Saturday, February 4, 2012

The Inner Life of a Gnome

by Carnuntum

I am an optician. It’s a profession not a definition. Like many in the world today, I spend a large part of the waking day working to keep body and soul together. My designated area of toil is a section of a large warehouse. Yes, I said warehouse. In the new meta-life created from blueprints provided by the Electric Jew an optical establishment is both demanded and provided by the faceless global corporations who shoulder one another aside like myopic titans in their supreme effort to blot out the sun. Here, in the dank confines of the workaday world, hubris has given way to the blunt edge of spiritual dissonance.

The Fool
At least hubris had a goal.

The area in which I dwell during the infamous ‘hours of operation’, is a guttering lamp of competence and professionalism in an inky blackness of mediocrity. The Doctor and I will hold the conch for only a short while before the heart of darkness devours us. The cannibals are canny and, having no other sustenance, will consume anything that presumes to rise above a level consonant with that of flat earth.

During the day we are provided with two state-mandated breaks and a lunch. These must be taken at specified times since a less organic drudge, the computer system, has been set to lock out anyone who fails to obey. This step was taken because the global corporation in question abused its slaves in the past. They do not wish to anger the parent corporation, commonly known as The Government, and so make an effort to comply. The Beneficent Overseer known as 'Uncle Sam' decrees that bricks may be made without straw so long as the shape and size are determined to be fair, regular, and equitable.

The Corporation nods. Their Ronald McDonald smile outshines the sun.

During the working day- a time I call ‘the dead zone’, a panoply of figures dance before my eyes. Mexicans, Africans, Pakis, Hindus and Asians bully and bargain their way through the stone walls of our mutual cultural prison in varying shades of brown and yellow. The Mexicans wear t-shirts with American flags to show careful loyalty to their new country. They are sure their illegal status will not make them taboo to the God of commerce who rules their somnambulant host. The Paki’s and Hindu’s, slightly more worldly, seek only the passion of the bazaar and the thrill of bargaining. They care not who they step upon in their desire to win at the game of material steeplchase-those races for whom race itself is the saddle of victory .

We have taught them well, our new Global Citizens.


As I use my training and experience to help our newfound friends I am informed, by loudspeakers nested in the girders above, that they are the essence of diversity. Burdened by Kipling’s flawed soul I fail to be moved by the trumpets of Jericho echoing above. The walls of my soul are still, sadly, intact. Yes, my friends, it is possible that I am so spiritually afflicted that I do not recognize that true diversity is found in cultures which project only slightly varying shades of color, both skin, hair, and eye, whose cultural attributes do not exert a magnetic attraction even among their own, and who approach me wearing mass produced ads which contain more variety, both of colour and original thinking, than do the wearers. For modern Americans the t-shirt is the new symbol of the soul, our Lascaux. Lacking even the rudiments of Universal Love when regarding the horde of cultural ambassadors arrayed before me I do not see the colorful costumes which would describe their unique spiritual essence. Instead, they appear in a variety of modernized garb confiscated from the society they have invaded so successfully. Mammon and Mad Max- they dance like Fred and Ginger over the corpse of our European identity.




“Habla Espanol? Do you take Medicaid?” The cry comes frequently and with pathos. They will spend over a hundred ‘gringo dolla’s’ to buy their colored contact lenses. Green-eyes Senorita? Spain was never your home…

The loudspeaker intrudes on our one-sided dialog,” Diversity is our greatest asset. America is built on diversity.”

I think of my friends and family, Southerners, with hair the color of sun and of heather, with eyes of blue, green, brown, and with the language of Shakespeare flowing from their lips. This could not be true diversity, I am informed.

” Diversity is our greatest asset in America.” The speaker attempts to penetrate my inner soul as I ponder my own inability to understand the subtle distinctions. Remedial diversity classes, offered by the ‘corporation,’ may help me to understand my biological defect.

The immigrant before me becomes more insistent. With the patience of Stonehenge I explain that, ’one must have a prescription,’ in order to make glasses, and that , ’ No , I cannot sell you glasses for your mother in Madras without a prescription.’ They attempt to bargain me down, sure even first-world standards must give way before the Greenspan's Titan. I repeat my mantra of order like prayers at the Alamo. This tiny bridge to the stars will fall hard.



The Lunchman Cometh.

The computer obfuscates my attempts to function. I must eat now or forever hold my peace.

Lunches are taken as far away as possible from the warehouse. A variety of multi-cultural establishments are at my disposal. Mexican, Asian and generic fast food buildings cry out at the noontime hour in shades of brown and green, the proud new flag of our nation. Many of the immigrants who own these eateries come to the cantonment where I work to receive their eyewear. With futility, I describe the limits of science with regard to optical possibilities. Had I known that the feild of optics was an esoteric gnosis I could have requested a more grandiose title than that of 'optician'.





The computer Overseer speaks, stopping my work for now, and I wend my way to the break- room. Known as ‘the dump’ by the denizens of the New World Order, it is dirty and unsanitary, nevertheless, is it diverse. Several languages echo from its concrete walls, a crossroad of confusion rather than a metropolis of understanding. The peeling paint and unsanitary conditions are predicated more on the condition of the denizens than upon any specific circumstance. When you live someplace, you care. When you merely inhabit something, the soul of a gypsy rides upon your shoulder. It is in this nurturing environment that I attempt to read my book, an escape from the inverted society around me.

I settle down in the cafeteria to nurture the mind, if not the body:

Page 19, On Being Pagan, by Alain DeBenoist:
‘That affiliation established, there is generally serious underestimation of the differences that exist between Judaism and Christianity. In practice this often leads to the attribution to paganism of features that supposedly radically distinguish it only from Judaism or- as is much more often the case-’

(Yo, d’you see dat game?)

‘-It has often been maintained, for example, that Greek thought was dynamic, concrete, and synthesizing in opposition to an essentially static-’

(I saw dat. I done fell asleep wit dat game.)

‘-In fact it was certainly the opposite, as shown by James Barr, who correctly opposes “ the Greek type of thought, analytical, creator of distinctions and pieces, and the synthetic Hebrew type of thought.” Furthermore-’

(yo man don’ hab no right)-shrill

(I know he don’)

‘-Furthermore, Semitic languages spontaneously lead to synthesizing and the concrete; partially lacking in syntax-’

(various Sinitic gabble-they are not discussing Taoist philosophy)

Night begins to fall. Back in our den the Doctor and I huddle around the computer, spreading our palms for warmth. Was it like this at Rorkes Drift? As the shadows climb the walls we hear them coming. The Doctor attempts a false bravado, telling me of his youth in Spain. I give him bonhomie in return but fail to ease his mind. Soon, others will control the Conch. Soon, others will practice our professions but with different worldviews and standards that the inheritors of the Acropolis will not find measured among their Gods. We who created and propagated this particular science and the very word ‘profession’ will be no more.

What will come after?

The loudspeaker blares once again. “Thank you for shopping at the Worlds Largest Retailer. Remember, Diversity is one of our greatest strengths…”


'This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper'

T.S. Eliot, The Hollow Men

Original story by Carnuntum posted on May 3, 2006.  Used by permission.

1 comment:

  1. Livin' the dream.

    "Do it to Julia! Do it to Julia!"

    I'm not sure what's worse. Rats or the drone of the Community for State Security. Least the rats kill ya quicker and leave your brain intact.

    ReplyDelete