Forgive me for not posting the last couple of weeks. Walks and concerts and slicing a finger, etc . . . I’ll post again toward the end of the month, but I’ve made an agreement to rest my normal posting schedule until then. So, until the end of the month when the angels WILL return, take this humble offering and enjoy! (And an extra link toward the end of a favorite, short, SNL clip of mine.
The Name
When the name was spoken, it no longer was what it had been; it had become something more; the same, plus. And so the names continued to make it more still, for what was discovered after many names had been uttered was that so had been created awareness by virtue of the fact that a being could point back at those things of which it was a part, and thereby itself.
Before the name was spoken, It had no reason to think in terms of itself. Once the name was spoken, it could. After that was only the simple realization that it could never be named; for if no tongue could exist from the beginning of time to the end of eternity, then its fullness could not be uttered in fullness.
And so has it ever, it speaks its own name alone for any who wish to stop speaking, and listen.
This one has overtones of day-time professionalism and was the brain-child of a particularly pernicious daydream.
Checking Others Out
Always the same gray permeating the air. I look out the window at work, and there’s the fog. I wake up in the morning, and there is the fog. All day every day, the fog . . .
Actually, it’s not so much a fog that effects the mind. It’s not bland or boring or depressing, at least, not when I look at it. Usually it’s just there at the periphery of my sight; it accompanies me as I go about my day. I focus on customer after customer and, staring at me from the outside, it meets the corner of my eye and keeps me company as my mind wanders and as I go about my business. But when I look out toward it, what I really see is the light behind the mists. I see the light from the journey I haven’t taken yet. I see my customers’ heads in the light’s direction all day every day.
In point of fact, this day has been rather long as it is, and I really can’t recall another . . .
I remember waking up, the fog outside my window. Getting ready; slippers to bathroom, nakedness to the feel of the water warm and refreshing. There was no hurry, I had plenty of time to get to work; I washed and relaxed. Brushing teeth and eating eggs and bacon, toast and fruit. I walked to work; the light was bright through the fog and accompanied me to the door of the store; I almost turned from the sidewalk to see if there was pure light behind the curtain of mist, but I entered the store instead; I knew I needed to work, I needed to earn my way to what I was waiting for, there would be something terribly missing if I explored the place toward the light just now. I need to earn my way . . .
And so my day began. It has been a long day. Aside from beginning my day, the rest is all I can remember. It feels like I have been processing customers for forever. Every one I ask the same question of, “Have you found everything you wanted?” They almost always say, “Yes.” I tell them to have a good day, and after I hand them their receipt, they walk toward the door, toward the light beyond the fog. When they disappear behind the veil of vapor I almost always seem to see the light brighten but for a second before returning to the glow accompanying me through my day.
When they say “no” it is almost always with a frown. And then I ask the next question it is my job to ask, “Is there something we can help you find?” If they say, “I don’t know,” I then offer them a job and they begin performing some task in the store if they accept. If they decline a job I send them to the manager’s office. I have sent a dozen or so to the manager’s office, some after they refused work; I never see anyone come out of the manager’s office.
Sometimes they tell me that they are looking for their daughter or son or other person they cannot find. I call for a woman’s daughter over the intercom, and after several minutes have passed her daughter appears from one of the aisles. She embraces her with tears in her eyes and I ask, “Is there anything else we can help you find.” She shakes her head with tears of gratitude, “No.” And I hand her her receipt and tell her to have a nice day. After they head outside the light becomes brighter for a few seconds and I return to give full attention to my next customer. It always makes me smile when I see two people reunited. I do hope my shift ends soon.
Sometimes, when someone can’t find a person, I have to call in a constable to assist one of our customers. They usually come in twos, and they usually walk with the customer toward the front entrance. Rarely there is a flash of light when this happens. Every now and then I see one of them return and take a place at a check-stand, but I never speak to them again at that point and I don’t think to speak to any of them thereafter; I have customers to focus on.
Sometimes people speak of misplacing vast sums of money, or misplacing their car keys. The constabulary is contacted in these instances, and the people are often walked outside, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen the light grow brighter any of the times I’ve seen that happen; it is rare I see that happen though. I’m grateful that when I’m done with my shift everything I could need is waiting for me at home; people seem so upset when they misplace something.
Some people complain of hunger and then wander off back into the store. There is always plenty of food here, no one ever asks me to help them find a particular food, they seem content to wander back into the rows of shelves in search of what they want themselves. After watching a customer or two wander back into the store I think about if there is anything I should buy for home, but I recall my shelves well stalked. I feel like there is something I am here for myself, but it is my duty to focus on my work so I return to giving full focus to the next customer; if there is something I am missing, I am certain it will come to me before I leave and I will get what I need before leaving.
Some tell me they are thirsty, and I point them toward the water fountain. They walk there, take a drink, then smile and wave at me before they walk to where the light brightens when my customers leave.
Some ask to use the restroom, and them pass once more through my check-stand once returning. It is my job to make sure I address everyone’s issues and concerns. Every customer’s need is responded to. If they require something that I do not know, I simply ask my manager or call upon the constabulary.
Once I saw a man caught for trying to steal from our store. As the constable brought him into the office, the assistant manager just kept asking him what reason he could have for doing such a thing. The man was repeatedly shaking his head while looking down through closed eyes and a clenched mouth. No one here has ever been denied, I do not know why he would have tried to steal when we always seem eager to give to the customers what they want; it is the customer service our company is built on, we never say no.
I know I have a break coming soon, yet I don’t feel like taking it. I wish to keep working, it pleases me to make my customers happy, and I feel that I am working for something; that the more I work, the closer I get to what I am working for. I just can’t remember what it is I am here earning for myself, but the job is pleasant enough, and I am grateful enough that I am closer to earning my way to what I am here for.
. . .
How much time I have spent here, I do not know, though I don’t think it can have been longer than a day; I don’t recall going home to return. I look up to my next customer and it is hard for me to ask what it is my job to ask. Recognition seeps into my brain from the distance of a lifetime called from across eternity although I know I know her at once. As the last word leaves my lips I feel the tears well to the corners of my eyes. She responds, “I didn’t at first, but I have now.” I shake from my tears as I reach her receipt out to her. As she touches my hand and our eyes do not part I know I have come to the end of a very long day; I no longer can not remember what I have come here to work for.
She does not let go my hand as she walks me passed my register and into her arms. She pulls me close and tight, whispers into my ear that it is ok now; it was ok when first my eyes recognized without recognition. I rest my head upon her shoulder as we walk out the door hand-in-hand; our receipt is shared for whatever it is worth. The world is brighter as we enter into and past the mists. I don’t remember who we were before we arrived here, only that I waited for her for I could not imagine going on without her. It is so very bright, so very, very bright. It is so very bright, and so very warm . . .
A friend of mine has expressed interest in my “dark side” from time to time. I started writing a piece as a meditation on such a thing which I intend on finishing in the not-too-distant future. In the meantime, this story idea came to me and I think it may satisfy his curiosity for the moment. It actually started as a hopeful, rather “bright side” consideration as to the idea that perhaps those things one is predisposed to viewing at a glance as evil really is the meaning of our existence. At any rate may y’all enjoy!
In The Beginning . . .
That’s the thing about humanity . . . it’s very hard for them to notice their size in relation to the rest of the cosmos. They discern that it is much larger surely enough, but they tend to lack a full appreciation for their own diminutiveness. Though they’ve existed on their “rock” for over 40,000 years, they have trouble conceiving much passed 10,000, and while they have evolved naturally over the trifling millions of years they can conceive, it’s laughable that they’ve never stopped to consider that the sole reason for their fleeting existence upon their “world” is to serve the incubation of what they live upon for the short, universally speaking, time that they do. But, though they can’t even conceive the service they perform to their “home,” the egg they cultivate is nonetheless grateful for the small and short-lived role its inhabitant bacteria play in seeing that it develops into something more than the single-celled being of the beginning stages of life that it exists as before becoming more, like so many human zygotes.
They are aware of their impending doom subconsciously, of course. They are linked psychically together so that they can communally perform the task for which they solely exist; they are all linked psychically to the egg itself, and thus directed to their task’s completion. It is their link to the egg that makes their unified subconsciousness aware of their impending demise; it is what ultimately will facilitate the final fertilization and subsequent multiplying of the cell for which they serve.
Some are aware of their subconscious mind, others not, and this is the catalyst . . . For those aware, watching those facilitating their own destruction serves as a consistent and ever-growing frustration. Of course, some are super-aware and able to meditate on reintegrating with the universe that created them; they have found inner peace. But those who see the others as destroying them unnecessarily, their frustration rises until boiling into anger; slowly and by degrees they begin the fight with those who serve completely blindly to destroy themselves in service of the egg. The more animosity created, the greater the psychic friction, and therefore heat produced to facilitate the next stage in the development of the zygote.
They only feel strongly, know implicitly, that the mining of oil and exciting of radiation to power their famous luminary inventions is somehow harmful to them as a whole; but as they notice so very slowly the cancers forming in them from the mining of these “resources” they never perceive in fullness that not only is oil and plutoniums and uraniums inevitably going to accelerate the rate of death to them by ways of cancers , but in fact they will quickly bring about the destruction of them all as the egg itself is fertilized by means of their self-inflicted poisoning. While they raise anger about “greed” they never notice that it is their anger itself that facilitates finally the full realization of the inevitable that they’d try to stop if they were more than the mucus temporarily incubating what is about to grow into a form of being so much greater than they could ever know; they could almost appreciate that they lived upon a fertilized egg, but the being it is to become they could never fathom.
And so, finally, as with all such organisms, the “accident” will finally come about. They will drill only more as the spills kill their food supply and fill their cells with the slow, painful death. And when the rage over the destruction rises enough the saboteurs will come to “save the planet.” And as bombs create ever-greater spills at refineries where containment is accordingly compromised, one country will fire their nuclear missile at another to distract the people from the toxins being mined and the retaliations resulting. And it is then their short lives finally come to fruition.
The bomb will hit near one of the many rigs and the oil will be ignited by the radiation as it should be. The “Earth” will be so filled with crude that easily a chain reaction will be set into motion in which the radiation will sweep over the oil as a flame over lighter fluid. And where other radioactive material exists, the extra heats and frictions will ignite it into union with the open wells, oil-filled oceans, and every oil-driven contraption upon the world.
As they perish over no more than a two week period of chain reactions between the materials they’d always know were purely toxic to them, the bacterium will never know that the sole purpose of their existence was to bring forth the fluids of the zygote, and mix them into the form of heat necessary to protect it and attract to it the other nourishments it needs from what they perceive of the “cosmos” so that it can multiply itself and form into the full being it will inevitably become. A short trillion years later, a being of genuine consciousness will emerge fully from the inescapable nature of the beings of fertilization that cultivated it when it was but an egg.
Lately, it seems, life has been focused on journeys and going to concerts. Often life lately has been about journeys to concerts. I’m sure this has been influencing my writing accordingly . . .
The Poet’s Favorite Word
Going where I’ve heard the scent lingers from a rose the color of the sun’s light. They say when you enter the same room with it, you smell it in your soul. The rhythm flows through your blood, and you dance to the voice that commanded each and every star by name. They say that if you look upon her, the pain you suffer in life is joyous for it allows you to know that she exists.
Her thorn is known to kill, but her flower caresses your cheek without the asking if she likes you. It is said that in the town she resides, peace enters the heart; that in the town beside, people dance to her breath. Her music is known far and wide. Where she blooms, the universe knows why it exists.
When I arrive where I am going I pray only to feel I am passing those who have been in the same room as her; perhaps experience their presence in the same several-block radius. Should I find myself drawn to her without my own thought directing, it is her smile that will shine from my lips forever.
More of the same in terms of process. In this one I found my end point a day or two after writing the first sentence. For me not knowing what I’ll write from beginning to end is a journey. I have fun as a story emerges that is more from a subconscious exercise than a conscious one . . .
Tunnel
A clear tunnel as a wind-swept cloudy-gray swirled all around him. He ran his sword through the wall of vapor as he walked, it tugged lightly against his weapon, calling it to unknown realm, or perhaps oblivion.
He had opened a door he found in a tree as he was patrolling the forests. He felt air rushing past him toward the light he stared at through the open door; he saw nothing but it. He had decided to walk through to find out where it came from, what it was, if it was useful to the others. As he walked through, the door shut quickly behind him, and now he found himself surrounded by the tunnel, staring at a long path, a light somewhere in the distance. He walked.
The ground below his feet was mossy, few dry scattered leaves here and there. No breeze from the tunnel moved the leaves but his own footfalls one after the next. Looking back toward where he came, he saw no place a door could have been, just a shadowy more-of-the-same that extended back apparently a half-mile or so. He took another step forward.
He walked for what felt like hours with his sword in hand. He didn’t know what may be ahead for him, he supposed some sort of magic to have brought him where he was, while he did not feel danger, he would not be caught unprepared. After what felt like several hours walking with his sword in hand, his sword began to feel heavy. He sheathed it. He took another step forward.
After what felt like more hours he stared into the wall of the tunnel. In the mists he saw shapes and forms as he remembered seeing in clouds one day when he had looked toward the sky from a place by a stream. He saw his fellow warriors in combat against a dragon. He saw a hand wipe away the battle, the outline of a face, a pair of eyes open toward him. He saw a stream and a man beside it staring up at the sky; he saw clouds swirl before the man, speaking to themselves, and beckoning him forward. He shook his head from side to side quickly to break up the wanderings of his mind. Again he saw a wall of swirling mists. He took a step back from the wall, back to the center of the path. He took a step forward.
As he walked he began dragging his sword behind him through the leaves, across the ground. He ran his sword from time to time through the mists to feel the light tugging that reminded him he had some reason not to wander off the path. He sheathed his sword again and noticed that the light did seem brighter if not particularly closer. He was about to sigh when he heard a voice echo in his mind, “Leave sword and sheath behind, or no closer will your footsteps bring you.” He considered it unwise to follow the voice of a magic that might leave him vulnerable. He stepped forward despite that voice and kept walking. His resolve continued for what felt as more hours, and the light did not become brighter.
He unfastened his sheath and laid it down with sword. He stepped forward. One step later he turned around to where his sword lay. It twitched, and he lunged for it. It moved toward the tunnel and immediately was lost from sight. He heard a voice echo in his mind, “Step forward now away from where that thing lay, or meet a fate same as it, a place where ever will you have need of it, the place opposite of where your steps will lead should you continue forward now . . .” He looked up toward where he had been walking and saw that the light was brighter. He was unsure, did not trust, and was unaccustomed to being without his weapon, but the light felt better than the gray, and so he stepped forward toward what gave him choice to move rather than the swirling mists which seemed in essence to tug and pull. He took another step forward.
As he stepped closer to the light, the light grew. The further he walked the more the tunnel blended in with the light. The swirling mists began to transition, slowly, from grey into lighter and lighter shades. He could swear he heard the sweet soft sound of humming as he stepped ever onward toward the light. Until, truly it became bright . . . He stepped forward.
And as he stepped forward, slowly now, the mists began to dissolve into the light and a brightness shined before him, in the distance, spectacularly bright where before the light was merely white compared to the gray the tunnel had been. It dazzled before him and grew as he stepped closer. Where before he walked toward light that at times did not at all grow, now every footfall brought him closer to a destination; something that he would come to physically before long, the shadows surrounding him now all but gone. Another step forward.
And surrounding him only white; no swirling, no mists, no gray, no tunnel to speak of, only white. And the brightness was maybe ten steps before him. He felt a light breeze of warmth caress his face coolly. As he took another step forward he heard a voice echo within his mind, “You may walk anywhere but forward and be returned to what you know, and not know what you don’t. Though, in this moment, you may be assured that what you don’t know will bring you no pain.” As this statement had finished within his mind he had already stepped four steps closer. And over the course of the next four steps, as something felt very right, he contemplated that he was bound forward by his own volition even if the voice had not caressed his mind with its assurance. He trusted his steps and wished only to know what only his steps could teach. “Extend your arms outward,” he heard in his head before beginning another step forward. Raising his arms outward, he took another step forward.
As his foot fell a final time he felt a deep softness upon his mouth followed shortly by a cool calmness of light within his mouth. He dissolved into the light and released himself of care for his body in entirety. He was relieved to carry no longer the burden of gravity; his body inconsequential as he was as what he reached; without care of substance, he was grateful to share with what was also as he.
I started with an image that sprang to mind, the one in the first line, then took it where it wanted to go. Just fun.
Into The Water’s Gaze
While gazing into the water, reflecting everything it could see, as he leaned forward the nearer he came to the reflection, the reflection beginning to look as those galaxies swirling beyond the atmosphere, until he found himself melting into the pool. He felt a drop of water fall from a leaf into him, and then ripple him from center to outer-most edge. He felt the leaf fall upon his face and begin to be carried toward the vastness toward which he was naturally pulled; as close to the infinite as he could conceive as he was. He felt himself fall through the surface and to the other side.
Looking up he saw the light dancing upon a sky un-anchored above him; he saw the blue of the sky. Surrounding him he saw all possibilities of the life the water provided; he saw all the possibilities of the imagination combined. A fish, whale size, darted past his belly; he was pretty sure it was a rainbow trout. From a blackness, apparently infinite below him, he saw the crashing of particles rise toward the sky; apparently matter forming for the first time as air and water and dust all realized the possibilities of their own existence. Looking up again, he saw that beyond the blue was a pitch black next to infinite galaxies swirling throughout an apparent endlessness. He began to thirst for a grain of rice.
He saw a civilization emerge beside him, a place in which the creatures living their found themselves drawn to a natural inclination, for which the others around them made room so that they could share the ripening fruits of their natural inclination. In this distant land, as everybody naturally produced what it was they cultivated from themself, they shared it freely with all around. No one thirsted, starved, or lacked for anything they wanted. Everybody feeding each other from their selves, no one considering there was any other reason to live but to feed others from one’s own self-fulfillment.
Through the water he flew, barely but thinking of which direction in which he wished to go. As bubbles were made behind him, and he flew around and around in them, he saw the breath of the waves, the possibility of all existence each held, when next to the water they held at bay. He became as a dolphin darting between fishes many times his size. Toward the promise of galaxies beyond the single blue eye of the world in which he lived he pointed himself and flew at the greatest speed he could fathom: one thought faster than the speed of light itself. He melted Into the light.
He melted into the spectrum, stopping himself at the color of the eye of the world late on a lazy afternoon just as a cool breeze called the heat of the sun to a marriage of equality and courted it to the joy of any creation possible. He felt the green of the blade of grass upon his cheek. He opened his eyes toward the Heavens to reclaim his body from all simultaneous particles of light. He looked up into the eye of a tarantula, black, average size. It kissed him on the cheek and then scurried into the woods in the direction he would go to return home. He was grateful for the promise of warmth shared by another heart as at peace as his own.
This story was inspired by– Well, never mind what it was inspired by. Enjoy!
Bring Out Your Dead!
“Let us raise the dead!”
“He’s only pining for the fjords. . .”
“PINING for the–. Never mind that! Find a corpse, command it to rise, and we’ll be on our way!”
“You want me to do the commanding do you? And what right have I to do that? Just because he owed you 20 bucks . . .”
“It’s not just the twenty bucks, if we don’t raise him he can’t be saved!”
“Saved from what?”
“Well, Satan of course . . .”
“He’s dead, what does he have to worry about Satan for?”
“Well, if we don’t resurrect him, Satan gets him for the rest of eternity.”
“No, no, you’re thinking of maggots, and really they only get him for a couple weeks tops.”
“Hello, Lord of the Flies . . .”
“Yeah Lords of flies, not maggots. Let Satan eat corpses! If there was anything to him but meat, that’s beyond arch-evil’s grasp. Angels will be feeding on that one if there was anything to him!”
“But we need to save him.”
“What, so angels can eat him instead of bugs? He’s being eatin’ one way or the other, it’s beyond our grasp now. Hell, what would I want to raise him for if I could, so that I could tell him what to be eaten by? He’s being consumed in the best way possible, let him enjoy it already, he’s suffered enough for it either way! Lord knows he was bombarded by his options as we all are. He chose already what will consume him, just because he owed you twenty bucks that doesn’t mean he was destined for–”
“IT’S NOT THE TWENTY BUCKS!”
“Yeah sure it wasn’t, it was just the principle of the thing. Look, here’s a twenty spot so that you can rest in peace tonight. I didn’t really need it anyway, now will you please let sleeping corpses lie.”
“I guess I don’t really have a choice in the matter if you won’t help me . . .”
“He gets his twenty, and all the sudden he’s not so adamant about animating the clay of the future, tut tut. Anyway, you show me something breathing to assist I’m all for it. Would you please put that shovel away now!”
A deeply personal meditation for me as I enter the New Year. May the New Year bring joy to my readership and also all in this world.
How Long?
“I feel trapped between a rock and a hard place!”
“How cliché.” She smiled a little as she watched him writhe in his own mental anguish.
“But it’s as accurate a way to say it as any I know.” He frowned. “Everything I’ve lived over the last three decades tells me I’m an idiot if I look at anyone but her. But how long am I supposed to wait for her to speak to me? It’s been more than twenty percent of my life I’ve waited with her in mind; struggled, grown, worked; become something more than a lazy shit-head dominated by fear. How long am I supposed to wait?”
“You’ve already described to me the ways you feel inadequate in your life. Is that really what you wish to offer her? Sex is easy to come, like the much touted quad-hourly bus, if that’s all you want out of your life. But, as I understand it, unexpected children aren’t cheap and you’re already pretty ashamed of your debt . . . caused by necessity though it may be.
“You ask me how long you’re supposed to wait? I think the answer to that question is another question. How much do you really love her?”
Since I’ve been hearing this song just about everyday during the yearly ritual of the preparation for the annual celebration of the culmination of greed of capitalism praying on the insecurity of consumers, a question has consistently arisen to my mind every time I hear the song play, “This must have had long term consequences to the psyche of this child. What must the consequences to this child’s mind have been?”
20 Years Ago Last Night . . .
I saw Mommy kissing Santa Claus, underneath the mistletoe, 20 years ago from last night.
Two weeks later, when I went back to school, little Cindy Sandra Morgan was telling her friends that her parents were getting a divorce. I was only five then, I’d never heard the word “divorce.” And then she went on to tell them that her father had been sleeping around on her mother. Apparently Cindy’s mom had been something of an alcoholic, and as she fled to stay with her mom, Cindy’s Grandmother, she had been drinking a lot. Apparently Cindy had spent much of her Winter break listening to her mom tell her all about adultery and divorces through whiskey-soaked breath while Grandma was asleep late at night. She said something about waking up late to get a drink of water, and she was going to check on the cookies she had left for Santa when her mother, sitting in a rocking chair in a dark corner of the room, told her to come over and sit down by the foot of the chair. Cindy told her friends that her mom smelled like bad, strong pickles, and that her mom told her all about what she called “sleeping around” and “divorces.”
I mean, in retrospect, my father role playing with my mom was really quite healthy. But I didn’t learn about sexual role playing until I was a junior in high-school, and I didn’t really understand it in-depth in terms of relationships until I was well into my second year of college taking an introductory course to psychology. Can you imagine? At five years old I was still quite convinced of Santa’s existence. I thought my Mommy was sleeping around on my Daddy until I was about twelve. I didn’t dare say anything to Dad, I didn’t want my parents divorcing. When Santa came to visit Christmas Eve the next year, it was all I could do to keep from breaking down in tears at once. And it strained my relationship with my mom. I kept thinking that she was going to break Daddy’s heart because she couldn’t “keep it in her pants.”
And when I was seven, instead of Santa coming over on Christmas Eve, we went to see him at the mall. It was horrible. I spent weeks avoiding the mall. And then when we started walking by the Christmas display, there I was on the other side of Mommy trying not to look at “Santa’s workshop.” But then Mommy took me by the hand and started pulling me that way, and I couldn’t say no without her finding out that I knew about her and Santa. So there I was waiting in line to meet Santa, and wanting to escape, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. And by the time I was seven I’d heard the term “Can’t keep her legs together,” and was wondering why Mommy couldn’t. And then there I was on Santa’s lap, and he asked me what I wanted, and I told him. I motioned that I wanted to whisper in his ear, and I told him. “Please stop trying to make my parents divorce. Please.” And no wonder he gave me a strange look. And then he started laughing a typical Santa “Ho, ho, ho.” And in retrospect he was just nervous because he didn’t know how to respond to that and was trying to buy himself time to answer in a helpful way. And he was about to say something, but before he could, I hopped right down from his lap and kicked him as hard as I could in the shin! Mommy looked so embarrassed as she took my hand, apologizing as we went. And then when we got to the car she asked me what I was thinking, but I just sat and didn’t say anything, trying to avoid her gaze. I didn’t want her to know I knew about her and Santa.
That was the last time I ever sat on Santa’s lap, or that Santa ever visited our house. But I didn’t care. I spent the next five years in dread of Christmas, but every time I didn’t see Santa I smiled quietly to myself that I had saved my parents’ marriage.
When I was almost twelve I finally understood that Santa wasn’t real; that Dad had been Santa. And that was weird thinking about my parent’s kissing at all, let alone my Dad dressed as Santa. But then the guilt started to seep in. Guilt, and the realization, that would take the next several years to unfold, that I’d deprived myself of one of my favorite parts of childhood. Every year I go broke around Christmas time. Not because of the gifts I give to others, but because every time I pass a Good-Will Santa I put five bucks in his bucket thinking that maybe this Santa is the one I kicked in the shin all those years ago, and that maybe my donations will make up for hurting someone just trying to make little kids happy, and make up for how I messed up my own childhood.
Most people have neurosis that were passed to them from their parents. Mine was completely self-afflicted. So, my kids will never think that Santa is real, and they’ll always get good presents, whatever they want. And if their Mommy ever cheats on me, I’ll just make sure I make her death look like it was caused naturally so that they don’t have to suffer the prospect of divorce like I had to. When I have kids, they will always enjoy Christmas!
It occurs to me that the appeal of writing in dialogue is that it gives me the opportunity to converse with myself. I make a statement, then I respond. The story that arises is almost secondary to the exercise of meeting my own mind. The story told, then, is often the story of myself. I suppose then the hope is that as I reflect myself to the world, the world sees something about itself, though not quite itself, useful in what I find in me.
Finding One’s Self
“Who are you?”
“This is a trick question, right? Do you not see the name-tag on my chest. Isn’t that why I’m wearing one of these things, so that you don’t need to ask exactly that question?”
“I mean aside from the name. Who are you?”
“Well, the name is a designation assigned to the circumstances of my creation and the history that followed up until this point in time. I would answer with the name you see on my chest, but it is merely representative of what my singular point of consciousness has perceived up until now. I would describe myself as that history designated by the name upon my chest, but, in my humble opinion, that would take too long, and so again I indicate to you once more reading the tag for the sake of saving time.”
“So for starters, you’re easily irritable, verbose, and take your time about dwelling in sarcasm?”
“I’m also fond of concision. Have I more or less answered your question?”
“So you believe yourself to be your history, not your present?”
“I believe my present is a representation of the entirety of my history. I am also that history combined with its interaction with whatever stimuli exists at present; in this case your question and the pressure of our audience.”
“So you are your cumulative experience combined with the experience of the moment. You are your uniqueness as an identity individuated, combined with the circumstance created by all other individualities?”
Hi! I'm Tygarjas Twyrls Bigstyck. Currently the home of the long work in-progress "The Chronicles of the Angels of Eden." Prior to this, I wrote about a conception of divinity that might be helpful for those willing to think outside of organized religion, and subsequently a place for me to flex my creative muscles as I devoted a year of blogging to short fiction. Enjoy!
Tygarjas Twyrls Blog 