Posted on by Michael Romano

The Delicate Balance of Terror 28

“Tacitly the Party was even inclined to encourage prostitution, as an outlet for instincts which could not be altogether suppressed. Mere debauchery did not matter very much, so long as it was furtive and joyless, and only involved the women of a submerged and despised class.” George Orwell

The Detective steps back from The Tree as he is overcome by a blinding light emanating from its bark. He places his hand upon the bark in an attempt to understand the life flowing within it. He begins listening to The Narrative so long forgotten. Swirling whirlwinds of dark energy form above him. Wings begin forming on his back, pushing through the lining of his trench coat. In a burst of darkness and light, the wings flap uncontrollably. Throughout his blood he feels a screaming unending pain. He is aware he was sent here to help everyone remember, yet all he can do is forget. Whispers within the wind enter his mind-The Narrative is within you-A flash of the old man with the beard comforts his endless thoughts. The life of The Tree pulsates into his hand. He closes his eyes as the leaves fall from above and he sees blood and hears screaming and the whirring slowly approaching. Colonel please, Colonel, please no. It never seems to work. Her safety was never safe. The Detective can no longer move his feet as chains wrap around him, securing him to The Tree. The Colonel places his bullet hole ridden book of fire on The Detective’s forehead. He closes his eyes and shakes the burning narrative away. The Colonel straps The Detective to the floor of the helicopter. They take off as The Detective reaches out for The Tree. A burning bunny pushes The Colonel away and gains control of the helicopter. The Detective looks into The Colonel’s dark eyes-Why couldn’t it have been the other way? Why couldn’t you study love instead of keeping people in a constant state of fear. In a dark flash The Colonel and the helicopter dissipate into the dark clouds. The Detective is floating above The Town without control of his wings. The Town looks so beautiful up here even through the lens of her eyes, as her tears and the pain fall on The Town below. He blinks her eyes and sees the burning pages and a wall of enflamed darkness. Another blink and a sense of beauty and love rains down on him as he falls into the gentleness of his own heart. He sees himself walking side by side with her on top of the hill. You must remember, she says to him. In his mind his hand is touching The Tree and he can only feel her pain. You must remember she screams as she points to her pain, it’s only a distraction…We must all remember. Maybe his mission becomes clearer to him, yet he still has no control of his wings. His mind is split as he chooses to walk through the middle. Remember, you must remember, if this is as simple as a battle between good and evil, you gotta pick a side.

“Just a simple choice, right now, between fear and love. The eyes of fear want you to put bigger locks on your doors, buy guns, close yourself off. The eyes of love instead see all of us as one. Here’s what we can do to change the world, right now, to a better ride. Take all that money we spend on weapons and defense each year and instead spend it feeding and clothing and educating the poor of the world, which it would pay for many times over, not one human being excluded, and we could explore space, together, both inner and outer, forever, in peace.” Bill Hicks

Posted on by Michael Romano

The Delicate Balance of Terror 27

“The eyeless creature with the quacking voice would never be vaporized. The little beetle like men who scuttled so nimbly through the labyrinthine corridors of Ministries-they, too, would never be vaporized. And the girl with the dark hair, the girl from the Fiction Department-she would never be vaporized either. It seemed to him that he knew instinctively who would survive and who would perish, though just what it was that made for survival, it was not easy to say.” George Orwell

She tiptoed through the desert as if she was walking through the sky. A see of stars surrounded her, swirling around her, lighting her path. She could no longer hear the humming, only the glorious whirling of stars. Stardust kicked up from the path of her feet as she saw the bunnies dancing in the distance. Created by her own bloody beaten hands, she breathed life into them with every footstep. In a sweep of wind the sky is blackened and the moon is full. There is a child looking down a well with tears falling from his eyes. She feels him, can feel his heart beating along with hers. He is holding onto a stuffed bear. She screams no, but as he falls into the well she sees the calmness on his face as if he was going back home. She is looking down the well and in the light of the moon she can see the tears glistening in the darkness. She can only send him stars, it is the only thing she knows how to do. She watches them enter his heart unbeknownst to him. A warmness he can’t remember feeling enters his body. She hears a humming and without thinking, ducks under a tree. They are here now. We were just a game. This is now the real game. She shakes off these dark thoughts. We were just practice. If it’s all a game we need to make our own rules. This thought comes to her from the shadows with the tip of a hat. The sparks are shooting out of their mouths as she puts a hand in front of her face realizing they can’t touch her here. She sees windup chattering teeth walking between her legs. They say nothing. They speak in chains. They trap us with each word. It says nothing. They are no longer living. Trapped reptiles in a cage of plastic. Their darkness surrounds us. The humming echoes within her mind but she will not let it cage her. The teeth and the wind up toys begin surrounding the bunnies. Pointing fingers, endlessly chattering what they are. The bunnies can’t hear it and continue on to that dark ever shifting building beyond the mountain. The old man with the beard waves them on as stars fall from his eyes, bathing the bunnies in light. The words he’s writing are disappearing into the air, floating away with the stardust. The Colonel is flying over head in his helicopter. His book of fire is slowly disappearing and his face is about to explode. He lands his helicopter in front of the bunnies and begins catching them in a butterfly net, but he can’t hold the stars. Don’t forget it’s all a game, the old man with the beard screams. The Colonel sees the stars swirling around me as he is clacking his claws. She tips her hat to him and with a smile, as she remembers how to communicate. In a swirl of stars she tells him, this is war, but now we’re making the rules.

Posted on by Michael Romano

…still waiting for Biden to end support for the war in Yemen…

Considered to be by far the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, made worse by Trump’s labeling of the Houthi movement as terrorists. Biden promised an end to the support of Saudi Arabia in the conflict, yet executive order after executive order, we are still waiting. “We’ve been warning since July that Yemen is on the brink of a catastrophic food security crisis. If the war doesn’t end now, we are nearing an irreversible situation and risk losing an entire generation of Yemen’s young children,” said Lise Grande, the UN humanitarian coordinator for Yemen. This included more than 12 million children according to UNICEF

“It is perhaps the most dangerous place on earth to be a child. One child dies every 10 minutes from a preventable disease. Two million are out of school. And thousands have been killed, maimed or recruited since 2015. Just last week, 11 were reportedly killed, including a one-month-old baby.”

“And now, despite repeated warnings, the country is facing a nutrition crisis. 2.1 million children are acutely malnourished — and almost 358,000 severely malnourished. We believe famine-like conditions have already begun for some children.

“These are not just numbers on a page. These are millions of individual tragedies. Millions of blighted futures. And millions of parents making the gut-wrenching choice between food and medical care for their children.” From Unicef executive director Henrietta Fore

Posted on by Michael Romano

The Delicate Balance of Terror 26

“Why should one feel it to be intolerable unless one had some kind of ancestral memory that things had once been different?” George Orwell

And everything he ever thought began showing up right there on the screen. Whether it was placed by his hand or some other dark shadow in the background, he could no longer know. Her star began shining through each frame immediately. The torture of her life acted with such intensity it became impossible to distinguish who she was anymore. Shattered to pieces she seemed to voice things with no conscious recollection. She became all he could focus on, every idea that passed by his mind was acted out by her, they became inseparable. They would hold each other falling asleep, travel through their dreams together, float along stardust through the facade of this life. She screamed her way into America’s consciousness, trapped in that house, entrapping the minds of countless children in the process. The house she was made by, the house that became alive, The House That Bled became the idea that created what she would be for the rest of her existence. It was his first memory from his childhood that he created, walls that bled. It haunted his dreams as he fell asleep, distracted him as he looked out at life. When she was lying on that floor, screaming he didn’t think she was acting anymore. When the cats walked by and the moon lit the house and the power died as the flickering candles were extinguished her screams seemed to escape from the center of the trapped earth. Down a long corridor of mirrors her screams echo, shattering everything. The cracked mirror is littered across the floor in a trail of blood. Her body contorts with each cats movement, her mind was splitting apart and her eyes couldn’t focus. He looked out through her eyes, he was trapped inside of her. The Movie was really what was constantly being filmed in the shadows, but he didn’t know where the footage was going, or who was editing it. I remember holding your hand as I was dying…you even took that from me…I’ve never taken anything, never, I created you…but his words became nothing, even he couldn’t believe them anymore. The helicopter was above and the fire and the screams were everywhere and what they all believed went up into smoke and disappeared out into the fog and the screams of the people were muted and the claws still holding onto that burning book, the book which was being written with each flaming soul it captured, suddenly opened up to him. The image he had of himself disappears as he walks into those burning pages and tries to answer why. She doesn’t care because the end is always the same. There is some light he can still distinguish out there somewhere. There is still some way he can direct that book from taking hold, or maybe he was just gripped with some false hope. As he walked through that burning book, he couldn’t help but succumb to the flames.

Posted on by Michael Romano

The Delicate Balance of Terror 25

“Always in your stomach and in your skin there was a sort of protest, a feeling that you had been cheated of something that you had a right to.” George Orwell

I saw her dying there right in the middle of the road and the first instinct was to place my boot there and not let her get up. Where was this coming from? I was always in pain, I knew exactly how she felt…she could barely breathe and her eyes looked at me filled with a fright I couldn’t comprehend. The hand I reached out to her changed everything. I could hear my heart beating once again through the pulsing of your hand and I knew right then you had no idea what was inside of you because I couldn’t overcome the fear that the energy swirling within you was causing. But the echo of my own beating heart lead me right into your hands. Please be gentle with me…that never works. The tree is waving in the wind of the powerful fall storm, attempting to shelter me as my broken wings are dissipated in the powerful force. It was the wings I first saw before I could perceive your form lying in the street, your bloodied broken wings. The spotlight which seemed focused upon your dying face, lightened as I approached. I walked right through you, but…I couldn’t remember…where I walked to. In your face I saw that child, sad, alone, the football helmet tugged to one side which you grasped so hard in that picture, I could tell, just like me that you were dying inside. There is a pounding entering my mind as I see the bunnies stand up and touch their hearts. They march for a truth we still cannot understand. And the swirling humming shadows overhead don’t know where to go as the bunnies seem to form a huge mass that the swirling shadows can’t understand. And the bunnies know something we don’t. They were built in someone else’s pain, formed with someone else’s ideas, but the cold, tortured, bleeding hands which created them, used all they had inside of them. They were trying to tell us something, but we no longer had the ability to listen. And that whirring came back and The Colonel, opening his book of fire reminded the bunnies exactly where they belonged. The Detective closed his eyes as the blood of the sun entered his eyes. As he looked into a mirror it shattered as the corridor of mirrors came crashing down, and the movie star fell further away from herself as she screamed and shattered to pieces. The bunnies stopped as The Colonel waved his claws above them. I scream no! I can no longer remember why as I feel the wings once again growing on my back. The sun darkens from behind your football helmet and I remember exactly what I am walking into as I hold your hand and walk right into the darkness. The Detective is standing by the tree, inspecting it he is holding something I can’t see…what are you holding?

Posted on by Michael Romano

The Delicate Balance of Terror 24

“It appeared that there had even been demonstrations to thank Big Brother for raising the chocolate ration to twenty grams a week. And only yesterday, he reflected, it had been announced that the ration was to be reduced to twenty grams a week. Was it possible that they could swallow that, after only twenty-four hours? Yes, they swallowed it. Parsons swallowed it easily, with the stupidity of an animal. The eyeless creature at the other table swallowed it fanatically, passionately, with a furious desire to track down, denounce, and vaporize anyone who should suggest that last week the ration had been thirty grams. Some, too-in some more complex way, involving double-think-Syne swallowed it. Was he, then, alone in the possession of a memory?” George Orwell

He walked down the rainbow in a trail of blood, approaching the laughing bunnies spread all across the land. A memory enters his head of his father building him a radio controlled helicopter. Smiling as it wouldn’t lift off the ground. Trying to take the Ken doll from the cockpit, hoping that was the only thing weighing it down as they both laugh when the helicopter smashes the Ken doll below it. Screams from a distant land he has never known pulse through his veins. The little girl covered in filth and blood and shadows reaches her arms up to the sun as she ducks from the shadows humming overhead. The humming that never stopped. The humming she could hear in her dreams. The humming that took her family away from her. The tracks of her feet on her way to work screamed up from the earth. The shadows which took all she is continued to float overhead, their electric eyes piercing through her. This rushed through The Detective’s blood, flooding all of his perceptions until he was looking out of her eyes. In a rush of pain she continued work, the same thing over and over, filling the bunnies with stuffing, she had to play a game in her head as she did this. She was giving them life. Not a life like her own, but a real life, with a purpose, they were going to save her, save all of them but they needed that life that the humming took away so long ago. It was the humming they hid from. Some sort of memory from the distant past programmed them to fear this sound. One of them wasn’t scared and she saw life in this one like she’s never seen before. She watched the light flowing from his now beating heart. When she took him home, he hid in a corner away from the light, shaking in fear when the humming returned. And once he began talking it never stopped. You need to know how to communicate with them…I do-They don’t understand…how can they not understand-you’re not real to them…how do I become real-by being what they think is real…what they think is real…really…isn’t real-that’s where you begin. She held up a cracked mirror to Bunny as he continued speaking, they just need to know who made me, where I came from, oh, do you know I’m really a bear, not a bunny? She shook her head as Bunny jumped under the bed at the sound of the humming. You can’t hide any more, you can’t be scared of that. That will never be normal. As Bunny looked through the mirror he saw a rainbow bleeding to the ground in the darkness as all of the colors washed across the bunnies lying on the ground laughing. The Detective tips his hat as the bunnies rise from the ground. The Colonel clutches his burning book as he hurriedly enters his helicopter quickly floating away into the air. The Detective is silent as the bunnies wait for his words. As she begins to feel her new skin she touches her heart trying to hold in the shooting stars from leaving her as the stars light a path for the bunnies to follow.

The censorship we’re not paying attention to:

“The administrations of social media websites have been pursuing, targeting, and restricting the publishing and access of Palestinian pages and accounts, and in full coordination with the Israeli occupation government,” the Initiative said in a statement. “As a result, Palestinian media have been restricted, and were unable to convey their national message.” The Palestinian Content Protection Initiative From an article by Jessica Buxbaum on Mint Press News

Posted on by Michael Romano

The Delicate Balance of Terror 23

“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

Posted on by Michael Romano

The Delicate Balance of Terror 22

“Which sub is that? said Winston, automatically feeling for money. About a quarter of one’s salary had to be earmarked for voluntary subscriptions, which were so numerous that it was difficult to keep track of them.” George Orwell

They will Rise. As I close my eyes to enter the darkness , the whirring begins. The coldness of Bunny is comforting against my head, but there is something stirring within him. I am shaken to consciousness as I feel the hands that created him, mangled, bloody, reaching out for my awareness. I close my eyes once again and see row after row of stuffed bunnies, marching in formation, reaching for the sun as blood drips down upon them. They are marching towards a rainbow, the only color in this blackness, I scream out them to turn back! The whirring stops as a shadow appears walking across the rainbow. As I succumb to the darkness the claw never comes tinkering into my head, and The Colonel never appears, the approaching shadow is lighting its own way down the rainbow. Its footsteps are trailing blood, in his shadow I see his eyes slowly open. They shine a light that I have never seen in this world. The bunnies become animated with the pulse of life as tears of joy fall from their eyes. The whirring begins but they continue on unfazed. they feel the claws reaching out for them, but they are focused on those eyes of light walking down the rainbow. As the claws attempt to tinker inside them, their laughter pushes the claws away. The Colonel stomps the ground behind them as they all fall to the ground in a roar of laughter. The man walking down the rainbow in a trail of blood tips his hat and without a word leaving his lips, communicates, They Will Rise

…the orange, red, and yellow leaves float in the air twisting around and around, landing at my feet and floating away down the creek. I just wanted to disappear until I looked into your eyes for the first time, your dying, burning eyes. When I reached down to feel my pain they still looked at me as if the fault was all my own. I looked in the mirror and couldn’t see anything I recognized. The voices in the night as I picked up the phone reminded me I am nothing. The way my parents looked at me reminded me I am just a ghost now. Once the shaking began, it never stopped, flowing along with the creek and the oscillating trees. As your hand touched mine, the noise within my mind ceased and I remembered the beat I was following and could once again hear it as the whirring subsided. Maybe we found what it meant to be free, and what it meant to be heard. There was still always that darkness following not far behind, but as long as we could still hear the song, those claws, the whirring, those rainbows dripping blood down into our eyes, they just seemed so childish here.

“The west has fiscalised its basic power relationships through a web of contracts, loans, shareholdings, bank holdings and so on. In such an environment it is easy for speech to be “free” because a change in political will rarely leads to any change in these basic instruments. Western speech, as something that rarely has any effect on power, is, like badgers and birds, free.” Julian Assange

Posted on by Michael Romano

The Delicate Balance of Terror 21

“How could you have a slogan like ‘freedom is slavery’ when the concept of freedom has been abolished? The whole climate of thought will be different. In fact there will be no thought, as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking-not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.” George Orwell.

The building changes shape as it sees fit, almost as if its only purpose was to never be seen the same way. The old man with the beard stands up. It’s been so long his joints crackle and he is a bit wobbly. He sees a door open and senses freedom for the first time in a long, long time. He sits down swiftly as the door closes immediately after it opens. How can you sit here, day after day writing words which are never read and as that building…It’s just a distraction, you can’t worry about that building, it becomes you, you can’t worry…maybe it’s a distraction but…it’s hard to close your eyes…but it’s there…and you don’t know if you are. The Detective falls to his knees. His eyes close but he can still see the building spinning within his mind. You can see anything you want coming from there, the old man points to the building. I thought I was sent here to find truth…what is truth? As he stands up a rainbow appears in the distance, shooting over the top of the shifting building. If you can’t find it, maybe the problem lies in it not being a thing at all. Through shadows he watches a claw form, reaching out for his mind. Tears of blood fall from his eyes as he hears piercing screams traveling down a long black corridor. He sees people rising from the soil beneath his feet. The Doctor’s heart bursts into flames. He touches his own enflamed heart as he hears a ringing in his ears. The sky burns pink as he once again finds himself in the middle of a vast desert. A dark shadow appears along the burning pink horizon. The shadow is clutching onto something so bright, burning so strong, The Detective cannot fully open his eyes to see it. The light is trying to communicate to him as he is walking towards the shadow. The pulsing within him tells him he’s heading in the right direction. The old man cries out to him, remember it is not a thing. No, no, it’s not just a thing, it is everything he is.

“What are the differences between Mark Zuckerberg and me? I give private information on corporations for free, and I’m a villain. Zuckerberg gives your private information to corporations for money and he’s Man of the Year.” Julian Assange

Posted on by Michael Romano

The Delicate Balance of Terror 20

“Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten. Every year fewer and fewer words, and the range of consciousness always a little smaller…reality control…The revolution will be complete when the language is perfect.” George Orwell

You were warned. He begins picking up the pieces of all she was. There was always a darkness that seemed perched on his shoulder, shielding him from the truth, and making him forget the chattering voices in his head. Sometimes it had the power to lead him in a certain direction, a direction that always lead to a million different paths. At night he would awaken to Her barely audible whispers, the Colonel, the Colonel, run… The day he looked into her eyes and saw her eyes expand as she gazed into his, the real story was set in motion. Everything he ever thought, everything he ever saw began appearing on the canvas he was painting of his life. And as he walked on the pieces of her life, putting them together to understand Her story, his own became clearer. You were born for this, she whispers in her sleep. This was always the way it was suppose to be, this was how the ending was written…I’m so tired, so, so tired. This is why we were born, all of us, we have a choice…The chattering of teeth and shooting of sparks become overwhelming as he clutches his head and looks into his cold, sad, dying eyes. An eclipse, the sky becomes deep reddish pink, the tears of the sky falling down to the earth. The sky is crying, everything looks like it is in the last gasps of life. A shadow of the Colonel dragging her by the hair as his shadow burns away in the sun…this is what we’re up against…Why? Does anyone ever ask why? They disappear when you ask that. The Colonel places his hand over her heart but it’s already gone. Why? As he pushes away the shadows, dusting them away from the pieces of her life, he sees a cracked view of himself amidst the rubble. He picks up the piece and instantly remembers…the purpose, the world seen through his eyes…why me…his vision, underneath the surface of it…why…the story is all of ours…why? They took the narrative and we forgot everything…why? The Colonel removes his hand from her heart, and now it’s full of stars…why? Colonel what are you holding? He’s holding her heart as it continues beating, still full of life, full of what the Colonel has no need to understand. Colonel what are you holding? Her soul, but he has no idea what to do with it.

“The world is not sliding, but galloping into a new transnational dystopia. This development has not been properly recognized outside of national security circles. It has been hidden by secrecy, complexity and scale. The internet, our greatest tool of emancipation, has been transformed into the most dangerous facilitator of totalitarianism we have ever seen. The internet is a threat to human civilization.

These transformations have come about silently, because those who know what is going on work in the global surveillance industry and have no incentives to speak out. Left to its own trajectory, within a few years, global civilization will be a postmodern surveillance dystopia, from which escape for all but the most skilled individuals will be impossible. In fact, we may already be there.

While many writers have considered what the internet means for global civilization, they are wrong. They are wrong because they do not have the sense of perspective that direct experience brings. They are wrong because they have never met the enemy.”  Julian Assange