An Old Journal Entry

It's nice that I can feel my toes again. Comforting, almost. I'm all about seasonal metaphors today. The table I am sitting at has more women at it than I'm used to. But that's alright. I'm learning: slowly. Perhaps I'll find out some tactics. About tact in general. I have very little of it, as seen through my engagements last night. I'm an Estelle from Big Brother. Or perhaps, a Bradley.

I cornered him, last night.
I put him on a pedestal.
I said "You listen here, I'm the bad guy."
And then I ripped him off like a bandaid. He seemed to take it well, you know. They always said that hobbits are adaptable. But it was quiet. The unatural quiet. There was no off-putting winter howl, an absence of crunching autumn, and spring's usual chirp was completely out of the question. It was the dead heat of midday summer. The roads are abandoned and everyone is trying to lock themselves in air-conditioned safe rooms. The room was hot, and heavy, and dead quiet.

So when he downed his whiskey and placed it on the table, in one swift movement, the noise rang in my ears. I jumped a little. I surveyed all the exits. One was plausible. I retreated to the kitchens comforts, of tea and less sweat under pressure. Rather, just sweat of unregulated room temperatures. The tension didn't pass. I don't know how long it will take to do so. I don't know if it will.

It will. It will. It will.
Threes are magic like that.


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Sometimes you speak a little too soon.

Brief.

You had your quick, Keats death too. Lacking beauty. Lacking distinction. Brief. And I'm left with letters in my hands, books I need to read and piles of unwanted conversation.

Still full of quiet breathing.

Who.

It's the inward focus. Most have it. I just want to know what this is to you. Keats spoke words like you speak them. Beautiful words. What makes you different is that he spoke them often. And I feel lonely in this blank space. Does your sister even know? I'm like a Mary Shelley piece! Who am I? Fucking seasonal metaphors, that's who. It's always fucking winter.

Heart of Darkness.

Achebe suggests we should stop reading the novel altogether. He compares Conrad to Nazi sympathisers, who directly call into question the humanity of black people. Africa is to Europe, as the picture is to Dorian Gray. And I don't blame Achebe, really. It's a scramble to justify English colonialism. Perhaps not European, but certainly English. It removes the personal from the African people, allowed four lines of pigeoned English and a tumultuous amount of prejudice. It manifests unconscious derogatory ideals, marginalisation on people who are barely there in the beginnings. Bullied down to the bones. 'Till you see the skeleton.

"Mistah Kurtz, he dead."

That's the only moment that I really comprehended, and it's sad. Sad that even then, it was on the wrong front line. Tunnel vision is so hard to shake. We bully, and belittle Africa, and send in our help like divine creatures, but we forget that their resources are making us more capital than we pour back into their economy. It's a nice little charade we've got going on, the WEST.

You know, after Achebe said these things. These truths. All that came of it was a polar opposite. The indulging in Conrad's Heart of Darkness skyrocketed.