Treason
- to your shattered limbs you go.
In less than half a century, man has been proven a miscreant of the worst order, an undulating, sublimated subduction of a fool, a calamity beyond hogsheads and Saturdays. How is this to be understood by us, here in the latter half of the dying modern age? Who will tell us how much a squid’s tentacle costs, or a burrito? Can anything be made, I ask you, can anything be made anymore of human life?
Well, my friends, have I got an answer for you. There have only been three times in the history of the world when people suffered under the delusions of today. And yesterday, friends, wasn’t one of them. In those three times, we’ve seen piccolos played like ukeleles, men chopped to pieces like submarine sandwiches, rivers that refuse to go in the ground. We’ve seen things that would drive the most pious man straight into the waiting arms of the washing-machine and the feuilleton.
And that’s just the thing, isn’t it? None of it made a whit of difference. In the end, for all the lambs we’ve fed at the point of a halberd, everything has come back no different all the same. The first time it might have surprised us. But it’s been three times. Three times! To account for this lunacy, you can’t just call a termite a termite. You’ve got to see that it’s also, at the very same time, an unfinished jar of mayonnaise. It’s unfair, but it’s the truth. And we can’t lie to ourselves any longer.
Because, I’ve got to tell you, this isn’t the world that we dreamed in a coma last night, and it’s not the one we’ll see mapped out in our coffee stains tomorrow. This is an older world, and one that’s closer to a carburetor than a transformer. You can’t expect it to combust into murder if you’re not watching it carefully. That’s what I’m trying to say.
And that’s really what we’re all trying to say, isn’t it? In the end, you’re not a phonograph either, no matter how much you look like one. Houses aren’t worth calibrating anymore. People are not a machine — except, of course, when they are. So don’t believe it! And you’ll be fine.
We’ll all be fine.