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Friends, Comrades. Another year gone. Another year, another year, another year, spinning on and on in the constant, subtle decay of the Earth's orbit, slowly slowly dwindling out on a scale so huge that to any being on its surface it seems infinite.
In this cosmological spirit I decided--around the time of the Autumnal Equinox, when I was buying my tickets home for the end of this year--that I ought to stay in Scotland for the Winter Solstice. My friend was planning a party, and I haven't properly celebrated a solstice in years. So I came to be in that frozen darkness, admiring the frost-sparkling ground and the intoxicated, sparkling company. Left at 7 am with a sleepy Daniel, and (at 8:46) finished watching the sun rise in magnificent, magnanimous red splendour from the window of the train, rushing off to Edinburgh to fly into those pinkening clouds.
Where, after wheeling through the new-morning-wet, Sunday-empty little grey city, trying and failing to find an open cafe and feeling a bit ridiculous dragging a floppy, wheeled duffel bag, florid inner monologue turned to panicked terror upon reading the departures screen: BD57 to Heathrow, Cancelled. A heavy Scrooge of a fog had settled over the city of London, and planes were having trouble landing; all flights either delayed or cancelled.
( How I got home. Cut for length and frustration. )
My one solace throughout all of this was my book, read openly in the hours-long queues and endless waiting in terminals: The Monkey Wrench Gang, a novel by rockstar-mountain-man eco-Anarchist Edward Abbey about a small troupe of dynamite jockeys harrying industrial "progress" in the American Southwest. I took great comfort, through all the indignity of the airport, the bag searches, the stroking and groping of the Female Security Officer, the shouting and shoving and the disorderly queues, that somewhere, somewhere out there, there might be (there are) people, flesh-and-blood-and-heart people, fighting the good fight, clawing the machine for all they're worth, getting in under the skin of the great complex organism of industry.
I thought about this a lot, because when you're alone for that long, surrounded by strangers, you have a lot of time to think. I thought about beaurocracy, and the breakdown of The System. (The trouble with Heathrow is mostly that it's poorly organised, but also that it's simply too damn big. And they want to expand that monstrosity?) Watching men and boys die at Branagh's Agincourt, I thought about war and technology and futility, the skewed priorities of men, that fierce loyalty which is so admirable and yet so damning; those poor noble fools. 'The Shawshank Redemption'? I thought about Anarchy. That great Ideal. But how are we ever to get there? I've always thought it was one of those things that people could handle just fine if they were raised in it--never bought those bullshit 'human nature' arguments claiming it's impossible--but, of course, we're not raised in it. We are born, we live, we die in the prison of the state. We are all 'institutionalised men'. And if we get out, what then? Will we die like Brooks, despairing and alone, in a brutal world of all against all, or will we gang together, supportive, and feel "the excitement only a free man can feel, a free man at the start of a long journey whose conclusion is uncertain"?
Roll on, 2008.
In this cosmological spirit I decided--around the time of the Autumnal Equinox, when I was buying my tickets home for the end of this year--that I ought to stay in Scotland for the Winter Solstice. My friend was planning a party, and I haven't properly celebrated a solstice in years. So I came to be in that frozen darkness, admiring the frost-sparkling ground and the intoxicated, sparkling company. Left at 7 am with a sleepy Daniel, and (at 8:46) finished watching the sun rise in magnificent, magnanimous red splendour from the window of the train, rushing off to Edinburgh to fly into those pinkening clouds.
Where, after wheeling through the new-morning-wet, Sunday-empty little grey city, trying and failing to find an open cafe and feeling a bit ridiculous dragging a floppy, wheeled duffel bag, florid inner monologue turned to panicked terror upon reading the departures screen: BD57 to Heathrow, Cancelled. A heavy Scrooge of a fog had settled over the city of London, and planes were having trouble landing; all flights either delayed or cancelled.
( How I got home. Cut for length and frustration. )
My one solace throughout all of this was my book, read openly in the hours-long queues and endless waiting in terminals: The Monkey Wrench Gang, a novel by rockstar-mountain-man eco-Anarchist Edward Abbey about a small troupe of dynamite jockeys harrying industrial "progress" in the American Southwest. I took great comfort, through all the indignity of the airport, the bag searches, the stroking and groping of the Female Security Officer, the shouting and shoving and the disorderly queues, that somewhere, somewhere out there, there might be (there are) people, flesh-and-blood-and-heart people, fighting the good fight, clawing the machine for all they're worth, getting in under the skin of the great complex organism of industry.
I thought about this a lot, because when you're alone for that long, surrounded by strangers, you have a lot of time to think. I thought about beaurocracy, and the breakdown of The System. (The trouble with Heathrow is mostly that it's poorly organised, but also that it's simply too damn big. And they want to expand that monstrosity?) Watching men and boys die at Branagh's Agincourt, I thought about war and technology and futility, the skewed priorities of men, that fierce loyalty which is so admirable and yet so damning; those poor noble fools. 'The Shawshank Redemption'? I thought about Anarchy. That great Ideal. But how are we ever to get there? I've always thought it was one of those things that people could handle just fine if they were raised in it--never bought those bullshit 'human nature' arguments claiming it's impossible--but, of course, we're not raised in it. We are born, we live, we die in the prison of the state. We are all 'institutionalised men'. And if we get out, what then? Will we die like Brooks, despairing and alone, in a brutal world of all against all, or will we gang together, supportive, and feel "the excitement only a free man can feel, a free man at the start of a long journey whose conclusion is uncertain"?
Roll on, 2008.
