Bitter

Morning came with an answering machine message. More specifically, it came with a voicemail. The answering machine, now a relic, a rotary dial phone, a transistor radio of a thing, never made the jump to digital, or if it did, no one noticed.

Hungover Man filled himself with Advil and Gatorade. He boiled water for instant coffee. He read the old newspaper.When news ages, it becomes history, like the fine fine wine he drank last night. Once, it was a vat of fresh grapes. Now, the grapes gave him a nasty fist headache.

He scratched his neck with the phone. He pressed the TALK button. He heard the tones. He dialed the answering service.

"Hi, Mr. Man," a voice said, "It's Boss Guy from Workplace Situation. I wanted to tell you this in person but blah blah bad news blah blah discuss blah blah blah repeated cautionary notices about blah blah blah blah blah - message erased."

"Next- New - Message," a pleasant female voice said, "Received - Yesterday - At (beep) - hissing - Hey there ah, Juan, I guess you're ah, not," Gregg's recorded voice said, "Awake? Eh. Yeah. Yeah. Perhaps your ah still gettin... laid? Message - Erased."

"Next- New - Message," a pleasant female voice said, "Received - Yesterday - At (beep) - hissing -Hey, ah, Juan," Gregg said, "What the hell is with you today? You ah gonna sleep all day, or are you gettin your groooove thing in the wing ding, if you know what I'm talking about. Man, you dip your sausage in that maple syrup like a fat guy at an all you can eat IHOP! That's what I'm talking about. You get an A for Action, and that stands for sex - Message - Erased."

"Next- New - Message," a pleasant female voice said, "Received - Yesterday - At (beep) - hissing - "Jeezzzus!" Barry said, "I'd be sleepin in too if I had three cows to milk. Did ya milk em? Did ya milk the udder sore? You. I was worried. Those hogs were grinding your organ like an immigrant with a monkey. Speakin of immigrants, where the hell did you drop off Steve? I can find that laced curtain anyware! Message - Erased."

Juan hung up. Everything felt like sandpaper. Ice water tasted metalic. His nostrils smelled bad. Dull throbbing migrated from his head to his joints. He turned the page. Classified ads slapped his eyes, a bad omen of the weeks to come. The man in the wide brimmed hat sat down across from him.

"Buenos Dias," he said.

"Fuck off," Juan answered.

"That," Juan said, "Sounds like a plan. We will, Senior, 'fuck... off'" He titled his hat and a bottle fell to the table. "Hair of the hound. The hound that bites!"

"Shut up," Juan said, "This whole latin thing is stupid."

"The ladies," Juan said, "Love a foreign man."

"No," he shouted, "No they don't. Ask Steve."

"Is it important to be liked by the women?" Juan asked.

"No," Juan answered.

"Are you a Sally?" Juan asked. "Are you Princess Juanita? No. You are a man!" Juan slapped Juan, hard. "No wonder you lost employment."

"That's entirely your fault," Juan protested.

"I beg to differ, Senior," Juan explained, "It was you that called me. I will tell you a story."

"I know the story," Juan said, "I am the story."

"It begins in a place much like this..."

************************************

The dogs roamed the night in search of wilderness food. These dogs, called deLoco, the five dogs of the lowlands, ate only the souls of desperate men. Wild men. Men who suffered greatly and cried out in any voice they could find. These wild men fled domestic life. They would not be tamed. But they knew nothing of deLoco.

The five dogs, Poverty, Illness, Depression, Slavery and Guilt, sought out any wild man alone in the wilderness. Even large bands of men in their wilderness hideouts feared the dogs. Who would save these men?

It was I who saved them. If they cried out, I would come to them. I would defend them from deLoco, if they would only ask me to stay with them at their camp for a while. I am an ambitious soul. Sometimes, out of need to save them, I would look for their campfires and draw deLoco to them. I would wait for the moment that these men cried out. Then, I offered help - If, and only if, they invited me to stay at their camp.

One day, it the clouded past, I came upon a fire. A sad man of the wild, bitten nearly to death by deLoco, stared out into the dark beyond the light of his camp. He saw me approach. He was not afraid. This man was wounded fatally, but he did not shrink or cower or cry out. I asked the man, "May I sit with you a while and tend your wounds?"

"No," he said. "My father told me all about you and your price. He told me never to invite you to sit at my camp. He told me to send you away and accept nothing from you."

"When," I asked this man, "Did he tell you this?"

"As a boy," he replied, "Just before I decided to enter the wild, as my father had gone before me. Now that you stand at the edge of my camp, I recognize you."

"Si," I admitted, "I knew your father well and he called on me many times. I have watched you grow through his eyes. I bandaged the woulds you inflicted upon him every time you ventured out into the wild." We heard the growling of Guilt at the edge of the fire. "It appears at least one has followed you. You are near death. Perhaps I could help send him away?"

"No," he said. "My father also told me that you run with deLoco in order to find more men to swindle. I have no need of protection. Go away."

"Bueno," I said. But I stayed. There came a howling of evil. The man shuddered and looked away from me. "Where will you find the strength to live?" I asked. "You ar nearly dead, miho. I can help. I will not stay long. If you bid me sit by you at your fire, I will stay but one night. I will stay until you ask me to leave."

"I've asked," he said. "Now go."

******************************

"And so," Juan said, "I did as you asked. How does the story end?"

"Please go," Juan said.

"No no no," Juan replied, "It is far too late for that. You were brave once, but near death. Allow me to be your bravery. We will raise a glass."

"Please go," Juan said.

The Night of Idea

"Hola," said the stanger. He coughed in his own dust. The hat, worn tilted down, hid his face. She sat down across the table from him. "This is the night for the Tickle Game."

"No," she said.

"Oh yes, mama," he said. He drank from a short glass of yellow liquor, "You will tickle them." He spun her around. She saw friends laughing. "Get up and say," he whispered, "Hi!" He nudged her up and forward.

She walked the twenty paces to the low booth tables.

"Wait wait wait," Juan grabbed her shoulder, "Here." He handed her the short glass. She sipped. His hand wrapped around hers and taught her how to drink properly. She gulped fire, but the glass was near full. Agai, the hand lead her to drink. The glass stayed full.

"My ----ing ---- itches," she said to the ladies. They laughed. Her friends drank to her ----. "Yeah, ladies," she said, "This one's for my ----." A group of gentlemen tunred. "Hey, here's to your -----, guys," she said. The women cackled. "Who's got a ----ing ---- that I haven't drank out of?" she shouted. The men looked away.

"Whoa," she said to their backs, "A girl can't say ---- in a bar full of drunken --------? You boys know you want to hear it. You make us say it when you ---- us." The girls were rioting with laughter.

"It's so true," Juan said.

"Hey, I can get them to turn around," she said. The gentlemen left after her display. "What are you three, some sort of ----?" One of the men protested in a heavy slavic or greek accent. Yeah, get out you ----. You can't handle this ----." One of the ladies laughed hard and stopped. Her face went blank and then she ran to the bathroom. Juan folded his arms and nodded.

"What happened, girl?" she called after her. But she knew. It happened everytime she played the Tickling Game.

Spin

You see the word,
Spin,
and you've been caught in the web.

Three Little Men

The door kicked in, askew on the hinges. He backed away, stubbled on the couch, now seated. A man in a red fez emerged from a cloud of smoke. Two others followed him. One, sunglasses at night and collar popped up impossibly high. The other balding, line bearded like Ahab and dressed like the 1980s in Europe.

The Popped Collar spoke, "Hey, take a look at this place."

"Yeah, yeah," said the Fez, "Like somethin' from a gay guy circus, eh?"

He tried to climb away as they approached. He twitched up the back of the couch, bumping the wall. "Get out," he said.

"What?" The Collar said, shrugged and looked at The Foreign Guy, "Get a good look at this guy. What-the-hells-the-matta with dis guy?"

"Perhaps he is frightened," Foreign Guy said. His accent sounded somewhat Slavic or Greek.

"Eh, eh! There's nothing to be scared of here," The Fez said. The Collar pulled him off the couch by the shirt and dragged him into the kitchen.

"What have we here?" The Collar asked. "You got any cigarettes? You got any BOOZE in dis joint?" The Fez slapped him on the crown of the head. A cigarette appeared in The Collar's mouth. He exhalled the smoke and said, "I'm from... CHICAGO!"

"What is his name?" asked Foreign Guy.

"I don't know," answered The Collar, "Why don't you freaking ask him?"

"Eh, I'll ask him, I'll ask him," said the Fez. The room went silent. "Hey, uhhhhh, what's you're name?"

"Juan," Juan said.

"Juan?!?" Collar shouted.

"Hey! Eh! We're rooming with Mexicans er something something!" Fez said.

"My new friend's name is Juan?" Foreign asked.

"Whadda you care, ya bald fuck?" Collar said. He leaned in close to Juan, "Hey, I gotta fat guy and a bald guy followin me around, how am I supposed to get laid with this crew?"

"Ya like getting laid, dontcha?" Fez asked.

"I should hope so!" collar said.

"Ya like a little tit in yer life?" Fez reached out and grabbed Juan by the chest.

"I don't do it with men," Juan said.

"No?" Foreign Guy looked dissapointed.

"Ugg," Collar chocked, "That's nasty!"

"Jezzzus," Fez said, "Nah nah nah, I'm talking about the ladies. The ladies!"

Collar thrust his hand out. "I'm Barry," he said.

"And I'm," Fez said, "Gregg."

The Foreing Guy came close to his ear and whispered, "Gregg..."

"Yeah yeah," Fez said, "And this is our slightly limp wristed buddy Steeeeve!"

"What is this you're saying with the limp wrist?" Steve protested, "The ladies love my smooth hands. What els do I say?"

"Anyways anyways," Barry said, "We're here to help you out."

"Help," Steve whispered in his ear.

"This is one Mexican in need of some help," Gregg admitted.

"I'm not Mexican," Juan said.

"Of course you are," Gregg argued, "I mean, look at you!" Each man produced a back pocket mirror, showing a grotesque, cubist and oddly Mexican looking Juan in the reflections.

"Hey, we've been looking all over for dis guy," Barry shouted.

"Yeah, the ladies love the Latin Heat Wave," Gregg winked, "A.K.A., you!" They pulled him by his legs out of the kitchen, down the three flights of steps (not so gently), and out into an El Camino with a cab on the back. Steve opened the back while Barry and Gregg threw Juan in. The tailgate slammed behind him. A rainbow of swirling reflected lights assaulted him. Lite Rock music played. Juan scampered up onto one of the seats. Something, he thought, was missing.

The speakers hummed:

It's that time of night
When the ladies get hot
And the Dudes
The Dudes
The Dudes
Are gonna get laaiiiiiiid.

They hopped in and circled him.

"Juan, hey," Gregg grabbed his shoulders, "You're all tense, Amigo."

"You need to get BOOZED UP, my friend," Barry said, handing him a large plastic cup. Juan took a sip. It tasted like a batch of beer that the Anhiezer/Busch company forgo to throw away. "That's what I'm sayin!"

The car sped off into the universe of loud bass and club girls.

Epistle to Juan Whiskey

Reality is a crock of shit. There are at least five significant ways to read the first sentence of this book. On the most literal level, the existence we live in is a heated dish of excrement. Taking a few liberties, one might interpret that our experience and belief in a stable existence with meaning and value is bunk. Perhaps the sentence is a statement of fact: Life Sucks. It could be a rebellious call to escape the entombed mindset of materialism. Most probably, it’s a statement based on the frame of mind of the one who wrote it.

I had a rough night.

The human mind’s greatest gift is self examination. Unfortunately, it’s killing most of us. Knowledge of the world expands outwards in a spiral, exponentially. Ignorance of what the hell it’s all about keeps pace. Now, we have to look inward for answers. We see ourselves staring back. No matter how honest and actualized we are, most of us are sickened by the reflection.

There’s a ticking emotional time bomb in your brain called the amygdala. It’s one of the primary emotional centers of your brain. It regulates the release of all sorts of neurotransmitters and hormones responsible for emotional reactions. It’s a powerful little almond shaped area, and it gets pissed off and bitchy quite often. In a pre-industrial world, you needed it to survive. React negative, cautious, and keep stress levels up, fight or flight reaction on high idle for a quick jump into hyper reactive mode.

Welcome to the Twenty-First Century, people. Real physical emergencies are rare, but the amygdala doesn’t know that yet. It hasn’t been given the hundred thousand or so years to atrophy, like the useless appendix or the pineal gland, supposed vestigial remnants.

Here’s where we jump to conclusions. Amygdala has a similar sound to Magdala, as in Mary of Magdala. Now we can make Mary A Mygdala, a sort of French Saint of the Emotional Brain. As fun as this may be, it is sacrilegious on both scientific and rational levels. It’s word salad. It makes no sense. It also has eased my sense of self burden about who I am. The horrible guilt of being human can be eased for a time by nonsense.

Recent studies on humor, most likely refuted before they were even written down, suggest that humor is a reaction to the unexpected. Humor calms the savage soul of the restless digitally overloaded human. Soul is a word already refuted. It is very poetic, a romantic notion, completely illogical in its foundation. It’s a fairy spirit, a wispy ethereal proto-being that has no basis in science. We must abandon soul, and study only the quantitative effects of the unexpected on the human brain and subsequent chemical reactions throughout the body. We have no souls. We have guilt and confusion. We have a self conscious, Edenesque horror, an emotional shouting of I am naked to a God that doesn’t exist, but still punishes.

God back to Mary A Mygdala we travel in unexpected horror, laughing even as we ache for our very souls which are puffs of imaginative smoke, shields against our own embarrassing self loathing. We are supposed to be strong and healthy. Non-existent-God forbid we have a breakdown. We can’t even call this self imposed emotional deconstruction a breakdown anymore. It’s not quantitative. It’s not empirical enough.

Some of you are waiting for the story to begin. Nothing would please you more than to escape into someone else’s story. Close the fucking book, Alice. This is an escape into Hell, the fictional realm of fire and retarded, malicious psychopath demons that endlessly burn as they freeze and take every inch of their pain and arrogance out on you. Close your fucking eyes. Hide. Throw this book out. Turn back. Abandon all hope. Pass out. Have a drink. Do anything but read this. It will only remind you of things you’ve forgotten.

That’s right, I forgot the time bomb in our heads, the chemical Mandala. The sweet Mandolin of emotion. The almond of cyanide in our very heads. The center of unreason. There is no green wire to cut. There is no protagonist to defuse the device. You are screwed. Wake up. Get up. Rise, take your mat and go home. Go and sin no more. Show the Pharisees what has happened. Tell no one.

Warning: this product contains inaccurate depictions of life that may cause dizziness, drowsiness, constipation, stomach irritation, retrograde amnesia, mania, ataxia, feinting, insomnia and many many other symptoms. Please consult someone before during and after reading this product. Emergency exits are locates bleh de bleh bleh. You’ve been warned.

I had a rough night. Falling asleep is anything but routine in my house. Some nights, sleep overtakes us like a silent assailant. Most nights it comes in like the tide. Last night, it waited quietly for the movie to end before turning on the lights of bad dreams. I thought about my life.

This caused complications. My life is hard to define. Hard, sparkling moments of success floating in self imposed sickness would describe it nicely. Nothing really wrong except my head. Bad things happen all the time, but nothing to end a life. Not even close. I’ve always felt on the edge of complete meltdown, regardless. I was born this way. These thoughts have always been with me.

Man, it sounds like pure bitching to hear it and that just makes it worse. We all have uncontrollable shit; I just can’t handle mine. Other people can, I suppose. Maybe they can’t and they hide it. Maybe that’s part of my embarrassment. I can’t seem to spare other people from my own state of being. I want everyone all in for every hand, every moment I spend here, they must come with me. The have to. How selfish. How shameful. Look in the mirror. Look inside. There’s nothing to run from and nothing to fight. There’s just you, or better, me, laying in bed, waiting for sleep.

Came with me. We belong here, you and I. All of us need to see this. Maybe you see this too. Maybe this event is common. We all might share it. Probably not. We most likely share very little. We all stay inside and watch others work and play and pretend we’re there with them. They believe it too. We are good actors. I can’t sleep.

I decided to get up.

It was the only sort of nervous breakdown I could afford at the time. Insomnia is a bitch queen. People have done studies on that. Brain and body related studies have been done. Again, they go on with the neurotransmitters and endocrine cycle and biorhythms. And when I can’t sleep I think about those studies. I think about all the studies of the mind, body and non-existent soul. I ponder theta brain waves and the effects of meditation and green tea. I wonder about powerful psychotropic substances and religious vision (which are completely dubious or perhaps a hiccup in the temporal lobe: see Joan d’Arc). I’m up, for crying out loud, and I can’t stop spinning my tires.

Television is a box now. I open the box and find DVR Recorded Shows hidden in digital ether. Once, we had VCR tapes. Now, nothing permanently exists as far as visual images are concerned. The average photo, even when developed, has a 100 to 200 year shelf life before it fades. We make copies of copies of tin prints and kodaks until what is it we see? What is it we see again?

All the recorded shows and movies are educational, conspiratorial, or speculative science. I can’t sleep and this is not going to be a good night. Of course this night was not really last night, but let’s frame it up that way. It might take me a few weeks, maybe even years to write all this down. It took me over thirty to live it. Unfortunately, the compressed version will be mostly panic, sex, drugs, alcohol and pure evil of human kind. The happy moments don’t copy well. Plus, I’m damaged good.

That’s what the insomnia is about. One day I knew I was a laid back guy trying to get his shit together, and then that night I realize I’m not okay with any of it. I’m scared out of my bed. I’ve been scared and running for a long time. Somewhere along the way I found out that certain people are insane and I’ve worried about me ever since. Halfway to this night, at around twenty years old, I made a decision not to worry about it, any of it, anymore.

It was easy to believe, but a lie. A very kind and wonderful lie for a while. I know the lie now. Into the second year of my abstaining from alcohol (something I had a particular problem with) I knew the lie by the signs of the life. Why would a laid back guy get drunk four to five nights a week and pop pills to get over it? My therapist never got around to that question. He knew I was lying, so I dumped him pretty quick.

It would never have worked. He was a bit of a flake. We hate people like us. Funny funny funny that I saw it and made it vanish so easily. But this sort of stuff waits for you. It’s never done with you. It’s got me by the neck. It’s lodged in my gut. I want to know how it got there and you have to come along.

Awake and the shows are too far fetched, too over stated for me to believe them anymore. I close the box. I wonder how the hell I’ll get by the next day with no sleep. It’s been done, but it sucks. The day is work, I think. I work. That’s part of the problem. I’m quite averse to that sort of thing. Lazy is not accurate. Lazy doesn’t involve outright fear of working. It’s painful. If I wear a steel worker, I could get away bitching a bit. My job is easy. It has to be. I can’t tolerate hard work. I can’t tolerate work. End of discussion. More later.

So, terror is upon me. The box is off. Now, the real problem starts.

“Why are you still up?” she asks. I have a wife. My mental answer is not going to make this easy. Now, she’s up because I’m up. I’ve caused her to be up. Guilt covers panic and an answer springs to mind.

“I can’t sleep,” I reply. I thank my brain for the help. Everything in her manner screams sympathetically to me to come back to bed and try again. Try to sleep. The guilt deepens. I wonder who’s hurt more, me or her. She has to watch this slow motion unraveling. I was supposed to get better. I was supposed to get better. I’m slowly getting worse. If I were alone, maybe I’d have no guilt. There is no way to be alone without destroying lives around you. The guilt would remain. Too many parents and friends are worried already.

I fucked up. I should have finished what I started. Sobriety is a clean mistake. Drinking to death is a messy one. No, there was as much pain as before. The alcohol wasn’t going to kill me. I was going insane. I thought getting dry would stop it.

Here’s where all the studies come in. There’s nothing to be done but build unsuitable dams to stop a real mental illness. The number crunchers and lab techs build dams and hope for a cure. There’s no known cure for alcoholism, either. Bummer. I gave myself a second incurable disease.

Oh, and there’s a ray of hope. I didn’t make me crazy. No guilt there. Wait. I can’t be blamed for any of this, right? Unless I stop fighting and let it take me. I have to fight every day to stay somewhere that hurts me more and more the longer I stay. I do most of the fighting for her, for my mother and father and a few close friends. I’d hate to watch them go through this. Worse, I’d begin to hate them.

“Come to bed,” she says. No. I wouldn’t hate them. Maybe. It’s tough to say. They have it just as hard if not worse than I do and yet somehow due to a glitch in nature I get a bit of a pass due to being lesser able. I might hate me.

Now it hits me again. I hate me and I’m scared and filled with shame. Yup. Checklist complete. Self realized man has awoken. This is the human condition. Perhaps. I’ve lied to people for years to make them feel better. They might be lying to me. Maybe they don’t get it. Maybe they’ve never felt this. Maybe only a few of us are broken.

I got to bed at one in the morning, fall asleep by three thirty and am up at six to get dressed and go to work. You do what your wife tells you or you suffer guilt. She’s not to blame. She knows what’s right. You can only try your best. Get up and shower and go to work. You’ll be home and unable to sleep before you know it. You could fall asleep driving in, but once you get home, you’re up for good. It takes a toll on the mind all by itself.

The sum total of all possible injury to your brain plus the sum total of chemical defects, medications and drugs you put in equals your insanity quotient. I’m good at mathematics but I’ve never run the numbers until that morning, driving in. It’s staggering. Shit. Even if I estimate other people’s insanity quotient, they have to be nuts too. There’s a moment of relief. There’s more of me. Hell, I might not even be that bad by comparison.

Wait. Reality is a crock of shit. No two perspective on life are the same sum total, and no single perspective is accurate. It’s barely an estimate. I can’t even tell if the entire world is on fire with lunatics and I expect to make sense of this? I call bullshit on life.

Oh sure, we’ve got some basic ground rules, but this whole sanity thing is up for grabs, so is the soul and God and religion and the mind and they can’t even figure out the brain let alone fix it and it’s the only tool we have to create reality. There is no way reality is even close to real. We’re measuring with a piece of toast for all we know. The brain is a jellylike hybrid multi-celled colony of neurons active with a hive-like, winner take all vote as you please and let majority rule. The brain is not a reliable source of information. The senses are flawed receptors. No way. I don’t buy any of it.

I park my car and head to my desk. Pascal weighed risk versus reward for the existence of God. I take his cue. If I’m wrong, and I walk out the door and drive and keep going and see if life just carries me away, if I’m wrong they will be hurt.

I can gamble my own life, not anyone else’s. It’s back to the crock of shit.

Based on the countless lives of the weary, 2008.

The Infinite

Passing through the many trials to find this place, this man, and finally achieving this goal, he felt his heart drop. Emptiness turned to frustration. In the corner of the cold cave slept a mummified body. This can't be it, he thought. Ten years he'd struggled to find this man. Every smiling face came back to him. He'd been tricked. The wise old man in the cold mountain cave was nothing more than a corpse. He'd bribed, cajoled and begged his way to answers. The long trail of replies lead him here.

They smiled kindly on him, the idiot. They took his money for one more clue. Each one sent him to the next one. How many tourists and seekers of wisdom had they manipulated? Frustration turned to hostility.

He flailed about the cave blindly, nearly dropping off a precipice near the back. The dead old man looked back and smiled as mummies do after the skin on their lips tightens. He stalked the carcass like a predatory cat, circling with anger. Closer and closer he moved. The withered hand held a scroll.

Excitement replaced hostility. Reverently, he pulled the parchment from the lifeless fingers. Slowly, as if untying a lover's bodice, he unrolled the scroll. It read:

"O seeker of wisdom, you have come far. If you come but a few steps forward, your reward awaits. Take my old body and toss it from the precipice. Then lie in my place a while. Only then will you know the Truth."

He placed the parchment on the flor of the cave. He rubbed his hands. The heat of shame washed over him. The bady had been here for some time. No one else had desicrated it for the sake of wisdom. Perhaps, he thought, it is another part of the test. Maybe he should report this to the locals.

For a long time, he thought. Finally, the cold thin air demanded that he act. A sense of hopelessness came upon him. In desperation, he grabbed the mummy and hauled it to the edge of the precipice. He threw it off. There was a clanging sound, as if metal hit metal. Then, nothing.

The scroll rolled past and followed. The wind had pushed it. What have I done, he thought in fear. He went to where the corpse had been and laid down. His eyes unfocused and as his breathing slowed, he saw writing on the cave floor. It was only visable from this angle:

"Rest here. Your journey has ended. The heart's desire is infinite, unquenchable. Only something infinite and unending will satisfy it."

He drifted into a long, dreamless sleep.

Story of Fire

Folks of various traditions have their own special notions of how fire was discovered. By discovered, I sort of mean given. As an old farmer, I'm very much aware that nothing we claim to own been made by us. Everything we've got is given us by something more powerful than us. Another time, remind me to tell you why people go to war about how we got stuff like fire in the first place. But war is not a subject I want to discuss right now.



Fire was given to us by an Angel named Arzeal. Some might think of him as a spirit. Science types call him electricity. Arzeal is everywhere, as we now know. If it's cold and dry in your place and you shuffle, as I've been know to, you'll see him jump out of your finger and into something else. It hurts a bit. Arzeal generally doesn't like to be mixed up with humans.



Well, long before Mr. Tesla and Mr. Edison fought for Arzeal's soul, there were folks of primitive kinds roaming around. Primitive folks are smarter than modern people because they fear everything just in case it'll hurt them. And they feared Arzeal whenever the spring and summer storms came. Arzeal used to take great delight in scaring us. He wasn't being mean. He thought it was a good thing for us to fear him. After a review of the industrial and digital ages, maybe he was right.



Arzeal isn't always a flashy bolt or spark. Sometimes just a hum or a ball or a glow. Like I said, he's not mean, but Angels aren't like men. They do what they were made to do and never change. So, when God set Arzeal up in the clouds and said, "Give light and voice to the storm to herald its coming," Arzeal did as God commanded. It's a bold job and Arzeal was hand picked to do it because of his arrogance and delight in fear. Some would think it's wrong to call an Angel those things, but God made arrogance and delight in fear for a reason.

One time, during a great storm, Arzeal jumped from cloud to cloud and to land and from tree to tree. His pride in his work sent him into a frenzy. A small farm stood in the way of the storm. A little man named Shem and his three sons tended the fields and lived there. As Shem saw Arzeal and the storm approaching, he called to his oldest son to gather the flock and herd them into a nearby cave. He called to his middle son to shutter the windows and prepare the door of the farmhouse.

His youngest son, Misach, was far afield and when his father called to him, the booming of Arzeal's voice deafened him. Then, Misach was truck dead as Arzeal fell upon him. Shem and his other sons, huddled inside the house in fear, dared not go out and look for Misach. They waited out the storm.

The next day they found his dead body, scorched from head to foot. Nearby, a small bush burned. Shem, a man given to conversation with the Lord, knew what this meant. His son had been taken by Arzeal. What's done was done, and Misach could not be given back. But the Lord hears the cry of those in anguish. For Misach death, he demanded that Arzeal give something in return. Shem took the gift of fire and made a pit in which to consume his son's body. After this, in his honor and in thanks to God, they slaughtered a lamb and held it over the fire. They found that the lamb did not burn. And so they ate it to complete the offering.

Since that time, Shem, his sons and his son's sons have tended fires for light, warmth and protection. And when the fire dies, Arzeal comes and brings it anew.

Even in these days, with Arzeal tied to the yoke of man, he brings fire to the wilderness. Only now, his obligation to the sons of Shem is released. And, one day, God will release him from servitude and allow him to bring fire to the entire earth. But, like wars, I don't feel like talking about that.