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The Twins of Kane – Leviticus 3.7

I imagine that the conversations that I was having in my head as I sat there alone were more complex than what I remember now. Most people don’t take too kindly to having their beliefs on divinity and the like corrected for them constantly, and worse than that having the feeling of divine omnipotence ripped out of you isn’t a picnic either. To recap what was already becoming a bad week, or weeks, or perhaps months for all I could truly remember, I had been alerted that God was a woman, Gabriel had no sense of humor, I could jump through time, and all of the minions of God didn’t understand it, oh and Satan was the most beautiful man I had ever seen, and preferred to be called Lou. The fact that he was a Dungeons and Dragons geek hardly even registered anymore.

I didn’t ask for any of this crap, and I sure as hell was sick of playing by a set of rules that my human brain couldn’t truly comprehend. The explanation that Lou gave me about “Lawful” natures and the such, made a certain twisted amount of sense to me, but I wouldn’t stake the fate of mankind on a set of rules that just “are” and the omnipotent beings that were supposed to just play by them out of their own sense of lawfulness. On the other hand, what could I do about it? My arms were sporting various bruises from all the times I had pinched myself and tried to get out of this nightmare that keeps going back to the beginning, and the middle and changing. Sometimes it was for the better I suppose, but for the most part it was mostly for the same. Part of me was wondering why Lou didn’t just draw on the infamous “fiends of hell” and all that crap that the hellfire and brimstone preachers had scared the crap out of me with as a child, but then again the more I talked to Lou the more it appeared that even in a supernatural way, sensibilities would dictate that most of those things were silly.

The concept of holding the angels hostage didn’t sit very well either. I’m sure that they are all unspeakably good and all of that but, I know that I would be pretty pissy about these things myself. This didn’t mean that I didn’t know the difference between Us and Them, and as a member of the “Us” team I can only speculate what goes on in the mind of the “Them” team after all. I was absently playing around with the piece of parchment that had been a strange and unexplained guide in all of this, but at this state of the game it just sat blank in my hand doing nothing spectacular whatsoever. I was feeling very lonely, and I really needed something to fill my mind because, like most philosophers I could feel the insanity starting to take control of my mind. I didn’t even know what was going on around me as my mind was simply starting to grow numb to the outside world, but I was starting to wonder how sleep fit into this whole ordeal. I had basically lived the equivalent of about 5 days at this point, despite all of the jumping in and out of time and ending up God knows where, and in that span of say 5 days, I have only slept one night. On that hand I had only eaten twice as well. Maybe I am hungry and exhausted, but I don’t feel it? Here I was going again on another grossly overstated philosophical debate with myself while Satan and his angel are probably out destroying the world. The parchment in my hands finally started feeling peculiar.

Written clearly on the parchment, or should I say, writing itself in as I read it were the words, “You are eating and sleeping in normal time,” and the words disappeared to be replaced with, “You made a wonderful pasta primavera last night in the time that happens without you,” and then the words faded away.

I was a bit put off that the instruction or whatever it was on the parchment had ended so abruptly. I stared at it for a bit and then said aloud, “Is that it?” and then continued to stare at the parchment which did absolutely nothing. What did happen at that point made me jump completely off the bench and then stumble around to land gracelessly on my behind on the grass.

My son had walked up behind me, and then said, “Who are you talking to?” and then reached out his hand casually to help me up like this sort of thing happened all the time. Come to think about it, this sort of thing did happen all the time because on my best day I am pretty clumsy, despite my excellent waitressing abilities. The trick to that had been to never carry more than two things at a time.

As I got to my feet, I decided that the best thing to do was be a smart ass and say, “I’m talking to God, it’s something that single parents do a lot,” and then I plunked myself back down on the bench so I could get my heart to stop hammering in my chest.

In perfect stride Jake sat down next to me on the bench, which seemed different than the last time I was in this reality but I was already starting to get foggy on what happened at what time, and how often. He stretched his arms out in front of him and then said, “Does she answer you? I heard that was the first sign of insanity,” and then started chuckling at his own joke.

The fact that he had called God a she didn’t go unnoticed but I was getting so good at subterfuge that I simply brushed it off and made a mental note to test that a few times before I start wondering where he got that from. With that I said to him, “Is that something that she told you?” figuring it was best to make a joke out of it at first.

“I don’t talk to God all that often, but then again I am not a single parent,” he started and then with a bit of a humorous note he added, “at least I’ve kept it from you this long,” and realizing that that didn’t work, I figured it was better to just give up and ignore the anomaly, because me head hurt enough anyway.

Of course my mind was wandering again anyway, since I had already seen my son turn into the king of hell on one occasion and didn’t want to just assume that he was who he appeared. I also had to deal with his ability to walk over the rational, like he had on the occasion in the kitchen with Mary, and the situation with the window, both times actually. Perhaps I could give the devil credit for making me not trust my own son, and on its own devices, that would rather serve as a reminder of who he actually is, regardless of how cute he is. Jake was just sitting beside me staring off into space along with me. The parchment in my hand started doing its little dance to inform me that it was writing, but I didn’t want to read it with Jake sitting there. I couldn’t help myself when I reached my arm around him and pulled him to me.

It was probably the most subtle thing in the world, as he stiffened a bit on the way under my arm, but it was enough. Mother’s know everything about their children, the way they talk, the way they lie and the way they think, but probably most importantly the way they deal with affection. Jake wasn’t the most affectionate boy in the world, but I have always been one of the luckier moms out there as he didn’t shy away from it either. That moment of hesitation that he gave me when I pulled him towards me, was enough for me to see that it wasn’t the Jake I know that would have at the very least fallen under my arm simply in his own way of getting it over with. For the love of God though, I was praying internally that whomever this was didn’t feel my heart beating faster at that very moment too. … To be continued

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I guess to be blunt about it, I am making a conscious effort not to play the game this time around. One would usually assume that I don’t have a choice in such matters but in all situations there is always a choice. Cases like this there aren’t exactly a right one either, but sometimes you have to walk away from what is comfortable and try something different to see what the outcome might be. Welcome to my life, and all of the wonderful drama that plays into it, but this week has been clouded by a wonderful visit by my mother {often codenamed “That Woman” in other blogs} who has been here for two days now. This is my family dynamic you see, which consists of a certain order and structure that has functioned for centuries now, and my mother is just a spoke in the wheel.

The structure is very simple, and I have explained it before, but here is a brief lowdown on it all for those that weren’t brave enough to read back. The men in my family all die before they make it to the age of 70. All the generations that I personally remember died at the age of 69 and none of them have gotten past that looking through the family tree that the Mormons were nice enough to print up for me. The women all live to be well over 100 years old aside from 2 or 3 that only made it past 90 but there were spurious circumstances in all three of those cases. They live that long because they suck the life out of the men and then after putting those in an early grave start working on the younger generation of men. This is done through the abusive use of drama, guilt, irrationality, closed mindedness, and every other stereotype that a man can use about a woman times ten. I’ve watched, and I’ve learned, and I’m planning my escape the day my youngest turns 18 {9 years and 4 days to be exact} and they will NEVER find me again.

My mother is s separate anomaly, in the fact that she will probably live forever and kill all of the men and women around her equally, and she uses a different tact. Sure she is full of drama {former Soap Opera Diva, what do you expect} and guilt, but she adds another dimension to it all in the form of being an elitist snob and a name dropper. This is the curse of the Semi-Famous, in that they have to spend a good bulk of their time trying to convince everyone that they are Actually-Famous. It grates on me rather quickly when she starts pulling people’s names out of the air, so she actually showed an ability to adapt to that situation this time around by using her dramatic skills to achieve that goal. She took my kids to Wal-Mart to search frantically for Kinks CDs so that she could get my daughter to open up the conversation when they got back with, “Grammie Do is dating one of the members of the Kinks!”

I didn’t even see it coming because I have been beaten down by 3 generations of the Greektradgedius Inyiddish, and am quite prone to being encased in drama, but I did recover quickly and get a jab in while I was still standing, “Aren’t they all horribly fat now?” which threw her off her guard and have to start denying that when she said it was Ray Davies that she was dating. Can you picture having a parent that the first thing she says to you after a year is “I’m dating Ray Davies?” I can see how I ended up marrying a woman that goes 3 months without talking to her kids, only to call so that she can tell her daughter all about her new tattoo, and never get around to letting her daughter talk. The vicious circle and cycle of the hopelessly damaged, is what you could clinically call all of us fuck ups on this end of the blue rock. There is still a rather large part of me that is wondering if Ray Davies even knows that he is dating my mother.

Well I have established that my mother is rotten, and she is only going to spend 4 days making everyone in this house miserable, as she has already made the anxiety level in this house intolerable for the two weeks leading up to this, but who is to say that the other women in this house aren’t equally as rotten? I mean, I had a bit of an epiphany about all of this today as I realized that she is simply invited into the house like a vampire to inflict the amount of misery necessary to sustain these Greek Tragedies in desperate need of suffering. I am NOT playing. In other words I have successfully avoided ALL of them the last few days and am perfectly happy to assume that when she leaves tomorrow that they will attempt to level sympathy from me for whatever reason they require and I will FUCKING IGNORE THEM THEN TOO! I could care less, because I have my own issues to deal with these days.

I relate it all to the battle of Thermopylae which was glorified in the movie 300, and rightly so actually, as it was one of the greatest last stands in the history of mankind. What doesn’t translate very well in the movie is that the Persian Empire was most definitely a very heinous set of people that met their doom because the 300 Spartans led by King Leonidas broke the spirit of the Persians. By demonstrating the Spartan will to defend itself, and inflicting such disproportionate carnage that what was left of the Persian Infantry was broken, and from the tales might have even been prepared to die. The Thespian Navy wiped out all chance for the Persians to escape, and when they pressed on they came head on with about 20,000 Spartans who made sport of what was left. It all makes a wonderful story and all, and we all had every right to root for the Spartans as they showed the evil Persians where the bear shit in the woods. What doesn’t get talked about very much is that the Spartans were most likely the second worst group of people on the planet. Their own horrible treatment of the rest of Greece through their warlike nature is also the stuff of legend.

I see it like this, as I know who the greatest evil in my life happens to be in the form of my own mother. It’s been that way since I was 2 years old and she kicked me {accidentally of course} into a table and I still have the fat lip to remind me of that encounter regardless of how sketchy the event was. The huge difference between her and the two women in this house that beat me down on a weekly basis with guilt and irresponsibility, is that she GOES AWAY, and more over she has no effect on my psychological well being in the least. She has made a wonderful thing to write about in my blogs but in all reality, I could give two shits what she says or what she does, or what she thinks about me. This is a sharp contrast to what I deal with in the eyes of the other two who she is winding up like tops at this very moment, by their own invite, and perhaps it is a better thing than what one would assume from the outside. If I could find a way to transfer my apathy onto them then I would be all set, but in the meantime, I might as well sit down here and root for the bad guy for a change ;8o)

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This is a repost of my writings from Itching For Coffee ... Where I often post writings with other talented writers ...

I probably should have stayed in bed. I don’t know what the hell was up with me while I tried to sleep today, but I kept waking up with the strangest dreams. Most of them involved my cat, which was a bit strange, but at the same time wasn’t completely unexpected. The stupid thing meowls like it’s in heat all the time, and refuses to keep a non nocturnal sleeping pattern, so it has been getting on everyone’s nerves around here pretty badly. Then there is the other problem where it is an eight year old cat, and my aunt’s three year old cat happens to be a bully. For those of you that have been reading my writings for a while, you can understand that my aunt’s brain turns to tapioca pudding when animals are involved so she doesn’t get the animal structure in the house through her rosey colored glasses.

Now does this mean that Duchess {my cat} gets beaten up by Lucy {her cat} all the time? Not in the least, and this is the part of it all that is so hard to explain unless you have one of those relatives that seems to have brain damage when pets are concerned. Her cat is a bully, and a con man just like most cats are, so she torments the dogs when nobody is looking, and runs the house with an iron fist. Duchess prefers to sleep all day, and is unimpressed with such Animal Farm style hierarchical structure, and allows Lucy to do whatever she does upstairs while she sleeps in the basement. Now of course my aunt {animal disfunctionate} will not listen to any one of the six other people in the house that try to explain to her that her cat terrorizes the house, just like the four dogs, and six cats that we have buried in the back yard that belonged to her {long story .. all buried there before she moved in .. I practically run the dysfunctional pet cemetery in town} and that will never change. Life in Tinsel Town goes on.

Duchess is the new cat in the house, much older, and subjected to a house full of cats before going to the Animal Shelter, full of cats, and then here to a house full of dogs and a cat. She knows how to play the game, and she appears to be an unusually gifted cat when it comes to getting what she wants. The obvious tone that she uses when she caterwauls all note either screams “feed me,” “play with me,” pay attention to me,” or in some cases “get up you lazy asses,” and gets what she wants when she wants it. Night time is also the time when she deals with certain “issues” that the dogs don’t seem to have the intelligence to take care of during the day. When Lucy comes downstairs to push Duchess around she usually encounters a surprise that befuddles her poor little bullying brain, which usually ends up in my aunt’s bedroom with Lucy hiding under the bed and Duchess trying to tear her apart. This in turn causes my aunt to ream the rest of us out for letting Duchess bully her poor defenseless cat, and the rest of us wanting to take her poor defenseless cat and put it where her last six poor defenseless cats ended up! It shows a certain level of cunning in her cat to end up in the one place where manipulation will create the sympathy required to keep her iron paw on the pulse of what is going on in the house, but again we are dealing with an unstable individual as it pertains to animals.

Needless to say after a night of nightmares that were along the lines of waking up to all the animals in the house being killed by Lucy the spawn of Satan and a stray cat that he had in a drunken night of indiscretion, I woke up late. It wouldn’t have been too bad except it pushes my schedule back an hour, which changes my usual daily activities just enough to make me a bit grumpy. The first of which is having to go to the gym when my usual cast of characters have gone home and a new cast of characters are there. This is both a good and a bad thing. The good part of it all is that all of the mentally handicapped people from the group home are in there after I leave. It’s good for the soul to walk into the place and be greeted by eight people that are genuinely happy to see you, very interested in how your day is going, and very happy to tell you about their own day. I don’t know all of their names but I get a smile when they are all around because they are very nice people. The fact that they are escorted in by a bunch of hotter than hell grad students who serve as their aides doesn’t hurt either, but they don’t seem as happy to see me.

The bad side is the “Jump Nazis” that now fill the gym usually after I leave, and are the reason I get up a bit early to make sure that I can get into the gym and out again before they get there. Most of these are college students, but they have been recruiting lately and walking into the joint was almost dangerous. These guys and girls usually take very heavy weights and stand in the middle of the walkways and jump up and down, or do very long sweeping motions with them making the place almost closed down the whole time they are in there. Today in particular they had just about every square inch of walkway covered by each of them holding Olympic size bars {seven feet, fifty five pounds} and jumping up and down blocking every machine in the joint. My mentally handicapped little buddies were all huddled in the corner practically watching them. After catching up with my little buddies I proceeded to walk through all the Jump Nazis to get to all the machines I needed. The trick is to not humor people like this in the least.

The icing on the cake was when my mentally handicapped little buddies left and the Jump Nazis decided to have a huddle and start talking loudly about all of them. I tried to do my preacher curls and ignore them all until one of them decided that it was important to talk about Jerry {the one that has to have a guide dog as he is also a severe stroke victim} and they all were whining like crybabies about how the dog was going to cause an accident. My years of going to this particular gym, that dog has been completely unassuming and usually lounged around behind the machines and completely out of the way. I wish the Jump Nazis would learn from his example, but I saw an opportunity to do something I like to do from time to time, and couldn’t help myself. This would be pissing off a large number of people, many of which are much bigger than me, in a fit of self righteous indignation. Its fun, you all should try it some time. I piped up from my preacher bench, “Unlike a bunch of two hundred pound people jumping around in every free space in the place with seven foot iron poles on their shoulders,” which elicited the type of response one would have expected. It just goes to show that steroids and animal fur make some people impossible to deal with ;8o)