THE LITTLE CROSS THAT SCREAMED

AUTHOR-TURNED-SELF-DISSECTOR’S NOTES: This is another throwback from years back, particularly interesting (at least to me) in how it charts my horror journey, and my approach to the subject at hand, both in real life and in the art that attempts to convey it.

In other words, it’s Party Time! WOOOO-HOOOOOO!!!

I’m trying to remember precisely when I lost my taste for courting dread. For facing down atrocity like it was an endurance test. Daring it to crush me. Flipping off the gates of Hell. 

As a very young man, I was drawn to horror – not by the allure of darkness as a place in which to wallow, nor by a love of violence as a thing to get off on – but from sorrow and rage at the monstrous injustice and horror of this world.

In the process, I came to recognize the power of those forces on my own soul. The shadow in me that DID love the darkness. The animal in me that DID love the violence. I was forced to confront these forces both outside and within me, and reconcile them with my love of light, of good will and kindness: every bit as strong, but in seeming opposition.

The darker my horror got, the more I felt like a sin-eater for the whole human race. As if my taking it in would lessen the load of the world somehow; and expressing it with every speck of my being would transmute it, cure it, bring an end to it. 

This, of course, was absurd wish-fulfillment fantasy, which I took as far as I could before it finally snapped me like a fucking twig.

But here's the thing. I was a twig. A young tree, plagued with guilt at the darkness of my roots, leaves reaching out toward the sun and sky. And I had to snap, in order for stronger limbs to grow.

So here I am now, more than three times the age I was when I went down that path. And the heart of what I've learned is this.

I no longer feel responsible for eating the sins of the world. I would never be able to eat them all, just for starters -- they're eating each other just fine -- and there will always be new ones.

Past that, I KNOW ALL TOO WELL WHAT THEY TASTE LIKE. Exotic seasonings aside, it's the same old shit. I know evil like the back of my hand, and am roughly as tempted to suck it in as I am to hit the drive-through at Burger King. Or eat my own hand. (Which, for the record, kicks the Whopper Junior's ass!)

This does not mean I no longer care about pain and injustice. It just means I don't have to carry it around, every second of every day, as if the weight of it was mine to bear and bear alone. Because

a) I got enough of my own, and

b) I'm not alone.

I have immense compassion for every living, suffering being. Which means everyone. Because EVERYONE -- from the biggest asshole to the closest thing to a saint you'll ever meet -- is suffering, on some level, as we speak. Some more than others, clearly. But if they aren't now, THEY WILL. Or already have. Or both.

As for me, I'm an old tree now. My roots are dark and deep. And my limbs scratch the heavens I longed for, with longer and stronger and leafier outreach toward the glorious warming sun and infinite sky beyond, every day I attentively live.

Balance is everything, in all things, forever. Reaching out to every side, because that's how and where we truly connect.

Which leaves me -- as my good friend Cody Goodfellow once said -- with a warm hug for all, and a fistful of fuck you in either hand, just in case.

And that is my Taoist message for today. HAVE A GREAT ONE!

Yer pal in the trenches,

Skipp