Scar Tissue

Scar Tissue

Marko Zlomislic

Cinema means pulling a uniform over our eyes, warned Kafka -- Paul Virilio, Open Sky

You are taken to see but your eyes are not prepared to look at the spectacle placed gently in front of you like a birthday cake. It is the dead who blow out the candles as your illusions are cut into pieces. The dead devour what still lives even as we eat the recycled remains of what is planted in the field, delivered to supermarket spouting forth freshly sprayed. To live on as one of Prometheus' children. Shreds of his liver torn by the eagle to re-grow. We are his scar tissue. The sweep of the broom over polished concrete stepped on by a million daily commuters, mute and unthinking, blind to the little pleasures as they search for the nuclear fusion of the orgasm afterglow. A shoulder to sleep on as your head is cradled. But there you already feel the skeleton underneath the varnished skin dying to leap through tissue, sinews, frayed nerves and muscle. The little acts of revenge are sweet especially when you have a key to the Other's door. Declare a war against vending machines and parking meters. Fill their slots with Chuck E. Cheese tokens. The Real seeps in through the cracks of the imagination to leave its stain. Left on the doorstep, a letter, a video, a dead mouse; all brought as a gift. These do not satisfy your hunger. On TV a horse takes the lead in the Tour de France. A preacher plays the electric guitar for Jesus who is still smoldering on Golgotha. It is a fun house ride with death hitching on your admission ticket. Magnify the details to bring the disaster near. Cut and paste until you create the ideal Adobe view. Where and when will we meet? We seek order where chaos rules. The bits are packaged: salad, porn, apples, cuts of meat, coffee spoons. The light enters when the illusion becomes tired. The cliché, "I love you" should be returned with silence. The echo you seek is an old repetition. The knock on the door, the ringing of the telephone are all reminders to stop eating the remainder. How is this possible when Death nourishes what survives?

-------------------Marko Zlomislic is professor of philosophy at Conestoga College, Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning in Kitchener, Ontario. He has recently published Jacques Derrida's Aporetic Ethics with Lexington Books and is currently writing a critique of Slavoj Zizek's work.