It’s all Hallows eve and I sort of wish I were writing an October Flash. I will. I have another horror flash in me, I’m sure, probably several thousand. I’m not a huge fan of the genre, I don’t read much horror, not novels at any rate, and most horror movies bore the hell out of me. I know, I know, you have a favorite and you’ll insist it’s not formulaic or that it’s so campy its cool; I don’t doubt it, but even so, it’s like a standard blues, you can’t force a mood on someone.
I was thinking about a flash, but it’s too long in my head and it other needs to solidify or be a much longer piece. The devil and god are the same side of the same coin, not polar opposites, but any devil and any god are inherently the same mythology. Go ahead and object to mythology if you want, even so the only difference between the devil and man’s evil is the concept of immortality. Hot poker up the ass? Non Coms and Cops and Pimps do that shit; they just don’t do it for eternity.
It’s the exact same scary as god. Rescuing kittens from trees? Non Coms, cops, pimps, just not eternally. The duality of man is such that to believe in absolute evil or absolute good isn’t just a question of faith, it’s contrary to the nature of man you see daily, contrary to your own inner pimp, cop, non com. It must be scary as shit to believe in God, believe that you can get punished for the selfish acts, for the human acts always in your heart on your tongue and staining your hands. Same thing with the Satanic except that they like the horror aspect; God is like missionary Sex, and the Devil is like spanking with a blindfold.
Not trying to be derogatory, there will be no footnotes, examples given, annotation. I like that faith keeps a certain number of motherfuckers out of clock towers with several clips for a thirty ought six. I like that satanic worship is chalk drawing of archaic and archetypal symbols, painting your fingernails black and listening to mix tapes of the Cure, Danzig, and early Marilyn Manson. Again, means you’re not in a clock tower sizing me up in a high powered scope.
What does any of this have to do with All Hallows Eve? Nothing really. Last night, Devils night, is a holiday for frat boys. Tomorrow, all saints day, the dead martyrs are supposed to wander around and, I don’t know, make you feel shitty that they have to carry their heads and you’re still sinning? I’m not a hundred percent on Halloween but I know it’s not really a sacred day for Satan worshipers or pagans. I mean old school pagans.
Huh. Yeah, that was another thing I was going to add to that flash. I’m not going to bitch about wiccans, I mean it being a patois of shit that isn’t Christian which really doesn’t mean anything in a broader sense unless you’re trying to piss off Christians. That’s like shooting fish in a barrel, you don’t need to blind a newt or desecrate a grave for that shit. I have no great love for newts, but I bear them no animosity either. In general if I had to outline my own spiritual beliefs part of the dogma would be; Don’t hurt or blind things without there being a measurable greater good. I can’t think of a single measurable greater good that involves newts at all, so, leave em alone wouldja?
Thing is I don’t think not blinding a newt will get you any eternal brownie points and the gratitude of newts is likely as useless as their eyes. Oh, shit, wait, no, newts had nothing to do with the flash I’m actively not writing; old school pagans. Core values. I almost wrote a flash as a survey. The survey question would be something like; does the younger generation have a fucked up set of values and the older generation an archaic one and are you satisfied that you live by your own core values, satisfied that they are a right and good set?
If I were the adversaries advocate I’d object that the question is leading. Wait. I am the adversaries advocate. I had a private discussion with one of my favorite peers when the Box was still teething about the archetypes laying the foundation, or at least trying too, for this type of networking site. I think I copped to Devil’s advocate. Not suggesting I’m good at it or that the Box has needed a devil’s advocate. That’s not really how group dynamics work anyhow, and groups where the participants sit at home and can edit their thoughts and, essentially forward them into a bloodless vacuum (I just mean all the other factors of group dynamics are missing; the roar of the greasepaint and the smell of the crowd, the sweaty brow, the raised fist, the clutching of mommies hand) and there are reactions or silence.
Group dynamics force you into archetypes. You’ve seen this a hundred times, a thousand, every time you interact with more than one other person. Perhaps you didn’t recognize what you were seeing; I’m not going to explain it to you. I have my biases and I am loathe to poison the well. Most of our daily activities are done on auto pilot while the ego does the things the ego does. There is no more direct way of saying this and yet I don’t mean to make it sound cruel or evil; the group mind doesn’t give a flying fuck about your ego. You’ll do what the group needs you to do whether you recognize what’s happening or not. Resistance is not futile, but it is unstable. It seems that if there were an eternal, immortal force of absolute good or absolute evil that’s the sort of thing they’d intervene in assuming 1) they can and 2) they aren’t both assholes and 3) The affairs of humans are as interesting to good and evil as they are to us. Three seems unlikely and yet most religions have that as the foundation as a lode bearing support beam in their core values.
Again, I’m not making a case one way or the other. As any kid knows free candy is free candy and whatever philosophy follows that dressing up as Cinderella with a begging bowl and a script (Trick or treat) has, fundamentally, an acceptable outcome. Unlike Santa Claus you don’t have to lie to your parents to keep getting extra anonymous gifts. You stop trick or treating when you believe it’s beneath your dignity, which, oddly enough, occurs during your teen years, the least dignified era of your life and the one you will refer to as the most formative (when you first deliberately got high, knocked over a mailbox, got laid or at least tried really hard to, maybe the last time you got to compete athletically or had to wait for an invitation to dance, or told one parent or the other or both to go fuck themselves and all sorts of other things that would make an absolute evil happy and an absolute good sad).
So, you don’t get a half-baked flash. You get a half-baked entry. You’d probably get a zagnut bar if you knocked on my door in costume. As it is I think I’ll just go next door and give the little girl, trey-trey as I’ve come to call her, an assortment of candy. There aren’t any other kids in this neighborhood. My address is the number of the beast, the outside lights don’t work. The doorbell doesn’t work. A demented man might wander towards the door holding up his pants and eating the candy, offering a bowl of wrappers and likely orange peels. I imagine if there is a personification of good and evil, both of them are holding up their pants and offering the empty shells of treats. It’s a sort of beltless Eucharist or broken zipper catechism, a baptism in dementia.
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