Phobokenosis
on stupour, fear and fearlessness, and collective rituals
There were two of them: fear and fearlessness, vastly different yet strikingly similar. Together they, in tandem, steered minds, wit and beyonwit.
There was fear, more on that later, and there was fearlessness, a sensation of peculiar stock, born not as a feeling opposite to fear, not its antonym or archnemesis, conceived in a passion spree from courage or recklessness, but rather a homunculus of fear itself, grown from the gradual realisation that being afraid is simply meaningless, for it will blow up anyway, will blaze with hellfire, suck you into the void, drain your life force, and then (someday) simply end, as if it never was, and therefore why be afraid, waste energy on fear, curl up into a foetus, if only not to be touched, not to be kicked, not to be spat upon, not to be spunked on, not to be yelled at with something like “what a creature you are”. Sometimes it’s not scary, not because we’re so fearless, but because the finitude of horror is unfathomable, its chthonic image so inflated that we don’t even know how to react. Baring teeth, shining with laser-eyes, spraying spittle and other fluids, waving a tail or a bunch thereof. Monster, devil, wonder-beast, creature. Nightmare, shudder, tremor. The bullet in the chamber isn’t “if”, the bullet in the chamber is “when”. Stupefaction, numbness, stupor, bewilderment.
Read this post for free on nova-nevedoma.com · Download PDF
