Living, Sleeping, or Dreaming?

We live in a generation where everything is faster than it ever was, and the world is made smaller, revolving at this Speed Of Life.  The expectations of a society that is so advanced – where responses should be nothing short of immediate – have robbed us of the chance to formulate more sensible (and sensitive) responses.  Even the word “advanced” sums up the curse of the blessing:  a state where we are perennially in front of where we actually are.

Cars and their drivers steam as they struggle with the inexplicable reality of having to queue up along congested roads, craning their necks as they try to see some relief ahead of them.  Customers fume at the pleasant elevator music slowly driving them mad while their call is on hold.  When I worked at a McDonald’s, I played a Game called “Get this punter’s burger and fries before he has a chance to come up with something insulting and/or sarcastic to say.”

I am that customer, and my favorite question in the world is “What’s the goddam holdup?”

Are we hopelessly addicted to Speed?  I often wish I had been alive in the days when people were allowed to take their time.  They took their time because, by God, they had a right to it.  Everyone either understood this, or just had no choice about it.  There was a time when two years of my life would have gone by just because I walked out my front door with the intention of joining a friend to a pilgrimage across the continent to see some Old Stones.

Two years.  In this day and age, I would have missed two seasons of How I Met Your Mother.  I would not see the Celtics win back-to-back NBA Championships.  The Book I want to write would have to wait.  The Film I want to do.  The Music I want to record.  The promotion, the car, the house, the wife, the kids...

Actually, I’ve already had thirty-six years, and of all the things I mentioned, I’ve only managed to watch How I Met Your Mother.  Everything else is waiting for me to make it happen – yes, even the Celtics, who seem to only win when I am watching their games.  I want so many things, and they are all waiting for me to have time for them.

The Super Secret Law of Time, Want, and Doing:  The less you want to do, the more time you have to do it.

I think about being the soul-searcher on a pilgrimage in the days when a pilgrimage actually meant something.  I think about how my daily calendar would have looked:  Today, walk à that way.  Tomorrow, walk some more.  One day, eventually, arrive. 

I can’t imagine that anyone would have bought two thousand pesos worth of Fraps and Lattes to get a free Starbucks Planner just to fill its pages with daily entries that said “Walk,” “Walk some more,” and “Shave.”

That must be what freedom feels like – to have a to-do list and know that I have nothing but time for it.  It must feel awesome to look at my “week-ahead” and think: “Okay, I can do that.”  In fact, Life would be great if there was no need for a planner.

I have a daily to-do list that always has anywhere between five and twenty items on it.  My day is a race against the Sun to knock items off that list with constant action chained together by a misplaced sense of duty.  I actually believe that the world will fall apart if those boxes are not checked by the end of the day.  Is my world that fragile?

Dinner with Mom is something I have to squeeze in after the six o’clock coffee-chat date with my casual acquaintance from college who just happened to suddenly call me because he was in the area.  The inconsiderate prick must think I just sit around waiting for random inconsequential people to walk into my life.  Let’s see, after that, I can go to the bank before ...it’s closed?!?  Nooooo...........

This bank business, along with the other items on the list that could not be possibly have been done in a 24-hour day, will carry over into the next day.  The Sun that brings this new day also brings with it a new set of random to-do’s:  A bunch of monkeys wanting to get on my back.  They must come in the night and sneak into my head so that they can introduce themselves in the morning.  I know some of them are brought in by people who are supposed to be friends.  A lot of them come in via email.

The time I might have spent enjoying the Director’s cut of The Lord of the Rings or writing some mind-blowing poetry is instead spent hitting the delete key a hundred and forty-two times – once for every email that I carefully read before I decide that it is neither interesting nor enriching to my life.  Half the time, I don’t even get to hit that delete key until after I’ve sent back to the sender some inane indication that I’ve read his useless thoughts.  The oppression from the evil master we call a correspondence continues!  Slavery!

“Haha!  Good one, Bob!  Hey, here’s a link that’s funnier, you should check it out!”

I am fighting, but I am losing the eternal battle against facebook, spam, and egroups.  I have seen people log on to yahoo inboxes that say “1024 unread messages” and I wonder how the hell they sleep at night?  What am I doing wrong?

Each day the monkeys climb out of my head, my phone, my inbox... they’re coming in through the window! (through Windows, literally).  They bring me presents – no, ORDERS – which I compulsively write down in neat rows headed by a new column of unchecked boxes.  When does it stop?

This Speed of Life is murderous.  With so many things wanting to happen all around me – and each thing happening faster than the last – it becomes very easy to forget to breathe.  And when I forget to breathe, I die.  Speed kills.  But whose foot is on the gas pedal anyway?

The Super Secret Law of the To-Do List and Its Author:  You wrote it down, you can erase it.

Whoa.  I can...what...?!?  Now that I think of it, I have often looked at some items on my list and wondered “What would happen if I did NOT pop this balloon?”  I have also “cheated” by checking off an item that I did not really do, but just “decided” was “not really necessary”.  Does this mean I can do this more often?  Like every day?

What if I sit here and imagine that my next text message would be from “www.SMS-MD.com” – a group of online doctors who give out incredibly free, unsolicited, and accurate medical diagnoses thru text messaging.  What if it read “Gd am! u hv cncr, n u hv 3 mos 2 liv. Tks!”

I would love for someone to tell me I had three months to live.  While it obviously means that I am going to die in three months, it also quite literally and figuratively means “I have three months TO LIVE!”  That would be a hell of a way to start my day – the good ol’ bit o’ bad-news-good-news.

Bad news: “You are going to die.”

Good news: “You can send the monkeys home, you can put the list down, and you can claim your voucher for unlimited freedom right now.  You can turn off the computer.  You can quit your job.  You can tell people what you really think.  You can do anything you want to do, and you can do it right now.  You don’t have to shower ever again.  That last part is optional, of course.”

Bad news: “You are going to make a new to-do list.”  Good news: “This new list will be filled with things you WANT TO do, as opposed to things you HAVE TO do.”

A Want List?  Let’s try this!  I want to drive a cab.  I want to sing and dance in public.  I want to teach basketball to homeless kids.  I want to invent a new sport.  I want to write a book.  (It may have to be a children’s book, given that three months isn’t a lot of time, and I don’t think I want to be typing away my last days on Earth). 

I want to talk to complete strangers.  I want to climb up the down escalator.  I want to run with scissors.  I want to get into a brawl.  I want to leap off Guadalupe bridge and swim in Pasig River.  I want to work on a loading dock.  I want to live on the street.  I want to have no money and no use for it.  I want to rob a bank – and an escape plan is irrelevant, because I am doing this on my last day.  It’s this, or skydive without a parachute.

As I write this, I imagine I would sit with my new list and stare blankly at the many rows of Want-To-Do’s headed by a new column of unchecked boxes.  Drive a cab, write a book, rob a bank, sing, dance, skydive without a parachute, think of more things I may want to do...

As it is, I will probably still be alive after three months.  But one thing will remain the same.  I am going to die.  I already know this, and yet I am not on the way to any of the items on my Want List.  I have not called a cab company, publisher, dance instructor, voice trainer, or illegal weapons dealer.  What is stopping me?

The Super Secret Law of Addiction to Listing, Scheduling, Doing:  LSD is addicting because it fills us with feelings of hope and elation; followed by a fleeting sense of order, control, and complete understanding; and finally topped off by a sense of achievement and joy.  LSD makes us feel alive!

My terminal disease is the consequence of a form of LSD addiction isolated to the first part, which I call “Listitis” and also “The Cancer of Random Desires.”  The reason I haven’t started on anything on my list is because I keep adding things to my list.

I am not Living.  I was Sleeping, but now I am just Dreaming – or, as the half-dead Zombies might call it, “Making Plans.”  Planning is so much fun – with all the hope and options and possibilities open to me – that I am quite likely to plan for a very long time.  Multiply “a long time” by an additional number of “planners” and the result is “forever till we never do it.”

The Super Secret Law of Dreams, Plans and LSD:  Dreams are important, but when the plan is to stay in dreamland, all you have is a drug-problem.

I know now that I can make time for anything if I wanted to, but I don’t have forever.  In fact, as long as I have Listitis, I will have nothing but a congress of monkeys lobbying for time on my back.  With each new thought the list is getting longer!  I succeeded in slowing down the frenetic Speed Of Life, but now that speed has been reduced to zero, and I am dead...

I am writing this list.  I can erase it.  I have to send off the clowns.  Erase...erase…erase…

...Until I can find the ONE THING that I can’t bring myself to erase.  The thing that I really want to do – not because it’s cute, not because it would be cool, not because other people have done it and I am curious, not because my big hungry ego requires it...

If I got another text message from the relentlessly helpful-but-negative doctors at “www.SMS-MD.com” – “Gd pm! U r going 2 b dead tom am. Tks!” – What would I do then?

I might think about writing a killer (pun?) farewell message for everyone to remember me by – or I may not – but one thing is for sure, I wouldn’t be sitting here writing about writing it.  Also, I would not write something awesome without wanting to see how people react to my awesomeness.

So my one thing is actually this: I would want to be around the people I feel most awesome with, so they can hold me and hear my awesome last breath.

What am I waiting for?  I have been walking for thirty-six years, and I have been waylaid by lists, tasks, distractions, and monkeys throwing feces at me.  What I want – what I really want – is so basic: to be around the people I love – because they make me happy and I want to make them happier.

My pilgrimage:  Find Love.  Share Love.  Be awesome.

Wanna come with me, or do you have other things to do..?

Trust Me While I Hold a Razor to Your Neck

I was at a Mall with about seven hours to kill.  I mulled over the many things I could do to kill time – which is funny because time lives on long after those of us who have been trying to kill it are long dead ourselves...but I digress.  I ended up walking into a barbershop – not a salon, not a spa – a barbershop.  I was going to get a haircut and get out.  That’s The Man’s Plan.

The last time I got a haircut, the plan was the same:  get in, get cut, get out.  A short snooze, a complicated shampooing, and two hours later, I was out of the salon and out nine hundred bucks.  Somewhere between “just take a bit off the top” and “would you like to try this product on your hair” I made an eight-hundred-peso decision.

What kind of man walks into a barbershop and spends a thousand bucks?

On this day, I did it again.  As this barber was pulling my hair and clipping away with his scissors, I suddenly remembered how relaxing this process could be.  The way my hair pulls at its roots in my scalp at the moment when the steel of the scissors cuts through the handful of it being held by the barber...it’s a magical feeling that makes me wish I had The Lion King’s Mane.  I wanted this haircut to last three hours.

The barber was aware of this, and must have picked up that I was looking for reasons to not get up and leave, because he started massaging my scalp.  When he suggested that it would feel great if I let him rub some menthol into it, I said “uhhhm…” – which in parlor-speak meant “I helplessly agree.”  When he suggested that he could clip my beard, I said “uhhhm.”  When he asked me if I wanted a shoulder massage I said “aw hell yeah, why not?” 

And when he asked me to lie on my stomach so he could go to work on the “lamig” in my back, I thought “as long as he doesn’t pull down his pants, I trust him...”

I step out of the barbershop two hours and one thousand bucks later.

What is this power these barbers have over me?  He says “sit there,” and I sit there.  He says “tilt your head up,” and I do it.  He says “I will pour a vat of menthol and rub it onto the top of your head,” and I say “go for it!”  This total stranger not only owns me for the two hours I am under his spell, he also gets to decide how I am going to look for the next thirty days.

Why?  Because I trust him.

The Super Secret Law of the barbershop, restaurants, and public transportation: Trust does not have to be earned, it is awarded at our convenience.

There are people I’ve known half my life who I would not trust to boil water.  I have close friends that I would never pass the ball to.  I have siblings who can suggest all they want, because I will never listen to their ideas.  I will not let my Dad pick what CD to play, because I don’t trust his musical sensibilities.  I am a control freak and a perfectionist who has organized and held auditions for parts as meaningless as “face in crowd”... 

And yet we all have in our lives a long line of complete strangers that we grant unquestioning confidence in.

Bus drivers: they’re professionals, right?  I mean, they DO have a license!  Does it really matter that this guy with only enough education to read (and ignore) a stop sign is piloting a ten-ton steel box with sixty lives at his mercy as he literally tries to make it fly over the highway?

Cab drivers: surely they know exactly where we’re going, right?  We can give him an address – any address – and then close our eyes so he can just wake us up when we get there.  And the meter, which looks like a clock because the numbers on it are rising every second, is probably industry-standard-legit, right?

On the Flipside, Jeepney drivers seem to implicitly trust all the passengers to pay before they get off.  And they trust that wherever you say you are getting off is in fact the truth, and that you would never think of shortchanging them.

When we choose to eat at a restaurant, we trust the cooks without question.  Sorry, are they Chefs?  If you say so.  As long as we believe that they all wash their hands and know what they are doing.  The waiters are going to be nice and get everything exactly right.  The busboys are going to clean all the tables we are eating on carefully and thoroughly - with that one scrap-rag of old underwear on the right hand and a near-empty spritz-bottle of what is probably only water on the left.

Listen, I worked at a McDonald’s.  I know all about the horrors we are capable of.  You trust us every day.  You trust us enough to complain about your food and return it to the kitchen knowing with absolute faith that we are going to “fix” whatever you say is wrong with it.

(We “fix it” alright.  Super Secret Special Sauce always makes up for the inconvenience, and it makes both the complaining customer and the irritated kitchen staff very very happy indeed.)

We trust the random traffic cop when we ask for directions.  We trust the Bank Guard with his rusty shotgun and six shells to fight off machine-gun toting robbers.  We trust village security guards to keep the bad guys out.  We trust the mall guards to check the trunks of cars for any signs of a bowling ball with a candle on it.

We let the plumber and the cable guy deep into the house – all the way to our bedrooms – and we personally show him where everything is!  We even show him where one might gain entry into the house without coming through the door...

We let random guys in nice white coats put their fingers in places where only our own fingers should go.  We let them flash a light down our personal abysses just because he says he was trained for it.  It must be their expensive haircuts.

When a priest says something about life, he is “obviously” drawing this wisdom from actual experience.  My personal favorite part is when he gives sex and marriage advice.  When the doctors at hospitals insist that we need that six-figure procedure if we want to live, we take out a loan.  We trust that we need all those pills and that the side effects are negligible...because the other eleven pills in our three-page prescription are there to cover for it.

The Super Secret Law of the signed document and Raffle Promos:  If you can show a signature on an official looking document, it MUST be for real.  And If you dangle a reward, not only is trust immediate, cooperation is complete as well.

If all we need to do for a one in a million chance to win this new Honda City is to give you all our information...we will do it.  Even The Batman might write down his complete name, address, contact number, and a detailed map to the Batcave just because it is required on a form.

Scammers, anglers, internet hackers, Nigerian bankers, Bill Gates, terminally ill children who love to email, and multilevel marketers ...all of them know this Law by heart!  Do Forever Living Products really last forever...?

The Super Secret Law of salvation as the ultimate currency:  If you can dangle any form of salvation, you can own my soul!

I trust when there is a reward.  I trust when I really have no choice – or rather, am too lazy to choose something else.  I trust when it is convenient.  I trust complete strangers because they are supposed to be professionals who can do things I cannot.  I trust drivers because the alternative is to walk home.  I trust my boss because he promised me that the company is growing and that there is a big office waiting for me.  This time next year, he says, I will be sitting in my corner office with a view of the bay...

It is truly sobering to realize that I can choose to trust anyone at anytime – it does not really have to be earned from me!  I just make a (lazy) decision, and suddenly I am sleeping soundly while a complete stranger has a razor pressed against my exposed neck.

Wait, that’s a good thing, right?

I can keep it this simple then:  I can simply trust everyone until they let me down.  And when they let me down, I will give them a few more chances.  I will stop living by the paradigm that only lets me give credit where credit is due!  I will stop thinking that trust, love, and respect can actually be “wasted on the unworthy” – if they want it from me, all they have to do is receive it.  Love, respect, credit - People are always asking for it, and no matter how much they actually get, they don't realize they are already getting it:

Can you imagine how lucky we are to be in a system so flawed that we can get credit first (hired from nothing but an impressive padded resume and a photoshopped profile pic) and have the luxury of earning it after - IF WE CHOOSE TO...?  A company that hires me will have paid me about three months worth of salary before they finally realize that I am completely and utterly inept at my job.  They pay me that much before they find out they can’t trust me anymore – what a sweet deal that is!  Trusted first, earned (or not) later!

We get credit for our potential.  Rookie professional athletes and their multimillion dollar contracts, the carpenter you contracted to fix your kitchen for the next two weeks, the man you fall in love with...all we really have to do is fulfill this promise called potential.  Or not, because there will always be a fair amount of messing up - and most problems arise when I have a different definition from the people around me regarding the "potential" I was supposed to achieve - but I can shrug, apologize, take the money, and run.

The Super Secret Law of Michelle Pfieffer’s Love:  Everyone starts out with an A, and it is up to us to lose it.

It’s great that nobody really knows who I am till much much later, but I can get credit for being worth every penny and every second right NOW.  It’s like this gift called Life – nobody deserves it, nobody earned it, but we all start out with it – and we have complete control over what to do with it.

So when you're not too busy asking for trust, love, respect, and credit, maybe you can shut your mouth, open your eyes, and just take it.  By the Grace of God and this gift called Life, it's already there.

The alternative is to live in a box experimenting and collating data to wait for complete proof of ability, reasons for faith, and guarantees of success and happiness.  Lived this way, our lives end on deathbeds where we know everything but experienced nothing.

It’s time to stop holding on to my love and saving it for the people who deserve it.  I don’t deserve to live, but here I am.  Eddie Vedder said it best:  “He still gives his love, just gives it away, and the love he receives is the love that is saved.”

Trust is love.  Give it away!  Be naive!  Be the toddler who wanders into traffic chasing after a ball, and you will see firsthand that all the cars will stop and everyone will make sure you are unhurt.  Don’t bother asking the barber to break out some curriculum vitae and a scrapbook of headshots – just let him cut your damn hair and maybe put menthol on your scalp!

You are out on a limb, and I am holding out my hand from the edge.  You are heavy and I am rail-thin.  You have no choice.  Take my hand.  You will feel safer.  You will be happier...or dead anyway.  So trust me.

I Am...Spiderman?

I was talking to a really good Friend of mine about writing something more “mainstream” for a change, like a movie review or a celebrity interview.

“You should interview Me,” my Friend beams, “as I am quite famous, you know.”

“Oh my God,” I exclaimed as the lightbulb lit up, “You are so right!”

The beauty of this idea is that while He is undeniably famous, He is actually not that well-known.  I could do everyone a service by shining a light on him, so we met up one midnight in one of His Chapels, and in the guise of an interview, I had a conversation with my World Famous Divine Friend and Teacher.  (Feel free to rephrase and say “I had a hallucination,” if that makes it more acceptable to you.) 

He goes by many names, and does not particularly prefer one over the other, but for the purpose of brevity, He asked that I refer to Him simply as “HIM” – or his middle initial “H” for short.

I thought I’d ask him about Loneliness, but H proceeded to talk about ostriches, elephants, and Spiderman.

(The excerpted conversation that follows was laden with expletives – mostly His – so I censored it using words like “stuff,” “heck,” “stinkers,” and “freaking” as replacements.  My words are boldfaced.)

HIM:  Hey, what brings you down here past midnight?

ME:  Ah nothing much, it's nice and rainy and it's cool up in my room, but it got kinda lonely without someone to enjoy the coolness with.

H:  So you came down here to snuggle?

M:  Haha, not unless you wanna do me a favor and turn into a woman right now.  I was just walking around and I wondered what you were up to.

H:  You asking Me? I'm always up to something.  I am up to a LOT, my friend.  Like, right now, I'm about to put in this Leonardo DiCaprio Collection DVD that this nice Muslim Lady dropped off this afternoon for... so you just wanna hang out or did you want to talk?

M:  Well...actually I was thinking about loneliness and was hoping to get your take on it.  There was a mention of it on a recent entry in God Calling, and in my single most important religious experience, it seemed to be one of the key themes... I keep running into what I am trying to understand as Divine Loneliness...?

H:  Well "Divine" says it all, buddy, that stuff belongs to Me, and only Me.  You can FEEL lonely, but you ain't built to BE lonely...

M:  But I thought I was supposed to sort of experience it, this Divine Loneliness - you know, to get to know You...?

H:  You got it backwards kid.  I'm the one who gets to be Lonely - and exercise this other thing called Divine Restraint - so you stinkers can get to know each Other.  ...(Loneliness is) something We have to go through - but it's not where you stay.  Like Silence ...I get to live in it, so you know where to find Me...but you, you're built to communicate, so you don't have to live here all your life.  Feel free to stay awhile, but know that you have a home away from this home, eh?  This is just where we start, see?  Remember, we all start out alone - especially Me, I had nothing and nobody to relate with.  So what are we doing during this alone time?

M:  ...Getting to know our Selves.

H:  Right, you got no one else, so all you got to do is get to know your Self...then you figure things out, you discover stuff about you and what you can do.  You go, HEY, I didn't know this about Me... It's kinda like Spiderman when he got bit by that radioactive spider.  He gets really sick that night, then he wakes up the next morning and starts figuring out that he has some powers - and what does he do?  He fidgets with it and explores himself to see what he is capable of, right?

M:  Right.  So I'm Spiderman...

H:  ...And I'm the Radioactive Spider, and you just got bit, fool!  (But) you're not Spiderman yet, you're still that stupid kid Peter Parker trying to shoot webs with his fingers, or however the heck that works.

M:  They come out of his wrists.

H:  Whatever, you don't even have to know how it works, you just know that you can shoot webs just by thinking it.  You can't even tell anyone, coz they just won't understand.  Even I don't know how that works. 

M:  Well I guess he has these small pores or holes in his wrists.

H:  Does he?  Have a hole in his wrists???  Freak Me, this Spiderman analogy just got cooler, coz you know who else has a hole in his wrists?  ME.  Lookit these babies...

M:  Yeah but only blood comes out of your wrist-holes - and yours are kinda gross...

H:  Hey shut up, LOVE comes out of these!  And what exactly was I supposed to do with webs back then anyway?  You want I should web up a bunch of Roman Guards for kicks?  How would that work out on a Bible Story you read to a six-year old?  Besides, what good are webs if I got no skyscrapers to swing from?  And, you know what, I always did wonder about this stuff:  after Spiderman tarzans himself through your city block, who has the God-Awful job of taking down all his little web-vines to dispose of them?

M:  I dunno, I always thought they just kinda melted away or turned to dust...?

H:  NO.  Some poor schmuck that the government pays minimum wage has to follow Spiderman around in his P.O.S. pick-up truck, with a machete and a large trash bin... or else the city turns into a freaking web-jungle.  

M:  Maybe he just needs a lighter, you know, just light the bottom of the web-vines and let the fire burn it upwards till they're gone...?

H:  Right, coz obviously Spiderman's webs are flammable.  You know what happens when crooks find out about that little factoid?  They start arming themselves with lighters and cans of Lysol.  No, those babies are NOT flammable...

M:  Why are we talking about Spiderman?

H:  Coz you're Spiderman, buddy.  Look, once he discovers his powers and has had some practice and knows how to use them all - let's say at this point that he finally really knows himself - what do you think Spiderman does next?

M:  Well, he goes out to fight crime of course - Uses his powers for good...

H:  Or he can use it to rob banks and make out with his best friend's girlfriend, it doesn't matter to Me either way.  What matters to Me is that you don't freaking stay in your room once you know who you are and what you can do, right?  What are you gonna do, just climb your own walls all day?  You cant!  So, ME, for example, once i was done exploring my Self, I had no choice but to put my Self out there - every possible aspect of Me.

M:  Aha.  So I have all these...what we call Others...so I could get to know Me more...?  So what comes next, I realize that I am all these Others?

H:  Something like that.  First, you explore your Self - for My Sake, and yours.  Then you get to know the Others, find out what they can do, who they are, what they are like - for My Sake, and yours.  See, it's all about getting to know Me, and I can't know All of Me till I know All of the Others, and I can't know the Others until you discover the stuff in your Self that you have to use so you know How To Be...

M:  So wait, all this is because you wanna know Us...?

H:  No man, I want you to know Me, so I can know Me.  Remember, I'm the lonely guy.  (Expletive), I already know all of you from looking at you all day, but I need you to learn how to See Me, so you can tell Me about Me.

M:  I'm so confused...that's a lot of "Me's" in one sentence...

H:  You gotta be really lonely to say "Me" that many times in a five-second span, kid.  I'm telling you man, you don't know lonely like I do.  Like I’ve been saying, I'm the only one allowed to be lonely around here.  You guys, you have each other - just walking around and getting in each others' faces.  Me, I'm largely invisible, forgotten, put off for later.  You ain't gonna see Me if you ain't looking for Me.  And you aren't exactly coming to visit me if you've never met Me.  You don't know My Name, My Address, how I like my coffee...

M:  How do you like your coffee?

H:  I dont drink coffee.  Can you imagine if I did?  ...you think Birds of Paradise isn't a messed-up enough plant?  If you think I went a little nuts making the ostrich and the elephant, imagine what I would come up with if I was pumped up with caffeine...

M:  I always did wonder about the ostrich, what is that all about?

H:  Well, if you must know, I got carried away and made some really big fishes back then, and one day I thought "who the heck is gonna eat all this fish?" - so I thought about making a really big bird to eat em all, but then I forgot to make the wings bigger so the stinkers just ended up running around on land and putting their heads in the ground looking for fish, dumb birds.  

So anyway I thought "screw that" and decided to make them even bigger so that they could just eat anything, so I made some dinosaurs.  Then - I forget what it was, I think one of the Stars burned out and I got distracted for a bit - but when I turned to put some wings on the dinos, I found that I forgot to turn the fire from the stars down a notch and it melted the ice caps and everything freaking went underwater... and the fish ended up eating the dinosaurs.

M:  Ahaha!  Sick twist!  What about elephants?  What's the story there?

H:  Well I was gonna make a new snake, then I remembered how much I freaking hate snakes... but I didn't wanna scrap what I had already started, so since I was also working on a giant mouse at the time, I just put em together... But hey, the elephant works out.  you can ride it, he's a nice guy, and the snake-slash-nose is goddamned amazing.  I just forgot to teach em how to jump, coz I was seriously considering turning their ears into wings.

M:  Hmm, wait, so you're lonely and you do all this because you're using your power to create, so these aspects of you - the ostriches and fish and elephants and Us - can experience each Other, and you therefore get to know your Self even more, is that right?

H:  Oh, yeah what was my point there?  Ah yes, Divine Loneliness - that's Mine.  You can visit, but you can't stay.  You can start with Me, alone - out of necessity coz you gotta get to know your Self - but once you're out there fighting crime, you get to be with all the Others, alone together.  Me?  I have to sit here and wait for those of you who are smart enough to figure out how to use the Power that includes Me in all the glory of your "alone-togetherness."

M:  This "Power to include You" - are you talking about Love?

H:  Love, making love...I don't even have a proper name for it.  All I can tell you is that you can't use this Power on your Self, by your Self.  You need an Other.  Remember that stuff in the Bible about "whenever two or more of you are gathered, there shall I be...?"

M:  Yeah.  Well, you already have me here, maybe I'll just wait for that crazy old lady who comes here a lot...

H:  Hah, good luck with that one.  She can be burning in hell, and she would still be on her knees praying for the fire to stop.  She comes in here praying for world peace and I'm like, "Lemme get this straight, you want me to fix everyone else in the world so that you all get along...?  Get along to do what?"

M:  Haha, and she's telling you we're all broken - that all these aspects of you need fixing...

H:  ...and she doesn’t?  Besides, just once - JUST ONE TIME - I'd like her to come in here and ask for something FOR HER.  ...Frankly I don't care if you all get along or not, as long as you get to know yourselves.  If you wanna make war, that's fine, that means you're exerting some effort to get to know each other's strengths and weaknesses.  If you wanna make love, it's the same process anyway.  But damn, instead of coming in here and telling Me what to do (about them), why don't you tell me about something YOU want to do?"

M:  I don't think she wants to make ostriches and elephants...

H:  Yeah, that's why I want to hear from her that she knows what she wants and what she can do!

M:  Have you told her all this?

H:  Dude, this hag is so busy praying, she never freaking listens to Me.  ...See, that’s why I like you, you actually listen when you come here.

M:  Well, I'm Silent, so I didn't come here to talk.  By the way, you mentioned something about Silence being the same as Loneliness?  That it's where you live, and I can't live with you or something?

H:  It's the same as Me dying on that lousy cross.  It's My Life, so actually you don't have to live it.  You don't have to die on a cross, you do not have to live in Silence, and you do not have to BE Lonely.  These are the places I inhabit, and it's really nice of you to visit, but it's not where you are supposed to be, and it's not who you are.  

Use your powers to build your own Home, and then invite Me over.  That talky twat Liz Gilbert said something to the effect of "God dwells within you as YOU" - so once you're done being with Me, I'd like you to freaking BE YOU, alright? 

...You visit Me in Empty Silence so I can fill you up, and I entertain you as a visitor of My Loneliness, to fill Me up.  But eventually you have to keep moving - all of you - while I Am the One who remains Still and Permanent.  So I will remain Lonely, and you will return to your world to talk to the Others.

M:  Okay, but I'm really not in a talking mood right now.

H:  That's cool, coz I really just wanna hang out and enjoy your company some more - have you seen "The Departed"...?

M:  Yeah but I wouldn’t mind seeing it again.

H:  Cool, but get your feet off my goddamned altar, that's just freaking rude.