THE HIGHER GROUND: A Last(ing) Installment.

The Higher Ground.

[I should pre-face this, with intellectual enthusiasm, by attesting that this is the second time that I cracked open a text by Nietzsche and God manifested through an incredible synchronicity. This just so happened to be the precise passage that I needed:-]

“29. The Tarantulas

Lo, this is the tarantula's den! Would'st thou see the tarantula itself? Here hangeth its web: touch this, so that it may tremble.

There cometh the tarantula willingly: Welcome, tarantula! Black on thy back is thy triangle and symbol; and I know also what is in thy soul.

Revenge is in thy soul: wherever thou bitest, there ariseth black scab; with revenge, thy poison maketh the soul giddy!

Thus do I speak unto you in parable, ye who make the soul giddy, ye preachers of equality! Tarantulas are ye unto me, and secretly revengeful ones!

But I will soon bring your hiding-places to the light: therefore do I laugh in your face my laughter of the height.

Therefore do I tear at your web, that your rage may lure you out of your den of lies, and that your revenge may leap forth from behind your word "justice."

Because, for man to be redeemed from revenge—that is for me the bridge to the highest hope, and a rainbow after long storms.

Otherwise, however, would the tarantulas have it. "Let it be very justice for the world to become full of the storms of our vengeance"—thus do they talk to one another.

"Vengeance will we use, and insult, against all who are not like us"—thus do the tarantula-hearts pledge themselves.

"And 'Will to Equality'—that itself shall henceforth be the name of virtue; and against all that hath power will we raise an outcry!"

Ye preachers of equality, the tyrant-frenzy of impotence crieth thus in you for "equality": your most secret tyrant-longings disguise themselves thus in virtue-words!

Fretted conceit and suppressed envy—perhaps your fathers' conceit and envy: in you break they forth as flame and frenzy of vengeance.

What the father hath hid cometh out in the son; and oft have I found in the son the father's revealed secret.

Inspired ones they resemble: but it is not the heart that inspireth them—but vengeance. And when they become subtle and cold, it is not spirit, but envy, that maketh them so.

Their jealousy leadeth them also into thinkers' paths; and this is the sign of their jealousy—they always go too far: so that their fatigue hath at last to go to sleep on the snow.

In all their lamentations soundeth vengeance, in all their eulogies is maleficence; and being judge seemeth to them bliss.

But thus do I counsel you, my friends: distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful!

They are people of bad race and lineage; out of their countenances peer the hangman and the sleuth-hound.

Distrust all those who talk much of their justice! Verily, in their souls not only honey is lacking.

And when they call themselves "the good and just," forget not, that for them to be Pharisees, nothing is lacking but—power!

My friends, I will not be mixed up and confounded with others.

There are those who preach my doctrine of life, and are at the same time preachers of equality, and tarantulas.

That they speak in favour of life, though they sit in their den, these poison-spiders, and withdrawn from life—is because they would thereby do injury.

To those would they thereby do injury who have power at present: for with those the preaching of death is still most at home.

Were it otherwise, then would the tarantulas teach otherwise: and they themselves were formerly the best world-maligners and heretic-burners.

With these preachers of equality will I not be mixed up and confounded. For thus speaketh justice unto me: "Men are not equal."

And neither shall they become so! What would be my love to the Superman, if I spake otherwise?

On a thousand bridges and piers shall they throng to the future, and always shall there be more war and inequality among them: thus doth my great love make me speak!

Inventors of figures and phantoms shall they be in their hostilities; and with those figures and phantoms shall they yet fight with each other the supreme fight!

Good and evil, and rich and poor, and high and low, and all names of values: weapons shall they be, and sounding signs, that life must again and again surpass itself!

Aloft will it build itself with columns and stairs—life itself into remote distances would it gaze, and out towards blissful beauties- therefore doth it require elevation!

And because it requireth elevation, therefore doth it require steps, and variance of steps and climbers! To rise striveth life, and in rising to surpass itself.

And just behold, my friends! Here where the tarantula's den is, riseth aloft an ancient temple's ruins—just behold it with enlightened eyes!

Verily, he who here towered aloft his thoughts in stone, knew as well as the wisest ones about the secret of life!

That there is struggle and inequality even in beauty, and war for power and supremacy: that doth he here teach us in the plainest parable.

How divinely do vault and arch here contrast in the struggle: how with light and shade they strive against each other, the divinely striving ones.—

Thus, steadfast and beautiful, let us also be enemies, my friends! Divinely will we strive against one another!—

Alas! There hath the tarantula bit me myself, mine old enemy! Divinely steadfast and beautiful, it hath bit me on the finger!

"Punishment must there be, and justice"—so thinketh it: "not gratuitously shall he here sing songs in honour of enmity!"

Yea, it hath revenged itself! And alas! now will it make my soul also dizzy with revenge!

That I may not turn dizzy, however, bind me fast, my friends, to this pillar! Rather will I be a pillar-saint than a whirl of vengeance!

Verily, no cyclone or whirlwind is Zarathustra: and if he be a dancer, he is not at all a tarantula-dancer!—

Thus spake Zarathustra.

- --oOo-- -”

[Pardon the vernacular. This virgin was the only version I could find on-line before I was satisfied (the first result). Enjoy:-]

The Higher Ground.

Brandan Whearty tore apart the value of Happiness one time. He called it a zero-sum game. I was sitting there humbled.

But re-newed. Re-freshed.

De-conditioned. I re-

membered what Doctor Englund had said about Self-Actualisation versus Self-Transcendance. It reminded me of what you said about Eros and Agape. I was ready to meet the challenge.

Reading a very elitist book on the English Language whilst volunteering at a Speech and Debate Tournament. I had to distance my self from the incessantly chattering ‘affluent’ adults just to Think. Then I met Krishna. She mani-

fested as a woman named Krishna that I could TALK to. With challenge but avail-

ability. Neither leveling nor feeling judged. Genuine.

She called me a poetic Soul. I could talk about men and women with her and not fear too much for offending some feminist pre-judice. It was in her wake (the wake of that conversation.

She did not die, to my knowledge) that I finally broke the ice and decided to ask you to hang out. It was that night that I really first bitched out Arthur and severed ties with him and Awilda.

They earned back my trust after Kresten’s treachery. Yet they lost it when I heard them condemn Sarah Namuri (not Daniel’s Sarah) as a ‘snitch’. I could go on about that. You re-

call that it was that Sunday night,*

*That I spoke with Krishna.

a week prior to the death of the old Dmitry, that I pretended to have amnesia be-

cause my friend Jennifer, who had committed suicide,

had had amnesia.

Sarah Namuri had been suicidal as well. [Or as hell? My manu-script could be read either way.]

So had Awilda. She should have known better. So had you. When I texted you in a panic for your life from my Hotel Room in Cleveland, Jared might have had the decency to ask WHO it was that I was keeping him awake FOR.

He called me a ‘snitch’ after I told Dewi about my rooming troubles. I vented every thing to Dewi that I needed to. It did not cross my fucking mind that people would accuse me of appealing to an ‘authority’, as though I were in terested in political power. It was an even bigger affront to be pre-

sumed selfish; to have Jared EXPECT that I level with him, as though I would beso rude as to keep him awake for any thing less than a dire emergency.

When I found out that you were safe, I immediately tried to relate with Apple and Jared. But to no ultimate avail.

This is why I rarely level with people. If ever.

Dewi would have condoned my acts. The theoretical absence of any ‘real danger’ does not permit one to sleep at night on a bed of coals called a con-science.

Apolonio texted me to meet. I turned him down. This was only a few weeks ago. He said: ‘I’m over it bro. You’re a good person bro.’

Do you re-call my dream about him?

See what Good I see in people?

Sooner or later You will wake up to (appreciate) my Goodness too. As Apple did.

Sarah Namuri had been Apolonio’s friend.

One of few to listen to him. She explained that he would re-

peat his self be-cause of his adol-

escent Drinking Habits and ‘brain damage’* I guess.

*Though she had the politeness not to mention ‘the brain.’

She had been the one who told me that ‘it was okay to tell the coaches’ if any thing went wrong.

It had put me so at ease. I had a serious para-noia about being mani-

pulated. I had thought that Apple’s repetitive tendencies were an attempt to control me. I had reason as of the Night I Died to be parannoyed.

Awilda was a competitive bitch.

Not like you. She blamed Dewi. She blamed. She blamed.

She blamed Sarah.

She blamed Brandan.

She never blamed Arthur. And for what did she blame these people?

Because she ‘did not do well’ this year. Because de-

Bate ‘was a game’.

Be-cause the coaches were ‘author-

ities’. Because she ‘never wanted to be a leader’;  because the coaches should [I miss read this from my manu-script “showed” and “slowed” prior to surmising/re-calling my initial intent] have helped her more.

Because her negativity to-wards these people has authority. She never wanted to be a leader but called me stupid whilst intro-ducing Raffy and the other Novice to Debate, saying that it was a game and that people who ‘use it to spread their own ideologies’ were dumb.

I refuse(d) to level with her. It was by leveling that she could maintain her cozy apathy, allowing her neurotic break-

down to take its un-

impeded course.

How could I be friends with Republican Anarcho-

capitalists who called Sarah a Snitch? HOW?

Their actions could not be per-

mitted; enough about their Souls. But most centrally I realized that *I* could not live happily for its own sake.

Fiddling while the World Burned. Treating it all as a (mere) game.

Happiness as an end in and of its self: A zero-sum game. Sarah, who all so had at one point idealised Brandan Whearty, would probably agree.

She was not a happy person. She was a good person. And Arthur damned his self to my own personal Hell the moment he said: She meant well, but her actions had had consequences. If there is one thing that I abhor more than a Fascist, it is a gangster. Or a Nazi.

The means justify the ends; Sarah was in toto innocent. She did only what she thought Right. It is all that we could ever do. And she was NOT striving for her own happiness. She was fighting for the team. She was fighting for survival. Brandan had helped her through her suicidal ideations art fully. Much as Dewi had con-

soled me that week I had died. I never told her a

bout you. But I will not forget her telling me that she hated to see good people suffer.And she told me that the flirtations typical of my age group were be-

neath me.

I do not care if K. was just trying to make his self ‘happy’. I care little for that as a mot-

ive. Awilda was responsible for the degeneracy of her peers; if she suffered, it was as a result of not having reported their acts in Sarah’s place. In stead she chose to be pragmatically violent to-

wards Sarah, as befit a competitive person who operates in a zero-sum game rather than for the Greatest Good and the Highest Way.

So it was with Jared and Apolonio. Our room-

ing situation was a game of zero sum be-

Cause they could not see be-

yond their own self-

interest and in-

sisted up on leveling with me patriarchally.

Jared pre-sumed that I was as self-

Serving as he, and so he conducted the conflict by order[-words].

Ethical Egoism.

I will not level with these people any longer. That is why I will not talk to K. ever again, most probably.

With more ease than bitterness, Dmitry.