[Because I love to read Melissa’s posts so much, I was teasing her a little bit about the fact that she was posting recipes instead of writing, so she said: “Why don’t you write something?”  I wasn’t opposed to the thing but I didn’t know what she wanted, and I’m not too good with guidelines and predetermined forms anyway.  A few days later, I wrote this on my way back from work, and afterwards figured it could be appropriate.  My thanks to her (although now her regular readers will see what a troubled & dreary man she has for a husband), for allowing me to share this inconsequential but heartfelt little piece.]

Occupy Montreal.  If I was young and without responsibilities, and not a bread-winner for my Companion & our four children, I would be there right now, with these beautiful Fools [1] who are not only showing their anger & dissatisfaction with the state of our Civilisation, but living it out [2].

Inside a small area, they have erected their tents, thus creating a small community who seemingly has no less a goal than Change & Revolution.

Now, some would call me pessimistic and cynical, but although I am completely on their side I don’t believe that these movements will lead to a lasting and significant alteration of the “way things are done”.  No, I don’t think the Occupy participants will see any real effects to their actions, except maybe in their own lives, which is no small feat in itself.  I can’t help but think that if they persist and camp through the hardships of our Quebec winter, the people of Occupy Montreal will be forever changed, forever steadfast in their convictions & beliefs.

Recent readings [3] have confirmed for me that our only hope (for our species but also for our planet’s capacity to sustain life) is a major shift, so major that we ? as a global collectivity ? might not be willing (or even able) to embark upon it.

Either that, or an ecological catastrophe of such tragic proportions that not many of us might live through it, or survive for very long afterwards.

Yet… wrong and deluded though I might be… I find myself in the paradoxical position of longing for such a primal, apocalyptic event.

Yes, strangely enough my fondest wish for my children, whom I love more than I could believe possible, is for them to live to see the day when the whole blasted Human Empire crumbles, one way or the other, so that they then could breathe and think in an atmosphere (physical and intellectual) which is free from Poison.

Desolation, the last painting of Thomas Cole‘s cycle called The Course of Empire

[1] I say “fool” in the Fool on the Hill sense, in the archetypal Tarot sense.

[2] So a few days ago, during my lunch hour, I walked to the site of Occupy Montreal with my friend, and we talked of it, and I left there a Ziploc bag containing a short story I wrote a few years ago, as a token of my respect and admiration for them.  It’s not much, but that’s all I could think of.

[3] Firstly, a lengthy article called Take What You Need And Compost The Rest, written by Margaret Killjoy, which I read in #2 of Alan Moore’s excellent but short-lived Dodgem Logic magazine.  Secondly, a crucially relevant book which I highly recommend called A Short History of Progress (2004), by Ronald Wright, which has recently been adapted into a movie called Surviving Progress (which I have not seen).