THE DISTRIBUTIVE PASSIONS:

 

A TALE OF THE LAST DAYS OF

THE FIRST HARMONIAN REVOLUTION

 

 by

 

Shawn P. Wilbur

 

Ascending Wing

 

A child saw a blue butterfly resting on a blade of grass; the butterfly was benumbed by the north wind. The child picked the blade of grass, and the living flower at the end of it, still benumbed, could not fly away. The child returned, holding up its chance prize. A sunbeam touched the wing of the butterfly, and suddenly, revived and gay, the living blossom flew away towards the light. We all, seekers and workers—we are like the butterfly: our strength is made only of a ray of light; nay, only of the hope of a ray of light. We must, therefore, know how to hope; hope is the force which bears us upward and forward. But it is an illusion! How do we know that? Must we not move a step, for fear that some day the earth will disappear from under our feet? It is not sufficient to look far into the future, or into the past; we must look into ourselves. We must note there the vital forces which demand to be spent; and we must act.

Marc Guyau, A Sketch of Morality Independent of Obligation or Sanction

 

Editor's Note

X+1, Era of Harmony

 

The Axis passed, it is perhaps natural that many of us turn our attention to the past, not merely from nostalgia, but from some sense that the road up to the crest may provide so signposts for the road down. This is a false logic, unquestionably. We would not expect one side of a mountain to too closely resemble the other. One can make too much of Symmetry and Analogy. In the Old Creation, the land was in places sharply divided by ranges of mountains, rising as high above the plains and deserts on either side as the crest of Harmony has risen above the eras of Civilization and Barbarism. These barrier ranges were responsible, together with the more extreme weather patterns of those earlier eras, for extreme divisions in weather and climate, extreme alternations in heat and cold, moisture and aridity. Air masses which passed over deserts without giving the slightest relief might, on crossing the mountains, deliver torrents. The first freezing winds of winter, pushing across the range, might become the last scorching breath of summer, fanning wildfires. We expect no such sudden transitions, but it may yet be that the dry breath of the past may let loose a gentle rain on our future.

We feel that we face a temperate decline. All the more reason that our Butterfly gravitates the intemperate, heroic eras of the past, the desert behind us. Thus the vogue for the deep past—the nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first centuries—the time of the First Harmonian Revolution, from the first discovery of the new science of society to the high tide of Soviet state associationism, and on through the reign of the Free and the era of the False Crown. Even so primitive an age has its heroines and heros, not least those who first put to the practical test the system discovered and the doctrine elaborated by Fourier, only to find it impracticable in so primitive a form. History and Harmony have validated their faith, two allied forces moving together towards that consommation which we still experience in nearly full measure. But the same doctrine tells us that a separation is in the works. History must move on, but Harmony will gradually be left behind.

Even with ages to contemplate this pivotal disconnection, we find ourselves ill prepared to face it—not that those of us alive to day will face it to any great degree in our lifetimes. But it is strange, unprecedented, to feel so blind in some regards, we who have attained sight in every degree, for whom the arrays of radical atoms and aromas present no mystery. It is as if we stood on the mountaintop, but with a view only at the terrain behind, and, worse yet, with the promise of worsening vision as we descend.

So we look back, hoping to in some manner illuminate the future. And we find that, in that direction as well, much is obscure, particularly as we reach so far back. What follows then is no true historical parcours, but rather a Papillon flitting through history, a series of incidents, with, at the centers of its ascending and descending wings, some rather more substantial narratives of a time, like our own, characterized by decline, but, unlike ours, uncharacterized by anything like gentleness.

The novel has a beginning and an end now, and enough of a narrative spine that it is unlikely to just fold up on itself anywhere in the next 1500 pages or so. I know what is beginning at the narrative's end, know a character or two who won't make it all the way, and  have a pretty good idea what boys and what girls gets, well, somebody before it's all over. A class-related reading of Guyau's "A Sketch of Morality Independent of Obligation or Sanction" (a remarkable book, which I highly recommend) yielded a general epigraph, a closing quotation, and the epigraph for one of the later sections. The general epigraph is:

A child saw a blue butterfly resting on a blade of grass; the butterfly was benumbed by the north wind. The child picked the blade of grass, and the living flower at the end of it, still benumbed, could not fly away. The child returned, holding up its chance prize. A sunbeam touched the wing of the butterfly, and suddenly, revived and gay, the living blossom flew away towards the light. We all, seekers and workers—we are like the butterfly : our strength is made only of a ray of light; nay, only of the hope of a ray of light. We must, therefore, know how to hope ; hope is the force which bears us upward and forward. But it is an illusion ! How do we know that ? Must we not move a step, for fear that some day the earth will disappear from under our feet? It is not sufficient to look far into the future, or into the past; we must look into ourselves. We must note there the vital forces which demand to be spent; and we must act.

Butterflies everywhere, which is no surprise, since I've taken Fourier as my primary inspiration, and Fourier took the Papillon as his symbol for change.

2005

Gabriel Solly leads a quiet life in the tiny community New Earth, Oregon Territories (Universal Code Union, Owenite-Orthodox), laboring in the Archives of the New Earth Institute, marking time through the last of his council-service years. His mother, Elizabeth Barchester-Solly, of the rifle family, would like him to assume the role, his by hereditary right, of directing intelligence and prophet of the Radical Babelite sect. The church elders would probably prefer that he disappear, much as his father did shortly after Gabe's birth. His grandfather, the original Prophet, has bequeathed to him a legacy that might well spell the end of Radical Babelism.

Landing at Enewetak atoll, Gabe arrives in time to witness in person what most of us watched on tv—the terrorist attacks, the U. N. intervention, the Battle of the Lagoons—and those events send him off on a new journey, in the islands of the Free Fourierists and on the floating platforms of the Pyrate Archipelago, and there he begins his initiation in the mysteries of the Distributive Passions.

[more]

Staring, with too little grace, down the barrel of possible successes. Time to scrape the hull, offer up a bit of precious scruff to the appropriate powers. Shaved as clean as my battered face will go in a day. More than an hour of soaps and creams, handfuls of blades, basins of bloody water. The result, abraded, tinted in styptic white and red, my adult face, out for its once- or twice-a-decade walk in the world. Always a disappointment, almost a self-mutilation, a relaxing of that careful cultivation of whiskery disarray. Jowly and soft. I look for my self, look for my father. If I got his best expressions, his voice, I missed out on some of his simple good looks. And what I have always had in excess no longer shows in my naked face.

Fortunately, scruff and attitude are almost infinitely renewable resources. The hours conspire to put the shadows back in my face, to etch my self back onto this rather too-blank slate. Only a matter of time now...

More details on the teaching debacle, of the sort designed to make you feel bad about other people, and yourself. We won't bother with them here. On the other hand, there is an outside chance of teaching in my field, on my area of special expertise, once before I blow this popcicle stand. And so I'm back in the saddle as far as archiving goes, pulling together the scattered resources students would need for a "Roots of American Anarchism" course. If the course doesn't "go," and perhaps if it does, I'll probably do something in the way of a webcourse on the subject, perhaps finally roll out the "mutual school," without the institutional partners that have only held it back anyway.

Art and writing projects are rolling along, and I think this year may top last for productiveness. Just keep fingers crossed about the bill-paying stuff. So far, just about good enough.

Minor rework to my page, to highlight some new projects and connections...

I had some contact with John Ruch, a writer for the Jamaica Plain Gazette, awhile back. He had seen a letter from William Batchelder Greene to Gen. Benjamin Franklin Butler, posted here. I gave him a general rundown on Greene's life, and what I knew about his time in Jamaica Plain. His article, "Anarchy in JP," is now available, and thanks largely to Dan Clore has been getting quite a bit of attention in anarchist circles. John did a very nice job, particularly as there are very few very complete biographical sources on Greene. (You can see my own first attempt at a capsule biography on Greene's Myspace profile.)

Untimely. Just this morning, a newly surfaced cicada, crawling across the sidewalk. Sidewalks already littered with the dead and dying. It seemed like latesummer had come early, but it has instead come in fits and starts, and nothing is quite on time. A dogday here and there, for the cicadas. A summer storm. And the buzzsaw chorus of August is fragmented, a modernist nightmare of fits and starts. Wait. Wait. Wait, for the summer storm. For the proper time. To find that it is late. Late to be crawling out. Late to be shedding this carapace.

Looks like my period of underemployment is due for some extension, but one of the discussion lists I host may have produced an "angel" who can cover hosting costs for the time I need to shuffle.

And researchers are starting to come out of the virtual woodwork now. My French counterpart in the anarchist archiving world got in touch, and I may have someone willing to dig out the early William B. Greene letters I need to make the critical edition of Equality and Mutual Banking happen.

Thanks for the odd assortment of ego-boosts and man-to-man communications occasioned by the post "For C," and for C's lovely follow-on post elsewhere. This is probably why I don't post more of that sort of thing: the implied appeal. No doubt, simply having a MySpace page is some sort of cry for help, but sometimes a vignette is just a vignette, or sometimes it's mainly just that, some sort of exercise in making a narrative of the mis/steps. Now, some folks might opine that my ego needs little or no boosting, and that my (scruffy) hauteur must certainly be the equal of that of any local goddess. On a good day, they might be right. None of which answers the question of what should go down when two (mock?)imperious presences cross paths with one another. The subtle exchanges that happen at the corners of mouths and eyes have to be counted as some sort of good unto themselves, without the need of them blossoming into something else. Events need not have ends, but they can hardly sustain repetition without becoming some sort of narrative, and there's the rub. "Why?" we ask, and "What's s/he up to?" Or we think we know, without much outside consultation. (There's a class of good looking women who, at a chance meeting of eyes, have to give some sort of up-or-down vote. I'm sorry, but you won't do at all. That is why you looked at me, right? Umm. Maybe not...) Put two potentially very similar people (intelligent, high-strung, off-putting mostly in a defensive way) into a situation with a spark and too many possible narratives to explain it, and you're likely to get instant meeting of the minds or Cold War. In the instance in question, "mistakes have been made" and it isn't clear that they can be unmade. And that's sad, and a bit of a cautionary tale.

Anyway, the vignette wasn't really about the poor objectified "goddess," who probably deserves any number of explanations and/or apologies, but about me and my characteristic dilemmas, about a friend and hers, about more belle lettrique forms of flirtation and about "over-analysis." FWIW...

Guinea-Pig Fleet: Hiroshima Tattoo



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