Resurrection

Chapter 26 : Live from the Land of Milk and Slavery

Descending upon Los Angeles was beyond the surreal. Landing at night, the horizon was littered with a myriad of amber, glowing dots that stretched on in a more spectacular representation of urban sprawl. During the day this would have looked like a concrete ant hive of economics but at night time it had a strange, vibrant pulse. Still, this was no Paris or Florence. My first encounter was with an African-American lady which to me was a fairly common experience given my history but would have been surprising for my Australian counterpart.

"How you doin' Sweetness?" she asked favourably in her most clichéd slang.

I took the nanoseconds of the moment to ponder which accent I should use, what could I become in the land of plenty? Should I use my vessel's Australian accent, should I continue to voice a crisper British accent or could I indulge my inner Californian? The choices were numerous and this was the joy of being a stranger in a strange land. For novelty's sake, I adopted Adam's Australian coastal accent.

"I'm alright. Can you tell me where the nearest taxi stand is?" I asked.

"Well ain't you just so cute. I love that accent and where is it from? She continued.

I had forgotten the appeal of having another accent in a foreign land. To have an accent in the US of A was like being an alien from Krypton; suddenly you had a distinctive advantage over the locals. Not that I needed that with my demonic super-ego. This would only work for dating purposes and I had much more dastardly deeds to enact and needed to favour an American accent to blend in once again. For now, I was content to amuse this lady and find my nearest café to people watch.

The streets of LA were often ablaze with activity; however the architecture and landscape are over glamorized on film, taking just the highlights and ignoring the gloriously mundane and faceless buildings that marked nearly every intersection; a post-modern mesh of people however made this place incredible to the foreign eye. Hipsters sporting man-buns, homeless bums with faulty hips, corporate high flying females in bright pantsuits, low flying chicken necks showing bedazzled, blinged denim graffiti with words like ho and slut across the front, steroid-induced erect bald men ready to pounce on Venice beach or the nearest trophy wife looking for someone to clean out their trophy wedding. All the while these people were wrapped up in the smoggy embrace of the City of Angels.

I found myself facing the agonising choice between Cracker Barrel and International House of Pancakes. I mentioned that it was agonising because both places were very loathsome. Each was another carbon-copied, franchised uniform version of the modern American restaurant where the morbidly obese could shove their heads into the proverbial trough and munch on a quagmire of plastic and cheese. Capitalism had spread like a virus in this nation, working so feverishly that it pushed most Ma and Pa businesses out onto the street all in order to promote another Starbucks or Wal-Mart. I watched a cluster of the obese, an extended family ho into gargantuan portions of biscuits and gravy before slapping them onto the free side dish of pancakes generously given out. In response to my critique, my host body gave out an involuntary dry reach and again found myself agreeing in unison with my vessel. It was at this point that I decided to turn around and find an actual privately owned café. Luckily in Los Angeles, these were as abundant as the franchises they competed against.

Feeling sentimental are we? How human of you.

I recoiled as a voice of light penetrated my thoughts, attempting to act like a conscience.

Quiet you loathsome mortal monkey.

I was amazed that my vessel thought he could have a voice and as I ordered my next hazelnut latte, I pushed Adam's thoughts deep down into the black abyss, putting him back in his place like the mere mortal he was.

I found a cosy little nook to people read once again but found it difficult to concentrate with the noise blaring from the television. The café owner, a delightful little human called Ron, was obviously a devout Christian because he had a television evangelist spewing forth the gospel on his mounted LED screen. There were a few patrons casually glancing up to absorb this dramatic performance.

I was both startled and fascinated by the words this 'guru' was using:

"But in the beginning it was not so, in the beginning all the heavens beheld the word of God. And God, who said let there be light, manifested the power of the invisible world, the power of the unseen, the power of the prophet, the power given unto men; that they might declare what is to be. We, the children of the prophets and the god, are to know our signs. We are to know the authenticity and the power of the word of the fathers, the family of God, the children of light.

As you know there is a great crisis amongst us in this message, but not for me! As a matter of fact, after years of allowing my body to feel the torments of the soul, to suffer the slings and arrows of the mind in the physical form, I have not in any wise deferred from my responsibility to give the truth that this God has given to me, that is, the God that I have never known."

I couldn't believe the high level of modality embraced by this man, yet with the completeness of narcissism in paradox with a blinding devotion and faith to a higher power. He continued on with his sermon and the camera panned down to reveal not a grandiose white tent but rather a large auditorium filled with thousands of worshipers.

Throughout history I have continued to be awed by the power of faith, or the ignorance of the masses while those deemed to be of a higher power could exploit, torture and murder. I guess you could call this hypocrisy but I knew what I was and what purpose I was to serve. Even I could not compete with the record numbers of souls extinguished during the crusades, the Holocaust, both World Wars and the Killing Fields to name but a few. You could argue that my voice had been in the ears of some dictators but at the end of the day, these were suggestions and these people were pushing the proverbial button and pulling the triggers. Acts of intense evil were often as inevitable as gravity, requiring only but the slightest of nudges to bring about an avalanche.

Strangely, faith should have been at the forefront of my cosmic compass yet it's strange almost supernatural like power pulsed beyond the might of an atomic bomb. I had managed a newborn grip on it in England with my gang of skinhead thugs but this felt like amateur hour compared to the weight of blind faith emanating from the typical American nuclear family. To put it more simply, I needed more disciples, I needed to make a bigger existential splash and if these moronic televangelists could do it, then surely I could capitalise and be a greater success. In my brief flings with the United States, I knew that the greatest success for religious manipulation lay not in the liberal states on the West or East Coast but rather in the bible-belt. Strike up the banjos, this devil was going down to Georgia, or at least I needed to venture into more formidably fertile pastures for the uninitiated as my quest yearned for me to head due south: The Deep South.

***

The longer I stayed within my vessel, the more powerful I became- not yet critical mass but close. Travelling became much easier and if I wanted to, I could close my eyes and astral project- concentrating on my chosen destination, cycling through it in my own inner travel lounge before hauling heaven and earth broadcasting and reanimating every single cell in a matter of seconds to reappear... anywhere. At this point in my evolution, the effort of projecting myself across the galaxy was still enormous and I would feel blood pulsing behind my eyes and brain before this rose in intensity as if each cell was about to explode, before collapsing into a long slumber. Projection was an uncomfortable option and I preferred a road trip anyway. Besides, why not enjoy a night out in LA to celebrate my latest holiday? The answer wasn't in the stars but only in the virtues of a being that had the eternity of choosing whatever the fuck they had hoped to do in the scheme of enjoying the chaos that is life.