After the demo, everyone – except me, you remember the oath – smoked weed on the riverbank, hiding under the bridge. Seven or so black guys leaned over the bridge and kept taunting us, sneering: ‘Whad-ya-lookin-at, snowballs?’ But we were a big group, and there were the goths and gays from Washington, too. So they didn’t pursue it – and anyway the guys were stoned, and none of us gave a damn.
At night we ripped flags off buildings. They were hung on every building in Downtown Baltimore in triplets – the US national flag, the flag of the State of Maryland and a flag with a municipal coat of arms. Pincher was the first to jump up, grab all three at once and yank them off with a noisy rending sound.
I remember at some point I flinched from the cognitive dissonance, yet all my life, all my eighteen years, everything around me, at home and at school, in the street and on TV, had drummed into me (and other children) that our star-spangled banner was our key and almost sacred symbol.
From my first days in school, I had learned the rules of what can and must never be done with a flag of the USA by heart! It should never be dipped to any person or thing even if the flags of states, military banners and other flags are dipped in their honour. It should never be raised upside down, except as a distress signal. It should never be raised so low that it touches something beneath it: the earth, a floor, water, other objects. It should never be borne on a flagpole with the pole horizontal (the flag shall always be carried at an angle). It should never be raised so that it could be damaged or soiled. One should never write or draw something on a flag; or wrap something in a flag; or use it as clothes, bed linen or draperies, or in a suit or on sportswear – though at the same time the image of a flag can be sewn for members of the patriotic organizations, military, police and firefighters. One must never use a flag for advertising and promotion of goods or print its image on napkins, boxes and other disposable objects.
Pincher broke several of these rules as he wrapped himself in a flag, blew his nose on its hem, then tore off a strip and put it in his trousers in the manner of a diaper. I wanted to tell him that, probably, he shouldn’t do it. But Frisbee shouted that Pincher looked like Casper the Friendly Ghost, and everybody laughed loudly, including me. And as my friends were under the influence of weed, they just couldn’t stop.
We hobbled along the street and tore more flags off. Some tied them as scarfs, some as Roman togas or Superman’s cape. For some reason, I tied a flag on a belt as a Scottish kilt and danced a wild jig with Neolani, yelling that we were from Clan Macleod and that there can only be one.
Of course, the police were called, as people peeped from their windows to see us up to all kinds of tricks, and breaking the peace and all kinds of state laws. But it was dark. And as the sirens wailed from the next block, we scurried into the slums and away.
Well, not slums really, but warehouses down by the railroad. We spent the night there on boxes and containers covered with tarpaulin, smoking weed before sleeping.
Under the tarpaulin, it was warm and easy to smoke. Some puffed smoke, others just breathed it in and felt high. They also invited me in, but I got out and sat down in the wind. Firstly, because of my oath, and secondly, it had all become rather revolting…
When we got back to college, life swept on indifferently. The ripped flags were nothing to most of us, a prank with no consequences and leaving no memories.
It haunted me, though, and once when Neo and I went to the Garage together, I suddenly told her it is wrong behave like this with a flag. I didn’t expect an answer, I just needed to express my feelings. But she did answer, and seriously, without any of her favourite words, like an exam:
‘Flags, anthems – these are all external symbols. A transferral of concepts. Do you understand?’
I shook my head.
‘Well. Fabric alone. Words alone. They mean nothing. But you can create fetishes out of them. ‘Don’t create an idol for yourself’ remember?’
I shook my head again. It wasn’t that her words were unclear; I just didn’t want to agree with them.
‘Oh, well!’ Neolani stamped her foot in indignation. ‘I’ll get you the book, and you can read everything…’
And she really did bring me the book. I don’t remember the name, but it was about Buddhism, about its various trends, about philosophical schools and wise men who lived a thousand years ago. Why was I interested? Probably because Neo liked it.
Not that I got the idea of all these allegories and abstract definitions straight away. How could I, an American teenager, understand what Tao is, especially if you consider that even now, as a thirty-year-old, I don’t really get it. I’m absolutely sure that no one in their senses and sober will say to himself: ‘I have learned Tao!’.
All the same, there were different scientific definitions, using clever words like immanence, and transcendence and undifferentiated emptiness, but what are they to me?
To me, as an IT specialist, it is clear from Lao Zi’s words that Tao generates one, the unit generates a pair – Yin and Yang – which generate three and reveal the entire world.
So Tao is a binary code, a source of all forms. But according to Lao Tzu, Tao is at the same time the energy which forms all processes of creation, and creation itself. It is the creating spirit which creates and destroys – but creation and destruction equally create and maintain this world, ensuring its existence in the form we know. Tao is also the balance of good and evil, again a binary code, and, I think, is also love, because how is anything possible without it?
I enjoyed reading the Taoist sages much more than the Buddha. Neo brought me the book of the writings of the great taoists – the Yellow emperor Huang-di and others. Of course, much of it was seriously obscure, but some of the formulations bewitched me with their refined absurdity:
When all in Celestial Empire learn that beautiful is beautiful then there is ugly.
When all learn that kind is kind then there is evil. And therefore what generates each other is life and non-existence, what counterbalances each other is heavy and easy, what limits each other is long and short, what serves each other is high and low, what echoes each other is a voice and a sound, what follows one after another is last and coming, and so endlessly.
This is my favourite Lao Tzu. Think about this, and in these phrases all world order is described! But it is best of all to think about it after long meditation, purging your mind of busy thoughts…
To be serious, Lao Tzu said some other things, for example, here: ‘Walking wins against cold; rest wins against heat.’ ‘Tranquility creates an order in the world’. It is true, it needs to be accepted, then go further.
But what further was there? Perhaps, the beginning of the war in Iraq. No, before the war there was a preparation. I remember how everywhere it was said that Saddam and his allies from Al-Qaeda were guilty of 9/11, that they killed thousands of innocent people, and now they were preparing for the slaughter of hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions, as they prepared to launch a war with weapons of mass destruction.
People argued about those Iraqi weapons of mass destruction anywhere and everywhere – at gas stations, in snackbars, in supermarkets, and even us at the Garage.
Then there was that well-known performance of Colin Powell at the UN Security Council when he showed the whole world a test tube with white powder and said:
‘…We know that Saddam Hussein has what is called quote, ‘a higher committee for monitoring the inspections teams,’ unquote. Think about that. Iraq has a high-level committee to monitor the inspectors who were sent in to monitor Iraq’s disarmament. Not to cooperate with them, not to assist them, but to spy on them and keep them from doing their jobs…