all things gnarled and beautiful

The ultimate questions are not?galatial? as we might suppose; nor
can we feed this wanderlust the stilted paths of human reason. We know
what we are but not what we might become if we could make the wind and
waves obey, the mind a placid mountain lake. The contemplation of the
infinite is best achieved through more than a few drinks; the only way
to silence the mind is to kill it. If I could only explain, nay, tear
out this tongue if it mislead, how it feels to be genially burnt by the
sun. "The horror, the horror," you say? I might be as young as you, old
man, if, like a crab, I could crawl backwards through the sands of
time, through Auschwitz, the great war, the plantation doors and all
the way to Egypt. Ten thousand slaves could break their backs to make
my final resting place and I could finally be alone. "A thousand years
of solitude," you say? Make it two thousand, ten thousand, a million
and then I might finally have some concept of what we're doing here. I
could drink cocoa with Montezuma? or human blood with the Tliingit
Tribe of the Pacific Northwest and it might be more interesting than a
Diet-Pepsi, fully endorsed by Britney Spears. I don't love your cities,
rank and rot with vile elements, the billboards offering the perfect
human shape. "Here he is:," they proclaim, "a human god." A bloody
yahoo. The buildings soar so high you could almost dream of something-
more noble. But all day long, the wage slaves graze on dollars bill and
vomit forth product. From out the window, they can hear the syncopated
hum of Chinese-classical-jazz. That's our high culture. "What would
Jesus do?" He'd overturn your booths, you bloody capitalist pigs. Oh,
there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. He'll smite this land as
he did Sodom and Ghomoreah. Yet I'm content to sit here on a warm
grave, contemplating the majestic oaks, gnarled and beautiful, which
carry me into the sublime heights of the sky; my grandpa lived not too
far from here. "Just toss me over the fence," he'd say. Well, I'd say
something more meaningful, something intellectually sound but, you see,
I'm no good. There is only one who is good and that is God. In the end,
the only art is a cross painted with your own blood.