I Think, Therefore I Am - An A**hole

April 21, 2016

If you are above the age of eight and you have a basic grasp on reality (I'm being hopeful here) you understand bad things sometimes happen.  Following along this vein, you would also think intellect is the golden, glorious trait of humanity, leading to all good roads.  Yet a quick glance at history quickly proves otherwise (at least on the 'all good roads' part).

That is not to say human intelligence is not a gift.  It is.  It's the thing that got us out of the caves and built civilization.  All good things can be attributed to it: books, can-openers, cat-flaps, flip-flops.  You name it and if it has been built, invented, or created by human hands it was first born in the human mind.  Sounds good, right?  A shining quality.  However, (you knew there was a 'however', didn't you?) "not-so-good-things" are born of it as well.

Case in point: The Burning Times -

Bad sh*t happening

Around the mid-1300’s humanity hit a bad patch.  It was already far left of great, but this was bad.  I mean bad.  Really, really bad.   Given the 14th century was neck-deep in the "Dark Ages", life had gone from shitty to - well, mega shitty.  1 out of 3 babies didn't make it past infancy and chances were pretty good that of the remaining 2, 1 wouldn't live past the age of 5.  Not only did women have fewer rights than donkeys, but nearly 20% died as a result of childbirth.  Life expectancy was only 45 years old (on a good day) and food, clean water, sanitation and human hygiene were scarce (like lottery jackpot scarce).  Add to this picnic the arrival of the Black Death which buried nearly 1/4 the world's population and you've got a whopping great run of "bad shit happens".

Now, ecclesiastics (fancy word for religious leaders) had set themselves up as the uncontested "We Know Everything Because God Talks to Us" group and had put themselves in charge of EVERYTHING.  (And I do mean EVERYTHING)  Having been terrorized against believing otherwise, people of the 14th century turned to the only resource of human intelligence they knew existed.  (Because all others were -of course - evil.)  Always eager to show off their superior minds, Church leaders dutifully promised to have a chat with God.  (For future reference, this was a male-heavy club, as in "No Girls Allowed Unless They're Washing Dishes")  Judging from the results they either caught the All-Father on a bad day or made up shit as they went along (which required the use of - you guessed it - intellect).

The reason (according to the Church) bad things were happening was because the Almighty was irate  Now to be fair, God had been angry since Eden (according to them).  And He was twisted about a lot of things - from pitchfork-shaped eating utensils to the fact that people had to have sex to procreate (a design flaw, maybe?).  But now, He was super-duper pissed and tossing out misery and disease like a ticket-dispenser on jet-fuel because there was veritable flood of Witches running wild in creation.

Making bad shi*t happen...

With such a definitive answer you would think these Sanctified Brainiacs would have an easy time fixing the problem.  I mean, find the culprits and get rid of them.  Quick, simple.  Five, ten years tops.  Suffice it to say - it did not go well.  About 500 years of 'not well'.  Not because they were stupid.  And not the "getting rid of" part.  That they pretty much nailed.  In fact, they made a rather lucrative business of it, founding a financial empire on their ability to 'nail' it (tax exempt, of course).

No, where the Church ran into trouble was in the identifying of witches.  Unfortunately, (it seems) practitioners of the abominable arts were so good at sorcery (they said), they could look like, live like and act like God's 'good' kids.  This, of course, created a huge issue.  But being the dedicated men they were, they attacked the problem with gusto and applied - yep - intellect.

What they needed was information and they deduced having spies would help.  After all, who knew better than your neighbors if you were having a wicked, midnight romp with the devil (apparently heresy creates 'bad shit' for those next door)?  They also tried to work Confession - (Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.  I couldn't find my car keys so I rubbed some unconsecrated, human fat on the ol' broom for a jot into town).  While these methods proved somewhat lucrative, as the continuous happening of bad shit showed, they weren't enough to get the job done.

Undaunted by this set back, they pressed forward, pouring copious amounts of thought, research and experimentation into the problem and even created an official office of pious, learned men to address it.  (The Congregation of the Holy Office of the Inquisition.).  And - bam - just like that these masterminds hit on the solution.  The use of excruciating, prolonged pain to extract information- Torture.  Starting out with tools and resources borrowed from other cultures, these 'geniuses' added their own touches and even invented a few new ones.  And, given all the subjects available for "testing", it wasn't long before they had agony down to a science.  (And I'm not kidding here.  A lot of what we learned early on about human anatomy and medicine was discovered in the torture chambers of the Inquisition.)  Being the most highly-educated men of their times, they soon amassed a cornucopia of implements to use in their quest to make the bad shit stop happening:

Boiling - (Yep.  Exactly what it says.)
Branding Irons - (We ain't talking ponies here, folks.)
The Brodequin - (Okay, that's just sick.)
Dunking - (So, if you drown you're not a witch?)
Heretic's Fork - (What the hell is their hang up with forks?)
The Chair of Torture - (Spiky fun, especially if you got one with a fire box under it!)
The Iron Collar - (Vampire accessories.)
The Iron Maiden - (Not the band, people.)
The Judas Cradle - (Too disturbing to go into here - just Google it.)
The Pear of Anguish - (For a jaw-splitting, good time.)
Strappado - (Gives new meaning to "just hanging around".)
The Rack - (If you're breathing you probably know what this one does.)
The Wheel - (Of Misfortune)
Thumb, finger, toe -screws - (Think sledgehammer meeting appendage slowly and without end)

Now, given the wealth of information these whiz kids gathered over several centuries of 'investigation' they were able to amass a list of what to look for when one was hunting the dreaded witch - originator of all "bad shit happening".  According to the Church (remember the All-Boys Club?), and the definitive texts on the subject, including the "Malleus Maleficarum", a witch was most likely to be:

A Tea Break from making bad sh*t happen...

1) A woman.  2) A poor woman.  3) A wealthy woman.  4) A woman with one or more friends.      5) A woman with no friends.  6) An outspoken woman.  7) A woman who made eye contact with men.  8) A beautiful woman.  9) An ugly woman.  10) An old woman.  11) A young woman.  12) A woman with a mole, scar or blemish somewhere on her body.  13) A woman who was a midwife or healer.  14) A married woman with too many children.  15) A married woman with no children.  16) A woman with spoiled milk in her kitchen.  17) A woman who had sex.  (Including incest, molestation, or rape)  18) A woman who enjoyed sex.  19) A woman accused by others.  20) The daughter of a woman accused by others.  21) A woman with a pet.  22) A woman with a frog in her yard.  23) A widowed woman.  24) A woman living next door to someone who died, whose cattle was sick, or whose bread did not rise.  25) A woman who went outside after dark.   (Picking up on the theme here, are you?  Bright kid.  While it is true males were also accused, "questioned" and sentenced (between 5% to 17% by some approximations) by far, the majority of those accused and executed were female, some as young as 3.)

It is estimated between the late 1300's to the early-1800's over 8 million suspected witches were “tested” (tortured) or "questioned" (tortured) or "examined" (tortured).  Of these, over 3 million sessions with these Sacred Guardians of Aptitude ended in intentional burnings, hangings, drownings, draw-and-quarterings, and stranglings.  There are no numbers on those who 'accidentally' succumbed during their "interviews" (The 'oops' factor here must be astronomical!).

Taken separately or together, these factoids are horrifying.  And from our lofty modern perch we love to look back into our uncomfortable histories and judge such horrendous events as evidence of the glaring human stupidity which can flourish when 'ignorance' is king.  However, that assumption is more about divorcing ourselves from the idea we somehow share DNA with our diabolically creative ancestors than it is about singing the anthems of intellectually-grounded existence.  In reality, many of the things conceived, invented and engineered during such times are, in fact, proof that we, as a species, are thinkers.  Coupled to our limitless imaginations and our drive towards curiosity and creativity, our ability to think is our greatest gift.  And yet, combined with our fear-based natures, our abundance of bias, innate leanings towards prejudice and our need to dominate, our intellectual prowess is also a fearsome beast because sometimes our capacity for thought isn't what could be called a good thing.  In fact, in a goodly portion of situations, it's the very cause of really bad shit happening.

Stages by H. Newberry © 2015

Just Suppose

4/15/ 2016 
Just Suppose by H. Newberry © 2015

Suppose, for a moment
-just suppose-
that each rip and
every scar carved into
the fabric of your being
was not put there to disfigure
or deform or disgrace you
but to define you.

Fold your mind
around the chance that maybe
– just maybe -
those gashes
and wounds
are the standard of a clan,
the banner of a people
who have survived.

And if this were true,
perhaps
-just perhaps-
the memories are there
for you to recognize
the trials that formed you
and the fires that forged you,
in the souls of other warriors.

So, suppose
-just suppose-
-that maybe-
-or perhaps-
the damage did not bled
the pain of fear or failure
but laid a thousand crimson roads
leading you to the steel
contained within your core
and returning you to the heart of your tribe.

 Origin Unknown

 

H. Newberry - Slayer of Trees

4/14/2016

Illustration from "The Red Fairy Book"

 

I am the bane of trees.  For those who think this moniker is exclusive to a comic book character - uhm- no.

bane
noun \ˈbān\
1 killer, slayer, poison, death, destruction, woe
2 a source of harm or ruin

The reason I am the bane of trees - whole forests, more like - is because I journal.  I journal my brains out.  Other people party, shop, drink or cram snack cakes down their throat.  I journal 'til my eyes are raw and my fingers are dented from the stranglehold I've had on my pen for hours.  (I read on a psych page once that obsessive journaling is a sign of schizophrenia.  I don't go there anymore.)

I've been at it since I was twenty and you'd think this is a side-effect of my craft.  It is not.  It's a byproduct of my need to figure out why I am the way I am, why I think the things I do, and create a list - a pretty impressive one so far- of the concepts cross-wired in my brain.

Given that I'm fifty and I've been journaling for thirty years you could easily estimate I have roughly 30 books covering this span.  (Right?  One for each year?).  All neatly organized by chronology, filled with antidotes of my life and work.  Superlative penmanship spanning the sacrificed papers from front to back.  A veritable flood of ink and masticated wood shavings sandwiched between two, stiff covers.

You'd be wrong.

My current, working collection numbers well over 30 (there'd be more, but I have rampages during which I gather up every scrap of paper I can find and set them on fire.  Pyromania maybe?) and not a one is filled to capacity.  (I wonder if that's a sign of some other disorder.)  Journals litter my house like tombstones; standing in bookshelves, toppled onto tables, half buried in boxes.  In my office, my room, my kitchen, and my car.  Spirals, composition books, binders: at least one sample of very type and size.  Cloth-bound, paper-bound, fabric-bound and leather-bound.  $1.99 small, pocket ones.  $45.00 artisan ones.  Ones with pen holders, some that tie shut with leather straps and others with neat little pockets in which to safely store even more slivers of dead flora. 

Nor are they in anything even approaching chronological order.  In stacks or in each individual atrocity.  'Normal' people start on the first page, write a date and proceed day after day until - viola! - back cover.  (I'm fairly certain I will never know what this feels like.)  Opening one of my journals is about as far left from 'normal' as you can get.  (And not just in content.) It's signing up for a time warp run by an alcoholic afflicted with topographagnosia. (This is a for real mental diagnosis!  It means you have no sense of direction and get lost.  A lot!).  It's buying a plane ticket and being handed a crooked pogo-stick by a twitching flight attendant at the end of the jetbrige.  Grab one and you will be bounced from 1998 on page 1-7 to 20012 on page 8.  From there, twenty blank pages in and - boom - you're in the year 2005.  In May. On the 18th, to be exact.

Adding insult to injury, I apparently am not capable of pursing only one theme in these rats' mazes of massacred pages.  Between any two covers you'll find thoughts, rants, whines, poetry, plots, snippets of dialogue and rough drafts of resignation letters as well as grocery lists, the reason's why I am contemplating the emanate torture of the man I love (and I do love him, no matter what those damn books say!) and why I think my cat just might be the Antichrist in disguise.  (Because he is.  I haven't found the tattoo yet but it's just a matter of time.)

So, yes.  I am the bane of trees.  The persecutor of Pines.  The murderer of Magnolias.  The assassin of Ashes.  (I know that those last two aren't used to make paper.  Give me a break. I'm being satirical.)  God knows how many poor trees have had to die - chopped, shredded and pulped - just to spend a few moments spread naked beneath my pen.  How many squirrels have lost their homes?  Birds their roosts?  Little mushrooms sizzling under a cruel and relentless sun, bereft of protective, musky shade in which to spread their little caps.  And bunnies - ah, the poor, poor bunnies - forced to procreate out in the wide, ugly open before gawking humans with camera phones and no sense of privacy.

Hittite God, temple relief, Turkey

The combination of all these wrongs weighs heavily on me.  They haunt me like the flavors of a favored sin.  They do.  But like any patient in the grip of their psychosis I cast longing, furtive glances towards journals instead of reaching for the phone to call my therapist.  The callous on my index finger throbs seductively and the haunting smell of spent ink wafts into my psyche.  The only way I am going to survive Judgment Day is if God is a lumberjack...Or a psychiatrist.