The Story of Jesus

At a certain moment in the evolution of the species the God of the whole universe decided to visit planet earth as a human, so as to solve the problem of evil. Being a plural entity, God commissioned one of his personalities to be born as a normal living person named Jesus.

Having chosen a small tribe of desert people called Israelites to be his special worshippers several millennia prior to this, it made sense for God to become a Jew, because they had a relationship. But Jesus wasn't a real religious guy. Instead, he began creating a lot of intensely awkward situations at public events, and this made him famous. Then he said something people really hated. He said that God had changed his mind.

Before God had been saying, "Humans can be a little soulless, but I'm going to really work on you guys in particular to make you more spiritual." Unfortunately it was a big disappointment. It turned out the Jews were the same as everybody else. So God wanted to try something new. Jesus said that God wasn't going to play favorites anymore. God doesn't like some people more than other people.

Jesus actually went so far as to say that God doesn't even prefer good people to bad people. In fact, the people who think they're good are the worst of all, because they are the most likely to treat other people as though they are bad. Jesus said, You have to treat every person you meet as if they are God.

Jesus said that if you want to stop secretly hating yourself, you have to stop secretly hating other people, especially the ones who hate you. Jesus said that you should give all your stuff away, everything, because owning things is a sad farce. Jesus said that society is not a pyramid, it's an organism.

Jesus was popular with poor people but unpopular with rich people. In the end he was executed for political reasons. In order for the normal world to keep going, people who think they are better than other people eventually have to get rid of the people who point out how wrong that is. Jesus said, Don't be afraid.

When he died, Jesus demonstrated that judging people is the same as killing them. First because you make yourself part of the killing machine. And second because you pretend that God doesn't live inside of the people you judge. So judging people is like killing them, and killing people is like killing God. When you kill God you get rid of your love.

Everybody does this, we can't stop ourselves because we're basically wild and that means being really scared of each other most of the time. Fortunately, several days after his death God brought Jesus back to life so that no one would have to feel bad about killing God. And then forty days later Jesus floated into the sky. He went home. Jesus said, Don't be afraid to go home.

Whom Does the Grail Serve?

For a few years I've been haunted by the tale of the Fisher King and the Holy Grail. I think the Fisher King reminds me of my dad, maybe that's why. The Fisher King was pierced through the hip by a spear and his wound could never heal. He sat every day on the banks of the river, fishing and waiting and dying, though death would never come.

As the Fisher King went on endlessly dying his kingdom was wasting away too. The land itself was suffering, there was a sickness in the earth. It was like ET and the flower. Leaves rotted on the trees, the air was grey. People felt uncomfortable. This went on for a long time.

But the Fisher King had a secret, for he was the keeper of the Holy Grail. He knew that when the right person came looking for the grail he would be healed. It was hard for him to feel too hopeful though, because he could only give the Grail to the person who asked the right question. Many came searching but all they ever asked was where to find it. He sent them away and continued fishing.

"Whom does the grail serve?" That is the required question. Of course no one ever asked it. Does any searcher stop to wonder if they can have what they are looking for? What if the thing you want you can't have? Would you continue searching?

The knights believed that the Grail was magic and that it would reveal itself to the worthiest person. Their quest was really a quest for their own identity, to discover their class and valorize their entitlement. They searched in vain because this is not the service of the Grail. Who knows what the Grail does? And who's asking?

An Old Saw is Good

Moment

Throw a lit match into a clean metallic ashtray. There is a moment before it extinguishes when the flame withdraws into the head of the match and disappears. It is the precise definition of an instant, that spell before the match goes out when the fire is missing.

But it is only an instant, brief and motionless, before the match raises its head slightly and exhales a thin, straight line of smoke that rises a clean inch into the air before it tangles and once again disappears. Below a pool of moisture forms, maybe a centimeter wide.

Product

Nearly Naked Woman

I had awoken one hour previously to the realization that I had ten minutes to dress myself, pack a bag and hail a cab if I had any hope of catching my train. I did it in fifteen. As I raced out the door Dalreen shouted at me, "You're in the newspaper!" "I know!" I shouted back.

I ran out to a bright hot morning sky and the street curiously shining. With fifteen minutes to departure I was standing at the end of the driveway, realizing that the cabbies had not in fact conspired to facilitate my dramatic dash to the station. I set my suitcase down on the unaccountably wet pavement and peered up Greenwood Ave.

I had forgotten my cellphone. I hurled myself inside to call a cab. "Somebody's in a rush!" Pat sang out. Back on the curb I tried to hail a cab from a different company just as my cab pulled up. What the hell did I think I was doing? We arrived at the train station with two minutes to spare. I did a hard sprint all the way to the gate, where I was told that I had just missed my train.

Half an hour later I was sitting in Tim Hortens a block away reading. I felt weary, bleary, smelly and hot. For all that, I had three hours and two cups of coffee between me and the next train and I wasn't unhappy. Then I looked up and discovered a woman wearing only a bra, very short shorts and sneakers standing right beside me.

I could see her very clearly, though with the reflective window pane between us I don't think she could see me. She was close, maybe three feet away, standing very still, typing into her phone. She didn't shift her weight, tilt her head or make any other small gesture. All that moved were her fingers and a few strands of hair around her face.

To say that she was beautiful would be wrong, though I think she would be generally regarded as one of the beautiful people. Her nose reminded me of my father's, but I don't think this was the only reason the total affect of her face struck me as fairly masculine. Whatever her appearance, I was deeply unprepared for the sudden proximity of her approximate nudity.

She stood against a concrete backdrop, standing in an alleyway in the financial district. In fact, she had no idea I was there, sitting so raggedly in such a stale atmosphere at a distance that could be measured in inches from her exquisite physical personage. Her skin was mahogany brown, a perfect, ungraded, unfluctuating tone. It looked expensive.

This situation went on for three or four minutes. Never did she so much as twitch, though I myself sequenced through every conceivable posture and attitude of voyeurism: staring, glancing, peaking, studiously ignoring. Twice I picked up my book and put it down again. Finally I looked up and she was gone. I decided to buy a donut.

Snake Lady

Scared of a Man

Once when I was poor I lived in a sad house with a terrifying man who used to ask me, "What? You think you're going to live forever?" I don't know. One night we were in his room talking and he was trying to say the Lord's prayer to make a point, but he always added a word. He said, over and over, "Forgive us not our trespasses. Forgive us not our trespasses. Forgive us not our trespasses." He became angry and started to throw things around. He smashed his tv, turned over the coffee table, threw the stereo against the wall. I was sitting in a chair, not moving. When it was over he turned to me, he was breathing loudly but he asked me in a quiet voice, 'What's your name again?" "It's Mark." "Go home Mark." So I walked across the hall to my room where I listened to him howling for long time like a bear at the top of a telephone pole. It went on and on. I could hear him as clearly as if he were right beside me. He was screaming, "It's a nice night for a murder! A nice night for a fucking murder!" I was scared, so I went for a walk.

Scared of the Toilet

When I was a child the noise of toilets frightened me. I did not want anyone to hear the sound of my urine striking the water, let alone the cacophony and uproar of actually flushing the toilet. This I could not bear and in fact I often did not do it, especially at friends' houses. (The truth is it wasn't toilets that frightened me but other people.)

I soon learned to to pee sitting down so the urine would hit the bowl first and then pour noiselessly into the water. As I got older I eventually developed enough accuracy to do this standing, but for a long time I took whatever precautions necessary for total toileting silence. Unfortunately this didn't solve all my problems because once I was seated the space beneath my ass and genitals was buried in darkness.

This frightened me even more. I worried that a snake was hiding in the plumbing with its tail dangling down the pipe -- perhaps all the way to the sewer! -- and its head just inside the opening, waiting to strike. I peered constantly between my legs for my assailant. When I was defecating I also used to imagine a race of shit-eating sewer witches in the sewer underground, waiting hungrily for me to flush.

I still think that the patience of predators is their most disturbing trait, that horrible capacity to simply wait. Spiders are a particularly terrifying example of this. I once worked in an underground parking lot where the halogen lights ran alongside exposed piping. A million spiders hung their nets there and feasted on moths all summer. It was awful.

Horse Grid

Internet Contest

Imagine an intervention with this amazing object and be rewarded with its realization in the world. Torontonians invited to participate. Photo to accompany.

The material is canvas with a metal frame. The dimensions are three feet by seven feet. The man is Arnold Palmer.

(note: I myself am also eligible for the contest.)