It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander when you were in any public place or within range of a telescreen. The smallest thing could give you away. A nervous tic, an unconscious look of anxiety, a habit of muttering to yourself— anything that carried with it the suggestion of abnormality, of having something to hide. In any case, to wear an improper expression on your face was itself a punishable offense. There was even a word for it in Newspeak: Facecrime.
Quotation from George Orwell, 1984
Posts Tagged ‘Peeping’
2 items.
15 Comments
The cost of hiding is the value of the alternative
by Seraphine Khorana on March 7th, 2009Posted In: Comics
apropos of nothing: off the lobby is a sauna
with a crack and my face pressed to it.
the front desk girl is putting drops in the eyes of another guest.
the sauna’s yellow light is burning my shoulder
and i should slip into the courtesy robe, and close my pores.
the bed is already turned down in my room.
but a lady carrying a dog puts down an empty wine glass
and i’m sure her dog is looking at me and licking its nose.
poem i wrote, on my birthday