Upon Tralfamador, as the radio signals of human beings on Earth caught in some in-between state, of sleeplessness, or anxiety, are picked up, there are the natural medicines.  Which, in turn, hopefully, are beamed back to those of here on Earth wanting.

There are the compounds in wine, which hold in the deepest corners of their molecular structure, tiny re-creations, microscopic microcosms of the Universe as a whole.  (To enjoy wine is better than watching The Weather Channel.  Or, rather, wine gives us perspective on all the tropes the professionals use to hypnotize us, with all the classic things, the cop, the beauty porn queen, lulling us all to a certain kind of sleep walking.  Wine puts things in perspective.)   Reassuring, as in each atom of the body, a reassurance, the teachings of all creation, as God saw to Create.  The point is not at all the alcohol, the spirit that came of tiny intelligences doing what they do for creative work, but the teaching, the realignment of the creature with its brain and nervous system with the gentle truth of all existence.

Wine, milder than ayahuasca, turns us into something similar to the plant world, back into, if you will, mobile trees and growing vines and dew-embracing grasses of cold sea island coasts.  Have faith, wine tells us, everything will be okay.  You just need to look at things a little differently, and not take things that unnerve you too seriously.  As the Dalai Lama says, things are not as they appear.


But there was never enough time to get done all he wanted to do.  Barely time enough to write a check for health insurance, requiring a focus... a need for shaving cream.  Travel plans, work schedule, credit card payments for trips up to see your old mom and take her to the doctor for some advice.

What you wanted then, the hack failure of a writer observed, was Jesus, and Jesus lives, lives on, literarily, figuratively, metaphorically, in wine, because He is the truth.  That's one of the things of the Eucharist, of taking communion.  The truth in bread and in wine.  Bread is easy.  It is the body.  But wine is the blood, and therefore it is in us, informing us.


Being in essence a Tralfamadorian makes you a nervous creature on Earth, and so you have to make contact, to sweep earthly things aside, and get back to the truth...  To get to the truth is done through writing, as much as anything else...  To get to the truth one really has to do the things of Jesus.  Like washing of the feet.  Like the waiting on people, essentially that was what it was, the Last Supper.  Like the energy, the laying on of hands...