The Devil Take the Hindmost

"Always look out for number one, and never step into number two" was something I heard Rodney Dangerfield once say in one of his mercurial quips. I laughed when I heard it, but my appreciation for the remark was primarily based on its truth. Altruism is nothing but flapdoodle. In the United States of America, "ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country" was just presidential claptrap that took advantage of the spirit of the time or, as I should write, the spirit of the "day." Indeed, such a statement is followed wholeheartedly only by those zealous dunderheads who find self-esteem in self-righteousness, marching off to carry out whatever crusade was sold to them. And even when it seems as if someone has put his or her needs into number two, these pseudo humanitarians are really doing what they do for some sense of self-worth, to elevate themselves from whatever personality deprecating bog they usually muck around in. Whether this selfishness is bad or good is irrelevant and not worth the time to expostulate. Nevertheless, I will make a tenable statement and say that this breed of selfishness is absolutely egoistic and fundamentally misanthropic.

To call this manner of functioning egoistic is completely platitudinal. The same could be said for such selfishness being misanthropic. But I don’t believe the severity of this selfishness and misanthropy is appreciated. Indeed, this type of behavior is guaranteed to dissolve any kind of cohesive unit, be it loving partners, family and friends or an entire country. And, as said before, the United States of America has become an extremely selfish country, one that can no longer (if it ever could) see itself in relation to the world. It’s a very isolated place, surrounded by two oceans and only capable of viewing the planet from its well-removed vantage point, a vantage point that has the remarkable ability of prohibiting residents from seeing out while allowing foreigners to see in. This, therefore, disallows residents the ability to self-access by comparing and contrasting their behavior with the world while allowing outsiders the ability to deride by scrutinizing and criticizing. Blame the juggernaut known as the media if you will, that powerful branch that rules side by side the legislative, judicial and whatnot. But, all in all, if being exposed to the world causes anxiety and spitting fits, then it would be safe to assume that whatever behavior was being exposed was not commendable and deserved any and all caustic derision received.

The United States of America is a titanic molester; it can’t keep its hands off the rest of the world. Anything the country is attracted to, it must touch and grope and fondle and chafe. Mr. United States of America—put your hands away. You are traumatizing the world, and if you don’t watch your diplomatic steps, you might find yourself economically castrated and, worse yet, ganged up on for a nuclear pummeling by the little ones you raped.

Eat Your Heart Out!

Love is a word that brings to mind roses and chocolates and cupids and God and France and everything that warms the cockles of our heart. We feel truly alive in the world with love because we all know that all the world loves a lover. Is not love all we need? But what is love really? One would hope it's not a cliche. Yet, this is what love has become, some vague concept based on symbols and beliefs created from superficial ideals. Love has become an emotional blind, a cataract that prevents us from seeing the reality of our relationships. There are several fallacies of love: manipulative love, lustful love and conditional (dependency) love. These are experienced because of a confusion in understanding the difference between true love and false love.

Manipulative love is the weaponization of love. It's wielding love like a knife and piercing another's heart with the intention of harming through the use of guilt, pity and fear. I hate it when you go out with your friends because I feel as if you love your friends more than me. I hate it when you don't pay as much attention to me as I think you should because it makes me feel as if you don't love me. I hate it if you don't dote on me because if I don't consume all of your affection then I'm going to leave you. This type of love inevitably leads to hatred, resentment and anger and is not love at all. How can someone love if his or her freewill is encroached upon by his or her lover? It can't because the manipulation of love is the undoing of love.

Lustful love, misinterpreted as love, turns a person into lust's conquered underling, dissolving the will and setting the person forth in high hopes of seducing the beautiful one with absolute disregard for personality, willpower and spirit. Lustful love is simply lust seeping out of your urethra or, as the case might be, your lubricated vaginal walls dripping with lustful anticipation. Lustful love is wanting to be in love and fantasizing its reality. The need to lust after love is so great in some people that they will abuse their imagination into making fictional feelings for a fictional relationship that always ends in a bad story about a person whom you can't help but look upon pathetically. But when we want, we want, and all non-aesthetically damaging blemishes fade to captivating eyes, pearly-white smiles and amusing stories. Worst of all, these lustful crimes of integrity and wisdom are not made accidentally or unknowingly. They are made in full knowledge, with absolute awareness. There's love in lust, but it is as short as an orgasm.

Maybe you meet that person, however, who offers you something more. Someone whose spirit is so complementary to your own that life becomes something wondrous. That somehow both of you make the world a better place for the other without trying. Lust is not gone, but it is surrounded by its bigger brothers such as compassion, friendship and experience. And maybe you think you have found what some never do. The real thing. Love. Ha, you think. I've found the buried treasure; I've found the holy grail; I've found the center of the universe.

You may have found true love but chances are you didn't. In all probability you have found a false love. Your love is too selfish to be the real thing, too one sided, too not like love. Now you're stuck always looking for validation. If you ignore me, I feel bad because I'm dependent upon your love. Your love makes me feel valid as a human being; it gives me my humanness and without it, I cease to exist as a human. I can't live without out you because I will not be able to be gratified by having sex with you. Your lover has become a material possession to you, and love has become conditional. If you dont give me love than I won't give you any either.

Love cannot be conditional because if it was it wouldn't be love. Pure love, true love, can only be given and never taken away. True Love loves without asking for anything in return. True Love is what we all want but rarely ever receive. Only a few understand this and fewer can achieve it. Anything less is a humorless farce.Love? What is love?

Love as a concept is fantasy. Love in practice is pretending. Love actualized is the shaft parting the labia minora, the pubic bone massaging the clitoris while the glans chafes the vaginal walls, stimulating the meatus to stretch wide open and say, "I love you."

Squirrels' Scourge

(This is to be rewritten.)

A Bridge Between Mahlkoot and Yesode

I was lying in bed, reading a book about religious experiences when it all began. I had become intensely interested in all things spiritual, especially the nature of spirit, what it was, what it meant, where it was; was it real or was it just fantasy. I wished with all of my being that it was more than fantasy. I’m telling you, the reader, this because of the validity of the old aphorism, "Be careful what you wish for; you just might get it." I, in a state of spiritual lassitude, was desperate for meaning in my life, something to elevate me out of a muck-filled world of supernal apathy and emptiness. And though I always despaired over the future, of what I was convinced was the inevitable annihilation of my life, my identity, something in me hoped for a continuation of life. As it was, something extraordinary happened to me (is happening to me) to make me intently consider that there is a soul; there is another way of existing; there is something called spirit.

It started when I came upon a section in the book where an anonymous professor from Oxford narrated in a letter an experience he had with what he called a dark, foreboding presence hovering over him as he lay in bed. He claimed that it terrified him, an understandable response. As I read this, I heard a sound of metal bending and snapping back. It was a loud, vibrating sound. The first thing I thought of was that I had left the front door to my apartment unlocked and a burglar had entered and possibly hit something accidentally to cause the sound. I was cursing myself for letting something like this happen and prepared to burst through my bedroom door and tackle anyone who had entered. Although I didn’t care for the plan, it was better than lying vulnerable in bed and waiting to be murdered.

I sprung from my bedroom into the living room but I didn’t see anyone. Indeed, the front door was locked and appeared to never have been opened. I checked my sliding glass door to the patio but that was locked, too. After surveying the area, I decided it must have been the water heater or a household appliance. What ever it was, it didn’t matter as long as it wasn’t a burglar.

I climbed into bed and began reading the book, again. I had just finished the professor’s narration when I heard the door to my bedroom smash into the door frame. Shocked, I just stared at the door, and as I stared, the door began to smash into the door frame as though someone was trying to push my door in. It did it over and over again, sometimes pausing for several seconds only to begin again with increased fervor. I had always told myself that if I ever encountered anything supernatural, like a ghost or spirit, I would stand my ground and not treat it differently than I would a spider or a bee. What bravado for I pulled the covers over my head and cowered like a baby in his blanky. After fifteen minutes of banging, it stopped. Nevertheless, my heart was thumping painfully against my chest and didn’t slow for hours. That night I didn’t get any sleep.

Other things have happened since then but not with nearly the same terrifying effect as the night when an unknown force was pushing in my door. Usually I hear scratching coming from my closet and tapping: one, one two, one two three, one, one two, one two three. These unexplainable occurrences happen almost nightly. But something, in my opinion, even more sensational occurred recently, a visual manifestation of something unknown. A series of lights, like stars in the night sky winking in and out of existence, have been occupying the upper regions of my apartment, particularly my bedroom and always at night, although twice I did witness such activity in the day. I’m not afraid of it; rather, I’m enthralled by it. Actually, the phenomenon stopped approximately two weeks ago, but I wouldn’t mind if it began again.

For the last couple weeks, occurring almost nightly, my bed has been shaking. Not violently like one sees in movies but enough to cause me to awake from my slumber. The shaking usually occurs at around midnight or 1 a.m., and continues sporadically from that point on, usually stopping so I can sleep. I don’t live next to any major roads. There really is no ready explanation any of my experiences. I don’t know what to make of it, and I would love to hear if anyone else has experienced such unexplainable phenomena in his or her life. Have I encountered a spirit? Or, as someone I know suggested, am I myself responsible the poltergeist activity? Am I unconsciously using telekinesis? All answers sound ludicrous; nonetheless, the situation is somewhat ludicrous in itself.

Today, while walking to one of my classes, I smelled the most powerful aroma of perfume. It happened at about 11 a.m. as I walked from the campus library. I at first thought it was some woman who had doused herself with perfume to the point of putridness for the smell was overwhelming. Nevertheless, when I spun around to find who was responsible for the overpowering scent, I could find no one around to lay blame to. There was no one around except a girl who was 100 feet away from me, and I knew it to have been impossible, even if she had bathed in perfume for hours, for such a potent odor to have rode the wind far enough to have reached my nose.