Only A Lower Paradise
Page 8
CHAPTER 8
How to describe Heaven? Everyone wants to know. It’s the first thing people ask me after they find out about my adventures. What’s it like? Usually I tell them that the first thing I thought of after being transported to Eternity was the Emerald City in The Wizard of Oz.
I don’t mean that the Cosmic Forces are like the façade of a wizard pulling levers behind a curtain. No. Everything in Heaven is real. Real as real. Real as the blood in your veins. People may not want to believe that, and that’s okay with me. I didn’t quite believe it myself until the smoke cleared and we found ourselves standing outside of a building that looked a little like Buckingham Palace. Sometimes your expectations are met, and sometimes they’re exceeded. Sometimes reality falls short. Heaven was strange because it didn’t do any of these things. It just was. It was there, and you were there, and it was all around you, and you felt warm and comfortable, like you were at home on your couch watching a hockey game and the home team was winning but you didn’t really care.
After we arrived things happened pretty fast. A lot of what I saw I’m not allowed to tell you, and what I didn’t see I haven’t learned too much about.
You can be sure, though, that Martha was at the heart of it. After she disappeared on the beach, the hippies took her to Pipsquin to meet Jesus. Then she led the negotiations to secure the Supra-Cosmic Summit between the Prince of Peace and the Prince of Darkness. Because she was a fallen angel, Martha had credibility in the eyes of Lucifer’s agents. She, too, had broken ranks with the ideology of Heaven. She, too, had rebelled against the dominant order and had chosen to live on the margin. When Jesus called her to Pipsquin she was an angel at risk of losing her identity. She saw that Heaven had been manipulated and fragmented, and had thus jumped into an Earthly frame. She had gone on the road, the endless highway, where all answers are over the horizon. Martha told me later that if she had lived the life of the road, that would have killed her, too. Life needed structure, not just moving on, moving on. The Holy Ghost and Gabriel wanted too much structure, but they weren’t completely wrong. Martha didn’t belong in a tent; she was capable of so much more.
As for me, right now I’m back in California sitting straight up in bed, my laptop on my knees, my imagination in the stars. How’s that, eh? I threw that cliché in for you literary types, to give you something to complain about. The Cosmic Press keeps sending me offers to tell my story, but I’m in no hurry. The New York Times says if my news is fit to print, they’ll take it when I’m ready. Robert says my scribblings have the potential to be a bestseller, but I don’t care about the money. I just want to be left alone.
Martha still comes to visit once and a while, even though she’s not allowed. She even stays over sometimes. Next summer, she’s going to ask for a vacation. We’re planning on renting a car and driving to New York City, like we meant to do back when the future of the universe got in the way. Sometimes we go for walks along the beach, but nobody asks her to expose herself anymore. Nobody even stares at her, though I think she’s more beautiful than ever.
Earth has become a more peaceful place. People have learned to respect each other. Martha’s still got her handbag, and it’s a little more worn and a little more torn. It gets more practical with age. That’s what I was thinking about after the first time we made love — how things get more practical with age. The dressing falls off. Either people are less inclined to believe in illusions or they’re more able to see stories for what they are. Nursery rhymes, fairy tales, and myths. One way, the other, or both — the wise mature beyond the sensation and start digging deeper for the experience. When you really want to understand something, anything that hinders your quest — like the frivolous mind-games of youth — is frustrating and disheartening, and you want to be rid of it. My point here is that the Earth has really only been exposed to language for a short period of time — we’re so bloody young, yet — and we are only starting to understand what it means to be alive.
The only thing that puzzles me is Martha’s comment about the special nature of Robert’s soul. Martha’s comment had seemed significant, but nothing ever became of it. When I asked her about it yesterday, she promised to fax me a response. “Let me think about it,” she said. The fax came while I was banging out Chapter Three, and I have been saving it all this time:
Dear Jon,
I was speaking with Hemingway yesterday. He advised me to tell you to forget your personal tragedies. Carpe Diem, Jon. Seize the day.
As for your question about Robert, I honestly can’t remember saying that. I checked my files, but they contained nothing pertinent. It probably wasn’t important — just an inkling. You know what I mean. Every premonition can’t be right.
I hope your book’s coming along. I’d love to read it once you’re finished. Your mother’s doing well. Give my love to your goldfish, especially Caesar.
The negotiations are going well, too. Everything should be ironed out by Friday of next week, and then we can get started on the grievance claims. So many souls are claiming to have been improperly judged, of being sent wrongly to Hell. Billions. And they all want compensation. I’m not sure what we have to give, really.
I hope this has been a help to you, see you soon.
Martha XX
So there you go. Angels aren’t perfect, after all.
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