Total Victory
05-05-2005, 02:12
This is something I wrote for my lit. class. Just some creative writing. Anywho, I want to see what people think of my writing... because... I do... really... that's about it. I'd go on about what I think of this, but (a) I don't want to corrupt your opinions with my own and (b) I haven't read this since I wrote it.
Anyone who was hoping for theological discussion or religious debate... sorry... I do other things too.
Thus Spake We
We have always known, and will always know, that white is the most oppressive color. We have always known, and will always know, that I is a white letter. I – the letter of the emperor and despot, the letter of the monarch and the crown of the monarch, the letter of people when each person was a monarch. Those ridiculous savages… they thought themselves so enlightened and yet they were still but an extension of the Dark Ages. They might well have still been riding horses in chain mail, sword swinging — sword singing! — hotly contesting with blood every grain of sand and blade of grass that they thought they might have a right to. Did they not really do this? In their own way, did these individual, infinitesimal monarchs not strike at each other and feud over petty things like honor?
Long dead now, that oppressive, white I, overthrown by the freedom of We. The reformers of the Late Dark Ages never sought to expand democracy beneath the level of the nation-state. But We have sought out and democratized the man-state and the woman-state and the child-state. Each person is not an inseparable collection of flesh, sinew, and synapse, but a city of base individuals whose own voices must be heard to achieve a consensus of the body-politic which the body-physical may act upon.
The noise of Our internal senate quiets, as another Republic approaches. A short man-state – its flesh-features a mélange, as if drawn from many sources – a democracy on the outside as well as the inside. It is so… invigorating to see such a wonder as that, but We know this Republic, We know it is not worthy of such a glory. Why not Us? Why are We not blessed with the thin mouth, the crimson nose on the porcelain-pale face, the eyes set equal in height but not size? Why cannot Our countenance reflect the diversity of Our soul? This Republic is so… undeserving.
“Hail, Republic,” he greets Us. No… he is the wrong word, in this time of supreme democracy, We should say They, but this one… he is a he, a sick, deceiving he with the face of a They… his white face. Oppressive white.
Here is the glory of this man-state, of the individual Republic: while one of us is off on his own, thinking this about Our fellow Republic, the remainder are still able to issue back a polite greeting. How was it that the savages did this in the Dark Ages in their individual kingdoms, with but a single decision-maker to handle all the tasks of existence? Think of it: that one monarch had to be a veritable acrobat, issuing orders to inhale and exhale, to walk, to think, to talk to the other kingdoms – nay, worse, I-dom’s – and always refusing the help of a single other, keeping them sunk in the white mud of the subconscious. Perhaps that is why their states died so young – so soon worn out by their internal loneliness that their flames would be snuffed at seven decades, earlier perhaps if another person-state acted upon a feud and struck it down.
Yet this one here… this should-be Republic… We know he is more that ancient monarchic person-state than a modern We-dom. “Are you well?” he says.
We are caught dumbfounded. We feel well…
“You look distracted,” he says.
Distracted? Ah! The senate must have taken up that whole conversation. Sometimes the inner ones can become so embroiled in a discussion they forget their duties. We issue an apology.
“Oh, it is understandable,” he says, mocking Us with his perfectly uneven lips, undeserved lips on a white face.
“Yes, sometimes we get carried away in our discussions.”
“Of course, understandable,” he says, but We know for him it is not understandable, because he cannot understand, because he is one of those
“Savage, Dark Age monarchs!”
His eyes fill with fire, his lips frown. How is it that a monarch can frown with his mouth and smile with his eyes? His cold, white eyes — cold, fiery white eyes — duplicity from one? And what voice was that that tore from our body without the consent of the many? Has the charismatic virus of the despot somehow crossed the silky medium of air and worked its contagion upon me? Us! Us! Damn that me: We are an Us! We can feel his sickness shadowing us, infecting us, desecrating…
“That’s right: savage monarchs!” His eyes betray alarm now, his face is in that contemptible, unified monarchic mode it rightly deserves, “You!” We say, “You…”
“You look ill.”
“Ill. Yes. Violently ill, like the savage kings and queens and you!” We feel our flesh quivering, as if at any minute the minute identities within could dissolve it and forge their own bodies. One mind to a body? Anarchy or monarchy… neither pleasant. Many minds, one body, many minds, one body… We remember.
That face, that blaspheming democracy of a face… We smash it — no, We cannot deceive ourselves — I smash it with a fist. I am like an ancient king, exulting in the smell of blood as I tower over the butchered body of my enemy. Inside me, the walls of the senate are shattered, like glass, like so much reflecting glass. The shards fall to the floor.
The people I saw… the We I thought was an Us, they were me, simply me in the reflections of the glass, from a different angle I saw a different person but all were me. And now, the shards settle to the floor, as the bloodied face of the other monarch… bless the other monarch who had the courage to ignore the democracy of his features and accept the yoke of the despot upon himself! He smears away the scarlet streaks and looks hatefully into my eyes… with the acrobatic skill of those monarchs, the hate is love as well.
We are two of us now, two monarchs, initiating the blood feud that shatters the illusion of many. And I — I am alone.
Anyone who was hoping for theological discussion or religious debate... sorry... I do other things too.
Thus Spake We
We have always known, and will always know, that white is the most oppressive color. We have always known, and will always know, that I is a white letter. I – the letter of the emperor and despot, the letter of the monarch and the crown of the monarch, the letter of people when each person was a monarch. Those ridiculous savages… they thought themselves so enlightened and yet they were still but an extension of the Dark Ages. They might well have still been riding horses in chain mail, sword swinging — sword singing! — hotly contesting with blood every grain of sand and blade of grass that they thought they might have a right to. Did they not really do this? In their own way, did these individual, infinitesimal monarchs not strike at each other and feud over petty things like honor?
Long dead now, that oppressive, white I, overthrown by the freedom of We. The reformers of the Late Dark Ages never sought to expand democracy beneath the level of the nation-state. But We have sought out and democratized the man-state and the woman-state and the child-state. Each person is not an inseparable collection of flesh, sinew, and synapse, but a city of base individuals whose own voices must be heard to achieve a consensus of the body-politic which the body-physical may act upon.
The noise of Our internal senate quiets, as another Republic approaches. A short man-state – its flesh-features a mélange, as if drawn from many sources – a democracy on the outside as well as the inside. It is so… invigorating to see such a wonder as that, but We know this Republic, We know it is not worthy of such a glory. Why not Us? Why are We not blessed with the thin mouth, the crimson nose on the porcelain-pale face, the eyes set equal in height but not size? Why cannot Our countenance reflect the diversity of Our soul? This Republic is so… undeserving.
“Hail, Republic,” he greets Us. No… he is the wrong word, in this time of supreme democracy, We should say They, but this one… he is a he, a sick, deceiving he with the face of a They… his white face. Oppressive white.
Here is the glory of this man-state, of the individual Republic: while one of us is off on his own, thinking this about Our fellow Republic, the remainder are still able to issue back a polite greeting. How was it that the savages did this in the Dark Ages in their individual kingdoms, with but a single decision-maker to handle all the tasks of existence? Think of it: that one monarch had to be a veritable acrobat, issuing orders to inhale and exhale, to walk, to think, to talk to the other kingdoms – nay, worse, I-dom’s – and always refusing the help of a single other, keeping them sunk in the white mud of the subconscious. Perhaps that is why their states died so young – so soon worn out by their internal loneliness that their flames would be snuffed at seven decades, earlier perhaps if another person-state acted upon a feud and struck it down.
Yet this one here… this should-be Republic… We know he is more that ancient monarchic person-state than a modern We-dom. “Are you well?” he says.
We are caught dumbfounded. We feel well…
“You look distracted,” he says.
Distracted? Ah! The senate must have taken up that whole conversation. Sometimes the inner ones can become so embroiled in a discussion they forget their duties. We issue an apology.
“Oh, it is understandable,” he says, mocking Us with his perfectly uneven lips, undeserved lips on a white face.
“Yes, sometimes we get carried away in our discussions.”
“Of course, understandable,” he says, but We know for him it is not understandable, because he cannot understand, because he is one of those
“Savage, Dark Age monarchs!”
His eyes fill with fire, his lips frown. How is it that a monarch can frown with his mouth and smile with his eyes? His cold, white eyes — cold, fiery white eyes — duplicity from one? And what voice was that that tore from our body without the consent of the many? Has the charismatic virus of the despot somehow crossed the silky medium of air and worked its contagion upon me? Us! Us! Damn that me: We are an Us! We can feel his sickness shadowing us, infecting us, desecrating…
“That’s right: savage monarchs!” His eyes betray alarm now, his face is in that contemptible, unified monarchic mode it rightly deserves, “You!” We say, “You…”
“You look ill.”
“Ill. Yes. Violently ill, like the savage kings and queens and you!” We feel our flesh quivering, as if at any minute the minute identities within could dissolve it and forge their own bodies. One mind to a body? Anarchy or monarchy… neither pleasant. Many minds, one body, many minds, one body… We remember.
That face, that blaspheming democracy of a face… We smash it — no, We cannot deceive ourselves — I smash it with a fist. I am like an ancient king, exulting in the smell of blood as I tower over the butchered body of my enemy. Inside me, the walls of the senate are shattered, like glass, like so much reflecting glass. The shards fall to the floor.
The people I saw… the We I thought was an Us, they were me, simply me in the reflections of the glass, from a different angle I saw a different person but all were me. And now, the shards settle to the floor, as the bloodied face of the other monarch… bless the other monarch who had the courage to ignore the democracy of his features and accept the yoke of the despot upon himself! He smears away the scarlet streaks and looks hatefully into my eyes… with the acrobatic skill of those monarchs, the hate is love as well.
We are two of us now, two monarchs, initiating the blood feud that shatters the illusion of many. And I — I am alone.