I was talking last night with a beautiful woman. We sipped shaken margaritas I’d made from scratch, and as the Don Julio Blanco hit our bloodstreams she opened her soul.

“I am from Brazil,” she said, “and in Brazil we are more superstitious than here. There is a man, named Jean of God–“

“Jean of God?”

“Yea, Jean of God, he is a spiritual surgeon. He operated on this boy that I kissed once. He does not cut into you. But he does into your spirit. He performs an operation. And this boy thought, ‘Eh, it means nothing.’ He was totally against it even though his parents wanted him to have it. And the next day, he tried to get up and just go about his daily stuff like nothing had happened, and he couldn’t. His entire body was in awful pain from the spiritual surgery and he messed himself up.

“Now Jean of God, he has been accused now of touching some women inappropriately.”

My eyebrows raised.

“But he like any of us is a human being. But even Oprah went to him to be operated on.”

“Well of course she did. Celebrities are the craziest,” I replied.

“No I am saying this because it shows how well known this man, who operated on this boy from the village I lived in, how popular he became.”

I thought about my comment immediately after it poured from my lips. It wasn’t fair. To categorize celebrities as the most superstitious, or most insane. What did I know about it? If something channeled your consciousness, tuned it during trouble. I imagined Oprah. What must she have been dealing with to decide she’d have a spiritual surgery?

“Have you heard of Condomble?” she said.

“No. What’s that?”

“It’s like Santeria. But Brazilian. An African religion in Brazil.” She recounted a visit to a shaman, or priest’s sanctuary once, where she passed by these shrines, or huts, little temples in the yard, filled and covered with bones. She looked frightened. “It was disturbing.”

“Why?”

“My spirit felt very light. Like it was floating above the ground. It was a heavy place.”

“Bad or good?”

“Bad.”

“Why bad?”

“Because that priest, that God the priest represented, Legba, will do bad or good. But if you ask him to do bad, like against another person,” (I imagined paid-for-hire assassins, but she was talking about spiritual curses or even death-curses) “if you ask him to do bad he will come back to punish you, eventually, like 10-fold.

“This one hut,” she said. “Here let me see if I can find a picture of it. Maybe on their Facebook page, this one hut had all these bones hanging in front of the doorway. And I was so terrified I couldn’t even take a picture.” She wondered as she failed to find any pictures of this shrine. She’d told me about this more than once before. It clearly was an impactful moment in her life. At Salvador, Brazil. “I wonder if everyone is too afraid to take a picture of it.”

Too afraid. In this day and age still. to take a picture of a shrine.

“I mean, the Catholics are even crazier,” she continued. When I went to Rome, I went to St. Peter’s. That place would make me want to go to church even if I weren’t religious. I would go. But downstairs, they had these windows, filled with skulls and bones. Here.” She had posted one picture on her Facebook. “I didn’t post any others, because I didn’t want my Facebook page to be filled with skulls and bones.” She laughed.

The window indeed was chock full, from its tall top to bottom, with human skulls and assorted other human bones. “Those are people who were killed for being Christians.”

“These margaritas are amazing,” she said, taking another satisfying sip. We shared a plate of seasoned ground beef with tomato and onion, and rice. “But these people, these spiritualists, priests, whatever, some of them have talent. And some are evil.

“My aunt has a daughter, my cousin, who was born with complications, she didn’t get enough air while being born, and so, she recognizes me, for example, when I visit, but she does not form words, just makes sounds, has very limited abilities.

“My aunt has always felt terrible. Reponsible. For this. And one time, years ago, this woman promised her that she could rid my cousin of the evil spirits suffocating her. She could cure her. And my aunt got so taken in. She really believed this woman. And paid her $3,000, in Brazil that is a lot of money. When my grandman found out, she was so angry, she wanted to call the police and have this woman sent to jail, but my aunt believed it so much, she opposed that, defended this woman, and was scared that if anything bad was done to her, the cure for her daughter would be reversed, or not come. So my grandma, not wanting to mess any more with my aunt’s emotions about this, just let it be. And that woman went away. But that, I think, you know someone is a fraud, when they are charging money for spiritual powers.

“We no longer live in an age of miracles. Imagine what it would be like to live with Jesus, when he was walking around, performing all these miracles. Or if he had charged money for them? But now, miracles are rare. I guess we are waiting for the salvation to come for us all.”

We’re all here. I’m used to Pink Floyd. The Rolling Stones. I realize they’re outplayed and heard a million times. That’s part of their charm. The songs of Earth. 

We live here happily on a troubled, bealeagured planet. An island whirring through space about stars. We take everything, especially death, very seriously, even though we don’t know whether death is better or worse. We don’t know anything about anywhere else but here. I don’t know why we’re here, who put us here if anyone or anything at all. I don’t know what makes us be. What our material structure is made of or energized by. And this is nothing new, but none of this mystery stops us. And that seems to be part of the principle behind life. That the unknown is motivating, not demotivating.

I’m amazed by the intricate systems we humanity create. I imagine I’m a traveler to a floating island. A planet I’m visiting. I have the privilege of peeking in, and participating in this mysterious activity of earth. When I imagine this it’s from the perspective of the brevity of my life. I see myself and everything around me as my recent creation as a being and my inevitable, approaching demise. I’m growing. Such a short time to take this all in! What a strange sad wonder this is.

The intricacy of our banking systems, our economy’s divisions of labor. The anatomical and medical knowledge. Our laws, morals, and systems of ethics. And history. How we act as one group in time. Traveling together. Learning from each other, suffering from each other. Inextricably linked to every event from our past. Physics, astronomy, biology, painting, theater, literature, medicine, technology bound together by our historical nature. The miraculous capacity we’re given to remember, record, and build upon a shared past. And most touching and charming of all, love. How we care for certain others. Family of course. But certain strangers we meet, with no ties or obligations at all, and “fall in love” with, maybe end up spending an entire life together until death do us part.

What motivates these things? There are passions, standards of behavior, impulses, feelings, built into us all as a species. We certainly didn’t choose those. We are actors while acted upon. Players while seeming to be played. And where do we go next? Is death really a horrible curse? An end?

I know that I hate saying goodbye. I’ve kept in touch with many of my past lovers for this reason. The ones I haven’t I feel terrible about. It’s a death in itself, to never hear again from someone I once loved dearly, to never know how they’re doing, or what. So death is a sad goodbye to this world we know nothing about, but become so attached to! It’s no different than the attachment I get to a great book. I hate the last pages, and I usually cry at the final word, because the book is over. The story is done. That world is ended.

And so with life. Is it any different? Aren’t I as attached to this life, not knowing whether it’s non fiction or fantasy. Not knowing whether it’s real or an illusion. We are actors. Lovers. Players. We invest so much into this intricate dollhouse of finite space and time. And where do we go? Who shall we be next, when we, when I, this visiting individual, am forced to take my leave?

I. And Thee.

Thou. And I.

We. Me. You. I.

A big deal these days, isn’t it? The last centuries, the I has become paramount. Over the we. The I. It’s the spirit of the age. Selfies, celebrities, fame, fortune. Partnering. Mariage and divorce. We’re all caught up with I. Who am I? Who are you? What is your personal destiny? Your individual calling.

We may be barking up the wrong tree. What I mean is, individuality might be over-rated. Meaning, the actual difference between any two of us, in the grand scheme of it all, might be equivalent to nil.

Are we really that different from each other? Is Trump that different from Bernie Sanders? Or Kanye that different from a homeless man? Is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez so different from Tucker Carlson? Or even Leonardo da Vinci so different, in fundamentals, from the dumbest kid you can remember from your high school class?

I’m not so sure. In immediate detail, yes, a rose is different from a petunia in many striking ways. But as flowers, don’t they both reproduce the same? Have similar lifespans. Need the same nutrients to stay alive. Beneath the flashy surface, in the history of all living things, I might say the rose and the petunia are about as close to equal as you can get.

We’re a family, us Homo Sapiens. And compared to the future race we might create. One with memories 1,000 times greater than ours, and collective consciousness that gives any individual a IQ 1,000 times greater than the smartest of us that ever lived. Or lifespans of 1,000 or more years. Physical strength equalling the greatest machines. I mean, will that super race, that next species beyond ours, really care about the difference between Leonardo and the dumbest kid from your high school class? If they can figure out as much about nature and the universe in one school year, as it took all of humanity to figure out over 70,000 years, won’t all of us, from their eyes, be rather insignificant as individuals?

Maybe. Just a thought. Just wondering if all this me me me culture we’re all so obsessed with is just foolishness. Maybe humility, joining the team of the human race, realizing we all have the same underlying structures and desires, needs, wants, maybe humility will be discovered to be a universal principle, a sign of the highest intelligence of all.