At long last, after nearly twenty years of trying, the Americans have got their man. Osama Bin Laden is dead. In most contexts, this simple fact is a good thing. Without the Bin Laden family’s personal wealth, connections, and cult of personality, terrorism will become more difficult. The current position is happier, for the moment. The method of arrival may yet cause more problems.
President Obama, in his announcement to the nation and a surprised world, struck a careful balance between the celebratory instincts that most Americans felt, and the watchful gaze of world that now includes an increasingly activist middle east and environs. The President recovered his gift for well-placed oratory at a time when its value cannot be overstated. It may yet be undermined by the scenes taking place across America, and the ongoing handling of the issue overall.
The questions for America around Bin Laden's death fall into three categories: the war/criminal terrorism paradigm; the level of triumphalism from America and her allies; and how this plays out in a middle east with an increasingly activist but non-militant movement.
There will undoubtedly be claims in the coming days and weeks that Bin Laden's death was an extrajudicial killing. Something akin to a public breaking on the wheel, a fatal response to the treason of acting against the American state. That will only apply if there comes some evidence that he could have been captured. If that opportunity presented itself and was snubbed by the US in favour of a military response, then they may come to regret it.
Nation-states have long struggled with categorising terrorism. Does it fall under the jurisdiction of the military, or is it a civil and criminal act? In part this is a difficulty caused by terrorism occupying a broad spectrum of activity. Latterly, states have been inclined to take an 'all-in' approach, and say that it generally falls into both. America has greatly muddied the water by affording a third status, of enemy combatants, which is neither judicial nor military whilst being both at the same time. This has, in turn, lead to a great deal of organisational schizophrenia in how it has responded to threats, with some crucial overlaps and double handling accompanying some glaring gaps that have only recently been addressed. That same confusion was present in Obama's oratory today: war is rarely a creature that provides justice.
If this is not war, then America and the world should be regretting that they were unable to prosecute, using the full weight of transparent due process, someone who has perpetrated vicious acts of murder and caused immeasurable harm to the American psyche. If this is not war, then setting out on a 'kill' mission, as has already been suggested, is at best an act of manslaughter. If this is not war, it means that America's own forces are not required to adhere to the same standard that America, the world's policeman, requires of other nations.
If this is war, then talk of justice is grossly misplaced. If this is war, then celebrations should be saved until there is a breakthrough victory, not just the elimination of a figurehead; this is not the death of Hitler, precipitating the end of a long, bloody war of oppression.
To say this will give closure to the victims of 9/11, of whom there have been tens of thousands, both direct and indirect, is to pander to the same logical fallacies that support the death penalty. Obama's enunciation of death as justice was echoed by the families of 9/11 victims, showing just how shaky this is as a basis for satisfaction. The law is, and must be, reason without passion. There are solid reasons, beginning with dispassion, why the victims and their families are left out of the justice process in western societies. Their grief, however real, raw, proximate and huge, adds no intellectual or moral credibility to the judicial process; legal professionals spend many years, their entire lives, in wrestling with these issues.
The celebrations in front of the White House are not just distasteful, they are full of hypocrisy and schadenfreude, the same malice and intolerance that saw dancing in the streets in the hours and days after 9/11. They are born of the same sentiments, mistrust and propaganda that influenced the same scenes with different faces ten years ago. To decry the citizens of Arab nations for celebrating what they saw, correctly or not, as a blow against the Great Satan and then do the same is rank hypocrisy.
Some will have asked, in response to this disquiet, “How many martyrs do extremists need?” The answer, in fact is none. Extremism will exist with or without martyrs. The extremism that breeds terrorism is borne along on a sea of domestic worries, poverty and alienation. Martyrs provide a focal point for that discontentment and alienation, but by the time individuals and communities have reached the point where they are cognitively receptive to such anti-heroes, they are already far-travelled down the road to terror.
Few assume this means the end of terrorism, yet many people still act as though it may be. The US still portrays Al Qaeda as some kind of hierarchical global terrorist organisation, an evil army that tries to eat away at the fabric of American life, like the SMERSH of James Bond fame. To consider Al Qaeda in this way is to fundamentally misunderstand their role, and the general structures of Islamic fundamentalist terror. It would be better to consider Al Qaeda as a one-stop-shop for terrorist funding, training and equipment. The Wal-Mart of terrorism.
Again, there is a dilemma: if the organisation exists in the structured, hierarchical way that it is portrayed by the Americans, then there are a dozen lieutenants willing and ready to step into the breach in place of Bin Laden. If it doesn’t, then fighting it in a military sense is largely pointless, as cells will come and go, facilitated by the base. Eradicating particular cells or uprising will not tackle the underlying issues. In either case, ending the leader of an organisation like this does play to some extremely strong media frames. It also fits perfectly with cognitive frames, the basis for which young and impressionable recruits in the middle east and beyond. Those frames are strengthened and the likelihood of direct action as a result increases greatly.
Bin Laden was a follower of Wahhabi Islam, a small segment of the Sunni branch of the religion. They preach that the Qu’ran and Hadith are the only authoritative texts, and that simple adherence to the interpretations of those texts by academics and clerics causes impurity in Islam. This is important in understanding the Bin Laden framing. Many of the acts he has committed are atrocities that most Muslims cannot align themselves with. Even at that though, as they go about their daily struggles of aspirations thwarted by repressive states and American foreign policy (the lesser jihad, or struggle to overcome), Bin Laden represents a figure that is undertaking the greater jihad.
Alongside this is the frame, floated by the Americans in the wake of 9/11, and now almost beyond contestation, that the extremists are those who hate the western way of life. They believe that we are corrupt, both immoral and amoral, and a decadent society that will destroy itself, much as Marx believed capitalism would eventually eat itself. While some or all of those beliefs may be true, they do not give the totality of the extremists’ position. Bin Laden repeatedly and consistently made reference to the US and coalition forces left in Saudi Arabia, on the sacred grounds of the Umma, the Muslim people. He also consistently and repeatedly made reference to US support for Israeli policies, the same policies that have been denounced by the UN. These are the bases for his support for action, for arming terrorists and taking action against the US. None of this makes his actions right or justifiable, and nor is this an apologist stance for any kind of terrorism, but they are his reasons; reasons only become excuses when they attempt to justify or pardon that which is wrong.
Killing a man who has been positioned as the leader of a putative neo-caliphate, without trial or due process will allow many extremists on both sides to view that the west, and the US in particular, is in direct opposition to Muslim struggles. It is difficult to see how, in the medium to long term, that particular frame can play out well for the US, while there are still American feet in American boots within a hundred miles of Mecca.
Throughout the Middle East and North Africa, populations are increasingly activist. It is difficult to say how Bin Laden’s death will play in those countries that are in the midst of political upheaval. Frames are more open, there is more space for debate and discourse. As citizens of repressive regimes avail themselves of technology and activism to grasp for a new future, America could exercise the soft-power that has been Obama’s byword ‘til now to great effect. There is a vacuum in the region and, however briefly, in the non-government actors sphere. How it is filled is up to the US, but they will fill it with triumphalism at the risk of squandering the greatest opportunity and alignment of chances in two decades.
Tuesday 3 May 2011
Monday 13 September 2010
No place, no time, no other, like here.
Here, amongst the heartbeats of God, where you could reach out and grasp infinity with your reaching hands, you sit.
Alone.
And nowhere is the realisation that you've wasted your life, squandered the gifts and intellect and instinct that passes for luck, nowhere is that more felt than here, in the very body of heaven.
Alone.
And nowhere is the realisation that you've wasted your life, squandered the gifts and intellect and instinct that passes for luck, nowhere is that more felt than here, in the very body of heaven.
Sunday 29 August 2010
We are The Last
We are the ones, every last one of us, we are each individual one, and many, all at the same time. A tiny part of our lives is vested in that of another. A tiny part of their life rests in ours. Day in and day out, our lives intermingle and bounce against each other. We, this body of people and existencies are the brownian particles of history. No rhyme or reason, but still we affect, in our own tiny way, everyone else who ever shall exist. And throughout time, throughout all of existence as we have recorded it, we have watched as the pendulum of thought and control has swung between Augustus to Pelagius and back. We watch, still, as the oscillations diminish and waste away. At last, in the very near future, that pendulum will slow and stop and still, and move no more.
And now, unlike at any other point in human history, we have nothing. No spark, no industry or drive to throw our hand to the pendulum and begin the cycle anew. There is no cleavage here upon which we can depend or hang our hopes. We have not even the indignity and horror of oppression, for even the hope of cruelty and untold suffering can spur us to move. There is nothing, and for that, for once, we are grateful. We stand alone, at this point, khorosho, all well and good, and in a place where neither happiness nor sorrow are matters for concern.
For more time than we can properly comprehend, humanity has acquired the veneer and sheen of what we have come to call civilisation. Throughout all of the centuries, we have strived (Sp?) and sought. Above all else, this is the mark of human endeavour. We suspected, supposed; we had above all the suspicion that there was a heaven, something beyond this. It mattered not whether that heaven was a better role in life than the one that vicissitudes of fate had assigned us, or whether it was a place beyond this life that we could go and there reach some state of bliss that was unknowable on this water covered rock. But in suspecting that heaven we all strove, and held our hands outwards and upwards in hope. Without something to keep that faith and passion alive, like anything else that goes untended in a harsh climate, it has been overpowered. Beaten down by the weight of the information we bury ourselves in. Suffocated by the million different things we have put between ourselves and [lsdknf]. And without that, we have no cause to strive.
Mankind, humanity, all of us. We are on a plateau now, one from which there shall be no movement, no great breakaway. Nothing, no step change, we have come through that phase now, where our ingenuity ran away with us and carried us breathlessly into the sky and deep into the bowels of the earth. Where the forces of political upheaval as people's faith in progress and hopes for themselves, their children, and their greater descendants clashed with those from others all over the world. We fought and argued. We suppressed and oppressed in equal measure, as the ebb and flow of power within countries and around the planet left entire peoples bobbing in the wars and revolutions and movements that follow power as surely as our night still follows day, after eight thousand years of civilisation.
And gradually, so gradually now, the waves of power that washed over humanity have levelled themselves out. The planet is becalmed. There is not so much a peace, as a simple absence of conflict. As the world became smaller and more interconnected, so did wars and conflict and our power grabs. And by degrees, by the tiniest of steps, we have teetered away from the precipice of oblivion, and instead, we are here. This place, where there is nothing, except an endless procession of days stretching into the future, that look far too much like this for any one man to comprehend and not take his own life in the face of such futility. The fury that we should feel in this cultural wasteland is gone. It is the most specific absence in our lives Without our faith in progress, we have no imbalances of power. Without those imbalances of power, we have no great suffering, meaning we have no great men.
Instead of tending to entropy, we have tended to mediocrity, and here we sit now, not the middle children of history, but the last. The last children, for all of those who come after us will be the same. They may have different faces and different names, but this, this is the last chance for them to be different people. Within a generation, we will have lost everything that will let us climb out from here. This is, the end. We are The Last.
And now, unlike at any other point in human history, we have nothing. No spark, no industry or drive to throw our hand to the pendulum and begin the cycle anew. There is no cleavage here upon which we can depend or hang our hopes. We have not even the indignity and horror of oppression, for even the hope of cruelty and untold suffering can spur us to move. There is nothing, and for that, for once, we are grateful. We stand alone, at this point, khorosho, all well and good, and in a place where neither happiness nor sorrow are matters for concern.
For more time than we can properly comprehend, humanity has acquired the veneer and sheen of what we have come to call civilisation. Throughout all of the centuries, we have strived (Sp?) and sought. Above all else, this is the mark of human endeavour. We suspected, supposed; we had above all the suspicion that there was a heaven, something beyond this. It mattered not whether that heaven was a better role in life than the one that vicissitudes of fate had assigned us, or whether it was a place beyond this life that we could go and there reach some state of bliss that was unknowable on this water covered rock. But in suspecting that heaven we all strove, and held our hands outwards and upwards in hope. Without something to keep that faith and passion alive, like anything else that goes untended in a harsh climate, it has been overpowered. Beaten down by the weight of the information we bury ourselves in. Suffocated by the million different things we have put between ourselves and [lsdknf]. And without that, we have no cause to strive.
Mankind, humanity, all of us. We are on a plateau now, one from which there shall be no movement, no great breakaway. Nothing, no step change, we have come through that phase now, where our ingenuity ran away with us and carried us breathlessly into the sky and deep into the bowels of the earth. Where the forces of political upheaval as people's faith in progress and hopes for themselves, their children, and their greater descendants clashed with those from others all over the world. We fought and argued. We suppressed and oppressed in equal measure, as the ebb and flow of power within countries and around the planet left entire peoples bobbing in the wars and revolutions and movements that follow power as surely as our night still follows day, after eight thousand years of civilisation.
And gradually, so gradually now, the waves of power that washed over humanity have levelled themselves out. The planet is becalmed. There is not so much a peace, as a simple absence of conflict. As the world became smaller and more interconnected, so did wars and conflict and our power grabs. And by degrees, by the tiniest of steps, we have teetered away from the precipice of oblivion, and instead, we are here. This place, where there is nothing, except an endless procession of days stretching into the future, that look far too much like this for any one man to comprehend and not take his own life in the face of such futility. The fury that we should feel in this cultural wasteland is gone. It is the most specific absence in our lives Without our faith in progress, we have no imbalances of power. Without those imbalances of power, we have no great suffering, meaning we have no great men.
Instead of tending to entropy, we have tended to mediocrity, and here we sit now, not the middle children of history, but the last. The last children, for all of those who come after us will be the same. They may have different faces and different names, but this, this is the last chance for them to be different people. Within a generation, we will have lost everything that will let us climb out from here. This is, the end. We are The Last.
Tuesday 1 June 2010
Not tonight, Gracey.
I waited in the hall. Home from school early, plaits in my hair straightened, and even my room tidy, I'm a good girl. I wait in the hall. I can hear the clank and clatter of pots and pans as my mother does something culinary in the kitchen. She doesn't like cooking, and we don't really like eating what she makes. But we do it because we feel that we should.
My mother called through, Do you want the gravy on top of your potato, or on the side? I ask if I can pour it instead of her doing it. Of course, she says. I smile, I like pouring it, I like watching them watch me, just in case I spill it. It's been a long time since I've spilt it, though.
In the drive, there's a scrunch of tyres over gravel. Every day as I come home from school, I walk up the furrows in the gravel, from where he drives in every night the same way. In the mornings, on the way out, we're usually running late and my mother says there's no time for games, so we just walk straight.
Face happy and sparkling at his special girls as he came home, through the door, sweeping me up, safe in his arms. Caught and lifted high above in his arms, near the ceiling, squealing in delight and my hair flying in my mouth as he rushed me through the softly scented room that my mother had carefully tended before the cleaners arrived. Always, she had said, be willing to do what it is you're going to pay someone else to do, or at least try it. This house is always tidy, and we pay someone to give it that extra sparkle, she said. I liked that, too. My house was lovely and clean and when I came through the door, I can smell the polish and bleach and all the other things that she used.
In the garden that day, and my daddy came bowling out of the house, almost tripping up. He was smiling and happy and I liked that look too. It's going to be the best thing in the world. Everyone in the world is going to want one, or two even. And I smiled, because my daddy was changing the world. And that means i've got all the more time to spend with my Gracey Elizabeth, doesn't it? She said, tickling me, and I squealed in delight again.
I remember the change in him, but not when it started. Less a switch and more a gradual slip, sliding away from where he used to be, as my father went from a man happily enamoured by his passions to someone else, someone consumed and devoured.
There was a lot less squealing, now. I was swept up and away and round in a circle less, and less and less. They're saying that they already did it, that they did it first. And that mine is just an improvement on an existing process. But how can it be, how can it be? Everything, corroding so, so early. And my father coming back in later in the evening, shoulders hunched and head down, smiling with his mouth, and then not even with that. They're saying that I need to just leave it, that they've so much time and money and whatever else, that there's no... ust no way that I can argue with them, even if I'm right. You are right. I know. But I've been told so much that I'm not now that I'm not even sure that I am any more. I just don't know, I just don't know.
Ten more years of this, I'm sure that it would have been fine, but he couldn't see, we couldn't make him believe, my mother couldn't make him believe. And the day I decided I was going to surprise him and make him, actually make him, damnit, remember and believe and spin me round and he'd remember and everything would be OK. That look would fall from his face, and everything would be. Not any kind of description, everything would just be, again.
Rushing towards the door with my arms outstretched towards him and Daddy, you're home, give me an aerrrrrroplane, and practically throwing myself at him, and he caught me. I could feel the muscles in his arms holding me, perfectly still, off the floor, everything in the world perfectly still for just a moment.
And then everything started moving again, and my feet touched the floor. Not tonight, Gracey. Not tonight. And his footsteps across the hall, and into the living room. The armchair glumphed, as he collapsed into it. His jacket creaked as he leaned back and his arm moved to cover his eyes.
I wait, in the hall.
My mother called through, Do you want the gravy on top of your potato, or on the side? I ask if I can pour it instead of her doing it. Of course, she says. I smile, I like pouring it, I like watching them watch me, just in case I spill it. It's been a long time since I've spilt it, though.
In the drive, there's a scrunch of tyres over gravel. Every day as I come home from school, I walk up the furrows in the gravel, from where he drives in every night the same way. In the mornings, on the way out, we're usually running late and my mother says there's no time for games, so we just walk straight.
Face happy and sparkling at his special girls as he came home, through the door, sweeping me up, safe in his arms. Caught and lifted high above in his arms, near the ceiling, squealing in delight and my hair flying in my mouth as he rushed me through the softly scented room that my mother had carefully tended before the cleaners arrived. Always, she had said, be willing to do what it is you're going to pay someone else to do, or at least try it. This house is always tidy, and we pay someone to give it that extra sparkle, she said. I liked that, too. My house was lovely and clean and when I came through the door, I can smell the polish and bleach and all the other things that she used.
In the garden that day, and my daddy came bowling out of the house, almost tripping up. He was smiling and happy and I liked that look too. It's going to be the best thing in the world. Everyone in the world is going to want one, or two even. And I smiled, because my daddy was changing the world. And that means i've got all the more time to spend with my Gracey Elizabeth, doesn't it? She said, tickling me, and I squealed in delight again.
I remember the change in him, but not when it started. Less a switch and more a gradual slip, sliding away from where he used to be, as my father went from a man happily enamoured by his passions to someone else, someone consumed and devoured.
There was a lot less squealing, now. I was swept up and away and round in a circle less, and less and less. They're saying that they already did it, that they did it first. And that mine is just an improvement on an existing process. But how can it be, how can it be? Everything, corroding so, so early. And my father coming back in later in the evening, shoulders hunched and head down, smiling with his mouth, and then not even with that. They're saying that I need to just leave it, that they've so much time and money and whatever else, that there's no... ust no way that I can argue with them, even if I'm right. You are right. I know. But I've been told so much that I'm not now that I'm not even sure that I am any more. I just don't know, I just don't know.
Ten more years of this, I'm sure that it would have been fine, but he couldn't see, we couldn't make him believe, my mother couldn't make him believe. And the day I decided I was going to surprise him and make him, actually make him, damnit, remember and believe and spin me round and he'd remember and everything would be OK. That look would fall from his face, and everything would be. Not any kind of description, everything would just be, again.
Rushing towards the door with my arms outstretched towards him and Daddy, you're home, give me an aerrrrrroplane, and practically throwing myself at him, and he caught me. I could feel the muscles in his arms holding me, perfectly still, off the floor, everything in the world perfectly still for just a moment.
And then everything started moving again, and my feet touched the floor. Not tonight, Gracey. Not tonight. And his footsteps across the hall, and into the living room. The armchair glumphed, as he collapsed into it. His jacket creaked as he leaned back and his arm moved to cover his eyes.
I wait, in the hall.
Tuesday 18 May 2010
Elizabeth
Smash. Glass tumbles. Spinning through the air, end on end, the shards arc away, glittering and flitting and flying through the early spring light coming through the main windows. The tinkle and patter as it lands is a contrast to the brutal sound of the pane smashing and breaking, en route to violation.
Deep breath. Push down. Pull the arms back. The wave of nausea rising up like a tree growing through me in fast forward, a hundred years of growth in a few seconds. The french doors rattle backwards against the frame as I lean back and instinctively try and extricate myself. I fight the natural urge and try and force myself to relax. I can feel the blood in my temple. Glass tumbles through the air. The house is quiet, one of those rare occasions I'm left to my own devices. Probably for the best if I'm honest. If my mother only knew. Well. Now that I even think about it, she probably does, they always do. But they choose not to. Selective deafness and mis-thinking is a common factor in our family. None of the things I've said or done can possibly be true, so they choose to ignore it.
Force myself to relax and push down again. I should have used the floor bolts to stop the doors moving about. Well, maybe next time. The ridiculousness of the thought made me laugh, even now. Around my feet, the blood pooled, seeping into the carpet, warm and slippery. It sluiced down the partial pane and onto the frame, dripped and flowed unevenly from there, some of it finding its way back onto the frames below, coating them as well. It's surprisingly sunny today, a rare piece of azure in the sky instead of the usual slate grey. Doesn't help my finality any though. [here I could exert myself, my final power, a final act.]
My head lolled forward as I saw the first of the black patches cross my vision. Had to stay upright, till I went properly. I knew that when I fell while my hands were still grasping for the world on the other side of the glass that the wood and glass would shatter more, ripping and tearing at what was left of my arms. I feel my stomach pulling in on itself at the very thought. Tendons would shred, muscle would divorce from bone, ligaments shorn. The more thoroughly I blacked out the less likely that the final coup de grace as I went forward through the rest of the glass would wake me up. The benefits of forward planning; and bitter experience.
It's
not
likeillrem
with a jerk I came back from the semi conscious tilt. My breath inhaled sharply and chillingly through lips as the glass in my forearm bit in unexpectedly.
“Elizabeth? What are you...”
An inrush of wind and dust and leaves as my mother rushes in, dropping the shopping bags. I her the eggs crack as they land. She'll be mad at me for that later, ifI
My eyes open again I feel hands, arms under mine, supporting the weight, trying to lift me off the glass that's jutting into my arm like an iceberg, the rest of the doorframe under the water, it certainly looks that way nowflooringfloodingandflyinginblackandwhiteand
“Oh my god, please, please hurry. My baby girl, my Elizabeth, my...”
My eyes open again. The ceiling rose is dirty. I wince at the fabric biting into my arms below the elbow. My eyes close.
My eyes open again. And again and again. And now it's the height of summer, the day before my 18th, and I lay here in the pristine hospital bed, the nurses fussing brusquely around me. They know why I was here. The severed tendons and brutalised muscles in my arms are, truly, honestly the least of that girls problems, I don't know why she did it, poor thing, I mean look at her, I wish I looked like her, how can a girl who looks like that, cheer up darling, if I looked like you I wouldn't have a care in the world, smile from that pretty face there we go but you should let it reach your eyes once in a while fuckofffuckofffuckfoffyoudontyou'venevereventried to as if that was the only thing that mattered, that they could never understand, my inability, my failure, my fucking bitter, bile spitting failure, to bring something, anything, that burned with the fire of the new, that would scorch the sky and tame the earth because it was fresh in a way that made people's heads spin and minds reel. I sighed again and slept.
My eyes open again. And again and again and again. And now it's more white sheets and institutional green walls, and the physiotherapist holding me under the arm, just less than the barest amount to keep me standing upright and mobile, coaxing and willing and hoping that my wasted muscles, between the malnutrition and time in the bed being turned and turned and turned by well meaning but lost, hopeless, awful people, my legs are unhappy at best and wilfully disobediant and thin and beautiful at worst. And falling less than an arm's length from the bar, and feeling it as I fall as though in slow motion that I know my frail, still tender arms aren't going to catch me, and they're out and they're in front but they're never going to hold
and
My eyes open again, and even from my bed, I can see the blink, blink, blink and flicker of the lights in the city from our house, this creaking pile atop the hill north of the city. We're safe here now. Safer now there's less glass. And don't think I don't see that the kitchen drawer locks, mother. As if I'd resort to that depth of cliché. You don't understand it, you never have. And even that's a cliché, and you don't even get that I know it, that's one of the bits that hurts and bites and catches in my throat overthedinnertableandpolitesopolitedontmentionthatletsskirtarounditconversation the most. It must be late in the night, or very early in the morning. I don't quite get when it switches from being one to the other, they flow uncomfortably into each other in a way that makes me uneasy. Jostling and juggling between one and the other, we're always in transition always moving from one state to each other and people say that it's not the journey but the destination or maybe it's the other way around, but I think it has to be both, you can't have a good journey if you're on your way to die, and we are all, all, every one of us on our way to die, we just have to try and line up everything in between. Delineate, deter from ambiguity, much preferred. Outside though, there's a bird who's singing, something cheerful about the need to feed his family. Ambiguity is probably better considered when you don't need to worry quite so fucking much about where your next meal is coming from. The glow over the back of the horizon tells me that the sun will be coming up soon, and I will face another day.
Consequence, follows action, regardless of intention, and by any intentions and rhyme or reason I should not have been here. I should not have been able to lift, and drink from, and caress the cold stem of, my breath condensing against the side of, that glass that ended up in the river, spilled any unhappy, and empty, no longer half full or half empty just a thing, an empty vessel.
`
Ever since I was born, or at least since I stopped being a solpisist, I started to corrode. I might start retreating back into that, maybe I already have. How would I even know? But I suspect, strongly suspect, and it burns, and hurts a little every time I think it, that no-one else feels like this. No-one, in the history of the world, in hundreds and thousands of millions of people, has ever felt this way. How vain.
Every day I decay a little, and with each passing minute and second and hour, another slice, slice, slice of my life, my existence, my whole is lopped off. We call this living, and we do it because we must. There is more than intent, more than just being, and more than just living. That's what the others could never understand, that's why we fought bitterly, tears and hoarse throats, drained and empty, hollowing inside out. The road to hell is, as they say, paved with good intentions, and that's why well meaning actions that result in nothing – well it's nothing short of death. Bad intent, the worst intent that you have in your darkest, bitterest moments, that results in beauty is far beyond death, because the dissonance is too great for us to handle, to comprehend. Now I realise, as the seconds and minutes and hours are shaved away that they lack a something the others call life, experience, living.
Through the window, I should have shut the curtains before retreating to bed last night, every night, I do it and every morning I wake before dawn, even in the grey wasteland we call weather, before dawn and wonder why I didn't do it. But through the window, and through the haze, the sun is audaciously starting to creep over the horizon off to the side of the city. Soon light will stream into windows, and people all over the place will blink, and yawn, and throw off their comforters and comforts and push themselves out into the world for another harsh day. Protecting themselves by insulating themselves from feeling, coating the wire. Inert glassware to carry the vicious acids that form our day to day lives. Or theirs. I'm not sure it's mine anymore, I think I threw all that away when I
glass tumbled
My eyes open again. It's the last big weekend before the weather turns and our clothes turn longer and warmer and hide our bare flesh away from prying, inquisitive eyes. The end of the century, it feels like. Eight weeks out of that bed, and my legs are still unsteady, far unsteadier than my mind is now, for once. They betray me and wobble and wave, and they're not helped by this deck that holds prying, inquisitive eyes. Eyes who stand on the other side of the bar on the boat on the river in the city that barely seems to sleep and never really seems to wake up and don't even look abashed as they stare at my arms, for once not hidden by sleeves or some other tailor's trick of gauze, and linen and art, and doesn't she look so elegant? Clumsily covered with makeup, concealer misnamed, my exposed upper limbs are a call to abuse, none of it original, none of it new, and none of it knew, not really, what you go through to get there, unless I'd been in some terrible vehicular accident, and even at that it was rude to make assumptions and ruder to point and look and everything else, and even ruder to, oh fuck it. I threw the drink, glass and all over the rail, it splashing gently, can't even tell if it smashed, probably from this height above the water. Looking, I couldn't see the glass, but I could see, just about dispersed the bloodstain it had left in the water, before the holy baptismal of the river washed it away, diluted and eventually draining away into the ocean. A snigger from the eyes on the other side of the bar. I put my weight on the ball of my foot and feel my thighs tremor as they decide whether or not they're willing to take this kind of abuse and they decide that they do for this time maybe just this time, and let the world rotate around me, and walk off the boat, stupid boat on the river. I sigh. I'll sleep later.
If it has to be, then our – my – entire purpose has to be, as we corrode and crumble into nothingness every day, that we make something new. All of my intentions must be devoted to that end or we are all for nought, regardless of what the others, the faceless, and the leader may do to us. Even under the heaviest burden of oppression and influence we can still create that something new, something special, the original from which all others are derived. That, and only that can give the hours and seconds and minutes value, and meaning, and purpose.
I sigh. For now, I sleep.
Deep breath. Push down. Pull the arms back. The wave of nausea rising up like a tree growing through me in fast forward, a hundred years of growth in a few seconds. The french doors rattle backwards against the frame as I lean back and instinctively try and extricate myself. I fight the natural urge and try and force myself to relax. I can feel the blood in my temple. Glass tumbles through the air. The house is quiet, one of those rare occasions I'm left to my own devices. Probably for the best if I'm honest. If my mother only knew. Well. Now that I even think about it, she probably does, they always do. But they choose not to. Selective deafness and mis-thinking is a common factor in our family. None of the things I've said or done can possibly be true, so they choose to ignore it.
Force myself to relax and push down again. I should have used the floor bolts to stop the doors moving about. Well, maybe next time. The ridiculousness of the thought made me laugh, even now. Around my feet, the blood pooled, seeping into the carpet, warm and slippery. It sluiced down the partial pane and onto the frame, dripped and flowed unevenly from there, some of it finding its way back onto the frames below, coating them as well. It's surprisingly sunny today, a rare piece of azure in the sky instead of the usual slate grey. Doesn't help my finality any though. [here I could exert myself, my final power, a final act.]
My head lolled forward as I saw the first of the black patches cross my vision. Had to stay upright, till I went properly. I knew that when I fell while my hands were still grasping for the world on the other side of the glass that the wood and glass would shatter more, ripping and tearing at what was left of my arms. I feel my stomach pulling in on itself at the very thought. Tendons would shred, muscle would divorce from bone, ligaments shorn. The more thoroughly I blacked out the less likely that the final coup de grace as I went forward through the rest of the glass would wake me up. The benefits of forward planning; and bitter experience.
It's
not
likeillrem
with a jerk I came back from the semi conscious tilt. My breath inhaled sharply and chillingly through lips as the glass in my forearm bit in unexpectedly.
“Elizabeth? What are you...”
An inrush of wind and dust and leaves as my mother rushes in, dropping the shopping bags. I her the eggs crack as they land. She'll be mad at me for that later, ifI
My eyes open again I feel hands, arms under mine, supporting the weight, trying to lift me off the glass that's jutting into my arm like an iceberg, the rest of the doorframe under the water, it certainly looks that way nowflooringfloodingandflyinginblackandwhiteand
“Oh my god, please, please hurry. My baby girl, my Elizabeth, my...”
My eyes open again. The ceiling rose is dirty. I wince at the fabric biting into my arms below the elbow. My eyes close.
My eyes open again. And again and again. And now it's the height of summer, the day before my 18th, and I lay here in the pristine hospital bed, the nurses fussing brusquely around me. They know why I was here. The severed tendons and brutalised muscles in my arms are, truly, honestly the least of that girls problems, I don't know why she did it, poor thing, I mean look at her, I wish I looked like her, how can a girl who looks like that, cheer up darling, if I looked like you I wouldn't have a care in the world, smile from that pretty face there we go but you should let it reach your eyes once in a while fuckofffuckofffuckfoffyoudontyou'venevereventried to as if that was the only thing that mattered, that they could never understand, my inability, my failure, my fucking bitter, bile spitting failure, to bring something, anything, that burned with the fire of the new, that would scorch the sky and tame the earth because it was fresh in a way that made people's heads spin and minds reel. I sighed again and slept.
My eyes open again. And again and again and again. And now it's more white sheets and institutional green walls, and the physiotherapist holding me under the arm, just less than the barest amount to keep me standing upright and mobile, coaxing and willing and hoping that my wasted muscles, between the malnutrition and time in the bed being turned and turned and turned by well meaning but lost, hopeless, awful people, my legs are unhappy at best and wilfully disobediant and thin and beautiful at worst. And falling less than an arm's length from the bar, and feeling it as I fall as though in slow motion that I know my frail, still tender arms aren't going to catch me, and they're out and they're in front but they're never going to hold
and
My eyes open again, and even from my bed, I can see the blink, blink, blink and flicker of the lights in the city from our house, this creaking pile atop the hill north of the city. We're safe here now. Safer now there's less glass. And don't think I don't see that the kitchen drawer locks, mother. As if I'd resort to that depth of cliché. You don't understand it, you never have. And even that's a cliché, and you don't even get that I know it, that's one of the bits that hurts and bites and catches in my throat overthedinnertableandpolitesopolitedontmentionthatletsskirtarounditconversation the most. It must be late in the night, or very early in the morning. I don't quite get when it switches from being one to the other, they flow uncomfortably into each other in a way that makes me uneasy. Jostling and juggling between one and the other, we're always in transition always moving from one state to each other and people say that it's not the journey but the destination or maybe it's the other way around, but I think it has to be both, you can't have a good journey if you're on your way to die, and we are all, all, every one of us on our way to die, we just have to try and line up everything in between. Delineate, deter from ambiguity, much preferred. Outside though, there's a bird who's singing, something cheerful about the need to feed his family. Ambiguity is probably better considered when you don't need to worry quite so fucking much about where your next meal is coming from. The glow over the back of the horizon tells me that the sun will be coming up soon, and I will face another day.
Consequence, follows action, regardless of intention, and by any intentions and rhyme or reason I should not have been here. I should not have been able to lift, and drink from, and caress the cold stem of, my breath condensing against the side of, that glass that ended up in the river, spilled any unhappy, and empty, no longer half full or half empty just a thing, an empty vessel.
`
Ever since I was born, or at least since I stopped being a solpisist, I started to corrode. I might start retreating back into that, maybe I already have. How would I even know? But I suspect, strongly suspect, and it burns, and hurts a little every time I think it, that no-one else feels like this. No-one, in the history of the world, in hundreds and thousands of millions of people, has ever felt this way. How vain.
Every day I decay a little, and with each passing minute and second and hour, another slice, slice, slice of my life, my existence, my whole is lopped off. We call this living, and we do it because we must. There is more than intent, more than just being, and more than just living. That's what the others could never understand, that's why we fought bitterly, tears and hoarse throats, drained and empty, hollowing inside out. The road to hell is, as they say, paved with good intentions, and that's why well meaning actions that result in nothing – well it's nothing short of death. Bad intent, the worst intent that you have in your darkest, bitterest moments, that results in beauty is far beyond death, because the dissonance is too great for us to handle, to comprehend. Now I realise, as the seconds and minutes and hours are shaved away that they lack a something the others call life, experience, living.
Through the window, I should have shut the curtains before retreating to bed last night, every night, I do it and every morning I wake before dawn, even in the grey wasteland we call weather, before dawn and wonder why I didn't do it. But through the window, and through the haze, the sun is audaciously starting to creep over the horizon off to the side of the city. Soon light will stream into windows, and people all over the place will blink, and yawn, and throw off their comforters and comforts and push themselves out into the world for another harsh day. Protecting themselves by insulating themselves from feeling, coating the wire. Inert glassware to carry the vicious acids that form our day to day lives. Or theirs. I'm not sure it's mine anymore, I think I threw all that away when I
glass tumbled
My eyes open again. It's the last big weekend before the weather turns and our clothes turn longer and warmer and hide our bare flesh away from prying, inquisitive eyes. The end of the century, it feels like. Eight weeks out of that bed, and my legs are still unsteady, far unsteadier than my mind is now, for once. They betray me and wobble and wave, and they're not helped by this deck that holds prying, inquisitive eyes. Eyes who stand on the other side of the bar on the boat on the river in the city that barely seems to sleep and never really seems to wake up and don't even look abashed as they stare at my arms, for once not hidden by sleeves or some other tailor's trick of gauze, and linen and art, and doesn't she look so elegant? Clumsily covered with makeup, concealer misnamed, my exposed upper limbs are a call to abuse, none of it original, none of it new, and none of it knew, not really, what you go through to get there, unless I'd been in some terrible vehicular accident, and even at that it was rude to make assumptions and ruder to point and look and everything else, and even ruder to, oh fuck it. I threw the drink, glass and all over the rail, it splashing gently, can't even tell if it smashed, probably from this height above the water. Looking, I couldn't see the glass, but I could see, just about dispersed the bloodstain it had left in the water, before the holy baptismal of the river washed it away, diluted and eventually draining away into the ocean. A snigger from the eyes on the other side of the bar. I put my weight on the ball of my foot and feel my thighs tremor as they decide whether or not they're willing to take this kind of abuse and they decide that they do for this time maybe just this time, and let the world rotate around me, and walk off the boat, stupid boat on the river. I sigh. I'll sleep later.
If it has to be, then our – my – entire purpose has to be, as we corrode and crumble into nothingness every day, that we make something new. All of my intentions must be devoted to that end or we are all for nought, regardless of what the others, the faceless, and the leader may do to us. Even under the heaviest burden of oppression and influence we can still create that something new, something special, the original from which all others are derived. That, and only that can give the hours and seconds and minutes value, and meaning, and purpose.
I sigh. For now, I sleep.
Sunday 18 April 2010
The danger of binarism.
Behind me, this time, are the barely massed arrays of bodies and faces and minds who object. All of those who made the choice that they weren't. And in pockets and bags and jackets and hoods, there are surprises and stories and anger incarnate.
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