Traveling Demons

I suppose one way to tackle the Divs is to reminisce about them through the decades of one’s life: you see them as a child, great big lumps of flesh with polka dots being bashed about by some muscle bound champ like Rostam and you feel mildly sorry for them as they look as innocuous as fat uncles in fancy dress. At the same time, you have notions of fear and dark places where sinister figures lurk but you do not put two and two together. Then you grow up and wander around the world and see things as they are and fall in love and out of love and in love again until exhausted disillusioned drained, you collapse on a therapist’s couch or talk to some priest through a hole in a dark church and face the divs again but they are no longer Divs but Demons, shapeless nebulous nasty things, and you think of them and fear them the same way as you did the sinister figures that you felt were lurking about at times when you were a child. But one day, on the run from the priest and the therapist, you say to yourself “suppose my demons too have a liking for polka dots and cross-dressing?” and “suppose they are uninvited guests to a country house week-end? Or at worst like the Old Man of the Sea with rubbery legs and a fondness for a piggy-back?” what next? And you begin to paint and draw, and one by one they appear on the cat-walk in all their finery. Next time you walk in the park, you take one with you.

I suppose one way to tackle the Divs is to reminisce about them through the decades of one’s life: you see them as a child, great big lumps of flesh with polka dots being bashed about by some muscle bound champ like Rostam and you feel mildly sorry for them as they look as innocuous as fat uncles in fancy dress. At the same time, you have notions of fear and dark places where sinister figures lurk but you do not put two and two together. Then you grow up and wander around the world and see things as they are and fall in love and out of love and in love again until exhausted disillusioned drained, you collapse on a therapist’s couch or talk to some priest through a hole in a dark church and face the divs again but they are no longer Divs but Demons, shapeless nebulous nasty things, and you think of them and fear them the same way as you did the sinister figures that you felt were lurking about at times when you were a child. But one day, on the run from the priest and the therapist, you say to yourself “suppose my demons too have a liking for polka dots and cross-dressing?” and “suppose they are uninvited guests to a country house week-end? Or at worst like the Old Man of the Sea with rubbery legs and a fondness for a piggy-back?” what next? And you begin to paint and draw, and one by one they appear on the cat-walk in all their finery. Next time you walk in the park, you take one with you.