"This may very well be it," he thought, as he kept doing martial arts
moves. Truly this was a fitting conclusion. Just a month ago, she had
gotten him to completely quit smoking, after he had smoked a pack a day
for over a year. And now there was a return favor to be done.
He had been scrubbing the floor at part-time job #1, and the owner told
him that he was scrubbing like a girl. He was thinking about how he had
done so much inner work to not be affected by labels and was almost
completely unfazed by this insult, in the same way as he had succeeded
some time before in being unfazed by people telling him that he did not
understand the real world, and how he was becoming almost immune to the
truly nasty stuff being said to him and about him. Then owner says that
lady would not love him if he was not acting like a man. Oh really he
felt his shout inside as he started scrubbing like a maniac. Is this
what you wanted to see?
The rage kept growing the more he was in tune with the situation. He
had taken to punching brick walls with his fists and running barefoot
on the snow. He had put out cigars on his skin, and he was forcing
himself to hold his palm on a burning stove or put his finger in
burning oil. "If I get killed and I go to hell I better be ready" he
thought.
Not that of course that was his plan; it was merely a contingency.
"Hope for the best but prepare for the worst." Better still: Anticipate
in one's consciousness wrong that can happen and deal with it there, so
that it did not faze him if it were to happen in real world. He had no
plans of any kind of violence, to himself or anyone else. But if
violence were to erupt, it better was to be prepared.
For him it really was the choice as to what was right. Most people,
when told of hellfire, would see it as threat to themselves and try to
mold their ways so that they don't go there. But his response to the
issue was different. "If there is a place such as hell," he thought,
"and people are thrown there for not following their religion, then
maybe there be people there who need my help." He thought of his
deceased grandfather, a kindly man who was a Jewish atheist. He thought
also of Janice and Michele. He thought and said previously at many
occasions that he did not believe hellfire to be an appropriate
punishment for any earthly transgression. He thought there may likewise
be people needing his help in other places in which people were thrown:
Jails; labor camps; marital and family situations that are as bad as or
worse still than the preceding. So he made it his project of training
himself to be immune to fear, so that he would be able to go to such
places physically or spiritually and relieving the suffering of those
there.
The energy of this woman was very strong and also in lots of stress and
pain, and he made it his project not only to be her empath but also to
help her through what was going on at the time. He had written 15 poems
in two weeks and was stretched out taut in his nerves. He made a
determination also to be unconditionally accepting and generous and
giving, even if she were to wrong him in any way.
The previous situations he had seen had complex effect on him, but this
one simply was making him furious. He had never - at least never
consciously - felt such anger before. Maybe my anger was unconscious,
he thought, spreading like poison gas and going out sideways. But now
it was here, palpable, powerful, passionate, and absolutely precise.
Julia's story had put him in a state of existential anguish. He
thought that a world where such things took place was awful, and he
internalized her pain. But here was something else. This was something
unknown: EXISTENTIAL FURY. It was not just a matter of "how can such
things happen," it was the matter of HOW DARE SUCH THINGS HAPPEN. And
that was a more, one would suppose, manly response to the situation.
She came from French North Africa. A place that produces magnificent
women and hideous men who beat them. She was tender, warm, beautiful,
honest, strong-willed and self-demanding, and she had an adorable one
and a half year old son who loved exploring things and had obvious
talent and intellect. He tried understanding what happened to her and
then figured out the problem: that when a woman has such tremendous
qualities and strengths the traditional man feels threatened and tries
to destroy her. The same, he found out, also works often in other
situations, in different methods, with both women and men. But the
result in all cases is a screaming injustice - injustice that gets
perpetuated through one or another manipulation and thus systematized.
A double-punch to the heart that leaves one dead: First allowing the
wrong and then claiming that one is either ruined by having the wrong
done or that one has somehow brought it about or any one of a million
other detestable lies designed to keep people from seeing the truth and
acting upon it. Not acted upon, the injustice becomes reified, and
morals and attitudes are made to justify it. Cowardice feeds into
callousness and then creates fallacies to justify evil.
At which point the state of affairs becomes that of consistent,
perpetuating injustice. Injustice that needs to blind people in order
to continue its hideous ways. The result of which is destruction of
insight and passion and sensitivity: All things that see into the core
of injustice and that, in order to perpetuate systemic injustice, are
suffocated and destroyed.
All of which had taken place and became systematized in the covenants
he had examined.
THe clock was giving interesting numbers. The stories of Keats and
Gatsby flashed through his head. "Could I have it this way" - "You got
it this way."
The existential fury was pointed and passionate, and he was one with
it.
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