Bridget Coila – Licence CC BY 2.0
And Gordon did issue an proclamation to the Ancients saying, Buy ye all an dwelling of thine own for we have no interest in building ye homes that ye might rent, it is only by massive indebtedness that ye can become true citizens, so said the Empress Thatcher and so say I, Gordon; buy even an broom cupboard or an carriage shed and buy it with an loan from scoundrels and thieves for tomorrow it will be worth twice its worth today, I, Gordon, decree it, and ye may take the gain and spend it on Chink rubbish from Beyond and cheap-flight holidays with Air Begorrah and its Leprachaun owner, Flying Officer Michael O’Mouth, for the day after tomorrow it will be worth four times as much and growth thereafter will be expo-fucking-nential, meaning not a proportion of the original sum but an multiple of each successively increasing sum, not an incremental increase but an exponential increase and those who say me wrong are enemies unto the State, or I, Gordon who are one and the same,and indivisible; those who deny me are BoomandBusters and I say No More to them, An end Unto Them; what goes up must stay up, it is the law of gravity; I have, economically speaking, made the cyclical linear, and all by the simple means of not, as it may appear, burning all the money, throwing the gold in the ocean and making you all bankrupt but by inverting reality; this means that the pound in your pocket ( a token by which the Ancients’ labour was exchanged for goods) is not worth a pound but ten of pounds or an hundred of pounds, however many pounds I say it is worth then so shall it be. And however many there are I shall take then from ye and give them unto the Bankers, without whom, we, or me, at any rate, are all fucked and in so doing shall I save the Eck-onomyStupid.”
But the children, many of whom would soon die, from filth and hunger, here, in Fourth World Britain, or would be taken by Others or Beasts and who shivered, homeless and knew nought of comfort or security, dozed-off, their hunger pains stilled for the moment by sardines and corned beef, pulled from the ground. And those grown ones as had survived, knew too well the Saga of Gordon the Ruinous, how once there had been more than enough for all and yet, in scrambling to give the most to the least, the greatest to the fewest, in his urge to give to the rich from the poor, Gordon had destroyed all. And they were weary of it.
They cared not to hear more of the Saga on that night and the Elder, sensing their despondency, crawled to his own, special, pile of rocks and meditated On His Time Of Dying, it would be soon, he had been, after all, in the Ancients measure, nearly twenty three years Born in Ruin.
The tribe made the brief sleeptime salutation to each other- “the man was an ruinous cunt” response: “An utter fucking bastard.” And went to the Shitcorner to make shitcake for the fire, before a fitful, shivery sleep.
Gordon had robbed them, yet lectured them, even as he plundered; Gordon had destroyed Learning and Care and Order; had robbed the Old of peace and comfort, the Young of safety and the people had been lied unto, year after year after year until finally, calling for an examination of accounts they found that nothing was there, all was illusion, everything which was, was shit. And even as the hungerwars loomed and merchants closed their doors and the Ancients fell idle and frightened, Gordon the Foul did still address them as though they were imbeciles. I am like unto an great artist, he said. I am reminded, he said, of Titian – although, as any who had read Gordon’s writngs would know, he would not know a Titian should one fall from the wall and land on his mis-shapen gulping head – I am reminded of Titian who did not do his best work until his old age. And I am like Titian. It is true, of course, that Titian did not fuck-up everything he touched and turn it unto shit, not that I have and it is true that I am not an artist and have not an creative instinct in my hobgoblin body but even so, you all know what I mean, Titian, old age, greatness…C’est moi, as I am reminded that the Germans say. And the Ancients cast around for means to rid themselves of this blustering freak and could see only the Compassionate Ho-Ho-Hos and despaired of the whole fucking nonsense.
And I am reminded, insisted the jumped-up, immature, malformed, snot-eating, gulping, stuttering, tongue-tied spasming bastard, facetiously, condescendingly, that I speak latin, (even though I don’t,) and you don’t, well, few of you – and the people turned one to another and as early as that day, commenced to making the Sign of Ruin, Head in hands, Oh for fuck’s sake, he’s barking – and Y’know, credit, which is the means by which I have engineered this great Eck-onomyStupid miracle of prosperity and growth and an EndToBoomAndBust, almost, is based on the latin word, credo, which means Gordon is Great and always does the right thing for small people and hard businesses, yes and families, too, of which I, of course, have one, and if you believe that you will believe anything, and you obviously do. So, there you have it, there it is, not only does my friend and student, President Obamalamadingdong, do exactly as I advise but even those old scholars, Socrates and Pliny and Zorba the Greek, they all believe in me, too, it’s there, in black and parchment, Gordon is Great. To-morrow, I shall paint my masterpiece. All over you.
Historian’s note. It is believed that the Saga of Gordon the Ruinous was never completed and told for centuries only in fragments. So completely dispiriting was any examination of the One-eyed one’s record that few could stomach it in its entirity; stanislav the plumber on whose commentaries the Saga was based was an indignant outsider who railed against Gordon and his work, but to no avail; professional chroniclers, up their own and each others’ arses, dismissed his work as notorious, infamous, excoriating, shocking, preferring their own insular and equally ruinous, feeble commentaries – the why-of-whys and the if-onlys of those who felt, that by their timidity they would stay closer to the House of Gordon. They were cunts.
More of the Saga may yet emerge, much, as the Ancients said, had been done, yet much remains to be done.
Times are perilous, eat as much mouse as you can keep down and stay close, with sharpened stick, to the shitfire; Ruin stalks the night.”
Ed. Here ends The Book of Ruin.
© stanislav the Polish plumber 2009. Website – Call me Ishmael
The Goodnight Vienna Audio file
