Wednesday, November 5, 2003

My next column for the newspaper.

It's nasty now, but I'll change most of the nasty mean parts.
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The old man laughs.

Hahahahah

His long beard falls on his face, all white as bone. As white as snow.

"It has been snowin' for all dese days 'cause I made it. Hahahaha." He puts his hand on my shoulder. "Ya knows...lets me lets you in on a t'ing. Snow ain't so bad, me boy. It's only as bad as ya make 'er. So I want you to go out there with yer hands all in a no'dle, an' I want ya to make a snow angle in teh snow. Make 'im a be'tiful li'l t'ing too. Even give 'em real feat'ers fer wings and real eyes."

It's been two days in a row now. It's snowed off and on endlessly, the demure white coming down in its little drivels, like tears crystallized from some cloud's eye. Like a confetti parade for the devil.

I go outside. The snow is pouring down in its little lazy way, a sloth too sloppy to know any better. I can see Santa outside the window, and I can hear him shouting at me, his ripe, wrinkled cheeks held against the window, making it look like his face is all squeezed. All I can hear of what he's saying is a going on and on mumble mumble, mumble mumble. I stare at him for a while, then it's off to work.

I fall into the snow, the cold froth grasping all around my body like a coat. I move my hands back and forth, back and forth. The snow bends to my will, and it is scraped off in the arcs my hands create. Moving my legs, I make the bottom arcs which serve as legs.

I've made an angel. A beautiful little scapegoat, as white as wool.

The flesh of fallen angels.

Something frail, something white, something faded. I look at it, and images of the clang of a church bell ding in my head. Images of a cross. Images of a candle burning, like a soul skinned to the bone.

It's just like the weather to me. Just like snow. It melts. It changes. It's based on faith. Based on something I don't have. It's just like the snow angel I've made. It is only there, but it means nothing to me.

All these countless hours of sitting in a church. All these countless hours of learning and knowing and caring and getting to understand. And even through it, all I can see is time trickling in its rivulets, like a river that's slowly drying up.

When someone dies, they are gone. Just like this angel I've made. Just like faith dying. Just like anything dying. Everything dies.

Everything dies

It's the universal thought that springs into my head each and every day, a mad psycho with an even madder knife. And all I have is the pure things. Well, the pure things I haven't turned my back on.

I can see Santa Clause looking at me through a window in some room of my mind. Some mish and mash of memories. I can also see this snow angel. And the premise both of these bring up means necessarily the same thing to me.

I remember being a kid, everyone remembers being a kid. There used to be a Santa Clause. There used to be a man I'd leave cookies out for. He was a man that was pure and great, just like Jesus was shown to me to be. He gave me presents for being good and giving to others. And he ate my cookies, and he had reindeer.

On Dasher, on Vixen, on Prancer, on Nazareth the red-nosed reindeer...

But he's all dead in my heart now. And so is Jesus.

One cannot imagine my disappointment of finding Santa Clause not to be real. I was so heart broken that I didn't care, and my parents still keep giving out presents each year for Santa as a rain check.

Boy, rain checks are really wet things, you know? Wet and slippery. Just like a lie.

No, I actually didn't care too much that Santa Clause wasn't real. Christmas was still the same. It was about getting presents and having a big dinner and being a family. It wasn't about Christ.

And nothing has ever been about Christ to me either. I guess the holiday is pointless to me. I don't even know why I vie in on getting my presents each year. It feels guilty to do it, because as I see it, there's millions of people on other third world and other countries who are suffering far more than I will for not getting a present on a holiday I don't even care for.

Why don't I believe in God and Jesus and everything so good and grand? It's rather simple. I label myself as an apatheist. That means I don't care if there was a God and a Jesus and everything so good and grand, and I don't care if there isn't a God and Jesus and all things so good and grand and beatific.

We have recently begun studying the well-known author of the name of Mark Twain. This man of this pseudonym was always bitter toward religion. In a book called Letters From the Earth released after his death, he claims he wouldn't want to go to heaven. I really feel that me and Twain would've been able to have a good chit-chat over things. I really do. He sounds so much like me. He's a humorist—uses his humor to make his cynicism have a better, more jolly skin. Something like Santa Clause gone skeletal and laughing.

And I wouldn't want to go to Heaven either, just like Twain. Since everything dies, I want to really die. Death doesn't mean going on to live again to me. Death means an end. Death means a maggot has grown to a fly and that fly has been squashed. Has been squashed just like Santa Clause was squashed like a dream from my head, or Jesus was squashed from all my beliefs like reason tasting on my lips. No, death to me is an end.

And to show just how indifferent I am, let me say this. When I die, I'd like to just cease to exist completely. Just crash, and nothing to ever remember or lament, and nothing to ever feel or have or pain. God, if you're up there, GIMME TEH SHIZ. Maybe then I'll slave my whole life away praying in thou holy name, amen.

I hope Santa keeps smiling in my head. It's really nice to see a lie, and I really like the way his beard just kind of fluffers around his head like a broken, white halo. Really nice to know that what I don't know can't hurt me. To know that if there is a God and Heaven and Hell that it doesn't matter. I'm still going to die. And I'm still not going to worship something for narcissistic reasons.

It comes down to this, and ends at this: Jesus is dead. Get over it. Because I know I'm over it.

Or perhaps it doesn't come down to that Jesus is dead. Perhaps it comes down to that I see religion as something that will eventually diminish slowly in society's ribs, and it won't be something needed to make its heart beat. But for now, I am fine with people believing in what they want, and always have. If it makes society's heart beat by having these ribs supporting it, fine by me. I just hope it doesn't get clogged with too much cholesterol and starts spewing out all over when it dies.

Now to begin my plans of removing one of society's ribs for plastic surgery purposes. Because really, society is getting too obese these days. Getting piggy, and this removing of a rib is just the thing.

And this column is the beginning of this operation. May all your hearts be woe as tear, for time ebbs its ear. And may it will, may it might, take thou's heart tonight, all ribless, and anorexic as white. For there's daggers in men's smiles. And don't you shake spears at that.
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