Dear diary,
Dia tried to escape again today. As I spoon-fed her the sea monkey and miso broth soup from the silver platter that she seems to like so much, she grabbed the spoon with her teeth and repeatedly tried to stab me with the handle, madly swinging her head around, growling through her clenched teeth. By the time I came back with the oven mits, she had nearly sawn through her restraints using the edge of the spoon that had been roughened by her biting. Clever, but the mits enabled me to take back the spoon while remaining relatively unscathed.
I'll have to buy chains tomorrow as she's nearly ruined the pretty leather restraints. I thought moving her from the garage to the linen closet would offer enough discouragement to dissuade her from making these attempts, yet she persists. Doesn't she understand that I'm just trying to propel her into enlightenment, that I'm a Bodhisattva in demon's clothing?
There's a scene in _Illuminatus_ where Hagbard Celine is holding a gun to Harry Coin's head and threatening to shoot him. At first, Harry tries to weasel his way out of getting shot, shaking, twitching, and sweating the whole time, employing various manipulation tactics to attempt to convince Hagbard not to shoot him. But Hagbard persists, dodging Harry's negotiations, as calmly as if he were sitting on a pillow, meditating in a temple. Eventually, Harry reevaluates his predicament and realizes that he's fucked. As he does this, he starts looking inward... he looks at his current situation, his life, and himself honestly, perhaps for the first time, and decides to fully accept that these may be his last moments on Earth.
And then he realizes that he's never let anyone fuck him like this before, so why should he start now. While he can't change the fact that Hagbard is a hairtrigger away from blowing out his brains, he *can* change his own reaction to the situation... he still has personal power and autonomy. The gun at his head severely limits his radius of action, but he still has choice. Really, this moment is no different from any other moment in his life because in a very real way his entire life has taken place at gunpoint. So he relaxes... completely. He stops shaking and sweating, he stops trying to talk himself out of the situation, he drops the nervous, wide-toothed grin and instead relaxes into a placid, un-emotive face. His shoulders drop, and then he's sitting in a chair... just sitting in a chair, as calmly as Siddhartha listening to the river or Hitler incinerating the unwashed.
He is no longer a master's slave, but a king.
The full scene is more elaborate than that, of course. It's the climax of one of the hundreds of narrative threads in the book, but I think it's one of the more profound ones, and one of the most dramatic illustrations of the inviolability of personal sovereignty and the value of extreme circumstances in bringing about the realization of its existence.
*sigh*
Maybe some day she'll understand.
Dia tried to escape again today. As I spoon-fed her the sea monkey and miso broth soup from the silver platter that she seems to like so much, she grabbed the spoon with her teeth and repeatedly tried to stab me with the handle, madly swinging her head around, growling through her clenched teeth. By the time I came back with the oven mits, she had nearly sawn through her restraints using the edge of the spoon that had been roughened by her biting. Clever, but the mits enabled me to take back the spoon while remaining relatively unscathed.
I'll have to buy chains tomorrow as she's nearly ruined the pretty leather restraints. I thought moving her from the garage to the linen closet would offer enough discouragement to dissuade her from making these attempts, yet she persists. Doesn't she understand that I'm just trying to propel her into enlightenment, that I'm a Bodhisattva in demon's clothing?
There's a scene in _Illuminatus_ where Hagbard Celine is holding a gun to Harry Coin's head and threatening to shoot him. At first, Harry tries to weasel his way out of getting shot, shaking, twitching, and sweating the whole time, employing various manipulation tactics to attempt to convince Hagbard not to shoot him. But Hagbard persists, dodging Harry's negotiations, as calmly as if he were sitting on a pillow, meditating in a temple. Eventually, Harry reevaluates his predicament and realizes that he's fucked. As he does this, he starts looking inward... he looks at his current situation, his life, and himself honestly, perhaps for the first time, and decides to fully accept that these may be his last moments on Earth.
And then he realizes that he's never let anyone fuck him like this before, so why should he start now. While he can't change the fact that Hagbard is a hairtrigger away from blowing out his brains, he *can* change his own reaction to the situation... he still has personal power and autonomy. The gun at his head severely limits his radius of action, but he still has choice. Really, this moment is no different from any other moment in his life because in a very real way his entire life has taken place at gunpoint. So he relaxes... completely. He stops shaking and sweating, he stops trying to talk himself out of the situation, he drops the nervous, wide-toothed grin and instead relaxes into a placid, un-emotive face. His shoulders drop, and then he's sitting in a chair... just sitting in a chair, as calmly as Siddhartha listening to the river or Hitler incinerating the unwashed.
He is no longer a master's slave, but a king.
The full scene is more elaborate than that, of course. It's the climax of one of the hundreds of narrative threads in the book, but I think it's one of the more profound ones, and one of the most dramatic illustrations of the inviolability of personal sovereignty and the value of extreme circumstances in bringing about the realization of its existence.
*sigh*
Maybe some day she'll understand.
VIEW 6 of 6 COMMENTS
dia:
You sure you aren't a demon in Boddhisatva's clothing?
goatlove:
I haven't yet determined which one I want to be...