47094: 4 The Junkyard is Haunted By the Search for Parts
Everyone saw these tectonic shifts, suddenly, from the midst of the usual everyday, jarring and shuddering in just a few words, but words that ended up on posters, t-shirts, hash-tags, and so endlessly repeated, with the horrifying elements – and the whole thing was full of horrors - on its surface and under too, this being seen as evidence of other, hidden things that only the heart confides in and clings to with a desperate commentary so that with the utter degradation and fear comes shame and humility, in some a little pride and arrogance twisting about, as there always is when the moment becomes one of confession rather than profession – the horrors packed deadly into the flesh of the neck without immunity like a gorged bulge of hell running up to split us all open so that lips, tongues, everything got curled and inflamed and not as intact as before. And with everyone seeing it, curious, active and indifferent all mixed peculiarly together, there was a new dispensation that quickly became apparent, and this was where everything was, and where anywhere else was flight, disgrace and flinching. At first the matter was incoherent but didn’t need plain speech at all anyhow because it didn’t rightly need much of anything because its obviousness was so apparent, so clear and straight that, hell, it was saying ‘help yourself the fold is open now because you’re looking on this and you know what it is and so you know what must be done.’ Eagles, sheep, wolves and lions could see it, as we’d have put it hence, and everyone was inclined to mingling and considerable latitudes of strolling wonder.
And of course there was an obvious set of steps and an overwhelming sense of pain and utter confoundment of love that brought together people just to cling to each other and say prayers to whatever they said prayers to, which of course didn’t need to be a God of any sort, more like a way of governance and a spirit emerging up on hind legs from the monstrousness that didn’t fear neither dogs nor clubs. And so if the great marches and spontaneous rioting where people gave free reign, and whence came messages, billions of them, all restless and appalled at first with tumults and offenses, if these at first caught politicians off guard, they soon pulled together various strands they could see would be useful and necessary and then they began to shape and nudge its course, as if they believed that by turning the event into nothing they could make something out of these wild responses, making plain that ‘not now’ and ‘not this’ and ‘not you’ would be ‘never’ and ‘something else’ and ‘I’.
Even so, but this was bigger than usual, because of its nature, which could fairly be called supernatural and a gift that leaves a debt and a law too. And if there was a love in it then serving the debt would involve, as necessity, others with it and not just an individual, just as learning is never just your own, but owed to the unlearned, and wisdom to the foolish, and power to the oppressed. This was what the event was showing, and in this spirit too which combined a strange holy dread and mighty compassion plus a wildness that seemed more a psychological, bodily thing, like a traumatic reaction intervening to carry people forward together, blind in many cases but for some, already, with a sense of ideas scribbled on napkins and old ones found in old books from departments.
‘What this has shown us is that things are not right and need to change,’ was the simple thought at hand and if there was a bewilderment coming from those who couldn’t bear to feel enough, or who refused it, well that’s when people started to feel lonely and confused which invariably happens when the company turns bad and you’re weak. But what really gripped this ethereal moment and mood, its towering humour and plunging bitterness, was a fallopian growingness, a politics that was getting born outside the womb and was troubled and weak in its expansions, and odd. That’s what she thought – though we’ll come to her in a minute...
Read 47094 from the beginning here.
Read the complete novel 'The Ecstatic Silence' here.