Parable of the Crust Punks

The Rainbow, 1878, by George Innes

This is the first post of a series I'm calling Conversation Deraillers. Each post will consist of two or more quotes and/or passages from various works, from books to scripts to lyrics. These quotes are generally topical or interesting, and are guaranteed to derail (or even end) any conversation when said, shouted, or sung aloud, as desired or required.

The series as a whole (which I'll probably collect into an ePub file once it gets long enough), I'm dedicating to my 10th and 11th grade history teacher (I took his Modern History class twice), Mr. Tozer, who taught me what a paradigm was, and how to break one.

“‘Rape, robbery, and now murder. Of course I think about it. Everyone thinks about it. Everyone worries. I wish I could get out of here.’

‘Where would you go?’

‘That’s it, isn’t it? There’s nowhere to go.’

‘There might be.’

‘Not if you don’t have money. Not if all you know is how to take care of babies and cook.’

I shook my head. ‘You know much more than that.’

‘Maybe, but none of it matters. I won’t be able to afford college. I won’t be able to get a job or move out of my parents’ house because no job I could get would support me and there are no safe places to move. Hell, my parents are still living with their parents.’

‘I know,” I said. “And as bad as that is, there’s more.’

‘Who needs more? That’s enough!’ She began to eat the bean salad. It looked good, but I thought I might be about to ruin it for her.

‘There’s cholera spreading in southern Mississippi and Louisiana,’ I said. ‘I heard about it on the radio yesterday. There are too many poor people—illiterate, jobless, homeless, without decent sanitation or clean water. They have plenty of water down there, but a lot of it is polluted. And you know that drug that makes people want to set fires?’

She nodded, chewing.

‘It’s spreading again. It was on the east coast. Now it’s in Chicago. The reports say that it makes watching a fire better than sex. I don’t know whether the reporters are condemning it or advertising it.’ I drew a deep breath. ‘Tornadoes are smashing the hell out of Alabama, Kentucky, Tennessee, and two or three other states. Three hundred people dead so far. And there’s a blizzard freezing the northern midwest, killing even more people. In New York and New Jersey, a measles epidemic is killing people. Measles!’

‘I heard about the measles,’ Joanne said. ‘Strange. Even if people can’t afford immunizations, measles shouldn’t kill.’

‘Those people are half dead already,’ I told her. ‘They’ve come through the winter cold, hungry, already sick with other diseases. And no, of course they can’t afford immunizations. We’re lucky our parents found the money to pay for all our immunizations. If we have kids, I don’t see how we’ll be able to do even that for them.’

‘I know, I know.’ She sounded almost bored. ‘Things are bad. My mother is hoping this new guy, President Donner, will start to get us back to normal.’

‘Normal,’ I muttered. ‘I wonder what that is. Do you agree with your mother?’

‘No. Donner hasn’t got a chance. I think he would fix things if he could, but Harry says his ideas are scary. Harry says he’ll set the country back a hundred years.’

‘My father says something like that. I’m surprised that Harry agrees.’

‘He would. His own father thinks Donner is God. Harry wouldn’t agree with him on anything.’

I laughed, distracted, thinking about Harry’s battles with his father. Neighborhood fireworks—plenty of flash, but no real fire.

‘Why do you want to talk about this stuff,’ Joanne asked, bringing me back to the real fire. ‘We can’t do anything about it.’

‘We have to.’

‘Have to what? We’re fifteen! What can we do?’

‘We can get ready. That’s what we’ve got to do now. Get ready for what’s going to happen, get ready to survive it, get ready to make a life afterward. Get focused on arranging to survive so that we can do more than just get batted around by crazy people, desperate people, and leaders who don’t know what they’re doing!’

She just stared at me. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

I was rolling—too fast, maybe. ‘I’m talking about this place, Jo, this cul-de-sac with a wall around it. I’m talking about the day a big gang of those hungry, desperate, crazy people outside decide to come in. I’m talking about what we’ve got to do before that happens so that we can survive and rebuild–or at least survive and escape to be something other than beggars.’

‘Someone’s going to just smash in our wall and come in?’

‘More likely blast it down, or blast the gate open. It’s going to happen some day. You know that as well as I do.’

‘Oh, no I don’t,’ she protested. She sat up straight, almost stiff, her lunch forgotten for the moment. I bit into a piece of acorn bread that was full of dried fruit and nuts. It’s a favorite of mine, but I managed to chew and swallow without tasting it.

‘Jo, we’re in for trouble. You’ve already admitted that.’

‘Sure,” she said. ‘More shootings, more break-ins. That’s what I meant.’

‘And that’s what will happen for a while. I wish I could guess how long. We’ll be hit and hit and hit, then the big hit will come. And if we’re not ready for it, it will be like Jericho.’

She held herself rigid, rejecting. ‘You don’t know that! You can’t read the future. No one can.’

‘You can,’ I said, ‘if you want to. It’s scary, but once you get past the fear, it’s easy. In L.A. some walled communities bigger and stronger than this one just aren’t there any more. Nothing left but ruins, rats, and squatters. What happened to them can happen to us. We’ll die in here unless we get busy now and work out ways to survive.’

‘If you think that, why don’t you tell your parents. Warn them and see what they say.’

‘I intend to as soon as I think of a way to do it that will reach them. Besides ... I think they already know. I think my father does anyway. I think most of the adults know. They don’t want to know, but they do.’

‘My mother could be right about Donner. He really could do some good.’

‘No. No, Donner’s just a kind of human banister.’

‘A what?’

‘I mean he’s like... like a symbol of the past for us to hold onto as we’re pushed into the future. He’s nothing. No substance. But having him there, the latest in an two-and-a-half-century-long line of American Presidents make people feel that the country, the culture they grew up with is still here—that we’ll get through these bad times and back to normal.’

‘We could,’ she said. ‘We might. I think someday we will.’ No, she didn’t. She was too bright to take anything but the most superficial comfort from her denial. But even superficial comfort is better than none, I guess. I tried another tactic.

‘Did you ever read about bubonic plague in medieval Europe?’ I asked.

She nodded. She reads a lot the way I do, reads all kinds of things. ‘A lot of the continent was depopulated,’ she said. ‘Some survivors thought the world was coming to an end.’

‘Yes, but once they realized it wasn’t, they also realized there was a lot of vacant land available for the taking, and if they had a trade, they realized they could demand better pay for their work. A lot of things changed for the survivors.’

‘What’s your point?’

‘The changes.’ I thought for a moment. ‘They were slow changes compared to anything that might happen here, but it took a plague to make some of the people realize that things could change.’

‘So?’

‘Things are changing now, too. Our adults haven’t been wiped out by a plague so they’re still anchored in the past, waiting for the good old days to come back. But things have changed a lot, and they’ll change more. Things are always changing. This is just one of the big jumps instead of the little step-by-step changes that are easier to take. People have changed the climate of the world. Now they’re waiting for the good old days to come back.’

‘Your father says he doesn’t believe people changed the climate in spite of what scientists say. He says only God could change the world in such an important way.’

‘Do you believe him?’

She opened her mouth, looked at me, then closed it again. After a while, she said, ‘I don’t know.’

‘My father has his blind spots,’ I said. ‘He’s the best person I know, but even he has his blind spots.’

‘It doesn’t make any difference,’ she said. ‘We can’t make the climate change back, no matter why it changed in the first place. You and I can’t. The neighborhood can’t. We can’t do anything.’

I lost patience. ‘Then let’s kill ourselves now and be done with it!’

She frowned, her round, too serious face almost angry. She tore bits of peel from a small navel orange. ‘What then?’ she demanded. ‘What can we do?’

I put the last bite of my acorn bread down and went around her to my night table. I took several books from the deep bottom drawer and showed them to her. ‘This is what I’ve been doing—reading and studying these over the past few months. These books are old like all the books in this house. I’ve also been using Dad’s computer when he lets me—to get new stuff.’

Frowning, she looked them over. Three books on survival in the wilderness, three on guns and shooting, two each on handling medical emergencies, California native and naturalized plants and their uses, and basic living: log cabin building livestock raising, plant cultivation, soap making—that kind of thing. Joanne caught on at once.

‘What are you doing?’ she asked. ‘Trying to learn to live off the land?’

‘I’m trying to learn whatever I can that might help me survive out there. I think we should all study books like these. [...] Hell, I think a lot of things. And I know—I know!—that no matter how many things I think of, they won’t be enough. Every time I go outside, I try to imagine what it might be like to live out there without walls, and I realize I don’t know anything.’

‘Then why—’

‘I intend to survive.’

She just stared.

‘I mean to learn everything I can while I can,’ I said. ‘If I find myself outside, maybe what I’ve learned will help me live long enough to learn more.’

She gave me a nervous smile. ‘You’ve been reading too many adventure stories,’ she said.

I frowned. How could I reach her. ‘This isn’t a joke, Jo.’

‘What is it then?’ She ate the last section of her orange. ‘What do you want me to say?’

‘I want you to be serious. I realize I don’t know very much. None of us knows very much. But we can all learn more. Then we can teach one another. We can stop denying reality or hoping it will go away by magic.’

‘That’s not what I’m doing.’

I looked out for a moment at the rain, calming myself.

‘Okay. Okay, what are you doing?’

She looked uncomfortable. ‘I’m still not sure we can really do anything.’

‘Jo!’

‘Tell me what I can do that won’t get me in trouble or make everyone think I’m crazy. Just tell me something.’

At last. ‘Have you read all your family’s books?’

‘Some of them. Not all. They aren’t all worth reading. Books aren’t going to save us.’

‘Nothing is going to save us. If we don’t save ourselves, we’re dead. Now use your imagination. Is there anything on your family’s bookshelves that might help you if you were stuck outside?’

‘No.’

‘You answer too fast. Go home and look again. And like I said, use your imagination. [...] Even some fiction might be useful.’

She gave me a sidelong glance. ‘I’ll bet,’ she said.

‘Jo, if you never need this information, it won’t do you any harm. You’ll just know a little more than you did before. So what? By the way, do you take notes when you read?’

Guarded look. ‘Sometimes.’

‘Read this.’ I handed her one of the plant books. This one was about California Indians, the plants they used, and how they used them—an interesting, entertaining little book. She would be surprised. There was nothing in it to scare her or threaten her or push her. I thought I had already done enough of that.

‘Take notes,’ I told her. ‘You’ll remember better if you do.’

‘I still don’t believe you,’ she said. ‘Things don’t have to be as bad as you say they are.’

I put the book into her hands. ‘Hang on to your notes,’ I said. ‘Pay special attention to the plants that grow between here and the coast and between here and Oregon along the coast. I’ve marked them.’

‘I said I don’t believe you.’

‘I don’t care.’

She looked down at the book, ran her hands over the black cloth-and-cardboard binding. ‘So we learn to eat grass and live in the bushes,’ she muttered.

‘We learn to survive,’ I said. ‘It’s a good book. Take care of it.’”

From The Parable of the Sower, the 1993 book by Octavia E. Butler. To help when you need to get a grip.

“The World Bank and the IMF have created a system

of modern-day colonialism that make the people

of the developing world poorer,

and the multinational corporations richer,

and take the power away from all of us.

It's time to take back control of our lives

and tear apart these monuments to greed,

and build our new world from the broken pieces.

I pledge allegiance to no flag;

top the bottle with an oily rag.

We're building up an army fast

to destroy the pigs and break the upper class.

I'm only one; this is my voice.

But you're gonna have to make a choice.

I don't care if you disagree

'cause this fuckin' thing

it means the whole world to me!”

Lyrics from the song “Super Tuesday” by the band Leftöver Crack, from their 2004 album Fuck World Trade. For when you want to raise a righteous fist, but don’t want P-U-N-X tattooed on your knuckles.