Thursday, November 13, 2003

Another version of my column.

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 white 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. The feeling of being in control of the snow, of making whatever I want of it is there.

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 believe exists. 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 Nazarene the red-nosed reindeer...

But he's all dead in my heart. And so is Jesus, like he's always been.

just because you feel it
doesn't mean it's there
Nazarene
just because you feel it
doesn't mean
it's there

Snow is up to my face. Santa's still staring out his window at me. And in his eyes, I can see something. I get up from my snow angel, walking to the window, looking eye-to-eye at Santa, the thin glass the only thing between him and me.

Upside-down cross

The cross dances on my face like a swastika, but doesn't have the same feel. It feels more beautiful than that. It feels something like a fairy tale. I could almost sigh, or laugh, or wonder. But Santa's pupil only stares me on, a dark hole like a key-hole, and in it standing the cross.

Soon, as I stare, the cross begins to fade. Five letters begin bouncing around like balls, spelling out SANTA in one of Santa's eyes, and in the other, SATAN. I recognize the anagram—that if you switch the letters of SANTA around, you can get SATAN. The irony hits me like a blearing bell, and I begin backing away from Santa, more sure of anything than before.

I walk in the snow, coming back to the snow angel and stare at it in its twinkled slosh, just frozen there. My feet crunch as I approach, a rhythmical little sound that reminds me of so many other things. Of leaves cracking, of silence being unsilenced, of things that seem not to matter. And then I come to an abrupt stop.

The angel stares me in the eye
and all over her body there is blood

have you felt it in yourself
and just froze?

My eyes are given over to blood that has now appeared upon the angel's snow-impressed form.

And when it die, it bareth forth much fruit.

The fruition of faith is staring me in the eyes; this bloody angel, once white, once standing for something with the eyes of other's on me, is now nothing. And nor was it ever anything. Faith does not exist; it merely believes. And for it to believe, it must have not fact, but must be cataract, which taken, serves like an eye that cannot see reality.

My brain
says I'm receiving pain
a lack of oxygen
from my life support
my iron lung

Suddenly the sun shines above me; it begins to melt the snow, the already congealed blood is left where it was.

The angel was never even there

As the angel leaves, it leaves a large machine, made of iron, and I can hear it hissing. It sounds like breathing, but is mechanized. It sounds like the breathing of a dying man.

Faith never existed. It never was, never is, never has been. In my implications, one can only truly do, be, know, have, need, clutch, touch something if it is a reality. If it is factually real.

As Santa fades like a fine-lined eyelash flickering away, and the blood of the angel is washed away in the rain, all that's left behind is what it is to be human and what it is to live. Those actualities and banalities that death is a truth, and that life is to be lived are never to have exemptions. They are the finite rules that the physicalities of our existence create. To expect more than what is here is to be selfish.

And if there is a Heaven, and there is a Hell, then so be it. I will go to Hell even though that in my death I'd rather just cease to exist and I have been a good person.

Sitting here on the ground a while, just watching the snow as it turns into water, I finally get up and walk on. The end is not near at all, but the beginning has begun long ago.

And faith, the phony thing I'll never need, will hiss its breaths on, the helpless iron lung that it is. And some will kiss it and breathe through it. But something never proved and as artificial is not meant to last. Something that great is not meant to be. If it is, it will not matter. I shall still die and I shall still live the same.
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