God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.
If by God we mean a very particular cake that once gave off a delectable aroma and bestowed a splash of bright, beautiful, and terribly artificial color on a muted winter landscape, then yes, God is dead. And we three (oh, three, that significant number!) have killed him. As far as I know, he has not risen, unless it be in the stomachs of birds.
But if God is more than that tasty tidbit, or more widely construed, an activity to give meaning to an otherwise meaningless day – in other words, if he is not man-made but man’s maker, then how can we possibly think our puny efforts have killed him? A god like Marx’s specter of Communism, a diaphanous movement of the frail human intellect, is easily killed, but the all-powerful Creator of the Universe may very possibly exist, and if he does, he’s still out there. Nietzsche, stop setting up straw men. You’ll only get people setting others up in return.
Human schemes go oft awry, helter-skeltering down paths hitherto invisible to our sight. When the mob killed Christ, what did he do? He came back from the dead. When Oedipus escaped his prophecy what did it do? At the moment he was sure of victory, he found himself mired in fate. What if we really cannot kill God? Nietzsche, you needn’t be so sad. Humans are too incompetent to manage anything on that scale. We don’t have enough data to compute even the status quo. We are blind men groping an elephant’s trunk and pronouncing it a snake. We are ants butting our heads against a shoe as if it were the Colossus of Rhodes. We worship the Colossus of Rhodes until we realize it can be demolished, in time, like anything – and in the silliest way too! An earthquake, fancy that. And just when we thought we had control.
This brings me to Existentialist Tuesday. As far as we know, it’s been around since before Tuesday. Thus spake Tom. Oh! Let me introduce you two. Tom, this is a delightful stranger I met in a cafe in Oxford; her name is Nia. Tom, Nia. Nia, Tom. (But aren’t we all strangers, really, even to ourselves? Our minds protect us from ourselves, which is awfully kind but sometimes feels a bit patronizing.) Nia, Tom is an actor. (But aren’t we all actors, really, in a society where bodies get in the way of minds? All “personality” is, is caricature of the common human condition – here a chin exaggerated, there an enormous nose…) Erin, that girl cross-legged by the fire with the book, is both a philosopher and a scientist. (Practically the same thing, which is why they bad-mouth each other so much over petty differences. They know each other too well.) Me? You all know me. I’m Amelia. But you wanted to know about the cake.
Do you hate it when authors introduce their stories by describing their protagonist as freckled with almond-shaped eyes only to reveal in the second chapter that she’s black? Well, the cake was funfetti flavored with pink strawberry frosting, and we decorated it with ornate candy hearts. Tom and I bought all the ingredients at Walmart, around 1:30 p.m., in matching burgundy pants. Last night, I had a black skirt picked out, but in the morning, I felt beatnik and not romantic, so the velvet pants went on, and here we are: two burgundy-trousered existentialists, alone on the harsh surface of the earth, staring at the stars as all the masses sleep beneath bourgeois roofs – in blue jeans. Oui, oui – ah, yes. Thank you. I like it too. It actually belongs to Tom. He didn’t mix his labor with it, though he was a gentleman in lending me his only beret. Which reminds me – we spent thirty minutes feebly scraping snow away from his tires, until a big snowplow driver in a plaid shirt stopped his work to push the car out of the drift. I would like to thank that truck driver, for without him, our lives would make too much sense. While trying to restore order, the truck driver helped us bring absurdity into the world. We baked it in Mac after my piano lesson – five eggs, a Pillsbury mix, half a cup of water, and a splash of oil. That is when Erin entered the picture, all in black, quite Simone de Beauvoir, reading a black-and-white book with a lot of gray areas as we mixed and poured and kept our hands busy and our minds blank. (How many cuils in are we yet?)
Tom, I have a lot of affection for you! We have fun together. Tom and I both operate with things like Anatevka and Rasputin and Phantom and the depravity of mankind in the backs of our minds. We intersect perfectly in weird places. Like those things and burgundy pants and childlike delight. And then the rest of our spaces of being veer off in alien directions. He into the history of nations, I into the musical tradition. It is always exciting to discover a new friend.
We proceeded through a foot of snow, Tom cracking through the thin layer of ice on top and bruising his shins in the process of clearing us a path to a gate that turned out to be padlocked, whereupon we hopped the fence, delicately transferring the cake plate from person to person, sliding the eggs through a gap in the fence. We gallumphed through the snowy woods, up the hill to the Catholic shrine ruins, and with a shout, Tom hurled the cake down the hill. We grabbed the plate, dropped a phone, grabbed the phone, snapped a photo, and gallumphed to the lake. We each hurled an egg at the lake. The plate slid onto the lake. Tom slid onto the lake. We filmed his potential death. The scenery was gorgeous.
The plate’s name is Albert. I washed the pink icing from his edges tonight, with lemon-scented dish soap. But before that, he visited the dining hall and took the fourth seat at our square table by the dish-drop, where his comrades drifted back to the steel-lined kitchen. Let’s have a moment of silence for those ordinary dishes.
Erin and I steamed by the Heritage Room hearth before we reluctantly traipsed back into the cold world. Do you ever notice how the streetlights at night reflect in one’s glasses and shine through the air until it becomes orange and opaque? I heard a voice and saw a best friend. For a moment I did not recognize her face or her voice…
But nobody can know! Nobody will know the conclusion of this tale! My end is in my beginning. Alas – my tongue has run on so. Tom, you should have stopped me. Erin! Erin, this is Nia. Please tell us what really happened.
Unfortunately, things have continued….
We met in Howard at 9:45 and ran up to a soundproof practice room with foam pyramids on the walls as insulation and dark bookshelves with a musty, 1950’s smell. The lamps were the green kind. We lived there until 1 a.m., when we went on a Micky D’s run and picked up a 20-piece chicken nuggets and a hamburger. The pickle shifted uneasily underneath the bun as we blasted anime and video gaming music with the bass turned up. Next, we broke into the Arb and Russian squatted in the center of a gazebo around our McDonald’s bag, munching our food. Tom discovered a chocolate hidden in the napkins and was utterly delighted and touched by the thought. There were also coffee candies, he determined with a blink of his flashlight. How kind! I laughed and laughed, and they still didn’t understand. Tom taught me aggressive dominance body language and power moves and how to be wary of men. Erin led us to the melting waterfall, and we hugged each other in delight at the coming of Aslan and the end of Winter before climbing a tree, which we named… I don’t remember. We returned to the car and drove to Walmart.
After Walmart, where Erin and I tussled in the glitter aisle and walzed by the interior decor as Tom had a slow dance with a stuffed ape toy.
We returned to the car for 4 a.m..
Tom and I demonstrated a Chinese fire drill for Erin, and I ended up in control of the car.
Oh, we came up with so many theories about us being in a flashback in the last moment of our lives, or in Purgatory, or in Limbo, or in a simulation.
Erin is now Clarence. I am Ram-Ram. Tom is Tom.
The next morning, I questioned Tom’s identity, which led Nathaniel Burser to question Tom’s existence, which led me to question the existence of Amelia. I told him I was his feminine side that he had never gotten in touch with and that he was sitting on his id (aka Tom), who had fallen asleep in the meantime, his head gently poking out from behind Nathaniel’s back with the chin resting on the arm of the couch, and the curly hair quietly asprawl.
A whirlwind. I feel so free. The world is beautiful. My heart sings.