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PROLOGUE IN HEAVEN The smartest person in the Bible was surely the (mostly) forgotten wife of Job, who urged her bereft and stinky husband to "curse God and die." But of course Job, another in the chain of zealotry, would not do so, therefore providing us with wonderful literature that doesn't quite justify the ways of God to man so much as it tells man that if he doesn't like the way things have gone, he can go fuck himself because a supernatural ego is in charge rather like George Patton's. As for Abraham, the first in the zealotry chain, God may have sent the ram to prevent the carnage on the mountain, but the terrified beast bleated loudly, figuring it was up for him for sure, so he had nothing to lose by yelling his head off about being a stand-in for Isaac, a thirty-seven year-old halfwit. Irony defin'd: the ram was so loud that Abraham, who by most reckonings was 137 years old, had lost most of his hearing, and so could not hear the whispering Angel imploring him to drop the blade and stay his hand: so, Good German that he was, Abe gutted Isaac his son, and had a bit of explaining to do to Sarah when he got home a day to two later. In due course Abraham died, didn't wait to be announced, strode (his youth restored) into the Divine Presence, and punched said Divine Presence in the mouth. "It was a test," God protested, spitting out two teeth, "it was so you could see what you're made of." "What the fuck was this," cried Abe, "a promotional exam in the Post Office? There were right and wrong answers and a better route that left out Newark if I scored high? You got me to murder my son after I sent the first one, Ay-hab the Ay-rab, out into the desert. You idiot, you let power go to your head like any other corporate shitheel! I didn't want to be the father of nations, I wanted to live out my life with my wife, a couple of kids a tent for the babes, and a bottle of cognac: but you, big man, you had to show everyone you were the big puppetmaster like that Hirschfeld cartoon of Shaw dancing My Fair Lady characters on strings. Well, I am not Al Hirschfeld, you don't have Shaw's brains or Isadora Duncan's body, you play with us like this is Atlantic City and you're a high roller. Well, I guess you are A gambler bound to lose not his own shirt (you forbid!) but ours, so at the end of the day we walk naked as we came from our mothers' wombs, bereft, sad creatures you have stripped of money, tents, dignity, and hope. But we alone are escaped to tell you that you have screwed up a really good idea. The ram could not talk. KTW/7-25-08 After a really bad couple of days, sometimes you've just gotta come out swinging. -- Ken Wolman http://bestiaire.typepad.com http://www.petsit.com/content317832.html ------------------- "I have been watching you; you were there, unconcerned perhaps, but with the strange distraught air of someone forever expecting a great misfortune, in sunlight, in a beautiful garden."--Maurice Maeterlinck, "Pelleas et Melisande"