Just a Couple of Days (43 page)

 

154
In the olden days, back when language was all the rage, when people mistook words for the world, people used to argue whether life was the result of creation or evolution. It was an utterly meaningless debate, arrogant individuals (myself included) bickering over the semantics of their comfortable metaphors instead of pushing them further. I suppose my grandfather belonged to the creationist camp. As he explained to me when I was a child sitting on his knee one afternoon, evolution is wrong for the apparently self-evident reason that there are still apes. “Hey,” he said. “If man evolved from apes, then why are there still apes?”

Despite his supreme confidence in making this assertion, I was unconvinced that his logic was ironclad. Perhaps that's why I became a geneticist, to find some answers that would satisfy me. I studied and I studied, and pounded my simian chest with the standard arguments of evolutionary theory. Because I could describe it, I believed I knew what life was.

In the end, however, it was Dandelion, barely five years old at the time, who proved my explanations incomplete. It could have been any child, mocking me with the automatic gamesaying of “Why?” to every answer I put forth. No matter how deeply I delved, this question was left unanswered.

“Why evolve?”

“Because of an accident of matter.”

“Why matter?”

“Because of the nature of energy.”

“Why energy?”

“Umm . . .”

“Not umm,” Blip corrected me, stroking his daughter's hair. “
Aum
, as in
aum mani padme hum
. Buddhist monks meditate on that phrase. It means ‘the jewel in the heart of the lotus,' which basically means ‘God is within,' or something like that.”

“You should listen to Dandelion.” Sophia counseled me. “A mystic named Jesus once remarked, ‘Lest you become as little children, you shall not enter the kingdom of heaven.'”
¹⁰

“Take the Holy Middle Path,” Blip advised.

“Evolution is the process of Creation,” Sophia quipped, as smart as a smack in the face from a Zen master. “Create. Evolve. Crevolve.”

 

155
If a man hollers “Hello!” in a city and no one's around to hear it, does it make a sound? Most certainly, but it is the soundscape of nightmarish loneliness. Loneliness is emptiness. It is the space between the stars. It is nothing. Creation is God's defense against loneliness.

And who is God? According to Sister Lolita, my first-grade teacher with the purportedly smelly underwear, God is an old, old man who was never born and who will never ever die. As a six-year-old, I took her word for it. I accepted her description with innocent faith, though I was utterly mystified by it. I could swallow that he would never die, but
never be born
? Come on!
This paradox consumed my young imagination for some time, but I eventually resolved it. My juvenile explanation does not make a lot of sense to me now, and indeed, my recollection of it is so vague I can't even be certain that I'm not making it up. Nevertheless, what I came up with is this: God is some old man who walked over the hill one day. That's it. That's how I comprehended eternity. God walked over the hill one day.

And now as I ponder this koan of my childhood, it occurs to me that I may merely have been making a random association. God, as far as anyone had yet explained to me, was an old man. And to be “over the hill” is a colloquialism for old age. Definitionally, then, God is over the hill.

In any event, I was reminded of my youthful reasoning this morning while taking Loki for a walk. We had just crested the peak of the hill upon which Blip and Sophia's dome was built, and Loki ran a bit down the other side to pee on a tree, as is his custom. I followed him over the hill, but stopped short when I saw what looked to be a child, far below. She waved up at me and sang out a series of beautiful and meaningless sounds.

I waved back. God may be some fool who walked over a hill one day, but she's also some child who scampered through a ravine one day.

 

156
Waving is an instinctual gesture, a innate form of communication intended to display friendliness as surely as a smile. It must be. Otherwise the child, presumably prancing on the heels of the Pied Piper, would have been unable to manage it as a learned symbol. Whatever the case, I continued waving like a perfect doofus long after she skipped out of sight. The
vision of another had bedazzled me into a silly and peaceful contemplation, a wonderful state of clarity and idiocy, grace and befuddlement. I whistled for Loki to follow me, immensely pleased to contribute to my surroundings with such a bucolic gesture.

A lone dandelion enhanced my cheerful amble toward the dome. It was small but brilliantly yellow, almost orange, like the yolk of a cosmic Easter egg. An impudent early bloomer, bold and beautiful, it was the first flower I had seen in over six months. A breeze whiffed past me, licking my face. A warm front. Spring was casting its worldspell, perfuming the air with a subtle sexuality and flooding me with an unspeakable
joie de vivre
. Entranced, I stood absolutely still, a racing velocity of perception surrounding me like a flurry of faeries.

I was admiring the dandelion as if it were the entire universe when a honeybee bumbled along and settled upon it. After collecting its pollen with all due busyness, it buzzed itself aloft and danced among the brush, searching for a flower, a flash of color, a perfumed scent. It came to me, to my hands, the hands I had recently washed with Blip and Sophia's homemade dandelion soap, and it landed on my thumb. Undaunted, I lifted my hand to peer at it. The honeybee froze, peering back at me for a long moment, and then, with a very precise insertion of its stinger, it let me know that I was unmistakably alive.

 

157
Spring has arrived, and every day there is a greater funk of sex in the air. Yesterday I saw a pack of six humans racing each other down the hill. They were entirely naked but for the fantastically colored rainbow cloaks fastened around their necks, fluttering like a gang of butterflies in their wake. I myself
was almost naked (I had a towel around my waist), and washing dishes in the kitchen at the time, but when I saw that vision, I got dressed and locked the house up tight. I can make no excuse for my actions. I am pathetic. I'd like to race naked down a hillside with my brothers and sisters, but instead I hide inside and monkey around with my little collection of words. I am alone, and I write because it gives me the illusion of social contact. But this time is swiftly passing, and the end of my story waits only for me. I am a social creature. Tomorrow I resolve to join the rest of my species in our destiny. Better to go crazy with others than by myself. Better to die together than to live alone.

But first, these past months in my hermitage I've figured out a few things concerning matters metaphysical. As I began to explain earlier, loneliness is nothingness. And as already mentioned, the Hebrew word for God,
Yahweh
, is simply a form of that most fundamental verb,
to be
. God is what is, understand, but God cannot be without being perceived. God is all that is, and yet God is nothing unless God can look upon God. God is one, but God is not lonely. Loneliness is a contradiction of Creation. Creation must be, but God did not create the universe. God is the universe. God is not the Creator. God is Creation. There is no difference. There was never anything but Creation, and there will never be anything but Creation. Creation requires nothing but itself for its own existence.

If you ever find yourself lonely, you are only undermining your Self. You are God, for chrissakes! Is the Truth really so tremendous? Look around and see what else you've created! Do you think you were born for nothing? Dreadfully sorry, but that just ain't so. You asked for it and you got it. You have a will. Have you forgotten what you wanted to do with it? Or worse,
have you surrendered it and become a tool of some other blind facet of your Self?

Humans take about twenty-two thousand breaths a day. Take just one deep breath and experience it. Live your life, for the Spirit that resides within you is only on vacation. Your soul is but a lungful of air, giving individual life while it resides within you but dissipating when it is ultimately released back into the infinite sea of the divine atmosphere. Trying to hold on to your breath will get you nowhere, and it will make you purple and ugly in the process. Enjoy your Self while you still can.

Do you really think there is no purpose to existence? You magnificent mop. You profound poop. You who make a brooding puzzle out of the simple experience of life, you make yourself worthy of severe ridicule with such sentiments. Unclench your ass. Don't be so freaking constipated. You deserve a smack upside your goofy, beautiful head. Do I have to spell it out for you? Very well. Hear ye, hear ye!
You
are the purpose of existence, as surely as I am, and as surely as are the birds and the bees and the flowers and the trees. Chirping, chattering, whistling, buzzing, and rustling. Moaning, groaning, writhing, wriggling, clawing, sucking, and fucking. The secrets of ceaseless peace and uncontainable joy are being whispered all around you. A squawking crow, a hissing cat, a howling wolf. A dripping faucet, a slamming door, a clanking pot. A falling tree, a clapping hand, a stomp, a slap, a kick, a kiss. A gently shifting shadow, a swiftly shooting star. Bees are bumbling, stomachs are grumbling, humans are mumbling, fumbling, and crumbling. Smell it. Taste it. Hear it. See it. Touch it. Love it.

You who are reading these words, this story is for you. Fear not the Piper. Fear not your Self. Paradise is yours to regain.
Ride the gales of divine laughter, the maelstroms of sacred mirth. It is your right, it is your purpose, and it is so easy. It is child's play. It is one small step for a human, one giant glide for humankind.

Godspeed.

 

158
Good morning, people! I don't know what's happening, but scores of the most majestic, noble creatures I have ever seen are ambling, skipping, and gallivanting down the hill outside, apparently on their way into town. I have spent almost four months completely alone, and I can assure you with a certain measure of hermitic authority that
nothing
between sunshine and clear water is more wonderfully necessary than other people. We are not born to be alone, nor are we born to act like we are alone, which is really what selfishness is all about. We are each of us fish, and we are water to one another. Without each other, we struggle, we flounder, we suffocate. But together, living for our sisters and our brothers, what is there to want? As one, what is there to fear? Yes, yes indeed. This is my day of reckoning. This is my prelude to spontaneity, my so long to solemnity. Woop woop woop!

Ahem. Yes then. Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to witness the realization of human potential. Behold our marriage of madness and mirth, our matrimony of lunacy and piety. Mark the moment, for today we walk down the aisle of laughter and love, we run the gauntlet of tickles and wisdom. These are the nuptials of the nonesuch of nonsense, when nothing short of everything has changed.

Who did we think we were anyway? We who whispered lies about our lives. We who wanted what others held, and held what others needed. We were the desperate and lonely of life. We were the weary, the wicked, the wrong. We were our own whip. We were the cranky monkeys, the cantankerous pipsqueaks whose deeds of disgrace sullied our own race. But as I look out the window—hold on—as I
open
the window, I see nothing of this past in the humans before me. Edenic smiles define every face. Indeed, smiles engulf the entirety of every person. Posture literalizes perfection, movement describes grace, bodies radiate health, and there is no ugliness anywhere. Poetry is personified. These are prelapsarian people, and every individual shines with a supreme and indefatigable confidence of being, an attitude of beatitude.

I've been noticed, it seems. A woman is sprinting toward my window. Her tight braids lash out fiercely behind her, a toga of sorts is flattened against her steel-belted physique. She seems to recognize me, and she's smiling like we're old friends. Loki is yipping in apparent delight, and so I pause my scribbling to greet my eager visitor. . . .

She came up to the window, a resonant laugh tearing forth from her with all the force of a rowdy goddess. I scarcely recognized her at first, but when I saw her sharp, foxy eyes it was unmistakable. This glowing woman before me was Mella Orange, and when her sonorant snickers subsided, she looked me over and sighed as if relaxing from an orgasm, then sneezed through my open window. I held my breath for just a moment before filling my lungs. She winked, I think, and began to sing a song with no words. Her voice had an unfathomable intensity of
tenor that set geese and ganders mating all over my skin. I saluted her and she cocked her head like Loki was apt to do when I was training him. She's still singing her song of redemption now, waiting for me to join her, I believe. I mustn't delay.

What's left to say? So near and so clear, the everlasting epiphany, my friend, lies in bumping your head, scratching your ear, blowing your nose. Savor every random event in the perpetually poignant present. Pat your head, rub your belly, and beat on your chest and roar! Pitch a fit for love. Toss a tantrum for life. It's the least you can do. Get back to the beginning, before you ate the apple, and life was a joyous, jolly jubilee. Go for broke and let it ride! Make our mamas and our papas proud!

What can I offer thee, what sort of a guarantee? Gloves and mittens, cubs and kittens, jujys and jubas, trumpets and tubas, elves and faeries, mountains and prairies, a jingling jangling jazzy jug of jiggling wiggling jelly. Why jelly? Because you have everything else you could possibly want. You have life, and you have each other, and if it'll make the crucial difference between life and death, between happiness and sadness, well then the hell with it, you can have jelly too. Feel better now? God, you can be such a baby.