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| QUOTATIONS 2062-2070 |
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| 2062. The Lost Chapter of the Old Testament. First it was the Dead Sea Scrolls. Then some previously unknown Gospels. And now, a lost chapter of the Old Testament has been discovered by an old woman who, while unwrapping a carp she bought at the fish market in Tel Aviv, noticed that the paper was covered with strange letters. She took it to her neighborhood archeologist (in Israel every neighborhood has at least one). He immediately called all his friends and, to make a long story short, when they translated it they realized that it was a missing chapter of the Old Testament. And a very important chapter it was indeed. For without it the Great Book has been always somewhat puzzling, which caused countless sages through the ages to analyze and interpret it, but never to everyone's complete satisfaction. But now everything seems to fall in place. And so here it is. Judge for yourself if it makes the whole thing more clear or not. It took Moses quite a while to read all 627 commandments, laws and regulations. Being both dyslexic and having a speech defect didn't help the matter. On the top of it God's writing wasn't the most legible and very often Moses had to guess what was engraved on the Tablets. So, by the time he finished reading most of the people had drifted away to look for something to eat –manna wasn't as plentiful as God led them to believe. But those who stayed till the end were outraged. "Who do you think we are, angels? This is much too much! No one would ever be able to follow all these endless "thou shall" and "thou shall not." And Moses said unto them: "Don't talk to me. I am just a messenger. Talk to God." "But where is God?" "God is everywhere. Just ask and he will answer to you." And the Jews had invoked God's name and it was not in vain. The Voice replied: "What do you want from me?" "We just want you to ease up a bit on us. Can you reduce the sum total of your commandments to somewhat more manageable number? Lets say from 627 to 27? Wouldn't that be enough?" "You got to be kidding," said the Lord. "Remember, there is no such thing as a free lunch, even if it is only one and the same manna three times a day. After all I have done for you, I expect gratitude and obedience, not insolence and rebellion. Besides, I have chosen you to be my people. And my people shall be the best, because I am the best. And the greatest! Don't you ever forget it. And if it takes 627 commandments to make you the best, 627 it shall remain. Be thankful it is not more. For I am beginning to doubt if this will do the job. You are not as promising material as I thought. So, unless you start shaping up in a hurry, I may even increase them." "But we don't want to be better, we're happy just the way we are, the way you created us in the first place, thank you very much. We just want to do what everyone else does. Is this too much to ask for? And we certainly don't want to be chosen if it means not doing the very things that make life worth living." "Sorry, I can't allow you to be like everybody else. Your notion of happiness is not my notion, and your ideas of what makes life worth living are not my ideas. Besides, I've made a contract, we call it "covenant" up here, with your forefathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. And I have no intention to release you from it." "But why us, what have we done to you to deserve this?" "Because I said so. I am infinite. Everything about me is infinite. My mind is infinite. As a matter of fact, my mind is so infinite I never remember why and when I decided on something. The only thing you can be sure of that it was done sometime and somewhere in infinity. So, as you can see, I can't tell you now why and when I‘ve chosen you, even if I want to. All I know that I‘ve done it and to tell you the truth, even I can't change my mind because, you guessed it, it is infinite and infinite cannot be changed by definition. Come to think of it, you should all brush up on your math. I think it's a good idea for another commandment. Something like ‘Thou shall learn math by all your heart, for I am God your Lord, the Lord of Infinity!' And I can give it a number #628. How about that?" "O, Lord, is there ever going to be the end to it?" "What are you complaining about, you ungrateful people? After all I have done for you. Saved you from extinction, freed you from slavery. And the miracles! Whose god has ever performed such miracles and so many of them for his people? And now I am taking you to the land of milk and honey as I promised to your forefathers. You accepted all these things, didn't you? And now you want to be like everybody else. Too late. I shall make you good even if I have to break every bone in your bodies, even if I have to kill you doing that." "But we can't be good. We are just human, like everyone else. And we want what everyone wants. We want idols, we want gold, we want to sin and enjoy it." "Yes, yes, I know you are only human. But I've decided to make you god-like. And by God (which is me) I'll do it, no matter what and how long it would take. I am not in a hurry. You know, infinity is a long, long time, and I have to do something not to die from boredom. Ha, ha. Me, eternal God, dying from boredom. Isn't it funny?" "But what's the point. Everybody hates us already for trying to be too good. They say we are arrogant. No matter what we do it is always used against us. When we plead for peace they called us cowards. But if we fight they accuse us of being aggressors. When we try to be thrifty, they call us stingy. But when we spend freely we are accused of being profligate. Our kindness is called servility, out firmness – heartlessness. It really doesn't do us any good to be ‘good'." "I am getting really tired of all this whining and arguing. Can't you just keep your mouth shut and obey. You don't like it? Tough. Get it in your thick heads, there is no way out of it. And the sooner you get that the better. You will save yourselves a lot of useless aggravations. If you don't understand what I am saying, go and read what my faithful servant Job has written. At the beginning he also was protesting and arguing too much. But then he saw the light. He finally understood it all. I am God, you are men. I am everything and you are nothing. Dust. End of the story. Don't bother me again. You know what I can do to you. Three thousand here, ten thousand there. I can drown you, I can burn you, I can bury you alive. It is all the same to me. Always keep it in mind. Be good or else. Amen." 2063. Someone in Canada has to have courage to tell native people like it is: It was your land, now it is our land. We came, we saw, we conquered. Or like Julius Caesar used to say –veni,vidi,vici. You were weaker, we were stronger. And so, we took your land in a manner it has always been done in history for the thousands of years. Moreover, no one can claim the original title to any piece of land, only the longevity of tenure. And everyone on this planet, including Canadian natives, lives on the land taken through military conquest from someone else. So, the choice now is between accepting the status qua and try to make the best out of it, or to continue fighting, which at the end will benefit no one. 2064. What was so unique about the British military machine, its Army and Navy, for 300 years, what gave them a winning edge over their numerous military opponents, what made them so successful in England's wars of conquest, culminating in the largest Empire in history – on which the Sun never set – was the grim determination of its rank and file, produced by the unremitting harshness of life with no prospects of redemption for the English lower classes, from which they were exclusively conscripted. Life which had little to offer but physical and spiritual depravation had little value and, consequently, death didn't appear to have the same catastrophic significance as it would to one born and living in more favorable social and economic circumstances – acceptance of death being in inverse proportion to the quality of life. Though one has to acknowledge that this attitude of indifference toward death affected some members of English upper classes as well. And it is hard to argue with a proposition that being impervious to fear of death makes the best soldier. But there were other factors to be considered, such as an instinctive desire to pay back, to inflict pain on anyone available as a target. For if they couldn't escape suffering neither should their opponents, or anyone else for that matter. And so they lashed at their enemies in a fury of misplaced vengeance, which makes the best soldiers as well. And if one is looking for an analogy, the cruelty of life from a cradle to a grave made the Spartans also the best warriors of the ancient world. Though this is far as this analogy goes, the difference being that in case of Sparta such conditions were created intentionally, while in England they were the natural outcome of its social ,political and economic system. One is tempted at this point to go on exploring what part it might also play in creating the so-called British character. But not to complicate the matter any farther, such an inquiry must be deferred to some other time when it could be dealt with separately. 2065. I don't know how it is with other writers but to me my writing is what I am. It expresses me more fully and more truly than anything else I do. It is my twin, only more clear-eyed and more articulate than I am. And while it is a great consolation to have a twin, to have someone who is blood of your blood and flesh of your flesh, who feels exactly the way you feel and think exactly the way you think, there is a danger as well, the danger of double exposure and double vulnerability. For what is done to my writing is done to me. When it is noticed I am noticed, and when it is neglected I am neglected. When it is praised I am praised, and when it is disparaged I am disparaged. The gratification is doubled, but so is the pain. It is a perilous state to be in, but there is no escape. For by now my writing and I became like siamese twins, the ones who could not be separated without causing the death of both. We live together and we'll die together. 2066. I have declined to repose, to live by bread alone. Instead, above mine station rose by efforts of my own. 2067. The union of man and wife is very often maintained by rather common quid pro quo: he fucks her body, she –his brain. 2068. Oh, dreaded articles, with you my daily fight, of mine writing life incorrigible blight. Of anything I'm ready to take vow not to have use you anymore from now. 2069. Libani Est Perdita Given a human proclivity to always look , while trying to make a point, for analogy, when a complete and solid one is not available, which is the case most of the times, a composite analogy put together in a more or less coherent manner out of several partial ones, may occasionally, for a lack of a better choice, serve the purpose. Bearing in mind these general qualifications (a useful device to provide one with plausible deniability when the logic of an argument leads to unforseen consequences) I shall attempt to compare the present military conflict between Israel and Hezbollah to the Judean War of Rome against the Jewish rebels in the Ist century A.D. For there are similarities as well as difference between the two. Let's begin with similarities. The first, and the foremost –the place is too small for both of us. The second – there is an obvious imbalance of power, though from the historical perspective Israel is weaker than Rome and Hezbollah is stronger than Zealots. The third – the official governments (of Lebanon and Judea respectively) are sidelined and made irrelevant by unfolding events. The fourth – like the Jewish rebels, Zealots, Sicarii,etc., Hezbollah fighters are relatively few in numbers but enjoy the broad support of population at large, from which they can promptly draw fresh recruits, if needed. This tends to prolong and widen a conflict, making the non-combatants its main casualty and leading to the wholesale destruction of the country. All this is exacerbated by the unwillingness of either side to consider, each for its own reasons, even a possibility of a compromise. Hence, the grim and unbending determination of both to fight to the bitter end. As it was in the struggle of Zealots against Rome, for Hezbollah fighting Israel is its existential reason d'etre. And here the similarities end and the differences begin. Unlike Rome, Israel has no place to retreat, even if it wanted to. Judea was a puny part of the enormous Roman Empire, while Israel is a tiny enclave into the vast Arab world. Considering its size and the range of modern weaponry Israel has nowhere to fall back. When Haifa (and perhaps even Tel Aviv) are as vulnerable as Kiryat Shmona to the rockets the borders become meaningless. The truth is Israel has no borders. What the fate of Haifa has shown is that the Wall is not enough, Israel needs the Roof as well. This being a physical impossibility, Israel has no choice but to win, by any means possible, for its very existence is at stake. Which was not the case with Rome, who could have left Judea and still remain an Empire, albeit somewhat less invincible. For Hezbollah, any kind of settlement, which includes retreat (and by the way, unlike Israel, they have plenty of places to go, both in Lebanon and beyond) would be viewed as a surrender by the rest of the Arab world and mean the end of it. And, so, they will fight to death, literally, and glory in martyrdom. Also, the machismo factor should not be discounted, always an important ingredient in still romantic Middle East –the opponents would rather lose the whole head then a part of it, the face. Since modern weaponry has been already mentioned, it is worth noting how immeasurably more powerful, sophisticated and lethal it is in comparison with what was used in the past. But it is also very expensive, meaning that the main protagonists in the present conflict, Israel and Hezbollah, cannot afford it on their own. They need help, and the price of help is conceding full sovereignly over decisions they make. On the one side there is Iran, who has supported Hezbollah for many years economically and militarily, and would consider its defeat a personal failure and victory for its archenemy – United States, who, on the other side, has supported Israel to even greater extent and for much longer. Neither of these "patrons" would permit their respective "clients" to stop fighting until some tangible gains have been made and some sort of victory could be declared. All this mean only one thing – for both internal and external reasons the war shall go on until one side loses and another wins. And since Israel is stronger and more desperate it must eventually crush Hezbollah, whatever the cost. Which brings us back to the similarities. As Rome to defeat Jewish rebels had to destroy Judea, so Israel to defeat Hezbollah will have to destroy Lebanon, for the inexorable logic of the events precludes any other resolution of this tragic dilemma. And if inevitability of such a catastrophic outcome still looks somewhat farfetched, consider the following. Hezbollah has turned Southern Lebanon into an unsinkable rocket launching battleship, anchored permanently at Israel's shore. As its arsenal increases both in quantity and in quality (and there are absolutely no reason why it shouldn't) given the size of Israel it has potential to completely obliterate it. Therefore, Israel's military actions now are aimed to present Lebanon and its people with a plain and simple alternative – you can have your country or Hezbollah, but you can't have them both. Make your choice. Free yourself from Hezbollah and live. Stay with it and die. My theses expounded above is that Hezbollah would not allow Lebanon to make this choice, but will drag it down with itself, in exactly the same way Zealots dragged Judea in the 1st century A.D., to total destruction. In the Middle Ages the Jews were taunted by what then was considered to be especially insulting to their religious dignity label –HEP, which is an acronym of the Latin phrase Hierosolyma Est Perdita –Jerusalem is no more. We no longer use Latin, but if we had the comparable word applied to Lebanon after this war is over would be–LEP, Libani Est Perdita–Lebanon is no more. Undoubtedly, it is all sheer madness. But then, we humans is a mad race. And if there is someone watching us from the above we must look like a murderous lunatic asylum. Whoever said that history repeats itself twice –first as a tragedy and second as a farce–was only half right. Alas, the second, as all the subsequent acts are as tragic as the first one, and one has to have rather macabre sense of humor to find anything comic about history. Devine may be the Comedy, but Human is the Tragedy. 2070. Considering the almost religious adherence of English middle class to a very well defined code of personal interaction, especially in public, when everyone seems to know what to say, and when, and where, and how much and how little on this or that subject, no less, no more that any particular occasion necessitates, one would expect the public life of its members to be a model of harmony, peace and good manners and to produce a special breed of self-assured, temperate and in the best possible psychological form people. Yet how far it is from reality, how much turmoil, conflict, uncertainty, emotional instability lies just beneath the well polished surface, ready to flare up under the slightest disturbance by something out of the ordinary. And that, perhaps, explain this apparent paradox. When interaction are expected to follow along the predictable lines, when new people, new experiences, new ideas are not welcomed, because they bring element of uncertainty and threaten the well rehearsed routine, it leaves very little room for spontaneity and flexibility which are required when something unexpected enters the picture. And something always does. For life isn't polite or reasonable. It is not of middle, or upper, or lower class. It is beyond any classifications. And it intrudes, it interferes, it upsets all neatly arranged apple carts, and it demands all the adroitness one can muster to escape being buried under its load But if one spends his or her entire life behind the walls of middle class mores and manners, in a cloister of homogeneity from which anything remotely uncongenial is barred, one is ill prepared to deal with its occasional but inevitable intrusions. And when it occurs, the very same middle class mores and manners, which were supposed to provide structure and stability, produce instead painful vulnerability to the vicissitudes of the bad-mannered life. |
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