Semi-abstract morningthots

To control traffic at the road junction in my small town, we use this set of lamps whose colors are red, pure gold, and green.

Dearest,

What a wonderful world we live in. There are so many people now. Back in the garden, it was just the two of us and our Maker. To communicate with each another, we would need to engage in elaborate physical gestures, hand waving, huffing and purring. Then, a few weeks later, we invented the alphabet and thus were able to send each other love-letters. Our Maker eventually learned our written language, and he used it to build his own massive book – more than a thousand pages long! – which is still one of the best things I’ve read. He claims that it’s a love-letter just like ours, and I partly believe him, although I can’t decipher who or what he’s in love with.

After that, our children’s children discovered how to enslave electricity. So they nailed together boxes of pine and jampacked them with technological advancements in the form of coiled snakes, which would burst thru the air when one pressed the red button. These machines helped to generate content for subscription-based services.

In our teenage years, we took a liking to music and formed an attachment to certain psalms. Now, all other music that comes our way, new or old, is measured against those youthful recollections. Over the ages, music has continually been dreamt up and produced – compositions and recordings keep surfacing every day – and although I myself don’t like any of it, the objective truth is that music has gotten better and better: it’s now streamlined, homogenized; it’s almost perfect: its human element has been nearly eradicated; the whole foreground is filled with aggressive editing . . . stiffer beats, more noise. . . . Sound science declares this very good.

And everyone participates in space and time. People are making money. Some are living happily; others are angry. There’s always violence somewhere, and cheating and scamming . . . But it’s the best system because it prevents any alternative from developing. You want to be on the winning side.

And what does our Maker want from all this? He’s still out there somewhere. He looks like anyone else. He created multitudes as camouflage, so that he and his coterie can blend in. Is he a shape-shifter like that one aqua-god? I sure hope not. Every time I’ve seen him, our Maker has sported the same hairstyle and mustache; and he even dresses relatively the same, considering that so many centuries have passed.

To bulk up, you must eat food and then lift barbells. Or, better yet, do farmwork. The meat that you consume will get transformed into muscles. But if, on the other hand, you wish to lose a little weight, because you gained a few extra pounds over the holidays, then simply cut back on the number of sugar cubes that you stir into every meal. Pig fat melts away in a pan. I only added that last statement for sound: don’t actually try it. For instance, if you’re in the habit of enjoying life (sitting in the sun, on the beach of a tropical island where this type of behavior is still morally acceptable), then just stop enjoying it so much, and you’ll slim right down. Go to the gym and buy those protein bars that they sell. You can take my car.

Here’s what I’m sincerely trying to figure out: If you practice a type of meditation that is designed to clear your mind of all thoughts, will you be able to survive a famine easier than the guy next to you, who wonders about all sorts of stuff? I’ve heard him contemplate going hunting and spearfishing, and he has questioned the ways of providence. But it must take only a small amount of energy to form a thought. How many calories are burned by worrying? I suppose it depends, to a certain extent, on how intense or complicated one’s agitation is. Think of a dog opening a can of soup with a blowtorch. Hold your vision steady. Now imagine several billion copies of the same dog sending each other silent video reenactments of The Synoptic Gospels Harmonized. Do your imaginations get blurrier as you begin to believe? And do you notice the colors of their dream-coats becoming more intense, when you die of starvation while prophesying? Or is all this saved in some surveillance artifact somewhere?

You’ll hear the annoying sound of feedback if you hold your microphone too close to the loudspeaker, during the next rock concert that you sing at. But do your highest thoughts triple in purity when you hold your brain near the Trinity’s pet? (I mean, when you use God’s Lamb as a pillow, while dreaming, and you envision a staircase, and the position of the camera invites you to peek up the robes of the angels. We’re dealing with figuration, here – when I said “hold your brain” beside the whatchamacallit, I did not mean “physically remove the top of your head” as some poets would have it.) For, if thoughts cost nothing, then why is a trim-fit body’s upper echelon always airy? And why are my fellow Wild Westerners always exhausted and scolding me: “You fret too well!”

And all the people saw the thunderings, and the lightnings, and the noise of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking: and when the people saw it, they removed, and stood afar off. And they said unto Moses, “Speak thou with us, and we will hear: but let not God speak with us, lest we die.”

And Moses said unto the people, “Fear not: for God is come to prove you, and that his fear may be before your faces, that ye sin not.”

And the people stood afar off, and Moses drew near unto the thick darkness where God was.

And Yahweh said unto Moses, “Thus thou shalt say unto the children of Israel, Ye have seen that I have talked with you from heaven. Ye shall not make with me gods of silver, neither shall ye make unto you gods of gold. An altar of earth thou shalt make unto me, and shalt sacrifice thereon . . . And if thou wilt make me an altar of stone, thou shalt not build it of hewn stone: for if thou lift up thy tool upon it, thou hast polluted it. Neither shalt thou go up by steps unto mine altar, that thy nakedness be not discovered thereon.” (Exodus 20:18-26)

I only wanted to share that very last sentence with you, to let you know where I got my idea above about the angelic upskirts; but then I needed to enlarge the quote for context. It’s important to remember that these types of commandments were given after rowdy displays, on a smoking mount, and that the audience was terrified.

People are committing loads of sins nowadays. I didn’t reside in Sodom or Gomorrah, before Yahweh destroyed them, but when I hear about the way that the residents of those places misbehaved, it sounds just like the 21st Century city-dwellers. But the one thing that I’ve never seen anyone do, at least in our Post-Industrial Age, is make gods of silver or gold. I find this exceedingly strange, because I imagine that if I had lived among the people who got to see firsthand that spectacular show upon Mount Sinai, the last thing I’d have been inclined to do is craft an idol of its proprietor. (How would I do that, anyway, since he’s always hiding in darkness? Even expert sculptors need a model to work from.) But the multitudes living nowadays have never heard their God voice a curse: no miracles ever happen anymore; the deity doesn’t send any prophets, not even lying spirits to prove us. So we moderns have no fear of Yahweh God; therefore we break all of his commandments: we’re cruel to the poor, we don’t help the widows and orphans, we allow the ultra-wealthy class to indebt everyone and charge rent for everything that should belong to the public commons – however, none of us has gotten around to making silver or gold relics of Eloah. I say we start. Forget about hiring a harlot for your model: just use a mirror; you own the same image – or look at the Caesar side of any coin – then revise that until you arrive at your ideal. Think about who you would choose to play you in a movie. Mine looks like a little golden statue of Cary Grant. How’d yours turn out? Exactly the same? Ooh, selah!

I didn’t mean to end this way, but just to support my remark about “lying spirits,” here’s the prophecy that Micaiah delivers to Ahab in the First Book of Kings (22:19-23) . . .

I saw Yahweh sitting on his throne, and all the host of heaven standing by him on his right hand and on his left. And Yahweh said, “Who shall persuade Ahab, that he may go up and fall at Ramoth-gilead?” And one said on this manner, and another said on that manner.

And there came forth a spirit, and stood before Yahweh, and said, “I will persuade him.”

And Yahweh said unto him, “Wherewith?”

And he said, “I will go forth, and I will be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets.”

And Yahweh said, “Thou shalt persuade him, and prevail also: go forth, and do so.”

Now therefore, behold, Yahweh hath put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these thy prophets, and Yahweh hath spoken evil concerning thee.