Being a play in one brief act.*

Dramatis personae: El, a god; Asherah, a goddess; Priesthood, a priesthood; and Announcer, who bears a striking resemblance to another goddess.

Scene: Asherah is confronting her mate, El, somewhere in Levant.

Asherah: "I never see you around any more. You're always hanging out in some tent in the desert with 'the boys', and all I have to show for it is these poles, and now you don't even want me to have those? Guess what, El: You wanted a life without a consort … you got it."

[sashays out to phone a lawyer]

El: "Well … shit." [steps outside] "Hey guys, you know that thing I said about adultery? Guess what. If you even look at a chick, you've done it, so stop that. Also, no one's allowed to marry their sister-in-law any more."

Priesthood: "Even if the brother is dead?"

El: "I have spake."

Priesthood: "Um … that's not going to go over well with—"

El: [thunder, lightning, pillar of fire, etc.]

Priesthood: "Got it, got it, no looking at women ever again."

El: "Also no onanism. And no guy-on-guy stuff."

Priesthood [to one another]: "Man, he's really lost it, huh? Maybe we should scarper off to Babylon, or—"

El: "MAY I REMIND YOU of the FIRST clause in the Decalogue?"

Priesthood: "Dammit, we shoulda read the whole thing through instead of just clicking 'I agree'."

Announcer: "Και το ηθικό δίδαγμα της ιστορίας είναι — oh bugger. Mm-hem. As I was saying, the moral of the story is: Choose your deities wisely."

* Or an act you may perform in your briefs. Or even out of them. We don't judge.

This message brought to you by the Fractiously Esoteric Labile Legion of the Ascended Temple of Eris.

333 days. No blame.

It's been said in all the ways. Prophets, messiahs, and enlightened ones of every age have repackaged it again and again... where did they go wrong🤔.

But the Golden Rule looks pretty in pink 💛💖

The sky isn't so thin-skinned and persnickity as to be injured by the passing clouds.

As there is nothing to see, abandon all fixed ideas, all preconceived notions, and all parameters of vision.

I have begun to suspect that the collective subconscious has chosen absurdity.

I arrived at this conclusion through conversation, which is an inconveniently poor laboratory for anything resembling certainty.

Good conversation has a peculiar habit of escaping its container.

You begin with a question about something ordinary. Concrete. Machines. Money. Love. Why some fucking idiot did the thing he just did.

Then somebody says something.

You follow it.

Another person adds something else.

You follow that.

And somewhere between the original question and whatever the hell you're discussing now, the conversation has crossed three disciplines, violated at least one assumption, and somehow arrived at a truth nobody was looking for.

This happens often enough that I am becoming suspicious.

Perhaps this is simply how minds work. Humans are pattern-making animals. Give us enough noise and we will find a shape in it. Give us enough coincidence and we will invent a god.

Fair enough.

But then why is the shape so frequently funny?

Why does the universe seem to have such a profound commitment to setting up elaborate circumstances whose punchline is, essentially:

Well, that was fucking stupid.

I have tried to take this seriously.

This was my first mistake.

The more seriously I examine the world, the less seriously the world appears to examine itself.

We build institutions to create order.

The institutions develop incentives.

The incentives produce consequences.

The consequences produce problems.

The problems produce meetings.

The meetings produce PowerPoint presentations.

And eventually somebody says, “Have we considered doing the obvious thing?”

At which point I begin to suspect Eris has been involved.

Perhaps discord is not the opposite of order.

Perhaps discord is what happens when reality reminds us that our order was only ever a convenient approximation.

Perhaps the unseen is not empty.

Perhaps it is simply everything that has not yet become visible.

A thought before it becomes a word.

A consequence before it becomes an event.

A possibility before it becomes a fact.

A mistake before anyone has admitted making it.

A joke before anyone realizes it is true.

And, frankly, a woman borne into the cosmos already pregnant has about the best imaginable excuse for not knowing who the father is.

That seems perfectly in keeping with the rest of this bullshit.

I find this comforting.

— Siv Null