HUMAN WRECKAGE

Awkward

I have read the Old Testament as presented in the King James Version of the Christian Bible. I’d been led to believe that edition constituted a work of literature. Verily, the prose begot boredom. Perhaps the holy nuances were lost in yet another translation based on other translations. I hate putting down a book just halfway through, but you know…. Life is short; there are far more interesting books to read.

At this time of year, just before Albertans make like Cher and turn back time, the light is slight and Autotune cannot change the low register dirge of the spheres. Saturday morning was darker than my sense of humour. Invisible to one another, Ann and I enjoyed our day’s first cup of coffee and cigarette together on the front porch of the Crooked 9. Hot orange glows in a toxic fog. The frosted leafy decay in the air smelled better, sharp. We listened for rustling, coyotes, hares, porcupines and skunks.

Caffeined and nicotined, we went inside and turned our attention to our ritual Saturday morning pleasure, The New York Times crossword puzzle. There were a couple of gimmies in the grid, STREET MUSICIAN and SPY NOVELIST DEIGHTON. Another clue read, SETH RELATIVE TO ADAM’S AND EVE’S OFFSPRING. Forgive me, Father, I’ve long forgotten my catechism; there were Cain and Abel for sure.

Ann said, “Adam and Eve had children?”

Oh, my woe begotten, pagan baby, let me pour you another cup of coffee. You’re not quite in full solve mode. It’s still dark outside, seems earlier than it really is.

It’s some kind of misappropriated miracle that many people with influence and power read the Book of Genesis as fact. Honest to God, The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway makes more sense. Institutionalized ignorance is worse than disease because diseases may be treated, sometimes cured, or even eradicated. Blind faith overlooks a lot of illogical suppositions. Should the creation myth of Adam and Eve be true, homo sapiens did not come from a good family.

Mom, an afterthought, the weaker sex made from the first man, was one bad apple. One of her rowdy kids was the world’s first murderer, fratricide at that. And Mom and Dad would necessarily have had some daughters, you know, just to keep the first family’s ball rolling. Talk about dysfunctional, all of us the progeny of incest. Of course, that could account for the endless tragedy that is human history; life’s rich pageant.

Ann slid off the kitchen stool, hunched her shoulders and set her face in a frown. I could imagine the dowdy overcoat. Ann proceeded to imitate her father, an educated man and a voracious reader, mimicking the lipless handbag draggers who constituted the religious constituency in the small Alberta town where she’d spent her formative years. We had one such pinched and prim lady in our neighbourhood who petitioned the community league to cut back the shrubbery in our central park because God only knows what teenagers might get up to in the shadows. Her Baptist Sunday school taught curtain twitching.

The Times Seth solution was THIRD. I’m uncertain how much begetting Adam did once the Tree of Knowledge revealed the pleasures of the night to Eve, that little vixen. Still, Seth’s sibling bride must’ve been child number four at the very least.          

meGeoff has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of myth and theology since 2013. My novella Of Course You Did is available. Visit www.megeoff.com to find your preferred format and retailer.