Speak Memory!…Memory? Where did you end up now? Ah, there you are, asleep, as usual. Well, I have some news for you, you kept me up all night, now it is your turn to be awake, when all you really want is to dip into the warm waters of Lethe and soak in the oblivion.
Speak Memory! Take me back in time; take me back to the darkness; take me back to the shadowy veil that hung over the turn of the millennium. The years leading up to 2000, in the cold and desolate plains of Alberta. I would go to Sanctuary, that blackened book store, appropriately off Whyte avenue. Ah, such a lovely shop. Come for the incense, stay for the Tantric Sex Magick.
The books in that store were varied and bizarre. I found books by Alistair Crowley, a book titled Packs With the Devil, HP Lovecraft, the Necronomicon, all the classics. Dreams of Terror and Death, a collection of HP Lovecraft’s Dream Cycle, is the first of those books that really hooked me. That is the book that explains the darkness found in my early writing. It was the justification for my perceived depression and melancholy.
It is funny to look back, now, in my current condition, and see the melodramatic rantings of the over-privileged youth in North America. Only the most privileged of individuals could afford to call down Melancholy and Despair with such blind abandon. The truth is this: those who truly suffer don’t really have time for those evil warlocks Melancholy or Sadness. That is a bit of a paradox, but it is true.
Let me explain, if I might, exactly what I mean: the most difficult times I spent during this whole cancer and surgery ordeal, passed fairly easily, because my mind was on staying alive, on recovering, on eating my next meal and getting enough rest. You don’t have time to expound to the world your woe; there is no time for feeling sorry for yourself. Your woe barely even raises its head. While you lie in a hospital bed, your guts stapled together under your gown, you just focus on getting through the moment; you focus on getting your meal down; you follow your doctor’s orders and you just try to survive. That is the truth of it. Too tired to be tired. Too sick to be sick.
It is a little funny that the Darkness is the realm of the healthy and the boring. That was me, back in the 90s, wandering into Sanctuary, looking for the keys to mystical places and fantastic worlds. I never found them. Packs with the Devil turned out to be a poorly written attempt at profundity and mysticism; Crowley turned out to be just another tripped out dope fiend; and Lovecraft turned out to be just another obscure pulp fiction writer. So it is, that never stopped me from skipping down the dark forest path with wild abandon, just wishing I had a real reason to be depressed, just wishing I was truly possessed by a Dark Fiend from the nether regions. Sadly (luckily?), for me, for him, that was not to be the case.
Time passes, and we learn that we don’t really have a reason to be sad, as well as, sad should simply be our default state. Whichever takes hold of you will do what it will, but the truth is we are lucky. Take it from me, the guy who will likely die 20 or 30 years before he should: Being born is a stroke of luck that, regardless of what torture and suffering you are forced to endure, is unmatched. Camus was right, even Sisyphus must have had a laugh as he followed his stone back down the mountain he had just rolled it up.
Suicide is such a tragedy for me these days. When I see the word in my own writings I want to slap that kid upside the head. Suicide, were he personified, is an evil dick who has spent too much time in the lives of people I know in the past few years. It is sad to see those people go and it is all the more sad for me, now that going is the one thing I am truly fighting against these days. The truth is I feel blessed today. I am happy for every moment I get. I am thrilled each time I forget, for just a moment, that I am still 50lbs lighter than I should be, and the reason I am tired is that doctors have mainlined poison into my veins. Be happy folks, be appreciative, enjoy the little things and recognize how lucky we truly are in this the foul year of our lord 2022, in this flawed but fortunate country we live in, Canada. Salut!
The image below is a composite of a picture I took in Turkey in the ruins of Troy, and a night shot from, I believe, Slave Lake Alberta.
there is beauty in clarity, in spite of it's plank-like hit to the back of the head. Sadly we often don't realize or only temporarily are able to sustain those ideas and then fall back into despair, sadness, all the while the sun shines brightly, the stars beam down for our pleasure. In defence of our societal woes, the stagnation of spirit is complex, learned and always capable of rewiring. Thanks for today Todd.