quakin' blues

Is there enough money in the world to relieve all the disasters when they occur simultaneously? Will there be enough money to pay firefighters when lightening strikes again? Do governments set a little liquidity aside in a secret column, (it should be secret now or someone will figure out a way to use it for something else like an infinity pool overlooking the Aegean) just in case all hell breaks loose? Or do they take out loans. Do they like to rebuild their mammoth beachfront resort hotels over and over? Wouldn't that be good for BAU to have a constant need with a constant flow of sequestered funds, new hires, new contractors, new designers, new tourists, new airports and hospitals and new high-tech security enhancements for all? Sure. And what if these disasters could be pumped into twofers or threefers, oh, that will happen, not if, but when and where and not too long from now at the rate its progressing. I sensed a little disappointment among the desperate shrieking pundits today, so primed for Hilo to be disastered on location on live TV, see it first, here and now as they quickly turned to Japan's coast with smatterings of the scene in Chile, a disaster on the scale of the fifth highest in magnitude in the history of all recorded earthquakes. The Chileans interviewed have a calm to them, realistic and resigned, fully disconnected intellectually to Haiti. Obviously this is because they are not descendants of African slaves, made malleable by debt poverty and dependent on the international shylocks, homeless, hopeless and shackled into sweatshop submission, ridiculed and starving: a true to life profound disaster unfolding at any time. No, Chileans appear confident their damages will be repaired without having to look elsewhere to the bondage of helping hands. The loss of life is a tragedy, but for the most part the damage to the infrastructure is an inconvenience, a workaround, to be managed by themselves. They are at this time reluctant to request intervention, shock of all shocks, because as they say, they have not been able to assess what aid they might require, if any. Of course, the road to the the other half of their country, the wild, untamed half, lies in ruins, they don't have a real body count yet. That body count might be impossible to assess. Lots of people out there don't want to be found: tribal people and such.

Don't take my word for these things, my information has come largely from TV. The frothing pundits get in the way of real facts, cutting off leading seismologists in the middle of explaining enlightening tecto/tsunamo-fact to interview a tourist evacuating a Hilo resort or taking a break for the sponsors. Hawaii is a US state you know and thus what happens in the US stays focused on the US by supreme decree.

Japan has not seen a tsunami warning coming their way for over fifteen years. In one and a half decades you can imagine how many people forgot the lesson and built right up to the sea's permissible edge, but they say they are well prepared unlike California who harbors replicating fast buck developers, building into the foothills and difficult to reach canyons so the inevitable wildfires consume any vegetation holding the earth in place (like trees) which then turns into mudslides with the heavy rains of winter. They prepare themselves with huge nets holding dirt in place. If you've never seen the sheer size of these nets, and ponder whatever they could possibly do to prevent a mudslide, you would not believe it. However, helpful of not, they can't net the whole state or the whole planet if it ever came to that. Nor can the tectonic plates sit still forever. The Earth does what it does and we are mere Gumby lookyloos picking up a geography lesson along the way. Common sense tells us Japan is a lot farther away from Chile than Hilo and not to expect much except these colorful computerized graphics of water rippling out from where the stone was dropped.

The worst that Hilo and Japan will see are the terrors of so many people evacuating at once. Reblowing the sirens WW2-style, incessantly doesn't help. The hospitals closed to evacuate their staff meaning going to the ER for treatment of the thousands of panic attacks taking place is not an option. There will be a lot of car accidents and likely a few vehicles careening into panicked crowds hauling their most precious heirlooms seeking escape. It could get very messy.

I've written often recently about the disasters one is required to experience in this adventure we call life. They have always been with us, personally and externally in the larger world. I've also mentioned the Forces that divine our journey - if you pay attention to them. It is clear the Earth has its own plan for survival and the Forces tell us we are irrelevant to this plan. We can invent technologies and predictors and evacuation plans until we are blue in the face but until we stop abusing the Earth's resources we remain irrelevant, a bothersome, tiresome, annoying destructive species stealing what never belonged to us and never will. We must be the joke of the Universe. Lovely, perfect Earth rotating on its axis with all the other magnificent heavenly bodies except she has this fatal flaw, those quarreling, relentless thieving humans squandering her bounty, intent on blowing up the whole sphere with materials cobbled together from her stunning body. In this way, the perps are organ harvesters.

But it appears she won't have to live as a joke for long. The humans will kill each other off and then she will calm down. There are more worthy species that help instead of harm the system. When the Homo Sapien species began to see itself as too big to fail, too clever and too invincible to be intimidated by the natural forces, we were marked for extinction and its happening now, in real time, in living color. Its even happening to you, as they bring the rest of us down with them.

When all has vanished that one needs to survive including materials to make a lean-to on the riverbank and edible forages are lost to the complete trashing of our food chain, we are cooked. Forget losing everything else, your possessions, your money, your transportation, your golden years, films, TV and the web, whatever place you call your home and all of its contents, its all drowning in the infinity pools as the violent seas ride roughshod over the globe.

We have seen the future, nothing is left to the imagination, and now it is here.

All images clickable, taken onsite 02.20.10, ccc. 2010

Blaze of Glory

02.13-16.10
You might have been thinking I am overdue for one of these missives, but we've never had a formalized schedule and at this time I play the disclaimer card. Just as external events are funneled into our brains with feeding tubes, events on a personal scale round our bends like a Ferris wheel at the Indy 500. That is because personal events are our own, always somehow impacted by the external, but taken helplessly into our flesh and blood, living in the moment, moments to be lived through. This produces a disorder known as mood swings. I'm confident the much mentioned, updated Official Manual for Identification of Misfits has a few chapters on emotional upheaval. This book and its updates fall into the category of Racism, designed to separate and condemn with labels, racism itself a label, anything unacceptable to the standard BAU nerve center of the Zombie Food Court.

It isn't my intent to bore or terrorize you with newsy commentary. You see what I see. Marja on My Mind... we remember too well Falluja and sigh, Jenin, where it was said blood ran in the gutters. The New World model for war means with each successive slaughter the bar is lowered further. Wars don't end, they just get branded. Its perfectly legal. And this one is brought to you by ___.

Why? Its all about ego, that compartment of the overindulged mind devoid of compassion. There is no room, no stray pang of conscience crying out for attention when someone lives off that high from strutting the razor's edge. Its all about looking good, making the scene, control of the couriers, savoring the sweetness of breathing rarefied air. Mammoth testosterone on nuclear steroids, a weakness unveiling Napoleon's complex metastasizing into Ponce de Leon's search for the fountain of youth. All of it waste. If you survive at all, life unfolds anyway, the great majority of the human species under an impression we have greater control than we actually do. It is a game of chance decided by how well or how badly we utilize our playing hand.

As far away and mellow as one might arrange themselves, the knowledge of the external comes to us in the tragedy of what is happening to a perfectly beautiful planet. Our appreciation and gratitude are increased by sorrow that it has been so maligned. Overpopulation coupled with that segment of humanity's predators, gift wrapped in a box of spiritual emptiness remains our undoing, just as we recognized the speed which the past was dropped for the reign of the Sopranos, we're traveling warp speed now. Stupid has become an exponentially stupid reality show. The advertisement is actually the complete antithesis of the body copy. The series is produced on location dreamed up by unemployed Tinseltown scriptwriters on Crack. It defies all logical lines of thought unless you too are on Crack. I fully expect to see Palin and Nancy Grace in the Oval Office following the departure of Obama's character. The past is only good for one or two generations, if even that much. Based on what has been done to that which we think we know of the past, who is to say with all certainty the past is anything remotely like you imagine it to have been? Each successive group of monarchs overwrites the rules to suit the personal preference of the monarchy of the day. Some of them are less creative than others and take up where the last left off.

*****

The Forces are like the wind behind events propelling experience at the level you require to understand. You can be a fool and take them individually and for granted, or aware something else is in control. There's not much in between those two states. When you come into contact with the Forces, you pay attention. It doesn't matter what you call them, signs or omens, good and evil, only that you are aware these roadsigns don't fool around. I have noticed they carry one feature in common, perhaps the supreme reason they exist at all and that is always having the affect of reaffirming values, who is really who and what is really what, and strengthening compassion, the opposite of ego. When you have compassion you possess ever expanding room for everything of real value.

*****

We lost Louis last week. To the best of my knowledge he was taken down by a Mountain Lion very shortly after running off in the darkness after something unknown. We searched alternately for hours. As I was passing a familiar uninhabited stretch of the near landscape, a Mountain Lion crossed my headlights like a wheat colored ghost, feline, fast ... (the sign, the omen). That this image was presented as it was in icy temps, ethereally, late, searching in vain as we were, was a certainty how Louie's physical story ended. It seemed he was destined to leave this life in a blaze of glory. Considering the rude awakening he was born into followed by abandonment in the desert, he managed a reprieve in which he experienced a real home where our animal brethren are accorded all the rights and respect shown naturally to a beloved family member. He gave his all to us and got it back in spades. The Forces clearly say he is not on dogs' death row, not lingering on veterinary life support, not lying by the side of the highway or bagged in a dumpster. Wondering would have been unbearable. I was shown the truth to be saved unnecessary suffering. Thanks Louie. Still giving I see. Rest in peace. We shall meet again and then there will be no separation.

The years rolled slowly past ...

By now you have probably figured out the punchline. Unfortunately, its not a joke. Everything you thought turned out to be the opposite and now, here we are, once again reminded if you want to know something, you have to teach yourself. This is the lesson, each of us the student.
Do take a minute to visit the Archdruid Report. I'll still be here when you get back.

... This becomes especially problematic in times like the present, when apocalyptic prophecy is a central trope in the popular culture that frames a people’s hopes and fears for the future. When the collective imagination becomes obsessed with the dream of a sudden cataclysm that sweeps away the old world overnight and ushers in the new, even relatively rapid social changes can pass by unnoticed. The twilight years of Rome offer a good object lesson; so many people were convinced that the Second Coming might occur at any moment that the collapse of classical civilization went almost unnoticed; only a tiny handful of writers from those years show any recognition that something out of the ordinary was happening at all. ...

This isn't the kind of thing you can just discuss openly, speech is free up to a point. Rather, you instinctively know or you don't. If you suspected, there is no longer any reason to doubt your own senses. Feeling crazy, depressed, insecure or anxious and experiencing stress manifesting in paranoia are all issues of the human being failing to trust his own judgment.

Time is speeding up because the jig, for the most part, is up. It will go on however. In slow motion, the divide opens into an impassable chasm with more desperate events packed into days, now hours and segments of hours. The wheel seems slow on the outside, the closer to the center, the faster it spins. Today Karma is having its way with a horrific snowstorm over the mid-Atlantic region not seen since 1922. No Dinnergate crashers tonight. Good thing Maliki isn't in town or he'd be veering into hypothermia waiting in the First Vegetable Garden.

Cruising the news is very much like holding a mirror over the page. You get different stories. Like Charlie Sheen and his stolen SUV. What are we seeing? Balloon Boy, Tiger Woods, John Edwards, now Sheen. These little smut mentions have in common a tale with open-ended punchlines. Suddenly, they burst upon us and remain with us like mosquitoes at sundown in the swamp. Do we have to wait to be spoon fed truth? Stupid is easy, but stupid and force feeding twenty four hours a day is something else, it will trip you up because stupid is a primary weapon in the war against the human spirit. Its easy to to minimize the signs, but you might have noticed the vehicles are having a few issues. And there is a little problem, nothing serious, with misspeaking and retractions, oh, nothing to get excited about ... who is controlling these gaps in reality? Who exactly determines where and when retractions are necessary? And the criteria is?
I get the idea health reform is cooked. Can they do nothing else but war? Does there have to always be a winner and a loser? Can they do anything right? Can they do anything wrong, right?

I don't know how this will play out over time. Predictions are dire, as you know, but meaningless in that all we have is now and now is uncharted territory.

... The years rolled slowly past
And I found myself alone
Surrounded by strangers I thought were my friends
I found myself further and further from my home
And I guess I lost my way
There were oh so many roads
I was living to run and running to live
Never worried about paying or even how much I owed
Moving eight miles a minute for months at a time
Breaking all of the rules that would bend
I began to find myself searching
Searching for shelter again and again

Against the wind
A little something against the wind
I found myself seeking shelter against the wind

Well those drifter's days are past me now
I've got so much more to think about
Deadlines and commitments
What to leave in, what to leave out

Against the wind
I'm still runnin' against the wind ...
Bob Seger

more cars, no sitars

... It seems we are a long way off from understanding what the non human beings on this planet know and have to teach us. ... freeacre

First thing this morning, after taking out the dog and getting coffee, I performed a set of short technical actions producing the phenomena known as Welcome News. As consciousness slowly settled into its next chapter of today, this is the time you might wonder why you are doing this? The farther you travel into waking (or dreaming) clarity, the faster those wispy memories of the past chapter, the sleeping dream, are suppressed.

You realize what you are reading are press releases aka propaganda presented on an all inclusive variety of subjects. Before the caffeine took effect you might have thought like I did which was what was I doing staring at drivel on a screen. To my recollection, one headline among several was the announcement of the new Miss America. You can't exactly liken that to anything else since Miss America holds a category of its own. Uniquely American, carrying a perfume vaguely reminiscent of Fellini partnering with Normal Rockwell at a Wal*Mart rave.

Recently I brought product placement as breaking news to your attention, we can safely classify the thrilling gas pedal fix in this category. Next please. KSM, hmmmmm. They cannot figure out a place to have his show trial. What can they be so worried about? Clearly, the outcome is known if you've been keeping up, I'm sure you have.

... We know that Illinois sold a maximum security prison to the Feds. The local rurals are happy, surely it will bring them prosperity. We know 100 - 200 detainees will be transferred to this facility from Guantanamo which isn't being closed because they have plenty more sticking around to order rum punches from their chaise lounges at the Tropicana Banana. ...The question was, Cuba was chosen because it was not on US soil therefore the US Constitution did not apply. Obviously, the detainees landing here despite lifer status, will want to see the insides of a courtroom and have a perfect right to do so. It didn't make sense. That is, until this morning. Now the pieces fall into place...

This KSM trial has to take place offshore for the process to reach its desired conclusion. What is this going to do to the Haiti Relief effort? Oh, its all under control now with other capable departments all of whom left to their own style follow a prepared program peppered with their particular agency's agenda where each department head adds his own agenda as does each subhead all the way down to reception's recorded voice. This would explain why there were two headlines next to each other, one saying US halts medical flights, the other saying, US resumes medical flights. I told you, $100 million wasn't enough (chintzier even than show money). That would explain why the IMF said they were sure they could arrange Haiti's debt relief, (so sure they sent out a press release) followed up 48 hours later with a new payment plan for the entire debt plus whatever nonsense service fees and performance schedules are hidden in those sorts of things. Lots of wrist slapping going on somewhere. (If Haiti defaults, what are they going to do, foreclose Haiti?)

Our photo shows a Garden of Eden paradise in which surely the most holy transcendental thought and action take place. Ras turey forwarded photos of pre-quake Haiti in which this one stood out as his favorite, not coincidentally mine too. Thanks spar. What this house says and what freeacre said in the opening quote are very close in spirit. It appears as a place where it is perfectly natural to commune with non-human beings living on this planet, a place to practice live and let live and to think clearly with great compassion, to be moved and to move around as you like.

In stark contrast I spent an entire portion of Saturday at breakneck speed navigating through one of the ugliest, dirtiest, most drive-in single-story stripmalls passing for big anchor malls, heavily laced with weed sprouting-industrial and agricultural processing structures - dying, rusting, half the roofs fallen-in, chain-linked, railroad tracked cities on the face of the map. It was a rare glimpse of how the other world has chosen to experience their journey though this lifetime. Central to the image I presented above are the turn-key gated tract communities, sandwiched between the Bread Basket to the World truck depots and wrecked car/parts graveyards. There are monsteroid oil rigs every 100 feet or so cross hatching this whole panorama - all of which is layered with a black, greasy dust gathering in heaps at the base of every obstruction to the wind. There were the occasional frantic jaywalkers in a rush to the check cashing joint, next to the heartbreak motels ... nothing we haven't seen before somewhere else, some other time, passing through the long and endless highways of over capacity and over consumption. The other urban centers of empire are in similar phases of wanton decay, for better or for worse. It can only cascade towards the worse because no one cares or knows any better and has adopted the whole fable of green shoot normalcy while spiraling downwards propelled by the desire to possess regardless of all other traveler beings. Why would anyone willingly minimize their life experience locked behind a steering wheel in frustration on the eight lane racing to and fro horrific locations that look and function equally dsyfunctionally? It can only be they are already void of spiritual imagination. This is the wonderment of the free market at work.

In that brief stage between rising and fully absorbing the impact of Welcome News, a headline caught my attention reporting the death of a high target Pakistani Taliban figure by drone attack, a piece which carried his photo, in robes, against an interesting and rather colorful psychedelic background. He looked like a tabla musician. Make of that what you will.

There would be basis for feeling this is a world war against spirituality, perhaps at its root, supported by a belief manifesting as allegiance to empire, an excuse so smarmy if must be only spoken of in certain terms, thus the terror system with its acronyms and shortenings, its hurry, its rashness and push for omnipotence.

Every day we go backwards when we could have gone forward. In the new phase, everybody knows and everybody knows everyone else knows, but nobody does anything differently because they've become inured to doing anything other than what they already do. Fade to black...