Cruella Devil

Flaubert in Purgatory

OK, so while I try to catch up with Buddha on his way back to Hell (which he spent a lot of time in before enlightenment, and knows like the back of his grounded hand) let me tell you a little bit about the work of the soul and what I have learned about it by asking around.

The fact that God said the work of the soul is never done puzzled me, quite frankly, because it seems that souls ought to have an identifiable and specific task which they get done and then they get to go to paradise.

Logical, yes?

No, my dearest but most naive friend, no, no, a google times no. If you are looking for logic here you are wasting your time.

Souls in this cosmos appear to wander about forever, like I do. We are born over and over again, and no matter how much we accomplish there is always yet another task.

We souls are, in other words, workaholics; and while it’s obvious some heavy-duty kind of therapy is indicated here God’s portfolio of heavenly counselors does not seem to have any serious depth to it. Souls ought, for example, to be told by angels or someone to STOP and go lie on the beach for at least a few weeks in Purgatory; yet we never do, and for the most part it’s just go, go, go. We don’t need meditation; we need medication, and pharmacies in Purgatory are few and far between.

Even worse, you need a prescription to get anything really effective; and there are no doctors.

This is the kind of catch-666 God thinks up and it is not amusing. I once asked Him personally why there are no doctors in Purgatory and He said, “Because nobody ever gets sick in Purgatory.”