Plague of the Invigilare

THE DOCTOR

The world is full of tortured souls. I know, because I am one of them. We don’t sleep, we never dream. We’re full of pain, but not in any physical sense. The agony we suffer is far more intense than any of those minor scrapes or backaches, even beyond all that emotional anguish you feel of losing someone you love. The pain I make reference to is our birth, our existence, our life. Life on this brutal planet will often strip you of every reason there is to live, without any rationale or logic. We’ve all felt it.

I did not always feel this way, I used to believe in a crucified savior or some kind of deity that rewards you for doing good by sending you to paradise, but now, I know it’s not worth it. Good, what is that anyway? As if it were a definable term that actually meant something. As if you could measure it on a scale and it were not based on a wide range of human relativity. Goodness, a connotation brought to you by the same preachers who claim you‘ll be dropped into a fiery pit and barbequed, like your dinner last night. Believe in it. Don’t believe in it. Believe in yourself, or whatever gets you through the day. If you believe in Jesus, does he exist? I think so.

Understand I don’t have all of the answers and if you’re looking for hope, you’ll find none of that here. The only thing I have to offer you is the truth, which is more than you’ll get from some ravenous minister, or your significant other, who sneaks things past you when your eyes are shut. For I know things...

...I met this scraggly fellow once in this Club Amnesia, in New York City, who swore on my life that he was Jesus Christ incarnate. The savior of millions hanging out in a dance club at three o’clock in the morning, getting hammered out of his mind. I asked the lord, "If you’re Jesus Christ, what are you doing in this bar getting shit-faced, shouldn’t you be out helping people?" He stared into my eyes with an iconoclastic smile, at a loss for words. Finally the former incarnate shrugged, as he had nothing witty to reply, which shocked me, the ignorance of it all. Most people don’t even know the history of their religion. If he were an educated man, he might have known that Jesus immersed himself around sin. He was constantly hanging around taverns and drunks, preaching. That’s how he met the apostles; they were drunks...

...Not knowing...that’s what plagues us, confuses us, drives us to a dark place. Your heart, my soul, and the illusions, which cover us from seeing what most cannot tolerate. That is where we reside: living, dying, thinking there is a purpose to it, thinking you will rise out of the darkness into the light. For all of you that believe this, there is sad news.

There is no light, but if there were one, I would hold the lantern...

...The idea that I’m an alcoholic, a hypocrite, mentally unstable, and an alienist, does change the truth: Hell, Jesus was three out of four of those and millions of people follow him everyday, two thousands years later. I’m not asking you to follow me, or anything remotely crazy like that...

...And I would never ask you to think for yourself, because god willing, we’d all be atheists, stranded in purgatory, searching for the meaning of life...

...While enjoying cocktails in Venice Beach, California, I had the pleasure of bumping into a man who insisted he had been Jim Morrison in a former life. Not quite as historically important as the Christ, but Jim had indisputable physical evidence to support his theory. First there was the uncanny resemblance between him and the Lizard King, especially in the eyes.

"Eyes are the windows to the soul," Jim explained.

There was also the fact he had been born the day after his former incarnation had past away: July 4, 1971. He showed me the birth date on his driver’s license. He also predicted he would be famous and die young; I guess some reoccurring souls never learn...