Inspiration and Independence, Part 2

The Path to Ukraine

Truth would have you believe that narrative cannot stand outside of language, even though in some projects the projection has no human response.

As a member of the Marxist-Leninist Party of Canada I once invaded the USA. I was beaten back by police with clubs, who handed me back to the Canadian police, who beat me with clubs, too, and left me in a ditch. Ah, youth.

Easy for me to say in context, I know, who have been mean to all sorts of living things, consciously cruel, strategically cruel, vengefully cruel — stupidly cruel — in ways sanctioned by my own ambition, someone else’s ideology, my culture and in pursuit of pleasure and of pain.

I had justifications. Some seemed believable.

Some cruelties, especially serial ones, seemed to be self-preservation.

Most were failures of imagination and intellect combined.

I was pretty worked up about Vietnam.

I have caused confusions.

Was I just a brick in the wall of Nelson’s prison? We don’t know enough to answer that.

Mind you, I have been beaten ritualistically and imprisoned, without the cause being as stated.

Everyone had a different image of me.

I have been fed excreta by systems of narrative virtue and imagined sin.

The invasion of Cambodia hurt me, especially.

Sometimes I was not of the right class. Sometimes I was wicked and scheming. Sometimes I played the unwilling, unwitting role of a ritual victim.

Mind you, sometimes I took to it with relish. So did Sir Elton.

I have escaped to be punished again. At times the punishment was prescribed for my betterment.

I was never bettered.

Continued in Part 3.

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