Perpetual Motion Machine

Some Thoughts on Chicago

Chicago has a lot of police on the train, I thought, making the transfer to the brown line at Clark and Lake. Well worn wooden clubs dangled auspiciously from their belts. They wore body armor. I had just arrived in the city from Los Angeles and was not aware of the protests scheduled for the following afternoon. I heard about the march on the news that evening and decided to go to see the spectacle.

The next day I made my way to Grant Park. I missed the rally there but followed the shouting until I reached the procession. After watching the crowd from the sidewalk, I joined in the march. Though I had no particular gripe with NATO – to be honest, I did not know much about the organization at the time – I saw the protest as a vehicle to express my dissatisfaction with the status quo, vague as it may be.

Surely there were others like me in the crowd: unemployed 20 somethings with liberal arts degrees that are unsure what they are mad about, but are mad none the less. Then there were groups, tightly knit groups, which were certain what they were protesting about. Socialist youth in red t-shirts, Anarchists with covered faces in dark sartorial monotony, middle aged men and women supporting teachers unions, environmentalists, Latino groups for immigration reform, and so on. Those like me filled the interstitial space between the major organs of discontent.

As the march went on, block after hot and humid block, the stark division between causes that I had initially perceived began to melt. A chant begun by a group of queer protestors was picked up by animal rights activists. Groups merged and diverged in fluid procession. A call and response rippled vigorously through the crowd: “Whose streets? Our streets!”

The popular speculation that, what is broadly termed the 99% movement, is too divided to succeed is, I believe, a misdiagnosis. The wave of discontent, from the occupy protests to the recent NATO march, is not divided, but rather, diverse. The diversity of ideas is precisely why such a movement has any hope of engendering change.

A similar concern – recently expressed by Jim Warren in his all too cute article about the protest for The Daily Beast – was that there was no concrete goal of the protest, nothing that the protesters could rally behind. Americans cannot direct their ire at a despot as was the case with protests in Egypt (among many others). Without a despot, there is no despot to depose and, therefore, it seems, no tangible goal. It is true that the only unifying theme of the protest was a resounding “Not this!” However, every disparate group in the crowd knew that their cries of, “Not this!” would be carried and amplified. A negative position, though perhaps unproductive on its own, creates cohesion. It is this cohesion that allows the question, “Well, what else if not this?” to be asked and answered.

The abstract nature of American frustration might not provide immediate gratification and change. Success is not a matter of getting rid of one man or woman, or ending a particular war, but rather having a conversation about what matters to us. What kind of country do we want to live in? What do we want future generations to inherit?

What I witnessed at the protest were conversations. Real live conversations between real live Americans. Conversations free of media spin, free of the nasty anonymity of internet discourse and free of the rigidity of academia. Before we can create positive change in this country, we must all shout, “Not this!” Then and only then can we have a conversation about what it is we do want.

Perhaps, as Mr. Warren suggests, the protest was a failure on a large scale. But in the streets that day in Chicago, amid the shouts and sweat, were small changes and small victories. Thousands of small voices, together, cried, “Not this!” 

Kids Like Us (A Novel In Progress) Part I

“You think this thing can stop on a dime?” Pete said and took his eyes off the road to leer at me. The highway was narrow and steep and the load was heavy. The truck was towing several tons of frozen meat. I didn’t answer his question; I had learned not to answer questions. All I said was, don’t.

Pete stamped his foot down hard on the brake and I felt the weight of the cargo slam against the cab. The front wheels skid on the dusty pavement and I grabbed at the handle over the door. He laughed like a Mexican bandito from an old western, “Ahhh, ha ha ha!” bearing his jagged yellow teeth.

I turned to look at Marion. She had gripped the sheets of the cot with both hands and her eyes were wide. “Did you see that one there? Shhhhhhheeeewwww! The wind, you could see it fly by. You know what that was?” 

“No, what?” I said. That was the only answer that would satisfy him. He wasn’t asking questions to get answer, he was asking them rhetorically to steer the conversation. If you did answer, no matter what you said, he’d reply with a loud, honking, “Naaaaaaaaaaaaawwwwh!”

“UFO,” Pete said, “aliens. They are all over the place out here in the desert. You think the Egyptians built the pyramids?” I didn’t even bother this time. “Naaaaaaaaaaaaawwwwh! There is a line,” his hands came off the wheel to gesture, “that runs all the way from the pyramids in Egypt to the ones in South America. The Aztecs, the Egyptians, they all worked with aliens. The line. You know why? Shhhhhhheeeewwww! They fly in straight lines.”

My eyes were dry and full of dust so I took off my sunglasses to rub them. Amarillo was in the rearview and Albuquerque was an hour or so of conspiracy theories and unanswerable questions away. “You tired already?” Pete asked and punched my shoulder. 

“No,” I said, “it’s just the dust.” 

I didn’t care if he was crazy or not, he was taking us all the way to Los Angeles. Better to be stuck with this Navaho nut job than stranded back in Amarillo. Texas is a stage four hemroid on the asshole of the United States and I was more than happy to put it behind me at 70 miles per hour. Even if you don’t mess with Texas, Texas messes with you.

La Honda (A Cut Up)

Relieve my anxieties 

like a machine gun;

a picnic table -

I can feel everyone a fraud - even the

sun is hot on a leaky faucet 

and rust and calcium buildup.

play with the united states 

think of San Francisco.

I drag a cigarette,

there is wildlife -

president of the flora and fauna.

scratch my head crack my bones

hear that I, as yet unknown,

have never seen shadows on skin, pathetic

This makes me a human laugh

and ask why the days drip out?

the sun reads over my shoulder

through my back and right now

always true

Stranded for a week in Atlanta. Stayed with a group of artists living in a gutted out mansion without running water. There were chickens, there was a dog named lucifer, there was max who lived in the school bus out front, there was Clementine who lived in the camped in the back, there was us, trying to get to New Orleans.

A kid with long greasy blonde hair dances violently with headphones on in a little park on Euclid Avenue. Emma called Lucky and she invited us to play pool at a gay dive bar. We haven’t heard a thing from the girl we’re supposed to stay with. At eight tomorrow morning we have to meet a man driving a forty foot school bus. He is to take us to New Orleans.

“It is getting toward dinner time and people are straggling back to their rooms with that weary dejected air that comes from earning a living honestly. The occupants of the rooms are yawning or else scratching themselves. They move about listlessly and apparently without much purpose; they might as well be lunatics. ” - Henry Miller

We walked down a hill to a large parking lot that was wrapped up by serpentine interstate overpasses. It looked like the kind of place you might find a lovely young blonde in a plastic trash bag.

The Cider House sits at the end of this expanse of pavement, brick with blacked out windows. Inside was a hillbilly rave, a dubstep hoedown. We took some E and it didn’t kick in until the club closed but it was a wonderful three mile walk back.