“What is the most valuable asset you ever had?” asked the Pupil.
“Trust in a friend,” replied the old Master.
“Don‘t you mean a trustworthy friend?”
“No, that is easy to come by. The challenge is to be able to place your trust in him.”
We live behind bars, barriers, dams, and walls of our own making. Does anyone ever get the chance to break out of their emotional prison cells and to express themselves freely? Perhaps; and perhaps that is the condition we label madness, or lunacy, or insanity. Sane people, I would venture to guess, stay within the imaginary walls that are more difficult to breach than the securest of concrete prisons. I suspect the reason to be that we can never fully trust one another: betrayal is the hallmark of mankind. The walls that keep us within ourselves, also protect us from the others, much like the way child molesters are put into solitary confinement for their own protection. We are all in protective solitary confinement.
How impoverished we are.
Perhaps we are afraid of betrayal from within; perhaps we are afraid of ourselves, the intensity of our emotions, the controlling effect of our senses.
How often have I looked at someone and felt that there is nothing in the world I would refuse to do for her. Nothing. My senses were alert to her slightest discomfort; I noticed the slightest emotional discomfort, and suffer along. I became bothered by her silence; her mood dictated mine; her words, thoughts, face, smell dominated my world and shaped my existence. A slight change in her tone of voice, the look in her eyes, the way she sat or talked or interacted with others, each minutiae of change could betray volumes of anguish and suffering and cause just about the same for the me. Perhaps it is this intensity, this attachment, that we try to avoid.
***
When he died, I did not feel anything. An overwhelming numbness enveloped and pushed aside all emotion. Nostaligic memories was all that I was left with.
What I should have felt, though, was not nostalgia and the occasional bitterness that was, I suppose, inevitable. I should have felt pain; I should have suffered with him, but I could not.
Why had I not felt pain?
I did not feel pain, I believe, because I felt dead. It is not just me, it is everyone. Reg may have been killed, but we are the dead.
Oh, we roam the streets and drive cars and eat and sleep and have sex ‑‑ we do everything living beings are supposed to do, but we are not alive. Our souls are dead; our humanity is dead; we are dead.
For how else can we account for the brutality that we impose and inflict on one another? What cause, what idea, is worth the price of a human life? I am not talking about those who depart with it willingly, for valiant or foolish, to them, the price is high. No. I ask this of those who take life for an idea, an ideal ‑‑ a conjecture, at best.
My head hurts and my eyes are burning. I cannot ‑‑ do not want to write any more…
What kind of person does it take to take a life to prove a point? What certainty of infallibility, what certitude, what righteousness does it take to pass such deadly judgment on another human being? I suppose it has always been there, but I had not wanted to see it. As with people in any other movement ‑‑ sane, rational people ‑‑ I had seen just what I had wanted to see, and dismissed the rest. But the signs were there, in full view of everyone, we just had to open our eyes; and that, often, is the most difficult thing to do.
***
A half moon arisen, a city fast asleep, a seagull aflight ‑‑ I know, even though I cannot see it, for I hear the flutter of the wings. Moonlight dances on the waves, a bone chilling breeze sweeps into the shore from the mighty ocean. I have to close my window.
I had the nightmare again last night. Well, I had a dream, which I do not remember very clearly, except that I woke up shaking with horror and could not go back to sleep, so, I suppose it was a nightmare. Dark figures dancing around a fire. I could not make out what was burning ‑‑ I knew it was something important ‑‑ because of the dancing figures, and I could not see the figures clearly because of the fire; there was music, which was drowned out by the cries of the dancers. Dancers? I am still not sure they were dancing. It was too grotesque. And I knew it was violent, even though in the smoke and the fog it was hard to tell. I tried to go closer, but I could not. Was I afraid? I do not know. Maybe I was just not curious. Then they raised the fire ‑‑ the object that was burning, and I turned my head away. I did not want to see it. And then I could make out the music, and I did not want to hear it. And then I could see their faces, and I did not want to know them. Then I woke up.
…
I cannot feel anything. I have grieved far too much for far too long; I have mourned, I have cried, and now, I have no more tears left. I have no more grief. I do not even feel dead any more ‑‑ for dead implies life before expiration, and I do not feel that I have ever been alive. I feel like the cold gray rocks upon which Tennyson‘s waves break; they sit patiently, bearing with fortitude the weight of an Ocean and the crashing of the wild waves of time, their edges softening, but still waiting, waiting for that one ship to come too close, for that one man to take the wrong step, and then they devour their victims, coldly, silently and passively.
I am scared because I, too, am now waiting for my victims. I have no one in mind ‑‑ like the rocks, I do not know who will pass me next ‑‑ but I do know that if I feel as cold as those rocks, I will claim my own victim in time. That is the nature of things. Maybe if I felt some sorrow, some sadness ….
Evil lurks in my mind. Like an assassin pacing impatiently back and forth on cold cobblestones of a dark misty alleyway, all I can think of is pulling the trigger. Vengeance; the thought of revenge began as a small idea, but now it has mushroomed into a creed; a cancerous tumour expanding mercilessly in my thoughts, awake or asleep; a malignant infection, debilitating, all‑consuming, all‑embracing.
When I first saw it in my own eyes I drew back. It was a passing moment. The hardness, the dark depth that nearly drowned my consciousness in unforgiving malice, vanished as soon as I recognized it and was scared by it. But like an annoying noise or habit, I have become used to the almost daily flashes of the thing, the monster, that inhabits my soul. There is evil, pure evil; it no longer runs through my mind. Evil lurks within me.
It is an unsettling experience, getting used to the evil within. At first I resisted it. I tried to run away from it. I did not look at myself in the mirror; I ran away from “bad” images; I shut “bad” thoughts out of my mind. But at night, when I went to bed, evil was an eager and faithful companion. When I felt grief, it sympathized with me. When I mourned my friend with eyes that no longer bore any tears, with a heart that no longer felt any pain, and with a soul shot through with confusion and anger, it held me up and nourished me.
You are a sly one, but a faithful companion! A weaker man would have given in to your wiles many a moon past: I have already seen too many moons trying to stay awake to avoid your allure. A weaker man would have sought consolation from you. But not I. I know you; I have seen you in the mirror; but I shall not be yours, not yet anyway.
I became aware of my humanity, oddly enough, at the moment when I realized I could take life. The look I saw in the mirror, MY LOOK, was the look of a murderer. It was, at that point, just a flash, and I had no inkling of the future frequency of the visit. Until then, I used to think that when faced with the choice of killing someone and being killed myself, I should have the courage to accept death rather than break my own proscription against taking a life. But that morning, in a flash of appalled recognition, I saw my capacity to take life ‑‑ not just to save life, but for more unsavoury reasons, for revenge. I retreated in horror then, but I have been visited by that spectre time and again since that morning encounter, and I have accepted its presence. Now I can only say that when faced with the choice of killing someone, and not killing someone, I should like to have the will to resist the force of evil.
But vengeance is a terrible master. It is merciless to both its victims, the killed and the killer ‑‑ one loses his life, the other his humanity. And just like night and day, when we become cognizant of the one at the prospect of losing the other, I first became aware of my humanity at that brief moment when I was close to losing it. Now I am ever closer to its loss.
Ali is aware of this. He has seen something in my eyes that I see but fleetingly myself, a look, a ghost even. He told me I was not in good shape, and he was right. How could a cold gray rock be a good shape for a human being ‑‑ a former human, now gone, now dead, now a mass of frozen lava sitting on a shore waiting to destroy anything that had the mischance of crossing its path? Ali was worried about the look in my eyes, but I was worried that I had eyes. Rocks sit passively, patiently, and do not kill unless trod upon. But I had the nature ‑‑ if it can be so called ‑‑ of a murderous cliff and the hunting instinct of a wounded tiger. I would not sit passively for my victims, I would seek them out; I would not wait for them to get close to me, I would call on them, like the Sirens, to come to me and to crash on my deadly jagged edges. It would not be random, but by choice and design ‑‑ my choice. I would look into the vast ocean, see the ship I wish to sink, and quietly lay myself in its path; and I would not feel any pain, and not have any remorse. And on to the next ship to sink, the next skull to crack open, the next life to take.
If we are dead, then taking a life would not be such a sin. If our souls are dead, then I would be putting an end to a mere chemical process. And after that, no more pain, no more brutality, no more violence, no more unleashing of pent up anger, no more random throw of the darts, no more bloody pants ‑‑ no more death.
“If we are to change anything, it must be intellectually, and not by violence,” Ali said. He was reading my mind, or my journals. I looked up, but he turned his eyes away from me. He looked out at the dancing moonlight; another insomniac fisherman, and his fishing boat broke the liquid silver pattern; the moon frowned; Ali sipped his tea.
“The look in your eyes in not human.” He shuddered. “It‘s still cold in here.”
He started a fire in the fireplace and went back to the couch, but it did not do him any good.
“Are you concerned for me?”
“No. I‘m … I‘m scared of you.”
How impoverished we are.
Perhaps we are afraid of betrayal from within; perhaps we are afraid of ourselves, the intensity of our emotions, the controlling effect of our senses.
How often have I looked at someone and felt that there is nothing in the world I would refuse to do for her. Nothing. My senses were alert to her slightest discomfort; I noticed the slightest emotional discomfort, and suffer along. I became bothered by her silence; her mood dictated mine; her words, thoughts, face, smell dominated my world and shaped my existence. A slight change in her tone of voice, the look in her eyes, the way she sat or talked or interacted with others, each minutiae of change could betray volumes of anguish and suffering and cause just about the same for the me. Perhaps it is this intensity, this attachment, that we try to avoid.
***
When he died, I did not feel anything. An overwhelming numbness enveloped and pushed aside all emotion. Nostaligic memories was all that I was left with.
What I should have felt, though, was not nostalgia and the occasional bitterness that was, I suppose, inevitable. I should have felt pain; I should have suffered with him, but I could not.
Why had I not felt pain?
I did not feel pain, I believe, because I felt dead. It is not just me, it is everyone. Reg may have been killed, but we are the dead.
Oh, we roam the streets and drive cars and eat and sleep and have sex ‑‑ we do everything living beings are supposed to do, but we are not alive. Our souls are dead; our humanity is dead; we are dead.
For how else can we account for the brutality that we impose and inflict on one another? What cause, what idea, is worth the price of a human life? I am not talking about those who depart with it willingly, for valiant or foolish, to them, the price is high. No. I ask this of those who take life for an idea, an ideal ‑‑ a conjecture, at best.
My head hurts and my eyes are burning. I cannot ‑‑ do not want to write any more…
What kind of person does it take to take a life to prove a point? What certainty of infallibility, what certitude, what righteousness does it take to pass such deadly judgment on another human being? I suppose it has always been there, but I had not wanted to see it. As with people in any other movement ‑‑ sane, rational people ‑‑ I had seen just what I had wanted to see, and dismissed the rest. But the signs were there, in full view of everyone, we just had to open our eyes; and that, often, is the most difficult thing to do.
***
A half moon arisen, a city fast asleep, a seagull aflight ‑‑ I know, even though I cannot see it, for I hear the flutter of the wings. Moonlight dances on the waves, a bone chilling breeze sweeps into the shore from the mighty ocean. I have to close my window.
I had the nightmare again last night. Well, I had a dream, which I do not remember very clearly, except that I woke up shaking with horror and could not go back to sleep, so, I suppose it was a nightmare. Dark figures dancing around a fire. I could not make out what was burning ‑‑ I knew it was something important ‑‑ because of the dancing figures, and I could not see the figures clearly because of the fire; there was music, which was drowned out by the cries of the dancers. Dancers? I am still not sure they were dancing. It was too grotesque. And I knew it was violent, even though in the smoke and the fog it was hard to tell. I tried to go closer, but I could not. Was I afraid? I do not know. Maybe I was just not curious. Then they raised the fire ‑‑ the object that was burning, and I turned my head away. I did not want to see it. And then I could make out the music, and I did not want to hear it. And then I could see their faces, and I did not want to know them. Then I woke up.
…
I cannot feel anything. I have grieved far too much for far too long; I have mourned, I have cried, and now, I have no more tears left. I have no more grief. I do not even feel dead any more ‑‑ for dead implies life before expiration, and I do not feel that I have ever been alive. I feel like the cold gray rocks upon which Tennyson‘s waves break; they sit patiently, bearing with fortitude the weight of an Ocean and the crashing of the wild waves of time, their edges softening, but still waiting, waiting for that one ship to come too close, for that one man to take the wrong step, and then they devour their victims, coldly, silently and passively.
I am scared because I, too, am now waiting for my victims. I have no one in mind ‑‑ like the rocks, I do not know who will pass me next ‑‑ but I do know that if I feel as cold as those rocks, I will claim my own victim in time. That is the nature of things. Maybe if I felt some sorrow, some sadness ….
Evil lurks in my mind. Like an assassin pacing impatiently back and forth on cold cobblestones of a dark misty alleyway, all I can think of is pulling the trigger. Vengeance; the thought of revenge began as a small idea, but now it has mushroomed into a creed; a cancerous tumour expanding mercilessly in my thoughts, awake or asleep; a malignant infection, debilitating, all‑consuming, all‑embracing.
When I first saw it in my own eyes I drew back. It was a passing moment. The hardness, the dark depth that nearly drowned my consciousness in unforgiving malice, vanished as soon as I recognized it and was scared by it. But like an annoying noise or habit, I have become used to the almost daily flashes of the thing, the monster, that inhabits my soul. There is evil, pure evil; it no longer runs through my mind. Evil lurks within me.
It is an unsettling experience, getting used to the evil within. At first I resisted it. I tried to run away from it. I did not look at myself in the mirror; I ran away from “bad” images; I shut “bad” thoughts out of my mind. But at night, when I went to bed, evil was an eager and faithful companion. When I felt grief, it sympathized with me. When I mourned my friend with eyes that no longer bore any tears, with a heart that no longer felt any pain, and with a soul shot through with confusion and anger, it held me up and nourished me.
You are a sly one, but a faithful companion! A weaker man would have given in to your wiles many a moon past: I have already seen too many moons trying to stay awake to avoid your allure. A weaker man would have sought consolation from you. But not I. I know you; I have seen you in the mirror; but I shall not be yours, not yet anyway.
I became aware of my humanity, oddly enough, at the moment when I realized I could take life. The look I saw in the mirror, MY LOOK, was the look of a murderer. It was, at that point, just a flash, and I had no inkling of the future frequency of the visit. Until then, I used to think that when faced with the choice of killing someone and being killed myself, I should have the courage to accept death rather than break my own proscription against taking a life. But that morning, in a flash of appalled recognition, I saw my capacity to take life ‑‑ not just to save life, but for more unsavoury reasons, for revenge. I retreated in horror then, but I have been visited by that spectre time and again since that morning encounter, and I have accepted its presence. Now I can only say that when faced with the choice of killing someone, and not killing someone, I should like to have the will to resist the force of evil.
But vengeance is a terrible master. It is merciless to both its victims, the killed and the killer ‑‑ one loses his life, the other his humanity. And just like night and day, when we become cognizant of the one at the prospect of losing the other, I first became aware of my humanity at that brief moment when I was close to losing it. Now I am ever closer to its loss.
Ali is aware of this. He has seen something in my eyes that I see but fleetingly myself, a look, a ghost even. He told me I was not in good shape, and he was right. How could a cold gray rock be a good shape for a human being ‑‑ a former human, now gone, now dead, now a mass of frozen lava sitting on a shore waiting to destroy anything that had the mischance of crossing its path? Ali was worried about the look in my eyes, but I was worried that I had eyes. Rocks sit passively, patiently, and do not kill unless trod upon. But I had the nature ‑‑ if it can be so called ‑‑ of a murderous cliff and the hunting instinct of a wounded tiger. I would not sit passively for my victims, I would seek them out; I would not wait for them to get close to me, I would call on them, like the Sirens, to come to me and to crash on my deadly jagged edges. It would not be random, but by choice and design ‑‑ my choice. I would look into the vast ocean, see the ship I wish to sink, and quietly lay myself in its path; and I would not feel any pain, and not have any remorse. And on to the next ship to sink, the next skull to crack open, the next life to take.
If we are dead, then taking a life would not be such a sin. If our souls are dead, then I would be putting an end to a mere chemical process. And after that, no more pain, no more brutality, no more violence, no more unleashing of pent up anger, no more random throw of the darts, no more bloody pants ‑‑ no more death.
“If we are to change anything, it must be intellectually, and not by violence,” Ali said. He was reading my mind, or my journals. I looked up, but he turned his eyes away from me. He looked out at the dancing moonlight; another insomniac fisherman, and his fishing boat broke the liquid silver pattern; the moon frowned; Ali sipped his tea.
“The look in your eyes in not human.” He shuddered. “It‘s still cold in here.”
He started a fire in the fireplace and went back to the couch, but it did not do him any good.
“Are you concerned for me?”
“No. I‘m … I‘m scared of you.”