What could be more boring than never having to work again? Here's a quick primer on how to make certain there's never a dull moment after you've won your jackpot prize, and discover your life's purpose in the bargain, involving risking life and sanity using a 15th-century magical grimoire to summon your Holy Guardian Angel.
Mighty and erect is this Will of mine, this Pyramid of fire whose summit is lost in Heaven. Upon it have I burned the corpse of my desires. Mighty and erect is this Φαλλοσ of my Will. The seed thereof is That which I have borne within me from Eternity; and it is lost within the Body of Our Lady of the Stars. I am not I; I am but an hollow tube to bring down Fire from Heaven. Mighty and marvellous is this Weakness, this Heaven which draweth me into Her Womb, this Dome which hideth, which absorbeth, Me. This is The Night wherein I am lost, the Love through which I am no longer I. —Aleister Crowley, “The Gun-Barrel”
I used to have a definite deathwish. During my twenties, I decided that I would kill myself when I turned 33. I wasn't depressed, I simply didn't want to grow old. “Decrepitude” has such a nasty ring to it—did then, still does—and an even nastier smell. And now, almost four years past that expiration date, I can report that I was being stupid. But then I go and write stuff like the following...
That day I was sleepy, all throughout work, into my lunch break. I took my usual vigil outside, by the pond, while reading the current issue of The New Yorker. There were metal benches arranged around the place where the pond erupted back on itself in mild geysers, and the wind sometimes carried the delicious spray back onto the benches, and anyone sitting on them. The red brick was wet there, cumulative testimony to the accidental hydration wrought by the breeze. I was sleepy again because of the previous night’s repeat of my occasional insomnia, and so I was drinking a coke. I plunked the near-empty can on the small table next to the bench, which a particularly upstart gust sought at once to upset and tip over. And nearly a hair’s breadth from reflexively leaning forward to still the tottering can, that day the thought, like a silent stranger, stole into my head: “I want to still this tottering thing because I am still afraid of death.”
Everyone is a slave. You, me, your boss, your spouse, your kids, your parents, your senator, your president… everyone. I don’t simply mean "slaves" to physical laws, to market forces, to demographics, to statistics, to nature, to nurture, to the good opinion of our fellows: I mean we’re all slaves, every last one of us, in the most basic of all possible ways, and our eyes are playing tricks on us when in fact, every cat in the dark is grey.
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