I would recommend Alamut, by Vladimir Bartol. I hate recommending works, because I think most people find things so differently. I've seen enough people sleep through films to realize that we have our times for works. After all, I slept through Lawrence of Arabia, The Godfather, and a number of other works as an adolescent.
But-- My point is that Bartol is interesting where he has Hassan-i-Sabbah, leader of the Assassin cult, ponder his own weakness in the world. In a few brief paragraphs, he muses how easily his servants might kill him. And then Hassan moves on, sprinting toward his plan's end. I like the book. Its questioning of lies and truth, illusion and faith, love and heartlessness, makes it timeless. I'd recommend it. It was a sad read in parts, puzzling in parts, frustrating at others. A little bit of Near East knowledge helps, I suppose.
And I also read The World that Never Was. And it was good, as well, if just as fantastic and a little sad. Some readers complained about his strong use of narrative to thread the story together, but I think Butterworth succeeded in tone and story as much as he could have. He tracks dozens of figures through four decades of political history and comes to the round point of the defeat of the first generation of anarchism after infighting, betrayal from the left, and infiltration of its ranks by agents provocateurs of the established powers. He shows their refuges dry up and their foes claiming their very names, in the case of the Soviet Union and the Maoists, who view themselves as successors or supercessionists of the Communard/anarchist cause. It ends sadly, but there is a sequel, of course, in Anarchist Catalonia. I've already read Orwell's history of that time--and everyone who claims to think about politics should--and I'm looking forward to reading more.
And from IOZ I have a new thought to read Rand. Haven't touched her in a decade. Maybe it's time for me to finally quit my bigotry and get around to reading her. A free or used copy of Atlas Shrugged is in my future. God help me.
Tuesday, April 24, 2012
Tuesday, April 17, 2012
We All Want to Change the World
It works for me.
But, but, but..!
It works for me.
But don't you see? Don't you see how you depend upon-- Don't you see how there's still the-- Don't you see?
Works for me!
But, but, but--
Sometimes "works for me" is all you've got. Maybe some see it as all there'll ever be, but sometimes it's all you've got.
So let the world rest 'til tomorrow. Let the world alliance of the people who till the land and watch the babies and fish the waters rise.
But until then--
Act as if tomorrow's now. Act as if you're a brother or sister of all others. Act as if--no, live like it. Because it's true. Or if nothing is true, then live like it because it's a pleasant way to be. Infinitely better to be deceived and lied about and hurt and wounded than to do the same first. No need to be some penitent or some sacrifice. Defy, grit your teeth, growl. And refuse to join in their game.
Maybe in this world we'll first appear as fools, outmaneuvered at times, surprised at others. Maybe we'll grow tough and defend ourselves in new ways. Maybe we'll still be hurt. Maybe we'll be killed, maybe they'll take our babies away through deceit and law, maybe they'll denude us and rob us and say we're monsters but that doesn't mean we'd be any less guilty were we to behave like others, were we to play at petty Caesars and treat our fellows like subjects, shaking the weak to their knees so that bigger men than us can keep sweeping up.
I've been lied about, and I've been attacked, and it's gotten dirty, and it's gotten sad, but I have only to tell myself and hear my dear ones tell me that the truth will out and the right will win. And I whisper to myself that they may be wrong and I may be wrong and the evil of the punitive will win, that the cruelty of the self-righteous will see me broken and weeping, having lost everything.
But I will not lie. And I will not cudgel or persecute. I will not do what's been done to me. I vowed that long ago about my father, and I never thought I'd have to swear it again. But like I've said, the state springs eternal, and it's in us, and the one who shares your bed can be your tyrant in a month. And you'll wonder if you shouldn't treat them like you've been treated.
But you decide to play it smart but play it right. Right, wrong... I don't even believe in these in the cosmic sense. But what works for me works for me. I want to go back to singing of the world. I want to go back to talking about the fraternity of man. But right now, all I've got is what works for me. It's not honor. It's not justice. It's not benignity, either. It's just what makes me able to face me, what makes me feel that our children will still be able to face me, year after year. It's all I've got, and it's hard to keep it. I'd like to act like a dog, but this works for me, and that's it. No truth bigger than that.
I hope I never judge a man for the smallness of his vision again. I've not known until now exactly how small are the traps through which some of us have squeezed.
But, but, but..!
It works for me.
But don't you see? Don't you see how you depend upon-- Don't you see how there's still the-- Don't you see?
Works for me!
But, but, but--
Sometimes "works for me" is all you've got. Maybe some see it as all there'll ever be, but sometimes it's all you've got.
So let the world rest 'til tomorrow. Let the world alliance of the people who till the land and watch the babies and fish the waters rise.
But until then--
Act as if tomorrow's now. Act as if you're a brother or sister of all others. Act as if--no, live like it. Because it's true. Or if nothing is true, then live like it because it's a pleasant way to be. Infinitely better to be deceived and lied about and hurt and wounded than to do the same first. No need to be some penitent or some sacrifice. Defy, grit your teeth, growl. And refuse to join in their game.
Maybe in this world we'll first appear as fools, outmaneuvered at times, surprised at others. Maybe we'll grow tough and defend ourselves in new ways. Maybe we'll still be hurt. Maybe we'll be killed, maybe they'll take our babies away through deceit and law, maybe they'll denude us and rob us and say we're monsters but that doesn't mean we'd be any less guilty were we to behave like others, were we to play at petty Caesars and treat our fellows like subjects, shaking the weak to their knees so that bigger men than us can keep sweeping up.
I've been lied about, and I've been attacked, and it's gotten dirty, and it's gotten sad, but I have only to tell myself and hear my dear ones tell me that the truth will out and the right will win. And I whisper to myself that they may be wrong and I may be wrong and the evil of the punitive will win, that the cruelty of the self-righteous will see me broken and weeping, having lost everything.
But I will not lie. And I will not cudgel or persecute. I will not do what's been done to me. I vowed that long ago about my father, and I never thought I'd have to swear it again. But like I've said, the state springs eternal, and it's in us, and the one who shares your bed can be your tyrant in a month. And you'll wonder if you shouldn't treat them like you've been treated.
But you decide to play it smart but play it right. Right, wrong... I don't even believe in these in the cosmic sense. But what works for me works for me. I want to go back to singing of the world. I want to go back to talking about the fraternity of man. But right now, all I've got is what works for me. It's not honor. It's not justice. It's not benignity, either. It's just what makes me able to face me, what makes me feel that our children will still be able to face me, year after year. It's all I've got, and it's hard to keep it. I'd like to act like a dog, but this works for me, and that's it. No truth bigger than that.
I hope I never judge a man for the smallness of his vision again. I've not known until now exactly how small are the traps through which some of us have squeezed.
Saturday, April 7, 2012
Pope Springs Eternal
IOZ sez:
It is my thought, as I said there, that statelessness is not the problem. It is the preservation of statelessness that is the problem. Leadership is in us. Rule is in us. All it takes is one bad harvest, one angry leader, one whatever-the-fuck in the next village, to make people consider theft of the idyllic fishing town. After all, there is no morality. Why not take what one does not want to make, or cannot make, for oneself? Consider human history. Have we really changed?
So the village gets dominated or fights off its enemies. And what of the defensive fighters? Say, in a generation or in ten minutes, they decide to levy tax in order to feed themselves? After all, they say, we are focused on preserving the lives and livelihoods of others.
Anarchists better think about this shit. Otherwise we're amateurs, pipe-dreamers, and fools.
The state is not a static thing. It is a process. It is born through human interaction.
Even those of us adhering to the view that this would be a welcome and desirable end tend to wax modestly apocalyptic about the period of transition. And yet, one wonders: would it actually be so? What if all the congresscritters in the world, the generals and general secretaries and unpaid unofficial advisers and MPs and CEOs and chiefs of police got ganked up in some kind of reverse rapture tomorrow? How long would it take the rest of humanity to notice that it was supposed to be helpless without the offices they all occupy
It is my thought, as I said there, that statelessness is not the problem. It is the preservation of statelessness that is the problem. Leadership is in us. Rule is in us. All it takes is one bad harvest, one angry leader, one whatever-the-fuck in the next village, to make people consider theft of the idyllic fishing town. After all, there is no morality. Why not take what one does not want to make, or cannot make, for oneself? Consider human history. Have we really changed?
So the village gets dominated or fights off its enemies. And what of the defensive fighters? Say, in a generation or in ten minutes, they decide to levy tax in order to feed themselves? After all, they say, we are focused on preserving the lives and livelihoods of others.
Anarchists better think about this shit. Otherwise we're amateurs, pipe-dreamers, and fools.
The state is not a static thing. It is a process. It is born through human interaction.
Thursday, April 5, 2012
A Silly Little Saying
It rhymes in Turkish, my grandfather told me, but it'll have to do in English. He never taught us his mother tongue.
"Call the bear 'uncle' until you have crossed the bridge."
"Call the bear 'uncle' until you have crossed the bridge."
Friday, March 30, 2012
Reality you make, reality you don't.
Everything is socialized in that you perceive things the way you're told. Menstruation or puberty are facts. They just are. But they get bundled with a number of stories, narratives of shoulds and shouldn'ts, which is to say morals and values. The physical will go on no matter what you do. The valuation is where the anarchist strikes, unless it's made by the individual.
So you happen to live in an area. That just is, unless you move. And the movement is, and the notion of emigration/immigration are, but one is a material act. The other is one that lives in fiction.
I am a citizen because I accept the fiction, play the game, of fealty or affiliation or whatever. You can do this with knowledge or you can accept it passively. Assuming it's true in the way gravity is, or genetics.
But we ought to think about what we can change, and there's so much. In my opinion, racism is infinitely more impactful than the nature and origin of your blood. In my opinion, I can't unmake the cripple and the ill, but I sure as hell can ask why buildings don't allow entrance to people who are maimed or deformed or somehow different in their physicality.
Nature is not the enemy anymore. We live as if we are cavemen, frightened of brush fires and predatory beasts. But we are the deluge, we are the storm, we are the predators and the prey.
I'm tired of us forgetting what we made and what we haven't. I'm tired of the confusion. I'm tired of people saying that this or that are the way things are when they plainly are not. If you take away human effort, the buildings will crumble and the pests will breed. That's nature. If you remove the hands that maintain the way things "are," how much of it will fall away?
We are truly our own gods now. It is our will, your will, that we see all around us. We live in artifice that was made. What is so hard to understand about the fact that it is maintained by effort and, with one good hobby or a fuck, those hands will find other activities and we can, quite literally, remake the world over night? Humanity is self-made and refuses to admit it. Better to chalk it up to God or nature or history or fate. Anything but accept responsibility that we have made this hell, and remade it many times.
So you happen to live in an area. That just is, unless you move. And the movement is, and the notion of emigration/immigration are, but one is a material act. The other is one that lives in fiction.
I am a citizen because I accept the fiction, play the game, of fealty or affiliation or whatever. You can do this with knowledge or you can accept it passively. Assuming it's true in the way gravity is, or genetics.
But we ought to think about what we can change, and there's so much. In my opinion, racism is infinitely more impactful than the nature and origin of your blood. In my opinion, I can't unmake the cripple and the ill, but I sure as hell can ask why buildings don't allow entrance to people who are maimed or deformed or somehow different in their physicality.
Nature is not the enemy anymore. We live as if we are cavemen, frightened of brush fires and predatory beasts. But we are the deluge, we are the storm, we are the predators and the prey.
I'm tired of us forgetting what we made and what we haven't. I'm tired of the confusion. I'm tired of people saying that this or that are the way things are when they plainly are not. If you take away human effort, the buildings will crumble and the pests will breed. That's nature. If you remove the hands that maintain the way things "are," how much of it will fall away?
We are truly our own gods now. It is our will, your will, that we see all around us. We live in artifice that was made. What is so hard to understand about the fact that it is maintained by effort and, with one good hobby or a fuck, those hands will find other activities and we can, quite literally, remake the world over night? Humanity is self-made and refuses to admit it. Better to chalk it up to God or nature or history or fate. Anything but accept responsibility that we have made this hell, and remade it many times.
Thursday, March 29, 2012
Out of Wisdom
I don't have much to say to the world. I've been whittled down to the basic individual interactions. Is that where I'm supposed to be? No such thing. That's just where I am at the moment.
I've known enough people that younger people sometimes find me funnily, almost spookily knowledgeable. "Stop being so insightful!" my friend's sister--both are roommates--says with a laugh. She's 21. I find it funny in that grim, poker-faced way. I'm not insightful. I've just read this book too many times.
But others have lived more, outlived me by decades. Have they just not paid attention, or been too deep in the bottle, to notice what I observe about their ancient cycle of pain, indulgence, guilt, and oblivion? This isn't insight. Wisdom's all around me, in the moves people make, in the ways their lives play out in such familiar patterns. What intelligence is behind me knowing that her mother will speak Urdu, but a Hindi speaker will do? That's knowledge. I don't feel smart. I don't feel witty. It's all replay. I know my brain too well. You don't act surprised at the player producing music from its files--or, for antiques like me, a disc (let alone a cassette or cartridge!). You don't act surprised at the gun firing bullets concealed in its clip. That's all I'm doing. Spitting out. It's not intelligence.
Dealing with authorities makes me familiar with them, their needs for respect, flattery, and obeisance. Dealing with the weak makes me familiar with the way to walk, the way to talk, the way that at the end of a session you can throw out a curse and they'll think you're an okay guy, not this little stuff-shirt shit. I pretend to be way more composed than I am.
"You! Are you white?"
"Mostly, sir."
"You must be some kind of Native American. You don't look prejudiced to me."
"No, sir. My people are all invaders. Mostly white, and Turk."
"Ottoman Turks! Like Genghis Khan, now he was some fighter."
"Some of my people followed him, yes. But if you'll excuse me..."
"Oh, I'm sorry about that--"
"Nothing to apologize for, sir. We're all here to talk."
Didn't know his story at the time. Came off as grandiose, but then a lot checked out. I've let myself be surprised quite a bit. It's good to let others have some space to define themselves. But that's not decency or intellect. That's just experience.
And I still find myself out of my league when it comes to certain fields. Like dealing with people I don't know but want to, and people I thought I knew who have become very, very different, or simply changed their presentation. Dropped their masks.
Best I've come up with is the mask of a calm face. I had a genuinely blissful, round face when I was a baby. Then came the desperate eyes of the clever, rail-thin teen. Now I'm a slightly narrow-eyed white with a beard and the face like some monk. My brow furrows at times, but I try to let my eyes go cool. Pictures of my old country grandfather, sitting there, open to the world but inscrutable if you lacked the comfort to ask him his thoughts. I can really appear profound and still like a calm, deep lake. There is no conclusion to any of this. Stillness, solitude, has become natural to me. It is an attempt to balance out the change in my life, I rationalize. But a part of me is realizing that I'm becoming more me everyday. There are some parts of my life that will only return, however, when I'm past the attacks and the danger and the crisis. I don't know where this is going. I'm trying to be okay with that. Looking forward to a life that's not so full of calming self-talk. I'm tired of soothing myself like I've had to do for my children, like I had to do for my brother after the beatings my father would give him. I want to cheer, but there is no joy. Shit is too serious to laugh, too dangerous still to cry.
I've known enough people that younger people sometimes find me funnily, almost spookily knowledgeable. "Stop being so insightful!" my friend's sister--both are roommates--says with a laugh. She's 21. I find it funny in that grim, poker-faced way. I'm not insightful. I've just read this book too many times.
But others have lived more, outlived me by decades. Have they just not paid attention, or been too deep in the bottle, to notice what I observe about their ancient cycle of pain, indulgence, guilt, and oblivion? This isn't insight. Wisdom's all around me, in the moves people make, in the ways their lives play out in such familiar patterns. What intelligence is behind me knowing that her mother will speak Urdu, but a Hindi speaker will do? That's knowledge. I don't feel smart. I don't feel witty. It's all replay. I know my brain too well. You don't act surprised at the player producing music from its files--or, for antiques like me, a disc (let alone a cassette or cartridge!). You don't act surprised at the gun firing bullets concealed in its clip. That's all I'm doing. Spitting out. It's not intelligence.
Dealing with authorities makes me familiar with them, their needs for respect, flattery, and obeisance. Dealing with the weak makes me familiar with the way to walk, the way to talk, the way that at the end of a session you can throw out a curse and they'll think you're an okay guy, not this little stuff-shirt shit. I pretend to be way more composed than I am.
"You! Are you white?"
"Mostly, sir."
"You must be some kind of Native American. You don't look prejudiced to me."
"No, sir. My people are all invaders. Mostly white, and Turk."
"Ottoman Turks! Like Genghis Khan, now he was some fighter."
"Some of my people followed him, yes. But if you'll excuse me..."
"Oh, I'm sorry about that--"
"Nothing to apologize for, sir. We're all here to talk."
Didn't know his story at the time. Came off as grandiose, but then a lot checked out. I've let myself be surprised quite a bit. It's good to let others have some space to define themselves. But that's not decency or intellect. That's just experience.
And I still find myself out of my league when it comes to certain fields. Like dealing with people I don't know but want to, and people I thought I knew who have become very, very different, or simply changed their presentation. Dropped their masks.
Best I've come up with is the mask of a calm face. I had a genuinely blissful, round face when I was a baby. Then came the desperate eyes of the clever, rail-thin teen. Now I'm a slightly narrow-eyed white with a beard and the face like some monk. My brow furrows at times, but I try to let my eyes go cool. Pictures of my old country grandfather, sitting there, open to the world but inscrutable if you lacked the comfort to ask him his thoughts. I can really appear profound and still like a calm, deep lake. There is no conclusion to any of this. Stillness, solitude, has become natural to me. It is an attempt to balance out the change in my life, I rationalize. But a part of me is realizing that I'm becoming more me everyday. There are some parts of my life that will only return, however, when I'm past the attacks and the danger and the crisis. I don't know where this is going. I'm trying to be okay with that. Looking forward to a life that's not so full of calming self-talk. I'm tired of soothing myself like I've had to do for my children, like I had to do for my brother after the beatings my father would give him. I want to cheer, but there is no joy. Shit is too serious to laugh, too dangerous still to cry.
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