“Spiritually…” I said, not entirely sure if I was saying it because that’s what I actually thought was at issue, or because spirituality was something she’d always believed in to such a degree that we’d constantly quarreled about it. Nor was I entirely sure if that was meant as a genuine gesture toward reconciliation or an attempt at being manipulative. “I guess that would be the word…”

In any case, it didn’t work. “Don’t talk to me about that,” she dismissed it. “Spiritually you were always a disaster. That’s you. Don’t worry about it. I have some things to do.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“I’m sure,” she said. “Goodbye.”

—

I stood outside. It was a moment—and they are few—when I wished I could pray—to some hard-core version of a monotheistic top-of-it-all deity who had all the answers.

I began walking up the mountain. There are no houses, roads, or structures above me. I was going deeper into the forest land. Strangely, walking up hill required no extra effort. It didn’t drain my breathing or make my thighs begin to ache.

The sun was low but bright. There was a daytime moon, three-quarters, simple and white, at an angle across from it. There was a wind, it made the trees rustle and murmur. Leaves were yellow, red, gold, and a lot of brown. They were dropping off the trees with their own subtle noises. I heard squirrels racing around, spotted some chipmunks, geese flew overhead, and a woodpecker rat-a-tat-tatted into a tree. Farther away, I heard some deer moving, at first slowly, just walking, browsing, then suddenly running and leaping, three or four of them.

In the forest lands, the winds, the heat of the sun, the cold of the night, all the things that grow, the animals and birds and even the insects are driven by forces, inhabited by spirits, have souls and their own demigods, in competition, going in different directions, speaking so many distant languages, it won’t lead you to imagine that there must be no gods but the One.

Monotheism was born in the deserts, where it’s empty and quiet and dead.

I was told that by Beinhart.

He got it from one of his fictional characters. “That’s no reason not to listen,” he told me. “There can be great wisdom in your hallucinations.” It came with a proviso, a stipulation. “But keep some part of yourself awake and aware that you’re hallucinating. That’s the key to not letting it become a bad trip.”

If you’ve made up the character that’s talking to you, and you know it, it’s fairly easy to stay aware that it’s you talking to yourself.

It’s more difficult when it’s a common-usage character. One that an entire group believes exists, that everyone and anyone can use, are even encouraged to use, for hallucinations. Where’s the hook on which you can hang the certainty that it’s imaginary? If multitudes believe in its existence, and many claim to have conversed with it, how do you not believe that such imaginary characters are alive, real, animate, and chatty. How do you not believe that their messages are to be trusted? Obeyed.