Whoo-hooing across Lethe
Cries ring out
Some schmuck wanting to board the ship
Getting a paddle to his sconce
If there is a kiss of Death, I want it. She withholds it, like some dominatrix cuckold ...
If I can enable myself to smear my body with the sweat and grime of innumerable sluts,
then please let me!
Dying Is an art, like everything else.
I do it exceptionally well.
~ Sylvia Plath, "Lady Lazarus"
There is, I think, a certain art to self-destruction: but only in retrospect. When one is in the midst of destroying oneself (as in the throes of alcoholic delirium tremens, for instance) there is not much in the way of art -- just a lot of painful sing-song voices and dancing about old times waiting for some non-existent savior to bring you another bottle.
However, in retrospect -- after the pain has become a distant, evolutionarily muted memory -- a certain odd beauty emerges, rather like one of those alien hybrid worlds of Lovecraft's work ... The intensity of the moment quiets and the sound of paramedics and sirens and the rush of nurses to get the IV in all become just a part of a tapestry ... that's it.
But the worst part of it all -- the inescapable part! -- is when the people we love no longer see this thing as a grand work of art, but as a simple refusal to live. And now here is where I'll get philosophical ...
Life on life's terms. -- I hate that phrase. It is spoken by the weak who pretend that Life is somehow an entity to be approached with reverence and awe like some sort of biblical manifestation of the deity. No! Life is nothing but a jumble of possibilities crammed into a very small personal space, with nowhere to go unless we drag them along with us on our unpredictable journey into the dark unknown, the boundless night, the pure chaos of non-being -- toward which we are all headed.
When Kurtz cried his famous line, "The horror! the horror!," he was not referring to anything inside or about him, but rather about the life-denying world that he tried to escape! Unsuccessfully, of course. The true artist wants to do two things at once: stay in the world and love it; and escape from it and laugh sardonically at its folly from a safe distance, or height. At worst, of course, the artist is like Byron's Manfred, pulled back from the precipice by the lowly chamois hunter. So what are we to do?
Remember to cry at Christmas (or whatever holiday you observe) for the family you've lost. But rejoice in the fact that you are INDOMITABLE.
Herr God, Herr Lucifer Beware Beware.
Out of the ash I rise with my red hair
And I eat men like air.
Sylvia, her last word on the matter
It's time to allow myself a little leeway ... some sad setting of my sun that makes no sense to anyone.
It's time to wander the streets of my own sad mind, to stand in awe of what I've become, without striving to overcome.
It's time to ask a really tough question: Am I worthless? Probably, but that's good -- because this life is worthless.
Somebody somewhere said that personhood is not to be taken lightly ... it's a gift. I beg to differ. It's a curse. Promise me (oh my soul) never to fall into a sad state, one in which you give up ... promise me never to abandon the power that rises above you, on a daily basis ...
Shall I vie with Walt Whitman? I think it's time. Here I go:
There is no song better than the one I sing to myself, no life better than the one I lead ... no difference between my own ass and the tree, no time to ask why ... no dalliance of the flesh, no succor of the sad little stream of consciousness that I call Myself.
I staggered into a supermarket in Philadelphia (not California) and I wanted to know why this luscious whore was inviting me to a session. I didn't ask ... much to my everlasting sorrow.
I'm trying to imitate Whitman but I can't -- so I'll be Edward. Listen:
There is no song better than the one that spurts from my loins, and antagonizes the earth with a demand.
There is no song better than this classic little piece of self-righteous bullshit that I spew ... No better song than the one I am typing like a drunken fool ...
There is no song better than the hope for ONE MORE DAY ...
(Thanks Walt)
"The fact is, if I were certain of anything, I would be inclined toward Manicheism," said Des Hermies. "It's one of the oldest and it is the simplest of religions, and it best explains the abominable mess everything is in at the present time. The Principle of Good and the Principle of Evil, the God of Light and the God of Darkness, two rivals, are fighting for our souls. That's at least clear. Right now it is evident that the Evil God has the upper hand and is reigning over the world as master."~ J. K. Huysmans, La-Bas
This novel, the title of which is variously translated, in an effort to overcome the untranslatable (I simply consider it "The Depth"), is one of the finest expressions of spiritual struggle ever put to paper. If a novel can have a thesis, I would say that the thesis of La-Bas is: Those who long for the spiritual heights of blessedness, when frustrated in their quest, will seek the shorter, easier road of damnation. Indeed, the intellectual centerpiece of this work is the life and trial of the fifteenth-century Satanist and violator of children Gilles de Rais, who has never (in my opinion) received a better analysis than that provided by Huysmans, through his fictional mouthpiece Durtal.
It is a habit of religionists or "spiritual" people (of whatever stripe) to praise the Deity for every good thing that befalls them (without ever considering their own role in their own good fortune) and to exonerate the same Deity for every bad thing ... God always comes out smelling like a rose. Of course, there are more intelligent notions of the divinity, which allow for a multitude of divine manifestations (not all of which are beneficent) and see life as a struggle between several opposing forces -- some of which (usually the bad) require placating. But I ask: Why invoke Deity at all? Is it not enough to know that we exist in a hostile environment? That our efforts make little headway towards the utopia that we envision in our wild, ethically-centered dreams?
Perhaps the best we can do is throw up our hands and repair to a bell-tower, high above the stinking vapors of a degenerate society. Perhaps we should all just snuff it, and settle the question of an afterlife when we meet (tautologically) in the afterlife. Better yet, let's do as Baudelaire counseled, and just get drunk.
Irving Babbitt, (the curmudgeonly foe of Romanticism, but such a fine writer) made a valuable distinction between "awe" and "wonder." The former, he noted, is an emotion born of the experience of a certain "unity" or "manifoldness" that "transcends" the individual, making ethical consideration moot, in the face of the Sublime (cf. his Rousseau and Romanticism, 1919). The latter, he said, is the emotion felt by the unreflective observer who simply gapes in astonishment at that which he does not understand. To make an idol of this emotion, to write poems expressing the ineffable glory of nature, without any attempt to conceptualize Her, is (according to Babbitt) the height of anti-humanistic irresponsibility. Now I am a partisan of Wordsworth's "Immortality Ode," and I've spent a large portion of my life elucidating the works of 'mystics' like Plotinus, the Pseudo-Dionysius, various Gnostics, the Cappadocian Fathers, and others ... Yet I am sensitive to the need for a humanism, especially in our present era of religious warfare, sanctimonious politics, hero-worship, and cookie-cutter "persons" ... Analysis, deep introspection, a glorying in the uniqueness of the self, is likely a recipe for loneliness, but not insanity. In our present age, the one who stands apart and erects a monument that sluttish time cannot besmear, is one for whom awe easily turns to disgust. The great Classical writers, so admired by Babbitt, were disgusted with the density of their age, yet enamored of the possibilities. This is the entire point of aesthetically responsible existence: to aim for that which should be, while hating vigorously that which is.
When Charon picked up his last passenger (cf. Lord Dunsany's vignette, he smiled and cried ... Smiled at the end of his labors, and cried at the loss if his raison d'etre: that is a superficial reading. The more involved reading suggests a love of change, an attachment to the unexpected, which is the recipe for sublimity. Awe-inspiring events suggest a realm heretofore unexplored, possibilities untapped ... The tired self is energized with a new reason for being, a new direction, even if it is shudder-producing, fearful in the extreme ... We crave these things. It is what makes us human. To sail off into the wide seas, expecting death but hoping for some grand alteration -- not only of one's own life but of all humanity -- that is the stuff of humanism, of awe
Speaking only of myself, as I embark on this vast sea of logoi (my newfound sobriety and new acquaintances and ... yes, new-old love) ... as I embark, I recite a line (modified to myself) from one of my favorite poems: And though I am not that strength which in old days riled up my Christian colleagues at philosophy conferences, / that which I am, I am: one equal temper of antagonistic analysis / Made weak by drink and intolerance, but strong in will / To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
"Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-teacher, what America did you have when Charon quit poling his ferry and you got out on a smoking bank and stood watching the boat disappear on the black waters of Lethe?"~ Ginsberg, "A Supermarket in California"
"Then the boat from the slow, grey river loomed up to the coast of Dis and the little, silent shade still shivering stepped ashore, and Charon turned the boat to go wearily back to the world. Then the little shadow spoke, that had been a man.
'I am the last,' he said.
No one had ever made Charon smile before, no one before had ever made him weep."~ Lord Dunsany, "Charon"
