Belief

Belief was a golden haired child born in the state of desire within the realm of the word. He had never been in the realm of the real, could never be, in fact, because nothing born of the word can walk in the realm of the real. In the realm of the real there would be no need for such a child as belief. Belief, as I have said, was born in the state of desire, a place where the urge to fulfil needs is transferred into abstract longings whose ends can never be met. In such a place, a place where yearning goes on and on because there can be no end to yearning, Belief is a necessary entity. Belief is a natural product of desire. Whereas a need can be met, a desire knows no fulfillment and so it naturally blossoms into belief, the notion that that which one longs for does exist, will happen, is coming eventually. But all of this occurs only within the realm of the symbolic order. All of this occurs because a symbol is not the thing itself. The signifier is not the signified. It is like a shadow, it refers to the real, it takes a shape that cannot be grasped, a shape that may take on a life of its own and birth new shapes with no correspondences to the real. These shapes, these shadows with no correspondences, are the makers of desire, the grandparents of Belief. Belief is a prince in the house of desire. He runs to and fro calling for some action or other in his name. People gladly indulge this spoiled child because it gives them Hope, his lovely sister. Hope and Belief offer justification to the house of desire. They are like the children that a couple that has become disenchanted with one another conceives in order to have a reason to stay together. They are the fantasies that make all of our fantasies okay. If we have Belief we will join God in Heaven and bring Tinkerbell back to life. With Belief’s hand in your own, it is okay to kill and take another’s land. His presence will make you feel better about actions which primarily serve some personal desire, his company will help to justify your actions. With Belief at your side, you will do any number of absurd things; set out cookies for an immortal in a red suit, or eat cookies and wine and call it the flesh and blood of your God, or burn a person at the stake, or drive your neighbors from their homes and push them into the sea, or destroy all of the natural resources available to you. There is nothing that can’t or shouldn’t be done when you can say that Belief is with you. No door can be closed to you when you come from the house of desire, frothing at the mouth with want of a satisfaction that can’t be had, Golden Belief and fair Hope marching at your side demanding that you take, take, take. Take what you want and say it was for Belief. Run amok under the shadowy banners of the house of Desire within the Realm of the symbolic. In the realm of the Real, Belief and Hope vanish like the ill spirits that they are, and you stand alone with blood on your hands, and it is not a Jihad, or a Crusade, or a Sacrifice, it is raw animal death and it is under your fingernails, spattered on your face, and shivering through your bones.

Sheep Roll In Soul

They show me that we are good sheep, sheep who walk in neat lines to be counted lustily, sheep who roll by in cars. They show this to me. They say, “You are a sheep. Sheep need to have this.” And that is the advertisement; sheep in lines, sheep in cars. They call it the soul. They want to sell me, a sheep, a soul. So ludicrous that my mind is dropped from its usual turbulent fury to a complete silence. I needn’t dig deep. They put it right out in the open. We have become so hopeless, so used to the manipulation of life and words that we don’t need the message to be too discreet. You can simply tell us, you are sheep, you want to fit in with the herd, you want this car, we will give you soul. Soul, the thing that flies or the thing that makes you rock and gyrate to the music. Soul. Yes. I told you. I can say nothing more than what they said, it was so plainly put in pictures and animation and words. I am left silent. Why fight it? Why suggest to a sheep, “Hey yew, they’re just trying to eat yew? They’re getting fat on yew. And yew are getting fleeced.”?
They want to be sheep. They want to be herded. They want the bearded man with the bo-peep cane to stand over them and smile with a heart pinned to his dress. They want him to tell them where they should go, when they should go, they don’t even need a why. Glad to accept that father knows best, they’ll do what they are told, because after all they are sheep, and the shepherd is much smarter, far better suited to make the best choices. He leads them to the greenest grass, the sweetest pastures, why object? We get what we want. Listen to it. You don’t’ even have to worry about your soul. You can buy that too. All you need to do is consume. Feed in the green pasture and the shepherd will give you a soul. He is looking out for both your material and spiritual well fare. He is loading you up onto the conveyor belt and watching you disappear into the dark depths of the light crushing machinery. You will be dust. You will be ash. Immortality is for Gods, not for sheep. You are a quick snack for the Cannibal God and his brood. Yum yum, they taste so good doused in Christian Doir and wrapped in lycra, served on platters of satin and oak. Down in the earth six feet deep your soul will roll along the black asphalt above with a new sheep at the wheel ready to go and earn a paycheck and hit the online stores and shopping malls. Ready to sign its life away, holding a pen clenched in its bovine maw, yes on the dotted line, thank you, and here, here, and here by the X , yes, thank you. Pockets full of plastic and we all fall down. Ring around, around, around. I know it’s true, I’ve said it before, I’ve sung it in nursery rhymes and set it in words and pointed and hopped up and down. And this time I mention it with less passion, with less concern. You are right after all, we are only sheep. If you’re only wish is to feed in greener pastures, then bon appetite. Enjoy it while you can. Because that soul you bought, it won’t roll where you’re going to go. The asphalt reaches only so far.
(A note to the reader- if you find this more than mostly confusing you may need to run a Google search on SOUL. The very first listing will help find a Kia dealer where you can buy your very own.)

Run Mousey Run

How dare they? How dare they take the magick away, to steal it from us like cats stealing the breath from babies? Dark thieves that come to us and civilize us, closing doors, choosing for us, severing us from the magickal kingdom, the vibrant corridors. I know there are doors. I know they are there, even if they have been hidden from my view, blinded as I am by the words for things, the words that decide which things are and which thing aren’t, which experiences are real, which are imagined. How dare they to tell me how I should be. How dare they to cripple me, stripping from me true sight with the way of the word.
They do it because it was done to them and it was done to those who did it to them, and so they perpetuate it. They make the human being a prison, a dark cell cut off from the magick and wonder of the universe. The word is the dark magick that holds us spellbound within our cold bleak cell. How dare they to be such cowards, accessories to the crime if not the perpetuators of the great lie.
I could cry sun black tears leaving purple stains on my cheeks. I am filled with rage and sorrow that I have been taken into their ranks, into the ranks of the dark army. They recruit us when we are children. Now I have been both recruit and recruiter, and my sorrow is all the deeper for that fact.
The things that we have done without knowing what we were doing. Because it was tradition, because it was part of our culture. It was our parents’ way, and their parents before them. Because we come from a long line of slaves. So when will we stand up and break the chains that bind us up and hold us as separate from the strange leaky wet universe without.
We are holed up in here because we are afraid of what lies without. We are afraid of what lies beyond those doors which we have been trained not to see. Like rats running through a maze, we run for the reward, for the cheese, and the cheese makes us want more cheese, and we grow tamer and more and more accustomed to the usual route, so that we do not even notice the passages that lead in other directions, passages that do not lead to the cheese which we are accustomed to, passages that lead away from the familiar, the known.
Run, run on those little legs, run away from the great snake winding its away around the pedestal upon which the world is founded. Run little mouse lest ye be swallowed by the serpent. Let the white coats poke you with their needles, cage you in your cell, and set you in your maze to run for the cheese.
The cheese is good. The cheese is the best thing that you have in this world. And you do not know what the worlds beyond this one would be like. Perhaps there is nothing better than the cheese. Perhaps the other worlds are worse than this. Perhaps. Or perhaps you have been domesticated. Your likes, your dislikes, they have been cultivated in the lab. Wild things don’t like cheese. They run through dark corridors that lead out into the wild wood where the wind blows and the winter comes and the fox and the snake and the peregrine look for you.
Something else happens to the wild, something that cannot be told. Something that can never be understood by or communicated to domestic animals. The wild are possessed by a dark strange something that makes them tingle. The wild are alive, and the domestic are dead, and the domestic fear the life that courses through the wild.
I am domestic and I am wild and the two make war within me, one host of voices screaming for freedom, the other host begging for safety and me in the middle, scarcely able to move in a consistent direction, torn as I am between the many, many voices that cry out in every moment.
But the fact remains. There are doors. There is one right now, waiting for you to acknowledge it, to extend your hand and turn its key and step into the beyond, if only for a moment you can master your habit of running, of running for the cheese and from the wild wood.
Yes, everything that you think you are, you think with the mind they made for you, made for you with the shape of their maze, with their rewards and their punishments. Your parents, your teachers, your politicians and preachers, your friends, your siblings, your neighbors, your lovers, your reporters, your doctors, your favorite movies, TV, and radio shows; the white coats with their needles. Everything that you think is founded on the omission of certain subtle realities. Everything you strive for is a quest suggested to you by the appropriate stimulus.
What are you mousey? Are you a mousey at all? Or are you a string of chemical instructions? Are you a body of habits?
A body of habits.
A body of habits.
A collection of conditioned responses. The bell rings. I am hungry. I am hungry and I run and you run and we run blind down the dark alleys of the world, and the white coats are there, but we do not see them either. We do not see them or the doors. We see nothing and we hope only for cheese. As if filling ourselves with it would somehow make us feel better. But there is no way to feel better when you are dead. No way to pursue true happiness when you are domestic. Why do you pursue those things that the others are doing, that the others have always done, falling in line with tradition? Why preserve their culture, the culture of death? The culture of cowardice and gluttony?
There will never be enough cheese to fill you and you will meet the hunter one day. Maybe not in the shape of a serpent, but in some shape you two will meet.
So why run? Why run at all?
Why not open a door, step out, feel the wind ruffle your fur and meet that other with it’s gleaming yellow eye. How good can cheese be if you are its slave, the slave of the maze and its makers?