In the Galactic Cathedral by Mario Moussa

In the Galactic Cathedral, my dog Lump stretches out at my feet. He’s small and scruffy, but he protects me, like those service dogs you see padding around airports.

Through the skylight, I can see stars rotating high above twinkle twinkle in a slow infinite arc. I reimagine fragments of poetry and philosophy—Oh reason not the nut. . . .To be is to be received—to match the moment. There’s a chair and a table. No other furniture. There’s a piece of paper and a pencil on the table. The simplicity is the point—it keeps filtering to a minimum. Lump snores and sighs. I think of a phrase: Rope burn around his neck. It’s not poetry or philosophy, but I write it down. The last time I saw my brother, he was lying on a slab in a California funeral home, a rope burn around his neck. A year later, worn out, my cousin went the same way. It runs in the family. Downstairs, my wife watches a movie about a bank heist in Barcelona, which evokes a ramshackle house, sunlight glinting off a rocky beach. When wife and I visited Dali’s house, we made our way up narrow winding staircases to a tiny library, a dome of stucco and glass and dreams, our voices echoing off the walls. Three months after we returned, contractors were at work. My Galactic Cathedral sits atop our row house and turned out better than the original. For one thing, Dali didn’t have a dog to keep him company. Three swans lived in the bay where his house rose from the beach. He was obsessed with immortality, and when the swans died, he had them stuffed and placed near his front door. Another thing: the original didn’t have air-conditioning. My father, who looked so much like Dali he could have been his brother, used to march around our suburban home wearing a captain’s uniform. I never thought to ask him why he didn’t wear a cap. It was probably because, vain and fragile, he didn’t want to flatten his wavy hair. My father the captain once told a college friend of mine, who was sitting with me in my parent’s back yard one evening after we’d eaten handfuls of peyote from a dirty garbage bag, that mental illness didn’t run in our family. My friend knew about my brother and my cousin. We laughed so hard we had trouble breathing. The captain laughed, too. Later, my friend and I took off on his motorcycle and rode in the mist blowing off Lake Michigan as we passed a joint back and forth, sparks flying into our eyes.

In the Galactic Cathedral, energy accumulates and taboos dissolve. Like an orgone box. Rope burn around his neck. It took a year in the Galactic Cathedral to write the words. Say the unsayable. It’s possible the Galactic Cathedral would work the same way for anybody if they gave it enough time to weaken the magnetic power of the past. But it’s a process that’s never complete. Is everyone’s past like this, a rehashing of the same few stories, changing in small ways until they become different stories that need to be retold? For me, there’s not much more to the story of my brother than him lying on the slab. I never got to know him when he was young or later when he’d grown up. But he seemed to have everything going for him—good looks, a lucrative job, a fancy car, two kids, a wife who shared his passion for golf and skiing. His wife told me, when I was talking to her from the safety of another coast, that he’d died for our sins like Jesus Christ.

In the Galactic Cathedral, Lump will never die. But when he does, my wife and I will be sad. We will not have him stuffed. I’m surprised my father didn’t arrange to have himself stuffed.

In the Galactic Cathedral, my brother didn’t die a pointless death. But there was no point to it, either.

In the Galactic Cathedral, no one dies for my sins.

Mario Moussa  

Image: A rope tied into a noose. From Pixabay.com