Going Alone

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I have come to realize that the muse I so often speak of, and which is the source and inspiration for so many of my thoughts, must be the same muse which heralds and inspires the words, music, thought, and motivation of the religious. A distinction though, is that I apply and attribute no animating will to this contrived agency beyond the scope, breadth, force, and power of my own weak and faltering intellect and imagination. It is no wonder then that I neither trust my god’s wisdom, guidance, or even its mere existence. My god is a little god, which can neither speak, write, argue, or even think without my own willful cooperation.

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Notes from my muse

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I told my little god of the desert today. He’d never heard of such a place. I admired his honesty in fessing up his ignorance. This may be one of his stronger traits. He seemed afraid to learn of the solitude in the desert, and he asked me if any gods or spirits might be found there. I told him it seemed there are none in the wastes. I didn’t bother explaining it’s all wastes.

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Caring for a very small god isn’t unlike tending a young child. Both are convinced of their omnipotence and immortality, and each at times rails at the world with an impressive wrath and fury. The difference being, the child possesses an anger they can truly inflict upon the world, while my little god relies on my belief to achieve even the slightest destructive end.

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My little god begged me today to believe in him. I think he’s become suspicious his immortality is dependent upon my belief and patronage. Did someone tell him of his contingent existence? Has he learned the root cause of his being? How very afraid he must be.

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I told my little god that we’re going to the desert tomorrow. He seemed unsure after I explained the place, carefully, so as to not offend his growing sense of omniscience. I told him the desert was a place for losing what we cherish, and for gaining what we fear. He nodded slowly, muttering something about the need of a temple. I suspect he’ll soon be very disappointed.

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My little god has no sense of his ignorance, which I reckon the greater measure of omniscience.

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I told my little god about the helpful muse we might meet in the desert tonight and tomorrow. He wasn’t at all pleased, and complained of my holding another before him. It didn’t help that I explained my muse is dead, and not even real. Such threats he leveled at me then! Maybe when he meets the nothing himself he’ll realize how little there is to fear.

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I’ve reached the near edge of the deep desert and oh my, it’s cold! I didn’t come prepared for this, and I’ve still 100 miles to go before I reach Siberia, and the safety of my desert camp. The sun’s just now gone away, and I know the deeper cold is coming. This is scary, just like the summer heat which has now passed was scary. Only this scary burns in a way that brings on shivers and chattering teeth rather than delirium and fatigue. I’ll bundle up now as best I can, and turn on the motorcycle’s heated handgrips which are a peripheral comfort. My small god is noticeably absent now. Have I perhaps been forsaken? He’s been pestering me for prayer. Maybe he thinks I’ll relent in the wild?

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I’ve discovered my little god is afraid of the new horizon which I uncovered this weekend. Such irony that I’ve been hooked up with a domestic god. A deity of home and hearth. A god more comfortable behind a walled garden or a locked door than amidst the frontiers of creation. My little god wants nothing of the larger world, and covers his ears when I speak of The Great Indifference. It’s no wonder he’s so jealous of others. His wrath now is no surprise. I wonder how we can reconcile our difference? Find peace between his small heaven and the greater universe of reality. I suspect I’ll simply need to leave him at home when I go out. Let him alone with his certitude and finality. Deny and protect him from the vast ignorance and reality which looms like a giant before us both whenever we step foot outside our door.

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My little god’s insistence on immortality is striking given his additional claim to know everything. Shouldn’t he understand his immortality cannot possibly survive my death unless I can find another to believe after I am gone?

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My little god came to me tonight trembling, and asking after eternity. I told him I hadn’t a clue, and could offer no suggestions along these lines. He went away wide-eyed and perplexed. I’ll bet he’s gonna make something up.

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A benefit of not believing in ghosts is that ghosts never come to scare me. Likewise monsters, demons, and poltergeist. They all keep their distance. The supernatural seems to only haunt the willing; the skeptical mind offering seemingly infertile soil for what is not really there.

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My god is small because he has no ample space to live within my mind. He’d probably be a great God if I’d only believe. He resides on a dusty and neglected mental shelf where I keep my credulity and faith, a place well illuminated with doubt to keep out the vermin. He’d be much happier on a shelf with certitude or belief, though it seems I’ve only enough to sustain the slightest of gods.

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I awoke past midnight to walk barefoot through the dark. Not far from the tent, just enough distance to unsettle whatever comfort had seeped in from the warmth of my sleeping bag, and the safety of my shelter. I so enjoy the feeling of letting go the rope to anything sound and settled. To drift for a distance naked and shivering in the cold. To stand vulnerable beneath a vast and seemingly eternal canopy of stars. That’s why I reject my muse, those ghosts and my little god, less for the fact that they aren’t real, and more for the desire to do without the false comfort their non-existence could never honestly provide.

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