And He Went Away

In the beginning, God created the earth, and he looked upon it in his cosmic loneliness. And God said, Let Us make living creatures out of mud, so the mud can see what We have done. And God created every living creature
that now moveth, and one was man. Mud as man alone could speak.
God leaned close to mud as man sat, looked around, and spoke.
What is the purpose of all this? he asked politely.
Everything must have a purpose? asked God. Certainly, said man.
Then I leave it to you to think of one for all this, said God.
And He went away. **

And I remembered The Fourteenth Book of Bokonon, which I had read
in its entirety the night before. The Fourteenth Book is entitled,
What Can a Thoughtful Man Hope for Mankind on Earth, Given the Experience of the Past Million Years? It doesn’t take long to read
The Fourteenth Book. It consists of one word and a period.
This is it: Nothing. **

There was a quotation
from The Books of Bokonon
on the page before me.
Those words leapt
from the page
and into my mind,
and they were welcomed there.
The words were a paraphrase
of the suggestion by Jesus:
Render therefore unto Caesar
the things which are Caesar’s.
Bokonon’s paraphrase was this:
Pay no attention to Caesar.
Caesar doesn’t have
the slightest idea
what’s really going on.

--Kurt Vonnegut
Cat's Cradle **

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