Here's the next page from my book of 300 Drawing Prompts (the previous page appeared one moment ago); the prompt for this here drawing was "Lily pad with frog".
Dear diary,
I will start out this entry as a continuation of yesterday’s cliffhanger. It was my initial intention to end that episode happily, with the cop and the cat-burglar trotting off into the distance upon a police horse after engaging in Celestial Marriage (which is one of the doctrines of Mormonism; also known as the New and Everlasting Covenant of Eternal Marriage, Temple Marriage, or The Principle: it’s far superior to regular old Holy Matrimony); yet, while composing the piece, I made the mistake of ignoring that original instinct, and I allowed myself to continue the experiment — which is to say: I kept writing instead of stopping where the tale naturally stopped — and this caused the piece to end up in rather scary territory. Not wanting to frighten my reader, I blotted the disturbing passages, but I saved a copy to share as an alternate ending, thinking as follows: Who knows but that someday, instead of sheltering my reader from danger, I might not want to frighten my reader to life? Well that day has come: That’s what we’ll dive into with the following installment. So brace the fuck up and consider yourself warned.
Here, I’ll flashback to the ending as it was published and begin again from there:
I’d make a lousy policeman. I’d be so enticed by the personal story behind each unlawful act that I’d end up siding with the criminal. For I can empathize with everyone. Or almost everyone. The one thing I’d be good at is murdering rapists. Cuz if I were ever to stumble upon a scene where some jerk is abusing any…
But now I wonder: Is it permissible to shoot rapists in the head, if you catch them in the act and you can get a clear shot? (When I say “catch them in the act” I mean that you catch them just prior to committing their offense, so that, if you don’t act immediately, the rape will occur, whereas, if you shoot them dead, you will have saved someone from being physically violated — they’ll only be left with the trauma of the build-up and aftermath, but the deed proper will not have occurred.) Cuz it could be argued that if you are able to stop a rape without slaying the would-be rapist, the thwarted aggressor might prove amendable to rehabilitation. Let me know what you think about this by leaving a comment in the “Suggestions” box.
Or what if you were known on the streets as a dirty cop, which is to say, one of the baddest apples in the crate. Let’s say that you spot some creep in the act of trying to rape a televangelist, who happens to be a billionaire (the televangelist is the billionaire, not the rapist — the rapist is penniless: he’s just a pervert who sits around in his apartment and watches porn all day, and this morally sick lifestyle corrupts and subverts his judgment and moves him to go out and rape, every single night of his life; and he harbors a penchant for wealthy televangelists), yet instead of shooting the rapist right in the head when you have a clear shot (remember, you’re the dirty cop, in this scenario; and the reason I employ the term rapist thus outright instead of adding a qualifier like “would-be rapist” is that, if you’ve been following the miniseries of this creep’s life, you’d know that he’s actually raped many times before: in fact, you could even say that he’s technically a serial rapist), I say, what if, instead of slaying him, you yourself rape the rapist? Cuz being creepily perverted and a dirty cop to boot, you’re just as capable of illegal actions as he is. (I’m not bringing this up to be salacious: I’m interested in the conundrums of crime and punishment.)
Here’s my question: Could you even deliver on such a commitment? (It goes without saying that everyone is virile in this predicament.)
And if an additional officer of the law were to arrive on the scene, as backup, at the moment when you yourself, the rapist’s rapist, are roaring “Vengeance is mine”, should we make that officer (the new arrival) be a good cop or bad cop? I mean, supposing you’re now my co-author in this story: should we make our latest party-crasher a saint or a sinner? The significance of this decision is that a good cop would shoot you in the head (your character, I mean), whereas a bad cop would rape you. Am I wrong? The third option of “Let the new officer de-escalate the situation” is patently ridiculous and makes for dull television.
I suggest we end our hypothetical like Hamlet, and let all the major characters massacre each other. That way it leaves us with a cheap hope for a civilized future, provided we don’t think too deeply about it. Cuz the characters who survive are all supporting roles and extras, so the audience hasn’t had a chance to discover their flaws. Once you get to know people, they end up either as killers or rapists or victims, in this off-Broadway world that we’ve been creating.
*
Well that’s as far as I got when I finished writing yesterday. I didn’t intend that final sentence to be the end: I just began feeling uneasy about speaking of rape so often and so casually, while using it as a centerpiece; the whole affair just felt too ugly, so I deleted it. Now I think I made the right choice. I prefer how the story ended the first time (in yesterday’s entry); with the narrator admitting that he would surely make an incompetent law-enforcement officer, as he’s addicted to redemption (cursed with the habit of forgiving all sins). Because, for me, it invites the thot: “What would Jesus do, if he were a cop?”
And then I think about the relation of cops to critics. In the world of art, there are no rules, but still we try to judge artworks and label them “good” or “bad”, just like deeds in the realm of morality, as if there were an instruction manual or set of statutes somewhere out there (perhaps written on stone tablets); and these artistic judges are titled critics, and everyone hates them. Quentin Dupiuex made a whole movie about them and called it Wrong Cops (2013).
It’s easy to dislike the police, especially when they’ve killed all your loved ones and family; but I still forgive them. In my own upcoming film, I have a scene where the cop shoots my mother, and there’s a tense moment where my character has to decide whether he’ll take vengeance into his own hands, but he decides against it; for he believes in non-violent protest. So, after the cop’s gun fires and my mom drops dead, I cry out “Please don’t shoot my dad as well,” and then the cop shoots my dad; so then I say “O wretched father adieu! Now I beg you not to shoot my sister and brother,” and then the cop shoots those actors, too, almost as if his onscreen behavior is being directed by the prayers of my character.
So critics are the crooked cops of literature, and that’s why poets distrust them. But Oscar Wilde wrote a dialogue called “The Critic as Artist”, which is beyond the beyond. Wilde sublimates the matter. I don’t wanna say “he cuts this Gordian knot”, as that would imply that he acted forcefully while rejecting more nuanced methods, so I’ll say that he untied it. (It’s weird, in a refreshing way, to think that an eternal paradox could have a solution.) And it’s interesting to note that Wilde himself was jailed in his lifetime. Bad cops do the jailing; that’s why this info is pertinent. They judged him “indecent”. It’s the same thing they said about D.H. Lawrence. And Joyce too, as I recall; at least for Ulysses.
I’m sure it’s an unintentional side-effect of the presumptions of these cops and critics, but all this instills the concept of indecency with allure — it makes it intriguing. So maybe this is a lesson for judgmental people: If you judge too harshly, you end up deifying the thing you’re trying to demonize.
Perhaps every God was once a Devil. Every religion presumably had its heyday, when of course its God or gods were praised and worshiped, and its Devil or devils were booed. But religions, like empires, have their lifespan: they are born, they age, and they die. And in the final days of their existence, they begin to be seen for what they are: mere systems of bias; essentially prejudicial and critical. “Love the LORD; hate the DEVIL.” And the people begin to take note that these terms “Lord” and “Devil” are simply titles that can be worn by any entity. So then we peek behind the drape and see that it’s Jehovah playing the LORD in this production; with Lucifer as the antagonist. And since Religion X is on its last leg, people rightly begin to doubt the trustworthiness of its message. It’s not hard to see how this could result in the swapping of the deities in the pantheon, like a shakeup in parliament, where those Olympians currently in power must give up their seats to the Titans who beat them fair-and-square: in a democratic election, which was overseen by the Federated Multiverses (like the United Nations, yet slightly bigger). So there’s a changing of the gods. Lucifer is born as the new Buddha and rechristened as Jesus; while Jehovah is placed in a cell next to Zeus and Baal.
For this history has been adopted by both parties
It indeed appear’d to Reason as if Desire was cast out [of paradise]; but the Devils account is, that the Messiah fell. & formed a heaven of what he stole from the Abyss
This is shown in the Gospel, where he prays to the Father to send the Comforter or Desire that Reason may have Ideas to build on, the Jehovah of the Bible being no other than he who dwells in flaming fire
Know that after Christs death, he became Jehovah.
[—from Blake’s Marriage of Heaven and Hell]
My point is that things are always spinning around, which is why my neighbor Herakleitos always sez “You can never live in the same flame twice.” And when I defy him, he calls it rhyming. We’re best friends, to this day. For all is flux. Rivers of water and baptisms of fire flooding the earth. Climate catastrophe; global warming. For fire weds water to bring forth steam, which can power certain engines. Then there’s oil: lubrication and combustion. Also Duchamp’s given: the waterfall and the illuminating gas. Having become undisguised, the Statue of Liberty reclines in green pastures, beside the still waters, on the leaves of grass, with her hand-torch of knowledge. She holds a candle in sunshine. The breeze blows where it wants: it is the spirit, & it is invisible. The wind moves slowly in the branches: The breath of life in the lungs of man. It makes idols come alive. The power of the air. A kingdom not of this earth. For whoever has riches shall lose them, and the last shall be first. The prophetic vision is an hourglass overturning; its granules hasten to the lower class, against a cloudy sky backdrop. The voice of awakened multitudes, as the voice of many rivers, and as the voice of mighty thunderings, declare the trademark vocal epitaph:
All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field: The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: because the spirit of the LORD bloweth upon it. Yea, like sands through the hourglass, so are the days of our lives. (Isaiah 40:6-7)
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