Chapter 2: LIGHT, DARK AND More Light

The 'Sing with Socialists' event was a success. People were conscientious about not hugging and shaking hands at first but there was a fair amount of elbow bumping and once alcohol worked its way in their systems, there were plenty of them who removed their masks and forgot about social distancing. Frankly, it didn't matter. They had all selfishly decided to be social. It was a conscious decision.

Harold was happy to be among them. Living in isolation for months on end had been psychically draining. As humans, we are social animals and when we take that away - all the Zoom meetings in the world can't make up for it. They sang, they danced, and many of them sat together in small affinity groups while others played the roles of social butterflies moving from table to table to say hello.

The Honolulu DSA meeting was a joyful success with many comrades engaged in lively discussion about the world they hoped to someday live in. Or at the very least, the world they hoped to help bring into being. None of them knew what a fully developed socialist society would look like in Hawaii, North America, or the world - but they all had ideas. This was one of the best parts about spending time with socialists - there is a naturally sunny optimism that exists in every socialist. They look at the world and they see what it could be rather than just what it is.

This is not to say they were fools looking at the world through happiness tinted glasses. They saw the problems and they tried to understand them. They knew just how far the world had swollen into pain and suffering for those trapped at the bottom, but still they were willing to posit a potential for utopia from the dog's breakfast of the present.

Fifteen people came to the event - they were diverse, ranging in age from nineteen to seventy-four. As might be expected at a socialist gathering, with fifteen people present there were fifteen different branches of socialist thought present. From anarchistic, socialist, and communist traditions on the far left to anarcho-syndicalism, free market socialism, libertarian-socialism, and Ayn Rand loving anarcho-capitalists. Marxism, Bakuninism, Trotskyism, Chomskyism and Maoism all were represented. They even had a Leninist, though, at twenty-four she tended to ignore the harder edges of the philosophy.

Not so with the seventy-four year old comrade who sat silently and sullenly through most of the evening but after a rousing rendition of the Internationale decried them all for fools and pawns of the capitalist machine as they started to wind things down and make their ways out of the venue. This did not stop nearly all of them from hugging him and wishing him the best holiday season of his life. Truth be told, it was he who had suggested they get together, he who had arranged the venue, and he who was the last to leave, wiping a tear from his eye as he walked back to his home, just two blocks away. Harold, however, had no way of knowing that because he was already on his way home.

It had been a wonderful gathering. It had re-inspired hope in him during a dark and dreary period of the world. Sitting in the Lyft (Lyft because it was less awful in a capitalistic sense than the alternative, Uber) with his temporary driver, Harold was not willing to let the night end.

"Have you ever heard of socialism?" he asked the driver.

The driver, a true son of Honolulu, had recently started looking at socialism as an alternative to the mess they lived in. He was working as a contractor for the company which meant that they didn't give him health insurance, he had to pay higher taxes, and since this was Lyft - the gas, wear and tear on his vehicle, insurance, registration, and any other fees were his responsibility. On the one hand, he loved that he didn't have a boss and could work when he wanted to but on the other hand, he had to work all the time to make up for the extra expenses and lack of benefit.

"I'd love socialized medicine," he said "I pay half my earnings to keep my family covered, but how would it work?"

The ride home was almost as enjoyable as the meeting had been. By the time they arrived at Harold's apartment building in the Moanalua neighborhood - the driver was convinced that he had always been a socialist but just hadn't been introduced to it properly - before that evening. That was the way that conversations usually went with Harold. He found that most people were already living partly as socialists without knowing it, driving on public roads, using public libraries, sending their kids to public schools and more - they just didn't think of those things as socialist - they considered them benefits of capitalism - which was a bizarre kind of twisted logic. It wasn't the taxes of the rich corporations or billionaires that paid for those things. That money invariably went to influencing the state to create a more business friendly environment - which invariably meant a less friendly human environment.

As Harold walked into his building, he was in a dreamy state of mind. The fully developed new socialist society almost seemed real - he could almost touch it. "If only I could experience it," he said to himself "I would love to see it, touch it, feel it. It would be wonderful to know how it comes about."

The elevator arrived. When the door opened, three of his neighbors rushed out. An old woman on her way to work at a local bakery, a janitor heading to Waikiki to clean during the night, and a paramedic who would probably face death more than once before the sun rose. Harold felt a moment of anger at the idea that the old woman still had to work so she could afford to pay her rent, get her medicine, or eat. He judged her to be in her seventies, maybe even her eighties. Here she was putting on her bakery duds and heading out at nearly midnight. If it were something she did through love, he would have supported it fully, but he knew better.

He had overheard her speaking to another neighbor in the laundry room not long ago. Her daughter had gotten involved with drugs and ended up getting arrested and then sent to rehab. The state was going to take away her children which meant that this woman, the baker, was going to lose her grandchildren. She had convinced her son to adopt them but this made his house too small since he already had two children of his own. His mother (the baker) went back to work at her old job so that she could help pay the rent for a bigger house that her son and his now expanded family lived in.

She had been retired for several years and was just eking out enough to pay her bills with social security but this tiny expense had pushed her over the edge. Going back to work meant she had to pay a higher tax bracket which actually meant that she didn't have enough for her medicines. And it went on and on...This was why he wanted a better world. Not for himself but for her and the people like her and her son and her grandchildren. Millions of them. Billions of them. Old age should not be a time of fear and uncertainty. Drug addiction should not be a crime but a condition to be treated. Child care should be something that a community takes care of. The list went on and on. All of this went through his head in an instant.

He smiled and wished them a good evening, but his mood had turned dark. Rather than taking the elevator to his floor he took it far higher to the top floor. He opened the fire door and walked up the stairs to the roof. From there he could see the vista of the the Waianae Mountains and Pearl Harbor. The cool trade-winds and twinkling of the few stars bright enough to make it past Honolulu's light pollution mellowed his mood. He found some of the peace and hope the evening had mostly consisted of. Still, he was troubled. Would the socialist society ever arrive? Was there any cause for hope?

"If only I could see it," he said.

With that he wandered down the steps, took the elevator back down to the third floor and went home for the evening. The apartment was silent. His wife was deep asleep in her bed. After ten years of marriage, they had finally realized that having twin beds that could be pushed together was far better than a queen sized bed that could never be pulled apart. He kissed her forehead gently. She had a smile on her face as if she were already living in the world he dreamed of. He was grateful that on nights like this he didn't have to worry about waking her as he pulled down the sheets and climbed into his own bed several feet from hers.

Within minutes he descended into the abyss of dreams but then, in what seemed moments, his eyes snapped open as often happens when one's body has had all the sleep it needs. The morning light was coming in the window. He heard the cheerful sound of birdsong. He turned to see if his wife was awake, but she was gone. In fact, Harold awoke in a room that wasn't his bedroom at all.