When You Can't Go Forward And You Can't Go Back

The Lovers, Justice and The Moon

I have started to write copiously, more or less out of despair. Not in the sense of despair as in mental anguish, pain and so on. I feel good, happy even. But despair of ever finding any creed or walk of life that makes sense, that is not weighed down by its internal contradictions, its glaring falsehoods, the fragile and explosive mask of the zealot. This rather sweeping view throws down the gauntlet to anyone, and I may get a host of angry responses, but I'm really not poking fun or trying to say that my way (the way that is not a way, the way that cannot be named) is better than anyone elses. But I flee here, to poems, stories and essays, as small furry animals flee to higher ground when the levees flood and burst.

I cannot act with certainty within any system. I cannot simply follow the majority at all times, I cannot rebel against everything, following a general rule. I cannot join the mob, but I cannot join to one side either. I am half the time an anarchist, half the time a fascist. I am communist and liberal in equal measure. At the same time, I am not some moderate or some mish-mash, my views are strong but inconsistent. It is that very inconsistency that I've come to hold dear.

If anything that is my ideology, that at any time I reserve the right to be Unreasonable, to be Reasonless to the full. I do not think we can have Justice by applying like rules to like situations. One murder is not another, this murderer is not this other. One man steals a loaf of bread, another steals a loaf, its not the same thing and does not befit the same punishment, if any. And who can decide? Well, only tyrant poets, to whom I would give all legal authority, antagonising Plato.

We have sought to create a society of impersonal rules because we distrust human judgement, we have sought to make the procedures heard above the baying for blood, freedom or pity, we have sought even-handed justice, but vainly. The fact is that my crime is not your crime, and no two crimes are alike, and a swelter of technicalities has meant that in the large, everything is injust.
And when something truly monstrous is done, the crime as vast as we have witnessed in our day, truly swindling the entire masses of the world, the poor and desperate of their skerrick of shelter, scran and safety, how could we possibly proceed by a system of laws, where crimes must be general and repeatable? Such a vile case is so monolithic, so specific, that no existing law could reasonably account for the injustice and its righting. There is no impersonal system, no machine-logic that can right the scales. When such a wrong is righted, it can only come in a flash of inspiration, such a Justice-doing cannot be premeditated, cannot be thought through. For this it takes not that judge, a gaseous old pedant, nor a paddock of cringing, servile jurists. A renegade lawyer might just about have the balls, as Gandhi and King.

The best server of such justice is a young woman of man, about twenty years of age, well fed on history, poetry and prose, having seen and experienced cruelty but not turned by it, having seen and experienced ugliness, but not made ugly by it. Not quite an innocent, this being, but close. Able to look upon the devilish world with angel's eyes. They must be angry, but not consumed totally by anger. Above all they must love. They must be fully prepared to die in the blossom of their youth. They must have a mind curiously empty of all but worthwhile things, simple things of beauty, rightness and truth. They must be posessed of an almost supernatural clarity. In short, a raw poet, unadulterated, pure. Such a being or beings, for since I have mentioned male and female we shall call them a pair, these two comrades, lovers, friends, strangers, I would give total authority political and legal. For them the right to execute, to atomise, to bury, to imprison to embarass, to reward. I would give them the big red button of the atom bomb, the keys to the city, the first spurt of milk from every cow. They have the right to give lengthy speeches and treatises on their decisions, or say nothing at all. They may act absurdly, in contradiction to Reason, above all they can act inconsistently.

And all this in hope that they will be that gushing font of Justice, the avatars of that primordial pang, that no system of laws and judges can substitute for. Where does it come from, this urge to set the world aright? The feeling that we cannot rest until the scales have finally been balanced. For even after the judgements done and the crowds have gone home, even after the final execution, still the molten burns inside if that urge is not satisfied. What is it that makes us nod and say, well Justice was well done this day? Or otherwise shake our heads with anger saying, 'there's more or less to pay.' Something that if it could be explained, would cease to exist at all.

Everyone should give up the act, this moment. Stop pretending to be so reasonable, rational, consistent. Stop giving such a weight of value to the orderedness of your outlook. First of all, that its a lie should be obvious. You are generally as consistent as you need to appear to others, and unreasonable, and inconsistent when you can get away with it. Its a ruse to draw others into your schema, to get followers, supporters and sychophants. You want to be Apollo in the Temple, with everyone around clinging to you as the source of order, regularity and light. Dream on.

Claiming to only hold as true that which is clearly demonstrated is just a lie. A babelian and stratospheric fib. We believe what we hold dear, we believe what we love. We are deliciously, endearingly partisan, biased, human and halesome. We only fall into error when we seriously believe or claim that we are somehow set apart from other human beings; a sceptic, a clear thinker, a machine-god. True clarity is knowing what you believe, and how strongly you believe it, being able to separate conviction from artifice and convention. And if challenged on why we believe things, I answer that generally we don't need reasons, that we should reject Reasons.

If this seems Absurd to you, well in a strict sense it is. Absurd is without or against Reason, the latin root can also mean 'Away from That which Is Heard,' or simply 'Not Heard'. Therefore, when I quote my absurdities, people do not hear, they close their ears.

As incredible as it may seem, Absurdity is the real state of the universe and Reason the invader, the interloper. Reason is human artifice, to see the world not as it is but as we expect it to be, regular and ordered.

Delightfully, I can still even apply Reason here and there, though not in the same way that others too. For the world to be always Unreasonable, and Never Reasonable, would be altogether too consistent, or to put it another way, it is a facet of the universe's unpredictability that it can sometimes be predictable.

Again and again I have returned to question of these inordinate runs of good luck that seem to befall me, and in the past the opposite, though I have sense that those black days have fallen behind. Benign coincidences, wishes granted, surprisingly lovely situations spread before me like a banquet. Something is happening, suffused with meaning, pattern, intention. However, as soon as I grope for Reasons or try to incorporate these events into some sort of general system, it eludes me, nothing seems to fit, all theories become dust and slime. Not even randomness fits, not even chaos, not simply God or angels, or intention, or magic. Nothing shouts at me, 'hey, this is why.' No logic produces anything remotely satisfactory. So, I have done perhaps the hardest thing that human being of our modern age can do, I've given up trying to explain it and admitted that I don't know. I have come to accept, love and worship this mystery.

I would like to tear down the main edifices of our age. First of all Free Will, and with it the Concept of Personal Freedom. In its place I erect a similar cathedral, Trueness. The freedom to choose from A, B, C or the entire Alphabet is a crock. There is no real choice, we merely think in terms of choice, it is a convenient short-hand, that allows us to approach an uncertain future (uncertain only to us) as if it were open. It is only open in that is unseen, so could contain anything.

The perfect metaphor is a rower, who pulls facing backwards so the oncoming is always behind him unseen, he sees what has happened, never what will happen. Because he cannot see it he imagines all sorts of things going on there, and because he can imagine more than one thing, he fancies that if he pulls more on the left oar he will see one thing, more on the right oar he will see another. After he has passed through the terrifying ordeal of a cavern and the sweetest stretch of lilypads, through stinking brackish waters and clear shining carribean blue, down rapids and concourses, waterfalls and shallows, then he is all the more sure that his decisions to pull left and right carry enormous weight, and so he scrabbles endlessly to determine the outcome of his actions, with his scant knowledge of whats going on behind him. The truth is he simply cannot bear the thought of terrible events coming upon him without his input, or of upcoming pleasures and he no chance hasten them. Tell him to go left and he will be determined to go right, try to stay an oar or force his hand and he will be furious and terrified.

It should not be thought that I see equality between the life of freedom and the life of oppression, on the contrary, as anyone who knows me knows I much prefer the hard but free life amongst nature. The lot of the plainsman who can wander with his herd is infinitely superior than that of the bureacrat in a totalitarian regieme, whose every action must be accounted for, who is monitored and controlled at every step.

But I defend the life of plainsman over the life of the bureacrat on different grounds than the everyday conception of freedom. It is not for the plainsman's freedom of choice, the protection of his inviolable will, that I labour, but for his Trueness.

If all things sing according to their natures, nothing more and nothing less, then all is well. The fact that everywhere humans, animals, plants and inanimate tracts are turned against their nature is at the root of all our woes. The best way to describe is the difference between the medium of art and art itself, a blank canvas is fitting for a work of art, as is a blank page for poetry and prose, but to tear up a a manuscript in progress for papier mache, or to smash the cistine chapel to build a tenement, this is bollocks.

It is with human beings who are turned to some mean capacity; petty officialdom, factory work or scholarship, but it manifests in a million more subtle ways, when as children attempts from authority and peers are made to erase our supposed faulty nature, to make a blank canvas for someone elses dream. So we have hosts and cohorts walking around, botched golems of other people's schema. Likewise we have housing estates and shopping centres, dystopian spires and cluttered sprawl where once a forest stood, where once a brook played. These things were functionless, they existed for themselves as should we. Nothing in this world owes anything else a damn, all it needs to be is True to its own nature.

Freedom of Choice doesn't enter into it, we never choose to part from our nature, and though we will spend our whole lives in one way or another trying to rejoin with it, that is not a choice either, but a drive, a force as fundamental as gravity, to return to ones nature. And there, if the English language does not hold a word for that, 'the urge to return to ones nature.' then I don't know what its good for. If I can't find it, I'll make it. Avareditumveritas? A cobbling together of the words for 'to desire or crave', 'return' and 'truth', it doesn't sound quite right, and is too long, I suspect I will have to search the germanic. 'Gernjanantrewthe', from old forms of yearning and truth is too archaic. Verorexia is too barbarous.

After having asked an Indian friend her view on sanskrit terms, I must lay down this task for now. The English language in all its manifold complexity is not adequate enough for this urge, which to me is as omnipresent as the air we breathe. Authenticity is no good because it suggests a judging from outside, it is something appraised or percieved rather than something felt and known. So I will use a dissatisfying and vague shorthand and say that what I am talking about be called Trueness. In many practical aspects pursuing Trueness is a lot like pursuing Freedom, the difference being that it is not based on a fictive obsession.

Trueness means I cannot choose, since my nature is not determined by me (by the choices I cannot make because I can make none) I cannot even choose to go away or towards my nature, there is simply a natural arc, cause and effect, alienation from and returning to our blissing vortexial moksha.
So I tear down Freedom and build Trueness, I blow up Reason and replace it with Absurdity, the unheard.

We are mostly all of us a little broken, or else a lot broken, mostly the second. Compassion is the very start of mending ourselves and each other. We often think of good works, and good acts, charity and so on. I do not think compassion is necessarily like this, as a very starting point its not about trying to solve problems, but simply being present with suffering. Mostly, we are very dysfunctional when it comes to other people's sufferings and our own, we don't act with any sense at all. We walk down the street and see a homeless young woman, forced to beg there, we will feel the beginnings of our natural emotions, just pure concern, sympathy and a desire to connect. But this resonant and beautiful chord is struck off midsonar, rendered awkwardly staccato, as dissonant notes interrupt. And these are a mixture of fear, cynicism, avarice and so, in short everything that represents a distrust of our natural feelings is manifested as a distrust towards the stranger, towards helping and the idea of being concerned for others in general. We expand in kindness then immediately retract into miserliness. But of course the song, which has now degenerated, is not over. Next we shall feel a pang of guilt, of morality, 'I must help this person', and all the things we were taught in school, and everything that was drummed into us, all of that comes up. And maybe we will then give a few shekels, spare the poor soul a little lucre, but then its only a means of bringing the song to an end, on a flat note. Compassion is nothing more than staying with that original concern. At first we do not need to worry about helping, thats just a natural outcome of compassion, at first all we will do is stay with the persons suffering, feel our own discomfort perhaps, calmly watch our emotions rise and fall, but whatever comes we're still sitting there with that person, not running away, just staying.

I do not know what this has to do with tearing down the edifices of modern society. Actually, I really don't think you need an ideology or an anti-ideology for this, its just a return, a stripping away of elaborate artifice. Tearing off the layers of wall-paper, plaster and rotten sideboard we find that the wall underneath was beautiful all along and just as structurally sound as it was with all that garbage on top. It is the wall that was holding up the house all along, while the decorations took all credit as they festered.

Thinking about voluntary simplicity, voluntary poverty, my friend's thesis is here on the table and that is the subject. I wonder if my poverty has been voluntary, certainly I had money once and was throwing it away as an almost allergic reaction. No-one came and took it from me, I released it like it disgusted me. But was that disgust really my choice? And are the residents of, say, darkest Hackney poor by choice because wealth disgusts them? I mean wealth is disgusting isn't it, or rather rich people are. So safe and secure, so well fed and housed, constantly crying over insignificant details, they are the victims of an overcooked steak, exploited by a red wine that promised more than it delivered, a scratch on their bentley is proof that God hates them, their yacht was pissed in by some disaffected youth, oh the cruelty of the world! Not that every rich person disgusts me so, I've met a few I liked, but let us say the neurosis and 'off-balancedness' of the extremely rich is extremely off-putting, and makes me prone to laughter. At the same time I have compassion because I see that they are truly miserable and unable to face it, unable to talk about it. Or when they do, its so self-conscious, they are so aware what an absurd condition to be rich and miserable, while everyone is trying to get rich thinking it will make them happy. Well, they didn't make this absurdity, we are all the heirs of this condition. But back to the question, did I choose poverty? I think to say yes would be to suggest I was in any condition to resist this urge towards destitution. The more holed my trousers became, the freer I was, as if an empty space had opened up where I could breathe. Dealing with everyday, simple problems like food and shelter, made life more meaningful, more zesty. Having to rely on the kindness of others as well as my own inner resources made me more grateful and yet more proud, and yet more humble. I developed a style, my ragged trousers patchworked through the holes, sweeping my tramp coat like a King's cape. People commented on my majesty, my paladin bearing, my composure.

But poverty does not equal simplicity, it is assumed that once the hunt for lucre, status and comfort is thrown in that the endless sorting, striving and self-questioning goes with it. Actually, once your status comes not from wealth, when you are propertyless, then to defend yourself may become very important. There will be no shortage of people willing to push you down, to mock and disparage you. You shall not be content merely to exist, but will try to demonstrate your worth in some other way. This may not be straightforward, but it is often a good thing, because its richer. Our years of activism, the art, the music, the performance, these were all proof of our worth. It was part of our thesis, 'look despite our lack of money, despite our lack of property, despite our lack of cars and clothes, fine food or steady employment, here we can do things that you cannot dream of' we were not content to say merely, we exist, but we had to show that we could be great, without the usual artificial trappings of greatness. It was glorious, but never simple. So I think in practice, it could be called voluntary complexity as easily as voluntary simplicity. To give up a straightforward life of study this, work that, follow advice, take out loans and so on. Its simple to follow the plan that you did not make, much more complex to find out everything yourself. So, we did not ever breathe terms like voluntary simplicity, it would have been ridiculous, instead we saw ourselves as those who had taken a harder, richer, more worthwhile road. And what's more, a more moral path, a radical non-participation in all the horrors of mainstream society, whose taxes pay for bombs and subsidise oil barons, whose cries of animal fear justify police states and border guards. We chose risk, hardiness, self-reliance, over the simplicity of letting Big Brother look after us, or of corporations selling us our life package.
I think the idea of voluntary poverty then is something different than what we were doing. And I suppose a person could not really conceive of voluntary poverty unless they were in some sense well-off, not necesarily rich, but materially comfortable. And in their comfort if they conceive of themselves as spiritually poor, distracted in thought, somewhat disgusted and hemmed in by their comfort, then they will dream of a simpler life without dinner parties, theatre, charity galas and so on, without a new car every year, without tittle-tattle conversation items. They may spend a long time in their garden, wondering why they could not stay there, the earth giving them their food, collecting their water from the rain, and not having to deal with 'all that'.

We all at some time will feel an alienation from the trappings of our life, look at our calender and feel each one is an invitation for some imposter, who is not you, to go and dance, or wine taste, or open a new savings account and so on. Each date on the calender you feel you were press-ganged into something, the something which becomes more and more ghastly and horrific as each year goes by.

And voluntary simplicity is very radical, to reject all the wealth and overburdened status preening, to say, at the end of the day, this is basically rubbish. Still, it is my hypothesis that for many, if they actually achieve a simplicity, they will quickly go about making it complicated again, but in a new and delightful way. Voluntary poverty, voluntary simplicity then, can be a way of starting from scratch, beginning a new and making a radical break with the past.

"Did you hear about Mr Weatherby?"

"Why yes, or rather no. Where is Weatherby I haven't seen him at the last few soirees?"

"Well, word has it he has gone off to live in a hut somewhere out in the desert."

"Really? Whatever for."

"He calls it voluntary simplicity."

"How intriguing, I really can't imagine. And what does he do out there?"

"Just scratches about in the earth, singing to himself, is what his wife says."

"And what does she have to say about it?"

"She's delighted, partially, I think because it allows her to carry on her affairs without the need
for the slightest discretion."

"Really!? Are you sure you should be telling me this?"

"Well you don't keep up with the gossip do you, its already the talk of the town. But back to
Weatherby."

"Yes, what a poor soul, no doubt she's driven him to it."

"No, no, I gather he's been talking about it for quite some time."

"You know, I must say, there's a part of me that really, really wishes that I could do something
like that. Just go and live a nice and simple life somewhere, not always rushing around, just taking time to smell the flowers. But I don't really. It's a nice idea, that's all."

"Well he seems to have taken a nice idea to rather extreme levels."

"Maybe someone should go and pull him out of there, I'm sure he's just distraught about his wife."

"Apparently he's quite happy. Happier than he's ever been."

"But whats there to be happy about, out in the desert?"

"Apparently, he's got a 'rich inner life.'"

"*snorts of laughter* He sounds like some sort of old monk, a regular 'Obi Wan Kenobi'."

"*stifled laughted*"

"When is he coming back then? The hunting season starts in June."

"Never, as he tells it."

"Never?"

"Never."

People get very offended. It makes them fairly upset. When you say in a few different ways that all that stuff like social climbing, getting a good job, becoming more educated, driving a nice car or driving at all, going to nice restaurants, having 'holidays', is all just a bunch of bollocks really. They get very upset, they find it hard to explain why. I'll venture that almost everyone has these feelings, they are frustrated with all the trappings. They go shopping, have a starbucks with their friends, read the paper, watch the tv, eat a nice dinner in a restauraunt, they go to work the next day and almost all the while feel strangely empty. But then they feel like they can't just drop the whole thing. They engineer addictions and insanities, arguments and eccentricities, because although they like to fantasise about a different life, of simplicity, of adventure, of romance, of danger, they have absolutely no idea on how they would carry through. They are too afraid that the first person that tells them to 'stop with that silly, childish, nonsense' will shame them so deeply that they'll crumple into submission. And so they do nothing, they say nothing, and if someone actually goes ahead and escapes they will become very upset. Although what they are saying is, 'how could you be so irresponsible, so selfish, so reckless as to give all this up?' what they are really feeling is 'its not fair, you get to do it and not me.'

I am aware that the situation is hilarious and horrific in equal measure. What is incredibly frustrating for me is that there seems to be no middle ground, you are either a solid employee with your life as regular as clockwork, an employment history with no gaps, a perfect record, or your living day by day, food and shelter a matte of providence, wit and others generosity. The middle ground is hard, certainly it befits society that we are offered two choices complete commitment to 'The Normal', or Destitution with a capital D.

The thing is about poverty is it can be no less a trap and maze. I think voluntary poverty is a term made up by people who have little understanding of what poverty actually is. It is not merely material deprivation, not a simple lack, voluntary or otherwise. Poverty is a set of cruel conditions we are subjected to as punishment, as exclusion from the glowing hub of society. It is for instance, working full time and not being able to afford to run the car that gets you to work on time and food, so having to choose. It is suddenly having the price of your medicine hiked up for no reason. It is failing a job interview because of the state of your teeth, when you needed the job to afford the dentist. It is meeting a man who you fall in love with, who gets you pregnant, then he leaves because you are pregnant, and then you must take a day off work to drive out of state because abortions are illegal in your state, your employer doesn't like this and fires you. It is losing your benefits because you missed an interview, for any of the previous reasons, but really because people have voted for a government which advertises that it punishes people like you in this way. It is being called an unemployed scrounger, even though you work, just because you claim the benefits you are entitled to, because your wage does not keep you out of poverty. It might be going to a betting shop or a pub once a week as your only pleasure, then being insulted and told that your poverty is your fault.

That's my definition anyway, if people want to use a different word for this real-world phenomenon, then I shall be forced to invent a new word. So, you can see no-one would volunteer for this, there is no spiritual advantage here, there is no simplicity, on the contrary everything becomes complicated. This doesn't mean the ideas behind voluntary poverty are wrong, no doubt they had a different idea of what is meant by the term 'poverty'. But perhaps we should question if it is a societal good that rich people ascribe moral and spiritual superiority to the idea of 'poverty', surely this chokes off any idea of destroying the poverty trap, inequality and so on.

"I would sign the petition my dear, but I hold that those in poverty live a happier, simpler life
than we do, so any attempts to 'Feed the Children' will only make them more miserable, I'm afraid."

To me, the ideas of voluntary poverty and voluntary simplicity are less interesting than what they are a reaction against. Why, if there is such a need to flee from wealth, is there is such an inordinate amount of time and effort going into securing wealth, protecting privelege and amassing greater and greater means of splurging wealth (yachts, cigars, wines and so on). At the same time I like yachts, cigars and wine (who doesn't?). I just don't build my life around acquiring them, nor do I think it is in the slightest bit sane to build a society around a small number of people acquiring them. What is it that makes people, either inwardly and secretly or publicly in protest say, hey this is a load of bollocks?