chapter five

Chapter Five

            The next day presented Maxwell with more of the same.  It was Sunday, which meant several things in the House residence.  First and foremost, it meant that Maxwell had to drag himself out of bed and go to Catholic Mass.  He hadn't slept well, but when he did sleep, he kept having the same strange dream which caused him to invariably wake back up again.  The shadowy beast had once again paid him a visit inside the dreams.  Maxwell wasn't sure he really liked dreaming very much. It didn’t really matter, that box had already been opened up inside of his being.  He had a feeling it was there to stay.

            The beast did not talk to Maxwell, nor did it physically interact with him, but its presence was constant and ominous. What it did, this presence, was cause him to experience a deeper pain than he had ever felt.  It wasn’t personal agony, and it was not exactly physical pain either, but was more or less a juxtaposition of all human anguish. Even this is a limited explanation for what he was feeling, for it was all just a dream anyhow.

            Such pain was almost unbearable, and yet the entire time Maxwell felt it was absolutely necessary for him to experience this pain even though he didn't understand exactly why.  When his alarm clock finally forced him out of bed to start getting ready, he found himself in a very weird and very irritated mood.

            He wasn't sure whether it was the horrible dream that had caused him to feel so agitated, or if it was the fact that he really wasn’t looking forward to going to church.  For Maxwell, church always meant going through the motions,         

            Sit down, 

            Stand up, 

            Kneel,

            Shake hands, 

            Eat a cracker, 

            Ring the bell, 

            Amen, 

            Hallelujah, 

            Praise Jesus. 

            It was all so silly and he was so bored the entire time.  Getting up in the morning was bad enough to begin with, and to top it all he was expected to put up with going to church as well? 

            Church wasn't the only reason Sunday's were no good for Maxwell.  It was also the fact that Monday would follow, and Monday sucked just as bad as Sunday did.   He couldn't help but be apprehensive all day on a Sunday, especially during the school year.

            Begrudgingly, Maxwell got himself out of bed, got dressed in the nicest clothes he could find, which just so happened to be looking rather shabby on this particular occasion and also quite a bit too small.  He felt as though he looked homeless, a regular run of the mill vagrant.  It certainly wasn't very hip. 

Maxwell had grass stains on his only good pair of khaki pants.  He acquired the stains by playing tag after church service a couple weekends prior.  He had been playing with some older boys and he kept getting trampled by a certain high school aged jerk that thought it would be great fun if he kept making Maxwell 'it', and then proceed to chase down and tackle the smaller Maxwell as often as possible.  Too stubborn to quit, Maxwell kept on playing even though he hated it very much.  He'd never let these imbeciles know they were getting the better of him, even though they did get the better of him, routinely.

            After dressing he went downstairs.  He didn't eat any cereal of course since there wouldn't be any until they went to the grocery store.  Maxwell wasn’t very hungry in the first place.  He was too upset to eat, and so ultimately he went without.  What good would it have done anyhow, eating?  It would only prolong this torturous event called life.  He sulked his way over to the dining room table and sat down adjacent from his mother.

            Mrs. House had already put herself together.  She was reading the newspaper and drinking her morning cup of coffee.  "Why, don't you look handsome!" she said.  She was being very sincere because his mother was always straightforward when it came to just about everything.

            "I look like a freaking idiot!", exclaimed Maxwell, "This shirt is all wrinkled and it's too small and my pants are all stained up.  Can't I get some new clothes, soon?"  He figured if he was going to have to endure going to church, he might as well not have to look so hideous.  Also, it was always a good idea to drop such requests in the same context as God, as his mother was all about appearances and wanted them to look like 'perfect little Catholics'.

            "I'm afraid we're really strapped for cash right now, Maxwell.  We only have one income at the moment and we're barely scraping by as it is.  The clothes that you have on right now are fine.  We'll get you some new clothes this summer when we have a little extra money at our disposal."  It wasn’t easy for her to tell Maxwell this.  She too was a kid once, and knew what it was like being underprivileged.

            Maxwell was very well aware of their financial situation.  He didn't have many things, not nearly as much as his friend Jimmy had for sure, and he was always wearing the cheapest clothing out of all the students at school.  There were plenty of rich kids in his class, they all had designer brand clothing and puffy little sneakers.  Some of them even had cell phones!  Sixth graders with cell phones!  Maxwell's mother didn't even own a cell phone for goodness sake.  This just reaffirmed to Maxwell how much he was worth as a person, which apparently was very, very little, and how life really wasn't very fair at all.  To make matters worse, these kids had never even worked a day in their life!  Why were they so daggone special that they deserved all these nice things in the first place?  Why'd they not ever get picked on for being lame?  What had they ever done to warrant such special treatment to begin with?  Every day it felt like he was playing the lottery, and every day he was ending up wasting his time and money.

          Maxwell and his mother got in the car and drove to the chapel.  It was actually a very warm day outside, a lot more like spring than winter for a change, and the snow appeared to be slowly melting away.  His eyelid was still twitching nonstop.  Such things were never lost on his mother. 

            "I scheduled you an appointment with a doctor tomorrow, we need to find out why you're blinking so much."  What Maxwell hadn't realized was that his mother had scheduled an appointment, not with a regular doctor, but rather a psychiatric one. 

            They arrived at church a few minutes late as usual and everyone was watching them as they shimmied down the aisle looking for a seat.  Maxwell, of course, was embarrassed by this.

            There weren't very many people who attended mass because most of the locals were Protestant as opposed to being Catholic.  The church itself was very small though, so it always seemed like there were more people there than there actually were.  They were singing the hymn, 'Are You Washed in the Blood of the Lamb'. 

            That's so disgusting; Maxwell thought to himself, Who in the world seriously takes a bath in someone else's blood?  Haven't these people ever heard of AIDS, or the swine flu, or whatever the heck is going around these days?  Why in the world would someone ever want to be washed in blood at all?

            The hymn would ultimately bring them to communion.  For Catholics, this means eating the body and drinking the blood of Christ.  So we're supposed to believe that this wafer is literally the flesh of Jesus Christ?  Of course this makes us all cannibals, but no one seems to find this somewhat disturbing?  How retarded!

            He just couldn't understand what made people fall for this garbage.  Did I miss the memo?  How can wine and a cracker turn into human flesh and blood for Christ's sake?  That's totally and physically impossible in every way.  This can't actually be a magic show can it?  I'd be having a lot more fun if it were, he thought.

            And so it went for Maxwell, his thoughts ever spinning, for he thought about all sorts of things which ultimately caused him to not pay attention to the service whatsoever. 

            He began wondering what Premi was doing at that very moment.  He had no idea that she was on her way to the airport that very second or that she'd be back in India in the next couple of days.  He was thinking about what she'd said about how his eyes had been 'expressing'.  This was all very cryptic to Maxwell.  His eyes continued to twitch in a relentlessly.  He was in his own little world until for no reason whatsoever he remembered one of the dreams he'd had from the other night.  There was a girl that had been trying to say something to him, and then, ...

            'Snap!' 

            In one brief, revelatory moment, Maxwell realized that somehow Premi was supposed to be the girl from his dream.  He focused his concentration as much as he could in order to somehow make more sense out of it.  He closed his eyes, and there was an audible squeak from his grinding teeth.  Sweat began to trickle down his face.  His eyelids continued to do their side show circus act.  In the dream, the words seemed to come out of Premi's mouth but they fell to the ground before they could ever be heard by Maxwell.  This had to be symbolic of his inability to understand Premi.  Since she hadn't mastered English, it was very difficult to understand what she'd meant by 'his eyes were expressing'.  Somehow it was up to Maxwell to make these words come to life.  He had to find a way to figure out what this 'missing message' really was.

        

            Father Wimbly was at the altar lighting candles while Maxwell was thinking of these things.  There were probably twenty candles or so, and they flickered and flamed while a tiny stream of black smoke wafted overhead.  Again, and for no reason at all, Maxwell tuned in to the service.  Wimbly strolled from the candles over to the podium to begin his homily.

            This should be pretty interesting, Maxwell thought.  Father Wimbly seemed to always look so uncomfortable in front of everyone.  Why'd he decide to do something like this for a living if he was going to be such a nervous person to begin with? 

            He stammered through a few sentences, then finally got himself going, "I'm going to try to keep this short and sweet," he said, "There's a rather important basketball game on at noon and I don't want to miss the tip-off."  The congregation laughed at this.  Maxwell had never heard laughter in church before, and he'd certainly never seen this side of Father Wimbly before.

            He continued, "The most important thing that we as Christians need to remember is this, 'Christ communicates his holy and sanctifying spirit to the members of the Holy Body of Christ.'  What does this mean to us?  If you have accepted the fact that Jesus died on the cross, that he was Holy, and that he arose from the dead to sit at the right hand of God the Almighty Father, then you've already overcome the obstacle of physical death.  You are now invincible.  Anything is possible, including that of life everlasting.  If you choose not to fight your faith, which is innate in everyone," he looked directly at Maxwell, "then you'll have the power of the Infinite Holiness guiding your way in your spiritual growth and in every other possible way as you journey through this physical world."

            And that, to Maxwell's great surprise, was the conclusion of Father Wimbly’s homily.  Maxwell figured he must've cut at least ten minutes out of his average homily time, which normally indicated that he'd be getting home a little early, but this wasn't foremost on Maxwell's mind.  It was the message that Wimbly had just passed on that was really grabbing his attention.

           

            Soon after communion, the service drew to a close.  On the way out, Maxwell was just about to shake hands with Father Wimbly when he had the sudden overwhelming compulsion to ask him if he'd like to talk, (about what Maxwell wasn’t even sure yet) and Wimbly, being the chatty Cathy all of a sudden was altogether more than happy to oblige.  Maxwell’s only previous experience with Wimbly consisted a handful of meaningless conversations including such things as, "how are you, Father?" and, "the weather sure seems nice today," and of course, "I really enjoyed your service today, Father."  Mainly, it was just a bunch of hackneyed small talk and not much more.

            Father Wimbly didn't seem even remotely surprised when Maxwell made such an unusual request, and he immediately asked Mrs. House to excuse the two of them so that he could talk with the boy in private.  Maxwell didn't really know what he wanted to say, and Father Wimbly would surely be missing his game to talk to him, but somehow he didn't seem to be the slightest bit upset about this. 

            Once they entered the rectory, Father Wimbly inquired, "What's on your mind, Max-man?”  There was certain palpable warmth that now radiated from him.  Maxwell could even detect a faint glow coming from him, much like the one that seemed to emanate from Premi Chandrasekar, but it was of a different design and had a completely different hue. The aura didn't seem to freak Maxwell out in the slightest.  He was actually getting used to all of the very strange things that were happening around him lately.        

            "Well, sir, I don't really even know why I asked you to talk to me."  As he said these words, he was overcome by an impossibly strong compulsion and couldn't help but blurt out the following, "I'm pretty sure I'm not a Catholic.  In fact, I don't even think I really believe in God at all!"  Maxwell was completely appalled at what he'd just told this man of the cloth, but once again, Father Wimbly just smiled down at him, seemingly unaffected.

            They sat in brief silence until Wimbly once again started talking, "You have no idea how refreshing it is to hear someone say that!"

            Again, a moment of silence fell between them.  The forthcoming response was something that Maxwell wouldn't have imagined in a million years coming from a man who'd believed what he'd preached so devoutly.  Father Wimbly broke in, "I used to have the same doubts as you have right now, Maxwell."  This completely shocked Maxwell, yet still Father Wimble continued, "I didn't always have plans of joining the priesthood, you know.  In fact, I went to college to study philosophy, if you can believe that!  When I was about twenty years old, I had several strange experiences that would end up changing my mind and the entire course of my life afterwards.  Once, an entity that I knew could only be that of the Holy Ghost himself appeared to me in a vision, and told me what I needed to do with my life."

            Maxwell seriously had his doubts about whether Father Wimble had actually been visited by some kind of strange spirit, "Couldn't this have just been a hallucination caused by some strange chemical reaction inside your brain?," he asked.  Perhaps you hit the pipe too many times in college, he wondered.  

            Father Wimble laughed and nodded his head in response, "Sure, I suppose.  Such a thing is entirely possible.  You seem to be a bright kid, so I won't talk down to you about any of this.  To put it bluntly, yes, it could've been a hallucination, but what, may I ask, is real?  And, just so you know, I have never done drugs.  Now, is your thought of this chair more real than this actual chair?"  He pointed to a chair that was sitting right next to them.

            Maxwell didn't know how to answer this question.  He honestly had no idea. "I'd have to say the chair is more real because I can feel it, and I can actually sit in it as well."

            Old Wimbly only smiled and then continued, "That's fair enough, and perhaps to you the chair really is more real, but for me, the thought in my head is just as real if not more real than the chair, mainly because I can feel my thoughts and can 'try them on' so to speak, and they can physically alter my direction in life just as much as the chair can physically change my motion, which actually happens to be created by something called gravity when I sit down on top of it."

            This was beginning to become an interesting idea to Maxwell, although he had the perfect response already prepared, "Okay, true, but what about when you aren't thinking of that particular thought?  How do you know the idea exists if you haven't thought of it or felt it before at all?"

            Father Wimbly didn't miss a beat as he quickly replied, "well how do you know the chair exists in the first place if you can't even see it?"

            "Because I saw it once before, in the past, and I remember the chair being there.  Of course its there, I know it to be true!  It doesn't just disappear like that!"

            "But how can you say so for sure?  You can't always see it!  Let's say you're in another room.  You can't touch it and you certainly can't see it in that case.  You have no way of knowing that the chair exists at all!  You can't prove the chair's existence, so all you're left with is a memory, or just an idea that the chair exists.  You can never be totally certain, but this idea is still inside your head, and an idea is only a thought.  Doesn't it now make sense that the idea is becoming more fundamental than the actual object?  Someone had to think of the idea of the chair before they were able to build it!"

            This was an interesting perspective that Maxwell had never thought of before.  He had to admit that Wimbly definitely had a point, "I think I see what you're saying, but I'm still not completely understanding."

            "And that's completely fine," Father replied, "You have to learn to listen to your heart.  Plato once said, 'know thyself'.  This is some really good advice.  Descartes said, 'I think, therefore I am'.  That was a very powerful idea at the time, perhaps a bit flawed, but powerful nonetheless.  He was actually being a bit redundant on the subject.  Thought is the same as being, just as being is the same as thought, so he might've been more accurate if he'd just left it at, 'I think'."

            Maxwell was trying to keep up, but Father continued on, "Have you ever heard of Carl Jung?"

            Maxwell shook his head.  “Negative…”

            "Jung postulated that there exists this enormous human subconscious reality, much larger than that of our own.  Do you know what I mean when I say the word subconscious?"  

            Maxwell nodded somewhat reluctantly.  He thought he knew what it meant at least, "Isn't it like the thoughts that we don't actually know are in our heads?"  

            "That's pretty accurate, Maxwell.  More specifically, it includes everything that falls below our conscious thought.  It's compared to an iceberg.  You can only see about ten percent of the entire body of an iceberg from above the water.  The other ninety percent is completely submerged.  In fact, you can think of intelligence as an endless ocean.  The seawater is like the vast subconscious reality inside all of us.  Water's merely made up of hydrogen and oxygen, while sea water has trace amounts of carbon and nitrogen along with sodium and a few other chemicals.  Consciousness is like a school of swimming fish in a sea waiting to be plucked from the water.  What are fish but complex, coherent amalgamations of water and other elements organized by a vast and magnificent intelligence," he paused for effect, "This is where it all starts to get weird."

            "I think it's already crossed that line for me," Maxwell remarked. 

            "This subconscious 'stuff' is so big that it encompasses all of humanity.  It extends from you to me to everyone else in the entire world.  And somehow this sub-conscious is more fundamental than consciousness, for every conscious thought ‘arises’ from the sea of unconscious thought below.  Anyhow, Jung referred to it as the human collective unconscience.  It's a 'field', for lack of a better term, from which all intelligent thought arises.  It's a place, he said, where all thoughts come from.  So it'd naturally be much larger than that of our own consciousness, in which yours is truly unique to you and mine, truly unique to me."

            Maxwell thought this sounded at best like pseudo science, but kept this to himself, "I thought our thoughts were supposed to be produced by our brain, not some invisible field that extends throughout all of humanity."

            "Neither of those ways have truly been proven, scientifically.  No one fully understands the human brain, or brains of any kind for that matter, all the way from mammalian brains, down to that of the smallest insects.  We have thoughts, and we can see activity on things like EEG's and MRI's, but no one can be completely certain that such images produced by these machines are actual reproductions of actual thoughts.  Correlations can be made, but that doesn't necessarily mean causation.  It could be that the brain is simply a receiver, tuned into some kind of mysterious consciousness that pervades the whole of the space-time continuum, and that the electrical activity of the mind is simply the brain functioning as this receiving device.  In this scenario, which is every bit as plausible as 'consciousness arising from electrochemical activity', the brain itself is not the place where conscious thought arises."

            Maxwell was very intrigued about what Wimbly was trying to say.  It was even more fascinating that this religious person knew so much about science.  He wanted to talk more, but he remembered Father Wimbly had wanted to watch his basketball game this afternoon.  "I can't talk much longer; I don't want you to miss any more of your game than you probably already have."

            Father Wimble laughed at this, "so you really were paying attention!"

            "Of course I was paying attention, father," he replied, laughing, knowing full well that he rarely paid any attention at all. 

            "Most people don't really pay attention.  They're always either thinking about their bills, what they plan on doing after the service, or about how much they'd rather be somewhere else," he chuckled. 

            Continuing the conversation from earlier, Father Wimbly explained to Maxwell, "Sad as it is, I truly believe most people live inside an endless cycle of incessant mind garbage.  Our minds can be like broken records, always thinking and chattering away about some troublesome thing.  Is this really any way to live?  If these people could just turn off the record player for only a moment, they'd be able to truly experience the unfathomable peace of God."  He closed his eyes at this and took several very deep and very slow breaths.  Then he smiled and opened his eyes again, "Listen, before you go, I just want to tell you that it isn't wrong to have doubts.  For me, I feel God's presence to be a fact of life; to each his own I always say.  We all perceive reality differently, each and every one of us.  All is relative to the observer, or at least that's what Einstein thought.  Everything is completely relative to everything else depending of course on where you are, individually, inside this space-time continuum. 

            He paused for a moment, and then continued.  “Just do me a favor, Maxwell, always question things, nurture your imagination, and never sit down on your beliefs as if they were absolute.  Life takes you in many different and unique directions, so keep an open mind as well as an open heart.  I try to do that with myself every single day of my life.  I can honestly say that this is what I truly believe, and that this is what I really needed most of all today, right at this very moment in fact!" 

            "Things change over time, Maxwell, just as thoughts and belief systems evolve over time.  Just never forget, 'know thyself, and to your own self be true'."