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Articles
Adventure
Seeker: The Avatar of Horror – Part I
by
Paul Crowley
(Part II here)
A Prefatory (Or Should I Say Preparatory, Or Maybe Even Introductory,
Of
Course One Could Also Say Preliminary, Even, In A Conversational Sense,
Beforehand, If One Were To…)
Um…
Okay, I’ll Begin Again.
Please Don’t Call My Family, Like They Did The Last Time.
Thank You.
A Prefatory Note
The individual identifying himself as the “Editor/Owner” of
this site, one Randall (or Randolph) Sluganski, has very kindly and
graciously (not to mention inexplicably) offered the writer of the
nonsense appearing below the opportunity of composing, once a month,
under the editorial guidance of said Randall (or Randolph) Sluganski,
one (1) piece, to appear under the Main Title (Adventure Seeker)
listed above. Needless to say (that is, indubitably, or, as we put
it at the institution, whenever we forget to ingest our daily dosage, “to
the contrary notwithstanding”), this generous (though alarming)
offer occasioned every conceivable species of fevered belles-lettres fantasy to hop around inside the writer’s skull, screeching
to him of literary glory, fame, fortune, celebrity and lifetime financial
security (not to mention unlimited visits with “masseuses”).
Then, the “Editor/Owner” (a rather shadowy and altogether
mogul-like character, it must be said) informed the writer that the
pay scale for his literary contributions would be, and I’m
quoting now, “nothing” (however, implying that said pay
scale could, under certain special circumstances, were the quality
of the pieces to attain the highest caliber, be even less than that
unconscionable, if fair, level of remuneration). The writer, therefore,
while remaining fully conversant with Dr. Samuel Johnson’s
excellent and wise observation, passed down to us by James Boswell,
that “No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money” (although
we should also keep in mind that this same Dr. Johnson, likewise
through the reportage of the same James Boswell, somewhat strangely,
if not downright alarmingly, said “Who drives fat oxen should
himself be fat” – perhaps at that moment seized by a
spasm of the brain, or a bit of momentary alimentary discomfort,
or even an understandable, but all the same, deeply disturbing desire
to register as a Republican…where was I? Oh, yes, the pay scale!),
and facing the dashing of all his dreams of worldly success accompanied
by (and herein lies the most important disappointment) good
old hard cash in frightfully scandalous quantities, has determined to gird
his loins, buckle his buckler, sharpen his halberd, powder his harquebus,
mount his steed (but only when the children are at school), thrust
his fists against the posts while the quick brown fox jumps over
something or other, gather seashells by the seashore, and continue
nonetheless, that is to say nevertheless, indubitably (did I use
that already?), with all deliberate speed, any and all liabilities
herein not listed…(I’m sorry, I seem to have wandered
off again…Oh, yes, the pay scale!), and proceed to write his
monthly column even in the face of such, as Karl Marx, sitting around
in the musty, but nonetheless tastefully appointed British Library
of an eventide, liked to put it, surplus value extraction from
the workers. So if the writer, in any of his upcoming monthly exercises
in highfalutin’ logorrhea (a technical literary term), seems
to you, dear and constant readers, to be straying somewhat from the
general point (which is, presumably, to write something having to
do with adventure computer gaming, instead of traipsing off through
various self-reflexive literary, historical, scientific or, more
probably, psychiatric fantasylands), please bear with him and remember
that he is only striving to bring his pieces up to the higher quality
level of the “less than nothing” section of the pay scale,
because, after all, his cat Wiley has been waiting for that trans-gender
surgery for an awfully long time now, and it would be a shame to
disappoint the dear old confused furry thing (whom the writer was
planning to refer to as “Tiny Tim”, but considered that
this sort of manipulation would constitute {in other words, be, or
as we say in the institution referred to previously, especially when
we’ve enjoyed a particularly stimulating and refreshing game
of slow-motion ping pong with one of the other shambling, slipper-footed
residents, seem} a gross misuse of the touching and supportive trust
that the readers have undoubtedly, indubitab…, {you know, confidentially,
I seem to have developed a problem here} already placed in the hands
of the writer as a result of perusing this prefatory note).
I trust I have made myself clear. Thank you.
And, perchance (or should I say peradventure, or maybe I should just shut the hell up) you readers have been misled by the delightfully vivacious, tastefully witty, yet gaily insouciant character of the preceding prolix, but no doubt fascinating, note, allow me to warn you that the fun and games are over for today, and that we are about to venture into areas slightly more serious (and don’t worry, there will be mention of computer games). Having thus already alienated some goodly portion of the readership, and indubitably (hey, I like the word!) alarmed the rest, allow me to present the first formal column it is my great privilege to have written for this wonderful site. Unless you’d all like to play Charades instead. Thank you.
Avatar Of Horror: The Thing, From The
1930’s To The Present
I
(A Preamble Of Sorts, Which At First Glance Seems To Contain Certain Elements Which Have Nothing To Do With The Subject At Hand, But Whose Connection To Said Subject Will, Through The Agency Of The Ink-Stained Wretch Who Is The Begetter Of This Column, Become Apparent)
Listen for a moment:
This is how some in the New York metropolitan area experience horror:
In our previous lives, amid the balmy days of the longest economic expansion in United States history, when the end of the century and the millenium (the millenium!) were in sight, when we all felt as safe as anyone could reasonably hope to feel, when the incredible flow of money into nearly everyone’s pocket had muted most of what normally passes for political awareness in the country, when home ownership was at its highest level ever, when our main problem as a nation seemed to amount to exactly how we were going to divvy up the goodies represented by an enormous looming budget surplus, when we still lived in our childhood -- a small band of dedicated men were resident among us, planning, with the professionalism and precision lacking in their predecessors, the cascade of all our heartbreak and woe, our dear ones taken from us in moments, our heartsickness, our dumbfounded shock, our disbelieving tears, our terror, our tragedy, our bitter vetch, our tumult and our rage.
They were dead men years before they died with their victims, and they knew and accepted this in the way that others similarly committed had done before them. They walked among us as ghosts, already stepping in and out of the lives that they led on the surface, hurtling toward doom on a holy mission for their God, dying each night as they fell asleep, remembering the future, the moment of death not yet experienced, perhaps savoring it in its very horror, in its finality, in the hope that death would resolve the ache in their bones, the ache which set them apart from nearly every human being whom they interacted with in the course of their multi-year preparations, the ache which consecrated them as God’s messengers, the ache which would not relent and grant them peace, the ache which sheathed them in cold fire, burning yet unconsuming, tormenting them unto death-in-life, unto ghostliness, unto madness and martyrdom.
How are we, the living, the survivors of the darkness in the hearts of these men, who reaffirm our love of life even as we mourn the innocent and valiant dead, how are we to approach them, these extraordinary ghosts, who revealed themselves to us for but a few moments at the end, in shouted oaths overheard at air traffic control centers; who revealed themselves to us for but a few moments at the end, in desperate choking sounds issuing from throat-cut pilots, caught on cockpit voice recorders; who revealed themselves to us for but a few moments at the end, when they drove screaming children, children, into fiery, bodybursting death; who revealed themselves to us for but a few moments at the end, when they visited Armageddon upon innocents who, unknowing, unprepared, were obliterated in the fury of fireball and shrapnel before they could even comprehend the moments of their leavetakings; who revealed themselves to us for but a few moments at the end, when they visited Armageddon upon innocents who, trapped in flying bombs, had lived the last moments of their lives with the awful comprehension of their terrible fate? Did the Americans among whom these wraiths wafted during the years of their preparations for death understand that they were looking at and talking to ghosts? Did they sense an already attenuated connection to this earthly vale of the men from whom they collected rent, to whom they handed money through teller’s cages, by whom they were paid for flying lessons, for whom they cooked hamburgers and French fries? Surely, not at the time; surely, the Americans who met them mistook them for fellow humans, unaware that they were already dead; surely, even now, memories jogged and crystallized by bland, depersonalized visa photographs thrown up on television screens, these Americans continue to mistake these faces for the people that they actually met and talked with, rather than the transparent remains of departed souls, long gone to some other plane of existence even as they paid rent, withdrew money from banks, took flying lessons, ate in restaurants. Though mere ghosts, they possessed enough of bodily raiment to pass among us unremarked; though mere ghosts, they possessed a terrible and mighty, indeed an inhuman resolve, which bathed us in the baptism of fire that transformed us, and our engagement with the world.
The survivors, the remnants of families, the mourning human wreckage of the new era: what do they see when they recall these phantoms?
Smoking ruins invade their dreams at night: twisted candy-ribbon steel and concrete-dusted rubble, piled in a jagged jumble with, here and there, specks of human flesh nearly lost in the stony immensity of a million tons of junk. “Alien” does not begin to describe what they see, the word has not yet been invented for what parades before their sleep-screened eyes in the watches of the night. Upon awakening, they attempt to wipe the moonscape images from their conscious minds and only succeed in recalling the day itself, live on drive-time news television, the stages from shock to wonderment to horror to certainty to fear and finally, to rage, alive once more in their heads, emotions replayed and savored even as they are endured and suffered.
Memory, insistent, merciless, scalding, refuses their silent requests for falsity, for substitution, for comfort of misremembrance. It is ever there, in the forefront of the cortex (humankind’s fate and gift and curse), vivid and hectoring, chafing their raw psyches with what was, and so, insistent to the point of cruelty, is, and therefore, shall ever be, for they will never forget their lost ones, their babies and dears and lifemates and lifelong friends, their angels and lovers and fellow journeyers, taken from them in seconds of crushing, flaming cruelty.
The voices of the dying, obscured by the rumble and floor-punching roar of the incredible behemoth of concrete and steel which twice descended into the canyons of lower Manhattan on the morning of September 11th, 2001, and the already dead, who rode the furious wind down with their dying brothers and sisters, call to their bereaved ones, in dreams and in the pitiless light of each passing day. For the living portion, the rememberers, the lightkeepers, the holders of the riven heart, there is no comfort, no peace, but an exhaustion, finally, mercifully, of unbearable pain into something resembling dull ache, a low, steady throb in the hidden chambers of the psyche where grief grooms itself and waits, patiently, for the unguarded moment.
____________________
So, as I write this in October 2003, we have all greeted horror over
the past two years, allowed it to tag along with us as something
of a life’s companion. The results of what has universally
come to be referred to as 9/11 have affected all Americans to one
degree or another, but it is the survivors, of relatives or friends
or even acquaintances who perished on that infamous day, who meet,
battle with and vanquish horror, as it is usually understood, every
day of their waking lives. Such an engagement with mass public
suffering, the sort of encounter with the fruits of human folly
and concerted, dastardly action that survivors all over the world
have experienced with numbing regularity, is now the province of
New Yorkers (as well as the rest of the survivors of the innocent
doomed of that day who met their fates at the Pentagon and Shanksville,
Pennsylvania).
Public and private horror amount to much the same thing: the earth opens up under our lives, we peer into an unknown section of our known universe, abyssal, maw-like, which threatens us, not with an incandescent pyre of destruction, but with a cold, grayed-out ember symbolizing despair and the death of hope. What real horror cannot, and must not, do, is cause those of us whom it touches to make the last, and greatest, abandonment, the final surrender: to make an orphan of caritas, to consign to despair our last holy weapon, love, which in every religious and secular ethos that aspires to truth, is the greatest of the virtues. Indeed, the struggle to maintain love in the face of horror is the only struggle that matters, since after the noise and shouts and tumult of war and strife, we must return to face ourselves, and our enemies, in the same earthly mirror, and the very qualities that sustain us in our rages against the horrors we are confronted with must be ultimately cast aside, if we are not to become the very horrors that we confront.
This is the burden, and the strength, of the human response to suffering, but not just any suffering. The response of a sufferer to a disease process is different in nature, if not in pain, from the response of the survivors, for example, of those mid-20th century place names forever written into the common pages of our culture: Bergen-Belsen, Dachau, Ravensbruck…Oswiecem. The chief difference is the sensation of horror; that which is not only difficult, unfair, debilitating, perhaps ultimately defeating, as in any process of human suffering, but truly unbearable in its ugliness and evil, in its negation of the basic common decencies and goodnesses of which the human character, on its better days, is mostly composed. Horror is something more than disgust or distaste or fear or even dread; it is beyond what the Edwardian English writer Lytton Strachey called “the wicked power of mere accident over happiness and goodness”; horror is primal, unbearable revulsion. It is not sick to one’s stomach – it is sickness unto death.
____________________