Cuba is often derided for its policies.  Americans, for example, would have us believe that the lack of basic freedom is of great hindrance to the Cuban people.  And probably they’re right.   But isn’t there something just a little bit exciting about being different to everyone else?  About being so near to a huge global super-power, a super-power that hates the way you run the country but can’t do a damn thing about it.    The best thing is that the Fidel Castro has the time to indulge himself in crazy master plans, the type of plans only cooked up by evil warlords in James Bond and Austin Powers.  

Even the greatest minds in the world get things wrong, but sometimes going a bit off the beaten track can yield fantastic dividends.   Here we have the story of Castro’s desire to breed a Cuban super-cow, a cow so great that it would produce four times the amount of milk as a standard cow.   Then, he would breed miniature versions so that everyone could have their own cow.  Fantastic.

http://www.hispaniconline.com/pol&opi/05_22_02_castro_cow.html

I don’t wanna go to school today
I don’t wanna go
I just wanna play guitar all day
You act like you’re the only one who has problems
You act like you’re the only one who’s ever gotten strung out on pills, pills
I don’t wanna have to do the things that people have to do
I’m not a person I’m just an object to you
Like books and shoes
You act like you’re the only one with a chemical imbalance
You’re not the only one who’s ever looked into a flash
Stay awake
Stay awake
I don’t wanna stay awake
Don’t wanna stay awake
Stay awake
Stay awake
I’m gonna go to sleep
Stay awake
Stay awake
I’m gonna go to sleep

Lyrics used without permission. This is, of course, the inimitable Juliana Hatfield. Who rocks.

Why? Well it’s something I’ve thought about a bit today. I had a few days out of the office, then, having negotiated my 615am alarm I threw myself half-heartedly into my day. By 730am I was in a daydream, and by 830 I had read a bit of my book (Vineland by Thomas Pynchon) but was still no nearer to being awake. I listened to Rage Against the Machine, and then the underrated Copper Blue by Sugar (is Bob Mould gay? not that it matters, but I think I read it somewhere). But still half-asleep. I marched through today’s essential tasks, and by 5pm was on my way out again. In between I did some stuff and sighed a bit, and postured a bit, and probably gave off the air of someone trying to act all important and busy. Whatever, I was a zombie, and it’s not the first time. In fact, it’s damn near every day, and dare I say it, I prefer it that way.

EB White, in “One man’s meat” (1944), said:

Once in everyone’s life there is apt to be a period when he is fully awake, instead of half asleep

Only once? Oh dear. I guess I’m still waiting, which is about the most damning thing I’ve ever said about myself. I’m happy, don’t get me wrong, but if there’s anything that the Way of the Beard should stand for it’s the desire to be all present and correct at all times. I think that parts of Buddhism have a similar thrust, the quest to be present in the moment rather than ghosting through it ad infinitum. It really is something I have to sort out, and fast.

So the beard learning of the day? Be here now I guess.

And so it is with life. If every part of every job was perfectly predictable then a lot of businesses would do very well. Certainly the company I work for would. And it’s this that people seem to strive for: control, over people, over events, over everything.

Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine has a similar problem with the world:

America touts itself as the land of the free, but the number one freedom that you and I have is the freedom to enter into a subservient role in the workplace. Once you exercise this freedom you’ve lost all control over what you do, what is produced, and how it is produced. And in the end, the product doesn’t belong to you. The only way you can avoid bosses and jobs is if you don’t care about making a living. Which leads to the second freedom: the freedom to starve.

Well that seems about right.
Which leads us towards the opposite, which I suppose is anarchy. Now, anarchy isn’t necessarily what we think it is. Here’s Peter Wild interviewing one of my favourite authors, the bearded Jim Dodge:

“Oh and you said “anarchy doesn’t mean out of control it means out of THEIR control” in “Living by Life”: bearing in mind your own definition of the word (“I hesitate using that fine word because it’s been so distorted by reactionary shitheads to scare people that it’s connotative associations have become bloody chaos and fiends amok, rather than political decentralization, self-determination, and a commitment to social equality”) do you still consider yourself an anarchist?”

Indeed. But more locally, what can we do that has a more anarchistic bent? I really don’t know. But one thing stands out, and this whole idea really does reaffirm how important it is. And what is IT? The Arts. Groan away, but it’s things like film and music and books that take us away from this ordinary predictable controlled world, and we shouldn’t forget that. Rock on, Tom.

PS Interesting Rage Against the Machine fact (copied from Wikipedia so the links stay): British DJ Bruno Brookes once accidentally played the full, uncensored version [of "Killing in the name of"] (which contains the phrase “Fuck you, I won’t do what you tell me!” 16 times followed by “motherfucker“) on the BBC Radio 1 Top 40 singles show.

I can illustrate all this graphically:

What I have here is how the way of the beard fits in. On the one side you have The Way, and on the other what I’m calling Way of the Slick (after Tony Robbins). Now, most of us fall into the middle of this, into what you could call the mainstream. That’s the main stream in the picture you see. Heh heh. Anyway, very few people are on each bank, and most of us are in the stream. We may wish to be on the left bank, and we may feel the world pushing us towards the right bank, and the one thing we know is that it’s darned wet in this godforsaken stream and there are rocks all over the place. So how to get to the side?   Or do we just plod on in the stream forever because it really does look quite nice at the end of it, however far off that might be.
Ahem.  I’m getting carried away, I know.  But this is what we have to find out isn’t it?

With my now familiar barrage of quotes I’ll keep at this and we’ll see where it leads.

Anyway, last night we watched Memoirs of a Geisha. Despite my reservations I quite enjoyed it, there were lots of proverby type exchanges, but if that’s how things are then more power to them and well done for the quick wits. I couldn’t quite tell if the wisdom was legit, or just the same type of wisdom they spout out at moving moments in Dawson’s Creek… it really makes a difference coming from a Japanese person you see. So yes, lots of wisdom.

One bit caught my attention (more quotes coming):

“We must not expect happiness, Sayuri. It is not something we deserve. When life goes well, it is a sudden gift; it cannot last forever…”

I thought this was interesting. The person saying this is the Chairman:

And maybe the Chairman is right. He’s a nice man, and such points do a valuable job of keeping things in perspective. After all, we generally only get unhappy when we want something that we can’t have, be it happiness, love, or promotion at work. I am going to collate these quotes by the way and publish them under something called the Way of the Beard or somesuch.

“Keep America Beautiful, Grow a Beard, Take a Bath, Burn a Billboard.”

Indeed. Burning billboards is a dangerous game, especially in this age of CCTV, but I can see his point. Incidentally, did you know that Ted Danson of Cheers used to burn billboards too? Yeah, he was an activist in his time. Kudos, Ted.

Here’s another:

“As a confirmed melancholic, I can testify that the best and maybe only antidote for melancholia is *action*. However, like most melancholics, I suffer also from sloth.“

Excuse the font, that’s how it came from Abbeyweb which is a good site for all things Abbey.

Here’s another Abbey quote:

“There is a deep, abiding, unshakable satisfaction in a life of complete failure.”

Where am I going with this? I’m trying to suggest that if only we’d accept who we are, stop trying to be things we’re not just because the world would prefer that we are a certain way, well, we might be happier.

Kajel at work, in response to my point about Tea Masters (she too has to raise her profile at work), sent me this quote from EE Cummings:

“To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best day and night to make you like everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight and never stop fighting” (E. Cummings)

I’m not going to let this blog descend into random quoting to make points, but as I set off to find the meaning of life, and to learn how to follow the way of the beard, there are certain background thoughts that need laying down from the outset. I think by now you probably know where I’m coming from, so I’ll broaden my scope next post.

Let me explain: think of someone with a beard. It’s harder than you think isn’t it? Don’t worry though, I have a good one, in writer Ed Abbey. He was a free spirit and usually had a beard.

Ok, now someone who wouldn’t be seen dead with a beard, someone to whom a beard would just be wrong. I’ve gone for American self-help guru Tony Robbins. The picture I found came from www.achievement.com.

Now, these people represent two extremes: Abbey lived a wayward life, including stints as a park ranger and eco-saboteur; Robbins was once a large man, but became slim through his will power and now makes millions teaching people how to achieve through the powers of positive thought and energy and all that sort of thing.

So where do I want to be? I want to be at Ed Abbey’s end, no question. But how? And when I say I want to be at Ed Abbey’s end, do I really mean that I want to be a wildman beardo type? Well yes, but in the confines of my own life this is tricky. So the question is, how does one get nearer to the bearded end of the spectrum?

This is going to be my ongoing challenge. Call it a quest for beardedness perhaps.

Then when we come to talking about promotions I’m not so good after all. My boss says I need a higher profile within the organisation, that I need to express more energy at work and be more vocal, extrovert perhaps.

This sort of thing can get you. I’ve spent 30 years learning to be me without having to learn to be someone else. Which is a bad way to look at things, but by now I’m coming to the conclusion that this is when life gets tricky, when you start having to change and bend and all that. No, I really believe in the old cliche about being yourself.

But in the meantime I thought it might be a good idea to think of a role model, someone nearer to my employer’s ideal, but who isn’t an aggressive me-man hell bent on being ambitious for the sake of whatever it is that drives driven people. I wondered about Jon Snow from Channel 4 news, and my friend suggested Tiger Woods. No, I thought, not Tiger Woods. But who? It really should be someone bearded.

Well. I decided that I was after a ‘quiet authority’. So I googled that, and what do you know, I ended up with some wise words after all. Japanese Tea Masters in the 16th century, to be exact, and their wabi-sabi ideas.
Here:

They do not blare out “I am important” or demand to be the centre of attention. They are understated and unassuming, yet not without presence or quiet authority.

Exactly. And there’s a lot more like that too. So thanks Resurgence issue 203, and thanks wabi-sabi. There’s so much sense there it’s embarrassing.