*Shadowland

 YT

I've had cause to become familiar with some number of dysfunctional behaviours of mind - we may call it abnormal psychology. I've been reminded quite forcefully recently of the borderline personality, characterized by a pervasive instability of self-image, of affect, of relationships - in other words, the self doesn't interact well with either the inner or the outer world. Reasoning tends to be emotional; judgments tend to the black or white; self-injury is common and self-destruction not infrequent. Somewhere between two and fifteen percent of a typical population may display such behaviour. Perhaps twenty percent of all psychiatric hospitalizations are due to this diagnosis. Not a small or a rare problem, then.

Is it possible that cultures, or religions, might suffer such an affliction?

I cannot say what Islam is. I do not know its existential reality. I do not concern myself with the arcana of its doctrine. I don't care about its times of quiescence - the hibernating bear is of only academic interest. I know only what it shows itself to be. Alas, we are, none of us, judged by our finest moments - praised perhaps, but not judged. We are judged, and rightly, for our failures. How then shall we judge Islam? What is its effect in the world currently? The question is mere rhetoric. Of the seventeen or so wars currently going on in the world at this moment, in every case one of the opposing sides is Moslem. There is a fifty-fifty chance that for any given terrorist event, the perpetrator's name will somewhere include a version of "Mohammed."

Here's the problem. There needs to be a difference between what is offensive and what is incendiary. These two ideas need to be sufficiently distinct that they evoke different responses. Such is not the case, with Islam. There is no offence that is not incendiary. And that is a very troublesome problem indeed. Because we in the West not only make, but rely on, the distinction. In fact, this is what defines us, describes the foundation of our culture. If I'm vulgar enough, some big dude may give me the whooping I deserve. Alas for him, the law does not recognize the concept of "fighting words." A jury may certainly acquit him, and perhaps rightly - but that's just another beauty of our system, where law is balanced by justice and common sense. We tolerate ambiguity.

With Islam as it presents itself in the streets, my intemperate speech requires a whooping - well, a stoning. For what I wrote in "Piss Christ," were I sufficiently important, a fatwah would be issued against me. And really, don't I seem like a pretty reasonable guy? - maybe too opinionated, maybe too sure of myself, but more concerned with being right than with sounding right? And even if I'm just utterly wrong, and even if I'm insensitive, or downright offensive, even the ACLU would theoretically defend me. (Laugh Out Loud.) Point being, the marketplace of ideas has been such a central idea to us - it is the plaza, the agora of our polis. The bazaars of Islam, sad to say, have no offerings, no wares of freedom. What do they have?

In the late 1850s a rumor swept through Bengal and then greater India that the cartridges used by Indian solders under the Raj were greased with both cow and pig fat. I sigh, I shake my head, and point out that the cow is sacred to Hindus, and the pig is anathema to Moslems. And cartridges were held in the mouth. Yuck. So of course the Sepoy Mutiny lasted for several years. Blood blood blood. Key concept? Rumor. Rumor. Rumor. Perhaps it was true. But rumor. The circumstances, the details are different today, but the attitude is the same. Rigidity and the inability to achieve a perspective that is not formed solely by dogma. Reasoning is emotional. Judgments are black or white. Self-injury is inevitable and suicide is a sacrament.

Islam, I'm vulgar enough to say, is a lunar cult - attested still in its crescent. Allah (al-ilah - "the god") was Mohammed's local and dominant moon god, Sin, made grand. Al-Ilah had - has - three daughters: al-Uzza, al-Lat and Manat, acknowledged in the Koran in the so-called "satanic verses"- which were expurgated and repented of by Mohammed - he was, you see, "tempted of Satan" to write them. But I digress. The moon is a universal symbol for the irrational - from folklore to Golden Dawn to Jungian psychology. It may be mere wordplay for me to require a genetic relationship between its occult lunar past and modern - well, current - Islam. But the fragility of Moslem character that at the hint of a rumor must rush en mass into the street and rant and riot and burn makes that case far more forcefully than any words I could string together.

There is in astronomy the phenomenon of the terminator, that line on a celestial body that divides day and night - the eternal glooming that rings a globe. Likewise, the borderline personality forever hovers in the perpetual twilight between psychosis and the merely neurotic. And it is not inapt, I think, to notice that Islam - lunar, crescent moon Islam - as it manifests itself through its public actions finds its most characteristic expression in the shadowland of irrationality, oppression, violence and destruction. The required perspective to see this, however, can only be achieved at a very great distance. Alas, dogma bears no wings.

What then? What hope? I turn to grand old Milton, writing of blinded Samson in his Palestinian agony:

O dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon,
Irrecoverably dark, total eclipse,
Without all hope of day!

Every poet writes on themes that move him, that speak to his soul and urge, compel his soul to speak. We do not know with what tears these words of Milton were written. We know they would have come from blind eyes - that Milton, the incomparable Milton shared this affliction with mighty Samson. What we can know is this: to speak of what might have been could flood the world with tears. Islam could and might have turned from darkness to light. But prophets of hate have turned that flock to the dark wilderness, and they would make a wilderness of the whole world. Well might we weep - but we must, well, keep our powder dry. Because they are coming, and they bring darkness with them, and they carry long knives. They enjoy killing, and they want to die. I suppose that answers the question. Islam has made itself psychotic.

J

*The Memory of Roses

YT

Love makes us ache.  When pain comes to others -- injury, illness, decline -- this is what anguish is, if we love.  When we speak of it, it doesn't have to be eloquent to be poignant.  

My mother is old, but healthy and alive.  This is no guarantee.  I've read of another man's mother, her long decline into the oblivion of dementia and the final release of death. It fills the heart with inexpressible sadness.  Even more, in its echo of other remembered grief, such as we all have, or will.

We can love people -- opt to love them, volunteer -- people who are not worthy of love, humanly speaking. No need for elaboration. It’s a provocative, for all that betrayal might seem almost commonplace. And we drag ourselves away from such and such a situation trailing most of our courage and all of our hope behind. And being human, imperfect in our capacity for tranquility, we might be infected with rage like a low-grade fever. 

Self-pity is not all bad.  It should come with an awareness of our flaws. But who even has a right to an opinion about the secret flaws in someone else's secret heart? It's not your business. All this is the negative.

And if the ones who work havoc were to fall into the hands of their victims? Best not to speak of it. But the people we have loved, despite their betrayals? Of course we're angry. 

Here’s what we have to tell ourselves.  Quote: I did not love, that it might turn into hate. I did not sacrifice, that it should bring only loss.

To love is an act of will as much as a sort of pit into which we fall. This is what it means when we are told that love does not fail.  It’s not that the flame doesn’t scorch but the light doesn’t fade. The outcome of love is not assured, but it's reality should not be in doubt.

Well.  High-sounding sentiments about the unfailing character of love have little merit if they have no effect in the real world. But we do need soft phrases sometimes, as we need soft touches -- they are comforting. It isn’t only monkeys that clutch onto each other when the skies grow dark. That's a picture of ourselves. We are created to love. We were made that we might count ourselves less, that someone else might be more. There is no human race where this is not true.

It isn’t something that needs to be written in a holy book. It’s written in our hearts -- incised, rather, cut in deep and ragged gouges. This too might make us angry. What sane person wants more pain? But can it be helped? Honestly. We must, must love, and it hurts the way a little child cries when stung or struck. But we cannot escape our nature any more than we can change our destiny -- or rather, as fools and saints attempt, change the destiny of someone else.  The transformative self-sacrifice of love.

The pundit George  Will wrote about his mother's decline.  He quotes ,J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan: God gave us memory that we might have roses in winter. How lovely a thought. There's the saying, pain comes to pass, not to stay. It calls to mind the fact that even in our wrath, we may forgo our demand for justice and discover almost out of vacuum a capacity for mercy, and forgiveness.

So, after a long and blessed life, George Wills mother, an old woman, descend into the darkness and indignity of senility. Her character, so carefully built-up over the decades, might fall away as cities succumb to earthquakes. What is left remains only as a mockery. But it doesn’t remain forever, and when she finally passes from sight, that dimming light might flair up bright as garden sunshine. So may we hope.

In this same way, we can only hope ... if we can hope ... that those who have passed beyond our sight, betraying, after having shed darkness upon our world like Satan in his fall -- they might with the passing of time enjoy a sort of dementia of an evil character -- where repentance works its transformation and nobility is found where only betrayal has been seen.

It cannot be that the world is destined only for decay. There must be some counterbalancing force, where the agony of watching those we love reduced almost to animals, is matched in some measure by the redemption of those who started life as animals, but who discover the very purpose of what humanity is. This would be grace, and a sort of justice too. For to be human is to be condemned to love.

You see the point. We concern ourselves mostly with comfort and prosperity. For what purpose? That we might be a more excellent sort of animal? It's an easy thing to hold out cliches of love and betrayal -- how wise I might seem. But honestly. What matters? We arrive at the answers we believe by going through our lives, like fishermen dragging nets. Maybe we come up with hope, and courage. But it takes strength. We grow strong by enduring trials. That's the point.

J

*Fortune

YT

We cloak ourselves in our various ways -- nowadays, it's outright masks.  But, our clothes, as statements about who we are, how we see the world, what we expect of it -- or hair, or makeup, or tats and piercings or amputations.  

It's like there's a soul or a spirit, buried in flesh, like a pearl swarmed over by ants, or a dragon guarding its gold.  Two different things, is my point, that have to work together, spirit and flesh.  Well, it's worked so far.  We're not extinct.  

But sometimes it doesn't' work.  Either the spirit, soul, is vicious -- the word TOXIC is like WEAPONIZED, over-used and misapplied.  But vice, and vicious -- these are still respected.  ...either the spirit is sick, or the body.  

Sometimes the bodies we're born into aren't quite right.  This is the core doctrine of the transgender cult -- spirit in the wrong body.  But generally they have a great body -- whole and healthy.  Hale.  Bruce Jenner had a world-class body -- one of the truly very best in the world.  I can't speak, for Caitlyn.  I don't have a metric, no frame of reference.  

But sometimes spirits, babies, are born with what is obviously a wrong body.  It's not even judgmental to say it that way, unless it should be said to a tranz-able activist. I trust that it is very unlikely indeed that I should have such a conversation.  

In terms of reality, humor etc is inappropriate, and even bitterness toward God, mankind, parents, society -- it just seems like silence is the most appropriate response. What else is there? We see, and we speak or we are silent.

Saini, 25 miles east of New Delhi, India. The little girl, aged one month, named Lali, meaning "red". The condition is called craniofacial duplication, or diprosopus, and is exceedingly rare, but well documented.

Such infants can have surprising functionality. Little Lali ate with both mouths, and all four eyes blinked at the same time. Said the mother, Shushma Kumar Singh, "She's fed through one mouth and sucks her thumb with the other. We use whichever mouth is free to feed her."

Her parents refused any special medical treatment for the baby.


Doctors in New Delhi wanted to take a CT scan to determine the state of the infant's internal organs. The father, Vinod Kumar Singh, declined the offer. "I don't feel the need of that at this stage as my daughter is behaving like a normal child, posing no problems," he said. "My baby is fine." At the time Singh was 23, a poor farm worker -- married in February of 2007. The village doctor, Brigdal Nagar, had grown exasperated with reporters. "She is very normal," the doctor once shouted, wagging a finger and shoving the father aside. "We don't need the media here. She's not an abnormal baby. It's just that she has two faces. And she's living a very normal life. And if she dies in the future, it's as God wishes."

The parents saw her as an incarnation of the Hindu goddess of power, Shakti, or alternatively as Durga, the fiery three-eyed deity of valor. They installed loudspeakers outside their home, that blared religious hymns all day.

"Lali is God's gift to us," said Jaipal Singh of the local village council. "She has brought fame to our village." Head of the council was Daulat Ram, who hoped for a temple to Durga. "I am writing to the state government to provide money to build the temple and help the parents look after their daughter." The crowds of pilgrims dwindled, however, local curiosity was sated, and worshipers became rare.

Lali had a cleft pallet -- unreported if it was two clefts, she could not suck properly. Her nutrition was poor -- bottle-fed sugar solution and diluted milk.  Chronic vomiting and infection.  Medical attention was delayed due to extended family and headman discussion. Dehydration became severe, the parents took her to the hospital, against community advice. Her condition started to normalize, but six hours later her heart stopped -- two months old. A temple was built in her memory.  

On the other hand, 

-

consider Lakshmi, here aged 2, of the state of Bahir, India. Analogous situation. Born with four arms and four legs, remnants of a parasitic twin, anacephalic.

Sometimes babies are born with only one body, and two brains.

An Egyptian girl, Manar Maged, victim of carniopagus parasiticus. The identical twin, Islaam, although having no body of her own could still smile, blink, look around and sleep independently, with a reportedly fully functional brain.  The twin was removed successfully, and died, of course, and Manar died a year later, of a brain infection.

Likewise with Rebeca Martinez of the Dominican Republic.

Manar bled to death after an 11-hour corrective operation.

As for Lakshmi, surgeons removed the limbs, transplanted a functioning kidney, and reconstructed the child's pelvis.


After recovering from the 27 hour surgery, Lakshmi was able to stand for the first time in her life, "which is remarkable," said chief surgeon Sharan Patil.

She was taken back to her rural village in eastern Bihar, where, earlier, she had been worshipped by some Hindus as an incarnation of the eponymous four-armed goddess of grace and fortune. After two years, however, she started going to school. No ... she started walking to school.

She developed scoliosis, which can deform and cripple. She had other problems as well -- no buttocks, bladder and intestinal issues, abnormal nerve connections to her spine, pelvic malformations. When she walked, it hurt.

But she walked.

What a pretty little girl.

J

*Why We Communicate

 YT

They say some large percentage of communication is nonverbal. Indeed, even some small percentage of this, written communication, is purely visual. Length of sentence and of paragraph. Typoes and missplelings. Letters that rise above or do not fall below the median. Abbrs. How much more, the ideographic scripts. As for face to face, doesn't that rather depend on line of sight? But even, say, perceived proximity carries its own subtle meaning -- a sort of silent body language, affirming the powerful fact, I'm near you.

It's words, though. I'll often hear the etymology along with the word. I'll remember where I first learned it, and rehearse again the by-now tiresome rote. I'll be thrown into the mood of the thing. Like "contradict." I was in the backseat with my older brothers. My father said something that was inaccurate, and I, eight or nine years old, presumed to correct him. My brother said, in a heavy tone, precise and ominous, "Don't contradict dad." And my father said, in the same cadence, "Yes. Don't contradict dad." What's contradict mean? Same sort of thing, with "seduce": Mrs. Robinson, you're trying to seduce me.

Not that words are what they mean. Hysteria: the wandering of the womb throughout the body -- cf hysterectomy. And then it took on other meanings. Well might Freud have wondered, what do women want ... he clearly didn't have a clue. But womb-wandering has a male counterpart in East Asia and in Africa: koro, Buginese for "wrinkled", and more felicitously, Malaysian for "turtle-head" -- the belief (hysterical) that one's penis is shrinking into the body. Fertility, male and female, depends so much on bloodflow. Of course we have a word for eating your own hair -- trichophagia. It only sounds Greek. So there you go then.

Words shape perception. We all know of the dozens of words the ice-dwellers have for snow. Albanians have 54 words, equally divided, meaning mustache or eyebrows. Vietnamese has 18 words for 'you,' yet we had to get rid of thou. Japanese marks the gradations of bowing, from the 15 degree nod of eshaku to the epileptic groveling of pekopeko. On the other hand, a Liberian language has only ziza for red/orange/yellow, and hui for green/blue/indigo/violet. That's a pretty narrow rainbow.

Some of it just makes you laugh. The French coined ordinateur to spare their lips from the vulgarity of "computer": con is slang for "vagina" and pute is slang for "prostitute". Talk about your Xbox. Bakku-shan is Japanese for a girl you think will be pretty when you see her from behind, but in front, not so much. That happened to a friend of mine in high school. "Yum," he said ... but it was a guy. Again, Japanese has senzuri and shiko shiko manzuri, for male or female masturbation; "a hundred rubs" and "ten thousand rubs"-- you guess which is which.

The tune that you can't forget: in German, ohrwurm, "ear worm". Scratching your head to remember: pana po'o, in Hawaiian. Words, like the predictability of the human form, remind us that we are all the same. We count our babies' fingers and toes, and are relieved.

There's the Bantu word, considered the most untranslatable in the world: ilunga -- who'll forgive anything once, tolerate it a second time, but oh, the third... There's German's torschlusspanik -- the fear of diminishing opportunity as you age; most apropos in childless premenopausal women. There's the French esprit d'escalier -- the thing you think to say, too late. There's an Inuit verb, iktsuarpok, that means "to go outside often to see if someone is coming." The sound isn't beautiful, but the meaning tears at your heart. And if you say it slowly, as three hard and lonely syllables, it sounds like what it is.

Such a history of fragility. What words do we have, that for their familiarity have lost their power or poignancy? Anguish. Rage. Loss. Lost.

That's how we communicate. With words. With our bodies. With the arrangement of images and of objects in space. And why?


J

*Poto and Cabengo

YT

Isn't it hard? Isn't it hard, being human? Having a past? Why can't we be recreated with every wakening? Renewed, reformed, regenerated. Resurrected. Why not? Because the past is gravity, and holds the universe together.

Consider, then, Poto and Cabengo. The world would have known them as Gracie and Ginny, if the world knew them at all. But it didn't, until it was, sadly, too late. Two little girls, identical twins, born in 1970, diagnosed early as retarded. Well, not actually diagnosed. The twins had suffered violent convulsions shortly after being born. 

A neurosurgeon told the father that it might be years before retardation could be ruled out. The father failed apparently to hear the nuances in this communication. "A man of his standing knows what he's talking about."

 And so the girls, defective, were left to the ministrations of a severe Prussian grandmother who spoke no English.  They were largely ignored, not sent to school. They did not learn to speak English, nor German neither.

Rather, idioglossia. 

A unique and private language, rarely but usually developed between twins. We would have to assume, twins who are severely neglected by adults.  It's not "twin speech," which is fairly common with very young twins -- a hash of idioms and slurred common words. Idioglossia goes far beyond that; 

it's a kind of creole, a unique language, complete with grammar and syntax and neologisms.

The language of Poto and Cabengo was a mishmash of English and German, gleaned from the impersonal and other-directed speaking of highly neglectful parents, and the German grandmother. All of whom had given up on the retarded little girls. Who used prepositions as verbs, and had 30 different ways to say potato; "pintu" (pencil), "nieps" (knife), "ho-ahks" (orange), "toolaymeia" (spaghetti -- o sole mio). The girls were listening, you see. They spoke no English. They spoke only to each other. "Poto" (Grace), "Cabengo" (Virginia).

The fact that they were of at least average intelligence is neither here nor there. The early label determined their fate. Back in the late '70s, after the girls had been "discovered" and "treated," a speech pathologist observed, "It was obvious these kids hadn't had much exposure to anything. They wanted attention." No duh. They had never seen anyone climb a tree -- a picture of this rare phenomenon provoked bafflement. With attention, their IQs moved up 30 points, to 80. Still awfully low. But it was still the 1970s.

After many months of intensive intervention, the girls were asked by a visitor if they still remembered their language. "Yes," one answered quickly. "No, you don't!" corrected the dad from the livingroom couch. "I don't know why you are lying about that! You live in a society, you've got to speak the language," he explained helpfully. "They don't want to be associated as dummies now."

The girls were born with normal intelligence.  As adults   Cabengo worked on a supervised assembly line at a job training center; Poto cleaned tables and floors at a fast-food restaurant.

Yes. The past is gravity. It crushes us if we're over-burdened, and it keeps us from flying.

Tomorrow I'll be driving my father to some health-related appointment he has. I have not seen him in 14 years. He lives 4 miles away.Should I shine my shoes? 

I've had the notes up for Poto and Cabengo for several months. Every time I turned on the computer, there they were. I wonder why I didn't get to it. There are a few other bits and pieces i want to write about. Something on Prohibition. Something on the Depression.

----

 

So I wrote this 14 years ago, in the 'Aughts.  I drove my dad to the doctor.  And for the next ten years, maybe once a year, or every few years, I'd visit him.  Likewise, a very rare phone call.  I told him once, that he was hard to be around.  Because he was.  

He died nearly four years ago.  Alone, on the floor of his bedroom.  Old, frail.

And I wish, bitterly, that I had been a better man.  Strong enough to forgive.  

So I know what I'm talking about, when I say that the past is gravity.

J

*Obituary

YT

In most sexual relations, regardless of the indeterminate of fluid genders involved, there is generally active and passive -- what we used to think of as male and female. It has been quite some time since Europe was masculine, and these past several lefty administrations have done much to reassign America's gender.  I mean Uncle Sam, not so much Lady Liberty -- she's just ignored. 

The American Left. Feminine. It's a stereotype I don't like, so much, but words have meaning, so, bitchy … the left, escalating to mob or syndicalist violence.  Masked.  

The Left finds its completion not in apposition to the American Right, but in the hard brown machismo of illegalism, and islam, with it's latest incarnation in Hamas, the baby killers.  Actively, aggressively hostile to the feminine, and humanity.

Do Moslem cultures oppress women? Define oppress.  But, yes. I'm talking about the normal ones, excluding honor killings and clitorectomies, and nine-year-old girls in arranged marriages.  We'll count that as NOT normal.

Yet the woke, a sort of undead, march, protest, rally -- rally round the flag, the un- and anti-american flag -- and call jews Nazis while themselves praising Hitler.  

'Ts been a few years sense it was in the news, islamists executing homosexuals.  There are no gays -- that political philosophy and identity -- in islamist controlled regions. It's the behavior that they execute, and the religion of gayness is forbidden.

Yet alphabet sexuals activists LMNOP … support Hamas.

These groups are not stupid as the term is generally reckoned. Rather, the politics of their identity takes second place to the much deeper need, to balance their extremism with its spiritual counterpart. Liberals bend over ... um, backwards for brown … privilege.

It seems not to be possible to have a war without having war protesters.  ... but no, I'm mostly wrong about that.  I seem to think that the Left loves Ukraine -- I sometimes still say THE Ukraine.  I don't know what to think.  Disliking war is a good thing.  War is an overall negative, a lose-lose situation, what with all that death and destruction.

But consider the mindset that protested our involvement against Hitler. The Left then did what it always does, the difference being that in that case they are seen for what they are -- opponents of liberty -- friends of not mere tyranny, but genocidal evil.  Yes, this is my usual broad-brush caricature. But I’m painting a big picture. Specifically, there is a bizarre but predictable blindness to the great trend of the past generation.

Oriana Fallaci wrote The Force of Reason, on the death throes of Europe -- or rather, the birthing of Eurabia.  She interviewed terrorist George Habash in 1972, and quotes him as saying that Israel was not the true Palestinian problem. Rather, Islam’s great conflict was “against Europe and America,” and its true goal was to allow “no peace for the West.” The islamist cause would “advance step by step. Millimeter by millimeter. Year after year. Decade after decade. Determined, stubborn, patient. This is our strategy. A strategy that we shall expand throughout the whole planet.”

There is a plan.  It's not like Satan on a throne ... anyways, we're the Satan around here.  They're like Cerberus ... no, call it Hydra, so many many heads.  That was Al Quaeda, with so many, many cells. But, there is the plan, the goal, and like ants, they work relentlessly toward it.  It's just that it takes generations. 

Re how this plan will be realized, Fallaci quotes an Algerian President, who announced to the General Assembly of the UN in 1974: “One day millions of men will leave the southern hemisphere of this planet to burst into the northern one. But not as friends. Because they will burst in to conquer, and they will conquer by populating it with their children. Victory will come to us from the wombs of our women.”

Consider, in Brussels, the soul of contemporary Europe, that the most common name for a newborn boy is Mohammed.  Consider what this means for women. What are women good for? Incubation.

All these super hero universe movies, with their race-swapped super empowered female super hero mutant  women -- not so powerful, in the Moslem hemisphere.  There is an Islam that is sane and honorable.  More power to it.  And more power to the Jews as well ... the power not to be murdered, or not to be murderers.  We'll just pretend that applies equally to both sides.  

That's what the comic book woman hero movies are all about. Pretending.  

In his A Heart Turned East (1997), Adam LeBor quotes a London-based mullah, thus: “We cannot conquer these people with tanks and troops, so we have got to overcome them by force of numbers.” 

Sounds like that plan.

Again, in Oslo, Moslem supremacist Mullah Krekar said that Norway would be changed by Moslems, rather than Moslems by Norway. “Just look at the development within Europe, where the number of Muslims is expanding like mosquitoes. By 2050, 30 percent of the population in Europe will be Muslim. ...Our way of thinking,” he declared, “will prove more powerful than yours.”

Is this conspiracy-nut-job stuff?  Connecting unconnected sound bites?  The preceding quotes are taken from the review by Brendan Bernhard, “The Fallaci Code.” In his article, Bernhard summarizes Fallaci’s explanation for the Moslem surge.  In the mid ’70s, there was an actual, technical, negotiated

 “arrangement between European and Arab governments according to which the Europeans, still reeling from the first acts of PLO terrorism and eager for precious Arabian oil, made significantly more precious by the 1973 OPEC crisis, agreed to accept Arab ‘manpower’ (i.e., immigrants) along with the oil. They also agreed to disseminate propaganda about the glories of Islamic civilization, provide Arab states with weaponry, side with them against Israel and generally toe the Arab line on all matters political and cultural. ... Fallaci recounts a 1977 seminar in Venice, attended by delegates from 10 Arab nations and eight European ones, concluding with a unanimous resolution calling for ‘the diffusion of the Arabic language’ and affirming ‘the superiority of Arab culture.’”

That's European leaders, conspiring with Arab leaders, to affirm that Arab culture was superior.  That's a suicide note. 

For publishing her ideas, Fallaci would have gone on trial in June 2006 in France, where “Islamophobia” is not just a thought crime, but a criminal crime. Evidence for the truth of her position was not a permissible defense, in France.  There was no trial, because she died.  

The mere assertion of a danger is not proof of danger. And belief in conspiracies, no matter how publicly attested, is still disreputable.  The logic of the matter is obvious.  But many false things are obviously true.  Every religion there is, is false, except maybe one. Because, if they contradict one another….  You know,  logic.  

So, let us eschew conspiracy. Instead, allow me to rehash the obvious correlations. The infertility of the West matches the fecundity of Islam. So, non replacement birthrates.  Also, the moribund patriotism of the West is matched by the sectarian fanaticism of islamism.  Europe learned to stop having religions wars - and their wars became nationalistic.  

But these past several generations, in the West, their passion  extends only as far as the skin. And its a non-reproducing passion.  Moslems have a passion for their culture. 

I speak in broad generalizations, and so I am certainly wrong in the specific. But you will have noticed in your studies of history, modern and ancient, that civilizations fall. All of them. Every one -- excluding city-states. How? Military invasion is never the actual cause. The real cause is always twofold: decadence from within, and migration from without.  

Both are at work, here.   We're seeing it in fast motion, in the Left's (I don't even want to say biden's name) -- in Left's open borders, love of crime, love of drugs, etc.

Hitler in Mein Kampf told the world what he intended. The world did not believe he meant it. Shall we learn from the error of our ancestors? If we repeat the error, our descendants will inherit a third world culture, and those who do not convert to, well, either islam, or catholicism, will live in the servility and oppression of dhimmitude. Or they will not live at all.

Am I overstating this?  Yes, I am.  But if you are sane, did you foresee what a catastrophe the situation is, now?  I vividly remember the '70s, the Carter Error.  This is at least as bad.   

The most prudent course, is, when people say they are your enemy, believe them.  

J

*On Obama's Newly Rediscovered 'Letter to America', Unattractive TacTic-ers, and Racist and Other Commercials … no, I mean "Osama's"

YT

These two, from the late 1960's. I remember them.

I could finish this song:

 

But are they?  Are they racist? They use stereotypes -- the bandito started with a stubble, a gold tooth and pistoleros.  Chicano pressure made the corporation tone it down, and finally threatened an 650 million dollar lawsuit.  A loser of coure, but bad PR, so the corp dumped the bandito.  Tex Avery, the road runner guy, designed the character, and Mel Blanc voiced it -- you know, Bugs Bunny et al.  

So is it racist? I see it as a character, like Santa, or Harlequin.  But it is indeed a negative, a bandito.  But it's not raciest.  It's a negative stereotype.  Stereotypes exist because of a fundamental reality.  There are swishy gays, and authoritatively droning white males -- like me. Although if you call me "white" you're a racist, and also I'm not "male", that's hurtful and dehumanizing to me. Human males are called "men", occasionally seen in their natural habitat.

This would have been from the Jack Benny program I think, probably mid-50s.  Before my time.  Again, stereotype.  And, no, not a very good commercial.  No need to be offended, but we might not be overly-sensitive if we note an undercurrent here.

Dialect humor was screamingly funny in the Golden Age of Radio -- surviving, like the minstrel show, into the '50s and '60s. 

Depicting race is not the same as racism. Neither is exploiting the conventions of stereotype. And there is a difference between race and culture, which fact is one of the great beauties of America.  But if these sorts of images are IT, for Chinese -- than the one-sidedness, the bias -- it's a problem. 

Just as for terrorism, so one man's racism is another man's superiority because of his race.  Even if we define our terms, there will remain a field of meaning -- as in the probabilities of quantum mechanics.  It's not a particle, not definite, not a thing, until the wave function collapses.  That's racism -- it's NOT, until it really IS.  

So the name-callers: first, for shame, for being a name caller ... but shaming the shameless is like squaring the circle, or circling the drain, or draining the monster -- it's just being frightened, or lured by the sound of the words, like the pied piper, and rats, and children, who have a very minimal capacity for critical thinking. The racist name-callers -- by which is meant, calling other people racist -- they function on the level of the lower anthropoid primates.  Monkeys, screeching and flinging feces, because that's who they are.  With no developed capacity to elevate their character via true self-examination, etc.  

Like, I've never seen tic tok, but the current thing about Osama's decades-old Letter to America, and these fetuses who've just discovered it…?  I saw one unattractive youngster who seems to identify as a person with ovaries and a cis vagina, I heard her saying that, "after I had deconstructed christianity, I had a lot of thinking to do" -  and Osama challenges her in the same way.  Because, as an unthinking bigot, she had never before examined her assumptions, biases and bigotries.  That's what being young and callow is -- questioning everyone else's authority and assuming your own existential virtue.  Hey, dude -- you don't have to question your axioms, your assumed truths -- but you do have to be aware of what they are.  

Regarding racism, I, personally, am superior to almost everyone, not because of genetics, or even culture, but because of my superb character -- the good attributes that I have adopted and disciplined enough so that they have become who I am.  That's the REAL truth about identity.  It's not about feelings.  It's about behavior.  

In terms of your psyche-soul, only god, judges, and the people who love you, have any business caring about your psyche-soul. Liberals, mind-readers and the sentiment -- but I repeat myself -- they THINK they know about your soul, but only the way an addict knows about self-control.

And then there was this.  Astonishing. 

 

 

Clearly anti-woman, if "she" identifies as a woman.

The wonderment isn't how we have survived as a species. It's why we'd want to.

J 

*Hand D

YT

That is Shakespeare's handwriting -- a manuscript page of Sir Thomas More, a probably-Elizabethan play  published only centuries later.  Politics.  There's much to say about all this, but, well, not here and now.  What is undeniable is that Shakespeare was a horrifically bad speller.  No insult there -- orthography was fluid in his day.  But even within a few lines of each other, "sheriff" is spelled five different ways, sometimes capitalized, and sometimes  More is spelled More, or Moo, or Moor, or Moore.

This sort of explains how he could have spelled his own name, in its six known examples, six different ways -- three of them in the same document, his Last Will.  Thus, Willm Shakp, William Shaksper, and Wm Shakspe; and  William Shakspere, Willm Shakspere, and William Shakspeare. At least  he knew how to spell 'William.'  You'll hear the Oxfordians sneer at this.  But, abbreviations are not misspellings, so we can discount Shakp --  and just trailing off,  Shakspe, is my own habit -- Ja... Ha... instead of Jack Haytch, my true and full name.  And Shakspere is spelled the same way twice.  So, uh, there's a point there, that proves my point, whatever it is.

I too have been a horrific spellor, and remain a not-very-good one.  (Spellchecker is a fantastic heuristic aid. I still miss sometimes on occurred, and consider.  Hey, got both of them right, first try.  Um, decision.  Yep, that one too!)  Likewise with handwriting.  My own is functionally illegible, even to me, all too often.  Needs to be remembered, as much as deciphered.  It's a bother.

As for Shakespeare's example, above, what a nightmare.  Not just because letter-shapes could be different --  the long s, ſ, that should be familiar to those who have read the Constitution (and his h's and y's are quite something to see).  All that's just the convention of the day, secretarial hand:

And not because of scribal abbreviations (p̱ for pro), or a line over a letter to indicate preceeding letter omissions.  But Shaksper closed his u's and didn't round his r's -- that sort of thing.  m n r i u w might all look the same, just an ambiguous cluster of troughs and peaks.

So, here follows the modernized text.

MORE: Nay, certainly you are;
For to the king God hath his office lent
Of dread, of justice, power and command,
Hath bid him rule, and willed you to obey;
And, to add ampler majesty to this,          5

He hath not only lent the king his figure,
His throne and sword, but given him his own name,
Calls him a god on earth. What do you, then,
Rising ’gainst him that God himself installs,
But rise against God? What do you to your souls          10

In doing this? O, desperate as you are,
Wash your foul minds with tears, and those same hands,
That you like rebels lift against the peace,
Lift up for peace, and your unreverent knees,      
Make them your feet to kneel to be forgiven!          15

Tell me but this. What rebel captain,
As mutinies are incident, by his name          19
Can still the rout? Who will obey a traitor?          20

Or how can well that proclamation sound,
When there is no addition but a rebel                     
To qualify a rebel?   You’ll put down strangers,
Kill them, cut their throats, possess their houses,                   
And lead the majesty of law in line,          25

To slip him like a hound. Say now the king
(As he is clement, if th’ offender mourn)                          
Should so much come to short of your great trespass
As but to banish you, whether would you go?
What country, by the nature of your error,          30

Should give you harbor? Go you to France or Flanders,
To any German province, to Spain or Portugal,            
Nay, any where that not adheres to England,—
Why, you must needs be strangers. Would you be pleased
To find a nation of such barbarous temper,          35

That, breaking out in hideous violence,
Would not afford you an abode on earth,                         
Whet their detested knives against your throats,
Spurn you like dogs, and like as if that God
Owed not nor made not you, nor that the claimants          40

Were not all appropriate to your comforts,
But chartered unto them, what would you think  
To be thus used? This is the strangers’ case;
And this your mountanish inhumanity.          44

The  link is Sir Ian bringing life to the matter.

In any case, how, how, how could anyone read the manuscript, the holograph?  Here's a start:

What I have labeled lines 42, 43 and 44.  Here's the decipherment:

but chartered unto them, what would you think 
to be thus used, this is the strangers case.
and this your mountanish inhumanity 

 I recognize a w, and an o.   And his commas are really nice.  Punctuation and capitalization are almost entirely from the editors.

As for the three crossed-out lines of the manuscript  -- 16, 17 and 18  -- they turn out to be:

is ſafer warrs, then ever yo^u can make          16

                                          in in to yo^r obediene.

whoſe diſceipline is ryot , why euen yo^r warrs hurly          17

     tell me but this   

cannot p̱ceed but by obedienc what rebell captaine           18

as mutyⁿes ar incident, …

I have buried the lead, here -- this being of the most interest to all truly intelligent readers.  We see the creative mind at work. So Shakespeare wrote lines 16, 17 and part of 18 (replacing warrs with hurly),  then he crossed out the end of 17 with 18 and interlineated above 17 (preserving   obedience), then he crossed out the interlineation along with 16 and the first part of 17, and interlineated above line 18  and finished that line.   He gave up on obedienc and warr and settled on mutynes.

...your unreverent knees, / make them your feet to kneel to be forgiven!  / In safer wars then ever you can make, / whose discipline is riot?  Why, even your wars -- no, your hurly / cannot proceed but by obedience...    No.   ...whose discipline is riot?  In ... Into your obedience...  No.   ...make them your feet to kneel to be forgiven!  / Tell me but this: what rebel captain / as mutinies are incident...  

All this is just me, mind you, supposing.  But I am as great a genius as Shakespeare, so I'm undoubtedly correct.

When the hurly-burly's done...

So many lessons here.  About opinions and dogmas and evidence and humility and meaning. I mean lessons in the handwriting and trying to read it.  As for the meaning of the speech, yeah, I suppose that's good too.

I'm thinking of writing The Autobiography of God.  If you have bothered to look at my Jesus as Human Being, you'll have an idea.  If you bothered.  But The Kardashians! is on, so there's that, if they're still a thing.  Is Huny Bubu still a thing?


J

* Socio-political Lessons from Etymology

YT

Character is reflected in the words we use.  This is obvious.  More can be said, but this too is obvious.  Indeed, what is not obvious?  If we didn't say obvious things, we'd hardly say anything at all.  Obviously.  

The word "obvious" comes from the Latin ob, 'against,' and viam, accusative of via, 'road'.  Against the road … something that's right in front of you, almost an obstacle -- or a guide post ... let's not be negative.

So, if we, 'we,' are ultra maga white supremacist racist hater deplorables, what are they?  Their choice of invective is a mirror not a camera -- about themselves, not the objective, outside, real world.  Of course cameras, in the selfie-ism of this current culture, cameras are so often about the beholder.  What then do they say about themselves when they call us all those names?

Maga, like mega, larger than life, which uses up all those resources and is bad for the planet.  Same with ultra -- ultramontanist, super catholic, therefore bad, like parents, and men and fathers and popes.  Deplorable?  From the Latin: de, and plorare, 'to weep, bewail, lament, cry'.  I do not think that they will mourn for us.  So their weeping must be of the more infantile sort.  Cry baby.

How very, very apt.

And I was thinking, what then are they?  What single word describes them? -- their character, conduct ... understanding what that word-choice would  say about me.  What word describes them?  Contemptible?

Contempt too emotional. It's 'disrespect'  I feel deep disrespect for them -- not the absence of respect, but the active presence of the opposite of respect.  So disrespect isn't quite the word after all, being somewhat tautological. And the opposite of respect is, yes, 'contempt'.  From the Latin … contempt,  com (intensifier), and temnere,  'to despise, or scorn.'   And the word  'scorn'  -- it's proto-Germanic: skarnjan, 'to mock, ridicule'.  'Despise', Latin: de, 'down,' and specere, 'to look at' -- so, to look down upon, as in judgment -- as an adult observing an ill-mannered child, or an utterly undignified adult.

Yes, I think that says it well.  It reveals me as I wish to be seen, a charming selfie, in this specific instance, of me observing and categorizing a subspecies of disreputable organisms and their concomitant behaviors.  No, not Millennial only, or Genzers. My cohort too -- it is impossible to believe that the loathsome Baby Boomers all of a sudden grew a brain. 

Liberals have a different brain-structure.  That overstates the case, but there are identifiable differences, useful as statistical predictors.  We need not be slaves to our genetics or circumstances, so brain structure is not a  true explanation, or excues.   More likely is the obvious fact that maturity takes time.  Wisdom ripens, the same way that decadence rots.

Politics  -- hum, some analogy … politics is like an earthquake, or quicksand, or parachute failure, or Chernobal.  

I choose to see it as an opportunity for children of all ages to grow up, to become wise to the level of their years, if not beyond.  The past three out of four election cycles have  not taught me optimism.  But I chose to become, or remain hopeful.  Hopeful.  

The word 'hope', from Old English: a word of unknown origin.

J

*How to Spell Biden-ism, and Today's Vocabulary Word, and Why I Am Still Deplorable

YT

The rule for adding ism to the end of a word when the noun ends in a vowel, that vowel is dropped and replaced with the i of 'ism'.  Thus, Nazi-ism becomes Nazism.  And Obama- ism becomes Obam-ism.

But it's biden-ism   

Is hillary still around?  The mad woman in the attic?  The streetcorner bag lady scretching about all the demons she sees everywhere -- or is it Nazi, or Obami. I'm sure I've seen her on the, as you people say, internet. Gliding along like a cartoon cat sneaking up on a mouse.  

Oh, I remember.  And I'm still, still, deplorable.  I am whatever she says I am.  If I wasn't why would she say I am???  ... Well, no, not ME, in that I voted for, but I was not a Trump supporter. We've been thorough this. 

But what is forevermore to be understood by the term deplorable, is its reference to non-hillary, and now non-biden, and so of course non-progress, non-woke, non-protranz, non pro-hamas, non-pro-terrorism, non-anti-semitic ... huh ....   

*ahem*

To collect my thoughts ... deplorable is the increasingly fading and obscure, like hillary, description of

rule-of-law americans.   Deplorable.  

Charles Krauthammer, now gone to his reward, coined the term: Bush derangement syndrome.  It has kept its currency, as Trump derangement syndrome.  Like Cleopatra, it is infinite in its variety.  Excect it's not about variety.  It's anything on that's not on the left.  If not Trump, in the coming generational election, it will be some other republican.  So it's really … Republican derangement syndrome.  

Not just 

trump, but any republican victory, and we would see it all again, replayed like another remake of a Disney movie -- no original ideas at all, just much more expensive.  Should the final nail be driven into america's coffin, and ... well, of course not biden, he will be dead, via the 20-year-curse ... but whatever lefty ghoul you stupid stupid americans might possibly install as the occupant of the Oval ... no, Zero Office -- my this is a long sentence -- and I've lost the thread of its meaning.  

It's about the left, and how they love to accuse and call names -- like me, but I'm right -- you know, the protesters -- that's their secret identity, you know because of the masks ... and their spirit animal is the chupacapra or sasquatch or Nessie, or any of the other invisible monster animals.  

The protesters, I say, or, if you will, the tantrumpers, who, you remember, actually Blocked Freeways, protesting Trump's first election.  And of course the rioting and looting ... it would be so nice if we had law enforcement.  

They don't need to be killed, or beaten, or gassed, these anti-rule-of-law, anti-self-control, anti-civilization forces. They need to be arrested and fined, or, in some cases, imprisoned. Is that not reasonable? The way, as we have discussed, the British Raj wiped out the murder cult of the thuggee.  And yes, there should be some executions.  Rule of law, and law enforcement, and justice, which is an equal and appropriate response. So, execution, for murder.  Just saying.  

 I live in the wild wilding New West, where outlaws roam free and there are no boarders, only frontiers, opening upon our great fertile plains and cities, available for the mass migration of vast and innumerable herds of migrants, by any other name … somehow, refugees?  Fleeing, what, the socialist hellhole of Venezuela, to this, our burgeoning socialist hellhole, of america?   

 So I, native of a failed state, california, speak as a mere theoretician.  In this analogy, of the open frontier and wild west, I am the scolding schoolmarm.  Sad fool that I am, to think a marm could trump the nanny state.  Nanny can call names, and it's not hate speech.  In this era, and metaphor, nannies hate FREE speech.

So, children, we've studied how to spell nazism and bidenism.  Today's vocabulary word is:

    Tantrump (v): 

  1. to violently deplore representational democracy; 

  2. to impose one's emotional upset upon society as a whole; 

  3. to selflessly protest against the hatred and bigotry of racist Amerikkka.  

   

    Usage: 

     "That fool be tantrumping all over yo ass!"  

     "Hey, Ashton, me and Breah are gonna get AOC tats on our areolas, and you can get your Prince Albert disinfected ... then we'll tantrump against the fascists!" 

    

     "Dude meet in 20 at the galleria -- flash tantrump!"

Sometimes it's necessary to start the education process all over again.

J

*Stench

YT

America needs to be beaten with a stick.  Soft lazy cowardly slut.  Weak the way decadence makes you weak.  Stupid the way easy victory makes you stupid.  Our strength and our virtue were not intrinsic.  They derived from the richness of the land and from the initial spirit of the Constitution.  The pioneer spirit, of colonists and homesteaders and entrepreneurs ... that spirit lasts one generation.  After that it is inertia and entropy.  We settle for our parents' settlements.  Perhaps our parents were worthwhile, and made an attempt to nurture integrity.  Perhaps.  But there is a way to test this perhaps: open your eyes and look around and make an evaluation.

Well?

I was a foster father, and one of my boys came from a crack whore mother.  There you have the picture of America.  An idealistic fool, willing to sacrifice, and, well, a crack whore, destructive the way Satan loves despair, for no reason at all, just because. Orwell and Kafka are the prophets of our age.  We're done with metaphor.  Reality has surpassed hyperbole.

The current college-age cohort has a pathological belief that being offensive is a crime against humanity.  How do you correct someone who forbids the expressing of an opinion not their own?  Rather than argue and defend a position, they burst into hysterical tears, traumatized by their own feeling.  It's a sort of auto-immune disease.

Another Great Awakening, if God will respond with mercy.  Or a national and world catastrophe, if God loves us enough to chastise.  If I personally had America before me and at my mercy, I would flog it until bones were broken.  The mercy of correction.  Punishment has been too long delayed.  Depraving drips from her slack lips and she calls it freedom.

Many civilizations have fallen.  It need not mean the end of days is upon us.  But America is dead.  Resurrections happen.  A man can drown in ice water and be brought back after a half hour.  Such things happen.  But the trauma is, well, real, and transformative.

What will happen when these foolish young college women who are offended by free speech are held down and serially raped, by the invading barbarian culture, of islamism and lawlessness?  Some of them will learn, as I have (through a not-dissimilar chain of events), to temper idealism with pragmatism.  When our feminized male youth are called upon to do something other than shout slogans at political rallies -- when actual suffering and sacrifice are demanded, to be met with something more vital than emotion -- well, not every trumpet call is answered.

When no one, or too few, will rise up and stand firm, then we lose.  The self-confidence and arrogance of the moslem horde is justified.  Our women are for rape.  Our men are for sodomy.  It is true, and it is true, because depravity drips from their lips, for all the world to see, no matter how depraved the world also is.  When you have held up a light upon a hilltop, you become the focus.  When what they see is shameful, their contempt is merited.

I don't want the nation to suffer, because I live here, and will suffer too, and I don't wish to suffer.  Have I not suffered enough?  Have I not sacrificed?  Sadly, no -- not enough.  The task ... no, the challenge, the quest, is unfulfilled.  In my outrage, my dismay, my contempt and bewilderment and feeling of betrayal, I may give up.  It's even likely.  I'm not the man I thought I was.  I just want to be left alone.

But of all the moving tales we might tell, how sweet, that of the prodigal son's faithful father.  We generally are not told the full story of that son.  It wasn't just wastrel behavior and then living with pigs.  Far more wretched than that.  The story isn't about pigs, but about love.  Since we are told that love never fails, then if we do not love, we never did.  That is a choice, not a feeling.  Love is what you do, not what you feel.  Be faithful, and you are faithful.  Being and doing are the same thing.

The point?  What can be done.  Stand up and become a target, and have the agencies of oppression turn upon you?  Do not remain or fall silent, but when some entity supposes there is such a thing as gay marriage and asserts that belief, interject some contrary fact about biology, history or logic?  And be branded and persecuted as a bigot? And suffer in business or career or reputation?

Patriotism is not the love of country.  It is the real willingness to sacrifice.  And it's not about country only, but about honesty and courage and truth.  These are virtues to which heroes and villains both pay lip service.  Villains use their lips also to drip depravity.  Who can be so strong, to stand and face what is repulsive?  Decency must avert its face from what is shameless and shameful.  But that's how we came to where we are.  To pull a child from pig shit, we have to wade in.  That's what Jesus did, sealing himself in flesh, immured, immerde.  We will do less, but we must to something.

Or not.  What is redemption?  The saving of what is lost.  Why was it lost?  Because it was not valued.  What is not valued has no worth.  Why save it then?  Well, as I say, love is a choice.


J

*What My True Name Might Be

YT

I've taken pains to keep my actual identity private, as my many frustrated admirers frequently complain via email. Oh Jack H, please tell us more about yourself, like your full name and where you live. But I have good reason to attempt to preserve my anonymity. As far as I've been able to find, my name appears on the internet only once, and just recently, in its complete and true form. It was rather distressing to find even this single slip. I am, you see, a hunted man.

It's a long story. Once, back in the 1930s, I was lynched by a mob of racists. I was a Negro woman in those days, and I spilled boiling water on a white baby farmed out to me. It was an accident, but no matter. They hanged me naked from an old elm tree. There's no record of it. It was a backwoods affair. I've hardly ever been important. Anyhow it's behind me. I miss my own little babies, though. They're all dead now too.

Then the next time, as a teenager in the fifties, I was abducted by sexual sadists -- my body was buried off an interstate highway. It's never been found. What was I, boy or girl? It hardly matters. Sometime I make the trip out into that desert and weep for myself over my bones.

This time, in these current decades, I've had a longer life than in the past several hundred years. Nearly everyone has died young, though, if you average it all together. This time I've passed the half-century mark. Maybe I'll make it to a subsequent decade. Odd, how we cling. We'd clutch even at razors, lest we fall. I usually die violently. I've never killed myself. It seems some instinct instructs us that life is better than death -- even if life waits on the other side. I do not trouble myself with paradoxes, anymore.

I don't know what dharmic violation I committed, but it's been this way for millennia. I don't go in for this past-life regression nonsense -- just a bunch of flakes as far as I can see -- but I personally really do remember it all, and not as some mere intuition, however powerful. My memory precedes the pyramids. Why? Why? I have not been told. No higher being, if there be such things, has ever revealed a truth to me. If the gods have voices, they do not speak to me. I believe in a higher order only through inductive reasoning.

I do know I was involved in the destruction of Atlantis, but there was no court of condemnation to make it clear that this was a crime and I was condemned. I simply started remembering. I never did it on purpose, that unloosing of such primal forces -- but the Wheel of Incarnation rolls inexorably along, and those caught up in its treads must suffer the indignity of continuing if intermittent existence. So inductive reasoning informs me.

It isn't my own deaths that bother me so, as much as those of the ones I love. Sometimes I've tried to love no one, to have no family. But we're born into families. And even when I did not start my own, I couldn't help but love, even strangers. How many lifetimes I have spent in the wilderness -- not lost, simply dreading the bonds that attach to us when we touch each other.

Being old is hardest, and I watch them all drop away -- my parents, my wives and husbands, even my children. I've had so many, by now. I've never counted. It must be thousands, many thousands. What a massacre, and no less terrifying because it stretches across the eons. I've seen towers built of skulls. I've seen rivers of blood. No place you can put your foot, that isn't an unmarked grave.

I don't recognize them again, my lost loved ones. Sometimes a smile or a tilt of the head in one generation reminds me of some soul I knew in a century past. The baby in Troy is like that maiden in Rome, who is like a boy in Gaul. But it blurs together, and it's as if the resemblances are only family traits. I never know if this one now is the same as that one from ancient days. I just know that these days too will someday be ancient. And those I love now will return into the earth, and emerge, if they do, unrecognized. That's the cruelest punishment of all, that the Lords of Karma have pronounced on me. I remember, and everyone else forgets.

Maybe I’m unique, though. Maybe I’m like beloved John was thought to be, to live until the Lord’s return – or like the Wandering Jew, cursed Ahasuerus, likewise bound to life, cursed for cursing the Lord in His Passion. Perhaps like the shade of Samuel, released from Sheol to pronounce one final judgment, upon Saul, I too eternally slip the chains of Hades and rise somnambular to take on other chains, of flesh. And all humanity slumbers on one or the other side of a great abyss, biding time until a harsher disposition, or one of mercy. While I alone tread some middle way, dividing the difference by partaking both of life and of death. Perhaps. I do not know. I speak sometimes of faith, but I think in terms of theory. Some traditions seem less suited to my case than others.

How weary my soul has grown. Hardly anything remains of that haughty prince who delved too deeply into the secret underpinnings of reality. How long before I am forgiven? What fire might I find, to match those that burned my world down, and now might burn away the last of my pride, my crime? I don't know. I trudge on toward an ever-receding goal, every myth of damnation woven into my shadow, weighing as much as eternity and its substance. I've seen the ice roll in and I've seen the sun grow hot, forests supplant plains and cities return to clay. The ages mount up on me like a sexual sadist, and I am buried and I return to the grave time and again only to mourn.

What is my true name? Well, I've had so many. H is for Happy, and H is for Hell. It is for Hunter and for Hatred, for Hubris and for Humility. H is for Holiday and Horror, for sacred and profane. It is for compassion and rage and desperation and forgiveness. H is for a man who wants to love and to be loved. He wants to love himself, but an unremembered crime, some unwitting sin has made him Eternity's vagabond and what invocation can turn aside the pursuing Furies? It must be this way for everyone. Not everyone is aware of it though. Forgetting is how forgiveness shows itself.

What is my name? I suppose it's the same as yours. H is for Human.


J