Today is a Testing Day.

I know it for a fact that it is. I even predicted in before I went to bed, and for the past week I’ve seen it looming in the distant future like a pothole I’m bound to step in and sprain my ankle. I’ve had it like the presentiment of inevitable things that are to come, and ones that ravage the peace and bliss of days.

Oh, how badly ravaged it is, and like bloodied soldier I kneel in a puddle of blood, crying, bidding the return of my virgin Sunday. (but it is tainted now and even Clorox won’t save it, so much for the miracles of soap).

But away with the histrionics; today is indeed a testing day. Dad is hell bent on mounting the newly bought prayers altar, which meant that there are holes to drill, screws to screw and many a mental strain as the profound immensity of my father’s Austinian means of oppression (and slavery) bear upon me like trepanning.

I will get screwed (as in scold), bolted (as in hit) and drilled (as in furiously demanded to repeat a course of work). It is the complete package should you wish to subscribe to Living with the Tans, the new and life-changing experience for your loss to miss!

So, then and there, it happened, and I got along with it. After all, it is a religious thing, and something I ought to get into without much qualms.

I’m not quite a religious person, though. I only go as far as praying, wearing amulets my dad insists I do and believing and respecting in the existence of a more higher form of life. In fact, I have this constant believe that all gods in every religion exists and are probably interacting among one another in more than mutual ways, up in the clouds. Like, for instance, a weekly bridge-and-poker night at Nirvana or a day off basking at the banks of Styx. I don’t mean to disrespect, but there’s this vision of Kuan Yin, Amaterasu, Mother Mary and Hera sitting down over Go Fish and comparing sons that I can’t really shake off.

(“I wouldn’t want to call Heracles my son,” said Hera. “But he did bring me back this ring from his business in Athens. Such a sweet young man, even if he’s not mine per se. I just wish Zeus would’ve kept it in his pants even if the titans were at it.”
“MY son led all humankind to eternal paradise,” said Mary, and all the girls nodded in approval.)

I take religion in a more lighthearted manner; I believe that if I do something I get something, and it is due to my own actions. I don’t believe in getting something by wishing and perpetually wishing that it will be given because I wish with devotion. I see death as something natural, and while I’m still scared shitless about it, I’ll eventually die and what happens after we leave it for then to see. Rather, I find it more important to keep a part of myself in this world, mostly in writing, so as to stay a memory on earth.

Funny enough, someone once told me that this believe in the cycle of life and the immortalisation of memories on earth is Taoism, and insisted that I believe in the bridge to God, and said it in the way like I’m certainly going to hell. No offence. I remember feeling insulted, but I gave him the benefit of the doubt.

Well, if you think of it, the way that most of us act according to each own beliefs, in every way we’re going to hell in one religion but going to heaven in another. Imagine a man dying and instead of seeing the shiny gates of heaven as he expects to, he sees the boatman at the river of darkness, who says, “You’re not buried with coins on your eyes. You stay here and rot.”

Imagine the distraught. But of course, I have this feeling that every belief sort of keep a track on their believers, and when they die they get assigned to them own means of spending the afterlife. Sort of like subscribing to insurance or a retirement plan from different companies.

Ah, time I head to bed now. But before I go let it be known that I mean no ill will towards other religions in writing this. I know we’re all chill people, but you won’t know if I suddenly find this in a newspaper somewhere and soon an entire nation wishes my death at the stake.

My dad will disown me and probably burn me at the stake himself, and well, spare it from me will ya?