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02-10-2006, 08:58 PM
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THE J MAN IN LONDON
Louis-Ferdinand Céline prefaced his master work Journey to the End of the Night with the following remarks:
"Travel is a good thing; it stimulates the imagination. Everything else is a snare and a delusion. Our own journey is entirely imaginative. It leads from life to death. Men, beasts, cities, everything in it is imaginary. It's a novel, only a made-up story. The dictionary says so and it's never wrong. Besides, every one can go and do likewise. Shut your eyes, that's all that is necessary. There you have seen life from the other side."
The J Man could not agree more. Let The J Man repeat: The J Man could not agree more. Céline was the 20th century's Master of Literary Disaster and the preeminent Chronicler of the Death of Europe and White Culture. He was born 27 May 1894 on the banks of the Seine in the Paris suburb of Courbevoie, and seemed marked by his birth at the address 12, rampe du Pont. The J Man says marked, as translated into English rampe du Ponte means "ramp of the bridge," and the Great Man's life was nothing if not the journey across the bridge from the Old Age to the New Age. Céline had been born into the Old Age, the Age when the individual still mattered, was still necessary, when individual acts of nobility were still possible. But in the previous two centuries man had begun to dabble seriously, for the first time since just after The Flood, with the black arts of science and technology, and when World War I broke out the consequences quickly became evident, and mankind suddenly discovered itself lost in a New Age. Céline was perhaps the first to truly understand all the dark implications. Among the first *heroes* of the Great War, Céline suffered a severe head injury which would forever after leave him with a roaring in the ears. You see, Céline was in the first wave of humanity crushed under the weight of scientific and technological warfare, and along with the roaring in his ears, he was left to realize the impossibility, in the face of Weapons of Mass Destruction, of ever reentering the Age he had been born into, and the impossibility of man ever again achieving the noble. Man was now a creeping thing, as anonymous as the ant, his individuality obliterated by the machines of war. A shell, fired from beyond vision, lands among dozens of individuals born in the last Age, and the explosion blows all the bits-and-pieces of them into the New Age. An Age in which warrior-heroes were no longer commanding, physically fit, brave and literal leaders-into-battle (such as Alexander the Great) but pathetically obese button-pushers such as the woman-and-child killer Schwarzkopf.
As one of the first victims of our New Age, Céline understood when man is dwarfed by his technology, when his own actions pale in significance to the achievements of his machines, then it is no surprise he is left a restless being, and our Age is marked by the behavior of the restless man: war, holocaust, rape, incest, murder and the endless lust for diversion. There is nothing meaningful for man to do while the machine regulates and orders society. Restlessness, bred of the machine, is the reason for the New Age rage. This is perfectly illustrated in the opening scene of Falling Down: a hapless ant Man, imprisoned in his automotive machine, left to the whims of the traffic light machine, with nothing to reflect on but his own insignificance--and with rage as the last outlet of personal expression.
If you disagree with The J Man, then The J Man pities you. You are a victim, in Céline's words, of "a snare and a delusion. Our own journey is entirely imaginative. It leads from life to death. Men, beasts, cities, everything in it is imaginary." Or, as the Bible says, "they that observe lying vanities forsake their own mercy" (Jonah 2:8).
Man can escape only in travel. To disengage, for however brief a time, from the ant life. To journey to distant ant farms and tower, as only a tourist can tower, over the strange ant and bemusedly observe him in service to his colony. Observing. Freed of our own ant nature, we become as large as the machine. . .The J Man goes to London and observes the British ant. . .
The Soul-Less Ant People Of London
Saturday night in ye olde London towne. The J Man wanders among the swarming colony of British, or *limey,* ants that clog the main thoroughfare from Leicester Square to Piccadilly Circus. These ants are, ostensibly, *having fun.* After a long week toiling at pointless jobs or being indoctrinated in school for just such dreary futures, the restless English ants scurry in and out of various pubs (bars), shops and theatres (theaters) in a desperate search for sensation. Why is the search desperate? Because in order to get to this *fun spot,* the woebegone London ant has had to take the tube (subway) from wherever his drab flat (apartment) is located. And the ant knows the tube will cease operating at midnight, so he must hurry up and have his *fun* before the clock strikes twelve, otherwise. . .otherwise what? You see, it doesn't occur to the ant that if he misses the last train he could simply take a taxi home instead. No, the ant has become dependent on the tube, dependent on rigid, fixed-scheduled technology to move him to and fro, and has thus become regulated, yes, his tiny ant brain actually entrained by the rhythms of the tube schedule, so that when the tube stops running, the ant believes he, too, must stop *running.* And so the ant is frantic to have his *fun* by midnight. For the ant's life has been boiled down to this: one 5-hour period (7 pm - midnight) every Saturday in which to invest meaning into his life.
But The J Man's life (as long as he remains a tourist) is timeless. All hours are the same to The J Man: empty. It is up to The J Man to fill them as he will. No external force regulates the activities of The J Man. The J Man watches the ant, much as one watches television. Merely for diversion. The ant's mad scramble for sensation is The J Man's sensation. The J Man chuckles to himself as he observes the male ants teem into the pubs. The male ants would like to escape their long week of drudgery in drink. But they would also like to rid themselves of their frustrations by having sexual relations with a female ant. So the dull male ant, so regulated by the colony he serves that he is incapable of deciding between two courses of action, will try to both get drunk and bag a female ant. So he drinks 5 hours worth of alcohol in 2 1/2 hours, thinking it will leave him 2 1/2 hours to secure the services of a female ant. But the male ant only becomes hyper-drunken. He is disoriented, his natural mating instinct deranged by an overdose of cheap limey ale. The male ant's damaged libido dooms him to failure. He stumbles from Leicester Square to Piccadilly Circus and back again for 2 1/2 hours. . .each reeling step bringing him closer and closer to the deadline for the last train. . .closer and closer to his inevitable failure to attract a female ant. Sweat breaks out upon his brow, in the palms of his hands, under his arms. Now the sweat rolls into his already-bleary-from-alcohol eyes. He can barely distinguish female from male. He panics. He reaches out at a passing female ant. He gropes at her fat limey buttocks, mutters an incoherent greeting, then curses as the female ant skips away, laughing at his ineptitude. The sober J Man laughs, too. It is good to be on holiday.
At midnight The J Man follows thousands of such ants as they crawl underground for the last train. They are angry now. They haven't had their *fun.* That little 5-hour window of hope they gazed out all week long has now had its shutters pulled shut to mark another Saturday night of defeat. And now it begins. It all begins.
Tube Rage.
There is a similar phenomenon back in The J Man's native land: Road Rage, it is called. Frustrated, impotent, restless ant people, their drone-like lives ordered by their scientific and technological colony, release their pent-up aggressions while behind the wheels of their automotive machines. The slightest perceived wrong from another ant driver is enough to unleash a psychopathic fury. The wronged ant will drive at any speed and in any fashion necessary to provoke his target ant into making that one mistake at the wheel, that one mistake which will leave the target ant a dismembered corpse in a heap of twisted metal. Of course, the crazed ant rarely has the driving skills necessary to accomplish his goal. Instead he merely makes a pest of himself, and flashes an obscene gesture as he whizzes past the target ant.
Tube Rage, as The J Man discovered while descending into the Piccadilly station, differs in one important aspect--the aggression is released ant-to-ant. There are no automobile shells behind which to hide. On the tube the enraged ant directly pushes, shoves, elbows, spits at and curses his enemy ant. Vicious old-fashioned fist-fights break out, and ant blood flows freely. Hence Tube Rage elicits faint echoes of the nobler ages of humanity, when human beings determined their own fates in hand-to-hand combat. Perhaps this is why the British ant has a reputation for greater civility than the other ants of the world.
As The J Man stood in the queue (line) leading to the electronic gate which gives admittance to the train platforms to all ants holding valid tickets, he heard an astonishing cry:
"FOR GOD SO LOVED THE WORLD, THAT HE GAVE HIS ONLY BEGOTTEN SON, THAT WHOSOEVER BELIEVETH IN HIM SHOULD NOT PERISH, BUT HAVE EVERLASTING LIFE!"
A man! Somewhere in this subterranean wilderness a man was crying out! As The J Man made his way through the mob of brawling ants, the voice grew louder, and the message continued: "FOR GOD SENT NOT HIS SON INTO THE WORLD TO CONDEMN THE WORLD. . ." and on this man went, shouting the gospel. Yes, it had to be a man, for no ant can confess Jesus Christ. And then a new voice, a female voice: "HE THAT BELIEVETH ON HIM IS NOT CONDEMNED. . ." A woman! A man and a woman! The first The J Man had encountered in England.
They were standing at the entrance to the platform for the Piccadilly train. A middle-aged couple. Husband and wife, no doubt. They were of modest earthly means, but here they were, laying up for themselves treasures in heaven. The J Man stopped to observe the scene. Thousands of angry, frustrated ants, pushing and shoving their way to the last trains, cursing each other, cursing their own lives, another Saturday night wasted in a futile pursuit of. . .of? The poor ants didn't really know what they were pursuing. *Fun.* If you asked one of these ants what they were up to this Saturday night, he would probably tell you he was out trying to have a little *fun.* What does that mean, though? It means the ants wanted something a little better in their lives than they'd had all week while laboring for the colony. They wanted to be themselves. And they thought by having *fun,* by eating and drinking and shopping and going to theatres (theaters) and having sex with other ants, they would have *fun,* they would feel alive. . .maybe even *human.* But it didn't work out. And now they had to board the last train. Crowd together into the train and be carried back to the anthills they crawled out of 5 hours earlier.
"BUT HE THAT BELIEVETH NOT IS CONDEMNED ALREADY. . ."
The ants streamed past, not a one stopping to listen, their ears dull of hearing. The soul-less ant people of London.
The J Man approached the man and the woman.
"Has anyone stopped to pray the sinner's prayer with you?" The J Man asked.
They sadly shook their heads. The J Man felt compelled to encourage them.
"Noah preached for one hundred years, and when that rain began to fall and he closed up the ark, there wasn't a single extra soul on board. But he was never discouraged from the task at hand, and you shouldn't be either. You are the two most important people in all of London."
Smiles the sizes of rainbows lit up their faces.
"God bless you, sir," they said.
"God bless you. And be of good cheer."
The J Man managed to squeeze onto the last train just before the doors slammed shut. This was an ark for all the ants of England. The stench was nearly unbearable. Two or three hundred sweating, drunken, frustrated, miserable ants crammed body to body. Vacant eyes and hollow stares. Two or three male ants, crushed against female ants, moaned and writhed, and then as their eyes rolled back into their heads and alcoholic slobber drooled from the corners of their mouths, they let forth primitive grunts as they spilled their seed in their pants. The body heat generated by the mass of ants, along with the toxic vapors of alcohol, digesting fish 'n' chips and tartar sauce, and all the other poisonous gasses which leaked through the pores of the ants, combined to produce a temperature inside the train which was so much greater than the temperature outside, that we soon found ourselves blanketed in a foul, putrefying fog. Some of the stinking, steaming haze escaped through the door cracks. Seen from outside, the train must have appeared to have been a phantom death ship bound straight for the Lake of Fire.
Riding along, inhaling the noxious fumes of *fun,* and peering through the hellish mist into the dead ant faces, The J Man realized he had allowed some dangerous thoughts to invade his psycho-space. The J Man had imagined that only as a tourist could he escape the deadly regimen of the ant colony. Of course, it is an idea that, in one form or another, will bedevil most Christians. For as we must presently live in the colony, from time to time we will fall into the bad habit of thinking we are of the colony. But hearing that gospel message, proclaimed loud and clear even here in this underground pit, brought back the mighty message that by grace through faith we are saved, and though we may die in this colony not having seen all the promises of the faith, nonetheless we have seen them afar off, and are persuaded of them, and embrace them, and therefore we confess we are strangers and pilgrims on this earth. To know Christ is to be free of the colony.
[The preceding were excerpted from The J Man Times #12. E-mail The J Man for information on how to order the TJMT #12--with the complete account of The J Man's trip to London]
THE J MAN IN LONDON
Louis-Ferdinand Céline prefaced his master work Journey to the End of the Night with the following remarks:
"Travel is a good thing; it stimulates the imagination. Everything else is a snare and a delusion. Our own journey is entirely imaginative. It leads from life to death. Men, beasts, cities, everything in it is imaginary. It's a novel, only a made-up story. The dictionary says so and it's never wrong. Besides, every one can go and do likewise. Shut your eyes, that's all that is necessary. There you have seen life from the other side."
The J Man could not agree more. Let The J Man repeat: The J Man could not agree more. Céline was the 20th century's Master of Literary Disaster and the preeminent Chronicler of the Death of Europe and White Culture. He was born 27 May 1894 on the banks of the Seine in the Paris suburb of Courbevoie, and seemed marked by his birth at the address 12, rampe du Pont. The J Man says marked, as translated into English rampe du Ponte means "ramp of the bridge," and the Great Man's life was nothing if not the journey across the bridge from the Old Age to the New Age. Céline had been born into the Old Age, the Age when the individual still mattered, was still necessary, when individual acts of nobility were still possible. But in the previous two centuries man had begun to dabble seriously, for the first time since just after The Flood, with the black arts of science and technology, and when World War I broke out the consequences quickly became evident, and mankind suddenly discovered itself lost in a New Age. Céline was perhaps the first to truly understand all the dark implications. Among the first *heroes* of the Great War, Céline suffered a severe head injury which would forever after leave him with a roaring in the ears. You see, Céline was in the first wave of humanity crushed under the weight of scientific and technological warfare, and along with the roaring in his ears, he was left to realize the impossibility, in the face of Weapons of Mass Destruction, of ever reentering the Age he had been born into, and the impossibility of man ever again achieving the noble. Man was now a creeping thing, as anonymous as the ant, his individuality obliterated by the machines of war. A shell, fired from beyond vision, lands among dozens of individuals born in the last Age, and the explosion blows all the bits-and-pieces of them into the New Age. An Age in which warrior-heroes were no longer commanding, physically fit, brave and literal leaders-into-battle (such as Alexander the Great) but pathetically obese button-pushers such as the woman-and-child killer Schwarzkopf.
As one of the first victims of our New Age, Céline understood when man is dwarfed by his technology, when his own actions pale in significance to the achievements of his machines, then it is no surprise he is left a restless being, and our Age is marked by the behavior of the restless man: war, holocaust, rape, incest, murder and the endless lust for diversion. There is nothing meaningful for man to do while the machine regulates and orders society. Restlessness, bred of the machine, is the reason for the New Age rage. This is perfectly illustrated in the opening scene of Falling Down: a hapless ant Man, imprisoned in his automotive machine, left to the whims of the traffic light machine, with nothing to reflect on but his own insignificance--and with rage as the last outlet of personal expression.
If you disagree with The J Man, then The J Man pities you. You are a victim, in Céline's words, of "a snare and a delusion. Our own journey is entirely imaginative. It leads from life to death. Men, beasts, cities, everything in it is imaginary." Or, as the Bible says, "they that observe lying vanities forsake their own mercy" (Jonah 2:8).
Man can escape only in travel. To disengage, for however brief a time, from the ant life. To journey to distant ant farms and tower, as only a tourist can tower, over the strange ant and bemusedly observe him in service to his colony. Observing. Freed of our own ant nature, we become as large as the machine. . .The J Man goes to London and observes the British ant. . .
The Soul-Less Ant People Of London
Saturday night in ye olde London towne. The J Man wanders among the swarming colony of British, or *limey,* ants that clog the main thoroughfare from Leicester Square to Piccadilly Circus. These ants are, ostensibly, *having fun.* After a long week toiling at pointless jobs or being indoctrinated in school for just such dreary futures, the restless English ants scurry in and out of various pubs (bars), shops and theatres (theaters) in a desperate search for sensation. Why is the search desperate? Because in order to get to this *fun spot,* the woebegone London ant has had to take the tube (subway) from wherever his drab flat (apartment) is located. And the ant knows the tube will cease operating at midnight, so he must hurry up and have his *fun* before the clock strikes twelve, otherwise. . .otherwise what? You see, it doesn't occur to the ant that if he misses the last train he could simply take a taxi home instead. No, the ant has become dependent on the tube, dependent on rigid, fixed-scheduled technology to move him to and fro, and has thus become regulated, yes, his tiny ant brain actually entrained by the rhythms of the tube schedule, so that when the tube stops running, the ant believes he, too, must stop *running.* And so the ant is frantic to have his *fun* by midnight. For the ant's life has been boiled down to this: one 5-hour period (7 pm - midnight) every Saturday in which to invest meaning into his life.
But The J Man's life (as long as he remains a tourist) is timeless. All hours are the same to The J Man: empty. It is up to The J Man to fill them as he will. No external force regulates the activities of The J Man. The J Man watches the ant, much as one watches television. Merely for diversion. The ant's mad scramble for sensation is The J Man's sensation. The J Man chuckles to himself as he observes the male ants teem into the pubs. The male ants would like to escape their long week of drudgery in drink. But they would also like to rid themselves of their frustrations by having sexual relations with a female ant. So the dull male ant, so regulated by the colony he serves that he is incapable of deciding between two courses of action, will try to both get drunk and bag a female ant. So he drinks 5 hours worth of alcohol in 2 1/2 hours, thinking it will leave him 2 1/2 hours to secure the services of a female ant. But the male ant only becomes hyper-drunken. He is disoriented, his natural mating instinct deranged by an overdose of cheap limey ale. The male ant's damaged libido dooms him to failure. He stumbles from Leicester Square to Piccadilly Circus and back again for 2 1/2 hours. . .each reeling step bringing him closer and closer to the deadline for the last train. . .closer and closer to his inevitable failure to attract a female ant. Sweat breaks out upon his brow, in the palms of his hands, under his arms. Now the sweat rolls into his already-bleary-from-alcohol eyes. He can barely distinguish female from male. He panics. He reaches out at a passing female ant. He gropes at her fat limey buttocks, mutters an incoherent greeting, then curses as the female ant skips away, laughing at his ineptitude. The sober J Man laughs, too. It is good to be on holiday.
At midnight The J Man follows thousands of such ants as they crawl underground for the last train. They are angry now. They haven't had their *fun.* That little 5-hour window of hope they gazed out all week long has now had its shutters pulled shut to mark another Saturday night of defeat. And now it begins. It all begins.
Tube Rage.
There is a similar phenomenon back in The J Man's native land: Road Rage, it is called. Frustrated, impotent, restless ant people, their drone-like lives ordered by their scientific and technological colony, release their pent-up aggressions while behind the wheels of their automotive machines. The slightest perceived wrong from another ant driver is enough to unleash a psychopathic fury. The wronged ant will drive at any speed and in any fashion necessary to provoke his target ant into making that one mistake at the wheel, that one mistake which will leave the target ant a dismembered corpse in a heap of twisted metal. Of course, the crazed ant rarely has the driving skills necessary to accomplish his goal. Instead he merely makes a pest of himself, and flashes an obscene gesture as he whizzes past the target ant.
Tube Rage, as The J Man discovered while descending into the Piccadilly station, differs in one important aspect--the aggression is released ant-to-ant. There are no automobile shells behind which to hide. On the tube the enraged ant directly pushes, shoves, elbows, spits at and curses his enemy ant. Vicious old-fashioned fist-fights break out, and ant blood flows freely. Hence Tube Rage elicits faint echoes of the nobler ages of humanity, when human beings determined their own fates in hand-to-hand combat. Perhaps this is why the British ant has a reputation for greater civility than the other ants of the world.
As The J Man stood in the queue (line) leading to the electronic gate which gives admittance to the train platforms to all ants holding valid tickets, he heard an astonishing cry:
"FOR GOD SO LOVED THE WORLD, THAT HE GAVE HIS ONLY BEGOTTEN SON, THAT WHOSOEVER BELIEVETH IN HIM SHOULD NOT PERISH, BUT HAVE EVERLASTING LIFE!"
A man! Somewhere in this subterranean wilderness a man was crying out! As The J Man made his way through the mob of brawling ants, the voice grew louder, and the message continued: "FOR GOD SENT NOT HIS SON INTO THE WORLD TO CONDEMN THE WORLD. . ." and on this man went, shouting the gospel. Yes, it had to be a man, for no ant can confess Jesus Christ. And then a new voice, a female voice: "HE THAT BELIEVETH ON HIM IS NOT CONDEMNED. . ." A woman! A man and a woman! The first The J Man had encountered in England.
They were standing at the entrance to the platform for the Piccadilly train. A middle-aged couple. Husband and wife, no doubt. They were of modest earthly means, but here they were, laying up for themselves treasures in heaven. The J Man stopped to observe the scene. Thousands of angry, frustrated ants, pushing and shoving their way to the last trains, cursing each other, cursing their own lives, another Saturday night wasted in a futile pursuit of. . .of? The poor ants didn't really know what they were pursuing. *Fun.* If you asked one of these ants what they were up to this Saturday night, he would probably tell you he was out trying to have a little *fun.* What does that mean, though? It means the ants wanted something a little better in their lives than they'd had all week while laboring for the colony. They wanted to be themselves. And they thought by having *fun,* by eating and drinking and shopping and going to theatres (theaters) and having sex with other ants, they would have *fun,* they would feel alive. . .maybe even *human.* But it didn't work out. And now they had to board the last train. Crowd together into the train and be carried back to the anthills they crawled out of 5 hours earlier.
"BUT HE THAT BELIEVETH NOT IS CONDEMNED ALREADY. . ."
The ants streamed past, not a one stopping to listen, their ears dull of hearing. The soul-less ant people of London.
The J Man approached the man and the woman.
"Has anyone stopped to pray the sinner's prayer with you?" The J Man asked.
They sadly shook their heads. The J Man felt compelled to encourage them.
"Noah preached for one hundred years, and when that rain began to fall and he closed up the ark, there wasn't a single extra soul on board. But he was never discouraged from the task at hand, and you shouldn't be either. You are the two most important people in all of London."
Smiles the sizes of rainbows lit up their faces.
"God bless you, sir," they said.
"God bless you. And be of good cheer."
The J Man managed to squeeze onto the last train just before the doors slammed shut. This was an ark for all the ants of England. The stench was nearly unbearable. Two or three hundred sweating, drunken, frustrated, miserable ants crammed body to body. Vacant eyes and hollow stares. Two or three male ants, crushed against female ants, moaned and writhed, and then as their eyes rolled back into their heads and alcoholic slobber drooled from the corners of their mouths, they let forth primitive grunts as they spilled their seed in their pants. The body heat generated by the mass of ants, along with the toxic vapors of alcohol, digesting fish 'n' chips and tartar sauce, and all the other poisonous gasses which leaked through the pores of the ants, combined to produce a temperature inside the train which was so much greater than the temperature outside, that we soon found ourselves blanketed in a foul, putrefying fog. Some of the stinking, steaming haze escaped through the door cracks. Seen from outside, the train must have appeared to have been a phantom death ship bound straight for the Lake of Fire.
Riding along, inhaling the noxious fumes of *fun,* and peering through the hellish mist into the dead ant faces, The J Man realized he had allowed some dangerous thoughts to invade his psycho-space. The J Man had imagined that only as a tourist could he escape the deadly regimen of the ant colony. Of course, it is an idea that, in one form or another, will bedevil most Christians. For as we must presently live in the colony, from time to time we will fall into the bad habit of thinking we are of the colony. But hearing that gospel message, proclaimed loud and clear even here in this underground pit, brought back the mighty message that by grace through faith we are saved, and though we may die in this colony not having seen all the promises of the faith, nonetheless we have seen them afar off, and are persuaded of them, and embrace them, and therefore we confess we are strangers and pilgrims on this earth. To know Christ is to be free of the colony.
[The preceding were excerpted from The J Man Times #12. E-mail The J Man for information on how to order the TJMT #12--with the complete account of The J Man's trip to London]