Sunday 15 May 2022

To Serve The Grail is to Serve The Inner Woman.

Glengarry Glen Ross - Romas' monologue (Al Pacino)

CHASTITY

Gournamond’s Instruction — Never to Seduce a Fair Maiden or Be Seduced by Her — is of such profound importance to our story that it is worthy of a chapter in its own right. 

It is important to remember that we are studying a myth much as one would study a dream, and many of the same laws apply. A Dream is almost entirely an inner matter and every part of a Dream is to be construed as part of The Dreamer. 

Example: if a man dreams of a fair damsel; it is almost certain that his own feminine inner capacity is being addressed. It is only too easy to literalize such a dream figure and explain it as one’s sexual interest or a comment on one’s current girlfriend. If one makes this error the true depth of the dream will be lost.¹ So also in myth; if we take Gournamond’s instruction in a literal sense, we will have little but a caricature of medieval chivalry before us. What is this inner femininity which Parsifal is to stay aloof from? It is all the softness of femininity that is so valuable in an inner sense but that would vitiate him if he mistook it and lived it in an outer sense. 

MOOD AND FEELING

Feeling is The Ability to Value
Mood is being overtaken 
or possessed by The Inner Feminine. 

To feel is the sublime art of having a value structure and a sense of meaning—where one belongs, where one’s allegiance is, where one’s roots are. To mood (we are already in difficulty since there is no adequate term for being caught up in a mood) is to be in the grips of the feminine part of our nature, to be over- whelmed by an irrational element that plays havoc with a man’s outer life. The feminine side of a man is to connect him within the depths of his inner being and to make a bridge to his deepest self.² 

Often a man has to make a choice between feeling and mood. If he is engaging in one of these, there is no room for the other. A mood prohibits true feeling, even though a mood may appear to be feeling. If a man is engaging in a mood—or, more accurately, when a mood has engaged him—he automatically forfeits the ability for true feeling and thus for relationship and creativity. In the old language he has seduced or been seduced by his interior femininity. A man never wears femininity outwardly with any validity. A man overwhelmed by a mood is a sundial in moonlight telling the wrong time. His interior femininity serves him well as “la femme inspiritrice” when she is rightly placed; but she does not serve him well when he wears her as an outer garment and uses her to relate to his outer world. 

“Uses” is the pertinent word here; anyone and everything around a man feels “used” when he relates to the world by way of a mood. Seduction, indeed! Feeling, on the contrary, is a sublime part of a man’s equipment and brings warmth, gentle- ness, relatedness, and perception. We often project our relationship, or lack of one, with our inner femininity onto an outer flesh-and-blood woman. 

Human woman is a miracle in her own right, a beauty which will be obscured if we try to put the laws of inner woman upon her. So, too, is inner woman clouded if we treat her in an outer way.³ Man has only two alternatives for relationship to his inner woman: either he rejects her and she turns against him in the form of bad moods and undermining seductions, or he accepts her and finds within a companion who walks through life with him giving him warmth and strength. I

f a man falls under the spell of a mood, that is, if he misconstrues her as being “out there,” he loses his capacity for relationship. This is true even though it might be a “good mood” or a “bad” one. Creativity in a man is directly linked with his inner feminine capacity for growth and creation. Genius in a man is his interior feminine capacity to give birth; it is his masculinity which gives him capacity for putting that creativity into form and struc- ture in the outer world. 

Goethe, in his masterpiece, Faust, came to the noble conclusion late in his life that it is the province of man to serve woman. He ends Faust with the lines “The Eternal Feminine draws us onward”— certainly a reference to the inner woman. 

To Serve The Grail is to Serve The Inner Woman. An alert woman knows the instant a man in her life succumbs to a mood for all relating stops that very instant. A glazed look comes over the eyes of the man and the woman knows he has abdicated from any relationship. 

Even a good mood costs one relationship. All ability to relate, objectivity and creativity, come to an end when mood takes control. In Hindu terminology, serving the goddess Maya (the equivalent of our anima moods) costs one all reality and substitutes a vaporous unreality in its place. 

Myth often overstates its case in its timeless language, and one’s chance for a vision of the Grail is not lost forever. But so long as the mood is dominant there is no Grail: the mood imprints its character on the objective world and all objective vision of the true splendor of the world is lost. One literally sells one’s birthright for a mess of illusion. The worst characteristic of mood possession is that it robs one of all sense of meaning. Suddenly the “out there” is dominant in one’s inner life and the inner meaning of life is lost. 

One is then at the mercy of the “out there” for one’s sense of value or happiness. One is so tied to a new purchase or gaining the favor of someone that he is unaware of his own inner meaning, which is the only stable value he has. Mood possession also robs him of the objective world and its true beauty and magnificence, a deep meaning in its own right.

DEPRESSION AND INFLATION
Depression and inflation are other names for mood. Both give one a sense of being overwhelmed by something other than one’s true self. This is weakness and incompetence in a man. Moods turn one to outer things or people for one’s sense of value and meaning. What American garage is not piled high with things that a man bought hoping they would bring him a sense of meaning—only to be discarded when they failed to bring whatever he longed for? 

Material things are valid in their own right and bring high value when related to properly; but when one asks them to carry an inner value they fail miserably. The one exception to this law is when some physical object carries an inner value that is meaningful as a symbol or in a ceremony. A gift from a friend can symbolize the high value between two people if it is consciously invested with this value. It will fail him and add to the collection in the garage if he asks it to carry that value aside from symbol or ceremony. No thing in itself is either good or bad; a man may take out his fishing gear one Saturday and have a wonderful and relaxing time fishing. 

The next Saturday he may have a bad anima attack and come home from fishing in a terrible mood. It is the level of consciousness that determines the difference between these two experi- ences. Outer value and inner value are both profoundly real; it is only when they are mixed or contaminated with each other that they can cause trouble. A man is not master in his own interior house when he is in a mood. A usurper has taken first place and the man’s response will be to fight the usurper. Unfortunately, he often chooses to fight this battle on the wrong level—in other words he will fight with his wife or his environment instead of facing the battle within, which would be the only appropriate action. 

Mythology describes the hero’s battle with his internal self as the encounter with the dragon, and modern man has no fewer dragon battles than did his medieval counterpart. You can update mythology and make it dramatically alive if you can find the modern stage on which the dragon battles, even fair maidens and red knights will play out their drama. 

HAPPINESS
Good moods are no less dangerous than the dark ones. To demand happiness from one’s environment is the dark art of seducing the interior fair maiden. This obscures the Grail no less than being seduced by fair maiden, though it is less obvious. Here is a differentiation easy to miss: that exuberant, top-of-the-world, bub- bling, half-out-of-control mood so highly prized among men is also mood posses- sion and is as dangerous as the dark mood. In a dark mood a man has seduced his anima and has her by the throat saying, “You are going to make me happy—or else!” This is to draw her into the lesser affairs of the ego’s demands for happiness or one’s restless quest for Entertainment. 

 

To be caught by an exuberant mood is also to be seduced by the inner woman. She wafts him off to dizzy heights of inflation and gives him a wonderful facsimile of the happiness he legitimately wants. Such a seduction exacts a high price later in the form of a depression that brings the man down to earth again. Fate spends much time bringing a man up from his depression or down from his inflation. It is this ground level which the ancient Chinese called the tao, the middle way. It is here that the Grail exists and happiness worthy of the name can be found. This is not a kind of gray average place or a place of compromise but is the place of true color, meaning, and happiness. It is nothing less than Reality, our true home. One form of seduction is to wring pleasure from an experience in advance. I know two young fellows who planned a camping trip. In their glory, for days ahead of the trip, they planned how great it was going to be. All the mood characteristics arose. Bits of equipment suddenly became Holy Grails: they marveled at the sharp- ness of this knife or the efficiency of that bit of rope. These fellows milked all the happiness out of that experience far in advance. Later I found that they went to the anticipated place, kicked around for half a day, couldn’t think of anything to do, got into the car and came home the same day—there was nothing there. They had se- duced the life out of the experience in advance. Modern western man has some basic misconceptions about the nature of happiness. The origin of the word is instructive: happiness stems from the root verb to happen, which implies that our happiness is what happens. Simple people in less complicated parts of the world function in this manner and exhibit a happi- ness and tranquility that is a puzzle to us. How can a peasant in India with so little to be happy about be so happy? Or how can the peon in Mexico, again with so little to be happy about, be as carefree as he appears? These people know the art of happiness, contentment with what is. Their happiness is what happens. If you can not be happy at the prospect of lunch it is not likely you will be happy over any- thing. A Hindu sage taught that the highest form of worship was simply to be happy. But this was happy in its profound sense, not a mood. Thomas Merton, the Trappist monk, once said that a monk may often be happy but he never has a good time. This is another way of differentiating happiness from mood. For many years of my life I thought one came down with a mood just as one comes down with a cold. But slowly I learned that moods are a product of pur- poseful unconsciousness and can be rectified by the very consciousness one worked so hard to evade. One can contrast mood with enthusiasm. The latter is one of the most beautiful words in our vocabulary. It means “to be filled with God,” en-theo-ism. It is a highly rewarding and valid experience to touch an enthusiasm. At the very opposite end of the scale it is painful to be possessed by a mood. When you laugh it is a divine act if you are filled with the joy of God; but it is blasphemy if you are swept off your feet by a mood. Happiness is entirely legitimate; mood invites the ensuing depres- sion. A woman faces a delicate challenge when her man has fallen into a mood. If she brings forth her parallel to it and begins needling him she sets off a highly negative exchange. Yet, a point of genius is possible for her in this situation; if she can be more feminine than the man’s mood, react out of her deepest femininity—as con- trasted with his misplaced femininity—this will give the man a vantage point of reality from which he can move out of his poor quality mood. It is a severe temp- tation to a woman to needle or puncture; but her own natural femininity is never more creative than when it can be an anchor for a man caught in the whirlwind of his interior femininity. This requires a conscious and well-developed femininity in a woman. It is the result of the many dragon battles she must fight to safeguard her own inner feminine kingdom.⁴ A woman must also understand that a man is much less in control or aware of things feminine than she is. Many women presume that a man should be as able as she to control the ever-shifting play of light and dark, angel and witch in the feminine element. 

No man is capable of the same kind of control as she has, and if a woman understands this she can be patient and understanding as the man bungles along some light years behind her in his feminine understanding. The re- verse is true in some other departments of life. In our myth Parsifal and Blanche Fleur make a perfect example of the correct relationship of man and inner woman. They are close to each other, each warms the other and makes life meaningful for the other; but there is no seduction. This is a sublime definition of man and inner woman; but if it were taken as example of man and flesh-and-blood woman it would be a ridiculous boy scout story. This misconstruing of levels has caused havoc with those following the medieval in- structions of the way-of-the-knight. Inner relationships have their own inexorable laws of conduct; outer relationships have their own equally explicit laws. Do Not Mix The Two.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              

Saturday 14 May 2022

No… No, You Ate Yours.



Great Meals fade in reflection. 
Everything else gains
Do you know why? 

'Cause it's only Food
This shit we put in us, 
keeps us going, 
it's only Food.




Shrink :
Who's gonna tell me about it, then?
You or The Boil?

Richard E. Grant :
No, no. I think we should start again.
There's no 'side' to any of this.
There is Me. There is a Boil.

The Boil happens to be Abel to Speak
but that doesn't qualify it 
to give an opinion.

It was Me that decided
to come here, not it.

Shrink :
You don't think the inclusion
of The Boil could perhaps help us?

No. I'm not interested in its opinions.

Shrink :
Even if it says something
that might be of relevance?

Shrink :
I'm not interested in it,
no matter what it says.

In my opinion, it should 
be lanced instantly.

It was the only reason
I agreed to come off the garage roof.

If it wants to join in,
it can pay its own bill.

Come and Lie Down.

Please.
Tell me about advertising.

Now, You Resigned 
from an important firm 
with a very highly paid job.
I'd like to know Your Reasons.

Well, at least try and 
give me an example 
of even one of those reasons.

All right. Reason one.
Advertising conspires 
with Big Brother.

And you're afraid of Big Brother?
Someone or Something 
Coming into Your Life and 
Telling You What to Do?

No. I'm not afraid of Him. 
I'm one of the few who 
really understands Him.

Oh?

The man who conceived of Big Brother never knew what was coming down the line.

Thought his filthy creation
was gonna be Watching Us.
But it is Us who Watch it.
There's one in every living room.

The monstrous injustice of it is,
We stare at it of our own Free Will.

So we could say, principally,
that it's Television that you blame?

We can say entirely it is The Crooks
who've infiltrated it that I blame.

They've moved in on 
The Greatest Means of Communication 
since The Wheel.
And now They've done it,
Their Greed is Insatiable.

They're cutting down jungles
to breed hamburgers,
turning the whole world 
into a car park.

They'd sell off The Sea to satisfy
the needs of their great god Greed.

They won't be satisfied, not till 
we're all squatting in one 
of its fucking hatchbacks
on a motorway.

There isn't going to be
anywhere left to go
except in slow revolutions 
towards the crest 
of the next slag heap.

Do you have trouble
in getting an erection?

- What?
- Can you get an erection?

- Yes!
- Masturbating much?

Constantly! I've got
a talking boil on my neck!
What would you do?

What does this mean to you —
"Are you ashamed of your false teeth?
Put an end to the miseries of dentures.
You could smile again with confidence.
Just ask Barbara Simmons."

The boil said it a few nights ago.
Sounds like a particularly 
crude voiceover.

Voiceover?

The Voice That Sells.
If you're selling perfume,
it sounds like A Lover.

If you're selling 
something inedible 
you want people to eat,
it'll sound as stupid 
as they'll have to be 
to buy it.

In this case, it would sound
like A Dentist, someone in the know.

I see. So one could say that it's,
erm, The Voice of Authority?
Like, erm...Well, like 
a parent's voice, almost?

If You Like.

Has The Boil spoken this morning?

Yes, I had a row with it, and it got
very heated when I refused to shave.

Tell me about your parents.

Not part of The Plot.
As far as I know, they 
were completely normal.
I come from a completely 
normal family.


Tell him about your grandfather.

That was the boil. Ignore it.

I don't think we should do that.

It's the first time it's spoken in front
of me, and it might be important.

It has nothing important to say. 
It is destructive, self-satisfied 
and abusive.

You cun...


You see? 
Don't Listen.

Come on. Fair's fair.
You've had your say. Now I'll have mine.

Don't listen to it! Don't listen to it!

Why don't you tell me
about your grandfather?

If you tell me, the boil might be quiet.

My grandfather was caught molesting
a wallaby in a private zoo in 1919.

- A wallaby?
- May have been a kangaroo. I'm not sure.

- You mean sexually?
- Suppose so. He had his hand in its pouch.

- Fucked it, didn't he?
- He did not fuck it!

Just... just lie back.

- What happened to him?
- He pleaded insanity and got three months.

Does the authoritarian attitude
they took with him upset you?

- No. He died before I was born.
- Do you sympathise with him?

If I had been stuck in a trench
for three years,

- I might do something stupid myself.
- Like showing affection for an animal?

- He'd fuck one.
- Shut up!

Ask Barbara Simmons.
He'd fuck her as well.

Oh, my God. How could the boil have
possibly known about my grandfather?

That means it can read my mind.

No, Mr Bagley, it does not.

We'll speak about that in a moment,
when we've had a look at this boil.

What you mean is you want
me to have a look at it. No.

What would you say if I said
that you don't want to look at it

because you're frightened
of what you might see?

I'd say you'd be absolutely right.

Isn't that trying to pretend
it doesn't exist?

Isn't that exactly what you're accusing
everyone else of doing?

Now, we must reduce
this guilt in two ways.

First, it must be physically
reduced with surgery.

And secondly, we must reduce
your punishing conscience

by refusing to allow it to hide.

Once we get it out into the open,
it'll be easier to fight.

And I'm certain that
by the time your neck's healed,
you'll be smiling at this problem
and be back at work.

Never. No matter what you reduce,
I will never go back to advertising.

Perhaps. But now, let's have a look
at this bully on your neck.

Just look at it in The Mirror...
and tell me What You See.

Oh, God in Heaven!
It's grown a moustache!

Oh, My God!
Oh, My God.
Yes.

Yes?

The Bastard looks just like Me!

What you must understand
is that it's not The Boil
that can read You.

It is you, Mr Bagley,
that can read the boil.

You can read it because it is you.
At least, a part of you.

The Boil knows 
What You're Thinking
because you've projected
Some of You into it.

You've given it the side
that you find intolerable,
the bullying, aggressive,
dictatorial side.

The side that sells 
Toothpaste and Soap.

You've decided that 
Selling These Things is a 
Bad Thing for You to Do,
and you are unable 
to accept The Guilt for 
what you feel you've done.

Therefore, you've transmitted
these qualities into The Boil.
Perhaps, by doing this, you hope 
to escape Your Guilt.

But you've created a symbol of 
Foul-Mouthed Authority instead.

Your Very Own 
Big Brother.

The Playground











The playground seemed much nicer in the deep snow than it ever had during the autumn. It looked like a fairyland sculpture. The swing chains had been frozen in strange positions, the seats of the big kids’ swings resting flush against the snow. The jungle gym was an ice cave guarded by dripping icicle teeth. Only the chimneys of the play-Overlook stuck up over the snow

(wish the other one was buried that way only not with us in it)


and the tops of the cement rings protruded in two places like Eskimo igloos. Danny tramped over there, squatted, and began to dig. Before long he had uncovered the dark mouth of one of them and he slipped into the cold tunnel. In his mind he was Patrick McGoohan, the Secret Agent Man (they had shown the reruns of that program twice on the Burlington TV channel and his daddy never missed them; he would skip a party to stay home and watch Secret Agent or The Avengers, and Danny had always watched with him), on the run from KGB agents in the mountains of Switzerland. There had been avalanches in the area and the notorious KGB agent Slobbo had killed his girlfriend with a poison dart, but somewhere near was the Russian antigravity machine. Perhaps at the end of this very tunnel. He drew his automatic and went along the concrete tunnel, his eyes wide and alert, his breath pluming out.

The far end of the concrete ring was solidly blocked with snow. He tried digging through it and was amazed (and a little uneasy) to see how solid it was, almost like ice from the cold and the constant weight of more snow on top of it.


His make-believe game collapsed around him and he was suddenly aware that he felt closed in and extremely nervous in this tight ring of cement. He could hear his breathing; it sounded dank and quick and hollow. He was under the snow, and hardly any light filtered down the hole he had dug to get in here. Suddenly he wanted to be out in the sunlight more than anything, suddenly he remembered his daddy and mommy were sleeping and didn’t know where he was, that if the hole he dug caved in he would be trapped, and the Overlook didn’t like him. Danny got turned around with some difficulty and crawled back along the length of the concrete ring, his snowshoes clacking woodenly together behind him, his palms crackling in last fall’s dead aspen leaves beneath him. He had just reached the end and the cold spill of light coming down from above when the snow did give in, a minor fall, but enough to powder his face and clog the opening he had wriggled down through and leave him in darkness.


For a moment his brain froze in utter panic and he could not think. Then, as if from far off, he heard his daddy telling him that he must never play at the Stovington dump, because sometimes stupid people hauled old refrigerators off to the dump without removing the doors and if you got in one and the door happened to shut on you, there was no way to get out. You would die in The Darkness.


(You wouldn’t want a thing like that to happen to you, would you, Doc?)


(No, Daddy.)


But it had happened, his frenzied mind told him, it had happened, he was in the dark, he was closed in, and it was as cold as a refrigerator. And—


(something is in here with me.)


His breath stopped in a gasp. An almost drowsy terror stole through his veins. Yes. Yes. There was something in here with him, some awful thing The Overlook had saved for just such a chance as this. Maybe a huge spider that had burrowed down under the dead leaves, or a rat … or maybe the corpse of some little kid that had died here on the playground. Had that ever happened? Yes, he thought maybe it had. He thought of the woman in the tub. The blood and brains on the wall of the Presidential Sweet. Of some little kid, its head split open from a fall from the monkey bars or a swing, crawling after him in the dark, grinning, looking for one final playmate in its endless playground. Forever. In a moment he would hear it coming.


At the far end of the concrete ring, Danny heard the stealthy crackle of dead leaves as something came for him on its hands and knees. At any moment he would feel its cold hand close over his ankle—


That thought broke his paralysis. He was digging at the loose fall of snow that choked the end of the concrete ring, throwing it back between his legs in powdery bursts like a dog digging for a bone. Blue light filtered down from above and Danny thrust himself up at it like a diver coming out of deep water. He scraped his back on the lip of the concrete ring. One of his snowshoes twisted behind the other. Snow spilled down inside his ski mask and into the collar of his parka. He dug at the snow, clawed at it. It seemed to be trying to hold him, to suck him back down, back into the concrete ring where that unseen, leaf-crackling thing was, and keep him there. Forever.


Then he was out, his face was turned up to the sun, and he was crawling through the snow, crawling away from the half-buried cement ring, gasping harshly, his face almost comically white with powdered snow — a living fright-mask. He hobbled over to the jungle gym and sat down to readjust his snowshoes and get his breath. As he set them to rights and tightened the straps again, he never took his eyes from the hole at the end of the concrete ring. He waited to see if something would come out. Nothing did, and after three or four minutes, Danny’s breathing began to slow down. Whatever it was, it couldn’t stand the sunlight. It was cooped up down there, maybe only able to come out when it was dark … or when both ends of its circular prison were plugged with snow.


(but i’m safe now i’m safe i’ll just go back because now i’m)


Something thumped softly behind him.


He turned around, toward the hotel, and looked. But even before he looked


(Can you see the Indians in this picture?)


he knew what he would see, because he knew what that soft thumping sound had been. It was the sound of a large clump of snow falling, the way it sounded when it slid off the roof of the hotel and fell to the ground.


(Can you see—?)


Yes. He could. The snow had fallen off the hedge dog. When he came down it had only been a harmless lump of snow outside the playground. Now it stood revealed, an incongruous splash of green in all the eye-watering whiteness. It was sitting up, as if to beg a sweet or a scrap.


But this time he wouldn’t go crazy, he wouldn’t blow his cool. Because at least he wasn’t trapped in some dark old hole. He was in the sunlight. And it was just a dog. It’s pretty warm out today, he thought hopefully. Maybe the sun just melted enough snow off that old dog so the rest fell off in a bunch. Maybe that’s all it is.


(Don’t go near that place … steer right clear.)


His snowshoe bindings were as tight as they were ever going to be. He stood up and stared back at the concrete ring, almost completely submerged in the snow, and what he saw at the end he had exited from froze his heart. There was a circular patch of darkness at the end of it, a fold of shadow that marked the hole he’d dug to get down inside. Now, in spite of the snow-dazzle, he thought he could see something there. Something moving. A hand. The waving hand of some desperately unhappy child, waving hand, pleading hand, drowning hand.


(Save me O please save me If you can’t save me at least come play with me … Forever. And Forever. And Forever.)


No,” Danny whispered huskily. The word fell dry and bare from his mouth, which was stripped of moisture. He could feel his mind wavering now, trying to go away the way it had when the woman in the room had … no, better not think of that.


He grasped at the strings of reality and held them tightly. He had to get out of here. Concentrate on that. Be cool. Be like the Secret Agent Man. Would Patrick McGoohan be crying and peeing in his pants like a little baby?


Thursday 12 May 2022

Secret Agent Man


Every Government has its secret service branch
America, CIA
France, Deuxième Bureau
England, MI5
NATO also has its own

A messy job
Well that’s when they usually 
call on me or someone like me. 

Oh yes, My Name is Drake
John Drake.


THE HEDGES


It was November 29, three days after Thanksgiving. The last week had been a good one, the Thanksgiving dinner the best they’d ever had as a family. Wendy had cooked Dick Hallorann’s turkey to a turn and they had all eaten to bursting without even coming close to demolishing the jolly bird. Jack had groaned that they would be eating turkey for the rest of the winter—creamed turkey, turkey sandwiches, turkey and noodles, turkey surprise.


No, Wendy told him with a little smile. Only until Christmas. Then we have the capon.


Jack and Danny groaned together.


The bruises on Danny’s neck had faded, and their fears seemed to have faded with them. On Thanksgiving afternoon Wendy had been pulling Danny around on his sled while Jack worked on the play, which was now almost done.


Are you still afraid, doc?” she had asked, not knowing how to put the question less baldly.


“Yes,” he answered simply. “But now I stay in the safe places.”


“Your daddy says that sooner or later the forest rangers will wonder why we’re not checking in on the CB radio. They’ll come to see if anything is wrong. We might go down then. You and I. And let your daddy finish the winter. He has good reasons for wanting to. In a way, doc … I know this is hard for you to understand … our backs are against the wall.”


“Yes,” he had answered noncommittally.


On this sparkling afternoon the two of them were upstairs, and Danny knew that they had been making love. They were dozing now. They were happy, he knew. His mother was still a little bit afraid, but his father’s attitude was strange. It was a feeling that he had done something that was very hard and had done it right. But Danny could not seem to see exactly what the something was. His father was guarding that carefully, even in his own mind. Was it possible, Danny wondered, to be glad you had done something and still be so ashamed of that something that you tried not to think of it? The question was a disturbing one. He didn’t think such a thing was possible … in a normal mind. His hardest probings at his father had only brought him a dim picture of something like an octopus, whirling up into the hard blue sky. And on both occasions that he had concentrated hard enough to get this, Daddy had suddenly been staring at him in a sharp and frightening way, as if he knew what Danny was doing.


Now he was in the lobby, getting ready to go out. He went out a lot, taking his sled or wearing his snowshoes. He liked to get out of the hotel. When he was out in the sunshine, it seemed like a weight had slipped from his shoulders.


He pulled a chair over, stood on it, and got his parka and snow pants out of the ballroom closet, and then sat down on the chair to put them on. His boots were in the boot box and he pulled them on, his tongue creeping out into the corner of his mouth in concentration as he laced them and tied the rawhide into careful granny knots. He pulled on his mittens and his ski mask and was ready.


He tramped out through the kitchen to the back door, then paused. He was tired of playing out back, and at this time of day the hotel’s shadow would be cast over his play area. He didn’t even like being in the Overlook’s shadow. He decided he would put on his snowshoes and go down to the playground instead. Dick Hallorann had told him to stay away from the topiary, but the thought of the hedge animals did not bother him much. They were buried under snowdrifts now, nothing showing but a vague hump that was the rabbit’s head and the lions’ tails. Sticking out of the snow the way they were, the tails looked more absurd than frightening.


Danny opened the back door and got his snowshoes from the milk platform. Five minutes later he was strapping them to his feet on the front porch. His daddy had told him that he (Danny) had the hang of using the snowshoes—the lazy, shuffling stride, the twist of ankle that shook the powdery snow from the lacings just before the boot came back down—and all that remained was for him to build up the necessary muscles in his thighs and calves and ankles. Danny found that his ankles got tired the fastest. Snowshoeing was almost as hard on your ankles as skating, because you had to keep clearing the lacings. Every five minutes or so he had to stop with his legs spread and the snowshoes flat on the snow to rest them.


But he didn’t have to rest on his way down to the playground because it was all downhill. Less than ten minutes after he struggled up and over the monstrous snowdune that had drifted in on the Overlook’s front porch he was standing with his mittened hand on the playground slide. He wasn’t even breathing hard.


The playground seemed much nicer in the deep snow than it ever had during the autumn. It looked like a fairyland sculpture. The swing chains had been frozen in strange positions, the seats of the big kids’ swings resting flush against the snow. The jungle gym was an ice cave guarded by dripping icicle teeth. Only the chimneys of the play-Overlook stuck up over the snow


(wish the other one was buried that way only not with us in it)


and the tops of the cement rings protruded in two places like Eskimo igloos. Danny tramped over there, squatted, and began to dig. Before long he had uncovered the dark mouth of one of them and he slipped into the cold tunnel. In his mind he was Patrick McGoohan, the Secret Agent Man (they had shown the reruns of that program twice on the Burlington TV channel and his daddy never missed them; he would skip a party to stay home and watch Secret Agent or The Avengers, and Danny had always watched with him), on the run from KGB agents in the mountains of Switzerland. There had been avalanches in the area and the notorious KGB agent Slobbo had killed his girlfriend with a poison dart, but somewhere near was the Russian antigravity machine. Perhaps at the end of this very tunnel. He drew his automatic and went along the concrete tunnel, his eyes wide and alert, his breath pluming out.


The far end of the concrete ring was solidly blocked with snow. He tried digging through it and was amazed (and a little uneasy) to see how solid it was, almost like ice from the cold and the constant weight of more snow on top of it.

His make-believe game collapsed around him and he was suddenly aware that he felt closed in and extremely nervous in this tight ring of cement. He could hear his breathing; it sounded dank and quick and hollow. He was under the snow, and hardly any light filtered down the hole he had dug to get in here. Suddenly he wanted to be out in the sunlight more than anything, suddenly he remembered his daddy and mommy were sleeping and didn’t know where he was, that if the hole he dug caved in he would be trapped, and the Overlook didn’t like him. Danny got turned around with some difficulty and crawled back along the length of the concrete ring, his snowshoes clacking woodenly together behind him, his palms crackling in last fall’s dead aspen leaves beneath him. He had just reached the end and the cold spill of light coming down from above when the snow did give in, a minor fall, but enough to powder his face and clog the opening he had wriggled down through and leave him in darkness.

For a moment his brain froze in utter panic and he could not think. Then, as if from far off, he heard his daddy telling him that he must never play at the Stovington dump, because sometimes stupid people hauled old refrigerators off to the dump without removing the doors and if you got in one and the door happened to shut on you, there was no way to get out. You would die in the darkness.

(You wouldn’t want a thing like that to happen to you, would you, doc?)

(No, Daddy.)

But it had happened, his frenzied mind told him, it had happened, he was in the dark, he was closed in, and it was as cold as a refrigerator. And—

(something is in here with me.)

His breath stopped in a gasp. An almost drowsy terror stole through his veins. Yes. Yes. There was something in here with him, some awful thing the Overlook had saved for just such a chance as this. Maybe a huge spider that had burrowed down under the dead leaves, or a rat … or maybe the corpse of some little kid that had died here on the playground. Had that ever happened? Yes, he thought maybe it had. He thought of the woman in the tub. The blood and brains on the wall of the Presidential Sweet. Of some little kid, its head split open from a fall from the monkey bars or a swing, crawling after him in the dark, grinning, looking for one final playmate in its endless playground. Forever. In a moment he would hear it coming.

At the far end of the concrete ring, Danny heard the stealthy crackle of dead leaves as something came for him on its hands and knees. At any moment he would feel its cold hand close over his ankle—

That thought broke his paralysis. He was digging at the loose fall of snow that choked the end of the concrete ring, throwing it back between his legs in powdery bursts like a dog digging for a bone. Blue light filtered down from above and Danny thrust himself up at it like a diver coming out of deep water. He scraped his back on the lip of the concrete ring. One of his snowshoes twisted behind the other. Snow spilled down inside his ski mask and into the collar of his parka. He dug at the snow, clawed at it. It seemed to be trying to hold him, to suck him back down, back into the concrete ring where that unseen, leaf-crackling thing was, and keep him there. Forever.

Then he was out, his face was turned up to the sun, and he was crawling through the snow, crawling away from the half-buried cement ring, gasping harshly, his face almost comically white with powdered snow—a living fright-mask. He hobbled over to the jungle gym and sat down to readjust his snowshoes and get his breath. As he set them to rights and tightened the straps again, he never took his eyes from the hole at the end of the concrete ring. He waited to see if something would come out. Nothing did, and after three or four minutes, Danny’s breathing began to slow down. Whatever it was, it couldn’t stand the sunlight. It was cooped up down there, maybe only able to come out when it was dark … or when both ends of its circular prison were plugged with snow.

(but i’m safe now i’m safe i’ll just go back because now i’m)

Something thumped softly behind him.

He turned around, toward the hotel, and looked. But even before he looked

(Can you see the Indians in this picture?)

he knew what he would see, because he knew what that soft thumping sound had been. It was the sound of a large clump of snow falling, the way it sounded when it slid off the roof of the hotel and fell to the ground.

(Can you see—?)


Yes. He could. The snow had fallen off the hedge dog. When he came down it had only been a harmless lump of snow outside the playground. Now it stood revealed, an incongruous splash of green in all the eye-watering whiteness. It was sitting up, as if to beg a sweet or a scrap.


But this time he wouldn’t go crazy, he wouldn’t blow his cool. Because at least he wasn’t trapped in some dark old hole. He was in the sunlight. And it was just a dog. It’s pretty warm out today, he thought hopefully. Maybe the sun just melted enough snow off that old dog so the rest fell off in a bunch. Maybe that’s all it is.


(Don’t go near that place … steer right clear.)


His snowshoe bindings were as tight as they were ever going to be. He stood up and stared back at the concrete ring, almost completely submerged in the snow, and what he saw at the end he had exited from froze his heart. There was a circular patch of darkness at the end of it, a fold of shadow that marked the hole he’d dug to get down inside. Now, in spite of the snow-dazzle, he thought he could see something there. Something moving. A hand. The waving hand of some desperately unhappy child, waving hand, pleading hand, drowning hand.


(Save me O please save me If you can’t save me at least come play with me … Forever. And Forever. And Forever.)


“No,” Danny whispered huskily. The word fell dry and bare from his mouth, which was stripped of moisture. He could feel his mind wavering now, trying to go away the way it had when the woman in the room had … no, better not think of that.

He grasped at the strings of reality and held them tightly. He had to get out of here. Concentrate on that. Be cool. Be like the Secret Agent Man. Would Patrick McGoohan be crying and peeing in his pants like a little baby?


Would His Daddy?


That calmed him somewhat.

From behind him, that soft flump sound of falling snow came again. He turned around and the head of one of the hedge lions was sticking out of the snow now, snarling at him. It was closer than it should have been, almost up to the gate of the playground.

Terror tried to rise up and he quelled it. He was the Secret Agent Man, and he would escape.

He began to walk out of the playground, taking the same roundabout course his father had taken on the day that the snow flew. He concentrated on operating the snowshoes. Slow, flat strides. Don’t lift your foot too high or you’ll lose your balance. Twist your ankle and spill the snow off the crisscrossed lacings. It seemed so slow. He reached the corner of the playground. The snow was drifted high here and he was able to step over the fence. He got halfway over and then almost fell flat when the snowshoe on his behind foot caught on one of the fence posts. He leaned on the outside edge of gravity, pinwheeling his arms, remembering how hard it was to get up once you fell down.

From his right, that soft sound again, falling clumps of snow. He looked over and saw the other two lions, clear of snow now down to their forepaws, side by side, about sixty paces away. The green indentations that were their eyes were fixed on him. The dog had turned its head.

(It only happens when you’re not looking.)

“Oh! Hey—”

His snowshoes had crossed and he plunged forward into the snow, arms waving uselessly. More snow got inside his hood and down his neck and into the tops of his boots. He struggled out of the snow and tried to get the snowshoes under him, heart hammering crazily now

(Secret Agent Man remember you’re the Secret Agent)

and overbalanced backward. For a moment he lay there looking at the sky, thinking it would be simpler to just give up.

Then he thought of the thing in the concrete tunnel and knew he could not. He gained his feet and stared over at the topiary. All three lions were bunched together now, not forty feet away. The dog had ranged off to their left, as if to block Danny’s retreat. They were bare of snow except for powdery ruffs around their necks and muzzles. They were all staring at him.

His breath was racing now, and the panic was like a rat behind his forehead, twisting and gnawing. He fought the panic and he fought the snowshoes.

(Daddy’s voice: No, don’t fight them, doc. Walk on them like they were your own feet. Walk with them.)

(Yes, Daddy.)

He began to walk again, trying to regain the easy rhythm he had practiced with his daddy. Little by little it began to come, but with the rhythm came an awareness of just how tired he was, how much his fear had exhausted him. The tendons of his thighs and calves and ankles were hot and trembly. Ahead he could see the Overlook, mockingly distant, seeming to stare at him with its many windows, as if this were some sort of contest in which it was mildly interested.

Danny looked back over his shoulder and his hurried breathing caught for a moment and then hurried on even faster. The nearest lion was now only twenty feet behind, breasting through the snow like a dog paddling in a pond. The two others were to its right and left, pacing it. They were like an Army platoon on patrol, the dog, still off to their left, the scout. The closest lion had its head down. The shoulders bunched powerfully above its neck. The tail was up, as if in the instant before he had turned to look it had been swishing back and forth, back and forth. He thought it looked like a great big house cat that was having a good time playing with a mouse before killing it.

(—falling—)

No, if he fell he was dead. They would never let him get up. They would pounce. He pinwheeled his arms madly and lunged ahead, his center of gravity dancing just beyond his nose. He caught it and hurried on, snapping glances back over his shoulder. The air whistled in and out of his dry throat like hot glass.

The World closed down to the dazzling snow, the green hedges, and the whispery sound of his snowshoes. And something else. A soft, muffled padding sound. He tried to hurry faster and couldn’t. He was walking over the buried driveway now, a small boy with his face almost buried in the shadow of his parka hood. The afternoon was still and bright.

When he looked back again, the point lion was only five feet behind. It was grinning. Its mouth was open, its haunches tensed down like a clockspring. Behind it and the others he could see the rabbit, its head now sticking out of the snow, bright green, as if it had turned its horrid blank face to watch the end of the stalk.

Now, on the Overlook’s front lawn between the circular drive and the porch, he let the panic loose and began to run clumsily in the snowshoes, not daring to look back now, tilting farther and farther forward, his arms out ahead of him like a blind man feeling for obstacles. His hood fell back, revealing his complexion, paste-white giving way to hectic red blotches on his cheeks, his eyes bulging with terror. The porch was very close now.

Behind him he heard the sudden hard crunch of snow as something leaped.

He fell on the porch steps, screaming without sound, and scrambled up them on his hands and knees, snowshoes clattering and askew behind him.

There was a slashing sound in the air and sudden pain in his leg. The ripping sound of cloth. Something else that might have—must have—been in his mind.

Bellowing, angry roar.

Smell of blood and evergreen.

He fell full-length on the porch, sobbing hoarsely, the rich, metallic taste of copper in his mouth. His heart was thundering in his chest. There was a small trickle of blood coming from his nose.

He had no idea how long he lay there before the lobby doors flew open and Jack ran out, wearing just his jeans and a pair of slippers. Wendy was behind him.

“Danny!” she screamed.

“Doc! Danny, for Christ’s sake! What’s wrong? What happened?”

Daddy was helping him up. Below the knee his snowpants were ripped open. Inside, his woollen ski sock had been ripped open and his calf had been shallowly scratched … as if he had tried to push his way through a closely grown evergreen hedge and the branches had clawed him.

He looked over his shoulder. Far down the lawn, past the putting green, were a number of vague, snowcowled humps. The hedge animals. Between them and the playground. Between them and the road.

His legs gave way. Jack caught him. He began to cry.


Sad Stories of The Deaths of Gods

 




PICARD
Well, he's always had a certain 
fascination with Humanity, 
with myself in particular….
I think he has more than a passing interest
 in What Happens to Me.


DATA

That is True — Q's Interest in You has always been very similar to that of a Master and His Beloved Pet. 

…..That was only an analogy, Captain. 


Let Us Lie, Dreaming all Across 
The Vastness of The Terrestrial Sphere 
and Lament Mournful Elegies 
to The Deaths of Gods




Q. :
I am moving on. 
In your parlance, 
I am dying…

A. :
…Yes, I know —

Q. :
alone. I am dying alone
I Do Not Want That for You. 

Humans... 
Your Griefs, Your Pains 
fix you to moments 
in The Past long gone. 

You're like butterflies 
with your wings pinned. 

My Old Friend
forever The Boy who, 
with an errant turn 
of A Skeleton Key, 
Broke The Universe, 
and His Own Heart -- 
No More

You are now unshackled 
from The Past. 
As I leave, I leave You Free

A. :
But... why does all this matter

Is something going to happen 
for which I will be required

Q. :
Must it always have galactic import? 
Universal stakes, celestial upheaval? 

Isn't one Life enough

You ask Me Why it Matters : 
It matters to Me
You matter to me

Even gods have favourites, Jean-Luc. 
And You've always been one of mine. 





Q. : 
Welcome to The Afterlife, Jean-Luc --
You're Dead.

A. : 
Q, What is Going on?

Q. : 
I Told You. You're Dead. 
This is The Afterlife, and I'm God.

A. : 
You are Not God.

Q. : 
Blasphemy! You're Lucky I Don't Cast You out, 
or Smite You or something. 
The Bottom Line is, Your Life ended 
about five minutes ago, 
under the inept ministrations 
of Doctor Beverly Crusher.

A.
No. I am Not Dead. 
Because I refuse to Believe 
that The Afterlife is run by You.
The Universe is not so badly designed.


Q. : 
Very well. If you really require more evidence 
of your post-mortem status, I guess 
I'll just have to provide you some.

MAURICE: 
Jean-Luc, I told you not to go running off to that Academy.

A. : 
...Father --
MAURICE: 
I Told You that Starfleet would bring you to a bad end, 
but you wouldn't listen
Now look at You : Dead before Your Time.

A. : 
Q, enough of this.

Q. : 
Enough what?

MAURICE: 
Why couldn't you have listened? 
Didn't you know that I was working 
for your best interests?

A. : Q, stop this.

MAURICE: 
After all these years, even now, 
You manage to Disappoint Me, Jean-Luc.

Q. : 
He's not the only one 
who'd like to have a word with you.

WOMAN [OC]: 
Why, Jean-Luc? 
Why did you do it?

CREWWOMAN [OC]: 
Captain, there are still people down there. 
You can't abandon them.

CREWMAN [OC]: 
There must be some other way, Captain. 
Some other choice than firing on them.

MAN [OC]: 
If you continue on this course.....

CREWMAN [OC]: 
A direct hit, sir. 
The Ship is Destroyed.

Q. : 
These are The Voices of all the people 
you've killed throughout the years.

A. : 
Whom I've killed? 
What do you mean?

Q. : 
Death has made you a little dim, Jean-Luc. 
These are the voices of all the people 
who have died through your actions 
or your inactions. 

Now, if you have any words 
of apology or regret
I believe they're all listening. 

They're a surly bunch, actually, 
so don't drag this out too long.

A. : 
I've no intention of performing for your amusement.

Q. : 
This is not for me. 
This is for you, Jean-Luc. 
This is your opportunity 
to make peace 
with your sordid past.

A. : 
I find it hard to believe that 
you are doing this 
for the benefit of my soul.

Q. : 
Well, now that you've shuffled off the mortal coil, 
we're free to spend a little time together.

A. : 
'A little time together?' 
How much?

Q. : 
Eternity. Now, you're sure you have 
no regrets or feelings of guilt 
about your former life? 

I can't have you whining 
and complaining throughout Time.

A. : 
If I'm really Dead, then my only regret 
is dying and finding you here.

Q. : 
You wound me, Jean-Luc. 
After all, I was not the cause of your death. This was.

He holds up the contraption Kate Pulaski 
put in him all those seasons ago

A. : 
Is that...?

Q. : 
Your Artificial Heart
You might have lived if you had a real one 
instead of this unreliable piece of Technology

By the way, how did you lose yours anyway?

A. : 
A Mistake.



Q. : 
Is that a regret I hear?

A. : 
I regret a great many things 
from those days.

Q. : 
Really?

(A Nausicaan and a young man in old-style uniform are fighting. Then a second Nausicaan joins in, and a third stabs the man through the back. The blade sticks out of his chest. The young man falls to his knees, looks at the knife point and laughs, then falls to the floor.)

Q. : 
It wasn't very smart of you to take on 
three Nausicaans, was it?

A. : 
No, it wasn't.

Q. : 
And did I hear a laugh? 
It's so unlike You, Jean-Luc, to have a Sense of Humour, especially about getting stabbed through the back.

A. : 
I was a different person in those days. 
Arrogant, undisciplined, 
with far too much ego and too little wisdom. 
I was more Like You.

Q. : 
Then you must have been far more interesting. 
Pity you had to change.

A. : The pity is that I had to be impaled through the back before I learned that lesson. I started that fight with those Nausicaans. I started it because, because I was young and cocky. If I'd been more responsible in those days, I wouldn't have needed this heart, and I wouldn't have died from a random energy surge thirty years later.

Q. : So, if you had it to do all over again?
A. : Things would be different.