the lady gaga fear and loathing smackfest

" ... Ah, my friends from the prison, they ask unto me
“How good, how good does it feel to be free?”
And I answer them most mysteriously
“Are birds free from the chains of the skyway?”
Dylan, Ballad in Plain D

There are many among our species more like ants than they realize.  Colonists feeding, toiling, regularly waging turf wars, the disabled, sick or different summarily dismissed for the greater good.  Where does leviathan royalty fit into this picture we ask? The Queen is their system unilaterally, interestingly similar to westernized homo sapien social orders, especially the "Disintegrate Iran into the mother of all resource/economic/hostile takeovers" Order of Wetiko Weasels.  We've heard Weasels are known for taking over the nests of other species.  One would imagine there is plenty of protective heat emitted from both sides, perp and victim and the backup choirs of both sucking the bias out of whatever justification for Weasel presence goes around.  Once the consequences of the Saturday Night Special, i.e.; primary Weasel weaponry, results of which may be infuriated bond holders, etc., no further global exchange is permitted for the original nest dwellers, at least for the duration of Phase Combat.  Although we have also heard there is a time tested, trust-based way around this. It is highly likely we'll be revisiting that particular system of exchange as the Weasels near ever closer to Full Spectrum Dominance with their unique brand of  bulldozing, garbage compacting, earth-moving genocide.  Start with clearing the property of human vegetable material, next, lay in sprinklers to soften the soil for tomorrow's state of the art interrogation basements.  I can't stand to see it, again, and again, the full body waxing formula cast in stone, Rumsfeld's pornographic dream of known unknowns come to full flower, a small and powerful coalition of roving international forces available, anytime, anywhere, quelling hotspots throughout the world on a moment's notice.  (Are you used to the former US commercial airports manager as SecDef in chief, yet? No?) And then what, when there is no more conquering to be accomplished, along with its attendant nightmares and serial slaughter, we ask, do they start over, reduced to warring over spoils among themselves, cuz we know they can't just quit and walk away? All to sustain the impossibility of infinite growth, swindling greenhorn shareholders into supporting the peak of the pyramid whose chief beneficiaries vanish from the headlines when the floor collapses, the ICC bent sideways under a burgeoning backlog of past patsy criminal investigations many of which may never see the light of justice if they want continuing economic cooperation from the global community, translated as continuing liquidity from the greater global printing press.  Geeze, its not like the joint squeaks by at all at the pleasure of Tony Soprano or something, is it? Once they get their hooks in, it only encourages more and worse of the same, forever fouling sovereign nests taken in the thrill of the kill, offing the seed of offspring to prevent any possibility future generations just might develop the temerity to look homeward as the Weasels settle in with faux Constitutional declarations and faux contractual claims to stolen fortune, unearned, undeserved. Rinse and repeat. 

"Everything is on the table."

When you read that sentence, or hear it, even typing it, it manifests an eerie cloudiness, a porous bamboo spear sizzling though razorwire, generating fabrications that nobody believes and eventually learns its too flammable to even whisper in most social interactions.  Who talks like that anyway?  What kind of mindset sashays atop the prized Persian carpet, hands in pockets, necktie pinned tightly in place, smears on a dour face melting into pockmarked pixels under the global lights and pronounces such a bizarrity?  With a pause before and after the sentence as if the weight of those words has long been calculated in the digitized, fusion funneled versions of Probabilities and Statistics which comes after Calculus if you're any good at it.  Or if you have a bit of the linear brain in you.  This action leads to this result, all of these actions lead to all of these results, one plus one equals two, questions are not permitted, nor is close examination, metaphorical comparisons are to be shot on sight or better, annihilate the entire region, apply chemtrails so we can breathe without gasping for CO2 by the time contracts are let.  A quadrillion zillion tiny slivers of colored glass and marbled mirror reflect the story echoing throughout pillared halls and archways in centuries old architectural splendor where all gather at dawn, on their knees, heads to the ground, genuflecting in unison, complete oneness in brotherhood with collective faith, collective unbearable loss and victimization bearing up under insane pressures, abandoned of all hope all ye of the formerly God-given right to exist in peace.  The man is on the move, Collaterals, beware, your time nears.  We urge you to locate refuge and  enact your evacuation plans as the No-fly Zone banner flutters into place above the shifting dunes and tightening straits, white phosphorus, escalating extreme munitions and eye in the sky surveillance portends the impossibility of any later exodus.  Cellos weep in minor, string sawing bass, intermission is over, the curtains part, Apocalypse Now, part two-redux, the part with body parts and streaming blood, guts and gore, little people flaying arms, running tear-streaked scattering,  the smell of Napalm in the morning ...

... The foreign sun, it squints upon
A bed that is never mine
As friends and other strangers
From their fates try to resign
Leaving men wholly, totally free
To do anything they wish to do but die
And there are no trials inside the Gates of Eden... 
Dylan, Gates of Eden

We will never go forward if we cannot cease revisiting the past, the past being an Objects in the mirror are larger than they appear mix of gelatinous thought balloons and scratchy black and white home movies, scripted by early childhood patterns where the stars are the entire cast, seen through your lens, molded by antiquity, in memory lock-boxes, broken into simple paragraphs for easy recitation should the need arise, as it sometimes will, complete with peak special effects and categorized under autobiographical summaries.   If you took a microscope to the stills you would discover unidentifiable ghostly figures lingering in the background, beyond the camera's frame, mocking the events, cattle branding their own version of reality in challenge to yours.  Is this time going to be any different than any other time in all of history?  It is always the same Trail of Tears expanded to suit seven billion needy, seeking souls adjusting, adapting each with his own past and pregnant future, the movement of Jah people. 


*****

In dissection of the Instamatic public relations campaign surrounding the serial killings stirred with peyote bitters flavoring the cruelty wars on top of resource wars on top of wars of suppression and out of favor with the agency strawdog wars, it is stupefying once again to fully digest the utter lack of respect or appreciation for the mentality of ordinary citizen bystanders going about their lives hungering for normalcy, in spite of normal having lost any credibility as a lifestyle in sadsack Beetle Bailey's Fear and Loathing Smackfest.  We are pressed into "compassion without choice" for the untreated alkie, he is today portrayed as fallen hero, just another little person helplessly trapped exactly as millions of others suffering financial woes, foreclosure, a father of toddlers, the hero's marital union blissful, but stressed under economic hardship and loathing the separation of repeated Middle East deployments.  Amazing, huh?  We are tortured through media to love our homegrown Ted Bundies. Only three days ago, his alcohol problem and anger management arrests saturated the airwaves, including a brief mention of Major Someone you know from somewhere else attempting a sneak-in under the fence upon reaching base post slaughter, somehow he emerges to recover from one damning image only to morph into the confusing demeanor of victim.  Excuse me?  And those sixteen heinous acts of pointless murder?  Nine children, three women included, are they not the victims?  It becomes even harder separating fact from psycho fiction after pouring the entire situation into the re-election machine, coating the most merciless extinguisher in dripdry vote worthy good boy sheen, tell me again, God is on whose side today? Watch for the defense to A) plea post traumatic shock and B) cop rehab as justice. 

Take #9

And thus it was in blinding fog, mist, icy temps and the occasional downpour, life became unglued from its routines, its simplicity, its familiarity and warmth in a swiftly moving beam reach, heeling port towards an unchartable course in uncharted waters.  We can, when called, gather an invisible interior crew together for the heavy lifting, just follow the light.  The problem came when the headlights went out and I followed close behind a truck ahead, using its light, certain the Force would not let me down, which it has not, not when you are guided by the Force to start with and do not deviate from its intuited direction.  It is when we move around ignoring the voice we get into trouble, hassles, meet with unpleasant circumstance which has a way of tying us up for sometimes months, even years, decades, expensively, foolishly, so much time wasted on the disappointing, increasingly disastrous outcomes interacting with Wetiko complexities, intersecting with the cubic corners in the shadowy recesses of the poisoned hybrid mind, that could have been so easily avoided had we paid attention. They enjoy making it impossible to pay attention.

I don't exactly know anymore what to call the Force.  Some speak of the Divine, the Ineffable, the Creator or God, but beyond doubt, there is something there, greater and more of everything we will ever be.  This Force I am speaking of has it over Everything and we can only work to allow ourselves to be a willing vessel filled with this Force, hopefully receive direction, insight, answers, connections, talents and send it freely outwards as close to what we receive as possible, although it is completely impossible to recreate that which flows through the human vessle.  We will never be pure enough in this journey, in these bodies, clumsy with shabby excuses and justification.  If we purified everything about ourselves, we wouldn't even come close.  To accept our failing is to accept the guidance of the Force knowing we will never know anything absolute until the Force has chosen to accept us into the Human Realm. Always, in the process of ignoring the higher spirits, we end up in circles going nowhere.  This is why people fear the unknown, taking leaps at all, preferring to re-chart the old familiar easy courses, arriving at the same isolated destination repeatedly, lifetime after lifetime, hiding behind patterns that never worked in the first go-round, deluding themselves that somehow the ship can right itself while the great Sea of Humanity swallows whole the mast.

There has never been a single time I feared the leap.  Early on, likely during Chess, I asked my Father about his experiences at sea. The game paused as I was awed by stories that would make a nonbeliever's hair stand on end.  The Square Circle is appropriate today.  His Hellcat left the carrier in bad weather, not much time passed before he was lost high above an ink black ocean and mentally reviewed his flight manual.  He said he flew in a square circle for hours lowering and raising altitude as darkness blocked out his view.  Just before his fuel was exhausted, he spotted a pinpoint of light far in the distance and made it back to the flight deck safely.  He never panicked, never doubted, always sure with himself and his craft, guided to a safe harbor by a higher Force.

One technique that helps us survive whatever harm comes into our path is to pre-condition yourself for the experience.  I used to imagine in heavy weather during long cruises out of sight of land, without charts, bum radio, exactly what might occur if I lost my first mate overboard.  Mentally take all the steps required for a safe rescue during the worst possible circumstances.  As if you were blind, feeling your way as you went along, reaching for the helm because you memorized every navigation aid aboard and activated all the correct steps insuring safety leaving nothing to chance.  Heh, so I insisted on our adorning harnesses roped to the foredeck, forged onward under bare poles, preventing having to execute the Square Circle under the duress of darkness, overwhelmed in the noise of angry seas, or suffering a broken mast from a mainsail ripping jibe. 

Our photos today are general purpose, some California unseens and some Arizona unseens.  They have meaning to our essay as you desire, or not.  You should be able to enlarge with a right click to open link in a new tab.  Each of them is a part of an unfinished document -  from January to the present, Twenty Twelve, a sort of digital diary of highlights, when I remembered to take the camera, because the camera lives with my art supplies and the photos were not the only highlights.  The most consistent highlights I keep meeting are acts of human compassion, the number one emotion separating good from evil and its disease-compromised followers.  It does exist, its alive and well, you get the feeling in this town real fast that everybody knows and no one has any idea what to do about it.  That's because the mob was once KING here.  Long time residents know the drill. Extreme Wal*Mart cheap technology and undersized underwear appears to have dulled overt awareness however.  The illegal family man with toddler on shoulders was losing his pants showing full crack and red silk knickers weaving into Wal*mart's Ballroom Joblot as I pretended not to look.  I take that back, it was Wal*Marts Stadium NASCAR triple blowout joblot.  Their veneer plastic lawn funishings Halloween costumed as Teak @ $15.00 US gives you a clear view into the lifestyles of people whose awareness is, let's say, not keen. Nor should it be after the harrowing leaps all of them have taken for ... for what?  Keep it to yourself.  There are two sides to every story is the saying which we can rework to say each person comes at it from a unique perspective.  My father's words "Everybody has a story."

There is a block of text in the lower left margin on this page worth reading and reading often, especially when you are considering leaps and tying harnesses to yourself.   May you listen clearly to the Force whispering in your ear and guiding you through every hour, every day and night.  We are in full-on crazy time now.   We knew it was coming and we could not pin point the visual although omens often showed themselves.  Once again, we have all the answers within us, we must learn to recognize them and act appropriately.  Second chances in this journey have already been taken, third, maybe fourth, fifth and sixth chances, but that is all in the past.  This time is here and now, and you know the ropes as well as the crowd in this city knows the drill.  Our country and its idealistic ideals, the base, our lives upended, as an entire civilization disintegrates before our eyes, it seemed impossible to continue such an extremely dangerous, unhealthy, threatening course, every decision the wrong decision against all forms of life in existence on the Living Planet.  But roll on it does, exactly as the giant rubberhog tires on the 'Cat garbage compactor roll and grind, a two-story tall, massive death machine, pressing into miles of hills and valleys of the LA city dump, twice as high as myself ... I was driven to stare at it.  The Security guard asked me if I wanted to ride on it which I did and climbed into the front, squeezing against the inside window while the operator in back of me pressed hard into the continuously renewing sea of styrofoam, hairpins, toothpaste tubes, plastic shopping bags, half-eaten, loose and maggoty McDonald's kiddy meals, high chairs, mattresses, TVs, saran wrap, plastic bottles, crushed milk cartons with sideways straws, broken carseats, cheerios boxes, socks, cartoons scraps and gnarled  logos of the trash legal Personhoods litter over the planet in glee oozing though the dark spaces between each recognizable item in rivers of bubbling dung.  I apologize for not owning a digital then, much less a cell phone video cam.  Doomers would appreciate how fortunate I felt for the experience.  The highlight, of course, being sworn witness to the carnage in real time and fully explanatory, an undeniable truth in 3-D, flesh and blood in-your-face.  Few things on our journeys are so well defined. 

See lower left margin T'ao Ch'ien. "... ever away into this hundred-year life and beyond, my story and I vanish together like this."