To say that it's preconscious or unconscious, the guiding intuition behind the monarch's migration or the python's mating ritual (or even the wren's succulent song) belies the reality of this experience. My eyes are dark from trying to see; my fingers can't feel this bloody blade; I taste the sun as if it were sherbet. “Yes!” But that merely proves your breath melts me into idiocy. I echo old sentiments. Follow the simple formula of body and mind bound by its base need—that is, under the gun. Become a stereotype of an imitation of a repetition of a bad copy of a clown's hypochondria and hidden itch. Of a gag-reaction.
Fear and desire grant no life, since personality remains shut-up, concealed beneath these drives. If I were to say, for example, “Aha, I've finally found you there, demon, a red dot hiding behind the black, broken moonlight, permeating man's yellow sea with yet more melancholy and disgust.” Or if I, feigning humility and good faith, declared a few of my discoveries: “I have here in my closet collections the fruit of three thousand years of archaeology, Christ's crusty shroud, the holy grail, and the ark of the covenant/flood,” how would you thereby manage to mitigate the sense of invincibility I feel right now?
Try as you may, neither scientist nor scholar; neither the cult of Mary nor the Priest's caste—nor any other system or sect employed by that goat-headed Moloch and his furry-mouthed bride, Mammon (queer couple)—will prevent me from falling into this blessed hole of oblivion: Abraham's bosom: Desolation Row. I'm too calm today, see, I stride slowly and they pa** me by; I'm too ecstatic here, listen, they huff and puff, running out of breath and slipping beneath me. Thus I alone take this voyage, hardly humbled by the damage done to “the word” or its significance by the masters of war and peace.
Yesterday I said to my soul, sister of the dead, “I'm nearly existing now,” no longer willing to pull a defense from my frayed quiver—this broken science—“There remains a rest for the people of God.” And knowing that this thought came to me against my will or conscious effort, I nevertheless feared that I'd fail to apprehend this state of bliss. Since even then I doubted the possibility of a personal, ever present (benevolent) God, and only felt compelled by another force to ask again, “Is this the last time I'll say, ‘I simply didn't get it back there, but now…'”
How many times have I returned to this same silly point of confusion? No point either, but a gaseous cloud, pressure and hot air, expanding eternally without hope of concentration, swearing as I do: “Now I'll believe!” But this is not belief, only another pathetic example of Baal worship.
Clearly I haven't fallen far enough from my country or creed as of yet. I still doubt there's s** in heaven, and so feel uneasy and coerced into making the world comply with my will. Uncanny! “It never works out the way we want,” cries the crow, “all I see now are walls.”
It's the same old story of our generation, or say, civilization. A boy grows fond of his father, having perceived the sententious logic and sentimental malignity in his mother's mood swings. “She just said, ‘Son, you are not to blame for your father's blunders. You're my favorite!' But then she said the same thing to him. Wicked idiot!” So the boy hardens his heart, breaks one spell to fall under another, determining to conquer all enemies, against the odds, he dreams of insane obstacles—and even when he finds none, he still finds some.
Truly the Buddha at least touched upon this before dwindling into the numbness of Nirvana. In this way suggesting that his strictly negative virtues also amount (in the end) to nothing. d**h. One simply cannot abstain from breathing bad air. Try as you may.
As for the ‘Christian hero,' he looks identical to the Greek, except he enjoys s** less. Has a stronger will. Can't seem to relax. Locked in a darker spell of negativity than any atheist.
“O I wish I could give brother Bill his great thrill/I would set him in chains at the top of the hill/Then send out for some pillars and Cecil B. DeMille/He could die happily ever after,” the poeta vates sings, nearly worn to shreds by this never ending game of dragon and mouse, giving the whole damned show away: “The commander and chief while chasing a fly/Says, ‘d**h to all those who would whimper and cry'/And dropping a barbell he points to the sky/And says, ‘The sun is not yellow, it's chicken.'"
So there it is again, the red demon I hinted at earlier in the essay. But of course this is just the Christ of culture (every bloody one)—American through and through, like Benjamin Franklin or Apple Strudel. And for this reason you sense a false salvation coming on.