CLOSE TO YOU!

There’s a market stall in East London which sits at the far end of the market, a little way from the other stalls, caught by the wind that passes down a side street and flaps the tarpaulin that just about shelters the stall from the rain.
There’s not much there, just a few handbags laid out on a plastic sheet. The old man behind the stall sits and stares down at the plastic and will not meet your eye. But the bags look quite like some very expensive ones, and the price handwritten in pencil on little white cards is very cheap, so every now and then someone will buy one. It might even be you, and you’ll be pleased about the bargain that you have found, and wonder how the old man makes a living.
What you don’t realise is that if you cut the bag to pieces and peeled off the lining from the outside you’d see that the side of the lining that you don’t see is covered with words and symbols of power, and every day you carry the bag close to you those words and symbols feed on you. You will grow paler and weaker and fade, and that is how the old man makes a living, because he sells what the bag steals from you to those who want to live on and on and on.