Ecotopia (14 page)

Later, when rest of us were eating, she sauntered back, flushed and sweaty. Ignored my obvious ill humor. Later, when we went back to the Marshall hotel, she was relaxed and floppy, and I tossed her around on the bed a little roughly, wouldn’t let her up, more or less raped her. She seemed almost to have expected this. I felt odd when it began, confused between hatred and desire, but then they merged in a kind of hard, tightly holding embrace—a welcoming back on her part, and a deep acceptance of her on mine. I love her freeness, even when it hurts.

Just before waking up and writing the war-games story, had awful dream about it. Myself all painted up, ready for battle. Body greased and shining and beautiful—feel very alive, very strong. Women smile from the sidelines, I want to make love to all of them.
Then there’s a terrible gong sound—reverberates in my head, and panic strikes. Grab my spear and rush off with the other men. But when we get to the fighting line and begin to feint and jab, suddenly they turn and look at me with amazement, realizing I am not one of them. Then utter despair seizes me, for I know this means they will not fight for me: I am not one of their Tribe, and I am out there alone, exposed to the sharp spears of the enemy, and my time has come….

Woke up sweating, hands clutched tight on dream spear. Wished I was home safe in New York.

Savages!

THEIR PLASTICS AND OURS

San Francisco, May 25. One surprising similarity between Ecotopia and contemporary America is that they both use huge amounts of plastics. At first I took this as a sign that our ways of life have not diverged so drastically after all. However, closer investigation has revealed that, despite surface resemblances, the two countries use plastics in totally different ways.

Ecotopian plastics are entirely derived from living biological sources (plants) rather than from fossilized ones (petroleum and coal) as most of ours are. Intense research effort went into this area directly after Independence, and it continues. According to my informants, there were two major objectives. One was to produce the plastics, at low cost and in a wide range of types: light, heavy, rigid, flexible, clear, opaque, and so on—and to produce them with a technology that was not itself a pollutant. The other objective was to make them all
biodegradable
, that is, susceptible to decay. This meant that they could be returned to the fields as fertilizer, which would nourish new crops, which in turn could be made into new plastics—and so on indefinitely, in what the Ecotopians call, with almost religious fervor, a “stable-state system.”

One interesting strategy for biodegradability involved producing plastics which had a short planned lifetime and would automatically self-destruct after a certain period or under certain conditions. (With typical biology-centered thinking, Ecotopians refer to such plastics as “dying” when they begin to decompose.) Plastics of this type are used to make containers for beer, food of many types, to produce packaging materials that resemble cellophane, and so on. These materials “die” after a month or so, especially when exposed to sunlight’s ultraviolet rays. I have noticed that the usually tidy Ecotopians have no hesitation about dropping (and stamping on) an empty beer container; it turns out they know that in a few weeks its remnants will have crumbled and decayed into the soil. Similarly, Ecotopian householders toss wrapping materials onto their compost heaps, knowing they will join there in the general decay into rich garden fertilizer.

Another line of plastics development led to a variety of durable materials, which were increasingly needed in place of metals. Metals became deliberately scarce in early Ecotopia, when the little mining and smelting that had taken place were replaced by an entirely scrap-based metals industry. An amusing aspect of this scarcity was the nationwide campaign to recycle junked cars, which had littered the Ecotopian landscape just as they do ours. These formerly worthless heaps of junk skyrocketed in value, and were hauled up from creekbeds, pulled out of vacant lots, unearthed in abandoned barns, and of course salvaged from scrap yards. In a parallel campaign, several billion beer and soda cans were collected and recycled.

Ecotopian durable plastics, which are used for minibus bodies, “extruded houses,” coins, bottles, and mechanical objects of many kinds, have molecular structures similar to those of our plastics, and are virtually decay-proof under ordinary circumstances—in particular, so long as they are not in contact with the soil. However, by chemical advances that have so far remained secret, Ecotopian scientists have built into these molecules “keyholes,” which can be opened only by soil micro-organisms! Once they are unlocked, the whole structure decomposes rapidly.

This weird but ingenious system means that even a large plastic
object will, if left in contact with damp earth over a long period of time, eventually decay. Usually, however, when plastic objects are to be recycled they are broken up into easily handled pieces and thrown into “biovats,” huge tubs of a special earthen mush that soil micro-organisms find a good habitat. In time the results of this process are dried into sludge arid recycled onto the land. (It is in such vats that the contents of the recycle bins marked P are dumped.)

Whatever their advantages these plastics do not impress all Ecotopians, especially those who are fond of wood. It is recognized, of course, that since plastics can be molded they are capable of taking shapes that wood is not; and that they can be stronger, more flexible, and often more durable. Extremists, however, still take exception to
any
use of plastics, believing they are unnatural materials that have no place in an ecologically ideal world. These purists will live only in wood houses, and use only containers such as wooden chests, string bags, woven baskets, and clay pots. The defenders of plastics, on their side, have many effective economic arguments, and they have also produced plastics that have a less “plasticky” feel and look—with some success, it seems to me.

Nonetheless, I have the impression that despite the undeniable Ecotopian scientific achievements in plastics, the future may well belong to the purists. For in this as in many areas of life, there is still a strong trend in Ecotopia to abandon the fruits of all modern technology, however innocuous they may be made, in favor of a poetic but costly return to what the extremists see as “nature.”

(May 26) Got into big fight with Bert about the ritual war games story—not the story itself, but that I hadn’t gone over it with him as I had said. “Do you always go off and do things purely on your own?” he said crossly. “Don’t you think you might be missing something? Don’t you know what you might get out of collective work?” “Well,” I said defensively, “I was in a big hurry and you weren’t around, and—” “Fuck your excuses,” he said bluntly. “I offered to work with you as a brother. That was important. Do you have any idea how competitive and detached you seem to us?” He
was furious, and I had the uncomfortable feeling he was right—I had missed an important opportunity. We talked for a while and I told him how I felt about it, but it will take some doing to get back onto a decent basis together. Which saddens me more than I would have expected; we have become friends.

Beginning to miss the kids a lot more than usual on this trip, and don’t know why. God knows I neglect them when I’m home—pass up my weekends with them whenever something unusual is afoot, then try to make up for it with presents. (Haven’t bought them anything in Ecotopia, though—nothing here worth carrying home. Or rather, there are many worthwhile things here, but none can be bought or carried away.) Have the feeling I’d like them to be here with me, see what I am seeing, meet the people I know. What would they think of Marissa? She would take their measure exactly, even their spoiledness (which wouldn’t get anywhere with her!) and they’d respect and like her. Fay once said, when she was about six, that she didn’t trust Francine. Marissa is easy to trust. But she never pretends there is no risk in it….

Spoke earlier today with Kenny, a kid living at the Cove. His mother is away for a week, and I asked him if he was lonely with her gone. “Why should I be lonely? Everybody else is here.” Suddenly tearful to think of my children so far away, without me, living what is after all a dangerous life and getting worse. It’s not just the crime and the crazed people everywhere, but the expectation that our children’s children will go on being poisoned by smog and chemicals. (Or will New York and Tokyo produce a race of mutants who can breathe carbon monoxide?)

What would their lives be like if they had been born Ecotopian kids? No ballet classes, stationwagons, shopping expeditions to department stores. They’d do actual hard adult work in gardens and shops and schools. They’d live in a welter of a dozen or more people, exposed to a lot of sexual vibrations and happenings that would make them grow up faster—and I guess stronger, though it scares me. (I want them protected—) But it would be a realer world than New York, I have to admit. In better touch with basic natural processes and the nitty gritty with fellow humans. It would
be an incredible switch in their lives. But how do I know they might not thrive on it?

Some random notes that don’t seem to fit in plans for columns:

Have discovered what those wet-suit-like garments are. People call them “bird-suits,” and often embroider birds on them; also “unitards.” Not uniforms after all, but a new type of garment. Many Ecotopians dislike them, in spite of their technical advantages. (“Bird-suits” because they are said to be almost as good a body covering as a bird’s feathers!) Woven of some new combination of fibers—story confused, some say from keratin, which would mean bones, hooves, hair—some think from wood fibers. At any rate the inner layer is woven, thick, spongy (quarter of an inch thick). Alleged properties quite magical: when it rains, surface layer cotton fibers swell and lie so tightly together that rain runs off; when it is hot, the inner layer fibers unkink, trap less air, thus allow faster escape of body heat, whereas when it is cold they curl up, trap more air, thus keep body heat in! (This why suits must be skin-tight, evidently.) Then there is another smooth inner layer, to feel good on the skin. I have tried them on, and in fact bought two to take home—even if I wouldn’t want to be seen on a New York street in them! Will be interesting to try in our zero temperatures—but I’ll take an overcoat along.

“Preventive transportation.” That’s how doctor Jake, Marissa’s cousin, sardonic of mind but optimist, describes bicycles. Claims that every heart attack costs the medical system, the patient’s living group, the patient’s work group, etc. something between a year and two years’ salary. Saving one heart attack can thus pay for something like 500 free Provo bikes. Besides, he claims that the bicycle is aesthetically beautiful because it is the most efficient means, in calories of energy per person per mile, ever devised for moving bodies—even jumbo jets eat up more energy, he says. (Looked me over as a physical specimen, said I was not in too bad shape for an American. “You’ll probably feel livelier after a few more weeks here. The food, the air, getting in better touch with yourself.” “What do you mean?” “Knowing yourself as an animal
creature on the earth, as we do. It can feel more comfortable than your kind of life.” “Well, I’ll let you know,” I said.)

Foreign trade note: Natural rubber comes in from Vietnam and Indonesia. Plastics and plastics-manufacturing machinery seem to be major export. Some Japanese electronics imported. Books, records, videodiscs, musicians, performers from all over the world-except the U.S.! How do they do it?

Good one the other night: Bert got to ridiculing the old Dupont slogan, Better Things for Better Living through Chemistry. “All that meant,” he proclaimed, “was nylon, orlon, and the total prostitution of the state of Delaware. We want better living through biology. We don’t think in terms of ‘things,’ there’s no such thing as a thing—there are only systems.” For the first time, this didn’t sound like gibberish to me. It would apply to myself too: I am part of systems; no one, not even myself, can separate me off as an individual thing. (This realization came with a sort of sinking feeling that was not unpleasant. Hmmm?)

An intolerably smug people: Young clod about 20 telling me “automobiles are such a 19th-century contraption—why are you still so hung up on them?” Still, Ecotopians really very American in some ways. With a curious French influence—things like train schedules and price lists have a severe systematization. Perhaps this intellectual rigor necessary as counterbalance to the frivolity and looseness of personal life?

Money: Ecotopian bills seemed comic when I first saw them. Yet three weeks later I find them more attractive than the greenbacks left in my wallet. Very romantic in style: lush, Rousseau-like scenes, almost tropical, with strange beasts and wondrous plants. No images of famous Ecotopian leaders—when asked why not, people just laugh. Maybe it’s a consequence of their informal, utilitarian attitude toward money—they bundle it up into rolls and toss it to each other in an offhand manner I’ve only observed among gamblers.