Sunday Night Journal — August 5, 2012

Blessed With a Dark Turn of Mind

Some girls are bright as the morning
Some girls are blessed with a dark turn of mind

--Gillian Welch

Some boys, too. As far back as I can remember I've been troubled by an inability to get very dark things out of my mind, or to keep them from getting in there in the first place. Even if I have some warning that something I'm about to see is going to include horror--a story about a gruesome crime, for instance--something in me is inclined to press on, not because of an attraction but precisely because of fear and repulsion, something that perversely and stupidly wants to find out just how bad it can be, as if knowing the worst will somehow arm me against it. And then, if it's really bad, I'm stuck with it, perhaps for a long time. 

The first specific instance of this I can recall was when I was, I suppose, six or seven years old--old enough to read, at any rate. Somehow I came across a horror comic. It frightened me, yet I couldn't resist reading it. It may well have been an issue of Tales from the Crypt. I don't recognize any of the synopses in the Wikipedia entry, although "Terror Ride!" bears a resemblance. If it wasn't Tales from the Crypt, it was something similar; the sample illustration at Wikipedia is just the sort of thing I remember. There were several stories in it, all terrifying to me, but worst of all was the one that I think was last in the book. It involved an amusement park ride in which patrons rode little boats through a series of frightening scenes, including, for instance, a huge hideous figure with an axe poised to strike down at them. Except that there was a monstrous demented old man running the thing, and he had rigged the axe so that it actually fell.... 

This little book sent me into something close to a blind panic. It was as if I had been swallowed by some great invisible fear-beast; I could still see the world around me, but it was remote and unreal. The only real thing was my  terror, and the images from the comic that would not go away. I don't now how long I remained in this state. At the time it seemed a very long time, weeks or months, but perhaps it was only days. I never told anyone what was going on, and eventually it faded away. (As an adult in my mid-twenties I had an experience similar to that provoked by the comic, except that it wasn't provoked by any one thing, but by an accumulation of several things. It's a story for another time, but I think it was what has now come to be called a panic attack.)

Years ago I saw a Gahan Wilson cartoon that made me laugh in recognition--if you don't remember him, he specialized in creating very dark humor out of macabre situations. This one pictured a little boy walking down the sidewalk. As I recall he is bundled into a big coat, with only part of his head sticking out, and he looks somewhat fearful. Two women observe him, and one says "There goes that little Wilson boy, all alone as usual." But images of monsters and other nightmarish things are swirling all around him, visible only to him. I had to laugh; that might have been me as a child, not always but too often. 

The thing that has continued to plague me from time to time is something that I suppose happens to most people. You read about some horrible thing--it may be a news story about the atrocities committed in war, or by a despot, it may be an account of torture, it may even be something from the life of a saint. And it hits you like a blow to the gut. You're dazed and sick with horror and pity and you want to cry out. You can't believe that one human being could do such demonic things to another, you want to know why God allows it, and you get no answer. For a few minutes your mind flails about desperately, trying to escape what has just taken possession of it, wanting to be rid of the hideous knowledge, wanting to somehow undo or ameliorate the pain and terror of the person who suffered what you just read about, but helpless.

Then you get control, you go on about your business, and the horror fades. Only, if you're like me, it keeps coming back, and your mind ties itself in knots trying to keep it away--everyone knows the phenomenon in which the effort not to think about something only insures that one will think about it. I have fairly frequent bouts of insomnia, and it's often during these, as I lie awake in the dark, that images of horror come back to torment me. Sometimes I can only escape them by getting up and turning on a light and reading or listening to music for a while. 

But I've recently learned a different way of dealing with this. Like any Catholic, I'm familiar with the idea of offering any pain or suffering of my own to God as a sacrifice for others. But only somewhat recently have I begun to think of these bouts of morbid obsession in that light. I think it was Caryll Houselander who made this really clear to me, in passages like this one that I quoted a week or two ago:

"...your suffering, bitter though it is, is healing the world's sorrow. Don't think of it in terms of what is unbearable to you, but when a specially bad hour ends, even in sheer weariness, think, 'That is a drink of water to someone dying of thirst,' or, 'That is a bar of chocolate for a hungry child.' It is mysterious, but true."

Could it be possible that by accepting the anguish that sometimes visits me and offering it to God on behalf of the victims of torture and atrocities of all sorts that I could be helping them somehow--giving them a hint of comfort, helping them to endure or recover...something? With that hope, the entire picture changes, as if a negative image had suddenly become positive, and what was dark is now light. My pain now has a purpose, and therefore is easier to bear. Now, if gruesome images come to torment me in the dark--well, I won't say I welcome them, because they are still a torment, but I welcome the opportunity to make use of them. I am at peace. I don't fight them or try to escape them, but rather let them come and face them, fear and horror dispelled by the hope that this is actually of some effect in relieving the pain of the actual sufferer. I offer not only whatever is bothering me at that moment but all the similar fears that have beset me from childhood on. The idea that I might actually be helping some poor soul to survive unspeakable agony is to me a joy that is also unspeakable. Send me as much of this as I can bear, Lord, I find myself praying,  if it can help that tortured child that I read about this morning.

If it can really help--and you'll notice I say if, because I'm always struggling to believe--then I can truly say that my dark turn of mind is a blessing.

The translation of the Psalms that we use in our Anglican Use liturgy seem to be based on the Coverdale translation. I'm sure others are more accurate, but since the psalms are poetry, I think multiple meanings are permissible. Last week we had Psalm 84, and it seemed to speak directly to me, as of course scripture so often does: 

Blessed is the man whose strength is in thee, in whose heart are thy ways, who going through the vale of misery use it for a well; and the pools are filled with water. 

Comments

[Janet]

Oh, my goodness.

AMDG

[grumpy]

I envy you being able to offer the dark side, as it were of your imagination. To me, it is too dark - I cannot dwell on it enough to offer it.

[Mac]

Well, I'd much rather have been able to escape it, but I can't seem to do that...

[Janet]

Anyway, I like that Gillian Welch song.

AMDG

[Mac]

I love it (not surprisingly).

[Louise]

This is wonderful, Maclin. And I have no doubt that somehow your sufferings, offered to God, really do help those you pray for.

I remember a time several years ago, Nick and I both read an horrific story in the paper online. We were both distressed and I was sobbing the whole time I was having a shower after reading it. It would have felt so much better to offer it up. I rarely read anything like that. Even headlines torment me.

[Mac]

Thank you, and I sure hope you're right.

As it happened, Monday morning I read something horrendous in the paper and have been troubled by it off and on since. I don't want to be specific, because I don't want to put the stuff into anybody else's head, but it involved deliberate violence against a child. And as always with such things, I find myself absolutely at a loss to understand how anyone can want to do such things. I have plenty of evil in me and can imagine, for instance, killing somebody at whom I was enraged. But it is simply literally incomprehensible to me that a human being ever even thought of doing the things I read about.

[Paul]

I can't put my finger on why, but it brings to mind a passage from Mencius:

"Supposing people see a child fall into a well – they all have a heart that is shocked and sympathetic. It is not for the sake of being on good terms with the child’s parents, and it is not for the sake of winning praise from neighbors and friends, nor is it because they dislike the child’s noisy cry. Judging by this, without a heart that sympathizes one is not human; without a heart aware of shame, one is not human; without a heart that defers to others, one is not human; and without a heart that approves and condemns, one is not human. The sense of concern for others is the starting point of Humaneness. The feeling of shame and disgust is the starting point of Justice. The sense of humility and deference is the starting point of Propriety and the sense of approval and disapproval is the starting point of Wisdom. People's having these four basic senses is like their having four limbs."

[Mac]

Among other things, that's a pretty rough indictment of an important strand of modern thinking. In turn it brings to mind for me Flannery O'Connor's remark about the moral sense being bred out of people the way chickens are bred to be wingless. How does that go?...ah, here it is:

"[I]t is easy to see that the moral sense has been bred out of certain sections of the population, like the wings have been bred off certain chickens to produce more white meat on them. This is a generation of wingless chickens, which I suppose is what Nietzsche meant when he said God was dead."

[grumpy]

Just finished watching Sling Blade! Excellent movie. I watched it in little bits over a few days. I'm wondering if it would do to illustrate friendship in the Love Course, alongside Broadway Danny Rose. Marianne, I don't have an allergic reaction to Woody Allen. I've always been a fan, ever since my parents took me to Take the Money and Run when I was eight years old. I felt so sorry for my students last year, who thought the movie about Paris was 'great,' and who had never seen the 'early ones, the funny ones.'

[Mac]

I thought you would like it. I watched it in several pieces, too, and it was plenty powerful enough that way.

[Rachel]

If I remember rightly, this idea--of offering up one's suffering on someone else's behalf--plays an important part in one of Elizabeth Goudge's novels. I can't remember which one right now, though.

It, or something like it, is also prominent in at least one of Charles Williams's books, I think.

I am not doing very well with titles this morning!

[Janet]

Oh, it's Charles Williams's main message. It's probably in all his books. And I've frequently thought that EG was like Williams in this way and perhaps read Williams. You see it fairly frequently in her books, but there's one in particular, The Rosemary Tree I think, in which a grandmother spends most of her time doing this.

AMDG

[Mac]

I think I said, in reviewing one of EG's books, that she should have been one of the Inklings. I also think I talked about the resemblance to Williams. Anyway, I definitely agree.