Read Truman Capote's In Cold Blood. Could hardly put it down. I've got a sketch going that I'm enjoying working on but even that wasn't attractive enough to draw me away from the book. Even though, having seen the movie (which was excellent) I knew what happened, it drew me in.
I Googled photos (mug shots) of Perry Smith and Dick Hickock. Unremarkable looking men - but aren't the worst criminals always unremarkable looking? While looking I stumbled across a page where photos taken by serial killers of their victims were posted. I shouldn't have looked. Worse, I shouldn't have read. When telling Richard about it I didn't tell him the details. I wish I hadn't let those facts into my brain as I've had more trouble shedding them then the 5kgs gained since I quit smoking. Why infect someone else with something so awful?
But that's what Truman Capote managed to do, make the most inhuman behaviour by the most inhumane of men somehow humane. They are not lost to humanity. Or perhaps, despite what they did, because I can still feel compassion for them, I see their humanity even if they couldn't. They lived half lives. They lived utterly on the surface. They reminded me of my Grandmother, buoyant as a cork, who kicked and thrashed to try and dive below the surface of the sea yet never managed to do so. These men skimmed the shiny surface of things. They knew there was more to life, more to them but it was, for some reason, inaccessible. And so, with no empathy and no intimacy or real feeling for themselves, they were congenitally incapable of extending feelings of empathy or intimacy and especially mercy, to anyone else.
But like Capote, I find the real enigma was Perry. He killed all four Clutters yet put a mattress box down to protect Mr. Clutter from the cold basement floor and prevented Dick from raping Nancy, was even willing to fight him to protect her. Dick seemed more a sociopath, even a bit of a savant with his almost total recall of places and events. Intelligent like a computer is intelligent but with no more feeling than a laptop. Unless it had to do with his own comfort.
Wonder if Perry had had a normal loving family life how he would've turned out. Know it is unfair to those people who had a similar upbringing yet managed to keep their sense of right and wrong and make a place for themselves in the world, yet Perry, intelligent, sensitive, dreamy, was so scarred by the abuse he received as a helpless child, he could only see through a glass darkly the bright sunshiny world forever closed to him by his emotional blindness. Like a fox caught in a trap he chewed off his own leg in order that he feel something.
So, recalling the truly horrendous paragraph I read about one of the photo taking serial killers (which I won't repeat here) and wondering why? why? WHY? and how could anyone torture someone like that? and thinking they were inhuman and worse than animals (and why, BTW, do we always give animals a bad rap? They kill to eat and although a praying mantis may eat its prey alive starting at the head and a lion toy with a gazelle fawn before killing it, they have nothing on the creativity and calculated cruelty of homo sapiens), yet even this half a person, this deformed and twisted human being is still a part of creation and has that spark of something, despite it being almost impossible to see, which gives him humanity. If he is killed by the State, what does that prove? It is only, as Dick rightly understood, a revenge killing. Perhaps a fear killing too for a community would feel safer knowing that murderers such as Smith or Hickock were dead.
Is there any redemption, any cure, for someone like that? I'll call him the Draino Killer (and that gives an indication of what this man inflicted on another). I doubt it. Society must be protected from someone like him but society as a whole is not improved by the taking of life.
While Hickock swung from the gallows the doctor who had to wait nearly twenty minutes to pronounce him dead because his heart kept beating, repeatedly stepped outside to cry.
I've written myself into a corner. I don't know what the answer is. We've just had a young British soldier hacked to death in broad daylight by two Islamic extremists who encouraged passersby to take photos while they waited the twenty minutes it took for armed police to come and shoot them. They wanted to start a religious war and the young hot heads are only too happy to make it come true.
Are we raising a generation of Draino Killers and Hickocks and Smiths? Sadly I suspect we are as, for more Darkness there must be more Light, we are raising a generation of animal activists and peacemakers, and volunteers, and holy men and women. It's an enigma.
Life coasts along and all is well and then something happens to shake things up. It's always the way. Loretta passed away so the inheritance saga is almost complete after completing forms and sending things off. Natalia got sick and wound up on a drip at Laidley Vets and yesterday while bending down with secateurs to cut some seed heavy weeds for the galahs my back went - not spine, muscle. So now, while waiting for it to heal, I wonder why.
There is, at least in my opinion, always a reason for things. I have been brought to a figurative standstill. Why? And while I pondered that question I played 3 games of Mah Jong. THAT is not the answer. What did I read this morning?
Death twitches my ear; 'Live,' he says... 'I'm coming.' -- Virgil
Live. Seems so simple but it's incredibly complicated. Or at least I make it so. I DO know when it is least complicated is when I am simply in the moment. My latest mantra? Everything is okay, right here and right now. I use it when I'm trotting on the hamster wheel of worry.
At least Natalia is better. She's sitting on the wood stool in the sun with her large chartreuse eyes slitted against the glare. Despite a diet completely composed of Hills C/D she was found to have crystals, blood and leucocytes in her urine. She's lost weight and is not quite back to her old self but is improving. Especially glad to see her appetite begin to return. That was the first clue something was wrong. That and the cessation of her morning run. Throughout it all - and it was quite an ordeal; xrays, having blood drawn, being put on a drip and kept in a small cage in a windowless room with two clinic cats checking you out and a chocolate labrador (that I saw, there were probably other dogs as well). Throughout it all she kept her purr.
One of the nice things which happened is the resolving of the accounts between Tam and I. All these years Tam hired and paid for the attorney which accompanied her to emotionally fraught meetings with Loretta, her sons and their lawyers. (Tam said she used to dream about Loretta, her greed and machinations wore Tam down). Now that it was finished I asked what my share of the fees were so that I could reimburse her. Rather than have me send her money she asked if I would donate it to a cat rescue. I immediately thought of the Cat Protection Society of NSW where I adopted two cats so many years ago.
Sending them a bank cheque for $6000 was one of the nicest things I've done. Felt wonderful. Of course it was Tam's doing. I wouldn't have sent them that much money without her prompting. Nevertheless the sense of satisfaction was genuine. Sent Tam copies of their letters to me. Pays for lots and lots of desexing.
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