Moving, if Not On...

I must have realized it then. She did not CARE about whether it was that I was wrong or she; she only cared about how I had made her feel. Irrespective of my motives, and with absolutely no respect for my role within the Group, a group assembled for one common purpose, she defied my will. Yet she had no right to do this. This was not some vehicle for her own interests any more so than it was for mine. I would not be condemned to that burden, and neither would I allow her to bear it. It is true that my troubled experience had imbibed in me the notion that a man can only trust his own conscience in any group. But this was supposed to have been a group of FRIENDS and ENTHUSIASTS, not conformists. How then could she hold it against US that I had obligated her to CONFORM in the interest of the Common Good, when we had all ready been established as trustworthy authorities?? It’s not as though I would have turned against this group, as she did, at the moment that I might be outvoted. All night I asked repeatedly for confirmation. But this autistic retard seemed to believe that I was supposed to read her PASSIVE AGGRESSION in place of a justifiable argument. And wherefore was this the case? How did the sociopathic leech imagine that my “failure” to read a social cue was evidence for social maladaptation on MY part? I literally had the OBLIGATION to withhold my own projections until affirmation for my suspicions, reasoned and orderly, arrived. And it only came after I had all but DEMANDED it, and without apology for having been withheld hitherto. Who gave her the right to withhold this information from her fellows, if it was the Truth? And her immediate instinct was to CONTRADICT me when I ASSURED that slug that I had had no interest whatsoever in controlling the situation. If she is so DAMNED sympathetic to her PARENTS, WHY then would she ignore what I don’t doubt they would have taught her, as all parents should: that situations NEED TO BE controlled for the Common Good, and for that reason you must comply with the wishes of your fellows, insofar as they prove equally compliant, that you might spare others the BURDEN of being forced to control you?

I did not sleep that night. I would have approached the group nearby, my eye set on a delightful black-haired specimen with an ostensibly generic-looking boyfriend. All of a sudden, however, two things happened when my false friend vocalized her schizotypal delusions: I felt myself to be in the presence of an In-Group that was nonetheless devoid of purpose and only provided shelter for a schizophrenic from the Out-Group. It was at this moment that I recognized within me most palpably the longing to escape into that Other Group. I realized that I had no intention of stealing that man’s girl. If she should happen to become my friend, and if they should part in my favour, it would not have been a betrayal on my part but an extension of kindness. I would have by then assessed her boyfriend’s character and decided upon whether his interests were mine or alien, for in such times as these one must draw that line frequently, and one cannot betray a man who never was a formal friend. I had the perfect pitch, too: I was in the company of actors. It was at this same Diner that I had met these actors, and just as easily upon a whim. Yet at that moment I felt at once a drive to prove my loyalty to the Human Slug that sat at my left hand and to clear my name of all ill motives ascribed to me, ensuring that my example would be followed. With pain I watched the black apple of my eye, with her petite physique and her upturned nose, leave the table beside her own companions. I took notice of her buttocks, their figure exposed by the white pants, and I for once had to confess to myself that I too admired the female figure, even at its basest level.

I did not sleep that night. Today I lumbered into the Book Store and cracked open “After Virtue” by Alasdair MacIntyre. The dry Capricorn Scotsman was the Father That I Never Had. I deplored him, but only in character. In truth I saw so much of myself in his every nuance. I was all ways capable of justifying my ostensibly self-interested behavior because I actually HAD values that were so nuanced and complicated and such a Herculean task to balance that they required constant analysis and revision before and after the fact. But these bitches did not care. They only wanted a member of the pack, and not a leader interested in Human Solidarity. The moment that I tried to lead them, they accused me. The moment that I defied them, they felt their accusations to be validated, for they found sufficient fault with me to condemn me for defying the pack in both my attempts to lead and in my attempts to transcend by seeking preferable company outside of it. If I rejected the accusation of ill will the second time, I was dispossessed of the right to have “accused” the first time. If I rejected the first accusation, making it clear that it was never my intention to accuse, but that I had to now that they had behaved so antisocially and with such depraved cowardice, I was dismissed and disbelieved.

I would have deserved the woman in the white pants.

There is a reason that I did not sleep this last night.

It is called the Anniversary Effect.

It was three years ago upon a Sunday that I lost my Light of Love. She died by the same diabolical device.

And all I could do when I set down MacIntyre and picked up Astrology was to look up Scorpio. Even when I flipped through Pisces, my own SIGN, I was not so thorough. I guess it’s true how self-effacing we are. After all: my very BIRTHDAY is this Saturday. I turn twenty-seven years of age. And I am still a virgin. And I am letting some delusional entrepreneur’s all-but-underage girlfriend call my shots with a passive aggressive pout. I tried to fall asleep when I got home. But I could not manage it. I could only drift in daydreams, tormented and depressed to the point all most of tears that I had taught myself to never shed, disillusioned and triggered all at once. How can any one tell me to move on when nothing changes? All my enemies are still alive. My most beloved friends are dead or dispossessed, with only a few exceptions. And Society does not even reward me for either my patience nor my chastity. How dare that scum accuse me of self-interest as though the World revolved around HER, and not the lot of us? Why should I ever accommodate HER when I know her behavior all ready to be in error? What right has she earned to complain? None.

And all that grates my ears is that voice in my head: you did not get what YOU wanted. As though I had not EARNED yet the love of a woman. As though I’d not EARNED the Moral High Ground. As though my ongoing chastity were not a testament to my beneficent intent. As though I could not seek the fulfillment of my own bodily needs and spiritual attainment with some sense of TACT. And as though to insult me at a time such as this were not all most as egregious a crossing of boundaries, especially when I am IN THE ACT OF SERVICE TO THE COMMON GOOD, as was the series of betrayals and abuses that I have spent the first seven years of my twenties trying to recover from. No THEORETICAL ill will or selfishness on my part could justify an ACTUAL abuse; no one has the right to be that paranoid out of MERE self-defense. I seldom if ever was. Much I tolerated before I cut any cord or burnt any bridge. And it is neither ill will nor selfishness to seek one’s own fulfillment once it is overdue. Even less so is it to make the noble sacrifice of one’s own individuality for some sense of solidarity under a Beneficent, Established Cause. Ill will is only at the DELIBERATE and UNJUSTIFIED EXPENSE of an other; either accidental expense or justifiable expense do not count. And the latter is only justifiable if it is all ready in the spirit of redressing a grievance, and only at the expense of the wrongdoer, and in proportion to not only the wrongdoing but the NEED of the aggrieved. No human being would allow others to be disadvantaged only to prevent pain to his or herself. If they WOULD inflict pain to himself or herself, he or she is only justified insofar as he likewise prevents their pain, for it is possible they don’t INTEND to inflict harm at all, and that what the witness perceives to be a threat to his or her well-being is in fact only available to perceive by avenue of the same would-be assailant’s generosity of trust. Yet all theoretical distinctions of ill will and good will become unequivocal at the moment of ACTION. When a coward betrays its friends, this is known, and it is unjustified. And I never did that.

So that is perhaps why these are the only warnings that the book on Astrology gave me: to avoid escapism (which is never in the Reasoning of MacIntyre so much as in the cynicism in his spite that tries to justify so many other forms of escape), to avoid Bad Company, and to avoid Negative Moods.

I deserve better. And I will never again allow those who prioritize their own feelings OVER mine to darken my doorstep. If they cannot reconcile their passions with a Common Good, then that is THEIR failing and THEIR inferiority to me. I am not so blind that I would not perceive it. My feelings are never of lesser import than any other’s. And this import is Absolute. My happiness cannot be less important TO any one, least of all those close to me. It simply IS. And I vow to prioritize it. That, at least, is the Loving response to my predicament. If I chose Death over Love, my own Death would not top my list, but rather that of those who all ready tried to place themselves before me. Yet I feel that soon I shall move beyond the need to desire vengeance. It was only ever a service to those who betrayed me and all ready died because of it, through no fault of my own.

Dm.A.A.

a List of Lies:

List of Lies:

You’re not better than any one.

No one owes you anything.

No one cares.

You are deficient.

Right and Wrong are Relative.

You do not deserve Justice.

You can’t tell people what to do.

Most people know the Truth.

There is no Objective Reality.

Silence is never Consent.

People who do not obey don’t care.

The Group is Right.

All of this is necessary.

You earn your keep.

You are Crazy.

There is Nothing More to Life.

It doesn’t matter if you die.

Dm.A.A.

Being, apparently.

[({Dm.A.A.)}]

Dream Gamma:

Dream Gamma: Yoda.

I began as a member of the Catholic clergy. Someone had stolen from the Church, and I knew that if he got away with it then he would be able to use the information in order to start a World War. Intent upon stopping him, I instituted a law that would allow Vatican guards to be armed even whilst the civilian population was disarmed. In this manner, I hoped that the Guard could track down the thief, by appeal to the natural fearfulness of the people, who would surrender the thief to the Guard immediately upon threat of punishment. Yet rumblings grew of an abuse of papal authority, so I revised the rules to allow common men the right to bear arms. They had only to abide by two strictures:

1.       They must not provoke attack upon a fellow without prior provocation.

2.   They must never attack an officer of the Guard.

In this manner I was certain that no common man would dare to disadvantage his fellows in a manner unjust and unbecoming of a child of God, because only in this manner could the Guard punish any infraction against the Common Soul of Man without fearing reproof for serving the Will of the Church and of God. If the first rule was broken, the second ensured that the first would be redressed.

This scheme proved insufficient, however, to the end of identifying the Thief. So I persuaded the Pope to sign off on an edict that allowed for the sale of indulgences. Only by so doing could I incentivize people to do right by the Church (and thereby by God) and to prevent the Worst of All Possible Worlds. In the same manner, I argued, as men could be allowed certain privileges in the spirit of Law Enforcement, they must be allowed certain meager infractions in the manner of surveilling and combating Evil, that Evil might never find a foothold in those weaknesses of character which it had itself produced in others by way of necessity unfulfilled. Evil, I argued, rests not only in its outward forms of aggression, but all so in its passive, subtler forms, whereby it might, by withholding, rob an other one of God’s Children of the rights to Life and Joy that Evil itself enjoys. Only by refusing to allow Evil this leverage could we hope to serve God’s Will. And this could only be by making clear that a double-standard exists between the Virtuous Man and the Vicious Man, so much so that the former must be spared no expense in annihilating the latter absolutely, and the latter has no right to disarm the former at any point, for he has all ready surrendered that egalitarian pretense that can only be Reality in God’s Kingdom and that is not the province of the Devil.

The Pope signed off on it, but only after reminding me not to RESIST Evil and that Armageddon is prefigured and inevitable.

You know how the story goes. Martin Luther became enraged. Intent on preserving the fig-leaf of Equality, he posted ninety-nine theses upon the door of the Church, arguing that it is only by Faith Alone that Man can find salvation. He was excommunicated, and he fled to the Americas, where he founded the Church of Latter Day Saints.

It was only when it was too late that we discovered that it was he that stole Our Treasure. The Treasure was buried in the White House. It was dug up in 1919 A.D, shortly after the end of World War One, which began, as Armageddon was prefigured to begin, in the year 1914. World War One ended on November 11, 1918. (Its Death will reach its centennial anniversary this year, on that precise date.)

I went to Heaven after my ship, christened the Mayflower, was sunk by radicals intent on stopping the conception of the United States. Along the way across the River Styx I was told by Chiron that Martin Luther was his cousin. We argued all the way about his character. Chiron argued that Martin was only trying to protect the People by defending their Equality and Liberty against a Totalitarian State. But I retorted that Equality and Liberty were only ever fig-leaves for his deeper, underlying agenda: to establish a New Empire more powerful than the Church had ever been, and whose every adherent was an agent of Satan. At this point Chiron told me that Satan was an other relative of his, and I told him to fuck off.

It was Night Time in the Elysian Fields when I arrived. I was greeted by Jedi Master Yoda. Yoda invited me to have tea with him. I asked him what I was supposed to have learned about the Sith by now. Yoda told me that God was in His Heaven and all was Right on Earth. He pointed to a Hexagram on the walls of his dome-shaped hut, which had I Ching Hexes running, apparently in order, all along the interior of its circumference, at eye-level with the tiny master. The Hexagram was “Heaven over Earth”. I pointed out that “P’i”, or Hexagram Twelve, represents Stagnation rather than Peace. Yoda replied that Pi goes on infinitely without any discernable order or pattern. I frowned. I then pointed out “T’ai”, to its right, (I’m guessing Master Yoda was writing them backwards, either moving progressively to his left or moving right and recalling them in reverse order) which is Hexagram Eleven (and must therefore PRECEDE P’i, and would hence have appeared to its left in the standard order of English Writing). I said that the Key to Peace is in Earth’s Triumph OVER Heaven, which the Christian Tradition forgot. Yoda smiled. He told me that I had learned all that I needed to. By attaining my North Node in Capricorn, the Cardinal Earth sign that had been daemonized by Christian Lore and turned into “Satan” (a perversion of its Greek Name Saturn), I would surmount the Church of Satan from WITHIN, beating them at their own game and restoring rule of the Kingdom to its proper Leader. Then I could avenge myself of the Thief of Virtue, and Balance between Heaven and Earth would be restored. The Sith would disappear, and Balance would be restored to the Force. Balance, he explained, was not by reconciling Evil with Goodness, for it is the very nature of Evil to be OUT OF Balance. Yet insofar as Armageddon raged on, I would be permitted to operate out of balance, like Hamlet in his antic disposition, or as the members of the Guard had been allowed to bear arms at the ostensible expense of their People.

I asked Yoda if this meant that when the Kali Yuga ended that the Tao would reach a standstill. He simply asked, “The same as Stagnation, is Peace?” I replied “no”, recognizing a koan. We could never know what the Next Age would bring. But we could be assured that once Evil was Conquered, as it inevitably is, what would follow would transcend that which had preceded it.

Yoda gave me a slice of pizza and a soda pop then, asking if I was okay with crème soda, since he was out of orange. I agreed greedily. He then told me that he had to get back to his knitting and that he would give me a ride home. I had much to do in my next incarnation.

We stepped out of his hut and I helped him down the steps that lined the Island, even at times requiring me to carry the tiny Zen master in my arms. Upon arrival at the bottom We saw his Toyoda was parked. “His” license plate read “YODA VO”. I laughed so hard at the sheer poetry of it all that my New Mother mistook my laughing for tears, as I was reborn.

Dm.A.A.

Dream Beta:

Dream Beta: Chuck.

I was Charles McGill. My brother Jimmy was working at ABQ in Tune, trying to use the musicians’ hangout as a location for his drug ring. I came to his door and posted a notice on his walls demanding that he stop supplying drugs to the local musicians in exchange for sexual favours and attention. In turn, he sent me a letter, which he stashed in my mailbox under a cell phone battery (that made me cringe and twitch as I removed the letter, careful not to let the battery fall into the grass). Running inside as day waned I opened the letter. It was hate mail, wherein my own brother tried to justify all of his crimes, both against me and those I cared about, by attacking and attempting to defame MY character, especially referring to my behavior in the AFTERMATH of the treachery. I decided that I would send this letter to Howard. I knew that I could have my brother committed for addressing his superiors in this manner. No one would possibly believe it. I knew the Courts; I’d argued a few rounds back in my own hey-day while he was sneaking around behind my back and rearranging numbers. I reread the last paragraph of the letter prior to sending it. He accused of turning him into a scapegoat by the end of the paragraph, but of course he'd had no choice but to confess to his OWN sins at the top of the paragraph. It was totally transparent that this thing that I’d called family had absolutely no interest in either preserving life, love, or the law. It was only trying to perpetuate itself, and no righteous person who considered himself a hero would fail to see through it. It was even willing to go so far as to defame me for kissing Jessica when Anthony and I picked her drunk ass up from Oceanside or something and when she made out with me on his couch after he supplied her with booze and bud. I laughed to myself. I knew that if Mike had had the nerve to accuse ME of rape back then, he would never invite Jimmy to an other Poker night, knowing what JIMMY had done, and that in fact it was because of Jimmy that I spent that night with Jessica and not my recently deceased Light of Love. You cannot scapegoat a guilty man, but only an innocent one. And Jimmy had nothing on me. I would win. I was meant to. And I had promised her that I would.

Dm.A.A.

Dream Alpha:

Dream Alpha: Frank.

A group of us broke into the Federal Compound that housed (what we would discover was the late) Frank Pentangeli. There he lay, in his bath tub, still bleeding from fresh flesh wounds to the wrists. The water was overflowing, doused in blood, so we were stepping into a Swamp. Above him re(a)d, in blood, the epigram “ha provato troppo duro.”

I was told to pull his last trigger. I leant in to turn the water off. My superior informed me that “to turn those knobs will be to put an end to his crusade of poison.” So I did. The hot water shut off easily enough. Then I reached further, that I might cancel the cold.

I found myself alone, within a replica of this restroom. The colours had been inverted. I was in the Upside Down. Strange vegetation covered all the walls, the floor, and ceiling. Bizarre fungal germs haunted the air.

I covered my mouth and discovered that my fingers had transformed into sausages. Before me lay a skeleton, in the exact same pose as Frank had been. He was covered in moss, vines, and ooze. His mafia ring glistened on the pinky that lay upon the floor.

I moved towards the mirror. Through the grapevine I could see myself. I was Pentangeli. I returned to the corpse skeleton. Gingerly I removed the ring. I put it on.

I was in a giant court room. This was the Supreme Court Hearing. The Chief Justice asked me to identify myself. I said “Frankie Five Angels”. He asked me to produce my legal name. I gave it as Francis Pentangeli.

Time seemed to warp. Suddenly I was talking to an other Justice, further to my left hand side, but to what was the right hand side from the perspective of the Judicial Branch. I was asked if I could produce a Corporeal Patronus. I told them I could. I was commended for this and then asked for a demonstration. I told them I would need my wand. It was produced for me. Under strict surveillance, I produced an Owl. It flew around the room and then perched on my shoulder.

The Chief Justice called order in the Court. The Prosecuting Attorney asked me what the Italian phrase over my bath meant. I replied that I wrote it whilst dying, and it was about one of my rivals in the Rosado Brothers. It meant, “He tried too hard.” I explained that the Rosado brothers had infiltrated the Catholic Church and were attempting to corner the market by selling indulgences. So I did the only reasonable thing that a Scorpio could do and pinned ninety-nine* theses to their door. The Court laughed. The Chief Justice told me that while I might find it amusing that I did that, the Court does not.

*Historically, it was an act of insubordination by a Scorpio, following this exact pattern, that produced the tradition of Protestantism.

A witness was produced: my Brother. He told the Court something in Italian which was promptly translated by the Prosecutor. The Prosecutor explained that while the blood was mine, I did not write it. It was written BY one of the Rosado Brothers. As it turns out: after I murdered one of them, the other sought revenge. Finding that I had committed suicide on the advice of Tom Hagen, he wrote the epigram to describe ME.

The remaining Rosado brother was produced to the Witness stand. He spoke passionately about how Frankie had crucified his brother in a Church restroom. The motive was simple: to send a message to any one who seemed all too pious.

Tom Hagen asked if it was not possible that Frank had other motives. Was it impossible that to ascribe a vendetta to Frank that was so childish and daemonizing would in fact only evidence projection on Mister Rosado’s part? Was it not evidence for a vendetta on the ROSADO’s part, equally irrational to the SUPPOSED vendetta of which Frankie was accused, and perhaps EVEN conclusive of the fact that the Rosado brother’s story was at worst a hoax and at best an exaggeration?

Then the evidence came in. As it turned out: the nails I used to crucify the dead twin were of the same brand and make as the nails that I used to pin my theses to the Church door. Only one smith manufactured these nails, and it was an old friend of mine back in Sicily.

I awoke on the floor, dripping wet with blood and water. I could not have been out for long, because mere moments later I was hoisted by two of my comrades in the Invading Party. Very briefly I wondered, deliriously, about whether or not they had let me lay there for that long. But then I realized that they wouldn’t have allowed it on principle, and dreams (and Visions) last a lot longer in subjective time than in “real” time.

A friend of mine had done the honours of turning off the cold water. We had to escape, and quickly. But then I realized that my friends were under arrest. I HAD been out for a long time, after all; the subjective was real. I was informed that two of my comrades, only after they had identified themselves, were permitted to pick me up; the cops, being assholes, might have let me drown or choke on Frank’s Old Dirty Blood.

We were put in the back of a cop car. I was asked to identify, as we began to drive, (I would rather say “we” than “the driver”) the cause of Frank’s death. I mumbled deliriously that he had tried too hard. The officer asked if he tried hard in the right direction. I amended my original statement with a simple “No”.

A trial was held in a court that was a little smaller but yet reminiscent of the Supreme Court from my Vision. The Prosecutor, a dead ringer for the prosecutor from the Vision, announced that on MY account as a witness (I was surprised to hear my name, given lingering delirium.) Frank died by trying too hard in the Wrong Direction. The only sensible retaliation that the Law could produce would be too try even HARDER in the RIGHT direction. He slammed his fist against the podium, which was situated far from me on the right side of the Court Room (but the left side from the Judge’s perspective) on the word “Right”.

We were released from custody shortly after the Joker’s testimony.

Apparently, we were never read our Miranda rights. Our arresting officers were disarmed. We went Home.

Dm.A.A.

Paradox:

Paradox.

Honestly: with all the time that I spend thinking, am I going to reprimand myself for a few conclusions that will eventually require revision? Categorically and imperatively (as well as definitionally): No. Because I know my intent, and nothing will either justify nor require me to waste energy reprimanding. As for a break from thought: I can dig that. Reprimanding is revision; that is all ready the beginning to think again. But I can reprimand those whom I know to mean ill. They are transparent to me. And this is no longer any relative matter. Even relativism was a step towards the teleological conclusion. It was a step in the proper direction, surely. Hence it was all ready an expression then of that peak from whence I speak now. And I do not delude myself into believing that all beings are intrinsically inclined to make this climb. I will help those on their path. I will annihilate those who would slow the ascent. They may get behind me.

Dm.A.A.

La Máscara del Diablo:

The Devil’s Mask:

The essential nature of evil is that it is ambivalent to human suffering. The agent of evil does not necessarily go out of its WAY to do harm; it simply allows harm to happen. Thus the hallmark of the Devil is neither aggression nor passion, but rather Apathy and Detachment. Evil brags of being remote from the consequences of its actions, and in its condemnation of those who must contend with it to set these matters right it is ruthless. Once it is met with its own ruthlessness in retaliation, it only mocks its victims by mirroring them. Hence the Devil is traditionally depicted as neither an aggressor (in the sense that political propaganda depicts opponents of its paradigm) nor a passionate and spited lover (as tends to be the media depiction of stalkers, rapists, and other people who are in romantic want). The Devil, in all known classics, is sly, and his slight is characterized by a CALCULATED apathy that misappropriates importance to things which are not intrinsically important. Hence: the Devil lives in the Details, and he is associated closely with pettiness, but not mere pettiness so much as one that makes matters of colossal consequence and import APPEAR petty. The righteous man is only calm when all is well; the Devil is calm, regardless. The nature of the trick is to persuade the docile mind that in fact good and evil are relative, by confining the distinction to a strictly personal view. But an Interpersonal View such as that which is provided by positive Religious Experience will demonstrate that in fact Harmony is a Moral Universal; any system in the Universe is either ALIGNED with God, or it is out of alignment. And all forms of pain are symptoms, even if they are necessary towards Godly ends, of misalignment. The aforementioned necessity itself draws its painful quality from the problem it aspires to resolve.

Dm.A.A.