Life and the White Gown.

I woke up this morning with a vivid flashback hanging in my mind. I was back to my mid twenties, a time when I still believed the tram lines to be a proper environment for living. I had a few tastes of what might be called the seedier side of life during that period. I never went very deep, though; I never did anything illegal, never crawled the kerbs of 7^th Avenue, and avoided doing anything which would have had an identifiable impact on my future prospects.

The reason I never went deep is easy to understand now. It had nothing to do with morality or concern for my own welfare; it was simply a matter of sensing that beneath the sweet, seductive scents, darker depths lurked: depths that had a rank smell about them, depths that were dangerous and sometimes destructive, depths in which the innocent suffered more than the guilty. And yet it was even more than that. It was something I couldn’t define then, and still can’t: something to do with the essential difference between meaningless religion and morality on the one hand, and the promotion of meaningful standards and ethics on the other. Something about it made me uneasy.

A few years later I witnessed one aspect of those deeper depths, but only as an observer. The smell was rank indeed. I saw twenty pairs of eyes lit up with the very fire that brings violence and abuse against women, and I saw two women fanning the flames. It was a sobering and singularly unpleasant experience. I can’t say I wish I hadn’t seen it because it taught me a lesson I consider valuable, but it still hangs heavy sometimes. And my own involvement with the sweet and shallow side still has me feeling tainted and ashamed that my inner self ever allowed it. It makes me feel complicit in the wider process.

I watch people seeking that shallow side now, young women especially, lured by the sweet scent and protesting the properness of their motives. They don’t see what I came to see; they don’t see the wider implications of their actions, just as I didn’t. I can no longer allow them into my life. Now I need the one who comes wearing the white gown of purity – naturally and unselfconsciously. It’s a tough ask, isn’t it?

And I must point out that this post is not meant sanctimoniously; everybody has to find their own way in life. It isn’t a matter of definitive judgement, but a matter of maintaining my right to be discerning in my choice of associates. I have to do that based on where I’m at now, and this is where I’m at.

Maybe it will all change when I get properly old, when I finally give up the Grail quest. Maybe then I won’t give a toss about anything; maybe nothing will matter, and maybe that will be definitively right. Maybe I will even re-engage with ground level.