On Security and Terror, 1779 edition*

I spent the last few days in the environs of our nation's capital. You know what it's called. All that marble pointing to the sky! How white it is. How straight the columns. There is apparently some disagreement among scholars as to whether the Senecas began refering to George Washington as Caunotaucarius ("destroyer of villages" or "burner of towns") before or after the Sullivan Expedition of 1779. Some historians, it seems, maintain that the name was a ceremonial title, a show of respect. Whatever. Washington's orders to General John Sullivan, issued May 31, 1779, bear quoting:

"The Expedition you are appointed to command is to be directed against the hostile tribes of the Six Nations of Indians, with their associates and adherents. The immediate objects are the total destruction and devastation of their settlements, and the capture of as many prisoners of every age and sex as possible. It will be essential to ruin their crops now in the ground and prevent their planting more.

"I would recommend, that some post in the center of the Indian Country, should be occupied with all expedition, with a sufficient quantity of provisions whence parties should be detached to lay waste all the settlements around, with instructions to do it in the most effectual manner, that the country may not be merely overrun, but destroyed.

"But you will not by any means listen to any overture of peace before the total ruinment of their settlements is effected. Our future security will be in their inability to injure us and in the terror with which the severity of the chastisement they receive will inspire them."

*See also, Efrain Rios Montt

And this is before he learns how bad things really are...

“If but for a single instant you could see this world of ours the way it really is—undoctored, unadulterated, uncensored—you would drop in your tracks!”

“Wait a minute. What world? Where is it? Where can I see it?”

“Why anywhere. Here even!” he whispered in my ear, glancing nervously around. Then he pulled up his chair and slipped me—under the table—a small flask with a worn cork, saying with an air of dark conspiracy:

“…Merely carrying it on your person, let alone using it, is a federal offense!  Remove the cork and sniff—but only once, mind you, and carefully. Like smelling salts. And then, for heaven’s sake control yourself, don’t panic, remember where you are!”

My hands were trembling as I pulled the cork and lifted the flask to my nostrils. A whiff of bitter almonds made my eyes swell up with tears, and when I wiped them away, and could see again, I gasped.  The magnificent hall, covered with carpets, filled with palms, the ornamented majolica walls, the elegance of the sparkling tables, and the orchestra in the back that played exquisite chamber music while we dined, all this had vanished. We were sitting in a concrete bunker, at a rough wooden table, a straw mat—badly frayed—beneath our feet. The music was still there, but I saw that it came from a loudspeaker hung on a rusted wire. And the rainbow-crystal chandelier was now a dusty, naked light bulb. But the worst change had taken place before us on the table. The snow-white cloth was gone; the silver dish with the steaming pheasant had turned into a chipped earthenware plate containing the most unappetizing gray-brown gruel, which stuck in gobs to my tin—no longer silver—fork. I looked with horror upon the abomination that only moments ago I’d been consuming with such gusto, savoring the crackling golden skin of the bird and crunching—in sweet, succulent counterpoint—the croutons, crisp on the top and soaked with gravy on the bottom. And what I had taken for the overhanging leaves of a nearby potted palm turned out to be the drawstrings on the drawers of the person sitting (with three others) right above us—not a balcony or platform, but rather a shelf, it was so narrow. For the place was packed beyond belief! My eyes were practically popping from their sockets when this terrifying vision wavered and began to shift back, as if touched with a magic wand. The drawstrings near my face grew green and once again assumed the graceful shape of palm leaves, while the slop bucket reeking a few feet away took on a dull sheen and turned into a sculptured pot. The grimy surface of our table whitened back to the purest snow, the crystal goblets gleamed, the awful gruel grew golden, sprouting wings and drumsticks in the proper places, and the tin of our cutlery regained its former silvery shine … as the waiters’ tailcoats went fluttering, flapping all around. I looked at my feet—the straw was a Persian rug once more. I had returned to the world of luxury. But examining the ample breast of the pheasant, I couldn’t forget what it concealed…

“Now you are beginning to understand,” whispered Trottelreiner…

—Stanislaw Lem, The Futurological Congress

Some questions

Oh look, there are clouds outside the plane. There are endless plains made out of cloud outside the plane. There are nine bacteria for every human cell in your body, I just read. In my body. In the bacteria's body. Let's call it our body. And water. Most of it is water, right? Most of us. Just like the clouds, the plains of clouds. I can't tell you how comforting I find these facts. The bacteria and I cannot tell you. We are too busy, too distracted. We have too many thoughts, the bacteria and I. Most of them unutterable. Only some of them obscene. Our thoughts also are mainly water, mainly cloud. The boundaries are hazy. Water being water. The screens on the seaths inside the plane are showing images of the tornado cloud and of the post-tornado cloud. The tornado cloud is made of water but also of wind, which is air, only faster. It is made also of debris picked up along the way. Debris like cars and trees and hospitals. Debris like persons. An unmeasurable but surely significant percentage of the tornado cloud is therefore a clever swirl of water and bacteria and the occasional human cell. Just like the rest of us. On the screens on the seats inside the plane persons who have avoided becoming debris survey the post-tornado cloud debris. They hug their neighbors and greet their pets with tears. They plant flags in their debris. I am fairly agile (we are) as far as thinking goes, but this is hard to understand. What percentage of America is debris and what percentage is bacteria? Can debris's loyalties be known? And bacteria's? If they cannot, can ours? And what about the clouds, tornado clouds included? Why have we put no flags on them? By excluding them from this great polity, do we not exclude ourselves?

Everything

"Everything one needs to know is right out in the open."

—Renee Gladman, The Activist

Every Little Thing

"It was morning, yet it seemed to him that the day was ending, that the light was retreating and abandoning the furniture, the room, every little thing bit by bit. He understood then that what he lacked was not air or a clear view of things or Ada's body. The something missing was much more vast and obscure, something neither close at hand nor far away, rather running parallel. The work of doing without was incessant: gnawing, gnawing."

—Severo Sarduy, Firefly