They would cold-bloodedly murder two of my best friends, take them out and shoot them in the chest. I realized I wasn't perfect since I was also tainted with the impurities of the historical past and no doubt my own imperfections reflected badly on them. I was harsh and brutal and had walked with muddied feet. I had to clear out my own backyard if I wanted any favorurs, but where to start? This room was filled with pig shit. I mean, I'm also tainted. What was that noxious smell, the one that persisted in following me everywhere. Whence the repugnant odour?
I couldn't make any plans for tumbulations. My best plans seemed not to ever to work. They were all messed up in some way or another. Before the ink was dried, there appeared a vile residue over all of my papers, everything. Nobody would believe in evil spirits, but it is as if there were some, hungry, waiting.
I'd started again, patiently, with an ever-increasing determination to do things right, but it kept getting messed up again during the daylight. The fingers of light had wreaked havoc through the small blinds. This was no photographic darkroom, nor had it been intended as one, but rather a semi-restored bunker or block house, half above the ground, half submerged. They'd set it up for me. I don't think they'd thought too deeply about it. I had to go through the process of working, but they never looked at the results. The point was to make us suffer, not to gain by productivity.
That's why they never looked at the results. I understood I was to be paraded around the city with my hands tied behind my back. They promised this would remove the taint all three of us had acquired during the infantry stage. That was when we were trying to be soldiers. They'd taken all our weapons and given us lessons. These lessons came in there parts. The first was learning to doubt our own history and to put our memories of it aside. The second was learning to attack oneself rather than others (once again in this mode of self-doubt). The third phase is what they called politely rehabilitation. It involved sitting in this darkened room and coming up with ideas for tumbulations. Needless to say our models for tumbulations were not meant to be effective, as our failure was intended to further demoralize ourselves. This was for our own good; to bring us out of the infantry stage so that we would only look back on it with horror. We learned to expect the daily degradations as good for us, because our training in the infantry stage had made us indifferent to all pain, or even partly welcoming of it. We'd learned our lessons.
But they still shot my two best friends, as if they'd never learned a thing. And we learned from that, too, that any future success with any designs for tumbulations would be kept to ourselves. We'd build one, a really super one, and we'd get ourselves out of here. That was the fourth lesson. It was imparted although it was never actually taught.
I couldn't make any plans for tumbulations. My best plans seemed not to ever to work. They were all messed up in some way or another. Before the ink was dried, there appeared a vile residue over all of my papers, everything. Nobody would believe in evil spirits, but it is as if there were some, hungry, waiting.
I'd started again, patiently, with an ever-increasing determination to do things right, but it kept getting messed up again during the daylight. The fingers of light had wreaked havoc through the small blinds. This was no photographic darkroom, nor had it been intended as one, but rather a semi-restored bunker or block house, half above the ground, half submerged. They'd set it up for me. I don't think they'd thought too deeply about it. I had to go through the process of working, but they never looked at the results. The point was to make us suffer, not to gain by productivity.
That's why they never looked at the results. I understood I was to be paraded around the city with my hands tied behind my back. They promised this would remove the taint all three of us had acquired during the infantry stage. That was when we were trying to be soldiers. They'd taken all our weapons and given us lessons. These lessons came in there parts. The first was learning to doubt our own history and to put our memories of it aside. The second was learning to attack oneself rather than others (once again in this mode of self-doubt). The third phase is what they called politely rehabilitation. It involved sitting in this darkened room and coming up with ideas for tumbulations. Needless to say our models for tumbulations were not meant to be effective, as our failure was intended to further demoralize ourselves. This was for our own good; to bring us out of the infantry stage so that we would only look back on it with horror. We learned to expect the daily degradations as good for us, because our training in the infantry stage had made us indifferent to all pain, or even partly welcoming of it. We'd learned our lessons.
But they still shot my two best friends, as if they'd never learned a thing. And we learned from that, too, that any future success with any designs for tumbulations would be kept to ourselves. We'd build one, a really super one, and we'd get ourselves out of here. That was the fourth lesson. It was imparted although it was never actually taught.
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