Against the steel cold rails of a balcony, it’s higher up here than usual. But don’t worry about me, as I glance down.

Down.

Down.

Sounds and every kind of traffic, a view from this height spoils anybody’s delusional illusion of unique purpose. A view from this height is a reflecting and neverending commonality you want to avoid. From up here, there aren’t faces. From up here, there aren’t even people. Each person isn’t one, only their contribution to whatever this bigger whole, a component of some kind of system. Hundreds of feet down is where I’m looking, some intricately woven ant farm of super highways and too many lights, actually clotted veins of a confused complexity trying to do just one thing: sustain. And even that’s going all wrong. These people if you like to call them that, all of them have a place to be, and it’s really completely the same place to be. Whatever contributing function they chose to be forced into: mother, doctor, student; their role essentially is that they are oriented and mobile, capable and eager serve. They and we really are all one. Not in a good way anymore.

December is it’s cold outside. I’m not up here as much.

“Do you hear all of what I say through the earpiece of a physician, a psychologist? What I talk to you about here: do you receive it always as being the words of a disease that needs to be treated, or do you sometimes empathize, and hear me just as another person? What am I to you?”

After three years at a university, Mike decided three years at a university is enough, and stopped going. That was five years ago, and he was an economics major with a minor in philosophy. I cannot say for sure what Mike’s study habits were like, how his grades were, or anything along those lines, but can absolutely say that at economics and philosophy both, Mike is completely brilliant.

Mike used to use his economics in ways that you’d expect. The kind of stuff you see on CNN or MSNBC, about the housing market and stocks. Whatever. I’d often come home and Mike would be arguing at whoever was on TV. “The strength of our dollar should be defined by it’s purchasing power, not how it compares to other failing currencies,” I think I heard him say once. I don’t know.

I live with Mike.

Mike has black and thick hair, broad shoulders, and blue eyes that are the same color blue as the cleaning stuff that comes in spray bottles. Sometimes the spray bottle says window cleaner on it, sometimes it’s for your car’s interior, or it can be all-purpose bathroom. But it’s always that same color blue. So no matter what you’re cleaning, Mike’s blue eyes are making sure you don’t miss a spot. Mike’s perfect, everybody that’s met him thinks. Except for his beard. Mike has a beard like a 17-year-old that hasn’t finished puberty, the yard that somebody fucked up on while spreading grass seed: patchy and weak and, “maybe it’ll be thicker next year.” Except Mike is running out of “next years” faster than most people.

Mike was diagnosed with lymphocytic leukemia two years ago.

Lymphocytic leukemia means that Mike’s white blood cells can’t fight infections, and get in the way of the healthy blood cells that can. Sometimes he feels really tired all of a sudden. Mike told me that lymphocytic leukemia is very similar to lymphoma, except he probably won’t grow a tumor. Mike hasn’t told anybody else about his leukemia…and that he probably won’t grow a tumor. “In the case of any life-shortening illness,” said Mike, “the tendency is to try for a new perspective, to try from then on to ‘live life to the fullest’ or whatever. What’s funny is that everybody else’s distracting and nonstop pity and sympathy completely prevent you from doing that. You get cancer and consider new things like, ‘Maybe I’ll call my grandma more,’ except every time you call grandma, you’re reminded of your cancer when she asks about it and how you’re doing.

“Living life to the fullest means keeping your problems to yourself.”

Mike still talks about economics all the time, but not like before. Like, there’s a stack of envelopes next to the mattress that he sleeps on: bills, account cancelings, default notices, follow-up default notices, the unmarked white envelopes that arrive when you ignore the follow-up default notices. I asked Mike before if he’s ever going to respond to any of those, or even open the envelopes. “No.” Why not? “Because I don’t have any way to pay off any of that stuff.” Isn’t this a problem? “Maybe. And when you have a problem, there are two ways to get rid of it: undergo the processes and steps required to actually solve it, or just pretend that it doesn’t exist. Ignoring all that shit is much simpler than actually doing something about it. It’s basic economics, man.”

Mike has his half of the rent every month. I don’t much care to know where that money comes from. Even if Mike didn’t have his half of the rent every month, I probably wouldn’t ask him to leave, because then there would be nobody.

For sure, I’ve noticed how annoyed or pissed off a lot of people get when an on-duty Christian shows up at their door. I’m no fanatic of the warm flow of holy rhetoric, but I don’t really sweat and clench fists each time I peek through a window blinds slot and see somebody in a gold cross holding a briefcase, ya know? The point, though, is that the religious seem to be doing a worse job than ever when it comes to the marketing and advertising of this supreme and invisible judge’s Judge in the sky. The Master of our fates. I think now would be a pretty good time for that Second Coming of Christ thing. Fake it, even. All that’s really needed to pull it off is a man with charisma and facial hair. Somebody a lot like the guy who sold that laundry bleach stuff, OxiClean. Billy Mays was his name. And that dude convinced everybody with laundry that they would be ground up and woven into sweaters unless they credit-carded vast amounts of OxiClean “within the next 20 minutes.” You remember. You still have some of the OxiClean, even (and you’ll never run out). The Jesus-like wisdom and facial hair of Billy Mays is key. No more door-to-door nonsense, and for sure no more, “Come to our church and give it a chance,” free trials. Both of these can only breed the skepticism, “It’s too good to be true.” Religion needs a Billy Mays and a pricetag. Then anybody could be made to believe.

Save yourself and your soul, only $9.95 a month.*
* $12.95/month after first six months.

God: The infomercial.

But I’m rambling. And by now I’ve already answered the door…

“Hello. What’s going on?”

“I have good news.”

“Oh?”

“You’ve been saved,” the guy says and smiles.

You are already fully aware of how the next couple exchanges went; you’ve heard it all before: “Jesus Christ is a champion…I’m from such-and-such church…can I have a minute of your time?” So we can skip that noise, and begin again at actual conversation. And very sincerely, at first I tried to make it so the talk could end with nobody pissed off, and without any lying promise that I’d check out the guy’s church. A fake commitment is a quick and always peaceful way to end such conversations with one of God’s messengers. But if they later realize you didn’t actually show, they will return to your house. With anger, a more violent sales pitch, and likely a foaming mouth. More or less.

The guy asks, “So do you believe in God?”

I shrug. “The same God you believe in? Tell me what exactly you mean by ‘God,’ and then I’ll answer.”

As he tightens his fingers around his Bible without really realizing it, “God created man and animals and the entire world…loves us all…we should open ourselves up to Him…live lives He approves of, so we can be with Him forever in Heaven after our time here on Earth.”

“No, sorry. I don’t subscribe to all that.”

“Well, then may I ask what you do believe?” the guy asks.

“I believe all species and types of life have a shared source or origin, or whatever you want to call it, but I think tha-…”

I’m cut off, “And what is that source?” by a criticizing tone that doesn’t expect an answer.

“I don’t know how consciousness or whatever came to be. Actual life and perspective the way most people contemplate it. If that’s what you’re getting at, I can’t be positive. And it doesn’t really matter to me. It’s all good.”

“So, you’re open to the possibility of God, just choosing to ignore it, and not believe? Is that right?”

I believe man created the Biblical God you’re talking and thinking under, and not the other way around. I can’t be sure if there is such a thing as any kind of god, or how specifically any of us got here, but I honestly, very sincerely, can’t swallow the notion that any of us or any of this is the result of a week’s worth of Genesis and magic tricks. No offense meant by ‘magic tricks,’ sorry. What I mean to say is, everything has been and is still very gradually developing and evolving. We weren’t created the same way a painter makes a picture, and then the art is all done. I don’t believe that we were made at all.”

If the guy were a vampire (and maybe he is), then my words were a silver bullet. Or whatever works on vampires. I know garlic does for sure, but spices shouldn’t be included in any analogy. It just sounds stupid. But yea, the guy grew livid instantly. Speaking of magic tricks.

“Everything is evolving? Evolution??!” the guy yells and asks. “Are you one of those people who think we come from monkeys??”

“No,” I answer.

“What do you mean, ‘No’?”

“Evolution by natural selection, I think is what you’re talking about: it absolutely doesn’t demand that monkeys as we know them now are a precursor to people as we know them now. What do you even mean by ‘monkeys’? Are you asking if I think we come from chimps? Gorillas? Both? A chimp and a gorilla had sex thousands of years ago, and thus the first human? Do you even know what you’re asking?”

I don’t think that you should decide you don’t believe something, before you know what it actually is. Is that unfair?

He sighs with too much effort, “Any kind of monkey. Do you think that our ancestors were apes?”

“I believe what all available evidence points towards, that we share a common ancestor with apes. Like I said, I believe all species and types of life have a shared origin.”

“So you do believe in this THEORY!! of Evolution??!”

Point some fingers at that word ‘theory,’ by the way.

And get bent, everybody who pronounces the ‘theory’ in ‘theory of evolution’ with some kind of upward inflection on it. You know what I’m talking about. “Theory of Evolution,” like they’re the first person to ever stumble into and discover this apparent anomaly, and it’s their duty to spread the insight and good news to all of humanity using their best William Shatner impersonation. It’s not necessary.

“Dude, this conversation is getting terrible,” I say. “What do you mean, ‘believe in’ the theory of evolution? And why are you saying ‘theory’ with a changed tone of voice?”

“The way you look at it, nature and a lot of time is a replacement for God. You believe in it’s power. And it is a belief, because it’s a theory, and not a fact.”

“No. No, no, no. There is nothing to believe in the way you’re talking about belief. No faith or hope required. I do not hope that the genes of which we’re all made don’t replicate perfectly, and that variations at the genetic level gradually develop complexity and more capable animals and organisms. This is in fact exactly how it goes. And theories aren’t inferior to facts; they’re entirely different. Facts are pieces of data. Information. And a theory is an explanation that accounts for facts. A theory is the result of facts that have been successfully put together, it’s right to say. For another example, heliocentrism is also ‘just a theory.’ It’s ‘just a theory!’ that a sun is at the center of our solar system, but I doubt you go around pointing that out, and we do, after all, call our situation a solar system.”

“But if there is no God, then how did life begin?? What does Darwin have to say about that?”

If you have a clue, you’re now saying to yourself, “Evolution deals with the origin of species, not the origin of life.”

What I was thinking, and what I said, simply, “This conversation is over.”

I’d rather concede. Whatever else is going on, absolutely much more important to me than this guy’s regressing madness. I don’t believe in his God. Full disclosure. I apologize. Jesus is not my homeboy.

God: The conversation I don’t feel like having.

What a completely mute point, by the way, “If there is no God, then how did life get here?” An unaimed bullet with nothing inside of it. How did life get here? Nobody is sure how they themselves even ‘got here’ or became ‘alive.’ Any guess could I suppose start with, “My mom and dad had sex,” but what then? Talk of reproductive organs can’t answer anything about how or when you exactly began. When did you actually become aware of yourself, and realize things are going on? You aren’t sure. You can’t answer. Neither can I. And since we’re both unable to answer the simpler question of how our own specific lives even started, a temporary consensus of uncertainty is indeed available to us in discussing this much larger “Where do we come from? How did we get here?” But I know you can’t just stop there and settle. Because surely, by now you’ve already achieved an answer that’s more correct than everybody else’s, and what else is possible is no longer relevant.

God: Better than whatever everybody else believes.

The guy hadn’t actually left yet, by the way.

“Ah! So you don’t want to talk anymore, because I’ve asked a question that science can’t answer?” curious eyebrows inquire.

“I don’t want to talk, because this conversation has become obsolete to me.”

“Obsolete?”

“Yes. I get by without faking absolutely certainty about our situation. I’d rather think or suspend judgment than pretend. And hypothetically, even if some sort of god, any god, does exist, and our lives can be considered gifts from Her: Do you think She wants us to praise Her forever, rather than simply enjoy the present? Would any decent and genuine gift giver really want you kissing their ass all the time for what they’ve done? Would any decent god want infinite praise for what, as far as anyone can tell, only came natural to Her?

“I’m not pretending,” he corrects me. “I have a personal relationship with God, and know who He, not she, is. And I don’t view myself as doing any ‘butt kissing.’ Thanking and being respectful is appreciation. And what difference does it make to you if myself and people like me, we believe in and preach about God’s love? What’s it to you?”

“Gods and religions have resulted in quite a bit more than basic preaching. The case is often made that organized religion has resulted in more murders and wars and oppression than has anything else.”

The guy’s pupils circle the perimeter of his eye sockets and he starts, “First of all, I disagree, and say greed as the biggest source of killing. Also, anything can be used in excess or get abused. Get hit by a bolt of lightning or a livewire, and you’re done for. Yet a paramedic can grab two electrode pads of a defibrillator and press down onto somebody’s chest to stop cardiac arrest. So, is electricity always a dangerous thing? Sorry, but I don’t think religion is unconditionally bad; it’s misused to be that way. And examples of this are everywhere. People have come to my church asking for help to get off drugs, and received it. And it worked. You would probably say any praying and recovering cancer patient is in fact only rambling into the hospital walls they’re surrounded by, but I assure you that there is much more going on than that. About the wars and abortion clinic attacks, and everything else I’m sure you’ve seen: am I to deny that which I truly believe in and love, because you can cite other believers’ abuse? God does exist outside of as-seen-on-TV attacks and bombings.”

God: Electrode pads.

God: Hospital room walls.

God…dammit, I’m convinced the guy had that speech prewritten and practiced.