Sunday 26 May 2002

Pic of the day: The truth about yesterday's picture is that my first associations were not bright and optimistic like that song. They were like "alien invasion", "doomsday", "fire from Heaven", death and destruction all around. But then I continued thinking until I found something positive for you to read. That's the kind of nice guy I am.

Evil inside

I am feeling evil lately. Evil inside. (Hmm, wonder if that is trademarked yet?) Not that I'm not usually evil inside, but I don't always think about it. Lately I have, because of the vivid daydreams of killing people and mutilating their corpses. Well, not exactly daydreams ... but when I am stressed, I can sometimes have these flashes in which I almost feel like I experience it. Almost feel the warm sticky blood on my hands, almost see the wet steaming liver as I lift it out of the chest ... almost feel the skull crunch underfoot as I kick it open. It is a rather weird feeling, when it comes so suddenly and unreflected.

Obviously, I don't actually kill people and mutilate their corpses, even when I am stressed. I've lived with this for decades, after all. It's already a decade or more, I think, since I read that Teen Titans comic book in which Raven (wasn't that her nickname) explained this condition. She was a healer and some other supernatural stuff, but she was actually half demon. She explained that she always felt the demonic part of her inside, but she added: "It's an evil I can control". I remember that I felt just like that too. I am evil inside, but it is an evil I can control. Of course, the worry is that there may be some time or some situation in which I will not be able to control the evil within. But then again, isn't that a risk for almost anyone?

***

I know I think, when I see people who flirt with evil, that they don't know evil the way I do. Or they would not court it. Some people can be a bit evil. (You may say that I am a bit evil too: Ignoring the poor, exploiting the third world, polluting nature. The usual stuff. But that's a passive, collective evil. It does not take an evil attitude, just a lack of active saintliness.) Some people can be a bit evil, a bit cruel, a bit unfair, a bit abusive. I guess I can be that without knowing – or can appear like that to sensitive souls – but I wouldn't dare to choose to be a bit evil. I know evil too well.

Let me tell you a parable, though it is all true. I grew up on a farm where a river ran through. (Actually two small rivers or big streams, they met and continued as one.) Just past our farma tree stood into the river, and the rapid water flowed past it on the right side. I loved to play with water, and one time I took a piece of wood and drew a thin line on the LEFT side of the tree, across the ground, just deep enough that a little water could find that way instead. Just a tiny little streak of water. You probably guess what happened. I left and did other things. The water continued its work. More and more water ran through the new course, because there was a constant pressure there already. In time, it eroded away all protection, and the tree was isolated in the middle of the stream. And then it died.

This is how I feel about the evil inside me. The pressure is too high. If I allow myself to be a bit evil, I'm afraid that all that stood against my evil will be swept away, like a dam breaking. Because I can truly and fully understand people like the kids that go into their school and shoot as many people as they can before they die. I can understand people who blow themselves to bits to kill as many as they can. I can, God help me, understand people who run planes into high rise buildings. I don't want to be like them, I don't defend what they do, but I know how they felt. It's kinda like adultery, you know: Even a man who would never do it, still understands it. That's how I feel about acts of massive, wanton destruction.

Sometimes I wonder what came first, the dragon or the egg. Am I a nice guy because I fear the massive evil inside, or did the evil inside just build up because I wall it in like I do? Both? None of the above?