An unfortunate modern-day allegory of Steve Kowalski
‘The same blood spatters the fleeting strange’, Steve Kowalski writes.
He won’t yet give up the worthless adolescence of his poetizing, like some child in denial.
Kowalski… KOWALSKI!!!
Ah, forget it.
KOWALSKI!!! Get a hold of yourself. Commix Girl didn’t fight your fight, she merely avenged you. That’s not nearly as bad as it may seem. In fact, I think it’s great. She didn’t proceed to fearlessly physically demolish The Ferret while you cringed and cowered behind her. She beat him to literal pulp AFTERWARD, swooping down on him much the way he’d swooped down on you.
And despite what you may think, we DO allow that you may have NOT been able to engage your natural and God-given defenses because you had indeed been taken by surprise – waylaid. This kind of thing does happen. The Ferret himself is a massive coward (not that we’re saying you’re one, no), and so would resort to ONLY this kind of tactic.
And of those of us who bore witness to the episode, some would indeed give you that much, would indeed argue that the way he swooped down on you from his barstool, using his little crippled umbrella wings for added propulsion, catching you completely unawares as you were deeply immersed in reading your literature and writing your poetry over at the corner table inside The Whiskey Basement while already somewhat inebriated on Johnnie Walker Red, left you no real out of the situation, and the outcome of the ordeal you underwent at The Ferret’s claws would have been different, if at all, BUT BY VERY LITTLE, even if you had actually tried to defend yourself.
But whatever the case, The Ferret remains all yours to fight. Therefore, leave Commix Girl out of it, writing your silly poetry as a way to make her look bad, or whatever twisted satisfaction you’re gaining sitting there night after night in your dilapidated hovel writing it.
I mean, it’s no substitute for going out there and proving you’re a man. That is what you are, isn’t it? One has to become what one is in life, what one is meant to be – why is it so hard for you to drop the pen and pick up the sword? You can always have your poetry, Kowalski, now, or later, but there is a time to fight, and that time is now, and that’s what you have to do – fight. Writing poetry is not that fight. It is cowardice. It is surrender.
But Kowalski doesn’t listen to what is obviously reason. He stubbornly continues on.
‘The same blood spatters the fleeting strange,’ he ponders.
‘Well, does that mean that it spatters those who are permanent, long-term, in for the long haul and the long fight, and not fleeting; or perhaps I meant fleeing? Is that what I’m proposing the reader deduce from the line: that the blood spatters those who stay put, defend their turf, stand their ground, but it also spatters those who are brief, short-lived and transitory, here today, gone tomorrow?
‘Of course the blood spatters those who stand their ground, both because they are in the midst of the action and the battle, and because it is also their own blood.
‘What the line is therefore suggesting is that the blood spatters the brave and the cowards alike, but this also suggests that the cowards are spattered with the blood of the brave because the brave are spilling their blood, in part, so that the cowards can live. The cowards – they are the fleeting strange.
‘But what this also suggests is that it’ll spatter you anyway, regardless of your bravery or cowardice, so you might as well dig in your heels and fight.
‘Is that it? Is that what I’m trying to say? Because you’ll die anyway, whether you fight or not, so you might as well fight.
‘No, that’s not good enough. You should fight, you have to fight. Then why don’t you fight?
‘If you don’t fight, you’ll die a coward. But if you fight, even if you lose, you’ll have been redeemed. Your name will not go down in ignominy. Your life will be justified in having made the effort.
‘That’s all that life wants from you, is to make the effort. That’s what you were made for – movement, resistance, exertion.
‘And if you make the effort, then that’s the start of a possible victory, so why not try? Why not swing that fist out? You might just win at that, you just might.
‘You have to fight for the things you want, they won’t just be given to you. You won’t just walk down some road free passage picking them up left and right, throwing them into a sack or a basket.
‘You have to fight for your life, and you have to fight for your honor and your dignity in it.
‘And you have to fight for your love, and the things that you love, and for whom you love, and for who loves you, and even for things like compassion, which may prove to be the cruelest thing of all to fight for, and kill you.
‘That’s what life is – a fight. Not a poem, but a fight. And really, it is a fight to the very end, it is a fight to the death itself. So fight, damn you, fight!’
But now Kowalski begins to crack up. He begins a downward mental spiral of harrowing degree and decline, and it is sudden. Kowalski is demented.
He is thinking and thinking of Commix Girl. He’s becoming feverish. He has a poetic rape fantasy, and he will now write it, and he will thrust Commix Girl into the midst of his deranged humiliation – of her, in a poem in which HE will, in an extremely perverse fashion, come out the self-proclaimed hero, commenting back on his heinous act with the cucumber coolness of a detached critic.
What’s worse, in the poem Kowalski is about to write, Commix Girl will not only have been defiled, but becomes pregnant as a result and in love with Kowalski!
Kowalski: like one of those guys you meet only in places like films and comics (except this is not films or comics, but real life; this is Kyiv Commix TM and a C with a circle around it), who perceives himself as being above the law, believes the law doesn’t apply to him, sees the commission of a vile crime the mark of a superior being, a genius of some sort, commenting coldly and distantly on the consequences of his actions only as they pertain to himself and the fulfillment of some twisted and depraved vision that he is now somehow a superhuman being.
Oh, the tragedy of it all, the utter loss of a good man’s humanity! But worse than this – his soul, Dear God, his soul!
But why, Kowalski, why? What will this do for you? What will it give you? You’re sick, son, sick. Seek help. Do not write this poem… do not write –
“Shut up!” Kowalski screams, clasping his palms over his ears, shutting his eyes tight, clenching his teeth. “I have the freedom to write any damn thing I want!”
And he begins to write.
Filed by Saint Stephan, July 6, 2016