It was as if some occult hand had gone through every book, turned every page, checked every genre and then shaken the entire library violently. Some of the bright and randomly placed volumes were scattered in the process, some landed on the ground pages opened, others stayed upright like soldiers refusing to fall in battle. The sorting process continued in this way for some time. It was clear that a great mind was at work and that a higher, loftier purpose was being acted out. I was on the edge, a spectator, only hoping that by the end I'd be able to quickly put my finger on whatever publication I was looking for. “It's a big machine and it's working.”
During a lull in the maelstrom I was able to reflect on the act of reading itself, for me, an unfortunate cross between an illiterate, irreverent and a lazy being reading sometimes is unattractive. Bad eye sight and Poundland readers don't help either. I cannot imagine myself coming home thinking “I really must read some Robbie Burns” or “where is my copy of Ivanhoe?” or even “when can I find the time to browse a few more of Shakespeare’s sonnets?” Some people must think like that. I do like the odd biography, Sci-fi or even (the lighter) self help books, BBC news and the Sunday papers but that's not serious reading. When I was small I used to like reading the ingredients of tins or containers, I also liked knowing their volumes which for some reason I'd try to compare with car or motorcycle engine sizes, “so that's what 100cc looks like.”
So now we are organised and I feel a deep inner peace, the universe has moved and I have survived but this may not last, all feelings form up into some kind of circle. Once you know that life's not so bad: anticipation, expectancy, planning, delivery, pleasure, relaxation, guilt, remorse, self pity, inspiration, anticipation...etc. You're never much more than a few steps from a good bit and time and experience can make the negatives tolerable, at least for a short while.
All these smart books got to me, entering the grey matter and while I was sleeping I was visited by the demon Chorozon aka as “the demon of the abyss”. He seemed to know a thing or two about my internal psychological processes and offered a few bits of constructive advice as well as insights. Anyway he was telling me that as he is the last great obstacle between the adept and enlightenment, it would do me no harm to prepare to meet and challenge him so I can move beyond that great gulf and into the greater cosmos and so on to the fictitious universe of Douglas Adams or somewhere (I lost the thread as it was 3am, why don't demons come along when you're in a good mood and maybe just having lunch?), all useful stuff to know. His price seemed fair; £666 in twenties (rounded up) and a small amount of blood and reasonable but limited public humiliation, I'm considering my options.
One demon I'm not so keen on is Lilith, she's a Jewish or Hebrew demon. She looks like quite a nice woman with red hair but being a demon has no clothes on most of the time and has bird's feet for some reason. I thought she looked a bit creepy in an esoteric way but she did have a nice sounding voice. Not sure what her powers are but she got some bad press in the Bible it seems, that was about 5000BC. She also had a snake wrapped around her, writhing, flicking it's tongue and looking menacing. Not many blokes are going to go for that look. The birds feet were also a bit off putting, I can't imagine her in stilettos but at a pinch they might be ok in a nice stir fry; tasty as chicken?
Islam has a few demons as you might well imagine, they are called the jinn (they don't merit a capital letter of their own either, a bit mean). Apparently they roam about in the unseen or unknown bits of the world, they can see us but we can't see them, a bit like being on a bus I imagine. Anyway I don't think they are very happy, Islam isn't a religion known for tolerating outsiders so all the jinn are condemned as the “smokeless bits of fire” who presumably cant even get into a pub these days and soon wont be able to get in a car either. One thing to watch is that a jinn can enter into you (only the better ones do this) if Allah allows it. That fact does set up a number of questions about the nature of Allah but maybe it's best not to go there. Oh and they can also, when they are not being invisible smoke, take the form of black dogs and snakes (no particular snake colour noted there). Nobody really knows why they do this. Good to get your head round the finer points of the world's religions, where would we be without all this collected wisdom and useful advice?
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