INTERREGNUM
A
NOVELLA
CHAPTER:
The Dam
If you have to hide one half of your imagination
then let that figment be a memory of your worst fear. Living a nightmare in the
shade of thunderous rain us the extreme surge which hits the walls of a place
of worship in the heat. Once we eloped with our baggage dressed in burgundy
colored clothes we find roots to salvation only in nature and charity, the
nature of man in society and the charity of nature in its fog and its
desolation. Have I become absent in the charts of daily routines or have I been
given immense weight with sweat dripping down on my shins? Out of necessity I
seek the help of another man’s labor and hold the voice of my infidelity behind
my uncomfortable lips as they shiver against the faith of a rising sun.
Withholding tickets to an amusement park with blood
soaking fingers and dizzy clouded mind, the soreness of age and grey develops
an embracing thought process for it is necessary to the survival of a naïve
mind. Then there lays the offspring of
lust waiting to be misbalanced from the surface of the earth once and for all.
The resolute drift from paranoia to warmth and affection has decapitated my
soul at the diner of a Master ungrateful to whom I am a humble servant for my
death lays with a name I have detached from that of my own. A poet in pictures,
a picturesque in movement and a scribbler of a cure… to the diseased minds
dwelling retarded, scratching the walls of bedlam till the bricks on the
surface quake with fury and illuminate engulfing the ‘I’ into fire and
awakening.
On narrow roads where the tired mind begins to fade
away and looks around for perhaps a glass of water, it begins to notice a
sensation of being watched. It is not completely untrue that the digital age
has brought before us a new age of mechanism that must be dealt with elaborated
sunsets. But for those who count lives with meaning and not with syllogism the contrasting
sunlight in the eye of the onlooker scorches the beauty of memory and innocent
insecurity. Far from the actual relativity of words, there is a desert where
and isolated person rocks back and forth consuming soup from a cup so that he
can live another day of his life.
The mirage of happiness has kept ho, well on its
mouth for too long and desires finally to trickle down from the sky onto his hair
and hush his hunger to sleep. Only a fool will realize what he sees to be the
truth and only a smart man will ridicule it to be fiction. I say we slay the
beast of curiosity and reason to bring to life evidence that will prove all
assumptions to be true and all peace to be one. Does this violence exist in
disguise? Masters may come and banish whomsoever they desire into exile… it is
for the vagabond to surmount himself to see another sunrise from a vantage
point. The body, the soul, the mind and the individual peep at their reflection
in the pond on a hot summer’s day and find oneness in truth. The echoes of
silence subdued by nature’s breath whisper strange hymns of melancholy into the
ears of the observer. It’s neck twists venomously towards the source of light
and its eye burns against a bright canvas of the infrastructure of the city. It
reminds me of the gracious embrace of a warm hand upon the chest of a thousand
unknown beating treasures.
Water pumping into buckets flung from the skies
unexpectedly at volcanic streets to soak and to puff up like the yellow sponge
I keep in the storeroom for when I feel like cleaning up my closet. A drastic
change in emotions has replaced my apathy with a phenomenon that cannot be
defined but it lingers still on the shared laughter and the tears shed for a
case. The particularity of selfishness is peculiar but it is not unjust in the
sense of mocking cultural prejudice. The eyes of the majority pierce through my
pockets and into my bones for it is my wallet that has gone missing. I
travelled through oceans and debris to get to a sense of release called
entertainment. You can listen to the sound of my words and call me a child but
it wouldn’t offend me as I have looked after myself, for a really long time
now. I have glided past illusions and dropped bricks on my head thinking they
were pillows. The edge of mu workspace is the entrance for a universal call and
amidst poverty and hunger we merchandise with the help of industry, a franchise
restricted to age. A ballot box, on the side of a young woman spits out the
verdict every moment till it flips on its head and realizes the beauty in
disorder. The malfunctioning machine in the office must surely seem to be
disinterested in calling bets in favor of any particular race despite its
efficiency depending on the resultant opportunity. The candidates of fate are
painted red and black and stamped with a pinch of cocaine to outlast the
previous batch of hedonists to have walked on the surface of this deserted land
I call my home.
My dreams are not dead, they may be meaningless for
you, my companion, but for me it is my existence and it is my salvation. I have
a flame to react to my dullness and voice the introvert emotions within me to
create a narrow passage for you to row your boat and follow me down to the
sunset, into the stars embedded like pearls on the midnight black tar that
holds the significance of the night. The rock under which my ally, the serpent
sleeps till it is summoned from within my dreams by me to eradicate all mist
from the eyes of the remaining few foes I have left. The world is in a battle,
in an argument. The debate is not to repose dominance but it is to explore and
suffice an experience that is filled with uncertainties and fears. I am sure we
will discuss in great detail the dynamics of priority before our light fades
and we fall victim to the ultimate absence. Imagine a sky with stars but
covered with a cloak of dark evil that is set upon our environment to aid
poisonous thought and dogma against innovation. The utility of purpose thus
remains unknown for it had always been a gift to the imagination of the mind.
What we perceived of it we named the reality and what we deduced became the
essence of that effort we had put initially to look ourselves in the mirror,
not knowingly but out of curiosity.
This figment of creative effort is conscious in
itself and we call it by our own name. We believe in it because it asks is to
believe in it because it asks us to confirm its awakening. We have observed it
from afar. Never hesitate before giving the structure of time a thought. It is
the thing that binds our existence to a precise moment and helps us to locate
our perception of life. This is a tough journey we have chosen to live through.
The terrain is flat and the sun is beating upon it through the clouds. There is
no refuge from entertainment and to pass our time we must make do with
memories. The pluralistic existence of life the modern times has lifted above
the horizon like a golden bird rattling in a cage. The emptiness of expressions
is what howls with clarity to resonate with the flow of the river aside which
we error unknowingly as we fail to keep up with its silent serenity. It is
almost impossible to look to the other bank of this river without picturing the
bridge disappearing after stretching into a deep fog of obscurity at the foot
of the dam. It is certainly not a satisfaction to see the boats sailing on the
waters effortlessly because we have less than enough resources to avoid the
temptation of riding on one of these. We could’ve enjoyed a ride with our feet
dipped in the river. That would be rebellious and cowards like us do not even
dare step in line to the onset of a revolution. We are cowards because we seek
for answers in others when we know they don’t even share our circumstances. The
lives we are living is one of migration and it is tiresome. I look around
myself some more and become more resolute not to show any signs of tiredness.
The faces of my friends who have decided to walk on the trial of my shadow by
day and with the sound of my breathing at night. I wouldn’t want to let them
down even though they don’t know I’m silently leading them into a trap. The
showbiz man says to me that the reality of environment is hostile and because
of them the nature of life has become unified temporarily, and that we are
supposed to believe in their actions to be associative our culture. As we walk
nearer to the sunset it is a privilege to refuse any association with
pluralistic belief. After witnessing the way we have been abducted, enslaved,
tortured, sold and tailored for generations we should know of how that
impending doom ours awakens us the fastest. The whole scene is a hierarchy where
one assumes the role of the Master and the other that of a puppet. I don’t want
to suppose any truths but the journey of life can simplify not be filled with
happiness if on going a journey is signified with the image of a man tied up
with chains being dragged around by another man to please society and to
provide for it.
The only choice is to delay any confrontation by
eloping into a state of genesis. Every dream which entraps a mind should be
free in it’s own course before it swivels with where the previous one had left
off. It shouldn’t purchase the subconscious self to behave in a certain way.
The time that is lost to imagination cannot be compressed into a can and
shipped overseas for consumption. The root to such a dream can never grow out
of the seed of culture because the heritage that the subconscious recognizes
lies. We have been lied to about the tree of life. It is paradoxical in nature
and if it seems illogical then it most probably is vague and absurd. How is it
that the recognition of one’s own faults is blurred and the percept of its
growth unclear? The empiricist thought would suggest that what a person dreams
of simply has no significance to society for there is no output to mere dreams.
It remains a fictional tale to be told out of memory. Thus, if the truth was to
be questioned, we would assume a form in time and reflect on our own existence
and perhaps the ideal of uniqueness has the answer to our questions. We always
want more out of life because it would be foolish to ask and achieve less than
what we potentially could. This doesn’t mean we disturb our peace to suffocate
ourselves with greed and discord but it rather means that we suggest an
alternative reality to our dreams so that the foundation of our existence can
reason without own imagination. This is the level of discipline we need to
achieve for us to realize that we are not alone on our journey to the other
side of the river and that the sin is not setting in the west everyday day our
own sake of convenience. We must negate curiosity from time to time and realize
and conceptualize what lay before us as law no matter if we are dreaming or if
we are awake. How does it truly feel to have lost something on the way to the
present moment without questioning how it all began is like looking for truth
in a hidden wildflower amongst the bushes in a sudden urgency that cannot be felt
but only acted upon… It is this sense of taking an action to produce something
out of nothing. But sadly the sky isn’t clear and the light remains dim. The object
of interest disappears from sight and our gasps encompassed within the
roundness of our lips draws a beam of light upon the black ballot box which is
still spilling opinions about the right to live a life worthy of being called a
human life. Across the river, the mist has evaporated and a stretch of
buildings outline the sky with bare minimum gaps, the structure of the dam is
merged with the yellow dust all around us. There are shops with tarpaulin
spread over the stock to prevent it from getting damaged. The water is known to
rise sometimes at night to a point which covers the line of sight and for a few
moments I picture the boats rocking violently sideways with the waves. In the
course of this journey the bridge we are heading towards is going to be an
instrumental turning point and could alter the psychology of our deeply rattled
mind. The bridge takes us to the most conflict stricken part of this place.
The clouds are in the shape of a brain infected with
tumors and the grey overcast resembles an X-ray of the sky. The State we are in
allows no liberty to grow. This constant movement churns our soul into weakness
till our feet become swollen and we faint only to be washed ashore by the river
that has taken a violent persona. We feel separated from our essence, it floats
on water while we are dragged in chains by the Master. We might bump into some
friendly citizen of the State we are in who understands our inadequate
resources to survive. Our mental abilities are disturbed and shadowed or
concentration. We accept sympathy but we also know that we deserve no mercy because
of what crimes we have committed in the past. There have to be more crimes than
we can count on a single page and an argument for justice may take an entire
novel. These notions need to be understood from within, the error lies not in
articulation but in the justification of pleasure and punishment. Guilt is
related to the mistakes for which we remain accountable, but the person
concerned, a subject to collective judgment, should he go through the debate of
a pluralistic identity?
It can be easily suggested that without a ruler, the
State will be in shambles and with war the new ruler cannot restore peace. If
truth be told violence and crime are the things that when subjectively studied
evolve the psychology of the self, the Master. Blood does not reap fruit nor is
it fit to be drunk on its ecstasy alone. Pleasure is another form of madness
which should not be tolerated if evolution is to be kept in mind.
I see a big metal containers floating on the river
near the foot of the dam with windows on its sides and people staring out of
it. There are four people in each window and that is all there is to this
picture. This, I think, is the kind of solitary violence that has become the
currency of prisons in the modern world in their transactions with death. A
divide in the understanding of spiritual suppression just life the way night
overpowers day and day overpowers night. Our journey too is a natural
phenomenon, one I think all must experience before they disregard the tyrant in
themselves. We were subjected to an exile during which we were taken prisoners.
We never accept ourselves the way we are, we want to change either what is
within us or what outside of our reach, that is something I learned about
myself at least by the way the State used to behave with us under the ruler who
is now dead.
In my dusty bag I used to carry a poorly sketched
drawing that has been criticized for being too obscene. I once hung it in my
room with extravagance but my wife, my elder brother and my friends didn’t take
very kindly to it. It didn’t have a story behind it but it has the capacity to
upset me. It was the drawing of a half filled glass of water. If I looked at it
now the drawing would urge me to make something else of it... I could have
shown it to the man walking ahead of me but neither do I have it with me
anymore nor does the man have any time to attend to my art. The truth is that
he has a habit of keeping the line well and straight. He’s tied to me with
chains, he to someone else and so on and so forth. We are all being pulled by a
single man who is the master of our lives. The man ahead of me is fascinatingly
tall and he has long hair. He too, like me, is a prisoner being excommunicated
further away from society to a newly built prison which is on the other side of
the river. He appears to be older than me but age never had anything to do with
our exile other than the effect it had on our skills to survive. The closed
walls of prison could not be breached in the few days I was in one before I was
sentenced permanently but life inside was that of absolute freedom. Our state
of mind could not be elected according to what kind of people we were but on
the basis of our imagination we were bound to be treated accordingly. These are
some of the things I have picked up about life in the past few days. I feel
conscious enough to desire life. I do not want to die.
I was surprised to find a flower in my bag one day.
I had been busy glancing at this flower, running my finger on its surface I had
felt the caress of decadence on my skin and I had looked around me for that
thing that would show me the meaning of a sting of a thorn. I was of the belief
that art needs an aching soul to come to life to be called art, but it only
proves to me a meaningless thing. My finger had started bleeding on the thorn
and instead of taking my hand away from it I grabbed tightly and pulled it out
of my bag. I could say that the rose was twice as troubled in that moment as I
as now. I couldn’t recall ever being romantically attached to that rose only I
remembered it belonged to me. What had mattered to me more was the way its dry
petals contrasted with the orange sky that shone bright on the day of my
heartbreak. If I do not error, I can say that the bewilderment of its fragrance
drew me the closest to death I had ever been.
The bridge at the foot of the dam was longer than I
had anticipated to be, the Master had begun walking on it but I was yet nearly
at a distance of five hundred yards. There were so many of us I could’ve taken
a while remembering the names and faces of all of them. They were all very
strange and the view in front of me was abrupt. With shackles on our feet and
around our wrists we walked carefully across the bridge onto a new land, on the
opposite side of the river. The sun hadn’t yet entirely slipped away from the
horizon dropping deep into the silent darkness. Its weak glimmer had still
given light to the streets on which we walked. The bridge opened into a busy
crowd on the otherside.
It feels like some strange burden has been lifted
from our heads. There were a few words exchanged between me and the tall man
walking ahead of me. It can be established that he was a stranger to me. He had
a scary voice and with his tone of speaking I picked up a hint that he didn’t
want to be bothered by any questions about where were going and would happen to
us when we reached there.
The cellar in which I had been put had a window
through which I could see the river bank from afar. The dam had only been
started constructing and was also visible from the window of that prison cell.
There were a few patches of greenery and some uninhabited sand but mostly the
view out of the window was the river bank. I would lie on the bed and stare at
the sky reading the books I received from the library in the prison. The Jailer
was a pleasant man, he looked after the needs of the prisoners and spoke
politely with them at times. He had an aura of deliberate caution which
influenced me a little to straighten myself out while I was there. Perhaps the
segregation of the criminals into dangerous and petty allowed him to be that
way. Some were sentenced for a lifetime and some were jailed will they were
hanged. My imprisonment is supposed to end in 5 years. The guards who were
working there told me I was one well mannered criminal. I was supposed to be in
exile for 10 years but one day they captured me, ran a court case in my name
and imprisoned me for 6 years. The days I spent in that prison have already
turned me into a better man. I have realized my guilt that has made me a better
person than I was when I was sent to prison. It’s not that I’d been a bad
person all my life but I was overtaken by a single act of mad corruption which
ended my freedom and turned me into a convict. I do not wish to look at the
past and must suggest that only logic erases its structure for an individual.
It is the only thing that will turn its back on you when you really need it to
be besides you. I was never a hopeful person but the shackles I find myself in
pain me, and now I have begun to feel hopeful for mercy’s sake. We have walked
a long way since the bus which was transporting us broke down near the highway
exit 7 kilometers off the river bank. It is a strange blue sky over my head
which has still not answered why we didn’t wait for another bus. I remember how
the Master had said to us that it would be a much easier journey into the newly
built prison we crossed the bridge on the river on foot. I don’t know why we
kept walking behind him the entire afternoon. Someone had been in exile for
five years and someone for nearly ten years, I have been away from home for
five years, we have nowhere to go. The way back home is lost. Maybe we had been
following the Master all evening because we were afraid and tired. I think if I
managed to gather the strength to runaway I will only end up stumbling on top
of the rest of the prisoners after being tangles with the shackles. Who knows
the Master and his guards might have even fired rounds at us with their guns. I
feel ashamed entering a new city on this side of the river half naked with dirt
on my face and my limbs tied and bleeding. The more I look around the city
seems to be a modern marvel. It is a wonder having seen something so big and
luminous with my own eyes. The streets are mostly unobservant of us but slowly
they are beginning to question our state of living. Their curiosity is
understood. As we enter the market we see they are standing on the sides and
staring at us, those eating in restaurants are staring us with suspicious eyes.
It is almost evident in the atmosphere that the crowd knows who we are and know
exactly what our fate is. I cannot keep my eyes open because of the bright
bulbs hanging from the tarpaulin covers but I know they have heard about us so
I thought it would be best if I hid my eyes from them.
There are fruits and vegetables being sold on our
left hand side in red and yellow cartons. There are spices of all kinds. My
head begins to sweat because of all that attention. It was the first time in
the day I was feel an unbearable heat despite the sun beating down on the grown
with immense fury. I thought we would become a laughing matter for the public
but it was quite the opposite of what I had imagined it to be like. The free
people around us were shouting harsh insults at us and making claims of what
should be done to traitors like us. A lady looked at the scar on my lip and
called me a murderer but I think she misunderstood that I had gotten it in
prison while trying to stop a gang fight. Stopping that fight was unethical on
my part and my character had been jeopardized that day because of my
foolishness but I calmed myself by repeating that it was nothing compared to
the foolishness that landed me in exile. I don’t know why they had to capture
me even though I was already in exile. But I also do not regret having been
taken to prison all that much because the ruler of the State was killing the
innocent citizens of his country as it is. The ruler of our State is not a
single person, nor is it an army or an agency regarded to the welfare of all
humans… It is a giant beast that is sleeping eternally and dreams our existence
in its lucid awakening. The blank void in its imagination imprints our morality
and we tumble into decadence once it begins ignoring its conscious mind and
nullifies back to the unconscious sleep. It is scary to think of living in
someone else’s head and looking at the sky and at the river only through its
translucent eyelids. My vision is blurry, my eyesight is very poor and I have
to wear glasses. The light of the shops bounce off of my glasses and my look of
guilt is firm. I looked in search of the Master and saw him and his men walking
side by side with the ballot box which was being carried by one of the
prisoners for them.
The tall man walking in front of me turned around
and stared at me. He asked me if I thought the people of the market hated us.
Soon we were away from the market. It was then that I realized that the rest of
the city was a dark shadow and the only thing glimmering with bright colors was
the market. We were heading into a deafening silence and slowly drifting away
from the light. I turned around while walking in line and saw that the material
of the market illuminated brighter than the moon. The top of the sky was
gaining darkness too and the faint orange of the horizon had melted smoothly
into the tarpaulin covers we had left behind us. I could not help but look for
the river bank which was roaring furiously into my ears and found a bleak reflection
of the dam on its surface.
CHAPTER:
The Psychologist
I could see a huge building surrounded by grey walls
that were topped with barbwires at some distance. The crickets in the bushes
were loud. There were big and small glass windows all over this building like a
patchwork of boxes on a silly carpet I would’ve proudly had in my house. It is
my tragic misfortune I was sent away to exile under legal sanction. The law has
respect for all and all must sustain themselves according to it, I didn’t and
look how terribly fragmented I am. I looked around to spot the faces of those
involved in the gang fight and saw the mischievous face walking right behind
me. Others involved in that fight were the ones nearest to the Master. It was
constantly on my mind that perhaps they must’ve already devised a plan for
spreading their domination throughout this newly built prison.
We were creeping up slowly on the lopsided hill on
top of which the newly built prison was standing strong. Tiredness had crawled
from my body into my mind. Our march thudded as we neared the big grey outline
of the prison. It was shining. Uniformly with crisscrossed windows embedded in
the walls like diamonds and rubies embedded on a crown. My thoughts had found
an alignment with the figure of all the bodies around me and we were a
silhouette against the stars. My eyes however kept getting shut because of an
approaching sleep. When the doors were opened for us to enter the light which
flooded into my eyes gave me a severe migraine. It was a pain to perceive what
the main hall looked like. There was a reception on the left and a notice board
underneath a wall of honor. There was a staircase leading into a basement and
another one leading into the upper floors. The doors had an arch above them.
The stones out of which the walls were made were off white in color and
resembled the shine of marble to a great extent. There were plants and
greenery. The tube lights reflected off of the surface of the floor and pierced
the back of my brain through my eyes like arrows. All the prisoners were walked
straight into their cellars. The Master had stopped at the reception and was
filling in some paperwork. When he saw me pass by he asked the line to be
stopped, put his stick on my chin and lifted my head up towards the ceiling. He
smirked at the receptionist and asked him to give special attention to me. He
described me to him with the words “quite a revolutionist”. On my way out of
the main hall I heard them change the topic of their conversation to the
breakdown of the bus at the highway exit. But there was something unhealthy
about this place. There were mosquitoes and spiders had spun their web in the
darkest parts of the cellar. The silence was haunting as usual and there was
not much of a difference in the state of living as far as my quest of
falsifying my delusional fervor was concerned.
We were told t be quiet and keep standing in the
common area of our cell block. The official was busy putting a seal on the
documents that confirmed our transfer. It felt like it was going to be a new
beginning in my life. I couldn’t feel it in my skin for I was too tired but my
mind kept telling me that whatever time I had to spend here could pass easily.
I had grown to like the air I breathed even though it smelled of newly
plastered cement. It reminded me of the bloodstains on the walls of the
previous prison.
Once the business had been done the officials looked
at us and introduced us to the jailer on night duty. They shook hands and then
the officials left. The gates buzzed loudly and the sound echoed through the
corridors. The jailer gave orders for our cellars to be allotted to us. We were
released from shackles one after another and taken to our cellars. I received
the cellar on the first floor. We were told we would be introduced to the
actual jailer of our facility first thing in the morning and that 7:00 AM was
our waking up time. The man’s final words to us were that we could use the
common area in the prison from morning till evening then he left from a back
gate. There were 3 cameras on each floor and one security guard inside the
block. There was only one door for coming in and going out and he was stationed
at it. I found out later that we were in prison block four. I had closed my
eyes and was lying on the bed of my cellar. It was a small room with the bed on
one side and a big box for sitting in the center. There were no windows. This
made me feel paranoid and unsafe regarding the behavior of my neighbors in
prison. I didn’t know when I fell asleep…
My head felt like it weighed in accord with a
feather that had been placed on a scale. The unforeseen breakdown of the bus in
the middle of nowhere had given a push to my imagination. I had plotted various
escape routes, but never got around to find the courage to do anything. But the
joy of having looked at the sky more freely after so many days helped my sanity
to loom large in the faces of some of the more violent felons. I adored the
aesthetic value of such a theorem and had been wondering about escaping since a
considerable amount of time. The walls around me had no color to them, as the
lights turned down they began to appear mystic and wild. I remembered how
brutally fragmented my identity has been and the thought of being somewhere out
in the open consumed me timelessly. The vastness of the world and the memories
I have of it constantly keep giving fuel to my imagination and the thought of
spending a night in a dungeon just doesn’t get through my rational mind. I
wished the walls to be blue or magenta in color but it didn’t occur to me that
I’d be overly familiarizing my sleep to a sense of homeliness. Before I knew it
I had already placed the memory of my days in exile on each and every brick
which lay divided by cement. I couldn’t identify myself as a pessimist now but
because of the way I found out it extremely easy to think of the incidents that
had caused me to corrupt in the case of the dam’s construction. I believe the
situation which got me convicted is more important to define than the reason
behind it. All I can say now is that the window in my previous cell had given
me a sight into hope itself, where there was none now. I couldn’t have said
what the nature of darkness is but I am fond of the mystery it has to show to
me as it shines and sparkles as if it has a coating of an invaluable mineral.
Nonetheless the absence of a window to the world had felt like a loss of an
ideological companion, far from perfect and nearly irreplaceable. I had
cherished the great uncertainty of freedom until I rested my spine on this bed
and thought to myself that I would never wish on another body to lay in it in
my place but my conscience allowed otherwise. I pretended to be a merchant of
pictures but my belief stood strong no more. Along with the growing darkness I
began to feel like a thief for having borrowed colors from the world I once
knew, now an impressionable gesture of the thumb propping up from a strong fist
mocked every shattering illusion. One after another worlds were built and torn
apart.
In this cellar I did not feel I was proposing a
challenge to the other half of my consciousness, I felt secure having pictured
my body existing in line of the ceiling, the bed, the body on lying on it and
the ceiling aligned together as celestial bodies. I affirm the bone in my
forearm kept under my head as a pillow to be a privilege and for it I am
gracious. My pain however is that it is all at the cost of the giant’s dream. I
am, concisely, what I am being dreamed of as in the mind of a fragmented
substance. I am sure, the body will produce its own drug, the mind will create
the soul and they will be combined together in elements to bring life and
essence to that which is otherwise a non-entity. The epoch of the mind
instilled in the body has assumed a sense of reality, what we know as age, I find
both tragic and satirical.
The toes on my feet beyond my breathing chest are
outlined by the light moving away from the common area downstairs. The bold
iron bars cast a yellow shadow inside the prison cell. Suddenly there was a
bang in the corridor. I got scared and did not wish to get up from my bed. I
squeezed on my chest with my hands and curled up my body. My eyes were wide
open in absolute terror. I began to hear a tip toe walk and a signaling hiss. A
voice started ringing in my head asking me to get up. I refused to move, I was
shaking my head violently in the dark. The voice was that of the tall man who
was walking in front of me in the line. He told me I am in a dream. He was mad
at me for being a nuisance for wanting to runaway. He wanted to dig his teeth
into my shoulders. The vivid nightmare elaborated as his voice kept repeating
the same thing over and over again. I sat up in fear. A sound of dripping water
on an empty plastic bucket started off on the inside of my skull… There was a
bleak bathroom and the tall man was standing there all by himself, the lights
were flickering. When the nightmare ended I realized I was shaking from head to
toe in my sleep. I thought to myself in such chaos that the figment of life
inside my body had begun detaching itself for some unknown reason from my
consciousness, from my knowledge of myself. It wanted to latch itself on to a
far off world I was picturing from my memories. All memories dwell in the past
experience of an individual and that is where the roots of fear are the
strongest. Somehow I passed the first night there.
At the sound of the buzzer the prisoners were
allowed to step out of their cellars. I stepped onto the corridor with
pleasure, it was an indescribable joy, the happiness of a cynic. The doors to
our prison block were opened. Before allowing us to go out to the other common
areas we were told about the various blocks there were in this prison and about
all the other necessary facilities. We found out about the bathroom and about
the mess. The instructor filled us in with details on how the prison was going
to help us make use of our time by giving us jobs to do. The prison had started
to feel like an experimental society and I had begun feeling like a citizen of
it.
I was thinking about how sometimes we don’t get what
we had set out to achieve. I think our will is not to be held responsible for
our incapability. The will is separated from the consciousness and is the prime
experience of the self. To brood on the idea of accumulating memory and
supporting the framework of a fallacy is an immoral act it is true but if I was
to become a citizen of this place I will begin by becoming an undesirable
leader because the consented wants and the awareness of an individual for the
sake of its personality is lies in reflecting on the recollection of action, on
the basis of imagination. I observe what I am, determine my disposition
cognitively and therefore experience the circumstances which my will succumb
visible in an otherwise ignorant world. Power is supremacy of the invisible
giant from my dream but the dream has fallen to ashes.
On the deductive scale desire for knowledge has been
overshadowed by the vanity and the glamour of modern life. This life of vanity
is a false construct in a sense because I can see that my nightmares are
getting darker. But my fascination with the ascertaining of clarity within
these nightmares and into the definitive nature of memory which cause scary
hallucinations during sleep support me and every principle I have of rational
thought. But it is only a matter of time before another nervous breakdown of
the body and the mind overtakes that rational system. Still I philosophize like
a mad man that the soul must be destroyed as well if there is any since it
shatters the illusion of age and of mortality. This I perceive is another
chapter unfolding in the uncertain eye of the observer. Through a looking glass
a man had a gloomy conversation with an insect and I thought to myself that I
had imagined it to be so but perhaps prison implied introspection regardless of
the sanity of the prisoner. It was strangely graphic though, as against the
beam of sunlight the man kneeled over the grasses whispering words of prophecy
into the earth.
Soon, the sun was out and the prisoners too came
gawking to the tennis lawn and to the open air gymnasium. Near the older blocks
there was quite clearly an established dominion. In all the shady corners tough
looking men had occupied their own space and it was understood no one should
trespass through it. The one gang which caught my eye before any other was a
gang of bald-bearded men. They wore black sleeveless jackets and had lots of
tattoos on their bodies. They usually have a common tattoo which refers to
their loyalty to one another. They caught me looking at them and in that exact
moment in time I was sure their stare gave me a deadly feeling. The tall man
with the long hair passed me by and I started chasing his shadow. He took note
of me and got startled. We exchanged a few words in which mostly I told him a
gang has noticed me staring at them. We moved closer to the lawn near block
four and saw that a fight had broken out between two of the violent men from
our days in exile. We had moved together as a tribe at times but we had never
accepted any of our companions as anything other than an instrument of
survival, we could eat each other if things got too dangerous. So now they had
begun exchanging blows because they wanted to assert their dominance around
these parts I was sure. In the prison on that side of the bridge, they had been
kept separately owing to their notorious spite for one another but revisiting
that time would be a huge mistake… A crowd had gathered around the members of
the quarrel and placed bets for the winner. I moved to a corner and stood there
for sometime in exasperation. I didn’t know to which extent my lunacy had
crossed its imbalance when I decided I will jump into the crowd and break the
fight. When they didn’t let go of each other I began landing kicks to the both
of them. The crowd was taken aback and the situation went haywire. I believe it
was a lengthy fight. As far as I knew the gangs in the older blocks would not
have seen it happen but in a few hours the whole of the population would know
about it. In the meanwhile, the crowd gave intensive heat to the three in the
fight.
The sun had risen and by afternoon the quarrel got
resolved in the jailor’s office. The office was a fine place to be with lots of
woodwork and paintings. The corridors on his floor were hard and nice and the
ferns in the pots were innocently dressed in green. The arched doorways at the
end of halls and corridors seemed to be the original design of the architect
who built this place. The air in his room showed quite clearly what becomes of
the atmosphere when alienated souls are breathing into it at all times. The air
was burdened with authority. The Jailor had proven out to be a little less than
a man and a whole lot more than a statue of rock solid wrath. There was a dark
shadow inside the room. Half of the map on the wall was undercover of its
darkness. The Jailor settled on a judgment after some consideration that he
would suggest we were transferred to the older blocks only then would we
understand how grateful we should have been to our Master he got us
institutionalized to live here. He told us we could be brought back to block
four if we were well behaved.
When we were taken to the older part of the prison
where I found out the first confined space we were put in was not a cellar but
a torture chamber. The three of us were put in different boxes. These boxes had
been attached onto long cylindrical spikes poking out of a central valve. At
the centre was a huge rotary turbine powered with electricity. The boxes had
smaller room than the cellars in block four and the walls were made of metal.
Every hour or so the valve would spin at pace and we would bounce around inside
with no padding inside to protect our bones from hurting. This went on for four
times. By the time we were taken out of that machine wounds had been torn upon
beyond repair and blood was everywhere. They had to drag my body out of the
torture chamber. When I woke up I was on a white bed in a lab all sewn and
stitched up. A machine kept track on my heartbeat. It kept beeping at regular
intervals and a green light blinked. I tried to turn on my side weakly and saw
the other two men lying on the beds next to mine.
A man came towards me and stood next to my head. I
was unable to move since I had exerted all my energy in trying to move to my
side. He put his arm on my shoulder and flashed a beam of light into my eye
balls. It sent a shiver up my spine and it was then I realized I had been tied
to the bed with thick straps. I could see a bald head and a beard behind the
great void of blinding light. The illusion of a memory had come to haunt me
again. The person who had come to observe me injected a dose of anesthesia and
I lost consciousness. There in my sleep I saw the giant beast from my dream
once again, a blue figure as naked as an alien. It has an embroidery on its
skin in a symmetrical pattern which was radiates with a golden spark. His forehead
wears a strange branding upon it. I became more aware of the shape of the
branding gradually as I attained lucidity. I desired to speak to it.
In a lucid state more powerful than anything else I
had experienced before I remarked that this vision of the blue giant was a
result of doctor’s medication. I couldn’t sustain the burden of its sight and
soon a shriek of terror developed frequency from the infernal depths of my
throat. I could feel the temperature of my body rise and the so the sweat under
my skin perspire from the pores. The air in the lab was chilling and the
droplets of sweat evaporated instantaneously. I felt my soul escaping into
absentia. When the doctor shut off the torch the blue giant from my dream
vanished too. The doctor began to walk away from the bed and exited the lab.
Whatever consciousness I possessed narrated to me a romantic justification
behind such an attachment for the giant of my dream. Under a sky full of stars
I had first seen him… under the veil of comatose. The medical staff in the
prison transported us to our own cells in block four. My stomach churned with
high fever and my nostrils flared with volcanic warmth, my sleep that night
resembled an empty room the walls of which had been painted white. I rested in
my bed for three days straight after that. Life had absorbed a deep dent to the
ways of self sustainability. I could barely move around.
The purpose of my life got established on the day
the gang of the skinheads came to see me in my cell. Four days had passed since
the fight and the punishment and I recognized their arrival as a sign of help
in getting back at the officials responsible for my torture. For a long time
they didn’t say anything and just stared. I was lying on my back facing the
bars and picked up on a signal of interest. I was afraid that at first that
more hurt could come my way but it didn’t matter all that much. I didn’t care for
harassment. I was as free from society as the dead because of my complete lack
of mobility at that moment. It felt like a heavy object was placed on my chest
when I saw them leave. It was yet another unnamed pressure on an otherwise
meaningless existence. Even though I had never experienced a sense of purpose
prior to this now the torture had instilled a strong sense of achieving
revenge. I believed my actions will serve as an act of resilience. I was
convincing myself by making up ill thoughts for the officials in the prison. My
mind was in shambles, my body suffering due to its actions and my soul aching
from the infernal irritation caused by illness. I still could not figure out
exactly what it was I saw in the eyes of the skinhead gang members. The only
reason my sentence wasn’t being extended was because this was the first time I
had shown signs of physical violence. In the old prison I was known for having
influenced people to do things on my behalf. But that was another matter, it
was necessary to build a sense of unity amongst the prisoners. Here, the Jailor
has visited me twice and has even asked me to write an essay on why I regret
having committed violence. The man is a strict man and says he cannot tolerate
indiscipline. He is passionate about my leap to salvation. My eyes are all
dried up and with a strange sounding mew coming from outside I feel an urgent
need for medical help… My head is going to explode at last.
Somehow I struggled to get to the bars and once I
had grabbed onto the cold iron bars with my hands I began moaning faintly
hoping somebody would hear me. To my luck the watchmen saw me waving at him
from a distance and rushed at once to my side. He asked me what it was he could
help me with and I told him I was scared. He brought a wheelchair for me and
took me back to the doctor. I’d been weeping all this while. In the lab the
doctor injected another dose of mild anesthesia and numbed out the pain. He
kept me under investigation for six hours and then declared that I should be
given medicine as per his prescription every day till the time I was better. I
kept insisting there was a kind behind me but as I became drowsier the sounds
drowned too. I laid my head to sleep again hoping to go for a stroll in the sun
tomorrow, to feel the blades of grass under my feet.
The blue giant had escaped from my dreams that
night. The hours I spent sleeping became an absurd series of sequences reappearing
before my eyes from the times of my family and the exile… It became a void
which the blue giant had to soon fill in to make my existence seem proper. Its
outline was smudgy in my subconscious memory but the dream never deviated from
the absolute truth that I was the creator of my own essence. The darkness was
fading into an unknown spiraling gyre which glowed with luminous exuberance.
Its beginning was modeled with the head of a serpent and the end a constantly
destroyed dimension. I was an observer at the epicenter of a thought that was
embezzled with malice and dexterity. I woke up suddenly gasping for air as if
the burden on my chest had just been lifted off by some mysterious presence in
the darkness. The glittering walls made no sense at all though my awakening had
begun. The delusions on which I had brooded for long had come of age and ran in
my veins right now. I was pleased at the thought that I would finally get to
see the sun in the morning. The night passed in silence. I was tired. I couldn’t
even move my eyeballs around without experiencing a piercing pain in the iris.
I was dissatisfied more with myself than anything else. By the time the man in
the control room buzzed us out of the cellars I managed to regress the intent
of an aching spirit which was driven by revenge. When my eyes met the rays of
the sun I tried not to romanticize the last day I had spent with my family but
it just didn’t help. Melancholia led me into deeper rebellion. There is not
much a one can achieve when one’s intentions speak against what the physical
body allows. I didn’t want to rush into the mess the way I did with arms
swaggering like a mad person almost in sync with a delusional humming. By the
time the food was served my appetite had regained itself to the fullest. My
tired soul had gathered all that empiricist thought and looked outside the
window. My sight fell on a bird’s nest on a tree. There was an egg in it,
unguarded. It reminded me of the day I had first committed helped plot an act
of violence. My strategy and rhetoric hasn’t changed all that much though I
have become a servant of this prison overtime. It comes down to satisfaction in
the end. I chewed my food with ease and swallowed it down my throat. The rule
of the mess is similar to that of memory, first come first serve. The tall guy
came in as I was moving to keep the dishes in the sink. He whizzed past me and
didn’t take notice of my presence. I wouldn’t have mentioned of regret to him
or of apathy since these are things that got lost in the service of crime. An
immoral man can live in ignorance and never once revisit the past and feel
guilty. Later, when I was sitting near the lawn I began wondering if the gang
members were still interested in me and if at all they were then why. It
must’ve been the feeling of community that led me to wish they would accept me
as one of them.
I know the story of my imprisonment has been
untidy. A notorious criminal such as me,
after all, cannot be an asset to any State. The demographic outline of the one
I dwelt in is a reflection of fences and barbed wires. It is difficult to step
out of its bounds and impossible to step back into it after having stepped out.
It does not mean however that I needed to forgo an existence out of the
parameters of duplicity of characters. An entirely metaphysical existence
strictly bound within the scope of a silver lined horizon which could not have
meant a greater deal if it wasn’t for the sake of nature. Man is puny against
nature, nature is the true colossal. What I conceive now from here is a replica
of the real one but is real none the less. I was at peace with suffering and
the wounds were in the process of healing. The flutter of the birds and the
rustling of the plants they were all signs of a grand announcement by nature.
CHAPTER:
The Trial
I had began wondering what work I would be assigned
in the prison and also if the Jailor would allow the doctor to prescribe
regular medicine when a few officials came in front of the gymnasium and put a
caution sign that gym was closed for maintenance. I was never one for exercise.
I could have vouched that I was peaceful man but why I experienced bad dreams
where I stabbed my parents in the gut I did not know. But I was deeply moved by
it. If I was to explain to anyone what crime I had committed I would say I
imagine therefore I malice. Morality and trust had never been instilled in me.
These must surely be values that differ according to nature. I assume the
physicality of a young human being would decide for the individual what
capacity of moral observance will fit in link with the environment. The mark
the handcuffs had made were still visible on my wrists and so I wondered if my
intention of revenge was influenced by the pain.
The day was quite young and I could learn from its
piecemeal brightness how the chances were created to reveal acquiescence. The
thoughts of an individual are in the mind while its reflection may illuminate
the world, which is why I could accept for myself the stature of a leader and
nothing less. A despicable muse spoke through me since ‘I’ was a medium of body
and spirit. A moment of silence can be ignored at an instance but does an
instance retain any silence at all? Is the world the same as it does appear
only to me? These were questions that were experiencing the dance of the
boiling water, they were reaching a high point.
I cannot seem to give the pale enigmatic figure from
my dream a structural meaning yet because the dream is nothing in its essence.
And never can it be essential till I picture the dream to be myself and us as
the supreme law to satisfaction. The dream clone of a moral dignitary must
surely exact itself for me and its surrounding might become my spiritual
teacher who knows. The naked subconscious might give me the insight into the
world I need to survive. There is no sleep and as a result of it my capability
to follow the grandiose and someone like Master has been left screaming against
a dark void. I wake up eternally gasping for air and not once face the
conditions of exile to truly let that feeling of nightmare be as it is. I’d be
happy if the Jailor allowed me to take regular medication. To really experience
this gasping for air I went and took a shower with hot water.
The inactivity gets replaced by a long drawn gaze I
have so often experience and I realize how deeply troubled I am at the thought
of revenge. My comradeship has promised me that no matter how hard I try I will
not fail in asserting the absolute freedom of an individual against this giant
machinery which produces slaves. The roof of the blocks were the hang out
places inside the prison compound and often people loitering there could be
trusted to be silent celebrities. I sat in the sun for some time on the terrace
and combed my wet hair, I think I over did it. I wanted to go to the library
but in the sky I saw a reflection of my poorly sketched drawing and my felt my
thoughts suspended in the cold air. I was experiencing a moment of aesthetic
beauty and it helped me develop an insight into the experimental structures of
the human civilization. These structures were getting cleared out of the dirt
of mental delusion and confusion. Still I was not yet ready as a conventional
citizen of the State.
I couldn’t have said what it was that had made a
special abode in my memory embedding itself in my universal consciousness. A
reality I could call my own was escaping from my mind and I had to chase it at
any cost. I had to wander around inside the prison to work up my brain. When I
committed the act of corruption I was a usual clerk. Since in the bigger
picture I had no powers invested in me I merely obeyed to the orders as they
were given. Our agency had been regulating the affairs of the dam’s
construction and we were accused of a huge scam. Especially the unit I was
employed in got expelled without any trial and they accused me of being the
mastermind behind the act of corruption. What I thought as a legal method to
inflect the rules of taxation turned out to be not only illegal but also
immoral. On trial I was decreed to exile as it was the growing trend of that
time under the supervision of the ruler. But as the tyranny of the ruler became
more and more aggressive the people overthrew him and our current ruler was
reinstated. On the terms of our current ruler those sent to exile were captured
and sent to prisons where they had to work for the State producing harvest,
baking bread, weaving and tailoring etc. But I know the man on the throne right
now is deceiving the people. Though the revolution has not died out some of its
participant fronts have taken a knee to the new ruler on the throne. I had been
thinking reality checks were something only dreamers did but ever since the
onset of the revolution I have seen organized reality checks for people being
conducted so that civilization doesn’t keep getting subjected to slavery. By
dreamers I mean those who have a tough time differentiating between the
universal mind and their own perception of reality. The symptoms for lucidity
are purely objective meaning they are quantifiable units. The entire day I
studied intensively in the library what impact could the absence of those
fronts from the revolution could have made on society. The objective
concreteness of my analysis had to be tried out now. That is to say in order to
seek revenge we will adopt the path of justice. We will strive and explore
revenge as much as we want but only by virtue of trail. That will be our
absolute freedom from slavery. It is in our genes to make just decisions and
therefore I will have to accomplish several things. First and foremost I will
have to try and experiment my social theory and secondly I will have to escape
from this prison. I see no way other than this.
Perhaps this correctness in generic planning was
what I had been looking for in companionship too. My wife and my elder brother
they both accompanied me in reforming the tax policies, they had their own
methods but in the end their approach kept them away from the surface. When the
officials found out about our misdeed, they were offended and seemed to be
angry. But somehow they only targeted me for having committed a criminal act.
Of course it turned out in my favor since the revolution went on without me.
But I never let my blue giant fall into a coma. The machinery broke me, and
took away all I had, it put me in confinement but I fought it back. Time and
time again I yearned for companionship for the sake of my own sanity, an
understanding of bundled up subjectivity was what had been suppressed as
indefinite concepts. But with the cycles of awakening and sleep the void of
complete darkness got filled with glimmering hope.
It is similar to the voice of confusion which
consumes me so often as the sound of the waves of the river hitting the torso
of a dead man who has drowned and been washed ashore on a cold wet dawn.
Similar, had been the fate of many I had plotted against and since I possibly
cannot believe in rebirth I accept I have a lapse in that universal
consciousness of which I speak when I address the subjects of my experiments. I
have experienced the vividity of an awakened dream in an unconscious state, I
believe thus in the existence of something so colossal that it cannot be
understood by a living individual. I was back in my cellar while there was
still daylight and perceived it with a clear mind exactly how small a trouble
it was to live there. But this thing which one cannot understand had to be
revealed to the people for their own good. Maybe I was being too selfish in the
quest of revenge.
The next day the Jailor came to visit me and said
that my prescription medicine was ready and that I was to collect it every day
from the rehabilitation institute near block two. Block two was adjoining the
mess. Every day I was fed one big red tablet after breakfast and a nice blue
one before sleeping at night. The effect of my drugged out stroll started
becoming clear to the rest of the prisoners albeit to a unique contactless
knowledge. The drugs were a merchandise for a uniform less franchise so that
the system could be safe, but most of all, alive.
CHAPTER:
The Prison
It was inevitable to have a scrambled map of time and
events inside this space that had been encompassed by a figment of vague
memory. I was busy putting pieces together from my recollection of the revolt.
How the protests were organized, how they were carried out and what measures
had been planned for the safety of the protesters was amongst some of the
elemental questions which needed answering. It was not that the mechanics of my
body had lost a sense of routine but my habits had been left disoriented by the
gathering of crowds every now and then. We had to be specifically careful of
any threats to our cause. The jailor and the officials shouldn’t find out about
these irregular meetings inside prison walls. People who attended these gatherings
had no intentions of doing what I said I wanted them to do. They needed to
‘know’ why these things must be done.
When you suffer from a seizure of sorts it becomes
apparent to you that life is not so much about making sense of why we do
certain things but instead you assume allusions that can be better understood
as a cultural euphemism. I had found comfort in the emptiness of my cellar
after having spoken at length in secret meetings about a strike but its
criteria for admission and regulation were against my conventional
understanding of people’s psyche. They just didn’t see anything wrong with the
way things were, they did not want to be a part of a strike. They said what I
helped them conceptualize for me was a fallacy. It was again a discourse in
thought and expression and the accountability of my identity as an undesired
leader of a ruined state was establishing itself in the eyes of the people.
There words of discouragement began to make way into my subconscious. The
understanding I allocated to the absurd reality in their minds was that of
abomination and submissiveness. My days were smooth as a tracing of lines along
a translucent film in motion. It is my reluctance towards animation that draws
me to converse with my dreams. Truth is that I dream the revolution will
succeed within prison walls just as it was successful in overthrowing the rule
of the throne. That dream of the blue giant is existent but it is indeed an
assumption and nothing can describe it more accurately than a few incidents
from my memory.
The experience or the knowledge that has been
gathered overtime is covered with the dust of memory and it lays the foundation
to the revolution. I fear it will get scraped off of the spine of the giant
from my dream in its pursuit of a utopia. Such an image exists in different
points of time so that it continues to exist. Expression, here is not an
obligation but a social truth which for some reason praises purity and
democracy. The unilateral formulation of majority-minority construct puts forth
a necessarily competitive psychology in the universal consciousness. The
construct is unique despite its many different executions and will forever
remain so, thus the franchise that is at the heart of democracy is the ideal
citizen. The sad truth is that for a brief history it is withdrawn from
democracy and put to a hierarchy of power. For lack of better words, my giant
dream machine, demands lucidity.
To take control of the strike I read up on social
theories as much as I could and brought to life either the stimulation or the
stagnation that the people wanted in exchange of their support. The merrier the
people became the easier the route to revolution spanned out. It was all part
of a mental map of course, but at the same time I kept in mind the efficient
co-existence of two strong forces working towards the same goal to build unity
in the fragmented population of the prison. In those days of malice and after
many restless nights troubled by nightmares eventually luck helped me out make
my way back to my loved ones. I found out that a lawyer has been trying to arrange
a meeting with me and he wants to help my family come and meet me. After years
of wandering in the wilderness my heart had become desolate in a deserted
landscape of hurt but this news made my heart beat with excitement. I needed to
find out if the rumors were true, only there was nothing I could’ve done other
than waiting for orders. The Jailor had refused to meet me due to some
mysterious reasons. I believed he couldn’t have found out about my bad
intentions, though I was sure he didn’t want to talk to a lunatic. The
institution of prison can practically invoke a war within a person despite
which they can castrate its rigidity. It wasn’t just courage which kept me
motivated to draw from the well of knowledge but also the sun and the air…
those two amongst the many other natural treats. It was a havoc to think of
companionship since it is easier to dwell in war and the thought of perishing
for a cause without it. However I felt something emotional at the thought of a
possibility of meeting my family. Each and every emotion I felt was soulful. The
reasons for this revolution cannot be absolutely scientific till the time a
certain singularity is not achieved. In fact this was what influenced most of
the prisoners in becoming a part of the strike, the end results of our revolt
could never be foretold since it is merely an object of anarchy. It is in
motion because the ideal which exists right now is an imperfect model of what
our lives were meant to be. If I was able to meet my wife and my elder brother
I would ask them about how my little boy is doing, if he is picking up the ways
of our comradeship. One night, I looked
at my attempt of formulating a perfect process of strike on a small piece of
paper and a final question was in sight. If the giant from my dream be
trustable, the strike had to be kept at bay till I found out what was happening
in regards with meeting that lawyer. I had to keep the people thinking they
were doing something important for the next few days so that they were busy and
didn’t ask unnecessary questions. In the morning I asked to see the Jailor. He
agreed to see me. It was that day I realized the Jailor was a miserable man. He
said that attachment can never be miserable if the host is miserable. He was
saying that in respect to my medication while recommending that my miserable
state was the way of life for a lunatic. One’s perception towards misery should
remain neutral as it is for happiness, prejudices come in handy for a parasite
doesn’t care so much for the social status of its host.
The field adjacent the prison walls had a huge
plantation where prisoners used to go and farm the crops. The system was
symbiotic and what the fields produced got used up by the other operations of
the prison. The plantations included cash crops as well as food crops, but what
became the focus point of our protest was the fact that the produce of cash
crops was much higher than that of food crops. If we weren’t getting a good
meal on any of the days of the week I would make a speech in the secret meeting
about how and why it was bad. I would try to influence people to look to the
way things had been organized in a confined space to further enslave us to
their system of injustice. What became a key instrument of rhetoric was my
observation that the uniform the prisoners wore were made out of the cotton
they helped produce in the fields, they processed the cloth themselves and
stitched it themselves but a large amount of cotton was also being used to
manufacture the uniforms of the workers employed by the State in the weapons
factory which operated nearby. It enraged others to know that the weapons they
used to commit crimes against humanity were now being manufactured with their
help. The State had implemented its policies efficiently but it didn’t appeal
too much to a morally awakening population. Three days after I received a
letter from a lawyer saying that he will be visiting me to arrange a meeting
between me and my family matters had kept getting heated up and the strike was
nearing its onset. The fact that I had been enrolled and shamed openly for
being the person I was came around to my aid when I tried to avenge my dignity.
I wondered deeply who felt more shame me or my family… It is an abnormal habit
to over think I know but when one has the kind of time we had in our cellars,
nothing, absolutely nothing can be accounted for in terms of who has power. The
web was too big to have been wiped away at once and my aspirations were hiding
on the back of it. If I hadn’t taken a step towards a tax reform I would have
forever been indebted to the State. Though I am now confined within a different
power structure I have the opportunity to be absolutely free. Surely I didn’t
know in that age of depression that before attempting to punch the throne in
the face I needed to decipher if it is suitable to my cause to reinvent
policies. But my heart is soothed at the thought of what the people have
achieved as a collective. I am now fully aware that any kind of inefficiency is
a crime as well. Although the taxes didn’t alter, the ruler did and that gives
us a new hope.
A day before the strike, the lawyer was coming to
see me. While waiting for him I was seated on a bench in the lawn and I was
humming a poem. It was made up of fragmented lyrics but at times some rhyme
would sweep me off my feet and into the air I would float. I felt detached from
myself once again.
“My
ego doesn’t allow me to linger
outside of my spiritual fantasy
till the time I am engulfed
in your ecstasy.
Will
you find me on an abandoned shore
of a different planet so that you
can hear me speak my mind with my words
absurd
and my phenomenon absentia?
It
is still a wave
you are riding within me,
and I wish your doubt be satisfied
not in the real world for it is faulty,
but in your dream,
through the memory of the giant
because you are unaware of yourself
and more baffled by the extravagance
of its celebration.
Neither
is it a man nor is it a beast,
it is a glimmer of light and that is
all that it is, in the background
while you are focusing on more important things.
Are
you aware of it?
I ask myself this before
I put forth such suppositions
and take very little to meet you
to be judgmental about such subjectivity.
CHAPTER:
The Visit
Soon after dusk I was shaken up thoroughly by the
push of a strong hand from my nasty contemplation on the truly mundane manner
of my dream world. It might’ve been a realistic call to my conscious mind which
I had overheard several times due to a sinking feeling. The drugs had settled
in deep into my body, it remained in a motionless gaze without my consent. I
could hear my name being called but for some reason I could not move but there
was recognition to my name being called. The voice of the official kept echoing
inside my damaged brain and my face remained contorted still, I wasn’t able to
move. The official had walked over right next to me and was dragging me along
with him by my elbow. He took me inside a room where I was asked to wait. To me
the darkness of that room wasn’t as glum as the inside of my brain. I wanted
the meeting to go well, I really wanted my family to be able to visit me in the
prison. It had been ages since we had seen each other and I hadn’t received any
word from them about the revolution, no word about my little boy. My thoughts
were estranged and made me wonder if I had ever been hopeful about seeing them.
After having buried deep under the illumination of the lamp on the farthest
desk in the library for months and organizing secret meetings away from the eye
of the officials I had perhaps become too fond of the red and green books that
had piled up on that desk. It was plain that I had been summoned to the meeting
room in a hall opposite to the reception near the main entrance to see someone
regarding that rumor that was spread about the lawyer sent by my family. The
official plummeted me down on a chair with as much force as he had picked me up
when I had refused to respond to his calls. I got up with a sudden paranoid
urgency but he sat me back down on the chair with his string hands. He pulled
on my ears to punish me for being restless. A shooting pain went up from the
part of the ear which attaches it to the skull into my brain and tore me off
from my gaze to bring me to the room with more life force than before.
In the window grayish clouds had settled and the
weather was turning quickly on its own. It seemed like a thunderstorm was on
its way to reproduce the wrath of nature on us. Lightning and rain drowned the
sound of everything else in a matter of minutes. I inquired from the official
about what was going on and he asked me to patiently keep sitting, a lawyer had
come to see me. I was pleased and I said to myself the rumors were true. What
had previously been announced to my subconscious mind was now a realistic
happening and its moment had thickened through opaque nihilism and imposed
itself on me in the way a mirror does. The situation must’ve been serious since
I was nervous as hell.
