(Barrett John Erickson)
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Intuitive AffinitiesAs an infant: a sense of joyful difference; an alienation from the shit in my diaper; an attraction for oral pleasure; a distaste for milk; a delight in dreams; a connoisseur of night terror.
Scanning the youthful horizon, landmarks are retrospectively obvious. Are such affinities in our genetic base, the natural result of innate desires for fulfillment, or do they grow in us like a venereal disease, contracted through impulsive spontaneous action in the pursuit of pleasure, perhaps incubating for years before overt symptoms appear? Simultaneously early television brought The Marx Brothers and Bela Lugosi. Abbot and Costello met the Werewolf in black and white late night Halloween marathons. Pods exploded with alien life forms exact duplicates of our parents, lacking spontaneous desire, while Groucho and his perversely lecherous brothers Chico and Harpo formed counterbalance to the banality of grade school discipline, and an educational role model came in the form of Professor Irwin Corey. Such twisted terrain pulled in many directions and soon death was everywhere.
Analytical Research RevelationsPoe led quickly to "The Metamorphosis." As zippered black bags accumulated on the west coast, a darkness of a more solitary kind descended on adolescence. The realization that life's course could be so drastically altered by the absurd force of trivialities, the slightest whisper of resignation, or the oppressive weight of inertia, leads to the conclusion that it must always be held close to the body. As the bloody fragments of shattered personalities fell noiselessly on a Tanguy canvass, Nietzsche laid a foundation for the exploration of Breton's manifestoes, Duchamp shed light on Groucho, and Beckett explained Quantum Uncertainty. A transformation was taking place in the dark hollows.
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Emergence is overrated.
There's something to be said for steady development in the open, but this path has been one of
submerged tendency and diversionary amusement. Explorations into dead ended alleys of deep
shadow and locked doorways behind which breathing can be heard. The occasional cry of pain
or ecstasy, they cannot be distinguished, echoed among the upper level windows. A salty
dampness under foot. A collection of oddly shaped keys on a souvenir ring.
Was there "light at the end of the tunnel?"
Perhaps, but it was not to be trusted. Illumination can be found only in the fires that consume
us.
~~ barrett