mwotw

Come into the emergency room. Feet first, if you can. I especially enjoy the surprising ways in which the color red makes its cunning leap from the spiraling ambulance light into the fluorescent world of the inside hospital. Cunning and subtle. The smell, only the smell of blood, which is of course brilliant red in the mind’s eye. I am like him around the eyes, the demon standing over by the television in the waiting room. I left a piece of myself out there with him. Much more than my eyes, I think. I am on my back now, in some impossible orientation, such that a river is coursing where the ceiling of the corridor should be. So swift is the advance in these treacherous waters. But I have been a guest here before. My body is still wet from the last immersion. And that demon, he’s laughing at me now, openly. What sort of familiarity could breed such contempt? Am I not a brother, after all. Perhaps it was that one occasion, so long ago. Yes, that must have been the moment of offense. The orderlies are running me faster down the corridor. We blow past doors, and they spring apart, I hear them explode against the pressure of my gurney. A missile, we are. But the demon still troubles me. If we begat children of the same woman, are we not brothers first? That was my understanding. Oh, the orderlies are excited now. They’re shouting commands of some sort. Battle field urgency. There’s that pesky red again. Now a tide, an awful wash. The river of the ceiling is running red, and even faster than our advance. There are swept and tumbled things, rolling miserably in the foamy red. A head, a bludgeoned face, specters from my past, the restless phantoms of my every misdeed. What service now, Elijah? What can I repent from this proximity? I am too close to your final gate, too far carried in this crimson flow, to give any flexion of remorse. Yes, I have killed, and the red which conducts me to my death is their spilled blood. But what can I achieve against the holes I’ve made? “Operating Room” … bloody letters at the final threshold.

Once upon a time, there was a powerful king who ruled his kingdom with great severity. Whenever subjects displeased him, they were banished without mercy.

In spite of that terrible consequence, many subjects spent all their energies trying to win the king’s approval with deception. Like all subjects of this kingdom could if they wished, these deceiving subjects read the Scroll of Rules the king had had posted in a prominent and public place. In fact, they read it more often and more carefully than almost anyone else in all the kingdom. They also watched the King’s actions closely, in both cases, looking for weakness.

We’re all holed-up in here, instead of out with the rest of the kids in the school yard, because sex is bad, right?

We (our species) made this bed, and we’re lying in it. Done.

Because sex can lead to pregnancy, and because (uncalculated) pregnancy can throw a monkey wrench into asset transfer, folks
had to come up with a way to keep sex in check. Enter, Shame. Done.

But, shame by itself couldn’t do the trick, especially once we got savvy enough to come up with contraceptive methods…