Fact and Fiction: The Power of Writing and the Power of Life

Fact and Fiction: The Power of Writing and the Power of Life

Compelling internal forces, call them voices of executive conscience if you may, incited commands unto my spirit requiring action.  If my past has granted me any beneficial commodity, such would be the proclivity to rebel against said voices, and demand of my will to break free of all preconceived notions of self, predestined arrangements of the vortex of decisions, moments swirling into some definite future which I refuse to settle upon.  I find it far more convenient to behead these ruthless dictatorial firebrands, which spew forth endless rampant suggestions, criticisms, and qualms; ideal end sequence of mission: appoint myself C.E.O. of self, and retire immediately with golden parachute, peace of mind intact.  Perhaps I’ll set one of these brutal despots free, to copy Mickey and Mallory Knox, the Natural Born Killers, leaving behind a brilliant, prophetic magician with the best story ever inside of his mind, certain to make him rich as the bestselling conglomeration of fact and fiction ever written.  His name is Muriah.  

One of these voices of executive conscience, before I beheaded him, planted a seed within my brain to engage myself to the woman of my dreams.  Grateful that he’s dead now, I cursed his selfish intention to solidify my future in such a traditional, sentimental fashion.  Dog on the sofa, twins in the crib, and steaks on the grill: kill me in my late thirties, deliver the life insurance settlement in one lump sum, and call it an early release.  

There’s more to a dream anyway, and I won’t know what’s left in its place: a message thankfully lent to my modest treasury of wisdom and knowledge by the linguistic prowess of the Yonder Mountain String Band, and I will return it one day with interest.  Please don’t misunderstand, she’s damned beautiful, a spark under the oil-drenched coals, and certain to be a handful in bed, but I prefer to return to Jesus’ ancient advice that, yes, “It is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35).  She’s extremely intelligent, an undercover investigator of persons suspicious to the government, and she must declare with no small amount of pomp to have been a vast and gushing waterfall into my shallow yet growing pool of intellect and desire, to consider that I was born rich and, she foreknowing that I needed colors out of the opposite end of the crayon box, lent me the sheer cunning and courage from her past, squeezed tightly from the aspirations of a poor, penniless girl who must use all of her resources in her environment to rise like cream to the top of the gene puddle.  Or perhaps, in fact, the opposite is the truth, and that simply by kissing me in the old fairy tale adolescent teen machine era, she was blessed with the poison germ of genius given from my rich saliva.  

Frankly, there is a great deal of satisfaction in opening the sheep gate, and letting one little sheep free, knowing that the lucky sheep is exuberant, purely jubilated in gazing at the open pastures of warm, dewy grass which she may suck on unto her heart’s content, and turning her head back to the penned up herd, with that premonitory sheep-conscience neural-communicative connection, hearing all the voices saying, “Damn, I wish that was me.”  Besides, the Lord manifested Himself unto me, telling me to look up to the sky, to gaze upon all the white beads of ancient light which wash the open pastures in gray night vision, and revealing to me that I, and this dream woman, have already filled the skies with our beautiful children, all bearing heavenly names written in a wide gold-leaf tome, flecked with the dusts of angels’ skins, forever sealed and sitting on a mahogany shelf in the Library of the Kingdom of Heaven, never to be re-opened.  We followed all the rules, never ate from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.  Subsequently, she experienced great joy in giving birth to my innumerable myriads of sons and daughters, as this dream woman was never cursed with the pangs of childbirth as Eve was; in fact, each child she bore carried with it the sensation of a warm, healthy bowel movement, in her own words.  And, as the Lord rewarded both of us for complying to his statutes, instituted only for the purpose of streamlined existence, it seems only fitting that the Lord would grant me the opportunity of setting her free forever.  And as much as I would love to feel those breasts against me one more time, or feel her neck hair, as soft as a lamb’s ear, against my lips, to do so would be a crime.  Such a crime could in fact be equated to a man who dove into the Fountain of Old Dominion, when the Fountain of Youth stood adjacent, crystal-clear liquid drizzling down the pristine breasts of ivory angels, filling the pool with warm, heavenly dreams.  Perhaps she already knows that I was her eternal dream lover, and knew all along.  Perhaps the Lord will opt not to reveal to her our epochs of love-making together, and the collective ecstasy we shared from the well-mannered gifts of our creations, or creatures if you may.  Or perhaps she will discover the truth of our own eternal age in some happenstance fashion, like a thirty-year old man who walks into a café and meets the identical twin which he never knew he had, staring for the first time into a cosmic mirror, battling ideas with the spirit with whom he shared the warm, liquid womb, the two twins concurring that, in fact, there is no thing random.  And all things considered, as the blood of the beheaded despots seeps into the hard wood flooring, and as Muriah picks up the fountain pen to outline the untold tale, it would be inappropriate to relive a flawless eternity, thereby rendering his pending novel unoriginal.  What’s more, I have already trumped Muriah with an incomparable potential for characters in this imperfect world that I have been abandoned within, teeming with thieves, bandits, lowlife, the scum of the earth that he will never encounter in his vision of my Old Kingdom.  

Now, the C.E.O. enjoying his early retirement with unification of mind and spirit, calls angels of the Old Dominion down here, his own descendants, commissioned as officers of a joint task force to surround me on earth, silently murder my countless enemies with telepathic brain trauma, leaving no trace behind of their silent, excruciatingly painful death.  Angels commissioned to ascertain my success, not in the accumulation of monetary wealth which my golden parachute already provides, but the acquisition of the greatest profession ever befitted for a good man- the leader of other good men.  One day while I am singing the National Anthem in the shower, I recognize my destiny, to be an officer in the United States Marine Corps, leading the soldiers under me to 75 flawless, consequent military escapades without any casualties to my forces, infiltrating terrorist sects, and decimating populations of demonic breeds, self-absorbed invalids with opium-tainted nightmares of raping and pillaging the world.  Nine years with the Corps and I’m out, having never earned a purple heart because the enemy never saw us coming.  The President of the United States commends my efforts for securing the freedom and independence of our blessed Nation by hiring the greatest goldsmiths in the world, and granting me the creative freedom of inventing my very own medal, to be rewarded to myself, as well as each and every one of my soldiers: a symbol to signify gold after it has been purified by fire.  The medal will signify the faith that the men possessed for themselves, for their leader, and ultimately for their God and Country.  The medal will be inspired by the Holy Spirit: “These [trials] have come so that your faith- of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire- may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory, and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed” (1st Peter 1:7).  The medal will be composed of the purest form of gold, purified three times, and stamped into a symbol containing three heads of wheat, the bottom of the three stalks each pouring a single drop of blood, the three droplets of blood meeting at the base of the medal to intermingle into one larger droplet.  The medal will be a signification of the soldier’s faith which is more precious than gold and carry the message of Jesus’ parable of the wheat: “I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed.  But if it dies, it produces many seeds.  The man who loves his life will lose it, while the man who hates his life will keep it for eternal life” (John 12:24, 25).

The lust for blood justified by the will to exterminate the demons which still lurk upon the earth, I leave the Corps with peace, and a satisfaction that I contributed to ridding other countries of their inborn scum.  I am given an honorary office in the Central Intelligence Agency, in which I am commissioned to oversee 85 covert tech operatives who govern flying microscopic nano-cameras with infrared capabilities.  My operatives are responsible for two things: 1) to survey people in America, foreign and domestic, infiltrate terrorist uprisings in order to uproot and eliminate them before they reach fruition, and 2) to survey the rising youths of America, pinpoint the elite population of men and women who are blessed with the God-given determination and intellect to assist in the future of the United States Government, the National Security Administration, and the Central Intelligence Agency, and send out field operatives to recruit them.

Meanwhile, Muriah sits at his night table tirelessly, the cursed scribe who is destined to pen the details, characteristics, and nuances of every being in my Old Kingdom, and all of the events leading up to my decision to depart from my Kingdom, and before doing so, appoint an eternally righteous King, to oversee my people, and assure that they have eternal security.  Hundreds of chapters later, while Muriah completes the first grain on the symbolic shore of my story, I retire at the ripe age of 51, after giving fourteen years of sleep-deprived life to the C.I.A.  I continue part-time work for the agency, providing valuable advice by phone and internet to the countless recruits who were hired under my commission, to secure the success and excellence of my investments, occasionally hopping on a jet when my personal service is required.  

As I sit here and collect my thoughts about my future service with the United States Marine Corps and the Central Intelligence Agency, I begin to feel wary about my decision to set Muriah free, and am gaining a heartfelt sympathy and pity for the poor old chap; to doom someone to write a tale that reaches the limits of nuance, plot-twisting, and the finale to end all other finales which never takes place, is certainly a downright evil and insidious thing to do to a person who never asked for such a fate.  I consider hiring a bounty hunter to put an end to his misery, but soon decide that such fate would be equal in brutality to the curse of the interminable tale.  I find that the only peaceful solution is to marry the woman of my dreams.  Perhaps it is only fitting that I die with the woman whom I have spent an eternity with already, to have our bones lay there together, developing into dust as new nations arise and are overthrown in rebellion (and as the dust settles, two caskets, one with only a 2 and ½ carat diamond wedding ring and a Ruby pendant, and in the other a single gold wedding band lined with tiny, spiraling diamonds and the medal of the three wheat stalks), as America still stands strong as the economic-military-political leader of the world until “Kingdom Come”.  I figure this way, Muriah will give up on his attempt to write the tale of the Old Kingdom, as our new children are born, which would inevitably destroy the originality of his plot and render him a plagiarist of the worst kind.  My intuition tells me that Muriah will retire from the endeavor, take the thousands of pages of the tale which he has already penned to his backyard, douse them with kerosene in the fire pit, and let the flames warm his carpel-tunneled hands under a starry night.  Then he will take a hiatus from the art, find a wife and have children of his own, enjoy the good life in the flesh, and then support his family by writing best-selling erotic romance novels, with well-endowed men and ravished, melting women on their covers.

If I set Muriah free now, with the only legitimate solution being to become engaged to the woman of my dreams, I figure it will be the most logical solution; this way Muriah’s curse will be broken forever, and he will one day rest in peace with a fate similar to my own.  I will cherish my wife, care for her in sickness and in health, and always be true to her.  If I become too utterly entangled in my works, leading to her loneliness and subsequent affairs with youthful and exotic lover men from any country which my work destines us, I do not see why I should hold it against her, nor the Lord, as she already practiced loyalty to me for the ages already spent.  As long as her heart still resides in my chest, and she doesn’t condemn us both by contracting any multi-syllabic diseases, then we’re golden.

A terrible thought has crossed my mind, that there remains an infinitesimal possibility that I am Muriah, have deluded myself into believing that I am the King of the Old Kingdom, that I am the cursed scrivener of the King’s tale which has no grand finale.  Perhaps that is why I find myself here, on a planet swarming with idiots all praying for death; maybe I am looking for release from the curse.  However, I do not think that having a wife of my own, and some new children of course, sounds like such a bad fate.  And if I am destined to write erotic romance novels which are, in the future, to be moistened and encrusted with hormonal fluids, then I would pour my heart out into them, under the female pseudonym of Angel Adams.  As great as the whole Marine Corps thing sounds, and retiring with the C.I.A. working on missions that children, and even grown men, only dream about, I feel that I have already done that in another lifetime.  As much as the devil will entice me to be one of “the Few and the Proud”, I think that I prefer to remain one of “the Many and the Humble” this time around.  

I don’t know what lies in store for me yet in the future and, as C.E.O. of myself, with ripcord already pulled on the golden parachute, I do not see, at this point, narrowing myself to any determined fate.  This way I can just dream on, and never have to accomplish anything at all; how relaxing that sounds.  Perhaps Muriah will look back one day down the road and realize that the curse was the best damned thing that ever happened to him, that being a writer is, in fact, the most suitable profession for a good man.  In fact, being a published writer can be likened to becoming the naked owner of the Garden of Eden.  The sheer nakedness of the mind, perfect strangers peering in for a view at the schizophrenia of colorfully crafted characters, and themes which display the author’s personal idiosyncratic shenanigans, must be coupled with the necessity of being comfortably naked.  All things said, I think that Muriah will discover for himself the power of life, as well as the power of writing, and the fact that the two are, if it makes any sense, adversely synonymous: The power of writing lies in taking all things factual and altering them into fiction, while the power of life lies in taking all fictitious imaginings of the mind, and making them real.  I also assume that Muriah would concur with Brett Gurewitz, punk-rock lyricist, that yes, “sometimes truth is stranger than fiction.”