Towers

I’ve lived within a tower of self-defense.

It’s not as if I pledged myself to a dark and sinister path, or expected to end up encaged. I just found something unique, and I wanted to bury it and protect it. And the lengthy progression from seed to structure was so slow - and so solitary - and so vulnerable - that either common sense or simple instinct demanded that I encircle the neat thing I found, to keep it safe.

In high school - a ruthless, single-gender Catholic-phallic pillar of the state’s capital community - the bulk of bullies wore the suits of professionals. Racist, homophobic pickers of athletic cherries excusing their crimes against reason and rationality with God’s Holy Word. Lashing innocent impressionable male minds with the sear-stripes of faith and almighty consequences of lap-running and eternal hellfire, should we ever question our faith. All I could do was hide. Eat lunch brooding in the corner. My class nickname was “Death”.

The disease, an oppressive blanket trapping toxic gasses and cooking us alive, smothered most others (save the good fortune of a hippie father). I connected with no one. And even when I knew someone who wasn’t an unwavering acolyte, their readiness to discuss blasphemous subjects and ask questions in the language of heathen lay dormant. Despite college being a much more open venue for cognitive development, I continued hiding. The scar was too deep, the risks too monumental.

But I did begin my blasphemy journey - in secret. Starting with an axe across the forehead of my old high school religion textbook, Building Your Own Conscience by William O’Malley, a priest responsible for other such literary regurgitation as Ways to Outfox Teenage Skepticism and the huge hit Redemptive Suffering, as well as ironically boasting a not-insignificant supporting role in the movie The Exorcist. This sweet small growth, which involved ink skulls, pentagrams, and eventually actual flames, watered that special seed I had found.

Sporadic paganism studies followed, and despite a rough beginning, I eventually grew to learn about other paths, both in the academic sense as well as in the practical. The Satanic Bible (and Satanic Rituals) called to me from the shadowy aisles of a used Nashville bookstore. I learned more. It made greater sense than anything I’d ever encountered (aside from rock & roll).

But even then, at age 28, the scar still throbbed. What does it even mean to live for myself? How do I trust and respect my own body, my own mind, above the enforced collective will of… everyone else? I would read a few pages and then slide it aside, then go for a walk to dilute the uncomfortable thoughts. Play basketball. Bite my lip. Twitch. Maybe let Iron Maiden sneak in quietly…

…and then I would pick it up again and read some more. This is right, I told myself. One small increment of growth at a time.

All the while, though, I was still entirely alone. 

The scientific method helped. It inoculated me from emotion during the years of isolation. I could prove how cruel and destructive “thoughts and prayers” were during the devastation of Hurricanes Katrina, Gustav, and Ida. The rise of “righteous” theocracy was annihilating nonhuman life while forcing every fertilized human chromosome to live just long enough to be slaughtered in a school.

I traveled. I learned what’s important to people who speak other languages, and then I practiced those languages. I read psychology books and sought out therapy and fastened my imagination in the stars - and my integrity on the merits of how I dared to treat - with respect and tolerance - those with whose opinions I disagreed, no matter how profoundly.

And thus, an original tower I constructed, unlike any other for miles. Encircling my saplings as they struggled through their own difficult growth in the hazy, choking atmosphere. Raising and reinforcing walls against increasing attacks of hyper-religious kin, my familial connections disappeared one by one until only my mother remained, and she from many states and lifetimes afar. And when the day came in which I chose to amputate that gangrenous limb as well - the date I selected was July 4 - I realized how high my tower had grown. And if not for that moment, I may not have gasped, for I had suddenly discovered the scope of the scar.

It wasn’t just my scar. It was everyone’s.

It is everyone’s.

When you are deep within the wound itself, at ground level, the extent of its effects are beyond the boundaries of your horizon. Even if you’re aware of the existence of the wound, you may not know how far down it reaches. You may have to do the hard work of climbing out of the chasm before you can see all of it. You have to face the fear, rise from a kneeling position, employ long-forgotten muscles, and search out footholds, identify falls, and remind yourself continually to un-bow your head so you can experience the life-affirming air that is a special phenomenon of being alive, a prize of which we are all deserving.

And this is a very deep wound.

Injured children grow up and injure their children. Terror breeds terror. Sprouts of knowledge are grotesquely uprooted, and liquid plastic faith is poured like boiling tar into the gaps.

From the pinnacle of the tower, I looked down through the smog and witnessed the perpetual chemical contamination of fields that could - and would - otherwise be rich and bountiful. I watched from behind the wall as all signs of fruit were destroyed and sunlight was suffocated, darkness enveloping the minds and wills of all below.

Or…?

A singular standout structure catches my eye, a pinpoint on the horizon. Peaked like a lighthouse slicing through fog, it calls forth a chill down my spine. Another tower.

And another.

They’re out there. Constellations in the night.

I stare in awe. After almost half a century, my relevance is suddenly clear, the worth of my efforts bathed in warmth. I glance backwards at my protected unique interior and, with a touching smile, I am finally able to whisper, “We are not alone.”

Like a revolutionary battle cry, a thousand million individual leaves roar with delight, dancing in unison from atop their own towers - the forest of massive apple trees filling our silent secret Eden.