Do We Need Another Mythology?

A certain woman I know is what one might call a "seeker": she seeks a spiritual ground upon which to stand firmly, her heart beating mightily, but her blessed intellect given over entirely to god. The intellect (nous, in Greek) is today given short shrift -- not because of its latent power to uncover cosmic and terrestrial "mysteries" (we all know the amazing discoveries in astrophysics in recent years), but rather because many are afraid of what Archibald MacLeish memorably descibed as "...the black pall / Of nothing, nothing, nothing -- nothing at all" ("The End of the World").

The intellect, when left alone by the Big God in the Sky, will tell you -- mind and heart -- that we are definitely not "fearfully and wonderfully made" (Psalm 139:14) but rather just a tad short of cursed. Recall these words of Kierkegaard: "Hear the cry of the mother at the hour of giving birth, see the struggle of the dying at the last moment, and say then whether that which begins and that which ends like this can be designed for pleasure." But of course there is pleasure in life: the album by Chick Corea to which I am now listening; the softess of my girlfriend's hands; the three little birds outside my window, singing to me a message of love ... But why must we allow these things to be subordinated to the power-hungry monster in the sky?

In the classic defense of atheism, The God Delusion (2006), Richard Dawkins observed (as Gore Vidal did before him) that the Old Testament god is the most unpleasant character in all fiction (Harold Bloom thought otherwise; but he also thought that Poe and Tolkien sucked -- so much for him as a critic). What amazes me is the profound (I'd prefer to say profoundly stupid) excuses that believers give for the genocidal mania of this so-called god. Needless to say, a god who demanded totaI war against unoffending nations is the last thing we need to study today.

I recently spent a very disturbing afternoon discussing theology with two Mormons. After politely listening as they explained their myth -- which I will not even begin to summarize here; instead go to: http://www.patheos.com/Library/Mormonism.html. I asked them (not quite politely) if what the world needs now is another mythology, instead of a more devout attitude towards science, philosophy, history, and the humanities? They had no adequate answer, as one would expect; but they did point me to this passage from the Book of Mormon (clearly directed at me):

Behold, I [the angel Moroni] am laboring together with them [unbelievers, Yours Truly] continually; and when I speak the word of God with sharpness they tremble [I was far from trembling, I assure thee, my brethren] and anger against me [I wasn't angry, just sadly amused]; and when I use no sharpness they harden their hearts against it; wherefore, I fear lest the Spirit of the Lord hath ceased striving with them.

For so exceedingly do they anger that it seemeth me that they have no fear of death ... (Moroni 9:4-5)

The potent arrogance of this passage -- and the context of its usage -- aside, whoever wrote this magnificent piece of modern mythology obviously misunderstood atheism. Atheists have no fear of death -- for there is nothing to fear! Oblivion, especially for those who suffer from depression, addiction, poverty, abuse, is a blessing if ever there was one! Further, sharp words demanding that I accept your god only make me feel sharp myself, and ready to get into a down-and-dirty debate. Alas! One cannot really debate with brainwashed people. They just smile and quote from their scriptures. Such people should have no place in modern society -- unless they change their views. Yes, that sounds fascistic; but hey -- if it works ...

I would say the same words as Dawkins, in reference to this problem (and it is a problem: the fact that otherwise intelligent people -- and the Mormons to whom I spoke were far from stupid -- spend their time studying either an authentic Bronze Age / Roman era set of texts, or a recent fabrication by a bona fide loon, instead of putting their considerable mental power to the service of science and human progress in general). Here is Dawkins: "I am not in favor of offending or hurting anyone just for the sake of it. But I am intrigued and mystified by the disproportionate privileging of religion in our otherwise secular societies" (The God Delusion, p. 27).

It is very dangerous to give equal voice to a Harvard-trained scientist and a believer in an angel named Moroni (an apt name). Let us, instead of attending Wednesday night bible studies, go to lectures or symposia by academically trained scientists, philosophers, cultural critics, et cetera. Keep the religionists out, and let the free thinkers in. Am I pissing on the First Amendment? You bet. 'Tis time to shut up the religionists. Not out of hatred, but out of respect for the complex and highly intelligent beings that we are (most of us, at least). One can only imagine the cultural change in this country if believers finally learned that there is no god, and gave their mental powers to the actual physical -- for we are purely physical beings (the soul is a myth) -- needs of our fellow humans.

As I write this, I am listening to NPR discuss the Pope's new enclyclical on climate change. Why anyone living in the twenty-first century would pay a stick of attention to what a believer in a virgin birth has to say about anything baffles and sickens me. The Pope should stick to preaching about the Assumption and stay out of politics. Let us rid ourselves of mythology. Understand that Christ has no more reality than Zeus or Kali or Thor.

It is time for us, as a society, to grow up. As unpleasant as the thought of a life that begins and ends with suffering (to recall Kierkegaard's words) certainly is, we must be strong enough -- intellectually -- to accept that reality. And in the meantime, let us do what we do best: learn about our world, and leave mythology behind.

Against the Seventh Day Franchisers

© Edward Moore, S.T.L., Ph.D. patristics@gmail.com

For Christianity did not embrace Judaism, but Judaism Christianity, that so every tongue which believeth might be gathered together to God.

(Epistle of Ignatius to the Magnesians, ch. 10, "Against the Judaizers")

Billions of people proclaim to be Christians today, yet how many of them know anything more than what their poor biblical translations and under-educated pastors tell them? Not much. For many years my opinion of the Seventh Day Adventists had been that they were merely misguided Judaizers, yet active in their community, and basically living a "Christian life" (whatever that means). But my recent experience at a Seventh Day Adventist "Church" in New Brunswick, NJ has taught me otherwise. Now perhaps not all Adventists are as odious as the ones I encountered in my visit. Before I go into my description of my experience and attendant diatribe, I will provide some theological reasons for why this group is simply wrong.

Further, He says to them, “Your new moons and your Sabbaths I cannot endure.”Ye perceive how He speaks: Your present Sabbaths [i.e., the Jewish Sabbath] are not acceptable to Me, but that is which I have made, [namely this,] when, giving rest to all things, I shall make a beginning of the eighth day, that is, a beginning of another world. Wherefore, also, we keep the eighth day with joyfulness, the day also on which Jesus rose again from the dead. And when He had manifested Himself, He ascended into the heavens.

This rather esoteric passage from chapter 15 of the Epistle of Barnabas is only difficult for those who have not followed the history of the notion of "the eight day." I will not take up space with Philo of Alexandria (a Platonizing Jew roughly contemporaneous with St. Paul) who made a fine argument for cosmic reasons for the Sabbath. Instead, I shall provide a brief synopsis of the authentic Christian doctrine of the Sabbath, as put forth by the earliest Church Fathers (whom hardly any Christians read anymore, except Catholics and Orthodox)

To begin, Christ rose from the dead on a Sunday, not a Saturday. The incarnation of Christ was a major event, no doubt, but his resurrection caused everyone, I imagine, to have shat their pants. This is why an all-around change of mind concerning the Sabbath occurred. The history of the conflict between Judaizing Christians and the more "liberal" Pauline followers of The Way is far too complex to deal with here, but a quote from an early Church Father will suffice:

[We] and the Greeks know the same God, though not in the same way, he will infer thus: “Neither worship as the Jews; for they, thinking that they only know God, do not know Him, adoring as they do angels and archangels, the month and the moon. And if the moon be not visible, they do not hold the Sabbath, which is called the first [i.e. Sunday] (Clement of Alexandria, Stromata IV.5)

This statement from the wise Clement shows that even though early Christians observed Christ's Resurrection on Sunday, some of them still practiced it according to Jewish Tradition, that is, if the moon was not visible, the Sabbatical customs could not be observed (literally and figuratively, I suppose; the nights were pretty dark back then). Christians back then (first and second centuries) were well aware that a major change had occurred in the cosmos: the divine logos had come to earth, fulfilled the old Law and set free the souls who who were laboring in darkness (the Gentiles) and opened the gates of Heaven for all who would follow Christ. The absence of the moon, in other words, doesn't means a rat's ass to those who are attuned to the spiritual musical of Christ. The numerous warnings against "Judaizing" in many of the early followers -- Ignatius, Polycarp, Barnabas, and others) -- shows that a true Christians worships Christ, and through Him, the Father. The day of the Lord's Resurrection is the new Sabbath, a change of cosmic course, if you will. For a Christian, nothing can be holier than the day that their savior rose from the dead, which is called the "eighth day," for it occurred outside of ordinary human time.

This was a very brief explication, and I'm sure to get some nasty mail from Seventh Day Adventists. Don't waste your time, please. I am an atheist but I know Christian theology better than most Cardinals. Now, on to the disgusting thing called "worship" that I recently witnessed at a Seventh Day Adventist -- and these are the actual words of the "pastor" -- franchise. The first thing I saw as I entered the place were a bunch of children being handed collection baskets. As my girlfriend and I proceeded through the nest of sweaty humanity (the air conditioning was either off or not working -- on a 98 degree day, where we live). We finally squeezed our mutually diminutive bodies into a pew and began to listen. Some typical prayers were spit out; but I was appalled that no prayers were given for the victims of ISIS, nor for our soldiers who are home but changed forever. Instead, the prayers were all for Mrs. So-and-So who is having surgery or for Mr. Such-and-Such who has a bad back. No prayers for the torture victims in Nigeria; no prayers for the soldiers dying horrifically overseas; no prayers for those who suffer from addiction; no prayers for pregnant teens; no prayers for those gunned down by tough-guy cops. As I writhed in the rather uncomfortable pew, trying not to stand up and express myself in a multilingual set of obscenities, the straw finally fell on my fragile back.

The pastor -- a well-dressed and very un-pious man -- began encouraging the "brothers" and "sisters" to keep the "franchise" alive by donating heartily. I may be an atheist, but I know that a church is not a franchise, but a community of those who have been called out by God (ekklêsia). The Greek terms means "the calling out that gathers us together" -- and God's the one who does the calling (for those who believe). A church is a home for all Christians, a place where we leave the seven-day week and enter the eighth day where the blessed Christ reigns.

The pastor announced that a vote was about to be taken, to decide whether two new Adventist believers should be allowed to join the congregation. At this point I lost my temper -- a VOTE!!! Is this a church or a political caucus? -- took my girlfriend by the hand, and angrily exited that den of stupidity and avarice.

My open question here, then, is why has a place originally intended for the comfort and spiritual health of the human person become a fucking franchise, like a McDonald's. Again, I'm an atheist, but I respect genuine love for God and fellow humans. This disgusting church made to want to give up my breakfast. So, you Adventists out there, explain yourselves.

Jennifer Koh's Languid Beethoven Interpretation

The great nineteenth-century violinist and composer Henri Vieuxtemps took less than two weeks to learn Beethoven's deeply personal D major violin concerto (opus 61). The performance by Jennifer Koh at the Caramoor Festival in Katonah, NY (July 19, 2015) is painful evidence, for me, that Romanticism is cold in the ground. Koh remarked in a pre-concert interview that she had to walk away from the concerto for six years, in order to purge herself (I suppose) of the accrued influences of the ages. Would that she had not! Her lack of vibrato, slides, and position changes, and other expressive devices of the great Romantics and their heirs, up to and including Perlman, Shaham, and even Kremer, were absent or barely audible. I recall with immense pleasure hearing, as a child, a recording played for me by my grandfather, of Grumiaux singing -- not just playing! -- this astounding piece of music. One can only imagine how Vieuxtemps must have opened the piece: silvery lines slinking like enchanted serpents through the Arcadian lushness of the orchestra. Oh well. Jennifer Koh might as well have been a computer, spitting out the data pumped into her by some unimaginative programmer. It is sad, because I adore this concerto, and I recall the days of yore when I attempted -- and failed -- to perform it myself. It is no easy task to sing Beethoven's notes. Yet here we are, in a day and age in which lovely women with little talent gain attention for simply looking fine on the concert platform, damn the performance. A notable exception, of course, is Julia Fischer: beautiful but overwhelmingly gifted with the voice of the ages. Listen, if you'd like to recover from Koh's languid performance, to this fine example of the decaying Romantic art. We need a necromancer, a true master of the black arts, to raise Classical music once again to the demanding, sensual, and even subversive artform that it once was, and should be. I regret wasting the better part of my Sunday evening listening to Koh drag her tender heels through one of the most verdant soundscapes of the repertoire.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_N15_3_TP7I

Something Deeply Personal, but not Maudlin (I think)

What horrifies me most is the idea of being useless: well-educated, brilliantly promising, and fading out into an indifferent middle age.

~ Sylvia Plath

Nobody likes a sob story, so I shall try not to torment my reader with sobbing, moaning, or whimpering. Yet here is something indicative of the United States of Armed-Buzz-Cutted-Uniformed-Officer-Worshipping-Nonthinkers. To get deeply personal, I am in treatment for bipolar disorder and alcoholism; I have been for some time. After my divorce (2010) I made two (obviously) unsuccessful suicide attempts, swam into the deepest ocean of booze I could find, had unprotected sex (thank whatever maker-critter that exists that I am not dying of something slow and creeping), and picked fights with guys much bigger and more agile than I. But I continued to read, write, and even lecture. Through it all, my ex-wife never once dropped me a line to ask about the piece of phosphorescent detritus that my life has become. So be it. However, one bright day, as I sat in my favorite spot by the lake, guzzling from a bottle of cheap gin and reading Keats, I finally decided to put a stop to the decline -- I called the Alcoholics Anonymous hotline and entered a rehabilitation clinic. That was back in 2013. Sure, there have been relapses since then, but for the most part I have remained sober. Yet under the miscropscopic and, yes, well-meaning care of the psychiatric professionals who treated me, it came to light that I am bipolar. Anyone who doesn't know what that means, well, google it. But the short version is this: I get happy and energetic for a day or two, and then I fall into a deep pit of despair and I want to die. So I am on medication and I go to therapy every week; I attend support groups and even -- despite my atheism -- go to A.A. meetings and say the Serenity Prayer with all the other depserate men and women who are taking it one miserable day at a time. I continue to write and have recently done a pretty fun lecture on Hemingway and a few other greats, near-greats, and ingrates of the literary world of the not-too-distant past. Anyway ...

A few days ago I had a notably horrible day. I awoke from a vivid dream of my ex-wife: a love-making scene that lingered after waking -- I could still smell her shampoo and taste her daffodil flesh. The dark corridor of my building was filled with the scent of pot smoke, and someone was arguing in an adjacent apartment. I walked outside, lit a cigar, and felt like every motion was an exercise not merely in futility but in cosmic mockery. I felt as though my very existence was an affront to everything that flourishes under the sun. I called my psychiatrist and went in for a very long session. We talked at great length, and she encouraged me to attend a performance of the student orchestra at the local university, which I did -- after asking a woman old enough to be my mother to go with me (but that is an ongoing drama with little bearing on this account). It was a nice time: Mozart's 14th symphony, rather languid but pleasing. When I returned home, I drank a few beers, took a few klonopin, and went to sleep. The days meandered: I read a new Clive Barker book, nothing deep, and listened to a lot of Art Blakey and even some Sun Ra. And now for the kicker ...

Just a short while ago, as I was finishing my dinner, a knock came at my door, and when I opened it I was shocked to see two burly armed police officers and a petite, unthreatening woman staring me down. She was a representative of the clinic where I go for my psychiatric treatment, there to check up on me (fair enough). But what bothered me was the two grim-faced officers, hands on weapons, staring at me like I was a criminal. So Edward being Edward, I asked them if they were planning to shoot me in the back. They didn't answer, so I said, "Oh, you won't shoot me, I'm not black." Again, no response, just threatening stares. After assuring the woman that I was not planning to harm myself or anyone else, I demanded that they leave my apartment. They did not immediately did so, as they should have by law. Instead, they made me wait while the woman called her "supervisor" to report the outcome of the visit. Shortly thereafter -- after the armed goons looked around my private residence -- they left.

Is this the United States I am living in? Apparently, one cannot have a mental illness without trigger-happy conformists showing up at one's door whenever they feel like it. In case you haven't figured it out, I despise cops. Anyone who wants to walk about armed and have the power to incarcerate one's fellow citizens should not be permitted to do so. Only the truly caring, altruistic ones among us ... Oh wait, where the fuck are they?

So here I am, in early middle age, looking down a barrel of hopelessness. I have no woman in my life, no real friends, no career any longer ... Shit, I don't even have a cat (landlord won't let me). Why do I write, and care. I picked up a book about Pope Francis today, planning to review it. But who will care? I'd like to say "fuck it" and stop at the liquor store before it closes (I have about an hour). Someone said that every writer writes for some one special person. I write for my ex-wife. She was the goddess who painted the world with the ever-shifting colors of her diverse, fascinating mind ... and tantalized me with the liquid silk of her clothes and the delicate arches of her feet, that made the ground grow rigid at her touch, as I still do -- albeit an imaginary touch.

Upon Julia's Clothes

BY ROBERT HERRICK

Whenas in silks my Julia goes,

Then, then (methinks) how sweetly flows

That liquefaction of her clothes.

Next, when I cast mine eyes, and see

That brave vibration each way free,

O how that glittering taketh me!

The Ruin (Part I.)

Anglo-Saxon Poem (ca. 750 C.E.)

Translation © 2015 Edward Moore

[Allegory is a neglected art nowadays. Chester, England, and the memory of She Who is Dearest saturates these lines: only part of the surviving fragmentary poem, which I plan to translate in full in the coming weeks, is plastered here today. -- E.M.]

Well-wrought were these walls, ruined by fate

Once proud work of giants pulled down

Now without roof, nothing remains

But pock-marked bricks, broken and strewn about

To tell of the great age when mighty men

Consigned now to the crusty ground

Made these monuments -- Alas! they are

Gripped by the unforgiving earth

Upon which now walks another race,

Until the long count of years

Overwhelms them too.

Many lives of men this wall outlasted

Battle-stained and storm-wracked

Withstood the onslaught of glory-seekers

But now it bows to the ground.

"Whoa there, palsy-walsy ... Mama spank."

Nathanael West, The Day of the Locust (1939)

Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, Venus in Furs [Project Gutenberg EBook 2004 #6852]

After the years of drinking, the months of pill-popping, the weeks of crying out like a finger-nail-biting brat at my psychiatrist's office, and the days of singing Marley's "Redemption Songs" in the shower (with aid of a fine drug called Lithium), I have at last begun to enjoy Bobby Timmons again. His pattern-finding piano style, which is like a reconnaisance of musical possibilities with a faulty set of binoculars, is suited to that which I can only call the soul's lament: too tired and sick of the sun to do more than recline in the shadows and murmur -- eloquently to oneself. This is of great importance to me, for sound is the only power capable of scrambling the all-too-organized onslaught of memories that has become increasingly vocal in my dreams.

She was much more than pretty. ... She was smiling, a subtle half-smile uncontaminated by thought.

She wasn't hard-boiled. It was just that she put love on a special plane ...

Her invitation wasn't to pleasure, but to struggle ... If you threw yourself on her, it would be like throwing yourself from a parapet of a sky-scraper. You would do it with a scream. You couldn't expect to rise again. [my emphasis]

These lines from West's novella, describing the luscious, luxurious, uxoriogenic Faye, do much to help me give structure to the elaborate form that is my ex-wife. And that is what my reading has amounted to, these days: a pathetic re-structuring of the old tattered pattern, the time-worn and timeless and unconquerably sickening remnant that my life has become. Now, as Bob Dylan is singing at the very moment I am writing this, "I fall in love with the first woman I meet." However, I am not looking for Alicia Keyes (though I wouldn't mind) but for one who has so effectively stricken me from the record of her existence that I feel like the pharaoh Nephren-Ka in Lovecraft's oeuvre, no recognition of my existence as a sexual being in need of more than pneumatic bliss. Anyway, since I am a remnant of something that never had a chance to sprout, it is especially pathetic that I even seek love (and never mind what that word means: those who know know).

In the novella, Faye gives both Tod and Homer a chance to become fervent worshippers of disinterested female beauty. As I have written elsewhere (in my piece on Anglo-Saxon heroics), the decline of manly notions of self-sacrifice as heroism (exemplified in poems like "The Battle of Maldon," the Finnsburh fragment, and, of course, Beowulf) and the rise (so to speak) of chivalry as the noble licking of the female shoe (exemplified in the works of the great troubadors) made it possible for a man to really know himself sexually.

Man is the one who desires, woman the one who is desired. This is woman's entire but decisive advantage. (Madame Venus, in Sacher-Masoch, Venus in Furs, p. 10)

Actually, I did not write this explicitly in the piece on Anglo-Saxon heroics, but I'm writing it now. To be overwhelmed by a woman -- in all the gasping, pleading, writhing, breathless ways possible -- is, for me, the height of sexual experience and the utmost expression of my love for the one who entices, torments in exquisite fashion, and ultimately fulfills me -- by releasing me. I mean, of course, the release of orgasm, which only has meaning when the eyes of the cummer meet those of the one making it happen. I look up, out of the world, only held to sanity by the embrace of the one into whom I pour myself.

There is nothing in this world comparable to that, and so we try to find topics to write about -- a release -- by reading as much as we can -- filling our balls to bursting-point -- and then spilling it all before an indifferent world. How many people even read me? My stats tell me only how many people "hit" me.

I am not sure what to make of The Day of the Locust. I only know that Faye stood out, for me, as a proto-dominatrix for whom the torment she inflicted upon her worshippers (and I consider Tod to have been a more deeply afflicted fane-builder than Homer) amounted to a trifle. For she only sought fame as an actress, to be loved by the faceless crowd. Her desire was the type that no single person can fulfill, and so she was inaccessible -- by accident of temperament, not by conscious design. My ex-wife sought, not fame, but a type of success that was peculiar to her: a carefully maintained and organized exertion of her abilities in a finite sphere (if that makes even a subatom of sense). In this, I had no effect, no influence, no staying-power -- once she achieved her goal, it was on to the next thing. Sex was a matter of desire meeting opportunity. For me, it was a world to be explored with no waystations prepared in advance. In music, one might compare Bobby Timmons at his unbuttoned best with the nearly neurotic tight-laced perfectionist mouldings of Steely Dan. There is perfection and grace in both, but the soul (and I am getting increasingly comfortable using that word again) lavishes itself upon itself most primally in the former, and finds itself a carven glazed monument in the latter.

* * * * *

She was, indeed, much more than pretty. That is a word that has become nearly obsolete, at least among the younger set. It is too cute and ... small. Which is precisley what it means: small, dainty, cuddly, easy to control. A pretty woman is a woman who is on one's level, who doesn't demand much in the way of intellectual investment -- she may not be easy sexually, but she is easy to talk to. Pretty much. My ex-wife demanded much in the way of talk; she had deep notions and her ideas, if not well-developed, were certainly large entities scratching frantically at the door of logos. Speaking with her was a welcome challenge; and as the conversation increased, so did my desire.

There is a Japanese visual art in which the artist is forced to be spontaneous. He must paint on a thin stretched parchment with a special brush and black water paint in such a way that an unnatural or interrupted stroke will destroy the line or break through the parchment. Erasures or changes are impossible. These artists must practice a particular discipline, that of allowing the idea to express itself in communication with their hands in such a direct way that deliberation cannot interfere. (Bill Evans, "Improvisation in Jazz," liner notes to Miles Davis, Kind of Blue [1959])

The excitement of the moment, when "direct deed is the most meaningful reflection" (ibid.), produces a space in which we may adjust the temperature to our liking. A mixing of metaphors here, but it makes sense. Think of the power resident in a single word from the one you love: productive of peace, elation, comfort, and the stress of response -- all in one elaborate yet tantalizingly simple moment. It is like the call in music ... the opening provided by the bassist, whose thunder, upon receding, gives the violin a chance to soar mightily into a realm of once repressed, now expressed, memories. Music does that to a soul -- there it is again -- music takes nous into a realm of instant communication, in which "I don't know" is not an option. Music demands a response, and a call in return. The beauty of the woman to whom one replies musically is not prettiness times ten, it is awesome Beauty. The sublime.

"And always cold in this modern world of ours, she seeks to keep her sublime body warm in a large heavy fur and her feet in the lap of her lover. I imagine the favorite of a beautiful despot, who whips her slave, when she is tired of kissing him, and the more she treads him underfoot, the more insanely he loves her" (Sacher-Masoch, Venus in Furs, p. 119). Such is the metaphor of the one who has found his perfect match, only to be aware -- in a manner so painful as to defy words -- "that the end was in sight even before she did. All he could do to prevent its coming was to increase his servility and his generosity. He waited on her hand and foot" (West, The Day of the Locust, p. 143). Any man who has ever been in this position knows it does not work. It annoys the goddess, and the whipping and the kissing ceases. Role-play is the closest one can ever come to the experience of loving a woman from below, from beneath her exquisite feet, while gazing into her incomparable eyes. Speech does not occur here, and so the tearing of the ever-so-delicate parchment is not a danger. Yet the comforting absence of speech, the pure anticipation of what may or may not occur -- Will she permit an orgasm? Will she make me pass out beneath her latex-clad bottom? -- these wonders are safe possibilities. No matter what she does or does not do, when the role-playing session is over, she remains my beloved. Yet the time comes -- not for all, but for me -- when the fun is over and the the fear is not the luxurious fear of the tightening of the plastic bag over my head as she brings me to climax, but the very real fear of knowing that she has contacted attorneys, and my days of hearing her voice and kissing her with all the love a mind-body composite can bear to feel without going mad are over. Forever.

I remember the glory of seeing her so long ago, in her bathrobe, gloriously barefoot, smiling the placid smile of one who has something so special planned that it must be concealed beneath the subterfuge of a bedtime gesture: a night of placing my tongue in places that produce the most mellifluous moans ...

The Day of the Locust is a book about the loss of a goddess who never had a chance to be genuinely adored and worshipped, for both Tod and Homer were uncreative souls, incapable of knowing that Faye's wall of apparent unobtainability was in fact a result of "boredom and disappointment" -- for a powerful woman despises uncreative men.

"Yes--you have awakened my dearest dream," I cried. "It has slept long enough."

"And this is?" She put her hand on my neck.

I was seized with a sweet intoxication under the influence of this warm little hand and of her regard, which, tenderly searching, fell upon me through her half-closed lids.

"To be the slave of a woman, a beautiful woman, whom I love, whom I worship." (Sacher-Masoch, Venus in Furs, p. 48)

And this most creative man got his wish -- for a while, for it eventually turned into a hell. But one must experience the fullness of female dominance before undertanding that it forces a man to appreciate what made the troubadors tick, what made poets like Byron cherish in verse the all-too-rare gift of unconditonal love, or which made Wyatt write, in a different vein, "But all is turned now through my gentleness / Into a strange fashion of forsaking." One never knows if one's love is truly returned, if the light behind the beloved's eyes is burning within or simply a reflection of one's own. The only truth, really, the truth that can be experienced without question, is that of plain old forsaking. When I fell upon my knees, kissed the hem of her bathrobe -- much later in our marriage -- and watched as she turned away in disgust, I knew with a certainty unknown before: I was despised. Not for lack of creativity but for my addiction to the bottle.

She whipped so hard that the blood flowed, and that, at last, notwithstanding my heroic spirit, I cried and wept and begged for mercy. She then had me untied, but I had to get down on my knees and thank her for the punishment and kiss her hand. (Venus in Furs, p. 42)

All is metaphor here (well, not entirely), but I never did get a chance to kiss her hand. I was utterly forsaken.

* * * * *

I am writing this piecemeal, after a bout of blackout drunkenness and a trip to the hospital for detox. It is 4:30 AM and I am drinking black coffee by the potfull and writing in spite of myself. I realized in the hospital that if all were to end, it would be like this:

"One step further," [Marilynn] commanded. "Now kneel down, and kiss my foot."

She extended her foot beyond the hem of white satin, and I, the supersensual fool, pressed my lips upon it. (Venus in Furs, p. 99)

Yes, I was and am a fool -- but not an uncreative one. I did not, like the silly Tod in West's tale, run madly into a crowd who possessed no "mental equipment for leisure" (p. 178). But leisure is not what the supersensualist wants. The lovely Lisa [she was / is a woman from Philadelphia whom I "dated" for a bit after my wife left me; Lisa was, perhaps still is, a sexual acrobat with ever-open legs] enjoyed the leisure of free sex: experimental episodes with bondage equipment was not her thing, but she did give me several handjobs that made me scream so loudly that the neighbors complained -- so I guess I can't complain. One day, as "punishment" for forgetting to buy her bourbon, she made me remove the shoes she'd been wearing that hot summer day and kiss her feet.

During that most arousing of moments, I called out the precious name of my ex-wife: Marilynn! -- and all was lost. She, Lisa, who would sneak out at night to get duct-taped to a chair and ravished by several men at once (as I later found out) couldn't forgive me for calling out the blessed name Marilynn.

What does this have to do with anything? Not a fucking thing, except that I am sober and suffering from insomnia and need to ejaculate some words. I am listening to the Stones, Exile on Main Street, and none of it makes a damned bit of sense. I look at the unsmoked cigar sitting on my desk and wonder why I am still alive.

The Lonely Bachelor Attempts to Gild Nature

For Marilynn Lawrence

(Burne-Jones, The Hand Refrains)

Thomas Ligotti, The Conspiracy Against the Human Race (Hippocampus Press 2010)

Georges Bataille, "The Cruel Practice of Art" (1949)http://supervert.com/elibrary/georges_bataille/cruel_practice_of_art

Christos Yannaras, Person and Eros (Holy Cross Orthodox Press 2007)

And when I feel, fair creature of an hour!

That I shall never look upon thee more,

Never have relish in the faery power

Of unreflecting love; -- then on the shore

Of the wide world I stand alone, and think,

Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.

~ Keats

Ruskin remarked somewhere that there is really no bad weather, only different kinds of good weather. When gray and rainy weather forces me to gloomy thoughts, as it often does, I find that instead of engaging in salubrious activities, I read things that are reflective of the state of things outside my window. Such have been the hours spent this weekend. Finally, I have gotten around to reading Thomas Ligotti's The Conspiracy Against the Human Race. I was forced to stop many times to take a breather from the relentless, yes, gloom of the work. This is not to say that I disagree with his overall thesis. Ligotti is making the not very original (as he readily admits) claim that all is not right with our existence, that being alive is not a very great nor even a good thing. Drawing heavily upon the work of the Norwegian pessimist philosopher Peter Wessel Zapffe, Ligotti articulates quite well the knowledge that every thinking person possesses -- buried often, as it were, deep in the less readily accessible regions of the mind -- that our consciousness is a source of immense pain, and far from being an evolutionary boon, requires us to "thwart it" in order to avoid going insane. "[C]onsciousness may have facilitated our species’ survival in the hard times of prehistory, but as it became evermore acute it evolved the potential to ruin everything if not held firmly in check. Therefore, we must either outsmart consciousness or drown in its vortex of doleful factuality" (p. 19). According to Zapffe (and Ligotti) we may "thwart" consciousness in four general ways: 1) by isolation, or hiding from ourselves and others the true ruinous nature of consciousness; 2) by anchoring our lives in "metaphysical verities" (Ligotti's phrase) such as God and religion, family values, law and society, et cetera; 3) by distraction (pretty self-explanatory), i.e., by engaging in essentially meaningless activities -- "a television screen or fireworks display" -- in order to think of anything but the curse of consciousness; and finally 4) sublimation (used here in a rather specialized sense), by which Zapffe and Ligotti mean "the process by which thinkers and artistic types recycle the most demoralizing and unnerving aspects of life as works in which the worst fortunes of humanity are represented in a stylized and removed manner for the purposes of edification and entertainment, forming the conspiracy of creating and consuming products that provide an escape from our suffering in the guise of a false confrontation with it—a tragic drama or philosophical woolgathering, for instance" (p. 18). In other words, making horror beautiful, or at least sublime. I could not help thinking here of the theories of Georges Bataille, who wrote, in an essay entitled "The Cruel Practice of Art" that "if there is any truth to the idea that human life is a trap, can we think -- it's strange, but so what? -- that, since torture is 'universally offered to us as the bait,' reflecting on its fascination may enable us to discover what we are and to discover a higher world whose perspectives exceed the trap?" I find it odd that Ligotti did not mention Bataille in his book; it seems appropriate that he should. I cannot think of any aspect of life more "demoralizing and unnerving" than torture. Bataille is quite right when he states that "what we call cruelty is always that of others, and not being able to refrain from cruelty we deny it as soon as it is ours." Cruelty, according to Bataille, is any act that we do not have the heart to endure. Aztec sacrifice, for example, was not cruel from the perspective of the ancient Aztecs (the victim, we are sure, felt otherwise); the contemporary sadist, about to take a whip to his "victim," repeats to himself that this act is cruel -- yet in fact, owing to the desire of the masochist to be whipped, the act is not cruel but simply a rather extreme form of sexual gratification. True cruelty occurs when the subject of the cruel act is destroyed -- but then, states Bataille, one is left with "a nothingness that abolishes everything." Art cannot overcome this, for art is an act of sublimation that takes us away from the truth of our being, which is being-toward-death, and gives us in place of the mind-shattering experience of cruelty some object about which to theorize.

Ligotti's book is such an object, even though he states at the outset that his "foregone conclusion is that our positive estimate of ourselves and our lives is all in our heads. As with many propositions that shoot for loftiness ('To be or not to be'), this one may be mulled over but not usefully argued" (p. 10). Of course, if one of the aims of art is to sublimate the inherent cruelty of existence by giving us edifying works to contemplate -- in place of the nothingness that is our ultimate telos -- another aim of art -- and this is the Romantic one -- is to "[exalt] the beauty of that which is most beautiful, and [add] beauty to that which is most deformed; [to marry] exultation and horror, grief and pleasure, eternity and change" (Shelley, A Defence of Poetry). The artist is not to remain passive in the face of nature's -- and humanity's -- cruelty, or to hide away from the stark reality of our nothingness; rather, the purpose of the artist, and of art, is to take this mad, sad, relentlessly sickening world and gild it in such a way that nature herself is defied, and a new reality is set up in place of the old.

Only the poet, disdaining to be tied to any such subjection, lifted up with the vigor of his own invention, doth grow, in effect, into another nature, in making things either better than nature bringeth forth, or, quite anew, forms such as never were in nature, as the heroes, demi-gods, cyclops, chimeras, furies, and such like; so as he goeth hand in hand with nature, not enclosed within the narrow warrant of her gifts, but freely ranging within the zodiac of his own wit. Nature never set forth the earth in so rich tapestry as divers poets have done; neither with pleasant rivers, fruitful trees, sweet-smelling flowers, nor whatsoever else may make the too-much-loved earth more lovely; her world is brazen, the poets only deliver a golden. (Sir Philip Sidney, The Defense of Poesy, par. 10)

This may be a fool's task, especially since very few people read for authentic escape anymore; instead, most people watch movies -- and not to be transported to better places, but to see CGI superheroes or robots battle over the very world that is slowly sapping our intellects of whatever vitality they used to possess.

But back to cruelty, which is all too real. Our digitized world has produced a generation of so-called millennials for whom a very wide and deep safety zone has been placed between their cozy spot in the world and the reality taking place beyond their screens. My recent viewing on YouTube of an ISIS "fighter" kicking open the skull of a prisoner and then beheading him caused a response for which I am grateful: I sickened, my stomach churned, and tears came to my eyes. The cigar that I had been holding fell from my trembling hand. [If one is wondering why I was watching such a video, my answer is that I am a philosopher and a cultural critic, and I must encounter the world if I am to remain, uh, intellectually viable.] Now I am not sharing this to make my readers think that I am occupying a higher level of moral sensitivity than the apes who posted comments cheering the "fighter" on, or lamenting the poor quality of the video ("the fucker's hands were in the way! I wanted to see the knife go into the muthafucker's neck!"). Yes, a genuine quote -- and there were many more in that league. I am not going to post the link. Any interested person may easily find that video, or similar ones, for him or herself. But yes, I am grateful for my response. Even though I have been able to watch such grand contributions to cinematic art as the Saw films, or Hostel, and merely cringe in bilious amusement, the fact that an authentic film of real torture and death made me recoil in genuine horror (and upon reflection, sorrow) is sufficient evidence, for me, that I am not nothing, that a moral center exists in me, and that art must do more than provide a "false confrontation" with the sickness of our world. Art must defy the sickness, and produce realms wherein "the Spirit of Love reigneth and ruleth" (as Poe put it in "Eleonora").

(Boris Vallejo, Aurora and Tithonus)

I am an atheist, though not one of the types that routinely bash religion or seek to blame all the ills of our planet on believers in what Gore Vidal memorably called "sky-god religions." As a philosopher (albeit one who has wandered quite far from the mainstream academic world during the past few years) I have sought to temper my atheism -- which could easily lead me to the type of "miserablist" intellectual stance of a thinker like Ligotti -- with a devotion to the higher emotional aspects of life: poetry, art, music -- my writing. Unfortunately, love -- which I knew once upon a time -- has been naggingly absent from my life since She left me (and I feel that perhaps She reads my work from time to time, so if I am correct in that, I hope you are ... alone and thinking of me). Anyway, intellectually I am in the camp of Sartre and others, for whom the absence of a god is an "embarrassment." It is not so much that without "Him" we lose all hope of "finding values in an intelligible heaven" (as Sartre put it in Existentialism is a Humanism) but rather that we lose the emotional foundation that makes art more than just a diversion or, if one wishes to use the psychologically loaded term, sublimation. On a very personal note -- and is not a personal essay meant for precisely this manner of confessional writing? -- my atheism has been, is, largely an act of resigning myself to the gray exterior and hollow interior of my existence. When I was in prison some years ago (for a minor, alcohol-related offense) I found solace in listening to the classical music station and reading the poetry of Keats. Although the bible sat on my bunkside table, I rarely picked it up. And now, living the life of a somewhat bohemian (that is a nearly obsolete word, isn't it?) bachelor, I can use the words of Durtal, in the decadent masterpiece Là-Bas by Huysmans, to describe (in comforting third-person) my moral, ethical, aesthetic, and practical situation:

Unmarried, without settled income ... he sometimes cursed the existence he had shaped for himself. At times, weary of attempting to coerce words to do his bidding, he threw down his pen and looked into the future. He could see nothing ahead of him but bitterness and cause for alarm, and, seeking consolation, he was forced to admit that only religion could heal, but religion demanded in return so arrant a desertion of common sense, so pusillanimous a willingness to be astonished at nothing, that he threw up his hands and begged off.

Yet he was always playing with the thought, indeed he could not escape it. For though religion was without foundation it was also without limit and promised a complete escape from earth into dizzy, unexplored altitudes. Then, too, Durtal was attracted to the Church by its intimate and ecstatic art, the splendour of its legends, and the radiant naïveté of the histories of its saints.

Indeed, religion -- especially history-saturated Roman Catholicism and the equally storied and somewhat more exotic Eastern Orthodox Church (to which I belonged, with my ex-wife, for several years) -- can function in one's life as an intensely present work of living art. While never providing answers for me, religion -- when I practiced it -- provided responses, and that was sufficient to tame my roiling thoughts and lend force to my writing. The unmediated response to the love of a woman; the joining of emotion and the critical faculty brought about by the presence of a beautiful -- and yes I'll say it, divine -- soul with whom one is unquestioningly in love; the "torment" of beauty, as described so well by the Eastern Orthodox philosopher Christos Yannaras -- in a book that my ex-wife cruelly stole from me during our divorce: cruel because my copy contained numerous marginal and interlinear notes that I will never be able to recall or recover -- entitled, rather ironically, Person and Eros -- in words worth quoting here: "Erotic 'wonder' in the presence of the uniqueness of a physical beauty is always an invitation to communion and relation, an attraction which aims at union, at the satisfaction of the existential desire [to assuage] the agonizing character of physical beauty, the torment that accompanies the aesthetic experience of beauty" (pp. 83-84). Yannaras is speaking of the overwhelming desire to possess, in a transformative ekstasis, a beauty so perfect that it causes what can only be described as unbearable ontological pain. In his book he uses the term eros in the far-reaching sense found in the Neoplatonic philosophers and Platonizing Church Fathers, i.e., "an ontological condition, experienced by the soul that has forgotten its status as divine governor of the material realm and longs for its true condition" (Edward Moore, Plotinus, § d.ii, "Love and Happiness," in The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: http://www.iep.utm.edu/plotinus/). This is neither poesy nor description of a dream-life; it is a reality known by anyone who has been simultaneously blessed and cursed with the inescapable condition of being in love with another person. That other person is the source of our salvation, the one with whom we will make the "about-face," as I have called the Platonic epistrophê, "resulting in an instant union of the soul with its divine principle, understood as an idealized, changeless form of contemplation" (cf. Moore, Origen of Alexandria, section 4.c, "Eternal Motion of Souls," in The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: http://www.iep.utm.edu/origen-of-alexandria/). I wrote those quoted lines many years ago, when I still shared my life and self with Her, and believed that the "divine principle" -- which I will now call, with rather more maturity, and, perhaps, cynicism, the combination of intense sexual desire and emotional comfort -- was found in this world when the ontic space separating persons was bridged through love, to become an ontological reality. This Heideggerian language is more than intentional; it aids my recollection of Her, for whom Heidegger was Her own bridge into the realm of philosophy, wherein She has, I believe, found a permanent home, while I remain in my little space -- I will not call it home -- "Unrespited, unpitied, unrepriev'd" ... "And what is else not to be overcome?" (these lines are from Milton, Paradise Lost, for those who need to be told).

"That is all that any career pessimist can hope for -- to put on show the horrors he has seen with his naked eye and the pain he has felt with his frail body" (Ligotti, p. 25). And how does that help the situation, mitigate the lacerations of memory? Religion, as I have discovered the hard way -- that is, through the worst of all possible intellectual wake-up calls: divine mockery (I shall explain) -- can only pull one into a society of people who have either never felt real pain, or who have wrapped themselves so tightly in the shroud of living death that pain, or memory of pain, no longer matters -- indeed, it is as though it never mattered. "And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away" (Revelation 21:4 KJV). My hope, of course, was not that the former things should pass away, but that they should return, resume, so that I might be given the opportunity to undo the wrongs I committed in my youth (a relative term). As I prayed one evening with friends -- during my separation from Her; the divorce was not yet finalized -- asking, nay begging, God to touch Her heart, not even to lead Her to forgive me, but only to open the door (literally and figuratively) to me once again, so that I may put into action all that I had learned, I was told I had a phone call. It was a mutual friend -- so I thought -- telling me that if only I entered into recovery for my alcoholism, She would give our marriage another chance. Oh, how I rejoiced! My friends believed that our prayers had "worked," and that night was one of pure joy. But I found out, not long after, that the "friend" had simply felt sorry for me, and was sure (in his own mind) that She would eventually come around. So he jumped the gun, so to speak, and told me what he was certain would happen -- only it didn't. She had no intention of giving me another chance, nor even of speaking to me again. And so it remains to this day. Five years later. And my love for Her is as strong as it has ever been.

If one of the aims of art is to free one from the shackles of an unbearable existence, it is happening for me, slowly. My atheism, which took hold the moment I realized that, if God exists, He would never have permitted me that false hope, would never have allowed me to spend a night awake in blissful expectation of holding Her again, only to find out, the next morning, that it was all an ill-advised but well-meaning effort by a friend to bring me some comfort: he had never even spoken to her. No god would use one's faith against one. Sure, some told me that it was the work of the devil, in whom I had never believed anyway. So after my release from prison, I took to the bottle, and stopped thinking, for a while, about anything. Various women entered my life, only to dissolve into the morning or evening or some gray area in between. Several times the words "I love you" escaped my mouth, heard by the wrong person but meant for the one who will never be truly absent. I began reading again. Not philosophy or patristics, at least not as much as before. Today I am reading, as much as possible, the works of those who, in Sidney's words, attempt to "make the too-much-loved earth more lovely." For it is here that salvation is to be found, not in some hoped-for other realm, and certainly not in the presence of another person, not in a life shared with a beloved, however beautiful and inspiring of erotism she may be. As I write for no known audience anymore, I feel a freedom that I have not known until now. That freedom made its force felt just the other day, when I gave a lecture on personal essay writing at a local library. Mostly everyone there was yearning to communicate something about themselves, as one would expect, but there were a few -- I sensed strongly -- who were trying to reveal something to themselves. Such revelation, as James Baldwin stated so clearly in his essay on "The Creative Process," requires us to "cultivate ... the state of being alone." In the last analysis -- and I mean that literally, for I am through with analyzing that which allows me not only to live, but to flourish -- the darkest place is our own mind, our own inner self, and I suppose I'll say it, our soul. "The role of the artist," writes Baldwin, "is to illuminate that darkness, blaze roads through that forest; so that we will not, in all our doing, lose sight of its purpose, which is, after all, to make the world a more human dwelling place." In all my loneliness -- and it has nearly destroyed me over the past few years -- I have only at last come to understand that "a human dwelling place" need not be one that is shared with another person, no matter how beautiful they are. The gilding of nature, the flowering of the self, "the word stronger and more delicious than any" (Walt Whitman), the early morning rising with something to do that requires only ... my own mind and my laptop. Freedom. Religion is not necessary, nor is god, or "spirituality" (a term meaning everything and nothing); the only necessity is that I keep on seeking the one great escape that will bring me to a place where there is always good weather.

Many years ago I presented a paper entitled "Salvation and the Human Ideal: Plato, Plotinus, Origen" at Villanova University; and in the audience sat my beloved. The paper was written for Her, even though we had only been together for a few months at that point. My thesis was that the original goal of philosophy was to seek salvation through self-knowledge. Not an earth-shattering claim, I know. But what set my paper apart was my insistence on the intimate connection between intellect and emotion; that when these two are not artificially separated but entwined erotically (in the Neoplatonic sense mentioned above) we achieve a natural state of glory in the here-and-now. I was struggling, at that time (between 2000 and 2001), with the supernatural elements of religion, and felt strongly that true salvation occurs when two lovers unite, and that evil is not the absence of good (as Proclus and others argued throughout the ages) but the absence of someone to love. Religion, by placing evil on a metaphysical level, treats things like cruelty, torture, all the barbarisms of our life-world -- including, for me, the ever-present absence of Her -- as forces emanating from something beyond the world, caused ultimately by one Force that will eventually be overcome. "Such is the function of the concept of evil -- to give glamour, in both meanings of the word, to our lives. Pain, on the other hand, is an unglamorous fact of life and cannot be raised or lowered to the status of a concept, either moral or metaphysical, and compresses the distance between the condition of being and the condition of suffering" (Ligotti, p. 28). This might be true, if truth can even be invoked for the sake of such a topic as Ligotti's book covers, but for me the fact remains that I am alone, and my only salvation must come through art -- for it is the only way I know of doing what must be done -- that is, to do what a lover does (in Baldwin's words): "reveal the beloved to himself, and with that revelation, make freedom real."

(c) 2015 Edward Moore