EXILE IN PURGATORY (1993)
1
Eight years have passed since my last series of autobiographical
sketches, and in that time much has changed and much, too, stayed approximately
the same. On the changed side, I moved
from one part of Hornsey to another, which, by and large, was a move for the
better, both domestically and environmentally.
I became, following a period of employment training, a part-time
computer/typing tutor for a small training centre affiliated to Hornsey
YMCA. I learnt how to type properly
(rare for a writer, not to mention a male) and, what's more, how to use a
computer.
Both these attainments
have since benefited me enormously, and my work, meaning principally
philosophy, is now at an all-time peak.
You could say that, despite these gains, writing is my constant
companion in a world which still finds me without friends or lovers but, as
though in compensation, with an excess of genius! For if there is one thing which more than
anything else has stayed approximately the same as before, it is my position as
a solitary writer of genius in an overwhelmingly philistine society. I may be alone, but I am alone on my own
creative terms, scorning the shallow successes of the commercial mob and the
vulgar blandishments of money-crazed advertisers.
From 1985-1993 I lived,
creatively, in what I now regard as a philosophical wilderness. I wrote nothing but philosophy, principally
in the form of aphoristic notes (or 'supernotes', as
I preferred to call them), and sought 'the truth', beyond anything I had
achieved before, with a zeal and one-pointedness of
mind which left even my earlier philosophical endeavours far behind. Yet, despite my unrelenting efforts to corner
and expound 'the truth', or perhaps I should say 'supertruth'
(for it was indeed a higher sense of truth I was pursuing), I failed to find
it, even after several thousand pages spanning some eight volumes. The ultimate truth was more elusive than I
had expected it to be, although here and there I did more than adequate justice
to subjects which bordered upon it or which I had already touched upon in
earlier works. Yet my metaphysics was
still short of completion when, eight years after entering the field of this
intense philosophical endeavour, I drew a close to the final volume of supernotes which spiralled through successive twists-and-turns
of a seemingly endless cycle of refinements and rethinks, and left the
'philosophical wilderness' behind.
Almost immediately I
entered the fulfilment of that period in the aphoristic purism of Maximum
Truth, which is where my metaphysics finally 'came good', and I achieved
the elemental completeness I had lacked until then, a completeness which added
the photon to the proton, electron, and neutron of my earlier theories. Now, finally, I had 'the truth', and I was
philosophically fulfilled. Everything I
had written led to this peak, this comprehensive objectivity and objective
comprehensiveness, and I could look back on it with the satisfaction of one who
has tallied long in the wilderness and passed on to higher things. I was saved.
Now it only remained for me to save the world.
2
The world will only be saved from its sin when people turn from
the lights which blind them to their spirit, and soar heavenwards on a current
of gravity-defying air, leaving the heaviness of their mundane lives behind
them. Currently there is so much moral
ignorance in the world, especially the Western one, that it is hard to see how
much progress against the lights which blind people to their spirit could be
made without recourse to the most drastic means, means which undo decades of
vacuous expansion and put a halt to the domination which these heathen lights
now enjoy, to the detriment of everything pure and holy.
Personally, I have no
illusions as to the difficulty of the task ahead, nor any scruples about exploiting
whatever means are most conducive to the liberation of mankind from the vacuous
clutches of these ungodly media. Each
year that passes the Moloch of spirit-devouring light
grows more powerful and exacts ever higher financial and moral sacrifices from
its countless victims, bleeding them dry.
Such will continue to be the shameful case until, under the auspices of
divine leadership, the people rise up against their oppressors and cast off the
yoke of media-grovelling enslavement which currently binds them to their sad
fate. How and where this will be done,
remains to be seen. But a time must come
when a moral reckoning will have to be made, since one cannot have it both ways. Either one is for God or for the Devil, and
if the former is ultimately to prevail, then the latter will have to be cast
down from its immoral throne and consigned to the flames of judgemental
history, there to burn in Hell until not a trace of its previous existence
remains!
I hope I shall live to
see the day when a start will be made, in certain chosen countries, on the
honourable path of rolling back the power and influence of these media which
now have the greater part of the world in their merciless grip, a grip which
can only grow tighter as the years pass ... if nothing is done to resist
it. Rest assured that, under divine
leadership, steps will be taken to combat the Devil's influence and free as
many peoples as possible from the spirit-throttling grip which ungodly men seem
hell-bent on tightening, come what may!
He who becomes the most credible approximation to a Second Coming cannot
stand on the sidelines and watch innocent people being consumed alive by this Moloch whose manifold lights know no rest. Better that the clear lights of the void
should be put out ... than that the people should be blinded to the Holy Spirit
of Heaven, which is their only hope of salvation.
If I can play a part, no
matter how small, in liberating the people from the lights which now bemuse and
confuse them, then my work will not have been entirely in vain. I praise the day when I broke through to
final truth and saw ... not the light of space, but the lightness of air all
around me and was lifted up, like Christ, to that resurrection which is the
true destiny of mankind. Where I have
gone, others can follow, leaving behind not only the gravity of the world, but
the tyrannous lights which currently dazzle them. They will see within and, in seeing within,
'the without' shall lose its hold upon them and perish to an insignificance
scarcely imaginable at present. What
remains of the old false way will be subordinated to the new, true way, never
again to have that independence which is the hallmark of open-society
immorality.
3
With me, autobiography in the usual trivial sense scarcely has any
place, so much does my life revolve around philosophy and the truth I have at
last mastered. It would be scant
exaggeration to say that, outside my work, I have scarcely any reality or
existence, since my work is such an integral part of me ... that the two are
virtually synonymous. Yet that isn't, of
course, entirely the case, nor could it ever be so, and I must now endeavour to
return to the more autobiographical mould which I initially set out to develop,
taking up the reins of phenomenal subjectivity some eight years on from the
last time any such undertaking was broached.
What makes me more
cautious and even reluctant than anything to autobiographically elaborate on my
life in recent years ... is the fact that previous experiments in the genre
have taught me, in no uncertain terms, just how transient and temporal
autobiographical statements can be, so that, before too long has passed, one is
already conscious of how much one has changed in the meantime, and of how
uncharacteristic of one's more recent lifestyle certain previous admissions or
confessions now are. In short, the pace
with which things change can be so rapid ... that one has already left various
aspects of a previous self severely in the lurch within a few months, if not
weeks, of penning them. And that can be
very embarrassing from the current point of view!
For instance, anyone
familiar with certain of my earlier autobiographical sketches might have good
reason to think that I am a masturbator and an advocate, by implication, of
sexual immorality. Yet that would be so
far from the truth of my current lifestyle, not to mention my lifestyle of
several years now, as to have no bearing on it whatsoever! For if there ever was a time when I
occasionally masturbated, that time is now long behind me, and I marvel to
think that I haven't so much as looked at a men's magazine in years, never mind
caressed my penis. Such an act would be
beneath me, and if I am guilty of anything ... it is of nothing more than an
occasional wet dream, such that only disgusts and inconveniences me, as I awake
from a superficial slumber.
Masturbation, thank heavens, is as far behind me as canned beer, bottled
wine, men's magazines, and T-shirts. In
fact, it is a good many years further behind me than T-shirts, about which I
only comparatively recently (1992) became severely disillusioned.
Yes, it was an important
day in my sartorial progress when I woke up to the fact that, together with
jeans, T-shirts are supersquare, and hence
effectively diabolical. I had been
wearing both jeans and T-shirts for years, never thinking about their possible
ideological or moral implications. All
that mattered to me was that I didn't wear shirts or trousers, those
complementary items of men's attire which I had abandoned, for the most part,
many years before, deeming them too 'straight' and 'bourgeois'.
Well, I was right about
shirts and trousers, intuitively if not logically, since there does seem to be
a correlation between such attire and middle-class squareness,
the squareness, one could argue, of a liberal lunacy,
which is only relatively square (like the shape of shirts, with their buttons
and collars). What I hadn't realized at
the time, and now find all the more remarkable, was that T-shirts and jeans
signified, in their more absolute squareness, a moral
degeneration from shirts and trousers, much as though the sun had eclipsed the
moon, or America taken over from Britain in the march of moral decline. If shirts and trousers were masculine, then
T-shirts and jeans were submasculine, and thus worse
again - a regression from purgatory to Hell, as from relative immorality
(phenomenal objectivity) to absolute immorality (noumenal
objectivity). In short, there was
something fundamentalist, if not fascist, about T-shirts and jeans, and I
vowed, on discovering this fact, never to buy either of them again. I had been caught-up, willy-nilly, in the
moral decline of the West from middle-class liberalism to upper-class fundamentalism,
and this despite my self-perceived image as an Irish-born 'Catholic' outsider
in Britain who regarded Anglo-American civilization with a sceptical if not
hostile eye, preferring, whenever possible, to remain detached from the
mainstream currents (including pop and rock) of its hell-bound course.
Clearly, there were some
aspects of this immoral civilization from which I had not remained sufficiently
detached, lacking insight, at the time, into their true nature! But I had always had an alternative up my
sleeve, so to speak, and this was of course the more mundane and subjective
alternative of vests, those intrinsically feminine items of clothing which are
effectively round ('hip') where shirts and T-shirts are square/supersquare respectively.
Yes, the vest was the moral retort to T-shirts, but it had to be worn
independently, not in conjunction (as in my case for several years) with
T-shirts - either under or, more occasionally, over the latter. It was necessary to 'come out', where the
wearing of vests was concerned, and proclaim one's allegiance to or, in my
case, moral support for the world ... against its purgatorial and/or diabolical
enemies. And not just in terms of vests,
but, just as importantly, with regard to the wearing of joggers, which are no
less subjective, taken-in at waist and ankles in due centripetal fashion, the
overall effect suitably round and contrasting, once again, with the squareness of trousers and jeans. In fact, it was through the gift of an old
pair of light-blue 'Nico' trousers from a neighbour
of mine that I was able to break out of the stranglehold which jeans had
imposed upon me, wearing them on an intermittent rather than a permanent basis.
When, two or three
months later, this same neighbour gave me an old pair of dark-blue joggers
which were too small for him, I was able to make the change to joggers with
comparative ease, since I had already been in transition, as it were, through
the 'Nico' trousers, and had come a sartorial step
nearer to the world in any case. Now I
was in harmony, at any rate as regards the combination of vest and joggers, and
it only remained for me to purchase some new joggers in a colour (dark green)
more congenial to myself ... for me to establish a colour harmony between my
favourite vest (also dark green) and these joggers; such a harmony being more
morally together than with disparate or clashing colours which, in any case,
suggest more of a particle than a wavicle bias. I had only to buy a new pair of sneakers to
match my 'worldly' outfit, an outfit of the world rather than of the
purgatorial overworld or the diabolical netherworld,
and the harmony of self-serving subjectivity would be complete - or nearly so!
For there is always need
of a jacket when the weather is less than warm or dry, and this jacket should
be stylistically attuned to everything else, not too short or with studs
instead of buttons or too prominent a zip.
I mean, too short and one is either 'up the lunar limbo' in some kind of
radical 'Protestant' elevation over the world or, worse again, in some kind of
diabolical (hoodless) opposition to liberalism which emphasizes studs (those
solar-like centrifugal vacuums) at the expense of zips. Bad enough to have zips, in lunar 'watery'
fashion, at the expense of buttons, those 'worldly' heterosexual norms. But to have studs at the expense of zips
struck me as worse again, more like sartorial Hell than purgatory.
Ideally, then, the
jacket should have buttons rather than studs, and a zip underneath ... for
added protection against the weather. It
should also have both the cuffs and the waist taken-in, and be of medium
length, so as to preclude lunar implications.
Sweatshirts would also seem to be the right choice of garment for colder
days, and if the weather is wet then boots rather than sneakers would of course
be the logical choice, provided, however, that they were of a sneaker-like
modernity of style. Doubtless, those of
us who dress in this relatively subjective fashion will eventually gravitate to
one-piece suits of an absolutely subjective character, as Heaven supersedes the
world, and 'supermoral' criteria replace the 'moral'
criteria of the vesty present.
Actually, until now, I
have never thought too deeply about jackets or, more specifically, the
ideological implications of jacket lengths, and, since all my own jackets are
relatively short zippers, it seems rather curious that I should suddenly decide
to regard short zippers as either liberal or fundamentalist, lunar or solar,
purgatorial or diabolic, and attach a 'worldly' status, by contrast, to
medium-length ones. Can this really be
the case when, to all intents and purposes, the short-length zippers generally
appear more curvilinear, especially when taken-in at the waist, and the
medium-length ones comparatively square?
Surely, if one is to be consistent, it is the short-length jackets which
are commensurate with a subjective bias?
In which case, it should follow that, like the liberal and
fundamentalist categories, worldly zippers will also be short-length, except
that, in all probability, they won't have a hood but be purely bodily, as
germane to the world. Rather, it seems
that the medium-length vis-à-vis short-length distinction, with regard to
zippers, is between the alpha and the omega of any given spectrum, so that one
has a sort of objective/subjective, particle/wavicle
dichotomy which cuts across all spectra (with the possible exception of the
divine one and its one-piece absolutism).
If this is so, then
'worldly' zippers, which give prominence to buttons as opposed to either zips
or studs, can be either medium or short, square or round, and their purgatorial
and diabolical counterparts likewise.
One's choice of 'medium' or 'short' will depend on whether one has an
alpha or an omega bias - as, for example, on whether, with regard to the world,
one is republican (and 'medium') or Catholic (and 'short'), 'objective' (though
loosely subjective would probably be a more accurate description here) or
subjective.
4
There was something almost Milleresque about
the way I became a computer tutor, having been sent along to Hornsey YMCA to do
Employment Training as a possible route back into work. I had hardly been on the course four months
when, due to the existing assistant tutor's sudden and unannounced departure
from the firm, I was offered her post on a part-time basis, much as Henry
Miller had become personnel manager of a telegraph company after having
originally sought employment as a messenger!
Naturally, I was somewhat apprehensive at first, not having taken
regular employment for several years, but it didn't take me too long to settle
into the job, perhaps the only job I have ever really enjoyed doing.
With some 25-30 trainees
between the principal tutor and myself, we were kept pretty busy, and I soon
had to take responsibility for typing tuition as well as basic computing. The good thing about working part-time was
that I still had sufficient time to carry-on with my writing, thereby
developing my philosophical ideas as before.
I had also learnt how to type properly, which is rare for a writer, and
could work faster and more accurately in consequence. Nevertheless, it wasn't until I got a
computer in 1991 that the quality of my work shot up to a standard of technical
and thematic competence I would scarcely have dreamed possible before. For with a computer one can revise and edit
work so extensively ... that the end product may bare little resemblance to the
initial concept. Without a computer I
would still be languishing in the mire of literary mundaneness,
unable to rise above those technical and thematic shortcomings which had
bedevilled my work from the beginning.
So, all things
considered, I cannot pretend that my period as both an Employment Trainee and
an Employment Trainer (1989-91) did not help my private work. On the contrary, it gave it a boost such that
took it onto a new and higher plane. My
only regret is that my career in Employment Training should have been so brief,
and that funding cuts by the then-Tory Government led to me being made
redundant at a time when my future seemed so assured. Unfortunately, good things often have a way
of coming to a speedy end, and this was a case in point. I am only relieved that I had been able to
move to better accommodation some six weeks before my redundancy notice came
through, otherwise I would still be languishing in the ghetto-like milieu to
which I had become sadly accustomed over the years prior to and during my brief
career in Employment Training.
The extraordinary thing
for me is that there is life, it seems, after the YMCA, and that I can see the
said building from my window in Hermiston Avenue whenever I look down the road
and across the nearby junior school to its imposing structure, towering five
stories over the area like a gigantic monolith, its top floor more or less on a
level with my eyes. From my previous
address in
Yes, there is indeed
life after the YMCA, but it is the classless life of social security once again
and not the working-class life of computer tutoring. I am, if you will, in the Beyond ... as far
as the world is concerned, and it is in this Beyond that, thanks in part to the
small computer I was able to purchase shortly after moving here, my best and
most truthful philosophical work has been achieved. It was in this Beyond
... of classless unemployment ... that I actually became a more genuine
philosopher, with a purchase on truth more firm and comprehensive than at any
previous time in the history of my philosophical quest. It was because I was once again unemployed
that 'the truth' was possible to me; for truth requires classlessness if it is
to materialize in anything approximating to a genuine mould.
5
These days I take more pride in my celibacy than ever before,
since it confirms my preference for the lightness of air over the heaviness of
the flesh. Only a clod would prefer the
heaviness of the flesh, and thus pleasure, to the lightness of the air, and
thus joy, and I flatter myself to think that, in Joycean
speak, I am rather more of a god than a clod, more of a full-wit, so to speak,
than a half-wit! That is why I tend to
listen to Jazz as opposed to, say, Classical or Folk, though I have more
tolerance for the latter kinds of music than for, say, Pop or Rock, not to
mention Romantic and the avant-garde.
Provided there is ample evidence of wind, particularly sax-playing, in
Jazz, I am quite happy to listen to that and to nothing else.
What I don't like to
listen to so much, however, is avant-garde jazz, which is generally too noisy,
boring, and even intellectualized for my liking, being the subversive product,
more usually, of 'lunes' and other unpleasantly
middle-class types who contrive to bugger everything they can lay their dirty
hands upon. When the middle class take
over philosophy, as they do in colleges and other institutions of 'higher'
learning, they intellectualize it to a degree where it becomes unintelligible
to all but them, standing in the way of truth and yet posing as truth. When they take over music, and jazz music not
least of all, they intellectualize it to an equally unintelligible degree, so
that the deplorable result is a purgatorial cacophony bordering on Hell. This avant-garde jazz is the height of
lunacy, and it smacks of musical heresy no less than the philosophical and
sexual and other heresies to which the middle class, in particular, are so
fatally prone! What's worse, it doesn't
even involve wind instruments invariably, but is more likely to make use of
keyboards, particularly the piano, as it wends its watery course through a
plethora of discords and unrelated notes in a frenzy of antichrist hatred! Were these people capable of genuine Jazz,
they wouldn't resort to such an abusive fury against it! But their ill-begotten, middle-class souls
make them as incapable of musical truth as of any other kind of truth, and a
gross subversion of Jazz is the deplorable result!
Truly, liberal
civilization is indeed on the brink of total dissolution when people like that
are 'free' to piss on Jazz with the same impunity as attends their philosophical
counterparts vis-à-vis philosophy when, in the grip of some heretical demon,
they reduce truth to the phonetic analysis and intellectual manipulation of
words and their syllabic subdivisions thereof.
The eclipse of these purgatorial 'lunes' by
heathen devils is virtually inevitable and will indirectly relieve the
oppressive burden from the shoulders of those who, living in cultural exile,
have to put up with that which is personally abhorrent to them and an obstacle,
by its very existence, to the realization of heavenly salvation.
Yet the full realization
of such a salvation can only come in countries which are less liberal than
humanist in character, and therefore in line for transcendental upgrading. The exiled man may have to return to his
rightful country, if he doesn't wish to endure the diabolical fundamentalism
which is the liberal heresy's just deserts.
For purgatory is one thing, Hell quite another, and he who relates more
to the world than to either purgatory or Hell will not receive Heaven by
staying put in the country of ongoing damnation. Should he be able to return to his own
country, so much the better! And it is
that hope which I still entertain as I write these sketches from exile in
