Sometimes in Heaven when I am not doing anything important and my wife is at work or celestial yoga or whatever I am overcome with this feeling of intense possibility and wonder so blinding and strong and pervasive it literally causes the atoms of my body to ripple and untether themselves, my consciousness washed white in attempted contemplation of the limits of my happiness. I disperse, trillions of atoms whirling outward with a sound like a sigh, becoming one with the walls of my mansion, the fragrant Spring breeze, the rays of the sun (or whatever it is that lights heaven. It looks like a sun). My energy flows through every possible conduit and into any conceivable receptacle. I am part of every other person who has ever lived or died, and both outside and integral to time, which is so much different than anyone ever dreamed and yet so much simpler to comprehend once you’re free of its constraints and part of its purpose.
I spend an eternity as a grain of sand (specifically a bit of silica, though I have at other times been glauconite, or feldspar). I am simultaneously and eternally a photon as well, a lonely gauge boson of spin 1, lacking charge or mass. I am the hydrogen bond that links covalency between hydrogen and oxygen, not knotting the two but clumsily disrupting their electrons’ path enough to form water, and from that water to form life, stitching protein peptides like a subatomic seamstress until creatures so unfathomably complex not only rise but live and breed and build and shop at Target and work in 20th floor offices on Monroe in Chicago’s Loop district and turn to wave to their friends one overcast day as Autumn threatens to break beneath the weight of Winter and with one gloved hand still on the handlebars and the steam from their mouth snaking out between their grinning teeth be struck at speed by another inexpressibly complex collection of mitochondria and ribonucleic acids and thinning hair follicles and second stage pancreatic cancer driving a comparatively simple machine that some would call a ‘73 Lincoln Towncar, dragging them under its wheels with a sickening crunch and tangling the top tube of a 1982 Raleigh Pursuit around and through the brittle cage of ribs that houses a heart that still beats at a steady 110bmp most days despite being broken and untended for the better part of a year and with that crackling, wet noise still filling their ears they watch all the light, every gauge boson of spin1 with no mass and no charge flare once, just for them, and then go as black as the dead center of the pupil of Leviathan behind its unthinkable closed eyelid in the darkest and deepest trench of the undiscovered ocean only to find everything set and ready to go for dinner half an eyeblink later at a long banquet table in the most verdant field to the West of Heaven’s silver city with the vineyards stretching just past the fence toward the horizon and the smell of truffle oil and some stinky but delicious French cheese filling the air and the soft sound of bells tinkling in the distance.
This can and does happen.
Other times, though, Rosario Dawson comes home to our Heaven house and she’s all sweaty from her yoga class and I’m just sitting there in an oversized chair reading DFW’s The Pale King and drinking bourbon or maybe mincing shallots and cucumbers and dicing tomatoes while some bulgur rests on the stove, swelling and softening as it absorbs steam from the small pot with the ivory handle (part of a set my grandmother gave me last time she stopped by to smoke cigarettes and talk about the ‘20s) and there’s parsley bits all over everything and a bunch of lemon juice in a little bowl and she’ll kind of lift one eyebrow and say, “Do you have to destroy my nice clean kitchen every time you make tabbouleh?” and I go, “Listen, babe, the mess is half the fun,” and she goes to dip her finger in the lemon juice and I grab her around the waist and the small of her back isn’t just damp it’s downright wet and I love it because I know she hates me touching it and the way her mouth wrinkles in mingled embarrassment and distaste is almost as adorable as the way it smiles and the feel of her sweaty back is just confirmation that Yes, this is my wife and Yes, she is real and Yes, please, I would like to be right here forever, covered in tabbouleh bits and holding my wife and brushing all the stray strands of her hair out of her eyes and tugging the one from the corner of her mouth so I can kiss her and feel her quit pulling back gently and surrender to the fact that I don’t give a shit about her yoga sweat and in fact actually like it and she so she kisses me and then still sticks her finger in the lemon juice and puts it in her mouth and then makes this face like Damn, that’s sour and I can’t help but go, “What did you expect?” and she says, “I expected to be able to take a shower before you started manhandling me,” and I go “Manhandling?!” in this shocked falsetto voice like I’m so offended I must squawk and flutter like a girl and we are magically standing in our shower which we don’t even need because she could just think herself clean and I repeat “Manhandling?!” and I set her down and I smile and she goes, “You are, quite possibly, retarded. You know that don’t you?” and I go, “Retarded like a fox,” and she gives me this exasperated but affectionate shake of the head and I take off my perfectly fitted Richard Hell and the Voidoids 1978 concert t-shirt and there’s parsley all over my hands still and she says, “How was your day?” and I go, “Boring, but it’s much better now,” and then we shower and make love and later she helps me finish the tabbouleh, which is delicious (and healthy).
And those are two types of days I might have in Heaven.
