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The Battle
When did the war start? Will
it ever end?
Are Rome and Carthage still fighting under different names and flags?
Were Elizabeth and the Pope fighting the same war?
Are there many sides or just two? Yin and yang, black and white, fighting
the battle, playing the game over and over again?
Is this how we are supposed to evolve, by killing eachother?
Do those spirits of dead soldiers wander the battle field and later find themselves reborn in a foreign land under another flag? And do they find themselves fighting again years later, perhaps on the same side but perhaps on the other?
"Behind above beyond
and in man the war rages on. Man, me and you, is not the only site of
the battle but he is one region of it. Mind and body are torn, ripped,
shredded, ravaged, exhausted by these Powers and Principalities in their
cosmic conflict that we cannot even identify.
We are shattered, tattered, demented remnants of a once-glorious army.
Among us are Princes and Captains of Armies, Lords of Battles, amnesiac,
aphasic, ataxic, jerkily trying to recall what was the battle the sounds
of which still ring in our ears - is the battle still raging? If we could
only make contact with Headquarters, only make our way back to join the
main body of the Army..."
R. D. Laing, Bird of Paradise
"It's dark when the
barrage starts, distant booms that announce that the war has come to The
City. The city is London in the year 2001 but it's also Rome as the Huns
batter on the door and also Berlin in 1945. I hurry to collect the few
things that I will take with me and that will make life bearable in the
days to come, a toothbrush, lip salve (strawberry flavoured), glasses. I've been wearing my combats
day and night for a week now, expecting this but still I cannot decide
what else to wear. Red or blue? Who am I more likely to get captured by?
Should it be a blue fleece over a red shirt or red over blue? I am a double
agent after all, aren't I? If only I could remember.
I leave my
home and walk towards the river. The barrage quietens and I slow my pace.
I'm approaching the Globe Theatre and I remember that I'm also Christopher
Marlowe on my way to the inn to meet my fate of a dagger in the eye. A
traitor's death at the hands of hoodlums, earned by accepting money from
the papists as well as Walsingham and for worshiping Dido, dark Queen
of Carthage, instead of our own immortal white Queen."
Christopher Malbonce, Tacking Down the Horizon
"The Empire never
ended"
Philip K Dick, Valis
Sources:
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Bird of Paradise
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Valis |
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Walking on Glass
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Cities of the Red Night |
