Chris Port Blog #255. What Is There To Be Afraid Of? (The Wind Calls My Name…)

The Wind Calls My Name

© Chris Port, May 2011

Tonight it seems to me

that the wind calls my name.

Slyly. Rattlesnake trees

make small stones bump the panes.

Damp leaves hiss with ghostly

disgust. I am ashamed.

Let eaves be uneasy.

Why must I be afraid?

“Oh, Whistle, And I'll Come To You, My Lad” by M.R. James

"Flabis, furbis, flebis" 
('You will blow, you will go mad, you will weep')

"Quis est iste qui venit" 
('Who is this who is coming?')

Something with a face of crumpled linen...

"Oh no. Oh no..."

“Whistle and I'll Come to You” (1968 adaptation)

(The end. Watch from 2:37 to… the end…)

He is a rational man. So what is he frightened of? And why does he keep saying “Oh no. Oh no.”? What is he trying to deny?

“Whistle and I'll Come to You” (2010 adaptation)

His wife is in a care home. Speechless, motionless, in the advanced stages of senile dementia. All she can move is one finger. Sometimes she scratches at the blanket draped over her knees. One night, miles away, he hears something scratching, trying to get in. Bad dreams. His wife, screaming, “I’m still here! I’m still here!”

The Woman In Black Bed Scene… (Watch at your peril…)

The Idea of a Presence by MacDonald Critchley

 ‘… The phenomenon in question comprises a feeling, or an impression – sometimes amounting to a veritable delusion - that the person concerned is “not alone”…’

Mystery of the third man by Liz Porter

 ‘… Ultimately, the author feels most comfortable describing the "third man factor" as a "coping mechanism". "It is a way for people who are under great physical and psychological duress to cope with their situation. There is nothing more helpful to people undergoing hardship than a sense that there is another person there, helping them."

*           *           *           *           *           *           *

"Reality - if there is such a thing - is the laws of physics. The laws of physics have nothing to say about life and death. The atoms of a living man and the atoms of a dead man are exactly the same. Did the dust think it had a name? Did the dust think the wind cared? The wind blows and the wind blows...

If you want to know the secret of life, ask Snowden. Ask Mistah Kurtz. Man is matter. The rest is just... two words…

Human affairs - relationships, politics, property - properly belong in the realm of fiction. To regard them as ‘real’ is to fly in the face of all scientific evidence. No wonder ‘God’ doesn’t physically exist. That wouldn’t make any sense at all…” ~ Marty Gull

See #274. Measuring the Dark...