My Spiritual Mentor, The Chink

(8:15PM EST – promoted by Nightprowlkitty)

I sneezed 13 times in rapid succession this morning. Not just your little golf sneezes into closed hands mind you, but body wracking man-sneezes that sprayed spit and sputum hither, thither and even yon. Tears not only ran down my face, tears broad-jumped from my spasmodic chin onto my chest and flowed south, eventually pooling in my navel. It was the triathlon of tears.

I contemplated this and concluded that this sneezing was indeed very mysterious, and since we are taught God works in mysterious ways, it must be divine.

Blinded by the tsunami of tears that now formed a salt-water sea in my bellybutton where millions of my DNA molecules frolicked ecstatically like Spring Breakers high on PNA (Peptide Nucleic Acid), I reached for my handy-dandy Bible.

With closed eyes, I opened the book to a random page and with my finger, blindly selected a passage for spiritual guidance. As I waited for my eyes to clear, I wondered if this is how God selects where a lightning bolt will strike during a thunderstorm, or if he intends that an occasional church steeple gets zapped along with a few unfortunate parishioners.

As my eyes cleared, I struggled to read these words…

I believe in everything; nothing is sacred, I believe in nothing; everything is sacred,

…Ha Ha Ho Ho Hee Hee

I’ll be damned; I had grabbed the wrong book. I flipped the book over and ignoring the little hibbity-jibbity, translucent, spinning, exploding bubbles that were dancing on my eyeballs, saw that I was mistakenly reading from The Gospel According to Tom Robbins, “Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (Part IV).”

The words were from The Chink, spoken from  a cave on the top of a mountain. Occasionally noises emit from the bowels of the mountain.

              The Chink leads Sissy into the cave where we see his

              clockworks. It is made of garbage can lids and old saucepans

              and lard tins and car fenders all wired together with baling

              wire. A bat flies into it making a bong noise and the

              contraption moves a little.

Bonk! sounds the cave, and then it chimes poing!

              The Chink smiles at the noise coming from his clockworks.

                                    SISSY

                        What was that?

                                    CHINK

                        Clockworks.

                                    SISSY

                        Clockworks?

              The Chink pauses to decide whether he should talk any further,

              then proceeds.

                                    CHINK

                        The Clockworks is one reason that I

                        am here on Siwash Ridge. I accepted

                        the invitation to be initiated as a

                        shaman by an aged Siwash chief who

                        was the principle outside confederate

                        of the Clock People.

                                    CHINK

                        The pivotal function of the Clock

                        People is the keeping and observing

                        of the clockworks. It is a real thing,

                        and is kept at the center, at the

                        soul, of the Great Burrow. Insofar

                        as it is possible, all Clock People

                        deaths and births occur in the

                        presence of the clockworks. Aside

                        from birthing or dying, the reason

                        for the daily visits to the clockworks

                        is to check the time.

                                    CHINK

                        These people have no other ritual

                        than this one. Likewise, they have

                        but one legend or cultural myth:

                        that of a continuum they call the

                        Eternity of Joy. It is into the

                        Eternity of Joy that they believe

                        all men will pass once the clockworks

                        is destroyed. The destruction must

                        come from the outside, must come by

                        natural means, must come at the will

                        of this gesticulating planet whose

                        more acute stirrings thoughtless

                        people call “earthquakes.”

                                   CHINK

                        The Earth is alive. She burns inside

                        with the heat of cosmic longing. She

                        longs to be with her husband again.

                        She moans. She turns softly in her

                        sleep. In the Eternity of Joy,

                        pluralized, deurbanized man, at ease

                        with his gentle technologies, will

                        smile and sigh when the Earth begins

                        to shake.

                        I loved those loony

                        redskins, but I couldn’t be a party

                        to their utopian dreaming. After a

                        while it occurred to me that the

                        Clock People waiting for the Eternity

                        of Joy was virtually identical to

                        the Christians waiting for the Second

                        Coming…

                        All the same.

                       

Just more suckers betting their share of the

present on the future, banking every

misery on a happy ending to history.

Well, history is ending every second –

happily for some of us, unhappily

for others, happily one second,

unhappily the next. History is always

ending and always not ending

… ha ha ho ho and hee hee.

                                   SISSY

                  What do you believe in then?

And here is where my finger landed.

I believe in everything; nothing is sacred, I believe in nothing; everything is sacred, …Ha Ha Ho Ho Hee Hee

Science explains that sneezing is a reflex action that I have no control over. So maybe this volley of machine gun like sneezes was just my internal “Clockworks” signaling a poing/bonk from deep in my soul.

However, come to think of it, a sneeze is not unlike an orgasm. Both are difficult to stop once they have started. Both involve an involuntary closing of the eyes. Both are physically intense followed by a feeling of deep satisfaction. Both involve the uttering of the word “God”, as in “Oh, God” and “God bless you”.

Maybe my nose was jealous of that other fleshy protuberance that lives on the other side of the tracks anatomically speaking.

Of course, it could be that I just had something inside my nose

ha ha ho ho and hee hee.

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