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My father regularly beat the yell out of me as a kid. I wanted to put and end to it however I knew that if I used violence I would become what I hated. Reading DRACULA at 15 I found the way when I read Dr. Van Helsing describing the Power of King laughter. I engineered the biggest beating that man ever gave me. Just before he struck I invited King Laughter into my heart. He beat, beat, beat, beat, beat, beat, beat, beat, beat, beat, beat, beat, beat, beat, beat, beat, beat, beat until he could beat no more. I had felt no pain. I had not a mark on my body. More importantly he never beat me again. Did I hate him? Of course not. He did what he thought right. Without him I would not have learned of the power of King Laughter. I use that power daily.
From DRACULA:
“”Ah, you don’t comprehend, friend John. Do not think that I am not sad,
though I laugh. See, I have cried even when the laugh did choke me. But no
more think that I am all sorry when I cry, for the laugh he come just the same.
Keep it always with you that laughter who knock at your door and say, ‘May I
come in?’ is not true laughter. No! He is a king, and he come when and how he
like. He ask no person, he choose no time of suitability. He say, ‘I am here.’
Behold, in example I grieve my heart out for that so sweet young girl. I give
my blood for her, though I am old and worn. I give my time, my skill, my sleep.
I let my other sufferers want that she may have all. And yet I can laugh at her
very grave, laugh when the clay from the spade of the sexton drop upon her
coffin and say ‘Thud, thud!’ to my heart, till it send back the blood from my
cheek. My heart bleed for that poor boy, that dear boy, so of the age of mine
own boy had I been so blessed that he live, and with his hair and eyes the same.
“There, you know now why I love him so. And yet when he say things that
touch my husband-heart to the quick, and make my father-heart yearn to him as
to no other man, not even you, friend John, for we are more level in
experiences than father and son, yet even at such a moment King Laugh he
come to me and shout and bellow in my ear, ‘Here I am! Here I am!’ till the
blood come dance back and bring some of the sunshine that he carry with him
to my cheek. Oh, friend John, it is a strange world, a sad world, a world full of
miseries, and woes, and troubles. And yet when King Laugh come, he make
them all dance to the tune he play. Bleeding hearts, and dry bones of the
churchyard, and tears that burn as they fall, all dance together to the music that
he make with that smileless mouth of him. And believe me, friend John, that he
is good to come, and kind. Ah, we men and women are like ropes drawn tight
with strain that pull us different ways. Then tears come, and like the rain on the
ropes, they brace us up, until perhaps the strain become too great, and we break.
But King Laugh he come like the sunshine, and he ease off the strain again, and
we bear to go on with our labor, what it may be.”
I did not like to wound him by pretending not to see his idea, but as I did
not yet understand the cause of his laughter, I asked him. As he answered me
his face grew stern, and he said in quite a different tone,
“Oh, it was the grim irony of it all, this so lovely lady garlanded with
flowers, that looked so fair as life, till one by one we wondered if she were
truly dead, she laid in that so fine marble house in that lonely churchyard,
where rest so many of her kin, laid there with the mother who loved her, and
whom she loved, and that sacred bell going ‘Toll! Toll! Toll!’ so sad and slow,
and those holy men, with the white garments of the angel, pretending to read
books, and yet all the time their eyes never on the page, and all of us with the
bowed head. And all for what? She is dead, so! Is it not?”
“Well, for the life of me, Professor,” I said, “I can’t see anything to laugh at
in all that. Why, your expression makes it a harder puzzle than before. But even
if the burial service was comic, what about poor Art and his trouble? Why his
heart was simply breaking.”
“Just so. Said he not that the transfusion of his blood to her veins had made
her truly his bride?”
“Yes, and it was a sweet and comforting idea for him.”
“Quite so. But there was a difficulty, friend John. If so that, then what
about the others? Ho, ho! Then this so sweet maid is a polyandrist, and me,
with my poor wife dead to me, but alive by Church’s law, though no wits, all
gone, even I, who am faithful husband to this now-no-wife, am bigamist.”
“I don’t see where the joke comes in there either!” I said, and I did not feel
particularly pleased with him for saying such things. He laid his hand on my
arm, and said,
“Friend John, forgive me if I pain. I showed not my feeling to others when
it would wound, but only to you, my old friend, whom I can trust. If you could
have looked into my heart then when I want to laugh, if you could have done so
when the laugh arrived, if you could do so now, when King Laugh have pack
up his crown, and all that is to him, for he go far, far away from me, and for a
long, long time, maybe you would perhaps pity me the most of all.”
I was touched by the tenderness of his tone, and asked why.
“Because I know!”
And now we are all scattered, and for many a long day loneliness will sit
over our roofs with brooding wings. Lucy lies in the tomb of her kin, a lordly
death house in a lonely churchyard, away from teeming London, where the air
is fresh, and the sun rises over Hampstead Hill, and where wild flowers grow of
their own accord.
So I can finish this diary, and God only knows if I shall ever begin another.
If I do, or if I even open this again, it will be to deal with different people and
different themes, for here at the end, where the romance of my life is told, ere I
go back to take up the thread of my life-work, I say sadly and without hope,
“FINIS.”—Bram Stoker, DRACULA

 

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