Lost in the Woods

Relatively early on this journey through life, I found myself in a darkened wood uncertain of my path, and thus was really fucking lost. The following is a visual and written account of the journey. Unfortunately, I am neither artist nor poet. Tersa rima this is not, and it makes my little parody a far cry from Dante Aligheri's 'The Divine Comedy'. The images are by Gustave Dore and the explanations will all be in English in tersa blog, if you will. Should you be inclined to read the traditional version, go with Sinclair's. That whore Mendelbaum can take his "I felt then a fiery urging" and blow it out his ass. Moving on with our little story, I was lost in the woods of life.

Faulkner is Contacted

As I wandered in the woods a man suddenly appeared before me. He had an old face with gray hair and a moustache that made him seem somewhat familiar. I could smell whiskey coming off him. "Pray child, do you not recognize me? It is I, William Faulkner!" he boomed out. In response, I began to back up and get ready to run. He sighed and pulled a flask out of his robe. "I'm not crazy and I'm not here to kill you. I've been sent by Heaven to take you on a tour of the afterlife. We're going to start out in Hell and then see how long you keep up an interest in writing this thing," the strange man declared. I blinked, thought about it, then kept backing up. "Wait, that sounds really weird, doesn't it?" Faulkner said. "Hey, if I was insane would I know that when you were twelve you once played hide and go seek with your neighbor, but then went to your house and played Doom instead of hiding?" I could not deny the truth of the story. I headed back into the clearing where William Faulkner stood. He motioned me along and said that he would explain more once we got to Hell. At least I was no longer lost.

Entrance to Hell

We walked through the woods for what seemed like hours and then suddenly came upon a rocky barren ledge. Considering I had originally been in Tennessee, the sudden appearance of a giant mountain range with no trees was pretty impressive. "So this is the real deal, right? I'm about to see what happens to people when they die?" I asked Faulkner. He shrugged and took another swig of his whiskey. "The afterlife is a philosophical concept. It's different for everyone. There are three distinct sections of any person's moral view of the world: unforgivable, forgivable over time, and good. Those get translated into Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven in a person's mind." We kept walking down the trail in silence as I tried to figure out how that would work. "Wait, so this isn't what happens to everyone when they die, just me?" Faulkner coughed and began to laugh. "Yeah kid, we invented a whole place just for fucking you. Ok, think about this. Time is relative to where you are right now, ok? To a person whose sitting in an office reading this stupid website, time is moving incredibly slowly. To someone whose having a great day, time is going by quickly. Joy accelerates time, etc. etc. The same applies to your concept of morality and the world. The more good things that happen to you, the more your morality views things in a positive manner." I was getting nervous because I was pissing off William Faulkner, pillar of all Southern Literature, so I kept quiet. I still didn't understand the point he was making and he seemed to be getting exasperated. "Just fucking think of it like we're all unique snow flakes in terms of how we see the world, but we're all the same pile of shit in terms of our literal differences, so that means that yes there is a Hell, but it's defined by your own perspective. Look, just go inside the stupid cave. Oh, and drink the whiskey." We approached the gates, and stepped through.

Minos' Judgment

Faulkner first took me to the place where people's sins are judged and assigned their place in Hell accordingly. These winged demons dragged a guy forward and was told to confess all that he had done. For three hours he rattled off everything that popped into his head. And some of this was some seriously awful shit. Like stealing from his grandmother, cheating on his wife, telling his daughter she looked fat. It was kinda funny to think that someone might expect brownie points for being honest after being damned to Hell. The guy went on and on until Minos finally just interrupted him. Minos boomed, "Well that's great Bob. But the fact is that you're not here for any of those things. In 1987 you began working for MPowerConcepts, a pyramid scheme that seduces college graduates into thinking they've made it big with an advertising corporation. In fact, they have to go door to door to sell hand towels and body lotions. It looks pathetic on a resume and often ends up sinking them into debt. You ruined hundreds of lives. Do you know what most people did after they quit working for you? No? Well it wasn't fucking advertising. Thanks for being so honest eariler. Bert, please escort him to the lake of shit." I turned to Faulkner and asked how they could possibly spend so much time on each individual case, since the line was stunningly long. Did they all have to wait for the other to talk? Faulkner nodded and smiled, and we headed onward.

Limbo

The next stop was Limbo, where all genuinely talented artists and contributors to society go. It was a beautiful garden that was just a brief walk from the place of judgement. Faulkner explained to me that most of these people end up doing some really awful stuff in life but are forgiven for it because of their dedication to their work. I met Homer, Shakespeare, the guy who wrote the Batman series, and all sorts of other important people. There were a lot of saytrs running around drunk. The writers were all standing around getting wasted, so I decided to try and hang out. Within seconds, Flannery O'Connor asked me if I wanted to do gin shots with her. It was the best tasting gin I'd ever had and I asked her if it was made of divine energy. "Naw, we have a demon whose down on the lower sub-circles. He harvests all the tears of people who judge those who drink alcohol while not examining their own problems and then brings that up here. We mix it with the gin and so that it tastes fucking incredible. Virgil keeps a stash of wine made from the blood of parents who spoil their children that's awesome too." We couldn't stay for long though since Faulkner was just stopping to fill his flask. All of the writer's patted me on the back and wished me luck as we left Limbo. While crossing out of the wooded garden and back onto the rocky plains of Hell, I heard someone cry out, "Hemingway and Clemens are fighting again!" I was sad to go.

Unfulfilled Potential

The first stop was people who didn't want to work hard and fulfill their potential. They were now cursed to work forever, rolling a boulder up a hill only to have it roll back down at the summit. Faulkner personally spat on every single one of them. "You know how long it took for anyone to recognize my fucking work? Decades. I had to write corny screenplays to make a living," Faulkner screamed at one damned soul. I saw George Lucas, the Wachowski Brothers, Britney Spears, and a bunch of teen actors whose names no one remebers. I asked Britney what she would have done differently and she snarled at me. "I'm fucking proud of who I am and I worked really hard on those albums. So what if I didn't write the music or words? I practiced dancing for HOURS to get those concerts ready. And then I showed everyone in the world the beauty of pregnancy by having mine be completely public." I wanted to ask her why her lyrics were so awful if someone else had written them, why she had decided to become the nation's leading method of birth control (if you get pregnant you'll end up like Britney), but Faulkner seemed so disgusted that it was time to go. I took a nip from his flask and prayed that I never ended up like that.

Creators of False Cults

The next stop was the creators of cults and falsifiers of Christianity. There were rows of people who were locked in tombs filled with fire and brimstone. A few contained people who had only read four pages of the Bible but pretended to be well-informed, the Kool-Aid cult that believed aliens were going to save them with suicide, and lots of Scientologists. I found the minister who used to rant at the Church down the street from me about the evils of homosexuality and popped open the lid. I asked him how he felt about burning in Hell. "It's all a conspiracy by blacks, homosexuals, and liberals. They tricked me into being in Hell. It clearly states that God hates queers in the Bible, and by God I'm sticking to that. I have no idea why I've been sent here, but I'm doing my best to continue saving our youth from fags and sinners right here in this box." Faulkner spat on him and we knocked the lid back onto the box so that it smashed him on the head. Tom Cruise, Tammy Faye Baker, and my old gym coach were also there. L. Ron Hubbard, whose box was full of flaming money that he had made from brainwashing all of his servants, at least did not seem particularly shocked that he was in Hell. "What the fuck is everyone's deal anyways? Why doesn't anyone understand why they are burning in Hell?" I asked Faulkner. He turned and said, "That's the whole point, Kirk. None of these people think they've done anything wrong. They chose to be burning in Hell."