First Annual International Day of Nuclear Disarmament
On June 20, 1983, the Livermore Action Group at Berkley declared an International Day of Nuclear Disarmament, which took the form of rallies, demonstrations, and civil disobedience in more than fifty cities across the United States. It might have been the official end of an era, when a group making a large public countercultural fuss, could have even a negligible effect on the body politic in any way. It was a damn good cause, abandoning a budget-killing, hair-raising, psychologically wigged out proliferation of nukes, whose increase was based on a set of lies, phony rationales, cockamamie scenarios and fanatical premises, and whose use, if it ever occurred, would be full bore, damn the torpedoes, and damn the radioactive half life of a hundred years, in the war to end all wars, and every other human endeavor, along with the deeply flawed and silly humans themselves. It was simply that you could not sell peace and sanity on their own merits, especially by proclaiming their virtues with a moralistic tone to boot. Things had reached the stage where you had to say to the country: “Look, you dumb bunch of motherfuckers, your wallets are being vacuumed in order to purchase an egregious redundancy of world destroying weaponry which can never be used, the purchase of which will offer no enhancement whatsoever to your security and safety.” Such a statement would need to be accompanied by one directed to the executive and legislative branches of government, as well as to the entirety of the military industrial complex, along the lines that, you were of the inclination to tear them a new and improved rectal orifice and to continue tearing it as long as they continued to pursue the stockpiling and development of nuclear weapons. On the First Annual Day of Nuclear Disarmament the unfortunate frequency of photographs of infants on signs held aloft by crowds, along with the phrase, “Russians Love Their Children Too,” displayed in televised images was a sign that poured-on syrup was the cause of snap, crackle and pop in the Rice Krispies giving way to sogginess. Another problem: the eighties hippies, though well meaning, had none of the old scarifying and boisterous pizzazz of their sixties’ predecessors and more a redolence of incense and homemade bread. Most importantly, the crowds no longer inspired jealousy and resentment deep in the hearts of current reactionaries, as the behavior of the original freaks had in their Sixties’ counterparts, still pissed to this very day about the degree of head over ass fun hippies had over all those years; not to mention, their discernible cultural and political impact. And most aggravating of all was the flagrante longhaired men delighted in with beautiful women of the era during the longhairs’ location at the advance point of the cultural edge. Of course, Rightists tried as hard as they could in the Eighties to elevate “portfolio” and “welfare scum” to the level of cultural catchphrases like “peace and love” and “off the pigs” years before, but as “hip phraseology” they never took.
I declined to read it for Lila right away, otherwise preoccupied as I was with returning to soaking up Bob’s prosaic spectacle. I told her I would love to read it for her as soon as we got back to the country house. The suspense wouldn’t kill her, she said. Unlike what such sentiments could lead one to believe, in fact Lila frequently professed her remarkable enthusiasm for, and unrelenting support for these indulgences of mine, whether the fanciful entries, or something deceptively ambitious. Without Lila hearing it, my hastily scribbled bastardization of the encyclopedia format, though possibly less humorous, and perhaps more true than the genuine article in the area of content, incited a conversation between us about the place and importance such activity might progress toward in my future; or return to, depending on how she was aiming. She started out saying, “Occasionally I think about how much I liked it when you were writing poems…even plays sometimes, remember that?”
“What kind of question is that? Why in hell wouldn’t I remember?”
“You would. Just another way of saying I think about it sometimes.”
“What I don’t remember is you liking it all that much.”
Not flinching, she said, “I didn’t necessarily like the side effects of you being so consumed with it; not on my account, but because it seemed to cause you all that anguish…the perfectionist part, pushing to excel, or to satisfy your own standards, or whatever it was, seemed to be fairly painful. On the other hand, I liked the excitement and enthusiasm you had when you were doing the work. I liked the fact that you seemed to get so much satisfaction. It was something I liked being around.”
“In a galaxy far, far away.”
“I enjoyed reading everything you did and I thought it was very good, naturally. I know you always knew that.”
“Obviously.”
“Ever think about starting it up again? I don’t care, I’m just curious.”
“You might remember that other than actually doing the thing, whether it was writing plays or writing poems, I hated everything else about it, and everybody involved. That seemed like as good a signal as any to cease and desist.”
“I remember. But you didn’t mind writing for the Encyclopedia.”
“Hack work for drinking money suited me better. A skill put to worthy use.”
“I understand. But potentially, also a talent wastefully rendered dormant.”
“Well it was high-brow hack work.”
“Yeah, I suppose it was. You like doing your little faux entries. I can tell how much you like doing them.”
“So?”
“Nothing. I like them myself. It takes a certain creative impulse and motivation even to do those.”
“That’s only compulsion. I wouldn’t dignify it by calling it anything as rarefied as creative impulse.”
“I’m not sure they’re all that far apart. And, I don’t know that I would classify creative impulses as rarefied.”
“You’d be as good a judge as me, since you not only have them, but still act on them in a serious way.”
“And anything you acted on in a serious way would be taken seriously. Besides that, you might even get a decent payoff once in a while; maybe even a sizeable windfall down the line. That would get you out of offices, and paid for doing something with greater value. I’m not bringing it up because I really give a damn, but because it occurred to me…it occurs to me every so often. ”
“I think word processing and customer service are regarded as having greater value.”
“Well, maybe just on the scale my work gets out there a tiny bit…small financial payoffs to go with larger satisfactions.”
“Your paintings have broader appeal.”
“You have more blarney at your disposal. You have obnoxiousness, and you’re not afraid to use it.”
“That’s only in my personal life. I don’t believe in using it for artistic self-promotion. Better to do something that really can’t benefit from promotion, something dead on arrival. Confucius say this give man with artistic tendencies a happier life.”
“That’s really stupid.”
“I can see that.”
“Either way, no one regarded the stuff you did as anything other than the work of a talented person, so the self-promotion angle is a little overplayed. Probably the fact that so many people liked the stuff required you to stop doing it.”
“Not exactly. You know me really well, but you still make mistakes.”
“All right. I like your plays, and I like your poems, so I remind you of it every once in a while when I feel like doing it. That’s all.”
“As for plays, I don’t even read them anymore; and they cost too much to go see. So why should I bother writing them? And poems? Fuck, everybody writes them, but nobody reads ‘em. So who gives a flying fuck? College teachers write them, rappers who want to be poets, or poets who want to be rappers are slamming their little hearts out. Those worlds are the only homes for poetry now; which would render anything I wrote essentially homeless. Where’s Francois Villon or maybe Ogden Nash when you need them?”
“I think all the institutions and people and official culture you loathe so much, and see as so dev
alued and corrupted by opportunism might be more accommodating and more capable of change than you think.”
“I don’t loathe anybody’s opportunism, I’m just maybe bitterly envious of people who possess it.”
“If you say so.”
“I admit it. I’d get more satisfaction knowing they didn’t have any of the stuff I wrote.”
“That’s you all right.”
“I’m only kidding, kidding about everything. The fact that I never tell the truth is what gives me the dependability you count on. There’s a moral consistency people are drawn to.”
“I really don’t care this goddamned much. Forget it. Screwy son of a bitch.”
“Look who’s talking? Pot, kettle, black.”
“If there’s one thing I don’t want to be, and one thing I’m not cut out for, it’s a motherfucking cheerleader, Donovan.”
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