He was aware that darkness could take root in pristine gardens, and even good men could fall to shadow. – Ella Rose Carlos
Since he had shot out of his mother, practically clear across the delivery room, the old man had been slow to grasp the concept of consequences.
He was over that now.
But there was a time, oh, God, a million times, like a little devil was sitting on his shoulder, whispering in his ear.
Go ahead, nobody’ll see you. Nobody will ever know. A demon that one.
We have a task before us which must be speedily performed. We know that it will be ruinous to make delay. The most important crisis of our life calls, trumpet-tongued, for immediate energy and action. … It must, it shall be undertaken to-day, and yet we put it off until to-morrow, and why? There is no answer, except that we feel perverse, using the word with no comprehension of the principle. … [Then] The clock strikes, and is the knell of our welfare. At the same time, it is the chanticleer-note to the ghost that has so long overawed us. It flies—disappears—we are free. The old energy returns. We will labor now. Alas, it is too late!
In 1845 Edgar Allan Poe wrote an insightful short story called “The Imp of the Perverse.” Poe’s narrator tells us what one’s mind might do if we were standing at a cliff’s edge:
“We stand upon the brink of a precipice. We peer into the abyss-we grow sick and dizzy. Our first impulse is to shrink from the danger. Unaccountably we remain. By slow degrees our sickness and dizziness and horror become merged in a cloud of unnamable feeling. By gradations, still more imperceptible, this cloud assumes shape… far more terrible than any genius or any demon of a tale, and yet it is but a thought… it is merely the idea of what would be our sensations during the sweeping precipitancy of a fall from such a height.”
He could still remember one midnight, driving to the graveyard shift at IBM HQ in Armonk in his brand new green VW Beetle on I-84. ($1700 straight off the showroom floor.) Thinking I could just take that exit and head north. Montreal maybe. Never be seen again.
But he didn’t.
Sometimes he’d be driving along and wonder what if I just pulled my steering wheel and smashed off that bridge, plunging to the dry river bed below.
But he didn’t.
Like a demon talking in my ear. Go ahead, the imp whispers.
Have you found your imp? Is it the urge to let go of the steering wheel while driving? That sudden impulse to start yodeling in glee when you are supposed to be somber? Maybe tell your boss to do something anatomically impossible?
You know what I’m talking about here. But what do your imps tell you?
And do you listen?
