Create an uproar! Intoxicate the politics of everyday life with a provocative disordering of the censors. Why follow orders or order followers? Be proud of your disorderly conduct. Conduct yourself with the electricity of unrestrained revolt. What is called for is not the bureaucratically packaged stimulation of the economy, but a poetically inspired flowering of autonomy.

Scratching The Tiger's Belly

So much the worse if poetry is slow to be made by all. At least let it be lived by some!
George Henein, Surrealist Group of Cairo (1957)

Rather than accepting the regimented social identity assigned to us by those who shape authority in their own pinched image, kick up your heels and do the dance of insurgent shapeshifting. The keys to our identity-shackles can be found floating in the elixer of refusal. Grab them and practice the fine art of staying afloat in the rough waters of repression and the doldrums of conformity. Do not hesitate to capsize the vessels of despair so that our marvelous dreamships can sail freely on the rolling seas of desire. Don’t fall backwards into the waiting arms of nostalgia. Head boldly into the eye of the storm. Storm eyes smiling in the reign (of terror). Eyes as windows. Eyes as mirrors. Eyes slit with razors or glazed over with candy floss. Eyes that wink or stare. Glitter or glare. Searchlight eyes. Real-eyes becoming Surreal-eyes right before our very eyes.

Last night I dreamed that I had sailed directly into the undulating depths of a tiger’s eye marble. Amidst the brightly burning Blakean flames, I found a tiger lying peacefully on its back in the sun playfully daring me with its eyes to scratch its belly. What to do? A sword lay at the foot of an ancient tree nearby. If I used it to heroically slay the tiger, would the beast disappear right before my eyes without revealing its secret to me? Was the tiger an enemy to be feared or a mentor to be approached with respect? Why conquer or subdue it, tame the wildness in it, make it into a mascot, Putinize it, sedate it for exploitation in a petting zoo or cage it so that passersby might gawk at their own imprisoned instincts on display behind bars? Suddenly, I felt claustrophobic and had an urge to climb the tree and get a birdseye view. Once on top, I saw that around me was a forest with each tree having its own sleeping tiger close beside it and a sword within easy reach. If I slew one tiger, there would only be another with which to contend.

Dreams can offer poetic solutions to the dilemmas that we encounter within their oneiric realms. Clearly, I could spend my whole life killing tigers or with one resounding whack I could use the sword to cut the debilitating bonds of conventional wisdom that might cause me to simplistically see the tiger as a foe rather than a potential ally. By scratching the tiger’s belly, I could overcome my fears and recognize the fierceness of the tiger in myself. Rather than attempting to vanquish the tiger, I could instead choose to understand its nature and accept its gift of valor. The act of scratching its belly is not about desiring its domestication, but yearning for its wild inspiration. The tiger takes what it needs and defends what it loves. It does not trouble itself with whether its actions are legal or illegal. It acts out of an instinctual need to preserve itself and its species. Its unbridled ferocity makes it a symbol of disorder to those who seek to destroy it rather than embracing its destructive power in the exuberant context of social revolution. Control it, they cry, before it devours all that we have been taught to hold dear.

While tigers are not humans, humans are animals. Human cages are forged from the cold steel of propertied legality and the strength of their bars are reinforced by the miserabilist social ties of mutual acquiescence. To live in them, we must not only be trained to obediently cringe before our masters at feeding time, but we must convince each other not to see the bars that surround us. Only through the process of dismantling our internal and external cages by means of direct action can we poetically scratch the tiger’s belly and find the strength to unleash a collective roar of mutual aid.

The above parable is the title chapter of Ron Sakolsky’s latest book, Scratching the Tiger’s Belly (2012). http://www.eberhardtpress.org

Share