*
She wants to be a Christian, wants to pray
doesn't pray, wants to, tries or tries to try
to be the thing she says she is, she tries
to speak with God, to be with God, to say
to him the things a Christian says
and live the Sabbath on the other days,
to rest within his presence, just
to rest not moving, not wanting to move
nor wanting not to, simply being there,
then doing all the other things she does
as one who is continually seen,
and acts as if God sees, because
the truth is that he does.
So she wants to be his because she is.
*
Monday, August 29, 2005
Monday, August 01, 2005
The Death of the Devil
*
The one that finally broke her was the prostitute. She was dying, Duessa was "ministering" to her. Her stiffish hospital garb was raising rashes on her ill-fitting flesh and then she noted that the prostitute had stopped listening to the scientific crap she was reciting to her and soon enough Duessa stopped listening herself. So nobody was listening. And at the end when the hooker started clutching a little cross around her neck, the devil (usually one to berate that particular symbol) found herself nodding off, and she hadn't bothered to do anything about it. She had failed to mock, failed to belittle, failed to reduce. She found herself withering like a dried pea inside her role. She didn't even feel hostile to that cross -- or at least not hostile enough.
*
Her desire -- to gnaw everything and make it bleed -- was dying.
*
And at the burial she had felt it only numbly when 2 or 3 of the woman's friends had begun to heat up, actually heat up at the sight of the remains, their souls had actually begun to heat up, move their particles more urgently in the "void" that surrounded them and become more interesting. With one pass their souls had grown tastier, worth the energy of destruction, of temptation. And yet she felt it happen but did nothing. She let them go! It was as though she'd reached the point where she could relish a taste but refrain from eating. It was as though their potential salvation left her unmoved. They blushed and cried at the touch of a hymn, and yet she did nothing! And the people left the service and went away unharmed.
And in the parking lot she felt dry sobs of self pity twist her body, as all the people rushed past her to their cars, scarcely registering her ill will for them, scarcely giving her a thought. So in this terrible new era -- filled with a faith without substance, shut up in styrofoam like cold pasta -- she found herself beginning to twist with self-pity, paralyzed, her faith in herself fallen to a new low. The evil seemed to have nothing real to live on.
*
Throughout the country, as differences between people began to decay, so did her memory of her own role in the decay, so did that memory itself, so did it decay. Those she had turned away from goodness had no particular badness to achieve. It was their reality and hers that had been gnawed away. People bored her and their collapse was beginning to flatten out, it wasn't interesting. And she was the one who had made it uninteresting, and this realization was quite terrible. Or rather this too had become old and flat. She was dying, she was dying.
*
Once people had been like pocks in stone, ready to hold rainwater or gather up the passing filth of their world. They had been like characters in fiction, blank and promising, they had not been so closed, so wised-up and hard. They had been more like vessels, open to receiving things from the world. And it had been her joy to fill them with her profoundly bad offerings. Centuries had accumulated with the brittle joy of people's destruction. But now the people simply filled themselves. There was no space left for herself or for the others whom she was careful not to think about. Her daughter, her darling daughter, lost forever....!
Oh such woe. It was as though people had simply become denial. And not only denial of the others, her kindly rivals, no, not only of them, but there was a new unpleasant flavor to the world, a new denial of herself. She too had become denied, her interest and her relevance. And though this too was a form of demonic nutrition -- though she ate people together with what they denied and though their denial was like a spice that helped her to consume them utterly -- still it had come to have the flat taste that she now recognized all too well. She was continually tempted to spit them out. They provided no satisfaction.
How contagious the feeling of flatness was!
There for eternity they lay stupefied, unable to feel, unable to suffer in a satisfying way. The change had eaten them up from the inside. There was no longer anything for her to enjoy.
*
And the others, her brothers and sisters, were so boring in their unawareness that she couldn't bear to spend time with them. And so it seemed that the end had come to some unmarked era but an end with no distinguishing marks, no character of its own, and almost no existence of its own. It didn't even feel evil! It didn't even offer that temporary relief.
*
The graduate student was hanging from a bar inside the freeway underpass. The cars pounded indifferently overhead, that was a satisfying sound. But where was the dead one's soul? What had happened to it? The devil fell to her hands and knees, pawing the ground.
There was a condom flattened against a twig in the mud. A broken beer bottle whose label was completely washed out. A scum of froth clinging to the bottle. Further down, there was a weed near the bent bottom of the slope, and this weed bore a single flower. It breathed heavily and ingested a mucousy substance, thinner than a wet tissue. The film on the weed -- that was the vagabond soul. The rest of it, of the soul, lay like a little wisp of foam on the ground. It wasn't even strong enough to hold itself together and *be* a soul.
The devil tasted it, gagged, and quickly spit it out. And she had never done that before!
Then this craven being suffered her deepest breakdown. For 39 days -- she was too wicked to be allowed the forty of her enemy -- she sat motionless, lower back slumped like trash, resting in the wild like a piece of eroding wood or stone. She was -- not pitiful, no one so wicked could be pitiful -- but almost fragile, propped in space like any piece of nature that a passerby might despoil. What seemed to have imploded was that iron core of will.
Even naughty runaway kids were afraid to approach where the devil rested. It was impossible to believe that what was seen could be other than a trap. At the same time the expression in her eyes was too much like the expression on a failed parent, an authority figure whose authority had dwindled to nothing. Also there was that terrible skeleton rattling by her side, the spectre of the dead man floating in the air.
So when the devil died no one much noticed.
*
But before that happened, she was visited by a homeless or "unhoused" man and caught a brief glimpse of the underkingdom, of her own kingdom. And then they say that she passed out her spirit, or as they say: gave up the ghost. That was the thirty-fifth night. Toward the end she opened her eyes to find the homeless man sitting next to her. Ah, I knew there was someone still at home in there, the man said. Greetings. The skeleton shivered and clicked his teeth.
The devil lay crumpled in a position that would destroy her own bones if she didn't move. But she didn't move. And then the other one said:
Look, do you feel it? Everything is softening now. The people up there, you can't hear it from her, but they're getting soft now. They are preparing for something. Do you know what I mean?
*
It seemed that a couple of days passed.
The man cut a slice of bread with an army knife. When the devil slumped even further, the stranger raised it to the edge of the other's mouth.
Like a beast, the dying creature snarled. Go ahead and bite me if you want, the homeless man said. Of course I know it's no longer fun when you're given permission. So go ahead but of course you won't. You were built on contraries and that's a house that can't ultimately stand.
You are a garment that God has shucked off and tossed away.
*
The homeless man had taken on an aura of holiness. The softening had begun. The things of the future began to happen, not before their "time" -- because "time" was a thing that God held as if in tongs.
The bread lay, a hideous tasteless mass on the thick part of her tongue. She was on her back now. I don't eat bread, she said. I can't, I don't know how.
The rest of the days passed, as many as there were. One day the graduate student's skeleton just got up and walked away to join its soul.
*
You know you are softening too, the homeless man said. His voice had the gentle tone that people use with pets. The devil was appalled, disgusted, nauseated -- its morality of evil lay profoundly offended. But she, now just an it, seemed to have less will to move than the ooze that lay on the mud. Even physiological decay could embody a kind of justice.
The devil sank -- and this was by far the most horrible part -- through its own kingdom and found there was nobody there anymore. The caves and warrens were empty like a broken ant-farm. The sinners all were gone or flattened. And the place wasn't cold and wasn't hot, wasn't high and wasn't low, wasn't terrifying or even trivial, it wasn't even nonexistent, but give it one kick and it would crumble. And the floor was the muddy clammy texture of the underpass. It *was* the underpass. There wasn't anything else, not for it, not anymore. Little cheerful worms were making tunnels under the road. That's all there was, except for the noisy place -- was it over the head or under the ground? -- where you heard the commuters, they were ferocious and grim, hurling at the speed of light on their urgent errands.
Yes but the goodness that the devil fed upon, that stilil existed of course, if not here. But the devil found itself unable to touch goodness and still *be* the devil. A great transition was about to occur!
*
The one that finally broke her was the prostitute. She was dying, Duessa was "ministering" to her. Her stiffish hospital garb was raising rashes on her ill-fitting flesh and then she noted that the prostitute had stopped listening to the scientific crap she was reciting to her and soon enough Duessa stopped listening herself. So nobody was listening. And at the end when the hooker started clutching a little cross around her neck, the devil (usually one to berate that particular symbol) found herself nodding off, and she hadn't bothered to do anything about it. She had failed to mock, failed to belittle, failed to reduce. She found herself withering like a dried pea inside her role. She didn't even feel hostile to that cross -- or at least not hostile enough.
*
Her desire -- to gnaw everything and make it bleed -- was dying.
*
And at the burial she had felt it only numbly when 2 or 3 of the woman's friends had begun to heat up, actually heat up at the sight of the remains, their souls had actually begun to heat up, move their particles more urgently in the "void" that surrounded them and become more interesting. With one pass their souls had grown tastier, worth the energy of destruction, of temptation. And yet she felt it happen but did nothing. She let them go! It was as though she'd reached the point where she could relish a taste but refrain from eating. It was as though their potential salvation left her unmoved. They blushed and cried at the touch of a hymn, and yet she did nothing! And the people left the service and went away unharmed.
And in the parking lot she felt dry sobs of self pity twist her body, as all the people rushed past her to their cars, scarcely registering her ill will for them, scarcely giving her a thought. So in this terrible new era -- filled with a faith without substance, shut up in styrofoam like cold pasta -- she found herself beginning to twist with self-pity, paralyzed, her faith in herself fallen to a new low. The evil seemed to have nothing real to live on.
*
Throughout the country, as differences between people began to decay, so did her memory of her own role in the decay, so did that memory itself, so did it decay. Those she had turned away from goodness had no particular badness to achieve. It was their reality and hers that had been gnawed away. People bored her and their collapse was beginning to flatten out, it wasn't interesting. And she was the one who had made it uninteresting, and this realization was quite terrible. Or rather this too had become old and flat. She was dying, she was dying.
*
Once people had been like pocks in stone, ready to hold rainwater or gather up the passing filth of their world. They had been like characters in fiction, blank and promising, they had not been so closed, so wised-up and hard. They had been more like vessels, open to receiving things from the world. And it had been her joy to fill them with her profoundly bad offerings. Centuries had accumulated with the brittle joy of people's destruction. But now the people simply filled themselves. There was no space left for herself or for the others whom she was careful not to think about. Her daughter, her darling daughter, lost forever....!
Oh such woe. It was as though people had simply become denial. And not only denial of the others, her kindly rivals, no, not only of them, but there was a new unpleasant flavor to the world, a new denial of herself. She too had become denied, her interest and her relevance. And though this too was a form of demonic nutrition -- though she ate people together with what they denied and though their denial was like a spice that helped her to consume them utterly -- still it had come to have the flat taste that she now recognized all too well. She was continually tempted to spit them out. They provided no satisfaction.
How contagious the feeling of flatness was!
There for eternity they lay stupefied, unable to feel, unable to suffer in a satisfying way. The change had eaten them up from the inside. There was no longer anything for her to enjoy.
*
And the others, her brothers and sisters, were so boring in their unawareness that she couldn't bear to spend time with them. And so it seemed that the end had come to some unmarked era but an end with no distinguishing marks, no character of its own, and almost no existence of its own. It didn't even feel evil! It didn't even offer that temporary relief.
*
The graduate student was hanging from a bar inside the freeway underpass. The cars pounded indifferently overhead, that was a satisfying sound. But where was the dead one's soul? What had happened to it? The devil fell to her hands and knees, pawing the ground.
There was a condom flattened against a twig in the mud. A broken beer bottle whose label was completely washed out. A scum of froth clinging to the bottle. Further down, there was a weed near the bent bottom of the slope, and this weed bore a single flower. It breathed heavily and ingested a mucousy substance, thinner than a wet tissue. The film on the weed -- that was the vagabond soul. The rest of it, of the soul, lay like a little wisp of foam on the ground. It wasn't even strong enough to hold itself together and *be* a soul.
The devil tasted it, gagged, and quickly spit it out. And she had never done that before!
Then this craven being suffered her deepest breakdown. For 39 days -- she was too wicked to be allowed the forty of her enemy -- she sat motionless, lower back slumped like trash, resting in the wild like a piece of eroding wood or stone. She was -- not pitiful, no one so wicked could be pitiful -- but almost fragile, propped in space like any piece of nature that a passerby might despoil. What seemed to have imploded was that iron core of will.
Even naughty runaway kids were afraid to approach where the devil rested. It was impossible to believe that what was seen could be other than a trap. At the same time the expression in her eyes was too much like the expression on a failed parent, an authority figure whose authority had dwindled to nothing. Also there was that terrible skeleton rattling by her side, the spectre of the dead man floating in the air.
So when the devil died no one much noticed.
*
But before that happened, she was visited by a homeless or "unhoused" man and caught a brief glimpse of the underkingdom, of her own kingdom. And then they say that she passed out her spirit, or as they say: gave up the ghost. That was the thirty-fifth night. Toward the end she opened her eyes to find the homeless man sitting next to her. Ah, I knew there was someone still at home in there, the man said. Greetings. The skeleton shivered and clicked his teeth.
The devil lay crumpled in a position that would destroy her own bones if she didn't move. But she didn't move. And then the other one said:
Look, do you feel it? Everything is softening now. The people up there, you can't hear it from her, but they're getting soft now. They are preparing for something. Do you know what I mean?
*
It seemed that a couple of days passed.
The man cut a slice of bread with an army knife. When the devil slumped even further, the stranger raised it to the edge of the other's mouth.
Like a beast, the dying creature snarled. Go ahead and bite me if you want, the homeless man said. Of course I know it's no longer fun when you're given permission. So go ahead but of course you won't. You were built on contraries and that's a house that can't ultimately stand.
You are a garment that God has shucked off and tossed away.
*
The homeless man had taken on an aura of holiness. The softening had begun. The things of the future began to happen, not before their "time" -- because "time" was a thing that God held as if in tongs.
The bread lay, a hideous tasteless mass on the thick part of her tongue. She was on her back now. I don't eat bread, she said. I can't, I don't know how.
The rest of the days passed, as many as there were. One day the graduate student's skeleton just got up and walked away to join its soul.
*
You know you are softening too, the homeless man said. His voice had the gentle tone that people use with pets. The devil was appalled, disgusted, nauseated -- its morality of evil lay profoundly offended. But she, now just an it, seemed to have less will to move than the ooze that lay on the mud. Even physiological decay could embody a kind of justice.
The devil sank -- and this was by far the most horrible part -- through its own kingdom and found there was nobody there anymore. The caves and warrens were empty like a broken ant-farm. The sinners all were gone or flattened. And the place wasn't cold and wasn't hot, wasn't high and wasn't low, wasn't terrifying or even trivial, it wasn't even nonexistent, but give it one kick and it would crumble. And the floor was the muddy clammy texture of the underpass. It *was* the underpass. There wasn't anything else, not for it, not anymore. Little cheerful worms were making tunnels under the road. That's all there was, except for the noisy place -- was it over the head or under the ground? -- where you heard the commuters, they were ferocious and grim, hurling at the speed of light on their urgent errands.
Yes but the goodness that the devil fed upon, that stilil existed of course, if not here. But the devil found itself unable to touch goodness and still *be* the devil. A great transition was about to occur!
*
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