{∅, {∅}, {∅, {∅}}} : Rage Against the Meat Grinder

"How can we ever want to embrace a sack of excrement?"

--------------- excerpt from Eco Umberto's The Prague Cemetery -----------------------------------

Late one night, I leafed through those volumes, which must have been precious and valuable, bound as they were in morocco, spines with raised cords and red title labels, gilt page edges, gilt fleurons on the covers and some with coats of arms. They had titles such as Une veillée de jeune fille and Ah! monseigneur, si Thomas nous voyait! and I shuddered as I turned the pages and found engravings that sent streams of sweat trickling from my hair down my cheeks and neck: young women who lifted their skirts to reveal buttocks of dazzling whiteness, offered for the abuse of lascivious men — nor did I know whether to be more disturbed by their brazen rotundity or by the almost virginal smile of the young girl, whose head was turned immodestly toward her violator, her face illuminated with mischievous eyes, framed by jet-black hair parted into two side-knots; or still more terrifying, three girls on a couch with their legs open to display what should have been the natural defense of their virginal pudenda, one of them offering it to the right hand of a man with ruffled hair, who at the same time was penetrating the girl lying shamelessly beside her, while the third girl had her crotch nonchalantly exposed and with her lefthand was parting her cleavage with subtle prurience through her ruffled corset. And then I found the curious caricature of a priest with a wart-covered face, which on closer inspection was made up of naked men and women variously entwined, and penetrated by enormous male members, many of which hung in a line over the nape of the neck as if to form, with their testicles, a thick head of hair that ended in heavy ringlets.

I do not remember how that turbulent night ended, when sex was presented to me at its most dreadful (in the biblical sense of the word, like the crash of thunder that arouses a sense of the sublime as well as a fear of devilry and sacrilege). I remember only that I emerged from that disturbing experience mumbling repeatedly to myself, like a litany, the phrase of some writer or other of sacred texts that Father Pertuso had made me learn by heart many years earlier: "The beauty of the body is only skin deep. If men could only see what is beneath the flesh, they would be nauseated just to look at women: all this feminine charm is nothing but phlegm, blood, humors, bile. Consider all that is hidden in the nostrils, in the throat, in the stomach . . . And we who are repelled by the very thought of touching vomit or ordure with the tips of our fingers, how can we ever want to embrace a sack of excrement?"

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I recall this passage not to offend women in general, but to remind myself that we are all sacks of excrement.  Surely "the self" and "the soul" or even "the personality" must be a kind of narrative fiction; for how much of our moods and "character traits" at any given moment have to do with the state of our intestines?  If my body is in good health and I am well-fed, then my personality may appear "pleasant" or amiable, but suppose "the body" is hungry, weak, and tired.  What am "I" then?   Raul might suggest the word "demon," but that is a somewhat dramatic and mythological interpretation.   Pitiful monstrosity?  Nasty, brutish … ? … whatever the case, who is to blame for their inborn wretchedness?


Are we all not potential "monsters" ?


In the novels written after Silence of the Lambs, there are prequels which went back in time in order to explain how Hannibal Lector became a cannibal.  As a child, while hiding in a cabin in the woods (from the Nazis I suppose), there is a bitter snow storm, and the soldiers are literally starving, mad with hunger, threat of deathly illness from lack of food, and, of course, the wet cold snow.   Aches and pains ... the nightmare of our "natural state".

Well, the soldiers found Hannibal's infant sister, and they made soup out of her.

Life is killing.

When I am able to "like myself," I think this is only out of good luck, and that, were I to have had differerent, extremely traumatizing hardships, I might not be such an amiable character; and so it is difficult to judge even the "monsters" of our species who may have been pushed to limits that would destroy me psychologically.

For some reason, out of anything I read by Eco Umberto, with all the high-minded esoteric information found in his books, the above passage stands out.  It's just a brutal assessment. 

I do not like to think of my mother or my sister as sacks of excrement, and if I imagined women who happen to be sexually appealing to me as sacks of excrement, then I must concede that I am also a sack of excrement. 

So, when I settle down to study mathematics or programming, is it not also phlegm, blood, humors, and bile that is studying so?   


Also, while sitting outside smoking tobaco, I could be struck on the head by a large branch fallen from a tree.   This could damage the brain to the point where I would hardly be able to even fry up some eggs for breakfast, and where does my interest in mathematics and programming go then?


Disturbing thoughts.   I feel compelled to record them here before proceeding to "get through" another day.  In the end, I must forget about the blood, phlegm, excrement and bile.  I have vectors to contemplate ... problems to solve applying vectors ... the business of feeding the organism/creature. 

Wow, life is just what it is.    How can anyone stand to sit through a sermon in a church?   Where is the truth in religious ceremonies?  It would appear to be an incredible farce to a man who is prone to free flowing contemplation.