Dear diary,
Mein gott! the world was beautiful, back in those days. — But I wanna keep trying to speak about these things in the present tense, so let me rephrase that: Mein gott! the world is beautiful, from here to eternity.
& Jehovah sez in his heart: “I’m gonna let this generation play out; no rapture this time. I really like Mr. Noah. I wanna see his people grow fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth. I will therefore bless their seedtime and harvest, so that everything is easy as it should be. For I don’t want them to be forced by necessity to spend a lot of time procuring life’s basic requirements, like food, clothing, and shelter; I want them instead to have the leisure to lean and loaf, so as to be able to develop their imagination. That’s what pleases me most: the Poetic Genius — it is inherent in every human heart, and available to anyone childlike enough to unshackle it.”
Then, still following the aroma from the altar, he arrives at Noah’s barbecue. God raises his arm in greeting, & addresses the assembly of picnickers:
“Bless you all! Don’t mind me — keep making love; be fruitful, I say: propagate thoroughly, & replenish the earth! I bless you all equally, from the mowers to the glowworms. For every thing that lives is holy. It is good that you do not fear and dread one another, & it is good that you allow your compassion to transcend your own species. The beasts of the earth respect the fowl of the air, and the fowl of the air respect the creepers that writhe underground, and each wriggling night-crawler feels the utmost respect for the fishes of the sea. Now, into the custodianship of Mr. Noah and his family, I deliver everything that moves. Every single thing that lives and breathes on the earth (or inside of it, where the molten lava is), or up in the sky, or down underwater, I put you in charge of. Take care of these creatures as if they were your own offspring. And watch over the trees, as well: all the greenery that you see sprouting up everywhere — trim it & upkeep it, however you like. For my hypothesis proved true: my garden throve in the wake of the global flood. But actually, on second thought, I don’t even mind if you let some of this verdure simply run wild, and allow your houseplants to grow up and become scary jungles. Fear itself is not the end of the world: it can be a thrill to walk thru shady paths in the rainforest, where you can barely see the air in front of your face because of all the dense fanning leaves; then you push aside some overgrown ferns and they reveal a burning tyger: staring at you, all aquiver. Yes, just respect one another: don’t offer each other unnecessary torment.
“In short,” continues Jehovah, “I ask you to play fair. Go ahead and eat flesh. Eat anything that has lungs, or gills, or neither. Eat herbs, if you like. I have given you all things. But just understand that when you eat flesh, you eat the soul: because life is in the body of every animal. So if you engage in a barbecue on my altar, like we’re doing here today, whether you cook the meat only a little, leaving it rare and bloody; or serve it medium, or well done, or even burnt to a crisp — however you prepare it, the moment you dine, that entity’s oomph becomes your oomph. For the body and the soul are one; there is no division in any existent individual: there is only division between respective individuals. And one being absorbs another. It could be that I myself might eventually ask to be devoured in just the same way, for the very same reason; & not rare but raw (uncooked!) — peradventure I will say ‘Take, eat; this is my body’; then hold out a cup, having a beverage served ‘on the rocks’, even a glass filled with ice, and offer it unto the descendants of my friend Mr. Noah, while shouting ‘Cheers! To your health. Now drink ye all of it. For this is my blood.’ Who knows! Anything’s possible. Or maybe I’ll coax one of my children to test this theory first, as an experiment; then I will note down the results, and make a more informed decision, before committing to anything.
“Yes, so what I’m trying to say here,” continues Jehovah, “is that even tho you can give up your life to another, by way of allowing yourself to be feasted upon (I’m talking strictly to you animals in the audience now, excepting the family of Mr. Noah; for death is unavailable to humankind: it’s something that only the rest of living creatures and we deities are permitted to enjoy), you should try, beforehand, to bring forth at least one new life, by way of intercourse with a playmate, so that the seed of whatever style of creature you happen presently to inhabit can remain upon the earth, and this replacement can thus have a chance to be eaten in turn. In other words: don’t hog all the bliss. Keep the population number steady. Practice planning your parenthood. Don’t be so generous with self-sacrifice that your kinfolk’s bloodline ends up going extinct. Put up a little fight, for show at least: don’t go dumb to the slaughter. Have grit in your soul.
“And humans were crafted as motion pictures of God, like animated portraits; therefore they share some proclivities with us vampiricals: They really love wine. Am I right, Mr. Noah?”
Noah raises his glass, while using tongs to flip the sacrifice on the altar.
“Alright, now, before we feast,” declares Jehovah, “let me offer up a prayer:
“Dear Noah and fam, thank you for setting up this barbecue for me. I like the scent of roasted flesh so much that I had no trouble finding your picnic, even tho it’s in an undisclosed locale (this mountain is so large that I haven’t had a chance yet to properly label all of its precincts on my map) — I simply followed my own two nostrils. Now I wanna bless you even further than I did just a second ago, because what you’re doing here really touches me where it counts. As I said, I want you to propagate a lot of offspring, so that humans who possess traits similar to your playmate can overrun the planet. Now I will have my secretaries draw up a contract between the both of us, and it shall be binding for all your seed that comes after you. Heck, I’ll even make it binding between every living creature under heaven — all the animals who occupied rooms in your Hotel Boat — everyone shall be a party to this mega-contract, whose terms shall state that, ever so often, I will cause catastrophic disasters upon the planet, like the recent worldwide flood, so that nothing will ever turn unexciting here: you’ll always have some wild ride to razzle your children.
“Now here is the token, the pledge, the security, the collateral, which shall stand to remind you that I have established this legally binding contract with all life on earth, for perpetual generations (that means there is no expiration date): I hereby invent THE RAINBOW, and I install one in every cloud; and there is a pot of gold at the end of each, which you can find if you look hard enough (keep searching! you might unearth it). This bow is caused by sunlight reflecting off raindrops — that’s what my engineers tell me, anyway — therefore, whenever you see it, it shall bring to mind two plain facts:
- that precipitation prevails: thus it may, at any instant, re-flood the earth
- that the sun is an arbitrary tyrant: its rays gladden and sadden
“My sun may even someday burn up the world; wouldn’t that be neat! Then, rather than sending my horse-drawn flame-wagons out to apprehend each generation when it matures, since I vowed to forgo a general rapture for the Age of Mr. Noah, the earth itself will become the chariot of fire! Get the idea? Instead of fishing earthfolk up, soul by soul, into heaven, we’ll just bring heaven itself down to earth. Thus the lower class will become centered into the middle class along with the upper class, and heavenly hell will be all in all.
“But,” Jehovah adds, “that day is far off; we have many minor blisses to taste before the Major Bliss. For I prefer to savor existence. As my friend Blake sez: Eternity is in love with the productions of time.”
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