Fresh Kills _ Baptism - Day 36

Baptism - Day 36

While I wait to graduate from this place, while I anticipate a merger with light and perhaps a greater perception of truth, a greater swifter balance between the yin and yang of the whole thing, I, realizing that this whole place fixates itself on the last thought and or thoughts at that last moment of life.

I am anxious to return, a visit in disguise perhaps to visit my son, whose face still eludes me here.

But I can see his face as a toddler at his baptism.

We had visited to my wife’s home town on the island and what I remember on Sunday morning is being rudely awoken by the sound of a very loud speaker but at some distance, like half a mile away. It is the loud speaker in the town, on the roof of an adobe church on a hill, broadcasting the mass to all who did not bother attend the service. Am I in United States territory?

Well anyway, it is like ninety-five degrees on an October Sunday afternoon and there is like a mass baptism going on with ceiling fans and open doors and windows in the tropics.

Thirty infants and toddlers were all assembled in their white uniforms and christening clothes.  That is the Prot in me calling them christening clothes. Sounds like mom-mom talking. Christening is what they do to ships, don’t you know.

Well the whole thing was going to be one long affair I could tell.  A basic dialogue with priest and congregation with the basic words of renouncing Satan whoever that is really and then one by one the kid and his or her godparents and parents and relatives approach the baptismal font for a sprinkle of water.

Just as the ceremony was about to begin, some little bastard in midst of the thirty to be baptized lets out a yell, cry, tears and then like wide fire it spread to each and every one through the ranks of babies and toddlers in the crowd.  And none of then stopped till we got out of that hellhole some two hours later.  Is that what hell is supposed to be like, hearing thirty infants and toddlers screaming their fear and disgust. Mixed with sweat and sticky clothing.

One pushes one primordial button and they all tap into that fear of the Yung uncatalogued data. What a mess is the concept of salvation.

Who is the kid that day that started the first scream of discomfort and primal fear? That Satan guy no doubt.  We have met the enemy and the enemy is we.

Welcome to the real world son.