My Ishmael (Ishmael 3) - Page 54

“No, if I’d looked at them, I would’ve said, ‘My God, what’s wrong with me? I must have a disease of some kind!’ ”

“These are exactly the kinds of thoughts that Jeffrey wrote in his journal again and again. ‘What’s wrong with me? What’s wrong with me? There must be something terribly wrong with me that I’m unable to find joy in the world of work.’ Always he wrote, ‘What’s wrong with me, what’s wrong with me, what’s wrong with me?’ And of course all his friends were forever saying to him, ‘What’s wrong with you, what’s wrong with you, what’s wrong with you that you can’t get with this wonderful program?’ Perhaps you understand for the first time now that my role here is to bring you this tremendous news, that there’s nothing wrong here with YOU. You are not what’s wrong. And I think there was an element of this understanding in your sobs: ‘My God, it isn’t me!’ ”

“Yes, you’re right. Half of what I was feeling was a tremendous sense of relief.”

Revolutionaries

You want to know how the world would be if you started living a different way. Now you have a better idea of what a different way would be for. I told you that you had to stop thinking of giving up things and be more demanding, but I don’t think you understood what I meant.”

“No, I didn’t, not really. But I thought I did.”

“But now you really understand. You fell apart when you finally realized that I would actually listen to your demands, that I actually wanted to hear your demands—that you even deserved to have your demands met.”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“That’s how we’ll design a world for you, Julie. By listening to your demands. What is it you want? What would you die to have?”

“Wow,” I said. “That’s quite a question. I want a place to be where I’m not always saying, I’ve gotta get out of here, I’ve gotta get out of here, I’ve gotta get out of here, I’ve gotta get out of here.”

“You and the Jeffreys of the world need a cultural space of your own.”

“Yeah, that’s right.”

“Cultural space isn’t necessarily geographic space. The kids who live on the streets of Seattle and places like that aren’t looking for a thousand acres of their own. They’re perfectly happy to share your domain and in fact would probably starve to death if they had to live in a separate domain of their own. They’re saying, ‘Look, we’re content to live on what the rest of you throw away. Why can’t you just let us do that? Just give us enough room to be scavengers. We’ll be the tribe of Crow. You don’t kill the crows that are taking care of your roadkills, do you? If you kill the crows, then you have to scrape off the roadkills yourselves. Let the crows do it. They’re not taking anything you want, so what’s the problem with crows? We’re not taking anything you want either, so what’s the problem with us?’ ”

“That actually sounds pretty neat—not that it will ever happen.”

“But what about you, Julie? Would you like to belong to the tribe of Crow?”

“Not especially, to be honest.”

“Well, why should you? There’s no one right way for people to live. But suppose the people of Seattle actually said, ‘Let’s try this. instead of fighting these kids and trying to change these kids and making life hell for these kids, let’s give them a hand. Let’s give them a hand to become the tribe of Crow. What’s the worst that could happen?’ ”

“That would be terrific.”

“And if you knew there were people like that in Seattle—people willing to take a risk like that—where would you want to live if you were looking around for a place to live?”

“I’d want to live in Seattle.”

“Could be an interesting place, Julie. A place where people try things.” Ishmael fell silent for several minutes, and I had the feeling he’d sort of lost his place. Finally he went on. “No matter how thorough I think I’ve been, at this stage students say to me, ‘Yes, but what are we actually supposed to do?’ And I say to them, ‘You Takers pride yourselves on being inventive, don’t you? Well, be inventive.’ But this doesn’t seem to do much good, does it?”

I didn’t know whether he was talking to himself or to me, but I just went on sitting there and listening.

“Tell me about being inventive, Julie.”

“What do you mean?”

“When was your greatest period of inventiveness? The greatest period of inventiveness in human history.”

“I’d have to say this was. Is. This is it.”

“The period of the Industrial Revolution.”

“That’s right.”

“How did it work?”

“What do you mean?”

Tags: Daniel Quinn Ishmael Classics
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