4 Character Sketches without Characters or Sketches

This is what happens when you read too much Faulkner. You want the feeling that comes from the grit of the soliloquy without the work it takes to write a story.......blarg..........or...........blog?

1. “Do not tell a man who comes to you in need of aid that he must simply depend on grace, and think for one moment you have supplied him with countermeasures. You have not offered him advice; you have scarcely uttered a word. Grace only means we do not know the exact cause of our fortune. To tell a man he must depend on grace is to tell him he must affirm the consequent, or have Jesus Christ create a stone so heavy that all the powers incarnate cannot lift it. What you have done, what you have smuggled into this man’s mind is the idea that if he fixates on a turn of phrase concerning grace, it will grant him the power to abandon his fixation with cutting or pornography. You have taught him magic where machines are necessary for his deliverance. You have sent him sailing with Ulysses toward a home he does not have, saying words he does not mean, with an identity he cannot locate. You have, in effect, successfully diagnosed him the angel Lucifer only to immediately thereafter prescribe him the Devil.”

2. “Dreams and sophistication. Dreams and the color of the length of your favorite food. I remember once I dreamt about relations with my cousin; how I would quote ‘I have committed incest father’ where I spoke to no Father and it didn’t count as incest with my cousin. And I remember Freud how he would say that I had killed him. And then I thought how Jesus had usurped his Daddy, and we call Him Abba reverently, as in a contradiction, and the two together the Trinity, and the Holy Spirit tagging along sitting next to me and somewhere inside me during Sunday School.”

3. You will say my religion is a fantasy—the construct of a society in need of therapeutic measures to ensure its survival. And I will say, ‘so what if it is’? True weakness, your weakness, is the failure to dive into the illusion. It is only in the illusion that suffering is real. It is only in the illusion that happiness is real. Reduce me to a chemical, and I will forget the smell of both corpse and rose. And I will forget that I have forgotten the smell corpse and rose. When you expect the grace of the gods only to find yourself disappointed and yet still manage to slither back into hope like Satan into Eden then and only then may you give me a lesson on the meaning of strength. Acquiescence to the mundane is not strength. It is not even weakness. Weakness is a failure to reach the prize and acquiescence has no prize.

4. “You don’t mean ‘I don’t know.’ I don’t know never means I don’t know. It means I do not want to say or I think modesty is more advantageous or I am not going to put the effort into thinking about it because if I do I might find out something I don’t want to. “Seek and you will find.” You know the answer. You just don’t give a damn where it’s more important to give a damn because you have no love of others in your heart because you have no love internally. It’s the insides and inner inconsistency of a man that no filter can hide. The eyes always tell, or the mouth contradicting the eyes; our cheek muscles betray us when our words juggle. I may not catch it at the time or care, but I always remember later about that moment I felt something funny when you said it. And what am I doing when I feel funny all the time, and don’t say something right then to stop you? Why don’t I demand clarification there and then? Does it mean I don’t know; or does it mean that I know and don’t want to say or modesty is more advantageous or I am not going to put the effort into thinking about it because if I do I might find out something I don’t want to”?