💾 Archived View for library.inu.red › file › anonymous-the-war-over-my-life.gmi captured on 2023-01-29 at 07:44:43. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Title: The War Over My Life Author: Anonymous Date: 2014 Language: en Topics: individualist, prison, insurrectionary Notes: Translated from Swedish: http://sv.theanarchistlibrary.org/library/anonym-kriget-om-mitt-liv
The battery feels cold against my fingertops. I stop grubbing about in
the desk drawer. Slowly the filter of the cigarette pastes itself onto
my lips. The thread of steel wool from the workshop is diligently
prepared with the eyes and the fit for the battery. Solemny I construct
the smouldering gear. First at the positive pole. Important that the
smouldering point, the eye, is proper. And so the other end follows at
the negative pole. The smouldering appears quickly. Hurriedly the
tobacco filled mouth of the cigarette meets the glowing eye. Puff. Puff.
The cigarette is litten. The smell of burned metal, battery acid and
tobacco smoke. It is past lockup. I'm really not the smoker type, I'm
doing the snuff but then again the forbidden smoking ritual... A heretic
ritual. A spit in the face of the correctional institution...a
manifestation of a fervent need within me, to refuse that uniform that
they are trying to impose on me. It raises the life quality...
I light a cigarette that I sloppily rolled myself. I stand in front of
the house where I live in an European metropole. A catholic church faces
me in defiance from the opposite side of the street. The cigarette no
longer raises the life quality, it is now as much a part of my everyday
life as was the strip-searches in prison.
I can never speak for anyone else without comitting a most horrific
crime to myself, I can always only speak from my own experiences, my
contradicting interests and desires.
The prison that I was defying when I was lighting a cigarette with a
battery and a piece of steel wool, is the same prison that I defy when I
today choose to act for myself, for my liberation and to be able to live
together with other free individuals. This is not a prison with a given
name or a specific place to find for confrontation. It is a prison that
I see us all living in.
The shapes it takes are so many and its guises are so different but what
they all have in common is that they are substantialized as soon as you
try to approach the spontaneous, the wordless, the immediate, the
unmediated – that, which is your life. There are many different names
for this prison – shame, justification, obligation, duty, obedience -
that all are deriving from the same source, which is, to be ruled by
someone else's interests.
The prison walls most simple to aim ones arsenal at, are of course the
ones right in front of us. Wether it be a local cop station, a company
or one of the state institutions that so innocently, through hard paper
work, administrate our life circumstances.
But what is then a demolished wall when you later finance its
reconstruction with the taxes you pay from the work you have been more
or less imposed to do? When, after all, there is yet another wall and
yet another still...behind the first one?
Attack is a splendid act but is so easily institutionalized into
becoming yet another unreflected part of ones administrated everyday
life's constitution. The attack is indeed an act of self-defense when it
is aimed from a slave to a ruler but how long are we gonna act like
slaves, how long are we gonna defend ourselves? How long are we gonna
let our ideas – our passions and wills – give in to the fear of really
becoming a threat to the ruling interests? When do we quit our roles as
submitted and start acting with the self-confidence of one who lacks of
masters? When do we stop believing in change and start to destroy the
foundation of this prison, that surrounds us all from first breath to
the last?
We can only be ruled so far as we allow ourselves to be. It might sound
cynical but it is at the same time a statement hard to disarm.
Ultimately: The one who rather chooses to die than to bow before a
master, is in no way better or worse than any other individual –
disgusting moralist values don't belong here – but what we can say is
that it dies as itself. It chooses to die of and for itself, for its
will to live completely in accordance to its own passions, needs and
desires. It chooses to die rather than to serve someone else's
interests.
Most people continue, however, barely living, to kill themselves for
someone else's interests. Few are of course the ones who wish to die
but, confronted with the possibility to really live, will they dear to
take the chance?
What does it really mean to live in constant hostility with the
existent, with the state, with the interests that tries to rule me? Put
aside the rather exciting taste it gives as the words roll out of the
mouth, it is of course something that recieves a new answer every time a
comrade asks herself that question.
For me, this means to never become comfortable in the circumstances that
the rulers create for us – circumstances they create in an illusory
exchange for our submission. I enjoy life as much as I can but I never
sink so far into the sofa, that I can't get up again.
This means that my everyday life does not only consist of pure survival,
or to ”take care of myself” according to the latest fashion, or to
achieve something that does not correspond with my passions, dreams,
needs and wishes, may they be social or societal expectations or
obligations.
For me this means a constant conflictuality with my current existence,
which is to say, with the interests that try to rule my life. This means
the active search for the materialization of my anti-authoritarian rage
and opportunities for confrontation with all the structures that
maintain this society.
This means to never compromise with these structures. To never fall for
the promises of change,accommodation, negotiation or improvement. For my
basic survival I do of course need to make practical compromises but to
mix them up with the place that what my heart desires has, that my
passions and ideas has, is just one big self-delusion. To mix them up
means in this case to hand over to the State my arms, in one
self-loathing weapons amnesty. To put the gloves on the shelf and be
pleased with the existence this society offers me. This means to not
feed myself with the lie that I can live a life on my own terms within
this society.
To never compromise means to never stop fighting as long as my freedom
and my life is being restricted and ruled by someone else.
The gate opens slowly. The sun makes me peer. On the parking lot the
hacks' cars are reflecting the sun in their shiny paint. The air above
the asphalt is rippling. It smells of freshly mowed lawn and elder. My
clothes are so last Fall's fashion and way to warm. The sweat is pushing
through the eyelids. They say that if you turn around, you will come
back. I turn around in defiance, smile and reach out a long finger. I
think a bit about the time that has passed. A tear appears in my eye but
soon disappears into the sweat. The smile expands. I turn back again,
let go of what I have in my hands and cartwheel over the baking- hot
asphalt. Soon my ride arrives with loud music through the downrolled
windows...
Constantly enriched of experiences in the struggle against the existent,
from one prison to another, I throw myself with a fighting spirit in to
the war over my life!