the inmate's journal : spring fragrance iii

on my first sunday back at spring fragrance, i sat soaking up the sanity.  everyone was dressed minimally in undergraduate degrees and didn’t show their breasts.  the people knew more than seventeen words, some of which had three or more syllables.  objective, strategy, india, segmentation, takeover.  the organist looked vaguely like my mother and didn’t consciously provoke my lust.  no one groped me.  no one cared about my soul.  doves twitted fashionably at appropriate distances, affirming lifestyles and conjugal procreation and mr. clean and organic instant porridge.  this was religion at its innocuous adaptable best.  it’s what’s kept the church in business all these godforsaken millennia.

 

but even mediocrity has its aberrations and as my baptist buttocks warmed the baptist bench, i noticed something strange about the woman beside me.  she didn’t smell like management and tax returns.  dressed in heaven and nineteenth century gingham, she seemed to exist outside spring’s bulk fragrance like a lilac bush at the edge of a mall parking lot.  she exuded the disturbing and distinctive energy of a true believer, rare among mortals, rare even among gods.  she sat while the host of homeowners and homeowners-in-training stood around her singing onward christian babies … she sat and did not sing.  she closed her eyes, wrapped in the god in herself - sweet well and mirror - who never lets us down.

 

as i listened distractedly to the forgettable 13-minute sermon, she nodded and intermittently whispered yes yes, as if macloo’s words had meaning for anyone but addictive consumers visiting god’s temple for their weekly injection of easy atonement.  and as the service drew to its tidy close and like mingled with like and affirmation stung the air, as the pews emptied and thoughts of lunch turned to lunch and the excitement waiting in monday’s office, i surreptitiously studied the woman next to me, deep in prayer, sucking on another world.  she was lumpy, but in a squeezable sort of way.  small, with a face that might have been pretty if she chose to spend time on it.  strawberry-blonde hair, hands folded on themselves in a gentle intimacy.  fashion, makeup, product, convention seemed absent.

 

the pew, designed for 12 fit citizens, had held 13.  as she and i were the only ones left and neither of us had moved, we sat, hips nestled into each other’s on this long log of god.  she presumably hadn’t moved because she was oblivious to my presence; i hadn’t moved, neither from oblivion nor any bold and lecherous intent, but from fear.  i was afraid that moving might shatter her containment, a focused inwardness so taut and tranquil it required preservation.  to be displayed prominently in some museum of mystic art - millions of guests, addicted to externality and speed, could come and view the weird creatures from spirit’s retired kingdom.  but i also didn’t move because i was paralyzed by the presence of the divine.

 

a few kalpas passed.  presidents and continents rose and fell.  languages became headlines and were forgotten.  love wore its thousand masks a billion times a billion times and every time it hurt.  at the end of it all, she opened her eyes, turned to me as if nothing had happened and said,

 

welcome to spring fragrance.

 

i blushed.

 

i don’t remember seeing you here before.

 

she spoke so normally, about normal things, as if she were human.  i stammered something barely intelligible about diapers and god and macroeconomics.  she put her hand lightly on my arm.  would you like to belong to our cell group?

 

i didn’t know what a cell group was, but i knew i wanted to belong.

 

it met on friday nights and the 10 adults with their 21 children left their magazine homes and crawled across weary expressways in convoys of privilege to arrive for fellowship, to justify their lives.  there was the luncheon meat of middle management, a mighty politician bound by beef and certitude, anachronistic housewives wrapped in spinach, visionary and carnivorous entrepreneurs, all pedigreed by homes and gardens and the denial of flies; and babies, always babies, coddled clones.

 

we met in one of their plastic homes and warmed our souls with chitchat about the challenging weeks we had all survived - weeks crammed with the demands of those called to consume.  lights lay around the room, exuding lack of character.  thick carpets spoke of peace and art of emptiness.  a producer to the left of me, a developer to the right, there i was, stuck in the middle of a designer couch, thinking vaguely of sister gooch and her broken springs, wondering how it was possible to think of sister gooch vaguely.  but the beauty of spring fragrance’s culture, its glory and hell, was its ability to diffuse the world’s intensities into an acceptable risotto, bounded by recently laundered napkins, an expense account, sprigs of parsley, and an ikea catalogue.