29 March 2006

Once the light was let in

"Buchenwald, according to Freud, once the light was let in, would become a soccer field, fat children would learn flower-arranging and solfeggio in the strangling rooms. At Auschwitz the ovens would be converted over to petit fours and wedding cakes, and the V-2 missiles to public housing for the elves."
--Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49


if part
of our self-knowledge
is blocked
by intimidation


there can be no
good
but withstanding that intimidation
and dissolving that block

and any attempt
to help
others

to help even
one other

is doomed to fail