Book of Cosmos

This is a work of fiction, not an actual event.


I dont like you, I say. I'm a little past being prejudiced, but I'm biased still. I know, he says with a shrug. I haven't told him anything he hasn't suspected. But I don't like you either. I guess it's good to know that I'm not alone in my thoughts. It isn't good to know that the person who is there with me is the one I don't like. Ironic.

The wind blows and my flat-ironed hair blows with it, whipping it across my forehead in a way I hope looks cool. The same thing happens to him, but since he has more hair than I do, it is less cool and more sad because he blinks with every strand that gets into his eyes. Blinkers have never been cool. Blinkers are liars and liars are not cool.

In fact, I go on, I didn't like you for a very long time. That one time we met briefly--

--I remember; in the mall. You were walking with Angel--

--and you walked past us with your friends. I remember getting a bad feeling in my stomach.

And we met at Angel's graduation. But we both knew the score... he says.

No, we both didn't. You knew the score. You knew everything because you'd been with him by then. He told you everything about me. He doesn't deny it. And all I knew about you was that you radiated a bad energy that I didn't like.

The oak grove is precariously close to the sea. It's thick with trees and great for privacy, but it sits on the edge of a cliff. We're pretty close to the edge and the orange sun sets through the trees. I don't think he's violent or anything, so I'm not afraid of being pushed over but the wind shifts at just that moment. Treacherous winds, treacherous people. As I lean against the tree facing him and he leans against the other, I place one hand behind me and grasp the trunk of the tree as best I can.

A bad energy, he repeats as he tries the words on his tongue. Bad energy...

I don't really know you, and I'm not comfortable disliking somebody I don't really know. So how about we turn over a new leaf?

He bends down slowly and picks up a leaf from the ground. It's green, as if it just fell, but it is dead. There's no sign that it ripped or had been plucked. Just a whole leaf on the ground--the corpse not yet cold. Still dead though. How about this one?

Why not? He rips it down the middle and gives me half of it. Even though I'm trying to be nice, I make sure our fingers do not brush upon taking the leaf. In a second too quick, his other hand rips the air and grabs my forearm with more speed than I could have ever thought anybody capable of.

I know you're just trying to ease your conscience. You want to remain on his good side and you're hoping I fail my duties as a boyfriend. You should have taken your chance. You were too slow the first time, the second time and the last time. And in your slowness, I took action. He's right.

And, he continues, you don't know what to do. Do you start dating others? What if the moment you start a relationship, I dump him? Then there's the period of unsureness within him about whether to jump into a relationship and you'll be tangled up with a boy of your own. And then, on top of that, even if you do manage to get rid of the guy you decide to date in lieu of the boy you love, you'll have to leave off to college and he'll be here alone.

You're just a scared little boy. You don't know what to do, where to start, how to begin or where you'll land. And that's why you're so slow. You want to control everything. You want to land on your feet, but you're the worst cat I've ever seen. A feline doesn't think about landing on it's feet after falling--it just does it. It's a reflex.

I rip my arm away from him, but my knuckles are whitening from grasping the oak behind me so tightly. Not in fear, but in anger. Or was it fear? Not of him--I could deck him and be done with it. Myself. I was the only one holding me back. I bare my teeth at him, but he doesn't flinch. He knows I'm all bark--and not even that!

You want him, he explains as if I'm a slow child, and so do I. You think he completes you, but I know he completes me--he's done it before, he winks and my stomach turns. I'm not a bad person, and you know that. Had we met under different circumstances and if you weren't so intuitive, we could have been friends. I still hold that we can be.

Now he's preaching to me. I think I hate him. I know I don't. The sun is nearly gone and if it isn't, the trees are doing a great job of blocking and filtering its light. I see the first twinkle of the stars above. I wonder--I really wonder--how am I going to survive seeing them together for the rest of this trip? Seeing them together at all ever? They both know I like him, as does everyone else in the world. And if they see us in proximity, then questions will rise...

We emerge from the oak grove, firewood in arms and appropriate smiles on faces. Camping and whatnot. My eyes do not water as I thought they would and my face is straighter than I thought it would be. Aquarian coolness has finally manifested in the most of dire circumstances. My firewood partner drops his wood near the small fire and hugs his boy, spinning him around and gazing at me with intense eyes.

The morph hurts--bringing up one side to equal the other, showing enough teeth that it doesnt look forced, making sure it extends up to my eyes--but in the end I could do what I meant to do: Smile.

So I had a great talk with a friend (X) yesterday about globalization and culture in Target. I was too busy trying to figure out what I thought to properly gauge his reaction to the conversation, but something surfaced that resonated deeply in me.

We say globalization. We mean Westernization or Americanization. Globalization is used as a rhetorical device by policy makers as a euphemism to not upset the masses.* As I see it, it cannot be globalization unless every entity—country, nation, individual, etc.—is able to equally give into the final product.

With both my friend and I understanding that globalization did not mean every country contributing something to the table, he said it would be better if everybody had the same world view—there'd be no wars and conflicts. But this would be the end of cool cultural diversity and stuff. This is a sentiment I am stirring conflictingly in the pit of my stomach. For everyone to be united in outlook and perspective would be great, but that severely limits human ability to think beyond a certain point and it puts my idea of Western culture trying to suck everything in like a restless empire. We did agree that America is an empire.

As somebody who falls into the 'minority' status, I realize there is a reason for this as seen by the government. Difference. Because I am descended from a people who are not Western European, I am given the shorter end of the stick in this country. Granted, if globalization is realized as we predicted and we are united in perspective and image, in some odd decades my above claim would not matter because where one descended from would be irrelevant. A great point for shared perspective.

But we also talked about international child adoption. I told my friend how another friend (Y) of mine felt that adopting children from Africa, South America and Asia was destroying the culture of that place—that the good-willed American family looking to adopt should instead sponsor the family and try to make the region the child comes from a better place. Y would go on to say that its a trend to adopt 'exotic' children and ease American guilt for past crimes both domestic and abroad.

X, on the other hand, felt that maybe the American family did not want to sponsor a family and wanted to give the child a privileged life—after all, the child is only guilty for being born into a messed up region whereas the parent(s) brought the child into the world without thought of the child's ability to survive.

I could not agree with X on this whatsoever. To me, it sounds like ripping families apart. Parents and siblings would be unable to ever have contact with this child again and the child will have been removed as a possible courier for the culture, ideals and beliefs of his native region. He will have been sucked into the belly of the American Empire Beast and will most likely resent his region and the family he never knew. Or maybe he would understand that his biological family could not take care of him and others stepped in. Whatever the case, the child will have the inability to spread pearls of wisdom about his culture.

But here's the meat of what resonated within me: My culture to is going away. My culture—whatever that means—is soon to be gone. I am a descendant of slaves who survived off of the bare minimum of what was left on the table of their masters, hence soul food. I can't actually I eat it a lot, but yesterday I went to a friend's house and had the greasiest, most foodgasmic morsel of unhealthy decadence that the chicken had to offer. Two things made me want to cry: One, it was simply divine and I found my head thrown back as I ate. And two, soul food will soon be a thing of the past. I don't eat it often because I'm a relatively healthy eater, but the idea that it would no longer be available to me...

Then I realized other things that I enjoy will be gone from me. Soon, I will have to take full and complete responsibility for everything I do—teenage bubbleheadedness will be gone to me. Soon, I wont be able to use computers the way I do now because of the changing culture of Information Technology. Soon, telephones will be flash tattoos on our forearms (seriously... see here)!

And as I throw inner tantrums and rebel in my head, I realize that I'm not terribly upset when I think of everything. The future has a name... The Age of Aquarius, Globalization, the New World Order and Westernization are but a few. My thoughts are not terribly different from everyone else's. In my heart of hearts, I am afraid of parting with the foundation that I know—decadently oiled fried chicken, computers that arent with you 24/7, sovereign nations that don't have to succumb to the one superpower of an empire—but I am also excited for the future and I look forward to being able to step from the end of the old age and into the new one.

So in the end, I guess there is no choice but to remember the things you love and keep the memory of them close to your heart. If you cant take your favorite food with you into the future, take the memory of the recipe. If you cant keep your humongous 12-inch laptop because the future dictates that you use virtual reality goggles for a 2-inch computer, put it in the bottom of your sock drawer and take it out every so often as a relic.

The idea is to let go while keeping in mind that you can never be apart with anything that you love. And so I prepare to let go, opening my fingers to let the sands of time slip through and into that vague abyss we call history. But since the future has yet to rear its head, I'm going to indulge. Salad with mountains of ranch dressing sounds good right about now.

Sage and out.

*(Think about the world 'causality' in relation to what it means: Death. But what sane person wants to go around and talk about 5000 deaths?—especially military generals who focus on this stuff! Euphemisms remove us from uncomfortably intimate associations with things we don't like.)

Ashtyn of Kuftys sat on the throne as bored as could be; his father was away and his mother was absent. Jyshiin Fyçiin adorned herself in the mirror, appreciating the scarlet moon backdrop provided by the open windows that made her ruby-clad neck gleam most brilliantly. Ationyn stoked the storefront, waiting for the night to be over so he could read the new book his favorite author wrote. Piankhi Ma’at sat in silence in the shadow of the Phoenix Palace of Kuftys, awaiting the signal to do his part.

And by the witness of the Creator, the gods, the spirits and the beasts: There was a great cry in all of Kuftys, such as there never has been or ever would be again.

From the west the cry came, causing everything in its radial path to shudder in uncertainty of its existence. So unreal, so demonic the cry. So unimaginable, so rebellious the sound. But more remarkable was the shimmer that encompassed the whole of the western sky. It might have been the heat of a fire; Kuftys had its share of those.

But this fire was not natural. As its many tips came into view over the horizon, it became plainly obvious that the fire was composed of hundreds of smaller ones, all on torches. All held by mad-faced peasants. The Revolution of the New Blood Moon had begun, and the family of the Phoenix Palace—the family that ruled for over five hundred years—was the target.

In lieu of the deranged cry and the shimmering western sky, Ashtyn of Kuftys fixed the Phoenix-Cobra diadem squarely on his head and ordered his men to prepare the court for public viewing. Jyshiin Fyçiin looked out of the window, shivering at the approaching army of lesser class people as her parents shouted in the background to pack valuables and make haste. Ationyn decided to leave the stocking of the store for later as he pulled on his coat and locked the door behind him, having less to fear than some, but realizing the potential damage that can come to his store and his person if he stayed around the westerners. Piankhi Ma’at rejoiced in the sound of the cry and put his hands together, praying to various pre-summoned spirits and spilling oils and herbs along the wall.

From their place so far away, one could begin to hear the chant of the fire-wielding marchers.

“Drown the Phoenix,
Slit the Snake!
Un-wing the Dragon,
Make them shake!”

Blaspheming the Holy Animals of Kuftys—such sacrilege would not be tolerated. There was no drum, no movement melody—only voice. But this was Kuftys, where only an utterance was needed to change the universe forever. Words were power, and power was increased by volume and intensity. And that is why this story has survived. The story of the Revolution of the New Blood Moon is alive because the participants etched it into the very fibers of the Cosmos.



//So this was meant to be a teaser. It's written in this weird all-knowing narrator voice that I'm not used to writing in, but it was worth a try. If it sounds like a dry recount of otherwise exciting events, then I've done my job haha. Comments? questions? Review?