Monday, September 17, 2007

Belle Starr at your service

Belle Starr at your service


To begin with, we need to bring back the guillotine. Belle has begun knitting again. Her yarn is blood scarlet. As she knits in the names of the rich, venal and fatuous, she hums a tune. It is, of course, by that granite-faced old scoundrel, Van Morrison:

"How can you stand the silence
That pervades when we all cry?
How can you watch the violence
That erupts before your eyes?
How can you tell us something
Just to keep us hangin' on?
Something that just don't mean nothing...

That was a Wonderful Remark
I had my eyes closed in the dark
I sighed a million sighs
I told a million lies - to myself - to myself

How can we listen to you
When we know your talk is cheap?
How can we ever question
Why we give more and you keep?

That was a Wonderful Remark..."

As she works away, Belle glances at the words scrawled across America's future:

"An honest criminal,if s/he's caught and convicted, will abide by the fact s/he's broken the law and is gonna do time. I've learned that's how you get through life without punching walls and hurting yourself; you abide by the facts of the situation, whatever it is."
---Elmore Leonard

It is time for us to do time. Hard time. It'll be too late for the domestic bees and the polar bears and that horned toad that just got turned into infra-structure kill by a bull-dozer a little north of Anthem, Arizona. Nonetheless, the pain might clear our minds long enough to...
...what? Try the experiment. The answer might come to you.

Back to my knitting...

La Belle