Page one again, how did we get here?

Taken individually, and individuals we are, each Internet user is able to come up with enough justifications to justify being online. On an individual basis. Let's assume whole nations as tribes of individuals, the ones making up these nations that are in a position to afford it - are online. Let's say everyone with a bank account jumped on the bandwagon and into the conversation, whatever was being discussed. Got that image? Good. Let's enlarge it. When the cat's away the mice will play. We're the cats.

I wonder why it is Jimmy Carter doesn't just come right out and say it. Maybe he doesn't use the Internet. Who is out there who will risk it?

I remember those days, we were still reading newspapers and watching TV. Our Internet use was intermittent, mostly scholarly then. There were still stores in the malls, places to go, films, theater, concerts, dinners and events. In retrospect, we were too busy to care a whole hell of a lot about politics. We voted if we remembered to vote. The TV determined our vote. Everything beyond the TV seemed to be unfolding normally ... until ... very suddenly too, there was a commotion in the headlines about vote recounts and hanging chads, a lot of peoples' votes were not counted, a general confusion rocked the nation, something big was happening and only the thieves knew where it would lead. The momentum of normalcy and the illusion of progress held us as firmly as if we were lobotomized and lassoed to our chairs. Months after 911 our welcome pages asked questions for us and supplied the answers. "When can we be happy again?" "Is it okay to go shopping yet?" Do you remember that part? You'll note the Internet played a large role then which ballooned over the Earth as the days and nights following September Eleventh wore on.

It is important now and will always be important to unravel the knot. The position we are in requires complete transparency of every detail contributing to our demise. Our demise is worsening, of course you see it too, some want us to know its too late. It isn't too late. To say it is too late is to allow our situation to continue to worsen. Some of the blubber absolutely needed to be lost, like the prices the medical/pharmaceutical industry jacked up beyond reach, although instead of shrinking to being within reason, you know what happened. What DO you think they have in mind while they debate Health Care for All? Ho ho. And another, more snakes swallowing their tails, the corporations have used up everything we used to buy and have nothing to sell now, no one to sell them to, a fine howda ya do. Just like the Illusion, grabbing, shoving, to get the last easy oil, jackbooting over all the dead bodies and not getting it. What can the Illusion get now that they sold everything they needed to sustain this nation? They ate themselves alive.

The hollow state we find ourselves in today is that of trivialization. The governor's tryst I'm afraid, is another slant on Blaggy's last stand, it runs together on the monitor, the media is giving them names to separate these trivias. This is only another wall of cover. As we look at the stones making up that wall, we see it was many years in the making, but will last centuries if allowed to exist. These stones, piled upon each other like the stones in the Pyramids and Machu Picchu are the tombstones of history. We are remembered by our tombstones.

Does it make you question your sanity? When something outside of yourself has you asking that question, you know there is great trouble at hand. This is not a position a thinking person will tolerate for very long. To suppose we'd all just shut up and go away is the assumption of people thinking about their next move, not what they did to you by the last one. Oh, they do not care, What me worry? Why should they, they see we are Occupado. To them, the evil magicians of white phosphorus waving taser wands, we're still pussycats busy licking the catnip.

It doesn't matter what we talk about anymore, who we are or what interesting things we do with our lives as long as the Nine Eleven Wall is in place. Almost a decade has passed and it is growing higher, sturdier still. Are we going to just accept it and trivialize our way through the bloody aftermath?

Haven't you imagined what the planning behind the scenes must have been like, the meetings, the money and sweat? The secret Energy collusion, the crimes committed in advance of the big crime? To go there, to really work it out in your mind is nearly impossible. Their thinking went like this: When something appears as impossible to understand, we generally take it for granted no one would willingly take on the work or the risk of being a spokesperson for the ugly truth.

Now, here we are, watching the Planet self-destruct and knowing it did not have to happen the way it did. But the cats were away, no one was minding the store.

Every time we talk about it, and we talk about it all the time in different words with different mental pictures connected to different experiences, I am more firm in my opinion 911 did not have to happen. All that has followed was going to happen anyway. However, if it did not include the shameless smarmy event of 911, the trail would be cleaner, but we would still know everything we now know without muddy water in the way. In other words, today we know, but it doesn't change the rest.

Dimitri Orlav was right when he suggested it will keep happening,

... Now that the reality of Peak Oil has started to sink in, one commonly hears that "The age of cheap oil is over". But does that mean that the age of expensive oil is upon us? Not necessarily. We now know (or should have learnt by now) that once oil rises to over 6% of global GDP, the world's industrial economy stalls out, and as soon as that happens, oil ceases to be particularly valuable, so much so that investment in maintaining oil production is curtailed. The next time industry tries to stage a comeback (if it ever does) it hits the wall much sooner and stalls again. I doubt that it would take more than just a couple of cycles of this market whiplash for all the participants to have two realisations: that they cannot get enough oil no matter how much they pay for it, and that nobody wants to take their money even for the oil they do have. Those who still have it will see it as too valuable to part with for mere money...

playing itself out in serial crises and catastrophes. We will see it again and then, again. There is no prevention mechanism in place. There are no punishments. They Live.

Add on to your thought process the Twilight Zone episode where Earth steadily moves away from the sun in a dream, but awake we discover its really the Earth slowly moving toward the sun and you have the poison frosting lathered into black roses as the last word in interior design beneath which all these crimes are enacted. No one will be able to survive in the latitudes of the Equator. Simultaneously the return of the Pleistocene in the Northern regions makes survival impossible there as well. Living species will attempt to squeeze in between these regions, elbow to elbow amidst desertification over here, ruined soils, toxic water, impossible winters over there, filthy air, animals and forests long-depleted. Rising sea levels. Again, rising-sea-levels ... This is Climate Chaos. Tell me you're not already seeing it. Tell me this very month of June was not three weeks of hoodies and today, tank tops and bare feet?

And now, UNDULATING clouds. Yeah, I saw them too, last winter, 2,000 miles and 6 months away from June in the midwest. They looked like cities forming in the skies. Above them, whatever activities took place, I don't know.

Sonata in D minor

Oh hello, you decided to stop by. I hope you are not expecting news because that's not what I'm serving today. You know where to get that if that's what you came for. I was out looking this morning, too. And I was disgusted. Maybe "sad" is a better word for it. How many other people were doing the same thing at the same time and "caught themselves" as they were, are, sitting upright, hands placed just so in the two-handed palms-on-plastic piano sonata in D minor? Ever seen what your face look like when you are not the one looking at it? Intense, furrowed brows, racing thoughts, one meshing into another faster than breaking the sound barrier, how much sticks? We make comments which serves as a glue ensuring our return to that one, or the other, all the while a thought balloon hovers, intentionally neglected, it says you should be doing something a little more physical, more serious, more real, in 3-D. Its like a rainstorm lingering on the horizon, you'd better bring in that laundry before the lightening and thunder starts.

I am definitely serious about this. Here we are in a fog of nonsense guaranteeing we will remain fogged. I have ALWAYS known this and yet, like you, I participate in my own ruin. This week has been especially poignant in that what I am saying today, once the thought was acknowledged, there's almost no place one visits on the box where the sadness of the Internet habitue does not show itself. All the while calling for, screeching for, demanding change and wondering why so much sheer tomfoolery proliferates.

Now we know what's going on, don't we. We read Escape from the Zombie Food Court, didn't we? And here we are, still at the counter, placing our order, looking for the cashier and a table to place our bums long enough to choff at the toxic trough. "My parsley windowbox is looking good." I plowed 40 acres before going online at dawn." My woodpile is really big and I even took the photo to show you online." My, my.

Is it any wonder all hell is breaking loose? The babysitter has us looking everywhere for our toys while outside another new law is passed practically every minute. That's right, we're under an Occupation and are too busy having the last word to see it. Inside this Occupation, we're drugged into false beliefs and inactivity aware something sinister comes this way, but not exactly certain we are on the list.

Let me lay it on you, we are. It is no accident the no-fly list has so many names, it is no accident you have too many bills to pay and no money to even prioritize them. Its no accident that drugs kill, as you know by now. There are no accidents. It is no accident you suddenly see yourself as a mere shadow of a former human being having chained yourself in front of a screen.

This is all to the good for the forces of evil. Oh, they LOVE what has happened. The evil has enlarged itself in perfect parallel to our enlarging Internet habits. Evil claims near totality and we ripple down the keys typing our anguish. "No, not Iran!" Type, type, type, backspace, enter, indent ... "No, not Jacko!" Type, type, it was painkillers again, type, type, Anna Nicole, Elvis, type, type, where's the digital, where's the email, where's the login, the password, the blog about ...

There was never a more evil device invented. The net, yes it really was once something, is in the way of the change we are looking for. And, by the way, if you have to look for it, you-will-never-find-it.

Just like I have to quit smoking, I have to quit this box. One is feeding the other, puff, puff, type, type. Days pass, weeks mush together, years, and the storm outside worsens, the laundry never taken inside, thunder and lightening shatter the panes, rain pours in through the shingles, the dawn never breaks, the houses slide down the mountains, the insurance companies deny you and charge a fee for denial, and there we are, Occupado. "I feel very strongly that our nation blah, blah, blah, the world leaders are meeting to blah, blah, blah, ObyWan, in a rare criticism of blah, blah, blah, Rihanna will testify blah, blah, blah, genocide, blah, blah, blah, weapons that burn the skin, blah, blah, blah, in various stress positions hung by the arms behind his back blah, blah, blah."

Hey, let's get real here.
We are doing nothing. At what point did your free time become all the time? This is reminding me of scrimping on the necessities to afford the luxuries. When did doing something to improve your lot and the lots of everyone else become scrimped between commenting and seeing your comment? Between that one site you gotta see today and the one you are reading right now? How has this addressed something helpful, something physical in the real world?

It is a sad story growing sadder, everywhere I look. How lonely, bored and gullible are we? How failed, how clueless, how ineffectual and hopeless do we have to become before you realize what has happened? Below I quote a few lines from a recent email:

"...Everything done online is monitored, and I mean everything. This is not the place to actually "get anything done". This should be incredibly obvious, but as we know, it isn't. The Internet is incredibly dangerous, while actually being near-useless as a change mechanism. Isn't that funny? What a perfect setup.
If we're ever going to make real connections to real people, and where it really counts, it won't happen here. All the promises of the Internet are false. If they were true, "it would have happened already".

It-would-have-happened-already. A-perfect-setup. More truthful words were never spoken. I am in total agreement and always have been. As I said in my last essay, I have some experience how these thing happen and how we must navigate our own way home. You are free to type something in response articulating so many reasons how the community of your Internet has improved your life, how much you've learned, how its a living web of protest and the only true change we've ever been allowed blah, blah, blah. Meanwhile, the circus of blood and parking meters rages on unimpeded, growing ever larger, thundering, whirling into cyclones destroying every land mass, body of water, living species blah, blah, blah. We are Dorothys and Totos, the tin men and women, the munchkins, amazed at the poppy fields and wicked witch, breaking into song on the Yellow Brick Road. Oh yes, we know, we know a lot, but we just can't seem to get home. Ask yourself why that is.

Fine tuning uncharted territory

I just had a synchronicity seeing the image of a swirling toilet bowl on the TV screen while thinking about Visible's post, Down the cosmic toilet bowl into the fires of hell. Synchronicity noted, we can certainly understand and share his sentiments. Its a crazy world getting crazier. We used to think there would be an end to it, at some point, few realized what a long slough it would turn out to be. Once you get the hang of observing, there is no end to the in-sanity.

For example, Dadnerd recently stated "... The ego wants, it desires, it is all about itself. ... It is an illusion." Thinking about that will direct you to the mystery chapter concerning a branch of medicine known as shrinking. You can see where this leads. It leads me right back to Joe Bageant's Escape from the Zombie Food Court. And more, right into Charles Eisenstein's Gathering of the Tribe who volunteered to solve the problems on Planet Earth. It leads to factual derealization (see Charles Hugh Smith's definition over there in the right column.) and empowers a phony representative self who leads you around on a choke collar. From Freud to green shoots to the Tuskeegee Experiment to the sandwich bagging of sample-sized shampoo, we were stuck in thought cages manipulating our breathing space.

If 911 never happened, how much longer would it have taken to reach an apocalypse, the unveiling? Where would we be now? All of our representative selves would be telling our egos we were missing a few screws. The derealization we experienced would have worked its evil and we'd be hoarders, living behind walls, broken appliances, engine blocks, maybe a school bus or two strewn around the place, swimming pool drained to a fishpond and penniless anyway since the debt meter is still running no matter what we do. No matter what they do. Shotgun marriages just don't work. Nothing works but love. The answer to everything, always, it never fails, does it? Love is all there is. Love is the beginning and the end of everything, you either get it completely or you utterly, spectacularly fail to see it.

On other planets there are love people, I am sure of this. Or maybe the Love Planet is in the Human Realm and we will be among our kind for thirty thousand years.

This program we've been subject to is a conundrum in that it distorts into multiples of fakery as it descends. A millenniums-long mass punking. There is no humor in it. Its too gory. There are no holds barred in the depravity of the program designers. You can actually watch its descent taking place as it accelerates down the charts or up the charts depending on what you're watching. Depression level - high, going higher. Retail sales - low, going lower.

There are only two ways to survive it. Ignore it and trudge onward in spite of it, ignorance is bliss, a limited plan, but available for survival through sheer happenstance. Or, the direct route, move into Plan B immediately. Everybody not ignoring the situation does not have the same Plan B, but we all make adjustments as required to insure our own Plan B's viability.

Last year I wrote we were surviving the brutal winters using only our fireplace for warmth. Despite having deleted my archives documenting why it was we chose this route, its worked out well and taught us the hard work of firewood collection is always going to be a year round activity. If you've never tried it, you wouldn't realize how quickly your stash is depleted. To be any good at at, you'll need fifty to one hundred times the firewood you'd imagine. As we move along with Plan B, what we've learned about wood banking parallels the quantitative need in storable foods. Never mind that clothing is the last on the list. You're going to be getting down and dirty, so threadbare tees and jeans with holes are the fashion of choice, if you have any choice at all. Eventually, your only concern will be surviving the elements.

Most of you reading this might find these words amusing while you are sitting in front of your freestanding, slim, liquid crystal display, feet on desk, cellphone earpiece active, secure in the knowledge the propane delivery truck is pulling into your home's drivway at this very hour. Okay, how long do you think that will last? Your tank probably holds a one month supply. And then what? How is your state doing? Your nation? Your community, you? Did the military industrial complex secure Iraq's vast oil fields?

I'm not going to attempt to convince anyone of anything here. People always have to find out the hard way anyway. That's the worst way to go about survival which we all know is about being prepared. The only edge I have over my species going through the crash is I crashed earlier and have some experience with how it works. First of all, you have to do all of the work by yourself if you ever want anything to work again. Its helpful to retain your sense of humor. And just like the woodpile, in order to work smoothly, it requires more humility than you knew you had. That's not groveling I'm talking about, its gratitude for having the experiences you always knew were most important, experiences that the crazy world of the Illusion denies us until it can no longer be denied.

The crash is actually a paradigm shift. Let me clear up another generally misinterpreted detail, the Illusion is not necessarily the government either, or the educational system, it is much more preponderant that a single entity, it is social mores founded in religious beliefs approved by the government and their educative counterparts, all of which is bullhorned by every media venue every second of every single day and night. The ads are generic images of the system idealized. It was never possible to emulate it in the capacity it was thrust upon the human element. The Illusion is still here, still bullhorning, but bullhorning into an empty choir loft. We hear they won't be able to keep this up more than a month or two, by fall the underground forecast is guaranteeing "bigger and worse" than the bigger and worse we've already seen.

We become inured. I'd almost go over to the other side of ignorance and bliss if I had the money to do it. As it is, having been driven by increments into destitution accompanied by the occasional displacement, I figured out the larger patterns mostly on my own by osmosis. The rest came in leaps and chunks of brilliance from like minded others, none comes from those caught up in the program that don't realize they are in a program. I have much compassion for this group, all of the suffering and confusion awaits them. I've seen some comments around today that spell doom for this crowd, deeply possession-oriented, convinced in their inviolate correctness. You can tell them nothing. They've invested everything, they have their ears locked on the bullhorns. Their actions are unhelpful to everyone else. They prolong the inevitable, worsening the crises by emulating the loudest bullhorns as less effectual, regional bullhorns, always introducing more delusions further inflating the Illusion.

Try not to get caught up in them. They never come right out and say what you are doing is wrong, instead they work behind you making regulations to prevent your success and harp on the negatives in your Plan B. By standing there in front of you in the very image of fascism idealized, your dirty work boots are a shabby representation of your total self in their eyes.

When this happens, muster up that sense of humor in the nonsense of the moment, recall your humility, be compassionate. Be strong. Come this fall, they will likely be singing the blues desperate to know how your survival is possible. You should show them then what real living is all about and be kind about it. That is the biggest lesson I learned along those weary roads, kindness is the key and love is the door.

Rules for getting along in the New World post crash:
1. Accept the reality of what is.
2. Do no harm.
3. Maintain your physical and your mental health.
4. Remove yourself immediately from the potential for damage.
5. Keep your higher self out front and available at all times, eradicate any vestige of a representative self so that all your thoughts, words and deeds are united.
6. Flow with nature.
7. Replace regret with heal, help and repair. Our language is as much at fault for our programming as the program itself.
8. Embrace the fire of transformation with trust and awe.

The rules are in random order and all have the same priority. Staying focused and open minded is important too, but easily twisted since these terms are flexible depending on who uses them.

egos in the woodchipper

In the unlikely event you haven't noticed, things are heating up out there. Your view and my view are probably going to be different because I take thought leaps which make for a very long view. I know not everyone arrives at conclusions which seem obvious to me and lately all the thought leaps I laid out moons ago are taking on physical form. Consider any one of the immediate crises for example, and you will find elements contained within each that are rooted in all crises. This is why I've made seemingly incredulous statements such as "China issued a margin call and we are heading into the Amero" in reference to the economy. As we move along in that direction, many things take place to deny my theses. The distractions of acronym bandages, personalities, numbered G meetings, natural and unnatural catastrophes, all the other crises clamoring for solution, take away our attention from one to another until we sound like Twitterers at the bird feeder, but birds don't go to war. It was just a matter of time before Twitter was hacked, what is there that isn't hackable anymore? Any megaphone is ripe for spreading propaganda, even if its your personal information sold to an entity that "loses" it enroute to another buyer. We're going to have another war. That much is clear. It will be the worst war ever.

The US wants a big war to pull itself out of economic free fall. That will be one objective, the other equally pressing objective is the same IED-pockmarked Neocon objective you've been seeing unfold, wading through blood in the streets to usurp the Mideast's oil supply. These objectives are not lost on our enemy brethren grouping together to figure out how to decouple from the dollar. You'd have to think they are prepared to leave the US out by any means. This is what greed, desperation, death and torture has wrought.

What do they think of when they think of American interests? They easily see the past decade as one huge collaring by noose of their sovereign lands. The truth of this story is in the geography. The problem appears as huge and complex, but simple when paralleled with maps of world resources. Have you noticed this? Have you noticed when the US goes in for the take, it never leaves and the corporatocracy emerges ruthlessly claiming shares, making laws, outfitting a decision-making body mirroring the lassitude of its own vested watchdogs ? It is the rush and grab of the last easy oil, more valued than diamonds or souls. Everything outta the way, here come the mercenaries and the miseries. It does not matter what historic value was held where, nothing is sacred when foreclosure is ordained. No tactic too harsh, too brutish, too under-handed, too dirty. Counterfeiting? That's nothing in these times, hey, its probably de rigeur. You can bet torture will show up carrying a carpetbag and camera phones too. Ahh, but worry not, they want you to know the US does not do white phosphorus.

You know I hate to get on this way. Looking at it is anguish. This isn't how we want to be. But we are just the little people observing, shut out if you will, while the war plans are acted on and the Earth combed clean of everything it needs to support life, not at gunpoint so much as at nuclear warhead, DU, UG99, pandemics, deforestation, overfishing, toxic waste dumping, toxic assets tranched into silk purses, demolition of pensions, demolition of faith ... Where does the US get the idea the remainder of the world is stupid? Maybe from its own citizenry who always fall into line with another deviant diversion, excuse and justification, more burgers, more slushys, more Pelosi, property taxes, bills, furloughs, bankruptcies, its a regular tinseltown Bonfire of the Vanities.

I am just not able to pretty up this picture, if you think I have it skewed, ask why are we in, uh, how many wars right now? Its all one war designed to keep a high living lifestyle afloat while the little people are chained below deck. Who's mother's son, who's father's daughter is next?

The real problem with this picture is the position it puts the rest of us into. It is more than clear we don't matter in this equation. Its like being caught in an argument you never meant to enter, you know who is right and who is wrong, but your input is the last thing they want. They are hell bent on seeing it through, each insisting on the moral high ground, witnesses, coalitions, courts and attacks and there you are, the taxi driver with a family, dying to get away from the fallout. If you want to get home, the one thing you must never do is use what any of them is doing to further your own agenda.

... If a man has some awareness of higher levels and knows that he is free to be anywhere in the universe, he may then seek to justify taking part in a physical game. The most self-flattering way to disguise his appetite is to see himself as a bringer of enlightenment, of purity, of virtue. No one, not even he, will question his motives and results: isn't he doing what he says he is doing? If others fail to reach his height, it's not his fault—and thus he keeps the game going forever. It's self-renewing as long as he is unwilling to see that his own vibrations emphasize the evil and ignorance he sees. The more he hates evil, the more evil there is to hate ... Thaddeus Golus, The Lazy Man's Guide to Enlightenment

Be aware of how it always works to no good end.

Back roads-eye view

On his way home from the jobsite, the fireteacher was passing though a hundred miles of bad road, lonely stretches of weeds, no dwellings, the occasional Sage families, around 6 p.m. Up ahead, he saw the taillights brake on a farmworker's pickup. The driver dumped something on the road and took off. The fireteacher slowed to look. There was Louis. When they got home, I was called outside and yes, it was an instant bond. At first I thought he looked like Peter Lorre, but that's all changed now. That night, Louis and I chatted in a shaft of moonlight from the tallest window. We talked about his suffering through abandonment, he wouldn't have lasted an hour out there, about what he might have experienced of life so far, especially as an unwanted pup on the verge of adolescence and assured him he was home at last. We've had a great time together ever since. He sleeps on the end of the bed already. He shines on a leash. Comes to his name. Its a lock. A win-win. I live in a houseful of males. That includes the Guinea Pigs. Louie's story is a metaphorical parallel to landing in Shambhala.

I hardly know what financial terror driven drivel is supporting the Illusion this week. It runs together like tears dripping down the page, smearing distinctions. It is stunning to me that there are not nearly as many intelligent people around as we would like to think. I had a few encounters with merchants over the past seven days and have nothing good to report. Ahem. While it was always grueling to go into town, these most recent sojourns have been less than chilly. Workers at every place I visited have lost their smiley face. They are able to glaze their ways through routine mechanical tasks, but they physically turn away when you look at the receipt and your stomach drops twenty feet. Its the same with the auto mechanics to the framers to the supermarket cashiers. Each of them lost in a paranoid thought bubble in a ballet class. You do not want to hear about all the nickle and diming going on out there, I'm sure you see it yourself as you start juggling which priorities you can live without. But why do these hourly rate types sink into stupor? And there is a difference between these workers and the salaried who exist in a leveraged universe currently in freefall ... They have always done the best they could in most situations, see themselves as good persons, going along with the program in a timely fashion only to arrive at this moment in history, juggling their own priorities, maybe they can slide another month on the rototiller ... some days they wonder what is going on when there is time to wonder. Except when the card goes in the little reader, then there is a spark of real communication, a shared knowing, but it passes quickly into bagging and what Admin at Survival Acres means when he says BAU, business as usual.

I know we like to wonder into the future, always thinking a little ahead, asking how this multiplies, perhaps it extends indefinitely, gradually worsening. At some point, there are no corners left to cut. Here we are again, why is all this happening? Resource depletion. Too many of us. These are the great Energy Wars trickling down to a hundred miles of bad road, lonely stretches of weeds, no dwellings, the occasional Sage families. Its a long road.

The bills flow in like bodies in the Tigris

See the USA in your Chevrolet, America is asking you to call
Drive your Chevrolet through the USA, America's the greatest land of all

On a highway, or a road along the levy, Performance is sweeter, nothing can beat her
Life is completer in a Chevy ...
So make a date today to see the USA, And see it in your Chevrolet

Traveling East, Traveling West, Wherever you go Chevy service is best
Southward or North, near place or far, There's a Chevrolet dealer for your Chevrolet car, So make a date today to see the USA, And see it in your Chevrolet.

Performed by Dinah Shore in a 1959 Impala Convertible.

Its entirely possible the US auto industry is being demolished so we will have to buy all our vehicles from China to satisfy the Bond Holders. We can't be so naive as to think the Bond Holders would be pleased for very long with this arrangement. Working the Canadian tar sands is a desperate, dirty job at best and they expect to pay plenty for the privilege. Shall we remind our US dealmakers the US installment credit system has evaporated? Americans subliminally fantasize the Chinese consumer wants to look like rugged Marlboro men ripping into war zones goggled in their cammie flaks and Hummers, but somehow I don't think the typical Chinese consumer is too enamored with us anymore. Aside from our loss in status on the world markets and the errand boys scofflawing side to side, doing the bob and weave in Rolex, we are no longer stepping up to the plate on our side of the deal either, which means Chinese exports gathering thick layers of dust in warehouses and freighters idled, bow to the wind. Its true we don't want the melamine, its also true imperialism comes at a high price. Its a good idea to keep an eye on the people who let your home slide into foreclosure when they have a moral compass opposite to yours.

I apologize if you are feeling a little neglected here lately. I've been busy in the Gallery. Its such a high, I think I am addicted. Heh, but addictions always have that other side, don't they? The "coming down" part. I'm just as addicted to blogging, so fear not, its only a matter of time. Like a day or two. Okay, that's what they always say and then its "just one more", I swear, this one last time and I'll quit. Well, we shall see about that. I'm pretty strong. And we're in a bad way in the real world, there is lots to talk about and lots of commiseration to be worked through. What will happen when the Imperialists have their own "come downs"? Uh, a passing fancy, you have to be human to experience the depths of coming down. Look at all the human beings around you coming down at this very moment! Gawd, its nasty. Writhing and moaning and puking on dirty mattresses in storefront rehabs... Ah, where's the community organizer?

Yes, yes, I care. I know you care too. Its painful to see it. And its everywhere now. There are however, still powerful strongholds of sheer denial, but these only show us how much worse it will get - all too soon. They cling and screech and build towers of lies upon crumbling, demolished towers of ash and thermite, they are the Rockettes in a Busby Berkeley Gold Diggers black and white. Scores of synchronized swimmers rising out of rose-petaled cesspools in a pre-LSD psychedelic vision tap-dancing up the stairway to the stars, pirouetting round, a thousand bare arms reaching into your pocket, open palm after another open palm, acrylic-nailed fingers rummaging for that last dime. You couldn't give it up even if you had one, we're all out of dough, out of soul, out of solutions, out of our homes, cars, schools, food, heirloom seeds, credit, young men and women, we're all out of band-aids and that means its very, very dangerous. When they have no band-aids left, and they are running low, the balloon bursts and that will be it.

Meanwhile we're fiddling while Rome burns over in the Gallery, I mean, what else is there to do with all this anguish but go on living and while you're living why not live it up?

photo credit: Wikipedia

Balance in Chaos

I have little to add to the noise. There are a number of fine writers out there chronicling the chaos unfolding on our lovely Planet, see my blog list. I suppose the truth is that I don't want to. I've prepared my list of Values and the Valued and am getting down to it. I note that in actually spending time away from this blog, already there are little grumblings of discontent. Perhaps its my imagination? I was asked in several different ways if I was bored. As if anyone could be bored in paradise, as if I have no appreciation for the amazing wonders before us in these times? Maybe, more to the point, questioners and naysayers are themselves bored. Bored with the slow crash and all of its attendant personal sleepless nights and yawning days into a state of never ending anxiety ... "What will I do?" and "How will we survive?" and "Will I be all alone?"
I think this kind of attitude is one we are conditioned to subscribe to as our western culture subscribes to having a government make the rules. There might be a plaque in the Oval Office that reads "The World Turns on Sex and Money." This means there would be executive signatures on every bill that promotes sex or money. Thus we have an overpopulation crisis out of control and record poppy yields in Afghanistan. Thus we've taken practically zero heed of Peak Oil, climate chaos, the disintegration of the global economy, the growth of the military industrial complex, the freezing in place of the population, pork spending, special interests, education, tent cities, the states' systems and infrastructures literally crumbling as we wonder how much worse is it going to get? Oh, much worse. Wait until its in your living room, if its not there already. You hear it on the news, now you're hearing it from your loved ones.

Like I said, I don't really want to add to the noise. Please stop with the nonsense and get one thing straight, we will get through this. We should know by now it will get much worse, you do know that, it has to, so get comfortable with the way things are and make your peace with the present. Then plan, act on your plans, see them through. Anxiety is not a plan. Wringing your hands does what. It only makes you more deeply conflicted and nothing improves.

I reach for art. You reach for whatever it is that focuses your meditations. Distraction away from fear of that over which you have no control is more than a solution, it is always a renaissance. Clear heads steer us out of darkness. In this way, lost is found. Loss is gain. Less is more. Negative turns to positive. The movie is over, you are no longer the tragic sufferer walking alone to nowhere. The new show has already started and you are the lead learning your lines as you go along.