MYTHS TRAVEL LIKE SEEDS on the wind, on clouds of radiation from a test site. They travel like zebra mussels in the bilge of an ocean liner, smothering native mussels, devouring the food supply, clogging engines and power plants. This could be an analogy to the invasive force of the Abrahamic Flood myth, details of which (the ark, animal pairs, the bird as scout, the name Noah) show up in or entirely supplant the flood myths of conquered and colonized peoples around the world—an excellent analogy except that the zebra mussel is reviled. I have never seen a zebra mussel plushie. But I have seen a plush ark with squishy sheep, lions, and giraffes you can pop inside. I have seen ark puzzles, mobiles, sticker books, hooked rugs, quilts, backpacks, playgrounds, earrings, stationery, and cookie jars. Noah’s ark was once an advertisement for a pontoon dealership.
What, exactly, have we cutified? What have we welcomed into our nurseries, classrooms, bedrooms, and greeting cards? Children’s toys and sermons don’t ask us to remember of the myth, in its most atomized form: the King James Bible, 1611. After God’s intentional and near-complete extermination of every land creature, he tagged a rainbow not as a symbol of “hope” or “renewal,” but of “hold me back.” He said, essentially, humans are crappy, we’re going to keep being crappy, but when he’s itching to lay waste to us again, he’ll look at the rainbow and talk himself down. The rainbow is a string tied to the finger of “every clean animal” got a boarding pass. The first thing Noah did when he stepped on the muddy ground was to build a makeshift altar and slaughter and burn those unpaired, seventh animals, “and the Lord smelled a soothing aroma.” You make it through 150 days of deluge, 365 days total in the dark hold of an ark, and when you finally disembark, hooves sucking through the sludge, you’re dragged before an altar where your throat is slit and the smell of your burning flesh is a balm to your creator.
