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Atavistic Pleasure

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Edited by Martin Cadwell, Saturday 3 October 2026 at 08:38

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I put a spell on you

[ 2 minute read ]

Opinion

WARNING - SUPERSTITION and DROWNING

Things are difficult now. I recently discovered that there are people who will harvest from the work of others to feather their own nests. Scavengers, like magpies, they look into corners to see what they can take. Something shiny? Perhaps with a little polishing they can make something of it. Their goal is to borrow, at least that is what they say, and by way of giving it back they say they will say where they found it. It is how they allow themselves to steal through telling themselves they are honest that sticks in my craw. 

But not only that. Gatherers have stripped the honest worker of reward. Hard-working and pioneering folk, these people have toiled for hours, and through trial and error and much time spent, have produced something useful or beautiful. Proud, they may exhibit it for the public to see. Then, along comes a thief who packs a mould around it and whisks the shape, the tale, or the design away and reproduces it. The thanks is a note on every cast piece that states where the thing was first seen or found. My father said to me 'I have a pocket-full of Thank Yous and I can't spend them.' Something that was rare is made cheap by these pilferers who work in the shade. I point a poison finger at them and spit in their direction to avert their evil. I long that they always spill their salt and that dogs forever howl near them. These dark shades are drains on our souls and they must be lit.

WARNING -DROWNING

I had to be taught not to leave valuables lying around because they can be taken; my brother, a dark shade, stole from me, and profited from my hard-won successes. A piggy-backer, he leapt on my back and weighed me down. He reached forward and and grabbed every fruit and every opportunity before I could focus. Greedy and selfish, he gnawed at everything in case it had any flavour. Stopped from drowning me when I was four, years later, he thrashed and pleaded as he himself gulped for air but there was no-one there. 

WARNING OVER

It is not difficult to slide into a dark way of thinking and so much easier if you have superstition to act as hand-holds or signposts along the way. I am fairly well inclined towards the kind of thinking that allows magic and superstition and curses and manifestations to billow out of the ether. I suppose many of us can feel the softness of letting go a bit and leaving the hardness of the modern world, and I have to say, I was beginning to enjoy myself a bit too much for a while back there in the earlier paragraphs; way too much atavistic pleasure; way too much.

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