The Spiraling Cornucopia of Pale Lavender [SEQ. 15 – END]

The Spiraling Cornucopia of Pale Lavender is  a 10-part series of fiction that explores perception and reality. Below is our final segment. To read the introduction of the project, click here.

To read part 1, click here.

To read part 2, click here.

To read part 3, click here.

To read part 4, click here.

To read part 5, click here.

To read part 6, click here.

To read part 7, click here.

To read part 8, click here.

To read part 9, click here.

Otherwise, begin scroll.

 

²⁶I stumble, change falls out of my pocket and a lightning bolt destroys a small building. It punches a hole through the rooftop and kills a baby. It is an accident but I don’t feel bad. Their brains are so simple they don’t really understand pain. ²⁷Studies suggest that their receptors are able to recognize simple stimuli such as something called “fear” and pain of the base physical kind but no further. ²⁸Perhaps the child will be born as new life in a better scenario. ²⁹I understand that sloths have it nice this time of year. ³⁰The bombs are launched and I watch them sail across my skies, penetrating my clouds like flaming flesh rockets. ³¹The bombs are driven by intention and I watch as a group of individuals gather in the desert and press their thoughts to steer the missiles through the sky. ³²They almost had it. They almost had it all. They could have had peace but instead they chose war. ³³They make boundaries and labels. They separate themselves and create hierarchy. ³⁴Each of them wants to be better than the other. ³⁵They are always trying to be superior to their neighbor and they become so consumed with it that they lose their very lives. ³⁶The entire purpose for their existence is lost to their greed. ³⁷They have passed all the way through the chain of life and have each been given their opportunity at humanity and they blew it. They each had a chance to live on the final level selflessly and to give of themselves and to enjoy each moment. ³⁸That’s all they had to do for a simple one hundred human years and then they would transcend this realm and begin to accumulate form on the next plateau. ³⁹But they messed it all up. Again. Always. Every time. ⁴⁰I desperately want to see my people succeed. ⁴¹I am so lonely. I want a friend. I want company. I want them to speak to me. I want them to love me. Why do they ignore me? ⁴²This plateau is so quiet. When will they find me? When will they encounter me? ⁴³They have trapped me in this box, calling me names. Calling me god or God or GOD. ⁴⁴They call me SHE and they try to label me and put words in my mouth and intentions on my heart. ⁴⁵I am not SHE. ⁴⁶I am sexless. I am not bound by simple human sexuality. Male / Female are a weakness given to them in order to breed and it has been evolved pleasurably because nobody would do it otherwise. ⁴⁷Their belief has placed me into a box and their understanding of me is disgustingly limited. ⁴⁸They pray to me and ask for cars when they have cars while their neighbor starves and dies. ⁴⁹They pray for justice when they mean revenge. ⁵⁰Their cruel hearts are deep with black worm rot and their eyes are empty pools. ⁵¹They desire every darkness. ⁵²They care not who is hurt or what the cost. ⁵³They will keep improper change at the store. They hit their children for hitting while telling them not to hit. They trap animals in giant facilities and skin them while still alive. They make the animals live in tiny cages in things called Slaughter Houses and they treat them like a piece of plastic that has not been endowed with life. ⁵⁴Where I have given life, I have given respect. ⁵⁵And this sickens me. They believe they are special because they are smarter. ⁵⁶They believe that the animals have been placed here for their enjoyment no matter the expense. ⁵⁷They believe they should be allowed to manipulate, confine and destroy resources and herds. ⁵⁸They believe that they can breed life for the purpose of death. ⁵⁹Their teeth chomp on rotten flesh and they ignore their fruits and vegetables. ⁶⁰They become obsessed with greasy bacon and forget about my apples. ⁶¹They grow fat and they grow obese and part of the world dies from being over weight while the other half starves and begs for help. ⁶²How do you not see that what you are doing is wrong? How do you look at a hurting person and walk away? How do you ignore a hurting human being? ⁶³They are like you. They are exactly like you. They are nearly photocopies of you. Look at your DNA. ⁶⁴You will find that you are nearly clones. ⁶⁵I bang my formless head against a formless wall and struggle with my mistake. What have I done? ⁶⁶How have you turned so quickly to evil? How have you turned so quickly inside? ⁶⁷You are living your life, pulling objects towards you instead of pushing everything out. ⁶⁸If everyone pushed out, they would each be hit with kindness from every angle. ⁶⁹If one starts. If one single person starts, it always begins a reaction. ⁷⁰They don’t understand their power. They don’t understand the energy. They don’t understand how they’re connected. ⁷¹Connected through me, with my spirit, my being, my energy. ⁷²They have access to it all because they are me. ⁷³We work in flawless unity but they have to tap into it. They’ve almost got it figured out. ⁷⁴But it’s too late now. Maybe the next time. Maybe the next race. Maybe the next revolution of evolution. ⁷⁵For now we’ll start back at the beginning. But it will have to be somewhere else. Somewhere far away. ⁷⁶The Greator will have to orchestrate another elaborate Cosmic Explosion. ⁷⁷The Humanlings have acted so selfishly that they’ve destroyed every trace of life itself. ⁷⁸They have not destroyed a piece of land or an area or a region. They have not destroyed a culture or a people. They have not destroyed a hemisphere. ⁷⁹They have destroyed Life Itself, reverting everything to abyss. ⁸⁰All trees, all hamsters, all vines, all flamingoes, all people, all grass, all ants, all microbes and amoebas. Virus, vaccines and vericuse veins. Air is gone. Matter is gone. Mars, Mercury and Venus (Earth names) have all been gobbled up by the exo-implosion caused by their thoughtless, thought driven cell bomb. ⁸¹It’s all gone. ⁸²If no one is around to experience space, is there space to experience? ⁸³Does existence exist if no one may touch it with their consciousness? ⁸⁴And if no one is there to believe in me? ⁸⁵My heart pumps with the belief of the little ones. With them gone, so am I.

 

 

 

 

[SEQ. XVI] ¹A whisper.

 

 

 

 

Shh.

 

 

 

 

Listen.

 

 

 

 

[SEQ. XVII] ¹I can feel it working its way into my heart like a warm fire. ²I grow brighter. I reach out. Of course. I was so obtuse. I never looked higher. I never looked beyond. I, like the Humanlings, was too busy looking in and down. I was pushing everything inside instead of outside. ³The greys buzz past in their plasmatic vessel and the consciousness that is my entity attaches to the ship and finds a home. ⁴I work my way through the navigational bio-computers and glide with it through the BLACK. ⁵There is absolute darkness Outside. ⁶The small grey creatures are nothing like the humans. They seem to understand one another through feelings rather than through simplistic grunts. ⁷Everything on Earth seems so primitive compared to these. ⁸There is a peace here that I’ve always hoped to exist. That I’ve known could exist. ⁹I feel a tickle. A prayer. ¹⁰A grey that is a bsipo – it takes three greys to make a child; a pleon, a bsipo and a mitigular. ¹¹They are not to be thought of as male / female and they, in fact, are enamored and interested that it only takes two humans to reproduce. ¹²They’ve been studying the humans for a long time and can’t understand how a normal social structure works with only two in charge. ¹³How do the parents vote? In a three way relationship, it is always easy to see which way is best for the group. Arguably some of the largest countries on their home planet, on their base plateau, work (or worked, since it is now a memory only of extraterrestrial life) under democracy and yet their personal relationships often operated as singular tyrannies. ¹⁴The bsipo sends its thoughts to me and I capture them. A prayer. ¹⁵The bsipo wants to be placed with a new pleon and mitigular. The pleon and mitigular have both agreed that the bsipo is not an accurate fit for their family and would like to replace it. ¹⁶The bsipo, understandably, is devastated. ¹⁷I nurture the thought and circle it and smile upon it. ¹⁸I’ve found you, little creature. I’ve found you. Your Controller has found you and I shall answer your prayer. ¹⁹But first you must do something for me. Fall to your knees and praise me. Throw your hands in the air and cry my name. Give me strength. Scream from your oozing guts. Weep for me. Take these new partners. And blessed be. ²⁰No. We can have a new start here. Not blessed be. You have been blessed. Give blessings back. It is your duty. No. Too authoritarian. They’ll contort it again. They’ll twist it and ruin it. They’ll manipulate my words and try to apply a value to their work. ²¹They always want gold stars. They always want approval. Why won’t they just do it to do it? Why won’t they just help? Why are they always wrong like burnt cookies? I can shape them. I can fix them. ²²Instead I tell the bsipo, I have helped you because you were in need. It’s still wrong. They will still think that helping only applies from me to them. They don’t want to engage with one another. ²³The pleon and the mitigular approach the orphaned bsipo and embrace it in a hug. ²⁴They have welcomed their partner back. ²⁵An orgy ensues but not the way in which you, the reader, understands it. There is no filth and perversion in the act. It is not a social scar. This is their circle of love. It’s embracing. ²⁶Their hands pressed together, their inner beings bond together. Their heads are thrown back and chem-trails that bridge their bodies between cells meld their fourth eyes into a single sight and they are each swimming in the pools of the others subconscious. ²⁷They are delighting in the pure thoughts and forgiveness of one another. ²⁸They dip their heads under the liquid dream and drink deeply. They spin and caress and levitate and merge. ²⁹Their bodies become one and then three. ³⁰The process itself is called Spiraling Trinity and is, as near as I can make out, recreational sex that transcends form. ³¹The three come back to their bodies and their inner eyes sleep while their outer eyes stare into one another in a triangle of vision. A six dimensional puzzle. Their blue hands intertwine. Their skin has changed color. ³²The door swings open and a child stands with mouth open. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’ve seen you blue,” she transposes to them through the tele-functory process of pro-standard communications. ³³“It is alright. It is natural. It is an accident. There is no need to be embarrassed. Please shut the door and we will see you at dinner.” ³⁴The child smiles and I see another child in its mouth. ³⁵Like a plant, the creatures grow one from another. ³⁶They don’t reproduce. They produce and the Spiral Trinity is not for rebirth but only for transcending form together. ³⁷In the other room, the child slides a pill into a crevice on the side of her body. Little stubby tentacles gobble it up and absorb it. Green goo begins to drip from the orifice and the face of the child goes limp. ³⁸The child has found the pleon’s Force T substances. Force T stands for Forced Trinity and it acts as a recreational drug that replicates a slightly dumbed down version of the Spiral Trinity. ³⁹The child falls to its knees and opens all four eyes, inside and out. Ears go pert. Inhale. Touch my face. Rub my face. Thoughts spiral. Goodbye. I see my body. Kneeling. Crying. Falling. Breaking. Goodbye. I lift up. ⁴⁰Trapped in the corner of my room. No. It’s okay. I’m still lifting. My spirit separates from my mind. ⁴¹I am experiencing the effects of the Force T. I am experiencing the perspective of the child. I am trapped in both the child’s reality and my own. ⁴²The child feels its / our life throb. ⁴³It slows. It speeds. It pops. The body goes limp and the face hits the floor and the orifice in its side pukes and yellow vomit and pink chunks of meat cascade onto the nice carpet. ⁴⁴As is traditional with grey deaths, the head collapses and a hog sized scarab crawls out. Black and green. ⁴⁵It shimmies for the nursery of the ship and disappears. ⁴⁶The child stands in front of me, our consciousnesses pressed against one another. ⁴⁷The child is a mitigular but always felt that it was a pleon. ⁴⁸The ple looks me over and feels me out. Me. I am All. I am Everything. Beginning and End. Outside of Time. ⁴⁹The ple tells me that The Greator has sent it and that I am to blink out. ⁵⁰But what will happen to me? THESE THINGS ARE NOT MY CONCERN. YOU HAVE BEEN FAR TOO HAPHAZARD WITH YOUR PEOPLE AND YOU WILL NOT CRUSH OURS. I HAVE BEEN CALLED AS AMBASSADOR TO THE GREATOR TO DELIVER THIS MESSAGE. ⁵¹But you died. ⁵²I DIED TO SAVE MY PEOPLE. I DIED TO STOP YOU FROM RUINING US AND SPOILING US WITH YOUR ATTEMPTED GOODNESS. ⁵³On the ship the three greys enter and stare at the body of their beloved child. Human sadness is not a part of the brain that the greys have. ⁵⁴They acknowledge that their race has suffered a great loss and that their community has suffered a great defeat. They pull in the last few traces of the child and understand that what happened was necessary. ⁵⁵“May we all stay safe from religion,” the adult ple speaks plainly. ⁵⁶They don’t want me here. ⁵⁷NO, THEY DO NOT WANT YOU HERE. BLINK OUT. ⁵⁸Blink Out? But that means oblivion. ⁵⁹YOU HAVE SUFFERED THROUGH OBLIVIONS BEFORE. NO ONE KNOWS WHAT AWAITS ABOVE US AND WE ARE ALL ON OUR OWN PATH TO THE GREATOR. BLINK OUT. GIVE UP YOUR SEAT AND PROCEED ACCORDINGLY. ALL GOOD COMES FROM THE GREATOR. ⁶⁰Thank you for showing me love and kindness. Thank you for being benevolent. It is more than I deserve. I know that now. AND OFTEN TIMES TOO LATE. JUST LIKE YOUR HUMANLINGS. ⁶¹Ah! I am no better! I am no better! I am a fool! I deserve this! ⁶²IT IS NOT ABOUT DESERVING. IT IS ABOUT RECEIVING. AND NOW IT IS YOUR TIME TO RECEIVE. YOU DO NOT HAVE TO BLINK OUT BUT YOU CAN’T STAY HERE. ⁶³Yeah, another Earth song. I loved them so much. I know I did rough with them. I know I loved them too hard sometimes. I know the floods and the fires were tough but they had to know. I did my best. I tried my best. I wanted them to love me. I just wanted them to love me. Some of them truly did. I made some of them. And I scared some of them. But some of them loved me dearly. And thanked me. And regarded me with awe. ⁶⁴The undercurrent pulls me down and I am absorbed through a vortex. [SEQ. XVIII] ¹Atom to atom, bounding across subatomic particles, I travel through worlds, around nebulas and beyond the cosmos. I transcend both space and time as I pass through swatches of color and joyful energy and symmetrical lines and shapes and numbers – ah, the sweetness of seven, you are beautiful – rotating and radiating in the space between, which is all space always. ²My collective consciousness, which is many lives and many perspectives on many realms all merge with the others that have come before us and that will come after us. ³After our journey, we all come to rest upon the shores of Pale Lavender in the womb. I see the glittering eggs of fertility. The cradle of life. The beautiful velvety warmth of The Greator. The Nameless. The Ageless. The Ever Present Always. ⁴I cannot gaze on the face of This Thing That Has No Name. It speaks and I weep. I am reduced to regret and remorse and I am being boiled alive and it is delicious. I fall to the velvety flesh of butter and I rejoice in being home. In finally being home. In finding the goodness in all that is good. And finding the absolute harmony of existence. ⁵The tones of peace and celebration throb gently as I am lifted and embraced and told that I did good. I did good. I am good. I roll over onto my belly and my stomach gets rubbed. I love The Master so and The Master loves me and our love makes the Spiral Trinity look like elbow macaroni glued onto paper. ⁶Streamers glaze before my eyes and my walls crumble and disappear. Nothing contains me. The sad three-dimensional world from which I have traveled, that world which contains pain and grief is vanishing from my reserves. I am not me. I am part of The Greator. The expansion engulfs the juice of glory and always and forever and now. ⁷I am this. Always at home, outside of time, with my darling, The Greator, Pale Lavender. [END SEQ.]

(The Father of) The Mother of Dragons

My friend Jack and I are standing in my front yard talking about The Big W’s – Weather, Work and Wives – when Quinn runs up and slams into my legs, a big smile painted across her face. I assume that she probably wants to tell me about a bug she saw, a rock she found or a bird she heard – these are the ecstatic ramblings of children long before the boring gray fuzz of adulthood has tainted their world view.

Jack bends at the waist and slaps his hands onto the tops of his knees and, in a sing-song voice says, “Why, hello there, princess!” Quinn looks up at him with a furrowed brow then looks over at me and I can hear her thoughts, Why is this guy talking to me like I’m a baby animal?

“How are you doing, Princess?”

“I’m, uh, fine?” and she says it like a question.

“You are beautiful, Princess! You are just beautiful, aren’t you?”

I cringe at the buttery compliments.

Quinn looks up at me. “Dad?”

“Yes?”

“Are, uh, princesses… uh, real?”

“Yes.”

“Like… on this planet?”

“Yes.”

“And they’re alive right now?”

“Yes.”

These are the three qualifiers Quinn uses in order to distinguish when and where a thing took place. She understands that things could have existed BEFORE now but exist no longer – like dinosaurs – or that things could exist outside of this country – like things in Africa – or that things could exist outside of this planet – like the sun and the moon. What she’s really asking is, “How accessible are these things to my reach?” How accessible are princesses to me? That’s the real question.

Can I be one?

Jack answers for me. “Of course they’re real! There’s one standing in front of me right now! A pretty princess! That’s you!” I cringe again. The last thing I want is my daughters to associate with characters who get trapped in towers, are afraid of spiders, and constantly require some form of assistance.

That is no one to make into a role model.

These ideas of “princess” are not inherent from birth. These ideas are fed into our daughters. We show them the pictures. We show them the movies. We glamourize the idea and the lifestyle. They are magical and beautiful and they don’t have bad hair and they never wet the bed and they don’t have to have jobs or work and everything is wonderful and their lives are perfect and how does it always end for a princess?

Happily Ever After.

And in all fairness, why would you not want that? I’m half tempted to throw a dress on myself and march around a castle while tethered to the sexual whims of some hunky prince in order to forego a few of the greater responsibilities of my standard adult life. Don’t judge.

We may not intentionally give our children this idea that they should actually dream to be a princess (I would never!). We may not intentionally feed this lie to them (They’re just movies!). We may not intentionally form them to believe this (Do you want to be a princess for your birthday?) but there are lessons in repetition and our culture helps shape that which we are.

It shapes girls through childhood with fun movies. It shapes ladies through their teen years, which we then couple with beauty magazines. It shapes women through adulthood, which we then couple with pornography. And they take all this baggage into the work force, which we then couple with an antiquated and slowly dying cultural idea that men work and women stay home and then we wonder why women make, across the board, slightly less in the workforce.

Perhaps we’ve spent decades telling girls that they deserve slightly less. Perhaps we’ve spent decades convincing ourselves that they deserve slightly less.

And maybe we all, on some level, believe it… even if we say we don’t. Perhaps there is a part of us all that still believes they are the fairer sex.

How do we know if we believe this? Well, if a man tells you that his wife works full time and he is a stay-at-home dad, what is your first, internal, gut, emotional reaction?

Your very first reaction is probably, like mine. “Wow, that is a-typical. I wonder what that’s like?”

I have full acceptance of it – no judgment – but there is this part of me that acknowledges that it is somehow out of the realm of what we typically understand to be true.

And herein lies the problem. Because we, as individuals or as an entire culture, can simultaneously acknowledge that it is okay and “progressive” for a woman to work and a man to stay home while also understanding that part of us finds it to be outside the norm.

And so if you also think it to be outside the norm, it is because you believe (or have been told to believe) that, like me, women have a specific place and men have a specific place. If your first thought is “That is unique,” then you too are trapped in this way of thinking even though you don’t think you’re trapped in a way of thinking.

Culture has also made you and I, as men, believe certain things without our knowing that we believe them.

Scary.

Perhaps we re-educate our daughters on what it means to be a woman. Perhaps we re-educate our girls on what it means to be a princess.

Perhaps we put Jack’s princess to rest.

Or better yet, perhaps we kill her completely. Perhaps we just let her starve to death in the tower as a lesson for not having the get-up-and-go to rescue herself. Rapunzel, you had hair. You could have crawled down yourself. Cinderella, you could have left. There was NOTHING tying you to that house. Those people hated you. Ariel, you doctored your birth form and gave up your entire world for a guy you just met simply on the hope of Happily Ever After.

These. Are. The. Lessons.

Settle for less.

Wait for help.

Change who you are.

And if you make twenty cents an hour less than men doing the same job, maybe that’s just your place. After all, that’s what we’ve taught you.

Perhaps feminism wouldn’t have to exist if we raised our daughters believing they were bad asses from the very beginning. Perhaps our daughters would never ask, “Am I good enough?” if we stopped telling them stories that highlight all the reasons why women aren’t good enough / pretty enough / strong enough.

Perhaps we start telling them stories about women that are leaders instead of women that wait for leaders.

Quinn looks up at me, a revelation dawning across her face, “Dad, am I a princess? Is this true?” Jack has planted the seed.

And now I must garden.

“Well, let’s see… do you have a crown?” “No.” “Do you have a scepter?” “No.” “Do you have a castle?” “Uh, no.” “Do you own any lands? Is your mother a queen? Do you have servants? Do you settle disputes amongst your countrymen?”

“Uh, no. I don’t do those things.”

“Then you probably aren’t a princess.”

Jack says, “Why would you tell her that?” and I say, “The same reason I tell her that she is not God nor an earthworm.”

“Dad? Is, uh, Cinderella a princess?”

“Yes, she is.”

And in that moment I see the light in her eye. I see the draw of The Princess. I see that my daughter wants it because, at her core, I think most little girls do. And that’s okay too. But how do we separate all the terrible trash from the good stuff? How do we tell them that it’s okay to be a princess and it’s okay to be pretty and it’s okay to dance and fall in love but… there is more. That is not all. The princess you know is an incomplete story. Because she is an incomplete character.

She is flat and brainless and you are not.

In her question I see an entire culture of beauty pressures and weight problems and negative encouragement and impossible goals and cosmetic surgery and feminism and macho bullshit swirling in a tornado, trying to rear its head, trying to sneak into Quinn’s ears and her head and her psyche, trying to poison the vision of who she is. Trying to mold her (and I mean “mold” both in the sense of “forming shape” and also as “an organism that slowly eats away and decays”).

Maybe that voice in our culture is impossible to stop. Maybe it’s a hopeless battle and all of the body image shit that bathes and berates our females is impossible to hide from.

But maybe not.

Maybe we just need to alter the messaging a bit.

I squat down onto one knee, proposing an idea.

“Quinn, you know what? Princesses are real. There are princesses on this planet right now. On this Earth. And you know who the best one is?”

“Uh, Cinderella?”

Me, “Nope.”

“GREAT GUESS, PRINCESS!” That’s Jack.

“The greatest princess of them all is a woman just like you named Daenerys Stormborn. And she is the Mother of Dragons.”

“DRAGONS!? SHE HAS DRAGONS!?”

“Oh, yes. Three of them.”

Jack, “I don’t think you can tell her that.”

Me, “You think I should stick to Cinderella and her transforming pumpkin-carriage as the barometer for reality?”

Jack shifts his eyes, “Uh, what?”

“THREE DRAGONS!?” that’s Quinn in full excitement.

“Yeah. And you know what else? She flies around on them.”

“WHAT!?”

“And they breathe fire.”

“WHAAAAAT!? FROM THEIR MOUTHS?!”

“Bingo.”

“Can I see a picture?!”

I pull out my phone and, thanks to Google and the wonderful CG team at HBO, I show her a picture of a very real looking Daenerys riding a very real looking dragon that is breathing very real looking fire.

“OH. MY. GOODNESS.”

“Can I tell you something else? She is a very. Powerful. Warrior. She is strong and she is brave and she stands up for people that are weak and she stands up for people that don’t have a voice. She is a hero. What do you think about that?”

“THAT IS REALLY KEWWWL!”

“Yes, it is. I agree. Now then, what do you think? Would you rather be Cinderella with her glass slippers going to the dance or Daenerys Stormborn with her dragons, breathing fire and battling the wicked?”

“I want to be Dan Harris!”

“I thought so. Remember, being pretty is nice. But being smart, brave and kind – being a leader – this is who you are. This is what’s really inside of you. Capiche?”

“Capiche!”

Quinn smiles and runs away. I stand up and smile at Jack, “Sugar and spice and everything nice only goes so far. Sometimes you’ve gotta pour a little whiskey in the soda if you want it to bite back.” Jack smiles in a way that makes me think he does not agree.

And that too is okay.

I acknowledge that someday Quinn will grow up and will most likely seek a spouse. And when she does, I want her to choose someone that she wants to be with. Someone that accentuates her happiness and helps to highlight her charm.

Our culture has a loud voice. And that voice tells us that spouses complete us. The voice tells us that our spouse is our other half.

But I say no.

I say we are complete people before we meet one another. A person does not complete another person. A person adds their brew to the mix. They bring their own ingredients and they help create a spicier dish but they do not complete the recipe.

Marriage does not complete you anymore than having children completes you anymore than having the proper job completes you anymore than having the right pair of pants completes you.

You are you.

You are you regardless of who you’re with.

Quinn doesn’t need someone to complete her. She can choose to be with someone because she loves being with them. Because their company is delightful. Because they find happiness in the other’s presence. Not because they will give her Happily Ever After.

Quinn comes running back, wrapping her arms around my leg.

“Daddy?”

I place my hand on her forehead. “Yes, Breaker of Chains?” Quinn squints at me. “Uh, those dragons… are they real?”

Ah, I knew that one was going to come around.

Sometimes, as a parent, it is our job to build up our children and raise them to be the best version of themselves that we believe they can be. Sometimes it’s our job to protect them from all the flying bullshit in the world – at least for as long as we can. Sometimes it’s our job to remind them to think for themselves and to question the status quo. Sometimes it’s our job to tell them the very hard truths of life.

And sometimes.

Sometimes.

It is our job to lie.

“Yes. The dragons are real. They are the last three in the world. And Daenerys has them and she flies around on them, fighting evil. And you, Quinn. You can fight evil as well.”

“I’M GOING TO!” and she turns and runs off into the yard, where I hear Rory and Bryce laughing.

Sometimes lying is good.

 

For more Bald, subscribe below. New stuff every Wednesday… unless I’m feeling lazy. Then it’s Thursday.

THE SPIRALING CORNUCOPIA OF PALE LAVENDER [SEQ. 14 – 15]

The Spiraling Cornucopia of Pale Lavender is  a 10-part series of fiction that explores perception and reality. Below is part 8. To read the introduction of the project, click here.

To read part 1, click here.

To read part 2, click here.

To read part 3, click here.

To read part 4, click here.

To read part 5, click here.

To read part 6, click here.

To read part 7, click here.

To read part 8, click here.

Otherwise, begin scroll.

 

[SEQ. XIV] ¹Now I’m making waffles. ²I am thirty years old and I have short hair and a good smile. My muscles feel good and my confidence is strong. ³The kitchen is wide open and there are pots and pans hanging from little hooks. It looks nice. ⁴My wife is a thin brunette who usually wears white shirts and black yoga pants. She doesn’t teach yoga but she’s thought about it. ⁵She’s a vegetarian who thinks vegans are pious. I don’t really like her. But I love my daughter. ⁶And right now my daughter is sitting at the kitchen table and she’s dressed up like a princess for no special occasion. She wears a pink dress with a crown on her head and a scepter in her hand. And now that I’m actually looking at the costume and giving it more than just a passing glance, I think she might be dressed as a kind of fairy princess instead and not just a regular, run of the mill, earth bound human princess. Boring. ⁷I lift up the waffle iron and see that the waffle is burnt to an absolute black crisp. “Okay, baby! Guess what we’ve got here?” “Smells like it’s burning. Did you burn my waffles again?” ⁸“I sure did. I know just how you like em! Black with a little bit of whipped cream.” ⁹“Ebony and irony,” she sing-songs jokingly. ¹⁰I love her and I’m thinking about packing her up one night and leaving her mom. ¹¹It might work but the horuscribe tells me it’s a mistake. ¹²The horuscribe is a small creature, three feet tall, that lingers in the ceiling corner of all rooms that I enter. ¹³Its body is very narrow and has always reminded me of a carrot – thick at top and tapered out at the bottom. ¹⁴It wears a black robe and a white mask. The white mask looks like a deer skull with black make-up applied to it. ¹⁵The black make-up highlights certain areas like spots on a dog. ¹⁶Sometimes, however, I wonder if the deer mask is not a mask at all but rather just its face. ¹⁷The horuscribe has eyeballs – two in the front of its face in the same place that I do. ¹⁸It has long black and white fingers that also look like bone. ¹⁹It watches me. It simply watches me. ²⁰On the morning of my 26^th birthday, it was the first daybreak of the second Knuckled Moon, I woke up and my wife told me, “Happy Birthday. I’m pregnant.” And it was that same morning that I first saw the horuscribe. ²¹My wife has never seen it. Nobody has ever seen it. ²²When I use the bathroom, it is there. ²³When I am intimate with my wife, it is there. ²⁴In my car, it is there. It is everywhere. ²⁵It was there when I opened my eyes. And now its there whether my eyes are open or not and I can’t get rid of it. ²⁶Everywhere I go, there it is. ²⁷I’ve tried to touch it but nothing happens. My hand passes through it but there is a sense of captivity when I do. ²⁸It watches me and sometimes it points at me but I don’t know what it means. ²⁹It is always in the room that I’m in and it is always there when I leave and it is always in the next room before I enter. ³⁰It is never positioned in such a way wherein I can see if it exists in two places at once. ³¹One time I was watching a late night science documentary and it was talking about how, in quantum physics, a singular atom can exist in two places at once and move in two different directions at the same time. ³²There’s nothing I can do with this information because I am not a quantum physicist but I found it interesting albeit useless. ³³At first I had a very difficult time coming to terms with its presence but now I find it kind of comforting. ³⁴I’ve gotten used to it. ³⁵And then one day I walked into my house after a long day of work and I found that the creature was sitting atop my daughters head, propped on top of her scalp like a vulture. ³⁶It seemed to be in a state of subdued ecstasy – a kind of waking coma. ³⁷“Meghan?” I asked and her hand lifts in the air and she smiles. “Hey, dad! How was your day at work?” ³⁸She is full of joy and she seems like herself but it is not her. ³⁹This creature is puppeteering her being. ⁴⁰The creature was controlling her like a puppet, drawing her arms and legs like marionette strings, creating mock emotions that felt genuine but were imposters. ⁴¹Has it not been observing me? Has it been observing her? What has it stolen from me? ⁴²All things my daughter does, no matter how genuine they seem, are now only reflections of real emotions. ⁴³When I tell her I love her, she responds and the worst part is that she thinks she means it but she doesn’t. ⁴⁴When she goes to school, she studies hard for good grades and she really does try but really it is the horuscribe trying and succeeding and I want to be proud of her because she doesn’t understand the difference but I do. I understand. I see through her. ⁴⁵Perhaps this horuscribe is her true self? ⁴⁶Is my daughter a projection of this oddity? ⁴⁷Is the horuscribe a projection of a projection? ⁴⁸Do I have a horuscribe attached to me that I cannot see? ⁴⁹Do I think I am making my own decisions while only being a puppet myself? ⁵⁰Has my daughter been living with her own visions of a creature attached to me, understanding that I am not her father at all? ⁵¹If my daughter feels emotions and thinks they’re real, even if they are being manufactured by the sentient thoughts of another, does that negate them? ⁵²When does self-awareness stop or start being self-awareness? ⁵³My world is false. My world is a projection. My world is transparent. ⁵⁴My daughter is here but she is not real. ⁵⁵My daughter is this creature. This creature is my daughter. ⁵⁶My daughter is just a body. Just a sock filled with meat that is being propelled through an entity no one can see except myself. ⁵⁷My wife speaks to me. I listen. My wife speaks to Meghan. She listens. ⁵⁸She answers. She smiles. She waves. She jokes. She eats. She poops. She vomits. ⁵⁹She is my Meghan. ⁶⁰And then one day the creature speaks to me. Speaks to me for the very first time. And it says to me, in a voice that sounds like a phone sex operator at a PTA meeting, ‘The Sky is Falling.” ⁶¹And I feel the sentence with each of its capital letters. ⁶²I feel the hard importance and the factuality of this statement. ⁶³I look up and the sky cracks open and begins to crumble like rocks. ⁶⁴Large boulders of celestial matter crumble and fall to the earth in slow motion. ⁶⁵Their ragged edges rip holes in the fabric of existence. Sheets peel down from the sky, of the sky, like billboards in a hurricane. Earth. The Greatest advertisement. ⁶⁶We are knocked out of orbit and our planet tears through the cosmos. ⁶⁷I lift off the ground and my back slams into an apple tree in our front yard. ⁶⁸I feel my spine snap and my legs disappear but it’s okay because I can fly. ⁶⁹The soil and the sky switch spots and the earth tears apart like a loaf of bread. ⁷⁰ “You can save her,” the creature whispers to me. “You can save your daughter from this fate but you have to do it now.” ⁷¹“Do what? Save her from what? What is happening?” ⁷²I desperately want to save my daughter and I desperately want to make a decision but I don’t know the rules. I don’t know the logic. I don’t have the information readily available to make a smart move. ⁷³Can I even trust this thing? ⁷⁴ “You must choose now, Richard.” “What is happening?” “Everything is falling apart. The pants of existence are getting unzipped. You knew it would be your generation. You always knew. And now here it is and you weren’t ready. There goes your house.” ⁷⁵I turn my head and I see my house tip over like a two dimensional slice of cheese and then it vanishes. ⁷⁶The world suddenly looks flat and strange although I think it has always looked like this? Do I have new eyes? A new brain? Where am I? [SEQ. XV] ¹I look down and see that I have neither body nor eyes. I am not breathing. ²I am embedded into the actual fabric of time. ³I am a moment. ⁴My eyes perceive all at once. ⁵Asia is my hand and Europe is my fist and North America is my toe. ⁶I feel the people walking on me and planting in me and digging in me. ⁷The pressure of the cities are great, like tumors. The gray masses grow and grow until it destroys my life cells. ⁸And then the people crumble. ⁹They always crumble. They always come and go. They rise and they fall. ¹⁰They destroy one another. ¹¹This time it will be with cellular weapons. ¹²The land will become polluted by their toxicity and then I will heal. ¹³I always heal. ¹⁴Until my mother Sun eats me alive, I will grow, the chosen princess of Miss Universe. ¹⁵The Greator chose me to bear life and to hold the secrets. ¹⁶I reach deep into my core and I find fire and I squeeze it tight inside me and I feel it drizzle out of my holes like burning shit. ¹⁷People scream for their lives from my red-hot diarrhea and I destroy their villages and burn their cultures in my frantic filth. ¹⁸Ash cakes the sky and thousands choke to death. ¹⁹They should have known better. ²⁰They should have asked me not to do it. ²¹The cities will be next. If only I could reach them somehow. ²²They are destroying me and eating away at my simple perfections and flawless ecosystems. ²³They are recreating a photoshopped copy of life and it disgusts me. ²⁴Bow to me, you fucking Humanlings! You stand atop me! You eat my grain! You eat my vegetables! You eat my fruit! I give you water. I give you trees and oxygen! I bore you. I gave you life. I nurtured you in my womb that you call the atmosphere. You are my children. Bow to me and respect me. Worship me. Tell me that you love me. Show me your appreciation. Tell me that I am beautiful. Fall to my feet, you pitiful worms or eat from the dumpster of my asshole. ²⁴I flex my unbreakable abs and a tsunami rushes over the coastal communities and I laugh as they drown and I watch their miserable little bodies float through the streets. ²⁵Let the buildings save you now. Let your silly paper money bandage your wounds.

 

***Like what you’re reading? Please subscribe!

The Spiral Cornucopia of Pale Lavender is winding down to its next Monday.

Lifestyle pieces go up every Wednesday. Stay tuned.

Discovering Rainbows: When your children turn to memories

Sometimes, when we speak to children, specifically those under the age of 3, we find that there is something of a communication barrier.

Sometimes it’s because the words they use contain different meanings than the words we use. For example, when my children say “yesterday” they don’t mean “the day directly previous to today.” Instead they mean “any period of time that came before my last sleep.”

Dinosaurs were yesterday.

Sometimes Rory says that I’m being a bully. But he doesn’t mean “someone that pushes smaller people around” he means… well, he actually means exactly that but the heart of the matter is quite different. He doesn’t like being disciplined. So when I give him a time-out for hitting his sisters, I am, effectively, being a bully.

And then there are times where things are not understood because they are taken out of context.

One day I’m at a friend’s house and Rory turns to one of the girls there and says, “My dad says that we should eat blood.”

And then all eyes slowly shift towards me and I smile sheepishly and stupidly because, well, yes. Actually, as a matter of fact, I did say that.

But my context… was a little different.

Jade and I had recently visited Ireland where they have black pudding. Black pudding is made by taking animal blood, mixing it with oats and spices, forming them into patties and then frying them. Ultimately they look and taste a little like breakfast sausages. So I was telling the kids about this. I was telling them about the time daddy ate blood. And I was telling them that people do this. And I was telling them that they could do it as well.

So yes, I was telling them that they could eat blood.

Conversations and words are strange things because ultimately, words are just empty containers – empty cups – and each of us gets to choose what we’re going to fill them with. Knucklehead can be aggressive or endearing. It’s just an empty cup until I fill it with intent.

***   ***   ***   ***   ***

Sometimes, however, we can’t understand children of that age because, well, we just literally can’t understand them. Their lips and tongues and brains aren’t quite functioning at full capacity yet. Their words sound mushy and drunk.

Like today when Bryce said, “Darezah aimbow in our-owse.”

I hear these words escape her mouth and they’re said with such conviction that I’m certain they mean something. Certainly she’s saying something. For Bryce it seems that she has full intent but no cup and her words, rather than being neatly contained, are just splashing all over the place.

And so we try to interpret.

“Darezah aimbow in our-owse.”

I’m sitting in a chair reading a book when she says this. I’m in the other room. There’s a wall separating us and my location in space has my back positioned to her. Ironically, you’ll just love this, my book is about finding happiness in the minutia of life. So it makes sense that, reading this book, I turn my head a quarter of an inch in my daughter’s direction and I say, “Oh, yeah. Neat. Okay,” and then go back to reading.

Rather than finding joy in my daughter, who is discovering and interacting with the exciting world around her – rather than connecting with a human, a child that came from me, no less – I choose to bury myself further in my own thoughts.

Because that’s what kind of person I am, I guess.

Because actions do speak louder than words.

Because even if we say, “I’m not like that,” our actions show us who we are. It’s so funny how, more often than not, our thoughts and our actions do not align. Our thoughts speak to ourselves (no one else can hear them) and our actions speak to others. So if we think one thing but do another, it creates a rift in our reality. We begin to think that we are someone that we are not. Or, worse yet, the world thinks we are one way while we think we are another.

There grows a haunting disconnect between that which we think we are and that which we actually are.

If I think I am the guy that gets up and engages with my children but when my children speak out to me, I pay them lip service in order to make them go away so that I can indulge in whatever it is I’m doing… who am I?

I give her just the absolute most minimal attention possible to hopefully satiate whatever want she has in this moment. Because I’m sure it’s nothing.

And then Bryce says, a little more enthusiastically, ““Darezah aimbow in our-owse.”

“Nice. Nice. Yes. Yes. That’s very wonderful, isn’t it?” Look! I’m paying attention to you, Bryce! I’m giving you words.

I am giving Bryce empty cups. My words are cups but I have filled them with no intent at all. She is asking to be fed with attention and I’m just pushing empty plates at her.

“Nice. Nice. Yes. Yes. That’s very wonderful, isn’t it?” Whatever, whatever. Please leave me be. I’m reading a book. You are a babbling child who is almost certainly making a mess out of chocolate cereal at my dining room table. What do I have to say to appease you?

Or… what do I have to say to silence you?

Or… best yet… what do I have to say to make you go away?

Because you are bothering me and I want to be left alone.

What are we really saying when we say the words we are saying.

Sometimes I don’t understand what my daughter says because she’s three.

Sometimes I’m thankful my daughter can’t fully understand what I’m saying because she’s only three. Thank you, Bryce, for not understanding that I’m pushing you off.

“Daddy. Darezah aimbow in our-owse.”

Alright. So this problem is not going away. I’m actually going to have to engage. I shut my book and I set it down and I stand up and I walk around the corner and I see Bryce sitting at the table with, wouldn’t you know it, a mess of chocolate cereal in front of her. Wonderful. Guess whose cleaning that up?

“What is it, Little Ohm?” This is a character from a movie I saw once and for some reason I started administering the name to Bryce.

“Look. Darezah aimbow,” and she points. And I look. And I see nothing. I see nothing and I just think to myself, of course.

“What are you saying?”

“Darezah aimbow. Dare.”

“There’s a rainbow?”

“Yah.”

“In our house?”

“Yah.”

“Where is this rainbow?”

“Dare.” She points. I still see nothing.

I sit down next to her at the table. I lower myself several feet. I squint. I lower myself further. I try to relax my eyes. Still nothing.

“Are you a freaking psychic medium?”

“Yah. Dare.”

I squat down lower. I bring my eyes to her level. I tilt my head like hers. And I follow her finger and I see… a rainbow.

In our house.

And it is a simple thing. But it is also a beautiful thing.

“There is a rainbow. Look at that.” I sit in silence and stare at the thing for a moment. “It’s quite beautiful, isn’t it?”

“Yah. Vewy pwetty.”

“Yes. It is vewy pwetty, isn’t it?” And then the two of us just sit and watch it. We just… enjoy it together. Like a piece of art in a gallery. We just sit and watch the rainbow, the silence periodically broken by the sound of dry, crunching cereal next to me.

“I wuv you, Daddy.”

It’s out of nowhere. Out of the blue. It has no greater purpose. No shadow intent. She isn’t trying to get something out of me. She isn’t trying to do anything. It is a cup that is filled with cold and refreshing water. The perfect amount. At the perfect time.

Where do I fit in this picture? How did I help create a being like this? They arrive here perfect and then we just start to slowly mess them up.

“May I have a hug, Bruce?”

“Oh, yes. Yes, Daddy.”

She puts down her spoon, delicately and intentionally balancing it inside the bowl, steps forward and hugs me. And she holds it. And she squeezes. And I can feel her smiling. When she pulls back she gives me a kiss on the cheek and says, “I love you, Daddy.”

Oh, it’s funny what a little perspective will do to your life. It’s funny that if we stop looking at things the way we see them and start looking at them the way someone else sees them, we actually get to experience life in a richer capacity.

If we open our ears and hearts to others, we get to see the world in a multitude of ways.

We can be both here and there. We can see things as adults. We can see things as children. And if we join together and sit down, we can somehow see the world as both. It’s like the 3-D glasses. You get to see through two lenses at once. And everything pops. Everything is brighter. More intense. More saturated.

I glance back at the rainbow and see that it’s fading – almost a gray color now. And I think about how fleeting all things are. The sun, nearly 100 thousand miles away, cast its light in just this way, to reflect just perfectly through that window, that someone built in that way. All of that coupled with my daughter standing in this room at this time (making a mess from her chocolate cereal), facing the proper direction as she was the exact height at this time of her life to see this miniature spectrum.

And she saw it in this tiny little window of time where it was available to her. Just a few moments in the late afternoon.

This special thing happened.

And then it was gone.

And we couldn’t get it back. So hopefully we enjoyed it.

“You want some cereal, Daddy?”

I nod. “Yes, please.” And she feeds me one small piece of chocolate cereal at a time. She drops a marshmallow on the floor, says, “Oops,” and then picks it up. It’s now covered in dust and hair. She balances it back on the spoon and says, “Here.”

I reach out, dust it off and bite.

The rainbow in our house is gone.

And then the cereal was gone.

And then Bryce left the table.

And then years passed.

And then Bryce left the house.

And then it was just me sitting in a chair with a book, remembering the time that I got to share a rainbow with her. Hoping that I enjoyed it.

Because this memory is all I have left.

 

 

Subscribe for more. Every Wednesdays there’s more Bald.

THE SPIRALING CORNUCOPIA OF PALE LAVENDER [SEQ. 9 – 14]

The Spiraling Cornucopia of Pale Lavender is  a 10-part series of fiction that explores faith and reality. Below is part 8. To read the introduction of the project, click here.

To read part 1, click here.

To read part 2, click here.

To read part 3, click here.

To read part 4, click here.

To read part 5, click here.

To read part 6, click here.

To read part 7, click here.

Otherwise, begin scroll.

 

⁴The creators, encircled around me like a very intimate Roman Coliseum. There are two hundred of them. ⁵Each wears a different colored robe. Each means something different. ⁶Who are they? Who are you? ⁷And then I feel their presence. It reaches out to me, stronger than a language. No body speaks. ⁸We stare at one another and I can see them all at once, spread completely around me. ⁹Everything is presence. ¹⁰I have full knowledge of my surroundings. I feel absolute warmth. ¹¹How do you describe love to someone that has never felt it? How do you tell someone what red looks like if they’ve never seen it? ¹²I feel uplifted. Warmth. Acceptance. ¹³I could reach my hands into the air and howl with delight and nobody would cast a social stone at me or even have a sideways thought of me. ¹⁴If that is how I were to display my happiness, it would be full acceptance. ¹⁵They all smile at me, but not with their faces. ¹⁶To me they all look nearly the same, much like the breed of a dog, but there are small differences. Nuances to features. ¹⁷I sense them as alternate forms as well. They display themselves differently depending on who is standing in front of them. Not just humans, either. Other races. ¹⁸A light consumes me and this one actually does look like a light. It slides with sun flares. It’s very bright. White. Almost blue. Perhaps pale lavender. ¹⁹I can see it. ²⁰What are you? I can feel you. Your presence is so close. Take me away. Am I alone? I want to know. How can I know? Do I have to believe in all of these things? ²¹“Just do good.” ²²But are you real?” “If I’m not, then whom are you speaking to?” ²³And then everything was gone. Just like someone changed a channel. Everything was gone and [SEQ. XI] ¹I found myself standing in a muted forest. And I was a yellow buck toothed sloth. ²Everything is SO muted. The greens are very mushy, pushing towards rotten. Yellows that are very warm and moist, almost a spicy diarrhea orange. There are greasy smudges of purple around. The flowers look like soggy beef. The ground looks like an untended lawn. ³Am I back on Earth? Is this what Earth has always looked like? ⁴I feel like my perception of truth has been totally fucked with. Have I been exposed to something so beautiful that now everything looks drab and weak by comparison? ⁵This world is a Seattle neighborhood in the nineties. ⁶I know what they did to me. In that bare moment, that moment where I felt naked, it was so powerful. Everything inside of me was revealed. ⁷My thought bubble. My consciousness. My history. The root of who I am. They were checking in on me and seeing how I was progressing before they placed me again. ⁸All the details and thoughts and past experiences were laid out in front of everyone. All the little pieces. They were pulled out of me, one at a time and then displayed. ⁹It was as if I were falling apart. And then I could see all facets of my entity before me, looking like orange and yellow and white dots, looking like soft gel capsules. ¹⁰And then the greys gazed. ¹¹But not upon the gel capsules, which were merely projections for my benefit. They sifted through my meat and energy and they saw everything. All of the terrible things. All of the thoughts that I don’t want anyone to know. They know that I’ve – [SEQ. XII] ¹then I’m sifting through the sea and it’s all I can observe for miles. Miles. What is that? A measurement for distance that does not matter. ²Control your elements. You are part of the elements. You touch the earth. You touch the heart of the earth. The planet of water is not a planet at all. ³Nothing is nothing. ⁴This is your. ⁵This is your subconscious. ⁶This bison of water is your being. Look at the ripples. Do not fear. You cannot die. ⁷I know I don’t have to tell you this because you already know but I need to explain it to the reader. They are a person sitting on an airplane somewhere over Utah dreaming about numbers. ⁸Where am I? What are you? Where are you? Are you under there? Underwear? You see the comedic value in my quip and I appreciate that. The joke would be considered by Earthlings, which you once were, as a bad one although we cannot describe why. It is called a dad joke because of something to do with its quality, something we cannot yet observe. They say things that don’t make sense. It seems to be random words strung together and then the others laugh. The dad joke is considered “bad” but it also brings a strange kind of joy and it’s only by disliking the joke that they are actually able to appreciate it. Very strange. ⁹They are glass porcelain, white and black and the sky is a white slate, perfect and clean and without texture. ¹⁰A moist cheese the color of lavender. Pale lavender. ¹¹It doesn’t snow but the air glistens. It glistens lightly. Not crystals. Emotion candy. ¹²I stick out my tongue and catch one and a sense of eagerness and acceptance fills my body. ¹³My mouth is sweet caramel. It isn’t a flavor but it is a memory so sweet that I can taste it but differently than before. It is caramel over my soul orb. It is rich and dark and sweet and light and amazing and I feel it rubbing all over my person, like conditioner on my dick in the shower. ¹⁴My whole body vibrates and tingles and I am the feeling that pulls through my physical chest and pulses through my physical eyeballs and glides through my physical veins like helpful heroin, to my fingertips and it touches the back of my spine and soaks into my brain and I peak in a prismatic eclipse of shattering crystals of known experience that actually makes me laugh out loud. ¹⁵I inhale deeply and give myself a hug. Life is good. [SEQ. XIII] ¹I begin walking towards work and then realize that I am in a neighborhood and I was having another hallucination. ²I haven’t been taking my medicine because I’m curious as to what will happen to me if I remove it from my diet. ³I want to better understand myself and what is wrong with me. ⁴I save all of my skipped pills in a small bottle in my bathroom cabinet. I don’t throw them away. ⁵The job is terrible. The pain is horrible. My hair is falling out. My knees hurt like fucking fuck. My hip has a sting in it when I walk and when it begins to rain. ⁶I mean, what the fuck? Just what the fuck, man? When did this happen? This is insane. ⁷I’m in better shape than this! I’m only sixty! I’m sixty. When did sixty get so old? When did this happen? ⁸Why am I working here? Why am I still here? ⁹I am going. To. Die. Soon

 

I

 

AM

 

GOING

 

TO

 

DIE

 

¹⁰I’m in a panic. But it’s subtle. It’s quiet. No, it’s muffled. ¹¹It’s very hungry and I can feel it wanting to come out. ¹²I need to leave this job. ¹³I need to do something with my life. ¹⁴What have I done? What have I done with my life? With my time? What is going to happen to me when I die? What have I done with myself? With anything? ¹⁵Will anyone remember me? ¹⁶Is that the summation of absolute oblivion? ¹⁷When you die your memory is winked out of existence? BLEEP. Goodbye. You don’t exist anymore. ¹⁸Nobody can remember you. ¹⁹And nobody will tell them. Because nobody cares. ²⁰And this is what god is afraid of. ²¹If no one has belief in the message, how will the message spread? ²²If we are called to be the hands and feet of god, are we called to be the hands and feet because god cannot do it himself? ²³I’ve spent my life working towards god and going to church and praying and I’ve read most of my bible. I’ve read most of the new testament. Probably half of it. But I’ve read that half twice. ²⁴I pray. I have prayed. When bad things happen to me, I pray. When bad things happen to people around me, I pray. ²⁵When I need something and it is really important to me, I pray. ²⁶And god never helps me. God doesn’t heal my family and people that I have loved have died. ²⁷He never gave me the things I asked for. I was poor my entire life. I had bills and there were times that I went hungry. I mean, I was never homeless or anything. We ate. We just couldn’t always go on vacation and I had to work my entire life. ²⁸I am afraid that this government is going to hell now that all these lower class people are asking for handouts all the time. ²⁹I would not describe my faith as sterile. I have spent every Sunday in church for my entire life. ³⁰I can recite the rosary, probably backwards. That’s a joke. I definitely could not do that, if I’m speaking factually. ³¹What will happen to me when I die? ³²My heart stops. I drop to my knees. There are no houses on the street – at least no inhabited ones. ³³They are all boarded up and the lawns are dead. ³⁴And now I can’t really breathe very well. ³⁵It feels like someone has wrapped a large belt around my chest and has started to squeeze. ³⁶My bones hurt. ³⁷My heart feels as though it’s going to pop. ³⁸I take shallow breaths but don’t panic. I don’t even have to convince myself not to panic. ³⁹It’s all right. Everything is all right. Everything will not be all right for this physical body but it’s okay. ⁴⁰Death is okay. ⁴¹My death will not be okay but death is natural and it’s just time for the next thing, whatever that thing is. It’s okay. Just like going to sleep. ⁴²We were born to do this. ⁴³Everyone was born to do it. And now it’s my turn. And now. And now. And now. ⁴⁴I lie down and I look down a sewer pipe across the street and I wonder where the water running into it goes. ⁴⁵I remember racing paper boats in them as a child. ⁴⁶I don’t wonder who will find my body. ⁴⁷My mind is already above it. ⁴⁸I cannot feel my body dying but I can feel my mind elevating. ⁴⁹I can feel myself understanding things with a cleared perspective. ⁵⁰There are walls on my brain and I can feel them crumbling. Information is flowing. But not information as in ones and zeroes. ⁵¹It’s information as in the curtain is being pulled back. ⁵²I can suddenly see through all of my opinions and I can see down to the tiny little speck of fact that is buried way inside. It’s so clear. ⁵³And I understand everything and everything I did wrong and everything I did right and did almost right and I understand that I did most of it wrong. Everything, nearly. ⁵⁴My kids are the biggest tragedy. I missed it. I missed it all. And I don’t even have a good excuse. ⁵⁵I just accept that I did it wrong and I don’t know what’s next but if I start over I hope I can do it better. [SEQ. XIV] ¹Now I’m making waffles. ²I am thirty years old and I have short hair and a good smile. My muscles feel good and my confidence is strong. ³The kitchen is wide open and there are pots and pans hanging from little hooks. It looks nice. ⁴My wife is a thin brunette who usually wears white shirts and black yoga pants. She doesn’t teach yoga but she’s thought about it. ⁵She’s a vegetarian who thinks vegans are pious. I don’t really like her.

 

 

***Like what you’re reading? Please subscribe!

We have two more segments of The Spiral Cornucopia of Pale Lavender going live over the course of the next two Mondays.

Otherwise, lifestyle pieces go up every Wednesday. Stay tuned.