AN INTERMISSION BETWEEN CHAPTERS

by

prophet red

Part One:

a brief retelling of the bible from the perspective of the tree

that was used to make the cross:

"You cut me down for this?"

Part Two:

The shortest story ever told...

"For sale, baby shoes, never worn."

Part Three:

The Spaniard and his declaration

"Thank you for the papaya...Thank You...Now Listen...

Listen very closely... No, No, No...put down the gifts...

Listen...

We've come for everything...

...yes...

...everything...

...God Sent Us..."

Sometimes, when Adam's peanut sized brain wasn't busy with mud, he would look at the way the other pairs got along. The monkeys would help each other pick lice off and the wolves would nipe and play. Adam would get a strange feeling in his heart, like something was squeezing it, then he wouldn't think too much about it. He tried to get Eve to spend more time with him, but Eve always talked about strange things. Last time, she got angry over a pear. He didn't know she was that hungry. Adam had offered to pick another bigger, sweeter one for her but she just walked off.

Adam had noticed that Eve was spending a lot of time around a snake. He thought that Eve didn't like the other animals. The other animals told him that his pair was difficult. They had tried talking to her, but she would always scorn and let her gaze wander to somewhere far away. He asked Eve about the snake one time but she did that far away gaze again.

Lately Adam was seeing less and less of Eve. A little bird told him that he had seen Eve talking to one of those angels. The bird told him that Eve had laughed. Eve never laughed around him.

He didn't think too much of it.

It was only when Adam looked up to the sky that day and saw a Eve shaped cloud did he realize that it had been a long time since he had last seen Eve. This disturbed Adam. Eve was supposed to be his pair. Adam wanted to know where Eve had wandered off to. Where had Eve gone without him? She was his rib bone after all.

Suddenly, it struck Adam how very alone he was. It didn't seem right for him to be alone in Eden.

Adam had begun starting his days by looking up to the sky. Everything was always better during an Eve cloud day. The mud would be perfectly muddy and the fruits on the trees would taste better. Adam had noticed that his day would be significantly better on an Eve day.

Gradually, looking at the sky became a before meals activity. Eve clouds became his religion. Adam came to believe that if there were Eve clouds in the sky, it meant that the fruit was safe.

Lucifer didn't understand why god loved those new play things so much, those... humans. God called the one he made from mud Adam and the one made from Adam's rib bone Eve. Lucifer thought that God was losing his touch. God looked at mud beings that played with mud all day and chuckled. he hardly took care of the stars anymore, much less them.

It wasn't that God had loved him the most before those mud beings appeared. Lucifer knew that God was a restless soul, always going about being reckless and unstoppable, making mud play things when he already had them angels. Lucifer had thought that, maybe, just maybe after trillions of eons of conjuring stuff from vast nothings, God maybe would have acquired some, well, taste. Why couldn't he create some more suns and moons or something. But no... God had to go play with mud, and look at the mess he created. Why wouldn't anybody listen to some good old common sense anymore?

Lucifer knew that God was proud (sometimes to the point of being arrogant), but, hey, he didn't really want to imagine what it would be like being him. Think of what it would be like living around stuff that you made and you commanded all the time. God was one lonely soul. He had tried talking to the other angels about God, but they only gave him the whole empty, God is Great chant.

Lucifer had a bad feeling about God putting Adam and Eve in a great big garden. He had a bad feeling about putting them in an enclosed space with the tree of knowledge. If Lucifer could decide, he wouldn't let that thing called Adam touch the tree of knowledge with a ten foot pole. The funny thing was, the more he looked at it, the more Adam reminded him of God, bored and playing with mud all the time. Maybe God was testing their limits, like how sometimes he tried to test God's limits by reminding him that there were other things to do. Perhaps God wanted to see how far he could control the things he created. Lucifer knew that God had apparently left out the "must worship" file in him. God had wanted to see if Lucifer would worship him if he got the chance. He didn't really worship God, they were more like homebodies. God had found him fascinating at first, but he started to annoy God after a couple of centuries. Trillions of eons can really get to someone. So Lucifer started to keep some distance.

It was somewhat the same with these mud beings. Except that God hadn't made them so smart. Lucifer could tell that God wanted to see if they would consider even the tree of knowledge. God was right to have made them dumb, they didn't even think about it. Then, Eve got bored. He didn't know why but he liked Eve more than Adam. Maybe it was because it didn't play with the mud that often, or maybe it was because Eve often wondered about lots of things. How did these plants became to be? Where did I come from? Why did the drooling dog sound like God backwards? He warmed towards Eve.

Ever so slowly, he found himself wanting Eve to take a bite from the tree of knowledge. He wanted her to be more than Adam's rib bone. He found himself checking whether the fruits on the tree of knowledge were all intact now and then. Eventually now and then became three times a day, the rest of the time he would look at Eve, reading the questions that came up in her mind. Sometimes he would catch a glimpse of Adam and see him literally monkeying around with the monkeys. Lucifer would roll his eyes and wonder how something like Eve could come out of Adam's rib bone. If only she could take a hint. Lucifer tried to let the sun shine more brightly on the fruits from the tree of knowledge one time when Eve was daydreaming. Bad timing.

Lucifer couldn't stand it anymore. He needed to tell Eve, a hint at least. He decided to turn into something harmless,something that was vulnerable, something without arms and legs. Wouldn't that make it all seem more innocent?
Lucifer was there waiting for Eve. He knew that was Eve's favorite place to daydream.

"Don't you want to know the answers to all the questions you think all the time?"

Lucifer startled Eve. Eve usually kept to herself and didn't really like the other animals.

"How do you know what I'm thinking all the time?"

"It doesn't matter. Don't you want to know?"

This was a revelation for Eve. She usually just liked daydreaming about questions. She didn't really want to bother herself to find the answers of the questions that usually went on unanswered.

"Not really..., well I do want to know, but I usually don't put up with the bother. I don't think God really wants me to know anyway."

"What about the tree of knowledge?"

"Wuck?!"

"the tree of knowledge..."

"Are you that kind of scary temptations God reminded me about? I'm not falling for this you know."

This was not how Lucifer imagined it. He had imagined a conversation with laughter, maybe Eve would be blushing a bit from something witty he said or at least take a nibble from the tree of knowledge.

"No!...I'm not..... I just wanted to help you out with your questions, that's all."

Lucifer then muttered God is Great while slithering off.

Lucifer didn't know what to do. Eve was so different from what he was used to. He spent his days with mindless god-worshipping angels and a slightly conceited God. Eve wasn't smart, but she had an opinion. Lucifer decided that he needed to redeem his failed first impression. Maybe he would become something more cuddly next time.

Eve didn't know what to do with that conversation, or the mere fact that she had a conversation. Whenever she tried to talk to Adam she was reminded of the pool near the willows. She looked into Adam's eyes and all she could see were clear empty nothingness with a ripple here and there. She once tried commenting on how special the shape of a particular pear was to Adam. She thought Adam was listening intently until Adam absentmindedly picked that pear, her pear, and munched on it.

What the snake had told her was so forbidden that even the mere thought of it gave her the shivers. Eve wanted to give their conversation a good strong long thought but it made her scared. Unanswered questions, the tree of knowledge, the way the snake's eyes gleamed all whirled around in her head. He had beautiful almond shaped emerald eyes, the snake. She was restless.

Eve had started to look at the tree of knowledge. Really look at the tree of knowledge. Before, she would pretend not to see it, wandering her eyes elsewhere whenever she was anywhere around it. Now she couldn't keep her eyes off it. The tree of knowledge fascinated her. She saw how the leaves seem to rustle more than other trees or how blood red its fruits were. Eve wanted to talk to that snake again. She needed to get things right. Eve had started looking at snakes, wanting to find the one with the pair of emerald eyes.

Eve had stopped daydreaming. Lucifer saw the way she would stare transfixed on the tree of knowledge for hours at a time. This scared and thrilled Lucifer. He wanted to see if she would really take a bite. He missed her questions though. He missed seeing her daydream. He missed the way her eyes would wander off and her body would slump, completely relaxed. Eve seemed to notice snakes more too.

Was it possible that the she was looking for him?

Maybe his first impression wasn't that bad after all.

After a week of Eve being restless and Lucifer wondering whether Eve's restlessness had anything to do with him, Lucifer decided that maybe it was time for a second conversation. He would be more stubble this time. He wouldn't mention the tree of knowledge.

"Hi"

Eve gave a start. It was him, it was the snake. She turned around and saw the pair of gleaming emerald eyes she had been looking for all week.

"Hi…" Eve was hesitant. Here was the snake she had been trying to look for all week. Just out of nowhere. There were so many things she wanted to ask him, yet she didn’t know where to start.

"Umm… If your busy I can go lie in the sun or something. I didn’t mean to bother you." This was too awkward for Lucifer. He didn’t know what to say. Eve had stopped daydreaming. There was nothing for him to start a conversation with. Lucifer turned around and was about the slither off. This snake body wasn’t all that comfortable anyway.

"Wait! You don’t have a pair."

Lucifer turned around and looked at Eve. This was sudden.
"What do you mean I don’t have a pair?"

"Everybody comes in pairs in the Garden. Everything comes in twos. I talked to the snakes, there aren’t any with emerald eyes. You not from here, right?"

Wow. Eve was smarter than she was given credit for.
"Well, when God made me, I think he looked at me and didn’t want another one. I’m sort of the failed experiment I guess."

"Why didn’t he destroy you then? Does God destroy stuff he doesn’t like?"

"God doesn’t destroy. God creates. I don’t even know whether he can destroy or not."

"Wait… You mean there are things God can’t do?"

"Duh… Think about the tree of knowledge, if God hated it, then he should have destroyed it."
Opps. Lucifer couldn’t help himself. The ToK just rolled out of his slithery serpent tongue.

Eve was frowning. She had never had to think so much before. It made her head hurt.
"So either God doesn’t really hate the tree of knowledge or he can’t destroy us."

Wow. Eve was smart.

Afterwards, Lucifer would appear here and there and talk to Eve. Eve didn’t really know when she realized Lucifer wasn’t a snake. She had started calling Lucifer Lucifer when he let it slip one day he was called Lucifer. Eve thought that Lucifer could possibly be one of those angels that always swarmed around God. They were beautiful and bright, fire things. Eve knew she came from Adam’s rib bone and that Adam had been made out of mud. She wished she could have been made out of fire.

Lucifer didn’t know when Eve figured out he wasn’t really a snake, but Lucifer knew Eve knew. It was about the only thing they didn’t talk about. They talked about everything else. Like how staying in a Garden all the time could get on one’s nerves, or how conceited God could be sometimes. The snake disguise was starting to annoy Lucifer. He had to spend so much time picking off ticks afterwards.

Lucifer wanted Eve to see him as he was. He wanted to plan out a great stage entrance. A flash and a beam. Or maybe he would just appear as he was next time. He had already ruined his first impression as a snake, he shouldn’t want too much drama for his second first impression as Lucifer.

Eve woke up early that particular day. The sun hadn’t risen yet. It was dark and she could still see the stars. Light was spilling out from the tree of knowledge. Eve walked over to see. She looked up and saw a gorgeous being of light sitting on the branches of the tree of knowledge eating one of its fruits. He looked down at Eve.

There was the familiar pair of bright almond shaped emerald eyes. It was Lucifer.

Suddenly Eve knew what she wanted to do. Eve knew what she needed to do. She climbed up to the branch where Lucifer was sitting. She looked into Lucifer’s eyes and leaned close. Eve tilted her head and kissed Lucifer. It was gentle at first, Eve could feel the heat radiating from Lucifer. Then Eve tasted the fruit, bittersweet and tart, and went wild.

They made love on the branches of the tree of knowledge.

red: handbags, what do you carry

int: umm...

red: only designer got it! only only only designer. with monograms. period.

int: ...

red prophet working as an ait interrogation specialist:


R:How do you plan to assimilate to the local culture?

INT: I...I dont know, ...be nice, friendly

R. Wrong!

INT: Ohh ok...I dont know

R: Well then..let me blunt...there are certain things one must do, to fully become Taiwanese
You just cant marry the first hapless naive girl you met from a wretch photo catalogue..
There is more...

INT: More?

R: First, to become Taiwanese...you must promise to take pictures of your food before you eat..

INT: Pictures of food?

R: Very important. In case of possible food poisoning, hospitals can look at your cell phone pictures and now what you ate. Very important!

INT: Pictures of food...ok

R: Second...You must fully commit yourself to taking every stupid self obsessed facebook psychology test that comes your way

INT: Stupid facebook...ok

R: You must love the Yankees

INT: Yankees

R: You must occasionally dress like you are going to class at Harvard..Or Yale, even if you just going down the street for hotpot.

INT: Yale?

R: YALE!

INT: I didn't even...go to Univ...

R:Doesn't matter...appearances...matter!

Lastly...and this ones big...

INT: Ok...

R: Never...ever...learn to speak chinese

INT: Why...but I want to...assimilate

R: If you learn chinese...you will have to leave Taipei...and leaving Taipei is bad
Taipei is the best place on earth...ask any Taiwanese. When Taiwanese say "Im from Taipei," they are saying..."Im a golden gift from God." If you learn chinese you will need to leave Taipei

INT: But I dont understand?

R: If you learn chinese...people in Taipei can not make fun of you...Which is the real reason your here...So we can make fun off you...If you speak Chinese in Taichung...Tainan....Kaosiung...HAHAHA Silly big nose..."We can speak Taiwanese in Kaosiung." But in Taipei...you take the fun of having you in our country...nobody speaks Taiwanese in Taipei

INT: I will never learn chinese

R: Good...Welcome to Taiwan...or as we call it here at AIT
Chinese Taipei...Touch your heart...and well help you touch your wallet

Everything about him would have been perfectly normal.
If only he didn't try to start a conversation with
"You have a mustache"

to a girl

He looked puzzled and a bit lost.
Not the child kind of puzzled.
He was the grown up puzzled, the I can't find my to so and so kind of puzzled.

He stopped and stared and hesitated.

Then he threw out the sentence. He wasn't questioning, it was a fact.
He seemed to want to start a conversation or ask something else.

She stopped talking the moment he stopped and stared.
He made her feel uncomfortable.
She giggled nervously.
The "you have a mustache" line froze her.
She didn't know what to do.

in highschool she had a unibrow
now, she levels doctors
i like her paintings
the ones where her hair is down and wild
the one with blood splattered across the wall behind her
is my favorite
she looks shocked to be caught in the act of
what ever it was she was doing before the picture
was taken
she tells me
"I know why America is scared of Iran"
I say
"We cant have this conversation."

perhaps it was conquest
silly old I want to do this only becuase I can

her name was feather jones
i was 17 when I stole her from a
25 year old named jake peterson
or so I thought

she was a year older than me
pale skin and brown thick hair
she was into guys who liked death metal
and motorcycles

I was too young for her
but one night near the bon fire
at the beach I tried
I tried even though I knew my friend liked her more than I did
he watched me with her
this was the first time this was to happen
between me and this friend
women got in the way of friendships
well into my twenties

two weeks after the bon fire
I met her and her friends
near the tennis court
it was dusk and I was smoking cigarettes
leaning against my car
and watching
the high school tennis team
perform warm up excercises
these were the girls my mom would have wanted of me
the proper
the guilded
the athletes

I jumped into her friends truck
it was large, black, it towered over the other cars
it was in this truck that I began to mix vodka and orange juice
into a large plastic bottle
we drove to the beach
it was dark when we got there
when I opened the door I fell out of the truck and passed out immediatly
I had drank two liters of screw driver hell while sitting next to this girl
I passed out on the beach, she was sitting next to me I remember
I woke up an hour later and she wasnt there
I wandered the black field of sand looking for her
whispering her name
I found the others, the other couple fucking in the sand
I kept wandering
but I stopped whispering
in the distance I saw
her step out of a van parked under a street light in the distance
I walked towards her
it was a week later when I saw the bruises on her back
it was ten years later until I figured out what the bruises were from

ten years later, visiting old ghosts in a home town
I decided on an impulse to drive by her house and see if she was still there
I heard that she had run into trouble with the police
and that even at the age of 28
her parents had locked her up in the same house
she had lived in since high school

I saw her car parked outside
and I walked to her front door
her father answered the door
he let me in
when she saw me she couldnt stop laughing
she thought I was absurd
I had come thaat night
to set things right
what had happened ten years earlier
she couldnt stop from laughing
I left defeated
the past was still what it had always been
a misguided calander in reverse
calanders are supposed to hold promises
promises of things to come up in the future
when they are calanders in the past
they are like things carved in stone
like those hanging grave sites
carved into the sides of mountains

I keft her house and got drunk with a an old friend
from the bar
he knew her well
he told me one of my friends slept with her
a couple years back
he told me she was a dead fuck
I didnt know if I should cry or hit him
I sat there, doing neither
I couldnt make a conquest of the past

She was trying to grasp something that had already gone a long time ago
She wanted it to be easy
Believing him was easy

But they had both changed

Bluntly said,
he didn't care about her anymore
their past was something he had already put away

She wasn't who she was
He wasn't who he was

It used to be so easy
laughing with him

now it was puzzlement
the closest strangers

They had both grown up and changed
it was gone
what they had

and yet she had never wanted him more

it was her silly pride

she didn't want to put him away
she didn't want to know that there was something she couldn't get
she cared too much

why wouldnt he touch you?

Im going snowboarding with a girl, lets say dirty blonde,
shes originally from here but she lives in boston now
back for the holidays
she is a kimberly

the waters have frozen and its time to leave the sea for
higher ground

it was beautiful, the sea today
cold moody and beautiful
blue green algae mixed with dark swirls of sand

he was still the same as ever
careless and free
a wind baby

he was still the same as ever
closed

he smoked though
all the smokers around her had suddenly popped out or something
she was surprised that she wasn't surprised

so they sat there
beside the sea
she wanted him to touch her

the waves were breath taking

she never will get over him
never a beginning
never an end

it had started to rain the second he hung up the phone
actually he didnt want to say anything
he just wanted her to listen
he wanted to share
thats all
he is looking for some one
just willing to sit back
shut the fuck up
and experience the little moments here
and there
a cat eating on a ledge
an old lady shopping for bread
a young couple fighting in a car
a black bird sitting a fire hydrant
the ocean at night
we are here for now
we are here
just listen and look and breath
this life with some one
we are here for now

she wouldn't move
she could only look at him
it was too long ago
too surreal
she wanted to do those leaping jumping up hugs that hollywood had perfected

she just said hi

smiled and looked

a ballad for bar fights and the shore

music and people
who ride out the storm
they've tied all their teathers
they've dried up their shores
lost in the city
they've worn out the lights
they've tried to concieve
they've tried
these ropes will never still
these ropes never still
keep swimming down the shore
your tired as a ghost
keep swimming down the shore
then when these tides turn
your screaming out
help me please
wheres the shore ive grown to love
wheres the one Ive grown to love
these ropes never will never still
ropes never still

...

pretty in pictures


he has made a picture of you

it was his way of saying goodbye
he didnt want to be in the water
he just wanted a picture
he wanted to look
he wanted a way to let things end
he ends where you wish things began
the chaos of the sea
for him it was a picture
one he could understand
years from now
years of eternity
you were acting out his goodbye
the way he would like to see it
letting you go to the shore
to the chaos
men need these pictures
and he will learn to start things
with the next girl
closer to the shore
things will start
where you left off
you will come up in conversation
as an idea
a poetic image
something he can have
for him
something he can create
this was for him
as much as you relate it to the past
and the warmth of his safety
you wanted both worlds
but realized where the lines
were drawn in sand
erased by high tide and the dreams of man

He should have brought her here before.

Before the breakup, before she called, before she told him she didn't want them anymore.

She hugged him on his scooter. She said it was out of habit. It was all so natural, the way she put her arms around him. It was distantly familiar, strangely familiar. All of her was strangely familiar. It was like she had jumped out of a memory and everything before was just a dream.

But he knew it wasn't that way.

He had thought that he would be meeting someone completely distant, a stranger perhaps. It wasn't that way though. She was still who she was.
Slightly crazy, slightly enchanting.

She started singing popish rock songs on his motorcycle. Loud and very off tune, the same as before.

He brought her to the beach. Lets just watch, he had told her. Don't go down. He knew she would go down anyway, even in her stockings and her red high heels. She couldn't resist the ocean.

He helped her down the edge. Her feet sunk into the sand and he watched as she tottered down and sat on a rock. She looked like some retro black and white picture. She kicked off her shoes and wriggled out of her stockings.

He laughed. He should have known better.

She ran off to the waves, hair flying all over the place, wonderfully free.

i was in hell week
if you haven't done hell week
this means nothing to you
hell week is created to kill you
my father watched me from the bleachers
we all look like helmets hitting each other
without names or numbers
I never let on that I was on the point of
collapsing in a dire wreck
this was hell week
and I counted the days
I took pain killers in the locker room
I was built to destroy

my father died in the summer
two weeks before my freshman year
I could hear him talking to my mother
about his back and how the doctor was working wonders
he called the doctor a miracle worker and then we left
to meet a client in a restuarant
three hours later, my mother left for the hospital in a panic
and my grand parents arrived
at the house
when my mother came home
she was with her best friend
my god mother
my god mother told me my father had passed
my mother couldnt speak

I left the room and went for the garage
it was the only place in the house I knew I could destroy things

I continued to play football
and I hit hard
every time I lined up
I imagined I was hitting god
I hit everyone in front of me like they were the ones
they were the reason he was dead
the garage became the football field
and my coaches took notice

at first, because of my size
the coaches put me on the line
I was line man

then they put me in a position where
my only job was to hit the quarter back of the other team
I played on defense
but I played like i was on offense
I watched the quarterback of the other team
and I ran for him with everything
i knew where he was going with the ball
I could tell he was scared

I had a reputation after a few games
I hurt the quarterback with everything I had
and I got noticed for it

suddenly I was the next prospect

coaches began pulling me out of history classes
and science classes so I could spend time working out
in weight room
I became bigger and angrier
I was no longer built to destroy
I wanted something to try and destroy me
I could go to any university I wanted
as long as I played football
as long as I crushed god
I wasn't the biggest on the team
but I hit hard
with everything

this became my weakness
it didn't release the anger
none of it
I still went home
angry at everyone
it gave no release
this is when I changed
and the world refused to change with me

I was supposed to keep on hitting quarter backs with
all I had and I no longer wanted to, I found nothing in this
it was hollow

my coaches turned me into a pawn
a weapon, so they could say:
"he came from my school"
I trained him


my coaches gave me a special position
it is really an illegal position
but I played it
it was something new so I accepted it
they called it the "head hunter"

at the beginning of the game of football
each team lines up
one team kicks the ball
while the other receives it and tries to run the ball back
when my team was the team to receive the ball
every one on the front line is supposed to drop back
and protect the man with the ball

but because of the way I hit
my coaches trained me to run towards the other team
no one else
instead of running back to protect my team mate
who would be catching the ball
my mission
their words
was to hit the kicker
with everything I had
so that
the next time he kicked the ball
he wouldn't be thinking about kicking the ball
he would be thinking about the guy who was going to hit him
with everything he had
the guy angry at god
my first lesson in psychology

The first time I did this
the kicker was looking up at the ball when I hit him
he never saw me coming
he was admiring his kick
how far it went
he never saw me coming
I took off his helmet when I hit him
he went to the hospital
i stopped playing football

we were talking
rock n roll
eric clapton

he plays the guitar

then he started telling me about a girl he liked
and this and that

trivial matters

he doesn't know rock n roll