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I don’t know what your spiritual views may be. I can be pretty assured you have some though since just about everyone does. From the early Aztecs and their somewhat unfriendly tendency to pull the beating heart from faithful schleps whose only mistake was to stay in town on holy day, to the positively benign by comparison Shi’ite Islamic fundamentalists willingness to beat themselves into a bloody mess during the Tiq Zani ritual, there’s a plenty wide range of beliefs out there to choose from. Kinda makes our own fire and brimstone Christian services here in the south seem downright social now that I think about it. I’m somewhat exempt from any of it though by virtue of my own unwillingness to concede any kind of belief until I have some authentication, which pretty well puts me on the spiritual group W bench with father rapers for the equivalent of littering. I do, however, sometimes imagine what spiritual beliefs I would subscribe to though if I were to make a choice.

Perhaps the most attractive to me is reincarnation. For some reason, the idea that we are doomed to repeat past life mistakes over and over until we get the point and thus further perfect our soul for its eventual meeting with its creator holds a certain degree of appeal. Sure, if I were to REALLY find myself reincarnated  after my demise I would promptly kill myself since there is no way in hell I’m going through all of this again, yet there still remains a certain amount of attractiveness to the idea. With a little more thinking on the matter, I’m on a roll here with the thinking stuff, I imagine this appeal is due to the possibilities reincarnation  holds for practicing denial and shifting blame; two things I’ve already admitted to occasionally finding quite useful. Especially when combined with Rum. You don’t end up on the group W bench for nothing you know.

For instance…

You would think that a guy who enjoys words enough to work with them for a living would be pretty well organized. You’d imagine him sitting at a stately oak desk with a row of prestigious books neatly arranged on the corner. There’d be a well stocked pencil holder full of sharpened pencils and shiny pens that actually work placed strategically next to the work area. You’d probably picture neatly arranged files, tabbed and labeled for easy reference arrayed in alphabetical order in his file cabinet and within easy reach. He’d have an uncluttered desktop and a neat little wastebin off to the side with precisely three crumpled pieces of paper lying in the bottom because by golly, this guy is serious enough to keep mistakes to a minimum.

Well, in my past life I was obviously a dyslexic compulsive hoarder because the inability to achieve anything resembling neatness and organization is the biggest reason for my currently higgledy piggledy state of existence. Apparently there was something I forgot when I embarked on this writing career of mine, in particular, that I am a disorganized slob. As pretty as the above picture is, the reality is cold and stark, a veritable wasteland in fact where organization and neatness go to die. Prestigious books? Well, if you count dog eared copies of Bloom County and Dean Koontz novels as literary greats then I guess it’s possible. I have all the classics; Huckleberry Finn, Gulliver’s Travels, War and Peace, Of Mice and Men and more do in fact reside in the same household as me. However, my spouse has wisely arranged them on ledges around the house, unmolested and safely out of my reach. My pencil holder is well stocked indeed although out of the fifty assorted pens and pencils there are approximately two pens that work, one of which contains lime green ink and none of the pencils has a point. I don’t even know where the pencil sharpener is although I do remember seeing it once. A moot point at best since there isn’t a doctor alive who can match me for mangled handwriting.

 I’m a great one for taking notes and keeping hold of important information. At first glance this would seem a good and promising glimmer of hope. Problem is, the contents of my file cabinet look more like something you’d find in a third grade teacher’s confiscated items drawer than anything else. There aren’t any files in there but if the in-laws are going to visit and I need to find a Whoopee cushion, I know exactly where to look. My actual notes and papers are spread all over in heaps as if a confetti stuffed piñata exploded over my desk. There are bills and notices, hastily scrawled bits of inspiration on half shredded paper napkins that I’ve long forgotten the inspiration behind, passwords and logins that I have no idea what they unlock, client notes and instructions that I somehow manage to remember even though coffee stains make them look more like Rorschach cards than anything and a whole host of miscellaneous detritus and random objects. Wastebasket? Not a one in sight. Since I’m not sure what half this stuff is, I throw nothing out until I am absolutely and positively certain I won’t need it again, which is about twice a year. Of course, three days after throwing the stuff out is when I end up needing it.

Lest you think this is a simple matter of bucking up and taking charge of things, consider that this has been my case since I first managed to get hold of a marker and the family photo album at the age of three. School was a nightmare and while the rest of the class had to turn in their notebooks for grading every semester, my teachers took one look at my lumpy book-bag and the trail of loose papers following me from class to class and decided to just take my word for it as long as my test scores stayed high. I still have vague memories of my English teacher praising my above average CAT’s while holding my notebook between thumb and forefinger as if it were radioactive.

It’s not that I haven’t tried. There have been periods where I’ve managed to maintain the appearance of tidy efficiency for weeks at a time. I’ve learned though that these attempts are in fact serious mistakes. Apparently, whatever forces are at work during the actual reincarnation process remain active during your lifetime in order to insure that should you catch on to what’s up, you still get your lumps. In this case, these brief periods of neatness only serve to cause an eventual explosion of disorganizational chaos. Things will roll along swimmingly and I’ll present to the world the happy and self congratulatory face of one who has their inner slob demons licked, then one day I’ll open the door to my room and it will appear as if a pack of rabid squirrels were fighting over a ten pound acorn on my desk. Far worse than the gentle and slow buildup I’m accustomed to, this will be a torrent of disorganization bursting forth like water from a dam. Everything in its path is obliterated and only time can allow things to once again resume their normal state of serene disarray. In these cases I usually just drag out the hefty lawn bags, scoop everything in, and resign myself to more of the status quo.

I’m told there are those whose offices are clean and tidy examples of happy efficiency. It might be true because I’ve seen things resembling this in corporate buildings. I’m a bit suspicious though because the mere fact that they pay someone to come in and do the cleaning smacks of conspiracy. I mean really, who pays someone to clean up their office? Messy people, that’s who. And I resent the picture of efficient neatness they foist on the rest of the world as if they never left a piece of paper out of place or a pencil unsharpened.

At any rate, let’s get back to spirituality.

If one day we should meet in another life? Kill me.