Angle of Repose - Wallace Stegner [251]
GARY SNYDER
Let these be encouraged: Gnostics, hip Marxists, Teilhard de Chardin Catholics, Taoists, Biologists, Witches, Yogins, Bhikkus, Quakers, Sufis, Tibetans, Zens, Shamans, Bushmen, American Indians, Polynesians, Anarchists, Alchemists . . . All primitive cultures, all communal and ashram movements . . . Ultimately cities will exist only as joyous tribal gatherings and fairs.
BERKELEY ECOLOGY CENTRE
I passed the sheet back.
“Keep it,” Shelly said. “I’ve got more. What do you think?”
“I like the part about the home-grown vegetables.”
“Come on!”
“What do you want me to say? OM?”
“Whether it makes sense or not.”
“It’s got plenty of historical precedents.”
“What do you mean?”
“Plato,” I said. “In his fashion. Sir Thomas More, in his way. Coleridge, Melville, Samuel Butler, D. H. Lawrence, in their ways. Brook Farm and all the other Fourierist phalansteries. New Harmony, whether under the Rappites or the Owenites. The Icarians. Amana. Homestead. The Mennonites. The Amish. The Hutterites. The Shakers. The United Order of Zion. The Oneida Colony. Especially the Oneida Colony.”
“You don’t think there’s anything in it.”
“I didn’t say that. I said it had a lot of historical precedents.”
“But it makes you smile.”
“That was a grimace,” I said. “A historical rictus. One aspect of the precedents is that the natural tribal societies are so commonly superstition-ridden, ritual-bound, and warlike, and the utopian ones always fail. Where’d you get this?”
“It was handed to me.”
“By whom? Your husband?”
“So to speak.” She scowled at me, pulling her lower lip.
“Are you being asked to bring what you have to this joyous tribal gathering?”
Letting go of her lip, she smiled with a look of superiority and penetration, as if she understood my captious skepticism and made allowances for it. “I didn’t say.” But then the smile faded into a discontented pucker, and she burst out, “If something’s wrong with it, tell me what. I’ve been trying to make up my mind if anything is. It’s idealistic, it’s for love and gentleness, it’s close to nature, it hurts nobody, it’s voluntary. I can’t see anything wrong with any of that.”
“Neither can I. The only trouble is, this commune will be inhabited by and surrounded by members of the human race.”
“That sounds pretty cynical.”
“Well, I wouldn’t want to corrupt you with my cynicism,” I said, and shut up.
But she kept after me; she was serious.
“All right,” I said, “I’ll tell you why I’m dubious. These will be young people in this garden commune, I assume. That means they’ll be stoned half the time–one of the things you can grow in gardens is Cannabis. That won’t go down well with the neighbors. Neither will free-form marriage or the natural-credit Communist economy. They’ll be visited by the cops every week. They’ll be lucky if the American Legion doesn’t burn them out, or sic the dog catcher on their wild life children.”
“None of that has anything to do with them. It only has to do with people outside.”
“Sure,” I said, “but those people aren’t going to go away. If they won’t leave the colony alone I’ll give it six months. If it isn’t molested it might last a year or two. By that time half the people will have drifted away in search of bigger kicks, and the rest will be quarreling about some communal woman, or who got the worst corner of the garden patch, or who ate up all the sweet corn. Satisfying natural desires is fine, but natural desires have a way of being both competitive and consequential. And women may be equal to men, but they aren’t equal in attractiveness any more than men are. Affections have a way of fixing on individuals, which breeds jealousy, which breeds possessiveness, which breeds bad feeling. Q.E.D.”
“You’re judging by past history.”
“All history is past history.”
“All right. Touché. But it doesn’t have to repeat itself.”
“Doesn’t it?”
She sat regarding me in a troubled way, puckering up her mouth and making fishlike, pup-pup-pupping noises with it. “I don’t see why you’re opposed,” she said. “It’s one thing to think it’s sure to fail, but you sound as if you thought it was wrong. I suppose you think it