Destroy Yourselves
“…to walk along the edge of the abyss, and I doubt I have the courage and the strength such an undertaking requires. But, then again, who can know?”
—C. Castaneda (own translation)
The great house of cards we live in is beginning to lose pieces. A house of cards and its cardboard tower. The Empire patches itself up with good doses of violence, here and there, just to contain. We crossed a stretch of summer driven on by the muddy, cop-ridden Genoese sewer, only to have our latest little toy suddenly snatched from our hands. Hold on — what the fuck is going on?
Now I find myself taking sides, they tell me. So it seems. They tell me that not even being no-global spares me from mourning my globalised culture. They also tell me there are three minutes of silence for the American dead. The dead here are not all equal. The good dead are prayed for; the bad ones are ignored. Like the Iraqi children, very wicked ones, they tell me. In two days they’ve already explained it all to me — who, how, why. They knew nothing before, and immediately after they know everything. Bin Laden, of course. A week on, it’s already getting hard to think about the evidence. We carry on as if nothing were wrong; the media now leave out doubt and take it for granted. Who knows how much time they need to rinse the Western critical sense clean so they can then bomb at the first idiotic excuse.
Here it is at last, globalisation. We’ve talked about it a great deal, and here it arrives aboard four airliners. The Empire buckles and the Pentagon goes up in flames. It all fits: terrorism becomes war, global and permanent. I think of the endless politely repressed smiles. I think of the million dead Iraqis, slowly murdered by hunger. The Western embargo in one of its many applications.
And while Western rhetoric mourns its dead, Israel bombs the Palestinian territories, fundamentalism cheers the Holy War, and all over the world humanity revels in the massacre. It’s all so stupid it turns grotesque.
Stunned. Here the holy wars are two. A duel to the last drop of blood, with extra time to the bitter end.
Drifts
Folios
Three readings
Folios
The end, the beginning
Incisions
Not hating those who hate
Folios
Macchina automatica / no anima
Folios
In Satan’s kingdom
Folios
Words of ruin
Folios
To the chainsaw gardeners
Incisions
Reset
Incisions
A new Middle Ages
Incisions
Busy
Folios
Irresponsible
Incisions
Cultivators of violence
Incisions
Cracks and simulacra
Visions
Liquid Progressions I
Visions