Tag: fable

At the Ministry of Misery?

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Here’s the fifth (of seven) installments in my Ministry Series:

 

My unending search for Truth, the Great Secret, at one point seemed pointless. I was in despair. The Ministry of Mystery wasn’t listed in the Directory of Directorates, Bureaus, Ministries and Secretariats, and I’d given up looking for it after uncounted days of asking around. Whomever I’d asked would tell me the same thing: “It’s a mystery.”

One day amid the long rows of giant government edifices, teeming bureaucratic beehives, I thought for a split second that I’d found it. But the sign, in fact, read “Ministry of Misery, Third Floor.” The thought came that perhaps they might help to unburden me.

My depression seemed to get worse with every step I climbed, and by the time I reached the third floor I was half-blind with tears. I stood at the threshold of the first office I came to and paused to compose myself before I entered.

The man behind the counter put down his rubber stamp when I approached, looking up at me quizzically.

“Hello,” I said with forced cheerfulness. “I need some information.”

The man forced a smile and said, “Hello, I need some information.”

My smile faded. “Um, what kind of information?” I asked, puzzled.

“Um, what kind of information?” he queried in an equally puzzled tone.

A wave of despair washed over me and tears ran afresh. “You see, I’ve lost my Meaning and I’m trying to get it back. I’m miserable. I thought maybe you . . .”

The man behind the counter wept silently. “You see,” he said, “I don’t know why you’re here and I’m trying to understand. I’m despondent. I hope maybe you . . .”

“Look here!” I barked, hands on hips, suddenly angry. “I’m a tax-paying citizen, and when I come to a government office for help I do not expect to be mocked!”

He put his hands on his hips and barked back, “Look here! I’m a government employee, just doing my job; and when I’m doing my job properly, I do not expect to be criticized!”

“But this isn’t the kind of treatment I would expect at the Ministry of Misery!” I expostulated.

“But this is precisely the kind of treatment you’d expect at the Ministry of  Mimicry!”

I stepped back and looked at the sign above the counter. “Sorry,” I mumbled, chagrined. “Good day.”

“Sorry. Good day,” he mumbled back.

The Ministry of Misery was in the office next door. I went in, but apparently one of the secretaries had just hanged herself in the copying room, and all the staff members were weeping inconsolably. So I left to meander moodily in the metropolitan maze.

At the Ministry of Madness

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Here’s the fourth installment (of seven) of my Ministry Series:

 

I never meant to seek the Ministry of Madness, but I suppose it had to happen sometime in my sometimes crazed pursuit of the supreme, serene Suchness that we all know, deep inside, is there. (But where?) It was on one of the many days  I spent seeking the elusive  Ministry of Mystery in Centre City’s massive maze of bureaucratic buildings. When I saw the arrow on the sign, “Ministry of Madness,” pointing down the corridor to the right, I instinctively went left. The first door I came to  simply had a question mark lettered on the frosted door glass.

I knocked. No answer. I tried the door handle and the door opened, pulling me through. Honest. The door closed behind me. The lettering on the door glass now read “Ministry of Madness,” only backwards. I blinked and the door was gone. I swear that’s how it happened, how I came to find myself in the waiting room of the Ministry of Madness.

I was not alone. A slack-faced angel (halo and all) shared the couch beneath the clock with a smiling alligator in a three-piece suit, and the Knave of Hearts, just like in the card deck. The hands on the clock moved rapidly in opposite directions. The walls were hairy and seemed to breathe. Mad Muzac leaked from unseen speakers. There was no door in sight.

“Would you kindly stop bombarding me with your Zenoid death rays?” the alligator asked politely. The angel giggled, drooling. The Knave mumbled something about a strawberry festival. “Take a number,” said a dwarf with teeth like knives, who was standing beside a water cooler filled with what appeared to be blood. “Or, better yet, have some pomegranate seeds.” Next to him, in a straight-backed chair, sat a little old lady dressed in black. Antlers protruded from her bonnet. She was knitting what looked like a shroud.

“But I don’t want a number! You see, I came in by mistake. I don’t want to be seen; I just want to find the exit!”

There was a moment of silence, and all eyes were on me. Then they began to chortle, cackle, howl, giggle – each adding to a cacophony of mad mirth. “By mistake!” roared the alligator. “No one comes here by mistake. You come by appointment!”

“If you don’t want to be seen,” howled the dwarf, “then disappear!”

“Find the exit?” cackled the horned granny.

“STRAWBERRY FESTIVAL!” roared the Knave, rising and advancing. He grabbed me by my collars and sputtered in my face, “Electricity is leaking from the wall sockets, causing sundry puppet mutations! Tidal slime emanations curdle imminent remedies! Noisome machine holograms cloud the aether with flux vibrations! And all you care about is your crusty CONSENSUS REALITY! Your Living Theatre! You think that’s where you’ll find your precious Secret?”

Either I or the room began to fade. “You know the secret?” I implored.

“Paf!” said Auntie Antlers.

“See you later,” intoned the ‘gator.

“Take a number, any number,” sneered the dwarf.

“Now that you know where to come, don’t be a stranger.” The vacant-eyed angel beckoned seductively.

And I found myself back in the Land of Laws, the Living Theatre, standing in the sterile street, still bereft of Meaning, all madness faded into the mundane.

It was on a Monday.

At the Secretariat of Salvation

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Here is Part Three (of Seven) of my Ministry Series:

 

Still stymied in my search for the Secret, I stumbled into the Secretariat of Salvation. I had been wandering along Church Street, without a clue; and there, where Church meets State Street, it was. I walked onto the grounds through the pearly gates and entered the temple, thinking “perhaps it’s salvation that I’ve been seeking, for I am surely lost.”

It was easy to tell who was on the staff and who was not: the clerks were all garbed in black robes, solemnly bustling about in the labyrinth of partitioned workspaces that filled the vast, high-ceilinged chamber. I walked over to the Information counter and  “ahem”ed to get the attention of the robed clerk, who  was reading from a massive black-bound tome. He looked up, annoyed at my interruption.

“Uh, good book you’re reading there?” I asked.

“The best book. How, pray, may I be of service?”

“Well – you see, I’m trying to find the Great Secret, and I wondered -”

“There is no Great Secret! It’s all in The Book, as you would already know, if your parents had raised you right.”

“Um, salvation, then. How do I find salvation?”

“Naturally, by doing every day, in every way, that which pleaseth God.”

“But how can I know what will please . . . Him? Or is it Her?”

“HIM, infidel! Look, it’s all in The Book. Haven’t you heard of the Many Musts?” He proceeded to recite some from memory. “Thou must, perforce, address God by His True and Proper Name, which is ‘I Yam What I Yam.’ Thou must, perforce, worship God through His designated representatives, and give them money. Thou must, perforce, love God, no matter what He does to you.”

“Ah, pardon me, but how do I know who I’m to trust as His designated representatives, to help me find salvation. . . and who  I’m to give the money to, of course?”

“By their robes of Holy Office shall ye know them.”

“Okay, I think I have the first two down;  but about that third Must . . . I don’t understand. How can anybody command love? It seems to me that love is . . . a spontaneous response. Or a gift. I mean, you either feel it or you don’t. You can’t make yourself love . . . right?”

The clerk’s face reddened. “Thou treadeth on the border of heresy, Bub. We are talking about GOD, not just some vile sinner like yourself! If it says in His Book that you’d better love him, or suffer eternal torment, you’d just better love Him!”

“Okay, okay, I hear you. But . . . but if I’m a sinner – and I’m not suggesting that I’m not – how am I to know what is a sin?”

The clerk sighed. “Verily thou art enough to try the patience of Mope, son of Rube, whom God didst sorely test. I tell you, it’s all in The Book! 100% of the Truth. Everything, all here!” The thumped his copy for emphasis.

“But I’m still confused. It seems to me that the only real truth we can know is in our direct experience of the world. Anything we say or write about it only reflects the truth, it doesn’t contain it. It can’t. Right?”

The clerk’s eyes narrowed to slits. His voice was gravelly with emotion. “Bubba, are you saying that you know more about the Truth than GOD? Now, why would He have gone to all the trouble of dictating The Book to his holy ghost writers if just any poor shlub, such as yourself, could figure out the Truth for his own damned self?!”

“I . . . guess I see your point,” I said, although I really didn’t. I was getting a headache, like you get from thinking too long about where the universe ends. “Thanks for all your help.”

I turned and walked away, the clerk’s reflexive “God bless you” echoing hollowly in the huge high holy hall.