The Enchanted Negro’s Head

Unrelated to the previous post…

The Red Book (Liber Novus)

Sitting bored at work today, I was perusing Google News when I came across this article:

The Holy Grail of the Subconscious

It’s a lengthy read, but one that completely fascinated me. I’ve always been a fan of Carl Jung and his dream analysis, but I’d never heard of the “mythical” Red Book–an illuminated manuscript, bound in red leather, that he himself claimed was his greatest work. It has never been visible to the public at large and has never been studied by academia–it took a tremendous amount of diplomacy to convince the Jung family to retrieve the book from its secret location and allow high-res scanners to capture the elegant German writing and archetypal artistry of Jung while he explored the depths of his subconscious. The contents laid the groundwork for the Jungian method of psychoanalysis, but the family has been terrified that the never-before-published work would cast Jung as a madman, as its contents are creatively schizophrenic and at times disturbing. Jung did not hold back, and the Liber Novus (as he called the Red Book) captured all the gory details of his visions, dreams, and reveries.

I am going to try to procure a copy if at all possible–the first edition print run is only 5,000 copies, and each copy is already priced at over $100. Amazon has already sold out, and some other sites have started jacking up the prices… If this effort fails, I know what I’m going to request at Christmas.

Poetry Animations

Apparently there is a person who takes photographs of famous authors and digitally alters them to create “movies” of the authors reciting their most famous works. In some cases, when there exists a recording of the author, the audio of the author’s actual voice is used. However, in most cases, they have a voice actor reading the work. Some of them are a little exaggerated but others, like this one, are at least somewhat “plausible”.

Of course, I thought Lewis Carroll was creepy even before seeing this–now I’m convinced of his malevolence.

The Mysteries of the Vampire

Gothic Perfection

Ah, if only I could find me a twinky goth boi like Christoph here for those dark, angst-filled nights…

Musings on the Fantastic Blue Peen

So, I’m sure by the title of this post that you know what I went and saw last night. And I must say… it did not disappoint. Zack Snyder’s rendition of Watchmen is uber-faithful to the original, and I have to give the man mad props for orchestrating an amazingly true-to-form cast, complete with spot-on costumes and “just like I imagined” performances. The effects, of course, were spectacular; I was particularly enamored with Rorschach’s mask. But, of course, the real star of the movie was Dr. Manhattan’s fantastic blue penis.

It was everything I imagined it to be, and more… much more. I found myself highly distracted in the scenes in which it makes an appearance. (Yes, I think it needs separate billing on the cast list.) Yes, I know it’s CGI, and yes, I know it’s glowing blue… but damn. For Laurie’s sake, I hope the Doctor is a shower and not a grower. No wonder Dan felt so impotent… most (straight) guys would too if they thought they had to compete with that nuclear-powered baby’s arm.

The most amusing thing about the showing last night was that there were a good number of tweens in the audience–some with a parent, some by themselves. When the credits rolled and the lights came up, the vast majority of them had left the theater. These were the people, I was sure, who didn’t know what they were getting into when they came to see the movie. The people who thought it was just going to be a “superhero movie” of some kind. What a shock that must have been! And while I can’t be exactly sure what drove off the younger crowd from the film (what with the intense scenes of graphic violence, the 2.5+ hour running time…) my own belief is that they all saw the cerulean manwang and the parents were fucking scared. After all, we’re a culture with a tolerance for watching people get limbs hacked off, but show a nice uncircumcized cock flopping around mesmerizingly for over a half-hour (I’m sure that’s how much screen time it got) is just too far. They don’t want to have to deal with questions like:

“Daddy, is that what all men are like? Are you like that?”

There’s power in that penis! (Certainly enough power to inspire rock star ex-BF and I to get up to naughty business after the movie… but that’s a different story.)

A Book Worth Destroying, Final

Yesterday I was feeling terribly sorry for myself, primarily over the realization that all people, regardless of how well they like you or you like them, will eventually fuck you over at some point during the time you know them. Whether intentionally or unintentionally, people will wound you, and there’s not a damn thing you can do about it, other than to act like it doesn’t happen. This is the price to pay for social interaction.

I needed catharsis from a negative thought loop that was only growing in intensity the more I pondered my fate, and so I chose to destroy the thesaurus and be rid of at least a small bit of emotional baggage, if only symbolically.

Before beginning the ritual there was the matter of being in the proper frame of mind. To enter the proper state, I went on a drive through the countryside, gulping down an energy drink and listening to appropriate (loud + fast + harsh) music. Returning home, I took the thesaurus from the back seat of my car (where it has been since I reacquired it) and placed it on my porch. The book has never been inside my home, nor did I intend it to ever cross the threshold. I stepped inside, got the lighter and my sunglasses, and went back outside to do the deed.

I walked solemnly to the backyard, to the edge of our property. To call the edge a cliff would be a bit of an exaggeration, but there is a rather steep and sheer drop-off to a creek, about 20 feet below. As I approached the corroded old barrel at the edge, the smell of a nearby pile of dog shit became an affront to my senses, but it seemed an appropriate enhancement to the whole experience. I looked around to see if there were any humans in sight, then I opened the book to the first page.

“1990. To Josh, from P–, with love.”

This would be the first page to go, and would kindle the flame for the rest of the book. I ripped this page out, then slammed the book down on the ground. Taking the lighter, I ignited the first page, the most corrupt page in the whole book, and tossed it into the barrel. I watched as my name and her name were consumed in fire and I felt the warmth growing.

Picking up the thesaurus, I proceeded to rip out chunks of the book, tearing some pages in half, and tossing them into the barrel, careful to not extinguish the flames. The words that went by seemed oddly appropriate. Anger. Exterminate. Just. Ripping out one set of pages, I tore the spine of the book, and at that point decided to remove the outer cover altogether, which I tossed to the ground. Standing there in the hot sun, I methodically destroyed the book, the smell of shit and smoke choking me and making my eyes water. Upon the departure of Zeal, I picked up the torn yellow cover and threw it into the flames, which at this point I had fed until it had grown to a dangerous (burning the hairs of my arm) height.

I looked around. Still no one. I watched it all burn. As the fire died down, I bent over and retrieved a large green rebar that lay beside the barrel. With that, I stoked the flames and churned the ash, causing partially-burnt pages that had been spared thus far to combust. I dug through the soot with the rebar until thorough combustion had been achieved, and no words could be seen.

With the destruction of the tainted set of words, I finally silenced the echo of those hideous voices from the past that, when I was a younger man, nearly drove me to suicide. With the immolation of their gift, I returned to them a generous wish of a thousand hells, a far kinder gift than was originally bestowed.

Book Destruction Suggestions

I am looking for some more suggestions on how to properly give the thesaurus the old send-off. Thus far, I’ve heard the following:

• Douse the book in lighter fluid (or gas) and set it ablaze.
• Feed it to a garbage disposal.
• Rip to pieces manually, either all-at-once or slowly over a period of time.
• Use as toilet paper.
• Feed to a paper shredder.
• Dissolve in some highly acidic solution.
• Toss into a septic tank / use as kitty litter.
• Band saw.
• Rip out the inscribed page and give the book away.

What do you guys think?

A Book Worth Destroying, Pt. 2

At nine years of age, I was convinced that my father’s new girlfriend was a witch. There was something terrible about her that I couldn’t quite place, but that chilled me to the bone. She was my father’s second or third girlfriend following my parents’ divorce, and she was a strange one. Even to this day, I will not utter her name, but will refer to her as P.

P. had a perpetual beholden attitude that seemed like a fakey, saccharine, somewhat medicated demeanor. She went out of her way to try to ingratiate herself to me; her attention was unsettling, even back then. Frequently she would take me on her lap and ask me to read to her; generally this reading took the form of comic strips. I would read her a strip, and she would just laugh and laugh, even when the strip wasn’t that funny.

To me, this bizarre behavior was clearly evidence of occult leanings. That, along with her bizarre collection of books about ancient ruins and her incredibly unusual music collection consisting of unknown and mysterious musicians that I am unable to name to this day.

I remember on a particular evening, my father, P. and I went to town for dinner, and en route, P. looked out the window, saw the full moon, and exclaimed “Oh my God!”

“What?” we asked.

“I finally see it!” she said. “I finally see the man in the moon!”

She then proceeded to talk about how her grandmother always told her about the man in the moon, but that she’d never been able to see it… until now. She genuinely wept as she looked up at the moon and proceeded to describe the features she saw. From the back seat, I simply sighed and shook my head in disbelief.

This woman somehow held my father captive with some kind of dark enchantment, that’s all there was to it. There was no fucking way that my father would fall for such a woman, who half the time seemed like she was just faking being batshit insane and the other half of the time seemed to be the genuine article.

Sometime during their brief time together, P. appeared at my father’s house one day with a thick yellow book in tow. She knelt down and presented it to me.

“Here is a thesaurus,” she said. “You are so smart Josh and are always using so many big words, you should like this.” I thanked her for the book and proceeded to completely forget about it. One must never accept gifts from witches, at least not willingly.

It was a few weeks after this that P.’s son, a fellow about six years my senior, sexually abused me.

The memories of that night haunted me well into my adulthood, confounding my sexuality and leading me to belive that I’d been broken permanently from the event. Every time I would look at a man, I would feel a tremendous sense of guilt and shame and blame the incident for why I felt the things I was feeling. Suddenly I was a child again in glow-in-the-dark Transformers pajamas, wondering what the hell was happening. I had been corrupted, I had been turned, I had been made into a sexual deviant… because of that fucking witch’s son. Without P.’s interference in the life of my father, the son would have never crossed my path, and it wouldn’t have taken me until the next millenium to sort out my issues and reconstruct a self I could live with.

And so now, nearly 20 years later, the book, the gift from the witch, has resurfaced and is once again in my possession. On the first page is an inscription that it was given to me “with love”, signed by P. and dated 1990.

The thesaurus shall be destroyed, and the destruction of each page will occur with the same “love” that was shown to me by my hellish benefactors.

A Book Worth Destroying, Pt. 1

A common theme in mythic and popular culture is the great man who is nigh impervious to corruption or destruction from the world except for a single, often inconspicuous weakness. In the ancient world, we have the examples of Balder and Achilles, and even in the present day, pop culture icons like Superman perpetuate the meme of the almost-invincible man.

This weekend I unknowingly found myself fulfilling this role in my own life. Though I am far from immune to the slings and arrows of the world, I am comfortable in my own identity and worldview, and with the reality that I am constructing. But all it took was a single object to rattle my foundations and take me back to the time in my life when all hope was lost, when I was filled with fear and self-loathing and every other conceivable negative emotion. Where Balder had his mistletoe, Achilles had his heel, and Superman had his kryptonite, I have a 20-year-old thesaurus.

It is a specific copy that I thought no longer existed… a copy that must be destroyed.