I Saw God
I woke up on mushrooms the other day. I found a note to myself written by myself to forgive myself. I obliged. I decided to enjoy the ride. I noticed the glory of the softness of my pillow for the first time. If it ended in anneyurism, even the spelling scares me, so be it. Then the craziest, and by craziest I mean best, thing ever happened. I changed history.
In my dream I was a 2nd grade girl again. This time I was allowed to be an altar boy. Not like real life back then. I was the youngest let in by two grades. I was reverent, then disappointed. Until I attended my first funeral. I had served several Catholic funerals before, but they were nothing like this one. The same way you think you know what sex will be like, then you have it, and it’s disappointing, til you meet *that* *guy* who lights you up. This Catholic funeral lit me up.
No one ever warned me that the ceiling opened up and you could see God. I mean, not see him exactly, because there’s nothing to see, but you know he’s there. It’s that kind of evidence where it’s too much to take in you barely even look, like identifying a bludgeoned loved one in a morgue. Similar intensity, but the total opposite charge. That’s seeing enough* evidence that God is real. And we danced, and we sang, and we smiled, and cried, I mean every one of us! The priest had never even spoken to me before, he was pissed I was a girl, but the music animated him. He wept as he laughed.
I stumbled out of the church. Inside, the church was dark, but had been blindingly bright and alive when God visited, now I was stepping into the parking lot in the middle of the day, so bright I have to shield my eyes and turn the world to dark. I sat on the hot pavement and burned my bum through my skirt. I knew that parking lot so well I felt my way to the grass and shimmied backwards until I came to rest under the shady tree. Even in visual darkness I could sense the additional darkness of shadow by temperature.
When I arrived at the end of the cool, darkened hallway of St. Patrick’s Elementary school, I stood before the light of my opened classroom door and lept through the doorframe. Everyone was reading a book. No one looked up except teacher.
I felt intense guilt for thrusting the joy of death onto these concentrating new humans all around me. Death is so aggressively shocking with people, no wonder everyone is twisted around on the subject. These kids didn’t even know I was gone. Shouldn’t I let them all know? There’s such better stuff to be doing, why do this?
This lead me to my first dead show with my cousin who told me to not be afraid twice: 1 when dressing ridiculously 2 when puffing pot. We were in the back of a van and she had no worries any horny boy would try something on me, they were friends after all. They knew her.
Dead were cool but somehow I fell in love with Duran Duran. I followed them for a summer. In Vermont I met a boy named Trey passing out tapes for his new college band. Everyone copied the Dead. Being a blossoming woman, band boys used to gravitate toward me. I saved all the tapes.
I followed Phish for the next decade or so. As my life got better my family hated me more. Fears of cults and drugs and drugs and cults. I think there was that Hale Bop sneaker cult happening at the time. Not too sure, I was busy having the time of my life. Summer of Love? Boy, it was the decade of love.
Then I met Brad. I was a hippy chick BEYOND happy with my life. I could not resist him. Earth has a magnetic field blanketing it, why shouldn’t all objects aboard Spaceship Earth also have blankets of magnetism? Brad’s charge and mine were unbreakable.
