That we have to care for each other, that must be the point. Right now we must fight, as hard and for long as it takes, but we can’t just keep fighting forever. Sooner or later we will have to stop fighting and care for each other. This is actually the real work. To be with people who we care for, and who care for us, instead of working for people who care nothing for our well-being. The more I think, the less likely it seems I will fall asleep any time soon. I’m full of doubts but know I cannot let these doubts stop me. There is so much in life we have absolutely no control of. My parents weren’t religious, or politics was their religion, and I’ve never considered believing in any church or any god, but I can see how at a moment like this, how useful it would be to believe in something, to have some otherworldly faith. So many times around the bonfire I heard the word dignity, that we want to live with dignity, and I wonder if this desire for dignity might be a kind of faith. A faith that there’s some basic value to being alive and that we all partake in this value. If you look around, people are being killed all the time, left to die, left to their own devices without resources to survive, for no good reason, and I don’t know how we can say that all these deaths, all these lives, were lived with dignity. I want to think that when we start fighting tomorrow we are also fighting for all of them, but worry we are only fighting for ourselves.
Sitting in the library I read about so many unions that began as bold, noble fights and over time declined into complacency, corruption or even worse. Imperialist unions that supported the destruction of left-wing unions in other countries. A story that repeats over and over again. Today I know we are not corrupt; we are fighting for our lives and all our reasons are good. But what can we possibly do about the future? Christ preached love and then the inquisition was a rolling orgy of hatred committed in his name. How do so many things devolve into their opposite over time? I keep telling myself that now is not the time to worry about such things. Now is the time to focus on the possibilities for our immediate struggle. And, at the same time, it is always the time to question oneself and one’s motives, if only to sharpen the blade, to make sure one’s blind spots don’t hide monsters that in the long run might upset the entire game.
I remember reading an interview with a concert pianist, perhaps one of the most successful musicians of his generation, who had much of his success when he was very young, just starting out. The interviewer asked him what it was like to be so successful so young, and his reply always stuck with me. He said there was so much happening, so much coming at him all at the same time, that he barely even experienced it happening, barely had a moment to take it in or enjoy. In the weeks or months or even years to come I feel my life will be the same, overwhelming. I will be overwhelmed by all the obstacles, tensions and decisions that must be made. But as I lie here in this tent unable to sleep, I tell myself I must pay attention, I must experience everything that is about to happen to me as fully as possible, I must experience it as some kind of joy. I can’t just let it all speed by without living it fully. I can’t let this life or struggle happen without me. But it is possible that it might, that it all will blur past and when it’s over I’ll look back and barely know what happened. Either way I will live with the results.
I don’t know at what time I finally drifted off, or how long I managed to sleep, but it couldn’t have been for long, and either before I drifted off, or shortly thereafter, I could already feel dawn cracking through the edges of the cheap tent. Even in the tumult of my anticipations and doubts, the morning light was here to tell me that it has all already begun.
1.
Emmett phoned me. It was the first time I had heard his voice in I don’t know how many years. The moment he started talking I had the devastating feeling that he wants something. He’s not just calling to chat. Later I had to ask myself: why did I find this feeling so devastating. I had to admit that all this time I’d harboured a secret hope that some day Emmett would call to offer the olive branch, would call for no other reason than to rekindle our friendship. But this was not such a call. As he is talking, trying to explain something to me, I feel distracted, trying to listen to this Emmett on the other end of the line while at the same time remembering the Emmett from before, the old Emmett, the Emmett I used to know. I find myself trying to remember the last time we spoke and what was actually said. Trying to remember if that final conversation began with me calling him or him calling me.
I remember him saying that he hoped I burned in hell, my reply that I knew he didn’t mean it and his insistence that he did. He told me that he had dedicated his life to me, that I didn’t know what a friend was or how to be one, and that I now had to spend the rest of my life watching my back because some day he would get his revenge, served cold as ice. When he had saved my job, saved my company, he had done so on the assumption that we were in this together, that we had each other’s backs until the very end, and he would have done things very differently if he had known that I in fact saw his back as little more than a target. As he said all this I remember the way I sat hunched in my chair, in my office, trying to think of some way to de-escalate the situation, to bring him back towards me, but any word I spoke just poured gasoline on his fury. I understood his position but still felt there was some way for us to work it out. He promised he would hurt me, that whatever I’d just done to him he would someday do to me but one hundred thousand times worse. He said that I wasn’t a human being, and that every time I looked in the mirror I should remember that my best friend in the world now doesn’t even think I’m human and wishes nothing more than I burn in the most disgusting of hells for all eternity. Then he hung up and that was the last time I heard his voice until today.
His tone today is almost the opposite, more calm than calm, so calm it’s almost deadening. He’s telling me about a situation he feels I should be aware of, that he thinks I should see for myself. He keeps repeating the day and time, saying that I should be there. That it is an important event that would be made even more important by my presence. He is speaking as if I already know what he’s talking about and somehow I am ashamed to admit that I don’t. He explains that he hasn’t contacted me in so long, and I should take the fact that he is contacting me now as evidence that this is a call towards something that truly matters. He then changes the subject, telling me he knows I am in crisis, not explaining how he knows, but that it’s all right since he’s in crisis as well. He knows that his crisis is because of me but is not yet certain if my crisis is because of him. So much time has passed but he feels convinced that he still knows me better than anyone. Don’t I know you better than anyone, he asks, and I am forced to admit that he probably does.