| Writing Samples - Novels "Dear Me" Third Sample |
I see now how we all actually preferred to believe lies over the truth – and why – simple: lies are always easier – always! – I lied to myself all the time – I still do - and I have no reason to anymore – none, whatsoever! - but I continue – I always have and I always will, I suppose In my defense, everyone I ever knew lied to themselves constantly – daily – hourly! – it was unavoidable – why? – because it was easier – why? – because life, no matter what your position or ranking or place in it, was tough – hard as hell! – every day – something was hard as hell - every day! – so, to make it easier, we lied – little lies, big lies – it didn’t matter - we lied and we lied and we lied – and I lied right along with everyone else – and I, like everyone else, thought I was so damn truthful! – truth- filled – “honest as the day is long” – me! Hell, you know, when it gets right down to it, the days aren’t long – they’re damn short – and numbered – don’t ever believe they’re not – they are – that’s WHY we lie and we lie again and lie some more – or we’d probably spend our time sitting around counting our numbered days, counting down, scared to death at the rapidly approaching void where neither truth nor lies account for anything – so, instead, in the meantime, we lie, because it is so much easier - to get through – I got through on my lies (or despite them) – okay – but then it was over – all of it! - but here I am – no point to any of it anymore – still lying! The lies the lies the lies – always the lies and the lying and the liars and the lied-to and the lied-about and what’s left after all the lies - this! - this is what’s left! - the aftermath – the cleanup – the large, empty, gaping hole – the whole - finally! – and what’s left after that? – (because of that): the painful, awful, terrible, dreadful: truth – which, sounds and feels and is so good – so perfect – so necessary – so clean Where was it when we needed it? – hiding, afraid – just like us - which proves, despite all that was and all that happened - all that I believed and saw played out day in and day out until the ultimate playing-out in The End - that We are never so far from the truth. Chapter 157 Vatican City went, too—last. They weren’t buying it. They knew better! But in The End: Lies are still lies, no matter who dreams them up, and they are: Very effective. Chapter 158 Some things are hard to figure out. Others are impossible. Another friend of mine, a lovely, good-hearted woman who was still on the fence about religion well into her forties, once said: “I don't want their God, not a God like that. If that's the way He is, the way they say He is, I don't want Him for my God.” She said: “But I still believe.” Chapter 159 In the same clogged vein, there’s another Tom Crowder story. We forever called him “Old Brass Rail.” So, we’re all at an up-till-then terrific party with lots of good wine and fond friends in nice casual clothes when Tom Crowder gives a completely un-asked-for and thoroughly unwanted lecture or sermon or something else equally disagreeable about hitting the afterlife motherlode when others are Left Behind, and how, or because: “God gives us free choice. He doesn’t interfere. It’s all Divine Intent.” This comment actually came in direct response to the old reliable: “Okay, so why do bad things happen to good people?” We’d been talking about social diseases—Manson and Bundy, Stalin and bin Laden, drunk drivers, Susan Smith, Christian assassins, OJ. Like that. There was some discussion about the errant mathematics of Free Will vs. Divine Intent—the doctrine or theory or whatever it is that everything, all of life, is planned out in advance—but Tom was quick to pound his own conundrum: “God has a plan for everything. For each and every one of us.” There was a moment of quasi-respectful silence, then someone wondered aloud if that plan included: “All six billion of us?” “Every person on this planet,” Old Brass Rail declared blissfully—finding comfort in his solace. You know. A fourth grade math teacher forthwith explained to Tom why the two are mutually exclusive, Free Will and Predetermination. “Can’t have one with the other, Tom, buddy,” was how he said it. They had been friends since, incredibly, fourth grade. Tom was not dissuaded by his old friend’s logic. He said: “He loves us and lays out our lives for us; but He gives us Free Will.” “To fuck it up,” someone said—someone named Denise! Tom begrudgingly nodded. “That’s the Free Will part.” He was unwilling, maybe even afraid, to lecture someone in a wheelchair about her language skills. “So,” Tom’s fourth grade math teacher friend from fourth grade said, “And, as I was pointing out, Tom, this is mathematically impossible. “You can’t…have…both.” As Tom sulked and no doubt considered ending this twenty-five year friendship, someone else said: “Are Free Will Baptists really free to think anything they want, I mean, really free to express their free wills?” Tom said, “Of course.” But, of course, no one at this party believed him. So, he, Tom, reiterated, “God does not interfere.” He sounded kind of defiant. So, someone else with a little more Chardonnay and sense in him, said: “Well, He should, don’t you think? Interfere? Otherwise…what’s the point (of having Him)?” There was a lot of nodding and grunting that sounded like agreement. Until Tom—or “Tommy-Tom” as his outrageously annoying wife called him—and in public!—said with abiding satisfaction: “God forgives us.” To which that same last someone said, with a full head of steaming outrage: “HE forgives US!?” Of course: That person was my father. Chapter 160 “God doesn't work in mysterious ways; he doesn't work at all.” This isn't as atheistic as it may sound. To me, Dad was simply saying: “God doesn't work. He doesn't have to. All of His stuff works out on its own. We just have to be patient and attentive. “As for bad stuff: We don’t need His help at all; we do fine screwing everything up on our own. Beyond that, it's all a mystery. So, why bother?” This was several years after most everything else I’ve mentioned and, of course, there shouldn’t be quotation marks and I’m reverse-paraphrasing. Always! Always I have to be different! Thank you, Dad! Just: Thanks a lot. Chapter 161 So, of course! people would say to my father: “Shut up, already! Who wants to hear this!” To which, Dad would say: “Whoever needs to.” Which, of course pissed them off even more. That and he looked so relaxed. Then, as if that wasn’t bad enough, he, Dad, would say to them: “Your anger simply reflects your doubt.” To which they would say, “Doubt?! What doubt? Doubt about what?!” their indignation swelling along with their aneurisms. “About everything,” Dad would say, with even greater calm—and an impending smile. And he would repeat, movie-style, “Everything.” To which, their response to this would be: To leave. But I agreed with Dad when he said, and he said this often: “If you're sure about it, what you believe in, whatever it is, no amount of disagreement, no degree of disrespect, no level of disagreeableness, no quantity of outright venomous attacks will make one whit of a difference; you will continue to believe what you believe, no matter how patently ridiculous it is, how overtly superstitious, how plainly stupid, or inarguably correct. Belief is like that. It has to be. And this doesn't even take into account faith. Don’t get me started on that.” I didn’t. I knew better. (Besides: I had faith in Dad, and his beliefs.) Dad was funny—in a darkly troubled sort of way—and very happy in his misery. Like Angela Murray-Doyle, a friend from The Good Old Days (yeah, right) who once told me of her hypothyroid condition: “I'm very happy with my disease. One pill a day and I go on with my life.” Dad was like that—miserable, desperately so—but very happy with his condition. (This being that Dad had no qualms whatsoever about doubting everything. He reveled in it. “It’s what,” he said, “keeps me sane.” Me meant, of course: Relatively speaking.) He even, on occasion, called it his disease. “It’s latent, it’s chronic, it’s terminal! But it’s mine: I’m a doubter.” And he would smile. I’d smile with him. I understood—and saw my future, clearer than dialing 1-800-YURFUTR. “It could be worse,” is what he always said next, Dad. “I could be a believer.” Well, that's what he said. Chapter 162 Personally, I think Dad actually had a God. His was just mute. I think Dad listened, tried to listen; but he just didn't hear anything because his God wasn't talking. At least not to Dad. But I think my father did try to hear something, and that if he had heard something, he would have been impressed. (He always kept an open mind; a hazard, he always said, of being a doubter. “You have to question your own doubts, DJ. Everything. Or it just doesn’t work.) Like Randall Hobbs, from after college, another atheist friend—I knew a big city revival tent full of them—how he always said, “Show me a Parting of the Red Sea, just one, and I'll believe. Just one,” he reiterated, to make clear his low standards. Randall said he would accept turning rocks into rye bread as well, “or just about any damn thing,” if it was on CNN, and Wolf Blitzer and The Amazing Randy were there and could verify it. “One little miracle. One measly little independently verifiable miracle, Danny, and I’m there.” I said, “Even whole wheat?” “Even white,” he said. Randall married a super-model with a heroin habit. She OD’d on their Italian marble bidet, slumped over and drowned, thereby missing her (The Big) end. I have to confess: I've tried listening, myself, but I don't hear much, either. Sometimes there's a voice; but I strongly suspect it's my own, telling myself what I already know. Of course, maybe that's all God really is—certainly the New Agers harped on this—but I don't think so. I hope not! He/She/It has to be much more, MUCH more, otherwise, What's the point? I'm me, I know me; and I'm not all that, well…anything. Trust me. (And by the way, I don't trust me. Not like that.) I am certainly not smart, or even interesting, enough to be God—even a god. And though I am arrogant: I'm not THAT arrogant. God! What is the point? What is the point? WHAT IS THE POINT! - I just don’t see it! - Someone tell me, PLEASE, what is the goddam Hell, I spilled my wine – Ha! - looks like blood Shit! It IS blood (Editor’s note: This page had a large brownish-red stain on it, and no further entry.) |
| LETTER #21 |
| LETTER #22 |
