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The story:
This belief is handed
down in Beersheba: that, suspended in the heavens, there exists
another Beersheba, where the city's most elevated virtues and
sentiments are poised, and that if the terrestrial Beersheba
will take the celestial one as its model, the two cities will
become one. The image propagated by tradition is that of a city
of pure gold, with silver locks and diamond gates, a jewel-city,
all inset and inlaid, as a maximum of laborious study might produce
when applied to materials of the maximum worth. True to belief,
Beersheba's inhibitions honor everything that suggests for them
the celestial city: they accumulate noble metals and rare stones,
they renounce all ephemeral excesses, they develop forms of composite
composure.
They also believe, these
inhabitants, that another Beersheba exists underground, the receptacle
of everything base and unworthy that happens to them, and it
is their constant care to erase from the visible Beersheba every
tie or resemblance to the lower twin. in the place of roofs they
imagine that the underground city has overturned rubbish bins,
with cheese rinds, greasy paper, fish scales, dishwater, uneaten
spaghetti, old bandages spilling from them. Or even that its
substance is dark and malleable and thick, like the pitch that
pours down from the sewers, prolonging the route of the human
bowels, from black hole to black hole, until it splatters against
the lowest subterranean floor, and from the lazy, encircled bubbles
below, layer upon layer, a fecal city rises, with twisted spires.
In Beersheba's beliefs
there is an element of truth and one error. It is true that the
city is accompanied by two projections of itself, one celestial
and one infernal; but the citizens are mistaken about their consistency.
The inferno that broods in the deepest subsoil of Beersheba is
a city with the most expensive materials on the market, with
every device and mechanism and gear system functioning, decked
with tassels and fringes and frills hanging form all the pipes
and levers.
Intent on piling up carats
of perfection, Beersheba takes for virtue what is now grim mania
to fill the empty vessel of itself; the city does not know that
its only moments of generous abandon are those when it becomes
detached from itself, when it lets go, expands. Still at the
zenith of Beersheba there gravitates a celestial body that shines
with all the city's riches, enclosed in the treasury of cast-off
things: a planet a-flutter with potato peels, broken umbrellas,
old socks, candy wrappers, paved with tram tickets, fingernail-cuttings
and pared calluses, eggshells. This is the celestial city, and
in its heavens long-tailed comets fly past, released to rotate
in space form the only free and happy action of the citizens
of Beersheba, a city which, only when it shits, is not miserly,
calculating, greedy.
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My interpretation:
I see
this very much as a parable of modern media and society--especially
of broadcast news.
Beersheba,
the city itself, is a metaphor of what we feel is important in
our lives. The Beersheba in the sky is how we think we should
be, behave, think, and feel. It reflects our hopes and desires,
but in a somewhat pompus way. The things that get discussed and
reported within this realm are usually idealized--often political
in both topic and strategy. Consequently, because so much attention
is paid to the idealized Beersheba, it is ordered but somewhat
dull, realting little to our actual lives.
The Beersheba
below is sordid and sensationalized. It reflects the worst of
who we are, but at leat has an honesty that the above Beersheba
doesn't. The tabloids (but in print and on television) reflect
these fascinations and although they, at least, are genuinely
interesting to many (they certainly get the ratings) they, too,
are hollow and unfulfilling.
In between
is a forgotten Beersheba, a society we do not see precisely because
it is always there, staring us in the face. This is the real
society, and although there are those who deride it for being
pedestrian and personal, silly and often stupid, it is the closest
reflection of who we are and what enriches our lives. This society
is filled with conversations--often banal, sometimes fascinating,
usually emotional. There are fights, arguments, painful admissions,
passionate rebuttals, and embarrasing truths. It is our lives
played-out in connection with others and we cannot hide here
who we are, what we like, nor what we feel.
This
last Beersheba makes little sense to others--it is intensely
personal and shared only with those it means something to. However,
it is the largest city, overlapping with a deafening roar and
volume of activity. It is the sum total of what we say to ourselves
in the car and what we say to each other under our breaths. To
me, this is the best of us and the media rarely pay attention
to it. Television only concentrates on the highest and lowest
societies, reporting the sensational with mock distaste and the
ideal with mock interest and much duty. But the real Beersheba
goes unreported, yet very much recorded in our memories, our
diaries, and now our personal websites. It is a participatory
collective consciousness.
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