The Day Before the Revolution

To look at oneself and find it hideous, what a job! But then, when she hadn’t been hideous, had she sat around and stared at herself like this? Not much! A proper body’s not an object, not an implement, not a belonging to be admired, it’s just you, yourself. Only when it’s no longer you, but yours, a thing owned, do you worry about it— Is it in good shape? Will it do? Will it last?

Who am I?” Laia muttered to her invisible audience, and they knew the answer and told it to her with one voice. She was the little girl with scabby knees, sitting on the doorstep staring down through the dirty golden haze of River Street in the heat of late summer, the six-year-old, the sixteen-year-old, the fierce, cross, dream-ridden girl, untouched, untouchable. She was herself

Un cuerpo en condiciones no es un objeto, no es un instrumento, no es una posesión digna de admiración, no es más que una, tú. Sólo cuando el cuerpo ya no eres tú, sino tuyo, algo que se posee, se preocupa una por él: ¿está en buen estado? ¿Servirá? ¿Durará?

One keeps oneself neat out of mere decency mere sanity, awareness of other people. And finally even that goes, and one dribbles unashamed.

Nikada se nije plašila grada niti ga je prezirala. Bila je to njena teritorija. Neće biti takvih ubogih mesta ukoliko pobedi revolucija. Ali biće bede. Uvek će biti bede, traćenja, surovosti. Nikada se nije pretvarala da menja ljudsko stanje, da je mama koja uzima tragediju od dece kako ona ne bi sebi naškodila. Sve drugo. Sve dok su ljudi slobodni da biraju, ukoliko odaberu da piju muharu i žive po slivnicima, bila je to njihova stvar. Sve drugo, samo da nije stvar Velikog Biznisa, izvor profita i put do moći drugih. Sve je to osećala još pre no što je išta znala; pre nego što je napisala prvi pamflet, pre no što je napustila Parheo, pre no što je naučila šta znači ’kapital’, pre nego što je dospela dalje od Rečne ulice u kojoj se igrala ’ide maca oko tebe’, klečeći na krastavim kolenima na pločniku sa drugim šestogodišnjacima, znala je to: da su ona, ostala deca, roditelji, njihovi roditelji, pijanci i kurve i čitava Rečna ulica na dnu nečega – da su temelj, stvarnost, izvorište. Ali želiš li da odvučeš civilizaciju u blatište? – vrištali su šokirani čestiti građani, kasnije, a ona je godinama pokušavala da im objasni da, ukoliko je blato jedino čime raspolažeš, onda, ako si bog, od njega praviš ljudska buića, a ako si ljudsko biće, onda pokušavaš da ga pretvoriš u kuće po kojima će ljudska bića moći da žive. Ali to nije razumeo niko ko je mislio da je bolji od blata.

Nothing is so soon corrupted by power-seeking as altruism.

But will you drag civilization down into the mud? cried the shocked decent people, later on, and she had tried for years to explain to them that if all you had was mud, then if you were God you made it into human beings, and if you were human you tried to make houses where human beings could live.

Ella les gruñía: "¡Pensad con vuestras propias cabezas!", "¡Eso no es anarquismo, es mero oscurantismo!", "¿No creeréis que la libertad y la disciplina son incompatibles, verdad?

So long as people were free to choose, if they chose to drink flybane and live in sewers, it was their business. Just so long as it wasn’t the business of Business, the source of profit and the means of power for other people.

They just came to look, as if she were the Great Tower in Rodarred, or the Canyon of the Tulaevea. A phenomenon, a monument. They were awed, adoring. She snarled at them: Think your own thoughts!