Font Size
The people native to the Americas taught that to beat a person for doing bad or wrong is to beat the badness or wrongness in. I’m with them.
That said my father beat me often. I wanted to put an end to his beatings without hitting him for I knew then I’d become what I hated, I found the way when I read Bram Stoker’s DRACULA. In it Van Helsing speaks of the power of laughter.
At 15 I engineered the biggest beating my poor father ever gave me. He beat, beat, beat, beat, beat, beat, beat, beat,beat, beat, beat, beat (I’m not exaggerating) until he could beat no more. The moment he struck I invited King Laughter in. Finally, exhausted, he stopped.
He never touched me again. I had felt no pain. My butt was not red. I had completely and thoroughly beaten him without becoming what I hated.
For decades forces in Toronto have done everything in their power to beat me. I got knocked down so deep they thought I’d never get out. Well, when you’re going to build a high house you need a deep foundation. My foundation rises out of Hell for that is where they put me.
“Keep it always with you that laughter who knock at your door and say, ‘May I come in?’ is not the 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.’ … 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 labour, what it may be.”― Bram Stoker, Dracula
  • Reply

« »