Those Who Cannot Remember the Past

This is my entry in the 2012 Short Short Fiction Contest sponsored by Esquire magazine and the Aspen Writers' Foundation. The story had to be exactly 79 words - to celebrate the 79th anniversary of Esquire.

I have included the photograph - a still taken from a 2011 YouTube video of an Occupy Wall Street march - that inspired the story.

When I saw the blonde woman toast the protesters, I immediately thought about the attitude and words attributed to Marie Antoinette - "Let them eat cake!"

I recalled the warning of George Santayana - "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." I thought about last year's protests and uprisings in Greece, London, Rome, and throughout the Middle East. And, I thought, if it can happen there, it could happen here as well.

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Those Who Cannot Remember the Past

By Bud Koenemund

  The insatiate gathered above Wall Street, on gilded balconies overlooking the rabble – the indebted; those without jobs; those left homeless by the housing bubble – the self-proclaimed 99 percent. They laughed, took pictures, and mocked the people; toasting the disaffected with champagne. They were among the elite in a world of margins and algorithms; puts and calls; dollars and cents. But, insular in their greed, they could not feel the heat of a fire whose glow already lit the horizon.

Tortured

For TK

Inspired by Jack, Neal, and Allen

We could see the darkness and were blind in the light. We stood, dumb, as a vomit of colors, and words, and numbers whirled around us. We were everything, and everywhere, not with each other, but within everyone; enveloped by a stream of power, drowned and reborn. It was beautiful. And, more beautiful because it was not limited by any form or definition. The waves swept away all thought of past or future. There was only the now, and we were it, and it would never end. It was an explosion, like the birth of the universe, and the death of everything all at once. We wielded energy, pure and liquid, against a roiling sky of neon. We were omnipotent within the world of our minds; and yet powerless to save ourselves. Our minds burned with the fever of knowledge; knowing everything, comprehending everything, thirsting for more, even as it all fell away as quickly as it came. A hurricane raged around us, stripping away our doubt, revealing in chaos: order. We reached out to touch it, to embrace it, and somehow pull it back within us before consciousness blotted it from our brains; struggling to save some small fragment of it. But, it could not be. It could not live beyond this dream, and so much was lost as our eyes opened, once more blind in the light of day.

Those Who Cannot Remember the Past

This is my entry in the 2011 Short Short Fiction Contest sponsored by Esquire magazine and the Aspen Writers' Foundation. The story had to be exactly 78 words - to celebrate the 78th anniversary of Esquire.

I have included the photograph - a still taken from a YouTube video of an Occupy Wall Street march - that inspired the story.

When I saw the blonde woman toast the protesters, I immediately thought about the attitude and words attributed to Marie Antoinette - "Let them eat cake!"

Then I recalled the warning of George Santayana - "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." I thought about the events that have taken place this year in Greece, London, throughout the Middle East, and now in Rome. And, I thought, if it can happen there, it could happen here as well.

I don't agree with everything the Occupy Wall Street protesters are saying/demanding, but I understand where their anger is coming from.

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Those Who Cannot Remember the Past

They gathered on the gilded balconies of Wall Street, overlooking the rabble – the indebted, those without jobs, those left homeless by "the bubble," the hopeless, the hungry – the so-called 99 percent. They laughed, took pictures, and mocked the people as they drank champagne. And, being well-schooled in margins, puts and calls, dollars and cents – but less so in common sense – they could not feel the heat of the coming fire; the glow of which already lit the horizon.