John Swinburn

What if even the most powerful volcano was simply a trick, a display of the amazing power of a fizzlewhuzzcan engine that melts rock and sprays it into the sky? What then? Nothing, of course. We’d simply come to recognize that we’d been deceived and go about our business. So, too, is how we’d handle the truth about planet Earth, when we discovered it was not a tiny speck in an infinite universe but, instead, the largest and most important part of the sky. We’d grapple with the truth for a moment, then come to accept it. Because that’s how we are. We are willing to challenge reality for an instant, but we adjust to it when the facts become evident. (Please understand, though; that was just an analogy. Planet Earth really is just an almost-invisible speck of dust in a universe several trillion times larger than the Milky Way galaxy. Just so you understand.)

That’s how I want you to acknowledge that, in spite of a lifetime of being taught otherwise, the real God is not somewhere else. The real God is right here. He’s typing this as I think of how to tell you who he is. I know. You’re annoyed that I say “he.” If I could, I’d switch genders for an instant so I could say god is female. But I have only so much power; and the ability to change from male to female at will does not reside amongst my admittedly incredible array of talents. Give me a break; we all have our limits, and mine aren’t so very different from yours.

The reason I’m bringing this up now, at the winter solstice, is that my Wicca brothers and sisters are enjoying an enchanting day of peaceful harmony with the universe. It occurs to me that the rest of you might desire such oneness with the divine. It’s actually quite special, the sense that all of us are in the presence of Mother Earth’s nature and are humbled in reverence of her (see, I got the feminine thing going here, okay?). So, take it from me, the acknowledgement of Mother Earth and the universe is an incredibly peaceful and humbling experience. And you don’t have to be Wicca to do it. You just have to be willing to be amazed and to recognize that even the most powerful human on Earth is a temporary illusion in several thousand billion century measurements of time, squared.

I’m now returning power over this blog post to its all-powerful owner.

Cyrus Bedlam watched as the pieces of a cosmic puzzle slipped through the sky. The bitter taste of dark chocolate and kale. That’s the association that popped into his head as he watched the setting moon grind against the horizon at the same moment the sun rose against the opposite horizon. As he looked out the west window, he imagined the moon choking on billowing cinders on the far side of the planet, as if the earth and the moon rubbed against one another in passing, throwing up monstrous clouds of dust and molten rock. And as he turned to look at the rising sun through the east window, he thought it looked like the tip of a weapon of an unhappy galactic god, a tool that master of the universe would use to scorch an offensive planet to make its inhabitants pay for their transgressions. Cyrus smiled at the thought. “We deserve this,” he said aloud. Gloria Mockry, the woman who had spent the night with him, rolled onto her side.

“Did you say something?”

“Oh, I didn’t know you were awake. I was just looking at the sky. The sunrise and the moonset.”

“Yeah, but did you say something to me?”

“Not to you. Just thinking aloud.”

“About what?”

“The way we’re all going to die. And that we deserve it.”

Gloria sat upright.

“What do you mean we’re all going to die? When? And why do we deserve it?”

“This is not a conversation I want to have with a woman I’ve only known for sixteen hours.”

Cyrus recognized the look in Gloria’s eyes as fear. His instinct was to say something to her that would quell her concern, but he chose, instead, to remain silent and simply look into her eyes as if he could see inside her. Gloria shivered at his gaze.

[This may find a place in a story some day. But not here. Not now.]

I listened to a voice in my head as it told a story. This voice was from a man who survived the siege but who wished he had acted, much earlier, to warn of what was coming. He failed to do that; and so his final anguished thoughts offered lessons no one learned.

If I had revealed to the world the writing I chose not to share, I might be in prison or an asylum. Or dead. You see, my most intimate thoughts posed a clear and present danger to the shackles that bind us to the mirage that those in power want us to see. Were my words successful in freeing even one person from the powerful manacles of misinformation, the fight for freedom would drown our oppressors in a powerful flood, deeper even than their pockets. So, you see, the winning argument against sharing my words was rooted in self-protection. The nobler choice would have been self-sacrifice in pursuit of the greater good. By opting to assign more value to my own well-being than to that of the society in which I live, I knowingly aligned myself with the oppressors. That, alone, is knowledge with which I cannot live; that, alone, is a horrible condemnation any decent human being would be unable to survive. Now, my voice means nothing. Now, my words are simply impotent syllables stitched together to form gibberish, a cotton-candy quilt in the face of a fire hose.

How can I write about such drivel as I posted earlier, my frustration with toilet non-delivery, in the face of the impending presidential inauguration? My answer is this: the little frustrations have their place; sometimes, it’s the little frustrations that offset the monstrous fears or, just as likely, the homicidal fantasies.

If I told you of my fantasies about what I would want to do, if I had the power, to a certain someone about to take control of the free world, you would gasp and pull away, as if I had become the worst sort of monster you could have imagined. But the fantasy that made you grimace and avert your gaze was the most civilized of them all. The others, the more gruesome ones, would have you turning away in abject terror, clawing your way through thorny brambles to escape images so vile, so incomprehensibly odious, that you would gladly go blind rather than allow those pictures to stay another second in your brain.

I won’t paint those images for you. Instead, I’ll let you paint them yourself. Think of someone strapped to a cold steel table. Think of ice picks, claw hammers, vats of acid, hammers, nails, wire cutters, and an industrial sewing machine capable of stitching leather. Think of scalpels and sandpaper and bottles of alcohol. Think of dental instruments used in tooth extractions. Think of propane torches and containers of molten lead. Think of the “jaws of life” with a decidedly different intent.

There, now. Don’t you feel a little better about yourself, knowing you weren’t the one responsible for the fantasy?

Soft, filtered light seeped through the canopy of mixed oak and pine, brightening as if the sun were awakening as it inched over the horizon. Fog drifted low between the ridges of ragged remnants of a worn mountain range. Fallen leaves, large and crisp from the dry air of recent days, snapped and cracked under the hooves of deer foraging for breakfast. Except for the explosive sound of the shot that shattered the silence of the morning, that morning would have been idyllic. But the violent detonation of hard noise and its metallic echoes ruptured the calm and scarred the peace of the morning.

Calypso Mason had moved to Arkansas to experience the ‘natural state.’ Instead, dimwits who enjoyed killing animals and celebrating their demise during the most calming parts of the day, surrounded him.

“Damn hunters; if I weren’t such a pacifist, I’d rip the hearts from their chests and eat them raw,” Calypso growled.

His wife, Lydia Truman, watched his face contort into an angry scowl as his mood grow more sour by the second.

“Yeah, but you’d happily accept a gift of venison backstrap from them, wouldn’t you? You’re such a hypocrite.”

Calypso turned toward her, his motion slow and steady like a cougar preparing to pounce, his head cocked to the right. “I’ve earned the right to be a hypocrite. That’s what makes me so damn appealing, isn’t it?”

Lydia’s attempt to hide a smile failed. Calypso’s scowl melted into peels of laughter as Lydia tossed a freshly-peeled tangerine in his direction.