Puck on... Christmas

But look at me jabbering on, we’ve nearly passed the holiday season up.  Don’t you owe your readers another themed post?

If you like.

If I like?  Do you really care so much for my preferences?  I wouldn’t, if I were you.  In any case, I did promise to say something about this time of year.  And I do keep my promises.

Really?

Yes, really.  I think you’ll find I’m very much the creature of my word.  Anyways, it is beginning to look a lot like… well, you know.  Such a wonderful time of year, isn’t it?  By the look on your face, I’d say you didn’t agree with that.

No.  I would just imagine Christmas means as much disappointment for some people as Thanksgiving.

Oh, that and more, certainly.  There are whole syndromes about what the season does to people.

Is that why you call it “wonderful”?

You wound me.  I’m not nearly so sadistic as you make me out to be.  (I’m much more!)  But, no, I call it “wonderful” because it’s full of wonder.  As in I wonder sometimes if any of you will ever get it.

Get what?

The significance of this “season” as you call it.

Many people have noted how the celebration seems to have overtaken the actual event.

Speak English, boy, or don’t speak at all.

The holiday is all about presents, what we get out of it, instead of the real reason.

Yes, yes, that’s it.  Consumerism!  The great devil of your age.  It is better to receive than give.  Me, me, mine, mine, more, more, more.  He who dies with the most toys…  Right?  But is that really the worst thing about all of it?

It’s not?

Oh, don’t get me wrong, your greed is simply delicious.  The fact that advertisers can take you in every year without fail, that you will shell out so much for what will mean a moment’s happiness at best, is continually entertaining.  But, in the end, all of it, the whole holiday industrial complex, is merely a distraction, and one of many.  Now, many people will, once they realized that, start genuinely working to eliminate this distraction.  They will preach the gospel of less, how we ought to spend less on ourselves, less on things, and more on others, invest in our family, more Tiny Tim, less Scrooge, and all those very good things.  And those people may be quite sincere in their efforts, but the fact is they are just as off the mark as the shoppers.  That’s the thing about you humans, most of the time, even your charity is a distraction. 

The question you need to ask is not: how can I get rid of this distraction?  The question you need to ask is: what am I being distracted from?  Because, and this is an important lesson, you will never get where you need to go by ridding yourselves of distractions, certainly not by replacing one distraction with another.  You will only succeed by finding the thing you are supposed to be focusing on, the thing your distractions have been keeping you from, and follow it.  Because when you do the distractions will handle themselves.

So, what are we being distracted from?

The importance.  The absolute, monumental, universal, importance of the event you celebrate.

The Birth of Christ.

Bingo.  But that you still miss, even when celebrating it.  The nativities, the creches, the little light up shepherds and the plastic haloes, what exactly does that convey about the event?  Imagine, if you will, how it really happened.  Night.  A cave somewhere in a dirt town in the backwoods of the world.  A girl, scared out of her mind.  A man who had no idea what he was getting into.  A struggle, the most humble struggle anything can experience: to live, to simply breathe.  Dirt and sweat and the stench of cattle.  The whole thing is so mundane as to be disgusting.  And yet, here, something happened beyond human comprehension.  A birth.  A miraculous birth, you may recognize it as.  But it is more.  It is an invasion.  It is D-day.  The beginning of the end.  There is significance here, profound significance, the weight of the very world rests in that manger.  All of my kind knows that day, all of us remember it, with pain.

Then why are you smiling?

Look outside.  Look at those people rushing to and fro.  How many of them do you think actually realize any of that?

Puck on... Antagonism

Now that does bring up something worthy of note.

If you aren’t part of the solution, you’re part of the problem?

Yes.  What a very human thing to say.  How telling of your philosophy.

Elaborate, please.

Well, since you asked so nicely.  Firstly, it belies the hypocrisy of your age.  In an era where absolutes are regarded as unenlightened and truth is relative, that you would have such a statement, which itself leaves no room for neutrality, no space for moral relativism.  But that’s not what should interest us at this point.  We’ll get to relativism later; I have much to say about that, I assure you.

But the statement really points to a very central tenet, as it were, of your personal universal philosophy.  We might call it the “Us and Them” paradigm.

You’re referring to the habit of people to form parties and factions to the exclusion of others.

Very astute.  And so concise and philosophical-sounding.  I bet that made you feel good, to use such big words.  Anyway, you are correct.  You humans are always splintering off into little groups, little gangs, little cliques.  It’s quite cute, and it would be harmless but for what it makes you do.  And here names come in again, for we must have some way to really distinguish “us” from “them”.  It may be as simple as that little pronoun or it can become very complex and droll even.  You see, humans have a natural inclination to define themselves, to literally name themselves.  (You must remind me to speak more on that for a later post.)  You seek to define yourselves, to link your identity with the group, to say you belong, to make sure no one mistakes you for “them” rather than “us”.

And that in itself might be benign but for where it inevitably takes you.  The Us/Them dynamic is never cordial but always and ever adversarial.  Why?  Because you need an enemy.  There are so many uses for a good antagonist.  It cements that group identity, and, of course, it’s always nice to have someone to blame.  There must be a “them” to oppose the “us”.  Trust me on this, I’ve seen it happen again and again.  I wish you could see things from my perspective, how comical it is.  You blame your enemy, accuse them of seeking to harm you in some way.  You may be right, you may be wrong, but what’s funny is it doesn’t occur to you that your enemy may just be saying the same thing about you, and, in fact, most certainly is.  Often, each side blames the other for what are shared problems.

And what’s even more amazing is when you do realize that your enemy has the same philosophy of “us” and “them” only in the reverse.  Because, while you might think that would drive you to seriously consider your ideas to make sure they aren’t due to your perspective alone, it so rarely leads to that.  The philosophy remains.  “Yes, they may say the same things about us, but we are right.”  You accuse them of the sin, while maintaining your own innocence.  “They” are always wrong and “you” are always right.  It’s something of a Napoleonic martyr complex that pervades your entire race.

But the idea goes so much deeper than any of you might realize or want to.  You see there is always an “us”, but how that “us” is defined changes.  “Them” may refer to a real threat one moment and suddenly include the man next to you a moment later.  Because the problem goes right to the root: you.  Because that “us” starts with you.  The two parties are you and everyone else.  Anyone you would like to include in that little circle is up to you.  And that, by the way, is how it always ends up.  You may maintain that “us” for a good long while, but, in the end, it’s you, what you get out of it.  In the end, you stand alone.  Naked you came.  And naked you go.

Ha, that almost rhymed.

Puck on... Hope

I hope I haven’t upset you.  I realize these things can seem a bit depressing.  Then again, reality often is. 

Well, there must be some hope.

I would expect you to say that.  But let’s be careful here.  Analyze that thought.  Is it born out of honest faith that hope springs eternal?  Or is it not out of fear?  The fear that it just might be true and all your fears and trials and tribulations might not be transitory.  That the valley will go on forever.  “Life sucks, then you die.”

I don’t believe that.

Of course not, it’s depressing.  Then again, listen to what’s coming out of your mouth.  Not “I know it can’t be”, or “it isn’t true”, but “I believe”.  You believe.  This is not an issue of the facts but of your own little ideas about how the world ought to be.  You don’t know.  You just believe.  You hope for hope’s sake.  Because to not would mean dealing with harsh realities.  And, don’t we both know, you just don’t have it in you.

You no doubt have some pithy prepared answer.  Go ahead.

That’s a rather dim view.

Of course it is; darkness has that quality.  The absence of light is quite dim.  And who’s to blame?  Me?  Oh, no, my boy.  It is you.  Actions have consequences; a lesson your species is hard pressed to learn.  You make your choices, you make your bed.  And now you must deal with it.  And how silly that you’ve seemed to have forgotten this.  That the very facts of your existence astonish you.  You’ve turned your back on the sun and are surprised to find a shadow.

And that does bring up a more interesting point.  Has it ever occurred to you that your hopes and dreams and desires fail so often not because of the particular things or places or situations themselves but because of something much more obvious?

What would that be?

You.  These things fail because you are involved.  The common factor in every human endeavor is humans.  You, flawed, tiny, dirty, clumsy, little creature that you are.  Everything you touch, everything you are spells doom.  You are doomed.

But you said before that the things we put our hope in fail because they are flawed.

Trying to hang me with my own words, are we?  Careful.  I’ve traded logic with the best of them.  Yes, the things you hope for are imperfect and undeserving of your hope.  And yet you persist in attaching your hope to them.  How could they help but break with what you’re doing to them.  You give them more weight than they can bear.  And don’t you see what that says about you?

Insanity.  As I said before.  Repeating the same mistakes, the same sins, again and again and again.  Never learning, never growing, always persisting, worse and worse and worse.  As you humans say: if you are not a part of the solution, you are part of the problem.  But what to do when you are the problem?

Puck on... Disappointment

Hmm?

You were saying you would explain why humans are so prone to disappointment.

Ah, yes.  But don’t you already know the answer?

Do I?

Don’t play coy.  It’s simple logic.  You constantly put your hope in things only to be disappointed.  Why?  What does it mean when you put water in a jar only to have it leak?  The jar is flawed.  Such with what you put your hope in.  Oh, the things you hope in, so ill-equipped to hold what you invest in them.  You know why?  They are of the world.  How can they help but be imperfect?

People.  Places.  Things.  It doesn’t matter.  You fancy each equally.  You put your hope in where you live, what you have, who you’re with.  And the repeated past disappointments don’t deter you in the least.  You always think, always, that this house, this job, this town, this haircut, will make it all better.  This time, this person.  But they can’t.  They never can.  You hype them up to unrealistic proportions, choose to focus only on those aspects that you think will make them last, ignoring the parts that will certainly doom them and you.

Why, you may wonder, do you keep doing this?  Don’t look at me.  You accomplish this all by yourselves.  You want it to work.  And that desire always spells failure.  Because the more you want it to work the more you pile on your anticipations to that place or person or situation.  And these feeble things you put your hope in simply can’t bear the weight of your expectations.  And so, that job is never what you thought it would be.  That place is never as amazing as you dreamed.  That person never makes you as happy as you hoped. 

And here’s the lesson.  You would think that a lifetime of disappointment would teach you something, would educate you as to the nature of these things.  That if you would only hold them lightly, as fragile things should be held, then you might actually draw enjoyment from them, rather than clutching them so tightly you crush them.  But you never learn.  And the wonderful thing about it is how it makes you act the next time.  Instead of hoping less, you hope more.  Instead of realizing that that job or place or person is never going to be as perfect as in your own mind, you start thinking that they ought to be so.  You are disappointed because they fail to deliver something they can’t possibly provide, and you hate them for it.  As if the failure were theirs and not yours.  Disappointment turns to resentment and resentment to bitterness.  And bitterness is, oh, so sweet, at least to my palate.

It is the vicious cycle of hope.

Puck on... Thanksgiving

Tell me we’re not going to do the very cliché holiday-themed post.  Oh, we are?  How very creative of you.  Surely, no one has had the innovative mind to have their blog post reflect the holiday of the moment.  Bravo.

Well, we might as well get it over with.  Thanksgiving.  Or as your generation knows it: Pre-Christmas.  I expect you think I have something to say on that, but really that is too easy.  And since I’m sure your going to have another themed post for the next holiday, I will save my thoughts for that one.

So, what are your thoughts on Thanksgiving?

Socially-accepted gluttony followed my mindless fanaticism to pointless athletic competitions, with a sprinkling of family angst and general seasonal disappointment.  What’s not to love?

Hmm?  Do I paint an inaccurate picture?  Everyone knows it.  The tragic, tragic beauty is that you set up every year as if it’s going to be different.  As if this holiday, this time, this Thanksgiving, it will be… better.  The food will be wonderful.  Your team will win.  And your family will be civil.  But come now, however the food tastes, you will eat far too much far too quickly for it to matter.  And your family will never be civil, because nothing has changed in the eleven months separating the last time you were together; everyone has simply had a year to reload.  All of it makes for a wonderful ballet of disappointment.

The big game, for instance.  I could talk an hour about how absolutely pointless the whole endeavor is.  And don’t believe that tripe about camaraderie and sportsmanship.  The simple fact it’s televised defeats that.  Between the cheerleaders, the ravenous fans and the commercials for cars, beer and pills, what is sportsmanlike about any of it?  And don’t you see that it’s quite impossible for everyone to walk away happy.  For your team to win, (and yes, your use of the possessive is so inane as to be hilarious), the other must lose.  Therefore, while all may be well and happy in your home, somewhere else, possibly many somewheres, it is not.  And you encourage this.  You want it.  Schadenfreude.  You want misery at the misfortune of others.

Disappointment.  That’s the name of the game.  And it’s a tough game.  Depression is one thing.  A general, continuous sadness can do a lot of harm.  But disappointment, real, bitter disappointment is so much more powerful, and infinitely more entertaining.  You see sadness keeps you down in the dumps.  But to be disappointed, you first have to be encouraged.  You must have the courage to lift your head, to bring yourself up just enough, to dare to hope.  It is the rise.  And then comes the fall.  You’ve cleared the clouds and fog just enough to glimpse the Sun, and then CRASH!  It all comes apart.  You rise only to be smashed down again.  And it is the fall, the crash that is so powerful.  It is quite true, you can only fall so far before you hit rock bottom, but if you are raised a little, then you can fall again.  And again and again and again.  It’s glorious.  You might have learned, but no.  You keep coming back.  Insanity, performing the same actions, expecting different results.  Over and over.  You raise your hopes, only to see them dashed.  You set yourselves up, every year, every day, only to be disappointed.

Oh, it is so fun, watching you ride that rollercoaster.  If you’re good, maybe I’ll tell you why you’re always disappointed.  Perhaps next time.

Puck on... Names

So, what shall we discuss first?  Sex?  Drugs?  Rock and Roll?

I thought I’d let you pick.

Oh, that’s dangerous.  You don’t want me to lead.  I’ll take you places you don’t want to go.

When you were talking before, about names-

Ah, yes, names.  Humans love names, don’t they?  Why do you think that is?  Go on, I’m very curious.

I guess, we want to be able to distinguish things.

Perhaps.  A good start, but it’s not the whole truth.  Really, you want to quantify things.  Oh, there’s quality as well, but it mostly exists as a means to an end.  To what end?  Why to put everything in little boxes, of course.  To divide and subdivide until you get to the real central nugget of everything, and then you can take that and pigeonhole it somewhere, with a neat label, so that everyone can know, so that you can progress your conquest of nature by every inch.

And you pridefully tout your knowledge.  You claim to know so much, but how much do you really know?  You haven’t begun to understand a fraction.  Even what you think you understand represents but the barest comprehension.  You are such ignorant things.  But still you make laws and state fact, or what you call "fact."  How quickly you forget that not long ago you thought, without a doubt, that the world was flat and maggots sprang miraculously from rotting meat.  Why should what you call now “science” or "knowledge" possess any more permanence than that?

And names.  Oh, you should not have gotten me started on names.  Everything must have its proper title, what is and isn’t such and such.  Oh, and only you can be the judge.  You prattle on incessantly: this is this and that is that and this is a rock and this is a planet and this is a tree and this is a bird and this is a completely different bird.  “Why?  Because I say so.”  Things are what they are, and they will continue to be so after you have changed your mind or stopped caring.  You make these “laws” and then rage when nature refuses to follow them.  It’s almost comical.

And it wouldn’t be nearly so bad if you restricted that kind of thing to just the observational sciences.  But, no!  Unsatisfied, you must get your fingers in everything.  You seek even to quantify what has only quality.  Beauty and Art and… ahem…  love.  You murder to dissect, you know.

But that is a speech for another post, I think.  You must be careful what you get me started on, my boy, I will talk your ear off.

To Begin With...

We should make a point of clarification before we begin.  This is “Conversations with A Devil”, not "the".  Though, I’m flattered that you would mistake me for HIM.  Or is it yourself that you think too highly of?  Trust me, the Man Downstairs has much more important things to do than talk to you.

And you don’t?

Well, zing!  That was quite the witty riposte.  Bravo.  That’s the sort of thing I would say, so I would watch that mouth, if I were you.  Then again, when have you ever watched it, really?  All the millennia of human history and that one lesson you’ve never learned.  Oh, how many troubles you could save yourselves, if you would only shut up.

Sometimes, to say nothing is the wrong thing.

True.  But it’s a pale excuse to never stop talking for fear you might miss the opportunity to say the right thing at the right moment.  Contemplate silence, then maybe you’ll understand.

Oh, but look at us.  Two minutes in and we’ve already traded insults, this does not bode well for our continued dialogue, and I would like it to continue.  I would.

That does beg the question as to why you’re here?

Ooh, that’s a doozy.  Not sure we have time to cover that.  Why are any of us here?

Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t mind a good existentialist debate, but we have so many other, more pressing matters to discuss.

I meant-

Of course, I know what you meant.  But you must learn to be specific if we are to get anywhere.

So, why?

Why?  “Why?”, is a question you don’t get to ask.  Suffice it to say I have my reasons, as do we all.  Of course, you will no doubt draw your own conclusions.  I won’t stop you.  Maybe we can even discuss them; that should be mildly entertaining.

So, where shall we start?  “In the beginning…”?

What are you?

You know what I am.  But for your “readers”, (assuming they exist, let’s not let that head get too big, my boy), I’ll explain.

I’m a demon.  Unholy fiend of the underworld.  Hell spawn.  The fallen.  Citizen of Pandemonium.  Absolute evil.  Et cetera.  Et cetera.  Yadda, yadda, yadda.  Your “readers” will no doubt paint some ghastly picture of me: horns, tail, or maybe they’ll be creative and render something vaguely Halloween.  You’ve always had such poor imaginations when it comes to real evil.  Is it fear, I wonder?  Like a child, afraid of what might actually be there, if you peeked under the bed.

How surprised they might be if they actually saw me.

Probably.  So, who are you?

I just told you.  Ah, but that was what, you want who.  Well, that's where it gets difficult.  See, you don’t want who.  Not really.  You say you do, but you don’t.  What you want is a name.  Just a name.  Something to call me.  That’s your problem.  Well, one of them.  You don’t really want to know things, to know people.  To know who they are, really, as a person, as a being, their hopes, dreams, personality.  Their naked soul.  No, you want the simplest tag to hang on them.  And so you give things names, to make it simpler.  To dumb everything down to the barest codifier.  To make it easy for you.  That’s what you’re always doing.  A whole universe of wonders beyond words and all you can think to do is label it.

I wonder sometimes if you realize everything already has a name.  A perfect title that describes it so flawlessly that to add anything else would be mockery.  Everything.  Even angels.  I had a name once.  It was light and music and beauty.

But I fear I’ve wandered from your original question.  Pardon me.  You want a name.  And in this I shall oblige you.  But that presents something of a problem.  As I said, I had a name once.  You wouldn’t understand it, of course; it’s in a language not meant for human ears.  I doubt you could even pronounce it.  And in any case, it doesn’t exactly apply anymore.  Hell changes you.  We are not what we once were.

But don’t worry, I may have lost that name, but I found a new one.  Several actually.  I’ve built up quite the collection over the years.  You see, though I may, at times, belittle human culture, there are a few aspects that fascinate me.  Over the millennia, I’ve developed a taste for mythology.  I must say you really are very creative when it comes to paganism.  I played my part in shaping it, of course.  I’ve had many incarnations.  They called me a “trickster” god, which I’ve never felt really captures my essence.  There’s so much more to me than mere mischief.  But these things do tend to be very one-dimensional.  Archetypal, you know.  They did always like to make me more palatable, more manageable.  More funny than frightening.  But who could blame them?  People tend to shun the truly horrifying.    Oh, the stories they told.  Anyway.

Let’s see.  To the Greeks, I was Hermes; Mercury, to the Romans.  The Norse called me Loki, god of fire; they may have been the nearest to the mark.  To some I’m the Fox.  To others, Coyote, Anansi, the list goes on.  But there is one that stands out.  I picked it up some centuries back.  I rather like it.

Puck.

I know what you’re thinking: me, a fairy?  Still, I think it suits.

Yes.  Puck.  That is what you may call me.