In The Beginning: An Innocent is Born
One might say of Joshua Megalos that he was an Immaculate Misconception. He was born, a bright beacon of human sunshine, to Bob and Mary Megalos on August 1st, 1968. In the year of the Tet Offensive in Vietnam and the assassinations of M.L.K. and R.F.K, something truly wonderful needed to happen, and Joshua’s birth was just the thing. It would take 17 years before Joshua ever knew how unhappy the marriage between Bob and Mary was, but the truth was that Bob enjoyed being wedded to Mary the way most kids enjoyed liver and onions. They had it because it was in front of them, and their parents had insisted upon it, but they found nothing resembling pleasure in it. As a result, Joshua’s parents had sex with less frequency than the recurrence of leap years in the Roman calendar.
Bizarrely, neither Bob nor Mary remembered Joshua’s conception, and with the rarity of their conjugal engagements, one might imagine that each episode of lovemaking between them, however forced, would be as memorable as a vacation to some exotic land, a royal wedding, or the day the music died. Apparently not. Joshua was born less than a year after Sarah, his older sister, and without his parents’ recollection of how that happened exactly, it became a joke to say that Joshua had been conceived in much that same way that Jesus was in Christian mythology.
In the song, “Every Sperm is Sacred” by the greatest comedy troupe ever, Monty Python, a simple and reliable statement is made.
“I'm a Roman Catholic, And have been since before I was born, And the one thing they say about Catholics is: They'll take you as soon as you're warm. You don't have to be a six-footer. You don't have to have a great brain. You don't have to have any clothes on. You're A Catholic the moment Dad came…”
This was true of Joshua. It was true of his parents. It was true of his grandparents. It was true of his great grandparents, born long ago in Naxos. It was probably true going all the way back to the time when Constantine got tired of the violence of the early Christians and decided to take all things Pagan, call them Christian, make Christianity the national religion, and thus avoid the bloody upheaval that was sure to occur had he not done so. Even though Christians proudly say he was a convert to their faith, the best one in the whole wide world, he was really just a savvy politician. As Senator Gracchus in the 1960 film, Spartacus said, “Privately, I believe in none of them [the gods]. Neither do you, but publicly, I believe in them all.” So it was for Constantine, and so it is for especially the most Bible-thumping leaders who ever followed, ad infinitum.
Joshua came into being at the end of a long line of people who submitted to being told what to do by people in funny costumes who claimed to be doing the will of a being that the weak and ignorant of the world were too afraid to admit had been made up long before they became its idiotic supplicants. Even though his parents were convinced that Catholicism was the one true religion in the world, and they would never admit to the following, had they been born in Israel, they would have been obedient Jews, had they been born in Pakistan, they would have been subservient Muslims, had they been born in India, they would have been devout Hindus, and had they been born on fucking Mars, they would have blindly followed whatever creeds and doctrines the religious authorities proclaimed to be the true path to whatever deity or deities they contrived for people to worship so that the clever, the wealthy, and the elite could wield the lion’s share of material power and influence over their red planet. The same could be said of religious peoples the world over. If they were raised in it, they probably stayed in it, despite all logic and without any perfectly honest acceptance of the ambiguity reality offered, with unwavering consistency, in every aspect of the human experience. In fact, at the core of most misplaced belief systems, there is a ridiculous desire to defy uncertainty. It is often the unknown and the unknowable that scares the Hell into, not out of, the faithful.
Joshua was the youngest of three, and he would prove, as the youngest in most families often do, that Mom and Dad, who might have imagined they had parenting down pat, hadn’t seen anything yet. He, his sister, and his brother would be taught the same bullshit that their parents were, but Joshua had a destiny very different than the rest of his family. He was to be the apple that would fall from the tree, roll down a hill into a river that flowed into a valley and find out, under the light of a separate sun, that he’d been an orange the entire time.
As a baby, Joshua crawled backwards, grinning and spitting up as it pleased him. In 3rd grade, learning the entirely unnecessary art of cursive writing, he held his pen in a way that people would even marvel at into his adulthood, and it certainly aggravated his teacher, who simply could never get him to do it “correctly”. When the family went for ice cream, the rest of the gang went for chocolate, double chocolate fudge, rocky road, chocolate chip and the like, while young Joshua couldn’t wait to grab rainbow sherbet, daiquiri ice, raspberry sorbet, and just about anything in the fruity department. This secretly troubled his father, who wondered whether or not a queer had sprung up in the bunch, but he’d put the thought out of his mind the moment it popped up, because it was too unpleasant and inconceivable a notion to entertain too deeply. His brother and sister were into soccer, and Joshua lobbied unsuccessfully to have piano lessons. Even the way he taught himself to masturbate was well outside the established orthodoxy (that will have to wait for later). He was altogether an entity, seemingly from another world.
To illustrate Joshua’s qualities as an outsider more profoundly, you’ll need some background knowledge on the wisdom of the ages.
Famed Japanese poet, Ryunosuke Satoro, once said “Individually, we are one drop. Together, we are an ocean.” This is a statement that harkens back thousands of years to early Brahmanism, which evolved into Hinduism and following that, Buddhism. It’s literally older than Jesus.
It’s a concept called Monism, and it is a philosophical hypothesis both simple and complex all at once. The Rigveda, an ancient Hindu book of Sanskrit hymns, dating back possibly to about 1700 B.C.E. tells us that “All is Brahman”, or essentially, all is God. This concept has been the subject of much discussion among history’s greatest philosophers and theologians for thousands of years. In Hellenistic thought, the oneness of all things was expressed as “nous”, consciousness itself, and that all reality proceeded from the mind. In Sikhism, it is said, "You have thousands of feet, and yet you do not have even one foot. You have no nose, but you have thousands of noses.” In Zen Buddhism, it is said that the difference between the enlightened man and the unenlightened man can be expressed simply. "The unenlightened man sees a difference between them, while the enlightened man does not." In Qabbalah, this oneness is expressed in the sphere known as Kether, which crowns the Tree of Life and is only divided as it manifests itself in the material world. There are recurrent expressions of the theory of monism to be found in virtually every major religion on the planet and in any of the the writings and discussions of philosophers throughout history who ever asked, “What is God?” or “What is the nature of creation?”.
Then there’s modern physics. In numerous attempts to reconcile the theory of general relativity and quantum mechanics, including the String Theory, many scientists are positing that time, matter, light … and well … everything may actually all be made of the same stuff. It’s all untested, of course, because no way has yet been developed to actually put such ambitious theories to experimental tests, but if the theories are born out at some point, it may mean that there is no difference between Joshua Megalos and you, or the trees outside, or the light from the sun, or the air we’re all breathing, or … indeed … God itself. Frankly, whether you come at the theory of Monism walking the path of physics or walking the path of metaphysics, you’ve chosen to walk a very weighty and heady path, not for the fearful fundamentalist or for the intellectual equivalent of a 90 pound weakling.
Joshua was ten. He’d always wondered if God had ears, or skin, or eyes, or if he sweated. He’d been taught, as his forbears had been taught, that mankind was created in God’s image, but it never sat well with him. In Joshua’s young but aspiring mind, if God was all powerful, it meant he could assume any shape he pleased. Why would he want to bleed, or to have butt hair, or to have to piss and shit? Why would he be restricted to a specific race or gender? Why would a limitless being choose to be so limited? With that in mind, how could humanity, agonizingly confined to locomotive, aging sacks or meat, bone and fluids possibly be the mirror image of its creator? Then he learned about the atom.
“Of course”, thought Joshua, with the enthusiasm of Archimedes in his tub, “Electrons, protons and neutrons. All matter is composed of it. Everything! What if that’s God? What if everything is God? Holy shit!”
And thus inspired, he wrote the following poem.
The All
We are the pieces of a puzzle That is the all And the all is good And the all is God. We are gatherers of knowledge For the all And the all is thought And the all is God. We perpetuate the existence Of the all And the all is life And the all is God. Our energy is its life force. We share its consciousness. We shall return to it when we pass. We are but cognizant tendrils Of the all And the all is us And the all is God.
He was excited, both about his theory and his poetic expression of the same. He practically ran home from the bus stop to show his mother. She read it impassively and said, “Joshua, can I hold on to this so I can show it to your father when he gets home from work?”
“Sure, Mom”, he answered proudly. He assumed that meant she was impressed and wanted to share this amazing work with Dad so they could both celebrate Joshua’s epiphany and to honor him, perhaps with extra desert, or even freedom from his chores for some small duration. He imagined the moment when Mom and Dad would read it aloud to his brother and sister, to their envious astonishment and reverence and how everyone would acknowledge that they’d been wrong about him being the incapable baby of the family, even deferring, in the future, to his obvious wisdom and intellectual alacrity. He couldn’t wait for Dad to get home.
Later that night, Joshua was summoned by older brother, Luke, to enter the throne room of his and her majesty, Mom and Dad. As he walked into their bedroom, he was perturbingly startled by fairly grim expressions on their faces, and his heart sank. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that his poem had not only failed to provide joy and inspire admiration; it had upset them somehow, and he was about to get a talking to.
“Come on over here and sit down, Joshua.” His father’s voice was not angry but forlorn, with just the most infinitesimal touch of fear in it. Bob Megalos was never one to raise his voice too easily. Behind his big, bespectacled, round ,brown eyes, there was ever a wellspring of aloof calm and even the seeming of unemotional detachment from just about everything. He was an all-too-measured counterbalance to Mary Megalos, who lived in the world a near floral burst of emotional color, capable of moving from potent joy to unrestrained frustration to palpable sadness with all of the subtlety of an air raid. Joshua would almost shamefully admit, later in life, that his character borrowed more from his mother than he’d ever intended and that probably the one thing that enabled him to love her throughout his life, looking past the extreme disparities in their ideologies, was the unusual compatibility of their flamboyant dispositions.
Joshua sat between his solemn parents, feeling the practiced shame he’d been conditioned to whenever their faces looked as somber as they did that evening and after most of his attempts to assert himself as an individual. It had become his sad custom to assume a stance of inferiority to just about everyone in the universe, and it would be a very long time before he ever made reasonable strides against this horrifying delusion. What might have seemed narcissism in him later on in life was really the byproduct of his elation at getting up from his knees.
“Joshua”, his father began cautiously, “What does the Bible say about God?”
Joshua already knew where this was going, and now their distress was once more becoming his own.
“It says that man is made in the image of God, but why can’t …?”
Mary continued, lifting up the paper with his poem on it and waving it dismissively in the tense air. “Is this what’s in the Bible?”
Joshua bowed his head. “No.”
Bob went on. “Joshua, you don’t need to go making things up like this.”
Joshua raised his head, speaking plaintively, “But why, Dad, why would God have hair? Why would he need to go to the bathroom? If I could make it so that I didn’t have to go to the bathroom, I would. Why not God?”
Then, Mom and Dad offered up a rationale that Joshua would hear with abhorrent frequency from his parents, the nuns at Catholic school, priests, preachers, and all believers ultimately, without fail, whenever reason came into conflict with faith.
“That’s a divine mystery, Joshua. It’s not for us to understand, just for us to accept.”
Somewhere in the remote recesses of Joshua’s consciousness a nameless voice cried, “What the fuck is that bullshit?”, and though that influence was present even then, it would be eleven years before Joshua would surrender to it. It would be fear that won that day as he accepted the admonishment of his loving parents … who surely knew better than he did.
“To question the Word of God, Joshua”, his father spoke gently, putting a sympathetic hand on the boy’s shoulder, “is a sin. Do you understand that?”
“Yes.”
Joshua’s mother lifted his drooping head so that her eyes could gaze directly into his and added firmly but gently, “Your father and I love you very much, and we don’t want you to go to Hell. Do you want to go to Hell?”
“No.”
“Ok then, Joshua”, spoke his father now decisive on the matter, “Then no more of this kind of thing, okay, Son. The Bible is the word of God, and it is what’s true. It’s all that is true. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“Now take this”, he said, returning his evil poem to him, “And get rid of it. Go and pray for a while. Let God speak to you about what’s true and what isn’t okay.”
“Okay.”
“And Joshua”, his mother added as the boy left their room, “You need to talk about this in confession, alright?”
“I will.”
And thus, his head awash with images of Satan laughing at him, screams all around him, pitch forks poking him, and flames lashing at his flesh, he pushed his theory of God and atoms as far back into his subconscious as he could, but somehow, for a reason he would never recall, he kept the poem and never ever let it go.
This sort of thing, quite common throughout Joshua’s upbringing had the cumulative effect of creating a nearly implacable inferiority complex in his ever-troubled psyche. Here was a boy, pondering his world, his universe, his life and all things with queries to rival Socrates, Thomas Aquinas, Carl Jung, Lao Tzu, and just about every other meaningful thinker in the world, and rather than be encouraged or embraced for it, he was made to feel vile and humanly substandard. Things like this made him an alien in his own home and bestowed upon him the confidence of the Cowardly Lion in nearly all of his social interactions.
Dictionary.com defines the word “Unique” thusly.
u·nique: [yoo-neek] adjective
1. Existing as the only one or as the sole example; single; solitary in type or characteristics: a unique copy of an ancient manuscript.
2. Having no like or equal; unparalleled; incomparable: Bach was unique in his handling of counterpoint.
3. Limited in occurrence to a given class, situation, or area: a species unique to Australia.
4. Limited to a single outcome or result; without alternative possibilities: Certain types of problems have unique solutions.
5. Not typical; unusual: She has a very unique smile.
In other words, being unique means standing alone and being considered weird. One can certainly understand the needs of most people to follow fashion, like what others like (whether they really like it or not), join organizations based on political, ideological or religious dogma, succumb to mob mentality, and labor tirelessly to feel like they belong in the world. The alternative is exceptionality, and while it can be spectacularly liberating, it also comes with a healthy amount of isolation, as in the life of Joshua Megalos.
From his birth to his death, Joshua Megalos was to be, from the perspective of those who created the unwritten laws of human normalcy, a creature of seeming contradictions and confusing eccentricities. He would be a man who downloaded porn with an acquisitive appetite, weeping like a blind man granted new sight at symphonies, particularly by Mahler and Beethoven. He would deeply remind himself of his own innocence, reading his favorite book of all time, “The Little Prince”, and he would then busily manipulate circumstances in order to have anal sex with the next woman who took his fancy. He would sacrifice much to improve life for as many people as he could, an uncommon inspiration, particularly to young people, and yet, on too many occasions, he would fail to be a worthy cheerleader to himself. He would forever abominate the drug of religion while he drank himself into oblivion at every possible opportunity. He would seem his most arrogant when he was actually most insecure, leaving constant and wildly varied misimpressions about his true nature upon nearly everyone who crossed his path. His mind would dwell poetically and romantically at the heights of holy rapture, even as it simultaneously ate shit out of the very sewers of Hades, and he would speak of both aloud interchangeably, in polite company, to equally simultaneous applause and derision from all sides.
So, Dear Reader, this gives you some idea about the protagonist of this book. If you are offended already, it’s perfectly understandable. Perhaps, rather than putting this book down or worse still, getting your church to burn it, consider it a kind of aversion therapy. Maybe, once you’ve been exposed to those things that disturb and frighten you, which in this work, you will be, repeatedly, like having bare genitals inches from your face for hours, you might come out the other side of the reading a resplendently less constrained and less oversensitive person. If you’re not offended by what you’ve read so far, this book may be preaching to the choir, but it’ll still be a lark, nonetheless, perhaps helping you to recall all of what it took for you to transcend the fear and stupid restrictions that had been imposed upon you in your own life, and maybe it will reinvigorate your enthusiasm for glorious rebellion and enthusiastic escapades. If you still haven’t decided whether or not you’re pissed off or pleased, keep reading. It’ll be like your mind is a tennis ball at Wimbledon.
By all means, Dear Readers, please enjoy