Prophet

by Sin Blaché

The ultimate hidden truth of the world is that it is something we make and could just as easily make differently. —David Graeber

“Anyway. One model of nostalgia sees it as a psychological response to trauma and discontinuity. A defence mechanism. Big social changes can conjure it. Wars, revolutions, 9/11. People feel dislocated, so they conjure an imaginary past they long to return to. This fantasy place of safety. So nostalgia is emotional and psychological, but it’s also political. Highly manipulatable, either politically or in the marketplace.

First-generation immigrants often refuse nostalgia completely. Second-generation sometimes get lost in it. Imagined homes, imagined places can have a power far greater than real ones.”

“You’re a smart guy, Rao,” Adam had said once, and Rao had grimaced. “I’m educated, Adam. People regularly mistake the two.”

“You’re not not. I’m an expert on not, Rao. You’re all.” “Right. Care to enlighten me further, or is this full Adam koan shit?” Adam looks at him like he’s in dire need of remedial education. “You’re like this pack of cards. You can pull any combination. It’s all there. You carry all of them at once, but you don’t have to show anyone shit unless you want to. You get to choose. You’re lucky.”

“There. That. The arrogance that oozes from you, deciding what matters from someone else’s past just because you never pay in sanity or blood like the rest of us. And no one can see it, because you’re so boring and god-awful to be around. But now—would you like to know what I have now?” “You’re going to tell me.” “Yes. That’s true. I am going to tell you. I have my wits about me now. My eyes are open. I know what you are. You’re broken on the inside and that’s why I can’t tell with you. There’s nothing even remotely human in there. It’s just all the missing parts from every other soldier on the roster jumbled into the cage you call a body. Under your shitty, shitty suits.” He takes a deep breath, trembling with rage. “Say something,” he says. “No. No. On second thought, don’t say anything. Don’t talk to me. Don’t fucking look at me. Fucking trust. That’s it. That’s me taught.”

You said nostalgia can be a response to a sense of dislocation. And your book says it’s an act of creation, right? It brings lost things to life, things from your past, things you remember. And the act of nostalgia forges a link between you now and a past self that’s always partly imagined. It’s comforting. Gives you a sense of continuity. Makes you feel you’re the same person through time.”

“I always thought the end of the world was going to be, you know,” he says, after a deal of silence, “properly apocalyptic. Fires. Tidal waves. Floods.” “No, Rao,” Adam says, the tiredness, the resignation in his voice as heavy and obvious as his conclusions. “The end of the world is just people glued to toys.”