Little Mermaid Diary Entry

6th February, 1993
Afternoon

Dear Diary,

Baba wore a suit today.
I hate it when he wears suits. It is like he is someone else.  They make him look rich.
They are also neat and straight and it takes me more than 11 minutes to iron them.

There are no colours or rumples and the ties are extremely stupid.
Why do people want to hang themselves with coloured silk stripes just so they can look like everyone else?

I don’t think I hate anything more than a suit.
Except diamonds.
I really, really hate diamonds.

Maria

An Amicable Divorce

“He hoped and prayed that there wasn't an afterlife. Then he realized there was a contradiction involved here and merely hoped that there wasn't an afterlife”
                                                                                                 – Douglas Adams

I just invented God.

Again…

Granted, I am by no means the first to do so and the idea isn’t exactly original but it always surprises me when I catch myself in an act of ‘creation’. It goes without saying that it is much easier to want to believe in my versions of god, while recognizing with perfect clarity that these are figments of my imagination.

The way I figure it, better mine than someone else’s.

I am currently working on deciding whether I am going to bother planting It with a gender this time around, seeing as I still haven’t forgiven Its predecessor for having invented such a blasé mechanism to segregate the species ala carte. In fact, I haven’t forgiven that one for feeling the need to segregate any species in the first place. Suffice it to say, we both had our issues, they were many and they were mangled. We have parted ways now and it has been described by most as an amicable divorce on all counts. The primary reasons cited for the proceedings have been: irreconcilable differences and a gross misrepresentation of facts. Custody battles over my soul and his rights to said subjective/neo-modern abstract currently ensue en' masse.

To be fair, He had His reasons too. I was simply unwilling to believe everything He said without evidence, reason or reason-ability. I openly flouted most of his rules and adamantly refused to extend respect He took for granted He deserved. I took ‘nothing’ for granted and never relinquished my mind and will to His dogma. My infidel-ity knew no bounds as I actively scavenged for alternatives to replace Him with.

In short, I was a miserable failure at being any kind of subject.

Rather like an obtuse Keirkegaardian Ironist.

I shall expound a bit on where this new incarnation stems from and where it might be headed. It is an odd business, this exercise of ‘designing’. I feel powerful already…and I hope I know better than to fall down that particular rabbit hole. This new -yet un-named - avatar springs from a composite of colour, impressions and the remnants of a broken heart. I believe the latter feature might render It more sympathetic to the human condition but I cannot yet offer any substantial guarantees on that score. I’m afraid that is the trouble with creating anything: there are never any guarantees. The act of creation is always subservient to how it is perceived and that function is always carried out by someone or something else.

The functional merits of the new prototype, for convenience lets call it ‘gOD’, are yet un-determined and I am quite liking the idea of them staying that way. I am hoping to avoid the usual strains of 'human projecting ‘omnipotence’ into the atmosphere that in turn allows him/her to control all other agents partaking of said atmosphere' business! As any invention of the mind, gOD will ideally remain a work in progress, a lot like Baskin and Robbins ice-cream. The range of ice cream flavours remains endless as empty canisters are perpetually on the look-out for the next curious taste bud to create its own variant. A God/ Ice-cream analogy, I find, makes as much sense as a God/burning bush analogy; a God/ Holy Spirit that-makes-god- ‘God’ analogy or a God/God’s son-in-one analogy. For one it is chirpier and much more aesthetically pleasing. I also feel that with the sheer volume of authorship he/she/it commands, gOD is unlikely to find favour among the ‘belief’ audience. I think that rules out proselytizing of any kind.

I find that I am quite comfortable with the idea of not having to preach.

I have always regarded it as a tiresome business.

Now on to the mythology. Every deity needs some kind of ‘back story’ to lend it ‘credit-ability’. Believers who claim that a mythology lends their deity any kind of credibility are high on holiness. It is hardly conceivable that flying horses; seven gates opening up to legions of virgins in some warped brand of  Valhalla; God's dead progeny not-dying to save humanity and parting of bloody seas can actually legitimize any creed of creator.

What it does proffer is ‘market value’.

It allows one to ask Charlton Hestern to ride chariots in a skirt and flail large sticks about on screen; it sells gold crosses and several strings of ‘last supper’ paintings; it introduces new and increasingly complex methods to wearing head scarves; permits blonde bimbo’s like Anne Coulter to appear on TV and actually command a considerable audience and let us not forget: IT SELLS BOOKS! Imagine any religious text without the android half man/half elephant deities or without burning bushes and sporadic, apocalyptic wiping-off of species to spurn angrier species that will repeat the process et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
* (apropos my new Gentile friend QN)
Oh, and on that note, how come no one bothers to ask this: If the creationists did get it right then Adam and Eve came on earth and had kids, and their kids had kids…and ...wait- a- minute.

Can anyone spell ‘incest’? And to think people take offence at being regarded as Ape-descendents a thousand times removed. I’d take a monkey grandpa over a perverted manage'-a-million any day!

It is this marketing of mythologies as facts that drives religion and the religious to unimaginable ends. The new brand of faithful subjects like the Scientologists and Mormons have jumped on to this particular band wagon with unprecedented fervor and the nonsense about magic underwear and reiterated stigmata’s are practically a requirement these days considering – to quote Bill Maher – “All the good shit is already taken!”

On a slightly more neutral note: I have to state that personally my beef lies more with Belief than the Deity it ascribes to. The distinction between ‘faith’ and ‘belief’ is an important one and it desperately needs to be made. In today’s vernacular ‘belief’ is a business and it pertains to God as he appears in religious dogma and text; the more benign ‘faith’ is a term employed by the apologist who often wants to distinguish his or her views regarding the god-subject as 'personal'.
 The latter expression holds considerable merit when it pertains to a deist and/or mystic perception of god. In its mind-logic incarnation this strain of ‘faith’ often revolves around the Einstein/Epicurus/ Spinoza perception of an ultimate designer that we cannot know or define but ‘could’ ‘possibly’ exist. In its heart-love incarnation it tends to seep into the mystic’s devotion towards ‘the indefinable, ecstatic Love’ component. I’m definitely open to the idea that god, in the benign sense of the composite Greek Muse; the Hermit Sage or Elpis could 'possibly' exist. However, I am certainly not on board with the prevailing monotheistic definitions of what that entity is; what He wants from us and how He will get it. Not to mention all that confounded carrot-stick business in the present for the infernal, eternal ‘What-if’ End of World/s where we wont even be allowed to ask -the entity condemning us for actions committed on Its behalf -why It chose to put us in that position to begin with?
I find this strain of ‘belief’ to be completely lacking in any semblance of humility.

Ironically, it is always the skeptic who is accused of arrogance regading the 'god gamble'. Figures, the believer is allowed certainty regarding the un-certifiable, extended full license to proselytize, pressurize and promote that certainty and the skeptic who applies doubt towards all enterprises is accused of brash, rude and abrasive offence! Durant was on to something when he said “Intolerance is the natural concomitant of strong faith, tolerance grows only when faith loses certainty.” This brings me to the ‘Respect/ Offence’ glitch.

Let me be clear: Nor I, nor anyone else is under any obligation to ‘respect’ anything without basis.

We are encouraged to respect the ‘right’ of other people to hold their own views regarding all things (a preciously fragile enterprise, which we often hope to command ourselves) but we are by no means required to respect those views. I can respect that an individual H has the right to be homophobic and consider gay people to be cursed by God, but I certainly don’t respect H’s homophobia or dogmatic assertion. The religious seldom fail to employ the ‘respect’ trump card, demanding the right to criticize others on all aspects of their lives while conveniently cordoning off their own lives from any kind of criticism on ‘dogmatic’ grounds.

This curious game of ‘Operation’ is utterly absurd.

If religious people are ‘offended’ by my opinions regarding their dogma then that is their problem (at least until they threaten to murder me for having an opinion and make it my problem). I am equally 'offended' when nine-year-old boys are brainwashed to stick knives into their back because someone who was related to Someone who narrated a book died a thousand odd years ago! What about ‘respecting’ my right to be offended?

When I was six years old, I believed, quite literally that Colonel Sanders (The Kentucky Fried Chicken Mogul) was god. I remember expressing this opinion to my mother who had a hard time concealing how disturbing she found the insinuation. She was right to be concerned. At the time, I thought the only pre-requisite required for omnipotence was kindness. Sanders had - and to this day continues to have - one of the kindest faces I have ever seen. The only alteration I affected to my god was his wardrobe. I always saw him in rainbow stripes and blue tap dance shoes. I had assumed that god was a happy fellow and that the deity was naturally (sic) inclined to sponsor magic, music and laughter. He loved happy endings and always remembered to reward polite-ness. Admittedly, I may have been a tad naïve regarding my subject matter.

This is still where I find myself - back at that beginning.

It seems the literal mind can never understand or adapt to the ironic mind. I have never been able to reconcile myself with God, because He – as He appears in monotheism- is distinctly un-lovable. Unless, one happens to be an irredeemable masochist who only falls in love with sadists that command you to love them; revere them and beg them for their mercy even when they are responsible for your being the You that you are; the You that you can be and the You that you will be. In my book that makes them responsible for all of your actions in equal if not greater measure.

I have never been comfortable with the word Atheist either, not because of what it actually means (which is, ‘not a theist’) but because of how it is perceived. The term has come to be equated with a barren disregard for the numinous, which for an artist such as I…is everything. Granted, this is through little fault of the authors of the term but over the years the word 'Atheist' has adopted a silent synonym: scientist. Atheism is largely equated with logical, critical and deductive reasoning (not that this is a bad thing). The term seems to alienate the subjective, intuitive, contemplative, artistic component that yearns for an 'unexplainable' component in their lives but have no particular need to call that x factor 'God'. 
For the artist or the bohemian bandit, if there is a god to be had, it is to be had in that space of serenity that commands everything. That veil between conception and realization that nurtures our thoughts and dreams right at the precipice before they appear out of the unknown and surprise us with the immense power we are capable of. The power of thought; of compassion; of song; of spirit; of art and yes of something as hackneyed as Love perhaps. While I sometimes do take Poppers claim of the absolutes seriously, I do have 'faith' in exceptions making life worth living. “If something that explains everything inversely explains nothing” than there is definitely some character to be ascribed to that ‘nothing’ dangling on the fringes of that particular absolute...

The last time I saw gOD, I was on the F-train in Queens headed towards Manhatten. A seventy-something year old man sat across from me in the sparsely populated cabin and he was playing the violin. He played Beethoven’s rendition of Symphony 9 ‘Ode to Joy’ and he never opened his eyes or bothered to look at his audience. I did, because I was it. The four other people in the cabin either had their headphones to distract them or a novel to drown out any need for audible stimulation.

In that moment, he was Holy.
Partly because he was magic, partly because he didn’t care and partly because I was the only one listening to his revelation. I rode the subway with him all the way to Soho, until he finally looked up.

Then He was g-OD.

When the doors opened, he packed up his violin and left...

And I knew I would find someone else, somewhere else tomorrow.