Barefoot Rage - Part 1

Welcome to Paradise

This week on The Crow it’s part 1 of a two-parter. The story of Gregor and a transformation. I won’t say anymore. You’ll have to read it and find out :)

Welcome to all new subscribers, I’m so happy you’ve found your way here. Welcome, welcome. There are some really beautiful people here to chat with so please feel free to comment. I will definitely reply.

ALSO…Below this week’s story I’ve added a brief list of suggestions of pieces new subscribers might like to check out. It’s supposed to help you navigate your way around The Crow. If anyone wants to suggest anything feel free.

So, without any further ado…

Photo by Marc-Olivier Jodoin on Unsplash

1.

I could never have imagined a friend like Gregor. He saved my life. I only wish I could have done the same for him.

I’d understand if you didn’t believe a word of this story. But if you’re patient with all that is unsolved in your heart, maybe you’ll understand the way it was. And maybe, just maybe, you’ll feel the same way. And please forgive my telling you this, but I have no choice, being that I haven’t much time left.

But then again, neither do you.

Enough of this. Let me tell you the story.

2.

“Indeed, the whole of our social arrangements may be likened to a perpetual comedy; and this is why a man who is worth anything finds society so insipid, while a blockhead is quite at home in it.” — Schopenhauer

When Gregor first appeared in my life, I became aware of my own dishevelled limitations, like I was a domesticated dog in a pack of wolves, clumsy and self-aware, without purpose. Gregor seemed to occupy his space in the universe perfectly, whereas I was searching for mine like a mime looking for a window. He had poise, an ease that was both arresting and disconcerting, he was like an animal, without decoration and pretence. He had a timelessness too, I could as easily imagine him daubing cave art in the firelight as I could delivering a speech in the Theatre of Dionysus or landing a 747.

I was bewitched by Gregor. And he, in his casual, yet eagle-eyed way, politely paid attention to me. Eventually, we became friends but I never shook the unsettling feeling that he was somehow more authentic than I. It may well have been this reverence that saved me, because no one else could have inspired me to change my mind the way he did.

When I first met him he was, as he put it himself, “only temporarily wasting time in this godforsaken slavery”. Gregor’s relationship to employment was tenuous at best. He sooner or later abandoned every job he’d ever had, never being able to accept the terms of what he called his “oppression”. He was able to turn his hand to almost anything but nothing ever suited his unyielding philosophical outlook. Where most people simply accepted the social reality of work and needed the cash, or enthusiastically internalised the values of their employment, or narcissistically wallowed in the social status of their role, Gregor shrugged off these coping mechanisms and considered all work as an effrontery to his existence, to be engaged in sporadically and reluctantly. “I took this job,” he said to me when we first worked together, “to manage the oncoming debt stream into which we’ve all been so viciously plunged.” I suggested he might find it at least tolerable, but he just stared at me and replied, “No, I won’t.”

He never, ever asked people what they “did for a living,” and he cringed when asked this himself. He didn’t care what people did. How they managed their oncoming debt stream didn’t interest him at all. He was searching for far more mysterious treasures.

Whenever Gregor had an income it trickled through his fingers. He wasn’t a fool, he understood the advantages money brought. But he bristled with disdain for the power that money held over him, treating money as the colonised should treat their oppressor, with that time-honoured act of defiance against the totalising and objectifying gaze, by barely acknowledging its existence. He lived as if money had no bearing on his life, even though it dominated everything.

Gregor wasn’t lazy. He once went from a slender man to a middle weight boxer’s physique in 6 months during a stint of building work, only to return to slender after a period in some white-collar landscape. He knew how to work hard, but he refused to commit himself to the role.

Gregor’s traits tended to ignite a low flame of admiration or crack the whip of panic in fellow workers. Neither admiration nor panic are helpful emotions, blinding and misleading as they can be, encouraging people to project their own feelings without really paying attention to who he actually was. There were few without an opinion, but equally few who really understood him. Not that he cared. But I did. It infuriated me that he could be so misinterpreted. Perhaps because I understood both the fear and the admiration.

Of course Gregor himself carried his own albatrosses. Whenever people behaved in some corrupt or contemptible manner he’d murmur, “Well, what do you expect?” Yet he had quixotically high expectations and was perpetually disappointed in people, always frustrated by their unwillingness to explore their complexity, irritated by their preference to flounder about in an enforced conventionality.

Anyway, I digress, let me get back on track.

3.

“Each generation doubtless feels called upon to reform the world. Mine knows that it will not reform it, but its task is perhaps even greater. It consists in preventing the world from destroying itself.” — Albert Camus

I was working as a staff writer at Barefoot Rage when staff writer’s were clinging on by their fingernails. Gregor was one of the first “consultant writers” to arrive. He had been painting window frames at the owner’s mountain “retreat”. Gregor had a kind of witchery that could simply magic a passing nod into a few words, that formed themselves into a conversation, which became a couple of beers and eventually, over an exquisite bottle of the owner’s most expensive red wine, the two of them brainstormed a monthly podcast for the online magazine. And hocus-pocus, Gregor morphed from carpenter’s sidekick to Barefoot Rage podcast producer.

The project was doomed from the outset. Gregor may have been a true poet, fearless and unrelenting and eager to peer into the shadows, but he was also entirely ill-suited to an office landscape with all its subtle intrigues, ego warfare and tacit requirement to comply. Besides, the magazine was more of a Barefoot Whimper than a Barefoot Rage, the owner being far more inclined toward advertising revenue and share holder value than actual environmentalism.

Gregor received a carefully curated list of respectable youth activists to be interviewed for ChangeMakers. He’d envisaged young, angry radicals willing to tear the world down and fight for change. He’d imagined deeply controversial conversations digging into the underlying root causes of the ever growing multi-crises. What he got were young people working for international NGO’s who kept very much on script.

“I get it,” I said, implored perhaps, “But you’ve got to work within current power structures though, right?” Which was the kind of thing I’d have said back then. He took a deep breath and gave me one of those withering looks that stripped me to the bone as he slowly nodded and said, “These kids man, they start out with grand ideas and truly radical alternatives, but then a kind of dark intuition slowly rises and they end up dumping their zeal and parroting institutional values, or it’s goodbye activist status and hello obscurity,” he looked tired, resigned somehow. “It’s the same old, same old, exactly like this bloody place. We’re fucked to kingdom come.”

“Yeah but the people who listen,” I said, “You’re reaching people who need to hear this stuff.”

“These people aren’t listening,” he said “they’re just identifying as outdoorsy personalities. I’m just giving them dinner party conversations!”

After 15 episodes of ChangeMakers covering funding stream application processes, or how to organise local youth advisory groups on climate change, or why Loss and Damage economics are unaffordable, as well as a never ending stream of other carefully worded yieldings, submissions and consents, Gregor gave up.

“I know it’s not your fault, you can’t help yourself,” he’d said to the owner, “But I can, so thanks, I appreciated the opportunity, but I just didn’t realise how fucked up we all are and this shit ain’t helping” And that was that. Gregor left Barefoot Rage and all the real rage left with him.

4.

“You cannot buy the revolution. You cannot make the revolution. You can only be the revolution. It is in your spirit, or it is nowhere”—Ursula K Le Guin

Barefoot Rage increased its readership, ditched the print issues and went fully online. The owner launched a sister venture, Barefoot Experience, where like-minded enthusiasts can collaborate with nature in luxury. I flew north to write an advertorial on Wolf Watching. The enthusiasts were picked up at the airport by a fleet of snowmobiles that whisked us to our Northern Sanctuary Glamping Village at the edge of the recently constructed Raging Rapids River - The Ultimate Canoeing Experience. The first wolves I saw were hanging on the wall of the LongHouse Brasserie along with moose, beaver, deer and arctic fox heads.

I slept well, ate a breakfast from an array of imported continental pastries and local produce, and then a group of we enthusiasts headed off-track on snowmobiles to discover the wolves.

The marketing bumf promised that our guides were passionate about sharing their knowledge on these enchanting creatures, but mine, wearing mirrored goggles and the same heavy snow suit we’d all been issued, said nothing at all.

It was cold. Very cold. The snow was about a metre and a half deep with a crust that had refrozen after a warm spell a few days earlier, which meant the snow was compact at the bed but like thick milkshake under the crust. Snowy quicksand. The snowmobile was surfing across the crust but if we punched through we’d sink in the slushy filling and have to dig our way out. There we’re shovels and snow shoes strapped to the machine in case we got stranded. They looked well used.

We travelled for around 20 minutes before the trail forked and while the rest of the train veered north-east, my silent chauffeur veered toward the north-west. I banged his back but nothing. The trail meandered through pines heavy with snow and we began to climb toward a long tree-lined ridge until we came to a stop about 100 meters below the summit. The abrupt silence was more deafening that the drone of the engine.

He reached down and unclipped the snowshoes, hopped off the machine and turned to hand me my pair, then he pulled back his hood, removed the mirrored goggles and there before me was a bearded, frontiersman-shaped Gregor smiling like a fool. He put his finger to his lips and nodded his head toward the snowshoes, then turned and began to walk toward the ridge.

The silence was like a stage for various vibrant sounds to perform. With each step, my snowshoes broke through the crust and sank 10cm’s, sounding as if a great ball of brown paper were being scrunched up by powerful hands. Then the lightest distant mosquito buzz of the other snowmobiles heading away from us wafted past on the light wind. The odd schlopp as a branch of snow finally slid earthward. And my own breathing, like the smooth, soft melody of life pulsating in and out and in and out.

Gregor was lying on the ridge below a pine with his binoculars to his eyes, he gestured for me to lie beside him and stay quiet, then he smiled and with his eyes beaming handed me the binoculars and gestured toward the centre of the valley. I saw nothing but snow, then a darkish stream of shapes that traversed like a meandering river from the base of the escarpment toward the forest. And then, I saw the head of a wolf rise above the snow, then another. There were seven wolves crossing the valley in a kind of tunnel under the deep snow that occasionally rose to become a trench. I had never seen anything so strange and wonderful and yet so completely as it should be. I turned to speak but again Gregor had the back off his hand across his mouth to silence me. The he smiled again and opened his arms as if to say, you have arrived my friend, welcome to Paradise.

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End of Part 1—Part two will appear here next Friday!

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Wondering what to read next?

Here are few suggestions new subscribers might like to check out. Please don'‘t consider this list to be comprehensive, it’s just a few things to get the lay of the land around here. I hope you find something you love.

Short Stories:

https://jonathanfostersthecrow.substack.com/p/schrodingers-cat

https://jonathanfostersthecrow.substack.com/p/skimming-along-the-fragile-surface

https://jonathanfostersthecrow.substack.com/p/the-tea-man

https://jonathanfostersthecrow.substack.com/p/daring-to-look-daring-to-leap

(the link to part 2 is of Dare To Look Dare To Leap is in part 1)

The Human Condition - Stories of People and Relationships

https://jonathanfostersthecrow.substack.com/p/a-murmuration-of-memories

https://jonathanfostersthecrow.substack.com/p/a-love-letter-a-kind-of-prayer-a

https://jonathanfostersthecrow.substack.com/p/the-witch-and-the-oak-tree

The Dog And I - Contemplation’s in Forests

https://jonathanfostersthecrow.substack.com/p/fire-and-smoke

https://jonathanfostersthecrow.substack.com/p/everything-is-changing

https://jonathanfostersthecrow.substack.com/p/venture-further-than-weve-ever-dared

Environmental Contemplations

https://jonathanfostersthecrow.substack.com/p/a-perpetual-collapse-in-spectacular

https://jonathanfostersthecrow.substack.com/p/rushing-headlong-at-the-speed-of

https://jonathanfostersthecrow.substack.com/p/a-horse-a-hare-and-a-peach