IT'S NOT THE FAULT of the father. It's a weakness of mind and character instead—a failure in human terms. I remember the story of Isaac and Abraham from an illustrated children's book and album. The tortured father and confused son. How it's okay in the end because Abe followed orders and Isaac survived. What's crucial here is a revelation of divine virus. The monothesim of the species breaks us in pieces: mind, heart, body—(I think, therefore…—gads, Christ, drop it—enuf already!). Even behind religion, in the dark disorder of the psyche, those fragile relations bind. The paternal pair cripples our ability to proceed. And that Death God Patriarch doesn't afflict men only. Like the poor woman in Tyler, Texas. Bashed her kids' brains out on the front lawn. Crippled her daughter in her crib. Said God made her do it, no angel interceding. Remember the woman in Houston, some years back, methodically drowned her spawn in a tub? No angel led a goat there into the bathroom as the water splashed out over inert, blue features. But these are mothers, not fathers. Medea, not Abraham. It's a failure of imagination. Diagnosis doesn't relieve us of the violent outbreaks. The secular law calls it crime or insanity. But it's inside where the remote origins of evil incestuously merge with the good, day to day. It's this we try desperately, unconsciously, to absorb. Somehow, snow-white purity pays. Stretch the lamb's neck over black stone. Pull the blade.
Posted by Dale at June 27, 2004 03:57 PM