For anyone keen enough to imagine them, the angels of history are indeed strange, almost baneful characters. As mischievous as impossible knots, wings visible only when in (perpetual) flight, eyes like marbles clinging to gravity on the inside of toes, their many hands busy hurtling back the strangest of objects. The important thing is to remember that the faster they fly forward (and they can only move at a stubborn and uniform pace), the further and more accurately can they understand (i.e. pierce or puncture) the past. Unlike humans, their every action does not imbue the present with new questions. On the contrary, all of their innocent crimes can be characterised as laughter bouncing off the wall of the future, resonating and bringing to life certain forgotten memories, or muffling others (mainly carnivals, fanfares) with the sweet plague of silence. They achieve these unpredictable and thankless miracles by a feat most probably outside their control: the many varieties of their laughter (chortles, snickers, guffaws) metamorphose (while in flight towards the past) into as many a variety of objects (otherwise known as causes and effects). Most notoriously, these include: grenades, weeds, kaleidoscopes (usually in packs of a dozen), out-of-tune pianos, wild unannounced applause, and countless other finite examples. All these objects have it in them to make the most impertinent of changes: turning wire into doves (and vice versa), verandas into tennis balls, plates into tears, or smoke into hapless fondling. If you've come this far you might as well know that every one of those angels of history is a potential homo sapiens. #1
#2 An army such as this is experienced only once, mainly because they don't leave anything alive behind. Successful even beyond their own awareness, the army achieves its omnipotence by gluing everything it encounters into one seamless gigantic sphere that rolls (increasing its momentum) crushing and simultaneously gathering everything in its wake. The officers most esteemed are those that steer the sphere by curling up into a little boulder at an appropriate spot in the sphere's path. They themselves are crushed of course, but become martyrs by contributing so effectively to the overall telos. Not everyone, however, believes this (obviously true and clear) explanation. Some prefer to think that the army is a collection of disparate atomised individuals working alone in a thoroughly sullen mood. In the opinion of these spoilsports, the officers most esteemed are those that use their axe to chop as much wood as possible, capable of balancing on the thinnest plank, and thus lucky enough to see most of their reflection in the current of the winding river. It is no secret that these same spoilsports worship those officers, preferring to forget the latter's horrified open mouths as they rush down the face of the waterfall, soon to burst into an irresistible emptiness. I, for one, would not be surprised to see those windbags snorkelling in the dam, trying to pluck out impossible dreams (alms too loud to be heard) from the grumbling stomachs of dugongs.

Max Leskiewicz
 

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