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"Everyone knows the phenomenon of trying to hold your breath underwater

- how at first it's alright and you can handle it,

and then as it gets closer and closer to the time when you must breathe,

how urgent the need becomes,

the lust and the hunger to breathe.

And then the panic sets in

when you begin to think that you won't be able to breathe -

and finally,

when you take in air and the anxiety subsides...

that's what it's like to be a vampire and need blood."

~Coppola's "BS Dracula"

In the face of the recent current events in the world, I would like to offer this conversation between Marius and Armand. Marius is explaining to Armand his loss of optimism in Humankind in the present day.



The more things change the more they stay the same. It is evident there is no clear cut answer.





Oh, why did I deceive myself for so long? Did I not see those Russian grasslands, those burnt cities.Why, all Europe might have fallen to Genghis Khan. Think of the great English Cathedrals torn down to rubble by the arrogant King Henry.



Think of the books of the Mayas heaved into the flames by the Spanish priests. Incas, Aztecs,Olmec - peoples of all nations ground to oblivion --.

horrors, horrors upon horrors, and it always was, and I can pretend no longer. When I see millions gassed to death for the whims of an Austrian madman, when I see whole African tribes massacred till the rivers are stuffed with their bloated bodies, when I see rank starvation claim whole countries in an age of gluttonous plenty, I can believe all these platitudes no more.

I don't know what single event it was that destroyed my self-deception. I don't know what horror it was that ripped the mask from my lies. Was it the millions who starved in the Ukraine, imprisoned in it by their own dictator, or the thousands after who died from the nuclear poisoning spewing into the skies over the grasslands, unprotected by the same governing powers who had starved them before? Was it the monasteries of noble Nepal, citadels of meditation and grace that had stood for thousands of years, older even than myself and all my philosophy, destroyed by an army of greedy grasping militarists who waged war without quarter upon the monks in their saffron robes, and priceless books which they heaved into the fire, and ancient bells which they melted down no more to call the gentle to prayer? And this, with in two decades of this very hour, while the nations of the West danced in their discos and swilled their liquor, lamenting in casual tones for the poor sad fate of the distant Dalai Lama, and turning the television dial.



I don't know what it was. Perhaps it was all the millions -- Chinese, Japanese, Cambodian, Hebrew, Ukrainian, Polish, Russian, Kurdish, oh God, the litany goes on without end. I have no faith, I have no optimism,I have no firm conviction in the ways of reason or ethics. I have no reproof for you as you stand on the Cathedral steps with your arms out to your all-knowing and all perfect God.

I know nothing, because I know too much, and under-stand not nearly enough and never will. But this you taught me as much as any other I've ever known, that love is necessary, as much as rain to the flowers, and food to the hungry child, and blood to the starving thirsting predators and scavengers that we are. Love we need, and love can make us forget and forgive all savagery, as perhaps nothing else.--- The Vampire Armand, Anne Rice