| The Witch-King and America's Dreaming Mind |
| Part one of nine |
| SPINBUSTERS |
| �I�m sorry to everyone. I was very naive ... it is my fault ... I insisted on everything ... everything had to be my way, and this is where we ended up ... hungry and cold and hunted ... I�m so sorry.� -- Heather, �The Blair Witch Project� Michael: �Which wicked witch was worse, the wicked witch of the East or the wicked witch of the West?� Heather: �The wicked witch of the West was the bad one.� -- �The Blair Witch Project� In 1968, the year I entered high school, I endured yet another rendition of a recurring nightmare. As always, a little boy and a little girl would shyly approach me, holding hands, as I stood in the wild woods of my dream. A great storm was blowing in backwards, from the East. With wide and trusting eyes, sister and brother gazed up at me. The little boy spoke first: �Our daddy is dead,� he said, then turned to the girl. �Our mommy is dead too,� she said. Orphans. I nodded and looked at the darkening sky, swirling like the Witch on her broom over Oz. Having delivered their speeches, the two turned to retrace their footsteps. �No,� I said, �not that way. You mustn�t go back.� I pointed to the West, into the thick heart of the forest � pathless, dim, and dangerous. �Go this way,� I said, smiling to bolster their courage. They frowned, unconvinced, and the wind picked up, hurling in stinging droplets of the onrushing Shitstorm. �There�s no path,� said the little boy. I bent down and kissed them both on the noggin. �I know,� I said. �but you�re not alone. It only seems so. Don�t be afraid.� I gave them each a little shove and on their way they tramped. Behind them rose the black wall of the coming Flood, under full moon, bad and on the rise. Then, as always, I woke up, sweating and disoriented, to face the daytime nightmare: the Foul Year of 1968, and the assassinations of Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King, in the wake of J.F.K.�s murder. So continued the assault on the collective Waking and Dreaming Minds of the West. To add gloat to sin, 1963 also witnessed publication of Betty Friedan�s The Feminine Mystique � surely the most misandrist, fallacious, self-pitying document to pollute recent history. It sold, of course, like hotcakes. America loved it. On All Hallows Eve of 1963, less than a month before the rightful King of the West was ritually slain -- and America began its nightmare descent to matriarchy in earnest -- two Powers met in the basement of the Statue of Liberty. In a crypt lined with red velvet walls and a checkerboard tile floor, the Empowered Witch and Toxic King of the West held congress, plotting against the free peoples of the Earth. The undersea chamber corresponds at precise geomantic coordinates to Isis� vault under the left paw of the Sphinx, that ancient lioness of Sheba, last of the matriarchs before the ice flowed down, and the Great Flood cleansed Earth of her corruption. Scattered across the chessboard floor of the crypt was the wealth of the nation, the hoard of a great Dragon with twin heads, one female, one male. Upon the cherry walls were diverse implements of war and torture, and illustrations of Kings and Witches past, brood in the line of Nimrod and Set. The old man entered first. He appeared as a rather generic-looking male, but the moment he crossed the threshold of the Tomb, the mask disintegrated, and his face revealed an iron cast -- the King of Swords. The King carried a black urn in his right hand, which, in apparent mistake for a censer, he waved about. His left hand clutched a rolled-up legal parchment, yellow and cracked with age. In contrast to his dour and regal bearing, he sported an enormous red codpiece, which kept bumping into walls whenever he turned, deflating his �imperial� air. In his time he had been a great ruler, patriarch of the Seven Houses of the West, the first male appointed by the Queen�s council, back before men knew they were men. But he got Set on his Mistress, and never unglued himself, and now he was just another wizened, foul old Gollum. He was covered with horrible oozing sores, in which resided � gamboled, actually � a tropical species of flea and its larvae. He weren�t a purty sight, and being dead improved his appearance not a whit. |