The living name begins with an A, it begins by becoming something else.
In many places now you will hear its being said that there is something happening which cannot be understood by anyone. Something new is beginning to unsettle the temples and the estates. Its not a god, they say. Its not another god but it moves like one. In one place they said it went through their homes one by one in the night asking quietly if it could stay. In one other place they say it spoke to a woman and that now she won't speak to anyone. She's crazy they say. She walks around all day collecting flowers, the most beautiful ones you have ever seen.
Not for nothing are we without words again. In this time when things have lost their names and names are looking for their things, we find ourselves together but unapproachable, invincible within ourselves. Blindness has affected many of us. A kind of cleansing blindness, as if we were born prematurely. The blind people sit quietly in their homes, all delicate, dainty, pretty, like a kind of fish. Everyone else is out looking for food. The gods and the masters have taken away their bread and are charging a lifes worth for even enough to eat. Everything else is not edible, even amongst all this divine splendor. People have been eating a kind of plant, it makes them feel deep, bottomless. Many are trying to move towards a point in silence, towards healing. Many are collecting gold, its safer they say, than expecting your neighbor to feed you when there's a famine, or a seige. Many of us are wondering how to live without gods or masters.
Elsewhere states are forming out of the wars. They tell us that gold is a gift from the gods. Funny that they should try to sell us a gift. The men in the agoras speak about democracy, about their money, freedom and their duty, about taxation and security, liberty and right thinking. Women, children, slaves, foreigners have no rights, no words, no bodies. Most people just work in the world, accepting their fates, giving offerings to the government and the cults. Kings rule, or rulers rule, and the rulers change, but they still rule. Sometimes they fill small islands with gold and priests. These men and women swan around in communion with the gods. Together they will sacrifice us one by one to their fates. Endless wars and torments, sacrifices, rapes and tortures. And still they try to sell us some money. The gods want blood and the army gold, they say, to keep us safe, they say, to stay healthy. They feed us cursed blessings; old wine, poisoned bread, sleep and death.
Elsewhere states are forming out of the wars. They tell us that gold is a gift from the gods. Funny that they should try to sell us a gift. The men in the agoras speak about democracy, about their money, freedom and their duty, about taxation and security, liberty and right thinking. Women, children, slaves, foreigners have no rights, no words, no bodies. Most people just work in the world, accepting their fates, giving offerings to the government and the cults. Kings rule, or rulers rule, and the rulers change, but they still rule. Sometimes they fill small islands with gold and priests. These men and women swan around in communion with the gods. Together they will sacrifice us one by one to their fates. Endless wars and torments, sacrifices, rapes and tortures. And still they try to sell us some money. The gods want blood and the army gold, they say, to keep us safe, they say, to stay healthy. They feed us cursed blessings; old wine, poisoned bread, sleep and death.
The gods told us yesterday: Bring us a goldfinch, a nettle, a spine, a thorn, and a kind of mite, very tiny. This will be your healing remedy. We went out and searched until we returned with the offerings. We gave them to the priests and they gave them to the gods. They said they would heal us. But they told us, first you must pierce yourself with this darning needle. We thought it would be ok. It seemed fair of course, we would be healed of the aches and pain that follow us all day and night, not letting us sleep, and all they want is for us to pierce ourselves once, for one moment to be poor and needy. So we did. We took the needle and we pierced ourselves, one by one, through the ear and through the palm. The wounds were small but remained open, not gaping but somehow they wouldn't close. Achille said to us: You have been healed of your blindness and your terror, but you have poisoned your blood with this needle, fate. With that the priests shut us out of the house, and we left. We screamed and we cried out. We cursed the gods and the priests who had tricked us. We went home and tried to heal ourselves but gloom penetrated the darkness of the evening, turning the shadows to chaff. We were froth, overwhelmed and colorless. Under this weight the gods' healing for the sickness they had given us began. It began like a burden. Like a bag of chaff or bran carried under the shirt, or wearing rough clothes fitted with a point, a small barb hidden somewhere in the cloth.
