I was back in college again, and on some kind of field trip somewhere lasting a week. Me and a bunch of other girls were sharing a house for the duration. the kitchen was bizarre. There were no work surfaces at all, but plenty of gas-powered hotplates for cooking on - at least twenty! the kitchen was also very spacious.

Oh, and it was the group’s tutor’s birthday. Why that was relevant, I have no idea.

But, for the record, here is what I believe.

I believe there is a god. Supreme being, maker of Heaven and Earth And all that jazz.

Gender? kind of irrelevant. My god has no gender, and in the English language tradition, I will use the 3rd person gender indeterminate singular pronoun “they”.

My god is also an uncaring god. Not malicious, merely not interested. They lost interest, perhaps, or god distracted, perhaps, or ran out of energy, perhaps. Whichever. They set things in motion aeons ago, and, being a lazy god, they set it up in such a way that it would continue, unattended, like some insane von Neumann machine.

But I digress. My god’s gender is irrelevant. My god’s goodness, motivation, interest, even very existence (beyond having set things in motion initially) is irrelevant. My god pays no attention to us. “Oh my god” almost takes on a new meaning for me, especially with a different intonation.

And yet…

I believe in Heaven and Hell.

And Heaven is right here, on Earth, around us as we speak.

And Hell is right here, on Earth, around us as we speak.

Oh, and reincarnation is real.

So how does it all fit together?

It’s like this. My god is, at a fundamental level, lazy. Omnipotent, sure. But even if you can run, that doesn’t mean you exert yourself constantly all the time with such activity. My god is the same. they could have chosen to judge each soul on its own merits and give each soul an appropriate afterlife. Sounds too much like hard work though. Far simpler just to reincarnate each soul back into this world.

You want heaven? Forget leading a good life. Who decides what’s good anyway. Instead, make the world more into your impression of what heaven should be. Some day, you will die. Sad, but true. And some day after that you will be reincarnated into this world. Did you make this world closer to your ideal of heaven? the more you did, the more deserving you will have been coming back into this heaven that you helped create.

Oh yes, and you can make Hell on Earth too if you like. Make the world a worse place, and when you come back, the badder you made it, the more deserving you will have been to be born back into hell.

Thus spake Warda kawabata.

“You are not a fish,’ said Huizi. “How do you know what fish enjoy?”

“You are not I,” retorted Zhuangzi, “so how do you know that I do not know what fish enjoy?”

The northern half is designated as desert, and the southern half as grasslands, with a mountain ridge dividing the two main areas.

This division is achieved by judicious use of the ground texture tools, and setting the altitudes at which each texture is used. One consequence of this is that the desert areas must be kept very close to sea-level, and the grasslands must be kept at medium-high altitude, or at least, not as lowlands.

Rental enquiries go to the usual places.

So today I had the dubious honour of coming in contact with a government organ. Government organs are somewhat icky things, and have a tendency to screw you if you aren’t careful to protect yourself. I always use protection; I take care to read their rules and regulations whenever they are presented to me. But since this is not Playboy, but a mere blog, I will stop with the innuendo for now.

The administratum drone I was talking with said i hadn’t followed the rules properly, then pointed to a certain line in the paperwork. I read it over, then immediately explained to her that it was badly written and unclear, and as written, it implied  the course of action I had undertaken was in line with their requirements.

Her response made me want to hug her out of pity. She said it had passed muster with all the spelling and grammar checkers on their word processors, and was therefore good English.

The login screens says there are currently 17,889 avatars currently logged in. LL must have an awful lot of employees. I had no idea they were so big.

“Who are you?” I said.

“You’re kidding, right? you know who I am.”

“Humour me, please.”

“Ok, I’m Steve. But you knew that already, right?”

“‘Steve’ is just a label. Who are you, really?”

“I’m not sure I get what you mean here.”

I grabbed the nearest can of food and threw it at him. He caught it with his usual agile ease. “What’s that?” I said.

He read the label, then threw it back to me. “Its a can of beans” he said.

“That’s just a label.” To illustrate my point, I ripped the label off and threw it back to him. “What is it?” I asked again.

“Ok, its a can.” he threw it back to me.

I caught it. “Just another label.” I said. To illustrate my point, I opened the can. Inside there was some pineapple cubes in syrup. “See? Those were nothing but labels. Your name is nothing but a label. I ask you again, who are you?”

“What do you want me to answer?”

“Ok, you have a father and mother, right?”

“Yes.”

“And you are male I presume?”

“Last time I checked, yes”

“So it follows then that you are a son!”

“Ok, yes, you’re right of course. I am indeed a son. So what?”

“I agree - so what! That is in no way the entirety of who you are. You are a son. I am a daughter. I am also a cousin, an aunt, a niece, a sister, and more!”

“So I guess you also want me to say I am a grandson, a great grandson, a great great grandson, and so on?”

“Only if you knew them.”

“Eh?”

“Only if you knew them. Most people, and I assume here for the sake of argument that this includes you, have had meaningful contact with their parents, and usually their grand parents too. But great grand parents? For most people, these guys are dead by the time they are old enough to start forming long-term memories. And if you have no personal knowledge of them, they are hardly a part of your identity, of who you are, true?”

“I disagree. I may not have known my great grand parents personally, but I know about them. For example, I know they were all from Germany…”

“So that means that ‘being German’ is a part of your identity, nothing more. A valid part of you of course, and very important for some people. It naturally implies ‘being European’. Im not sure where in Germany your folks were from, but I have no doubt that a regional identity forms a part of who you are too.”

“Ok, cool, we’ve established I am a set of relations to my family, and where I come from forms a part of who I am. Surely there’s more to it than that?”

“Of course. You work, right?”

“yes, I’m a translator.”

“And when you go home, you are a traveller. When you cook your dinner you are a chef. When you phone your girlfriend you are a seducer. Each of us wears many hats. Our role in our family, our role in society, our place of origin, even all of this put together is only an approximation of who we are.”