Just a Couple of Days

by Tony Vigorito

  After all, it may be only after we fall that we can flower.

  153 This chapter is purely academic. I include it only because I sense a logical incongruity in my own reasoning. Feel free to skip it and get back to the action, but if you’re up for it, try to follow me on this.

  Evolution is dependent upon error; mutations drive evolutionary change. If, as I have argued, culture represents the next layer of evolution, then miscommunication is the equivalent of mutation. In other words, miscommunication drives evolutionary change at the cultural level. If this is correct, then it is precisely our miscommunicative powers that have allowed our species to adapt so efficiently and so quickly to our environment. Consequently, if the Pied Piper virus perfects human communication, as it indeed appears to, then it seems to follow that the human species has in fact lost its greatest evolutionary advantage. What is worse, and despite all the happy dancing, we are apparently left to rot in paralytic stasis and stagnation.

  This is a delightful contradiction. How can I, a molecular biologist, cheer for the end of evolution? My answer, which satisfies me completely, is simply that evolution has not, in fact, ceased. Rather, evolution has merely reached a new level. In the same way that the evolutionary shift from the genetic to the cultural carried with it a tremendous leap in the rate of change, the shift from the cultural to the God-knows-what must carry with it a similarly exponential leap, a million-trillion titters and teehees coalescing into one gigantic guffaw. I am talking about a transcendental quickening, an eschatological escape into a higher state of being where we evolve all but instantaneously. Beyond language, there are no cultural habits of thinking to slow us down. We evolve in immediate response to all new stimuli, asymptotically attaining a fractal Truth where we see that all is one and we can do no greater good than to observe the universe and ourselves at play.

  But it is not quite so simple as this. Coming from such a prudish culture, I have overlooked one crucial component of evolution: sex. Miscommunication may be equivalent to mutation, but communication is equivalent to sexual reproduction. Sexual reproduction mixes new patterns of genetic traits together, increasing the likelihood of a species remaining well adapted to its environment. In the same way, communication mixes new concepts and ideas together.

  Sadly, however, most communication is akin to bad sex. Do you know what sex feels like? Admittedly, I myself have but a vague recollection, but I nevertheless remind you that sex, good sex, is, as they say, orgasmic. That is what evolution feels like. Do you know what communication feels like? Nothing like sex, I don’t have to assure you. Impotent and dry, flaccid and frigid, brief and unsatisfying, our linguistic intercourse leaves much to be desired. But then along pranced the Pied Piper, mooning and shining and flashing the world, and communication suddenly became perfect. Empathic communion, then, must feel heavenly.

  Hmm. It occurs to me that if my analogy is correct, then we are having sex right now. How awkward. I apologize if our encounter has been less than fantastic. It is a limitation of language. Talk to me on the far side of the Pied Piper virus and I’ll show you a good time. But perhaps I stretch this allegory too far. Or perhaps I’ve been celibate for far too long. Caveat lector.

  I’m bored. I wonder what everyone else is doing. The Pied Piper virus has surely touched all but a few handfuls of humans on this planet by now, and in time it will tickle every last one of us. I wonder how the experience of life has changed. Do they just dance forever in postapocalyptic merriment, eternally marveling at the miraculous devastation of it all? Not likely, but this is a question that I cannot answer. I can no more answer it than I can answer what happens after death. I can say that I have witnessed no mourning over the culture and civilization that has been lost. Quite the contrary, I have seen nothing but unconditional and unrestrained joy at what has been gained. Like death, it is only those who are still alive who would mourn. For the dead, this world surely fades as quickly as a dream.

  Think about this: Etymologically, apocalypse comes from the Greek word apokalyptein, meaning “to uncover.” If this outbreak is really it, then what has such a merry-hearted apocalypse uncovered? Listen up. Hell comes from the Old English word helan, meaning “to cover.” Do you understand what I’m saying? The Pied Piper virus is it! It has blown the lid off hell, freed us from prison, demolished the delusion of separateness, and put our species where we properly belong. Humans are back, and our destiny holds nothing you or I can possibly imagine, not in our wildest, most far-out reveries, for our destiny lies further than the imagination itself.

  Well, this is all chuckles and cheers, but what of our drama, our excitement, our intrigue, mystery, and espionage? What of it? Are our lies really worthy of such lamentation? Must we romanticize deception and glorify war? We’ve had a few cliffhangers, sure, and maybe they’re fun, but life is too often lackluster and lonely. To pule, pine, whimper, and whine over the loss of a perverse fascination with our own pitfalls is the worst kind of self-obsessed navel-gazing.

  Of course, what else can I do? There is no sense in grieving over my lack of hyperawareness and empathy. I am what I am, with nothing better to do but what I do. If I’m in prison, why should I grieve over the open fields I believe to exist just past the concrete wall topped with razor wire? I should revel in the glory of the sunshine I have, perhaps marvel at the nest an enterprising and daring cardinal built suspended in the barbs. And yet, simply because I can enjoy watching an anthill in the prison yard doesn’t imply that I wouldn’t enjoy traipsing naked through rolling hills of wildflowers more. But remember, in prison, I only imagine these wildflowers to exist—sort of a nostalgic premonition. Who knows what experiences actually lie on the other side? How can I hope to compare them to what I know on this side? On the one hand, there may exist a whole new level of experience just beyond that wall, with pleasures and aesthetics that humanity’s greatest artistic, linguistic, and musical manipulations only hinted at, mere signposts along the path to the garden of the gods and goddesses. On the other hand, there may be some mean bumblebees among those wildflowers, and I may be wishing I was back in prison, predictable and safe, playing with ants in the dust.

  154 In the olden days, back when language was all the rage, when people mistook words for the world, people used to argue whether life was the result of creation or evolution. It was an utterly meaningless debate, arrogant individuals (myself included) bickering over the semantics of their comfortable metaphors instead of pushing them further. I suppose my grandfather belonged to the creationist camp. As he explained to me when I was a child sitting on his knee one afternoon, evolution is wrong for the apparently self-evident reason that there are still apes. “Hey,” he said. “If man evolved from apes, then why are there still apes?”

  Despite his supreme confidence in making this assertion, I was unconvinced that his logic was ironclad. Perhaps that’s why I became a geneticist, to find some answers that would satisfy me. I studied and I studied, and pounded my simian chest with the standard arguments of evolutionary theory. Because I could describe it, I believed I knew what life was.

  In the end, however, it was Dandelion, barely five years old at the time, who proved my explanations incomplete. It could have been any child, mocking me with the automatic gamesaying of “Why?” to every answer I put forth. No matter how deeply I delved, this question was left unanswered.

  “Why evolve?”

  “Because of an accident of matter.”

  “Why matter?”

  “Because of the nature of energy.”

  “Why energy?”

  “Umm . . .”

  “Not umm,” Blip corrected me, stroking his daughter’s hair. “Aum, as in aum mani padme hum. Buddhist monks meditate on that phrase. It means ‘the jewel in the heart of the lotus,’ which basically means ‘God is within,’ or something like that.”

  “You should listen to Dandelion.” Sophia counseled me. “A mystic named Jesus once remarked, ‘Lest you become as little children, you shall not enter
the kingdom of heaven.’”10

  “Take the Holy Middle Path,” Blip advised.

  “Evolution is the process of Creation,” Sophia quipped, as smart as a smack in the face from a Zen master. “Create. Evolve. Crevolve.”

  155 If a man hollers “Hello!” in a city and no one’s around to hear it, does it make a sound? Most certainly, but it is the soundscape of nightmarish loneliness. Loneliness is emptiness. It is the space between the stars. It is nothing. Creation is God’s defense against loneliness.

  And who is God? According to Sister Lolita, my first-grade teacher with the purportedly smelly underwear, God is an old, old man who was never born and who will never ever die. As a six-year-old, I took her word for it. I accepted her description with innocent faith, though I was utterly mystified by it. I could swallow that he would never die, but never be born? Come on! This paradox consumed my young imagination for some time, but I eventually resolved it. My juvenile explanation does not make a lot of sense to me now, and indeed, my recollection of it is so vague I can’t even be certain that I’m not making it up. Nevertheless, what I came up with is this: God is some old man who walked over the hill one day. That’s it. That’s how I comprehended eternity. God walked over the hill one day.

  And now as I ponder this koan of my childhood, it occurs to me that I may merely have been making a random association. God, as far as anyone had yet explained to me, was an old man. And to be “over the hill” is a colloquialism for old age. Definitionally, then, God is over the hill.

  In any event, I was reminded of my youthful reasoning this morning while taking Loki for a walk. We had just crested the peak of the hill upon which Blip and Sophia’s dome was built, and Loki ran a bit down the other side to pee on a tree, as is his custom. I followed him over the hill, but stopped short when I saw what looked to be a child, far below. She waved up at me and sang out a series of beautiful and meaningless sounds.

  I waved back. God may be some fool who walked over a hill one day, but she’s also some child who scampered through a ravine one day.

  156 Waving is an instinctual gesture, a innate form of communication intended to display friendliness as surely as a smile. It must be. Otherwise the child, presumably prancing on the heels of the Pied Piper, would have been unable to manage it as a learned symbol. Whatever the case, I continued waving like a perfect doofus long after she skipped out of sight. The vision of another had bedazzled me into a silly and peaceful contemplation, a wonderful state of clarity and idiocy, grace and befuddlement. I whistled for Loki to follow me, immensely pleased to contribute to my surroundings with such a bucolic gesture.

  A lone dandelion enhanced my cheerful amble toward the dome. It was small but brilliantly yellow, almost orange, like the yolk of a cosmic Easter egg. An impudent early bloomer, bold and beautiful, it was the first flower I had seen in over six months. A breeze whiffed past me, licking my face. A warm front. Spring was casting its worldspell, perfuming the air with a subtle sexuality and flooding me with an unspeakable joie de vivre. Entranced, I stood absolutely still, a racing velocity of perception surrounding me like a flurry of faeries.

  I was admiring the dandelion as if it were the entire universe when a honeybee bumbled along and settled upon it. After collecting its pollen with all due busyness, it buzzed itself aloft and danced among the brush, searching for a flower, a flash of color, a perfumed scent. It came to me, to my hands, the hands I had recently washed with Blip and Sophia’s homemade dandelion soap, and it landed on my thumb. Undaunted, I lifted my hand to peer at it. The honeybee froze, peering back at me for a long moment, and then, with a very precise insertion of its stinger, it let me know that I was unmistakably alive.

  157 Spring has arrived, and every day there is a greater funk of sex in the air. Yesterday I saw a pack of six humans racing each other down the hill. They were entirely naked but for the fantastically colored rainbow cloaks fastened around their necks, fluttering like a gang of butterflies in their wake. I myself was almost naked (I had a towel around my waist), and washing dishes in the kitchen at the time, but when I saw that vision, I got dressed and locked the house up tight. I can make no excuse for my actions. I am pathetic. I’d like to race naked down a hillside with my brothers and sisters, but instead I hide inside and monkey around with my little collection of words. I am alone, and I write because it gives me the illusion of social contact. But this time is swiftly passing, and the end of my story waits only for me. I am a social creature. Tomorrow I resolve to join the rest of my species in our destiny. Better to go crazy with others than by myself. Better to die together than to live alone.

  But first, these past months in my hermitage I’ve figured out a few things concerning matters metaphysical. As I began to explain earlier, loneliness is nothingness. And as already mentioned, the Hebrew word for God, Yahweh, is simply a form of that most fundamental verb, to be. God is what is, understand, but God cannot be without being perceived. God is all that is, and yet God is nothing unless God can look upon God. God is one, but God is not lonely. Loneliness is a contradiction of Creation. Creation must be, but God did not create the universe. God is the universe. God is not the Creator. God is Creation. There is no difference. There was never anything but Creation, and there will never be anything but Creation. Creation requires nothing but itself for its own existence.

  If you ever find yourself lonely, you are only undermining your Self. You are God, for chrissakes! Is the Truth really so tremendous? Look around and see what else you’ve created! Do you think you were born for nothing? Dreadfully sorry, but that just ain’t so. You asked for it and you got it. You have a will. Have you forgotten what you wanted to do with it? Or worse, have you surrendered it and become a tool of some other blind facet of your Self?

  Humans take about twenty-two thousand breaths a day. Take just one deep breath and experience it. Live your life, for the Spirit that resides within you is only on vacation. Your soul is but a lungful of air, giving individual life while it resides within you but dissipating when it is ultimately released back into the infinite sea of the divine atmosphere. Trying to hold on to your breath will get you nowhere, and it will make you purple and ugly in the process. Enjoy your Self while you still can.

  Do you really think there is no purpose to existence? You magnificent mop. You profound poop. You who make a brooding puzzle out of the simple experience of life, you make yourself worthy of severe ridicule with such sentiments. Unclench your ass. Don’t be so freaking constipated. You deserve a smack upside your goofy, beautiful head. Do I have to spell it out for you? Very well. Hear ye, hear ye! You are the purpose of existence, as surely as I am, and as surely as are the birds and the bees and the flowers and the trees. Chirping, chattering, whistling, buzzing, and rustling. Moaning, groaning, writhing, wriggling, clawing, sucking, and fucking. The secrets of ceaseless peace and uncontainable joy are being whispered all around you. A squawking crow, a hissing cat, a howling wolf. A dripping faucet, a slamming door, a clanking pot. A falling tree, a clapping hand, a stomp, a slap, a kick, a kiss. A gently shifting shadow, a swiftly shooting star. Bees are bumbling, stomachs are grumbling, humans are mumbling, fumbling, and crumbling. Smell it. Taste it. Hear it. See it. Touch it. Love it.

  You who are reading these words, this story is for you. Fear not the Piper. Fear not your Self. Paradise is yours to regain. Ride the gales of divine laughter, the maelstroms of sacred mirth. It is your right, it is your purpose, and it is so easy. It is child’s play. It is one small step for a human, one giant glide for humankind.

  Godspeed.

  158 Good morning, people! I don’t know what’s happening, but scores of the most majestic, noble creatures I have ever seen are ambling, skipping, and gallivanting down the hill outside, apparently on their way into town. I have spent almost four months completely alone, and I can assure you with a certain measure of hermitic authority that nothing between sunshine and clear water is more wonderfully necessary than other people. We are not born to be
alone, nor are we born to act like we are alone, which is really what selfishness is all about. We are each of us fish, and we are water to one another. Without each other, we struggle, we flounder, we suffocate. But together, living for our sisters and our brothers, what is there to want? As one, what is there to fear? Yes, yes indeed. This is my day of reckoning. This is my prelude to spontaneity, my so long to solemnity. Woop woop woop!

  Ahem. Yes then. Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to witness the realization of human potential. Behold our marriage of madness and mirth, our matrimony of lunacy and piety. Mark the moment, for today we walk down the aisle of laughter and love, we run the gauntlet of tickles and wisdom. These are the nuptials of the nonesuch of nonsense, when nothing short of everything has changed.

  Who did we think we were anyway? We who whispered lies about our lives. We who wanted what others held, and held what others needed. We were the desperate and lonely of life. We were the weary, the wicked, the wrong. We were our own whip. We were the cranky monkeys, the cantankerous pipsqueaks whose deeds of disgrace sullied our own race. But as I look out the window—hold on—as I open the window, I see nothing of this past in the humans before me. Edenic smiles define every face. Indeed, smiles engulf the entirety of every person. Posture literalizes perfection, movement describes grace, bodies radiate health, and there is no ugliness anywhere. Poetry is personified. These are prelapsarian people, and every individual shines with a supreme and indefatigable confidence of being, an attitude of beatitude.

  I’ve been noticed, it seems. A woman is sprinting toward my window. Her tight braids lash out fiercely behind her, a toga of sorts is flattened against her steel-belted physique. She seems to recognize me, and she’s smiling like we’re old friends. Loki is yipping in apparent delight, and so I pause my scribbling to greet my eager visitor. . . .