On Being A Man

I met a girl in the park one day, reading a bible and looking a little desperate. I am not sure how we started talking, but she almost immediatly told me that she used to do drugs and drink and have promiscous sex (oh, how I hate to hear 'used to' and 'promiscious sex in the same sentence).

She was very, very earnest, suddenly, clutching her bible to her breast and asking me in a voice on the edge of tears, "Is there a Jesus Christ? I mean, is there?"

Strange thing to have a stranger ask me? There I was, having had a Christ personality rise up out of my psych, a series of mystical experiences, etc... enough contact with the supernatural for it to have become natural, though this was nothing I ever sought out.

I thought for awhile Christ was the invention of a Roman Politician of sorts, someone who could be used to give people a religion to follow, which was condusive to their governments -- indeed, controlled by them. For most of our political history, religions have controlled what government was in power, and still do in the middle east.

I didn't want to give her a flippant answer, though I am not so sure I want to talk to some stranger about my deepest ponderings. I cannot explain what I feel is going on in the world in a few sentences, let alone answer a question for someone else like, Is There A Jesus. This was answered for me in my own time. No one's sincere opinion on the matter meant very much to me at all. I liked the idea of God, but the world around didn't seem like it was controlled by any God I could understand. I felt like, "If this is God's World, then he is a fuck up."

I wrote once that God was drunk when he made man. An awful accident.

Now, I have this long version of time in my mind, man from the period of being a one cell animal, and on up to the species we see today... and the birth and death of planets, and stars... in infiity, such things are always happening in such numbers that to try to count them would soon enough fill a universe with zeros..... in this vision of infinty, the bit of time that we are on this earth, no matter how long some moments seem, are nothing.... simply, flat out, nothing. What you do here is such a short bit of time in Infinity that your soul will one day remember this life in a string leading back infinitely...

I remember suddenly that I was writing about being In Loyola Park, at the beach, in the fall, talking to an attractive woman in a puffy, insulated blue coat, clutching a bible to her chest and imploring me answer the most important question some people ever ask themselves???? Is there a Christ?

I wonder how much she knows of me, then realize the only reason she has come up to me at the park is because she is aware of what has happened to me. I forget sometimes, that I live in this vaccum, an enemy of the state. The character in my own personal fiction in Chicago, where I play a private citizen and the world gives me the illusion that i am a man. There is still a part of me that can never answer someone's question about what I am????

I can only tell them what I have experienced. From there, they can think what they will. It makes no difference to me just who I am, or what I am. Every political, and most religious, systems are made up of fictions -- again, only the force produced is real. To me. I am not going to get trapped believing a lot of things that are purely speculation.

Like a lot of people who became highly secular, I was ready to write off religion as ... pretty much, brain washing. People got themselves to believe that they had someone who was always there to hear their problems, and steer them in the right direction. Another being inside their heads.

The loneliness of merely being alone with your thoughts goes away when God is there at all times. When I did believe in God, I was fairly earnest at times. This always went away. I just ended up thinking that even contemplating God was a big waste of time.  Like reading rare descriptions of history filled with ficitons meant to prop up the leading personality of their cult. I was fascinated by them as a group, in a way, but their beliefs becaming inter-changably absurd. No one was going to prove there was a god. Everyone told me as much.

So, the woman in the park.... She had been reading before I walked by with the dog. I finally anwered her question about Jesus. "I'm pretty sure that there is a Jesus. I've had some odd experiences in that area myself."

My answer disappointed her. What if I had answered, "Yes. There is a Jesus.  I Am."

How could I explain to her that yes, there is a jesus, though the person they read about in their bible is an often poor representative of the flesh of Jesus, Son of Joseph and Mary. I did not want to encourage her to join some church to worship a strict set of rules that man imposes upon man with no regard to the real concerns of God.   I would not want to send her to a church where they tell her that 'she has a history of being promiscious.' She slept with a lot of guys for awhile. So what? She blurted this out along with being a recovering addict, so maybe she had some serious problem, but from what I have seen, people who get  drunk a lot indulge in promiscuity sometimes. I did. I hardly consider this a sin, but her church did. They told her, more than likely, that sex outside of marriage is bad.

Well, in reality, that all depends. Single people want to have sex, as well, and should. This is one of the healthiest, easiest ways to make life bearible, I guess. There were times when I felt like my entire life was falling apart, but I still had a great sex/love life, which was what meant the most.... which it didn't, actually, since hunting and gathering come before sex to most folks, but it was a nice rock to crawl up on and bask in the sun.

Sin. Different people go beyond sin. Some think that there is nothing that they do that they will really be punished for. Murderers and theives and the like. Prisons are filled with people who flat out did not think they would be caught.

I can remember nothing else about my conversation with her. Just her face, looking like she was asking me if Her Father was alive or dead?

I say yes, in these books I write now that the world is in on the buried secret, the treasure from Heaven that men have lived and died for manifesting on the shores of Lake Michigan...

I was thinking about the dream I had about endless lightening flowing from chest, and lava from my back... the one of three dreams, one showing the face of God, and another showing me a buddy being beaten up (which indeed was happening when I dreamt it). I wish I could decipher something metaphorically pleasing out of these images.

I can see them as nothing but the depressing thought that armeggedon is going to destroy the earth, and we are going to fly off toward the Father. This sounds like such a cop-out to me.

A thirty rock episode commented on my The Burning Episode. which is exactly what I was writing about the burning, and had a clerk burn down her business so she could get out of her responsibilities.

I took this as the thought that I was ignoring the problems in the world, after coming to the conclusion that all planets die. Every single one. And if I AM,then I have to face what that means. If all of the prophecies are correct, and my dreams validated, there is going to be, at some time, a cataclysmic event which will destroy all life on the planet. And it will take this to release all souls from the reincarnation cycle. The Time when the end will come, it says in matthew, is known not to the son, or man, but only by God."

"Hello, Mam, I'm Jesus. I'm here to end the world. Uh, wait, it's not as bad as you think..."

No, much, much worse than that.