Spaceship of Fools

As I was saying, anything can happen and also mentioned the exponential feature of disaster. By now, you know how it goes and have reacted according to your Nature and situation in this life, considering too, the proximity of the Disaster/s-of-the Day to you and yours.  Media loves disasters.  Recently I visited the east coast region of Winter Storm Jonas and was told time and again, it was not nearly what the media made of it.  In fact, everyone bore up extremely well during that, ah, epic event.  "It was just a big snowstorm, we get that every winter here".

Too often lately, if you want to read a story on the news pages, you are requested through a pop-up to open an account with your email address and make up yet another password. Who among us is not irritated and fatigued with this practice?  That seemingly small trick is designed to 1) soothe us into fantasies of privacy and 2) what one does, they all must do, an important and widespread law in the personal constitution of ladder-climbing scribes of code.   Corporate media's screeching news stories advertise themselves wherever page space permits as well as report the same stories everyone else is putting out, usually with same, lame deviations from fact. Facts which they eventually, equally, iron out to resemble what they were supposed to say.  I've been clicking them off as soon as I sense the ploy, no further proof of intent required.  It makes readers feel like ducks bred for foie gras.

What they are doing has always been their ultimate goal from the time "news" transitioned from gossip to paid for with money, printed gossip.  We do not get the same news unilaterally, we get tailored news.  We are given the option to further the tailoring to fit a personality type their bots have decided we possess if they are so fortunate to have us actually subscribe.  Imagine Scrooge McDuck rolling in his golden coin coffers while  bots haul in the daily take.  Heh, but while there are many McDucks, there are seven billion more quacking people, swallowing whole what is being stuffed down their throats.

People could easily fill up their most productive time online lost in the maze of this nonsense.   It is just another effect of overpopulation, that social problem that has no remedy.  The more Humans, the more everything.  Its Present Shock. Hungry people vying for recognition and redemption, multiplying at an astonishing rate, regardless of happy talk statistics.  What, are we not supposed to realize the greatest rape in the history of the Universe is going down as we continue as we are?  And where we are has long moved beyond crazy.   Makes you wanna weep. 

Recall how you feel when someone tells you a lie.  The trust is broken.  And yet, they continue on as if you are stupid. Which is even worse... sometimes.   Because when you are thought of as stupid, the truth is staring you in the gut.  It is impossible to not see it.  However, at the point of obvious over-saturation, they move on to something else, like junkies, ever seeking more and more powerful ladders to inflate their peer recognition. 

By that time we also will have moved on.  Its already happening.  The history of Man is proof of the pudding.  The lifeless, so-called dead planets, in whatever form life took, went down the same roads we travel, so very long ago we can't possibly imagine.  We're just the latest kids on the block relearning the universal meaning of mortality.

Recent Timelines of A, B, AB and Us.

It is not so much as frightening, not necessarily confusing either, but very much in keeping with what many Boomers - those that experienced that particular period of time, that state of mind, when things were different, you know the time I am speaking of - envisioned happening given enough time, latitude and perversity encouraged by imitation, for whatever reasons imitation exists inside Present Shock. And here we are at last, full on, off the wall, it is what it is and looks like and it isn't going to reverse itself anytime soon.  As long as the Human Race continues to trample overboard through the Mothership's carrying capacity, conscience be damned, the changes will continue to accelerate exponentially into 24/7, 3-D dystopian Ice 9 extreme planetary and thus, Solar catastrophy. The media's role in all of this is that of soap opera producers egged on by their Bond Holders.  I have previously suggested in a variety of ways if there were not two species, identical in body, appearance and commonly accepted speech and to date, as usual, we've talked about other concerns as we have always done.  There are always other concerns and then there are immediate concerns.  This is because we are rational people who gradually became enured to the state of affairs sitting over the land like a hungry Black Hole.  In spite of how freaky it gets, we have our lives to live, however we live them, as true and honest, loving beings. 

Early on, I developed an ability to tune it out.  This was because I was the eldest of my siblings, i.e.; somewhat more free to explore the territories beyond those native to suburban sectors. Naturally, I took advantage of that limited freedom to experience a broader view of life in the same way I encourage world travel as often as possible in this lifetime. Really, who wouldn't? Perhaps this apparently huge group of Trump supporters might not. Like the thugs and firebrands.  Did you realize there were actually so many of them?  In cities, too, my friends, places where you would not think you'd normally meet up with them.  They are certainly not on the fringes anymore.  The rednecks' backwoods must have profited greatly from removing trees and encouraging development, eventually allowing it to meet up with major urban centers where caucuses and primaries are held.  All their philosophically cloned children cut a beeline to the cities and kept their ingrained mindsets, points of view, unfounded prejudices and friendships close.  There is a staggering number of them, the gleeful Wizards framing the Great Illusion surely know this as well as their markets.   They have tailored civilization to suit the common man's limited capacity to look beyond himself and his situation, which is, by the way, Jack London's point in To Build a Fire.

"... But all this—the mysterious, far-reaching hair-line trail, the absence of sun from the sky, the tremendous cold, and the strangeness and weirdness of it all—made no impression on the man. It was not because he was long used to it. He was a newcomer in the land, a chechaquo, and this was his first winter. The trouble with him was that he was without imagination. He was quick and alert in the things of life, but only in the things, and not in the significances. Fifty degrees below zero meant eighty-odd degrees of frost. Such fact impressed him as being cold and uncomfortable, and that was all. It did not lead him to meditate upon his frailty as a creature of temperature, and upon man's frailty in general, able only to live within certain narrow limits of heat and cold; and from there on it did not lead him to the conjectural field of immortality and man's place in the universe. Fifty degrees below zero stood for a bite of frost that hurt and that must be guarded against by the use of mittens, ear-flaps, warm moccasins, and thick socks. Fifty degrees below zero was to him just precisely fifty degrees below zero. That there should be anything more to it than that was a thought that never entered his head. ..."

It is my observation their numbers can only grow.  As the same time of course, so do ours.  Imagine how well that works out.  We see it multiple times every single day.

There is and always has been, I am sure, plenty of interspecies mingling which never turns out well according to the soap opera production personhoods.  Many seemingly perfect relationships dissolve in disaster because these jack-in-the-box pairings were destined from the start never to be.  In the beginning,  A types actually admire many of Bs' qualities, qualities that A lacks and vice versa.  Over time, it comes out, of course, that A realizes B is not perfectly suited for A's life plan.  Then its over and a new path is taken.  Often, they repeat themselves over and over almost as if a violent Karmic Plan was playing out.

And while all these As, Bs and ABs carry out their Karmic debt, it runs counter to ours.  A very small portion of it is convenient for us and we take advantage of what they offer from time to time, in the process of habit which against your purer self, eventually develops, seemingly impossibly, while nothing is done to bring the great spinning Ferris Wheel to a halt or even slow it down, inertia has taken over and we are simply you and me, reeds in the wind and yes, in the way, unless we yes-man the processes. 

I extend my gratitude to all who visit and comment.  I do truly love the friends that take the time to leave their thoughts all of which taken together have created our outlying island.  We have been doing this for a long time, the era has been an unanticipated joy in multiple ways and occasions. I won't ever stop posting, although as you know, life has a way of putting you in different places for awhile, but I've noticed we always return to this interesting and much needed style of communication.  I take you very seriously and have a personal law to never let my friends down.  Life is holy.

Raining in My Heart

And now, my dearest allies, those people who visit and leave a multitude of feelings, inspirations and personal thoughts and connections - for which I am always so grateful, people from near and far who read here for whatever reasons and leave without commenting, but take away something helpful or consoling with them on their journeys, we come together again because its time.

We are weak and on our knees simply trying to comprehend the accelerating suffering from coast to coast and country to country which, as we have known has been simmering for centuries and now reaches the boiling point. 

Since I was a little yout, I never got the "why" part. Why beat down the downtrodden? Why create circumstances to deliberately divide us? Why make hard that which is naturally easy, what was it, what is it, they can't see?  It follows, of course, that those early years would not have been smooth.  But still, they formed me and were imbedded more deeply every  single day in one way or another. My crime was holding ideals that differed radically from too many others' ideals, that is, if they held any genuine ideals at all.

I can't say I've changed much in that category. Truth always mattered more, although it commonly comes at a high price.  One must be able to convince the medium from which truth comes to you that you will accept it with no repercussions, an impossible feat. The first repercussion is your normal curiosity for truth.  And curiosity makes you think which makes you feel a way.  It can not be helped.

I am sure anyone reading here already knew the repulsive truth about torture many years back. They thought we would forget it with the passing of time, our attention long diverted with school shootings, cyber hackings, privacy leaks and abject consumerism as if "all that was so then" in the same way Bill Cosby might think about his past behaviors. Only now we are presented with a damning report years after the fact and already its  being run through the dairy queen dispener. Yes, its Christmas under the tree for the damage control industry which are as you know, ruthless professionals in Timing is Everything whose hands are permanently stained with the stigmata of global misery.  Instead of apology they race to deny.  They threw this report at us to get those criminal, lippy protestors to knock it off by shifting the spotlight. We're in Present Shock, remember?  Where everything happens at once?

I can't breathe.

I want to speak to them directly and let them know WE can't breathe.  We can't eat, we can't speak. We can't live, we can't weep because we know their stock in trade and brace ourselves while inside our tortured hearts we are praying they get hip.

But you know, they don't see it that way.  They have a vision that they are untouchable, a uniquely superior example of our species, a more perfect person.  So remarkably special, revered and powerful, so right, so clean in conscience, communication of any sort with the slightest potential truth might accidentally slip out is not allowed.  It appears truth was made illegal and the ruling kept secret because damage management was on vacation in some private blackjack suite high above the golden avenues of Fat City. 

The divide is wider than the distance between Mother Earth and Uranus which means it is extremely unlikely we will see any of these white face Ken dolls fess up and get with the program.

The program, (you know the program, you are the program)  is and always has been DO NO HARM.  There are a million, billion, trillion subheads under that title, including all sizes and manner of beautiful, truly Godly acts of compassion and seva.

I will make it simple for them by saying truthfully,  all they have to do is recognize we are all one. Yes! Pan Species Diversity. Without the game, we're all the same. We breathe as one.

There is nothing, NOTHING, less than  absolute ZERO, ever to be gained by allowing ignorant prejudice, vanity and testosterone fueled anguish to dictate action.


Raining in My Heart:
Post title from The Best of Slim Harpo
Excello Records, recorded: Crowley, Louisiana, 
November 1960
Photo c. Yahoo/Pinterest

picking up where we left off...

On the same page as our beloved and insightful, tell-it-like-it-is friend, Bho, I ask you who among us who does not feel the craziest days and nights of all time past and to come, are heaving themselves in front of us - so that we are forced against our will to feel the hot, foul breath of the beast, the stink of his burnt tongue from slurping the fires of Hell?  We are just simple people, never asking for, never imagining, never looking for the House of Horrors on a bright, sunny afternoon kicking back in essex green Adirondack chairs on the deck overlooking the perfect beauty of Nature.  I began to count concurrent events before my hiatus, but the events rolled themselves into what began as a series of global news stories, each international, previously unheard of www.slime.rag on overtime pushing details regardless how insignificant, or false, designed purely to inspire fear and loathing, and quickly grew into a Ripley's Believe it or Not, including immediate placement in the Guinness Book of Gargantuan, Stupid and Hypocritical Earth Shattering Records.  Now, today, and for evermore, in our remaining times among the living, a monster ball of dung trails the slouching beast, growing larger and heavier, squatting on our sad blue planet, surely she, blameless, is weeping tonight. 

But her wrath is sly, her rope unlimited and she allows the Hominid species to simply hang themselves. 

If you been readin' the news pages on your device of choice, you know what I'm sayin'.
 
It goes without question, life is about learning.  We who are aware we are always learning and accept what we experience as a teaching moment, good or bad, are able to draw on those lessons because these lessons are integral (our nature) and lifelong.  If those experiences are perceived without overstanding, or fleeting, or just never acknowledged at all, where would you be now?  Probably in a maximum security prison of your own making, certain you are innocent of whatever crime that put you there, you were just going along, caught up in your materialist fantasy, accepting of your entire current life situation on the Great Plantation when WHAM.  Something happened, could be anything, you know, but you don't know what happened because responsibility of any sort was never in your vernacular.

I didn't come into this observation recently.  It seems to grow in league with population stats so that everything strongly disagreeable, ridiculous, backwards, tragic, corrupt and evil multiplied exponentially, which should mean the antithesis multiplied exponentially also, but no, it did not happen as the TAO explains the natural balance of beauty and ugliness.  It meant instead, the heinous acts of the Yang overlapped its boundary into the Yin, in doing so, the balance undone, quaked, the axis spins wildly out of control.  One could, if mathematically inclined, actually calculate where all of this is going since it continues, unabated, nothing at all on the horizon impeding its excesses. 

Sometimes we wonder how it came to be this way in the spare moments between events.  Is it genetic imbecility or is it unabated narcissism?  Or is it both and more?  I don't completely count out otherworldly.  Are we merely a proving ground, a coliseum for hostile aliens?
 
... Intermission for Meditation ...

Far away, in another land, a tropical dream where the overseers are right on the edge of legalizing weed for religious purposes, our Rasta continues to build his paradise where on warm, silvery nights you can see the moon looking into his door.

the sliming

Is it not strange to you how there has been a recent cluster of three riveting global disasters, not including the warring separatists and all that symbolizes and portends, with losses in similar numbers, MH370/Malaysia, stolen Nigerian schoolgirls and the sinking of the South Korean ferry ... the numbers of losses change as some have managed escape and dependent on who is doing the reporting, however, they range in the 200 to 300 figure.
UPDATE: Add the Turkish Miners burned to death underground...which presents to us now as a quartetto of riveting global disasters which very nearly if not exactly, are running along at about one x per week.  Ahem ...Oh and the Nigerian schoolgirls have not been found at this writing.  Why is that?  Its not, please tell me its not, its not that which we already know.  A tiny festering sore ignored because energy is getting expensive just like everything throughout civilization is running out.  Slip Sliding Away.  Change soon come, my Spars.
                                           end of update

I am not going to get into the details, all who are reading here at this moment cannot help but absorb international headlines. The trinity  quartet of three four human crises in a row feels other worldly.  It feels like whatever the truth is concerning the cause of each disaster and the actions that led to them, won't ever be known, but generalized in a manner that makes it easy for western peoples to file under Backward with a sub folder of Corrupt and go on to a new tab.


I would like to note in addition to the publicly available data, the media, perhaps to keep these stories live and continue collecting revenue, seem to over emphasize, actually relish, the local backwards handling of these three disasters within each respective country.

 The Message?

In each case, great dishonor has been done to those who acted as they only knew how to act.  After all, when decent human beings are face to face with certain death, do the rules any longer apply?  Instead they are slammed to the wall.  As if anything less than the highest tech, Snowdenized drone militia could have possibly saved everything that happened from happening at all, as if, for example, Nigeria's shores had not already been helplessly shackled by Black Gold under the land where their people arrived into this very world.  They live differently than we do in every way you can and can not possibly imagine. Each country has its own operational style and culture.  How they accomplish what they must is on a very different timetable than ours, certainly under our extended Present Shock. Where does this come-lately, comic book journalism get the hutzpah to brazenly speculate, insinuating blame and fault, when blame and fault always serves to worsen any crisis?  Subterfuge shortly becomes its own crisis.  That would mean more news. More billboarding.  More pop ups on the highways of our trip.  More of everything that makes us what we are perceived as being. Slick badasses with the word.  And that word is money.  The manual: How to Covertly Create Subservience.


We are to think only WE~tikos, yea!, are the only intelligent life form on the planet.  Why, only Vampires and Cannibals always do everything necessary and also, are always right AND in a timely fashion!  Must we remind them of the Bush Brownie Chertoff debacle of Katrina?  Yes, Mr, Chertoff told the nation he read about it in the Saturday morning paper over coffee while bodies were floating upside down in the streets of New Orleans.  And then there was that early news clip following 911, if I recall correctly, immediately following the goat book reading, Bush was reported to have flown around aimlessly in AF1 eating ice cream before deciding to hang out at (safe, comfortably distracting) Warren's crib. 

seeking Yin in a Yang existence

If you want to know why everything is so weird, backwards, upside down and growing more so, look no further than the, heh, bipartisan cage fights going on at our expense.  What we see occupying the mouths and dials of any subject du jour gone wild from Casey Anthony's farce of a forensics trade show the judicial system to the made-for-Twitter debt ceiling brawls is standard BAU, supersized as technology advances and the money moves, changes hands and moves again always pretending to recreate itself as larger, smarter and more deserved while vanishing through the revolving doors of the Bond Holders' international headquarters.

There appears to be a pattern developing, a devolving pattern, is it possible that everything comes crashing down at once?  Or is it first, the sense of crash, then the announcement, speeches followed by political analysts analyzing what we already heard or wished we had not, then the shakedown takes place, after the fact, the effects rippling out as a flat stone skipped across the entire world's bodies of water, jumping the shores, landing smack into the heart of the world's capitol cities who then react with a combination of panic and schadenfreude.  Certainly other nations have noticed something of a pattern as well and easily for  much longer, meaning they are likely far advanced in disciphering patterns.  In fact, I would venture that Somalian mothers probably know a lot about patterns, especially in a famine - a day away from death, when the limits of the technology that sends messages, money and images around the globe at the speed of light, delays the vastly underestimated food drops.  Uh, sohree, maybe next week, maybe next month ...  but hey, we're working on it.

We know nothing for sure. We only know its all speeding up while winding down.  Isn't that what they call a speedball?  Nothing will be the same this time next year or maybe it will, we don't really know, do we.  The pattern I'm seeing is like a video projected on a blank wall.  This video has one basic frame of a massive chart superimposed over changing images of global disasters, as the disasters increase or level off, the chart notes the activity.  All activity including epidemic outbreaks,  the air crash in Guyana, Arab Spring in Israel, China's financial wizard hoping through the media they get paid back first, Arctic Scientist sent packing for seeing and thinking too much...  Moody's in a bad mood.  There are red lines all over the place, zigging up and zagging down, unstable and trembling, its not something someone would bet on, or is it?  The reason a lot of us can't fathom how ubiquitous are CDOs and why they were allegedly referred to as weapons of mass destruction by Warren Buffet, is betting that the opposite will take place goes 100% against the grain of those who are doing the right things, the good things, at all times. The bookies of our planet probably have a much clearer perspective on the state of humanity and surely cannot resist taking advantage of the situation as often as possible themselves.  You know, access is power, and ... and
so forth.

So deeply imbedded in the slave psyche is the concept of The Dream that nothing interferes with such beliefs without a continuing series of unparallelled shocks eventually proving one undeniable element, existence of pernicious intent, over which you personally have no control and from which you along with billions of others are denied relief.  Is it even rational to suggest created chaos?  What happened to integrity?  There can be no integrity when everyone at every level of society is more concerned with CYA.  A very human trait, some are better at it than others, some can't hide motive while plenty do, those with far too much invested are blind genius pigs who can't see themselves as we see them oinking and snorting at the trough overflowing with the spoils of a possessed population, a population dodging and weaving before taking the hit, again and again.  Of course there are reactions, it makes you rethink any number of mysterious events in a brand new way.

Imagine a world where anything you said and did went viral before you took your next breath?  And billions of human beings judged from every possible and impossible angle whatever you said and did?  My how far the fledgling colony of fundamentalist pilgrims has come, advancing exponentially what could not have been nearly so surgically precise and hidden from all slave eyes relative to the known history of western civilization.  We often read or hear that situations supposedly similar in pattern, long before we ever came along, always happened, as if that's some kind of comfort to dream on, which it is not since what is happening now never happened with seven billion people on a rapidly depleting Earth where every thought and deed circles the globe - at the speed of light.

The photo uploads displayed below took long enough for the Sunday night cage fight championship "Obama vs. Boner" with Harry Reid as cutman mopping blood, tears and sweat, to reach a deadlock a temporary agreement on their obligations to Planet Earth which must still pass Congress and is still slated for super-review, all over again, by Saber tooth Sharks bearing execution axes come this fall, after their vacations.  At this late hour, 8:20 pm EST, that's the best they can do?  We ask why put everyone through this extreme adventure in pernicious procrastination?  They must hate everyone they work with, hate their jobs and would leave in a heartbeat if they were not making so much funny money on the side, unless of course, they are evil aliens living among us and this is actually another episode of Torchwood - Miracle Day. 

Enough of that.  Now for the treats: 
I've always said, when a system is this FUBAR, we must go back to the beginning.  Here are the efforts of someone who broke on through to the other side, our Rasta's camp, a real life survival dream coming to fruition by the day.  Thanks and Praises.  The message that arrived with these sweet "sights" read:

Nina, some images upstairs, downstairs tent, pond on walk to sea with lotus's and crocs. Etc.

Night coming, walk 20 mins to camp.

One Love

Sincere gratitude, I-turey, for allowing us to share a little of your experience.  Walk safe Spar.  Those cows appear to be all in one piece and we want you to continue with your camp construction all in one piece too. When we look into your world, we are seeing the Yin and Yang of Life on Earth.  Its good to remember when the going gets tough, wherever there is Yang, somewhere else, thankfully, namaste, there is Yin.

independence camp

off the grid

the road home

Lotus Lagoon in Tureyslandia

stairs to enlightenment

Jah Pups

Namaste: I bow to you and send I-greetings to your helpful bredren and Jah pups.  Now we see what a serious survival family looks like and it looks like Love.

one mind is a revolution

It is unconsciously understood by logical people that panic is the least effective response to crisis whether it be creeping-crisis, mid-crisis or post-crisis, panic has nothing to offer and everything to worsen whatever problematic situation affects our human experience in general.  Panic is a physical state where the trembling imagination swings into overdrive fantasizing often impossible possibilities all of which magnify the potential for cascading disaster, making whatever is happening into extremes of personal damage especially inclusive of what the term damage represents to the particular individual in crisis.  (dam-age, i.e.; capture and block the natural progression of life) If you happen to be standing near someone in panic you will be subject to all the exponential multiples of why you too should join in.  If you happen to bear some guilt related to the crisis incident, however minor or drastic, you will understand the contagion of panic and if your mind is on straight, you will note the futility of such behavior and instead do the right thing to resolve whatever is taking place that is causing panic, especially when panic is expressed among a wide variety of people, many of whom have no ability to rise above their fears to see what is actually taking place.

Since the dawn of the governed and governors, forcing panic is the favored tool for control of the slaves.  However, panic, torturous and nonproductive, backfires when overused as it has been continuously, now more than ever before thanks to the mass mind whipped into frenzy by masquerading oxymoronic analytic punditry.  Think George Anthony, according to his alleged mistress's testimony, in a state of panic after his granddaughter drowns in the family pool, "It was an accident that snowballed out of control."  Think of the Orthodox hardware store stocker, who when he heard of the search for missing eight year-old Leibby Kletzy, likely seated quietly waiting for his ride to the Judaic bookstore, panicked and kills him, dismembering the defenseless child body and distributes the pieces in various locations.  You have to ask what happened!  The logical mind, cool under pressure, aware through multitudes of precarious circumstance, wants to know what would have happened if instead, someone had the wherewithal to do the right thing because on the other side of the moment is another moment, life comes in waves, and the next moment could have brought resolution rather than enlarging the hemorrhaging of panic.

It is helpful to be aware that nearly everything, perhaps all of what we hear coming from anyone who thinks themselves somehow more powerful, more Darwinianly "fit" for survival than ourselves, is inducement to panic.  The intent is to have you become a follower, to lean on them for your every need eliminating any positive activities on your part, resulting in a sort of expansion of predatory power to suck you into any agenda that without the element of panic, is an agenda with which you would never have any involvement at all. It is the pressure to panic the populations that has created the very stupid situation the westernized world finds itself inside today.  True believers have swallowed it all and refuse to see beyond the immediate.  An excellent point made recently by Arthur Silber discussing Stockholm Syndrome was that of whatever relief we are allowed during the induced panic state is generally often viewed as a kindness thus leading us deeper into darker dungeons of torture and cruelty.

Once one achieves a certain level of spiritual development, induced panic has no effect.  They might as well put that tool away now because as far as we overstand the national crisis, whatever effects are supposed to occur cannot take place without creating freak outbursts among the population at large that has become helpless and terribly confused so that any positive action that could be taken during the course of panic resolution appears in the imagination as the wrong action since any action at all is punishable by any means from instant penury to permanent social status as pariah/outcast or grossly disturbed mentally deficient to capital punishment by multiple injections of paralyzing chemical compounds.  A person succumbed to panic naturally thinks he is damned if he does and damned if he doesn't and then whatever course of action follows rips off the bandages and unravels the stitches of social cohesion, bleeding all over everything making healing very nearly impossible.

I've noticed there are people who are entirely responsible to themselves and in direct contact at all times with the truth that terrorizing them is wasted energy. And certainly there are times when those same people are faced with genuine crisis, but having had experiences and understandings of those experiences unique to themselves, never panic.  In other words, once you have died, you no longer fear death.  Stated further, once you have allowed yourself to live fully, why would you fear death?

In perhaps the most glaring illustrations yet of how bizarre the governing process has become, these freak outbursts within the ranks tells us all we need to know to move on and leave the jackals quarreling over their kills.  They overused the tools and fail to see themselves as berserk and pitiful grappling over spoils.  We see them committing career suicides and it means everything to the mass mind, but what does it mean to us?  Its supposed to mean TEOTWAWKI, but it does not.  Life is everywhere, life is what we make it, peace is where we find it and dwells within us if only we are strong enough to stop handwringing and see it all for what it is.  Sometimes, you want to put a hand on their shoulder and say, hey, get a grip there fella, but you don't dare unless you want to face off with snarling monsters in which case, winning with your life intact is definitely not an option.


I agree they make it hard to get there, but it is that difficulty that makes our journey ultimately worthwhile.  If you achieve nothing else in this lifetime, to achieve inner peace regardless of predators and their freak offspring, the mass mind, you will have achieved a legacy worth the heartache of having been here.

The morass of legalities, justice and vengeance foisted upon the hapless for the ugly intention described above can be simplified and vastly improved by sticking to one easy rule taken to heart and always intended, Do No Harm.  How we could ever get into that headspace now is a truly tedious, mind-numbing complexity that few will take the time to consider or even view as rational thought, except there is no alternative.  If we cannot see the harm intended and where it is taking humanity, we will shortly extinct ourselves into oblivion exactly as is happening in real time.  It is now more important to terrorize each other than explore the heavens.  It has been coming on for ages, our ridiculous, tragic destiny to undermine humanity so that one portion appears to themselves, superior.  And you know, it doesn't have to be that way if you, in your own heart, refuse to allow it any room to manifest.

If you are a new reader, it goes without saying you should not be confused between the mass mind and the one mind.  There is literally an entire universe of difference.

Listening to the wind

Flying in the very face of spectacular, breath-taking, unimaginable-if-you-aren't-in-it, triple whammy catastrophe, the Wetiko-infected push for more guaranteed disaster.  What does this say?  Have they not by now read any news, seen a TV, been party to a press conference, spoken with or heard another suit hand-wringing over le conversation du jour?  Not at all, they are busy showing off their spoils, ordering around the staff, meeting heart attack inducing deadlines por nada, slamming china coffee cups on the inlaid ceramic tile imported sideways from East Asia, I don't care what it costs dammit, they fail to notice when the radiation level creeps between the sheets.  That multiples of thousands are already dead or dying, dispossessed and locked into sure contamination, or is that kind of utter chaos just another day in the life?   It makes you want to cry. I remember during my sojourn in the desert, the Vets, the cowboy bikers, world weary and tired of it all, I was the person who took them to their VA appointments and waited until we could get out of dodge, back to Elephant Rock which had a natural trunk you climbed and sat up high listening to the wind.  When you are on Elephant Rock, there are no questions, silent knowings whisper about your body and blow across your face.  Most of these gentlemen were very ill from existing too long downwind the waste dump and from exposure to agent orange.  Some were cured (that means not healed) only to get worse.  Austin passed.  It was not a happy ending.  I recall him showing me a strange growth coming from his calf on which a four inch long tube of flesh had grown out like an unnecessary appendage.  We couldn't figure it out and yet, during his VA visit, they removed it in the examining room avoiding even a cursory explanation of what it was or WHY it happened, but everybody knew anyway.  It wasn't long afterward Austin went to Heaven.  Once the desert predators heard he was ailing, they were all over him like feeding vultures.  He felt he had no options and simply caved.

Is there any difference between catastrophic natural disaster and HAARP disaster?  Is there any difference between anthropogenic climate chaos and natural changes within a fluid Universe?  No, the outcome is the same, but there was once a difference, we had time then, time to change the course, set sail for calmer seas, pursue directions that brought joy to ourselves by bringing joy to others.  And now?  In stark contrast to what we could have been, we are silenced before the Great Tsunami of Evil.  Perhaps more than care to be known as evil enthusiasts actually follow evil doings the way Octomom followed Brangelina.  They never see themselves in that light.  They instead see themselves as interested patriots, active or inactive, using talking points interspersed with half-truths formulated as they finished the morning commute in their restored Porsche 911, entered the glass and steel monolith and huffed it over to the post, sipping Latte.  But for the love people, this isn't their cup of tea at all.  Nothing wrong with Latte, what is wrong is the direction that is being pursued only perpetuates more and worse evil.  At this moment in real time, evil has seemingly broken itself like dropped Limoges, each shard growing arms and legs in order to continue adding insult to injury, once, twice, three times is never enough no matter how ghastly the items on the evil checklist appear.  I try to remember what we hear and see is multiplied by the increasing populations everywhere holding remotes to a thousand channels of nonsense. thus nonsense increases in tandem.  This is heh, a special kind of growth.

Its never them that take the hit, you"ll notice.  Its the people, the little people, many of them love people and love-people-in-training. The poor people just hanging laundry or riding a bike to collect wood for heat, children doing what children do, fishermen, farmers, the uncelebrated ones, the ignored, are the ones deemed expendable.  They have long been exploited in unimaginably gruesome fashion, most of which is unknown and through bubble aftermath which you might notice qualifies as a prolonged state of shock, and possess nothing of worth, just ask the homeless what happened that ruined everything for the remainder of their time on Earth.  What is more loss when you already lost everything and there are no means of ever getting it back?   For that matter, what is loss when you've been brought to your knees in acknowledgment of the existence of a superior man because you hurt so bad there is no other way to make it stop, and it didn't really stop, it just costumed itself as TBTF.  You have to wonder sometimes, if the secret societies have small scale plug-in Ferris Wheel desk accessories complimenting the leather armchairs complimenting finely polished rotating globes.  "Get Hillbilly on the phone sweetheart." Maybe this is so, maybe it is not, but the idea would not have come up if there were not some reason to think ...  High on Elephant Rock one accepts the state of all of humanity, the good, the evil are just life's infinite variety of vegetation.  Warning: you may go there in a typical everyday state of shock, but you will leave in love.

Who among us really knows what will happen, anywhere, anytime?  Apparently nobody  knows despite a handful of smug reports of warnings given which were apparently not actually transmitted to anyone not invested in catastrophe before whatever event occurs?  Now let's go back in time for a minute and recall the bodies floating in flood waters like unleashed rivers of blood streaming through New Orleans.  And the towers, or AIDS, yes it goes way back, there were always things happening somewhere on the planet and we became inured as if we were purified from conception merely by our nationality.   Well, not completely inured, it was a surreal confusion and no amount of tranquilizing  pronouncements made it right.  To my Father's credit, when I was freaking out after reading Sophie's Choice, he looked me in the eye and said "You think that was something, you should see what we did to the Indians", meaning Native Americans. 

In catastrophe, there are always earnest, well intentioned inventors desirous of fame and fortune with their solutions.  One of them managed to secure an interview on CNN yesterday with a Tsunami Ark.  His  ark holds (only) 50 to 70 people he says, but they are nothing more than floating orange capsules tethered to cement supposedly able to withstand tsunami force. Can you see it?  Its perfect, its time has come!  It is yet another layer of complexity gone wild to sustain the fantasy.  Right away you can punch a tsunami of holes in the plan, principally just how long and longer will these tethers become as the wave heights increase and what if these tethers are too short and for cryin' out loud, what tether can withstand the most recent tsunami doing drive-bys at every port around the shores of the Ring of Fire?  While we're on the subject, let us also mention the immoral developers who manage to arrange zoning approval to create entire towns which quickly grow into overpopulated cities on stilts to better retain a minuscule slice of ocean view which as an aside also determines property taxes.  What happened to preplanning?  If a tsunami aimed itself at Malibu or Montalk, there would be no more tinseltown players and no more beachfront architectural amusements regardless of how many orange arks dotted the sands.  Especially when the warnings were half-truths and speculations.  There is a weird part of human nature that gets lost in happy memories of better days when faced with the real possibility of immediate annihilation. That weird part is never taken into consideration because we are expected to snap to attention instantly at the ear-shattering blaring trumpets of the Schmooz.  Everybody Listen Up!  Shake, tremble and speculate!  You can always tell when someone is fear mongering because they tell you so up front, "Now, I'm not fear mongering, but ..."

Bella's little girls, 15 minutes into the world

Watching are Scarlett's twins, Arnie and Adele at two weeks

Stella working on a treat

As all was becoming a nightmare of Karmic return while in mourning for the Japanese villagers who in these crazy days cannot possibly look forward to a brighter day, I took Bernie out as usual and noticed Scarlett the Ewe, recent new mom, gathering her lambs about her in a rather frantic manner.  I rushed to see Bella, her sister, standing over two tiny wet charming puppy-size blobs of black.  Two females this time.  It was helpful I'd seen Scarlett's twins developing so quickly this week so I knew whomever was not able to stand up yet would be soon running and getting into everything that attracts their attention.  I spent more time again with Amos, the father, the Ram, as always, because I know as a brother being, he wanted to help, grazers are genetically designed that way, although he was kept in his penthouse to prevent backbreeding.  And of course, with Stella, the Mustang Princess, evermore lovely in mist and fog, glowing as her winter fur is brushed to a shine and her mane resembles Lauren Hutton's messy golden highlights... They all know me very well and are insatiably curious about my person-ness.  Not a single thought about anything else other than being witness in the magnificence of birth including amplified love and compassion for all species was the Divine antidote to whatever else is going on anywhere.

What's goin on

Mother, mother
There's too many of you crying
Brother, brother, brother
There's far too many of you dying
You know we've got to find a way
To bring some lovin' here today ...
1971 | Marvin Gaye | Obie Benson

Finally, it has come to this we think and yet, its not over, not by a long shot. The mess, the turmoil, has a long way to go. A few things need attention while the thunderstorm and hail are flung across the passes and traffic slows to a dead halt on the interstates ...

Browsing the welcome news (we all have welcome news, you might have seen this), I was amused by an article dated today concerning a GOP senate candidate's statement made four years ago and wondered as you will too, why bring up this paranoid's delusion now? Of course, its election dirt, but its more. It reads as a thinly disguised attempt to take us further into 1984 where we are always at war. If this is so, it needs to be nipped in the bud immediately because we are going to need strong friends and soon. The paranoid's delusion is just that, a delusion, and a rather perfect illustration of reactionary thinking. What's wrong with these people, anyway? We wouldn't be reluctant witness to provocateurs' antics if our Laureate community organizer and his handlers could organize their way to real solutions, but alas ... personalities earn fame and fortune spotlit by media's public relations-compliant analysis, pressing and pushing to no avail. Economic relationships are stuck for life regardless of who occupies what office, and where, unless (there's always an unless) one party is suspected to be profiting more than the other. Profiting greatly.  In the end, in our bottom line, in our litmus test, it means nothing we don't already know. Tit for tat. Where's the change, dude? The whole place is still sliding on thin ice.

You'll want to follow up that piece, whichever one you chose among the roster of corporate feeds, with something of genuine substance, although its the blog author who provides great insight to the ironies contained in certain documents which are purportedly the agenda for the upcoming G-20. You will find the opinions fascinating. You may even find confirmation for your secret thoughts on this issue contained within. Gonzalo's take on his material is most entertaining. It would make a great film. Someday, I would like to see a dream roundtable discussion between Charles Hugh Smith, James Kunstler and Gonzalo Lira on just about anything. If wishes grew on trees ... Oh, the poor public. They have no idea. The new statistic for our beleaguered livestock is three out of four Americans will be obese (not merely overweight) by 2020. Do I need to repeat that? Has it sunk in? Good. The cattle would rather scrape lemon drops off the bottom of the BGH-GMO barrel than figure out what's going on.

None of the above will mean anything to you if you don't see the links.

The cattle better figure it out soon because it is no longer in the hands of some mythical great overseer. Mentally repeat the past and ask yourself what are you going to do when disaster snarls its way into your living room? Who is prepared when they don't know what is brewing in the witch's den? Personally, I have a prejudice against knowing too much because MSM details generally obscure the point, among other travesties. What has happened is we have no one looking out for us, we are viewed as too shallow, too spoiled through over-abundance, too oblivious and too corrupt for salvation. The humanity has been wrung out of the human. Where does one begin to repair all that has happened and all that is to come? How can we heal while wallowing in a national cesspool of denial? Yes, it is shocking. It is an impasse like none other, ever.

Mister Kunstler's essay today is his best one since I've been reading him, easily a few years by now. Oh, I know, he doesn't keep his house all that clean, there are plenty of repeat trolls nosing around, but once in a while there will be a comment so worthy of a larger audience it is like a rainbow breaking the storm. (I've taken the liberty  to correct punctuation where I find it and understand in the heat of the moment how such things happen.)

This one is from conchscooter:

"Can you spell quitclaim? The reason those famous "23 states" keeps getting brought up on this issue is that these are judicial foreclosure states. That would be states that require a judge to sign off on a foreclosure order.
However if challenged (and the title companies are doing just that)the banks not only can't produce the pen-and-ink mortgage agreement, they have had those lackeys sign off that the original documents were "lost." They weren't lost they were transferred without the benefit of being properly recorded to investment trusts.
That means the mortgages are not properly recorded and can therefore be challenged.
If you buy a foreclosed property you will not get title insurance because in those judicial foreclosure states the banks had no legal right to sell a property in which they had no legal standing.
This is a state issue and is going to have a more revolutionary impact on this lawless state of ours than any number of survivalists with guns.

Don't believe me? Ask yourself why banks are stopping foreclosure in judicial foreclosure states...No one else has asked themselves why and what happens next. Not even Jim Kunstler, which is disappointing, but he got closer than most."

And here's one from eightm: 

Another AX: WORK
Take a look at all of those skyscrapers in New York City, Tokyo, Seoul, etc. What do you think all of those office workers actually "do" ? Do you really think they are actually producing anything ? Are they needed for anything except being a place holder - a figment of imaginary labor - work, to justify billions of dollars of money transfers amongst the already and only ever going to be rich ? The truth is work in general is no longer needed, is destined to become obsolete no matter what anyone says or thinks or desires.

The calculation is easy to do: there are 200 million office workers worldwide, information workers, "knowledge" workers, research workers, "innovation", and research and development and all of the other mega Bull Shit terms and expressions the modern economist love to talk about. So exactly what are they discovering - improving - creating ? Absolutely nothing except billions of dollars being robbed from the poor. But let's look at it for what it really is: out of 200 million workers I would fathom that only 1 out of 1,000 are creating anything, are really producing anything of lasting value, any real optimization, any real improvement, any real result, any real serialization of work as something that accumulates. But this is OK, the other 199 million are just running around in circles, they are essentially spinning their wheels, they are mostly just killing time and creating and solving imaginary problems, and playing the status game, office politics game, and creating useless meetings and every conceivable way to pretend to actually be working and doing something.
But those 200,000 that are actually optimizing, that are improving the little work processes that are left to do, those guys there are setting the stage to eliminate at least each 100 jobs as a minimum. For what is all of this research, optimization, innovation worth if it doesn't cut costs, which in the end really means cut jobs ? And cut costs they will, no matter how inefficient they are because it is only natural that processes can slowly be improved and optimized. So 200,000 workers (the only ones that are actually serializing work, accumulating lasting results) will eventually each cut 100 jobs, so another 200 million unemployed workers will appear in the near future.
So the future of work is actually no work, hundreds of millions of unemployed, mass poverty, eventually starvation, thanks to the capitalists, success model of rich robbing everything from the poor. We need free salaries, and cheap rents since there will no longer be any possible work in the future. We need to get rid of the competition mentality, the me better than you idea, the idea of "earning" what you need, we need equality and everything must be furnished for free since automation and technology have essentially killed all possible work and will kill all work in the future.
You don't understand: you won't be choosing "capitalism" or whatever, the forces at play are going all in the same direction no matter what you or anyone wants. Optimization, automation, Chinese or South Korean scientists - engineers automating factories, creating production shortcuts, etc. etc. This will trickle through and translate into less costs which means somewhere and somehow less money to workers or less work. No matter what, this world is going towards the end of work, work is no longer needed, I know many people for one reason or another have no work, have nothing to do, even if they wanted to, because the modern production process is all geared towards the elimination of work. We better get this straight and not buy all the BS justifications of the economists that say more productivity, more research etc. will create new jobs. And in fact these are exactly the items that are eliminating work. More productivity and more research will kill jobs, not create new jobs, unless you consider dog walking a new "kind of job", a new "service job"...
No matter where and how many people can build houses or cut the lawns (valid only in the US, most countries don't have houses with lawns to cut, etc.) there is not enough work for too many people. We have huge excess capacity in all productive endeavors, Spain and the US, just to name 2 even very different countries built way too many homes and now have a glut of homes, the US may have 15 million empty homes, all of Europe from Lisbon to Moscow may have even more, they did all the right things, they built all the homes they could, but the system cannot support them without free salaries to millions of families that could use them.
The right wing thugs like to pretend there are these magical solutions, "technology destroys jobs but creates more jobs than destroyed", or "go somewhere else where they are looking for your manpower", etc to put the blame on the unemployed, to put the blame on the victim and not on the system: we live in automatic economies, work is disappearing at an alarming rate, there is no magical solution. We need free salaries and cheap rents, government owned, because the government is the people, the government is the nation as a whole, is the only real value, the collectivity, the individual is an egotistical criminal that wants to rob from the poor, wants to beat up the weak and kick them out of work. A central government that gives what the people need, and a progressive government that will use all the excess productive capacity for progress, the future, like space exploration, millions of skyscrapers, a society where the common good, and not the individual good is cherished. Exploration of the solar system and then the stars and planets, thousands of rockets, the future of humanity, a future of science and discovery, of an advanced civilization that puts all of its energy to use for progress, for the advancement of everyone, to share with everyone, to go higher and higher and further and further. Capitalism is a stone age system for violent - ancient apes that like to fight and have huge egos.
But this is exactly how the system is being set up to be ... (Please see link above for the rest of eightm's comment.)

Shall we ask eightm where the free salaries will come from?  Ah, sweetheart, don't even think about Treasury's presses.

What does all this say as a whole picture? It means we are fubar and need to either pull up stakes or batten down the hatches for our remaining lifetimes. That's right, sail under bare poles from this moment forward.

Who remembers the ISG, the Iraq Study Group, asking for solutions from the American citizens?  And did not BP ask for the public's solutions to the blowout?  And was Saudi Arabia's' offer of assistance not refused? Of course, Bush strummed his three chord riff, his only riff, during Katrina at a California's power photo-op rather than ask for solutions because he just didn't give a damn.  All along the signs and omens were blinking neon truths which for the most part have been taken for granted.  You saw it. The Fema trailers for those who qualified were reported to be cancer incubators.  And now there's Corexit - a solution not supplied by the public who was cluesless as to what on Earth could be done short of a walking evacuation, but where to?  With what?

Nothing is like it was and will never be like it was again. We've outgrown our childhoods and cannot go back. The people are unhappy and complaining and running into brick walls with every action they attempt to accomplish seemingly simple tasks. Simultaneously, it is a continuing joy to communicate with each other in our small, caring communities. I know lots of readers are worried about Visible this week, but he will survive his situation and resurrect into more than he already is. Tell me who among us has not been there? Let us trust each others' journeys through our own power to survive these times with our love and understanding. We ARE on our own, but we are not alone.  I will pass along a secret I shared with a friend just this morning: When your broken heart needs repair and you find yourself in the dark, swirling abyss, falling, falling, faster and faster, do-something-good-for-someone-else.   It is amazing how one small good deed turns it around.  This is where we are, just taking it day by day, usually hour by hour.  Baby steps and good deeds.

Art: 
L.A. Postcard | 18" x 24" watercolor on Arches
Woof!  Woof! Creole translation: Oua! Oua! | 18* x 24* watercolor on Arches

Disclaimer: I'm not responsible for comments made by others and hold no political position for or against the commentary produced by anyone else.  All material on this blog is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

As the Hourglass Empties...

Hi five. We've got bholanath on Mridang , Su-Nami on Wind Chimes, Scappy on Mandolin, me on Thumb Piano and freeacre working up some organic munchies in the kitchen. Charles is on the roof adjusting lighting [watchit!], so slip on your darkers, striped sweaters and get out those cigarette holders, its Poetry Night:

THE LOON

On wooded height the slanting light
In glinting, gleaming radiance falls,
And softly sifts throught opening rifts
That cleave the fog-bank's hazy walls.
The splendor thrills from purple hills,
And lights the grassy circling swell;
But, hist! awake! From off the lake
The loon's wild cries, with sprite-like spell,
"Ke-woi-o! Ke-we-oi-o!"

In bluest sky the fleece clouds lie,
In floating fancies slow unfolding;
The village spire is tipped with fire
Reflections bright from golden moulding.
While close around, in slumber bound,
The roofs of modest mansions rise.
The silence breaks! From off the lake's
Unrippled reach, the loon's wild cries,
"Ke-woi-o! Ke-we-oi-o!"

"Oh, tell my why," I weary cry,
"A world so peaceful, fair, and pure,
Must still be rife with crime and strife
Why sin and sorrow must endure?
Why labor's slave, whose spirits crave
Such beauty, ne'er can steal a glance?"
My sole reply, the loon's wild cry,
Again returned in echo's chance,
"Ke-woi-o! Ke-we-oi-o!"

George Charles Selden 1893

INDIAN SUMMER

At last there came

The sudden fall of frost, when Time

Dreaming through russet September days

Suddenly awoke, and lifting his head, strode

Swiftly forward--made one vast desolating sweep

Of his scythe, then, rapt with the glory

That burned under his feet, fell dreaming again.

And the clouds soared and the crickets sang

In the brief heat of noon; the corn,

So green, grew sere and dry--

And in the mist the ploughman's team

Moved silently, as if in dream--

And it was Indian summer on the plain.

Hamlin Garland, (1860-1940) American Novelist, Short Story Writer, and Poet; active social reformer, especially concerned with Native American rights

Part XXII: Hiawatha's Departure

By the shore of Gitche Gumee,

By the shining Big-Sea-Water,

At the doorway of his wigwam,

In the pleasant Summer morning,

Hiawatha stood and waited.

All the air was full of freshness,

All the earth was bright and joyous,

And before him, through the sunshine,

Westward toward the neighboring forest

Passed in golden swarms the Ahmo,

Passed the bees, the honey-makers,

Burning, singing In the sunshine.

Bright above him shone the heavens,

Level spread the lake before him;

From its bosom leaped the sturgeon,

Sparkling, flashing in the sunshine;

On its margin the great forest

Stood reflected in the water,

Every tree-top had its shadow,

Motionless beneath the water.

From the brow of Hiawatha

Gone was every trace of sorrow,

As the fog from off the water,

As the mist from off the meadow.

With a smile of joy and triumph,

With a look of exultation,

As of one who in a vision

Sees what is to be, but is not,

Stood and waited Hiawatha.

Toward the sun his hands were lifted,

Both the palms spread out against it,

And between the parted fingers

Fell the sunshine on his features,

Flecked with light his naked shoulders,

As it falls and flecks an oak-tree

Through the rifted leaves and branches.

O'er the water floating, flying,

Something in the hazy distance,

Something in the mists of morning,

Loomed and lifted from the water,

Now seemed floating, now seemed flying,

Coming nearer, nearer, nearer.

Was it Shingebis the diver?

Or the pelican, the Shada?

Or the heron, the Shuh-shuh-gah?

Or the white goose, Waw-be-wawa,

With the water dripping, flashing,

From its glossy neck and feathers?

It was neither goose nor diver,

Neither pelican nor heron,

O'er the water floating, flying,

Through the shining mist of morning,

But a birch canoe with paddles,

Rising, sinking on the water,

Dripping, flashing in the sunshine;

And within it came a people

From the distant land of Wabun,

From the farthest realms of morning

Came the Black-Robe chief, the Prophet,

He the Priest of Prayer, the Pale-face,

With his guides and his companions.

And the noble Hiawatha,

With his hands aloft extended,

Held aloft in sign of welcome,

Waited, full of exultation,

Till the birch canoe with paddles

Grated on the shining pebbles,

Stranded on the sandy margin,

Till the Black-Robe chief, the Pale-face,

With the cross upon his bosom,

Landed on the sandy margin.

Then the joyous Hiawatha

Cried aloud and spake in this wise:

"Beautiful is the sun, O strangers,

When you come so far to see us!

All our town in peace awaits you,

All our doors stand open for you;

You shall enter all our wigwams,

For the heart's right hand we give you.

"Never bloomed the earth so gayly,

Never shone the sun so brightly,

As to-day they shine and blossom

When you come so far to see us!

Never was our lake so tranquil,

Nor so free from rocks, and sand-bars;

For your birch canoe in passing

Has removed both rock and sand-bar.

"Never before had our tobacco

Such a sweet and pleasant flavor,

Never the broad leaves of our cornfields

Were so beautiful to look on,

As they seem to us this morning,

When you come so far to see us!'

And the Black-Robe chief made answer,

Stammered In his speech a little,

Speaking words yet unfamiliar:

"Peace be with you, Hiawatha,

Peace be with you and your people,

Peace of prayer, and peace of pardon,

Peace of Christ, and joy of Mary!"

Then the generous Hiawatha

Led the strangers to his wigwam,

Seated them on skins of bison,

Seated them on skins of ermine,

And the careful old Nokomis

Brought them food in bowls of basswood,

Water brought in birchen dippers,

And the calumet, the peace-pipe,

Filled and lighted for their smoking.

All the old men of the village,

All the warriors of the nation,

All the Jossakeeds, the Prophets,

The magicians, the Wabenos,

And the Medicine-men, the Medas,

Came to bid the strangers welcome;

"It is well", they said, "O brothers,

That you come so far to see us!"

In a circle round the doorway,

With their pipes they sat In silence,

Waiting to behold the strangers,

Waiting to receive their message;

Till the Black-Robe chief, the Pale-face,

From the wigwam came to greet them,

Stammering in his speech a little,

Speaking words yet unfamiliar;

"It Is well," they said, "O brother,

That you come so far to see us!"

Then the Black-Robe chief, the Prophet,

Told his message to the people,

Told the purport of his mission,

Told them of the Virgin Mary,

And her blessed Son, the Saviour,

How in distant lands and ages

He had lived on earth as we do;

How he fasted, prayed, and labored;

How the Jews, the tribe accursed,

Mocked him, scourged him, crucified him;

How he rose from where they laid him,

Walked again with his disciples,

And ascended into heaven.

And the chiefs made answer, saying:

"We have listened to your message,

We have heard your words of wisdom,

We will think on what you tell us.

It is well for us, O brothers,

That you come so far to see us!"

Then they rose up and departed

Each one homeward to his wigwam,

To the young men and the women

Told the story of the strangers

Whom the Master of Life had sent them

From the shining land of Wabun.

Heavy with the heat and silence

Grew the afternoon of Summer;

With a drowsy sound the forest

Whispered round the sultry wigwam,

With a sound of sleep the water

Rippled on the beach below it;

From the cornfields shrill and ceaseless

Sang the grasshopper, Pah-puk-keena;

And the guests of Hiawatha,

Weary with the heat of Summer,

Slumbered in the sultry wigwam.

Slowly o'er the simmering landscape

Fell the evening's dusk and coolness,

And the long and level sunbeams

Shot their spears into the forest,

Breaking through its shields of shadow,

Rushed into each secret ambush,

Searched each thicket, dingle, hollow;

Still the guests of Hiawatha

Slumbered In the silent wigwam.

From his place rose Hiawatha,

Bade farewell to old Nokomis,

Spake in whispers, spake in this wise,

Did not wake the guests, that slumbered.

"I am going, O Nokomis,

On a long and distant journey,

To the portals of the Sunset.

To the regions of the home-wind,

Of the Northwest-Wind, Keewaydin.

But these guests I leave behind me,

In your watch and ward I leave them;

See that never harm comes near them,

See that never fear molests them,

Never danger nor suspicion,

Never want of food or shelter,

In the lodge of Hiawatha!"

Forth into the village went he,

Bade farewell to all the warriors,

Bade farewell to all the young men,

Spake persuading, spake in this wise:

I am going, O my people,

On a long and distant journey;

Many moons and many winters

Will have come, and will have vanished,

Ere I come again to see you.

But my guests I leave behind me;

Listen to their words of wisdom,

Listen to the truth they tell you,

For the Master of Life has sent them

From the land of light and morning!"

On the shore stood Hiawatha,

Turned and waved his hand at parting;

On the clear and luminous water

Launched his birch canoe for sailing,

From the pebbles of the margin

Shoved it forth into the water;

Whispered to it, "Westward! westward!"

And with speed it darted forward.

And the evening sun descending

Set the clouds on fire with redness,

Burned the broad sky, like a prairie,

Left upon the level water

One long track and trail of splendor,

Down whose stream, as down a river,

Westward, westward Hiawatha

Sailed into the fiery sunset,

Sailed into the purple vapors,

Sailed into the dusk of evening:

And the people from the margin

Watched him floating, rising, sinking,

Till the birch canoe seemed lifted

High into that sea of splendor,

Till it sank into the vapors

Like the new moon slowly, slowly

Sinking in the purple distance.

And they said, "Farewell forever!"

Said, "Farewell, O Hiawatha!"

And the forests, dark and lonely,

Moved through all their depths of darkness,

Sighed, "Farewell, O Hiawatha!"

And the waves upon the margin

Rising, rippling on the pebbles,

Sobbed, "Farewell, O Hiawatha!"

And the heron, the Shuh-shuh-gah,

From her haunts among the fen-lands,

Screamed, "Farewell, O Hiawatha!"

Thus departed Hiawatha,

Hiawatha the Beloved,

In the glory of the sunset,.

In the purple mists of evening,

To the regions of the home-wind,

Of the Northwest-Wind, Keewaydin,

To the Islands of the Blessed,

To the Kingdom of Ponemah,

To the Land of the Hereafter!

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow spent nearly a year and a half on Hiawatha, finishing in November of 1855.


THE ROAD NOT TAKEN

TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Robert Frost (1874–1963). Mountain Interval. 1920.

photos:
Beatniks c. google images
Loon: c. google images


[About that absurd while box below, heh, your guess is as good as mine. N]