I speak directly to God and God answers me directly. Looking skyward laughing in jest for my friends I say, "to the big man with a long white beard sitting on a cloud. Watching. Judging." A laughable thing, vision. Whatever the experience I am having, however I may experience it, I do talk with God. With God (God talks back). It is true and in no uncertain terms. During these conversations I ask God for things, that part does not come audibly rather it comes in silent longing behind a clearly defined cloud of confusion. And within this same indiscernible boundary of disbelief I am answered. The prayer usually being a selfish one as all prayers are. This cursed blessing always arrives in the best and most direct of terms. Tonight I received the best of gifts i would tell my friends. "What gifts, Rose? What were you given?" They may say in earnest. And I answer, "clarity." "Also love." I need love, lots of it, so I keep asking for it and it keeps coming. A never ending river of love from others and to others. "Don't you think this is what all people experience?" They (my friends) may reply. "No," I say, "because when I ask around there are so many who have settled and stopped looking or asking and then settle on being miserable." "Who do you mean Rose, do you mean us? Do you mean we are miserable?" And in some cases I thought yes but didn't have the heart to make that call aloud. As I thought this my face became flush with the shame of judging others and the transparency of ignorance. Essentially I was telling my friends, those I love, that they were unspecified losers. Do you see reader, the torture I put myself through? All for nothing so as a relief I speak with God and God answers. Sometimes God answers with a woman - I would ask, Dear lord, though I am not worthy to receive any further chances (as mine have dried up or long since been squandered by unwise choices) please send me a companion that I would fall easily in love with and who would love me back and relieve, at least, the utter loneliness of existence. Of not knowing. Oh and it would be nice if she were a virgin (as I've never been with a virgin), I might add as a gratuitous self serving clause to the shameful silent pleading. Then, within a day sometimes, without so much as a phone call, she would show up. A hot virgin, able and ready for commitment, like God's hot breath in my ear. Of course, asking and receiving are more than meets the eye. I am thankful I reassure you. Still there is the matter of the rest of it - food, shelter, clothing, childbirth, family, school, potential military service, religion, etc. When one is taken care of, proper income, the rest will fall in line (as they tell me)(who's they? mostly the jews in my life, the practicing jews). However, so often, I find myself at the divide of two worlds and perhaps the story is what's been received or earned in my life before I'd asked for a stop gap solution like a virgin or debt relief.
The two worlds are like broken drifting sheets of ice and I'm above, crotch exposed, to the flat cold sea below. Threatening always to drift impossibly far apart I could always leap to one or the other knowing the isolation of either may kill me. Some of us (I think to myself for want of comfort) are born to be the inbetweens and spend our lives scaling the crevasse. And it takes so long that by the time one has reached flat ground half the life is over and accustomed to the conditions of living while scaling a wall. Like all lives. Human ones. Sometimes this divide is made as clear as day like the night I picked up my surrogate family from the airport. I had been traveling around town in someone else's car, taking care of someone else's home, my friends, as I had done for the two years prior. From the airport to home the children climbed on me, asked me to stay, even dragged me upstairs to read a bedtime story. There in the children's bed, where the entire family lay - mom, dad, kids and myself at the center reading a story about dinosaurs. Diplodocus, Stegasaurus, Ornithomimus. At these moments I want to leap to this drifting sheets of ice. This side, the one that is family life, children, love, safety, stable. But before the time to think it through arrives I see everyone is asleep and feel self conscious at how close I've become. I creep out to leave them sleep as I, now carless, ponder ways to get myself and Faf across town. I call Nowik and in a moments notice he is there with Jeffrey and I ramble into the vehicle, Faf too, into a cloud of smoke and hash and we rumble across town to the bughouse, not daring to call it home. back into the place where prayers are answered and demons crawl, at times visibly, across lives. The other side where if for nothing more one can see reality more clearly - the question being if one wants to or even ever should.
