Bonnie pointed. “I like that one.”
Doc said, “Exactly.” He climbed out of the car and stumbled to the back, through the tin-can tumbleweed community of the roadside ecology. He opened the trunk lid and removed, from among the golf clubs, the spare tire, the chain saw, the case of spray paint, the tire tools, the empty gas can, another gasoline can, full. Doc closed the lid. Across the length of his rear bumper a luminous sticker proclaimed in glowing red, white and blue, I AM PROUD TO BE AN ARMENIAN!
Doc’s car carried other hex signs – he was indeed a decalcomaniac – to ward off evil: the M.D.’s caduceus, American flag decals in each corner of the rear window, a gold fringed flag dangling from the radio aerial, in one corner of the windshield a sticker which read “Member of A.B.L.E. – Americans for Better Law Enforcement,” and in the other corner the blue eagle of the National Rifle Association with the traditional adage, “Register Communists, Not Guns.”
Taking no chances, looking both ways, severe and sober as a judge, carrying his matches and his can of gasoline, Dr. Sarvis marched through the weeds, the broken bottles, the rags and beer cans of the ditch, all that tragic and abandoned trivia of the American road, and climbed the cutbank toward the object of his fierymania:
WONDER ENRICHED BREAD HELPS BUILD STRONG BODIES 12 WAYSLiars! While down below his Bonnie waited at the wheel of the Lincoln, her engines running, ready for getaway. The trucks and cars howled by on the highway and their lights shone briefly on the girl’s face, her violet eyes, her smile, and on Doc’s other bumper sticker, the one that confronted the future: GOD BLESS AMERICA. LET’S SAVE SOME OF IT.
– From Monkey Wrench Gang, by Edward Abbey
I’ve been reading Monkey Wrench Gang, after a long time of not having the time or concentration to read. The frequent wordplay and embellishment certainly helps keep hold of the reader’s attention, often having to read certain sentences twice to admire the scenery. As a non-native speaker I wish I had such control of the English language (though even my own, I am not sure if I control to this degree). All the flavoring aids in delivering the main core of the story, of a group of four eco-terrorists united by a shared goal of rebelling against the ugliness of man-made metal monsters against the beauty of the American wilderness.
The characters themselves do not in any way fit the expectation I have of an environmental activist, and frequently at odds with the kind of morality I would consider adjacent to these politics. They consume meat, litter (though they argue about the matter), describe Native Americans in uh, not particularly progressive terms. Each character has further unsavory traits that I do not wish to belabor on. And yet, they are effective in furthering their collective goal, and in that one uniting aspect, they are certain of their conviction. On some level this contradiction must be intentional on the part of the author (else if he played to more familiar beats, perhaps he may have imagined hippies on LSD), but to me it solidifies an image of American patriotism that I had not encountered before as an immigrant.
These characters, undeniably, display a love of their land, which they are willing to defend to a point of danger to their lives. That would normally create an image of a gun-toting, red-hatted republican in my head, as I’ve become accustomed to a certain degree of self-loathing on the other side of the American political spectrum (and again, I want to stress, I am not American so all observations come with a large grain of salt). The revelation of the existence of such explosive, yet progressive, mentality in the American psyche resulted in this word vomit was axed out of my head after a prolonged headache.
I’ve lived in the US for what is soon going to be 10 years, and as Odysseus perhaps it is time to begin my return home, but only in the past couple years have I truly understood that the kind of Americans I’ve had the chance to meet are by and large Yuppies, or children of such, or future such. Yet so much of “Americana” lies behind a secret curtain, that many Americans may be able to live in front of and peer behind, but us immigrants will not come in contact with. That curtain is in some sense the class divide, but also the divide between family and society, between what is shown in film and TV and what still cannot be put to word. Beyond that, this curtain hides the true psyche of Americana that may be perhaps more beautiful than the shallow depictions of it we’ve been allowed to see.
Monkey Wrench patriotism is a kind that I’ve associated with my own country’s psyche, which bemoans construction over natural beauty, which is violent and yet loving. You do not know that psyche, but I will translate for you a song that I believe captures it, Ρεματιά, by Μαύρο Δεντρί:
I told you over wine, I will tell you again now
that what I see around me will drive me crazy
Each one holds as rosary the place he is born in
he rages and rants once he sees it spoiled
Oh and why have these places changed
and the strangers went and built over the fields
I know it, they have ruined the shepherd-shacks and the meadows
and poured cement over the streams and rivers all
I peer and hearken that the time has come
to wear gunpowder and destroy it all
To take an old hillside and to work it
to live alone in the mountain and start my life
If you are so inclined, you may strum along.
Truly it seems that the power of this love-for-land is more universal than I thought and indeed it may still exist within the hollow heart of the American beast. Though when I speak of this curtain, I am not yet certain if it is the same people themselves that hide behind the curtain and appear in front of it at the same time, or if they’ve left the others behind and truly live in front. In support of the first one, I had the chance to work with an otherwise normal, but quite smart man, who I later learned had spent some time in federal prison after being convicted of conspiracy to arson (the fact that he ended up not doing any damage made his sentence even more ironic) – an bona-fide eco-activist himself. I will avoid going into much detail, but he was a smart man, and after prison did quite well for himself. When I was pointed to his wikipedia page by a coworker, I was quite stricken to imagine this man who I was used to see argue about bayesian methods and pull requests having fought for his convictions in the past, to the degree that he served time in prison. I’m sure that to a large degree he was, what we would consider, a reformed member of society and regretted his past acts. I wonder if that other back-of-curtain person (perhaps now not violent) still had the same love for his land. He is a very nice man all the same.
To bring it back to the title of this ramble, I think about Doc’s practice, that he calls decalcomania (not to be confused with the practice of transferring art onto materials though that is exactly how we get the word decal). Doc himself commits crimes in service of his hatred of billboards which in his perception spoil the natural countryside. We may make guesses at his political affiliations, or opinions on gun ownership, yet he seems to display contradictory iconography on his car, explicitly referred to as hexes. These are aiding him in disguising his true motives, and perhaps even evading the suspicion of police. One may wonder today if we should do the same.
To whoever reads this I say, a thin-blue-line sticker may act as a ward against parking tickets. Multiple stickers could even protect against ICE. Be safe.