into the slaughterhouse

“There’s a crack in everything” –Leonard Cohen

I’m sitting on the patio of a café on Jacques Cartier Square in the old section of Montreal on a Wednesday morning. But what I call morning is afternoon to most other people. The city is picturesque and the women are beautiful with long hair and fantastic breasts in the hot summer streets. The varying architectural styles spanning over two hundred years blend together seamlessly and there’s no discord in sight. The sidewalks are clean and the coffee is fantastic. Bookstores sell works in French and English, and people are easy to talk to. It’s a most civilized place; so civilized in fact, it’s not to be believed. And rightly so.
I know that this perfectly executed cappuccino, the fine cigarettes, the desirable young waitress, the beautiful buildings on this square, and all the other pleasantries surrounding me are a soothing denial of basic realities. Our distractions and desires pull us through another day in the middle of an existential tragedy. Everything we see is a curtain pulled across our eyes to avert our gaze from the one ultimate fact. The beautiful life is a lie, a massive act of denial both on the personal and mass-cultural scale. Nonetheless it’s a n ecessary lie, for without it we’d be scratching our brains out through our eye sockets in a fit of terror. We just wouldn’t be able to come to terms with the truth of the situation.
If there’s a rule in this world it’s that man is a beast, just another animal. Civilized living is a fragile charade. We must kill and/or be killed, suffer never-ending rejection and disappointment, starve, and turn on a self-destructive axis of lies that never leads anywhere.
And yet, in spite of these prevailing conditions we find ways of exempting ourselves from the facts of the situation –at least temporarily. These magic moments of happiness, these feeling of security, cast a spell and keep us in the game. They keep us striving in a situation that’s ultimately hopeless.
And yet, be it false or not, we cannot keep living without hope. Desire is the engine of life. If we should truly awaken from it, then we would simply die.
When people indulge in beauty, desire, or even hope, I can’t help imagining two pigs fucking on the blood-slick floor of a slaughterhouse, totally oblivious to what’s in store for them.
This world, this life, is a slaughterhouse. It’s a butcher shop of hearts serving some master we do not know or understand.
Everyone ought to realize this. We’ve all seen the cemetery, the faded photographs of memory, and the mountains of history we sit lightly upon. It’s a history of crime and disaster, a long-term perpetual massacre where everyone is guilty. Gas masks and monuments riddled with bullet holes are evidence of this. Men were enjoying good wine and classical music while shoveling Jews into an oven by the truckload. The German’s turn in the fire came soon thereafter. Fucking and murder are the norm for our species. If you want to see men release their most vicious instincts, just observe what happens when people are hungry or afraid. The whole daydream of civilized Christian behavior is completely forgotten.
On a perfect afternoon in Montreal it’s easy to forget how these people would respond if they were in danger or if there weren’t enough food for everyone. It’s easy enough to forget that you are on a one-way trip into some sort of terrible personal decline. The pleasantries are just a thin film covering over a black pit of fearful instincts and terrible realities. Even before we had the means to destroy one another, there were plenty of adversaries in the natural world. There’s always been disease and starvation and death. Even in the most advanced society, everyone is still going to die. How can anyone come to terms with this? They can’t and never will.
We all know this, but no one seems to feel the reality of it. There are merely words, rather than a certainty known deep in the heart. If the knowledge did penetrate to that level there would be no way to stifle a scream. These pages are a scream.
The terror of the situation ordinarily remains a secret in plain view. We turn our eyes away. That’s the only way to go on eating and fucking in the midst of a never-ending holocaust, to laugh and continue living on top of a mountain of corpses.
Modern life in the midst of cities and civilization is a fascinating truce between opposite realities. Fear and hope live side by side, trying their best to ignore one another. Systems of safety and rules give the impression of security, while underneath the surface we remain wolves and maggots. The slightest disruption of our system causes man to revert to beast. Why else would a funeral or a mugging seem so terrible? It’s a normal fact of life in nature, but in a civilized world it’s a shocking contradiction to everything we’re striving for. All the aims of our artificial rational world are instantly and totally refuted by something as simple and as common as a funeral. We deal with its incomprehensibility for a moment; then forget it as quickly as possible. But you can’t avert your gaze forever. The coffin is real. So is the freak, the rapist, the beggar, the deathbed and everything else our civilization is attempting to hide or defeat.
If by some terrible magic, we all suddenly came to and understood what’s really happening to us, what kind of fodder we are for mechanisms beyond our understanding, the earth would convulse in flames. Or maybe nothing would happen at all. Maybe the sun and the moon and stars wouldn’t give a fuck about it. And that’s fine too. In Montreal, I can defer payment on life for another day. I light another cigarette and call for my waitress.

July 9, 2008 / Montreal