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How many of you have seen

www.explodingdog.com

?"

To apply that kid of positive or negative connotation to anything, is not important.

Lovage - Music to make Love to your Old Lady By      is  a side project of Mike Patten ... If the man has anough stamina will kick ass if you can stay through the whole thing

No way, if you are going to listen to Mike Patton while penetrating the gates of Ishtar, than listen to Adult Themes for Voice.

"all of the things of this world are of but one essence, for which there are no words. This is the greater part, which has no beginning and no end."

In the past, I have called this "God".  But even that word fails in communication of that aspect. You can communicate this, but there is little you can do to percieve it. You simple know of it, and see evidence of it, and it is true.

IS.

If one ignores human perceptual notions of positive and negative with regards to the piece we tend to get the impression (like you said zombie) that the writer embraces the darkness...

Positive and Negative exist, to us, because we are a subdivision of the one essence for which there are no words. Each of these things relates to each other, and in these relations positive and negative are formed with the self as a reference point... but the greater truth is that all things are the same.

There is only existence, because there is nothing that does not exist.

On several occasions during deep sleep periods I have experienced what has been variously called satori, the hum, collective memory, etc. All it was however was a senosry overload that existed in total darkness.

I think this thing, you describe, is omnipresent... in this age it is beginning to manfest corporeally, and will continue to do so.  The internet is part of this.  Collective conciousness is a big thing with me.

To remove one's own perceptual mindset from one's thought processes is a frightening experience you lose your identity; something that must be surrendered, but ultimately (i Feel) something that is not supposed to be lost.

Thats very enlightening.
I'm tired, so I'll be brief.

I havent read any P.Dick... but I want to, and I will.







I have a special plan for this world will always have a special place in my heart. I'll have to post the other piece by Tibet that I like (most of his music sucks) when I have the time to do so.

I find, in myself, that my sense of self is in a state of flux. I try to break it down and destroy it, and build it back up again. I repeat the process. I beleive this helps foster understanding, and the ability to adapt,  in my own spirit (ego, ressurection body, avatar, whatver) if you will.  The special plan helps me do this.

I thought you'd like that one, Trollax.

Honestly, I'm not entirely sure what is meant by the piece... but even without complete understanding there is the sense of being overwhelmed. I derive Nihilism from the piece more than anything.

There are no people.
All of the things of this world are of but one essence.
A darkness that existed long before the dark of night, and a strangely shining light that owes nothing to the light of day.

When a damaged brain is filled only with damaged thoughts, and a damaged body is filled only with pain, and exists in world for which there is no special plan.

You get the feeling that the seeker feels as if he is moving beyond, or somehow augmenting and embracing, the nihilism in the piece. No more worlds like this, No more days like that.

It is common for humans to feel powerful and whole, when in fact they are not. They are damaged goods. They are not the whole of everything, they are merely a manifestation of something deeper than that which they percieve. One essence, for which there are no words.

The very words you speak are only its very words.

[I Have A Special Plan For this World]

By posting this, I am revealing to you fellows something that is sacred to me. With the exception of one verse in the middle, this prose is Bad - Ass. I'm transcribing this, so respect it.

Its one song, 20 minutes long. Its terrifying. Its beautiful.


I Have A Special Plan For this World



By David Tibet and Thomas Lighotti

When everyone you have ever loved is finally gone. When everything you have ever wanted is finally done with. When all of your nightmares are for a time obscured as by a shining brainless beacon, or a blinding eclipse of the many terrible shapes of this world. When you are calm and joyful and finally entirely alone, then in a great new darkness you will finally execute your special plan.

"One needs to have a plan", someone said who was turned away into the shadows and I had beleived to be sleeping or dead.

"Imagine", he said, "all the flesh that is eaten. The teeth tearing into it, the tongue tasting its savor and the hunger that taste. Now take away that flesh", he said, "take away the teeth and the tongue the taste and the hunger. Take away everything as it is. That was my plan, my own special plan for this world."

I listened to these words and yet I did not wonder that this creature I had beleived sleeping or dead would ever approach his vision, even in his deepest dreams or his most lasting death. Because I had heard of such plans, such visions, and I knew they did not see far enough. That what was demanded in the way of a plan needed to go beyond tongue and teeth, taste and hunger, beyond the bones and the very dust of bones and the wind that would come to blow the dust away. And so I began to envision a darkness that was long before the dark of night, and a strangely shining light that owed nothing to the light of day.

That day may seem like other days. Once more we feel the tiny legged trepedations, once more we are mangled by a great grinding fear, but that day will have no others after. No more worlds like this will follow, because I have a plan. A very special plan.  No more worlds like this... no more days like that.

"There are but four ways to die", a sardonic spirit might have said to me.
"There is dying that occurs relatively suddenly, there is dying that occurs relatively gradually, there is dying that occurs relatively painlessly, there is the death that is full of pain. Thus by various means they are combined, the sudden and the gradual, the painless and the painful, to yield but four ways to die... and there are no others."

Even after the voice stopped speaking I listened for it to speak again. After hours and days and years had passed, I listened for some further words. And yet all I heard were the faintest echoes remind me "there are no others... there are no others...". Was it then that I began to concieve for this world a special plan?

There are no means for escaping this world that penetrates even into your sleep, and is its substance. You are caught in your own dreaming where there is no space, and are held forever where there is no time. You can do nothing you are not told to do. There is no hope for escape from this dream, that was never yours. The very words you speak are only its very words, and yout talk like a traitor under its incessant torture.

There are many who have designs upon this world and dream of wild and vast reformations. I have heard them talking in their sleep of elegant mutations and cunning annihliations. I have heard them whispering in the corners of crooked houses, and in the alleys and narrow backstreets of this crooked creaking universe. Which they, with their new designs, would make straight and sound. But each of these new and ill concieved designs is deranged in its heart, for they see this world as if it were alone and original... and not as one of only countless others whose nightmares all proceed as a hideous garden grown from a single seed. I have heard these dreamers talking in their sleep, and I stand waiting for them as at the top of a darkened flight of stairs. They know nothing of me, and know none of the secrets of my special plan... while I know every crooked creaking step of theirs.

It was the voice of someone who was waiting in the shadows, who was looking at the moon and waiting for me to turn the corner and enter a narrow street, and stand with him in the dull gaze of moonlight. Then he said to me, he whisphered, that my plan was a mistake. That my special plan for this world was a terrible mistake.  

"because," he said, "there is nothing to do and there is no where to go, there is nothing to be and no one to know."

"your plan is a mistake", he repeated.
"This world is a mistake", I replied

The children always laughed at him, when they saw him hopping by. A funny walk, a funny man. A funny funny funny man. He made them laugh sometimes, he made them laugh oh yes he did he did he did he did he did. Oh how he made them roll. One day he took them to a place he knew, a special place, and told them things about world... this funny funny funny world, which made them laugh sometimes. He made them laugh, oh yes, he did he did he did he did. Oh how he made them roll. Then the funny man who made them  laugh, sometimes he did, revealed to them his special plan his very special funny plan. Knowing they would understand and maybe laugh sometimes. He made them laugh, oh yes he did he did he did he did, their eyes grew wide beneath their lids... and how he made them roll.

I first learned the facts from a lunatic in a dark and quiet room that smelled of stale time/space.

"There are no people, nothing at all like that. The human phenomenon is but the sum of densly coiled layers of illusion each of which winds itself upon the supreme insanity that there are persons of any kind, when all there can be are mindless mirrors laughing and screaming as they parade about in an endless dream."

But when I asked the lunatic what it was that saw itself within these mirrors, he only rocked and smiled, then he laughed and screamed and in his dark and empty eyes I saw for a moment, as if in a mirror, a formless shade of divinity in flight from its stale infinity of time and space, and the worst of all of this worlds dreams. My special plan for the laughter and the screams.

We went to see a little show that was staged in an old shed past the edge of town, and in its beginnings all seemed well. The miniature curtain stage glowed in the darkness while those dulls bounced along on their strings before our eyes. And in its beginnings all seemed well, but then there came a subtle turning point, which some had noticed and I was one... and quietly left the show, though I did not because I could see where things were going. As they antics of those dulls grew strange, and the tiny strings grew taught with the tiny pullings of tiny limbs. I wanted to witness what could never be, I wanted to see what could not be seen... the moment of consumate disaster when puppets turn to face the puppet master.

It was twilight and I stood in the greyish haze of a vast and empty building, when the silence was enriched by a revurberant voice.

"All of the things of this world", it said, "are of but one essence for which there are no words. This is the greater part which has no beginning nor end, and the one essence of this world for which there can be no words is but all the things of this world. This is the lesser part which has a beginning and shall have an end, and for which words were concieved solely to speak of."

" The tiny broken beings of this world, " it said

"The beginnings and endings of this world, " it said

"for which words were concieved solely to speak of. Now removed these words and what remains?" It asked me as I stood in the twilight of that vast empty building, but I did not answer. The question echoed over and over, but I remained silent until the echoes died. And as twilight passed into evening, I felt my special plan for which there are no words, moving towards a greater darkness.

There are some that have no voices, or none that will ever speak, because the things they know about this wold ,
because the things they feel about this world ,
because the thoughts that fill a brain that is a damaged brain,
because the pain that fills a body that is a damaged body,
exist in other worlds, countless other worlds. Each of which stands alone in an infinite empty blackness for which no words have been concieved and where no voices are able to speak. When a brain is filled only with damaged thoughts, when a damaged body is filled only with pain, and stands alone in a world surrounded by infinite empty blackness and exists in a world for which there is no special plan.




(weird)
When everyone you have ever loved is finally gone. When everything you have ever wanted is finally done with. When all of your nightmares are for a time obscured as by a shining brainless beacon, or a blinding eclipse of the many terrible shapes of this world. When you are calm and joyful and finally entirely alone, then in a great new darkness you will finally execute your special plan.

(weirder)
When everyone you have ever loved is finally gone. When everything you have ever wanted is finally done with. When all of your nightmares are for a time obscured as by a shining brainless beacon, or a blinding eclipse of the many terrible shapes of this world. When you are calm and joyful and finally entirely alone, then in a great new darkness you will finally execute your special plan.

If the jesus had a point, I'm afraid the christians missed it.

There are good things in the bible, but its mixed in with a bunch of blatant lies and political propaganda.

I feel the same way about modern satanism (mostly la vey, but crowley as well.)

I used to post on the 600 club forums, but because I didnt agree with them I wasnt very well liked. Modern Satanism is good on one point. It is stupid to neglect yourself by blindly swallowing faith, and it is important to educate and better yourself. Unfortunately the whole philosophy is so blatantly selfish that in the end it becomes a degenerative thing (this is my opinion).

Because I have freed myself from the shackles of blind faith, I am not christian.

But because I am not purely motivated by self interest, or hedonism, I do not agree with the philosophies that have made themselves the antithesis of christian belief. I will not simply shift from one extreme to the other, blindly or otherwise, as many have done.

So there is all of that which falls in between, or rather outside.



It seems to me, that the best thing to do, is to look around you and figure it out for yourself. If you want to be a spiritual person it becomes necessary to become your own prophet. If christianity teaches people to beware of false prophets, in the end it would be necessary to do this anyway in order to be a "proper" christian (thats the personal definition of proper, not the collective one).



I have come to believe that all faiths are wrong, and all of them correct, just not at the same time.

If there is such a thing as one omnipresent, omniscient, and omnipotent force... then the pathways to understanding that force would exist in all theologies and philosophies, but because human beings are so small minded (literally) they seem to lack the ablity to focus on more than one thing at a time.

Silly monkeys.

So there, you have the number 1. This is the whole of the thing.
If you divide the number into pieces, you get fractions. Anything that isnt everything is a fraction. I am a fraction, you are a fraction.

Each fraction relates to the whole differently, if you multiply different fractions times one... you get the fraction. Our worlds begin and end within our own perception.

But that wont prevent us from relating to each other. When you multiply fractions by fractions... you get different fractions. When you add, divide and subtract... they all turn out differently.

There are a lot of places I could go with this, but this post is getting long, and I'd prefer to leave it open ended.

This is a story by thomas lighotti... enjoy!




Before there occurred anything of a truly prodigious nature, the season had manifestly erupted with some feverish intent. This, at least, was how it appeared to us, whether we happened to live in town or somewhere outside its limits. (And traveling between town and countryside was Mr. Marble, who had been studying the seasonal signs far longer and in greater depth than we, disclosing prophecies that no one would credit at the time.) On the calendars which hung in so many of our homes, the monthly photograph illustrated the spirit of the numbered days below it: sheaves of cornstalks standing brownish and brittle in a newly harvested field, a narrow house and wide barn in the background, a sky of empty light above, and fiery leafage frolicking about the edges of the scene. But something dark, something abysmal always finds its way into the bland beauty of such pictures, something that usually holds itself in abeyance, some entwining presence that we always know is there. And it was exactly this presence that had gone into crisis, or perhaps had been secretly invoked by small shadowy voices calling out in the midst of our dreams. There came a bitter scent into the air, as of sweet wine turning to vinegar, and there was an hysteric brilliance flourished by the trees in town as well as those in the woods beyond, while along the roads between were the intemperate displays of thorn-apple, sumac, and towering sunflowers that nodded behind crooked roadside fences. Even the stars of chill nights seemed to grow delirious and take on the tints of an earthly inflammation. Finally, there was a moonlit field where a scarecrow had been left to watch over ground that had long been cleared yet would not turn cold.

Adjacent to the edge of town, the field allowed full view of itself from so many of our windows. It lay spacious beyond tilting fence-posts and under a bright round moon, uncluttered save for the peaked silhouettes of corn shocks and a manlike shape that stood fixed in the nocturnal solitude. The head of the figure was slumped forward, as if a grotesque slumber had overtaken its straw-stuffed body, and the arms were slackly extended in a way that suggested some incredible gesture toward flight. For a moment it seemed to be an insistent wind which was flapping those patched-up overalls and fluttering the worn flannel of those shirt-sleeves; and it would seem a forceful wind indeed which caused that stitched-up head to nod in its dreams. But nothing else joined in such movements: the withered leaves of the cornstalks were stiff and unstirring, the trees of the distant woods were in a lull against the clear night. Only one thing appeared to be living where the moonlight spread across that dead field. And there were some who claimed that the scarecrow actually raised its arms and its empty face to the sky, as though declaring itself to the heavens, while others thought that its legs kicked wildly, like those of a man who is hanged, and that they kept on kicking for the longest time before the thing collapsed and lay quiet. Many of us, we discovered, had been nudged from our beds that night, called as witnesses to this obscure spectacle. Afterward, the sight we had seen, whatever we believed its reason, would not rest within us but snatched at the edges of our sleep until morning.

And during the overcast hours of the following day we could not keep ourselves from visiting the place around which various rumors had hastily arisen. As pilgrims we wandered into that field, scrutinizing the debris of its harvest for augural signs, circling that scarecrow as if it were a great idol in shabby disguise, a sacred avatar out of season. But everything upon that land seemed unwilling to support our hunger for revelation, and our congregation was lost in fidgeting bemusement. (With the exception, of course, of Mr. Marble, whose eyes, we recall, were gleaming with illuminations he could not offer us in any words we would understand.) The sky had hidden itself behind a leaden vault of clouds, depriving us of the crucial element of pure sunlight we needed to fully burn off the misty dreams of the past night. And a vine-twisted stone wall along the property line of the farm was the same shade as the sky, while the dormant vines themselves were as colorless as the stone they enmeshed like a strange network of dead veins. But this calculated grayness was merely an aspect of the scene, for the colors of the abundant woods along the margins of the landscape were undulled, as if those radiant leaves possessed some inner source of illumination or stood in contrast to some deeper shadow which they served to mask.

Such conditions no doubt impeded our efforts to come to terms with our fears about that particular field. Above all these manifestations, however, was the fact that the earth of those harvested acres, especially in the area surrounding the scarecrow, was unnaturally warm for the season. It seemed, in fact, that a late harvest was due. And some insisted that the odd droning noises that filled the air could not be blamed on the legion of local cicadas but indeed rose up from under the ground.

By the time of twilight, only a few stragglers remained in the field, among them the old farmer who owned this suddenly notorious acreage. We knew that he shared the same impulse as the rest of us when he stepped up to his scarecrow and began to tear the impostor to pieces. Others joined in the vandalism, pulling out handfuls of straw and stripping away the clothes until they had exposed what lay beneath them -- the strange and unexpected sight.

For the skeleton of the thing should have been merely its two crosswise planks. We verified this common fact with its maker, and he swore that no other materials had been used. Yet the shape that stood before us was of a wholly different nature. It was something black and twisted into the form of a man, something that seemed to have come up from the earth and grown over the wooden planks like a dark fungus, consuming the structure. There were now black legs that hung as if charred and withered; there was a head that sagged like a sack of ashes upon a meager body of blackness; and there were thin arms stretched out like knobby branches from a lightning-scorched tree. All of this was supported by a thick, dark stalk which rose out of the earth and reached into the effigy like a hand into a puppet.

And even as that dull day was dimming into night, our vision was distracted by the profounder darkness of the thing which dangled so blackly in the dusk. Its composition appeared to be of the blackest earth, of earth that had gone stagnant somewhere in its depths, where a rich loam had festered into a bog of shadows. Soon we realized that each of us had fallen silent, entranced by a deep blackness which seemed to absorb our sight but which exposed nothing to scrutiny except an abyss in the outline of a man. Even when we ventured to lay our hands on that mass of darkness, we found only greater mysteries. For there was almost no tangible aspect to it, merely a hint of material sensation, barely the feel of water. It seemed to possess no more substance than a few shifting flames, but flames of only the slightest warmth, black flames that have curled together to take on the molten texture of spoiled fruit. And there was a vague sense of circulation, as though a kind of serpentine life swirled gently within. But no one could stand to keep his hold upon it for long before stepping suddenly away.

"Damn the thing, it's not going to be rooted to my land," said the old farmer. Then he walked off toward the barn. And like the rest of us he was trying to rub something from the hand that had touched the shriveled scarecrow, something that could not be seen.

He returned to us with an armory of axes, shovels, and other implements for uprooting what had grown upon his land, this eccentricity of the harvest. It would seem to have been a simple task: the ground was unusually soft all around the base of that black growth and its tenuous substance could hardly resist the wide blade of the farmer's ax. But when the old man swung and tried to split the thing like a piece of firewood, the blade would not cleave. The ax entered and was closed upon, as if sunk within a viscous mire. The farmer pulled at the handle and managed to dislodge the ax, but he immediately let it fall from his hands. "It was pulling back on me," he said in a low voice. "And you heard that sound." Indeed, the sound which had haunted the area all that day -- like innumerable insects laughing -- did seem to rise in pitch and intensity when the thing was struck.

Without a word, we began digging up the earth where that thick black stalk was buried. We dug fairly deep before the approaching darkness forced us to abandon our efforts. Yet no matter how far down we burrowed, it was not far enough to reach the bottom of that sprouting blackness. Furthermore, our attempts became hindered by a perverse reluctance, as in the instance of someone who is hesitant to have a diseased part of his own body cut away in order to keep the disease from spreading.

It was nearly pitch dark when we finally walked away from that field, for the clouds of that day had lingered to hide the moon. In the blackness our voices whispered various strategies, so that we might yet accomplish what we had thereto failed in doing. We whispered, although none of us would have said why he did so.

The great shadow of a moonless night encompassed the landscape, preserving us from seeing the old farmer's field and what was tenanted there. And yet so many of the houses in town were in vigil throughout those dark hours. Soft lights shone through curtained windows along the length of each street, where our trim wooden homes seemed as small as dollhouses beneath the dark rustling depths of the season. Above the gathered roofs hovered the glass globes of streetlamps, like little moons set inside the dense leaves of elms and oaks and maples. Even in the night, the light shining through those leaves betrayed the festival of colors seething within them, blazing auras which had not faded with the passing days, a plague of colors that had already begun to infect our dreams. This prodigy had by then become connected in our minds with that field just outside of town and the strange growth which there had taken root.

Thus, a sense of urgency led us back to that place, where we found the old farmer waiting for us as the frigid aurora of dawn appeared above the distant woods. Our eyes scanned the frost-powdered earth and studied every space among shadows and corn shocks spread out over the land, searching for what was no longer present in the scene. "Gone into the earth like something hiding in its shell. Don't walk there," he warned, pointing to the mouth of a wide pit.

We gathered about the edge of this opening in the ground, gazing into its depths. Even full daybreak did not show us the bottom of that dark well. Our speculations were brief and useless. Some of us picked up the shovels lying nearby, as if to begin the long duty of filling in the great aperture. "No use in that," said the farmer. He then found a large stone and dropped it straight down the shaft. We waited and waited; we put our heads close to the hole and listened. But all we seemed to hear were remote, droning echoes, as of countless voices of insects chattering unseen. Finally, we covered the hazardous pit with some boards and buried the makeshift enclosure under a mound of soft dirt. "Maybe there'll be some change in the spring," someone said. But the old farmer only chuckled. "You mean when the ground warms up? Why do you think those leaves aren't falling the way they should?"

It was not long after this troubling episode that our dreams, which formerly had been the merest shadows and glimpses, swelled into full phase. Yet they must not have been dreams entirely, but also excavations into the season which had inspired them. In sleep we were consumed by the feverish life of the earth, cast among a ripe, fairly rotting world of strange growths and transformation. We took a place within a darkly flourishing landscape where even the air was ripened into ruddy hues and everything wore the wrinkled grimace of decay, the mottled complexion of old flesh. The face of the land itself was knotted with so many other faces, ones that were corrupted by vile impulses. Grotesque expressions were molding themselves into the darkish grooves of ancient bark and the whorls of withered leaf; pulpy, misshapen features peered out of damp furrows; and the crisp skin of stalks and dead seeds split into a multitude of crooked smiles. All was a freakish mask painted with russet, rashy colors -- colors that bled with a virulent intensity, so rich and vibrant that things trembled with their own ripeness. But despite this gross palpability, there remained something spectral at the heart of those dreams. It moved in shadow, a presence that was in the world of solid forms but not of it. Nor did it belong to any other world that could be named, unless it was that realm which is suggested to us by an autumn night when fields lay ragged in moonlight and some wild spirit has entered into things, a great aberration sprouting forth from a chasm of moist and fertile shadows, a hollow-eyed howling malignity rising to present itself to the cold emptiness of space and the pale gaze of the moon.

And it was to that moon we were forced to look for comfort when we awoke trembling in the night, overcome by the sense that another life was taking root within us, seeking its ultimate incarnation in the bodies we always dreamed were our own and inviting us into the depths of an extraordinary harvest.

Certainly there was some relief when we began to discover, after many insecure hints and delvings, that the dreams were not a sickness restricted to solitary individuals or families but in fact were epidemic throughout the community. No longer were we required to disguise our uneasiness as we met on the streets under the luxuriant shadows of trees that would not cast off their gaudy foliage, the mocking plumage of a strange season. We had become a race of eccentrics and openly declared an array of curious whims and suspicions, at least while daylight allowed this audacity.

Honored among us was one old fellow, well known for his oddities, who had anticipated our troubles weeks beforehand. As he wandered about town, wheeling the blade-sharpening grindstone by which he earned his living, Mr. Marble had spoken of what he could "read in the leaves," as if those fluttering scraps of lush color were the pages of a secret book in which he perused gold and crimson hieroglyphs. "Just look at them," he urged passersby, "bleeding their colors like that. They should be bled dry, but now they're. . .making pictures. Something inside trying to show itself. They're as dead as rags now, look at them all limp and flapping. But something's still in there. Those pictures, do you see them?"

Yes, we saw them, though somewhat belatedly. And they were not seen only in the chromatic designs of those deathless leaves. They could show themselves everywhere, if only briefly. Upon a cellar wall there might appear an ill-formed visage among the damp and fractured stones, a hideous impersonation of a face infiltrating the dark corners of our homes. Other faces, leprous masks, would arise within the grain of paneled walls or wooden floors, spying for a moment before sinking back into the knotty shadows, withdrawing below the surface. And there were so many nameless patterns that might spread themselves across the boards of an old fence or the side of a shed, engravings all tangled and wizened like a subterranean craze of roots and tendrils, an underworld riot of branching convolutions, gnarled ornamentations. Yet these designs were not unfamiliar to us . . . for in them we recognized the same outlines of autumnal decay that illuminated our dreams.

Like the old visionary who sharpened knives and axes and curving scythes, we too could now read the great book of countless colored leaves. But still he remained far in advance of what was happening deep within us all. For it was he who manifested certain idiosyncrasies of manner that would have later appeared in so many others, whether they lived in town or somewhere outside its limits. Of course, he had always set himself apart from us by his waywardness of speech, his willingness to utter pronouncements of dire or delightful curiosity. To a child he might say: "The sight of the night can fly like a kite," while someone older would be told: "Doesn't have arms, but it knows how to use them. Doesn't have a face, but it knows where to find one."

Nevertheless, he plied his trade with every efficiency, pedaling the mechanism that turned the grindstone, expertly honing each blade and taking his pay like any man of business. Then, we noticed, he seemed to become distracted in his work. In a dull trance he touched metal implements to his spinning wheel of stone, careless of the sparks that flew into his face. Yet there was also a wild luminousness in his eyes, as of a diamond-bright fever burning within him. Eventually we found ourselves unable to abide his company, though we now attributed this merely to some upsurge in his perennial strangeness rather than to a wholly unprecedented change in his behavior. It was not until he no longer appeared on the streets of town, or anywhere else, that we admitted our fears about him.

And these fears necessarily became linked to the other disruptions of that season, those extravagant omens which were gaining force all around us. The disappearance of Mr. Marble coincided with a new phenomenon, one that finally became apparent in the twilight of a certain day when all the clustering and tenacious foliage seemed to exude a vague phosphorescence. By nightfall this prodigy was beyond skepticism. The multicolored leaves were softly glowing against the black sky, creating an untimely nocturnal rainbow which scattered its spectral tints everywhere and dyed the night with a harvest of hues: peach gold and pumpkin orange, honey yellow and winy amber, apple red and plum violet. Luminous within their leafy shapes, the colors cast themselves across the darkness and were splattered upon our streets and our fields and our faces. Everything was resplendent with the pyrotechnics of a new autumn.

That night we kept to our houses and watched at our windows. It was no marvel, then, that so many of us saw the one who wandered that iridescent eve, who joined in its outbursts and celebrations. Possessed by the ecstasies of a dark festival, he moved in a trance, bearing in his hand a great ceremonial knife whose keen edge flashed a thousand glittering dreams. He was standing alone beneath trees whose colors shined upon him, staining his face and his tattered clothes. He was seen standing alone in the yards of our houses, a rigid scarecrow concocted from a patchwork of colors and shadows. He was seen stalking slow and rhythmically beside high wooden fences that were now painted with a quivering colored glow. Finally, he was seen at a certain intersection of streets at the center of town; but now, as we saw, he was no longer alone.

Confronting him in the open night were two figures whom none of us knew: a young woman and, held tightly by her side, a small boy. We were not unaccustomed to strangers walking the streets of our town, or even stopping by one of the surrounding farms -- people who were passing through, some momentarily lost. And it was not too late in the evening for some travelers to appear, not really late at all. But they should not have been there, those two. Not on that night. Now they stood transfixed before a creature of whom they could have no conception, a thing that squeezed the knife in its hand the way the woman was now squeezing the small boy. We might have taken action but did not; we might have made an effort to help them. But the truth is that we wanted something to happen to them -- we wanted to see them silenced. Such was our desire. Only then would we be sure that they could not tell what they knew. Our fear was not what those intruders might have learned about the trees that glowed so unnaturally in the night; or about the chittering noises that now began rising to a pitch of vicious laughter; or even about the farmer's field where a mound of dirt covered a bottomless hole. Our fear was what they might have known, what they must certainly have discovered, about us.

And we lost all hope when we saw the quaking hand that could not raise the knife, the tortured face that could only stare while those two terrible victims -- the rightful sacrifice! -- ran off to safety, never to be seen by us again. After that we turned back to our houses, which now reeked of moldering shadows, and succumbed to a dreamless sleep.

Yet at daybreak it became evident that something had indeed happened during the night. The air was silent, everywhere the earth was cold. And the trees now stood bare of leaves, all of which lay dark and withered upon the ground, as if their strangely deferred dying had finally overtaken them in a sudden rage of mortification. Nor was it long before Mr. Marble was discovered by an old farmer.

The corpse reposed in a field, stretched face-down across a mound of dirt and alongside the remains of a dismantled scarecrow. When we turned over the body we saw that its staring eyes were as dull as that ashen autumn morning. We also saw that its left arm had been slashed by the knife held in its right hand.

Blood had flowed over the earth and blackened the flesh of the suicide. But those of us who handled that limp, nearly weightless body, dipping our fingers into the dark wound, found nothing at all that had the feeling of blood. We knew very well, of course, what that shadowy blackness did feel like; we knew what had found its way into the man before us, dragging him down into its savage world. His dreams had always reached deeper than ours. So we buried him deep in a bottomless grave.

THOMAS LIGHOTTI

But the way people aproach things is based on both there situation and who they are neither of whitch they choose, now you might claim that they do choose who they are and they do choose there situation, but those choices all stem from there situation and themselves, which stem's from there situation and themselves, and so on and so forth.

No offense, but...RUBBISH! (John Cleese voice)  We are all motivated by the same basic drives...however, how we respond to those drives is entirely a matter of choice.  We have drives, not instincts.  Instincts cannot be disobeyed, drives can.

Otherwise, the entire human population would act just like Hitler.

Heh... its the Gom Jabbar.

Were all motivated by the same things when it comes down to it, nobody is a monster none of those you named are exceptions.

I disagree, but I approach this from a different standpoint.

Yes, humans are all motivated by essentially the same thing, and thats self preservation and interest. But there are distinguishing characteristics about how people approach it, and how much they look out for other people as well as themselves.

Because I am opinionated, and believe myself to have a small grasp of what is "right" and "wrong" according to my own ethics/morality/honor... I reserve the right to apply the label "monster" to anything that grossly defies that.

Funny, how I'd apply that label to my countries own leader for helping turn that nation into a theocracy.

I dont think sadam is any more evil or a monster than any one of us... i iknow im gonna be accused of naievity (sp) etc but wth i just dont think anyone is...

Oh, monsters exist, all right.  Hitler, Mussolini, Tojo, Hussien...they're out there.  The problem is, SH hasn't attacked us, and who made us the world's cop?

We have problems of our own.

Exactly.

I dont think sadam is any more evil or a monster than any one of us... i iknow im gonna be accused of naievity (sp) etc but wth i just dont think anyone is...

nah, saddam is pretty bad. When shiite muslims confronted him about some issues at one of his conferences he nonchalantly ordered them taken outside and shot. This was televised.

Yes, it was anti-iraq propaganda... but that sort of stuff is difficult to fake.

I might not support going to war with him, but he's still a dickhead.

I just think its stupid that the US is trying to delude itself into thinking its some kind of moral/ethical authority. Its not, nor does it need to be.

Are you suggesting that we have all the authority we need because we CAN?

Not exactly. I just notice how the people in politics who use morality and ethics as the basis of their standpoint are full of shit. Morality and Ethics has absolutely nothing to do with politics for these people, its just a tool that they use to manipulate the masses into self righteousness.

It had just occured to me that the united states remains blissfully ignorant about a lot of things. When september 11th happen we were urged not to let the terrorists win, not to change. Thats a little fucked up, because change is necessary. We need to understand why these people hate us enough to destroy our buildings, the american people NEED to know WHY things happen rather than just trusting to government to blow up the people responsible. So we go on, not understanding why the rest of the world hates us, secure in the belief that we are absolutely right and that anyone who isnt with us is against us.

Americans are arrogant and self righteous, and so are our politicians. Worse yet, americans are dishonest with themselves about all of this, they blame the rest of the world rather than looking inward and examining themselves.

If france wont support us, they support terrorism... etc

So what we have done, is gone on a vindictive rampage in the middle east, without understanding or educating ourselves to why the initial event happened in the first place. We pump ourselves up by buying flags, and patriotic T-shirts, and our president does everything his power to paint our enemies as the true form of evil (he's really colorful about that). So we get all pumped up on that too, because that makes us righteous.

Its disgusting.

I just think its stupid that the US is trying to delude itself into thinking its some kind of moral/ethical authority. Its not, nor does it need to be.

You know, I'm not totally against the war on Iraq.

For one, I dont like Saddam Hussein.
For two, if this war is about economic power and oil... I dont feel like I have a problem with it.

What I have a problem with is the fact that A: our leader is an idiot and B: americans are selfish and self deluded.

If you drop bombs on a country, and then say that its because that country is run by a dictator who supports terrorism... what do you do about all of the other fascist states that exist in this day and age? Are we (americans) going to personally improve the way of life in the middle east... or how about africa/south america/asia/everywhere else in the 3rd world. Thats stupid, its not even a believable lie.

How about this? We (americans) drop bombs on Iraq and actually admit that its about Oil and Power. I'd be down for that, its not dishonest at all. If we're going to improve our status as world power, and take out some asshole, thats fine with me... but I wont support it if I'm being lied to and abused (Like I am.)

Thats how I feel right now.