Of a lonely Manifesto

There It sat. Clad in a black and red jacket; beneath that, a murky darkness devoid of red. In a shelf betwixt hundreds of others, the weight of them calling against It. Theorists of what was, rather than what could be, called out around it; of things past (though now, of course, It had also moved into that same past); even the children sat oblivious to it. Within crawling reach, they debated what today’s would be — clearly, some ritual was being played out, sitting on the floor. The mother squatted, moving between the gaze of the two, leaning to turn a page, sometimes two. Its colours were crisp, but not against the pictures accompanying words (though words may first accompany pictures) in folio-sized glossy colour. The little red book clad in darkness said nothing against them, did not try to plead its case. The children were oblivious, anyway. Gradually, the mother grows tired of waiting and pulls out a (probably recurring) threat, another piece of the ritual: perhaps we won’t get a book this week? No, of course we shall. It is an empty threat — even the children know this. The book would splutter, groan at the bourgeois’ idleness and commitment to acquisitive ‘education’. But It could not, the superstratum of capitalism wrapped tightly around it, even as it is released unequivocally into the domain of the people. Destined to life on a shelf in a world as foreign as it has always been.