What Lies Above

by Astrid H. Cruz

(This document contains snippets of songs. You can read the lyrics or play the video next to it.)

"Religion is the opium of the masses."

Karl Marx had it right. The quote is a bit overused but I, for once, can nod reassuringly every time I hear it.

Having been brought up in a religious environment and having my good set of Christian morals in the base of my skull – I will never deny that I do believe in God – I can tell you first hand why that quote is true.

God is watching you, God has designed a set of rules you must follow, be good and you’ll be saved, be bad and you’ll be punished. If you stray away from the rules fingers will be pointed at you, public shame ensured, lots of cold shoulders and you’ll have to look at people’s backs for the rest of your life… until, yes, until you decide to come back, convert, be one of them again, follow the rules, be good and get a pat on the head. Not that we will forget everything you did ‘out there’ in that ‘mundane’ world, however, God will forgive you. Ah, but there is that passage, do you know it?

“As a dog returneth to his vomit, so a fool returneth to his folly.”

Proverbs 26:11. It says so right here in The Bible. Yes, I have a Bible in my hands and have just looked up that passage because, even when you turn good, there is that little demon inside you that will push you to the floor, drag you around the room and try to take you back to that horrible place you came from. Usually that demon is dressed in a nice suit, wears a fedora hat and holds a Tommy Gun, or is that just mine? That’s your Id, not some demon but, oh well. The thing is that everybody, and when I say everybody I mean every single person in your church from the little doll-like five year old to the woman so old she is on the brink of death, from your congregation will be watching you. They will all know what you did last summer, if they don’t they’ll make it up, talk about horrendous deeds you committed and cast sideway glances at you when you walk around the temple.

I know, not all churches are like that and not everyone inside them is like that but bear with me when I tell you they will be watching you, the stray they must protect from going back. It is all part of that set of rules, the Commandments, written in stone so no one can erase them. They are marked with fire on your skin and you like it, you like that sense of oppression. It tells you what to do, how to do it, when to do it, what to think about it and what not to think about it, all this takes off the burden of figuring things out by yourself. It is comfortable, you are comfortably numb, like when opium embraces your system and lulls you into that place you used to hide when you were little and wait for the storm to pass.

Humans like rules, either they accept it or not, having rules gives life meaning. Religious or not. However, when that set of rules transforms you into Schrödinger’s cat and no one knows if you are dead or alive: Houston, we have zombies!

You, the convert one that never strayed, walk down the street and see them, plotting, those are the demons, those hippies, those socialists, those communists, those baby eating creatures with no rules, searching for anarchy, making Molotov cocktails and looking for the deep pockets of derailed minds to pay for the guns they need. They are making an army, stinking revolutionaries with no heart and soul. Terrorists. And you tell your kid to look at them and see the signs, see the bloodshot eyes from one too many overdoses, the stench of not showering for days, of living in dark places, crowded ones, and having sex with whomever is settling on the cold floor next to them. And you pull your kid’s eyes away because you know he’s taking mental pictures of that girl with long hair and loose jeans and he may well think of her like a goddess. But goddesses don’t do shady stuff, they don’t live in dark places like she does. Dark places are home to sins and you must not visit them, you must not become one of them because if you do… and you shake your head to the word ‘hell’.

Nevertheless, the girl with the long hair and the loose jeans might as well be me and all the while I am looking at you and how you pull your kid away from my gaze. Now I am the one shaking my head. If I look up to the sky I can see the mechanical birds flying in circles ready to drop the bombs they’ve been manufacturing in well-lit places on all of us. Me, you, your kid, no one is safe from the blast. Pity that it is us, those not living by your rules, the only ones that can see them, or worse, you do see them and still prefer to shield your children from me rather than from the enemy fire.

I am not plotting a war, I shower every day, my hair may be long but that is because I’ve wanted it long since I was a kid, like yours, full of dreams and sporting that innocent spark in my eyes and listening to what I shall not become. I’ve never even tried drugs and, most certainly, I am not making orgies, ever. I don’t have a gun, I don’t need one. All I have is a conscience nagging on my brain, making me read, researching, clinging to the silver lining.

My demons, as you call them, are working overtime so you and your kid and your kid’s kids can have a better future. I see the ceiling falling over our heads and you are doing nothing to stop it from squashing you. We, those you point your fingers at, have become Atlas.

Demonstrations, we gather and we stop traffic. We gather and you can’t drive through that avenue because we are there with our signs and the music and the jingles. And you curse us under your breath, really low but not low enough for your son to hear it and repeat it a thousand times in his head, grasping the fabric of the seat, his eyes wide in wonder observing those socialists and their calls for mayhem.

Mayhem is drawn on heavy papers over mahogany desks. The illustrator’s ass on a comfy leather chair too expensive for you to even dream of having in your always-getting-tinier cubicle. You make it to work, sit on that chair that is hurting your back, face the blackness of the computer monitor and you can feel it sucking the life out of you. There is a picture of your wife and your son from that birthday party they enjoyed so much, that you enjoyed even when there was something breathing on your neck. Demons. God, oh God, those demons are poking me, whispering lies to my ears, make them go away.

Lunch. The big flat screen TV in the cafeteria shows a reporter talking about us, the wild-eyed, derailed, unruled ones picketing, striking, screaming at the top of our lungs because it hurts, it hurts to carry the weight of a world that turns its back on you, that attacks you until you are bruised, black and blue, gasping for air, pain worse than that of a mother giving birth because we are, after all, desperately trying to give birth to change. Then you snicker when the uniforms storm in with heavy footsteps, bashing skulls, showering us with a hatred drilled into their brains by those on the mahogany desks. We cry but we don’t cry for help, we cry because people like you smirk and nod and are content with this, because you are on that other side of the TV where you feel so comfortable shouting orders for more blood, for torture, for murder. Those that do not live by the rules, that dare stand on the left side when everybody knows the right is the safe one, that aren’t eating their own vomit just because they are rolling on it day in and day out, they must be punished, arrested, why don’t we bring public stonings back? That would be a sight!

The cats that dared open the box and scream ‘I am alive!’.

And when you return to your cubicle inside the box, there is a note. It doesn’t say thank you, it isn’t inviting you to this year’s summer party the company will be throwing for the CEO’s and their families, it says quite the contrary. You are fired. You turn it and turn it and it doesn’t say you’ve dedicated your life to this company anywhere, it doesn’t tell about the sleepless nights you’ve had thinking up the solution to that hiccup in the merge and that you so bravely told your superior while he looked through the large glass window of his office and dismissed you even when he was taking mental notes and did everything you said only that he signed it with his name and not yours. It says nothing. And saying nothing makes a whole in your chest, a sudden pressure you had never felt and that is constricting your lungs. When you ask for answers you get nothing, when you look around there is nothing. Not one living thing that can tell you it’s a joke, you’ve been punked, look at the hidden camera. You hear Jenny crying in the cubicle next to yours, and then Martha, and then David starts sobbing and Gilbert is running for the bathroom. You hold your belly in your hands to suppress the wrenching.

Budget costs, says one of the zombies. Economic crisis, no money for payroll. Downsizing. But when you look out through the one foot wide window at the V.I.P. parking lot the Mercedes is still there, the BMW, the red Porsche, they are all there. And you know it’s not fair. Then the heat starts building up on your neck, your jaw so clenched it hurts, the paper crumpled inside your first.

You grab your jacket and storm out. No need for pleasantries, no time for goodbyes. Leaving skid marks on the asphalt, making walls of smoke out of burnt rubber. The ground has been pulled out from under your feet and you are sinking, quicksand, swallowing you alive. The hell with the rules, the hell with the world, the hell with everyone that doesn’t understand this crippling pain, these spams that feel close to ripping me open, making pieces of me.

And you get there, to the melting pot, the sea of shouting and banging and wrestling and trying to make treaties out of mistreatment. And you join, because these are the only people that know what you are feeling, that have cried the same tears you are crying, that have often raised their eyes to the heavens and asked the whys out loud. Why me? Why us? Why now? Why like this? Why don’t they hear what I have to say? Why don’t they get it? That we are all drowning, that we will all perish and it isn’t because of the apocalyptic cataclysm we are all so eager to talk about. The cause is that other thing you don’t talk about.

Now you are hit, tagged, you are shaking on the floor, kicked, a baton landing repeatedly on your already aching body. It hurts, it really hurts. It does because you are finally waking up, breaking free from that eggshell you were trapped in.

Our eyes locked on each other, chins on the ground, hands behind our backs. Bloody noses, chipped bones. A hysterical laughter makes you quiver against your will, making you ache further, almost fainting. The movie of your life playing in your mind, you see that time in the record store when you pulled your kid away from me, when you said those things about me you know I didn’t hear but somehow you know I knew what you were saying. I know it by heart, the same old speech that hasn’t changed in ages, the same words used to impose fear. You know all about fear.

“He that dwelleth in the secret place of the
most High shall abide under the shadow
of the Almighty.
I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and
my fortress: my God; in him will I trust.
Surely he shall deliver thee from the snare
of the fowler, and from the noisome pestilence.
He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under
his wings shalt thou trust: his truth shall be thy
shield and buckler.”

What? You are not going to continue? We are sitting in a police van facing each other and you are going to leave me hanging, aren’t you? And your eyes bulge when my lips part slowly and proceed:

“Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night;
nor for the arrow that flieth by day;
Nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness;
nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday.
A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand
at thy right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee.
Only with thine eyes shalt thou behold and see the
reward of the wicked.
Because thou hast made the Lord, which is my
refuge, even the most High, thy habitation;
There shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any
plague come nigh thy dwelling.”

I’m terrified because we are moving and even when I asked, they wouldn’t tell me where we’ll be taken. I can see the fear in your eyes too, that and the looks of a man that has seen a ghost entering his chamber. You may think I am used to this but I am not, I’ll never be. Come on, lets do it together before this thing comes to a stop.

“For he shall give his angels charge over thee,
to keep thee in all thy ways.
They shall bear thee up in their hands, lest thou
dash thy foot against a stone.
Thou shalt tread upon the lion and adder: the
young lion and the dragon shalt thou trample
under feet.
Because he hath set his love upon me, therefore
will I deliver him: I will set him on high, because
he hath known my name.
He shall call upon me, and I will answer him: I will
be with him in trouble; I will deliver him, and honour him.
With long life will I satisfy him, and shew him my salvation.”

Psalm 91. My mother used to recite it to me every night. Bibles don’t burn my hands, prayers don’t make my mouth bleed. I’m as human as you are, I have as many rules as you have, they differ from yours but they are rules after all.

When the thing stops, when the doors are opened and we are summoned to the light and the heat of a sun that makes our bruises sting, I can see realization in your eyes. You can see it now, the same things I see, those things that doom my kind as crazy, lunatics, and even then we don’t close our eyes to it. You flinch when you look at the sky, you hunch over to cover yourself from what lies above.

You can see it and it scares the life out of you. It scares me to death too, yet I use that fear as fuel because I don’t want the next generation to live like me, to have to deal with this snowball that is growing by the minute and will fall on our heads, crushing us. A snowball that was once a piece of crumpled paper falling from a mahogany desk.

**I do not own any of the Pink Floyd lyrics used here.

1. ‘Comfortably Numb’ by Pink Floyd.
2. ‘Wish You Were Here’ by Pink Floyd.
3. ‘Goodbye Blue Sky’ by Pink Floyd, video from Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE_yNPNCflk

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