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Complementing a Half-Truth [Video, Text, Backdated to 5/2]
"Hello, everyone. Thank God the Cirque du Vrai is no more, eh? First time I've been glad that the circus left town. My sympathies for those who suffered its decadent airs. To my chagrin I was silly enough to go, and, thanks to the terrible charities of a dear and faithful friend, blessed enough to die to it. By now I suspect everyone knows the meaning of its name: "Circus of Truth." An odd title for something with the pretense of a masquerade. If there was truth therein, 'twas only partial, and taken solely by itself, is as destructive as a lie. The other half ought to be unveiled, and it's towards that attempt I present the following works. I hope reflecting on their wisdom will help settle your mind and mend whatever wounds were left in the carnival's wake. May whole truth, bared in love, illuminate."
1st Piece: The nature of the circus
The Devil is a gentleman and askes you down to stay
At his little place at What'sitsname (it isn't far away).
They say the sport is splendid; there is always something new,
And fairy scenes, and fearful feats that none but he can do;
He can shoot the feathered cherubs if they fly on the estate,
Or fish for Father Neptune with the mermaids for a bait;
He scaled amid the staggering stars that precipice the sky,
And blew his trumpet above heaven, and got by mastery
The starry crown of God Himself and shoved it on the shelf;
But the devil is a gentleman, and doesn't brag himself.
O blind your eyes and break your heart and hack your hand away,
And lose your love and shave your head; but do not go to stay
At the little place in What'hitsname where folks are rich and clever;
The golden and the goodly house, where things grow worse forever;
There are things you need not know of, though you live and die in vain,
There are souls more sick of pleasure than you are sick of pain;
There is a game of April Fool that's played behind its door,
Where the fool remains forever and April comes no more,
Where the splendor of the daylight grows drearier than the dark,
And life droops like a vulture that once was such a lark:
And that is the Blue Devil, that once was the Blue Bird;
For the Devil is a gentleman, and doesn't keep his word
2nd Piece: Proper pretense
Let us take the most elementary example: as a father, I know I am an unprincipled weakling; but, at the same time, I do not want to disappoint my son, who sees in me what I am not: a person of dignity and strong principles, ready to take risks for a just cause -- so I identify with this misperception of me, and truly 'become myself' when I, in effect, start to act according to this misperception (ashamed to appear to my son as I really am, I actually accomplish heroic acts). In other words, if we are to account for symbolic identification, it is not enough to refer to the opposition between the way I appear to others and the way I really am: symbolic identification occurs when the way I appear to others becomes more important to me than the psychological reality 'beneath my social mask,' forcing me to do things I would never be able to accomplish 'from within myself.' - Zizek
Doth any man doubt, that if there were taken out of men’s minds vain opinions, flattering hopes, false valuations, imaginations as one would, and the like: but it would leave the minds of a number of men poor shrunken things: full of melancholy and indisposition, and unpleasing to themselves? - Bacon
Final Piece: Do you have eyes but fail to see?
Once upon a time, a man named John was arrested in his pilgrimage by armed men, who, upon meeting him, sprang up and barred his way.
"Do you not know," they said, "that you are in the land of the Spirit of the Age?"
"I am sorry," said John, "I did not mean to trespass. I will try and find some other way beyond that country."
"You fool," said the captain, "you are in his country now. This pass is the way out of it, not the way into it. He welcomes strangers. His quarrel is with runaways." After that, a young man clapped John in fetters and dragged him towards their prison.
They went through a valley. Along the way, John observed a strange mountain, and said so.
"Oh, is that what you think it is? Plain rock?"
"What!" cried John. "Then what is it?"
John became like a terrified child and put his hands over his eyes not to see the giant; but the captain tore his hands away and forced his face round and made him see the Spirit of the Age where it sat like one of the stone giants, the size of a mountain, with its eyes shut. Then the captain opened a little door among the rocks and flung John into a pit made in the side of a hill, just opposite the giant, so that the giant could look into it through its gratings.
"He will open his eyes and look upon you soon," said the captain, before locking the door and leaving John imprisoned.
John lay in his fetters all night in the cold and stench of the dungeon. And when morning came there was a little light at the grating, and, looking round, John saw that he had many fellow prisoners, of all sexes and ages. But instead of speaking to him, they all huddled away from the light and drew as far back into the pit, away from the grating, as they could. But John thought that if he could breathe a little fresh air he would be better, and he crawled up to the grating. But as soon as he looked out and saw the giant, it crushed the heart out of him: and even as he looked, the giant began to open his eyes and John, without knowing why he did it, shrank from the grating. The giant’s eyes had this property, that whatever they looked on became transparent. Consequently, when John looked round into the dungeon, he retreated from his fellow prisoners in terror, for the place seemed to be thronged with demons. A woman was seated near him, but he did not know it was a woman, because, through the face, he saw the skull and through that the brains and the passages of the nose, and the larynx, and the saliva moving in the glands and the blood in the veins: and lower down the lungs panting like sponges, and the liver, and the intestines like a coil of snakes. And when he averted his eyes from her they fell on an old man, and this was worse for the old man had a cancer. And when John sat down and drooped his head, not to see the horrors, he saw only the working of his own inwards. Then I dreamed of all these creatures living in that hole under the giant’s eye for many days and nights. And John looked round on it all and suddenly he fell on his face and thrust his hands into his eyes and cried out, "I am in hell. There may be no heaven, but there is certainly its opposite, and I am there. I am mad, I am dead, I am in hell forever."
Every day a jailor brought the prisoners their food, and as he laid down the dishes he would say a word to them. If their meal was flesh he would remind them that they were eating corpses, or give them some account of the slaughtering: or, if it was the inwards of some beast, he would read them a lecture in anatomy and show the likeness of the mess to the same parts in themselves—which was the more easily done because the giant’s eyes were always staring into the dungeon at dinner time. Or if the meal were eggs he would recall to them that they were eating the menstruum of a verminous fowl, and crack a few jokes with the female prisoners. So he went on day by day. Then I dreamed that one day there was nothing but milk for them, and the jailor said as he put down the pipkin:
"Our relations with the cow are not delicate—as you can easily see if you imagine eating any of her other secretions."
Now John had been in the pit a shorter time than any of the others: and at these words something seemed to snap in his head and he gave a great sigh and suddenly spoke out in a loud, clear voice:
"Thank heaven! Now at last I know that you are talking nonsense."
"What do you mean?" said the jailor, wheeling round upon him.
"You are trying to pretend that unlike things are like. You are trying to make us think that milk is the same sort of thing as sweat or dung."
"And pray, what difference is there except by custom?"
"Are you a liar or only a fool, that you see no difference between that which Nature casts out as refuse and that which she stores up as food?"
"So Nature is a person, then, with purposes and consciousness," said the jailor with a sneer. "No doubt it comforts you to imagine you can believe that sort of thing;" and he turned to leave the prison with his nose in the air.
"I know nothing about that," shouted John after him. "I am talking of what happens. Milk does feed calves and dung does not."
"Look here," cried the jailor, coming back, "we have had enough of this. It is high treason and I shall bring you before the Master." Then he jerked John up by his chain and began to drag him towards the door; but John as he was being dragged, cried out to the others, "Can’t you see it’s all a cheat?’ Then the jailor struck him in the teeth so hard that his mouth was filled with blood and he became unable to speak. While he was silent, the jailor brought John outside.
When they came out into the air John blinked a little, but not much, for they were still only in a half-light under the shadow of the giant, who was very angry, with smoke coming from his mouth, so that he looked more like a volcano than an ordinary mountain. And now John gave himself up for lost, but just as the jailor had dragged him up to the giant’s feet, and had cleared his throat, and begun "The case against this prisoner—" there was a commotion and a sound of horse’s hoofs. The jailor looked round, and even the giant took his terrible eyes off John and looked round: and last of all, John himself looked round too. They saw some of the guard coming towards them leading a great black stallion, and in it was seated a figure wound in a cloak of blue which was hooded over the head and came down concealing the face.
"Another prisoner, Lord," said the leader of the guards.
Then very slowly the giant raised his great, heavy finger and pointed to the mouth of the dungeon.
"Not yet," said the hooded figure. Then suddenly it stretched out its hands with the fetters on them and made a quick movement of the wrists. There was a tinkling sound as the fragments of the broken chain fell on the rock at the horse’s feet: and the guardsmen let go the bridle and fell back, watching. Then the rider threw back the cloak and a flash of steel smote light into John’s eyes and on the giant’s face. John saw that it was a woman in the flower of her age: she was so tall that she seemed to him a Titaness, a sun-bright virgin clad in complete steel, with a sword naked in her hand. The giant bent forward in his chair and looked at her.
"Who are you?" he said.
"My name is Reason," said the virgin.
"Make out her passport quickly," said the giant in a low voice. "And let her go through our dominions and be off with all the speed she wishes."
"Not yet," said Reason. "I will ask you a riddle before I go, for a wager."
"What is the pledge?" said the giant.
"Your head," said Reason.
There was silence for a time among the mountains.
"Well," said the giant at last, "what must be, must be. Ask on."
"This is my riddle," said Reason. "What is the colour of things in dark places, of fish in the depth of the sea, or of the entrails in the body of man?"
"I cannot say," said the giant.
Reason set spurs in her stallion and leaped up on to the giant’s mossy knees and galloped up his foreleg, till she plunged her sword into his heart. Then there was a noise and a crumbling like a landslide and the huge carcass settled down: and the Spirit of the Age became what he had seemed to be at first, a sprawling hummock of rock.
[A poem, some choice quotations, and an allegorical story. A trifecta of literary pleasure! Hopefully, Ted thought, those words would do someone, somewhere good, especially as they recovered from the dark bacchanal of the circus. The last story was incomplete; he had to shorten it for the sake of relevance and attention span. The meaning of the riddle is explained, though Ted humbly thought everyone else perceptive enough to not need it. But if they do, he's always happy to reveal for those who sincerely want to know. For the right reasons, of course.]
1st Piece: The nature of the circus
The Devil is a gentleman and askes you down to stay
At his little place at What'sitsname (it isn't far away).
They say the sport is splendid; there is always something new,
And fairy scenes, and fearful feats that none but he can do;
He can shoot the feathered cherubs if they fly on the estate,
Or fish for Father Neptune with the mermaids for a bait;
He scaled amid the staggering stars that precipice the sky,
And blew his trumpet above heaven, and got by mastery
The starry crown of God Himself and shoved it on the shelf;
But the devil is a gentleman, and doesn't brag himself.
O blind your eyes and break your heart and hack your hand away,
And lose your love and shave your head; but do not go to stay
At the little place in What'hitsname where folks are rich and clever;
The golden and the goodly house, where things grow worse forever;
There are things you need not know of, though you live and die in vain,
There are souls more sick of pleasure than you are sick of pain;
There is a game of April Fool that's played behind its door,
Where the fool remains forever and April comes no more,
Where the splendor of the daylight grows drearier than the dark,
And life droops like a vulture that once was such a lark:
And that is the Blue Devil, that once was the Blue Bird;
For the Devil is a gentleman, and doesn't keep his word
2nd Piece: Proper pretense
Let us take the most elementary example: as a father, I know I am an unprincipled weakling; but, at the same time, I do not want to disappoint my son, who sees in me what I am not: a person of dignity and strong principles, ready to take risks for a just cause -- so I identify with this misperception of me, and truly 'become myself' when I, in effect, start to act according to this misperception (ashamed to appear to my son as I really am, I actually accomplish heroic acts). In other words, if we are to account for symbolic identification, it is not enough to refer to the opposition between the way I appear to others and the way I really am: symbolic identification occurs when the way I appear to others becomes more important to me than the psychological reality 'beneath my social mask,' forcing me to do things I would never be able to accomplish 'from within myself.' - Zizek
Doth any man doubt, that if there were taken out of men’s minds vain opinions, flattering hopes, false valuations, imaginations as one would, and the like: but it would leave the minds of a number of men poor shrunken things: full of melancholy and indisposition, and unpleasing to themselves? - Bacon
Final Piece: Do you have eyes but fail to see?
Once upon a time, a man named John was arrested in his pilgrimage by armed men, who, upon meeting him, sprang up and barred his way.
"Do you not know," they said, "that you are in the land of the Spirit of the Age?"
"I am sorry," said John, "I did not mean to trespass. I will try and find some other way beyond that country."
"You fool," said the captain, "you are in his country now. This pass is the way out of it, not the way into it. He welcomes strangers. His quarrel is with runaways." After that, a young man clapped John in fetters and dragged him towards their prison.
They went through a valley. Along the way, John observed a strange mountain, and said so.
"Oh, is that what you think it is? Plain rock?"
"What!" cried John. "Then what is it?"
John became like a terrified child and put his hands over his eyes not to see the giant; but the captain tore his hands away and forced his face round and made him see the Spirit of the Age where it sat like one of the stone giants, the size of a mountain, with its eyes shut. Then the captain opened a little door among the rocks and flung John into a pit made in the side of a hill, just opposite the giant, so that the giant could look into it through its gratings.
"He will open his eyes and look upon you soon," said the captain, before locking the door and leaving John imprisoned.
John lay in his fetters all night in the cold and stench of the dungeon. And when morning came there was a little light at the grating, and, looking round, John saw that he had many fellow prisoners, of all sexes and ages. But instead of speaking to him, they all huddled away from the light and drew as far back into the pit, away from the grating, as they could. But John thought that if he could breathe a little fresh air he would be better, and he crawled up to the grating. But as soon as he looked out and saw the giant, it crushed the heart out of him: and even as he looked, the giant began to open his eyes and John, without knowing why he did it, shrank from the grating. The giant’s eyes had this property, that whatever they looked on became transparent. Consequently, when John looked round into the dungeon, he retreated from his fellow prisoners in terror, for the place seemed to be thronged with demons. A woman was seated near him, but he did not know it was a woman, because, through the face, he saw the skull and through that the brains and the passages of the nose, and the larynx, and the saliva moving in the glands and the blood in the veins: and lower down the lungs panting like sponges, and the liver, and the intestines like a coil of snakes. And when he averted his eyes from her they fell on an old man, and this was worse for the old man had a cancer. And when John sat down and drooped his head, not to see the horrors, he saw only the working of his own inwards. Then I dreamed of all these creatures living in that hole under the giant’s eye for many days and nights. And John looked round on it all and suddenly he fell on his face and thrust his hands into his eyes and cried out, "I am in hell. There may be no heaven, but there is certainly its opposite, and I am there. I am mad, I am dead, I am in hell forever."
Every day a jailor brought the prisoners their food, and as he laid down the dishes he would say a word to them. If their meal was flesh he would remind them that they were eating corpses, or give them some account of the slaughtering: or, if it was the inwards of some beast, he would read them a lecture in anatomy and show the likeness of the mess to the same parts in themselves—which was the more easily done because the giant’s eyes were always staring into the dungeon at dinner time. Or if the meal were eggs he would recall to them that they were eating the menstruum of a verminous fowl, and crack a few jokes with the female prisoners. So he went on day by day. Then I dreamed that one day there was nothing but milk for them, and the jailor said as he put down the pipkin:
"Our relations with the cow are not delicate—as you can easily see if you imagine eating any of her other secretions."
Now John had been in the pit a shorter time than any of the others: and at these words something seemed to snap in his head and he gave a great sigh and suddenly spoke out in a loud, clear voice:
"Thank heaven! Now at last I know that you are talking nonsense."
"What do you mean?" said the jailor, wheeling round upon him.
"You are trying to pretend that unlike things are like. You are trying to make us think that milk is the same sort of thing as sweat or dung."
"And pray, what difference is there except by custom?"
"Are you a liar or only a fool, that you see no difference between that which Nature casts out as refuse and that which she stores up as food?"
"So Nature is a person, then, with purposes and consciousness," said the jailor with a sneer. "No doubt it comforts you to imagine you can believe that sort of thing;" and he turned to leave the prison with his nose in the air.
"I know nothing about that," shouted John after him. "I am talking of what happens. Milk does feed calves and dung does not."
"Look here," cried the jailor, coming back, "we have had enough of this. It is high treason and I shall bring you before the Master." Then he jerked John up by his chain and began to drag him towards the door; but John as he was being dragged, cried out to the others, "Can’t you see it’s all a cheat?’ Then the jailor struck him in the teeth so hard that his mouth was filled with blood and he became unable to speak. While he was silent, the jailor brought John outside.
When they came out into the air John blinked a little, but not much, for they were still only in a half-light under the shadow of the giant, who was very angry, with smoke coming from his mouth, so that he looked more like a volcano than an ordinary mountain. And now John gave himself up for lost, but just as the jailor had dragged him up to the giant’s feet, and had cleared his throat, and begun "The case against this prisoner—" there was a commotion and a sound of horse’s hoofs. The jailor looked round, and even the giant took his terrible eyes off John and looked round: and last of all, John himself looked round too. They saw some of the guard coming towards them leading a great black stallion, and in it was seated a figure wound in a cloak of blue which was hooded over the head and came down concealing the face.
"Another prisoner, Lord," said the leader of the guards.
Then very slowly the giant raised his great, heavy finger and pointed to the mouth of the dungeon.
"Not yet," said the hooded figure. Then suddenly it stretched out its hands with the fetters on them and made a quick movement of the wrists. There was a tinkling sound as the fragments of the broken chain fell on the rock at the horse’s feet: and the guardsmen let go the bridle and fell back, watching. Then the rider threw back the cloak and a flash of steel smote light into John’s eyes and on the giant’s face. John saw that it was a woman in the flower of her age: she was so tall that she seemed to him a Titaness, a sun-bright virgin clad in complete steel, with a sword naked in her hand. The giant bent forward in his chair and looked at her.
"Who are you?" he said.
"My name is Reason," said the virgin.
"Make out her passport quickly," said the giant in a low voice. "And let her go through our dominions and be off with all the speed she wishes."
"Not yet," said Reason. "I will ask you a riddle before I go, for a wager."
"What is the pledge?" said the giant.
"Your head," said Reason.
There was silence for a time among the mountains.
"Well," said the giant at last, "what must be, must be. Ask on."
"This is my riddle," said Reason. "What is the colour of things in dark places, of fish in the depth of the sea, or of the entrails in the body of man?"
"I cannot say," said the giant.
Reason set spurs in her stallion and leaped up on to the giant’s mossy knees and galloped up his foreleg, till she plunged her sword into his heart. Then there was a noise and a crumbling like a landslide and the huge carcass settled down: and the Spirit of the Age became what he had seemed to be at first, a sprawling hummock of rock.
[A poem, some choice quotations, and an allegorical story. A trifecta of literary pleasure! Hopefully, Ted thought, those words would do someone, somewhere good, especially as they recovered from the dark bacchanal of the circus. The last story was incomplete; he had to shorten it for the sake of relevance and attention span. The meaning of the riddle is explained, though Ted humbly thought everyone else perceptive enough to not need it. But if they do, he's always happy to reveal for those who sincerely want to know. For the right reasons, of course.]
[Video] [Private]
[He says it as if that explains it all. Then he blinks, remembering that people from other worlds don't know what that is.]
Means I'm such a badass, all I gotta do's decide y' ain't gonna hurt me, an' from that point on, it ain't possible.
Re: [Video] [Private]
[New goal: break through Haki and make him eat those words at least once. That settled, that raised his curiosity considerably.]
Well, you said you weren't a sorcerer so it can't be magic. There must be something more to it than simple say-so.
[Video] [Private]
Naw, that's pretty much the long an' short a it. No tricks or nothin', jus'. You.
Mean, there's a lot that goes int' wakin' it up an' shit an' learnin' how t' use it on purpose an' it ain't everbody can do that an' them that can it takes 'em years an' years. Their whole lives sometimes.
[Namur shrugs.]
Re: [Video] [Private]
[Sorry Namur, you brought up another otherworldly proper noun. Now you get the questions only slightly more tolerable than prison interrogation.]
[Video] [Private]
[He's laughing as he says it, though.]
Haki's like... spirit power. So yeah, there's folk that uses it without even realizin'. Most a the time 's how y' find out y' got it woke up, but y' can train someone t' do it, too, if they's strong 'nuff an' got 'nuff determination. Took me several years t' get the hang a it, but I's doin' shit 'fore I even realized what was goin' on, 's why they even started yawpin' at me 'bout it. All them folk y' met from my world uses it.
An'... shit I forgot the last part.
[He frowns, trying to remember.]
Re: [Video] [Private]
Goodness, so your spirit manifests as an impenetrable blackness? I should've guessed.
Ah, well if it takes as long to work as all that, my last question was merely idle curiosity. I wondered what would happen should two of its users square off. If neither could hurt the other, what would result? They fight until fatigue?
[Video] [Private]
[Namur rubs at the side of his head.]
Look I'm better at knockin' dumbasses 'round t' get 'em t' 'waken it. Yer gonna want book shit an' I can't tell y' that.
Re: [Video] [Private]
[He means that, even if there is a mildly mournful air about him. He really is happy that Namur has light about him. Some people have all the luck.]
Well, I appreciate you indulging me and my bookishness. And thanks again for, ah, coming to my rescue back there. I'm in your debt.