A best friend with different literary tastes than myself recommended a book. An historian buff he reported this psychological, political rendered piece of fiction as his all time favorite. A friendship of many years deserves its many sacrifices. A bit of time seemed small. Maybe many of us here at GR have been in this situation. A small amount of time sacrificed does not only mean plowing instead of the grace of reading but also not getting the time for the next book we have been waiting to rea

A best friend with different literary tastes than myself recommended a book. An historian buff he reported this psychological, political rendered piece of fiction as his all time favorite. A friendship of many years deserves its many sacrifices. A bit of time seemed small. Maybe many of us here at GR have been in this situation. A small amount of time sacrificed does not only mean plowing instead of the grace of reading but also not getting the time for the next book we have been waiting to read. Books are not like people. They cannot be predicted to react with the same molecular DNA strands of emotional combustion or lack of. When finally gotten to they are tired of waiting, have moved on to another partner. Wasted in waiting they curl drooping in boredom, recalcitrant, slouched, flat-faced. There is always the chance it may be the opposite and the passing of time may heighten the books appeal and rendering. It may be at its best and show itself as it always imagined. But this is not predictable as it sits in wait, as we in our steady plow continue.



I don't like books of fact, history, political anthems. I bought a used copy with a GPS decoy to find its own way back to an Amazon warehouse when finished. This was helpful. But, what was I going to say to my kind friend? Repeat the book's flat facts and smile? It's called a conundrum, isn't it? Book Lover's Problem. BPL.



Okay, I could say that this political, historical book was a searing, scorching, dive into time's passage, its traumatic effect on the equilibrium of human beings inhabiting this burning planet. But I didn't think it would help my book-in-waiting at all. Though it would help build myself up for what a good person I was to do all this.



What then though to say about the words vanishing? Some kind of practical joke? Who the hell gives a friend a book with no words. I'm supposed to, what, make them up or imagine them? That's what I did, not given any choice, I imagined. The next thing I knew I was confused, waking to two officers by my bed reporting they were arresting me. One older and reverent, the young kid full of his vigor and authority. People still called me Sir. My story will be written in other places before it is spoken here.They will give the usual reasons eventually. How quickly they forget my being tortured in other countries and not giving up a word. When released I returned home to cheering crowds. On crutches still, on a stage my words to them resounded loudly about the importance of the Revolution. There was no more "I". Everything we do is for the Revolutionary Party. Everything we receive is to help the Party. We devote our entire lives to the Party's program which has been thought out by the smartest men with their powers of reason to the furthest possible moment of calculation. There is no, "I". It's appeal for devotion, to forever change the future is possessive. Answers all questions.



The guy who is reading this seems like a nice enough a guy but clearly isn't ready to give up his guy-ship. He is recalling. He has no idea what power as a character in this story I have over him in this cell, he over me. With each person reading me I am somewhat invented according to their needs. Theirs to mine. It is my lot. This one is filled with jitters. He is older. Even though he speaks it, dresses himself up for it, he isn't quite clear he wants to reevaluate the history of his life and pass a new judgement on it. Perhaps he was wrong? Freeing the African Americans, Women, from the tight straps preventing them their civil rights in a democracy. He saw a war stopped, cities set afire, government buildings taken over. Seeing the possibilities of creating a democracy formed within a democracy in name only. The Revolution became lost under the blurred shadows of capitalism's fear, the revolutionaries aging into the cowardice of security, the message subsumed within the culture. The Causes though continued. The strength of African Americans and Women have not wavered. The difference between then and now is remarkable. More so is the new generations coming of age could care less what happened then. Rightfully they want more of what is just and fair. They show an historic endurance. Their movements shall continue without the need for a revolutionary party. Within them is strength.



If you initially reader radically succeeded what would you have invented? Possibly the future cut and fragmented? How important might it be to consolidate power so your message, obviously right, could continue. At some point without self awareness or confession justify the means to the perfect end? Believe your knowledge superseded the people who no longer understood? Evolve into a tyranny before the word was ever mentioned?



Close this book my friend. You would be simply retreading history, believing what you were doing was the first time it was ever done. Your passion steamed through you unequaled by anything before. The present was your God, the future unexamined. The impatience of seeing the way towards light is a slow burn, unheeded in your fervor.



So, I returned to my country in every way the revolutionary hero. I joined the party in early adolescence. Forty faithful years committed to the dream. I was made head of a department. Met with number one whose poster hung on every wall. The photo of the great revolutionaries also hung included myself though there was no self. Reason only existed, made my decisions. Some had to die if their thoughts, actions, tastes, preferences, in any way showed any threat to the party's stability, the eventuality of the dreamed for world. Importance was meted out on the balance of a scale, my friend, that considered the parties mission. If reason were to be consulted-and it was-then it was the best overall for the people even though they could not see it. The uncountable number that must die-even my lover according to my own command-starve, be imprisoned, suffer the unspeakable agonies of torture were necessary sacrifices, obvious according to logic. They were not people, not individuals. Decisions were made according to the irrefutable plan based on irrefutable logic and reason. This is where all other revolutions failed. Ours was the only one set to last.



What happened my friend was our not calculating into the equation that future generations were to proceed us. They had not the intimate experience of what our revolution, what I, needed to fight against. Soon we original revolutionaries were considered old guard, decadent, of little use. But more so, and think about this now that you are reading this old miserable used copy of this book and I feel the crackle of the binding splitting all around me, that I and my colleagues, the way we thought, were now counter revolutionary thinkers. There was no room for us in the Party. We needed to be removed like the others so the party could go on. Our photo decked in proud uniforms was removed.



You should have bought a new copy. Have this message read and reread. It does not lighten with time. Time passed slowly as I paced my cell, six feet in one direction nine the other. The taste of fear darkened my tongue. Thoughts, thinking, distributed an "I" through my weary weakened mind, body. You cannot know. A new copy would have been better. It became apparent even before my arrest that I doubted. How could I not. If there was any clarity, what we fought for vanished. The Party reeked of its need to consolidate and maintain its own power. The lies, rewriting of history, were built upon and reinforced in a dizzying circular motion, justifying every move. Now, and how was it to be done, I was to disavow everything I had lived my life for, everything I had so irrefutably believed. The progress which sat before us. Attached to that, to each of my steps of pacing the cell, were the people I sent for torture, the people I sent to death. My irrefutable wrongness with no way now for redemption. Even the woman I made love to so many times whose scent hung about me in this small cell.



A code of knocking against the common wall to the adjacent cell was known to all. But who to trust? The banal conversations did break the solitude at times. In the multitude of days passing there was even a semblance of a friendship. But it could all be a setup, a further testing.



I want to thank you now for reading more openly reader allowing me as a character to open further. Maybe we both are learning things we didn't know we knew.



When someone from our small corridor of cells was to be next to be tortured or executed word passed furiously through the walls. Messages of fear. Membership in an unspoken community. I participated. It felt as a necessity. When finally they were dragged down the hall, past the small eye hole where guards observed us, where we could see the small riveted space of the hall, all of us prisoners beat on our doors creating a dirge of protest, helpless incurable writhe. Every minute I waited for the guards to appear at my door, for it to be me. I began to write to make sense of it all. A few days further and I learned the next to be executed was a friend of mine. Not unlike you reader and your friend of years who you thought you would read this book for and now finding it a much different experience. I feel for you since it is so difficult, maybe painful for me to feel for myself. He was dragged by the arms head first his feet skimming behind. Blood oozed from open wounds. Salt-spit drooled from his mouth to the floor. As he passed my door he looked up, called out my name. Called out my name. His last words. They were never people I ordered to be exterminated. They were obstacles against reason and the future, statistics and numbers ordered into straight columns. They had not bodies, hair, eyes, a mouth filled with saliva and screams, something called a soul. My lover whose extermination I rightfully ordered thus too was dragged down a hallway bloodied and spewing? Whose skin I caressed and scent still hovered about me?



What have I done? But I did it for the party? You…you may not choose to read any more my friend. The book will last with some care. Maybe it is not for the best for you to read to the end. I am not sure it was good for either of us to come this far. Is it of use to understand that it is within each of our grasp?

