I said: it’s not going to get any better . . . then the thought seemed to run out of energy, the thought itself about to evaporate after hitting some blockage in the road. After all sometimes it was apparent that things did indeed get better. Sometimes. Although they were just as likely to go wrong, to get worse.
Is that what you think? I asked her. That things are going to get better?
As usual all I had to offer were questions and questions about questions. You see I want to understand.
No you don’t, you just want to stop me from doing anything that doesn’t include you.
There was Virgil and Dante down there in the inferno, tourist with guide gawping at the variety of sufferings imposed on Dante’s enemies. Dante’s Commedia. That word comedy. How many in the crowd laughed at the public executions – the hangings, Monsieur le guillotine, let alone the far greater excesses of extravagant punishment. Does the suicide bomber laugh as he pulls the plug, presses the switch. I read in the Guardian a few days ago that the face of the suicide bomber somehow survives the explosion even though the rest of the skull is in a million fragments. Hysterically we laugh our way into some new hell. Excited as hell. Laughing out loud.
And the one who was seated on the throne said, ‘See, I am making all things new.’ Also he said, ‘Write this, for these words are trustworthy and true.’ (Revelation 21:5)
And to go with this Naomi Klein picked up this from Condoleezza Rice:
‘The world is a messy place, and someone has to clean it up.’ (September 2002, on the need to invade Iraq).
Life is not just a comedy, it’s serious.
Yes, of course it is I’m tempted to say but don’t because I’m distracted by this bi-polar sort of vision of it being both, like two images superimposed one on top of the other. Could we do the serious stuff in the morning and then go to the pub in the evening and have a good old laugh about it all.
I think we should split up, she says using her most utterly serious tone.
Really! But I can’t hold the outrageous laughter inside anymore and out it splutters and then roars.
In the heat of that ecstatic moment everything was possible and nothing impossible and nothing mattered.
A few minutes later it really did and it really hurt. The pain was sharp and overwhelmed me.
‘People were in prison so that prices could be free.’ Eduardo Galeano 1990.
Wise man, I thought.
Thanks to Naomi Klein (The Shock Doctrine) for the quotations.