“It’s because it’s all out of alignment.”
The mechanic was confused. “You want me to put it up on the rack? I have to warn you that my regular guy is not in today.”
“Your regular guy? Wait … what …Oh, no, that’s not what I was talking about.”
The man in the oily coveralls was glad it was a slow day because this guy sure sounded like a nutcase. Of course, what was he saying? Out here, every day was a slow day. And, come to think of it, nutcases were not too uncommon either.
“No, you were just saying that you were tired of this heat wave. It’s because we’re all out of alignment with the universe.”
“Oh … the universe…” he trailed off, looking around for an excuse to get away, back into the air-conditioned station office.
“So, you really just need gas? And some water for the radiator? I think these newer imports come with sealed radiators.”
“Well, my father always said to check it on long trips like this.”
“No problem.” He took a rag out of his back pocket as he popped the hood.
“Looks like you’re good here. I’ll check your oil while I’m under here. Got a sale on today…” His boss always nagged him to push the extras, especially with the price of gas jumping all over the place. OPEC rules the world.
“The oil looks good, too,” as he let down the hood.
“You know, I wish I didn’t have to drive this thing. It’s out of balance with the universe too, you know.” The mechanic cringed again. His half-drunk ice-cold coke was nearly screaming to him from the office. “But the company requires I make my calls.”
The salesman inserted the nozzle of the hose back into the side of the pump and grabbed the receipt before it blew away into the desert heat.
“Well, have a good one!” The attendant waved as he drove off.
***
As he drove on through the barren stretches of cholla and roadrunners, he began to envision a plan. Empty as it appeared, he could start something out here. He could make something of nothing. He was sure of it.
He knew the land was cheap. Not exactly good for anything but solar farms, he joked to himself. The ideas slowly melded and coalesced as he watched the mile markers tick by. Hmmm. A solar energy farm could sustain it! Yes, and maybe some wind turbines too. It’s brilliant. The universe must approve, he could feel it.
He was about 150 miles from his next appointment, and ahead of schedule, so he pulled off the road to write some things down. He popped open his laptop and began to tap away.
***
TO DO:
- Go to the county land agent and get the latest geodetic survey plats.
- Identify the highest land in the area.
- Investigate leasing solar panel setups and turbines
- Hire accountant to help calculate ROI and budget.
- Start social media accounts.
- Find graphic artist for images and branding. Website design too.
He rattled off some more quick ideas to launch his new project. He was excited. Really excited. He hadn’t felt this way in years. It was like the cosmos had its finger on him, was actually communicating with him.
***
All through his next call, his mind was only half present. He routinely perused the parts inventory sheets the retailer had collected for him. He scribbled various items, with mandatory minimum quantities listed next to them. He knew them by heart. He reviewed the promotional calendar with the store manager, along with several new planograms for their high-volume, high-margin items.
He shook hands at the front door and groaned out loud at the prospect of heading back out into the blast furnace of the parking lot. The saguaros across the road quivered in the heat.
“Well, it’s all because we’re out of alignment,” he said, like the modern-day prophet he knew he was becoming.
***
Weeks later, his plans were falling together. Of course, it took too many phone calls, visits, and emails, but he was used to that. The vision was shared, the handshakes were made, accounts were opened, surveys were drawn, and most of all the contracts were signed.
He was on the path. His dream would lead to a new way. For himself, for those around him, for the world.
***
My family won’t like all this, he thought while looking over paperwork in a rented store-front office space in a small strip mall on the edge of town, but they already think I’m crazy. And it’s my money anyway. That’s the way the trust attorney had set it up. They have nothing to say about where and how I spend it. They don’t have my vision anyway. They’re all out of alignment. With their conspicuous consumption. With them, bigger is always better. Well, I’m going to be bigger than all of them.
And the sooner I get this started, the sooner I can say goodbye to that boss of mine, too. The whole company. It was founded out of alignment.
***
The Internet was a wonderful thing. He could — and did — reach to the farthest corner of the globe. He soon had followers, and not just Facebook followers, real followers, in every country. At least every country he knew about.
He had to hire several translators to render his website content in the top languages of the world. And he was so pleased at the dedication of those multi-linguists. They not only knew their languages but they readily grasped his new concepts. ‘Alignment’ became their new byword. The universe — as he imagined it — had become their new home.
Due to the demand, he had to go from weekly podcasts to daily ones. His studio space grew by the month as donations poured in.
The funds for his operations, though at first coming mainly from his own bank accounts, were quickly being matched by income from his solar arrays and wind turbines, and then — most of all — from online contributions.
The locals, though at first skeptical, now enjoyed the extra employment opportunities afforded by his new operations, both at the mechanical level and at administrative functions.
***
It seemed as if the whole world was looking for ‘alignment’ as well, and this wasn’t just the maharishi types. They all knew something was wrong. The news was always bad, no matter where you looked, what media you used. Yet, ‘established religion’ had no answers. At least not for them. Too much bureaucracy. Too many strings attached. Join this. Read that. Thou shalt. Thou shalt not.
‘My god wouldn’t do this.’ ‘My god would do that.” These phrases were the common threads he heard on his social media feeds, podcasts, and blog comments. He knew he had struck a chord. He was on the pulse.
***
His properties were growing. Construction was nearly completed on his lecture hall — which was none to soon as many of his listeners were begging to hear and see him in person. Cars and RVs regularly drove by, and sometimes stopped and pulled into, his developing land. They drove around construction trailers, earthmovers and cranes, piles of rock and sand everywhere.
He would soon begin groundbreaking for his gallery and performance hall. Then there would be the necessary lodging quarters. Then a nature center, or more properly called ‘compound’ as it would contain species from around the world, particularly endangered ones. He and his staff had not failed to notice that many of his followers were scientists. From astrophysicists to zoologists, all were looking for ways to explain what they were experiencing in the lab or in the field. They knew the world around them, in large or small ways, was out off balance — had always been — and they yearned for a reason.
***
Then one day, one of his young assistants — a girl he’d taken a liking to — brought in a printout of an email that had come in recently. He rarely read his correspondence. His willing assistants broke down the subject matter and sent him weekly updates on trends.
But this one had apparently stood out, at least to his young protegé.
He tipped back in his chair and scanned the printed page. It was from a fairly well known university, from the philosophy department actually. He read further.
The writer complimented him on his work, his creativity, and especially the speed at which his movement had caught on. He smiled inwardly, glowing with pride. Although he never admitted it openly, these communications always made him feel gifted, a cut above. He had asked his people to print off the highly complimentary ones and send them to him directly.
He read on. There was a ‘but’ sentence. So, this one wasn’t all fanaticism and flattery. The writer began to question whether he proposed any reason for the imbalance, the lack of alignment in the universe. He also challenged him on his lack of real solutions to the misalignment. Perhaps humankind itself was also out of alignment?
Then the correspondent went deeper. Did the misalignment have a moral side to it? The writer challenged him to address that issue more fully. All his writing and speaking inherently implied a value to his propositions. Something was definitely ‘wrong.’ But how had he arrived at that notion? On what did he base it?
The lead edge of the paper drooped in his hand. The type was no longer in focus. His mind wandered … strayed, more like it. He didn’t know where to go with this. At first he thought to simply ignore it, file the email along with all the others. But for some reason he didn’t. He laid it on the corner of his desk. Then, for some reason, attached a paper clip to it … a red one.
***
The next morning, he was set to do final inspection on his new assembly hall. What he was most excited about was the new mosaic-tile ceiling.
It had taken him months to locate the craftsmen to do the work. He searched through contacts at museums throughout the world, contacting curators who would know if anyone still did the type of work he pictured. Styles from Mesopotamia, Mycenean Greece, and Byzantium swirled in his mind’s eye. He had reviewed — and rejected — dozens of portfolios. Likewise, when he had chosen an artist, he had struggled through draft after draft of design concepts. Finally, once chosen, the work begun in earnest. That was now nearly nine months ago.
Like Michelangelo beneath his Sistine chapel ceiling admiring the work, he stepped around a scaffolding to get a better look, It was composed of multiple layers of the cosmos, both seen with the naked eye and unseen. Galaxies, nebulae, all strewn across the expanse in dazzling asymmetry. He knew there was order there, deep under the surface. Yet half the beauty was the initial impression of disorder. Chaos presented itself to the untrained, uninitiated eye. He had made sure that his chosen artist was as inculcated with his personal doctrine as all his other followers, even before he put pen to paper with his initial concepts.
Finally, it was complete. He would unveil it both in person, on television, and on live Internet feed. He had invited both art critics and news media representatives from around the world. For good measure, he had also requested figures from the world’s major religions to attend. Bishops, rabbis, Caliphs, Imams, the Dalai Lama — all were welcome. The acceptances were flowing in, and his concierge office had to hire temporary staff to handle the arrival and accommodation arrangements. Nearby hotels were booking to capacity.
He pictured his new religion as spanning the gaps between all the world’s religions. The cosmos was something they all had in common. Every twenty-four hours it revealed itself, both old and new again. Looking up once more into his man-made ‘heaven’ he pictured all his guests assembling, paying as much homage to him as to his artwork overhead. In his imagination, he was a modern-day apotheosis. With arms back and chest upward, he rose toward his golden dome with no need of ladder or scaffold.
***
“Excuse me, Sir. We have a number of visitors in the front lobby of the admin building.” His bubble popped and he plummeted back to the terrazzo floor … and reality.
He noticed how shaken his young colleague was. He had made a point of hiring only assertive, outgoing, and confident staff, and this behavior was definitely out of line. “I’ll be there in a moment …”
“Sir, I don’t think our … visitors … are in the mood to wait.” She replied in a trembling voice. “In fact, they’re already …”
Stepping over some painter’s dropcloths, he strode quickly past her and out of the center of the space.
***
“What is this all about?” He raised his voice to be heard over the inrushing army of very official-looking men and women, some pushing hand carts and trolleys, and a few armed with rifles and sidearms.
Three individuals in black suits or law enforcement uniforms stepped forward, each flipping open badges of various shapes and sizes. “This is agent Trumble from the Southwest section office of the Internal Revenue Service.”
“I’m Roger Adkinson, Sheriff’s department”
“And I’m Henrietta Seymour, U.S. Marshall service.”
“We are here acting on several arrest warrants and seizure orders, stemming from numerous unanswered tax evasion charges, as well as sexual harassment complaints from several of your employees. It’s best you and your staff simply step aside and let us do our job with no obstruction.”
From the sheer elation of a few moments ago to the scene unfolding in his front lobby, he felt like an Icarus plunging from the clouds. He stumbled back against a glass wall. His people, young and old, were entirely dumbfounded. They stood, aimlessly scanning the group of strangers heading into their inner offices as if it was their own morning routine, some even balanced coffee cups and cellphones in their hands as the employees had earlier this morning.
“You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments”.—Exodus 20:4–6
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