| Life just isn't the same without a laptop. I write presently in Cafe Bean, which is very nifty. From now on I can post my philosophy as it comes to me, which means you'll get more of it, but I won't have the drive home to mull over whether it's right or how to communicate it. Up in quantity, down in quality. But I've been getting pretty sporadic on here, so that's a good thing.
Here is a portion of the short story I've been working on for the past while. The latter part of the title comes from a suggestion from Jeff Douylliez, who's presently on duty here. It's a parody of the quest story, like Lord of the Rings.
EDIT (from the Beehive originally, but my connection quit on me): These next sections are talking about stuff you've heard me talking about for quite some time, so it'll prolly be less interesting. But there's still some really funny stuff, so you might as well read it.
UMPTEENTH EDIT: 'Sfinished now.
Ad Absurdum : For Sarcastic Bastards
John A. Hobson was a good man. His children called him "Papa," and his wife called him "Jonathan" in the solemn, loving manner women who understand a great deal about the world are wont to use. His childhood dream was to become a great hero, but when he took up an apprenticeship at the local blacksmith, he was forced to abandon dream for the adult reality which would fill his stomach. At age 17, he met Nora; he was in love, she was unmarried. They were a perfect match. At 42, he was drafted to serve in his country’s military, and he scarcely remembered his childhood dream. After three weeks of marching, the army entered battle with that of the evil wizard, whereupon an arrow pierced his skull. His brains splattered onto Pandora’s boots as the latter dashed past. She would later pout to Pyotr that the stain was impossible to remove.
Of course, this couldn’t concern him, as he hurried along his divinely ordained mission. Several days prior, all the representatives of the nations of men (yada yada yada), "Pyotr, you are our greatest hero. Our armies are no match for the wizard’s; you must lead a quest into his castle and slay him before all hope is lost for the nations of men!" Pyotr thought this was just the cat’s meow; his childhood dream was to be a hero, after all. With sweet cerulean pride charging his chest, he accepted the honor with all the grace and pomp of a good medieval hero. And an honor it was; Pyotr had never been so proud in all his life. To be named the greatest hero of men! The only thing which slowed the grand train of pleasure steaming through his head was the thought of his fellow men, the lesser soldiers and non-heros whose lives would be given on the battlefield to make his mission possible. And he did grieve for them, honestly, because Pyotr had a very good heart, although he was a little misguided. But more on that as the story progresses.
Now Pyotr wasn’t to travel alone. A party of 4 was to accompany him; a young healer girl named Pandora; the dwarves’ champion axeman, Hrothgar; Monet, the elves’ most skilled and handsome archer; and the imperial court’s oldest and wisest wizard (named Aristote). Unfortunately, they all died very early on, as people are wont to do during a war. The exception to this was Pandora, who, being the hero’s love interest, couldn’t die until the very end.
And naturally, they did fall in love. She was attracted to his good heart, and his boyish heroic spirit; he was attracted to her kindness and the hole between her legs. It may be true that she was engaged to be married to a young nobleman (and not at all a bad man) back home, but what matters that, when one is traveling alone with a handsome young hero for an extended length of time? As is often the case in these fairy tale romances, they were actually fairly incompatible; his main interests were swords and baseball, she was a tarot card enthusiast. They talked very little. But love, as they say, is blind (like most human faculties), and need I repeat - "What matters this, when one is traveling alone with a handsome young hero for an extended length of time?" Carpe diem! ‘Twould have been quite tragic to pass up such an opportunity in this very short life of ours.
So off they set, the two of them (all unnecessary appendages having been severed) for the horizon.
The battle raged...
Their hands brushed against each other...
...His overtaxed heart burst out of his chest...
...Her heart pounded...
...An ogre and a man’s swords locked...
...Their eyes met...
...His muscles wavered, the serrated blade pressed in...
...Her legs weakened as she felt his presence more and more intensely...
...He looked about frantically for something with which to save himself...
...Her gaze locked furiously onto his face...
...just as the sword pressed slowly into his forehead...
...just as he leaned in for the inevitable kiss.
And with this moment of ecstasy to gird themselves, they stole through the battlefield, hoping to continue their quest.
Hand in hand, they dashed through a great basin of the wailing and gnashing of teeth, their feet barely pausing to touch the bloodied ground beneath. Though they were terrified, both of the battle and of their new feelings, they stole surely through the chaos, confidence emanating in waves from their clasped hands. Occasionally a scream pierced the hushed silence which tends to occur in those who have just completed a romantic moment, but overall, their attention was focused safely on the other side of the battlefield. Had they stopped to look, they might have seen a man’s head hewn off by an orc’s battle-axe; or the epic duel which occurred between the two commanders - a downward chop parried, a reverse cut at the legs, with a quick anticlimactic thrust putting the orc to rest; or an entire family’s worth of bones scattered to the winds by an errant catapult stone; or the soldier with bloodshot eyes who went completely berserk when he saw his brother slain, only to have his own heart promptly pierced; or the group of cowards who turned their backs on the enemy, half of which managed to escape, but at the price of 3 others slain for each coward who got away; or perhaps the man who simply fell to his knees and wept in the middle of the battlefield (who, incidentally, survived). They would have seen it all, but they didn’t, and why would they care to? It had nothing to do with the present moment, which they were busy seizing. Though every single soldier who survived the battle was traumatized for life - scowling at their eight year old daughters and whimpering at the sound of fireworks - Pyotr and Pandora walked away with only a brain-stained boot to show for it.
But the stain was rather persistent.
~~~~~~~~~
The evil wizard hadn’t always been evil, nor had he always been a wizard. A secret about the world which you could only get from an evil wizard or an orc, never a man, is that what seems like "evil" is usually just "hungry". If men had cared to listen to orcs, the entire war might even had been avoided by a grand feast, but such a prospect is nonsense, considering orcs speak in a different tongue, and their only diet is human beings. At any rate, the evil wizard had once been a normal, relatively happy, if not extremely intelligent boy. In fact, he was what someone who’s not an evil wizard would call "good" - he nursed an intense love for mankind, so strong that it often pained him. This is where his story truly begins, because he knew that the only way he could help people as much as he wanted to was to become a wizard. A hero, or a merchant, or a politician can all help a huge number of people, but none of them are capable of helping humanity in the abstract, eliminating pain at its source, not just its symptoms. But a wizard! There he just might be able to accomplish his ends. Wizards, after all, deal habitually with abstracts and concepts and other frighteningly arcane things.
Now it was the case in this era that in order to become a wizard one had to undergo a certain very grueling process, involving getting in touch with certain veins of powerful ancient wisdom. Most wizards, when they underwent this ritual, merely took what they needed and returned to the everyday world. But some, upon tasting this strange universe which was a thousand times transcendent of anything they had known previously, became hungry for more. An outsider would see him enter his meditative trance a man, and after a grueling wait, see him return to consciousness as something different entirely - what said outsider might call an evil wizard. This is how evil wizards are born.
Now it would be impossible to narrate precisely what the evil wizard sees, comes to understand, when he undergoes this wizards’ rite. If it were possible, it wouldn’t exactly be "transcendent wisdom", and evil wizards would be a fairly common lot. (Imagine what a world!) But as best I can, I will tell you the secret, because without it you will be fairly displeased with the conclusion of this tale, and you will subsequently not recommend it to your friends. It is the secret I alluded to earlier, which only an orc or an evil wizard knows; a secret which at best you can understand partially and will quickly forget. It is a secret which has destroyed the lives of the few men who have understood it - indeed, it is impossible to understand it and remain a man. The world of man is built upon the false negation of this secret, after all. So what is it? It is the fact that there is no such thing as evil, and consequently, of good (only pleasurable and unpleasurable); no such thing as beauty and as ugliness (only attractive and repulsive); no happiness and no misery (only steeped in dopamine, steeped in sharp electrical signals); no should and no shouldn’t (only must). It is the fact that ultimately, there is no good reason to do anything.
You may or may not believe this, and it is my hope that you do not, because if you do, you are probably an evil wizard. And I apologize if my narrative has become preachy at this point, but we have broached a topic I feel rather strongly about. Why this is so will be revealed in good time. But imagine what the evil wizard must have felt! His love for mankind, the strongest force he had ever known, around which he built his entire life, revealed to him as a farce! It was the sort of shock from which a man emerges either a corpse, or a monster.
But for now, whatever you believe, remember this about the evil wizard... To a man such as he, pleasure itself is painful, happiness is the saddest thing in the world, and beauty is something hideously ugly.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"But isn’t it all so beautiful?" Pandora mused. Though she was speaking through the haze which usually follows when one has just surrendered one’s body, and though while laying supine she could hardly see the landscape around her, she was still voicing one of her most deeply held convictions. She had few, of course, because she thought very little. But she quite enjoyed cookies, had a thing for tall dark men, and thought the world was very beautiful. And that was that. Naturally, she had many male admirers.
Pyotr, of course, was in great agreement, albeit for slightly different reasons. He, like the evil wizard, nursed a strong love for mankind, but for whatever reason, it never reached the contorted point of causing him pain that it had in the wizard. Perhaps he just didn’t love enough, perhaps the various small good deeds he performed throughout life provided an outlet (he had always been a man of action, not of thought). Perhaps it was because he simply never reflected upon it, wasn’t self aware enough to understand. Whatever the cause, he, too, thought the world to be very beautiful. And to him, that was a rather important idea. So important, in fact, that one of his favorite activities was talking about it.
In a less civilized age, Pyotr probably would have been called a hedonist. He was a very emotional man, and he valued those emotions very highly. "To love and to be loved," as they say, was Pyotr’s greatest desire; and fortunately for him, he was rather skilled at both. When someone was in trouble, he always rushed to her aid ("her", because seldom is it anything other than a "damsel" in distress, much to the benefit of the hero profession). And when those he loved were threatened, he wouldn’t have hesitated to take up arms against a sea of troubles, whether victory was a possibility or not. For these reasons, those he loved never failed to requite the favor. A great author once described the artist as "the lover and the beloved of the people", and had Pyotr picked up a paintbrush rather than a sword at an early age, he would have made a splendid street caricaturist.
"But isn’t it all so beautiful?" she said, and with his head on her breast, he nodded his approval through a grin distorted by a small amount of slobber.
Thus they lay together in the grass, basking in the warmth of a very beautiful sunrise, whilst a man on the other side of the planet froze to death.
~~~~~~~~~~
It would be prudent, at this point in the narrative, to relate some of the many trials and adventures they faced as they championed their way through the wizard’s territory. But the reader will forgive me if I can’t muster enough personal interest to bother, for you see, there are any number of likewise quests one can read about in the pages of human literature. And surely most of them will do their relating far more skillfully than I. Rather, to save us both the tedium, I shall relate one particularly characteristic story which I believe will tell my good reader what he or she needs to know. So, without further ado.
The pair had traveled deep into the evil wizard’s territory, where decidedly un-beautiful crags and mountains composed the landscape. They were approaching a tower which long ago had been occupied by a lich, a special sort of evil wizard who actually kills himself that he may return as a skeleton (which, incidentally, will live forever and not have its arcane studies interrupted).
"Pyotr, look out!" she shouted, as the arrow dug a vacuum past his ear. There were three orcs perched upon a rather large boulder, several stone’s throws away. These served only to distract, however, from the five rather large soldiers - three swords and two spears - which pressed upon him from behind a nearby grove of dead trees. He drew his sword just as they formed into a circle, and the battle began. A spear thrust from behind, which he side-stepped, while drawing his sword across his face for to parry a downward cut from three o’clock. Catching his sword in one of the serrations (which, any evil wizard’s blacksmith would admit, were there just to intimidate, and served no practical purpose), he yanked backward and sent the orc’s blade flying between the two soldiers on his other side. Exploiting this opportunity, he leaned in and dashed with one bound at the newly disarmed target, running his blade deep into the throat. Though the result was rather bloody, Pyotr’s blade and clothing remained perfectly clean, as heros’ clothing tends to do (for the laws of physics, you see, appreciate a good hero as much as you or I). As the orc slumped over through its curdled scream, Pyotr ripped his blade back out, sending splatters of the hot red liquid all over the other orcs (who admittedly didn’t care very much, being orcs), then rolled around his falling opponent’s back in order to extricate himself from the circle. The orc who had first thrust his spear immediately charged, being the most hungry (and thus the most aggressive) of the bunch, but regrettably for him and his orcish family, Pyotr was already on his hero’s streak which no orc can stop. Thus he sidestepped the orc’s spear and merely held out his sword for the still rushing orc to clothesline itself upon, whereupon his head was instantly removed. More of the vermilion stuff geysered from its neck, rendering the other orcs even more soggy, though Pyotr again remained miraculously untouched. His body twitched in the throes of death as electrical signals fired at random; an arm thrust at the heavens here, an inexorable trembling in the legs there, just as it fell to roll about in the dust, bloody life still gushing from the headless neck. The orcs’ numbers reduced to three, they became more cautious, and approached Pyotr in a line. That hesitation was unfortunate, however, because just as they reformed another volley of arrows came from the archers on the boulder. How Pyotr knew they were coming and was thus able to sidestep is a secret which only a hero can know, but as a result of this action, two arrows thunked into two orcs, causing two more geysers of red life and two more curdled screams. The final orc chose "fight" over "flight" and charged, clashing swords with Pyotr. It fought with the strength of rage, while he fought with the technique of calm, and ultimately, the latter tends to prevail during martial competition. As the orc sustained cut after cut upon its exposed skin, and as the life pressure dropped in its veins, its rage was replaced by a vague, airy despair, of the sort that only a man who knows he’s about to die can experience. If this were a movie, told from the orc’s perspective, the music would have stopped, the framerate would have slowed, and the edges of the screen would have lost focus, all in order to illustrate the greatness of the struggle. Unfortunately, however, such niceties are reserved for men, not orcs (who have all the same sensations, believe it or not), and this orc eventually fell as his intestines spilled from his stomach with a sideways cut. Had it been possible to detect another liquid amidst the deluge of blood, I might say that he cried as he died, but I shan’t.
That left only the orcish archers, who, detecting their imminent doom, chose "flight". One dashed for the door of the lich’s tower, while Pyotr and Pandora gave pursuit. Cornered like a rat, twittering and darting its gaze about, it slumped back against the door, awaiting mercy or doom at the hands of its human judges. Pyotr, being the heroic type, and being in the company of the delicate sensibilities of his love Pandora, chose mercy, and once approaching within three paces, sheathed his sword. The archer saw his opportunity to flee, to rejoin his two bolting comrades, and picked up his bow, but alas! Pyotr saw him reach for the war implement and assumed he was about to strike, and thus ran him through on the spot in order to protect Pandora (who secretly enjoyed the show of masculinity). His liquid life thrust out from the new hole under his sternum, as chunks of his kidneys and liver dripped to the ground. He slumped back down, not as a rat, but as a dead rat, and that was that. Pyotr and Pandora opened the door and stepped inside, their feet pounding tender spots into the orc’s corpse as they passed.
They saw, as they entered, a laboratory geared for war. Various needles and other threatening implements were strewn about the room, betraying its true purpose - the lich had been experimenting on orcs in order to make them stronger. Machines existed for grafting weapons onto arms, armor onto internal organs, and similar gruesome projects. It must have been hideously painful for the orcs. A few stains of blood peppered the walls.
Seeing this, Pyotr and Pandora were horrified and indignant. She clutched his arm and leaned up against him, and he, shaking his head, said this...
"How dare someone use another’s life to his own ends?"
Sickened, they stomped back out, beating more tender spots into the ill-fated archer’s torso, and their feet - miraculously clean.
~~~~~~~
It is now time to bring this tale to its conclusion, and I hope you will forgive me if it is somewhat anticlimactic. But in life there is always a gap between what should happen, according to the decent sensibilities of human beings, and what does happen, according to the insensibilities of reality. After all, when reality and sensibilities collide, it is seldom the former which is altered for the experience. The only thing with the power to combat reality is unreality, and she is seldom able to muster the requisite interest. But I digress.
After many trials and tribulations, our fated pair found their way to the wooden door which barred them from the evil wizard’s quarters. There they set their pikes and girded their loins for the inevitable confrontation. Pyotr spoke his challenge.
"Ye foul wizard, ye wretched sorcerer... Show yourself, and answer for your crimes! Many a man has died because of your contemptible deeds, and I, men’s champion, have come to bring your reckoning. Now show yourself, and receive your judgment.
"When you still walked among the societies of men, you were known to purport that there was no difference between the mind and the brain. Because of this, you thought, there was no morality - for if everything one does is ultimately the motions of particles in his brain, what matters whether he is good or evil? Good and evil, you thought, were both reduced to the same thing. But you were wrong. A mind and a brain are two of the most different things in the world, as different as you and I; the former, the seat of all thought and will, where men’s choices made freely decide their fates in this beautifully wrought world of ours; and the latter, a four pound lump of fat in one’s skull. How dare you deny all the beauty of the mind by comparing it to this thing? And nay, even if you were right, and the mind and the brain are the same, that does not detract from the beauty of the mind, it simply offers another explanation for how it is there, another perspective from which to view it. Whether I am my brain or not, I am still me, with all my thoughts and actions, with all the things I love [he looked at Pandora, who swooned], and all the choices I make. For it is as the great wizard once said, cogito ergo sum - and no one, evil wizard or not, may take this away from me!
"You were offered many chances at redemption from your heresy, which was clearly nothing more than a defect of your character, but you refused, and abandoned mankind. Thus you built your tower, and began to raise your army, but I ask you.. For what? ‘Because it doesn’t matter if the earth lives or dies, and I would just as rather it died.’ This is the message you delivered to the nations of men. But did not your very action betray your reasons for that action? Was not your choice to destroy just that - a choice, made freely - which had you only seen, you would have called off this fool’s anti-crusade? But no, you were too stubborn, too foolish, too steeped in your own sin to see yourself, and thus your armies marched. And thence comes your judgment.
"Wizard, I won’t let you take away the things I love. I love them, so I protect them - while you shout nonsense about there being no free will and drown in hypocrisy. Thus I call you out, wizard, and challenge you, that I may save my town, save the nations of men, and save my love. I will put it on my banner, where it as a rune to protect me from your magic - cogito ergo s-"
Before he could finish his mantra, his severed head fell to the floor, and that was that. The wizard had stepped out of his study upon hearing the racket and did the deed with a sword, which as any good evil wizard will tell you, is made of the same stuff as magic. He stooped down to look in the severed skull, called in, "Are you thinking? Do you exist?" and shrugged. If you have ever seen a dead man’s face, or if you are an evil wizard, you can perhaps understand what he felt. Otherwise, I suggest you think him insane.
He then turned to the horrified Pandora and laughed. But noticing her ill humor, he stopped long enough to sigh, "Sorry dear, but I have better things to worry about." He cut off her head too. And that was that.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
In the end, I decided to stop my army. ("I", for if you haven’t yet gathered that I am the evil wizard, you probably have not understood my message.) I had grown rather fond of the rascally orcs, which was why it was rather tragic when I had to melt their brains in order to stop them (they were dreadfully hungry, you see). But such are the sacrifices evil wizards must make. Only the very best evil wizards can ever escape the pain of severing away some of his own appendages, sometimes part of his own essence, in order to protect the people for whom he couldn’t care less. A rare man in history, a man who knew both wizardry and heroism, once said, "If your hand or your foot causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away." That was the wizard talking, because heros either don’t sin, or can’t tell where their hands end and their selves begin. Naturally, the man who said that is not around today. No one ever asked him the questions I would like to ask, and something tells me he wouldn’t have very good answers. Perhaps that’s why he’s not around today - some wizard probably killed him. I know I would like to.
But we evil wizards aren’t an all bad lot; if we were, rest assured, you wouldn’t be reading this story, because you would have been turned into a frog. You can attribute your human form, not to our good will, but to a combination of our laziness and our childhood conditioning. For as I shall never forget, and if I am lucky you understand by now, it really doesn’t matter who survives. The res cogitons is just a negative quantity of entropy, and so is all other life; and no ideal or beauty outlives the flapping lips which create it. But this, this talk of human beings, is not for me. "I have better things to worry about."
For instance, I have here the body of a one John A. Hobson, and necromancy has always been an interest of mine...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
(By the way... "Pyotr" comes from "Pyotr Illyich Karamazov", the premiere sensualist of literature. "Pandora"s obvious - the prototypical female. If any other names need explanation, I'll explain 'em, 'cuz I hate art as obfuscation.
The other metaphors should be pretty obvious by now.) |
