“Returns now completed of the output of all classes of consumption goods show that the standard of living has risen by no less than twenty per cent over the past year. All over Oceania this morning there were irrepressible spontaneous demonstrations when workers marched out of factories and offices and paraded through the streets with banners voicing their gratitude to Big Brother for the new, happy life which his wise leadership has bestowed upon us…He could not follow the figures, but he was aware that they were in some way a cause for satisfaction… OUR NEW, HAPPY LIFE…” George Orwell

That was when I saw The Movie, the beginning of it at least, he remembers hearing her say. The unedited version, I could remember what he took when I saw those images. A toy lost in this swamp they never even thought I was alive. I became a toy, a product but I was never real to them. Images of the idea of me were everywhere, but I didn’t recognize myself in them. You can’t, you cannot go back from here, they would repeat. I never wanted to go back, I never wanted to be anywhere but dead and they couldn’t even give me that I was too profitable. His eyes can’t even focus on his face looking out at him from the screen as he remembers something; Her, from so long ago and what he did to her. How he made her cry. How he made her feel ashamed, covered in acne and scared of her ugliness, her finger was always shoved deep up her nose and she was always looking behind her hoping no one would notice. How was she here, within his own memory, maybe she was placed…he tries to focus on his eyes, but she is still there, trapped within his memories, screaming to get out, but he did not know how to set her free. She covers the mirror with a dark blanket as her voice fades away. She was lying on a black and white tiled floor, her lipstick smeared across her face, her dripping mascara merging into a black and red smear with her lipstick and the tears and the blood falling everywhere. Someone was yelling cut at the same time he yelled action and when he went back to edit the scene there was something there that he didn’t film and it was something that she couldn’t watch. She would scream everytime he asked her about it…where…when…I didn’t…film this. The scene shifts, her first scene, sideways, the ground becomes the wall and her hands scratch down the black and white checkered walls, blood falling from them like paint and no one knew where it was coming from. She opens her heart and he sees it, right then, with the camera attached to his eyes, its full of stars and he knows this is not where the movie begins but as he sees that shadow walking in the stars, with its claws filled with light, he knows he’s trapped here. He knows he signed something he shouldn’t have signed and he knew he was filming something he had no idea how to stop. Colonel what are you holding? He remembered when he came for him. With that book in his hand, flames shooting from the multiple bullet holes on its cover. It wasn’t him who signed it, it was his father, trapped in a delirious alcoholic haze, overcome by the shadows, he had no choice, he remembers saying goodbye and The Colonel taking him away as his father opened up a suitcase of money. Soon all of the dreams he was painting across his mind would be right up there on that big screen. But first the tinkering and the claws and the screams and the making of a vortex of hatred and neurosis, but it would never happen to him, he would never lose what he had inside of him, he would never forget to keep an eye on himself. But the darkness is too overwhelming and once The Colonel’s claws reached into him, The Movie he thought was his life, began.

While we were wasting our time on fake insurrections…

“According to the UN’s Comprehensive Report of the Group of Eminent International and Regional Experts on Yemen: “After six unremitting years of armed conflict in Yemen, the multi-party war continues with no end in sight for the suffering of millions caught in its grip. … Yemen remains a tortured land, with its people ravaged in ways that should shock the conscience of humanity.” Total deaths approach a quarter of a million; 4.3 million people have been displaced.” From Doug Bandow @antiwar.com