A Reading from the Book of Canal:
From what did I flee? Was it from soldiers or, once again, from history that I ran away? Does it make any difference? Did I go to the march because of a moral choice or to subject myself to yet another test of Opportunity? I was either too early or too late for all the great Opportunities, but that was the fault of my birth date. I would have liked to have been in that field of bullets, shooting, even at the price of striking another. But I was absent because of age, not because of cowardice. And what, then, of the march? Again I ran away for a generational reason: it was not my conflict. But I could have taken the risk even so, without enthusiasm, to prove that I had been in the field of bullets, I would have known how to choose. Does it make sense to choose the wrong Opportunity just to convince yourself that you would choose the right one--had you had the Opportunity? I wonder how many of those who opt for fighting today do it for that reason. But a contrived Opportunity is not the right Opportunity.
Can you call yourself a coward simply because the courage of others seems to you out of proportion to the triviality of the occasion? Thus wisdom creates cowards. And thus you miss Opportunity while spending your life on the lookout for it. You have to seize Opportunity instincitvely, without knowing at the time that it is the opportunity. Is it possible that I really did seize it once, without knowing? How can you feel like a coawrd because you were born in the wrong decade? The answer: You feel like a coward because once you were a coward.
But suppose you passed up the Opportunity because you felt it was inadequate?
The words from a book.
Response: Thanks be to Dewey.Let the record show that there were those amongst you, Citizens, who would cause you harm in the course of their displeasure with those who were not amongst you.
That is, there were those amongst you who were displeased with us but whose angry, in its impotence, found its release amongst you and thereby did you harm.
And these selfsame ones who would do you harm did so likewise make attempts to harm us as well. These came to naught.
See these people. See each of them. Look on each of them. You know their opinions of the world. You can read it in their faces, in their stances. They are displeased. Yet their complaint that life is no bargain masks the actual case with them. Which is that others will not do as they wish them to. Have never done, never will do. That's the way of things with them and their lives are so balked about by difficulty and become so altered of their intended architecture that they are little more than walking hovels hardly fit to house a conscious spirit at all. Can they say, such people, that there is no malign thing set against them? That there is no power and no force and no cause? What manner of heretic could doubt agency and claimant alike? Can they believe that the wreckage of their existence is unentailed? No liens, no creditors? That gods of vengeance and of compassion alike lie sleeping in their crypt and whether our cries are for an accounting or for the destruction of the ledgers altogether they must evoke only the same silence and that it is this silence which will prevail? To whom are they talking, City? Can't you see them?
A being seeks its own destiny and no other. Will or nill. Anyone who could discover one's own fate and elect therefore some opposite course could only come at last to that selfsame reckoning at the same appointed time, for each being's destiny is as large as the world it inhabits and contains within it all opposites as well.
The ground upon which so many have been broken is vast and calls for largeness of heart but it is also ultimately empty. It is hard, it is barren. Its very nature is stone.
That which they attempted came to naught. In the words of Canal, it was not the right Opportunity. So be it. They have been captured in their own game, they have been ensnared in their own trap.
And, so, they have been punished, in that they did harm to many and attempted harm on more, in that they sought to undo the order of the City with disorder, in that they would destroy the City itself to achieve their ends. Therefore, they have been punished.
They shall be obedient, as they must be. For a penance is not penance without the prick of conscience, without the ache that informs the wrongdoing.
For that you have not been broken on a wheel you may thank us. You will be summoned soon. Do your duty to us. You will know our call. We have work for you.
For all others, look upon these and consider. Do well by yourselves to meditate on their actions and consider what ends you seek and by what means.
How little you know.
[ooc: tl;dr: the conspirators associated with the recent uprising were caught in the midst of their attempts on the lives of the Deities (not advised, y'all). They have been punished by the Deities with forced obedience--that is, much like Ella Enchanted, they have to do what they're told, short of killing anyone or being ordered to ignore all orders. So far as I know, the main involved parties were Loki, Other!Loki, and Leah. Anyone else who was really "in charge" of the uprising who might have been punished too, for their involvement, can be punished as well, but I think everyone who needs IC punishing knows about it already. The punishment will last through next week and, for much of next week, the guilty parties will be on the newly-resurrected Prison Island, helping with the last of the restorations that the Ghouls couldn't get done right (fine motor skills, you see). Any property damage done by the riots will be repaired by City crews if you so wish. Otherwise, feel free to use property damage as a plotting point. Have fun, all.]