Love at a Reasonable Price

Part I – Individual Something Deeperism

If Pure Love creates, sustains, shines through, overwhelms and ultimately Is all things

If all that truly Is is an infinitely infinite explosion (exploding out infinitely in all possible ways, and from every point again exploding out infinitely in all possible ways, and from …) of creative kind joyful embracing and giving

And

If mortal minds/hearts/bodies can relate meaningfully to this Love that is enough for love and life overflowing for everyone that ever was is and will be

Then

Wisdom is possible

And

There is a way forward: a way of feeling/thinking/speaking/acting/relating that we can adequately believe in, care about, understand, connect with, follow, be, joy in.

This is the foundation of individual Something Deeperism, which holds that the way forward is to assume the possibility that there is a Truth and we humans can relate meaningfully to It, just not in a direct/1:1, or complete/definitive, or exclusive/unique kind of way.

The non-literal part is because:
If Truth exists, It is prior to our feelings and ideas about Truth, and so the best we can hope for is that the Truth shines within our conscious experiences and we can orientate ourselves poetically (without literal, precise, or complete certainty, knowledge, or understanding; but yet with an adequate whole-being connection and — through the constant effort of harkening better and better to the Truth and thereby self-critiquing and adjusting how we hold and move ourselves within our own conscious moments — (though setbacks are inevitable part of an imperfect human process, on the whole) ever-growing sense of confident insight into an experiential sense-of-things) to It.

Individual Something Deeperism is easy, at least the theory of it is: Take as a working hypothesis the essential correctness of the mystics and seek the Kingdom of Heaven within yourself in the ways long established: pray, meditate, study sacred texts, practice loving kindness and humility and gentle resolve; seek always to turn yourself inside out, letting the inner Light shine out and connect to the Light all around and through all things and all creatures; seek always to do what is best for everyone in a gentle soul-centered action-cautious love. That is to say, carry on as normal —

Just with the constant consideration that what we are all seeking is a real relationship with Pure Love; and while (being comprised in the here and now largely of ideas and feelings) we must meaningfully relate our ideas and feelings to Pure Love as part of meaningfully relating our whole moments to Pure Love, confusing our ideas and feelings about Pure Love with Pure Love Itself is counterproductive.

And hence the dance of wisdom: Open up to what is beyond feelings and ideas, drop down into your workaday self once again transformed and with slightly tweaked feelings/ideas about Love and life; listen and live as best grounded in the spiritual Reality as possible, but not pretending you have it all figured out at all or anything silly like that; and then again you try to turn yourself inside out, forgetting everything you imagine you’ve learned and trying again to let Pure Love overwhelm every bit of you — including all your notions about Pure Love.

Easier said than done, but not controversial when said, since we all share this common vista and it is the sharing of this vista that makes both meaningful connection and wisdom possible.

Part 2: Shared Something Deeperism

What is more difficult to figure is what we collectively should do with Something Deeeperism.

Because here the matter becomes political. The request is no longer that people consider the ideas of Something Deeperism and assent to a certain reasonableness and wonderfulness within them, but that people agree to jointly adopt them. And how could I be so bold as to even suggest such a thing? And, more to the point, how do we create political consensus around what is prior to ideas and feelings without doing more harm than good? And then again: Even if we could get people to agree upon some broad principles, what difference would that make? Would they not already be the broad principles that politicians on all sides mouth and which humans are notoriously adept at manipulating to selfish ends?

Still, the first moves of shared Something Deeperism are self-evident and clear-cut enough to avoid much controversy:

We separate religion and state not because we claim that spiritual experience is not important, but because combining spiritual authority with political power tempts both leaders and citizens to lie to themselves and others about the most sacred things in order to win worldly power, security, and glory.

And so for shared Something Deeperism we don’t request that everyone sign onto our philosophical and spiritual notions; but rather that we all agree that none of our worldviews, religions, and/or philosophies can make sense to any of us except to the degree that they help us to feel/think/speak/act/relate/live aware, clear, honest, accurate, competent, loving kind, and joyfully sharing; and to better understand that and in what way it is True to say, “We’re all in this together”. And that therefore, we should not sacrifice these fundamental shared values for any expediency.

That is Something Deeperism: Keep first things first. Within a human conscious moment or between them, there is much confusion and controversy: OK, but don’t let those confusions and controversies take our eye off what we within and between individuals agree upon.

What are both atheists and fundamentalist theologians so desperately protecting if not their right to a worldview that is meaningful to them?

And what worldview can be meaningful to anyone except insofar as one’s interpretation of the worldview helps one to feel/think/act aware, clear, honest, accurate, competent, compassionate, loving kind, and joyfully sharing; and to gain more and more insight into that and in what way it is True to say we’re all in this together? Without these goods, life tastes like chalk in our mouths — meaningless, pointless, a lie, a crime of confusion; and we cannot meaningfully travel with our own thoughts to our own conclusions.

This does not prove that the universal values are correct, or that we’re all in this together, or that life is meaningful; but it does demonstrate that there is only one way forward for human beings: find a way to gain reliable insight into the universal values and the Truth of the Love that chooses us all — not literally/dogmatically (since the point here is a meaningful life: not assenting to stories about the Truth no one can intellectually/emotionally understand anyway; but actually living in and through the Truth) but as a whole (ideas, feelings and the Truth all working imperfectly but still meaningfully together).

This is what we essayists are here asking us all to agree upon: That we already share fundamental spiritual values, with “spiritual” here used in the sense of, “deeper and wider than ideas and feelings, so that our arguments for and against them are less fundamental to our feeling/thinking/acting than the values themselves”; and that those values are founded in a spiritual sense of Pure Love: a love that chooses everyone, that binds us all together in a universal accord. It is the sense of things that makes us appreciate simple tales of friendship and wholesome intentions triumphing over self-centered grabs at power (think The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter series); and it is the sense of things that made young people in the 1940s — walking to the farm or the factory or the corner store — think to themselves, “I feel that Hitler is wrong. Why? Because I say he’s wrong? Because my parents do? Because the preacher does? No, I feel Hitler is wrong because I feel that God says what Hitler is doing is not OK.” Is it so much to ask that we all gently and carefully, and not trying to find Hitlers in everyone who we disagree with, but holding to a clearcut historical example, agree on that sense of things — not worrying one way or another over the absolute meaning of words like “God” or “right and wrong”, but on the general sense that there is a Way and It is gentle, humble, kind, careful with ourselves and one another; that It is chooses us all and is wise enough to guide us all together towards what is best for us all together?

So then, we accept that general direction, that general sense of a Reality that is Love, and that living in and through and for Love is the Way, and that we have inborn boundaries to help us keep to that path: feel/think/act aware, clear, honest, accurate, competent, compassionate, loving kind, joyfully sharing. But what does it matter if we all sign onto that path? What concrete systems, policies, and procedures can we jointly draw from it? Don’t we already nod along to such high-minded niceties? And don’t we already misuse these concepts to undermine our individual and shared fidelity to them? What good can an essay about shared Something Deeperism ever do?

I don’t know. Maybe by clarifying what we agree upon and what we can meaningfully say and do about it, we can better individually and jointly prioritize it.

There are basic psychological laws to human life that require us to seek and attain and live in accordance with wisdom — which is a spiritual good because wisdom is not about what seems best, but what is Best, and what is Best is by definition wider and deeper than our ideas and feelings about what is Best: “What is Best” points towards a sense of things that is either illusionary or wider and deeper than what ideas and feelings (who know themselves to be limited and fallible and in-and-of-themselves without reliable foundations) can describe. And if the sense of “What is Best for us all” is illusionary, there’s no hope for any of our feeling/thinking/acting to be meaningful to any of us: our feeling/thinking/acting is predicated upon the sense that there’s truer and better ways and that Love is real. To see this one only need to consider what meaningful conclusion one can derive from “knowing” that our senses of the universal values and/or of a universal Love are illusionary: None! Nothing matters to us, nothing is worth or not worth saying or doing, everything turns to empty mush. This is not a sermon; this is just psychology. No metaphysics is involved in this argument besides the sense that we are all fundamentally the same. And not even that metaphysical assumption is considered proven by our need for it to be True. All we here argue is that we all need for the universal values and for their underpinning Love to be True; and we all need insight into that and in what way these Goods are True.

If we agree to together accept the reality of our shared psychological need, we can agree to together adopt systems, procedures, and policies that conducive to pursuing and sharing wisdom: conducive to individually and collectively pursuing aware, clear, honest, accurate, competent, loving kind, joyfully sharing feeling/thinking/speaking/acting; and to individually and collectively behaving in ways that are in accordance with a Love that Loves us all equally and never hurts or abandons or puts down or makes a snide comment about or in anyway harms anyone ever no matter what.

And so we return again and again to this individual and collective agreement to honestly try to do the right thing for all, nourished by the freedom to pursue our individual senses of the Love as we see fit — be it through this or that religious tradition, and/or secular humanism, and/or (not always wisest and best) an obsessive writing and rewriting over and over again essays on Something Deeperism. And from here we converse, we debate, we legislate, we organize, we vote. Maybe that makes a difference.

All our worldviews consider it counterproductive to squabble over details none of us understand instead of focusing on working together to protect and develop those areas we already agree upon. That’s it. That is shared Something Deeperism. I conclude from it liberal democracy — so that individual rights are protected, and that the many can serve as a final check on the madness and corruption of the leaders and other minorities. I conclude from it an open, transparent political process and honest and careful political conversations. I conclude from it a constant gentle effort to fight against corruption in politics, elections, information, society, and everywhere: not the demagogue’s tool of calling what is not quite perfect “evil corruption” in order to co-opt the system to their own actually evil ends, but a gentle careful honest shared self-critique, -analysis, and -adjustment: as if we were all one body and we were seeking to become actually healthier by making meaningful and actionable and careful changes. I see more madness and corruption as what makes it easier for less wise impulses to gain and hold attention, respect, and power; and I see more sanity and good government (within or between individual human conscious spaces) as what makes it easier for wiser impulses to gain and hold attention, respect, and power. I see a story of Love that is not about who is better and worse, but about what motions within and between our conscious spaces do a better job of turning towards and poetically (not literally/definitively/1:1, but still meaningfully) expressing the Love that chooses everyone always.

In short, I see what we all already agree upon. So why do I write essay after essay about Something Deeperism? I don’t know. What am I doing? Winding around and around in circles.

Mindless cynicism is just as self-defeating as mindless following. And both tools are used by those who would lead us astray. “Mindlessly agree that the other side is Evil and that I am Good!” This is the way down. Together feeling, thinking, and acting aware, clear, honest, accurate, competent, loving kind, and joyfully sharing is the way up.

Why do we like simple hero tales? Because they tell us that our sense that friendship and kindness and cooperation and generosity and compassion not only should but can win the day. What do we know? Maybe they can. We can’t know how beautiful we can make our lives without giving it an honest effort.

Authors/Editors: Bartleby Willard & Amble Whistletown
Copyright: Andrew Mackenzie Watson

Left Overs:

…

You can also use the universal values angle as a way into individual Something Deeperism: We can only believe in our own thinking/feeling/acting to the degree it is clear … joyfully sharing. So sacrificing those values for the sake of any dogma would be self-defeating. So they must be founded in a sense of things prior to specific dogmas. But within the universal values is implicit a sense of Absolute (we don’t sense that we should abide by these values because we personally or collectively opine or feel or assume that we should abide by these values, but because deep inside, prior to our arguments for and against doing so, we KNOW that we SHOULD abide by them); as well as the sense that our relationship to the Absolute will be more meaningful by prioritizing a non-literal process, as opposed to some specific dogmas (the values are not so much dogmas as inner directions).

Although, the more we think about it, the more we see that the foundations of Something Deeperism are self-evident to us all: Without Truth we slide back and forth upon ultimately foundationless/meaningless assumptions that in vain would try to justify themselves and each other; but for Truth to be Truth, it would have to be prior to our ideas and feelings about It, and therefore confusing our ideas and feelings about Truth with Truth Itself would have to be self-defeating.

So, upon further reflection, can we not all agree upon the basic foundations of Something Deeperism? Whether we be atheist, fundamentalist believer, fanatical skeptic, or liberal believer / (wisest and best) devout Something Deeperist; can we not all agree to assent both to the human need for universal values with a spiritual foundation and the human reality that our insights into the spiritual can never be literal or definitive or exclusive, but must always be poetic (of a vista that cannot fit into words, nor even any collection of ideas and feelings) and thus an ongoing process of constant self-assessment, -critique, and -revision — of the sort recognized by all wisdom traditions?
You can also use the universal values angle as a way into individual Something Deeperism: We can only believe in our own thinking/feeling/acting to the degree it is clear … joyfully sharing. So sacrificing those values for the sake of any dogma would be self-defeating. So they must be founded in a sense of things prior to specific dogmas. But within the universal values is implicit a sense of Absolute (we don’t sense that we should abide by these values because we personally or collectively opine or feel or assume that we should abide by these values, but because deep inside, prior to our arguments for and against doing so, we KNOW that we SHOULD abide by them); as well as the sense that our relationship to the Absolute will be more meaningful by prioritizing a non-literal process, as opposed to some specific dogmas (the values are not so much dogmas as inner directions).

Although, the more we think about it, the more we see that the foundations of Something Deeperism are self-evident to us all: Without Truth we slide back and forth upon ultimately foundationless/meaningless assumptions that in vain would try to justify themselves and each other; but for Truth to be Truth, it would have to be prior to our ideas and feelings about It, and therefore confusing our ideas and feelings about Truth with Truth Itself would have to be self-defeating.

So, upon further reflection, can we not all agree upon the basic foundations of Something Deeperism? Whether we be atheist, fundamentalist believer, fanatical skeptic, or liberal believer / (wisest and best) devout Something Deeperist; can we not all agree to assent both to the human need for universal values with a spiritual foundation and the human reality that our insights into the spiritual can never be literal or definitive or exclusive, but must always be poetic (of a vista that cannot fit into words, nor even any collection of ideas and feelings) and thus an ongoing process of constant self-assessment, -critique, and -revision — of the sort recognized by all wisdom traditions?

….

So, upon further reflection, can we not all agree upon the basic foundations of Something Deeperism? Whether we be atheist, fundamentalist believer, fanatical skeptic, or liberal believer / (wisest and best) devout Something Deeperist; can we not all agree that we need Truth, but the Truth we need cannot be captured in any ideas or feelings, and thus not in any dogmas? And so can we not all agree to assent both to the human need for universal values with a spiritual foundation and the human reality that our insights into the spiritual can never be literal or definitive or exclusive, but must always be poetic (of a vista that cannot fit into words, nor even any collection of ideas and feelings) and thus an ongoing process of constant self-assessment, -critique, and -revision — of the sort recognized by all wisdom traditions? Is that not the wisdom within the separation of church and state: Not that the spiritual side of life doesn’t matter, but that it is too deep and hidden and important to be used as a political test, since doing so tempts everyone to lie about the most sacred things, both to themselves and to one another?

If Pure Love is the Great God
If the Great God is Pure Love
If all that truly Is is
an infinitely selfless joyful huzzah-overflowing
Accepting Delighting-In Caring Nurturing Giving
than how can life be the way it seems to be
?

The only explanation I can find
is that there must be so many twistings
and turnings
contortions
dare we say
perversions?,
of Pure Love.

Why would Pure Love allow Itself
to be manipulated like that?
Used to create so many moments of awfulness,
of cruelty crime suffering breaking boiling blistering cramping shoving-down-in-the-cold-dirt?

Is that price of existence?
For Pure Love is all there Is,
but Pure Love
has no form
no shape
no color
no odor
no texture
nor even thoughts and feelings beyond an all-knowing, in-all-timespaces eternally present kind delight —
a kind of giggle that is boundless joy in boundless creating, giving, animating, uplifting, knowing, cherishing.’
In short,
Pure Love
does not exist —
at least not in the way we need to exist in order to exist as creatures —
as little moving outposts of watching of feeling of perceiving of guessing of interacting of reaching and dancing.

But the old argument remains,
why so much evil?,
so much cruelty?
so much victory
for rotten resolve
and wicked delight?

Or doesn’t Pure Love
see it that way?
Maybe Pure Love
is so Great
and so Real,
whereas particular existences
are so tiny illusionary fleeting
that
we’re all really winning
when all is said and done?

I reach for you, my darling one
to love and cherish, ere life is done
But you must moan and groan and whisper
what I need to hear, hold dear, kiss-for.
And so I make a twisting and a turning
of the Love ever bright and burning
that holds you without you performing
any kind of show or otherwise deforming
the innocence of your friendly heart.

And then we wrestle our passions out
through to each other’s center lines
until children fall shouting out
And I am their’s and they are mine
And so again I twist the Love
that in equal joy in all abides
until it seems to want to shove
all but my little home aside.

But what oh what would you have me to do?
For I’ve seen us love only God and forget
our homes and families
fblowing up men and women on their way to work and children on their school busses
for the glory
of a vaguely arching strangely sprawling awfully contorting vengeance
called God Love Virtue — Peace, even.
And I’ve seen us call love and/or Love out as shams
and proceed to grind ourselves and others into dust
on the wheels of ambitions dreams schemes hugs grabs systems waterfalls
that we pretend
that we can Love

Author: BW
Editor: AW
Copyright: AM Watson

God, please help us.
Turn us inside out
that the Love running through our center lines
might explode through these empty hulls
that the resultant tatters might fit into the
shared explosion
of shreds and shards
in such a way
that we all flow together
with the kind resolve
that makes everything
better for everyone.

Wife Number Four
The sand fits between my toes
like a million other times in this pretty place set in sparkling blues
And I move step in step with the drums nothing new
Feel the heavy certainty of the beat driving me into my people into our gods
Yet this is new that the fire is so large hot close my nose and lungs hurt from the smoke and the skin on my face and chest feels close to bursting from the warmth.

I don’t know why they weep and wail behind me
They were so happy when I was made wife to the king
Did they think he’d live forever in this in-between land?
Or that suddenly kings would have no need of their wives?
But I know my luck.
They weren’t there when he took me with his big hands
and I felt the nearness of his strong chest and shoulders
and he was so gentle until the violence became absolutely necessary
and so descended upon us and took him into me.
They weren’t there when he entered and I knew we were joined forever
and I was blessed among women.
Oh you open up
oh you accept what you are
oh you let it win

Only poor wife number six, only her I pity
poor girl with her baby only half-full
poor girl not able to leave no prince behind
the priest is wise and must know
when he says her baby will be a great king
in the higher land
but the frustration of it!
I remember the need to burst forth with him,
with my answer
to the loneliness of love
For no matter how tenderly the king touched my hair my face my thighs my burning dream
no matter how much he reminded me
with his looks and his words and his fingers
that I was special to him
even more or at least as much
as his first wife who he’d known since childhood and who was always so strong and beautiful and never said a word against anyone and always took care of the children and the people loved her and mourned her more than they know your him which is a great sin but not really since she reaped what she sowed and no one could be expected to outshine her harvest of our hearts
No matter how much he made it clear that he loved me
still I must share him with the other wives and their children and all the people and gods

But it will be different in our new place
He’s watching me now
He’s seeing how I don’t mind to watch my body blister and come undone and melt down
How could I complain about the path to him,
the way to find him again?

God, what is going on?
God, I feel so sick and awful
God I feel so lonely
God, my God,
Why have you forsaken me?
It is done, for good or ill
It is done, please accept me

Highest Priest
Oh God-who-shines-on-the-waters
guide my body, my ornaments and rattle, my voice and my form
Oh sparkling-protector
Take this our king to your high land
above the curved clouds and ever-reaching skies
Take these his wives and these virgins
to serve him in his need and you in your glory
Take this my heart and my mind
that I who must remain here upon the wavy sands
might speak for you and guide your people and your kings
for the king is ruler over all, but you rule even the king;
and I am servant of all, but I tell even the king
what you command
Don’t let me falter or fail or lust
after that queen who you know her name and how many nights
next to my own wife who I love and bless her please
would dream though I fought it and though I prayed you help me escape the stomach-churning shadows
of her beautiful smile and the gentle laughter in her eyes
oh why oh God did the king not see her worth?
Why did he prefer that silly girl?
and now it seems such a shame
this is my fault and my weakness and I beg you stomp out this evil fire in my gut
but it feels like such a waste to let her to go you so soon
when I love her so much here in the in-between land
and it is a heavy burden to serve you and I just want a little succor a little place to rest upon
but my teacher warned me against these evil inner thunderstorms and how they would sometimes rage and that I must resist
God I am lonely and I am dying to watch her burn!

The artist in the cafe
This is a beautiful moment, God.
This warm cup of coffee on the sunny patio
watching the surf break upon the boulders that reach into the sparkling sea
watching the kicks and giggles of foam-lipped shatter-splatter kisses.
What would you have me do?
How would you have me sing?
All this evil, God.
All this evil in me and around me.
All this evil in our hearts and between our fingers,
in our stories and our systems,
in our smiles and our frowns.
All this evil, God, I fear it is winning
I fear that we cave in
I fear that we falter
and that mere huzzah-porpoise-kickering-arch-leaping Beauty
— my only weapon if you’d grant me the open carefree strength required —
is no match for the gentle grinding corrosion of hope and fear.

Help me God
Lift up my voice that it might serve you and forget all my hopes and fears,
which must come and go with my skin and teeth
Please God, please help me to write a worthwhile poetry, full of thought heart images and deep and wide as life and its people.
Impossible?
OK, then grant me at least enough joyful wisdom and steadily percolating and bubbling over feeling thought and word that I might serve Love in me and in everyone.
An artist is just a person making and sharing art
Dissolve my vanity and make my life and art outshine my ego-tripping half-ass stories about my life and art

The God-who-shines-on-the-waters
I can’t do this anymore
That awful moment while they are still human enough to feel the sting
of loss,
of waste
so much waste

Author: BW
Editor: AW
Copyright: AMW

I wish I could make things right between us
Make you happy
Make you glad you’d met me
Everything else — who loves who and who belongs with who:
that’s not so much the point
it turns out

In the early days of hip-hop, before the first phonographs recorded and then testified to their greatness, rappers could only communicate across the country with telegrams, which were priced by the character.

From the East Coast:
I am greatest STOP
Filthy rich and flaunting it STOP
Heroic stud and sharing it STOP
Also best rapper STOP

From the West Coast:
No, I am greatest STOP
Richer and more ostenta STOP
More sex prowess STOP
Greatest rapper STOP

Caught in the Middle:
You sound same STOP
Production trumps lyrics STOP
An old tragedy STOP

From the East Coast:
We do not STOP

From the West Coast:
Nuh uh STOP

Author: BW/AW
Copyright: AMW

The trouble starts when we try to do things in the real world.
We therefore resolve to stay within the safe folds of fictional realities.
Is there a real world?
The real world is a wondrous magical realm where real people interact and their separate minds push back on one another and together compromise their ways into shared realities.
We wish we could be a part of it.
It seems so wonderfully unlonely.
But it is also a dangerous place, where you can harm real people and their shared systems and understandings.
One must tread lightly there!
And one must accept that one cannot daydream it into the shape that one daydreams one desires.
We accept that, but somehow we forget and forget again and everything goes wrong.
So we apologize, bend low in a formal bow, and then run like mad off until we’re behind the curtains and safely off stage.
OK, made it.
Now we’ll just pretend, since we never learned how and when to stop pretending and listen and react to another’s voice.
We want to!
But since we fail to, everyone’s better off if we work exclusively in fiction.

Signed,
Bartleby Willard, WHA (World-Historic Author)
Amble Whistletown, ME (Matchless Editor)

What can we say?

He got it wrong
again.
He’s sorry
again.

Once every ten years or so
This happens
And he’s mega wrong
and makes trouble.
But this is the worst.
He should’ve known better.
And she, well, it’s just worse this time —
I don’t want to talk about it.

I can’t fix it.
I would say I’m sorry if it would do any good.
But nothing I can do does any good.
So I tell God I’m sorry
I tell the air I’m sorry
I ask myself to please stop whatever is
in me that causes me to cause this kind of trouble

There’s so much in life that is beautiful
and so much that is worthwhile
So it is a shame
when a body
let’s itself
waste love
on selfish daydreams
that aren’t even nice
not even nice
he had thought
somehow

but letting myself leave reality
is my choice,
and whatever sins follow
are mine

please be well, be happy, forgive me

now I go

I am sorry
right through
to the bone
into the pit of me
I’m sorry
I didn’t tell you how I felt
in a way that could be nice,
that could make you smile,
that could let you know;
not just that —
in a way that could let me know;
because by speaking of it in that broken and self-circling way,
I also lost my chance to really know
what I felt so deeply, what held me for so long,
what I wanted so much to say, to do, to share

I’m sorry

I wish I could know you and make things right between us
I would I could show you all I’ve thought and seen of
this life where we live all together apart.
What I have to give a woman of hand and heart
would most thrive in your service.
Down we’d dive beneath the surface
until our tales all fray and we must admit
that this love always stays and we with it.
I think
I think it would be like that —
a reach that caught and held.
A something nice, a place whereat
feeling thought and touch meld.

But I wrecked any hope there for us
so I lonesome grope through the crush
of words and glances that brush past me.
I’m sorry.

Mortal: Hey.

God: Hey.

Mortal: So.

God: Yeah?

Mortal: I feel like I’m in the wrong. Like I’m doing things wrong.

God: How so?

Mortal: I don’t know. I have problems with real and not real.

God: Oh?

Mortal: Honestly, I blame my metaphysics. I say that we cannot have literal knowledge of “Real”, but we can poetically relate to “Real”. And from there I seem to reason that my relationship to “real” should be some kind of a free-write.

God: Can you explain the reasoning that takes you from a poetic — not literally precise, clear, or accurate; but still adequately precise, clear, and accurate — relationship to Reality to turning life into a free-write?

Mortal: Yes. Well, maybe. Basically, “Real” is more important than “real”; so the foundation of my life should be “Real”, rather than “real”; so the foundation of my life should be a constantly self-critiquing and -correcting poem relating my thinking/feeling/acting to Reality; and so off of that Reality-centered poem, my day-to-day — my “real” — should flow.

God: But what happens in practice?

Mortal: In practice, I walk around talking to myself, and/or pretending talk to you or to people who aren’t there. In practice, I slide around in fiction and don’t seem to make much progress in either Real or real. In practice, I am lonely; probably because my relationships lack enough reality for us to know each other enough to share Reality. So am I doing everything backwards?

God: I don’t know. What do you think?

Mortal: No! Well, I don’t think it is that simple, anyway. What should I do? I mean: You’re God — you should have some good advice for me.

God: Yeah.

Mortal: Well?

God: I think you should relax and try to remember that drive you took through the mountain passes of Arizona twenty-ish years ago.

Mortal: Oh yeah. Where was that? Jerome? Who was I with? What were we doing? Was that when my sister and I were visiting our grandparents? I can’t remember. Just the sun and the pines and driving. Roads winding up and down through the pines and slant-roofs and then a tiny downtown? Why were we there? Did we visit someone? An artist? Or did we just stroll through some artist’s shops? Why were we there? Who were we? What does it remind me of? Winding up and down through the bright sun and dusty pines and (abandoned?) homes and shacks: what does it remind me of? I mean, besides a hundred other such drives in Arizona and Idaho.

Is there anything I could do? Tell me what you want of me and I’ll do it.

I want you to go to hell.

Yeah, you got that across from before, and I’ve done it. Is there anything else you’d like me to do? Anything you want me to pick up from hell? Never-ending fire for your heating system, or to sell to a power plant? The eternal bellyaching of damned souls to encourage children to say their prayers at night? Complete separation from God — for those evenings when you really don’t want anyone looking over your shoulder?

I want you to get lost.

I been done that! I’m lost without ever knowing you, without ever saying anything any good to you. Are you sure you don’t want me to do something different? Something new? Or do you just want me to stay lost? I can do it, if it is what’s best for me to do. I just thought maybe we could start again, from the beginning. Like those last several years were just a warm up, but now it’s for real.

Huh.

Yeah.