Level 7

 

You are about to arrive at Level 7.

The elevator door will soon open and you will be a septuagenarian.

You will be given a bundle of old man problems. 

Congratulations!

Hello. My name is Lars and I am your greeter. That’s right, I am you. You yourself. Thou art that. Some of the surprises are being saved for your next wellness check up. Each year there will be more surprises. As you know, your financial situation is not secure, which in America means you are not a millionaire. Be careful. Your diet could be better. Many of your comrades have already fallen. You are fortunate you have made it this far, so once again, congratulations!

I am afraid of wasting time.

Time is all I have and I too easily lose it.

I misplace the time and don’t know what I did with it.

The time clock is on my phone and my phone is shackled to my wrist. A chain is attached to the phone and to my wrist so the phone won’t lose me.

Dig this time. Dig into it. Dig into the dust from which you came.

I know there is something buried here.

A thought is buried here.

I could use a thought detector or a dog trained to sniff out thought,

A thought detector that would locate the insights and inspirations and theories that are HERE in front of me or HERE in my memory or HERE underneath the paper or inside the paper and if I scratch or tickle the paper with this pen it will burst out with laughter or cry out with pain and then I’ll have something of value, something to make you laugh or cry, or even think, or even act.

All I have is time. All I ever had was time and now it is running out and I don’t know how much I have left and I’m afraid, scared, terrified, of wasting it.

I’m writing these notes on the back of this week’s work schedule. I have a little more than two minutes left to have a thought.

I’m sitting in the Marketplace at 8 in the morning, waiting to sell a good portion of my day for a few dollars. I’m a member of the labor force, a unit in the economic system of an Empire, and my free time is almost up.

Today is February 29 and it is Leap Day. If we don’t have a leap day every four years Halloween would eventually occur on Easter, which would make for some peculiar theology involving a zombie Jesus. Why seek the living among the living dead? Why seek the living among frozen eggs? If we were formed out of dust is the dust a person with the rights of a human? When you return to dust, does the dust claim its due? Food turns into shit, but I don’t eat shit. I return to dust, but I am not dust, even if I’m dusty. 

This morning I read on my phone about the young man who was brought up in a Christian community that practiced a militaristic discipline. He left the community and joined the Air Force. He poured gasoline on himself in front of the Israeli embassy and set himself on fire screaming, Free Palestine!  There is a story that connects these three facts of his life but I don’t know it, we don’t know it, and you don’t understand it. He was twenty five years old.

Israel bombs hospitals because Hamas wants them to and Israel seems committed to doing what Hamas wants as long as it involves killing Palestinians. Hamas kills 1200 Israelis and Israel kills 30,000 Palestinians, and counting. Israel is almost as bad as America. I can’t say I understand it and I can’t really say what Ezekiel would say about this, or Isaiah, or Jeremiah, or the minor prophets. Did that young man’s Bible teachers tell him this is God’s plan and these are the End Times? Did he realize this is crazy, but it drove him crazy also? What God or Devil pours flames on the heads of the confused? What Zombie Christ calls for genocide and suicide? What do you do when you look for life among the living and only find the dead? What do you do when you look for truth and only find lies? We live in the fantasies we’re given and then move on to new fantasies. Easter is Halloween. Ash Wednesday was Valentine’s Day. This calendar is a mess. Independence Day is April Fools Day. Day becomes night becomes day becomes night. I wake up and dream. I fall asleep and work. Labor Day is for veterans of the class war. On average, seventeen military veterans kill themselves each day, and that’s down from 17.2, so that’s supposed to be good news, seventeen military suicides a day, but I think the military is losing an invisible war.

I dig a couple of thoughts out of the ashes:

Memorial Day is for survivors to pretend that organized killing is a force that gives us meaning.

When the church becomes an empire the Christians become the crucifiers.

Behold, the Door opens.

Welcome to Level 7.

Watch your step.

Mind the gap.

You either leap or you fall.