Outlook
Charles William Johns
Outlook
Copyright © 2019 Charles William Johns. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.
Resource Publications
An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers
199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3
Eugene, OR 97401
www.wipfandstock.com
paperback isbn: 978-1-5326-7049-7
hardcover isbn: 978-1-5326-7050-3
ebook isbn: 978-1-5326-7051-0
Manufactured in the U.S.A. 11/26/18
For Benji and Emily
(and Anna Sadness . . . wherever she may be).
Benjamin Flew
Everyone becomes who they truly are through two types of pain: a pain handed over to you and a pain which is self-inflicted. As psychoanalysts have depicted, the building-blocks of pain are set up in early childhood (even before one is born) but the awareness of such building seems to settle and congeal within oneself in the mid-to-late twenties. The predicament that one feels themselves in-when one truly realises such-is what makes a man an adult. Like the history of Christ split between the before and after of his crucifixion, one can split their life into the feeling of nonchalance before the realisation of one’s true disposition and the situation of attempting to love and be loved whilst acknowledging the illness that defines them and the futility of its overcoming.
The question always remains as to whether it were the actual traumatic events in life that brought on this morbid realisation or whether it was solely the realisation itself, expanding, accumulating, basking in its own poignancy, diving into the recesses of the soul, appearing at the forefront of one’s mind like a wasp that you bat out of the way in irritation in order to get on with the task in hand.
Alas, friends, there is no going back or moving forward for me. In early childhood, my overactive imagination was nurtured; I was encouraged to play out the detailed fantasies I had in my head, whether through soldiers and dolls, or through the dozens of stories I wrote every day. At one point I particularly remember drawing an entire city and designating to it certain imaginary lives such as husbands and wives, fireman, politicians and even a church and a school. I would spend days animating these invisible people through their daily lives with only the movement of my eyes carrying them to certain places (I even allowed these characters to have their own inner lives and dreams, which I miraculously achieved without forgetting the precise plane of reality they occupied).
Soon after the disappearance of my mother and father’s soul-replenishing love and care for me (because of their subsequent divorce and the general assumption that a man should grow to be fully independent), I enrolled as an art student in London. I felt alone, living in a tiny dormitory within a ginormous city, and all I could feel were waves of fear and possibility capsizing me and pinning me forever to my bed.
Soon I would realise two tormenting truths. Firstly, that the overactive imagination I was blessed with as a child was in fact a curse. I remember reading somewhere for the first time what I was (what I am) and the immediacy of its truth pierced through me as if I had somehow whispered it into my own ear as I read the definition-
Neurosis-behavioral symptoms such as phobic avoidance, vigilance, impulsive and compulsive acts, lethargy, etc., cognitive problems such as unpleasant or disturbing thoughts, repetition of thoughts and obsession, habitual fantasizing, negativity and cynicism, etc.
The definition was acceptable enough, but it was only through Freud that I realised the foundations for such neurosis. It was only through Freud that I painfully learnt and accepted a second truth: the effects that sexual taboo and infidelity had upon me.
I will avoid the exposition of reasons why this is to be the case for my neurosis, but I will say that part of it was plain unluckiness. After my dark adventure into all things psychological, I can now say, with full understanding, that it seems tragic enough for the human race to have to unwittingly carry out their experiences of childhood (dare I say the experiences of their parents) for their whole lives, but to also experience such cruel fate twice, by particular persons that come into your life, who you build trust with and love–now that is an evil repetition that none should have to bear.
Because this was my fate I now love and hate equally. I hate all those that I love because my love is unconditional and therefore I cannot retract that love even when they mock it or transform it into a way that can give me pain. I love all those I hate simply in the sense that my enemies (including my loved ones) take over my mind and provide me with an infinity of images, sensations and feelings so intimately studied by myself that such intimacy must be love if it is to be anything at all.
This would, perhaps, be bearable if I wasn’t also an idealist or a romantic. However, it is my almost religious, almost transcendental, desire to be truly loved by a woman, that causes such desperate despair; to wish to lie with her naked, upon her sweet bosom, while she caresses my sweat-ridden brow and whispers my name. This sacred yet ultimately impossible desire is why I wish to die and be at rest now. When I look back at the memories, even those ones that give me momentary delight, they become, through examination, false and impure. Even when I think of my lover’s smile and her flowing dress, it is soon followed by the opening of her legs for another, her mouth open, tongue touching another’s, giving the other sweet sensation. Even when I think of my mother and father, I do not see all that they have sacrificed for me, all the care that only parents can truly give, I instead see alcohol, laughter, jealousy, lust, selfishness, infidelity. In truth, I see them as myself.
There are times when I mutter under my breath that this whole situation is unfair. But what does it mean to say this? Nature is not ‘fair’, the clotting of blood, the building of an abscess, do these comply to the laws of fairness? If one were a Christian, one might be able to ask this question; one might look up to God and ask why his intentions were to be this way, but most of us live in an ungodly world. Perhaps the smallest traces of religion can still be found when a child, being stung by a nettle (or I myself) under the tyranny of despair, whimpers and proclaims that such is ‘unfair’.
Best,
Benjamin Flew
Sam Wood
Like any event of death within life, things seemed to settle down after a while. The sadness and confusion disappeared and the day-to-day activities of the eight men that Benjamin sent his ‘suicide email’ to (who were presumably the closest to Benjamin) quickly ensued as if his death were only a nightly thunderstorm that departed with the rise of the sun the next morning. We were all interviewed the day after his death, but because these sessions were isolated to a one-to-one interrogation I never got to meet Benjamin’s friends. I was still a little perplexed (yet flattered) as to why he thought of me as one of these special select friends; I had taught him how to play basic guitar chords at my studio for approximately
