‘The Targeter,’ a Surreal Novel, Chapter Eleven

Wait a minute…no. I cannot have attained enlightenment. That would be far too easy, especially for a dope fiend like me.

I haven’t attained nirvana…I’m just really fucking high.

No, I’ll just have to work hard to attain it like everyone else, with discipline, like that old man meditating under the tree. That man I see over there…wait a minute. He’s gone! Oh, I wanted to ask him for guidance!

Oh, well. I’ll just have to look for him, or someone like him, to teach me how to gain that peace of mind I saw on his grinning face, that impressive grin I saw while hearing the bombs and gunfire all around me. I’ll float up and fly in the air in search of him, airborne by ketamine.

I’m flying as if lying on my side, as if reclining on the ground. Am I? I’m traveling high in the air, but I feel as if I’m not at all moving.

I see all these Asian faces looking at me in wonder and awe, amazed at my superhuman flying ability. I see a mix of wonder and worry, as if they think I’m having health problems. Am I? All I know is that I need to find that wise old man, or any wise old man, to guide me to enlightenment.

I see Asian gurus in robes advising me to use extreme discipline and self-denial. They tell me that I must learn to endure extreme pain and discomfort, including fasting.

One of them says to me, “The evil is inside of you, Sid! You must expel it! Vomit it out of your body!”

So I do.

My puke smells as awful as it looks, a pink ooze pouring out of my mouth and onto the stony ground that my head is using as a pillow. I hear voices in Chinese saying, “How disgusting! This foreigner needs a doctor.”

My stomach is empty…so empty. I need food…No! I must be disciplined and resist the urge for material comforts.

I’m getting dizzy. Everything around me is spinning. Apart from that, I feel nothing, as if I have no body.

I hear someone say in Chinese, “Is he dying?”

I’m scared.

Am I dying?

Hey! Was that an explosion in the sky? I thought I saw a huge fireball.

I hear machine gun fire. Since I don’t know where my body begins and ends, and I feel an ache in my…stomach?…I wonder if the bullets have hit me.

I feel a black hole growing in my centre. Is it a bullet hole? Is it my growing hunger? It hurts.

Am I going to throw up again? That puke stink is still all around me.

Wait…now I see only black all around me.

Am I dead? Have I become a huge black void? Is that what the black hole in my centre has grown into? A black everything?

Oh, my God…help me! Wait, I don’t believe in God.

I smell…food. Some kind of…rice pudding? Milk? I still see only black.

Something soft and mushy is going in my mouth…I think. Am I eating the rice pudding? I taste milk.

Hey, that feels better. Still, I’m really wasted. That smell of vomit is still nearby. I wish someone would clean it up.

The black void around me is gone. I’m floating in the air again, still on my side, as if I were lying on the ground.

I see groups of men in army uniforms. Some speak of liberation, some of revolution, others of “restoring order.” All of them are speaking in Chinese. Many are arguing.

Still floating in the air above, I look down and see all of these soldiers from a bird’s eye view. Some are anarchists, dressed all in black and carrying Molotov cocktails. They would overthrow the government immediately and replace it with the ideal world they want, or so I hear them shouting.

Some are wearing PLA uniforms, demanding loyalty to the Beijing government, their rifles pointed at the anarchists and the soldiers of the third group, who are in camouflage, their rifles also pointing at the anarchists and PLA men. This third group is shouting about wanting to restore order to the island.

Shots are fired. Molotov cocktails are thrown, breaking some windows in the neighbourhood buildings. I see a few more fireballs bursting in the night sky, breaking up the darkness.

Several of the men, one or two from each of the three groups, are lying on the streets and sidewalks by my apartment, bleeding. Those that aren’t dead are wailing and moaning in pain from their injuries.

I agree that revolutionary change must happen, to eliminate poverty and end this war; and I agree that some kind of restoration of order must come, so our lives can at least go back to normal. I don’t, however, want to see needless infighting among the revolutionaries, and I don’t want the restoration of order to be so repressive and violent.

These agitators, therefore, are not my kind of people. I’ll float away to some other part of town, one where I can hope to find either that wise old man, or some other guru, one not so extreme in his quest for nirvana, or some other revolutionaries to help me bring down this oppressive power structure we’re all forced to live under.

Buoyed by my ketamine high, I’m flying away from my home.

Pyramids

At
the
top is
the one
who gains
the most, in
death & in life.

At
the
base
aren’t
slaves,
but they
who’d hold
up the entire
edifice below.

A
lot
of the
low ones
come on up
to have their
hearts cut out,
their bodies tossed
down those stone steps.

An
idea:
because
pyramids
are houses
of dead rulers
and the mangled…

At
the
least,
we could
bury these
anachronistic
triangles, along
with their monarchs
& their lifeless victims.

Such pointless pointy things to make.

Analysis of ‘Rocky’

Rocky is a 1976 film directed by John G. Avildsen and written by and starring Sylvester Stallone. It also stars Talia Shire (who is also known for being in The Godfather trilogy), Burt Young, Carl Weathers, and Burgess Meredith.

Rocky was the highest-grossing film of 1976, and it received critical acclaim for Stallone’s writing and acting. Rocky received ten Oscar nominations, including ones for Stallone for Best Actor and Best Original Screenplay; it won three of those–Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Film Editing. It has been ranked by many as one of the best films of all time, spawning five sequels and two spin-off films, Creed and Creed II. Creed III is planned to come out in 2023, and there have been discussions about a prequel film about Rocky’s younger life.

Here is a link to famous quotes from Rocky, and here‘s a link to the script.

The film’s enduring appeal, as is true of all the films of the Rocky franchise, is of course its portrayal of a sympathetic underdog boxer, Rocky Balboa (Stallone), who gets a chance to beat the world heavyweight champion, Apollo Creed (Weathers)…and Rocky almost does. We all love to cheer for someone prevailing against impossible odds.

What should be emphasized, however, about this first, and best, film in the franchise is that our underdog and champ are much more than what we see and hear on the movie screen. Great stress is put at the beginning on how poor and starving of confidence Rocky is, and how proud, overconfident, and smug Apollo is.

This contrast is significant because, since Apollo wants to promote a bicentennial boxing event to reel in lots of money in an appeal to American patriotism, we can see Apollo–wearing the colours of the American flag on the night of the fight and saying, “I want you!” like Uncle Sam–as personifying American capitalism. Working-class Rocky, on the other hand, personifies the struggling global proletariat. Now the masses really have reason to chant his name.

The film begins with his name in big letters on the screen and Bill Conti‘s “Fanfare for Rocky.” Normally, a fanfare is music played on brass instruments to introduce someone of the importance of, say, royalty. This music, however, is a kind of ‘fanfare for the common man,’ a raising of the proletariat to a dignity normally reserved for the ruling class.

We see a shot of a large picture of Jesus holding the Holy Chalice and the Host. The camera goes down to show us Rocky receiving punches from Spider Rico (played by Pedro Lovell). It’s a juxtaposition of two struggling proletarians with an icon representing the opium of the people up above. Eating the flesh and drinking the blood…isn’t that what boxers do, in a way?

This “opium of the people” should be kept in mind when we remember not only Rocky’s Catholic leanings (e.g., doing the Sign of the Cross before a fight, or wearing a crucifix), but also how “Apollo Creed” sounds like a pun on “Apostles’ Creed.” The capitalist class has always used religion to control the people, and the reciting of the Apostles’ Creed is a lot like the automaton-like way the Pledge of Allegiance sounds. Control the people’s creed, what they recite and are therefore indoctrinated to believe, and you control them.

Though Rocky wins the fight against Spider after being enraged by a head-butt, and Rocky tries to be as proud of his win as he can, always saying, “You shoulda seen me,” he is repeatedly called “a bum,” or a fighter of little to no worth, the lowest of the low. Even when Rocky later boasts of his win to trainer Mickey Goldmill (Meredith), Mickey dismisses Spider as “a bum,” too. Bum sounds like derelict, the lumpenproletariat, whom Marx and Engels considered lacking in revolutionary potential.

When Rocky and Spider are paid for the fight, we also hear the deductions taken from their pay: for their lockers, shower, taxes, etc. One is reminded of how the pay of the working class in general is brought down to a minimum.

As he walks home that night in his trademark black hat and jacket, bouncing his ball, he passes by the pet shop where his love interest, Adrian (Shire), works, all while the movie credits are being shown. Then he walks by a group of street singers, led by Frank Stallone, singing “Take You Back“…doo-doo-doo-doo. Rocky encourages them, just as he’s tried to win Adrian’s heart by charming her with corny jokes. In the alienating working-class slums of the Kensington section of Philadelphia in late 1975, Rocky tries his best to connect with people.

In his home, he feeds his turtles, Cuff and Link, and brings over the fishbowl of “Moby-Dick” so his turtles can have some company. If only he could do something about his own loneliness.

He goes up to his mirror, where he has photos of himself when much younger. He practices a new joke he’ll tell Adrian the next day, but he gets frustrated with his clumsy delivery and gives up; then he takes one of the photos, one of him as a kid, presumably a school portrait from before he dropped out. He looks at it and frowns; now that he’s thirty and getting nowhere in life, he’s wondering what he’s done with it.

The juxtaposition of seeing himself in the mirror and trying–and failing–to tell the joke reflects the contrast Lacan noted between the ideal-I in the reflection versus the awkward person looking at himself. As a struggling, working-class boxer, he’s alienated from society; he’s also alienated from himself, from the man he wants to be as reflected in the specular image, from the man who can tell witty jokes and win Adrian’s heart.

The next day, he goes to the pet store to tell Adrian the joke. His desire is the desire of the Other, for the recognition of the Other, for what he believes the Other desires, to have the Other want him as much as he wants her. This is what he wants from ever-timid Adrian, just to have her look back at him, like the ideal-I in the mirror reflection, to be united with that person over there. He likes her because, in her shyness, he sees a reflection of his own lack of self-confidence. He sees himself, his own lack, in her.

At the gym, he’s annoyed to learn that Mick has emptied his locker of six years (to give to another, more worthy boxer, in his estimation) and put his things in a bag on “skid row.” This is the contempt Mick holds Rocky in: not because of a lack of talent, for Mick acknowledges that Rocky has “heart,” but because as we learn later, he has wasted his talent as a fighter by working as a collector for Tony Gazzo (played by Joe Spinell), a loan shark, which leads to the next point.

Rocky’a alienation from himself, as we observed from his inability to measure up to the ideal-I in the mirror (as successful boxer and charmer of Adrian), extends to his alienation from his species-essence as a leg-breaker for Gazzo, a job Rocky has to do to live, but one that he, with his sensitive heart, doesn’t want to do. Small wonder he doesn’t break the thumbs of Bob, who’s failed to pay Gazzo back the full $200 he owes.

Gazzo’s annoyance with Rocky only encourages Gazzo’s driver, who despises Rocky, to mouth him off all the more. Gazzo as a mafia man represents capitalists, as I’ve observed before: here we see all the more alienation for Rocky.

Rocky’s impoverished self-worth (further compounded when 12-year-old Marie [played by Jodi Letizia] says “Screw you, creepo!” to him after he tries to give her advice about avoiding hanging out with bad influences) must have been a semi-autobiographical element from Stallone, who in 1970 suffered homelessness and, desperate for money, ended up starring in a softcore porno film called The Party at Kitty and Stud’s. (Years later, it would be renamed The Italian Stallion upon the success of the Rocky franchise.)

With not only Stallone’s success but also Rocky’s in his defeat of Apollo in Rocky II and afterward, we see a change in the erstwhile underdog in regards to his place in the capitalist world. We see Rocky’s acquisition of wealth and property in Rocky III, then his symbolic defence of capitalism against Soviet boxer Ivan Drago in the blatantly anti-communist propaganda of Rocky IV (despite its liberal critique of over-the-top American jingoist Apollo), his loss of his wealth in Rocky V, and his re-emergence as the owner of a restaurant in Rocky Balboa (with the film’s embrace of petite bourgeois Christian values and a ‘You shouldn’t blame others for your difficulties’ attitude, a neoliberal attitude of the 2000s as I described it in this post). In the sequels, therefore, we see the evolution of ‘left-leaning liberal’ (which actually meant something back in the 70s, if not very much) to the Reaganite right-turn of politics from the 80s to the present day; this is in a way fitting, given Stallone’s somewhat Republican leanings.

To get back to the story, Rocky meets up with Adrian’s brother, Paulie (Young) in a bar, asking him why his sister is so unresponsive to him. Paulie dismisses her as “a loser,” and it’s clear from his abrasive manner that he emotionally abuses her–small wonder she’s so shy and terrified of the world. He’s mean to her because it’s the only way he can feel less shitty about himself…already a hard thing for him to do, especially in an alienating capitalist society.

Meanwhile, Apollo is trying to find a boxer to replace Mac Lee Green (who has injured his hand) for a fight in Philadelphia for the United States Bicentennial on New Year’s Day, 1976. All other contenders are either booked or unavailable for some reason. Apollo proudly points out that they’re all just too scared to fight him, since they haven’t a hope of “whipping” him. The overweening pride of Apollo, who recall personifies American capitalism, thus represents the hubris of ‘exceptional‘ US imperialism, the belief that “there is no alternative,” and that the West can’t be defeated.

Allied to this hubris is the fake modesty assumed in the notion that America is “the land of opportunity,” that with grit, hard work, and determination, supposedly anyone can succeed and become stinking rich. Therefore, Apollo decides to give a local Philadelphia boxer a shot at the Heavyweight Championship of the World.

George Jergens (played by Thayer David), the promoter of the fight, likes Apollo’s idea, calling it “very American!” Apollo correctly says, “No, Jergens. It’s very smart.” One should not confuse Rocky with any endorsement of “the American Dream”: like The Great Gatsby, Rocky exposes the myth of The American Dream. Rocky almost wins the fight against Apollo not as a vindication of that fantasy, but in spite of it. He almost wins out of his own personal volition and determination. Apollo and Jergens never take seriously the idea that Rocky might win, just as the American ruling class, while promising wealth and abundance to the lower and middle classes if they work hard enough, have done everything they can to thwart such hopes for the great majority of the American population.

It’s significant that Rocky’s first date with Adrian is on Thanksgiving. On their date, Rocky and Adrian essentially save each other, that is, from lives of loneliness and self-hate. In keeping with the American theme of this film, we know that the origin of Thanksgiving is in the Native Americans’ having taught the white settlers how to prepare for and survive the harsh winters of a place the Europeans weren’t used to, that is, having saved their lives. (How the white man eventually ‘thanked’ the aboriginals is, of course, another story for another time.)

Rocky wants to show his sensitivity and thoughtfulness to Adrian by paying to give her ten minutes to skate on a rink that’s closing for the night. We see him grab her arm when she’s about to fall, and her enjoyment of the skating helps her to relax and open up to him as he tells her of his boxing and being a southpaw. In such a chilly place, the two are warming up to each other.

The most difficult part of the date, of course, will be Rocky getting her to trust him alone with her in his home that night. She–a timid, petite girl in the home of a large, muscular man, a boxer!–has every reason in the world to be afraid of him. He, having a sexual/romantic interest in her, is groping (pardon the expression) to find reasons for her not to be afraid. Since he knows he’s a nice guy–but she has no way of knowing that, beyond his considerateness at the rink–he can only hope she’ll trust him anyway.

On a date, one should never be expected, let alone pressured or forced, to be sexual, but one does explore sexual possibilities when dating. She’s afraid, but she does find him attractive…especially in his sleeveless shirt with his muscles showing. Being a good man, he’ll never force himself on her…all he wants her to do–all he needs–is for her to accept him. The scurrilous, misogynist violence of incels is of course never to be tolerated, rationalized, or in any way sympathized with–they certainly have no right at all to demand sex from a woman–but the pain emanating from their hearts (which, again, should never be translated into violence) is from their loneliness and sense of rejection, a universal pain felt by incels and non-incels alike.

Rocky, not having the bent towards violence against women, but feeling that loneliness and fearing that rejection from Adrian, just needs her to accept his love. His tactful and sensitive overture to her is to say he’d like to kiss her, though she doesn’t have to kiss him back if she doesn’t want to. For a guy who takes it and dishes it out so brutally in the ring, he is beautifully gentle with his frightened but fascinated date. The beautiful song “You Take My Heart Away” is playing during this scene; it shares a similar theme or two from “Gonna Fly Now,” suggesting the same sense of encouraged aspirations to something better, which leads to the next point.

Her acceptance of his kisses, her kissing him back, marks the turning point in the film. Both of them, instead of seeing their self-confidence continue to wither, are seeing it begin to come back to life. All those self-help books, and all that pop psychology, tell us about the importance of self-love, of building self-esteem from within; but it can only grow from ‘other-love,’ if you will, from receiving the love of others. We are social beings, and we can only grow in love by being together and supporting each other in communities, in loving solidarity.

Right after this date, Rocky receives the news about facing Creed. His self-love is only beginning to grow at this point, so doing anything more than being a sparring partner for Creed–especially fighting him for the heavyweight title!–seems way out of Rocky’s league. When he initially refuses the opportunity offered by Jergens, you vividly see the frown of self-loathing on his face.

Jergens talks him into fighting Apollo, though, and we see the two boxers on TV, with Rocky, Adrian, and Paulie watching the broadcast in her home. Apollo, of course, isn’t taking the fight seriously, and so he makes an ethnic joke against Italians about their stereotyped cooking skills. Naturally, Rocky, Adrian, and Paulie, being Italian-Americans, are not amused.

This leads us to an interesting point about race and ethnicity as regards this fight, something the news reporter says about this American bicentennial fight being between black Apollo and white Rocky. That Apollo is black, however, in no way detracts from his personification of American capitalism, something we normally associate with white men; one must steer clear from the distraction of identity politics when it comes to critiquing capitalism. As we now know, four decades since the beginning of the Rocky phenomenon, the first black American president, despite all the idiotic complaints from the right that he was a “socialist” or a “communist,” was no less capitalist or imperialist than any other US president before or since.

Similarly, Rocky’s being white doesn’t detract from him being the underdog. Though, as Apollo earlier pointed out when choosing Rocky for the fight, an Italian, so they say, discovered America (Cristoforo Colombo, who subsequently abused the natives)–in fact, America was even named after an Italian (Amerigo Vespucci)–Balboa is still working class as against wealthy Apollo, and Italian-Americans have experienced plenty of bigotry from WASP America, as blacks have suffered. So the skin colours of our two fighters make for an intriguing paradox in terms of how the men represent oppressor and oppressed, and their struggle.

Another interesting point should be made about when Apollo chose Rocky as his challenger. He says, with a chuckle, “Apollo Creed meets the Italian Stallion: sounds like a damn monster movie.” One might think of those Japanese kaiju films–Mothra vs Godzilla, King Kong vs Godzilla, etc. Godzilla is a metaphor for Japan’s collective trauma after the nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, an American imperialist war crime resulting in a pop culture icon that Apollo finds amusing, since this “monster movie” title will make for an alluring promotion of this most profitable fight.

Apollo’s not the only one hoping to make a buck or two off of this fight: Paulie will have advertising of his meat-packing business sewn on the back of Rocky’s robe. Also, Mickey has suddenly warmed up to that “dumb dago,” and offers to be Rocky’s manager. Though Rocky at first is too proud to accept the help of a trainer who’s only treated him with contempt until now, he realizes that Mick’s decades of experience will be a great help to him.

During his jogging down the streets of Philadelphia, Rocky stops by Paulie’s meat-packing place of work. Obviously envious that Rocky and his “loser” sister have fallen in love while he, the real loser, still has no girl of his own, Paulie pries into the more intimate aspects of the couple’s relationship using vulgar language. He further annoys Rocky by saying he ‘stinks’ and by punching a piece of meat, inspiring Rocky to do the same. Paulie later has the local TV news show Rocky demonstrating his punching of raw meat; Apollo’s trainer, Tony “Duke” Evers (played by Tony Burton), watches the demo on TV, anxious to have Apollo watch, too.

Tony tells Apollo that Rocky “means business.” Apollo answers that he also means business, that is, of the literal, capitalist kind: he’s preoccupied with advertising and promoting the fight, getting tax breaks, and ensuring that many luminaries attend, for the sake of making as much money as possible. In this sense, Creed is a pun on greed.

Paulie’s envy of the happiness of his sister (along with his fear that she’s lost her virginity), and of Rocky’s newfound success–while he can’t even get Rocky to put in a good word for him for Gazzo–causes him to lash out at Rocky and her one time too many, driving her to tell him off once and for all. Just as Rocky’s confidence is improving, so is hers.

Speaking of Rocky’s growing self-confidence, we’ve come to the famous moment when we see him vigorously training, and “Gonna Fly Now” is heard. Since I’ve said that Apollo personifies American capitalism, and Rocky represents the global proletariat, the underdog fighting against US imperialism, we can think of this emotional moment as something to inspire us and steel our hearts in our current struggle against the oppressive ruling class and its brutal war machine.

I find it ironically useful in this connection to mention a parody of this iconic scene in the otherwise egregiously Zionist film, You Don’t Mess With the Zohan, in which the titular character’s Palestinian nemesis (played by John Turturro) goes through an inspiring training routine like Rocky, with a Middle Eastern variation on “Gonna Fly Now.” In spite of how nauseatingly pro-Israel this piece of Hollywood garbage is, this one scene is like a Freudian slip, reminding us of which people in that hateful conflict are the real underdogs to be sympathized with. It also reinforces my idea that Rocky represents all such Third World underdogs as they try to resist Western hegemony.

So let us be moved when we see Rocky run up the steps to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and he holds his arms up triumphantly at the top. In spite of all the alienation he’s experienced as a poor man in this city, we can be reminded that Philadelphia means “brotherly love,” and thus we can remember the importance of solidarity.

Recall Che’s words: “At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love. It is impossible to think of a genuine revolutionary lacking this quality.”

Rocky visits the arena where the fight will take place, and he notes how on his poster, the colours of his boxing shorts are reversed, a careless oversight reminding him of how no one is taking him seriously as a challenger. Jergens is there, noting how the error “doesn’t really matter.” All of the confidence Rocky has built up to win has just been deflated.

He goes back home to tell Adrian that he has to be honest, that he has no hope of beating Creed. He does, however, still have one significant hope: that he can go the distance, something no boxer has ever done with Apollo. Sometimes, setting a more realistic, attainable goal for oneself is better than dreaming the big dream.

Because sometimes, the realistic goal pulls one much closer to attaining the big dream than we expected it would.

Recall Lenin’s words: “There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.”

Recall also that this is Rocky’s dream, not the ‘American dream.’ Here, he achieves great things not because he lives in the ‘land of opportunity,’ but because he has chosen to set those achievements for himself, of his own accord.

Now, for those who may still not accept my idea that Apollo personifies American capitalism, consider his entrance on the night of the fight, and try to deny it. First, he’s dressed like George Washington while the “Marines’ Hymn/Yankee Doodle” is heard; then, he’s dressed like Uncle Sam, shouting, “I want you!” over and over.

Apollo’s pride is therefore the arrogance of “American exceptionalism,” and just as Rocky’s confidence is rising, so is Apollo’s pride about to fall. The commentators note that this fight will be “the caveman against the cavalier,” contrasting Rocky’s slow, brutish, “goddamn ape” fighting style with Apollo’s quick, skillful, and graceful style–Dionysus vs. Apollo, Romanticist Rocky’s “heart” against Apollo’s Classicist technique.

In Round One, though Rocky is slow and awkward with his swings, easily dodged by Apollo, he gets one lucky punch in and knocks Apollo down for the first time in his career. Apollo’s ego is as wounded as his face. His pride is further wounded when, contrary to his smug prediction that he’d “drop him in Three,” he finds Rocky going the distance, something else that’s never happened to Apollo before.

Rocky was made just a few years after the end of the Vietnam War, when the Viet Cong were the underdogs fighting the behemoth of the American army. Charlie, too, went the distance, and proved to the world, just as Rocky is doing to Apollo, that the US war machine isn’t the invincible juggernaut it seems to be.

Rocky sustains some terrible injuries, including swelling over his eye that makes it hard to see, prompting him to tell Mick to cut the skin where the swelling is. Apollo, too, has sustained terrible injuries, including a broken rib. Such injuries are comparable to, on Vietnam’s side, the napalming and trauma of people like Phan Thi Kim Phuc; and on America’s side, all those veterans with PTSD. Small wonder the commentators say we “are watching a battle,” and in Round Fifteen, “They look like they’ve been in a war, these two.”

The last round ends with Apollo saved by the bell after Rocky has pounded his face so hard, it seems as if, had Rocky been given a little more time, one or two more hits would have knocked Apollo down for a KO.

The split decision gives the fight to Apollo, though as Mickey says at the beginning of Rocky II, Rocky was the real winner of the fight. The split decision reminds one of how some patriotic Americans might try to save face by saying, as Otto (Kevin Kline) did in A Fish Called Wanda, “We did not lose Vietnam. It was a tie.” But Archie (John Cleese) knew better, as we all do.

In any case, Rocky doesn’t care who’s won the fight: he’s gone the distance with Apollo, and has come a split hair away from winning–good enough. He just wants to have Adrian by his side. Hearing her tell him she loves him is all the victory he needs.

We, the global proletariat that he represents, likewise don’t need to win all at once. We can enjoy every small victory, one at a time, before the final great revolutionary victory comes. In the meantime, our mutual love and solidarity, like Rocky’s and Adrian’s love, will keep us going.

When that final victory does come, though, we must beware against letting it make us so comfortable that we become the liberal Balboa in Rocky IV, out to propagandize against all that was fought for, however symbolically, in this first great film of the franchise.

‘Tenebrous Trinity,’ a Supernatural Horror Short Story

[This short story is inspired by The Three Mothers trilogy of horror films by Dario Argento, Inferno in particular.]

Mary kept reading the book with fascination. She had already read three pages, and she couldn’t take her eyes away from the text.

She had come to this passage: “Thomas De Quincey surely had insight when he wrote of Levana and Our Ladies of Sorrow, though he wasn’t entirely accurate about the identities of the three goddesses. To know of their true nature, it is helpful to compare and contrast them with the Christian Trinity.

“Just as there is a masculine Trinity in Christianity, so is there a feminine, tenebrous Trinity. There is God the Father, who said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there is the Mother-Goddess of Darkness. There is God the Son, who gave Christians the joy of hope in His resurrection, and whose suffering caused the tears of his mother, Mary; then there is the Daughter-Goddess of Tears. Finally, there is God the Holy Spirit, the ruach, or wind that went over the face of the waters at the beginning of the Creation; and there’s the Spirit-Goddess of Sighs, those sighs of sadness that blow through the leaves of the trees.

“Everything has its opposite: god and goddess, light and darkness; also, the goddesses take the four elements and pair them into opposites for their purposes—fire with water, and air with earth. Fire is passion, and water quenches and calms passion. Air is movement and restlessness, while earth is stasis and restfulness. These contraries, when pressed against each other, create greater power for the goddesses, and so they are fond of intermingling them.

“I, Verne Edgars, author of this book you are reading, built the three houses of the goddesses in our city of Hamilton; I built them in their honour. These buildings are their churches, where we commune with the goddesses in ritual and grow in blessedness with them. Just as the Christian Church teaches salvation by sharing in Christ’s suffering, so do the goddesses’ three churches help us achieve absolute blessedness through suffering. When we are spiritually ready, we may descend to the lower room and become one with the goddess of the house we are in, just as Jesus ate the Last Supper with his disciples in the Upper Room, where in eating his flesh and drinking his blood, they became one with Him.”

‘Descend to the lower room,’ Mary thought after raising her eyes from the book. In my search for my missing kid sister, Penny, I found this ‘House of the Daughter-Goddess of Tears’ a month ago. I didn’t find her here; perhaps she’s in one of the other two houses…or perhaps they’re hiding her here…in the ‘lower room’? The basement? No one ever goes in there, no one except the priestesses, who are the only ones allowed down there. The door is locked, though I managed to pick a priestess’s pocket and get one. I’ve been meaning to go down there, to see if that’s where Penny is, though I’m scared of what I may find. Do I dare?

She took out her phone and typed an email to her brother, Elliot. This is what her message said: “I’ve found the address of one of the three houses of the religious cult of the ‘Tenebrous Trinity’ that Penny ran off to join. I’m not sure if she’s in this house—probably not—or in one of the other two, whose addresses I don’t know. I’ll be looking around here some more; if I don’t contact you in the next one or two days, you can come here to find me. The address is 246 Kent St., here in Hamilton. The other two houses are in our city, too, though as I said, I don’t know their addresses yet. I hope to contact you soon with news of finding her. Love, Mary.”

She put her phone in her purse and took out a notebook from it. She opened it to the page with the latest poem she’d been working on. This is some of the best work I’ve ever done, she thought as she looked at her verses. Another reason I’m still in this house, despite not having found Penny, is that I find life here charming and inspiring. I really do believe these goddesses exist, and they have become my Muses…at least the Daughter-Goddess of Tears has been. No wonder Penny got caught up in this religious cult: they really do seem to have a way of achieving absolute blessedness. It surely feels that way when we do the rituals with the priestesses. Elliot would never accept the way of the goddesses; he’s too attached to the Catholic faith we were all raised on, with our old priest, Father Rosario, his father-figure, in St. Andrew’s Church. He’d never open his mind to our new faith. He wants me to find Penny to get her out of here; I want to find her to tell her I’ve seen the light here. He would never accept that.

She put her notebook in her purse and got up from her chair. She put the book back on the shelf where she’d gotten it, then walked out of the library. Nobody else was around; everyone, including the priestesses, had left the house for the day to run errands. She was left here all alone.

She walked down the hall, which glowed with spots of red, blue, and purple among the shadows, towards the door to the basement. She took the stolen key from her purse and fit it in the lock. She took a deep breath and opened the door. She swung it all the way open and looked down the stairs into the darkness. She gulped and took a few steps down.

She reached for a light switch; there was none. Though she was too scared to go down into the pitch-black, she felt a warm, vibrating feeling that encouraged her to explore. It was the same vibration she felt during the rituals, the same feeling that charmed her so, that inspired her poetry. The vibrations made her feel safe, protected. She continued down the stairs, feeling as if she could see what was down there.

When she got to the foot of the stairs, the door slammed shut, startling her. Now, she didn’t even have that glowing blue light upstairs. She stood in absolute black. The warm vibrations soothed her fears somewhat, though, and she walked ahead, as if she knew her way.

She heard a faint sobbing.

“Penny?” she said. “Is that you?” She took a few steps forward.

The sobbing continued, a bit louder now.

“Penny? It’s me, your sister, Mary. Are you there?”

As she stepped forward in the blind darkness, walking as if she could see, the sobbing got louder. Then she felt a few drops of water on her shoulders and hair.

“What? Dripping from pipes above?” She stopped walking. The sobbing got louder, and the drops of water were now as numerous as rain. “It’s raining inside?”

A puddle was growing around her feet. That water was rising fast into what felt like a pond. In a minute, it had gone up to her waist. It felt like being in a lake on a starless night in the woods.

“Oh, my God,” she said. “I gotta get out of here.”

She turned around and tried to go back to the stairs; of course she had no idea where they were, and the water was so thick to walk through that she could barely even move in it. It was now chest high on her.

I’m gonna drown in here, she thought, shaking.

Don’t be afraid, a voice whispered. You’re about to join the Goddess of Tears.

“W-wait…no!” she said in a trembling voice. The water was now up to her chin. “I’m n-not ready yet!”

Don’t be afraid, the voice said again. You are ready. All will be well. Trust the goddess. You suffer a little now, then you gain absolute blessedness.

Her head was now completely underwater. She held her breath for as long as she could.

Remember the ritual, the voice whispered in her mind’s ear. Move your arms and legs. Swim in the goddess’s tears.

Mary did just that. She swam around freely, but couldn’t hold her breath much longer. She tried to swim up to the surface, but couldn’t find it. It seemed as though the entire basement was filled with water, right up to the ceiling!

Breathe in Her tears, Mary, the voice advised. Don’t be afraid. Have faith in Her grace. Breathe in Her tears, and be one with Her. You won’t die; you’ll have eternal life.

Mary breathed in, desperately trying to believe the voice. Instead of passing out and drowning, she found herself breathing the water like a fish!

But another alarming thing happened: she felt her body beginning to…melt?

Indeed, her arms and legs were gone, at one with the water. She felt her torso and head melting now. Her heart, though fading fast, was pounding in terror. Her clothes floated away.

Her face melted off. Her breasts melted off. Her stomach, intestines, and heart were now gone. Her hair was one with the watery waves. Her brain was merging with her surroundings…

Elliot looked away from his notes when he saw the new message on his phone. It was from Mary. The title of the message said, “Penny.”

“Hey,” he said as he went to pick up his phone. “Has Mary found her?”

He read the message, disappointed at his kid sister not being found. Still, he’d make time to find the house. He put the phone down and resumed listening to the lecturer talking about the scene in Mozart’s Don Giovanni when the libertine is taken away to Hell by demons.

“Note that Don Giovanni is unrepentant to the end,” the professor said while a recording of the music was playing. “Only when the demons come to take him does he realize his mistake.”

Elliot felt a warm vibrating all over his body at that moment. He felt an urge, he couldn’t explain why, to look over to his left, where a beautiful young woman was sitting at a seat across the aisle from him, at the row of seats in front of his row. She was staring at him with hypnotic green eyes. Her lips were bright red, her hair a long, wavy blond, and her curvy figure was in a tight, black dress.

Is this my lucky day? he wondered.

No sooner did class end than she walked over to him.

“Hello,” he said with a smile. “How can I help you?”

“It’s I who can help you,” she said, with a serious face. “Your family is still searching for Penny, and you’ll be searching for Mary, too.”

His eyes and jaw opened all the way. “How did you know about that? Do you have Penny with you?”

“No,” the woman said. “But I can take you to where they are. My name is Sibyl.”

“Elliot,” he said, shaking her hand.

“I already knew your name. Come with me.”

They left the music school together. On the street and walking in the direction of the house of the Daughter-Goddess of Tears, they exchanged furtive glances at each other.

“How do you know so much about my family?” he asked.

“You won’t believe me, but I’ll tell you, then I’ll make you believe,” she said. “I have magical powers.”

“Oh, really?” he said with a chuckle. “Good luck convincing me of that.”

She put her hand on his forehead, and instead of seeing the street before him, he saw a dark area in a house…a hallway next to an opened basement door. What little light there was came in through the windows behind. The light was a dark, glowing blue. Penny was standing at the doorway. She looked as if she were in a trance. Someone in the dark seemed to be behind her.

“What the hell?” he said, his eyes and mouth agape again. “What is this place? Is it where we’re going?”

“No,” she said. “It’s the house of the Spirit-Goddess of Sighs. Just watch, and see what became of your sister Penny.”

He felt a chill go through his body as he saw Penny slowly descending the stairs into the basement. Glowing red and blue light among the shadows gave her face enough illumination for him to see a frown of fear, yet also determination, on her face. Walking behind her on the steps was, as Elliot could barely make out, some mysterious, older man.

When she reached the foot of the stairs, she heard a sighing voice. She jumped at the sound and froze where she was. Then she continued walking in the dark.

The door upstairs slammed shut, startling her again. All around her was pitch black, except for a slight, glowing blue coming from a wide-open window further off. Trembling, she began walking toward it.

More sighs.

Wailing, too.

After several slow, careful steps, she was standing by the window, a powerful wind blowing against her and making her long, wavy hair flutter about. The wailing, sighing sound was heard even louder now; she stood there, transfixed and mesmerized.

Don’t be afraid, the loudly sighing wind told her. Let the goddess take you, and you’ll achieve absolute blessedness.

“I’m not afraid,” Penny said, trying hard to believe her words. Her eyes shut and her mouth curled up in a smile. “Take me!” Her heart was pounding.

The mysterious man was watching the whole thing from further back, still only barely visible to Elliot.

Now the winds were sucking at her, pulling her towards the window. Her heart was pounding even harder, she was shaking all over, but she held onto her faith in the goddess.

The wind pulled her out through the window. She screamed. Now Elliot saw his sister flying in the night sky.

“Oh, God, No!” Elliot shouted. People on the street were shocked at Elliot’s reaction to what only he and Sibyl saw. Sibyl just watched his horrified reaction in all stoicism, as if testing his attitude towards what he was seeing.

As Penny kept flying in the air, pulled in the wind as if caught in a cyclone, she felt her body evaporating. Her eyes and mouth were wide open in horror at the sight of her disappearing arms and legs, but she held onto her faith as best she could.

Don’t be afraid, she thought. Have faith in the goddess!

Her hair vanished. Her clothes blew away without enough of a body to keep them on. Her breasts, belly, pubic hair, and buttocks became one with the wind. Then her face disappeared, along with her ears, her skin, and her bald scalp. Soon, her sighs were one with the goddess.

The vision ended.

Elliot saw the street again. Some people were looking at him as if he were a madman.

“She…vanished into…thin air…literally,” he said in a tremulous voice. “Who was that man in the basement with her?”

“That would have been Verne Edgars, the architect who designed the three houses,” Sibyl said.

“We should find him,” he said. “Was he responsible for leading Penny to her death?”

“No, and she didn’t die,” Sibyl said. “She’s one with the goddesses.”

He grabbed her by the arms. “You have to help me get her back!” he shouted. “I lost my father when we were all kids, and my dear mother died a year ago. My sisters are all I have left of a family. You’ve gotta help me find Penny and Mary, and save them from this sick religious cult!”

Sibyl looked in Elliot’s eyes with a frown, thinking for a moment what to say to him. “To get your sisters back, you would have…to defeat the goddesses.”

“Yes!” he said. “I want them to pay for what they did to Penny, for what I fear they’ll do to Mary. You’ve got to help me! Those goddesses are demons! With God’s help and yours, we’ll destroy them.”

“I see,” she said, looking away from him for the moment. “To defeat the goddesses, you must…cultivate the power of fire, the energy of desire, then use it to burn down the houses. It’s the houses that hold the power of the goddesses; in destroying the houses, you’ll deprive the goddesses of their power, and your sisters will be freed from the goddesses’ spells on them.”

“How will I get this ‘power of fire,’ Sibyl?” he asked.

“Come with me to my apartment,” she said, taking him by the arm. “It’s very close.”

III

Verne Edgars, 61, was watching Elliot and Sibyl a half a block away from them, hiding among the pedestrians.

I know what she wants to do with him, he thought as he followed them. I love the goddesses, but Elliot will never accept our way, and he’ll be enslaved, if not just plain killed, for rejecting it. I don’t want him to suffer. I have to figure out a way to stop him from going along with her.

Suddenly, he heard a sighing, and felt the wind blow against him.

“Wait,” he said, feeling the wind take more and more control of his body. “O Great Goddess, by Your grace, allow me to help E—“

Go home, Verne, the voice in the winds sighed in his mind’s ear. We will help you understand. Come with us.

A wind, which only he felt blowing against his body and through his hair, escorted him, as it were, back to the house of the Spirit-Goddess of Sighs. He tried to resist as best he could, pressing his feet against the ground to stop him from walking there, but his shoes kept moving, scraping against the pavement.

“Please, O Great Goddess,” he pleaded in a strained voice. “By your leave, allow me to warn Elliot. He’s a good man, just misguided. Penny, surely you don’t want your own brother to be–”

We will guide him, the sighing wind told him. Stop resisting. You know what will happen to you if you continue to resist, which is futile.

Finally, his scraping shoes took him back to the goddess’s house. In he went in all reluctance, and now his shoes were scraping on the wood of the hall leading to the basement. Vivid red glowed among the shadows.

Take out your key and unlock the door, the voice sighed in his ear. The wind forced him to put his hand in his coat pocket and take out the key. Put it in the lock.

“But, Great Goddess, I—“

His arm was sore from resisting putting the key in the lock. In it went, the lock clicked, and the door swung all the way open. He looked down the stairs into the all-enveloping black.

Down he went, his shoes scraping against the wooden stairs. He almost tripped a few times.

When he reached the foot of the stairs, he no longer felt wood or any hard surface under his shoes. He felt clumps of dirt there. The door slammed shut, startling him.

“What?” he said, feeling the dirt rising and covering his shoes.

You resisted the movement of the air, the wind sighed, therefore you will feel the stasis of the earth, holding you in position as you tried to hold yourself out there on the street.

“Wait, Goddess, I’m not ready,” he said in a hoarse voice as the dirt had now come up to his knees.

Yes, you are, the wind sighed. You have done the rituals. Remember what to do. Don’t be afraid, Verne. Don’t resist. All will be for the best in the end.

“But, Elliot—“ The dirt was up to his waist now.

He is no longer your concern. Be at one with us.

“Yes, Goddess,” he said as the dirt rose up to his chin. There is no denying the will of the goddesses, he thought, the dirt just under his lips now. I tried my best to help you, Elliot. You’re on your own now. Good luck.

He was completely buried under the earth now. His heart was pounding, more from his fear of angering the goddesses than from knowing he was going to be one with the earth. Would they deny him the absolute blessedness he’d been hoping for as punishment for going against their will? He hoped they’d forgive him as he continued holding his breath.

Finally, he could hold it no longer, and soil flooded his nostrils. He was breathing it like air, and his body was crumbling into tiny pieces that intermixed with the dirt. His consciousness was fading, as was his individual ego, which merged with the eternal spirit of the goddesses…

In Sibyl’s apartment now, Elliot was led by her into her bedroom. They stood at the foot of her bed. She looked up at him.

“To gain the power of fire, we must arouse your passion to the greatest intensity,” she said, reaching back and unzipping her dress. “Therefore, I must indulge your lust.” She let her dress drop to her feet, and she kicked off her high heels. Wearing no bra or panties, she stood there completely naked before his delighted eyes. “Put me on the bed and make love to me.”

Am I having a lucky day, or what? he thought as his eyes poured over her flawless body: large breasts that hung naturally without sagging, creamy skin, hourglass curves, and even a full Brazilian wax. “You’re a bold one, Sibyl,” he panted. “You don’t even know me. Aren’t you afraid I might hurt you?”

“I’m a witch, remember?” she said, turning around so he could see her round, creamy buttocks, then turning again so he could see her full frontal again. “You couldn’t hurt me if you tried. Do you like my body? Only a witch’s magic can make her body this flawlessly beautiful.”

“It’s better than any I’ve ever had the pleasure to see,” he said. “How shall we do it?”

“Any way you like. The object is to get you as excited and passionate as possible, so do to my body whatever is most pleasing to you. My magic will protect me from any pain you could possibly cause me, so I’m not at all afraid.”

“I see.”

Still amazed, he hesitated in disbelief at his good luck…and in his doubt as to whether he could trust her.

“Well? Are you a man, or not? Take me, and enjoy yourself to the fullest.”

“If you insist.”

As he was having her, he felt himself glowing brighter and brighter with the fire of his passion. He was getting hotter, literally hotter, but not burning in any pain—nor was she; after all, it was she who was passing her power over to him for use against the goddesses. His eyes widened in amazement at the changes to his body.

As they were approaching climax, his body was all aflame. “Holy shit!” he gasped.

Finally, they came, the flames flickering all over him from head to toe subsided, and he cooled off. He lay beside her on the bed.

“I can’t believe what just happened,” he panted.

“You are a wicked lover,” she sighed with a lewd smirk. “Most women would be too timid to do the things I allowed you to do to my body. You’re lucky I had the power to endure it.”

“Forgive me my sinful passions,” he said, though glad he had the chance to indulge them.

“No need to apologize,” she said. “As I said, you didn’t and couldn’t hurt me. Now you should have all the power of fire needed to defeat the goddesses.”

“I’m just curious: why are you helping me? Aren’t you one of them? Why should I trust you not to betray me in the end?”

“I’ve seen the evil the goddesses are capable of. They are demonesses. I saw them kill a Father Rosario just the other day, and—“

“Father Rosario?” Elliot shouted. “Father Robert Rosario, of St. Andrew’s Church on Fleet St.?”

“Yes, him,” she said with a sigh and a frown.

“He was my spiritual mentor as a kid. After my father died, Rosario was like a second father to me! And your goddesses killed him? Why?”

“For opposing them, of course.”

“How can I know for sure that they really killed him?”

“I’ll show you another vision. Brace yourself.” She touched his forehead.

Elliot saw Father Rosario, 65, standing on Fleet St. in front of the House of the Mother-Goddess of Darkness and, beside it, the dilapidated remains of what once had been St. Andrew’s Catholic Church, where Elliot’s mother took him and his sisters when they were kids…years before Penny went astray and followed the goddess cult. The church had been struck by lightning a week after the House of the Mother-Goddess of Darkness was finished construction and open for use by her priestesses, and a pervading sense of evil surrounding the area made the parishioners wish no longer to attend their church, so no attempt was ever made to repair the damages.

That pervading sense of evil was only a vague feeling, most of the parishioners not attributing it to the goddess’s house; but the priest was convinced that that house was Satanic in nature, and he blamed it for destroying his livelihood and place of service to God for so many decades. He was determined to confront that Satanic presence, and if he couldn’t rid the neighbourhood of it, he’d die trying.

He looked up at the damaged steeple of the church, where the lightning bolt struck the crucifix, shattering it and leaving the top of it with a jagged edge. The ugly new shape of it looked blasphemous to Rosario.

He looked over at the black house next to the church, and walked over to it. Standing on the front porch and facing the front door, he took a deep breath, gritted his teeth, held his hands in fists, and pushed the door open.

He walked down the hall, where spots of green, red, and blue glowed among the black shadows. He passed by the door to the basement; unlocked, it swung open for him.

“No, she-devils,” he hissed. “I won’t descend into your Hell.”

You have no love for the darkness, Father? a female voice asked him.

“Of course not,” he said. “I believe in the light.”

Very well, the voice said. Come upstairs to the roof, and we’ll discuss whatever is bothering you.

He went up four flights of stairs, which were shrouded in absolute black. No glowing colours here to illumine his way.

The wooden steps creaked. The only way he didn’t trip or bump into walls in the absolute darkness is that the power of the goddess guided his steps so well, it was as if he could see.

Rather than reassured with this guidance, he could only feel profoundly disturbed at being led the way by devils. After all, it wasn’t so much that he was being guided as he was being compelled to go up these stairs.

By the time he reached the roof, the ascent had caused his aging legs to be sore and tired. He bumped into a door leading outside to the roof.

Still no glowing colours accompanied the pitch black of the area in front of the door. He’d might as well have been blind standing there. He held the crucifix hanging from his neck tightly.

You abide by the light of the Lord, don’t you? the voice asked him tauntingly.

“Of course,” he said defiantly. “Jesus is the light of the world. Whoever follows Him will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”

Very well. Open the door, and have your light.

He opened the door, and the light was like a white fire–it shone in so brightly that it burned his eyes. He staggered forward and out onto the roof. He was slipping along the slope of the side of the roof. He opened his eyes, but saw only black.

“What? What the…I’m blind!”

He kept sliding down the side of the roof, then fell off the right side of the house, screaming.

If you want your Christ and your crucifix, you may have them, the voice said.

He landed, facing upwards, on the jagged edge of the steeple’s crucifix, impaled through his back, with the jagged edge coming out of his belly.

“Father Rosario!” Elliot screamed as he saw his priest’s lifeless body, with copious amounts of blood pouring out of the wound. “I will avenge you.” Tears ran down his face.

He and Sibyl put their clothes on and left her apartment. He felt the fire inside him. In his rage, he even let himself flame up all over; he was so amazed to see the fire not burning his clothes off that he took no notice of the shock on the faces of the people who saw his fiery self on the streets.

He smiled at the sight of his new power. “I feel like a comic book superhero,” he said with pride. “So, am I a god now, like you?”

“Well, something like that,” she said as they walked down the street in the direction of the House of the Daughter-Goddess of Tears.

They reached the house within ten minutes. They stopped by the front door.

She looked at him. “Are you sure you want to do this?”

“Yes,” he said. “They took everything from me. I want to take everything from them.”

“Well then, follow me down into the basement. There is the best place to start the fire; burn the foundation, and the fire will rise up to the rest of the house.”

“OK.” They went inside and down the hall. He saw glowing spots of red, purple, blue, and orange among the shadows. He saw the door to the basement swing open, welcoming him. “I’m not afraid of you, bitch-goddesses! I have the power to destroy you. I’ll go down into your Hell, and make of it an even greater inferno.” He went down the stairs, lighting up his fire so he could see the way. He reached the foot of the stairs, noting the wet floor.

He stretched his arms out, using them like flamethrowers to hit the walls and wooden stairs with his fire. Everywhere he saw flames engulfing the basement. He smiled.

Suddenly, he heard loud sobbing, hurting his ears. He shot more fire from his hands.

“Yes, go ahead and weep, goddesses,” he said. “You’re about to be destroyed!”

It started raining tears from the ceiling of the basement. Within ten seconds, he was up to his ankles in water.

He fired his flames onto the watery floor, as much fire as he could muster in an attempt to vaporize it. It wasn’t enough, though.

“Why isn’t this working, Sibyl?” he shouted, feeling himself becoming at one with the flames in his consuming rage. “Sibyl? Where are you?”

The water, now at waist level on him, displayed three female faces on its surface, the faces of Penny, Mary, and Sibyl. His eyes and mouth widened.

You wanted to find us, Elliot, his sisters said with grins, and you’ve found us.

“But you’re my sisters!” he shouted. “I came here to save you! And now, you’re trying to kill me?”

We don’t need saving, his sisters said. The goddesses saved us. They have given us absolute blessedness. You should embrace their power, too.

“Never! Sibyl, you bitch! I thought you said you wanted to stop the goddesses’ evil!”

I am one of the goddesses, you fool, she said from her face among the wavy surface of water, which was now at Elliot’s neck level. I’m the Daughter-Goddess of Tears, using your fire to increase my power. But why should you complain? Today was your lucky day. You got to have sex with a goddess.

He strained to increase the power of his fire, desperate to vaporize the water that was now at the level where his lips had been. The glowing fire pushed back the water to be separated from his body, which was now almost completely transformed into a pillar of fire, by about a foot all around. He was getting tired.

Give in, his sisters said. Let go of your passion. It only leads to suffering. Embrace sorrow and tears. When you accept pain as inevitable, you can join us and be blessed forever.

“No! Never!” he—a talking pillar of flame—shouted, and fired more flames out. “God is…my…salvation…”

He could sustain it for only a few more seconds, though. Finally, he shrank from exhaustion, and the water extinguished him.

Poor Elliot, his sisters said. He never could adapt to new beliefs.

It is no matter, the daughter-goddess said. We have his power now, and can benefit from it. His soul will serve us for all eternity. We’ll feel him near us always. After all, family should always be close.

Yes, Great Goddess, the sisters said, grinning. It was our plan to have Elliot serve us. The wisdom of the plan came clearer and clearer the more we became acquainted with your divine ways. His God won’t save him from the flames.

‘The Targeter,’ a Surreal Novel, Chapter Ten

Having just snorted my second line of K, I’m feeling an urge to go outside, as foolish an idea as that is. I felt no numbness from the last line; maybe I won’t feel numb from this one. We’ll find out.

I get up and stagger to the door.

My sparkling, dazzling ecstasy high is so powerful that I want to share my love with the world.

I walk out of my apartment. Did I close and lock the door? Who cares? It’s the world I must take care of, not myself!

I plod my way down the stairs, almost stumbling and falling a few times. It’s a good thing I’m holding onto the hand rail. I get to the ground floor, then begin staggering towards the front door.

I’m outside.

Not just outside my apartment building.

I’m…outside…my…body…

Am I floating?

Am I up in the air?

Am I one with my surroundings?

It sure feels that way.

I see that old man sitting under the tree with his eyes closed and his toothy grin. He looks so peaceful, with the sound of bombs and gunfire all around us.

I want to be him so badly.

A fuzzy, wave-like feeling is permeating my whole body, or this whole, vague presence where I am, be it in or outside of my body. There’s no sense of where I physically begin and end. Is there a boundary between that old man and me? There doesn’t seem to be.

I see him sideways, as if I’m lying on my side on the ground. Am I? I didn’t feel myself fall.

Everything…everything…feels fuzzy, wavy, vibrating…

I am that old man!

I am the great, wise one! Or at least, I’m going to be him.

I am Sid Arthur Gordimer, spiritual leader of the people! I will lead us all to enlightenment! Follow me, my disciples!

I am prince of the realm of Sakia, and I renounce my throne-to-be!

No, Father, I will not be the next king! You and that horrible stepmother of mine, the queen, can argue with me and yell at me all you want! I won’t continue the regal family line! I am leaving home, in search of enlightenment, and salvation for my impoverished people, those you have impoverished, Father, through your neglect!

I don’t want my inheritance, not one gold coin of it. Give it all to my wife, Jessie, and to our son, Raoul. When he comes of age, he can inherit your throne, if he wishes to have it!

As for me, I am leaving the palace! I am seeking liberation for myself and for all of our starving, oppressed people! When I attain my goal, I aim to be reclining on my side on the ground (as I am now?), in a state of perfect bliss and peace, with all of my followers standing and sitting around me, gazing on me in love.

Perhaps I’m already there, floating up to heaven, at the gates of nirvana-like perfection. It looks that way, with all these Asian faces looking at me (Indeed, I hear Chinese whispers of…is it…”Crazy foreigner”?…”On drugs”?…”needs a doctor”? I’m not sure; the voices aren’t clear.)

Nirvana isn’t to be actively sought out, anyway…is it? We already are there…we just need to wake up and recognize it, don’t we?…the Buddha-nature already within, the Atman that is already at one with Brahman. I feel no dividing line between my body and all that’s around me. I must have already attained enlightenment.

Haven’t I?

Birds

What’s
supposed
left wing is, seen more closely,
in the centre, which in turn
moves to the right.

A
bird
in flight, whose flapping wings are
left here, over there on the right,
is only so depending on your
point of view.

If
it’s
flying forwards, you will see
the left wing where it ought
to be, and where the right
should be.

If
it’s
flying backwards, right at you,
the left, centre and right
may seem a confused
monstrosity,

as
has
been the case, increasingly,
for the past forty years.
As it nears,

the
bird,
which is an eagle, quite the hawk,
shows no signs of slowing down
as it reaches us,
its prey.

Not
knowing
the left wing from the right,
we will be snatched up
in its claws, fed
to its chicks.

Analysis of ‘The Howling’

The Howling is a 1981 horror film directed by Joe Dante, based on the 1977 novel of the same name by Gary Brandner. The film stars Dee Wallace, Patrick Macnee, Christopher Stone, Dennis Dugan, and Robert Picardo.

The film received generally positive reviews, with praise for the makeup special effects by Rob Bottin. It won the 1980 Saturn Award for Best Horror Film while still in development, and it was one of three major werewolf films of 1981, the other two being An American Werewolf in London and Wolfen.

Seven sequels have been made to The Howling, the first film’s success having helped Dante’s career so he could make Gremlins in 1984. A remake of The Howling is in development, with Andy Muschietti set to direct.

Here is a link to quotes from the film, and here is a link to Brandner’s novel. Here is a link to the script.

The differences between the novel and the film are huge. In fact, the film only ever-so-vaguely follows the plot of the novel. I’ll point out just a few of the differences for now.

Karen While (Wallace) is Karyn Beatty in the novel, and her husband is Roy Beatty, his film equivalent being Bill Neill (Stone), for we learn that White has kept her maiden name. Karyn is raped at home in the novel, whereas Karen is almost attacked by a werewolf in an adult bookstore’s movie booth in the film. In the novel, her psychiatrist is only briefly mentioned; in the film, psychiatrist Dr. George Waggner (Macnee) is a major character, who has her recuperate in his health resort, called “The Colony,” while in the novel, she recuperates in a town called Drago, in California. The nymphomaniac werewolf is Marcia Lura in the novel; in the film, she’s Marsha Quist (played by Elisabeth Brooks), sister of werewolf/serial killer Eddie Quist (Picardo). The rapist of the novel is non-werewolf Max Quist.

It’s interesting to analyze the nature of the changes of the novel’s beginning to those of the film’s, that is, in psychoanalytic terms. It’s as if the screenplay to the film were written by Karyn Beatty instead of by John Sayles and Terrence H. Winkless, as if an attempt by her to reframe her trauma in a way that’s less invasive of her body, replacing a direct rape with a more symbolic, dream-like attack.

In the novel, as stated above, Max Quist, an ex-con resentful of being an unacknowledged worker and with no werewolf powers, comes into Karyn’s apartment while her husband’s away and rapes her, even biting her hard on the thigh. The Beattys have a dog, significantly named Lady, that tries to intervene on Karyn’s behalf, but is kicked away by Max. The dog goes with Karyn and Roy to Drago, and it is killed there. Violence against a dog named Lady seems like a further projection of Karyn’s trauma elsewhere.

So what we have in the novel is a straightforward act of brutal violence causing Karyn’s trauma. In the film, this violence is transformed in many ways, suggesting in its distortions a diluting of that pain.

First of all, Karen White is a TV news reporter risking her life by drawing out her stalker, Eddie Quist, so the police can catch him. Instead of Quist raping her, he has her meet him in a sleazy porn movie booth in an adult book store, where he makes her watch a video of a young woman being bound and raped. Thus the trauma of Karyn is projected onto the woman in the porn video.

Instead of getting a…lupine?…bite from Quist, Karen looks behind her and sees his terrifying transformation into a lycanthrope…though immediately afterwards, she is amnesiac about it, her repression of the memory protecting her from the pain.

This comparison between novel and film leads to a discussion of one of the film’s themes: the contrast between the true self and the false self. As Dr. Waggner says in a news interview with a TV host, “Repression is the father of neurosis, of self-hatred.” He speaks of the unfortunate reality of denying “the beast, the animal, within us,” of replacing the true self with the false self.

This replacement, in the film adaptation, of the novel’s rape scene with Karen watching a video of a rape, a man transforming into a werewolf, and her no longer being able to remember the traumatic experience, is an example of replacing the truth with a kind of fantasy, a falsehood that hurts less. Such replacements of painful truth with comforting falsehood are also seen in characters in the film replacing the true self with the false one.

Another interesting observation can be made of how the true experience of Karyn Beatty’s rape is expressed via the written word, whereas the trauma of Karen White is given in visuals, in images. These two presentations of the traumatizing incident correspond respectively with Lacan‘s notions of the Symbolic and the Imaginary, the trauma itself corresponding to the Real.

Trauma corresponds to the Real because the Real cannot be symbolized, or articulated with words. It is through psychotherapy, or the “talking cure,” that the horrors of the ineffable, undifferentiated world of the Real can be transformed into the Symbolic, the realm of language, of the differentiated. Such a talking cure is attempted with Karen in group therapy sessions in The Colony. This therapy is an attempt to peel away repression, bit by bit, to find the truth.

In the novel, it is significant that Karyn Beatty escapes the town of Drago, which is all engulfed in flames, defeating the werewolves that inhabit the town. In the version of the story given in the written word (the Symbolic), she survives–she’s ‘cured,’ metaphorically speaking. In the film, the version with images and an examination of the narcissistic false self (the Imaginary), Karen White becomes a werewolf and is (presumably) killed with a silver bullet shot from the rifle Chris Halloran (Dugan) has been using on the werewolves.

If you’ll indulge a brief digression, Dear Reader, it is through the Imaginary that one establishes a sense of self, an ego; this comes about during the mirror stage, when an infant first sees his reflection and realizes that that person over there, in the specular image, is himself. He’s alienated from it, though: it’s himself, yet it’s over there, as if a totally different person. That image is also a unified, coherent one, as opposed to the awkward, clumsy, fragmented being the child feels himself to be. Is that really me over there? Is the ego real, or is it illusory?

The ideal-I as seen in the mirror reflection is an ideal that one feels compelled throughout life to measure up to; an example of this attempt to measure up is seen in the scene in the public washroom, when an anchorman (played by Jim McKrell) is standing before the mirror practicing how he’ll enunciate his introduction of a news story with the most mellifluous, rounded tones he can muster. It’s a comical scene, especially when Bill Neill walks in and the anchorman switches to his normal Southern accent to speak with him.

The Imaginary is fundamentally narcissistic; Lacan called it “Fraud.” Indeed, it is the false self that hides the beast…and the buffoon.

This scene in the washroom ties in well with the fact that Karen also works as a TV news reporter. Those of us who observe the media carefully have known for decades that the news frequently disseminates false or at least misleading information, intended to serve the interests of the corporate elite and the military-industrial-media complex. Images of people like Karen on the TV (i.e., the stoic anchor persona) are thus thematically fitting for the purposes of this film.

On two occasions when in front of the camera, Karen fails to present this fake persona expected in the news media. On the first occasion, her trauma causes her to see images of her painful memories of that night with Quist instead of seeing the camera in front of her; this causes her to freeze on air, making her unable to announce the news. The second time, at the end of the movie, she turns into a werewolf for everyone to see on TV.

This theme of the media as representative of fakery is developed, however indirectly, through the film’s use of many nods to classic old werewolf films, a cartoon with a wolf, and actors known for having appeared in old horror/sci fi films. These actors include Kevin McCarthy (who appeared in Invasion of the Body Snatchers) as the TV news station manager, John Carradine, and Kenneth Tobey (who was in The Thing from Another World, later remade as The Thing). Even Roger Corman (who made The Little Shop of Horrors) does a cameo, waiting for Karen to finish using a pay phone at the beginning of the movie. Recall how the aliens in Snatchers and The Thing are fake imitations of people. Recall also how fake the special effects of those old horror movies were, as compared to the effects in The Howling.

When Karen and Bill (or Karyn and Roy) go out to The Colony (or the town of Drago) for her to recuperate, she is disturbed at night to hear howling coming from the woods surrounding their cabin. She goes over to the bedroom window, looks out into the trees, and listens for the howling. This howling represents a projection of her trauma, her howling in pain, as it were, out into the woods. The notion of werewolves out there, as she eventually finds out is the source of the howling, is a transformation of the rape trauma, in her unconscious mind, into something unrecognizable as symbolic of a rape memory, since what is repressed returns to the conscious mind and hides in plain sight, unrecognized by us in our waking hours. The howling also represents the honest expression of feelings, the true self.

The film makes a strong link between werewolves and sexuality (I also did this in my novel, Wolfgang), as already indicated above. This howling in the woods reminds us of Freud‘s rather far-fetched interpretation of the dream of the “Wolf Man,” in which Freud’s patient saw six or seven wolves on tree branches outside the window of his home. Freud interpreted this dream as representing Sergei Pankejeff‘s witnessing, as a child, the primal scene–that is, his parents making love in ‘doggy-style.’ (I’m not endorsing Freud’s wild speculations here: I’m just using the fame of this interpretation to reinforce the link between wolves–and therefore werewolves–and sexuality.)

Another such link in the film is seen in Marsha Quist, a known nymphomaniac in The Colony who seduces Bill, the two of them turning into werewolves as they have sex in the woods. In the novel, Karyn immediately feels jealousy on meeting Marcia Luna, angered at the attractive woman’s constant attention to her husband. As in the film, Roy has a sexual relationship with Marcia, a werewolf like all of Drago’s residents.

Bill’s becoming a werewolf coincides with two other changes in his personality: first, going from being a faithful husband (initially resisting Marsha’s sexual advances) to cheating on Karen; second, going from being a vegetarian to eating meat. Again, the false self hides the true self through repression of unacceptable behaviour.

In the film, a character not in the novel, Terry Fisher (played by Belinda Balaski), also works at the TV station and is Chris’s girlfriend. She continues to investigate Eddie Quist, going into his home with Chris and discovering his aptitude at art. The killer has drawn many werewolf portraits and has posters of old werewolf movie ads on his walls. Terry quips that Eddie “could’ve designed the Marquis de Sade colouring book,” another link between werewolves and sexuality.

Terry later explores The Colony, finds Quist’s body missing in the morgue, learns from a bookseller (played by Dick Miller) that regular bullets don’t kill werewolves, and that Quist’s drawing of a lake is one in The Colony area. She’s found his other drawings there, too. Quist is alive!

Now, how does one become a werewolf? By being clawed, scratched, or bitten by another. This is what happens to Bill when walking through the woods back home after he resists Marsha’s initial sexual advances. Since the film links werewolves with sexuality–rape and, as we can see here, unwanted sexual advances in particular–the scratching or biting of someone by a werewolf, making him or her into a new werewolf, is thus symbolic of passing the sexual trauma onto a new victim.

The werewolf’s claws and teeth are phallic symbols, cutting yonic wounds into its victims, making the werewolf’s attack a symbolic rape. This symbolism is how I can see the film’s beginning trauma of Karen seeing Eddie Quist’s transformation in the porn movie booth, juxtaposed with her watching that porn rape scene, as a transformation of Karyn’s actual rape, with the wolf-like bite on her thigh, in the novel.

When Terry puts all the pieces together about The Colony, and is about to reveal its secrets, she is attacked by TC Quist (played by Don McLeod), the werewolf brother of Eddie and Marsha. Terry manages during the struggle to find an ax and hacks off the werewolf’s hairy, clawed hand, which she sees transform back into a human hand. Since the clawing of a victim, with phallic claws, is a symbolic rape, then the cutting off of a werewolf’s hand is a symbolic castration.

Later, she is killed by werewolf Eddie in Waggner’s office after phoning Chris and telling him about the werewolf secret in The Colony; when she’s being killed, the phone call being interrupted by Eddie means it hasn’t been hung up, so Chris listens in horror at his girlfriend’s screaming and death. (Later, Chris arrives in the office and confronts Eddie, who tells him Terry has “a sexy voice,” once again linking werewolves with predatory sexuality in The Howling.)

Karen goes over to Waggner’s office and finds Terry’s bloody body there, then she confronts resurrected Eddie, who transforms in front of her. She’s paralyzed with fear.

Eddie’s transformation into a werewolf is the highlight of the film, being an impressive example of pre-CGI special effects (though the transformation scene in An American Werewolf in London is even better). Eddie is proud of his powers, pleased to demonstrate them to terrified Karen. He’s displaying his bestial true self, as opposed to his human false self.

One of the insights Terry and Chris get from the bookseller is that the movies’ notion of werewolves needing a full moon to transform is “Hollywood baloney” (reinforcing what I said above about this film’s theme about the media and falsehoods); actually, as shapeshifters, lycanthropes can transform anytime at will, as we see Eddie doing here.

Karen scalds Eddie’s face with acid and runs outside, but she is caught by the other residents of The Colony. Waggner appears among them, revealing his sympathy for them, but also pleading with them about the necessity of fitting in with society for the sake of keeping their secret safe.

The other werewolves have lost patience with the psychiatrist’s recommendation that they all hide their lupine true selves behind a human false self; Marsha in particular is adamantly opposed to this hiding, having earlier rebuked the doctor for giving her brother TC a copy of his book, The Gift, which rationalizes man’s bestial nature as a source of creativity. (Recall in this connection Eddie’s artistic aptitudes.)

Chris arrives with a rifle loaded with silver bullets he got from the bookstore, and after killing Eddie with it, he shoots and kills a few of the werewolves holding Karen (Waggner, too, gets shot, and–having just been scratched by a werewolf–he’s grateful no longer to have to continue the burden of treating the untreatable, or to have to be a werewolf himself), and Chris runs off with Karen to his car to get away, having also burned down a building filled with werewolves.

Even Sam Newfield, the sheriff of The Colony area (played by Slim Pickens), is a werewolf, and as Karen and Chris are getting away, they have to put a silver bullet or two in him, too. The sheriff, with his rifle, has shot up Chris’s car, including blowing a tire, and a few more werewolves are attacking, so he and Karen have to switch to Sam’s police car to get away.

Werewolf Bill, however, is one of their attackers, and he bites Karen from the back seat of the car, so she will be a werewolf, too. She knows she must warn the world, using her position as a newswoman to disseminate the message to as many people as possible. This means, contrary to the normal media practice of presenting a false self that is pleasing to one’s viewers (i.e., that image of stoic reporting that her male colleague was practicing before the mirror in the public bathroom), she must show her true self as a new werewolf…on live TV.

Chris, heartbroken, must now put a silver bullet in her.

The film ends in a bar where its patrons, having watched the news broadcast on the wall-mounted TV screen, debate whether what they’ve seen was real or the gimmickry of special effects–another manifestation of the film’s exploration of the theme of truth vs. fakery in the media.

Marsha’s managed to survive the fire in The Colony, and she’s in the bar, where a man hoping to get lucky with her has treated her to a hamburger cooked rare. She’s enticing him with her nymphomaniac false self, while waiting to reveal her true self to him in his bedroom.

While the credits roll, we see her burger cooking. It’s interesting to watch the slow transformation of the pink meat into a hamburger; this parallels the slow transformation of Eddie into a werewolf…or the slow process of psychotherapy revealing, bit by bit, repressed trauma. On top of all this, there’s the symbolism of the rising heat of sexual passion, and meat…flesh…to be eaten: more of the merging of the carnivore with the sexual predator.

‘The Targeter,’ a Surreal Novel, Chapter Nine

I hear a loud boom and repeated gunfire outside.

How’s the war going out there? I wonder. Is the fighting getting closer?

I get up from the coffee table and walk to my right over to the front window. I push aside the curtains and look outside.

With the booming of more explosions, I see a few fireballs lighting up the night sky. Comparing their size to those I saw earlier tonight, before I started drinking and getting stoned, that is, I realize they’re noticeably bigger balls of fire now.

The rattling of machine gun fire is louder than before, too. The war is coming closer to home, for sure.

My ketamine high is starting to come down, but it’s still strong enough to keep me feeling that illusion of safety. I’ll snort another line in a few minutes.

The second half of that ecstasy pill is starting to kick in. I’m feeling that delicious sparkling, tingling sensation again. I’m feeling love…love for all of humanity, a wish to help everyone out there who is suffering and in need, though I’m not dumb or stoned enough to go outside and into the danger.

After seeing another few fireballs flashing in the sky, I look down at the sidewalks, road, and front area of my apartment. I’m on the second floor, so everything is easy to see; I can see quite a lot of detail down there, in spite of how disorienting my high is, and how dark it is out there.

I see a homeless old man, or so he seems by how filthy dirty he looks, and how he is lying on the sidewalk in front of my apartment. Greying and balding, he must be in his sixties at least. He is facing me, with his mouth wide open in a yawn; I notice a few missing teeth.

Poor guy, I think, with this love drug in me drawing out my compassion. He’s out there with no protection from the bombs or bullets. I should give him a snort of my Special K.

My eyes drift to the right, where I see what must be another homeless man, younger but just as filthy as the first. He’s walking over to the first one; perhaps they’re friends. This second one has gaping holes in his shirt and pants, and I can make out what must be boils all over his skin. His hideousness can only inspire pity.

There’s no way he’s gonna get medical care for his skin condition, I reason. Even with universal free healthcare here on this island, what with all the war wounded, he won’t be given anywhere near priority in the hospitals.

I hear another explosion and some machine gun fire. It must be getting really close, for during this last rattling of bullets, I just saw the chest of what appears to be a third homeless man burst open in a huge splash of red. He’s now lying on the sidewalk, motionless and lifeless to the left of the first derelict.

I’ll bet he has no family to grieve for him, I think as I see a pool of blood growing in an oval around his body. The other two homeless men, still in the exact same place, don’t seem to notice the blood getting on their clothes and shoes. I see a soldier running by–the one who shot him? Is he wearing a PLA uniform? I think it is.

I heave a big sigh, then look over to a bench on the left side of the front area of my apartment. There’s a tree with overhanging leafy branches over the bench, and after I squint my eyes and look more carefully there, I see an old man sitting there crosslegged with his eyes closed and a smile on his face.

Is it even possible to sit like that and meditate amidst all that mayhem? I wonder, then go back and sit at my coffee table.

I close my eyes.

I open my eyes, and instead of seeing my small apartment all around me, I see my parents’ mansion. Instead of wearing a T-shirt and shorts, I’m in a black Armani suit with a white shirt and dark purple tie. I’m looking out the front window on the second floor, looking out on the front lawn over to the front gates of our estate.

“What’s out there?” I ask, looking back at my father.

“You don’t need to know,” he, wearing the regal attire of an Oriental king, says with a frown of disapproval towards my, to him, excessive curiosity.

“But if I am to rule these people, I need to get to know them,” I say. Now I am dressed in similar, Asian clothing. Instead of a modern mansion, I see the elaborate interior design of an Oriental palace. Instead of the gates outside, I see palace walls at the far end of the front lawn as I look back through the window.

“You don’t need to see the filthy dirty masses to rule them,” my stepmother, dressed in modern clothing but no less a queen, says to me coldly. “If you went out there, you might catch their diseases. I forbid you to go out there.”

“I still want to see them, and I’m going,” I say. She tries to stop me, but I just walk past her. I pay no attention to her shouting as I leave the room, go down the stairs, and walk towards the front door. I’m in the black suit again, and the palace has returned to being the modern mansion.

I hear my father call out to the servants to make sure I have a retinue of followers to protect my “inviolable” self from the “riff-raff” outside. When such followers walk by me, I brush them aside.

“I want to be alone,” I snap at them.

Suddenly, I find myself outside the palace walls. I’m in my Oriental robes again. On the sides of the streets, I see destitute Chinese and Indians begging, sitting on the ground with bowls in front of them.

To see such abject poverty makes me feel ashamed to be dressed so well among them. As I continue walking, I look down at myself and see the black suit on me again. I hear gunfire and bombs exploding. I look in front of myself and see a homeless Indian man lying on the ground. He must be in his seventies, with his long, wiry white hair.

He looks hungry and in pain. I toss a few gold coins in the bowl he has lying by his head. He says something to me in his Hindustani dialect–“Thank you,” I assume. I notice that, as he’s speaking, half of his teeth are missing. He also has only a loincloth to cover his nakedness.

I continue my walk and see another homeless Indian, a younger one, but one with boils all over his semi-naked body. He, too, is wearing only a loincloth.

Are there no doctors to care for him? I wonder, giving him a few gold coins, too. I’m back in my Asian robes.

I notice the sharp smell of smoke in front of me. Is it a marijuana cigarette burning? It sure smells like that, but instead I see the burning body of a dead, homeless Indian. No gold coins will help him, or his family, since I see no one near him to grieve for him.

I hear a bomb explode and some gunfire not too far away. I look up at the sky and see fiery mushroom clouds turning all the blue to orange. I heave a sigh, feel my heart sinking, and turn around to return home.

My father has taken too little care of this, and he’ll continue to care too little, I think as I’m walking back to the palace.

As I’m going, though, I pass by an old man sitting under a tree in a park. Crosslegged, he has his eyes closed, and has a wide smile on his face. He’s at peace amidst this turmoil!

My body feels as if it’s glowing in a radiant fire. I’m sparkling and tingling all over. I feel the warmth and light of love permeating my body and shining all over me!

This meditating man has inspired me! His example has shown me what I must do: go out into the world and help humanity through spirituality and mysticism!

My father will never, ever use any of his wealth to help the poor or to end these wars, I think as I begin walking faster back home. Sakia’s influence over all of the politically powerful in our kingdom has ensured that the wealthy will never be taxed. But if I can reach the people spiritually, then inspire them to revolution, we can together solve the problem of the poor.

I see the walls and entrance to the palace. The gates open…as my eyes do.

I look around and see my humble living room again.

I hear the explosions and gunfire outside. A few flashes of light brighten the night sky past my window with those explosions.

I am definitely coming down from my K high. I’m starting to feel less safe, though the glow of universal love is at its most brilliant right now.

This ecstasy is powerful, I think.

I want to go out there and spread love, however dangerous it is outside.

I look down at my lines of ketamine.

A snort of one of them will be my armour.

I pick up my straw.

The K-hole isn’t anything more than illusory safety, I think as I bend down to snort the line. But if I die out there, I die. We’re all going to die, anyway. Why keep living in this shitty world?

Daggers

This
dagger
which
hovers
before
me will be used to kill a king.
Is he a kind and gentle king,
or has
this
king
worked
hard
to get
each
stab
in

his
back
and
guts?
Good kings should not be
invited to eat, then betrayed.
Bad
ones
are
not
fed
and
bled
to

bring
about
reigns
which
renew
past tyrannies. To resurrect
him who was pierced is no
different
than
let-
-ting
his
son
sit
on
a

gold
seat
that’s
good
as new.
Kill the Duncan-killer,
let Malcolm mend our wounds,
and
all
our
red
can
be
a

poured
liquid
in
a
cup,
not spilled.

Analysis of ‘A Passion Play’

A Passion Play is a 1973 concept album by Jethro Tull, their sixth album. This album moved the band further in the direction of progressive rock, a move started with their previous album, Thick as a Brick.

Both albums have the format of continuous music spread over two sides of the original vinyl releases; but with A Passion Play, the music became much more elaborate and complex. Also, while Thick as a Brick has been largely well received critically, A Passion Play was panned by the critics, who soundly thrashed bandleader Ian Anderson for his perceived self-indulgence (i.e., the over-the-top “Story of the Hare Who Lost His Spectacles”) and pretentiousness.

Nevertheless, the album sold well, reaching No. 1 on the charts in the US and Canada. It also sold well in Germany, Norway, and the UK. Though I agree that the “Story of the Hare” is little more than outright silly, I feel it’s unfortunate that the album has such a bad rap, for musically it’s among Tull’s most accomplished, with Anderson expanding on his already considerable multi-instrumentalist abilities to include soprano and sopranino saxophones. He does some fine acoustic guitar playing here, too; and John Evan‘s keyboards and Barriemore Barlow‘s virtuosic drumming and percussion add lots of musical colour.

Here are links to the lyrics, and here is a link to the album.

When I bought my copy of the LP as a teen in the 1980s, it didn’t have the gatefold inner sleeve with the lyrics and the drama masks (let alone the six-page programme included in the original album to tell us the characters, etc.). All I had was the outer cover, with the pictures of the ballerinas. As gleaned from just the lyrics, the story is quite unclear.

Indeed, what do they mean by “a passion play”? The story of the album isn’t a dramatization of the suffering and death of Christ, so the title is obviously a metaphor…but of what? Here’s where everything is open to interpretation–so here’s mine.

A “passion play” is a metaphor for life. Instead of Christ, our protagonist, as indicated in the programme, is “Ronnie Pilgrim,” an everyman whose death at the beginning of the story, and whose progress through the judgement of his life, then through heaven and hell, and back to corporeal existence (rebirth), is an ironic cross between passion plays and a variation on John Bunyan‘s allegory, The Pilgrim’s Progress.

Now, the story is full of Christian imagery, though Jesus is only briefly and occasionally referred to. On the other hand, since passion here has its original meaning of “suffering,” rather than “ardent emotion,” and play refers to life, as in “All the world’s a stage,/And all the men and women merely players,” then “a passion play” as a metaphor for life means a life full of suffering, which sounds more like the Buddhist concept of dukkha. After all, the first of the Four Noble Truths is that all life is suffering. Furthermore, Pilgrim ends his progress by being reincarnated.

Whether Anderson consciously or unconsciously intended A Passion Play to have a Buddhist subtext hidden under Christian concepts is ultimately irrelevant; my point is that such a subtext can be found in the story.

Another irony is how a story about the suffering of life is mostly presented in the afterlife, causing one to wonder if this “afterlife” is literal or metaphorical. Indeed, how does one go from being accepted into heaven, then opting for hell, and finally coming back to physical life if this is all understood to be literally happening? After all, when entering hell, aren’t we all supposed to “abandon all hope” (i.e., of leaving hell)?

I’d say the Pilgrim’s “death” is really either a coma in which he, dreaming, mistakenly believes he’s dead, and from which he eventually wakes; or, the death, heaven, and hell experiences are just temporary psychological states between incarnations. Whatever the answer may be, let’s dive into the music.

Side One begins with a fade-in during which we hear Evan’s synth imitating a heartbeat. This is mixed with various other instruments, including the organ and Anderson’s sax; it has a trippy, psychedelic quality, suggesting a dream-like state, as if Ronnie Pilgrim is merely imagining the whole story.

Barlow’s drums kick in with the rest of the band, and we hear them playing a brief instrumental fittingly called “Lifebeats.” It has an almost march-like rhythm in triple time, until there’s an interruption in 9/8 (subdivided 2+2+2+3), first played only on organ, then with added acoustic guitar, whistling, and tritones on Martin Barre‘s guitar and Jeffrey Hammond-Hammond‘s bass.

This brief 9/8 passage ends with a ritardando of the synth-heartbeat, which also lowers in pitch, indicating that Pilgrim is dying. A crashing sound then indicates that he is now dead, as Anderson sings, beginning the narration of the predicament of our protagonist. “The Silver Cord,” which ties mortal flesh to the spirit, now “lies on the ground”…and so Pilgrim is dead. Evan’s soft and pretty piano accompanies Anderson’s singing.

Pilgrim sees his friends all attending his funeral, though they’ve arrived too late by taxi. “A hush in the Passion Play” means that death is the silence when life ends.

Pilgrim meditates on the good and bad moments in his life, though the “rich attainments” are “all imagined,” and “sad misdeeds in disarray” seem more prominent. Such is the essence of life as an experience of sorrow, or a “passion play” that we all must go through. To compare the suffering of life (e.g., aging) to music, we could speak of “melodies decaying in sweet dissonance.”

“The Ever-Passion Play,” or eternal life of suffering, with death conceived as an integral part of this eternal experience, suggests the cyclical suffering of samsāra. Since the Passion of Jesus ends with His harrowing of hell (as Pilgrim will do on Side Two) and resurrection, Pilgrim’s ‘resurrection’ could be seen as symbolic of reincarnation.

An instrumental section interrupts the narration, starting with a reprise of that 9/8 tune, now played slower on the organ and with Barlow’s marimba and the tritones on the guitar and bass. After this, a jazzy passage is heard in 11/8 time, featuring a sax solo by Anderson. Then there’s a return to the narration, with Evan’s dainty piano playing.

An angel descends to meet Pilgrim, and “a band of gentlemen” escort him out of Limbo. An instrumental “Re-Assuring Tune” comes next, including an acoustic guitar solo displaying Anderson’s skill on the instrument. This leads to “Memory Bank,” in which we find Pilgrim in “the viewing room,” where he’ll watch video of his entire life. They have him taped; he’s “in the play” of life, which will now be judged.

We’re coming into what is perhaps the most musically tense part of the album, and fittingly so, since this is the moment that determines whether Ronnie Pilgrim will go to heaven or to hell. Still, this issue is resolved with him going to heaven by the end of Side One. Pilgrim’s real issue isn’t whether or not he’ll be saved, but rather if he even likes it in heaven, or if he likes the afterlife in general.

In contrast, the pilgrim of John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress (the protagonist fittingly named “Christian,” for the purposes of Bunyan’s allegory) has to go through an ordeal of temptations and dangers of being led astray, and therefore he’s in danger of not being saved. Of course, Christian passes all the tests and makes it to the “Celestial City,” or heaven. Ronnie Pilgrim’s “progress” is about contemplating the vey nature of the afterlife, and making up his mind whether it’s worth venturing into at all…or would one rather just stay in this material world.

An instrumental passage in 11/8 leads to a reprise of that jazzy section originally with the sax solo, but this time instead of the sax, we hear the album’s major showcasing of Anderson’s trademark breathy flute soloing. Though there is, of course, lots of flute heard on this album before and after this particular passage (on which Anderson overdubs two solos), since Jethro Tull in general is more or less synonymous with the flute, by Tull standards, A Passion Play has far less of the instrument highlighted.

“Memory Bank” ends with the judges watching the videotape of Pilgrim’s life and noting some of those ‘rich attainments’ of his (“Captain of the cricket team,/Public speaking…” and “a knighthood…”), I must wonder if he really did attain these honours, or were these attainments “all imagined,” as stated above. In any case, this section segues into “Best Friends.”

Apparently, Pilgrim never stopped chatting on the phone with his best friends. Rain coming through a tear in his old umbrella, rain like tears, seems to represent old sorrows of his; still, “the rain only gets in sometimes,” and the sun, which seems to represent his fiery passions, never left him alone, as we’ll judge soon enough.

The next section is the particularly dark, heavy, and tense “Critique Oblique,” which opens with an ostinato of six notes (G, A, B-flat, D, D-flat, and C, each with an inverted parallel fifth below these tonic notes) that starts slowly on the organ and is repeated accelerando. These six notes (and their inverted fifths) will form the basis of the riff for this whole section, backed by Barlow’s pounding drums.

The judges watching the videotape of Pilgrim’s life seem to be judging him here for a sexual indiscretion of his, which has resulted in an illegitimate child. As a comment on this sin, we hear comically melodramatic voices singing an example of the album’s fatuous infatuation with puns: “The examining body examined her body.”

After a judgement of Pilgrim’s moral imperfections, we have one on the limitations of his intelligence. Since life is a passion play, we who live life are the actors, and Pilgrim is one “of the low IQ.” Not only was his sexual indiscretion sinful, but it was also foolish, leaving the illegitimate child’s mother “faded,” that is, her life ruined.

Still, in spite of his errant ways, the judges “won’t cross [him] out.” Pilgrim is loved like a son, or like the Son (John 3:16). Indeed, the only way Pilgrim could be saved is through Christ’s blood on the Cross, because of “how absolutely awful [he] really [is],” awful the way Lucifer is awful, as we’ll learn on Side Two, the way the state of unredeemed sin makes us awful.

In any case, Pilgrim is admitted into heaven, and the blissful state of the celestial paradise is reflected in “Forest Dance No. 1,” which leads to “The Story of the Hare Who Lost His Spectacles,” ending Side One and beginning Side Two.

It’s curious how “The Story of the Hare Who Lost His Spectacles” is sandwiched in between the two ‘Forest Dances’ of Pilgrim’s experience of heaven. As we will discover on Side Two of the album, he becomes disenchanted with heaven when he finds its inhabitants all reminiscing about their lives on Earth rather than simply enjoying eternal life (indeed, at the beginning of “Forest Dance No. 1,” we hear that synth heartbeat of life again).

The story, narrated by Hammond-Hammond in an over-the-top, affected Lancashire accent, seems a mixture of Prokofiev‘s Peter and the Wolf (i.e., the music), Peter Rabbit (i.e., the hare), Winnie-the-Pooh (i.e., the kangaroo and rabbit), and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (i.e., not only the rabbit but also the extensive use of puns). As pretentious, self-indulgent, and generally annoying as this story is as an interruption of Pilgrim’s story (I used to skip this part when listening to my LP, and when I taped it, I omitted the story), in a sense it could be considered a fitting inclusion, in that, as a children’s story placed in the middle of Pilgrim’s experience of heaven, it represents how one must be a child to enter the Kingdom of God (Luke 18:17).

The hare losing his spectacles sounds like someone who has lost his vision, lost his way. This is an odd experience to have when in heaven…unless the whole point is that heaven was an illusion from the beginning. We all fantasize about a perfect world that can never be, and in that fantasizing we grow myopic, if not outright blind.

Or perhaps the point is that in heaven, our troubles are only slight. The hare loses his spectacles, yet has a spare pair, so his problem is quickly solved. Heaven is thus perceived as a charming children’s world, with the cute hare, a kangaroo, an owl, a newt, and a bee. (Here is a link to a video dramatizing the story.)

During the course of the story, we hear a number of puns on the animals’ names: “Bee…began,” “Owl…scowling,” “Kangaroo…hopping mad…” and “…can guru,” “Newt knew too…”, and Hare did have a spare pair/A-pair.”

After this nonsense we hear the heavenly “Forest Dance No. 2.”

In “The Foot of Our Stairs,” Pilgrim expresses his astonishment, incredulity, and surprise at how disappointing he finds heaven to be. Instead of enjoying eternal bliss, the saved just remember their old lives on Earth. Apparently, our life here in the physical world, in spite of all its suffering (“a passion play”), is the only life worth having. Indeed, dukkha as the Buddhists understand includes even the mildest of unpleasant feelings, like disillusionment, or the foreknowledge that even the best of parties have to come to an end sooner or later.

Pilgrim, in fact, is so disappointed with heaven that he’s decided, as AC/DC would observe years later, that “Hell Ain’t a Bad Place to Be” (though he’ll regret his decision soon enough). He tells God that his “is the right to be wrong,” and requests to be sent to the Other Place; for the reward of heaven is just “Pie in the sky.”

Could “Jack rabbit mister” be a link to the hare who lost his spectacles? In any case, “The last hymn is sung, and the Devil cries, ‘More’,” suggesting that the Devil has all the best tunes. What we note in this qualifying of heavenly bliss vs. hellish torment is that the two places aren’t as black and white as we’ve been told; that as in life, there’s a considerable grey area in both heaven and hell, and that ultimately we never really escape suffering as long as we keep existing.

After an instrumental passage with a sax solo, Pilgrim carries on in his qualifying and relativizing of heaven and hell by singing of “that forsaken paradise that calls itself ‘hell’.” Pilgrim’s decision to leave heaven for hell is made all the more ironic with his allusion to Christ’s healing of a paralytic (Mark 2:9) by singing “Pick up thy bed and rise up from your gloom smiling,” since Christ spoke of how much easier it is to forgive sins (i.e., deliver a sinner from hell and admit him into heaven) than it is to cure paralysis.

Anyway, Pilgrim has left heaven and gone to hell, where in “Overseer Overture,” we are given Satan’s perspective, him being “the overseer.” One would expect music depicting the hellish experience to be of the gloomiest, most hopeless and evil sort; oddly, what we get instead is music of a mostly merry sort, with a bouncy rhythm in triplets. There’s even a joining “round the maypole in dance.”

The only exception to this merry tune are two brief, dissonant moments with synthesizer arpeggios and groaning. These appear before the lyrics “Colours I’ve none…” and “Legends were born…” These are the only truly musically infernal moments in this part of the story. These brief moanings put among larger passages of musical merriment reinforce the sense that heaven and hell are not meant to be understood here in the classical, Christian sense of being absolute opposites. Again, I suspect that Pilgrim either hasn’t really died, but is merely mulling over the idea of the afterlife in his mind, or he’s experiencing a temporary, relative heaven and hell before being reincarnated.

So his dissatisfaction with hell is really just like his dissatisfaction with heaven and everything else–all is dukkha.

In “Flight From Lucifer,” the Devil being “an awful fellow” sounds like extreme understatement for describing Satan, once again reinforcing the relativity of hellish torments as felt in Pilgrim’s experience of the place. Though the Devil is “icy,” a reference to Dante‘s Inferno, Canto XXXIV, in which Lucifer is trapped waist-deep in ice, he is called by his original name, Lucifer (“Light-Bringer”), back when he was once held by God to be fairest of the angels before his pride became his infernal undoing.

The musical structure of the louder, more rhythmically pounding verses of this section is interesting in its trickiness. (I refer to the verses beginning with “Flee the icy Lucifer,” “Here’s the everlasting rub” [an allusion to Hamlet, perhaps?], “Twist my right arm in the dark,” “I would gladly be a dog…”, “Pick me up at half past none,”and “Station master rings his bell.”) In the first, third, and fifth of these verses, we have 4/4, 2/4, 5/4, 4/4, 5/8, and three bars of 4/4. This pattern happens again in the second, fourth, and sixth of these verses, but instead of the bar in 5/4, it’s one in 6/4, with a pounding of Barlow’s tympani providing the added beat.

In Pilgrim’s regret over coming to hell, he realizes he’s “neither…good nor bad.” He wants to come back to physical existence; it’s “Time for awaking,” or coming back from the sleep of death. He politely says he’d like to stay, but his (angel’s, or devil’s?) “wings have just dropped off.”

Another pounding of the tympani, as well as some organ, fades out and segues into the next section, an instrumental passage called “To Paddington,” on which we hear overdubs of sweet acoustic guitar playing by Anderson in 5/4.

Next comes “Magus Perdé,” with a scratchy, angular electric guitar riff by Barre, including quickly strummed harmonics, as well as hammer-ons and pull-offs. Anderson’s flute joins in, along with shaken tambourine from Barlow and Evan’s synth.

Pilgrim, “voyager into life,” wants to come back to the material world. He’s with “The passengers upon the ferry crossing, waiting to be born”; normally, Charon would be taking them in the opposite direction, to Hades. There is an instrumental section in 7/8, then a tricky passage with jumps, starts, and interruptions before a restating of the main guitar riff, and the final verse.

Here, reincarnation is given the metaphor of resurrection. Christ’s in particular is alluded to in “son of man” and “Roll the stone away.” Note that in the Old Testament, “son of man” (ben-‘adam), lacking the definite article, refers to humanity in general; whereas in the New Testament, Christ tends to refer to Himself as “the son of man” (ὁ υἱὸς τοὺ ἀνθρώπου, or ho huios tou anthropou). So this last verse, while linking reincarnation metaphorically with resurrection, is also linking man in general (and Pilgrim in particular) with Christ.

In the “Epilogue,” we hear a brief reprise of the soft piano melody from Side One and Anderson singing about “the ever-passion play.” The word ever was heard repeatedly in the verses of “Magus Perdé,” namely “ever-dying,” “ever-burning fire,” “ever-door,” “ever-life,” and “ever-day.” In all of these “evers,” we have the eternal sense of recurrent death, pain, and movement through the (as it were) doorway of changing states of life experience, as well as the eternality of existence in the light of day. In this sense, we move away from Christian symbolism to the Buddhist concept of the endless cycle of life, death, and rebirth…samsara.

So Pilgrim returns to physical life, and we hear that synth heartbeat again, as well as what would seem, at first, a reprise of the Forest Dance of heaven as heard at the end of Side One, just before “The Story of the Hare.” Both of these sections begin with the “passion play” reprise of the soft piano and Anderson singing “play,” ending the word in falsetto, suggesting a conceptual link between the reprises.

So, coming back into the physical world, despite its suffering, is the closest we’ll ever come to anything like heaven.

Why do people believe in an afterlife? A simple fear of death, which is of course unavoidable, but we feel a yearning for at least some kind of existence afterwards. Belief in hell satisfies our wish for justice against the evildoers of the world, but that belief also carries with it the negative trade-off of a fear that we ourselves may be included among the wrong-doers. The afterlife, as a solace against the fear of death, becomes a cause for an even greater fear of death.

The conclusion of A Passion Play is that we should focus on this material life here, with all of its pain and contradictions (as symbolized in the fadeout of Side Two, with its dissonant, startling organ chords, etc.). Instead of fantasizing about a utopian heaven for our narcissistic selves (as parodied in the absurd “Story of the Hare”) to enjoy, and an infernal concentration camp for those we hate, we should do what we can to improve our material conditions here as best we can.

Instead of admiring and imitating a resurrected Christ who has suffered a passion for us, we should be like the bodhisattvas, who swear off entering into the blissful state of nirvana to return to the physical world and help all of humanity to end suffering. Instead of emulating the passion play of life, one should end the passion of it (i.e., life’s suffering), liberating us all to enjoy the play.

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