Op.
19
DREAM
COMPROMISE
Short
Prose/Aphorisms
Copyright
©
2011 John O'Loughlin
__________________
CONTENTS
1.
Nolan's
Investigations
2.
Living
in the City
3.
A
Canine Crime
4.
An
Evening with Paul Kelly
5.
Prospect
of a Change
6.
Extracts
from a Journal
7.
Dream
Compromise
8.
Appendix:
Aphorisms
________________
NOLAN'S
INVESTIGATIONS
Gracefully,
Bridget
Nolan
applied the clips of her white suspenders to the dark tops of
their nylon stockings and, straightening up, regarded both legs with
critical
detachment in the wardrobe mirror. Yes,
that appeared to do the job! Although
the right clip needed to be adjusted a little, in order to bring it
into line
with the left one, so that the suspenders were equidistant down the
middle of
her thighs instead of slightly awry, as at present.
She made the necessary adjustment and then
regarded herself anew in the long mirror - this time with some
satisfaction. For her underclothes
looked pretty smart and sexy. The
suspenders were every bit as fresh-looking as the nylon panties she was
wearing
for the first time. They didn't clash
with the latter but formed a delicate harmony with them - a harmony in
white. The clash, if anywhere, came with
the dark tops of her stockings, which was as she liked it.
There would soon be another clash lower down,
when she stepped into her white shoes.
But that, too, would be intentional.
Turning away from the
mirror, Bridget
reached into the wardrobe for the silk dress she was intending to wear
out to
dinner that evening - a white one which would go nicely, she thought,
with
everything else, including the stockings.
She removed the hanger and put on the dress, letting it slide
down over
her slender body with obvious pleasure, since its contact with her skin
was
pleasantly smooth and cool. To be sure,
it was a warm evening and the coolness of the dress felt agreeably
refreshing
to her, especially as she had only a short while before taken a bath,
which had
somewhat warmed her up. Even with talcum
powder one was apt to sweat a little in the circumstances.
Indeed, a few beads of sweat were at that
very moment cascading down her back, but she wasn't particularly
conscious of
them, what with the feel of the smooth dress against her skin. And neither was she particularly conscious of
the sudden entry into the bedroom of her husband, who came creeping up
behind
her and put his hand on her back, causing her to jump with fright. He was a few inches taller than her, a fact
which allowed him to peer over her shoulders or head with comparative
ease. His short curly-black hair
contrasted sharply with her long wavy-red hair, as he stood right
behind her
with a slightly mocking expression on his pallid face.
"Aren't you ready yet?" he
commented, while his hand caressed her back.
Bridget had recovered her
composure and
gone back to looking at herself in the mirror.
However, the dress hadn't quite fallen into place, so that a
large part
of her left thigh was exposed to his gaze.
He grew intrigued by what he saw and, although she quickly
smoothed the
offending part into place, she was too late to prevent him from
becoming
sexually aroused. For he proceeded to
caress her back more firmly, continuing to gaze over her shoulder at
where the
exposed thigh had been. "Would you
like to do me up," she requested, growing uncomfortably conscious of
her
exposed back. For she was afraid that if
she didn't do something to cool him down, he would mess her up, undoing
the
care she had put into getting dressed.
"Certainly," he said, and he
pulled the zip up the length of her back to the base of her nape. "But now I'd like you to lift it
up," he added, thereby assuring her that he was still pretty warm.
She frowned slightly and
pretended to
ignore him.
"Go on!" he demanded more
firmly. "You know what I
mean."
Reluctantly, she raised the
rim of her
dress in both hands, until part of her thighs was exposed.
"Higher!" he cried, becoming
impatient.
She lowered her eyes and,
with ever so
faint a blush, lifted up the rim to a point where the dark ridges of
her stocking
tops were on display. Yet even that
evidently wasn't sufficient for him, since he immediately repeated
himself,
compelling her to expose the white suspenders.
"Aha! so
that's it," he exclaimed, staring more closely over her shoulder at the
reflection of her thighs in the wardrobe mirror. "Virginal
innocence
this time, is
it?"
She smiled and nodded in
equally faint
measures, for an instant flashing her bright-blue eyes at him. "Satisfied?" she sneered, though
she might have known better where he was concerned!
"Now let's see your briefs,"
he
demanded, smiling lustily.
Once again she was obliged
to respond in
kind and lift her dress still higher, doing so with noticeably less
reluctance
than before, because she was fairly proud of her new underclothes.
"Hmm, quite the little angel
this
evening, aren't we?" he remarked, as the first glimpse of her white
panties came into view. "All
spick-and-span.
One would never think you had sexual proclivities, still less a cunt. But, of
course, you have - in spite of your spiritual ambitions."
Bridget blushed anew, this
time rather more
deeply. Unfortunately she knew quite
enough about his sexual proclivities by now, indeed she did! But he had to have his way if there was to be
any peace in the house. One had to
satisfy his whims as best one could.
"Seen enough?" she at length asked, as the seconds ticked away
and the business of holding her dress up became more tediously trying.
"In this context," her
husband
replied, his gaze still riveted on her latest exposure.
"Although, while
you're looking so seductive, you might as well get down on your knees."
"Oh, Barry!" she protested. "Do I have to?"
"Yes, get down on your damn
knees!" he insisted implacably.
She knew from experience
that it was
useless arguing with him. He was her
master, after all. She had to obey him.
"And keep your dress up," he
reminded her.
Reluctantly she kept it held
up, so that
her thighs remained on display to his avid gaze.
"Now squat on your heels,"
Nolan
directed with obvious relish.
Again she obeyed him,
drawing her legs
slightly closer together in the process.
Inevitably the flesh on her thighs spread out conspicuously with
the
pressure of her calves against them, and this, she knew, was precisely
what he
wanted to see. For, to him, it
contradicted her spiritual pretensions.
Nolan chuckled to himself awhile, then knelt down beside her and ran his
hand up and
down her nearest thigh a number of times.
"What's this?" he sneered, referring to the seductive
enlargement of the limb in question.
"And what's this?" He
had thrust the hand between her thighs and was resting its palm against
that
part of her panties which covered her crotch.
"Is this a fiction?"
She had started to smile to
herself as he
said this. For it was
only too obvious what he was getting at, especially as his hand had now
begun
to tickle her.
"And what's this?" he
continued,
sliding the hand further underneath her until it rested, with splayed
fingers,
against her rump. "Is this
necessary for the spiritual life, too?"
It was still possible for
her to treat his
behaviour as a joke, in spite of the ironic sarcasm in his comments
which, at
another time, could have caused her to lose patience with him. For it was Saturday evening, after all, and
Saturdays were somewhat different from other evenings as far as
attitudes
went. Had it been a Sunday or a Monday,
she would almost certainly have lost her patience with him - assuming
he would
have been stupid enough to try it on then.
But, under the circumstances, one just had to relax a little and
enjoy
oneself as best one could. Otherwise
every day would be too much alike. On
Saturday evenings one just had to take one's husband's perverse little
self-indulgences lightly.
"Oh, but you know what they
really are,
don't you?" Nolan declared, having removed his hand from the last
'this'. "You damn-well know why you
were given them, don't you?"
"Why?" Bridget rejoined
innocently.
"To seduce men with!" came his implacable response.
"To enable you to
fulfil yourself sexually. To get
seed into your womb! That's why you were
given them - those thighs, this cunt, that arse. Not to
mention those arms, these tits, that nape, this face.
Oh yes, all of it! They weren't
intended to facilitate
meditation. They were made to seduce men
with!"
A fresh blush had appeared
on Bridget's
face with the reception of this self-evident information.
For although she had heard him speak like
this before, she was still capable of being embarrassed, from time to
time, by
the coarseness of certain of the words he used, which assaulted her
lady-like
primness. Needless to say, he used them
specifically for that purpose, since it gave him pleasure to drag her
body
through the dirt of sexual slang in defiance of her spiritual
pretensions. He knew that a word like 'cunt',
used in a specific context at a certain time of day on a day like
today, had
the effect of diminishing her spiritual morale and making her more
accessible
to his sexual demands. It worked like a
spell on her, bringing her completely under his influence.
Occasionally he would flatter her by telling
her what a beautiful cunt she was, as
though he were Mellors and she Lady
Chatterley. Occasionally, too, he would
flatter her by telling her what a beautiful cunt
she
had. But he would never use the word in
any other context or with anyone else, the way he would sometimes use,
say, the
words 'dickhead' or 'arsehole' or even 'prick'.
It was strictly entre nous,
between man and wife. And the wife,
being a well-bred young lady, would retain a discreet silence and
perhaps even
allow herself the luxury of a faint blush.
She would never say "I know."
Which
was how it was on
this occasion, when the possibility of an affirmative response
presented
itself. The temptation to immodesty
had to be avoided, if one wasn't to compromise oneself in either one's
own or
one's husband's eyes. To give the game
away would have been unthinkable. Nolan
could insinuate all he liked, but one would never confirm him in his
insinuations. One had to pretend
otherwise.
"And you don't need me to
remind
you," he continued, ignoring her latest blush, "how many times
they've succeeded in enabling you to seduce me.
Oh, no! You're perfectly well aware
of the matter.... But I haven't finished with my little investigations
yet. I've got other things to
investigate. So I suggest you stretch
out on the floor stomach uppermost, toute
de
suite."
Obediently Bridget did as
requested, since
it was a bit late to remonstrate now.
Seeing as the game had progressed this far, there seemed to be
no
earthly reason why it shouldn't progress a little further, maybe even
reaching
a climax or logical conclusion, if such a thing were possible with
Nolan. Besides, she had little doubt what
was coming
next. They had played this particular
game at least three times already. It
was becoming rather predictable, not to say monotonous.
"Would you like me to lift
up the rim
of my dress again?" she ironically inquired of him.
"No, it will be raised back
in any
case," he blandly assured her, "since I'm going to raise your legs up
myself, if you don't mind!" And,
sure enough, that is precisely what he did, as he turned his back on
her face
and, straddling her stomach, lifted up her dark-stockinged
legs by the ankles until her inverted feet were pressing against his
lower
abdomen. Now he could look down the
entire length of her legs and note the gradual progress of their flesh
towards
its culmination in the ample contours of her seductive rump. There was nothing to impede his view of her
new panties from this vantage-point, which afforded him direct optical
access,
as it were, to the indisputable cynosure of her fleshy charms. Looking down at Bridget's rear from this angle
was indeed a revelation, a confirmation of the woman's seductive power! And if she was blushing or feeling slightly
insecure and vulnerable behind him, so much the better!
That would teach her for playing the
spiritual hypocrite and laying claim to certain religious aspirations
which he
lacked! That would put a dent in her
spiritual pretensions for a while, even if it couldn't be guaranteed to
completely demolish them. For he knew
her well enough by now to know that she wouldn't give up those
pretensions too
easily, no matter what he did or said to her.
No doubt, the fact that she was the daughter of a philosopher
had
something to do with it, making her more conscious of the spirit than
would
otherwise have been the case.
But she was still a woman,
damn it, and
therefore a creature, Nolan reasoned, in which flesh generally
predominated
over mind, in which appearance generally got the better of essence. She was entitled to meditate, by all means,
but meditation wouldn't change her into a man!
She would still possess all the physical charms with which
nature had
endowed her, including large breasts, the fluidal contents of which
would not
take kindly to the proximity of too much airiness, and it was from the
exploitation of those bountiful charms that she would derive her
raison
d'être in life, not from the spirit!
If she persisted in assuming the contrary, too bad!
It would simply show that she was a victim of
heredity, upbringing, and to some extent the times, which, as many
people well
knew, worked to further the development of masculinity or, at any rate,
artificiality at the expense of the more natural feminine element in
life. If she was primarily a victim of
heredity and
upbringing, there wasn't much Nolan supposed he could do about it. But to the extent that she might be a victim
of the times, with her head up in the clouds of a prosperous career, he
thought
it possible she could be disillusioned to a degree which would make her
more
consciously feminine and, consequently, a better companion than she had
occasionally shown herself to be. For although he wasn't entirely destitute of spiritual
ambitions
himself, he found their prevalence in a woman, especially a highly
attractive
and seductive one, both obnoxious and somehow irrelevant. Women weren't put into this world to develop
their spirituality, he reflected, but to safeguard the flesh and thus
keep the
species going. Heaven, when it finally
came, would be an entirely transcendent affair - pure spirit. To live with a well-endowed woman who
regularly practised meditation for long stretches at a time and
imagined that
she was a potential candidate for the transcendental Beyond was simply
to live
with a dupe. Better to disillusion her
if one could. And how better, Nolan
conjectured, than to make her thoroughly conscious of her seductive
power and,
if possible, undo or, at any rate, undermine her past conditioning? True, it might not prevent her from
meditating, but at least it could serve to remind her of her rightful
interests
in life, to make her conscious of the necessity of taking her physical
charms
more seriously. After all, one had to
acknowledge the flesh to some extent, if mankind were to survive.
"Yes, what a pleasing arse
you
have," Nolan commented, once he had studied the development of her
flesh
from the calves to the thighs, and then from the thighs to the ample
contours
of her buttocks. "There are few
women who could be accused of outdoing you,
where
the
extent of its seductive potential is concerned."
"Really?"
Bridget responded, her intonation betraying a calculated degree of
petulant
indifference; for this was usually the point where her husband
terminated his
investigations. Yet no sooner had she
given vent to that ... than she felt a
degree of
concern entering her mind. For, to her
surprise, Nolan had now pulled her legs back to a point where her feet
were
almost level with her ears, having suddenly decided to squat down on
her
upended calves as though to pinion them or, at any rate, her shins to
her
chest. And this is precisely what he
next proceeded to do, so that she was absolutely powerless to move. "Darling, what are
you
doing?" she asked in rhetorical bewilderment. Had
he
gone completely crazy?
But no, Nolan was simply
taking his
investigations a stage further than previously, squatting down on her
calves
while resting a palm on each of her buttocks.
He was scrutinizing her white-pantied
rump
from an even more advantageous vantage-point.
And not only scrutinizing it, but, to her greater surprise,
caressing it,
to boot! She was completely at his
mercy.
"Yes, one can be under no
doubt as to
the quality of your arse, even with your briefs in the way," he
remarked,
ignoring her question. "But one
will have to get rid of them if one wishes to verify the quality of
what lies
beneath." And almost immediately,
before she could say anything, he had seized her briefs in both hands and
begun to
lift them away from her flesh, applying his teeth, in due course, to
that part
of them which had covered her sex.
Before she could protest or inquire just what he thought he was
doing,
he had bitten a hole there and begun to tear them down the middle by
pulling
their material in opposite directions, causing a three-inch rent to
appear. Now he could scrutinize her
sexual cynosure close-up.
"But, Barry, they're my new
panties!" she protested, as the enormity of his fetishistic
eccentricity began to dawn on her.
"I bought them specially for this evening ..."
"Did you indeed?" Nolan
responded
unconcernedly. And, without further ado,
he began to apply his lips to her sex, gently kissing it and
simultaneously
inhaling the musty odour which emanated from its soft skin. There was nothing she could do to prevent
him, for even her arms were pinioned down either side of her chest. He had her exactly where he wanted her at
that moment. After the first few
preliminary kisses, his investigations became a little bolder, as he
proceeded
to probe her opening with his tongue and even - heavens! she
could hardly fail to notice - nibble at her emerging clitoris with his
sharp
front teeth.
Yes, he was exploring her
flesh all right,
and what he had discovered about it was sufficient to preclude him from
changing his opinion of her spiritual pretensions.
It simply confirmed him in it, making him, if
anything, more determined to stick by his guns.
For now that she was beginning to moan softly behind him, to
experience
her womanhood afresh, he could be under no doubt that the lesson he had
to
teach her was sinking in, and that she was responding to it in an
appropriately
sensuous manner. She would continue to
respond to this lesson until he brought it to a thrilling conclusion. And then, well, then it was her duty to
accompany
him out to dinner dressed not in all-white, as it present, but in
all-black -
her proper colour. That was why he had
put a rent in her new panties!
LIVING
IN
THE CITY
Pascal
had
said
that a man would save himself a lot of inconvenience if only he
could
learn to sit still in his room, scorning the outside world as much as
possible. Matthew Ryan, a leading
twentieth-century
writer, had come, through bitter experience, to appreciate the
shallowness and
narrowness of Pascal's oft-quoted dictum.
He had indeed spent a great deal of time sitting still in his
room, but
instead of saving him the suffering that would presumably have come
from
venturing out of it for any length of time, this reclusive habit had
resulted
in his experiencing more pain than ever he would have got from the
outside
world, had he chosen to dwell there in defiance of Pascal.
But he hadn't done so, and for the simple
fact that he was a writer who needed somewhere private to work. He couldn't bring himself to write in the
reference department of the local library, despite the ample provisions
for
sedentary toil, since he would have been exposed to public scrutiny and
become
self-conscious. He would also have been
exposed to the coughings and shufflings,
comings and goings, questions and answers, wailings and slammings,
snivellings and sneezings,
etc.,
which
figured so prominently in the reference room on an average busy
day, whilst from the street he would have heard children crying or dogs
barking
or cars honking or workmen hammering or women shouting or any number of
other
extraneous noises which invaded all departments of the library at
virtually any
time of day.
No, he couldn't force
himself to work in
the local library! There was far too
much noise about and, besides, he needed privacy. Serious
writing
regularly entailed periodic
deliberations, not to mention frequent erasions
or
modifications of unsuitable material. He
would have felt embarrassed to behave in such a way in public,
particularly as
he also needed to take periodic breaks from his work during which time,
usually
amounting to ten minutes, he would simply be sitting there doing
absolutely
nothing. What he did or didn't do in
private, on the other hand, was his own business. And
so,
eschewing the temptation - sometimes
very pressing - to visit the local library or, for that matter, work in
the
local park when the weather was fine, he remained in his room, which
became for
him a kind of study. He had no option but
to remain
there.
Yet, contrary to Pascal's
wisdom, he didn't
escape all that much suffering by remaining put. For
it
was one of the noisiest rooms
conceivable, or, to be more precise, was exposed to the noises made in
other
rooms of the house, as well as to noises issuing from the surrounding
external
environment, as with the library. He kept
the noise level in his own room down to a minimum, but his neighbours
had, for
the most part, no pressing desire to follow suit. Rather,
they
indulged in it to the limit, or
so it often seemed to him. Consequently
the ordinarily difficult task of writing along serious philosophical
lines was
made doubly, nay, trebly difficult by the all-too-frequent prevalence
of
neighbour and environmental noises which, conspiring together, could
only make
for increased suffering. God knows, one
suffered enough from one's work, without having to endure external
noises as
well! But there it was; by sitting still
in his room, Matthew Ryan had discovered the relative and altogether
limited
applicability of Pascal's famous dictum.
He had come to despise it!
But here a discerning reader
may well
wonder why, if he hated noise so much, our writer couldn't find
somewhere
quieter to live. Well, the explanation
here is simply that he couldn't afford
anywhere
quieter to live, that, for want of a sufficient income, he was obliged
to
remain in the relatively inexpensive accommodation in which he was
living. But why, the reader might then
wonder, was he
in want of a sufficient income? Ah, the
explanation there would have to be that he was a writer whose writings
were too
progressive and sophisticated to earn him a sufficient income and
enable him to
move to somewhere quieter. Yes, here was
the paradoxical truth of the matter. For
instead of serving to make him rich or, at any rate, moderately
well-off, his
writings only served to keep him poor, despite what he considered to be
their
intrinsic intellectual value. And they
kept him in poverty because they were too elevated to appeal to the
broad
masses, the bourgeoisie - to all but a comparatively small number of
people who
preferred the pursuit of truth to the indulgence of vice.
They kept him poor because
of their
quality.
Oh, you may well wonder, but
isn't it odd
that work of quality should fail to be appreciated on its true merits
and
granted due recognition? Ah, you clearly
fail to appreciate the nature of contemporary capitalist society if you
wonder
that! You fail to appreciate the fact
that, the commercial requirements of publishers notwithstanding, a
majority of
people are simply incapable of recognizing the merits of a work of real
quality. You haven't realized that the
majority of people in countries like
But, of course, Matthew Ryan
had
appreciated
it
and,
being unable or unwilling to stoop to the popular level, had done
his
best to live with the fact, even if this did mean that he was obliged
to resign
himself to poverty while lesser writers grew wealthy on the stupidity
and
gullibility of the masses, grew rich by producing the kinds of writings
which
he, through spiritual nobility, was utterly opposed
to
producing. All he could do was carry-on
with the kinds of writings which meant something to him and became him. And those writings were largely what kept him
chained to the humble lodgings in which he lived - a prisoner of
circumstances. There was no alternative
fate, since he couldn't alter his style or content, bringing them more
into
line with popular taste, and thereby 'sell out', as the expression
goes, to the
lowest-common-philistine-denominator, producing not literature but
commercial
trash! A man is what he is, and nothing
can change him. If he is destined to be
like Schopenhauer or Nietzsche or Spengler
or Hesse or Baudelaire or even Huysmans,
there is nothing he can do to alter the fact.
One doesn't choose to write for a mass readership; one is either
disposed to doing so or indisposed, as the case may be.
And for anyone with any degree of
above-average intelligence and an appropriately serious temperament,
there is
not the slightest chance of one's being disposed to writing for the
broad
masses. There is not the slightest
chance of one's stooping to the level of adventure stories or thrillers
or
ghost stories or sentimental romances or war novels or science fiction
or
horror or whatever else is usually read by a majority of the reading
public,
which is still a minority - even quite considerable - of the public in
general. One simply can't do it. And consequently one can't expect to make all
that much money from what one does
do - from
work which seems to one of real literary value.
On the contrary, one has no option but to accept the fact that
only a
comparatively small minority of people are going to appreciate it, no
matter
how progressive it may be. Even Lenin
and Marx didn't really write for the masses, but for those who would
lead
them. That is a significant distinction!
And so Matthew Ryan had come
to accept the
harsh reality into which circumstances had inexorably led him,
contriving to
persevere with it as best he could. In a
sense there was no real alternative, short of suicide.
But suicide wasn't something he particularly
wanted to entertain, since death, whilst it might put an end to one's
personal
and professional problems, would hardly serve the world's improvement. For the world could only be improved by people
like him remaining in it, continuing to fight on behalf of quality and
progress, continuing to impose his higher thought upon it.
To kill oneself would simply be to destroy
what opportunity one had, by living in the world, to work for the
general
good. It would be to succumb to the evil
in life, to fall along the way. But the
most enlightened people had to survive if the world was to be improved. They had to continue the war against the
Devil, against everything low and evil, vain and predatory. That was their raison
d'être for being in the world, not simply to enjoy themselves. Only the people or, rather, a broad and
usually youthful stratum of the masses could content themselves with
self-enjoyment, with simple irresponsible hedonism - as Ryan had learnt
to his
cost! How many times, he reflected, had
he struggled with his writings during the day while neighbours played
rock 'n'
roll or pop music on their record-players for hours
on-end! Ah, it was terrible, the extent
of the irresponsibility and inconsideration of these half-witted
people, these
mass types! Irresponsibility and
inconsideration - weren't they the most frequent evils one encountered
in
lodging-house accommodation?
Yes, there could be no doubt
of that fact
in Matthew Ryan's mind! He knew his
neighbours well enough, by now, to know that much!
He hadn't spent years dwelling among them to
be blind or deaf to their abuses. He
knew that, left to themselves, they tended to behave just as they
pleased,
without respect or consideration for anyone else. Indeed,
there
were times when he had felt
obliged to complain about the noise and humbly request that the volume
of
radio, television, record-player, or whatever, be turned down a bit. Sometimes the neighbours responsible for the
noise responded sympathetically. Sometimes not. On
one
occasion, when his next-door neighbour's radio had kept him awake all
night, he
had received as response to his complaint at 4.00am a punch on the face
and a
barrage of highly abusive language that continued until after 4.30. The man had evidently been drinking in the
company of some woman, presumably his latest girlfriend, and, being
desirous to
impress her or at any rate not lose face, had resorted to violence and
bad
language when asked to show some consideration.
Inevitably, Ryan had beat a gentlemanly if, under the
circumstances,
slightly ignominious retreat to his room, since he had no desire to
indulge in
physical violence with the man, who, in any case, was older and
stronger. Physical violence was all very
well when one
was on a par with the average muscular type, but when one was above it
- ah!
there could be no question of one's doing anything but turning the
other cheek
or, if one felt unduly endangered, threatening to sue the man for
assault. After all, it isn't in the
interests or
nature of one who was more spiritually evolved to resort to physical
violence,
like a beast. The only kind of violence
such a person could or should resort to is spiritual violence, like
strong
words or sharp looks, in accordance with his status as a gentleman, or
someone
who, for a number of reasons, was above physical threats.
Spiritual violence was a gentleman's
prerogative, in view of the fact that he shouldn't be expected to
demean or
compromise himself by indulging in physical violence.
Only a 'man of the people' could reasonably
be expected to resort to the latter, since he was less spiritually
evolved and,
consequently, more under the influence of his senses, his emotions, his body. And this
was precisely what Ryan's nearest neighbour had resorted to on the
night in
question!
However, as relations
between them
gradually quietened down again, he had no reason to fear a repeat
performance
of that experience in future. Though he
remained on his guard, so to speak, and refrained from acknowledging
the man
whenever they crossed on the stairs or in the hallway.
It wasn't as though Duggan had become an
enemy to him; just someone to be avoided and despised for his foul
behaviour. An enemy, on the other hand,
had to be
someone closer to oneself, someone whom it was possible for one to hate
rather
than simply despise. His next-door
neighbour was simply one of 'them', meaning an average Joe.
But Matthew Ryan had never
gone out of his
way to quarrel with average people or, more precisely, his neighbours. He had simply wanted to carry on with his
work and forget about them as much as possible.
Yet much as he wished to forget about them, they didn't
necessarily wish
to forget about him, but preferred to remind him, on various occasions,
that he
was a stranger among them, a social outsider.
They would feign polite coughs or make vulgar wretching
sounds or purposely drop things on the floor (his ceiling) or slam
doors and
cupboards. They had a number of ways of
reminding him of his social origins, of the fact that his behaviour was
inherently different from and even superior to theirs.
It didn't matter how socialist or progressive
one considered oneself to be, they didn't care what one read or wrote
or
thought, but based their opinion of one on one's appearance, accent,
general
behaviour, and occupation. Had Marx, Engles, Lenin, or Trotsky been living in similar
circumstances, matters probably wouldn't have been any different. The neighbours would have sensed their
intellectual distinctness and accordingly taken measures to oppose
them, no
matter how humbly. For the difference
between average people and those who are above average is essentially
one of
intelligence, and it matters little whether or not the latter use their
greater
intelligence to improve the former's lot -
at least
not to the former themselves. The fact
that one's behaviour is different suffices to make them suspicious of
one, to
regard one as an enemy or, at any rate, potential threat, whether for
good or
ill.
Thus Matthew Ryan had not
struck-up
friendly relations with any of his neighbours over the years of his
confinement
to this single room. He had simply dwelt
among them. But, in dwelling among them,
he had come to see them in a much clearer light than would have been
possible
had he still been living elsewhere - say, in the comparatively
middle-class
provinces. And in seeing them in such a
light, he had avoided the illusions which usually befell those who saw
them
less clearly, as from a rosy distance in the comparative safety of
their
suburban or provincial environments. He
had seen them as they really were, and that had been enough to convert
him to
socialism. Previously he had been an
anti-bourgeois intellectual. Now he was
a pro-proletarian intellectual. That was
quite a distinction! He had changed from
being a kind of latter-day Baudelaire into a kind of latter-day Lenin. He wanted to transform average people, in
turn, into something higher and better than themselves - in a word, to
make
them noble.
Yes, there could be no doubt
in his mind
that most people had to be transformed and thereby dragged out of their
wretchedness and baseness. How long it
would take to improve the quality of the race, he didn't pretend to
know. But no matter how long, the job had
to be
done if life was to become better (or perhaps one should say less bad). There were basically only two types of people
in the world at present: namely, mob types and nob
types. The raison
d'être of social progress, as he saw it, was to transform all mob
types into
nob types in due course, to raise the
general level
of human life to a point where the highest possible type of nobility
prevailed
in the world at large, and mankind thus became spiritually united in
their
quest for ultimate transformation into supreme being, if not actually
into the
Supreme Being itself. At present,
however, the mob type, which mostly stemmed from the proletariat, was
ranged
against the nob type, which mostly stemmed
from the
bourgeoisie. This latter type was
divisible between those who served themselves, as capitalist
individuals, and
those who served the masses, as socialists; between the hard-core of
traditional bourgeoisie on the one hand, and the revolutionary
supporters of
the proletariat on the other. There was
no such thing, as yet, as a proletarian nob. For at present the only possible kinds of
nobility (using that word in its broadest sense) were either
aristocratic or
bourgeois, with the latter tending to predominate.
But bourgeois nobs
can be in the proletariat's service, just as certain aristocratic ones
were in
the service of the bourgeoisie during the French Revolution, and this
was
certainly also true of many Bolsheviks at the time of the Russian
Revolution. Their nobility was put to
the service of the proletariat rather than predominantly reserved for
themselves, as is generally the case with nobles of a traditional cast. But being a nob
in
the service of the mob doesn't mean that one intends to transform
proletarians
into bourgeoisie in due course, and Ryan was under no illusions
whatsoever on
this point. On the contrary, progress
towards the highest possible type of nobility presupposed the
transformation of
proletarian mobs into proletarian nobs. The base clay, so to speak, of the urban
environment had to be transformed into the highest possible humanity,
not taken
out of its rightful environment and reduced to a nobility compatible
with the
suburbs, if not the provinces. There
could be no going back so far as evolution was concerned.
Willy-nilly, a new
nobility had to be created!
But Matthew Ryan was
essentially a
bourgeois or, at any rate, upper middle-class nob
who, through force of circumstances, had
become stranded in
the city and thereby cut off from his rightful provincial habitat. Being confined to the city, he had not
altogether surprisingly developed proletarian sympathies and become
socially
progressive, become revolutionary rather than remained rebellious, as
he had
been when still a suburban youth. Yet he
hadn't ceased to be intellectually middle-class through enforced
confinement in
the city, as his neighbours often reminded him.
And even if they hadn't reminded him, he would have known it,
known he
was fundamentally a fish-out-of-water or, rather, a deep-sea fish
languishing
in the shallows, which was how he saw the artificial nature of the
urban
milieu, with its scarcity of vegetation.
Yet
that is a relative matter, so let us return to the problem of our
philosopher
vis-à-vis his neighbours again, rather than remain in the realm of
metaphysical
speculation. Nevertheless he was aware
that his immediate neighbours were by no means untypical proletarians,
being of
a sensual disposition which allowed them to take city life more or less
for
granted. They were, he had often
noticed, of a different build from himself - either
muscular
or fleshy rather than thin. They were
what the American psychologist W.H. Sheldon would have classified as mesomorphs or endomorphs rather than ectomorphs,
like himself.
And they had no compunction about regularly visiting the local
pubs or
leaving cigarette butts lying around the house.
Neither did they live alone, without the assistance of friends
or the opposite
sex. Had they done so, Ryan reflected,
life might have been a bit quieter for him.
But, of course, they couldn't be expected to do so, since they
were too
sensual to contemplate the prospect of remaining celibate.
They behaved in a manner which more or less
guaranteed them mental health, free from crippling depressions. Had Ryan stumbled upon a woman worthy of
himself in the neighbourhood, life might not now be so trying for him
either
(assuming he would have been capable of responding to her in a
relatively
natural fashion - a somewhat debatable assumption in view of his
lopsided
spirituality!). But, unfortunately, he
hadn't done so, since the only women he ever saw were proletarians, and
they
could scarcely be expected to appeal to him, a man for whom cultural
and
intellectual company was a must, if he was to have any company at all. An average girl, even when attractive, would
quickly have bored him, having very little in common with him. A woman had to be more than just a sex
partner; she had to genuinely share his tastes and interests. And, by god, there were very few women in his
neighbourhood who could be expected to do that!
No, an above-average man
couldn't be
expected to live with a proletarian. His
father had tried and failed hopelessly, leaving him the victim of a
broken
marriage and a half-witted and fundamentally philistine mother whom he
had
never ceased to despise. He had no
intention of making the same mistake himself!
If he were ever to live with a woman, she would have to be
someone on or
near his own wavelength whom he could respect.
But, at present, he was still hopelessly isolated and therefore
alone. The kind of woman he admired
would probably be living in the provinces, somewhere far from him. And, in all likelihood, she wouldn't be
living amongst alien or hostile types either.
On the contrary, she would be living in accordance with the
dualistic
criteria of a compromise nobility, suburban
and
complete. How would he relate to her,
after all this time cooped-up in the city?
He wondered whether she would be as interested in Marx and Lenin
as
himself. Probably not, he surmised.
A
CANINE
CRIME
Swiftly,
though
with
agitated fingers, old Mrs Gilmour slid back the rusty bolt and
pushed open the door leading to the cellar.
Almost immediately a whining noise erupted from its murky
depths, some
yards below, followed by the scampering of paws and the rattle of a
light
chain. "Alright, Scotty, it's only
me," the old woman murmured, as she switched on the electric light and,
closing the door behind her, began slowly and carefully to descend the
stone
steps, as much from fear of dropping the plate of meat she carried in
her right
hand as because of her age, which was past seventy.
"It's only me, dearie,"
she repeated. For
there
was now much more excitement coming-up from the cellar than at first,
though
this was usually the case. Scotty
was always anxious to see her, especially at meal times.
At last Mrs Gilmour reached
the bottom of
the steps, bearing the meat safely to its goal.
"Shush! Not so much fuss," she protested, stretching out her
free hand to pat Scotty on the nose.
"Ah, how you strain at the leash, hungry one!" she added,
before setting the plate down on the stone floor in front of the
highly-excited
spaniel who, having licked her fingers, straightaway proceeded to
gobble up the
meat, as though he hadn't been fed in days.
"There! There! Take you time," the old woman chided him,
wagging a reproachful finger at the greedy dog.
"You'll get tummy trouble!"
She straightened up and
looked around the
cellar to check that everything was in order.
Yes, there was still plenty of water in Scotty's drinking bowl
and that
was just as well, since too many trips up and down the stone steps were
out of
the question. Over in the far right-hand
corner a little pile of droppings could be discerned, but that, too,
was as it
should be. "No worms, I
trust?" Mrs Gilmour muttered, as she shuffled across to inspect the
dung. "No, nothing to
worry
about, Scotty."
There was a small coal
shovel and a heap of
old newspapers lying nearby and, spreading out one of them on the floor
in her
usual patient fashion, Mrs Gilmour proceeded to shovel the dung onto
the paper,
making sure it was centrally positioned.
Then she wrapped it up into a neat little parcel and carried it
back
with her towards the opposite corner from 'the toilet' (as the old lady
regarded the crapping area), where 'the bedroom', or dog's basket, was
neatly
made up, requiring only the slightest of adjustments to the soft
cushions on
which Scotty generally reposed. It was
from here, through a bracket in the stone wall, that the slender chain
holding
him captive issued, though, being a long chain, his captivity wasn't
confined
to a few feet but embraced virtually the whole of the quite large
cellar, so
that he could move around fairly freely from corner to corner and even
up to
within a yard or two of the stone steps, as he had done today in his
impatience
to greet his benefactress. Occasionally,
however, he would get himself caught-up in the chain and so find life
rather
more constricting than formerly. But, as
a rule, he was intelligent enough to avoid this inconvenience, even
when he
dragged the chain across his bed and ended-up more or less sleeping on
it. Somehow, he had learnt to live with
his
chain, just as he had learnt to live with his solitary confinement,
broken only
by occasional visits from the old woman.
There was nothing he could do to get rid of it, since it was too
strong
to bite in half.
But old Mrs Gilmour couldn't
have risked
letting him off it, especially with the likelihood that, in his
eagerness to
greet her, he might bound up the steps and cause an accident either to
herself
or to the meat while she was painstakingly descending them. An accident could be fatal ... to both dog
and owner alike. And then he might get
out of the cellar altogether, run around the house or out into the
street,
barking at the top of his lungs. That
would be terrible - even worse, if anything, than an accident on the
steps! Obviously Scotty had to be chained
up, as much
for his own good as hers.
Satisfied that his 'bedroom'
was in order,
Mrs Gilmour shuffled back towards the meat-gobbling spaniel who, by
this time,
had consumed most of his dinner. She
almost slipped en
route on a small puddle of urine which, in his excitement,
he must have recently made. Usually he
confined himself to 'the toilet' where things like that were concerned,
but not
invariably, as the old lady was once again finding out, and this time
with some
annoyance.
"Really, Scotty, you are
becoming careless!" she scolded him.
"Why couldn't you have done it against the wall over there in
the
corner?"
But the little dog seemed
relatively
unconcerned by this slight departure from custom and continued to
voraciously
chew his meat, oblivious of the puddle behind him.
It was all right for him anyway; he didn't
have to clean it up. Such an unenviable
task was always done by his owner, who descended the steps once every
two or
three days with a bucket of hot soapy water and a swab in her hands,
expressly
for that purpose. Today, however, she
wasn't scheduled to do so, having put swab to wall and floor the day
before. Yet really, what with a mess
like that in the middle of the cellar, it was almost worth making an
extra
trip, if only to freshen-up the atmosphere a little.
"You'll have to go, Scotty!"
warned Mrs Gilmour, wagging a playfully reproachful finger at the dog,
who had
now turned round to face her. "Go,
do you hear? Like all the
others...." But a feeling of
compassion towards him overcame her with the utterance of this thought,
and she
bent down to stroke his silky back.
Go? How could she ever let him
go? He was the only living creature she
had! No, she wouldn't give in, despite
the hardships he unwittingly inflicted upon her. He
was
a companion to her, after all - more
of a companion, in certain respects, than her late-husband had been in
his last
years, what with his laconic senility.
She would hold on to the droopy-eared creature no matter how
messy he
became. And now he was wagging his tail
and licking her free hand, the one not holding the parcel.
Yes, he was glad to see her and be made a
fuss of, she could tell that easily enough.
But he oughtn't to bark, all the same.... "No, Scotty, not like
that!" she cautioned him, giving him a gentle slap on the nose. "Keep your voice down, for heaven's
sake!"
Obediently the dog quietened
down again
and, taking her leave of him, old Mrs Gilmour slowly began to ascend
the stone
steps, content that she had done her duty.
Perhaps, on the other hand, she would
fetch a
bucket and swab to clean-up the mess below.
She thought it might be a good idea, especially since Scotty had
started
to whine with her departure, and that always saddened her.
He would be pleased to see her again. So
she
left the bolt drawn back when she got
to the cellar door, as though to inform him that her departure was only
temporary. His sharp ears were
accustomed to hearing it slide to-and-fro.
Yet today was going to be
different from
previous days in more than one respect, more different than even Mrs
Gilmour
could have anticipated. For no sooner
had she disposed of the parcel of dung in her private incinerator than
she
heard a loud banging on the front door, which quite startled her. She wasn't expecting any visitors - none, at
any rate, who banged on the door in such a violent fashion, seemingly
oblivious
of the bell. Although her granddaughter
sometimes visited her these days, that young lady was a lot quieter in
her approach,
preferring the bell to physical force.
Perplexed, she hesitated a moment, undecided what to do next. But a repeat banging, coupled to a sustained
ringing, prompted her to take action.
So, curiosity aroused, she shuffled through the kitchen and down
along
the hall corridor towards the front door.
In her bewilderment, she had quite forgotten about the dog!
Nervously she jerked open
the
slightly-warped front door and confronted her callers with a distinctly
puzzled
expression on her wizened face. For
there were in fact two of them, and they were garbed in the dark-green
uniform
of the S12s - the special police. Only
after a number of seconds had elapsed did this fact dawn on her, and
with its
realization a fearful anxiety entered her soul.
"Mrs Gilmour?" the taller of
the
two officers volunteered in the meantime.
"Er,
yes,"
she
at length admitted.
"We have a warrant to search
your
property in response to certain rumours which have been reaching us
through various of your neighbours, who've
heard what they took to
be dog noises issuing from this residence," he informed her.
The shorter and younger of
the two men
said: "You do know that the ownership of dogs is illegal, don't
you?"
"Why, of course!" Mrs
Gilmour
replied, endeavouring to sound as matter-of-fact as possible; though
she felt
anything but relaxed in the circumstances.
"I don't own a dog, I can assure you."
The two officers briefly
exchanged
sceptical glances. "Nevertheless
we'd like to investigate your property for ourselves, if you don't
mind,"
the taller one affirmed, brandishing his search warrant.
"Well, if you really
must...." The old woman stepped
aside to allow the men ingress, and then gently closed the door behind
them. Only now, however, did she recall
that she had left the cellar door slightly ajar, a recollection which
caused
her considerable trepidation, though she did her best to conceal the
fact.
"I think we'd better split
up,
Sean," the first officer said, turning to his colleague.
"I'll take the ground floor, you do
upstairs."
"Right," the latter agreed,
and
he immediately headed along the corridor in the general direction of
the
stairs, which were conspicuous enough from the hallway.
Meanwhile the other officer
had turned into
the first room on the right, which happened to be the living room, and
was
rummaging around in search of incriminating evidence.
"I can assure you that
you're wasting
your time," Mrs Gilmour protested, as she stood watching him from the
door. "The neighbours must have been imagining things."
The officer paid her no
attention, however,
but continued with his search, opening and investigating, by turns, the
living-room's two cupboards.
'As if
I'd keep Scotty in
there!' Mrs Gilmour thought in a huff.
Satisfied that his potential
quarry wasn't
to be found in the living room, the officer next turned his attention
to the
dining room, where he once again began to open cupboards, looking ever
more
suspicious and threatening as he proceeded.
Not surprisingly, Mrs Gilmour made a second verbal protest, but
that,
too, was duly ignored, the man being too engrossed in his search to
have much
time or inclination for her comments.
But he noted, all the same, that her hands were trembling as he
made his
way past her and into the kitchen at the rear of the house. She had ample reasons to be apprehensive now,
especially as his eyes had fallen on its half-open cellar door.
"What d'you
keep down there?" he asked, pointing to it.
The old woman could barely
answer; for a
large nervous lump had suddenly welled-up in her throat, making it
difficult
for her to breathe. She thought she was
on the verge of fainting. "Only
some old b-belongings," she managed to stutter, as the officer's glance
embraced her trembling hands again. But
it was now that her worst fears were about to be realized.
For no sooner had the man pushed the cellar
door wide open than an apprehensive whining emerged from its
nether
depths, accompanied by the sound of a chain being rattled.
There could be no doubt, from his point of
view, that some creature was down there, and, as he slowly descended
the stone
steps, the whining from his prey grew more intense, reaching a
veritable
crescendo with his eventual appearance in front of it.
Poor Mrs Gilmour became paralysed with horror
at the sound of this noise, and could only lean pitifully against the
cellar
door. A large tear detached itself from
each of her grief-stricken eyes and went rolling heavily down her
cheeks. She knew that Scotty was breathing
his last
conscious seconds, that any moment now the officer, disdaining
ceremony, would
train his stunner on the dog, shooting it unconscious on the spot
before it
could turn on him. For a moment the
whining continued as before, and then, suddenly, a couple of piercing
thuds
impacted on Scotty's head, followed by a chill silence which confirmed
her
worst expectations.
She turned away from the
cellar door and
collapsed onto the nearest chair, stricken with grief and remorse. For three years, three long difficult years,
she had held out against the authorities, defying their decree on dogs. And now, unexpectedly, it was all over. Her criminality had been exposed and she
would be obliged to face the consequences.
Liquidation for Scotty was one of them - the worst one. A heavy fine or up to a year's internment was
another. Public disgrace would
inevitably constitute a third, and so on.
There could be no escaping them.
She had known the risks she was taking by defying the law.
Meanwhile the second officer
had come down
from upstairs and, seeing the agonized and pitiful figure of old Mrs
Gilmour in
the kitchen, halted in front of her, just three or four yards from the
open
cellar door. He was on the point of
offering her some sympathy when the sound of his senior colleague
ascending the
cellar steps precluded him from doing so and obliged him, instead, to
hasten to
his aid, principally by procuring the latter the means whereby the limp
animal
could be freed from its chain. The old
woman was in no state of mind to fetch the key herself, so neither of
the men
bothered to ask her. Only when they had
re-emerged from the cellar with their task accomplished did they bother
to take
any notice of her again, and this time it was the younger man who spoke.
"You really shouldn't have
kept the
dog chained up all this time," he remarked, turning to face her. "It was a cruel thing to do."
"Yes,
and cruel to
confine him to the cellar too," the taller man averred in a reproachful
tone.
Mrs Gilmour could barely see
them through
the dense veil of her tears, but she could hear what they said clearly
enough,
even if she couldn't agree with it.
"You saw the anti-canine
film, I take
it?" the senior officer continued after a moment's pause, during which
he
readjusted his grip on the limp spaniel's hind legs.
"I did," she admitted weakly.
"Then there's no excuse, is
there?" he said.
"No," came
her feeble response. For the old lady
had indeed seen the film in question at the time of its release, some
three
years ago, both on television and at the local video centre. There had been no way to avoid seeing it,
since it was televised on a number of occasions on all the major
channels, as
well as screened at all the principal video centres.
She could still remember the negative
impression it had created on her, as though the event had taken place
only
yesterday instead of in 2029. She could
still hear the narrator's voice saying: "In a post-humanist and
transcendentalist society such as ours, where man prides himself on
spiritual
purity, commerce with animals must be discouraged as much as possible,
since
constituting a harmful impediment to moral progress."
Yes, she could still hear
the opening salvo
in the war against dogs. Could also hear
fragments of the commentary that followed, in which dogs were condemned
for the
barbarous noise they made - the loud and often continuous barking which
caused
untold suffering to millions of human beings; for the mess they left on
pavements and roads, making it both hazardous and disgusting for people
to walk
about; for their subconscious stupor, which resulted in their spending
so much
time dozing or sleeping; for being a bad influence on man's spiritual
aspirations, since too readily given to carnal pursuits; for their
aggression
and suspiciousness, and so on ... through a long list of similar
condemnations.
Yes, she could remember
these fragments of
the film commentary quite lucidly, especially now that her reactionary
crime
had been exposed. And not only was it
the commentary that returned to her memory but, even more lucidly,
snippets of
the film itself - a clip of a dog fouling the pavement; another clip,
this time
of a bulldog, lifting one of its hind legs to urinate against a fence;
then a
clip of a very large dog, a Pyrenees mountain dog, she thought it might
be,
barking ferociously from its confined space overlooking an alleyway at
some
passers-by who were doing neither it nor its master's property any
harm; then
another similar clip, but this time of an intellectual or artist who
was
suffering from the incessant barking of a nearby Alsatian and, unable
to
continue with his writing, felt obliged to put hands to ears in a
gesture of
agonized despair; next a clip of a Labrador dozing with head on front
paws and,
juxtaposed with this, a man engaged in the intense alertness of
Transcendental
Meditation; finally, and most poignantly, a clip of a young child whose
face
had been savaged by a Rottweiler and was
now a mass
of scars.
Old Mrs Gilmour saw all
these clips from
the film run through her mind's eye in quick succession, as the two
officers
carried her last companion out to their van at the front of the house,
before
setting off for their next assignment in another part of town. They hadn't bothered to arrest her, since her
age precluded any immediate haste on their part. She
would
receive the date of her trial in
due time. They knew she wouldn't be able
to escape them in the meantime. She was
dependent on the State for her pension, after all.
Her guilt was already recorded. It
was simply a formality to disclose her
sentence in due course, to have the presiding magistrate record the
inevitable
verdict of 'Guilty of dog ownership' and thus, by implication, of
'open-society
reaction'.
Yes, she knew what lay in
store for her and
knew, too, that the person who had informed on her would soon be in
receipt of
a £5,000 reward for his/her social vigilance against 'beast-mongering
enemies
of transcendental progress'. Who could
it have been? she wondered, as she drew a
tissue from
her trouser pocket in order to wipe the remaining tears from her eyes. She very rarely saw the neighbours and had no
way of telling which one of them might have been seduced by the
prospect of a
substantial reward. She couldn't believe
anybody would want to avail of the reward at her expense.
And yet, someone must have betrayed her to
the police for them to know, and that someone could even have been her
granddaughter, who knew all about the dog and could well have spoken to
one of
the neighbours about it one day. It was
a terrible thought, though not one that Mrs Gilmour could completely
rule out.
"No, I can't believe that
Sadie would
have done such a thing," she muttered to herself as, with a bucket of
hot
soapy water and a swab in her still-trembling hands, she staggered over
to the
cellar door and began her painful descent of the stone steps with the
intention
of cleaning-up the mess down on the cellar floor, which doubtless now
included,
besides urine, some of Scotty's saliva.
"It can only have been one or other of the next-door
neighbours," she added, as tears came
welling-up
in her eyes once more. "Someone who
begrudged me what little pleasure I had left in life!"
A few days later a
State-registered letter
arrived at Mrs Gilmour's residence, summoning her to attend court on
the
Wednesday of the following week. The day
in question came and went, however, but Mrs Gilmour had made no
appearance in
court. Surprised, the police authorities
sent the two offices previously involved in the case along to her
house, in
order to find out why she hadn't attended.
There was no answer to the door when they knocked, so they
forced a
front window and let themselves in. But
she wasn't to be found in any of the rooms of the
house,
neither upstairs nor down. Only
when they descended the cellar steps, however, did they find what they
were
after, though hardly what they had expected!
For the old woman was there all right, but
she was
lying on her back at the bottom of the steps, stone dead. Nearby her a bucket lay
on its side, empty except for the presence, half-in-and-half-out, of a
dry
swab. There wasn't a trace of liquid.
"She must have had an
accident on the
steps, Sean," the senior of the two officers concluded, as he bent over
the lifeless face of the old woman.
"Indeed!" confirmed the
other,
who noticed traces of dried blood there.
"Slipped on something, by the look of it."
AN
EVENING
WITH PAUL KELLY
Paul
Kelly
had definite ideas about art and even about artists,
especially twentieth-century ones. Indeed, he had definite ideas about a variety
of subjects, including women. Trudi Keenan was beginning to find this out at
first-hand
as she sat in an armchair, a few yards in front of him, and listened to
the flow
of his definite ideas with a combination of bemusement and admiration. To her left, in another armchair, the artist
Donald Connors was also listening to it, though he had heard much of it
before
and appeared to be showing signs of impatience with his principal guest. On his left, in the only remaining armchair,
Patricia Connors was also listening to the oracle's pronouncements,
though, to
all appearances, with greater attentiveness than her husband. For the subject at issue was indeed women,
and the two females present were, naturally enough, more interested in
this
than in anything else, especially since they were both relatively young
and not
unconscious of their attractiveness.
"As a rule," Kelly was
saying,
"women are more given to appearances than to essences, since of a
predominantly sensuous disposition.
Their principal duty in life, as they see it, is to keep the
species
going, not to direct that species on its course towards the
transcendental
Beyond. That, on the other hand, has to
be done by the leading males, who pioneer mankind's advance towards the
spiritual culmination of evolution.
Women, by contrast, uphold the sensual aspects of life, and may
consequently be said to stem from the Diabolic Alpha rather than, like
men, to
aspire towards the Divine Omega. And
because they stem from the Diabolic Alpha, which, in the guise of
stars, is the
ultimate negativity, the ultimate agonised doing, they have a
like-capacity for
suffering, for negative living. One is
almost tempted to say that they prefer negative emotions to positive
ones;
that, contrary to masculine procedures, they live for their sorrows."
There was a titter of
disrespectful
laughter from Trudi, the art critic's
latest
girlfriend, who found the idea slightly amusing, in spite of its
inherent
absurdity. Mrs Connors, however, had a
more serious response on offer.
"It's probably true to
suggest that we
women do have a greater capacity for suffering than men," she conceded,
"and that we bear-up to our trials and tribulations with greater
fortitude, on the whole, than you do.
Very few of us take to the bottle when we're under strain,
whereas most
men would doubtless go to pieces under adverse circumstances, if they
didn't
have some compensatory stimulant or woman to lean upon."
"That's putting it a little
too
cynically," Kelly averred, frowning slightly, "though there's
certainly an element of truth in what you say.
It isn't very often, at any rate, that one encounters women who
are
down-and-out. They appear to float
better on life than men, to be buoyed-up on the current of life, which,
considering they support and sustain it, needn't particularly surprise
us. And this is because they're closer, in
their
physical and emotional constitutions, to the sun than men and are
therefore
more given to the apparent, the sensual, the stable, the natural. They burn up internally, like the sun, with
negative emotions - doubts, worries, second-thoughts, fears, hatreds,
resentments, suspicions, et cetera., and
are
consequently more prone to bad temper than men."
"One would think we were all
born
masochists!" Trudi interjected, casting
her
fellow-female a vaguely conspiratorial glance.
"Or sadists," said Mrs
Connors.
"Certainly pessimists," Mr
Connors volunteered, as he emerged from a long brown-study and
proceeded to
light himself a mild cigarette. "Women are generally more pessimistic
or, depending on your viewpoint, realistic about things than men."
"That's true enough," Kelly
confirmed, nodding briefly.
"They're less easily swayed by imagination, primarily because
they
have less of it anyway."
"And would you say that
they're more
disposed to sunbathing than men?" Trudi
inquired
of her boyfriend.
"Yes, on the whole, I
would," he
answered. "Sunbathing for women is
a form of sun-worship, a kind of pagan communion between the absolute
supporter
of all life on this planet and the relative supporters of it. Of course, men sunbathe too.
But I'd say that women do so more shamelessly
and enthusiastically, if not thoroughly, as well. It's
almost
a form of lesbianism they indulge
in. For, although the sun isn't strictly
female, still less feminine, it has a sensual essence which corresponds
to the
essence of woman, using the term 'essence' in the sense of fundamental
nature
rather than, as in a narrowly philosophical sense, with an implication
of
spirit or, better, soul. Thus while
women, in relation to this latter context, may be said to reflect
appearances
over essences, their essence, in the former context, is one of
sensuality."
"How
confusing!"
Mrs Connors objected, screwing-up her brows in disbelief.
"You philosophers, with your paradoxical
logic, are all the same!"
"Nonsense! It's perfectly clear to anyone with a lucid
intelligence," the oracle retorted half-humorously.
"The essence of woman is drawn to the
sun, enabling women to soak-up more sensuality from its powerful rays
and
possibly draw additional emotional strength from it.
Their natural sensuality is toned-up, as it
were, by prolonged contact with the sun, and accordingly they're
assisted to
downward self-transcend in subconscious stupor."
"A quite pleasant form of
relaxation," Mrs Connors declared, unscrewing her brows.
"So it might be," Kelly
conceded. "But it's hardly
conducive to the furtherance of the spiritual life!
A time will come, I feel sure, when all forms
of sunbathing will be considered undesirable and, consequently, no-one
be
encouraged to spend time lying around on beaches or in parks or
wherever. Instead, they'll be encouraged
to turn their
back on the sun, so to speak, and get on with the infinitely more
important
task of developing their spirit, of cultivating the godly."
"Isn't he a spoilsport?" Trudi objected, turning to Patricia.
"A religious zealot would be
nearer
the truth!" the latter sneered in a deprecatory tone-of-voice.
"Not quite," Kelly
responded,
blushing faintly. "But I do have
certain theories concerning the future path of evolution which I'd be loathe to contradict, as Donald well knows."
"Indeed I do," the artist
confirmed,
his lighted cigarette smouldering in his lap.
"And, for the most part, eminently credible
ones,
too! I go along with them to the
extent I'm able. For if we're eventually
destined to attain to the transcendental Beyond, then
it stands to reason that we'll have to clamp down on sunbathing at some
point
in the future. One can't indulge in
solar sensuality and develop one's spirit at the same time! Dualism is gradually being superseded, after
all."
"So it is," Kelly affirmed,
anxious to return to the philosophical limelight again.
"There can be only one way forward, and
that's up through the spirit, not down through the flesh.
Even the days of traditional marriage are
numbered; though your marriage would seem to be one of the few
exceptions, Don."
"Thank God for that!" Mrs
Connors
exclaimed on her husband's behalf.
"Frankly, God has nothing to
do with
it," averred Kelly, who was carried away by the momentum of his
argument. "For the simple reason
that, conceived in any ultimate sense, God is in the making, not an
already-existent fact. No, it's the
Devil, the influence of the sun and doubtless of stars in general,
which
cements marriages together. Love is a
sensual phenomenon which is strongest where nature's influence is
greatest,
where there's a profusion of sensuous plant-life. Once
one
becomes accustomed to living in a
big city for any length of time, however, one's capacity for love, or
falling
in love, is weakened and eventually reduced to a point where it either
ceases
to exist at all or only exists on a comparatively weak level - a level
not
guaranteed to cement marriages together for any length of time! For, without a strong sensuous influence,
love begins to wither in the individual, to grow faint and fade away."
"How
terrible!"
Trudi opined.
"I don't agree," Kelly
rejoined
coolly. "For there's a great deal
of difference between sensual love and spiritual love, between what is
generally termed 'being in love' with someone and actually aspiring,
through
spiritual love, towards the eventual establishment of supreme
being. Only the latter kind of
love can eventually take man to his ultimate destiny in the bliss of
transcendent spirit, not the former, which, by contrast, would keep him
chained
to the flesh, just as it keeps one chained to a particular individual
when
powerful. But these days, however, it's
much less powerful than formerly and therefore marriages increasingly
tend
towards separation or divorce. The
artificial influence, as it were, of the urban environment is a major
factor in
the growth-rate of divorce. Couples come
unstuck more easily because the emotional cement which formerly bound
people
together is somewhat weaker or thinner than it used to be, and
consequently
they separate."
"I still think it's
terrible," Trudi declared, unable to
overcome her own feminine
qualms. "The cities shouldn't have
been allowed to become so large in the first place."
"Nonsense!"
Kelly retorted. "If they weren't so
big, we would still be nature's victims, as of old.
Their very size is what guarantees us our
future salvation in the transcendental Beyond.
By contributing so significantly to the fall of sensual love,
they have
made the further development of spiritual love possible, and thus real
evolutionary progress."
"But how can the break-up of
so many
marriages be equated with evolutionary
progress?"
Mrs Connors protested, coming to the assistance of her fellow female. "I just don't see your point."
"Neither do I,"
Trudi confessed.
Ah, it was difficult
explaining things to these
people! Paul Kelly was accustomed to
encountering such incredulous opposition these days.
It was the price one paid for being so
radical.
"Well, let's just say that
the age is
becoming less dualistic and correspondingly more post-dualistic," he at
length
replied, doing his best to sound reasonable, "and that the demise of
marriage is but one of several manifestations of this changing
state-of-affairs. Dualism is being
outgrown, and consequently men and women no longer live together on
quite such
a harmonious or complacent basis, on the whole, as previously. Sensual love is no longer binding them to one
another, and so they wander between relationships more freely than ever
before. They aren't enslaved to the
sensual to the
degree they used to be in the heyday, as it were, of marriage, but can
develop
a spiritual bias independently of matrimonial ties.
Women are becoming masculinized
to a point where many of them no longer desire to lead a traditional
domestic
or maternal lifestyle, and, by a like-token, men are becoming even more
masculinized, even more intellectually and
spiritually
disposed. Consequently, the old dualism
between the sexes is disappearing, disappearing, one might say, into
the cult
of unisex, where women dress in pants of one sort or another, like men. Women are increasingly being regarded as
'lesser men' rather than simply as women, like traditionally."
Mr Connors smiled to himself
and vaguely
nodded his head. "Perhaps the
growth of homosexuality this century is another manifestation of this
incipiently post-dualistic state-of-affairs?" he suggested, while
stubbing-out the butt of his cigarette in a glass ashtray.
"Homosexuality has become a fairly
commonplace aspect of contemporary life, hasn't it?"
"So it would appear," Kelly
admitted, ignoring the women's derogatory sniggers.
"Which just goes to
show that sexual relations between men have acquired, in the light of
post-dualistic criteria, a respectability they wouldn't otherwise have
had and
certainly didn't have as recently as Oscar Wilde's time. They are somehow compatible with the
masculine bias of modern civilization."
"A bias which you apparently
don't
share," Trudi commented, focusing her
attention
closely upon him.
"No, not as regards
homosexuality," he confessed, blushing slightly in the process. "Maybe that's because I'm too much of an
old-fashioned dualist in certain respects, and am therefore susceptible
to the
charms of women who, like yourself, are both very attractive and highly
intelligent."
This time it was Trudi's
turn to blush, and she did so generously, flattered, as she was, by her
admirer's opinion.
"But apparently not so
susceptible to
them that you'd be capable of falling deeply in love and living with
the same
woman for the rest of your life," Mrs Connors observed in a suitably
ironic tone.
"That's something I can't
say for
sure," Kelly responded.
"Though since, with due respect to Trudi,
I'm
not
deeply in love at present, I incline to that assumption, yes. It remains to be seen whether I shall ever
get married at all."
"But you're not opposed to
marriages
breaking up," Mrs Connors rejoined, pursuing her old course at the
expense, seemingly, of evolutionary progress.
It
was
a
difficult allegation to answer, what with a married couple and a new
girlfriend sitting in front of him, but Kelly made a brave attempt at
doing so,
nonetheless. "On a personal level,
the tendency of so many modern marriages to collapse is bound to bring
pain and
suffering to the people concerned," he admitted, "and thereby evoke a
degree of sympathy in us. But on an
impersonal level the tendency of couples to separate can only be viewed
as a
good in the long run, because it testifies to a reduction in the
traditional
influence of egocentric possessiveness and personal selectivity, not to
mention
sensual enslavement to a particular person.
'What God has joined together let no man put asunder', say the
priests at
marriage ceremonies. But to what are
they really referring by this word 'God'?
I'll tell you what: to the Devil, the Cosmos, the Creator -
anything but
supreme
being. God the Father is one thing, God
the Holy Spirit quite another! Most
people apparently don't yet appreciate that fact. But,
increasingly
these days, what the Devil
has joined together men are putting asunder, which shows that
they're at
last making some real spiritual progress in life by turning more
towards the
eventual creation of a supreme level of being and away from worship of
the
creative Almighty. Of course, sensual
love is still to some extent present, but in a growing number of cases
it isn't
strong enough to keep couples together for the whole of their lives, so
they
separate - some disillusioned by marriage, others in the false hope of
finding
a stronger love elsewhere."
"If you fail once you
continue to
fail," Mrs Connors averred, her dislike of
Kelly's argument no less intense.
"Not necessarily," he
countered. "Though
failure in marriage may well lead to success in the cultivation of the
spirit
or in intellectual progress. One
needn't look upon the break-up of so many marriages only from a
negative
point-of-view. There are degrees to
everything, and this may well be but a stage on the road to complete
liberation
from the flesh and, hence, all forms of sexual activity - a liberation
which
will be reached when men attain to the culmination of evolution in
discarnate
spirituality, and thus become experiencers
of Eternal
Life. They're a long way from that
blissful state-of-affairs at present, as you'll doubtless be aware. But the overcoming of dualism is an aspect of
their struggle towards it."
"And hence the overcoming of
women," Mrs Connors concluded huffily, a look of defiance in her dark
eyes.
"Yes, there would seem to be
no other
course," Kelly confirmed, prompted by the integrity of his genius to
draw
the inevitable conclusion as to what evolutionary progress ultimately
signified. "We live, as I've
already said, in a post-dualistic society, and this society can only
become
even more post-dualistic in future, as we draw closer to the divine
culmination
of evolution. As a woman, you may not
like the idea, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be happening. What happens must happen, for only through
evolutionary progress towards the eventual creation of a supreme level
of being
does life acquire meaning and justification.
As a stasis of perpetual dualism it would be absolutely
meaningless,
futile beyond words! Only continuous
change lends it meaning and so justifies our presence here. But continuous change - what does that
signify? It signifies - does it not? - the outgrowing of traditional patterns of
behaviour and the
acquirement, in their place, of new patterns.
It means a time must come when what was once justified is no
longer
relevant but anachronistic, harmful to further growth, and thus subject
to
removal. Marriage, believe it or not, is
no exception to this general rule. It
isn't something that could or should last for ever, like Eternal Life,
but
something, on the contrary, that must give way to its logical successor
in the
progress of evolution - possibly to some communal sexual arrangement
or, as is
certainly the case at present, to a freer exchange of partners. And this in turn will give way to what stands
above it on the next rung, so to speak, of the evolutionary ladder -
namely to
the widespread introduction of artificial methods of reproduction,
reminiscent
of Brave
New
World, which will result in a much greater freedom
from the sensual. Eventually, life in
the highest civilization will be so post-dualistic ... that there won't
be any
women in existence at all, since they'd be superfluous and a temptation
to
dualistic regression. Men will simply
dedicate themselves to the important task of getting to the spiritual
culmination of evolution via the path of Transcendental Meditation."
"Not forgetting that such a
task will
be facilitated by technology," Mr Connors interjected, recalling what
he
had already learnt from Kelly on a previous occasion.
"Men will, by then, have been elevated
to the status of so many meditating brains supported on artificial
bodies, as
it were, with artificial methods of keeping the brain alive, and most
especially the new, or higher, brain."
"Absolutely," Kelly
concurred,
casting his artist friend an affirmative nod.
"The very thought of it
makes me
cringe," Trudi confessed, screwing-up her
facial
features in a demonstration of disgust.
"It does me too," Mrs
Connors
admitted, following suit.
"Naturally," Kelly rejoined. "But that's primarily because, as women,
you're fundamentally appearance-over-essence, and thus more aligned
with the
sensual, the bodily, the apparent. You're society's born conservatives, opposing
change to the extent you can. You're
largely resigned to the world as it is, since the beauty of your
natural bodies
is quite acceptable to you. Needless to
say, you wouldn't wish to be deprived, by advanced technology, of your
physical
assets. You put your chief pride in life
in your appearance, not your essence, or spirit, which is no small
wonder, since
it's comparatively negative in relation to a man's spirit.
Only men, as a rule, give precedence to the
spirit, and you're a long way from being a man, even if both of you are
somewhat masculinized females, like so
many women
these days, since intellectualized to an unprecedented extent. But no matter how far evolution masculinizes you, it can't literally turn you
into men,
changing the charge, as it were, of your spirit from negative to
positive. Even the most
spiritually-advanced women are
still fundamentally female, with appearance-over-essence their chief
characteristic. They're still slaves to
their bodies, proud, if attractive, of their physical appearance, which
plays a
dominating role. So how could they be
expected to approve of a technological strategy designed to free men
from the
flesh to an extent which resulted in their becoming
artificially-supported
meditating brains? How could they
approve of the supersession of the natural
body by an
artificial one? They couldn't."
"Indeed not!" Mrs Connors
exclaimed. "This whole idea strikes
me as monstrous, if not positively insane!"
"That's how it strikes you,"
Mr
Connors
remarked, speaking directly to his wife for the first time all
evening. "But it doesn't strike our
genius friend here like that, he who has a much more objective and
masculine
view of it."
"To be sure," Kelly
confirmed,
blushing slightly for the compliment paid him by a man who, in his own
sphere
of creativity, wasn't entirely bereft of genius himself!
Indeed, he might even have had as much genius
as Piet Mondrian,
a
painter
whom Kelly regarded, in common with many others, as the foremost
artist of his
generation. "Yet because it will
strike the average female as monstrous, it stands to reason that women
won't be
expected to follow the male lead," he continued. "It
stands
to reason that any society in
which such advanced technology was to be found could only be supermasculine, with essence triumphing over
appearance to
a quite incredible extent. Women,
however, would have been gradually phased-out of society in the
meantime,
which, to some extent, is already happening, as the masculinization
of the female well attests. Only men
could be expected to continue evolving, in accordance with their
spiritual
predilections. And this evolution would
inevitably entail their sacrificing physical appearance to essence,
which could
only be in their deepest spiritual interests.
For women, on the other hand, such a sacrifice would be their
greatest
loss and destruction as females.
However, have no fear! They won't
be obliged to make it. Only men will
attain to the culmination of evolution, women having been genetically
phased-out of society some time before."
"It's mad, Paul!" Mrs
Connors
protested, unable to reconcile herself to the transcendental scope of
Kelly's
mind. "How can you say such a
thing?"
"Modesty forbids me to
confess,"
the art critic replied facetiously.
"Yet the fact is that a view which tends to endorse a perpetual
stasis of behaviour or custom would be madder, absolutely so! Life, remember, is change, and if it's to
continue a time must come when women cease to exist and men are
elevated to the
quasi-divine status of artificially-supported brains.
Evolution can't come to a halt in front of
the natural body, like a horse in front of a solid wall.
It must lead to man's overcoming the body and
progressing beyond it, progressing to his ultimate salvation in the
spirit. For the path of evolution, I
need hardly remind you, leads away from nature, whether internal or
external,
towards the self. And, in leading away
from nature, it can only lead towards the supernatural.
Progress is a fact, whether or not you
approve of it. The modern city has
enabled us to push external nature away from ourselves to an extent
quite unprecedented
in the history of our evolution. The
future city will doubtless enable us to progress still further in the
direction
of the supernatural, by causing us to push nature back even more, to
thin out
whatever of the natural is left in the city.
Eventually, as recipients of the highest possible civilization,
we'll
completely escape nature's influence and attain to the transcendental
culmination of evolution, attain to an area of space which will be at
the
farthest possible remove from the sensuous influence of stars, and
which
traditional idealists call Heaven. Yes,
such a Heaven will surely come about, though not, however, following
death, as
Christians have believed, but at the climax of evolution, following the
post-human millennium - a period of the highest civilization which will
have
been raised on the solid foundations of world socialism.
Yes, socialism coupled to transcendentalism
will lead to the millennial Beyond, and that, in turn, to the
evolutionary
culmination of life in supreme beingfulness. That will be a time worth looking forward to,
believe me!"
"Perhaps for people like
you,"
Mrs Connors corrected sarcastically.
"Naturally," Kelly admitted,
offering her a faintly ingratiating smile.
"But I can sympathize with you to some extent, especially in light of my earlier remarks about women."
"Can you indeed?" Mrs
Connors
responded, and, turning towards Trudi, she
said:
"Isn't he kind?"
"Awfully," agreed the
latter, who
was privately of the opinion that, despite his considerable
intelligence, Paul
Kelly was a conceited jerk whose view of evolution, while broadly
credible in a
paradoxical kind of way, was woefully misguided in regard to gender,
and just
another example of male chauvinism. It
wasn't
women who would be left behind, she reflected, but men!
PROSPECT
OF
A CHANGE
It
was
a
vertical canvas that the artist Brendan Martin had brought to show me,
and I
must confess, when I saw it, to being puzzled by its content. I had never seen anything remotely resembling
it before, and could scarcely contain my astonishment.
"Well, what does it
signify?" I
asked him, as he stood back from the canvas in question to permit me an
unimpeded view of a spectacle which, at first sight, resembled a tower,
but
was, in fact, three portraits - one above the other.
"You doubtless recognize the
portraits, Mr Deasy," he crisply remarked.
"Of course," I answered,
nodding
affirmatively. "But why are they
arranged in a vertical order?"
"Ah, that's the whole crux
of the
matter!" Brendan Martin replied.
"They're arranged in what I consider to be a hierarchical
fashion."
"Oh
really?"
I responded, somewhat baffled. "You
mean in order of artistic importance?"
"Yes, one could put it like
that," he admitted, smiling briefly.
"Picasso at the bottom, Dali in the middle,
and Mondrian at the top."
I drew a deep breath and
knitted my
brows. For the life of me, I still
couldn't figure it out. Yet I had to
admit, as I scrutinized the individual portraits in greater detail,
that they
were remarkable images of the actual men, done with virtually
photographic
exactitude. "But why do you
conceive of them in that order?" I at length asked.
"Why with Picasso, whom many people
regard as the greatest artist of the twentieth century, at the bottom?"
Brendan Martin smiled anew
and advanced a
pace towards the canvas. "You
perceive this background variation to each of the portraits?" he
responded, pointing out the black background to the Picasso portrait,
the grey
background to the Dali one, and, finally, the white background to the
portrait
of Mondrian.
As I made no objection, he continued: "Well, this serves to
explain
and justify the existing hierarchy. The
black stands for the subconscious and hence, by implication, paganism;
the grey
stands for the ego, or conscious mind, and hence, by implication,
Christianity;
and the white stands for the superconscious
and
hence, by implication, transcendentalism.
Each artist is equated with a specific religious tendency and
arranged
accordingly. Consequently, Picasso is
regarded
as the least of the trio and Mondrian as
the
greatest, while Dali comes in-between."
"Extraordinary!" I
exclaimed,
scarcely able to believe my ears.
"You mean Picasso, for all his inventiveness, must rank lower
than the
others because his art often reflects a pagan or subconscious bias?"
"Absolutely, Mr Deasy,"
the artist confirmed. "Of course,
none of them was wholly one thing or another.
But they certainly reflected, in their different ways, a
predominating
psychological bias one way or another, which justifies me, I believe,
in
generalizing them into these respective categories."
I knitted my brows more
deeply with the
reception of this rather esoteric information and requested him to
expand on
it, to go into the subject in more detail.
As it happened, I had no pressing engagement that afternoon and
was
accordingly in the mood to be instructed.
"You see," he complied,
"Picasso was very much an artist of the
"And not only his
paintings," I
impulsively volunteered, mindful of his romantic proclivities.
"Quite," Brendan Martin
agreed,
smiling wryly. "He was also pretty
famous as a lover. However, to confine
ourselves to his work, we may conclude that sensual influences played a
significant role in it. He was by no
means averse to depicting sensual women but, on the contrary, ranks as
one of
the most prolific nude-portrait painters of the century.
Admittedly, he didn't paint women in the most
literal or realistic of terms, since he was, after all, a modernist in
regard
to technique. But he rarely scorned an
opportunity to emphasize their sexuality when the body was at stake. He was virtually a pornographer.
"However, women constituted
only one
aspect of his art, if a by-no-means insignificant aspect," Brendan went
on, following a brief pause. "The
sun also played an important role in it, as did the bullfight and
ancient Greek
mythology, thereby confirming a pagan bias.
Furthermore, he was drawn to African and primitive art, which
may
likewise be equated with the pre-egocentric.
Granted that his technique was, in its general sketchiness and
penchant
for expressionist distortion, decidedly modern, or post-egocentric, his
themes
and subject-matter were mostly pre-egocentric in nature, giving to his
work an
unmistakably pagan slant. Sex, sun,
food, animals, landscape, wine, blood, bodies, primitivism - these are
the
constantly-recurring Camusian motifs, one
could say,
of his art, betraying his subconscious, and hence sensual, leanings."
"Yeah," I conceded, nodding
once,
"I think I'll have to agree with you there. He
was,
as you say, a true Mediterranean
type.... Yet what of Dali, who was also a Spaniard
but,
according to your assessment, a different psychological proposition
than
Picasso?"
"Well, Mr Deasy,"
the artist responded, showing obvious signs of impatience to explain,
"Dali was essentially a less sensual and consequently more spiritual
painter whose work qualifies, on the whole, for the egocentric rather
than the
pre-egocentric category. His work often
suggests a compromise between the subconscious and the superconscious,
which is why I consider it fundamentally Christian, and hence dualistic. He considered himself to be artistically
Picasso's superior, and so, I believe, he was, although his technique,
being
classically-orientated and profoundly articulate, is, as I say,
egocentric
rather than post-egocentric, and therefore somewhat anachronistic by
truly
contemporary standards. Nevertheless his
subject-matter, especially when surreal, is distinctly post-egocentric,
so he
can't be dissociated from the moderns and equated with bourgeois
tradition. His work is essentially
avant-garde, but of the second rather than the first type - a looking
down on
the subconscious from the vantage-point of the superconscious,
instead
of
an endorsement of the subconscious for its own sake and, as far as
possible, on its own terms. Picasso's
work, particularly when Expressionist, also falls partly into this
second
category, but by no means to the same extent or with the application of
a truly
egocentric technique. He is generally a
proponent of the first type of avant-garde art."
"I see," seemed to be the
appropriate response here, though, in truth, I was finding it difficult
to
assimilate the logic of Brendan Martin's contentions at the speed he
was
talking. A little slower, and it might
have sounded clearer to me. However,
since he was fully wound-up and eager to enlighten me, I bid him go
ahead with
an explication of Mondrian's painterly
status.
"Piet
Mondrian," he happily obliged, "was a true
child
of the North, with a puritan temperament.
He scorned the sensual to an extent unprecedented in the entire
history
of painting, by concentrating on a spiritualized art relevant, as he
saw it, to
a metropolitan age. Instead of betraying
an egocentric compromise in the manner of Salvador Dali, who even when
dealing
with transcendental themes - as in various of his late-period works -
applies
an egocentric technique, Mondrian
approaches art from
the vantage-point of the superconscious,
in which a
post-egocentric ultra-simplistic technique is put to the service of a
truly
transcendent art and, objectively considered, the greatest and most
spiritually-advanced works of twentieth-century painting are produced -
works
appertaining to the third category of the avant-garde.
With Mondrian, one
is in the post-egocentric realm in both technique and
subject-matter, which is why his paintings must rate above those of his
two
great contemporaries, who remain accountable to the subconscious. Consequently he is the greater artist, the
one who deserves to be at the top."
"So that's it!" I exclaimed,
casting an appreciative eye on the tall painting before me and, in
particular,
the Mondrian segment, with its white
background
symbolic of the superconscious. He was evidently the man whose art stood
closest to the Holy Spirit. For I could
now recall something Brendan had once said to me about the greatest art
being
that which most approximates, in concept, to the pure spirituality of
the
millennial Beyond, thereby encouraging us to focus on our essential
destiny
rather than on our apparent, or mundane, one.
Appearance and essence were diametrically antithetical entities,
he had
told me - the former appertaining, as phenomenon, to the temporal, the
latter,
as noumenon, to the eternal.
Now that I remembered this conversation, it
seemed appropriate to draw on it in relation to Mondrian,
whose
art
was evidently essential rather than apparent, and thus inherently
religious.
"Indeed, Mr Deasy,"
the artist confirmed, a twinkle of spiritual satisfaction momentarily
illuminating his dark-blue eyes.
"Transcendental art pertains to the essential, or spiritual, and
is
consequently diametrically antithetical to Socialist Realism, or that
which
pertains to the apparent in contemporary urban, industrial, proletarian
terms. There's no official
transcendental art in socialist countries traditionally, because such
countries
are upholders of a materialistic one-sidedness in loyalty to an
ideology which
pertains to the temporal rather than the eternal. Only
in
the West has this kind of art been
regularly produced."
"As I well know," I
admitted,
briefly nodding in apparent sympathy.
"Western artists are often given to the ideal these days, which,
in
a society which doesn't profess any official allegiance to dialectical
materialism, is only to be expected.
However, where artists like Dali and Picasso are concerned,
surely it's
truer to say that they're more given to distorting the real than to
actually
pursuing an idealistic path?"
"To be sure," Brendan Martin
conceded, smiling. "Particularly
Picasso, whose early Cubist and later semi-Cubist portraiture provides
a
conclusive illustration of the fact.
Dali, on the other hand, is less prone to distortion in his
later, or
mystical, works, though his idealistic aspirations are always depicted
in
realist or semi-realist terms, and are accordingly restricted in scope. Unlike Mondrian,
he
doesn't apply an abstract or truly idealistic technique to them, which
is why I
described him as fundamentally an egocentric dualist.
His best work is undoubtedly great, but it
stands lower in the evolutionary hierarchy than Mondrian's. Men aren't equal, after all, but decidedly
heterogeneous in their various psychological or intellectual
constitutions. The gap between Picasso
at one extreme and Mondrian at the other
... is
really quite immense in regard to lifestyle and artistic production. One can hardly believe they lived in the same
century, as artistic contemporaries. Picasso's
most
sensual
works and Mondrian's most
spiritual ones
are so different, so unrelated, as to suggest that their creators lived
virtually centuries apart - the one in pagan times, the other in a
transcendental age. The difference is
really quite astounding!"
"Yes, I suppose it is," came my half-hearted agreement.
"Mondrian
probably wouldn't have deigned to shake Picasso's hand, had they met."
"Well, I'm not too sure
about that, Mr
Deasy," rejoined Brendan Martin in doubtful
vein. "But he certainly wouldn't
have approved of the latter's art, what with its uninhibited
sensuality."
"No, I guess not," I
chuckled,
amused by the thought of how Mondrian
would probably
have reacted to the garish spectacle of Picasso's most unabashedly
sensuous
paintings! "Yet
what of Dali?" I asked.
"How would he have reacted to Mondrian's
work? You've already told me, in so many
words, that he didn't have a particularly high opinion of Picasso."
"Quite so," Brendan Martin
confirmed, as he took a step nearer to his own canvas in order to peer
more
closely at the Dali segment. "If,
in Dali's estimation, Picasso didn't produce a single masterpiece ...
owing to
the sketchy and distorted nature of his work, then Mondrian's
art struck the egocentric Dalian
imagination as too
sparse, too barren, too simplistic, too ... nothing, to use a word he
coined
himself as a pun on Mondrian's Christian
name, Piet, which became Niet, thereby
suggesting nothing, the void. Nyet of course means 'no' in Russian."
"Yes," I responded, and
suddenly
burst out laughing at the unintentional clash of opposites my response
had
engendered! Brendan found this slightly
amusing too, and then, returning to sanity, suggested that there was no
need to
speculate on the likeliest response Dali's art would have evoked in Mondrian's mind, since it was virtually a
foregone
conclusion that lack of appreciation would have been mutual.
"But what d'you
think of my art?" he asked, having said as much as he wanted to say
about
theirs.
I hesitated a moment before
committing
myself to an answer, screwing-up my brows in an effort to bring greater
concentration to bear on the subject.
"Hmm, I quite like it, on the whole, though I'm still slightly
bemused by its originality. In fact, I'm
surprised that you've actually painted such a work, for you usually
specialize in
either Modern Realism or Socialist Realism these days, don't you?"
"To be sure, Mr Deasy,"
the artist answered, blushing faintly.
"Although I occasionally venture further afield
into other forms of artistic production, in accordance with my status
as a
Western artist, or someone who is under no binding obligation to toe a
party
line. Hard-line Marxists would probably
regard it as a weakness, but I'm not in the best of positions to be a
hard-line
Marxist myself."
"No, I guess not," I wearily
conceded. "In a sense, you know too
much to be a hard-line anything.... Or is it because you don't happen
to live
in the right country?"
"That must undoubtedly have
something
to do with it," he candidly admitted.
"One isn't given much incentive to be a hard-line Marxist
here. People prefer one to be
avant-garde."
"Some people do," I averred. "Though, as you know, I'm not one of
them. Yet I take your point.
It's probably true to say that a large
proportion of Western avant-garde artists would be Social Realists
under other
circumstances, and not necessarily unwilling ones, either!
You compromise a little with Modern Realism,
yet even that would be considered bourgeois in some countries."
"Indeed it would," Brendan
Martin
agreed, a slightly-pained expression momentarily marring the purity of
his
handsome face. "Anything short of
socialist propaganda would be considered bourgeois, including my triple
portrait of three of the West's most controversial artists."
"Which, incidentally, I'd
like to
buy," I declared, having finally made up my mind about it.
"You would, Mr Deasy?"
he ejaculated, obviously delighted.
"Well, that's something of a relief to me,
since I feared that you'd reject it on the grounds of its unusual
nature, and
accordingly oblige me to find another dealer."
I laughed and said: "Have no
fear,
Brendan! I know your work too well by
now to have any doubts about its artistic quality.
A purchaser will soon be found for it, I can
assure you." And, smiling
ironically, I cast him a knowing wink, which quickly appeased him. This canvas, I reflected, would be one of the
few works from him which could be sold over the counter rather than
under it
for once, thereby saving me some professional inconvenience. I relished the prospect of a change!
EXTRACTS
FROM
A JOURNAL
They
are
fools
who imagine that the physical universe is expanding and that the
stars
are therefore getting bigger and hotter.
They've got the wrong end of the cosmic stick!
But Michael James Carey, solitary thinker and
private writer, knows better. I know
that, whilst one part of the Universe is expanding, another part of it
is
contracting. And I don't confound the
one with the other, like the untransvaluated
shallow-pates! For the fact of the
matter is that while the infernal side of the Universe is contracting,
its
divine side is expanding - and quite rapidly, too!
The sun is losing millions of tons of its
matter each second, is shrinking through the conversion of hydrogen
into helium
by the so-called proton-proton reaction.
Most other stars are doubtless doing something similar, for one
star is pretty much akin to another, no matter how varied they may be in size
and intensity. And since stars represent the
infernal side of the Universe at its most intense, we may conclude that
it's
this side of it which is contracting, whilst our side is rapidly
expanding.
Yes, we are a part of the
Universe,
too. Everything to be found in this
world is a part of it. But human beings
may be said to represent its highest part - the part beyond stars and
planets
and nature. Naturally, there's a world
of difference between one human being and another.
But even the most dissimilar human beings
have more in common with one another than with animals, whichever
animals you
care to name. Even the most stupid and
ignorant of men is closer to a genius than to a dog or a cat. He is certainly superior to the animals! So human beings represent the furthermost
point of evolution on earth to-date - the highest life form, in all probability, that the Universe contains.
Astonishing?
Ah, I can imagine an imaginary reader
wondering about the possible existence of other life forms in the
Universe
superior to ourselves. Hasn't he
encountered stories and films depicting fantastic beings from outer
space who put man in the shade in virtually
every respect,
including cruelty? Yes, of course he
has! Yet whilst I'm not altogether
immune to the imaginative appeal such stories and films may have, I
rather
incline to the view that, if the Universe is in fact peopled with other
intelligent and evolutionary life-forms, they'll be more human in
appearance
than monstrous, being something like ourselves, only less evolved or
more
evolved, as the case may be.
So you see I incline to
believe the highest
life forms throughout the Universe to be human, and therefore akin to
one
another in respect of their superiority to animals.
They may not look exactly like us or speak
with similar accents, but I'm confident that they would be able to
recognize
one another as kindred, human-equivalent life forms, if brought into
contact. And I'm confident, too, that
they would be of approximately the same scale, not vastly dissimilar in
height
or build. I don't foresee earthmen
grovelling before sixty-foot giants or, conversely, staring down at
six-inch
midgets in the course of their future space explorations.
I'm cautiously hopeful, even optimistic, that
they'll be able to see eye-to-eye, as it were, with their galactic
neighbours.
I
wrote
the
above yesterday afternoon, while the rain was pouring down outside my
window in
the swift wake of a violent thunderstorm.
I expect there is rain and storms on other planets elsewhere in
the
Universe too, though it didn't occur to me to consider that possibility
then. I was much too engrossed with the
subject of scale, as recorded above.
However, what applies to one life-sustaining planet is likely to
apply
just as much to others as well, its being
assumed that
life requires a given environment in which to evolve.
There is no life on Mercury because the red
planet is too close to the sun, and therefore far too hot to permit its
development. Conversely we may admit
that a planet at too great a distance from the sun, like Pluto, will be
too cold
to permit any life to emerge. A planet
has to be in a solar position somewhere in-between the two extremes, if
oxygen
is to arise and thus encourage the development of life.
So it has to be in an Earth-equivalent
position, relatively speaking, no matter in
which
solar system it exists. And because of
this, life throughout the life-sustaining planets in the Universe will
have to
share more things in common than not, will have to be quite similar,
since in
any one context, be it air, sea, or land,
it requires
a fairly uniform pattern of life-sustaining encouragement.
It's no good expecting people to live where
there is no rain or oxygen. And where
there is rain and oxygen, it's a bit silly expecting monsters instead
of
people! A similar environment should
give rise to similar life forms.
But I'm becoming too
technical and
speculative. I wanted to record in my
journal that the Universe is both contracting and expanding
simultaneously, in
order to make clear to the misguided souls of this world exactly what
the
Universe
is
doing, and which part of it is doing what. For I will subsequently be
developing this theme in a major essay, for the sake of literary
respectability. My journal - a
slightly pompous habit - is a first and rather tentative step in that
august
direction. Or perhaps I prefer to keep
certain things to myself, from fear of arousing too much opposition? I am
a rather
controversial writer, I'll have to admit.
Which, in a sense, is something to be proud of, since it proves
that one
is capable of independent thought and thus of innovation in matters
intellectual - quite unlike the majority of writers who, by contrast,
remain
all-too-depressingly predictable, whether through cowardice or
stupidity or
commercial pressures ... I leave for them to decide!
However, enough boasting! As long
as I know my own worth,
intellectually speaking, the intellectually pusillanimous can go to
hell!
The Universe, then, is
expanding
spiritually. Let this be made absolutely
clear! For there has
been a great deal of shilly-shallying uncertainty this century. At one time it has been fashionable to
contend that the Universe is contracting and, at another time, that
it's
expanding. Both views, I maintain, are
equally correct,
providing they are applied to the relevant parts of
the Universe - a thing, alas, which hasn't always been the case! For example, some people have believed that
the sun, growing in size and intensity, will one day burn up the earth,
including them or their future descendants.
Unable to take spirit seriously, they have applied the theory of
an
expanding universe to the stars! I,
however, must do what I can to emphasize the erroneous nature of this
misguided
belief which, when considered in the light of factual reality, becomes
positively
absurd. How, one imagines, can a star
which is losing millions of tons of its matter a second possibly be
expanding? And even the tendency of
stars to rush away from one another, as from a central void, is less an
expansion, I contend, than a divergence.
No, let's encourage people to get the right end of the stick and
thereby
view the Universe the right way up instead of, as in all too many
cases, upside
down, if not back-to-front as well. Let
them see that, while stars slowly burn towards extinction, the human
population
of the globe continues to rise, and thus to increase the sum total of
spirit
currently in existence. Yet spirit isn't
just related to population growth. It
can grow, or be encouraged to expand, within the individual, so that
any given
person can become more spiritual than would otherwise be the case ...
if he
ignored his spirit or smothered it beneath sensual distractions. We are born with spirit, but we're also
responsible for cultivating it, if we so choose. Hence
the
expansion of spirit is also
dependent upon human effort, and we may assume that, with each
succeeding
generation, the level of spirit being cultivated generally rises,
because the
pressure of evolution is all the time directed towards increasing the
spiritual
at the expense of the sensual. The
Universe is in a constant process of spiritual expansion through the
medium of
man.
I
must
have
been in a highly idealistic frame-of-mind yesterday when I wrote the
above, and
now I feel quite proud of myself for having written it.
I was talking to a friend, during the
evening, who referred my attention to Teilhard de Chardin's
theory
concerning a convergence of the Universe to what he calls the Omega
Point. He pointed out the difference, as
he saw it,
between the great French theologian's contention and my own, reminding
me that
while de Chardin stressed a convergence, I
emphasize
an expansion. We couldn't both be right,
in his view, and I found myself to some extent agreeing with him....
Although,
like so many things in life, I think both approaches are correct, provided
one knows
which approach to apply to which context.
Let me explain.
If the Universe begins with
the stars and
progresses, via man, to the Omega Point, which should be regarded as
the
spiritual culmination of evolution, then a convergence from the Many to
the One
there most certainly is, since stars are separate, whereas the ideal
climax to
evolution would be unified, in accordance with the essence of absolute
goodness. The agonized doing of the
Alpha Absolutes would lead, via the world and its historical struggles,
to the
blissful being of the Omega Absolute, thereby reflecting a process of
convergence from the Many to the One. To
that extent, I have to agree that de Chardin
is
probably correct in his choice of terminology, since we can
detect a
process of social convergence at work in our own world, as manifested
in the
coming together of disparate races under similar living conditions and
ideologies. This process may still have
some way to go before a complete unification of spirit is achieved in a
transcendental context, but at least we can detect a trend towards that
desired
culmination in the changing configurations of mundane society. A communal attitude is gradually gaining the
ascendancy over the traditional individualistic, isolationist attitudes
hitherto so prevalent in our world, thus vindicating the logic of Teilhard de Chardin's
evolutionary thesis.
But if there's a limit to
the context in
which a convergence towards the Omega Point can be maintained, it must
lie in
the fact that we are encouraged to visualize a tiny point of
transcendent
spirit as the climax to or culmination of evolution.
Yet this would be misleading, in my opinion,
since it contradicts the logic of a spiritually-expanding universe. One is confronted by the absurdity of a tiny
point of transcendence existing in the immensity of infinite space,
inwardly
shining there like a lone star. Such an
absurdity, however, is clearly inadmissible!
We must confine de Chardin's theory
to its
rightful context, and use a different terminology for the actual
development of
spirit itself - one implying expansion.
For there is, indeed, sound sense to the argument that, while
stars
continue to contract, spirit will continue to expand, in accordance
with its
blissful essence in eternal being.
Yes, there, if anywhere,
lies the
fundamental difference between the two viewpoints
and, to my
way of thinking, both of them are correct - in context. The Universe converges in space, but expands
in spirit. Teilhard
de Chardin stresses the external aspect,
I, Michael
James Carey, the internal aspect. He
takes the converging process of evolution from A - Z, as it were,
whilst I
dwell on the nature of Z and its continuous expansion.
In that sense there will never be an end to
evolution, for the Omega Absolute will continue to expand into the void
throughout eternity. Yet to the extent
that its essence will be fixed ... in transcendent spirit, then it will
certainly signify the climax of evolution, whether one chooses to
regard such a
climax as the Supreme Being, the Holy Spirit, Ultimate Reality, or even
the
Superman, to use a term coined by Nietzsche, who taught that the
Superman would
be the outcome of historical evolution, and hence 'meaning of the
earth'.
Yes, how compelling his
teachings were
there, even given the philosophical inadequacy of their terminology! For this terminology has since lent itself to
excessive vulgarization at the hands of men who have interpreted the
Superman
in terms of a Mr World-type figure, and thereby falsely endowed him
with
muscular significance. But, in reality,
a muscular significance is the last thing that the Superman would have
- as is
the anthropomorphic projection of the pronoun 'he' which such a
terminology encourages. For beyond man
there can be only 'it' - the
pure transcendence of ultimate divinity.
After all, man, remember, is 'something that should be
overcome', as Zarathustra well knew!
However, there are a number
of things which
Nietzsche's Zarathustra didn't know but
which I do,
having given some profound thought to them.
My journal is full of notes relating to the means through which
man is
to be overcome in the struggle to attain to salvation, not the least
important
of which are the ones appertaining to his technological progress in the
face of
natural opposition. For instance, I have
no doubt that, one day, man will overcome his natural body through the
gradual
perfection of an artificial one, since only by distancing himself from
sensual
needs and obligations, in part through technological progress, can he hope to arrive at a position whereby an
exclusive and
extensive spirituality will be possible to him.
This advanced spirituality will only be possible, it should be
emphasized, in the upper reaches of his psyche, which, in physiological
terms,
are compatible with the new brain and, in psychological terms, with the
superconscious. The
lower
reaches,
or old brain/subconscious, are aligned with the body in
sensuality, and would therefore have to be guarded against and duly
'overcome'
when the technological moment was ripe.
One cannot compromise with the sensual and hope to attain to
spiritual
salvation at the same time. Evolution
demands that man becomes ever more biased towards the latter, as he
slowly but
surely acquires the means to defeat the former.
It demands, at its highest post-humanist level, a single-minded
commitment to the cultivation of spirit, so that the human universe may
expand
more rapidly in the direction of spiritual transcendence.
For attaining to a condition of pure bliss in
supreme being is such an alluring prospect ... that we would be mad or
foolish
to wish for anything less! On the
contrary, the nearer we get to our ultimate destiny, the more quickly
do we evolve. For
we
are
then in a better position to comprehend the direction we must take in
order to
achieve the maximum self-fulfilment in transcendent spirit.
Yes, the spiritual universe
is certainly converging/expanding.
But we should also remember that its root, or physical, part is
simultaneously diverging/contracting, and will one day diverge/contract
out of
existence altogether. Exactly when that
day will come, I cannot of course say, although it's to be hoped that
we - and
other beings like us elsewhere in the Universe - will already have
attained to
our goal in the never-ending expansion of transcendent spirit ...
before the
complete disintegration of stars and planets becomes a reality. Once that is achieved, the fate of the
physical universe won't concern us. 'We'
will no longer exist - only the complete and utter unity of the Omega
Absolute,
as it expands eternally in the void and ultimately replaces the
infernal
imperfections of the contracting stars with the divine perfection of
its
blissful being.
Thus speaks Michael James
Carey!
DREAM
COMPROMISE
I
used
to
hate visiting old Mrs Donnelly, and would invariably wait until she
wrote me an
invitation before ringing her up and agreeing to a date.
That would be once every three or four
months, so I never had to visit her more than a few times a year. Nonetheless even that
proved
inconvenient to me, ever since I had first answered her invitation
about four
years ago. There were times when I
needed all my perseverance and willpower to persuade myself to go!
It was an aunt of mine who
had first
written to Mrs Donnelly about me, and so it was she who was at the root
of all
this inconvenience. I used to dread
getting letters from her because they would invariably mention the old
lady and
reprove me for not having contacted her for some time.
Somehow Aunt Mary imagined that I would rush
into Mrs Donnelly's arms as into those of a long-lost friend or future
saviour. But when it eventually became
clear to her that I entertained less than flattering opinions of the
old woman,
she instinctively resented it and took a highly critical attitude to me
in her
letters. I would get a scolding from her
for not having taken due advantage of Mrs Donnelly's generosity, and,
inevitably, a letter would subsequently arrive from the said lady
inviting me
to lunch and/or tea whenever convenient.
The noose seemed to be tightening around me and I would
invariably fall
into it, like a convicted criminal, and ring my prospective hostess in
order to
fix a date. Regrets would automatically
follow, but by then I was resigned to my fate and in no position to
back
down. I used to dread the prospect of
another vituperative letter from Aunt Mary even more than the impending
visit
to old Mrs Donnelly!
Considering I had no other
friends or
contacts at the time, it might perhaps seem strange that a person like
me
should be so recalcitrant where the prospect of a little friendly
company was
concerned. But although I had spent a
number of solitary years in an insalubrious part of north
But I said there were other
reasons, and so
there were. For all her faults, Mrs
Donnelly was a devout Catholic and would attend Mass every morning
virtually
without fail. Like many genteel
Irishwomen, especially of her generation, she was a religious fanatic
and
couldn't open her mouth without saying something about the Holy Virgin
or the
Blessed Saints or the Holy Fathers or the Good Lord or whatever. At eighty-two, and well-advanced in
repetitive senility, she was probably more fanatic than she had been
twenty or
forty or even sixty years before, and it was this aspect of her life
which
constituted another of my reasons for being less than keen to visit her. I was almost certain to be bombarded with a
résumé of Catholic doctrine, or recollections of the mystical
experiences she
had undergone in various odd places, or memories of the priests she had
invited
home to dinner, and so on, throughout the time I spent in her company,
much of
which, incidentally, was spent in the twilight of approaching darkness,
since
she only switched on the light as a last resort, as and when she was
obliged to
make me some tea, and must have feared that her conversation would be
adversely
compromised by her wrinkled features,
did she not avail of the dark both to conceal them and enhance
her
personal standing with me at the same time.
Initially, she had high
hopes of converting
me, a lapsed Catholic in her opinion, back to the Faith, since she
didn't know
enough about me to realize that such a conversion was the last thing to
which I
would succumb. But slowly, by degrees,
it began to dawn on her that, even in the approaching darkness, she
wasn't
getting anywhere and that, rather than admitting to faults, I was
becoming ever
more adamantly opposed to her faith and convinced of the validity of my
own,
which ran somewhat contrary to hers, though not in a Protestant manner. Slowly, the light started to fade from her
eyes, and she began to perceive that I lived in a different spiritual
world
from the one she was accustomed to inhabiting.
Her invitations to lunch thereafter grew less frequent, though
by no
means less cordial, and as though by a reciprocal compensation the
threats and
reproofs from Aunt Mary grew ever more frequent. But
I
wasn't to be swayed. I could see through
Mrs Donnelly too easily
to be in any way ashamed of who I was, and would console myself in the
knowledge that I had the truth while she lived in illusion. Besides, I soon discovered from the
excellence of the home-made and fresh food she provided that her
religiosity
was more a matter of lip-service to symbols to which long habit had
ingrained
her than any consciously-lived asceticism carried out, in defiance of
the
flesh, with intent to cultivating the spirit as much as possible. There was little of the half-starved saint
about old Mrs Donnelly, who always prided herself on eating only 'the
best', no
matter how expensive. Religion didn't
interfere with her stomach, nor, one might add, with her appetite,
which for a
person of her age was anything but slight.
Yet, frankly, I would be a hypocrite to pretend that it
interfered with
mine instead. There is little of the
half-starved saint about me, either!
I would ward off Mrs
Donnelly's Catholic
sermons as best I could, trying, in the process, to convert her to my
transcendental standpoint, in which spiritual self-realization was the
ultimate
ideal. That, however, was no more likely
to succeed than were her attempts at converting me to prayerful worship, and so we would eventually agree to a
truce and
tactfully change the subject. My
literary career was sometimes an alternative one, and when, one day, I
was able
to tell her that I had at last found a publisher, she almost died of a
heart
attack, so unexpected was the good news.
A publisher meant I would now have some money, and Mrs Donnelly
had
quite resigned herself to believing that I would always remain poor and
dependent on the state. Now I was going
to be self-supporting, and that came as something of a shock to her. She congratulated me in the most cordial
terms and offered to pour me an extra cup of tea, which I gladly
accepted. At last I should be able to
afford somewhere
better to live, she hoped, since my domestic problems were by now well
known to
her.
As luck would have it, that
was the last I
saw of her. For she was to die in the
New Year, a few weeks after Christmas, and I received notification of
the fact
from her sister, Polly, one evening. It
came as a surprise to me in view of her previously good health, though
not as
great a surprise as the knowledge that she had bequeathed her property
to me -
a two-storey semidetached house in Palmers Green. At
first
I thought I was imagining things,
hallucinating or imposing subconscious hopes on the letter in my hand. But no, it was for real, and I, Nicholas
Brennan, was to inherit her property! I
could scarcely believe my luck! Without
wasting any time, I dashed over to her sister's place, was given
confirmation
of the bequest, and duly handed the keys to the property that very same
day. I was to have a home of my own at
last!
Moving in was one of the
most exciting
experiences of my entire life, especially since the lodging house I was
moving
from was so dilapidated and depressing as to be a permanent nightmare
in which
to live. I couldn't wait to get away
from the noisy neighbours in whose vulgar company I had spent the past
four
years, and was accordingly impatient to set-up home in this small
private
house, where I looked forward to a life of dignified peace-and-quiet
instead of
constant torment from aggressive boors. There
were
three
rooms on the ground floor, including a kitchen-cum-dining room,
and
three upstairs, with the addition of a bathroom and toilet. The road in which the house stood was
agreeably quiet, being wholly residential, and at the back stood a
pleasantly
elongated garden which gave-on to a tranquil canal that suggested not
only
peace, but privacy as well. The nearest
houses, on the far side of this canal, also had gardens backing-on to
it in
similar fashion, so there was a wide-open space in-between, quite
unlike
anything to which I had been accustomed in recent years.
Here, if anywhere, I believed I would be able
to get rid of the depression I had contracted from the squalid boxed-in
urban
environment of my previous residence.
More regular contact with nature was precisely what I needed!
The front room of the house
was quickly
transformed into a study, and I began to acquire a collection of books
to line
the bookcase I had placed against one of its walls.
Previously I had been dependent on the local
library for reading material, but now that I had some independent means
I could
at last afford to start a small private collection, to augment the worn
paperbacks purchased by me as a youth.
Thus I acquired a number of my favourite novels, including works
by
Lawrence Durrell, Aldous
Huxley, Hermann Hesse, Henry Miller, and
Anthony
Burgess, which I knew I'd feel inclined to re-read from time to time. Additionally, I purchased some philosophical
works by Teilhard de Chardin,
Lewis
Mumford, Arthur Koestler,
and
Jean-Paul
Sartre, and these I placed on a higher shelf than the
novels. I had only to get some further
works of a poetic or aesthetic nature in order to have the rudiments of
a
representative collection of choice twentieth-century writings, and was
satisfied that my study would be a sufficiently dignified sanctum in
which to
carry on from where such great minds had left off.
As for music, I quickly
acquired all the
Shostakovich, Ravel, Martinu, Delius,
and Prokofiev records I could get my hands on, and to these
incomparable
masters I added a number of modern-jazz albums by the estimable likes
of Miles
Davis and Herbie Hancock for good measure. All I needed now, I felt, was a person with
whom to share my house and tastes. But
this desire was soon to be realized, since I received a letter, one
day, from a
young woman with whom I had been madly in love some years before,
albeit
without requital. She had read my
recently-published novel, recognized herself in it, and, obtaining my
new
address from its publisher, was curious to find out whether I really
meant what
I had said about her. I invited her over
to see me and duly reassured her that I did.
Her name was Sheila, and she became my mistress that very first
visit,
despite being married.
In due course, she obtained
a divorce from
her husband on grounds - probably genuine - of infidelity, and came to
live
with me permanently. I fell in love with
her all over again and duly proposed marriage to her, which,
thankfully, she
accepted. I had great need of such
company as she supplied, and found that my depression was gradually
lifting in
consequence of our blossoming relationship.
She was truly a beautiful woman and very generous with her
charms, which
were more than ample for my needs. I
would make love to her virtually every day, using every resource for
variety at
my disposal. Life was beginning to
improve for me after years of solitude, poverty, and pain.
My wife gave me the sensuality I had so
desperately needed, and this enabled me to get over my enforced
celibacy. My writings were improving all
the time, as
was the public's response to them.
People would write inquiring about my work or congratulating me
on a
particular literary achievement. The
number of books in my private collection was steadily expanding, and to
such an
extent that I soon required an additional bookcase in which to house
them all,
as well as extra shelves for my records.
Occasionally Sheila's friends would pop in to see us and talk
about
literature and philosophy. Someone
brought me a large poster of Hermann Hesse,
whom
I
was said to resemble, and someone else one of Nietzsche, my favourite
philosopher. I would talk about politics
and religion as well, and often enough we would end-up listening to a
Shostakovich symphony or a Martinu
concerto - a
fitting climax to the evening. Sheila
would pour a final round of wine or sherry,
and I
would go to bed feeling slightly giddy but relatively content. Her body was there beside me in the dark, and
I had only to stretch out a hand to feel its softness and warmth.
One day, I followed her into
the toilet and
watched her going through the motions of relieving herself. Strangely, I felt curiously aroused by this
spectacle and, before she could replace her panties, I lifted her up
and
carried her into the adjacent bathroom.
There I quickly removed her jeans and panties and made her
straddle the
sink, so that her rump was facing me and I was able to soap it. She made no protest as I continued to
lubricate her rear, but remained facing the wall with a vague smile on
her lips. She had guessed what was coming
next and,
when it actually did, merely whimpered and blushed faintly. I was able to satisfy my lust while she
pretended not to be aroused. But I could
tell that she was secretly excited by this extension of our sexual
relationship
and able to fulfil herself in due course.
Why had I done it? she wanted to
know
afterwards. I smiled weakly and replied
that it was a concession to the post-dualistic nature of the age, which
seemingly required a degree of artificial or unorthodox sexuality of
one. However, I assured her that I
wouldn't do it
very often, since it was less satisfying than regular sex.
She smiled understandingly
and brushed a
gentle kiss across my brow. As long as I
didn't become actively homosexual or even bi-sexual, she was prepared
to
tolerate such occasional deviations from strict heterosexuality. After all, she was a modern woman, which
meant, amongst other things, that she was less natural and feminine
than would
otherwise be the case, had she been living under different or more
traditional
circumstances. In some respects, a
modern liberated woman was almost a man, and therefore someone capable
of
attaining to greater freedom from nature or the natural than women had
ever
done before. I had already impressed
this fact upon her in certain other contexts, including the cultural,
and it
had evidently sunk in, since she was anything but ashamed of the
unusual
experience I had just imposed upon her.
Rather, she teased me for being
like Salvador Dali, whose Unspeakable
Confessions had shortly before
made such a profound impression on us.
Yes, I was rather proud of the analogy and told her so. Dali had been one of the world's most
civilized men, and I still had high hopes of becoming another - with or
without
the aid of my beloved. I would be to
literature what Dali was to art, only more so!
She smiled approvingly and continued to regard me with a vaguely
mocking
look in her dark eyes. She could tell
that she was as indispensable to me as Gala had been to Dali.
Later on, she came
downstairs in nothing
but a pale-blue semi-transparent nylon sari and asked me, in
penetrating her,
to wheelbarrow her around the house in the manner of an oriental despot. It was then that, realizing what was required
of me, I panicked and woke up! Across
the table, old Mrs Donnelly was still droning-on, in the merciful
semi-darkness, about the Blitz and the Holy Fathers, seemingly
oblivious of the
fact that I had spent most of the preceding hour fast asleep. None of this, thank God, had really
happened! Though die in the New Year she
duly did, releasing me from any further obligations towards her.
APPENDIX:
A
SELECTION OF APHORISMS
RELATED TO THE TEXT
1. A dualistic civilization can only
tolerate
truth in small doses, or diluted by illusion.
2. Women are society's natural
conservatives -
impeding change.
3. The Devil may
have
created woman, but man will create God (the Holy Spirit).
4. Women are akin to stars ... in that they
attract men to themselves. However, their
children shine, like moons, with a borrowed light - the light of
maternal
authority.
5. Man may be a slave of nature but he is
also a
rebel against it, and one day he will be its master, becoming
supernatural.
6. Increasingly man will turn from natural
drugs
to artificial drugs. He will prefer
upward self-transcendence in spirituality to downward
self-transcendence in
sensuality.
7. What, in physiological terms, the new
brain
is to the old one, in psychological terms the superconscious
is to the subconscious.
8. Evolution proceeds from the Alpha
Absolute(s)
to the Omega Absolute via the sensual/spiritual compromise which is man.
9. In an absolute there is no dualism
whatsoever, not even the slightest hint of an antithesis.
10. No two absolutes could be farther apart than
the Alpha, which is Manifold, and the Omega, which will be One. They signify
the extremes of evolution, and
are accordingly antithetical in every
respect.
11. Post-dualistic man won't confound the Devil
with God, or vice versa. There will be
no ambivalence or ambiguity in his religious sense.
12. The Devil exists,
but
God is in the making - a potential culmination to evolution rather than
an
existent fact.
13. There is no reason why atheism should prevent
one from believing in the Devil. For the
Devil most certainly exists - albeit in the non-figurative guise of
stars.
14. Evolution is a journey, so to speak, from the
unclear light of stars to the clear light of transcendent spirit.
15. Christ is a relative, anthropomorphic deity
relevant to an egocentric stage of evolution.
16. A Christian is entitled to claim that God
exists, insofar as he is referring to the god of the Christians, viz.
Jesus
Christ. But this relative deity is a long
way from being the absolute divinity of ... the Omega Absolute.
17. The natural state
of
relations between the sexes is normally one of disharmony, not harmony,
since
women are less spiritual but more sensual than men.
18. In the so-called
war
of the sexes, men are slowly gaining the upper-hand.
One day they will
effectively vanquish women altogether.
19. Small minds invariably find genius abhorrent.
20. Technology will be the materialistic means via
which the spiritual end ... of transcendence ... may be attained.
21. Without the
assistance of advanced technology, no amount of meditation will carry
one's
spirit to the transcendental Beyond - the salvation which will come to
pass at
the culmination of evolution rather than in any posthumous heaven.
22. The traditional
doing
of the West will be placed in the service of the traditional being of
the East
as, increasingly in the future, East and West come together into one
civilization - the transcendental civilization of post-dualistic man.
23. To live for the
mere
sake of living, without reference to the evolutionary struggle and its
moral
implications, is to live not as a man but as a beast - uncivilized, and
therefore wild.
24. These days women are becoming so masculinized ... that it is expedient both to
regard and
treat them as men - albeit lesser ones.
25. The cult of unisex is but a reflection of the
post-dualistic development of contemporary society.
So, to a lesser extent, is the growth of
homosexuality.
26. Pornography, in encouraging sexual
sublimation, is a transitional phenomenon coming in-between literal sex
and the
eventual complete overcoming of sex ... in post-dualistic
transcendentalism.
27. Nietzsche wrote that 'Man is something that
should be overcome', which is true. But
before he overcomes himself, man must first overcome woman ... in
accordance
with the post-dualistic requirements of evolutionary progress.
28. When the natural body has been superseded by
an artificial support-and-sustain system for the brain, then man or,
rather,
his superhuman successor will be in the highest phase of earthly
evolution - a
phase in which essence will preponderate over appearance to such an
extent ...
that one might characterize it as supermasculine.
29. What essentially distinguishes a man from a
woman isn't so much the brain ... as the psychology imposed upon it by
the
body's sex. Thus a woman's brain would
become masculine or, at any rate, less feminine if deprived of a female
body.
30. One is a 'he' or a 'she' because one isn't an
absolute but a combination of sensual (feminine) and spiritual
(masculine)
elements. An absolute can only be an
'it'.
31. The relative,
anthropomorphic god of the Christians, viz. Jesus Christ, is
necessarily a
'he', since He is relevant to a dualistic stage of evolution. The literal, absolute deity that should
emerge from the climax to evolution will be an 'it' - as suggested by
the term
'the Holy Spirit'.
32. Hence if the Devil is an 'it' because of its
absolute sensuality, God will be an 'it' because of its absolute
spirituality -
the former, remember, as the stars, and therefore Manifold; the latter
as
transcendent spirit, and therefore One.
33. Every development which makes for greater
unity in the world - and therefore greater world unity - should be
encouraged;
for it is good.
34. Socialism is the material foundation upon
which the erection of the transcendental civilization will take place.
35. By itself socialism can't lead to the
transcendental Beyond. It can only lead
to millennial civilization, since it is a materialistic phenomenon, and
where
materialism ends the spirit must take over.
36. We haven't ceased being idealistic. We have simply decided to apply a more
realistic approach to our idealism.
37. Realism is of little account unless,
ultimately, it serves the cause of idealism.
38. The post-human(ist) millennium will signify the maximum
spiritual striving
to attain to the transcendental Beyond. A time when men will be free from materialism and able
to attend to
the exclusive cultivation of spirit which their advanced technology had
made
possible.
39. The post-human
millennium will be the higher phase of the transcendental civilization,
the
lower phase being a combination of socialism and transcendentalism - in
other
words, Social Transcendentalism.
40. The totalitarian socialism between the end of
dualistic civilization and the beginning of post-dualistic civilization
... is
the new barbarism - a largely communist phenomenon traditionally.
41. Civilization begins where barbarism ends -
with the adoption of a relevant religion.
42. Pre-dualistic civilization was pagan,
dualistic civilization is Christian, and post-dualistic civilization
will be
transcendental - an evolutionary progression from the Father to the
Holy Spirit
via Christ, Who, while being 'Three in One', and thus dualistic, is
less alpha
than the Father and less omega than the Holy Spirit.
43. The Father is a
Christian euphemism for the infernal Creator, i.e. the Devil, in
response to
the diluted truth of dualism.
44. But, being dualistic, Christianity sometimes
eschews the Father in favour of an antithesis between Satan and Christ
- the
former taking the place of the Father and the latter that of the Holy
Spirit.
45. Our modern endeavour to prolong human life is
indicative
of an evolutionary struggle towards eternity.
46. At death the spirit ceases because it is
defeated by the mortality of the flesh.
We, however, wish to save the spirit but, because we lack the
means,
i.e. technology, to do so at present, must be content with prolonging
the flesh
as long as possible.
47. The fact that we now live longer is proof of
our growing power over the flesh.
Eventually we will live for ever, though not in this world but
in the
millennial Beyond - the next one.
48. A brain artificially supported and sustained
would have a much longer life-span than one supported and sustained
naturally,
in or through the flesh. Indeed, it
would probably have an indefinite life-span were it not for the fact
that, at
some point in millennial time, extensively-cultivated spirit would
detach
itself from the brain and soar heavenwards.
49. Until technology has been developed to a stage
where the old brain (subconscious) can be removed from the new brain (superconscious), I foresee the necessity of
synthetic
hallucinogens (like LSD) being used to protect the latter from the
sensuous
influence of the former.
50. The lower mystical experience of
artificially-induced visionary projections would have to precede the
higher one
of concentrated self-contemplation, or absorption in the light of superconscious mind.
51. To live wholly in the superconscious
would be to live beyond egocentric reference to the personal self. It would be a prelude, on the individual
plane, to the mass absorption of spirit into the Omega Absolute.
52. To live wholly in
the
superconscious would be to live without a
subconscious - in other words, to live with only a new brain.
53. By degrees, people will be led beyond
egocentricity, of whichever description, to an entirely post-egocentric
phase
of evolution, in which the superconscious
will be
completely free of subconscious influence and thereby able to aspire
exclusively towards transcendence.
54. Because we are still egocentric, or recipients
of subconscious/superconscious compromise,
we find it
difficult to identify the self with superconscious
mind. But one day we will be the superconscious, and consequently take such an identification for granted.
55. As yet, the 'I' of egocentric reference has
more appeal to us than the higher self ... of the superconscious. This latter, when we finally come to identify
with it, will dispose us against thinking in terms of 'I'.
For we will be so absorbed in the superconscious
... as to be at one with it, and therefore
indisposed to personal reference.
56. The 'I' of egocentric reference stems, on its
subconscious side, from the diabolic competitive roots of life in the
stars. Each star is a furious rival,
competing, in isolation, with other stars for mastery over a variety of
planets. But each star is also an 'it',
because wholly
sensual. There can be no 'I' before the
dawning of ego in dualistic compromise.
57. As a rule, women
are
more prone to the 'I' than men, since of an ego under a greater degree
of
subconscious influence.
58. The more a man thinks in terms of 'we' rather
than 'I' or 'they', the greater is the influence being exerted by the superconscious on his ego.
59. 'They' is especially appropriate to the
pre-dualistic egocentricity of a preponderating subconscious influence,
'I' to
the dualistic egocentricity of a subconscious/superconscious
balance, and 'we' to the post-dualistic egocentricity of a
preponderating superconscious influence.
60. In the wholly superconscious
phase of evolution, however, there will be neither 'I' nor 'we' but
absorption
in 'it' - the personal 'it', firstly, of one's individual superconscious,
leading, via transcendence, to the transpersonal 'it' of collective
absorption
in the supreme being of the Holy Spirit.
61. Being of a supreme order - that is the
essential meaning of the Supreme Being as I conceive of it, which is to
say, in
noumenal rather than phenomenal terms.
62. The highest art is ever an attempt to
approximate
the mind to a state of being which transcends egocentric selfhood.
63. Even the greatest art, insofar as it manifests
in appearances and enters consciousness from without, is strictly
limited in
the extent to which it can provoke upward self-transcendence.
64. The internal stimulus of mind-expanding drugs
is far more efficacious in facilitating upward self-transcendence than
the
external stimulus of art, for the simple reason that it acts directly
upon the
psyche from inside rather than indirectly ... from outside.
65. Art is the paradoxical employment of symbolic
or beautiful appearances, in materialism, to facilitate the cultivation
of
essence, in spirit, and is accordingly strictly limited in scope.
66. Only by directly affecting the mind from
within, through synthetic drugs, can greater degrees (in relation to
art) of
upward self-transcendence be achieved.
67. The more men
develop
essence, the less they can have to do with appearance.
From dependence on beautiful appearances in
art, men will gravitate to the much higher contemplation of the beauty
within
themselves, as set free by synthetic stimulants.
68. As evolution
progresses, so man will free himself from the sensuous influence of
natural
drugs by subscribing to their gradual curtailment.
69. Tomorrow's world won't be one to encourage the
consumption of tobacco, alcohol, tea, cannabis, or any of the stronger
natural
drugs (narcotics) which, by their very sensuous nature, appeal to the
subconscious. Tomorrow's world will be
geared to the superconscious, and thus
only to
artificial drugs (synthetic hallucinogens).
70. The higher the
civilization or stage of evolution, the more the artificial prevails in
life.
71. The most complete
artificiality of the highest civilization will ultimately free man from
nature
altogether, enabling his extensively-cultivated spirit to break away,
in a rush
of ultimate deliverance, from the last vestiges of the brain and so
become
supernatural.
72. The supernatural will be formless but probably
very extensive, considering that it will be compounded of all the
spirit
throughout the Universe which was capable of transcendence.
73. That evolution progresses approximately apace
throughout the Universe ... is a more credible hypothesis, in my view,
than one
suggesting the contrary.
74. Just as an advanced world is one in which both
inhabitants and geographical areas are universally known, so, I
contend, would
an advanced universe be one in which both inhabitants and planets were
universally known. Such an advanced
universe isn't within human range at present, however.
75. The converse of a
gradual contraction of the natural world, both on a planetary and a
cosmic
scale, is the gradual expansion of the spiritual one in the realm of
human
life. Thus the Universe expands
spiritually while contracting physically - just like a human being.
76. An indefinite expansion of spirit throughout
the Universe is the prime condition of evolutionary progress. Man will expand spiritually into God, and the
Holy Spirit expand in the void of limitless
space.
77. The Universe will never be perfect so long as
a single star remains.
78. Human evolution tends to the gradual
perfection not only of the world (a relative perfection) but,
ultimately, of
the entire universe.
79. When there is nothing but a unified clear
light of pure spirit in existence, then and only then will the Universe
be
perfect, and the goal of evolution accordingly have been achieved.
80. It is more probable that 'globes' of
transcendent
spirit from one part of the Universe will gradually converge towards
and expand
into similar 'globes' of it from other parts, than simply achieve an
outright
centralized unity in the Universe immediately following transcendence.
81. Thus one may speculate that the journey
towards ultimate spiritual unity will happen by degrees even on the
transcendent plane, given the spatial immensity of the Universe.
82. Now if this were so, then the supreme being ... of the Omega Point (de Chardin)
would only be established when all separate 'globes' of spirit
throughout the
Universe had converged towards one another and achieved an indivisible
unity.
83. This unity, however, would continue to expand
in accordance with the blissful condition of ultimate being, so that
the
Universe slowly became increasingly perfect, ever more filled, so to
speak,
with the divine presence alone.
84. From the Primal
Creator to the Ultimate Creation - evolution as a journey from the
stellar
Almighty to the spiritual Supreme Being, which is still a long way from
completion at present.
85. Nevertheless we can console ourselves in the
knowledge that we are closer to the divine climax of evolution than any
previous generation has ever been. We
may not yet have arrived at the best, but we are certainly over the
worst. For the worst
is
subservience to nature, including cosmic pantheism, and we are slowly
becoming
its master.
86. We will eventually cease being dependent on
sensuous food and, with the assistance of advanced technology,
exclusively dedicate ourselves to the
cultivation of spiritual food.
87. Elevated to so many static units of potential
transcendence, we will be free of crops and animals and all the other
natural
offspring of the infernal creative force.
88. To throw off our natural chains and embrace
the freedom of transcendentalism - that is the chief raison
d'être of progressive man!
89. The higher spiritual men aren't ones to spend
too much time in the company of females.
Rather, it is the lower physical males who tend to be the slaves
of
women, victims of both their sensual dominance and physical beauty.
90. These maxims are like intellectual mirrors in
which the reader may perceive his mental self reflected back at him
according
to his opinion of them.
91. Politics isn't the only sphere of life in
which reactionaries can be found. There
are also religious reactionaries, social reactionaries, sexual
reactionaries,
aesthetic reactionaries, scientific reactionaries, gastronomic
reactionaries
... indeed, reactionaries in virtually
every sphere of
life. And, as reactionaries, they
approximate to 'the chaff' rather than to 'the wheat'.
92. The business of temporal judgements en
route
to the millennial Beyond ... is to separate 'the chaff' from 'the wheat'
and
vanquish them as enemies of progress.
93. The twentieth century corresponds, in a manner
of speaking, to an age of the Last Judgement, in which 'chaff' are all
the
time being separated from 'wheat' in the interests of evolutionary
progress.
94. The 'Second Coming' corresponds not to the
literal return of Christ (who died 2000 years ago in the Middle East),
but to
the advent of an ultimate messiah whose task is to expound and further
post-dualistic religion.
95. The 'Second Coming' has reference to the
arrival of a new spiritual leader to take over from where the old
one(s) left
off, and thereby signify the continuation of religious evolution on a
higher
plane - namely the plane of post-dualistic transcendentalism.
96. The ultimate messiah doesn't speak in terms of
man but in terms of God. He is beyond
anthropomorphism and therefore can't be personally worshipped as God,
since all
worship indicates subservience to the given, whereas he is only
interested in
furthering the becoming until it achieves total being.
97. But if he is beyond
dualistic idolatry, and implacably opposed to alpha fundamentalism, he
is for
transcendental liberation, and would have men aspire towards the goal
of pure
spirit through spiritual self-realization as a matter of course.
98. He points the way towards the Omega Absolute,
which will ultimately reside, beyond the post-human millennium, in the
transcendental Beyond, the Beyond-of-Beyonds
set not
on earth but in space, and thus beyond
any
'heaven on earth' to which the combined efforts of social and religious
progress should be directed.
