If you want to gauge how discerning they are, just look at how well they understand one another. From scraps of information, misunderstandings and misinterpretations, they stitch up a crazy quilt of inferences, enhancing the picture with bits of their own unrelated experience, void of logic, far from the facts, often quite contradictory and even perfectly antithetical. Wrapped up in this Harlequin’s coat they spin mad plots and fairy-tale fantasies that explain little more than their own obsessions and failures.
And yet, most things (wo)men do are peculiarly in accord with the way they’d like to be seen. They spend most of their time misleading, pretending, feigning, and dissimulating. Truth is, every human being is a shrewd professional liar, a seasoned actor capable of great performances. Faking it is one of their native talents—also necessary and characteristic—just as nightingales are born to sing and kangaroos to hop. Every species has a specialty; theirs is charlatanism. In short, they were created defective, and things have only gone downhill with time. My self-appointed son, I mean the emaciated hippie who claims he came forth from third-party insemination, tried to sort them out, but he seems to have done more harm than good.
I have to admit, though, at times they’re entertaining. Not that a god needs amusement, God forbid, but these clowns are so full of themselves, they’re such hucksters, so reliably unpredictable, immoral, and nuts that anyone observing them is soon transfixed. They’re devious, like television: you end up glued to the screen even if you’re not interested, even when you know it’s just an indiscriminate ploy to grab your attention. Lucky for them they have no competition. There’s not a single form of organic matter in the entire universe that even faintly matches their sly industriousness, ubiquitous meddling, clumsy-but-cunning illogic, their skill at getting something out of every new situation.
So-Called Love in Gestation
The following day the giantessa with the sideways braidlets wakes in a good humor. As dawn breaks under the raised awning, she waves good morning to the Indian across the street, who’s now busy converting his bedroom into a shop. Outside, mounting her twin-cylinder, she takes off. At the Cattle Breeders Federation she selects, from the vials nested in liquid nitrogen, doses of the semen of a German bull that’s all the rage that season. Then she’s off for another Alpine valley not far from the city but not wrongly considered quite backward.
The owner of the dairy farm is a typical denizen of this valley of pre-digital cavemen, and with a cigarette clenched between his teeth, his muttering is hard to understand. She removes her helmet and he can’t believe his eyes: not only is her hair purple, she’s not a man. An artificial inseminator who’s female, wears a ring in one nostril and a black leather jacket with studs is quite a novelty. Paralyzed, he hovers next to her throughout the entire operation, eyes bulging at her every move, ready to let out a scream. As she always does in these situations, she pretends not to notice. From time to time she has to cope with one of these lobotomized farmers. She doesn’t treat the matter lightly, though; she knows she must perform better than the best male around if she wants to be judged his equal. She can feel the yokel’s tribal gaze burning into her hands and skin. If he had the nerve he’d confess his doubts, the way you complain to a trusted friend. She’s had that happen too.
Our tall sorceress doesn’t wonder why she’s so cool about this oaf literally breathing down her neck, she doesn’t ask herself why she’s feeling euphoric. She’s distracting herself using a tried and true human technique, thinking about the night before. Not about Prince Charming’s ravishing good looks, but about his girlfriend. That medieval peasant outfit she had on was lovely, and she looked good in it, she has a natural elegance. The giantessa doesn’t usually go for the thrift-shop look, it reminds her of old photos of her mother. But this sticks in her mind. You don’t have to be a mind reader, though, to know that pretty soon, she and the fellow with the hieratic hairstyle—drawn together by their mutual Darwinian fundamentalism—will gang up and eliminate her rival. Not that they’ll necessarily be an item for long, mind you.
Humans, rather than simply mate and be done with it like other animals, make a huge drama of so-called love. They suffer and sigh, they get all sentimental, become inebriated in a sea of noble aspirations, make crazy promises. We’re not yet at that stage here, however, for right now our young microbiologist is merely lost in contemplation of moonmilk and the risks of climate change. In any case, she’s a novice; up to now, her love stories (I adhere to the formulation) have been limited to a single copulative contact, sometimes two or three and very rarely four or five. These trial sessions tend to establish that the male in question isn’t her type. The scores say it all: two–zero, one–zero, three–zero. Forever zero, home game or away. Undiscouraged, she fishes out, more often now online, still another individual with XY chromosomes, but things won’t go well there either: one–zero, three–zero, two–zero. And no particular empathy.
It’s been like this since she was fourteen, when in order to have sex she had to sneak out of her fundamentalist boarding school like a cat in heat. Even to her the thing is starting to seem a bit peculiar, but she’s not disheartened, she’s an optimist, a real Sagittarius (in case you were wondering whether I have anything against the zodiac—I don’t). People who know her consider her a free spirit, but freedom has little to do with it: she’s looking for the right person, and so far she hasn’t nailed it. But she’s convinced that sooner or later she’ll succeed; it’s like those scientific breakthroughs that take years to mature but then turn out to be genuine revolutions.
The Alpine Brown’s rectum is narrower and shorter than that of larger breeds, and she has to squeeze her fist tight when she approaches the stretch next to the cervix. The vagina, too, is smaller and shorter. She likes Alpine Browns because they remind her of undemanding people, people who don’t put on airs, but also because their contained dimensions are heaven-sent (sic) for her hands and arm. While she’s more at ease in the job than usual, there are annoying gasps and sighs coming from the nearby hominid, whose shoulders seem to be held up by an invisible coat hanger. It’s obvious her moves don’t convince him; he thinks she’s too limp-wristed, too indecisive. She wouldn’t mind telling him that an arm in the ass is an arm in the ass; cows are God’s creatures too.
The dairyman huffs and puffs, he moves his legs up and down like a bear tied to a stake, he wishes she would hurry up. She’s watched men do this, she’d like to say—they just want to get their right arm to the uterus and plunge the syringe as fast as possible. It’s that same haste you find during sex with them, and the reason she doesn’t get to orgasm. She’s not wasting time, just avoiding brusque movements, getting the animal to relax. She doesn’t force them.*
* Human beings are adept at finding ways to soothe their consciences, and especially the human beings of that down-at-the-heel boot known as Italy. Italian thieves believe they are the most honest of criminals, the assassins fancy themselves highly altruistic; everyone has a system to balance his or her personal accounts. We’ll see whether that same indulgence is applied in the court of Last Judgment.
Removing the dark blue overalls (same color as her eyes), the tall one is thinking that maybe the farmers in some of these tribal areas would benefit from genetic improvement along with their cows. Yes, it would surely be best to begin with them. This fellow could be enhanced with a genotype that promoted an intelligent gaze, good posture and a clear voice (not this grunting like a walrus with a cigarette stuck in the corner of its mouth). Certainly, a physical specimen more in tune with the times.
The Poetry of Mathematics
The bespectacled geneticist, all bones and pointy asymmetric angles above and maybe a little too plump below, is convinced that science can explain everything. How the universe was formed, where it’s going from here, the meaning of everything that happens. In her mind, there is just one true explanation, one single transcendent entity, and that is the Theory of Evolution. She believes that one day very soon
science will reveal how life itself came forth. Peering into her test tubes with those far-apart bird eyes, she dreams she sees the first spark of the reenactment. You’d think it was some heirloom recipe: one good solid or gaseous ingredient, a defined sequence of chemical reactions, and poof, there you have it, a living being.
She’s not the only one, heaven knows. As time goes by human beings grow more and more inebriated by what they think is their unique talent: their so-called reason. They don’t see that whether it’s rational or irrational, cerebral activity is always faulty and misleading. Reasoning, by definition, gradually homes in on one particular aspect, revealing, in that foolish arbitrary focus, how fallacious and worthless it is. While the only truth is All, the whole, that is to say, God, the undersigned. And so-called reason is only an illusion—slightly less fickle perhaps but still utterly fanciful—of unreason, of the hardwired need human beings have to believe in something. But this they cannot know because they are unable to think about thought (human language makes it impossible to say that better).
Humans throw themselves into their tiny scientific breakthroughs to distract themselves from their finite condition, the way elderly women sew cross-stitch patterns on table linen to keep the aches and the pains and the approaching end at bay. And yes, they have achieved some modest results: for example, they can photograph bacteria, exchange kidneys, fly from one part of the planet to another, even if painfully slowly (the vapor trails their vehicles leave in the sky remind me of snail slime). But in order to arrive at those tiny conquests, they have wrought devastation everywhere, and put their future in question. And at every step of their so-called progress they conceal the consequences, the looming catastrophe.
It was obvious to me from the days when they began to employ their rudimentary telescopes and their Torricelli tubes that, just as the investigators of the Inquisition had perfectly understood, the aim of these scientists (their term) was to compete with me. So that one day they could take my place. If however these wise guys considered that a nuclear-powered rocket would take thousands of human lifetimes to cross a small-to-medium-size galaxy—not to mention clusters of galaxies—and that the temperature inside the most peaceable of stars is a couple million degrees above that of the water in which they boil their pasta, the pressure several million times greater than the cooker they use for artichokes, not to mention the fact that Andromeda is heading straight toward them at a speed of 430,000 miles per hour, well, they might be less cocky. Instead they’re convinced they are advancing by leaps and bounds, that the future holds amazing promise.
And yet, and yet. I must confess that scientific discoveries have always intrigued me. Does that seem strange? Well, I never claimed to be consistent. I enjoy watching matter and organisms be ground up and digested by human intelligence (however limited), seeing complex phenomena reduced to austere algebraic formulae, to gelid equations. As you can probably imagine, the various scientific disciplines with their high-sounding names offer me no novel discoveries—given that everything was created by me with my own hands, I’d be tempted to say if I didn’t mind sounding bombastic. I know full well what they are and what they contain, but still, I find them amusing. Paradoxically, I find that scientific laws, so awkward and insistently insecure, almost always have a graceful side. But above all it’s the enigmatic poetry of mathematics (which for me is just a vague approximation, a baby’s confused babbling) that I like.
Incongruous as it may seem, a god likes to keep up with his times, he’s interested in what’s new. You might even say the new galvanizes him, if the term, which makes me think of frogs’ legs twitching, weren’t so impossibly un-divine. There is really nothing new for a god; nope, it’s all as ancient as the beginning of time, given that past and future are one. Still, those human novelties stir him to stay informed. To review various notions that have grown a bit vague. It’s like opening at any random page a great encyclopedia written a long time ago. Anyway, I’ve always been curious, although that adjective needs to be purified of all its human sludge.
When I was young (allow me) I was crazy about animals; I could study them for years, for centuries. Damn, I’m great, I would think, impressed by how many I’d made and how different each was from another, with the strangest of habits and the most unimaginable particulars. And of course they’d change over time. They’d evolve, as the biologists say: these people see evolution in a pot of pasta cooking. Sure, it was all prescribed from the beginning, but there were undeniable coups de théâtre: fish that stood up and walked on dry land, big lizards that sprouted wings and began to fly, all kinds of stuff. I didn’t need that Darwin fellow with the chronic depression to point it out to me.
As I grow older, though (as it were), I have to say it’s the humans who interest me most. They bug me, that barbarous cult of technology of theirs and their contempt for the things that matter; they enrage me; I’m always thinking I must teach them the lesson they deserve. But I can’t stop looking at them. I have no idea what’s happening to me; it’s like a drug. (A god on drugs!)
A Paleobeatnik’s Transcendental Silences
On her way to work, the neo-Mendelian cow-sodomatrix stops to polish off a couple of cannoli. For the record: one, then another, then yet another (!); the Palestinian counterman’s gaze ricochets up and down, to her scrawny upper body, then to her plump lower half, in search of an explanation. Restraint, she finds, is hard to achieve when it comes to sex and Sicilian cannoli. When she arrives at her little corner of laboratory, it’s already almost noon and she’s somewhat uneasy. Everyone knows her scientific productivity is outstanding, but she never feels she’s accomplished anything. At this point one might mention the Judeo-Christian et cetera guilt complex, but it won’t be me to do it, God forbid.
That afternoon she can’t keep her mind on gene amplification. When she stopped for the cannoli, she had glanced at the newspaper and seen the new data on CO2 emissions. Golden boy is absolutely right, she thinks, the politicians, rather than heed the urgent warnings of climate science, are doing their best to stoke so-called economic growth, i.e. increase pollution and set up a huge own goal. The only way out is for science to find immediate, effective responses to energy and contamination problems. People had better get on it fast. Her bacteria-fueled battery, if she can get it working, will be a contribution.
Now it bothers me a little (maybe even that’s saying too much) that this girl, who’s in some ways insufferable despite her many sympathetic qualities,* still doesn’t realize she’s been hypnotized by the paleoclimatic Casanova. I’m tempted to warn her (and yes, I can find a way, I assure you). However, I very rarely interfere in such matters. I mean, I’m no Aphrodite or Cupid, I’m a proper monotheistic deity with all that implies in terms of status and decorum. I’d never have a moment’s peace if I got mixed up in such chicanery; they’d all come begging and promising me this or that for some petty sentimental or sexual favor. Whatever happens I must safeguard my transcendental dignity.
* I’m the first to admit I’m amazed, because at the beginning I didn’t notice these at all. However, you would be very much mistaken to think divine justice implies an unshakable, irrevocable verdict; to be just also means to evaluate elements previously overlooked, as happens in criminal justice when new evidence emerges.
Exiting the laboratory, Ms. Einstein zigzags across town on her bike, zipping in and out of the lanes of traffic with infidel bravado. Another quick voluptuary stop—two cream filled cornetti—and she’s on her way toward the hills to the south. The hideously overbuilt plain behind her, she coasts over gentle dales pocked with neo-oligarchic villas, heads down the narrow valley inhabited by the dropouts, you might even say the wasted. When she gets there she parks her bike by her mother’s friend’s house (house: a euphemism). He’s in the shed next to the chicken coop, head deep in the engine of a decrepit Caterpillar tractor. His orange overalls are stained with oil, and his sparse hair, beginning at the sides of his head and at the nape of his neck, is gathere
d into a long, scant ponytail. After she has thoroughly cuddled the two big dogs and the small one, the sex maniac—the dogs make a big fuss when she comes and squabble for pole position—she approaches him and makes a pecking gesture with her long bird’s neck. Then her purple locks, too, disappear into the Neolithic engine.
Before a word has been exchanged, she’s understood that once again the problem is the diesel pump. The only good solution would be to go out and buy a new one. Instead, they try to revive it. As always, they work in silence, apart from “pass me this” and “pass me that.” Often they’re engaged, as now, in antiquarian mechanics, but it could also be the rebuilding of a collapsed wall, the replacement of a bent gutter, the pruning of a comatose apple tree, and other such bucolic operations linked to a lifestyle of semimystical autarchy. She helps him, and sometimes takes over where the problem is electronic (not this tractor) or even just involving very tiny screws. Often they lack the right equipment, but usually they find a solution. Much of their pleasure derives from that.
Once they’ve reassembled the pump the weary tractor starts up, expelling a plume of thoroughly unecological black smoke. Pleased with their success, he passes her a filthy rag to clean her hands, and, cigarette sinking into his large Indian beard, wipes his own on an old pair of underpants. They then go inside the wood-built part of the construction—to call it a construction is perhaps to exaggerate—that serves as kitchen and living room,† followed by the two big dogs, one with a long coat, one shorthaired, as well as the small addled dog and a cat of many colors. He offers her a beer, then settles into a yoga position to roll himself a joint, the laborer at last permitting himself a well-earned reward after a hard day’s work. She sits on the broken-down armchair and there they remain facing each other, not exchanging a word.
I Am God Page 4
