Until the Enlightenment, revolution meant circularity. A revolution was the motion of a planet, on itself or around something. Then, the orbit broke and stretched and became a line on which men could walk. Revolution became forward movement, progress progress progress. Some disagreed. Revolution is still a circle, they screamed. François-Renè de Chateaubriand, who lived through the French Revolution and through the Terror that followed accused revolutionaries of being as authoritarian as the king that preceded them. He accused them of walking in a circle. Koselleck, a scholar of historical semantic reflected on this phrase by Robespierre:“La moité de la révolution du monde est déjà faite; l’autre moité doit s’accomplir.” There is a naturalistic metaphor, Koselleck thought: if half of the World is in the light, the other half is in the dark. Koselleck then goes on to try to define revolution as a historical term, but when he talks of Robespierre he’s asking a question: if half of the world is always in the dark, if revolution is in fact a circular motion, then why bother?
Everybody stole something from the city. It’s still dark and couples of sleepy teenagers hold traffic islands from the two sides while groups move bins and someone balances a pile of empty fruit boxes. The school is on top of a hill, somebody is panting, somebody stops for a cigarette break on the way. This weird caravan moves slowly, nobody speaks. They get to the gate, the garden behind is not lighted, it looks uncanny. They know only few hours ago they were sitting around there, chatting, confabulating, making decisions. Now the garden seems unexplored, foreign. There is a little chatter, and for some reason, everybody is almost whispering, everybody tries to be as quiet as they can and while they point and say “a little to the left” or “hold this” a small weird barricade of bins, fruit cans and traffic islands appears. They all sit in front of it. The gate will stay closed.
Yesterday, as they got out of school, air was electric. The mother of a girl from 11th grade waited for her at the gate with a car. She was on the verge of tears. Groups of students waited around after the bell rang, they chatted, kind of agitated, kind of angry. A week ago, they had gotten to know that a girl filed for sexual assaults against her math teacher. She had been missing from school for a couple of weeks then and her friends had gotten worried. Now they felt stupid, he had always been a bit too close, a bit too chatty. Today, the director had called for an assembly. The teacher had been missing since the report was filed and they expected the assembly to be about him leaving permanently. Instead, he was sitting right next to the principal on the stage. Everybody was agitated, they sat down. The director gave a long speech about the teacher being a long-standing employee, an excellent professional, about the benefit of the doubt. “Given all of this, he will continue teaching until there is proof of the accusation towards him. We have arranged for the student reporting to continue her education from home.”When they exit, the air is tense. As they talk at the end of the school day, a group has an idea. If she can not come to school, nobody can come to school.
The sun has come up, the garden, behind the gate, now looks as usual, green trees full of inscriptions, benches with gum attached on the bottom, small driveways. Now the students talk louder, somebody brought a thermos full of coffee and they are passing it around, everybody holding it in the gloved hands to get some warmth. It’s just 20 of them, somebody is starting to chat, talking about a new club that opened, a dress they wanna buy, how their mom got mad, the test they have next week. It's 8 a.m., students start to get to the gate, they first look confused. Then they look at the banner hanging on the gate. ”If she cannot come, we cannot go”. They start to sit, one next to the other, on the ground.At 8.30 the director shows up. He gets in front of the gate with the car and when he sees the scene his face morphs. He raises his eyebrows, he opens his mouth, his eyes widen. He honks. The students look at each other, then they burst into laughter. He gets out of the car, he stomps his feet. Before talking, he tries to take a deep breath:” So, who organized it?”Nobody says anything.
It’s 5 p.m., the sun is going down and everybody is getting tired and cold. A terrible techno music playlist is blasting, a few people are reading, a group is playing cards and every now and then somebody screams about someone else cheating. Two friends are sleeping lying on each other’s shoulders, the back on the barricade. A couple is sitting together, he shows her something on his phone, she laughs. In the morning a couple of journalists came, the director was still there, he comically almost ran towards them, started talking about disorder and about fixing the problem as soon as possible, about the mayor not having to worry and nobody having to worry, everything is under control. One of the journalists held a camera that covered his face, he looked like a weird giant insect. He zoomed in on the students, on the backpacks, on the banner and the lens made this weird mechanic sound. Now the director has been missing for a couple of hours and the journalists left, everything seems calm and somebody wonders if it’s a good idea to go get some coffee or tea for everyone. Just as they are thinking that, a couple of men walk towards the gate, they stop a few meters before. They seem to be talking on the phone with someone.
It’s 7 p.m., it’s a winter day and the sun is setting. Everybody is freezing when the police approach. It’s five or six cars and the the policemen are dressed as if they were going to war. They have shields and helmets and arms. One girl, who is sitting right by the gate, laughs to herself. They look like rollie pollies that could close on themselves every moment. One of them gets a megaphone and from only 5 meters away from the students screams that they have to leave, otherwise, he says “We’ll have to remove you”. The students look at each other, nobody moves. The policemen, with their shields and helmets and arms, take one student at a time, somebody screams, somebody kicks, they take everyone’s name, they threaten fines and trials. They undo the barricade, they move the traffic islands and the bins and the fruit boxes. When dark comes back to the garden, the space in front of the gate is empty.
A hydrothermal vent is a fissure on the ocean bed from which heated water discharges. They can be in places relatively near the surfaces but even in the abyss, at the bottom of trenches.A lot of the sea is completely dark. Cause it’s dark, it’s also empty. Hydrothermal vents create energy, their water has been heated by geological processes, and some creatures, the chemotrophs, can use that energy to survive. The energy of the chemotrophs, a crew of bacteria and archaea, allows a variety of other animals can survive. So, at the very bottom of the ocean, in the dark, small ecosystems made of bacteria and shrimps and giant blue worms are born: the islands of life.
The day after the school opens like every other day, the students get there in full daylight, the garden looks familiar again and everything is running smoothly. Except, when the director walks into his office, three girls are waiting for him, they all want to talk about math class.