Philip Appleman

“HEAVEN: The big apartheid in the sky.”

“God must have a weird sense of values, and if there’s a Judgment Day, as some folks think, He’s going to have a lot to answer for.”

“This is the only real revelation — that God is only a trick with mirrors, our dark reflection in a glass.”

“Darwin's ArkThe fact is, I know those ancestors floating through my sleep: an animal that breathed water, had a great swimming tail, an imperfect skull, undoubtedly hermaphrodite . . . I slide through all the oceans with these kin, salt water pulsing in my veins, and aeons follow me into the trees: a hairy, tailed quadruped, arboreal in its habits, scales slipping off my flanks . . . . I have sailed the ancients seas to come to the bones of Megatherium. . . . The thing I want to father most is the rarest, most difficult thing of all. Though knee-deep in these rivers of innocent blood, I want to be - a decent animal.”

“Whatever we are, whatever we make of ourselves, is all we will ever have – and that, in its profound simplicity, is the meaning of life.”

“Last-Minute Message For a Time CapsuleI have to tell you this, whoever you are:that on one summer morning here, the oceanpounded in on tumbledown breakers,a south wind, bustling along the shore,whipped the froth into little rainbows,and a reckless gull swept down the beachas if to fly were everything it needed.I thought of your hovering saucers,looking for clues, and I wanted to write this down,so it wouldn't be lost forever - -that once upon a time we hadmeadows here, and astonishing things,swans and frogs and luna mothsand blue skies that could stagger your heart.We could have had them still,and welcomed you to earth, butwe also had the righteous oneswho worshipped the True Faith, and Holy War.When you go home to your shining galaxy,say that what you learnedfrom this dead and barren place isto beware the righteous ones.”

“DAYS ONE THROUGH SIX, ETC.You keep on asking me that –“Which day was the hardest?”Blockheads! They were all hard –And of course, since I’m omnipotent,they were all easy.It was Chaos, to begin with. Can you imaginePrimeval Chaos? Of course you can’t.How long had it been swirling around out there?Forever.How long had I been there?Longer than that.It was a mess, that’s what it was. Chaos isRocky. Fuzzy. Slippery. Prickly.As scraggly and obstreperous as the endless behindof an infinite jackass. Shove on it anywhere,it gives, then slips in behind you,like smog, like lava, like slag.I’m telling you, chaos is – chaotic.You see what I was up against. Whocould make a world out of that muck?I could, that’s who – landfrom water, light from dark, and so on.It might seem like a piece of cakenow that it’s done, butback then, without a blueprint,without a set of instructions, without a committee,could you have created a firmament?Of course there were bugs in the process,grit in the gears, blips, bloopers –bringing forth grass and trees on Day Threeand not making sunlight until Day Four, that,I must say, wasn’t my best move.And making the animals and vegetables beforethere was any rain whatsoever – well,anyone can have a bad day.Even Adam, as it turned out, wasn’t such a greatidea – those shifty eyes, the alibis,blaming things on his wife – I mean,it set a bad example. How could heexpect that little toddler, Cain,to learn correct family valueswith a role model like him?And then there was the nasty squabbleOver the beasts and birds.OK, I admit I told Adamto name them, but – Platypus?Aardvark? Hippopotamus?Let me make one thing perfectly clear –he didn’t get that gibberish from Me.No, I don’t need a planet to fall on Me,I know something about subtext.He did it to irritate Me, just plainspite – and did I need the aggravation?Well, as you know, things went from badto worse, from begat to begat,father to son, the evil fruitof all that early bile. So nextthere was narcissism, then bigotry,then jealousy, rage, vengeance!And finally I realized, the spawn of Adamhad become exactly like – Me.No Deity with any self-respectwould tolerate that kindof competition, so what could I do?I killed them all, that’s what!Just as the Good Book says,I drowned man, woman, and child, likeso many cats. Oh, I saved a fewfor restocking, Noah and his crew,the best of the lot, I thought. Butnow you’re back to your old tricks again,just about due for another good ducking,or maybe a giant barbecue.And I’m warning you, if I have to do it again,there won’t be any survivors, not evena cockroach! Then,for the first time since it was PrimevalChaos, the world will be perfect –nobody in it but Me.”

“GERTRUDEGertrude Appleman, 1901-1976God is all-knowing, all-present, and almighty. --A Catechism of Christian DoctrineI wish that all the peoplewho peddle Godcould watch my mother die:could see the skin andgristle weighing onlyseventy-nine, every stubbornpound of flesh a smalldeath.I wish the people who peddle Godcould see her young,lovely in gardens andbeautiful in kitchens, and could watchthe hand of God slowlytwisting her knees and fingerstill they gnarled and knotted, settling infor thirty years of pain.I wish the people who peddle Godcould see the lightningof His cancer stabbingher, that small frametensing at every shock,her sweet contralto scratchy withthe Lord’s infection: Philip,I want to die.I wish I had them gathered round,those preachers, popes, rabbis,imams, priests – everypious shill on God’s payroll – and Iwould pull the sheets from my mother’s brittle body,and they would fall on their knees at her bedsideto be forgiven all theirfaith.”

“O Karma, Dharma, pudding and pieO Karma, Dharma, pudding and pie,gimme a break before I die:grant me wisdom, will, & wit,purity, probity, pluck, & grit.Trustworthy, loyal, helpful, kind,gimme great abs & a steel-trap mind,and forgive, Ye Gods, some humble advice—these little blessings would sufficeto beget an earthly paradise:make the bad people good—and the good people nice;and before our world goes over the brink,teach the believers how to think.”

“How Evolution Came to Indiana In Indianapolis they drive five hundred miles and end up where they started: survival of the fittest. In the swamps of Auburn and Elkhart, in the jungles of South Bend, one-cylinder chain-driven runabouts fall to air-cooled V-4’s, a-speed gearboxes, 16-horse flat-twin midships engines— carcasses left behind by monobloc motors, electric starters, 3-speed gears, six cylinders, 2-chain drive, overhead cams, supercharged to 88 miles an hour in second gear, the age of Leviathan ... There is grandeur in this view of life, as endless forms most beautiful and wonderful are being evolved. And then the drying up, the panic, the monsters dying: Elcar, Cord, Auburn, Duesenberg, Stutz—somewhere out there, the chassis of Studebakers, Marmons, Lafayettes, Bendixes, all rusting in high-octane smog, ashes to ashes, they end up where they started.”

“VasectomyAfter the steaming bodies swept through the hungry streets of swollen cities; after the vast pink spawning of family poisoned the rivers and ravaged the prairies; after the gamble of latex and diaphragms and pills; I invoked the white robes, gleaming blades ready for blood, and, feeling the scourge of Increase and Multiply, made affirmation: Yes, deliver us from complicity. And after the precision of scalpels, I woke to a landscape of sunshine where the catbird mates for life and maps trace out no alibis—stepped into a morning of naked truth, where acts mean what they really are: the purity of loving for the sake of love.”

“Three Haiku, Two Tanka(Kyoto)CONFIDENCE (after Bashō) Clouds murmur darkly, it is a blinding habit— gazing at the moon. TIME OF JOY (after Buson) Spring means plum blossoms and spotless new kimonos for holiday whores. RENDEZVOUS (after Shiki) Once more as I wait for you, night and icy wind melt into cold rain. FOR SATORI In the spring of joy, when even the mud chuckles, my soul runs rabid, snaps at its own bleeding heels, and barks: “What is happiness?” SOMBER GIRL She never saw fire from heaven or hotly fought with God; but her eyes smolder for Hiroshima and the cold death of Buddha.”

“Darwin’s BestiaryPROLOGUE Animals tame and animals feral prowled the Dark Ages in search of a moral: the canine was Loyal, the lion was Virile, rabbits were Potent and gryphons were Sterile. Sloth, Envy, Gluttony, Pride—every peril was fleshed into something phantasmic and rural, while Courage, Devotion, Thrift—every bright laurel crowned a creature in some mythological mural. Scientists think there is something immoral in singular brutes having meat that is plural: beasts are mere beasts, just as flowers are floral. Yet between the lines there’s an implicit demurral; the habit stays with us, albeit it’s puerile: when Darwin saw squirrels, he saw more than Squirrel. 1. THE ANT The ant, Darwin reminded us, defies all simple-mindedness: Take nothing (says the ant) on faith, and never trust a simple truth. The PR men of bestiaries eulogized for centuries this busy little paragon, nature’s proletarian— but look here, Darwin said: some ants make slaves of smaller ants, and end exploiting in their peonages the sweating brows of their tiny drudges. Thus the ant speaks out of both sides of its mealy little mouth: its example is extolled to the workers of the world, but its habits also preach the virtues of the idle rich. 2. THE WORM Eyeless in Gaza, earless in Britain, lower than a rattlesnake’s belly-button, deaf as a judge and dumb as an audit: nobody gave the worm much credit till Darwin looked a little closer at this spaghetti-torsoed loser. Look, he said, a worm can feel and taste and touch and learn and smell; and ounce for ounce, they’re tough as wrestlers, and love can turn them into hustlers, and as to work, their labors are mythic, small devotees of the Protestant Ethic: they’ll go anywhere, to mountains or grassland, south to the rain forests, north to Iceland, fifty thousand to every acre guzzling earth like a drunk on liquor, churning the soil and making it fertile, earning the thanks of every mortal: proud Homo sapiens, with legs and arms— his whole existence depends on worms. So, History, no longer let the worm’s be an ignoble lot unwept, unhonored, and unsung. Moral: even a worm can turn. 3. THE RABBIT a. Except in distress, the rabbit is silent, but social as teacups: no hare is an island. (Moral: silence is golden—or anyway harmless; rabbits may run, but never for Congress.) b. When a rabbit gets miffed, he bounds in an orbit, kicking and scratching like—well, like a rabbit. (Moral: to thine own self be true—or as true as you can; a wolf in sheep’s clothing fleeces his skin.) c. He populates prairies and mountains and moors, but in Sweden the rabbit can’t live out of doors. (Moral: to know your own strength, take a tug at your shackles; to understand purity, ponder your freckles.) d. Survival developed these small furry tutors; the morals of rabbits outnumber their litters. (Conclusion: you needn’t be brainy, benign, or bizarre to be thought a great prophet. Endure. Just endure.) 4. THE GOSSAMER Sixty miles from land the gentle trades that silk the Yankee clippers to Cathay sift a million gossamers, like tides of fluff above the menace of the sea. These tiny spiders spin their bits of webbing and ride the air as schooners ride the ocean; the Beagle trapped a thousand in its rigging, small aeronauts on some elusive mission. The Megatherium, done to extinction by its own bigness, makes a counterpoint to gossamers, who breathe us this small lesson: for survival, it’s the little things that count.”