How We Do It: Part XLIV

When a doctor tells you you have silent migraines, it's like asking someone on the street which way to the station and they say, I think it's that way, and point toward an urban horizon. But they're not sure. My policy is to never follow directions from someone who isn't sure. Keep asking until you find someone who knows, even if it's awkward and insulting to the person that thinks you should probably, maybe, turn left.

Stephen Elliot, via his Rumpus emails 

I watched Sophie have a very big seizure yesterday. She was sitting on her bed when it started, as was I. I was reading Eleanor and Park aloud to her, wondering if it was all right to read aloud the words fuck and shit which were sprinkled liberally throughout the first chapter. She's nineteen years old. I skipped over the word retard, flaming off the page. Sophie fell over seizing and I put down the book and said it's ok, Sophie, and then I watched her grimace and jerk, her thin legs and even thinner feet stiff, her toes curled. She made a guttural sound even as I spoke softly and watched her lips turn gray and eyes blink. I looked out the window, at the light falling on the drifting sun mobile that hangs from the silk floss tree. I probably blinked a few times and wondered at my own dissociation even as I dissociated. No one knows what this is like unless they know. When it first started happening, when I asked for direction and got it, I trusted the way. I gave her this drug and that one. I measured sticks of butter and whipped cream with slivers of strawberries, spooned it into her mouth as she paced restlessly around her room, starved. I removed all fragrances and chemicals from the apartment, the direction an Orthodox lady gave us using a pendulum in upstate New York. I removed dairy and added long-chain fatty acids, probiotics before they were called that, walked down paths while being mocked (I know you did, behind my back). I don't remember which year it was when I realized that the person giving directions wasn't sure, but I stopped taking them. If you stop taking directions, you wander. You wander down different paths and up staircases in offices on residential streets. A man with a ridiculous name taps his long fingers together and tells you, Help will not come from a traditional source. It will be natural and near-spiritual in nature. You forget that direction until you remember it. It's a feeling in the pit of yourself, not in an organ. You dissociate from it until you can't any longer, and then you look. You find someone who knows, and that someone is you. It is awkward and insulting to the others when you find the way, but you keep walking it. You give her the oily extract from the plant, a spiritual plant. Sophie only had the one big seizure, and it came after nearly three weeks with none. Go this way, says the sun as it twists in the wind under the silk floss. Keep going this way.

"The occupation is not meant to become a butterfly"

I like this:

Yesterday I went down to Zucotti park. It seemed like there were at least a thousand people and probably more surrounding the park, pressed up against barricades, wondering why they weren't allowed inside. In the park were maybe a hundred police officers, occupying the park. The park has lights on the ground, in the concrete. You could barely move on the sidewalk. Around six p.m. they began letting the occupiers back into the park through a small opening in the barricades, searching them for tents and sleeping bags. It was lightly raining.

There were numerous editorials about the end, and beginning, of Occupy Wall Street. They were often written in the tone of a proud father. They were encouraging: Now was the time to grow into something else, the next phase. The movement is leaderless, its demands unclear. You could hear the editorialists smirk. Why do we do that?

Yesterday a stockbroker stopped on the corner of Cedar and Broadway to argue with some of the protesters. At first it was tense, then it became friendly. What do you want? he asked.

We want the rich to stop taking our shit. Stop placing the tax burden on the poor and expecting us to be grateful. It is no longer OK to give away all our money to the richest 1%, to bend to the will of the financial institutions and the labyrinth of dividends, offshore tax havens, and money making schemes. Stop referring to fair taxation as socialism. Stop telling dishwashers and migrant farmers that you earned your money, that you work hard for what you have, because lots of people work hard and don't have. There are a lot of hard working people who are not rich. Don't look down from your fairy tale and tell us that people get what they deserve. Stop quoting Reagan. Stop telling us that riches beyond imagination breeds innovation. Stop pissing on our leg and calling it rain.

Occupy Wall Street is not a set of demands, it is a statement: We exist.

It began, though not noticeably, when Obama extended the tax cuts for the wealthy instituted by George W. Bush, referred to by Dick Cheney as "Our due." At the time it didn't seem like there was the political will on the left to do anything else. Occupy Wall Street is a manifestation of political will. It would be a awhile before the tents and libraries and occupations across the country, but that is where it began. It's hard to gauge which step is one step too far, but there it was.

The occupation is not meant to end, or become a butterfly, or sadly peter out. It's not indebted to paternalistic leaders giving a pat on the head and assuring the child: You will do better. The occupation doesn't need to negotiate or lay out a list of specific demands. Stop taking our shit. We notice when you steal from us. The occupiers sleep in the park and in the widening gap between the rich and the poor. The occupiers will invade the political rallies in 2012. Of course they will. The politicians will notice, they already do. The occupation is a seat at the table with no intention of going home.

-- Stephen Elliot, The Rumpus