in aleppo
Returning from time away to your city, a sense of alienation returns. There is cricket on the radio, as there always will be; my tuna and sweetcorn pitta is as idiosyncratic as ever; last night I foisted my potato salad on an unknowing world. Things seem the same but they don’t feel the same.
It’s been a long time now since they did. I live with a sense of alienation from those things which for a while seemed a part of me. That alienation is currently clearly definable, and there seems little reason why it should change with any degree of imminence. The architecture of my world was stripped away and cannot be rebuilt in a rush.
Why did this happen? Why does someone make choices that lead to this? Perhaps they are wilfully destructive. Perhaps they are casual. Perhaps it is something else. It is almost a year now since last Summer. When this alienation acquired a forced shape; longer since it took an occult shape. But an event is not the creation of a state; it is the culmination of a process. The event is one of the many possible events that could occur; it is channelled and patterned by the days, months, years, maybe even generations that have lead up to it. The event itself does not cause the alienation; it is but the manifestation of that sense of self.
And then it too, the event, becomes looped into the process which was at work, and the fall-out and the management and the negotiation – the post – seems a mirror of that which lead to it – the pre.
In Othello, Iago stays silent at the end. He offers no defence of himself. He is the wrongdoer, his guilt seems transparent. So much so that it’s easy to forget that within this tragedy, he has killed no-one, whilst the hero has throttled Desdemona.
Society puts down markers and we are measured within those markers. Society, the weight of history, makes voices shrill, and casts events in stone. It belongs to the powerful, in every sense. It has as little regard for the truth as a python for its prey.
It’s been a long time now since they did. I live with a sense of alienation from those things which for a while seemed a part of me. That alienation is currently clearly definable, and there seems little reason why it should change with any degree of imminence. The architecture of my world was stripped away and cannot be rebuilt in a rush.
Why did this happen? Why does someone make choices that lead to this? Perhaps they are wilfully destructive. Perhaps they are casual. Perhaps it is something else. It is almost a year now since last Summer. When this alienation acquired a forced shape; longer since it took an occult shape. But an event is not the creation of a state; it is the culmination of a process. The event is one of the many possible events that could occur; it is channelled and patterned by the days, months, years, maybe even generations that have lead up to it. The event itself does not cause the alienation; it is but the manifestation of that sense of self.
And then it too, the event, becomes looped into the process which was at work, and the fall-out and the management and the negotiation – the post – seems a mirror of that which lead to it – the pre.
In Othello, Iago stays silent at the end. He offers no defence of himself. He is the wrongdoer, his guilt seems transparent. So much so that it’s easy to forget that within this tragedy, he has killed no-one, whilst the hero has throttled Desdemona.
Society puts down markers and we are measured within those markers. Society, the weight of history, makes voices shrill, and casts events in stone. It belongs to the powerful, in every sense. It has as little regard for the truth as a python for its prey.
posted by maldoror at 15:47
2 Comments:
"personal responsibility"
"absolutely"
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