The Lizard of Oz
 
Whine the party line, do you, ra-ra, rule Britannia, you all love England.  Vermin.  Yes, of course you do, that’s why you’ve 20 years beavering away at destroying England, destroying me.  It does wear rather thin. What else do you filth whine, oh but we had to do what we’re told.  No, you didn’t, and don’t. Nothing compelled you to skulk around in the wainscoting like the fat slimy sly squalid diseased cowardly rats you are, conspiring to pervert the course of justice, overthrowing democracy, giving aid and comfort to the Queen’s enemies, refusing to give me help or support of any kind, refusing to intervene, refusing to publicly establish the facts, refusing to demand everyone spoke in the open, nothing compelled you to insolently reject all fact, reason, morality, nothing compelled you to sit peacefully watching me getting more and more disabled, older and old, more and desperate and say nothing, ,vermin, filth, nothing compelled you not to question the ravings of criminals and psychopaths and perverts, nothing compelled you to never express the slightest concern for my back, for how I was managing, surviving, cunthead filth, traitor vermin, nothing compelled you to dismiss everything I said out of hand, nothing compelled you to reject the governing system of the country, nothing compelled you stinking vermin to behave as though democracy had never existed, ignore every check and balance the free world has created against creatures like you.  You cuntheads can’t read the facts?  You can’t speak?  You can’t act? Start by laughing in the faces of the kinky boys.  Laugh in the face of that fat monster grotesque gloating filth-monkey Saunders. 
 
Every step of the way you had choice and every step of the way you chose and choose evil.
 
You filth-monkeys you don’t give a fuck about England, you just want to live in some dirty freak-hole ruled by pervert monkeys with clubs, dirty apes who hit you if you argue, twisted mnokeys who think women are property, dirty freak pits of corruption and psychosis, fascist sewers where sick dirty psychotic cunts like you strut around lording it over us slaves, whose sole business is to obey, fucked-up monkeys like you, freak sickos, nutters who think they are so far above us and all us little slaves must know  our place and bob curtseys to our fucking superiors, freak sicko nutters who think they know best, nutter vermin who  think you can’t be questioned, think you can’t be challenged..  How do you fucking dare, freaks, sickies, impose the dirt and squalor and filth and corruption of your dirty monkey-pits on England, who the fucking hell do you think you are, jumped-up trash too important for democracy, too all-wise and all knowing,  Doctor knows best.  Doctor is sick dirty cunt, a diseased monkey who thinks itself fucking omniscient and omnipotent and belongs in a fucking zoo. 
 
Maybe it’s time to go back to putting psychiatric cases in cages in public for people to laugh at, at any rate if they’re big enough to know better, if they’re fucking professors of medicine, insolently, insolently evil.
 
This country is not run on the ravings of fucking savages, jabbering about a great head monkey in the sky  You dare try and force me into the world of sick monkey, jabbering apes, you fucking dare, Blair, you and stinking chimpo cunt ape monkey catlick traitor, you dare make subject to perverts, sickies, nutter, mentally deranged ape men who insist their psychopathic ravings, the foetid contents of their worm-infested brains, are the will of God
 
Not human beings.  Nothing I have ever said has stopped you trying to injure me, maim me,nothing stops you trying to destroy me.  Best to depict you like plastic puppets, like in Thunderbirds, these weren’t humans around me, they were robots, unswerving, unyielding, incapable of thinking, wondering, questioning changing their minds, absolutely and totally committed to my destruction. Not flesh and blood, not mind, just little murder-machines. 
 
Because it’s too horrifying and sickening to think of these creatures as human.
 
So long as I’m in a wheelchair in the gutter, right, Linch, so long as I’m past being able to do anything about your precious bags of poison, the filth you nurture and protect and uphold, the vermin you incubate, so long as the little bags of poison like Plucinski and Ardeshna flourish. Are you a sadist too?  I think you’re close, view me as some kind of experimental animal.  How far can you push me before I break?  When I’m in my coffin, cunt, not before.
 
Uggh looks down at himself.  Jackson. Hughes, oh they’re so impressed with themselves.  The usual word is cocky.  Cocky little brutes.  Keep it in your pants, boys, there are ladies present, but of course these are the absolute dregs of the slums, surprised they’ve even been taught to bother to do their flies up.
 
And now I’m old and tired and bent and frail and helpless and it’s all unbearable, absolutely unbearable to have everyone ganged up on me, you just sit there and you do this to me, in my own country, which is no longer my own country but what a bunch of foreigners think England should be.  You won’t rest, will you, until you’ve razed hated England to the ground, made it a cess pool of corruption and violence where we’re all eversa respectful, eversa deferential to whatever monkey puke our ‘masters’ feed us, you just won’t rest until intellect is destroyed, reason is destroyed, monkey vomit rules everyone and people are prosecuted for ‘defying’ ‘rebelling’ against the vomit of sick animals
 
Horror, absolute horror that England has become this, the absolute assumption evil rules, filth and lies rules, no argument, no debate, wordless mindless animals rule, the most basic facts dismissed out of hand, jeered at.  Anything filthy and corrupt is wonderful, anything foul and stupid and twisted and psychopathic.
 
Somehow I shall come out the other side of this.  The glass is right now not half-empty or half-full, but empty, dry as a bone, but maybe Johnson won’t destroy the rest of the Welfare State and I shan’t starve because I’m not even able to get to a food bank.
 
Makes you feel important, makes you feel eversa important skulking like the cowardly vermin you are behind closed doors, lying and manipulating and corrupting and wielding criminal power, oh it make you pathetic sick animals feel so important, oh you clutched your dirty wizened little cocks at the power to assault me, to cripple, the power to forbid intervention, forbid anyone helping me, supporting, oh that gave you dirty fucking filth an orgasm didn’t it, you forbid the governing system of the country and all the subhuman slave-vermin obey, you forbid anyone to speak and the dirty subhuman grovellers beg to suck your dirty smelly cock, oh what a big man you are to achieve assault on a woman where I am medically vulnerable, to achieve crippling me and now achieve my destruction, a cowardly perversion of a human being who hasn’t got the balls have you, ape, haven’t got the balls to speak in the open.
 
Oh, doesn’t the baboon get hot and wet when everyone obeys it and crawls to it, oh the ape is so powerful, but then an ape is all it is, power, violence, force are all it understands, heart mind, love, reason, fact, these mean nothing to an ape.
 
Oh, you so want me to crawl, don’t you, deny everything I know, deny everything I am, deny facts, deny history, anything you say, o master, only let me live. FUCK YOU WHERE  YOU BREATH and FUCK THE GROVELLER DEGENERATE VERMIN who all suck your dirty cock, disgusting repulsive subhuiman vermin who refuse to counter you, challenge you, arrest you, who know only your commands.
 
I suppose you want me to beg forgiveness of what you call ‘God’, do you, a diseased figment of your dirty animal brain or in other words you, you pathetic animal, you absolute pathetic repulsive ape smelly bag of infected shit, I suppose you want me to say the monkey Jackson isn’t illiterate, and it’s all a fucking dirty smelly animal can do, butcher, murder, attempt to terrorize, well, it works in the dirty foul degraded ape-holes out of which they all crawl, groveller sick filth, obscene depraved sickening vermin, scum of the fucking earth, rejecting all fact, reason, morality because they’d rather grovel, they’re rather writhe and moan in ecstasy at what obedient little subhuman slaves they are, rather throw themselves on their faces in front of evil and press themselves into the ground rubbing themselves of on how obedient they are and how they love to please their masters, how of course no silly fact or ethics should get in the way of their masters’ delight. Dirty, dirty, dirty obscene scum creatures to whom any lie is better than fact, any corruption and bestiality is superior to decency.
 
All prostrate before not so much the Wizard of Oz, as the Lizard of Oz, something still crawling around in the primeval swamp. 
 
What a pathetic little amphibian you are, what an absolutely pathetic and inadequate freak, a sick freak who has to have control, who feels threatened if everyone else isn’t crawling to him, a desperately sick dirty inadequate, a complete freak, a psychopath convinced of its own perfection, regarding any criticism or challenge as a foul slur to be ruthlessly punished, a freak who thinks itself omniscient and omnipotent, a grotesque sickie, a slobbering animal, who feels ‘threatened’ if everyone doesn’t agree with him, share his pervert freak views, control everyone and everything around him, so about control isn’t it freak-monkey, you have to have control, and government, all the security services grovelling at your feet in their readiness to destroy me for you, you must be out of your mind with ecstasy, they obey you! Freak. Pervert.  Animal.
 
Ludicrous, ludicrous, ludicrous little freak who expects me to deny the history of the free world.  Yeah, mong nutter, there was no French Revolution, no Enlightenment, no English Civil War, no Reformation, no Woodstock, no Marxism, because you say so.  They actually take you seriously.
 
You only survive because of your disgusting obscene pervert slaves, of course.  What could you have done if they’d all upheld democracy, all screamed in fury at the assault on my spinal fusion?  Laughed in your stupid evil lizard face.  And just think if it weren’t for these filth, I’d be able to walk and to run. 
 
If we strip this filth down, remove the specious untenable evil filth about ‘faith’ and ‘sacred beliefs’, we get:
 
A grotesque inadequate incapable of handling the existence of other people who are not of like mind, who run on separate tracks and think our own thoughts, arriving at concepts diametrically opposite to his, a psychopath who believes himself to have the rights of property over the bodies and minds of others, who thinks he must constitute a necessary point of reference to all, all other thought is to be filtered through, determined by what he thinks.  Like any common criminal, any rapist or murderer, he is self-obsessed to the point of insanity, thinks others may be used to satisfy his desires. Like the rapist, he lies in wait watching for potential victims who may be said to have ‘asked for it’, over whom he subsequently spews self-justifying filth.  Shouldn’t have dressed like that.  Shouldn’t have said that. 
 
What he thinks is that the contents of a book are a revelation to the world of the Will of God.  He has no evidence to support this claim. Neither can he prove the existence of the god whose revelation it is supposed to be.  It is his belief and he is welcome to it.  He is not welcome to smear it over others. 
 
Many other people have other versions of the Will of God for which there is equally no proof. 
It is to be noted by the by that within each belief system the ‘revelation’ gives a full range of choices.  If you are a sick shit, you choose the bits representing a sick shit god.  If you are a kind and loving person you choose the bits representing a kind and loving god.
 
No-one can believe every word of a ‘divine revelation’ because of the internal contradictions, no matter how vociferously they claim to believe every word.
 
This psychiatric case has forced himself on me and been left free to do so because he deeply sincerely believes a load of untenable, unproven and unprovable garbage, some of it grotesquely sick and evil garbage, not least his supposed right to force himself on others.
 
Then of course there’s the behaviour of civilized people.  People who discuss things using language and reason.  You wouldn’t know about that.  You revolt me and you’re so corrupt you don’t even understand why.  You think you’re normal.  You think corruption, bestiality, violence, murder are all normal.
 
Extract from The Anile Heir ©2006  I, Ysabel Jehan Howard, hereby assert and give notice of my right under s.77 of the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this book.
 
Munzi raised his hand in  imitation.
“Cool it, guys!”
“It’s not that the authority isn’t there, it’s that it is.”
“There you have the nub, I think.  Undoubtedly there is metal under the paddy-paws.  What is its chemical composition?”
What, we wonder, warms it up around here?
 
 “It’s not the same,” said Inyulat.
“Oh but it is,” said Ritawa.  “You’re missing the point.”
“You can’t fake it,” said Munzi.  “The animal does not get antsy.”
“You want to see if you can make Sarat antsy?  Are you completely insane?”
“Bit more to it than that,” said Ritawa.
“Morons,” said Munzi, “piss-artists, time-wasters.”
“We want to know what he damn’ does,” said Ritawa.
Inyulat spluttered.
“Other than summary execution, you mean.”
“That would be very uncool,” said Ritawa.
“Spetzi wouldn’t want you to go this way!”
Challin came in.
“We were planning a little intolerable insolence,” said Ritawa
“Entirely insufferable and insane behaviour,” suggested Munzi, “time-wasting and tedious.”
“An experiment,” murmured Challin
“We do not entirely understand.”
“Clarification,” murmured Challin. “I imagine execution will be swift.”
“I know how I should respond,” said Ritawa.
Challin pondered that a moment.
“Would it not be less painful to ask Mitch?”
“You really think there’s a point to be made?” asked Inyulat. 
“Yes,” said Challin.
 
 
So here is long trellis table.  It is not an exciting table, slatted and of a dirty brown.  There are many of its kind around.  Sarat and Maya are sitting at it, along with several other people of various species.  Behind them there is a hot-water dispenser, a basket of tea-bags, powdered milk, sugar and a box of polystyrene cups.  Other guys mill around. 
Ritawa and Munzi sprawled themselves nearly opposite, waiting for a good opening.
Maya turned, cup in hand and half-rose to make herself another cup of tea.  Some nice person took the cup from her, and she sat down again.  Gripping this, isn’t it.
“Ah,” said Ritawa.  “The Dabidan whore.”
Heads jerked up, people half-moved, started to speak, fulminate, as people do in situations in which an electric current has passed through them.
Sarat raised his hand signalling my call.  Ritawa’s eyes met his, quizzical, mocking.
One duels, sir?
And of course journos routinely trailing Sarat around broke into sweats.
              “Not the Azt Star again!” said Sarat.  “Do they never give up!”
“Be saying I am The Star next,” said Maya.  Jaizal’s favourite tart, you will recall.
“Haven’t they done that yet?”
One chance to say just quoting the papers?  Fuck, they’re good!
              “Did someone speak?”
“Hearing loss?” asked Maya.
              “Guess he should be invalided out,” said Sarat.
              “It seems we have a Fidubi homosexual and a slut from Zur Master and Mistress of Kadun.”
              Maya bit her lip.
              “I think he doesn’t like us!”
              “Just what the hell do you think you’re doing here?”
              “There was this guy Narulis.”
               “How slut?” asked Maya
              “Clearly you were sold to gain power in Kadun.”
              “Clearly,” said Maya, in a voice that -  clearly – said loon!
              “You can scarcely claim to hide it!  All too plainly the only coup here is one by AMI.”
              “Aw,” said Sarat, “haven’t I done anything?”
“Are you from Glitz?” asked Maya. “All a bit chaotic, thought you might be a press-fiend who’s stolen a uniform. Trying to goad us into revealing the secrets of the imperial bed!”
              “After all,” said Sarat, looking extremely innocent, “we have promised transparency.”
              “Not that transparent,” said Maya briskly. “I can sincerely assure you Sarat isn’t gay.”
              What do you do with it!  Raw unforgivable insolence, I think
              “You are of course too scared to command, take refuge in puerile repartee, a pansy who defends neither his lady’s honour nor his own.”
              Sarat burst out laughing.
              “What commands d’you think I should give?”
              “Oh for -  get on my feet! Apologize, retract, crawl at my lady Maya’s feet.”
              “But you want to be a fuckwit,” said Sarat. “Why should I get in the way?”
              I do?
              “You are the bloody Anile emperor!  Supposedly.”
              “Prove I’m the boss?  I know I’m the boss,” said Sarat.
              “Hardly if no-one obey.”
              “Define ‘obey’,” said Sarat.
              “You did go to school?”
              “It is a transitive verb meaning do what one is told.”
              “Try again.”
              “Fidub speaks a different language?”
              “If I command you behave like a fuckwit, undoubtedly you obey.”
              “Implicit is doing something you don’t want to do.”
              “You’re all here because you’ve been made to do something you don’t want to do?”
              “Of course not!”
              “You want to be made to do something you don’t want to do?”
              “Of course not!”
              “Why should I want guys to do something they don’t want to do, something which has no purpose other than to prove I can make them do it, prove I’m more powerful and important than they are.  Prove I can jerk people around like puppets.  That’s what the other guys do.”
              “Surely authority has to be established in the face of gross insubordination.”
              “But it’s phoney,” said Maya. “Either everyone here wants broadly the same thing and so wants to work together to achieve it or they don’t and we pack.”
              “Alternatively of course,” said Sarat, “you pack.”
              “You would say we are – surplus to requirements.”
              “Suppose I enter into your dumbfuck game, order you to get on your feet. You refuse.  If I accept that, I’m weak, scaredy-cat, in your view.  I play your game. What then? PANTHER drag you to your feet?  Oh the drama! What has been achieved that is of the remotest use, help or interest to you, me, Kadun?”
              Of course we want it! There is the small detail that we do not understand what ‘it’ is.  Let us continue.
              “Our job is to listen,” said Maya.  “Doesn’t mean we have to like what we hear.  Doesn’t mean we have to coo over it.  Doesn’t mean we accept having our time wasted if it’s garbage.”
              “We need to listen,” said Sarat.  “See if there’s any non-garbage.  You decide how you behave.  If it’s gross, you’re pulled up and you go on with it, then you’re a waste of oxygen.  That has nothing to do with military discipline.  That’s true in the Sa’aanda Senta, in the student caff.”
“Student caff, guys just walk away,” said Maya.
              “Bo-o-o-ring,” said Sarat.  “Hey, it’s an offensive little shit.  Leave it drivelling to itself. But if I walk away you say I’m scared, yes?”
              “Yes.”
              “Why?”
              “You have noticed you are Anile emperor?”
              “It has crossed my mind.  So?”
              “Leader of the pack, was it not.  People in senior positions do not tolerate – drivel from people in junior positions.  Nor get displaced!  I should have thought that was pretty universal, even in Fidub!”
              “And here we are at a board meeting of Sohenoil.”
              “What would happen?”
              “The fuckwit would be asked to wait until it was over, when he or she could scream at Cho all he/she liked.  I prefer here and now.”
              “Why!”
              “If someone’s at the screaming stage, s/he has a problem or thinks s/he does.  It needs hearing.  Maybe it’s garbage, maybe not.”
“The tolerating,” said Maya.  “What does it indicate?”
              “If we get away with it, then everyone will think they can get away with it.”
              “That,” said Sarat, “presupposes that ‘everyone’ wants to, that it’s only being crushed from above that maintains order.”
              “That is rather what we’re against,” said Maya.
              “And a loss of face, I am -  we are supposed to be lessened by your crap? Is that what you think?”
              “No.  It is a – an element in some people’s thinking.”
              “So ‘scared’ is – scared to do that which maintains an order which is essentially corrupt – why should I want to do that!  Suppose I tore your balls off verbally while you stood rigid, forbidden to speak.”
              “I’d have asked for it.”
“It’s still a grotesque  abuse of power,” said Sarat, “to insult, anger, distress a man who cannot answer back.  Like hitting a man who’s tied up. Do you have a partner?”
“Yes.”
“Suppose for instance I amused myself abusing her, with the pathetic excuse that it was just tit for tat.  Wouldn’t that be pretty filthy?”
              “Yes.  I really can’t say I should like you very much after that.”
“And  you would have no means of redress, no means of making it entirely apparent I was a total – consider the third letter changed! And of course you would have to continue obeying me.  Isn’t that a pretty filthy way to run a country?”
              “Of course.  The answer to -  unconstructive conduct not equally unconstructive conduct, then?  That is interesting.  It may even be correct!  Nonetheless - let us list our offences!  We have called your lady a slut and a whore, your lady who is by the way Anile Empress, Mistress of Kadun, to whom our loyalty is pledged.  We are therefore probably guilty of high treason. Additionally we have accused her and with her the Crown of Dabida of – actually I’m not sure what of, fraud, theft? General venality.  Called you a pervert, a liar and a coward.  Denied and mocked your authority.  How can we possibly be permitted to get away with it?”
              “Don’t forget wasting my time. Yea, mine honour is besmirched.  And of course Maya’s. Why should your drivel be of the slightest importance to either of us?”
              “Does it come out in the wash?” asked Maya.  “Smirch.” She began to examine her sleeve for stains. 
“I think it’ll wash out with new improved PANTHER,” said Sarat.
“You have just said people have to be heard.  Now you say – drivel has no importance.  Would it be at all possible to clarify?”
“Emotionally,” said Sarat, “to us personally.  Ravings no importance.  Do we strike you as having hissy fits?”
Whew!  Many things strike me.  Not that.
“Truly,” asked Maya, “you expect me to be stung?”
“You have said you want to know what people actually think.”
              “Yes.”
              “I am telling you what people actually think.”  This in the tone of one addressing someone of limited mental endowment.
              “You are telling me what some people think.  If it were the view of everyone I shouldn’t be here.”
 “Let us say it is a segment of public opinion.  May I not introduce to you something called reason?  On the one hand you say you wish to know what all people actually think.  On the other when presented with what some people actually think you mock it, dismiss it.  Is that entirely logical?  Further, you have said that you recognize that persons of socially conservative opinion are not necessarily, what was it, creatures from the pit of desecration – “
              “That was Mitch.”
              “But you concur.”
              “I concur.”
              “But you treat their opinions with complete contempt.”
              “I find them contemptible.”
“So you will ride roughshod - ?”
“Basic human rights are non-negotiable. Women and gays are about 60% of a population. How can a country be fairly governed by 40% of its population? Nobody knows exactly what All-Kadun thinks.  Until everyone is equal in rights, free to speak and in the polling booths no-one will know. You appear to be saying my conduct should be shaped by the Azt Star.”
              “You seem to be saying  lack of courtesy is frowned upon – “
              “My lord Cile, do you have to be totally moronic?”
              “Among other bons mots…”
              Morons, I think, are decidedly non grata.
              “How else would you describe what is probably the only course of action anyone anywhere on this continent right now can pursue which ensures that lots and lots of guys with partners and kids get dead?”
              “Let an insult be only true!”
              “Broadly based in fact! Or rational argument.  I’m also saying, fine, you’re concerned about Dabidan and Fidubi influence in Kadun.  You get a few facts and figures together. You present me with arguments. It’s all on the Grid, AMI, Sohenoil.” Pause.  “There are two – can’t think of the word, must be my limited education – “
“Realms,” suggested Maya innocently.
“There is the world of the mostly sane based on fact and reason and there is the world
of the out of it.  Insult falls into one or other category.”
              “Insult is then – merely a joke if grounded in nonsense and directed at the mostly sane.”
              “And a weapon against the out of it!”
              “The Cult owns approximately half Kadun.  It is just a little kooky to rave about me rather than  Madam Minister.”
              “Perhaps there are concerns about exchanging one set of masters for another.”
              “A valid point.”
              They looked at each other and started laughing.
              “We appear to be having a civilized conversation. But of course those in the world of the out of it think themselves in the world of fact and reason. It would  be fair to say you don’t like idiots?”
              “Don’t do idiots,” said Sarat.
              “It would seem to me,” said Maya, “that the basic – perception is that most people are idiots and require their idiocy controlling.”
              “Except,” said Sarat, “the people who want to control other people generally are the idiots.”
              “Freedom,” said Maya, “sort of idiot control mechanism basically.”
              “But it has to work both ways?”
              “But it has to work both ways.”
               Maya said: “Someone tells us we’re out of it, nuts, we can’t possibly take Azt.  No, we’re not going to explain how we can, we don’t know whom the person might sing to.  But we need to know that people are worried and need some reassurance and we need to hear why.  They might know something we don’t.”
              “There is nobody,” said Sarat, “who can’t be wrong, misinformed, flawed in his or her reasoning.”
              “And obedience is the opposite of that?”
              “Deference is the opposite of that.”
              Oh, right, lad, thought Varulin, so that’s why I want to fall at your bloody feet.
              “So here are Sarat and I in the lush green fields of Carlin,” said Maya, “a couple of screaming loons who think they’re going to take Azt and establish democracy in Kadun.  Who are these nutters?  Where are they coming from?”’
              “Obedience is switching off one’s brain?”
              “There isn’t an insult in the world that isn’t coming from a point of view.  Next question is whether that point of view has any basis in fact and reason.”
              “Could we possibly behave intelligently!”
              “Pretty-please,” said Sarat.
              “I think – among some – there is a – perception that the mere act of questioning shows a lack of respect.”
              “For what?  Omniscience? Psychosis?”
              “Who,” asked Maya, “is actually being treated with a total lack of respect in that scenario?  The only serious offence is to think people are your property, your tools, creatures of your will.”
              “We have of course observed the extreme deference of Zuri”  He stood.  “My lord, my lady, we have been moronic.  Our abject apologies.”
              In days of yore, thought Baz.  Will he do it?
“Accepted,” said Sarat. “Kilana siy tan.”
“Kilana siy tan.” said Maya.
              “Spring has the to-do list,” said Sarat, “if you want to hang around.”
             
LIVE FROM KADUN
 
Gee, Bal, he’s just bonding with his officers.
 
Karmen (Harn State Security) rang Faun: “Purr, purr, purr, such a cutesy little pair of cubs, I deem!  I may invite myself along?”
“Wondered what was keeping you,” said Faun.
“You have a fairly international gathering, I hear.”
“Nobody wants to miss this party.”
 
…
 
Ritawa had a moment to himself once more. 
      I have, he typed, played over certain scenarios suggested to me.  I think the best one was where Sarat walked away, bo-o-ring, leave you to Maya.  One day, some time way in the future, I might ask him or at least someone why he didn’t.  Or is that being unfair to myself?  He not she designated himself leader of the pack, he not she is recognized as CinC.  Enough of empty speculation! What you do around this joint (Spetzi choked softly as she read: vocabulary, darling, quite so) if you do not know something is ask.  I therefore cornered a cat, with due everyone is busy, hardly time for lengthy, is it at all possible to tell me briefly what is the party?  I do hope you have your smelling salts to hand.
The party is an elevated plane of consciousness.  Nor is this all.  It is a place where nothing matters and everything matters.  The usual lucidity and directness of speech that attends our new continuum appeared markedly absent.   I must have looked pitifully woebegone for my puss relented.  We agreed to meet later. 
 
Kilana siy tan.  There is no harm to the ego, the self, because it is illusory.  It does not get antsy, threatened, because it isn’t there, or if there is not dominant, does not automatically, as one does, assume itself of greater importance.  Thus ‘you cannot talk to me like that because I am the emperor’ has no place in the construct; nor of course does ‘you cannot talk to me like that because I am an officer’.  I have received a certain amount of straight talking from what used to be called the other ranks though equally many have understood what I was trying to do; I think Challin possibly had a discreet hand in that. In any case the general consensus is that I bit off a great deal more than I could chew and got delicately, courteously, possibly the biggest bollocking it has ever been my misfortune to receive, an outcome with which they are of course content.   No harm done….No, I am not digressing!   Sure, you can talk to me like that, because I am a human being.  As such, however,  I am not required to like what you say.  I think I noticed.      The physical body, however, is very much there.  Harm lies in physical injury, physical duress, because any such damage, any physical constraint upon volition is not illusory.  I did just wonder when he mentioned PANTHER dragging me to my feet.  Never in a million years.  I should have to have become violent first.  That is the principle of the initiation of force.  Everything’s cool, so long as both parties are free to walk away. I’m not sure it’s quite that simple, but it seems a more than adequate base.  The everything that matters therefore included me.  This guy is upset.  That matters. What is he upset about?  However, also, I am adult and fully in possession of my faculties.  I can be expected to communicate in an adult fashion and I can expect to be told how moronic I am, whether I have an ego or not! Also a lot of other things are mattering too so do not waste my time, puh-lease!  I have learned another one for the dictionary: ‘my stuff’.  But Ritawa, this is all your stuff, man, nothing to do with us.  True-untrue? Certainly nothing prompted by the immediate situation, as for instance a remark about AMI with which I took issue. 
Everything not tainted by harm has a gurgle of laughter in it.  I just think about that.  I saw it.  I think that must be serious harm.  Obviously they don’t find the Cult funny but I don’t think it would much have spoiled the party if I had made to hit him or something grotesque like that. I think I may be flushing even as I write this but I think overall they would have found that – not unfunny.  I took a deep breath and asked: had I made to hit her?  Should I not instantly have been clapped in irons!  Er, no.  My lady Maya is Hadin-Wadud.  I should probably have found myself on the floor with my arms twisted behind my back.  Let me say that increases the number of counts on which I am remarkably glad I did nothing so vile!  
All of it, all of them, the Anile throne, Alzani-Meta, PANTHER, VILE, the Hadin-Wadud, are the outward and exoteric aspects of the party, its interface with the normal world. You simply do not push other people around, smear your self over them and they are not to be terrorized into submission because they have redress.  Of course today in the south they equally have redress through the courts, but that essentially is ‘Narulis’ gig’, always has been, so far as possible, and I trust always will be: if you have certain kinds of problem, you find a cat. Or of course the emperor’s stewards. Thus under imperial law anyone at all had right of access to the emperor (or presumably empress) and it was a crime to impede that access.  ‘From no man may the right of speech be withheld.’  I think some of the chaps think we must be running under Fidubi law, or possibly international statute, the Treaty of Sal-venon.  We’re not!  Or more exactly – some of it didn’t entirely mesh with the modern world, I am given to understand,  extraordinarily minimal property qualifications.  You had to be of fixed abode and have three head of sheep, whatever that is! They are?  Presumably if you had neither you homed in on the nearest cat and asked why am I homeless!  Imperial law tweaked to accord with international law where it gave people fewer rights.  International law completely ignored if it give fewer rights.  I think the precise term for this may be Sarat’s Law! 
What happened to the empire  - the First Empire, we must now say – was purely a question of metaphysics.  I do not recall having read that in any history book.  Contempt for human rights justified at the metaphysical level.  Because the pain, anger, confusion experienced by someone who has been hard done by, or feels he or she has been, is illusory, it was felt not to matter. That in tandem with what was described to me as ‘perverted esotericism’: nothing of this world matters, therefore you watch a man starve to death. The third letters walked in, walked all over the Anile Court. Clearly if there is another world it left it open to them to designate that other world as that of Death the Great Master, though initially of course that was not at all what was meant.  What was?  What was?!??!  I think another layer of reality to this world, where things look different. Obviously as previously indicated in letters of steel it may be rubbish but it has to be heard in order to decide whether it is rubbish or not.
The other matter may be several lessons down the road, I think.  It does not for the moment matter.  I wanted to know what is now governing Kadun.  Now I know.  I am, I suppose, fairly stunned.  Yes, I want to know more. 
Oh, and you were essentially right, I think.  Sarat is ‘an essentially outer and exoteric kind of guy’.  Maya is ‘frantically eso(teric)’.  Shall I say there are no fucks where Maya is? Surely lese-majeste! Certainly no dumbfucks.  He relates to people at the level of the normal world.  She, I think, is a more complex affair, not that I should describe Sarat as simple.
What do you think?
 
I think I think what we have already thought, that we have been utterly confused by language.  They put this in the language of modern human rights – how else could they put it when empire was soiled, defiled, when the very idea may yet cause war with Ciletij. That is not a complaint.  I don’t think you can stand live on camera today and babble about metaphysics, even if it is all that actually matters!  I believe we might have dimly grasped they are Narulis’ and Zani’s heirs and all that that implies concerning the Cult.  We did not properly put the two together.  I think a lot of other things too.  I need to think about what I’m thinking!  Write more later.
 
Just something to add to your thunks.  An awful lot of that, now I come to think about it, economics, social conditions, was actually Mitch.
 
 
Nothing from Spetzi
Two days later: nothing from Spetzi.
Ritawa to Spetzi: I yearn for the sight of your name. I lust after the movements of your fingertips. 
We shan’t bother with the rest of that one.
Spetzi to Ritawa: I went back to Mel’s Place and read all of it.  What I am thinking is blowing my mind.  Just trying to put it all together.
 
 Cantilip and Mel both had succinct things to say about earthpower, about the – psychology of the Cult.  If anything what was wrong with that was it was NOT couched in the language of modern human rights: student philosophizing, no great connection with the normal world.  In any case, it was before the arrival of Mitch, the real box-office draw, I believe you put it! I am going to sit very tightly on my fingers and not say a word about how few would have concerned themselves with critical delineation of the nature of earthpower from my lady Van-senok in comparison to the many gripped by the orations of my lord Var-sega’.  Evil grin.   Neither Sarat nor Maya was actually heard until Ground Zero – except of course for the excursion to Van-senok which ran through us like a forest fire.  About which we were of course free to make whatever the hell we liked. True-untrue, can we accept this.  Can our itsy-bitsy little egos take it.  Let us be exact.  Let me be exact.  The rule of the Cult is to sustained because no-one is going to call me ‘Miss’ any more? There was of course what Sarat looks like.  From the perspective of female people and one must assume gay male ones also! No, one does not choose the future leader of one’s country because he will look awfully good on a postagestamp.  It is a question of tone, of body-language, of course of class.  We concluded in demeanour sufficiently imperial, but did not dwell on precisely what that word means to Kadun – rather more than opening a hospital in a constitutional monarchy. Language versus body-language….You said it!  If a man have the appearance of – of a damn’ panther padding about the place, the language of Harn is not inappropriate, though can scarcely be said to be fitting at any formal occasion.  But then why should the emperor not pad around Azt, have we not already concluded he looks the part  – it tied us in knots.  From their side, I’d guess an absolute determination to make clear – forewarn – of what the offer was and what was entailed in acceptance.  Totally obscuring what was actually on offer?  One is a brash Fidubi brat, one will make waves that will shake Kadun to our foundations, but oh, what is the nature of the waves.  And so some of us, being less stupid than others, took a closer look at those foundations.  Interesting, certainly, fascinating, startling, amazing – but rather long ago, in a pre-industrial setting.  To bridge a mere 1500 years we have of course the Dabidan model – but then again is that not merely a quirk of Zur. The panther will not be caged, tamed, contained, that the clear message.  But of course – even indulgently – one is young, one will mature, come to understand one cannot possibly behave like this! Ah, six is the killer.  Are we not now, as from the moment he crossed the border, living in a democracy?  Isn’t that what democracy is supposed to be, power given by the people and which can be retracted by the people? Here I get into 6a and 6b, oh and 6c.
6a) of course is, its being the case that our noble Army was probably deigning to support him, some thought they would be able to cage, tame, contain, do deals.  That above all in 5, I think.  Guys, guys, we’re doing this my way or not at all.  Naturally we played the less delectable scenarios, amongst which working-class revolt.  I told you, Daddy said it: to fight the licit heir is treason against the idea of Kadun.  A milder version of which of course: to fight the licit heir to postpone change we know inevitable merely silly. 
6b) of course is Sarat’s mere existence as a focus for what I shall I call it total democracy completely changed our frame of reference; many had thought reasonable a limited democracy; the name Ban-varna was heard, often.  That CBV would accept some role more akin to, if not a mere figurehead…The cub clearly intends total overhaul.  Nothing if not refreshing.
6c) of course is the damned ratters are out of the barn.  All of us who are sentient – even female ones – have grasped the real war is against the Cult. That PANTHER are at war against the Cult, waging total war.   Which impinged on practically everything.  6c)i therefore, no I’m not going to do this, like some ghastly piece of bureaucracy.
      7!    Sarat/Cho co-terminous with PANTHER?
              Dropped straight into the other matter. 
Where we went from there entirely determined not by gender politics or ego or nationalism but by what we knew of the other matter
Or didn’t know.
What is behind him? Sohenoil!  What is behind him? Conceivably AMI!  What is behind him? Fidub?
What is not behind us?  Fidub.  To have the Fidubi scam plainly expounded of course a delight and a pleasure unlooked-for.  The only problem with some wistful hope that Mitch would keep them in line being of course that Mitch was worse.  This then coming from Mitch? Somewhat unlikely that Sohenoil would be manipulated by Var-sega’ but if we get to Azt, the shots called from the Sohenisle?
Just trying to summarize our permanent state of confusion. 
Some pooh-poohed it but largely it is and was given that only PANTHER have the necessary skills to defeat the Cult. Van-senok and Sardun excluded here because they are not part of the pairing that so sadly fell apart.  What those skills are – perhaps I should say were since I understand amplifiers!  Hypnosis, mind-control and of course wilder stories. I am actually getting to the point!  PANTHER are waging total war.
Why?
Obvious, surely.
Of course we all loathe the Cult.
Of course they are the most repulsive and contemptible of animals
Naturally concern for the most elementary human rights, the most basic civilized behaviour.
The  ethos, the ethic, the drive, the motivation thought too obvious to ask.
There was something so absolutely critical said at Mel’s Place by Cantilip that of course everyone missed it.
Certainly earthpower is non-aggressive: we do not seek war.  Certainly it is not pacifist.  What one may call the vulnerability lies in the doctrine of being.  In earthpower, people simply are, at one with the universe.  This loss of self is perverted by the Cult into submission to its will, deemed co-terminous with the reality of the universe. 
We’re all bloody tree-huggers, Ritawa, do you understand, everyone clean, all you cold hard men of steel! Of course we’re not passive!  But nor are we active.  We just are, in a field of flowers.  Some filthy creature in a black robe comes along with a – with a mowing-machine! Then we fight. 
Of course we adore!
And so we have been – accepting.  Not of starvation.  I don’t know anyone who would not help the desperate.  I should not want to know anyone who would not help the desperate.  But at the level of the individual.  What is to be done about the cities?  Something has to be done.  The difference is you don’t just say something has to be done, you do something?
But then you might say, but we understand that, Carlin understood, Var-sega’ understood, Van-senok understood.  Most of all you might say, that’s crazy: Van-senok, heart of earthpower, is the worst of the lot!  Though I might just investigate dark-green hair!  Radical earthpower? 
I think the core of this is action.   I don’t exactly see how.  They live life in the active voice.
What do you see when you see another human being?  Anyone, Sarat, Challin, me, well possibly that’s an exception! The squaddies who bollocksed you.  A stranger in the street. There’s something in the idea that we see something stationary and they see something in motion, though I don’t know what.  I suspect it has a lot to do with hierarchy deforming.  They see something the motion of which isn’t impeded by its place in the pecking-order. 
Sarat refuses to be dammed, two m’s, as a river is dammed, by the triviality of being Anile emperor.  It has no place, no meaning, in that other level of reality and the existence of modern human rights gives him, all of them a gloss, a place in the normal world. 
So my grand conclusion is that when we look at people we see them as they are in the normal world, which means we take in - accoutrements of position or lack of, even if we disapprove of at least some of them.  They see a person as he or she is at that other level, without any of the crap.  A being being in a field of flowers?  An active being in a field of flowers?
Do-be-do-be-do.  Can that be set to the tune of the anthem?
The problem is/was it’s not all the things the south said about us, that they are egalitarian and we are really hierarchical (though of course for some it is/has been), it’s that it’s so nearly the same.  But different.  That came out at Mel’s Place.  When there were still empty seats.  Carlin shocked Mel.  He had assumed how the good guys in Kadun do things is how they’re done in Dabida and Fidub, but that was at the level of Va the Silver Homeland or would you prefer a field of flowers. I suppose we call that the exoteric level.  I think we’ve returned the favour, assumed how Dabida and Fidub do things is how we do them, with modern human rights as distinct.  ‘Modern human rights’, give or take a head of sheep, are how Fidub has always done things.  Would that by any chance be at the esoteric level, that we have assumed a shared metaphysics?  Assumed we’re all talking about the same thing when we’re just not.
I know some of this is st-range! Not only have I probably not put it correctly, I’ve probably not put correctly exactly what I’m trying to think might be correctly putting it. Add to that that I know very little about metaphysics!  But Mel actually said it for all the world to see: To some irturbi at least the Fidubi belief-system was simply a particular kind of earth-power.   The whole history of recent years, all our confusions, all bound up in the relationship between earthpower and the Tradition.  When we’ve thought we were talking the same language we were talking different ones.  When we’ve thought we were talking different languages we were talking the same one. I just can’t work out what that relationship is.  Maybe a bulb, a plant-bulb, I mean, not a lightbulb!  Two separate shoots.  Or – like conjoined twins, you separate them and they die?  No, die can’t be exact.  Become something different?
 
May I show this to Challin, typed Ritawa, deleting of course the last paragraph.  Evil grin.
My fame spreads!  Of course.  He’s senoki, isn’t he.
He indeed is.
 
“Have you got five minutes sometime?” asked Ritawa.
“Of course.”
“There’s something I should like – I should be grateful if you would read.  I could mail it but I’d also like to be present when you read it.”
“Indeed?”
“Spetzi has been thinking about the relationship between earthpower and the Tradition.  No, more: its relevance to everything that has happened.”
“Ah,” said Challin.
“I realized I was invited to the party,” sighed Ritawa.  “Our conversations have taken an unusual bent.”
“After dinner, about 9?”
“I thank you.”
“I shall come and find you.”
 
Challin held out his hand for the phone.
And smiled.
And smiled more.
“You are a very fortunate young man.”
“I know,” said Ritawa.
“Are you aware of an incident at Carlin?  You are probably too young.  It must have been 15 years ago.”
“No…”
“Marula’s partner was a drunk.  There are no excuses.  On a visit to Carlin he tried to put out the Flame.  San-yaega-baht of course threw him out.  Shortly afterwards Marula threw him out.  It was probably the worst rift for 600 years. Publicly, at least.”
“Six – “
“Van-senok was livid that Zani would not take the Anile throne.”
“I have never entirely understood – “
“Nor I.  Nonetheless, he founded Dabida instead.”
“And so here we all are!  But why?  Why put out the Flame?”
“It burns,” said Challin.
“Burns wood?  That’s a bit – “
Challin was laughing softly.
“Primitive?  Oh it is, it is.  There is more to it than that. I too am no metaphysician – physicist?  Let us consider the natural world.  Are we not all tree-huggers?”
“Fire equally devastates a field of flowers?”
“And what is left?”
“I suppose ash!  I’m really very lost.  No, actually I’m totally drowned.  If Van-senok wanted Zani to crown himself emperor, surely Van-senok approved the Flame.”
“You have to think in metaphor.  These fields, suppose they are seared by fire, what then?  I believe some farmers do just that.”
“For a time nothing and then regrowth?”
“Make a senoki of you yet.  And what regrows is different, the constitution of the soil has been changed.  It is not Marula’s thinking, nor I think that of most senoki who consider these things, but there are branches – little more than twigs -  of earthpower where the Flame is perceived as a threat, an intrusion, a disturbance of the balance.  No, not  the green-haired brigade.  Kuran’s cronies, however.  The green hairs are at least superficially a far simpler proposition.  I should imagine Sarat’s views on the planet are identical to theirs.”
“Love at first sight.  But if that is not mainstream – “
“Why am I wasting your time with it?  Because it embodies the difference.  Union in earthpower means union with the physical world.  I do not know what that means, though there are of course others here who do. The Flame is an interloper from the non-physical world. You have considered talking to Cantilip?”
“No!”
“It would be somewhat indelicate,”  agreed Challin.
“What – oh no!”
“What Spetzi strives to establish is the relationship between fire and earth.  It is of course the practical.  It sent waves through Van-senok of many kinds.”
“Hostility?”
“On the whole no. An acute curiosity.”
“And union in the Tradition means union with the non-physical world. Oh I see!  I think.”  Challin waited.  “Provided one accept there actually is a non-physical world, these are the two halves of the Whole.”
“I have never doubted your considerable intelligence.”
“Having previously considered myself if not quite a cold hard man of steel  I find myself strangely ready to flush these days.  Then earthpower denies a non-physical world?  I may still be lost.”
“That,” said Challin, “is what it does, one goes through a door only to find another one.”
“Do I know you well enough to ask - ?”
“Frankly, no,” said Challin, “but this much I say: my  refusal to enter the maze was the root of my difference with Marula.”
“May I call that a refusal to join the party?”
“An invitation I am reconsidering.”
“We are all being changed.”
“Fire burns,” said Challin.  “What regrows is different.”
“Put like that, it is a little.”
“Frankly petrifying?”
“May I ask.”  Ritawa stopped, as one does when three questions at once occur to one and none of them makes sense.  “The last 600 years!  In your view.”
“An avoidance of the party?  Many social and economic factors of course.  The apparently independent development of human rights.  Must we not join the modern world, the party an inevitable if somewhat disruptive piece of baggage in the train. But then of course, as Spetzi identifies, the party was already here, cats at every base.  I do not think we should be here now had we not learned to swim in the shallows.  The less fortunate rescued from bottomless filth.  Perhaps above all why cats at every base.  Leaving us free to choose.  Tell Spetzi to remember that all she describes was atop a fundamental appreciation of cathood. Unless of course, as she says, there was no comprehension of the feline.”
         Ritawa was frowning.
         “That is perhaps the opposite of – “
         “What you have frequently heard me say?  No.  What was it, total democracy.  The party demands it.  You think older people could successfully have explained the party to you? Given that we fail to understand it ourselves.”
         “And the cats were – are – irtubi.  I am contemplating – too mild a word – another layer of what I understand is called my sexist conditioning!”
         “Oh yes,” said Challin.  “Perhaps unwise to think too hard.”
         “The cats in uniform had necessarily to be male.  The cats fighting with Sardun must therefore have been overwhelmingly female.”
         “I imagine our refusal to accept women was the cause of some irritation.”
         “Since we didn’t see them or saw them less.  The other matter.  Is it – would you say – an element of – we little tree-huggers in our field of flowers – no, that makes no sense!  If I may start again!  Anything from deny to shun the non-physical world.  But presumably Sardun must – embrace it.”
         “I understand Sardun harness the power of the physical world.  I have of course no idea how, though I understand the reasoning is that all life is part of the physical world.”
         “If there is a non-physical world.”
         “There is the question also of what in their terms is the non-physical world, which I have never remotely understood.  If the Flame represent light, is light not energy?  Non-material possibly a better term, but then – what is matter, never mind!  There are always more questions.”
         “Would you regard that as a warning or just guidance?” 
         Challin laughed.
         “Let us say intellectual curiosity can lead in unforeseen directions.”
 
         Challin pondered then dropped a line to Cioulis.  He’s really getting awfully good at doing good by stealth.  Several lines, in fact.  Very bright. Possibly a purely intellectual curiosity but not sure.  Possibly still a little shaken.  I know there is what in other circles would be called an aptitude test.  He would pass.  Would you meet him?
         Cioulis mailed back: Sure, but isn’t this PANTHER’s bag?
         I think not, replied Challin, and explained about Spetzi.
         Aren’t we sweet, aren’t we cute? Is it not wonderful to just be!  I see a slight embarrassment here.
         Of course
         Thank you!
        
         “Well, didn’t I just get the turkey,” remarked Cioulis to no-one in particular.
         Karmen looked up.
         “How so?”
         “The young guy who was so very entertaining, department Dabidan whore, Challin thinks he’s interested and thinks he’d jump the hurdles.”
         Saban said: “He is senoki?”
         “Segani.  So’s his partner.  It seems it struck her in a moment of illumination – we’re all bloody tree-huggers, just being in a field of flowers.”
         Saban truly does have a sense of humour.
         So of course does my beloved.  He arranged to meet Ritawa in ‘Opshar’s Glade. In the interim he digested the world according to Spetzi.
        
         Cioulis settled himself comfortably into the leaf mould, his back against a handy bush.  Ritawa squatted on a small fallen log.
         “Now,” said Cioulis, “where are we?”
         “A little late in the season perhaps,” growled Ritawa.  “A field of flowers?”
         “Aren’t we!” said Cioulis enthusiastically.  “Are we being or doing?”
         Waa!
         “I suppose if we were motionless, without speech.”
         “Without heartbeat,” added Cioulis.
         “Life is movement?  I have to see that.”
         “And non-life? The physical world?”
         “Glaciers?” suggested Ritawa.  “Rivers.”
         “Thus the Great Divide.”
         “Everything is in motion, just a slower pace…
         “Even corpses,” said Cioulis.  “A dead rat, does it stay fixed, like an exhibit in a natural history museum?”
         “You are telling me something about the Cult?”  Ritawa had gone rather rapidly back to Mel’s Place.  “Everything is in some sense dead.”
         “It’s a question of control,” said Cioulis.  “There isn’t any, so they try to make some.”
         “The final control to murder.” 
         “Movement versus inertia.”
         “Then there is no – being, no stillness?”
         “Everything is itself,” said Cioulis, “that is its being. Sarat.”
         “Sarat is being Sarat.”
         “The unique lovable individual he is.  He will not be the Anile emperor.  The Anile emperor is whatever Sarat is. So?”
         “Being is doing?” sighed Ritawa.  “You are – recruiting officer?”
         “Take your time,” said Cioulis.  “Just at the moment we’re not training.”
         “What does it entail?”
         “First there are – you could call them aptitude tests.  In the first half we completely screw your surrounding reality and see how well you hang onto it.  Look around, drink it all in, imprint it.  See that lissome frond.  You are in a clearing in a small copse in Carlin. Strictly not your mind, that’s way down.  You are Ritawa.  You have a  really rather bright partner called Spetzi.  For reasons that possibly just at the moment escape you you are in a clearing in a small copse in Carlin talking to a loon from Sardun, whose preferred attire appears to be pirate. Thus the earrings, which appear to be in the form of a knot.  You are sitting on a small log.  The sun is sinking slowly into the west, which is thataway. A squirrel is watching us from that tree, wondering if we’re tree-huggers.  You are sitting on a log.  The path out of the clearing lies over there.  It veers sharply left at its start.  You are sitting on a log, aren’t you. And the ground is firm beneath your feet.”
         “Then what?”
         “Sure?”
         “Yes.”
         No! yelled Ritawa’s mind. The pirate-craft rocked gently under him.  The sea stretched to the horizon.  The sun was in the wrong place. I am not even bloody well standing up! He found it is quite hard to rise from a sitting position when one is already standing.  Squirrel – detail.  The squirrel was a small fat puffin perched on one of the masts.  What does reason tell me!  I put one foot in front of the other.  I walk out of the clearing.  Into the sea.  Sharks milled below him.  You bastard!  Not sharks  not sharks what sharks. Vegetation?   Not bloody fucking there, not real not sharks. What should I like to be there?
         Cioulis grinned to himself. A trio of sharks rose out of the water, performed graceful porpoise spins and sank slowly below the waves.  Land appeared, apparently a rocky outcrop on which was a lighthouse.
         What! Swim. Land.  Raft.  You’re not even bloody porpoises, you’re a raft!  The sharks manfully resisted and remained sharks. Not sharks, wrong shape sharks.  Not going to be able to do this but I can try.  He walked into the sea and tried to clamber aboard a raft.  It was still a shark, but what the hell.
         Normality.
         “Excellent start,” said Cioulis.  “Not of course maximum intensity. What happened there?”
         “You tell me!”
         “Think back to your conversation with Sarat.”
         “What!  I – I was in two places and my mind told me with – nearly equal fervency both were real.  What did you mean – yes, one might have been more – not sure what the word is.  Fragile.  Thinner than the other.  But I wasn’t sure. A bit, maybe, coming in and out of focus?”
         “Ever used a graphics program?”
         “Sometimes.”
         “Reducing the transparency of a superimposed image.”
         “Yes, that’s the word.  Real reality isn’t transparent!”
         “And you chose the real one.  That is good.  But?”
         “It didn’t bloody well work.  Was I right the sharks were less transparent!”
         “Ah, no.  That was the survival instinct kicking in.  Every neuron in your subconscious mind is telling you not to commit suicide.  Every neuron is focused on one small part of the whole.  The ship doesn’t matter, even the sea. So what did you do next?”
         “I tried to turn it.  I mean I couldn’t but.”
         “Focus on the essential, that is good.”
         “But wasn’t my focus split?  Isn’t that a bad thing?”
         “You could not have jumped if you were not fundamentally sure none of it was real.  If you had turned it, some things are sometimes best done incrementally, to climb back to – claw one’s way back to – reality.  The raft become an island, the island land known to you, etc.”
         “That is startling.  I thought you said every neuron of my subconscious mind!”
         “Beneath that.”
         “Hmm. My conversation with Sarat?”
         “You mean he didn’t enter the dumbfuck game and turn it?”
         “Aargh may be my response.  You said there were two halves.”                                            
         “Evil grin. Worse.  I increasingly bring to bear the full weight of my forceful personality on you, giving you orders you resist with every cell, every atom of your being.  Gold stars for retaining a reasonably relaxed posture and telling me to go fuck myself.”
         “I really know how to draw attention to myself,” said Ritawa. “I am thinking there must have been people around Sarat.”
         “Never in a million years,” said Cioulis.  “1) There is a large number of progressively more searing hurdles.  We have to be sure.  2) That is precisely why we hate them.”
         “And it’s all the same party?”
         “Is a party not a varied place?”
         “Obviously you didn’t – mess with my mind.  I felt – all my wits about me, in full possession of my faculties.  What did you mess with?”
         “Pixels,” said Cioulis.  “I think one may call them pixels.”
         “I don’t understand.”
         “One to think about,” said Cioulis.
         “May I tell Spetzi?”
         “She might like to join too.”
 
It was then, typed Ritawa, I felt angry. At myself of course.  Having had my reality smashed fazed not your cold hard man of steel.  Much!  Why do I keep doing it!  Obviously I can rationalize.  Ingrained, not as a man but as a soldier.  Need to know. 
Spetzi took pity.  Poor darling, kiss better.  Etc.
 
After a while, Ritawa wrote.  We don’t just see with our eyes.  Locate ourselves, I mean. We only see with our eyes.  I was of course too thrown to think all that through.  Does the air smell of salt? Does my face sting?  Can I feel the log?  Should I have registered that subconsciously?
I think that might depend on the density of the pixels!  Suppose – not that I understand or anything.  An illusory reality put in front of your eyes.  You can’t not react.  As far as your field of vision stretches, you are on that bloody ship! Or suppose you were simply cocooned in an illusion, so everywhere you interface with the external world was cut off from it?
Hmm-hmm! What really puzzles me – did I just write that – Cioulis himself was nowhere to be seen.
Invisible man!
Not that too!
Time I went back to school.  The biology of vision.  I really want to know exactly how we see.
That would be brilliant.  Cornea, rods.  Remember bits but if you asked me to describe exactly how I am seeing the screen in front of me, I get about as far as light hits the eyes and signals are sent to the brain.
We don’t actually see with our eyes at all, do we.  They’re just the interface.  Obviously they’re critical, of all the awful things that can happen to people I’ve always thought being blind was worst.  But – technically, eyes are just a piece of machinery.  But – when all this is over, shall I write science fiction!  If a piece of machinery could be devised that registered, imaged, the external world and communicated it to the brain, then a blind person could see. Sight actually is all that matters, in the context of this.  So long as you could see the clearing it wouldn’t matter that you couldn’t feel it or smell it.
I’m wondering – this is weird.  So if I had simply shut my eyes, proceeded like some poor blind person by feel.  Maybe!  That depends on your cocoon. Isn’t it called a camera?  The machine!  Small matter of connecting it to the brain.
Doctors must have thought of this.  Have you ever heard of artificial eyes?
No.  That is hair-raising.  The surgery required to connect to the brain. 
I’m actually thinking  about what we’ve been saying, without turning a hair.  A illusory reality has been created.  What of?  Literally out of thin air?
There are about 90 naturally occurring elements, remember that bit!
That does somewhat simplify the whole thing!  So if you have all of them you can make anything that exists?  And presumably – what’s a rare metal?  Inessential to – most things I guess?
Actually not.  Vital to phones!
Why has Sarat not banned them entirely! But the natural world.  Presumably there are no rare metals in a fallen log.  The natural world is chemically fairly simple? What’s air made up of? Mostly oxygen?
Mostly nitrogen.  
What chemically is an image.  That seems to be the question.
Physically? I’m not saying there was a deck under my feet, only a good imitation?  A sensation, if we casually affirm we have dealt with vision.  What actually is a pixel?  Let me look….Oh great.  It is a ‘logical  - rather than a physical unit’.  That is clarifying! The ‘smallest addressable unit’.
O great pixel, impart to me your secrets. But that of course is in the context of a screen.  You can’t have a pixel in the open, all on its own. What I was starting by going to say is that in terms of sheer hair-raisingness – a surgeon is only human, his or her hand can slip, remember anyone can be wrong! Even if it were possible I’m really not sure a scalpel being wielded in my brain isn’t more hairy than this.  Except of course.
Except of course there would be a clear logical progression. 
There has to be, doesn’t there.
I’m wondering two things.  The first is – what you said about a different level of reality when looking at people.  Why just people?  Why not a blade of grass?  No idea what that means of course. Even if it’s true.  The second is – the Whole.  If everything is whole, it must follow that any part of it can be reached from any part of it.  No idea what that means, of course, even if true.  The third is saner and possibly madly more interesting.  We don’t just see what’s there like a camera.  Suppose you despise poor people or are terrified of dogs.  If you see a poor person or a dog, your brain adds a generous dollop of ‘your stuff’ to the image.  Doesn’t it.  I don’t just mean you have an emotional response.  Your brain edits the image.  So you only really see ragged clothes or dirt or teeth.
You don’t see a person and you don’t see the dog is really rather small! Were they big sharks?
ROTFL.
Tush, I was being serious…Imagine a shark the size of a goldfish.
Think that might be called a piranha. Well, smaller.  Not entirely sure that’s better.
All of this, all of it is about seeing. 
All of this is about what Sarat saw when he looked right back at me!  My life seems to have got quite exciting since then.  I couldn’t read what he was thinking.  I think now it might have been something like, OK, you want to play? I play.
 
And Spetzi wrote.
I kept thinking about those 94 it is actually elements.  Like a fully-stocked kitchen.  Only you can’t put them together any way you like because they won’t go -  but there must still be a mind-numbing number of combinations, with or without human aid.    So then I found a site for kids on chemical bonding and reminded myself – honestly, this girl was taught science! So then I wondered can something that doesn’t exist come into existence or is everything that can exist in existence.  Has life diverged as much as it can and if it can’t diverge more what stops it.  At which point I more or less decided that I needed a chat with Cioulis because the alternative was ten years at the Schools! But I remembered, when we were staying at Tamal-va, there was a mutant in a litter, a poor little two-headed puppy.  It was put down of course but it wasn’t viable, that’s the point.  Back to ten years at the Schools, no idea why, maybe because two brains. So then I started to think a couple of strange things, if an insect can manage on six legs, why shouldn’t a puppy if unfortunate enough. Why would it be unfortunate?  An insect is lighter. Wouldn’t a dog benefit from six legs to carry it?  Why shouldn’t a dog have two tails!  We have of course been asking ourselves for many years now why are things as they are and can they be different!  Not, however, on the cosmic scale.  Crazy questions, why isn’t a shark the size of a goldfish? How dare a panther be bigger than a house-cat!  They’re the same design, can’t be a basic design-flaw that stopped goldfish from growing!  Can a shark grow more? How fixed is reality, Ritawa?  There are giant things like planets and minute things like bacteria and it all seems immutable, but if it’s all made of the same stuff is it? Two things.
People have always imagined things that don’t exist, though whether they can’t is something else, from the five-headed monster to unicorns.  There is nothing beyond the capacity of the human mind to imagine, which is a commonplace enough idea except that in the current context it is just a little nerve-wracking. 
Fundamental particles.  I was actually quite good at physics but it wasn’t that kind of physics.  Back to the Grid.  Everything indeed is the same stuff. Jolly little tidbit with which to wow your friends: only 5% of the universe is actually visible.  Isn’t that completely mind-bending?  What it seems to mean is so far as we can calculate only 5% of what is calculated to be the mass of the entire universe is made up of normal matter that we can quantify.   Most of what I seem to be currently reading I feel as though I understand about one word in ten – yes, I can cope with ‘the’ and ‘a’ – but I do seem to be able to grasp the essential: the universe is out of this world!  It’s defined as literally everything, did you know that, not just everything that is, everything that ever was and everything that ever will be.
 
And Ritawa wrote:
I knew I had to do it and I knew he’d understand and somehow that made me feel worse, as though I was messing up the party again!  I asked if I could see Sarat briefly, at a time of his convenience of course.  I was asked to pop back at 3, so I popped.  I was shown in.  He was sitting on the desk on the phone, just ending a call.  Hi, he said.  Grab a coffee, do.  There’s a hot-plate and a mini-fridge.  I made polite noises about not wishing to take up his time but I grabbed a coffee anyway.  He motioned to me to sit and I sat, one of those frantically uncomfortable canvas folding-stools. He said: I hope Cioulis is treating you properly, I guess to show he was up to speed.   I grinned. I just wanted to ask a quick something, if I may. It – may sound a bit odd. What did you see when you looked at me? Ah. A person.  A person who actually isn’t a shit.  As to how to – progress. Pretty much the same, age, class.  Brought up differently. How differently? See how the budgie bites!
Does that answer - ?  I managed to say, I thank you.  Some of us, I admitted, are compiling phrase-books.  I don’t think I’ve met that one before.  He said: we’re all on a learning-curve.  My other question -  you are the Tradition.  Cioulis is earthpower. Cioulis said the  party is a varied place.  Does that mean I’d get different answers depending on whom I was talking to?  Woo-hoo.  Yes and no.  There’s only one reality.  They tell me it’s entirely mind-bending. For certain I’m not in its more esoteric reaches.  Upper branches, as you prefer.  I think Cioulis is capable of telling you reality is a tree.  I was made to learn a bit about it. Apparently it’s in the job description, essential qualification for the post.  I could not help laughing. What I wanted to learn about was how electricity is supplied to entire communities.  What unites the party is attachment to reality, seeing the real, what is there, not what you think is there, but – people are people.  They have their favourite bits of it.  They see it at different levels.  So – yes and no, essentially the same answers but they might seem different.  Does that help?  Very much, I said.  I thank you. And it’s based in physics.  Yes.
Of course I completely longed to say please may my partner be the first female member of the Imperial Army but of course that would be preposterous unless everyone’s female people not to mention children pitched up!  We are after all in this crazy nothing happening war.  A propos of which there was a very large map on the wall.  Can’t possibly tell you what I thought it was indicating but it was very, very interesting.
 
And Spetzi wrote:
Some of us female people have formed a kind of militia, just in case something disastrous happens, but I think we all understand that we don’t have a place in strategy planning, so it’s back to war to the death with leptons!  So no, I’m not doing anything particularly dramatic to assist the war-effort – though I may wish bloody Azt would bloody do something, preferably come out with their hands up, though probably not quite as much as all of you -  but I am very definitely working for the peace. 
 
 
Ritawa.  There’s only one reality but it’s constantly changing?  That actually sounds strange and is rather obvious..  A tree isn’t the same in spring as it is autumn. The geography of the planet isn’t what it was millions of years ago. What I think today most certainly isn’t what I thought a month ago! But the change is contained.  A tree is limited in its movement.  It can’t change itself into a daisy.  What limits the change is what it is. What limits change to people is what they think they are? Mental change I mean! And of course what other people think they are.
Spetzi.  Cantilip can’t have got that wrong.  I don’t mean she’s incapable of error.  In the situation, in the context, she could not have put on line total nonsense. Of course it might just have sounded different!).  People just getting on with their lives, not looking for a war. What have we learned?  The apparent difference is – let’s not say superficial, why not say superficial!  It works in the context it is, on level it is.  If there was no difference, it’d be the same.  Gold star, Spetzi, top of the class! There are different ways of climbing a tree but it’s still the same tree.  That’s pretty obvious too.  I mean you can start at that low branch on the left…What did you see when you looked at Sarat?
Ritawa.  That’s the funny bit, isn’t it. Pretty much word for word the same.  Only of course what you said.  So you’re His Imperial Majesty.  Let us see how this budgie bites!
Spetzi.  So what’s the difference?
Ritawa. Hierarchy, obviously.  We’ve been there.
Spetzi.  So he didn’t see a bloody offensive little shit of a junior officer, who bloody dares.  What does it mean?
Ritawa.  What do you mean?
Spetzi.  I don’t know!  But it means something, something to do with controlling, containing.  Don’t tell me that’s hierarchy too, I know it’s hierarchy too!  People are not to be controlled.  Of course there have to be ground rules for when they can be controlled, people being people. Let me try kindergarten steps. You wanted to establish how and in which circumstances he’d control you.  He didn’t see anything that basically needed controlling. Something in motion.  What did I say, hierarchy controls the motion.  A person can only behave in the way ordained by his or her position in the hierarchy.  Though of course there is only one way to behave.  Fun, this, isn’t it.    But we, but earthpower. In some fundamental sense sees people as being, not moving.  Not fluid.  It doesn’t  - wish you were here to soothe my brow.  You can put it really hierarchically or totally unhierarchically.  This is some filthy little man far below me.  This is a friend who’s really upset.  IS, Ritawa, IS.  Am I making the remotest sense?
Ritawa.  Yes but I don’t understand it either. We don’t think people are fixed.  Hierarchically or un.  If your friend is very upset you want her to be happy again. . 
Spetzi.  Oh no! I thought - what if Sarat were earthpower.
Ritawa.  So?
Spetzi.  Do you remember when I yelled at you for joining Challin and you said he wasn’t like what I thought.
Ritawa.  I told you other stuff too, didn’t I.  How none of us had ever met anyone like him before.  It wasn’t that he didn’t keep us on our toes, it was how he did it. 
Spetzi.  Never met a senoki senior officer?
Ritawa.  Now you come to mention it.  That’s interesting, isn’t it.
Spetzi.  I do of course keep every jewelled word that falls from your fingers.  Hang on a minute… ‘He just looks at you and that look says, oh this is ridiculous, but true.  I don’t mean the look says that, though I suppose it actually does. When I stop babbling, I mean the look says what are you? Munz describes it as biologist examining a new life-form.  He might say something like, ridiculous man. Then he’d ask you how you were ridiculous.  In a detached sort of way.  As though it were an open question rather than in a domineering way.’
Ritawa.  Of course we were all with him because we hated it all.  The last thing we wanted to be was ridiculous.  Does this sound familiar?
Spetzi.  Don’t tell me you expected Sarat to behave like Challin!
Ritawa.  Of course I didn’t. The problem just might be how very much he did.
Spetzi.  I suppose if you are a civilized being faced with a moron there can’t be that many variations on a theme.
Ritawa.  Thank you for your tender words.  It’s still what you said though, about motion.  I wish I could nail it.  Supposing Fana’s really upset.  Your focus is – what’s there. It’s not that the upsetness - is there such a word - is fixed, she can’t be happy again.  What IS is that she’s really unhappy. But – but if being is doing,  That IS – it’s the IS that’s fluid.  As if - this sounds good, no idea what it means.  As if the IS isn’t really an IS – this is going to drive me nuts -  means there’s a struggle.  Like that image going in and out of focus.  There’s something else there,
Spetzi.  That’s silly but I know what you mean.  About Fana I mean.  Seeeing the whole of her as her upsetness.
Ritawa.  You want to be a fuckwit.  Not of course you my angel!  There’s something there about choosing.  Earthpower doesn’t focus on the choosing but the choice?
Spetzi.  Could that possibly make sense? If there’s an illusory self, it’s pretty obvious where the struggle is.
Ritawa.  Then earthpower doesn’t believe in this illusory self?
Spetzi.  Earthpower says all of you is upset.
 
Cioulis had said: mail me any thoughts you might have if you like.  Quality check.  If it’s passable, I shan’t bother to reply, only if you go screamingly off in the wrong direction. 
 
“These two,” said Cioulis, “are nothing if not interesting.”
Karmen tapped his fingers on the table-top.
“I of course am more of a free agent.”
“She’s really going to relish some loon from Harn turning up on her doorstep.”
“I suspect little niss Spetzi would prove more than equal to the occasion.”     
“Just talk to her about fermions.”
“That is precisely my thinking.”
“I think not,” said Cioulis.  “He’d want to go and join her, not of course that he would and not of course that he doesn’t anyway – you know what I mean.”
“An activated wanting!  I know what you mean and I take that point.”
Cioulis was grinning to himself.
“What do you know about Challin?”
“A decent man, as clearly evinced. A brave one – “
“Nothing about his personal history?”
“Divorced, two kids with their mom, who does not seem to be anything of particular note.”
“Challin comes from deep VS, as I do, the area around the House.  Plenty of senoki in the Army of course but yes just possibly only one or few at least from the heartlands, the rest of us having joined Sardun.”
“So indeed he is unique?”
“You have to be pretty unique for Marula to fall in love with you.”
“I am entirely startled.  An affair – it would seem to me that you cannot be either Sardun or my lord of Van-senok if you will not go the whole way.”
“Ex-actly.  Joined up instead.”
“So long as Cantilip is not his daughter!”
“Dates are wrong,” said Cioulis.
“I am relieved to hear it.”
“Daddy is the fuckwit who tried to put out the Flame.”
“That did reach even our distant ears.  It would seem to me – that particular lady.  What is the vogue expression, socially conservative opinion.  My lady Van-senok perhaps the cause of a more conservative opinion of the female of the species?”
“No,” said Cioulis.  “Of course it may be our tendency to see what IS, block capitals.”
“You have lost me.”
“It isn’t that he thinks less of women. It’s that he thinks less of men.”
“You sound as if you know him – the same community?”
“Worse than that.  He had a run-in with the geralis.  Mate of mine was part of the rescue-party.”
“Oh, oh, oh,  I would guess it was after that he declared himself non grata – or grata, as you prefer.”
“He left it three months and planned it exquisitely.  That impressed us.”
“Indeed persons post do not necessarily think at their clearest.”
“What was of consuming interest to us is whom he talked to in those three months when we weren’t watching because we didn’t know there was anything to watch.”
“Cho?  You cannot believe in view of what you have said that it was a feint.”
“No, no, no.”  Cioulis looked quite shocked.  “Protected by a steel ring of fur, to mix my metaphors.  That took arranging.  It also means that PANTHER understood something essential, there had to be a focus for decent kids like young Ritawa who were nonetheless not quite ready to boogie naked in the Sa’aanda Senta.”
“They do that in Zur?  I must visit more often.  That is interesting,” said Karmen, and thought: you cannot be more than a year or two older.  But you of course have seen it and he has not.  I guess that is also what we are fighting for.
 
From Spetzi’s archive:
Spetzi: you have joined – I too can use the language of Harn – that sexist pig!
Ritawa: He’s not like that, Spetz. You’re probably thinking of someone like Ban-vardan, intellectually inferior, weak minds, all the rest of it. Yes, he has profound reservations about suitability.  They come from being bloody civilized.  He is.   
 
So, gee, fuckers, I just live and possibly die with the knowledge that you all want me destroyed for what I am,  a civilized educated literate, literary intelligent, moral, intellectual adult woman, a hunted animal in other words, to be ruthlessly exterminated.  It is not to be permitted, a woman who thinks for herself, a woman capable of handling complex ideas and expressing them.  Intellect and reason in a female body are anathema.  Well, religion is very good at destroying intelligent women.  It’s had four thousand years of practice.  It only took that ape degenerate filth monkey Blair to slime his way into  Downing Street to destroy everything women have achieved, block off escape from dirty old perverts, demand they be respected. 

One more time: you're free to come; you're free to go away again if you don't like it.  You are not free to do what the fascist fake Left has engineered, which is impose your bloody ape-shit on England, demand it be respected, deferred to.
Why has no-one hanged Blair?

You just go right on with your insolent deliberate evil, your absolute refusal to support me.  All too clearly, I can't stop you.  I can't stop murder-machines programmed to destroy tits+vagina+functioning and well-stocked mind.  I understand - all too clearly - a woman is only allowed to be virginal or married and emotionally and intellectually helpless, a simpering monster, wholly dependent, that it's ridiculous and obscene to the kinky boy pervs and their vile repulsive perv women that a woman be capable of independent rational thought, consider herself the intellectual equal of Authority, that a woman be the person she chooses to be, not the person freak sicko kinky boys say she must be.  

And I understand all too clearly you are animals, words, language, reason, morality, fact, nothing human means anything to you filthy animals who understand only power, violence, bestiality, fear.  Who attempt to terrorize because you have no fact, reason, ethics to make a case for imposing the twisted contents of your freak worm-infested minds, no grounds for your sickness and psychosis, your grotesque inadequacy, your delusional notions of your own omniscience and omnipotence.  You are so fucking pathetic.   You are a fucking sick joke. 

And I laugh.  Not quite at the moment, but I shall get there.

There is nothing here not immediately resolved by:
Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign
Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech.
Society has the right to require of every public agent an account of his administration.

And you dismiss it all, as though it never were, because you are pure evil, you are so evil you're funny. And of course puerile and ludicrous, the ape who thinks violence is the answer to ideas it doesn't like, the subhuman, the utterly pathetic failed human being

And I laugh

And I laugh because all you have proved is that you are that slimy nefarious corrupt object called ‘the Establishment’ which meets in clubs and on race-courses and spends as much in an hour as would feed, clothe and house a family of four for a month, assumes it governs, unaccountable, cowardly, uncontrollable. 

Oh jolly old boating weather.  Do rather miss the Thames and Eton is awfully pretty.  Used to take the train to Windsor and Eton Riverside and walk upstream.  Oh, are all the little slave-sluts and sycophants and general issue cock-suckers and arse-lickers cheering for the best of schools.  Sure Cameron and Johnson can tell us more about that.  Just think, I used to be able to walk, walk miles.  Nonsense like that doesn’t matter when little penises are twitching.  Just don’t need the use of my legs, do I

Now, pet, I imagine that in  what passes for your mind England and the  English like everyone else and  everywhere else belong to God. It’s a possibility. There is, however,  something in between England and  God in your model, is there not. You, little  you. You represent God and  rule England on God’s behalf. 

There are a  few problems here, as those nice young men in their clean white coats I’m sure  would be glad to explain to you. 

1) there is not one shred of evidence  for your conviction you carry out God’s will
2) If you do carry out God’s  will, then God is clearly a grossly  mentally disturbed being to whom no sane  and civilized person would give two seconds’ attention 
3) There is not one  shred of evidence for  the existence of this God of yours. You believe he  exists. Others do  not. What is not demonstrable cannot be binding. You must see  that. Some people believe this God exists. Others do not. They can’t both be  right and it is impossible for any individual to be bound by both beliefs.
 
So we have a situation here, Houston Control, where this fucked-up  baboon 
thinks he carries out God’s will. The territory he inhabits may  be summarized 
as the supreme authority of the Church which I must be  made to accept. The 
fruits of the independent exercise of the hearts and minds of humans are the 
work of Satan. This is to what Blair and the  rest of the New Labour rabble 
consider me subject. It's perhaps not so  much a question of why haven't they 
been arrested as of why haven't they been sectioned.
 
That which makes you look stupid, ludicrous, ignorant, irrational.
 
There is somewhere in literature or oratory a superb put-down I cannot unfortunately recall and can’t be bothered to hunt for.  It may be classical, it may be Churchillian, but the gist is: your refutation of my argument would be greatly enhanced by your having understood it
 
THAT AM I

That indeed, ‘old boy’, are you, the difference being I know what I am and you do not. If you have love and the universe, you do not need God, though possibly you have It anyway. Depends on what you mean by 'God'. 

My happiness is not contingent upon your approval, your liking. That of course your sick sad ego finds intolerable. You must matter to me, no? I must find you important, defer to you, take you into account. I do not. Thus in common with sick sad monkeys of all kinds, Nazi monkeys, Stalinist monkeys, religious monkeys, you force yourself into my life physically, impairing my mobility such that you are ever-present in my life. Vulgar little man, aren’t you, not a gentleman.

As I have previously remarked:

Having class is entirely distinct from being a member of a social class. You, I suspect, may be either what people think of as a 'real' aristocrat, ancient title and blah, or someone who thinks having a lot of money and mixing with the 'right people' makes him posh.

Since, however, you are sly, cowardly, dishonest piece of puke, a thug, a wordless, mindless baboon, you have no class at all. 

You seem to think your culture (what culture?) important. We all have our cultures, of course, and within them many quaint customs that have not survived into the modern age. If we are to be civilized, we do not do such things any more. Perhaps you might ponder that? However, if you insist on being a product of the Stone Age, I would remind you that my culture used to have a fondness for stringing people like you up from lamp-posts. Shall you all swing together/Dressed in the old light blue? Just a thought. Perhaps we should therefore agree to differ? 

Hmm, that would be irresistible. No, not the stringing-up. A Labour Government was so mortified by the distress of an Old Etonian that it allowed him to cripple the grand-daughter of Labour pioneers. You do just have to see the funny side.

But then it is terribly obvious that the entire ‘New Labour’ project was dedicated to the destruction of England, the destruction of freedom, the destruction of reason.

There is of course another light blue here, that of Cambridge (specifically Gonville and Caius).

And I laugh because I have made no impact whatever, as well does a swimmer tell a shark you cannot behave like this, you cannot treat me like this. These creatures are not human, unreachable by human means, by love or mind.  As well to reason with a shark, indicate my inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. 

Religion has of course been destroying women for 3000 years, since the first Jew dribbled about that spare rib and the root of all evil.  They’re very good at it, a word in your ear, some ridiculous woman.

I read actually that Ancient Egyptian religion made remarkable strides towards gender equality, though no-one can say how true that was in practice.

A story on a papyrus dating from the 2nd century CE relates that the goddess Isis, bestowing gifts on humanity, gave as much power and honor to women as she did to men. This tale reflects the high status women enjoyed in ancient Egypt. Although they never had the same rights as males, an Egyptian woman could own property in her own name and hold professions that gave her economic freedom from male relatives (women could practice medicine, handle money and make real estate transactions). A wife was entitled to one third of any property that she owned jointly with her husband and, on her death, could will her property to anyone she wished, male or female. Egyptian women were equal in the court system and could act as witnesses, plaintiffs or defendants (as we would understand those terms today). Women were accountable for crimes they committed and would have to stand trial the same as any man.
 
The Goddess Isis
 
Married women were known by the title `Mistress of the House’ and most women’s time was spent caring for the home and children. Her responsibilities would include child rearing (unless she was wealthy enough to be able to afford a slave for the purpose) house cleaning, sewing, mending and making clothes, providing meals for the household and managing the accounts. Even so, there is ample evidence of women tending to chores outside of the home such as the care of livestock, the supervision of workers in the fields (even doing field work herself) the maintenance of tools, buying and selling slaves and real estate and taking part in the commerce of the market place (all of these rights and responsibilities, to this extent, the women of Sumeria and Greece never had).

The Egyptian Wisdom Texts admonish husbands to treat their wives well since the balance between the male and the female resulted in harmony (known as ma’at) which was valued by the gods and, especially, the great goddess Ma’at, she of the white feather of Truth. Marriage was considered a pact between a husband and wife for a lifelong commitment of equal partnership and companionship which could only be broken by death (which was the will of the gods, not of the individual marriage partners) although divorce was common in practice. Women were legally protected against abuse from their husbands and, in the documents from a 12th Dynasty lawsuit, a man had to “swear that he would henceforth refrain from beating his wife, on pain of one hundred blows with a cane and the loss of everything he had acquired together with her” (Nardo, 35).

And I laugh because some dribbling squirming heap of infected shit thinks I should be ashamed of my body, ashamed of being ‘soiled’.  Because as an act of cold brutal deliberate evil these pervert freaks have once again been loosed in this country and it is universally hailed as good.

And I laugh because my not inconsiderable mind means absolutely nothing to them, I might as well never have written a word, and that too is universally hailed as good.

And I laugh because all  you have proved is as I repeatedly say you are filth and evil, haters of love and mind, haters of anything clean, anything upright, anything rational, filth and evil and lovers of filth and evil.  That filth and evil are to be unswervingly, unyieidingly and universally upheld and protected.  That filth and evil are not to be disturbed or upset by being named.

Of course I laugh.  Laugh in their vacant evil stupid faces.

And I laugh because the world is full of books to read and things to find out about, infinitely more than any one human being can manage in a lifetime, and they are so ludicrous that they think they have nothing to learn.  Nothing outside the garbled drivel in their heads, their fuck-up beliefs and their loony conviction of their own perfection exists.

And I laugh because there is one form of ‘medicine’ at which I am very good.  I should long since have bled to death from internal wounds but I staunch the flow, knit the tissues, heal the cuts, because I make me and that they can never understand.

And I laugh because these obscene filthy brutes who have pawed and mauled me, smeared their dirty animal selves indelibly over my body and my life are irrelevant to me.

And I laugh because my life is a huge mad joke.  All I ever wanted to do was write and go for excessively long walks in wild places but I had to earn a living and so fell through a black hole into a parallel universe of the raving mad who have broken my body, raped my mind and wrecked the remainder of my life, a world divorced from reality in which truth and good are the drivellings of the ape with the biggest club, in which everything independent of the dribblings of some authority figure with a club is dismissed out of hand, in which language is treated with contempt and force, power, violence are all, all fact, reason, decency, sanity are jeered at and regarded as a joke, where people regard themselves as slaves, owned, to do only what they are permitted by the mad, are damaged nutters who think it wrong to doubt and question the words of authority, independent thought is regarded as evil and independent action is inconceivable to them,  where a woman’s body is simply a punchbag for inadequates and a woman’s mind is a joke, and that there is universal agreement the world of the criminal and the psychopath, of the Broadmoor patient, be regarded as normality.

And I laugh because these perverted deformities really expect me to see myself as a slave, property, who has sinned, transgressed, said and done things Master does not permit, functioned independently of her lord, been self-willed, disobedient, and of course a freak who does not accept Master’s right to punish her.

Yeah, I have a mind of my own and know how to use it.

And I laugh because they think so very much of themselves and have not the smallest intellectual virtues, contemptuous of fact, unable to learn, unable to reason, to construct argument, to research fact.

And I laugh because like Dill I combine my father’s rationalism with a profound esotericism; unlike Gandalf I have not met a Balrog.  I have met so many fucking Balrogs that it’s funny, nearly as funny as the entire political class intoning, O great Balrogs, you alone we worship, you alone we adore, there is no truth beside you, there is no good beside you, you alone are our meaning and our source.  Sustain us, great Balrogs, fill us with your truth and might, that we may do your will.

Because they sure as fuck don’t do anything else.

And of course, great Balrogs, we thank you for the bounty you send.  It sees the kids through school and uni very nicely.

Has anyone checked out these folks' bank balances? Research funding? PFI? Living above their means? Come on, they can't all be dribbling religious loons. What's the going rate for selling out everything? Where there's muck there's brass.

Nobody wants to give Pussy squeaky rat-toys to play with. Could this be because they're rich rat-toys?

And I laugh because Medicine, the University, Government, politics, everything has become a sick joke. See them press themselves ever further into the ground, yearning to please, for the Balrogs have to be fed.  Feed them everything, all fact, all reason, all light, all life.  The Balrogs are not to be upset, disquieted, perturbed.  Of course no demands may be made of them.  That would be absurd, the slaves making demands of their masters. Since the Balrogs are without flaw and of course omniscient, the idea of correcting them or educating them is absurd and impossible.

So they threw the Balrogs my medically vulnerable body, without a qualm or backward glance.

And so I  hobble about covered in little homunculi, Abraham, O’Mahony,Wilson, Sturridge, Black, Linch, Blair, Goldstone, Milburn, Naylor, Plucinski, Saunders, Rowley, McGuckin, Ardeshna, Whelan wrapped around my torso and legs, forever with me forcing their filthy animal selves on me. 

And I laugh because they are so ludicrous.  Really, you think crawling over my body leaving nasty itchy red blotches convinces me of your veracity and probity?

And I laugh because I still don’t give a fuck.

And because I actually feel rather good about myself.  I have not betrayed my country, my University, my self, soul.  I have not become a squirming pile of infected shit for sale to the highest bidder, dismissing all fact, all reason, all morality in the face of mad animals with clubs and money, a dirty little animal who says yes, o master, whatever you say o master, in you lies all truth, all good, o master, india-rubber man who bends in the middle and falls on his face to evil and calls it good, filth, all the way through, rotting flesh.

Anything you said, o master, only please don’t hurt my back.  The apes really expected me to cower and crawl. 

Yup, it’s OK here up a lamp-post 

Of course historically the lamp-post was  seminal to the revolution, essential kit, one might say, bloated  capitalists, imperialist  running-dogs and fascist hyenas for the  stringing-up of, I think nowadays the  RSPCA would step in. What does the lamp-post mean to us today? Well, it's pretty  critical if you happen to be in Narnia and come to think of it who's to say I am  not, that I have not inadvertently walked through a wardrobe into the realm of  perpetual winter. Certainly I am in an alien dimension, one that runs on totally   different rules. Otherwise, an agile puss can shin up it PDQ with the   imperialist running-dogs and fascist hyenas on her trail and leave them  to  howl and yap and whine at its foot. Nor is this all! I'd think the  base of this  particular lamp-post was pretty smelly by now. The question of course arises as  to how close it is to the barrack-gate, in which  case to talk of being  underneath it is inexact. No, today's Lili Marlene must be curled up on top of  the lamp-post, where after all it's much  warmer than underneath it. The  imperialist running-dogs and fascist  hyenas must be really cold by now. Really,  should one not call the  RSPCA? How do those in the immediate neighbourhood feel about the smell? And the noise! Might they not call the council in? Surely feral  dogs  represent a public nuisance. They could call in the Sanity Inspector. Oh  no, wait, that's me.