Anthi Hermogenous writes
Andreas, my brother, went to elementary school when I was already starting to form a perception of the world. He let his curls grow long and reach shoulder length, against his classmates with the banker haircut. You could call Andrea a child of excellence. And that scared me more than his anarchist curls. You looked for a flaw, you didn't find a flaw. The gymnast found. He demanded a haircut, because everyone has to be "confused". Otherwise he will be expelled. Expulsion, in elementary school.
My mother wanted to go and scold the trainer, my father suggested that we cut Andrea's hair if he feels uncomfortable, my sister that we send him to school the next day with curls and an earring. I was mostly afraid of my mother. That she would lose her right. After a discussion, Andreas decided that he wanted to keep the curls. I honestly tell you, I was very excited. I took the little one to school the next day and after he entered the classroom, I asked for the gym teacher. He was a child of my generation and this is the scariest thing of all. I spoke to him in a low voice, so much so that it was fishy. I explained to him that the only place where they chopped everyone up to remove their personalities was in the concentration camps. He spoke of uniformity, as if he meant "uniformity."
Whoever dared and resisted the shape, whoever showed signs of revolution (like the girls in the silly walk, like the girl with the Palestine pin on her sleeve, like the Pakistani who sold umbrellas at the Constitution, the one who shattered the perfect image of white passers-by with briefcases, the one who saved me on a hail day in Athens, the one who that day for me seemed like the miracle itself), hit a roadblock. Block of motley townspeople, taken out of beige houses, who can't bear to see an unusual movement.
In their societies no one sticks barefoot, no other revelation of identity. They can't look each other in the eye. They shop with lives similar to their grandmothers', as if stitching together their grandmothers' eras, a version of morality. It's as if the lives of grandmothers are a document of hope. They insist on the sample, for reasons unknown to me though. Probably because in their minds they inflate the "family" from the pompous triptych to others. The lives of their grandmothers do not convince me of good societies. Many such grandmothers ate wood and lived. Grandmothers household utensils, very unhappy, lives meaningless, without any associated personal happiness. Lives that make me feel an honest horror. Women grandmothers from their little ones. Beautiful and dead, that's the only way you can love them.
Society of deadly accuracy. It identifies. Good element, bad element.
You were trained to want to be among the first. So you'll be refined and amenable to uniformity, precise as a robot. Pulses twice a week, haircut every fortnight, wake up 6:37, toilet 6:52, in the lights of Fou 7:22, work 7:30, snack 9:10, cigarette 11:10. White or blue striped shirt, patent leather, white socks. Casual chic, you'll tune in you'll perform. Life like a Swiss watch. Indiscipline, deletion. The achievement of the destination and your importance is measured by how much collared clothing the job you ended up in requires. The more absolute the crease, the more respected you are. But all the more crushed.
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"If they didn't want to, let them not participate in the parade." Society isolates the honest in the homes, the excellent in the parades, the whores in the brothels, the "sluts" in the Exarchias, the rockers in their bedroom, the well-dressed in front of the President, the comilfos in City Halls. What deprived perceptions.
Society hardwired to organize early, children's dependencies on social opinion. Cultivating the fears of any mutiny that may come to mind in the future. Let them know that it will turn out sour for them. Society suggests uniformity. Leveling uniformity. He models servitude, calls it good manners. At this time, when in questioning and in any sign of revolution or inconsistency, he had to see wide open, the traces of the future. As if the advance is measured by the absolute order, by the flat flow, by the unhinged.
Prison society, school, party, family, everywhere is the same. Guerrilla court.
We are all made of rules.
editor-in-chief
