ORGANIZING LIGHT
Book VI: Where Memory Isn’t
Those moments when you can’t recall how you got here. I see you reading this. Those are all my days - I can’t remember anything from the first of time except the angels that defied Him and the way they blistered in the heat of the lake when they were cast aside. We all wondered if it came to be upon the first sin or if it was always there, something that was always set to be because of course he knew, we didn’t ask. What was remarkable was how it was hot and horrid despite the removal of most of one’s senses upon death - one doesn’t realize the brain has no place in the afterlife, and while it was very clear it was always intended for greater beings, it was an oven for the end days charring every last worldly sin and didn’t seem to mind worldly limitations.
It’s so many years later, I think. I’m on a rooftop in a small chair with an unlit cigarette in my hand wondering why they decided the sky was what’s above. The people below scurry about and I know which ones won’t be released from the fire until the absolute end and they’re supposedly cleansed. Imagine beginning as an ant unto a snake unto lamb unto a cat unto a man and you’re a Buddhist, I suppose. Maybe a sea mammal or cephalopod before man but who’s counting? And then you’re before Him and becoming a star unsure how you got here. What happens when a star falls, they ask? We only know what we’ve been shown and it’s a trap, I say. It’s like fossils, a suggestion only from the first time, we couldn’t possibly know.
Have you seen the imprints of dope on the brain? Funny story, that’s a mockery of God’s gift and you can’t even see it. The senses meant to be overloaded to a point and you find yourself hunting for it on the streets at the expense of every decent thing that ever was. You should know you’re out for no good. I spent some time in a dope house, you see. It was so I’d understand them, He said. I still don’t, even worse, truth be told - I never will. I recall the house in Thousand Oaks now as a small child. I chewed on a Tylenol at Sherry’s house and my friend shit on the plastic slide out back. Our house - it was so small and we were always too close and it was after that that he got real mad at me all the time I suppose it was all the questions. I remember it all. The paint cans in the garage that had all the colors of our world stirred up. The old car that didn’t start sometimes. When my sister was born and everyone was concerned. I recall having a sister now, what a venture - she was all but forgotten before this moment because I can’t remember a damn thing, even my first name from the first time.
I know years later there was only violence. Not just at home from where I ran ran ran, but to where I moved right back to it. I could have been far far away and instead I was close by and ready for more. A man stood outside my house one night and I walked out, the sound of frogs clear in the night because of that pond (long gone) and told him he had no idea what he was getting himself into and smiled.
G was visiting from down south his Corvette blocked in, his breakdown not quite ready but certainly queued up and he had dreams of his own which was why he stood out there by the old mailbox some world war veteran posted years before. There were mosquitoes everywhere out in the front yard I’d wished they were the fireflies from my mom’s family’s cul-de-sac in the midwest and I remember catching them in jars and tasting crab apples for the first time. They were so bitter and the lights were gone so quickly.
The man, he left and wouldn’t come back for almost a year but I know it was him slamming through the back door my cat hiding in the closet and thank God they left him or I’d have hunted them for sport pretending they were the bad side of the family and I was back with the archangels and remembering my role which only ends poorly for man and the Nephalem.
I only know that the first time a gun was pointed at me I was smiling I was in a place where over was just fine. I also recall the first time I saw Stephen doped up and he still thinks I didn’t notice and that somehow impossibly he’d spared young me from it. Here I am recalling all the times and I wish these cigarettes I won’t ever light were an option come the end. It’s a long ways away but never as far away as they think and then it’s time.
The caterpillar can’t conceive its shift. Neither can they…us, I mean. We will bathe in fire even if it’s only for a short while to be purified into light itself and that’s inevitably awful. To be free from not flight what a change that would be. New limbs and a way to and fro requires sacrifice, you see.
You’ll think of seasickness if you recall anything and you’ll feel ridiculous. I can’t even be anymore. I know I’m here waiting for the end of the next time and it makes it all so quiet even in the storm. Would you run? I cried too when I saw how it ends and thought of Damiel and wondered how on Earth and this universe itself Wenders knew the ending in 1987, year of my birth they say. The whole world in color now and I can’t remember when it changed but it did and it’s appreciated I suppose. I’d hand her flowers, tell her how I’d watched cities rise and call it a day. But then that would be straightforward and nothing simple ever seems to bloom.
Call me by my name from either time and we’ll hope for the best, for some can avoid the lake and I hope to call that “us.” The fruit from the tree that tells all curled within our fingers as I brush stray hairs from your face and all is right with all things. Every color worth each trouble so just smile, they say.