by Crimethinc. Workers' Collective
Available in 284 free installments
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Select an activity that has always struck you as absurd or unjust and refuse to participate in it, no matter how compHcated this proves. This may sensitize you to tragedies that were once invisible?a few months into veganism, you enter a leather market and experience it as a grave robbers' bazaar?or reveal the excesses of your society to your fellow citizens, as in tiie case of the ascetic who carries wdth him all the trash he produces.
Give yourself a special relationship with a location by associating it with a specific activity. For example, you could decide that whenever you are in Germany, you are a runner who gets up at dawn to jog around the city.
If your outward appearance has always provided you with the privilege of passing as a "normal" human being, paint or dye your skin, or shave off your hair and eyebrows, or
A Few Behavioral Cut-Upsfor Would-Be Beginners
Behavioral Cut-ups S7
You can get in touch with and
establish power over your fears by
means of a variety of rituals: try being
naked with your friends and then
with less familiar acquaintances,
being intimate with people of the
sex opposite the one you are used to
touching, taking blindfolded tours of
familiar and unfamiliar environments,
starting frank conversations with
strangers, climbing the ladders of
water towers?nothing can multiply
your capabilities like confronting the
limitations you have set for yourself.
Behavioral Cut-ups
dress in drag. Don't make any attempt to explain yourself if you want the full benefit of learning what life is like for those who attract attention whether they want it or not.
Go without something you have taken for granted your whole life. For example, learn to recognize all the edible and medicinal plants that grow in your region, and spend a season living outside, subsisting on them. Refuse to set foot in any buildings for the duration of this period.
Take a weU-knoviTi tool^?for this example we'll use a toaster?and turn it back into an object. Take it far from the kitchen, perhaps to a mountaintop or an abandoned grain silo. Say its name continuously for thirty minutes: say it fast, say it slow, spell it out, sing it to the tune of your favorite childhood song. Now take it with you to the bank. Wear it as a shoe. Run a mile in it. Exhausted, curl up with it for a long nap. Remove one of its shiny panels and write a letter upon it to a friend vvdth whom you have lost touch. Invent a dozen other uses for it, and utilize it thus until these are habitual and toast seems strange.
Violate unspoken social laws about the application of space. Squat one of those vast 24-hour super-marts for a few days. Conduct experiments, play games, graze on food in your "pantry," find a quiet comer to sleep. Pick a neglected category of items {green plastic things, paraphernalia of insecurity, materials not produced by slave labor) and, cartload by cartload, establish a new section for it. Use stationery to write letters to friends, use the phone to invite them over. Throw a party^?guests need not bring food or gifts. Take a disposable camera off the shelf; after taking some unusual photos, repackage it as a gift to its future owner. Add to this list of things to do as the days go by and your derangement intensifies.
Become a guru. Go to a public place where you can set up camp, and establish a constant presence there. Bring a project. It will have to be a project that creates ripples of notoriety?rumors should spread about your presence. People will approach vrith stories for you: give them time, listen. You, above close friends, will be told of injuries.
secrets, dilemmas, desires. Do not try to solve problems or offer advice: your role is to hold the stories as if you were a hiding place. Your visitors will return to sort through them, to make amendments and new deposits, to revisit old ones. They will offer you food. Occasionally they will ask about your Hfe?but remember, they do this only out of politeness and habit, for they know that you are a magic person, you have a project. As your relationships grow, your needs vdll be increasingly met by the offerings of your visitors. These gifts carry with them the power to cast spells on their behalf Heal them, make them well.
