When you're afraid of your shadow longly enough and intensely enough at an age where you're saying to whatever adversary that you happen to be facing: "I'm just a kid ... kill me if you're going to kill me, but I just got to the party" ... when you're afraid like that long enough, afraid of your own shadow as a result of having to say those words ... shadows, shadows in general, begin to feel attractive. That is, you tend to overcompensate for your fear, having learned that your adversary can be frightened, and so instead of being afraid of your shadow ... you walk right up to it, or them, and say, "Friend or foe?
"If you hesitate ... I'll kill you. If you say foe ... I'll kill you. You've got one good option. If you're fool enough not to take it, you're stupidity might be taking me down with you. But let's do it, because if I wait, I get too scared ... and I know it has to be done." And, of course, after IT is done ... it doesn't hurt anymore, because it never does, or has, and that is a very, very good case for the existence of a just God. Creation is made to heal itself. Evil's job is to tear it down. One soul at a time.
I tend to think that we, you and I, have no control over a lot of what we do. I mean, we do it ... but we don't fully will ourselves to do it, I don't think. We will ourselves some to do certain things, but we are slaves, or so it would seem, to circumstances; they change, and decisions are made, options are weighed and chosen. It goes well or badly, and we learn from it. And we get better as we go, unless you don't have the mental capacity, experience, brain power, chemicals, natural chemicals, to get better as you go, but steadily worse as time goes on. We go right instead of left. We go upstairs instead of down. When these things are really, really important to some overall picture or plan. So, what we have is a battle between two plans. One wins ... and one loses. In fact, I think that the side that will ultimately lose knows that it is going to lose, it just wants to cut its losses. That is ... evil doesn't expect to win ... it just wants to take as many people with it as it can ... the way the cowboys grab all the whores at closing time. Except whores, real whores, female whores, are by and large not evil. I don't know if finding an evil whore is possible. Because whores often get the evil beat out of them. Once they're broken, they make for better lovers. But their souls are dead. And, the way I look at it ... they're already in heaven, if they're already dead.
I hope that makes some sense, because a big part of what I'm about to tell you is comic-book stuff, the stuff of dreams and nightmares. That is to say that it would appear that the subconscious world, which we wildly overlook, because we must, but probably not so much, at times, is pushing its way into our conscious world. And to quote a character written by a man whose little house I looked into as the sun was setting and as I was working on my ... (who's counting?) umpteenth beer: "Man of the worldly mind," said the ghost, "do you believe in me or not?"
To which I replied ... well, it would have been unintelligible, to be sure, but something to the effect of ... "Hey, baby. Don't you remember me? We go back a long ways." And though I don't remember what was said by everyone else, or done, I'm sure they would have laughed. Or they did laugh, if any of this actually happened, or I should say happened exactly in this way, because I was in and out, as they say. I had indeed been in London near Fleet Street, practically rolling on it, actually, and I had been drinking in a pub(s), and we did stroll by Mr. Dickens' home and peek in, as the last glowing rays of the fading light touched a few more objects in the place before the light disappeared altogether, but it's hard to tell when you have multiple personalities which one will be responding at any given time, especially when you're so many sheets to the wind, at which point all the numbers become very confusing. I remembered the quote which occurred to me. I must have been too worldly to say anything meaningful at the time in reply. But worldliness is okay, in my book, just as long as you don't hurt anybody else with yours. Your own. Worldliness. And so, the way I figure it, the worldly people, the most worldly people ... have already been visited by Jacob Marley. Only, instead of a "ponderous chain" forged over so many years of evil, this Jacob Marley ... would have had stretch limos and a chain of showgirls longer than anything Dickens could have imagined.
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to generate some appeal. After a while, the shadows begin to be ... shall we say, darker. A tad. Because you find yourself quite lucid in a dreaming state -- in other words, your conscious mind and your subconsious get together and have a pow wow.
As much as admirers of Houdini were convinced he could dematerialize. Trick gear shows otherwise
HARRY HOUDINI, whose real name was Eric Weiss, was the son of a rabbi, and arguably a messiah-like 'superman' who inspired immigrants yearning for freedom and success. Houdini was beloved by all who knew him. Toward the end of his career, with his hair beginning to show touches of gray, he devoted his time to entertaining sick children in hospital. He may have been murdered by friend turned foe Sir Arthur Conan Doyle of Sherlock Holmes fame. Sir Arthur was a spiritualist, close friends with several mediums, and convinced that Houdini could dematerialize. And Houdini thought Sir Arthur was a nut and said so -- which is a credit to Houdini's craft, in the sense that it is, after all, just illusion. The author of the enormously popular Sherlock Holmes stories was a practitioner of the occult, and who knows, he may very well have seen ghosts in the presence of these mediums, hence his strong reaction to Houdini's debunking efforts. Doubtful, however, that any "Watchers" (in Purgatory?) could be produced at will, or that they could ring a bell or do other spectacular tricks. Sir Arthur was too smart a man to fall for spiritualism unless his occultic experiences produced tangible results; and they very likely did. Houdini's medical records from a Detroit hospital where he was treated after allegedly being punched in the stomach, rupturing his appendix, are highly suspect in light of the marked indication for the appendix on the medical chart on the "left" side. Any legitimate health care professional would have readily known the appendix is found only on the right side. No autoposy was ever performed, and, Houdini's body was placed in one of his trick caskets made of bronze, placed on a train and whisked to New York before the family knew what had happened to the famed magician's body. Houdini may have been poisoned. Was Houdini a forerunner of anything or anyone? Arguably, histoty often appears to be constructed as art.
TANATA: Things (often) Are Not As They Appear
- Randall Carter Gray
- Signal Mountain, Tennessee, United States
- student of Coptic and Judaic studies, gentleman (amateur) scholar