I looked up the etymology of torture, it’s from the French, and among other descriptions I noticed the word “twisting.”
Try to put aside for just a brief moment any outrage, fear, anger, any high emotion that automatically occurs when the subject of torture, and more specifically, institutionalized torture a’la Woo/Cheney, etc. comes to mind.
Just for a brief moment.
Twisting. For some reason that makes me think of someone taking a beautiful sacred mesa and brutally mining it so that it is utterly destroyed.
In other words, taking something useful and making it useless.
I recently read a wild novel by the equally wild Whitley Streiber, 2012, a Philip K. Dickian paranoia trip with some interesting notions, one being that there are monster people (somewhat lizard like but who can mimic human beings if necessary) who want to enslave our souls and the sacred spots on the planet were put there to keep the monsters’ giant “lenses” from working and stealing every human’s soul with a weird sparkly light that when poured over a person basically turns them into a zombie.
Well, that’s a terrible review, but I found the notion interesting in the sense that we have sacred places on our planet for a real reason, not just some mumbo jumbo hooie or sentimental “tree hugging’ motive. Winter Rabbit, among others, has enlightened me to the reality of why human beings need sacred spaces. And Streiber just gave a jazzed up high tech paranoid illustration of that in his book. But for me, the conclusion is the same. Sacred places, the word “sacred” itself, is a part of our human condition, and can be a very instructive teacher if we open ourselves to learn. I’m sure all of us here have experienced the sacred, but the word itself is either laughed at or “twisted” by fundamentalists of every stripe into something awful.
When we raze mountaintops and destroy sacred spaces, we are twisting something valuable into something not only useless but dangerous and toxic.
Why would we as a society do that? And why would we allow others to do that as a regular mode of business?
Why would we think for a moment that twisting something beautiful into something ugly is a good idea? Or that it would keep us safe?
Human beings are marvelous creations, as sacred and wondrous as the mountains, the oceans, desert, forest, all those places that give us a deep abiding sense of peace when we are near them, places that we know we need in order to stay sane.
Why would we twist other human beings into tortured souls? Is that truly the best we can come up with when danger threatens?
I said in another essay, don’t remember which, that it’s good to learn what one can from the past, as there have been tyrants throughout history, but it’s not enough.
We need to add to that knowledge as well, I feel, not just rest on what has already been learned. We need to come up with the language that a few generations down the road will be quoted as we blockquote others, both our peers and folks from the past whose writing has survived.
I asked at the beginning of this essay for the reader to put aside, for a brief moment, any outrage, anger, fear, other strong emotion, when thinking about torture. I asked because I think we need to go deeper into those strong feelings to find their sacred root — the creative human energy which will provide us the strength and ability to not only face the dangers of the present, but leave a marker behind us for our friends who will be traveling this way in the future.
I don’t mean some grand monument, just some good vibes, maybe some good stories, some chronicle of acts taken and deeds done, I dunno.
I read that ships in the sea will re-position a buoy if it has gone astray, so that others won’t be harmed by the event. That kind of thing is what I’m trying to get at.
Heh.
Anyway, I signed the petitition.
Friday. Snow and ice and general cold wetness, though at Rockefeller Center the little puddles reflected all the Christmas tree lights on the little sidewalk trees. Looked like a snowglobe of Midtown for a while.
Hope everyone had a good week.
And for lagniappe, because there’s no yin without yang and vice versa, there is another type of “twisted” I confess I don’t find useless. La la la la la.
(Bette Midler, “Twisted,” courtesy of YouTuber BetteMidlerMusic)