I’ve been thinking a lot about faith these days. I am always humbled by humanity’s ability to use faith as a reason to be a better person. This is a very important time of the year for several religions. Passover. Good Friday. Equinox.
For someone who talks about Hell all the time and the likelihood that I’ll be ordering room service to be sent to the Evil Bitch suite where I’m attending Martha Stewart’s slumber party (because don’t lie, you totally would too, just to see the plate settings), I actually don’t believe in the idea of Hell. I think that if there is a god, it probably isn’t so vindictive as to punish bad people. If there is an afterlife, then the punishment is that you don’t get to have one. Or that you are lost. In New Jersey. Without correct toll change.
But just the same, the belief in God floors me. It’s like the untouchable love between a mother and a child, but concentrated into such optimism, such unwavering devotion, that I can’t even comprehend it. I want to have faith like that. I want to believe. It destroys me when I am in houses of worship, every damned time. It makes me angry that it was taken away from me, by someone or something or sometime, it’s gone now. Or it’s hiding. Perhaps in my dining room, where all good intentions go to die. And I don’t have that good of an excuse. I’m just reserving judgment. I don’t want to get fooled again.
For someone with so little faith, I do believe in it. I have faith in faith. People are inherently good. I shouldn’t believe that. Not after what’s happened in this world, not after what I’ve seen personally and also on the news. But I do. I can’t help it. I believe the best about people. I know that’s na’ve, but it’s true. A world with a St. Paul’s Cathedral, with Schubert’s Ave Maria, with acts of selflessness all around, how can you not know that you are living in an incredible world where people can strive to be more than the sum of themselves. They can be perfect. In some way, they have within themselves the ability to be God.
About one in four times that Esteban leaves on a trip, I become utterly convinced that I am never going to see him again. He is going to die, he is going to do something selfless and save someone else’s life, negating his own, and I will be a widow and the ache will split me apart and I will never function again. I don’t delete his voicemails, in case they become precious last glimpses of his voice, the last time he tells me that he loves me. I sleep on his pillow each night, pulling it into my face and inhaling. Sometimes I wonder if he is the most selfless person I know and if he wasn’t meant as proof of something more. Or to prove my point exactly. But I have to believe each time that he’s coming back. And that is my challenge. That is my test. That is my forty days in the desert.
Last night, I drove through a clouded night up the Bay and in the darkness of a soulless icy grave, a gleam from a lighthouse breaking through the cold. And it was enough.
My plan to write each night has been completely ruined because I have cramps and am grumpy and tired and want nothing more than to lounge in yoga pants and a t-shirt and wish for the Advil to start working. The brain has decided that it is bored with my Alzheimer’s/Mother story and now wants to go back to the Martyrs On Survivor satire story that I put on the back burner a long time ago. My brain has a long memory, even when it really shouldn’t. It should let its old ideas die, instead of resurrecting them (three day limit!) many months later. But it was not entirely wasted, I guess, as I have been scrawling things in my paper journal, nonetheless, and here’s what I’ve got from this week:
‘And you are?’ to Jesus’. ‘Um’ Bob. Name’s Bob.’
Cave painting figures getting fat’ two lines not one
Strawberries at the sports bar
Skirted trees, ready to dance
To Jesus’ water walking ‘Why are you looking at me?’
Mother was a plaster caster’ t-shirts with ‘Wanted Child’ on them
Distended (something that looks like ‘goated’) syndrome?
Sock puppet love triangle
Invitation letter for companies/vendors?
Anna = Joan of A. Mon Dieu!
An entire milky way in a black bowl of sky…too many bowl metaphors, get a clue dumas*
Emmanual Kant. Can’t what? DANCE!
Scaring, running, tell her that the boogie man is chasing her’ tell her that Nixon is.
No one marries the Up-The-Butt girl
Faces on the wall from different ages, albino castings of her childhood, plumpkin cheeks, eyes closed, a Greek chorus to everything she ever (ends there with a deep ink mark where I rested the pen)
To Jesus’ loaves/fishes ‘What?’
Can you tell that I’m a crazy list maker? Sometimes my lists mate and the ‘invitation letter’ is a reminder for one of my freelance projects. As you can tell, the story is heavy on Jesus jokes, but I swear that’s all of them for the entire story. They’re just the easiest to write. My favorite is the one about the Up The Butt girl. Because I’m twelve. It makes me laugh even now.
It’s true though. No one marries the Up The Butt girl. The Up The Butt girl stands alone.
*A long time ago, we were talking about the Cannes Film Festival and someone replied that they would love to go to “Cans” and a very pompous ass said “Uh, the proper pronunciation is CAN.” and then later, called someone else a dumbass, to which I replied “Yes, but the proper pronunciation is DUMAS.”
