(This was written borrowing liberally from the short story:
“Rappaccini’s Daughter” by Nathaniel Hawthorne.)
Rogers writings, to do them justice, are not altogether destitute of fancy and originality; they might have won him greater reputation but far an inveterate love of allegory, which is apt to invest his plots and characters with the aspect of scenery and people in the clouds, and to steal away the human warmth out of his concepts. His work sometimes… and only sometimes… so far as can be discovered, have little or no reference either to time and space.
The faintest possible counterfeit of real life and endeavors by some less obvious peculiarity of subject of religion becomes abhorrent. Occasionally a breath of nature, a raindrop of pathos and tenderness, or a gleam of humor, will find its way into the midst of his fantastic imagery, and make us feel as if, after all, we are yet within the limits of our native Earth. We will add this to the very cursory notice that his insurance booklet is equally as disturbing.
Rogers the writer, may amuse a leisure hour as well as those of a brighter man. And his time can hardly look excessively like nonsense… He puts up far too much effort into distorting his true actions and intents, to have the latter occur! As an author, Rogers is: voluminous. He has the indefatigable prolixity as if his efforts were crowned a brilliant success that so justly attends the most profane in the business.
To the writer, I would like to show an example of true natural elements described in an almost pastoral fashion:
(Scene setting is an entryway in the cabin of Rogers house at 5:45 pm after a pre-Christmas musical concert at Saint Mary‘s Baptist Church, Ohio, USA. Exhibited over its entrance are the armorial bearings of a family long since extinct.) I, a young stranger, unstudied in the art of deception walked as a partaker in a new endowment: Love of a “soul mate”. Rogers seemed to have been cultivated with extreme care when I had first met him in the sanctuary as he was singing. But, my hopes were woefully shattered by the impossibility to trace the original design of this homme de monde quality from the chaos of the remaining fragments of him!
A little gurgling sound ascended to the window of my ear, it made me as if a fountain where a immortal spirit that sang its song unceasingly and without heeding the vicissitudes around it (a fountain of youth, for the slow people) was present in this man. While one century embodied the marble face of Rogers (quite the bubbling and babbling flooding waters of a brook have you--a Babylonian for certain), another scattered the perishable garniture of the soil upon which he statuesquely stood.
The perfusion of propinquity lured me in and hope crept serpent like along the ground that his feet battered. I intuitively knew that this task might be laborious in nature, but I was no common laborer and quite curious and teasing for a bit of adventure. My heart was teeming as I tarried about his domain for the first time. I was so excited about my newfound friend!
This person, a figure which emerged into view as a choral splendor showed himself to be sallow, emaciated and sickly looking now. Rogers was dressed in scholars garb. He was beyond the middle-term of life, with white hair, a thin white beard, and a face singularity marked by what appeared intelligent and cultivation, but which never, even in his most youthful days, could have expressed much warmth of heart. Pale and cold, his eyes seemed gray and dead; I wondered, why? My interest drove me to inquire further into who he was.
Nothing could exceed the intentness, every shrug element which contracted his path was examined. He seemed to have been looking into the innermost nature of things he encountered. Making observations in regard to their creative essence, making discoveries.
“Penny for your thoughts?” I questioned the pensive thinker.
“My thoughts are worth far more than that.”--he replied
“What’s that tell ya?”--he taunted my excessive interest had procured a response but what was he communicating I asked?
A savage beast, a deadly snake, an evil spirit, or was it the direct inhaling of an odorous nectar that had malignantly influenced me to trust this man? Contrariness at one moment had full license, his demeanor had changed to a terrible disagreeableness. We had approached intimacies entryway and he quickly changed his essence. I was walking amongst a vegetable-like, broccoli-head (or was it cauliflower) that would spontaneously wreak havoc on my life unprovoked.
Sadness and sanity befell me. What was I doing here? I was a young girl redundant with life, health and energy; all of which attributes were bound down and compressed, as it were and girdled tensely, in their luxuriance, by my virgin zone. I was inexperienced.
The first impressions that the stranger had made on me were beautiful, vivid and rich but when the mask was removed… what he had most sedulously avoided was the real him. Shattered as I am, I was surprised and a little ashamed to find how real and matter-of-fact an affair it proved to be. Now, my life was not bound by the limits of ordinary experience, for sure, but I was a rare flower not yet ready to bloom!
He and his daughter had been attributed their own qualities and a symbolic language to keep them in communion with their strange nature, a tainted seed seemed to have been present. His wonder-working fantasy had lured me to this place, and now I had to face a sedulous reality: I had to weasel my way out or go through with the disappointing act!
Inclined to take a most rational view of the whole matter, I stated that his intentions were not of noble spirit. He stated somewhat testily: “God forbid”. Sarcasm should have been a pretty good clue that things were not going to end well. He was a refractory element, that was not going to give up.Drink off your glass of Lachrymal, what a lachrymose tale this is, he quaffed at me as I had taken momentary lodging and entrusted him with my fragile life. Something had caused his brain to swim with strange fantasies… he had misinterpreted my intentions.
Ascending to his bed-chambers, within the shadow thrown by the depth of the wall, he walked with little risk of being discovered--a confidence of a sick predator that has his hand on and is about to enjoy his prey.
I had witnessed a fierce and subtle poison enter his system. It was not love, although he was a madness to me; nor horror, even though I had fancied his spirit to be imbued with the same baneful essence that seemed to pervade his physical frame; but the wild offspring of both love and horror that had each parent in it, and burned like one and shivered like the other. He had lust and I was to be the depository of his desires.
Rogers endeavored to assuage the fever of his spirit by a rapid walk through the hallway to the bathroom, then back again to me, he returned. Endeavoring to recover himself from his trip to the infernal regions of the levy, he stared forth wildly from his inner world into the outer one and spoke like a man in a dream. Taking merely a speculative, not a human, interest, the sagacious (but unfortunately seized by an ungodly portly personage) man exchanged a cold and distant salutation with me upon his return.
“Hey babe, how ya doin’?”--he factitiously asked.
He had thrust him self into an incalculable position of opening the avenue of conversation, this was my opportunity to give him the big blow…off that is! My intense interest was not delusory he was of remarkable character however, as is often the case with men of his stature, ugliness had wreathed its tendrils over the hidden entrance of his sensitive heart. When impossibilities have come to pass, and dreams have condensed their misty substance into tangible realities, we find ourselves calm, and even coldly self-possessed, amid circumstances which it would have been a delirium of joy or agony to anticipate! Fate delights to thwart us thus. Passion will choose his own time to rush upon the scene, and lingers sluggishly behind when an appropriate adjustment of events would seem to summon his appearance. My fate had been encountered--Amor Fati!
A species that the production was no longer of God’s making, but the monstrous offspring of man’s depraved fancy, glowing with an evil mockery of beauty stood before me. He was probably the result of a scientific experiment gone array, into disarray. A faintness which passed like a shadow then flitted away revealed to me(as unfortunately he was revealing to me his most private and prized of possessions) that my plans had gone terribly astray.
He seemed to gaze through my eyes into my transparent soul, and felt no more doubt or fear; because… I was in deep shit! Much to my confusion the man I had first been attracted to, had returned only haphazardly, to trick my senses and connect again, only this time on a physical level. A tinge of passion that had colored my manner vanished. I became happy again, I appeared to derive a pure delight from my communion of tongues with the old man. Suddenly lip-locked, I felt not unlike what a maiden of a lonely island might have felt conversing with a voyager from the civilized world. I was confused but not alone--once again I tried to retreat from his hyper masculine advances.
Oh how stubbornly does love--or even the cunning semblance of love which flourishes in the imagination, but strikes no depth of root into heart--how stubbornly does it hold its faith until the moment comes when it is doomed to vanish into thin mist! My fate was with the destroyer that day. My once sincere companion had become the most deadliest poison in existence.
Poison was his touch, his element of life. With the cologne of his breath he blasted the air--with the fowl smell that I had become his conversation piece, yet another trophy to sit collecting dust on his mantle. His love would have been poison for real--his embrace death-choking out the very essence of my being. I was a parlor stunt, a game. My sober imagination does not often play such tricks but the bare idea of Love, was so entrancing, it was such a marvelous possibility of a tale that I fell with much hesitancy.
Poison was his touch, his element of life. With the cologne of his breath he blasted the air--with the fowl smell that I had become his conversation piece, yet another trophy to sit collecting dust on his mantle. His love would have been poison for real--his embrace death-choking out the very essence of my being. I was a parlor stunt, a game. My sober imagination does not often play such tricks but the bare idea of Love, was so entrancing, it was such a marvelous possibility of a tale that I fell with much hesitancy.
The idea of a pale, white night saving me was so intoxicating. Blasphemous, I may even say--that is offered by his character anything more than a problematic “may”, “may I please be excused”--I quietly asked.
Not by a light or an injurious word, could I have predicted or estimated the wrong that he would do to me! He was counterintuitive and how could I have possibly communicated the atrocity that was to occur. Like a lemon twisting in my ear, he denied me my premature release. There was no hesitation, I was to perish in his grasp.
Not by a light or an injurious word, could I have predicted or estimated the wrong that he would do to me! He was counterintuitive and how could I have possibly communicated the atrocity that was to occur. Like a lemon twisting in my ear, he denied me my premature release. There was no hesitation, I was to perish in his grasp.
A certain shallowness and insecurity of character overwhelmed him; he was not going to let me go. My vivacity and superabundant life was about to depart. A poison had not yet insinuated itself into my system. I set forth a breath, deeper, longer and imbued with the venomous feeling out of my heart; I knew not whether I was wicked or only desperate. Why had I come here, had I been deceived or lured by the temptress’ called the Fates?
He had been vigorous and active in church, but this aspect of sullenness was not utterly lost. I was crossing and re-crossing the artful system of interwoven lines--I shuddered my naked body hanging from the web of the predator. He intended to consume my right to choice. In the antique cornice of his cabin, I vibrated with a tremor originating in my own body.
He was a spider who had ceased my toilsome struggle, the small artisan watched with a curious eye… he emitted with a deep long breath. I was wrong and thus submitted the tragic loss of me. In the comfort of his chambers, the handmaiden bedded me down. I seized without help--he had poisoned my mind and body with the stress of his force, his anger emitted into my soul. Recovering from a stupor, desperately I tarried across the long hour of mid-day becoming night. Barely lingering, barely holding on to a sentiment of sentient life I was accursed, accursed.
The earthly illusion had slain my passionate out gust. He gushed emotion drastically from the tool of my demise. I had lost my foundation of youthful health, the benign power of his pale-now blue-eyes enveloped me. A transparency came into view, I was no longer opaque to his real eyes vision. I was now fully visible in all avenues of my existence… I could no longer hide. I could desire nothing but to regain my freedom. He was a criminal, a thief, yet I was the prisoner.
Recollections of the delicate and benign powers of his virgin, feminine, and gentle nature were gone. He had utterly lost his magic of deception. I couldn’t have estimated what was to come to pass, and he wouldn’t have told me. I was a fool to entrust a fictitious stone-faced man in the realm of his hidden world. I intruded upon his loneliness, and he upon my most sacred domain.
He had assured me of the positive intentions he possessed… he lied. As I lay sad and silent in the midst of an evil clutch that gathered over me, I immediately felt an ugly mystery unwind. Unfurled Rogers rage quelled into a sullen aspect of insensibility, his appetite for copulating unsealed at its depths (or more so mine). He was digging in a gulf of blackness between us which neither him nor I could pass.
We would walk on the sands of his beach no more. The seashore was a fearful place for me now. What had befallen me? The force of his words had not found its way into my mind, I was merely thunderstruck. My powers of inspection had come from God, or a chance sperm, but I had not earned the right of my gift! I hadn’t walked the walk, but had talked the talk of friendship to the opportunistic suitor.
The deadly creature had filled my veins with poison. I had joined “lips” with him in a passionate kiss. His breath was as happily fatal to me, in unutterable hatred the worlds wonder of hideous monstrosity killed me softly with words, smiling eyes, and then his own forceful nature. In a low moan of my heart, I was broken.
“No…please…don’t…Stop.”--I begged, then demanded.
“No,…please…don’t stop!”--he replied in a derogatory responsiveness to my plea.
He spurned me, tread upon me, killed me… by “dying” himself! In the intimate but peculiar relationship, what is death after such actions and words as his?
“Are you done? Can I leave, now?”--I asked.
I had accused him of caring, who was none the less solitary by the densest throng of human life. Ought not then, the desert of humanity around us press this insulated pair closer together? If we should be cruel to one another, who was there to be kind to us?
I was not redeemed, but I could always dream of an earthly union and earthly happiness as possible, after such deep love had been so bitterly wronged by his behavior.
I’m dubious and across the borders of time I leapt, his simple impulse to harm had fount a paradise and composed the ingredients of the opposite of his intentions. The triumphant expression of immortality was mine.
I’m dubious and across the borders of time I leapt, his simple impulse to harm had fount a paradise and composed the ingredients of the opposite of his intentions. The triumphant expression of immortality was mine.
No longer desperate now at peace, I was the lucky one in the relationship, I was able to leave and he was to remain with himself for the rest of his life! Since he was still to be encased in the reality of him, I was fortunate enough to not be, and tried to retreat with a small degree of hope!
The calamity had distilled my blessed heart, and yet I was purified of evil.
“Shall we not quaff together, again?”--he inquired.
Feebly he inflicted doom upon me, a child. The poison had been life, so powerful an antidote was death and thus the poor victim of man’s ingenuity and of thwarted nature, and of the fatality that attends all such efforts of perverted wisdom, perished there at the foot of the bed. A doorway to Rogers heart was now opened and could not be closed again!
“You haven’t given me an answer?”--he stated apparently surprised at my lack of interest in his crafty handy work.
“You haven’t asked the right question.”--was my response.
I was to die and have no more injury upon me, he was to walk as the living-dead left to the vicissitudes of life and the consequences of his actions. I was at peace in non-consciousness, and he was unaware that his torment was about to begin. Semper idem--always remember, when you Carpe Diem--seize the day-- you will pay the toll of the ferryman, a handsome price, tomorrow.
Walk cautiously, ‘cause you’ll never walk alone. I went gently into the night. He rocked me without a choice beyond an initial spontaneous engagement of conversation. An entryway into the passages of the inner regions of my heart became apparent. He was stuck remembering that night when anger struck and I fell to the furry of his frustrations. I was victimized but he will suffer far longer than me for his behaviors. I walked into his life and his bed chambers but he can’t walk out… he’s stuck!
...and so the last words were spoken and the message that was communicated was far clearer and insidiously more human-nature bound then his writing had been before!
“What’s that tell you?”-- echoed the world of forgotten promises! In fallen dreams of fairy tales, the fountain of youth sprung no more in the stone-faced grimace of a man that I had had unrealistic expectations for… I was a girl who became a woman in a split second. Splintered was the immature man who made me become aware of my change to the state of adulthood. The stage of development had occurred instantaneously by a foolish old boy that wouldn’t grow up and would feign to have you believe differently!
“I’m dating a vegetable, a cauliflower…he’s a blooming idiot.”xxx
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