The Longing for Fathers

  

I and My Kind inherited a utopia 

built on Human Suffering. 

Mine is NOT any 

World You Know.

— Overman

[Borg operating room]

(The entity originally Picard is being augmented. 

He gets a prosthetic forearm with attachments, 

and his skin turns white. 

A single tear rolls from his eye.)

“Real Policemen, of course,

Don’t DO This, 

they go around 

in pairs.”

— Kim Newman,

Commentary Track,

Exorcist III : LEGION

Robocop :

Aim for Me.

Submission to 

a Loving Authority.

It's okay not to know 

what you want. 

No, I know what I want. 

I know EXACTLY what 

I want right now. 

What's that? 

It's BAD. 

It's okay. 

I want someone to tell me 

What to Wear in The Morning. 

[HE LAUGHS] 

Okay, well, I think there 

are people who can —

No, I want someone to tell me 

what to wear every morning. 

I want someone to 

tell me what to eat, 

what to like, what to hate, 

what to rage about, 

what to listen to, 

what band to like, 

what to buy tickets for, 

what to joke about, 

what not to joke about. 

I want someone to tell me 

what to believe in, 

who to vote for, 

and who to love, 

and how to tell them. 

I just think I want 

someone to tell me 

How to Live My Life, Father, because 

so far I think I've been 

getting it wrong. 

And I know that's why people 

want people like you in their lives. Because you just tell them 

How to Do It. 

You just tell them 

What to Do, and 

What They'll Get 

out of the end of it. 

And even though I don't believe 

your bullshit, 

and I know that scientifically,

nothing I do 

makes any difference 

in the end anyway, 

I'm still scared! 

Why am I still so scared?! 

So just tell me 

what to do. 

Just fucking tell me 

what to do, Father! 

Kneel. 

What? 

Kneel. 

Just kneel.

"Almost all of The Book was based on stories my friends told me and stunts we pulled together. The rest was just a matter of looking for the themes, the topics that brought people together in Excited Conversations.

The Longing for Fathers 

was a theme I heard a lot.

The Resentment of Lifestyle Standards imposed by Advertising was another.

The Goal all along was to write a novel based on Being with People and Listening to Them. That's why so much of Fight Club was written In Public, at parties, in bars, at the gym, at work."

-- Palahniuk 

….Yes, it was a Day of Mourning 

for the families of 113 people 

known dead at this hour, 

among them, 

Two former United States Presidents 

who had retired in the Santa Barbara area.

A Day of Mourning for Our Country.

Police Union representatives and OCP continue negotiations today in hopes of averting a citywide Strike by Police, scheduled to begin Tomorrow at Midnight.

Justin Ballard-Watkins has more :

‘They're still On Duty, 

but what about Tomorrow?’

That's The Question we put to people in the crime-plagued 

Lexington area —

“They're Public Servants.

They got Job Security.

They're not supposed to strike.”

“It's a Free Society, 

except there ain't nothin' Free,

'cause there's No Guarantees, you know?

You're on Your Own.

It's The Law of The Jungle."

Be very careful.

Excuse me, please.

They must be remodeling.

Hiya, Barbara.

Listen, I'm here to see Dick Jones.

But when I'm done,

I've got some free time.

Maybe you could fit me in.

He's expecting you, Mr. Boddicker.

You can keep The Gum.

This looks good.

Get a measurement on that.

Bring a hammer, too.

Hey, Dickie boy. How's Tricks?

That Thing is Still Alive.

I don't know what you're talking about.

The Police Officer who arrested you, 

The one you spilled your guts to.

Hey. Take a look at My Face, Dick.

He was Trying to Kill Me.

He's a Cyborg, You Idiot.

He recorded every word you said.

His Memory's Admissible as Evidence.

You involved me.

You're gonna have to Kill It.

Listen, Chief.

Your Company built the fucking thing.

Now I gotta deal with it?

I don't have time for this bullshit.

Suit yourself, Clarence.

But Delta City begins construction 

in two months.

That's 2 Million Workers 

living in Trailers.

That means drugs, gambling, prostitution.

Virgin Territory for 

The Man who knows 

how to open up new markets.

One Man could Control it All, Clarence.

I guess we're gonna 

be Friends after all, Richard.

Destroy It.

Gonna need some major firepower.

You got access to military weaponry?

We practically are The Military.

The Policeman :

Did You bring The Gun?

Partner :

The Precinct was deserted.

Half The Force didn't 

Show up for Work Today.

Everyone else Walks Out at Midnight.

I guess We're on Strike.

I wasn't sure What You Needed.

I sort of grabbed things.

Your Gun.

You asked for this?

(She produces from her bags several jars of pureed Orange & Apricot-Flavoured RoboCop Baby-Food.)

Partner :

I Brought You 

Some Food.

The Policeman :

No, Thank You --

I'm not hungry.

You may not like 

What You're Going to See.

Using the pit-mechanic's power-drill,

he begins to methodically 

unscrew and then remove 

his plate-armoured facial visor, 

one long retaining-screw at a time,

until finally --

Partner :

It's really Good to See You Again, Murphy.

The Policeman :

Murphy, had a Wife and Son --

What happened to them?

Partner :

....after The Funeral, 

she moved away.

The Policeman :

Where Did They Go?

Partner :

She Thought You were Dead.

....She started-over again.

The Policeman :

I can Feel Them.

But I can't Remember Them.

……Leave Me alone.

For Knowledge of Runes and For POWER —

Odin 

The Highest and 

The Oldest 

of all The Gods is Odin. 

Odin knows Many Secrets. 

He gave An Eye 

for Wisdom. 

More than that, for 

Knowledge of Runes, 

and for Power, 

He Sacrificed Himself to Himself. 

He hung from 

The World-Tree, Yggdrasil, 

hung there for nine nights. 

His side was pierced by 

The Point of a Spear, 

which wounded him gravely. 

The Winds clutched at him, 

buffeted His Body as it hung. 

Nothing did He eat for 

nine days or nine nights, 

nothing did he drink. 

He was alone there, in pain, 

The Light of His Life 

slowly going out. 

He was cold, in agony, 

and on the point of death 

when his sacrifice bore 

Dark Fruit : 

In the ecstasy of His agony 

He looked down, 

and 

The Runes were 

revealed to him. 

He Knew Them, 

and 

Understood Them 

and 

Their Power. 

The Rope broke then, 

and he fell, screaming, 

from The Tree. 

Now He understood Mag!c. 

Now, The World 

was His to Control.

BALDER

“As Isaac aged, He became blind and was uncertain when He would die, so He decided to bestow Esau’s birthright upon him. 

He requested that Esau go out to the fields with his weapons (quiver and bow) to kill some venison. 

Isaac then requested that Esau make “savory meat” for Him out of the venison, according to the way He enjoyed it the most, so that He could eat it and bless Esau.

Rebecca overheard this conversation. 

It is suggested that She realised prophetically that Isaac’s blessings would go to Jacob, since She was told before the twins’ birth that The Older Son would serve The Younger. 

Rebecca blessed Jacob and she quickly ordered Jacob to bring her two kid goats from their flock so that he could take Esau’s place in serving Isaac and receiving his blessing. 

Jacob protested that His Father would recognise their deception since Esau was HAIRY and he himself was SMOOTH-SKINNED. 

He feared His Father would curse him as soon as he felt him, but Rebecca offered to take the curse Herself, then insisted that Jacob obey ONLY Her.

Jacob did as His Mother instructed and, when he returned with the kids, Rebekah made the savory meat that Isaac loved. Before she sent Jacob to His Father, she dressed him in Esau’s garments and laid goatskins on his arms and neck to simulate hairy skin.”

“I heard a voice that cried,

Balder the beautiful

Is dead, is dead 

- I knew nothing about Balder; but instantly I was uplifted into huge regions of northern sky, I desired with almost sickening intensity something never to be described (except that it is cold, spacious, severe, pale, and remote) and then, as in the other examples, found myself at the very same moment already falling out of that desire and wishing I were back in it. 

The reader who finds these three episodes of no interest need read this book no further, for in a sense the central story of my life is about nothing else. 

For those who are still disposed to proceed I will only underline the quality common to the three experiences; it is that of an unsatisfied desire which is itself more desirable than any other satisfaction. 

I call it Joy, which is here a technical term and must be sharply distinguished both from Happiness and from Pleasure. 

Joy (in my sense) has indeed one characteristic, and one only, in common with them; the fact that anyone who has experienced it will want it again. 

Apart from that, and considered only in its quality, it might almost equally well be called a particular kind of unhappiness or grief. 

But then it is a kind we want. 

I doubt whether anyone who has tasted it would ever, if both were in his power, exchange it for all the pleasures in the world. 

But then Joy is never in Our Power and Pleasure often is. 

I cannot be absolutely sure whether the things I have just been speaking of happened before or after the great loss which befell our family and to which I must now turn. 

There came a night when I was ill and crying both with headache and toothache and distressed because my mother did not come to me. 

That was because she was ill too; and what was odd was that there were several doctors in her room, and voices, and comings and goings all over the house and doors shutting and opening. It seemed to last for hours. 

And then My Father, in tears, came into my room and began to try to convey to my terrified mind things it had never conceived before. 

It was in fact cancer and followed the usual course; an operation (they operated in the patient’s house in those days), an apparent convalescence, a return of the disease, increasing pain, and death. 

My Father never fully recovered from this loss. 

Children suffer not (I think) less than their elders, but differently. 

For us boys the real bereavement had happened before our mother died. 

We lost her gradually as she was gradually withdrawn from our life into the hands of nurses and delirium and morphia, and as our whole existence changed into something alien and menacing, as the house became full of strange smells and midnight noises and sinister whispered conversations. 

This had two further results, one very evil and one very good. 

It divided us from our father as well as our mother. They say that a shared sorrow draws people closer together; I can hardly believe that it often has that effect when those who share it are of widely different ages. 

If I may trust to my own experience, the sight of adult misery and adult terror has an effect on children which is merely paralysing and alienating. Perhaps it was our fault. Perhaps if we had been better children we might have lightened our father’s sufferings at this time. 

We certainly did not. 

His nerves had never been of the steadiest and his emotions had always been uncontrolled. 

Under the pressure of anxiety his temper became incalculable; he spoke wildly and acted unjustly. 

Thus by a peculiar cruelty of fate, during those months the unfortunate man, had he but known it, was really losing his sons as well as his wife. 

We were coming, my brother and I, to rely more and more exclusively on each other for all that made life bearable; to have confidence only in each other. 

I expect that we (or at any rate I) were already learning to lie to him. 

Everything that had made the house a home had failed us; everything except one another. 

We drew daily closer together (that was the good result) - two frightened urchins huddled for warmth in a bleak world. 

Grief in childhood is complicated with many other miseries. 

I was taken into the bedroom where my mother lay dead; as they said, ‘to see her’, in reality, as I at once knew, ‘to see it’. 

There was nothing that a grown-up would call disfigurement - except for that total disfigurement which is death itself. 

Grief was overwhelmed in terror. 

To this day I do not know what they mean when they call dead bodies beautiful. 

The ugliest man alive is an angel of beauty compared with the loveliest of the dead. 

Against all the subsequent paraphernalia of coffin, flowers, hearse, and funeral I reacted with horror. 

I even lectured one of my aunts on the absurdity of mourning clothes in a style which would have seemed to most adults both heartless and precocious; but this was our dear Aunt Annie, my maternal uncle’s Canadian wife, a woman almost as sensible and sunny as my mother herself. 

To my hatred for what I already felt to be all the fuss and flummery of the funeral I may perhaps trace something in me which I now recognise as a defect but which I have never fully overcome - a distaste for all that is public, all that belongs to The Collective; a boorish inaptitude for formality. 

My mother’s death was the occasion of what some (but not I) might regard as my first religious experience. 

When her case was pronounced hopeless I remembered what I had been taught; that prayers offered in faith would be granted. I accordingly set myself to produce by willpower a firm belief that my prayers for her recovery would be successful; and, as I thought, I achieved it. 

When nevertheless she died I shifted my ground and worked myself into a belief that there was to be a miracle. 

The interesting thing is that my disappointment produced no results beyond itself. 

The thing hadn’t worked, but I was used to things not working, and I thought no more about it. 

I think the truth is that the belief into which I had hypnotised myself was itself too irreligious for its failure to cause any religious revolution. 

I had approached God, or my idea of God, without love, without awe, even without fear. 

He was, in my mental picture of this miracle, to appear neither as Saviour nor as Judge, but merely as a magician; and when He had done what was required of Him I supposed He would simply - well, go away. 

It never crossed my mind that the tremendous contact which I solicited should have any consequences beyond restoring the status quo. I imagine that a ‘faith’ of this kind is often generated in children and that its disappointment is of no religious importance; just as the things believed in, if they could happen and be only as the child pictures them, would be of no religious importance either. With my mother’s death all settled happiness, all that was tranquil and reliable, disappeared from my life. There was to be much fun, many pleasures, many stabs of Joy; but no more of the old security. It was sea and islands now; the great continent had sunk like Atlantis.