Update on Presentism

It is only right and fitting that proper credit be given where  it is due.  This hot and sweaty subject is still with us, the beast's foul breath up close and personal and has a feel of permanence, but then so did the past while yesterday was gradually awakening into the present, step by step, the sands running through the hourglass of time,  we suddenly arrive at this peculiar situation.  An example of how the memory in overload of presentism stores information would be the essay I put up in July on Present Shock, much of which highlighted Charles' essay of May 22nd.  Thus the following correction and more on the subject:

"Present Shock and the Fantasy of Change August 17, 2013
The fantasy is that the status quo won't change dramatically, even as it already has changed dramatically.
It's remarkably easy nowadays to experience Present Shock overload. I wrote about Douglas Rushkoff's new book Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now recently (Present Shock and the Loss of History and Context May 22, 2013); the book discusses the manner in which always-on digital media, communication and work flatten the natural narratives of time and context into an associative sea of free-floating information.
With history and context both disrupted, it takes a huge amount of work to maintain a context that "makes sense" of our actions and conceptual narratives. Just maintaining this coherence requires a constant investment of time and mental energy. In this sense, the constant threat of filter failure or information/task overload acts as a kind of ambient friction, draining a significant amount of time and energy from our limited resources.
When I find my worklife decohering/splintering, an internal Code Red is triggered and I go into slash-and-burn mode, reducing commitments and circling the wagons to conserve my mental energy for truly critical long-term tasks. In a way, the multiple commitments and digital distractions of modern life conspire against long-term projects and the coherent organization and investment of one's time and energy they require.
In other words, as distractions and pressures mount, we become ever less able to focus on the truly important projects that are long-term by their very nature. ... "

I saw Charles' new post a few minutes ago, the subject fascinates me.  I highly recommend reading further at his sites.  In presentism, our overloaded memories of what someone said or did have no room for context.  This leaves us wide open for suggestion, implantation of context from undesirable forces as we see happening repeatedly to beleaguered little people worldwide every hour of every day.  USA, USA, USA!  Some might call it a war if they are able to grasp its totality of annihilation.  This IS what is dividing us because so few are able to see or define it,  much less get out from underneath its brute weight. 

Douglas Rushkoff's brilliant book cover, can you feel it?  

alien patriots

When you are celebrated and revered by yourself (and oftentimes others solely on your say so) as a "super" anything, it inspires generally unrealized paranoia, but manifests in profound acting out on the part of the praised.  Look what being a super control freak did for George Zimmerman.  Look what living inside superdom has done for us.  When someone convinces themselves they are worthy of placement at the top of the dung heap, they make mistakes (because they are not thinking clearly and relying on past success in smothering errors) that winds up costing them far more than had they tempered their self-aggrandizement with a little humility.  In such a position, mistakes (impulsive actions not thought all the way through to inevitable consequence) are life shattering.  We see it daily in the news and in person taking place on every social strata from underpaid clerks in boiler rooms all the way to the grandest offices in the land. I posted the following on a popular conservative blog a year ago and to date, nothing since has transpired to change my opinion.

"At the root of this case, not in the aftermath and resulting layers of diversionary complexity, you have a human being stricken with an extreme desire for control who appointed himself vigilante and masqueraded with various members of authentic law enforcement as fellows in brotherhood, i.e.; trained and legalized members law enforcement.
Only someone with deep seated feelings of inadequacy and failure, "unable to control themselves", aspires to an identity of being above the law and often manifests escalating abusive behaviors such as domestic violence if the perpetrator does not receive intervention. Most never receive proper intervention. The point is usually buried with a good defense attorney only to surface later in even more bizarre behaviors. The jury should consider the underlying motives of anyone - armed, but unqualified to secure the safety of any community. There are trained and paid security guards for such positions. People allow self-appointed representatives because they are not willing to pay for the real thing and are willing to let someone else bear the responsibility for them, making it fully possible for irresponsible and disturbed fakes to create overwhelming problems with tragic implications for all involved. Did anyone even vet this guy before he was in position to cast his own version of final judgement? It doesn't matter that Zimmerman sustained an injury, it matters that he saw himself as an empowered authority figure with nothing at all to back it up.”

If we take the example of Zimmerman writ large, we're getting close to what is happening to our alien family way up there skiing the peaks of the previously mentioned heap.  When we read of the surveillance games, the coercions, the playground tit for tat, and when we read how fruitless such efforts toward total control have shown themselves to be, we wonder what shoe is dropping next because none of it plays out in they manner it was initially desired.  These aliens never give up, do they. When something doesn't work, the inventors, eager to stay on top, desperate actually, defend and amend language supporting a supposed brilliant achievement while we, watching, wondering, waiting, see only cruelty and failure.


We can call this a movement in the same way there was a Civil Rights Movement.  You will note how well that has worked out. Now, at this late date, we get word the aliens want to supercomb through our underwear drawers and are in possession of the super tools to do it.  You'll note their super secret courts have allowed them access.  We hear these secret courts and agencies with secret passkeys and biometric print entrances have mutual agenda to show off the little people's dirty laundry which makes this current movement more hypocritical than all movements past, movements that, looking back, did little to enhance life because anything conceived, plotted and acted out in secrecy has no chance of long term survival when exposed to the bright light of love and compassion.  You cannot cultivate Nature in darkness and expect it to thrive.  Whatever comes from the effort is stunted, twisted from last gasps to survive and fundamentally illegal by Natural Law, thus they keep their underwear search under wraps because God is always watching and God makes them paranoid.  IF what they are doing was good and right, trust me, they would not hide it, not our allegianced aliens.  And now as the grand result unfolds across the once glistening prairies, we are forced to ingest an upside down poisonous layer cake of alien defense bending over backwards and sideways to make wrong into right  I gotta tell you, guys, it can't last.  All illusions fall apart as we mature.  You are showing us the wormed fruit of false desire.  You don't have to be a weatherman to see which way the winds blows and we don't need no stinking secret program to do it either.


As I watch this parade of fools passing by, muscles flexing, jaws clacking, lockstep high steppers inebriated on cheap power, the banner wavers and philharmonics of great yawning black holes, I note many of our beautiful bredren hurt and confused.  This is not good.  You cannot abuse a nation this way, you cannot ground the people down into quivering blobs of GM jelly and expect a thriving, successful population to result.  Look at the stats.  All chartlines are dragging bottom, health, education, employment, science, industry, infrastructure, trust, etc.  Oh and while you look, look also at the violence spawned and multiplying unnatural disasters.


Back to Zimmerman.  Now just why was he, a man I've heard born with high-placed relations, acquitted?  Because his localized self-appointed vigilantism exemplifies the personality type encouraged and enamored by the ringed in fire, all-seeing eye of Sauron. All past deceits on his and his wife's part to conceal an internet-obtained "get out of jail free" card ... deleted from the record.  It was designed he would walk.  What's this guy really do for a living anyway?  And why was he speeding in Texas (Texas?) with a gun - after his vigilante gun was very pointedly not returned to him following the acquittal?  Note he got off with a warning.  Take a good look, this is, my friends, today's new patriot.  The alien's from no one knows where plaintive wail "Trayvon could have been me at seventeen" flatlines.  It could never have been him, his Mother was white. 


We could have been something great, something better at least than the greatest of the paranoid, the greatest of the failed and creative directors without equal, premier aides and abettors of planetary demise. 


It appears we come genetically from something similar to the children's barge, those young, present day Dicken's characters collared and shipped to somewhere else because no one knows what to do with wicked little orphans of the state, there are too many to support.  In the past, there were colonies available to absorb them such as Jamestown where the formerly imprisoned, mentally unfit and hopelessly undesirable could be delivered into self-survival.  The more entrepreneurial and paranoid among them took matters into their own hands.  Thus was born our rule of law, a centuries old manifest culled from the ranks of the most deviate predators, too incorrigible even for UK style 16th Century incarceration, mandating behaviors and ideals that keeps alive everything that should have been kept out.  They scorned, continuing to this day, the greatest opportunities of all time to wipe the slate clean.  We've never really recovered, the brief window of opportunity is sealed shut as our beleaguered Mother, unquestionably the purest and unerringly powerful force, the authentic truthteller lacking all illusion, the very engine that turns darkness into light, rises up to sweep clean the house of bad tidings, false gods, subterfuge, mayhem, malice, hypocrisy.

Present shock ...

Present Shock and the Loss of History and Context

Recognize the title?  Charles is the brilliant mind behind it.  I liked it so much, I've borrowed it.  It perfectly sums up the experience of these times more succinctly than anything I've seen.  Read that line again, maybe again and again, there is a long and tedious, alarming and prescient freight train of human catastrophe endlessly passing before us as we sit at the crossroads while bells clang, lights change from green to yellow to red and whistles scream Danger, Danger!  Each boxcar crunchlocked to its predecessor, each more incongruous than dreamed possible to the landscape they pass through daily, nightly, every crusty bolt, every surface upon and in between the corrugated tin smashtagged in day glow obliterating ownership logotypes so that no rust remains visible, ensuring no one has reason to suspect the panorama passing before them is forever doomed to the elements.

One might think they'd lost their way, if they knew the way to begin with, which many do not.  I'm constantly running into people who have no idea where they are going.  It looks like they know their way, but if you ask them for directions, you get, to begin with, a quizzical look.  I'm gettin' very tired of that, aren't you?  Charles' "Loss of History" became a reality because the memories of our train watching travelers are sponging incessant variations of experience, pleasure and pain complete with artful twists, victor after victor indulging his mortal vision, including the perverse persuasions of centuries old scribes, co-authors and copywriters, that actual history, those massive subjects of World Civilization and Ancient Geological History, going back as far as the human imagination extends, exists only to adopt and rearrange.  

I find the daily compounding disasters taking place globally to be in perfect keeping with Kali Yuga.  We knew it was coming on and now its everywhere at once.  It is impossible to say with certainty how many of the daily disasters come about through technology fatigue, reliance on automated systems. We know that nothing lasts, nothing, and we see the world's infrastructure coming apart without serious management programs and funding allocated for upkeep.  We see our land itself heaving, sinking, shrinking, burning, sliding, frying and when you see it you ask why is this?  We see the enrichment of evil, the smarmy contracts let to those who deserve it least and still the train keeps on a rollin'.  We see everything, us, the Earth, all life under God under brutal attack and we very often find ourselves unable to do anything meaningful to abate the increasing damage.  When we can find nothing meaningful to do to heal this situation, its easy to fall back into complacency because there is no encouragement to be on the side of good and right.  What we must do is find our own encouragement and act on it.  A group isn't the answer.  Groups are brought down through all the common weaknesses inherent in gathering - from diverse allegiances to infiltration to unaffordable, impossible to implement solutions.  Not enough like minds agree on exactly which problem or issue to tackle and the reason behind this is the secrecy shrouding every platform that requires transparency, as if there are merely a handful of problems and all we need to do is agree which particular one in which to devote our energies.  Addressing them ALL is beyond our means and beyond our capabilities.  Even agreement on the magnitude and timelines of these problems is up for debate.  And there are worse problems ahead, just as Kali Yuga arrived, on schedule, so will the problems of the near future.  Soon enough we will witness rising seas pushing inland the great coastal cities as metropolitan populations are told they will have to pay for the stilts and cassons and berms and seawalls themselves - which is saying "Save Yourself"- and happens to be the exact formula we've seen played out time after time in every country on the planet since corruption/irresponsibility and evil became the NWO norm.   Due to the historically sideways manner of revealing important climate, food, economic truths such as employment and healthcare, there will be many who will interpret the information casually as far off in the distant future or people who must by circumstance refuse to pay.  Many will not survive. 

In a disaster, there is no room for debate. It is nothing short of cruel, evil, stubborn insistence on false ideals based on allegiances that overrides the possibility anything can be saved now.  This is another area where my patience is running thin, I'm sure yours is too.  At this juncture in Present Shock, to begin explaining what has happened and how it happened is ridiculous.  If one has not noticed by now that which is impossible to miss, one will never notice.  The die is cast, "things" will take their course and our best hope for survival is to stay out of the way. 

I don't blog as frequently anymore because the information is there for all to see and interpret.  Brevity is the short answer due to the nature of our precarious situation, the clash of civilizations, the mass undoing of global humanity, unilateral species genocide, the very breath of air itself, the seas, the water, and now the maturation of the dumbed down unable to decipher the difference between vicious violence and compassion, don't be surprised if you see much smaller posts soon.  The long answer is unknown.  It may come to a combination of the two, short then long, etc.  I won't back out, its something I do and will continue doing, like painting which has taken higher priority for weeks lately. 

On a happier subject, be sure to visit the Trout Clan's regeneration efforts.  From the devastating fire wiping out their once beautiful property, out of the ashes comes the TEEPEE.  Praises!  Crushall!  It is beautiful indeed to see disaster overcome by the unstoppable forces of goodness, love, truth, solid dedication and authentic partnership in action. 

What I was saying in the paragraphs above the Trout's heartening news, is in no way to be taken that I condone ignoring the circus.  We are an integral part of that show, like it or not, and there are things we can do.  We can counter evil, hatred, stupidity, carelessness, lies, conservative and liberal prejudices and allegiances, deliberate cruelty, revenge, greed, illusions, personal rejections, etc., by simply being the natural person we are in our core, for once and forever casting out the loudmouth representative-self blathering platitudes.  ALWAYS making the effort to see whatever there is to be seen through eyes of understanding and compassion.   Spiritual evolution, especially the continuing growth of our own, is our battle strategy, our Zen simplicity accurately aimed with all activity a union between body, mind and heart in sync so we may exponentially improve our response to all that comes, now and directly ahead, is and has always been the only way to manage survival.  It has undoubtedly taken all of us uncountable lifetimes to realize this fact and in knowing this we must also know it will take further uncountable lifetimes to re-right the ship, if ever.  We have no choice but to be okay with that and live wisely with love, otherwise the cycle of return, for uncountable members of our bredren (and perhaps even ourselves) will never end.

Post title © CHS 2013

Snowjob

I can’t tell you for sure if the Snowden incident actually happened, I can tell you only vague highlights (think headlights in a thick fog - at night), that you already know and I can also tell you whatever happened didn’t happen in the way it is being presented.  Really now, where’d they get this guy?  Was he cloned and trained just for this moment in time or lured off death row by the promise of a holiday in Hong Kong?  The same applies to nearly everything, maybe all, that has been cultivated, packaged and consumed without having any factual information on what it is exactly that you are ingesting, as if reader content is just more pink slime, as if sand men running around the dunes carried out … well you know, as if that was the beginning of the end of happier days which it was not, impossibly so, from any angle.  The point being we have become inured to these stories because we‘ve been around this block before, it’s the same old song lip synched by the same lame band, pseudo vocalists who appear to us as simple minded in that they repeat themselves ad nauseam.  Have they never heard the story of the boy who cried wolf?  However, each time the wolf snarls, it could very well be a real wolf, except, well, as I said, we’re inured.  How long has this been going on?  Surely you haven’t forgotten Choicepoint?  So why are we being subjected again to threats upon our sacred secrecy policies that are not exactly secret at all?  There could only be one explanation which is, apparently, we are not yet completely in lockstep with created reality.   To the masterminds of heroic murder fiction and spy thrillers, we appear disinterested.  YES!  I realize its hard to grasp such a thing, but no one in their right mind wants to pick up the same book over and over again, unless it’s a Henry James or Chinua Achebe work of exquisite art where every word in every sentence conjures revelation and imagery both good and evil and invites ardent study in order to grasp the full poignancy and utter foolishness of the human species.   Certainly this is yet another good reason to wear earplugs and blinders, the self-styled masters behind these phenomena have to be unable to hire better writers at any price and to any literate person, appear oblivious, which means they like it that way in the same way they like their Chateaubriand.  Perhaps they fell for slick presentations from the slickest of the slick PR/Damage control/Crisis Management consultants all of whom turned out to be duds when what is perceived as an exciting, lucrative, all time best selling crisis by our death-match secret keepers is casually treated with recycled product messages such as Swine Flu at the Podium, Bin Laden Deepsix or Bush Drops From the Sky as Jesus in Flackwear.  Besides, there is so much else going on, every day, wonderful and atrocious, we no longer have the time, interest or desire to freak out.  It is a fact of life in our overproduced and counterproductive environment, the human being’s natural defense mechanism is activated to turn away from that which causes anguish, suffering, harm and pain. Our lives are local and in local territory there are unwritten rules of genial conformity tempered with much compassion largely adhered to with an exception here and there.  Normal people don’t speak in acronyms or define whatever it is they’re pushing with MIC-speak.  Normal people have no way to translate journalists’ dialogue filled with words and statements such as breached, intelligence and leak and the overused unclear, "It remains unclear due to ongoing..."  The meaning behind this language is completely lost on vast numbers of citizens, it simply is not in their vernacular.

What is truth for locals are hourly wages, food on the table and their children.  As much as I detest this city, its dirt and its ubiquitous evil, equally I love the diversity.  From my observation, the US born white guy is the minority here.  Of course, it is that very diversity that is the spinal cord buttressing the local monoculture of obscene wealth in wanton ignorance to the outside world and its ongoing disasters just as blood circulation is to the heart.  As far as that monoculture is concerned why should they care either?  They, too, are busy with their own version of local.  They care only to the extent of returns on the dollar.

It seems the only people(?) that are having hissies over the current revival, Its Snowing in Snowden, are the producers and their agents.  There is a point, of that we can be sure, why such events take place and are, as you have noticed, escalating and that point is M-o-n-e-y.  You might disagree, but power and control are expensive products to maintain and to insure their viability into the far future. 

If you haven’t been keeping up with Arthur Silber’s takes on this issue, you are missing the best thinking and writing available anywhere. 
* * *

Bulletin: The Trout Clan will shortly be making public, visually, their astounding recovery progress.  It’s a mighty thing to behold.  Stay tuned for their next post.  I will be linking to them onblog to make sure all of you have the opportunity to see what hard work, love of the land and love of life itself can do.   Residents of Tornado Alley and regions prone to wildland fire will be especially interested.

we can do this now

The Trout Clan's Murph and Freeacre, have had a disastrous fire wiping out their formerly exquisite property made by holding hands with Nature.  I don't know the details of how it began, but they are in the midst of starting over which has been held back as usual by the ARGHHHH insurance industry.  Please see their new post and offer what you can by way of assistance in any and all areas to speed healing.  We know them to be an incredibly hard working and resilient couple and I have no doubt they will, at some point in the future, discover this disaster as a blessing in disguise. 

Let's help them however we can, even if it is only through your good words, I am sure it will help.  Thank you.

the demonstration of a test

It was easily three weeks ago I was doing my usual, walking the Hound.  It was an extended period of multiple tests, one after another, coinciding with each other, piling on one another, you might be experiencing the same thing, my mind stretched grid-like in the demonstrations arising, working out the balancing act required to meet each one, confidently, making the most of each as they were  presented and recognized for what they were.  The Hound snatched something nasty from the bushes at night and whomped it down before I could inspect.  He became ill, of course.  In the course of getting him to the vet, the rockbuggy would have to be charged and a new starter meant getting to the car guy.    These are classic everyday tests we experience in overpopulation, nothing is as it would be today if only ...  You may have noticed these tests come in bunches.  Certainly someone, or one key element, along the chain of multiple tasks required would flake and more, each test required it be done correctly in order to proceed to the next.  As soon as it came to me the combination of dog, vet and auto mechanic was a test and the scenery and cast were all part of the demonstration, all doubt vanished.  And still, I barely know my way around in this place.  Driving around is always a sort of hunt and peck affair, but its small here in my quadrant and with enough time, you can reach whatever destination you want.  I was up to the challenge.  As a person who has lived jungle and rural for half of their life, to find my way around a complicated maze of ramps and overpasses in that special searching style explains my lack of interest in knowing where anything else is located, with the exception of what it is I want to find within every sector of post NWO structures, or would that be Neo-NWO, whale-gulping our Mother's resources in every skinflint shape and flavor.  I refused the GPS app for a similar reason, why do we need this shit?  GPS addicts tell me how fabulous and convenient are these talking beltway devices, but they should know better by now.  I would take offense, if such a thing were possible, except I can't be offended by not being interested in mass consumer hypnotics to quiet the methane-belching cattle.

There are some days or nights or both that run by us magically in their perfection.  Its as if you were looking at a tapestry of the hours woven as it happens, where the yarns, blending colors and weave explain it all in seamless mesh, as one activity naturally leads to another, each demonstration sweetly paves the way into the middle of the next.  The Pup is cool now thanks to his vet who did what I wanted her to do and relinquished her own plan for dog te$ting and just handed over the goodies.  I'd done my homework online.  The rockbuggy took us there because 1) I got an unexpectedly easy charge for the battery, and 2) the car guy did his replacement at the speed of, heh, light.  

There's more, two beat up strays were hanging around the 'hood during this same period.  You could see they'd had it rough and for a long time.  Various neighbors were leaving out food and water, but not taking them in.  It was pretty cold too.  I worried about their nights, under bushes, escaping the MAN, but the way they were roaming around the houses after dark said they were hungry, tired of exposure to the elements and in need of family.  My own pup was worried too.  For him, the message was loud and clear.  I called a friend who has adoption connections and was told if I could bring them to her, she would get them medical attention.  Ah ... the test took a sudden turn.  I'll save some space here and just mention they now live permanently in a nice big heavily-fenced house with dog door, huge backyard and pool and are brushed, bathed and putting on weight, best of all, they are cherished.  You might think I denied them their freedom, but the city kill shelter is reportedly worse than Abu Graib.  The same people who would call the dogcatcher, and there are multitudes of them, are the same patriotic Roundup Ready racist fringe who  are devoted to their version of cleanliness is Godliness. 

The list of tests goes on, those I mentioned were important, but apparently not final.  The tests are actually life, why we are here.  Sometimes, a test will appear as minor, the reason for that is to gauge your ability to acknowledge they are tests.  To use a TAO-like balancing example, without awareness of what it is that is taking place on a higher level, there is no understanding at all, i.e.; ignorance.  Further, failing a challenge that you arranged, attaches itself to your core, negatively, from negativity into certain defeat and self pity. 

An interesting test is giving small sums, if it is done compassionately, without expectation of reward such as currying favor or calculating return, there is no element of debt which changes everything that the recipient was preparing himself to feel badly about in advance of asking for what it was he needed. There is a beautiful Universe that exists where expectation and anticipation, rewards and dishonor are erased from the activity.  There is no hypocrisy, no building of pre- and post-fabricated animosity.  It can be for some a very difficult test especially in overpopulation, everyone you know running short of funds and thus quickly friendless, rampant corruption all around and the fear of being labeled with trash nicknames behind their backs. It works both ways when done wrong, the giver is a sucker and the taker is a deadbeat.

I well remember being so crazy hungry I actually called home collect, thousands of miles away, to beg, and looked down at the Lower East Side street beneath my bare feet before the call connected and staring back at me was a twenty lying on the pavement.  In terms of demonstrations and tests, the message was clear and it was multipart on numerous levels, all of them corrections and lasting lessons.   None of them forgotten to this day, especially the part about the futility of dwelling so intensely on fear of the future.  Given awareness, all works out as it was designed.

Just because I am posting about beautiful things such as tests in no way negates the egregious, bloody happenings "out there".  The time has arrived to make serious plans to secure a more survivable future.  As a reminder, I am reposting Scrapwood's contribution of T'ao Ch'ien's  After Liu Ch'ai-Sang's Poem ...

I'd long felt these mountains and lakes
beckoning, and wouldn't have thought twice,
but my family and friends couldn't bear
talk of living apart. Then one lucky day
a strange feeling came over me, and I left,
walking-stick in hand, for my western farm.
No one was going back home: on those outland
roads, farm after farm lay in empty ruins,
but our thatch hut's already good as ever,
and you'd think our new fields had been
tended for years. When valley winds turn
cold, spring wine eases hunger and work,
and though it isn't strong, just baby-girl
wine, it's better than nothing for worry.
Distant -- as months and years pass away here,
the bustling world's racket grows distant.
Plowing and weaving provide all we use.
Who needs anything more?
Away, ever away into this hundred-year life and
beyond, my story and I vanish together like this.

Too Hot to Handle, Too Cold to Survive

Good Evening Friends, welcome again to another episode of Lies & Diversions. Tonight, as we lean back in our office style swivel chairs, surrounded by the warmth of a glowing fireplace brightening our War Rooms, we invite you to take a little trip with us into certain, rather frightful places, some call it the unknown, but that would be only because they have not been paying attention.  They have been paying attention to the aps and features on their bluetoothed phones between absent-minded mouthfuls of whatever high cholesterol, fructosed, BHT preserved and crunchy crackling bag contents they've sequestered in their desk drawers, occasionally spraying large gulps of green Monster on the desktop.  They think you are laughing with them because they are funny, but you are laughing at them because maligning them is not spiritually healthy.

As a mood-setting prelude for tonight's episode, here are a few select lyrics from "Desolation Row" off the Highway 61 Revisited album.  Are you going to ask me who wrote them?

... They're selling postcards of the hanging
They're painting the passports brown
The beauty parlor is filled with sailors
The circus is in town
Here comes the blind commissioner
They've got him in a trance
One hand is tied to the tight-rope walker
The other is in his pants
And the riot squad they're restless
They need somewhere to go
As lady and I look out tonight
From desolation row ...

... Yes, I received your letter yesterday

(about the time the door knob broke)
When you asked how I was doing
Was that some kind of joke?
All these people that you mention
Yes, I know them, they're quite lame
I had to rearrange their faces
And give them all another name
Right now I can't read too good
Don't send me no more letters no
Not unless you mail them
From desolation row

If you'd rather listen than read poetry, visit the link and turn up your speakers, although this particular version has a skippable ad before the stills.  Why can't we view the original?  Because standards and licensing agencies appear to have found something objectionable about desolation.  "This video contains content from SME and The Harry Fox Agency, Inc. (HFA), one or more of whom have blocked it in your country on copyright grounds." Cough, cough...

It is interesting to me that Visible's recommendation of the film, Memento, so remarkably captures visually much of the same high weirdness, tragedy and romance we pondered over the years listening to Dylan's musical metaphors.  Thank you Vizzy.  In Memento, with the funky sexy Guy Pierce (also in The Road, the calming father with his family at the beach) as our protagonist who has lost his short-term memory, aka the inability to make new memories.  Check out the trailer and skip the brief Jurrasic Park-extreme ad if you like. Memento is THE perfect film for these times, crazy, backwards and forwards, completely lacking the continuity necessary for making sense in our once civilized world of dates, calendars, clocks and schedules big and small.  I suggested you see it last summer, but if you have not done so yet, let me remind you again, its very, very good.  Easy to rent too.


***

I read Clusterfuck Nation every Monday morning.  Its just what I do, along with all the other blogs on my bloglist.  I don't usually comment there because its a crowded house and heavy on self-adverts, but Mr. K's entertaining writing style and take on our state of affairs are always interesting, often localized, you get a clear picture of what seedy desolation has overtaken upstate NY and much of small town New England.  This Monday's read contained a link it would be well worth your while to investigate.  Kunstler never links and I'm not going to give you a direct link.  I think you will find out why when you visit the sole link wedged into the middle of Kunstler's essay.  You can't miss it, it ties together more than a few billboarded and blathering diversions and puts truth to your worst suspicions, if you have them, if you allow yourself to ask the hard questions, if you are able to grasp a complex concept and follow it to its natural outsome.  Some of you may not be shocked at all.  Some of you may even have known all along the BRICS are well underway in their program.  There is no way our overlords will take this oncoming economic ostracisation sitting back, handwringing, unless action is taken before the fact - which may happen.  The MSM just ignores it, continuing on with gay marriage, the downfall of Lilo, powerball frauds and absurd employment/home sales statistics.

Decide for yourselves and feel free to comment even if you have never commented here before.  This needs discussion.  It does appear we are facing Memento on Desolation Row come round at last.  All that we have been preparing for, all along, was this.  We may not have to prepare anymore because if we've been good, loving, compassionate little persons, we might soon wind up on Pandora with our beloved Scout, ..neil..  HI NEIL! 

orchestral chorus lines and pathological plot lines

I suppose it goes with the territory.  Look at what we are doing ... conversing on a regular basis with people we've never met and likely never will through a medium most of us, unless we happen to be geek hobbyists, have no idea how they actually work.  There are people out there living their entire lives in ratty pjs glued to these little boxes sharing their most minute life details with complete strangers.  Points for the most heartfelt, the most revealing of minutae, the most ingenious command of links to others firmly locked into the same pizza delivery lifestyles, when at its most pronounced means what?  Based on the global popularity of this particular manner of survival, it reveals a tragic longing for connection to others that is obviously absent in their 3-D.  We've always known this at heart, but paid little, if any attention to whatever we might do to change it in our own 3-Ds.  It may be that serious external change is impossible in these times, the imaginary neon lights beckoning from every angle, every waking minute, something like living on the Las Vegas strip if it were physical, so that you can not escape the pressure of your zeitgeist even if you try with every ounce of energy, the very impulse to indulge, for the most part, inescapable, the life blood of the New World pumping through every little person heart because ... because that is all there is.  That the controls manufactured specifically for managing overpopulation make casual conversation, normal courtesies and compassion very close to impossible, thus the out of all control populations revert enthusiastically to the fantasy of connection through invisible mediums, except they blotted out all the really good stuff that makes life beautiful.  The individual desire for attention has gone into overdrive, the unmet narcissism of the lonely Human Being has no time for, or memory of, the real person behind the written word.  And while all those fonted words of temporary, inanimate connection produce a brief semblance of reality, the acknowledgements pale in comparison with the real thing.  They bear numerous, serious and cautionary downsides.

The worst of them being the unknown chorus line accompanying electronic reality.  Behind every feeling put into binary code await uncountable chorus lines ready to parachute into your authentic life in ways least expected.  I'm saying this must be part of the draw.  When the false meets the real, the narcissistic ego is assuaged as a three prong plug meets the socket - snap-pop-bingo.  Its a step up, closer to something intense (whatever that is), greater leaps of fantasy are taken, after which 3-D hardly matters.  Of course, considering the common state of 3-D, it makes a sort of secondary logic the individual would desire retreat into imaginary communes of supposed agreement.

One day, not too far from today, these electronic mediums will be directed towards their final purpose.  Cyberwarfare will replace all ground and air wars. Its already happening.  It is backwards now, too expensive, too contagious and unwieldy to use in full today as it will be used eventually, but great highways of inroads are being made by the hour.  Why wrangle with the problems and expense of F35s when any resource-laden nation can be brought to its knees through cyberwarfare?  Eventually it will become the weapon of choice and all the little bloggers, tweeters and effingbookers clogging up the bandwiths will be phased out by stray variants of worms and hacks.  Not only will it be a self-defeating exercise to manage your add-ons, heh, how many of us actually know how to stay clean of the as yet unknown electronic diseases still in the womb?  Busting the little people's small pleasures will be immeasurably easier than lining us up to take seriously manufactured stupidity.

Back to the chorus lines.  Recently, I was kind of shocked into recognizing the sea of humanity's Dagwood and Blondie grouping into simpleminded sectors of black or white mass opinion.  As I thought at the time, the first episode was a feeler.  An how far can we go feeler.  Apparently, we can go VERY far.  Everything one might type or dictate into the electronic medium of their choice is food for the black and white chorus lines of mass opinion.  This is but a stage my friends, a training exercise for tomorrow's plot line.  In the future, whatever overpopulation does on an individual basis will be accompanied by choirs of opinion,  long lines of faceless, disembodied people you've never met and never will, speaking to you through multiple devices as arms and hands in text stretch out in unison coercing you to feed them what it is they want.  And how do we know what they want?  Whatever we feed them will be twisted to suit what they already think because they don't really think, they adopt what they've admired from afar and use it as nourishment for their own pathological needs.  This behavior is a sideshow mirror of the courts of our current justice system replete with prosecution, defense, judge and jury, as if a "crime and criminal" were identified and opinion camps firnly established.  It is just-us after all.  Who are we fighting, who are we defending today?

Before I had the rockbuggy, my beloved V8 was smashed.  I was forced into battle with the offender's insurance company.  Of course, when something like that happens, my first instinct is to be done with it, but it immediately turned into a full time job because not only was I dealing with several different agents, I was dealing with Godzilla, the insurance industry's computer system that decrees your fate.  The cast of characters grew by the hour, from the state, to storage at the tow guy's holding facility to insane repair estimates.  I came to realize each massive industry out there has its chorus lines, the required-by-law parades of needy, greedy hands all screaming "gimme gimme" and all of them in full ignorance of the victim's plight.  And let us not forget the byproduct groupies these TBTF industries spawn such as the underground parts market or the hot, slimy breath of municipal auctioneers.  Doesn't it make you wonder WTF is gonna happen when the states' agencies are mandated into health insurance exchanges?  Geeze amighty. 

Enough of that for now, I am merely bringing to your attention certain evidential fallout one may not have grokked was included in Mayan Prophecy that is actually in full bloom as we speak.  The artisan carvers of prophecy obviously were mistranslated as lost and foreign languages in metaphor often are.  Sybil whatshername told us that much as did Condoleeza concerning Ahmadinejad's poetic letter writing skill.  If you were keeping up with this blog in 2012 and earlier, you would have seen it too.  The whole year of 2012 spelled itself in bold, you had to be institutionalized to miss it, TEOTWAWKI. Another part generally misdiagnosed is the Prophecy's exponential power over the immediate and going forward.  Take heed.

Open your eyes, take a clean reading, unplug for a month and see how you feel.  Concentrate on what you personally can do to love more, help more, SEE more, be more receptive to the Forces of truth that are always there guiding us.  You will never hear them as long as you are cursed with the motivation of feeding your dis-ease in the netherworld's underbelly of cyber-genergated opinion modification.  Look at your actions: Every action has a reaction.  Every re-action is then multiplied until it becomes another mass moron behavior acceptable primarily to the actors and their fawnng, hungry chorus lines.

Missing neil, irreplaceable, genuine, deep, so real his pictures perfectly match the man envisioned.  How fortunate we were to have him among us for that little space in time before he returned to Pandora.  We want to say "Take us with you."

Do No Harm

This past week's community slanderfest is probably not over, just in remission until someone else picks it up.  Therefore, the following lesson is particularly appropriate when considering New World Thug Behavior and Carelessness.  Much gratitude goes to Scrapwood for sending in the 59 Lojongs.  It will go on the left sidebar in the Free NeverOverdue Library shortly so you will have immediate access to all 59 teachings and the preliminaries.


"... The Mind-Training Slogans, #31 

Each Friday, Acharya Judy Lief, teacher in the Shambhala tradition of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, comments on one of Atisha's 59 mind-training (Tib. lojong) slogans, which serve as the basis for a complete practice. 

Atisha (980-1052 CE) was an Indian adept who brought to Tibet a systematized approach to bodhicitta (the desire to awaken for the sake of all sentient beings) and loving-kindness, through working with these slogans. Judy edited Chogyam Trungpa's Training the Mind (Shambhala, 1993), which contains Trungpa Rinpoche's commentaries on the lojong ("mind-training") teachings.

#31. Don't malign others

When we malign someone, our intention is to cause harm. Our words are spiteful and ill-spirited. There is a saying that “sticks and stones can break my bones, but words can never hurt me.” But in fact words do have power and they certainly can hurt.

In working with the slogans, we are working not only with our actions, but with what is behind them. For instance, when we say something, we should ask ourselves why we are saying it, and for what purpose. Will what we say help the situation or not? Are we trying to connect with someone or get rid of them? Are we trying to help them or to destroy them? Or maybe we are talking just to talk, to fill the space because we are uneasy with the silence.

If we need to malign others to make us feel good about ourselves by comparison, we will never feel all that great. And at the other extreme, when we encounter people who are exceptional, that approach will make us feel pathetic in comparison. According to this slogan we should stop that whole destructive approach.

Not maligning does not mean that we do not notice differences in people. It does not mean that we should not recognize people’s hateful or destructive attitudes and weaknesses when we encounter them or that we should not speak up. Everything does not just become a mush. But when we see other people’s problems without encumbering our perception by the need to prop up our own insecure ego, we can respond more directly and appropriately. By stopping the habit of maligning, not only will we do less harm to others, but we will also begin to free ourselves from the need for such props.

Today’s practice
Pay attention to your speech and to how you talk about and to other people.  What is the difference between speaking critically and using speech to harm or to destroy? ..."


***


I  would rather, any day, be thought naive rather than publicly slander another, especially when that person is already down, battling demons no one can dispel but themselves.  I wish I were naive sometimes, ignorant of the viciousness that can arise when expectation and motive are shredded in the bright light of reality.  Naive to the increasing overtone of violence rocking our world off its axis every single day, every hour, somewhere, blind to the immediate flare of tempers feeling wronged by whomever, wanting whatever.  If you look at these situations closely, you would find there are always two elements at the root of conflict, one is of course, money, the other, credibility. The belief systems accompanying our existence in western culture encourages the value of those two elements exponentially to the point that all most people are exposed to is violent in its nature and always disastrous in result.  It does not have to be this way, it never did.  As Ran Prieur quoted on the idiocy of property ownership and John of Survival Acres presented in his essay on food production being at the root of all civilizations, both break down the walls of perception of why vicious conflict, bloodletting, enslavement, abject penury, injustice and arsenals of weaponry never had to be the roadmap to food security, peace, satisfaction and freedom.  In fact, we should be aware by now, our quickly depleting world seems to be composed of frivolous thug-appeal, violent "advancements" against humanity at large principally for the expansion of wealth among the already wealthy, i.e.; more food and property than can possibly be consumed by offspring of offspring.  In the present, it is trusted more than ever, violence is the only means to continue the atrocious, hideous charade.  As it stands now, this ongoing tragedy ends only when we die.  There has always been a better way for mankind to survive.  The reason Thug World thrives is violence is expedient, lacking clarity of thought and convenient, whereas exercising  intelligence and compassion for all beings requires love, that inconvenient marvel that always gets in the way of false desire.


We who seek awareness are on the right track for the most part, but it is evident the violence all around us is a highly contagious disease which is immunized against and blown away entirely with LOVE.

Part Two of Two

 The following post was composed over the last two weeks of December and the first two weeks of January, 2012 melting into 2013. 13, a significant number.

Good evening my friends, may the rumored peace of the recent giving season have found you, somehow.

Somehow.

"... Lately I've been stayin' at home
(Stayin' at home, stayin' at home)
Workin' the crosswords, turn off the phone
(Turn off the phone, turn off the phone)

And I dream I'm on vacation
'Cause I like the way that sounds
It's a perfect occupation
For me
I don't mind being by myself
If there's no one else around
It's the last good time in town ..."

The Eagles Long Road out of Eden   
Last Good Time in Town

Frantic is the word I would use to describe the people on the ground full on consuming globally-produced trade goods hammered together as fast as humanly possible more often under inhumane conditions. Frantic is not a kind state, it is a state almost without any realistic thought of others' situational states of existence other than how such supposed and taken for granted states press self-imposed deadlines the frantics adopt in the act of gaining approval from others they suspect are expecting some material something from them.  Now, WE know approval is never gained through deadlined offerings, attempting to increase your approval rating is an unnecessary, alien act anyway, you are either already appreciated as the person you have shown yourself to be or you are not.  And more, the best giving usually isn't gift-wrapped, especially if it is done through that extra gouge at the checkout, bare-bones, logo-imprinted, ribbonless, cheapskate gift boxing service so common everywhere.  Do Robots do that in the megabox factories colorfully streamlined with Flash Gordon appliances forcing the Dwarfs into unemployment and foreclosure on their snowy cribs?  A great gift to acknowledge love is one that indicates a friendship treasured, a gratitude so down home, whatever token you feel to bestow on your friend symbolizes you know their heart, you hear them, you listen because you are interested in another person's story.  You cannot fool around with that.  If you pretend, and think you are clever, your gift will symbolize your inaccurate understanding of what this um, friend of yours is really all about.   We must always choose with care, which takes time, there is nothing frantic about the process because it is a pleasure to think about expressing your attention with a symbolic act of love, kindness, authentic assistance in whatever is needed, an object, token, whatever. There is some homily about giving being more rewarding than receiving, some might think it a religious doctrine, but I find it runs deeper, at the gut level where personal sacrifice is not a consideration.


Allow me to acknowledge some of the recent lowlights: Sorry to hear about Mali.  Sorry too, to hear of the Algerian crisis.  Sorry for the innocents suckered into these things.  Outraged MLK Day was shifted from January 15 to partner with the inauguration follies.  I say to them, "You may be baaaaaaad, You may be haaaaaard, You may be totally out of your abusive, twisted backwards, Wetiko skull, but you do NOT mess with the sacred celebrations of our Bredren", we do not mess with theirs, ignoring them is not exactly on the same level as wrapping our moral and compassionate memories in a sequined tutu around the American Flag pole.


The redeeming part of these weeks has been the music.  I came across a radio program out of San Francisco called Hearts of Space.   Its broadcasting as I write this, chimes, theramin, flute, etc..  You'll want to listen Sunday nights outdoors or maybe just in the dark, inside with the starlight pouring in through rectangular shafts.   Also, here are some samples of David Nevue, another excellent find, scroll down for tidbits of  Amazing Grace and the soulful O' Come Emanuel. Nevue's interpretations of well known hymns shows us he is following a path many other musicians left behind, and he does it astoundingly well, its very stirring, emotional in fact. Nevue's tender handling of the music of our childhood Sunday mornings, a visit into the past, may have had to happen in the cycle of our journey so that we could appreciate the roots of the masters, Keith Jarret for example: classical and gospel to jazz-infused psychedelic rock aka The Jimi Hendrix Experience followed by a rebirth into classical masterworks, at every juncture gliding through advancing compositions, interpretations, always reflecting  unique style and sensitivity.  You get the feeling Nevue is also pushing through to another level, breaking some ground, what we hear now won't be where he stays, but its a great ride anywhere you hop on.  These demonstrations of  creative genius call  to us for reasons probably not known even to the most enthusiastic listener..  His bio intimates he is heading into a sort of natural man priesthood as if what he believes he can do for people doesn't need his piano to say it.  We shall see how that goes.  I think his personal style of musical expression says a lot more than he may realize.

... Like if I stopped painting.  If Bholanath stopped drumming.  If Scrap stopped enlightening us.  If Su stopped writing, if neil quit poetry, and so forth.  I use these few of the many talented people reading here as examples of why it is that what we do best is intimately connected to everything else we do.


Someone might ask me where I've been lately.  Heh, I'm not sure myself.  I've reached some kind of plateau that has a vaguely marshmellow feel, time is entirely my own.  I read the news, sometimes, I am affected, but I am not Of The News.  I am here with full responsibility for everything that takes place.  There are a handful of people I desire to see, the rest, well, if we should happen to strike up a friendship, they could be one of the handful too, its always a possibility, but not a requirement based on some public relations material possessed by our ex-ally, the Representative Self.  The RS, by the way, is 100% responsible for the sudden demise of the hapless Hindu gentleman pushed to his death onto the subway tracks as the trains were entering the loading area during the holidays, by a thirty-one-year old freewheeling psycho maniac who was reported to detest Muslims AND Hindus and liked to beat them to a pulp whenever she felt the grotesque urge of fevered violence course through her veins.  On the surface, she is made to appear as something like a one woman Civil War.  Where do you think she absorbed all that hatred?  Proof Beyond the Shadow of a Doubt Side Effect 247-094-859-762A-14,  the perp's influence wallows and swarms in Wetiko pathologies and their bands of willing assassins, accomplices and subgroupies, copywriters, copycats and stupids.  Once again, we see the behaviors of that "Breed without a Soul" wreak havoc on the innocent.  I stand behind my previous statement there would be no crime if there was no war.  It is not a matter of underfunded metal health programs pretending to corral the "lone nuts, fools and schizoids" at all because anyone can be subject to the kind of massive influencing going down disguised as responsible, healthy,  legal and ethical reality blared at you 24/7-365 from every faux churchbell turned cellphone tower, from the very air we breathe and the food we eat.  It is almost impossible to escape unless you happen to be on your guard, which is also called AWARE.

When you are truly aware, all the way, without lapses, you make no conscious effort towards being aware.  You are a fortress unto yourself because you are a child of JahGod on this journey, mending ancient karma, and you have an important mission to get somewhere really good and lasting when this journey in these skins is done.  The Wetikos are just not with us on this issue and that is too bad, their loss.  They will have to come back over and over and go through all the crazy jackass BS again and again until they destroy Earth with all their wanton waste, future foolishness and backfiring technologies rippling outwards through the entire Universe like skipping stones rippling tsunami-style, carrying microbes to swarms of galaxies where the growth of the ripples is unlimited.  Nice work fellas.  I'm sure the Inferno is readying a special heated vault just for you.

If you think its scary now with all the landfills and waterways on the planet in various states of decomposition, war-without-end plundering over the past, belching poison, spawning reproducing swamp creatures, hybrids resembling the human species, the truth is we have seen nothing yet.  

We have had little impact if any.  We have collectively a minus effect which translates into ever more ludicrous attempts to convince us of their correctness in a time when the wrongs, no matter how you look at them, speak for themselves.  Loudly.  They say they are pro-life but all they do is extinguish life in every way annihilation is possible, making any kind of life IMpossible for those who just want live in peace.  That destruction of life as we know, goes far beyond the species of homo sapien of which H.Sapiens are but one of the gazillions of scientifically categorized groupings of all victim cellular structures. They say this is for the best.  They say they have to do it to protect life, but murder, torture, enslavement, extinction is not life.  They say its about growth, that growth is good, but infinite growth as they imagine it is no different that any natural growth, from birth to death, growth itself implies shrinkage as in "There is no beauty without ugliness", no inherent opposite from which all things origininate, exist and are made whole, taking on mental and physical attributes in our consciousness.  The fallacy of the growth ideal is its tenuous bubble gum quality, born from corruption and by its very nature must burst.  That which increases eventually must decrease.

There is a line to be drawn here, how much of it are you going to let involve you?  This is where awareness comes in. Gather as much as you can until you are soaring on auto pilot in an endlessly clear sky.  Even then, a review is always encouraged.


During my absence from blogging, I still saw your blogs and comments and occasionally contributed here and there.  It felt as if it was ok, a non-event, of course I would pick it up when the moment felt right.  I discovered if one ceases doing something that brought desirable interaction with like-minded friends, other things, especially creative expression, wains.  In the act of moving again, four times in less than one year, it feels in many ways that this time in particular I've softly shifted away from much of the ambient planet backwards pressure to join the Denial of Consciousness Movement.  The vacillations of weather this winter dictates much of the experience, its been freezing, people rushing past in the icy winds, heads down, over-clothed, always in a hurry, going nowhere, I mean now just where, what is it, that is so important, that taking a good look at what has happened to us is not and never will be a priority? Everything has changed, but its just another everyday?

The studio is set up now.  I had to  get back into the familiar  "reintegrating without thinking" business of setting up little dropper bottles in lines according to color and shade, laying flat the colored pencils in geographic tones, desert, city, Heaven and Earth.  
The engine that powers this industry is you.

How's it going?

the other side