House of Pain

House of Pain

There is physical pain and psychic pain. You notice people who attempt to use physical pain to quell emotional disturbances. You may have noticed suspicious cuts or burns on a disturbed person. Physical exercise, especially when it test one's limits, is another way of muffling hurt. Interestingly one may start from a position of great emotional turbulence, arriving at another state that is uncomfortable in a totally different way. Sublimation is one of the ways a person can turn untoward life experiences into art, though the art itself may be painful for others to experience. It's similar to passing the baton in a relay race or "passing the buck." A writer is kicking the can down the road. One of the great lines in Charles Ludlam's Bluebeard is "remember the house of pain."

read The Wormhole Society by Francis Levy

and read The Wormhole Society: The Graphic Novel by Francis Levy and Joseph Silver