Meeting In Progress

All of my demons got together for a brief meeting the other evening, which is to say they briefly misplaced their ability to write anything and blamed me.

The fur-laden marshal of my demons, who looked like a cross between a haggard hippie, an exhausted chef, and a disgruntled poet slash philosopher, banged his gavel against a tree stump that had been demoted to furniture due to the lack of his adequate judicial training.

The gymnasium-sized wilderness echoed with howls, growls, throat-clearing, and the unmistakable sound of moral ambiguity being microwaved like the bag of Orville Reddenbachers, you the reader, should probably get ready.

There were at least a couple hundred demons present, ranging from all ages and appearance. This, mind you, wasn't even counting the ones loitering around the refreshment table, sipping on their feelings, while devouring their own hearts, as if their own emotional hunger had personally wronged them.

“This meeting shall come to order!” howled the marshal. It took several attempts to get their full attention. Most of my demons are famously torn between listening, community-building, and setting the whole damn place on fire, almost like a well-balanced paradox of romance and rebellion.

Eventually, the growls subsided. Stumps were claimed by their assigned seating arrangements. Meanwhile, the moon held its breath, like a famished coyote waiting with patience in a desolate wilderness to steal the wandering hiker’s half-eaten sandwich.

It was time the meeting began.

A blue eyed demon took the stage first. He clicked on his PowerPoint, which to say was a rather bold move in any metaphysical realm, especially for a creative platform that can be found on Instagram. The temperature of the room warmed quite a few degrees almost instantly..

Earth, according to the slides being presented, was behaving like a rebellious boy who’d been left alone at a ranch full of bunnies with a maxed out credit card and unresolved childhood trauma.

All the while, wars in the name of greed strutted across the screen. Natural disasters being manipulated by negligent claims of climate change did cartwheels across the clarity of things. Technological advances wrestled with the loving soul of humanity into a chokehold, while whispering in it's ear, such easy access to everything is for your own good in the long run and corporate checkbooks. Politic's appeared briefly, but were quickly escorted away due to a false flag or two, or maybe too much indecent exposure, and straight into a secret tunnel that most likely led to an undisclosed island that kind of rhymes with in between.

“It’s not looking good down there,” the blue-eyed demon said. “People have managed to weaponize their beliefs out of sheer boredom and virtue signaling.” A restless murmur rippled through the crowd.

Demons you see, despite their gaslit and negative branding, have always adored humans. They have always admired their creative approach to life, their stubborn faith, and their reverent ability to create both pagentry and gasoline by splicing them in the same incendiary sentence together.

“What are we supposed to do?” one of the demons growled. “Is this the end of the experiment of enlightenment before the so-called apocalypse?”

“Come to order!” roared the marshal, banging the gavel upon the tree stump like a sexually frustrated woodpecker with a borderline obsessive compulsive disorder.

A demon that likes to moonlight as a writer stood up suddenly amongst the crowd. He had the posture of someone who’d seen the roman empire fall and finally remembered where he parked his horse and chariot. “A lot of people are drowning in themselves,” he said. “They’ve become hypnotized by these glowing little rectangles and seem more allergic to unconditional caring and listening to others than ever before, because they are too worried about what everyone thinks about them and their own self image to uphold. I don’t really see a fix unless we can flip their inner algorithm’s script.”

Pandemonium erupted. A bunch of demons started fighting. One looked like it wanted to start a fire. Chairs flew. A few even went so far as to reenact a scene from The Sopranos using finger guns and sock puppets. All the while, the illuminating ideology of love and light knelt and wept amongst the stars above.

That’s when a lovely young demon sauntered up to the stage all of the sudden.

She was a special surprise guest that the chairmen had kept hidden in his heart until the timing of her entrance was perfect.

She wasn’t little in a delicate way. She was little in the way new beginnings are. Her horns didn’t match her outfit. Her halo didn't quite fit. Her ash covered sundress smelled faintly of soot and bad decisions. Her wings looked like they’d been slept on by one too many two timing men.

“I have an idea,” she spoke gently into the microphone.

Her voice wasn’t loud, but it was precise. It was like a ceramic knife tapping upon a glass of champagne about to give a toast in honor of the universe during a chaotic argument.

The room fell silent. Hell, even all the chaos going on leaned in to listen.

“We don’t need to send them another savior or some spiritual guru,” she said. “Everyone’s exhausted by saviors and spiritual gurus.”

She paused, smiled crookedly, and continued.

“We’ll send them a woman.”

“She’ll look ordinarily gorgeous enough to be looked over by many, which is perfect. She’ll live among them, messily. She’ll fall in love with many a wrong man. She’ll lose faith in herself, only find it again late at night and alone in laundry rooms and dimly lit libraries.”

She continued.

“She won’t glow unless a poet makes her blush. She won’t preach unless the sermon is on a Saturday night. She will swear like a sailor though, and she will laugh in the face of hate. She’ll forgive when gravity remembers it’s wildly inconvenient. She’ll be too kind for anything cynical, and way too sharp and on point for any fool to disregard. And she will be subtlety irritating to anyone who profits off of poetry and cruelty’”

She continued still.

“They’ll misunderstand her constantly. They will call her dangerous. They will color her difficult. They will consider her a problem. And they’ll be fucking right. Because she’s not here to save the world. She’s here to infect it with laughter, empathy, curiosity, creativity, and the long forgotten and farfetched idea that everone on this planet is responsible for treating one another with the utmost respect no matter what color they are, and/or what most recent news segment has brainwashed them. She will remind humanity that it's not broken, it's just become way too distracted by its own hypnotizing devices.”

“And when they ask her who sent her, She’ll shrug her dainty little shoulders and say,

‘No one you know of yet, it was just time for me to show up.’ like he always believed I  would.”

She then blew a kiss into the microphone, said a silent prayer, performed a cute little respectful curtsy and walked off stage, right back into the chairman’s heart.

The marshal slowly set down the gavel.

“Do any of my demons in the audience object to the task at hand?” he asked.

Silence fell across the room thick and thoughtful.

One of the demons sighed. Another started to howl, then pretended he was just yawning. Another started scratching the back of his ear with a number two pencil.

“Okay then. If there are no objections, the motion has been passed. But only on the “soul” condition that we never ever take credit for whatever happens next.” spoke the chairman from the bottom of his heart.

All of the demons slowly rose, shook hands, and got to know each other again. Then they mingled and laughed while discussing the happy ending of the Revelations. The whole damn room was buzzing with an electric energy of something dangerously close to faith.

And somewhere upon god’s green earth, a lovely woman grabbed her boots, buttoned her blouse and her blue jeans, put her lipstick on, and looked into the mirror and smiled.

Because she just realized the rules of her being her truest self were no longer negotiable.

Meeting adjourned.

Til the next time.

That Ryan guy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhUz4gARqZo