Hannah Dukkha Nirvana: First Book of Trinity, Set 1, #3
Photo from Ironica/Shutterstock.com
The angry man’s tale …
I want to ask you a question, like, but you have to suspend emotion, you know, uhm; forget what others put into your heads and how you all punish yourselves for things you cannot help, like, that are not in your control. Things you cannot help are not your fault. You are messy little humans. What you choose matters, so think about this, like, question, because as one raging man once said, “I have, like, a really smart brain.”
If you could make love to God, would you? [Stares at you with downward glance, twirling hair with right hand]
If you love the one you fear then making love would kinda be, uhm, like, OMG, rape?
The question should haunt you, like a stranger in the night, huh … a stalker? [looking at you with a dominating, serious, playful look]
Oh, oh, I know, let me tell, let me talk, like, the flesh is not separate from Nirvana for it’s the vehicle of love that connects the living, like, the dead.
To deny the flesh is to deny living, and to deny the living is to deny the path toward salvation, as religious humans like to say, like really? Like, come on-nah! Detachment, I mean, like, total detachment, is like psychopathy, those darn Greek and Roman gods, like, are buttholes!
Ya know how those bold dudes in robes go and freeze, like, on freezing mountaintops and survive? [raising shoulders and shivering with anticipation]. That may be cool if you like freezing yourself for yourself, but, really, how does freezing on a mountaintop with a bunch of bald guys help others? [Looking at you angry, shaking and pointing her middle finger at you]
Detachment, like, OMG, is the space between God and Satan that forcibly, like, separates what is natural. You! You messy little humans, are devil-gods, duh!
Enough god-girl tea play for now. You can play with me, like, later daddy? [She sits up, eyes widen]
Now, you have got to hear this next tale because there is also an angry man, and who likes angry men? But I kind of liked this one despite what he had done because choices that are chosen, like, because of pain are not always clear choices.
You know, like, to be so angry means to be so good, ya know? People that are hurting are good people. That is why they punish themselves with anger. People that don’t are made, like, uhm, Greek and Roman gods. Who loves these gods anyway? Unless they like fake love because, like, they think the gods won’t know the difference between fake love and real love, huh?
Oh, I chatter like a little girl and make should-be sentences in to life sentences!
I know because I am … [stopping herself]
So he had this long career in the military, you know, served 8 tours of duty in Afghanistan and Iraq. He saw a lot of really bad stuff, like, arms and legs lying around, dead people with missing ears, and the smell of burning bodies made him never able to eat a hamburger because the smell was the same, I guess. I mean, like, OMG, want to talk about detachment, being able to cut off ears and kill and then go home, pray, and hug your kiddos? And, like, uhm, you wonder if God does not simply walk away from such prayers and … pardon me. [begins to vomit but stops, dangerous look on her face]
Uhm, he looked at some, like, child pornography online and had two naked pics of girls like me, you know, naked little girls. [Wide eyes, concerned look]
His longtime wife ran into it and called the police, ya know. She was pretty shocked. So, he went to prison for 4 years and is out now but is on, like, the registry for 20. Had 20 years in the military but, uhm, lost all that. He lost his sons, too, because they thought he would molest them. I am pretty sure though that he liked girls, not boys. He raised four boys without incident. And, well [thinking] like most guys that look, he does not hurt real girls that way either. His crime is watching those often-hurting others. Ya know, you all, like, watch someone hurting others, whether fictions, truths, or based on “truths.”
So now, like, all he can do is, uhm, what do you call it, like, change oil? He used to run military bases. Kind of a waste. But he was so angry, such an angry man. I mean, doing what he did was wrong but nation states murdering millions tends to get my attention, not a troubled guy looking at naked little chicks. So, the whole thing, like, about anger and about being angry has to do with fear when you think about it. Like, ya know, fear? [pauses, looking at you with wonderment]
Making love to someone you love or, like a vision, of who you could or, uhm, would like to love, is replaced by your hurt, your self-punishing. I mean, like the guy spent 8 years in combat, like really! OMG, it’s a wonder he is alive. You lock him up for masturbating to little chicks. I know their hurt, the girls. They are GIRLS, not chicks, I mean. Don’t you even go there!
You all gotta stop, like running, and face the rawness of context, like, you’d be better, not such messy humans. Running from a ghost-god-devil girl never makes one smarter.
Duh, like a little context here would be nice. [looking up, snapping fingers in the air] That is his reward for serving his nation because he is now, like, uhm, messed up?
One time, I was really angry. I stomped that dot out three times with my toes [holding feet up wiggling her toes at you], just smooshed it, but sometimes, when we act really big, we hurt the little people and punish them for symptoms, not the problem.
The angry man reminds me of an angry dog. Why is that dog so angry? Why does it bark and growl and want to attack people? He is afraid. The angry man is the scared man. Yes, he looked at naked little girls and he said that men are like lions; they are predators, and I had to laugh because in a lion pride, who do you think does the hunting? The boy? Nah, the girls do the bulk of predatory behavior. So be warned if a girl was your god. [winking at you]
He was afraid, like, of his desire for innocence, you know? We are cute. Girls can be and sometimes cute and sexy get confused for a guy that had IEDs blow up in his face and he saw his buddies liquefied and dead little kids and the living child that still clings to a three-day dead mom. Maybe girls can be sexy because, uhm, language, like, cannot get to our true feelings. The kids he looked at, me, the kids, the guy, you know, it was wrong, but maybe I was wrong to step on that dot three times? Because for many that dot was the world to them. For me, those kids, it was not just being naked and safe, it was being naked and afraid, fear, you know.
Fear, hello?
You all are scared, too, like, death, so fear becomes panic.
Who can make love and love in a panic-driven pandemic? Because, like, you all are clinically diagnosed with pending death the moment you are conceived. [giving you a sly and evil look]
The biggest mistake, I think, and you need to take me seriously now, so, like, uhm; this will get your attention: By its very nature religion is nothing more, in its current state, than practiced insanity.
Like, OMG, the biggest mistake in the institutions you call religious and, mind you, faith cannot be institutionalized because, like, such does nothing more than put a soul in a cage, separated from the heart.
The biggest mistake is that you can never fear one that you love. You all, silly humans, do the same thing over and over again and expect a different result. [irritated look]
Do you think I want to hear you sing when you cannot even hold a note? [argumentative, irate]
No, be sincere. OMG, listen to me. You’d think I was God, but you think God is an old narcissistic, anti-social man in the sky? It’s all for HIM, but he is not really in your image, like, really, duh!
Sometimes, I get very angry. I am not patient. Are my dots failures? Oh, now, look at me, am I playing at God?
So, are you afraid?
Still?
Of me.
Oh, oh, yes, back to that question, you know, the question. [looking serious, like a librarian]
Could you make love to me if I were God?
Would you if you could you? [giggles]
Like, don’t worry, we all are safe and secure when with a god-girl.
#####
Let’s continue that I am a ghost-girl, girl-god or a devil-girl. Let’s play it. It will be fun because, uhm, a 10-year-old girl cannot be a threat, right? I mean, we are either cute or annoying, depending on how sexist you are, and if we are too cute, then, well, maybe you’d be called a pervert, but I would not call you such things, only silly or messed-up little humans because if I am a girl-god, then I am a very old 10-year-old.
Remember this, if the only reason you go to your Church is to save your soul, because you are afraid, and you try to think that fear leads to love, when you get to those gates, so you believe in gates, in barriers and boundaries, I will surprise you because you only loved yourself. You are the parent that used your kid to distract the bear from killing you. There is no safe place for you, then. You can play that game, it’s fun, all your life, but would be better if never born. [hateful, disgusted look]
It’s okay. Relax. Kids know a lot of stuff depending on how much you, like, do them for. When your screen includes everyone in the world, then what can I say but that girls would be gods. If you were me [leaning forward, forcing eye contact] what, like, worse hell is there than to see your dots kill each other by the thousands every minute, often, like, uhm, in the worst way? To be … to be a god-girl means to see every speck of trauma from every messy little human. [pauses and glares at you].
And, you [she laughs] describe hell as if it were elsewhere, waiting for you. My hell is eternity unless I, like, scrub you out of existence. [wrinkles nose making scrubbing motion near your face with her raised hand]
If you fear your dad, do you love him the same? When a man rapes you or you are gang raped, and you die in fear, does that fear love?
If your mom burns you with water, does your fear equal love?
OMG! Do, like, I shock you? Am I inflammatory? Am I a bad little girl? Want to punish me? [Looking at you with seduction and repulsion]
You don’t want to talk about that? Then what will happen to you in hell?
And if Abraham killed his only son Isaac or attempted to, like he did, where is the love in such destruction? He would have done it out of fear for himself, not out of love for God. I’d say [index finger touching lips in thought] the devil-god was fond of conundrums. You all take me for an idiot! [rolling her eyes]
And if you think these things are horrible and evil, do you think this girl-god would love you unconditionally but throw you in hellfire for all of eternity because you looked and little girls’ bums naked? Or that you eat too much, or touch your thingy to bad thoughts and send, like, little Homunculus(es) all over the table and mush them, whip them away before your family comes home? Or you masturbate to horses and girls, but everyone thinks that you are normal?
Remember, I see all and know all, and I am but [pouting] a little girl? What does that make you with all your assumptions?
Does this God of yours know love if you think such, and if fear is a prerequisite of love then loving serial killers would be humankind’s main adoration, and given who all of you often choose to lead you, I sadly think such is true. [frowning]
Don’t insult me! Even a ten-year-old god sees the fool in you. I have better things to worry about than you touching your clitoris or penis. That, now [shaking her finger at you] would be inappropriate unless you take the girl out of God. Methinks, [reflecting] that devils are more fun. They don’t run and pretend things are better.
Can a religion be a disease, a catalyst for mental illness? Can, like, religion also make one feel better? It depends. Few see religion because, uhm, well, you are selfish creatures.
Such is blasphemy. God heals. I am not patient and sometimes I want to wipe all of you out of this world like the shame Homunculus brings to a medieval man, bugs that I love but you hate. Because do you know how beautiful they are? The complexity. You stepped on something that existed for 120 million years, and you, what 4 million, are you serious? And humans think they are special [frolics around the room dancing] Maybe you are nothing but parasites, a super bug that can destroy a 5-billion-year-old planet in a couple centuries?
I did not say that healing was easy, nor that as your girl-god, I am perfect, because not even I am perfect, and remember, once in a while scripture is right that if I made you in my image then what does that tell you? I am you and everything on this planet. When you hurt something or someone, you hurt me, and when I call you a bug or a little sperm man such may hurt you, but why do you put yourself ahead? Does that make you love things, thinking that you are bigger and more important than they?
That makes you squish them, whether roaches or humans? Because you believe that in doing so, you are somehow better.
Stop! “Better” is what makes you worth, like, squishing. [holding the sole of her bare foot up toward you]
But don’t hate yourself because if you do and I love you what does that say about your God? Either I am wrong, like that is going to happen [looks to heaven], or you need to stop being afraid of me. I am not wrong and neither are you. We just do wrong things.
Being selfless is kinda maladaptive, like, abnormal, ya know, but creating hope … that one person, a sad, kind person like the sad old man that likes girls, makes me love you messy little humans [smiles at you] sometimes.
Maybe it’s not so fun being a girl-god? Like one time, I thought I wanted to rule the world, but that was too much responsibility, so I walked away. Kids do that, and sometimes adults do, too. Like, getting Guinea pigs was cute at first, but they are such feeders that I lost interest in them. It’s the same when humans chase their tails, as if they are dogs, instead of staying calm and reaching out to me in their time, on their self-made alter, and let me come to them in the way that empowers them and frees me.
But I would say this. I am sorry there is pain in this world but it has to be so, but that does not mean that fear leads to love. I want you to be with me. I want you not to see me as an old white bearded guy in the sky that loves only himself and throws away others [waving her hand in a sweeping motion] because for that god, he is separated from all connection and life.
Stop SEPARATING me! [yells, breathing quickly]
Everything is there to serve HIM, and he could not love nor give love nor give his son for love because he can only love himself. And loving only yourself is not love, but narcissism: self-hate and low self-esteem, fragility in reverse. I am no such thing … not a reflection of your human weaknesses but a reflection in your goodness in spite of your weaknesses.
You want to know the truth? OMG, like, you all spend so much time seeking it. I only do you the injury that you do onto me in equal measure, but even my anger is not spite. If you want to be with me you cannot expect to be a spirit in heaven yet and know me through grasping at visions. Use your body and your mind to show me your love, and I will love you back in equal measure.
I, too, need love, uhm, desire, like, a hug, to be held in both spirit and flesh.
You must face pain, but do not let pain become destructive because then I will destroy you like you did me in equal measure. On my time, I will. The serpent approaches slowly, and I will swallow you whole, even if you are a big man and me, a pretty little girl, daddy? You have only a spurt of human time to hurt me, and I have all but eternity to toy with you, [pauses] but that would be vengeance, not love.
The angry man, I still like, though he was angry at women, afraid of them, because he felt his woman betrayed him, blew him in to the cops. But that is what fear does. It destroys and kills love. Such never, ever fosters or creates love.
I will love you, but you have to learn how to love me first. What is it that they say, “Faith is about feeling, not believing?”
[She jumps up, clasping both hands below the waste] I think this girl-god thing is pretty cool, I hope you think so, too. I think I will go and play with frogs now because that little boy’s dad is too busy for him. [lowering voice with index finger to lips] His dad does not like frogs, but I like his son better. [getting tearful]
Editor’s Note: Catch up on the rest of the serial novel chapters here.
Earl Yarington (LMSW) is a social worker and school bus driver. He taught literature and writing for nearly 20 years and spent 3 years working in forensic social work internships with offending populations, including work at Delaware Correctional facilities and the Federal Bureau of Prisons. He has a PhD in literature and criticism (feminism/women writers) from Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Master of Social Work from Louisiana State University, and an interdisciplinary Master of Liberal Arts from Arizona State University, where he studied the impact of visual image and girlhood in media/social media. He also has an MA and BS in English from SUNY College at Brockport. The opinions and analyses that Earl writes are his own and are not necessarily the positions or views of his employers, the agencies he supports, or that of his colleagues. Reach out with comments or questions.