Echo

Blake: Then I left no such place when I took to the streets.

Irvine: What did you leave?

Blake: Nothing. I carry everything with me.

Irvine: Meaning memories?

Blake: I'm only interested in the present. It's how we live our present that predicts our past and our future.

Irvine: In other words, joy in the present gives rise to joyful memories and an optimistic view of the future?

Blake: Yes. If that is what you want.

Irvine: Isn't it what you want?

Blake: Joy is another concept that is incomprehensible to me. A destitute man takes pleasure in a butt-end in the gutter, while a wealthy man is disgusted by the self-same object. I am content to be at peace.

Irvine: Does drinking help you achieve peace.

Blake: It's a quick road to oblivion, and I would describe oblivion as being at peace.

Irvine: Don't you like your memories?

Blake: (Gave no answer)

Irvine: Can you recall a bad memory for me?

Blake: I've found men dead of cold in the gutter, and I've watched men die violently because anger drives others to the point of insanity. The human mind is so fragile that any powerful emotion can overturn its precepts.

Irvine: I'm more interested in memories from before you took to the streets.

Blake: (Gave no answer)

Irvine: Do you think it's possible to recover from the kind of insanity you've just described?

Blake: Are you talking about rehabilitation or salvation?

Irvine: Either. Do you believe in salvation?

Blake: I believe in hell. Not the burning hell and torment of the Inquisition, but the frozen hell of eternal despair where love is absent. It's difficult to conceive how salvation can enter such a place unless God exists. Only divine intervention can save a soul condemned forever to exist in the loneliness of the bottomless pit.

Irvine: Do you believe in God?

Blake: I believe that each of us has the potential for divinity. If salvation is possible then it can only happen in the here and now. You and I will be judged by the efforts we make to keep another's soul from eternal despair.

Irvine: Is saving that other soul a passport to heaven?

Blake: (Gave no answer)

Irvine: Can we earn salvation for ourselves?

Blake: Not if we fail others.

Irvine: Who will judge us?

Blake: We judge ourselves. Our future, be it now or in the hereafter, is defined by our present.

Irvine: Have you failed someone, Billy?

Blake: (Gave no answer)

Irvine: I may be wrong but you seem to have judged and condemned yourself already. Why is that when you believe in salvation for others?

Blake: I'm still searching for truth.

Irvine: It's a very bleak philosophy, Billy. Is there no room for happiness in your life?

Blake: I get drunk whenever I can.

Irvine: Does that make you happy?

Blake: Of course, but then I define happiness as intellectual absence. Your definition is probably different.

Irvine: Do you want to talk about what you did that makes stupefied oblivion your only way of coping with your memories?

Blake: I suffer in the present, Doctor, not the past.

Irvine: Do you enjoy suffering?

Blake: Yes, if it inspires compassion. There's no way out of hell except through God's mercy.

Irvine: Why enter hell at all? Can you not redeem yourself now?

Blake: My own redemption doesn't interest me.

(Billy refused to say anything further on the subject and we talked for several minutes on general subjects until the session ended.)