dear God,
dear? God? but the dubious imprecision of my greeting matches perfectly the dubious imprecision of my understanding, so 'dear God' it will have to be. and indeed at times you do seem most dear, though at other times as blank as this table, and as uncommunicative as my own soul when it is sulking.
my dear, i am going to write to you anyway, though i hardly think you will reply – either because you have overlooked my existence, or because you yourself do not exist – as such. and that ‘as such’ is burdened with all the irony i can summon, because i am well aware that it is within the ‘as such’ that you are to be found, if you are to be found at all.
well, never mind whether you exist or not. really, i hardly know whether i exist, even though it is becoming clearer to me (or am i becoming more deluded?) that since i am you – or an infinitesimal fragment of your celestial hugeness, struggling on in an unknown direction for an unstated reason and with the vaguest of procedural instructions - my confusion as to whether or not i exist is certainly yours as well.
or entirely yours? after all, you are the one broken in little pieces. you are the one who can’t seem to get from here to there, from now to then, without taking in everywhere else, doing everything else, being everyone else. so who has the problem here, you or me?
if that sounds a little hostile, you'll accept, won't you, that it is difficult for me to be magnanimous under the circumstances. buried as i am under the circumstances – in fact, overwhelmed, and yet, also trying to take refuge under the circumstances from all the emptiness which would otherwise devour me.
was this always the deal? all or nothing at all? utter profusion or the void? did it ever occur to you, my dear, that i might one day stand up and speak out, and indeed have a justifiable grievance to express? oh yes, pure comedy of course: this tiny, belligerent bacterium and its list of ills and grumbles, bellowing upwards in its gnat's voice to a god which it knows about as well as it knows itself – that is, not at all. but expecting all the same to be taken seriously; expecting at least a courteous reception.
no, but why would you listen? as broken as you are, with everything flying away from you, everything irretrievable and irredeemable and lost? surely you must be sitting there with your hands over your ears, your legs drawn up and your face buried in your knees, grieving the absolute loss of meaning? surely the last thing you need at this moment is to be confronted by yourself, even such an insignificant fragment of yourself, crying out the words you dare not cry out - daring at last to put the ultimate heretical question:
‘what is it all for?’
dear god, what is it all for?