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... to England. Miti's writings are edited by Dave in England and published by romania.uk.com |
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Bread and Circus
07
June 2001 02:44 Well yesterday afternoon, I stepped back into the Foreign Languages room at the library to fulfill a promise made some time ago to the ladies in charge. It was about 14 o'clock and unlike before, this time the room was full with college students and I could hardly find a place to sit. Blonde Eve was very happy to see me again and straight away brought out an edition of the French magazine Figaro from January 1997, with a front page story titled 'SHAKESPEARE une passion francaise'. I skimmed through it quickly, there were many pages dedicated the illustrious bard. "And I have something to show you" I said. "What?" "A few photograhs taken in England, mostly from Stratford Upon Avon." "Ah yes" she said beaming widely, "you remembered." She began going through the photos one by one. "It's like a temple" I said, "a place sacred to the playwright's worshipers from all over the world, where they come to pay tribute to the most famous and most staged writer of plays. Being there was like making a pilgrimage to the Mecca of Universal Literature." She looked at another photo while I narrated. "... and this is the school which Shakespeare attended in Stratford Upon Avon. When I touched the desk in the classroom where he sat, I could see his name scratched on it with possibly a penknife, just as we did in our classrooms! It all seemed so incredibly familiar to me." "Mr Zaharia" she said, pointing to the Figaro magazine, "as far as I can understand from this, Shakespeare did not attend any prestigious university of his time, like Oxford for instance?" "I guess a genius doesn't necessarily need a university graduation" I said, "Motzart never set foot in a classroom, as far as I know. The great Will is probably the most celebrated self-taught person in the history." Blonde Eve became silent. Then her pretty face darkened and her voice became heavy: "My daughter is a university student in Bucharest" she said almost whispering, "and has at her disposal means that Shakespeare never dreamed of, and still she behaves more like a brat, like a spoilt child. I am afraid for her, not to take drugs or get into a bad entourage. What I see now on TV and in the papers is frightening me." I tried to comfort her: "Well, all I can say is that if you feel you gave her a good example then there's nothing to fear." "Today for these kids" I said, "if mamma will offer the bread, the media will offer the circus!...." (she recognised the words of Juvenalis, who in the decadent years of the Roman empire, said in one of his satires that the multitude in Rome wanted 'bread and circus') ...."the trouble is, Romania is not the Roman Empire, so mamma unfortunately, is not able to offer bread all the time. But now there is a consolation - the media offers 'circus' for free and on such a scale only a devilish mind could have ever imagined." Suddenly I noticed we were being watched by most of the students in the room. That made me feel pretty good for there in the room were were mostly beautiful girls! (the boys were probably at some internet cafe playing war-games). I continued, addressing Blonde Eve, but now aware of other attentive ears.... "Yes 'circus' was invented in Rome when the first Christians were building the church of Jesus. It meant among other things, watching daily the butchering of dozens or sometimes over a hundred humans inside what we see now as a famous work of art, The Coliseum, which was basically a human abattoir. "The welfare system is not a modern invention as I believed", I said. "Half the population of Rome was state assisted and nearly every other day was a 'fast day' - that is a holiday. The list of things the Romans were doing to escape boredom resembles to a very great extent the one of our modern times; - Legal infanticide, the killing babies after birth, instead of before, like we do, was available for women. - They didn't want to have children, they wanted to be free to enjoy life - just like in our day. "Did you know, Christians introduced the table and the chairs as we know and use them now? Before that in the roman empire, a chair was a 'throne' and normally only Jupiter and other gods got to sit on a 'throne'. Jesus didn't offer to the mankind only the 'bread of life' but the table to eat it upon too - and chairs to sit around it comfortable! "Yes" I said, "Christians were so different from the other 'pagan believers' in just about every aspect. They, Christians, in the end pressed roman authorities to forbid the infamous habit of killing the unwanted babes but today, who will save them?" It was a rhetorical question. "And Madame, in time, the young girls of decadent Rome - more and more of them - sought salvation both physically and spiritually in the Christian faith. The same thing could happen to your beloved daughter today, too." I was glad that there were many ears listening to us talking, me and Blonde Eve, that once femme fatale of my age who I soon discovered, is divorced and thinks marriage is a trap - 'the yoke is not for me, thanks!' - and what's more didn't believe in God, but trusted instead the horoscope. "What is your birth date?" she asked. I told her, - "Ah you are a fish like me she said." From there Blonde Eve is someone who knows more things about your own self than you do! "Ah, exactly as your sign says, typical for us fish" she says, "yes we fish normally do that..." Out of the blue she asked me at a certain moment, somewhat enigmatically: "Mr Zaharia, how would you feel like, say, you see your wife hand in hand walking with another?" I considered carefully her question, when I caught the glint in her eye: It was circus time and I was a Christian in her Coliseum.... "Blood! Blood! Blood - Jaagoo!" I said laughing. "Typical for a fish" she said, smiling! "Remember, the Zodiac won't save Romania" I said, leaving the room. to be continued.... |
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| The
abolition of the soul
27 May 2001. 10:55
The aristocracy of the heart does
not need any membership these days and its century's old language of courtesy
has fallen into oblivion.
The business of sex for money is
as old as the world, as old as humanity, but never in humanity's history
has it reached these awful proportions.
I was wrong in my previous letter when I told you that we were treated by the communists as tools with souls. No, we were treated as just tools, as objects. Maybe living objects. The communists had no concept of such a thing as a soul. And now, today, I can say that things are not that different in the sense that in our pseudo-scientific culture we treat each other as objects - as any manual of psychology teaches us. Body and Spirit are not separate as they were before in another age, when we believed that Flesh will turn to dust but the Soul, the individual one, will live on, maybe in a more dignified place - Heaven. The abolition of the soul led inevitably to the atrocities of our century's two ideological pests: nazism and communism. It never arrived by edict, or any kind of proclamation, but came a slow process working through alienation. The first victims were hope and love, the fruits of human family. The end was slavery. Where before it led to a slavery before power and dogma, will it now be any less disastrous for humanity if it leads to a slavery to sex, to money, to pleasure? God bless, an idiot romantic. Miti. |
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Impostors 25 May 2001 10:42 + 26 May 2001 11:18 We were taught at school that the
first communist, Lenin (the first to rule that is), assumed the role of
teaching the nations world-wide true moral values. He did it by trying
to uproot from peoples minds the idea that Jesus was a true moral leader.
If Jesus' teachings had a legitimacy as coming from God, Lenin (and later
Stalin) stated that their teachings had the legitimacy of coming from Science
- the new 'True Religion'.
If Jesus promised eternal life for
his followers and peace in His Kingdom to come, Ceausescu promised heroic
medals and a peaceful life in his communist kingdom here and now (Securitate
- our guardian angel - was in business of securing that peace - for the
king, not for us!). Yes Ceausescu was an impostor who for a minute, thought
himself God. |
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© romania.uk.com 2001. Portions may be reproduced without permission for non-commercial use only |
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