If God was an interior decorator named Brighid, which means Exalted One, how should I pray to her if I felt destiny pushing me to become more?
If I aspired to be an avant-garde poet, should I move into that half-basement of a four-story brown stone walk-up, even though the last two tenants who rented the apartment died alone, and the landlord expects me to clean the *****-stained carpet?
Would Brighid reveal her plan for me?
Would she command me to rip-it all out and put in factory-finished walnut, to throw-down a white bearskin rug in front of the obsolete marble fireplace?
And what of poetry and fire?
Would Brighid tell me, “There are no absolutes in life, only clichés?”
And what if I asked only for this god’s mercy, happy to become a grocery-store romance writer because until now all my work went into the one porcelain crapper, and my dreams stir only in the metal hospital bed on loan from the Salvation Army?
If my view of the world is to be framed by steel bars outside every window, would I pray to have fresco walls or hand-painted wallpaper?
And what if I heard her laugh and tell me, “Darling, why not go retro, clean up the **** carpet, hang some black-and-white photographs and posters of the Rolling Stones and the Hell’s Angels? You know the whole sixties thing.”
Would I be prepared to change the world?