Constantine - The Novelization - Whoa is (Not)

material world but still exerted a positive influence on it. She could feel them out there, also in akind of orbit, trying to help. They were contemplating the suffering in the world and looking forways to ease that suffering.Her psychic sensitivity followed their lead, and she found herself aware of a churning, stormysea of suffering in the mortal world: children being preyed on by men who regarded them asthings conceived for their pleasure; women being knocked around by drunks; drunks beingpreyed on, in turn, by muggers, and pickpockets and whores who took their money; starvingchildren by the millions, wondering why they'd come into the world only to raven endlessly forfood and perish; paralytics who prayed for death to release them from their nightmare trap;lunatics in tiny cells, who'd done nothing to bring their lunacy on themselves; children beaten byparents in America; children in the Third World sold by parents into slavery; people of all kindssunken into deep depression; animals tortured in lab experiments; men bleeding slowly, slowly todeath on battlefields for causes they could no longer remember; mothers feeling their children diein their arms; people dying in fires set by arsonists; old folks sinking into senility and despairingof hope, sorry for a thousand mistakes; underfed people working in fields until they collapsed;people in sweatshops working as their hands bled, their eyes burned....Suffering. It was like a great discordant symphony ringing out from the world; like aklaxoning of a million million cracked bells.She knew then that it did matter, despite how temporary people were: What happened in theworld really did matter. What the devils and the psychopaths and the greedy did mattered.Suffering gave meaning to it; suffering alone. Because diminishing that suffering, modulating it,turning it into something a little better - yes, even making things just a little better was worthdoing.And she realized that she'd nearly succumbed to the darkness; that Mammon had beenwhispering to her unconscious:Look, and see: Nothing matters! Don't resist me.Don't struggle. Nothing matters in the great scheme of things. All flesh is grass, it all withersand dies; fighting it only prolongs your own misery.... Surrender, Angela!But she would not be persuaded. She would not surrender.When the time came, she would fight. With the subtle aid of the bodhisattvas, she wouldfight. Her chance would come.Because she knew, then, what she was, what her role in the world was. Her calling. Anoracle? Yes. But more fundamentally...... Angela Dodson was a warrior.--Midnite and Chaz and Constantine were standing outside the EI Carmen, taking in the humidnight.The world wakes up for day in a certain way; there's another way it wakes up for night. TheLos Angeles night was beginning to wake up. Cars honked, sirens wailed, music banged fromradios, and all of it was given a kind of backbeat rhythm by the steady change of traffic lights, thepulse of cars going by.People were gathering for the club; others were walking by with their kids, on their way to avideo arcade, laughing about the money they'd waste. Couples walked by on dates, each with anagenda they didn't even know they had. Just following impulses, desires, lusts, or wistfullongings...Constantine shook his head. He had his own impulse - to shout, You idiots! The world is atwar with the powers of darkness! The doorway to Hell is opening! You're fiddling while Romeburns, you clueless chuckleheads! Rally with me and fight those who would make beef cattle ofyour souls!And how would he sound if he said that aloud?