Wandering thots on endings, featuring my improved retelling of “Revelation”

Dear diary,

I care too much about beginnings. How the first human was created; where life came from; how God stole his power. (I’m referring to the sermon that I delivered yesterday.) I’d really like to turn over a new leaf and begin to worry about endings now. Maybe someday I’ll even find time to exist in the present and give my attention to life’s midsection; but, for now, let me brood upon the final page of our story. The cessation of everything. Armageddon.

Already, I’m on shaky ground. For Walt Whitman, right at the start of his “Song of Myself,” says:

I have heard what the talkers were talking . . . . the talk of the beginning and the end, / But I do not talk of the beginning or the end.

And Whitman also appears in a poem by Wallace Stevens, “Like Decorations . . .”

Nothing is final, he chants. No man shall see the end.

But, just to interpose a little ease, let our frail thoughts dally with false surmise. What does the end of a battle look like: One of the armies is standing proudly, holding its flag, with its boot on the head of the defeated army’s corpse. Now what’s “not final” about this, Walt? I guess he would say that the deceased opponent will eventually decompose and enrich the soil for the surviving army; and the trees and beasts that are nourished by that soil will offer their fruits and meat for sustenance, and the living will then incorporate the atoms of the dead: thus everyone is a winner. As Hamlet sez:

Alexander died, Alexander was buried, Alexander returneth into dust; the dust is earth; of earth we make loam; and why of that loam, whereto he was converted, might they not stop a beer-barrel?

I still think it’s worthwhile to consider finality, however; because, when we speak of the dead as not having truly met an end, whatever constitutes “the thing that continues” is so different from what it seemed in the time preceding its Big Change that the concept of persistence applies only to the dullest details in the wastebin of spacetime.

Plus, the Church Fathers tell me that God wrote about the end of the world; and if it’s good enough for God, then I am willing to give it a glance. There is no reason to doubt the Church Fathers – it’s not like we caught them abusing children or anything.

So what happens when a song stops? We hear silence. Well, actually, as Whitman again reminds us, we hear “The ring of alarm-bells . . . . the cry of fire . . . . the whirr of swift-streaking engines and hose-carts with premonitory tinkles and colored lights,” etc. (I’m quoting from the part of “Song of Myself” where he says that he’ll do nothing but listen and record what he hears.) But that’s just background noise, because we live in the city: it’s fair to interpret this racket as the absence of racket, just like the War to End All Wars led to World Peace.

I’m trying to think of more examples of things reaching their conclusion, before I move on to the biblical End Times. . . .

What happens when you finish playing a card game? You place the deck of cards in the furnace and never see your friends again. What happens when a horse finishes speaking? You think about the content of his prophecy.

The final end, death, is something else that cannot be faced in its inhuman coarseness. [. . .] If you imagine yourself being shot, your body being rolled away in a barrow by soldiers, you are cheating yourself by substituting for your own body someone else’s, or perhaps an impersonal dummy. Your own death lies hidden from you.

—from The Sense of an Ending 
(VI) by Frank Kermode

And they all lived happily ever after. Then there’s Duchamp’s notion of leaving a work “definitively unfinished.” Also the typical Hollywood ending, familiar from movies made in the studio era, also known as The Golden Age. . . .

All right, the Book of Revelation. “I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last.” (22:13) I now regret that I chose this topic.

The start of the finish. Bang goes the gun, signifying the commencement of the race. Who’s gun? God’s gun. But this ain’t your mother’s Heavenly Father: this is the Resurrected Christ. He’s all bulked-up and tricked-out, with swivel-action torso and combat wounds that change color in the sun.

I’m being too jokey. I need to get serious about this shit.

MY NEW & IMPROVED, SUPER-CONDENSED 
RETELLING OF THE BOOK OF REVELATION

(a screen treatment for a closet teleplay)

Alright, so the Christ’s servant John is living on the island of Patmos. The seven churches of Asia are nearby. Now the Son of Man appears with seven stars and seven golden candlesticks. He has a bazooka in either arm. John is commanded to scold the angels of the churches, because they’ve all been very bad.

The throne of God appears in heaven. There are twenty-four elders surrounding it. God is holding two flame-throwers. Out of the blue emerge four beasts with googolplexes of eyes all over their fur, and they begin to perform an everlasting act – they cannot stop, it is sick – they keep worshipping and adoring the enormous God.

Now God stands up and points his flamethrower at some drudge, who scampers forth to do God’s bidding; God commands this annoying placeholder to go fetch his awesome book with seven seals, which nobody is allowed to page thru. John starts to cry, and nobody comforts him. God is not even paying attention to John. The Resurrected Christ then enters on the right wing holding his two bazookas. The nonentity who was sent to retrieve the sealed book returns with the volume in his snout – we now realize that this loser is the dead Lamb who was shot by God and Christ in an earlier scene when they both carried machineguns. The Lamb is bleeding from all its bullet wounds. God snatches his awesome book out of the Lamb’s muzzle and gives the beast a kick. The four eyeball-ridden beasts keep puking out praise to God. And the elders all stink.

Now six of the seven seals of his awesome book are slashed wide open by God’s fingernail. “Rah! Look at that!” sez God.

John the wimp now looks to his left and sees four angels struggling to hold back the four winds of the globe. The angels are sweating. Another angel then comes around and uses a hot steel brand to stamp the foreheads of God’s property. God makes a gesture to the latter angel with his flamethrower, and the angel goes and uses God’s best broom to sweep his Chosen People into a pile. Everyone looks at this pile. Then God commands someone to put some robes on the Chosen People. So a huge cart of robes is wheeled over and dumped on the pile.

Now the seventh seal is slashed open. Seven orange angels climb out of a tub: they are holding seven trombones. Some ruffian from God’s entourage then goes around spraying everyone right in the face with holy incense, using one of those manual-pump bug-sprayers. Great plagues severally follow.

At the center of the universe is erected a vast golden altar that’s in very bad taste. The orange angels from the tub now blow their trombones and keep moving their tuning slides up and down so that it irritates everyone.

This causes a star to shake loose and fall out of heaven. It falls into the bottomless pit. When it hits the floor, BAM! it breaks open and locusts crawl out. And swarms of scorpions. All these poisonous creatures keep hurting people. John is still crying. God and Christ stand watching as more plagues and pandemics ravage the earth.

A big musclebound angel stomps forward with his chest all oiled up: He swears at the world on behalf of God and says that he has been put in charge of destroying time. So this means that nothing will ever be able to change or move, henceforward. He spits when he talks.

This musclebound angel then pulls a glossy magazine out of his compression shorts and stomps over to where John is crouched and crying. He grabs John’s head and force-feeds him the glossy magazine, which has full-page photos of buff angels at the gymnasium. The angel stuffs the paper into John’s mouth, as John keeps whining. “Read this,” shouts the angel, “and tell me what you think.” Then all of heaven laughs.

John is then kicked forward and compelled to take measurements of the building where God keeps his riches.

God now lets loose a vicious Dingo to terrorize the globe. Then, to give the Dingo something to chew on, God drops two prophets down from heaven: they land outside of the warehouse that John is measuring. The Dingo immediately clamps the prophets in its jaws, and you can hear their bones snapping. He then spits them out, and they lie there unburied for more than three days. Shoppers who are heading to the marketplace must walk around the corpses and plug their nose as they pass. Sometime in the afternoon of the next week, God reels the two prophets back up into heaven.

Then there is an earthquake; after which, all the elders struggle back up onto their feet and then continue to praise God.

We now learn that the sun is actually a woman who is perpetually burning alive. She is positioned so as to give birth, but a pale white saltwater crocodile stands waiting to eat the infant. The hideous reptile waits with its mouth agape, right between her legs.

Her contractions are getting closer together, and the labor pains are intense. The pregnant sun-goddess then uses her uterus and abdominal muscles to push so hard that the babe shoots directly over the head of its would-be devourer.

Prince Michael the Archangel then trots out of his mansion with his angelic posse, and they draw their swords and begin fighting against the pale white saltwater crocodile. The repulsive beast is beaten back to the edge of the cliff. Finally it slips over and tumbles down: it falls from heaven and lands on the earth. The gang of angels in heaven then throw a party to celebrate their victory. Meanwhile, the crocodile goes around persecuting the earth-women.

Now a merman rises out of the ocean. By way of telepathy, the saltwater crocodile transfers a percentage of his evil powers to the merman. The merman curses at God and makes obscene gestures with his webbed fingers toward heaven, and he exasperates all the saints. Then a giant earthworm surfaces and enters an alliance with the pale white crocodile. We now notice that they both have the number “666” tattooed on their comely parts, as they go around raping all the rosebushes.

The Lamb sits with Michael and his angel-gang as they listen to a corpulent cherub preach about monogamy and property rights.

Seven more angels now fly out of God’s robe spreading seven more plagues. Christ whistles to get their attention and then cries “Don’t forget these!” And he tosses to the angels seven golden vials filled to bursting with Divine Wrath.

God raises both his flamethrowers and blasts them off as he shouts the command, which causes the angels to dump out the plagues over all of humankind. Christ then dives down into the earth’s atmosphere and shocks the global population by announcing in a shrill voice:

“Behold, I come as a thief! Lucky is any woman who keeps her eyes open and her garments on! Because otherwise she walks naked, and we all get to look at her shame!”

Then God makes it hail colossal ice balls from outer space. And they smash everything, and car alarms begin blaring. One of the hail balls even falls on the police station.

Then John, still weeping in the corner, begins to dream of a sexy whore riding upon the giant earthworm (the one that formed a wicked league with the saltwater crocodile). The whore is wearing a red-hot outfit, straight from the depraved region of John’s own fancy, and she is holding the Holy Grail and sipping the blood of Christ like cheap wine. In his dream-vision, John very timidly asks this whore what her real name is. In the sky above now appears a message printed in all-capital letters, saying: “THE WHORE MUTELY GESTURES IN LIEU OF AN ANSWER.” John then becomes aware that the woman is wearing no loincloth under her miniskirt.

A mighty angel now prophesies that the whore shall lose her balance and tumble down from off the enormous earthworm. The woman laughs. Then the mighty angel who made the prediction dies of a heart attack.

Everyone in heaven is still praising God. The saints all raise their cups in a toast, and then we notice that they are all reacting to the whore from John’s dream-vision, who is holding her Grail up towards heaven and winking lasciviously. They all sip the blood of the prophets.

Now God blasts his flamethrowers and announces that it’s time to force the population of the netherworld to romance his dead Lamb. Christ then thumps the Lamb on its head with a wooden cudgel and says “Pay attention.”

At this point, John’s eyes are drawn to the demoness who is operating the mechanical device from which his dream-vision is being projected. John bows to this demoness, who is topless; but the demoness slaps John across the face with her strap-on phallus and says “I only moonlight here. Worship THAT.” And she points at God, who has joined Christ in administering kicks to the dead Lamb.

Now all of heaven praises God even louder, as he climbs on a white horse and gallops off and gets into bed with John’s dream-whore, and they avenge the blood of the saints. The doves are invited to come down out of the sky and consume the souls of the prophets. An electronically generated caption scrolls across the bottom of the dream, announcing “Saints Win, Prophets Lose!” The merman along with the crocodile and the earthworm are burnt to a crisp in the Lake of Fire. Everyone who ever hesitated to be the slave of God is utterly slain.

Now God turns his flamethrowers on his own right-hand man, Christ. And he says, “Take thy fire-baptism, O son. Thy name shall be called no more King, but Adversary: for this heaven is not big enough for the both of us.”

So that is how Jesus, who was once called Christ, which means “king,” came to be known as Satan, which means “controlled opposition.”

And Satan was chained down to a mountain for a thousand eons. And little white doves came and pecked at his spleen.

Then Satan broke loose and roused up all the ex-angels from John Milton’s Hell, and they struck back against God’s Empire. But the Empire triumphed, because it owned superior weaponry. And the soul of Jesus was thrown in the Lake of Fire, where the worm was still burning, along with the merman and the crocodile.

Now there is a general resurrection. No matter how many times you died in the above shitshow, you’re presently coming back to life. And God is livid.

At the Final Judgment, everyone is found to be sinful. Angels, saints, all the lackeys of heaven – they all require thorough reprogramming. Open them up and rebuild their inwardness: no freewill this time, sez the LORD. He just can’t stand it. He’s wasted too many worlds already. He’s not hoaxing around anymore.

So the old heaven is crumpled up and discarded, and the earth is placed in the recycle bin, because look at it: it’s all deep-fried and radioactive, the atmosphere is neon-green, its oceans are poisoned, and corpses are everywhere; the place reeks to high heaven.

Now a new heaven is installed. And earth is granted a blanket of fresh topsoil to cover all the putrid aftermath from the Cosmic Battle of God Versus Jesus.

And God, the eternal victor, commissions the building of a New America instead of Jerusalem. And he makes a New People as the replacement of both Jews and Gentiles.

And God orders a garden to be planted, and there are some rivers and the tree of life in the midst of the garden; and he authorizes the existence of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil also.

Now the resurrected Jesus is seen to be hanging from one of these trees, so John bows and worships him. But God squirts John with his flamethrower and yells “Abstain.” He does not curse or mutilate John for this, however; because, as was already made plain, all beings have undergone a faithful perfecting, and now they all obey without flaw and no longer think aberrantly.

Thus, henceforward, everything goes exactly according to God’s plan. Now God stands on the tallest rock in the garden and blasts his two flamethrowers, while shouting a titanic blessing out at the universe:

“Blessed are they that do my commandments, that they may have the right to the tree of life, and to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and may enter through the gates into the garden. For outside are dogs, and sorcerers, and whoremongers, and idolaters, and freethinkers, and rebels.”

And God compels John to warn us future entities that anything we saw him do above, in the End Times and the Final Judgment, will be done to us too, if we dare to act up. And all the plagues and pandemics that he spilled over the planet and sprayed in everyone’s face along the way, those same terrors and more are hoarded up in God’s heavenly biolab, just waiting to be unleashed upon us again.

And John adds, in a note of his own, that God will send us a rescuer very quickly.

THE END OF ENDS