Floating bricks poetically changing color? The authentic deed to London’s St. Paul’s Cathedral for sale at a street market? A mini-nebula transported in a fish-and-chips bag? British Telephone’s most darling operator enmeshed in the Eternal Wheel’s inexorable circuit? All these and more events fill one week for Winslow, who descends each morning from the north balcony of Liverpool Street Station into a surreal London. His many journeys on the Underground confront him with a bewildering assortment of troublesome passengers, bishops, engineers, agitators, enforcers and formidable matrons, along with the exasperating spirit of Descartes and the mockery of an unsyrnpathtic Deity. All concludes to Winslow’s satisfaction, however, with Liverpool Street Station created anew under his admirably humanistic ordering.
Merritt Abrash, author of Things in Heaven, and Earth wrote numerous articles on utopian studies, science fiction, and art history—his primary teaching field—during his professorial career at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Since retirement, he has published several books: a utopian novel, an “imagined biography” of an actual 18th century artist created from fifty short stories, and a group of absurdist history plays of which one has been professionally produced. He also founded the Society for Utopian Studies, leading organization in its field, and currently does art history research for the Frelinghuysen Morris Foundation, Lenox, Massachusetts.
Winslow crossed Bishopsgate and started down Brushfield Street. At the end glowered Christ Church, blasting in all directions either waves or particles (depending on scientifico-theologico interpretation) of the Power of God. He gamely breasted the barrage, analogous, in his personal experience, to a tsumani of spiritual gelatin. But why, he wondered, would a deity, whether authentic or ersatz, obstruct access to his/her/its precincts by inspiring fear and trembling, when the most blinkeredly secular of mortals knows that a little sugar makes the sacrosanct go down? Yea, as he entered the alley of the shadow, Winslow kept his eyes fixed on the Christ Church steeple, coolly taking the measure of its accusatory prowess even as it towered with ever greater perpendicularity over his approach.
At last he and He squarely confronted each other at Commercial Street. Winslow doubted if anything was to be gained by contemplating the inscrutable façade, hence reserved his active animadversion for the steeple. Slick surfaces and straight edges! What could be their purpose save to deny disputants the slightest spiritual handhold? “Why,” he challenged, “does the steeple offer no decorative comfort? Why only the numbing rigor of divinity incapable of flaw? Where is Your mercy, Your compassion, Your forgiveness?” Useless to expect a reply, he reminded himself, it being the privilege of power to suffice in silence.
He was hardly surprised to find rivulets of solemnity oozing out beneath the church doors and cascading down the steps to Commercial Street. There, eager scavengers scooped it into bags decorated with Union Jack, Tower Bridge and Houses of Parliament. They accosted passing tourists with clamorous commands to “Bring home a bit of British phlegm! Impress your friends! Buy it now! Be first on your block to own some!” The more sophisticated tourists insisted upon peering into the bags, upon which their faces lengthened perceptibly as they hastened to pay in silent sobriety.
Winslow climbed the steps, taking care to avoid treading on lumpish sermonical segments scattered about. His entrance into the church was greeted with a multidirectional celestial baritone intoning, “Looking for someone, buddy?”
“As a matter of fact, yes,” he replied briskly, “I’ve been told this is the kind of place where You hang out when not otherwise engaged.”
The Voice responded with a purr of satisfaction, “Here, there and everywhere, Mac, and all at once, too. Which part of that is too subtle for your humanoid understanding?”
“All I can say is, you sure are one lucky deity,” countered Winslow, thinking it best not to respond to divine-level snidery, “what with personalized accredited accommodations available throughout Your very own tax-exempt ecclesiastical network!”
“Now that you mention it, nice digs, don’t you think?” said the Voice, motioning around brain-to-brain.
Winslow thought he saw an opening for a dig of his own. “If You’re really who You’re supposed to be, You wouldn’t have to ask what I think. You’d know.”
The Voice threw back its metaphoric head and chortled through the ages. “Of course I know, but it’s such a kick to hear humans acting out what they think is free will, when everything they say, do and unfailingly foul up to kingdom come—don’t hold your breath waiting for that, by the way--is totally predestined! By Yours Truly, in case you still haven’t caught on.”
Winslow licked his lips uneasily, aware that this Entity, as he decided to label it, was no slouch at close-quarter canoodling. “Sure, it’s easy to make fun of humans,” he nervily countered, “but You’re the one who created them, remember? Sounds like a pretty grave booboo to me!”
“Grave? If you want to talk grave, pal, head back to West Brompton Cemetery! Digs there are plenty grave, in spades!”
Winslow gasped. Did his ears deceive him, or was that a triaxial pun? Grave, digs, spades? Could it be that punning is the quidditious expression of divine essence? He quailed at the thought. God as finagler with words? Mankind misinterpreting through the millennia? Goose pimples broke out in intimate areas as insidious reformulations infiltrated his mind. Could “son” be a stand-in for “sun”—innocent-seeming plug for worship of old Sol? Transgressor a wink for transdresser? And what about “parable”? Wouldn’t that populace-puzzling word more likely be “parabola,” which would, in fact, make “arc” better accounted for than that Old Testament homonym “ark”? And the Ten Confoundments? The Inaccurate Conniption? Wait till they hear about this back at Shul Central and, even more addling, IHS HQ, thought Winslow! Ordinary churches will transmogrify into hotbeds of comedy, and as for cathedrals, the groans impacting their walls will come less from the torments of crucified martyrs than from garden variety supplicants excruciated by execrable wordplay.
Staggered by this epiphanic revelation, he backed cautiously out of the church, on the qui vive for quasi-miraculous occurrences such as lightning bolts emanating from the steeple in his general direction. Safely arrived at the head of the steps, he took it upon himself to address scavengers and sightseers below in his most prophetic voice. “Humans! Heed my visitation! The Lord speaketh in waggish ways! Attend to his/her words paronomastically!” Other than a few coins flung up the steps in appreciation for performance, there was no response, partly because his listeners had profound doubts about the epistemological thrust of his theological expatiations, and partly because no one knew what paronomastically meant. Even as he collected the coins, Winslow sorely regretted having left his flowing-beard-&-piercing-gaze kit back at Liverpool Street Station, but how could he have known that on this day he was to colloquialize with God Him/Herself? Such failure to right the relationship between human and divine would be enough to plunge anyone into depression.
He dejectedly descended the steps and turned onto Fournier Street, along which he trudged with never a sideways glance or venerating thought in the church’s direction. Such obstreperous indifference, he believed, ought to shock the pants off any deity, known as they all were for adulation abuse. On the other hand, he granted, it might shock the pants on, since you can never tell with deities.