Saint Augustine claimed that evil is just the lack of good. How else could we describe nature, the bottomless pit of the universe, the deserts of Saturn, the solar tempests, the carelessness of the weather? Humans, insects, birds, grass, fish, all living creatures are together in the struggle against evil. They are the rebels, doomed to a perennial fight. They are the resistance, because they are alive.
In medieval times, all wars stopped with the arrival of the winter winds. Before the imperialism of centrally heated offices, people used to be subjected to the evilness of nature more than to that of their fellow men. In that horrifically wise age, humans like us used to relegate the vanity of war to times of luxury, when the loss of one’s life or freedom could at least have been mitigated by the gentle warmth of the evening and the abundance of raspberries even at the edge of a serf’s field.
Now war expands to the darkest hours of January, when not even leaves dare to unfurl. War: the capital double-u like the cross of martyrdom of Saint Andrew, the final ‘ar’ like a scream softened by agony. Ages pass, martyrdoms take different names. So, it is Work today. The same cross, hiding the final sound of an Ogre, inhumanely muscular, insatiably hungry. On that cross the monster hangs his prey, cures them, lets them dry. And as their skin hardens like the leather of an executive chair, as their neurons take the square shape of silicon, he finally sinks his teeth into their flesh.
