Apocalypse of Jude

Caul and Jude leave the house unlocked on its hill to haunt the air as they make their way down to the gleaming white mall below, with its towers boasting of Jerusalem, Athens, Alexandria, Vienna and London on its five corners, all far away places of mystery for those who people the stream of vehicles going in and out of it, like ants weaving steadily in and out of a nest. Caul pulls into this stream of vehicles, moves into parking lot avenues, searches then dives and stills the car. Both he and Jude wonder dazed into the emporium, a vision taking Caul as he passes through its doors. Both walk straight and people, each one with eyes cast upon the ground, part. Through this walled city’s tiled thoroughfares of contrived harmony, the constant resonance of people’s minds, voices and bodies mingle to create a haunting oceanic music of lament and toil in Caul’s mind.

“Look at them. All buying into what they’re told. You were right Caul. I had not thought that death held so many. The only thing they know is the craving lust that possessed them when they drank the maddening wine of the whore’s adultery.”

As they work their way through the masses to the circular heart of the mall, Caul becomes aware of more and more money changing hands, the merchants growing rich with this place’s growing lust for luxuries.

On their left opens the semicircular front of a department store and its cosmetics counters. Both Jude and Caul see Janice in the middle of the floor, clothed in a scarlet suit, glittering with jewellery and in her hand the effigy of a golden chalice, the marketing tool of a fragrance called Mystery to which she is unsuccessfully inviting arriving patrons to savour, or buy. Upon her, Caul sees piled us as if to heaven, deeds of her darkened soul, and above an angel about to pay her back by mixing her a double portion of her own wine.

“As much glory and luxury that she gives herself, double will be her torture and grief. She says I am a bride and a queen and will never mourn. But in one hour her plagues will overcome her and she will burn. My people need to come out of her, so that they will not share in her doom.”

The world is suddenly normal again. Jude looks with bizarre curiosity at Caul.

“You okay?”

Habitual hands rub Caul’s face, knows it wasn’t, but decides to say so anyway.

“Weird flashback. That’s all.”

They enter an open faced restaurant opposite the department store, ordering simply two beers. The waitress’s face grimaces before she walks away.

“She must think we’re bastards?”

“Aren’t we?”

“I try not to be.”

“Good for you.”

They cast casual glances around, getting a lay of the place.

“I guess I owe you an apology for my episode last night.”

Caul nods. “Just promise me you’re going to get help for the coke.”

Jude just laughs and lights a cigarette.

“That’s rich coming from someone who suffers flashbacks.”

He offers Caul a cigarette, who hesitates for a moment then takes one. They sit back in silence smoking, listening to the melancholy words of an overplayed pop song, the words of which a few faces around them are mouthing. Jude smirks, then turns to Caul.

“You say you want to find God. Everything we are is cultural. Everything we do. Everything we say. No matter how subtle, at some point everything can be ascribed to the nurture of our culture in general and all the permutations within it.”

Caul wanders through the haunting images he has just seen trying to find their nurture.

“So you’re saying, it’s impossible to find God because whatever God is, is mediated?”

“Exactly. We are in a Babylonian captivity. Held captive by the culture. The system. Babylon.”

“Never quite thought of it like that.”

The furrow of Caul’s brow reveals his brain trying to tie all he has come to realise together with as much honesty as he can understand.

“But if God exists, he is not dependent on culture for revealing himself. Even if that revelation was mediated by the culture, it doesn’t deny the fact of the revelation itself. If you believed it, God could just reveal himself to you in and through the culture couldn’t he?”

“That would make it a personal revelation.”

Caul allows his pause to grow pregnant. “Yes.”

Jude snatches.

“Who are you to believe you can bring yourself to some righteous standing and come into God’s presence without the mediation of the Church, and then have a personal revelatory affair with Him?”

Caul lets his slowness drag on a cigarette.

“But isn’t that exactly what you’ve retreated to, ever since you left the Church? Made the existence of God a personal affair, to be dealt with as you so wish.”

“That’s only because the Church can no longer mediate God.”

“Well then, we’re in the same spiritual boat.”

Jude leans forward, slight indignation in his breast.

“Now listen my dear fellow. I’ve been baptised and confirmed by the Church. This they tell me is enough to ensure my place in heaven. Beyond that God remains an incomprehensible mystery that the Church pretends to hold onto but can’t communicate. So instead they propagate the mystery in their own lust for power. That’s my spiritual anguish. You on the other hand, whether you like to admit it or not, proceeded from a stock, who, after emptying God of awe and magnificence, slowly eroded Him from existence. Your culture orphaned you spiritually and now you collectively don’t know where to turn anymore. That’s your spiritual anguish. No wonder your parents became pagans.”

Caul swallows the insult.

“But you’ve missed the point. Both cultures are still attempting to have a personal relationship with God by themselves, only both cultures have turned God into a-whatever-you-call-it-beyond-thing experienced only in our minds, but not with each other. They both believe, but they don’t belong to the same belief. They don’t belong to the same belief because they don’t know what to believe, and they don’t know what to believe because they reject the one institution that can keep the line between good and evil clear. And this is what both our cultures, cultures that have both proceeded from the Church, have culminated in and led us to believe. But it just seems like one big fallacy to me. God’s revelation exists despite what our culture might choose to make us think regarding that revelation.”

Both sink back into their seats, drawing the last of their cigarettes, to let the tension go. Jude leans forward, stubs his butt out and offers Caul another cigarette in a hand outstretched across the dark table. There is lighting and inhaling and exhaling, then words.

“We’re living in a dark ages, Caul, and they’re getting darker. And we’re clinging to the remnants of our reason getting more and more mystical and cutting ourselves away from reality. Why do you think there are so many religious nuts running around. And you’re going to become one of them if you’re not careful.”

Caul ashes his cigarette and Jude looks at him, smoke escaping his nose, before Caul commences.

“I’m already one of them. I’m having visions.”

Jude just throws his head back and chuckles.

“Oh great, too much acid for you.”

The seriousness does not leave Caul’s face.

“They’re not flashbacks Jude. They’re too constructed. Like they have a narrative. And the images are Biblical. I just had one as we were walking through the mall.”

Jude tries to tame the bemused ridicule that surfaces within him.

“The Biblical images are culturally copyrighted into us Caul. We just talked about that.”

But Caul is determined to finish.

“It’s like I can be totally occupied with this reality, but then suddenly I’m looking on at everything from this other reality that I can’t break out of even though I want to. Do you know how scary that is? That’s why I’m trying to find out if God reveals Himself so that He can be communicated with Jude. Because I want to know if God’s trying to talk to me, or if I’m going crazy.”

Jude’s silence gives his verdict. Caul peers deeply into Jude.

“You’re right to berate me for my sudden religious leanings Jude. And right now they are something I irrationally cling onto. But that’s all of us. None of us have anything to take the place of our own internal irrational logic. I look at our culture and its like we’re just biding time waiting for a new system to come along and worship that which will give us peace of mind again. But whatever that is will just be deception as well. I don’t want to be deceived again. I’m petrified of that Jude. I want to know that whatever I end up building my life on, I want it to be something that even when I am deceived by this culture as to its nature, at least I know my basis is solid and I just have to return to that. None of this shifting sands of human thought. Can you see why now, my growing fascination with God?”

Jude is staring around him and suddenly hating everything. He can see the amphitheatre of the mall and around it shops arrested in plastic green trees, shiny tinsel and golden thread and in the centre a man dressed in red surrounded by children, and he hates it all, rising vehemence beginning to throttle him.

“You want Biblical images Caul, I’ll give them to you. This town has gone the way of Cain, Caul. It has gone after the profit Balaam sought, and because of this, many in this town have followed into Korah’s rebellion of seeking to declare holy what God has declared unclean. And as a result we have become like clouds without rain blown by the wind; trees for harvest, but without fruit and uprooted, twice dead, never having produced goodness. We are like the foaming waves of a sea in storm. We are wandering stars and blackest darkness has been reserved for us forever. God has abandoned us.”

Caul lowers his eyes from Jude’s glare.

“I think I’m willing to take the chance He hasn’t.”

The shrug of Jude’s shoulders is mixed anger and indifference.

“Well, its your life. As for me, this whore of a system is just going to have to do away with its velvet glove and pull out the iron fist to put an end to all this crap. Yes sir. I know I’m going to die in agony, but at least I’ll have the satisfaction of having refused to let it use my life potential so it could use it at my expense.”

Jude looks again over the amphitheatre, there suddenly being a torrent of words coming up from deep within.

“But all these people here that walk her wide, glittering thoroughfares and share in her luxury, when they see her burning, they will weep and mourn over her demise. And all those that sell her luxurious wares will weep and mourn as well. Their gold, silver, precious stones and pearls, fine linen, silk and scarlet cloth and things made from ivory, rare wood, bronze and marble will be worthless. Their cinnamon and spices, their incense, frankincense and myrrh, the wines and the olive oil, all the fine flour and wheat will all have rotted. And all their cattle and sheep, and horses and carriages, and souls of men that they enslave for the production of their luxuries will be wasted. Because no one will buy or sell these things anymore. As for all the kings who shared her body, they will see in one hour her power be stripped from her, leaving her naked and to be burnt. And they will cry out their woe.”

Jude stops abruptly as Caul stares amazed before the verbal vision.

Wasteland Mix: Fragment 96