the wisdom of multiple gods
(elsemore in)
> No one seemed to notice Ansel walk in.
"Now this," Ansel thought to himself immediately, "is a good place." Although he wondered if he was overdressed.
Winslow stopped whistling "Me and My Arrow" and looked up from the kite that he was working on. "A very good place," he said.
"Hold it!" Said Ansel, who was starting to realize that he had much more control over his confusing new world than he'd once thought. "If you'd please back up, let's see, two paragraphs. I think you'll find that I did not say this is a good place, I thought this is a good place."
Winslow stopped whistling "Me and My Arrow" and looked up from the kite that he was working on. "Why, hello there," he said. "Please have a cookie."
Ansel saw that there was a plate of cookies on the table beside Winslow's kites. They looked like molasses. Ansel took one and was surprised, but hardly, to find that it had the word "Ansel" stamped into the bottom of it. He put it down and picked up another. On the bottom of this one was stamped a number, and the letters "lbs." Ansel noted that the number did, in fact, represent his current weight. Or, at least, the last time he was weighed. He winced when
he recalled standing on the scale next to the beautiful nurse with his bare ass peeking out the back of a powder blue hospital gown.
Ansel looked from the cookies to the kite maker and formed a question with his eyebrows. Winslow said, "Well, I suppose it means you've been here before."
Ansel was starting to get that schizo feeling again, as if multiple gods were trying to simultaneously define and invent both himself and his reality, pulling him at once in different directions according to their own whims. Geek gods all of them! But then he remembered that he was in control.
"What did you mean when you said that this is a very good place?" Ansel asked Winslow. With the hand that was not holding a half-eaten cookie, he made rapid little circles, a motion correctly interpreted as Rewind.
Winslow stopped whistling "Me and My Arrow" and looked up from the kite that he was working on. "A very good place," he said. "And very good places can be found almost anywhere." Ansel noticed his T-shirt, on which was written "My Life is Inspired by a True Story."
"Nice shirt." Ansel said.
"Nice tux," said Winslow. "Now take the Internet. Some people might tell you that it's corrupting our children, that it's a breeding ground for hate and racism."
"Nazis, porn freaks." Said Ansel.
"Right," said Winslow. "But, I would propose to you that two people could sit side by side on separate computers, one searching the internet for good and the other searching for evil, and that for every hate-filled chat room, user-group or web site that the latter discovers, the former can easily find a dozen sites that are dedicated to goodness. To poetry. To music. To helping children. To peace . . ."
"To curing diseases," said Ansel.
Winslow nodded. "I guess you see what I mean. And life is the same way. No matter that all the problems get the attention, there are good places everywhere. If you keep your heart and eyes open and follow the right links."
Ansel picked up another cookie and examined the bottom. It
read "www.verything.org."
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