Our enemies come, not with force and violence and noise, but with quiet arms that guide people softly but definitely into dark and darker places. No one knows and no one hears. Few surface.
They come with brutality selectively applied, rarely in the light of day. They come in stealth, in the dead of night, when man's heart is at its most fragile. They come when imagination and supposition can work its own work even before; before the gentle click, click, click of a lock being picked and opened. Click, click, click, a home becoming a house becoming just another building; an empty shell with the goods of half a home, half a life, a life that was ruined.
Monday 25 January 2010
Friday 22 January 2010
The Futility and The Fury
Imagine, just imagine, the futility, and the fury.
The first proper day of summer. The first big weekend beckoned, full of promise, but that wasn't today, not this time. The garden was green that day, the trees alive, dancing happily, touched gently by the breeze. Alone I walked slowly, transitioning from the short, trimmed grass that indicated the border of the garden, and walked into the longer grass in the orchard. Shaded by the trees, it was cooler here too, suffering less in the baking heat, still not used to it. Too soon it would be gone and we'd complain, I supposed. That was an awfully long way away.
As I plodded, my foot caught an apple, aborted and fallen from the tree too early, hard. Probably sour. Not worth eating. I could wait till later when the ones on the tree were riper, and it would be difficult to walk under trees without Newtonian braeburns plummeting towards you.
With a roar that still scares even the well heeled businessman in 1A, I always turn left, not right, when I get on a plane, the aluminium beast lurches forward, rubber on tarmac, rushing and spinning, rolling noise decreasing. The push down into the pit of the stomach as the ragtag arrangement of latter saints and sinners, feathers and wax elegantly lifts three hundred and thirty five tonnes into the sky. Defiance.
I knelt down in the longer grass, the furry seed ears tickling my face as I flopped forward onto my stomach, making an indentation that would last for a few days: less if it rained. There were still trails and dens through some of the grass where the dogs had walked and run and frolicked earlier in the week. The sun had dried the grass out well, and it held in position, a kind of solar fixing glue. Maybe it wouldn't rain. I contemplated the log in front of me, mostly hollow now, some rotting wood still in the middle. Above I could hear a plane making its way through the sky, ferrying people to or from a holiday, no doubt. I used to look at them and wonder where they were going, where they had been, what their stories were. Not any more. I knew what I needed to do now.
Ding dong. As we have now reached our cruising altitude, the captain has turned off the seat belt signs. Yes, we've been before, we like it there. Such friendly people, and the food's lovely. Of course, the young ones like all the bars. You should feel free to move gingerly around this pressurised cigar tube that's hurtling through the upper reaches of where man can possibly live. Our cabin crew, who are inadequately trained and even more inadequately equipped to handle any real emergencies, will do their best to reassure you. In the event that anything untoward happens, please pay attention to our cabin crew's faces. Close attention. As we said during the cursory safety demonstration, please refrain from opening the external doors of the aircraft, as explosive decompression is no way to start a holiday. Ho ho ho.
I'd always been able to do it. Simply by placing my wrists together and forcing them forwards, the view would spin out and spiral away from me, up and away, the gardens and surrounding orchards becoming flat landscapes, terrain relief, then maps, then a globe. Energy would crackle across it, waves trying to ground to earth, ball lightning gathering on branches and streetlights, purple and black. Even from this height you can see the expression on my face, pain and fury, misery and anger, but tempered by the anticipation and wanting to smile at the vitality sucked from across the earth into my body. Jets of that power would burst forth at the command of my twitching wrist, splitting and burning wood. With enough effort I could bring to bear enough energy to knock aside anything. I had found it invaluable, but it had always been my secret. How do you begin to describe that to your friends, your family?
We will shortly be serving a small selection of drinks and snacks, to further distract you from your precarious position defying nature. You will be pleased to know that the alcohol and salty products we provide will serve only to dehydrate and disorient you further, greatly exacerbating your jet-lag on arrival. You will be similarly pleased to note that it will be three or four days before you have fully adjusted to the time difference and recovered from the dehydration. By this point, being people of mostly ill means, you will be preparing to return to your routine. We hope you enjoy the rest of the flight.
As I do it, the noise, the noise that begins is indescribable, but you need to try. A malevolent bass note, below the range of human ears, deafening and inaudible in its entirety; rising up through the crust of the earth and vibrating into the troposphere, stone shattering and ear splitting. It rises up through the pitches, and smashes objects from the sky, causing birds to stop and fall midflight, dead from the sonic force and venom. It's the noise of the firmament being burst asunder, split in half between the warring brothers. When they hear it, one by one the pin-prick stars tremor and extinguish themselves.
The noise reaches the jet, making its way across the azure, shunning nature and gravity, testament to lift and elevation and the like. In their pressurised tomb, turbofans still roaring in the rarefied air, the passengers hear nothing yet. A finger idly flicks a page in the in-flight magazine. Oh look. They have that film you were wanting to see. Look. Look here.
In a moment, the shortest of moments, I'd push my hands forward, and all the gathered potential would channel in a furious burst. Purple, through pink and black, burning and freezing, a horizontal nuclear blast. Obliterating trees, blackening the grass underfoot. Turning people into skeletons, skeletons to powder that blows away in the gentle summer breeze, the trials of trivial men evaporated like milk on the stovetop.
I didn't want to see that film. It looks rubbish. You can watch it if you want. I think I'll try and sleep. Above the orchard, above the otherwise inconsequential figure at the centre of the electrical storm, the captain of the plane of happy holidaymakers looks over in alarm as a column of sheer crackling vigour blasts its way into the sky, smoke and cloud pouring into a boiling ring, towering five thousand, two hundred and eighty feet above the slight figure: still far below and uncomfortably close to the ground for a wide bodied jet. The plane shudders and yaws as the first shock waves reach it, the body of the plane unhappily rotating in space. In the cabin, passengers look up in surprise at the lateral movement, grabbing drinks and vacuum packets, lest they spill on their holiday clothes. Oh, I hate turbulence, don't you?
As I would turn, the stream of plasma would lash round like an oversized neon whip, lashing to the houses, dissolving first the structures; brick from stone, wood from brick, then the components themselves, bricks hack apart into sand, cement, backwards through time into straw, mud and clay. Everything is nothing in the face of the cold fires of fury and fear streaming from my arms.
The plane's progress halts, held in the sky only by the determination of the figure on the ground, and the impact of the shock waves. Slowly, ponderously, it rotates and tilts towards the orchard, the airframe screaming as it massively decelerates. With a ping, ping, ping of rivets, a crack appears around the body in front of the wing, the first class section twisting separately from the rest of the plane. The cabin crew freeze where they are, poised in the aisle, with heavy trolleys of distraction, knuckles whitening on the stowing handles. Wide eyes, mouths open, the merest beads on an abacus between the glossy lips, skin tone maintained by concealer and foundation and blusher, but inside, freezing, frozen, frosty hearts and stomachs, solid and knotted. Nearby passengers grasp the significance and find sudden solace in the God they once knew. We are all holy men now.
Soon the world around me would be carved and smoking, my arms burned and seared, satisfying as I walked through the crater, through the smoke towards whatever was left. One day, the world would end. Just like this. Today.
The passengers scream as the fuselage separates, seats ripping from the floor of the cabin, grabbed by an invisible toddler, towards his hungry maw, out into the cold air, the shock rendering the lucky unconscious. Still strapped into their plush seats, the unfortunate plummet, pell mell towards the ground, free from the effects of my force that pulls their vehicle inexorably towards me.
The noise reaches a crescendo, the crackling lightning pulling up my frame, creating a vacuum towards me, the electricity crowning me for a moment, an electrical halo for a mechanical messiah, the suffering of men about to be written and unleashed.
With the dullest of thuds, an impact more felt than heard, the first of the fortunates slams into the earth in a field some distance from me, further into rural solitude. The only witnesses are cows in the fields, who look with mild surprise, and return to their fealty to the grass. Milking time soon.
The white noise trembles the earth, then suddenly ceases. The cessation slams into the world like a hammer blow, the very opposite of noise.
The world breathes its last, as I close my eyes. The leaves rustle. I can feel the warm sunshine on my face, dappling through the treetops.
In the distance, I can hear a bird chattering. A swallow, perhaps.
As a thousand times before, I push my wrists together again, feeling the connection with millennia of history and force, channelled through me.
I take a breath, deeply and slowly, till my lungs scream on the point of bursting.
I prepare to release it. The end of everything.
For the barest second the sky flickers black, the world in negative. My muscles strip from sinew, sinew from bone, cleaving me apart joint by joint.
My mum shouts over the fence. It's dinnertime. This can wait.
The jet continues on its way, unmolested, undeterred. The passengers sip their complimentary drinks, and contemplate vacation time ahead.
Time to go in. I trot towards the fence. This can wait.
Imagine, the futility, and the fury.
The first proper day of summer. The first big weekend beckoned, full of promise, but that wasn't today, not this time. The garden was green that day, the trees alive, dancing happily, touched gently by the breeze. Alone I walked slowly, transitioning from the short, trimmed grass that indicated the border of the garden, and walked into the longer grass in the orchard. Shaded by the trees, it was cooler here too, suffering less in the baking heat, still not used to it. Too soon it would be gone and we'd complain, I supposed. That was an awfully long way away.
As I plodded, my foot caught an apple, aborted and fallen from the tree too early, hard. Probably sour. Not worth eating. I could wait till later when the ones on the tree were riper, and it would be difficult to walk under trees without Newtonian braeburns plummeting towards you.
With a roar that still scares even the well heeled businessman in 1A, I always turn left, not right, when I get on a plane, the aluminium beast lurches forward, rubber on tarmac, rushing and spinning, rolling noise decreasing. The push down into the pit of the stomach as the ragtag arrangement of latter saints and sinners, feathers and wax elegantly lifts three hundred and thirty five tonnes into the sky. Defiance.
I knelt down in the longer grass, the furry seed ears tickling my face as I flopped forward onto my stomach, making an indentation that would last for a few days: less if it rained. There were still trails and dens through some of the grass where the dogs had walked and run and frolicked earlier in the week. The sun had dried the grass out well, and it held in position, a kind of solar fixing glue. Maybe it wouldn't rain. I contemplated the log in front of me, mostly hollow now, some rotting wood still in the middle. Above I could hear a plane making its way through the sky, ferrying people to or from a holiday, no doubt. I used to look at them and wonder where they were going, where they had been, what their stories were. Not any more. I knew what I needed to do now.
Ding dong. As we have now reached our cruising altitude, the captain has turned off the seat belt signs. Yes, we've been before, we like it there. Such friendly people, and the food's lovely. Of course, the young ones like all the bars. You should feel free to move gingerly around this pressurised cigar tube that's hurtling through the upper reaches of where man can possibly live. Our cabin crew, who are inadequately trained and even more inadequately equipped to handle any real emergencies, will do their best to reassure you. In the event that anything untoward happens, please pay attention to our cabin crew's faces. Close attention. As we said during the cursory safety demonstration, please refrain from opening the external doors of the aircraft, as explosive decompression is no way to start a holiday. Ho ho ho.
I'd always been able to do it. Simply by placing my wrists together and forcing them forwards, the view would spin out and spiral away from me, up and away, the gardens and surrounding orchards becoming flat landscapes, terrain relief, then maps, then a globe. Energy would crackle across it, waves trying to ground to earth, ball lightning gathering on branches and streetlights, purple and black. Even from this height you can see the expression on my face, pain and fury, misery and anger, but tempered by the anticipation and wanting to smile at the vitality sucked from across the earth into my body. Jets of that power would burst forth at the command of my twitching wrist, splitting and burning wood. With enough effort I could bring to bear enough energy to knock aside anything. I had found it invaluable, but it had always been my secret. How do you begin to describe that to your friends, your family?
We will shortly be serving a small selection of drinks and snacks, to further distract you from your precarious position defying nature. You will be pleased to know that the alcohol and salty products we provide will serve only to dehydrate and disorient you further, greatly exacerbating your jet-lag on arrival. You will be similarly pleased to note that it will be three or four days before you have fully adjusted to the time difference and recovered from the dehydration. By this point, being people of mostly ill means, you will be preparing to return to your routine. We hope you enjoy the rest of the flight.
As I do it, the noise, the noise that begins is indescribable, but you need to try. A malevolent bass note, below the range of human ears, deafening and inaudible in its entirety; rising up through the crust of the earth and vibrating into the troposphere, stone shattering and ear splitting. It rises up through the pitches, and smashes objects from the sky, causing birds to stop and fall midflight, dead from the sonic force and venom. It's the noise of the firmament being burst asunder, split in half between the warring brothers. When they hear it, one by one the pin-prick stars tremor and extinguish themselves.
The noise reaches the jet, making its way across the azure, shunning nature and gravity, testament to lift and elevation and the like. In their pressurised tomb, turbofans still roaring in the rarefied air, the passengers hear nothing yet. A finger idly flicks a page in the in-flight magazine. Oh look. They have that film you were wanting to see. Look. Look here.
In a moment, the shortest of moments, I'd push my hands forward, and all the gathered potential would channel in a furious burst. Purple, through pink and black, burning and freezing, a horizontal nuclear blast. Obliterating trees, blackening the grass underfoot. Turning people into skeletons, skeletons to powder that blows away in the gentle summer breeze, the trials of trivial men evaporated like milk on the stovetop.
I didn't want to see that film. It looks rubbish. You can watch it if you want. I think I'll try and sleep. Above the orchard, above the otherwise inconsequential figure at the centre of the electrical storm, the captain of the plane of happy holidaymakers looks over in alarm as a column of sheer crackling vigour blasts its way into the sky, smoke and cloud pouring into a boiling ring, towering five thousand, two hundred and eighty feet above the slight figure: still far below and uncomfortably close to the ground for a wide bodied jet. The plane shudders and yaws as the first shock waves reach it, the body of the plane unhappily rotating in space. In the cabin, passengers look up in surprise at the lateral movement, grabbing drinks and vacuum packets, lest they spill on their holiday clothes. Oh, I hate turbulence, don't you?
As I would turn, the stream of plasma would lash round like an oversized neon whip, lashing to the houses, dissolving first the structures; brick from stone, wood from brick, then the components themselves, bricks hack apart into sand, cement, backwards through time into straw, mud and clay. Everything is nothing in the face of the cold fires of fury and fear streaming from my arms.
The plane's progress halts, held in the sky only by the determination of the figure on the ground, and the impact of the shock waves. Slowly, ponderously, it rotates and tilts towards the orchard, the airframe screaming as it massively decelerates. With a ping, ping, ping of rivets, a crack appears around the body in front of the wing, the first class section twisting separately from the rest of the plane. The cabin crew freeze where they are, poised in the aisle, with heavy trolleys of distraction, knuckles whitening on the stowing handles. Wide eyes, mouths open, the merest beads on an abacus between the glossy lips, skin tone maintained by concealer and foundation and blusher, but inside, freezing, frozen, frosty hearts and stomachs, solid and knotted. Nearby passengers grasp the significance and find sudden solace in the God they once knew. We are all holy men now.
Soon the world around me would be carved and smoking, my arms burned and seared, satisfying as I walked through the crater, through the smoke towards whatever was left. One day, the world would end. Just like this. Today.
The passengers scream as the fuselage separates, seats ripping from the floor of the cabin, grabbed by an invisible toddler, towards his hungry maw, out into the cold air, the shock rendering the lucky unconscious. Still strapped into their plush seats, the unfortunate plummet, pell mell towards the ground, free from the effects of my force that pulls their vehicle inexorably towards me.
The noise reaches a crescendo, the crackling lightning pulling up my frame, creating a vacuum towards me, the electricity crowning me for a moment, an electrical halo for a mechanical messiah, the suffering of men about to be written and unleashed.
With the dullest of thuds, an impact more felt than heard, the first of the fortunates slams into the earth in a field some distance from me, further into rural solitude. The only witnesses are cows in the fields, who look with mild surprise, and return to their fealty to the grass. Milking time soon.
The white noise trembles the earth, then suddenly ceases. The cessation slams into the world like a hammer blow, the very opposite of noise.
The world breathes its last, as I close my eyes. The leaves rustle. I can feel the warm sunshine on my face, dappling through the treetops.
In the distance, I can hear a bird chattering. A swallow, perhaps.
As a thousand times before, I push my wrists together again, feeling the connection with millennia of history and force, channelled through me.
I take a breath, deeply and slowly, till my lungs scream on the point of bursting.
I prepare to release it. The end of everything.
For the barest second the sky flickers black, the world in negative. My muscles strip from sinew, sinew from bone, cleaving me apart joint by joint.
My mum shouts over the fence. It's dinnertime. This can wait.
The jet continues on its way, unmolested, undeterred. The passengers sip their complimentary drinks, and contemplate vacation time ahead.
Time to go in. I trot towards the fence. This can wait.
Imagine, the futility, and the fury.
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