Forty-three

Days go by during which I see no one, speak to no one. I don’t open my mouth except to eat or drink, and sometimes not even for that. 

I prefer to be alone because even when I’m with others physically, I’m alone mentally. Most people can’t tell me what they think because they don’t know; and those who do know are afraid to tell themselves, much less others. 

I know the thoughts of others only through the magazines I read. Of late they all contain articles about the Nazi camps. Ostensibly it’s because this year is the 70^th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. But fascism is never far from our thoughts, and needs only an occasion such as this to become conscious.

When I read how the camp commanders got the inmates to fight each other, betray each other, so that they despised themselves and each other too much to unite against their masters, I can see modern society being born. The fascists lost the war, but won the peace. The whole world is a prison camp now; but as long as we confine our worst brutality to the provinces, following the example of the Nazis who built Auschwitz in Poland, we in the Empire’s heartland can pretend we’re free.