Thinning Membranes

 

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Dear Bernie,

I thought I would write as it seems ages since we talked. Yeah, I do remember why that might be. I remember that ranting evening and I remember stomping, swearing and swearing that that was it! Never again! Still the months pass and I thought to myself, come on, get over it, so what is it, when it comes down to basics, what is a slight difference of opinion or even, come to that, a murderous gulf of difference, a tsunami of different views.

I miss you, you old bastard.

Shall we meet up for another round of bare-knuckle fighting.

Come on, it would be fun, right!

Yours in jest

Pete

 

 

‘Outrage inspires resistance.’ I borrow those three words and tentatively taste them, try to chew them but I’m too tired, too preoccupied with other stuff. Could I ever be outraged enough to act. This is an terrible confession to make: could I stand up for what I believe? Especially when it seems to be so hard to define just what it is I believe.

But then the text goes on: ‘two views of history.’ Let’s have a look at this. ‘When’ (he continues) ‘I try to understand what caused fascism , the reason we were overtaken by it . . . It seems to me that the rich, in their selfishness, feared a Bolshevik revolution.’ He might be right and what do they do? Terrorise some and corrupt others. Pinochet set out to terrorise a whole population, while a few years later, his friend Maggie T, apparently (and perhaps reluctantly) acknowledging that she would be unable to get away with thousands of tortured and disappeared, moved more circumspectly. Following military success a very, very long way away, like a fairy tale adventure – if it wasn’t for television – then having gained confidence and popularity, terrorised much of the unions and the left, and corrupted the rest of us, promised us a new world of promised wealth if only we would agree to give up the idea of there being such a thing as society.

‘There is, of course, a conception of history, which sees the progress of history, which sees the progress of liberty, competition and the race for ‘more and more’ as a destructive whirlwind. That is how a friend of my father described history. This was the man who shared with my father the task of translating Marcel Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past into German. I am speaking of the German philosopher Walter Benjamin. He drew a pessimistic message from a painting by a Swiss painter, Paul Klee, called Angelus Novus, which shows an angel opening it’s arms as if to contain and repel the tempest that Benjamin equates with progress.’

It must be the angel that is welcoming – at this very moment – Maggie. Come here Maggie, let us have a little chat about things. Ding dong . . .

 

Dear Constance,

I think of you often. Those soft grey eyes of yours belying the harshness of your incisive judgements. It seems a lifetime since we met. I feel very trusting that this letter will reach you though rationally I have to admit it is far more likely that you’ve moved many times since I last saw you. And that was before this wondrous age of emails and Facebook. I did try googling you but no success yet. Who knows Hermes might help this letter’s onward journey.

Did you marry that guy you were going out with – I can’t (or don’t want to) remember his name?

Warm good wishes

Derek

 

(Quotations from Stephane Hessel’s Indignez-vous – Time for Outrage)


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