addled anarchy

My first introduction to real live anarchists was when I lived in London.

Being a child of the South African seventies, anarchy was alive and well in my youth, only not much reported on. This was the age of riots and car-bombs and “total anarchy” was the reason we had bomb scares at school and couldn’t go to the Carlton Center to do Xmas shopping.

Anarchy was occasionally mentioned in horrified tones that implied certain un-imaginables. Our headmistress and Department of Education found such subjects unsuitable for girls with my skin colour and so anarchistic behaviour was reserved for our teenage conversations and not publicly named.

Enter punk-rock, torn clothes and safety pins. Scope magazine gave us a different face for anarchy, but still, while I pogo’ed and spiked my hair, I was not exactly Sid and Nancy! I just knew I wanted Change. The System was always wrong - even those that tried to make it right still started with the same system.

Moving to London allowed me to breathe. Wide-open head-spaces and spicy debate fed my happy self. Enter God and Alex (I kid you not, God was a tall thin, slightly stooped total hash-head and Alex was his scruffy tousle-haired companion.) They defined themselves as anarchists and made addled punk-inspired plans to blow up London and wipe out the establishment. However, after the influence of a few pints and a couple of illegal indulgences, they never got very far, so the plans were nothing more than Friday night conversations. I found them very entertaining.

Much life-experience later, it is only as I ripen into my prime :), that I accept what an anarchist I truly am. Because such an identity has been associated with extremism, and I have always found extremism spit-in-the-face ugly, I never recognised that my moderate philosophies of a brave new world quite fit the bill. I never saw how wanting to totally change the way convention operates and live in a completely differently-ordered society is actually just lots of words for saying “total anarchy”. However, it’s still just a label (and those bore me and have to be changed as soon as they’re applied.)

I dream of global willingness to own the truth that lies beneath the dramas of Today’s News. A real, authentic, truth-in-the-eyes attempt to change the dinosaur-establishment belief structures that we are socialised to apply (as if on automatic pilot!) Almost everything – both left and right, up and down and all else in between, is part of the same dis-functional old black and white movie re-run.

If we could stop jumping to conclusions, stop jumping up and down, just stop, stop, stop reacting from limited versions of how-its-always-been. Take a deep breath, look around and accept: we created this, how can we make space for our Little Frankenstein love-child? I’m sure we could come up with some stark raving, transcendental, radically creative total anarchistic solutions!

As I dream on, I wonder if God and Alex are still at that pub on the corner…