Established Marvel : a Monk by Abbreviation

146. MARMADUKE AND BAAL:

There's often a material reality to the most superficial emotion : like parents crying over the death of someone they revered the real reason for the crying can be traced back to something other : a memory of childhood want or need or a recollection of a moment of loss or a loved-one gone or some old aunt or uncle from another land - stories they'd heard of but which were only brought forth as real in the family situation which formed them : none of this can be articulated properly but for those involved it all becomes the sentimental underlayment girding everything else and coloring and influencing the very way the world is experienced and seen forevermore - in fact it all is one of the most rational reasons for much of the maudlin behavior one sees in politicians and honorees and heroes as they stupidly try to verbalize what they're experiencing but wind up instead yapping some sentimental drivel proving nothing at all and I've always found that this sort of thing stays alive and is present everywhere and most especially in the 'lessons' we draw or try to draw from history : stories and adventures turned into lesson-leading or religiously-indoctrinated pabulum and tales gone awry with overt detailings of Faith and Honor or Fidelity and all of that - Christopher Columbus in a valiant effort for God or (no wait) the Queen or (no wait) the greater power of the search for Right and Propriety for the gloried kingdoms and powers that were : the frugal episode of Martin Luther and his Theses pinned to a door or the hemlock-induced death of Socrates and all the belated stories which go with it : every sort of cant and trite morality brought to bear so as to 'advance' one or another worldly cause so something or some other could gain and I've always been able to find that beneath everything there's always an undercurrent of a 'greater' reality and knowledge almost a 'secretized agenda' to what was or is being portrayed - from the 'comedy' of Marmaduke to the sentience of 'Baal' and everything else with it - NEARLY all of literature and art and entertainment couched in weird and somewhat twisted moralities - the world is constantly under pressure of the influence-peddling of people wishing to turn things their way - so WATCH OUT! it should be said and let no man fool you twice Haystack Calhoun or whomever it may be -- and like the small parts of everything which are embedded into everything else this crazy old world it seems just goes on and just as Religion is all about transcendence (really that and nothing more) in the same way no one really likes being here but one by one we go on anyway - hopeful perhaps for deliverance with the patience of a saint and wiser than a saint too but nevertheless resigned (as it were) to the ending : the girl I was walking with was off to my side and I noticed she had the palest reddest eyelids I'd ever seen and with red eyelashes too and she often closed her eyes as she talked and all I'd see were pale pink slits where eyes just before had been and it too all became to me like a high transference of things - here and there the little and the large - the tree with reluctant leaves the roadside light which must be triggered by the switch the way traffic and people flow together as opposites but as one and never are any words exchanged - I knew I was falling for something but I couldn't know what - the metal clang of the cars turning corners as people try to sneak between and the cluttered condition of traffic and its congestion - humans and things scurrying everywhere and about nothing no matter where to as the simple toss and throw of living itself is enough - nothing ever seen by Blake nor Whitman or Stevenson nor Caesar himself yet today it is all among us : a radical historian would say 'jam and tobacco - the very best things.'