Poisoning

Opening the bottle.

O great wine spirit, show us the way, Driss says. O priests of the wine god in the holy night!

I just wish it was hemlock. I wish we could just have done with it all. Die like Socrates! He was positively delighted to be sentenced to death. He thought drinking hemlock was a cure …

A cure! There is no cure! They’ve poisoned the air. They’ve poisoned the earth. They’ve poisoned us – God knows. We’re sick with their poison. We’re sick with their sickness. As they want us to be.

They’ve left nothing alone. This wine just reveals the poison, that’s all. It lets us taste the poison as poison.

The only philosophy must be a philosophy of poison – that’s what Livia used to say. A philosophy that has grown from poison, and lets poison philosophise.  

interesting things grow from the poison, Livia said. Twisted things. Sports and mutants. With special gifts. The poison produced our kind – as a byproduct. As an unintended consequence.

They made their enemy, the poisoners, Livia said. The brought us into the world as near-perfectly poisoned. But they didn’t suspect that we might out-poison the poison. That one amongst us might be able to convert the poison.

Which is you, Shiva, Furio says.