The cut worm forgives the plow. (Proverbs in Hell, W. Blake)
The title of the post is a line from William Blake's poetry; Which Nadine Gordimer appropriated for her story about a girl who gets killed when a terrorist, a roomer in her mother's boarding house she fell in love with, uses her to bomb the plane she boards.
What I say is, it is not a question of whether you stole or did not steal, and not a question of getting caught or not caught, but rather, what do you steal. Robinhood is, of course, everybody's star robber, stealing cratefuls from the rich that the poor may eat. One of my favorites is Riva, Marge Piercy's information pirate: she steals data, including scientific formulas from the multis, that poorer countries may make their own medicines.
Another favorite is the bohemian Jean Genet, who is not fictional, and that's why he can only be a petty thief. What people miss is, the fag was actually stealing a life: he got free board and rent at the penitentiary and wrote the plays that earned him fame as a poet-criminal, which in the French revolutionary tradition is a glorious title.
The previous week, journalist friends were on a hype over what they perceive as big-time robbery. Mary Ann, they say, has been robbing you blind. Lord. As though I didn't know that. If I make up a list about crimes committed by NGO friends, I said to them, murder and theft ranks highest: they rob you first, and then they murder you. Or, they murder you first, and then they rob you. When you're dead, nobody believes you anymore, and so they embalm you for a little while, and resurrect you again if they need more of your remains.
How come, you say, I'm still here and not quite dead yet?
But I am already dead. See, I cannot even write a book. That requires a living writer to do that. I don't even have a byline. A blogline is not a byline. A byline is what you see on newspapers, legit. Genius is achievement, poet-mentor and underachiever Cesar Ruiz Aquino explained, quoting another mentor. Yes, Germelina, you are right. We mother rights awardees are just pathetic bloggers, ghost writing for our former dead writer selves that our employers may live.
The Royal We doesn't become me, aha? But false humility doesn't become me more.
You know the funny story about how some cadres escaped the purges?
Oca, said Luwi, was spared because the hukbo -- or the Political Officer -- who should be ordering his execution had a moment: he thought maybe Oca could write them another project proposal? After the purging the reconstruction, what will happen to the Reaffirm project if they ran out of fucking writers to take care of fucking funding agencies? I don't know if they were able to recycle Oca's life as a fund raiser, but I just know the feeling. So when I listen to Joni Mitchell singing how freely she slaved away for something better and how she got herself bought and sold, I feel a little better, like I can forgive myself and my retailers.
So what if fat catatonics and ugly old dykes stole my words and my aces? It wouldn't make them better catatonics and better dykes, only better thieves.
Credit? Byline?
Long had I signed a pact with the devil. I'll be damned if my friend Mephistopheles did not take care of them.
