I was trying to echo the Greatness. I wanted so much to echo the Greatness because the Greatness was so Great. I wanted nothing more than to be a part of that Greatness, to have some share in it, no matter how small. It didn’t work though – it never does. I tried to put on the Hero Coat but the shame became too great for me and I had to cast it off. I ran away screaming, clutching my customary rags to me as I ran. Boy did I ever a run! I ran like a scalded cat. I ran in desperate search of a world of which I’m very fond, which is also a world that I do not in any way like.
Did you ever find that world, you might ask? Was your desperate search successful? I did find that world, as it happens. I always find it. There never was a time when I didn’t find it. There never was a time that I didn’t find it and I doubt if there ever will be. The outcome of this search of mine is what is called ‘a foregone conclusion’, and therein lies my doom. These words drip softly from my pen – and therein lies my doom, and therein lies my doom, and therein lies my doom, and therein lies my doom, and therein lies my doom, and therein lies my doom, and therein lies my doom, and therein lies my doom…
It reminds me of a tap that keeps on dripping. A tap that keeps on dripping late into the night and which keeps you awake. You call a plumber but he can’t fix it. He turns to you with a look of sorrow on his face and informs you that this is a tap which no one can fix. He gathers up his tools and let himself out without another word, without a backward glance, leaving you alone with your thoughts. At least he didn’t charge, you tell yourself. That is at least something, some small thing to cling to.
That is a rotten old world isn’t it – this world which we are so fond of – so very fond of – but which we nevertheless don’t like? What a wretched world that is! It’s made out of a dirty piece of fabric, a dirty old piece of fabric which no one would actually want to be in close proximity with. It’s a kind of thing no one would want to focus on – we have to focus on something else, we have to look somewhere else, anywhere else rather than see this wretched, sordid cocoon. The fabric of this world is stained and soiled and saturated in all sorts of hideous uncleanliness, but it is the only world we have.
How can my own mental process trust itself so much, I find myself asking. How can this mental process of mine trust itself when it is always so inescapably biased? We all know that the only truth that is worthy of the name is true that is unbiased, yet my own mental processes are as biased and crooked as the day is long. They are as corrupt as Satan himself. What kind of fool am I – I ask myself – to trust my own mental processes in the way that I do?
I know the answer to this question very well indeed however. I knew it all along. I wanted so much to be Great, I wanted so much to wear the Hero Coat and walk the Hero Path and not be a mere worm that crawls on the ground and eats its own filth, thinking that filth good, thinking that filth wholesome. That however was only a feint. We feint to the right to disguise our intentions to move to the left. We aspire to Greatness in order to camouflage the hideous corruption that lives in us.
