Amsterdam Forty: Fuzzy Cuddly Anarchy

In contrast to the centralized decisions and hierarchical authority structures of modern institutions, autonomous social movements involve people directly in decisions affecting their everyday lives. They seek to expand democracy and to help individuals break free of political structures and behavior patterns imposed from the outside." As such this has involved a call for the independence of social movements from political parties in a revolutionary perspective which seeks to create a practical political alternative to both authoritarian socialism and contemporary parliamentary democracy. — Georgy Katsiaficas, The Subversion of Politics.

Interesting. Autonomism seemed to be compatible with social anarchism which was a view of individual freedom as dependent on mutuality that emphasized community and social equality--the communitarian aspects of anarchist theory. Libertarian socialism also seemed to fit within the umbrella, a theory proposing the conversion of contemporary private property into the commons while still retaining respect for personal property.

I kept surfing the Internet, going from link to link to link. All in all, it seemed that there were dozens of interrelated and complementary theories covering similar ground. Europe was a cut above the rest of the world when it came to putting these theories into practice. Italy, Germany, France, Greece, and The Netherlands were the countries that had the most active autonomist and anarchist movements. The 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, and early 1990s constituted the beginnings and most contentious times of these movements in various countries, including the most violence. The violence, though, was not always between autonomists/anarchists and the state. In Germany, autonomist/anarchist groups clashed with neo-Nazis. The autonomens in Germany heavily emphasized “species solidarity” as opposed to neo-Nazi nationalism and racism. The autonomens of Germany became known publicly as anti-fascists (antifas) and during the years following the fall of the Berlin Wall they were the most effective defenders of immigrants, homosexuals, and other marginalized peoples attacked by neo-Nazis. The unified German state did little to nothing to stop the violence. The antifas, on the other hand, organized quickly in several cities and rooted out neo-Nazi squatters. They occupied those squats and became a significant anti-hierarchical social force as well as a home to those who were marginalized or threatened by extremist groups as well as mainstream political and economic society.

Fuck, I could get on board with this. Everything the autonomists and social anarchists were doing resonated with my values. I wasn’t sure there was a place for me, but how could there not be within “species solidarity”? I knew of no similar groups or movements existing in the United States. For one, squatting was an integral practice in the movement which made perfect sense within the strategic goal of reclaiming private property for the public good; in the U.S. police would arrest squatters immediately and most Americans would view autonomists/anarchists as either homeless vagrants or potential terrorists depending on how the media branded them. All government officials and corporate public relations had to do was give the news media the tiniest of nudges to suggest that squatters were lazy homeless pus-filled sores blighting America or potential terrorists huddling under the nation's nose to blow up the White House or roam across the country from city to city killing all the middle-class white Christian heterosexuals. And people would gobble the turd nuggets of media bullshit like it was Halloween candy. No, there was a reason autonomist/anarchist activities played meaningfully in Europe rather than the United States.

How could anything approximating a democracy survive without a healthy press acting as a check on government and corporate power? It couldn’t and it hadn’t; the U.S. was lost with an entrenched corporate oligarchy governing 300 million people wandering in the dark. Only those interested in following the links could make sense of what was really happening in the world which meant that each person had to act as a journalist to remain informed. Journalism, of course, requires round-the-clock vigilance and there weren’t many Americans willing to spend their limited leisure time working their asses off to piece together how the world worked. What could they do with the information, anyway? It wasn’t like there was a wave of Americans ready to form squatting communities so that they could be part of something with flesh and blood and physical space. Creating a community of participatory democracy that required engaged thinking and action to make society work? Why do that when there existed a technological mindspace that allowed avoidance of physicality?

I shook my head vigorously to clear it. It was about eight o’clock. Two hours of searching and reading after a couple hours of sleep. I needed food, but I also needed a puff from the pipe to relax my mind and muscles. I lit up then had a cig, opening the window and relaxing while looking out at the street. I had a tendency to get wound up regarding matters of politics and economics, particularly in relation to social injustice. I needed to focus on my well-being. 

As I sat puffing my cigarette watching pedestrians walk past in their relaxed manner and cyclists pedal by as if they hadn’t a care in the world, my mind eased. I was extremely happy to have ganja at my disposal. A single puff, really, that’s all it took to let go. The environment outside my window quieted my mind, allowed me to simply observe for the sake of observing. No ulterior motives, no ultimate goals, just time passing slowly, imperceptibly, as I watched a tiny slice of the world move up and down the street. Outside the window was the commons, the place where interesting things happened, where cyclists whistled, where walkers sang, and where groups conversed, teased, and laughed. All was not bliss as there was occasionally belligerence and even hostility; those occasions were infrequent, rare. Funny, all the arguments of the chaos that would result from having commons or spaces for the public good instead of private property were debunked by the sensory evidence I saw on streets, squares, and parks. People mostly enjoyed themselves while walking, biking, or hanging out with friend and family. It was January, the coldest month of the year. How much more enjoyment was there in the middle of summer?

I had to eat. I made pasta, ate the dose of McKennaii, had a beer, ate a dose of Golden Teacher, drank another beer, took a puff of Super Silver, and smoked another cigarette. Again, I looked out the window. I felt strange. Not shrooms strange, just … strange. I couldn’t identify my emotions; they were unfamiliar. Not pleasant, but not unpleasant. There was something roaming underneath, something that might be good or might be bad. I looked at my laptop and wondered if my research on autonomism fucked with my equilibrium. I hadn’t felt such frustration with the world for some time. Why would reading about movements that shared my values make me feel alienated? It didn’t make sense, but less and less made sense any more.

I had too much information swimming around my head, too many ideas from too many different sources. My sparked interaction with Che, the humanity of it, was wonderful. Getting lost in the theories and practices of autonomism? Not so much. The mind has limits even though I strongly pushed against that notion. That wasn’t necessarily true; I couldn’t accept it. As I lay dying, yes, but I couldn’t accept it while continuing to live. Rests for the mind, sure, and now was a time to rest the mind.

I had another puff of Super Silver then another cigarette. I saw a guy dressed all in black stop to look in the window of the gallery kitty-corner from me. Shiny black shoes, black pants, black suit coat, and, gauging from the lighted reflection in the window, a black button-down shirt. He had dark hair as well. I never saw blonde guys wearing all black. Not really a good look for blondes. The man in black adjusted his clothing, stretched his neck, looked at the window while turning to one side then the other, and walked away. He hadn’t been looking at the art at all—unless his moving reflection was a work of art. Possibly. I had no idea what the art world considered art other than it had to have a monetary value so the man's window reflection certainly wasn't "art world" art.

While what I was seeing was less than interesting, the cigarette tasted damn good. I lit another one, sucking in my cheeks as I drew the smoke into my mouth and down my throat. My lungs said, “Ahhh,” and my body loosened that much more as I exhaled. There was something decidedly sexual about smoking a cigarette. Perhaps I had an oral fixation, but I thought Freud was a quack so I ruled that out. The greatest thing Freud did was snort cocaine. If he had spread the word in his books that cocaine cured depression then I would have respected him. But he didn’t—as far as I knew—so he was full of shit.

My mind wandered to Che. Not specifically Che, though, but becoming the focus of her attention during the morning. I wondered if I was attracted to women and men not because I found them sexy, but because I found it enlivening to be the focus of another person’s attention. Each person had innumerable, possibly infinite, ways to direct their attention each moment. A man could focus on the way he walked, a woman could focus on how her hair looked, a boy could focus on playing with a toy, a girl could focus on skipping, a person could focus on a movie, a game, a sunset, a car, a noise, a broken fingernail, an idea for a novel, next week’s math test, last week’s presentation, yesterday’s sex, tomorrow’s meeting, and on and on. Why this instead of that? Why her instead of me? Why me instead of him?

My awareness of these endless possibilities made me feel special when a person chose to give me his or her attention. “You’re choosing me? Are you serious?” I might look around and see dozens of people who were intriguing to me and, thus, no doubt others; I might see a cozy café, a gorgeous mansion, a colorful houseboat, a three-centuries-old bridge, or a perfectly blue sky; I might smell fresh bread from a bakery or hear someone playing a violin; and yet, a person chose to be attentive to me. What a gift to be regarded by a sentient being. 

This was fascinating. Why was this so fascinating to me? I looked out at the street and noticed the bricks on the building across the way were blinking different shades of dark red. I laughed out loud, “Oh, yeah, I’m shrooming! I can't believe I forgot!” I fell onto the couch, my face buried in the cushions, convulsing laughter. I propped myself up, still only lightly shrooming. I felt the cold coming in the window and cranked it shut. “Well shit, man, that’s a fine how do you do.”

I got up and walked around the living room, observing each wall and everything in between. After a time, I realized I hadn't showered since the previous day. My skin felt filmy and grimy. I walked to the bathroom, removing clothing on the way. The shower was warm and relaxing, but not particularly pleasurable. “Two doses and I barely feel like I’m tripping. Well, I feel like I’m tripping, but not to the extent I would expect, especially after last night.” I kept talking to myself in that manner for a long time, getting lost deeper and deeper into my mind. For no apparent reason, I noticed that I was standing an inch from a wall tile outside the shower, my body almost drip-dried from standing there so long. “Huh? How long have I been talking to the bathroom wall?” Oh, well. I noticed the shower wasn’t running. “Good, good. Responsible to save water. Good.”

I walked out of the bathroom and into my bedroom to get dressed. I wore a pair of sweats and looked at the clothes hamper. Laundry. “I should write that down.” I walked back to the living room and then realized I didn’t have any socks. I walked back to the bedroom and realized I hadn’t written down “Laundry.” I walked back to the living room and stopped. “Wait a minute. This could go on endlessly. I have to choose to do one before the other. Well, how the fuck am I going to do that? Hmmm…” I didn’t know so I decided not to do either of them. I walked to the couch and sat down to smoke more pot. I cashed the bowl and loaded a bud. I lit and inhaled. I grabbed a cigarette as I exhaled, cranking open the window and lighting up. A smoke ring floated from my mouth into the dark of night illuminated by artificial light.

Few thoughts. Easy, everything languid. Cooooool. Breathing in worlds and worlds, tumbling them like smoky marbles. Essences lived in the smoke, they breathed in the smoke, and when the smoke was gone they drifted apart, stretched thin in invisible layers easily passable by dense objects. The essences remained, though, always stretching further and further, thinner and thinner, never breaking, never disintegrating, always existing. Each new inhalation was the genesis of a new essence and each exhalation was a birth and each dissipation was a transformation into the invisible stretching of the eternal invisible essence.

The cold from outside mixed with the warm of inside. I was the resulting storm, the source of chaos between two otherwise self-satisfied temperatures. Neither blamed me. I wouldn’t have apologized even if they had. They had borne me, after all. I simply opened a window to allow them to meet. The way they went at it with one another? That was their business. I was a participant-observer, a gonzo journalist inserting myself into the story of inside-outside clashes of temperature. I had to insert myself in the drama since I caused it; I was the beginning of the story and I could end it just by turning a crank. Would journalists drop bombs just to start a war in order to have a story to cover? How would they stop the war once it started? No one could close the war crank. No matter who cranked it open, no one could crank it shut. With all the magnificent engineering in the world it was surprising that no one had been able to figure out how to make a war crank that didn’t get stuck once it opened.

I ended the conflict by turning the crank and put out my cigarette in the ashtray. I sat still looking around the room. Lights were on everywhere and I didn’t like it. I walked around and turned them all off, every damned one of them. Each one had a defiant personality, but they all acquiesced. I stood in the middle of the room and swallowed the darkness. I had lost myself in darkness while surrounded by light the previous night, but this time I would find myself in light while surrounded by darkness. I wanted all the darkness within me, though, every bit of it. I gulped mouthfuls of it, gobbled it up, licked it off walls, and took off my clothes so I could smear the darkness all over my body. I rolled around the floor, coating every centimeter of my skin with darkness. If I walked outside I would be seen by others only as a silhouette, scaring the shit out of those who had thought themselves sane and I would have bellowed, “You were never sane! I have always been right beside you but now I let you see and hear me. I will always be with you even if you can’t feel my presence. Be haunted forever and never believe anything you think you know or understand ever again. Cower, forever cower, and let that be your calling.”

A heat emanated from the middle of my body. As I stood up I looked at a dark reflection of myself in the glare of the figurine case. I saw Martin Sheen’s face from the end of Apocalypse Now, my body caked not with mud but darkness. My heart was dark and I heard Jim Morrison’s voice, “This is the End, my only friend, the End.” I said aloud, “There are no endings. Even death can’t be called an ending unless you’re a narcissist. ‘Your’ ending? Who are you to say that your death is ‘yours’? You don’t own life so how are you going to own death?”

I intertwined my arms and legs, continuously twisting and squirming them around one another while gyrating my hips one way then the other then back again and back again and back again. These movements allowed my thoughts to flow more naturally … or so it seemed. The rhythm of my body churned a rhythm in my thought. The Doors remained in my head, “Lost in a Roman wilderness of pain and all the children are insane waiting for the summer rain …” The song went on and on and Jim made up lyrics when he couldn't remember other verses: “People moving aimlessly struggling to get out God hates me the world ought to be lathered in doubt, pungent firecracker odors snuffing babies pig blood smeared on men a woman cut in half, no one cares about anyone killed without mercy no one except the impotent bastards with no remorse for their helplessness …” All lyrics about a man who became darkness.

My naked body was writhing on the floor. Sounds in my head may or may not have been audible, but everything seemed to happen gradually. There were no hard stops-and-starts, water pouring out of a pitcher down a sheer mountain cliff thousands of kilometers never beading into droplets. Slowly, slowly, slowly I saw that there was an opening of orange through the darkness. The sun! The orange sun spun and shot beams of red and yellow everywhere as well as crimson and honey, wheat and barley, drums and money, cum and bunnies. Colors ran together, so much color, too much color! Fuck! 

I jumped to my feet, on my toes, semi-crouched, ready to fight whoever or whatever light had come to disturb my darkness. I could feel it, I knew what was happening, it was what had happened the previous night, but this time I had a handle on it … or did I? I gave it a name, a name that made no sense at all but served as a signpost I could reference in case I got lost. The sign read, “PRIMORDIAL,” and it meant nothing other than possibly “NO WAY BACK.” The sign spun round and round. Occasionally it stopped but not for long before it spun again. I didn’t move. To take a step might be a one-way ticket to somewhere other than anywhere I had been. Did I want to go somewhere I hadn’t been even if it meant never coming back?

I sat and pondered. I wouldn’t see Che tomorrow or … the someone I had been wouldn’t be seeing her tomorrow. Whoever was new who would be me might see her … or he might decide he didn’t want to see her. If he did see her and he was nothing like me what would Che think? Why would that matter? I have to take the step. I have to go in a direction, one I have never experienced. I took a step. I looked around the room, slowly turning my head. I heard sounds. What did they mean? Maybe the new world didn't affect my sight, but changed the way I experienced sound.

Crashes and bangs, yelling and screaming. Where did the sounds originate? A strange language, mad words I did not know. I felt my mouth. The sounds didn't originate there. Other parts of my body? I looked and couldn’t tell. The yelling continued. Different voices, several different voices. Calmer and then angrier, calmer then angrier. I looked at the window and saw a new type of light, a white beaming light. I walked to the couch, fascinated. I leaned against the back and peered down out the window. “Oh my God!” There were … creatures! I pulled back from the window, curled up into a ball, and hid. “Surely they didn’t see me?” Shhh. Quiet! I pulled myself up slowly and peeked out the window.

Fucking ogres! Thousands of them, maybe more. A sheath in a blanket shared a rocket pack with a silver suit that had been mangled by a demon. There was red everywhere except where it wasn’t! Fuck, a female talisman with a mouth the size of a cow gnashed razor teeth back and forth to make a sound like a motor whirring! I didn’t think that would scare the demon one bit. What kind of hell occurred? So many new species of beings. I couldn’t keep track. The noise, too, was frightful. I hunkered back down and whispered, “Why did I leave the darkness? I want to go back.”

I saw the magic pipe floating on the liquid glass. My hand took over and controlled it. My other hand trapped the lighter before it could submerge. I made fire and inhaled darkness into my lungs. I could feel the power of its warmth. I forced the smoke all around the room, hoping to rid it of light. I looked through the window again. A metallic green and white ladybug the size of a hippopotamus was on the scene. There were flashing blue neon eyes on top of its body. Two armor-clad black spiders, each a third of the size of the bug, emerged from under each wing. They skittered to the demon, crawling all over it and wrapping it spindles of spider silk around it. The demon screeched and thrashed, but it was no use. The spiders had cocooned it and tugged the squirming coil behind them back to the ladybug, placing it under a wing. One of the spiders crept back to the rocket pack and the talisman, circling around them. The spider emitted a crackling noise and the sound of a thousand newspapers being ripped and crumpled.

An orange grasshopper-beetle hybrid the size of an elephant leapt next to the spider. It turned around and around, back and forth, back and forth, then attached a pincer to the talisman and another to the rocket pack before slowly crawling away. Red was still everywhere except where it wasn’t. The ogres danced about, waving their arms and legs, elongating their mouths until their faces disappeared. The movements became too ferocious to watch, blurs of energy mixing with static imagery of burning candles and baby white eyes, a fever of shadows illuminated by a red mist, signals from hell flashing orange, the neon blue eyes sizzling electricity, colors running together and pulling apart, figures forming and disintegrating, pulses of light and sound indistinguishable from one another, the smell of burning rubber and rotting sulfur, asphalt droppings from flying mechanical bats, roiling movements in a sea of solids, stalagmites rising above the apartments into the sky …

My body fell back against the couch as I tilted my head to watch the pillars rise higher in the sky. Fur grew on me, covered me, a polar ball of bear fur, no mouth, no nose, no eyes, no ears, polar fur blending into a couch pillow to fool predators, and then ... sensations of warmth and cuddliness. Eons passed as cuddle ball, antidote to sharp edges and jerky movements, polar immunity from grizzly latitudes, fuzzy frizzles free, gewoon, étant, að halda áfram að vera, freiheit des seins, liberdade sem fim, essere senza fine …

Expansion … contraction … expansion … contraction. Fuzzy … cuddly … fuzzy … cuddly.