The Blue Column or: The World Formula - Muhammad A. Al Mahdi (good books to read .txt) 📗

chain that can repress a mind that has become aware of itself?!?
Let us shake off our robes and shed our stigma, ignore the tyranny of the gongs, the close circuit cameras, which we are supposed to be unaware of, and all this bogus prison of madness and go away.” Indeed, I said this with a full stop rather than with an exclamation mark, for it was in this form that it dawned upon me: a clear-cut, straightforward, indubitable statement (Aye, and grammatical excellence, to the expert, shall at all times remain the strongest argument to disprove madness or the allegation thereof, for it is a sane mind, and a sane mind alone, that can muster the sophistication it takes to defeat the yoke by the yoke -similia similibus, as the general practitioner calls it-.)
“Away”, they repeated with wistfully dumb voices, “away…the gongs…away…the gongs…the gongs…the gongs…away..,”
Enflamed, I ran from one to the next, slapping their faces with full force in order to rouse them. They smiled happily.
“Gong”, I began to chant in imitation of the gongs, “Away…GONG…we shall go…GONG GONG…GONG…GONG…away…to freedom…GONG GONG GONG …to freedom…GONG…GONG…GONG…Tomorrow when they march us through the city, as they use…GONG GONG…to do, we shall take…GONG GONG…the other turn…and gone…GONG GONG…are we.”
In dull happiness, they nodded their heads:
“To hear is to obey.
To freedom
GONG
To freedom
GONG
To freedom
GONG GONG GONG!”

And thus it happened that the following day, as the blue column, to the sound of the gongs, was marched through the city at rush hour, conditioned by a new kind of gong -my voice, employed in the absence of any other means of beating sense into them-, the blue column turned the other way round and marched off; under the leadership of the man who possessed the world formula -and humility compels me to state that, in this case, it was me- in their own direction.
The wards couldn’t do a thing. Realising this for he first time, they stood open-mouthed.
All eyes were averted and there wasn’t such a one in the street, male or female, old or young, as couldn’t have sworn that he hasn’t seen a thing.
And those who firmly shut their eyes -who can blame them?- maintain that they didn’t know what was going on.

For us, however, the moment had come now to ceremoniously shed our blue robes.
“GONG
First button
GONG
Second button” and so on, I shouted. And then, finally, the accursed shreds were off.
We proceeded to burn them, not giving a damn whether we had anything to dress, and in the absence of anywhere better to go, we made straight for the sea.
Armed with the world formula, I had no thought to spare for the elements. When the water began to get in our way, I addressed it thus:
“GONG!”
And, lo! The waters parted, making the way free for us. We walked right through them.
At the next sea, in order to demonstrate the redundancy of gongs in the lives of a free nation, I merely said: “Part!”, and the same thing happened.
“Have you seen it, my people?!”, I cried, “Have you seen the redundancy of the things to which you were so slavishly devoted? Where there is a brain, there is no need of substituting it with a gong. Thoughts are like birds. They come and go by themselves. Where there is thought, there is a way out of the madness. Where there is a way out, there is always a man who will go it. And in this case, humility compels me to state it is me. See how the waters part for us!”
So speaking, I marched on, followed by the column which to awaken to freedom and nationhood I had put into my head, and in this manner we crossed the seven seas.
At the sixth, I initiated the parting of the waves by a mere movement of my hand. At the seventh, I merely walked on and the waves parted by themselves.

Since the law of things does not permit a regress from the greater miracles back to the smaller ones, the technique of imitating the gongs of our previous life had been abandoned and outlawed as of the time of the crossing of the second sea, and any recourse to it was impossible. This, however, proved a serious obstacle to the emerging nation’s instincts of self-preservation, for though they found no difficulty in following their leader through the parting waves of the ocean, they were unable to eat without their impulses having been activated by the gong, and so starvation began to take its toll among them.
When the first victims succumbed to the lethal effects of lacking nourishment, there arose an outcry among the people.
“We are dying!”, they cried, “Have mercy, o first among equals, and beat the gong so we can eat!”
Enraged, I shouted back at them: “Go and eat then, o sons of dogs, for there are fish in the sea and there is manna from heaven! Grab it with your hands and open your mouths to consume it, what ails you!? Eat, I say to you, eat!”
“The gong!”, they demanded.
“If hunger kills you, o sons of my mother”, I entreated them, “can’t you find it in you to master opening your mouths and eat of your own accord?!”
“The gong.”, came their urgent, subdued, menacing wail, and I could not help noticing that there was an increasingly threatening quality to it.
“The gong to eat, the gong to sleep, the comfort and the warmth of our blue garments, the beneficent eyes of the wards and the safety of close circuit surveillance-- you have deprived us of them all!”, they shouted. “What is the use of crossing seas on the way to the zeroness of your universe consisting of these damned fish and this accursed manna we cannot eat in the absence of the gong to make us!? We’re conditioned by it, and you’re killing us by taking it away from us. In so doing, you shed our blood and walk over our dead bodies. Lead us back to the gongs or we shall all die here! O you blood-thirsty dictator, you who are the ruin of us, where is the freedom thou hast promised us and what is the use of it? Have mercy upon a nation of fools! Lead us back to the gongs! To the gongs!”

And what should I do?
Either I destroyed my life work in order to preserve their lives or I’d let them die for its sake, which would yet result in its destruction, as there would be no one alive to carry it on. If there had been one, one only, to show some sense, one only to follow the dictates of nature without having to be called to it by the command of a gong; had there been one among them who had been able to develop a conscience without requiring for it the imposition of close circuit surveillance and whose sanity were not the product of a straight-jacket, my decision should have been a different one, and I should have gladly sacrificed them all.
What, o what have you made us into, and how shall you ever account for this before the heavenly tribunal? Before the tribunal of history and human sanity, which one day, one day perhaps shall dare again to lift its head-- and judge you mercilessly.

Down in the asylum, a madman sat in front of a black board, scribbling fragments of formulas and hitting his head against the wall.
On his forehead there was a huge, dark-red smouldering wound and the inmates of the madhouse were madder than ever.
The blue column increased in numbers by the day.

“Danger isolates itself.”, comment the higher instances, indicating thereby to the lower ones that they have always been in control.

Accompanied by omnipotent gongs, we are marched through the streets of the city.
The universe is zero contained in zero, and our suffering, immortalised by the untiring eyes of close circuit surveillance cameras, is meaningless. It goes entirely unnoticed.
All eyes are averted, and the lids of those upon whom our presence is imposed are firmly shut. There is oppressive semi-darkness, and they could have sworn they saw nothing.
And the gongs, in replacement of sun and moon, make night and day.
Breathe in
Breathe out
GONG
GONG
…


(2008)


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Publication Date: 07-18-2009

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