Month: January 2020

When the Fat Lady Sings

Rita Sommers-FlanaganLeave a comment

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For the 17th time, we’re remodeling our interior space(s) with upcycled materials that require varying levels of tolerance and creativity. In this, as in all things in my life, God worms his way in and turns whatever I’m doing into a parable. It’s all about him. Some might find this reassuring. I don’t. Here’s what I know: In contrast to me, the Contractor-in-Chief always obtains the correct permits to begin remodeling. Then he rolls up his sleeves and works like the devil to upcycle your innards. Seventeen times is nothing to him. It’s a rolling remodel–a lifetime composting project. And here’s something ugly: In your innermost being, there’s asbestos, black mold, dry rot, and highly combustible chemical substances that must be properly stored but often are not.

Fire happens frequently. Like many in my species, I start little blazes that if left unchecked would burn the entire project to the ground. God’s a skilled firefighter, but sometimes he decides to call in the whole damn volunteer fire department. It’s embarrassing. After the flames subside, platitudes and excuses abound. The crowd is pleased, hell freezes over, and I skate away on ice I know to be very, very thin. The cows start for home, and the Fat Lady warms up in the wings, octaves surging like a dangerous river. There’s no doubt she will sing. She’s the most voluptuous incarnation God ever assumes. Such lungs. That dark cleavage rising, those magnificent breasts; objects of desire and dread. This is where we’ll all find ourselves eventually; in the arms of the Fat Lady smothered in love; upcycled beyond recognition. Transformed.

“And in the meantime?” I wonder to myself. God smiles, soot clinging to his mustache, circling his nostrils. He tosses me a hard hat, a yellow suit, and a big, cherry red fire extinguisher. “Keep trying,” he says. “You’ll improve over time.”

“Why?” I moan. Doubt lines my face. “Even if I get good–really, really good–it won’t be enough.” God remains silent, eyes generating their own searing light. “And I might get burned trying,” I add, feeling sorry for myself. Who really wants the eyes of God focused on them?

“Of course you will,” God says, his voice kind but firm. “But what’s a little scorch here and there?” He waves a crusty hand out the window of his firetruck, slips into the turn lane, and disappears.

 

 

Lists

Rita Sommers-Flanagan2 Comments

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There are so many things on my list today: Paint the coffee table orange; bake the leftovers with lots of cheese and spices to disguise the blandness; locate the next hot yoga class and begin making excuses for not going; do some laundry at somebody’s house; get out of my pajamas; buy a carrot peeler and cabinet knobs; make a cameo appearance in the happiness class; check my email; watch it snow.

But the snow stopped. The knobs are the wrong color, and bland isn’t always bad. The time on my hands is faintly bioluminescent, but there isn’t enough light to do anything but pray, palms together, a gesture of peace. Gratitude. Acquiescence. This, while the world has sunk so deep into the chaos of self that no one can tell an enemy from a friend. The bottom lines have given way. We’ve fallen through. Again.

Generally, solitary confinement is a form of punishment often classified as torture, but solitary confinement of the soul is a necessary discipline for recalibration. For close encounters. For unwinding the knot. Time to let the long tongue and wagging tail of the ever-eager God cleanse the wounds and loosen the grime of everyday life.

But God is not a dog today. Her calendar is filled with boring meetings, delicate negotiations, and a stint of volunteer work at the homeless shelter. She’s doing a reading tonight that will likely be well-attended—I’m glad for her, but I’m jealous. I don’t like waiting on such a busy God.

To my great delight, there’s a glimmer of God in the corner. She shakes her head as I try to snuggle in. “Not now,” she says. “You need to wait.”

“No!!” I wail, “I hate waiting. It makes me very, very anxious.”

“Sorry,” she says. “But you can do it. I’m counting on you.”

“Counting on me to wait?” I ask, stalling, pretending not to know.

“You can’t trick me,” God says, fading.

“Yes I can, yes I can, yes I can,” I yell to the Great Disappearance.

I tell myself I’m lucky she stops by as often as she does, but that’s not how I feel. The time on my hands has turned blood red, and my fingerprints are everywhere. “Get centered,” I tell myself. “You’re making a mess.” Waiting is a transformative torture. The long way home. I feel like a fool when I wait. I picture God, busy dishing up soup, teasing the tattered men with her sexy winks, her arms slung around the shoulders of women, repeatedly stoned. That’s how it is. She’ll come by later, and I’ll rub her feet.

Faith

Rita Sommers-Flanagan4 Comments

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The only reason I have any faith at all is that the alternatives are worse. That, and the incessant presence of this thing I call God bugging me, day and night, my face in her hands. My thoughts invaded, emotions mirrored, breath punched repeatedly out of my gut, eyes stinging, heart heavy. Is this any way to live?

“Hey,” God protests, perched like a bird on a very small branch. “I can hear you, you know.”

“Oh, I know,” I say. “I know.” I look the beast in the eye. “But it doesn’t matter, does it? There’s nothing I could think or say that would make you disappear anyway, right? Vamoose, God. Come here, God. Take a bullet for me, God. Cure me, God. Kill the bad guys, God. Elevate the good guys, make my team win, get me some of that human elixir, revenge. Okay, God? Okay?”

Human prayers—my prayers—flawed. Arrogant. The sheen of innocence rubbed raw by the abrasive sandpaper of reality. For instance, there are people in my life, people in the news, people on the street—all waiting around in my mind in case I muster the strength to love them. But I don’t want to love them. In fact, I wish some of them dead and gone.

“Hey,” God says quietly. “I can still hear you, you know.”

“Oh, I know,” I say. “But that’s your problem.” I offer God my ear buds. “Take a break if you’d like.”

I howl like a wolf, snarl like a jaguar, scream like prey being eaten. I consider the various abdications or aggressions at my disposal. God is an excuse, a drug, a cult leader, a fairy tale, a haven for the vicious and the weak. In the name of God, we’ve tortured, killed, subjugated, taken our fill of the first fruits, grown fat, hateful, and smug.

“Hey,” God whispers from the smallest place. “The ear buds are nice, but I can still hear you. It’s from the inside.”

“Oh, I know,” I whisper back, my voice hoarse, my throat on fire. “I know.”

The day begins despite my protests and misgivings. Morning is rolling across the hills, quivering with the potential of the moment lived, mine for the taking. If I leave it untouched, can it be returned? If I put my soul in my backpack and run for my life, can I escape?

“Hey,” God says without making a sound. “Can you hear me?”

“Yes,” I admit. “But with really good earbuds, I keep hoping…”

“Oh, I know,” God says. “I know.”

Year End Report

Rita Sommers-Flanagan6 Comments

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On December 18th, 2016, God and I posted our first godblog. We’ve written 170-some of these parabolic missives, and here we are, 2020–still speaking to each other, which is noteworthy for such a mismatched pair. Me, human, fallible, aging less than gracefully, root-bound, forgetful, trying hard, falling short. God, falling long. God neither human nor fallible, forgetting nothing, forgiving everything. God, erudite, defenseless, foolish. Me, wrapped in paper-thin pride with touches of temporary blue in my hair. God, humble, wearing the entire iridescent sky.

“Parabolic?” God asks.

I laugh. A chance to show off. “Well, I meant to say parable-like, but then the word parabolic got in my head. A parabola is a sort of U-shape line that’s mirror-symmetrical. It’s the path a projectile takes when it attempts to escape but instead, is subject to gravity and falls back. It’s not a circle. It’s more like a shape made in protest.”

God looks at me like “Duh” and I get defensive. “Fine. Sometimes, you just sit there and make me feel stupid.”

“True,” God says, with patient look. “I’m glad you’re so frank with me. But you could be nicer sometimes.”

“Sorry,” I say. “I’ll try.”

We sit for a while, me mulling what it means to be nice to God, and God knitting an afghan. He’s been working on it off and on for a long time. It stretches for miles–up, down, east, west, north, south, and around. And it includes every color ever seen or imagined. I suspect it’s a gift for someone in another galaxy, but I haven’t inquired, and God hasn’t said a word. For some reason, that damn afghan frightens me.

“I understand that,” God says.

“What?” I say, but in my bones, I know. He always gets in my head.

“It frightens everyone,” God says. He holds it up and blocks the sun. “It’s a shroud.”

“For someone—or something—very large,” I say, making my shaky voice as kind and approving as I can.

“Indeed,” God says. “From your perspective, very, very large.”

“And from yours?” I ask.

God smiles gently and opens the front of his jacket. Strands of yarn flow like brilliant rivers of color from the essence of his being. God is making his shroud out of himself. This realization upsets me to the point of nausea.

“Ah, sweetheart,” God says. “Don’t be sad. It is as it has been and will be. There’s no promise better than the rainbow, nothing more perfect than a circle.”

“But God,” I protest. “I’m linear. Monochromatic. Vanishing.”

God shakes his shroud like a rug. The whiplash at the end dislodges the stars, and planets roll like bowling balls, and all the music there has ever been plays at once, and I drop and curl to prevent subatomic dissipation.

“Hold that pose,” God says. He shapes himself around me and begins to snap selfies; me and God, entwined like twins, the shroud a roiling ocean behind us. A sudden wind lifts the shroud. God grabs hold, and they rise like a kite. It’s a very strong wind.

I hold myself tight with the earth, grateful for gravity. Coiled inward like that, I can see what appears to be the beginning and the end, but for the life of me, I can’t tell them apart.