The Divine Farce (LeapLit)

by Michael S.A. Graziano

Its solidity was so absolute that I lost the ability to imagine emptiness outside our microcosm. In my mind the universe was filled up infinitely with concrete, and at its center was one tiny bubble in which our randomly assorted souls had been entombed.

We were so squeezed side-to-side that our souls squirted out promiscuously over the emotional landscape.

Why are we here? What can we do? It is what it is.

I had never felt so empty, both gastrically and emotionally. I had helped to knock a hole in heaven. I had walked away from it much too eagerly, and now I felt more sad for it than for me.

I had become a member of the multitude in spirit, in emotion, in greed, and now finally in satisfaction.

deep

Reach as high as you can. Ascend to heaven. Rise to the challenge. Stretch to the sky. Elevate your mind. Seek knowledge at the summit. Attain the pinnacle of joy, the peak of success, the spire of aspire, the loft of lofty.

I began to think that people must shed a chemical, like an insect pheromone, something in the sweat, in the oil on the skin, in the smell aerosolized by armpit hair and pubic hair, something that swaps around and spreads and gets up people’s nostrils and in their pores, and comforts the brain, the chemical essence of companionship, so that even if you snarl at those people around you, or ignore them, or fight them to the food and the water, and never say a diplomatic word to them, still you feel the mass of human comfort sustaining you.

Maybe we are condemned to an endless nagging sense of discomfort balanced against comfort, satisfaction against the itch to escape.