Episodes in the Smoke-Filled Coffee Shop: Me and St. Augustine

I saw St. Augustine today. He always drinks cold drinks during the day--you know, adult cold drinks. Anyway, I'm not judging--but every time I have seen him in the shop he has been drinking an adult cold beverage. Who knows.

He is old, probably as old as the Old Man. But, he doesn't take care of himself nearly as well. He never wears shoes into the Shop, and he is always unshaven. Sometimes his beard is so thick he looks like a hobo. And, he is certainly fragrant.

I walked past and said hello.

"Good to see you son, why don't you sit down?"

I sat. He seemed to know something was wrong.

"Well, what's the problem? Love, isn't it? It is always love."

I tell you, that St. Augustine is always going on about love. He loves love. It is all he talks about. And when he does, he always has a bit of a sketchy look in his eye.

"With all apologies, I don't want to talk about it."

"No problem."

"I do want to ask you a question, though. What is the greatest sin?"

He wasn't at all taken aback. He just flowed right into his answer like someone being interviewed on a topic about which they knew very much.

"Well, son, you remember all those confessions I did? I wrote those down because I was obsessed with myself. I wanted to know who I was and what I was supposed to be. I also wanted to be happy. I thought, "If I can just know myself--who and what I am at my core--I'll be happy someday. I emptied me out--I confessed it all and realized two things: God was inside me in a place I can't describe or locate. I don't know how he got there, and I don't know how I found him. But, it was then that I realized that self-knowledge--self-awareness--is the key to life and happiness. Without that, you are committing the greatest sin. You know why? Because you are ignoring the gift you have been given--what makes you you--you are ignoring the image of the highest inside you--your true capacity and your true self. If you never stop to consider who you are, what you are, and how you should be--if you never examine--incise--tear--open--build--re-build--gather--explore--assess--yourself, well then you are ignoring the highest, and committing the worst."

He looked at me with a deep grin at this point.

"You know about self-examination?"

"I do," I replied. "It is hard work."

I was about to take my hot drink elsewhere to read, but he stopped me.

"Wait, that is only half the story. The second part of it is your will. Once you are there--once you examine--find--and realize that there is Love--there is Love around you--well, you have to have the will--the commitment to go for it. You have to leave everything--including yourself--to become yourself. It is scary. It is risky. But, it is how it is. You know about that?"

"Kind of."

With that, I left. Augustine kept drinking cold drinks well into the afternoon.

Episodes in the Smoke-Filled Coffee Shop

"I can't believe you. It's like something has misfired in that little squishy egg inside your head. I think you should check into getting rewired or something. Do you have good insurance?"

The Old Man was lecturing me. His moral outrage was part old-fashion and part his right as an old person. I mean I think there were moral sensibilities built into him that caused these sorts of sermons. But, I also think he just thought this was how he was supposed to speak to me--like he had earned it and even though he didn't want the free drink that comes with the meal of age, he was going to refill it as often as possible just to make it all worth it.

"I know. What do you want me to say? I told you, I agree with you."

God created it. What God created was quickly divided--the chaos that came from nothing was quickly classified--organized--and partitioned. Here, within the creation, the chaos was ordered and then disordered all too quickly. Whether that poor decision involving a reptile and some produce was planned or not, we shall never know. The point is that the disorder caused the partition--the primal partition--the original cubicle. We are now sat in a 3 sided space, with a desk that faces a temporary wall. Sitting, we face a wall mixed with appointment reminders, calendar items, extension numbers, account listings, a few pictures from last year's vacation, and a screen--a flickering, luminescent screen that is a portal into a world of sinful ones and zeroes.


"Why do you think you can do shit like this? I mean, who acts this way?"

"I don't know."

He was incensed. He stood up and paced to the counter of the Shop and back.

Well, that partition can't be crossed by either of us. Not by the Nothing that created the Nothing--to do so would be a compromise of the grandest proportions. And as good a conflict resoluter God is, he just can't bring himself to it. And not by us, either--the door to the boss's office is closed. We are here--in the swirling nothing, organized into a sham of institution, language, and other mortal economies. We are here. He is there. That is the important part.

From here, it is all a matter of intimacy. It is all this paradoxical, stupid try to get as close as we can to another--to somehow bridge that unbridgeable gap without dissolving ourselves into the other.

IT has all gone from nothing to chaos to a garden, and now to this paradox. Life is about getting as close as possible to one--to One or one--whatever you prefer, or can believe in, or see, or find. Some of us find the One. Some of us find one. Some of us find more than one, over and over again. Regardless, it comes to intimacy--to having an encounter in a place that is locked. It comes to having some-one (some-One) unlock the door that lies so deep that you can't get to it by yourself.

Let's get close, or pretend we don't want to. Let's meet--dance--speak--move--around, through, over, behind, and backwards. Let's use each other for intimacy and then move on. Let's believe in dual myths of the One that lead to the spiritual Bridegroom and a heavenly wedding. Let's stride--pace--and fight to get as close as possible . . . to pull the two sides of the strings--the ones fabricated from the chaos--so that they touch, even if it is just for one second at one point. Let's stretch the bungy chords of forgotten souls as far as they will go with the goal of hooking them up at the end.

Let's get close. Let's touch. Let's touch--show me the way to the most intimate part--I'll unlock it, believe me. Show me the way to the hidden valley--I'll put you at ease, peel the layers of chaotic sedimentation, and traverse the terra that is untrammeled and unseen. Let it out--let the place that is not a place out into the open--let's touch--let's see what we find . . .

The One? No, no. I'm not the One. Did you think? Oh goodness, this is a mix-up. My secret? My layers? No, no. I'm not going to do that. Did you think? Oh my, we are really on different planes here. Well, this is awkward. Maybe I should . . . well . . goodness.

"What are you going to do about it?"

"I don't know."

"You are a horrible human being."

"Thank you. That helps."

Episodes in the Smoke-Filled Coffee Shop

At this point, I didn't know why I inevitably let myself create chaos. It was swirling--terrorizing--and inspiring all at the same time. Why is that? Why is the chaotic enthralling and terrifying at the same time? Why is chaos always a spectacle?

I sipped. He sat. We didn't speak for a while, but I knew he was trying to figure what to say to me. The Old Man could be a careful listener when he wanted to, and now he was figuring out if he had anything to say about it all.

"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth."

God created it. God created it out of nothing. I guess that's the first step? Creating--at least in this story--begins with nothing. It seems like that nothing comes from somewhere both unexpected and familiar. My suspicion about God is that the nothing was something both surprising and near--something he called forth, but something that came forth from inside somewhere.

God created it and it was chaos. There was a surface--some material--some swirling, terrifying mess of nihil--a swirling dervish of potential--atoms--pieces--entities--particles--sand granules--folicles--molecules--and little, tiny, black souls. The chaos didn't last long. It seems that with creating the nothing goes to chaos and then the real creating begins. I guess the first step is impressive, but the second is definitive. If the chaos would have remained, well it would have been a spectacle, but there would have been no witnesses--no eyes--no admiration, praise, terror, or movement. And what fun is chaos if no one gets to see the result?

"You are an idiot."

"I know. Thank you."

He sat back and looked the other way.

So, is this a God problem? Is the problem wanting to be God? I don't think so. Maybe. No. I don't think so. Well . . . I think it is a creative one. I think it comes from a desire to want to create--to make--to fabricate--and yes, to do so with/for witnesses. It comes from a desire to show something--let an-other see what has come to be. In that sense, I need the chaos.

I need the chaos. I need to let the waters of the surface--the deep--run over my head like a powerful, fatally cold waterfall of blades--cutting, grabbing, piercing, opening. That's right, let the chaos flood--let the waterfall of incisions open a flow from within--one that flows from nothing to nothing--from the utter wordlessness of having your face stomped into pavement as a circle swoops around in ferocity and laughter; as I run wild in a revelry that is decadent--exuberant--use-less--expending energy on things that have no return--laughing--crying--running into situations--into mire--into the baseless deep of the night as it turns into morning. Let the flow move as we stay up past the time of the horizon in order to inhale the smoke that sputters into an atmosphere that means its spuriousness will be forgotten in the morning; let us breathe in the air that expands into the void within our lungs causing just enough breath to keep my eyes fluttering and my mouth moving, my tongue laughing and my eyes open to the onslaught of moments that come without welcome and deliver more air--more faceless deep--than is healthy or helpful or useful or usable. Let's drench ourselves in an attempt to laugh deeper than we hurt and scream over the silence of a deep beyond that cannot--will not--be fabricated--molded--into an order that let's the children sleep soundly and the parents sigh a breathe of relief--one in which the moments are held at bay and the deep made shallow with 90 degree angles, pythagorean theorems, and the equation for presence.

Let's create the chaos--advance where we are not welcome--spit words that are awkward, inappropriate, and unable to be swallowed once beckoned. Let's lay face down in the mud of a field in the middle of trees--wind--fire--let it cover us--envelope us--let's run through the rain as the sun hides under the moon and the grown-ups turn their backs. Let's eat candy for dinner and stay up past our bedtime; spoil our appetites for productivity and oversleep the alarm for labor, organization, and manners.

And yes, when exhaustion sets in, when fatigue means the breathing of smoke--the imbibing of drink--the movements of eros and thanatos--the dance of aphrodite in front of a full moon--the skinny dipping at midnight--when it is time to sit--when the music stops--the laughter falls mute--the dancing stills--when my expanse falls expended--well then, let's take that fucking surface--let's take that fucking deep well of nausea--let's take the unbounding chance of the molecules, atoms, elements, and consciousness--bound it into 6 days of creating and one to sleep; 6 to spew it forth--let the words swell over in the hope of speaking a Word, and then one to rest and think about all that has happened. Let's take 6 to fabri-create and one to put our head under the cover and not look. Let's take 6 to crate and one to be embarrassed by it all. Let's take one to build and one to be sorry for it all--to not look--to wish that . . .

To wish the nothing that comes forth wasn't the nothing that is familiar; to wish the void that erupted hadn't left an open wound wherein the guts and insides and intestines had spilled out into a pile of fecal fecundity. Let's wish we didn't have to look. Above all, let's wish there weren't witnesses.

And after that 7th day--well, we'll peek our head out--and hope for the 8th--hope for the new one--the time to do it again--to re-surfac-rrect the void into something else. And when it is time--when the Father says to hand over the keys; to stop playing in the dark streets; to stop creating forts out of old wood in the backyard, or from the pillows on a rainy day; or from the pencils and paper left in my childhood cabinet; or from the words left scattered from the death--the annihilation--the shattering--of his Word--well then, we'll lie down and be embarrassed no longer. We'll hand the keys to the Kingdom to someone else and take a deep rest.

Then, we'll let the chaos settle into a nothing that is not ours.

"Tell me the story again, I want to get it straight."

The Old Man is senile. I get so tired of repeating myself.