". . . we'll tear your soul apart."

Kirsty: "Who are you?"
Lead Cenobite: "Cenobites. Explorers in the further regions of experience. Demons to some. Angels to others."
HELLRAISER (1986/7)

Death made an unexpected visit to our apartment this weekend. One of our three kittens, Sultane by name, sailed out the 3rd-floor (4th floor in USA) living room window and into the Great Beyond on Sunday. The litter originally numbered four kittens but the male has been gone for over a week, adopted by a lovely young woman. Sultane was the only named kitten of the three remaining females, having been christened by a young girl and her mother who were to pick her up at the end of the month. (I no longer name the kittens birthed by Wendy, our fertile female, in order to lessen the attachment factor on my part.) As the cats do not leave the apartment, and the two males are now neutered, this shall not be an issue in the future; nonetheless, I was deeply saddened and moved by the adorable kitten's death yesterday. I was seated at my computer during the morning, and only briefly saw her amazing leap from the floor to what she assumed would be a safe landing on the windowsill. She either underestimated her jumping èlan or overestimated the width of the sill, but my momentary glimpse caught her as she reached free space and sailed downwards, legs outstretched, and I heard, seconds later, the horrifying echo of her arrival on the inner courtyard paving below. She actually survived the fall, there were no compound or obvious fractures, but I feared, rightly, that she was internally injured. After the brief drama of actually getting into the courtyard below (which belongs to a neighborhood pizzeria on the ground floor & it was Sunday morning), I brought her back to the apartment where she slept for several hours, stunned by her experience. Then, awakening, she voided some blood on the floor and I knew it was very bad indeed. She did not cry or miaow, she simply laid there, waiting, it seemed. Shortly afterwards, she rose, walked into another room and began to call as loudly as her little voice could and her family gathered around - her sisters, her parents, an older brother, and we two humans. She briefly turned in a circle, cried once more, and fell over on her side, body seizing in her last moment. Death was swift and, it seemed, without l'agonie, the French concept of the final mortal moment, so pitiful and terrifying to witness. I began to cry, slow tears for the passing of an innocent creature who for a few months amused and delighted us, her first family. I am still depressed and quiet today.

My "regarde ironique" is somewhat lacking today as a result of yesterday's events. I marvel, again, at the animal kingdom's ability(??) to accept death in silence. I have witnessed, over the years, the death of several animals of different species, and all have had in common that calm, quiet acceptance of the inevitable with no histrionics or behavioral difference to mark the moment. I 'wanted' our remaining cats to howl, or exhibit their awareness of Sultane's death in some manner but of course they did not, other than a momentary confusion as to what had become of her presence, although that, too, was soon forgotten. Life goes on and the cats are not troubled by Memory, content to exist with learned behavioral responses to assorted stimuli. Perhaps there is nothing so illustrative of our differences from other members of the animal kingdom as this, nor as illuminating of our anthropomorphism in order to create a rapprochement between "us" and "them". Inevitably, this leads to a small meditation on which method I would prefer for my passing and I wholeheartedly opt for the animal approach. To die quickly, in silence, to go forward to what I hope is the next chapter of 'the Adventure', and my passing only briefly remarked upon, if at all, with an alcohol-soaked and drug-affected fête for a few hours at some convenient future moment.

Lead Cenobite: "No tears, please. It's a waste of good suffering."

In no particular order, over the past week several items have caught my much-amused eye, among them: Morocco Cracks Down On Journalism (Le Monde) (it's a monarchy, folks); Mystery Illness Killing Camels in Saudi Arabia (CNN); British Civics Classes - "What Would Muhammad Do?" (NYTimes); UAE Father, 60, Wants 100 Children (Reuters) (he has 78 already by 15 wives, whom he marries 4 at a time, divorcing the last batch - one must have died or been sterile, n'est-ce pas?); Monster.com Hacked, Millions of Users' Encrypted Data Stolen (BBC); Zimbabwe Inflation Hits 7,638% (BBC) (that's the official figure, more realistically 13,000%, expected to hit 100,000% by the end of the year, with unemployment at 80%; sterling, President Mugabe, just sterling); it goes on and on and humor and irony begin to seep back into my consciousness. Suffering sports a sardonic smile, if nothing else.

I do not know if it is smiling much in Caracas these days, however. I read and hear that El Presidente Chavez wants to be president-for-life down there in 'The Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela', and yes, that is what he has renamed it. Okay, hmmm, let's see - shut down journalism, nationalize your oil industry, stop policing your cities, tinker with your constitution, arbitrarily change your time zone (Reuters) (that one wows me; why on earth change your time zone?? by 1/2 hour??), assume imperial ambitions, um hmm, um hmm, sounds like a go to me, Hugo! One wonders how long the oil companies are going to allow this to go on, doesn't one? There must be some sort of sub-rosa agreed-upon internal time limit sufferance for neo-dictators before someone in Houston or Amsterdam decides "enough is enough" and places a call. As to the policing of cities, there was a related article about a Caracas family that waited 5 hours for the police to show up at the site of their son's murder, only to finally call a taxi to take his body to the morgue as the police had never appeared. They are all busy, no doubt, polishing the Ruritanian regalia recently received from Cartier© for El Presidente. The French would never miss an opportunity like that, believe me; it will be kitsch jewelry trivia in a few years when the regalia disappears and Señor Chavez is living in Switzerland.

Female Cenobite: "We had to hear it from your own lips."

I see that the Vatican has started its own airline (BBC). Using airplanes "borrowed" from an Italian charter company (the planes have already been painted in the papal yellow and white), the Vatican is going to run charters out of Rome to various sites of pilgrimage, fairly close to European "home" for the moment, but to assume larger itineraries in the near future. One can only hope that 'they' will eventually go multi-denominational as well, with a non-stop between Rome and Atlanta to precess to the new, $90M Hindu temple in Auburn, Ga. (CNN), a marvel of its age and a surreal addition to the cultural landscape of Greater Atlanta. I can see the GaneshBurger (soy, naturally) restaurants and Diwali Palace casinos lining the Georgian interstates already. I want to be sipping a cup of coffee in the kitchen of the area resident who first discovers a runaway elephant bathing in his backyard swimming pool; hopefully he will be well-stocked with cocktail peanuts (yes, I know, it was lame & highly previsible). In a just-barely animal & area related story, I see Mr. Vick has copped a plea - and about time. I have nothing to say about all of that other than this: Americans are extremely insane. They pay a man millions of dollars a year to be violent and bloodthirsty and single-mindedly subhuman, and then they are surprised that he is not an enlightened pacifist during his off-time? What is wrong with you people? After all, you created him.

Frank: "I thought I'd gone to the limits. I hadn't. The Cenobites gave me an experience beyond limits... pain and pleasure, indivisible."

The world keeps turning but you have to wonder in which direction. Is it like a Superman gimmick, the world turning in reverse and thus the time flow as well? It seems the blogosphere in Russia has been aflame with the video of two Caucasian men being executed/beheaded by an ultranationalist youth group, said "executions" occurring in front of a large Nazi flag (Le Monde). As well, in the former RDA (East Germany), neo-Nazi youths are regularly terrorizing immigrants, especially Indians, to which the authorities are turning a bored and blind eye. Europe, especially eastern Europe, is undergoing more and more of these hallucinatory shifts to the far, fascist right, and so far the response has been negligible if not nonexistent. Either that, or such vivid fascism simply reflects the underlying growing sentiment of the Silent Majority and thus obviates a lack of response. In Russia, it is a heady mix: high publicity ultranationalists, untrammeled capitalism in a 1920s Chicago-style gangster climate, a Mafia second to none, along with the head gangster, V. Putin, heading firmly back to communist-era dictatorship if not outright imperial autocracy. (Did he and Chavez share a couple of Mai-Tais in Singapore or somewhere and on a bet, one agreed to try it disguised as socialism and the other as 'reformed' capitalism?) Right across the border in Afghanistan, peasants are risking life and limb to get to Shaddle Bazaar, where a farmer's 10 kg. of opium will bring in about $1,400 if he is fortunate (BBC). Poppy cultivation was widely encouraged in the country under Taliban control some years back, one supposes in the hope that there would be an acceleration in the internal rotting process of the West. There are so many problems on the Afghan plate these days, however, that minor carping about poppy production hardly merits a snort of derision much less studied action. I do not particularly care, as I firmly believe that all drug use should be legalized across the board. Let those who want kill themselves, let others enjoy themselves, and others abstain if they wish, but follow through with the basic capitalist premise - put it on the market and let the market decide its value, unaided by false constrictions of "legality/illegality". If it finds a solid, workable niche or if it drastically subsides after an initial boom, so be it. If one were to stop making the criminals rich and the rich criminal, both categories would lose a lot of steam and panache. Plus, said drugs would be pouring from Big Tobacco and government, thus subsidizing the massive fiscal black holes at the hearts of most governments & easing the slide to the "cigarette-less utopias" so fondly dreamed of by the Pollyannas of the world. As I light a cigarette, I think, "C'mon, Pollyanna, you badly need to get laid and get over your cheap self."

In a courtly bow to my fellow countrymen in the USA, I applaud the sheer chutzpah of their vast entrepreneurial vision. The infamous 9/11 attack on NYC is being recast as, actually, a re-urbanizing opportunity sans pareil. With Wall Street heavily damaged after the attack, the realty visionaries saw if for what it was - an opportunity to "tone up" the financial district with high-rent skyscraper condos, ludicrously priced restaurants, and a massive influx of the "essential service industries" such as Hermés and Tiffany's (CNN). "How about that!," crows Mr./Mz. Up&coming Trader, "now I can actually sh*t, eat & sleep in the same place I make money!" If I remember correctly, it seems to me that our forebears, including recent generations, always said "Don't sh*t where you eat or sleep, it doesn't work." New rules for the new reality, I suppose, but I must say it does not impress me, not in the slightest degree.

I sometimes wonder if we should not be worshipping the old gods, the ones that pre-date all of our current crop. There is a fun read on the subject, "American Gods", by Neil Gaiman, (2001), which is fiction with an acerbic bite. No plot synopsis or spoilers here, just a recommendation for those who enjoy a somewhat skewed reading experience. However, the book is full of little bits of wisdom and fun, such as 'twilight is the best time for lying'. I like that, it is very evocative of both the state of twilight and the art of (good) lying. Shadows, stray shafts of illumination, the smoky blend of light & darkness and truth & lies, the flickering existence of crepuscular men and women shifting and sliding into and out of seedy diners and fun house fortunetelling booths. In the old religions, it was a given that the gods lied, they lied all the time and humans knew it, never taking divine word as something immutable, fixed and true. The gods, too, depended on us knowing that they lied, and amusing them with our efforts to get the best deal possible out of a duplicitous deity. If you were lucky, said deity decided to honor his word, if unlucky, not, and if very unlucky, it was honored to the letter, always with catastrophic consequences. Nevertheless, it was a fairly savvy setup, and a young man or woman with a bit of get-up-and-go could, quite possibly, receive a more than fair shake from a thus inclined god or goddess. Given my choice, I must say that I think I would most likely subscribe to the ancient Egyptian mythology/religion/setup. It is reasonably clear, unfailingly just (on a divine timescale), and in its larger, hastily sketched outlines very adaptable to our sensibilities; it is, after all, the birth space for most of modern Christianity's mythology. I, too, would like to spend eternity on my vast Nile-side estate, attended by numerous servitors, breathing the smoke of sacrifice rising from my mortuary temple, sampling the baked goods left on my ka's offering stone, gazing in the cool evening breeze at my surroundings in Amenti and feeling superbly self-satisfied. A cup of date wine and a freshly roasted duck sit on a side table, awaiting my pleasure, and I am assured of my good luck in having had a great roll of the die in the game of Grifting the Gods. (This assumes, of course, that my heart has proved lighter than the Feather of Truth on the divine scales. If it is not, then a quick, gruesome and eternal judgment awaits me in the jaws of Apep.) You could do business with the old gods, not like now with the present puerile crop of fanatics and xenophobes who haven't performed squat-all in far too long. Our own semi-divinity (changing the climate, destroying an entire world, deciding who lives and who dies and with what genetic makeup before they are even born, it is all a pretty heady power trip despite its insanity, wouldn't you say?) has taken the wind out of their over-patched patriarchal sails, and they cavil about our lack of faith! I say, "Fork it up! Deliver something other than an old book and maybe we can do business. Otherwise, I've got a room full of interviewees and only one mythology to fill, so put up or shut up. And don't let the door hit you on your raggedy old ass on the way out!"
Leducdor