by J. R. Helton
The Mormon Mega-Churches are also one of the last remaining large corporate, political religious institutions. It was no accident they’d built one of their strange, Masonic lodge-like, mystical and mysterious, marble temples smack dab in the middle of the Stone Oak subdivisions. That night, as I drove in circles, trying to find my friend’s home, I stopped near the new white and gold Mormon temple. I was briefly entranced by the tall glowing angel that sat atop the building, a huge statue of gold lit brightly in the night. I was lingering at the green traffic light, staring at the angel who was holding a golden trumpet to his lips. I realized then it was the MDMA kicking in that had stopped me. Rather than walk into the dinner party a bit paranoid from the original rush and crush of the drug, I turned off the main Stone Oak Parkway, purposefully driving toward anywhere dark, some lonely piece of yet undeveloped land.
I made a right on an isolated road and was pleased when I drove to the pavement’s end. I had left all of the houses and their bright porch lights, the harsh lights of businesses, stores, malls, bars, churches, and the noise and halogen headlights of the freeway. I turned the car around, parked, and opened the sun roof. I was alone. I looked up and the absence of manufactured light was revealing the stars, so many glistening stars in the night. I was listening to Ulrich Schnauss, “A Strangely Isolated Place,” and the two drugs of hypnotic music and mild chemical stimulus drew me up into a different, silent world of unimaginable immensity over the tiny planet I was spinning on below.
I have in the past, and will in the future, stare up into the sky with a mix of wonder and melancholy, knowing I will never travel to see such stars and their planets, solar systems and galaxies. The two drugs only enhanced, brightened, and enlightened my experience on that dark, moonless night. I knew what I was doing; every movement of the day, a conscious, rational decision. As I eased back the seat in my wife’s car, I allowed myself to let go, to lose myself to the limitless universe above me. Feeling successive waves of pure comfort and calm, the happiness passing over my body in time with the music, I knew I was in a perfect moment with my body and soul, a moment I would never have again. For it is the transitory quality of both time and experience, and the realization of such, that gives life meaning.
About the Author
J. R. Helton has been writing for thirty years. He has published a number of short stories, as well as the memoirs Below the Line and Man and Beast. A French collection of his work, Au Texas, tu serais déjà mort, was published by 13e Note Editions in Paris. He maintains a website at www.jrhelton.com. He lives in Texas.
About Seven Stories Press
Seven Stories Press is an independent book publisher based in New York City. We publish works of the imagination by such writers as Nelson Algren, Russell Banks, Octavia E. Butler, Ani DiFranco, Assia Djebar, Ariel Dorfman, Coco Fusco, Barry Gifford, Hwang Sok-yong, Lee Stringer, and Kurt Vonnegut, to name a few, together with political titles by voices of conscience, including the Boston Women’s Health Collective, Noam Chomsky, Angela Y. Davis, Human Rights Watch, Derrick Jensen, Ralph Nader, Loretta Napoleoni, Gary Null, Project Censored, Barbara Seaman, Alice Walker, Gary Webb, and Howard Zinn, among many others. Seven Stories Press believes publishers have a special responsibility to defend free speech and human rights, and to celebrate the gifts of the human imagination, wherever we can. For additional information, visit www.sevenstories.com.
