1.

A woman screams on the corner. It’s Tuesday. People cross the street to avoid passing near her. This is not a metaphor. It’s Tuesday and a woman screams on the corner. Cassandra, some think, but they don’t stop. Cassandra is the name we give to screams that bother us before breakfast.

2.

Prophecy differs from weather forecasting in the following way: weather forecasting can be wrong, and nobody dies because of it. Prophecy is always right, but everyone dies anyway. The difference between them is discomfort. Meteorology is comfortable because it is about clouds. Prophecy is uncomfortable because it is about us.

3.

Apollo spat in her mouth. This is an important technical detail. A god’s spit in a woman’s mouth transforms truth into noise. Divine saliva is an excellent acoustic insulator. It works from the inside out: you hear yourself perfectly, others hear only noise.

4.

There’s a science to this. It’s called the acoustics of disbelief. It works like this: if a woman screams « fire » in a burning theater and nobody gets up, the problem isn’t the fire, nor the scream. The problem is the woman. Or rather: the problem is that it’s a woman. If it were a man he would shout “conflagration” and use more technical words. That gives credibility. Technical words burn more slowly.

5.

Cassandra belongs to a specific professional group: those who see the obvious before others. This group also includes children who say the emperor has no clothes, climate scientists, and people who read the Terms and Conditions. They all have something in common: they’re annoying. Seeing the obvious before others is the most effective way to be excluded from parties.

6.

A practical exercise: tell your boss the company will go bankrupt in six months. Present data. Show graphs. Be precise. You’ll be fired in three weeks. Not because you’re wrong. But because you’re Cassandra. And Cassandra, even when she’s right, is always fired. It’s an economic law: the messenger of the apocalypse isn’t profitable in the short term.

7.

Cassandra’s curse isn’t not being believed. That would be bearable. Cassandra’s curse is continuing to speak knowing she won’t be believed. It’s this repetition that kills. Saying “it’s going to rain” when you’re already soaked. Saying “the boat is sinking” when you already have water up to your knees. The curse isn’t others’ deafness. The curse is the inability to stop speaking.

8.

There’s an instruction manual for being Cassandra. Rule number one: don’t stop screaming. Rule number two: get used to the echo. Rule number three: the echo is yourself. Rule number four: forget rule number one, there’s no throat that can take it.

9.

On social media, we’re all Cassandras and we’re all Trojans. We publish prophecies, we scroll past them. The algorithm is the new Apollo. It too spits in the mouth of those who speak. That spit is called “impressions”. Seventeen impressions, three hundred and forty-two impressions. The apocalypse has likes but no credibility.

10.

Serious question: if Cassandra had Twitter, how many followers would she have? Answer: many. More serious question: would that change anything? Answer: no. Visibility isn’t the opposite of invisibility. Visibility is just a more sophisticated form of not being seen. You can have a million views and remain invisible. This is called: the twenty-first century.

11.

There’s a difference between “not being heard” and “being heard but not believed”. The first is a question of volume. The second is a question of authority. Cassandra doesn’t need a megaphone. Cassandra needs a suit. A man’s suit, preferably. And perhaps a tie. Ties give credibility to catastrophes. It’s basic anthropology.

12.

Meanwhile, Troy burns. This is important: Troy is always burning. Troy is always burning because someone is always screaming that Troy is going to burn and we’re always too busy not believing to put out the fire. The real Trojan horse isn’t at the door. The real Trojan horse is our capacity to ignore the obvious until the obvious kills us.

13.

A theory: Cassandra isn’t a person. Cassandra is a function. The Cassandra function. Input: inconvenient truth. Output: social ostracism. It’s pure mathematics. You can substitute the variable “Cassandra” with any name: Rachel Carson, Greta Thunberg, that friend of yours who said the guy was an idiot three months before he broke your heart. The function remains. The results are consistent.

14.

Gaslighting is the sophisticated cousin of disbelief. It works like this: first they don’t believe you. Then they convince you there’s nothing to believe. Third stage: you manage to convince yourself that you made it all up. Fourth stage: you apologize. Fifth stage: Troy burns and you think it was your fault for having seen the fire. Gaslighting is the contemporary Apollo. It no longer spits in the mouth. It’s more elegant. It spits directly into the brain.

15.

There’s a word for this in German. Probably. The Germans always have a word. Something like Wahrheitsunglaubwürdigkeitssyndrom. Truth incredibility syndrome. Or perhaps: Kassandrakomplex. It sounds good. It sounds scientific. We can write articles about it. Hold conferences. Meanwhile, Troy continues to burn. But now we have a German name for the fire. That’s progress.

16.

They ask Cassandra if she can be happy. It’s a stupid question, but they ask it. The answer: no. But this isn’t necessarily bad. Happiness is overrated. Happiness is for those who don’t see horses at the door. For those who can sleep while the world burns. Happiness is a luxury of those who live in ignorance.

Cassandra doesn’t have happiness. Cassandra has accuracy. And accuracy, when everything collapses, is its own kind of consolation. Being right while dying isn’t a great victory. But it’s the only one available. It’s a crumb. Cassandra feeds on crumbs.

There’s a perverse joy in that, perhaps. Seeing what you predicted happen. Saying “I warned you” to the void. But it’s a bitter joy, tasting of divine spit. It’s not joy. It’s cold revenge. It’s the consolation prize for those who are always right but never heard.

17.

A practical everyday example: you go to the doctor. You say something is wrong. The doctor says you’re nervous. You go back. You say something is really wrong. The doctor says it’s anxiety. You go back again. You’re dying. The doctor says: “How strange, it didn’t seem serious at all”. This is Cassandra’s basic narrative structure. Replace “doctor” with “family”, “boss”, “police”, “system”. The narrative remains. Cassandra always dies in the third act.

18.

Cassandra’s prophecy about the environment is particularly interesting because it’s verifiable in real time. We’re all watching Troy burn. We can measure the temperature of the fire. We have graphs. We have data. And yet there are those who say: “But is it really fire? Isn’t it just excessive heat?” This is the glory of the twenty-first century: we manage to be Trojans even while seeing the flames.

19.

There’s something fundamentally obscene about asking Cassandra to be clearer. “Speak in a way we can understand”, they tell her. But Cassandra has already spoken in every possible way. She’s already screamed. She’s already whispered. She’s already used PowerPoint. She’s already made infographics. The problem isn’t the clarity of the message. The problem is that the message implies change, and change implies discomfort and discomfort is unacceptable. We prefer death to discomfort. This is called: civilization.

20.

Technical question: what’s the difference between Cassandra and a conspiracy theory? Answer: Cassandra is right. But careful: this is only known afterwards. During the process, both are indistinguishable. They speak of things we don’t want to hear. Both point to culprits. Both predict catastrophes. The fundamental difference between the two: one has data, the other has YouTube. But until a Trojan horse enters, they’re both equally irritating.

21.

A thought about the body: Cassandra has a body. This is important because bodies have gender, have color, have class. A white male body with money can say exactly the same thing as Cassandra and be called “visionary”. Cassandra’s body says the same thing and is called “hysterical”. The prophecy doesn’t change. Only the body that enunciates it changes. And Cassandra’s body is always the wrong body.

22.

About repetition: Cassandra repeats herself. She has to repeat herself. Because the first time didn’t work. Nor the second. Nor the twenty-third. But there’s something radical about repetition. Repeating is refusing to forget. Repeating is denying the comfort of silence. Repeating is a form of violence against order. Order prefers silence. Order needs Cassandra to shut up. Cassandra’s repetition is, therefore, revolutionary. Even if it’s useless. Especially because it’s useless.

23.

An imagination exercise: imagine that this time they believe Cassandra. What do they do? Stop the horse from entering? Close the doors? Reinforce the walls? Or do they become paralyzed by fear? There’s an interesting hypothesis: we don’t believe Cassandra because believing would imply acting and acting is more frightening than dying. We prefer to die surprised than to live prepared. It’s basic psychology. Or laziness. The boundary is thin.

24.

Contemporary Cassandra works in specific areas: climate change, epidemiology, human rights, investigative journalism. She also works at supermarket checkouts and says “this won’t end well” when she sees how they treat employees. She works in hospitals and says “the system is collapsing” before the collapse. She works in schools and says “this will produce a generation of functional illiterates” before it produces them. Cassandra is everywhere. We just don’t see her. Or we see her and call her “pessimistic”.

25.

A note on pessimism: calling someone who predicts catastrophes a pessimist is fascinating. It implies the catastrophe exists only in the head of whoever predicts it. It implies reality is negotiable. It implies that if we don’t talk about the horse, the horse disappears. This is our secret weapon against Cassandra: optimism. Optimism kills more people than war. But you die smiling. It’s more photogenic.

26.

Can prophecies of misfortune be healing? Provisional answer: if they’re heard, yes. If they’re not heard, they’re just misfortune. Healing implies change. It implies hearing the diagnosis and taking the medicine. But we want the cure without the medicine. We want Troy not to burn but we don’t want to refuse the horse. We want Cassandra to shut up but we don’t want her to be wrong. This is called: having it all.

27.

Here’s a final irony: Cassandra enters history. We all know her name. We know her story. We hold academic calls about her. But we don’t believe her. Nor those who come after her. We’ve transformed Cassandra into a symbol and continue to ignore the real Cassandras. It’s our specialty: honoring the dead, silencing the living. We make statues of prophets. But only after we kill them.

28.

Final instruction: if you’re Cassandra, continue. Not because it will work. But because it’s your job. Someone has to foresee the horse. Someone has to scream. Even if nobody listens. Especially because nobody listens. Your function isn’t to save Troy. Your function is to be right. And being right, in a civilization that dies of its own stupidity, is the purest form of revenge. It’s not joy. But it’s something.

29.

Last note: this text has about fifteen thousand characters. It was written for a call about Cassandra. It probably won’t be accepted. It’s too fragmentary. Too direct. Too Cassandra. But here it is. Screaming into the void. As it should be.

Troy burns. It always burned. It will always burn. The only thing that changes is the quality of the silence before the fire.