Don't Go

That wasn't my father in the casket, that was just the bread, the meat and the fat. It's done it's job, he's done with that. 

You did good, you were a good dad. You gave us all the freedoms that your parents made sure you never had. 

I picture your own disapproving father, holding you over his knee, as he cut off your quiff. 

What was is about your style that signified something he felt he had to attack? You never did that, you were a good dad. And when your work was done, you were ready to go. Where are you now? I don’t think we’re built to know. 


You Make Me Feel Like a Smiths Song

This is my father's wake. The white bread, the meat, the drink and the cake. He lived for his family, for art and music; the coastlines and the rolling lands, the surf, mod, punk and pop bands.

Style wasn't something that interested my dad. I always figured he missed out there, by not being a Smiths fan. I thought he would have appreciated their Englishness, their conservativism, their melancholy; their nostalgia for a semi-fictional past: of girl bands, quiffs, and Carry on films.

This building is like a Smiths song: draped in England flags, it is almost entirely of the past. It's a fading old 7" on a dimly light jukebox; echoing through endless empty function rooms, a pile of twenties on the pool table, rusty coppers atop the rim of the poor box. Transistor voices, kaleidoscopic 12-strings, cardboard drum beats, woolly, fuzzy, all so very English. Badly tuned TVs. Drudgery, BBC, ITV, Beatles harmonies.

Empty institutional chairs in precise institutional lines, a locked groove stretching on forever through the rhyme, of swinging doors strewn with football colours, framed photographs of long dead politicians; sportsmen, comedians, serial killers; club singers, ventriloquists, sex offenders; ribbons, flags, forgotten, half-remembered. Even that fresh paint smell is arrogant, bad tempered.  

I see all those chairs arranged in rows, repositioned, stacked, un-stacked. I see the football colours and the England flags. As if we need to be reminded of where we are. Lost like ghosts. Nationalism at times when the nation’s failed the most.

National Pride in places the rest of the nation doesn't even know exists, or if it does, is happy for the place to remain in the sticks. 

Vanity, they say, is a kind of pride: when you’re smug about something that maybe you should hide. Pride in something you really don’t have: or youth, or wealth and things that don’t last.   

They bow and they kiss the hand that divides, the hand that takes, accuses, denies. For their bellies are full and their TVs wide. All the extra channels and two cars in the drive.

God don't get him started on the politics. We should never have let him go to college. Put ideas in his head that did. You never met the right girl that’s the trouble with you. You want to settle down. It's not too late for you. Just stop trying to try to do things we don’t know how to do.

Your family will fight to the bone over their favourite TV show, but only your friends will really defend you. 

Misplaced rage, loyalties in the wrong place, tipping your cap and shaking their hands as they confiscate freedoms you never knew you had. Divide and rule is the order of the day. It's in the water, the booze, the coal and the clay.

"Oh don't go, It's not too late."

Every day is like my father's wake. Every day is an echo of a better day.

White bread, beer, meat and fat. The future doesn't have to be an imitation of the past. Why do we always seem to aspire to that? The white bread, the meat, the beer and the fat. 

The rooms all smell of time stained carpets, of ill-fitting jumpers, meat raffles and indoor markets; record sleeves, paperbacks; Steven King, Union Jacks.

The taste of blood and tears in the mouth, beer, tobacco, Bitter and Stout. Bitter, Mild, accusations; Fear, Hatred, Resentment, Failure.








Coal and Clay

Look at the games rooms my god the antique arcade machines bleep and hiss away as they must have done for the past three decades, how are they still going? Ignorance is strength, pride and delight in obtuseness. Pac Man forever chasing ghosts around the exact same paths. These things were really built to last. They've been here so long that their whole style has come back, more times than the manufactures ever needed the cash. What are you supposed to do with that?

Do they know what they're worth? The building probably wouldn't allow anyone to take them away. They’re a part of the architecture, they are here to stay.

But the building is not a gracious host. It stands tall but shadowy like a disapproving ghost, something constructed out of fear and doubts. As far as this building is concerned, it's still 1954 or thereabouts.

There's no one drinking here save for the bar staff, who do not speak; even their suspicions are muted and meek.

Only the over-sized TVs break the spell, retrofitted to the walls like the Ghost in the Shell. 

Coin-op vending machines full of plastic spheres, their contents all rusted, sun bleached by the years, anachronistic items that must have ceased to be manufactured decades ago. Brittle powder chewing gum, war time candy with a taste like a shadow.  

Men come here to hide from their parents. Men come here to hide from their wives. Sometimes women are allowed some nights. Sometimes women and children are allowed inside. They're a source of entertainment. Like foreigners on the bowling green. Christ look there's a bowling green.

"There's a foreign woman on the bowling green who does she think she is?"

The banality of bigotry, like a corpse buried beneath the perfect surface of the fucking bowling green. 

UKIP stickers in the shattered window of a council flat. The white bread, the meat, the fear and the fat. Foreign labour didn't put you out of work, you can thank the Tories for doing that. But still you smile and you doth your cap, you’re faithful, you'll get your country back. 

 The Tories shut down the industries that built the towns like this. Now the residents vote Conservative. They believe that's right. They don't believe they're struggling, you can see it in their eyes: they've got all the HD channels, and two cars in the drive. Belief is a lie. Belief is a lie. 

Coal and clay, coal and clay. 

"Oh don't go, it's not too late."

Here are my ghost family, their complexions like clay. Even the young ones are colourless and grey. There is no sunshine here. There is no outside. Glaring reminders of all you've been denied. And do you have a boyfriend children proper job? Mortgage, all the HD channels oh well there's plenty of time for all that but that's not a proper job because I don't believe it to be a proper job I can't even imagine what that would really involve so it isn't real it can't be.

You've been all around the world why would you want to do that? I wouldn't let my daughter go around dressed like that. You read too many books, let them brainwash you into having an open mind about things. They should never have let you indulge your dreams. You should be at home, preparing yourself for marriage. That's what I believe and so it must be true. If you disagree what’s it got to do with you?

Belief shapes the world, belief is why we can't evolve. Belief in ideas, in imaginary things. You can't construct a physical world out of ideas and daydreams. 

Ah but you believe what you believe, you can’t get through to a brain that perceives: the world through the filter of blind belief and no proof, no facts will sway them from their truth.

This is the way of the circle of life, we’re chained to the wheel by blind belief. Look up, look out, there is more than this, but it’s not what you want, it’s not what you wish. Belief gets in the way of life and release, but that’s not what you want, that's not what you seek. You’ve lived so long in the shadows of a cave, freedom and light isn’t what you crave. You seek out fear, guilt and regret, it’s what you deserve so it’s all that you get.

In the culture of blame you have crafted your own chains, a culture of compassion would be a culture of shame. You can’t let people just live how they choose, let the powers that be tell us who to blame and abuse. For the ruling class’s failings, in the culture of blame: the people they’ve failed are the people we should blame.

This is the trouble with your belief: you invent horror stories for strangers on the streets. Fear and regret steer your every move, no amount of experience, no amount of proof: will let you see the world anew, a world of compassion, a world founded on truth.


Inside Outside

Inside, the wind doesn't move them, the sun shining through the windows shines through them. There is fear and uncertainty in the eyes of the young, a fear that must over time become: the look of defeat in the adults who look on.

Look how much she's grown, no I don't like that; isn't it a shame that she turned out like that. He's married to a woman but how can he still seem so… gay? Which one is his wife no that’s HER wife you say? That's his brother, he looks so much older, than I saw him last... ten minutes ago, no look I'm confused by all these new ideas but I’m afraid to ask.

We're not here for your pleasure so you can say how much we've grown, whisper how you don't approve of our hair or our clothes.

We're not here to educate you. It's not our fault that you aged but never grew. You've stayed the same for decades, entirely unchanged; and you're somehow proud, that you’re old for your age. Staring faces silver grey, staring at us like we're the ones who’ve made the mistakes.

At least I'm still capable of change, still capable of feeling the sun upon my face. 

"Don't go, don’t go, it's not too late."


The Fadeout

We stand outside and the wind moves our clothes, the sun shines in our eyes. I'm shaking hands with a slender man I don't recognize.

He is a shadow, sunken and grey, peering out at the world beneath cloth cap and shades. The voice is an echo from when he was young. He pushes words out like smoke from half a mutated lung. Every word exclaimed as if every moment of life is a surprise. Someone else, he says, has died. I'm still here, oh wow, oh well. You're looking good, you must be doing well. 

I wish that I could say the same, but I’m not even sure I remember his name. Decades of yesterdays, in the milky eyes emotion, malnourished limbs move with a medicated slow motion. 

Later I discover that this man is younger me. Flesh and blood, coal and clay. 

He took heroin and it took his youth, sharp of tongue and sweet of tooth. Beware the vultures at the wake. White bread, meat, fat and cake. Does he remember me, when did we meet? He's staring down a one way street, in the car park, where a man stares back while he burns some tires, and children’s toys to fuel his fires.  

You lot aren’t from around these parts? Mate, we’re the ones you wouldn’t want to meet in the dark. We’re unified though we live far apart, at least we don’t spend our days burning weird shit in a car park. 

But I have to say that there are no vultures here. My father’s brother has disappeared. Somehow he felt he wasn’t working class, he didn’t condescend to us long enough to ask. If any of us even give a fuck, that he’s not here, I guess he is better than us.  

The wealthier ones seem less animated, more colour has bled from their hair and faces. They are tired of all they see. Money can't buy you youth or dignity. Old age doesn't have to be this way, there are many older people here with something positive to say. The glint of youth in their eyes and smiles, energies lilting with humour and style - though life has been really fucking tough, they can still fucking laugh it all off.

"Fuck it, life happened to me, I didn't do that, I didn't make that shit happen, it’s all in the past. There's no shame in old age, in the lines on my face, there's no shame or sin in the place that I’m in. I did my best, never crossed anyone, I’m not ashamed of the person I’ve become."



B/W

Sometimes my friends and I appear kind of ageless. But that isn't our style and there are lines on our faces. We have energy, because we're not consumed by hate. Hate drains, compassion elevates. We have side-stepped the pressures of conformity. Life certainly hasn't been easy, and nor should it be. We're not ready to surrender. Not to this mundanity. Don't want to belong. Have to look beyond. 

I'm hugging goodbye my childhood friend and I feel her sadness even after it ends. The longer it lasts the sadder she gets. She hasn’t grown, never fled the nest.

Life has not been good to her. Her eyes are the eyes of a ghost, barely blue, wide in a kind of muted horror. Was she the only other person crying at the service, besides my mother? 

 You were so strong. What happened to you? A strength that didn't deserve to be robbed. If there was something I could do, but you can't you can't help anyone they’ll only resent you.

As children we were unified in our anger, but you always saw yourself as stronger. Staring at the same old shows on TV, staring at the ghosts in the vending machines, staring at the shadows on the walls of a cave, staring at the mess of the world that we made.  

Even the young here have no youth, it’s not aloud, it has no use. The only difference between us and you, is we’re still learning, and you refuse.

Faded England flags flutter in the merciless wind; in the car park, where a man stares and burns things. 

My friends and I are alive and yet, in a way that makes us seem like a threat. We don't leave. The building fades. The people go back to sleep, unchanged.

M. Taylor, October 2017. 


All proceeds from Imaginary Weather (containing The Landscape Welder, dedicated to my dad) will go to Myeloma UK until the end of the year:
https://themekanoset.bandcamp.com/album/imaginary-weather




BELIEF IS A LIE

Belief without question is passivity. Passivity is good for the business of religion and politics. Belief without curiosity is stasis. Stasis is entropic, destructive not creative. Passivity is not good for freedom.

Our entire culture is based on this passivity. Education is only concerned with knowledge and the ability to remember and repeat information. Questions (a sure sign of intelligence) are not encouraged.

Higher Education is concerned with furthering knowledge. It rejects ideas that question the validity of existing knowledge.


BALANCE



How fortunate are we the living now, to be here to witness the very pinnacle of our culture. Things will never be as good. How unlucky we are to see what will be, on the other side.

Prayer for The Jam Factory

"Government will [not] posthumously pardon thousands of men convicted for the crime of being born gay. "

Father Ian McKenzie, Parish of West Imercia:

Oh Lords, our merciful Government, with your hostility towards all things bright and beautiful, your fear of all people great and small; with your power to deflect blame for your own failings upon your innocent flock, we thank thee for this bountiful gift, so bountiful it hath taken thee 6 decades to instigate.

We thank thee Lords for thy mercy, for the possibility of forgiving people long after they are able to benefit from your forgiveness.

We thank thee for the gift of no longer forcing courageous people to take drugs they don't need, and for no longer imprisoning them based on the gender of the people they find attractive. 

We thank thee for the gift of new and easier targets for our fears and prejudice to flourish (for truly, you just can't tell by looking at them, can you?). And we thank thee Lords for smiting the sick and the poor. 

Lords, in your wisdom, you have banished the blight of the foreign worker. For how can any man or woman receive the gift of labour, just because they are willing and able to work? 

We thank thee, oh Lords. For just as Jesus banished the money lenders from the temple, you have banished the sick, the poor and the needy form our hospitals. For how can any man, woman or child receive that which they have not paid for, directly, in cash? 

We thank thee Lords, for drawing us up into the light of your prejudice. For the blessing of thy persecutions upon people with disabilities and long term care. 

We thank thee Lords, for banishing the homeless and vulnerable from our streets. 

We surrender unto thee our personal freedoms. Cleanse us of our impure thoughts. Watch over your flock, going over our phone records and internet browser histories. Cleanse us of our imagination, our hopes, our dreams. 

Give us this day our daily white bread, feed our fears and nurture our prejudices as we celebrate our ignorance and confusion. And give us our mounting debts as they accumulate mounting interest against us. 

For thine is the Kingdom, the power, the riches and the glory. Forever and ever, Amen (or to put Amen in its English translation: 'let it be kept secret.')

The Great British Tea Fields

"British tea, jam and biscuits will be at the heart of Britain's Brexit trade plans." Say the mighty old boys at the Torygraph, nodding in agreeance with themselves as they gaze through the sash windows to the tea fields stretching out to the glorious British horizon. The spittle of rage cooling within the folds of their jowls. The delicious glint of schadenfreude in their eyes.

For soon these will all be luxury items, only available to the wealthy of the world. Soon, this world will fall to its knees and beg like virginal nieces, and pay any price we name, for the precious tea and beauteous biscuits of Great Great Britain. 

Soon the re-purposed slaughterhouses will spew forth their jammy bounty. Oh how the great unwashed will queue as far as the eye can see, for work sets you free. One bolt per head. We may need to look at that.

"Perhaps we could have them fight to the death, for a chance at the vats?" Suggests the chairman of The British Wool Marketing Board.

"Oh I like that." Chimes Boris as he parks a Dinky Phantom V between the patent leather shoes of the Barclay twins. Their cold grey eyes follow his progress with an eerie precision. 

But this timeless solace is interrupted by the sound of choking, the ugly jazz-like clatter of a china tea cup against the edge of an oak conference table, biscuit crumbs flashing gold in the sunlight. One of the editors drops to his knees, crumples face first into the Axminster carpet. The others stand in silence at this insulting turn of events. The editor in chief, his grey Aryan features offset by the gold rings of his predatory irises, presses the buzzer for the servants to sweep up the shattered china.

Meeting at The Arts Factory

Fresh from the shower, the sharp, glassy scent of vodka radiates from his gleaming flesh, eagerly reaching out through the fisherman's jumper, the vintage corduroy trousers, the smock style linen jacket and the Barbour Crieff cap. The obligatory uniform of the upper-middle class creative man.

It's only when the lift takes too long to arrive that he realizes he's still drunk from the night before, and the night before. Like a child inexplicably tasked with driving a J.C.B. down a motorway: his eyes widen, he sways, his limbs suddenly very keen to appear to be doing something physical.

As the canned applause in his head dies down and the lift finally arrives, the cleaning team emerge and in his eagerness to escape the lobby he jostles a bucket from their equipment trolley, spilling purplish bleach and water down the front of his vast corduroy slacks.

Dystopian Jam

Once we've all been transformed into magical jam factory workers living in a sweet smelling 1930s white Britopia, who will The Daily Mail types turn on for their fear porn fix? Apple Sauce labourers? Scrumpers?

 On the horizon, like the blush of dawn, I see a bright future, where Blackberries are re-branded as Britberries; where landlords and successful businessmen wear tweed plus fours and gun down berry poachers, as is their right.

 Retired Jam Factory workers smile as they wipe sweat from their brows, picking over-sized English apples in their orchard gardens as a new generation of school leavers cycle on down the road to the Jam Factory in flat caps and trousers with braces, thrilling beneath the great gleaming smile of the Golly Wog atop the factory gates.

 The paperboy passes by at a sensible speed, in cloth cap and high-waisted trousers with braces, gently depositing copies of The Daily Mail on doorsteps dusted with the soft-bright pollen of this eternal English Summer. At the end of the street a woman scrubs blood stains from her WELCOME mat.

 The air chimes with the scent of freshly baked white bread, the brassy sounds of bicycle bells, C of E bells and the buzz of British bees. We eat white bread now. It's fine.

 The newspaper headlines are all becalmed and all is right with the Empire. All of the sex perverts have been slain; celebrity sleaze has been lanced, the working class have been inoculated against work shyness, all thanks to the power and might of great English journalism.

 No more talk of Muslims or the E.D.L. anymore. For truly, the British Biro is mightier than the unchristian Damascus steel sword of multiculturalism.

 The brave but unruly right wing extremists have all found their calling: as hospital porters, soft service workers behind the scenes at airports, traditional abattoirs and subdued shopping malls. The dynamic contrast between the fresh scrub uniforms and the fading blue-grey ink of facial tattoos. The intoxicating sweetness of repressed male rage; the tightening-grip whisper of repressed male homoeroticism.

 A new, stronger generation of white upper middle class adults emerge from the cloisters of the great old universities, squinting in the summer haze, clutching doctorate diplomas, stethoscopes and prescription books. A man with the sexual glint of the predator in his handsome blue eyes smiles behind a clipboard. Halcyon days.

 The blight of the foreign work force is but a distant memory, like tea leaves at the bottom of a china cup. No more their smiling coloured faces, no more the exotic celebratory clothing, no noisily melodic foreign accents thanking you for your custom, telling you not to worry, asking you if you'd like anything else, happy to be of service; acquitting lower class men of criminal activities when a good prison sentence would sort them out regardless. Just good old ruddy-cheeked Englishness. Decency. Obtuseness. A chemical-swelling of the pores. Failed capillary veins mapping decades of alcohol abuse on a pock-marked face. Eyes the colour of morning piss. Teeth like a display of half-chewed British toffees. Pushing a youthful face into the dirt.

 Lardaceous mild English cheese. Acrid English butter, sterilized English milk. White bread. Delivered by clean-limbed men in caps and uniforms, energized by unquenched sexual appetites. White aprons stained with miscellaneous effluences. Teeth like standing stones. Eyes moist and hungry.

 All the old bothersome, over-educated youths with ideas above their station have been rightly tamed: they work as fruit pickers now, their lives an unending summer's day in the golden fields of a new England. Scrumpy and the shadows of domestic violence on the weekends. The Royal Variety show on in the background.

 Tucked away in damp rooms behind the crumbling walls of tiny, sallow apartments in carcinogenic grey concrete. The shadows of happier times cast across the abandoned communal gardens: echoes of unity. Divide and rule. Burned mattresses; vicious, hungry eyes in faces young without youth.

 Our streets are safe now. No more unsightly gangs of people of questionable sexualities in garish clothing. So noisy in their happiness and their 'freedoms'. No doubt that sort of thing goes on behind closed doors still, but at least they know their place. Subdued in natural fibers, gold jewellery, family photos in cheap Balsa wood frames, the scent of real soap masking something dark and oily.

 Banished are the sports casually attired children of the great unemployable masses. So much cannon fodder gone to seed. Such a waste. London's streets are as silent and unlittered as a 1950s Wednesday. Early closing, the flutter of grease proof paper and brown butchers string. The bright flash of blood pooling on gleaming white tiles. No more the indulgent luxury of 'youth'.

 Songs of Praise on the television. Dad's Army. Delicious hints of war in Europe. How wonderful that would be. Like a sallow cream cake in a shop window. On a doily. Let's pack off a goodly amount of working class youth, keep the numbers down, make real men out of the survivors. They'll be glad of any job. Obedient. Thankful. Terror sealed off behind the eyes. A silent scream.

 That'll teach the EU where the power really is. Send in the troops. Boots gleaming in the dazzling brightness of today, tomorrow, yesterday. Forever England, forever the picnic basket of fortune, smearing butter on the burns on the back of a hand. The shocking rush from slapping a child with the back of a hand for crying in public. Locking them away until they finish their homework. Silent, dignified mealtimes. Mopping up the gravy with a slice of white bread.

 One public house per town or village, the way it always should have been. A tea dance on a Saturday afternoon. Noise meters, bunting and a 9 pm curfew for the under 40s. Good old fashioned Police corruption, patent leather shoes up on the desk, stretching far back in a Chesterfield chair. High-tar cigarettes unfurl for days on end. Phones off the hook. Cash prizes for local councils, new roads to nowhere.

 With a real old fashioned Conservative government at the helm, gleaming in cerulian blue. Hard like an English willow cricket bat. The loving comfort of paternal sadism, like an old brown teddy bear filled with bad drugs. Bright white smiles, boarding school ties, the blight of the Polytechnic riff-raff hosed down and purged.

 A luxurious afternoon snooze in the House of Commons, the scent of warm leather. Dreaming of 1980s cocaine, champagne and sexual abandon. Dribble on the collar, sweating out brandy beneath layers of tailored tweed.

 The shadows of Socialism on the dirty billboards outside the boarded up co-operative cafes. Sinister community values. Dirty, horrific notions of equality. The power has been cut, the locks sealed up.

 The sense of relief that comes from knowing that nothing is new and nothing new will ever be. No more the pot-luck of innovation. No risk factors. A return to Bakelite, white tiled corridors with royal blue trim stretching on forever, forever England.

 The school scents of sawdust and bodily fluids, forever, forever England. A beautiful die-back. A near pre-industrial simplicity. Thank God. Thank the great Grandfather in the sky that is the English God. The beauty of a silent, angry, vengeful English God.

 Thereasa May in the ladies loos, the tap of steel on mirrored glass. Bowie on the earphones. The comforting weight of the knuckle dusters in her left jacket pocket – ruining the line but a welcome compromise. Shadow boxing, she eyes her reflection with a satisfied smirk.

 The seductive beauty of Divide and Rule.

 Rich veins of cash from foreign students to placate unruly northern cities best left to their own devices. The dirty passion of the dispossessed. Finest education on the planet - to those intelligent enough to have been born to families that can afford it.

 Harvest the myth that hard work leads to the greatest rewards. Works set you free. Good old fashioned English superstition to keep the masses at bay.

 The sun is going down to the sounds of the tolling of factory bells, the disapproving shuffle of the clocking out machines, ticking off those precious grimy British coppers. Brown cardboard, callouses and warm fatigue.

 A pint of English bitter in the country styled pub on the way home. The air thick with the scent of sweat, frying pork and burned toast. Dulled faces trudging home with their lights out, all of the fight and self-awareness muscled out of them with a good hard days graft. Work sets you free. You, not me. Some freedoms are a privilege. And rightly so.

 No more the sounds of shattered glass and revelry. Communities are silent now, respectful, distant. No more the troublesome camaraderie that generates energy where it shouldn't be. Divide and rule. As far as the eye can see. Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ‘Em and Alf Garnnet on the telly, void of irony. Class traitors and the celebration of idiocy. Forever, forever England.

 They’re bringing the car round to the bins behind the House of Commons. She is dabbing the faded blue-grey swastika at her neck with foundation. She puts on her gloves.

 The penetrative scent of burned paper from the hot, brutalist incinerator. From the boot of the car the familiar muffled sounds of limbs bound, of a mouth gagged. Sounds that she has come to know and love. The special love that predator has for prey.

 She emerges into the golden light as they pop open the trunk. He is squinting against the halo of her hair. There is blood and sweat pasting his fringe to his forehead. His eyes are full of fear, regret, sorrow. He is scruffy. These are things of the past.

 From his luxurious suite in the east tower of Buckingham Palace, Rupert Murdoch gazes out at an England transformed by the power of his will and words. His work is almost done.

 He notes his reflection in the floor to ceiling security glass: the gleaming new body feels a little tight. The process takes noticeably longer each time now. The thick black ichor of his soul is a burden for the strongest of flesh.

 He sips Kenyan coffee from a tiny human skull. It’s a little too cool. He makes a mental note to have the kitchen staff executed and replaced before the end of the day.

 Distantly, the scent of burning, the blush of fire on the horizon. Sunset?


Report by M. Taylor

BELIEF IS A LIE

For the believer, facts prove nothing if they contradict their beliefs. They pick and choose. Any data that contradicts their belief simply gets ignored.

Belief is not a strength. Belief is a lie. Belief shuts you down, narrows your vision. You believe that you have found your truth, so you need look no further. Where is the life in that?

Fact is not truth. Belief is a lie.

MAGIC IS REAL THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS MAGIC

There is no magic. There is only reality, and how much of it we are able and willing to perceive.

FICTION

Our culture is upside-down. Our loyalties warped. Even in our fiction, we're fighting on the wrong side. From Robin Hood to Star Wars, our rebel heroes are always fighting on the side of established order: for King and Country.


"Milk's knowledge was always useful, but not necessarily in a way that would make you happy."

Justine Marzack {AN I FOR AN I}