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The thugs in the mirror
Wignall's WorldMark Wignall
Sunday, July 08, 2007
I've often wondered as I stand in front of a looking glass, Alice's or my own, if the me that I stare at as it watches the other me doing so is not something more than just the plainly obvious.
Even remotely possible, could it be that what is seen as 'reflection' is really the object generating the image, which is the me that I imagine myself to be? I am a fake, I may claim, if I allow myself that trip even though the form, from end to end, implores me to familiarity and convinces me that I am directing the script.
Inside the unlimited 'confines' of a mirror could lie a parallel world bringing confusion to our deepest desire towards understanding our search for peace, good health, wealth and community. We ask, could civility exist on one side while strife rips apart the other? No, we say, because a self, a village, a nation well-practised in fostering its own degradation, cannot breed anything but the reflection of its nasty self.
A thing, a form, then a finely defined mass of body, thought and purpose, if intent on creating a personality, then citizens, then towns and cities and a noble dream handed to leaders to guide those very citizens towards the truest goal of 'society' cannot
reflect itself as a blot, or as a thing misshapen and indelibly bent. Instead it must impel its reflection towards pride and the achievement of greatness.
If in one definite, infinitesimal moment of time, repeated many times, the ones holding true to building this nation were given sway, would that not suggest that in this most parallel of worlds the manifestation of itself would paint the mirror with an end to the fear and the uncertainties held that thugs are upon us? And if indeed thugs, brigands, highwaymen and angels of light shrouded in the bleak cloak of despair should overcome us and hold us as slaves over too long a time, would we be able to tell our children, then grown and lied to, that our eyes were blinded and we saw it in the mirror as the beginning of our salvation?
If thugs held sway, how would we know? Would they exist in the reflection or on 'our' side, the one to which we bring claims of reality? And could we know them by their deeds? What is the mark on them that would shine in the mirror and assail our eyes?
The thugs would walk upright but the soles of their feet would be padded because as they walk by night throughout the villages and the towns and slither through our windows and every crack as we sleep, they desire silence in their lust for our bread, our breath and our being.
The thugs began as angels in our minds as we gave them the right, implicitly at first, to think for us, to act for us. Then we brought them to the town square and greeted them with our love, our undying trust and a cry on our lips for more of their name.
So overwhelmed were we that we immersed all of ourselves in what we saw as magic as we slowly lost ourselves. They claimed us and made themselves us as they paraded in our skin and claimed one with us. We gave them the villages, the town square, the city and all of its people and they said, 'All is well. Give us more and we will, we will give you more'.
We co-opted other cities and we gave it to them. We stole the future of our children, ripped it from their soft, trusting, yielding hands and, along with our patrimony, we gave the lot to the thugs. As if that was not enough to fill the guts of the ravenous beasts, we drew a line around the outermost points of the country and handed it all to them. At that stage the thugs looked on and said, 'The fools desire more.
Let us take them to the brink of their own demise. Let us loosen a rampage on them. Let us loot now, tonight, tomorrow! Let us face the foolishly innocent, stare them in the face and tear the pockets from their garments, like the docile sheep they are. Now, now, let us salivate in this rampage because we know not how much longer it will be ours to rape'.
On one side of the mirror, real or reflected, the thugs have sat at tables with men from afar and they have balked at our future as, on our behalf, they have pocketed precious stones. Eight stones are signed to, but 10 are collected. Two are collected and placed in the vaults of the land of the men who travelled from afar. The thugs loot us, they wring the blood from our shrunken arms and suck what little is left from our necks as our hearts are bled dry.
The thugs place their friends, many of them, in high places, and in a frenzy, they feed like vultures on a human dehydrated of the water of life; fallen but doomed to feel that conquering beak poking into flesh, into the last breath of life. They tear at the flesh relentlessly and still they smile for the lights and the mirror and the reflection and the fools which gave them endless hunger.
Learned men and women have been used by the thugs to act as ciphers for their misdeeds. They have sat in council, have gazed at the mirror and found us asleep. So they raided, looted and then dressed it up in tinsel and painted words on it to quell our fears.
Then they spoke the words and we looked at the reflection, then ourselves, and became confounded because the words spun around us and made us dizzy. Light of head, we gave to them the right to convince us why the watchman should watch himself, or herself.
Thugs, being thugs will always find reason to envy each other. Being thieves and raiders, they cannot help availing themselves of the need to consume each other. Sometimes the raiders gather outside the walls of one citadel and in their confusion they are forced to steal from each other that which was stolen from us. When the very few who are guardians and the representatives of the people's voice discern the padded feet lurking outside the hallways, the thugs claim that they were overseeing the safety of those who were the object of their rampage.
The guardians become lost in the night, swallowed up by louder voices and the laws shackled by the brigands. A name or a part of it becomes something to see and as it takes on added importance in the reflection, and in the reality, we can see no angel of light, only a thug wrapped in tinsel, a common thief.
Somewhere in the mirror lies the purpose, the original plan, the blueprint we gave to them when we had seen the first smile and heard their words and felt the tug at our hearts. But we allowed them too much space, gave up too much of our own thinking and in doing so, fed them more than the notion that we were fair game, year after year.
Towards the mirror we stare and take leave to gaze at the monster we created and the many spawns it bred. Reflection or no, in the space between the two lies a nation on its back, trying not too valiantly to discern the difference as the thugs have their way with us. The raid is on in earnest and no cupboard is being spared. The windows are being torn down as we sleep.
The door is only a moment away from freeing itself from that last, fateful hinge. The very walls are shaking as the thieves and the pirates, the robbers and the rapists smear our mirrors, blot out the reflection and smash whatever little understanding we had left as to how we had travelled from one certain beginning to a demise too long and too painful.
In our panic, we want to flee, but... the children, we cannot leave them. Oh no! The savages. They have set upon the children and are devouring them, tearing them from limb to limb, stalling the future we had. Are we doomed! It would be bad if after the looting and the rampage, we would all be dead. But fate, though certain, guarantees to no one paradise at the end.
When the last page is turned and we look at the mirror, we are doomed to remain, in shame, hungry, unclad and backwards in time as a people.
Stand at the mirror and ponder on these things. And be afraid of the haunting mirror. Is it the reflection? The reality? A dream? Only those living in the land of the blind will fail to be informed by the mirror.
observemark@gmail.com
Cont.
Wignall's WorldMark Wignall
Sunday, July 08, 2007
I've often wondered as I stand in front of a looking glass, Alice's or my own, if the me that I stare at as it watches the other me doing so is not something more than just the plainly obvious.
Even remotely possible, could it be that what is seen as 'reflection' is really the object generating the image, which is the me that I imagine myself to be? I am a fake, I may claim, if I allow myself that trip even though the form, from end to end, implores me to familiarity and convinces me that I am directing the script.
Inside the unlimited 'confines' of a mirror could lie a parallel world bringing confusion to our deepest desire towards understanding our search for peace, good health, wealth and community. We ask, could civility exist on one side while strife rips apart the other? No, we say, because a self, a village, a nation well-practised in fostering its own degradation, cannot breed anything but the reflection of its nasty self.
A thing, a form, then a finely defined mass of body, thought and purpose, if intent on creating a personality, then citizens, then towns and cities and a noble dream handed to leaders to guide those very citizens towards the truest goal of 'society' cannot
reflect itself as a blot, or as a thing misshapen and indelibly bent. Instead it must impel its reflection towards pride and the achievement of greatness.
If in one definite, infinitesimal moment of time, repeated many times, the ones holding true to building this nation were given sway, would that not suggest that in this most parallel of worlds the manifestation of itself would paint the mirror with an end to the fear and the uncertainties held that thugs are upon us? And if indeed thugs, brigands, highwaymen and angels of light shrouded in the bleak cloak of despair should overcome us and hold us as slaves over too long a time, would we be able to tell our children, then grown and lied to, that our eyes were blinded and we saw it in the mirror as the beginning of our salvation?
If thugs held sway, how would we know? Would they exist in the reflection or on 'our' side, the one to which we bring claims of reality? And could we know them by their deeds? What is the mark on them that would shine in the mirror and assail our eyes?
The thugs would walk upright but the soles of their feet would be padded because as they walk by night throughout the villages and the towns and slither through our windows and every crack as we sleep, they desire silence in their lust for our bread, our breath and our being.
The thugs began as angels in our minds as we gave them the right, implicitly at first, to think for us, to act for us. Then we brought them to the town square and greeted them with our love, our undying trust and a cry on our lips for more of their name.
So overwhelmed were we that we immersed all of ourselves in what we saw as magic as we slowly lost ourselves. They claimed us and made themselves us as they paraded in our skin and claimed one with us. We gave them the villages, the town square, the city and all of its people and they said, 'All is well. Give us more and we will, we will give you more'.
We co-opted other cities and we gave it to them. We stole the future of our children, ripped it from their soft, trusting, yielding hands and, along with our patrimony, we gave the lot to the thugs. As if that was not enough to fill the guts of the ravenous beasts, we drew a line around the outermost points of the country and handed it all to them. At that stage the thugs looked on and said, 'The fools desire more.
Let us take them to the brink of their own demise. Let us loosen a rampage on them. Let us loot now, tonight, tomorrow! Let us face the foolishly innocent, stare them in the face and tear the pockets from their garments, like the docile sheep they are. Now, now, let us salivate in this rampage because we know not how much longer it will be ours to rape'.
On one side of the mirror, real or reflected, the thugs have sat at tables with men from afar and they have balked at our future as, on our behalf, they have pocketed precious stones. Eight stones are signed to, but 10 are collected. Two are collected and placed in the vaults of the land of the men who travelled from afar. The thugs loot us, they wring the blood from our shrunken arms and suck what little is left from our necks as our hearts are bled dry.
The thugs place their friends, many of them, in high places, and in a frenzy, they feed like vultures on a human dehydrated of the water of life; fallen but doomed to feel that conquering beak poking into flesh, into the last breath of life. They tear at the flesh relentlessly and still they smile for the lights and the mirror and the reflection and the fools which gave them endless hunger.
Learned men and women have been used by the thugs to act as ciphers for their misdeeds. They have sat in council, have gazed at the mirror and found us asleep. So they raided, looted and then dressed it up in tinsel and painted words on it to quell our fears.
Then they spoke the words and we looked at the reflection, then ourselves, and became confounded because the words spun around us and made us dizzy. Light of head, we gave to them the right to convince us why the watchman should watch himself, or herself.
Thugs, being thugs will always find reason to envy each other. Being thieves and raiders, they cannot help availing themselves of the need to consume each other. Sometimes the raiders gather outside the walls of one citadel and in their confusion they are forced to steal from each other that which was stolen from us. When the very few who are guardians and the representatives of the people's voice discern the padded feet lurking outside the hallways, the thugs claim that they were overseeing the safety of those who were the object of their rampage.
The guardians become lost in the night, swallowed up by louder voices and the laws shackled by the brigands. A name or a part of it becomes something to see and as it takes on added importance in the reflection, and in the reality, we can see no angel of light, only a thug wrapped in tinsel, a common thief.
Somewhere in the mirror lies the purpose, the original plan, the blueprint we gave to them when we had seen the first smile and heard their words and felt the tug at our hearts. But we allowed them too much space, gave up too much of our own thinking and in doing so, fed them more than the notion that we were fair game, year after year.
Towards the mirror we stare and take leave to gaze at the monster we created and the many spawns it bred. Reflection or no, in the space between the two lies a nation on its back, trying not too valiantly to discern the difference as the thugs have their way with us. The raid is on in earnest and no cupboard is being spared. The windows are being torn down as we sleep.
The door is only a moment away from freeing itself from that last, fateful hinge. The very walls are shaking as the thieves and the pirates, the robbers and the rapists smear our mirrors, blot out the reflection and smash whatever little understanding we had left as to how we had travelled from one certain beginning to a demise too long and too painful.
In our panic, we want to flee, but... the children, we cannot leave them. Oh no! The savages. They have set upon the children and are devouring them, tearing them from limb to limb, stalling the future we had. Are we doomed! It would be bad if after the looting and the rampage, we would all be dead. But fate, though certain, guarantees to no one paradise at the end.
When the last page is turned and we look at the mirror, we are doomed to remain, in shame, hungry, unclad and backwards in time as a people.
Stand at the mirror and ponder on these things. And be afraid of the haunting mirror. Is it the reflection? The reality? A dream? Only those living in the land of the blind will fail to be informed by the mirror.
observemark@gmail.com
Cont.
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