Dark and Stormy

It never was a comic book film. It was always the Jack Nicholson kind of movie that I thought we'd grown up away from in the 1980s. The thing that makes it deep is our cognitive bias — expecting a comic book but getting a dark and melancholy, violent, perhaps horrific piece of powerful cinema — this makes us impute extra value to it.

It is not your grandfather's Gothamite avenger, with his chirpy sidekick. It is the psychic residue of a hero who got darker and darker in his own little circle of hell as his writers Reichenbached him to a farewell.

The only versions of him I really liked, of all his latter-day incarnations, were Neil Gaiman's caped crusader and Jeph Loeb's madcap running-around-after-all-the-villains version. These were perhaps the furthest anyone should have taken the character as far as dark and stormy were concerned.

I've left out, of course, Frank Miller's on-the-verge-of-retirement classic version. I loved that one. But it's since become conflated with the no-man-is-an-island clock-ticking Hitchcock version. See first paragraph. Gah.

Meditation on Psalm 124

This is the dominion, Darkness,
That thy hand is glad to find;
Though the world hath light and laughter,
Thou art never far behind.

While the thoughts of men continue
In materialistic vein,
Thou shalt ever be exalted
Through a haze of human pain.

Therefore we shall still resist thee
Though we be the last to stand;
We are really not too sorry
That we shall escape thy hand.

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Notes:
1. Psalm 124 is one of the Songs of Ascents, essentially hymns of pilgrimage.
2. My notes show me that I first wrote this as Part VI of a longer meditation back in the days of the online Poetry Room — this was on Friday 25 Aug 1989, apparently.

December

And so we come to winter and the dying end of the year. It has been a long travelling, as Eliot might have said, and at the end of it, a confusion of outcomes and a profusion of alternatives. What do we do, as year succeeds to year? The answer of the ancients was a simple one; they laid up stores, hunkered down, and waited till the new year had really started. (For many of us, this will be on 20th January, when finally the long drawn-out lack-of-government in Washington comes to an end.)

But this year has always been redolent of the fin-de-siècle. Again and again, that French phrase connoting the end of an era and new hope for the future seems to come up. At the same time, one thinks of Zeitgeist and Aufklärung; one thinks of light and clarity and time and spirit and how mankind does tend to screw it up.

The last time things felt this way was probably on 22 January 1901, when Victoria of England died. That will have been 108 years ago, when Barack Obama becomes the 44th President of the United States of America, that entity that began as a group of British colonies way back in the 18th century.

This, then, is a December of the world and its times. Old things have passed away, and looking forward in faith, we hope that new things will come that are not old things repackaged. If faith is the substance of things hoped for, and the change we want is change we can believe in, then we should really open up the armouries of the soul and the arsenals of the heart for our assault on the present darkness. God be with us.

Beyond The Pale

This is an interesting phrase. Everyone knows what it means, but why does it mean what it means?

First, its meaning is indisputable: everyone agrees that it refers to something that is outside the norms for civilised behaviour. From this comes the extended meaning of referring to something that is beyond normal human experience and expectation.

The word 'pale' here comes from Latin palus which means 'stake' – a long pointy piece of wood. It is from this that we get words like 'impale' (to put up on a long pointy piece of wood) and palisade (a fence-like defensive row of long pointy stakes). The other meaning of 'pale', i.e. 'less dark', actually comes from a totally different word which meant 'not so illuminated' or 'greyish' (actually, it used to mean dusky or dark, haha).

That's why some people think 'beyond the pale' means 'into the dark side of humanity'. Well, I suppose it might.

Changeling

Here we are, doing our work, going about our business, making ends meet. And still our lives are guided firmly and patronisingly by the people in the smoke-filled back room. I know this, having seen many such rooms.

Transparency is anathema to those who are addicted to power and control. It is perfectly all right for a leader to take the reins which have been bestowed upon him and to use them well and openly. It is not so when you cannot see who else is guiding the reins, or when their uses are kept secret and undocumented.

There are a few tests in any corporate environment. Is work appraisal based on pre-agreed terms? Is every part of it transparent and open to critique and resolution thereof? Are salaries and compensations, bonuses and perquisites all part of an open plan, bestowed based on documented criteria? Is information open to the use of anyone who needs it? Is fair comment allowed? Is there, conversely, a preference that commentary be kept in smoke-filled rooms and not released for general discussion?

We see change to the north of us and to the south of us, change to the east and west. Some of it is good, some of it is bad. But even the tenets of the moldering and corrupt past agree that, in principle, people should be empowered by information and by the wherewithal to work out its best use – and the tools to implement such.

We stand on the cusp of worldwide change. Whether we elect to remain shadowy figures in the wasteland, or come into the light, will determine whether we become changelings or change-agents. While it is true that there is nothing new under the sun, it is also true that when one has been kept in the dark for a long time, the light makes a welcome change.

Feel the wind. Is it freedom that you smell? Or is it the blast of armageddon?

The Shadow Of Wings

The darkness comes in quickly these days. It wraps its wings around these buildings as if they are eggs. You can only wonder what will hatch from the calcific fecundity of this nest.

Fellowship

The word translated 'fellowship' in the New Testament is the Greek word koinonia. It can also mean community, commonality, or commonwealth. The funny thing is that this word, around which many things have been built, is not mentioned once in the Gospels. Jesus did things with his friends and colleagues; he did not have anything as abstract as koinonia with them.

That's the thing: Jesus was master and friend, but never a fellow as in, "Hail, fellow! Well-met!" I'm sure he was good company - too good, said the Pharisees. But he was a one-off. Unique. For what fellowship can light have with darkness?

I guess what subsequently boggles my mind is that he went all over the country with his friends. He slept, ate, drank, and had late-evening suppers with them. He visited their in-laws and their outlaws. He attended wedding dinners. Well, there you go. Amazing person, as a person goes. I'm not being flippant here. I am in awe of the whole idea, that light can indeed fellowship with darkness, and best of all, not 'take back the land from the darkness' but 'bring the light into the darkness'.

And that is why in the end, the dark will not understand nor withstand the light – because there is nothing which darkness can define; rather, light defines darkness by absence.

Transparency

"On a clear day you can see forever," as the old and visionary line goes. But as Shakespeare says in Macbeth, "Hell is murky." Chaos and order, light and darkness; radial, diametric or conceptual opposites - all things come together, and if things can be clearly seen (in the light of reason, in the harsh glare of morning) then it is good. And if unclear and murky, bad.

So why is the system so intent on keeping information in chains? It is as if the free market were to be touted to all, but open to none. The paradox is that those running the system benefit the least - resources must be spent on keeping the information cribbed, cabined, confined. The other members of the system will still tunnel around the obstacles, like stainless steel rats. The opacity will slow them down, make them less efficient, but they will survive.

Meanwhile, the information jailers ossify, and eventually become odd and touristy relics, like the beefeaters at the Tower of London. Their main job is, of course, to feed the ravens.

And on a clear day, some day, we will see forever.

Spiritual Discoveries

It is odd that anyone should fall into some sort of Gnostic duality. It's heresy. Ethical dualism is not the way of God; He is great, He is of both light and darkness, greater by far than either, making one out of the other and manifesting in both. Light and darkness are not opposites, no matter what people say. Light comprehends darkness; darkness does not comprehend light. Light is reason, the manifestation of the Logos; darkness is what is formless and void. But darkness is not always evil, just as light is not always good.

Here, for example, is Exodus 20: 20-23:

Moses said to the people, "Do not be afraid. God has come to test you, so that the fear of God will be with you to keep you from sinning." The people remained at a distance, while Moses approached the thick darkness where God was. Then the LORD said to Moses, "Tell the Israelites this: 'You have seen for yourselves that I have spoken to you from heaven: Do not make any gods to be alongside me; do not make for yourselves gods of silver or gods of gold."

It is clear here that God Himself contrasts His essence with that which is venal and material, not that which is dark. For the light can be as false as the dark; here is II Corinthians 11:13-14:

For such men are false apostles, deceitful workmen, masquerading as apostles of Christ. And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light.

What should we learn from such passages? Perhaps, that we should be careful with what we say about dualism, light and darkness - in case we end up mistaken for Zoroastrians or some sort of Gnostic heretics.

A Sense Of Wonder

I spent most of today marking essays. Tall ones, short ones, long ones, brief ones. It struck me that they all lacked one thing: a sense of wonder. I mean, here you have young men writing about God and philosophy and transformation and power and technology - and yet it sounds so dry, so dispassionate, so bloodless. The Greek word is anaimosarke - lacking blood and fleshly substance, and it is the adjective used in a very famous classical poem to describe the cicada, who is happy to be that way.

Yes, they lack a sense of wonder - a sense of numinosity - that deitropic sense which seeks and finds a hidden fundamental glory behind the apparent firmament of this world. Agnostic physicists have it; Feynman could marvel at how his simple diagrams of the subatomic world were so apt, so descriptive of the unseen. But where to find it, if they don't have it?

That's a serious problem. It goes beyond philosophy and sometimes, even religion. It goes beyond modern culture or society or whatever. I think that a sense of wonder only forms when two things happen: 1) the human entity realises how small it is, and 2) the same entity realises how big everything else might be. Note: 'might be' and ' not 'is'. If you know how big something is, then it isn't big enough, or perhaps it's really big and all that, but you have set the seal of finity on it, and it will someday end.

So I tried delving deep in me to find instances of that sense of the numinous. Where have I ever felt that, when, and why?

I found numerous examples. I shall share just one, though.

In my life of idle wandering, I have seen many comicbook heroes die. Some companies kill them off in huge numbers (maiming is sometimes almost as good) just to raise sales. I will talk about three. I saw Jean Grey (Phoenix) die - we all did, in X-Men #137 all those years ago; I saw Superman die, beaten and pounded to a pulp by Doomsday, on 18 Nov 1992. And I saw the Batman die, at the hands of his best friend, at the stroke of midnight and Frank Miller's pen.

I was saddened greatly by Phoenix's death, but she had killed a world, and besides, her Cyclops was there to mourn her and I closed the book and it was never as sad again. I was stunned by Superman's brutal demise, because he was Superman - Last Son of Krypton - and could never die; and of course, he didn't. But the one which kicked me in the guts was when a bruised Wayne crumpled in his armoured exoskeleton, the ultimate knight felled in his defence of a free land.

Why?

Because Batman was human, purely so. He had triumphed over evil, both within and without, with nothing but bare humanity and the excellence that can come with it. If he had ever taught anything to any of his colleagues, it was that humans can be much more than anythng humans can imagine; that a driven, focused, intelligent perseverance could be more telling than X-ray vision, an emerald ring or a golden lasso. I wept when Batman fell. He was the darkness in us that was also the dark before the dawn. Unlike Superman and Phoenix, he was really one of us - perhaps not the neighbour of our choice, but the defender who would always have our concerns at heart.

I saw a lot of the Batman in the defenders of New York three years ago. Helplessly, they watched loved ones die. Tirelessly, they fought to save the living, and they swore, 'Never again.' It was one shining moment which could only come out the darkness, the cape blackly flapping in the midnight wind of Gotham. And it was that moment, when humanity in all its frailty looked into the darkness and found light, that I felt again a certain sense of wonder - not certain, as in 'specific'; but certain as in 'sure and steadfast'.

As long as a sense of wonder remains to be evoked, humanity has hope. The true heroes are among us.