The Time of Monsters
“I just stared at him for a minute, noting that he was insisting on reciprocity — a thing for a thing. It’s an ancient principle, the sort of thing an Otherworldly visitor would ask of you.”
Photo by Malik Earnest
In the city where I live, we are now in the fifth month since the pandemic made our lives unrecognizable. August will also be the third month since the Uprising began, and although the struggle is now centered in other cities, it continues here as well.
In Portland, Oregon, protesters waged a fierce struggle night after night against mercenary storm troopers, living with the terror of being pulled off the street without warning and forced into an unmarked van by unidentified attackers. Here in the Twin Cities, crowds have been mobilizing to protect the tent cities and preserve the parks as places of sanctuary, to demand an extension of the eviction moratorium and the cancellation of rent for the duration of the pandemic, and to demand the abolition of the police. Free zones without a police presence still exist here, defended by barricades and guarded by volunteers.
There’s no way to know how long it will continue, but Minneapolis is still a city in revolt. Many businesses are still boarded-up and closed, the boards painted over with revolutionary graffiti. Not everyone is part of the Uprising, though. Other businesses, such as bars and restaurants, are once again open despite the threat of the virus. People sit inside with each other, talking and laughing, unmasked and oblivious. And the death count keeps rising.
These are strange days indeed, and strange days bring strange visitors.
A Knock on the Door
A few nights ago, I had insomnia, but was finally starting to drift off at two in the morning. Suddenly I heard a loud knocking on my door. I got up to answer it, wondering why the hell anyone would be knocking on my door at 2 am. A little voice in the back of my head was saying what if it’s them – the people who haul anarchists away in the middle of the night?
They’re not hunting down all the anarchists yet, but how far away from that are we? When we do get that far, will I see it coming ahead of time, or will I not even realize how bad things have gotten until they show up at my door?
I looked through the peephole and saw someone tall holding what looked like a piece of paper. I couldn’t tell what was going on, but whoever they were they didn’t look like the secret police. I opened the door just a crack, ready to fight if that should turn out to be necessary.
It turned out to be a tall man with burning eyes, holding two Priority Mail packages. “The next time you see your Dad, have him call me,” he said, and handed me the packages. I glanced down and saw that they were indeed my packages, which he must have found in the lobby downstairs.
“My Dad?” I asked him, sleepy and confused. After all, my father never lived in this state and has been dead since 2006.
“Yes,” he replied, and mimed the act of zipping his lips shut.
“Okay,” I said. “Sure.”
“Since I'm here,” he asked me, “do you have a soda or anything?”
I just stared at him for a minute, noting that he was insisting on reciprocity – a thing for a thing. It’s an ancient principle, the sort of thing an Otherworldly visitor would ask of you. He didn’t look like an Otherworldly visitor, though. He looked like a tall man with an intense stare, standing in the hall in front of my door.
“I can get you a glass of water,” I replied at last.
“Do you have anything with carbs?” he asked. “I've just been out here so long.”
Had he really been standing out in the hall in total silence, waiting for the right moment to start pounding on my door?
“I can get you a can of fizzy water,” I told him. Fizzy water, of course, has no carbs – but it was all I had. Maybe the reciprocity was the important thing.
“Thank you, that would be great,” he answered, so I shut the door, then went to the fridge and got the fizzy water.
When I opened the door again, I said, “You do realize it’s two in the morning, right?”
He assured me that he was well aware of that, still staring at me with his burning eyes. I gave him the fizzy water and thanked him for the packages. He kept staring at me as he backed away, walking down the hall with the water in his hand.
I didn’t fall asleep till four.
A Thing for a Thing
The principal of reciprocity, “a thing for a thing,” is a common feature of traditional fairy lore. There are many stories told about fairy visitors, asking for the loan of common everyday items. If the item is offered freely then the human is repaid, often with something far more valuable. If the item is refused the fairy visitor takes it anyway, because a person who refuses to deal fairly with you is just an enemy.
In Minneapolis right now, politicians are starting to walk back their frightened promises. The city has postponed the vote on abolishing the police department, and politicians are promoting fear at what they refer to as “lawlessness.” Never mind the fact that the far majority of the city is still patrolled by the police, so the existence of un-policed free zones can hardly explain the recent violence.
The empire we live in has become unstable, and it may not exist much longer. If it does continue, it may take a shape we will no longer recognize as the same thing. In this liminal time, the old structures are unstable and shifting. Dangerous things are happening, but the question is this: who and what are they dangerous to?
As Antonio Gramsci once said, “The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born. This is the time of monsters.” Gramsci was warning about the instability that comes with the fall of established systems, but more than one kind of monster can arise in such unstable circumstances.
The people of Minneapolis have been demonized as monsters because they stood up and fought back against a murderous police department, and against the whole world that needs such a police department to keep it safe. If we are not dealt with fairly, with reciprocity, those monsters can always come back again.
Christopher Scott Thompson
Photo by Tam Hutchison.
is an anarchist, martial arts instructor, and devotee of Brighid and Macha.
