The Strawberry
God created Man in His own indelible sacred image, and Man created God in his very best image, well, sort of, um, maybe, more actually, like a five-year old child’s hastily scribbled drawing with many Crayola crayons. Man, being an exceptionally clever beast and a paragon of the animal kingdom, who could think and reason, if it suited him, refined this image of his Beloved. From the deep recesses of his mind, he enshrined this sacred image as a very valuable picture at a golden altar in a very rich church and convinced his fellow brethren to come worship with him on a Sunday afternoon. People came and rejoiced. They upheld the sacred texts despite their different names. Soon, the coffers overflowed. Man could readily see that their God was a Great Business – in truth, the first Fortune 500 Company that appeared on the NASDAQ Index. But beyond that, God was quite equally formidable in terms of making pronouncements and changes in politics and socioeconomic matters, too.
All a person in authority had to do was to essentially say, “The reason why we are going to do X, Y, and Z is not only because it makes sense and it is verily good, but because God BELIVES SO! BECAUSE GOD SAYS SO!!” And then point to a convenient passage in a sacred text (heavily edited and redacted) to take your own peculiar ideology about enslaving black people, women, or people of a lower socioeconomic class and then make it an important law. Don’t worry, if you’re unduly concerned. Inevitably, it will pass muster with the simple-minded folk who believe that an apple is an apple and a box is a box, and more importantly everything is what is appears to be.
Of course, as everyone knows, there are disbelievers and heretics in any field. But most of these can be dealt with through shame, ridicule, and confessional booths, and if necessary, dungeons and torture, Spanish Inquisitions, and Holy Crusades.
As a result, Man becomes a fearful and dangling puppet on tenuous strings. Many become his Puppet Masters. Resultantly, he sits and believes contrived stories with the way a five-year-old does with mouth agape dressed in his pajamas at bedtime.
But the times change: The mighty river flowing from the mountains to the ocean moves swiftly and rapidly, now, in another direction. Religion began to slowly cede its throne to politicians lording over the same serfs that still begged for pittances and their daily meals. Now in this new and beguiling age, the arguments needed to be cleverer with a certain amount of sophistry and excessive verbiage. These prevaricators had court jesters and clowns juggle red and blue balls, clumsy and inordinate things called statistics, high into the air, and then afterwards, they would try and persuade and clarify the most abstruse subjects. This only led to obfuscating things even more. But the people were sufficiently entertained and even I would so far as to say, enraptured because they had Roman letters after their names: PhD., J.D. or C.E.O.
So, the Wily Politicians held power along with The Church. They became a new mafiaso.
The philistine crowds who didn’t know any better would cheer and go: “Ahhhh. That makes perfect sense! My opinion was right after all! The only crucial mistake I made was in THINKING I HAD MADE A MISTAKE.”
But this Ship of Fools otherwise known as The Earth kept sailing into dire straits. For you see, the times were very dark and true knowledge had been lost. The many people were ignorant about being ignorant. There was only the proliferation of information. In truth, there was also a lot of so-called progression. But there was a lot of regression, too. The ordinary person had problems sorting through this, like finding the wheat among the chaff; and at the same time, mankind, unfortunately, had divided itself into many tribes and was constantly raging war against itself. They couldn’t see that we were the Wiggling Fingers belonging to the same Hand, and that their own self-destruction was imminent if the gap between their technological prowess and their own wisdom and compassion grew any broader. In short, Man kept meticulously building with Lego Blocks and Play Dough from these original premises, and in some ways, he had verily built an impressive infrastructure of roads, bridges, and buildings, tele networks, the Internet, computers and supercomputers, biotechnology, nanotechnology, space technology, and military technologies.
But like I said, They Had Amnesia.
They Had Forgotten Who God Was.
For She was Life Manifested.
For She was Everyone.
Finally, God herself got fed up! She had been slaving for others all day in a hot kitchen, and it had been that time of the month, as she took off her dirty apron. Her mischievous children were messing up their Pre-Kindergarten room and enough was enough! Things had to change! They needed to change! So, one day, the fluffy clouds drifting along a rustic landscape were parted by a Big Hand that possessed, I believe, the most beautifully painted manicured nails. They wiped away the mist so that the Sun could shine, at last, down on everyone. While this extraordinary event was happening, another Big Hand brought a huge squeaky-clean china plate to a rather lonely Iowan field that had a green tractor moving along it.
Then a Red Strawberry bigger and wider than Yankee Stadium was gently lowered onto the plate itself.
The Strawberry glistened as it had just been picked fresh and washed clean. It was conically shaped with green leaves at the top and leaned towards Old McDonald’s farmhouse. Bystanders gawked like bewildered children.
“Oh, my God, are you seeing this?” “Yep.” “Unbelievable!” “Holy Shit!” “Actually, I think it’s a Strawberry.”
The media came in droves interviewing everyone.
They hemmed. Some hawed.
Others said they had seen this. Some said they had seen that. However, soon the U.S. military intervened, as expected. Was this an invasion? By an alien nonetheless? They flew their F-15’s and F 16’s, and stealth bombers on reconnaissance missions armed with nuclear bombs, if necessary. Several divisions of troops and a battalion of tanks blitzkrieged and cordoned off the entire area simultaneously moving from the north and south. Things were secured from the embarrassing fiasco that had occurred which had been undetected by NORAD. It was an unexplained phenomenon. When asked about it, NASA had contritely issued a statement that said in effect that their instruments had not detected the Big Hand on any kind of elliptical orbit or trajectory approaching earth, nor on their radio telescopes, and not on any other instruments. Other institutions when pressed for an answer, could not give a scientific explanation for what had inexplicably occurred. General Adam Filch, alongside his lower ranking officers, called the president at the White House: “The well-manicured Hand, appearing somewhat feminine in disposition, has disappeared, sir. The area has been fully secured. No further encroachment on the ground or breach of American airspace has transpired.”
General Filch nodded.
Intently, he listened to the President for several minutes before replying: “No, the Strawberry does not appear to be a Trojan Horse delivered by an alien race from an exoplanet. It just appears to be, um, just a gigantic Strawberry, sir.”
Finally, the very best academician minds were assembled from the Ivy League, Stanford University, UCS Davis, and Europe and Russia. At their televised symposium, they gave their lofty opinions as they were instantly translated into 160 languages across the entire globe. A world renown String Theory physicist, Dr. Michael Cognitiom, stated: “It does not violate the laws of physics in any manner that a Red Strawberry apparently descended onto a china plate by a large unknown hand.”
The people clamored: “Why not?”
“Well, it’s quite clear: Reality has thirteen dimensions, at least. What you ‘see’ before your eyes and ‘hear’ is an illusion. Therefore, we cannot trust our eyes nor our ears as we see only a tiny sliver of the Electromagnetic Spectrum.
“Further, if we think about it, the compelling and mysterious universe is comprised of 4% of The Periodic Table and 96% of dark energy and matter, which quite frankly, we know nothing about. Therefore, the miraculous can conceivably occur if we remember the world itself is a ghostly congregation of a myriad number of forces. With this in mind then, the following can occur: Moses can part the Red Sea, Jesus can walk on water, and indeed, Man himself can go backwards and forwards in Time. These actions do not violate any known laws in physics. As for other alien entities, from far away exoplanets, I would simply not eliminate any of their potentialities while we are deeply mired in our own particular ignorance and strife here.”
A famous psychiatrist, Dr. Nicolas Caput, stepped forward to the podium and ventured an answer: “Although I respect my colleague here, a famous physicist who, perhaps, is on the verge of combining String Theory with a Unified Law for all of life, I must advocate nonetheless for my own particular field and knowledge.
“Psychiatry clearly states that given the right situation, for instance, times that harken to Biblical times, and the end of times, and even Armageddon that mass hysteria and illusions can happen. There are many precedents for this: the Salem witch trials and the infamous War of the Worlds broadcast. Clearly, The Strawberry Incident is another case of a collective mind, which some postulate does exist, being infected by a meme, and therefore, a distortion of reality can occur.
“Some psychologists have even recently argued, although it is highly speculative, at this point, that this collective brain, also shares neurons, axons, dendrites and synapses whereby information moves along it much like in our actual physical brains, and obviously, this might account for sudden fads, trends and Zeitgeists that occur every decade with a kind of stubborn irrationality.
“Many have now said during these times when world crises are occurring that God is Dead, and if not, He is nowhere to be found. “Perhaps, The Strawberry Incident represents our atavistic urge for this kind of simpler God where divine interventions occurred and our wrongs could be righted. It is within this labyrinth-like human mind down many darkened corridors where Man, unfortunately, still wanders to defeat his own personal demons.”
At the internationally televised event, the next person that followed was Ms. Fragums, an agricultural expert, specifically, on strawberries grown in the Midwest, and who before clearing her throat solemnly announced: “The Red Strawberry in question does appear to be a genuine strawberry. At least, in terms of its appearance. The Strawberry in question does have the prerequisite redness, the texture, the green leaves or calyx, and the achenes or ‘seeds’ on the outside which are the plants ovaries. But so far, I might hastily add, we have not been given permission to closely examine and cut into The Red Strawberry with our instruments to determine its exact chemical composition.
“Essentially, we will need to examine The Strawberry further, run more tests, and write a report first.
“However, if this is resolved, other pressing questions need to be answered. For instance, how was The Strawberry grown on an exoplanet, and then flown through the vast cosmos and light years of space? Was it transported by a UFO? Did this alien species have knowledge of earth and our present agricultural conditions? If so, how was this knowledge acquired?
“Also, Mr. Chairmen, I think it’s important to note the Strawberry is not an actual berry like cranberries and blueberries. The Strawberry is NOT a fruit per se, but the receptacle that resides near the stamen. Therefore, it has been called an ‘aggregate fruit,’ in fact, and in genus, it belongs closer to the rose.
“This distinction, although academic, may prove to be very important in our assessment of this potential threat posed by an alien race.
“Essentially, we must ask ourselves: Did these aliens intend to send us a very specialized fruit, which, upon closer examination, is not a fruit at all by our scientific definitions? If they did, it would cast aspersions upon their intentions. For example, it would be like a suitor sending roses to his beloved that weren’t roses, at all.
“Also, I’d like to say while I’m at this particular podium that ….”
“Thank you, Ms. Fragums for your wise and very informed opinions. If we need any more information from you, we will give you a call soon.” A televised reporter finished the day’s rather long events.
“Well, gentlemen and ladies, The Strawberry Incident continues. Despite bringing the most intelligent minds together from academia and around the world, still there are no clear answers. Aptly, The Strawberry still sits in an Iowan field as the President of the United States and other heads of state grow extremely frustrated not knowing if this represents a harbinger of an alien invasion. Tensions still run high as U.S. military jets fly back and forth with their nuclear warheads at the ready. Of course, if this thing is just a Strawberry, then are we overreacting? Who knows? Heads of the major religions of the world from the Pope to the Rabbi of Israel to the Ayatollah of Iran seem to be just as confused as they both condemn and celebrate this event without any kind of hard evidence. Some have called for a Eucharist festival while others believe the Antichrist is involved. As might be expected, entrepreneurs have called from all over the world wanting to take this Strawberry off our beleaguered hands, and turn it into a World Heritage site. Of course, they have been respectively turned down. But we’ve had had credible lucrative offers, too, namely, from Monsanto, the world’s largest GMO, about creating crops of these strawberries around the world.
“Meanwhile, folks, we’ve all had an exhausting week. Perhaps, we need to sit back, take a deep breath, and relax as this Red Strawberry is not going anywhere as it remains securely cordoned off by the U.S. military.”
With that, the world conference ended nearly a week later with dismally poor results, and The Strawberry Incident was covered much less by the national media and then very rarely or even not at all.
But The People were famished and thirsty. They had been starved for many years. Many of The People had been through Auschwitz, Dachau and Treblinka. If they did not survive, they had been dumped into an open grave with their faces and bony skeletons and bony ribs sticking out. Some of the living with ghastly faces and sunken eyes had pencil thin arms, and what looked like wobbly arms as feet. Sharp hips could be seen poking through the decimated flesh. Many had untreatable sores. Contagious diseases. A few had bloated stomachs. Death was riding on horseback unencumbered. Taking many Souls back with Him. Many more people had given up a long time ago and possessed shrunken dark marbled eyes, looking not at this world anymore, but at a nether-world filled with ghosts and demons.
We could see them.
But, alas, they couldn’t see us.
But many of The People were angry and now congregating about. They believed that the Strawberry did not belong to any government, the military, a religion, the long sought after academicians, or any other group of importance. The Red Strawberry belonged to The People as it always had! They could not rationally explain this tenet or argument, and they had not the slightest chance of persuading anyone in power. However, this did not matter. Once and for all, The People had decided to peacefully converge by the hundreds of thousands, at first, and then even the marching millions, if necessary, armed with their own tiny forks, knives and spoons! They would bring their own china plates, and whipping cream and march en masse towards The Red Strawberry, and in a spark of great insight, they would eat The Red Strawberry themselves.
Of course, there might be many casualties.
The odds were slim to none of even getting there.
But so were other improbable death-defying odysseys.
The People believed in themselves, for once, instead of -isms, and this, that, and the other thing, and that they were on the right side of history. Resultantly, they began converging on this lone Iowan field filled with green husks and yellow corn by car, bus, train, ships, or even commandeered planes. They flew from all over the world, in fact, and inundated, and then overran Homeland Security and U.S. Customs who could not possibly cope with tens of millions of people coming from all over the world desperate to eat The Strawberry, along with heapings full of whip cream. The U.S. President didn’t want an international incident and bloodshed on his hands already dirtied by a garden variety of wars. In a desperate maneuver, he ordered the U.S. military and its NATO allies towards a fallback position, like a Mid-Western wall, like a Siegfried Line, so that they could set up an impregnable 500-mile radius around The Strawberry. The People themselves, of course, could not possibly breach what was now overtly being called by all major media outlets the Wall of Freedom and Democracy, since it was defended by two hundred thousand troops armed with the latest weaponry.
But a gigantic tsunami came comprised of millions as The People were on the move! It rolled like droplets of water over the contiguous U.S. inundating the Midwest. It was impossible to stop The People as they chanted in unison: “We shall Lead! The Leaders will follow!”
They had made up their minds that they would not be stopped by any kind of tyranny. They were marching with their recently washed and shiny spoons, forks, and knives, and were intent on eating The Strawberry.
At first, half a million people converged. They were repulsed by tear gas and even charged particle beams before they crumpled onto the ground. But then The People bravely continued marching. More falling by the wayside as troops used, at first, non-lethal means to stop the protestors and then lethal ones.
But then a proliferation of gas masks came! They were passed out by the thousands, and then EMP devices which were used to effectively neutralize the army’s initial defenses.
The People were ecstatic! Hurriedly, they began marching on as though they would get The Strawberry in a fortnight.
“Hip! Hip! Hooray! Hip! Hip! Hooray!”
“The People are on their Way!”
In another day, however, the People encountered their strongest resistance. They faced off against the American military and its NATO allies. They courageously charged, again! The military had been pushed to its brink and their generals were afraid of losing face. The command had been given to fire. By whom? Exactly when? No one knows. But the troops fired. Hundreds of thousands of protestors lay slaughtered. The President was outraged about the losses as well as Congress which had returned in session. The Supreme Court wanted to step in but needed an actual court case to uphold or to repeal its verdict.
“All over a stupid Strawberry,” one outraged Senator told the media.
“If I had my way about this, I’d just drop napalm and other incendiary bombs on that damn Strawberry, and you know what? The People would see it, and they would all go home.”
A temporary truce was called.
The G-8 leaders wanted a peaceful resolution.
The United Nations was in session, too.
At the break of dawn, however, the People commenced again towards their highly improbable journey. No matter what they wanted to eat The Strawberry as it stood alone in an Iowan field. Beyond a doubt, they felt it was destined to be eaten by them. Nothing could stop them. General Dyer, however, gave the command to shoot, once more. His call this time went unheeded. The troops threw down their powerful weapons, heavy in a bloodied field, the men abandoned their tanks, the F-15’s and 16’s flew overhead, but veered away, and failed to drop their bombs and no death rays were used as a last defense.
Slowly, The People began marching past the military, almost in an injured daze, and then down lonely roads and through the mystically blowing in the wind corn and tomato fields. At last, they began running towards the Red Strawberry, which was now in sight, and like lovers who had been lost forever, with a newfound delirium, they began cutting into The Strawberry with their tiny forks and knives. They put pieces of The Strawberry onto their china plates and began eating it with heroic amounts of whip cream. Many felt ecstatic. Others felt that they had ingested strange like magic mushrooms with the active ingredient of psilocybin. Their bodies were like metallic filaments carrying tremendous energy, or life force, and they could see fantastic colors when music was played; and many could hear their own sacred heart beats for the first time. They realized that everywhere is a church and everyone is a priest or priestess. Some even heard the music of the spheres as the celestial orbs danced around the Sun, as they were perfect embodiments of genii. Soon, their hard-intact egos diffused. They could see themselves blending in with the beautiful landscapes of the crops, the swaying trees, the azure skies and beyond the solar system into the Milky Way Galaxy itself. All in all, it was like a Claude Monet painting – “Bridge Over River” – as people’s parched, aching throats were being soothed and their tummies were filled with real food, specially made, at last. Strangely, when The People shared the Strawberry, and nearly half of it was gone, God’s hand again – and parted the clouds once more, and put more china plates down along with more Strawberries. The People rejoiced since, finally, they had a true vision of themselves and of life itself. The Moon disappeared. After a long interminable Night. Darkness and twilight were over. The Sun shone in its entire brilliance. Love became the only religion known to Man.
