On Idolatry
He trembled, he shrank, his will was steadfast to preserve and uphold his own god against this stranger who was sworn enemy to dignity and self-control. But the mountain wall took up the noise and howling and gave it back manifold; it rose high, swelled to a madness that carried him away... in his very soul he tasted the bestial degradation of his fall.
--Thomas Mann, Death in Venice
The green glare of the television screen; 2:00 a.m. is a motley parade of brutality and chaos, but he sat there watching. Her beautiful face conjured suicide; that gaunt wretchedness restrained only by a thick layer cream and makeup. He cursed the ‘human soul’ for all of its pretense and turned off the television. After half an hour of barrel rolling and smacking his pillow as if to get a confession out of it, he got up and went to the bathroom. He came back, lied down, curled himself into a ball, and shivered himself to sleep.
The next morning. Those punks had been lurking so long that if it did not rain, it would be a dream. It did not rain... it was not a dream. Even the mold was melancholy in his apartment that morning. He got dressed, opened the apartment’s yellow door and was astonished by the fact that the elevator, which was by this time collecting social security benefits, was out of order...astonished. He walked a couple flights of stairs, opened the lobby door, and was cordially welcomed by the grey Santa-Monica mist-- in short it was a beautiful morning.
If only the world were always this still he thought, staring at the nervous elementary students. They stood awkwardly while their eyes bounced around like gas molecules in a bottle; the students were all the same, all the same charge, and that repulsed them. They repulsed him as well. It pulled in. It was not technically a school bus, but he was the only one riding over twelve, save the bus driver. The front row is traditionally where the rejects sat, and this is traditionally where he sat. Aside from a history of rejection, the front row was less littered with elementary students. In fact, there was only one student who sat next to him– Jose. He had some history with Jose: Jose was a small child, even for he age. The black and blue of Jose’s arms used to remind him of the of the Santa Monica peer under the moonlight. Jose would get beat up by larger Mexicans and black kids. This clever little Mexican victim decided one day to turn to the aloof twenty-five-year-old for help. He had no reservations about beating up kids less than half his age; he would sometimes skip work for the pleasure of busting open their noses. They soon got the idea; Jose was looking better. Jose’s mustache reminded him that this was all in the past, and Jose was on the path to becoming a little man.
The bus stopped a three-minute walk from the mall where he worked; the trance-like murmuring of the shoppers, and the rhythm of the fat jiggling down the thighs of adolescent girls all distracted him. The boss called him a miserable employee. That did not bother him much: I’ll kill myself before I embrace scooping ice cream. He took some solace in the fact that his forearms were muscular.
There was a long line at the counter; it was a busy day, a mass day. Their flesh was all deformed in its own special way, but they all looked the same to him. He noticed the heavy ennui, that Nazi boredom in their eyes; these were the same bored psychopaths who experienced the deepest pleasure in watching a naked woman get stabbed and raped to death by an apparition in a horror film...What other way is there to deal with impotence? The horror. He understood the Holocaust glancing into their eyes; eyes which avidly needed to please their idolatress gods with a sacrifice. But these eyes knew nothing of idolatry, nothing of God; these were a pack of educated idiots. These savage animals are those that would reduce six-million of the most brilliant minds in the universe into a creamy ash. These lackeys even sacrificed the connection to another human soul in a spurt of monotheistic rage, in a crusade against all that stood in the way of the god of Ego; indeed the only thing the corpulent man in front of the counter was able to connect with was a triangular ice cream cone as this blasphemer sacrificed Ego to Pleasure and Complacency. So, in those fat polar-bear hands, was his perverse Trinity, while he stood there, licking away at the heavens. He watched the man look up to pay, and like a Jamaican cloudburst it hit him; reflected in the fat man’s eyes he noticed his own miserable, droopy, and now frightened gaze.
Lunchtime; it was now his turn to eat. The guise of the florescent lighting fooled no one, he was tired. He hesitantly slouched over to the pizza stand, and although the sight of food nauseated him–-a fact he felt throughly ungrateful for– at least pizza was easy.
He sat down. There was an emptiness in his stomach surpassing any routine hunger. He looked up and noticed a boss patting his subservient on the shoulder, a mother buying her child a burrito. His pizza now looked edible, even irresistible. He lifted it up, slowly examining its texture, its smell, when suddenly his faced pinched into the most scornful expression when he noticed its shape--- son-of-a-bitch!
--Thomas Mann, Death in Venice
The green glare of the television screen; 2:00 a.m. is a motley parade of brutality and chaos, but he sat there watching. Her beautiful face conjured suicide; that gaunt wretchedness restrained only by a thick layer cream and makeup. He cursed the ‘human soul’ for all of its pretense and turned off the television. After half an hour of barrel rolling and smacking his pillow as if to get a confession out of it, he got up and went to the bathroom. He came back, lied down, curled himself into a ball, and shivered himself to sleep.
The next morning. Those punks had been lurking so long that if it did not rain, it would be a dream. It did not rain... it was not a dream. Even the mold was melancholy in his apartment that morning. He got dressed, opened the apartment’s yellow door and was astonished by the fact that the elevator, which was by this time collecting social security benefits, was out of order...astonished. He walked a couple flights of stairs, opened the lobby door, and was cordially welcomed by the grey Santa-Monica mist-- in short it was a beautiful morning.
If only the world were always this still he thought, staring at the nervous elementary students. They stood awkwardly while their eyes bounced around like gas molecules in a bottle; the students were all the same, all the same charge, and that repulsed them. They repulsed him as well. It pulled in. It was not technically a school bus, but he was the only one riding over twelve, save the bus driver. The front row is traditionally where the rejects sat, and this is traditionally where he sat. Aside from a history of rejection, the front row was less littered with elementary students. In fact, there was only one student who sat next to him– Jose. He had some history with Jose: Jose was a small child, even for he age. The black and blue of Jose’s arms used to remind him of the of the Santa Monica peer under the moonlight. Jose would get beat up by larger Mexicans and black kids. This clever little Mexican victim decided one day to turn to the aloof twenty-five-year-old for help. He had no reservations about beating up kids less than half his age; he would sometimes skip work for the pleasure of busting open their noses. They soon got the idea; Jose was looking better. Jose’s mustache reminded him that this was all in the past, and Jose was on the path to becoming a little man.
The bus stopped a three-minute walk from the mall where he worked; the trance-like murmuring of the shoppers, and the rhythm of the fat jiggling down the thighs of adolescent girls all distracted him. The boss called him a miserable employee. That did not bother him much: I’ll kill myself before I embrace scooping ice cream. He took some solace in the fact that his forearms were muscular.
There was a long line at the counter; it was a busy day, a mass day. Their flesh was all deformed in its own special way, but they all looked the same to him. He noticed the heavy ennui, that Nazi boredom in their eyes; these were the same bored psychopaths who experienced the deepest pleasure in watching a naked woman get stabbed and raped to death by an apparition in a horror film...What other way is there to deal with impotence? The horror. He understood the Holocaust glancing into their eyes; eyes which avidly needed to please their idolatress gods with a sacrifice. But these eyes knew nothing of idolatry, nothing of God; these were a pack of educated idiots. These savage animals are those that would reduce six-million of the most brilliant minds in the universe into a creamy ash. These lackeys even sacrificed the connection to another human soul in a spurt of monotheistic rage, in a crusade against all that stood in the way of the god of Ego; indeed the only thing the corpulent man in front of the counter was able to connect with was a triangular ice cream cone as this blasphemer sacrificed Ego to Pleasure and Complacency. So, in those fat polar-bear hands, was his perverse Trinity, while he stood there, licking away at the heavens. He watched the man look up to pay, and like a Jamaican cloudburst it hit him; reflected in the fat man’s eyes he noticed his own miserable, droopy, and now frightened gaze.
Lunchtime; it was now his turn to eat. The guise of the florescent lighting fooled no one, he was tired. He hesitantly slouched over to the pizza stand, and although the sight of food nauseated him–-a fact he felt throughly ungrateful for– at least pizza was easy.
He sat down. There was an emptiness in his stomach surpassing any routine hunger. He looked up and noticed a boss patting his subservient on the shoulder, a mother buying her child a burrito. His pizza now looked edible, even irresistible. He lifted it up, slowly examining its texture, its smell, when suddenly his faced pinched into the most scornful expression when he noticed its shape--- son-of-a-bitch!
posted by Philip at 11:12 AM
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