Sooner or later it will get to you. And when it does, it’s already too late to dig yourself out. It’s hard to see something other than your own rotting flesh, when you move you feel as though there is a truckload of shit following you.
Somehow it does so silently, attentively. It’s so silent you become paranoid and paranoia makes people woozy.
People down the streets of Vancouver are developing a new pathology of chronic smirks, they have a strange grin on their faces when you meet them and shake their hands. At the market on Granville everybody looks clownish.
You notice their grins when you go to church,
feeling out of place
and counting
minutes
until you’re finally allowed to leave.
You can’t remember why you go in the first place.
The whole concept of God was always a mystery to you, and you haven’t been praying all year and not for many years. And now that everything is starting to fall apart, there is no refuge anymore, not in coffee or friendly faces. Community gatherings seem so pointless now. You want to get up and leave this place forever.
You engage in polite conversation with your family friends and
all you can think about is
how strange everybody looks
and how alone you feel.
“You look a little pale today, are you sure you’re fine?”
“I just feel a little strange.”
“Maybe you’re getting sick. It’s all this rain and ice, I’m sure. Don’t bike around downtown so much in this weather, it’s not good for you.”
“I’m sorry to hear you’re not doing great, but I’m sure you’ll get better soon.”
“I’m sure, I’m sure.”
“God bless you, everything will be alright.”
Human contact is so insipid that you can’t get any warmth from it anymore.
The sound of chatter arrives to your ears distorted by the awareness
of something out of place,
an added resonance of distaste and revulsion.
And at the same time you long for somebody to tell you what your problem is,
you long for somebody who can understand.
It dawns on you that the people you know
wouldn’t be so nice if you told them the truth.
It’s as though their hearing is muffled,
they could try listening but they wouldn’t hear,
and your cry for help gets lost through the cracks,
your words start falling down,
down,
down further.
Day by day you start to realize what inclusive community
really means.
The urge to rip something apart reaches a whole new level.
In a series of frustrating attempts to find an explanation, you scour through piles of memories and you look for a word, a memory, a cause, an expression that you can use to label whatever it is that is so clearly wrong with you.
But you can’t find one, and you don’t even know what symptoms you need to be analyzing.
You stumble upon a psychiatrist, they recommended her to you because she’s so good. So you conquer rush hour and make your way to the West End. She likes the dictionary more than you like it. She wants you to pay her a year-worth of salary so that she can read for you and find a Greek word that can explain your disease. Your diagnosis is that her expertise is insufficient to serve your ends. Greek words are too abstruse to mean anything to anybody.
So fuck the fancy jabber and fuck the useless jargon. It’s hard to think articulately with a truckload of shit following you, but you drag it on and on
to and from the clinic,
to your favorite restaurant,
to the aquarium,
to the movie theater.
How do you feel?
Angry, you don’t want to talk about it. That is such a dumb question. But let’s think about it. Resigned, check.
Cynical, check.
Tired, check.
Powerless, check.
Pessimistic, sort of. Not really.
But there is more.
Frustrated, check.
Angry, check check check.
Want to smash your head against the wall, check but you don’t have the strength and determination.
Apathy, check.
Exasperation, check.
Depression, check.
Screw psychiatrists, there is no remedy for this except for anti-depressants and a bowl of oats. You guess you need a psychiatrist at least for the first one. Why does it have to be so hard? You just want to soak in the tub for another hour.
You wander around Stanley Park
but the people you meet there can’t give you the right directions.
They can point you to the café. Go drown your issues in a latte
and a buttery bagel.
You don’t feel like talking to anybody anymore,
everybody is fading in the distance
but there must me somebody somewhere who has gone through this.
You take yourself to what you think are the wackiest parts of town.
You don’t know anybody on East Hastings, not anybody in the hipster neighborhoods,
but you don’t miss talking to the people you know anyway.
“Maybe you just need to meditate more, you know… Just sit down on your porch and do the whole thing, I’m sure it’ll help.”
“I’ve tried.”
“It’s some spirit, perhaps. Like, this is freaky. Are you haunted? Dear lord, fuck. Maybe you need to be exorcized or something.”
“Maybe.”
Three chakra readings later and you have given up on all this spiritual bullshit.
If only you were one of them,
if only you could find your own people,
if only someone could tell you that you are really not crazy.
But you sit down on a bench and watch
couples of strangers
walking past with their grins and their distorted conversations.
You despise them.
Now you know
you are truly alone:
in the land of tolerance there is only place for diversity that is already on the map.
But you’re off the grid now,
and you are falling further.
There are answers you want
but they keep sinking,
they keep escaping.
You chase after the darkness,
you start to sink deeper and deeper.
You stop talking to the people,
you walk yourself to the edge of the city,
you sit in front of totem poles.
But even they are refusing to talk to you, they refuse to give you their wisdom.
Maybe you aren’t worthy of it. Maybe they have nothing left to say.
You are completely alone now.
One day you discover that your loves, secrets, and hopes have sunk one level under.
Now you’re desperate, truly desperate, but there’s a problem.
That hole you’re going down is making you so nauseous that you can
barely think, let alone plan your own suicide.
And it’s tearing your bones and your skin
apart so that, eventually, you assume you’re just going to die anyway.
And it’s making you so paranoid
that you don’t really want to be alone in the house anymore either.
And there are those chills you feel across your back
as though someone is watching you.
But the truth is, this is addictive. Creepy and compelling.
Euphoria, check.
You want more of it, you want to go further, and you are scared shitless because you want to go further and as you sink deeper your skin and your bones fall off your body and the darkness engulfs the you that you don’t even have anymore.
That has fallen
off,
too.
Now this is a whole new continent you’re walking into.
One of dark, unintelligible whispers.
You have left Vancouver far behind you, with its buildings of sparkling glass and its Asian cuisine and its native art souvenirs.
You are completely alone in a desolation with no reference points and no signs, no roads, no nothing.
In the distance, a glimmer.
Getting closer, crawling on your stomach and your ribcage because everything else has fallen off. The stench electrically magnified somewhere behind you, but no eyes to turn and see, and no more care to find out.
Some kind of temple,
the glimmer
at the far end.
In extremis,
faith.
This is the last signpost; the last bulwark of mankind is here. Maybe there is somebody somewhere else, but no one in sight. So you might as well.
It doesn’t matter what kind of sanctuary this is, what culture you’re walking yourself into.
You have left the city now,
you have left all the rules and social etiquette.
“I am sick. I am followed. I don’t know what to do.”
“You are in the right place.”
“Help me.”
“You are sick with evil.”
“So what do I do?”
“Walk away.”
“Which way?”
“The right way.”
But this is not the answer you need. That answer would sound different.
Now that nobody is here to judge you,
nobody is here to tell you what to think,
maybe you can go back to that mystery.
In this desolation you can finally stop,
you can come up with your own answer,
and you can speak this answer out loud.
In this desolation,
you can finally meet your own needs.
And this answer would say:
it is God
who has fallen with you
because God is always sinking deeper.
The hand on your back and the torchlight ahead was God.
God was carrying you.
God with no stomach
or heart
or voice
but with gravity pulling down
inexorably,
relentlessly
down.
Pure electricity
leveling mountains
and opening seas,
inverting magnetic poles.
Over the edge,
over another edge,
over another edge until there is
another edge that God can cross over.
God can do things,
but deeper.
It’s all a matter of places, a matter of waves that travel further. God has traveled here, seen this, lived this. God has come here and gone further.
Sooner or later everything will be pulled forth and over the edges. God does not leave things behind. This black hole warps time and space but has no center. Heavier things come slower, but all will come, eventually.
God’s tears of love have fallen down on this city with the rain of the everyday and, like silk, they have embraced the wealthy living by the beach and the men in suits downtown. They have made a wet carpet of the pavement,
they have made the flowers bloom,
they have washed difference off of all faces.
Eventually, everybody will be pulled forward.
Everybody will be falling with you, because nothing will matter anymore.
Good news is every question is legitimate.
There is no standard anymore, nothing left to dehumanize.
Once you get here, you’ve passed the resentment,
you have passed the judgment.
Answers aren’t here, they are
always down,
always further.
But now all questions can be asked.
Bad news is maybe no one is listening.
People are being pulled down so slowly that they ignore the signs of collapse, the bugs in their brains, their thoughts trickling down and sentences flying away in the streets, blown by the wind.
They ignore the call of the waves
smashing against these trees, these trails,
these shiny cathedrals
of their illusory knowledge.
The answer you need would say that even though people are distant there is always God passing through them. It would say that this hidden God is community. God has always come and is always coming. The city and the forest aren’t as different as they seem.
The answer you need would say that it just takes time for things to get better, for others to get here, too. In this shared space that is God’s cradle. There is no expectation here, but that you will share your story and others will share their stories with you. And you can all get lost together by the shore of the ocean and the snowy mountains.
Totem poles will speak again. They are God, too.
Sooner or later it will get to you. And when it does, it’s already too late to dig yourself out.
You can only sink deeper.
But in truth you don’t know if there are things to be found anywhere anymore.
You don’t know whether your answers make sense.
Good news is others might make it here, too.
One day.
One day it will happen.
One day you will meet them.
Bad news is that you see nobody down here,
yet.
Contributor Biography: Valeria Vergani
Valeria Vergani is a student of religious and cultural studies at Quest University Canada in Squamish, British Columbia. Through her writing, she likes to explore the ways in which religious discourse can shape ideals and practices of peace within a community. She is the co-founder of the Quest Multifaith Club and likes to get involved with the Squamish community in order to foster a healthy environment of cultural and religious diversity. She was born and raised in Verona, Italy. Before she moved to Canada she also lived in Poland and earned her IB diploma at the American School of Warsaw.