excerpt
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| Chapter One
Contents
Prefatory Midrash (Genesis 22)
To my son, a.k.a. The Modern Prophet.............................5
Requiem Aeternam
The Human Condition (1).........................................13
Jezebel Shall Be Like Dung (1)..................................17
The Life of Chris (1)...........................................24
Murder Mystery (1): The Crime...................................28
Isolation (1)...................................................30
Mozart's Requiem................................................32
Contrition (1)..................................................40
Treachery (1)...................................................50
Confutatis Maledictus
The Soul in Paraphrase (1)......................................55
I Have Taken My Good Papa in Plaster............................61
The Seven Last Words of Christ (1)..............................63
Isolation (2)...................................................66
Murder Mystery (2): The Detective...............................67
Who Cannot Weep May Learn from Thee (1).........................69
The Soul in Paraphrase (2)......................................76
No Comment......................................................83
Something Understood (1)........................................84
Isolation (3)...................................................89
The Binary God (1)..............................................90
The Life of Chris (2)...........................................93
Dies Irae
Isolation (4)..................................................101
A Sacrifice to Be Devoutly Desired.............................104
His Life Was So Sad (1)........................................107
The Modern Prophet Speaks of the People Unto Death.............110
The Soul in Paraphrase (3).....................................116
The Seven Last Words of Christ (2).............................119
Not One Does What Is Right, Not Even One (1)...................124
Jezebel Shall Be Like Dung (2).................................138
Murder Mystery (3): Clues......................................139
Who Cannot Weep May Learn from Thee (2)........................141
Treachery (2)..................................................145
The Soul in Paraphrase (4).....................................147
Something Understood (2).......................................149
The Binary God (2).............................................152
Kyrie Eleison
The Book of Sam (1)............................................161
The Human Condition (2)........................................165
His Life Was So Sad (2)........................................167
Not One Does What Is Right, Not Even One (2)...................169
Isolation (5)..................................................173
The Seven Last Words of Christ (3).............................175
The Soul in Paraphrase (5).....................................178
Something Understood (3).......................................181
Murder Mystery (4): Evidence on a Videocassette................184
The Life of Chris (3)..........................................187
Who Cannot Weep May Learn from Thee (3)........................190
Isolation (6)..................................................197
The Modern Castrati (1)........................................200
The Binary God (3).............................................201
Lacrimosa
The Book of Sam (2)............................................209
The Human Condition (3)........................................917
Not One Does What Is Right, Not Even One (3)...................224
His Life Was So Sad (3)........................................225
The Soul in Paraphrase (6).....................................231
Something Understood (4).......................................233
Contrition (2).................................................234
Murder Mystery (5): No Solution in Sight.......................236
I Want to Make People Weep.....................................239
Who Cannot Weep May Learn from Thee (4)........................244
Jezebel Shall Be Like Dung (3).................................247
The Seven Last Words of Christ (4).............................248
Who Cannot Weep May Learn from Thee (5)........................250
Isolation (7)..................................................252
How Sex Lost Its Body..........................................254
Isolation (8)..................................................263
Requiescant in Pace
The Human Condition (4)........................................269
The Modern Castrati (2)........................................271
The Voices.....................................................281
The Life of Chris (4)..........................................297
Marche Funèbre.................................................319
Mahler's Last Symphony.........................................329
The Human Condition (5)........................................331
Chapter One The Human Condition (1)
And then he was overboard and in the cold ocean water. He was only five miles from Ocean Beach and the Pacific Coast Highway, but it might as well have been a thousand. The tide was going out and it was evening. Not even he knew exactly how it happened. Tripped? A tricky current? One too many Anchor Steams (which was the bravado behind the folly of this joy-cruise on a spring evening in spite of small craft advisories)? Or the dogs? Probably the dogs. Basset hounds. Sweet but deadly dumb. Really, he had no idea. Here's what it was most like. It was most like: it's time for you to be in the water. It was just time for this, clear and simple. Once he'd gotten his heavy, sodden jacket, pants and shoes off (which helped nothing with the hypothermia, you can believe, or the icy panic), he was able to see the boat circling to the left, the rudder stuck hard to the right. And he could see the dogs, Harvard and Holofernes, paws up on the edge of the little craft, barking and wagging their tails, enjoying this game and wondering if they were supposed to jump in too. Now a little anxious about it. Some dim doggy corpuscle aware that this was no game. The boat was in fact making a very tight circle about him, little could he tell. For him, the damned boat and the yapping dogs barely stayed on the horizon. It was obviously futile to swim straight for the boat. It would always flee him. Besides, he was not a very strong swimmer, in spite of his many years of sailing. No, he had just one chance. But how to exercise it? The question was, how to know what the right geometry and math would be. The boat's on this tack at X speed (allow for incoming wind [+20 mph] if heading in); the man's swimming at Y speed (allow for out-going tide if in-going swimming, opposite in opposite event). How many degrees should the man attempt to lead the boat by? If he was in the center (and damned if he wasn't pretty close), each radial arm contained a different, very profound, and very secret answer. To know the answer to that math was, it occurred to him in that his last moment, to know God. To know the answer to the question—by how many degrees should I lead my little boat, with my lovingly dopey dogs, which circles around me now like a sacred riddle—was to know God. If he hadn't been on the verge of panic in that moment, he would have been calmly dumbstruck by the incredible beauty of this understanding. But, then, he always had been perhaps overly impressed by the ability of the "smart kids" to do those hard math problems. Believe me, in this moment, he wished he'd spent more time with those equations instead of running for the harbor. He'd just throw the old textbooks in the back of the truck. Little could he imagine this moment when the boats and the math books would have so much to do with each other. And God, too, thrown into the bargain! "Hell, I might as well stay where I am and wait for the damn thing to run over me." He actually thought that! Sitting out there in the middle of the Pacific with a little dinghy and two basset hounds circling him absurdly if not unkindly, he had that thought. This was evidence that he was getting beyond the panic and into a certain calm. But perhaps the cold was getting to him. It had been about ten minutes now and he was starting to shut down. Then a strange thing happened. I'm assuming that this "shutting down" was, at another level, a sort of "letting go." He saw the boat now, not moving one bit, quite calm, just a few yards from him. The dogs had their feet up on the edge of the boat. They weren't barking or whining or bouncing anxiously. They were watching him quietly. It was as if they were observing him. As if this were some sort of test he was undergoing and they were his judges. Imagine that! When you die, animals judge you! He had to admit, it made a lot of sense (oh, in the extremity of the moment, to be sure, that explains a lot of it, these crazy thoughts). Who better to judge humans than these creatures or beasts upon whom humans had been visiting death for centuries in holocausts, blood sacrifices, jungle pogroms, in search of a meal or a pelt, the bear penis and the rhinoceros horn, animal death endless and oceanic. But wait a minute, these were his pets! Good old Harvard! Sweet Holofernes! Here boy! Catch! Wanna go for a walk? So, if that was the case, why were they so sober now? Like long-eared angels of the God of Abraham and Isaac. They stared at him. Evaluating. Reading like the most careful exegetes his every response. Perhaps that meant that there was still time for him. Perhaps he could still make a good impression. Yes, if he made a good impression on his own dogs he could go to heaven. Something like that. If he had a little more time, he could refine this theology. So the two basset hounds, his pets, stood with their little stubby legs, their barrel chests, their saggy jowls and ears like regal drapery, looking down on him in final judgement. Then, hard as it was to believe, he saw them muttering to each other, exchanging stern comments, from the side of their mouths. They never took their dispassionate brown eyes from him. What could they be saying? Were they recalling the time he'd dislocated puppy Holofernes's shoulder slamming him into the soggy patch of carpet where he'd peed? Was that it? Was this righteous revenge? Or maybe they were remembering the time he'd literally knocked his little lovebird unconscious because it put the death grip on his finger. Would these canine patriarchs take up the cause for pet birds? He could see their bizarre lips move articulately, as if memorializing his every worst act. With great, deep precision. Well, that was it. Really. Quite enough. Something in those lips. The way they perfectly captured the essence of his life. And he surrendered. "I'm sorry. Forgive me. I am willing to die." And he began to sink. And as he sank he could just see his dogs come to full alert, peering over the edge of the boat, understanding everything, absolutely everything about this moment for their pal, the owner, the master, the human. And there was sincerity and sorrow in their eyes.
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REQUIEM