thorny triptych

by Andrew Rai Berzins

1.      HOW THE GOD THING HAPPENED

We were exhausted. Well, I know I was. Looking at the others, I gauged them to be in a similar state. This mammoth had been one whack of work. They always are, but this one, this one, this fella was not good with demise. To his credit, he’d put up a fight, but his right front elbow was his literal downfall. Some kind of wound, ooze-shiny with fester, whether perpetrated by toothy-cat or snub-nose bear, had gone beyond muscle, into tendon, bone. Strands of shredded ligament – scarlet – waving like tiny ribbons from the joint. With every turn, he flirted with buckling. Groans – I tell you – something horrendous. A dire dance. It brings you pause.

While Randy carved off some feasible flesh, and I did my thing with recreating fire, June lucked on a walnut tree. Brenda scored basil and mint and kale. Phil had gone off on one of his wanders – as he does – whether dejected or confounded or gaseous, but, on return, came bearing mushrooms. We didn’t know—at first—they weren’t like other mushrooms.

We ate like kings and queens – even though royalty would not be envisioned for many more millennia. We ate darn well (no qualms there), though in retrospect you’re forced to wonder how much of one’s behaviour is mere performance for some unseen external agency.

Given all, even in aftermath, none of us bore Phil ill will. Because – see – it got a bit wild. Like the wind was tryna communicate. Everyone had versions of themselves moving every time they moved, like shadows, except as walking shadows, not like shadows on the ground.

We didn’t have the words to describe our experience.

Literally – we did not have the words.

Randy went to utter town on the mushrooms, and, after a series of pretty odd noises, several waves of sweat coupled with shudders, some revelatory gestures about his upbringing, he started throwing up. Then, throwing up blood. He’d die in the night.

Rain came. Somehow, we let the fire go out – something we’d been pretty good not to do the last few years – and it was getting bugger cold. Brenda was shaking like the dickens. It got bad. Temperature swooping like a pterodactyl. Of course, we could only imagine their swoop. We’d found this fossil of a pterodactyl earlier that day. We didn’t know they’d been extinct for 66 million years. How could we? We weren’t paleontologists. Just late-Pleistocene misfits tryna survive. We were in hills new to us, so couldn’t be sure what was still around. Anyhow, cold. We were wet. Then, just before Randy died, he started making sounds that we would only later come to realize (in retrospective blinding awe) were words – indescribable words.  He conceived words then went and died!  His first words were also his last.

Is that ironic or just terribly unfair?

Not proud to say we edged morose. Randy there now dead. Shapes still shifting from the mushroom buzz. Mammoth on its side, half-lidded dead eye staring back, almost like an accusation, like we’d done something wrong in bringing him down with our spears. Poison, admittedly. Was that the gripe? Monksblood’s been commonplace since I was a runt. Tips themselves were standard. We sure weren’t the first clowns wielding lithic-reduction spearheads.

I was ready to call it quits. Heart palpitations. Headache. Limbs creeping numb.

But then the sky opened and a very big cloud-person threw a blazing spear down toward us. It hit a nearby tree – a bristlecone pine if memory serves – the exploded bark cascading down in scorched bits around us. The ground sizzled, warming us up. We looked through our smoke-teary eyes to the smouldering stump, sheared off at the bulbous knot that looked – uncannily – like a head. A large branch rose upward from either side like arms. In welcome, you would think, in any language. Big heat. Power. Good enough. We were grateful. Thank God, we were saying to ourselves. And then – not too long later – to each other.

But those were not the first words we said. Be a better story if they were.

The first word we actually said, as a group, with Randy’s last breath crisp in our minds, taut and moist and delectable – it was not God.

It was barbeque.

2.      JESUS’ WIFE

Couples argue. Lilith knew this as well as any. And having Jesus for a husband added tensions to a marriage most people would be loath to endure. While a host of buddies were busy elevating him as the son of God, several had taken her aside and tried to persuade her to maybe – you know – disappear? One called her “night-creature.” Another – “screech-owl.” She fully recognized that her voice could get shrill, but somehow, in this instance, she kept her temper.

“What about our children?” said Lilith. She knew Jesus loved them. She had no doubt.

“Lots of children kicking around,” said Matthew. Or maybe it was Simon the Zealot. “Why should J’s love be limited to only those that escaped your womb?”

This upset Lilith bigtime, especially since she’d increasingly felt that Jesus had been more focused on work than on family. When he suggested that she become one of his apostles – even just to mollify the others – she basically freaked. She wasn’t going to take the bottom rung on a twelve-foot ladder leading back up to her husband.

So, she went off to visit some cousins in the desert. Hauling the kids. The fresh air would do them good. And fresh figs from right off the tree. Then there was her uncle’s excellent wine.

When she got back a couple weeks later, she was slammed with the crazy stuff that had gone down.  Jesus was up on Golgotha Hill, nailed to a cross, a rogue on either side.

Against the advice of her neighbours, Lilith snuck out the Jerusalem gate in the night. At the base of the hill, she could see the three elevated men, now barely the shadows of men. Crows hopped about the perimeter. The silhouettes of griffon vultures drifted against the torch-lit clouds. The haters were out in full force, snarling obscenities, especially at Jesus.

Lilith started up the path, but a massive Roman spearman turned and denied her. She knew him. Marcellus. He wasn’t an overly harsh man. But he was hundreds of miles from home, tired of his job, tired of conflict, tired – he’d made it clear – of the bloodshed.

“Get gone,” he said.

“That’s my husband,” said Lilith.

“That is no one’s husband,” said Marcellus. “I were you, I’d make myself scarce. Fella up there, he never had children. Remember that – he never had children.”

Reluctantly, she turned and headed back. In his voice, of course, she’d heard the ominous warning. But further – and more persuasively – the care.

3.      OTHER

Most days I struggle to grasp my true purpose. I’ve gauged I’m not alone in this.

So, I went looking for an other job, right, something to keep me occupied until I fully figure shit out.  Enthralled would be cool but – as I hear – that can be a pretty tall order.

It does make one wonder though: How much of life is a search?

Regarding a job, I set the bar low. Or so I thought, dumb to the current economy.

I looked everywhere within what I’d gauged my realm of access, which is not insubstantial. Initially, I was vigorous, until the actual anxiety kicked in. Like – I imagine – when you’re a smoker and you find yourself with an empty pack, 4 a.m. in the palace, and the stores are closed, and your friendly neighbours – the smoking ones – are all asleep, and it’s a monster trek to the nearest all-nighter, and – who knows – maybe it’s bloody Christmas again – which can only make things worse. Or you’re a dog, and you put a bone somewhere you can’t any longer seem to find. The scent is gone! Where went the scent? Where the fuck we bury things! Bones or cigarettes, bonhomie or bliss...

Brain damage, some fucker muttered, passing by, orange corduroys, paisley shirt, Adidas Rod Lavers, apropos of nothing I could discern. Then, again, perhaps I’d been muttering. We did exchange glances. He gestured outward. Only a brain-damaged god could vomit up this.

And – yes – the nearby buildings were less than inspiring. Fit for insects. Human-sized insects. I could not protest that I did not know the architect.

Tears happened on my cheeks. I wiped them off and flung them afar. New streams on other continents bubbled up through barren dirt – maybe not the worst thing – still baffling the hydrologists employed to make sense of those scenes.

I preferred that guy who deified gravity, dreamt one night of flying and lost his faith.

Some days I struggle to remember who I am. Further, what or where or why.

Messily enmeshed in this world I created.

For instance, this other fella stopped me on the street, could have been a billionaire, could have been a beggar. Scent of sandalwood, which is nice. An EAT SHIT forearm tattoo, just above a battered TAG Heuer timepiece. Glitter on his cheeks, caramel teeth. Claims to want a conversation but won’t say concerning what. “You go first,” he smirks. Having sworn off interpersonal violence, I made the pavement tremble, but he just stared. This is senseless is the only chorus ringing in my sorry skull—that and then: Is this also my doing?

I met the demon’s gaze until he sidled off. “Good riddance,” they said, where I was raised [those aeons ago], when something undesirable left. And he was. And he did. Though – I suspect – temporarily. Good riddance to bad rubbish. If only, huh.

But look at the landscape. Out there. Past those millions of buildings. No one can call that shabby work.

I get it. I do. I think I do.

The job for which I thought myself adequate was offered – seemingly – to someone more adequate. I got the update on my phone. A message left upon my phone. I called back and got a robot reply. I said words, perhaps, I shouldn’t have said. 

Lucky me, I currently exist near a beach. Beach upon an ocean. So that is swell.

An albatross landed nearby, recently, but was (of course) lost. Was here on account of being lost. He – or she – left upon her/his own propulsion. I was not present. I was not a witness. Albatross are foreign. Or albatrosses. Are they pluralized? No one on the beach seems to know.

I know I should, me of all, but increasingly details go missing.

Yet, I remained like a piss-pants fool – no one offering clarity – here as I ask – on the very beach – a familiar place, a place of some pleasance – or none at least within shouting distance. No dictionary within reach. No one with a phone blessed with service, no access, no privilege to online information, nor knowledge any longer left in your fucking heads. Someone offered that the nearby dunes – that the dunes are responsible for blocking the signal. The dunes are magnificent, so how can they be blamed? Beauty – an enemy? Something in their silica makeup, he said. A peculiarity. A rogue aspect. I cannot tell if he’s insane or informed. My own mind seems as shot-up as the turn-off sign for West Pubnico. But I offered back that I was not so upset by the failure of cell-phone service as I was by the ignorance of those within range. He countered that I could go fuck myself since it was my own ignorance that had prompted our exchange.

Fella had a point. Still, in my momentary pettiness, I gave him cancer.

That job I sought might have changed things. Hard to say. Something to preoccupy. In my boredom, I thought of a volcano, I thought of an earthquake – and there it starts.

Stimuli.

Most of us do things of which we are not later proud. Ghosting a lame date. Prompting an avalanche. Sinking a continent. Or sitting back – beer in hand – dispassionately amused by the antics of idiots that might end the experiment of bipedal life on this particular rock. 

I saw this podcast on embracing your power. For good or ill, I’m not there yet.

I stumble. I do. Hesitate. Imagine the havoc of my inattention.

Imagine the havoc of my full attention.

That job – the sole one for which I seemed qualified – asked me to be available always— constricted shifts if necessary—and be bold, vigorous, a basic superhero of marketing, a tiger with time management, a rockstar of SEO lure & secure, and jazzed with “owning” $13 an hour. Could that job have made things worse? Would I have been compelled to do more damage?

It’s a full moon tonight, and my hatchet is surprisingly sharp. I don’t know why. It must have been me. I must have done the sharpening.

Thing is – again – “for good or ill” – I’m no longer seeking scapegoats.

An incorruptible mirror is the best Christmas gift.

I am singing along to a song I don’t know – beautiful song – in a language I don’t know, and I don’t know if that commits me in any way to some intriguing enterprise that only reveals itself when I happen to join in singing this song – beautiful song – in the location wherein this song is a signal or trigger or encouragement to spectacular actions.

Calmness overtakes me in all its splendor.

I can’t claim I was the one who conceived calm, but I like it. I do.  

I could end the world right now. That’s the crazy thing.

I could end the world, much as I began it.

With dust and spit and lightning. Rules that erode. Chaos and whimsy...

But just look at that sky.

Photo of Andrew Rai Berzins

BIO: Andrew Rai Berzins lives among trees and crows in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. Other writing includes the short story collection - "Cerberus" - and the screenplays for the feature films "Beowulf & Grendel" and - forthcoming - "Remind Me" and "Tower of Babel."