waking up - freeing ourselves from work

Energy seeks its source. Electrons just wanna do that thing, it’s their nature fulfilling itself.
But we are energy. We also seek our source. We’re like water finding its level.

As we left The Hill that day, after showing me the route to Building 69, A asked me, “Do you regret it? Going into the trades?”

As she waited for a response, I thought of my blown lungs, my sore back and my busted knees. And I thought about what Juan, a journeyman I’d worked with, had said to me once. We were walking back to the parking lot after work. He was actually my journeyman at the time, since I was an apprentice and I’d been assigned to him. He was the most tolerant of JWs any apprentice could hope for, very calm and grounded, very low-key, raw, and real.

He said to me, “You know Pam, a lot of guys point to buildings they worked on and say, ‘I put in those feeders. I put in those lights. I did the underground on that job.’ Me, when I look at buildings I worked on, I think, ‘that’s the one got my knees – that one took my shoulder. That one busted my elbow.’”

He’s right of course. But the theft goes beyond that – though, believe me, I’m not making light of the sacrifice of our physical health to the god of profit.

But I’d lost track of my whole self before I went into the trades, and that’s a question to look at too. When did I lose myself, and how?

And wasn’t there a sense in which helping to install the electrical in various buildings helped me reclaim some lost bits? I’d tried before, with martial arts – why wasn’t that enough?

Because, as Engels said, when viewed from a perch high enough above, capital and labor are the same, and because capital has, politically, been successful in moving us over onto their side of the imbalance sheet, with the earth in resistance on the other side, our thoughts and preoccupations tend to mirror those of the podrunks.

If we stop to think about it – and podrunks hope you never do – we have seriously placed our bets on the wrong horse. This is Marcuse’s point again. We have become them not just materially, but spiritually. Because everything is a commodity – water, oxygen, soil, the ‘right’ to pollute, sex, status, piety, pleasure, poetry, health, people, therapy, corporations, companionship – we all share a common absence, share in common the void. We are all united in being nothing.

[See Blog 47, The 4 Ruses (Pt. 3) on how this manifests as a sense of invisibility.]

And because everything gets hollowed out and thinned, it’s more important than ever before that we embrace fully the earth when it speaks.

To fill a Gap • Insert the Thing that caused it – • Block it up • With Other – and ‘twill yawn the more – • You cannot solder an Abyss • With Air

Each generation is biologically predisposed to fill its gaps – to be connected…to those who’ve gone before, and to those who come after.

We are biologically predisposed to be diffuse as to ‘time.’ Our boundaries bend, and wrap around themselves.

But what we cannot be, and maintain any semblance of ourselves, is distinct, isolated atoms caught in an eternal present.

We are not only wired to be large, we’re wired to seek, maintain and extend the tapestry. We long to be embedded in a web of relations, to know where we came from, where we are, and where we will go.

And when our parents freeze us out from answers to these questions, and the job likewise, and the mass media ditto, we fall asleep, fulfill the minimal roles required of us, and then slip quietly into eternity.

It is a conundrum. In order to become large – to weave our place in the tapestry – we need the ancestors. In order to claim the ancestors we need to study. In order to study we need…permission.

But permission is the one thing we cannot give ourselves, or our children.

When we’re initiated “into an adult world of limit and sorrow,” we’re told that ‘freedom’ is not our birthright, but must be achieved. We must follow orders, follow the sequence of steps laid out for us, and, then, if we work really, really hard, we’ll be placed above others and allowed to boss them. That this ‘reward’ is not ‘freedom,’ is never discussed. Generally we discover the fact too late to act upon it.

There’s a very funny recent article in the “Back To School Edition” of the satirical newspaper, the Onion. The title is “6-Year-Old Stares Down Bottomless Abyss of Formal Schooling”:

Local first-grader Connor Bolduc, 6, experienced the first inkling of a coming lifetime of existential dread Monday upon recognizing his cruel destiny to participate in compulsory education for the better part of the next two decades, sources reported.
“I don’t want to go to school,” Bolduc told his parents, the crushing reality of his situation having yet to fully dawn on his naïve consciousness. “I want to play outside with my friends.”…
After learning that the first grade will continue for eight excruciating months beyond that date, it was only a matter of time before Bolduc inquired into what grade comes after first grade, and, when told, would probe further into how many grades he will have to complete before allowed to play with his friends.
The answer to that fatal question – 12, a number too large for Bolduc to count on the fingers of both hands – will be enough to nearly shatter the boy’s still-forming psyche, said child psychology expert Eli Wasserbaum.
“When you consider that it doesn’t include another four years of secondary education, plus five more years of medical school, if he wants to follow his previously stated goal to grow up to be a doctor like his daddy, this will come as an interminably deep chasm of drudgery and imprisonment to [Connor],” said Wasserbaum. “It’s difficult to know the effect on his psychological well-being when he grasps the full truth: that his education will be followed by approximately four decades of work, bills, and taxes, during which he will also rear his own children to face the same fate, all of which will, of course, be followed by a brief, almost inconsequential retirement, and his inevitable death.”
“Even a 50-year-old adult would have trouble processing such a monstrous notion,” Wasserbaum added. “Oh my God, I’m 50 years old.” (the Onion, Fall, 2008)

Gotta laugh to keep from crying, right?
But…what if…
What if, when Connor said to his parents, “I don’t want to go to school,” they replied…
“…OK.”
?

Before the housing bubble, my son and I managed, with my mother’s help, to secure a loan for a tiny house in Berkeley.

Because I’d promised to consider a dog if we ever got our own place, I was forced to craft some qualifications that no dog could possibly meet.

We didn’t have a lot of space, so it couldn’t be a big dog; my son and I both have allergies, so it would have to be hypoallergenic; our neighbors live practically within arm’s reach, so silence had to be an option; and given how over-worked and exhausted I was, like every other wage-slave, the dog really needed to be low-maintenance (i.e. not shed a lot).

I felt certain the hypoallergenic part would settle the question.

But then a television program around that time revealed the existence of a breed that sounded excellent for people with allergies, a “Mexican hairless.” One look at it and my son and I both fell deeply into doubt about my requirements.

“It looks like a rat,” my son said finally. He looked very glum. He hesitated. “Maybe I could love it.”

I took pity on him and admitted the truth – it was hideous.

He started pouring over dog books when we went to the bookstore. We’d look at them together, inserting first one photo, then another into our domestic fantasy of ‘dog.’ Suddenly an image of pure royalty appeared on the page. His carriage was erect. His eyes blazed with intelligence. Shorthaired, neat, very symmetrically square, a superior canine if there ever was. He was looking up at his owner with such an intense longing to please that my heart warmed. We scrolled down for the name of this miracle on four legs.

“A basenji,” it said.

The description it gave sounded like it was crafted to our specifications – perfect for tight quarters; hypoallergenic; and, amazingly, it didn’t bark!

That was about sixteen years ago. I tell myself, if only we’d just gone to the Pound and trusted the universe, if only we’d had the Internet…

But we didn’t. The difficulties of sharing space with this breed are legion and I won’t bore you with them here. Suffice to say that they seem to have been placed on the planet to show humans what control freaks we are. But writing this is forcing me to think about it all and I really don’t want to do that. Let’s just fast-forward through horror upon horror upon stress upon much mutual recrimination, culminating in the following scene: a mother and her twelve year-old son crouched on the kitchen floor with two basenjis, one very pregnant, the other a male, leashed to a table-leg. The female is pacing and making odd noises and the humans are following her around, even more nervous than she is.

The power goes out.
Panic erupts.
Where’s the flashlight?
Omigod! It’s happening! They’re starting to come! Where’s the floss?!
I wrote about it in my journal:

T and I watched as the first slippery black bubble began to emerge. The first one fell in our hands and the placenta slipped cooperatively out with just a gentle pull. We broke the film at his face and watched – almost dazed – the determined squirming / instinctive searching of the baby. We were determined to help him get attached to a nipple. For T and I this first puppy was the whole world and he needed food. But ‘mom’ just sniffed him suspiciously and a little dance ensued as we chased her around the kitchen and attempted to connect baby with less-than-loving mother. …But…‘baby’ finally got his way.
He sucked mightily. And his powerful sucking had a transformative effect on his mother – she looked a bit drugged and dazed herself. Her eyes closed. It was as if everything clicked into place. I could be wrong, but I think bonding began here.

OK – enough with the dogs. Here’s the point. My son and I got to see – up close and personal – how parenting is done by another species. Perhaps the defining quality we bore witness to was tolerance. As far as I could tell, mama and papa basenji didn’t ‘teach’ their children anything. They didn’t discipline, threaten, reprimand, cast harsh looks, withhold treats, scream or holler, send anyone to ‘time-out.’ And if the quality of this restraint doesn’t sound like much to you, it’s only because you didn’t see those four puppies, heavier and heavier as they grew, vying for a chance to lock jaws on one or the other parent’s bloody neck. Mama and Papa’s necks were scraped-red raw for weeks. They cried out in pain to request release, boned up on their martial arts skills to avoid getting into this hold in the first place, but other than that, all Mama did was provide food, wash faces, and clean-up poop.

And all Papa did was play – riotously.

Now you’re free to interpret this behavior, or draw lessons, as you like. But what it showed me was that these parents did not question how the earth moved in their children.

They trusted it. They had nothing invested in some ‘idea’ of ‘dog’ that their puppies were ‘supposed’ to comply with.

Waiting in line in a coffee shop recently, I watched a little dance a mother did with her four (?)-year old son. He chose a pastry, the barista picked it up with her tongs and extended it towards the child, the child reached up for it, and…mother stayed his hand.

“What do you say?”

The child’s face set in a mask of grim refusal and he remained stubbornly silent. There was a standoff. The barista was left holding the bun, tension mounted – and the child won. If he mumbled anything I sure didn’t hear it.
Nikola’s life is again instructive.

As we learned, all he ever wanted to study was electricity, from a very early age. But that’s not what his father wanted for him.

From my childhood I had been intended for the clergy. This prospect hung like a dark cloud on my mind. After passing eleven years at a public school and a higher institution, I obtained my certificate of maturity and found myself at the critical point of my career. Should I disobey my father, ignore the fondest wishes of my mother, or should I resign myself to fate? The thought oppressed me, and I looked to the future with dread. (Nikola Tesla, Collected Papers, Vol. 2, p. A-195)

Nikola had to damn near die to get his father to release him from this ‘idea’ in his head.

…the cholera was raging in that district and…I contracted the dreadful disease…I was confined to bed for nine months with scarcely any ability to move. My energy was completely exhausted and for the second time I found myself at Death’s door.
In one of the sinking spells which was thought to be the last, my father rushed into the room. I still see his pallid face as he tried to cheer me in tones belying his assurance. “Perhaps,” I said, “I may get well if you will let me study engineering.” “You will go to the best technical institution in the world,” he solemnly replied, and I knew that he meant it. A heavy weight was lifted from my mind… (Autobiography, p. 27)

If we are stern taskmasters with our children, we’re no less so with ourselves.
We drive ourselves mercilessly; take pride in never missing work, never going on vacation, working sixty for forty.

“Harder! Harder!” we tell ourselves, “work harder!”
“To be competitive you have to be twice as good as the next guy!”
“You can’t just give a hundred percent, you gotta give a hundred ten!”

“Be the best!” we tell ourselves, though we’re fuzzy as to why, rushing around at breakneck pace, we never stop ‘til we die.

But…what if…
?

What if we listened to the earth in us?

The earth continually tries to reclaim its own – which is us. We are nature. We brim with energy fields and universes within us that align with those without. We tend magnetically to find complementarities in others – our energy fields are meant to attract and combine.

Not long ago on KPFA (a critical source for we who believe in freedom), I heard resident theoretical physicist Michio Kaku say that an atom is two strings vibrating at a specific harmony.

Now that is very trippy, and a life in which you sit around pondering such things sounds like a total blast. I look forward to when we all get to do it. *
But, assuming I heard him correctly, imagine what a stirringly subtle symphony we are. As Whitman said, “the narrowest hinge in my hand puts to scorn all machinery…And a mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels.”

But we don’t listen to the earth in us.

Towards the early middle of my electrical apprenticeship I developed fibroid tumors in my uterus, causing extremely heavy bleeding when I menstruated. I’ll leave it to your imagination to picture how difficult this made working on job sites.

The first doctor I consulted about it advised, given that I was in my late forties and that menopause was not far off, that I take iron, live with the tumors, and let nature shrink them in due course.

Oh, no, I thought. That is not acceptable. How’m I gonna compete with the boys if I’m stuck in a porta-potty half the day? Screw that.

Next stop: surgery… and I’ve had abdominal twinges and discomfort, and back pain, ever since, to say nothing of the hideous pouch it made of my formerly flat stomach.

Now if I’d put my body first…instead of the job…

That never seems to be an option, though, does it?

But if we did, if we listened to our longing, wouldn’t we take more time with our children, and with our gardens, and with ourselves, and with the ancestors…

Walter Lundquist, a commercial artist, tells this story:

The turning point in my life was the death of my father. It was a funny thing. Here you’re watching a beautiful guy with white hair lying in his bed, dying of a heart attack. You hear him ramble and wander and talk about his life: “I was never anything. I didn’t do a job even in raising my children. I didn’t mean anything…” You watch death. Then you say, “Wait a minute. What’s going on with him is going to hit me. What am I doing between now and my death? If you take actuarial tables of insurance companies, I’m running on borrowed time.” You begin to assess yourself and that’s a shock. I didn’t come up smelling like a rose. “Am I going to go on forever being a goddamn pimp? What’s the alternative? Is there another way of earning a living?” (Walter Lundquist in Studs Terkel’s Working, p. 526)

We sacrifice our minds, bodies and spirits to a system that views us as essentially worthless, and only when the earth comes to claim us, does truth become unavoidable.

But what if we woke up sooner? Not on our deathbeds, but under the tutelage of turbulent times tipping us toward…toward our freedom…toward the earth moving in us?

Do we really want to arrive at the moment of our deaths only to realize we never lived?

Is that a legacy we want to leave our children? … a legacy of ‘lightness’ – of accommodation with our slave-status?

Our children want to help us recover ourselves, to help us recognize reality, to become ‘large,’ to honor nature in us. They are ‘pre-dream’ and reliable sources. Listening to them is one way we start to respect our wholeness.

And as we dissolve into dust, we become the promise in return, the promise to help our children see, to help them realize their dreams.

So this longing that is life is a compact, really, between the living and the dead, between generations, between birth and death, seed and decomposition, a circle always becoming itself, and then enlarging.

A conversation. An agreement. A compact. “We seed you.” “We feed you.” A compact, endlessly enlarging.

And what is this to do with wage work?

Nothing.

And that’s the point. But it has everything to do with our future, with getting to a future without bosses.

The circle is widening beyond the bounds that capital can contain, rising higher than the walls they erect.

The divisions are coming down.

Continue to "The Two Winds" - Part 9

* I feel compelled to share that once, as a student, I attended an evening gathering to honor Walter Rodney, the writer and Guyanese activist, shortly thereafter murdered by his government. What he wanted to talk about, tightly bookended on that apartment couch, was quantum physics.

Nascence to End Work

waking up - freeing ourselves from work

Chapter II: The Two Winds (Part 8)

Waking Up: Freeing Ourselves From Work