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Back on the Grid

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It was a strange experience for me to relive the few hours my brother and I spent Visiting Bombay Beach and Slab City, those strange communities along the eastern edge of the Salton Sea. I keep wondering to myself what it would be like to live there, and I’ve come to the conclusion that I couldn’t survive there.

What if there were an emergency? And, with my lack of a pituitary gland as the result of a long-ago tumor, I do occasionally have emergencies. Would I be able to get my hands on Hydrocortisone HCL or Prednisone in time for me to avoid sinking slowly and lethargically into the boundary between our world and what, if anything, lies after?

And that’s only one thing. What about making the daily trip to Niland to get the necessary 5 gallons (or 19 liters) of water required for drinking, cooking, and washing? What about starting from scratch because some mentally unbalanced or drugged neighbor decides to set my encampment on fire?

I imagine that life in a place like Slab City has its moments, but it also has its anxieties and moments of outright fear. Check out this video about the Slabs from a visitor from abroad:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=HsE9tMdR9dY%3Fsi%3Dgkq3kfLvFUte43QV
Ruhi Cenet’s Negative Take on Slab City

Sometimes there is a high price to pay for the type of freedom that Slab City represents. Whether it is “the last free place in America,” as it calls itself, or just one of the circles of hell in Dante’s Inferno remains to be seen.

I thought I would have negative feelings about the residents we met in Bombay Beach and Slab City, but I don’t. What I felt was compassion.

Too Many Freedoms

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Maybe Wee Need to Stop Desiring “Freedoms” That Were Never Guaranteed to Us

Look what happened to our Second Amendment. Somehow, the original text—“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”—became in the minds of our dimmest and most criminally inclined citizens an invitation to accumulate military grade weapons for non-militia use.

As school children, we all heard that we didn’t have the right to shout “Fire!” in a crowded theater. Now I think almost half the population would disagree with this.

The outbreak of the coronavirus epidemic has created a whole slew of crypto-freedoms, such as the freedom to refuse Covid-19 vaccination or to wear a mask to protect oneself and others from the virus.

I have just finished reading a collection of Franz Kafka’s shorter works that were published during his lifetime. In one of the stories, entitled “A Report to an Academy,” we find this very germane discussion in a speech given by a talking ape:

I deliberately do not use the word “freedom.” I do not mean the spacious feeling of freedom on all sides. As an ape, perhaps, I knew that, and I have met men who yearn for it. But for my part I desired such freedom neither then nor now. In passing, may I say that all too often men are betrayed by the word freedom. And as freedom is counted among the most sublime feelings, so the corresponding disillusionment can be also sublime.

Take a look at the above picture of the January 6 insurrection by Trump’s followers at the Capitol in Washington. This insurrection was conducted by people who have decided to take a lie (that Trump won the 2020 election) and make it into a cause for revolt. Repeating a lie at the top of one’s voice, even when accompanied by violence, is not a right guaranteed by the Constitution.

Such freedoms I can do without!

An Impassioned Plea for Freedom

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Gulag Prisoners in Siberia

Gulag Prisoners in Siberia

Fyodor M. Dostoyevsky could hardly believe his eyes. He had spent four years in a Siberian prison camp and six years in the Russian military in Siberia. His first published works after returning to St. Petersburg were comedies: Uncle’s Dream and The Village of Stepanchikovo. Now he wrote two short pieces for publication about his experience in the camp. The first was approved by the Tsarist censors; the second, rejected—because it was thought that Dostoyevsky was saying that life in the Gulags was actually quite appealing.

That could not be allowed to stand. Dostoyevsky immediately penned a supplement to that piece, which included the following:

What is bread? They [the convicts] eat bread to live, but they have no life! The genuine, the real, the most important is lacking, and the convict knows he will never have it; or he will have it, if you like, but when? … It’s as if the promise is made only as a joke.

Try an experiment and build a palace. Fit it out with marble, pictures, gold, birds of paradise, hanging gardens, all sorts of things…. And step inside. Well, it may be that you would never wish to leave. Perhaps, in actual fact, you would never leave. Everything is there! “Let well enough alone!” But suddenly—a trifle! Your castle is surrounded by walls, and you are told: “Everything is yours! Enjoy yourself! Only, don’t take a step outside!” And believe me, in that instant you will wish to quit your paradise and step over the wall. Even more! All this luxury, all this plenitude, will only sharpen your suffering. You will even feel insulted as a result of all this luxury…. Yes, only one thing is missing: a bit of liberty! a bit of liberty and a bit of freedom!

This impassioned plea is perhaps the germ of Dostoyevsky’s great works which were to follow: Notes from the Underground, Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, The Possessed, and The Brothers Karamazov.