AFRAID OF THE DARK: Don Quixote Tilting at Windmills
I read an article yesterday about how a large number of Americans are arming themselves, not to hunt or target shoot, but to defend themselves from an impending civil war. All day, as I thought about it, I wondered about what kind of country I was visiting after visiting Greece and Germany. I couldn’t get the image of Don Quixote out of my mind.
I think of Don Quixote tilting at windmills, seeing giants everywhere, determined to protect Dulcinea, an old, wizened man in clanking armor on a worn out horse out to save the world. And I see Don Quixotes all around me, I see myself as Don Quixote.
I am an old man, unable to run any more, bending over when I walk, taking constant naps. I live in a world where there seems to be terror around every corner, monsters lurking in the dark, threats to my identity right and left. And who cares about my identity? I am alone and ignored. No one that I know of shares my fears. I appear to be a harmless shambling old man who needs to be told to watch his step be careful when he drives, which I am. I am careful all the time.
But in my dreams I meet monsters and beautiful maidens and imagine ways to save the world. For all of my life I have been afraid of the dark. When my mother came up from the blistering plains where my father worked to cool Landour in the lower Himalayas with a view, then almost to Delhi, now covered with pollution, we lived in a missionary duplex Called Tehri View. To our left were the Tehri Hills, rows of mountains, purple in the evening sunset and the town of Tehri where there is now a huge dam providing water to Delhi, water that will run out with global warming.
Our side of the house on the steep hillside had two rooms down below and the living room, kitchen bedroom and toilet up above. To get town to the lower part of the house where there were two bedrooms was a path that went across our yard and then bent back under the pushta or stone wall that supported the yard. It was 100 feet out and 100 feet back by flashlight in the pitch dark. My brother Ted had the first room and I had the second.
I was a great reader in those days and had read all the books by Jim Corbett, a legendary British hunter, who hunted down the rare tiger or leopard which in its old age when deer and other animals were too quick, turned to killing and eating humans. One book was about the Man-eaters of Kumaon, another about the Man-eating Leopard of Rudraprayag which was said to have killed and eaten 126 people. Corbett was a marvelous story teller. You could feel the warm hidden presence of the leopard as he stalked his prey, sometimes lifting a person out of group sleeping together in a room with the door locked and lifting them silently, paralyzed by fear, out of a ten foot high narrow window. I would sometimes read these stories before locking the door and turning out the light in my distant downstairs bedroom, lying there in the damp dark, rigid and unable to go to sleep. I have been afraid of the dark ever since. Over the years Kathe kept the tigers away when she was asleep beside me, but when she went to England to visit her sister I would go to bed with the doors locked and the lights on in the hallway and bathroom. I knew nothing was there but I was scared to death.
Until Kathe died, and I was alone every night. And suddenly I could turn over and go to sleep without the lights being on. The monsters, the unnameable threats, vanished and haven‘t come back once. I think I just decided firmly that there was nothing there because there was nothing there, a windmill was a windmill, and so I turned over and went to sleep.
But even during the day there are threats everywhere these days. In addition to invisible ever present Covid, there seem to be monsters around every corner: pedophiles, communists, socialists, the threat of black lives, perverters of every kind, stealers of elections, internet spies. Most of them are as invisible to me as those tigers were to everyone else including my brother Ted who slept in the next room like a baby. I‘ve personally never experienced these threats but other people say they have and that is enough to scare me, or others, to death, enough to get us on our horse and do something about it
And I can understand these fears. Just because there is nothing there visible to anyone else doesn‘t mean that there is nothing there. There is something there because if you let go of conventional reality, ordinary everyday life which is just a facade, there is something there down in the dark within us that will silently eat us up if we don‘t stay vigilant. Freud saw it, the ID or satan is out to get us. If I don‘t see it someone else will and will tell me about it with graphic details that curdle my blood.
And to counter these threats there are Don Quixotes everywhere galloping through the night as they battle monster after monster or tilt at windmill after windmill and protect Dulcinea, who lives in the depths of their dreamworld, from harm.
I was afraid of the dark, not because what could actually happen but because of what I projected out in my fear, fear of the unknown.
Paranoia. All my life I have seen red flags. Just a word— academic credits, academic rigor, high standards, objective truth—caught my attention and told me that other people’s identity was different from my own and that they were therefore a threat to my identity. For me experience was more significant than academic standards. What other people saw clearly, academic credits, I didn‘t see. I saw experience as being what impels us along, not academic understanding. And the experience comes from some inner visceral drives that we are hardly conscious of. But I was outnumbered and said nothing.
Paranoia also turns windmills into giants, an inner feminine archetype into Dulcinea, and turns an old creaky man into a warrior.
There have been so many deep fears that we project out and have as a tribe defended ourselves against. One of them now is tyrannical government that people are arming themselves to the teeth to protect against. Another one remains communists although actual communists are long gone and another fear is of socialists in distant places. There are certainly pedophiles out there and probably racial animosity and resentment from people who have been enslaved and and even your car with an expired warranty is a threat of blowing up. I just happen to be frightened of man eating tigers which for some reason don‘t scare other people.
From the inside all of us defend ourselves against threats that may be actual but get overblown until they paralyze us with fear and we are desperate and have to do something. So we shoot up a pizza parlor or kill 12 people at prayer in Charleston or throw fire extinguishers at the Capitol or we kill millions of Jews to protect ourselves, or in self defence kill a black man who threatens us by his presence, jogging or driving a car. We can be persuaded that women are witches and need to be burned at the stake, that kindergartners have been brutally sexually molested in Satanic rituals by their teachers as happened at Little Rascals Day Care in Edenton, NC in the 1990’s.
In one way we are all tilting at windmills. Our fear is real enough and something is going on deep within us that provokes it. And when we connect as a tribe of people afraid of the same thing, threatened by the same thing we can do something terrible. We can rape or murder or lock people up or segregate or marginalize in one way or another. So the tilting at windmills, fears we project out, can hurt us and hurt the people we project them on.
The man eating leopard of Rudraprayag really did kill 126 people. And I was terrified of it. But it was dead by then and no leopard threatened me. What could be, what I could imagine, the unknown all around me was what threatened me and kept me up at night.
That is pretty much it. I know what it feels to be terrified of something that doesn‘t exist. Knowing there is nothing there doesn‘t protect me from being afraid of the unknown threatening me at night.
Fear of queers, fear of Japs, fear of Papists, fear of Krauts, fear of Commies, fear of Socialists, fear of pedophiles, fear of violent murderers, fear of Blacks, fear of cops, fear of abortionists, fear of teachers, fear of evolutionists, fear of social media, fear of Democrats, fear of liberals.
MAGA America used to be number one in the world doing everything right, doing everything better than anyone else. There was nothing to fear. We could be proud of ourselves.
In a world that is turning upside down with rapid change it is hard to know what is actual and what is terrifying.
What‘s a person to do? Put on his clunky armor, grab his AK 47, get on his tired horse in order to save indifferent Dulcinea and begin tilting at windmills which certainly seem to be giants. They may even look like windmills to you but other people know better and can describe the giant in detail, scaring you to death. At least you are doing something. If you don‘t the world will go to hell.
Or you could realize that you don‘t actually see any giants out there and let yourself roll over and go back to sleep.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 