CFG: Louis Riel Pt 3
Thanks to Gerhard for getting these to me, and thanks to Dave for letting me post them. This is the three part series "Louis Riel" which is an exchange between Dave Sim and Chester Brown which originally was published in the back of issues #295 - 297. The only change I made to the formating for the html is to put it in one column instead of two. If you would like to see the original word document, here is is as a MS Word doc.
If you haven't read part two yet, then go read Part Two of "Getting Riel" or better yet, start with Part One.
Getting Riel
Chester Brown discusses his graphic novel,
Louis Riel
Part Three
In the conclusion of the last installment you said, “You might as well
tell me that eating food is one of YHWH’s ways of keeping us distracted from
God.” Well, certainly. In the sense that I see all “sensory
adherence” as a distraction from God.
There are degrees of the distraction.
I can eat a plastic-wrapped sandwich just to keep powering the rotting
carcass that I—that is, my soul—inhabits.
Or I can spend a month’s wages on cordon bleu cooking in a top New York
restaurant. The latter distraction is
more severe, in my view. I’m going to
be thinking about the money, proper table manners, my selection(s) and then
focusing on the food when it gets there.
God is going to be very far from my thoughts.
It seems to me an implication of incarnating physically. A substantial number of spirits hurled
outward from the Big Bang, it seems to me, chose to incarnate physically for
the exact reason that it allowed them to get away from the realm of spirit.
Part of the price that you have to pay for incarnating physically is that you
have to keep your rotting carcass from rotting too quickly. You have to expel
rotten bits from your rotting carcass on a regular basis. The fact that my spirit inhabits a rotting
carcass, to me, is no different from the fact that YHWH’s spirit inhabits the
rotting husk of rock known as the earth—except, of course, that his/her/its
rotting carcass is going to take a lot longer to rot than will my own. A rotting carcass insulates you from the
realm of spirit except in indirect tangential connections like sleep, hypnotic
states, mystical events, voices in the head, UFOs and so on. I see incarnating physically as an extreme
form of attempting to “do a Jonah”: to attempt to flee from God, Who, I would
assume is inescapable in the realm of spirit.
It seems to me that you can judge how you’re doing by the extent to
which you have incarnated physically and how far from the Big Bang the
incarnation took place. If you consider
how far our little flyspeck of a planet is from the Big Bang, I think it bodes
ill for the lot of us. But I think God
takes this very much into account. As I
indicated in “Chasing YHWH,” I think that God’s purpose through Judaism,
Christianity and Islam is to help YHWH to remember who he/she/it actually is
and the choices he/she/it made long, long ago which led to his/her/its’ present
circumstance. As far as I can see,
that’s the role of human beings, billions and billions of tiny little spirits
inside rotting carcasses busily doing their tiny little physical being “things”
on top of he/she/it. He/she/it doesn’t
like us as a matter of policy, but he/she/it—aware of all these tiny spirits in
a profound way because of their relatively small size—gets sucked in spite of
his/her/itself. It’s like television:
having incarnated physically to get away from God there’s really not much else
to do while you’re waiting for your carcass to rot through completely. Might as well see what’s on. Of course, God is omniscient so he always
knows which “channels” YHWH is partial to. And it’s through these “channels” in
particular that God conducts his dialogue with YHWH—not communicating verbally
with him/her/it anymore than he communicates verbally with us—but by showing her the
difference between good and evil, patiently over the course of millions of
years so that ultimately he/she/it will choose to return to God once
his/her/its carcass rots completely and earth’s molten core “hatches out”. Which, it seems to me, is only a part of the
process. Just as we are being used to
“subdue the earth” (as God instructed us in Genesis 1), I think the earth is
being used to “subdue the sun.” The
earth’s life is being enacted to persuade the sun’s spirit—when his/her/its
carcass rots—to return to God. This
process, I would imagine, is duplicated everywhere in the universe. Every little flyspeck chunk of rock and
every star thinks itself to be God, having incarnated physically. God is, in a sense, “playing chess” with
spirits wherever they have found themselves anywhere in the universe—like one
of those grand masters who can play twenty games simultaneously. The challenge being to persuade everyone who
has fled from Him into a specific state of
existence which precludes perceiving Him (except through faith) that He
actually exists and that returning to Him is preferable to just ending up
crushed inside a black hole or adrift in a vacuum. It seems to me that returning to God is a very quick step at death. God is omnipresent. If you choose to return to Him, He’s right
there. The alternative, as far as I can
see—faith in anyone or anything besides God—is a long, long walk home to the
Big Bang.
But speaking of Swedenborg, I remember vividly my visit to Toronto, one
of the rare times that Seth was there and, as you say, Seth is the leader. Seth was going shopping for records and
books, so you and Joe and I basically follow Seth whither Seth goeth. Seth’s very good about it. Says this is where he’s going and leaves it
up to everyone to make up their own minds, but everyone’s mind is made up. Whither Seth goeth so goeth we all. Since a big part of my enjoyment of the
trips to Toronto has been the fact that I’m not working, having someone to trail
around behind without having to think about where we’re going is an added
bonus. This particular occasion was
while I was developing “Chasing YHWH” and, as far as I remember, it was after Louis Riel 5 had
come out and I was very eager to talk to you about the panels depicting Riel’s
mystical experience. It was, to me,
definitely YHWH, but I couldn’t talk to you about it without spoiling “Chasing
YHWH,” so I tried talking around it. I
asked you if you thought that had been an actual experience or if Riel had
imagined it. Which was a pretty futile
avenue of inquiry. One of the points of
incarnating physically is it not only separates you from an actual awareness of
God, it separates you from actual awareness of other awarenesses. No one knows what is going on inside of any
other rotting carcass but his own—and even that only imperfectly.
Seeing that it was a futile avenue of inquiry, you shifted the subject,
asking if I had heard of Swedenborg. As
I told you at the time, the only contact I had had with Swedenborg was a girl
that I slept with for about a week—the one I had broken my 1989 to 1991
celibacy period with, the only girl I ever slept with who was taller than
me—who was a Swedenborgian and whose father (strangely enough) had ended up
being my limo driver a couple of times and had said, “I think you know my
daughter.” And then he said her
name. And what I thought was “Sir,
your daughter was a great lay but nutty as a fruitcake.” Of course, I just asked him how she
was. Turns out she was married by that
point, so I was able to do a more socially acceptable, “Oh, how nice. You must tell her Dave Sim says hello.”
Not much of a steeping in Swedenborgianism. You gave me a crash course
while we were waiting to be seated in Sushi on Bloor, and I must admit, I
thought right off the top, Yep, that’s YHWH all right.
That’s going back a couple of years now and you had just started reading
about Swedenborg. So, while I’m working
on what I saw in Louis Riel’s religious/mystical experiences, why don’t you refresh my memory about the Church of
New Jerusalem and the elements of Swedenborg’s philosophy that appealed to you?
Actually, I was just ending my several
months of studying Swedenborg, not starting them, when we talked about
him. I haven’t read anything by or
about him since, and so my memory on the subject is a little bit fuzzy.
In 1745, Emmanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772),
after an intense period of studying the Bible, found himself having out-of-body
experiences in which he was able to enter into spiritual realms: a spirit-world
(which was like Purgatory) and also Heaven and Hell. “Out-of-body experiences”—that’s probably the wrong term now that
I think about it. It wasn’t that he
left his body, it was more like tuning out of this world and turning into the
spiritual one. Reading several of his
books, I became convinced that he hadn’t made up his experiences—that he’d
reported what he thought had really happened to him.
He was told by the angels that each person
has a single dominant love. It’s this
dominant love that determines where we end up in the afterlife. Dominant loves that are selfish lead to Hell
and dominant loves that are characterized by love for others or love for God
lead to Heaven.
Our dominant love can change over the
course of a life. We can have one
dominant love when we’re twenty and a different one when we’re eighty. The possibility of changing this dominant
love ends at death. It then defines us
for the rest of eternity. Denizens of
Hell can’t work their way up to Heaven.
But, for the most part, denizens of Hell don’t want to get into Heaven.
Hell’s inhabitants find Heaven as unpleasant as the angels find
Hell.
Swedenborg thought that the afterlife was
a continuation of our psychological state in this world. That is, in a way, we already live in either
Heaven or Hell before we die. He
thought that this was what Jesus meant when he said, “The Kingdom of Heaven is
within you.” This made sense to
me. He believed that this was true no matter
what a person’s religion was. In others
words, Hindus, Zoroastrians, Pagans, etc. could all get into Heaven. This tolerant attitude toward other
religious seemed surprising to me for a Christian of his day, and also inclined
me in the direction of accepting what he wrote.
The book by Swedenborg that I found
problematic was The Worlds in Space (also
known as The Earths in the
Universe). In it, he describes
encounters with spirits from planets in our solar system (Mercury, Venus, Mars,
Jupiter, Saturn) who claimed that those worlds are inhabited by humans. Swedenborg believed them. If the spirits could give him incorrect
information on that matter, it—in my opinion—calls into question all of the
information he received in the spiritual realm.
I still take Swedenborg seriously—I don’t
think he was crazy or delusional—I think he had “real” experiences in a place
that is as “real” as our three dimensional material realm, but I think one has
to be skeptical about everything that
he was told, right down to whether the good place he visited was Heaven and
whether the bad place he visited was Hell.
I know that I was at the end of reading
about Swedenborg when we talked about him because The Worlds in Space was the last book I read by him, and I remember
mentioning it to you.
I
tend to see the tenets of Islam as a safe haven for the reason that, in my
opinion, submission to the will of God and to four of the five pillars of Islam
(I won’t be even attempting a pilgrimage to Mecca until the House of Saud
collapses and the war on terrorism has the Wahabites on the run) alleviates the
need to consider what else I believe in the realm of spirit. For me, when it comes to the idea of a
“dominant love” in someone’s life—I can far more readily believe in God than I
can believe in love. I’ve experienced the omnipresence of God. Family “love,”
girlfriend “love,” “love” of
friends—it’s either “scam” or “sex” misspelled (apologies to Harlan Ellison who
has “gone over to the other side” since then). If any of our existence has to
do with love, I am sincerely screwed.
I see intimations of YHWH in Swedenborg’s philosophy. One of the reasons that Muhammad was a
polytheist, I believe, was that—by the sixth century—monasticism was becoming Big
in the Christian church. I suspect this
was a consequence (intended by God but unanticipated by YHWH) of the Synoptic
Jesus: it’s a lot easier to follow the Synoptic Jesus’ teachings if you stay
the hell away from women and worldly temptations than it is otherwise. Hardly
the he/she/it ideal YHWH would be partial to.
I believe the parts of the Koran that state explicitly that no
“warranty” was sent down for monasticism are YHWH contributions.
It seems to me that Swedenborg’s philosophy has a lot of YHWH in its
tolerance of paganism and belief that pagans can get into Heaven (I still
maintain that “heaven” is just earth’s atmosphere, commandeered by YHWH for her
own “Oz the Great and Powerful” delusional seven-level movie set—“I’m ready for
my close-up, Mr. DeMille”—but, I’m getting ahead of our discussion).
[#s 5, 6, 7 and 8] This resonates with the great scene in Louis
Riel where the Métis are under fire and
Riel is telling Gabriel Dumont that there is a Hell, but it won’t last
forever. Eventually every sinner will
be reconciled with God and everyone will live in heaven. I always crack up at Dumont’s <”sounds
good to me.”>. [#s 5, 6, 7 and 8] I’m always suspicious of spiritual
revelations that “sound good to me”.
Like reincarnation. If you think
you have a chance of coming back, why not wait ‘til next time to make a real
effort? But consider the consequences
of not exerting yourself flat out for your entire life if this is your only
shot at it?
But, as you say, it does seem uncharacteristically tolerant for a
Christian of his time. And it has
occurred to me more than once that God might be extremely tolerant of largely
delusional faiths so long as God is preeminent in them. After all, from the vantage point of an
omniscient being delusional would be a relative term: all human thought and belief would be implicitly delusional including our
deepest mental perceptions of God. As
I’ve said elsewhere, I would imagine that Jews—although they’ve been
worshipping YHWH for millennia—intended to
worship God (the men, anyway) and that God knows that. Just as God knows, I would imagine, which
Christians accept God’s preeminence and which Christians are closet Goddess
worshippers with their devotion to Our Lady.
I also wouldn’t be too quick to rule out the existence of human spirits
on the other worlds in our solar system.
I think as the sun waxes in intensity, it will warm Mars and “thaw out”
the spirits that will be told to “be fruitful and multiply” and enact the next
part of God’s chess game with the YHWH in Mars’ core (who will believe that
he/she/it is God) after the earth’s chess game has ended in a win, a loss or a
draw. Just as I assume that before the
sun reached its present intensity, it probably “thawed out” the spirits on
Venus who have already enacted their own multi-million year-long chess game,
crawling around on the surface of Venus’ YHWH and attempting to “subdue”
he/she/it and explain to he/she/it that he/she/it isn’t God, just another chunk
of rock in the near-infinite expanse of His Creation.
Despite my opinions about the
romantic eternal-love ideal, I have no trouble believing in the reality of love
or of any emotion. They’re mental
experiences—if my thoughts are “real” then so are my emotions. I may not always
like my emotional reactions (certainly not the ones most people would agree are
negative, like anger or hatred) but I have them.
You wrote: “Family ‘love,’ girlfriend
‘love,’ ‘love’ of friends—it’s either ‘scam’ or ‘sex’ misspelled”. Let’s look at “love of friends” and my
friendship with Seth as an example.
“Scam” or “sex”—we’re both heterosexual men, so we can dismiss sex right
off the bat. “Scam”? Where’s the scam?
In a scam, isn’t someone trying to deceive someone else for some sort of
material gain? I can tell you that when
I met Seth 16 years ago, I didn’t think, “Hey, I’ll bet if I pretend to like
this guy and hang out with him a lot he’ll give me free copies of all the
comics he produces in the future.” That
would have been a pretty stupid scam. No, I hang out with him because I enjoy
his company. There’s no scam.
Does God think love is important? I wouldn’t know, but it seems to me that on
a social level, love binds people together and creates harmony and peace. It looks like a good thing to me (or should
I say, “Sounds good to me”?)
Anyway, Swedenborg’s idea of a dominant
love doesn’t necessarily refer to emotional ties between people, it could be a
preference for an activity or experience that doesn’t involve emotions and that
one prefers for rational reasons.
“God might be extremely tolerant of
largely delusional faiths so long as God is preeminent in them.” Yes,
Swedenborg is quite clear that one has to have some kind of concept of the
Divine. Atheists and materialists are
headed for Hell according to him. I
don’t remember a passage in which he specifically mentions pagans—I was
extrapolating because, from the little I know about pagans, they have some kind
of concept of the Divine.
Here’s a passage by Swedenborg:
“Non-Christians are born just as human, as people within the
church, who are in fact few by comparison.
It is not their fault that they do not know the Lord. So anyone who thinks
from any enlightened reason at all can see that no one is born for hell. The Lord is actually love itself and his love
is an intent to save everyone. So he
provides that everyone shall have some religion, an acknowledgment of the
Divine Being through that religion, and an inner life. That is, living according to one’s religious
principles is an inner life, for then we focus on the Divine, and to the extent
that we do focus on the Divine, we do not focus on the world, but move away
from the world and therefore from a worldly life, which is an outward life.
“People can realize that non-Christians as
well as Christians are saved if they know what constitutes heaven in us; for
heaven is within us, and people who have heaven within them come into
heaven. The heaven within us is our
acknowledgment of the Divine and our being led by the Divine. The beginning and foundation of every
religion is its acknowledgment of the Divine Being; a religion that does not
acknowledge the Divine Being is not a religion at all. The precepts of every religion focus on
worship, that is, on how the Divine is to be honored so that we will be
acceptable in its sight; and when this fully occupies the mind (or, to the
extent that we intend this or love this) we are being led by the Lord.
“It is recognized that non-Christians live
lives that are just as moral as the lives of Christians—many of them, in fact,
live more moral lives. A moral life may
be lived either to satisfy the Divine or to satisfy people in this world. A moral life that is lived to satisfy the
Divine is a spiritual life. The two look
alike in outward form, but inwardly they are totally different. One saves us, the other does not. This is because if we live a moral life to
satisfy the Divine we are being led by the Divine; while if we live a moral
life to satisfy people in this world, we are being led by ourselves.” (Heaven and Hell, p. 318)
Its probably significant that while
Swedenborg almost always refers to God as a male, in the above passage he calls
the Divine an “it”.
I’m holding myself back here. I’m very curious about how you’ve
“experienced the omnipresence of God” and want to ask you to elaborate, but,
since you’ve warned me that the upcoming “What I think happened to Louis Riel”
is so lengthy, I’m hesitant to get into it.
Woke up at 1:42 this morning sufficiently “spiritually uncomfortable”
that I was unable to get back to sleep even after praying. Lay there for an hour, willing myself to go
back to sleep (particularly with 63 pages left to go on Cerebus, sleep
has become critically important).
Finally, got up and came upstairs to see if any faxes had come in over
the Sabbath. And here’s your fax. This, to me, is the “omnipresence of
God”. Very unusual for me to check for
a fax at 3 a.m., but I can see His point.
If I’m going to clean up the studio, get everything prepped for Ger
coming in tomorrow and get my page done, 3 a.m. is probably the best time to
answer your fax.
When I began fasting in Ramadan, and then began praying 5 times a day
and then began doing the ritual ablutions before praying and then (most
recently) began fasting as a regular habit, I saw it as, basically, just
cleaning up my act. A twelve-step
program with God at the head of it, so to speak. What I hadn’t anticipated was the level of (again, I’m hesitant
to use the term because of my largely atheistic audience, but there isn’t a
more accurate one) demonic possession in the world. The net effect of that was to come to see family “love” and
girlfriend “love” and “love” of friends as a scam. Whereas previously, like most people—just for the sake of
politeness and to avoid offending others—in conversation I would agree with a
lot of things that I didn’t actually agree with: or say something neutral like
“it takes all kinds” or “it’s a strange old world, isn’t it?”. The more I prayed, the more I read scripture
and the more I fasted, the more it became a situation where, in conversation,
people were unwilling to let it go at that and would become more and more
insistent on their viewpoint and less amenable to my “neutralisms”. The
easy exchange of viewpoints between two atheists or an atheist and an agnostic
had been supplanted by Dave Sim versus his adversaries. I irritated people, most particularly my
family who would rattle on in their atheistic way while I sat there smiling
politely but inwardly wondering if I really should be listening to this and not
saying something: wasn’t I endorsing their atheism by holding my peace? But, it was three-against-one, majority
rules, don’t make waves, Honour thy father and thy mother, blah, blah,
blah. Of course, eventually one of them
would ask me a question and then I was faced with: do I answer honestly and
essentially waylay the majority’s preferred direction of discourse or do I lie
in the interests of not making waves?
Again, the “neutralisms” weren’t working anymore. So, as would invariably happen with family
or friends, I would end up waylaying the conversation and everyone would get
more and more irritated and clearly desperate to get back to some atheistic
common ground since what I was talking about was, to them, just so much
religious twaddle. And, of course,
they’re of the TV generation where each person gets fifteen seconds to say
something and then its someone else’s turn.
As you can see from this dialogue, I can explain my viewpoint on, as an
example, “what about stem-cell research?” but it’s going to take me ten minutes
just to set the groundwork for what I’m ultimately going to have to say. That’s monopolizing the conversation in the
atheistic world where, as I say, conversation is seen as verbal badminton (and
not even competitive badminton, but
“how long can we cooperate in keeping this bird aloft?” feminist-style
badminton).
So, that’s a lot of the “scam” that I see in today’s world. Through the pernicious influence of
television, I can get fifteen seconds into an explanation and then anyone in
the room, under our new societal rules, is at liberty to interject with another
question. And if I say, “Why do you ask
me a question and then interrupt when I’m answering it?” then I’m being societally offensive, not
playing the game. Everyone will subside
(although irritated) for another fifteen seconds but I know they’ve stopped
listening because I’m not playing the game—going along with their societal
“scam” of how a conversation is conducted.
And, of course, everyone I know—or, rather, knew—is an atheist (and most
of them are irretrievable alcoholics) so, from what I can see, they are fair
game for YHWH who makes a point of “taking possession” of them when I’m around
and finding the most offensive conversational topics in an effort to get under
my skin.
[You are pretty much the only exception that I found to this
“rule”. Remember the dinner that you
and I and Joe and Seth and Al Bunce had at the Senator in Toronto? Where we had met at the Sheraton and I told
everyone that I was fasting which led to a discussion of faith in God and
quickly out of a discussion of faith in God and then we were off, taking forever
to find the place (Seth can be, I think you’d agree, an imperfect leader)? You
hadn’t said anything since the Sheraton—probably half an hour before—and
suddenly you turned around and said to me, “I think I believe in God.” Likewise when you and I have dinner at Peter Pan (at
a table where I can watch the girls going by). You listen until I’m done saying
what I have to say. And then it looks
as if your soul has to undo all the snap-fasteners in your jaw one at a
time. And I don’t say a word. Finally the last snap fastener is undone and
out comes this perfect distillation of what it is you have to say, usually in
two or three sentences. Like most of
this dialogue]
A perfect example of this “demonic possession” would be this March just
past when I finally “broke” with my family—the last phone conversation with my sister—when she said, “You know it’s
interesting that with all the praying that you do, you never once prayed for
your parents.” Well, you know, get thee
behind me, Satan. How the hell would you know that I’ve never once prayed for my
parents?
[Of course, it’s true as, I assume, YHWH well knew. I don’t think it’s
right to pray to God for anything or for
anyone (in fact, the only thing I ever
prayed to God for was the strength to get through Christmas at my parents’).
The point of prayer, to me, is to get down on my knees five times a day and
express aloud that I still “hold these truths to be self-evident”. To pray to
God —asking Him to, say, “heal my mother” seems to me to be putting God in a
nutcracker. I assume that my mother’s
ill health is as a result of all the bad decisions that she has made over the
course of her life, not the least of which is choosing to be an atheist. Who am
I to say to God, “Please take whatever favourable disposition you might have
towards me and use some part of it to heal my mother’s infirmities?” For what? So she can go home and tell
everyone about the great hospital and the great doctors that healed her? No, I made the commitment to God early on
that anything I was doing that caused Him to be favourably disposed towards me,
He should just use that wherever it would be the most useful in the Big
Plan. I mean, sure I’ll take whatever
blessing He wants to send my way, but I know that its spiritually more
beneficial to do without “blessings” in this world. Obviously, I would love to have an “Entitles bearer to One Free
Fornication” card or an “Entitles bearer to One Free Trip to a University-Age
Club” card signed by God but, to say that I’m not holding my breath
dramatically understates the situation.]
So, I said to my sister,
“They’re atheists.” My point being that
it would be a screwy kind of belief in God that would make me think that I
should pray to God on behalf of atheists.
Which my sister jumped on with “They’re still human beings!” Which, of course, is the highest attribute
and credential of which an atheist is capable of perceiving. In my ears it just
sounds like “They’re bags of chemicals and protoplasm!” Yes, they are, indeed,
bags of chemicals and protoplasm. Yes,
they are, indeed, human beings, but, as I said to her (trying to keep to the
television-dictated level of sound-bite-as-conversation), “There’s still a
difference between right and wrong.”
That pretty much ended it, to my great relief. I walked around clenched for a few weeks, waiting for some
massive repercussion of violating “Honour thy father and thy mother” to descend
upon me. And then realized that I was
right. God had the same level of interest
in my family that they have in Him. It
was a non-event. “Let the dead bury their dead,” as the Synoptic Jesus so aptly put it.
Which brings me the long-way around to Swedenborg and the passage that
you cite which, like so much of theology (and the Bible and the Koran) seems
composed of alternating “God”; “Not God”; “God”; ”Not God”. The word “human” in the first line sets off
alarm bells. One of YHWH’s top
priorities is to get us all to view men and women as interchangeable bags of
chemicals and protoplasm. Likewise the
use of the term “the Lord”. If I talked
to people who used the term “the Lord,” I would have to make a point of saying,
“Do you mean God?” Which would only get them irritated since another of YHWH’s
priorities, as I see it, is to make God and Lord interchangeable. Good example
in the next line: “The Lord is actually love itself [!] and his love
is an intent to save everyone.” If this is God, then that’s a fine and, it
seems to me, (mostly) accurate statement.
If its YHWH then it’s, to me, pernicious and perverse since, from what I
can see, YHWH wants to “save” everyone from God. Likewise “the Divine Being”.
Do you mean God? Or do you mean
Gloria-Swanson-in-the-Clouds? Just say
“God” and save us some nomenclature trouble.
That would, in my experience, just irritate the spirit that’s inhabiting
them. In fact, I agree with the entire
Swedenborg passage as long as you substitute God for “Lord” “the Lord” “the
Divine” and “Divine Being”.
No need to hold yourself back, Chet—it’s a decided improvement to me
over your being evasive and foot-dragging.
This ain’t the CBC. We have
nothing but room for an actual exchange of viewpoints. The only boundary is Gerhard finishing the
backgrounds on this issue’s story which should be (let me just check the
calendar here) two weeks from tomorrow.
Everything else is just extra newsprint.
The “What I think happened to Louis Riel” is nearing completion—a couple
of more runs through should do it—and runs around six pages.
It’s now 5:18, my usual wake-up time.
God’s immaculate sense of timing (including the hour he knew I would
spend tossing and turning).
I looked for a love-is-a-scam
message in the glimpse into the Sim family that you described (Dave Sim
irritates most people, therefore love is a scam. No that doesn’t work. People
only want to talk in TV-style sound-bites, therefore love is a scam. No that doesn’t make sense). I found one—I’m not sure it’s the one that
you intended, but I’ll outline it anyway.
I think love is enjoyment. If we enjoy a certain thing, we love
it. If we enjoy being in someone’s
presence, we love them.
It sounds like you’ve stopped enjoying
your family’s presence (if you ever did) and they may have stopped enjoying
your presence. I don’t know that they have—I think people can
disagree and argue and interrupt each other every fifteen seconds and still
enjoy each other’s company. But for the
sake of argument, and because I think it might be your point, let’s say that
your family doesn’t love you, and they would never admit to not loving you and,
if asked, might insist that they do love
you, therefore there’s some kind of deceit going on, perhaps self-deceit,
perhaps conscious deceit. In other
words: a scam.
I hope I’m correctly guessing your point.
If so, it hardly proves that love is a
scam. It would only mean that people
can lie about love like they can lie about anything. But it doesn’t mean that people always lie about love.
There are lots and lots of people in the world who are sincere about
their love.
Am I being too literal in my
interpretation of the word “scam”? Or
perhaps you mean it in a different way.
I hope you had a good sleep last night.
Yes,
I did, as a matter of fact. Something about working from 3 a.m. to 10 p.m.
seems to lend itself to that.
Actually, now that I consider my choice of terminology, it seems to me
that I was indulging in the same thing that I’m accusing my family (and
virtually everyone else) of: hypocrisy.
In my case, by hypocritically avoiding
using the term “hypocrisy” by calling it
a “scam” (which, to me anyway, has a much more light-hearted sound). I alluded to this before in our conversation
in the coffee shop about how you thought that people were beginning to think
that it was okay to let Dave Sim back into human society. Because of the nature of what is called
“love” and “friendship” there is absolutely no way for me to know what the
reaction to me is. As an example:
everyone in the comic-book field that I have any contact with is very nice to
me to my face or over the phone. Extremely nice. Excessively nice. Which—with hypocritical liberals (again, pardon
the redundancy) can mean either that they feel bad about the way that they
treated me in the aftermath of 186, “Dear Jeff Smith” and/or “Tangent”—that is,
that they realize that the bottom line of each was a political difference of
opinion and they would like to find some way to make amends and let bygones be bygones OR it could mean that they
think that I’m certifiably insane and they are patronizing me in the way that
hypocritical liberals always patronize those they see as being mentally ill OR
they think that I’m a vile and putrescent example of humanity and they’re going
to prove their liberal credentials by deigning to treat me as if I wasn’t a
vile and putrescent example of humanity on those rare occasions where, for some
reason, they are forced by circumstances beyond their control to talk with me
face-to-face or over the phone. This is
a large part of the reason that there will be no “End of Cerebus”
celebration. Sure, I’d love to “patch
things up” with those people who are examples of my first instance: no hard
feelings. You made a mistake that undermined your own pretensions of tolerance
and inclusiveness and, as liberals, you’re profoundly embarrassed by it. We all make mistakes. Apology accepted. But I haven’t heard any apologies, so I assume that what I am
looking at is the latter two instances.
In which case, no problem. I
don’t see myself as insane and I don’t see myself as a vile and putrescent
example of humanity and I certainly have no interest in “playing a role” in
someone else’s hypocritical liberal delusion of who and what I am. Failing an
apology for the way I was treated and failing an apology for how everyone who
purports to be my friends stood by and said nothing while I was treated that
way, I’m perfectly happy to continue to live my life as I’ve lived it since
that all took place: in isolation from
my society in general.
Trust me. It’s. No. Big.
Deal.
As I say, my gut reaction when you told me that popular sentiment was
changing in my favour was complete numbing horror—a profound reaction which
came as a terrifically amusing surprise to me.
I hadn’t realized what a relief it had been to have lived apart from
liberal hypocrisy (apart from dinner with my parents and Christmas with my
family—both now, thank God, at an end) for a good ten years (almost). The idea
of having to walk into a room at the San Diego Con or someplace and have to
guess who is being nice to me for reason #1 and who is being nice to me for
reasons #’s 2 and 3. As I say, numbing horror. “It’s okay, Dave” I reassured myself, “They can’t pass a law
forcing you to subject yourself to liberal hypocrisy.”
But you’re right. The fact that
love in my life is a scam/hypocrisy doesn’t disprove its existence. On the other
hand the fact that hypocritical liberals proclaim their love loudly, vehemently
and relentlessly doesn’t prove its existence, either. In fact the eternal-love “hype” in our society that you’ve
discussed at several points in our dialogue, I think, arguably includes family
love. How many people actually enjoy
Christmas with their families and how many people are just being hypocritical
liberals and pretending that they do? God gave everyone free will the same as
he gave me. If you want to believe in
love—or, more perniciously, pretend to believe in love that you know, in your
heart of hearts doesn’t actually exist—that is your free-will choice. “I love
my (sister/brother/father/mother) BUT…”
followed by fifteen minutes of recrimination and vituperation looks to
me (let me be charitable here) more than a little screwy. But, again, that is a perfectly valid
free-will choice (he said, backing away slowly).
If people in the comic-book community are
nice to you, I doubt that in most cases it has anything to do with hypocrisy—it
sounds more like common courtesy to me.
‘The fact that hypocritical liberals
proclaim their love loudly, vehemently and relentlessly doesn’t prove its
existence.” Do you deny that people
experience enjoyment? And you don’t
have to be a liberal to proclaim your love.
I was listening to CBC radio yesterday and heard a conservative
Christian who was against gay marriage assert that he loves gays but hates
their sin. I don’t know if he’s a
hypocrite or not. Maybe he actually
does know some gays and he does enjoy spending time with them, or maybe he
doesn’t.
How many people actually enjoy Christmas
with their families? A lot.
How many people are just being hypocritical
and pretending that they enjoy Christmas with their families? A lot.
You would have to have experienced having the whole mob turn on you and
having no one raise one word of protest (apart from the “Dave Sim is entitled
to his own vile and subhuman opinions the same as any other Nazi is”) to
understand what I mean, I think. I’m
not sure who told me, but in the immediate aftermath of 186 someone asked you
about me and you said, “He’s fun to jam with” referring to that nonsense strip
you and I did about ten years ago. That and the occasional phone call from Bob
Burden counted for a lot. You were the two exceptions. But, when it comes to the hypocrisy of
everyone turning against me and the subsequent hypocrisy of a bunch of them now
being excessively nice—it would be nice to take it at face value but it seems
too valueless—on its face or otherwise—to delude myself about it. Why waste time with people when there is no
way of telling if they’re sincere or lying?
It always ends up that I owe them
something, never the other way
around. That’s been my experience with
love and friendship.
I do distrust the modern Christian “love the sinner, hate the sin”
sentiment myself. It seems to me to
presuppose that we know what actions and choices and decisions are sinful so
that we, as the good people of the village, can collectively hate them. Again,
mob rule. I believe each person’s soul is at stake and you have to decide for
yourself what you consider to be sins. Associating
with you, a user of prostitutes, could be a sin—the Koran as much as says
so. I’m staking my soul on the fact
that I don’t believe that. As I’m
staking my soul on the fact that I don’t believe I’m just supposed to join what
I consider to be the “group-think” nearest to my own and then round off my own
corners to fit in with that group.
That may be the case: it could be that you’re supposed to choose a
“group-think” and I could be, spiritually, completely ludicrous and hell-bound
by virtue of having chosen Judaism, Christianity and Islam jointly. But, my attitude is the same as my attitude
towards self-publishing. I have no
problem with going down in flames, but I want to go down in my own plane if I’m
going.
I got a very nice letter from a gay comics professional who has been on
our freebie list for years who (surprised hell out of me: an example of
stereotypical thinking on my part) is in favour of the war on terrorism. Chided
me for my “limp wrist” references noting that his own wrists seem sturdy
enough. I wrote back and told him that
I have always considered him a “credit to his sexual preference” in exactly the
way that you would never guess that he was gay (I only found out through, where
else? female gossip). Gay as sexual preference, private concern, individual choice
of what you intend to bring before God on Judgment Day I have no more of a
problem with than I do with you using prostitutes. It’s none of my business.
It’s between you and God. Gay as in theatrical mincing and lisping as
new societal norm we all have to get used to I have a problem with. “The human right to drool on people in
public”thing. Conversely, you and I
were discussing a certain comics professional—who is definitely not gay—and
both of us thought he was gay when we met him. The “Straight Guy Seems Gay”
syndrome becoming more widespread.
Metrosexuals. I don’t think it’s a good idea, to say the least, but as
long as I don’t have to socialize with anyone, I don’t mind watching it all
“hatch out” from the other side of a metaphorical ten-foot barge pole.
I think it would be worthwhile to give those people who are just being
hypocritical and pretending that they enjoy Christmas with their families a
“bye,” a “Get Out of Christmas Free Card”.
Picture a family of, say, ten people and NONE of them actually want to
be there and they’re all pretending for the sake of everyone else. Isn’t that kind of…pathetic? I mean, funny in a situation comedy way,
but…
Personally, I’m looking forward to spending Christmas reading John’s
Gospel and A Christmas Carol out
loud to myself.
Anyway, I finally got my “what I think happened to Riel” piece
finished. Here goes.
I must say, you do a great job in the fourth issue (p.74 forward in the
book) of portraying the extent to which the pressure on Riel is building. Father Ritchot fails to get the assurance of
an amnesty, Gabriel Dumont shows up prepared to start a guerilla war against
the incoming Canadian army, [#11 and 12] Riel reads Dumont the letter from
Colonel Wolseley assuring Riel that he’s only coming to “afford equal
protection to the lives and property of all races and of all creeds” (“<And
you believe him?>” Dumont is a doubting Thomas after my own heart), [#11 and 12] Riel is
elected to Canada’s Parliament even as he’s being hunted. And throughout, he’s thinking, thinking,
thinking, thinking. And then comes the
chance meeting in the hospital with Bishop Ignace Bourget. An actual bishop! What a (literal) godsend for a good Catholic as lost and confused
as Riel was. Bourget tells him that
“God has given you a mission—you must persevere on the path that has been laid
out for you.” As you indicate in your notes, he didn’t actually say this on the
occasion of their meeting, but wrote it in a letter: “God who has, up until the present, directed you and assisted you
will not abandon you in your most difficult of struggles, for He has given you
a mission which you must accomplish step by step [and] with the Grace of God
you must persevere on the path that has been laid out for you.” On the face of it, pretty generalized advice
which (in my view) could, fruitfully, be addressed to anyone. In our secular
and cynical age and in atheistic ears, it would seem as vague and
semi-meaningless as a daily horoscope. But you quote Riel biographer Stanley:
“Riel never parted with this letter. He carried it with him every day, next to
his heart, and he placed it at the head of his bed every night.”
This part is going to interest me, I hope you, and maybe three or four
people in the audience, so I’ll try to condense it as much as possible,
although—as I warned you “off-camera”—what seems easily explainable when I
arrive at it after a lengthy period of assessment (like Cerebus’ Torah
commentaries) proves more difficult when I try committing it to print for an
audience of devout atheists.
It seems to me that that was YHWH speaking through Bourget—that Louis
Riel and his Red River community had become one of YHWH’s favourite
“channels”—by a wide margin—and that he/she/it had come to the conclusion that
Riel would make the ideal YHWHist Prophet of the New World. It’s not hard to see why, since Riel, as an
individual, inhabited a number of pertinent borderlands—between pagan and
Christian, Indian and white, French and English. He had as much loyalty to the
United States as he did to Canada and oscillated between the two countries
comfortably, as he oscillated comfortably between eastern and western Canada
and urban and rural Canada. As the designation he/she/it would indicate, YHWH has,
I believe, an in-built predilection for just such borderland existences, for
those who straddle many fences reflecting, again, what I see as his/her/its’
pivotal belief that good and evil are not clearly demarcated and that,
therefore, individuals who fit more than one definition hold the key to the
supremacy of the YHWHist viewpoint. Gay rights and same sex marriage, it seems
to me, are central YHWHist interests because they exist (or appear to) on the
borderlands between male and female, husband and wife. As you noted, Riel had
already written his Massinahican (a Cree word meaning “book” or “Bible”
interchangeably—another enticing borderland!) proposing “a confederacy of
Indian and mixed-blood peoples who would fight for a country of their own”. So, it seems to me that with Riel—as opposed
to the indiscriminate ker-WHOMP that I and most of his/her/its’ victims get
from YHWH—I think he/she/it sincerely believed that Prophethood could be
conferred by he/she/it in this new land and gave Riel the full Moshe treatment.
(“…the same spirit that appeared to Moses in the midst of clouds [sic] of flame
appeared to me in the same manner.”)
[I should explain that I believe the voice in the “burning bush”—fire
being YHWH’s element—was YHWH in Exodus chapter 3.
God calls to Moshe from the midst of the bush in verse 5 saying “Draw not nigh hither.” YHWH, as I see it, then takes over for the
balance of verses 5 through 10. Then
Moshe—thinking that YHWH and God are the same being—addresses a question to God
in verse 11, which allows God to answer him (“Certainly I will be with you…”)
in verses 11 through 22. God—Nice Guy
that he is— doesn’t blow the whistle on YHWH and instead uses the “I am that I
am” evasion, subtly indicating that there are two “I am’s” and that one of the
“I am’s”—YHWH—the “god” of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is the one commissioning
Moshe as a Prophet—while indicating to YHWH his/her/itself that this is fine by
God. Which indication, I suspect, came
as a complete shock to YHWH.]
And perhaps he/she/it could, in a sense, confer a kind of ersatz
prophethood. As I’ve said before, I
imagine no one but God has full knowledge of what the rules are governing the
realm of spirit or Spirit. My own faith
tells me that the Age of Prophets ended with the death of Muhammad in 632, but
I suspect that YHWH was allowed to “anoint” a few pseudo-prophets in the
aftermath (if only to prove to himself/herself/itself the difference between a
real Prophet sanctioned by God and a pseudo-prophet not sanctioned by God). As
I said earlier, I think this was God’s motivation in engineering Schultz as a
Riel-in-microcosm test: proof positive that Riel is Not a Prophet, while still
leaving the choosing of Riel as a viable option for YHWH. It’s this choice, in my view, that he/she/it
ultimately makes.
I have an interesting letter from a Mr. Jim Keller coming up next issue
(we’re going to miss you around here, Chet) which cites a number of analogies
between Islam and the Mormon faith, just as there are a number of points of
intersection between Islam and Riel.
Foremost among these is the fact that YHWH transports Riel to the
“fourth heaven” to explain the nations of the world to him. The notion of there existing seven
heavens—ascending one above the other—originated in Islam, in particular with
Muhammad’s Night Journey (for those interested, this reportedly took place
almost immediately after the death of Muhammad’s uncle, patron and protector,
Abu Talib, and—three days later—the death of Muhammad’s first wife, Khadija). The only canonical reference to the Night Journey, however, is in the
first verse of sura 17, entitled “The Night Journey”:
Glory be to Him who carried his servant
by night from the Sacred Temple to the Temple that is more remote, whose
precinct we have blessed, that we might show him of our signs! For he is the Hearer, the Seer.
In
the legend of the Night Journey,
documented in the biographies of the Prophet, the angel Gabriel came to
Muhammad as he slept and said, “God commands you to come before His
Majesty. The door to the Seven Heavens
is open and the angels are waiting for you.” [#13] The Prophet traveled on
the back of a beast called The Buraq or Borak (Lightning)(!) with the
countenance of a woman, the body of a mare and the hooves and tail of a camel
(elsewhere I found it described as having the head of a human, the torso of a
horse, the gleaming tail of a peacock and white wings). [#13] To say that this doesn’t sound like
something God would have anything to do with and that it clearly epitomizes
YHWH, instead, understates my view dramatically. The earthly portion of the journey—from Mecca to Jerusalem, with
stops at the tomb of Abraham in Hebron and the birthplace of Jesus in
Bethlehem—is called the Isra. In Jerusalem,
Muhammad visited a mosque where he met Abraham, Moshe and Jesus among other
prophets and holy men and led them in prayer.
There followed the Miraj (mirage?) the ascent through the seven heavens,
reportedly commencing from Jacob’s rock…
[Genesis 28:11—where they’re mentioned in the plural. Scotland’s
legendary Stone of Scone—which, before it was returned to Scotland a few years
back by royal decree, was housed within the seat of that throne at Westminster
Abbey used, for centuries, for the investiture and anointing ceremony of all
the Kings and Queens of England—is reputedly another of the rocks Jacob used at
Luz for his pillows]
…which is, today, housed and spot-lit and barricaded by high wooden
railings in the middle of the Dome of the Rock mosque in the Temple Mount in
Jerusalem. The Night Journey, under the
name of its two components, Isra and Miraj, is commemorated in the Muslim
calendar on the 27th of Rajab (which, this year, fell on September 23rd).
In the legends, in the first heaven Muhammad meets Adam and learns the
secrets of time and duality (yes, duality—again, doesn’t sound like something
God would be associated with, to me).
In the second heaven, he meets Noah, in the fifth, he meets Aaron, in
the sixth, Moshe (who reportedly is saddened because he knew Muhammad would
bring more souls to heaven than Moshe ever had), and in the seventh, Abraham.
The distance from heaven to heaven is said to be 500 years and in the third
heaven Muhammad met an angel “whose eyes were so far apart that it took 70,000
days to go from one eye to the other”.
In another heaven he meets an angel made half of snow and half of fire
(!). In the third heaven, he met an
angel with seventy faces, each with seventy tongues singing seventy exquisite
melodies of praise for God. This form
of multiplicity, again, doesn’t exactly suggest God to me (and the mention of
music—an abomination in Islam—in proximity to God is jarring in the extreme)
but instead seems to echo the multi-dimensioned demons—like Asmoday from the
Apocryphal book of Tobit—that Alan Moore discussed in our From
Hell dialogue and what I see as the
YHWHist predilection for exponential multiplication in the hopes that in this
multiplying of realities there might exist realms where good and evil aren’t
clearly demarcated or where they “switch sides” or become interchangeable (I
suspect that this is YHWH’s underlying motive in his/her/its interest in
borderlands of all kinds—that there exists some realm where YHWH and God switch
sides or become interchangeable). Of course Muhammad was reputedly also taken
on a tour of Hell according to the Night Journey legend. My own view is that the seven heavens and
the seven circles of Hell are both constructs of YHWH (as I likewise believe is
the case with the celestial throne described in John’s Apocalypse with “seven
lamps of fire (!) burning before the Throne, which are the seven Spirits of
God”—I just can’t picture God having a throne and I can’t picture YHWH having
anything else)(“and the four beasts had each of them sixe wings about him, and
they were full of eyes within, and they have no rest day and night saying,
Holy, holy, holy, LORD God Almighty, which was, and is, and is to come.” It
seems to me that only a being who was completely uncertain of his/her/its
divinity would require that level of positive reinforcement/cheerleading,
24/7).
The only reference I found to the fourth heaven in Islamic legend is
that it was guarded by an angel “whose size was the length of 500 days”. From the Buraq (lightning) who was able to
travel from Mecca to Jerusalem in a single night, the distance between heavens
being measured in years (which anticipates the discovery of light-years by more
than a thousand years), etc. etc. this seems to me to be very much a light-based
construct, exactly the sort of “heavens” that a being of light would
manufacture to show off his/her/its “best side”. And again, it seems to me, an
entirely manufactured construct, that YHWH engineered in the hopes that by
creating such an exponentially vast context for exponentially vast creatures
some ambiguity between good and evil might be created. Real Ray Harryhausen Arabian Nights
stuff. Very far from any reality of
God, in my view. The fact that one of the individuals Muhammad meets in one of
the heavens is Moshe’s brother, Aaron—he of the Egyptian Whorehouse motif
Tabernacle, Golden Calf and cattle-abattoir worship—well, personally, I can’t
think of a more unlikely candidate to find in any heaven I could think of. It is interesting that the third and fourth
heavens are the only two without a YHWHist prophet or “prophet”. What do you want to bet that Riel’s
spirit inhabits the fourth one, now?
Would Louis Riel have known about the seven heavens of Islamic
legend? It seems unlikely to me but I
figured if anyone would know the answer, you might—or at least know where to
look for it. I imagine that the Catholic priests of the Red River
settlement—who you indicate in your notes were all deeply suspicious of and
disliked Riel—would know enough about “Mohammedism”(as they would have called
it) to get their hackles up at the mention of a “fourth heaven”. Anyway, that was my principle interest
the first time I asked you if you believed that Riel had actually experienced
what he said he had experienced. My
opinion is that he did, in the same sense that Muhammad experienced his Night
Journey which was reportedly verified when he was able, the next morning, to
describe the precincts of Jerusalem in great detail to the satisfaction of
those who had been there even though he had never been there, himself,
previously. But, it was greeted with
the same sense of incredulity at the time that it is now, embarrassing the
followers of the new faith, causing many of them to abandon Islam and opening the
Prophet to new levels of abuse and ridicule.
My personal suspicion was that this was a two-pronged effort on the part
of YHWH to either destroy Islam in its infancy or to make it a YHWH-based
faith. I’m sure God had every confidence that Islam would survive and flourish
in spite of this Arabian Nights cul-de-sac (and that the followers of the two
great faiths intersecting, as a result, on the Temple Mount will learn to live
in peace one day, while YHWH, I’m sure, has staked all of his/her/its chips on
Red Armageddon between Jews and Muslims) (I bet God turns out to be right).
In your notes for issue nine, where you doubt the veracity of Charles
Nolin’s testimony about what he testified to be Riel’s [#14 and 15] ultimate plan
to divide up Canada and give Quebec to the Prussians, Ontario to the Irish, the
Northwest to different European nations—the Jews would have a part, the
Hungarians, the Bavarians— [#14 and 15] as you say you couldn’t see Riel getting
support for outside conquest. The
people of the Red River settlement just wanted to defend their own homes, not
conquer anyone else’s. My own view is
that Nolin was testifying about the only residue we have of whatever YHWH’s
plan was which had been imparted to Riel when he was in or “in” the fourth heaven
and having the nations of the world explained to him. I suspect the missing part of the equation was that Riel never
seriously considered declaring the Red River settlement a separate nation—in
the process, I suspect, letting down YHWH big time—as you yourself dismissed
the possibility earlier. As I say,
given how promising Riel’s Cree book/Bible would have seemed (YHWH-wise), I’ll
bet this was quite the body blow to he/she/it.
Whatever it was YHWH had intended for his/her/its Prophet of the New World—and
I suspect that the Red River settlement was, in YHWH’s planning, modeled on
Medina, the small Arabian city from which Muhammad ultimately conquered all the
Arab lands—I think YHWH’s plan foundered on this exact “fumble” on Riel’s part. The fact that Riel keeps insisting that the
Canadian government owes him something—and that he petitions Macdonald directly
for thousands of dollars as payment for Riel having supervised the
settlement—certainly undermines any credibility that he would have as an independent
agent of an independent community. It
would be as if President Ulysses S. Grant had petitioned the Canadian
government for redress for governing the United States. Do you see what I mean? You’re either the leader of a separate
nation or you’re a functionary of a
pre-existent nation. The latter was Riel’s free will choice—repeatedly! I find
it fascinating to imagine what sort of “wiggle room” it would’ve allowed YHWH
if Riel had avoided standing for election to the Canadian Parliament, if his free
will decision had been to not officially register as a sitting member…
(this was the first of your own “little ker-whomps” from YHWH, in my
view—when you showed Riel, on page 102-103, choosing not to enter the
Parliament buildings rather than, as you admit in your notes, “Riel did enter one of
the parliament buildings without being recognized and walked into the chief
clerk’s office to register as a Member of Parliament. The clerk didn’t realize who he was signing in until he saw the
signature. He ran to inform the
Minister of Justice, but Riel was already quickly retreating from the
building.” I imagine it was YHWH’s most fervent and heartfelt desire that the
incident might have transpired the way you drew it, since it could create at least a semblance of ambiguity about
whether Riel ever officially “signed on” as a Canadian citizen in any official
capacity and therefore would make his trial for treason against his country
unfounded. However, he did register officially, so, inescapably, he
acknowledged that the Canadian government had sovereignty over him)
…to not stand for election again and if he had not repeatedly demanded
compensation for supervising the Red River settlement—if Riel, in short, had
followed what I imagine were his YHWHist marching orders: make the Red River
settlement into a separate nation and let YHWH work her international mischief
from that base of operations…Alas, such was not to be.
But, boy, you can’t say that Riel didn’t get into the, ahem, “spirit” of
the thing—declaring that the Church is corrupt and announcing he was setting up
a New Church. Declaring that the Pope no longer had authority over the Red
River settlement and that Bishop Bourget will be the new Pope. He obviously got ker-WHOMPED but good! It doesn’t occur to him for a moment that a
Catholic bishop might have a few problems with being declared the new Pope by a
schoolmaster in the Canadian hinterlands.
Makes about as much sense as Jackie Onassis inheriting the
presidency. That is, perfect sense after
you’ve been ker-WHOMPED by YHWH.
Your notes on Bishop Bourget being an ultramontane—a designation I’d
never come across before—was helpful.
That they believed in “papal authority over state authority and…desired
the reunion of church and state.” This seems YHWHist in its nature both as a
desire for blurring of borderlands and distinctions and with the preeminence of
the Bishop of Rome on earth (founded upon a single passage in Matthew, attributed
to the YHWHist—in my view—Synoptic Jesus).
Along these same lines:
In your notes for page 111, you mention that “[f]or unknown reasons,
Riel was transferred from L’Hospice de
St. Jean de Dieu (that is, the Hospital of St. John of God, near Montreal) to the
St. Michel-Archange (St. Michael Archangel) asylum at Beauport (near Quebec City).
I suspect that the “reason” was that this was the point where Riel was
officially transferred from God’s jurisdiction (John being, from what I can
see, the Elohist gospel) to YHWH’s jurisdiction. St. Michael (from the Hebrew mik-a-el,
literally “who is like God”) (nyuck nyuck
nyuck)—or the Archangel Michael or Prince Michael, the purported guardian
archangel of the Jews (with friends like Michael, who needs enemies?), as he is
variously known—makes several appearances in the Bible. In the extra-canonical book of Daniel
(12:1, 10:13, 21—extra-canonical to the
Jews, anyway, where he is, I think, properly relegated to the Hagiographa or
Writings. The goyim inexplicably promoted him to the Prophets along with Ruth
and Esther) and the Apocryphal book of 1 Enoch (20:5, 89:76). That is, he’s
only mentioned in those books which the rabbinates of the Diaspora already
suspected of having a Babylonian “taint” (it is reasonably certain, as an
example, that the Book of Esther is a re-written Babylonian myth). The
Saint/Archangel/Prince’s only canonical appearance is in John’s Revelation or Apocalypse in the
Christian Bible (12:7) where he wars against the Red Dragon (which predates the
Red Dragon’s appearance in Bone by a
couple of thousand years).
The scene between the Prophet of the New World and Gabriel Dumont in
issue six is great as a contrast between the ker-WHOMPED and the completely
UN-ker-WHOMPED (“<God doesn’t want us to fight guerilla-style—what does God
want us to do?>”). Even though
Dumont knows better, knows that Riel’s strategy guarantees their destruction,
he defers to him. That be a righteous
ker-WHOMPing all right when it overpowers straight thinkers in your vicinity to
the extent of jeopardizing their own lives!
You know, I read your graphic novel all the way through several times
and I still missed the significance of [#16 and 17] Riel’s praying
at Batoche during the Battle at Tourond’s Coulee until my latest reading. I
suspect YHWH might have compelled you to throw a little more snow over the
panels on page 7 (and it’s a beautifully-drawn scene with the finely-woven
cross-hatching and blobs of snow) in the interest of covering up what I would
guess was a very self-revealing piece of imagery. (You even seem perplexed at your own choice to use that much
snow, pointing out that the Métis and the Indians had set fire to the grass at
the Coulee, so it couldn’t have been snowing that heavily on the 24th. Looks to me like this was your second little
ker-whomp, Chet). As you say in your
notes, “Riel held his arms up in the shape of a cross.” And you further quote
from Maggie Siggins’ book (p.399) “When his strength had given out, the
Métisses [female Métis] had taken turns holding [Riel’s arms] up.”
The analysis is accurate as far as it goes, but predates Jesus’ cross by more
than a thousand years. It’s actually an
invocation of the first military conflict undertaken by the Hebrew people under
Moshe, as documented in Exodus 17:8-16,
(itself an invocation of the first military conflict participated in by Abraham
against the country of the Amalekites in Genesis 14:7):
Then came Amalek, & fought
with Israel in Rephidim.
And Moses said vnto Ioshua, Choose vs out
men, and goe out, fight with Amalek: to morrow I will stand on the top of the
hill, with the rodde of God in mine hand.
So Ioshua did as Moses had said to him,
and fought with Amalek: and Moses, Aaron and Hur went vp to the top of the
hill.
And it came to passe when Moses held vp
his hand, that Israel preuailed: and when he let down his hand, Amalek
preuailed.
But Moses hands were heauie, and they
tooke a stone, and put it vnder him, and he sate thereon: and Aaron and Hur
stayed up his hands, the one on the one side, and the other on the other side,
and his handes were steady vntill the going downe of the Sunne.
And Ioshua discomfited Amalek, and his
people, with the edge of the sword.
And the YHWH said vnto Moses, Write this
for a memorial in a booke, and rehearse it in the eares of Ioshua: for I will
vtterly put out the remembrances of Amalek from vnder heauen.
And Moses built an Altar, and called the
name of it IEHOVAH Nissi. [The YHWH, my Banner]
For, he said, the YHWH hath
sworn the hand vpon the throne of the YHWH warre with Amalek from generation to
generation.
This
definitely prefigures the cross. And the stone Moshe sits on, it seems to me,
prefigures Peter (as, much later, the crowning of England’s sovereign upon the
Stone of Scone was intended to resonate with this same…image? Living
metaphor?—the rocks Jacob used for his pillows were, for all practical
purposes, the first Judeo-Christian “church”). Of primary significance in the
story, in my view, is that it is Aaron and Hur who “stayed up” Moshe’s
hands. The same Aaron and Hur—or, at
least, Hur’s grandson—who were responsible for changing Judaism from a
Prophet-centred faith to an Egyptian-Whorehouse-motif-Tabernacle-centered,
Golden Calf, cattle abattoir-centred faith.
That is (and this is as close as I can get to guessing at the spirit
world Rule, rule or “rule” underpinning both circumstances) the ones who hold
up the hands of the central figure become the heads of his church. When Joshua gets his turn generations
later—as the Synoptic Jesus—to occupy the centermost role previously occupied
by Moshe, there would naturally have been great curiosity about who would get
to hold up his hands. The answer, of
course, was no one. He was nailed to
the cross and two spikes held up his
hands “until the going down of the sun”.
What’s interesting here in the story of Louis Riel is that he has two women holding up his hands—even though there are
still plenty of men in the settlement.
I imagine this was a specific instruction from YHWH. Now, the story begins to make a little more
sense (although in a very vague way; again, I can only guess at the
underpinning of the “staying up” of the central figure’s hands and why YHWH
would attempt to influence you to obscure the image with snow). YHWH has declared Riel to be his/her/its
Prophet of the New World and by having the women holding up his hands,
he/she/it, it seems to me, has guaranteed that women, in general, will become
the heads of the New World church. I would imagine that there is something
fundamentally wrong—in the spirit world, I mean— with this that either
embarrasses YHWH to have attention called to it or which undermines YHWH
because she was “pulling a fast one” with it.
[#16 and 17]
[maybe citing what I see as an analogous modern-day situation will
help. In Cecille B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments—the Charlton Heston version—the character who makes the Golden Calf in
Moses’ absence isn’t his brother Aaron, as in the Torah, but Dathan, a
completely separate character who rebelled against Moses with his brother
Abiram and a Levite, Korah (Numbers 16:1-35). This, it seems to me, was
another little ker-whomp. YHWH can’t
change the Torah—much as he/she/it would like to—but she can avoid the
embarrassment of having the founder of the Egyptian-Whorehouse-motif
Tabernacle, Golden Calf and cattle-abattoir-worship and chief resident of
his/her/its fifth heaven played as a villain by (YHWH forbid!) Edward G.
Robinson in a movie. Which, it seems to
me, he/she/it avoided with a little ker-whomp on Mr. DeMille and/or his
screenwriter]
If I understood the specific
spirit world rules in play, I imagine it would explain the exponentially
greater level of feminism in Canada than elsewhere and explain the onset of
feminism itself in 1970: 85 years after 1885.
Why 85? What is the significance of two 85’s? Beats hell out of me, but
the symmetry is interesting, don’t you think?
It also helps explain the otherwise inexplicable: why Riel becomes
completely passive at this point, refusing to let Dumont and the others chase
the Canadian troops or ambush them.
Basically, it seems to me that what YHWH required—given that Riel
bungled several key points in his intended prophethood—was Riel’s martyrdom. What YHWH hoped to do, in my view, was to salvage
his/her/its “fourth heaven prophet” by imitating what God did with Jesus. By having the Romans execute
Jesus—unjustly—Jesus’ spirit “entered” into the Roman Empire, “traveling” all
the way to Rome and, ultimately, after five centuries, collapsing the Roman
Empire from within and replacing it with his own “rock”. I have no idea what
the rules of the Spirit world are, but this seems to be one of them—and my gut
instinct tells me that it came as a complete surprise to YHWH and impressed the
hell out of he/she/it that Jesus’ crucifixion ultimately led to the collapse of
his/her/its pagan crown jewel (all roads lead to Rome). As I see it, If YHWH could get the Canadian troops to arrest Riel and the
Canadian government to execute Riel, he/she/it suspected that the Indian,
French and two female spirits united in Riel at Batoche would, in a comparable
fashion to what God accomplished with Jesus’ martyrdom against Rome—travel to,
inhabit and, ultimately, collapse the Canadian government from within in the same
way. Of course, I also think YHWH was
originally a good deal more ambitious than this. I think she wanted Riel’s spirit to go all the way to London
(Canadian Head Office, so to speak) and collapse the British crown (whose
possessor is one of God’s designated “anointed on earth”). Turnabout is fair
play. If the spirit of Jesus could collapse a pagan empire, why couldn’t the
spirit of a half-pagan—a Métis—collapse the empire headed by one of God’s
anointed? It seems to me that had Riel maintained the Red River settlement’s
status as an independent nation—over which he was already the sole acknowledged
leader—there would have been no impediment to his spirit (after his martyrdom)
traveling to London and collapsing the British crown. But, I suspect, by repeatedly insisting that he should be paid by
the Canadian government and by running for election to Parliament, registering
as a Member of Parliament and standing for election again, Riel guaranteed that
the road he was traveling on YHWH’s behalf led only as far as Ottawa. As in the case of Riel’s intransigence
against Schultz and Schultz’s Canadian followers, it was Riel, himself, who
would prove to be his own worst enemy as YHWH’s putative Prophet of the New
World.
But within those admittedly narrow constraints, Riel’s martyrdom was effective: amazingly so: in a very
few years, collapsing John A. Macdonald’s Conservative Party and making the
Liberal Party virtually the perennial custodians of the only one-party state
among the great democracies. The Liberal
party which—as documented by Peter C. Newman in his article, “The two rules of
Liberal longevity”—has only two foundational rules for its leadership (which
aren’t so much rules in any conventional sense as they are pagan tribal
shibboleths). First, that—beginning
within two years of Riel’s execution—they adopted the rule of alternating
between French and English leaders—from Laurier to King, to St. Laurent, to
Pearson, to Trudeau, to Turner, to Chrétien, to Martin. “This,” as Mr. Newman correctly asserts, “is
not negotiable.” It’s also not wholly democratic (to say the least)—a kind of
19th century “affirmative action” which imposes arbitrary impediments to
genuine fairness in the interest of creating illusory fairness.
“The second rule, which is more obscure, but equally strict, is that no
matter which party veteran most clearly deserves a shot at the top spot, the
Liberals always choose an ‘outsider.’
That’s political sorcery of the highest order.”
I suspect Mr. Newman is more accurate than he knows in describing this
as sorcery (if, as I suspect, YHWH was the motivating force behind it)—as he
was equally accurate in the same article describing Liberalism as “Canada’s
state religion.” And it’s hard for me
not to picture the spirit of Louis Riel when Newman describes Pierre Trudeau’s
dramatic ascent to the leadership in 1968 as that of “a rabble-rouser who a few
short years earlier had been attacking the party for its nuclear-friendly
defence policies.” And bearing in mind the YHWHist predilection for borderlands
and imagery, it’s interesting that Newman also notes:
Liberals react with an almost
gravitational pull to compromise, conciliation and the notion that the
political ideal is to do as little as possible, but as much as necessary…true
Grits [Liberals] treat the voters’
ballots as a commodity, to be bought and sold, a mathematical rubric that isn’t
valid past Kenora, because west of the Ontario border, few votes are required
to bolster the party’s winning margins in Ontario and Quebec.
…epitomizing
the French and English duality, which was Riel’s seminal distinction in the Red
River settlement and essentially restricting Canada’s over-arching reality to
the borderland between French and English: Ontario and Quebec. And if
the spirit of Louis Riel, Martyr, has
taken possession of the Liberal party and through the Liberal party, this
country, could YHWH’s sentiments have found a more eloquent spokesman than Jack
Pickersgill, a senior minister in the Pearson government, quoted by Newman from
a personal interview?: “It is not merely for the well-being of Canadians, but
for the good of mankind in general
(emphasis mine) that the present Liberal government should remain in office.”
And could Riel have more succinctly expressed the sentiment, “Conservative
governments are like the mumps.
Something you have to endure once in your lifetime, but when it’s over,
you don’t want it again.”
And if there exists a country on the face of the earth that is more
extravagant in just shoveling money in the direction of its aboriginal peoples
(billions and billions and billions of largely unaccounted-for dollars through the Department of Indian Affairs) I
sure don’t know which it would be.
Likewise with the blight of feminism which has taken root in Canada to a
nearly unimaginable degree—as I documented in the final installment of “Why
Canada Slept”.
Sorry, Chet. Typing quotes out
of a newspaper article I slipped into “essay mode” at the end there. Anyway, this is what it’s like tracking “the
finger of God” through these stories. I
mean, at first, it was just an interesting meeting place of Islam and
Christianity (Hey! Wait ‘til I tell Chet!).
But, the further I extrapolate backwards or forwards from one of these
little quirks, the more interesting it gets—answering large questions which
then pose larger questions. It’s easy to forget that this isn’t just literary
criticism (at least I don’t think it is): “Compare and contrast Louis Riel’s
experience in the fourth heaven with those of Muhammad on his Night Journey.”
Large question: are we permanently, inescapably locked into this
dichotomous Louis Riel/Martyr reality?
Every new Prime Minister, Conservative or Liberal, vows to overhaul the
Indian Affairs Department and every one of them just ends up installing bigger,
faster money shovels. Even for an
ultra-liberal democracy, there’s something downright spooky there. Billions and
billions and billions of largely unaccounted-for dollars flying out the window
and the most anyone in this country can manage is to go, “Hm.” And how much does this “curse” affect the
United States? After all, Riel adopted
American citizenship in 1883 and he was—if his experience on the hilltop near
Washington actually took place (and I, for one, believe it did)—designated not
the Prophet of Canada, but the Prophet of the New World, an altogether larger
kettle of fish presumably including our neighbours to the south.
Is it that my extended celibacy has placed me outside of the ensnaring
influence of the curse— immune to the hallucinatory reality of the
Aaron-and-Hur-modeled Métisses who supported Riel’s Moshe-modeled arms that
long-ago April 24? I have to admit that that doesn’t seem outside of the realm
of likelihood to me. I wanted to do a
parody of what writing about feminism so extensively looks like from this side
of the keyboard: “Two and two equals
four. That is to say that two and two
do not equal five or six nor, in my opinion, any other integer which would not
be what most of us would agree to be what is conventionally agreed to be four
(IV). Put another way: one plus one
equal two. In repeating this process
and considering the resultant amounts in tandem (while acknowledging that none
of you see it this way) it does appear that the two results (both of which can
be most accurately described as “two’s”) when joined, inevitably (at least as I
see it) equal four (or, if you prefer, any whole number which exists between
the numbers three and five).”
Okay. I’m done. Time for the snap
fasteners in your jaw-line to undo themselves one at a time. No rush. I’ll be right here.
Several possibilities had
occurred to me regarding the encounter or encounters that Riel claimed to have
had with the spirit of God.
1) The spirit lied to Riel. 2) Riel misunderstood the spirit (in the
same manner that he chose to misunderstand Bishop Bourget, but with the added
problem of the discombobulating nature of the mystical experience—the ker-WHOMP.)
3) Riel lied and invented the
story. 4) Riel was mentally ill and
there was no “external reality” to his hallucination(s).
That last one is, given my biases against
materialism in general and psychiatry in particular, the one I consider the
least likely, but the materialistic-model is still in my head even if I
generally ignore it. I see 3 as more
likely than 4, but I think Riel’s confused mental state in early 1876 was
consistent with the sort of mystical experience that he reported having, so I
think he was probably telling the truth.
1 and 2 I see as being about equally possible.
I was aware that there were other
possibilities that weren’t occurring to me, and you last fax provides me with
one: that the spirit was mostly sincere and didn’t lie (or didn’t lie much) and
believed that it could confer prophethood on Riel, but that the spirit wasn’t
able to control events in the way that Riel and the spirit expected it would be
able to. A possibility that I’d rate up
alongside 1 and 2. Of course, since, as
I said earlier, I don’t accept your God and YHWH story as “the truth,” I see
the details as they relate to your God and YHWH story as interesting and
fun-to-read (for me, anyway) but rating only a little higher than possibility
4. I don’t have a religious
counter-story to oppose yours and to place Riel’s mystical experiences into in
a way that explains them, but I still have a few comments.
The tenet that there are seven heavens
pre-dates Islam. It’s an ancient pagan
belief. But Riel wouldn’t have had to
have been familiar with paganism or Islam to have come across the idea of there
being multiple heavens—all he had to do was read II Corinthians 12:2 where Paul mentions being taken up to “the
third heaven.”
Swedenborg talks of there being three main
heavens, but I seem to remember a passage in one of his books where he wrote
about intermediate heavens. I spent a
lot of time, after getting your fax, searching for that passage so that I could
see what number of the main heavens and the intermediate heavens added up to
(seven?) but I couldn’t find it.
Regarding the first of my “little
ker-WHOMPS”: Yes, Riel registered as a Member of Parliament on March 26, 1874,
but in 1878 he moved to the States and in 1883 he became a US citizen. I would think that Canada’s claim of sovereignty
over him would have ceased at that point.
Not too long before I drew the scene of
Riel’s arms being held up in the shape of a cross, I saw the relatively recent
CBC TV production, Canada: A People’s
History. In that version of the
scene, the actor playing Riel crossed his arms in front of himself to form a
cross (in the way that you sometimes see characters do in vampire movies). Up to that point, I had just assumed that
the cross had been formed by Riel holding his arms out from his sides. That’s the way I’d mentally envisaged the
scene when I first read the Siggins biography, and the two visual versions that
I’d seen since—the CBC TV-movie from the 70s and the French comic-book bio by
Zoran and Toufik—had both shown the scene in the same way. So, seeing A People’s History made me unsure how to depict the scene: arms outstretched at the sides or crossed in
front? The CBC had really played up how
historically accurate A People’s History was. I thought that maybe the producers of that series
had some information I didn’t have that indicated just how Riel held up his
arms. In the end, I decided to go with
the arms-up-from-the-sides because it would have been difficult to clearly
depict the crossed arms. If Riel had
crossed his arms, the Métis women holding his arms, presumably, would have
stood in front of Riel. I could have arranged the figures in such
a way that the crossed arms would have been visible, but it still would have
been a difficult-to-read image.
You would have really thought I’d been
ker-WHOMPED if I’d drawn the women in front of Riel. In fact, if I’d had Riel crossing his arms, I probably would have
drawn only one woman holding up his arms.
But then, if I’d done that, you’d have been even less likely to see the
possible Moses connection.
[#18]
You’ll probably find it interesting that, even though the TV-movie and the
Zoran and Toufik comic book show Riel holding up his arms in the
I’m-being-crucified position, neither shows anyone—male or female—holding up
his arms. [#18] I can’t remember if A People’s History shows anyone holding
up Riel’s arms or not. I’m almost
tempted to rent it just to find out.
There may be some people who distrust
your interpretations and are unfamiliar with Canadian history and who are
therefore suspicious of your claim that Riel’s execution was responsible for
the weakening of Canada’s Conservative Party and the domination of Canadian
politics since then by the Liberal Party.
So, let me assure yours readers that I agree with this view and so do
many respectable historians. The
Liberal Wilfred Laurier certainly did exploit French resentment over Riel’s
death in the 1896 election, which resulted in Laurier becoming prime minister. Perhaps I should have mentioned this at the
end of my notes to make it clear why Riel’s story is still important and how it
connects to today’s political scene in Canada.
It should be pointed out, thought, that
Riel himself was a conservative and was opposed to 19th century
liberalism. And he would have been
horrified to find out what the liberalism of his day would evolve into.
And he wouldn’t be the first conservative to be misappropriated by the
other team.
I can’t believe you actually read all that, let alone answered it.
Well, this business with Riel’s arms just gets more and more
interesting, doesn’t it? One of the
major reasons I got rid of my television was that I started seeing it as a
light-based YHWH conduit, the fatuous content being only a minor element. I
believe she issues society-wide ker-whomps through television on a regular
basis (which, not to alarm anyone, seem to be coming closer and closer together
like labour pains). The National Post, the
day after a generalized ker-whomp, is just riddled with really obvious typos,
complete lapses of common sense and an exponential increase in female-centered
“news” items. The next day,
everything’s back to normal (relatively speaking). I note with interest that A People’s History aired just before you were getting ready to
draw that sequence, just in time to sow some radical doubt about what you had
pictured in reading the Siggins book.
Quite aside from how much more difficult it would be to draw, I think it
would have been completely obscure to any eyewitnesses. I suspect that most devout Christians (as
most of them would have been) would have recognized the Moshe imagery from
Exodus—particularly with a pitched battle going on nearby. Had Riel crossed his arms in front of him
and had Métisses (plural) supported his arms, it would be hard to picture
anyone recognizing what Riel was doing (say! What is Louis doing wit’ dose
chicks over dere? Save some for us, Louis!).
Which leads to the question, where did the documentation of the incident
come from? Given that Maggie Siggins (a
woman, I hasten to point out) seems to be the only one who has two women
supporting Riel’s arms, where did she get the story from? Or did she get a little ker-whomp herself? What do you want to bet that she knows she read it
somewhere, but darned if she can find the reference in any of her notes? (Objection, your honour, the question is
highly speculative and calls for the drawing of a conclusion on the part of the
witness.) (Sustained.)
I do think that YHWH has taken some pains to try to obscure the
image. I have no idea what the
motivation might be, but I suspect he/she/it is really, really, really not
happy about us going on at this great length about it. Which makes all this typing just that much
more worthwhile!
I’m not sure what international law was like in the 1880s, but I’m
reasonably certain that Riel’s registration as a Member of Parliament and his
solicitation of “back pay” from the Government of Canada for back pay for his
services as the supervisor of the Red River settlement would constitute an
acknowledgment of Canadian citizenship, thus making him subject to Crown
prosecution. Even if he renounced his
Canadian citizenship in becoming a US citizen, I doubt that would give him immunity
from prosecution (I don’t know how far back extradition treaties between our
two countries go but I would imagine they were in place by 1883) and I think
his returning to Canadian soil to lead a rebellion would make his American
citizenship a moot point. I suspect the
American State Department would have to have intervened on Riel’s behalf and
it’s hard to picture them doing that for someone who keeps “going home” to
cause trouble. There’s no domestic
“plus” to counter the diplomatic “minus” involved in an intervention.
Technically, nothing predates Islam—the submission to the will of God is
universal except in vast numbers of human beings—as opposed to the revelation of
Islam as a religion, but I know what you mean.
Your reference to II
Corinthians is interesting.
I knewe a man in Christ aboue fourteene
yeeres agoe, whether in the body, I cannot tell, or whether out of the body, I
cannot tell, God knoweth: such a one,
caught vp to the third heauen.
And I knew such a man (whether in the
body, or out of the body, I cannot tell, God knoweth.)
How that he was caught vp into Paradise
and heard vnspeakeable wordes, which is it not [lawfull/possible] for a man to
utter.
Of such will I glory, yet of my selfe I
will not glory, but in mine infirmities.
Paul’s
syntax always makes my head ache. Why
does he put the “such a one, caught up to the third heaven” at the end of the
passage? The way it reads, Paul knew “a
man in Christ”—but Paul isn’t sure if he knew the guy in his body or out of his
body. Whose body? The guy’s?
Or Paul’s? Paul wasn’t sure that
the guy was in his body when Paul knew him.
Or Paul wasn’t sure Paul was in his own body when he knew the guy. Or is the body Christ’s? Paul didn’t know if the guy was in the Body
of Christ (i.e. a good church goer) or not in the Body of Christ (i.e. a pagan)
when he knew him. And then he just repeats the confusing part, instead of clarifying the confusion he created. He does that a lot. “Hmm. This part is a little confusing. Better write it down again.”
But, giving Paul the benefit of the doubt, I think what he’s saying is
the same thing we’re saying about Riel: the self-evident truth is that we don’t
know what Riel experienced, any more than Paul knows what the man he knew
actually experienced. The nature of
spirit in a human being is that it is housed in such a way that no other human
being can be aware of another’s spirit.
My awareness is my awareness.
Your awareness is your awareness.
We have no way of determining if those two awarenesses are linked in any
way to each other or to other awarenesses, whether they are comparable in any
way or even that they exist in any conventional—and certainly any demonstrable—
meaning of the term “exist”. It seems
to me that this cuts to the heart of the central flaw in calling psychiatry a
science: because actual awareness is
structurally inaccessible, it is beyond the boundaries of actual science. My own thesis is that most of our own
awareness is inaccessible even to ourselves.
The self-awareness I think of as “me” is like the visible part of an
iceberg. The vast majority of it is
hidden—from me, but not from God.
Submitting to the will of God allows the vast majority of my awareness
that is otherwise inaccessible to me to be put to good use even as I continue
to be completely unaware, consciously, of the process taking place. Obviously, parts of yourself of which even
you aren’t aware are the most private parts of you imaginable—which is why, I
think, God needs to have you make the free-will choice to submit to His will
and to reinforce that decision consciously and repeatedly through prayer,
because, otherwise He would be trespassing in a major—and completely
unconscionable—way.
Uh-oh.
I got your fax at 11 p.m. and had to be
out of my apartm—fashionable condo at 6 to catch my flight to Calgary. Reading the fax, I thought, “Siggins wasn’t
the only author who mentioned the Métisses holding up Riel’s arms.” I went and found Flanagan’s Louis “David” Riel and flipped to the
pages dealing with the Fish Creek battle.
“He stood and prayed with his arms
extended in the form of a cross. Two
strong men helped him keep his weary arms up, as Moses had been helped during
the battle with the Amalekites.”
Uh-oh.
I grabbed my copy of George Stanley’s Louis Riel.
“Raising his arms in the form of a cross,
and turning his face upwards, he began to pray. When his arms became weary, two métis stepped forward and held
them.”
I checked the
end-notes—Flanagan cites Stanley as his source, so it looks like Flanagan added
the adjective “strong”. Stanley cites
the memoir of someone named Garnot, so that looks like the primary source. Siggins cites…no one. Only when I was on the bus to the airport,
hours later, did it occur to me—too late—to check Siggins bibliography to see
if she listed Garnot (I’d photocopied what I thought were the relevant pages to
bring with me on the trip so I wouldn’t have to carry a stack of books).
Here’s what I think happened—I’m guessing
that Garnot describes Riel praying with the women (all the books I’ve read
specifically make note of Riel praying with the women). Then Garnot probably relates how Riel lifted
his arms and how the Métis held up his arms when he got tired. The word “Métis” can refer to both men and
women. Flanagan—spotting the Moses
connection—assumed the Métis arm-holders were men. Siggins, noting that the Métis who were around Riel were
described by Garnot as being female, assumed that they held up his arms.
Perhaps I noticed the conflict between the
Flanagan and Siggins interpretations when I wrote my script and made a choice
to draw the Siggins version, intending to note the other possibility in my
end-notes, and then completely forgot about the matter. Or perhaps when I read the Flanagan book, my
eyes saw “men” but my mind read “women,” since
I already knew from reading the Siggins book first that that’s what was
“supposed” to be on the page. In fact,
I’d read the Siggins book three times before reading the Flanagan one.
I think Paul was referring to himself in
the third-person in that 2 Corinthians passage
and was specifically discussing his experience on the road to Damascus. I can’t remember why I think that (perhaps
he refers to “unspeakable words” when he talks about the road to Damascus in
his writings?) And I don’t have a Bible
with me here in Banff to double-check that.
Oops—just checked—there is a Gideon’s
Bible in my hotel room. Now I need a
concordance.
As
I say, I have real problems with Paul’s commentaries (and I do consider them
commentaries, not scripture).
Re-reading the notes on II Corinthians—as has been my experience in reading the notes in my New Bible Dictionary on
all his other epistles—has only reinforced that for me. Christians— for some reason which is
inexplicable to me—seem compelled to raise Saul of Tarsus up to the level of a
prophet and his writings to truth incarnate. Obviously, someone who experienced
his conversion, as Saul/Paul reportedly did, in a blinding flash of light, I
have no trouble, personally, picturing which team he’s on. The fact that so much of his writing can be
read as being simultaneously pro and
con on any given subject (his idiosyncratic syntax again) and that much of his
writing is, to me, simple gibberish (however high-minded and stirring on its
surface) makes him, in my eyes, a great YHWHist functionary, but very little
besides. Paul literally has me on the
edge of my seat, intellectually, time and time again, anticipating some grand,
over-arching insight.
That never comes.
I consider it a hallmark of what I see as Paul’s singular nature that
his Epistle to the Romans and Epistle to the Hebrews are among my favourite books of the Bible
to read aloud, even though virtually
every idea expressed in them, in my experience, turns out to be either
double-talk or an emotion-based “road to nowhere” relative to the rules
governing sequential thought—which is what I think they were intended to be.
Like the ambiguity of the Synoptic Jesus, I think Paul’s epistles were and are
a litmus test of inherent goodness, since they can be read either as a)
self-exaltation to deistic and near-deistic levels or as b) genuine
self-abasement and humility. The latter view has definitely prevailed,
universally, in the Christian church (both as the Christian perception of
inherent Christ-nature and as the perception of Paul as the seminal Christ
commentator) so, to me, God has won his point.
I would assume that YHWH was betting that the Synoptic Jesus (as
interpreted by Paul) would have the entire Christian world—after the manner of
YHWH him/her/itself—exalting themselves as deities and near-deities inside of a
few generations.
The fact that Acts 9 (which documents the road to Damascus
conversion) makes no reference to a third heaven, I think, might undermine your
argument. On the other hand, it is
certainly possible that Saul/Paul was told more than “Saul, Saul why
persecutest thou me?” and “I am Iesus whom thou persecutest: It is hard for
thee to kicke against the prickes.” (a reference, I believe, to YHWH’s “thorns
and thistles” from Genesis 3:18) and
“Arise, and goe into the citie, and it shall be told thee what thou must doe”
and, possibly, Paul was also told not to reveal anything more than those three
statements even as the secrets of the third heaven were revealed to him. He could very well be Louis Riel’s
downstairs neighbour in the heavenly hierarchy even as we speak.
As to your “uh-ohs,” I will point out that this is one of the major
problems I have with allowing (what I see as) the intellectual perversion of
feminism into fields of genuine study and scholarship. Women and feminists are far, far more
Chauvinistic than men are (that is, predisposed to look for and enlarge their
team’s role in any given text even—and I daresay—especially
where the evidence doesn’t warrant it, just as Chauvin was blindly
prejudiced in favour of all things French) and are also willfully blind to
exactly that trait of inherent prejudice in themselves. As you say, you read “men” but your mind
thinks “women”—in my view, because you—and Maggie Siggins and feminists
generally—want so badly for women to be infinitely more important than they
are. Warning flags go up when I hear
about how women are bringing a new feminine perspective to Biblical
scholarship. Strikes me as comparable
to saying that Adolf Hitler brought a new Germanic understanding to the study
of Judaism. Feminism and the female
viewpoint, in my view, should be restricted to Women’s Studies, gossip,
back-biting and psychiatry (and all other pseudo-sciences) where it
belongs.
As I say, I have no idea about the nature of the realm of spirit or
Spirit, but it does seem to me that there is something “afoot” in Maggie
Siggins’ leap of feminist faith, your unquestioning adoption of it (to the
extent that you don’t even know if you recognized it as an exceptional view or,
in fact, know if you intended to note
that there existed a consensus view diametrically opposed to it—all earmarks, I
hope you would agree, of a previously unrecognized ker-whomp), and the fact
that certain…other-worldly?...efforts appear to have been made to obscure your
pictorial misapprehension. The fact
that I don’t understand the underlying motives and forces at work compels me to
be more (rather than less) wary of these feminist peculiarities when and where
they appear.
Okay, I’m back in Toronto with
all my books to refer to.
I looked up 2 Corinthians 12:2 in The
Interpreter’s One-Volume Commentary on the Bible, and whoever wrote that 2 Corinthians commentary in that book
agrees with me that Paul was talking about himself being in the third heaven
but disagrees that Paul was talking about the road-to-Damascus experience.
With various translations of the Bible
before me, I can see why I thought that Paul was probably talking about himself
12:2—in 12:1 he says he’s about to boast about his own mystical
experiences. That that’s what Paul is
saying isn’t clear in the King James
version. I think a lot of the
difficulty you have in understanding Paul comes from trying to wrestle with the
archaic phrasing of the King James Bible.
Maybe you should try some more recent translations. Not that those translations completely clear
things up—there’s enough ambiguity in the passage that I’m not entirely certain
that Paul was talking about himself.
I’m probably wrong about Paul visiting the
third heaven during his road-to-Damascus experience, but I seem to remember
connecting the third heaven visit to some other mystical experience described
in Paul’s writings. Maybe I’m
remembering wrong—I haven’t been able to track it down, not even with the help
of a concordance.
You hope I’d agree that I’d been
ker-whomped in regards to my handling of Riel’s arms being held up. Not at all.
I’ll admit (shame-facedly) to carelessness, but that’s all. Manuscript Siggins’ guess that the Métis who
held Riel’s arms were female looks to me like a completely reasonable one,
although I do think she should have noted in her text that she was guessing.
Spoken like a truly ker-whomped
feminist.
From what little I’ve read of Paul’s commentaries in New Easy To Read Scripture, all the latest
apologists have managed to do is to transform his non sequiturs into different
non sequiturs. It isn’t the Jacobean
prose, I don’t think, it’s the fact that most of his stuff is gibberish. Sufficiently incoherent that most of the
time the verbiage obscures his own, as I see it, intended subtext (about which
he was understandably nervous) which, it seems to me, was: Jesus was actually God and I, Paul, am
actually Jesus. As I say, I think this
had enormous appeal for YHWH who expected everyone to decide that Jesus was
actually God, Paul was actually Jesus and everyone is actually Paul, therefore
everyone is actually God. YHWH “logic”
at its finest. Much, I’m sure, to YHWH’s chagrin, the entirety of Christendom
has, historically, managed to avoid drawing any specious analogies between
ourselves and Jesus—apart from a few seriously loose screws like John Lennon, the
self-confessed “born- again pagan.”
Talk about “ker-whomped”.
A few stray observations to “close out the show”. [#19 and 20] I very much
liked your portrayal of John A. Macdonald’s epiphany on page 134 where his
insight is marked by the omission of solid blacks and cross-hatching from the
panel—literal brilliance (it even balanced out what I saw as excessiveness on
your part in portraying our first prime minister’s legendary tippling by having
empty whisky bottles scattered on the floor.
Sir John was, unquestionably, a toss-pot, but I would imagine he was
still drinking his spirits) (nyuck nyuck nyuck) (by the glass from a proper
crystal decanter and not chug-a-lugging them straight out of the bottle!). [#19 and 20] What was
particularly interesting to me is that when the cross-hatching returns to your
work on the subsequent pages it does so with a vengeance! Multi-layered fine-line hatching that could
give Gerhard a run for his money. When
I mentioned it to you at the time, there was a note of ambiguity in your
reaction—you weren’t happy, or part of you wasn’t happy, with the new look and
the decision-making that led you to incorporate it. How do you see the decision in retrospect? Was it just that you weren’t looking forward
to having to go back and “goose up” the cross-hatching in earlier pages to get
a consistent look? Or was there a
deeper ambiguity there that I’m missing?
My cross-hatching in Louis Riel was inspired by Harold Gray’s
shading technique, and I think I fell short of what the master accomplished.
I’m glad you liked the way I handled
Macdonald’s epiphany. [#21] I’d originally drawn the scene in
a different manner—placing it in Macdonald’s home in Ottawa rather than in the
Batt’s Hotel in London—and had depicted an oil-lamp in a thought balloon over
Sir John’s head as a 19th century substitute for a light bulb. I decided that that was too cutesy when I
redrew the scene. [#21]
Just while I was in the neighbourhood of that part of the story, I
noticed Riel’s reference on page 137 to “the losses he suffered from being
obliged to abandon his country for so
long.” My emphasis added. It seems to me that the cumulative evidence
points to Riel believing himself to be a Canadian, whatever he might have
thought of Canada and its government.
The quote comes from the local
government official, David Macdowall, not Riel (see panel 137:4), but it could
well be that in 1885 Riel still thought of Canada, or at least of the Canadian
Prairies, as his country.
Regarding the matter of Canada’s sovereignty over Riel in 1885,
the following is from The Trial of Louis
Riel: Justice and Mercy Denied by George R. D. Goulet (1999):
“Riel
was charged with six counts of high treason.
Three of the charges, relating separately to activities at Duck Lake,
Fish Creek and Batoche, were based on the principal of law known as the
doctrine of natural allegiance. The
other three charges, while almost identical to the first three, were slightly
varied to encompass the doctrine of local allegiance. Natural allegiance was the legal obedience which a subject owed
to his or her sovereign at all times, and in all places, so long as the
relation of subject and sovereign subsisted. […] Local allegiance was the
allegiance owed by an alien while he or she was resident or continued within
the dominions and the protection of the English Crown. […]
“British
law had been that if one was born a British subject one died a British subject
regardless of whether that person later became a naturalized citizen of another
country.
“[…] To forestall potential antagonism by the American government to Riel, a
United States citizen, being charged only as a British subject, government
officials prudently added the charges based on the doctrine of local allegiance
[…] It was fortunate that the did so
since the doctrine of natural allegiance under the British law was wiped out by
the Naturalization Act, 1870 of the United Kingdom which came into force on May 12, 1870 […] Section 6 of this act provided that a person ceased to be a British
subject by voluntarily becoming a naturalized citizen of a foreign state. […] In
light of the foregoing, as well as the fact that no testimony whatsoever was
adduced at Riel’s trial proving that he was a British subject, the first three
charges against Riel, founded on natural allegiance, were invalid.” [Pp.
49-51]
You’ve retreated into nit-picking forensic debate, Chet. David Macdowall was enunciating Riel’s
viewpoint as it had been conveyed to him. As to Goulet’s argument, I don’t buy
it. Canada bought the territory Riel was living on. At that point, to escape Canada having jurisdiction over you, you
leave or, by staying, you accept
Canada’s jurisdiction over you. Yes, certainly, Britain had ultimate
jurisdiction but only in the sense that Canada was—and technically still is—one
of Britain’s dominions. Whether Britain would extend citizenship to individuals
living on land purchased by the government of Canada: that’s an argument
between Britain and Canada and completely irrelevant to the relationship
between Canada and one of its citizens.
It would certainly be convenient to be able to take out a foreign
citizenship so as to bypass a charge of treason, but it seems ludicrous to
me—commit a treasonous act and then become a naturalized citizen of another
country so as to eliminate the basis of the charge of treason? Particularly when you are still living on
the land where you chose to commit your treasonous acts? are continuing to
commit treasonous acts? and are, simultaneously insisting that the government
that owns that land compensate you for supervising it? after you have stood for
election to that country’s parliament and have registered as a member of that
parliament?
“Just ignore all that. I’m actually an American, now.”
“Oh, sorry. Consider the treason charge a bad dream. Here’s a cheque for supervising the Red
River settlement and a letter extending the prime minister’s sincerest apologies.”
You can remain willfully ignorant of Riel’s repeated demonstrated intent—his demonstrated intent in
accepting Canada’s jurisdiction over him, both by remaining on Canadian land
and by functioning within Canada’s electoral and parliamentary context—(and
willful ignorance does seem to be the universal consensus for everyone in this
lunatic country except me) but that doesn’t change the facts of the matter any
more than sticking your fingers in your ears and going, “LALALALA! I’m NOT
LISTENING” would in any way change the facts of the matter.
Probably irrelevant to everyone except myself, but given that my own
thesis is that Riel was chosen by YHWH to be his/her/its prophet of the new
world, it’s interesting (as I say, to me, anyway) that on page 145, Riel
“breathes the holy spirit on his followers,” since this was an act attributed
only to the Johannine Jesus (John 20:22).
I wonder if Riel was improvising at that point, essentially “acting out”
scripture as it occurred to him to do so—and inadvertently giving YHWH a little
slap in the face—or if there was an ongoing contention between God and YHWH
through these events.
Meanwhile, back in the world all the rest of you inhabit:
I can’t let you go here without asking what your thinking was behind
alternating the sound effects “PK” and “BLAM” for gunfire. I really liked the “PK” because it is so
much closer to the actual sound a rifle makes, particularly in a wide-open
space (a very versatile sound effect—you used it as well for the nailing of the
“royal proclamation” to the fence. Very
austere, very frontier-like, as I told you at the time). What’s the story, Chet?
I used “PK” for gunfire in the
distance and “BLAM” for gunfire that was closer to the “camera”. I don’t think I’ve ever heard real gunfire.
Well, good guessing then, Chet, because that’s what it sounds like. The “PK”, I mean. “BLAM” is Hollywood,
“juicing up” the sound. I also found
your story of how you arrived at your archetypal horse (something of a
necessity with all the Métis and Canadian soldiers on horseback for pages and
pages and pages) interesting. Our discussion started with me asking if Harold
Gray had ever drawn a sequence in Little
Orphan Annie with horses that you could
use for reference (in the same way that I ask myself “did Al Williamson or Mort
Drucker ever draw hair that looked like Woody Allen’s hair? And if so, where would I find it?”—the
inevitable question of the acolyte of a specific artist’s style. I always
picture Raphael craning his neck to see if something similar to what he needed
to paint was somewhere on the Sistine Chapel ceiling).
What story was that? I’ve forgotten that particular conversation.
I don’t have many examples of horses drawn
by Gray, and I don’t remember referring to those few examples during the creation
of Louis Riel. What I did refer to was Jack Hamm’s How to Draw Animals.
As I recall the conversation, what few Harold Gray horses you had
weren’t running horses—or, at least, not galloping horses which you needed
for the scenes of the Métis pursuing the Canadian soldiers and for Gabriel
Dumont’s reckless charge. I found it interesting because I was having to solve
the same problem with the Three Wise Fellows after the massacre of the
Cirinists. What horse illustration reference I had was of posed horses or
horses cantering. What I did was to get
a couple of picture books on the Kentucky Derby and thoroughbred horse racing
out of the library. Even there, the
number of photos of horses galloping flat out were few and far between since a
horse race is a more formal set-up.
Part of the horse’s training involves staying in a narrow “flight path”
which (I assume) would differ from the training of a horse for military
purposes.
It had to do with the legs, you decided.
Now I know what you’re talking
about. I decided to usually draw
running horses with their legs splayed out front and back (the “flying”
position). This isn’t how horses really
run. I had good reference material
showing how horses run (pages 64 to 67 of Hamm’s book) but the splayed-out legs
were easier to draw and somehow looked “right”. Probably one of the reasons that they looked “right” was because
I was looking at a lot of 19 th century drawings and paintings to try to get a
feel for the time, and the artists who created those images usually depicted
horses running with splayed-out legs because no one knew how horses actually
ran until the publication of Eadweard Muybridge’s photographs of running horses
in the late 19th century.
I had a bit of a problem on page 160 where
I have Dumont’s horse running for four panels.
I wanted to show the horse’s
legs moving in some manner and was reluctant to retreat to realism. Flipping
through Hamm’s book, I noticed his pictures of an impala running on page
19—that looked “right” to me, so that’s what I based the running horse on page
160 on. I had the same problem in
panels 172:6 to 173:2. [#22 and 23] There I drew the horse
with splayed-out legs in 172:6 and 173:2 and with the legs in a realistic running position (for a horse—not an
impala) in panel 173:1. [#22 and 23]
I think that was the better solution to the problem than using the impala
reference.
You should have called me up when you
were drawing that scene with the Three Wise Fellows on horses—I’d have faxed
you the relevant pages from the Hamm book (based on what I was doing in Riel, you must have just assumed that I
didn’t have good reference).
You’re right. I should have.
On page 203 when the court clerk reads the charges against Riel to the
court and says, “Louis Riel, being moved and seduced by the instigation of the
devil…” I assume you got this from the
trial transcripts. Of course, given
that I see Riel as having been manipulated by YHWH, this rings pretty true to
me. I was wondering if this was a
standard preamble in Canadian jurisprudence of the time—or if someone got a
little ker-whomp they weren’t expecting.
My guess would be that it was a
standard preamble—at least for serious crimes like treason.
On page 212-213, when Riel objects to Francois-Xavier Lemieux—his own
lawyer’s—approach to questioning Nolin, it’s an interesting moment,
particularly when the judge asks Riel, “Are you defended by counsel?” This reminded me a great deal of that incredible
moment in From Hell when Dr. Gull is facing his own inquisitor
who asks, “Dr. Gull? Are you fit to continue?”
As I said in my dialogue with Alan, the question functions on a number
of different levels, from the banal to the exalted and—in the fictional case of
Dr. Gull and the real-world case of Riel, they each appear to be immobilized by
both the depths and the heights which the question represents for them. In Riel’s case, I suspect, at the highest
spiritual levels, this is a real “day of reckoning” for him, given that, under
Riel’s jurisdiction, Schultz had been condemned to death with only the barest
inkling of the proceedings against him—and wholly reliant on Riel himself for
that barest inkling. In a spiritual
sense, I suspect, deeper parts of Riel than he was aware of were recalled to
that earlier event by the question posed.
It seems to me that, in answering, he (or whatever spirit or Spirit is
inhabiting him) answers both as Riel and as Schultz—that, in making his own
case, he makes Schultz’s case as well and in defending his present self, he
indicts his earlier self. It is only
when the judge rephrases the question that Riel can even begin to answer:
Is your case in the hands of
counsel?
Partly—my
cause is partly in his hands.
(This, it seems to me, is Riel discussing his own lawyer and Riel
play-acting Schultz discussing Riel)
(The judge returns to the original question)
Are you defended by counsel or
not?
(It’s
a ball-breaker of a question, all right.
Was Schultz defended by counsel? There is an inherent disparity between
being defended by counsel and being effectively defended by counsel)
I want his services, but I want my cause to be defended to the best
which circumstances allow.
(This, it seems to me, is he/she/it evasiveness of a very high
order. Schultz had the best defense
“circumstances would allow” insofar as Riel was the only person fluent in
English in the community where Schultz was tried…or, rather, “tried”. Riel is, spiritually, attempting to defend
his earlier self as Schultz’s counsel while trying to open the question of
whether someone else might be appointed for him—the circumstances here, he is
saying, allow for more options as to who might represent him. Unfortunately, this can also be taken at
face value: the circumstances, as they stand, are that he is represented by
counsel to a far greater extent than Schultz was. He is not effectively
represented, but he is represented.
Therefore the circumstances allow that situation to continue. )
Then you must leave it in his
hands.
(It
would be hard to imagine a persuasive argument that could be made against this
in light of Riel’s treatment of Scott.
Riel—or the spirit who is informing him—attempts to tackle the question
obliquely:)
My counsel comes from Quebec—from a far province. (It’s a good beginning: it holds true both
for Riel and for Riel’s present lawyer).
He has to put questions to men with whom he is not acquainted on
circumstances which he does not know.
(Here Riel, or the spirit appears to be drawing a distinction between
his own situation at Scott’s trial—where he was questioning men he knew about
circumstances in which he himself had been a relevant figure—and his situation
at this trial where his lawyer does not know the men he is questioning or Nolin’s
or the Red River community’s entire “back-story”. It’s an interesting point, but quasi-legal at best. The law obviously can’t demand that a lawyer
has to know every witness intimately and to be a central figure in their lives
in order to be deemed to be representing a given client effectively. Riel
and/or the spirit continues:)
Although I am willing to give him all the information that I can, he
cannot follow the thread of all the questions that could be put to the
witnesses.
(Riel, it seems to me, stumbles badly here with the phrase “he cannot
follow the thread of all the questions”—Riel isn’t eloquently bilingual, but he
is able to “follow the thread of all the questions” which Scott had not
been. Scott not only couldn’t follow
the thread, he couldn’t understand a word of the proceedings against him).
[#24] He loses more than three quarters of the good
opportunities of making good answers.
(By this point, to me, Riel is now taking the equivalent of boxing’s
“standing eight count”. “Making good
answers” is a very skewed way of describing—particularly to a judge’s face—the
nature of trial testimony. The assumption, in any civilized judicial system, of
what counsel is attempting to achieve in the course of a trial is to bring out
all the truths relevant to the issue at hand—and the judge’s primary role
relative to counsel is, in the trial context, to exclude demonstrable
falsehoods and irrelevancies. To describe a counsel’s questions as inadequate
because they’re not “making good..” that is to say,
advantageous-to-the-defendent “…answers” is an affront to the court and
particularly to the judge. An impartial judge wouldn’t allow counsel to
“make good answers” through his questions—that would be “leading the witness”.
Trial questions, properly and fairly stated, should solicit only a “yes” or a
“no” reply.
It also—unfortunately for Riel and whatever spirit is informing his
assertions—introduces the larger indictment: at Scott’s trial how many “good
opportunities of ‘making good answers’” did Riel forego on Scott’s behalf given
Riel’s greater familiarity with the witnesses and events? [#24] Presumably
quite a few considering that Scott was condemned to be executed for an
unpremeditated crime of passion in what was, arguably, a wartime context.
Riel’s lawyer offers to resign: the only legal way that Riel can manage
his own defence. Riel gets evasive again:)
I was going to ask if it is in any way possible that I should put a
question to the witness and my good lawyer being there to give me advice
necessary to stop me when I go out of procedure.
That is a matter between you
and counsel, says the judge.
I
will not accept that arrangement, says Riel’s lawyer.
(Badda-bing, badda-boom.
Checkmate. Riel would not have
accepted the arrangement with Scott although it would have a gone a long way
towards making Scott’s trial at least a semblance of a just proceeding and not
a Stalinist show trial.)
Have I to keep silent? Riel asks.
Suppose this gentleman does not continue your defence—you might
have counsel assigned by the court, and then you would be bound.
(Just
so: as Riel was assigned as Scott’s counsel and as Scott was thereby bound by
the limits of the defence Riel was
prepared to mount on his behalf—which was basically no defence at all. There’s no way out. When Riel “defended” Scott inadequately and
allowed him to be executed under his, Riel’s, universally acknowledged
jurisdiction, Riel effectively boxed himself in at his own trial two years in
the future. It could only end one way:
the way Scott’s trial did).
It is not against his dignity. I
cannot see it in that light.
(Fascinating. In one sense,
Scott, speaking through Riel, gets the last word. Riel would not have shared Scott’s defence with Scott because it
would have lowered Riel—offended against his dignity—in Riel’s eyes to do
so. Riel is accusing his lawyer of
Riel’s own analogous “pridefulness”) (In another sense, it could also be seen
as Riel’s reaction to the spirit within him trying to explain to Riel that, by
implying that the judge would, without objection, allow counsel to “make good
answers” Riel had insulted the judge’s—and the
court’s—dignity and, therefore, has brought about his guilty verdict
upon himself: )
It is not against his dignity. I
cannot see it in that light.
It’s Riel’s last word in his own defence before he is sentenced to be
hanged.
That’s not Riel’s last word before being
hanged—not even in my version of the story.
You’re forgetting the speech he gives to the jury on pages 228 and
229. A speech that I drastically
shortened. The whole speech as recorded
in The Queen v. Louis Riel takes up
14 pages of type.
Yes, his extraordinary assertion that it was
the Crown which had committed the act
of treason against him. [#25] Humpty Dumpty-like, he
believes that words mean what he wants them to mean rather than having
indissoluble meaning on their own. I’ll
have to read the whole thing someday to see if he ever gets any more lucid than
that.
Anyway, that was a fascinating analysis
and a good reminder for me of why I enjoy reading your words (and listening to
you talk). You come at everything with
such idiosyncratic originality. It
probably doesn’t need to be pointed out that when shaping the scene (I can’t
claim to have written it), I was concerned about what was going on at a much
more obvious and mundane psychological level.
In your “Q & A” in the Books section of the National Post, you
said that your next project is going to be an autobiographical graphic novel
about your sex life. Speaking as a
taxpayer, I hope you won’t be writing off too many visits to your “girlfriends”
as research. How’s it coming along?
I haven’t begun work on it
yet. I’ve been too busy doing
promotional stuff for the Riel book and illustration work to get any “real”
work done.
Ha-ha—don’t worry—I haven’t been writing
off my whoring and don’t plan to.
Any
decision on what parameters you intend to set?
Does it start post-Sook Yin in your prostitution phase? Or are you going back to your girlfriend
periods as well?
The latter—that’s the plan at this point, but that plan might
change as I start to work on the script.
I
have to say that I admire the fact that you bounced back from your experience
with Underwater, saying that Louis
Riel would consist of approximately ten
comic books and, by God, ten comic books it was. Are you going to set similar parameters with the new work or
leave it open? Any working title? Or are you just superstitious enough not to
want to say anything about it until you get rolling?
I don’t know how long it’ll be,
though I doubt I’d want it to be longer than Louis Riel. No working
title yet. It probably won’t be
serialized—it’ll just appear as a “graphic novel” (I’m still not comfortable
with that term). And it might not
appear at all. If I start writing it
and decide it’s not working, I’ll set it aside and work on something else.
Well. It’s been an interesting
couple of months conducting this dialogue.
There is a psychiatric term, “referential thinking” which identifies as
a mental illness the subjective notion that completely unrelated events in the
world are somehow related to one’s self (Starson’s notion that he controls the
Pope would be an example of “referential thinking”). Since neither of us are faithful Congregationalists in the scientific materialist “Church” or
“church,” I’ll just note that it interested me that
i) a day or so after I wrote the bit about how I think jurisprudence
could only be improved by keeping all emotion-based constructs a country mile
away from it—that the only pertinent elements in Schultz’s “trial” should have
been a) what did Scott do? b) what are the relevant laws? and c) what is an
appropriate punishment?—that the Saudis finally let Canadian William Sampson go
after keeping him imprisoned, under torture and under threat of a death
sentence for well over two years
ii) that the October 2 Ontario
Provincial election took place pretty much at the mid-point of our discussion,
bringing the he/she/it Liberals to power in a precise he/she/it 3:1 ratio over
the ousted Conservatives (72 seats to 24)
iii) that even as I was
hectoring you about your feminist evasiveness and foot-dragging, it turns out
that something comparable was taking place between Canada’s two federal
conservative parties, the Canadian Alliance and the Progressive Conservatives,
wherein the leader of the former party, Stephen Harper (according to the 16
October issue of the National
Post) “…flew to Toronto and insisted on a meeting with Mr. McKay” (of the
latter party) (and) “…after public sniping, back-room griping and a Keystone
Kops-like chase that saw Mr. Harper hound Mr. McKay all the way to Toronto in a
bid to force a meeting between the two men” and after a summer of evasiveness
and foot-dragging on the part of the Progressive Conservatives’ new leader we
now have the altogether happy result that the two parties are on the verge of
reuniting (against all odds) in time for the next federal election with the (to
me, significant) loss of the adjective “Progressive” from the newly revivified
Conservative Party of Canada.
As with so many recent events in which I see the finger of God, a
largely inexplicable but welcome development here in our virtual one-party
Marxist state. And perhaps it
represents the first large step back from our country’s century-long
subjugation to (what is to me) the entirely misapprehended “martyrdom” of Louis
Riel—whose execution by the Canadian government was entirely appropriate given
his own actions, arrived at through his own free-will choices and enacted,
without any trace of mercy or compassion, against two individuals in situations
directly analogous to his own.
This time, you really do get the absolute last word, Chet.
I’m perfectly willing to believe that
there are connections of some sort between seemingly unrelated events at a
mystical or spiritual level, but I’m wondering if I’m a bit dim-witted right
now, because I’m not seeing the connections between our dialogue and the news
events you mention. Perhaps I would if
I followed the news more closely.
Thanks for taking the time to do this dialogue when you could ill spare that time. Now get back to drawing! I’ve been a Cerebus fan since 1980, and I’m eager to see how the story ends.