SOMETHING LIKE THIS SHOULD NEVER HAVE HAPPENED

267. SOMETHING LIKE THIS SHOULD HAVE NEVER HAPPENED (a story of misunderstanding; 1998):

There are moments when conversation stops all time and the only recourse one has is to listen and review - like the cowbells coming across the field - tolling deftly from the neck of every cow leftover lame vital and what-not - and a part of us each knows that reality is real while another part recognizes the fact of its fiction and its subjectivity within all the made-up attributes of a sad and sorry life : the guy with the hunched shoulder rolling down the street with a bag filled with debris - light or weightless things he's picked up from along the way to try and redeem for small change as if already the misinterpretation of redemption can work in his favor or be put to use for his benefit : we pile on meanings one after the other and as wrong as they get to be so the deeper they're piled - skylights and mass parades - thousands of fools out on the street with a regular and unceasing levity yelling and screaming and laughing for something else - lines and acres of girls in small shirts at the curb with all their boys and boyfriends - a gaggle of serfs - hanging drunk at their necks and the color guard of police and fire and mayors and priests walks by with their canes and brittle thoughts and wheelchairs and harbingers of things to come : death riots and fires for sure : and EVERY man at EVERY moment is making his or her own pure unfettered eternal and unceasing definition about all things - "And Jacob once the tomb was empty what else was there to do except believe in something miraculous and the bones anyway the bones never showed up and that was the simplest thing - all the authorities had to do if they wanted to stop this crazed band of nascent Christians was to produce some bones - in fact ANY BONES would have done - and disprove in their way the occurrence of which everyone spoke but nothing like that ever happened nothing of the sort occurred and they let it all keep running on and eventually PERFECTLY it fell into place into something and neither lions nor martyrdom nor slayings and killings and ostracism and outlawing could put a stop to it as it grew fingers and added doctrines and made its rules and credos and new beliefs over old beliefs and before it was too far on the everything about it had become everything else and political power and secular rule became its order of the day but JACOB again NONE of that would have happened if they didn't will it to and that's the run of the world today - that's what we're left with the remnants of all which occurred and every offshoot from that which still exists today is what we're still fighting over and there will be no loving end to anything of this sort but any fool who fights for God is fighting for a DEFINITION alone - that and nothing more can you understand that Jacob?" and Jacob said "why do you believe everything you read and what if it never happened like that ? what if this was all made up in say 719 and they added AD to it for credibility and the entire back-story of all mankind can be adduced to be fictitious and without any basis in reality - have you ever considered that - and perhaps you're nothing more than - as all of us - a captive complete and total to whatever they've told you occurred" : it was an endless story and the push and pull of all things is what kept us alive - now I won't go on to say this conversation was something I wanted to listen to ad infinitum BUT it was interesting enough and these people were characters in the way that fiction makes characters who embody concepts which the story needed and that's probably just as artificial as anything else since - using myself as an example - whatever I was told when I was young I've since later found out was wrong incorrect lies and crap the stuff like 'statesmen never lie cops are your friends the priest will help you do this for your own good' and a million more things I've wrestled with mentally but never talked over and (as I recall) the last friendly conversation I had with my father was as I drove him home from another of his problems and all the way home he talked about the moon and everything about the moon and who'd been there already and who really made it there first and what the Russians (he called them Russians not Soviets) were planning to do and it all made little sense to me because I didn't view the moon in his terms - as if it was some form of political real estate that someone had to inhabit just to show who was boss - and the entire framework of that thinking and that thought was bogged down in nothingness and we never got anywhere with that one : but anyway I'd have rather talked with him IF I HAD TO about the beauty of its light and the odd regularity of its passage and waxings and wanings and what it all meant for those before us and the eons of time it was seen from the sea by sailors with nothing else to do or see.