y memory is going," said the man with the close-cropped hair and
owl-like spectacles as he swivelled on his stool to address the empty
space to his right. "I don't know if it's due to trauma or perhaps due
to something I ate, but I find I can't recollect even the broadest, most
general details of my life even ten minutes after they've occured. I seem
to have a fuzzy inkling that something has happened, but there is some
kind of barrier preventing me from seeing it; I merely want to know if
it's a subconscious, willful block, or if I am have no control over the
situation. If the latter," he concluded, swivelling back to his original
position, "then I am absolved of my amnesia, and thus I can feel better
about the current state of affairs."He said nothing else, and the silence invited others to chime in with their opinions on topics of the moment, but the assembled, for quite some time, declined the invitation, electing instead to keep their thoughts to themselves, hoarding them. (Or perhaps afraid that, once exposed to the outside air, they would be revealed as ridiculous, half-thought-out tripe unworthy of the words needed to form them into an understandable coherence. The words of the language have a way of ursurping the meaning of a thought, or rather of showing starkly the ill nature of a thought, its weaknesses, its absurdity, and its complete lack of value.) Thus, when the woman at the far end of the room licked her lips in preparation for speech, many regarded it silently as an act of courage.
"I think," she began, hesitantly at first, as if she weren't quite sure of what words were next going to exit her lips, "that whatever it is that stifles us, whether we can identify it or not, has a source both without and within. That which is without needs to be obliterated, removed, in some way exorcised from our lives, and that which is within likewise needs to be cut free from its moorings. An outward censor can simply be shot or hacked into small, component pieces, as is meet and proper; an internal censor needs to be dealt with in a similar fashion, although since it is a part of yourself, the methods required perhaps need to be more delicate and surgical in nature. But the desired effect is the same. One merely needs to decide on the order in which to deal with these two problems."
So saying, she launched herself at the man she had come in with, who hadn't spoken a word through the whole proceedings, and drawing a small knife from her jacket, made a series of patterns across his face, chest, and extremities.
To the surprise of the congregation, the man did not bleed, but simply fell into small, granite pieces which wobbeled unevenly where they landed, the most telling of these, perhaps, being the chunk which contained both of his eyes, which bore an equivocal expression of equal parts resignation, indignation, and apathy.
The lack of applause was deafening.
G9(8)