The Great Apology

A Fool's Errand

Alexameno's Graffito is a 3rd century piece of Roman graffito depicting a Man (identified as Alexameno proper), worshiping a crucified donkey-man, with the derisive inscription "Alexameno worships his god"

This God is identified as Jesus Christ of Nazareth... classifying this piece of graffito as one of the oldest depictions of Christ recorded.

This is a defense of Alexameno, as one can sympathize with him and his beliefs being made a mockery, being singled out as a minority 3rd century religion during the dynasty of the Western Roman Empire..

Being depicted worshiping an ass, Alexameno is made a fool, and there insinuates a formal projection, that the worshiper is, himself an ass.

This is also a defense of his persecutors, as I would also be perplexed to derision if I had heard one of my colleagues began to worship a random street preacher from primitive-palestine, who was crucified by his own people 200 years ago for claiming to be God, and his followers had (until this point) been scattered and persecuted from a city that was destroyed to rubble in the mid-1st century...

However, our friend Alex cannot help it, as he too is just as perplexed as I am. In this utterly contrived suffering, there remains in him an absurd conviction and assurance of things hoped for, that all tendency to abandon his foolishness is immediately overridden by the miraculous cleansing of his conscience. Alexameno is happier than I am in my vitriol of him, in fact, my persecution vindicates his conscience further... for him, to die for his foolishness would be his greatest gain.

In my scoffing I have become the ass.

This is my Apology to Alexameno.

My own retrospective foolishness rends me in two, and I am driven to a Leviathan cycle of self-justification, dissociation and deflection. I have become intoxicated and delirious by a twisting and strafing and tracing malacopia. The double inversion of my projective complex causes me to lose sight of who I am.

I am a fool, I am a god, I am a clown of God...

Yet my divine mania is insufficient to atone for the weight I bear in my foil.

The vexing of my soul involuntary hiccups and convulses and compresses and contracts. And spins, and twirls. I slip, and tumble and tumble and find no footing, the ground is no longer stone... but sand. I am now Alexameno's Ballerina. I dance to His horrifying Music.

I must know who His God is, and I must know now. For my sanity hinges on an epiphany.

Upon shameless, sweating and bleeding reexamination of my vandalism of his pure soul, I find myself afloat in a white void, alone with my ass. In a moment's notice, I am sober. For an instant, I understand. I am merely a helpless infant turning round in Eternity. I am the sand. I am the nothing.

I peer upward onto the One I had pierced, and fall to my knees in reverence. I am now Alexameno Worshiping His God.

My Ass gives me a friendly smile, as if I had done no wrong. As if I had never stained my hands with innocent blood. The weight of my shame is lifted like a mountain being moved from one place to another.

"I am your Rock, but you can call me 'Christ', I am your Serpent. I am your friend"

He touches my lips, and I am transfigured into an Eagle, and I spring upward, soaring into water colored sky that ignites into a spire of flames that are colors. The fire breaks into a twister of glittering dust, I am scattered and strung into a strong stone tower, and from the tower I become a man again.

I am Man, not Ass.

I awake on a ground floor, with a kindled warmth beneath my sternum, as I kiss my graffito, and draw the famed fish symbol in the dust of my testament. The story of the most greatest scandal..