Why The Maggot Hates Art & Artists

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The low road

Marge Piercy

What can they do
to you? Whatever they want.
They can set you up, they can
bust you, they can break
your fingers, they can
burn your brain with electricity,
blur you with drugs till you
can't walk, can't remember, they can
take your child, wall up
your lover. They can do anything
you can't stop them
from doing. How can you stop
them? Alone, you can fight,
you can refuse, you can
take what revenge you can
but they roll over you.

Two people can keep each other
sane, can give support, conviction,
love, massage, hope, sex.
Three people are a delegation,
a committee, a wedge. With four
you can play bridge and start
an organization. With six
you can rent a whole house,
eat pie for dinner with no
seconds and hold a fund-raising party.
A dozen make a demonstration.
A hundred fill a hall.

A thousand have solidarity and your own newsletter;
ten thousand, power and your own paper;
a hundred thousand, your own media;
ten million, your own country.

It goes on one at a time,
it starts when you care
to act, it starts when you do
it again after they said No,
it starts when you say We
and know who you mean, and each
day you mean one more.

Thanks to The Writer's Almanac for this.

Problem People

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I had a problem yesterday, then I made it go away.

Someone with whom I sometimes work has me begging for things. He might not even know he's does this, but what's his is his and don't touch without permission. The fact that we work together would seem to give him incentive to cooperate, but he's suspicious and that gets in the way of so many things.

Yesterday, I needed something from him. A simple thing. He could easily share it. Situations reversed, I'd have sent it maybe even before he asked, but situations aren't reversed, so I asked — politely, carefully — if I could trouble him for it. Phrasing things, revising my thoughts so as not to offend, I realized I was begging. Ugh.

Neither needing the thing nor the begging was the problem. My problem was that I was growing angry. I wanted to complain about him to someone else. I wanted to tell him to go fuck off. My problem was choosing to make myself angry wishing things were other than they are with this guy.

That's a problem because I still need this one thing and need to work with him from time to time. If I go into each interaction angry and expecting a fight, I'm going to be a very unhappy boy.

Yesterday, anger and frustration welling up as I begged, I stopped and asked, "what other choices do I have?" Before anyone thinks I'm enlightened, what I yelled was, "what other fucking choice do I have working with this motherfucker?!" Still, that question served me well. What other choices did I have?

That's easy: I could let my anger go.

I hit send on the message, understanding that he's a difficult partner but I'm smart enough to work around that. A day later I still haven't heard back from him. I'll find another way to do the work and move him that much further out of my life, move myself that much farther from my problems.

Again, lest I seem enlightened, I wrote the line above thinking "move that motherfucker that much further out of my life." Luckily, motherfucker turns out to be one of my happy words. It's no problem.