The Greatest Works of Aleister Crowley. Aleister Crowley
to be making his jokes to himself.
Most of the time, I don't get what he means. He talks to himself a great deal, for another thing. I get a feeling of absolute repulsion.
I don't know why it is. The least thing irritates me absurdly. I think it's because every incident, even the things that are pleasant, distracts my mind from the one thing that matters-how to get a supply and go down to Kent and lay off for a bit and have a really good time like we used to last month. I am sure love would come back if we did, and love's the only thing that counts in this world or the next.
I feel that it's only round the comer; but a miss is as good as a mile. It makes it somehow worse to be so near and yet so far....
A very funny thing has just struck me. There's something in one's mind that prevents one from thinking of the thing one wants to.
It was perfectly silly of us to be hunting round London for dope and getting mixed up with a rotten crowd like we did in Naples. It never struck us till to-night that all we had to do was to go round to King Lamus. He would give us all we needed at the proper price.
Funny, too, it was Cockie that thought of that. I know he hates the man, though he never said so except in an outburst which I knew didn't mean anything....
We went to the studio in a taxi. Curse the luck, he was out ! There was a girl there, a tall, thin woman with a white face like a wedge. We gave several hints; but she didn't rise, and wretched as we were, we didn't want to spoil the market by telling her outright.
Lamus would be there in the morning, she said.
We said we'd be there at eleven o'clock.
We drove back. We had a rotten night economising. We didn't dare tell each other what we really feared: that somehow he might let us down....
I can't sleep. Cockie is lying awake with his eyes wide open, staring at the ceiling. He doesn't stir a muscle. It maddens me that he takes no interest in me. But after all, I take no interest in him. I am as restless as the wandering Jew. At the same time, I can't settle down to anything. I keep on scribbling this stuff in my diary. It relieves me somehow to write what I feel.
What is so utterly damnable is that I understand what I am doing. This complaining rambling rubbish is the substitute which has taken the place of love.
What have I done to forfeit love ? I feel as if I had died and got forgotten in some beastly place where there was nothing but hunger and thirst. Nothing means anything any more except dope, and dope itself doesn't really mean anything vital.
August 20
I am so tired, so tired, so tired I...
My premonition was right about Lamus. There was a very unpleasant scene. We were both frightfully wretched when we got there. (I can't get my hands and feet warm, and there's something wrong with my writing).
Peter Pan thought it best to remind him in a jocular way about his remark that we were to come when we needed him, and then introduced the subject of what we needed.
But he took the words brutally out of our mouths.
" You needn't tell me what you need," he said. " The lack is only too obvious."
He said it in a non-conunittal way so that we couldn't take offence; but we knew instinctively he meant brains.
However, Peter stuck to his guns, like the game little devil he is. That's why I love him.
" Oh, yes, heroin," said Lamus; " cocaine. We regret exceedingly to be out of it for the moment."
The brute seemed unconscious of our distress. He gave an imitation of an apologetic shop-walker.
"But let me show you our latest lines on morphine."
Cockie and I looked at each other wanly. Morphine would no doubt be better than nothing. And then, if you please, the beast pulled a review with a blue cover out of a revolving bookcase and read aloud a long poem. His intonation was so dramatic, he gave so vivid a picture that we sat spell-bound. It seemed as if he had long pincers twisted in our entrails, and were wrenching at them. He gave me the verses when he had finished.
"You ought to paste these," he said, "in your Magical Diary."
So I have. I hardly know why. There's a sort of pleasure in torturing oneself. Is that it ?
Thirst !
Not the thirst of the throat
Though that be the wildest and worst Of physical pangs-that smote
Alone to the heart of Christ,
Wringing the one wild cry
"I thirst ! " from His agony,
While the soldiers drank and diced: Not the thirst benign
That calls the worker to wine;
Not the bodily thirst
(Though that be frenzy accurst)
When the mouth is full of sand,
And the eyes are gummed up, and the ears Trick the soul till it hears
Water, water at hand,
When a man will dig his nails
In his breast, and drink the blood
Already that clots and stales
Ere his tongue can tip its flood,
When the sun is a living devil
Vomiting vats of evil,
And the moon and the night but mock The wretch on his barren rock,
And the dome of heaven high-arched Like his mouth is and and parched,
And the caves of his heart high-spanned Are choked with alkali sand !
Not this ! but a thirst uncharted Body and soul alike
Traitors turned black-hearted, Seeking a space to strike
In a victim already attuned To one vast chord of wound Every separate bone
Cold, an incarnate groan
Distilled from the icy sperm Of Hell's implacable worm;
Every drop of the river
Of blood aflame and a-quiver With poison secret and sourWith a sudden twitch at the last Like certain jagged daggers. (With bloodshot eyes dull-glassed The screaming Malay staggers Through his village aghast). So blood wrenches its pain
Sardonic through heart and brain. Every separate nerve
Awake and alert, on a curve Whose asymptote's name is never In a hyperbolic " for ever ! " A bitten and burning snake
Striking its venom within it, As if it might serve to slake The pain for the tithe of a minute.
Awake, for ever awake !
Awake as one never is
While sleep is a possible end,
Awake in the void, the abyss
Whose thirst is an echo of this That martyrs, world without end, (World without end, Amen!) The man that falters and yields For the proverb's month and an hour To the lure of the snow-starred fields Where the opium poppy's aflower.
Only the prick of a needle Charged from a wizard well ! Is this sufficient to wheedle A soul from heaven to hell ? Was man's spirit weaned From fear of its ghosts and gods To fawn at the feet of a fiend ? Is it such terrible odds,-
The heir of ages of wonder, The crown of earth for an hour, The master of tide and thunder Against the juice of a flower ? Ay I in the roar and the rattle Of all the armies of sin,
This is the only battle He never was known to win.
Slave to the thirst-not thirst
As here it is weakly written, Not thirst in the brain black-bitten, In the soul more sorely smitten ! One dare not think of the worst ! Beyond the raging and raving Hell of the physical craving
Lies, in the brain benumbed,