A man approaches. A fearsome gaunt figure stands ready on what appears to be an innocent wooded path. A fabulous lightsaber is unsheathed, casting its perimeter in shadow. It’s getting dark, and the man doesn’t hesitate to dress only in an Irish cable-knit sweater, Lee jeans, a leather vest handmade in Pakistan, and leather sneakers. The messenger of light beckons him to stop or face sudden death.
“Hey Charlie, can we stop dramatizing? We’ve only been doing this for, what, a little over 30,000 years?” says the man in the sweater.
“I know, but it’s my job, you know.” says the man with the sword still flaming.
“Can you turn that thing off, Rudolph? Right! I come here every ten years or so to see if I can walk the garden path, what are you doing in the meantime? I mean, Gabriel kicked us out and sent you here forever.” “. since, he cannot do his own dirty work. Destroyer of cities and big mistakes, remember those giant chickens, I think they were called dinosaurs, well you remember it took Gabe over fifty years to skewer that batch and fricassee them. Only if the Colonel was alive.”
“Why do you go on about time, you know it doesn’t exist for us.”
“Well, I prefer it, it keeps my head straight, but to the point you’re going to let me in this time!”
“Didn’t you just ask me that just ten minutes ago?”
“No, that was ten years ago!”
“Oh right, I never quite got that, it’s a difficult concept for me.”
“Do you agree with the time?”
“Nope,…!”
“So why did you accuse me of being here ten minutes ago, in that statement you acknowledge the existence of time or else you wouldn’t use it in your accusation?”
“I was only using it in the temporary point of view…”
“The prefix of temp as in tempo, or temporal refers to time once again, are you a bit confused, old man?”
“No, you know what I mean…”
“Just because I ate the apple doesn’t mean I know everything. But since time is irrelevant as you tell us, you know damn well you’re going to let me through eventually and it’s all honky dory so why can’t it be that weather?” now. If all moments are continuous in the same space and time, why isn’t the moment you let me through not the same as this single moment we both know is all time? Including the time you let me in, which is the same as now!”
“Okay, go come in.”
“Thank you Charlie.”
“Okay, don’t mention it, say hi to Pops for me, I hope he doesn’t get too mad at me.”
“Hey, he told them to serve me anyway, right! Remember the war and all, how that statement wasn’t good for everyone.”
The man in the sweater made his way through the dark woods, finding the right path. The woods led to a garden path blocked by a high retaining wall with no gate.
“Sheep tricks won’t work on a shepherd, now for real!” the wall had a place where an opening was cut into the wall at a forty-five angle making the opening invisible to anyone looking at it from the front, but becomes visible when viewed from an angle.
“Eden, it’s looking a lot better than Baghdad lately. Now where’s that tree?”
“Stop, who goes there. Everyone is forbidden to enter, because certain death will follow!”
“Dad, get off the soap box, it’s okay to be brief, leave that trick for Dorothy and her friends.”
“Spoiled little brat, how’s the world of basketry treating you?” Say Yahweh.
“Look, it’s not basket weaving, it’s syncratic weaving, making all the coincidences come together to lead people to certain inalienable truths that…”
“Basketry, when are you going to get a real job? When are you going to be the tyrant of your own universe? God knows I need a break…”
“Dad, we’re going to go through this again, look, I’m here for that tree…”
“The tree I forbade you to eat from, it is nothing sacred, with the help of that astral-minded meddler, you were already tricked by that woman into eating from the first tree, where is that being now anyway…”
“She’s at home taking doses of Prozac, she’s had a bad deal about the whole thing, man, I preferred the days of Sodom and Haight Ashbury, now they were good drugs, man, that shit makes me hunt some sheep, ’cause she no longer It’s helpful. Can we sleep with women for a change, or are you still not talking to Best a Mom?
“Don’t mention the name of that infernal woman in my…”
“I guess that answers my question, look dad, I buried the ax a long time ago, though part of my brain says it should have been in yours, but it’s over, I learned a few things from those guys down there. You keep interfering .con, Christ is sick of patching up your shit, man, seven days was a bit of a rush job, hey!
“Don’t go through with it…”
“Just a C on your college boards, hey, good thing you gave those beings some intelligence, but too bad you gave them your psychosis too, some of them are real greedy bastards. When are you going to realize that?” happiness does not come? of how many black holes and stars you can Nova, but from the inside, Best a Ma feels a little separated from you…”
“Don’t mention…”
“What, Best a ma, Best a MA, Best a Ma…”
“So you want the tree, I already gave it to Chipendale to make a beautiful side table.”
“Oh, get out of my way…”
“But…”
“Or we can shine a bright light on you and you can play with your shadow, Hey Luce, are you there?”
Adam pulls out a giant magnetic light and shines it on his father, casting dark shadows on the wall. From the one on the left appears a mischievous person, of the same height and complexion as Yahweh, but with sharper angles that cause his gaunt face to end in the beard and mustache of Mephistocles.
“Ah, Adam, it’s been a long time since Sodom, how are the ladies? Are you still playing with those sheep, the cliff and all? A little inappropriate..”
“Let go, you two are so inept in the area of endowment that you had to search the earth to find a woman who would be pleased with the two and a half inches that you two could muster. dreams, hey, I think you put the truth in advertising, politics and used cars. Talk about wild fish stories…”
“I see you haven’t accomplished much, nephew! Are you still running around with those apes?”
“Hey, wasn’t that you I saw a few years ago doing the funky tango in that green jumpsuit!”
“Hey J, how about you and I found a character from Job and tormented him a bit…”
“Son, now I mean whatever is best for you…”
“Best interest, I was very happy picking berries and painting on the cave walls until you took me away from all that, just because I looked up at the sky and asked why, to tell you the truth I think I was just muttering something in response to indigestion , and I’m going to this garden just to get kicked out so you can rip a rib out of me so you can transform him into someone who gets a bum deal and skewers on Prozac and forces, yeah, Luc, to play with the sheep after yelled at me for no reason and…”
“You’re done!”
“Yes!”
“Okay…”
“Now where is that tree…”
The man in the Irish cable-knit sweater walks to the center, leaving the dynamic duo alone. After walking around for a bit, he hears the strange melody of Look On the Bright Side of Life and enters the clearing when he sees a man in a tree house singing the verse. “Life is a piece of shit, when you look at it…”
“Oh, excuse me, I didn’t see that coming, would you like some tea? Wow, you’re looking good lately! Did I ever thank you for taking care of me in that ocean, or did I? Well, thanks again, I always have.” I prefer the name San Cristóbal, so since you have been, I always knew you would come.
“So this is where you’ve been hanging out?”
“No, I just knew that today was the day and I wanted to go back to the place of our first meeting, you know that your father has only good intentions, it’s just that Sophia is just left alone up there. Caught between here and there, Very simple thinker, that’s your problem, you can’t think in circular motions of events. Always point A ends up at point B, very lonely that one is.”
“Any place for them in that tree house of yours?”
“Of course they just have to figure it out for themselves, is that incarnation of ours writing that story?”
“I am pretty sure.”
In an ugly little house on a sinking street that leaves the house settling a little to the right and a little more to the left is a man named Christopher, who at that moment, not when you’re reading this but at the moment when that he was writing this as the one where they’d asked if he was in but then as we’ve seen above the time for them or that matter no one really exists so it’s safe to say this writing was done light years away from now on. or just a few moments ago, but this reference is inappropriate because it uses a faulty discourse that refers to a time that itself is non-existent…
“Get on with it” resounds in chorus from the heavens…
“Yeah, we just have to get him to hug her.”
“How do we do that? The only words she said to him were ‘Liar!’ And that was the end of it all.”
“I don’t remember her adding that he was a minor little psychopomp with a mania problem, I think that was her exact words.”
“Never the less, we need him to hold her. Did you ever learn anything from Mercury hanging on that doorstep?”
“We can try dressing her up as a cow, which won’t be too hard, she’s been eating a lot of chocolate and Ben and Jerry’s. A little depressed, you know?”
“A cow?”
“Yeah, one of Mercury’s tricks. He hides a cow in the cave and pretends it’s really a woman what he’s hiding from one of his wives so that when she finds out she never knows, the best thing is he’s really doing it to her.” tickle some udders. Quite a nifty trick I must say, but he likes cows. I prefer milkmaids myself and a little butter for my pancakes and a tall drink of milk…”
“Isn’t that a bit of incest?”
“Now how did you populate the world again, Adam?”
“Enough of that, those other cro-mags weren’t intellectually stimulating.”
“Well I was planning on stopping things before they got that far, hell I’m supposed to marry old man Broad.”
“You old snake, Christ, come here and let’s get started. Do you think we can get rid of that hormone and bleeding with women and go back to the stork, I think they’d really like that, I’d really like that. For once, it would be nice to know for what are they yelling at me?”
“Sure.”
“Okay.”
So Adam and Christ went into limbo and put Sophia in a cow costume, took Yahweh there, kept things from getting ugly, and stuck their names on the family tree of life with the rest of humanity and the land species. Yahweh took comfort and stopped chasing golden cows, Sophia was able to think in circles and is now competing on the Nascar circuit, Jesus enjoys solitary walks in the Jersey Pine Barrens and dances at night at the local pub, Adam knows what he’s getting. . He yelled for a change, Eve has put the Tampax company out of business along with prozac and is happy just being, and the stork is very busy once again.