Month: February 2024

The (Human) Race

Rita Sommers-Flanagan4 Comments

My superpower is reasonable restraint when it comes to cheesecake and dark beer. I also have x-ray vision for seeing the artistic potential in sticks, stones, and rusted metal. I possess both grandiose aspirations and impressive amounts of self-induced humility. As far as I can tell, God’s superpower is stealth. And maybe patience, though I’m less sure of that.

Arguably, my superweakness is asymmetry in a world that demands alignment, hierarchy, and singular definitions. Luckily, this is one of God’s superweaknesses, too. It’s challenging to stay balanced with eyes that are not horizontally level and ears that don’t match. My right hand is overly dominant and the same can be said of my Coauthor. We dig far better holes handling the shovel from the right. But then, who’s to say what constitutes a better hole?

Someone close to me was born ambidextrous with a leaning toward the left. At the time, this was perceived as a correctable birth defect rather than a rare gift. The prescription for people born with such amorphous qualities was to crawl around on all fours, supposedly rewiring their brains. To this day, tucked deep in the psyche of my loved one, there’s confusion. What could have been a superpower was turned into self-doubt. A shameful reason to hide.

“Balderdash!!!” God yells. “I’m sick to death of simplistic dualism and brutally enforced conformity to false binaries. There are males, females, and those between. And there are exquisite crossovers and crossbacks. Right handers. Left handers. Both handers. No handers. Isn’t it glorious? I love them all just the way they are. They tickle the bejeezus out of me.”

A song from the 1930s pops into my head. “You say tomay-to, I say tomah-to,” I sing with a lopsided grin. God joins in. We bellow out the old tune. “You say ee-ther, I say eye-ther…You like potayto, I like potahto…Let’s call the whole thing off.”

We’re unhinged, offkey, and happy.

“You’re no Ginger Rogers,” I tease.

“And you’re no Fred Astaire,” God teases back. “But you’re on the right track, sweetie. Sing louder. Run harder.”

“I try, God. You know I try.”

To demonstrate, I stop cavorting around the dance floor and kneel like a sprinter, poised to run in the next heat, waiting for the crack of the starting gun. But there are handguns, rifles, and machine guns firing all over the world. It’s impossible to discern the one clarion shot that will signal when I should dash my whole nonbinary heart and soul into the next battle.

“Use your better ear, baby,” Coach God says, leaning in. “And keep in your lane. You’re perilously close to being disqualified.”

Closed Captioning

Rita Sommers-Flanagan2 Comments

During the witching hour last night, my electric blanket turned itself on and fried me to a crisp. Light from my flaming hair revealed the outline of God burning beside me which provided strange comfort. Over time, I’ve had various vague ideas about the best ways to die. I’d not thought of this one, but it seemed an acceptable alternative. Our charred bodies were soon unrecognizable. It was over.

The enormity of waking has overwhelmed me. I’m the walking dead, moving through my morning chanting please, please, please. I don’t know what I’m asking for, but I’m certain I’m supposed to ask. Being dead absolves the body. Being alive requires fortitude, vision, and help.

One of our chickens lost an eye to a predator, but she’s still laying eggs. The garden is buried in snow, flat and pristine except for the tall dry stalks of late blooming weeds. The exhaustion of autumn always gives these invaders an unfair advantage. Spring will bring renewed energy for the inevitable skirmishes, but there will be no definitive victor. The spoils of war are never what one might imagine.

Since the thousand-year flood two years ago, we monitor the river with new respect. God and I are working steadily on the basement with an eye to evacuation. We’ve moved our vulnerabilities to higher ground, aware of the futility but content to at least be doing something. Doing something. Doing something. I am the walking dead doing something.

God routinely disappears and only explains their whereabouts in languages I do not understand. Multiple translations scroll across the bottom of the screen. I’m forced to suspend my agenda and hold very still as I struggle to grasp the plot of the cosmic drama. I wish God spoke simple English. Then I could do two things at once.

Instead, I must contend with the tongues of angels and demons, the vernacular of eagles and earthworms, the dialects and dialogues of the infinite all rising on waves of unprecedented heat, wrapping the earth in a shroud of utterly brilliant sunsets. Or are they sunrises?

God wears the tattered ozone like a cape and lands gracefully beside me. I am still chanting please, please, please as I accept the bent elbow and march down the aisle toward the edge.

“I hear you,” my Escort whispers, leaning down. “But you might try a thank you now and then.”

The dark and troubled waters below offer no sustaining image, but I don’t need one. I am the walking dead, learning to navigate weightlessness. I am the walking dead, slowly, slowly, slowly letting go. Letting go. Letting it all go.

The Ways We Use the Frontal Lobe

Rita Sommers-Flanagan2 Comments

Even the most obvious instructions for being happy, healthy, and wise are routinely ignored, ridiculed, and explained away. Physicians, therapists, pastors, scientists, Jesus, the Dali Lama, Taylor Swift, and a vast array of poets and philosophers past and present shake their heads, mystified, and discouraged.

For instance, though cheap and easy, fossil fuels are finite and poisonous, but who doesn’t like well-paid extractive industry jobs, entertainment, warm houses, and nice vacations?

In the long run, we’d be happier (and less likely to go extinct) if we fed the hungry, welcomed strangers, exercised, turned down the thermostat, stopped bombing, and reduced our fat and sugar intake. Instead, we use our astounding intellect to invent complex rationalizations for less-than-helpful choices.

Me: Admit it, God. Your frontal lobe design has failed. Abstract reasoning is a bust.

God: Yeah. Science and compassion shot to hell by fear and feigned ignorance.

Me: I know. We strive to be avenged, satisfied, pain-free and immortal.

Meanwhile, there’s fire. I let the morning blaze die down because the sun is taking over, beaming radiant energy into the thermal mass I call home. Earthly fires are a triangle: Oxygen, fuel, and heat. Existence is a triangle enabled by fire: Birth, life, and death.

God: And I’m a triangle: Creator, Recycler, and Evolver. I don’t give up.

Me: Well, if I were you, I’d call it quits on earth. Lots of flops and botches.

God: I know you would, and I know you’re afraid, but I’ll never not be around.

The glow of the sun is not fire. It’s nuclear fusion, which involves protons smashing into each other so hard that they stick together and become something new. This transformation produces a tremendous amount of light and heat.

Me: That’s like us, God. When we smash together, good energy is released, right?

God: Cute. But no. You’re a willy nilly smasher. Mostly, you bounce. I help with repairs.

Me: But sometimes, I smash into something vaguely like you. I’m sure of it.

God is chuckling. As usual.

We are all willy nilly smashers. We take a hard run at something, crash, pick ourselves up, dust off our boots, gulp some coffee, tea, whiskey or kombucha, and take another run. Sometimes, fusion occurs, and we’re changed. But mostly, we bounce and remain unchanged.

God: Essentially unchanged, but not unfazed. Shed the defeatist attitude. Keep smashing.

Me: Ah ha! You’re still working on the frontal lobe, aren’t you?

God: Well, I may be deluded, but I believe even total failures have redemptive value.

The sky has clouded up and blocked the sun. I smile at the Eternal Delusion and get my matches. It’s time to start another fire.

Membership

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Once in a while, book clubs invite an author to visit. God prefers anonymity, so she always declines. Not me. Often, it’s a nice experience, but on rare occasions, things get awkward. Members who’ve read only the title and back cover take the opportunity to share views tangential or even hostile to the essence of the book. Others fawn over the author, more focused on affiliation than analysis.

And speaking of awkward, I know of a romance writer who finagled an invitation to join her neighborhood book club. Because she published under a pen name, no one realized who she was. When it was her turn to choose a book, she held up her latest bodice-ripper, the slick cover burbling with cleavage and low-slung jeans. Everyone burst into laughter, thinking this was a joke. The author stomped out, never to return. They did not read the book.

“Well, they should have,” God says. “Romance is a billion-dollar industry.”

I roll my eyes. “I prefer murder mysteries. They do less damage.”

God leers at me. “Ah, come on. What’s wrong with a little erotic fantasy? Steamy scenes, orgasmic encounters, soulmates finally licking or sucking just the right spots…”

“Stop!” I interrupt. I don’t enjoy talking about sex with God. “Could we change the subject?”

“Sure,” God says. “But what is the subject?”

I pause and then admit, “I don’t know. And you know I don’t know.”

“Maybe we should talk about who gets invited,” God says.

“To what? Book clubs?”

“No. To anything. You all want to belong, don’t you?”

“Not necessarily. We want to belong to our tribe. People who look and think like we do, believe what we believe, read the same books, and share similar realities.”

“Then don’t invite me!” God snorts. She pulls on her turtleneck sweater. “You’re strangling yourselves. Loosen up, you judgmental little speck.”

“Don’t worry,” I snap. “You are definitely not invited. And don’t call me speck.”

Evening is approaching. The daylight remaining is not straightforward.

“Speck. Dot. Flicker. Flash. You realize that like rain, fire and light do not discriminate, right? So, instead of speck, how about I call you light of the world?”

This is a seductive but perilous proposal. God is the Ultimate Refractive Substance. As light passes through God, it splays and changes directions. That’s why stars twinkle. If I agree, I will be bent and fractured. My membership anywhere will be in question.

“Let me think on that,” I say, hedging.

We curl up on the couch and continue reading our book club’s latest selection, Sun House, by David James Duncan. As usual, I’m a little behind.