When pregnant women are shown in films, they are played by non-pregnant women who place a pillow under their clothes and over their wombs. And, as the manmade and moveable palms are preferred to the genuine and rooted palms, the padding is preferred to the pregnant womb.
It is, by the way, wondrous that the doppelgängers of a shadow should still possess the natural ability to become pregnant, sometimes even from the embrace of the doppelgängers of another shadow
In this, however, let us recognize the immeasurable goodness of God.
His unfathomable benevolence calls the female shadow to the life of motherhood. Because she has become a living person, because of what is, in her case, the twofold wonder of motherhood, she can no longer play a role — in the actual sense of this word — in the world of shadows. And they chase her out of the gates of the shadow-factory.
I will take this opportunity to mention that in all the countries of the world that are viewed as civilized, the laws of humanity and religion forbid a woman to have the ripening fruit of her body removed.
If I had the power, in the name of divine or earthly justice, to issue decrees, I would outlaw the shadow-factories of Hollywood, if only because they compel women to have the ripening fruit extracted from their bodies.
It grievously astonishes me that ecclesiastical and secular legislators do not know, or do not notice, the inhuman laws of the shadow-factories.
In all the countries of this civilized world a hungry beggar woman is thrown in prison if she has an abortion.
A shadow-manufacturer, however, who causes pregnant women to get abortions, is not sent to prison.
God sees all this. And He will judge the lawmakers as He will judge the shadow-manufacturers. But He will not judge the beggar women.
The Lord will not judge the poor. Nor will He, unlike the law-makers of this world, in any way judge the destitute who sneak into houses, into strangers’ houses.
Such poor I have seen in Hollywood, too. There the poor also sell their shadows. Only there they are not called poor but ‘extras’.
And it happens that for one shadow-show or another, many shadow-people are wanted, for example to dwell in a wonderful palace.
They aren’t allowed to live in the palace as real people but only as people’s shadows or shadow-people.
Once their shadows have been sold they cannot stay in the palace any longer.
It happens that many of the poor who are extras in Hollywood have no shelter for the night.
And, although they have sold their shadows that these shadows may sleep in the palace, they, as doppelgängers of their shadows, may not spend the night in this palace. They aren’t Roman legionaries, Nubian slaves, armoured knights, janissaries or Crusaders any longer. They are poor homeless people. They call them in this city ‘extras’.
Even truth here is nothing but a shadow. After I had seen this city I knew that it — and it alone — was the true capital of this great country, and I had no desire to see any other cities or villages in this land.
It is true that the leader of the country lived in another town.
It is also true that those who had wealth or engaged in business lived in yet another, but Hollywood was the capital. This city, I had come to realize, was the capital not only of the country but of the entire world.
For it is the capital city of the shadows, and it is shadows that rule the world.
All the shadows have their residence in Hollywood. Yes, when I left the city and came to other cities my eyes no longer believed the reality of the things and people they saw in these other cities. If I came across a skyscraper, I imagined it had only been erected for a week’s duration so that its shadow might be projected on to the screen for a particular film in which a skyscraper was required.
And, in fact, someone told me that this particular building was about to be torn down and another near by had been constructed just a week before.
As quick and fleeting as shadows, and more transient than the clouds they touch, are the buildings in this country.
The actors are also removed, for people have no use for memories.
I saw kind people in this country as well, but people without time.
Just as the shadows take up no space, so the people in this country have no time.
Goodness, however, requires both time and space.
Even truth in this country is a shadow.
The laws of truth are proclaimed from the capital of the shadows.
It is the truth of shadows and not of people.
Yet even in this country I met a just man. He urged me to have patience and not to be so hasty as the shadows I was condemning.
‘This country,’ said the just man, ‘will perhaps give over all of its shadows and skyscrapers to other countries and itself arrive at life and truth. Perhaps the people here will one day have time and will build little houses and love people of every colour; perhaps they will love permanence and hate transience and despise money. This country is a young heir of older countries. And the heirs have inherited before their elders were dead. Let the elders lie under the ground first, and then the young ones may become magnificent heirs.
‘You must have patience!’
I, however, who am not a just man, don’t have the virtue of patience.
I am a weak man, and I fear the Antichrist.
UNDER THE EARTH
I went to many other countries in the service of the master who had a thousand tongues at his disposal.
I descended eight hundred metres beneath the surface of the earth and saw men who for eight hours a day, eight hours on a daily basis, lie on their backs eight hundred metres under the earth. With hammers they broke off the coal over their heads, coal that is plentiful below the earth.
They are threatened by poisonous gases, by falling stones, by rocks that collapse suddenly and block the way out. And many workers had already died such a death.
God Himself made the coal form underground so that it may warm us, so that it may heal us, drive our machines and support the works of our reason.
But I also met people who deal in coal. And these did not lie on their backs for eight hours a day, eight hundred metres below the earth.
It is certainly true that God granted them the intelligence to trade just as He gave the others the strength and endurance to lie on their backs and hack at the coal above their heads.
The men who deal in coal can thus not be less in the eyes of God than the men who mine it.
Before God, I said, they aren’t less. But before people, they are less, for their work is less strenuous and they earn more money.
Human justice is not as perfect as divine justice. People look at the degree of toil and the amount of its reward.
Every half-hour a lift brought the men below, eight hundred metres deep. When one is underground, eight hundred metres from the light of the world, one not only loses the light that illuminates the earth but one longs for the sky; one has nostalgia for the heavens.
We were not made as hamsters, moles, salamanders or worms but as humans; the earth is meant to be under our feet and the sky above our heads.
We were created to walk upright, on two legs not on four feet. Our arms and hands are not for crawling around the earth but for working, for embracing our neighbour and to stretch towards the heavens.
Through this also are we differentiated from the animals, in that we alone, among all the beings of creation, have the ability to stretch our arms and hands towards the sky.
We are also different from animals through the fact that our forefather Adam received the breath of God. It is as though we had been granted this power because we yearn for contact with He of whom we are a reflection.