Most of the literature and tales created by humankind throughout the world deals with the concept of Love and define it either specifically or by the acts and deeds committed in its name.
I was a voracious reader from the age of five. I had no inkling of the nature of sex, and therefore entirely missed all references to it in literature as a child who read Greek and Roman classics as well as English novels from Dickens, Thackeray, and even Mary Renault at the age of 8 or 9, as well as plays by Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, as well as Continental plays by Molière, Racine, and so on, but was conditioned by all of that to place Love on a pedestal. Love always is a principal theme, along with lust for power, greed and war. Love, however, somehow is defined as ‘good’ when in fact, so-called Romantic Love across thousands of years and thousands of miles, is not good at all. It is a form of abuse. First of all, it is based on a desire to possess another human being, and the idea that one is incomplete alone. Success in love equals possession, and jealousy is an aspect of this. Requited and unrequited love alike bear jealousy on their backs. How can jealousy ever be extolled as a virtue?
One could write volumes as well about the way women are differentiated from men in any treatment of Love. Men fought duels over Women, like two dogs fighting over a bone, and the woman was a prize for the victor. I think there still are women who allow this nonsense to be perpetuated. Two men, to my absolute horror, fought over me once. I went home with the loser, mainly because I felt sorry for him. He had not chosen the fight. It was thrust upon him. I did not stay with him after that, but I did go home with him that night. He
This leads me to the idea of divinity, of ‘gods’ and ‘demi-gods’. Our Western civilisation was founded on the Classics, on ancient Greece. Here we find that the love of any god equals lust, and the need to possess at any cost. There is little courtship. It is essentially rape. Even where a god lusts for an animal, it is nothing more than rape. There is no concept of nurturing or protecting the object of his or her ‘love’.
Ironically, it is animals who demonstrate the quality of nurturing , protecting and raising even a baby who is human, the offspring not only of a stranger but of another species. There are children raised by goats and wolves. The god rapes the object of desire, plants the seed, and abandons the individual.
Humans are depicted as lesser beings, inferior to gods. Yet, gods are never good really, whether it is Odhinn, Yahweh, Jehovah, or Allah. We use adjectives such as ‘Merciful’ and ‘Compassionate’ but these only can be applied in relative terms! By comparison, as it were, with past divine acts. For example, Merciful when God does not destroy the entire world with another Great Flood.
In fact, it is humans who have the capacity and potential desire within themselves to save the world. God or gods could not care less. We are their playthings, and they delight in toying with us.
This is why Jesus is superior to God. God planted the divine seed in a woman’s womb, and she gave birth to a being with the capacity to feel. Jesus possessed the ability to feel all emotions: joy, sorrow, pain, agony, compassion, and most important of all perhaps, empathy. A god has no ability to feel empathy. Their natures are beyond that.
When any human being strives to become a god, that individual usually becomes a criminal guilty of the worst crimes. A god can take whatever it desires with impunity. A god suffers no emotional consequences. Nor does a sociopath. The definition of a god is the definition of a serial killer.
Jesus was not placed on this Earth to atone for humankind’s Original Sin, but to create a being who would be a bridge between heaven and earth, one who could FEEL, and thereby be fully invested in US.
Gods are not invested in us more than in anything else they have created. That propaganda that purports to place us above all animals and other living creatures was written by humans in the same way that the ‘Land of Milk and Honey’ as a prixe for the ‘chosen people’ was nothing more than blatant political propaganda designed to justify the invasion and appropriation of land that belonged to another.
So here we descend from the general to the personal. When I was a little girl, I fell in love with a little boy. Two little boys in fact, although as that would have been improper, I could not admit it even to myself.
They both were ‘gifted’ like me, which meant that a decade or so later, they would have bern called ‘freaks’.
They both embraced my fantasies to some extent. One was blond with the face of an angel, and an ectraordinary voice. I still would respond insrtantly if I were to hear M.’s voice again. He had a very precise diction, a sort of cold precision in voice and words, but he was not cold at all. There always was an undercurrent of passion there, even as children, although neither of us knew what to do with it.
We did have a lot of fun. Both of us were fascinated with cypers and codes and would leave coded messages to one another in Butlers Lives of the Saints at the library. I saved my money to buy a fencing sabre, and M did the same. We then had duels together, and invented reenactments of 19th century fiction, like Twenty Years After. He was the brother I never had. We should have come together easily and naturally, but his mother was a dragon, as was mine.
D. was a different story altogether. I thought he was very cute, and sort of rakish. The rumour was that his mother dressed him, but that meant he wore better clothes than M. Moveover, he had chipped a front tooth, so had a silver cap, which gave hima a vaguely piratical air. I barely saw D.,but we spoke of our ultimate plans to marry. Fo some reason, I felt that was my destiny, however long it might take.
Fast forward to the 21st century. We do tend to be vulnerable to our first loves, but this one proved to have an uglier ending than I ever would have imagined. When D. got in touch with me again, ostensibly it was to offer his condolences on my mother’s dearh and sympathy for my cancer. This all was arrant nonsense, and I should have realised it, but when he wrote about healing the emotional wounds of the past by rewriting the history of our relationship to give it a more joyful resolution, I felt it was a positive idea.
In fact, he was data mining. He was trying to provoke me into adding little intimate details about my homes and family in California. He was inserting bizarre references to an auto parts shop as well. I kept protesting, not even knowing the place at all, but now I suspect he may have been involved in the disappearance of our antique MG. Perhaps he was trying to get texts from me to claim somehow that ai had agreed to let him take the car. I never agreed to allow him to take anything for himself. He is not my partner, my manager and sadly, alas, as events proved, not even my friend. He certainly is not a beneficiary of my mother’s trust.
