The Ascension

Water:

Droplets fell from the radiant man’s bare shoulders to the puddle below, sparkling in the midday sun. The stream from the golden bowl ceased trickling. The man raised his head, his eyes full of light. John the Baptist put down his bowl and followed his gaze into the clouds that blew across the sky, like foam on a rolling ocean. The man stared at something in the sky before looking down again. The sun played with the beads of water adorning his brown and unkempt locks. He shook his head and shook his mane, sprinkling mist into the air. In the brief cloud of vapor, John saw the bright white light of the sun, having once been set ablaze deep in the blinding core of a star thousands of miles from the earth, now dampened, reflected, refracted, and dispersed into a shining rainbow gloried around the man’s head.

The man closed his eyes and a curious smile danced along his thin lips, before he crouched down to dig out a handful of dirt. John peered at the man’s spine which glistened with sweat and delicately carried his two obliques, one of which was still covered in a light sheet of grime. The man resurfaced from the dust with a clump of deep black-brown colored dirt held together by the pale white roots of a small green sprout.

Still smiling, the man turned to match John’s gaze, who quickly looked away. “Come with me,” said the man as he began walking along the wide expanse of the riverbanks. John glanced over at the water where a few groups gathered in the current: some idle in thought, some praying, and others rejoicing in the river’s cool breezes—and followed him. A white dove flew down to perch in a grove of trees close by. John thought he saw small leafy buds springing up from underneath the man’s heels as he held the plant in his hand.

They continued down the riverbank shaded under a thick canopy of leaves. John eventually asked if they should stop and eat. The man chuckled and shook his head. “Let’s run,” he offered instead. “There’s a faraway place I want to show you, a little paradise on earth.” The man stretched his arms out wide, inviting, and his teeth shined like white gold.

And so they ran, verily, like a rushing stream across dirt and stones between the grassy shorelines of the forest. Nigh out of breath by the end, John and the man arrived at a clearing encompassed by woods and split by a thin stream. Light filtered through the overgrowth and flowed into the air like the Pishon, Gihon, Tigris, and Euphrates. From between the trees and branches, dozens of songbirds perched and flew through the wind, chirping at John. He and the man sat by the edge of the clear stream that trickled by.

A few minutes passed when John felt a tap on his shoulder and turned to look over. In the man’s hands was a circle of thick leaves and healthy stems weaved into a green wreath of fronds. Jesus crowned John.

Father:

         Water leaked from the concrete ceiling into a puddle on the floor of John’s prison cell. From a missing brick in his chamber moonlight shone inside, periodically interrupted by passing clouds. John turned his head to the worn, gray stones of the wall upon which he rested his back. He felt their bumps, pores, and cracks as he ran his fingers over their rough surface. John shifted to ruffle his hair and tossed around the straw that lined patches of the ground. He stood up on his bare feet and pulled together the sparse straw into something he could rest on for the rest of the night.

He lay dreaming, and then he turned, and roiled, and then foamed into a mist that crashed down in thousands of millions of imperceptible crystals of life, crashing down like great waves over tall, unflinching cliff lines, shattering into billions of fresh pieces of glass, then regathering along low tides until the moon dictated that he surge again upright as he leaped into yester-month, where a current directed him toward the parade of Herod flowing through the streets and byways in cities and paths along the Jordan.

         Aquamarine silks and lush Persian rugs carried on poles weaved along the dusty ground and between crowds that gathered to see the sight. Sounds of clamor and bells and chimes rang alongside the shouts of men. Lines of beasts stretched forth, and rows of camels stretched behind, all emblazoned with the signs and patterns of Herod and ridden by his soldiers. Underneath the roof of a conspicuous, jade-encrusted golden palanquin carried by two elephants and surrounded by a dozen of his closest guards was Herod himself and, behind the darkness of expensive curtains, Herodias. Under the distant sun, partially obscured by wind-blown sand, Herod looked out at the multitudes of shawled faces and waved to their cheers.

         Herod came to see John. As they stared at each other, he focused on the angry chants John’s followers made:

         “Get off your high throne!”

“Depose Pilate!”

         “Divorcer!”

         “Incestual sinners!”

         “Herodias, you adulteress!”

To this, Herodias turned her angry head out of the hand-woven curtains. They draped over her delicate black hair like a veil. Her thick eyebrows knit together, and her lips pursed. Herod retreated to the back of the palanquin in exasperation as the crowds booed louder.

         “Herod, I must have that man’s head,” said Herodias, violently jamming her finger in the direction of John, who was behind the palanquin now, causing Herodias to snap her elegantly painted nail on the palanquin wall. Her eyes widened as she looked at the chipped manicure before screeching in horror. She tossed her lithe body back inside the padded safety of the palanquin, nursing her injured finger and pride as big blobs of tears broke off from the corners of her eyes.

“Therefore Herodias had a quarrel against John, and would have killed him; but she could not: for Herod feared John, knowing that he was a just man and a holy.”1

The waves rolled back again, drawing John into the sea.

Son:

         And then weakly, like the ripples near a tide pool dragging a piece of driftwood onto shore, John came to see the darkly illuminated court of Herod. Black bricks built the inside of Herod’s castle; the only light came from three windows penetrating in from above. A red velvet rug embroidered with gold lay stretched out and undulating on black stone steps, on top of which a golden throne stood cushioned with red velvet pillows. Herod sat on the throne, and Herodias sat on his lap.

         Herodias tapped her chipped nail, now painted with a glossy black, on the side of the throne. One of the three rays shone with full force onto the Herods. “Darling, can we close them? They’re too bright.” A guard retrieved a long lance and dragged three blinds down over the three high windows.

         The sky was peaceful and the sea was calm, but slowly the chatter of laughter grew incessantly loud. Herod sat at the head of an acacia table, covered in a feast. Waiters refilled golden cups and sprinkled spices onto guests’ dinners as ordered. Exotic animals were served roasted and seasoned on green jade platters. Herodias sat by the side of Herod, who was drunk.

“Salome, perform for us, dear,” said Herodias to her daughter, who was standing timidly between a pillar and a pillory. The guests watched as Salome danced, and they applauded. No one more so than Herod, however, who shouted, tears leaking from his eyes, “Whatsoever thou shalt ask of me, I will give it thee, unto the half of my kingdom.”2 Salome looked to her mother, who whispered something into her daughter’s ear.

         “I want the head of John.”

Ghost:

A hurricane roared: white water jettisoned over the shoulders of John in the bleak gray sky. Tornadoes and waterspouts towered over the muddled clouds across a desolate land. A great wind blew and pushed John onto the ground before a silver charger. “And immediately the king sent an executioner, and commanded his head to be brought: and he went and beheaded him in the prison.”3

The Harrowing of Hell:

BERESHIT BARA ELOHIM ET MAYIM

IN PRINCIPIO CREAVIT DEVS AQVAM

IN THE BEGINNING GOD CREATED WATER

John dwelt in a twilight for ages. His hand traced the smooth, cool material of the flat walls around him. Coming to a corner, John noticed a lamp illuminating the nearby passage in a moody glow. He stared at the lamp for a long time, even though it was identical to countless ones he’d seen before. A small white lump of wax sat shriveled on a small white plate. It burned its tiny heart out in an ornate black iron cage. John walked along one of the paths from the intersection. The air was humid, like the inside of a cave. His steps echoed throughout the halls, but he could not tell if he was wearing shoes. And he continued to walk, and he continued to trace his hand on the straight walls and right angles, and he continued to think, think for a while to let his thoughts wander the halls. He had all the time in the world, after all, deep in this place, wherever it was, whatever it was, and thought that he was dreaming awake, watching life—no, lives—he’d lived flash before his I’s.

And he continued through time, and he continued to time, and he continued to water: John came to notice how all things caught the flu, no, were flawed, no, how all things flew, no, how all things flee, no, how all things flowed, how things soaked up and then spat out rain droplets, how the bags of rain droplets sat and sometimes moved and sometimes lurched and sometimes died and converted rain droplets into a living thing that laughed and sometimes loved and sometimes vomited and sometimes lied and lay by the side of another, to curl up together, to hug and kiss and touch each other to make sure they both still existed and both still were living things that flowed, fled, flewed, flaweded, and fluededed; they woke under warm blankets to the whispering droplets drumming outside their comfortable rocky cave, but they only stared at the dissipating mist that hung low in the air and kept still, hand in hand, arm in arm, one in one, and continued to stare at the now pouring rain veiling their view, until they turned their multitudes of heads upward through the hole in the rock and the hole in the sky at the golden light that flushed the day bright and carried the clouds through the blistering air as thin strands and the wind blew greatly and with terrifying sounds when one was up so high because it was like he was on a raft in the high and mighty oceans, like she was sinking in the troughs and rising on the highs of waves, like they were at the whim of hulking masses of white-lined undulating blue-green bringing down their fists onto their other hands to make eruptions of water erupt from the craters in a sea that had been set a-boil.

A small tree sat alone in the desert, a few green leaves on its thin and angled branches basking in warm rays. A small bird, a white dove, landed from the heavens to perch. It sat erect, then dropped its tired eyelids and rested. It rested for many days while the sun and the moon chased each other around the blue and black skies, and the stars sat waiting for something extraordinary.

They watched meteors fall and burn ablaze with terrific howls in the fiery air, and then they watched auroras aglow past the Arctic and Antarctic ice sheets with electricity crackling along the edge of the atmosphere, and then they watched the years pass, a stream of falling and melting snow, a stream of dead leaves and growing trees, a stream of sinking tectonic plates and rising mountain ranges, and they saw the small tree grow, die, spread into the land as grass, and then sprout again in thick forests and lazy lakes and running rivers held in place by plant roots, and all multitudes of leaf litter and six-legged critters and animal chitter, and all the while the songs of many white doves were sang and still sing and would continue to be sung, a the passionate sound, e the unique sound, i the concise sound, o the admiring sound, u the mourning sound: Aiya was passionate, Edward was unique, Philip was concise, Ohm was admirable, Ulysses was crying, which John wrote with his language, which he and his forefathers had derived from the faces their mouths and tongues made, and which followed in words because now thoughts could flow to hands to pens to ink to paper in letters that intrinsically reflected the emotions he wanted to express and with these new words, though they might be finite, so were the miniscule neurons that fired to keep him conscious and human, and though one or two were useless, a multitude was almost infinite, and all the little precious living things were full of these finite infinities and infinite finities, and though they were irreplaceable, they would never know until they lost each other, to which they all their uncountable souls fired as one and cried ugly tears—

The ceiling, or the ceiling that John had thought might be up above him somewhere, exploded in a flash of the heavenly. The maze of flat stone walls around him twisted itself into smooth curves and a single path.

White light illuminating his vision now, he walked the winding way, passing from his urban mortal realm of hard edges and tight halls, now feeding into the joy-crying lush tenderness of curved comfy clouds and coronated the caelum and sparkles of odd candies resonated in laughter and game in the crisp, clean, virgin air around a ramshackle dome struck by a palm and hammered rings signaled to strangely shaped birds that snappily flapped their wings through the cavern of his head where an impossibly interwoven idea interned inside lay, an inextricable feeling that he would be purified of his unlikable traits, his unsightly slights sliding out of his nostrils leaving hot trails of snot on the ground where the old adages of fools warned him against the mystics that conjured effervescent particles over the old lake, tranquil in effect, hypnotic in motion, and now they lay to rest for now he could see the entrance of the ballroom where serpentine pillars slitheredly snaked among jade engravings pointing him to the black doors blocking his view which opened under his weight onto a marble balcony where he marveled at the foaming moaning ocean.

Notes:

1 (Mark 6:19-20)

2 (Mark 6:23)

3 (Mark 6:27)