REBEL WITHOUT A PAUSE

marcel janco

Another cold night and day to freeze a crust on yesterday's snow, the surface melted slightly by the sun, froze overnight. I had to poke holes in it with the walking stick each step and punch holes in it with my shoes. Don't have boots. I wear heavy shoes and heavy socks. Getting a grip with feet in today's condition of the snow was easier than in the fresh snow. The crunchy surface adds traction under the shoes, like tiny bits of gravel. Forecast says Friday the temperature will be above zero. Must go to one hardware store to buy sunflower seeds for the birds and squirrels, and another hardware store for a bag of sweet grain for donkeys. They need the nutrition especially now to warm themselves on the inside through the zero night. Earlier today, I stepped into their den, spreading new hay at the opening so they can stand out of the wind in the morning to graze before I get up. A few days ago I spread old hay on the floor and already they'd wet it down good with piss and continue the mound of donkey biscuits in the middle and against the back wall. I can't help but see it's the way they want it. It has become such a pattern I can see it is conscious, they know what they're doing. It was actually warm in there. Smelled like a donkey toilet, identifying it home for them. It keeps the place warm, makes good insulation to retain their own heat. I feel a little bit better about them tonight and tomorrow night. The forecast for Thursday night, not only below zero, but big wind too. If the donkeys and I are fortunate, the wind will blow above my little valley between ridges. If we're unlucky, the wind will fly out of the east directly into the donkey den. If it comes out of the west, it will blow through my house like it was a screened porch. The wind currents in this small valley go every which way, in circles. One minute it will be coming from one direction, and the next minute from another direction, on and on like that. If I'm really unlucky, one or more of the big white pines near the house could break about half way up the trunk.

marcel janco (find the donkey)

I've learned to trust the elements over years of experience. Like I trust the donkeys not to kick me, I trust weather on the mountain not to damage my interests. I have a relationship of trust with my mountain like I have with the donkeys. I love my mountain and it loves me. My mountain knows I respect it. I am the mountain's keeper in this time of my life. I sometimes suspect the mountain, itself, wanted me here and drew me like a mystical vibration. It was like as soon as I was open to the spirit the mountain began the process of pulling me to it. Whether or not this is the case, it is how I feel the connection with the mountain I have spent my life here learning. I have not done it in several years, but am able to go within and connect with the mountain, have conversation with it, ask it questions and it gives me answers. I asked it once about Tom Pruitt, who was the last of the mountain people on the mountain, asked about the mountain's relationship with Tom. The mountain said there was none, Tom did not respect the life force of the mountain. This is the Tom who, instead of putting a fence around his garden, sat in an upstairs window with a .22 rifle in the gloaming and belly-shot deer that came into his garden, so they'd go off someplace else and die. Tom had little respect for the living. One of the first characteristics I saw in Tom, getting to know him, was the passion he had for killing. It was culture, not just him individually. The mountain told me it appreciated my respect for the living beings of the mountain, the squirrels, the trees, the ferns, the rocks, the ground, the mountain itself. Since the time of our communication, I feel like my mountain is a conscious being. Saying my mountain, I don't mean possession. I mean like my friend. At the same time I feel nurtured by the mountain, energized, my battery charger, I also feel protected by the mountain. I feel like the mountain looks after me. I don't kill anything, rather regard all the beings on the mountain my neighbors. Like trustworthy friends, we've got each other's back.

marcel janco

My vision of the direction USA has been going throughout my lifetime, fascism, is here, now. Any attempt to defeat it, reverse it or change it would be at the peril of becoming a martyr nobody ever heard of. Lillian Hellman's Julia. Can't organize, the FBI infiltrates first sign of organizing, sets everybody up for arrest and all go to prison on "conspiracy" charges, for which there is no legal defense. Demonstrate and cops beat the hell out of me, pepper spray, tear gas, real bullets, arrested if I survive and tormented in jail. Police state is so tight and propaganda so sophisticated, rebellion doesn't work in America. I learned this in the Sixties. I have found in my lifetime the only rebellion that works is non-cooperation, what I call the boycott of one. I don't like that Coca-Cola Corp hired death squads in Columbia to kill union activists and their families. I don't buy Coke products. I dislike everything about Walmart; I don't give them my resources. I don't "buy into it." I don't like paying to the military machine, so I have kept income all the way along in the zone that pays no income tax or very little. People that want to fight the tax system end up in prison. I don't want to go to prison, so I live on the very least possible, inside the poverty zone, and pay no taxes, except sales taxes, which do not go to military domination of the world. Sales taxes are state and local. I'd be happy to pay federal taxes, too, if two-thirds of it did not go to the Death Star. Living frugally is my rebellion. It is the only rebellion I have access to that works. It works for me, and I'm the one it matters to. I think of the people who spend a fortune in legal fees and go to prison over refusal to pay federal taxes, and see them not committed to their belief. It's simple. Just live below the poverty line and you don't pay taxes. One man cannot defeat the Death Star, unless you're in a Hollywood movie. I've often thought, if federal government knew my mind, I'd be locked away in solitary confinement for subversion. Like my daddy told me, "I ought to hit you for what you're thinking." I laughed inside. If he knew what I was thinking, he'd have killed me in a passionate rage and never regretted it, no matter what the consequences.

marcel janco

Rebellion has been the nature of my life. Rather than fight back at an oppressor looking for any moment's opportunity to pound me into the ground, I learned to let these foster parents take care of my needs until I'm able to make a living on my own after school. By the age of ten, both had become foster parents. The kid had no recourse. I turned within, followed orders and waited for time to pass. In my time I went as far away as land allows, like an arrow shot from a bow, the string pulled all the way back to the tip of the arrow. Released, I was gone, and gone forever. I knew the flight was not from mad, but from a lifetime of anger so intense I'm surprised I couldn't bend spoons by looking at them. After Navy and college, I learned government is not here for me; I'm here for government. It's the same with the economic system. I have to give up me to play the money game. I am more valuable to myself than money. I don't want to be a success in the money world. I want my success to be inside myself. I want my success to be who I am, not what I am. By who I am, I don't mean a nice guy. I mean I can practice my art expression any way I want, independent of the art-market world. Fame and money have no value for me, What I mean by who I am is able to take an interest in what interests me, not toward making money for somebody else. I saw the equation that we choose time or money. Can't have both. I chose time. Recalling a dream from childhood. It was before I was old enough to drive. I was driving a car on a dirt road at night, came to a fork in the road, did not know which one to take to wherever I was going. In the headlights I saw standing in the grass of the Y the roads made, a white owl. It looked at me and flew down the road to the left. I took this to mean it was my road and turned that way. I was reminded of the dream some years later when I read Good Soldier Schweik. At the end, he was walking with a regiment to war in WW1. A fork in the road. The regiment took the road to the right. Schweik saw some flowers up the road to the left and he took the road to the left, called by the flowers, by life. 

marcel janco, himself

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