The Long Fast or the Fast Long

[jackshoegazer]

It has been a year since I fasted and I'm giving it another go. I'm only at nine and a half hours so far, but I can already feel the deep hunger set it, the frayed wire of nerves, alarmed at the lack of fuel. I nearly succumbed to a cheap gas station breakfast sandwich, but kept myself walking. I only want the attendant to turn on the air pump, to refill my low tires.

Ah yes, I have my car back and it seems to be running fine, so I will tempt no jinxes and hope all remains well. I enjoyed my time on the bus, except for those odd moments when I would get motion sickness while trying to read as the bus made a wide, loose arc around a corner.

A friend of mine says that perhaps I am not paying as much attention to my spiritual matters as I should and that is why the lightning strike, the symbolism of the Blasted Tower and all that. Perhaps. While spiritual matters are never far from my consciousness, to the point where I can't think of a day where they weren't standing at full attention or running amok through my psyche, I have slacked on my studies, progressing no further in knowledge, but merely wisdom through observation and the practical application in my life of that which I already know. Either way, this fast is a good opportunity for a renewal, a cleansing, a new beginning.

And last but certainly not least, at work last night, in between playing Baldur's Gate II and reading Breakfast of Champions, I wanted to write a short piece and ended up with a little something I call


The Long Fast
or
The Angel Drives a Truck of Light

by
Jeremy Parker

    The pain in my stomach was like a scratch on the roof of your mouth, irritating, constant, yet intriguing. I slammed the plate down on the table and looked across the room. It was winter and obviously so, evidenced by the glaring white light streaming into the kitchen through the age-warped windows, beams of light reflecting the snow like angelic superhighways. Only the angels wouldn’t come. No divinity would visit this morning and for all the light, it may as well have been hell, perilous and dark. But that’s not important now.  Maybe later, but not now.

    I couldn’t remember the last time I’d eaten. Days and some odd hours, maybe; the time bled together, an amorphous lump of homogenized sunrises and sunsets. It wasn’t for lack of food; the pantry was full of anything the heart, stomach, tongue and their digestive accomplices could imagine. This was by choice. Am I anorexic, you ask? No, I answer. This is a test, a spiritual war, a nuclear holocaust of my tummy. More so, it’s the clean-up efforts afterward. The actual offences were the meals I’d endlessly stuffed in my gullet, regardless of protein, preservatives and parasites. No, this is a cleansing, a purge of toxins, of rotten food still clinging like strings of moss in the folds of my intestines. Out, I say. Be gone with you.

    With this purge, this mass evacuation, comes the hunger pangs, the pains. The body, which seemed such a good employee, suddenly begins to assert itself and we discover who the real boss has been all this time. Yes, I slammed the plate down, almost involuntarily, an overreaction to the startling discovery. What did I discover? Something monumental, perhaps? A new planet, a new continent, the lost city of Atlantis, your mother’s car keys? No, I discovered my hands stealing food. Against my will, my hands had grasped a pinch of crumbs as I held the plate and raised them to my lips. My body was going to eat all on its own. A thief in my own home.

    It makes me wonder how many people are running on bodily autopilot, people whose souls have shut down, gone into hiding. Divine sparks living like hermits in the landfills of the psyche. Some say the heart wants what the heart wants or the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. What about the rest? Who will reign supreme in this battle royalé of bodily functions? The mind says no, we will not eat. The body cries, sobbing like summer rain, humid and sticky, why are you trying to kill me? It doesn’t understand; it only feels the loss.

    Because this is necessary. One must starve the body to find the soul. The body spends its time and energy burning up calories and carbohydrates and not the stinking landfill in which the soul is hiding. You must make the body think it is dying, which will fool the mind into thinking it is dying and then, and only then, will the soul step precariously from its garbage hovel, it’s recluse refuse rendezvous. And you can’t miss it. Like the morning’s dawn after a night of pitch black zombie nightmares, like a shaft of light penetrating a winter kitchen, an abandoned attic, an inky basement, a three-mile crevice in the floor of the ocean, the spark will step from its cave and everything is illuminated.

    It is this divine light, this angelic chorus that brings the corpse and brain back to life, retrieves them from their hypostasis of starvation and reveals the path, the orbit we are on. The mind like a moon, revolving around, reacting to the body. The body, like a planet, orbiting the sun that is our soul. The analogy grows; the moon reflects the sun, the mind reflecting the soul, illuminating the body in it’s darkest moments, silvery, pale light giving shape to our most crepuscular needs. Like food.

    And this morning, it is this revelation which the angel brought, the soul illuminated, arriving like a freight train on the superhighway of light which the sun paved through the kitchen window, the plate hitting the table like the screech of brakes of a late delivery truck, only it’s right on time. The angelic trucker steps from his celestial transportation, a divine revelation like a clipboard in hand. I sign for my package on the dotted line and it’s gloriously bright.

It's just over a page long, so it's not very long at all. I'd appreaciate any comments, critiques, criticisms, or constipations you may have.

Comments

[mananath.livejournal.com]

I have slacked on my studies, progressing no further in knowledge, but merely wisdom through observation and the practical application in my life of that which I already know

Yes but isn't this as it should be? Established knowledge can only take you so far, granting you a framework. The wisdom as you call it, I think, is more important and useful.

[jackshoegazer.livejournal.com]

I agree, yet also see a need for a balance between the two. One must make their own explorations and observations, but must test and compare. We are exploring the spiritual territory and we make maps as we go. Then we compare our maps to the maps others have made before us to see where we fit in, what we've learned, always filling in the dark unknowns left by our predecessors. I see this as the most sane approach to such studies. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Very nice!

[anubis75.livejournal.com]

I think the angel trucker is a great metaphor. Reminds me of the HGA.

Re: Very nice!

[jackshoegazer.livejournal.com]

As well it should. The idea of the HGA has really laminated itself to my concepts of the soul. And not the animal soul, but the enlightened soul, the one that must be brought into being, invoked if you will, through self-observation and initiation.

I always giggle when I think of the phrase "INitiation is the way IN."

[kiwikat.livejournal.com]

http://www.mugglenet.com/viewer/?image_location=gof/posterbook/harrybath.jpg
http://www.mugglenet.com/viewer/?image_location=gof/posterbook/ronscared.jpg

[jackshoegazer.livejournal.com]

WOOT! Me lurve HP!!

[sarahdipity418.livejournal.com]

I like it.

You watch Iron Chef, don't you? Your 4th paragraph screams it...though maybe it's just a coincidence?

[jackshoegazer.livejournal.com]

Thanks a lot! And no, it was a coincidence, and now I can't read that line without hearing that damned announcer :P Which is funny actually because this story takes place in the kitchen :)