I apologize. I apologize for Grace and all the mistakes she made. I apologize for being bipolar. I apologize for driving my father into an early grave. I apologize for disrespecting mom. I apologize for the time I locked my brother in a room with the lights off till he cried in fear, and then pulled the door open and pulled him close and hugged him. I did it because I needed to comfort a crying baby.
I apologize for getting ketchup on my math homework. I apologize for letting the cat pee on my science project. I apologize for falling into the water when I was three because I leaned too far over the dock. I apologize for torturing a brother who later drank himself to death. I apologize for disappearing at thirteen down the park with my boyfriend and missing dinner. I apologize for turning the TV on when I was three and getting an electric shock that blew me across the room. I apologize for saying the wrong thing all the time. I apologize for trashing my apartment. I apologize for trashing my parents’ guest room. I apologize for trashing the emergency room at Columbia Presbyterian. I apologize for getting fired over and over.
All apologies. And I apologize for writing about my experience which makes it a neurosis instead of literature.
I apologize. And the church won’t give me absolution and I can’t receive Communion.
So now I start over. And stop apologizing. Because “Love means never having to say your sorry” according to a line in the novel “Love Story.”
Which book I read in math class in sixth grade. Oh yeah, and then there was the time I played with my new watch and Sister Cephas threw an eraser at me which hit me square in the Forehead.
Kids have to be disciplined. Or else they won’t learn.
Thus spake Zarathustra.
Did that make any sense?
I think I just did the fourth step. And I didn’t even know I was doing it.
*************************
So we are back to square one, or is that just a cliche? Where are we really? Well it is 2024 and the presidential election year. Palestine and Israel are duking it out. College students are protesting American Zionist Policy by camping out in the universities. Teen suicide is sky high.
And Grace sits with her wine grape juice cooler with ice and attempts another literary accomplishment. Which is really a tale of Neurosis. This according to Jung who says personal literature is not art, it is neurosis.
He also says artists are autoerotic, selfish, antisocial and vain. This in one of his books. A chapter on Ulysses. That’s as specific as I can get. Ulysses apparently is an exercise in semi-creative semi-schizophrenic high art because Joyce wrote it. It is a tome of groundbreaking art. Also boring as hell.
What you are reading may be neurosis but I will tell you it is a lot easier and more interesting I will venture, than Ulysses. Try it. Get the book out of the library. See how far you get. See how much you understand. If anything, fall asleep.
A soporific for the masses.
*************************
Try sending this off to a publisher. Or don’t.
Grace is writing to herself. Grace writes to herself these days. Pages and pages of diaries and journals. She is very preoccupied with that. And her wine. Not to mention the cigarettes.
Somebody offered her K2 and she turned it down. Afterward she was mildly interested in considering its efficacy as a sedative for the Pain of Life. It was readily available and cheaper than weed. Grace soon tired of this consideration, however, and returned home to the apartment she shared with a maniac Arab immigrant who was more a security guard than anything else.
*************************
The clock goes tick tock. It is late May. Grace takes a drag and stops writing. Regards the calendar on the wall. Think of things. Things, things, things, many thing-things. Richard Wilhelm translated the I Ching. She learns something new every day.
You know what the Immaculate Conception is? A catholic school reared young man once said it was the Nativity. Close but no cigar. Literally. And they say a cigar is just a cigar. Tell me another one.
We are here for a reason. But we are also Dust in the Wind. By Kansas. Ecclesiastes to be exact.
Grace sits up straight and does a terta and closes the book. Not good enough. Not good enough. Did she apologize for that?
We are having difficulty here. Remnants of ruminations. Incomplete and incoherent. No better than the lunatic raving on the train station.
Try again. You must try again. You must try, try again.
Grace? Grace! Grace111
Grace! Pull it all together. Get a grip. It’s filler just filler.
Grace!! And I heard my name.
We are all here for a reason. Or not.
Jung also said that art was useless. But everything is useless. Even money in the long run.
Grace sits and wipes her eyes and runs her hand through her hair. Then she starts to consider again. Consider this and consider that.
A pedicure. What a lovely idea. I can go for that. So simple and lovely. Pink toes. Lovely. Yes, a lovely pedicure. Why not?
Let’s not and say we did.
It’s late May. Something pretty. We need something pretty. Pretty useless I say. No, not that way. Not in that context. Not that slip of English homonym. Adjective or adverb. Which?
*************************
And now for some clean fun. Cigarettes. Wine with pomegranate lemonade. A call to Jack. No, he is sleeping. A call to Billy.
Now we will relax and sit in the night.
Grace regards the running of fingertips over a keyboard. What’s left? Only the sound of cars swishing by outside. And the refrigerator. The refrigerator hums.
Jack calls. Oh shit. He is not sleeping. He doesn’t sleep. And then he does sleep. At the most inopportune times.
Let’s turn the radio on.
Let’s get down to what is really going down.
At the moment I am not sure. So to speak. As it were. Be that as it may.
*************************
All it really is is what it was. What it is going to be. What it is already. Do you get it? For real. Surreal, Reality. The time we live in. The best of times and the worst of times. Like so many other times.
But this time it really is. It really is such a time. And it has been. It has been growing, and moving, and there have been children born and many old people who have died, and we are at the cusp.
The cusp of reality? No, you idiot. What does reality have to do with it? Such things are relative, subjective and idiosyncratic. We don’t deal with such things as reality. Nobody does. There’s only illusion.
The cusp of what then? The cusp of a new creation. The cusp of a new beginning.
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches toward heaven to be born?
Bethlehem you idiot.
No. heaven.
The husband comes in. He has a shirt. It is the makeup shirt. The shirt to makeup for a pre-afternoon yelling match, replete with breakdowns, meltdowns and suchlike.
And a sandwich too. Fine. lovely.
Why are you still married to this guy?
She stops and stares. The radio plays classical. She can finally listen to classical without tearing her hair out.
Grace!
Three year old Grace scowls. Momma says, “You WILL listen to Mozart.”
What’s all this about? The husband says. I think you are a witch.
A genie. A gremlin. A fairy. One of the little people, the Wee Folk.
Yes, Says Jack. From the speaker. A wizardess. Of sorts.
I can’t do it, says Grace. Not tonight.
What did Viejo say? Not a woman. Maybe a Venusian. Maybe.
Violet says they can give the old women eggs. Put them in the Fallopian tubes, Fertilize them. Make babies at 90.
Grace moves through forty years of history easily. She slides. She is of another time and she she she–
Grace!
I can’t. Under pressure. There’s too much pressure. I don’t understand.
Where I come from. Where I have been. How I got here.
Into this Dystopian nightmare.
*************************
Of course there are happy people. Of course. The people that don’t feel too much pain. The people who don’t listen to rock music. They listen to show tunes and 50s oldies. The doo wop.
They listen to children’s music. Rock music has demonic rhythms, I’ve heard it said. By church ‘people. People who listen to harp instrumentals, hymns, organs that are centuries old. Time tested for God.
And of course God is happy. And he likes good little children. Obedient citizens. He doesn’t like questions. He especially doesn’t like people questioning his authority. Resignation to His will. That’s what he likes.
This is the God I imagine has some kind of winter wonderland outside of hell. Which is where I seem to be.
Hell is a place of pain, boredom, horror, evil Hell is a place for people who question. Hell is a place guarded by a Fire breathing dragon.
The dragon is there to make sure nobody gets out.
And Camus said, Hell is other people.
And the churches hand out God like candy. He loves you. God loves you. Now put the money in the basket. We all feel good. Let’s sing a song. Play the drums and stringed lute and clashing cymbals. Give praise to the Lord. Only don’t play rock. Don’t do that.
A mighty fortress is Our God. The lady in the corset covered by a polyester blue sleeveless shift (it’s summertime) sings. She has children and grandchildren. And she will show you pictures if you want. Or if you don’t want. She doesn’t care. Just look at the pictures of her bloodline which will guarantee immortality if not heaven.
It’s more important to have progeny for future generations that bear your name and hang your picture on the wall. More important than being single and childless and shining like the angels in the afterlife. Cause in the afterlife, there doesn’t seem to be anyone to show your pictures to.
Next to the dish closet that has china from countless generations back.
Why beat up on God? He’s a nice guy. Offers all sorts of gifts. You know, all good gifts around us. Offers gifts.
And he gave us monotheistic faiths. The Jews he told to kill all the Amorites and Canaanites so they could take over that particularly nice cut of land on the Red and Dead Sea.
And the Muslims he told to hide their woman behind black coveralls because after all they are property and besides that all men are malicious rapists who salivate at the sight of skin and hair. Which is supercharged with estrogen.
Then you have the Christians. Barbarians grafted onto the root of Jesse.
Oh my God.
What if God really is everywhere? What if he is down in the netherworld and in the far reaches of heaven, earth and hell? What if he doesn’t like to look at pictures? What if he doesn’t nod his head and tap his feet and boogie to Day By Day?
What if he whispers? What if he has your back when you’re bad and wrong and judged by society for the contents of your wallet and not your character? What if God sleeps with prostitutes and eats with dirty hands the pigs of Ireland? What if he kicks that lady in the corset in the blue polyester dress in the ass when she bends over to pick up her hymnal which fell on that kneeler under the pew?
What if God is one of us? Just a slob like one of us? What if Jesus sits at the right hand of the Father and covers his mouth in a yawn when preachers start talking? What if really everything you can’t see, everything you breathe, the dust and the wind, what if all that is a byproduct of what Christians call grace, what if it is God’s sweat and tears and blood, what if we are wrong to relegate him to a temple or mosque or church building?
What if God is waiting for us to say something interesting in our bedtime prayers so he won’t die of boredom?
What if God is something nobody can see, hear, smell, read, understand? How do atheists know whether he is there or not? What if he is talking all the time and nobody is listening?
I don’t know. I don’t really know. I just like to blabber a lot. And spread the filth of my brain’s ruminations around like so much mud and sand.
Of course God likes apple pie and fried chicken. Who doesn’t?
Grace chose to write on a July day when she had been calm. She wrote because things were kind of calm.
Boring. Switch to another document. To save face.
Author Info:
Eileen McManus
Book Author
