I didn’t read it then, at least not in its entirety, but I got enough of a feel for it that it entered my imagination, and began to do its work.
diary /
I first encountered it, I think, on a bookshelf belonging to one of my older sisters, when I was in high school, in the state of Minnesota.
diary /
I’m reminded of The Screwtape Letters, by C.S. Lewis, which purports to be a series of letters from a demon named Screwtape to his nephew, Wormwood, a “junior tempter,” advising him how to accomplish his current task, which is to secure the damnation of an unnamed man who is living his life in mid-twentieth century England.
diary /
The more present she is to your mind, the more powerful you allow her to become.
diary /
Speak to your guardian angel, know that she is there.
diary /
And when the hour of our passing arrives, how well we have battled them accounts for how near or how far are our souls to their clutches.
diary /
Perhaps they are like the stars, these demons, present always, but seeming to recede from us at certain times of day.
diary /
His absence of figure casts its absence of shadow across the floor.
diary /
I imagine him sitting on his haunches in the corner of the room, just dwelling there, watchful.
diary /
He arrives around one o’clock, and, if I’m not vigilant, will influence my thoughts and my behavior.
diary /
I’ve noticed I’m susceptible to what I call the demon of afternoon sadness.
diary /
I still have them, of course. They do not go away. Though maybe different ones occupy us at different stages of life.
diary /
I have had my demons, which are another sort of oppression, and which come for us all, with varying success.
diary /
Not, anyway, systemic oppression.
diary /
Here I am, a straight white middle-class English-speaking male, with much privilege, and virtually no experience of oppression.
diary /
Part of me dislikes hearing me say such things, for there is something disagreeable, if not unjust, about the ruminating types of philosophy, at least when voiced by those who have lived through little suffering.
diary /
Or, anyway, linguistically. Which does have consequences metaphysically.
diary /
For example, I say that I am in Brooklyn, and that is true, but if I think about what those words mean, I can begin to lose my bearings. Not geographically, but metaphysically.
diary /
There is a great void that runs on down through everything.
diary /
As I stand at my window now, and look out, I can see two birds on a branch of a tree that is technically on the property of the building behind the one where I live, but that, because of the way it has grown, is closer to me in its upper reaches.