Space
This crazy dude called Jeremy Bentham designed the ultimate prison, octagonal in shape, with a tower in a courtyard in the centre. Each little cell was visible from the tower, so that the inmates had no privacy, no individuality and no choice. This was ultimate control. Bentham went so far as to decide a heating system for the prison using the inmates’ urine; cheapest form of most efficient control, apparently.
But he didn’t account for the laziness of the guards in the tower. And the fact that the establishment considered itself understaffed. Eventually, they came up with the idea of putting a bright 360 degree light in the tower so that it would seem to the prisoners that they were under constant watch, whether or not the sentry was indeed on duty. The eye that never sleeps... (barad dur anyone?) Can’t you just see the sometime baddie cowering in his cell, shrinking from the bright flame, Gollum Gollum, wishing that it would go way, but it never does? So much pain and terror, from an empty room in a tall tower.
Perhaps the socio-political discourses about post-modernism are getting at the same thing. There’s an empty seat of power. The seat where the state used to be, the seat where one capitalist will never be allowed by his fellow capitalists to reign. What are we afraid of and who are we fighting. There’s too much confusion for anyone to notice just yet, but I think there’s no-one in control anymore. Or too many people and things close to where the seat is, but not quite there.
Whom do we look to then in times of trouble? (Mother Mary doesn’t come to me, sadly...)
Faith is something we need, pretty much all the time. For some lucky ones, faith and therefore strength, comes from inside. But some others have an empty seat of faith inside them as well! I worry about those.
There’s a prayer embedded in my head that comes out in times of need. I needed that prayer today and as I repeated it, like a parrot, I noticed that I was bowing before a big empty spot in my bookshelf. Missed the books, missed the mirror, missed my make up, (the divine objects of today’s cosmetic religion, in fact) and found an empty place on a shelf. Maybe I have no one to worship to. Or maybe, subconsciously, I was bowing before her that I always bow to, always have, since I was a child of two, told to admire a pretty face made of earth and painted, while drums beat around my ears and sweet smelling smoke coats my lungs. The smell of the smoke never leaves me; I can summon it up at a moment’s notice.
Speaking of faith, we had a nice Diwali set up today. Private, God-addressed thoughts and practices aside, it went something like this -
But he didn’t account for the laziness of the guards in the tower. And the fact that the establishment considered itself understaffed. Eventually, they came up with the idea of putting a bright 360 degree light in the tower so that it would seem to the prisoners that they were under constant watch, whether or not the sentry was indeed on duty. The eye that never sleeps... (barad dur anyone?) Can’t you just see the sometime baddie cowering in his cell, shrinking from the bright flame, Gollum Gollum, wishing that it would go way, but it never does? So much pain and terror, from an empty room in a tall tower.
Perhaps the socio-political discourses about post-modernism are getting at the same thing. There’s an empty seat of power. The seat where the state used to be, the seat where one capitalist will never be allowed by his fellow capitalists to reign. What are we afraid of and who are we fighting. There’s too much confusion for anyone to notice just yet, but I think there’s no-one in control anymore. Or too many people and things close to where the seat is, but not quite there.
Whom do we look to then in times of trouble? (Mother Mary doesn’t come to me, sadly...)
Faith is something we need, pretty much all the time. For some lucky ones, faith and therefore strength, comes from inside. But some others have an empty seat of faith inside them as well! I worry about those.
There’s a prayer embedded in my head that comes out in times of need. I needed that prayer today and as I repeated it, like a parrot, I noticed that I was bowing before a big empty spot in my bookshelf. Missed the books, missed the mirror, missed my make up, (the divine objects of today’s cosmetic religion, in fact) and found an empty place on a shelf. Maybe I have no one to worship to. Or maybe, subconsciously, I was bowing before her that I always bow to, always have, since I was a child of two, told to admire a pretty face made of earth and painted, while drums beat around my ears and sweet smelling smoke coats my lungs. The smell of the smoke never leaves me; I can summon it up at a moment’s notice.
Speaking of faith, we had a nice Diwali set up today. Private, God-addressed thoughts and practices aside, it went something like this -
Comments
and where was all this text hiding all these years?
actually, i am assuming you weren't.. i never did ask if you were?
were you?
(the only other sample of your writing was that article that i read)
thangyou inky
thangyou harry