Dear diary,
At least novels end. Life has no end. You wake up every day as the same exact hero. Imagine you take a book down from the shelf of your library: it’s a novel; you begin to read it; its hero’s name is Bryan Ray. But this novel has no plot, or a dull plot that moves too slow; so you place the book back on the shelf. Now you reach to another shelf and find a different title and take that new book down; it’s another novel, by a whole nother author. But its hero is, again, Bryan Ray. You throw the book aside and grab yet another volume. You double-check to make sure: Yes; this one has a different title than either of the first two books, a different date of publication, and a totally different author; it’s even a much shorter story, printed and bound in a compact format (its cover, pink and glowing, is made of translucent plastic)… but, again, its main character is Bryan Ray. And the plot line sucks. All these books on the shelves, by so many talented authors, and not one of them contains a non-Bryan-Ray hero (or a decent plot). And here’s the summary, the outline, the gist of all the novels in your library – here’s what they’re all about [ALERT! spoilers ahead]: Each morning, a giant insect wakes from the charmingest dreams to find that it has been transformed into a human named Bryan Ray.
Not once can our hero awaken as, say, Sarah Ash-plant or Christa Eight-ball or Melanie Murderess or Kimmy Tang or Saint Miller or Rebecca Coal-haul or Kym Watt or Shalon Fiero or Rachael Kool or Tessa Westwild or that girl who worked the graveyard shift with me at the restaurant that had a burnt-out letter 'S' on its neon sign that was supposed to read TACO SHELL, back when we would close the store together, and I’d wash all the dishes while she tended the drive-thru; then our manager Terrance—the biggest man in town, with big, big muscles—I say, this manager of ours named Terrance would then drive the two of us to our houses, in the middle of the night, cuz we were both carless (& too young to drive), so this co-worker and I would sit in the back seat of our Giant Manager’s coupe and berate each other mercilessly, while Big Terrance laughed, as he probably assumed that we twain were, at that point, more parasite than host (tho we weren’t wary enough to summon any upshot to our downfall), and the parasite was love. Or either of my red-haired managers at the prior fast-food joint: Jenny Light, or Jennifer X. Or that girl in green at the mall...
I’m writing in a stupid way here; a way that’s not even pleasing to myself. I’m agitated because yet again we have some specialists scheduled to pay us a housecall: this time it’s a professional tree-removal service. They’ll be here at 8 a.m.; so I’m up at 3:30 a.m. buzzing with worry. I’m not really worried in an intellectual sense; by which I mean, my worry is not driven by logic, or even by any thot at all: it’s rather a body-fear; an automatic overdose of adrenaline that my fleshly vessel (my outer husk) gives itself since it senses that something unusual is in the air today. It’s like my body has a mind of its own.
So I consist of a body-mind and a mind-mind. And I side with my mind-mind; I wish my body were…
No, you shouldn’t wish ill upon your own body. Your body is like a pet that follows your spirit around. Like a little dog leashed to a soul. Here I’m using the words ‘spirit’ and ‘soul’ synonymously, which is wrong; but, bear with me, as I’m only wasting life. So the body is a cute little puppy that ‘serves’ my mind. I place the word serves within hooks to indicate the ironic nature of my cute pup’s servitude. It thinks that it’s doing you a favor and showing love when it licks your hand, but this really just leaves you feeling slimy…
My point was to illustrate that the body’s mind is like a little puppy’s brain, in comparison to the mind of the mind, which, in the present analogy, belongs to the ghost: the pet’s holy owner. Of course the little dog doesn’t understand exactly what’s planned for the day – it doesn’t grasp that an actual team of men are soon to arrive at the house and begin to saw down trees with huge motorized tools and then violate the earth itself to get rid of the remaining trunks and roots – but, say, my little four-footed friend heard me talking on the phone last night and noted the tenseness in my voice and that I was pacing anxiously; and then since I keep patting his furry head and reassuring him excessively for seemingly no reason, he deduces in his little doggy way that there’s an existential threat. So, instead of behaving calmly while we’re walking around at the park, he zips & zags impatiently, pulls constantly at the end of his leash, sniffs every growth on the path obsessively & suspiciously, lunges at passersby, and growls and pees more than usual.
I’m trying to say that, during times of stress, my body is like a pet dog that acts annoying precisely because it means well, while its owner, the mind, is like the original, non-cynical deity who’s trying to figure out where this world went wrong.
You created the world; your aim was such-and-such; the world flung off unexpectedly. When did error creep in? How could this be? You assumed you were omnipotent and omniscient: all-powerful and all-knowing. Now this wacky world that slipped from your clutch proves you can’t be both: that is, you might have all the power but you sure don’t know everything (there are possibilities beyond your ken); alternately, if nothing escapes your knowledge then you must lack the power to make reality match your will.
Perhaps there’s a will behind your will, just like there was a body-mind under you mind’s mind. Or should we label this will 'over' or 'under'? Is it a sub-will or a super-will? It seems sub, since its accomplishments are a minor nuisance in comparison to your own glorious handiwork (the world and all that is in it); however, the fact that it could act at all without your consent implies that it’s super, that it emanates from a source superior to yourself.
To avoid admitting that even the Most High God has a Most High God, and that monotheism is simply polytheism dressed up as a Russian doll, (“a matryoshka doll, also known as a Russian nesting doll or stacking dolls, is a set of wooden figurines of decreasing size placed one inside another; the word ‘matryoshka’ literally means ‘little matron’,” which reminds us of the pet dog representing our physical body in the example above; and now we regret not making the dog into a bear), I say, to upkeep the truth of our boast “I am the LORD, and there is none else, there is no God beside me: I girded thee, though thou hast not known me,” (Isaiah 45:5) and to avoid admitting that I am not exactly the LORD—not altogether, not 100%—as there is something else, a God (or more) beside me, & not only these extra-deific forces but even my underlings know me, because this mouthpiece, this speaker of mine, this “prophet” has leaked my secret to the people, and the result is not at all as I expected – I say, to avoid having to blank all the above, we might declare:
But I intended to trick myself in this fashion: I set a counter-will as a boobytrap for my future self, long ago, knowing that I’d someday try to fashion another world; and this successful self-deception is my finest accomplishment to-date. The only thing finer would be if I could convince myself that I’m dead.
I’m merely saying the same thing that I always say: that atheists are more pleasing to God than believers. We prophets tend to harp on a single message, thinking that too much complexity will baffle the masses and lose them, whereas simplicity and repetition might help us to make some moral headway; then, when our generation has passed, our words are taken up by the subsequent ages and employed to justify more money-making and warfare.
Seriously, would you like to have a mirror positioned permanently before your face? The reason the mirror is anchored to the wall of your mansion is so that you can have a temporary proof of your handsomeness: this can then be abandoned when you go out into the world; you enjoy experiencing the effect of your light upon others: all of nature blooms in response to the sight of your beauty. But if you have a mirror taped to your face, then this bliss is truncated –
I almost want to say that your glory short-circuits, but the truth is that I’ve never been able to grasp what “short circuit” means. I thot it was like when electricity takes an illegal, alternate route to its destination, so it’s like cheating in a race: the racetrack is ellipsoidal, but you dash thru the bushes to your left and cross the finish line in three steps—ping pang poom—while the rest of the runners are sweating and grunting for light years (I’m pretty sure that a “light year” is a unit of distance); but now I fear that short circuit means precisely the opposite: not a cut to the end thru the woods but rather an opening out into the abyss of possibility where both the estate AND rate of your pleasure’s expanse is limitless. Like when the miracles of one’s creation exceed the amount of creative juices in one’s reservoir. God is then sucked inside-out. What I’m saying is this:
Having to listen to your believers praise you all day and night for eternity is like being plagued by mirrors, like being lost in a Really Fun House; you begin to yearn for the honest scorn of infidels.
However, in truth, you prefer neither praise nor scorn but an alert, cheerful fellowship. That’s why skeptics and poets are superlative. Also fanatics. But the finest enthusiast will believe absolutely everything, with an easily bendable noncommitment. We atheists should not be afraid to sin against ourselves. Our goal should be to walk around with a lump of guilt in the pit of our spirit because we know that we half-prayed yestereven: a compassionate request of good health for our enemies. We’re probably our own worst enemy, anyway; so it’s ultimately selfish, all this altruism. But that’s the way to do it: that’s the proper style. Loving your adversaries and praying for those who persecute you: this should never go out of fashion. Heaven and earth should pass away, but this pose should remain. (Matthew 24:35) — The defender praying for the prosecutor, the accused for the accuser, the adversary for her opponent, Jesus for Yahweh, Satan for the LORD: this is the vision that should shine, the sole permanence, once all the hosts of heaven are dissolved, and the heavens themselves are rolled together as a scroll: and all their armies of saints tumble down, as the leaf falleth off from the vine, and as a falling fig from the fig tree (Isaiah 34:4) – every angel eventually, and Lucifer from happily ever after.
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