is God. And I don't mean the bearded white man showing leg on a cloud of young men, touching fingers with Adam. Hopefully, by 40, you see that god as no more than a weirdo doing weird things.
No, I'm talking God as in the essence of all things, that energy that can't be created or destroyed. The creative force that empowered Michelangelo to paint the strange god in his head. No matter what you call it, I just hope that, by 40, you have acknowledged something greater than yourself kemosabe.
I have, thank God. And I see God in many things. But one of the coolest places I see God is in math. Yep, to me, the thing that seems to be the opposite of belief in that which can not be seen (AKA faith), is chock full of God. I share some of my perspective on this in a part of the book I will make available as an e-book in January 2016. It's called Mass Transit Muse. It's good. It's an epic poem of magic realism, a la Homer's Iliad, Dante's Inferno, or Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, except that it's a tale written in spoken word chronicling a city bus ride through the history and future of New Orleans (one time for your meta-modern mind, baby).
Here is an excerpt from early in the book, where the storyteller muses on God and gets interrupted by an interaction with the bus driver, Vince. Enjoy!
A reading from Mass Transit Muse, Chapter 1
As I am apt to do,
I sat next to no one,
leaving space for observation,
for imagining people’s life
stories for fun.
I tapped open my notepad app
like I used to take the cap off a
pen.
I thought, writers write,
then pulled out my mini-pad after
a bit of self-judging
and kvetching.
I took a long look around
and started character
sketching.
I noticed the driver.
His look was arresting.
He was that strange melding
of everything humanity has to
offer,
often found in New Orleans’ sons
and daughters.
I thought him worthy of the effort
of my handwriting
and scribbled a name for
him:
Vince.
Vince had thick hands.
He wore amber skin.
Hazel flashed in his eyes.
A neat goatee cupped his
chin.
Gold winked from under his lip
as a sly, self-satisfied smile
crept half across his cheek.
I played God
with what Vince,
my character,
must be thinking.
I began to write this story
about how he quit drinking
and found God
to keep from losing his keys to
the bus driver’s kingdom,
and to keep his job.
How he was St. Peter at the gates
holding his riders’ fates
How he navigates the purgatory
between the hell of being late,
perpetually,
and the paradise
of guaranteed punctuality.
I felt the urge to look up from a
line about finding God
To see Vince bearing the grin of
a suspect friend
as he looked up into his mirror
and spoke to me:
“I
know what God feel like.”
I was shocked
by how his statement either came out of nowhere
or directly out of my mind.
He went on to lament about the suffering of the divine.
“People
come along on your ride like you not even there. You have their lives in your hands and they
can’t even care to say hi. All they got
to say to you is ‘Next Stop!’ Man it’s
lonely at the top. You a writer, nephew?”
Vince’s question startled me,
And before I could consider a thoughtful
response
I mumbled,
Barely audibly:
“Uh,
nah. Just scribbling some shit.”
Vince curled his lip.
His gold tooth twinkled in the sun.
He spoke matter-of-factly,
with a hint of derision.
“Scribbling
with shit, ha? Well that’s pretty
filthy. Don’t get no dooky on my bus or you
gon have to clean that up, hear?”
A grin bent my cheek
and lifted my eyebrows into my
forehead.
Vince did not appear amused
but then laughed
loud and red.
“Ha ha ha ha haaa… I’m just clowning with you fool. I’m a writer too. And even though I don’t write with poo…
He paused to give me a curious glance
And then continued:
“I do got some funky
ass shit. Peep this.”
He said:
Some say God works in a
mysterious way
But I don’t believe
that
I think God is simple
as the sun make day
I know God is math
God add, subtract,
divide, and multiply
Now when the meteor
came
God was riding it
God rides that
mechanical bull in your heart
When the big bang sang
God applauded it
God will be there when
light goes dark
We won’t outlast the
roaches
And God will smash the
last one
God built the pyramids
God sunk Atlantis
God hung the moon and
flung the sun
God is God
We calculate it
To calibrate our
insignificance
God is our soul
a flat black hole
God is the horizon of
the infinite
God is the wrath of
zero
God is the one
God is math
And with that audacious start
he could have finished.
But his piece went on and got
better.
The pace with which he fed energy
into each letter
into each of his words,
which were drawn out and blurred
one into the next,
all made the text seem bonded to
his breath.
He was bereft of hesitation
and didn’t at all seem distracted
by his occupation.
He would pull that big steering
wheel
and let it slip back through his
fingers,
then grip the turn straight,
right as he hit a line that he
wanted to linger.
And the piece was about how he was math,
as he piloted us on our paths
about how he was Noah 40 times a
day
in his fiberglass raft.
He bragged like Ali
about the polysynaptic agility he
uses to drive a bus,
about the complexity of the
somatic math we riders trust
as he ushers us from point y to
point z.
I probably added some layers of
meaning and meat,
but either way
Vince added to the ride
and to my life
a new memory.
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