Saturday evening the 29th of November I was hanging out with my son in our apartment and I received a phone call. The place was messy, as usual, and I wandered between cleaning up, washing dishes, checking email, and playing with legos. This is a usual state for me, wandering, drifting back and forth between unrelated activities. I like it. I don’t know if my son likes it. The phone call was from a woman I know who lives beside the Cyclops.
What is the Cyclops? For the full story from my point of view, find the blog post entitled “a world of wings and cries” under the category called “practical.” The short version goes something like this: we’re all tied together in this net. All our movements send vibrations across to the others, all swimming together in this pool of motion and tremor. No one sees all the bands, the tendons, no one sees the whole group, the skeleton of connections hidden under the meat of work, the work of planning and of executing plans. No one knows exactly why we’ve all come, what strange course of life has delivered us to the threshold of this group, KULTURKAMPANJEN, and entangled us in it’s web. Oh tie me with a thousand ribbons, let me feel the fluttering of your hearts across the room.
The Cyclops was a building and more than just a building. Eyes like a viper you want to bite you. An undulating and carefree body. Grab onto the ceiling babe and wrap those legs around my waist. Lick my lips. Run your fingers through my hair and say I wanna see you bat shit crazy piss-wild horse of madness. We’re spinning! ..and dive into a kiss, there happens to be applause from the record on the radio. Burn me like the desert sun in a cold and dark country. Take me to the deep water. You make me want to lose sight of the shore all over again. Like I’ve never been defeated, never been hurt or lost, like no one in the world can even see or threaten me.
Jane, the ladder you built those years ago survived the fire. Mark, the rock we used as the counterweight for the drawbridge is till in there, buried under black wreckage. It’s like having your youth stripped away, what little youth you’ve managed to pull across your chest. It makes you speechless. THE FIRE. Many thoughts and feelings run through you. Insecurities, grudges, scary visions, dreams, hesitation… swept off me like a layer of dust or ash. Even though the clouds white curtain in a far off corner flowered, the hypnotic splattered mist was slowly lifting. It didn’t make me sad, exactly, didn’t make me want to lay down and die. But I didn’t feel powerful either.
The next day my clothes smelled like smoke. Black corners. Bowed lines that should be straight. Lite rain. White smoke. Collapsed walls, skinny sticks reaching up in charred sillouette against a blank November sky. Rubble. Fallen sheets of corrougated steel roofing, strewn, blown, mishapen, stained. Pockets of air, bubbles beneath the paint. Smell of coal, melted iron. All those unfinnished details, all those projects, wiped away. Nausea, dizziness, rage, confusion, police tape, silence.
The day after the fire we had a meeting. We sat in a broad ring and talked. The mood was diverse. All of us were still at least a little devastated, chocked by the gnarly maw of the world which had learched out of the darkness, grabbed our baby by the neck, and dragged him off into the forrest. Some were getting cocky, getting that crazy look in the eye. Others looked defeated. Emotions are liquid in a room like that. Sadness becomes love becomes anger. Looking around the room you can see a glimpse of rage, then steadfastness, and a moment later that face is laughing. Some people talked like they were already exhausted but had no choice but to walk on down the road. Would this bring them joy or frustration?
Most these people, these concerned and caring faces, they did not use the house when it stood. Most of these people were not engaged in the Cyclops, most of these people at the meeting, and most of the people who hugged me on the 30th. They come to you with a question on their lips. Cyclops had given them something to believe in and now they came in wondering what to believe in now? and we deserve it, we deserve to have hope, and to give that to one another. That is what we built and that’s what they want to know, did our hopes burn as well?
All those afternoons building, working those mornings. Pouring coffee from a thermos. Wiped away. Clean away from the crust of the Earth. My mood depends on my perception of the coming months. Remember that reality is out there waiting before you go uncorking the champange. The effects of violence, violence has touched the rim of our circle, that is enough to drive us to fear. It was ARSON, the cops have confirmed this. And that forces us to acknowledge their violence. We must confront the fact of arson, of attempted murder.
We organized a demonstration. Benefit parties. Another demonstration. We have given speeches, interviews, radio, television, newspaper. We are stronger now than we have ever been. More people, more money, more attention, more support. Soon we will begin plans for the next building. We have grown, we’ve had our backs on the anvil. But the Cyclops, the Cyclops is gone forever. Nothing can replace it. The candles of our innocence are burning fast, soon all we’ll have left is the salt on our lips. Olof, we won’t be building that dry toilet this spring. We’ll be building much much more.
