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.

Parades of hope against the backdrop of fear

While I read the blogs linked in the blog list, I read a lot more that there isn't room left to link here.  That's a given experience, a daily occurrence, facts and fiction of life in the internet age of which we are all doing the same thing more or less at varying times.  What is not an ordinary experience is visiting these "stories" in real life which is why I went along with the group to a candidate's rally.  I'll synthesize it for you briefly: the appearance of this candidate was exactly as we've seen him on TV with the exception of the crowds, crowds numerically rivaling a Stones concert at Madison Square Garden, for example.  What was originally presented as a speech, likely under an hour or less, turned out to be an all day affair in order to get a "good" seat which meant a faraway glimpse of what it was you agreed to attend at all.  Actually, I agreed to go because it was something I would normally never do, such as ride in a giant Cat garbage compactor gliding over the L.A. city dump.  Further, if I was going to continue to blog about our bizarre lives on Planet Earth in 2012, seeing up close in 3D just how the appointed Earth leaders do whatever it is they do, in person, seemed worthwhile. 

From where we connived our seats, connived because only a mere hundred or so people were able to occupy them, thousands upon thousands stood, the angle of the setting sun made photography impossible.  After dark it remained impossible as the stage lights (think Woodstock-style scaffolding) acted as more Suns.  The real show was sneaking peeks at the well-armed, military uniformed security squad on the roof of the adjacent building.  If there was anything to walk away with after such a show, it was the demographics of the crowd on the ground and the roars of approval.  The content was nothing we have not heard before.  The sad part was seeing the sheer numbers of true believers, the shabby and rundown, the confused and uncomfortable, the disabled and the aisle dancing, placard holding families with strollers, the obvious poverty of beleaguered persons and congregational fellowship of unbridled patriotism under the media spell that their immediate future will change everything wrong with today for a better tomorrow if one just manages to climb aboard the magic Diebold bus.  I liken it to a tent revival, the cultists, having lost everything, still filled with worship and couch change as if nothing, no matter how goofy, can shake that faith in the snake handlers' snake oil cure-all.  Too bad the show organizers overlooked the inspirational Bondo of a good gospel choir.

Thus, the first of the candidates' debates was a rehash of the same impossible shuck 'n jive we know all too well because we've read it, seen it and we live with it in one fashion or another every day, like it or not.  Nowhere present in any of these "entertainments" was there discussion of any real plan to survive climate change or what we are going to do when our own municipalities declare States of Emergency (emerge and see), leading to full bankruptcy which means contractual obligations will not be met.  Who will fight the wildfires then?  Will it all become so unweildy they will eventually sit back and let it just burn until there is nothing left to fuel the flames?  And don't even think about calling 911.  It seems as if all the candidates are doing at their meetups and globally televised "debates" is to trade inaccurate statistics on how the health insurance industry will continue to gorge on whomever's version of healthcare is forced down our throats, mandated under a tax penalty - a penalty tax actually of which those very funds could have been paid, and in many cases probably will, to see your doctor.  Now tell me, is it not stupid that one must pay just about the same amount of money to the IRS, if that money were available to the individual, to receive immediate medical attention?  Imagine how it works - law abiding citizen, churchgoing, college educated, but unemployed, deeply in debt, children and more on the way, home in foreclosure, suddenly notes tax scofflaw on his lifetime list of unplanned mile markers.  You better believe these folk were also in attendance at the rally, cheering.


And then the day came last week, at some point, there was yet another negative Monsanto mention on some site out of the hundreds visited so that nothing really stuck, but the thought, which according to all we know about what it is they do, came together in such a way it overwhelmed the latest evil reports and took on the solid form of the answer we've sought for how many years now?  Everything since that insightful moment unfortunately fits.  The birthrate in the US is down for the fourth year.   We are to think this is because of the economy, the 2nd Great Depression, ah, the recent recession which we are also to think is well along the road to recovery. Maybe we're not thinking too well, maybe the steady diet of pesticides in GMO seeds, the massive romance with convenience foods pushed at low prices or free with ubiquitous government food stamps, maybe this has something more to the point to do with low birth rates?  And maybe Monsanto is in league with a certain global agenda and everyone including the suicided farmers and new moms, even the journalists offering implausible justifications are oblivious?  They want us to think an under-performing economy does not translate into something as basic as increased sexual activity.  Hey, when you have no money to go out, what are your plans for the evening?  And what do we know for sure anyway, maybe legitimate rape is on the rise and women's bodies just sort of magically shut down all those mysterious female secretions that make babies?  My friends, I will not insult your intelligence, you and I know the global population needs to be lowered asap, there simply is not enough of anything to go around. All the media's trending growth reports are growth only in their clever manipulation of tragic facts.


The debate of my dreams will come on the day these Charlie McCarthys lay out realistic repairs granting every man the right to choose and construct plans of his own making wherever his vision of survival appears most possible.  That the candidates admit to being powerless over Nature and throw off the reins of the personhoods that train them, promote them, pay them and mold their agenda and allegiances. The candidates are their spokespeople, testing consumer enthusiasm, allowing them to statisticize response and thus reach further.  As long as there are so many populations stuck inside ridiculous beliefs they are free, better, smarter humans than all other humans existing outside their country's borders and and will always be safe and prosperous thanks to the benevolent all-seeing government, everything is heading on a perfectly linear course towards cruel, unnecessary and absolute chaos worsened by the accelerating effects of climate change and its revolving disasters.  We know how that came around too, don't we.

Truly, posting on this subject is not pleasant, nor particularly deep.  In between the rare moments when we are not under the cloud of the enforcers, I have many other things to be said here.  Perhaps the pain of life itself is on hiatus in those hours of system anguish in which case there are too many who welcome the intellectual exercise.  However, the epidemic of re-election fever, simply in its overabundance, is making us ill, queasy and becomes cause for strange and unlikely interactions pitting us against our fellows as if the clock was turned back to the Civil Rights Movement.  In reference to our last post on Fear of Being Real, it appears no one is willing to experience the consumerless lead-up to authentic change.  As Charles Hugh Smith says  Crisis is a Positive Force, I've said as much myself, for it brings out the innate compassion and self-reliance of every human being, but to get there we have to be fully willing to rely on our own creativity in survival and that requires we put fear on the far back burner.  Of course we have that creativity in our makeup, its just been dulled like the useless appendix so that we live inoffensively on the chain gang.  Few escape successfully, no one apparently has ever been successful enough to live to tell about it.

***

Last but definitely not least, somehow I missed this on Property from Ran Prieur last April and today is a good time to bring it into your thought process. 

"April 24. I've written before that we could define the "owner" of a place as whoever lives there, and factor out the whole concept of "property". Last month I discovered that Pierre-Joseph Proudhon had the same idea in 1840, in his book What Is Property? Specifically, Proudhon noticed that our word "property" blurs together two opposite concepts: the rights of someone who actually works with a piece of land, a house, a sum of money, a tool; and the rights of someone who does not work with it, who might never see it, but who is said to "own" it because, well, the rules say so, and we don't question them.

Looking just at land, where do pieces of "bought" land originally come from? Usually they are violently stolen from indigenous people, or in the case of unoccupied wilderness, some central authority simply declares "ownership" out of thin air. Tribal people have the concept of territory, but they would think it's insane for one tribe to "own" the land that another tribe occupies. Even neolithic farmers, who have already carved fields out of the forest, would not understand how one family could work a field "owned" by another -- unless they were slaves.

The concept of non-occupying ownership is like a magic spell that makes violent conquest and near-slavery seem natural. It enables ecological destruction, because people actually living on land, seeing the effects of their actions, are less willing to cut down forests and deplete topsoil than remote commanders seeing only numbers. And it enables positive feedback in wealth distribution: the two big ways the rich get richer are rent and interest, one where you pay a fee to the "owner" of land you're occupying, and the other where you pay a fee to the "owner" of money you're using...."

Phase II 2012 is over. Next?

Are you seeing any progress?  At this time, that which we feel is progress, although weakly discernible since we try hard to see "something" in order for it all not to have been an all-encompassing waste of a once good thing, is not progress acknowledged by the larger community, it takes a train you know, mountains must move, a violent punishing God must come down from the sky with his shepherds staff, breathing fire with bands of angels ripping off the masks and costumes, exposing the most intimate, naked fears of the paranoid human species.  God would herald the animals, the seas, the deserts and prairies, both poles, the foliage and his supreme natural system ensuring once and for all, they were understood to be his most pure, perfect creations, to be celebrated and treasured for they make his projects run smoothy.  Our progress levels seem  as slight acknowledgement of basic truth 101, there are many more advanced studies to be undertaken, it furthers one to cross the water.  Basic truth 102 is good, but Basics 103 gets a little slippery because of the commitment required to maintain previous understandings while the class ventures out of doors blindfolded.  One person wears the blind, the other leads the way.  That's the one where we are forced to abandon fear and embrace trust and can go very wrong if your trust has been misplaced.  Fortunately, with God, the coursework offers the solution which is to trust regardless because anyone reaching level 103 is already on the same page as you are. 


Are we waiting for God to visit?  Not hardly.  God is in us already, in the here and now.  This idea of a visiting deity, akin to political candidates' whistle-stops, is shared by many faux religions and  actually keeps God away, somewhere in a celestial palace, not available to stand on Earth and straighten out the turmoil in the way it appears to need, so it is that available self-serving rulers are appointed and reappointed,  telling us they do God's work, which they cannot as is plainly obvious, yet the fundies persist in this conundrum replete with erasing Mother's history to the point logic and sensibility of their motivation is distorted as always happens when someone starts from the wrong premise.  You cannot contemplate the Dharma without consciousness of that which was already here before mankind came along.  WE are not an original species, we are a sort of byproduct of Apes, Apes are a far more realized species in comparison.  We might have been their "services" sector because our dexterity proved capable of making tools and weaponry, but we were never decent helpers, always whining, grumbling, making deals behind the caves, cheating on the assignments, thinking our ways were better, that we were overall better beings than Apes, trading women in secret for the production of evermore skilled and creative offspring with which to overthrow the unpleasant circumstances of living without the luxuries the Apes seemingly enjoyed.  Man dearly desired to conquer his lowly status as sub-Ape and systematically, unknown to the Apes who bore him, fed him, gave him reason to be and the freedom to develop his skills, and began the long ascent (a descent) to rise above the arrangement.   This happened everywhere, almost simultaneously.  This era can be called the birth of human evil.  It was supplemented by a victory of sorts for Mankind so that he saw himself possessing great power over all.  Recall it began with an accidental hybrid who to this day has still NOT earned the trust of the Animal Kingdom. 


It is a cultivated occupatiom to let your mind travel and see where it goes.  As you throw in memories of your truth-time online, the story begins to evolve onto a nonfiction mystery which will take you, very often, to what it was that really went down.  As you know, one connection suddenly leads to another... and this "making of connections", be they local or far beyond the perimeter of your personal sphere, is the only kind of progress that ultimately matters.

* * *

In the process of thinking about trust, connections and progress, what we really need to talk about is fear in some of its most common manifestations.  For those of you who missed the comments on the last essay, you would not know we are speaking of the Fear of Being Real.  I will tell you right off, the more real you are the better your chances of survival anywhere, anytime.  Life is not a cakewalk, we were put here to suffer in order to understand suffering.  The Great Wall of Fear is one of the fundamentals of life, such as appendages and DNA.  Attempting to break through the wall is one of the, if not THE, most difficult things we can do.  There are quick ways to do it, but they are not as long lasting or life-impacting as doing it on your own without embellishments. Once you start however, even the smallest crack in the wall bears great fruit, call it beginner's luck.  It will encourage you to try it again and again because the jewels of self-knowedge lying inside and the pasture of Universal Plenty on the other side, patiently wait for you to reach them.  With each success you gleam brighter.  There are many who only go so far and quit, thinking they've figured out all they need to get around it, fearing huge losses resulting from coming clean with themselves, their enablers and their followers also locked in lies.  It is the Great Wall of Fear after all and it is fearsome indeed, those who don't make it would be the masses hard-wired into elaborate systems of false belief.   An example would be that of someone who basically portrays themselves to themselves, and others, in the context of full-spectrum fabrication, 24/7.  Do you know anyone like that?  Although some people who have the most to fear will sometimes make the breakthrough, this rare occurrence happens only because living a lie-filled life includes a suffering that in its most unbearable moments overwhelms them, then compels them to seek another way of existence. 


Some Top Fears in no particular order:

being unloved
loss of shelter
escalating the potential for violence
appearing stupid
being needy, hungry
loss of credibility
perceived as sloppy and careless
chosen to be an accidental enemy
penury
abuse
loneliness
being unjustly taken advantage of

And those are just common fears, not mine, maybe some were a long time ago, but fears I have witnessed over the recent past often enough to note these particular fears are usually the root behind otherwise inexplicable behavior.  I'll be interested in hearing your lists.  Some might interpret these fears as being mostly without physical pain, but the pain of suffering encompasses physical and intellectual pain, it can and will kill and/or destroy lives and create medical conditions often matching one's "worst" fear. The fear experienced typically in wanting to speak the truth but do not for fear listeners will discredit you and never again take you seriously is RAMPANT.  It stings in your body, knots the gut.  That kind of fear, BTW, is taught in kindergarten or earlier should one be so unfortunate as to be a product of abusive parenting.  The way to break through that is to forgive and move on, carrying with you the lessons of support and compassion.  When you examine the root, you are bringing fear to its logical dead end.  The problem is in the examination, we must be motivated to uncover what fear tells us.  Remember that every seemingly chaotic and cloudy event is fear based.  Imagine multiples of fears cascading upon you all at once, there are people who love this state and others who will not tolerate it, seeing though the veils and incessantly backtracking for the cause.  It is always startling to discover how routinely those fears listed above show themselves.  Before 2012, of course we saw them, but in 2011 and further back, they were not nearly as stark as today, in the urban global marketplace where life depends on creative survival in spite of fear.


Large numbers of city dwellers are walking around with invisible bandaids over their fears instead of facing them.  This is why wherever you have to go within a city, you are met with vast sinkholes absent human contact, the silent self of the stranger recoils from risking a glimpse of you in all your truth, as you find you are attempting to interact with a robot quoting from the employees manual.  Nothing in these exchanges have any truth to them other than "yes" or "no".  This means whenever we must be present in an urban setting for whatever reason it is within the quality of a movie, perhaps They Live, Wall Street, Death of a Salesman or Glengarry Glen Ross, a.k.a. "no one is home", because they are lost in their steamertrunk of fears, making it nearly impossible for you to accomplish whatever seemingly simple task you went there to achieve.  The truth is never the fantasy.


It also means whenever you are among friends, it can be guaranteed some or one will fear your straightforward no-nonsense approach which unfortunately can sometimes translate into seeing your views rather unsymathetically.  That usually happens among the kind who always have to be right as their drug of chioice - of which there are as many as there are psychopathies to hide them.  Our recent favorite lesson stands: They-want-it-that-way.  Well, fine, but the unconscious emotional trauma brought on by fear is a killer leaving untold collateral damage in its wake.   Once it is clear to you that you are perceived as an enemy to the robot, which you cannot help but be - since your very presence brings up unconscious fears, intimdation, foreboding, suspicions, it is best to use simple, clear sentences and leave quickly.  It is likely you have nothing at all to do with somone else's baggage, so be kind, be geniune and brief. 


Afterwards, when you are far away, back in your own comfort zone, you might feel sad their lives were lost while they were still living.  I blame these fears on childhood abuse and/or a childhood surrounded with the same fears we are talking about, as if the child sponge fully absorbed those very same fears squeezing the life out of the adults even before the child was able to name sunshine and rain.  I've heard it happens in the womb or for that matter in conception.  Think about it.  Work to overcome it.


Related:  Visible Origami:
"... What is going on? What is going on? What is not going on? Why do we walk around massive lies that we know to be massive lies and are indifferent to this? Why do we carry the truth around with us and are indifferent to it? Fear plays a great part in all of this. We fear exposing the existence of the lies to ourselves. ..."
 

current conditions: lower lows and scattered highs

The dog and I were coming around a favorite city corner late Tuesday when we noticed an obvious hard luck case on the other side of the street we were just about to cross. You know the type, no shirt, filthy jeans, the mandatory satchel, long dirty yellow hair, I never saw his face, but already knew he'd have vacant glassy eyes and grey, lifeless features.   Simultaneously, a large, noisy immigrant family group was coming toward us from the opposite corner, many kids on bikes and Moms, Dads with strollers, perhaps twenty people in all.  If I wanted to avoid them, with my dog who adores children, I would have to cross over to the hard luck case, now weaving into collapse and so chose to keep walking on the other side as the family drew near.  Bernie, my dog, is in training for city walking and very young children are not only a thrilling distraction, but such a crowd can be unknown possibilities for dangerous encounters, especially where bicycle wheels are involved. It wasn't too long before the group caught up with us and Bernie and I were able to keep to the fringes.  Meanwhile, across the street, the hardlucker was exhibiting some extreme behavior, none of the group, I mean no one at all looked his way.  I was growing more alarmed as it appeared that he was having a breakdown of some sort.  I kept having to look over the heads of the crowd while reigning Bernie in closer to my body.  I saw this guy reach high up the chainlink fence and grab on, then stretch sideways so his head went all the way down fully disappearing into the satchel sitting on the sidewalk. The chainlink, by the way, happens to wrap all the way around a huge, fairly new elementary school.  After about ten minutes, the group was mostly ahead of us, but there had been no change in the hardlucker's pose, head still in satchel, arm achingly twisted above and behind him holding on in a death grip.  It wasn't making sense.  His arm was beautiful, tanned and strong.  I guess I was waiting for the fall which never came because by the time we reached the farthest corner twenty minutes away, his position had not changed.  It was as if he was somehow sculpted in place.  I could not imagine what he was doing.  The entire time he was in my vision, I felt I had to help him.  It was an awful feeling realizing there was nothing I could do but keep moving with this crowd of rollicking strangers . The questions and suppositions we make at such times are telling and alarming, was he armed, perhaps a knife, perhaps diseased and contagious, maybe a killer, rapist, a homeless zombie?  No, I am positive he was none of these absurd suggestions implanted into our suggestive psyche by the paranoiac news media.  But he was a person in trouble, trouble to himself, not to others. A sufferer in need of assistance.  He has remained in the forefront of my mind all night and I bear great guilt for not having helped him.  And while it was taking place, I knew very well the help I could have provided would have been worse than the situation he was already experiencing.


We have now come to the place where any helper agency cannot possibly do the very jobs they were created and funded to do.  What GOOD would it have done to have called 911?  To have the swat team arrive instantly surrounding the block at 7 pm with twenty squad cars in full color blinkies and screaming sirens and their particularly tidy way of grounding the so-called perps... it was, after all an elementary school where this guy absent mindedly chose to fade, help of that sort would have arrived in seconds and done exactly what we hear they do.  Can you imagine being as hopelessly lost and ill as this man appeared and being forced to his knees and shoveled off in plastic cuffs to the strip search, or at the very least dumped at the city shelter only to be told they are already full for the night and he'd better go somewhere else.  Like where? Or maybe a stretcher in the ER for an hour or two and then?  I spent a lot of time today searching for shelters of which there are a small few, but they cater primarily to foreclosure families with children, focusing largely on religious affiliation.  And if he's a vet, well, drug him up and let him go.  This was not the first time and certainly won't be the last time such a sorry scene bursts into our consciousness and therefore I sought sincere alternatives where I could, in good conscience, refer a damaged soul for authentic comfort, follow through and repair.   And yet, nothing I found can be held as bearing authentic aid because the system that has created homelessness is a system that has proven itself entirely ineffective in addressing the ugly side effects it spawns.  And these side effects are glaring, brutal and escalating the demise of innocents everywhere in a million new backwards, self-serving distortions every time you look upon it.


This is why the immigrant family that overtook Bernie and me continued staring straight ahead and laughing as if the singular misery of a sufferer in breakdown was nothing they had not experienced immeasurable times themselves as an unavoidable part of life, that the journeys undertaken to arrive and survive in the promised land where the streets are paved with gold were so incredibly noxious in savagery, shock and horror that they were drained of compassion in the process, compassion for anyone other than the bearers of their own DNA, never to look sideways again.


 I would like you to play at least four of the extraordinary videos at full volume shared on Bho's blog now, Throw down your heart and Oumou Sangare.  While you are there, be sure to spend some time with the magnificent and free at last Oliver, the Bear, as well.  Afterwards, I invite you to come back and tell me, please, what we ARE doing here? Are we just marking time or unwittingly locked into an eternity of simply passing through?


I'm cutting this post short today because visiting revelers with a multitude of large dogs are arriving shortly and time to think on why it really is that we are here will be delayed while I am there and here although comments of course will be allowed my full attention since I am not much of a reveler, notorious for hiding out with the dogs out back or running off in the rockbuggy to find whatever peace of mind is available.

a breed without soul

In a recent post concerning overpopulation, I mentioned the lack of identity among purchasing dependent overpopulators:

."..The next time you find yourself sitting in traffic, take a good look at your surroundings, take note of the decals emblazoned in obese fonts with neon hues on westerners' windsheilds, "American Patriot",  "I'm not a bitch, I'm THE Bitch" or the rednecks' fave, bin Laden pissing.  These indicate a desperation to stand out among the writhing masses, wouldn't you say, a loneliness so severe that attention is drawn by means of annoying hapless passersby?   You might also say its obvious they have no identity anymore (if they ever had any to begin with) and obscene decals are the best they could scrabble together in saying "I am alive, look at me, I count dammit!" ..."

... Overpopulators who in elbowing their ways through the journey atop Nascar rated tires or encased in overpriced lookalike cages behind gated walls,  the cabs and carriers of which include amenities such as surrogate identity where none actually exists, rooms and inhabitants displaying various cult features such as fashion. style, cosmetic surgery, meaningless logos and rude decals, never used tourbus campers, accessorized show pets, sculpture for the stupid tipped over on the tiny lawns and so forth which when distilled are banners hovering above their bodies as cartoon thought bubbles since the verbal skills of these cage dwellers are limited to uninspired overused phrases meted out under stress with matching facial expression instead of the age old middle finger hand signal which could, if employed outside the safety of shatterproof glass, bring on drastically unintended consequences.  For example, our mridang master met up with one of these PDO cultists last week, here is his description of the experience:

"On the 20th, in town, I was flipped off, cut off and almost rammed by a woman tearing in the exit to get in front of me at the gas pump. As she calmly got out I asked what the problem was. My eyes met the most icy cold, nobody-home, face I've seen in a long time. I was told to 'have a nice day'. Maybe I just don't get out much, and this is the new normal? Heavily meded-up was my take, and too close to the edge for me to pursue it further, as it was already disturbing enough...."

Hey, good move my man!  Too close to the edge indeed.  Call in the Astrologers or perhaps this event was yet another training exercise...
Shall we translate his tongue-tied  aggressor's meaning behind "Have a nice day", under those circumstances?  How about heated guilt?  Guilt so pure and intensely felt inside it burned in a wildfire of panic.  Caught, the pretender of rights to the pump was instantly reduced to a cheesy four words - words only used in that particular way by all the other countless guilty who know perfectly well they have destroyed your peace of mind by initiating deliberately violent and dangerous action proving for all who happen to be passing by, whatever they are doing is of more importance than whatever you could possibly be doing and are rendered speechless when the unexpected and unknown consequences of their reprehensible behavior suddenly confronts them face to face.   "Have a nice day" means Go away. I have no explanation for my actions, I don't even  know why I did what I did.  I can't apologize because that would give you (and me) living proof I was wrong.   Had it been anyone other than our musician confronting her, you can be certain she was aware her behavior was setting the stage for violence.  She took a wild gamble there and lucky for her, walked away to continue ruining the days of whomever else was so unfortunate as to be in her path.  I'm sure you've met plenty of these kinds of people, we all have, it is unavoidable, especially now as many of them have been born into a world ripped asunder, minus any comprehension of what exists inside themselves and others or even a shred of vague curiosity why the world is what it is today.  To question is to risk exposure.  They run the gauntlet and take their gambles and often lose, the losses piling high in their wake.  And when they don't lose, they still lose, because living a life in this manner makes them no friends.  There is something about being behind the wheel or any imaginary shield that ignites these wannabeWetikos like nothing else because out in the open they become sniveling cowards either looking for the nearest escape or threatening with a show of imaginary protections referring to friends in high places, but when you're looking at them, they are accompanied by no one.  Who could stand them?  They don't even like each other and are so worried their children won't turn out exactly like themselves, the kids are forced to stay indoors, losing their own curiosity and adding pounds watching candy bars broken in half and magically sealed back together on the wide screen.

Sad to say, I've been coming across this kind of thing too much. I try to stay apart, while being there with others, but alert, you never know what triggers another person's unsuspected anger.  Of course, this is not always the case, but it has happened enough in these times to be a recurrent phenomena.  However long and however well you think you might know someone, there is still a hidden, rather low level potential, you could, completely accidentally, set them off.  When that happens, you never forget, whatever you thought you had previous to that moment is gone, the trust betrayed.  The trust I am speaking about is a trust that we accept the totality of others, their baggage, their flaws, their bond with us until it is exposed as one sided, which isn't a bond at all.  Regardless of how fully we might join in smothering the outburst and make a long drawn-out show of loyalty, in your own mind and memory, the scene lives on.  You may think others have long overlooked your lapses too, but from your own experience, you know it is impossible and you can only hope the passage of time brings opportunities where you or she/he show themselves a better man than that deep, dark, secret memory you have of a seemingly out of character event.   Note it works not only both ways, but from an intermingling of angles. If you notice it happening repeatedly, you will eventually be forced to confront yourself, asking what are you in it for anyway?  Some know exactly why they engineer face to face crisis.   The Wetikos and their vain admirers play us like pianos, confident that following a successful guilt-inducing punishment, if you are still present, still forgiving, you are no threat to their existence. One might think they take it for granted no one is paying attention to the dynamic or how it charts itself in the memory-bank.  Over and over I see it going down, day after day, night after night, the same scenes enacted by countless human beings refusing to see the reality of what is happening, what they are doing, stumbling over the damage left in the wake of continuing crisis, poisoned to the gills from a steady diet of pesticides, loaded on mind glazing drugs, oblivious to the tortures they inflict and are being inflicted upon them. They are far beyond caring. What's more, they do not want you to point it out to them either, they already know they are in so deep there can be no escape during their lifetime.

I cannot imagine a life spent like that, can you?  They might as well just be lifers on the chain gang cultivating your crops.  We like to think somewhere down the road the human underneath will show up, but there is no evidence such a folly ever takes place.  That would be like hoping Jerry Sandusky mends his ways or George Zimmerman feels remorse.  Ladies and gentlemen, there is a breed out there that has no humanity and has laid claim to entire lifetimes without sensitivity, sorrow, suffering, love or compassion.  They have learned to blend in order to thrive and thrive at your expense they will.  This breed is one of the worst effects of overpopulation because you cannot avoid meeting up with them in crowds.  Avoid crowds.  Stay aware of your surroundings and keep a low profile. This breed thrives in a pampered and corrupt culture based on worship of the self.  In this way, you could call them vampires - energized by the blood of innocents.

We can also say Great Fortune shined upon our beloved musician while being shown the existence of this breed.  The fact the remainder of his day turned out so well, not to mention void of conflict escalation, speaks highly of his self-control.  That is a self-control we would all be wise to emulate.  Considering the bigger picture, with all its extending pressures and disappointments, the undeniable angst of a planet under siege, the refusal to address responsibility for extinction events immediately under way is leading westerners from denial and refusal into violence as if civility no longer matters.  To say civility has no place, is saying there is no love.  There will always be love, my friends.  No matter how unwieldy it gets, how freaky, how strange, how cruel, humiliating, devastating and physically painful, the one thing we can always count on is Love.  Love always wins. 

I  leave you with a link to an alarming report, Global Warming's Terrifying New Math, written by Bill McKibben and published for the August 2012 edition of Rolling Stone. I am sure some of you have seen it already. The fact that this piece was made available in that publication tells us citizens are meant to see it, share it and lose their cool over it.  Isn't that what Wetikos really want?  Ah, but I've got news for them, the majority of readers will be concerned only until the next personalized blinking ad grabs their eyes.

"... This record of failure means we know a lot about what strategies don't work. Green groups, for instance, have spent a lot of time trying to change individual lifestyles: the iconic twisty light bulb has been installed by the millions, but so have a new generation of energy-sucking flatscreen TVs. Most of us are fundamentally ambivalent about going green: We like cheap flights to warm places, and we're certainly not going to give them up if everyone else is still taking them. Since all of us are in some way the beneficiaries of cheap fossil fuel, tackling climate change has been like trying to build a movement against yourself – it's as if the gay-rights movement had to be constructed entirely from evangelical preachers, or the abolition movement from slaveholders. ..."

dark clouds, silver linings

"Arrows of neon and flashing marquees out on main street.
Chicago, new york, detroit and it's all on the same street.
Your typical city involved in a typical daydream
Hang it up and see what tomorrow brings. ..."
Grateful Dead


The vain and powerful personhoods continue to expand their reign swallowing whole the lesser of their kind like black holes as the only source of statistical profit left to economies. Money makes its own laws.  It makes its own friends and followers and hangers on and suck ups and blood leeching parasites.  Unless it infringes on protected territory, any source of hefty profit, especially carpet bagging, is worshiped and fully supported regardless of how it is achieved, although you'll note with "the gift to health insurers", a loophole of choice was left up to the states to accept or deny medicaid expansion and now we are seeing many states hesitate and back off,  they can't even handle their current volumes. 

A state's denial of funding to expand their health support services can be seen as an intentional enrichment of the fundamental gift.

Meanwhile, environmental disasters continue to expand in parallel.  The heat is on - still, and this is only July - encouraging the very real possibility one or more derechos, superfires, floods and droughts will happen again. Power outages will eventually become so unwieldy, there will be many locations the power simply cannot be returned.  If you have ever been in a disaster, you would have seen funding generated by your state's declaration of emergency, go where it is declared to be needed most (the strings attached), which is not the same as restoration of "normal".  The victims of Katrina can tell us all about that.  Normal is relative anyway.  Our normal now is living side by side the existence of mass illusion, its clear failure in sight if by nothing else than by the ubiquitous, ugly consequences of control by proxy.

prox·y
noun, plural prox·ies.
1.the agency, function, or power of a person authorized to act as the deputy or substitute for another.
2.the person so authorized; substitute; agent.
3.a written authorization empowering another person to vote or act for the signer, as at a meeting of stockholders.
4.an ally or confederate who can be relied upon to speak or act in one's behalf....
From Dictionary.com 
5. a robot, android, battery powered remote controlled model plane, boat or car or a skillful hologram
...not from Dictionary.com


As always,  I am more concerned with how all of this plays out on the little people.  Recently, there was an urban structure fire started by leftover fireworks which destroyed two apartment buildings.  I saw it develop while walking the dog.  It was a typical dusty triple-digit late afternoon on our return to the homestead of these weeks, I could see black smoke billowing from the end of the blocks, blocks crammed with tiny apartments void of ameneties or landscaping, culminating at the cusp of stripmalls.  The reports said 48 people were displaced, four injured.  The location and construction details reported in the aftermath indicated a rather low rent complex, which tells you right away some of the 48 had to have been foreclosure victims previous to becoming renters.  And now, where do they go?  Unless they were paying a monthly storage bill, this time around they lost everything.  (Interesting how storage ops blossomed over the past twenty years.  Moneys abhors a vacuum.)  My heart goes out to these people.  I want them to know they still have themselves and there are multitudes of rewards available when the slate is suddenly wiped clean, that whatever material objects stood in the way of the truth matter none to the awakening out of illusion where real life begins, that great suffering is required to rid the mind of trivial nonsense and their character and actions will shortly reveal themselves to be capable of so much more than previously thought possible.  As they trickle into the illusion's help agencies in humiliation bent sideways with desperation, they will find the system was never designed to give them back their "normal", for many of them, revelation awaits while perspiring in long, noisy lines only to be referred somewhere else and somewhere else again until it all becomes a circular journey of last hope where false belief is shattered in the process of testing faith in a system based on infinite economic advancement.  The helping hand they really need is at the end of their arm.

Our own lives are a testimony to the truth.  Nothing worth the effort is easy, occasionally you will be burdened beyond your capacity to function and overwhelmed at every turn.  You will have very little agreement if any at all.  Your spirituality will be crudely shoveled aside ... temporarily.  All the while, the more sincere your suffering, the more your very survival becomes apparent, standing in stark contrast to the situations you recognize from books and films as the dead end of your downward spiral. In this way, the totality of your life itself is a quest, a quest forever seeking higher ground, you know you've come a long way when the judgement of your peers has no bearing on your existence at all. Besides, who among us is in any position to cast judgement, the very act of judging a sacrificial practice.  We look to the animals and fowl to see judgement as designed by Nature, the lame Quail excluded from the tribe as invitation to predation.  The one-eyed squirrel, not long for the living under the glare of a hungry Redtail. Magnify these precious offspring of Earth to what we see being pressed upon the beleaguered little people and right away it become obvious, suffer your way into the lair and trust you will be, ah, safe?  There is only one way out and it is being handed to us every day, but many still don't get it, so thick and impenetrable are the hypnotic gasses producing weakness, beware the beckoning poppy fields on the yellow brick road while seeking your way back home. 

There comes a point where you must let it go in order to regain your personal spiritual being.  Compassion is the guide here.  Dwelling in anger over situations over which you have no control only carries you deeper into the illusion. A case in point would be that of a dear friend going through a continuing crisis taking place thousands of miles away from her present where her last living relation is failing rapidly under the spell of a fundie faith healing couple who have already achieved the "aunt's" signature, placing everything in trust for themselves.  While the situation is sad and gruesome in its many twist and turns under the illusion of control, especially the part where just whom is it exactly who can exercise the most power, calling in law enforcement and making reference to friends in high places, this one small story evolves into a dirty little war with the fallout effecting hundreds of uninvolved others, each of whom have some unrelated contact with the offices of either side, all doors to repair are thus sealed making it impossible to navigate through the fog of schadenfreude as one camp works to destroy the other. I listen to the explosions with half of one ear, mindful that should I allow it to impair my objectivity, there will be no one left standing.  When we enlarge the preditorial details of this sole situation, we will at once discover the motivation behind the curtain of compounding complexity, pain exacerbated by false belief and judgement based on hearsay, which in the bigger picture is the primary role of media, and can only result in worsening the state of our current condition.  Every single minute, somewhere, behind the faceless, nameless, tormented bodies of overpopulation, the little dramas and wars of the human species play out in timeless tragedy. We see it all the time, enough to think surely others see it too.  But they don't, not yet! Only through the experience of intense suffering does such suffering turn to prolonged despair deep enough to call it off at which point the absurdity of invited desolation clarifies the spectacular futility of the quest.  If, in such a place, you possess the insight to SEE yourself, consider yourself blessed.

Suffering is welcome as the universal deifying force enabling us to manifest beyond the barrier of impossibility.

And then there are many others, of course, who seemingly through no fault of their own, are forced to suffer silently since the mere scent of their vulnerability lays the foundation for greater torture.  These would be the elderly, the elderly workforce, the battered and abused victims of domestic violence, abandoned and abused children, children in cash motivated foster care and the kidnapped, hijacked innocents at all levels who quickly learn which side their bread is buttered.  We visited a strip mall chain store over the weekend and were waited on by a sweet, chatty, twice-widowed woman easily in her mid-eighties.  During the course of our visit, for one simple inexpensive item, she was unable to produce a receipt for purchase because her elaborate computer system kept going down.  Each time it failed, she called out to Mister Bill, premier salesman, who responded if and when he so desired and when he actually came over to us it was with loud vocal abuse and intent to show off his technical prowess at her expense.  It was quite a show.  It took over an hour of him shoving her out of her chair and ripping through stacks of files and wires before our meager tranasction was deemed satisfactory.  I had sad visions of this woman's everyday ... how she must anticipate and prepare herself to endure the abuse of her bullying co-worker sixty years her junior.  You might see this woman's position as hopeless, desperate for income and acknowledgement at all costs to her pride, but we should know well by now, pride is just another set of rusty pliers in the devil's toolbox.  The truth is, while Mister Bill sought the spotlight, it is she I applaud for maintaining her cool.  

We can't know how long it takes others to walk away from incessant self harm.  We only know that living the mantra of Doing No Harm is salvation.  And now, while the sky breaks apart and the world bleeds, salvation for ourselves is more available than ever before.  We should not fear the mystical appearance of sudden salvation for our loved ones is unavailable because I can testify to the fact everyone gets there on their own timetable without our input.  This too can be witnessed time and again.  All it seems to take is some serious forthright analysis during disaster before your loved ones will be telling you things you didn't know.  The resourcefulness that has taken all of us this far, is still very much alive.  The only thing typical about illusions is the constant pressure to make everyone of us dependent on a mirage in spite of our inate self-reliance and spirituality.  Those two elements exist within all of us and are the two traits for which there are no boxes to check on applications for aid.  They remain off the grid, immune to technology which is the same as immune to control by proxy.

Control by "proxy", by the way, is the chief reason many personal relationships fail.  The proxy in such a case is, of course, the usual suspect, our ridiculous, aggressive Mr. Bill-ish nemesis, the Representative-Self.  No, no Mister Bill 

***

I remain in fairly full agreement with most 2012 Apocalyptic revelations and predictions.  Where we are today is much more and far worse than where we were last year at this time.  I realize many of you do not agree the horrors of these days have overpopulation at the root and find myself not at all divided, convinced we have over-bred ourselves beyond the Earth's capacity to support life AND always willing to give great credence to the many additional causes still operating, morphing, mutating at full throttle and taking down everyone and everything so unfortunate to inhabit the geographies and civilizations in their way.  Maybe LIBOR's scandalous interest rate manipulations will finally create the Grand Global Debt Jubilee and maybe pigs fly.  Expect anything, anything at all, to come crashing through your windshield now, obviously there is no limit to the Wetiko imagination for make believe, insane justifications for criminal/satanic behaviors and interior decorating with matching swags and drapes. 

Forget them, just forget it all.  We must stand back and remain as completely unaffected as humanly possible.  If the Higgs Boson gives body to matter, removing it would take everything apart, right?  Think Tao.  Let us give them NO mind and instead bow our heads and fold our hands in the humblest thanks and praises to the Supreme Creator Divine for our brief journey on such a beautiful planet complete with her incredible Mother lode of lessons.  We are very fortunate.

World X sponsors revolution ap

... Here he comes, he's all dressed in black
PR shoes and a big straw hat
He's never early, he's always late
first thing you learn is that you always gotta wait
I'm waiting for my man ... 
Lou Reed ,  lyric from I'm waiting for the man


We who have been so badly burned over and over our skins red and oozing from the lash, and not just us, but everyone all around us in their varying states of suffering, look up and see protestors on tv, on the net, in our hearts, wondering what slimey deceitful tortures await them?  That is how we've come to think.  We are not really Stockholm Syndromers, appreciative of any pause in the new, upgraded wheel of everything, the operating system under which slaves, wrists leashed to railroad ties overhead, power the wheel 24/7. No, nada, nunca mas, rather we are compassionate, seeking their safety, It IS becoming too big to fail, this is empowering them, every arrest empowers them more, and then when the you-know-whos make the TBTF connection, the real war, not the one that has become totally automatized and roboticized, begins.  Those real wars will be the one-sided wars of exposure of the most mundane detail of a human life interpreted to mean something completely different by running it through the press release machines.  Wars of ubiquitous commercialism and sponsored entertainment, great amounts of wealth will  pass hands.  It will be attacked as a rite of passage, the Aborigine child at last becomes a man, because no one can afford to backpack through Europe anymore, and the costs are not always financial.


When Tahrir Square's protests began, bleating pundits directed opinion in the weeks long media blitz, the one thing you knew straight on was how the Overseers viewed it.  The violence was roundly "deplored".  You knew they wanted to quell that thing a.s.a.p. because it was giving others in other locations in the Zombie Food Court ideas.  You know what happened later and how lovely things are over there today.  Why in fact, many of us will recall a bizarre photo candidly depicting the war cabinet hovered over questionably functioning laptops. 


I am jaded.  I see things from the inside out, not outside in.  It is natural to ask about anything that appears to be one thing, if perhaps maybe its another?  Life is all about learning and this just one of multitudes of ways that we learn.  "What if ..." is usually a good way to present the case.  It invites sharing the responsibility of a direct response. That particular method of inviting exchange can go to unusual places and you will learn what you needed to know, if you didn't already, at the least you will have confirmed your original observations.


Maybe if ... we had not already put aside false desires such as hope and belief, and lived so hard on the barren plain of the human condition, crushed by repeated falls into the stairwells of life's basement long enough to recognize the pattern and its mocking roots of Wetiko wet nurses and Wetiko religious dogma, maybe we would want to ask who started what and why.  Oh, forget the "why."  Moreover, forget the "who" also.  Who cares?  "What" is what we learn, "how" is the core.  And running through the heart, pole to pole, is the arrow of evil, the Yang.  In the early chapters of Arab Spring, I suggested sovereign leaders were being rotated in a manner more beneficial to  Big Mo.  I think all of our questions are being answered with each passing event. Especially the part about sovereign which in the language of the World X OS upgrade translates to colonial.


If we apply what we learn to another situation we might say "What if ... what if the design is inextricably in place, all that is left is more bloodletting and the good old highway robbery under the cover of darkness and freight trains, forever underwater at the company store? One of billions wet-faced in the rain racing for shelter, to the tents and migrant motels?  What if ... we die and are exploited further in death by past-their-prime degenerates playing their last card last off your back?  Addicts never change.  They can clean up, briefly, but its always calling.  You bet they are hustling again, they are in a pact from the grave.  The candidates are competing with the false flags.  Every time, throughout all of human existence, when they start up that shuck and jive, it is the sound of hellfire and fury heralding in another notch on the ancient Totem of history. In fact, there was another heated display of cravings just today as the Iran drumbeat drifted across the prairies with the Cartels as back-up chorus.  Of course, its not doing well on the charts, its rather worthless until they can use it in conjunction with the Times Square dude and the panties on the plane mule.


What success are we seeking?  We are seeking peace of mind and to be left alone to pursue our authentic interests, so many of which are denied for all the wrong reasons regardless of geography.  We seek universal love and compassion, genuine peace on Earth and recognition of every living thing on the Living Planet as family.  These few things are not universally sought, you know that much by now no matter what station you may be waiting in during this journey,  but be comforted - you are not alone.

*wysiwyg, its not sci-fi anymore

OK, I give in, its time to write rather than experience.   Let's start with Su's most recent and insightful post with the artwork I can't keep from visiting as if it were the golden compass reaching out, pulling me deeper into each sublime, anti-directional vortex of purity, so what about the world, love is all that matters anyway.  The sooner they can get with the program, the better off we will all be. Yes, freed slaves, amen, Praise Jah I-Mighty! I decided to explore Su-san's thesis concerning deep thought "... alongside which arises a shallow thought."  The Beagle-Basset and I took off to the highest ridges in search of burn scars to paint, in fact it was going to be an episodic story within a story within a story.  Right away, well, as soon as we were a mile or more beyond the familiar, Su's statements on thought veiled themselves over a widespread cluster of Flannel Bush and Pinyon Pine.  Here is what happened: The journey was all about observing the wonders of Nature, the awesome variety of vegetation and the animals' habits and spare, but clever habitations, especially the Quail coveys who live inside thickets made by wandering Pinyon branch and tumbleweed.  We never reached any burn scars, the truth is I don't want to see them.  By this time next year, so much overgrowth will have reborn and within another year, there will be few, if any signs of wildland fire.  If you must see it, you'll have to peel off layers of bark to get to something burnt.  The obvious conclusion is our Mother heals herself.  Interpret that as the uselessness of a careless, sloppy, gullible species, unlike pollinators, unlike birds, unlike the variety of predators who manage species populations and species who turn the Earth and clean the seas for new life all on their own.  What do we offer anyway, but to capture them and throw them into laboratories, zoos and aquariums, drown them in oil, sell them and cannibalize them? When you are told the specialty of the house is a delicacy, you'll know you are being served Murder with Geno on the side smothered in Vampire gravy.  What I think Su san means by petty thoughts are actually guideposts we do not much like, thinking our previous state to be so deeply satisfying, we want to stay there.  We know exactly what she means, but I've made the effort to track what could really be happening when our minds depart from the exquisite as an apparent pettiness suddenly intrudes its way into our bliss.  These guidepost thoughts can be anything, but the ones we dislike the most are those having to do with an issue or conflict that requires your immediate attention. Your calm has attracted your sense of responsibility, desirous of balance, since only in a clear state will you be able to explore and satisfying all necessary criteria. 

Line up your petty thoughts for a minute and see what they are saying.  Try it now.  Perhaps seen this way they become warnings so that you may act to preserves your balance.  Or, perhaps the abundance of petty thoughts centered in one particular area of interest is telling you truths you would much rather deny.  While we can look to many events as being designed personally for us by The Forces, petty thoughts have a way of itemizing the bigger picture and thus initially appear to us as small, insignificant details, mostly unworthy of our character and therefore unworthy of note.  However, when you think of them as guideposts, you could be educating your way out of many mysteries and coincidences surrounding your journey.  Our minds can know far more than we allow, we are personally in charge of setting our own limits.  In this strange, hungry and dangerous period on Rogue Planet Earth, we are trained to ignore the obvious.  The obvious is of course, the elusive you are seeking.  I am certain we discard the obvious many times in the course of one single day because the obvious is socially damned.

This brings us around to the social acceptability of institutionalized belief systems in existence long before we came into consciousness, such as the death penalty, a pharmaceutics sponsored media ceremony packed with symbolism which Vivek recently compared to ritual sacrifice.

As the hours preceding the Troy Davis 11:08PM execution drew short,  a white supremacist was executed in Texas at 6:10pm, followed the next day by yet another execution in Alabama.  (I could hardly believe my eyes!) We tend to recall the seemingly never ending racial prejudice of the old South, and yet a white man in Jasper, Texas is taken out for his murder of an African American which might in the long run mean nothing, but Texas does have quite the record, does it not?  Rick Perry has allowed 234 executions to go ahead during his three terms as governor.  Does he think this makes him a popular guy? Surely the arguments pro and con will go on until the concept of execution is wiped off the face of the map.  I educated myself on both crimes and present you with another conclusion.  It matters not who is guilty, what matters is no execution brings back the victim. 

People clamor for justice in exactly the same way they clamor for the nanny state to do something, by God.  They have been fed the lines of dogma since birth and will never let it go. This is domestic violence and Stockholm Syndrome writ obese. They believe with all their hearts and minds they should have their high value justice, like a cheeseburger and fries, like flags and symbols of a superior race, like some sort of warranty for performing in a lifetime of going along to get along and paying taxes.  The very word justice and its ugly sister, revenge, will always be there because it is perceived as deserved, legalized payback by and for the people victimized by the crazies living among them.  Of course, they aren't crazy themselves, or disturbed, or misguided, or unclean with buried secrets, are they.  My friends, when you see these things unfolding, taking over your thoughts and visuals, you are witnessing the triumph of nothing less than the representative self.  The outside persona as media interviewee, justifying, defending and auditioning to win his/her rights that somebody must pay for every evil in their upside down zeitgeist where evil is the new angelic.

When are they going to face their truth?  This is why I've often inferred the ending of the War is far away.  What you see is what you get which has a way of inflicting worse as overpopulation bulges out of control.  I suggest the amount of evil may well be in close parallel to the amount of humans occupying the planet.

Justice and revenge are way up there on the to do list meaning that which we must resolve before moving ahead is possible.  They are waved about as threats, ultimatums and punishments and it should be especially obvious in this millennium they are ineffectual gaping holes in a crumbling overall system that appears to have no idea where it wants to go or how to save itself, instead over-breeding, over-consuming in the very face of resource depletion, crippling debt, mass indigence and over-entertains itself from sheer lack of anything better to do, void of creativity and absent any sensitivity at all to the necessary stewardship of the very Earth from which all of us should be down on our knees in humble gratitude for the incredible experience She provides every living species without exception.  I would go so far as to say every living species, sentient or not, but non-sentient is another myth designed to comfort yourself as you crush the hapless moth desperate for his freedom.  You can see how even the extremely smallest among them work themselves into frenzy trying to flee your assistance.

I wouldn't waste your brain trying to figure out what course of action is required, it is akin to attempting to unwind any institutionalized belief - beliefs frequently founded so long ago in a very different and far less crowded world, designed by ancestral representative-selves indulging their victors' pomposity in sealed Dickins-lite, that everyone acting it out in the present forgot what they are doing while conveniently blanking out the most elementary knowledge, All actions bear consequence. Those who perpetuate the backward system, thirsting for just-us and preaching revenge are intractable.  The integrated you, lacking a representative-self, cannot argue with an actor.

Perp (or not), victims and their clinging spokespeople, including the tragedy media and that vast complex of Death Cult-carpet baggers, I am sad for them all who willingly choose to blot out the healthier, higher understanding and greater purpose resident within the potential of every human being.  If we could just get to that place where everyone's minds/hearts/souls, those beaten down, dammed up, the authentic human underneath the publicly acceptable face interacting superficially with the publicly acceptable public, felt completely free to respect the oneness of all, in concert with right intent and right action, organically unable to harm, disrupt or disturb, there would be no need for the cages and needles, the cameras, the drones, the prejudices and the hatreds and evil deeds.  To change harmful beliefs held by others, you first must set the example for why that change is necessary.  To heal a terrible infection, you must first disinfect the affected areas.... and so forth.

For more on this subject, and as I mentioned earlier, Vivek shares his perspicacious revelations on the master scheme in three consecutive essays over the last three days.  I relish his discoveries.  They key into those realms we are not yet developed enough, and possibly never will be at this rate, to fully grasp, although we try and some of us come close, concerning the whole miraculous mystery, the Grand Design aka Something unEarthly, slippery, indefinable and just how it applies its magic to little citizen Earthlings.

You could get the idea we are nothing more serious to "it" than billions of nano-particulates in a glass of water.  Everything disastrous that happens is because "it" spilled the water, added more water, added alien flavorings to it, ran it through a coffeemaker, threw in some teabags and lemon, or sand, dust, electricity, dropped it, stuck it in the dishwasher or smashed it while having a tantrum.  We might be leftover crumbs on its table, brushed off and vacuumed up with all the physicists and scientists explaining how his/her theory means lah de dah.

Lighting the Pyre: a portrait in child abuse

A rather perfect metaphor for the state of our new national lifestyle happens to be playing out at this very moment under the noses of one of the largest gatherings of tabloidiers in America's favorite conference city, Orlando.  Yes, its the sad, sorry show trial of "Tot Mom", Casey Anthony.  Since the OJ freeway chase, these trials have become commercially sponsored circuses where every irrelevant detail is allowed a full day, often weeks, in sideshows where everyone who is someone presses or is pressured repeatedly to resolve actually nothing.  It seems in this latest Orlando tent revival encircled with news caravans swaying to the chorus of death penalty, cold blooded monster, spiteful bitch, etc, nowhere is there mention of a father for the dead child.  You'll have to think about that one, and when you do, it will remind you of a swirling Twilight Zone vortex sucking you far, far down the rabbit hole into long and winding secret tunnels, each of them detours and cul de sacs lined with casinos, choir boys, Super 8's and fast food chains.  Mind you, I pay attention to this trial reluctantly.  Our old friend Pirate Rick once said about these things, its like trying not to look at a horrible car accident... as you inch by in first gear under direction from the highway patrol.

Ahem, cough cough, and how is that different from the general state of affairs?

This Tot Mom story is interesting because the seriously damaged defendant on trial for murder simply cannot speak truthfully on any issue at all.  That she cannot tell the truth about ANYthing, many unrelated or very much related witnesses on the stand can lie and walk free since next to Tot Mom, everyone else testifying appears innocent and is excused from guilt.  If you have a chance to see this girl in action what you are seeing is an extraordinarily advanced product of civilization in disaster, a modern day dysfunctional family up to their eyeballs in abuse.  The upbringing of such a defendant becomes obvious as the storyline continues to guarantee further depletion of Floridian taxpayers pockets.  I give this one months in the oven and even then nothing about the story is obvious for the obvious here is what is brazenly ignored in favor of execution.  It is this summer's Coliseum act.  Glancing at the MSM sites tells us it is a ratings smash.  You have to imagine there are more than a few swaps riding on the verdict.

Let's see, if you were beaten to a pulp as a child you would soon learn to lie about whatever it was that caused the beatings.  Let's say the infractions were always minor, like not making your bed or keeping your drawers neat enough, and let's say it made no difference, minor infractions were treated as serious criminal offense each and every time without regard to degree of the offense, eventually a child adapts themselves for survival by distorting any truth in order to escape punishment.  Now, imagine both parents of such a child never spoke truthfully either, that every word was a denial of responsibility through subterfuge and little coalitions agreeing with one another's fabrications on every single issue that came along, even that of being fully unable to cancel an appointment without spinning a web of transparent and complicated whoppers. Remarkably, this upside down and backwards family receives the kiss of lily whiteness while Tot Mom becomes further separated from the world of the living.  And yet, nothing to date has come up that in any way resembles truth.  It is as if the jury is deaf and blind and the prosecution's vampire fangs drip blood on the industrial carpet of modern justice's architectural flooring.  This event is of course only one of many more to come as technology partners with the global economy to stay high on the Forbes list with all the extreme and previously unimaginable  tortures reducing world population to a more manageable size and expense, simultaneously producing glowing quarterly growth reports. 

One item of note in this bloodthirsty carnival that evades discussion concerns the father of the dead toddler.  Um, where is he?  Who is he? Why is he never mentioned?  Its a simple question, isn't it.  Perhaps something was said before I looked behind the pulpit?  Its possible, in fact you may wonder how I could be posting about this trial at all.  No problem, the Fireteacher is the TV guy here, I pass through the room where he watches hundreds of times a day in my position as friend doing my chores of support, and whatever is blaring on the box meets my ears, like it or not, if anything it stimulates the aura of ambient anguish.  One could fall into compete spiritual fulfillment without the grinding vocals of analysts analyzing computer generated news because the Internet killed the physical papers and they had to make up the loss keyboarding in ones and zeros like everybody else if they were going to keep up appearances as vitally important to global economic growth in transition.  (Cough, cough, must be getting a cold ...)  The longer the Apocalypse stretches out, the more variations of dysfunction come into the spotlight.  The more absurd the circus acts, drunken, oxycodoned, opiated and chloroformed to both seller and buyer, the more fantastic these distortions of reality become and there my friends, lies our true growth as a species, giving willing and gutturally brazen acceptance to Orwellian mass hatred by the numbers and again, it appears a smash.

Yesterday morning as I was leashing little Bernie for his stroll, the squawk box attached to a satellite network was trembling with cartoon lightening zig zags concerning a controversy between political analysts having to do with a few states' new plan to drug test food stamp recipients.  Maybe they should take a poll among the African Americans in Oakland to see how well that might work out as a clever cost cutting measure to trim the deficit?  And, btw, can anyone tell me what we are doing in Afghanistan?

There was a time not too long ago, black gold was all the talk, but no more.  Its got lots of company as the land melts away under mining wastewater and radiation encircles the globe, this must be what it is like to smother slowly inside a bank vault.

Back to the trial, children are sponges, they take on their parents patterns helped along with more advanced patterns of the same behaviors as they mature and observe.  Try to keep that in mind when you run into denial.  Denial is not a genetic trait, it is a learned self-preservation strategy.  Ideally, humans should not be forced to deny anything, but as technology advances, lies become ubiquitous because every aspect of the greater denial is charted for approval and receiving high marks for complete, multi-tiered, tinseled fabrications such as the recent resurrection of Osama.  High approval ratings equate to big investments which benefits ... oh, guess who.

Tot Mom's entire family is hiding a horrible secret.  So noxious is the truth behind this story, they are willing to crucify each other on the stand before revealing anything even hinting at this secret which of course, they are sworn to do under oath.  Since 2008, they've continued the charade of forthright honesty all the while building walls of deceit to protect that which they are loathe to utter and yet, having lost a granddaughter, the life of their only daughter/sister is thrown under the bus to protect their magazine image, their collective representative-selves, rather than see the remainder of their days on Earth tarnished with the ugly stain of perversion and abuse.  No doubt the truth will come out one day, but possibly not in time to save Casey from execution.  It is a shame to watch these characters portray the drama mirrored daily in political life, the corporatocracy and its filthy policies, foreign and otherwise, which regularly throw entire populations under the bus as well.  Post traumatic shock, dysfunctional leadership and the abuses they perpetrate always make a delicate situation worse with after-effects trickling down wherever exists the path of least resistance - among the innocent, the unaware, the suffering, denied the God-given right to flower into maturity, instead forced to shrivel under the boot.   What we find ultimately repulsive are the crowds pointing and shouting blame while possessing no insight into how these situations come to pass or what they portend for our shared futures.

Update: As I ready this post for publication, the trial pundits seem to have taken a new twist, CNN is actually arguing over Tot Mom as traumatized victim of sexual abuse by her solid citizen father, former police officer, but will it stick or be shouted down by the hungry crowds thrilling to the circus?  We might know by the time the next "giving" season rolls around - or not.  A this point, it would not be out of the ballpark to say this particular circus has real potential for indefinite repeats as the subjects under examination take the broken middle class off the pages of human history forever.

It does not further one to cross the water

We have a few new links brought to us from Charles in the Free Never Overdue Library over there on the left, please take some time to digest them. A big Thank You to Charles.

So now, it looks like we'll be leaving the Middle East having accomplished the stated objective. Perhaps this objective is included in the Status of Forces agreement with Iraq, and perhaps there never was a SOFA at all. And certainly, we can expect what is left of our weary troops to come home from Afghanistan, right, with their bodies and minds intact since PTSD will soon be a fading footnote in the Diagnostics Manual. And we'll have no more terror talk and idiots on planes doing weird things with their underwear and shoes, so TSA will be furloughing the gropers, right? Did Saddam even know Obama, I mean Osama? One thing is for sure, there will be no more fake Osama videos. Whew. Can Nick Berg come home now? There is one burning question we all need to ask at this time given all the bs that has taken over our lovely planet and that would be Did they hate us for our bank robbers? Heh, you bet cuz the robber barons know nothing of sovereignty.

Writing the blog today is a lot like the end of the year high school yearbook signing fest where everyone tries to nutshell what took place and how much their friendships kept them mentally stable during those times. Your closest friends were allowed to take up a whole page, the more full page memories you collected, the more popular you were. Since popularity is definitely not the objective here, we won't go into all the misery and mischief that has gone down since the towers blew, you are living through the aftermath already. You want to scream, fine by me. You want to cry too? Have a tissue.

If ever you are going to deliberately lie, you need to have an ironclad alibi without holes otherwise someone will figure it out. The problem we are looking at today is lies were told, so many that the liars lost track, got cocky and left gaping craters which immediately were filled by willing loyalists who only created greater caverns of disbelief continuing to remind the victim/shil/mark/you that the string of nonsense produced was just that, nonsense, especially as people were labeled with nonsense terms such as nine eleven enthusiasts, a rather nasty swipe reminiscent of much older ones, nigger lover and close kin to injun lover, updated today to tree hugger, peacenik, pothead and doomer. My friends, have we any skin left that has not been burned, stung, smarting still as loss grows exponentially into greater and greater loss? We stand naked before it, the united federal lying machine, an entity with one sole intention which is to erase anyone who does not go along with the program and worse, anyone who is unable, especially for all the reasons created to keep us never, ever examining holes, buy into the program. What can sweatshop slaves buy into anyway?

We want to ask, hey, what happened? All THAT for what?

I'm fond of Stephen Crane's short story The Open Boat written during an especially dark literary period termed Modernism and published in 1898. You should read it through and if you do, you will remember it for the remainder of your days. It is brief and appropriate for these times:

..."If I am going to be drowned--if I am going to be drowned--if I am going to be drowned, why, in the name of the seven mad gods who rule the sea, was I allowed to come thus far and contemplate sand and trees?"...

In other words, and you will be doing that all the way through this timeless work and again as it reinforces itself repeatedly in human interactions: have we come so far, suffered so deeply, loved so dearly, endured torture and needless oppression beyond all reason, all for nothing?... What plan? June 2010 archives

Yes, we're back bobbing on the waves in sight of land we'll never reach in Stephen Crane's The Open Boat, we came so far, suffered so deeply, loved so dearly, endured and lost so much ... all for THIS? More than a freekin' decade of that and now this? Get real! Such horrors we would not wish upon our worst enemy, if we had any enemies. We do however, have deviants among us that do wish such things, painstakingly plan and live for the moment to carry them out. Here is your news sir, the lie is over, I am sorry for you because you have no reason any longer to thrive in your deviation. We have instead a series of real life disasters taking place in front of our very eyes and now you must redirect your attentions which means many of you will have nothing to do at all since solving the problems of the suffering is not part of the personal makeup of your representative-selves of whom you are held hijack. You will have gazillionz of trillions coming in now to fix our little oil dilemma, hopefully you will not pretend you misspoke about hologram Osama's instant sea splash and keep kicking the resource rich nations in the groin, assassinating their children, their blood seed, running the old regime change hustle on sovereign peoples, dragging NATO along where it was not officially empowered to assist. We can hope, but you will do what you will do. That is who you are.

You are known by what you do.

The supposed death of the supposed cult leader will change nothing except to further reveal the extent of the disruptive and diversionary psychosis that grips westerners. This latest has everything to do with keeping afloat multilayered fabrications designed to bestow personhood on the global sucking vampires who are not persons at all. They must at all costs keep their failing Ken doll twirling in his executive swivel chair rather than let some over-rich, balding, Chateaubrianded version of Rev. Terry Jones as a rug-headed TV personality realign the people's perceptions yet again. Further, they absolutely require the gods of hyper-jibberish to continue waxing on the hallelujah recovery in order for all of us to reawaken our diminished senses of need and gas it over to the nearest Wal*Mart to consume nonstop at the nonsense trough.

For an interesting mental exercise, imagine the amount of advance coordinated planning that went into gathering thousands of fresh-faced subteens together in front of the cameras, all of whom strangely appeared at first glance to be celebrating Mardi Gras, gushing in glee over the news the old evil hologram met his demise, much the same as if Sukie, the waitress fairy, put an end once and for all to the True Blood leeches.

Now imagine this: The time came the slaves no longer needed the whip for they knew their place well and knew there would be no escape for the remainder of their miserable days on Earth.

So much tragedy barely holding together a weakened, beaten, downgraded infrastructure and disgruntled populace. We could have skipped it entirely and just gotten down to work. Think of what beneficent wonders could have been accomplished during a whole decade had it not been for the neoCons' deathmatch journey into Nevernever Land. Instead, we could be this very day supporting something such as a global Earth-friendly volunteer association open to every nation, developing and otherwise, for sharing resources while simultaneously cooperating with all educational and scientific institutions in discovery and implementation of sustainable systems for poison free agriculture and healthy alternatives to factory farming and slaughter of livestock, realistically addressing the limits of the planet as finite and dealing humanely with overpopulation through multitudes of small and local enlightenment programs which include safe and freely distributed birth control.

We will not be participating in anything remotely as necessary as you can plainly see since baldfaced lying is still perceived as the only way to advance the insatiable hunger of imperialism, which in itself is nothing but covetous, outright theft when you lift away the altruistic veil. A veil which you may have noticed, isn't fooling any of the victim/shil/sufferers/you or me or anybody, anywhere. Thus we get this shabby little Osama story thrown at us interspersed with hundreds of other shabby little stories as if the dumbdown stage was just one of many checklist missions accomplished.

Truly, it makes you wonder what pact with the devil was made to get that which was perceived as so necessary.

Thus, we continue on the treadmill of zero resolution while repeating all the same tired mistakes which brought us to this point of collapse. Abusing Nature and her creations, rampant, heedlessly warring wherever the natural inhabitant species have been intentionally weakened over time, dispossessed and disoriented. We will go on as we are, awakening each day to incessant distortions and deformities of species behavior, including that of the human species, corralled and broken down into levels of useful servitude or slaughter, and all of it for one disgusting, egregious reason, that no thinking person discover the truth behind the greatest and greediest lies since all of recorded history. This is why there will be no repair, the damage done and damage to come is too great. When something this severe occurs, you must go back to the beginning and start anew, something which will never be considered in the program since what we are talking about is comedy for the annual Correspondents Dinner.

Centuries ago when the idea for this experiment towards a better life was undertaken, how many signed on to get away from exactly that which continues unabated and exaggerated today? It does not further one to cross the waters because the same and worse exists on the other side. There is only one safe haven and it is not here, it will only appear before you when the time is right.

How can the time possibly be right today while we measure radiation clouds and the Gulf floor steadily, irreparably, seeps dark, deadly grease destroying any possibility of renewal? Have they yet tasted corexit in Niger?

More on the subject, and don't miss the comments:

Exit the Excuse ... But Elites Insist Their Wars Must Go On

OSAMA BIN LADEN

And my favorite new phrase: Managed Perception. Wow, that's just like managed care or debt management or anger management. Everything must be managed now, you know. Otherwise, things might take their natural course and that is hmmmm, extremely dangerous.

When Does "Managed Perception" Become Reality? Note that Charles never mentions Osama, but he doesn't have to. All of it is related as our frequent readers know only too well.