The fewtrility of time spent in Hell...

homo homini lupus

Canis lupus or Cainus lupus?

(Image from Wikipedia)

Deogolwulf was recently reimbursed with the wages of sin and spent his paycheck on a lost weekend harrowing some drunkards' Hell.

Hell lost, and Deogolwulf liberated 17 captive fewtrils from the abyss, offering them as gifts to the elect readers of his blog. Here's my favorite, Fewtril #186:

"A contrarian is easily led astray; one need only point him in the right direction."

Well said! Not that I agree with this, of course. Indeed, I strongly doubt it. I can't quite put my finger on why, but it just seems wrong. Totally wrong.

And how I wish that Fewtril #187 were also wrong:

"It is in poor taste to say that a man is made happy once he has been disabused of the guards of his happiness -- his illusions. One disabuses a man of his illusions because one wants him to see the world as it is, or as one sees it. The last thing one has in mind is his happiness."

"Sigh..." I never realized this. All those years disabusing the misled of their illusions, thinking that I was contributing to their happiness. To think ... that I was the one so misled. Ah, misery.... Whatever can I do with my life now?

Then, there's the occasional stumper like Fewtril #193:

"One may easily get another to admit his shortcomings provided he has hasn't already bragged of them."

Uh ... "has hasn't"? What's Deogolwulf getting at? A semi-Hegelian negotiation of the negation? Or the beginnings of an unprofound thought of the sort intimated by Deogolwulf in his musings on the creative process, found in Fewtril #191:

"One will occasionally have inexpressibly profound feelings about something -- one feels one knows the hidden truth about it, but cannot quite grasp it. This may well be the beginnings of a profound thought, but then again it may not, and one ought not to flatter oneself into believing that it is."

Setting that Möbius musing to one side ... or the other (it's all the same), let me end, finally, with the rude truth of Fewtril #198:

"We can hardly imagine what fools we look to posterity, and in what present and prepossessing absurdities we engage, until we catch a glimpse of ourselves in the mirror of history."

In my case, I need merely gaze into the mirror of my personal history...