Know your place.

"You should rejoice that you're in prison. Here you have time to think about your soul." 

Alexandr Solzhenitsyn.

Months of punishment regime gave me a clear idea as to the nature of the institution to which I had been admitted.

This was senior school.

I vowed to fight covertly.


They may have had an apparence of my acquiescence, they wouldn't have my soul.

I was biding my time.

Higher education.

"You should shut up, otherwise...."

I had been educated to recognise this.

I vowed to fight covertly.

They may have an apparence of my acquiescence, they won't have my soul.

I am biding my time.

Prison exercise yard.

Your time they take up with drills.

You get rewards for drilling satisfactorily.

You get threats to ensure compliance.

You learn to know your place in their scheme of things.

Scheme of things.

Scheme of objectives for subjects, objects, things...

Grades, marks, brands, certificates of conformity, scientific process....

Don't venture beyond the boundaries of your assigned place.

Know your place.

A sense of security.

"Better a devil that you do know than a devil that you don't." 

Boxes, categories, drills, grades, ranks, rituals gives one a sense of security.

THIS IS HELL.

We know our place.

The peers keep us in our place.

"THIS ISN'T A PRISON." 

"ARE YOU INSANE?"

THIS IS HELL.

They threaten you with solitary.

People like to be 'kapo'.

It is a recognition of sorts.

"HELL IS THE OTHERS."

Sartre.

Know your place.

I have been thinking about viruses.

I have been thinking about how they spread.

It doesn't take long.

One simply must have a host who travels widely and contaminates a critical mass of people.

The result is an epidemic.

Openness can be a virus.

Dreams can be a virus.

Stories can be a virus.

Fear can be a virus.

Hate can be a virus.

Love can be a virus.

Know your place.

I am no longer biding my time.

I shall be host.

I shall carry infection.

I shall travel widely.

No prison resists infection.

Know your place.

“The preachers and lecturers deal with men of straw, as they are men of straw themselves. Why, a free-spoken man, of sound lungs, cannot draw a long breath without causing your rotten institutions to come toppling down by the vacuum he makes. Your church is a baby-house made of blocks, and so of the state.

...The church, the state, the school, the magazine, think they are liberal and free! It is the freedom of a prison-yard.” 

Henry David Thoreau, I to Myself: An Annotated Selection from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau