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Revolutions



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Thu Nov 02, 2006 7:52 pm
backgroundbob says...



Yeah, I know, not the best attitude for starting off. But, y'know, whatever :P

REVOLUTIONS


Dramatis Personae:
I met Galleazzo Montefeltro in the rainy British summer of 2007, and we plotted the revolution together.

When a man is at the prime of his life, his normal psychological state can often be compared to bi-polar disorder. That is, he rides life like a rodeo bull, full of exhilaration and extravagant gestures, but always in danger of being trampled and dragged through bouts of crippling crises in confidence. Existence is one long semi-witty self-report garnished with philosophy, expletives or fists, depending on the man.

Such was not the way with Galleazzo. Oh, he was not 'different' in the way that so many women love to believe of their latest abuser or dependant; there were no sudden silences when he entered the room, no collective pauses when he opened his mouth, no stamp of genius on his forehead, but I still believe - and here, perhaps, is a small hint of my own selective blindness - that he was absolutely capable of that. Making a person's jaw drop is, after all, just a matter of capturing their attention for a moment and letting gravity do the rest; any street magician or would be Lothario knows the value of cheap tricks and manufactured, manicured anecdotes. One day, someone will discover there is a mathematical formula for the perfect emotional manipulation. Maybe they will become God; maybe they will be killed by a jealous husband; maybe by then such things won't matter. Maybe someone already found it, and called it love.

Gal weathered the same inner storms as anyone else, but he made a conscious choice not to allow them to affect his life. If you saw him on a good day, only occasional sparks of unusual high spirits showed through; on bad mornings he was short but not crude, brief but not cursory - the perfect gentleman. In this desire to present an unruffled façade he was not, I think, unique or even rare among men, but he did achieve success to a remarkable degree: even when he was plumbing the depths of some hurricane of emotion or other, you had to know him very well to detect it. It took me months of struggling to open him up to teach me to tell his mood by the tightness around his eyes; they were absolutely beautiful, too, grey-green and perpetually amused. He used to tease me when he caught me staring, or just bask in the attention, pretending not to notice; pretending not to care. We did a lot of that in those days, it seems.

You have to understand, it was just 'the done thing.' We were the generation who were spoiled for causes: from save the children to save the whales to save the animals; help the aged, disabled, unfortunate, poor; stop the war, stop the lies, stop the immigrants; ban this drug, legalise it, Christ! What were we supposed to do? Most of us learned at a very early age that throwing your weight behind something just meant wasting your time getting nowhere, maybe fifteen seconds of fame in the papers or on the news; once read, once seen, easily misplaced. All my life, cool insouciant non-participation has been the norm, the only way to deal with existing in the middle of a world overload of problems, stress and insecurity. I remember my mother used to tell me 'not to worry about tomorrow, today has enough problems to be getting on with.' Well, we learnt our lesson all right; there are plenty of problems in the world, so why bother worrying about any of them? They'll always be there.

I joined in the last great march, the last great protest; over two million people flooding through the streets of London waving placards, banners, effigies, the works. I didn't even know much about the War, and it had been all over the news for months; before Gal, I never bothered to keep up with much. It was a great day, though, caught up in the explosion of unity and defiance, singing and chanting all the way from the Thames Embankment to Hyde Park; there's something oddly inspiring in parading alongside socialists, anarchists, people skipping work, children skipping school. We crammed the most people into one city since VE-Day, cheered at speeches we could hardly hear and went home satisfied that we'd actually made a difference.

Of course, we hadn't; they sent them to out to kill and die in the desert in spite of us. After we abandoned London, no-one had the heart to throw defiant parties any more. That was just the final blow, though, in the long beating into the unconsciousness of indifference and disengagement. I read that in a newspaper once, somewhere. Funny how it comes back to you, isn't it? It's like living your life all over again, in black and white. Harder than it sounds, I suppose; we always did live our lives in brilliant colour. Something gets lost in the translation. Is it something vital? I don't know. To be honest, I don't really care; that's your job, now.

I meant to introduce you to the main players, but sometimes I forget things. For your purposes, existence, or life, whatever you want to call it, that's the only actor; we little people, Galleazzo and I and the other uncomfortable revolutionaries, we were only the background, the scene - I have set the scene, no more. In some ways, we were always set; a person aches to believe they control their own circumstances, to believe that they are free, but perhaps true freedom is knowing when to fight and when to let God take over.

I stopped believing in God years ago.

Avanzato?
The Oneday Cafe
though we do not speak, we are by no means silent.
  





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Sat Nov 04, 2006 3:57 am
Poor Imp says...



'Tis cool, bob--if also indubitably a doomed attitude. ^_~

I love the narrator's voice, scattered, incisive seems, by turns.

Molto?
ex umbris et imaginibus in veritatem

"There is adventure in simply being among those we love, and among the things we love -- and beauty, too."
-Lloyd Alexander
  





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Sat Nov 04, 2006 4:15 am
Wiggy says...



That was really well done, bob. The narrator's voice was well-defined and you had a brilliant use of language. Congrats ona great job!

I just hope everything gets resolved for the narrator. :D
"I will have to tell you, you have bewitched me body and soul..." --Mr. Darcy, P & P, 2005 movie
"You pierce my soul." --Cpt. Frederick Wentworth

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Sat Nov 04, 2006 5:08 am
Ohio Impromptu says...



Splendid, to say the least. There was something about that first sentence that made the whole piece so simple - yet epic? I don't know. Still, you managed to capture the small-scale, personal picture along with the wider, higher picture, and create a perfect marriage between them. Great work.

I really hope to see more of this story.
Gone, gone from New York City,
where you gonna go with a head that empty?
Gone, gone from New York City,
where you gonna go with a heart that gone?
  








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