have you ever seen exorcist 2? it's actually a fascinating movie, even if you're not particularly into horror, or demonology. it almost has a redemptive quality about it, not unlike the ending of omen 3, when damien thorne dies and the second coming happens...

in the exorcist 2, there is talk about a demon called pazuzu (or something), symbolized by locusts. yet there is something special about this demon. she (?) is immune to the madness of the swarm mentality... in a plague of locusts, it is this "madness" that causes locusts to wantonly cause uncontrolled and uncontrollable destruction. but supposedly, pazuzu (who possesses?) the girl from the first exorcist is actually what i term a pharmakon, someone who has taken the poison of the community in order to save it. while the world falls into madness, she alone is immune, and thus she alone has the power to calm the madness and save the world...

i think about this of late. there is, or has been, a sense of madness in my local environment... people on fire. i think about the fear and the panic of the stock market, and its power to topple down our house-of-cards reality... it's all psychological, or so they say... and so, perhaps all it takes is someone to be a pazuzu, a person immune to the madness. someone who can hear the silence amidst this cacophany. someone who can remain calm even as tomorrow slips underwater.

i don't pretend to be calm. in fact, more often than not, i feel myself losing fragments of control. i just don't show, or am not in positions where it can necessarily show... but i imagine heroes, or perhaps they are fools, who calmly concentrate on each successive task, each little thing, each request of a child, as though it held all the importance in the world... and maybe, nowadays, it does.