Once upon a time there was a beautiful and brilliant Princess. She was the pride of her mother and the joy of her father. A prodigy with a big heart and lovely brown eyes, she was the delight of the entire kingdom, the envy of every parent and the beloved of many a hopeful prince. She spent most of her time, however, alone with her thoughts and a friend no one else could see.
Many years had passed since the day her mother, the Queen, had found her wrapped in black blankets and whimpering outside of the palace gate. Attached to her basket was a hastily written note from the babe's mother. The letter explained that the poor child had been born to such ravaging poverty that any hope for her future would lie in the kindness of the royal family. The barren Queen had secretly prayed for a daughter to love and to raise. As she swept the baby into the castle, a tear rolled down her cheek and landed on the rosebud lips of her newborn charge.
The King was also ecstatic at the foundling's arrival, and he made sure to celebrate the royal family's new addition in a fittingly grand way. Musicians were called from the furthest reaches of the kingdom. Jesters and jugglers and acrobats performed, tirelessly, for hours in front of the assemblage of courtesans and peasantry. A wave of happiness spread throughout the realm. And the Princess, even in her tiny and infantile stature, was somehow aware of what was transpiring. Even as a little baby, it somehow made her very sad.
This preternatural child, with slender brown eyes and a wisp of curled black hair peeking from
under her bonnet, watched as her family and their attendants prattled on into the night, boundless in energy and drunk on joy. This preternatural child watched all the revelry and song and could not help but think of its end. She could not help but realize that at some point the celebration would dwindle, and in its wake would be disappointment and sorrow and heartbreak. This tiny baby, cuddled in her soft black blankets, somehow knew that all happiness was eventually rendered obsolete by the introduction of sadness. And she knew that history was nothing but the expanse from tragedy to tragedy. So as the congregated mass around her danced and laughed and gave way to all their mirthful abandon, the adopted Princess, too aware for her own benefit, softly wept.
As she grew, those who attended to her realized that the girl was gifted. Even before the Princess could speak, the aged and wise could see a sort of kindred spark in those dark eyes of hers. She seemed endowed with monumental intellect. She seemed to be cognizant of the minute workings of her universe, and could, as if by instinct, see how the tiniest pieces of her world fit together. And she was compelled to paint and to draw as soon as her miniature fingers could grip a pencil and brush. So she was an artist first, and when words began escaping her lips, she uttered nothing but poetry: ballads and songs so dense with meaning that most of her caretakers had only a notion of her brilliance without really understanding a word of what she said. She would walk the corridors of the castle, humming her own symphonies and daydreaming about the end of the world.
And though she was unfailingly polite and generous, and though she was sweet tempered and genteel, her parents fretted over her. They worried at the lack of smile on her lips, the lack of laughter from her throat and the expressions of concern that the beautiful child so often wore. The Princess, their beautiful gift, always seemed so burdened, especially for one so small. And the Princess knew of her parents' worries, and she did her best to alleviate them. When smiled at, she would smile in return. And when surrounded by laughter, the child would also laugh. When in the company of her family or her army of nannies and wardens she would contort her face into an uncomfortable simulation of peace and ease. Only in the solitary confines of her bedroom did she allow her lips to rest in their natural frown.
So as the Princess came of age, she was paraded amongst her peers, displayed for various suitors, all of whom were quickly enamored of her startling beauty and enchanted by her demeanor. They would fall into raptured spells as she spoke, her mellifluous voice florid with natural wonder and shimmering fantasy. She would speak, and they would listen and watch her with expanding eyes and racing hearts. But though she would never dare let on to them, these princes were, to one as bright and as old a soul as she, nothing but dullards. At the end of her brief engagements, she would return to her bedroom to drift into the seas of her saddened mind. She would lay in her bed and sleep and she would dream.
And all this isolation may have sparked a minor sort of madness, or perhaps her imagination was powerful enough to bend a small bit of reality to her will. Whatever the cause, one day the Princess woke to find she was not alone in her bedroom. There, at a tiny table where she had stationed a silver toy tea service was a guest. The Princess, without the provocation of placating the fears of her family, smiled. And her guest smiled in return. She noted the strings of blood that plied between the spiny, splintered teeth in its grin. And she realized it probably should have frightened her. It didn't. The Princess was not afraid of anything.
She sat across from him, the tea set in between, and she stared. The thing stared back with eyes that seemed to flicker from inside. They sputtered from gray to blue to green, and then would die to black before sparking away again. It had great claws, yellowed ivory talons that clattered away on each other, and clinked against the silver cup it took in its hand. It sipped at imaginary tea. This monster was playing with her.
The rest of the creature was something she would scarcely, if pressed, be able to describe. It was slick, like oil, but misty, like smoke. It had no shape, just a vague Shadowy outline that, for the most part, was nearly paper thin. It hardly looked like it took up any space at all aside from its grinning gnash of fangs and it's decayed, marbled claws. It took another fake sip from the silver cup.
The Princess, quite aware of the horrible countenance of her guest, was nonetheless pleased with its appearance in her room. She had felt so very lonely, stranded amongst a wasteland of friendly but alien beings who seemed not even of her species. Despite its fearsome form, she saw in the strangely flitting eyes of the thing a sort of understanding. Whoever this was, now, pretending to drink from a toy cup, was someone, some thing, the Princess felt was an equal. Her smile did not fade as she took one of the taloned paws into her hand. Her guest's grin quite widened.
So for days on end, the Princess would quickly attend to matters outside of her bedroom, and hurry back to her newfound friend. She imagined that she must have seemed unusually buoyant and light to those around her. But that was not the impression she gave. Instead, what her nannies and wardens saw was a very stark grimness overtake their lovely charge. It was as if a specter of gloom constantly clung to her, a vampiric force sucking away at her life. Her flesh grew pale. Her eyes drowned under a heavy weight of sleeplessness. Her posture slumped. Her walk became slow and defeated. But in her heart, she was aloft. What appeared to her companions as a practical crawl to her bedroom after lessons or after dinner or after a social engagement felt like flight to her. She beamed as she rushed to the side of her new companion, wanting nothing more than to just hold its hand.
The days stretched into weeks and months, and her contingent of caretakers grew more concerned as outwardly, their vibrant, if odd, child descended into a very murky depth. The Queen took occasion to speak with her daughter, and the Princess tried as best she could to convey her disinterest in the dealings of the kingdom as well as her elation over the world in the monster's fluttery eyes. She tried to convey how, within the terrifying visage of some imaginary beast, she had somehow found a sense of wonder and peace that seemed to be completely non-existent anywhere else. She pleaded for her mother to understand that a life demarcated by benchmarks of conformal behavior and personal loss held no interest for her. She begged to be released into the custody of her new guardian, that Shadowy figure that without any spoken word promised so much more within its authority. But, of course, the pleas fell on deaf ears. The Queen was horrified and flustered. The King tried desperately to wedge in some wise words to aid his wife and alleviate his daughter. He, of course, failed.
The Princess' Shadow company was a powerful bit of witchcraft. It welled up from somewhere inside the girl herself. A reflection, distorted and magnified and then breathing. The monstrosity that sat across from her at tea was more than just an imaginary friend, then. It was the avenue for an escape from a life of good natured and well meaning tedium. And so the Princess found it beautiful. The Queen, terrified at the madness her daughter seemed to be overtaken with saw it too. But she saw no beauty in the thing. Just an ugly, scary, fang riddled horror. The Queen demanded the Princess stay away from the Shadow. She stood between her precious daughter and the monster, praying for some end to the magic it had ensorcelled the Princess in. The creature, fearing an end to its newly discovered friendship begged the Princess to leave the palace together. And the Princess, torn between the understanding of her friend that only she seemed capable of, and the knowledge of what her abandonment would do to her already grieving parents stood paralyzed in her bedroom, guilt ridden and miserable.
Finally, she kissed her mother's cheek and grasped onto the talon hooked hand of the beast. The Queen, so overcome, fell to her knees, wept and realized what her daughter had known all along.
History is merely the expanse from tragedy to tragedy.
(c) 2009 Jason "Danger" Block
Showing posts with label The City. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The City. Show all posts
3.22.2009
Eight Musicians On God (From "The City")
PORTIA
There is magic in every tiny crevasse of this world. Imagine a place of such intricacy and wonder - there is no chance in it, of course. It's all gloriously designed. My breath, my footsteps, my words all drawn out in perfect detail on Her meticulous blueprint. Her hand, plotting the story... but She has enough faith in Her creations that she allows them a fraction of Her boundless imagination. You think of a sonnet, or a symphony, and what, more who, is it there that spawned it? What is that profound inspiration? Where is that well of creativity that the work is drawing from? And I have to think that Her art is multiplied a million times over. Each of Her works birthing even more works, things that, in as much as her omniscience allows, can maybe even surprise her? Think of this: for so long we have copied Her creations. We tried to recreate nature in static image, or describe it with inadequate language. But even in that dawning era, there was the spark of novelty. In our mythology we invented a whole world outside of what She'd shown us. An imitation, to be sure... in our limited capacity we can, at best, rearrange what She's given us in relatively novel ways. But think of how many pieces She's seen fit to bestow! Think of the seeming unending variety of Her world, and the huge palette it allows us to work from. There are a thousand bits of creation in even the smallest stone. There are such minute diffusions of color that every single shade of green can take on its own unique meaning! Our toolbox is filled with a staggering amount of possibilities, of near infinite variations on all the splendor She has shown us. God has given us so many gifts, but I can't imagine a single thing greater than that bit of Her she's bequeathed to us. The greatest gift is Her own ambition, that impetus to create that She's been kind enough to grant.
MICHAEL
If there's a God, and let's be clear: I'm praying there isn't... but if there is, it means all I can do is a pale copy of His creation, and even in that, I'm nothing more than a tool of His oppressive will. How can you claim responsibility for what you've made if it wasn't yours to begin with, or if all you are is a cog in His machine, or a character in His book? To be artificial, to be created by an authority, well that's no better than being a plaything, right? That's nothing more than being an automaton, guided solely by some greater force's whims. If there is a God, if there is an omnipotent thing, all present in this world, then I don't have a single original thought in my head. If there is a God, then I don't have a choice in any action I take, in anything I create, or really, in anything at all. That poem I wrote? It's God's. The song I composed? God's. The cake I baked? Even that's God's, right? He put the notion of it in me. I'm just an instrument. A means to an end. To even suggest there's such a thing as freedom is a joke. The thing can't be everywhere, can't be all knowing without having wholly dictated what I am. At best, I suppose, if there's a God, maybe it's a dispassionate being. Something that made us and then let us be. But even then, that thing, if it created this world, it couldn't really grant us freedom, could it? Even if you claim freedom, that being, that dispassionate God, would've had to make the rules, the rules that decide everything. So even an uncaring deity would be responsible, at least indirectly, for every last thing knocking around in my brain. What I'd hoped for, what I wanted to be true (but am now quite sure isn't) is that there is no creator. No divinity overseeing his world. If I am an accident, a byproduct of an unfeeling cosmos, at least then I am free. Responsible entirely for my own fate. But then, I guess, the cosmos itself is God, and I face the same problem. All of which leads me to the inexorable (and hopeless) conclusion that I am nothing but a lifeless thread in someone's, or something's, immense tapestry. So my only consolation is in the thought that if there is God (and let's be clear: I still pray there isn't), He's hopefully just as artificial as I am, another thread in someone else's weaving, and feeling the same impotence as I am.
THOMAS
We can be cogs, understand? We can be no more alive than the bits of wiring in the telex machine or the circuitboard in the computer. We can fill that role, I suppose, letting ourselves slip into our preconfigured notions of what it is to be made. But, under that, there is still a warm heart that beats in us, and we are full up of the irrational, and the passionate and even the insane. Filter us through logic, and you might have chess pieces predestined by some greater being, sure. But the sting of loss and the kiss of loneliness resonate in me, and so I know (I don't really know, I'll admit it) I am more than just guided missile parts and machine gun accuracy. We impose our own prison walls, we hide in the shadows cast by autocrats and claim no responsibility. We let it all wash over us and blame, with some validity, sure, the monster or monsters in power. But I can't shackle God with that. We might be hardwired for something, maybe rote, maybe divine... but you have that heart beating in you and the capacity for independence in it too. Argue logically with me, I don't mind. It sloughs off, because what faith is is knowledge of what you can't ever really know. We are more than a whirring collection of internal machinery and programmed destinies. I know it, even if I can't really know it. I feel. That's enough to give me all the faith in something greater I need. I won't say that God is necessarily active, or even real in the way a brick or a car or the moon is real. Obviously it's not something to touch with your hands. You can't see it with your eyes. But it figures. We are mystery. Our whole being is questionable and if you can question yourself you can bring the whole Sea of the universe into doubt. And it doesn't matter. It's simple to get mired in the crush. The world we built, though, isn't God's. His is elegant... savage, sure, but chugging along of its own accord independent of the ruinous little monkeys unable to get along with anything. We are not tied to any stake except the stakes we've imbedded on our own. Free will. And it only matters to the extent that I do not have to be confined to just one tedious world. Why bother the unknowable with your ideas of what it means to be free? Exercise it, that freedom, and I assume that's enough to keep it pleased.
TOM
You can question His existence, I know it. It's easy, because you'll see a child trampled by life, or an innocent swallowed up by the earth, or a knife in your jugular and there's no reason in it, you figure. And maybe that's right. It seems to be an easy out, doesn't it, to keep citing some grandiose plan He didn't see fit to share with us? Doesn't it seem awfully cruel of Dad to constantly let his kids suffer for the sake of some perceived greater good? And, sure, I can see that. But at the worst, you can say the guy's ambivalent, or that His rule is pretty arbitrary, right? I don't think it's even a question... I don't know that you can hold God accountable, guilty, for what you think are His transgressions. Really, it's probably more like indifference, huh? But then I look at something pretty or something amazing. Look at the way the sunset ignites the sky into a gorgeous inferno of pink and red and orange and yellow. Look at the purple strata of a canyon so deep that the bottom blurs from your sight. Look at the head of an eagle, or the tail of a swan or the markings on a clown fish. And you can point at it, and you can tell me that it's all science and accidents but it's not. It's no less than the greatest work of art conceivable. A project so massive it incorporates the whole of existence. And the detail, the detail just here on our little corner of the universe is incredible. And we dovetail into the rest of it, a picture so big you can't even really imagine it. And again, scream science and accidents, it's just not. You can feel Him, there in the pitch black of an infinite sky, or the murky deep of some algae smothered bay, or the architecture of some moldy pile of bones that used to be a man. Reflections of Him, his brush or chisel or clay or whatever the hell it is you make a world out of. Maybe it's just words, I don't know. And are you a speck to Him? Probably. But I figure if something's, someone's, important enough to design everything ever, you can't expect to matter much. So, I won't fault you claiming God's indifference, and probably His biggest mistake, the most egregious lapse in omniscient judgment was His letting us see our own insignificance. It does seem unnecessary, almost mean spirited. But I'm gonna succumb to the cop out. Who are you, you dust mote? Who are you to question what brought you into this place? You're a trifling nothing bobbing around in something so gigantic that it doesn't even pay to try to think on it. And you can say it's unfair. It probably is. But so what? You stand up to the giant, little tailor, go ahead. See what it gets you. You're an insect. As for me, I'll just be content to watch it, and try to leave my stinger in where I can.
RICHARD
I guess it's one of those things where we pretend to know, because not knowing it is just too much on the overwhelming side. I can tell you what I think, or rather what I wish was true, and what probably isn't. But I want that kindly God. I want that God that resides up in some heavenly gilded palace, waiting on your prayers and doling out justice to the sinners and equity to the righteous. But you don't see much evidence of that. I wonder how much we make up, how much our fear and anxiety at being lost little children in a haunted forest dictates what we invent in God. When you're faced with the reality of life, of power and authority in the hands of folks just as flawed as you, it rumbles a bit, and really makes you long for divinity. And, too, it gets to be something to strive for. We wallow in the mud of imperfection, stuck by our inability to always make sense, or our unwillingness. So I think we try to see a future brighter in the eyes of the compassioned perfection. Or maybe we really do see it. Maybe we are allowed a glimpse, and our wishes maybe are more than just wishes. Maybe we get to reflect the ideal, even if just a fraction of it. There are times, and I do know the power of want is incredibly persuasive... but at times, you might just be overtaken with the sense of it all being bigger than just you and your petty real world concerns. You might be isolated, wandering the desert, and just be struck with it, a bolt of lightning and the scales slipping off your eyes. We see the Angels, we feel the jabs of devils' forks and above all those there might be a greater force. Or not. It has a sort of ambivalence to it, because as much as you might want to know it, you just can't. Maybe when you pass along, but never before. But what you want to be true is sometimes more real than what is true anyways. And no matter what the truth might be, I'm going to have to believe in something bigger and sweeter than the muck we find ourselves rolling in now.
CASEY
To talk about it is really pretty useless, ain't it? Think about it. If there is a God, there is. If there ain't, there ain't. We can't do nothin' about it. God is most useful, anyways, as an idea. Or most harmful, I guess... But He can be something to check yourself against, or pray to when you've got nowhere else to go. I mean, it's not like He's answering you when you ask Him something, right? You might feel like He is, but He's not. Honest. That's not sayin' He's not up there, somewhere, watchin' over us. I can't say that. Nobody can. Either way, y'know? But we do. We preach ham-fisted sermons on soapboxes and nail our theses in bold type to the church door and shout our condemnations at who we figure to be lowlier and more sinful'n us. Or do it opposite. We tell you you're a fool for believin' in what you can't see and that everything is just random and God ain't nothin' more than myth and legend. But truth is, we don't know. It's a funny thing, sorta, people gettin' so worked up over their baseless opinions. Baseless, like what can you do to prove it? Nothin'. You can't. And you might spend your whole life tryin', either way, but you won't come to any conclusion. You think what you're gonna think, and nothin' but tragedy or miracles're gonna change your mind. So, whether I think there's a God watchin' over me is pretty irrelevant. Well, it's irrelevant whether it's true or not. 'Cause the power ain't in it being true. The power in it is how strong your convictions are. So that you can use Him as strength, a crutch in your hard times. Or you can defend your bein' an asshole by pinning your bigotry and hatred on Him. Or you can revel in the lack of any cosmic responsibility, thinkin' that spiritual ethics are nothin' but the invention of petty men trying to control your mind. Or you can live in unending fear of the oblivion spiral that's waiting for you at death. That's what God really amounts to ain't it? A collection of hope and fear played out in your head... justification in any means of what you want the world to be, or what you're afraid it is. So, God doesn't matter. Not directly at least. But what I think of Him does, I s'pose. So what do I think of God? I guess I don't know. And I probably won't until I die.
TUCK
I imagine a God no better than me. A God just as flawed and lost and hoping to make sense of Her world by creating Her own world. We do it. We create in an effort to understand. I don't know if we're replicating that godly desire, or really just thinking along the same lines. Is that profane somehow? To humanize God, I suppose... well, it sounds awfully arrogant. But I don't mean it to be. I don't mean to take away from the power of something that could create an entire universe. But that's what's so amazing about us, too. We have that ability. We can create the whole universe in our mind's eye. We can conceive of our own place. I don't really think of it as God's gift or anything, imagination, y'know? Like, I think it's just the byproduct of thought. You exist in this place, and you can't always make sense of the way life works. So much seems outside your control, not even just control, but like, even outside of your understanding. So we fumble around, blind, stupid, hoping for something better. Some people are content, I know, to live without realization. To accept it at face value. This is the world. This is what you get. But then, you can scratch down one more layer. Copy it. Tweak it and make it something your own. And you'll get to a deeper understanding, not a full understanding, I know. But you copy it, you make it something else. Something better. Or try to figure out that it could be worse. And maybe you'll find some reason in it. Some kind of empathy with God, like, here's why She might've done it the way She did. I can't say that for sure, obviously. I'm not gonna go out preach this as gospel. But I think I'm right. I think that God's up there, somewhere, confused and lost in Her own right, and trying to figure out why Her God made Her world the way She did.
LEO
It's easiest to be cynical, and I find myself most often reverting to that mindset, just because it's easiest, I guess. The empirical evidence is pretty staggering. Let's face it. God is dead. He has been for a long time. And the guy comes in so many flavors that somebody just has to be wrong. And then how the Hell are you supposed to choose? You're best bet, like with almost everything else, is that no one is right. And, wow, does it seem made up. Wow, does it seem like we're still a bunch of Neanderthals afraid of the rain and so we burn lambs to appease some mythical monster in the sky. I mean, it's a pretty mind-blowing thing, this whole being alive deal. There's so much that we just aren't privy to. So much that we aren't cut in on, and it makes you feel pretty worthless. And that too, man, I totally get inventing meaning in the face of the meaningless. Because otherwise, really, why? 'Why' is a dangerous little question, and answering it with an all powerful father figure is awfully convenient. So, on most days you catch me, that's what I'll say. I'll say I might be wrong, but I'm probably not. Okay, so that's my inner agnostic. The little philosopher tugging on the strings of my brain. And I really think that that dude is right. He's the one who should be calling the shots. But, and maybe it's just some remnant of that collective unconscious spawned at the dawn of civilization, but I feel like I'm bucking a lightning bolt every time I knock the guy. It's like, no matter how much I rationalize Him out of the picture (and trust me, I can make a damn good case for the non-existence of God) He's always just peering around the corner, winking that big all seeing eye at me, and laughing at my crumbling towers of reason. And what's left then, in those ruins, is this: I don't think I could exist without that cosmic watchmaker. I am going to be the dolt that stands in awe of his creator, whether he wants to believe in Him or not.
(c) 2008 Jason "Danger" Block
There is magic in every tiny crevasse of this world. Imagine a place of such intricacy and wonder - there is no chance in it, of course. It's all gloriously designed. My breath, my footsteps, my words all drawn out in perfect detail on Her meticulous blueprint. Her hand, plotting the story... but She has enough faith in Her creations that she allows them a fraction of Her boundless imagination. You think of a sonnet, or a symphony, and what, more who, is it there that spawned it? What is that profound inspiration? Where is that well of creativity that the work is drawing from? And I have to think that Her art is multiplied a million times over. Each of Her works birthing even more works, things that, in as much as her omniscience allows, can maybe even surprise her? Think of this: for so long we have copied Her creations. We tried to recreate nature in static image, or describe it with inadequate language. But even in that dawning era, there was the spark of novelty. In our mythology we invented a whole world outside of what She'd shown us. An imitation, to be sure... in our limited capacity we can, at best, rearrange what She's given us in relatively novel ways. But think of how many pieces She's seen fit to bestow! Think of the seeming unending variety of Her world, and the huge palette it allows us to work from. There are a thousand bits of creation in even the smallest stone. There are such minute diffusions of color that every single shade of green can take on its own unique meaning! Our toolbox is filled with a staggering amount of possibilities, of near infinite variations on all the splendor She has shown us. God has given us so many gifts, but I can't imagine a single thing greater than that bit of Her she's bequeathed to us. The greatest gift is Her own ambition, that impetus to create that She's been kind enough to grant.
MICHAEL
If there's a God, and let's be clear: I'm praying there isn't... but if there is, it means all I can do is a pale copy of His creation, and even in that, I'm nothing more than a tool of His oppressive will. How can you claim responsibility for what you've made if it wasn't yours to begin with, or if all you are is a cog in His machine, or a character in His book? To be artificial, to be created by an authority, well that's no better than being a plaything, right? That's nothing more than being an automaton, guided solely by some greater force's whims. If there is a God, if there is an omnipotent thing, all present in this world, then I don't have a single original thought in my head. If there is a God, then I don't have a choice in any action I take, in anything I create, or really, in anything at all. That poem I wrote? It's God's. The song I composed? God's. The cake I baked? Even that's God's, right? He put the notion of it in me. I'm just an instrument. A means to an end. To even suggest there's such a thing as freedom is a joke. The thing can't be everywhere, can't be all knowing without having wholly dictated what I am. At best, I suppose, if there's a God, maybe it's a dispassionate being. Something that made us and then let us be. But even then, that thing, if it created this world, it couldn't really grant us freedom, could it? Even if you claim freedom, that being, that dispassionate God, would've had to make the rules, the rules that decide everything. So even an uncaring deity would be responsible, at least indirectly, for every last thing knocking around in my brain. What I'd hoped for, what I wanted to be true (but am now quite sure isn't) is that there is no creator. No divinity overseeing his world. If I am an accident, a byproduct of an unfeeling cosmos, at least then I am free. Responsible entirely for my own fate. But then, I guess, the cosmos itself is God, and I face the same problem. All of which leads me to the inexorable (and hopeless) conclusion that I am nothing but a lifeless thread in someone's, or something's, immense tapestry. So my only consolation is in the thought that if there is God (and let's be clear: I still pray there isn't), He's hopefully just as artificial as I am, another thread in someone else's weaving, and feeling the same impotence as I am.
THOMAS
We can be cogs, understand? We can be no more alive than the bits of wiring in the telex machine or the circuitboard in the computer. We can fill that role, I suppose, letting ourselves slip into our preconfigured notions of what it is to be made. But, under that, there is still a warm heart that beats in us, and we are full up of the irrational, and the passionate and even the insane. Filter us through logic, and you might have chess pieces predestined by some greater being, sure. But the sting of loss and the kiss of loneliness resonate in me, and so I know (I don't really know, I'll admit it) I am more than just guided missile parts and machine gun accuracy. We impose our own prison walls, we hide in the shadows cast by autocrats and claim no responsibility. We let it all wash over us and blame, with some validity, sure, the monster or monsters in power. But I can't shackle God with that. We might be hardwired for something, maybe rote, maybe divine... but you have that heart beating in you and the capacity for independence in it too. Argue logically with me, I don't mind. It sloughs off, because what faith is is knowledge of what you can't ever really know. We are more than a whirring collection of internal machinery and programmed destinies. I know it, even if I can't really know it. I feel. That's enough to give me all the faith in something greater I need. I won't say that God is necessarily active, or even real in the way a brick or a car or the moon is real. Obviously it's not something to touch with your hands. You can't see it with your eyes. But it figures. We are mystery. Our whole being is questionable and if you can question yourself you can bring the whole Sea of the universe into doubt. And it doesn't matter. It's simple to get mired in the crush. The world we built, though, isn't God's. His is elegant... savage, sure, but chugging along of its own accord independent of the ruinous little monkeys unable to get along with anything. We are not tied to any stake except the stakes we've imbedded on our own. Free will. And it only matters to the extent that I do not have to be confined to just one tedious world. Why bother the unknowable with your ideas of what it means to be free? Exercise it, that freedom, and I assume that's enough to keep it pleased.
TOM
You can question His existence, I know it. It's easy, because you'll see a child trampled by life, or an innocent swallowed up by the earth, or a knife in your jugular and there's no reason in it, you figure. And maybe that's right. It seems to be an easy out, doesn't it, to keep citing some grandiose plan He didn't see fit to share with us? Doesn't it seem awfully cruel of Dad to constantly let his kids suffer for the sake of some perceived greater good? And, sure, I can see that. But at the worst, you can say the guy's ambivalent, or that His rule is pretty arbitrary, right? I don't think it's even a question... I don't know that you can hold God accountable, guilty, for what you think are His transgressions. Really, it's probably more like indifference, huh? But then I look at something pretty or something amazing. Look at the way the sunset ignites the sky into a gorgeous inferno of pink and red and orange and yellow. Look at the purple strata of a canyon so deep that the bottom blurs from your sight. Look at the head of an eagle, or the tail of a swan or the markings on a clown fish. And you can point at it, and you can tell me that it's all science and accidents but it's not. It's no less than the greatest work of art conceivable. A project so massive it incorporates the whole of existence. And the detail, the detail just here on our little corner of the universe is incredible. And we dovetail into the rest of it, a picture so big you can't even really imagine it. And again, scream science and accidents, it's just not. You can feel Him, there in the pitch black of an infinite sky, or the murky deep of some algae smothered bay, or the architecture of some moldy pile of bones that used to be a man. Reflections of Him, his brush or chisel or clay or whatever the hell it is you make a world out of. Maybe it's just words, I don't know. And are you a speck to Him? Probably. But I figure if something's, someone's, important enough to design everything ever, you can't expect to matter much. So, I won't fault you claiming God's indifference, and probably His biggest mistake, the most egregious lapse in omniscient judgment was His letting us see our own insignificance. It does seem unnecessary, almost mean spirited. But I'm gonna succumb to the cop out. Who are you, you dust mote? Who are you to question what brought you into this place? You're a trifling nothing bobbing around in something so gigantic that it doesn't even pay to try to think on it. And you can say it's unfair. It probably is. But so what? You stand up to the giant, little tailor, go ahead. See what it gets you. You're an insect. As for me, I'll just be content to watch it, and try to leave my stinger in where I can.
RICHARD
I guess it's one of those things where we pretend to know, because not knowing it is just too much on the overwhelming side. I can tell you what I think, or rather what I wish was true, and what probably isn't. But I want that kindly God. I want that God that resides up in some heavenly gilded palace, waiting on your prayers and doling out justice to the sinners and equity to the righteous. But you don't see much evidence of that. I wonder how much we make up, how much our fear and anxiety at being lost little children in a haunted forest dictates what we invent in God. When you're faced with the reality of life, of power and authority in the hands of folks just as flawed as you, it rumbles a bit, and really makes you long for divinity. And, too, it gets to be something to strive for. We wallow in the mud of imperfection, stuck by our inability to always make sense, or our unwillingness. So I think we try to see a future brighter in the eyes of the compassioned perfection. Or maybe we really do see it. Maybe we are allowed a glimpse, and our wishes maybe are more than just wishes. Maybe we get to reflect the ideal, even if just a fraction of it. There are times, and I do know the power of want is incredibly persuasive... but at times, you might just be overtaken with the sense of it all being bigger than just you and your petty real world concerns. You might be isolated, wandering the desert, and just be struck with it, a bolt of lightning and the scales slipping off your eyes. We see the Angels, we feel the jabs of devils' forks and above all those there might be a greater force. Or not. It has a sort of ambivalence to it, because as much as you might want to know it, you just can't. Maybe when you pass along, but never before. But what you want to be true is sometimes more real than what is true anyways. And no matter what the truth might be, I'm going to have to believe in something bigger and sweeter than the muck we find ourselves rolling in now.
CASEY
To talk about it is really pretty useless, ain't it? Think about it. If there is a God, there is. If there ain't, there ain't. We can't do nothin' about it. God is most useful, anyways, as an idea. Or most harmful, I guess... But He can be something to check yourself against, or pray to when you've got nowhere else to go. I mean, it's not like He's answering you when you ask Him something, right? You might feel like He is, but He's not. Honest. That's not sayin' He's not up there, somewhere, watchin' over us. I can't say that. Nobody can. Either way, y'know? But we do. We preach ham-fisted sermons on soapboxes and nail our theses in bold type to the church door and shout our condemnations at who we figure to be lowlier and more sinful'n us. Or do it opposite. We tell you you're a fool for believin' in what you can't see and that everything is just random and God ain't nothin' more than myth and legend. But truth is, we don't know. It's a funny thing, sorta, people gettin' so worked up over their baseless opinions. Baseless, like what can you do to prove it? Nothin'. You can't. And you might spend your whole life tryin', either way, but you won't come to any conclusion. You think what you're gonna think, and nothin' but tragedy or miracles're gonna change your mind. So, whether I think there's a God watchin' over me is pretty irrelevant. Well, it's irrelevant whether it's true or not. 'Cause the power ain't in it being true. The power in it is how strong your convictions are. So that you can use Him as strength, a crutch in your hard times. Or you can defend your bein' an asshole by pinning your bigotry and hatred on Him. Or you can revel in the lack of any cosmic responsibility, thinkin' that spiritual ethics are nothin' but the invention of petty men trying to control your mind. Or you can live in unending fear of the oblivion spiral that's waiting for you at death. That's what God really amounts to ain't it? A collection of hope and fear played out in your head... justification in any means of what you want the world to be, or what you're afraid it is. So, God doesn't matter. Not directly at least. But what I think of Him does, I s'pose. So what do I think of God? I guess I don't know. And I probably won't until I die.
TUCK
I imagine a God no better than me. A God just as flawed and lost and hoping to make sense of Her world by creating Her own world. We do it. We create in an effort to understand. I don't know if we're replicating that godly desire, or really just thinking along the same lines. Is that profane somehow? To humanize God, I suppose... well, it sounds awfully arrogant. But I don't mean it to be. I don't mean to take away from the power of something that could create an entire universe. But that's what's so amazing about us, too. We have that ability. We can create the whole universe in our mind's eye. We can conceive of our own place. I don't really think of it as God's gift or anything, imagination, y'know? Like, I think it's just the byproduct of thought. You exist in this place, and you can't always make sense of the way life works. So much seems outside your control, not even just control, but like, even outside of your understanding. So we fumble around, blind, stupid, hoping for something better. Some people are content, I know, to live without realization. To accept it at face value. This is the world. This is what you get. But then, you can scratch down one more layer. Copy it. Tweak it and make it something your own. And you'll get to a deeper understanding, not a full understanding, I know. But you copy it, you make it something else. Something better. Or try to figure out that it could be worse. And maybe you'll find some reason in it. Some kind of empathy with God, like, here's why She might've done it the way She did. I can't say that for sure, obviously. I'm not gonna go out preach this as gospel. But I think I'm right. I think that God's up there, somewhere, confused and lost in Her own right, and trying to figure out why Her God made Her world the way She did.
LEO
It's easiest to be cynical, and I find myself most often reverting to that mindset, just because it's easiest, I guess. The empirical evidence is pretty staggering. Let's face it. God is dead. He has been for a long time. And the guy comes in so many flavors that somebody just has to be wrong. And then how the Hell are you supposed to choose? You're best bet, like with almost everything else, is that no one is right. And, wow, does it seem made up. Wow, does it seem like we're still a bunch of Neanderthals afraid of the rain and so we burn lambs to appease some mythical monster in the sky. I mean, it's a pretty mind-blowing thing, this whole being alive deal. There's so much that we just aren't privy to. So much that we aren't cut in on, and it makes you feel pretty worthless. And that too, man, I totally get inventing meaning in the face of the meaningless. Because otherwise, really, why? 'Why' is a dangerous little question, and answering it with an all powerful father figure is awfully convenient. So, on most days you catch me, that's what I'll say. I'll say I might be wrong, but I'm probably not. Okay, so that's my inner agnostic. The little philosopher tugging on the strings of my brain. And I really think that that dude is right. He's the one who should be calling the shots. But, and maybe it's just some remnant of that collective unconscious spawned at the dawn of civilization, but I feel like I'm bucking a lightning bolt every time I knock the guy. It's like, no matter how much I rationalize Him out of the picture (and trust me, I can make a damn good case for the non-existence of God) He's always just peering around the corner, winking that big all seeing eye at me, and laughing at my crumbling towers of reason. And what's left then, in those ruins, is this: I don't think I could exist without that cosmic watchmaker. I am going to be the dolt that stands in awe of his creator, whether he wants to believe in Him or not.
(c) 2008 Jason "Danger" Block
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