Long Tale Press

January, 1986

The chairs at the Rec. Center were harder than ever. The impasse among the members of the Island Recycling Group was insoluble. They operated by consensus, but now, even if they had reverted to Robert’s Rules of Order (arcane rituals, known only to the few select members who took an active part in union meetings), it was doubtful that a 51% majority would have agreed on anything. Susan reported that there would be no more free trucking of recyclable material to Vancouver Island. If that was not depressing enough, she added that the price of used paper had sunk again, and the price of used glass was close to zero because the government had bowed to capitalist pressures and suspended the “glassphalt” program which used bottles and shredded tires to replace the asphalt from Venezuela. The government lackeys slyly claimed that the tiny population of British Columbia, spread over an area the size of France and Germany together, could not supply enough discarded tires – clear evidence of the sinister power of the oil cartel.

Father Jake said it really did not matter what they did with their recyclables, since B & M logging was going to kill them all with cancer causing sprays, while getting rid of unwanted tree species on the cheap. A Communist faction kept trying to refer this matter to the Friends of Gaia Society, saying it was outside the mandate of the Recycling Group.

Hans broke all rules of decorum when he personalized an attack on the retired business agent of the Glazier’s Union. “Fred, you bozos vill do anyt’ing to wreck da environment, won’t you? It’s not enough that Lake Baikal is dying, the Caspian Sea is drying up, dat de Barents Sea glows in de dark, and dat anodder Chernobyl is waiting to blow at any minute, ass long ass de glorious mudderland vants to conquer nature, like Lenin and Stalin ordered, you can’t vait to wreck da environment.. You might efen pick up a vote or two from a hard hat who iss vorried about his chob, becauss uff da eco-freaks.”

(There were boos from both hard hats and eco-freaks).

Jake interrupted, “Let’s not rehash the arguments of 50 years ago. The fact is that we are going to be poisoned, and we ought to do something about it.”

Fred was good and mad, and not content to be relegated to the dustbin of history. “Red-bating has never solved an environment problem yet, that I know of. You are the broken record. You remind me of the guy who honks his horn, when the car in front breaks down. ‘Let’s trade places. I’ll honk your honk and you try and make my car go.’ To put it simpler, I’ll say bad things about Russia, if you can solve all our environment problems.”

Susan broke in. “Will you guys stop worrying about your eternal feuds? Our recycling efforts, are about to go bankrupt, and if what father Jake says is correct, we are all about to get another dose of cancer causing chemicals. Doesn’t anybody want to focus on the here and now?”

Hans: “I do. Dat’s Vy I opchekt to dis trick of ‘refer it to a commiddee.’ Dat’s an old trick to kill somet’ing you don’t like, vidout saying so.”

Fred: “It’s no trick. We don’t ask the fire department to solve robbery cases. If we dabble in everybody else’s business, nothing gets done, or else it’s so half-assed, that nothing effective gets done.”

Susan: “But the Friends of Gaia are here. We’re the same people.”

Fred: “Then let’s adjourn this meeting, and reconvene as the Gayanese, but leave me out of it.”

Jake: “Not materialist enough for you?”

Fred: “I came here to retire in peace. I never dreamed this island was such a loony bin.”

Willy’s father, Archie, spoke up for the first time. “I’m against the motion. Let’s do what we can about recycling. If you tree huggers want to throw the monkey wrench into our jobs, I don’t want no part of it.”

Matt thought frantically: (How can I keep my inner peace, and still get some results out of this wrangling mob?) He said: Let’s agree on what we can agree on as the Recycling Group, and then if the Friends of Gaia have a quorum, we can reconvene, and agree on what we can agree on.”

Since that was hard to quarrel with, no one responded directly. This was a crucial moment for leadership. Either there wasn’t anyone with enough leadership skill, or the group was in no mood to be led. The sniping and quarreling went on, and Matt stepped outside the hall to re-center his Wa, and restore his inner peace.

Nothing had been decided when he returned, but he felt better. Finally the recyclers agreed to send faxes to the provincial government and to the trucking company. Matt thought he might need to go outside again, when the recyclers finally agreed to adjourn. The Gaians immediately swarmed to the right side of the mini-stage. As people were heading out the doors, Susan shouted: “No one has to leave if you are not a member. Archie, Fred, you are welcome to stay.”

“Thanks,” a voice called back, “But I’m not nuts!”

The Gaians had what they considered to be a quorum and joined hands, standing in a circle. One voice chanted “Ommm…” Others joined, first in unison, than in 3rds, 4ths, and 5ths. Matt recoiled at some of the less than perfect intervals, but tried to remember to be tolerant. (They have a right to recreate any harmony they want to). After a lot of “Ommm”-ing, there was a loud “Pahh” as one member let out his or her breath. (How can you hold your breath and chant at the same time?) Matt wondered. Then all hands were raised high, and everyone shouted a word that Matt could not understand. Then they sat on the floor to ground to earth’s energy, although there were plenty of chairs. Matt began to see why Hans and the old trade unionists left in fright. Since everyone had been part of the earlier discussion, the meeting continued as before, but with no reference to Robert’s or anybody else’s rules of order. There was an argument about whether to put up an information picket line at the B & M marshalling yard, or at the job site where they were cutting, or to substitute spring water for the herbicide spray, or to confront the sprayers personally but non-violently, or to have a non-contact meeting by projecting energy from the top of the cliff, which sounded to Matt like witchcraft or cowardice.

After more than an hour, there was no formal agreement, but it seemed one group would emanate positive thought waves from the top of the cliff, which had a lot of Feng Shui power, and another group would telephone the press and hand out leaflets at the marshalling yard before the shift started.

People began to drift away. The hard core meeting goers held hands in a circle again, “Omm”-ed a bit, and then shouted the magic word.

The next morning, five men and three women gathered on top of the cliff on the East side of the island. To an airborne observer, it would have looked like they were not doing anything. Most wore checked shirts, (made in China,) blue jeans and gum boots. A few wore the home made clothing from the food Co-op with all natural fibers, and natural dyes, and unnatural prices. One man had two eagle feathers stuck in his hair. A few other people wore beaded headbands. Without a word, they sat in a circle, joined hands and closed their eyes. They thought of trees growing from single cells, or more complicated scenarios if they had paid attention in biology class. They visualized the tree sprayers and forestry company executives as beings conceived in love, and needing love; they sent thought waves of love to all. They sent messages that trees of al species were beautiful, necessary and useful. One or two misguided individuals sent images of cancer caused by the herbicide, and of victims dying slowly and painfully in hospital beds. They had either not understood, or not believed the rule that negative thoughts rebound onto the sender. That is the reason that faith healers usually work without pay, since they are re-charged with the same positive energy they send to their patients. Still holding hands, they struggled to their feet, formed a line looking at the sunrise, raised their hands for a moment, shouted the word, and left silently.

At the marshalling yard, Matt joined Hans, Father Jake, Bill, the sign painter, Mrs. Waters and two other women he did not recognize. They felt a little silly since they knew most of the guys going to work, like Archie. They also knew that the loggers looked down on them as being neither real men, nor gainfully employed. Except for Hans, those with jobs were not in primary industry but in tertiary, or in Jake’s case, quaternary industry. Most political tactics are designed for strangers facing strangers. On the island, only the rawest new-comer was a stranger. There were good-natured, and not so good natured jibes from the loggers: “You guys come to see what work really is?’ “Is the zoo closed today, ya gotta come and look at us?” Jake managed to give a printed statement to a young guy visiting from the Vancouver office. He said he would pass it on to the appropriate people, while looking down at his feet. Nobody from the press showed up. The loggers got into their crummies, and waved mockingly at the forlorn demonstrators. Less than an hour later the little group straggled away, grumbling.

Jake went to the pay phone at the ferry landing and gave the story (somewhat enhanced) to the Courtenay newspaper and radio station. Then he called the community TV station, and made an appointment to appear as a guest on a call-in show.

Matt was with him, because it was on his way home. He was astounded. “How can that be a news story?” He asked. “Nothing happened. They are still going ahead with the spraying. We stood around on the road for an hour, and nothing happened – no punch-out, no yelling or screaming.”

“You don’t understand news,” Jake said pedantically. That was an event. Opinions belong on the ‘Letters to the Editor’ page, but now the editors can write about it, because a demonstration is an event. A war isn’t much different, except for short violent episodes where people get killed. Most of it is hanging around waiting.”

Jake borrowed all of Matt’s change and started calling all of the media in Vancouver and Victoria.

“Vancouver!” Matt expostulated. “Why the hell would they care? Half a dozen people stood around on the road for an hour, on an island nobody in the city ever heard of, and you gave a press release to a punk who is going to toss it in the waste basket.”

“Matt, my boy, the media in Courtenay are nervous because they do not have a lot of advertisers and the live on the edge of existence. Besides, no decisions are made here. We just do the work and send out the resources. The company headquarters are in New York. Some controls on logging are legislated in Victoria, but the voters are in Vancouver. The press in Vancouver don’t give a damn what B & M thinks. Besides we are far away, and therefore, exotic – orgies in clouds of hash smoke, the last of the psychedelic freaks, welfare bums, - us.” He said “us” in italics.

Matt shook his head and started walking home on the paved road. He went over all the arguments in his head. It’s only a little poison. It is highly diluted. It will wash away in the rains. Then why spray it on at all? It only degrades the ground water a little bit. It only increases our chance of getting cancer a few points. This is not ‘cancer alley’ in Louisiana, or the Ruhr Valley. But, nothing goes away. Barry Commoner said: “Away from me is toward you.” It is cheaper than thinning the unwanted species by hand. However, the middle class protestors do not know how tiring and tedious it is to thin by hand. We need the jobs. Hand thinning makes more jobs. It might cost more, and there is competition from low wage countries. We’ve got mortgages to pay, and car payments. It was the same crap about the need to convert nature into cash at any price, to ‘keep up’ an ever rising standard of living. “The price of progress.” But why? How many more stereos and trucks with CD players or winter trips to Mexico do we need? Why take an area that is pretty close to paradise and poison it like the rest of the industrial world, to support a standard of living that is unsustainable? Privately Matt favored the idea of that refugee from California, a former Earth First member, with a warrant out for his arrest, who wanted to spray the loggers with distilled water, and say: “We don’t think it is toxic, but there is a risk in everything you do in life. We will pay for a free cancer check-up in 20 years.”

Matt couldn’t do that to Archie, Willy’s Dad. Julie had to work with Willy. The enemy were neighbors, if not always friends. That led to the lyrics of Matt’s favorite folk song: “If we could consider each other, a neighbor a friend or a brother, it could be a wonderful, wonderful, world; it could be a wonderful world.” (If we dealt with strangers as if they were at least neighbors, it would be harder to napalm them, to blow up passenger buses to make a political point. You can only treat people as objects when you stop seeing them as related to yourself. The reality of the present moment should not be denied. We should treasure the moment.)

February 1986

Julie was sitting at her loom, trying to decide whether to add more small details to the pattern that was emerging or to let it develop into something simpler and bigger. At the moment she had a figure of a warrior on a light orange background. It could be an Egyptian or an Inca Indian. Thor Heyerdahl saw the connection between the Egyptians and the Central American Indians. Maybe they went farther south. It was a figure of power. Since that was the dominant emotion, she was inclined to minimize the detail and go for size. The warrior was holding something in his right hand. He came from a book in the Courtenay Library. Should it be a sword, a mace, or a spear? No, long skinny objects meant a hell of a lot of more work, and the buyers never appreciated the labor. Julie felt it was a bit mad to create handicrafts when anything could be photographed or hologramed and produced by the zillions by sweated labor in poor countries. It made as little sense as making your own music, when the world’s best was available on a CD or whatever would come next after that. There could be only one justification since handicrafts were uneconomic. There must be some intrinsic enjoyment of the activity. She felt that selling her work gave it legitimacy in the eyes of the world. She did not quite have the courage to say that the market was irrelevant. They always seemed to be short of money, but aside from the Rothschilds, who wasn’t? It made sense to weave or sing as long as the process of creation was more satisfying than driving to a mall and buying a plastic tapestry or a CD. The warrior was going to turn into a monster. The width was limited to 54 inches by her loom, but the length could be infinite as long as she could afford the yarn. She thought of the mysterious signs in the Chilean desert that can only be seen from the air. (Of course my buyers are not going to cruise over this in a flying saucer.) She got up to look at it from the greatest distance the cabin allowed, and then sat down again. (With this freedom to choose, this momentary peace, I could be happy right here and now. Are we ever allowed to stop worrying, to stop feeling that we should be doing something else? Are we being stupid or negligent if we just let go and enjoy ourselves?)

It was a delightful but worrying idea.

Melanie was having a tea party down the road, with Rebecca and Jeremy. It was a perfect time to concentrate. The soft rain on the skylight was like white noise on the mood tapes. She wondered how great art was ever created in a sunny climate. Whenever the rain let up, she always wanted to be out in the garden. She was learning a lot of the gardening basics that the old timers had know since antiquity, but it was a fascinating adventure for her. She thought growing flowers was a slow motion form of fireworks, which could never be caught and frozen in time. Their growth and decay was as irreversible as the bursting and dying away of a skyrocket. Lately she had become just as interested in the vegetables and herbs. After coming to the island, she felt that her sense had been reborn. There was such a difference in taste between the vegetables she grew herself and the plastic stuff from California in the supermarkets, that it seemed dishonest to use the same names. A carrot wrapped in plastic had only a distant relation to a carrot from her own plot of ground. In the last few months she had begun to get ever more daring with fenugreek and basil. Matt complained a little at times, but it was only by experimenting that she could learn how much was enough, and what was too much. She sometimes gagged on her more exuberant creations but she often lied and told Matt they tasted great.

The peaceful suspension of time for creation did not last long.

“Hi! Mind if I visit?” Laura asked. She was already inside the door.

(I mind like hell) Julie heard herself saying, “Come on in. I’m not doing anything.”

(Just enjoying myself, just creating, just communing with the universe. Doing ‘my thing’ of course is ‘nothing.) Julie had a twinge of regret for apartments with locked lobby doors, and TV monitors. Here people going down the road just peered in the window and decided if you were home, or engaged in something too intimate to interrupt. There was no chance to hide on the 15th floor, and after scrutinizing your potential visitors to simply refuse to push the button to admit them. There wasn’t even a lock on her front door.

“You weaving?”

(What the hell does it look like I am doing at my loom?) “Yeah, you got to grab the chance when you can. Melanie is at the neighbor’s and Matt is out saving the world.”

“Is he protesting the spraying?”

“Yeah, but he thinks it’s more than that.”

“Why aren’t you with him? I thought I’d go myself. Bill’s there, but the damn car wouldn’t start.”

Julie wondered about the martyrs who would never have been martyred if they were as dependent on cars as we are. “I was going to defy the powers that be, and be thrown to the lions, but my car wouldn’t start.”

“Why? Do you think I ought to ‘Stand By My Man’?”

“No. It’s just that who wants that shit in our well water?”

“But what good does it do to stand around and protest? If it helps them make money, they’re going to do it anyway.”

“And if it costs them money, or gives them bad PR, they may stop doing it.”

“You don’t believe that, do you Laura?”

“Don’t take this wrong. I don’t want to hurt your feelings…” Laura wondered if she should go on.

Julie laughed at her discomfort. “I’m not that delicate. I won’t have a fit. I only do that with Matt.”

“This sounds like an attack, but it isn’t. I just can’t help noticing that the worldly wise, cynical people, who say there is no use in getting involved, no point in voting, all politicians are the same, demonstrations and petitions are a waste of time, these are the same people who are first in line when other people’s efforts produce a social benefit like free medicine, or dental care for kids, or subsidized day care. I may sound a little cynical myself, but aren’t all these rationalizations just elaborate excuses for sitting on your backsides and doing nothing? The smart people who know all this idealistic nonsense is a waste of time are indistinguishable from the lazy people who can’t be bothered, the uniformed who don’t know there is anything wrong with the world, and the indifferent who know there’s lots wrong but don’t give a damn.”

“Wow, that’s quite a mouthful!” was all Julie could say.

Laura looked embarrassed. “I don’t usually give political speeches, but this has been on my mind for a long time. For some reason, all the threads just came together.”

(I was just getting my own threads together) Julie thought.

Laura didn’t pause for breath. “I know it’s easy to see the frustrations and disappointments from all these crusades, but really is it any different from building a house or raising a kid? The prices of materials go out of sight, contractors let us down, the weather turns shitty, but somehow they get built. Our kids get ornery, never seem to listen, go out of their way to annoy us, get weird diseases nobody can diagnose, make their teachers go into real estate, have learning disorders that can only be described in Greek, but somehow, they grow up, one way or another. We are no longer being governed by the Hudson Bay Company; sailors aren’t flogged, women can vote. It’s pretty crazy to say that the bad guys always win, or that nothing ever changes.”

Julie realized that she would not get any more weaving done that day. She felt like taking her pique out on her unwanted guest. “So if I don’t run around and wave signs, I am a lazy bum, willfully ignorant, an indifferent slob, is that what you’re saying?”

“If that’s what I said, please don’t get upset. Maybe you are bummed out with politics because of your experience back East. It’s not just you, I’m upset with all the people who complain but don’t do anything.”

“As you know, politics bores me to tears now, so if you don’t mind, could we talk about something else?”

“Is getting cancer boring? Is being poisoned every time you take a drink of water boring? Politics is not just making an “X” every few years for somebody with a phony smile.”

“I had no idea you were such a visionary.”

“I know most people feel like Pavlov’s dog in a laboratory, caught in a frustrating but insoluble situation. I don’t believe we have exhausted every possible effort to help ourselves and make the world a better place. Half the people in the States don’t even bother to vote, and then they whine that there is nothing anyone can do.”

“Do you think it will rain any more today?”

“Maybe a little acid rain from Port Alberni, or if it’s a southeaster, we may get some shit from Vancouver.”

“The world you live in is a grim and terrible place.”

“From time to time I try to do a little something to make it better. If more people did just a little, it might get better faster.”

“Well, if you don’t mind, I will just go on being an indifferent slob, and wring my hands ineffectually.”

Laura saw she was dealing with a hard case, so she decided to try a little Dale Carnegie and show some interest in her antagonist. “Is that a spear thrower you are weaving?”

“I’m not really sure. I’ve just been deciding about his future. It gives me a dizzying sense of power. One reason I am so turned off politics and protests is that I realized we don’t control much of anything in our lives. I have also been trying to figure out why I do this. It can’t be for the money.”

“I’m sure it isn’t. Be brave and admit to the world that you are part of the mad minority who dare to do what you want, even when it doesn’t make a buck.”

“Is that grudging admiration, or are you just putting me down because I won’t join the cause?”

“I thought you knew me well enough to know that I insult people directly when I want to insult them. It is not politically correct for a woman to be coy and devious –fist in the face, two-by-four on the head – that’s me, the New Woman.”

“How does anybody know when you’re serious?”

“Like you said, I live in a grim and terrible world. I’d go nuts if I didn’t laugh once in a while.”

“Is that politically correct?”

Laura sighed. “No, I’m afraid not, and it depresses the hell out of me. There are still a few funny books left in the library, but they all seem to have been written before World War II.”

“Was the Great Depression something to laugh about?”

“I wasn’t there, but I guess there was a need. People must have realized that for a lot of them, life was so tough that they needed a laugh. They liked pie in the face movies.”

“So is that why we are all so grim? We aren’t suffering enough?”

“You may have something there. We live in a pretty fat world, here, even those of us who are officially below the poverty line, or unemployed. We are better off than most of the world, without lifting a finger. Maybe we feel too guilty to laugh.”

“You may. I don’t. I just don’t see anything funny in my life, living with a guy who won’t grow up, not being able to pay the hydro bill, worrying every damn day how to make ends meet. Melanie needs a lot too.”

“I don’t see you getting on a bus back to the city.”

“Oh Christ, I haven’t given up. I’m not sure why I came, but I hoped to find something better here than that crap of running like a hamster on a wheel in a cage.”

“Then why don’t you laugh? You don’t need to worry about being politically correct any more.”

“I used to worry about it. I’m like an ex-Catholic. I can’t get over it.” Julie felt the need to take the hard edges off this heavy conversation. “You want a toke?”

Laura brightened. “Of course! Pardon me for hectoring you. I hope I’m not trying to be more holy than thou.”

Julie: “Just a second, I’m a traditionalist. I keep it in the oregano jar in the spice rack.”

Laura: “Does Matt do dope?”

Julie: “Is this for the record. Should I speak into your fountain pen?”

Laura: “No, it’s just that he is such a funny mixture of far out and up tight.”

Julie: “That hits the nail on the head.” She rolled a generous joint. “He likes it better than I do. He was a heavy smoker and his throat must be tougher than mine. We just avoid it when Melanie is around. We lecture her on the evils of tobacco and it’s hard to explain the difference. And little pitchers have big ears, and she certainly has a big mouth.”

Laura: “Yeah, I felt a pang of regret as each of my kids learned to talk”

Julie lit the number, took a deep drag, and handed it to Laura, speaking in a funny voice, trying not to exhale: “’ere.”

Laura: “Smoking dope is not just socially acceptable here, I think it is socially obligatory. You know, people on the mainland would be disappointed if we did not live down to their expectations.”

Julie took back the joint and wheezed: “Really.”

Laura: “Sure. You know I feel like we are part of a carnival. People come here and take pictures of us. They don’t want to buy your weaving. They want to photograph you doing it. Isn’t that true?”

Julie: “I feel like part of a drive-thru zoo in the summer.”

Laura: “We have more economists and philosophers per square mile than U.B.C. Everybody has “the answer,” but hardly anybody can make a living.”

Julie: “You got that right.”

Laura: “Down at the veggie bar, I’ll bet there are ten guys giving speeches on how to save the world, and not one of them has enough money in the bank to pay their utilities.”

Julie: “Amen, sister!”

Laura: “We are all for peace and sharing. We grab as much land as we can afford and post signs and fence it to keep everybody else out.”

Julie: “That’s because we love humanity so much.”

Laura: “Julie, you got it! We love humanity; it’s people we can’t stand.”

Julie: “Laura, if you aren’t careful, you might make me laugh, yet. You say we all hate the system, but we can’t wait to be its agents and sell Tupperware to each other.”

Laura: “Or educational toys.”

Julie: “Pyramid investment schemes!”

Laura: “Powdered seaweed!”

Julie: “What about algae from Oregon?”

Laura: “Multi-level marketing and vitamin Q!”

Julie: “And DHEA and melatonin!”

Laura grabbed Julie in a hug, and raised a pottery cup with yesterday’s left over herb tea: “Here’s to capitalism, the system we love to hate!”

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