Via Negativa by Daniel Hornsby

Author:Daniel Hornsby
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2020-08-10T16:00:00+00:00

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We set the chalice in the grass and sat there for a while. Paul had brought his ukulele and strummed a few verses of “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood.” The red-haired boy stared at a relief of the Agony in the Garden, and soon I found myself staring into it, too. Look, he said. Look. Suddenly Christ was moving. So were His apostles, breathing as they slept in a dog pile behind their kneeling Lord. The bloodied sweat on Christ’s brow ran down His face like raindrops on a windshield.

The garden itself began to breathe around us, to pulsate and contract like the drumhead of a giant jellyfish. Each of us got lost in his own sensory bewilderments. It was not completely unlike the wobbly auras of my migraines, but without the ensuing headache.

Somewhere in my increasingly geometrical visions, I saw Paul shaking and shivering, with his back against one of the mysteries. He started crying, but when I reached out to him, he jerked away and curled into a ball, and I got lost in the undulating grass.

Eventually, we returned to one another from our respective cosmoi. Still high, but more aware and in control now. It was decided that we should venture into the compound. The sun was setting. We’d been out there for four hours already.

We got up, and as we turned back to the buildings, the red-haired boy stepped on Paul’s ukulele, making a strange, incredibly loud chord that hung in the air for minutes, like colored smoke. Paul studied the mangled pieces of the instrument for a while and then led us to the chapel.

By now, our complete separateness had fizzled off entirely, and we had become a giant six-legged creature of a single will, lurking the ambulatory, lighting the candles. We chattered in the dark. We hummed songs, we ran up and down the aisle. We took off our shirts and pants, reveling in our wildness. We were silent, and then we were talking over one another, caught in dumb tangles of language. We ran into the sacristy and took the chrism oil and ran it through our hair, styling it like Ricky Nelson and James Dean. The ceiling, covered with flabby angels, seemed to be as deep as the sky itself. Together we lay out on the cool stone of the nave, staring up into the high depths of the artificial heavens.

Out of nowhere, Paul produced Mary, Queen of Snots. He must have had it all along, but I hadn’t noticed it until Paul plugged her in and her green rays danced on the floor.

“I don’t think I’m going to go through with it,” Paul told us.

“With what?” I asked, but if Paul answered, I can’t remember. I’d become wholly absorbed by the Queen’s slimy radiance.

I stared at Our Lady of Mucus for a while and traced her light along the walls. I imagined we were floating up with it, into and past the ceiling, flung high above the

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