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As in. . . .
Real.
I don t know what you mean.
What if the stories in the Bible are true? Oh, not all of
them. God didn t create the world. He and this is so typical of a
patriarchal male just took credit for it. But the smaller miracles,
those are true. And the smiting. Lots of smiting.
So you re saying
Your muse really exists. My muse really exists. So why
should we get so skeptical when it comes to the capital G God? Why
are the spirits we experience real and the Big Guy is just a projection,
a mass hallucination on the part of hundreds of millions of Chris-
tians, nothing more than an excuse to commit atrocities on the part
of the powerful and a solace for the victimized?
Because your muse is good. My muse is good. They haven t
told anyone to go forth and conquer. They aren t responsible for the
murder of hundreds of millions of human beings. They aren t respon-
sible for the mindset that s killing the planet.
Why do all of these spirits have to be good? Why do they
have to wish us well?
Allison blinks hard, twice.
I say, The central questions become: Why does He hate us
so much? And, Why does He want to destroy the earth?
eleven
w h o s i n c h a r g e
Songs of the Dead " 99
I m thinking about pinworms, Enterobius vermicularis.
If you accidentally or I suppose on purpose, although I don t
know why you would ingest pinworm eggs, the eggs pass
down to the small intestine, where they hatch. The male and
female worms then migrate to the large intestine, and live and
breed near your rectum. Early in the mornings females crawl out
of your anus and lay eggs, then crawl back into their nice warm
home.
Now, you may wake up that morning, and you may
have no idea that these pinworms are living inside of you I
mean, how many other creatures live in or on our bodies about
whom we know next to nothing? but here is what you will
know: your anus itches. What do you do when your skin itches?
You scratch it. If you use your finger to scratch your anus and
I know you re far too sophisticated and health-conscious to do
this (and besides, it would be just plain gross), but if you re like
me you weren t quite so sophisticated when you were an infant
or a young child, but merely knew that when something itched
you scratched it with your scratcher you get infectious eggs
on your finger. If you happen to put your finger in your mouth,
the eggs are home free. If you happen to touch clothing, kitchen
counters, schoolroom desks, the eggs can come to rest there,
waiting for someone else to touch that particular cloth, counter,
or desk, then put a finger to a mouth.
The question I m asking right now is this: when a child
scratches her itching anus, who is in charge? The pinworm is
changing the child s behavior.
Not only that, but if the pinworm changes the child s
behavior, is the pinworm now a part of the child? At what point
does someone else become a part of you? Is the flora and fauna
in your gut part of you? How about the cells of your brain? How
100 " Derrick Jensen
about the infection that who? makes you sneeze so you can
expel aerosols to be picked up by some other host? I need to
sneeze. Who needs to sneeze? You or the infection?
Who is an invader, who is a hitchhiker, and who is a
part of you?
But of course, just because someone changes your be-
havior doesn t mean they re a part of you otherwise Mrs. Pur-
cell, my fourth grade teacher, would have become a part of me
by holding me in during recess. I can change our dogs behavior
by giving them treats, and they can change ours by begging. So
there s obviously more to the question of who is part of you than
simply affecting your behavior, just as there is more to the ques-
tion than simply being inside your skin.
I got a pretty bad prostate infection last year. In retro-
spect, the earliest symptom was that I wanted to have lots of
orgasms. Allison was gone, first for a long visit to her parents,
and then to oversee the hanging of her works at a gallery in San
Francisco, so I was masturbating a lot. I mean a lot. My histori-
cal average when I m on my own is probably three times a week.
I was masturbating three or four times a day, not stopping till
long after the muscles in my forearm started to burn. I tried
switching to my other hand, but that never seemed to work: not
only was my right hand out of practice but I felt as though I were
cheating on my left. And I knew there was no way I could keep
one hand from knowing what the other was doing.
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