Distant Thunder

 

 “We are aberrations—beings born undead, neither one thing nor another, or two things at once … uncanny things that have nothing to do with the rest of creation, horrors that poison the world by sowing our madness everywhere we go, glutting daylight and darkness with incorporeal obscenities."

— Thomas Ligotti

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"Tom O' Bedlam" Norman Lindsay, c. 1918

 

Wilderness. The word itself is music.

Wilderness, wilderness… We scarcely know what we mean by the term, though the sound of it draws all whose nerves and emotions have not yet been irreparably stunned, deadened, numbed by the caterwauling of commerce, the sweating scramble for profit and domination.

Why such allure in the very word? What does it really mean? Can wilderness be defined in the words of government officialdom as simply "A minimum of not less than 5000 contiguous acres of roadless area"? This much may be essential in attempting a definition but it is not sufficient; something more is involved.

Suppose we say that wilderness invokes nostalgia, a justified not merely sentimental nostalgia for the lost America our forefathers knew. The word suggests the past and the unknown, the womb of earth from which we all emerged. It means something lost and something still present, something remote and at the same time intimate, something buried in our blood and nerves, something beyond us and without limit. Romance—but not to be dismissed on that account. The romantic view, while not the whole of truth, is a necessary part of the whole truth.

But the love of wilderness is more than a hunger for what is always beyond reach; it is also an expression of loyalty to the earth, the earth which bore us and sustains us, the only home we shall ever know, the only paradise we ever need—if only we had the eyes to see. Original sin, the true original sin, is the blind destruction for the sake of greed of this natural paradise which lies all around us—if only we were worthy of it.

La Cara de la Guerra

 

Dali painting The Face of War, circa 1940.

Atrocity is recognized as such by victim and perpetrator alike, by all who learn about it at whatever remove. Atrocity has no excuses, no mitigating argument. Atrocity never balances or rectifies the past. Atrocity merely arms the future for more atrocity. It is self-perpetuating upon itself—a barbarous form of incest. Whoever commits atrocity also commits those future atrocities thus bred.

- The Apocrypha of Muad’Dib

The Heat of Noon: Rock and Tree and Cloud

"The sun reigns, I am drowned in light. At this hour, sitting alone at the focal point of the universe, surrounded by a thousand square miles of largely uninhabited no-man’s-land—or all-men’s-land—I cannot seriously be disturbed by any premonitions of danger to my vulnerable wilderness or my all-too-perishable republic. All dangers seem equally remote. In this glare of brilliant emptiness, in this arid intensity of pure heat, in the heart of a weird solitude, great silence and grand desolation, all things recede to distances out of reach, reflecting light but impossible to touch, annihilating all thought and all that men have made to a spasm of whirling dust far out in the golden desert."

 

R.I.P.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

'Borrowed time and borrowed world and borrowed eyes with which to sorrow it.' 

1970

 "I have a disciple in Vietnam who wants to build a stupa for my ashes when I die. He and others want to put a plaque with the words, 'Here lies my beloved teacher.' I told them not to waste the temple land...I suggested that, if they still insist on building a stupa, they have the plaque say,  'I am not in here.' But in case people don’t get it, they could add a second plaque, 'I am not out there either.' If still people don’t understand, then you can write on the third and last plaque, 'I may be found in your way of breathing and walking.'"

 

 

 Look, you had a beautiful friendship. Maybe more than a friendship. And I envy you.

In my place, most parents would hope the whole thing goes away. Pray their sons land on their feet, but... I am not such a parent.

We rip out so much of ourselves to be cured of things faster, that we go bankrupt by the age of thirty and have less to offer each time we start with someone new. But to make yourself feel nothing so as not to feel anything - what a waste.

Have I spoken out of turn? Then I'll say one more thing. It'll clear the air. I may have come close, but I never had what you two have. Something always held me back or stood in the way. How you live your life is your business. Just remember, our hearts and our bodies are given to us only once. And before you know it, your heart is worn out, and, as for your body, there comes a point when no one looks at it, much less wants to come near it. Right now, there's sorrow, pain. Don't kill it and with it the joy you've felt.

“I was pretending that I did not speak their language; on the moon we spoke a soft, liquid tongue, and sang in the starlight, looking down on the dead dried world.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Scratchboard illustration by Thomas Ott

 

1938