Things. Things that you worry about. Things that need you to worry about them. Or do they? How do they feel, these things? Do they feel the need for your concern as you feel the need for theirs? How do they feel?
Have you found places for them? Have you given them names? Have you numbered them? Have you known them to gather together in groups without your instigation? To whisper about you as if you could not hear them? To plot and contrive against you?
Things, things, things. What are you to them? Do you bow to them? Are you meek before them? One can go about things and then go about them again. And still one gains nothing.
Where one resides, things reside. If one cannot make one’s claim on things after going about them and going about them again, then one cannot make one’s claim on the space in which one resides, nor in the space in which they reside. For the space is the same.
Alas, if the gadgets are not ours, then neither is this place, this Venue. Yet is it true, conversely, that we belong to it? Do men and women belong to the space in which they reside? And, if so, do the gadgets belong to the Venue as we do? Or are they as alien to it as they are to us?
These things – they do not color us. We do not paint our faces with them or tattoo our bodies with them.
Neither does the Venue color us. Rather, we color it. Without us, the Venue would be gray and forlorn. Yet without the Venue, where would we be? Without the Venue, we would be at odds with each other, just as things are at odds with us and with themselves. One Venue, one Accord.
May the Greater Men of Menahmen cast their blessings upon this Venue.
One Venue, one Accord.
-- from the Creed of the Lesser Accord
The reader may have thought to ask why the greater
accord refused to end their humiliations
by learning the Creed and imbibing Whiff,
thereby achieving membership in the Lesser
Accord. It’s not an easy question to answer,
as a good many factors were involved,
and each one of us had his or her own reasons
for desiring to remain aloof. For one thing,
one reasoned that if the greater accord
could wait long enough for the individuals
who filled the rank and file of the Lesser Accord
to attain to the calm sobriety
of vision that would assuredly come with age,
there would likely come a time when they’d abandon
their follies and once again benefit
from our age and from our greater experience.
In addition to this, there was the interest
in prolonging the dubious honor
and privilege of lending one’s image and wit
to the ranks of the disciples and saints that were
quickly swelling into a pantheon.
The humiliation of having to attend
daily classes at the LA’s academies
and, along with that, the didactic plays –
for the sake of which we would suddenly be rushed
out of the academies and onto the Floor –
was balanced by the small bit of glory
one would garner in having one’s image painted
and displayed on the hoods of the vehicles used
in the exploration well underway
of the Periphery and in recognizing
remarks that one had made in the distributions
of the Analects. This glory, of course,
was confined on the whole to the prestige received
within one’s own accord, as the LA didn’t
seem to recognize in us the models
and progenitors of their revered “Greater Men,”
though it can’t be said that we didn’t now and then
make an attempt to point this out to them.
They never reacted in anger but simply
patted our backs and nodded with the believer’s
certain smile of superior knowledge
and condescension, saying, “Yes, Elder, of course.”
Sadly but certainly, our numbers were dwindling.
Many of the greater accord had gone
over to the LA from the very moment
that the youth who had split off from the First Accord
declared themselves a legal entity
and opened up membership to all those willing
to submit to their authority. While it might
be supposed that the ones who went over
from the start did so out of prescience and so as
to make one’s peace with what was inevitable,
in nearly every case it was far more
out of laziness and out of the mere desire
to flow along with the current. From the outset,
those of the greater accord who held out
were treated shamefully by those who went over.
Imagine, however, the vindication that
we “Greater Men” felt when we saw many
of our former comrades come begging the LA
to revoke their memberships, so jealous were they
of the honors we received by lending
our images to the vehicles and our sly
witticisms to the Analects.
It’s hard, though,
to say which side was right. On the one hand,
those who went over were left alone, did not have
to attend the recovery seminars or
the didactic plays and for that reason
got much more rest than we did and were permitted
to play a limited role in the official
and non-official life of the Venue
(although, to be sure, age restrictions severely
limited the sort of role you could hope to play
and the effectiveness with which you could
play it, in spite of the egalitarian
wording of the membership clauses). Moreover,
a number who went over were destined
to live out the bitter remainder of their lives
in high resentment of the glories and honors
that were bestowed upon the Greater Men,
which they appallingly overestimated
and which hardly amounted to much anyway,
as the LA didn’t recognize (or
pretended not to recognize – indeed, the truth
is still far from clear) their apocryphal heroes
in their aging students. Naturally,
those who had gone over didn’t permit themselves
to acknowledge the fact that the entire business
of the “Greater Men” had little or no
available textual evidence to serve
as support and that those visages constantly
spotted whisking by on pilgrimages
to the Periphery were merely likenesses
of their former friends. They were never bashful, though,
in making their resentment towards us felt.
[Next: Of Those Who Went Over and of Those Who Held Out]