how beautiful the mountain!
It is a country where the patterns have been set down a long time ago. Besides, if you were to look at it from the sky you would be struck, nay overwhelmed, by the undulating riffs, the delicate ribbing, the repetitive flow of waves, the unbroken lines of force — all to be ascribed to incessant wind action. You could perhaps say this country has the smoothness and the symmetry of the inside of a much-used mouth. I am the suckhole, the chewing and the cud; whosoever partakes of me shall die and be delivered of death forever.
During the twentieth century there arose in some peripheral parts of the globe an obsession with democracy and human rights. Don’t bother to read the rest, it is of no importance. These notions reflected a general paucity of generative enterprise urbi et orbi. Of little import, but the pounding propounding was disruptive, being so flagrantly out of step with the hallowed interests and everyday practice of the state. The artificial only then makes sense when it enhances the nitty-gritty; heaven should be at least an echo-chamber or else best left alone as a queer leftover, an obsolete secret lost in the obscurantist mass mind of a bygone humanist age. Like the glass eye buried under the rubble of the pyramid of Cheops.
‘Happily dissolved,’ says the ruler of the country serving as environment for this story. ‘Orgasmed. Man is animal. Why hang fishes from the highvoltage poles? Man’s life is to war, extract, uncover, torture, exile to Orbi or orbit. To be maimed is to have achieved the distinction of service. We too have incantation, certainly, but it is to bolster the rhythm. And all of this, in the epoch of the neutron chip and fast food and instant sex, we do exceptionally well. The sphinxes will be clairvoyant, the sphincters eloquent.’ This the ruler repeats daily on Radio Truespeak. ‘Do I hear it mentioned that man is animal? Perfectly, pure consciousness. But purity, or awareness if you want to call it by its hidden name, is the matter of sifting. In other words of structured recognition, the beat of the trance. The other margin, that of hypocrisy and nonsense, dear beloved listeners, is traced by archaic make-believe veins of democracy. Freedom is always here, never and nowhere else or other. No ways!’ To conclude: ‘Are we happy to be rid of the poisoned mind? Yes! We never fool with farces et attrapes!’ (You know that the trouble with history is exactly no wind.)
In such a land ritual is of the utmost importance. The national emblem is the bee and munching is much appreciated. Breaking wind, however, is a fine art reserved for the nobility. ‘No amount of ability creates nobility’ is a popular wisdom often heard in these regions. And: ‘Almost all people have tits but very few have grown titles.’ A soft wind whispers sweet nothings down the corridors of the prison that I return to. It will take the keepers a long while to learn again that I am the important timer who should be neutralized by special dispensation. Our legal system, having to dress the surface, is of necessity arcane. We have a Minister of Police, a Minister of Justice and Related Matters, a Minister of Law and Order, a Minister of Security, a Minister of State Security, a Minister of Counter-terrorism and a Minister of Culture. The ruler has own Secretariat and then there is the State Council of Security. Rights and propaganda, presided by him, to run the show. Thereupon we have attorneys, lawyers, barristers, advocates, procurators, magistrates, justices of the peace, judges and diverse orderlies, clerks, officials and functionaries and flunkeys of the court delegated to search and fetch the filth.
The walls are painted an aubergine colour. It promotes a sentiment of bliss and recitation. In each cell there is a white-clad figure down on the well honed knees, chanting: I SHALL NOT DEVIATE I SHALL NOT DEVIATE I SHALL NOT DEVIATE. They have years ahead of them.
Sometimes the outside working population must revolt because it gives us the chance to air and recapitulate old grievances. The male workers will gather in front of the ruler’s palace early in the morning when a thin fog still shrouds the public places. The strikers are young: labour is a question of virility. We show our discontent in a quaint but effective way — we unbutton our private parts to all masturbate together. The catch is to have the cum shoot straight into the mouth of the I. There we are quietly bending our minds to the ritual, hunched over our shaking meats as if paying allegiance or humbly thanking the deity for the back-breaking work. It normally takes us two and a half minutes to complete the cycle because we are well constituted and broken in to synchronization. People straighten up, wipe their members, and speak to one another in husky voices. Some may clear their throats. The sun also rises.
But when you go to be helped out of this life it is always very cold. Executions take place under a bridge not far from the capital. Steps lead down to the sandy bed of the naked river. We cling to one another like a cluster of atoms. A typical quota will include a few greybeards, some loose-bellied mothers, two or three men strong and mature with well muscled forearms, and at least three children. The latter must be big enough to walk by themselves. It is expected of the candidate executees to dress up in disguises for the occasion. We have false noses and conical hats, and tears painted on our cheeks. One or two of the weaker ones will sport shaven heads and be wearing striped pyjamas. We are the farces et attrapes. And the terrible wind plunging with a howl down the sheer rockface of the mountainside. When we get to the bottom we all start dancing, Jew and Gentile and Animist, slowly at first and then progressively more gaily, repeating the same simple steps circling closer livelier clinging to partners changing hands grips around waists and buttocks closer the heavy sand faster happier to where the oiled gallows loom. On the bridge above us the wind will be fluttering the trouser legs of Graf v. Dood, the Observer of Proceedings. How beautiful the mountain!
remnants of my story
We live deep in the country where it takes a long time to fashion a phrase to perfection. It rains incessantly, strands of hair cling to our foreheads, our hands are painted with water, our legs are browned to the thighs with mud. The trees submit to the ongoing gossiping of uncountable wet tongues.
(Let me open brackets here because sometimes it can get worse: the heavens have been known to cede and to flood our distant land with gurglegitation. People then perch in the trees, like so many inarticulate words, wrapped in wet cloth or, I say, like disastrous flowers sprung from some wrong season; a bloated cow bobs along for all the world a dislocated upside-down M; faces swim by the window and the moon is monstrously multiplied. Indoors I find myself trying to force the huge metallic ants back into the broken earth, I even use a hose on them, a full-throated stream, and the Minister of Justice rushes in to scream at me that these are his agents for God’s sake man you are destroying my agents! I have my differences with the Law.)