7

The garlanded gods moved on through the jungle casting roses underfoot and trampling them. Thus do the gods use up what we offer them: by turning them to roses that are trampled underfoot in great joy. It is a beautiful feeling for them to trample the roses, for they are consuming every emotion humanity has offered them. It gives them no joy to smell the roses or place them in a conspicuous spot: rather, they put them all about their clothes in random patterns, so that they are clothed in mismatched blossoms; and they pour them out on the jungle floor, and trample them down into the muddy earth. We do not notice when the burning butter or rice or milk floats on up into the gardens in the stars, and are turned to blossoming roses that bloom in the gardens in the stars: the burning butter merely turns to oil, the rice gets cold, the milk curdles; but the roots of the heavens reach down in great strands of consciousness, and suck up the spirit of the offerings; and the offerings turn to roses that the gods trample underfoot. Just as we may dream of rolling in thousands of hundred dollar bills on our beds and floors, or giving ourselves up to every sexual pleasure imaginable in some orgy, so too do the gods love roses, and love destroying roses in a great frenzy, wherein there is no end to the supply of roses. Such were the stories, written on golden leaf, placed in Billy's heart, and poured out onto paper to be told again and again through the ages; and lost through the eons and transformed into their opposites, until they were placed in newer and younger hearts; and we become like dreaming men, dreaming the dreams of nations and peoples; and life becomes a dream for us, and oblivion is more real than the dream.