Allegra Harvard
Lemming Story
Forcing prematurely, very confusedly, and figuring something skewed: suddenly, the star spangled banner. Itself, it has ignited in flames! And from its glory there became a horrible truth derivative of liberty and force and permanent shame, followed by respect and a restorative admiration, forced upon us like a woman in the night. Narcissus enters — disillusioned and leading a horrendous number of people like lemmings off a cliff. (whispered with direct eye contact at reader: In this scenario, I am the sole lemming whome simultaneously started the mass suicide— that being Narcissus, who is now god— but I am also the lemming who doesn’t understand why all of its family and friends and playmates are jumping off of a cliff, en masse. On top of this, I have become the woman in the night and die very often):
The book is called “The Lemming Condition” by Alan Arkin. My fifth-grade teacher read it to our class incrementally during lunch periods halfway through the school year. It was sad and made all of us eleven or so year olds think about mass death and suicide, and genocides by the hands of god. It was the same teacher which priorly and starting on the first day of school, told us to write down something we never thought we would be able to do on a piece of paper and to not show it to anyone. After that he told us to follow him outside, where he dug a hole in the school yard, and we were to watch him dig the hole in the school yard. Then he told us to put the pieces of paper in the hole. And then he set the hole on fire and filled it with dirt.