ghosts & admissons

The shape of things to come part deux

So after diner I sure had a lot to think about. The conversation continued, and my date, for all her brilliance, didn't contribute much. So we marched to a park because I wanted to drink wine in a park and feel romantic while I still could (in case this alien took that away from me too). I also wanted to stand on snow, so the park had to have snow. So I stomped in circles in the snow and followed the little path that I had made, as wine sloshed over my hands and wrists and chilled in the wind. I stood back and looked at the imprints I had just created, I took pride in that accomplishment, at least not all acts seemed transitory.

The alien explained that "Love is an imaginative means of bestowing value that would not exist otherwise."

"So it is a figment of our imagination? A fabrication to help explain something that we do not fully comprehend?" I replied.

"Yes, and quite frankly us aliens are sick of how you are treating our souls."

His cruel words stung, a great affront to something we perhaps spend our whole lives (or their souls) chasing. I opened my mouth not sure of what to say, nothing came, so I continued to shuffle my feet in the snow.

"You see we aliens have already led perfect lives, therefore we have no need for an afterlife. Then you assume control of our souls, but only to behave in a manner unbecoming of a perfect being. To think, wasting our precious souls on others. The nerve."

"So what would you have us do with your souls then?"

"Nothing, we sent them here for quite rest. Or simple non-existence. We did not know at the time how you would abuse them."

"So why do you keep sending them? You said every time a baby is born, it is actual just receipt of yet another one of your discarded souls."

"Well, at the time of our initial departure we had slower transport than we do now. So some souls from the original transport are just now arriving. I was able to surpass them with our new technology and arrive before they did. Please remember we have sent them great distances, and since this discovery new shipment have surely ceased."

"So why don't you stop them?"

"That's precisely the point. We do not wish to disturb these souls, yet if we simply allow them to arrive in the same way, you just abuse them in a fashion that we deem undesirable. And if we disturb them by interrupting their voyage we are no better than you, or how ourselves will become, as the case may be"

As perplexing as this was I guess the humour of having an argument with an alien in the middle of a Montreal park wasn't lost on me. I startled to chuckle. Exasperated he continued.

"Love supplements the human search for value with a capacity for bestowing it gratuitously. See you love something then attach value to it because you love it. We would much rather you 'love' something that has previously been deemed valuable, such as our souls, and treated them accordingly."

I looked at my date. Her gigantic bag, bulging with the days acquisitions, my books, my blackberry. The bottle of white wine in her hand (we had drank the red at diner on my suggestion, despite her requestsfor the white.) Her sporting sleepy eyes from me having dragged her out of bed.

"Grant us peace, and stop loving"

I turned back to the alien, "I cannot agree with you" I said.

posted by El Chupacabra @ 5:27 PM