It started months ago, during a hail storm. But first, picture this. It's Christmas and there hasn't been any snow. The sky is a teasing, slate-gray and the air is perfectly still and freezing cold. Imagine yourself sitting by the window in a perfectly ordinary suburban home. It's quiet. You are alone. You watch the sky but your focus keeps shifting from the outside to the glass where you can see the reflection of Christmas tree lights blinking on and off at a tiresome pace. All the lights on the tree are blue, which feels more cold then festive, and the ticking of the clock refuses to match their silent beat. Nothing about this scene is warm. You shiver. The house is empty and the emptiness sucks at you. It presses against every object in the room like it's fighting for more space, more emptiness. Then it starts to get dark. You consider moving but what would be the point? To relocate ones self in the emptiness would only serve to reset the awareness meter. For a moment things might seem different, lighter, but once your bulk settles again, the process would begin again and there you would be, still taking up the same amount of space within the emptiness. So you stay by the window and watch it get dark. You watch the street below. It must be cold. Freezing even. The kind of cold that is void of life. A clean cold. It would be mad to open the window but that's what you do. You like the idea of a clean cold. You want to feel it just for a moment, because, well, you are closer to it now then you are to anything warm. To make it to something warm would take energy and effort, but the cold is so close so cleansing. You open the window.
It all started months ago. During a hail storm. I was at church. I go to church sometimes, not for any reason other then to be there, which up until recently I felt made me a bad person, a liar. But on the day of the hail storm, I saw something new. The church I go to, went to anyway, was very much like the one I grew up going to. Built in the seventies, drywall mixed with stained glass, a wholly unsatisfying attempt at churchiness encased within what essentially amounted to a cardboard box. There's a mural I like, and some pleasing sconces, but the pale peach walls take me out of character. Much like an actor in a period theme park or a shoddily put together Renaissance Fair, no matter how hard you blur your eyes, it just doesn't cut the mustard because it can't. There will always be an electrical outlet, or a kiosk, or a plastic rock formation to take you out of it. And of course, the tourists. I like my churches to be churches, I would find myself musing through the reading from Saint Paul according to John. I want my senses to be enveloped fully in the atmosphere of what it was selling, not put off or distracted by crappy carpeting, fluorescent lighting, or puckered ceiling tiles. It's a wonder the church doesn't think more about these things. We could wear costumes. Robes. In lieu of the authentic, an art director might just be a worthy investment to dial up the needed intimidation factor as bit. Add a smoke machine, candle light, but hey-ho, I just missed the whole reading thinking about interior design. A thought that led to the original thought about me not deserving to be there. But this day was different. People seemed different. No they weren't wearing robes, quite the opposite. They were regular people, just like me. And somehow I knew that while they might not have been thinking about turning the place into one of the set pieces from "The Bells of Saint Mary", they were thinking that they didn't belong. I immediately chalked this up to the hail. You could hear it tap, tap, tapping against the stained glass, against the roof. It must have been God pelting handfuls of frozen tears at our unrepentant souls, giving us a little scare. It felt dark outside even though it was mid-afternoon and when the time came for Communion, a practice I have sat out of since the eighth grade, something compelled me to rise and get in line with everyone else, for everyone in that church on that unusually dark afternoon, took Communion. Every last wide-eyed, embarrassed cynic from the bowels of Hollywood. We all rose and systematically ingested the body of Christ. Amen.
So you wanna hear the fantasy? It's like this. I go up to the priest and hold out my tongue. He places the Communion wafer in my mouth and says, "Body of Christ", to which I reply, "Amen". I drink the wine, and presumably the backwash of my fellow absolved, and as I'm walking back to my pew, I'm overtaken with a feeling of intense nausea. My body starts to wretch and I can feel my gut sucking at my entrails like a vacuum cleaner, pulling the sin from my body, all the infection, all the years of self abuse, all the pollutants, all the disease, all the weight, all the evil from wicked thoughts, to bad memories, to bad decisions, all the shit from life, either manifested by me or imposed on to me, into a black ball of writhing slime that forms in my stomach. I fall to the ground and feel the cool of the tiles on the side of my face and open my mouth. I'm like a fish gasping for air. My mind holds a single thought, mercy, and I wonder if I deserve it. I wonder as I feel the blackness descending, and then, I cough. Several more times as my face turns crimson, as someone has run off to call an ambulance, as the priest looks on in knowing horror, as mothers hide their children's eyes from the sight of me. I cough and out it comes. I breathe and look down. On the cheap mismatched tiles is everything wretched, everything impure everything that has weighed me down and now, I am free. I am light. I am with God. For now, I believe.
This is what it would take. The hail was not enough. For any of us.
I think I go to church for this fantasy. It's also why I like a church to be a church. Such a scene deserves a great setting. I took the Communion and felt queasy. I hadn't eaten yet that day and the wine was cheap, probably from a box. It made me sick and for a moment, just a moment...
You open the window. It's still outside but the cold hits you like a stone wall. You can't remember a time when you felt such cold. It almost makes you giddy. How insane. How fortunate that we live in a time where such elements can be controlled and kept at bay by a thin pane of polished sand. It's humbling. We ascribe so much power to things that don't exist and walk around ignoring, and often disrespecting, the power that holds our lives in its very hands everyday. The cold is that kind of power. The cold is right there, you can feel it. This cold can kill you, but it can also, maybe, absolve you. You stand and go to the door. You open it. In just your slippers and a nightgown you make your way through what feels like needles across the frozen lawn to the blacktop of the deserted street. You can no longer feel your face. You lie down. The warm soft parts of you are instantly grabbed by the dead cold ground, which seems to suck at what warmth you have left, a devilish purification, but nonetheless, what is happening is real. It's as real as that cardboard church is not. You open your mouth. Nothing comes out but steam and perhaps a Rhinemaiden or two, maybe a laugh, and as the process intensifies, you look up and notice that the blue lights of the coldest Christmas tree in creation are still blinking in the empty house, and you promise yourself to add some red ones next year.
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