Update to 7th May
I am sitting in Claudia’s living room, on sheepskins lain out on a seat that, like a Russian Samovar, surrounds the fire. Early spring sunlight is streaming in through the 4 corner windows that look out into a garden filled with aple blossoms. Claudia is still sleeping. She has been in a great deal of pain in the last 48 hours It is good to here at lasi.
For those people who read this Leonie is a former owner of Gaia House. Born in
I arrived at Ultralab, which is a short walk from the Chelmsford Railway station laden with luggage and tired from my journey that morning from Cindy’s. It was the first of May, the international day of Labour, and in
After the dancing we all went back to the “Grassroots Community” for Mayday breakfast, of bagels and cream cheese, which was also a tradition established for some time. From there I jumped into my car and drove to Rebecca Sue’s for the second time, as I had left my blue file, with many of my important papers at the Cinema about 3 days before. We had been to see “Joyeaux Noel” together, an important movie based on the real events of Christmas 1914. It left me feeling hopeful, not only at is portrayal of basic human decency, which first must be in some way perverted to enable people to slaughter one another. But even more deeply, it showed me a history of what might have been, a possibility of what could have happened if the events of that Christmas had been allowed to spread down the Western Front, and peace had broken out. The War could have stopped, and we would have had no Hitler, no Holocaust, no Stalin and no gulag. How different the world could have been. Without the baggage of National Socialism and Bolshevic Extremism, perhaps we would have seen the spread of Democratic Socalism, rather than the long Cold War, and the Triumphalist Capitalism that is taking the world into a new era of ecological collapse, poverty and destruction. I wrote to the “Seedlings”, who have completed the 30 day Training in Deep Time, Lunar Time, and Dreamtme, that we ran in January 2006 “Joyeaux Noel. Go and see it! Its not to be missed! It is a beautifully done movie, full of surprises. It is about loving your enemies and about how dangerous that really is to those in power. It shows how the power system maintains itself by shaming men for that which is most beautiful in them, and for seeing others as human beings. None of the sides portrayed were demonized – all you see is humans under immense strain in dehumanizing circumstances. And at the end, when the German troops are shipped east to the Russian front and the battle of Tannenberg they were humming a Scottish song – dreaming of home. Its not difficult, all we need is to let our hearts be real and genuine. We just need to let our hearts be true, as the movie was not about changing people. It shows that it was the powers that be that be sought to change them from what they naturally were. The bishop who comes to replace the padre, preaches that Jesus is bringing a sword – and this is the Jesus that many believe is coming – a hero on a white horse with a sword to defeat the non Christians and the unsaved. It is the Jesus of George Bush, who rather than loving our enemies believes that those who are not with us are against us. And yet how different history could have been, if our leaders had had the courage to let peace break out along the Western Front in Christmas 1914. No Nazis, no second world war, no holocaust, no Stalin. Probably no nuclear weapons, no proliferation. What a different world. And all because on the Western Front, soldiers put down their guns, singing Silent Night.
Maybe there is an alternate world where that really happened. Even if we don’t live in that world, it makes it almost bearable that it could exist. That movie is an inspiration to us all to build that world that could have been. In their trenches, those men had no idea that a movie was going to be made about that night. If only all the soldiers in
So … – get yourself to the trenches of your nearest movie theatre, arm yourself with the appropriate tissues. And treat yourselves to a great and tragic real event.”
At the movie’s I had the presentment that I ad left something behind as Rebecca Se and I left. It was only the following day that I discovered what it was. Rebecca Sue had taken me to her parent’s house where I tried to track it down. It was not at June’s Café, where I had been working for much of the day. Nor was it at the Soup Kitchen where we had gone for dinner. Both seem to be institutions for “alternative minded” folks at
The trip to
I stopped at the first tollway, and went into their offices. I explained the situation, and here we see in operation the kind of people I found Americans to be. I explained my situation. The manager of the tollway reached into his pocket and withdrew from his own wallet the cash I would need to proceed. He said, I did not need to return it to him. (But I will, such generosity needs to be rewarded – it seems understandable that this country was the one which coined the phrase “Practice Random Acts of Kindness and Senseless Beauty”.) The staff in the office also explained that in returning the rental care to Manhattan I should avoid the George Washington Bridge and take the Henry Hudson Freeway, the only non-tollway access to New York (unlike the Lincoln Tunnel et al). My first problem had been solved. But how was I to return the car when the streets were all blocked off by police cordons guarding the route of the protest?
In the end I just parked the car on a side of the street, and walked through the marching column of thousands to the place where I had hired the car on arriving in
Well that about brings you all up to date for the moment.
More adventures to follow.
John
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