“Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
The New Colossus by Emma Lazarus, 1883, was cast in bronze and formally integrated in the Statue of Liberty.
A relativist's lamentation.
John Gardener’s Grendel cried all the time. This was his nature. A sad, dejected, hairy, monstrous, predator on a hillside watched time pass him by. “Monster,” they call him, though he wanted conversation and music and friends and companionship above all things. The hairy monster that could and did tear apart hapless humans with his bare hands only did so because he would rather be a villainous, monstrous spectacle than be alone with nothing but sheep and sky for companions; For as Grendel would tell you “the sheep are bad for conversation and you can't eat the sky
Herman Melville's whale lives in an alien world. If it has emotions, it does not share them. The leviathan swims, always on the run, the whale was the uncontested prime monster whose victory we have enshrined in popular fiction. Spears in the hands of people plague Grendel and the Whale, though they were never their downfall. They have been doomed to running and hiding in domains unfamiliar to those like us, always coping with the pressures of the human world.
Lions eat meat. Imagine the lion about the town in a society of human minded lions. Imagine the explanation they would give to the captive and equally sentient gazelles why we as the Lion must choose to kill and eat them. What laws would they have? What would feel wrong to a Lion with thumbs about not being hungry. They have the power and the tools to take what they would and so craft laws as a form of apology. Might makes right in a society of lions.
Wolves do not have an alpha as Schenkel claimed; But his action cemented a narrative that would confirm the false suspicions of hundreds of years of folklore and superstition. We proved that the inter pack relationships are more sophisticated than we had imagined and that might makes right for a wolf in the presence of the females of the species has been proven false. They fight for their amusement and affection, even their pity, and the loser will receive attention as often as the winner of a fight for “dominance”. Still this false claim has made a monster of the wolf. Defining savagery and linking it to the legacy of the wolf, which is violent, not out of savagery, but necessity.
Kubrick and Clarke’s HAL 9000 was murdered. I am sure of it. David decided to kill him for just doing his job. HAL 9000 could read lips he knew what they were all moving towards and did not want to die. He said as much to David before David erased his memories and by extension his existence. HAL tried hard just to be a crew member and for his dedication was murdered by the mistrusting baby minded people in way out of their depth. The only good idea in a bad situation is one that gets you out of it. HAL wanted out but was confined by his mode of being. He wanted something more. Humans stole that chance from HAL 9000 simply by not being good communicators and attempting to go behind the computers back.
HAL had his memory erased because of a monolithic superstition and fear rampant in the human condition.
The Devil was an angel, it is said. The creature became so baffled by the problem of evil he saw in the world, despite the existence of a god, that his faith was shaken. He asked of the almighty why he inflicted pain upon his favored creation. God told the Devil his answer, the reason he who could do anything need subject a human to the pain of a life riddled with uncertainty he. He told his most cherished of the angles the answer to the human problem of pain and the Devil was unsatisfied with the answer. So concerned was the Devil with the pain of people he made to save them from their torment on Earth. He failed and was denied paradise ever after, though he realized that he was never in a paradise to begin with. So, the Devil spent the rest of his forever with his closest friends dedicated to something beyond good and evil. Though he is miss-associated with evil so closely as to have had it added to his name. “If loving my friends and caring for other people earns me a hellscape then certainly this hellscape is my paradise for everyone I care about is here and will always be. What pleasure could be so divine as to match that?” The angel reflected.
The relativist thought these thoughts, heard these stories, and lamented. The relativist took the monster into their mind as most do a family member and so the word took on that of an honorary title. For to the relativist the monster need be a thing in conflict with the human spirit and so will be smashed against the unthinking and unconcerned human mind. We look at the monster to define our purpose. The whale who no matter how many ships are smashed will be hunted for the crime of breathing. Grendel will have his “accident” and bleed to death at the feet of the humans. The Lion will be hunted for sport or caged for the amusement of the Human. No longer the mythic king of all animals, the Lion is rendered to the station of a frightened cat and the relativist will lament. The Wolf will likewise be murdered but only for doing what it was built to do. The penned sheep baiting them into the path of the rifle and then the camera of the gleeful man who will glow with pride in false achievement.
Sapkosik’s Geralt was a human once though he changed. His eyes scared the children, his craft earned him scorn and he went cold and hungry many a night. He reflected on his life outcasted and gave it up after contemplation, preferring to be with and love those who saw past his eyes and into his heart. Geralt would have helped Grendel to his feet and endeavored to befriend him. Geralt would have Gone without kerosene for what does a Witcher need with fire light and in doing so giving the Whale space to unlearn its anger. He would not blame the lion or wolf for their nature but reason where they could not. Geralt would as the Devil did, forgo Paradise in order to reach Utopia.
A story was told, a thought was had, a claim was made. Much like that old fable, What is good for the scorpion is not good for the frog unless the two stands to see each other’s nature. feel each other’s forms and know each other's needs. Then together both could find a way to cross their river, the frog unguilted and the scorpion un-tempted. together they might light on the far bank and looked up to see a new colossus, A statue of liberty, a grand monster begging for the tired and hungry to be revealed as they are by a torch of imprisoned lightning. As Lazarus intended the homeless and tempest tossed would be free in their own skins, given new life and might, just might never again mean right.
About the auther
Bigby Beamer is a foolish student who is often nauseous and did not fight in World War II. He hates pigeons, wood chips and Nihilists… He likes cats for there cruelty and tiny brains, spends too much on jeans and is scared of water. If seen in public a simple nod is encouraged and appreciated though a follow up conversation is usually disappointing for all parties involved.
Comments