Human
adventurers meaning no ill will, will sometimes bring with them to
foreign lands ravages of nature which devastate the populations of
their vanquishments. So George, harbouring no vengeance, awoke one
fine morning a week after his inestimable visitors had departed to
depart with the contents of his stomach in a rather forceful manner,
which left poor Mottles rather taken aback as George collapsed back
to an irritable stupor. George lay in oblivion for a mere
twenty-four hours although eternity does not mind the clock, the
latter half being in a copious diaphoresis, in which his mind was
beset by visitations from tenuous dimensions some which stuck in his
mind for days after he recovered. As George regained some composure
the following morning and was able to light a kindling in his cold
stove and warm up a delectable broth, his sentience was unabashedly
worsted by the seraph of an ancestor who had been prominent in his
delirium.
This
seraph who had in his own words, been floating around the universe
much like the detritus from a resentful supernova since his earthly
departure, had come to impart bits of his icky bicky spirit unto his
descendants more for his own gratification than for any altruistic
considerations. But anyhow, he had told George realms of fables
about his own and George's past, about the rather tedious
relationship which had developed between their kin and the god
almighty, and their search for a new land where they could be
ostracized for their sinful nature without the constraints of
totalitarian governments. They had come to this land of virgin soil
to build their little wooden church with uncomfortable stately pews
and keep their nonheathen convictions free of adultery. And so it
had been that George as a little boy had been taught the true way,
the uprighteous way, the way to heaven and the everlasting life. And
the god almighty would make mince meat of him if he ever so much as
thought of straying from the path of total servitude.
But George
had not been a good lad. He had the knack of asking the darnedest
questions. The leather strap did little to quell his enthusiasm for
shameless knowledge. The elders and the revered pastor found no
pleasure in George's flights of fancy and so at the modest age of
sixteen, when he was found hiding in the woodshed with a paperback
copy of “The Catcher in the Rye” he was convicted of being a
menace to the purity of his compeers and banished to the outer world
to live in sin in duplicity with the heathens till fire and brimstone
could take his soul forevermore. Even his upright parents could not
see their way past this unremorseful dilemma and turned their other
cheeks when George bid them all a brave farewell. So George had
trudged off with a few clothes and not too many dollars to make a new
life for himself.
Resentful
supernovas, or resentful seraphs, or even Georges for that matter
whether resentful or not, can have a difficult time coming to terms
with the staunch biddings of the fantasies of nature which have
guided their conquests of a self identity out of the chaos of our
universes building blocks. So George lay in bed one night and said
out loud “There is no god,” and nothing happened. The devil
didn't come dancing in his head with corruptions of fiddling duels or
hot women, no, everything was humdrum. But time went on and the
feeling that there must be something significant in the spiritual
history of humankind would not leave him forsaken to the fervours of
capitalism. George found a lowly job in his non-diplomaed state but
not having the social skills to fan wangle his way through legions of
the more aggressive sorts he sort of stayed at the bottom of his
calling which gave him latitude to make the local library his second
home where after several years he knew the covers of most books by
heart having read bits and pieces from many of them, and the kind
librarian had taken to ordering in armfuls from the main branch
downtown dealing with everything spiritual and philosophical, some
with a slightly pagan bent, which George would devour in no time
flat. And so it was that George being not a trifle disillusioned with
with the construction techniques of fine furniture for the
well-heeled, turned his mind inwards to the disciplines of sages and
mystics not to mention yogis and began a journey into the depths of
his noggin where there lay a wonder world of adventure far beyond the
confines of condescension. He had few friends, that being non,
although he got on well with most people in the work-a-day world and
even developed a sort of humour about life, but he could just not
bring himself to trust the self importance of anyone desirable of an
indelible bound through the vagaries of social stratagems, many of
which had befuddled his childhood with their destinism.
The
ancestral seraph had left his mark, although time obliterated the
details of a lively encounter which may or may not have had a footing
in the less walked corridors of reality. Georges memories of his
past life returned. They were not so scary, they actually made a bit
of sense. People were people and no one was perfect. We were all
flawed perfections of humanity striving to whatever humans strive
for. George began to feel he wanted to be a part of it.
(To be
continued)
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