#its why santiago is so so fun to write hes got a way of phrasing things that is rlly hard 2 get right but i also get--

[beeapocalypse]

trying to envision scenes in which a character is seething mad rules bc i come up w a single sentence and then get stuck on the phrasing of it to make it the most spittle flying teeth barred angry sounding thing ever and i turn over those same words for like five hours. how many ways can you rephrase dumb shit son of a bitch before it becomes verbal slop

[iamabax]

Seagull and Religion

Goodnight took dried green buds, a smidgen of purple, two pinches of white and brown, and laid them in fresh paper, licked it, rolled it to a perfect cylinder, and handed it over, lighting it for her from a lighter with a golden trumpet on it.

“You’re a musician?” she asked.

“Jazz, major. That’s my band- The Curiels,” he said with a nod in toward the music.

“You’re fantastic,” Bax said, the haze rising like a thick wool blanket, she thanked Goodnight with her hidden eyes and teetered backward and some minutes later on the totter she caught Seagull and Goodnight in conversation.

“How can you be such an atheist and think so highly of religion?” Goodnight asked.

“I’m not an atheist. I’m a salesman at a car lot, I have the keys to all the cars, porches and station wagons alike,” came her brother’s reply.

“Well, how can you have such a high opinion of the station wagon and never buy one?”

“Because it is no longer a station wagon, now it is a Subaru with paint that sparkles, and heated leather seats, and legions of them roam about city asphalt where they should be taking kids off road, fishing, camping. The prestige has replaced the function.”

“I think I lost you,” the top hat said.

Her brother broke in again, “Anyhow, it would take a lot of time - religion, although it certainly has a solid routine.”

I wonder how many men have been saved by mere formula? The spectacles asked.

“Anyhow, the best part of it is it’s solitude and the majority of it’s adherents are so damn needy, indulgent, vain, ego stroking - no rivers of living water in sight, and the greatest ego stroke of all is to allow yourself to be just mildly sinful enough to be mildly convicted, so then to resolve to be a better person but changing just enough to feel terribly pleased with ones self, every year growing infinitely more self satisfied at your gradual decline, growing into a self you’d have been horrified to meet at first grace. To meet a self satisfied rich man, a wicked man, is amusing. To meet a self satisfied Laodicean makes me want to vomit every word of gospel I ever heard.”

“But you have to respect our fruit.”

“That’s why I love you guys so much, your works are unparalleled. There are few things that terrify me more than a leper, but say you buy a suit, well you look in the mirror in the morning to get your tie right, but a few will stay peering into the mirror.  And so yes, the religious in the streets with their ministry, but really, they are grabbing for their reflections off of car windows, off of quiet waters even, and only make eye contact long enough to see themselves in other peoples eyes.”

“You can’t know that.”

“But you can, you’re closer, and you surely see it.”

“I see a mans’s effort but not his end.”

“I assure you, if you couldn’t see the effort, there would be a lot less of it.”

“But nevertheless the effort remains, the resolution to be better.”

“Oh, better? Really? Religion and its perpetual resolutions- why does anyone have to resolve to do anything but to fail. I wake up every morning and pick up my plow and dig deep furrows- Christians always resolving and always running in circles.”

“Lots of people run in circles. Harrison chief among them,” Goodnight said, indicating toward the young Dick Diver. “He’s been waiting for the upper class to implode probably since he was fourteen, and will when he gets married, when he has kids, when he’s writing his will, wondering if there will be anything left to leave anything for.”

“I, I, saw the warning signs as young as age twelve. Even then I began so suspect….”

Goodnight continued, “You have to admit the religious man at least is not spiraling downward with break neck speed."

“That’s just it. The religious man above all other men is content to hit cruise and settle for mediocre, he’s the most uninteresting man to write about and yet he loves to read stories about everyone else, living vicariously because at last he’s a coward. Yet, he takes the appearance of progress because he pays a mortgage, raises three kids, buys a new car and later on a newer one. But you take a monk, a good monk and not a bad one, take a good monk and at the end of his life he will have no progeny.”

“Unlike the bad monks,” Bax whispered giddily.

“No possessions, no fleet of patrons to eulogize him with sentiment, but he would have ascended higher than the religious man ever dreamed, that is if he were a good monk. And then they’ll put him in a pine box and put him in the dirt where he belongs.”

“I think they burn the monks,” the Top Hat corrected.

“Ever better,” Seagull said. 

Goodnight gave Seagull a long look. He was flustered but to Bax it seemed he enjoyed Seagull’s observation, his humor, his perspective, and finally settled on his own observation, “You process trauma different than the next man. You’re impervious to it.”

Bax’s face warmed because she not only knew this was true but she knew why it was so.

“No!” Seagull said, suddenly hot. “The next man clings to trauma mistaking it for life, taking the exhilaration of drama and the high it gives in place of an elevated and quiet character. No drugs are more potent than the reliving of trauma.”

“Did I mention charity?” Goodnight asked. 

“Your sect has just enough to stay in cruise, just enough to bring everyone up to cruise with him, and I tell you what, don’t be impressed by works, it takes all legions of works, as if they were treading water to keep men from sinking, to fight against entropy. Shouldn’t you play sometimes soon?”

Goodnight looked over at his band, and let out a sigh. He was having fun here and saw he could not win.

“Anyhow,” Seagull continued “it’s all very mediocre and too often sensational. But most of your sect are just a slip and a slide away from pathological appetite. Yes give a man CPR if he’s drowned, but once he’s resuscitated stop giving him CPR.

“You wouldn’t give a man CPR unless you were certain he was drowning,” the top hat said.

“Until he was positively blue in the face,” Bax added,” and they all laughed. 

“I’d wait till purple, just to be sure you know. But I got big lungs. I can bring a man back from purple. Besides, you didn’t need so much air back in the day. For the love of God…”

At the mention of God everyone in the glass arbor crossed themselves, it was their own inside joke every time ‘God’ crossed Seagull’s lips.

“Dammit,” Seagull said, hating to lose his composure. “Where was I?”

“My work is done here,” Goodnight said rising and turning to go.

“My own roll please, dear kind servant,” Seagull suddenly petitioned. 

Goodnight sat back down and indulged him.

“But, really, just that a handful would just take a good word and run with it. You only need a single good word to run a marathon. I met a girl once who ran the El camino de Santiago on nothing more than a phrase. Meanwhile, you have all legions of tongues and prophecies and stand perpetually exhausted, holding on for dear life to the treadmill as if it were real work, no longer treading, the belt of artificial motion flying by under your feet. Only the quiet ones have anything decent to offer, otherwise it’s all spitting in the wind and distraction.”

Goodnight gave the freshly rolled concoction to Seagull and lit it for him.

“You’re a Christian Bax asked?”

“Deeply so,” Goodnight said.

“A Christian drug dealer?”

Goodnight laughed. 

“I only deal the soft stuff.”

Seagull cut in, “And he sells everything for fair market value but he himself never indulges in anything other than tobacco.”

“Is that so?” Bax asked, she looked around and the other faces nodded with clear appreciation and respect.

“I like to remain sober minded,” Goodnight said.

“But he is merciful to the rest of us. He’s the most responsible men I know.”

“Tobacco’s a stimulant,” Bax said.

“I’m a jazz major West, Greek to the Greeks,” and Bax could not place the reference.

“Anyhow,” Seagull said, “I’ll trust your religion more once you graduate and test it in open waters, until then its all theory.”

“When we both graduate there will assuredly be a testing,” Goodnight said and this time, he and Seagull both rose. Seagull guided Bax upward and they followed Goodnight out of the arbor just in time to see the Goldfish being carried away by hands and feet,

“I’m having such a wonderful time,” she sang dreamily, an angry pirate leading the way.

“He’s interesting,” Bax said.

“He’s one of the few Christians I can trust,” Seagull said.

“Because he deals drugs?” Bax asked.

“Exactly.”

The aberration was essential in her brother’s vetting of friends.