Is it true? Am I getting the vibe we need a new post today? Have patience, maybe tonight or tomorrow. I'm working my way slowly through the results of proven stupidity as if we lived in the olden days when summer meant swimming and nothing could ever, ever harm us. We so badly want to go back there, we will subject ourselves brazenly to schizophrenia by jumping blind and deaf into icy water chlorinated and teeming with the germs of the new reptilian unknown. Weeks after the fact the truth comes home to roost. Is there any place untainted anymore? From Austria to Antioch, from the southern plantation doublewide to the Aylesbeare Commons to Little Big Horn, karma tells the story laying out the future in ways not even Tinseltown dare broadcast on our entertainment dishes. The legions of empty dwellings, flat colorless discs with bulging eyes, hanging sideways off the barbecue decks, are all that is left behind after recent human occupation, the family swansong, the dishes, pointing aimlessly at firesmoke skies reflecting orange on tumbleweed carried by the winds of these New World days. Beauty shields the beast within.
We nailed it down. My brother, his elegant adolescent daughter and I took the community plunge. The others lagged under a sunbrella browsing magazines. We got a nasty gift that keeps on giving, the control group remains healthy. It comes and goes with dizziness, getting-off-a-boat dizziness, and posting focus is weak at best.
Reading focus is remarkably intense. Is this the Vista flu I wondered? Where every effort to say something is blocked by security pop ups? Regardless, looking at art is redeeming. Looking at other people looking at art is almost as sweet as falling in love. We can still love, can't we, even though love is sorely lacking from the very hearts that need it most? I will recover from pool germs in a relatively short time, but I am convinced our love of culture is gravely ill.
Nurse, shake the shoulders of the former Veep and tell him he is without love, gravely misguided, lost and rasping hollow on the airwaves, no one believes a word, he speaks to whom?
And cleverly, AP wants to break our shattered piggybanks into shards of porcelain stuck between the fibers in the Berber, thus no links, its all smarting on your welcome pages anyway, headline after headline calling out, torturing a people chemicaled into homogenized, pasteurized, chlorinated and fluoridated, gum cracking, hip-hopping, ear-pieced, twittering, unnatural representatives of the dizzied body politic.
30 comments:
Wow. A tone poem for our new millennium that set my heart aflutter by making perfectly good sense.
Thanks, Nina. I needed that.
Somewhere in there you are, you know.
yes your words do flow as if performed in a beat club slam - the Anti-twit balm.
That was a great era Chickory, spawned by the same reappearing organisms. Perhaps when it too came upon them, they burst into staccato phrasing and stopped wondering.
Traveling on the blog highway today, I'm seeing a lot of it. It initially reads as semi-regional, but quickly goes global.
I have to say I truly love the abandoned farmhouse.
The rotten roof, the peeling paint, The rust stains and the gaping windows, the 'I'm going to eat your leg,' porch. The truly massive impermanence of somebody's most treasured space, lovingly added to as the years came on. How sweet the uncaring hills. How mysterious the roadbank with the stripe that says 'I could be rail, i could be asphalt'. So new and white and empty of life. Like bones made fresh with no flesh while the decrepit flesh watches.
That 'un sings.
We retreat to art because it is immune to false names. A great piece will be named whatever the people call it regardless of the artist's preferred convention. Note the banker's heart:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/thomashawk/348052086/
Nobody in San Francisco knows it by any other name.
hahahaha, I haven't been there in a while.
When you put All Things Must Pass next to Cold as a Banker's Heart, its Steinbeck updated.
somebody praised your comment on CFN as kerouac prose. your writing is quite a refreshing respite over there!
i wish i could dismantle an old farmhouse and rebuild it at my place. as it is, i would be very happy with a shed.
Thanks for telling me, Chickory, its a real free for all over there sometimes, I never really thought anybody would read it. No matter, I read JHK anyway. He's always worth it.
And okay, yes, a shed would do! I'd even go for a room.
Pangolin mentioned something that kept driving home as I went on with that house, which is "lovingly added to as the years came on", that believe it or not, inspired the faux, multi-roofed tract home of our times. Yes, that popular California ranch house theme, adopted and recreated millions of times is rooted smack inside the basic human need to "lovingly add on". Brilliant Pango. That the updated models are totally, wastefully faux, price padded with cheaply imported materials, signifying inaccessible, empty space, is just another indicator of how far out on the weakest limb greed has gone.
Oh, the tales I could tale of the back-road hippy houses I've seen. For many years my Tai Chi instructor in Sonoma County lived in a former chicken coop that had been improved on the inside to not-quite resemble a normal suburban home. The illusion was quickly broken by a floor so warped that a marble dropped on the floor of the kitchen would have shattered in the impossibility of deciding which corner to roll into.
Another house, home to our home-birth, baby group, co-family, was a Winchester mystery house built in miniature. This house had no less than 25 roof surfaces and seven floor-level changes in about 1,100 sq. feet of space. As far as I could tell rain simply avoided the roof for fear of never reaching the ground in the maze of drainage. This place probably burned to the ground in last years fires. Everything else in that valley did.
One of the nastiest things we have done to ourselves is to engineer our culture so that homes are something we purchase like a finished suit. We trade the illusion of completion for slavery to the banks and sell the cow for the magic beans but never the beanstalk.
Where, where, is our giant killer? You out there Jack?
word: grall (bladder? a source of spiritual bile?)
Jack got laid off. His unemployment ran out. His mother disowned him. The market rallied.
Pretty typical.
I love your stories. I bet that kitchen did a lot for your balance.
Chickory, it occurs to me you left a CFN comment also, do please tell me which page? It was up to 14 earlier. Eeeeeee!
Stories? Hah!! Those aren't stories. I've got 'strange attractors' in my genetics and weird chit just happens to me. That or it seeped in with the fog when I was a kid in San Francisco and the Bay Area.
If you really want good balance what you do is go to San Francisco and 'surf the MUNI.'
First you find a route with an electric trolley bus; the kind with the overhead wires. You want these buses because they have incredible acceleration and they also have the routes with the steepest hills. (evil chuckle) The 22 Fillmore was my personal favorite. Here's your MUNI Wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_San_Francisco_Municipal_Railway_lines
Then you choose the Ocean or Bay side of the line and find a nearby chinese restaurant and fill up on Saturday morning dim sum. This is essential for good ballast as well as practical training in not losing your lunch in a crisis. Mind, you DID get up at 6:00 A.M. and join the fog warriors practicing in the city parks until your legs were jello. You EARNED that lunch but watch out for the sticky rice because that stuff is greasy as hell coming and going.
Once you have paid your fare you wend your way to the rear of the bus behind a few other standees so the driver can't watch you too closely. You DO NOT sit down. True fog warriors never sit on a bus unless the driver threatens to kick you off. He doesn't want to do that because he knows that the cloth bundle on your back is your weapons bag but he's used to fog warriors and pretends indifference. Here's the fun part.
Those trolley buses have accelerations like a quarter horse and brakes to match. That bus will buck, twist, pop, drop, jolt and shudder under your feet. Your only defense is to flex into your stance You are not allowed to touch the bus with your hands. Now you're 'surfing the MUNI.' Extra points if you can manage your whole route without moving your feet from the stance chosen at the start of the ride. (dodging old ladies is permitted). Good luck.
I'm kinda hard to trip.
Belief ? / Unbelief ?
ah—hell, nuthin much on the box tonite, maybe I can see what's goin' on at Nina's fire! Maybe spark-up a discourse? Kind of miss Jj's ramblin's, Notamobster also. Had some things in common with them folk. Felt as though they'd been cyberbullied. Looked like it (only discussing concepts—hah). Aargh—but what do I know—apart from willing to finger perps? Just a ramblin' man, maybe with a ramblin' plan! Hell, felt as though I'd been set on by a Jack Russell the moment I arrived. Ah well, let's see if we can't right the wrongs, then get down to business? Now this—here are ONLY thoughts—nothin' personal, and other people have them too, probably in all likelihood exactly similar—only for one reason or another (OK—break)
ah, too embarrassed, or felt ridiculed, or set upon, belittled—only guessing. Hell, maybe I am Jj—huh? Did yah think of that? I mean how (only rambling—on topic even—bear with me!) would you know that I was, or wasn't? No deceit. Tryin' my very bestest here to be clear, or I could be quiet, and say nuthin', and ya'll would be none the wiser for it. Is that clear enough?
Yah—know Arthur, not to bark on like a Pig-hunting dog which refuses to let go, but you've poignantly highlighted, ie. bought to my attention, the very real difficulty of attempting to converse with people from differing cultures across the globe. To share common experiences, or uncommon, but share none-the-less. Why? For myself, I suppose, just as you declared—“I'd like to understand ... is all.”
This simple “declarative statement”, is what we would all ideally like, regardless of language and culture, and nyet persists in proving elusive. So much obfuscation goin'-on at the higher echelons to purposely disorientate the unsuspecting populace. The big cheeses call it mis-information, from the Propaganda Ministry. Kind of like being hurled into a top-loading washing-machine—hah
to be continued ...
Hey, I don't know whether you saw my last ah, poignant entry under yours on the previous thread? I've revealed my passions / positions without plopping as requested (and more to follow!), taken the time to enable you to understand, as best I can—so what about you Arthur? You've suggested you don't mean to be rude to me! Confessed to having trouble with me? Sounds alot like doublespeak, or as the Lakota Sioux called—“forked tongue”. So maybe you can explain what you really mean?—and that would be great also!
Still smiling! As we say downunder here in NZ, Gidday (means Hi)—You too, Nina. As has been elucidated by others, limitations exist within cybercommunity, adding to the already existing problems. And yet, as I understand it, this is the purpose of the PC—machine ; the 'democratization of knowledge' ~ one of the founders of the internet.
I actually believe this. I feel in my bones that it's high time the people took over the show—kind of Revolution—take back the power from the thieving bastards which have been deceiving us for far-too-long, to the point now, that we don't know who, or what, to believe anymore. We just keep hoping and praying, while they keep fooling us and preying. Call me an unbeliever if you like, but I no longer believe (my degree of faith doesn't extend that far), that they have our best interests at heart.
ALL the evidence, and we're talking steaming sh*tloads here, points clearly the other way: U.S. Senate bill proposes handing the White House the power to disconnect private-sector computers from the Internet—“non-governmental” computer networks and do what’s necessary to respond to the threat. Hah—did yah get that !? Who's the threat ?
Not to sound alarmist—hah, but gun-point quarantines are on there way with immune-system depleting vaccines to depopulate—yah. But don't ya'll worry yah pretty little heads about it now. Shhhh, go to sleep.
Here's a question to no one in particular, Have we been relying too much on our Governors? Maybe it's time to stand on your own two feet again. Of course, it's possible the host is now, after being promulgated and pummeled for so long, in such a weakened dependent state, that we wouldn't even know ?—where to begin—hahaha! Expertly brain-washed, tenderised by elites, so thoroughly, and successfully, we're shell-shocked into subservience! Confusion and bewilderment reign universally supreme. The herd are in transit ... to the slaughter. WAKE-UP STUPID SHEEPLE! In the words of Maria Montessori “No one can be free unless they are independent.”
Oh yeah, and have a nice day :—)
Word Verification: loguelum
Got'cha Baz. You're a strong man who's got a good deal right now with TPTB. You've got your bit to play on and they mostly leave you alone on that bit. What's it to anyone else what work you do or don't do there? They weren't there helping you and you didn't want them there anyway.
Today.
Don't get hurt man. Nothing worse than a strong man brought low by pain. Or worse, asking your body to move and not even getting a response from the required part. You get hurt too far out the back door and it's the pigs turn to eat but you know that. Man hunting alone has to be lucky EVERY day.
There's no place to stand in the world for many of us. There is no place the government isn't claiming or deeding to the banksters. TPTB don't like you and they send a whole military squad to raid your house in the middle of the night and masked cyborg 'agents' shove automatic weapons in your kids face at four in the morning. Happens to someone I know just about every year.
And they will shoot. Oh damn straight they will.
So that MINE word some folks hold on to is a LIE. It's a lie that the cyborg whispers to us to separate the strong from the weak. Wolves from the sheep, Steers from the heffers. We know what happens to steers, don't we now.
Hey, don't look here. We're just taking a few of the weak ones. Don't bother yourself about where we're taking them; do you want to come too? Then the 'borg looks at you and you KNOW you're fucked if you don't back off.
Don't bother yourself. It's just the tweakers. Just the morons. Just the gimps, gypsies, Indians, wetbacks and Maori. Just the Jews. We're just cutting out these steers to improve the herd.
You got yours know. You keep it. You don't owe them steers nothing.
Don't get hurt.
word:fulavid
I think Google's self aware. These words get spooky.
cross-posting on my blog with edits.
Feedback wanted:
Hey all... nice post Nina. Like I said before, you should be a singer-songwriter. You are... let's here the music.
I had a weird interaction with someone on the "Ontario Prepper's Network." The posts there are usually pretty lame, but not totally un-useful. But a blogger named Scarecrow mentioned the importance of getting your swine flu shot this fall.
I posted a 2 sentence comment on the possible dangers of the vaccine, especially if it contains squalene (an adjuvant that is likely behind Gulf War Syndrome, among other conditions).
Boy, did that set him off... he wrote two separate long entries about the anti-vaccine wackos... the danger they posed to society and themselves... though they have 'right' to their beliefs, but should be quarantined, etc.
WTF? I had simply pointed out that one type of one kind of vaccine MIGHT be dangerous, and I incited a really condescending rant against the anti-vaccine crowd.
I pointed out in a reply that part of being a "prepper" is to think for yourself, and that he was basically accepting the pro-vaccine party line propaganda.
Regardless, I discovered that claiming that even one vaccine might pose a hazard can really get you some incoming fire.
I think it is best to lie low in that regard this fall....
You see, I got hurt. Hurt so bad I can't find the trail back to the warm hearth. Just wandering the wilderness losing bits of my kit whenever I stop for a boil up. TPTB they whispered to what I thought was my family. Hey, you got YOURS to protect. Don't go helping him. So they wander out and give me a few kicks and tell me to get my ass back to the barn and do my chores and then they leave. Never a hand down to pull up on. No shoulder offered for a limp back.
The 'borgs been whispering to them too from the evil box. "This could be YOUR's. And THIS and this and this and this and then you will be complete. But not if you're helping others oh, no. How could you buy this if you're helping others. Be a Wolf. We've got the vultures to take care of the weak."
verification word:delet
I swear it's a Turing test.
Pangolin:
Sometimes people I meet in real life seem like they are really Turing-test programs!
Interesting twist: I tried to de-follow the Ontario Prepper's Network, and Google/Blogger will not let me do it. This error does not happen for other blogs. Ah well.. who cares anymore to even try to differentiate between technical errors and malign intent, between tainted produce and by-products of the industrial food process, between iatrogenic disease and the real things... it's all so confused that I just want to retreat.
My wife says that she now wants to head into the great White North woods to "enhance" our lives, not to escape anything. Thus, we now have similar goals for different reasons: she still sees me as an escapist.
Damn right I want to escape if I can, yet I do have a goal. I want to escape to something, for sure. That is, wanting to leave a bad town, or malignant culture, or depraved environment should not be dismissed as "escapism." Sometimes escapism is the best -ism out there, the most rational ideology, the fastest way to leave the wasteland for a more life-affirming clime.
sionses - weird!
Publius, congrats on the change-of-heart in your household. Running away from or towards is just a game of words, innit?
Pangolin, your willingness to brace yourself and surf is greatly inspiring. Hang in, man, we're heading for Maverick it seems!
I hope it ALL passes soon, somehow, wherever it is bound up and needing a good purge.
Love to all,
Z
Aha - I've been officially banned from the Ontario Prepper's Network!
My first Internet ban.
Zoner: good to see you last week... hope your liquidation program is going well.
Pango Pango, is the hurt physical? Was there some sort of an accident? When did it happen?
Pangolin:
I misunderstood your post at first - and then I read your blog.
I thought you were giving us a little fable... but now I sense that you really were hurt?
You seem pretty strong now, brother.
While I'm waiting for Pango Pango, I'd like to take a moment to recommend the Trouts newest post on the www.
The news on our little public news sites are going right along with the beats. Bongos, sunglasses, the Andromeda Galaxy is a cannibal. Madoff had at least 5 botched probes. The Station fire was human caused. Dig it?
Ka bong, ka bong.
Fables, fables, kitchen tables
stories to be told
when you owe your life
to the edge of a knife
the fables are what hold
My pain is real TO ME, like yours is real. I hurt my back in '89, and in '95, and again in '06. Soft tissue injury combined with a bit of chemical sensitivity due to exposure to raw analine dyes in quantity. The latest iteration includes peripheral neuropathy to add spice and fireworks. All this on a foundation of addictive family history (not mine, thank GAIA), clinical depression and aspergers maybe.
I am muscular, mobile and flexible but things happen behind my eyes that you don't ever want to know about aside from scary stories. So I hunker down and breathe it out and recite the prajna paramita.... Gate gate pāragate pārasamgate bodhi svāhā.... "Gone, gone, gone beyond, gone utterly beyond, Enlightenment hail!"
It's about impermanence which is a good reminder when lizard brain is telling you to look for that last bullet. OK, I don't own a gun but you get the point.
there is a gift attached.......Pain is the gate to compassion.
I will never doubt your pain or how important it is to you. EVER.
Thank you for your compassion. It matters.
p.s.- my bus surfing days were in the '80s and early '90s but whenever I'm in S.F. I try to squeeze in a little play time with MUNI. The drivers still yell at me too. The fog warriors still patrol the parks every morning. I'm not sure if they still get to play publicly with steel swords like we used to but they are surely allowed, bokken, bo, jo, staff. They're just sticks, right? (evil chuckle)
pps.- The family kicks are metaphorical. Real kicks hurt less.
ppps- Zoner, if you brace while bus surfing your head will hit the ceiling on a bounce.
word: unonesi, bastards mocking me
there is a gift attached.......Pain is the gate to compassion.
I knew that was coming. That redeeming understanding that has kept you going, nice work.
Jesus—nuttin on the idiot-box, again tonite! Man I should sue the BBC, for .. mis-information, or somethin'—hah. Now I wonder what response I got from my little miscreant prose last nite? Almost afraid to look. I remember it was a bit, ah, truthful. Sometimes I get lonely, and like a good discourse. The problem is finding the right people! Always had this problem .. and when I do find them, it turns out ... aargh—waffle-waffle.
Huh!—no reply yet, from Arthur, and I was so helpful, giving him everything that he asked for! Reciprocity maybe not in his vernacular, and yet he was so verbose with Notamobster and maybe Jj, I forget. He doesn't like metaphors, and yet is full of it—hah, go figure? Aargh—maybe he's just forming his words! Yes, that'll be it. He just wants to be clear! God, I hope so ... he can be so ah, disorientated, like so many of us in these difficult times. Strange how people accept the most heinous / vile living conditions, and even go so far as to justify them even! It's like their stuck in stupid, or somethin'—now who said that? Some wise person no doubt.
But I probably have an advantage after all .. seen alot of stupid things, almost immune now, to the herd instinct—abattoir season coming-up, again. Oh, did I mention, done some dumb things myself. Yes indeedy, like that time I went off stalking a 400lb sow with suckers, wearing nothin' but me undies and carrying a sturdy kitchen knife—hah! Man, wuz that an experience! Hit me so hard and fast, like a freakin' freight train—Whamn. All I saw was black blur, and black fur, in my teeth. It was a nice double backward somersault off the edge of that cliff too! Collected every manuka (tree) and privet (tree), on the way to the bottom, helped break my fall! Covered in bruises, disoriented—didn't know which way was up, or momentarily where I was. Still holding the kitchen knife surprisingly, and wearing a new gash across my forearm—hah
Man I could go on, accumulated many more pig stories since then .. and so much wiser for them. I've always been lucky like that. The old man called me a survivor way back. Somehow he knew. Yes, so far, I've been lucky, damn lucky—the luck of the Irish. Lived like an Aztec, tasted death a thousand times.
Well Pangolin, looks like you're it baby / man, ah, no offense intended—just some hippy sh*t I picked up in the 70s from ahh, some hippies. Kind of goes with the San Pedro. Hey I'll tell you a secret, from the same cat you were quoting earlier, and then endorsed by both Publius / Nina, yes, quite, yes. I said it already, but in case you missed it — I pretend to be strong. Yeah, yeah, apart from the luck, and consummate skill acquired over the years from various experiences, the teachings of Confucius, Sun Tzu, The Secret of the Golden Flower and other writings, has helped to build a bridge of psychological understanding. A link—integration of personality. Kind of like ah, maybe pork and watercress, available quite freely from the mountains where I live, if you know where to look, and possess the requisite skill (which can be learned), to acquire said food items. Throw in some taters and Rosé wine, grown / made yourself, tomatoes—whatever you've liquid fertilised, and you have all the ingredients for a happy healthy life—voilà. Some good music—once again, you can learn. Getting better on guitar—hah. What else do yah need! Oh yeah, and fuck the corporation owned govt—hahahah
WV: wentist — went east !
"Economic growth may one day turn out to be a curse rather than a good, and under no conditions can it either lead into freedom or constitute a proof for its existence."
"Dedicate yourself to the good you deserve and desire for yourself. Give yourself peace of mind. You deserve to be happy. You deserve delight."
Hannah Arendt
Baz_San Pedro? Sun Tzu? Secret of the Golden Flower? (have to Google that one, funny it's a manual on sitting down and shutting up) I'm starting to see the picture.
You don't really rely on luck. You've been peeking backstage and looking at the reality of the scenery. Do enough of that and you (I too) cease to give a shit about which side of the coin comes down when lady luck flips it to see if you live or die. It doesn't look so bad that backstage; kind-of goes on forever. It's the damn stage that's crowded.
Though what's the point about bitching about the crowd on the stage then huh? It's just more dukha to let by. Where's the boddhi tree then if not within you?
Still, got to be careful. Sometimes Fate gets pissed off and let's the coin land on the edge. Trapped in the meat prison you could be hmm? Not on either side and no way to tilt the coin back the way you want; or any way. Get lots of time to meditate then. Speaking of which....... it's time for my morning dancing lesson.
VW-butela
nina: i never comment at CFN its too hard to sign in and i hate hate hate the system. half the tabs never open and it formats in a dreadful way.
remember, i followed you home because of something poignant you wrote at club orlov. now i would know you anywhere. unmistakable sentence structure.
Baz, Been away... I'll read what you wrote and if I'm can stay awake long enough I'll respond.
...But don't hold your breath. wink
Word verification: rangster, 2nd time: bonsly
I think I'll copyright them both right now. The computer gawds have tapped into my skull somehow. heh heh
Post a Comment