Depending on how you count, there are 11 major religions in the world today — of course I don’t count that way. I prefer to believe the slightly larger estimate of world religions which suggests there are a bit more than 4,200 different belief systems bouncing around int he heads of man.

I don’t know if any of the current religions involve talking animals wandering about the edges of reality, but if one of them does, that’s the one I want to believe today.

Part of me is certain that I’m not a man at all, I’m just an odd little story being told by an enormous turtle to an audience full of fat people muttering how they need a cigarette. The certainty raging about inside my gut is uncomfortable and a bit dangerous I think. There’s nothing more dangerous than certainty.

I’m looking for the 4th wall in hopes I can look past it or through it and into the eyes of the turtle who intones my life. A lot of people would probably think that’s a strange way to pass a day. Walking around an old mill city, talking to random passersby, smiling, laughing, wondering which real thing is most real, which true love is most true, which kind word is kindest — which unbelievable thing is most worthy of being believed.

A girl with blue hair becomes a pastiche of Picasso and when she laughs with her friends I see Les Demoiselles. This is normal if anything is normal in a city.

A boy with an acerbic grin feigns gut pain, but I know he’s just afraid and so I tell him, “Dali said you don’t need to be afraid of perfection you’ll never reach it.”

He is confused, rolls his eyes and walks away without swearing at me, but I know in his heart he hates me a little bit now.

This is life in a city, brief touches of word on ear, breath on breath, and never heart on heart because that is to risk the calamity of being known — or worse, never being known at all.

It is snowing on Merrimack Street when I step outside without any God at all. None of the major religions or any of the thousands more offer me any solace. Today is today, and I don’t know why I am, never mind why  I am now.

I don’t bother to ask anyone for help with this. I sketch 3 goats and figure that must be a metaphor for a big sacrifice I’ll make at some point. I don’t want to tell myself what I’ll sacrifice or why and spoil the story for me.