READING THE MATCHBOOK COVERS

268. READING THE MATCHBOOK COVERS:

"Men are all alike and so are all their Gods – I found that out a long time ago – all that vengeance and anger violence and retribution and the killing of the masses that goes with it all and I never know why but the only thing I’ve ever gotten from this stupid world is sadness – the sadness that comes with it : that absolutist bullshit crap about men killing men for a cause and men taking it upon themselves to rule over others with the solid stipulations of rightness AND righteousness too and the straight-line direct message from the Gods stuff by which we apparently murder and maim each other and it’s all a direct link to stupidity and madness nothing else : I’ve been sickened over time and over again by things I’ve seen and heard : the stupid Spaniards who put a bull in a bullring – first unloading him blindfolded from the rear of a truck – after dousing his horns with gasoline and then setting him free after the horns have been lit into flames – stupid sucking bastards these famed Christians are – and then cheering as they watch the bull rave and rant to its death in some forlorn corner of the arena – WHAT PRIDE’S IN THAT for a God OR His creation you’d have to tell me that – or the American Appalachian hunters who select the dog with the least succesful treeings for the afternoon and hang him from a tree in glee and I’m sickened by the sadness around me : animals like corpses along decimated highways left to die and rot after being massacred by cars and the time a thousand small frogs in some post-rainstorm frenzy were crossing Route 6 at dusk right by the ‘Camptown Races’ Stephen Foster sign by Wyalusing Rocks and the cars going by just ran them over by the hundreds – smashed frogs and guts all over the roadway – what kind of God would forget this stuff in the equation and not kill off Mankind – if even as merely a gesture of His own righteousness about His own work : how can this be accepted how can any source of justice be found coming from a mess such as this - meandering millions of evil idiots crawling and crowding over the very globe they’re ruining and NOT A WORD BACK in either direction for this God or that God nowhere and Mankind in its eyes harbors resentment and hatred and cannot then fathom its own reasons why RUINATION is its wont REVOLUTION its aberration as the thunder roils and rolls overhead the great pealing of perfection breaking back over itself and every God story has its own ending : while we ‘wait’ for Salvation (again) or fire up the maddening guns for to make RIGHT the world in the WAYS of GOD – hang-dog message-mentor that it is – there is no meaning but rot and there is no passage but the one to DEATH and to BACK from whatever oblique blackness we once came from EMITTED like atoms spit forth atomically and clinking to the darkest sides of some magicians swift DNA – ‘we are monkeys not men and we prove it and then…’ SO I’ll mention once more – ALL men are the same and so are their Gods" and as he was talking to me I was sitting up in a chair reading the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius which reading he’d interrupted to tell me what he’d just told me - based I guessed on the premise that he saw that I was reading about Gods : and I might as well have been since they were all alike – Pagan Animistic or Religious doesn’t matter – and I wanted to harken back to where I’d been and tell him I’d been there and visited and seen and lived the times KNOWING FULL WELL that all it would do would be to certify back to him and confirm that he was right in his meager and raging opinion but WHAT HAD I TO WAGER no sum worth anything : and the thunder overhead pealed again and the thin stick of lightning jagged lit its jagged way down ‘God’s saber this ? God’s diminishing sword?’ I questioned myself : "for Pete’s sake" I said to him "why don’t you stop your harrowing outrage and get down to business here anyway – like what the matter really is is you’ve got nothing to do and too much time to do it in so your brain is breaking things down way too much : people don’t give a shit about that stuff – if they’re told to ‘live like this’ they do it and if they’re told to ‘go to church’ they do it or repent or pray and seek the God of their likeness – notice I said likeness not choice – why is it every man’s God in the end comes out looking just as they do anyway ? which is to say as sadly humanoid as possible?" and my point was (even though no one was listening) fairly much the same as his had been : Mankind are dolts the message is sadness and ALL THINGS LIKE THIS DO PASS AWAY - - (but hell I said to myself I could have read all that on a matchbook cover for what it all was worth)….