Don Quixote, Which Was a Dream (25 page)

'I know they hate women because they're kidnapping a woman against her will.'

'That's the Virgin Mary,' said another dog. 'Maybe you

should try looking through glasses which aren't so dark you can't see through them.'

'Religious white men hate women because and so they make women into the image of the Virgin Mary,' the night concluded. She felt sad because no man loved her.

The knight knew that theft is evil therefore the theft of any woman is evil. Even the Virgin Mary. Therefore religious white men are evil.

But evil must be evil. If evil is evil, how can any one or thing be evil that goes against itself? A man who controls political power does whatever he likes. It's natural for him to do whatever he likes because that's what having power means and is: the power to do. A man who controls other people steals their souls. Therefore, when the poor or soulless steal, they are acting unnaturally, they're redressing through unnatural means the proper balance of human power. This is why women have to get abortions.

All the dogs started barking.

In humans, human sexuality is closely tied to power. What are the sexualities of those white men who have almost complete political control?

All the dogs were barking.

'Valiant beasts,' Don Quixote named the dogs, 'valiant beasts; because your sexuality does not partake of this human sexuality. I, a knight, partly due to the fact that I no longer fuck - though that hasn't been quite my decision - but what is my decision? - I will now lead you in a fight to death or to life against the religious white men and against all the alienation that their religious image-making or control brings to humans.'

The Battle Against The Religious White Men Even though the dogs were barking in answer to the knight's battle cry, and in response to their own barking, and even though the dogs, becoming more and more excited as dogs do, were biting bits of the night's flesh off the darkening night, neither they nor anyone could stop the knight from attacking the religious white men.

Being Doggish, The Dogs Try To Stop Don Quixote From Battling

One dog, who was part of the mass, cried out: 'Don Quixote! What're you doing with your life? Where're you going to live? How're you going to grow old? You insane night.

'Must humans always be so stupid?' the dog asked.

'Don Quixote. Why are you assaulting our doggish Catholic faith?'

'Yours?' Don Quixote cried out in astonishment, for she was surprised. 'I didn't know Catholicism was for the dogs.'

'Better
for,
than
going to.'

'If Catholicism is for dogs,' Don Quixote continued fighting for her right to battle, 'how do you think it became that way?'

'In your world, religion disintegrated,' another dog woofed, 'because you humans stopped thinking things through. You no longer perceive clearly, night. Look at those penitents, night. They aren't bearing away a woman, as you saw; they're bearing the image of a woman: the Virgin Mary.'

'Then why are they religious?' the unseeing night queried. 'Why are they ashamed and miserable?'

'They're repenting that they're white. Any thinking human does this. Don't you read your own history books?

'So if you attack those miserable moderns or modernists, knight, you'll be making a miserable historical mistake. You will be preventing whites from hating their own whiteness.'

Don Quixote finally refuted the dogs' attack on her attack: 'Liberalism has never stopped me from doing anything,' said the night.

The Battle Against Religious White Men Ignoring the howling doggish dogs, Don Quixote stepped right up to the religious white men or penitents. She wasn't scared of them because she felt that she was such a failure as a person and she was so sick of the world in which she was living that she wasn't scared of anyone anymore. Finally, in a manner of speaking, she was a knight. 'Sirs,' she said.

As a child Don Quixote had been trained to be always polite despite whatever she was thinking. To act despite whatever she was thinking.

'Sirs,' she said.

The white religious men didn't want to bother listening to her because she was neither a landowner nor being victimized.

'Sirs,' she said, 'once upon a time there were many hyenas.'

The dogs, hearing about their brethren, began to gather around the knight.

'Hyenas are the greediest and most ambitious of animals.
He
is short for Hyena.

'Oh religious men: One of the hyenas was so greedy for fame that he turned to God Who is our, or whoever-believes-in-Him's Master. God told Hyena that if he wanted to get famous like God, he would have to pay his dues: he would have to suffer and he would have to sacrifice. Since there are a lot of dues to be paid, even for male (as opposed to female) beasts, it isn't enough to suffer and sacrifice just once in order to get fame. Hyena would have to suffer and sacrifice again and again. Just like everybody else.

'Specifically: Hyena would have to suffer and sacrifice once in order to be powerful because a person who's famous in this country has a lot of power. And once in order to get rid of all those jealous people who were trying to stop him from being famous. Jealous people, naturally, are enemies.

'Being naturally greedy Hyena was already suffering once because he didn't have everything he wanted. Hyenas never have everything they want. This's why suffering's natural. For hyenas. As for sacrificing, as opposed to suffering which is natural, Lord knows, and who else knows but the Lord?, he had sacrificed enough in one lifetime for his parents and his wife. Sacrificing isn't natural, but social. This proves that society isn't natural. For hyenas.

'Hyena rightfully or righteously decided that he'd have to suffer and sacrifice only once more, considering how much he had already suffered and sacrificed, in order to get famous.

'God, being good, kept His word: Due to one act of suffering and sacrifice, Hyena became head (HE) of a multinational corporation. According to Jesus Christ Our Lord, you too can become head (HE) of a multinational corporation if you, following the teachings of Jesus Christ, give up enough and stop giving head (HE).

'But Hyena hadn't given enough head, I mean he hadn't

given up enough: he hadn't suffered and sacrificed a second time: so he had many cruel even criminal enemies. From pencil eraser and stamp thefts to major embezzlements, criminal acts like termites were gnawing away at his multinational corporation. From the inside.

'I already taught you about theft, didn't I?'

'Oh, yes,' a dog replied. 'Stealing is one of the first ways by which we can de-control ourselves.'

'That's either right or wrong.'

'Good dog.' The dog who had just spoken patted Don Quixote's head.

'Being headstrong, the more crimes took place, the more Hyena accused and judged, but, like all political leaders, he made a lot of noise without seeing anything. The more hysterical our leaders will grow, the more the company shit or shitted-upon employees will commit every crime they can think of. And more.'

A political theorist dog enquired who the real criminal was in this situation.

'God.'

'Then God exists?'

'Someone has to be making all this up.

'If imagination still exists in this world - which could be doubtful,' Don Quixote explained, 'there must be an Imaginer. Otherwise imagination, imagining only itself, isn't imagination. It is possible that there is no imagination, that this world is dead. Otherwise, there must be an imaginer.

'Since the Imaginer, whose existence I've just proven, imagines other than Her-or Himself, the Imaginer, having the riches of the world, is a thief. Theft is good or holy.

'Therefore Hyena trotted over to the Imaginer, or God, to complain about his enemies. The enemies of the multinational corporations.

'God said, "Well, son. You ain't no son of mine. I guess you are."

'God explained His indecision: "It's hard for me to accept what I've done, that I've imagined or spawned evil or you into this world. You ain't no son of mine because you haven't given up enough. Have you given up your wife?"

'And Hyena replied, "I don't have a wife: I don't believe in indulging women in their fantasies."

'And The Lord said, "Have you given up your life?"

'Hyena laughed. "What life? This life which the Lord God Our Father, I mean
You,
gave me or threw me into? This life which started out in poverty? This life which passes from desire to desire, desires which as I grow older I'm less able to satisfy, until I have grown to hate my very self? This life which becomes harder, then goes. I'm a mass of hunger lust loneliness unsure if I have value unsure of any meaning deeply bored helpless. Lord God Almighty, what is there to give up?"

'And The Lord said, "Hear this, sinner man. Sinner Hyena. Your only problem is that you are not rich. This is the problem with all of you poor people. Why don't you just give up your damn desire to have our money?"

'The greedy beast replied to The Lord, "Why, Lord, then I'd be giving up everything!"

'The Lord said, "That is the point. You have to give up everything if you want everything. Or anything. I told you already:
you
haven't given up enough! You have to give up your self."

'Hyena the Laugher went home to his crime-riddened multinational corporation and did exactly as he had been instructed. He did his best to force out of himself all his evil love of money and greed. For if he wasn't rich, he wouldn't have enemies, so his multinational corporation would be secure.

'Hyena clothed himself in whatever squatters had thrown away, which wasn't enough, and, as if that wasn't enough, after 11:00 at night smeared the beer from drunken spillings on pub floors over his rough skin. Then he took, - not knowing what to sacrifice, he went a bit overboard, - all the red animal meat out of his refrigerator, all the liquid assets out of his VISA-ACCESS accounts, about three hundred thousand cowries (this is an African tale), and whatever cunt juice he could get, Hyena wasn't sexist, and took all this, red meat, cowries, and cunt juice, down to the river under the Hammersmith Bridge. In this place the river Thames was full of garbage. It was prior to the breaking of dawn.

'There Hyena saw the squatters who have no bathrooms in

their squats throwing their leavings or livings into the river. Which is why the river under the Hammersmith Bridge's so dirty.

'God does not like to see His animals slaughtered. God does not like red meat. As the squatters were throwing their livings into the left-over river, holding His Nose God shoved a portion of Hyena's red animal meat into every bit of their piss. The piss turned to blood while the meat changed into the bones of the living animal from whom the meat had come. Hammersmith's squatters would never again eat meat. God moves in mysterious ways.

'The squatters ran back to their flats, and told everyone who was awake - who's awake? - what had taken place. No one believed them because no one believes the poor.

'Then Hyena went to the Hammersmith police station and accused the squatters of stealing his red meat. Of course the police and the courts uphold any accusation against the poor.

'The squatters are the criminals, the ones who've been messing up the multinational corporations in this country, and this country. Having found them out, having eradicated his enemies, having saved his multinational corporation from decay and decadence, Hyena was now rich and secure, which is securely or doubly rich, in the Eyes of Our Good Lord.'

Busy with bombings of abortion mills the religious white men didn't pay any attention to the words of the knight. The dogs were barking.

'What, then, is crime?' the knight asked no one.

'What is it to imagine?' asked a dog.

'I have a vision.' Don Quixote started being autistic again:

'I'm hanging by and dangling from a rope over a pit. The pit is bottomless.

'This is the human condition,' Don Quixote said.

'I was in the middle of my life when I found myself in a dark wood, for I no longer knew my way. How hard it is to explain to you how lost I was: the wildness roughness harshness of the wood. Even the memory of it shuts my soul up with fear. My life was so hard for me that death could have been easier. As far as I know,' the night began again:

'I had found myself hanging by and dangling from a rope

over a pit which had no bottom and into which I had fallen. Into bottomlessness.

'Though I was in it, I couldn't perceive its bottom. For everything depending on everything else (meaning and value being only contextually definable) was formless and, so, imperceptible. How is, I mean
was,
vision or meaning possible?' the night asked the wild dogs.

'In my despair which is utter loneliness I cried out for help. I cried to anyone because I didn't know to whom to turn. My mother was dead. I even cried to you,' the night told the beasts. 'But I guess you haven't heard me.'

'I know I could perceive or know something because I knew I was lonely. In this sense, the rope, from which I had been dangling, had dropped.

'I further knew that somewhere I had taken a wrong turning in my life, for I was responsible for my loneliness.