The Desk.

Let's have something a little brighter, shall we?

Independence Day is nearly upon us, and it's gotten me nostalgic again for my many adventures. Every crappy 90's sitcom had an end-of-season clip show, and since I live in a crappy 90's sitcom, here's a look back at the good times we've had.

July 4, 2006:Sitting on top of that mountain, Pilot Mountain, North Carolina, trying to avoid doing my job, which mainly consisted of sitting on top of Pilot Mountain.

July 4, 2005:Took a couple days off my construction job to jaunt up through the misty rolling hills of Carver's Gap, Tennessee.

July 4, 2004:
On top of Mt Phillips, New Mexico, as the sun set, I gave a magnificent sermon on self-reliance, something about a map, and it had hailed earlier in the day, as I recall.

July 4, 2003:
Back in Grayson Highlands, Virginia, between sessions as a camp counselor in Valle Crucis. Then one of the ponies bit me.

July 4, 2002:A terrible picture, New Mexico is beautiful.

July 4, 2001:
Base Camp. That would be my back yard. Yes, indeed, my real life back yard, in real life Lewisville, North Carolina.

July 4, 2000:

Raven Knob is one of those places, tucked away down some empty holler behind the Blue Ridge, that can answer a young man's questions about his identity and destiny. I needed that the summer after my father died.

July 4, 1999:Utah. There are no words for Utah.

Just a shade of my many adventures, a few of the places I've been to celebrate the independenc e of our great nation. So then, where will I be for another exotic All-American adventure on July 4, 2007?In there. Whee.

Death?

I have an unhealthy preoccupation perhaps bordering on obsession, but such is the nature of our condition, is it not? I have become an intensely serious person, even grave, but sometimes we're entitled to that. I'm entitled to deny the existence of God, or if not his existence, his benevolence at least. I forsake God not on the word of scholars, but because with my own hands I've buried Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. And here you ask me, naively, for my thoughts on death?

There are these dreams. Beyond the lingering fingerprint of death to which I've become accustomed, I haven't managed to shake these dreams. And while I've faced death with waking eyes and stood steadfast even as a youth in the face of demons as stronger men than me crumbled under less, I am haunted by these dreams. They are not nightmares, there are no monsters, no grotesque phantoms awaiting in the darkness. They are much more real, and much more frightening because of that. I dream about funerals. I dream about the funerals of my family and friends, wherein I deliver the eulogies. Every night, as clockwork, I take the pulpit before your open caskets and tell your stories. And every morning I have to recount and determine whether it was real, because every detail, down to the detail is exactly as it would be in reality. Who will it be tonight, I wonder, whose life and death will I have to narrate tonight? And they are beautiful sermons. I don't know where my mind finds the words to weave in such a way. To hear me tell it, they'd think you walked on water. Give me your stories, and I could make you as gods. True, in real life I've brought grown men to tears without so much as a word, what makes you think I'd do less in a dream?

I rather like the idea of heaven. It's a convenient belief, designed to manufacture complacency and impose obedience through fear. Though being well-crafted and indeed a desirable incarnation of elysium doesn't change the fact that it's not real. Faith based on rewards and punishments is hardly religion at all; it's no more a cornerstone of morality than Skinner's operant conditioning. And I've heard enough variations on Pascal's wager to discount any credibility to whichever variety you might prescribe, so don't even try.

To answer your question simply, I believe in stories. My afterlife, my religion, is stories. They are not just exotic tales of adventure, penned to impress, though I do tend to romanticize; they serve a purpose. They serve for me the same purpose that your Bible, your prayers, your heaven serve for you. There is no God, and no grand judgement; this is all we have to fight off illness and death, all we have as a final resting place for the souls of our departed is in the stories. That's how men become legends, and legends immortal. Give me your stories, and I could make you a god. To hear me tell it, they'll think you walked on water.