GENUINE BRICOLEUR Issue #6 May 17, 2007 PROSE:
When it Counts Maybe he wasn’t really a man. That didn’t matter, one day he would be—when it counted. When that time came he would be wearing his best suit, his second best tie, a pair of shoes that said he was thrifty, but not at a cost to fashion. His hair would be neat and trim. He would not perspire excessively, though just enough to show that he was human under his calm demeanor. He would be slightly more handsome than he was now, his jaw a little more chiseled, his ears slightly more flush with his head. His daringly good looks would be offset by a pair of puppy dog eyes, the kind that make women wet, he thought. Yeah, he would be beautiful, with bulging pecks and a sense of humor other men envied and yet couldn’t help but love. He would be taller—not much taller—he was already quite handsomely tall, but another inch would make him more elegant, more noble, more the man he was inside. When it counted he would recall all his lovers names, and form lyric poems, whose lines all began with a letter of the lovers name, such that viewed vertically the poem said the name of the lover. He would argue the topics of the day when it counted. War, he was against it, but sometimes you just got to do what you have to do. Finance, the prime was much too high, much too high. He would be rich, well, modestly wealthy, with many long term investments so conservatively chosen that it could have been stock in light. He would be a financial wizard. Yes that sounded good; he’d always fancied himself a wizard. He was set on wearing his best suit, but now drawing a cape around the shoulders seemed to make some sense. He would be, after all, a highly accomplished financial wizard. Sequins would be tacky, he thought. He took a sip of water from the fountain. It was lukewarm. No, no, the cape wouldn’t do. He was no conjurer. He was a man of ideas, a beautiful man of ideas. When it counted, everyone turned to him. And when they did, he would be a man. Sharon, the receptionist, bent over to reload the copier. That had made him happy. She had a nice ass. Round, with oomph. Sharon would love him when it counted. –ALM Punctuality, part 1 Early one morning, the bored yet hedonistic and easily intrigued, dune-dwelling Alien was refueling in what Earthlings would call "Space Sand." Space Sand was actually the ingredient that fueled all the Aliens on the planet and kept them alive. Out of the corner of its eye, the Alien saw a dark, cone-shaped silhouette from the Fuel-Nook that the Alien had established in the planetary sand dunes which stretched for what some Earthlings would call "miles". Squinting, the Alien stared listlessly in the direction of the cone-shaped object, momentarily believing it to be a mirage (which could often fool an Alien in the dunes). As it became clear to the Alien that it was not a mirage, the Alien moved closer to the object and picked it up. After thoughtfully examining the contents of the cone-shaped object, the Alien became very excited. It was apparent to the Alien that the object was a Time-Capsule that had been shot into space from China using US missile technology, obtained from Israel. The Alien had yearned to be a time-travelling astronaut and this fortuitous finding of an Earthling Time-Capsule, the Alien surmised, would give it a one-in-a-million chance to pursue its time-travelling astronaut dreams. The Alien knew that the Time-Capsule would enable it to travel back to the time on Earth before global warming, oil and water shortages and the civil unrest that destroyed the planet Earth, and before the surrounding atmosphere became so polluted that no Earthling or Alien could ever make use of the space again. As the Alien opened the Time-Capsule it found a set of directions written in what the Alien's called "Cuneiform," a Space-Watch that kept Universal Standard Time, and a Cell Phone with one number stored in it, the number of the Cheetah. The Alien had heard of "Starbucks." The instructions read that the Space-Watch was included to allow the Alien to remain universally punctual. The instructions explained that the Cheetah kingdom had evolved to the point where Humans had been when the world experienced a violent water shortage and resource war rendering them extinct. The Cheetahs had advanced past human simplicity and conquered time travel merely days after Humans had dehydrated. The Cheetahs survived because the water shortage had not killed them off as quickly. Luckily, the Cheetahs were not as dependent on water due to their innate ability to live in sweltering temperatures for longer intervals of time. Included in the Time-Capsule were directions stating that the Alien would initially be transported to Earth during the time of the Cheetahs' reign and should call the Cheetah on the Cell Phone once the Spacecraft reached Earth. After contact, the Cheetah would take the Alien back to any time in the history of Earth the Alien desired to experience. The directions instructed the Alien to take the keys to an ancient Spacecraft and use the automatic ignition button to start the Spacecraft. The ancient Spacecraft was programmed to function on auto-pilot and transport the Alien directly to the Cheetah, who would be waiting. Therefore, after the Alien pressed the button and boarded the Spacecraft, all that was left to do would be to ride. The directions warned that by invoking the Earthly treasures in the Time-Capsule, the Alien assumed the risk of physical devolution, as the Alien would be traveling back in time. Therefore, the Alien would need to be adaptable to any condition to which it might be exposed. Essentially, by partaking in the activity of time-travel, the Alien was agreeing to risk automatic assumption of human characteristics and thus may need the essential element of human life: water. Wedged in the bottom of the Time-Capsule, the Alien found a hard copy issue of an Internet magazine called "Genuine Bricoleur," with an article by the name of "Breakfast" that the Alien read while he finished up re-fueling on Space-Sand in his Fuel-Nook. The Alien was startled by the article, because as evidenced by the blank space left in the article, it seemed Earthlings had no real definition of "Breakfast." The bored Alien, already aware of the meaning of "Breakfast," yearned to know how it would feel to exist in such a state of blissful ignorance. The emotionless Alien, curious, took the keys and the automatic ignition starter and pressed the button hoping to experience a time where nihilistic and confused Earthlings of the past existed in a conflicted state of existential angst, deep apathy, religion, depression, subjectivism and denial by heavy substance abuse, or use, in their quest to find the meaning of "Breakfast." After a long, bumpy ride, the Spacecraft landed. As the Alien descended from the Spacecraft he began to feel extremely dizzy. The punctual Cheetah was there to meet the Alien as promised by the directions and writings in the Time-Capsule. [to be continued...] –CPB Surviving Reality in Ten Steps: Movement A: The Deconstruction of the Reality of Your Surroundings Like any process, we’re going to have to clear some ground to create the new you that you’ve always wanted to be. You wanted to unlock the universe? Here’s where we start. Step 1: A Mantra—Difference is the Essence of Reality. If you’re coming to this guide you have probably experienced the resistance of the world to the different ways you’ve tried to conceptualize it. The secret to the old maid’s slipperiness is that your conceptions always require a totality such that everything becomes uniform and mappable. When you recite your mantra, clear your mind of its desire for the whole by dissipating all those parts into tiny singularities. This is the first step. Recognize now that essence can only be difference. As such, it cannot be a negation or opposition, but instead is the fundamental mode of being given to things in the world. Step 2: Realize that Identity is the Negation of the World and Yourself If you’re smarter than your average monkey with a stick, you’ve realized that if difference is essence then identity loses its place as a means of grouping objects and others. The same now goes for your own identity. That identity is used for the comparison of like objects as well as the term used to describe your individual self isn’t just a clever linguistic device. Your identity, which we will erase shortly, was a clever method of attempting to individualize yourself through, get this, associations with others! Welcome to the contradiction of your existence. Step 3: Manual Removal of your Physical Identity This is the hard part, but the results are well worth it. Begin by shaving all body hair, and afterwards, proceed with the removal of your skin. The color of your eyes may be bleached by a 50/50 solution of lemon juice and isopropyl alcohol. That burning you feel is the sting of freedom! If you’re worried about your new found nudity, don’t worry, it’ll all grow back. Consider this a symbolic move— “re-birthing” without the silly blankets and pillows. If you’re frightened, pretend those now external fluids are amniotic remnants of your mother’s womb. That’s comforting, right? Removing of genitalia is not necessary; those of you with penises may simply hide them by tucking. This is a learning experience, not self-torture. Movement B: Re-education, or “Everything You Need to Know can be Demonstrated by this Circle” Figure 1, below, is a simple shape you may be familiar with. The men and women responsible for your primary education labeled it a circle. That designation will do just fine. The inside of the circle represents reality and all of its possibilities. The outside space, ignoring all texts and images is your physical and mental experience of reality which I will soon teach you how to determine. The point will be explained later. Once you are comfortable with this diagram, proceed to Step 4. Step 4: Envisioning Reality (Getting the Point) Now that you are comfortable with reality in two dimensions, we will now expand the representation into three dimensional space and the fourth dimension: time. Focus, in your mind, on the point of the circle. This is the origin of reality which, actually, is a spring of eternally (re)created and incredibly powerful water. (Didn’t you know it was the elixir of life?) Each atom of this water is a possibility that can be realized in experience if it escapes the boundaries surrounding it. The atoms each rush at speeds imperceptible to human sense and, therefore, gain enough force to destroy you. Never fear. Your protection lies in the structure surrounding it that controls the flow to your sensual experience, but only if the flow doesn’t overtake it. We’ll have to construct it carefully now, won’t we? Step 5: Comprehending Your Physical Reality The reason you aren’t quite dead yet is that everything comes equipped with a ready made reality barrier. This dome which surrounds and covers the reality flow determines your physical constitution and will be the source of the regrowth of that pesky skin and hair you rid yourself of in Step 3. Your organic self receives its determinations not from the barrier itself, but from the taps created in it by your parents’ genetics (also powered by the spring of reality) which filter the proper atoms to your organism and maintain their structure through a flow that lasts as long as you do. They do, however rust, clog, and eventually become blocked. So take good care of them. All other organisms have these domes as well, to produce the sustenance you need to maintain yourself. (The apple from the tree is a product of the tree’s fountain that provides you with the water you need to help keep your system clean and running.) These too have a tendency to change over time, but c’est la vie. It was their interaction with other organisms that brought them to be the way that they are in the first place. If you think it’s not fair, that’s a grievance that has to be taken up with the fountain, and you know what it’s capable of. Step 6: Your Mental Reality (The World and You) The same relationship of possibility to actuality that gave birth to your physical being is replicated in the mind as the unconscious to consciousness. The reality pool of the unconscious contains possibilities in the form of drives, undetermined impulses that only manifest themselves determinately once they are filtered into consciousness and have efficacy in reality. Your reality filters, some of which are given by early rearing, filter the type of atoms of each flow that emerge giving each impulse a particular flavor as they flow into the mind. That’s right, your dispositions, values, and mental identity are a matter of taste (Hume was being literal, his morality smacked of strawberries). Feeling uncomfortable with your masculinity? Perhaps your impulses need a slight tweak. I recommend checking through that manual of traits (easily read off of society’s manual) to see which atoms may need to stay or go. It is of the utmost importance that you check the filters and even mix and match them now and again to make sure you are where you ought to be. Failure to do so may lead to neuroses that will allow you a greater access to drugs, but not the ones you really want. Step 7: The Flows of Others (Forming a Society) So here’s the hard part. Like you, everyone else has their own set of filters and hoses connecting them to the infinite pool of reality. Those friends of yours with whom you identify have flows much more similar to yours than others. Conflict will arise with others since not everyone wants a mocha, spirituality or their aesthetics with a twist of lime. The balance between stability and instability in the world around you is dependent upon the variation in the flows which find themselves in the external world and the way in which they interact. Don’t take this to mean that peace is stasis. If we all have the same flows, things go well, but the power of the unconscious and possibilities always seem to break through here or there (this is why your past conceptualizations of reality have failed in their attempts at totality). Be prepared for an eternal flux. While a stilled pool seems best, it’s the easiest way to see stagnation and decay. Movement C: Rules for Your New-Found Reality Now that you’ve got a new understanding of reality, you’ve hopefully started turning yourself in to the you that you’ve always wanted to be. Here are a few basic things you should keep in mind. It’s not an exhaustive list, but it can’t be. Existence is a learning process, not merely a dump for useless matter. Step 8: Reality is Activity As demonstrated above, the construction of reality is a movement from the unseen to the visible. All that you see, hear and feel is process. (The natural sciences have demonstrated this, but posited a difference in human beings due to the possession of conscious thought. You know now that this consciousness is simply a filter that allows you more choice than a tree, but that’s about all.) This means that all about you is a coming into and passing out of being. Since this is an active relationship you should follow suit. While you may have previously been merely a conduit for certain determined flows you now know that you have control over which ones you embody. Choose them yourself and choose wisely. Experiment with your connections to the world and see where you feel most at home. That’s the key to that whole happiness phenomenon you keep reading the books to learn the secret of. Everything you do requires work, requires action. This is the meaning of affirmation, what you do is the only verification of who you really are, otherwise you’re just thinking a lot of things that remain dreams and never reality. Step 9: Freedom is only in action Freedom is not just an abstract endowment. While if it has this quality, if it’s relegated here, it’s still an illusion. Your true freedom consists in choosing your determinations and making them manifest in the world around you. Granted, it’s not necessarily unlimited, but that depends on getting everyone else on the train. Hand out the pamphlet, make demonstrations of your freedom and accept the successes and failures that come along with them. The worst that could happen is your destruction. Afraid? Everyone who has dared to test themselves against the gods has died horribly but never with shame. Their stories are contained in myths told to this day. The best your favorite guru Rob Atkins achieved was becoming the punchline of a whole host of jokes. How do you want your life to be remembered? I say, be a hero. If history has taught us anything, it’s that it’s better to burn out than to fade away. Step 10: The Question is not just Why, but How Your friends will ask you, “Why?” Perhaps incessantly. But that’s the way a three-year-old responds. At the end of the day, your reasons will always be your own, and while it is worth looking into your motivations, you have a desire and you should go with it. The real question seems to be: How? The magic of freedom not only means that you have the ability to recognize the presence of possibilities but that you have choice in which ones you choose on the path to your goal. Want to choose a job? Why not take one that’s fulfilling rather than the one that makes the most cash. Sure, law school looks nice, but once your blow your head off in the driver’s seat, you don’t get the joy of owning it anymore. This is the tricky part of freedom, because your actions are all up to you. You are the only one accountable for them. Take this to heart. As a final note, I leave you with the wise words a dwarf once whispered in my ear while I observed a stream dividing itself into an seemingly infinite number of minute ripples at the end of a long night of tripping: “Be cool.” While your normal determined existence has taught you the value of values, you’ve seen the useless destruction and confusion that arises from them. If anything, now that you have reappropriated your reality, you have learned that those values are merely attempts at creating an artificial harmony that is untenable. Instead, remember the flows. You too are one flow in an endless stream of others and that you must find your way in the midst of this infinite flux of reality. Overwhelming, yes. But take a breath, relax, and remember, it only wants you to be. Although it’s dark, and the things that seem the clearest will obscure themselves in a second, this is simply the incalculability of nature. That you’ve appeared in nature at all assures your necessity in the eyes of God, so there’s no reason to fear or be insecure. The only thing you have to do now is be one amongst a whole host of artists constructing existence. Enjoy! –MT Man Alive He entered the world a fully gown man, muscles bulging through his Armani suit, a master of rhetoric, and fluent in Latin. In one hand a shotgun; in the other, a Harvard law degree. While we live in shrouds, he lived in the world– the real one. A world of perfect shapes and free celestial music our filtered eyes and dullard ears will never know, perhaps for our own protection. He feared no animal, vegetable, or mineral. He was fast, exact, and timely on all points of apex and nadir. Popes sought his communion, kings his justice, and women his love. Artist begged for beauty; warriors his power. For this man, unlike all other men, no difference or time or space between decision and result. His intent was consequence. His action absolute. Sadly, he never got over ripping his mother in half at birth, and died a drunken failure. –WBJ Refrigerator Note to the Missus: Got your note. Yes, dear, I agree. Our teenage daughter is just rebelling, which is exactly why we, the authority, just need to crush her. Our darling little angel has grown up to be quite the upstart Che—and you know how great that turned out. I remember when I was that age. Drag racing, sneaking out, foul language. And you, weren’t you a Sophomore Wiccan or something? But our little Trotsky is burning upside down crosses on her forearms with cigarettes, and using her allowance to print a tattoo of a black penis on her chin, spurting semen into her mouth. Now, I’m no racists, you know that. I think Little Miss Thomas Paine choose black so the detailed, throbbing cock would stand out against her increasingly pale, even anemic, face. Little Bunny Jacobin is going beyond words, and I think it’s time for a little drastic action from the central authority. You order the tanks into the protest, and I’ll get to work on the gulags. Love P.S. Pizza tonight? –WBJ The Do Guy Wayne careened into the steep curb of the Do It Up Professional Hair Salon and splashed coffee on the front of his shirt. Shit, he thought, this was a sign. Maybe I should go back home. It was silly to even come here. No. I’ve come too far this time. Today’s the day. As he walked up to the glass door of the salon, Guy Wayne paused and thought about turning around. He peered at his reflection in the glass and swept his hair back trying to imagine the elegant swoop he once wore. He removed his hand and let his unkempt mop fall back over his eyes. A swirling mess. An overgrown thicket. A rat’s nest. Tumbleweed. “No,” he said aloud to reassure himself. “Today is the day.” He pulled open the glass door and the acrid smog of vitriols and pomades hit him instantly. The same framed posters hung on the walls—drawings of women with their features washed out in white leaving only their sinister purple-and-red grimaces. Giant photos of handsome young models sporting various sharp hairstyles mocked him. Glossy covers in the magazine rack reminded him of what he used to be. “Good morning,” the round woman with makeup like a sick kabuki greeted him. “My name’s John Jones. I have a 10 o’clock with Sheila.” Guy Wayne almost stumbled over his words. He hid his eyes behind his bangs and cowered into a slouch. “Well, Mr. Jones, it looks like you got here just in time.” Guy Wayne looked at her fingers and tried to decide what color they were—somewhere between pink and purple. He’d heard the word fuchsia before but didn’t have a clear idea of what color that was. Her nails had a metallic sheen and looked like a Monte Carlo he saw in a rap video once. Guy Wayne didn’t think the tough guys on TV would drive anything fuchsia. “Just follow me and I’ll get you washed up and ready to go.” Guy Wayne followed her plump haunches in stirrup pants down a line of empty barber chairs catching every angle of his hair in the mirrors on the way. She led him into a room tacked with more handsome models and scenic posters with inspirational phrases. A heavy middle-aged woman sat under the hair dryer reading a fashion magazine. There was always a heavy middle-aged woman sitting under the hair dryer every hour of every day in every salon—the lynch-pin of the industry. Another plump blonde replaced Guy Wayne’s escort and sat him down in a chair with his head in an oversized sink. She introduced herself as Brandi with an “I” and pushed up her red short sleeves to reveal thick, shapeless white arms. She asked all the same questions: What do you do for a living? Oh, you don’t say. I bet that’s real exciting. Do you know so-and-so? Is this your first time here? Guy Wayne lied. He said he was a real-estate developer and that he did know the guy and that it was his first time here, all the while nervously scanning the room for Sheila. “Are you cold, Mr. Jones?” asked Brandi. “No, no. I’m fine. I just, uh—I’m fine.” “Well follow me and Sheila will be right with you.” Brandi dipped her cleavage into Guy Wayne’s face once more as she wrapped his head in a terry cloth turban. Guy Wayne drummed his fingers on his thighs and wiggled his knees as he waited for Sheila. The elevator chair made a satisfying huff when he turned clockwise and an impotent squeak when he rotated back. He kept his eyes locked on his head, how his wet hair held back and tickled his collar. He counted the drips from the tendrils of wet hair protruding from under the towel. He watched his head from every possible vantage in the tri-paneled mirrors. I shouldn’t have come here, he thought. Every few seconds Guy Wayne would scan the room looking for Sheila—just a glimpse would do—maybe settle his nerves a bit. From around the corner he could see her elbow—he was sure it was her elbow, her posture. It bobbed up and down like a phantom, disconnected from a body. Guy Wayne shifted his gaze to one of the side mirrors and could see the ruffle of a pink sleeve at the top of that elbow and how the back of the arm looked like a boat hull or frog’s chin. He could hear her laugh and it reminded him of the way things used to be when he was younger. He had great hair, magnificent. Just seeing his head in the morning all clean and perfect was enough get him going, to get him out of the house and out in the world kicking maximal ass with the confidence that only great hair could provide. Then it all went south when Sheila stopped seeing him. At first Guy Wayne depended on quotidian over-the-counter hair products to keep his head shaped. But as his hair grew it became ever more challenging to sculpt that perfect do. He tried everything: Super Glow, Nice N’ Slick, Farnsworth’s Conditioning Vitriol, Goop, Bodifying Sparkle, Volumizing Sparkle, Maximum Hold Sparkle. None of them would do the job. Before long his hair had grown unruly and that slick ridge he hung over his left eye had to be pressed down and tucked behind his ear. Then he tried to find a replacement for Sheila’s magic. He went to Straight Cuts at the mall and tried to explain what he wanted and ended up with the old number one, that generic shit-eating haircut that every balding fuck who didn’t care sported around the food court spilling honey mustard on their extra-large football jerseys. Over at Shear Perfection off the expressway they wronged Guy Wayne’s hair so bad that he hid in his apartment for three weeks afterward. Salon Alaikum didn’t do any better. Family Styles shaved a garish straight line with sharp square angles on his neck. At the Cline County Community College Barber Academy the hung-over looking girl with “Destiny” airbrushed on her shirt in sparkling bubblegum pink had nicked him just behind the ear. None of them got it right. None of them could ever get it right. He needed a stylist with vision. He longed for Sheila. Please Sheila, make it right again. Guy Wayne was shoegazing, trying to fight the urge to run away. He hung on his mantra: Today is the day. He looked back up to the mirror and saw the inverted Sheila approaching just behind him. For a split second their eyes met and Guy Wayne turned his head quickly and back down to the silver tips of his boots. Shit, he thought. I shouldn’t have worn the shit-kickers. They’re a dead giveaway. “Hey hey, Mr. Jones. What are we gonna do for ya today?” Sheila netted him with a smock and jacked the chair up to the right height. Guy Wayne was buzzing. Too late to run. All the practicing for this moment, all the times he’d tried to go over the situation in his mind, all the preparation left Guy Wayne at that moment. He was alone with Sheila for the first time in many years. His tongue swelled and stuck to the sides of his mouth. “I need to be fixed up,” he said. “It’s too long, too shaggy. I want it a little long in the front, you know, so it kind of swoops back to the side…” He almost blew it. He almost said “…like you used to do.” He knew she didn’t recognize him, at least not right off, or if she did, she wasn’t letting on. It had been years and they both had changed ever so slightly. “And I, uh, I want it short in the back, but not, you know, tapered. Just fix me up.” “Well I’ll see what I can do. I’m a beautician not a magician.” Sheila chortled, a little high-pitched squeal caboosed by a snort like she was so proud of herself even though she’d passed that line almost every day. “I’m hoping you’re a magician,” Guy Wayne said. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Sheila gave him a little bug-eyed look out of the corner of her eye. She grasped his head and positioned him. Tingles exploded across Guy Wayne’s scalp. He could feel the air between her palms and his ears. As Sheila made her initial exploratory snips Guy Wayne kept his eyes tight on her. He relished every touch she planted on him. Whenever their eyes met in the mirror he would glance away often transferring his gaze to her profile on one of the periphery mirrors. He breathed in her smell of citrusy shampoo and menthol cigarettes. Sheila began taking wide sweeping slashes as she tugged tufts of hair. Piles of curls formed on the floor and Guy Wayne’s glower began to soften. His shoulders relaxed. Soothing salon fumes flowed in through his nostrils. As more and more hair dropped to the floor he began to recognize himself again. He wondered if Sheila was also beginning to recognize him. Maybe she had some inherent lingering muscle memory of Guy Wayne’s specific head and his specific hair and how she’d done this same ritual dozens of times over. With each snip Sheila transcended the role of mere stylist. She was communing with some cosmic force, setting things in their proper place. With each snip she revealed Guy Wayne from his mess of hair like Michelangelo chiseling away all that was not Moses from a block of marble. Sheila’s wide eyes met Guy Wayne’s in the mirror and they both paused in wonderment. Sheila shook her head and looked away and flapped her comb on the counter. Guy Wayne’s lips twisted into a slight smile. “Is there a problem?” he asked. “No, honey, I’m fine. It’s just…oh never you mind. I just thought of somebody I haven’t seen in a long time, that’s all.” “Oh, nothing bad, I hope.” Sheila picked up the electric clippers and flicked them on with a buzz. “Um, could you use the razor instead? Gets a smoother finish and besides I don’t like that tingly feeling on my neck back there.” Guy Wayne could see her hand go slack and the clippers crash to the floor before it even happened. Her jaw dropped slightly and her mouth and eyes widened into O’s. “It is you,” she stammered to get the word out. “Guy Wayne.” “Hi, Sheila.” Guy Wayne wiggled his fingers—an attempt to be coy. They both paused for a long, uncomfortable moment. “You’ve got a lot of nerve showin’ your face in here, freak!” Sheila’s face collapsed into vicious, almost animal, hatred. Her voice rang out shrill and meaty. “But Sheila…” Guy Wayne, for all his practicing, for all the times he’d run through this exact instance in his head, had never formulated a plan to diffuse the situation. “Only you can do this right. Only you can help me.” “Brandi, call the cops!” Sheila yelled over her shoulder. Guy Wayne tried to stand up but Sheila pushed him back down, tripping over the hydraulic release under the elevator chair and spilling to the floor. “Sheila, please listen to me. I want to make it right again. You know, with us.” But Sheila had grasped a can of SuperMaxHoldPlus and sprayed him in the face, then chucked the can at him, then swept her entire counter of hair condiments onto him. “I love what you’ve done with my hair!” Guy Wayne shouted. “It’s wonderful. I love what you’ve done with my hair!” A frantic Brandi with the phone in her ear had appeared to survey the situation. She was saying something inane into the receiver like “Now he’s on the floor screaming.” Guy Wayne tried to stand up but Sheila kicked at him, knocking herself off balance in the process. The instant she hit the floor Brandi erupted in a deafening siren wail. The heavy middle aged woman with a helmet of pink curlers ran up and joined in the screaming. Sheila howled and picked up some scissors and began furiously slashing at Guy Wayne. He batted her scissor hand away—grabbed it firmly at the wrist—and locked eyes with her. “Only you can make it right,” he said with a calm intensity that only fueled the banshee chorus. Guy Wayne scrambled up and burst through Brandi and the heavy middle-aged woman like a halfback, slipping on bottles and salves and piles of hair. Just as he got to the door he paused and checked his reflection in the glass. With one quick motion he swept his hair back and let if fall. It slacked to just the right place, just over his ear and out of his eyes. Guy Wayne smoothed his clothes and calmly stepped through the door, emerging from years of depression, uncertainty and chaos, and into a world of gleaming hope. He strutted the few short steps to his car, fresh and glad, and drove away knowing that at that moment he was perfect. – MAS2 Green Syndicalism There are myriad reasons for this, though ultimately I will focus on one broad cause. In large part this is simply a question of timing. The catastrophic Bush adventurism in the Middle East has focused America’s attention on our oil dependence in a way unmatched since the ‘70s. At the same time, venture capital and technological development has progressed to a point where industry is willing and able to pursue serious green startups. The internet allows producers and consumers a way to link directly, bypassing retail oligopolies. And of course, there is the burgeoning reality of global warming, and the crisis that confronts us if we fail to act swiftly and intelligently to prepare for its effects. All of these factors create a perfect storm for a growing environmental movement (in terms of consumer action, popular sympathy, and governmental influence). But I want to focus on three basic qualities of the environmental movement that seem most relevant to the labor movement. Two are positive, one forms the basis of some positive critique. *Environmentalism offers local and diverse opportunities to act in the world. Instead of a strongly centralized movement, we see a cultural force emerging. That force is undergirded by a wide array of organizations, small and large, practical and ideological, and this internal difference allows tremendous adaptability to local conditions and new events. It also allows people to weave the movement into their daily lives in many different ways, increasing the proportion of citizens who actively identify with the movement or its values. *Most importantly, environmentalism has the quality of a values-driven movement. Its strongest proponents are not simply motivated by pragmatism; they have a worldview and life informed by the movement’s values, meaning they devote every aspect of their waking hours towards those values in some way or another. Ecology is not something meant only to reform a broken system, it proposes alternative ways of viewing the world to those dominant American society- material pleasure and consumption at any cost. *Environmentalism (as it now stands) is possibly the most individualistic progressive movement in American history. Its chief expression currently lies in consumer action and individual economic desire. It is based in a wide field of institutions, organizations, clubs, etc, but its massive popularity at present is expressed mostly through consumer choice or electoral action. Even the most developed “ideology” of environmentalism and ecology is openly hostile to large formations of people. It works through affinity groups, or a major desire for localism. There’s nothing wrong with this, if the visions for democratic confederation of local groups actually come to fruition. They don’t. This means that instead of relying upon the grassroots community action that most environmentalists and ecologists deeply advocate and treasure, the movement functions through some genuine grassroots action, lots of consumer action, and ultimately dependence on the government to force positive change through regulation or big business to redirect the economy out of sheer good will and wisdom. I think this will neuter the environmental movement in the long-run, despite its popular appeal and overt strength. The movement will continue but it will be much weaker and move much more slowly than it might. Environmentalism lacks effective, grassroots, collective organization that can apply itself across society instead of simply pressuring governments and oligopolies. The only social movement that can possibly deliver this type of organization is organized labor. Labor and Values I believe there are deep, foundational reasons for the unification of labor and environmentalism, but those are for another time and place. The simple, straightforward reason to unite labor and environmentalism comes from a shared enemy: a business logic based in generating profits and responding to stress by externalizing internal cost and responsibility. To a company, the logic of laying off or outsourcing workers is the same as the logic of dumping pollution into the oceans, land and air. Corporate logic brings labor and ecology together, because corporate logic thinks of both labor and nature as weak and expendable. Practically, ecology needs the power of labor organizing to actually build grassroots community action that will allow exponential leaps in green transformation of the nation and world. Labor needs ecology to make it more of a values-driven movement. The question of labor’s decline has been debated in books and articles and conferences and union halls for decades. I have no desire to enter this debate. It is heated and necessarily imprecise, based on the contingencies of history and global/national politics. But I will say this- Labor functions most effectively as a movement when it is seen as a matter of values, when people think it offers the possibility for creating a better world. Bread and butter matters are important, but it is also important to charge people up, offer them a vision of something worth fighting for, offer them strong ideals to which they can devote their attention and life. The structure of social movements, chaotic as they are, makes this hard to see or even to demonstrate. But it seems that the most powerful social movements are those with a large pool of members devoted to building a better world, especially in the ranks of upper and middle leadership. Just to break the ice on this point, we cannot understand the success of the labor movement in America in the 20th century without understanding the broad appeal of anarchism, socialism, and communism among the American working class until the clear and distinct disgracing of those latter ideologies by Stalinism, whose effects were felt in America through McCarthyism and driving the organized left out of the unions. In a certain sense, this a question of leadership. People do not have the strength in them to organize and fight the rulers of society out of a simple desire for another dollar an hour. Values and movements give them that strength. A vision of bettering the world gives them that strength. Knowing that that however small a trace of their actions will survive them in the form of a transformed world, this gives people the strength to organize and fight. Right now labor in America does not have this, because it has no larger vision for a better world. It has a vision of late 1950s Keynesianism, minus the structural racism and sexism of that period. I’m not saying this is bad or wrong, I’m saying that it clearly just isn’t enough. I don’t want to focus on criticism, at the end of the day it has little value. I’m just trying to say, we can merge these movements effectively to their mutual benefit. How Do We Merge? There have been major efforts to bind together environmentalism and labor in the past few years, and they have proven tremendously effective. I’m thinking for instance of the Apollo Alliance, the joint effort of major unions and environmentalist groups to promote political action to rebuild sections of the American economy on green technology. The major efforts though are very top-down, at least within major unions. I think this is necessary but limited. We need a general greening of existing industry to be really effect necessary changes in society. Now, to do this we could rely upon the efforts of managers and labor chiefs and heads of green organizations. This is slow. We could also try and tap into the workforce of a business completely, mobilizing the energy of workers to transform their businesses from the inside out. If successful, this would be very, very fast. A mass of decentralized organizations throughout every business, every sector, focused on the value of reducing negative environmental impacts and even contributing positively to the natural environment, would have inconceivable effect across industry. Here’s my proposal: That a major union organization (preferably the AFL-CIO) sponsor an independent, cross union confederation. That this confederation be open to three types of organizations: And finally that this “dual union” focus broadly on greening the workplace. I’m taking as my structural model the old IWW (and to some extent the Knights of Labor). I mean primarily to invoke the structure and not the ideological connotations of those organizations or labor history in general. Their organizational versatility is perfect for a labor-oriented values-based movement. I do not mean to promote the traditional adversarial relationship the IWW had with larger unions. This confederation should have some independence from larger union structures as a whole, though, if only to minimize bureaucracy in organizing and actions. This offers several basic benefits to both environmental activism and the labor movement. Environmentalism gets a major infrastructural support for green action across America, and immediate partners in any firm or business. Labor taps into the energy of the environmental movement, along with the interest of political and economic leaders in environmentalism. Labor also receives a mechanism for bringing energy into its own locals. Finally, in the form of green minority unions, labor gains a new technique for organizing unorganized workplaces, a technique that will immediately draw out public support and potentially lessen managerial resistance. Conclusion: Stewardship I have focused on a mechanism for green syndicalism, but environmentalism does not provide the only possible grounds for organizing values-based hybrid unions. The only real requirement is direct application of an ethos into the production process itself. Several other value systems present themselves. For instance, the American economy and American political logic is driven to a large extent by militarism, especially in the current climate of outright piracy perpetrated by recent administrations (either through war and occupation or by imperial trade policies). The anti-war movement has found itself without practical direction besides electoral action. Yet there is no shortage of work that must be done to change this feature of American life so basic that we often see only its most blatant expressions. Alongside environmentalism, we could see a hybrid union devoted to demilitarization of the American economy and American life. To remake itself for a new century, Labor must build up its basic principles, the values that every unionist in the country will respond to and draw hope and strength from. This is a simple enough task but an important one, because it allows members to contribute their efforts towards long-term goals beyond the drama, stress and danger of immediate conflicts. Just to get the juices flowing, I’d like to suggest a simple code of Labor Stewardship that recognizes and enshrines basic values flowing organically from the experience, rights and responsibilities of working. Some basic principles of Labor Stewardship would include the following goals and ideals: *empowering, democratic workplaces Principles and values are tools to be used for concrete action in the world. They are important because they allow us to make concrete connections between our myriad actions and intentions in the world. Considering those principles at the start will give a vibrant movement coherence and strength, a strength based on an upwelling of diverse and devoted labor action. –DEJ Credits: [back to top] END.
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