Tuesday, May 20, 2008

The All-Seeing Eye

It was only a matter of time before the regime began taking note of Yoani Sanchez and her Generacion Y. First she came in for some public criticism. Now, according to this post from a few days ago, come the implied threats. Seeing the art she chose to illustrate the post, reminded me of this quote from the The Great Gatsby-

This is a valley of ashes—a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens; where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and, finally, with a transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air. Occasionally a line of gray cars crawls along an invisible track, gives out a ghastly creak, and comes to rest, and immediately the ash-gray men swarm up with leaden spades and stir up an impenetrable cloud, which screens their obscure operations from your sight. But above the gray land and the spasms of bleak dust which drift endlessly over it, you perceive, after a moment, the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg. The eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg are blue and gigantic—their irises are one yard high. They look out of no face, but, instead, from a pair of enormous yellow spectacles which pass over a nonexistent nose. Evidently some wild wag of an oculist set them there to fatten his practice in the borough of Queens, and then sank down himself into eternal blindness, or forgot them and moved away. But his eyes, dimmed a little by many paintless days, under sun and rain, brood on over the solemn dumping ground.

By the bye, if you look at the latest post on the blog in which the wouldbe hikers were virtually turned into the authorities, you might be reminded of the emotional backdrop of Child 44.

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