Excerpts: From Chapter 1:
It was a landscape of undifferentiated bliss, the very rapture so longingly talked about and desired by those anxiously awaiting (and hastening) the end of the world, as if the end of the world is going to be a good trip! This place, which was also not a place but rather a state of being, was the desired destination of every seeker of every religion who has ever walked the planet earth (and, perhaps, other planets too). Nirvana, Heaven, Brahman, so many names for a place that’s not a place, a destination ever-present yet nowhere and so hard to find, an ever transmuting mandala of possibilities and ecstatic experience that can only be called, like Mounds and Almond Joy, “Indescribably Delicious!”
Even though this place is indescribable, we humans have been babbling about it, trying to describe it, giving directions to reach it for tens of thousands of years. The ancient Vedas have tried to describe it, the Taoist poets have tried to put the experience into words, the Koran has spoken of it, the Old and New Testaments have tried to describe it, and glorious poets like Dante and Blake, Milton and Coleridge spent their lives trying to tell us what it is like to be there and how it felt to get kicked out. Oh, and lots of chemists have done their work to get us there as quickly as possible, usually with unintended results.
Saints and Yogis stretched themselves, starved themselves, shaved themselves, and slapped themselves lifetime after lifetime for a tiny taste of this place.
Occasionally, one in a million made it there and was simultaneously here and there, maybe? (frustrating as hell for their followers). They became eternally famous and therefore qualified to be misinterpreted, exploited, politicized and misunderstood. You know the guys: Lao Tsu, Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed, Elvis?
One in a million, that is, until the sixties and some very good chemists made the experience available to anyone with the guts, curiosity, audacity or idiocy to want something grander than a house in the suburbs, temporarily at least. And, together with this limited time only opportunity to experience simultaneous transcendence and immanence came the ideal language to describe it. Young and old alike would walk, lie, dance, swoon, hold hands, look deeply into each other’s eyes and say: “Cool,” “Far Out,” and most often, “Wow!”
In this place our story begins anew. In this place our hero and proclaimed savior has been hanging out in a state of merged Oneness, ecstatically enjoying himself with no concept of himself, no idea of who or what he is or was, bathing in a titillating sea of dark chocolate-like electrical impulses and orgasms for 2000 years.
Suddenly, the sky that wasn’t a sky, the sea that wasn’t a sea became permeated by a sound that grew ever louder, more insistent and urgent.
A name was being called.
Jesus, Jeezus, Jeeezzzzus!.....
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Then the Lord saith: “You have a Hispanic body this time because no other culture names their kids “Jesus.” If you had a white body and entered into a Christian family and were named Jesus, you would have a lot of unnecessary problems growing up. Nope, Jesus wouldn’t work these days for a white guy.”
“What’s a Christian family?” Jesus asked.
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From Chapter 13:
Then suddenly the pounding stopped. His mind became clear; suddenly he was in tune with who he was and what he must do. He realized, in that moment, that the fate and well-being of Christianity depended on him! He was the chosen one; he the very protector of the power and reputation of Jesus Himself! He remembered again why he had created the Secret Anti-Semitic Society for the Preservation and Continuance of the Suffering of Jesus.
“I,” thought Mal, “I alone must stop this guy. I alone have
been divinely inspired and empowered to do the right thing. I am St. George
who slays the dragon!”
“Wow, that’s a rush.”
Mal just had to go and look at himself in the mirror, just had to see the
chosen one, the hero. He stood tall and straight, straightened his hair and
leaned closer.
“You’re some kind of awesome, badass kind of guy!” he said
to himself, wondering why he was talking so strangely. Then he leaned even
further over and winked at himself. He had an incredible urge to even kiss
his own reflection but stopped with the passing thought that that was also
strange…and someone might find out.
Satisfied with his revelation, and how he looked while having had a revelation,
he began to map out how he would save traditional Christianity, keep Christ
in Christmas, get rid of this HeyZeus guy and his message of accountability
and, this was sheer genius, extend the culpability of the Jews!
Mal started to hop around the room in sheer glee. He felt like the Easter
Bunny hopping around Jesus on the cross.
He picked up his phone and dialed a number.
“Prop Shop,” a guy said as he answered Mal’s call.
“This is Mal Gypsome. I need something made for an event I’m planning.”
“Sure, Mal, shoot.”
I need you to make me two dozen latex noses, each different, but each based
on the shape and size of Adrien Brody, the Je…, er, the actor.”
“Weird,” thought the prop man, “but this guy
has always been a bit weird.”
“Sure,” he replied. “I can have them for you in about two
weeks.”
“Perfect,” Mal chirped, “send them to my home FedEx and
bill my account.” He could hardly contain himself over his own cleverness.
He hung up, slipped his phone into his pocket, pirouetted out the door, into
the garage and drove off humming Zippity-do-da, Zippidy-ay until he remembered
the song was written by Disney to celebrate the stories of Uncle Remus, a
black man.
