From: rmr@acsu.buffalo.edu (Richard M. Romanowski)
Newsgroups: alt.sexual.abuse.recovery
Subject: Re: Weird Spoiling Poetry [*** spoiler ***]
Date: 3 Jan 93 04:27:16 GMT
Organization: UB

anon-1406@twwells.com (Empty & Aching) writes:

>*** Spoiler alert *** 
>Despair & wallowing follow
>***
>

{top of line deleted accidentally ... whoops}

>a little like this, myself.  And
>    those are times when I feel a little more myself than usual.
>    Then I wish I could let go of that foolish, childish hope,
>    that longing for something, I'm not sure what, that keeps
>    me coming back, that makes me want to think it's not that bad,
>    that if I just do x, or y, then Hell will just be a fever
>    dream.

	I think I don't even hypothecate the possibility of such a disappear-
ance.  Hell does fade out if I'm obsessed with something else ...
at times, I suppose, I'm quite ecstatic.  Or at least keeping busy. 
But that has the Miltonic sense of Satan's ascent ... or Prometheus'
swooping, stooping glide ...


>    But mostly I just feel empty, half-alive, jerking along like
>    a dissected frog's leg connected to a battery.  Jerk! he runs
>    to work.  Jerk! he tries to finish a paper.  Jerk! he hews --
>    unsuccessfully -- to his daily routine.  Why don't the other
>    frogs have this much trouble catching flies?  What's wrong
>    with me?

	I feel just like that a hell of a lot.


	You said it very well.  SOrt of galvanic, running on autonomic 
responses channelled through a 300 baud connection with the wrong terminal
protocol and lots of line noise.

>    Ah! to be in Hell.  At least it wouldn't be a stupid joke.  Or,
>    maybe if I really were there, I would see through even that.  And
>    realize what a pathetic thing it is to be in Hell and have no
>    greater ambition?  hope? than to snap at saints' heels.
>    What do RMR's demons feel, when Hell's ``joys'' fade like
>    a Christmas carol?

	Well, in truth I don't do a great deal of snapping.  The image
goes back both to Genesis and to Poe's _Cask_+Of_Amontillado_ . ...
But spiritually, I will eventually rend the metaphorical seven seals
and triumph.  

	I know that rapists are temporarily strong, but spiritually 
weak -- therefore I have perfect confidence in the ultimate victory of
Honor, Free Will, Survival, Our Side ... whatever you call it.


>>       Let your despair be grand and black,
>>       not small and oft-repeated.

>    Tell me about it....  (said w/ a tone of irony)

>Empty & Aching

	As I said not long ago to a depressed friend :

	MOUNT UP, DON QUIXOTE!

	The trick is to take the horror and self-hate and place the sharp
edges outwards.  You are not merely a half-alive thing, writhing unnaturally,
but also you are some unholy revenant, moving silently through darkness
as if guided by some unspeakable knowledge not channelled through your
unseeing eyes ...

	Swoop like a Nazgul, blast like a dragon, and bind round all
the perfect memory of a man unjustly slain, who will creep past the
unsuspecting masses, striking only at the evil-doer ...
 

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