A Pillory on Memory Lane

oh i see where this is going this to be a situation isn’t it one of those simultaneously very public but intensely private events that ends up on the internet or whatever it’s called one of those virus videos of police officers arresting someone for opaque reasons and or under an illegitimate or straightforwardly illegal pretext accosting in other words depending on one’s perspective a free man in a free world or a formerly free man in a quondam free world. how it usually starts is of course broadly familiar by now which is to say that the subject let’s say i for now and for the sake of ease i am stopped and asked by a police officer where i am going and i might for example say why the fuck is it any of your business where i’m going and then certain corollaries would ensue (see the following). or i might say for example i’m going home all smiles and butter perhaps or perhaps all face screwed and bitter either eventuates eventually in the identical eventuality (see the following). to which the officer or by now likely officers plural (see the following) may respond and where is that your home what is your home address. at which point i might reply what the fuck does it have to do with you and who the fuck are you to ask me that and then i would almost certainly be asked my name and i would reply in similar fashion (see the following). or i could on the other hand acquiesce state my name and address and beg that i be permitted to continue officer please please officer to my home i will be good i swear i will simply walk and walk and then i will go to bed. and then they may well say very well then mr smith as you were or perhaps say very well then mr smith but we must see you enter your stated abode or even say very well then mr smith but we must see you to bed and to sleep first so as to know that you will not cause any further disturbances along this street a street which as you must know is not for walking but for emptiness and therefore for our patrolling it and so ensuring its remaining in such a condition. agreed i might reply and do keep up the good work sir and madam there are rebels around i am quite sure that a rebellion is abrew far be it for me to play the role of informer but i have recently seen not one but two persons walking this street and not apart i should add but would you believe it together hand in hand side by side with eyes and blood and tongues and thoughts walking as though these streets were theirs to wander as though the world was theirs to behold to live in laugh as you might officers i swear i have seen it. conversely i might misbehave tut and say no tut tut my name is mine not yours it is mine only i may speak it freely should i so wish but it is mine to give and not to be taken you may take many things from me even perhaps everything you think you can take but i cannot be made to give what i choose not freely to give for what is not given freely is not given at all but taken. similarly i might continue you might take me from this street into a cell and in the course of your patrol take more of the still living from this street and all other streets but they will never be yours because they will never be given to you because they are theirs to give and always will be. take take take all you above the perfidious and overreaching firmament take take all you prophets known and calumniated take you sophists and seducers but what you take will never be given. perhaps it is in our respective natures then i to resist and you to insist and neither it appears to desist. perhaps it is simply in our marrow or in the hollows where our hearts once were the mapless hearts of each history handed to us to do or not or otherwise.