Crazy is Crazy

Religious believers who are moderate to progressive politically and "moderate" religiously, who claim to be advancing a middle way between fundamentalism and what they claim is the equally-extremist pole of "fundamentalist" atheism, are very reluctant to openly criticize crazy stuff like this when it isn't accompanied by an overt right-wing political agenda -- indeed, they often even publish and otherwise support crazy religious rantings. They refuse to acknowledge how very close this sort of thing is to the right-wing stuff and how both come directly from their own Holy Books. They refuse to acknowledge their responsibility for the crazy religious thinking they condemn when it's right-wing, and smile at it, perhaps an embarrassed smile, perhaps not even always that, when, as apparently in this case, they judge it to be not right-wing, and therefore harmless. Crazy is crazy. Religious moderates need to see their role in fostering religious extremism.

Draft of a Novel, ch 2, pt 1

And so a protective detail was assigned to Michael, in addition to the one now protecting Giuseppe. It was thought best to separate Michael and Giuseppe for the moment. The most urgent task right now, besides protecting the two of them, was to figure out what Seraphiel wanted with Michael. For the time being Michael was being kept in a dimension not accesible to humans, with a guard of about twenty angels, most ranked higher than Michael and more powerful than him. It was a strong guard, a sign that the situation was being taken seriously. But it was also much simpler than keeping him among the billions of humans, hiding him among them like a needle in a haystack. If anyone had assumed that Michael could possibly have been important enough to the other side for them to start a full-scare war over him, then they would've hidden him among the humans, and kept moving him from place to place. Here the other side could see him and his guard quite plainly.

In such a situation some angels might have been insulted to be held in plain view, in open acknowledgment of their lowly position in the grand scheme of things. Not Michael. He had no illusions about his place in the world. Besides, he was bothered about something else right now: Ellen kept laughing at him. She had been one of the dozen who showed up in Giuseppe's kitchen when he called, she had come with Michael straight from there to here, and ever since his stuttering attack when Giuseppe said that Seraphiel was looking for him, Ellen had not stopped giggling.

Michael liked Ellen. A lot. He was heterosexually oriented, and he had had a big crush on her for about a century now, he just found her to be very, very beautiful and witty and smart and wonderful. He hadn't told her yet about his feelings, but he hadn't been in a relationship with any other female angels in the last century, either. He was taking his time.

And now here she was laughing in his face for being afraid, and mocking his stutter in front of all the other angels. "Uh-eek! Ick! Ack Ook!" she said, holding her side which apparently was starting to hurt now, because she had been laughing so hard for so long. "You sounded just like a character in an old Warner Bothers cartoon, when they start to sputter and babble in fear!" She wiped a tear from her eye. "Aw, don't be cross! It was adorable!" She stepped in close and squeezed his arm and rested her head on his chest as a few last waves of laughter came out of her. And suddenly Michael wasn't annoyed at all anymore, not in the slightest. Now he blushed and was perfectly happy, and felt that his feelings for her must be perfectly obvious to her and to anybody and everybody else who was paying the slightest bit of attention to them, and he didn't care, he wasn't the slightest bit embarrassed any more, only perfectly happy. Just as he had been at many other moments in her presence over the course of the last century.

He didn't know if she felt romantically attracted to him. But it was obvious that she liked him at least a little. She didn't have to spend nearly this much time with him. He put a hand on her back as she rested her forehead on his chest, spent from the laughter, and he kissed her on the top of her head. He had never kissed her lips. He was very happy. She seemed very happy, too. Happy to be with him? or was she just a happy, well-adjusted angel generally? He didn't know, and he wasn't worried about it. Generally speaking he wasn't worried about much when she was around.

Now, to be sure, there was this alarming business with Seraphiel. A recording angel, sent from somewhere up in the higher ranks, was there waiting to interview Michael, to open the investigation officially. He sat down across from Michael, Ellen sat down beside Michael and squeezed his hand reassuringly, the official's eyes went back and forth several times between Michael and Ellen, he looked as if he might be considering asking who she was or asking if he could speak to Michael privately.

Draft of a Novel, ch 1, pt 3

Michael took a few steps through dimensions which people can't see or feel and few people can imagine clearly, and dropped back into our three dimensions down the block from his friend Giuseppe's apartment outside of Rome. Giuseppe seemed to be at home almost all the time, his apartment was usually relatively quiet and dark, Giuseppe rarely entertained and didn't seem to mind when Michael came over, and he had a couch. When Giuseppe let him in Michael headed straight for that couch, and was asleep before Giuseppe could fetch a pillow and a blanket.

When he woke up there was a pillow under his head and a blanket over him. He felt his cheek: the stubble was gone. Giuseppe hadn't shaved him while he slept. The act of sleeping grooms angels. Michael had gone to sleep feeling grimy and unkempt; now he felt clean and neat. Besides his stubbly beard having gone away, his hair was now clean and neatly arranged, and his fingernails were shorter again.

His clothes, however, were of this Earth, and they still bore the funk of his late exhaustion. He heard Giuseppe moving dishes in the kitchen. "Can I get a change of clothes from you?" he called out.

"Of course, my friend. You know you can. You don't have to ask."

"Thank you." Michael went into Giuseppe's bedroom and began to change.

Giuseppe called out, "Just put your dirty things in the hamper, like before."

"No. I think this time I'll take them with me and throw them away in a dumpster. Trust me, I don't think you want them, they're past washing." Michael put the dirty clothes in a bundle in the hall outside the apartment door. Stretching luxuriously in Giuseppe's fresh clean clothes, he came into the kitchen and asked, "How long was I out?"

"About twelve hours."

"No."

"Yes. You arrived a couple of hours before I went to bed, and I've been up again for a while."

"Well, I feel wonderful."

And then he perceived that Giuseppe, on the other hand, did not feel well at all. Whatever the problem was, Giuseppe did not seem inclined to talk about it, or to let Michael see that he was upset. Instead he said, "I'm having coffee, will you join me?"

"No, thanks." They both were silent for a while, until Michael said, "C'mon. I can see auras. I'm empathic to a certain degree. It's my job to know when people are troubled. Are you going to tell me what's wrong, or make me spend five minutes figuring it out myself?"

Giuseppe would not meet Michael's gaze. Finally he said, "Seraphiel was here to visit me."

Angels' bodies are different from ours, they're much more durable in most ways, immensely impervious to heat and cold, for example, but an angel can still shiver from fright. Sometimes, if they're very afraid, they'll even stutter a little. "N... Nuh... nu-nu-nu... ayyehh. eh-eh-eh, " Michael said. He could feel his pulse pounding in his ears and his throat and his chest and his legs. He took a minute to calm himself, and then asked Giuseppe, "Ssss-Ssss-Seraphiel of Toledo, you mean? Seraphiel from Spain? Was here in this apartment?"

"Yes."

"But you're not at all inclined to..." As with some humans, moral relativism had spread among some angels. Michael was generally inclined to speak of the practical, concrete implications of given actions, and not to use words like "evil," which traditionally had been applied to this Seraphiel, who was named after the first Seraph and who had been causing trouble in Spain for several thousand years, was rumoured to know Satan personally, who according to some was part of the original Legion who followed Satan out of Heaven, Seraphiel who was seven feet tall and very thin and wiry and had a greasy black pointed beard and fangs, actual fangs like a vampire...

It was rumoured that Seraphiel had not slept in more than three thousand years.

Michael called out the news, and in the twinkling of an eye a dozen angels were crowded into Giuseppe's tiny kitchen. "We'll protect you, " Michael told Giuseppe. "We will guard you."

"I know you will," Giuseppe said.

There was something Giuseppe still had not said. This still did not make sense at all. As Michael had been about to say, Giuseppe was not at all inclined to the sort of thing Seraphiel had to offer: material riches and power, mostly, to be given to those humans willing to follow Satan and Seraphiel and others on their side, and to engage in treachery and violence, to fight and distress their fellow human on behalf of these disgusting, dirty angelic beasts. Giuseppe was one of those rare humans would could see angels on both sides, but he saw the Satanic ones only out of curiosity and the desire for knowledge, not because he was tempted to work for them. And so, conversely, an angel like Seraphiel would not be tempted to waste his time on Giuseppe. Finally, Michael got Giuseppe to meet his gaze. "What am I missing here?" he asked.

"Seraphiel wasn't here for me, " Giuseppe said. "He was looking for you."

"Ittuh.. ittuh, Fffff... ffff... Ahhh, yahhh.... N-, nnn-, nn-, n..."

Chapter 2, Part 1

Draft of a Novel, ch 1, pt 2

"Can I ask you a few questions before you go?"

"Sure."

"What's your name?"

"Michael."

"Oh my. Are you the Archangel Michael?"

Michael laughed. "No. No, no, no. I'm quite a few ranks below the Archangels. In fact, I can't remember whether I've ever actually seen an Archangel."

"So, were you named after the Archangel?"

"Yes, I was. A lot of angels are named Michael. A lot of us are named Gabriel, and there are a lot of Raphaels und Uriels and Remiels, too."

"So, there are seven Archangels?"

"Twenty-five, at least. Sorry, I'm bad with numbers, I don't know the exact number. But it's a lot more than seven now. There were seven for a few centuries, and then more got promoted."

"How many angels are there altogether?'

"There are thousands who are based here on Earth."

"Based on Earth -- do you mean that there are others on other planets?"

"Who knows? I don't. You humans, you wonder whether there are creatures like you on other planets, and we angels, we wonder too."

"So you're not all-knowing?"

"No, no! Not even close!" Michael rubbed the stubble on his chin nervously, hoping she wasn't going to ask him any questions about God.

"But you knew about me and Joe."

"It's our job to help people out, to the best of our ability. Really, people can help each other about as well as we help people. They just, um... They just don't, sometimes. People can see that you and Joe would be a good couple. Another human could've given you a little nudge toward each other like I just did. But nobody was taking care of that, so it came down to me."

"Well, thank you very much."

"It's my pleasure, really. Always glad to be of some use."

"So, are you a Cupid?"

"No. no, just a regular all-purpose angel."

"Heh. Yeah, I thought you looked a little big for that. So, where are your wings?"

"Ah, that's a very common misconception. We don't have wings. There are creatures from other mythologies that have wings. Ancient Egyptian deities, Mesopotamian beings. People started to assume that we do too."

"You said mythologies. Do those Egyptian and Mesopotamian creatures exist?"

"I don't know. All I can tell you for sure is that I can't remember ever seeing any of them. Or any Cupids, either."

"I see."

"But speaking as a creature that's often said not to exist, I'm hesitant to jump to the conclusion that someone else is purely imaginary. If you see what I mean."

"Sure. Why jump to conclusions? So you get around pretty much like we humans do?"

"No, we have some advantages there. Do you know about Stephen Hawking?"

"British physicist, confined to a wheelchair, frequent guest-voice on 'The Simpsons'?"

"That's the guy. And you know about how he discovered wormholes?"

"But wormholes were theorized long before Hawking."

"Oh. Oh. Sounds like maybe you know more about it than I do. So, a wormhole is like a shortcut in time-space?"

"Right."

"Well, we angels have all sorts of shortcuts, compared to humans, because we travel in more than three dimensions. I'm sorry, I'm not good at physics. I don't know if this has anything to do with wormholes. But we can take a couple of steps in other dimensions, and in three-dimensional terms, we've traveled thousands of miles."

"I get the idea. Are all angels male?"

"No, about half are male, half female, like you humans."

"Do you you mate like we do?"

"No, it's a little different with us."

"Do you eat?"

"That's a little different, too. We don't have to eat. If one of us eats something, it's usually just because we're curious about how it tastes."

"Do you sleep?"

"Sometimes we do."

"It just occurs to me, I'm gabbing away at you, and you look beat. You really look like you need some rest. I'm sorry."

"Don't apologize. It's my pleasure, really. Don't think for one second that humans are the only ones who get something out of exchanges like this."

She came up to Michael and laid a hand on his, and they both sighed with pleasure at the touch. Yes, these encounters were good for the angels, too. "Okay," she said. "But get some rest now, okay?"

"Yes, ma'am."

Chapter 1, Part 3

Draft of a Novel Whose Protagonist is an Angel Named Michael, ch 1, pt 1

This woman was a difficult case: her moods were fragile and changed abruptly, and Michael was concerned that he might do nothing other than upset her greatly. A couple of times he considered just giving up on her and moving on to the next case, but giving up and moving on was not really his style. She had just loaded a washing machine, she hadn't brought a book with her today, and hadn't found a magazine or newspaper laying around. For the next few moments at least her mind would be very open, looking for something to do. This time was about as auspicious as he could hope for if he was wasn't going to wait indefinitely. And the woman had been waiting long enough for this problem to be solved. Michael materialized in the laundromat, sat down a couple of chairs away from her and pretended to look around the place randomly, but made sure that their eyes met long enough for him to smile and nod.

She said to him, "Your aura is very interesting."

Was it really interesting to her? Could she see his aura at all? Frequently it was not clear whether a human was seeing an aura, or just had a very vivid imagination. Michael's aura was a steady, deep blue at the moment; the woman's aura was jerkily shifting color and intensity, somewhat reminiscent of a pre-cable television with bad reception. Her distress was palpable.

"Is it really?" Michael asked, and leaned toward her, trying his best to look non-threatening.

She moved to the chair next to his and said, "Let me read your palm."

Michael hadn't expected an opportunity like this to present itself so soon, and he didn't feel completely prepared, but he felt he had to seize the moment. It occurred to him that the problem here might not be entirely the woman and her loneliness, as he had been thinking, but also his own indecisiveness. "Let me read your palm," he said. He took her hand and wrist in both of his hands and performed a simple manipulation to soothe her nerves. At once her aura stopped flickering like a bad TV picture; for a while it was a dark brown-green, but then it settled to a pleasant, mild yellow-green. Perfect.

"Wow," the woman said. "What was that?"

For a moment Michael was about to tell her that what he had done, any masseur or accupressurist could have done, although unfortunately few of the human ones were skilled at such things. He had to remind himself to do what he had come there to do. Mentally he repeated to himself the old saying: when you're up to your ass in alligators, sometimes it's hard to remember that you started out to drain the swamp. In this case the alligators represented Michael's own issues, his confusion and indecisiveness --

Focus! he told himself. Here we go: "I'm an angel," he told her.

Good, he'd managed to get this far without freaking her out. She seemed to believe him, and she seemed to be receiving the information calmly. "Are you my guardian angel?" she asked. She was as open as she could be, he hadn't had to do anything more than that little wrist massage in order to gain her full attention and trust. So why did this seem so hard? Why was Michael so scattered?

Focus! Michael told himself again. Do what you came here to do, and you can analyze yourself later! "Ah, no, I'm not your guardian angel. I'm just here to help you out with one thing. Look, I know you're lonely. I know you've been lonely for a long time. I'm just here to tell you to go and talk to Joe."

"Joseph Manelli, the guy who works in the office across the street?"

"Yes. Talk to him. Next chance you get. As soon as you see him leave the office. He's a nice guy. You're a nice person. He's lonely, too. Something nice could happen between you, you just have to get his attention. Just -- talk about the weather or something. You don't have to throw yourself at him or degrade yourself. Just be there, and something will happen, something good."

"He's the guy. Why can't he take the initiative? Why aren't you over there talking to him?"

"I'm talking to you about this because Joe doesn't believe in angels. He wouldn't be able to see or hear me. You should wait until you're with him for a couple of years before you mention me to him. If you ever mention me at all."

"Joe and I are going to be -- really together? For years?"

"Yeah. It'll be really good. He's a sweet guy. Not particularly open to metaphysical things, but -- "

Michael touched her forehead and mumbled a blessing in Latin, figuring that would work well in this case. For a moment his aura and hers were both pure white. Could she really see auras? he wondered. Then he started to prepare mentally for the next case.

Chapter 1, Part 2

Chapter 1, Part 3

Chapter 2, Part 1