Dear diary,
Now Fernando Pessoa feels pity for me because my prescription spectacles fell into the sand dune while I was hand-digging a post-hole for our birdhouse, so he sez: “C’mon Bry, get up and dust yourself off — let’s go fulfill all the American Myths.”
I flinch: “American Myths? — But you’re from Lisbon; what do you know about…”
“I know everything,” sez Senhor Pessoa.
“I don’t doubt you,” I salute. (Note that I do not need to feel the wounds in Fernando Pessoa’s hands and feet, or thrust my hand thru the hole in his side where the Roman Centurion stabbed him on the day that the Church crucified him, in order to have faith that Fernando is the Word of the Alien Deity, which is to say: ONE OF US.)
So we first fight off the British when they come to our shores. They are the redcoats and Fernando and I are the good guys, the original Marines. “Die, commie scum!” we shout as we shoot them with our muskets and steal all their tea.
Then we go and assassinate President Lincoln; but immediately we revive him, using the Heimlich maneuver (a first-aid procedure for dislodging a magic bullet from a person's windpipe in which a sucker punch is applied to the abdomen), and we turn around and assassinate John Wilkes Booth instead. “Whew, that was close — I remembered the story wrong,” we say to each other; “I almost killed the wrong guy again!”
Then we go kill Jesus. Then we kill Zeus and World War Two, which, like a domino, falls backward and crushes World War One, which dies a couple days later of its injuries.
Then we kill the Vietnam War and the Korean War. We turn them into promising newborns instead. And they grow up into mighty nations that are utterly harmonious and immune to warfare. Tons of plants grow up around them, and the environment is healthy.
Then we go back and fight the Civil War. We keep inhabiting the bodies of anyone who gets slain, and we let Walt Whitman nurse us. This happens over and over and over. And both sides lose.
Then we invent the U.S. greenback. We tiptoe clandestinely into a room that has a printing press within it, and we note that the group of men that is gathered before the machine keep bickering over whose image should get to grace the obverse. I hold my white-gloved hand to my lips as I whisper during a lull in their heated argument: “Why not put Julius Caesar on the throne?” Then this group of gangster-thugs grows alarmed and turns around and shouts “Who said that? Who’s here? Show yourself!” And they are pointing their guns at the nothingness that haunts them; while Fernando and I have already leapt out the window and tumbled away to safety. (The window had a glass pane, and it was closed when we traversed its frame, therefore it shattered into a million pieces and caused a great crash in 1929.)
But now we grow annoyed with all these guns and bombs, so we eliminate the portions of spacetime during which these things were invented. We simply cut out the pages from God’s Book of Truth which enshrined them in history, and toss the scraps into the fire that heats our cauldron of red pottage.
“This is good,” I say, after ladling myself a bowl. “Is this technically soup or stew?”
“Call it what you like,” sez Fernando Pessoa, “but I agree: it is good.”
“I’d sell my birthright for this, in a heartbeat,” I say.* [*Genesis 25:29-34]
“Mmm,” sez Fernando.
Now a cranky old man walks into the room where we are supping and exclaims: “What have you two done! What were you thinking! You erased from existence the possibility of guns and bombs!? How do you expect me to write U.S. history without guns and bombs!?”
While continuing to spoon mouthfuls of this excellent pottage, I answer our visitor: “Oh, you must be the old man who’s in charge of writing U.S. history? Please sit down and have some red pottage with us.” And I ladle some into a bowl and hand it to the fellow.
The old man takes the offering and sniffs it. Then he dips the spoon and brings it to his mouth. He tastes a sip: “Hey, this is not bad at all.”
So this old man becomes our friend. But now that we’ve eliminated firearms and massive explosives from the storehouse of reality, every United Statesian is constantly jabbing knives at everyone else, including his or her family. Therefore we de-invent metal; and that seems to work, because, henceforward, instead of daggers, everyone is holding legal contracts; and they have no intention of keeping their side of the deal.
In sum, all the world’s problems are solved, and we can start re-instigating the most atrocious problems everywhere at once.
Suggested initial sentence for the next chapter: “Therefore, now, Fernando and I, along with the old man whose job it is to faithfully record U.S. history, join forces and begin to re-establish the concept of dread within all the worlds.”
CHAPTER NEXT
So, now, me and my friend Fernando Pessoa join the ancient historian whose job is to etch U.S. myth onto gold-plated tablets, and collectively begin to build back a better America that’s great again instead of…
I can’t even finish the first sentence of this book. How is my work going to enter the Annals of State-Approved Action Novels if I can’t think of what I want to say in it!? — I don’t even have a doctrine or any sort of design upon my readership, other than hating everything that is and being in favor of everything that never got to come true.
I guess that’s OK tho. It’s a start, anyway.
So let’s say that Fernando Pessoa and I join forces with the U.S. Mythologist plus Jeanette MacDonald, Anna Karina, and Monica Vitti in a world that’s now entirely at peace. We let our livestock eat all the suburban lawns in Eagan, while we look on and think and converse and sing and drink spirits.
“Shall we go for a walk?” sez Jeanette.
We all agree to go for a walk.
There are stalled cars, some overturned and burning, and humans arguing and physically fighting near buildings aflame, on the outskirts of all our multitudes of normal livestock and unnamable beings that we’re herding here in the suburbs; but the six of us find some places in Eagan that have rocks, rivers, valleys and hills to walk thru.
While we walk, we talk. “Why do you dislike thinking?” I ask Fernando Pessoa.
“I don’t dislike thinking,” sez Fernando. “Where did you get that idea?”
“Ah, you really don’t know?”
“No, of course,” sez Fernando; “I’m joking — but if I blaspheme thought, it’s only in the way that you yourself always claim that you hate the sun. Remember how you enacted all these scenes where you shoot the sun down out of the sky and kill it? And don’t you always curse its rays? We’re doing the same thing, you and I. A house divided cannot stand; and I AM thought, just as you are the BEING OF PURE LIGHT that all creatures merge with after death — the only reason that you don’t blind us when we behold you is that you deigned to drape yourself in mortality so that you could enter the world of spacetime and befriend us all.”
“Tell no one of this!! — I am the Abomination of Desolation,” I smile and laugh.
“See? You see what I mean.” Fernando laughs.
“Guys, seriously tho,” sez Anna Karina, “our shared hatred of philosophy — that’s not ironical, is it? Please tell me we’re being sincere at least about that.”
“Yes, and religion,” sez Monica Vitti.
“And mysticism,” sez the Court Historian.
“And the sun,” Jeanette MacDonald looks distressed.
I wink to Jeanette, and she relaxes and winks back.
“How’s everybody doing today,” God now approaches our group and begins to walk alongside us.
“Speak of the devil,” Fernando quips. “We were just now blabbing about religion, mysticism and philosophy.”
Jeanette looks concerned again and sez to Fernando, “Shall I notify the police? This is technically a violation of the restraining order…”
“No, let him stay,” smiles Fernando. “Just don’t leave the two of us alone — I want everything on the record.”
“I saw you all out for a stroll, so I thought I might join you, since I happened to be in Eagan,” sez God. “I hope you don’t mind.”
“It’s fine. Where are you headed?” asks Monica.
“I’m just on my way to go slaughter a sheep,” sez God. (We all hope that he will crack a smile and start laughing, but his big face remains like unrisen dough.)
“The sheep are over yonder,” Anna points. “We should know; we’re shepherds.”
“So am I,” sez God.
Anna squints and cocks her head: “No you’re not.”
Now God laughs, “I know, I know. No, I was just taking a scenic route. I like to gaze at the stones and the streams.”
We all look down and note that there are indeed countless picturesque rocks and rivers of clear, brilliant water beneath our feet. God bends down and picks up one of the rocks and holds it up before Fernando’s face while pointing out the characteristics of its strange shape. Fernando seems half-interested. When finished with his little lecture, God tosses the stone away; and, when it hits the ground, it turns into a loaf of bread. Immediately, a scruffy cherub scurries forth, jaws it up and scrambles off.
Chuckling to himself, God returns to his place beside Monica Vitti, as we all continue to pace forward in cinematically stylized ultra-slow-motion as a group, over the rocks and rivers. It is impossible not to notice that Monica has an old-fashioned revolver protruding from the waist of her light-gray skirt. The gun’s black grip can be plainly seen against her bright white blouse. (This detail offers the studio audience a hint about what will happen later on: for there’s no way that a firearm can appear on the page of a storybook and not eventually be used to kill God.)
Thinking to myself about how God said that he had decided to take up shepherding, I turn to him and ask: “Hey, don’t you normally carry a little lamb with you, in your purse? There’s this rumor: Something about its fleece being white as snow, and it follows you everywhere? Or am I forcefully coupling you with Mary Mag, back when she still charged for her services? Ah, yes, that’s it: She’s the one with the free-range lamb, which accompanies her voluntarily; whereas YOU keep yours chained to your throne. I only have misty memories about the circumstances surrounding the last time I dealt with you and your pet — I recall a physician being sick and in need of healing, so we telephoned a vet; but now I can’t think who saved who; I just remember that, after the procedure, you appeared unusually dashing, riding off into the sunset, up the mount, on your handsome horse. But do you know what I’m talking about — that suckling lamb that you used to have? Whatever happened to Mister Mutton?”
In his deadpan jokey way, God replies: “I ate him. — Don’t you think he becomes me?” as he pats his distended gut.
Hearing this, Monica Vitti pulls the revolver from her skirt, holds her arm straight out with the gun’s barrel pointing at God’s large head, and pulls the trigger. God’s body drops. With swift determination, Monica then steps over and discharges the firearm repeatedly into the Godhead, at point-blank range, using up the rest of her ammo.
Gentle reader, if you’ve seen the movie that I’ve mentioned time and again, titled L’Eclisse (1962), then you’ll know that my friend Monica plays a character in it whose name is Vittoria. In one scene, Vittoria visits the apartment of a neighbor who happens to own a plantation in Kenya; and the scene ends with Vittoria dressed up in presumably Kenyan accessories and garb, plus full body-paint, and pretending that she is an African dancer. — Now, one of the faults that literary critics have found with this present textbook of mine is that I blatantly lift the aforesaid part of the scene from the movie L’Eclisse and depict my friend Monica as doing the exact same dance, in exactly the same costume and makeup, over the corpse of God. The critics complain that I don’t change a thing about the movie’s idea — I simply plagiarize the moment, and exploit and appropriate it for this key scene in my own memoirs: That’s not very creative.
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