My name is Peeping Tom—
caught in the little drama
of that insular open-air museum
unwilling to admit it punches above its weight,
I can’t imagine calling myself anything else
after a few weeks of reading The Letters
of Lytton Strachey—and yet even a subaltern
yearns to be fond of something
beyond the mathematics of conduct,
where to simply live would be nothing
but stating the obvious (we try to warm ourselves
by the soul’s residual heat, only such a fireplace is no more—
we once replaced it with a radiator).
But if life has no inherent meaning,
it’s up to me to invent one for myself—
a cup of chilled hemlockshake should suffice.
More words to ponder at maciejmodzelewski.com
hidden pilcrow 
What strikes me is how both the Godiva legend and Strachey’s letters expose the theater of morality. In the myth, Godiva becomes the icon of virtue while Tom bears the entire weight of human curiosity, as though isolating vice into a single figure preserves the illusion of collective purity. Strachey, with his ironic wit, spent his life dismantling this very hypocrisy, the mathematics of conduct that elevates performance over truth. Perhaps being a Peeping Tom in Strachey’s sense isn’t about voyeurism at all, but about seeing through the staged virtue society insists on.
If an actual noblewoman rode nude through a medieval town, it’s hard to believe only Tom peeked. I did an assignment on Tom the tailor and defended him all through that assignment 20-sum years ago 🙃
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And I’m sure it was quite something 😉
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