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 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 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

Posted on by Michael Romano

The Delicate Balance of Terror 14

O you who pass, halt and remember
What tyrant holds your life in bond;
Remember the fixed, reprieveless hour,
The crushing stroke, the dark beyond.

And let us now, as men condemned,
In peace and thrift of time stand still
To learn our world while yet we may,
And shape our souls, however ill;

And we will live, hand, eye and brain,
Piously, outwardly, ever aware,
Till all our hours burn clear and brave
Like candle flames in windless air;

So shall we in the rout of life
Some thought, some faith, some meaning save,
And speak it once before we go
In silence to the silent grave.
Eric Blair

The whirring of the helicopter would not subside as he was reminded of consciousness by the blinking of his eyes.  Scrolling down the screen at the numbers for the over/under on his death is constantly amusing to him.   There are now cartoon Nazi villains threatening a reset, poison pushers threatening passports into normalcy, and he was watching himself die because he was convinced his eyes at least took some part in causing this.  He travelled through the explosions of distraction his eyes have caused.  He watched the acceptance of the perpetual death machine bred from his ideas that would not disappear.  The script once again appeared before him.  The shadowy hand once again blocked his vision.  He looked for an escape but can only see the sound bites haunting him, the ones he placed within his films, the ones the shadowy hand allowed to flow through his mind.  He watched the children being taken away, their minds hovering above their bodies.  A shadowy hand passes across his vision as he sees it's not The Colonel doing this, it's him...he shouts I was one, I was one of them when you took...me away.

The spells were cast, still regurgitated from the massive vortex of dying ideas, he found one that came from deeply within him.  He began to randomly insert them into the violent bloodbaths he was creating on the screen.  The fire was lit within him, yet that script which grew bigger every time it would appear, would not relinquish its power over him.  

He focused into his forehead on the screen in front of him as he heard her calling out to him.  Down a long corridor of mirrors she attempted to escape only to be trapped in her own house of mirrors as they began to crack.  He noticed the fire appearing in his eyes once again.  The whirring enters his hearing and with each revolution of the helicopter blades he watched a child disappear into the darkness.  And he entered into that night from long ago, the glass house, something being placed into his eyes.  There was a mirror on the floor, he saw his eyes bleeding pink as he fell to his knees.  She was still calling him, trapped down a long corridor.  Her voice echoing through the house.  My eyes were never the same...I was no longer looking through them...Colonel what are you holding?
Posted on by Michael Romano

The Delicate Balance of Terror 13

“And somehow or other, quite anonymous, there were the directing brains who coordinated the whole effort and laid down the lines of policy which made it necessary that this fragment of the past should be preserved, that one falsified, and the other rubbed out of existence.” George Orwell

And we danced like it was the last time, everything felt like the last time now. Light from the candles was flickering off our faces. I pointed to the top of the hill where the old man continued writing. You still could not see him. The star vibrating within my mind led me from the dark hole where memories and truth could be touched as solid objects. I could hear the sound of your voice asking for help, destroying me each time. You told me about the man in the dark hat. The same one I saw. He took away all you were before you even knew there was anything to take. They called him The Colonel you said. You couldn’t forget his face, the way it transformed before your eyes. And you said how you were reaching out for butterflies when you sensed his presence. And you felt like you reached through the sun as a butterfly landed on your hand, and you didn’t feel there was much more you needed to know. You looked down from inside the sun and you could see all the lines down there, all of the division. You close your eyes and fall into the darkness of remembrance. I see you walking next to the dark building as it was changing shape, reaching for butterflies, still unable to see the building…all I ever wanted you to do is hold me. Out here, lost in all of this fog your eyes are opened but you can no longer see. Through the fog I can only hear your heart beating, it’s loud and it’s scared and I can’t ignore the cries. I reach for you as your hand moves further away, pushing me away just…as…I learn…to hold it. I extend my hand through the fog but feel nothing as the sensation of touching my own arm passes along my skin. I wipe the fog away from your eyes and I watch as you process the remembrance of what you once were. You walk towards a tree, The Tree, its shadow casting across your face. I shiver as the image of you holding yourself up against the tree only able to hold its shadow, becomes my own. And you look down at the blood, and something is gone, but you don’t know what it is. The sound of your heart increases in volume as you look into the shadow you are holding in your hand. Unable to move your feet, stuck there in one place, you wish you could disappear into the miasma of the spinning figures approaching you. Can you see that old man with the beard? I cry out to you. Your eyes are lit up by the spinning vortex as you are paralyzed by its movement. Your eyes tell me you know all you need to know, all you were looking for, or all They want you to know.

“If we can only live once, then let it be a daring adventure that draws on all our powers. Let it be with similar types whose hearts and heads we may be proud of. Let our grandchildren delight to find the start of our stories in their ears but the endings all around in their wandering eyes. The whole universe or the structure that perceives it is a worthy opponent, but try as I may I cannot escape the sound of suffering.” Julian Assange #wearemillions

Posted on by Michael Romano

The Delicate Balance of Terror 2

“How could you communicate with the future? It was of its nature impossible. Either the future would resemble the present in which case it would not listen to him, or it would be different from it, and his predicament would be meaningless.” George Orwell

My finger followed those words across the page the first time they entered my consciousness. There was never a time they weren’t there. In a flash of light I knew why I was down here, trapped amongst shadows. First smoke, a man in the far distance at a table writing pages falling to the ground as they erupt in fire. The man continues on unphased, his white beard, dragging at his feet, the history of his words burning at his feet as he continues adding page after page…

I hear screams erupting from the ground beneath me as I run my finger down the mirror which materializes before me. Something falls from the sky as the screams erupt from the blood flowing through my arm, the square says to be happy. The toaster that makes my breakfast in the morning also made what’s falling from the sky. I’m not suppose to know it, but I feel it, they make me feel it. I touch the mirror again, reversing every one of my experiences, traveling to and through time, it was the mirror…and I am trapped in a vision.

A reverse memory of her, the dark eyes, I touch the mirror of her as she screams, and splits in two.  And that book, upon opening, which shed so much darkness, and so much light, and such a powerful vision, a vision so powerful, it’s future reality became all but inevitable….how to communicate when you’ve forgotten what you are? There is a hand at my back, I look up at the moon and I remember traveling through darkness. The first light I see seems to be a camera followed by noise and screams and I lie here, at the bottom of a well, water dripping on my forehead. The first quiet I’ve felt in a long time.

Something was buzzing above my head and the buzzing never stopped. I couldn’t tell anymore if it was part of my own thoughts. My hand reaches for the mirror as I see a line in the sand. I see a time when I remembered for the first time, when I forgot my name for the first time. When the mole growing on my face held me back from becoming one of them, and I scratched until it was gone, until I could taste the blood in my mouth and as I was reborn into the shadows they are, I remembered, and I forgot and I became everything.

And the cries I had no ability to calm, escaping from the mouth of the stuffed bear I held in my hands. The bear that protected me when the shadows would come at night. Would whisper in my ear it’s okay. Don’t tell anyone, they won’t listen anyway. The bear told me maybe one day it would be okay if only I learned how to listen. I close my eyes but still the shadows don’t disappear.

I looked down an infinite hall of mirrors, and I saw you somewhere amongst them, your dark hand waves in front of my eyes but I wasn’t afraid.  As a card removed from a deck, you appeared before me and I instantly knew, I saw a way, and since then, I let my heart lead.  I continued on and the pain was overwhelming as everything was repeatedly reflected upon me. And the whirring started again, and your hand waves by once again, but I am still clutching that book and watching all of the demons, and all of the shards of light escape as I drop the book and it falls open to a page I don’t recognize, and words which overtake me as I see a large rectangular structure appear. This must be where they build truth. There is a conveyor belt in the distance, figures appearing on it slowly being carried into their new home. I look down at my feet as I travel along that conveyor belt, with the black smoke rising from the building and the shadows floating up along with the smoke. The man hands me a page, as I hold it in my hands, everything I’ve ever forgotten enters my mind and I look down at the page as it erupts in fire and falls at my feet…abandon all hope ye…who…enter here

Posted on by Michael Romano

The Delicate Balance of Terror 1

“It was not by making yourself heard but by staying sane that you carried on the human heritage.” George Orwell

       There is something slowly beginning to breathe once again in the corner, covered in shadows as shards of light begin to escape. Inside this prison I’ve built with my own eyes, my heart beats elsewhere as I begin to see through the walls. I clutch my head and can’t let go of the only thing I have.  A whirring begins echoing in my mind as light appears and disappears in rhythm. There is a beat, a song to all of this. The memories come flooding back, the tinkering, the slow manipulation of what use to be mine, taken away with a pair of tweezers from a long forgotten memory.  Slowly, even here, trapped amongst my nightmares, do the words begin to form on my lips…and I remember the rhythm.

  The shadows thicken as I close my eyes.  There are boots stomping in the distance, slowly getting closer.  I feel the shadows wrap around my heart.  The air is heavy and dark as are the eyes which never stop following me. There is a flash as my thoughts slip away and I look out the window reminded of where I am. Watching everything die, watching people meekly circling , trapped in an invisible maze. Caught in a game with no exit.  I always thought it would be this way, these thoughts followed me and I could never shake them from my mind.  This darkness is sweltering around me, every time I open my eyes. Did we ever think that shaking hands would be a subversive act? We’re taught from birth to fear each other, fear everything, but did we ever think there would be a recommended distance to stay away from each other? All it takes is numbers falling from the sky, robots parroting  what another one said to infinity, and fear of everything, to forget the beating heart that gives us life…lost my train of…the shadows aren’t coming from the outside, they are coming from within

       I remember when I was told what to do, I always asked why? I remember when I saw someone without food to eat I asked why? And I asked why we were afraid of people struggling, people who didn’t quite make it the way we did. And I asked why we stared at a box as it poured fear into us every minute of the day and sent us the bill. Why we watched numbers as they piled up and graphs we couldn’t understand and statistics speeding by our eyes as we accept the chains that must inevitably be tied around us to keep us safe as all of these nonsensical numbers piled up. And I asked why most of all, when they told us whoever had the most paper pieces, stood head and shoulders above us. But I forget those words down here, I even forgot how I got down here. Some say publicity, some say I was pushed and some say it was an accident, but I’m not sure it matters all that much. I am down here, as the world is dying, at least that’s what they are telling us, yet somehow I’m finding life more and more amongst these hidden shadows, these silenced voices, their cries can no longer be hidden, no longer distorted, they cry out in silence as their pain becomes mine.

      In every flash of light I see the walls, the generic lighting, my screams and the tinkering hands and the calm movement that went with each slice, taking away all the memories I’ve ever had. There is one they could never take away, could never own, flowing along with the voices of the shadows, crying out from down below here. I shout into the darkness, remember who you are, remember what’s inside of you, for there are no chains that can hold this back. And my heart beats a little faster as I hear the boots getting closer as they trample on all of the shadows in their wake. And I can only run, it is the only thing I can still remember how to do down here. I keep running, and I can never stop, never look back because there is always someone, something, keeping score.