The Divine Farce (LeapLit)

by Michael S.A. Graziano

At the root of jealousy is a fear of abandonment, and we had no possibility of abandonment in that place.

A brilliant organizational trick, it was applied game theory. A person alone—hell. No matter how deeply reflective, no matter how self sufficient—eternal solitude—hell. Two people—as good as hell. Three people, a triangulated complexity, strife and forgiveness, alliance and conflict, a polyphonic piece of music sometimes dreadful in its dissonance, sometimes uplifting in its harmony—heaven. My optimistic theory was that any three people, crammed together for a long enough time, would eventually find a mutual harmony. The rules of heaven were minimalist. They were elegant.

Who made this place? Who runs it? Does it have a purpose? For myself, I seemed to have a repertoire, if not a purpose, and my repertoire was limited. I was, apparently, a wanderer. Was that the right word? I bashed my way out of one place and into another. I had fallen out of a chrysalis, fought through concrete and crowds, scaled heights, and achieved—what exactly? Ambiguity. Gains and losses in uneasy balance. A naked drift farther away and farther out from the truth of my original home. I never seemed to reach a goal. Maybe the exploration itself was a purpose. I couldn’t think of any other. Just like the purpose of a hammer is to hit things, I had no other way to relate to the substance around me except to do what was in me to do. That was not a satisfying answer, but it was all I could think of.