I was much moved by today’s New York Times “quotation of the day,” from Halima Mohammedi, an Afghan teenager in love with another teenager, a relationship that set off a lethal riot in their village: “We are all human. God created us from one dirt. Why can we not marry each other, or love each other?”
Not a bad motto for the noble anti-miscegenation crusaders or yore as well as gay marriage advocates of today. Lets hear if for dirt, for our deep-down dirtiness, our shared ancestry in the wonderfully yucky, difference-defying dirt of the cosmos! At the risk of introducing farce into what is after all a legitimate tale of societal stupidity and human tragedy, Ms. Mohammedi’s profound lament also brings to mind, in addition to the obvious references to Romeo and Juliet, one of my all-time favorite books, Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle.
In it, we learn of a religion, Bokononism, which particularly delights me because it is doubly fictional: not only does it appear in a work of fantasy fiction, but in the telling itself, is avowedly fictitious: Verse One of the First Book of Bokonon states “All of the true things that I am about to tell you are shameless lies.” Whereupon verses 2-4 continue as follows:
“In the beginning, God created the earth, and he looked upon it in His cosmic loneliness. And God said, “Let Us make living creatures out of mud, so the mud can see what We have done.” And God created every living creature that now moveth, and one was man. Mud as man alone could speak. God leaned close as mud as man sat up, looked around, and spoke. Man blinked. “What is the purpose of all this?” he asked politely.
“Everything must have a purpose?” asked God. “Certainly,” said man. “Then I leave it to you to think of one for all this,” said God. And He went away.’
Mud—a close-enough approximation to Ms. Mohammedi’s touching and heartfelt invocation of dirt—makes another bravura appearance when we encounter “The Last Rites of Bokononism”:
God made mud.
God got lonesome.
So God said to some of the mud, “Sit up!”
“See all I’ve made,” said God, “the hills, the sea, the sky, the stars.”
And I was some of the mud that got to sit up and look around.
Lucky me, lucky mud.
I, mud, sat up and saw what a nice job God had done.
Nice going, God.
Nobody but you could have done it, God! I certainly couldn’t have.
I feel very unimportant compared to You.
The only way I can feel the least bit important is to think of all the mud that didn’t even get to sit up and look around.
I got so much, and most mud got so little.
Thank you for the honor!
Now mud lies down again and goes to sleep.
What memories for mud to have!
What interesting other kinds of sitting-up mud I met!
I loved everything I saw!
Good night.
If I were ever to subscribe to a religion (and please don’t hold your breath), it’d be mud-pies, all the way down.