A Narrative In Several Parts (pt. III)

Columbine - Doug Nox

De profúndis clamávi ad te, Dómine: Dómine, exáudi vocem meam.

Sometimes I get lost, my thoughts turning in Escher stairwells and the endless reflections of mirrors facing mirrors.  Sometimes I get lost.  It’s alright, I think sometimes to have nowhere in particular to go, somewhere in the deep down of human memory is a time of endless wandering.  It bubbles up, that need to see something I have never seen before, a flower, a beast, to hear a new music or puzzle out a new language.  I can’t get lost in Toronto anymore, I can sleep walk here and still catch every train just as it’s pulling into the station.  It is a trap most cunning, the ennui of familiarity, escape from which requires feats of daring; one can never know the effusive joy of coming home if you never leave to begin with.  You have settled for half a life.  You have let the clothes make the man.

Fiant aures tuae intendéntes: in vocem deprecationis meae.

Columbine wears no mask.  She is the secret you keep, that you are always pretending.  Pretending to be human, pretending to care, hiding your prejudice, your fear, the amoral fire of your desire.  That piece of ass, that bit of acknowledgement that you can humbly disregard. 

Si iniquitátes observaveris, Dómine: Dómine, quis sustinébit.

For a long time I got lost in the endless shanty.  That place in my mind that went on forever.  That crowd of gods.   That denial of permanence, no mind palaces or astral temples over which I might stand as some lord or master, just shanties and lean-to’s, dusted red rust on corrugated aluminium and shit floating in the river.  I found there a girl in pristine white, dress and skin and hair luminous but eyes like crimson.  Like a cartoon vampire or a drunk deep into his cups.  She vibrated with a desire so dark and absolute that the gods of that place cowered before her.  As though getting too close to that absolute hunger would lock them into her gravity and they would be eaten whole by her, like a black hole consuming time and space.  Forever, by definition, cannot have a center and yet there she was, the center of forever, eating it whole.  The gods hide like remorseful children from the penitent soul.

Quia apud te propitiátio est: et propter legem tuam sustinui te, Dómine.

The Anima Sola became an icon for a number of obscure figures.  Clarissa, the adolescent god of the Obeah clothed in the gossamer web of the Spider.  Klemezin Klemay, the child bride of Agwe and sister-wife of Freda and La Siren.  The icon is originally Catholic in origin, the penitential soul of a woman surrounded by the flames of Purgatory, seemingly in an ecstasy.  The icon was often utilized in workings of sexual compulsion or seduction, still is to this day.

Sustinuit ánima mea in verbo ejus: sperávit ánima mea in Dómino.

Not long after that vision Elliot Rodger killed nine people in Santa Barbara.  He was quite clear in his memoir that this monstrous action was rooted in a pervasive and relentless hatred of women that had grown out of their refusal to validate his culturally reinforced sense of entitlement.  The inevitable and depressing debate broke out between feminists and frankly just about everyone else over whether or not this event was symptomatic of a greater widespread form of institutional misogyny.  I thought a lot about that red eyed devil at the center of forever, the fires of the burlesque enshrining her, the god-men hiding their shame from her.  I thought a lot about Columbine’s secret, about my secrets.    

A custodia matutina usque ad noctem: speret Israel in Dómino.

I saw the truth of my desire in her blood red eyes, how it was colored by violence and jealousy and possessiveness.  I was that hellish fire or a part of it at least.  The best man I can be is in truth not a good enough man, I will spend my whole life unmaking the entitlement I was conditioned with and I will fail.  All men, no matter how well-intentioned will fail at some point and in some regard. 

Quia apud Dóminum misericordia: et copiósa apud eum redémptio.

Penitence is forever, it is the center of it.  A black hole eating up time and space.  You have to own it or the gods will have you, better to burn than cherish your pride.    

Et ipse redimet Israel, ex ómnibus iniquitátibus ejus.