Ecotopia (6 page)

Then sometimes life here seems like a throwback to a past I might have known through old photographs. Or a skip
ahead
in time: these people, who are so American despite their weird social practices, might be what we will become. (They miss no chance, of course, to tell me we should get on with it.) Also keep feeling I have gotten stuck on vacation in the country. Partly it’s all the trees, and maybe the dark nights (which still make me feel a power blackout must have struck), and also it’s hard to get used to the quiet. Must be doing something to my New York paranoia system, geared to respond to honking, screeching, buzzing, bangs, knocks, not to mention a shot or a scream now and then. You expect silence in the country. But here I am in a metropolitan area of several million, constantly surrounded by people—and the only really loud noises are human shouts or babies crying. There’s no “New Man” bullshit in Ecotopia, but how do they stand the quiet?

Or for that matter, how do they stand their isolation from us? Has bred a brash kind of self-sufficiency. They seem to be in surprisingly good touch with the rest of the world, but as far as we’re concerned, they’re strictly on their own—like adolescent children who have rejected their parents’ ways. They’ll probably get over it.

Ecotopians a little vague about time, I notice—few wear watches, and they pay more attention to things like sunrise and sunset or the tides than to actual hour time. They
will
accede to the demands of industrial civilization to some extent, but grudgingly. “You’d never catch an Indian wearing a watch.” Many Ecotopians sentimental about Indians, and there’s some sense in which they envy the Indians their lost natural place in the American wilderness. Indeed
this probably a major Ecotopian myth; keep hearing references to what Indians would or wouldn’t do in a given situation. Some Ecotopian articles—clothing and baskets and personal ornamentation—perhaps directly Indian in inspiration. But what matters most is the aspiration to live in balance with nature, “walk lightly on the land,” treat the earth as a mother. No surprise that to such a morality most industrial processes, work schedules, and products are suspect! Who would use an earth-mover on his own mother?

Hotel was okay for a while, but has gotten kind of boring. Have taken to spending a good bit of time a few blocks away, down near the waterfront, at “Franklin’s Cove,” a sort of press commune, where maybe 40 Ecotopian journalists and writers and TV people live. They’ve been extremely hospitable—really make me feel welcome. The place must have once been a warehouse, and is now broken up into rooms. They cook collectively, have work rooms (no electric typewriters, I notice, but lots of handy light video recorders), even a kind of gym. Beautiful wild garden in back where people spend a lot of time lying around on sunny days—part of it in crumbling ruins of one wing of the warehouse, which nobody has bothered to wreck and haul away. (“Time is taking its course, and we just let it,” replied one of the residents when I asked why this unsightly condition was tolerated.) Center of things is a lounge-library filled with soft chairs and sofas. I’ve been there so much I even have a favorite chair.

Ecotopians, both male and female, have a secure sense of themselves as animals. At the Cove they lie about utterly relaxed, curled up on couches or floor, flopped down in sunny spots on little rugs or mats, almost like a bunch of cats. They stretch, rearrange themselves, do mysterious yoga-like exercises, and just seem to enjoy their bodies tremendously. Nor do they keep this to themselves, particularly—I’ve several times walked in on people making love, who didn’t seem much embarrassed or annoyed—it was hardly different from walking in on somebody taking a bath. I find myself envying them this comfortableness in their biological beings. They seem to breathe better, move more loosely. I’m experimenting, trying to imitate them….

*    *    *

Especially in the evenings, though of course they have a lot of free time during the day as well, people gather round and talk—the kind of leisurely talk I associate with college days. Jumps around from topic to topic, and people kid a lot, and cheer each other up when need be, but there’s some thread to it usually. Last evening spent quite a while talking to an interesting guy I’ve met at the Cove—Bert Luckman (that seems to be his
real
name). He was studying at Berkeley at the time of Independence—bright Jewish kid from New York. Had gone through Maoist phase, then got into secessionist movement. Politics and science writer (not an odd combination here) for the S. F.
Times.
Has written a book on cosmology, has a mystic streak, but still a reporter’s reporter: tough, wry, well-organized writing. Is surprisingly skeptical about U.S. science, which he regards as bureaucratically constipated and wasteful. “You made the dreadful mistake,” he said, “of turning your science establishment over to established scientists, who could be trusted. But it’s mainly young and untrustworthy scientists who get important new ideas. —You still have a few things happening, but it’s lost the momentum you need.” (I wonder. Check when get back.)

After some drinks the conversation got livelier and more personal. Thought I’d do some probing. “Doesn’t this stable-state business get awfully static? I’d think it would drive you crazy after a certain point!”

Bert looked at me with amusement, and batted the ball back.

“Well, don’t forget that
we
don’t have to be stable. The system provides the stability, and we can be erratic within it. I mean we don’t try to be perfect, we just try to be okay on the average—which means adding up a bunch of ups and downs.” “But it means giving up any notions of progress. You just want to get to that stable point and stay there, like a lump.”

“It may sound that way, but in practice there’s no stable point. We’re always striving to approximate it, but we never get there. And you know how much we disagree on exactly what is to be done—we only agree on the root essentials, everything else is in dispute.” I grinned. “I’ve noticed that—you’re a quarrelsome
lot!” “We can afford to be, because of that root agreement. Besides, that’s half the fun of relating to each other—trying to work through different perspectives, seeing how other people feel about things.”

“It’s still flying in the face of reality, this striving for stability.” Bert took this more seriously: “Is it? But we’ve actually achieved something like stability. Our system meanders on its peaceful way, while yours has constant convulsions. I think of ours as like a meadow in the sun. There’s a lot of change going on—plants growing, other plants dying, bacteria decomposing them, mice eating seeds, hawks eating mice, a tree or two beginning to grow up and shade the grasses. But the meadow sustains itself on a steady-state basis—unless men come along and mess it up.”

“I begin to see what you mean. It may not look so static to the mouse.”

After his student years Bert traveled a lot—in Canada, Latin America, Europe, Asia. Even thought of going to the U.S. sub rosa—but didn’t do it (or says he didn’t). Attached to a charming giddy woman named Clara, some years older and also a journalist—they have separate rooms at the Cove. Bert seems to be a wanderer—has also worked on papers in Seattle, Vancouver, and a little California coast resort town called Mendocino. We exchanged life histories, and he pumped me for inside intrigues on my travels, my relations with sources in our government, and so on. Caught me in a couple of prevarications, but seems to take their measure quickly and understand them. We went on talking in a frank and almost brotherly way, so I tried harder to be candid and scrupulous. Told him about Francine; he wanted to know precisely the nature of my relationship with her, and seemed surprised that it is so tentative, even though it’s gone on for three years now. “It seems contradictory to me,” he said. “You live in separate apartments, see each other a couple of times a week, spend weeks on end away from each other altogether. At the same time you don’t have a group of people to live with, to support you emotionally, to keep your collective life going on actively and strongly while you’re apart. I’d think that during one of these absences you’d have split up long ago—one of you would have taken up seriously with someone else,
and then there’d be two other little separate worlds, instead of the two you have now. I’d find that very scary.”

“It
is
very scary,” I said, “and once or twice we
have
gotten involved with someone else. But we have always come back to each other.” “It still sounds frivolous to me,” he said, frowning. “It gives too much power to loneliness. Here we try to arrange it so we are not lonely very often. That keeps us from making a lot of emotional mistakes. We don’t think commitment is something you go off and do by yourselves, just two of you. It has to have a structure, social surroundings you can rely on. Human beings are tribal animals, you know. They need lots of contact.”

“You might be right,” I said doubtfully. “I never thought of myself that way particularly. Though at one point I remember wondering if having lots and lots of children might not be a good thing.” “Well, there are other kinds of families, you know,” he said gently and with a slight smile. “I’ll take you to visit some.”

Have also had some good talks with Tom, a writer for a major magazine called
Flow.
He’s maybe 35 but has a face that already shows lines; also a temper, and he was swearing at somebody who had challenged his view of recent American strategy in Brazil. I kept quiet at first, but it happened I knew Tom was right: we
had
set up a system of electronically fenced enclaves in Sao Paulo as a means of controlling guerrilla movements, though it had been portrayed as an urban-redevelopment measure. “Look,” said Tom finally, “we have a goddamn American reporter right here, why don’t we ask him?” “All right,” said the other guy to me, “do you know anything about it?”

“Yeah,” I said, “I do. Tom’s got it straight. There are sensor fields all over Sao Paulo. Anything that moves, the army knows about.” “How did you get your information? Are you sure?”

“Sure I’m sure. I heard the President give the order—and I also heard him tell the press that he’d deny it if we reported it.” Tom burst out laughing. He and his opponent didn’t speak for several days after that, but Tom and I made up for it. Talked not only about Brazil—also about functions of journalists, and the changes in man-woman relationships that have occurred in Ecotopia. According to him, women in Ecotopia have totally escaped the dependent
roles they still tend to play with us. Not that they domineer over men—but they exercise power in work and in relationships just as men do. Above all, they don’t have to manipulate men: the Survivalist Party, and social developments generally, have arranged the society so that women’s objective situation is
equal
to men’s. Thus people can be just people, without our symbolic loading on sex roles. (I notice, however, that Ecotopian women still seem to me feminine, with a relaxed air of their biological attractiveness, even fertility, though I don’t see how they combine this with their heavy responsibilities and hard work. And men, though they express feelings more openly than American men—even feelings of weakness—still seem masculine.)

Tom’s bright, and cynical as any good newspaperman is, yet strangely optimistic about the future. Believes that the nature of political power is changing, that the technology and social structure can be put at the service of mankind, instead of the other way round. Skeptical but not, I notice, bitter. Must be comfortable to think like that.

Am missing Francine’s reliably amiable “attentions.” (Whenever I’m away I realize anew what a faithful playmate she is; despite our having deliberately resolved never to be faithful to each other.) Have the awful suspicion that every woman around me is secretly, constantly fucking and that I could have them if I only knew the password—but I don’t. I must be missing something—can the women journalists at the Cove simply find me unattractive in some mysterious way? They are friendly enough, direct, open; they even touch me sometimes, which of course feels good and gives me a warm rush. But again, it’s sisterly: if I touch them back, they seem to feel I’m making an improper advance, and back off. There must be some move, when a woman here comes close to you, that I don’t know how to make? Yet I watch the Ecotopian men, and they don’t seem to do anything, except maybe smile a little; and then things go on from there, or sometimes don’t—it’s all very casual and nobody seems to worry about it. Very confusing all around; makes me feel hung up on my own patterns. Many Ecotopian women are beautiful in a simple, unadorned way. They’re not
dependent for their attractiveness on cosmetics or dress—they give the impression of being strong, secure, pleasure-loving people, very honest and straightforward emotionally. They seem to
like
me: in the Cove as on the streets they meet my eyes openly, are glad to talk, even quite personally. Yet I can’t get past that stage to any real action. Have to think about that some more. Maybe I’ll learn something.