Angle of Repose - Wallace Earle Stegner [248]
What to pay: What you can.
FREEDOM MEDITATION LOVE SHARING YOGA
Address: Box 716, Nevada City, California
When I finished the front side and looked up, Shelly was watching
me, moodily running a rubber band through her front teeth like dental floss. She said nothing, so I turned the sheet over. On the back were three quotations:
Let the paper remain on the desk
Unwritten, and the book on the shelf unopened!
Let the tools remain in the workshop!
Let the money remain unearned!
Let the school stand!
My call is the call of battle, I nourish active rebellion.
He going with me must go well arm's,
He going with me goes often with spare diet, poverty,
angry enemies, desertions.
WHITMAN
The practice of meditation, for which one needs only the ground beneath one's feet, wipes out mountains of junk being pumped into the mind by the mass media and supermarket universities. The belief in a serene and generous fulfillment of natural desires destroys ideologies which blind, maim, and repress-and points the way to a kind of community which would amaze 'moralists' and eliminate armies of men who are fighters because they cannot be lovers.
The traditional cultures are in any case doomed, and rather than cling to their good aspects hopelessly it should be remembered that whatever is or ever was in any other culture can be reconstructed from the unconscious, through meditation. In fact, it is my own view that the coming revolution will close the circle and link us in many ways with the most creative aspects of our archaic past. If we are lucky we may eventually arrive at a totally integrated world culture with matrilineal descent, free-form marriage, natural-credit Communist economy, less industry, far less population, and lots more national parks.
GARY SNYDER
Let these be encouraged: Gnostics, hip Marxists, Teilhard de Chardin Catholics, Taoists, Biologists, Witches, Yogins, Bhikkus, Quakers, Sufis, Tibetans, Zens, Shamans, Bushmen, American Indians, Polynesians, Anarchists, Alchemists ... All primitive cultures, all communal and ashram movements ... Ultimately cities will exist only as joyous tribal gatherings and fairs.
BERKELEY ECOLOGY CENTRE
I passed the sheet back.
"Keep it," Shelly said. "I've got more. What do you think?"
"I like the part about the homegrown vegetables."
"Come on!"
"What do you want me to say? OM?"
"Whether it makes sense or not."
"It's got plenty of historical precedents."
"What do you mean?"
"Plato," I said. "In his fashion. Sir Thomas More, in his way. Cole-ridge, Melville, Samuel Butler, D. H. Lawrence, in their ways. Brook Farm and all the other Fourierist phalansteries. New Harmony, whether under the Rappites or the Owenites. The Icarians. Amana. Homestead. The Mennonites. The Amish. The Hutterites. The Shakers. The United Order of Zion. The Oneida Colony. Especially the Oneida Colony."
"You don't think there's anything in it."
"I didn't say that. I said it had a lot of historical precedents."
"But it makes you smile."
"That was a grimace," I said. "A historical rictus. One aspect of the precedents is that the natural tribal societies are so commonly superstition-ridden, ritual-bound, and warlike, and the utopian ones always fail. Where'd you get this?"
"It was handed to me."
"By whom? Your husband?"
"So to speak." She scowled at me, pulling her lower lip.
"Are you being asked to bring what you have to this joyous tribal gathering?"
Letting go of her lip, she smiled with a look of superiority and penetration, as if she understood my captious skepticism and made allowances for it. "I didn't say." But then the smile faded into a discontented pucker, and she burst out, "If something's wrong with it, tell me what. I've been trying to make up my mind if anything is. It's idealistic, it's for love and gentleness, it's close to nature, it hurts nobody, it's voluntary. I can't see anything wrong with any of that."
"Neither can I. The only trouble is, this commune will be inhabited by and surrounded by members of the human race."
"That sounds pretty cynical."
"Well,