Harper on Phantom Wings

There are just the two of us, Harper and I, and we are talking in the dark corner of an all night diner where you can still find a waitress who wears too much perfume and calls everyone 'Honey'. I like to talk to Harper because he's the only person I know who is stranger than me. He also loves words and often mangles the English language in pursuit of that passion.

When two people are first falling in love and they form that little microcosm in which only they exist, Harper calls that the "hamster ball".

When a person discusses something passionately, flailing their arms around like Kermit the Frog on crack cocaine, Harper calls that going "Muppet Buck Wild".

When someone feels particularly emotional and is trying to explain how they feel, and their spoken words are coming out fast and twisted, Harper calls that either a "tangly ramble" or "rambly tangle" or "tangled rambly" or "rambled tangly" or a variety of other permutations. He says all these phrases are synonymous and interchangeable because the semantics are far more important than the syntax, and that, if a "ramble tangle" doesn't care about its order or grammar, then the phrase that describes it shouldn't care about its order or grammar either.

Tonight, we are discussing a phrase that he uses quite often and the phrase is "phantom wings".

Sometimes he says, "My phantom wings are killing me."

Sometimes he says, "Someone should check on her phantom wings."

Sometimes he says, "Stop crushing my phantom wings."

Every time he uses this phrase, as beautiful as it sounds, he confuses people, until he takes the time to explain that the phrase "phantom wings" refers to feeling stressed. This is a sufficient enough explanation for a majority of people. They hang the syntax in their memory banks and hook it up to the appropriate semantics and transparently translate the phrase the next time Harper mentions "phantom wings".

My memory banks don't work that way because my memory banks need concepts and stories to make connections. Besides, Americans have entirely too many unexplained colloquialisms in English as it is and, if Harper gets hit by a bus tomorrow -- which is not completely outside the realm of possibilities considering his inability to pay attention to the external world -- Americans will be stuck with one more.

So I say, "What are phantom wings?"

And he automatically says, "If I mention phantom wings, it means I am feeling stressed."

"Yes, I know that, but why?"

Harper sighs and says, "Takes too long to explain."

But I know Harper and when he says something takes too long to explain, it simply means I have to keep listening until he starts to talk again.

So, I listen, until he starts to talk again.

"In the beginning, there was God and God was the creator and the universe was his Magnum Opus and, when he finished, there the universe existed before time. It was good and the universe was a thing in and of itself, and its purpose was itself, but a work of art is not complete without an audience and the audience had to consist of sentient and rational creatures so that the universe would convey purpose beyond its mere existence. So God created angels as his audience for his work of art. But angels already had total knowledge of everything through their connection with God, so there was no mystery. God was not a Faith for the angels, he was a Fact. There was no conflict and, therefore, no drama, and, therefore, no context of conflict and drama in which a story could unfold through time and this make the universe static. There was only an infinity of praising and glorifying God until the fall of Lucifer and when Lucifer fell, he lost his wings."

"Sorry?" I said, "What version of the bible have you been reading?"

"What do you care? You're agnostic."

"Doesn't mean I don't respect a good book when I read it."

"I'm not being disrespectful. Every good reader who reads a good book sees their stories between the lines. I'm just telling you mine. You want to hear the rest of it or not?"

"Yes."

Harper stared at me, tilting his head.

"Yes!" I said, "I want to hear the rest...sorry..."

"Lucifer was delivered to the Lake of Fire, but hubris is the greatest of all sins, so Damnation was not sufficient punishment. So, God created phantom wings, a remembrance of was it was to be winged and knowledge of was it is to never being winged again and he cursed Lucifer with their bodily pain, carried just above his shoulder blades, as an added reminder of all that he had sacrificed. Lucifer's banishment created the dichotomy of Good and Evil and within those two extremes the angels saw that there existed many shades of gray and they asked God if they could enter into those shades and if they could praise and glorify him with their Faith and without their wings and God was pleased with their Faith so he created human beings as angelic avatars which allowed the angels to experience his universe in a uniquely human way. But, in order to turn God from Fact to Faith, the angels had to forget everything they knew and enter the human condition as a blank slate and God knew that this would cause despair so he gave each human a pair of phantom wings, a much milder form of Lucifer's punishment, to remind them of who they really were."

"And how did you find your phantom wings?" I asked.

"When I feel anxiety or sadness or despair, I dream, and when I dream, I have many symbols and settings and situations that recur in those dreams. Sometimes I think I have an unconscious treasure trove of stress in abstract forms buried somewhere in my mind because many of the dreams are the same. I am late for work, or I can't find my clothes, or I can't find my car, or I have a school assignment due even though I haven't been in school for years. In this dream, all other dreams coalesced, causing two knots of tension in my upper back. And though I don't remember all of the details of the dream, I do remember that it culminated in a scene in a large retail store where I was operating a cash register without any knowledge of how the machine worked and all around me were angry customers waiting for me to finish a complex and unsolvable business transaction. As the crowd threatened to crush me on all sides, the tension above my shoulder blades increased to an unbearable, pulsating pain and then two immense white wings burst through my flesh and muscle, unfurling and flapping with unprecedented power and the crowd was buffeted backwards by the force and I skyrocketed upwards through the ceiling and roof of the store and rose above a cloud cover in the sky until all below me was an endless floor of white mist and all around me was a glorious sunset of reds and oranges and pinks and purples and I felt an overwhelming, giddy joy, an ecstasy, that I knew only as a muted and filtered, human-sized portion of the infinite love of God."

After we finished our food and the table had been cleared and the waitress had brought us our check, I picked up the tab, with no argument from Harper, and I paid for both of our meals. It seemed a reasonable price for the discovery of the presence and purpose of my phantom wings.