Divination

Oh shit. You mean I can't hide behind pretty words anymore?

I still could, I suppose. The post that you're reading right now could be about the City, and Lilith, and mythology, and the grotesque, with a bit of The Wasteland thrown in for good measure - but it would seem disingenuous after Zach's post.

I have a feeling there will be no magic to this post. I feel deflated – I read ‘The Mirror and the Image’, and I thought, that’s really cool, maybe I’ll try something like that, and I wrote the fist line - Oh shit. You mean I can't hide behind pretty words anymore? – and that was it. I couldn’t think of anything else. I have no story this week. Nothing pretty, nothing grotesque.

Usually an image comes to me, born from Zach’s post, and then another image, and a line after that; soon I start writing, and there they are, the words and words and words, unfurling like a bright red ribbon behind me, like a fever dream, like the smoke from a cigarette swirling seductively, all around me. Soon enough, I hear a song or an entire album that seems to fit the mood, listen to that on repeat while I write, until it’s done and the words have all found me. I often do research – read up on church design or the Furies, find the lyrics and poetry I might want to reference, search Google for a picture of whatever it is I’m struggling to describe. I read it over a second and third time to make sure I’ve said what I wanted to say, that all the images and allusions are in place - not to mention the commas and apostrophes.

I love the process, and I love how it affects me – it’s like a drug. I feel alive and I feel like I’m full to bursting with colors – a starburst of light. I lose my sense of self to it; I am made of words and the words are made of me, and I drink from the deep cool well of the collective unconscious. I am pure light when I write, and when the words find me I am beautiful. When I’m writing and the words are all that’s left of me, I have access to all of human history; I drink from the well and I drink the blood of oracles.

I can’t do drugs anymore, so it’s nice that I’ve found a cheap substitute. Plus I can function afterwards, and there aren’t any nasty side affects.

There are a couple of lines in ‘The Mirror and the Image’ that I loved:

I wish I could convey to the readers the incredible transparency in that last paragraph. I actually could feel myself floating as I wrote it, much like I always do when I’m talking to you.

He’s talking about God, but he could just as easily be talking about the Process. Could be they’re one and the same, actually.

I stopped believing in God about a year ago. I read The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, and it solidified a lot of things I had been struggling with, and it just…clicked, I guess. All the puzzle pieces snapped together, and that was it. I saw the picture clearly; I saw the world; I saw the truth. I was done with God. It felt amazing. Still does. I was free. Still am.

I think I’ll be cheap and quote here from a piece I wrote back then, called ‘Dear God (A Monologue)’:

Dear god, I think I may be an atheist. I think I may be ready to take a huge leap into the unknown. Into a place where there is no celestial guidance, only the wonders of nature and science and measurable facts. There is still love and transcendence and meaning, mind you. But you're not there, and the heavenly choir is silenced, and most of human history is mistaken in its belief, but it doesn't matter. Because truth – and facing the truth that you will never be found – is beauty, and beauty is truth, and that is all.

The last line of the piece is ‘Good-bye’.

I thought that last word – that sad, final ringing of the bell – would stay with me always, and haunt me at night. But it hasn’t. That’s the thing, that’s what makes me smile and that’s what tells me I that I found the truth – it doesn’t hurt at all.

When I stopped believing in God, I stopped talking to Him. I knew that if I vacillated, and spoke to him, privately, then it would be like I was holding onto a shameful secret, and I would never know truth. So I let go of him – and now I think it’s time to stop capitalizing him, and start capitalizing Truth – completely. I haven’t spoken to god since then, not even in my weakest moments, not even those times when life has hurt so badly I thought I wouldn’t make it through the night. What I have done, though, is write.

There’s a lovely symmetry to it, don’t you think? I stopped talking to my imaginary friend, and started talking to the world. I found the Process, which is transcendent – and not unlike the experience mystics describe when they’ve met god. Which, incidentally, is not unlike the way I felt the first time I smoked pot. I have the Process, which I think is the most honest of all these experiences. It’s a kind of birth, and it’s painful and joyous and exhausting in equal measures. It’s bloody and long and splits the soul open, but the end result – a few words on the computer screen, a bit of telepathy from me to you, whoever you may be – is a beautiful mystery, a sublime experience, a truly mystical thing.

I seek pleasure. I seek the nerves under your skin.
The narrow archway; the layers; the scroll of ancient lettuce.
We worship the flaw, the belly, the belly,
the mole on the belly of an exquisite whore.
He spared the child and spoiled the rod.
I have not sold myself to God.

from ‘Babelogue’, by Patti Smith