The Dead Zone
Good Friday is always an interesting day to go slinking about in the city as the place is pretty much a ghost town. There’s the usual hordes of tourists looking like stunned mullets when they discover that the only places open are the churches and McDonalds.
The smart ones abandon any plans of shopping and go for picnics or barbecues in the parks and by the river.
The serpent routine also takes account of the strangeness. In fact that is what makes the day so special. The usual routine is to go to the old Wesley church in the city for the annual Stations of the Cross art exhibition before slinking over to the east side of the city to lurk around the old streets and the historical graveyard on a hill. There’s also a park on the way with bunya trees. This time of year the nuts are on the ground ready for the picking. They can best be described as pine nuts on steroids. They are the size of avocado stones but that’s just the seeds. The actual pine cones are likely the size of a durian fruit and could be very painful if one fell on top of you.
After making a special effort to keep an eye out for the church art posters, noticed that they were only promoting the assorted Easter services and not the art exhibition. Visited the church yesterday just to be sure as it is usually on for a whole week. Maybe there’s budget cutbacks and they could not afford to pay the commissions this time. While there took the opportunity to look at some of the free reading material. Was very happy to see some “Good News” Bibles with a font just a bit bigger than size 8. So not so randomly went looking for Judges in the Old Testament and was not disappointed. There were genocides, nonconsensual orgies, lies, deception and human sacrifices in less than four pages.
I could not help but think of Professor Eric Rabkin of the recent science fiction and fantasy literature course who saw the Garden of Eden and Biblical references in just about everything. And a snake of course is never ever just a snake.
Today there was a radio program about a girl whose mother was convinced that God wanted her daughter as a sacrificial offering. She was only two when her mother tried to cut her throat with a knife. The girl survived and is now in her twenties. She does not have a very good relationship with her mother.
Was listening to that story while picking up the bunya nuts and thinking about how scary it is that just about no one comes out and says that the whole business of Abraham and Isaac is appalling and disgraceful. As far as I’m concerned it is the most dangerous and disturbing story in the whole book which is precisely why I snaffled it for Nanowrimo but with some wicked twists. Having a father who tries to kill you because God told him to is a very good reason to become a militant ‘take no prisoners’ atheist.
The only remotely acceptable explanation of this appalling story claims that it marks the turning point from human to animal sacrifice. So no literalism and no acceptance of abominable acts because “God told me to”. But nearly all the believers feel the need to justify the actions of Abraham and his sanity is never ever called into question. Instead the believers just repeat the trope on a much grander scale so that it is perfectly logical and acceptable even for God to sacrifice his son and that this is a very good thing. Unfortunately for Jesus there was no last minute rescue with some conveniently located ram in a nearby bush. But that’s getting into dangerous Mel Gibson territory and the cult of martyr worship and suffering for its own sake. All the interesting things Jesus of Nazareth does and says get completely ignored due to the obsession with suffering and sacrifice and all this Son of God stuff and the desperate desire for a happy ending.
So it seemed appropriate in keeping with the tradition of starting a new spooky book on Good Friday that it should be a red tome with a serpent on the cover and the intriguing title “Sepulchre”. Snaffled this book at another favorite ritual event. A local charity always has books, cakes and sausages in a bun for sale to take advantage of the captive audience at election time. Got the Philip Pullman books there at the Federal election and this time some Stephen King books and this one from James Herbert. He died last year and his most famous books were mentioned including “The Rats” and “The Fog”. Don’t know if they are any good but with wonderful titles like that, well worth a second look.
So far there’s a haunted house, a multinational mining conglomerate and some dodgy security agencies and mercenaries. But it is the quote about God condemning the serpent in the Garden of Eden that got this book on the Good Friday list.
It is such a pleasure to be able to read a book again without worrying about having to write an essay about it. Sitting on a park bench outside a historical graveyard while watching the sun go down just adds to the spookiness of it all.
Many years ago Stephen King’s “Dead Zone” was one of these Good Friday spooky books and the one that started the tradition. It was really creepy remembering the grass and the graveyard and all the surrounding areas from the days when it was a wasteland all blanketed in snow. There was snow storms and blizzards in the story and it was all so vivid that I seen them in the real world too. And like seeing Bugs Bunny at Disney World, snow in April or even in June is completely impossible in this bit of Oz.
But in the world of imagination all things are possible and that is the most scary idea of all.
The smart ones abandon any plans of shopping and go for picnics or barbecues in the parks and by the river.
The serpent routine also takes account of the strangeness. In fact that is what makes the day so special. The usual routine is to go to the old Wesley church in the city for the annual Stations of the Cross art exhibition before slinking over to the east side of the city to lurk around the old streets and the historical graveyard on a hill. There’s also a park on the way with bunya trees. This time of year the nuts are on the ground ready for the picking. They can best be described as pine nuts on steroids. They are the size of avocado stones but that’s just the seeds. The actual pine cones are likely the size of a durian fruit and could be very painful if one fell on top of you.
After making a special effort to keep an eye out for the church art posters, noticed that they were only promoting the assorted Easter services and not the art exhibition. Visited the church yesterday just to be sure as it is usually on for a whole week. Maybe there’s budget cutbacks and they could not afford to pay the commissions this time. While there took the opportunity to look at some of the free reading material. Was very happy to see some “Good News” Bibles with a font just a bit bigger than size 8. So not so randomly went looking for Judges in the Old Testament and was not disappointed. There were genocides, nonconsensual orgies, lies, deception and human sacrifices in less than four pages.
I could not help but think of Professor Eric Rabkin of the recent science fiction and fantasy literature course who saw the Garden of Eden and Biblical references in just about everything. And a snake of course is never ever just a snake.
Today there was a radio program about a girl whose mother was convinced that God wanted her daughter as a sacrificial offering. She was only two when her mother tried to cut her throat with a knife. The girl survived and is now in her twenties. She does not have a very good relationship with her mother.
Was listening to that story while picking up the bunya nuts and thinking about how scary it is that just about no one comes out and says that the whole business of Abraham and Isaac is appalling and disgraceful. As far as I’m concerned it is the most dangerous and disturbing story in the whole book which is precisely why I snaffled it for Nanowrimo but with some wicked twists. Having a father who tries to kill you because God told him to is a very good reason to become a militant ‘take no prisoners’ atheist.
The only remotely acceptable explanation of this appalling story claims that it marks the turning point from human to animal sacrifice. So no literalism and no acceptance of abominable acts because “God told me to”. But nearly all the believers feel the need to justify the actions of Abraham and his sanity is never ever called into question. Instead the believers just repeat the trope on a much grander scale so that it is perfectly logical and acceptable even for God to sacrifice his son and that this is a very good thing. Unfortunately for Jesus there was no last minute rescue with some conveniently located ram in a nearby bush. But that’s getting into dangerous Mel Gibson territory and the cult of martyr worship and suffering for its own sake. All the interesting things Jesus of Nazareth does and says get completely ignored due to the obsession with suffering and sacrifice and all this Son of God stuff and the desperate desire for a happy ending.
So it seemed appropriate in keeping with the tradition of starting a new spooky book on Good Friday that it should be a red tome with a serpent on the cover and the intriguing title “Sepulchre”. Snaffled this book at another favorite ritual event. A local charity always has books, cakes and sausages in a bun for sale to take advantage of the captive audience at election time. Got the Philip Pullman books there at the Federal election and this time some Stephen King books and this one from James Herbert. He died last year and his most famous books were mentioned including “The Rats” and “The Fog”. Don’t know if they are any good but with wonderful titles like that, well worth a second look.
So far there’s a haunted house, a multinational mining conglomerate and some dodgy security agencies and mercenaries. But it is the quote about God condemning the serpent in the Garden of Eden that got this book on the Good Friday list.
It is such a pleasure to be able to read a book again without worrying about having to write an essay about it. Sitting on a park bench outside a historical graveyard while watching the sun go down just adds to the spookiness of it all.
Many years ago Stephen King’s “Dead Zone” was one of these Good Friday spooky books and the one that started the tradition. It was really creepy remembering the grass and the graveyard and all the surrounding areas from the days when it was a wasteland all blanketed in snow. There was snow storms and blizzards in the story and it was all so vivid that I seen them in the real world too. And like seeing Bugs Bunny at Disney World, snow in April or even in June is completely impossible in this bit of Oz.
But in the world of imagination all things are possible and that is the most scary idea of all.