No, Jesus, I Don't Want Your Card
I have been, as of my last post, seeking spiritual and philosophical guidance in the various nooks and crannies of Wash U's campus. For the most part, my pleas have fallen on deaf ears, with all the philosophy majors busy developing theses and wallowing in pits of self-loathing. However, I managed to find one second-year grad student willing to humor me. He prescribed a regimen of "smoking cigarettes, drinking coffee, and staring off into the distance." It sounded simple enough, at the time, but a man searching for nothingness is like a beacon to the harpies of embraced existence.
Yesterday, I found a bench in the Brookings quad, sipped my mocha and took two drags before the pillars and stonework began to melt out of my consciousness. No sooner than the sky began to slip away, I was confronted by two young men; a skinny white boy and a chap who looked, for all the world, like a Philipino. They wanted to know if I would take their survey. Descending back into the cave of shadows, I said yes.
They asked me what three words I would use to describe my life : "Surprising," I said, digging for any other neutral adjectives at my disposal. "Perpetual," I said, again, aiming to outline the aspects of any life, not specifically my own. But I was out, strapped for neutrality. Instead, I let slip a tiny ember to fuel their fire. "Promising?" I said, shamed.
They asked me something I intend to do before I die : "Visit all 50 states," I said. The white boy asked if I'd been to Montana, his hailing peak, and I said no, but asked if he lived in the half that Ted Turner owns. Apparently he lives somewhere near the Ted-line. The Philipino then revealed that he was, in fact, Russian, which led me to amend my previous assessment and place his area of origin in Southeast Russia, near Mongolia.
They asked me what I believe exists after death, and still I remain oblivious to their aims : "I don't know, but if there isn't a hot tub, I'm not interested." The white boy laughed at this, but the humor was lost on the Russian. Perhaps his ancestors were the victims of an obscure genocide in which they were boiled alive; I didn't dare ask.
They asked me, if a friend of mine approached me for advice about becoming a Christian, what would I tell them. Their agenda revealed, I inadvertedly snapped my cigarette in half. They had trapped me : "I would tell him to make sure he was fully aware of the moral and ethical codes that he was agreeing to." This answer led the white boy into a monologue about how, to an outsider, it may seem that Christianity is forbidding and full of rules, but that the truth was in Christ's sacrifice; though there are plenty of rules, Christ martyred himself so that his followers could be forgiven for their trespasses. I listened, only so I could smile and nod at the appropriate places. His pupils were the smallest I'd ever seen, and I began to wonder if the spiritual ecstacy of Sunday Services was the only thing that dialated those pin-pricked eyes of his.
Finally, they asked me, on a scale from 1 to 10, how important it was for me to find God : "Seven has always been a good number," I said, and took a drag off my new cigarette. Though my answer had no hooks, nothing explicit to respond to, the white boy took off again on a rant about his courtship with Christ. Smile, nod, sip, drag, sip, smile, drag, nod, sip, nod, drag, smile. The Russian's name was Uri, and the white boy's name escapes me, now. They walked on, satisfied with their attempt to penetrate my soul, and I sat smugly, reinforced by the knowledge that one doesn't need to stare off into the distance when there's a perfectly good intellectual void right in front of you, singing the Gospel.
Still, I am afflicted by my reckless enjoyment of life, but I am beginning to see that it is not by isolating myself that I will escape. No, the best way to become disillusioned with humanity is to look it in the face, and listen to it prattle on about all the empty vessels it worships.
That is all.
Yesterday, I found a bench in the Brookings quad, sipped my mocha and took two drags before the pillars and stonework began to melt out of my consciousness. No sooner than the sky began to slip away, I was confronted by two young men; a skinny white boy and a chap who looked, for all the world, like a Philipino. They wanted to know if I would take their survey. Descending back into the cave of shadows, I said yes.
They asked me what three words I would use to describe my life : "Surprising," I said, digging for any other neutral adjectives at my disposal. "Perpetual," I said, again, aiming to outline the aspects of any life, not specifically my own. But I was out, strapped for neutrality. Instead, I let slip a tiny ember to fuel their fire. "Promising?" I said, shamed.
They asked me something I intend to do before I die : "Visit all 50 states," I said. The white boy asked if I'd been to Montana, his hailing peak, and I said no, but asked if he lived in the half that Ted Turner owns. Apparently he lives somewhere near the Ted-line. The Philipino then revealed that he was, in fact, Russian, which led me to amend my previous assessment and place his area of origin in Southeast Russia, near Mongolia.
They asked me what I believe exists after death, and still I remain oblivious to their aims : "I don't know, but if there isn't a hot tub, I'm not interested." The white boy laughed at this, but the humor was lost on the Russian. Perhaps his ancestors were the victims of an obscure genocide in which they were boiled alive; I didn't dare ask.
They asked me, if a friend of mine approached me for advice about becoming a Christian, what would I tell them. Their agenda revealed, I inadvertedly snapped my cigarette in half. They had trapped me : "I would tell him to make sure he was fully aware of the moral and ethical codes that he was agreeing to." This answer led the white boy into a monologue about how, to an outsider, it may seem that Christianity is forbidding and full of rules, but that the truth was in Christ's sacrifice; though there are plenty of rules, Christ martyred himself so that his followers could be forgiven for their trespasses. I listened, only so I could smile and nod at the appropriate places. His pupils were the smallest I'd ever seen, and I began to wonder if the spiritual ecstacy of Sunday Services was the only thing that dialated those pin-pricked eyes of his.
Finally, they asked me, on a scale from 1 to 10, how important it was for me to find God : "Seven has always been a good number," I said, and took a drag off my new cigarette. Though my answer had no hooks, nothing explicit to respond to, the white boy took off again on a rant about his courtship with Christ. Smile, nod, sip, drag, sip, smile, drag, nod, sip, nod, drag, smile. The Russian's name was Uri, and the white boy's name escapes me, now. They walked on, satisfied with their attempt to penetrate my soul, and I sat smugly, reinforced by the knowledge that one doesn't need to stare off into the distance when there's a perfectly good intellectual void right in front of you, singing the Gospel.
Still, I am afflicted by my reckless enjoyment of life, but I am beginning to see that it is not by isolating myself that I will escape. No, the best way to become disillusioned with humanity is to look it in the face, and listen to it prattle on about all the empty vessels it worships.
That is all.
posted by Alfonzo Debussy | 4:01 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home