Ground Control
“Except that a man is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.”
— John 3:5
The only sound in the city was the 10 mph wind roaring in the 13° temperature that bit at the skin of the homeless through here clothes, some time after 2 AM on the 11th of January in the two a thousand a and the sixteenth year of our Lord, Cedar City, Utah.
Chesterton Lazarus Carmine leafed through the vinyl collection kept in a derelict suitcase his father the clergyman bequeathed to him.
As if the vinyls were children, he took them out with careful handling and looked at them lovingly, placing them side-by-side on his bed. He took out a young vinyl last. It was the youngest in his collection. He turned to the back to see the tracklist.
“3. Lazarus.”
Chesterton looked at the framed torn page on his wall. In withering ink it said,
“The sages have a hundred maps to give
That trace their crawling cosmos like a tree,
They rattle reason out through many a sieve
That stores the sand and lets the gold go free:
And all these things are less than dust to me
Because my name is Lazarus and I live.
— G. K. Chesterton (1922)”
On the blue Crosley record player, he set the vinyl and lay the needle with all the weightiness of an altar boy lighting a candle. He had not listened to the vinyl. He bought the vinyl merely for the sake of having it. This time, he listened beginning to end, and saw these weren’t only music and lyrics, they were a goodbye.
Look up here, I’m in heaven
I’ve got scars that can’t be seen
I’ve got drama, can’t be stolen
Everybody knows me now
-“Lazarus,” David Bowie
Chesterton’s mother found him lying on the bench on the porch. His head hung off the bench as if her youngest son thought he wouldn’t be able to fit all of himself off of the bench, and sacrificed his head rather than his feet. Her boys were raised to not be of this earth. Sometimes it seemed she did too good of a job.
She fetched the newspaper and went back inside, not speaking a word to Chesterton, but she left the door unlocked. Chesterton stretched for a moment and let himself in.
“Hi, Mommy.”
His mother was at the kitchen island, chopping up green onions for her omelet.
“It’s good of you to come.”
“I’m sorry I’ve been gone so long.”
“I know why you’re back. I saw the news.”
“Does he know?”
“No.”
“I need to do this.”
“Why?”
“I couldn’t tell you. I feel like it’s the only thing I can do.”
“To feel better.”
“…to save him…the way he saved me.”
“You’re too gentle for this world.”
“Would Daddy be able to do it today?”
Mama Carmine gave her eldest son a peck on the cheek and went to fetch his father.
“He was helped in some degree by the arresting oddity of his appearance, which he worked, as the phrase goes, for all it was worth.”
-The Man Who Was Thursday, G.K. Chesterton, pages 6–7
Daddy Carmine slept in the opposite side of the house. He slept on the opposite side of the house on the opposite side of the room on the opposite side of the bed to that of his wife, but he wouldn’t know it since he hadn’t seen the bedroom since the last time they were ever intimate together, which had to be at least ten years ago. Chesterton’s youngest brother Patrick was going to be ten on the fourteenth the following month.
Chesterton’s brothers were gone that morning, they had gone to seminary at 6 AM.
Chesterton wanted to get some coffee, but then he remembered.
Chesterton’s father came into the room in his beige pajamas and slippers.
“Chesterton,” said Daddy Carmine. “This an unexpected visit.”
“Yes, Daddy.”
“Not only are you here but early n the morning.”
“I need your help,” said Chesterton.
It had a sobering effect on his father, who spoke in a hushed tone though they were the kitchen alone. “What’s happened, son?”
“I need you to baptize me.”
“I am pleased to hear this, but you only need to return to the church.”
“It’s for someone else.”
“You may add the name — ”
“I was hoping you could do it now.”
Daddy Carmine was not accustomed to nor content with being spoken over.
“Why the urgency?”
“This person meant a lot to me, Daddy.”
Chesterton was not accustomed to empathy from Daddy Carmine, but his father placed his hand on his shoulder and made eye contact in what may have well been the first time. “We all deserve salvation.”
“He does.”
“There’s so many stories I could tell you. I wish I could have more time to tell you things, like…haha. The things I could tell you.”
— David Bowie, Manhattan Center, New York (1999)
“I still believe,” said Chesterton on the ride there.
“I believe you.”
“I pray in private, by myself. I feel like most people who see God see him when they’re alone, so that’s the best way to reach out to him.”
“…Okay.”
“I’m still in the records.”
“That you are.”
“Personal revelation.”
His said tunefully to himself, “Revel revel…”
“…What?”
“Nothing, son.”
“ I’m an instant star, just add water and stir.”
-David Bowie
Daddy Carmine and Chesterton went to the white font resting on 12 oxen’s backs.
Chesterton was in a white t-shirt and white pants. His father wore a white dress shirt and white dress pants and was the first to enter the water of the font. Chesterton joined his father in the water, he crossed his hands over his chest. Daddy Carmine put one hand on Chesterton and the other in the air, gave the rites and dunked his son in the water on behalf of Chesterton’s friend, David Jones.
“ And all the nobody people, and all the somebody people
I never thought I’d need so many people”
— David Bowie, “Five Years”
Many hours later, Chesterton showed up at the old record store his friend Lyle’s family owned. He entered into the backroom, which acted as a den. Lyle was the mod “Love You Till Tuesday”. Their friend Hilary was Ziggy Stardust. Chesterton was the Thin White Duke. The minute Chesterton, known as Chester to these two friends, Lyle played and sang “Rock n’ Roll Suicide” on his Fender, amp on full blast. Feeling this as tasteless, Chesterton synced his phone with the Bluetooth speakers Lyle kept, and played “The Width of a Circle.” Rather than reprimand Chesterton for the transgression, Lyle turned off his amp, playing along softly enough so that his playing could not be heard over the music coming from the speakers.
The three of them joined in on the elongated “Ah” that came in 5 minutes, 13 seconds into the song, and did not stop until it did, 23 seconds later.
The song ended and they stared at one another, knowing that at such a time silence expressed more than anything else more than ever.
They held a vigil in the small alley outside the record store. Lyle, an aspiring graphic designer, had made a mural on the wall of the store. A problematic action, seeing that the building was a rental, but now was not to worry.
Hilary, an apostate Catholic, lit a handmade candle depicting Bowie as a saint. She made many candles like this and sold them online for years, but this one was special. the image set in custom made glass (she was an adept glass blower, did it for a living) and the thicker the glass was the easier it was for her. The Saint Bowie image had been melted onto a candle made of recycled wax from tea candles and vanilla Yankees, set and melted together in a mason jar that she broke with a hammer, before setting Saint Bowie on the wax with a hair dryer and wax paper. It only cost her $4 to make, and she made $15 for every one of these she sold. She sold a lot.
She lit the candle and said out of earshot, “I’m sorry I only really appreciate you now, that you’re gone.”
Lyle had spray-painted the words “Turn and face the strange.”
Lyle went back into the store. Hilary said to Chesterton, “I think that’s the only good thing about death, everyone comes closer together — if you can say anything is good about it.”
“No, you’re right.”
“I always hoped I’d get to meet him.”
“There’s no saying you still won’t.”
“See, I let go of all of that.”
“Is that why Bowie’s a saint on the candle?”
She looked up at the darkening sky, “Nothing up there but the cosmos.”
“That should be enough to be happy about.”
“ One of the chief uses of religion is that it makes us remember our coming from darkness, the simple fact that we are created. Chesterton”
“You still quote him?”
“Christianity. It’s my cocaine. I’m really trying to quit, but every now and then I go off the wagon and hate myself afterward.” She got out a cigarette and lit it up, using the same lighter she used to light Saint Bowie, “My friends like me a little less afterward. You want a drag?”
“No.”
“As long as there’s fire.”
“I still have that poem.”
“You can get worlds more out of it than I ever did… Sing ‘Heroes’ with me.”
“O-”
Lyle came out with his guitar and started playing the guitar for “Moonage Daydream.”
Hilary sang the song as if she were singing a hymn, her contralto voice a nice match for the song, sounding sadder than ever.
When the intermission came, Chesterton started to repeatedly sing “can you hear me, Major Tom?”
Hilary sang in her lowest register, “ Ashes to ashes, funk to funky/We know Major Tom’s a junkie.”
Lyle, not a fan of his own singing voice, but capable of strumming and singing at once, came in with, “Do you wanna be free?”
And that was how the memorial proceeded for five minutes more before they went their separate ways, walking off like they were under a trance. Chesterton was heading to his car to drive home, or rather have his body drive him there, his mind was elsewhere. Hilary could have very well been going to Jericho to throw a Jabberwock.
Nicknamed Planet Nine, it “has a mass about 10 times that of Earth and orbits about 20 times farther from the sun” than Neptune. That means “it would take this new planet between 10,000 and 20,000 years to make just one full orbit around the sun,” according to Caltech.
— Amanda Watts, “Ninth planet may have been discovered, researchers say,” CNN. (Thursday, January 21st, 2016)
The news came on Wednesday, but Chesterton didn’t watch the news, and Hilary was always late in receiving it. She called him.
“I sent you a link to a video”
“What of?”
“Watch and see.”
Scientists, as the lovely, blonde, CNN reporter said, had been looking for “Planet Nine” for a century, and of all the things to bring this planet into reality, and into Hilary and Chesterton’s consciousness, it was theoretical mathematics that found it, with the help of computer simulations.
“People are trying to have it named after him,” said Hilary, to which Chesterton said (not giving it a thought), “Far out.”
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