Charles Bukowski is the Poet Laureate of the Alt-Right —an essay by Tom X Hart

The German conservative revolutionaries had Ernst Jünger, Vichy had Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Quisling’s Norway had Knut Hamsun, and the US alt-right has Charles Bukowski.

Bukowski — drifter turned LA post office clerk, perpetual beer swiller, poet, novelist, whoremonger, Sibelius listener, gambler on horses, lover and hater of women.

A deplorable before there were deplorables.

Everything Bukowski did was small-time. A small-time gambler on the track. A small-time Post Office worker. A small-time writer with minor presses. A small-time lover (though he certainly looked for value when it came to whores).

And yet, and yet, and yet.

The small-time man’s time has come.

Bukowski died in 1994, but every year a few more posthumous titles roll from the press. Every year his books sell.

And what is the greatest literature? Why, I say to you that it is the novel that is uncanny, uncanny because a person you never met has replicated your thoughts and feelings. You no longer feel so alone. There is a truth out in the world to be found.

Bukowski’s truth has found a million Bukowskis since he died.

Bukowski wrote about what he knew, the desperate lonely men in their apartments and rented rooms. The perpetual bachelors. The drifters from menial job to menial job. The barflys. The alimony groaners. The fathers who haven’t seen their son in…it must be…five years now? The unpromoted for six years. The regular faces at the bar. The college drop outs. The family failures unmentionable at Christmas. The dreamers with a new get rich scheme every week. The embarrassing uncles. The two sentence obituaries in the local newspapers. “Paul Davis, 64. Mr Davis worked at Car-u-Rite for seven years as an administrator. He lived in Los Angeles for twenty years”. The van drivers. The carpet salesmen. The guy who owns a fifteen-year-old car. The obsessive sports fans.

Smart, but unlucky – or just too deformed to be popular. Too lazy to be hen pecked by wives in the suburbs.

In California everyone is golden, everyone is young, everyone is sexy — except these guys, slinking from the adult movie house in a mustard-stained, two-day old shirt.

The Crunch (circa 1977) 

too much too little
too fat
too thin
or nobody.
laughter or
tears
haters
lovers
strangers with faces like
the backs of
thumb tacks
armies running through
streets of blood
waving winebottles
bayoneting and fucking
virgins.
an old guy in a cheap room
with a photograph of M. Monroe.
there is a loneliness in this world so great
that you can see it in the slow movement of
the hands of a clock
people so tired
mutilated
either by love or no love.
people just are not good to each other
one on one.
the rich are not good to the rich
the poor are not good to the poor.
we are afraid.
our educational system tells us
that we can all be
big-ass winners
it hasn’t told us
about the gutters
or the suicides.
or the terror of one person
aching in one place
alone
untouched
unspoken to
watering a plant.
people are not good to each other.
people are not good to each other.
people are not good to each other.
I suppose they never will be.
I don’t ask them to be.
but sometimes I think about
it.
the beads will swing
the clouds will cloud
and the killer will behead the child
like taking a bite out of an ice cream cone.
too much
too little
too fat
too thin
or nobody
more haters than lovers.
people are not good to each other.
perhaps if they were
our deaths would not be so sad.
meanwhile I look at young girls
stems
flowers of chance.
there must be a way.
surely there must be a way that we have not yet
though of.
who put this brain inside of me?
it cries
it demands
it says that there is a chance.
it will not say
“no.”

Loneliness is dulled in the crowds, of course.

Among the uniforms, among the chants one is still lonely, of course — but now at least they know you exist.

They know you exist for the first time — and what is more they are afraid.

And who are “they”?

Why, the people who have overlooked you over the years: The big shots with perfect hair and college degrees; the snooty women with PhDs who laugh at your poems; the rich Jews who live off other people’s hard work; the illegal immigrants who smile stupid smiles despite it all; the know-it-all journalists with less talent than the toe nail clipping you chewed on after cutting it off last week; the guy who cut you up on the freeway; the college professors who went from private school to Ivy League university, but love the poor they’ve never met so much — oh, you could tell them stories about their beloved poor.

It’s every petty boss who was more stupid than you. Every superior woman who turned you down because you didn’t say the right things (but really it was because you didn’t earn enough money). Every editor who scoffed at your work. Every petty bureaucrat who made you wait for the hell of it. Every hotel receptionist who gave you a dirty look before handing over the key. Every bouncer who threw you from the bar for being pissed on a Saturday night.

A common misconception on the political left is that the poor, the working class — put it how you will — are basically stupid. Exploited, for sure. The harbinger of a better world, well, that goes without saying. But nonetheless stupid because they let people exploit them.

Sure, the sturdy proletariat has been deluded. False consciousness, as the Marxists say, has blinded the worker to his true interests. But, no matter, with intellectuals to lead the working class — a Lenin, for example — the workers’ eyes will be opened.

That was a very Marxist way to put it, but the same idea is current among the non-Marxist left as well. I do not mean to say here anything so crude as that US liberals are Marxists or inspired by Lenin — they certainly are not.

But there is a common attitude between those political currents and an approach towards the working class — perhaps it is merely because any political movement led by intellectuals will inevitably have such views. I don’t know.

Anyway, US liberals have long been shocked, shocked that a substantial section in the US working class votes solidly Republican.

But why? It’s against their rational (whatever rational means) interests to vote Republican! Why, oh why? What’s the matter with Kansas?

So went the liberal cry. And it is a cry even more amplified now that the same demographic has delivered up a Trump presidency.

In fact, the liberals don’t even pretend to care for these working class oiks anymore — they are disgusted, and perhaps they always were disgusted.

What the liberals failed to understand is that these people are perfectly intelligent. The millions upon millions of Bukowskis may not have made it to college or made a pile of money — but that doesn’t mean they’re not smart.

Sure, they’re not refined. They’re not sophisticated.

They can’t play the contemporary middle class games around ethnicity, sexuality and gender.
And they know it. And they know the middle class know it. And they know the middle class despise them for not being able to do it.

Once it a question of being a member of the deserving poor, with scrubbed doorstep and at least one clean suit.

Today, well, one wouldn’t want to appear too white would one — it just isn’t decent.

What this goes to show is that economics is not enough to move people in the political realm, even if liberalism or socialism delivered the working classes a better economic future it would not be enough.

People have pride, envy, jealousy, resentment, passions, prejudices (reasonable and unreasonable), desires, aspirations, self-consciousness, wit, verve, courage, despair, ennui, desire for appreciation — and so on.

The working class no more want to jump gratefully to the liberal tune than to their boss’s tune at work.

And in many ways voting for the party that cuts against your economic interest is preferable to voting for people who despise your habits and way of life.

Exploit me, sure. Just don’t ridicule what I am, okay? No need for the liberal to rub it in, eh?
You’ll never be rich, so why abase yourself before the liberals?

And, anyway, most Bukowskis are smart enough to know that politicians never changed shit anyway. The liberals will get cushy government jobs and cut you cold while saying they’re doing it for you.

Pious frauds. The Republicans are mean bastards — but they don’t pretend to be saving the world.
The deadbeats have their theories about the world, too. A pampered middle class liberal can believe in universal brotherhood, say the Bukowskis. It’s easy with a degree, a fancy house, a good childhood, a sexy wife to say all men are brothers.

Did these guys ever try working in a suburban call centre? Amid the farts and public hate and stench from half-eaten McDonalds the workers not so cordially stab each other in the front. The girl over there with hula hoops in her ears has fucked half the staff, and now three goodish men are down with crabs. It’s a beautiful world, isn’t it?

All men are brothers? Give me a break. I don’t think even the liberals who say that believe it. I see it in their eyes. They say the right platitudes because they want another cookie come annual review.

Dinosauria, We (1992) 

Born like this
Into this
As the chalk faces smile
As Mrs. Death laughs
As the elevators break
As political landscapes dissolve
As the supermarket bag boy holds a college degree
As the oily fish spit out their oily prey
As the sun is masked
We are
Born like this
Into this
Into these carefully mad wars
Into the sight of broken factory windows of emptiness
Into bars where people no longer speak to each other
Into fist fights that end as shootings and knifings
Born into this
Into hospitals which are so expensive that it’s cheaper to die
Into lawyers who charge so much it’s cheaper to plead guilty
Into a country where the jails are full and the madhouses closed
Into a place where the masses elevate fools into rich heroes
Born into this
Walking and living through this
Dying because of this
Muted because of this
Castrated
Debauched
Disinherited
Because of this
Fooled by this
Used by this
Pissed on by this
Made crazy and sick by this
Made violent
Made inhuman
By this
The heart is blackened
The fingers reach for the throat
The gun
The knife
The bomb
The fingers reach toward an unresponsive god
The fingers reach for the bottle
The pill
The powder
We are born into this sorrowful deadliness
We are born into a government 60 years in debt
That soon will be unable to even pay the interest on that debt
And the banks will burn
Money will be useless
There will be open and unpunished murder in the streets
It will be guns and roving mobs
Land will be useless
Food will become a diminishing return
Nuclear power will be taken over by the many
Explosions will continually shake the earth
Radiated robot men will stalk each other
The rich and the chosen will watch from space platforms
Dante’s Inferno will be made to look like a children’s playground
The sun will not be seen and it will always be night
Trees will die
All vegetation will die
Radiated men will eat the flesh of radiated men
The sea will be poisoned
The lakes and rivers will vanish
Rain will be the new gold
The rotting bodies of men and animals will stink in the dark wind
The last few survivors will be overtaken by new and hideous diseases
And the space platforms will be destroyed by attrition
The petering out of supplies
The natural effect of general decay
And there will be the most beautiful silence never heard
Born out of that.
The sun still hidden there
Awaiting the next chapter.

Misanthropy. A common theme to Céline, Hamsun and Bukowski. And Bukowski admired those two writers, for sure.

There is a sourness to fascism — for all the uniforms and muscular marching men fascism is a political movement for the unhealthy, deformed and the bitter.

Unable to love, unable to be realistic and accept limitations the fascist sweeps everything away.
If I cannot have universal adulation let the world end! No limits! No restraint! All is corrupt and I am corruption too, so let it all end! Viva la muerte!

So goes the fascist refrain.

Bukowski was okay with Hitler — as with most fascist writers he was not too serious about the politics. He was not so crude as to be a joiner — and besides he hated people too much.

Stormtroopers have to get up early for long marches. Bukowski advocated sleeping in bed all day as a cure for having to interact with people so often.

It was enough for him to dangle the name ‘Hitler’ and make liberal journalists squirm uncomfortably — an amusing game.

The Charles Bukowski Tapes (1985) №16 

Bukowski: “I’ve admired all men like Adolf Hitler. All gross, evil creatures have something because they don’t believe in the rules. I mean you’re supposed to…this is not right. These guys just come out and say, “I’ll do, well…” You know? They have escaped from all teachings and so the rest of humanity says they’re insane, they’re insane.
Interviewer: What happens when these evil men start attracting followings?
Bukowski: Well, if enough evil men attract enough followers and the followers spread all over the Earth and they become good men. Then we need new evil men to overthrow.”

The final sentiment is Nietzschean. What is “good” or “evil” is determined by the herd, perhaps influenced by a few extraordinary individuals.

But even these exceptional rule breakers will probably be pulled down by the mass. All is hopeless and moving towards entropy in our indifferent universe.

A few animal pleasures, our absurd, comical fucks, our drunken blabbing punctuated by music’s exceptional beauty, are the best we can hope for.

What keeps a man alive is his compulsion to steal and kick his fellow man in the face.

So wrote Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht in the Threepenny Opera, but for these leftists the compulsion was short-term, local to capitalism.

For Bukowski it is the human lot forever.

In another video Bukowski states his belief that all men are rapists and murderers. It is merely social conditioning that makes us “good boys” — sometimes.

He imagines a man who has broken through the rules — raped a women, murdered her, and then sat under a tree eating chocolate cake as her blood flows into a river.

Then there is a break, a moment of pathos, Bukowski hopes that what he says is not really so. It was also the case with Céline, his works show man as low, viciously comical, pathetic, without redemption — and yet as a doctor he showed kindness to his poor patients, and sometimes even to characters in his works.

I believe this is because Céline and Bukowski are what all misanthropists must also be — hopeless idealists. It is the spolit child’s attitude to life, which sees that people are low, lusty, greedy and imperfect and so decides to hate all.

But this hatred springs from a belief that people can be better, should be better. But people always disappoint.

And if a perfectionist cannot have second best they will have nothing at all.

This is why misanthropy and fascism are childish — and why Bukowski and Céline flash occasional humanity in their works.

The Charles Bukowski Tapes (1985) № 21 

Bukowski: “As time goes more and more on there seems to be an attrition of natural, creative talent. I guess it is the crush of the numbers upon the Earth, and also the fact we’re all narrowed down through shit like television, newspapers, communication. Communication is the greatest destroyer of talent because it makes everybody like everybody else….The chance for genius becomes less and less. The others say it’s more and more, but it’s the same kind of genius they agree with, you see? The true geniuses like Idi Amin, Adolf Hitler and Charles Bukowski will become less and less and less and less. Further questions?
Interviewer: There is something behind the light.
Bukowski: Huh. The devil’s face [laugh].

The lone genius, another theme from Nietzsche. But not the conventional genius. Not Gandhi. Not RFK. Not Einstein. Not a wet humanitarian.”

Bukowski celebrates diabolical genius.

And he teases us, placing himself alongside the great tyrants. When he does so he is every man who has ever watched a war film, or played a shoot-em-up video game, or debated with his friends down the pub whether a Russian tank could beat an American tank — although the only khaki he has ever seen is his car’s upholstery.

Bukowski never so much as killed a man, and by his own account he couldn’t do it if given the chance.

This is the mind-world such an attitude creates:

It’s fun to be evil, a bit like hating people. It’s like using the word “k**k*” and watching all the pious fucks collapse with shock. It’s like scaring the liberals with a cartoon frog that’s anti-semitic, so they think. Suckers! It makes us feel important. We count at last. People will notice! We’re not losers anymore, we’re dangerous — we’re the devil!

It is a dangerous game to write as Bukowski and Céline did. So much they say is true, well put — humans are such comical, vicious and stupid creatures. So vain and pompous, so desperate to do good — and so cruel when we try to do it. Behind every humanitarian impulse there’s desire for power.

Yes, it’s all true — life is about sex, and sex is about power and money is a proxy for both. And when the sentimentalists and pious try to put lipstick on the pig it is embarrassing, funny and cruel.

Céline and Bukowski are right.

But if life is measured as one foot, 11 3/4 inches are sex, money and power.

And 1/4 inch is love, honour and duty — it is in that 1/4 inch that we really live.

Few authors make crude, direct political appeals in their poem or novels. Their politics are implicit in the way they see the world, as Bukowski and Céline’s fascism is implicit in theirs.

This does not mean we should not read these works, for they still speak truth about the world and help us understand how those drawn to fascism think.

It is not the truth we want to hear, but it is the truth still.

The new Twitter rival Gab has launched with a promise not to censor users as Twitter does.

The Bukowski quote on Gab’s homepage.

Figures who identify with the alt-right, such as Richard Spencer, and those who wish to see the alt-right speak, such as Milo Yiannopoulos, have been removed from Twitter (though Spencer has now been restored).

Gab is the platform of last resort for them.

Notice that pesky frog stands above Gab’s sign up buttons.

And below the sign up buttons, a statement from Mr Bukowski himself.

It could have been Voltaire. It is Bukowski. It is Bukowski because this is the time of the small-time man. This is the time of the Bukowskis.

They do not love or admire their president — but they love the way he sneers at the people who have sneered at them decade-upon-decade.

Bukowskis live on your righteous scorn. Bukowskis are afraid to love.
Listen, big-time man! Listen to the schlubs!


_
Tom X Hart is a writer based in London, UK. You can read and follow Tom X Hart on Medium.

I Didn't Speak Up —an essay by Bonnie Wilkins Overcott

Artist: Allen Forrest 

I recognized the woman, with the bleached hair, dark roots and a life-worn face, struggling to pull her ponderous body up the steps of the bus. She was the woman who attempted to leave her child in the church nursery Sunday morning so she could do some shopping. She wasn’t a member of our church, but it was across the street from the grocery store, and I’m sure she knew her son would be safe with us. Something within the boy, though, did not want her to leave him. He cried and created such a fuss that she took him with her when she left.

She sat down on the seats facing me at the front of the bus, rifling through her purse for the bus fare. She was drunk. At one point, she put her arm and hand around her stomach and said, “I don’t feel well.” I was in no mood to get vomited on by a drunken woman, so I moved away to the middle of the bus.

A young professional man got on the bus and sat where I had been sitting. When she told the bus driver that she was just sure she had bus fare, the man across from her said, “I’ll give you the money for a bus ride, if you get off and take another bus.” People on the bus laughed. The woman began to weep as the bus driver assured her he’d drop her off when she reached her destination.

As she wept, she complained to the bus driver that she didn’t understand why people were so cruel. The young man wouldn’t let up. He berated her during the entire trip as the rest of the passengers laughed and clapped. Finally she reached her stop and thanked the bus driver for his kindness before she got off. As she put her foot on the ground, the entire bus cheered. She walked home with the insults and jeers echoing in her mind. And I never spoke up.

___
The Writer: Bonnie Wilkins Overcott writes nonfiction and fiction. She maintains a blog/resource at http://workinginthe21stcentury.com/. She previously wrote for newspapers, her employer’s newsletter/journal, and had a short story published in the Work Literary Magazine in July.
___
The Artist: Allen Forrest's work is a mix of avant-garde expressionism and post-Impressionist elements reminiscent of van Gogh. Allen Forrest can be found at his website or on twitter.

Making the Tongue Dry —essay by Jen Soriano

I’ve blown a bubble and instead of catching it on the wand I open my mouth and catch it on my tongue where it stays, full, round, shining and iridescent, seductive and plump and magical. Until it bursts.

My 14 month old squeals with delight and claps for more. Is it then a natural human impulse, to want more bubbles, even though they burst?

The bubble that is no more has left a slickness on my tongue that I can’t quite spit out. I go to the kitchen faucet and run it, cocking my head and opening my mouth to catch some of the water stream, like I used to do as a kid. I wet my tongue. Rinse. Spit. Repeat. My baby thinks this is funny and lets out one of his distinct laughs - a sharp “ka!” followed by a loud and drawn out inhale that makes him sound like an old man with emphysema.

I turn off the faucet, pick him up, and walk out to our balcony. In the late afternoon light we watch the surface of the Puget Sound recede, like water draining reluctantly from a bathtub.

About a mile away, a bald white head stares at the same waters. Four stories high, the head gazes like a sentinel over the Sound, across the southern arm of the Salish Sea. The statue’s soft features could be those of anyone, but she is sculptor Jaume Plensa’s version of a tragedy. She is the Greek mountain nymph Echo, who kept Hera from discovering Zeus’ flirtations by distracting the goddess with conversation. Hera, angered by this intervention, punished Echo by abolishing her ability to speak freely, save to repeat the last words of others.

In this moment, staring at the bald twin peaks of Mt. Olympus, I imagine that if she could, what Echo would say is this:

“Austerity with the decadence of plunder will not stand.”

Instead, in the harsh heat of climate change come to Seattle summer, she is silent.

Hotter than July is starting to mean something even in the Pacific Northwest. Always in Puerto Rico but even more so now that the island is small enough to fail, apparently. For a long time in Greece, as Echo repeats, and now doubled down with a bailout package that looks more like a draconian lock with a rusted key. Before in Argentina but it’s cooler there now, it’s winter in the South after all.

In the North twenty degrees more of mercury feels like a lot of things — feels like my baby’s hair trampled in sweat, feels like seagull droppings steaming on Echo’s head, feels like my father’s ankle bursting with gout. Feels like bald eagles — or is it plucked chickens? — coming home to roost.

Bulging deficits. Damaged climates. Seismic shifts.

Backs of workers. Spine of the earth. 

Subtraction. Extraction. Contraction.

The end of this long division is not a natural number.

How can I explain this to my baby? Better to just blow bubbles that burst?

Maybe we can begin here: with the origins of the word.

Austerity: from the Greek austeros meaning “bitter”, “harsh” and especially, “making the tongue dry”.

Bitter like soil turned to dust from the drought turned Golden State grey, bitter like ash once a tree flying wild like unrooted flame.

Harsh like robbing all the Peters to pay a few Pauls, like water rationed inside turned faucets dry while outside turned to rebellion with ordinary names.

Bittersweet like windfalls for the gods of profit.

Nothing like the clothes off poor backs to mend holes in silk pockets.

Dry. Like.

Dry like Echo’s tongue mined of its glands, thick with unspoken longing for her mountain home, even the baldness of it, where just last summer we could lap the peaks like popsicles. Now we can only lick gravel and dirt. Dry like tongues shredded from telling harsh stories that taste of bootstraps and chains. Dry like tongues forked by love for Narcissus, who seeks only to reproduce himself, at any cost, regardless of alternative. How many people go hungry to feed his nest egg. Remember that in the end he himself starved.

Echo the mute nymph deceived Hera, protected Zeus, loved Narcissus. Eco, I mean Echo, the 4-story sentinel bears witness, hopes for freedom from this curse. She is tired of echoes, tired of dominoes, tired of the N that dominates the L and the bubbles that burst.

She wants dandelions. She wants alternative cycles of dissemination, re-creation. Closed loops that somehow lead to better places. The ability to seed the new rather than to reap what has already passed.

How can I explain this to my baby? Better to just blow bubbles that burst?

Maybe we can begin here: with the origins of our world and the lesson that all that’s old must become new again. Metamorphoses. Transformation. New stories of creation. After all, years ago it was written, as Ovid knew, that everything - even Rome - must give way to change.

___
Jen Soriano is a Filipina-American writer and social justice communications strategist. As a freelance writer she has published articles in outlets including Mother Jones, Filipinas Magazine, Yes!, ParentMap, Stir Journal and Seattle Magazine. She is pursuing an MFA in non-fiction and fiction with the Rainier Writing Workshop at Pacific Lutheran University. She'd love to connect with you on twitter: @lionswrite

Utopia X3 —Editor's note by Ada Fetters

I confess that each year in June, I become briefly mopey at the anniversary of Iain Banks' untimely demise. After revisiting his books, however, it always becomes apparent that he would rather that people devote their mental energy to pondering the ideas and themes in his novels.

Thus we will compare and contrast the utopias of great writers. Specifically, I'd like to look at Philip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle, Plato's Atlantis, and of course the Culture novels written by Banks himself.

The Man in the High Castle is set in a dystopian world in which the Axis were the victors of WWII. Phillip K. Dick's world is so insidious and plausible that the reader is unsettled. For example, the Japanese want United States artifacts: toys, weapons such as revolvers and so on. They are fascinated with the bygone culture. This seems annoying and condescending: then an American reader is disoriented, realizing that this is what our culture did to theirs: condescension masquerading as xenophilia. Yes, it is disorienting to be startled out of one's complacence.

In the world of The Man in the High Castle, the citizens of the former US are discouraged as individuals. The culture (what there is left of it) is fragmented and is also experiencing an existential crisis. Robert Childan, one of the main characters, bounces back and forth between anger at the Japanese and subservient passivity each time he is reminded of how efficient and complex their way of being is. When faced with a conversational maneuver that crushes his pride so gracefully that it raises condescension to an art form, Childan tells himself that this is evidence that the Japanese race is superior. He tells himself that Americans are gauche, blundering barbarians; that everyone has their place; that certain people are meant to rule.

That isn’t even the main point of the story. However, interactions like this create a world of richness and depth, which is important because this is not a fun world to visit. Dick makes a point of showing that the Japanese are gracious in victory. They won and they know it, but they are not cruel. They have tried to help the Pacific coast of America back to its economic feet. However, the Germans are not as kind. Without opposition, things have gone from bad to worse while the Nazi regime commits genocide after genocide and enforces draconian laws on the east coast of the former US. Later it is revealed that they are planning to destroy their former allies, the Japanese.

Long story short, this world is an uneasy place, torn between resignation and anger. The bright thread running through this book is a novel called The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, which takes place in a world where the Allies won the war. Various characters read it and say, "Oh, if only that were true. I'd like to go there. Alas, it is only fiction." Others claim that it really is true, that there is something more beyond their depressing reality.

And the reader wants to say, "Yes, it is true! It really is true, if only I could tell you, or better yet, show you!"

Of course, the reader knows that our world is not even close to utopia. The US and its allies won WWII, which is definitely better than the world sinking into the horrifying Nazi-ruled of High Castle, but we in this world have our share of problems too. One small event was enough to change their history, but one big event was not enough to completely “fix” ours.

Iain Banks, meanwhile, wrote about the galaxy-wide Culture, which is a post-scarcity, post-currency society. These people are a collection of anarchists who basically have fun while hyper-advanced Ship Minds run their civilization. No one in the Culture is sick, or poor, or hungry. You can explore or do research or whatever you like, all the while interacting with friendly machines and other aliens. Sure, the machines can do everything a thousand times better than any human possibly could, but what of it? The Culture novels are so amazing—they are exuberantly nihilistic-- that after finishing one of them I always pine after that that universe. If only it were true.

What if the Culture's citizens read about our fossil-fueled, impoverished world where nobody can agree on anything? Perhaps they would say, "No, but the Culture is real. You poor squirming things, with no machines to take care of you! If only we could tell you, or better yet, show you..."

Writing a place so beautiful that it disorients its reader and makes our own world seem like the unrealized potential of High Castle requires prodigious ability.

The ancient Greeks knew this, of course. So now we come to Atlantis, the original “better world.” Originally, Atlantis was a small part of a larger point that Plato wanted to make, but he was such a genius that he casually made up something that struck such a chord with humanity that we still aren't done with it. Hence Man in the High Castle and my pining for the Culture.

Two of Plato’s dialogues, Timaeus and Critias, tell of a long-ago time when the gods had divided the earthly territories with the intention that no one would have go to war. Neptune got Atlantis. He promptly fell in love with a human woman and had children, each of whom got a section of the island of Atlantis. At first, these kings were very intelligent and noble: Plato described a wonderful, peaceful place where everybody had enough to eat and more wealth than they knew what to do with, so they spent it building wondrous structures and improving their technology for a healthier, more educated citizenry. Basically it is the Culture with gods instead of robots.

Of course, Plato never intended Atlantis to be a real place. He made a joke about it in fact, writing that Criteas heard it from his father who heard it from a wanderer who heard it from somebody-or-other who heard it from "a priest" who'd had it handed down from generation to generation of priests before him. What Plato meant by that was, of course, that the source was completely anonymous and unreliable and so this should be taken as an illustration of his argument, not as a real place.

After all, "utopia" is "nowhere" by definition.

Phillip K. Dick and Plato agree that utopia can't just exist, it has to be earned. That was Plato's whole point: kingship might be a decent way to run things if the country is fortunate enough to have all the natural resources they need and have a king who is god-like in his compassion, wisdom and knowledge. Similarly, the Culture is post-scarcity and ruled by compassionate Ship Minds.

Real places, though, aren't like that. Indeed, that was Plato’s point. Iain Banks cheerfully admitted that the Culture could not come to be, with humanity the way it is now.


Plato, Dick, and Banks also agree that the dream of this better place must start somewhere, if it is to have any chance of becoming real (this is why Ursula Le Guin issued her challenge to writers to come up with alternatives to capitalism). A change must begin with the possibility of something beyond one's current reality.



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The Editor, Ada Fetters has been published in The Journal of Humanistic Psychology, Copperwood Review, Humanist Magazine, Niche, Tertulia, Debris, Poetry Pacific Magazine, Pink.Girl.Ink and most recently in Bewildering Stories.

A Good Non-Catch—an essay by Caroline Beaton

A young southern fishing guide teaches you how to fly-fish this summer on the ranch in  Wyoming where you work. You would hardly classify yourself as an angler, but you do fly-fish. You just don’t catch. 

You arrive on the ranch and meet your guide. He is not that young; he is twenty-two and you are eighteen and he will point this out frequently. But you don’t know he’s your guide yet. You think he has a very sexy southern drawl but is a little short. You listen to him talk about how his family owns the bottom half of South Carolina. You like his smile. When he finds out you like to fish he’s thrilled. “I’m a fishing guide here,” he tells you. You know. You’re a housekeeper. He knows. You tell him you really do love to fly-fish but you’re not particularly good at it. He says he’ll teach you how. Your last boyfriend taught you last summer and you never caught anything. But this is a new summer, new river, new fish. You’ll have better luck this time.

NOW SING!—an essay by L. Garvey Thomas

Nobody warned me it would happen, and it sure wasn’t in the course description. I later learned that it was just the nature of a theater class...

The class was called Poetry as Performance, and the professor, (I’ll call her Professor Bell), had a BFA in Journalism, an MFA in Anthropology, and a Doctorate in Theater. To add to this list of credentials, Professor Bell wrote16 plays, all performed by major playwriting companies, appeared on talk shows like Riki Lake, and shared performances with famous poets such as Maya Angelou. She told us stories of marching in Black Rights rallies and performing her poems in front of thousands of people. In comparison, I felt like a peon, a speck of dust.

After the Water—an essay by Sarah Newton

Dad? What’s that sound? Shhhhhhhh. The sound of a disaster. The sound of a burst pipe. The sound of water flooding out from beneath the kitchen sink, pouring onto the kitchen floor and the carpets of the house. It was the sound of thousand of dollars of damage. It was the beginning of the end of my family.  

We were returning from our trip to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival: the festival we went to, to get our fill of theatre, food, hippy culture and family time. One of the few occasions when my family could be a real family, outside of the context of work and school. The trip to Ashland was one of our favorite family trips. We drove for seven hours each way, discussing the plays that we were about to see or had just seen.  

The discussions became heated as we contemplated a certain acting choice or set piece. My sister and I would reflect on why each play had been chosen for that season, believing ourselves to be far more knowledgeable about the workings of a theatre festival than we actually were.   The seven hour drives flew by. We would stop for one, maybe two breaks on the ride home before diving back into deep discussions. On this particular drive home, my dad and I rode together. We were anxious to get home and watch the Olympics, as we had missed so many of our favorite events in favor of the festival. We drove straight through. We didn’t take a single bathroom break. 

As I walked around the house my feet sunk in the puddles of water that had soaked through the carpets. I was lost for words. We had been gone just four days. And within that time, our entire house was turned upside down. The only miracle was that the water didn’t reach my room. If the water had even touched the entrance, the entire house could have burned down.   

After my mom and sister got home, Mom told us to pack up our rooms with whatever we would need for the next couple of days. We moved into a hotel to make room for the incoming occupation by insurance inspectors, industrial fans, frantic phone calls, and blazing hot temperatures. I didn’t see my Mom for an entire week, as she ran the disaster area called my house, while I stayed far away in a hotel, watching Mad Men and the Olympics.  

 When I did visit my former home, I got more than I bargained for. Plumbers, painters and insurance inspectors climbed over the industrial sized fans, attempting to survey the damage and speak to my Mom about estimates for this or that. We put a storage unit in the driveway, to prepare for the home makeover. We packed up our lives. Countless memories shoved into cardboard boxes, to go through at another time. When there was time. When we had our house back.  

 School started, and I threw myself into homework. It was a welcome break from all of the industrial fans and design plans that were being discussed over dinner. I felt like I was escaping the real world, of a destroyed home, as I walked into school. Staying late after school became a luxury. I could, temporarily, avoid the reality of my home as I studied in a corner of the library.   

Eventually my house started looking like a home again. The industrial fans were taken out. New carpets were put in. I painted my room blue. I put in a blue carpet. I put my own creative mark on my world after the disaster. I strung origami cranes on my ceiling, along with glow in the dark stars. As I drifted off to sleep, I imagined the night sky over head. A blissful fantasy compared to the reality outside of my room.


____
Sarah Newton is a writer/designer/actress living in New York. She writes personal essays, plays, screen plays or anything that fits her flights of fancy. She is a crochet designer with her own crochet line, Puzzled Heart Designs. Follow her everyday thoughts on her blog.

Purple Legs—an essay by Sarah Newton

I always hated the smell of sunscreen, and the horrible feeling it left on my skin. The sticky yet oily feeling grossed me out to the extent that even when I knew I would be in the sun for hours, I would wear long sleeves. To avoid wearing sunscreen. This approach worked until one summer day when I went kayaking with my family.

            The sky was the type of grey, overcast sky that fakes you out. It makes you believe that the sun isn’t there. It is. The sun is right there. You just can’t see it. That day, I put on my knee length capris. Sturdy. But capris. Half my leg was exposed. My father told me to wear my hiking pants. I said it was too hot for hiking pants. That I would be fine. He rolled his eyes and said, “Suit yourself.” 

            Our expedition started out well. I was in a double kayak with my dad. We made an excellent team. Or he made an excellent kayaker. I just fumbled along. My sister was in her own single kayak, fumbling along far behind; without the power of my dad to propel her forward. By lunch time, my dad and I were sufficiently far ahead, so we pulled into a small nook to wait for her. I watched as she approached. Closer and closer. Closer and closer. And then a strong current came by and swept her out of her kayak. In a blink and you miss it moment, she was out of her kayak and in the water. The kayak was upside down.

            I looked on, shocked. And then promptly burst out laughing. My dad gave me a stern and concerned look. Somehow, my sister ended up back in her kayak. No harm done. Her clothes were soaked. But she paddled up to us smiling. Dad looked relieved.

            We eventually banked, and set out a beautiful picnic. Despite my sister’s topple, everything was going well. I was happy. I hadn’t worked too hard. The scenery was beautiful. And then the pain started. The slight tingling of doom. The start of a sunburn. My legs were bright pink. I knew I was in for a bad burn. It normally took a few hours for a burn to set in. This took 45 minutes from landing. This one was going to hurt. But denial was easy in that moment, and as I could still walk, I said nothing. Eventually, we returned to our cabin.

            My legs were decidedly more red. A deep red. The deep red that causes your father to look worried. And to mutter, “I told you so.” The type of red that indicates you are going to go through hell. The kind of red that involves blood rushing down and making your legs swell. I popped a tylenol. Took a nap. Hoping the pain wouldn’t get worse.

            I woke up to agony and purple legs. The type of purple where you want to dunk your legs in ice water. So that you can feel them again. The type of purple that demands that you stay in bed for the next eternity. That makes you cry just from moving.

            Dad announced we were going to the movie theatre. I was determined to hide my pain. To make up for the fact that I had told my dad that I would be fine. That my legs would not get burned. He knew the second he saw me walk. Or waddle. It was more of a waddle. I told him that it wasn’t that bad. A lie that even he could see through. I walked in second position lumbering backwards and forwards, trying to soothe the pain. But there was no soothing. There was nothing to be done. I was stuck with purple legs.

___
Sarah is a writer/designer/actress living in New York. She writes personal essays, plays, screenplays or anything that fits her flights of fancy. She is a crochet designer with her own crochet line, Puzzled Heart Designs. Follow her everyday thoughts on her blog.

Go Time—an essay by Wanda Morrow Clevenger

Two grueling hours in, basting in 90 degree humidity, I could have served myself for supper with an apple between my teeth and a side of smashed spuds.  A half-kaput ceiling fan of the cheaper variety, brand new just a decade prior, dropped a single 40-watt spot straight down.  Installation of an upgraded fixture held a place of honor at the bottom of my husband's honey-do list.  I couldn't turn a blind eye as easily as him, couldn’t wait another ten years to hit that room.  It was Go Time.

            A late summer thunder-boomer threatened; the same not generally heard first or even smelled.  Muggy pea-soup swelled the second-story bedrooms.  I kept in the crosshairs of an Aloha Breeze super-fan, shifting it toward me as I moved from one disheveled pile to the next despite gaining little relief.

            When the dim fell darker, I cut the power to the vacuum, crossed to the window and did a quick Al Roker.  Laden grayish pockets crowded above, the underbelly of a pregnant mutt scoping a drop-site.  I quipped to a perceived audience, “And here's what's happening in your neck of the woods.”

            Indian summer's slide into fall is a mixed bag––one foot in today, one in tomorrow.  All the windows wide open meant listening for raindrops, then racing around shutting out the blessed reprieve.  I returned to my cleaning feeling like an aging plow mule, not old enough to be put out to pasture, not young enough to enjoy the exertion.  And not looking forward to winter coming either, but given no vote in the matter.

           

            Our younger son, Nick, returned to college one week earlier, the aftermath a disastrous mishmash of teenage leavings spewed across every walkway and a bathroom in dire need of HAZMAT intervention. 

            This day marked the second round of detoxifying the upper level of our home―I overdid the day before, got on a roll and couldn't seem to stop.  Not that there is a specific stopping point at this stage of reconstruction.  I just pushed and pulled, groaned and growled, until my clothes were soaked and my backbone baulked.  Downside of claiming “neat-freak” is no matter how mountainous the job, it's impossible to quit mid-mess.  I inadvertently missed lunch and forty-five minutes of The Young and the Restless.  Even so, at nearly five o'clock I had barely made a dent.

            But this was not unanticipated.  I had been in the trenches before, knee deep in Fischer-Price baby toys, scattered Mattel board game pieces, and orphaned mini cartridges and batteries from Game Boys, V-Tech Power Pads, and Sega Game Gears.  Had sorted, hunted down parts, and reassembled boy-toys of every kind for twenty-five straight years, starting with Playskool's Weebles Wobble But They Don't Fall Down graduated to Microsoft X-Box.  The last, hoped but not, grand overhaul occurred the previous fall―Nick's freshman year at SIUE.             

            The day after Nick bugged-out for his waiting dorm room, I climbed the stairs to his abandoned room.  He'd turned a page and I was proud he was following after his brother, pursuing the higher education his father and I missed out on.  But that didn't make his departure any easier.  When I stepped into the empty space my chest tightened and I felt that achy-breaky thing that leaves simple separation anxiety in the dust.  My brain knew Nick wasn't gone for good, but my heart hadn't got the text message.

            A few minutes lagged in slo-mo while waves of empty nest syndrome pummeled.  Then I gathered myself then and did a 360.  The nest wasn't empty so much as it was trashed.  What remained now was nowhere to go but up.  Or maybe out.  I briefly considered heaving everything through the window.  Thankfully, my Mrs. Clean alter ego rationally reminded that someone near and dear to me would have to clear the wreckage off the lawn too.  I wasn't up for double-duty. 

            Déjà vu.  Nick's brother, Nathan, left a similar catastrophe six years before as he headed to Southeast Mo.  I recalled kidding the boys, calling them alien abduction babies―lacking their parents' spic-n-span skills (and in Nathan's case, our love of cheese).  The collective slouchy state of their bedrooms left little doubt in my mind that something was cosmically amiss despite friends' reassurance that teenage girls weren't any tidier.

            So there I found myself, 365 days later, facing my nemesis.  Thunder rumbled a call to battle.  The heavens opened in a deluge.  I sprung into action.  An old soldier in the clash against clutter, I knew from the onset what I faced: a hard fight to the better end.     

            I hunkered down in a corner demilitarized zone and coordinated my attack.  Outnumbered on all flanks, my intent was to deploy from the point of least resistance―

the doorway corridor― picking off my opponent with perimeter sweeps, then implementing a full frontal assault on the under-eve closet: the terrible toy zone.

            The strategy worked well.  Much ground was gained on the objective before discovering myself surrounded, cut off by a five-foot barricade of sorting containers and sprawling trash piles, incapable of even minimal maneuvering.  My Aloha Breeze fan now MIA, I feared it suffered a hostage situation behind enemy lines.

            Another hour in the fray and in desperate need of reinforcements, I couldn't secure a single spot to sit and regroup.  Forced to keep moving or surrender, I pulled more boxes from the toy pit and heaped them higher and higher.  Every inch gained was lost by a spill of Micro Machines and Hot Wheels, Legos and puzzles pieces, Beanie Babies and baseball cards.  Somewhere in my head Sgt. Carter yelped at Gomer Pyle.  “Move it! Move it!”

            A CD-player box centered in my sights, but it was figured for empty, like so many other stray cartons I had raided and flung toward the hallway.  Surprised at the heft, because the player was already dug out of the rubble, I secured it and squeezed toward the bed, cautiously curious as to what covey of contraband it contained.           

            Same as everything before, it was covered with more dust than Mr. Magoo’s reading glasses.  I placed the box on a stack of loose paraphernalia―unmatched playing cards, keys, Monopoly money, and Risk plastic roman numerals―and sighed for the hundredth time.  Then looked around for my Swiffer duster.  Swif apparently had seen enough engagement for one day and was retreated to parts unknown.

            Exhaustion teetered at the edge of my resolve, threatening dramatic crash and burn.  Screw it, I thought and swiped the dust with my forearm.  A gritty film stuck, reminding how the boys looked after playing trucks in the dirt.  I scowled at the grime before popping the lid.

            A faint order wafted upward.  Good gawd, an old Gatorade bottle.  What the . . . I raised those boys better.  I lifted the bottle to eye level and inspected an ominous pale liquid.  A deeper scowl crimped my parched lips.  Surely to all that is sacred to mothers, and the cleaning product industry at large, it wasn't . . .

   

            Fully disillusioned, I set the bottle aside, first checking the seal on the cap, and started pitching scraps of paper printed with foreign symbols into a Carolina Tar Heels waste can.  The drawings looked Goth, an interest of Nick's in eighth grade.  Next, several signed pages of notations and expressions of concern in colored felt-tip, some followed by hearts and x's and o's: “I'm here for you, Nick” and “Hope you feel better soon.”  Puzzled, I racked my brain but couldn't recall him missing more than a day or two of classes ever.  Not even for fake sick.

            Green Day sheet music lay beneath―set aside without reading―plus two Playboys, September '93 and March '98, and a handful of colored, elastic hair bands.  I smiled, amused for the first time in long hours, remembering finding a nudie magazine in Nathan's room after he left for college too.  How they came into possession of these publications, I didn't think I needed to know.       Buried near the bottom of the box: a photo.  And instantaneous recall.

            The Warped Tour

            The ash bottle

            The condolences 

            I shoved debris across the bed so I could sit on the edge, clutching the nearly empty box as if breakable.  Nick, in a Blink t-shirt with his cap worn backward (looking not a day over ten, though fourteen), his best friend Steve, and a band member from Warped Tour 2002―making a hand gesture moms aren't suppose to understand―stood frozen in time, mugging for the camera.  I had stumbled across Steve's box.

            My mind wound backward to what had slipped away in the business of keeping pace with my own life and family (until Green Day music back-dropped in a movie), to small group of young men and one girl at the grave site singing along with “Time of Your Life” blaring from the boom box near Steve's casket.  Each friend, my sons included, made it to the song's end.  They did better than me.

            Stunned, I sat for unknown minutes in the war-zone I had created, then pulled the Goth drawings out of the waste can, got down on my knees to make sure I retrieved all, and put every piece back into the box in the order removed.  The ashy Gatorade liquid―water, Nick confided once, Steve used to flick his cigarettes into―was returned last.  It could smell up my clean house any day.

            Steve's unconventional funeral replayed.  Had the mourners been dressed in ghoul-garb and served cocktails from the casket lid, the scene could have rocked a dreadfully delightful Halloween party.  The depressed, wrongly-medicated sixteen-year-old hung himself in a barn adjacent to his home.  His parents buried him in keeping with his interests: dressed in skateboard clothes, his red hair spiked like a troll doll, and black-polished fingernails.  Punk music blasted from the funeral home's stereo system.  A first, I'm sure.

            This landmine was a severe setback, affecting a truce for the day.  Tears smeared my vision as I lifted the box to a shelf in Nick's clothes closet.  There was a colossal difference between Nathan relocating to another state, Nick away at college, and Steve's absence.

            A lot sifts through a parent's mind when bivouacked in the middle of their children's former lives.  Seems impossible to forget a single minute of their growing up until you unearth a faded memory: a platoon of plastic arm men―a handful with their heads freakishly decapitated; a bevy of stuffed animals, wildly loved until the arrival of the first live pet; a grade school hand-printed note: I LV MOM, NiCK, embellished with a lopsided heart.

            After a week of intense skirmishes, my personal war was won.  I managed to scrounge through and box up every surviving toy my sons played with since birth.  And yes, there were many casualties―my neck, my back, my elbows.  Not to mention some unfortunate unladylike language. 

From the moment I knew they existed, those boys laid unmistakable siege upon my heart.  My orders now: send them out on their own, hoping I have equipped them with not only courage but kindness.  With a fresh coat of paint, new linens, and a working light fixture, the upstairs is finally suitable for future daughters-in-law and grandchildren.  I am ready for whatever comes next.  Bring it on.  Hooah.


___

Wanda Morrow Clevenger lives in Hettick, IL.  Over 200 pieces of her work appear in numerous print and electronic literary journals and anthologies.  She used to keep birds, but they kept committing suicide.  She tried to write an essay about the extensive misfortunes but no matter how she spun it, she came out looking pretty bad.  Now she mostly writes poetry and is currently shuffling the pages of two poetry manuscripts; one compiled entirely of poems bent from early 1900s Leavenworth Prison records.