From a Distance

Best viewed from a distance, my son!

Oh yes, from a distance. From a distance you might judge him to be aggressive, head a little blunt maybe, neck an inch or two too short and too thick for refined taste: you might consider his conversational powers to be limited, his language profane.

From a distance you might denounce her: she is clearly loud, dressed to entrap, a vulgar woman, coarse: a tramp.

“Here, what you after then? F**k off! Bleedin’ pervert!”

From a distance….

But come closer. See how the eyes you imagined belligerent are dull and downcast, the uncertainty of touch in those powerful hands. See how she retreats at your approach, slips back inside the shell of herself with the ribald remark or the defiant word that is all she has in her defence.

And you see all of the truth, when you see within. You see the hopelessness, the futurelessness, the fear of imagination; the dread of the dream.

They are not as you denounce them, these people: they are not sub-human, Neanderthal, anthropoid or even dull. They are as you have made them; they are your intellectual exercise, your product, the fruit of the society that feeds you so well. They feed you so well.

And you know what? As you revile them, avoid them, mock them; they are not even angry? Because of all the things you have taken from them, and make no mistake your wealth is borne upon their backs, the greatest and the most unforgivable is their anger!

They should be so angry!