Christmas Eve, 2008
Vientiane, Laos – I love writing to you. I love writing. I love you. Writing love. How many ways can you say it? Even though sometimes…well…a lot of the time, actually, many, many, many of you never write back. Like sometimes it is with me and God. Sometimes I'm too buy. Channel’s open, message sent, God just can’t get a ‘come back’.
Nevva Miiiind. UP2U.*
You can’t hear what the other end is saying if your mike is open all the time. Same same combat. You remember me asking Father Paul about that. If you’re manufacturing prayer all the time, how can you hear…got the time and space inside your head to catch the drift. And what would that be, once you caught it?
I can tease about it, tease Jesus, poke Buddha in the ribs, because Lord knows I’m just his simple-minded servant, and I believe doesn’t hold it against me. I learned that a long time ago, without a traditional vision quest. Now, Allah, I leave alone. Allah, the Aliens, and The Honorable Lewis Farrakhan.
And why do we have to keep bugging Creator with our pitiful prayers when what they said wuz…Man already knows what you’re gonna say before you say it. Already knows already what you’re lining up to ask for, juuuuust like Santa. Everything going on in the world, he’s got time for you and your pitiful request?**
Well, if there’s a sender, then who’s the listener? They also say it works, and they also say you’ve got to watch what you pray for.
So then, what’s the point of it? Can you just carry on with what you were doing…isn’t everybody doing the lord’s work, anyway? Makes you wonder sometime, doesn’t it? Not just the Mormons, who’ll tell you they are. Like the dancers in the arbor, you’ve seen those schools of minnows, all moving together in sync.
Down on the street, four stories, two people load their wheelchair-bound elder into the back of a truck. Three blocks down, the workers on a new building sleep under a mosquito net on a 4x8 sheet of plywood, laundry on a line, the building skeleton their home.
Hospitals, alleyways, nursing homes, refugee camps are all full of the sick and infirm, the homeless, the displaced, the unfortunate sufferers. Can you say ignorance is its cause? All those souls, moving through time, in their place, in their skin.
Just a note here: yes, it says ‘former writing professor’, and that’s true. And you might wonder why my work is so full of technical errors, like I know they’re there, some of it, but you don’t have to be so technical. This is like a conversation, ok?
You made me loo…I lost my whole train of thought. Father Paul…Allah…just like Santa, just like Santa. Dance to the tree. Go back to the title. What did you come here for?
-end
*copyright 2006.
**use of ‘man’ and ‘he’ in the generic sense.
