"We have been beaten and humiliated ... scattered, imprisoned, disarmed and gagged. The fate of European democracy has slipped from our hands."
-Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, 1848*
We have been beaten and humiliated. Scattered. Imprisoned. Disarmed and gagged. What fate has slipped from our hands? Do you remember the feeling before the momentum behind us faltered, leaving us inert, stunned? I understand that all waves break, but it feels like this tide only recedes. The quaking ground beneath our feet gave way to empty space, felt ourselves running half-pace in place.
The violence done to memory. To dustbin histories.
The centuries it took to atrophy collective imaginative capacities.
I'd like to mean it when I say I'd never let them take you away, but I've hesitated one breath too long, held a grip just not quite strong enough to keep their lines at bay. Found bread crumbs still in place among 10,000 grains of sand. The rocks that (may have) left our hands soared so high and fast but couldn't bring her back.
I'd like to mean it when I say I'll be there with you. But the balls we dropped just before our chance to shoot pile up until the memories of the monstrous weights we could not escape, of failure and regret, are the only ones left.
Spread thin. Just glance in the rear view mirror to catch a final glimpse of the warning signs as they disappear. A nocebo effect from the lowest common fears we held. From registers, sinks, cells… "The best of us are stuck in the webs of work, alcohol, madness and confusion."** Settle for what I've become, and just drink enough to give up.
And then! She tears out the wash, across the gauntlet set. Cop car in flames reveals a new city in silhouette. Swarm across the plains to respond with life to death. Kite lines burn fuses through states, statutes and statues. Guard towers burn.
The shadow cast over the effusive love here by monuments to power begins to disappear as they're overturned. Guard towers burn.
*Not to be taken as an endorsement of democracy (or Europe, for that matter!). For a critical anarchist take on democracy, see crimethinc.com/democracy.
**Line taken from the farewell statement from Tides of Flame, an anarchist print publication in Seattle which shut down in 2012. tidesofflame.wordpress.com.
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