god wars (final revision?)

[mnaz]

(written and perceived, lived, between 9/12/01 and today, mostly in nevada)

No way to narrate this loop and leave out madness of belief, and how radiance remained despite. To wit, the scene: rock and sky, lucid light. Jah roots have a foothold in rock rhythms, muffled reverb turned down low to fill the expanse, ricochet off mesas and peaks, lay out the land, bathe it in desolate echo and wistful fade, dubbed out roots blown open and transfigured, from a dashboard island in Nevada's burnt auburn. Soft, interior thunder. You drift on it past a jagged rise across the divide. Hard to believe it came from aquamarine; reggae was the bouncy stuff they play at Beach casino, plastic props in pink drinks, trivial beside blown dub deconstructions on grinding bedrock, the heat and grit of it, the lost tribes.

Screens are closing in, pale glow creeping on the hills, something about a God war. The President was on TV, something about a "religion of peace," and then he turned the dogs loose, Gods of wrath, wild heads on screens, glow filtered in dust, talus rubble and detritus, elegant bones in miles of quiet defiles, jealous Gods, jagged glow advancing, corkscrew thermals to haunt perfections of silence, wrath in every corner of unbearable stillness. Enter roots reverb. “Hey Gods, over here.” On muffled echo, rock and sky. Immaculate subversion.

Never saw so many men of God so agitated. Or serene. It's only prophecy, horsemen and earthquakes. Don't fear the prophets, they made you. Met a high priest on radioactive fortress on the big bang’s holiest hot rock, taller than the other fortresses. He peered down, our big bang father who art nearly in heaven, you barely made him out he was so high. Other times he sat beside you with brochures. There's a God war on, need wheels turning. It all turns on dread, enter Jah dread, raw sculpture, Zion lyric riding on the echo. Mostly it was irony, a fat irony sandwich, rock and sky. Mine it, muck it, bleed the ore.

Everything changed. Nothing new under the savage sun. Faith was more humble once, not yet an empire. In the third century monks and outcasts went to live in the Egyptian desert. The "desert fathers." Like the oldtimers. Elijah knew a spring, out of corruption's reach if not a gentle murmur, a fading stammer of vanished walls, rattle and wane, down to your whoosh. Instinctual emptiness. Faith was more humble, like Jesus in the desert, forty days and nights, not legal in Rome, although John heard louder tremors; he was no simple hermit monk. God would descend from the sky in utter terror at any moment.

In 2001 AD a God war erupted. Almighty hurled a thunderbolt at the other Almighty, threw jetliners into tall buildings, which fell down in twisted, terrifying obscenity, as Almighty willed it. Screens called it evil; you don’t need evil, only abject disconnect. Words cannot cover. Screens said that a few Saudis with a deific death wish sneaked onto some planes and grabbed the wheel, with results so stunningly apocalyptic and efficiently destructive that these unseen outlaws could hardly have dreamed it. The people in the air tried to ride a sheet metal pony to LA. Everything accelerated sixty years ago, techno and babies. Huxley figured we'd fly on rockets by now, but the jetliner is the proven pony, though "travel" only in a vague sense. You barely see earth; hazy bumps slink by. On a rocket you'd be free of earth, only a blue brown blur, if rockets had windows. Pick the olive from your drink and you're in Tokyo. Disconnect. The more bulbous sheet metal pony made more sense. Can't see it the same way now.

Rock and sky. Zero sum equilibrium. And wisdom into its non-zero sum, as it is prone to. Mutual interdependence. But there's no "universal purpose," no "wholeness." At most, progress thereto or paying a price. As sheer numbers tax the place, how does profit fit with the collective? Avoid system failure. Except we're fascinated by our own End of Days: the flame-throwing preachers, street corner freaks with signs, even psychotropic scholars, all with their coming singularity points. Everything changed. Heat and dust, the big beat earth. Sun goes like a fusion death star at a purple rim on rich amber, diabolical orange as it squats and fattens, roils on the rim, seeps into broiled rock, and reverb murmurs in twilight impossible to paint, echo smothered in dub, soothing pain of silence, emptied in canyons, the sufferer's rock, though earlier Augustus Pablo lit the eastern slope in dignified luminance.

Whiskey in the morning, raw light kissing bleak granite, or in the dark cocoons of wager, decadence and chance, might catch a storm of wealth, but those damn beeps, bells and whistles. Whiskey at nine, silent heat by noon. You meet a guy from Toledo. He says we don't do God wars, only they do. The conversation goes on for years. When you look up the bar is closed, only the same deranged bells and beeps. "I heard that President Bush called President Chirac one time, and he said, 'Gog and Magog are at work in the Middle East. Prophecies are being fulfilled, and this war is willed by God, who wants to use it to erase his people’s enemies before a New Age.' It just came out." Toledo man had left.

Don’t fear the prophets. Ezekiel went out and saw a whirlwind. You hear things, fossils screaming and fortunes of kingdoms on the dry breath. “Tap tap, you there? Can you mobilize against Gog? And do it quickly, before it gets too hot.” The Book: epic tales, wisdom and poetry. Could use a better translator. Ezekiel wrote of an “attack from the north,” in which God will intervene with the usual Old Testament (postmodern) nihilism. Some scholars read it as mythological; preachers take it as the literal end. Strange, these revelations on the road; on bleak desert rock, their names even sound like the end. At the next station you find a terminal, sit down and search the end game:

"In Islamic tradition Dhul Qarnayn roamed until he found a tribe threatened by Gog Magog, and he built a great wall to hold back hostile northern nations, similar to Alexander the Great's wall". "Gog Magog may have been the Mongols, who threatened Muslim power in the Middle Ages". "In British tradition Gog and Magog are giants in the Lord Mayor’s show every year, guardians of London, an event dating to Henry V, a myth rooted in the myth of Roman Emperor Diocletian’s thirty-three wicked daughters". "In Irish tradition Magog is ancestor to the Irish and numerous other races across Europe and Asia, as told in 'Lebor Gabala Erenn'". "Chassidic rabbis called Napoleon’s invasion of Russia a sign of the Messiah’s return". Waiting on a messiah, raising a little hell.

Why should you care? State your peace and move on. Howl it to heaven’s icy glitter if you must, the swinish politics and waste, but go on, further into arid tides. As most things go, in childish footsteps of a fool, in recesses and shade canyons unseen, getting it out is enough. You made some good points, in theory, but you had to yield the floor. To rock and sky, simmering roots. Mostly it was irony. Can't forget that heady stretch of blaze.

[dadio]

Excellent prose and theme.

[mnaz]

Thanks dadio. I was literally in the desert for long stretches of time throughout Oct.-Dec. of 2001, and this piece basically grew out of a "moment" in that silent realm where I realized I "rejected both sides." For lack of a better way to describe it. Yeah, I know. A little simple-minded, but basically true.