^ The Descent

We watched this movie last night, a flick about severalwomen who go cave exploring together. It’s disturbing in the extreme, for avariety of reasons, but the one that struck me the most was the concept of whatconstitutes madness. Without giving away the story line, I can say this: when aperson cannot determine what is reality and what is not, that is madness. Notmental illness. Not a breakdown. Fullblown madness.

It disturbs me because I sometimes think I dally with whatis and is not real. I have such a creative imagination, and I see so well through reality and right into possibility that I frequently feel I’mdancing with what I WISH I saw and not what I really DO see.

Another disturbing provocation from “The Descent” –retribution, and under what conditions retribution is a moral reaction tobetrayal. In my mind, it’s a little bit an eye for an eye, on the surfaceanyway. You take my job? I am entitled to take yours. But that seems less thanevolutionary, less than progressive. If I want to be better than my nature,then that biblical admonition to turn the other cheek (which is so rarelypracticed as to be practically not truly existent) is the right course ofaction. But if someone tries to kill me? I feel I’m capable of killing inresponse.

Despite my docile exterior, I am fully in touch with mydarkness within. I know what kind of depravity I’m capable of, and it scaresme. I wonder if it would scare those humans out there who think they couldnever be a certain way, when in fact they certainly could and would. How manywould fall into psychosis because they never embraced the animal within, atleast metaphorically?

I know what I’m capable of. And I prefer to keep thatleashed beast on a short chain, locked away in my psyche. She might serve apurpose one day. But I hope to never see it.