Where Things Break Down

“Do you mind if I call you Allah for a while?” I asked my old friend often referred to as God.

“Of course not,” she said. “I’ve been called worse.”

I was hoping Allah might ask me why so I could explain my longing for humans to be more forgiving and inclusive, but she just sat at the edge of my peripheral vision grooming and preening, completely self-absorbed. This irritated me, but then I thought, why not be self-absorbed if the Self you are absorbed in is the energy behind DNA, the Big Bang, dark matter, the molecular miracles of sperm, egg, tastebuds, vision, synapses, light, friendship, sacrifice, and transformation. Why not?

“I’ll tell you why not,” Allah interjected. “Absorbed is the wrong verb. I’m self-expulsive. I have self beyond self. I wear more hats, circle more stars, shape myself into more curvilinear spaces than you can possibly imagine. But I like it when you open your mind and try. Keep up the imagining. Climb high.

“When I was younger, I had no fear of heights,” I said. “But now I get vertigo.”

“I know,” Allah said. “And it’s wise to be cautious. I can’t promise to catch you when you fall.”

“I’m already falling,” I said.

“Me, too,” Allah said.

“Why?” I asked. “You’re falling voluntarily, aren’t you?

“Of course. But I’m lonely. Misunderstood. And…”

I held up my hand, signaling Allah to stop talking. I was feeling sick. Vertigo does that to me.

“Do you mind if I call you duckling for a while?” Allah asked, kindly changing the subject. “Or maybe cuddle-buddy?

“Do you mind if I call you Absurd instead of Allah?” I responded, smiling a little through the haze of my human frailties and foibles. The vertigo settled.

Then without warning, Absurd grabbed my arm and pulled me into a headfirst dive. The speed of our descent peeled back the skin on our faces.

“See?” she shouted.

“See what?” I shouted back.

“Falling together isn’t that bad,” she answered with a thin-lipped grin.

“Stop this nonsense,” I pleaded.

“Can’t,” Absurd said. “It is what it is.”

She pulled the cord, the chute opened, and the moments of the coming day rolled out beneath us. We landed on a spongy, rotting heap of bad intentions, false hopes and broken promises.

“What’s this?” I asked, trying to scrape the sticky substance off my shoes.

“Compost,” she said. “Where things break down and get another chance.”