Ital vs. the Tudors, the beauties of collapse

I must apologize for not tending to the blog or I should have told you I was not going to put anything up for awhile, but those are the ruinous musts and shoulds so let's just get on with it. We have some lovely weather here these days, last week was deep snow and cabin fever. The more I go out, the better it feels. Then I don't have to twist my mind around why I am doing or not doing what I must or should, you understand. None of that changes the course of destruction we are on regardless of wanting to be involved, or wanting nothing to do with anything under the heavy, pressing webbed paws of the Illusion.

I dislike TV with the exception of the Tudors series. Last Sunday night's episodes were just as backbiting and evil as anticipated. The courtiers and titled ladies all seem to be working towards the goal of getting someone's head whacked off or conniving to see a supposed seditionist, heretic or treasonist burned at the stake. To do this, first they must curry favor with His Majesty, while behind his back, lay a trap for whomever it is that is felt to need a good lesson without allowance for an aftermath in which they might have been able to show repentance, although, as the sentenced head up the stairs to their execution, purse in hand to pay said executioner for his labors, you can imagine the pleas and denials, the promises, the apologies, the beggings for forgiveness and so forth. Detail for detail, trap for trap, it runs a course parallel to what we hear unfolds in the Palace of the Illusion among the your graces and lords. The only difference is the costuming and candelight. An important aside, you will note, if you watch carefully and if you've traveled through Europe, incredible cathedrals and castles are shown to have been built eight centuries before the industrial revolution sucked dry the easy oil. The scriptwriters know this - why have they not made it known? I'm thinking eight centuries because the Italian Renaissance c. 1400's due in large part to lavish sponsorship from the Medicis, took place two hundred years before such grandiosity (mastery of frills and frosting) spread to other parts of that continent where THE Renaissance, two hundred years later, was recognized as the only one of its kind throughout all of time. While we think of the history of the Humanities, and all that was accomplished long before big oil/big ag put a key into the ignition of the overpopulation machine (more people, more sales) let's look at Charles's wonderful discovery of a 1905 postcard, a real life photograph of Market Street in San Francisco.

To me, this finding is of equal importance as the photo I received of our Rasta's spar, Neil, just cooking food. It is a blessing to be sent such reminders, its is a blessing to have faraway friends who like to throw reality checks at the little people from time to time. I lived Ital as well in my youth. Returning to the US remains a culture shock in more ways that I can describe. I still suffer somewhat from the weirdness of our contrived lifestyle and revert to common sense simplicity when necessary just to get something done that in America means generally trying to work with something broken, dysfunctional, can't get a part or replacement because X company merged with Y company who was bought out by Z company in China. A lot of gadget distress has to do with plastic being breakable, it wears out much more quickly than old fashioned cast iron, wood or bamboo. I think just about everyone busting their chops at one of these outsourced corporate manufacturing sweatshop assembly lines knows this, too. Do they think we're silly? No, they think we are extremely rich and silly. They can't wait to get here. It is a measure of Illusory progress that our Rasta tells me they aren't so hot to expatriate anymore, because ... sigh ... because they can just fly back and forth to the great mall that is the US. Many have seen the light. (Those that live in ignorance to this day are those who are ignorant of their history as Arizona will show them soon enough. You can come to spend and go, but you may not come to hang around and drain the system unless you adopt the system in full = pay heavily as you go or go.)

Last time in heaven, I mostly hung out with a longtime Beekeeper, on his land in the unmapped jungle, with his extended family, under a galvanized roof held up by four wood poles under which a large cast iron cookpot fed everyone and anyone who happened along. If the mood struck, and something about being outdoors with people you know and love is the right mood for a little jungle jam, there were huge drums and a wooden/bamboo xylophone, flutes and more. But the most interesting thing of all was the Beekeeper's coffeebean shelling apparatus. He's taken a washboard and cylindrical grater, more about graters in a minute, attached a handcarved wooden crank to the grater so that each bean's coat was lifted off as it funneled through, rolling down the washboard and passing under the grater much the same way the early washing machine squeezed wet clothes into a tub. He gave me a thick chunk of beeswax to chew while we discussed how his machine worked. Nice. His granddaughter, everyone in the extended family lives at home, was an angelically beautiful three year-old child born deaf, but fell right in with everyone else working or playing, it seemed not to hold her back in any way, but allowed the elders to smother her with open affection. No one, I mean no one, would ever think of removing her from the tribe and sending her away to some official center for special needs children. I carried her in my arms and we danced to the pounding of the percussion instruments. She feels it. At one point, the Beekeeper got us involved in moving a mature chocolate tree to a more spacious location in which to branch freely out of the way of its neighbors. Everyone joined in, you would have thought it was the Alabama chain gang building a railroad, the rhythms and the chants made it easy to do a chore most little people insist on doing with lifts and pulleys, gasoline chain saws and tractors. You push on the down beat and hang back on the up. There is an art to it which is to remove the me from the moment. A little beeswax, a little chocolate tree moving, a little dancing with the baby and the me vanishes without knowing or thinking about it at all. You are just there, with the moment, of the moment. With them, of them.
It took a month or two to realize I had completely lost any sense of skin color, other than to be in the habit as all were, of using it as a tool for definition: "You know who I mean, the clear skin girl." or "No, he's the red one." In the beginning, I was pretty young then, fresh from the states and thought everyone looked alike. This of course, caused a lot of confusion, having an idea of whom I was conversing with only to discover we'd never met before, so too often I'd find I was on familiar terms with a total stranger, however, this half-bond turns out to be a fearless way to make friends. Sometime later, wading and rock climbing alone at sunset it struck me I was recognizing everyone all the time and then more, I had lost my white. I tried dreadlocks, but they didn't suit me at all, I always looked like I just fell out of bed. This goes over badly when you have some sort of bureaucratic mission to accomplish.

In complete reversal, in Bubblovia, I find I remain the clear-skinned girl only to myself, not really at home in civilization and often irritated to be pressured into dependence on plastic, convenience and entertainment technologies. Somehow its not fair. But then what is fair? If you watch the Tudors next weekend you'll see nothing was ever fair. The story of Cain and Abel isn't fair, either. Collapse is not fair. Life in full is not fair. I prefer a world where there is no unfair or fair, where things just are because they give and take with Nature - naturally. A grater for citrus peel or cheese is a square foot of galvanized aluminum pounded to remove the ripples, and pounded with nails to make holes. Take the "holed" galvanized and roll it into a half cylinder so the scratchy side faces outwards and secure each end with a single piece of wood, nail each strip of wood into place tightly across the ends making handles and securing permanently the half-cylinder shape. (If you're really good, you'll use wooden pegs.) You can grate comfortably for at least an hour as well as pass it down to your daughter for her household, etc. I've mentioned some of these "differences" in the comments section at various times and I think it is important we realize we don't need to keep stocking our lives with useless gadgets with brief lifespans in order to get something done. The same principle applies equally well to communication devices, unnecessary when people gather casually among each other on a daily/nightly basis. They love to gossip - and what is writing about and commenting on the activities of the Illusion but gossip on a plastic and precious metals communication device that makes lots of money and provides jobs to sweat labor in "developing" countries? Word always gets around.

More to come on this subject, in series - eventually. Collapse can be beautiful.