1977 lines
112 KiB
Plaintext
1977 lines
112 KiB
Plaintext
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Living in such a state taTestaTesTaTe etats a hcus ni gniviL
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of mind in which time sTATEsTAtEsTaTeStA emit hcihw ni dnim of
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does not pass, space STateSTaTeSTaTeStAtE ecaps ,ssap ton seod
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does not exist, and sTATeSt oFOfOfo dna ,tsixe ton seod
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idea is not there. STatEst ofoFOFo .ereht ton si aedi
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Stuck in a place staTEsT OfOFofo ecalp a ni kcutS
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where movements TATeSTa foFofoF stnemevom erehw
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are impossible fOFoFOf elbissopmi era
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in all forms, UsOFofO ,smrof lla ni
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physical and nbEifof dna lacisyhp
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or mental - uNBeInO - latnem ro
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your mind is UNbeinG si dnim rouy
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focusing on a unBEING a no gnisucof
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lone thing, or NBeINgu ro ,gniht enol
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a lone nothing. bEinGUn .gnihton enol a
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You are numb and EiNguNB dna bmun era ouY
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unaware to events stneve ot erawanu
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taking place - not -iSSuE- ton - ecalp gnikat
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knowing how or what FORTY tahw ro woh gniwonk
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to think. You are in 10/15/97 ni era uoY .kniht ot
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a state of unbeing.... ....gniebnu fo etats a
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--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
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CONTENTS OF THiS iSSUE
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=----------------------=
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EDiTORiAL Crux Ansata
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LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
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STAFF LiSTiNGS
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[=- ARTiCLES -=]
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CAPiTALiSM AND HUMAN NATURE Crux Ansata
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THE REVOLUTION IS NOW Bobbi Sands
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CONFESSiONS OF A MALE FEMiNiST Crux Ansata
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PAGE FROM A DIARY Crux Ansata
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[=- POETASTRiE -=]
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UNNAMED BAD POEM Flying Rat's Nostril
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PROMETHEUS MOURNS Nemo est Sanctus
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[=- FiCTiON -=]
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ALL POWER STEMS FROM... I Wish My Name Were Nathan
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PREDATOR Howler in the Shadows
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DANCE OF THE HEKURA Dark Crystal Sphere Floating Between Two Universes
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--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
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EDiTORiAL
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Crux Ansata
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First of all, boys and girls, it's October. Remember to be wearing black
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on the twenty-second for the National Day of Protest Against Police Brutality.
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Tell your friends.
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There's been a bit of a shake-up here at State of unBeing offices. Or,
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rather, that isn't "here". The true successors to State of unBeing are
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working from an undisclosed location, at least until we manage to drive the
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usurpers from the complex.
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In any case, here is the summary. After I Wish My Name Were Nathan had
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Kilgore Trout killed, and then tried to cover it up, we had to have a meeting
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of the Intertextual Workingman's Association. We would have been flexible,
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and even would have allowed the people to vote on the multimedia idea, so long
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as we could have been sure the people would have voted the right way. But it
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wasn't working out.
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I'm kidding, of course. The people kicked IWMNWN out for killing
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Kilgore. Killing editors is wrong, even if he had it coming.
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So, boys and girls, you know what State of unBeing looks like. If
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anything drops into your mailbox that doesn't look right, it isn't right. And
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see if I Wish My Name Were Nathan ever ends up on the contributors list now.
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We have a pretty decent issue, anyway. Several articles, a couple of
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pretty bad poems -- but they're short, and several short stories. Not bad
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from working on a laptop plugged into the cigarette lighter of our old pick-up
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truck, don't you think?
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Until later, It Is Right to Resist.
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* * *
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News Updates:
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The Congress has on the fast track a lovely bill called the Freedom from
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Religious Persecution Act. This bill essentially sets up an organization
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answerable only to the U.S. President, with the power to enact sanctions,
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etc., against countries whose religious policies they don't approve of. It
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also calls for this office to monitor religious organizations around the world
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-- with no injunction against within our borders.
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That means the U.S. government is going to be tracking and monitoring
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people's religious affiliations.
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I don't know about you, but I find that ominous.
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*
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Here in Texas, we continue to have prisoners of war in relation to the
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Republic of Texas movement. Never thought I'd see it. The movement is
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struggling now under legal fees, and has little chance of surviving.
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Meanwhile, Texas also leads the country in state executions.
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*
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Earlier this year, the Southern Poverty Law Center released a report on
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militia organizations two years after the Oklahoma City bombing. The SPLC is
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a familiar name to those following militia and similar organizations, or the
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Oklahoma City bombing, and is an organization dedicated to smearing
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organizations the One Worlders don't approve of. Because the average American
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-- newspaper employee or otherwise -- has the political consciousness of a
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carrot, if your organization has a sweet sounding name like "Southern Poverty
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Law Center", you get believed. Among their targets this year was the United
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States Taxpayer Party. Their crime? Openly opposing the New World Order.
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(Believe it or not, the SPLC report listed opposing the New World Order as a
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reason for being listed as an anti-government hate group.)
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*
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A member of the joint chiefs of staff recently told the Army Times
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Americans are soon going to have to choose between decreased civil liberties
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and decreased protection from domestic terrorist activity.
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*
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Across the country, large conglomerates are buying up radio stations and
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television stations and bringing them into ever smaller ownership groups.
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Particularly noticeable in this trend is that conservative talk radio is being
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bought up -- and shut down -- decreasing the variety of views available in the
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media. This has been made possible through the recent Telecommunications Act
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of 1996. If anyone speaks legalese and can explain how and why these changes
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were made, aside from economic censorship purposes, I'd appreciate hearing it.
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*
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A new study shows poverty among Texas children to be 24% -- 39% among
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African American children in Texas. I know of only two places with a rate
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higher than that latter. Poverty is 40% among some communities in New York
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City, and Guatemala.
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*
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Michael New has entered the appeals phase of his trial for refusing to
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wear the United Nations blue beret. (His struggle is far from over. There is
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no doubt whichever side loses this appeal will bring it to the Supreme Court.)
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In other news, the United Nations recently seized three Serbian radio stations
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due to disapproving of their news broadcasts, and reports of UN blue helmet
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atrocities from abuse of power to rape and child prostitution continue to
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stack up.
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The price we pay for "world peace".
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--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
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LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
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Dear Editor:
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I just thought I'd write in and voice my support for the one true State
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of unBeing. Not too long ago ansat pulled up to my office, bleeding from
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several wounds, in a gunshot-riddled beat up old pickup truck with the
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Apocalypse Culture Publications seal on the door. After letting him stand in
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the rain for a while and liberating him from society's demands that he stay
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dry, I let him into my office, at that time still located in a cardboard box
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in the turning lane of US 183, and we discussed the future of the zine after
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the rise of the Young Pretender Nate. (I can call him Nate when we're at
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war.) After hearing ansat's long, twisted, story of sex, money, and betrayal,
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we set out to publish the truth, along with the help of a few loyal
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contributors who had not been subverted by Nathan's -- I mean Nate's -- lies.
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After several attempted firebombings on my office foiled by the rain and wet
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cardboard, we moved my office and operations to an undisclosed location in a
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street outside the University of Texas. Despite complaints about the road
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narrowing, we've worked night and day to bring you the issue you now hold on
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your computer. We will reclaim the ACP complex, and I urge you all to take up
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arms and aide us in the fight against the tyrant IWMNWN. Of course, I will
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join in the fighting as soon as they tell me where the complex is. So rally
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around the true SoB and recognize ansat's claim to succession, at least until
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I claim it for myself.
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In Defense of the SoB We All Love,
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Captain Moonlight
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--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
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STAFF LiSTiNG
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EDiTOR
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Crux Ansata
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CONTRiBUTORS
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Bobbi Sands
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Crux Ansata
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Dark Crystal Sphere Floating Between Two Universes
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Flying Rat's Nostril
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Howler in the Shadows
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I Wish My Name Were Nathan
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Nemo est Sanctus
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GUESSED STARS
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Captain Moonlight
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--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
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[=- ARTiCLES -=]
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--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
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CAPiTALiSM AND HUMAN NATURE
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Crux Ansata
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I'm sure I've said this before, but there are few things that irritate me
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so much as to be told something I have experienced is impossible. This often
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comes up when discussing Capitalism with the bourgeois. Whether due to shame
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-- an attempt to find an excuse for their self-centeredness -- or due to
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actual, innocent inability to see reality, I don't know, and my usual answer
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is more trite than thorough: I point out that it is one human's nature, but
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not mine, and that their selfishness is no justification for a parasitic
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worldview. They may consider it impossible, but I simply do not see the world
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their way. I do not live for money, I do not feel a need to beat out my
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neighbor, and I am not aware of feeling a desire to stockpile that particular
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fetish.
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There is a level of truth to it, though. Capitalism has deformed human
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nature into a form that allows those benefiting from the inequalities of
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capitalism -- and those who merely hope to -- to justify their predation.
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Various Views of Human Nature
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A number of views of human nature compete in our intellectual world, our
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marketplace of ideas. Many or most people have some combination of these
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views, although few examine why, or even what, they believe.
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The Capitalistic view of human nature should seem familiar to most
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people. After all, this is the concept we are brainwashed into believing. As
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Marx said in The German Ideology: "The ideas of the ruling class are in every
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epoch the ruling ideas." This is to say, the ideology of the ruling class is
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the ideology of the nation, and our ruling class has its ducks in the
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proverbial row on this one. Our schools, our courts, our advertising all
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conspire to teach us this distorted perspective. Worse, the people want to
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believe it, for reasons I will go into later. Suffice it now to say that this
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conception provides a cover to allow people to think and do what they are made
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to believe they want to, without bowing down to idols like "virtue",
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"morality", "justice", or outdated systems of prescribed morality, like the
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Bible, the Quran, or the Declaration of Independence. This view of human
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nature frees the people to be the willing slaves of the ruling class. Heil
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Progress!
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The fundamental principle of the Capitalist view of human nature is the
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assumption that humans exist in a "war of all against all". This draws from
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the first prophet of Capitalism: Hobbes, in his book Leviathan. From the
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time it was published Hobbes was persecuted by those who misinterpreted his
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work. Many, for example, saw it as an atheistic work. This atheistic
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distortion has continued into Capitalism in those who see the negative in man
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to be inherent, somehow genetic, indeed "human nature", while Hobbes himself
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would undoubtedly have traced it to the fall of man. Those who see the war of
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all against all in the contemporary manner of Capitalism are also guilty of
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another misinterpretation of which Hobbes would be quite sad.
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This is not a critique of Hobbes, and I do not want to devote too much
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time to philosophical disputes between he and I. (There are many.) Neither
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do I intend to dwell on how the world-historical situation in which he was
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writing influenced his beliefs. I mean only to point out his position as
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prophet of the Capitalist order -- and that he probably intended no such
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thing. He was quite clear in the beginning of his Leviathan that he was
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discarding the concept of the summum bonum, the absolute good. He gave no
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reason for this, and was probably well aware his work was not a self-contained
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system of philosophy, but an intentional distortion of the world for the sake
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of demonstrating a point.
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This distortion has become enshrined into the dogma of the Capitalist
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faith.
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The second prophet of the Capitalist faith, and one who I suspect knew he
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was distorting someone, was T.H. Huxley. (He was the grandfather of the
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Aldous Huxley who wrote the books Brave New World and Brave New World
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Revisited, et al.) Huxley generalized this distortion of the world of man as
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a war of all against all into a world of all species against all species, and
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into a concept where not only every species but every individual within every
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species was in similar competition. Huxley was a Darwinian revisionist, and
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some of his work on evolution as being less gradualistic than Darwin conceived
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is without doubt of value, but intentionally or not, Huxley presented a
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worldview heavily distorted against cooperation and towards competition, which
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has yet to be rectified in the common mind. (I suspect most people still
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believe the phrase "survival of the fittest" is from Darwin.)
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The impact of this distortion was to make it justified as not only a
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feature of fallen human society, but as an inherent rule of all nature for
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humans to be willing to destroy each other. Indeed, it was made a relative
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good for an individual human to destroy those around him. These features of
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"social Darwinism" and eugenics were most pronounced in the earlier part of
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this century. Hitler is often cited as one of them, although he was more
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altruistic than our contemporary Capitalists. Hitler had an understanding of
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cooperation as a factor in evolution, though he restricted it to those of an
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individual's race. Contemporary Capitalists deny the value of cooperation
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except where necessary for individual gain. Another celebrated early
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proponent of social Darwinism and eugenics was Margaret Sanger, founder of
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Planned Parenthood. This group proudly states it follows in her ideological
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footsteps, and indeed does so. (See any research into birth control
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activities in other nations, where Planned Parenthood is more drastic and so
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more noticeable.) What Planned Parenthood tries to gloss over is Ms Sanger's
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open intentions to exterminate undesirables, such as the poor and economically
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nonproductive, as well as Catholics and members of racial minorities.
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These features of the Capitalist worldview can thus be summarized
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briefly: "The world," the Capitalist says, "is a battle of all against all.
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As a zero sum game, in order for me to benefit, others must suffer. Even if I
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understand this to be true I deny responsibility as I see it as an inevitable
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feature of the natural laws of this world. After all, humans are the sum of
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millennia of evolution which have programmed us to destroy everything weaker
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than ourselves and to take what they have, merely to survive. If I didn't
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destroy those around me, they would destroy me. We have a genetic
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predisposition for this. It is human nature," the Capitalist concludes, "for
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me to act in a way once considered evil. It is my nature, and if I don't I
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shall be destroyed."
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This distorted worldview, which is by all neutral definitions a
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psychosis, leads to great amounts of fear, rage, hate, and shame, some of the
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impacts of which I will get into in the section on how and why Capitalism
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distorts the subjective world of those of us colonized by it. First, though,
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let us look at some impacts of this worldview on Capitalist anthropology.
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By anthropology here I mean its most basic meaning: the study of man.
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Any worldview -- by humans, at least -- must include a set of beliefs
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concerning what man is, where he comes from, where he is going, and so on.
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(Some deny that an atheistic or skeptical society has such beliefs, but I hold
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"indeterminate" to be a valid value.)
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Capitalism's anthropology is particularly morbid. Capitalism, first,
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presumes all humans to have only the value they have or can take. This
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fundamental worthlessness of humans is often denied, but obviously true to
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those who are not willfully blind. Each individual is taken to have value
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relatively, not absolutely. (This is an obvious function of the Capitalist
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concentration on the supply-demand relationship.)
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This relative value takes its scale from a number of origins. Some judge
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human worth by the amount of money they own, or the economic influence they
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control, and so on. All of these are smoke screens. The fundamental
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expression of the worthlessness with which the Capitalist views humans is the
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fact that, in Capitalism, every human becomes nothing more than a commodity,
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something manufactured, bought and sold not because it is considered valuable
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in and of itself, but merely for the accumulation of more commodities. The
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fundamental value -- in Capitalism -- of any human being is how much they can
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produce, how much value they can receive for their labor time, a.k.a. their
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life.
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As an historical aside, it is relevant here to take a glance over our
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collective shoulder at the Christian anthropology, at least briefly. The
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Christian worldview forms the basis of the current Western worldview not
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because the latter is built on the former, but due to historical happenstance.
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The Capitalist worldview is absolutely distinct from Christianity, despite
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claims occasionally made to the contrary.
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There are two essential features of Christian anthropology that must be
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contrasted against Capitalism to relatively see the systems. (These are, of
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course, not exclusive to Christianity.) The first has to do with the value of
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humans. In Christian philosophy, every human is of infinite intrinsic value.
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This is value that is not put into the person, and cannot be taken away. It
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holds for every person, whatever their condition. One historical way this
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concept has been expressed is: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that
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all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain
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unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of
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Happiness." Obviously, this is anathema to Capitalism, which views humans
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through exchange value, although some make lip service to humans as use value.
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(In truth, a human of no use value to the ruling class also has no exchange
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value, but the commodification of humans makes the dominant perspective the
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exchange value. A simple proof of this: A poor child dying of leukemia has
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no use value to the ruling class. Therefore, among the ruling class, she also
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has no exchange value. To the child's mother, this child is of infinite value
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in and of itself, that is to say infinite use value. However, this mother
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cannot exchange anything for this child's life, and hence cannot interest the
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ruling class in mere matters of morality. The exchange value, dominated by
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the ruling class, shatters to insignificance the infinite value of a daughter
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to her mother.)
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Second, and perhaps more discussed, is the origin of evil in man. The
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Capitalist considers evil to be inherent in man, and some claim this is an
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outgrowth of -- or at least compatible with -- Christian philosophy. This is,
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of course, wrong. Christian philosophy does not blame evil in the person as
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being inherent "human nature", but rather the effect of an historical and
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rectifiable event, i.e. the Fall in the Garden. To the Christian, every human
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is inherently good. Evil actions are the result of man's unfortunate, fallen,
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imperfect state.
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These two -- Christianity and Capitalism -- do not, incidentally, exhaust
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the possibilities. I will briefly run through some others.
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Orthodox Marxism tends to consider human nature to be something quite
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malleable. The orthodox Marxist tends to think that if the government was
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good, and sufficiently strong, people could be forced, coerced, or trained
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into being good. This is true to an extent, but is not absolutely true. No
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matter what the upbringing, if someone were put into a Capitalist society they
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would begin again to manifest the failings of Capitalist man, unless they were
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particularly strong in will.
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Anarchism is often presented as believing that humans are inherently
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good, and this is often used as a critique against them. In actuality,
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although some Anarchists hold this, by no means do all. Some, indeed, take
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the Capitalist claim that man is inherently evil, and use that for the
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explanation of why they accept no master, who by definition could not be a
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"better" master than he himself. Anarchism is too broad a trend to exhaust
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its anthropology here.
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There is one Anarchist who must be made note of here, though, and that is
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Prince Petr Kropotkin, who styled himself an Anarcho-Communist. He was a
|
|
scientist, and like Huxley was a Darwinian revisionist. Unlike Huxley,
|
|
though, Kropotkin focused on cooperation rather than competition.
|
|
|
|
In his work Mutual Aid as a Factor in Evolution, Kropotkin destroyed the
|
|
claim that there is some kind of scientific "proof" that competition is the be
|
|
all and end all of evolution, a position Darwin would never have conceded to.
|
|
Darwin held, and Kropotkin expanded upon this claim, that there are two trends
|
|
in a species, that to cooperate and that to compete, and that these trends
|
|
manifest themselves under various conditions. Some of these conditions have
|
|
been since examined even more thoroughly, though the tests are often framed so
|
|
as not to make clear all the results. (Frequently, they concentrate on
|
|
phenomena such as overcrowding, without using the results to form adequate
|
|
political conclusions.) More on some of these conditions will be said in the
|
|
section on Capitalism's deformation of man.
|
|
|
|
As an aside, there are some that don't bother with what man is qua man,
|
|
and instead hold that some individual men are simply superior, in one way or
|
|
another, than others. This sometimes takes the form of a superior group, such
|
|
as in National Socialism, or a vanguard who are simply more aware of the
|
|
truth, such as in Bolshevism. Some hold that some individual is simply
|
|
superior, as Nietzsche's superman. Some forms of Gnosticism apparently held
|
|
that some men were superior to others, although this is debated. If they did,
|
|
it would likely be along the lines of the feature in some forms of
|
|
Protestantism, holding that some are saved and some are not, and this
|
|
salvation makes the individual metaphysically better.
|
|
|
|
The worldview we are to examine here is Capitalism, and the question is
|
|
the nature of all men. Having set the terms of Capitalist anthropology, and
|
|
set them in the perspective of other worldviews, I now turn to the how and why
|
|
of the matter.
|
|
|
|
Capitalism's Deformation of Human Nature
|
|
|
|
Capitalism cannot be said to have directly caused the Capitalist view of
|
|
human nature. Someone had to have come up with the idea first; indeed, a
|
|
class of people did. Capitalism's beneficiaries, though, continue to teach
|
|
and indoctrinate so as to make sure this worldview remains dominant -- and
|
|
virtually uncontested.
|
|
|
|
The fundamental manner of teaching this is as explained above: the
|
|
devaluation of humanity into a commodity. As less and less people came to
|
|
have wealth and control, as political power concentrated into smaller and
|
|
smaller entities, people came to "owe" their labor -- their life -- to those
|
|
who controlled the flow of money. That is to say, people in general ceased to
|
|
be able to live without selling themselves into wage-slavery. This was not a
|
|
conspiracy, so far as I know, so much as a snowball effect. Some people had
|
|
the wealth, and they controlled more. For whatever reason, these first
|
|
Capitalists increased their holdings. They came to see that if they told the
|
|
people they were worthless, and if they forced these people to act as if they
|
|
were worthless, they would be able to increase their economic power.
|
|
|
|
People not being inherently evil, these early Capitalists needed to come
|
|
up with an excuse why they had more than others. We see this in the
|
|
prejudices against Blacks as being inherently inferior, and hence calling
|
|
poverty and slavery upon themselves. Similar claims were made regarding all
|
|
colonized people, such as the Irish and Native Americans, and continue to be
|
|
made. Otherwise intelligent people can with all conviction say that the poor
|
|
are universally lazy, that the beggars in the streets universally choose their
|
|
lifestyle, and not even realize the prejudice and hatred in such statements,
|
|
or wonder on what they base these beliefs. In the past, much of it was an
|
|
excuse for shame. Today, this shame is hardly conscious, as people go their
|
|
entire lives without having such prejudices challenged. People simply don't
|
|
realize it is wrong -- much like the segregation and slavery of the past.
|
|
|
|
These excuses work along with and perpetuate the economic development of
|
|
Capitalism. Once the Capitalist has deluded himself into believing he is
|
|
somehow doing the working class a favor by his parasitism, he can continue to
|
|
do what he wanted to in the first place -- drain away the last of the workers'
|
|
commodities. As he has "proven" to his satisfaction that the worker has no
|
|
value aside from his productivity -- which is to say the worker has no value
|
|
other than the worker's value to the Capitalist -- he can believe he is doing
|
|
the worker a favor by commodifing him.
|
|
|
|
(Keep in mind that this trend works along with the trend to decrease the
|
|
number of hands holding the money -- in other words monopolies are an
|
|
inevitable result of Capitalism unless it is restrained by another force. In
|
|
our country, this opposing force is pretended to be the government, despite
|
|
the fact that the government remains in the hands of the wealthy, and even if
|
|
it were placed in the hands of the people, would be worthless there as long as
|
|
the wealthy continue to blackmail the worker through his domination of the
|
|
factories, and brainwash the worker through his domination of the schools and
|
|
media.)
|
|
|
|
It is not enough for the Capitalist to control most of the money. He has
|
|
worked himself and those around him into a worldview of wanting more. This
|
|
feature of Capitalism makes it essentially a cancer on society. It can
|
|
survive only so long as it devours. When a market is saturated, a new market
|
|
must be created, so our cigarette companies use international trade
|
|
organizations to bully open Asian markets, and our companies invent "planned
|
|
obsolescence", which is why everything seems to break down so much faster.
|
|
"They don't make them like they used to" is a Capitalist necessity. But there
|
|
are more insidious ways that the Capitalist uses, and at least one of these
|
|
has to do with programming of the America psyche.
|
|
|
|
Capitalism commodifies everything, and one of the ways this is least
|
|
perceivable is that, now, Capitalism has actually managed to commodify money,
|
|
divorcing it from its traditional ground in silver and gold. Not only that,
|
|
but it has monopolized money, and found a way for a small group of Capitalists
|
|
to profit from the "manufacturing" of money. This is not the place for a
|
|
detailed analysis of the Federal Reserve, and such an analysis would probably
|
|
be beyond my capacity. These are only a couple of things that need be noted
|
|
here. (As an initial aside, on the subject of commodification, a few decades
|
|
ago American money was commodified. There is nothing backing the American
|
|
dollar except American guns. American money gets its value entirely
|
|
relativistically, like stocks on the stock market. If ever certain nations
|
|
lost their trust of or love for the American government, you and I would be
|
|
sitting through a horrible depression. Somehow, I doubt the ruling class
|
|
would find itself destitute.) Our money, when printed, is "loaned" to the
|
|
United States government, who distributes it to the people. As this is a
|
|
"loan", the government actually has to pay the people who loaned them the
|
|
money, and these people are a corporation, not a branch of the government
|
|
answerable to the people. Our government is democratic, and so has everything
|
|
divided up among the people. The ruling class has to do all the governing,
|
|
and you and I only have to pay the bills. This means we pay a fee for having
|
|
our American monetary system.
|
|
|
|
Twisted as this is, it gets better. The government has established a
|
|
monopoly on the publication of bills. Only one corporation may manufacture
|
|
bills. If I printed bills which, for all practical intents and purposes, were
|
|
dollar bills, I would be a criminal, and would go to jail. If these people
|
|
print the same bill, they are businessmen, and I pay a fee for not having to
|
|
bother with the freedom to manufacture the goods these people force me to use.
|
|
What this means practically -- aside from all the other things that economics
|
|
books talk about from the dangers of monopolies -- is that this corporation
|
|
controls the interest rate. This interest rate, through magickal powers I
|
|
don't quite understand, control "growth" in our market. In practical terms,
|
|
the government controls unemployment.
|
|
|
|
The ruling class does not want universal employment. The ruling class
|
|
wants all the economic power. By forcing unemployment to continue, they
|
|
create a shortage of jobs and a surplus of workers. This means workers are
|
|
forced into competition with each other, and so (1) have to accept lower wages
|
|
or die, and (2) will not organize, because they don't trust the other workers
|
|
and have to bow to the demands of the bosses not to organize. The ruling
|
|
class has created something of a safety net to prevent people starving to
|
|
death in the streets, at least to a degree: until the people are not quite at
|
|
the point of revolution. When the people's spirit has been sufficiently
|
|
crushed, you can be sure people will be starving to death again. Just looking
|
|
at the poverty figures or visiting a couple of families on welfare will show
|
|
you what it will look like, though on a smaller scale. The greatest
|
|
humiliation in our nation is this: The ruling class wants unemployment; the
|
|
people do not. The ruling class benefits from unemployment; the people
|
|
suffer. The ruling class creates unemployment; the people pay for it. The
|
|
ruling class has a demand for unemployment, and in all fairness they should
|
|
pay for it. In all callousness, the working class benefits from people
|
|
starving in the streets. That increases agitation, speeds revolution, and
|
|
shrinks the working pool, boosting wages. But the working class pays a
|
|
disproportionate amount of welfare. There was a time when noblesse oblige
|
|
made this concept laughable, but today we "know" human nature justifies the
|
|
ruling class's behaving like maggots and vultures.
|
|
|
|
This domination of the Federal Reserve is a single example of another
|
|
larger phenomenon. Capitalism depends on consumption. When a market does not
|
|
exist, Capitalism forces one. It is therefore in the interests of Capitalism
|
|
to create shortages where none exist. This is a well known phenomenon, and is
|
|
blatantly obvious in much of our advertising. A desire is created for a new
|
|
product, and then this desire is made into a "need", and then people can no
|
|
longer conceive of a life without the product.
|
|
|
|
In my opinion, one of the worst uses of this tactic is that addressed
|
|
above: creating an artificial shortage of jobs, to force people to struggle
|
|
against each other instead of acting in solidarity. There are other bad ways
|
|
too, though. The ruling class pretends there is a shortage of resources, so
|
|
people are unwilling to support welfare bills and the like, despite the fact
|
|
the people with the least to give are disproportionately charged. The ruling
|
|
class creates shortages of necessary supplies, such as food. While this
|
|
benefits economically the rich, the poor die, or at least go undernourished.
|
|
In Boston, a malnutrition clinic was recently opened, because malnutrition
|
|
exists in Boston at third world levels. That is not right in a country like
|
|
ours, where no shortage exists, where farmers are paid not to farm, and where
|
|
Capitalism artificially increases the prices. By a blind adherence to the
|
|
price curve above all else, the human factor is lost. Where there is no
|
|
shortage, where some can afford to waste, no one should die of want. That is
|
|
not a statement of economics; that is true human nature.
|
|
|
|
Psychology experiments have been done on humans and animals as to what
|
|
happens when shortages exist, and bear in mind that these shortages only need
|
|
to be perceived. When these shortages appear to the people -- shortages of
|
|
food, shortages of space, and so on -- some interesting habits arise. For one
|
|
thing, cooperation goes down, and competition goes up. Every species has the
|
|
habit of helping their own, unless there is a shortage preventing it. (Our
|
|
greatest men have been those who help their own even when they personally
|
|
suffer. The universal respect paid these people speaks volumes on human
|
|
nature.) For territorial animals, this "shortage" of space can be merely
|
|
perceived, etc. As Capitalism creates artificial shortages, so it increases
|
|
artificial competition and artificially stops cooperation.
|
|
|
|
Another behavior that increases with shortages is aggression. Murder
|
|
rates go up. Deviant sexuality goes up. In extreme cases, cannibalism -- a
|
|
physical version of the way people destroy each other to get ahead -- occurs.
|
|
Much of our society's ills "coincidentally" parallel what would be expected if
|
|
we had shortages. Sickeningly, these shortages are man made.
|
|
|
|
Like the cycles of alcoholism and child abuse, this cycle of fear and
|
|
lack of cooperation threatens to be intergenerational. There is some evidence
|
|
that humans are born incompletely developed -- as fetuses -- and there is no
|
|
doubt humans are influenced by their environment. Raise a child in constant
|
|
terror of shortages -- or merely in constant terror -- and he will be more
|
|
likely to be unable to see through the Capitalist lie. On a related note, see
|
|
The Plug-In Drug on the terror-inspiring effects of television on children.
|
|
|
|
A bit more abstractly, this treatment of people as commodities causes
|
|
them to be less interested in their work, less satisfied with their lives, and
|
|
so on. Capitalism causes people to be less interested in themselves as
|
|
humans, which perpetuates Capitalism just as does the use of this mythos for
|
|
assuaging the remnants of bourgeois conscience and provide the petit-bourgeois
|
|
with a worldview for getting ahead. People no longer see the value in
|
|
themselves and in their work. (This phenomenon is also known as alienation.)
|
|
This leads them to put less attention and effort, less care, into it. This is
|
|
a downward spiral.
|
|
|
|
Some Results of the Capitalist Deformation
|
|
|
|
Before ending this essay, I will take a moment to summarize some of the
|
|
most practical ways in which Capitalism, as described above, is in the process
|
|
of destroying our nation, and our people.
|
|
|
|
i. Devaluation Causes Death
|
|
|
|
The Capitalist worldview presents, as demonstrated above, humans as
|
|
valuable only through their exchange value. As this is hammered into the
|
|
heads of the people, they come to have a diminished view of themselves, and of
|
|
each other. The violent opposition to the value of human by virtue of being
|
|
human reflects itself in the perceived value of the people to each other.
|
|
|
|
In our society, we are seeing a massive level of murder. This is not
|
|
reflected in other nations, although they are moving in this direction. As
|
|
they continue to destroy their economic opposition and cooperative movements,
|
|
and "modernize" into Capitalist states, their murder rates will increase.
|
|
Capitalism drives the individual not only to lesser assessments of his own
|
|
value, but lesser assessments of his brothers' value. Hence, we see children
|
|
killing without any conception of the evil of their actions. They see
|
|
themselves as merely dispensing with something which no longer had exchange
|
|
value to them. In a healthy people, a human is of infinite value. In our
|
|
society, humans are sometimes of lesser value than shoes or cars.
|
|
|
|
On a more controversial note, Capitalism also has led to increases in
|
|
abortion. A child is no longer seen as infinitely valuable. (I would say the
|
|
child is not seen as a distinct human being, but this is only true in rhetoric
|
|
and self-deception. All scientific evidence speaks otherwise. People don't
|
|
like to admit it, but abortion is not a matter of human versus non-human. It
|
|
is an issue of human with exchange value versus human without exchange value.)
|
|
This child can be dispensed with because he is not seen as having intrinsic
|
|
value, an expression of Capitalism's Big Lie.
|
|
|
|
Finally, as previously explained, eugenics is made palatable by
|
|
Capitalism. Those who are not economically viable, those who no longer have
|
|
exchange value for the ruling class, can be "put to sleep". This is only
|
|
possible because Capitalism has destroyed the concept of human as
|
|
intrinsically valuable.
|
|
|
|
ii. Devaluation Causes Depression
|
|
|
|
Capitalism tells the worker, he who must sell his lifeforce in order to
|
|
physically survive, that he is worthless. Even those who have economic power
|
|
enough to survive are told they are without value in and of themselves. I
|
|
ought not to have, but when I began talking with members of socioeconomic
|
|
classes significantly higher than my own, I was surprised at the degree of
|
|
drug abuse, nihilism, and simple alienation present among them. As I say: I
|
|
ought not have been surprised. Capitalism tells everyone they are
|
|
intrinsically worthless.
|
|
|
|
This is more or less a definition of alienation, and it would be
|
|
redundant to say this leads to alienation. It does lead to depression,
|
|
though, with a constant feeling of despair and worthlessness. I suspect it
|
|
leads even to a number of mental disorders considered physical. The constant
|
|
stress and fear brought on by Capitalism likely lead to things such as
|
|
clinical depression and schizophrenia, both of which are known to increase
|
|
under stress. The current fad of drugging those who suffer from such maladies
|
|
merely bolsters the ruling class, and can only last temporarily, or until we
|
|
are all in a Huxlean soma-state. (Incidentally, recreational and escapist
|
|
drug use among the people voluntarily also helps the ruling class, for the
|
|
same reasons.)
|
|
|
|
On a related note, this leads to a degeneration in the schools. What
|
|
once were seen as ways to form valued individuals is now seen as a way to make
|
|
individuals "productive" or "employable". It sickens me how much people buy
|
|
into this. One would expect even children can see through the way that, if
|
|
schools are seen as ways to make them "employable" and agitate for "classes
|
|
that will help" them "in real life", schools become merely another way they
|
|
are dehumanized and devalued, but I know from experience this is not so. Even
|
|
the children buy the lie.
|
|
|
|
From elementary schools to colleges, schools are seen only as ways to
|
|
help people get jobs and make money, and this is a trend which must be battled
|
|
from the outside. Those in the institutions generally can't even see they way
|
|
they are being brainwashed.
|
|
|
|
iii. Devaluation Causes Degeneracy
|
|
|
|
Finally, and a bit more abstractly, the devaluation of humanity by
|
|
Capitalism leads to increased degeneracy in the nation. As everything is seen
|
|
only in its capacity to increase economic power, values of all kinds, and
|
|
especially the value of humans as individuals, go out the proverbial window.
|
|
As one facet of this, I will look at the commodification of sex, but this is
|
|
merely one way in which this takes place.
|
|
|
|
Capitalism commodifies everything. This is the only way the Capitalist
|
|
can measure how much he dominates his fellow man, if he has a scale for
|
|
measuring this domination. Sex does not escape this. Not only is sex
|
|
devalued and dehumanized, which helps the ruling class but is not my direct
|
|
focus here, sex becomes merely another thing to sell. Unfortunately, the
|
|
fundamentalist Capitalist, who has lost the ability to view the world
|
|
objectively, cannot see the evil in this, but those who can view the world
|
|
without the Capitalist distortion see the evil here.
|
|
|
|
In our society, sex is used in a number of ways. It is used to sell; not
|
|
only is advertising entirely divorced from reality, it is distorted from its
|
|
former use as a means of informing the consumer of a product to a brainwashing
|
|
tool whereby people react emotionally rather than intellectually, and consume
|
|
rather than choose. The defense of this advertising as "free speech" benefits
|
|
only the ruling class. Pornography is a similar matter. Most people, capable
|
|
only of parroting the lines fed them by the ruling class -- "Pornography is
|
|
free speech" -- cannot see reality. There is no comparison of free speech
|
|
between the ruling class and the ruled class. The ruling class rules the
|
|
presses, rules the television stations. They and they only benefit from our
|
|
current economic structure, and by making everything a commodity -- even sex,
|
|
even pornography -- they continue to dehumanize the worker and bleed us of
|
|
power and life. The worker has no such thing as "free speech", and the ruler
|
|
needs no governmental protection to express his.
|
|
|
|
Conclusion
|
|
|
|
This essay only goes over the Capitalist deformation of humanity in broad
|
|
terms. As a way of explaining the world, and thereby excusing the excesses of
|
|
Capitalists, this has risen into the dominant worldview. No lie can survive
|
|
when the people are educated, but right now, at this stage in history, the
|
|
people are not only blind, the people seem to want to stay blind. Only by
|
|
opening their eyes can the people ever come to be free.
|
|
|
|
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
|
|
|
|
[World Spirit:] Should I tell him that the value of life
|
|
lies precisely in this, that it teaches him not to want
|
|
it? For this supreme initiation life itself must prepare
|
|
him.
|
|
Arthur Schopenhauer
|
|
|
|
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
|
|
|
|
THE REVOLUTiON iS NOW
|
|
Bobbi Sands
|
|
|
|
The Revolution is now. Now and forever. The fundamental creed of
|
|
Anarchism, perhaps the only thing that holds together not only all true
|
|
Anarchists, but all lovers of Freedom everywhere, is that the Revolution is a
|
|
constant battle.
|
|
|
|
Not everyone uses those terms. Jefferson spoke on the need for the tree
|
|
of liberty's need to be watered with the blood of tyrants and patriots.
|
|
Trotsky said: "The conquest of power by the proletariat does not complete the
|
|
revolution, but only opens it." (And we are not even to that point.) Here in
|
|
Ireland we have had a tradition of at least one rising a generation.
|
|
|
|
The most important thing in any battle is to identify the enemy. Those
|
|
who work for your objective are not your enemies, and any time you can live in
|
|
coexistence with them, do so. The enemies of freedom are enough, without
|
|
making the friends of freedom personal enemies. The enemies of freedom
|
|
understand this, as well, and they push the people into battles against each
|
|
other. Always look to see who benefits from any ideological split, and any
|
|
time you see a group supported or opposed in the media.
|
|
|
|
Who is the enemy?
|
|
|
|
The Cold War was expressed, strategically, in two terms: Containment,
|
|
and Rollback. Enemies of freedom will never cease to exist. They can't all
|
|
be put up against the wall. Neither can patriots, however, and that is why
|
|
the Revolution is permanent. Neither force can ever win.
|
|
|
|
Today, the nation state has taken institutionalized form. If anyone
|
|
knows a way of rollback from this, I will be more than happy to find out. It
|
|
seems to me that at this point in time that is not possible. Even if a state
|
|
is overthrown, the bourgeois ruling class will fill the vacuum with a new
|
|
state. (What is the UN, if it isn't a way of appointing who is and is not an
|
|
acceptable state, and divvying up the world among those accepted powers?) The
|
|
only way I can see of pushing back State powers is to divide up those states
|
|
further -- that is, by supporting every nationalist resistance group, every
|
|
separatist movement, anywhere.
|
|
|
|
Since rollback is not possible, that leaves containment, and that is
|
|
mostly what I want to talk about. For someone who supports freedom and
|
|
opposes State power, containment must take the form, at this time, of opposing
|
|
forms of internationalist government, and especially world government. This
|
|
is in every form -- the United Nations, the European Commonwealth, the World
|
|
Trade Organization, the World Court. They do not support the people; they
|
|
support the bourgeois nations that dominate them. When has Britain ever
|
|
followed the World Court, except when it served them? They have been found
|
|
guilty of killing Irish nationals by the World Court. What happened to them?
|
|
When has the United States, or its client state Israel, ever followed the
|
|
United Nations's commands? How many UN resolutions have opposed United
|
|
States's or Israeli action? Could Indonesia have gotten away with the
|
|
slaughter and occupation in East Timor if the bourgeois nations didn't want
|
|
East Timorese oil?
|
|
|
|
It is important for all lovers of freedom to look into groups, and
|
|
support those who oppose world government, opposing those who support world
|
|
government. The media knows that this is the only danger. "Safe"
|
|
alternatives are presented, so that people can think they are making a
|
|
decision, when really it is just between globalist number one or globalist
|
|
number two. Very few groups or individuals oppose world government, and those
|
|
are always vilified by the media.
|
|
|
|
But it is necessary that people not be fooled by the media. Use the
|
|
media's opposition to groups and individuals as signs they need to be
|
|
investigated. It is not necessary to agree with them on every point to know
|
|
that they are allies. Those battles can come after world government has been
|
|
contained. We can take back our nations; it would be hard to "take back" a
|
|
United Nations, for which not even show elections take place.
|
|
|
|
So that, in a nutshell, is what the Revolution is, now. Opposition to
|
|
globalism.
|
|
|
|
One battle at a time.
|
|
|
|
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
|
|
|
|
Then, in the beginning of Kali-yuga, the Lord [Visnu] will
|
|
appear as Lord Buddha, the son of Anjana, in the province
|
|
of Gaya, just for the purpose of deluding those who are
|
|
envious of the faithful theist.
|
|
Srimad Bhagavatam 1.3.24
|
|
|
|
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
|
|
|
|
CONFESSiONS OF A MALE FEMiNiST
|
|
Crux Ansata
|
|
|
|
I was fortunate. I was raised in a family that did not deny differences
|
|
between people, but also did not play them up. I was taught from ground zero
|
|
that people are people, and after that they are Black or White, male or
|
|
female, smart or otherwise. I saw the differences in people, and because I
|
|
know the differences do not make people better or worse, I can celebrate these
|
|
differences.
|
|
|
|
In a way I did not understand at the time, I was raised a feminist. By
|
|
that I don't mean I thought women were better, or should try to be imitation
|
|
men, or any of the other things that have made "feminist" such a dirty word
|
|
even most girls disown it. I mean I saw women as people, deserving as much
|
|
respect as male people. Probably the biggest way I didn't realize I was a
|
|
feminist was that I always thought everyone else felt the same way, at least
|
|
every reasonably intelligent member of my generation. I didn't see myself as
|
|
a feminist. I saw myself as fair. For the most part I thought the women's
|
|
movement had won.
|
|
|
|
It was essentially not until high school that I finally realized I was
|
|
wrong.
|
|
|
|
I grew up in a kind of ivory tower. I dealt only with intelligent,
|
|
middle class overachievers in my classes in school, and had few friends even
|
|
in my middle class neighborhood. I was aware bad things happened, but it was
|
|
with what the French call savoir -- head-knowledge -- not connaitre --
|
|
heart-knowledge. I was not involved with the social lives of the mainstream,
|
|
and didn't want to be. I was having enough trouble trying to survive high
|
|
school, determine the flaw in Communism, choose between Gnosticism and
|
|
Catholicism, the things that were important to me. Again, in a way this was
|
|
fortunate, even if reality was a rude, late shock.
|
|
|
|
In my tenth grade year, a male friend and I, sitting in debate class,
|
|
were discussing the importance of forming friendships before relationships,
|
|
and about how a relationship cannot thrive if it is based solely on the
|
|
physical. We listened with what was for me at least genuine shock when an
|
|
otherwise intelligent, middle class girl of such strict Baptist upbringing she
|
|
fled weeping to the storage room when I pulled out my role playing game
|
|
handbooks explained to us about how one only gets to know someone after
|
|
forming a bond based on lust. She probably couched it in terms like
|
|
"attraction" and would have been shocked herself to hear herself rephrased
|
|
honestly, but that's the way it was. I don't make a habit out of euphemising
|
|
what disgusts me.
|
|
|
|
The girl thought of herself as a feminist, or at least a reasonably
|
|
liberated woman. And I don't mean one of the "do-me" feminists. She seemed
|
|
to have reasonable self-esteem. She simply had failed to grok the entire
|
|
anti-lookist trend in the feminist movement, or to understand that if women --
|
|
and men -- are to be treated as people, they have to be seen as more than
|
|
objects. For all her self-righteous rhetoric, she failed to judge by the
|
|
content of a man's character. I understand now she was a product of her
|
|
society. I was a product of ideals. I chose to see what was right, and
|
|
oppose what merely was.
|
|
|
|
But still I had hope. I assumed most girls were not like that, or that
|
|
this was simply bluster, mirroring what guys wanted to hear, for right or
|
|
wrong.
|
|
|
|
A more painful awakening came in late high school, when I fell in love.
|
|
I played the game the way I thought it should be played. I was there to
|
|
listen to her when she was hurt. I talked to her about her feelings, and
|
|
about her family. I encouraged her interests in art and music, and tried to
|
|
understand her world. I tried to avoid complimenting her on superficials,
|
|
like appearance, and was rather disheartened at the emphasis she placed on the
|
|
few times I did comment on them. I didn't have as much information on
|
|
teenaged girls' psychology back then, or the awareness that women in our
|
|
society are pathologically insecure about their appearance, and I was more
|
|
interested in the person than the packaging.
|
|
|
|
I also refused to go to bed with her. That, although not the only
|
|
factor, was the factor that ended our relationship. Treating her like a
|
|
person and not a thing, like a human being rather than a sex object torpedoed
|
|
our relationship.
|
|
|
|
My subsequent relationships, although I have learned a bit more how to
|
|
bolster a girl's esteem without making appearance the main factor in a
|
|
relationship, have not improved my opinions. I still feel traumatized that a
|
|
relationship cannot be sustained in this society if a guy wants to respect
|
|
those boundaries and his girlfriend's personhood. I am unhappy to see women's
|
|
magazines -- fashion magazines, Cosmopolitan, and the like -- scattered around
|
|
the bedroom floors of adolescent girls. I'm bothered by the emphasis guys put
|
|
on girls' appearance, and even more bothered by the emphasis girls do.
|
|
|
|
It was more than two decades ago when Anais Nin wrote these words ("In
|
|
Favor of the Sensitive Man," Playgirl, September 1974):
|
|
|
|
The new type of young man I have met is exceptionally
|
|
fitted for the new woman, but she is not yet totally
|
|
appreciative of his tenderness, his growing proximity to
|
|
woman, his attitude of twinship rather than
|
|
differentiation.
|
|
|
|
She appears to have thought this was a temporary problem. Indeed, later
|
|
in the same essay she says:
|
|
|
|
This loss [of the ability to govern oneself] is a
|
|
transitional one: It may mean the beginning of a totally
|
|
new life and freedom. The man is there. He is an equal.
|
|
He treats you like an equal. In moments of uncertainty
|
|
you can still discuss problems with him you could not have
|
|
talked about twenty years ago. Do not, I say to today's
|
|
women, please do not mistake sensitivity for weakness.
|
|
This was the mistake which almost doomed our culture. ...
|
|
Let us start a new regime of honesty, of trust,
|
|
abolishment of false roles in our personal relationships,
|
|
and it will eventually affect the world's history as well
|
|
as women's development.
|
|
|
|
Perhaps I live in a cultural backwater. Perhaps I have been merely
|
|
unlucky. All I can say is she seems sadly optimistic from my perspective
|
|
twenty-three years later.
|
|
|
|
I have a lot of anger towards the young women, my contemporaries. I know
|
|
that this is not entirely justified. I have seen some of the trauma that
|
|
girls go through today, have been exposed to the same media. Nonetheless, I
|
|
feel this rage, and I feel this rage is an acceptable feeling. One of the
|
|
women's movement's most important advances was giving women back the right to
|
|
feel rage, and it is important men are not denied this same right, so long, of
|
|
course, as the rage is safely and sensitively expressed.
|
|
|
|
As a male feminist, I feel my contemporaries have betrayed me. I feel
|
|
that the new woman was not there to pick up the ball. It can't be done by
|
|
guys alone, and guys will have no real motivation as long as women put up with
|
|
the same situations as in the past. The way women allowed the women's
|
|
movement to be coopted, and the emotional advances to go unsolidified --
|
|
though understandable in the world-historical situation -- still hurts.
|
|
|
|
Our society is pathologically anti-girl, and anti-woman. Much needs to
|
|
be done to raise everyone's consciousness, and especially to clean up the
|
|
media. I don't have the answers. Nonetheless, more needs to be done by
|
|
today's girls. As Nin said, "The man is there." Twenty-three years later,
|
|
he's still looking for the truly feminist woman.
|
|
|
|
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
|
|
|
|
[W]ith the help of a foundation of 6 pianos, 4 harps, 9
|
|
double-basses, 6 each of flutes, oboes, and trumpets as
|
|
well as 60 (!) percussion instruments -- some newly
|
|
constructed -- it was possible to come up with an entirely
|
|
new, unusual orchestral sonority.
|
|
liner notes for Antigone, by Orff
|
|
|
|
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
|
|
|
|
PAGE FROM A DiARY
|
|
Crux Ansata
|
|
|
|
0012 092497
|
|
|
|
About half an hour ago I finished Martian Time-Slip, by Philip K. Dick.
|
|
It was the most terrifying novel by him I have ever read, and I have read
|
|
close to a dozen. Even with the universe decaying in Ubik, there was not
|
|
nearly the horror of Martian Time-Slip. The descriptions of schizophrenia and
|
|
mental illness hit too close to home.
|
|
|
|
Reading it in school, I think I triggered a minor psychotic episode. It
|
|
was horrifying. Low grade hallucinations, such as color intensification;
|
|
confusion; anxiety; etc. I realized what was happening pretty quick, dropped
|
|
a ginseng, and rode it out, so it didn't get too intense. I could tell myself
|
|
that the guy in the business suit on the phone, while I could not entirely
|
|
rule out that he was watching me and calling in to my enemies, he probably
|
|
wasn't. I could tell that when a woman walked by and said, "It's a way of
|
|
control. Get our hopes up and then dash us. It's the way they brainwash us.
|
|
It's the way they brainwash us." it was probably coincidence. I could tell,
|
|
intellectually, it was not that everyone was out to get me, but just that this
|
|
was the way I was temporarily viewing the world. During the worst episode, in
|
|
1994, it took me some time to regain control. I had some part of me that
|
|
constantly knew it was in my head, but that part didn't gain control quickly.
|
|
|
|
I had myself under control when Jujube came by. I started to tell her
|
|
about it, but she didn't seem to understand or empathize. I don't suppose
|
|
most people can. Afterwards, it flared up again, but fairly minorly. I found
|
|
myself wandering the third floor of some building, not knowing where I was or
|
|
where I was going, wondering why room 308 looked like somewhere I had never
|
|
been before, until I realized that I had a class in another building. I
|
|
looked out a window -- down the hall and about twenty yards from me -- and got
|
|
totally depressed about how high up it was, to the point I was almost crying.
|
|
But levels of confusion like that are nothing compared to sitting against the
|
|
wall by the library, shaking all over and staring wide eyed, wondering about
|
|
all the people around me, like during the worst of it. It sounds like nothing
|
|
when I write it down. That kind of horror, I guess, can't be expressed.
|
|
|
|
The most amusing part, though, was when I got to class. It was a good
|
|
thing I decided to go to French class today, since it turns out we had an
|
|
exam. I got very anxious, understandably, but then I started hallucinating
|
|
all these black dots, and they were flying into the center of my vision, like
|
|
when you have oxygen deprivation or are too tired, giving me the weirdest kind
|
|
of tunnel vision and leaving me fascinated with one word at a time, which
|
|
temporarily made it impossible to make sense of anything. But I nipped that
|
|
in the bud, and at least answered every question.
|
|
|
|
Anyway, it was scary. I got to wondering if the reason I have never had
|
|
a physically satisfying sexual experience, and why M.'s explanations of why
|
|
coitus is more emotionally meaningful than foreplay because it somehow is more
|
|
intimate or draws people together or something, may be because I simply cannot
|
|
empathize like that. I can empathize with people, but I can't really
|
|
contemplate the bringing together. That makes no sense. I'm trying to say
|
|
that I understand a parasitic relationship, and I understand a symbiotic
|
|
relationship, and I understand a master-servant relationship, and all that. I
|
|
understand a relationship where two persons work for the same power -- be it
|
|
person or ideal. I don't understand bringing together. I guess that is what
|
|
makes sex matter, but I don't... It doesn't mean anything to me. I don't
|
|
know.
|
|
|
|
I wonder if people would tell me that I should be more willing to give up
|
|
control if they knew that it is only my control that stops time from slipping
|
|
and the earth from stopping to exist. If I lost control, I would be nothing
|
|
more than a weeping, trembling mess, wondering when I was going to literally
|
|
fall apart, on the atomic level.
|
|
|
|
I need to get past that. I'm going to move on.
|
|
|
|
The ordeal was so stressful that, when I got home, with a splitting
|
|
headache, disoriented (I had to keep reminding myself I was in a car, or I'd
|
|
have never made it home), and nauseous, I just went to bed. I have no idea
|
|
how long I slept. It must have been about two or three hours, I suppose. I
|
|
woke up and heard cartoons from the living room, with the sun shining in the
|
|
windows. I woke up terrified, unable to remember where I was, or what day it
|
|
was, or what time it was, or what. I came out into the living room, and asked
|
|
what day it was, whether I had slept until the next afternoon or something. I
|
|
wasn't even coherent to myself, but my mother told be it was later in the
|
|
afternoon, and my father had gone to pick Moonlight up, since they were
|
|
letting me rest.
|
|
|
|
I had a strange, homoerotic dream, but I feel relieved in one sense,
|
|
because I had heard that if one does not experience nocturnal erections it is
|
|
a serious physical problem, and I had no reason to believe I did. I have
|
|
never had a nocturnal emission, and generally don't experience erections when
|
|
I wake up, and have never had a coital dream, so I was beginning to think
|
|
there was something wrong there, but I was aware I was erect in my sleep,
|
|
though I can't be sure whether I became aware of this before or after I woke
|
|
up. In any case, this was the dream:
|
|
|
|
I was at the University, at the student union. It was some kind of
|
|
resort or hotel, though, and had been moved down to around 23rd street or
|
|
Martin Luther King boulevard. I don't know why I was in the resort. I was a
|
|
student, and knew I was a student, and that I was not very accepted there. I
|
|
think I lived in a nearby dorm or something. It was night, and there was some
|
|
kind of party there, and there I was. I was incredibly lonely, and somehow
|
|
had befriended this boy. I get the feeling he was in his mid to late teens,
|
|
and he liked me, too. I don't think there was ever any sexual activity
|
|
between us, but there was an undercurrent of homoerotic tension I can
|
|
recognize at least in retrospect. I can't recall if I recognized it then.
|
|
|
|
I know his parents didn't like me, though I'm not sure why. Perhaps it
|
|
was a social class thing, since I get the feeling they were of a significantly
|
|
higher socioeconomic class than me, but it could also have been a simply
|
|
social thing, if I, as a student, didn't belong in their resort. Whatever the
|
|
case, he and I spent some time together.
|
|
|
|
I remember looking for someplace to get something to eat. It was late.
|
|
There was a bar on the corner, which I went to frequently, but I couldn't
|
|
bring my friend there because he was underage. I kind of remembered a
|
|
convenience store down the street that would be open at that time, but I
|
|
decided to accept my friend's invitation and go back to the resort. They had
|
|
a kitchen downstairs, and he and I went in there. We were joined by two
|
|
teenaged girls, who I suppose to have been his sisters. I think they were
|
|
older than him, so if he was about fifteen they would be about seventeen or
|
|
so. Perhaps one was his sister and one was her friend. In any case, they
|
|
were not exceptionally attractive, but they were pleasant looking, and I took
|
|
a fancy to one of them. I was sexually aroused, and I figured I would push my
|
|
luck, and walked up behind one of them, and put my arms around her waist and
|
|
held her. As I recall, she said something sarcastic, or something. She did
|
|
not physically pull away, but she emotionally did, if that makes any sense.
|
|
She did not try to resist, but she made it known she wasn't interested. I
|
|
don't really remember anything after that.
|
|
|
|
I suppose that about covers today. I might write what I meant to write
|
|
yesterday in a while, but for now I'm going to take a break.
|
|
|
|
0106 092497
|
|
|
|
0127 092497
|
|
|
|
To me, it is simply irrational to deny that we live in an existence of
|
|
perpetual suffering and pain. That much is obvious to any but the willfully
|
|
blind. The horror I try to hide from is that the very body I live in is an
|
|
animate corpse that I watch die day by day. That is the horror of existence;
|
|
not to simply be imprisoned in a torture chamber of reality, but to know I
|
|
can't even trust my body, and to know that it could rot and die around me, and
|
|
not to know what will happen to me when it is destroyed. Will I be trapped in
|
|
this world of suffering without any ability to manipulate the world? That
|
|
would be horrifying to the point of insanity. Does death bring liberation,
|
|
back to the pleroma, or, if we fail to effect our salvation before our vehicle
|
|
rots, will we be trapped eternally?
|
|
|
|
No one would be one of those Buddhists or Hindus that believes that
|
|
reincarnation can be anything other than a more vicious evil than anything to
|
|
come out of any Christian tradition if they were not willfully blind. This
|
|
horror is the illumination of every path.
|
|
|
|
0132 092497
|
|
|
|
0328 092597
|
|
|
|
I can't sleep. I just dropped a ginseng. (Actually, it is dissolving in
|
|
my mouth now.) In about fifteen minutes to half an hour, I ought to be
|
|
relaxed enough to sleep, so I guess I'll write until then.
|
|
|
|
I'm not addicted, though. I took one on Tuesday, to get over the
|
|
episode, and now one tonight, to sleep, but it isn't like I'm taking it daily
|
|
or anything. These were just exceptions. If I start taking it to wake up in
|
|
the morning, and then to go to bed at night, on a daily basis, then I'll start
|
|
to get worried.
|
|
|
|
Then again, it took me a while to admit it when I was addicted, if I
|
|
remember right.
|
|
|
|
I wonder sometimes if I ought to tell my parents about my ginseng thing.
|
|
I don't really think I should. They don't need to worry about anything like
|
|
that, and such a conversation would just end up revealing my unstable
|
|
personality. (Maybe that's what I want.) I can't even bring myself to talk
|
|
to them about my psychotic episodes. No one I've talked to really seems to
|
|
understand what's up with them, and people just seem nervous when I bring it
|
|
up.
|
|
|
|
Anyway, new subject. It is a bad sign when you begin spending a lot of
|
|
time talking about drugs, just like one of the first signs of mental illness
|
|
is interest in the disease.
|
|
|
|
I finished Martian Time-Slip yesterday. I think I said that. Today I
|
|
finished Science, Politics and Gnosticism, which I started in New York, and
|
|
read The Hindu View of Life straight through. I keep forgetting how many days
|
|
have passed. I thought I had been reading it for about three days, but I keep
|
|
reminding myself it has been one. Now, I'm reading The Nameless, a seventies
|
|
horror novel Moonlight recommended to me some time ago. He recommended it to
|
|
me unsolicited. He hadn't even just finished it. He just came up to me one
|
|
day and offered it to me, saying I might like it. The feeling of the moment
|
|
was very uncommon. It really felt more like an offering than a loan. Not a
|
|
gift, an *offering*, and I don't mean he was offering to an idol or a god or
|
|
anything, I just mean that there was something emotional involved, not just
|
|
something rational. I really didn't know how to deal with it. I was touched,
|
|
but hesitant to read it, and so it has sat on my shelf for a long time. I'm
|
|
about fifty pages into it now.
|
|
|
|
I have something to say. I know this is an odd transition, and I usually
|
|
try to make my journal sound chatty. Even when I've planned it out, I try not
|
|
to let that be seen. But I don't know how I'm going to work this out, and it
|
|
is something I've been thinking about, and I'm not going to be able to express
|
|
it well, but the powder is coursing through my system and my keyboard feels
|
|
like a musical instrument and Sinead O'Connor is playing in the background and
|
|
I just want to make sure I say it.
|
|
|
|
I wish I could make a girl happy. I wish I could look into a girl's
|
|
smile, and know that it was because of me, that it was for me. In a way, I
|
|
think all my talk about changing the world, and getting published, and being
|
|
written about, and all that is just so much verbiage. The only thing that
|
|
really matters in this world is a girl's honest, innocent smile. I think that
|
|
manifests itself in bed. To me, there is little sexual about sex. Those that
|
|
can understand that, do. Those that don't understand... well, I don't think I
|
|
could explain it in words. To me, sex should be playful, the lila of Krsna
|
|
and the Gopis, if I understand the Sanskrit properly. (I never had doubts
|
|
until I read some odd translations in Ramakrishnan, but I don't know that lila
|
|
was one of the words I thought I misunderstood.) I was watching a video. I
|
|
think it was Sinead O'Connor's new video. I think Kenny Rogers was in it. In
|
|
it, they were in bed. It had nothing to do with sex, but it was intimate.
|
|
Erotic would carry the wrong weight, but I don't know that intimate even
|
|
pretends to say what I am pretending it says. I did not feel jealous, or
|
|
repulsed. There was no judgment going on, or analysis, or any real rational
|
|
thought at all. In an old set of terminology I used to use, it was an
|
|
instance of higher emotion. I just began to weep. She was smiling, and it
|
|
seemed a real smile. I could feel her when he held her, and it felt more... I
|
|
don't know. More happy, more comfortable, more joyful, than anything else. I
|
|
don't know. When I started this paragraph I knew I would gibber away and stop
|
|
making sense, but I had to say it. It is the truth. The only thing that
|
|
matters in this world is a girl's smile. Where did I read it? Something
|
|
like, "Is the truth any less true because it is temporary?" That isn't it at
|
|
all, at all. But it is what I mean. A girl's smile is temporary, and
|
|
fleeting. It has two defined endpoints in time, and a defined region in
|
|
space, but it is no less infinitely valuable for all the boundaries.
|
|
|
|
God, I've even lost myself! I have to move on, but to what?
|
|
|
|
The girl with the cane was not in class today. Have I written about her?
|
|
Or was that only in a notebook? Or only in imagination? I don't care. The
|
|
only thing the reader has to know is that she usually dominates my attention
|
|
in class, for no good reason, and that she was not there to do that domination
|
|
today. I amused myself most of the class period looking for wedding rings. I
|
|
don't know what got me started on that, and I don't know how to tell if a ring
|
|
is a wedding ring. I think a wedding ring is worn on the so-called ring
|
|
finger of the right hand, but I could be wrong. That is where I used to wear
|
|
my rings, but I was never married. I saw one girl who seemed married, and she
|
|
had a ring on the ring finger of each hand. Neither of them looked like a
|
|
wedding ring, though. They both looked too gaudy. But people have different
|
|
tastes. There was at least one other girl with a ring that looked much more
|
|
like a wedding ring, but then I got to thinking about how guys and girls
|
|
approach the text of Colette's The Vagabond from differing perspectives
|
|
because guys and girls have differing degrees of engulfment and abandonment
|
|
anxieties. I took some notes on it. Maybe I'll transcribe them someday.
|
|
|
|
Now, I feel tense in some places -- shoulders and a line right down the
|
|
spine -- but the flesh hanging off those places feels relaxed. It is a very
|
|
odd feeling. I think I will have a cigarette and go to bed.
|
|
|
|
Oh, by the way, so I don't lose this information: My anthropology
|
|
teacher told us a piece of information I had pored over the small medical
|
|
library we have, trying to find out. I wanted to know -- for the all but
|
|
abandoned tragedy -- what causes people suffering from malnutrition sometimes
|
|
to bloat and sometimes to become emaciated. He said that the bloating is
|
|
caused by water retention due to having a diet of sufficient calories but
|
|
insufficient protein. I'll have to remember that.
|
|
|
|
That professor has an interesting class. He distorts information, but
|
|
I'm sure it is honestly. I think he simply does not realize there is data out
|
|
there that is just as valid but contradicts his worldview. But he also has
|
|
fascinating trivia, and Moonlight and I, even though we both took the same
|
|
course from him, sit there and swap trivia in the evening sometimes. The
|
|
other day he explained why, if we drive with a pig strapped into the front
|
|
seat of a car, get into an automobile accident, and have an airbag, the pig's
|
|
neck will snap. It was quite interesting. (Though I don't plan on ever
|
|
driving a pig anywhere strapped into the front seat, but you never know when
|
|
data will come in handy.)
|
|
|
|
I suppose, finally, that is enough. As usual, my day was just classes
|
|
and reading, and the only person I talked to who is not family was Jujube,
|
|
into whom I ran on my way to class, so I really have no justification for
|
|
going on like this, but I felt I needed to talk. I guess what it comes down
|
|
to is that I didn't talk to anyone, and that is *why* I'm talking to myself.
|
|
Or future generations, or whatever the fuck excuse I give myself to get my
|
|
fingers moving so I don't go totally psycho and carry out that suicide fantasy
|
|
with a real gun this time.
|
|
|
|
Damn. Almost losing it there. Easy now ansat.
|
|
|
|
I used to be able to talk to A. Sometimes. Even though we had some
|
|
awful times together, I suspect that for the rest of my life -- and for the
|
|
rest of eternity is eternal life is true -- I will remember her also as being
|
|
the best times of my life. No one can ever replace or supersede what we had
|
|
together. Maybe someone could give me experiences that would approach what we
|
|
experienced, or that would be different but equally pleasing, but I could
|
|
never regret my time with A. I tell people I don't know what happiness is, I
|
|
don't know what makes me happy, crap like that. E. and I were telling each
|
|
other that just the other day. It isn't entirely true, though. Laying in bed
|
|
beside A., just holding her. Smelling her hair, and the incense she used to
|
|
burn, the peach scent she wore, feeling the slick chill of the white nightgown
|
|
she looked so beautiful in, I just stopped being me, and I think at that point
|
|
I felt what people call happy. The only other times I remember experiencing
|
|
anything like that is in religious ecstasy.
|
|
|
|
Two hideous drawbacks: I know perfectly well I may never have
|
|
experienced that happiness, and have just invented it in retrospect. In a way
|
|
that doesn't matter, since I can revisit in memory whatever I believe
|
|
happened, and the facts don't matter. In another way, it is miserable,
|
|
because I know I can never go back. The other drawback: The comedown's a
|
|
bitch. I remember times in bed with A. when I'd go into convulsions, full
|
|
body convulsions of such violence that she would get scared. I would cry
|
|
about every time we had sex, laying there. I would hallucinate sometimes. I
|
|
had visions of wars in the desert and things like that. In essence, the whole
|
|
religious ecstasy thing, but it is a lot more horrible than people realize.
|
|
|
|
Sometimes I envy the people who have never experienced a high, because
|
|
they never experience the real lows. They never even realize they live a low.
|
|
Like animals. Not in real happiness, but blissfully unaware of the pain of
|
|
reality. Like little lambs. If there was only less hostility and guile in
|
|
people's eyes, I could almost look at them and see lambs. But, instead, I
|
|
suppose I see whipped dogs, who haven't learned to trust, not quite knowing
|
|
why they are being beaten, but knowing they don't like it.
|
|
|
|
God! I'm losing myself again. But everything is so pleasantly real
|
|
right now. I'm having trouble hitting the right keys. A couple of times I
|
|
have thought one word and typed something utterly different. But the colors
|
|
are real, the light is playing so crisply, I suppose that means the ginseng is
|
|
now well into my system, and I am feeling physically happy.
|
|
|
|
It's experiences like this that lend credence to my idea that there is no
|
|
such thing as happiness, essentially, and that all people experience is an
|
|
animal high, a strictly hormonal phenomenon that they pretend is an emotion.
|
|
But I don't want to dwell on that. I'd rather believe my previously referred
|
|
to old theory of two types of emotion. And now I believe I'll go have a
|
|
smoke.
|
|
|
|
0407 092597
|
|
|
|
2211 092597
|
|
|
|
I had a couple of dreams. The latest one, I was going to a party at
|
|
Harlequin's house. I don't remember too much from it now, and I think I had
|
|
to walk through a city -- maybe not New York, but some city -- to his house.
|
|
I remember getting there, and we were sitting smoking, with the lights out and
|
|
the shades drawn, in the semidarkness. I had to go get something, but that's
|
|
about all I remember. I wish I could remember the earlier dream. I did
|
|
remember it, but I didn't write it down. Maybe I'll remember it in a bit.
|
|
|
|
2214 092597
|
|
|
|
2239 092597
|
|
|
|
I remember in a recent dream I had a bottle of beer to drink. The only
|
|
thing I remember was being in my bedroom with the empty bottle, going to throw
|
|
it away, and seeing the trashcan was too full and wondering what to do with
|
|
it. I'm reasonably certain it was a dream, because I have had nothing to
|
|
drink in some time, and nothing at all at home since the night I went out with
|
|
Moonlight's friends. I'm not sure the dream is significant, though, as my
|
|
trashcan is indeed overflowing, as usual, and the only concern it may
|
|
represent is that of needing to empty the can. (This is, incidentally, a real
|
|
problem for me, as it involves remembering what day the trash people come, and
|
|
throwing everything away the night before. I suppose that would not be a
|
|
concern for most people, but I have trouble with the time thing.)
|
|
|
|
I have read that paranoia presupposes megalomania. I don't know if, on
|
|
this point, there is a distinction between paranoid schizophrenia and paranoia
|
|
as an independent phenomenon. I have been thinking about that, and I can only
|
|
come up readily with two ways this could not be true. Or could be not true,
|
|
to be more accurate. Moonlight suggested that someone would feel people were
|
|
out to get him because he felt worthless, and that was why they were after
|
|
him. I suggested this was just an inverted form of megalomania, a kind of
|
|
pride at being worthless, while a truly worthless person would be simply
|
|
ignored. The first way I can think of this would be inaccurate is if the
|
|
people who were out to get the individual were out to get everyone, or most
|
|
everyone. This would be, I suppose, a general delusion, and perhaps not
|
|
purely paranoia, but it does seem to me to be a counterexample to the
|
|
statement paranoia presupposes megalomania. I came up last night, though,
|
|
with what I think is a better counterexample. Every person needs a measure of
|
|
attention. That is normal. An individual that did not feel he got enough
|
|
attention, and who was incapable of conceiving of a way people would take
|
|
interest in him without a critical or punishing motive could obviously create
|
|
an entity to pay attention to him in a paranoid fashion. To me, megalomania
|
|
implies the individual conceives of himself as better or more valuable than
|
|
people in general, and this would not be a case of that at all, but would
|
|
rather be an individual who felt he had as much value as anyone else and
|
|
simply lacked the tools for conceiving of someone who cared about him in any
|
|
other way.
|
|
|
|
In short, this individual presupposes hostility from people, and is
|
|
incapable of conceiving of love, or at least of being loved. In this
|
|
conception-poor mindset, he creates what his subconscious thinks it needs --
|
|
"caring" as attention -- and creates an insanity by failing to generate what
|
|
he really needs -- "caring" as attention motivated by love.
|
|
|
|
2240 092597
|
|
|
|
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
|
|
|
|
|
|
[=- POETASTRiE -=]
|
|
|
|
"The poets? They stink. They write badly. They're idiots you see, because
|
|
the strong people don't write poetry.... They become hitmen for the Mafia.
|
|
The good people do the serious jobs."
|
|
--Charles Bukowski
|
|
|
|
|
|
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
|
|
|
|
UNNAMED BAD POEM
|
|
Flying Rat's Nostril
|
|
|
|
Roses are red,
|
|
Violets are blue,
|
|
I kill children,
|
|
and....my what a lovely daughter you have ma'am.
|
|
|
|
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
|
|
|
|
Famous remarks are very seldom quoted correctly.
|
|
Simeon Strunsky
|
|
|
|
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
|
|
|
|
PROMETHEUS MOURNS
|
|
Nemo est Sanctus
|
|
|
|
Prometheus mourns, but does not weep
|
|
As he gazes across the wastes.
|
|
With tears in check, he surveys the deep
|
|
Destruction that man tastes.
|
|
On the peak of man's potential he stands.
|
|
He gazes deep into the chasm,
|
|
Ironically anticlimax beside the grand
|
|
Dreams he had for them.
|
|
A measureless grave, now dark
|
|
For man chose to ignore
|
|
When Prometheus brought the spark.
|
|
Man dubbed him Lucifer.
|
|
Man faltered and fled before the Light
|
|
And, by emotion, was scared to flight.
|
|
|
|
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
|
|
|
|
|
|
[=- FiCTiON -=]
|
|
|
|
|
|
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
|
|
|
|
ALL POWER STEMS FROM...
|
|
I Wish My Name Were Nathan
|
|
|
|
I was riding my bike home from school today when I glanced over into
|
|
someone's garage and saw a man in his teeshirt and boxer shorts fire a gun
|
|
at me -- and miss.
|
|
|
|
Immediately I wrenched my brakes and squealed to a stop, jerked the
|
|
handlebars to the right, and bore down on that asshole, pedaling right
|
|
toward him. He wouldn't forget his mistake.
|
|
|
|
(Let it be noted that this will not knock someone down if he is tall
|
|
enough; rather, the pedalist and the pistolist shall soon be face to face
|
|
straddling said bicycle.)
|
|
|
|
"Hey, asshole!" I screamed, so doing. "If you're gonna fire a gun at
|
|
me, you're gonna HIT ME! Try again!"
|
|
|
|
He merely appeared shocked, bumbling towards apology but failing
|
|
foolishly.
|
|
|
|
"Look, buddy! This isn't the kind of shit I want to put up with!
|
|
I've got done here reading Henry David Thoreau, asshole; this is the man
|
|
who'll show you where to put that gun! What kind of a man is playing with
|
|
a gun in his underwear in the middle of the afternoon except a stupid fuck
|
|
like you who has no clue why he's alive at all? Do you even know why you're
|
|
doing this?
|
|
|
|
"(Go ahead, buddy, lift that gun again! I'm waiting for my final
|
|
release!)
|
|
|
|
"It's a damn shame, the state society's in nowadays. What even sucks
|
|
worse is the fact that it's been this sucky for centuries! If not one kinda
|
|
suckiness, another! And why? I think it's shits like you who brandish
|
|
weapons! Small arms, machine guns, cannons, military airplanes, nuclear
|
|
bombs -- one story. Deception, wrath, greed, envy, selfishness, prejudice,
|
|
outwardly projected self-disgust -- another! It all makes me sick! My nose
|
|
is running, you asshole, and all I want is inner peace!
|
|
|
|
"For some reason, I thought I should be comfortable in detesting and
|
|
fearing the big stinging arms of our out-of-control fat-ass federal
|
|
government -- the FBI, CIA, ATF, IRS, and the W.T.F. -- all insane fuckin'
|
|
unsupervised masses of bent people out to fuck over their neighbors.
|
|
There's no pretty word for it, buddy, that's what they're out to do -- to
|
|
sidestep every law and bill of right we think protects us so they can
|
|
forward their wacked-out agenda of death, fear-mongering, war-propagation,
|
|
thought-crime, and all-out rudeness!
|
|
|
|
"But now, looky here. Like the local shock-jock media has been
|
|
telling me for years, I really DO have to fear the jerks who live up the
|
|
street, because they COULD be murderers- and rapists-in-training, only
|
|
waiting for the right moment to assert their God-given rights to be complete
|
|
fucks!
|
|
|
|
"(Why aren't you doing anything with that goddamn penis-extension gun
|
|
of yours, you shit?! Aim it AT MY HEAD and make it DISAPPEAR!)
|
|
|
|
"Well, you know what? I'm sorry for you! I'm sorry for everyone
|
|
living! Maybe I don't know them personally, but I know that for the most
|
|
part they've been raised under the control of cultures and societies and
|
|
power structures whose only purpose is to keep themselves going -- no matter
|
|
how unjust, silly, unscrupulous, inefficient, or altogether mean they are.
|
|
No government will allow its citizens to deny its right over their lives.
|
|
No economy will train its workers to be wise. No society will allow
|
|
nonconformance to its basic precepts. Why? Because then they'd be
|
|
committing suicide! What sort of guillotine would allow its blade to freely
|
|
leave, dull its edge, and put itself to the purpose of peace? What sort of
|
|
electric chair would allow its straps to contemplate the beauty of existence
|
|
rather than hold some poor fuck down while his muscles tear and his skin
|
|
melts? They'd be worthless, wouldn't they?
|
|
|
|
"This is what we are! We are tools! We are cogs in a machine! We
|
|
are codependently useless unto ourselves -- self-loathing in fact -- only
|
|
useful to external goals and needs, whether it be the circulation of money
|
|
or the proliferation of megamonopolistic power structures or the funding of
|
|
a government to smudge out the dignity of what nations still have it and
|
|
reform them in our own image.
|
|
|
|
"And you know what? I wouldn't mind being a tool. I wouldn't mind
|
|
being a cog in a machine -- if I had been led to believe this would be my
|
|
destiny in this self-mutilating world! Please, stop spreading these lies
|
|
about human rights and freedom and dignity, when you only denigrate and
|
|
annihilate all of them behind our backs -- and in our faces -- anyway!
|
|
Please, stop bellowing about the rights of the unborn American citizen when
|
|
the ones already living, here and abroad, are learning through the harshest
|
|
psychological and physical lessons the fact that such rights do not exist.
|
|
Yes! If we can claim human beings have a right to liberty, equality, and
|
|
the pursuit of happiness, and then work as hard as possible to classify,
|
|
quantify, and pick away at that liberty, to make equality of misery the only
|
|
real success, and to define happiness in such a way as to value finite
|
|
material goods over the infinite beauty of Being -- then such rights must
|
|
not exist at all!
|
|
|
|
"Why the drive to propagate the species when such truths are evident
|
|
to anyone who stops for ten seconds to think about them? Is it that enough
|
|
of us simply don't stop to think? Have we scheduled and commodified our
|
|
time and energy to such a degree that self-reflection is no longer
|
|
practical? Please don't tell me that you understand all of this and have
|
|
children simply to hope that THIS one won't go wrong.... Have we so given
|
|
up the idea of spiritual and psychological survival that we've died unto
|
|
ourselves, converting our bodies into factories to toil for their own shoddy
|
|
maintenance until they can produce an offspring that might WORK OUT?
|
|
|
|
"How many of us have honestly given up? How many of us no longer
|
|
believe in having a meaningful life, something to be happy of having lived
|
|
through? How many of us simply avoid committing suicide for the sole cause
|
|
of preventing new suffering, a feeble justification for living through it?
|
|
|
|
"But look! WE'RE FOOLS. We've been suckered! And you know how? Too
|
|
many of us actually believe all that shit matters! Look: where are our
|
|
chains? Where are these machines? They're in our heads, buddy! Ain't that
|
|
hilarious? All this oppression and strife and injustice -- between our
|
|
ears! Fuckin'-A freakshow we live in, huh?
|
|
|
|
"What about physical pain, you ask? Ha! Also in our heads! The same
|
|
thing that defines pain, makes us fear it! And what about it? Why do we
|
|
fear pain at all? Because it intimates death? I'll ask you a metaphysical
|
|
question, buddy: if infinity exists, can any of us really be separate from
|
|
it?
|
|
|
|
"Pick up that gun, motherfucker, and aim!
|
|
|
|
"PICK IT UP! Yes, that's it, I'm SERIOUS.
|
|
|
|
"YES, AT MY HEAD, in my EAR, if you so please.
|
|
|
|
"Now, one last thing:
|
|
|
|
"SUFFERING IS A CHOICE. DO WHAT THOU WILT."
|
|
|
|
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
|
|
|
|
"Agneta," Elms whispered, "did you see that? Christ ate
|
|
Travis. There's nothing left but his gloves and boots."
|
|
Philip K. Dick
|
|
|
|
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
|
|
|
|
PREDATOR
|
|
Howler in the Shadows
|
|
|
|
Shiiik!
|
|
|
|
"Mary had a little lamb, little lamb..."
|
|
|
|
Shiiik!
|
|
|
|
"Little lamb, little lamb....."
|
|
|
|
Shiiik!
|
|
|
|
The man glanced briefly at his reflection in the bathroom mirror, before
|
|
continuing to sing softly.
|
|
|
|
"Little lamb, little lamb...."
|
|
|
|
Shiiik!
|
|
|
|
Once again, he slid the whetstone across the length of the knife blade.
|
|
|
|
Shiiik!
|
|
|
|
It was a wicked blade. Custom made, not another one in existence. The
|
|
blade itself was six inches long, tapering to a double-edged tip, like a
|
|
trappers blade. Like something used to skin animals. The back of the blade
|
|
thickened and became ridged, like the saw on a survival knife. The handle was
|
|
a black plastic "comfort-grip", specially contoured for his fingers. It was a
|
|
thing of beauty.
|
|
|
|
Shiiik!
|
|
|
|
The singing had become a tuneless humming, a menagerie of seemingly
|
|
random notes and rhythms. He glanced at the mirror quickly, somehow assured
|
|
by the reflection looking back at him. He was a tall, well muscled man, with
|
|
dark brown skin and piercing blue eyes. The harsh, fluorescent bathroom light
|
|
reflected off of his cleanly shaven head, giving his skin the appearance of
|
|
polished leather. He sat on a rickety, wooden stool set in front of the
|
|
bathroom sink, clad only in a pair of baggy, white slacks.
|
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"Ya know..." he said, glancing up at the mirror and then quickly away, as
|
|
if afraid to meet his own blue-eyed stare.
|
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|
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"Ya know...," he started again, and then faltered.
|
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|
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Shiiik!
|
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|
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"I--I once heard that lunatics were geniuses," he looked up at the mirror
|
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earnestly, as if seeking the reflection's approval.
|
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|
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The reflection looked down on him, good-natured humor in its eyes,
|
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|
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"No Larry," it said, "you are indeed many things, but a genius you are
|
|
not."
|
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|
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"Why not?" he asked disappointed.
|
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|
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The reflection sighed heavily, it had explained this many times.
|
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|
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"You're not a genius, because you weren't born a genius."
|
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|
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"Oh." he said.
|
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|
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"Don't worry, Larry" it said reassuringly, "you don't need to be a
|
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genius. That's why you have me."
|
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|
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"Oh yeah..." he said unhappily.
|
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"Larry," It said reproaching.
|
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"Don't be upset. We can't all be geniuses."
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"I wish I was a genius."
|
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He carefully slid the knife into its sheath, pocketing the whetstone with
|
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his other hand.
|
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|
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The reflection was silent. He looked up at it and smiled.
|
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It beamed down on him, its eyes filled with pride. Larry reached over to
|
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the towel rack and pulled the yellow, button-up shirt off of it. He slowly
|
|
put it on, making sure that each plastic button lined up with each hole.
|
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|
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"Happy hunting," called the reflection.
|
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"Thank you," mumbled Larry, clicking off the bathroom light.
|
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|
|
It was raining outside. Larry grabbed his over coat and threw it over
|
|
his shoulders. He liked the rain. It gave him the opportunity to wear his
|
|
over coat, a dark grey thing, like what a detective would wear in the movies.
|
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|
|
The rain also made hunting more fun. It was harder. The game few and
|
|
far between. He glanced at the clock on the microwave, but it was flashing.
|
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Twelve. Twelve. Twelve.
|
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|
|
He hated clocks.
|
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|
|
He left without locking the door, thieves were welcome to rob him. There
|
|
was nothing in that apartment that he cared about. The elevator was out of
|
|
order. That was just fine with him. He hated elevators, always had. Down
|
|
four flights of concrete urine-smelling steps into a dilapidated front lobby.
|
|
Empty. The decent people were all asleep. Out the front door and onto the
|
|
streets. He flipped his collar up like he imagined a police detective would.
|
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|
|
He began to sing softly as he walked, eyes flicking back and forth,
|
|
scanning both sides of the street,
|
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|
|
"London bridge is falling down..."
|
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|
|
"Falling down...."
|
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|
|
"Falling down..."
|
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|
|
There! The corner. A glimmer of movement. He quickened his pace. The
|
|
rubber soles of his tennis shoes began to squeak on the wet concrete. He
|
|
slowed, silence was the key. Larry reached the corner soon enough... empty.
|
|
The street was empty. Whatever he had seen was gone. If it had ever existed.
|
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"Falling down..."
|
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|
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He was not disappointed. No. It was too early. The chase was half of
|
|
the game.
|
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|
|
* * * * *
|
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|
The moon was almost setting. He couldn't see it through the clouds, but
|
|
he could feel it. The rain had slackened off some. Good. It had been too
|
|
heavy. He hadn't seen a soul. He was humming to himself. He had reached a
|
|
small park and sat down on one of the benches. Off to the left three figures
|
|
sat huddled around a small fire they had going in a waste basket. Larry was
|
|
content to watch. One of them had to wander off eventually.
|
|
|
|
One of the three did indeed stand up, but he didn't just wander off as
|
|
Larry had originally hoped. Instead, he began to walk over to where Larry sat
|
|
This could be an interesting night indeed. Larry studied the man as he
|
|
approached. Young, black, nervous. His friends had probably put him up to
|
|
this. Larry's knife was in his hand, hidden in the folds of his over coat.
|
|
|
|
"Hey, mister," the man said as he drew near, "you got any spare change?"
|
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|
|
"Hmm." Larry responded standing up. He proceeded to search the pocket of
|
|
his left side. His right hand he kept perfectly still.
|
|
|
|
"Sorry," he said smiling, "no change today."
|
|
|
|
"Then how 'bout your wallet, mother fucker!" the man said, voice
|
|
cracking, as he flipped a knife butterfly knife open.
|
|
|
|
Larry smiled. His adrenalin pumping. He was higher than any drug had
|
|
ever gotten him. He wilted back, seeming to be afraid, then cat-quick he
|
|
lunged forward. His left hand grabbed the man's wrist, while his right
|
|
plunged his knife to its hilt in the man's belly. Warm, sticky blood rushed
|
|
over his hand. God, how he'd missed that feeling. The man cried out and
|
|
tried to stumble back, but Larry held him fast.
|
|
|
|
He was grinning now, positively enjoying himself. He twisted the blade
|
|
and pulled violently to the right, ripping free of the man's abdomen. The
|
|
faint aroma of bowel reached Larry's nostrils. He released the man, allowing
|
|
him to stumble back. He cried out again as his intestines slipped free of
|
|
their cavity and piled onto the grass.
|
|
|
|
The man's companions started forward, alerted by the man's cries. Larry
|
|
was on them in a second. He leapt at the first man, forcing him down into the
|
|
mud. The man's cry of surprise turned into one of pain as Larry began to
|
|
wildly slash him. Instinctively, the man threw his arms up, blocking his
|
|
face. Larry's first swipe went across the man's hand. The second landed on
|
|
his face, cutting deeply from his right eye down past his chin.
|
|
|
|
Suddenly, the third man was there, grabbing Larry by the shoulders and
|
|
pulling him off of the wounded man. Larry broke free and swiveled, bringing
|
|
his knife up to a guard position. His opponent stood a few feet away from
|
|
Larry, pointing something at him. A gun. Larry hated guns. They were no
|
|
fun. The man glanced at his companion,
|
|
|
|
"Jack, you all right?"
|
|
|
|
The man didn't answer, he just held his face and screamed. Larry took
|
|
the opportunity and threw his knife. It was not balanced, not designed for
|
|
throwing, but it was heavy and Larry's aim was good. It smacked hard against
|
|
the man's hand, knocking the gun free.
|
|
|
|
Larry tackled the man, forcing him face-down into the mud and beating him
|
|
savagely.
|
|
|
|
After a few moments the man stopped moving. Unconscious or dead, Larry
|
|
didn't know and didn't particularly care. He stood up and cast about for his
|
|
knife. It was lying in the mud, next to the gun. He saw his knife, but the
|
|
gun was gone.
|
|
|
|
Suddenly, fire exploded in his back. He dropped to the ground, crying
|
|
out in fear and pain. The other man, the one with the cut face, he'd found
|
|
the gun. Once again pain exploded in him, this time in his chest, just to the
|
|
right of his heart. He fell back against the ground. Damn his stupidity.
|
|
He'd totally forgotten about the man. Assumed that he was taken care of. Now
|
|
he'd been shot. Badly. He could feel the blood flowing from his veins. He
|
|
was going to die, he knew that much. No one would save him, even if they
|
|
could. He was going numb, shock he guessed. It suddenly occurred to him that
|
|
no one was going to pick his knife up out of the mud. The blade would be
|
|
ruined. This disturbed him more than the thought of dying. He tried to
|
|
speak, to beg the man to take his knife, to clean it and care for it, but only
|
|
a gurgling croak would come out.
|
|
|
|
'I wish I was a genius' he thought sadly. If he'd been a genius he
|
|
wouldn't have been shot. He wouldn't be lying here dying while his knife got
|
|
ruined in the mud. For the first time in nearly twenty years, Larry cried.
|
|
|
|
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
|
|
|
|
I judged others by these standards; the only people who
|
|
existed for me were those who, without cheating, looked
|
|
this all-consuming nothingness in the face.
|
|
Simone de Beauvoir
|
|
|
|
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
|
|
|
|
DANCE OF THE HEKURA
|
|
Dark Crystal Sphere Floating Between Two Universes
|
|
|
|
"The *hekura* are often found in the hills, or high in trees, often
|
|
suspended there, but they can also live under rocks or even in the
|
|
chest of a human. . . . Some are 'hot' and some are *naiiki* -- meat
|
|
hungry and cannibalistic. Some are both hot and meat hungry, and
|
|
these are often the ones sent to devour the souls of enemies."
|
|
-- Napoleon A. Chagnon, Yanomamo
|
|
|
|
Cornelius Omphalos hung over me as I followed his directions for making
|
|
the drug and the heated seeds and white ash combined to form a green powder in
|
|
my mortar. This lab room allotted me by the University of Texas to complete
|
|
my chemistry graduate research was merely the latest in a series of sites
|
|
which had seen the preparations of such strange concoctions and mind-altering
|
|
brews, going back to the *Club des Haschichins* we had founded in our
|
|
undergraduate days based on Moreau's and Gautier's example. Each of us sought
|
|
in these forays into drug use our own goals; mine being the insights of
|
|
chemical effects on the brain and its evolution on the material level, while
|
|
Cornelius' belonged to another plane altogether.
|
|
|
|
I had known the anthropology student for quite some time, and it was not
|
|
long after our having met in the reading room of the Life Sciences Library
|
|
that we organised the underground *Club,* made up of a small circle of close
|
|
friends willing to experiment and to gamble, meeting in rented rooms and
|
|
secluded spots at odd intervals to try an elaborate assortment of concoctions
|
|
in quasi-religious rituals. One after another, however, the group was wooed
|
|
away, by lovers or jobs or other aspects of the vulgar world outside the
|
|
spheres Omphalos and I chose to inhabit. For while I was the scientist
|
|
dedicated to learning at any price for its own sake, Omphalos sought with
|
|
similar dedication a higher ideal, dealings with something outside of our own
|
|
realm of experience, something which perhaps should not have been dealt with
|
|
and which perhaps God and Nature have mercifully shielded us from by
|
|
relegating to us such weak senses.
|
|
|
|
Omphalos had that fearlessness brought on by wonder and that far-reaching
|
|
yet blind vision held by all mystics and revolutionaries, and a fire burned in
|
|
the Greek's dark eyes as he no doubt contemplated what I would never have then
|
|
imagined. For he had seen the ebene, the hallucinogenic snuff now forming
|
|
before us, used so often by the shamans of the South American Yanomamo; he had
|
|
watched the shamans as they switched between their own roles and of those of
|
|
the hekura, spirits called down from the hills and the forests and even the
|
|
farthest reaches of the universe to dwell in their chests and to work strange
|
|
deeds. Returning from his fieldwork he carried with him a walking stick made
|
|
of wood of the ama tree which was soon reduced to ash necessary for the
|
|
experiment and a tube of the skinned seeds of the hisiomo tree, traded from a
|
|
Yanomamo looking for the advantages a new shotgun would bestow upon him in
|
|
this often warlike society and brought through customs with the aid of a few
|
|
dollars and the kind officials. I wish I could erase that day soon after his
|
|
return when he showed up at my residence holding the cane and his battered
|
|
leather bag containing the tube of seeds and told me of his experiences, and
|
|
of the refusal of the Yanomamo shamans to grant his most urgent wish, that he
|
|
be inducted into their mysteries and learn to deal with the hekura. Had he
|
|
paid heed to their warnings he would have realised that his quest could not
|
|
end happily.
|
|
|
|
As the Sun shone on the University's cyclopean Tower from the Western sky
|
|
and unwitting students went about the petty dramas of their lives unsuspecting
|
|
of that which lies beyond, we hurtled down the back roads of the Texas Hill
|
|
Country towards our preselected site, oak rising thick on either side of the
|
|
road thinning out onto juniper-studded limestone hills and growing beside
|
|
winding rivulets which had been devouring the rock for countless ages,
|
|
proceeding from sources unknown to unknown destinations eating valleys and
|
|
hidden grottoes from the white rock. I realise in retrospect that during this
|
|
journey Omphalos was steeling himself for trials whose appearance he knew
|
|
waited only for the blast of that snuff. For he had sat among these men and
|
|
heard their stories and while he had not seen the entities these men culled
|
|
into their bodies, he had seen them carry out that drama known only to the
|
|
shaman, he had seen them slip between worlds and watched their actions with
|
|
spirits. This was what Cornelius had searched for for so long among so many
|
|
cultures, the doorway to the unknown which had been the quest of the Greek's
|
|
life, and he was willing to make the sacrifices necessary to secure this
|
|
prize.
|
|
|
|
The Sun shone down upon bare limestone patches in the sparse grass as I
|
|
turned my dirty grey Oldsmobile onto the rocky dirt road winding up to the
|
|
hilltop clearing along the last leg of our journey in the Westlake hills. We
|
|
rolled to a stop in the rocky clearing and clambered out of the car, noting
|
|
briefly the commanding view of the bare hilltop, one among several in the
|
|
area, fringed lower down with juniper trees giving way to dry creek beds at
|
|
its base. A flock of grackles hopped about eating things squirming in the
|
|
sparse grass and watched us with curious yellow eyes as we prepared for our
|
|
saturnalia, their squawking and cackling filling the afternoon air as the Sun
|
|
shone upon us just as it has upon so many of the deeds of men, good or ill,
|
|
standing silent watch over Earth's affairs. I quickly dressed in the flowing
|
|
priest-like robes we had designed for our *Club* in those days so long past,
|
|
in the Western Ceremonial style the group had favoured, but Cornelius had
|
|
spent his days of late in other climes, and my robes clashed with his South
|
|
American dress and painted body, looking so much like those grainy pictures of
|
|
Yanomamo Omphalos had shown me as we discussed the dancing hekura. While I
|
|
dressed as I felt appropriate, Omphalos dressed as guest of the hekura, for
|
|
the hekura demand beauty of their hosts, a beauty known to the Yanomamo in the
|
|
pigments and feathers of the jungle.
|
|
|
|
The Sun hung not far above the Western horizon when we finally squatted
|
|
down facing each other, the scientist and the mystic, with Omphalos' old
|
|
leather bag lying between us. Reverently I opened the bag and removed the
|
|
snuff tube which the Yanomamo call the mokohiro along with the pouch of ebene
|
|
and placed some of the snuff into the nose piece of the instrument. Placing
|
|
the nose piece to Omphalos' nostril, I blew the greenish powder through the
|
|
pipe first slowly and finally ending with a sharp blast. Omphalos fell back
|
|
in pain, coughing and hacking, with mucous dripping from his nostril, but
|
|
quickly regained himself and prepared for a second blast, which was met with a
|
|
similar reaction. However, Omphalos had the determination of one heading
|
|
towards a tantalisingly close goal, and he once again regained himself and I
|
|
reluctantly received a blast of the greenish powder myself. Falling back
|
|
gasping and coughing, my eyes watering and mucous dipping in long strands from
|
|
my nose I refused a second blast and lay on the ground awaiting the painful
|
|
drug's effects.
|
|
|
|
Slowly recovering from the first pains of the drug, tears flowing from my
|
|
eyes, I soon heard Omphalos' high clear voice crooning a strange and ancient
|
|
melody, softly at first but gradually crescendoing to ear-splitting volumes,
|
|
but always maintaining the beauty and wonder of the song. This was the song
|
|
of summoning which Omphalos had told me of so often, the calling out to those
|
|
glowing creatures to come and join the realm of men, to join us in the fields
|
|
men know. Mucous dripping down his face and chest, dropping in patches and
|
|
forming green crusts on the white limestone, Omphalos reeled about singing
|
|
this song as I watched in both amusement and with a twinge of fear, for he had
|
|
the bearing of a true fanatic for this religion he had never even really
|
|
known, and he had made the transition into that man whose acquaintance I had
|
|
made but a few times before high on drugs in those meetings of our *Club,* who
|
|
would push his corporal frame past the point where it should have broken.
|
|
|
|
My eyes still watering and my nose running profusely I lay watching him
|
|
reel about me and snorting small handfuls of the drug, no longer even
|
|
bothering with the mokohiro, oblivious to the black winged birds screaming and
|
|
hopping about in reply to his strange song when, opposite the setting Sun,
|
|
strange tiny lights began to appear in the Eastern sky. Sitting upright I
|
|
watched with curiosity as the dancing lights arose from the hills and trees
|
|
and from high in the encroaching darkness, twirling along their trails and
|
|
whirling about in the air as they approached our hilltop. As they drew closer
|
|
panic began to creep over me, for no longer could I deny that they were taking
|
|
on the shapes so often described to me by Omphalos as we laid out our plans
|
|
and read the scattering of articles on the ebene available in English, for
|
|
here were approaching the tiny forms of glowing creatures, tiny men and women,
|
|
each less than two inches tall, some carrying soul-piercing weapons and
|
|
wearing palm-frond visors as if in preparation of attack on an enemy. Like
|
|
tiny ballet dancers they gamboled about, spiraling towards us, as they each
|
|
danced along their paths to us and congregated around Omphalos, spinning in
|
|
the air to the time of his song, now reaching a fever pitch. Finally, with
|
|
Omphalos' gestures of invitation, the hekura, many with weapons in hand, began
|
|
to march along glowing trails to his feet and enter his body, making the
|
|
invisible course to his chest. It was then that Omphalos stopped his singing
|
|
and his face made odd contortions of fear and of pain, and I noticed with the
|
|
hekura's advances in my direction that both Omphalos and I were screaming.
|
|
|
|
The police found me running through the woods, blood trailing from dozens
|
|
of wounds where thorns and branches had torn at my face and hands as I ran
|
|
blindly long after the effects of my panic had overcome the ebene and I ceased
|
|
to even remember what I was running from. Fortunately men are quick to make
|
|
up their own explanations for what they do not understand, so my ravings with
|
|
what little coherency they had fell upon deaf ears and closed minds. When I
|
|
finally recovered enough to lead them to the spot in the woods where Omphalos
|
|
lay, the Greek was near death, and he did not live long after the trip to the
|
|
hospital. But to this day Omphalos' words when we found him lying in that
|
|
clearing still haunt me, and as I make even the shortest sortie outdoors I
|
|
look about and fear what may come dancing unseen along its path to the realms
|
|
of men, what has been so mercifully cloaked from our feeble senses, for as he
|
|
lay there all he could say, over and over, was how he could feel them chewing.
|
|
|
|
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
|
|
|
|
State of unBeing is copyrighted (c) 1997 by Crux Ansata and Apocalypse Culture
|
|
Publications, "The Revolution Is Now" Faction. All rights are reserved to
|
|
cover, format, editorials, and all incidental material. All individual items
|
|
are copyrighted (c) 1997 by the individual author, unless otherwise stated.
|
|
This file may be disseminated without restriction for nonprofit purposes so
|
|
long as it is preserved complete and unmodified. Quotes and ideas not already
|
|
in the public domain may be freely used so long as due recognition is
|
|
provided. State of unBeing is available at the following places:
|
|
|
|
CYBERVERSE 512.255.5728 14.4
|
|
TEENAGE RiOt 418.833.4213 14.4 NUP: COSMIC_JOKE
|
|
THAT STUPID PLACE 215.985.0462 14.4
|
|
ftp to www.io.com /pub/SoB
|
|
World Wide Web http://www.io.com/~hagbard/sob.html
|
|
|
|
Submissions may also be sent to Crux Ansata at <CruxAnsata@hotmail.com>. The
|
|
SoB distribution list may be joined by sending email to the same address.
|
|
|
|
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
|