The Tiger’s Egg. Or How I Became A Seven Year Old Anarchist.

It gets real for a first world problem. You’re going to want to cry.

Greetings, fellow minnows, dolphins, whales and sharks (that’s a thing right?)

I’m Kindle, I’m new here. I chose the name because it means “ start a fire ” and it also contains two of my favourite words, kin and kind .

I thought the best way to introduce myself would be to tell you the story of how I became a seven year old anarchist . It’s all the fault of my primary school headmaster and an easter egg competition. It get’s pretty real for a first world problem. You’re going to want to cry.

It’s 2600 words long and will probably take you 10 minutes to read so I guess I should explain why you should read it? What’s in it for you ?

I got thinking about this earlier in the year. I live in the UK and we had this thing called “Brexit”. You may have read about it on the interweb. The prime minister promised a referendum on membership of the European Union in order to unite his own party, forgetting that he could lose the referendum and fuck everything right up.

Picture credits: Thomas G Clarke, https://anotherangryvoice.blogspot.co.uk

Now I tend to stay out of party politics. I grew up with Generation Slack and we were all about DIY and direct action. Finding freedom between the cracks in the system and sticking it to the man yeah?

But the reaction across the UK the next day, when we woke up and realised what we’d done- It was palpable .

I remember lying half asleep, listening to the reassuring lullaby of the BBC World Service on the radio, hearing the announcement, my heart beat starting to quicken as I came swiftly awake. “Fuck!” Politics just got real.

It didn’t matter whether you had voted for Brexit or against it, everyone felt the shock . For the rest of the day it was as if the veil of numbness and distraction we hide behind was lifted to reveal the horrible, raw emotional truth beneath.

People were scared , people were angry, people were confused. The arguments flared within families, across communities, dividing, creating suspicion and mistrust.

Every meeting I went to, felt nervous , withdrawn- until some one dropped the Brexit bomb and the room went off like a fizzy can on a hot day- everyone finally saying what was on their mind.

I tried to talk to everyone I met about it. Which way had they voted and why? How had they come to that opinion? I tried to explore, I challenged, I questioned, I used my best non-violent, compassionate communication strategies to try and find our common ground.

I’m a pretty relaxed guy, but it was hard. It was so hard; so hard to tame my own beast, that savage heart that wants to be right.

And I had to tell people. I don’t usually talk about it.

I had to admit I was an anarchist.

In some of the communities I work with I might as well hang up a big sign that says “troublemaker” and wait for them to tar and feather me.

Some people take it real personal, like I just said something very unpleasant about their god, their tribe or their mother.

The more usual response is that conversation drys up and people wander away, On the plus side it’s a good way of getting rid of people I don’t want to talk to at parties.

Why was I so convinced that I was right?

And was I sure enough to be unsure?

Where did my opinions come from- where do any of our opinions come from?

We like to think that we are rational conscious agents in charge of our destiny but how much of who you are, is just the books you’ve read and the parents you had and the friends you made- an accident of birth in the geographic lottery!

That night as I lay drifting off to sleep I let myself wonder.

When did I become an anarchist?

Age 17 I was already quoting Godwin and Kropotkin to anyone who would listen and pretending I enjoyed listening to the music of Crass !

But reading those books didn’t make me an anarchist. I read those books because I was already an anarchist.

Half way between waking and sleep the answer came to me. A black oval hanging in the air in front of me.

The memory of a tiger burning bright.

Tyger Tyger, burning bright,
In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies.
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand, dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder, & what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? & what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain,
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp,
Dare its deadly terrors clasp!

When the stars threw down their spears
And water’d heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

Tyger Tyger burning bright,
In the forests of the night:
What immortal hand or eye,
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

William Blake 1757-1827

It started back in junior school when I was Seven.

I’d come from my old school with a glowing recommendation but this new school was tough. I didn’t have any friends and I was bored. They were making me repeat year 2 so I’d be the same age as the other kids. It was humiliating.

When the headmaster announced in school assembly that there was going to be an Easter Egg painting competition, I marched back to class full of excitement. As soon as the headmaster had finished speaking I had decided what I was going to make.

Here was a chance for me to show them what I could do!

I began to plan my egg.

Mum had recently introduced me to William Blake’s poem “ Tyger, Tyger burning bright ” and I decided my egg would be decorated with the picture of a tiger.

I lay awake that evening, the egg hovering in the air in front of me.

First the background colour resolved itself into a solid deep reflective black. Then slowly, stripe by stripe the head of the tiger came to life in gold. Finally the eyes – two rubies, fiery red, burning bright.

As I drifted off to sleep the egg seemed to me, already complete.

When I woke the next morning I began to plan how I would turn my dream into a prize winning entry.

I had never undertaken anything so complicated. I can’t remember painting anything before but like most kids I must have brought home strangely shaped blobs of paint I claimed were pictures of my parents.

What I had done was paint and assemble model aeroplanes and I knew that to get the kind of deep glossy finish that I wanted for my egg I would have to use the same kind of paint.

I was seven years old- but I knew enough about my own limitations to know that I would have to be extremely slow and careful if I was to carry this off.

My first step was to prepare the egg. Selecting a large size egg, free from blemishes I carefully stuck a pin through both ends and blew out the contents.

Blowing out the yoke was quite tricky but there were advantages to having a tomboy mum who robbed bird’s nests as a child. She showed me how to jiggle the pin inside the egg until the tough membranes were broken.

Sealing the holes with a drop of molten wax, I put the egg safely away and that night as I sank into sleep the tiger roared through my dreams.

Over the course of the next week I slowly and carefully began to create my masterpiece.

First I painted the whole egg a glossy and sleek black. I wanted to be sure the egg would last so I applied three coats of paint, drying each layer thoroughly over night before beginning the next.

Tapping it with my fingernail made the reassuring click of a laquer jewelery box.

When I was ready for the gold stripes I painstakingly began applying one tiny dot of paint at a time. I would take the smallest amount of paint I could onto the paintbrush and make just one dot. Then I would carry the egg in it’s cotton wool bed and leave it on the boiler to dry over night.

I took no chances. I knew that a slip would be disastrous.

I can remember the pine table I worked on as mum prepared our evening meal in the kitchen next door. Slowly, slowly the tiger began to take shape.

With only a week to go I made a terrible mistake !

Too much paint on the brush, a smudge trying to clean it. I squashed my rising panic and put the egg back on top of the boiler until after school the next day.

A dot of black paint and the damage was fixed. I breathed a sigh of relief. I would have to be more careful. Another night to dry. I’d lost a couple of days but I could still meet the deadline for the Easter egg competition!

I was ready for the final touch. Today I would make two dots in red. Those eyes burning bright. There and … there. I was finished.

I was elated with what I had created. It was exactly how I had imagined it would be.

For the final touch I found on old watch display case lined in velvet and carefully laid it inside. It looked good enough to sell in a shop.

Excitement mounting I placed the box in my satchel and headed into school. I went straight to reception to hand my entry into the competition. All the other eggs were displayed on a special table and as I glanced over the entries I knew without a doubt that I was going to win. My egg was twice as good as any egg there! I proudly handed it in and waited for the good news.

You’ve probably guessed already that I didn’t win the competition. I didn’t even come second or third.

They wouldn’t even let me play the game.

The headmaster called me into his office. I was pretty nervous. I didn’t think I’d done anything wrong. Both my parents were teachers! I was a good kid!

I can still remember his sad face and his grey suit as he explained to me that my Tiger’s Egg could not possibly have been made by a seven year old child . It had clearly been made by an adult and so it couldn’t be entered into the competition.

My angry tears could not persuade him otherwise, neither could my mothers frustrated phone call. No doubt he thought he knew her type.

I wasn’t completely naive. I knew adults could be wrong, especially teachers. There’d been that thing a couple of years before with my year 1 student teacher. She’d been trying to teach the mathematics of area to the class but she’d got it wrong and I kept trying to explain to her how she was wrong but she didn’t seem to like that. Eventually the guy in the suit who’d been sitting in on the lesson had to take over and ask me to explain it.

He seemed quite amused by the whole thing but Miss Clarke was not happy. He was her examiner or something and I had made her look bad.

But in the headmasters office that day I learnt that other people’s mistakes could have consequences for my life. I learnt that life was cruel and random and unfair and that I was at the mercy of forces beyond my control.

I got angry. And I promised myself that from that moment on I would be my own judge and care for no one’s opinion but my own. No one got a free pass just because they had a title or a badge. If I had to prove myself to them, they would have to prove themselves to me. I would make my own way, I would find my own voice.

Because frankly. The grown ups had fucked it all up.

The Tiger’s egg lay forgotten on the top of my cloths cupboard for months until one of my brothers “friends” found it and crushed it. By then it didn’t matter.

A cold hard shell surrounded me. Inside, a rage waited, patient and unforgiving like a predator crouched over a waterhole.

From time to time as I drifted off to sleep the black oval of the egg would hover in the air above me- the tiger, burning bright

Waking up the day after Brexit I had a new sense of purpose.

Some where along the way I had become lazy and indolent. I had retreated from the glamour and clamour of the Spectacle , I had let self reliance become isolation- but worse, I had lost touch with that inner voice that cries out, this is wrong this is unjust, It doesn’t have to be this way!

That seven year old anarchist would look at me with contempt- but I could still teach him a thing or two.

I decided that day that I would be my own judge and jury, that I would allow no man or woman to stand between my soul and my god.

I reaped the rewards of that decision for many years.

• I questioned everything and that lead me into uncharted territory.
• I chose my own moral compass and that taught me how to navigate, how to lead.
• I became a jack of all trades so I relied on no one.
• I learnt how to keep safe in hostile environments so I could explore the cracks in the world.
• I slipped easily between tribes, embracing friends from the gutter to the stars.

But there was a cost.

• I travelled far from the safe ground of home.
• I lost belief and trust in a benevolent authority.
• I lost my way trying to fit in
• I stopped relying on other people. In self reliance I lost inter-dependence and became isolated
• I chose scarcity over abundance
• I stopped believing in the roles I was playing and saw myself for the fool I was.

And I realised something that morning. I was never going to change my mind. And that was ok. All I had to do was advocate for that seven year old anarchist, to make sure his voice was heard.

Because we have to make space for everyones voice.

We have to create safe spaces were we can express ourselves, freely, creatively.

We have to communicate with each other with love and with respect - and through that communication we have to build communities in which we can play together , because playing is how we learn to collaborate and build value.

So here I am on steemit.

What are the key events in your life that formed your opinions?

Are you sure enough to be unsure?

Let me know what you think in the comments and thanks for reading! I’m looking forward to getting to know you.

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