14. An Interview with The Creator

Detail of "DELUSIONS OF GRANDEUR"
A meerschaum pipe. The workers are 1/2" (1.3 cm) tall

AN INTERVIEW WITH THE CREATOR

ARTY> Well, Yahweh, Thank you for taking time away from your busy schedule to come to 20/20 hindsite to talk about your work in creating this very impressive universe and of course your greatest creation, we humans. It is Yahweh, isn't it?

YAHWEH> Yeah, well, call me God for short. It's easier. Did you know the word "religion" used to mean your life, what you did every day, but it's been separated from that. As for my busy schedule? Don't you know I'm resting? You should too. I built this universe to enjoy it. I'm a process person. I don't create things, I build whole systems and then take pleasure in watching them all work. The real joy comes when something nice happens quite by accident. I was at Earth the other day and I met a Duck Billed Platypus. I loved the little guy and I could never have come up with his species on purpose. Well, maybe if I had a bunch of left over body parts from experimental animals that never made it into production and I threw them together for a joke but he seemed to be doin' OK and it sure was a treat spending a few minutes with 'im.

ARTY> Then you must be thrilled to spend time with a member of that sub species you created in your own image? White skinned Americans?

GOD> Y' know, I spent prob'ly... 10 minutes with that little platypus and I'm more bored with you in two minutes than I was with him in ten. Take a hint. I built a universe where there's fantastic fireworks goin' off ALL the time. I LOVE fireworks! It takes a lot to impress me. To listen to humans bragg about how great they are, well, I've heard it all before. From species you have nothing but contempt for! And I got news for you, they feel the same way about you and they've at least had enough respect for my work to leave it the way they found it. In fact, if ya' gotta know, I put you in charge of the most beautiful planet in the universe but you humans are the Milky Way's WORST, absolutely WORST stewards. And neighbors. God, you're rotten neighbors. Everybody has ta make room for you. And as bad as the species is, you born again Americans are like the people next door who drink and fight and mess with your stuff and you're afraid to speak up 'cuz you know it'll cost you. You know people like that.

ARTY> nods agreement

GOD> Well, they want to say they're being like me but really, they're bein' more like my eldest son. You know the story, I had two sons and they were 180º apart. One wanted to control everything for his own pleasure and one who loved just tending the human beings I had started there in that most beautiful little blue planet. Oh! I lavished so much TLC on that planet. Can't you tell? This was my little get away from the workaday world of creating the systems and processes that drive the universe. The grunt work of creation. I could come here and spend as much time as I wanted planting my best work and watching it develope. I was a molecular physicist working in a microscopic world while at the same time building planets, stars, galaxies. I gotta lotta time and effort in the earth and frankly it's more more than a little irritating to come here and see such widespread destruction.

What I see here is the work of my eldest son, Stan. Well, you add an a but whatever. He's my oldest and he's been nothing but trouble from the beginning. Of course, as a parent I blame myself. The two sons split my traits. My older son took that much of me that made him the control freak who thinks he's better 'n me and has been trying to push me aside ever since forever. I mean, I'm the guy with all the sweat equity in this universe and my eldest thinks he owns it. Did you know he once tried to offer part of it to his brother as a bribe?

ARTY> What about your younger son? Jesus Christ?

GOD> My other son Mike is Mr. Humility. Think about it. He's the son of the creator, could be doin' anything in the universe but he takes an interest in this tiny family of nomadic shepherds that I had a thing with living in a desert on Earth . Long story. By the way, Christ is a title given after the fact. Listen, this guy is so humble that he CHOSE to be born human in a barn in the boondocks of a raggedy little nation that had a special relationship with me. I picked THEM, not the other way round, f'r cryin' out loud.

They proved t' be so fickle that they were trying my patience. Besides, they started out as what, a dozen families and they were down to two or three by the time Herod's temple was finally torn down, also thereby, incidently, destroying all written records of who's really a Jew. Not exactly a stellar record for my chosen people. I blame Stan. He's got a crowd of bad eggs around him that just hafta make trouble. When Mike wanted to relieve a little bit of tension on planet Earth ol' Stan just couldn't stay out of it.

But Number Two Son, Stan's worst enemy (he thinks), said he wanted to fix what was broken with that little dysfunctional family down there in Asia Minor . He said sumpthin' about "Pottery Barn Rules". Frankly, I think he's taken this humility thing a bit far. He can't blame himself for their problems. He volunteered to be their Messiah, knowing all the build up and prophesies he'd hafta fulfill and the kinda death he'd undergo during that time in history. Frankly, I was ready to hand my Chosen People off to someone else.

Course, he has spent real time with 'em and I was only here when I had to get away from the day to day grunt work. I have to admit there are things I coulda' done different but hey, you only create a universe once and frankly the want's n' needs of a fickle few on that otherwise idyllic planet... It's Stan's work packaged as Jesus'.

ARTY> So. You're saying that the battle that rages here on Earth involving your Chosen People is really just the result of a sibling rivalry.

GOD> Well, yes and no. Remember Jesus thought small. Do you remember when he told people to put themselves last? Well, the day came when he had to walk the walk and put himself up for execution by torture to save someone else. Barabbas was the man who walked away because Jesus committed suicide by police that day to free him. So it all came down to puttin' up or shuttin' up. He knew it goin' in, as Michael, before he ever made the transition to Human. Yet he did it anyway. It had to be done that day to save Barabbas and he picked the one way that was sure to do it. He attacked the profiteers in the Temple. I can still picture him summoning all that power with a whip in 'is hand.

Oh, I do like fireworks! That was quite a show! The hated profiteers n' their partners the priestly class got what for that day! That was the only time he ever had a temper tantrum like that, and when he did he picked on the one thing that, as a peasant kid growin' up then an' there, annoyed him most.

But he had to go. He couldn't bust up a racket like that, even though everyone knew it was a scam. I mean, by the time Mike, as Jesus made his move Passover was in full swing. There was a long line to get the required sacrifice at the Temple and it had long been common knowledge that the same animals were sold for sacrifice over and over. The temple currency was undervalued and you had to pay for that required sacrifice at highly inflated rates. "Money changers!" Ha! Nowadays you call the ones with their hands extended, palms up, evangelists. Pharisee means "bookmen". Mike had no time for 'em. Everyone knows that. Mike reminded that tattered little remnant of Solomon's great nation that my relationship with them was a freebie and to be cashing in on it was not just a sin but it really, shall we say, pisses him off. And they do it in my name, no less! No, they're workin' for Stan.

ARTY> Jesus has given up?

GOD> No. He's older and wiser now. That was a joke. He doesn't change. He replaced my casual, on again, off again approach to human herding with a pure hands on, retail compassion as he likes to call it. Since it's no longer possible to prove that someone's a direct descendent of Abraham any more he treats everyone as if they are. He's like the really good officer in the Civil War who moved his men toward the sound of firing. He still thinks small, still feels he has to put up or shut up. Now you can find him in soup kitchens and shelters. For some reason he's bound to help humans, who, if you look at it from a cosmic perspective, are like a virus that has infested my favorite planet with an infection that has already caused a great extinction. I mean, I know that little platypus fellow wasn't much in the pig picture but I liked him. I'd like to know his offspring are still alive next time I stop in for a visit.

I want to say something else about Michael while I'm here. He is what he is because of things that happened eons ago. For him to watch pharisees and eva.... There is a strain of humanity that wraps itself in little bits of him and demands to be paid well for what they received as a gift. Can you imagine him hanging on that cross, every breath an agony, thinking "Boy, this is going to sell a lot of T shirts someday."

ARTY> Well God, I won't take anymore of your time. I want to thank you on behalf of all white Americans for making us your new Chosen People.

GOD> Wait a minute, pal, Your pointy hat must be covering a pointy head. You'll have to schedule another interview to deal with that issue and a few others we haven't even gotten to yet. Meanwhile, I gotta go see a certain platypus.

1. That was then

Arty, the wood wizard
The staff is Sumac with an optional lit crystal for guiding people through mines.
Each new post will feature something I've made.


I've always been interested in history. First it was the adventure. Pirates, soldiers, explorers, statesmen. As I got older I found myself looking for the answer to "Why?" we are the way we are. It's all about personalities, or rather, personality disorders. I plan to interview some of the people I have met in my long lifetime.
I also think I'm funny, something I inherited from my father who entertained people his entire life with his music and sense of humor. So look for unique insights laced with some of my funniest stuff. ENJOY!
For those who want to hear my wife and me play piano duets just write to me at pipedreams@me.com and write "Brahms" or "Sousa" in the subject line. I'll send it by return email.

THE IMPACT OF HUMANITY ON THE EARTH
As seen by a 5000 year old man

Much has been made of it and many believe there's nothing to it. The planet is too big to be affected by us tiny little humans. Yes, we are tiny. Compared to the earth we're the size of a microscopic growth like yeast. Yeast eats sugar and if it lives in a sea of sugar it will eat till it dies of alcohol poisoning. That's wine.

As a species we are consuming the planet we live on. And we give off waste products. Take the Great Pyramids. They are the waste by product of divinely inspired architecture. They were put up as human ant hills to satisfy the ego requirements of ancient narcissists and to employ the excess population that the Nile valley could support. They were needed when they were built, but aside from the fact that they represent so much work so long ago they are not needed today. Nice but not necessary. Monuments to getting it wrong.

So many human endeavors involve building things, a practice whereby humans extract substances from the planet, alter them somehow, and rearrange them in mostly straight lines. First we built mounds, then pyramids, great walls, finally vast cities. As our numbers grew and our techniques improved we built taller and taller with glass and steel.

Imagine if you will that the earth is only 6' (1.82 m) in diameter. We've seen it that small many times going to and from the moon. You can walk up to it, feel it with your hand, smell it. Right next to it is a time machine that can instantly take the planet back to any time in the past. Set the dial for 5000 years ago. I chose 5000 years ago because the change from oral to written record keeping was well under way by that time. Some of the old oral legends made it through the switchover, Moses and Noah top among them. Even Jesus. His story was not written down until years after the fact. If he was alive today he'd have written the entire New Testament himself.

Now set the time machine on auto time lapse so the earth ages those last 5000 years in an hour. Now let's go looking for signs of human beings. You'll need a powerful magnifying glass. Luckily we know where to look. The "fertile crescent" and the Nile valley are among the earliest civilization sites. They both grew a lot of food and brewed a lot of beer. It was worth protecting those sources so it was worth owning them.

And who owned them? Self proclaimed divinity. We know by now, of course, that all of that ancient religion was a load of crap, beautiful but all wrong. But look what wonders were left by them. Yes, and I love it but it's still litter. Right now we can find it with a powerful magnifying glass but only by looking for natural features and working out what we're seeing. Run you finger over the area and you'd just barely feel anything.

The time machine is working it's way forward. You can can see tiny little cities grow up in Greece and Asia Minor. Soon there is a city in Italy that you can feel and smell. Run your finger over it and it's like a tiny scab that you could easily scratch off. Stick your nose down there. Oooh. Much of that smell is waste, of course, but some of it was death. Every amphitheater in the Roman empire was surrounded with an aromatic type of pine tree to deal with the stench. Besides everything else, the amphitheaters stink like a slaughter house. And at the end of every day of public carnage all the prostitutes would gather around the arena and do their best business working the departing crowd. The Romans were the first to inlay the earth with stone roads to connect their cities.

But I digress. At the same time half a world away a long lesion is appearing in Asia. You can see it more than feel it but it adds a man made feature to an otherwise wild landscape. An insane man named China erected it as a billboard to show the world how much he owned of it. We're left to live with the litter resulting from his personality disorder.

Look over there in central America. More pyramids, some on top of mountains. Few and far between but we can be sure there's a ruling priestly class involved. Anytime a society has any surplus a breed of people appears who think they should have the excess while not adding anything to the common wealth. They do this by claiming to be powerful angry deities or representing them. Still, it's fascinating litter. So different from Europe, Asia and Africa yet so similar. All with the same motivation, the same need to cause monumental buildings so someone would be remembered.

The Romans were fully modern men. They wrote their own lives for us to read. Their cities survived the empire and grew into some large cities. Aside from the black death the population increased continually, yet it is still hard to find them on our 6' world. The time machine is just approaching 500 years ago and you still have to search for all but the biggest cities and even they are just tiny pinpoints when seen with a powerful magnifying glass.

200 years ago things were still as they had been since the beginning. You can look for a long time and still see no sign of human life on our 6' earth.

That was then,