purgatory for non believers

Purgatory for non believers

fiction
edward w pritchard

Purgatory for non believers is a place, here and now where there's never quite enough money, you never lose that last twenty pounds and a chest cold never finishes the charade of living because of the benefit evolution gave your immune system from  3300 generations of spunky ancestors.

Housing values never go up when you are in purgatory, only property taxes, both the old house and old car needing looming repairs, mortgages and loans are always adjustable with inflation threatening from the next recession, bank accounts are checking only with no savings and overdraft fees on the rise from bank consolidations, cash in hand is just more than enough to support your unhealthy habits and perversions, and military veterans with fat pensions and high school students with good life prospects are always soliciting lucre over and over when you enter a grocery store to buy an instant caffeine fix to get you through another interminable morning. You live in the wrong place and time happy to be just alive under the dome of a protective sky and timeless landscape.

Pretty women keep getting older and older when you are in perpetual purgatory, and they never have red hair anymore, and never know or want to know anything about art history, Vermeer's best paintings, their sparkle left then a dozen years ago, and you have to endure tons and tons of idle discussion about money, see inane most current movies, and when they finally invite into their circle you always remember someone else anyway.

Doctors only prescribe more/more/more pills in Purgatory, Ministers aren't spiritual only officious, pedantic and obtuse and politicians not only aren't philosopher Kings, but they are dishonest, and are raving fans, [rah rah rah $], about their party to a fault.

The sky is too bright at night where you live in Purgatory for non believers to see the wonder of the distant universe and the hiking trails are crowded with over population on sunny days during your walks and every one drives way too fast in over-sized trucks to ruin your bike rides on the serene hilly roads.

Old Jesus was just another poor fellow, one of about three million the cruel ambitious Romans crucified in rows, Jesus who was another perfectly beautiful baby but grew up to have lots of problems with authority and got in all kinds of trouble because of talking about class warfare in his times and place. If you try to talk to Jesus silently in your head inspired by your childhood faith he sends you thoughts deep in your brain about randomness, probability and maybe fate and determinism that you learned in college instead of ready solutions to your insurmountable problems.  

Purgatory for non believers is day to day but mercifully each morning about six am you get out of bed and get real busy doing nothing with about fifty important things to pass the time until it's time to go to sleep alone again after you are done worrying  about houses never going up in value and old cars never running right anymore and how many days there really are in five to ten more years.