The Ministry of Fear

Greetings,

My job is to control the flow of disinformation here in Egypt. Let's be as clear as the day is long. In Egypt GROUND ZERO is a square. Mathematically this is impossible. A zero is a circle, a complete and comprehensive series of events colliding to express totality and unity and harmony in a community.

For 3,000 years give or take a pharaoh, our ministry developed highly scientific methods to restrict, control and in 99% of the cases eliminate people from expressing their opinion, views, frustrations, repressed anger, poverty and related daily abuses to their dignity and self respect. 

Using paid government thugs we harassed, intimatidated, threatened, imprisoned, tortured and often killed the traitors, running capitalistic dogs

(to borrow a phrase from 1.6 billion oppressed Chinese people who have no idea what's happening here because their government restricts media coverage fearing blowback and social unrest, can you imagine)

and devious illiterate yet courageous freedom loving Egyptian people to suit our purposes. We were in past tense very efficient. Everyone was afraid, even Winston Smith.

What was our purpose? To stay in control. To manipulate the system, create chaos, divide and conquer. To get rich. To redeem insurance policies against revolutionary poor marginalized common people for valuable prizes on game shows.

The emperor has no clothes. Now the shoe is not on the other foot. It is in the collective hands of the common people and they are waving it at the dictator, his cronies, his lackeys like me, yelling, Enough, Give us liberty or give us death.

The red emergency light in my steel reinforced bunker is flashing. I've gotta run, run, run. 

 

Who cares?

Greetings,

Here's an article on literature and how novels come to the internet by Laura Miller in The Guardian. She writes for Salon.

..."Do the people who constantly pester us for our opinions care what each and every one of us really thinks? Sort of and not really. What they require are opinions in bulk, so many of them that they can be analysed and averaged out and processed into useful data. Only then can they be sold, and then used to encourage us to buy more stuff. Our judgments matter, but primarily in aggregate, which makes us not so different from the faceless mass of television's audience as we are sometimes led to believe. The main distinction is that the crowdsourced are active collaborators in the commodification of their opinions, while TV viewers just get to sit on their duffs."

The Guardian...

Metta.

silent love

Greetings,

May this find you. Find you well, dancing in the light. Delightful fall cool winds caress the ebony of laughter.

I am an unfinished symphony. I live with visual touch holding a small spinal kiss. Feathers on my skin. Shivers along my spine, because I loves this sensation. It is all sensation in my quiet world. This wild swan lifts off skin, its wings a flower opening a petal to light warming me. 

Our love is voiceless. It is tenacious. It is the charity of lust and trust. Respect. Our silent joy is a breath. Exhaled. Released. 

He comes to me in the heat of the day. I welcome him with my bright dark eyes. I welcome him with a gesture, a fingertip on lips..."quiet." We share brief moments. My passion is deep and strong. My language - a smile, eyes, hands, fingers, rolling sounds whispering: 

• time
• relationships
• secrets
• fear
• family
• passion
• laughter
• sadness
• a heart

Metta.

Mr. Liu dreams

Greetings,

Inside my solitary confinement cell 300 light years from freedom I was dreaming about fantasy baseball playoff games, international human rights and my wife when the starving destitute guards showed up.

It was dark. The bases were loaded in the top of the 9th.

1.6 million fans were standing, screaming and waving red star flags. It was a full count. The micro-managers in the Forbidden City were tearing their hair out. They'd exhausted their bullpens, bloody fountain pens and bullshit. 

A guard scratched on the iron bars. Let's go, he said, We're moving you out. Orders from the Noble Leadership. It's dynamite. Everyone's afraid for your safety. We need to get you to a safe undisclosed secret location.

They shackled me to Charter 08 and dragged me down a long and winding labyrinth. It smelled like yesterday's pig slop.

A white rabbit carrying a pocket watch ran past us. I'm late, I'm late, for a very impotent date. Farewell cruel world!

They put a bag over my head. I couldn't breathe. They stuffed me into a vehicle. They drove forever and a day. Years later we reached Oslo, Norway. I heard a familiar language.

They stopped, opened the door and threw me out. Don't come back! they screamed.

I hit the bricks. I rolled. I tumbled. A child found me. They removed my hood. I blinked, blinded by clear light. Another child cut off my chains. They led me to a castle. My wife was there. All my friends from human rights organizations, writers, artists and supporters were there.

I was free.

Metta.

798

Greetings,

Living in a huge art museum we can never escape art. Where does the artificial end and the real begin?

798 is a district in Beijing where artists collaborate and present their vision, similar to the Left Bank or Greenwich Village.

798...

Wu Yuren, an artist who led a public protest over land thieves was recently arrested. “You don’t realize how arcane this system is until you have to deal with it,” Ms. Patterson, his wife said. “It’s a nightmare.”

NYT

Metta.