A Different Story

I've always been filled with the urge to become an eco-terrorist. Was I alone on this one? To just live in hammocks, high up in the canopy, spiking trees, and cutting the fuel lines of bulldozers? Steal the explosives that rip apart the unique American terrain and use them to destroy the constructs that dry it up? Dismantle the surveyor's markings and hide my tracks in the moonlight? ...Hayduke would have been with me.
     So would have Hawkins.
     He was always with me for anything.
     Don't get me wrong on this one. The kid was a great friend and I would have protected him to both of our deaths. That was the problem. No matter how either of us felt, we were side by side.
     I guess that's really why we ended up together. Here.
     We had plotted it for some time. We had prepared, planned, prepped, even got down to physical training so we could outrun our adversaries if the incident arose. Neither of us had been quick enough for what we ended up dealing with.
     We were together, living in the beautiful and majestic American southwest. We grew tired of the atrocities that we saw impact the landscape that had been cultivated over eons and had just started to discuss doing something about it. We even followed Abbey's Monkey Wrench Gang and started to plant strategic caches and plot out attacks against key points in the terrain.
     Honestly, most of it was just a loud, drunken chaos of he and I yelling at each other over the music at whatever bar we had picked out that evening. Aside from the caches and our newly acquired desire to exercise, each night after we had worked out, anyone in our town could find us at the bar. The cops in town had even grown akin to shouting at us from their patrol cars as we harassed the college students for never working for their keep.
     This was our regular routine.
     Until that night. That night where we finally left to enact one of our plans.
     It was a small one.  They had been building a new road up the side of the mountain. It would connect a suburb to the tiny downtown hub where we lived. A connection, though, that would change the economy and allow for a new mining industry to grow that had been started near the suburb. We were on our way to just pull out the surveyor's markings when we ran into him.
     He was our town's newest criminal. A serial rapist. His picture had just been posted about town earlier that week. That's not to say the situation wasn't a dead giveaway. He was on top of his newest victim.
     Hawkins ran up on him. I knew it wouldn't go well, he was a small framed man. He was definitely a scrapper but no match for the bastard, twice his size, that he ran towards. Nonetheless, Hawkins caught him off guard and kicked him right in his chest.
     He fell of of the poor woman with an exhale of air.
     It didn't take him long before he pounced from the ground on top of Hawkins and started to pummel him in the chest.
     I felt for my knife on my hip. I had never used it before for anything but just skinning animals so as soon as I touched it, my conscience told me to leave it rest. I ran in and tackled the bastard into a puddle in the alley.
     He and I were evenly matched. Same size. Same build. I think the difference that mattered was that I had grown up with an older brother, and Chuck liked to pick fights with me.
     He swung at me. One. Two. Three times. The first and last connected with either side of my jaw. Luckily, that had always been Chuck's favorite move in a fight.
     I shrugged off the blows like they were mere glances of a dagger against my iron shield and came in on top of him. My hands were clenched together and came down on his nose with the meat of my palms. I knew immediately that I had entirely separated his nose from his face as blood spurted all over my pants.
     His surge of adrenaline must have kicked in as he tossed me away like a doll. I hit the ground on the opposite side of the alley and my head bashed against the back door of a pizzeria.
     As he came running at me, Hawkins came in for a tackle like he was the game-winning linebacker and stole the bastards breath from him again. Hawkins stayed on top of him this time.
     Hawkins had found a sizable rock in the alley and began to use it as a fist pack.
     I joined in with swift kicks to the rib cage from my steel toed boots.
     We would have him now. We would pummel the life out of the bastard and he would go to jail to receive the same he had felt so righteous about doling out in the months prior to our midnight rendezvous.
     After a moment, Hawkins stood up and joined me. The fight had turned into a right proper romp. We made blood blisters of waffle iron markings in his forehead as our Doc Martens stomped down on his face. It was after that blissful moment of blood and boots that I kicked him in the ass and he flipped onto his hands and knees.
     I'm still not sure how he did it but he survived the beating with enough wits about him to scamper into the bushes on his hands and knees. The only thing I can surmise now is that it was the red and blue lights that flickered down the alley that had scared the pathetic excuse for a man off and into the darkness that shrouded the bushes.
     The cops came in on us fast. From both sides of the alley too. We were trapped. Not worried.
     The first cop jumped out and cuffed us immediately.
     We had been expecting as much. To go to jail as the two guys that kicked the ass of the serial rapist, that was something we had been willing to do. The ideals of our eco-terrorism had been long forgotten as we sat in the back of the squad car and waited for the cop to pop in and ask us how it felt to be the first people to pummel that bastard's face.
     When he finally came in, we couldn't believe our ears.
     "You two are under arrest for the rape and murder of this poor bitch in the body bag right over there. What the fuck do you two bastards have to say for yourselves?"
     We were too worried and dumbfounded to even say a word. So he carted us off to jail as the real bastard probably laughed at us from the bushes he had hidden behind.
     I'll make a really long story shorter. We ended up with a public attorney. The swine didn't do us a lick of good. He was caught up in the same hype we had been that night that we attacked the bastard and assumed we were just a couple more low lives that drifted in to ruin his hometown.
     He did absolutely nothing to help us and everything he could to convict us. The blood on my pants was turned into the remnants of my befouling of that poor young woman and Hawkins' bruises in his chest had been inflicted upon him as the woman fought back against his restraining arms.
     A week later, while the trial was still going on, the bastard's body turned up dead in the bushes he had crawled towards. We were charged with his murder and stories were concocted of how we had actually started a raping gang and he had threatened to turn us in and we tried to frame him on that night.
     Now we sit in prison. Our faces smashed against the bars. I day dream of our caches and plans to destroy corporate America's controls on the beautiful backcountry destinations that had been sworn to being protection areas. Hawkins dreaming of 100 proof whiskeys and craft beers. Neither of us regretting killing that bastard ass rapist that never had a chance to do it again.

Circled 'A's and Chaos Stars

When asked, "what does it mean?" He'd simply look at them and say, "everything," and elaborate no further. He never really gave them a chance to understand what everything really means. See, to him, it really has everything he believes in. He believes that at the beginning, there would be chaos and through the chaos kids from all races, both men and womyn will unite and fight for what they believe in. That would be a society free of masters and lords. No governments to oppress humankind and they are, in turn, free to live there lives out in peace along side nature. That is exactly what he fails to explain and the inquisitor never learns anything. The only thing that comes from their sidewalk debate of neo-con politics and new age televangelist world domination, that the symbol toting punk would have the gumption to stick out his hand and ask for some change.

     Trying to sum up all of one's beliefs into a simple little symbol in hopes that brandishing it on one's arm would be an easy way to convey those belief is a cute idea. It's simply the monkey-see-monkey-do philosophy played out again. Monkey see symbol, monkey know. I think it's sad to say but in our society, not too many people really understand a lot of the symbols they see. It seems to me that Americans only understand the middle finger, bald eagle, football logos, the flag, brand logos and the little yellow ribbons that every SUV lovingly brandishes. So when they get confused, pissed off or, even worse, both, their reaction renders the symbol completely useless.

     I am saying this though with what my parents and older brother (and probably my younger fiancée) would refer to as youthful prejudice and probably a little bit of leftover angst. Well, I'm a twenty-two year old, unemployed, college dropout that's struggling to get into the tattoo industry and about to get married. Thank god! Thank satan! Thank the flying-spaghetti monster that I've got a little bit of angst left in me. I could be a bitter, pissed-off alcoholic whithering away in the cold basement of an apartment with no running water. I'm glad I've got that angst left damn it! It's probably the only thing that really keeps me going. It's just that youthful prejudice term that bugs me so I'm going to digress and break down that last paragraph.

     Of course I've got a few stereotypes about America, what it is and what it means to be an American. I'll also be the first to say that my feelings on that subject are prejudiced of me. That's what makes me creative and drives me in general. I am not, however, passing this prejudiced judgement on a people and holding my prejudices against anyone. I'm creating these prejudices about the society that I've been oh so privileged to grow up in. So is it really that fucked up of me?

     Let me get back to my main point here, the only real use of a symbol is identification. When we affiliate ourselves to anything we automatically identify ourselves to that symbol. For example, I'm on a casual stroll down the street and my endless horizon staring day-dream is interrupted by someone walking down the street with crass symbol on their t-shirt. I know the symbol. I know the band. So I wonder if maybe I know the person. The only way a symbol really works is if the viewer already knows what it means, an easy enough thought that still needs to be pointed out.

     It really is the association of symbols that can completely destroy most political movements. I speak mainly, about anarchism and its notorious circled 'a'. I would dare to say the circled 'a' is as commonly seen in American pop culture as the middle finger. Actually, I would go farther to say you'll see more circled 'a's in  the allies of Chicago than middle fingers on the Jersey turnpike. To me, that's a huge problem. Most people, the elusive non-anarchist type, have seen it played out in dodgey spray paint on the overpasses near our cities for years. It's carved into high school desks and scribbled on bathroom stalls next to Susie's fun-time phone number. It's also patched on the clothes and tattooed on the skin of travelers, squatters, and outlaw cyclists.

     I don't want my words to be manipulated into me dogging on people I know or could be very good friends with. I've got a circled 'a' tattoo myself. Hell, I can see it drawn two other times around me and it's even spray painted on my wall. I know, how cliche? Stand on the outside and look in though. If I step into the shoes of my grandmother, I can imagine what she sees: a dirty, godless child of ill-dispute living a life lacking in respect for authority. Funny thing about her association to our symbol is that it's pretty much true. We just look at it through a little more glamorous light. What she fails to acknowledge are the good things coming from a few circled 'a' bearing kids.
     Out there are a handful of kids making an immense difference in their communities. They're working at the grassroots level to take care of the less fortunate of their communities. They're out there running organizations like Food Not Bombs and starting programs like really really free markets, all-age venues, art communities, and public gardens. They're out there busting their asses to make our city more fun for all of us. They're also improving the lives of others with free handouts of food, clothing, books, music and more. These symbol toting kids are vital to the movement. They're the ones that are building the underground network of roots for our anarchic redwood forest. These kids doing all this good and being spattered with anarchic symbols are causing others to think, "does the bomb-throwing anarchist really exist?"
     That's an open window.
     An open window to expose the uneducated to a belief they may have never known they could even get behind. Yes, any one can be an anarchist. The ideals of living free of oppressive governments, laws and city codes, a place where people take care of themselves, their friends, and their family. Ideals that America was founded on, ideals every American, every person, wants for themselves. That is why this open window system is crucial. They see the circled 'a' accompanied with good natured people, instead of painted on our city's abandoned buildings, we will have the opportunity to educate. These peaked interest "converts" should be embraced, educated, and looked after, they will be important pieces to the puzzle when our time comes.