Hegemony at home

For those of you, like me, who tend to be defenders of order against the forces of chaos and feel bothered by stacks of paper that never seem to go away, I have the ultimate solution. For months, the paper piled up, simply because my old filing system (piled folders inside a drawer) was weak. The post office, too, conspired against me: Mail was saved and delivered 48 hours after every reluctant filing, thus maintaining the massive stacks of paper remain at all times.

However, the evil-doing stacks of bank and student loan statements, papers, assignments and bills have been destroyed. Not by simply defeating the piles themselves, but by destroying their ability to reproduce themselves in my household. Simply by signing a credit card slip, I felled the paper city and did the king of messiness to death.


The Hand that Signed the Paper -- Dylan Thomas

The hand that signed the paper felled a city;
Five sovereign fingers taxed the breath,
Doubled the globe of dead and halved a country;
These five kings did a king to death.

The mighty hand leads to a sloping shoulder,
The finger joints are cramped with chalk;
A goose's quill has put an end to murder
That put an end to talk.

The hand that signed the treaty bred a fever,
And famine grew, and locusts came;
Great is the hand the holds dominion over
Man by a scribbled name.

The five kings count the dead but do not soften
The crusted wound nor pat the brow;
A hand rules pity as a hand rules heaven;
Hands have no tears to flow.