When the outworld comes knocking at the gates of the modern city…

When the outworld comes knocking at the gates of the modern city…

1.

From The Word of the Money God: a Prophesy

by Taylor, High Priest of the Order of the Modern Machine

1 Corinthians 13 New International Version (NIV) with an unmistakably Orwellian twist (Keep the Aspidistra Flying…reader’s voice)

13 If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have money, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have money, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have money, I gain nothing.

Money is patient, money is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Money does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Money never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears.  When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

And now these three remain: faith, hope and money. But the greatest of these is money.

Believers, you will be modern citizen-workers in thought, word and deed. Any who fail to modernize will be supported for a time by the priests of the Money God; but those who cannot transform their lives in accordance with his Word, in accordance with modern science, the eternal laws of capitalist exchange, the modern system, the modern logic, the modern mode of management will be branded unbelievers and banished to the hinterlands, to live out their lives as pariahs, untouchables, invisibles who walk like ghosts outside the walls of the modern city.

They will be known as creatures of the outworld, and they will creep through the forests of folklore. They will become the wicked night-crawlers that keep children awake at night. Mothers will warn their children:

‘Be good modern children now, or the outworld creatures will come for you while you sleep and drag you down into the deepest, darkest depths of the hinterland lagoon.

This is the word of the Money God.

2.

2 Photographers report on the current refugee crisis on the Greek island of Lesbos [September 2016]

Le Monde Jeudi 1er Septembre 2016

<< Quand on voit des enfants noyés qui ont le même âge que ceux qu’on va  border dans leur lit le soir même, c’est difficile de garder son sang-froid. >>

When you see drowned children who are the same age as the ones who try to climb into your bed the same night, it’s hard to keep a sense of proportion.

Il a vu de petites ONG venir sur place davantage pour se faire de la publicité que pour aider les gens. <<Tout est toujours une question d’argent. Il y a des gens qui souffrent, et d’autres qui font du business>>

He has seen NGOs come in for the publicity rather than to help other people. ‘It’s always a question of money. There are those who suffer, and those who do business…

[Aris Messinis, photographe en chef au bureau d’Athenes de l’Agence France-Presse (AFP)]

<< Avec mes images, je veux montrer que tout le monde peut devenir un réfugié un jour. Vous êtes dans un beau salon entouré d’objets que vous aimez, et un an plus tard vous êtes sur les routes a fuir avec votre famille >>

With my images, I want to show that anybody can one day become a refugee. You are in your nice living room surrounded by the things you love, and one year later, you’re on the road, fleeing with your family.’

[Yannis Behrakis, photographe en chef au bureau de Reuters]

The Door in the Wall

He’d found, not a neglected family wine-cellar, but a hidden, secret library…

Poking around in the basement he’d found with Roy beneath the ruins, scrambling over shifting, crunching heaps of nameless bits -  sheets, shards and lumps of ancient stuff - unreliably led by the hectic, twitching light of a candle, that threw ghost-train spasms of light and manic hunchbacked shadows along the blackened brickwork of the archways, he found himself suddenly at the end of a long, narrow section, where he scraped to a halt and stood to attention, non-plussed, all quizzical before a tall wooden door in the wall.

Moving the candle closer, he soon located the mottled silver doorknob. He gripped it firmly, and tried to twist it. Stiff and stubborn with age, it resisted. But turning the knob, pushing against the door with his whole body-weight, and with a final, determined thrust of his substantial shoulder, there was a mighty, splintering crack, and the door gave way.

Inside, by the light of the flickering candle, he saw what appeared to be the wine-cellar of a well-to-do household. Certainly, there were the usual rows and rows of neat, wooden shelves, but on the shelves, in place of the anticipated ranks of ancient bottles, the disciplined parade of cobwebby colonels in vintage regalia, there were untidy rows of faded green and brown leather-bound books; rows and rows and rows of dusty books! He’d found, not a neglected family wine-cellar, but a hidden, secret library.

The Cellar Door

‘Hey, come and have a look at this,’ Roy said, poking around a particular spot with his stick.

One spring afternoon, Roy and O went out scavenging together in the hinterland, far out of sight of the city walls. It wasn’t for food on this occasion, though they were hungry (they were always hungry in those days). They were on the look-out for bits and pieces of old machinery they could re-assemble and re-activate. Something wondrously new from the old, worn-out things nobody seems to want anymore, Roy always said.

More by luck than judgment, they found themselves at the site of an old bombed-out building they’d been meaning to explore for some time. They were busy rooting around in the rubble, when:

‘Hey, come and have a look at this,’ Roy said, poking around a particular spot with his stick.

Half-hidden under scattered red heaps of broken bricks, white and grey folds of powdered masonry, and wild, green knots of weeds, was what looked like the metal cover of an old wartime air-raid shelter.

On hands and knees, like eager young terriers in search of a long-buried bone, they scraped away what they could of the layers of neglect, decay and destruction. Then, they gripped the thick, twisted loop of iron they'd uncovered (and took to be the handle), and pulled.

How they struggled. Backs aching, faces red and silver with sweat, they strained, they tugged and tugged together. And finally, suddenly, it pulled away in a crashing shower of roots and rubble, thumped to the ground, and they collapsed in a heap, barely escaping the snap of the trap.