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Ritual is a kind of mask that holds in check what happens in our most secret lives.
When we encounter ritual enacted in a grotesque fashion (that to some extent ridicules our own repetitions) we may at first try to reconcile it with our own preordained patterns; thus the absurd element of politeness or reasonableness sometimes expressed in true-life extreme situations. But if instead we recoil, run shrieking, might it be not only because what we see is macabre but because, for a moment, we recognize that this strangeness partakes of the same wellspring as our own regimented lives? That our (unthinking) rituals are only attempts not to succumb to what is going on beneath the
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“Creativity isn’t always an index of niceness,
Sometimes you just have to keep some distance between yourself and reality, even if it means becoming a little less human.
He talked about a place that sounded like a cosmos of crooked houses and littered alleys, a slum among the stars.
a realm that cross-breeds a mean-street reality with a fantasy world of his imagination, a phantasmagoric mingling of heaven and hell. This is where he does his ‘frolicking’ with what he calls his ‘awestruck company.’ The place where he took his victims might possibly have been an abandoned building, or even an accommodating sewer. I say this based on his repeated mentioning of ‘the jolly river of refuse’ and ‘the jagged heaps in shadows,’ which could certainly be mad transmutations of a literal wasteland, some grubby and secluded environment that his mind turned into a funhouse of bizarre
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“When I tell you, you’ll probably just think I’m a little crazy myself. You didn’t talk to him, though, and I did. The mannerisms of his speech, or rather the many different mannerisms. The shifting expressions on that lean face. Much of the time I talked to him I had the feeling he was playing at some game that was beyond me, though I’m sure it just seemed that way. This is a common tactic of the psychopath—messing with the doctor. It gives them a sense of power.”
“What’s the matter, David?” Leslie asked, her voice weakening. “I’m not sure exactly. It’s as if I know something and don’t know it at the same time.”
Dr. Monk, read the note from inside the animal, We leave this behind in your capable hands, for in the black-foaming gutters and back alley of paradise, in the dank windowless gloom of some intergalactic cellar, in the hollow pearly whorls found in sewerlike seas, in starless cities of insanity, and in their slums . . . my awestruck little deer and I have gone frolicking. See you anon. Jonathan Doe.
Then the beautiful house was no longer quiet, for there rang a bright freezing scream of laughter, the perfect sound to accompany a passing anecdote of some obscure hell.
It’s strange how you’re sometimes forced to assume an unsympathetic view of yourself through borrowed eyes.
Oh, the thrill of bringing a romantic companion to this dark paradise. How I yearned to show her this resplendent world in full bloom and have her behold it with ensorcelled delight. She was somewhere near me in the darkness. I waited, seeing her a thousand ways in my mind before actually gazing at the real Day. I looked. “What’s wrong with the stars, the sky?” was all she said. She was trembling.
To Eden with me you will not leave To live in a cottage of crazy, crooked eaves. In your own happy home you take care these nights; When you let your little cat in, please turn on the lights! Something scurries behind and finds a cozy place to stare, Something sent to you from paradise, with serpents to spare: Tongues flowering; they leap out laughing, lapping. Disappear!
Patently, he had overfed himself at the turgid banquet of life, lethargically pushing away from the table just prior to explosion. The thing before me was a portrait of all that was defunct, used up—the ultimate adult.
That demonic giggling I heard at the library. Even when I concentrate, I’m still not able to tell if the sound is inside or outside my head.
