The Gatekeepers

They stand vigilant at the portal, ready to strike down those who would blaspheme, ready to reward those who have meekly awaited their turn at the trough. They are fed themselves by the beast, they bear the scars of their tainted fare, and for suffering, they have taken their place in the hierarchy and now sit in judgment on the lonely scribe who places no filter between his thoughts and the page.

They lurk at the edge of the public agora, huddled, sweating, neurotic, murderous, jealous, obsessed, deranged, desperate, obsequious, knowing the end is near, but unable to pull out of the gyres spinning them madly counter clockwise into greater acts of folly.

They sit at the gates of hell. If you pass through the portals your fate is sealed, you are thrown into the Hades, or to a sisyphian fate, endlessly pushing a boulder up a slope for the sin of pride - daring to think you had genius. Daring to think you had anything to say. Finally, daring to think at all.

They are our leaders, the culterati, talibanistic, subsidized throat cutters. Fear them, as you would fear fear itself. Seek their reprobation, smile at their ostracizing, welcome their opprobrium. Then turn the eye away and look at life itself, at everything it has to offer, provided you are willing to embrace it alone.

The Amoral Writer

Those who have made the leap into what a writer truly is – an amoral scribe of his times – are not devoid of a conventional humanity. All that of course has to be extinguished insofar as possible. There's a price, as the realization grows of what he should be doing and writing. The best and the strongest – like Cendrars – leave the world to wonder and gaze at the sidereal tracks they have left behind. As for his basic humanity – his eldest son, Odile, showed up at his door after a seventeen year absence. It was during the war, and if the father was penniless, the son lacked even a roof over his head. “I cannot help you, you are not staying with me,” was the response of the son, and no amount of begging could change his mind. In a later letter, he defended his refusal to pay any money for the support of his children. “They will see one day that I am their best friend”. There is no-one we can count on, and there is no one who can rely on us. Everything changes, mutates, extinguishes, regenerates. The rest, all of it, is the eternal stupidity, the cretinism that binds us together, the brick and mortar of our dense mortal minds, as we huddle together in the slaughterhouse, hoping desperately for a last minute reprieve.