When I really press myself on the issue, I find it unusually disheartening that I don't really remember what it was like to believe in God.
There was this test that I took once, in sixth-grade English. For ten bonus points - and trust me I needed them - all you had to do was name five books of the bible. Now, you have to keep in mind that there was never a point during the school year where our instructor broke out the ole King James and did a thorough exegesis. For the first time in my young life, I remember sitting there thinking I’m supposed to know this Yet, as the saying goes, I know ye not.
I looked up from the paper and surveyed the class, just to see if I could create an opportunity to make eye contact with anyone else, just any other like minded pre-adolescent who was thinking to themselves: what is this bullshit?. No such luck. Every other kid in class was breezing through the old and new testament like jasmine of the mind. The only thing I learned that day was that concentration alone cannot breed knowledge. My feet may be kicking for olympic gold, but my fat ass is still sinking to the bottom of the pool. I’m certain that I ended up writing The Book of Moses. I’m absolutely certain of that - I mean it’s the most obviously blatant book, right? My memory isn’t so certain of the others, probably because at that point I knew I was just pulling everything out of my ass anyway. However, it’s reasonable to believe that I may have written The Book of Adam and The Book of Eve as well.
My parents never went to church when I was growing up. However, they both believed in God - well, at least I’m certain that my mom did and somewhat sure about my dad did as well. My mom would feel guilty and talk my cousin’s mother into hauling me off to vacation bible school once a year. My fuzziest memories of that educational jaunt, involved crocheted plastic crosses, bitter green kool-aid and cold hot dogs. Apparently, I could remember that, but not a single piece of scripture or book of the bible.
I believed in God, though. That’s also an absolute certainty. At one point, I even wanted to be a preacher. Either that, or a professional wrestler (there are still a few nasty trampoline scars on my legs from trying to prepare mentally and physically for that last one). There was even a point in time, when I was eleven years old, that I remember the most solemn prayer that I ever made to the lord. Over the last couple of years, my hands had made the joyful, yet curiously scandalous, discovery of my own erection. I had felt such a powerful sense of guilt and shame that I made an earnest commitment to put a stop to these unfortunate misadventures in the back of the double-wide bathroom. I wholeheartedly prayed that if I were to masturbate once more, that God kill me right then and there on the toilet seat - just like Elvis. This was entirely, and without a doubt a most heartfelt, genuine plea to God. This meant business. Nonetheless, like an alcoholic who says “Ehhhh, I’m just gonna have a sip, get off my case” I fell off the back of the salami-slap wagon with a resounding thud that may have culminated in perverse aftershocks for weeks on end.
The important thing is this triggered some sort of evolutionary change in my pre-teen rationale. Every moment of every day I stood on high alert for the final blow, the coup de grace of the lord almighty. I expected to pay the piper, it was my deal afterall right? But nothing ever happened. Is it possible to be twelve-years old and disappointed that Jesus didn’t strike you dead for jacking off to your sister’s Cosmo magazines? Yeah, I guess it is.
My dad still lives in the double-wide trailer. Went home a few weeks ago to visit, play with the dog and just enjoy being out in the country.
On the way back home, there was a full moon in the sky that night. These eerie long, black slender clouds had spread across the center of that pale white disk. The timing of these cosmic entities, the clouds, the moon, the long country highway, they worked together to create a seemingly routine, yet unnerving illusion. To my grown-ass adult eyes, the moon had been split into two halves.
Glancing up every now and then through the corner of my windshield, I thought how strange it was that this had never happened to me before. The clouds could have been a genetic match for the night itself. A broken moon, two halves floating away in the night. As ten minutes chugged over to fifteen, the illusion became more profound. The divided moon seemed to drift, as if as if caught up in the unyielding undertow if the galaxy that lay beyond it. Split through and through by the hand of Zeus himself. What if it’s true? What if the moon is broken? How long would it take to feel the effects? I remember reading somewhere that if the sun disappeared we wouldn't know it for nine-minutes. Can you imagine that? Nine-minutes of warmth, and sunshine, then instantaneous dark, cold oblivion as we spin out of control into the milky way. If the events I appeared to be witnessing actually came to pass, perhaps the results would be less dramatic, but shocking still. Afterall, the moon controls the tides, and the tilt of the earth that gives us our seasons. Nevertheless, my hot running dread of the apocalypse turned lukewarm with the dissemination of the puffy nebula that once hung so dense and terrible overhead. The spell had been broken.
As ridiculous as it may sound, for a moment I was afraid. The visualization combined with an admittedly over zealous imagination had conjured up some strange, profound emotion. A long lost desire for the extraordinary. Some rich, worthwhile enigma to pull my ever-numbed brain out of that sterile cubicle I had regarded as normal life. Something to make me stop rubbing reality with that fucking brillo pad of logic. Just always rubbing away at it till everything is flat and grey and dull and worthless. Flat and grey and dull and worthless and dead. That’s what I was, at least inside. Do me a favor, If you’re gonna be dead, at least be a poltergeist. Throw some furniture, or drop a chandelier - hell, kick the goddamn refrigerator over. There’s just something about watching a ghost punch a clock that sucks all the chutzpah right out of him. A curiously large part of me can’t help but believe that if you can put words on piece of paper, you stand as good a chance as any at changing the world. I don’t want to be dead anymore, you know? I want to believe that something can be real, so real that eventually it has to succumb and just be so. I want to be back home on those old lonely country roads, walking the tracks in the middle of the night. Picking up pieces of loose granite - the ones that glimmer like tiny diamonds. Picking them up and tossing them into the cold, black november sky. Trying my damndest to break the moon.
Submitted October 28, 2014 at 07:55AM by jagged_little_phil http://ift.tt/1zCcceD WritingPrompts
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