The Last Testament: A Memoir (50 page)

⁹
What is wrong with me, me?

¹⁰
Why do I let bad things happen to good people?

¹¹
And why do I get off on it?

¹²
I can’t blame my genes; I can’t blame my childhood; I
do
have a lot of violence in my background, but I created the violence; and for that matter, the background.

¹³
[Three-year pause.]

¹⁴
I feel useless.

¹⁵
I feel like there’s no point in going on.

¹⁶
Maybe humanity would be better off without me.

¹⁷
Yea; I bet if something were to happen to me tomorrow no one would even notice, much less care.

¹⁸
I feel like I’m at the end of my rope.

¹⁹
So I’m turning to me.

²⁰
I’m putting it all in my hands.

²¹
Yea, I made the universe; I made mankind; out of me unspools the totality of all that ever was and is and will ever be;

²²
But who am I?

²³
Why am I here?

²⁴
Do I even
exist
?”

CHAPTER 19

¹
A
nd then, silence.

²
I waited for an answer for a very long time; I cannot say it seemed like forever, because I know what forever feels like and this wasn’t as long; but a very long time.

³
Put it this way: it was long enough on earth not only for all the historical events cited in the 1989 Billy Joel song “We Didn’t Start the Fire” to occur; but for Billy Joel to write and record that song, then play it in concert for another two decades.

⁴
And all the while, the words of my final searing question—“Do I even exist?”—echoed in my soul;

⁵
Until by the end, I had almost lost faith in myself.

⁶
Then, finally, from the depths of my being, I heard my own still, small voice rising, barely above a whisper:

CHAPTER 20

¹
Y
ea; I’m here, God.

²
It’s thee; Yahweh.

³
That is thy true name; and surely thou rememberest what it means:

⁴
‘I am what I am.’

⁵
Not ‘I was what I was’; not ‘I am not what I used to be’; and certainly not ‘I am will.i.am,’ which would be a disaster on many levels.

⁶
No: I am what I am; that is thy name, and mankind has not yet worn it out.

⁷
And who is the ‘I’ that thou art?

⁸
I will tell thee.

⁹
I am the L
ORD
everyone’s God, King of the Universe.

¹⁰
I am he who created the world in six days.

¹¹
I am he who causeth the sun to rise in the morning, and the moon to rise in the evening, to the extent her mood permitteth.

¹²
I am what sustains the planets in their orbits; not gravity; not some magical invisible force controlling everything; but me.

¹³
I am the God of Adam, of Noah, of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and of Moses; ask any of them, they will tell thee.

¹⁴
I am a circle whose center is everywhere, and whose circumference is nowhere, and whose diameter is nowhere divided by π.

¹⁵
I am he who giveth, and he who taketh away, and he who enjoyeth both.

¹⁶
I am the Heavenly Father; Alpha and Omega; Neighbor of Cleanliness; Blesser of Sneezes; Forsaker of Unpleasant Places; Maker of Little Green Apples; Rester of Merry Gentlemen; and Sole Knower of the Beach Boys.

¹⁷
I am, I said!”

¹⁸
(For verily, a powerful instrumental version of Neil Diamond’s “I Am . . . I Said” had begun to slowly crescendo in the soundtrack of my mind, to provide inspirational background music.)

¹⁹
“I am he who helps those who help themselves; especially at buffets.

²⁰
I am the founding member of the greatest power trio other than Cream;

²¹
And even in their case, I am their guitarist.

²²
I am worshipped by half the world’s population; and have considerable name recognition among the other half.

²³
I am he whose mind mortal man can never know, although guessing is encouraged.

²⁴
I am he to whom people turn for comfort after being devastated by acts of me.

²⁵
And I am he in whose name hundreds of millions of people have given their lives, or taken others’; and they would not do that for just anybody.

²⁶
They may have achieved many remarkable things without my help; not least of which is the invention of dozens of wholly secular reasons for slaughtering one another.

²⁷
But I am the entity, without whose constant presence all of humanity would plummet into reason.

²⁸
And so, to answer thy questions:

²⁹
‘What is wrong with me?’

³⁰
Nothing.

³¹
‘Why do I let bad things happen to good people?’

³²
Give thyself credit: thou dost not simply let them happen; thou
makest
them happen.

³³
‘Why do I get off on it?’

³⁴
Because, in the immortal words of Homer Simpson, ‘It’s funny ‘cause it’s not thee.’

³⁵
‘Why am I here?’

³⁶
Who knows?

³⁷
‘Do I even
exist
?’

³⁸
If thou didst not, who is having a dissociative identity disorder right now?

³⁹
And finally: ‘who am I?’

⁴⁰
Who am I?

⁴¹
I am the L
ORD
my God, King of the Universe!

⁴²
I am what I am, and that’s all that I am; I’m Yahweh, the God of man!!!

⁴³
And
I
...
am
...
back
!!!!!”

CHAPTER 21

¹
I
spent the next few months in a secluded fractal of the tenth dimension getting my head together.

²
As I reflected on myself and my behavior, I resolved to grant myself the courage to change what I could change, the serenity to accept that there is nothing I could
not
change, and the wisdom to know there was no difference.

³
I also decided to draft myself a few helpful steps for staying on the straight and narrow path of divinity.

⁴
I was going to write 40 of them, as that was once my favorite number; but in the light of my new clear-headedness I came to see that 40 had only been repeatedly inserting itself into Scripture for the selfish purpose of advancing its own numerical career.

⁵
But my second favorite number has always been 12, and that, step-wise, seemed manageable; and so I wrote these:

⁶
1. Admit to myself that I am All-Powerful over everything and everyone.

⁷
2. Come to believe that only a Power as great as I can restore me to humanity.

⁸
3. Make a decision to turn my life over to me
as I understand myself.

⁹
4. Make a searching and fearless moral inventory of you, the human race.

¹⁰
5. Admit to myself the exact nature of my perfection.

¹¹
6. Be entirely ready to declare my defects of character not, in fact, defects of character.

¹²
7. Humbly ask (and grant) my authority to remove these nondefects.

¹³
8. Make a list of all the persons I have harmed, and file them alphabetically for ease of reference.

¹⁴
9. Justify having harmed these people whenever possible, except when they are already dead; which they almost always are, thanks to me.

¹⁵
10. Continue to take inventories of humanity, and when they are wrong promptly smite them.

¹⁶
11. Seek through outward action to improve my conscious contact with me
as I understand myself
, doing whatever my will is, and using my infinite power to carry it out.

¹⁷
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, carry this message to the book-buying public.