Читать книгу The Skin of Meaning - Keith Flynn - Страница 16

You got to roll with it, or else you’ll roll

under it, says the piano player, roiling

the air with arpeggios. The genius is in

the second line, the one entranced and

in thrall to the drum, where the fierceness

of the soil is made manifest, its black mass

loosened by the rhythm of the water roots.

If Heaven is the place where nothing ever

happens, then the stomp and pomp takes

place elsewhere. Horses fear bridges

because of their binocular vision. Unable

to see straight in front of them, their

survival instincts have fashioned a 180

degree panorama in their peripheral scope,

with two realities constantly in play, like

the whale heads hanging on either side

of the Pequod’s stern, whom Melville

named Kant and Locke; our perception

is only narrowed when our brain feels

threatened. In Antelope Canyon, on

Navajo Land, Heaven is slotted in

the sandstone, and gossamer beams

of light compete with the waterfalls

to frame a vision of life after death.

The Crack and the Corkscrew spiral

out of the layered earth tones like a

pair of Dante’s hellish circles, where

painters and mathematicians spar with

sediment for the symmetrical spoils,

though sometimes the occasional flash

flood will claim a tourist or two.

In Heaven, to whom does one confess?

And when does Death show his face?

Perhaps there the water is made of silk,

and the substance washing around you

is called Grace. Seven white coroner’s

sheets covered seven unarmed black

men, who were killed by white police

this week in America, and each of the

deceased’s mother or wife believed

their beloved was in a Gucci stall being

fitted for wings. Every policemen thinks,

there but for the Grace of God go I.

Does the Governor of Heaven care about

the color of the murderers? Is there a

great slide, shaped like a bell curve, that

drops the unworthy straight into Hell?

Or streets paved with gold, diamond

Jacob’s Ladders, leading the freshly

christened cherubs on escalators into

the segregated first class seats?

On Earth as it is in Heaven, says the

solemn congregation, where the lion

lives in harmony with the lamb.

Awake for five straight days, eating

speed and drinking tequila, Mickey

Newbury swore to me that he’d

seen Jesus, and how did he know?

Had to be Him, said Mickey, He had

on an eggshell robe with the letters JC

monogrammed on the breast pocket.

When 4-year-old Colton Burpo told his

father, Pastor Todd, that he had visited

Heaven while having his appendix

removed, he had sat in JC’s lap and

summoned angels with halos riding

rainbow horses and singing his favorite

song, dressed to the nines, with fashionable

robes and purple sashes, and best of all,

no lines for the rollercoasters. Trayvon

Martin’s parents said their slain son was

in Heaven with God, and was wearing his

hoodie. Plato’s assertions put the temporal

body in peril, but the immortal soul could

eventually have a conversation with anyone.

The pagans thought the soul just stewed,

until the Captain of the New Groove Ship

descended from Heaven and united every

saved soul, dead or alive, under one cool

banner, and cast out old Scratch, and put

out that Lake of Fire, just as soon as the

wicked were tossed in, and then it was

fireworks and roasted hot dogs for all

eternity. But what if this is it? This one

wild life, on a single blue pebble, caught

in a vast webbing of dimensions? I take

no pleasure in the capricious exclusion

of any known Heaven. I spent my child-

hood asking forgiveness of a father who

did not exist, and could not listen, a myth

in the settled universe whose conjuring

only adds to the random strangeness

of humans, now clearly standing in the

margins of their own demise, faced with

the unyielding despair and certainty that

this galaxy must end in ruin, with our

species scattered among the celestial

debris. I cannot fault any being that

seeks a balm in some perfect afterlife’s

Wonderland, though the nature of their

prosperity gospel means one man’s

salvation is achieved upon the broken

back of his neighbor. The soul’s habitation,

should it exist, leads to the imagination’s

redemptive force. We are what we make,

and the making is love, and love is the

mystery that sustains us. Any tacit

acknowledgement of religion’s cheap

tricks opens the vistas of the unknown.

The higher we climb, the world lays

wider in our scope. The more I know,

the less certain I am, and my self-

deception grows commensurate with

my ignorance. What we have is here,

where we are is now, in Time’s despicable,

multi-tentacled clutches, in the habitat

of dance and feathers, building our

headdress and staking our territory,

lending our love’s disguise to the march.