(Alternatively titled: Dead Sea Scrolls)
There is a place far from the freedom of the City where the sun is always shining. Waves roll up a sandy beach with a crisp, full sound. Sitting right where the tide comes in, the cool water refreshes weary feet. It's always a striking blue. The horizon continues into a “yonder,” when the sky meets the sea for as far as the eye can see. This is where I live.
Behind that sacred seat, is the lush greenery that I think is called a jungle. Life here exists brilliantly, vibrantly.
Psalm 24
She makes me feel alive, in a new way. In a way that I don't even know how to explain... it's like... fuck, man – it's the reason curse words were invented. My religious friends always said that the gods fill a hole in your heart that you didn't know you had. She does that. Since the moment I fucking saw her, I became different. I became hungry. For the first time in my life, I didn't just understand it, I was it.
I don't know how to tell her, but I try every time she lets me. I want her. I want to fuck her, I want to provide for her, I want to make her smile, I want to know everything about her. She makes me want to live, to adventure, to be a better person. Life was black and white, meaningless and dull before her. Now, whenever I think of her, the whole world seems bright and alive. I feel real.
I suppose I was on a pilgrimage of my own, of sorts, when I saw him. It is not enough to say that he had a strange look to him, for the City is defined by its sense of strangeness. But he radiated a presence, standing on the street, that set him apart. The breeze seemed to blow by him, not against him. He was on the very edge of the curb and his coat flapped quickly every time a car sped past his person. His hands were by his side – open palmed in what seemed like reverence towards the endless traffic. As I moved closer to this sight, I saw that his eyes were closed – he was in a sort of reverence.
My curiosity got the better of me, but before I could ask “why are you here?” I heard his voice in my head.
Prisoners do not write on walls.
It's true, I thought: walls write on them. As my mind finished processing the response, I looked up to see the figure open his eyes and step off the curb. The car that hit him was going so fast that I don't think his foot reached the cement. Several meters away, his face did.
Psalm 68
I lost her. It was so sudden. My friends all think I'm ridiculous – I suppose I am. But I'm drunk and here, so I might as well put down my story. I was never really with her, but there was a chemistry there. I know there was. And now it's gone. She just isn't interested anymore. I feel it too – I'm just not as interesting. Where did it all go? Where's all that goddamn magic?
I'll never know whether the man was making an allusion to the Red Door or not. But when I first found it 7 months later, I thought of him. People didn't say it was the best club in town, at the time, because it was. They just went there. It was the kind of place that all the other, less desirable places called fake or cliché or cheesy. But the truth was, it was the only joint in town that was real.
I won't rehash what others have probably already told you about the place – you can discover plenty on your own. There must be enough people willing to talk about it.
I will tell you what it was like for me, though. I didn't go there with someone, I went there looking for someone. It was the Great Temple on my own personal quest for meaning. And I certainly found someone. Hundreds of someones, written all over the walls. Every one was unique, and yet it was the same. Thousands of stories, each with their own personal, private interest, and each full of universal importance.
Night after night I went to those walls. Night after night I read them like prayers. Night after night I memorized them like scripture.
Psalm 3
We may look like animals, but we fuck like gods.
I suppose you could say that there, I found Her. In the heat of the night, Sin itself seemed to make love to Truth, surrounded by voyeurs and disciples. The marriage was one of divine significance. Ugly, raw, real, polite, unintentional, direct, tempting, dirty, fantastic and blissful. Amidst it, one could not help but understand what prophets meant when they said they had “found” religion. One could barely help becoming a prophet themselves: the writing, as they say, was on the wall.
Psalm 40
I would move to the City for her. Many would. Some already have. But neither of those are the point.
All my life I have carefully disciplined my life to not need another person. I've told myself, over and over, that the right person has to fit. I cannot just uproot on some meager fancy. What's more, I have to be true to myself: I have to follow a path that I enjoy, work in work that I love, not that provides me money. I have to live where I am happy and comfortable, not where it is economically convenient. I have to be me.
But, if she said she wanted me, I'd move tomorrow. I'd be scared shitless, but I'd find a job, even if I hated it, that made oodles of money so that I could provide for her – so that she'd never have to worry about being in love with a “loser,” or worry about the financial comfort of her child/children. I'd take night classes so that I could move up in the world, and I'd certainly make her breakfast or make breakfast with her every day.
Because she's got it. I don't know how else to explain it. I know she's a regular person. I know that she has weaknesses and quirks and undesirables in her past. I know that there is so much about her that I don't know, and lots of things that might make me feel uncomfortable. I know that one day, she'll get wrinkles and get saggy and all of the other realities of age. But, including all of that, not ignoring it, she's perfect.
And she's got a charm that will knock your socks off.
I've never looked her in the eye and told her how serious I am. That would ruin it. I've told her how wonderful she is, including her inner and outer beauty. We've joked about her capacity for enchantment endlessly. Meaningfully, but playfully. But when it comes to that critical connection I know that “part of our magic is what's not said.” Sacred words from her. But she knows.
I don't expect it to “go anywhere” – I don't expect it to be anything other than what it is, and what it will be. That in and of itself, is perfect and wonderful. We are, uncompromisingly, who we are. But I wanted to tell someone: I needed to tell someone straight.
I want her.
I was there that day, when those Bastard children appeared. Don't ask me what happened. I don't really know. I know that I was in the middle of finally writing my own story. I know that one of the first ones to die was my Beloved.
I know that I didn't finish.
And then, I know that I blacked out.
Psalm 96
The best thing about the three of us, is that we never know what's going to come next....
Or who's cumming first!
When I awoke I was here on this beach. Ever since, I have been here with no knowledge of how it came to be, or how I am to return. No matter how far I walked down the beach, or into the trees, the place remained the same. The same beautiful horizon, and vibrant tree-line. Here, there is almost no semblance of the City that I once knew. Almost.
It was when I was uprooting in mourning that I first noticed the subtle similarity. I had finally allowed myself to admit what I had lost, and in a rage I began tearing at anything I had the strength to destroy. When I paused, plants in hand, I saw it. The plants here all had a majesty about them, but deep within the old roots something strange was gnarled. So much vitality combined with so much absence had caused the place to yearn. And aimless, nameless, unrecognized yearning has a way of twisting itself into an entirely different kind of villainy. Once I noticed it, everything here seemed... different.
I had to find things to pass the time – I could never starve nor overheat, nor lack for any other physical sustenance, but was otherwise left to my own devices. I refused to grow the same roots, to succumb to the saturation of insanity.
I will not bore you with my efforts – the summary was simple: nothing worked. Everything I did offered the same reflection.
Psalm 108
How can we be so perfect and yet so imperfect? We have all of the puzzle pieces, and they fit, but we just don't work. Everyone thinks we should be together. We understand each other and enjoy each other's company. So where is that spark? Are we scared? Are we broken? Or is this just the way things are supposed to be?
Why can't we be lovers?
Psalm 109
Me again. She's gone. The truth is, I'd just end up hurting her.
I had given up. As a passing irony I thought that a fitting commemoration to decent would be to finish my own long lost and uncompleted story. There, across the endless sand, and with only the waves to cheer me on, I drew out the whole tale – as it was supposed to have been.
It was a long process, rank of ritual that the place was otherwise devoid of. Each stick-stroke brought me closer to a sense of closure, so that when my final “i” had been dotted and my final “t” had been crossed, I was filled with a solitary contentment.
I would never write that tale again. As I watched the tides come in to wash it all away, I could rest assured that it was Ours, and Ours alone.
Epilogue:
Shortly after the tide had gone out I found myself considering the old walls. Silently I recited the familiar hymns of heartache and hope, slipping in and out of a trance. When I came to, it was evening, and the moonlight highlighted something down the beach from where I had come. My dazed search revealed that it was a large plant of some kind – itself a stark oasis against the horizon of granules. It was like an overgrown rose. The petals shimmered in the starlight.
Methodically, and without thought, I began to trace one of my favorite 6 word stories on the petal. It was the second story from the Red Door that I memorized, and to this day my favorite scripture. As I finished, the petal broke away suddenly and floated up. A sudden breeze carried it into the air and over the treeline.
I don't know where it went, but the roots of that plant were distinctly different.
Psalm 2
I will never regret it. Never.
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