Same Story (part 17)

Dear diary,

Now, all I’m trying to do here is tell a simple tale about the most important people in the universe, from the very first human ever created, all the way to the end of time, without skipping anyone who matters. So I started with Eve and her playmate Man, and I followed a few of their offspring, notably Cain and Seth; then I proceeded to the next high-water mark, which was Lilith (and Noah); I followed the lines of Lilith’s three children, the world’s greatest businessmen, and showed how they spawned multitudes betwixt them, and these multitudes cohered into a universal culture and managed to build the most efficient megalopolis that had the tallest library possible. — And now let’s leap ahead to the next hotspot: the lovely Sarah (travelmate of the prairie lawyer Abram). Yes, this is the same actor who would eventually star in my other book, Rumors of Sarah — she would play the titular role. But she didn’t want to repeat the same performance, and do all the same things in the same type of events, both there and here; so that’s why her personality and appearance in the scenes that follow, as well as the adventures that she relishes, when compared to my other scripture, are irreconcilably different.

This matriarch is so important that I probably should start a new tablet and call it “Book 4: The generations of Sarah”, like I did for Enoch and Lilith; but I’m feeling lazy, so I’ll just keep etching on the same marble and add her exploits to the foregoing.

You’ll recall Lilith’s sons, the trio of businessmen: Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Well I’ve told you already about why Mr. Ham is renowned — he kept the bloodline going when Noah “fell asleep at the wheel” (that’s a euphemism for suffering a dysfunctional performance in the bedroom); thus Mr. Ham fathered the famous magdalene Mary, as well as her twin cousin Elisabeth, the latecoming forerunner. — So the remaining two brethren, Mr. Shem and Mr. Japheth, need something memorable to accomplish, lest their names be forgotten. I’ve chosen to allow Mr. Shem to be the ancestor of Sarah (more on that directly below); so that’s his claim to fame. And I’ll let you, gentle reader, dream up some adventure for Mr. Japheth, all on your own; for I do not aim to corner the market on tall tale telling.

OK, so Shem makes a mental note of how Ham’s romance with Lilith resulted in multiple births. “Wow that’s fecund,” he gasps, beholding Ham’s two daughters. Then and there, Shem vows to break Ham’s record, and to pull off this multi-birth trick for himself as well. Therefore it comes to pass that, some moments after Ham’s episode reaches its happy ending, Shem pays a visit to the waterbed of Lilith, and she begets Arphaxad.

Now, a person who’s hearing this fact for the very first time might think that Shem sadly failed in his endeavor, because Arphaxad is just one name, as opposed to seven or ten names; thus the child must have been only a single firstborn. But here’s the catch:

Arphaxad actually contained the next seven generations within his own forehead. (Years later he would teach this skill to Zeus, who would use the same technique to bear Athena.) So when Arphaxad emerges, his father Shem appears crestfallen, thinking it’s merely a single lousy firstborn. He turns his back and begins to walk away, in a state of dismal woe. — But soon a noise is heard like an automatic weapon: rat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat! — seven bangs like gunshots fill the nursery; and lo! seven extra babes are shown to have popped straight out the head of little Arphaxad. And they’re not just siblings, no: they’re actually the subsequent generations of the line of Shem (they were, each and all, nestled in the forehead of their respective father-babe, like those hollowed wooden dolls that’re split so they fit inside one another): whole ages are accordioned between the nano-instants that buffer one birth from the next, which is a side-effect that occurs when you snugly fold spacetime — and the children’s names are

• Salah,
• Eber,
• Peleg,
• Reu,
• Sereug,
• Nahor,
• and Terah:

one for every hue of God’s rainbow. Moreover, corresponding to the pot of gold at its end is the head-birth of the lastborn; for the infant Terah no sooner traverses the matrix himself than cha-cha-cha! from his own noggin bursts forth the triune finale of

• Mashpo,
• Haras,
• and Sarah.

Note the lone feminine name among the roll-call; that’s a sign that you’ve really got lucky: when a damsel is born. So I wanna forget all the other listed souls and focus exclusively on Sarah:

BUT, before we take our leave of the above extras, note that Sarah and her brother Haras possess each other’s name spelled backwards.

Also Haras eventually fathered a lizard named Lot (not “a lot”, as in “a nest of guarded duplicate eggs”, but just one brain-ball: Lot; that’s the reptile’s God-given name); and Lot’s business partner Abram would one day become the official travelmate of Sarah.

Abram made his living as a lawyer; also later in life he served as the 16th president of the United States. (That was obviously after the Shinar paradise would pretend to have broken up into separate countries.)

A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR

I guess I have a habit of summoning individuals out & away from their context. What happens is that, once I perfect a world, I wish to avoid changing an iota of that perfection, but, at the same time, I desire to keep creating more of the whatness: to continue to expand onward and outward. And the best way of accomplishing these two seemingly contradictory things — saving perfection while allowing for strange new changes — is to withdraw my focus to a detail of the entirety, and work from there: set that fraction on a course to become its own whole.

My compeers tell me that the genii have a concept called zimzum, where Endlessness (called “God” by some, tho it’s bigger than me) contracts itself so as to make room for a creation in spacetime. Or something like that. Here’s what I’m trying to say:

When the world of the Outer Darkness was perfect, I chose to focus upon one fraction, floating in the void — the planet Earth. I created my androgyne; then I divided my portrait, Eve, so that she became both she and he: and we called our he “Man”. Then, once Eve and Man had spawned a full world, with help from my friends and neighbors (the Goddesses from beyond the sky), I wanted at once to SAVE this perfection, yet still to keep instigating impromptu flux. Therefore, just as in Earth’s beginning I withdrew my frame of focus and fixed it upon the first couple, so now again I “zoomed in” on one element within the swarming perfection: Noah; thus I asked Lilith to collaborate with my merry-mad mission, by being Noah’s playmate for one world. In a sense, one might say that I achieved a zimzum-within-zimzum by way of rapture and flood, because I utilized my army of flame-wagons to preserve all but one single atom of that lusty world.

And now that Lilith’s offspring have replenished the globe, and built the perfect city in Shinar, having a tower equipped with an elevator that reaches into heaven, so that they can mingle with the ur-generation of those glowing beings that preceded them, I find myself wanting to zero-out the field again, and swerve freshly: thus I set my sights on Sarah.

In short: As the generation of Eve genuflected to the generation of Lilith, now the generation of Lilith shall relinquish, in love, the central place in the dance unto the generation of Sarah.

Does that make sense? Anyway, let’s return to the tale…