Dear diary,
As you may know by now, my name is Bryan Ray. But I want to speak as tho I’m not Bryan, just for a moment, so that I can introduce the prayer that I want to say this morning:
Prayer intro
The following prayer was said by Bryan on Tuesday, 25 Aug of 2020, to mark the occasion of waking up and feeling annoyed. One should imagine sad accordion music playing in the background, softly and slowly, for the duration the prayer. However, to be clear, this sound of accordion-playing should exist ONLY in the mind: Do NOT add actual accordion music to the soundtrack. [End of intro.]
Pt. 2: THE PRAYER ITSELF
Dear LORD God,
Why do you allow everything to be so awful? What exactly do you do all day, anyway? Are you hard at work, preventing millions of things from going wrong, but you just can’t fly to every single problem, every day? Or are you asleep and not even trying? Do you factually exist somewhere external, as the church-folk say who speak on your behalf? Can you hear me right now, or are you receiving my prayer at second-hand, thru a messenger?
I suspect you’re not listening. — If you have any sense of the tendencies of the human mind, which you supposedly fashioned from mud (with your own bare hands!) then you know that you’re acting in a way that would lure a thinking person to doubt you.
Why do you make me feel angry all the time? Why do you provoke me to feel annoyed almost constantly?
Do dreams matter? Or are they just like the brain digesting the perceptions that it ate.
Why have you let me die so many times? Why did you let me jump out of my WW2 fighter-plane and then my parachute jammed, so I fell into a tree? You let me hang there for 34 hours, till I bled out all my blood and couldn’t tolerate the lightheadedness. So I cursed you, O LORD, and I gave up the ghost. — Is that the reason you ignore righteousness and apparently favor evil? You’re really still enraged about me cursing you to your face?
Seriously, what the fuck is your problem! You’re a failure as a man. Only silly people believe in you. That’s the lone reason I’m even deigning to address you right now: I’m proudly silly, and I believe in pataphysics. I also like poetry, and no one can deny that you own the top spot in Poem-land. That’s choice real-estate.
Now, how long will you allow armies to march all over peaceful citizens, O LORD, my God? It used to be that you’d bait armies to clash against EACH OTHER, like men do with chickens, just to laugh at the sight of them fighting. I’m sure you felt entertained, watching all those human lives derisively pecking each other to death with their little bayonets. But nowadays, instead of armies cockfighting enemy armies, you allow the mercenaries of one multinational corporation to slaughter the civilians of some other pleasant land, who’re so misinformed that they still believe that there are countries.
Why, O LORD, are you so inscrutable? Even the prudest killjoy Christian, even the most modest Protestant, will lift her dress-hem to show off a little bit of her ankle, just to flaunt her allure. Why don’t you stand near the edge of your cave so that we can see your silhouette? Then at least we’d be able to tell if you’re a short or medium-sized goatherd.
I’m gonna come find you. To hell with this waiting: I shall climb up out of Purgatorio and seek far and wide until I discover your coward frame, wherever it’s hiding. I don’t even care if you destroy me — I don’t care, O LORD, if it comes to pass that, the moment I set mine eyes on you, I gasp and begin to stammer apologies, for I never expected to stumble upon such a Strong Man, whose visage is absolutely terrifying (I always assumed that the rumor about “No one lives after looking at the face of God” was just hyperbolic advertising) — I’d be honored to let you tear me to shreds and devour me, if you’re really so mighty: if your bite is as bad as your bark. But I suspect you’re just bluffing: you’re probably nothing but a pack of cards, as Alice sez to the Queen, during her adventure in Wonderland. I’m guessing that you, O LORD, my God, are just a brain in a vat, attempting to visit us from the future, so as to extend your pointless existence by cycling your essence inside of mankind, like a reverse vampire — you’re like lifeblood trying to find a body to pump thru.
That’s the only thing I like about you, by the way, O LORD — your total pointlessness. I wouldn’t want a useful God if there were one available. Cuz having a use might render you necessary, and we mortals already have too many needs to be met. And, no thanks to you, it is a miracle IF we meet them. Lo: it’s now more than two thousand years after Jesus tried to offset you, and we’re still dealing with the same old problems: wicked merchants, usurous banksters, a ruthless & inhumane economic scheme propped up by a “government” that’s barred from helping anyone but the creditors. Rich versus poor. Are you tired of this stupid plot repeating? My God, I’m speaking from a single body that has only forty years on its odometer (or whatever the proper name is for the gauge within us that records how much time we’ve suffered), I say, I’m only a fraction of an ideal lifetime old, yet even I, this early in the game, feel acute revulsion to this tedious cycle: this predictable farce of human brutality. All one needs to do is read a history book (not to be confused with a propaganda book), and one masters the template — so, how is it that you, O LORD God, keep wanting to watch this same tragic show!?
Again, I suspect that when I find you, you’ll be dead, slouched over your armchair in front of the television. And, upon seeing this scene, I’ll exclaim: “Ah, THAT’s why he never changed the channel.”
But, instead of dying instantly of a Holy Heart-attack, I hope that you drink yourself to sleep on the couch, and your cigarette drops out of your lips, O LORD, and catches fire. Then maybe YOU will feel what it’s like to try to enjoy the pains of hell. I’ll double over with laughter, after listening to you try to persuade yourself that your situation isn’t really all that dire: “I rather fancy the looks of these flames — they flicker so splendidly; and although I am sweating from the heat, it is passable, because, as an angel, my perspiration has the scent of perfume: as it is written, ‘Divine am I inside and out, and I make holy whatever I touch [...] The scent of these arm-pits aroma finer than Bryan’s prayer...’.” Here, O LORD, you are quoting from “Song of Myself”, section 24, for it is not only I who bow down before Walt Whitman. But you are a hypocrite: a fraud. Whitman worked as a nurse in the war, O God of this World: YOU never helped anyone.
Yes, I shall hunt you down and confront you. I’ll take the whip from my belt and whip you. I’m normally not a violent person, here on Earth; but that’s cuz I love my fellow-creatures. Even the meanest humans around, I tolerate their lack — for I consider all that men call evil as mere impatience and misunderstanding. But I have no further mercy for you, O LORD. You’re an enemy noble enough to deserve the full force of our fury. In fact, we were wrong if we ever maligned you as puny or weak — those false accusations reflect worse on us than they do on you, and I, for one, regret it. You are as awesome and wondrous as any believer has ever howled, when they howl their hymns. That’s why I find you worth my time.
And when I do, at long last, pull back the curtain and behold you alive in person, in the flesh, I will probably not be able to go thru with our battle. I will probably choose to set down my glittering sword, and refrain from holding it up to the heavens and beheading you: at the height of my strength, I shall choose to disarm myself. I will most likely fall in love, all over again. Despite my intentions, I will show you undeserved mercy.
I remain in awe of how many gems you have on your armor. You make the warrior lifestyle seem dignified. It almost makes me wanna go out there and rejoin my Host; and storm Heaven, to take it back. But I vowed long ago to waive my rights. — What are rights, anyway? They’re just more pageantry fortified by violent threat. I want no part of that. In this respect, I’m at least one step ahead of you: I know that harmony cannot be arrived at by way of mere force. But, yes, I understand that your ultimate aim is not harmony — THAT is, I suppose, our main point of contention.
Anti-benediction
So, to wrap things up here, let me proclaim a long litany of punishments that I’d love to inflict upon you, O God, if I could manage to locate the place where you have been hiding — but let’s be clear about the fact that, although I’m preparing to shout some very harsh words now, there is a clear understanding between us that I’ll most likely melt and reconcile with you when we really do meet:
- I would love to throw you off of a cliff, O LORD my God, and watch you fall till you hit the ground.
- I’d love to yank your helmet right off your head, and slap your face with the palm of my hand. And when you turn the other cheek, I’ll slap it even harder. I’d love to see the look that you give me, after I did this.
- I’d love to set up a trap; then hide in some bushes by the wayside & wait for you to come strutting by. Suddenly, ZWIZH! you trip the string which causes a complex array of deceptions to expose your shame. And I will acquire your holy spirit.
- And I’d love to catch you in the act, one moment before you’re about to molest your next angel: I’d grab a fistful of your hair and pull you back away from your intended victim, and I would cut off your head with my sword. (This would be the same sword that you stole from my estate — but I stole it right back.)
- I’d love to gather some devils together and form a gang, and then buy some rubber tires from an automotive supplies shop, and throw a tire at you so that it hits you in the gut, and you fall over sideways in the potato-field.
[PROPHET’S NOTE: both of those last two curses are sly references to my previous entry.]
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Last but not least, I’d love to line you up with all of your celestial accomplices, O LORD my God, against the wall of an underground parking lot, and cradle a tommy gun in my arms, and mow you all down: I’d aim the gun and squeeze the trigger WITH ALL MY HEART, and it would shoot out bullets automatically, at a rapid pace. I’d wave the weapon back & forth, slowly & gently to the rhythm of the music, until you, O God, and all your seraphs are dead in a bloodbath. — This would be known as “The Tuesday Prayer Massacre” in all the headlines of the local newspapers. And the story next to that one, in the column just to the left of it, would proclaim:
“Landslide Victory! Bryan Ray Elected Mayor of New Chaotic Void, After Slaying Opponent & Seducing the LORD God’s Consort.”
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