I am tempted to say, nothing is what it seems . . . but it’s a cheap jibe, and, besides, would it lead anywhere! After all that may be the point of all this: A leads to B, B to C . . . steps in the darkness, the return to walking. The first of our three word signifier; walking as a defining action of what it is to be human. Or at least we become infatuated with status and speed, the will to power. We always knew nothing good could come of it. So there you are astride that horse of yours and naturally the poor dragon gets it in the neck.
Thatcher speared Galtieri.
Poodle Blair with his snout stuck firmly up Cheney’s backside was gungho for the spearing of Saddam Hussein.
And now the PR exercise known as Prime Minister Pinky Cameron is trying to line up Gaddafi’s throat in his sights.
As though this is a necessary rite of passage. Needless to say, specialisation of roles have long intervened: no longer does the pretender to the throne have to get his/her hands dirty. There are others whose job it is to take the risks and there are the thousands of nameless bystanders, extras for the crowd scenes, who die in their beds or the streets as the bombs fall. Others get bit parts in hospital settings as their horrific injuries are shown on tv.
It makes sense that the camera catches you in petrified unrest. At the same time you must realise that everything is grist for the mill of ‘being worked on’. So you must work on this petrified unrest. But which direction should we aim to help you limp towards? Should we train you up, CBT wise, in order that you can spear your dragons with steely resolve like those young NATO pilots with their deadly spears? I think not! Rather the underlying wound must be torn open, the pen never leaving your trembling hand. We’ll bind up your bloody feet so that you can keep walking, keep you learning the language of those darker streets and Mrs Wilkinson will continue to collect your blood stained notebooks at the usual pre-arranged drops and organise suitably obscure publication.
For some reason which is completely hidden to me, Wallace Stevens' Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird comes to mind. This is the first one:
1
Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.