11.

Joshua walked with the angel through the orchard. The trees were obviously the artifice of Man, each spaced in uniform organization, all of them of the same height, species, color. The angel walked beside him; he was a white man in flowing navy blue silk, fringed with gold.

"Men by nature think there is nothing beyond their intellect," said the angel. "We angels know differently."

It was sunset and the trees made long shadows on the dust of the ground. They were walking with their backs to the sun, and their shadows preceded them like a surrealist artist's exaggeration and distortion.

"Philosophers talk about logic--they make rules of inference, use it to study propositions, seek out hidden contradictions," the angel was saying now--"what they don't get is that there are other--other structures. Mathematics. It's the logic of quantity. But did you know that there are thousands, millions of other cognitive structures? They are completely distinct from logic, from quantity, mathematics--but men are blind to them, just like a worm is blind to what words are, just like a crab on the seashore knows nothing of arithmetic."

"I've had enough of thinking," said Joshua. "I'll vomit if I think one second more. I don't want to know anything. I don't want to discover any truth. I don't want to find any solution. I just want to sleep--to sleep and be nothing. Failing that I'd rather just spend my life painting--I don't want to discover any secrets. I don't want to examine life; I'd rather just live it, get it over with then sleep and sleep forever."

"I guess living is by its nature an examination of life," said the angel.

"You people--you angels of the Dreamtime--you're just saying the same old 'If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there' bullshit. I've had enough. I'm going to--"

He bent over and started to vomit. His vomit was black and yellow, and bitter in his mouth. It came up in sharp contractions of his stomach.

The angel waited for him to finish patiently. Joshua finally straightened back up and looked at the angel.

"Are you happy?--you made me puke," said Joshua.

"You're right--you're right," said the angel. "Enough of philosophy, enough of these silly thoughts. Philosophers don't care for truth anyway. The greatest among them were simply ambitious people who wanted to make a dent in the world's thought; this was their preconceived goal, before they thought up what they'd like to say. The best among them would be anguished to find the final truth in some ancient book, a truth that rendered their own innovations impossible, even though they are so-called seekers of the real. They just wanted to be the movie stars of philosophy--they just wanted to find something, anything to say that would shake the world. Those who were lucky--whom we call the greats--found something new to say, and got more satisfaction from the fact that it was they who said it than that they'd found something true, if they did."

Joshua turned his face toward the sun. It was golden, the clouds on the horizon flecked with bloody reds. It looked like the delicate feminine sexual tissue--what the very womb must look like from the inside, if it were somehow suffused with light.

"It doesn't matter," said the angel. "Truth doesn't matter. It makes no one any happier to know the truth. What matters--what matters is only this--that we stop making this world a horror for one another. We find ourselves here by causes we know nothing of. We know what it is to be tortured--we know what it is to suffer cruelty. What should be our aim? To find out what this world is about? To argue the fine points of physics and logic? No--it is enough for us to unite, to give mutual aid, to be comforts to one another rather than terrors. Why is prison such a horrible place? It is perfectly within the power of those in prison to make it a mere vacation, a thoroughly easy experience. All it would take is for the prisoners to all bless one another instead of treating one another with cruelty and malice, and they would all alike be in a gentle little hotel with bars. Why don't they do it? Why don't we who are outside of prison--in the prison of the world instead--why don't we just make this world the very image of heaven? It is perfectly within our power. All it would take is for all of us at once to treat everyone with mercy and kindness. Why--why don't we just do it?"

"I think I'm in hell," said Joshua.

The angel suddenly stopped, turned to Joshua, who also stopped. The angel laid a hand on his shoulder. "Joshua," he said, "I can get you out of here."

"How?" said Joshua.

"Just give it up," said the angel. "Give up being the hero--lose your damned ambition. Just be satisfied with working some shit job the rest of your life, beers on the weekends, football. Give up your art; give up everything that could make your life great. Just let life pass by and try to have a good time in it--don't go after anything but a superficial life, completely insignificant."

"Can I make my life significant if I choose to?" asked Joshua.

"You can," said the angel. "This is what it's all about. You have been elected."

"Elected?"

"You have the power to be greater than you imagine--as great as Jesus, or greater. But the catch--the catch is that it means you stay in hell forever."

"You mean sell my soul to the devil?"

"No," said the angel. "To God. To the highest glory. But he does not elect someone without recompense. The only way to the golden realm is through the torturing fires, and both are one and the same. Innocent people are tormented every day--after this life it is no different. The saints go to hell, the evildoers are rewarded. Only the reward of the saints is that they've done something worthy in this world, done some good in their life. That's the only sort of reward they wanted, if they were truly good and not just feigning good for selfish ends. Give it up. Don't try to save the world, nor should you make anything valuable out of your life. That--the path to ambition and glory--that is the path to the very hell caves. If you don't regret it now, you will eventually."

"I changed my mind," said Joshua. "I'm not in hell--I've only lost my mind. I'm fucking crazy."

"Yes," said the angel; "it is hard to comprehend a crazy world without being so."