Hell hath . . .

D. R.                &                E. C.

April 28, 2011

Hell hath no fury.

Love, love don’t come easy, but we keep on waitin’, anticipatin’.

It’s unlikely, however, love will come at all, if we’re the unlovable shit-heels, Emil Cioran thinks we are. Cioran argues in A Short History of Decay that there are “no limits . . . to our whims.” Moreover, if we followed them with the same “limitless use of freedom” the murderer has, we would drag after us literally − as we do already figuratively (in our wishes and dreams) − “a cemetery of friends and enemies.” So this world, because of who we are, this human world would be a “slaughterhouse.”

          But Cioran gives us too much credit.  We are not so fallen, if only because, frankly, we didn’t have so far to fall.[1]  Our puny thoughts don’t turn to slaughter, only to mayhem. Consult your daily fantasies: in which that one’s wagging tongue detaches at the root and gags her till she vomits out with it the embarrassing contents of her stomach, including a caramel macchiato, two Snickers bars and six boogers; in which that one’s perky arsenic − whose lovely, firm image she’s checking out approvingly in the store window − sags to the back of her knees; in which that one’s robust rubidium shrivels to the size of an acorn or turns to fog; in which that other one’s pounding music makes him deaf to the horn of the Hummer that runs tank-like over the hood of his Cradillac; and that one’s distant gaze and easy grace misleads him into an open manhole. The possibilities are limitless, but we’re not seeking death or hell, only the justice mayhem, or farce, provides.

          Even when we say (most likely sotto voce), “Go to hell,” we don’t mean the forever flaming fire, only a day or two, a week − maybe a month − until a suitable punishment, as Procrustes’ bed or Sisyphus’ rock, teaches the lesson that needs to be learned.

          We don’t wish “forever.”  We can’t wish “forever”; we have no true conception of it. We’re not all murderers. Even if our freedom were limitless, our cruelty has its bounds, if not so much taught it by exalted reason as limited by our feeble imaginations.

          Because we didn’t have that far to fall.

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[1] Reread Genesis 1-3. There is no evidence whatever that Adam and Eve were any smarter, wiser, more imaginative, or even better before the fall than they were after. They just had a better gig . . . and they couldn't hold onto it!