Spent most of today asleep. Which I hate. As you know.
It always makes me feel like my life is being stolen away. I don’t want to sleep all the goddamned time. I want to live, and play, and enjoy myself.
Just like I am enjoying these turkey stuffing flavored chips. Yum. They have that savoury flavour that makes Stove Top Stuffing so addictive.
There’s a certain richness missing, but I assume that’s because it does not contain any actual turkey drippings.
Anyhow, my point is, I am once more pissed off at being asleep for most of the day. Patient readers know I have been to this place many, many times before, and so they know what I am going to say next too :
I wish I could just be philosophical and Zen about the whole thing. Just relax into it and treat it as a little tread – an island of relaxation and tranquility amidst my usual turmoil.
But seriously – fuck that. I’m too alive for that bullshit. I want to fight and struggle and strain, not lay down and play dead.
Al’s got my back on this.
And you know what? There’s nothing wrong with that. As much as I value harmony and calm, the truth is that I am an ornery, feisty, fire-spitting kind of guy deep down.
And if I ever hope to actually be calm and strong and all those other things, it will be because I have harnessed that part of me instead of just blanket suppressing it because it doesn’t fit some bullshit inner image of myself.
One of my biggest challenges is to dream up a better inner image of myself – one that includes all of me, in all my many dimensions, and excludes nothing.
Everything in me is me, including things I would rather not own like all my rage and bitterness and neediness, and until I can view it all as a single version of myself, I will continue to suffer from all that raging inner turmoil.
As it stands, I find it impossible to imagine all of myself at once. I am so used to presenting selected parts of myself to the world that I have come to see myself that way as well. And I honestly don’t know how else to see myself.
Hell, I have taken parts of myself and turned them into a whole different persona – a cute little fluffy foxy named Fruvous – and come to see him as an idealized version of myself, as opposed to being, ya know, me.
It occurs to me that it is time for all my shadows to come together as one. For all these versions of myself to merge into a single solid entity of extraordinary depth and dimension who can then walk forth upon this world as the real me.
It’s an awe-inspiring and terrifying thought. I am actually afraid of this new, integrated version of myself. He seems like a powerful being indeed.
But I know he’s the next step. No more fucking around with shades of myself. Time to bring it all together into one fully integrated monolithic self.
I hope he’s nice.
I’ve slept some more. Still pretty tired.
And so it goes.
This idea of many shadows merging into one has really caught my imagination. I imagine some denizen of the night noticing that his back-alley universe seems to have a lot of people who despite their pitch black outer clothing do not seem to belong there, and he gets curious and follows one.
Through twists and turns that would make the Minotaur dizzy, his awkward, hurried prey navigates with unerring accuracy and flawless purpose.
This man, thinks our narrator, is moving through the most dangerous neighborhood in a city of millions, past places where murder is a leisure activity, and directly through territories of a thousand varieties of human predator, and he might as well be hurrying home to fuck the wife after church.
Eventually, it dawns on our increasingly incredulous pursuer that there are many others just like his quarry scurrying toward the same destination.
Finally they arrive and disappear down a cunningly hidden hole in the back of a side alley so thin you could pass it a thousand times and never know it was there.
Our observer pauses to curse the gods for making him such a fool before plunging in after his quarry.
More twists and turns, but this time underground, in halls made of nothing more than packed earth, with the occasional crucified skeleton wreathed in rotting leaves and with a single tooth… the right upper incisor… removed.
After an interminable time following these, our hero emerges into a rough hewn auditorium filled with ancient clay loggia. At the base, instead of a lectern, there is an enormous roaring bonfire, and the loggia are filled with black-cloaked figures just like his prey, all of whom are shouting and roaring as one of them approaches the fire.
The figure at the fire turns to face the crowd, waits for them to fall silent, then screams “Ut in æternum vive: non necesse est mori!” then leaps headfirst into the fire and is instantly and completely consumed.
The crowd roars with lusty approval, and our observer is horrified to see that, one by one, all present willingly and eagerly, and with a sense of relief, meet the same fate.
And as they feed the fire, a great shadow forms from the smoke and slowly takes the shape of an enormous black cloaked figure just like
Finally, all are gone except for our hero’s prey and himself.
The prey pulls back his good, and our hero is startled to see the face of his councilwoman, a rich and well loved woman of great statute and grace.
She smiles at him like a proud mother, and says “And you, my child, are to be last. You are the New Blood, and by your power we shall be reborn in Him. ”
She gestures to the shadow, which is now so thick and dark as to almost seem solid.
“But I don’t want…. ” begins our hero.
The councilwoman quiet him with a finger pressed to her lips. “Hush, child. That is nothing but your shadow speaking. It is time to cast aside the illusions and be reborn in Him. Look into the fire, my child. It will tell you what you must do. ”
And with a laugh, she leaps into the flames, and disappears like the others.
And for a time, our hero merely stares into the flames. As he does so, he feels something inside him die and slip away. Part of him remembers that what died in him seemed very important very recently. But now it means nothing to him.
And once it is gone, he can see that the fire is not a fire. It’s a brilliant golden radiance, warm and splendid and inviting, and inside it there are thousands of souls just like his own, once cold and alone but now joined in harmony.
And all he has to do to join them is to… let go.
So he does.
And once he too is consumed, the great shadow stands, and from within its inky blackness bursts a golden, heavenly light,
“WHAT WAS LEGION NOW IS ONE IN ME!” it intoned in a voice that people miles away could feel in the soles of their feet.
And nothing was ever the same again.
I will talk to tyou nice people again tomorrow.