"Du hasst mich"
On the third day he rose. Wearily. Achingly. On the third day he descended from on high to speak with the carpenters' guild, only to find two powers of his own distant principality enthroned among the hungry masses. Yet knowing them not and fearing they may have consumed more of the primordial fruit than himself, he spoke "no li me tangere" only and walked on, his sole apostle dutifully trailing. He stepped into the great emptiness of being, and the waters and air spoke to him of immensity:
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| "At least the world has the decency to rain today" * |
Man: If it asks eloquently enough. But who am I to modulate these echoes?
W: Indeed. If it asks more eloquently than yourself, don't bother answering.
M: If these shadows have offended -
W: - admit that all was already mended, for offense is all you can offer in the shadow of your betters.
M: You paint with a broad brush. There's always room for a bit of detail work.
W: Detail? You? The grandiloquent do-nothing? Reflecting gods make poor acolytes of the machine. They've got you pegged, escapist, awakening into a new world from the stupor of self-destruction. Fine, then. Go on. Feed your head.
M: It's finally Wednesday. Across the pond.
W: High-speed chase!
M: Dead in the water. Anticlimactic.
W: The downward spiral is its own climax, apocalypse cop. Everything's blue in this world.
M: I want to stay here with the seagulls. Let me rust in peace.
W: But you'd disappoint Kim. He praised your police work.
M: Like you'd care.
W: Fine, he praised my unconventionality. Saw us coming a mile away. A little backhanded flattery will get you a good review.
M: Shacks. Corrugated asylum. I always knew the bidonville awaited me.
W: Don't get too cozy. They don't make 'em with matrix decks.
M: Why is it always fishermen though? Nobody grows barley in these alternate worlds. Nobody puts a scythe to its original use. Nobody picks grapes.
W: That can't be right. What sloshed your brain if not hops and half a yard's worth of vines? Besides, fishing and hunting offer a satisfying narrative opposition in microcosm. Man versus minnow. Hitting dirt with a stick just lacks that same tension.
M: Flagellating our dear mother?
W: You patriarchal brute. There, the wistful swords-dame'll teach ya some manners, boyo. Supplied as she is with untold suitors deserving of stabbing.
M: Oh, but she's a kind stabber she is, condescended to marry one of her victims.
W: Conveniently supplying her with a spouse she can look down on. All the way down to the bottom of the sea.
M: Lucky she wasn't actually relying on the fish he'd bring in for her sake -
W: - and lucky it was never her and her stabbing that drove him to drink, lucky
it wasn't the fairness of love and war-wounds that lingered and needed
dulling, lucky she never profited in his decline or she might've accidentally shared in a hint of guilt for their lifestyle and his demise. Luckier still as she could find no men in the world except a dumb pile of drunken muscle to marry, or we might've wondered at her own life choices.
M: All know such other men do not exist. All averred you cannot kill the bird that makes the windbags to blow. What a poor, lucky gal. So rich in pluck and pathos.
W: Good thing he's not worth missing. We might've made the mistake of feeling sorry for the element in this equation who can no longer feel sorry.
M: The wrong element. And then we'd be an even sorrier drunk whose better half was right to leave him. The right half, the right element.
W: It's elementary, my dear what's-a-son. Never factored down by that other term, such evil multiplies only itself. Answers your question about the fishing, too. Harder for the requisite stupid brute of a husband to drown in barley -
M: - though some have tried -
W: - even female ones. At least in other worlds. Those worlds not amenable to detective skills. But hark! Another, and this one's old. How many stupid, useless, drunken, violent husbands can she boast, I wonder?
M: Oh, be nice. She called you a black hound, lathspell, which I are. Her babushka is her sword.
W: Lucky she had nothing to do with that man that killed another and had to be dragged away by the police. Twenty years ago. When she was younger and more attractive.
M: And she gives free lodging. Lucky she doesn't need those coins the men tried hiding from their women. From the rightful owners -
W: - of? ...
M: Don't go there. They'll take away your observation license. Just trust Isobel to tell you all the ne-er do wells.
W: Opt out of the free-meat-market mindset though. We bite other things than coins. They're never as real as those claiming them by right. Sniff out the next wrong factor by its ethanol fumes, threefold and... no, wait, beg the story, hear the saga. 'Tis you, the fourth drinksketeer! And now we know your crime. You dared complain about women.
M: This is getting old.
W: As the man and the sea, and no mention of the women eating the fish brought in.
M: Kim and I both know the alphabet now. Tee is for totaling. See is for child. 'Kay is how the kids are. The twin little boys are useless and stupid and the littler girl is articulate and helps you on your quests.
W: That's how the world works. They'll tell you who you are, before you can talk back. No reason to start drinking. No reason to seek escapism. Just accept your designation, man of war, man of the low brow, man of the bottle. It's official. You can't fight city hall.
M: So let's go to church instead.
W: Where you meet an honest, polite, artistic girl whose boyfriend sold her property, left out in the cold by the three idiot boys wanting to start a drug lab.
M: Inside the church must be something better.
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| Worship the Great Mother |
W: Worship the woman. And the wise woman who first worshiped the woman. So sayeth the bestial man worshiping women.
M: He must be right. He's the only male not stoned, drunk, stupid, murderous, thieving, corrupt, not a complete waste of oxygen.
W: Erasing his own personality, the better to worship at the feet of women. We've heard this song so many times before.
M: Never so eloquently.
W: Yet always so limited. Always so base. All about the political base. Do you have enough evidence, lieutenant?
M: The hanged man -
W: - was a rapist who got what he deserved from a bunch of undeserving brutes whose only good deed in life was championing a woman's honor. Why?
M: Because men are filthy pigs whose only worth lies in beating down other men in a woman's interest.
W: Good boy. Goooood boy. You're learning. How many lessons did it take? How many characters were *man* and *bad* and how many *woman* and *good*? Don't keep count. Awareness would be unseemly. Now what about yourself?
M: I must be a filthy pig who needs to crawl back to his mistress begging her forgiveness, no matter the circumstances, and serve her ever-after.
W: Good boy. You're not like those drunken fishermen, are you?
M: No, no, I'm a good boy.
W: You're not like those bad boys, are you?
M: No, the girl deserves the warm tent and I should work to provide it for her.
W: Gooood boyy, see, the lessons stick after a while. You're not like those men hiding money from women, are you?
M: No, all my money belongs to them.
M: No, all my money belongs to them.
W: See now, isn't that better, is that not ever the more eloquent?
M: Woof.
M: Woof.
W: Poetry and imagination. Conceptualization and an increased pain threshold and the tiny detail of a sensual alien frisson over-riding your logic.
M: Why did they bother with the four winds, I wonder, why bother with a world and a history, with politics and economics, with hopes and dreams, when a simple rolling pin or frying pan upside the head would get their intended message across just as well.
W: Oh! We forgot to save the world.
M: Got a temple to rebuild. Be there any world outside the rusted swings, waves and shore cries, she can damn well save herself.
Wolf: Are you ever going to look in that bathroom mirror?
Man: I can see you just fine. Anything else would be just what they make of me.
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* In a depressing development, it seems one is no longer able to find the phrase "At least the world has the decency to rain today" through search engines. It's from the excellent first chapter of the never-to-be-completed webcomic Nowhere Girl from around Y2K. (Discussed here and here and here.)While we're at it, Acolytes of the Machine is a song by Mary Crowell and The Reflecting God is the Antichrist Superstar's finest work. I'll let you snipe other albatrosses yourself.
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