And in so many voyages are all religions made one.
And now the juggernaut is thronging past the Hawaiian Islands. The decomposing beach balls and toothbrushes are agitated by the seas, and they break down to undifferentiated flakes and specks and shreds. To coumarone-indene and diallyl phthalate. The photons of infrared radiation and ultraviolet light, these cleave the bonds which hold together atoms. Hydrolysis causes the scission of polymer chains. And these, these disposable cigarette lighters and flea collars, they’re reduced to their constituent monomers.
And so suspended in this rich bath, the Neoplatonists believe, the thing-child waxes plump. It evolves lips, and those lips part to reveal a mouth, but the thing-child is still not alive. And within the mouth grow teeth of polyarylate.
Above Wake Island, the flood of thermoplastic polyester compounds and polyphenylene oxide veers north, lingering near Yokohama along the coastline of Japan. There, a discarded wristwatch wraps itself around a growing wrist. The thing-child face floats above the water’s surface like a tiny atoll. The broken wristwatch begins to tick. The graven idol opens its eyes, dull eyes that stare up at the ocean skies. And on clear equatorial nights those polystyrene eyes marvel at the stars.
The new lips do tremble and utter the words, “Ye gods!”
Yet, still, the thing-child is not alive.
DECEMBER 21, 10:31 A.M. PST
A Match Made in Heaven
Gentle Tweeter,
Years before, once I’d been retrieved from my nana’s tedious upstate funeral and returned to my natural habitat of Lincoln Town Cars and leased jets, I resumed my campaign of inventing salacious diary entries.
“Dear Diary,” I wrote, “what I once felt for musky moose pee-pees I find was merely a fascination. What initially drew me to a leopard’s velvety hoo-hoo was not love….”
Here, my parents would be forced to turn a page, pulse-poundingly anxious for my next self-revelation. Their every breath bated, they’d read on, desperate for assurance that I’d abandoned my ardor for lemming wing-wangs.
“Dear Diary,” I wrote, “living upstate, among simple, weathered folk, I’ve discovered a single lover who has eclipsed all my previous animal paramours….” Here I altered my handwriting, making it crabbed and jagged to heighten the tension of reading my thoughts. My pen shook as if I were overwhelmed with strong emotion.
My busybody mom and dad would squint. They’d debate every illegible word.
“Dear Diary,” I continued, “I’ve formed an alliance more fulfilling than anything I’d ever dreamed possible. There, in that rudely constructed upstate house of worship…”
My parents had been at my Nana Minnie’s funeral. Both my parents had seen me comforted by the towheaded David Copperfield with his face like fresh-baked bread and his hair like butter, that countrified swain who’d pressed a Bible book into my hands and bade me find strength therein. Now, as they read my diary, most likely they imagined that I was enacting some tantric upstate Kama Sutra with that earnest blond prefarmer.
“Dear Diary,” I wrote, stringing my parents along, “never have I imagined this level of satisfaction….”
I wrote, “Until now my eleven-year-old heart has never truly loved another….”
My mother would be reading aloud by now. In the same elegant voice with which she did voice-overs for Bain de Soleil television commercials, she’d say, “I have at last found happiness.”
Both my parents would leer at the pages as if they were a sacred text. As if this, my humble fake diary, were the Tibetan Book of the Dead or The Celestine Prophecy: something lofty and profound from their own lives. My mother, in her stage-trained, Xanax-relaxed voice, would read aloud, “‘… from this day forward I commit my eternal love to…’” and her voice would falter. To them, what followed was worse than the image of me suckling at any panther woo-woo or grizzly bear nipple. Here was a horror more confronting than the idea of their precious daughter wedding a staunch Republican.
Seeing my words, she and my dad could only stare in disbelief.
“‘I commit my eternal love,’” my dad would continue, “‘to my supreme lord and master…’”
“Lord and master,” my mom repeats.
“‘Jesus,’” reads my dad.
My mom says, “Jesus Christ.”
DECEMBER 21, 10:34 A.M. PST
My Flirtation with the Divine
Gentle Tweeter,
Jesus Christ made the best fake boyfriend ever. Wherever my family traveled, at our homes in Trinidad or Toronto or Tunisia, the doorbell would ring, and some aboriginal delivery peon would be at our front step bearing a vast bouquet of roses from Him. Dining at Cipriani or Centrale, my dad would order me the lapin à la sauce moutarde, and I’d wait for it to arrive at the table before regarding my plate in pretend disdain. Recoiling, I’d signal the waiter, saying, “Rabbit? I can’t eat rabbit! If you knew anything about Leviticus Two, you’d know that an edible beast has to chew a cud and have a hoof.”
My father would order the salade Lyonnaise, and I’d send it away because pigs didn’t chew cuds. He’d order the escargot bourguignon, which I’d reject because the Bible book specifically forbids eating snails. “They’re unclean,” I’d insist. “They’re creeping things.”
My mother would put on a serene Xanaxed mask. The buzzwords of her life were tolerance and respect, and she was trapped between them as if crushed in an ideological vise. Keeping her voice calm, she’d ask, “Well, dear, what can you eat—”
But I’d cut her off with a “Wait!” I’d fish a PDA from the pocket of my skort and pretend to find a new message. “It’s Jesus,” I’d interrupt, making my parents wince. “He’s texting me!” Their own dinners cooling, I’d make them bide their time. If either of them said a word of protest I’d shush them as I pretended to read and respond. Without looking up, I’d squeal, loud enough for the assembled diners to overhear, “Christ loves me!” I’d frown at my little PDA screen and say, “Jesus disapproves of the dress you’re wearing, Mom. He says it’s too young for you, and it makes you look slutty….”
My parents? I’d become their worst nightmare. Instead of hoisting the ideological banner they’d so proudly bestowed upon me, instead of accepting the torch of their atheist humanism, I was scrolling through the messages on my phone, telling them, “Jesus says that tofu is evil, and all soy is of the Devil.”
My parents… in the past my parents had put their complete faith in quartz crystals and hyperbaric chambers and the I Ching, so they didn’t have a credible leg left to stand on. Throughout this dinner stalemate the waiter had remained steadfast, standing beside our table, and I now turned to him and asked, “Do you, by any chance, serve locusts and wild honey?” I asked, “Or manna?”