Likenscapes: Dreamer

Karni Mata

"Jai Mata Ji..."

 

 

The following is a partial transcript of the death tape which appears in Mark Lane, The Strongest Poison (New York: Hawthorn, 1982), pp. 199-206

 

 

 

JIM JONES: I tell you I don't care how many screams you hear, I don't care how many anguished cries, death is a million times preferable to ten more days of this life. If you knew what was ahead of you. If you knew what was ahead of you, you'd be glad that you're stepping over tonight. Death, death, death is common to people – the Eskimos, they take death in their stride. Let's be dignified. If you'd quit telling them they're dying – if you adults would stop some of this nonsense.

 

Adults! Adults! Adults! I call on you to stop this nonsense.

 

 

I call on you to quit exciting your children when all you're doing is going into a quiet rest. I call on you to stop this now if you have any respect at all. Are we black, proud, and socialists or what are we? Now stop this nonsense; don't carry this on anymore. You're exciting your children. No, no sorrow – that it's all over. I'm glad it's all over. Hurry, hurry, my children, hurry. All right, let's not fall into the hands of the enemy. Hurry, my children, hurry. They're seniors out here I'm concerned about. Hurry. I'm not leaving my seniors to this mess.

 

 

Quickly, quickly, quickly, quickly. 

 

No more pain now. No more pain. I said no more pain. Jim Cobb is laying on the airfield dead at this moment. [cheers] That Oliver woman said she would come over and kill me if her son wouldn't stop her. These are people, the peddlers of hate. All we're doing is laying down our life. We're not letting them take our life, we're laying down our lives....

 

 

JONES: Stop all this nonsense. Stop this screaming. All we're doing is taking a drink and going to sleep. That's what death is – sleep. You can have it, I'm tired of it all....


JONES: Where is the vat, the vat, the vat, with the green sea in it? The vat with the green sea in, please?

We didn't commit suicide, we committed an act of revolutionary suicide protesting the conditions of an angry, mean world.

 

In the future, when the Leader of a Reality Distortion Field demands a show of loyalty from followers with an act of suicide, the best defense is to respond with the Words:

 

RIGHT-O MATE, YOU GO FIRST!!