Anything can happen

So much trouble in the world
So much trouble in the world

Bless my eyes this morning
Jah sun is on the rise once again
The way earthly thin's are goin'
Anything can happen.

You see men sailing on their ego trip,
Blast off on their spaceship,
Million miles from reality:
No care for you, no care for me.

So much trouble in the world;
So much trouble in the world...

Yes I.  Indeed.  Anything can happen ... and will and does.  As you know well, by now, at this time in this form in this particular go around on this spectacular Earthly plane.

Imagine, for example, what the next leaders of the multitudes of lives and lifestyles within our geography will be doing at their polished desks among all the rare antiquities surrounded by their special chosen Cabinet. Think about how they think of you - and then think about the generations to come.

Are we in agreement that it is absurd that the legal personhoods continue to flood coastal cities with waterfront development?  We wonder if the Blonde vs. Blonde voting populations also find it absurd.  I think not.  With one, we get to be subjects of the Roman Empire on Steroids, with the other, slave gladiators.  As in anything can happen perhaps nothing like what I've just described will happen. Judging by the American experience since WW2, a good bet would be no positive change, but an exponential growth of what we already have and see now - which will, naturally, unfold rapidly since this is how they already do it, momentum is increased at every opportunity and the opportunities are unlimited.  My friends, we are in uncharted territory. 

UNLESS

You see it for what you always saw it, lodged in buildings built by slaves housing the slickest of the slick, where they do what they think are slick things.  These things are rarely in and nowhere near our favor because people who make rules always make rules in their favor whether they know it or not.  Their favor means anything further separating them from those who are disfavored, be it status, power, visibility or loyalties favoring all whom they perceive to be just like themselves.

To live a happy life, forget about them and enjoy JAH suns and moons. Teach the children love and compassion.  Stay with your own creativity, it never fails to keep you high and away, above the BS and free.  Keep your mind open and learning.  Stay away from judgements, instead look for the overview. 

Surely there are many who sacrifice enjoying a happy life out of sheer gluttony for status, power and visibility.  They made their choices long ago and we should not expect them to change now, therefore, it is up to us to live our happy lives as best we can.  By using the term "happy life", I mean living a life in which you respect your own existence and everyone else's also.  If you have love for yourself, it radiates into everything you do, everyone you see, all species you come across, not just those with whom you are already close, but the "strangers" you frequently meet in your journey. More often than not, I am a little shocked and pleased to find new like minds where I never thought I would.  For Izzy who commented on our last post he wished it was easier to find like minds off line as it is for him online, I would think the more time you can spend offline, the more you give of yourself, you come across like minds.  Another thing that must be stated about happy lives isn't exactly Izzy's issue as he stated it, rather it is a common trait among human beings to create a pattern in the unconscious mind of just how a stranger must appear and sound in order to communicate with them.  It is extraordinarily beneficial to recognize that trait is a survival throwback to the dawn of Humankind and has virtually no basis in your mission on Earth within the Heavens.  All uncharted territory is opportunity.





Verse: So Much Trouble In The World
Bob Marley & The Wailers, from Songs of Freedom

the inevitability of limited vision

The thing I like the most about the west is not something usually listed in travel advertisements such as accommodations and exclusivity.  It is the Cecil B. Demille skies at just about any given moment on any given day.  They appear unusually panoramic in comparison to skies in other geographies, with heightened cloud activity and weather complexities you would see elsewhere only over the open ocean where on the brightest sunny day, running wing on wing, you can study a distant squall off the port bow or rains falling from one cloud bank into another below it.  At this moment, a dark thunder storm is approaching from the southwest while overhead it is clear blue with Old Masters-style Cumulonimbus bordered with watercolor blends of soft Ultramarine graduating to crisp Titanium White.  You would think standing on the coast of say, Florida, you would see the same things, but it isn't so.  The Eastern Coast of this continent, especially in flat Florida, the adventures of Cowboy Clouds Gone Wild does not present itself in Cinerama, being quickly battened down by low lying landscapes: uninterrupted stretches of Mangroves and Sawgrass, beauties in themselves, but nothing like the lost fogs who become trapped in the passes and canyons hugging the California Transmontane as they also do in the Nevada Sheep's Range.  It is the appearance of white wool-like fluff that gathers through the striated peaks and crags that gives that region its name. This phenomena shows up often after rainstorms and on high humidity winter mornings.

What is peculiar about the cities of the western territories is the overkill to sell every man his castle.  In doing so, most homes built after the middle of the last century have high walls dividing them from their neighbors' houses.  Even strip malls employ a sort of semi permanent fencing arrangement utilizing metal posts and barbed wire.  It appears the McMansion development communities, squeezed by the thousands into formerly trash riddled vacant lots, each dwelling erected on individual tiny parcels, as small as the builder can get away with, are especially subject to high walls and ostentatious iron gates.  The walls are made of painted cinder blocks in multitudes of varieties of beige aka sand tones as if tight enclosure of the castle was something natural.  Is it natural to exit the kitchen door and meet with a wall extending to the second story?  These walls dividing homes from one another are typically fourteen or more cinder blocks tall. Even in ungated residential neighborhoods, the homes are walled off from passersby and sidewalks as if the presence of human habitation must be a secret kept far from tourists.  Existing behind walls limits sky viewing in the same way the web is seen on cell phones or news on TV with too many banners and blinking gadgets.  Who are these dickwads anyway,  blocking out our views?  Is anybody home there?  It is difficult to know what they're doing overhead, you can hear a lot of noise, seemingly close, but you don't know what it is.  It brings an air of gnawing mystery to whatever you are doing.  Naturally, it doesn't bother the locals at all.  Have they never lain in the grass with a friend watching clouds?  Actually, there is very little grass and grasses used for energy- intensive landscaping are poisoned.

There's more.  Most of the intrusive alerts and crackling static warnings that I mentioned in the last post are centered around flash floods.  They caution you to stay indoors, go nowhere, lay low until the all clear is given by "your" TV weather forecaster.   Do we have primary care weather-people now?    I have visited this same location off and on throughout the years, mostly seasonal layovers, mostly during this same season when these freak flash floods were definitely not happening, at least not happening to the extent they are this time.  Nature had not yet caught up with what the city planning board had in mind. Certainly, uninhabitable desert regions have always had flash floods since dry grit and creosote making up the floor of western deserts are not porous enough to soak up heavy water flow, in many foothhill regions you will see evidence of man's hand in redirecting the flow for human use.  But here, in the city, what seems to have happened is in the overbuilding, they covered the valley floor with wall to wall cement and asphalt, there is no other place for the water to go except into various dips of road and unfortunate properties cheaply bought and sold in less unpredictable seasons which we know are becoming more rare by the day.   It is exactly in those places flash floods take take their worst toll.  They have aqueducts, but not nearly enough and were never built to reign in the increasing summer overflow which always claimed victims even before superstorms.  This same situation also occurs in the high desert suburbs bordering the Mojave northwest of Los Angeles.  It happens where there are heavily traveled, ground level, high speed multilane asphalt highways bordered on both sides with non-porous ground and subject to increasingly extreme rainfall.  Of course, in the urban planning room, surely there are solutions to eliminate the fallout of flash floods, but the general story goes something like lack of funding, which is not the real story.  The real story is funding has been funneled into the show-off channel, an American Idol of the tallest, most absurd architectural atrocities designed specifically to lure huge convention crowds and international families bored with Disneyland.  Local citizens attempting survival in a state with the nation's highest foreclosure rate are actually a population of servicers to the illusion, working round the clock, racing over the curbs of flash flooded roadways to maintain the playground of a non-local 1% to whom the most important feature and most desirable and memorable adventure is blowing wads of dough at the altars of the Backjack gods.  Whatever weird, inexplicable interactions one may encounter in this city always have a common root.   It may take a lot of standing back and mental synthesis to make it out, but it never fails to arrive at the same vainglorious destination.  It is the same root for every destination mankind has worked over.  It is always all about the money.

In reference to the saying sex and money make the world go round, sex is only included in the partnership as the offspring of money, not the well spring.

I respect your right to debate, indeed there are millions of examples why this just isn't so.  Look at all the wonderful foundations that assist humankind ... the money that is diverted to charity would otherwise be taxable income.  This is how our system operates.  Regardless of who receives the funds, be it government or charitable foundation, the gaping flaw is owned by the earmarks directing the contribution. Do you read me?  So that developers of gated properties, in order to market the concept of One Man's Castle,  an updated version of retirees purchasing unseen sandlots in Arizona, get rollercoaster bangs for their buck as sponsoring members of the razor's edge fraternity, lobby for permissions to build and lobby against building codes they can legally ignore and those lobbies have been very successful, as you can see for yourself, but those lobbies and lobbyists are serving whom?  Not the clueless end-user who has been raked over the coals by the mortgage mills and employment classifieds and their children locked into lifetimes of education debt-servitude.  Not the women who were electrocuted in fire hydrant water spilling over a downed power line while attempting to rescue victims of the car accident that ended up on their sidewalk causing a chain of horrific events in the San Fernando Valley this week. Development is often a give and take business, they must contractually agree to include something for humanity at large such as public access to park benches and shade trees, but only if they are given free reign to short the construction codes.

Enough of that, all of THAT which now appears to be one long, curcuitous, converging zenith of mythical progress.  Much of which we all bear some small measure of guilt for some distantly related participation during the journey, even if that participation was nothing more than checking it out for the sheer curiosity or perhaps just going along for the ride.  The interesting part is how some of us have NOT become enured, none of what I am saying is new to you, I don't have stupid readers, Praise Jah, we keep on looking and keep on finding more interesting wonders daily, nightly and in those thoughtful hours inbetween, to fill our visual field and broaden spiritual development in spite of the many who give up and cave due to lack of encouragement, inspiration or example, life is so much more than what mankind has made of it.  It would be amusing if so many lives were not lost because of intentionally misdirected over-achievement and its coatail disciples.  Amusing in the similarity to standing on the beach watching the foam lap away your sandcastle, wave by wave, ever so gradually diminishing the dams, moats, towers, bridges and walls until there is nothing left but a clean smooth expanse, beautiful and perfect just as it always was.  Amusing as in building with toy blocks which fall and have to be put away in the blocksbox.  It seems it is inevitable, the persuasions of mankind always fall apart.

There is no good to be had from comparisons of your dream of lifestyle from that of childhood memory.  It only makes it worse.  Better for your personal well-being through which your own positive existence adds to the Overall Well Being, we ask what else is out there that can capture our compassion and expand our awareness in the Universal community?

***

Department of extracurricular observations and interpretations:

How long have we been reading Visible Origami?  Maybe forever.  All those years where Visible writes "Everything is under control" somehow entered the perceptive brain differently while reading a recent essay.  We've been under the mis-impression the phrase meant the Divine wouldn't actually take our beloved Earth away from us, that planetary calamity is unholy, extreme and intensifying, but ultimately a passing problem and we would be wise to not take it too seriously because change for the better is guaranteed regardless of Humanity's survival.  However, re-reading the phrase again a few days ago, in a somewhat different context, I realized and perhaps you did too, what he has been saying all along is that the ENTIRE show, journey, lifetime, dream, appearance/s, events, non-events, is controlled.  And as always, he backs it up with the qualifying statement, "for the purposes of demonstration".  This is much clearer now and I agree completely.

May the Force be with You

Has everyone been enjoying the internet lately?  Heh.  Its all bad stuff.  They've won.  Yes, the real terrorists are running free, running the whole show and we've bled and watched and waited and bled more and watched more until our Groucho Marx eyeballs sprung from their frames.  They viciously grabbed our attention, rifled hungrily through our empty pockets seeking anything that Wal*Mart could stack into their job lot weather-less caverns and left  us by the side of the dirt road in the heat searing, barren desert brush too beleaguered, too unhealthy, too weak, too empty of spiritual energy to find our way back because ... the gates to the heart of the matter are sealed with nuclear crazy glue.


We're still alive however.  But it is an alive that is like living in a movie set, the Truman Show perhaps, the infrastructure for life itself is there, but nothing works underneath the wall paper of a sky with mannequin characters forever locked into place.  A suitable stage set would be that early Twilight Zone episode concerning the Sterno junkie strangely surviving radiation in a fake model town destroyed by a good nuke testing.


The recent Adam Mayes murder kidnapping episode took us far back into the old moonshining days of inbreds and foliage overgrowth where dummies are still at the still, banjos and preachers and relatives of relatives' friends and their third cousins of ex-spouses and (no traceable relation because its too complicated) hangers-on quikstop cashiers having their say in the press, he said, she said, no one is guilty and everyone clamors for a part, the mothers-in-law of the former spouses of bigamous Zombie creatures slithering through wet, uneven terrain where no child has a father and all the children are reproduced in the exact image of their toothless ancestors combined, emerging from quicksand by the miracles of Jesus.


Why IS this we ask?  It is because the square mileage of our continent allows holdovers from an earlier era to exist in geographies unclaimed by urban sprawl.  Its always been a government problem.  Combing, cleaning out, dumpster diving though these ancient closeted holdovers remains a Fed priority to this day.  Why throw funds at education or municipal improvements when you can simply shine the white hot planetary stage spotlight on its unprofitable worthlessness?


Cockroaches are not allowed to exist in a flattened world armed with singing camera cellphones reviewing their bank accounts and foreclosure proceedings by the hour inside armed gated communities anchored to select chain store strip malls.  From time to time, we are forced to look, as if the "civilized" populace needs another Foie Gras treatment shoved down their esophagus as warning to all to get with, and stick with, the system.  Of course, there is that additionally tasteless re-election component involved.  Their eveready tactical opener, Caveman Nugie, knows all about murder in the backwoods, interesting how he was drafted from the dusty archives a mere days before the Foie Grassing.  You will note in the Adam Mayes episode, no mention was made of performing the usual criminal search practices such as collecting cellphone records and laptop seizures. The Mayes event appears to have been entirely an "on foot, door to door" extraordinarily closed mouth arrangement.  Likely this is why cleaning out and cleaning up Waziristan has been such a nasty problem as well.  Can you imagine?  How can the land even be considered for Wal*Marts and development property leases when there are uh, those insane infestations of swarming insects crawling through the undergrowth up and down the mountains (apparently immune to Roundup, and highly likely that is due to zero percent purchasing power)?  They sought to draw us in on their horrific difficulties during the BP blowout, spotlighting shrimpers and the abundance of backwards, makeshift lifestyles to no avail, the greater issues blocked the effort and were quietly cancelled due to the impotency of the punishment.  A more effective bang for their buck would have been to rip apart the seemingly flawless Anthony family and expose the massive infestation in Orlando's angelic state of make-believe sub-urbanity.  Ah but no, that would not have worked in their favor, we can be sure such dumpster diving would have exposed the poisoned roots of all that appears covetously shiny, lush, clean, nutritious, expensive and healthy.


It would have come out that every man remains an island unto himself and no expensive product or perfectly plasticized contortions of lifestyle, unmarred and ziplocked into purring vehicles under 24/7, 365 day monitoring will ever have effect on the infestations ... anywhere.  If they really meant to do the job effectively, they should call in Wildland firefighters and the backhoes, radio the command planes and cordon off the region, all of which tells us something about the fundamental reason they do not.  They don't because these spotlit events are the Foie Gras method of keeping in line those suburbanites, exurbanites and urbanites who are not absolutely yet convinced or growing less convinced the wonderful new world isn't actually so wonderful.


That it isn't so wonderful is an understatement.  It is useless diversion barricading authentic experience.  All of it wrought long ago by the evil insights of Bernays where realty is contorted by words and imagery into the facade of human advancement.  Surely he was a card carrying CFR Jetsons fan.  Surely his followers felt things were not happening quickly enough to satisfy their own payment plans and upped the program after a brief intermission for Kool smokers and college educated middle class homeowners before abruptly unveiling the new, improved date-stamped Ponzi pyramid.


During that intermission, many of us reading here were selected to enter this journey, at this time, in this place, on this very planet.  And this group, this band of concerned volunteers without memory of our transported altruistic goals, matured along with Earth's inhabitants as if we were a natural part of the program except ... there was always a lingering doubt of its viability, especially as it repeatedly rubbed against the grain, a soft reminder of the forgotten mission, the appearance not at all being what it proclaimed to be, that the species itself seemed deeply flawed preventing the homo sapien from its ability to develop spiritually, to see and know in that way that seeing is wisdom and knowing is acceptance, dis-empowering the individual to achieve any greater purpose other than placing all sensory powers upon the activities and appearance of mannequins, zombies and spotlit personalities, adopting each others' roles, characters, allegiances and opinions - automatically.  It is stated frequently "This is life", as if it is a condition, a helpless syndrome of vacuous and painful wandering from nowhere to nothing and simply must be endured until the big prize of magnificent rapture arrives.   It matters none the rapture doesn't take place, there is always some bible thumping, high moral ground justification encouraging the great sea of homo sapien true believers to press on, endure more.  Should any of those enduring grow weary while pressing on, the length of the average lifespan of the human being is comforting in its brevity fully allowing the tragic possibility any greater potential remains eternally unrealized, unknown, lost in whatever continental universe of in-curiosity and regulated behaviors exist among the retarded faux civilizations doomed to ennui and suffering.

Our mission can be remembered at any time, especially when you are not trying to remember, rather, standing in the welfare lines or gathering flints and interesting rocks in the desert during an oncoming sandstorm or if you are a musician, evading the work of a composition, even though you know it will center you.  It will come back to you in a variety of forms, mostly it is a taking-off of sorts, suddenly airborne, and you will realize it had nothing to do with your wants or what you think about it at all, and everything to do with letting go.  You cannot call it forth, it will alight when and where you'd least expect.


There is a Force in the Cosmos, of that we can be sure, outside of us, that takes care of us, it is love seeking a receptive vessel.  As proof, you can do nothing civilization terms usefully productive for as long as possible and see what happens.  Let it flow through you and radiate it outwards at every opportunity.  Love, compassionate, seva-love is the remedy needed now. 

The downpressors may have won the round, but they will never rule the Force. May the Force be with you.
 

as we go on

By now, I'm sure you're hip to Survival Acres.  I've always been fond of John's way with words, perhaps its that weird, inexplicable ministry background infrequently referred to in his work.  John's opinion on the evolutionary phenomena of  information sharing is right on the money and insightful in that my enchantment with the web diminishes in parallel with the exponential rise of social networks, tech toys, apps and everything that is nothing less than sheep's ear tags for the identification of which herd belongs to which plantation and are they stupid enough yet, i.e.; finished fully, for the slaughterhouse?  I do hope authors don't mind my brevity, I've done this before in comment links, when I nutshell a sort of boost for their labor by saying John doesn't mince words or overlook a particular iconic angle in the current zeitgeist even when others will perceive it as just another part of the background noise, its like white noise now, hypnotic, where it is what-it-is and it has no impact on anything happening out there and a worsening impact on what is happening inside.  On a lengthy sabbatical in the Nevada desert, I lived not far from the drone nativity colony during which not a day passed I wasn't awakened by drones in training.  They whine.  Imagine a nightmarish Ellen Ripley-style drooling Alien, whining.  All these recent stories in the media about the sudden use of drones on American soil are paychecks being collected for clicking on the press releases in their email.  I was told by the locals in 2006, very nearly six years ago, in no uncertain terms, drones honed-in on a prison escapee inside an aqueduct which showed on the thermal sensor as a bright red line around the prisoner's seemingly hidden body. 

Lying is ubiquitous from birth.  We exit the womb into feeling-censored expression.  Take a typical day and see if you can intermingle with a varied mix of personalities, including yourself, and see how many lies you hear and how many you tell.  There is courtesy ... and then there is compassion.  Both are on the wane with compassion actually being the real basis for love and for friendship, as the two are one.  Then there is the disappointment one leaves themselves open to in showing the real self and finding whomever it is that you are interacting with won't go there and no matter how you try, there is no reciprocation.  Of course we know there is a way, but few dare to tread that path for long, however heroic.  The only saving grace I've ever found that works every time is Struggle On, life is about learning and if its truth you seek and truth you discover, it is a blessing regardless of the occasion.  Even then, you cannot fix another person, you can only understand.  With someone you are close to, understanding knows no limits unless you are being endangered which sounds a lot like the situation we are living through at this very moment in time, taking place up there under the stage lights of the main arena, the lame new world.  We read, we interpret, we read more, we see the illusion come to life, we actually see the catch pens under construction, there can be no doubt and yet, it just goes on, it drones and whines and eats itself only to come out the other end as worse than it went in.  Somehow, just when it appears the worst is upon us still we are able to reach for some rosy part of the day to lift us above the rabble into that sweet change where the air is fit to breathe and the soul is stirred.  Bholanath's Wildlife Center and 'hood pics of the animals and avian families do it for me.  So does Jimi Hendrix with Red House (over yonder).

It is extraordinarily rare to come across a person who is completely straight all the way regardless of  circumstance, situation, dialogue in any and all relationships.  We strive for this and too frequently fall short.  This is a facet of the human condition, but being of the human species doesn't require that we cannot learn from our animal teachers. 

Today I found a fallen Hawk, as magnificent a creature in death as in life, and carried him by his legs to a picturesque soft spot away from the road where his soul would enter the Animal Kingdom in natural peace. His lower backside was black charred, otherwise he was perfectly intact leading me to think perhaps he had some accident atop the phone pole, a favored place to hang while hunting.  I'm hearing this kind of electrical equipment has to be grounded, so I can't explain the nasty burn.  All that can be said about it is whatever happened, this true feathered monarch came in contact with something unnatural.  In other words, he bumped up against the anthropogenic system and it cost him as it always costs all who meet with bumps.  What is unusual and wildly prevalent are those who choose to participate in the entertainments, the circuses such as boxing, rodeos, Nascar, casinos and porn.  These things are different worlds of territorial testosterone gone to extremes enabled by the highest bidder.  This too is all another avenue of spectacular riches and occupies the fascinations of a huge part of the worshiping public with whom we interact making all that shared information gathered over the years absolutely worthless in changing the ways we are impacted in order to proceed through this journey.

The Internet has only pointed out in starker terms what has always been happening.  Before the web, sometimes we heard it might be happening, now we read it happens regularly as if each event, crime, scam, rip, enslavement, hustle is brand new, but it has always been the vicious writhing mass of tortured secrets and inhumanity compounded with greater heights of inhumanity that you see unfolding before you now.  It has no repair.  Beauty and contentment are where you find them.  You must take the steps to your own freedom.  As I have said, compassion is the magic key. But like all keys, sometimes it is lost and you have to figure out where you left it and how you could possibly find it again in these times.  Recently, I lost mine and got a case of serious trepidations racing back to the spot where I last remembered having it.  A woman I'd never met drove up behind me, shouting "I've got your keys!"  Sure enough, she'd even left a note at the spot. Keys, cards and ID were safe and as I took note of the excited children in her SUV (and obvious lookalike family members visiting for Christmas) the warm glow of gratitude enveloped me enough to hug her and leave the scene spiritually intact.   I felt like I could post again.  Breathe again.  Kiss the dogs and hug the Oaks, fall on my knees in prayer for the Hawk that his body rest in peace and his soul fly on.  That my friends I've never met are unknown multitudes of the ones already visiting, feeling just like us and deserving of whatever, small comfort we bring each other in these times of terror, joy, lies, loss of dignity and respect, humiliation, confusion, ecstasy, despair, etc., stepping away from extremes into our own personal freedom to speak what is on our mind and share what is in our hearts or simply dwell.

In truth, we can step out of the noise anytime, it isn't us, it holds not a scintilla of reality, so why be in it at all? It is not important to puff up ourselves with the Dangerous Life being offered through technology, the mob, sensationalistic media and titillating headlines and the people who believe it all and seemingly know no better, as if there is only one way to live, one way to love, one way to gain, if they know what it is to gain, seeing only the gain that morphs itself into loss, fully blank when it comes to deep wells of purity available everywhere yet invisible, but the life-giving source from which all must drink if it means anything to experience the years full of changes spent on Planet Earth.  Everything we learn about each other reinforces the observation that no one is immune without inflicting great damage to themselves.

Whatever 2012 has in store for our planet, since we have survived so much already only to arrive here at this time of witnessing, there is not much that could take it away.  And if there was something, some disaster, something tragic, have we not weathered these storms before and before that?  I have watched the sun rise dawn over the mast discovering my low little sloop sailing in a school of sharks off the southern coast of the Dominican Republic, I have lost power on a windless day over knife-craggy reefs breaking the sea surface and figured out how to bleed a diesel while rocking back and forth as the water slapped the beam.  I have held on for 6 hours to a T-Bar in a blizzard looking down at snowy treetops singing Calypso, Sparrow tunes actually, and walked on single train tracks above the surly canyons of British Columbia, stared down the barrel of a gun held by a hostile dealer and wrecked motorcycles on Riverside Drive at rush hour, leading me to think 2012 will be interesting if anything... May the New Year be the best ever for each person reading here.

If wishes grew on trees...

One Love

a select destiny

"... Be careful where you're walking
You might step in something rough
Be careful where you're talking
And saying all that stuff
Take care when you are breathing
Somethings funny in the air
And somethings Im not saying
Bout what's happening out there
Its inside out ..."
Traveling Wilburys, from Inside Out

Having seen Avatar again recently, there is no question we, the Humans, have it all wrong.  Well, that is IF we were designed to thrive within the same galaxy as Pandora and her allied planets. We may not have been elected for living in harmonious balance. We may be something else, a rogue planet, the balance the Universe requires, as if no particle is complete without an antagonist.  Is good complete without evil?  And vice versa?  There are stories, such as Earth is the prison planet, or Earth is the feed lot for aliens.  The truth is we have no way of knowing for certain with the exception of how we have performed historically as a species dwelling on this planet.  We have performed exceptionally poorly, stupidly and foolishly.  Can you imagine Pandora with her ability to call species from like-minded galactic bredren and sistren destroying herself from the inside out?  Never!  If however, there is nothing like Pandora in existence and the other planets are stuck in a me, mine rotation, we have before us the grandest opportunity ever to make a difference, an opportunity presently being blown up, blasted, fracked, radiated, microwaved, tasered, tortured, denied, whipped and generally debased as geographic slave congregations under the watchful technological eyes of the plantation overseers who happen to be far worse in carrying out punishments than their oblivious masters busy keeping their infinity pools overflowing.  I fear the change we know could come about will not happen within our lifetimes and I doubt anyone reading here could become inured, although it is possible, albeit briefly, perhaps a few days at most.  I know those few days are hard when it happens, but you bounce back, you know too much. you feel too much, you see everything and what you don't see, you soon will.  You see when you are not trying to see.

There is no beauty without ugliness, The Tao, v.2
watercolor on Arches '06

One of many thousands of things I've read online over the years was a piece on depression claiming people who are depressed are actually more in tune with the reality of their situations.  They are fearful of what they see and it pains them physically.  Compassionate friends or family want to help them come out of their pained state because the depressed are a drag on the health and happiness of the greater clan and will perform a variety of comforts designed to lift the depression and return the depressed to a more satisfactory state.  It can work, but only temporarily.  It cannot work in the long term because the state of depression is the state of seeing our fundamental realities, slaves on a rogue planet where anything could and will happen.  Taking comfort for granted is living a lie.  There is no perfection without imperfection.  The Jane English and Gia-fu Feng translation of the Tao Te Ching says, in so many words, there is no beauty without ugliness.

Under heaven all can see beauty as beauty only because there is ugliness.
All can know good as good only because there is evil.
Therefore having and not having arise together.
Difficult and easy complement each other.
Long and short contrast each other:
High and low rest upon each other;
Voice and sound harmonize each other;
Front and back follow one another.

Therefore the sage goes about doing nothing, teaching no-talking.
The ten thousand things rise and fall without cease,
Creating, yet not.
Working, yet not taking credit.
Work is done, then forgotten.
Therefore it lasts forever.

But on a rogue planet, the balance can change as easily as the heartbeat of life.

Sometimes it makes us feel like the walking dead.  Cats with nine lives who have multiplied the odds as they keep coming, back to back, each should have claimed us we say, yet we live to see more.  And more again.  Something we cannot define with science and logic is happening here, a grand design, some not-of-this-world intention we are simply not at the rightful stage of development to comprehend regardless of our effort.  I believe this makes us a unique product of evolution to remain invincible in the face of pure unadulterated evil where vast and continuing material loss strips us to the lowest category of Earthly life and it has no influence at all, we go on in trust, always looking forward, accepting each test as triathlon athletes determined to pass and not just well, but intact, because in spite of the incessant repeats, it makes the good, the pure, the honest, the natural reverent and holy, gifts from somewhere else reminding us the world we desire really does exist and one day we are destined to reach it.

the catalytic converter model of progress

There are no coincidences.  Keep that in mind when nine eleven's ten year global observance ceremonies come round.  We will be told the alerts are way up there, they will rub Breveik, Loughner and Ft. Hood in our faces while never mentioning Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 

Following the bomb's birth from Enola Gay's belly, right away the victorious occupiers began a study, now documented in the National Geographic Explorer series "The First 24 Hours After Hiroshima" as if it was an altruistic thing, a study concerning exactly what happens to detonation sites aka Ground Zeroes, for the good of the future.  I'll say that again so you can interpret what that was supposed to mean in the year 1945 AD ... The-Good-of-the-Future.  You would think, wouldn't you, having researched and tested and retested the incredible damage done to life and infrastructure from genocidal weapons of mass destruction that there would be no such thing as a Nuclear Lobby and nuclear power plants, anywhere.  But the satanic treasure chests these things bring forth have a hold like none other.  It is hard impossible for us to find anything altruistic and progressive about what was and is happening.  It is my hunch, Fukushima is played down because not only will the truth crush already waning public opinion, but also the Japanese don't want us with our gifts that keep on giving, anywhere around.  Certainly, plenty of people in Japan are reliving the hell on Earth they experienced as infants... all over again.

Regarding recent comments on "Simplicity" during our last posting here, Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Fukushima, and all the people purchasing and using dosimeters, losing their homes and livelihoods, their families and their faith and the many who are already ill and dying of radiation poisoning, and for the remainder of their lifetimes live in paranoia cancer will one day take them down, birth defects, contaminated food, NONE of it had to happen, even Somalia's famine did not have to happen IF we had been a loving, compassionate, spiritual people from the start.  Now we have layer upon layer of unnecessary complexity (©John Michael Greer) jamming up the works so that nothing flows smoothly or efficiently.  Its almost as if we grew catalytic converters out of the tops of our heads to survive the Twentieth Century and no one pointed out how absurd and unnecessary it was so we went further and built monolithic exploding catalytic converters in  every vacancy the money was available to pay for it, and if the money wasn't there, the IMF was.  This is insane because a catalytic converter does not make a vehicle's engine run.  It is an unnecessary and expensive "part" that must be rigorously inspected every year or two depending on your state's DMV requirements in order to register a vehicle (again, that does not need it to "go") to be deemed legal, i.e.; free from impounding.  (Mandate alert) This analogy is only one of billions cataloging unnecessary parts, actions, expenses, activities, employments and improvements in progress, growth and market opportunities that make life for everyone a Brillo scathing hell on Earth.

Not a day passes in our lives we are not somehow impacted by senseless tragedy.  Every dead animal run over on our streets is another senseless tragedy.  Make way, its Man!  Run, run.

For the past two days there has been a curious discussion for the masses started by a NYT opinion columnist's piece concerning angry space aliens warring with Earthlings because we trashed this place and our trash threatens the balance of the galaxy.  The MSM is having a diversionary heyday with the idea.  Little do they realize how close to the truth they may well be.  Unfortunately, it is just another PR trick to 1. divert public attention and 2. deny responsibility.  Aliens have every right to be angry and you'd better believe if they were warring with us, you would not need the MSM to carry on in satire to tell you about it from their moral depths of sheer depravity and lush experiences rewriting history to suit the victors.

How can anyone call themselves a victor anyway when to achieve that label, entire nations lose everything?  Collateral damage is a nation.  There is no such thing as blowing up a region without civilian deaths, even at testing sites, if the bomb doesn't kill them, cancer will.  They have yet to design a selective bomb affecting solely combatants no matter how many joystick jockeys wearing cammies and jackboots guide the drones. Does it make the Victors feel good to kill and mutilate, is that feeling good the feeling of victory, pride, honor and glory?  Let's get real here my friends, those are not feelings descriptive of anything remotely simple, humble or compassionate.  Those feelings are only more of the full-on twenty first-century advancement in the catalytic converter model of progress.

For an exercise in what you do not need in order to live a kind and decent life, look around you at this very minute and count the many things, elements, situations, behaviors in your very own location of the moment that you do not need for your survival.  While I have said here many times we can boil the righting of most everything wrong down to Do No Harm, we should add to that:  Do No Harm and Unburden Yourself of Excess.  Be ready for anything, unconsciously, while everything you attempt becomes itself, doing it so perfection in action is achieved as you and "the attempting you" are integrated in the simplicity of one streamlined model of natural efficiency.

Has anyone read Eugen [sic] Herrigel's Zen and the Art of Archery?  Highly recommended.  You can find references to it, but good luck locating the work.  Just as wonderful is Gilbert Highet's The Mystery of Zen describing Herrigel's journey into archery under the tutelage of a Zen Master.  Again, that work appears to be only available in the Norton Anthologies, compilations of brilliant stories and essays, most of which are not available online.  If you should come across either work, you will discover a beautiful way to think about not thinking unnecessary thoughts and integration of your actions into the activity itself. 


Here is a very simple thing: The Wildlife Center in New Mexico needs our help.  As a wildlife lover, I have an insatiable desire to give over to the cause and ask you to join me.  This summer's horrific fires created a deluge of wildlife in need and we must help however, wherever possible.  While you are downsizing your lifestyles, please consider sending your extras to the location where they will be most useful.

The following is a quote from Cheryl at the Wildlife Center:

... For those interested in monetary donations, checks can be mailed to The Wildlife Center ... or donations can be made via PayPal on our website ...  For those who wish to donate food and other supplies, here is a current list of needs.  If somebody wants to donate produce, please have them check with us prior to purchase to ensure we don’t have too much of one thing on any given day, as some items cannot be frozen ...

          Dry kibble dog food – puppy and adult
·         Dark leafy greens (no iceberg or cabbage)
·         Celery
·         Carrots
·         Grapes
·         Bananas
·         Apples, other fruit
·         Honey
·         Gerber Rice Cereal Boxes
·         Apple sauce
·         Frozen mixed veggies (NO LIMA BEANS!)
·         Wild Dove Food (PetSmart)
·         Finch and Canary Seed (PetSmart)
·         Wild Bird Seed (limited amounts)
·         Bleach
·         Powdered Laundry Detergent
·         Paper Towels
·         Ziploc Bags – Freezer, Quart and Gallon
·         Copy paper

My note:  If you can get produce shipped with a one day delivery it might work, otherwise, I'd go for the less perishable items on the list. Injured bears are the heavy users of dry dog food. Our Animals and Avian bredren are gravely suffering and we must make it up to them or we will lose them forever.   Address, email, etc. at the website.

holy daze

Rosie 7.5.11

We went nowhere this holiday and did nothing one would call serious work with the exception of my painting and usual chores because going nowhere is the cheapest alternative to going somewhere as well as the safest.  Who knows what lurks out there in these times?  What costly experience awaits one in the hours to come if we actually put ourselves into one of those public scenes of the sweaty herds squeezed tightly into stadium seats watching whatever circus is playing all the while unaware you may well be the next act?  No, the real excitement is at home interacting with the animals whose intelligence continues to awe.  A new sheep has been added to the herd, Rosie, the Blue Ewe.  She looks very much the Suffolk, but under that blushing cream wool, her coat is black which means black lambs because Amos aka Ram-beau, has fallen in love.  Its no wonder, she's quite a classy lady with her skinny black stockings and thick ruff setting off her chiseled cheekbones, although since I've been comparing her closely with the other Ewes, Scarlett and Bella, undeniably classic Suffolks, they all have wonderfully sculptured faces with individual visual treats for the interested observer.  Rosie just arrived over the weekend and Monday any celebration was all about her immediate integration with the family.  What's more, she was given a new name upon arrival and when I call her to come using "Rosie", she comes right over.  She's picked up the whole routine.  There is something going on that tells her this is not a brief boarding situation, not a feed lot, this is home. 

You already know I can't talk about the animals without mentioning Stella, the Mustang Princess, ever watchful, giving us the love whinny whenever our kitchen door creaks on its hinges, day or night.  She and I are at that stage now, the one I've patiently waited to arrive.  That stage would be the one Pangolin suggested we go for when the moment was right.  We put our heads together trading breaths.  Thanks Pangolin.  A beautiful and holy experience for which there are no words in our language to describe.  A final word on the holiday, perhaps one of the loveliest, indoors, ceiling fans blowing off the outside world of chemtrails and Big Ag's smog snaking through the passes, the dogs were served vanilla ice cream and ice cubes in the water bowl.  Some might say what a dull holiday nina, I would say Hey, that's my idea of the good life well lived.

You can see why scheduled posting to a blog on a plastic flip top box takes a back seat.  Oh, certainly I put my time in just as you do.  Except there is nothing to know.  Mind you, I've looked.  Sure, there is stuff, hieroglyphics symbolizing spoken tongue, but there really isn't anything going on you don't already know is going on.  Its very wicked out there beyond our little enclave of peace and frequent joy.  Every time I look across the mountains past the valley, the mushrooms are bigger, more poisonous, and there are more of them.  These are not your nice mushrooms, no.  Just about everything and everyone is in the process of some kind of melt down, its not pretty nor is it in any way conducive to peace.  Perhaps once we are all on the precipice of extinction will we be able to see a vast expanse of absolutely nothing and call it peaceful?  As if the full, completed derealization of formerly heavily consuming consumers and imaginary enemies worsened by the unforgiving mass mind might we find freedom with nothing left to buy or pay for, nothing left to fear, never being forced into giving unwilling support to unnatural activity, the vanishing of usury for our very breath of life.  That once the entire promise of the corporate mission statement had been fulfilled there would be nowhere else for them to go but to evaporate, the gates of our corrals could open and freedom to live and love, appreciate and steward the Earth as it was always meant to be would happen naturally, season into season... that anxiety and misinterpretation, quarreling within our species, possessing, lying, guilt, petty deceits, perhaps that would simply disappear and we could finally get it on with other planets without the usual self-righteousness, claims staking, false glories and so forth, just as you are you and I am me and there is no difference between us in reality. 

A few years ago Visible put up an essay basically asking what we, the reader, planned on bringing to the table during and in the aftermath of Apocalyptic events.  This would of course, be the real proof of our pudding.  Therefore, it was especially heartening to see some of the residents of Joplin, MO, already rebuilding their homes as the light of dawn arrived to helicams and pundits and tsunami-style destruction.  They were not waiting for insurance appraisers nor some political celebrity to tell them they were in a state of emerge and see.  They were not spray painting the relocated bathtubs in day glow orange begging for attention.  Whatever happened to our species that we insist upon a self-appointed authority figure to tell us what we already know and when they do look to them as the coming of Christ Almighty?  That we caved ourselves into mewling accomplices by begging alms?  My response to Visible's essay has not changed at all, it never will, the more backwards, incongruous and impossible it becomes, the more intact my root position which is that of exercising the one element that can never be lifted, hijacked or co-opted from the Love Tribe, Nurturing.  That's all it is and it IS our saving grace.  One cannot nurture anything without pure, unbiased communication with that requiring nurturing.  All species and complex vegetable matter must know they are cherished to grow healthy into maturity whether it is us providing direct nurturing or the nurturing they provide one another.  This is the essence of the line in the 23rd Psalm, posted recently, Yea though I walk through the Valley of the shadow, our work is cut out for us.  A lot of our species, a lot of all species, are getting hit brutally and when this happens, there must be some of us around to heal and explain.  Otherwise there would be no point at all to having survived the journey, which is tragically the point we are supposed to accept and I object.  To accept is to say nothing has value.  Nothing.  To accept is to say we are born into consciousness where we flop around until we die.

The Lesson from the Plum Tree:
Last winter one of the Oriental Plum trees appeared lost.  The snows weighted his boughs and he fell to the ground where he lay frozen under drifts until spring.  The Fireteacher dug him out, I'd tried but needed more bicep, he lifted the scraggly guy out, redug his bed and sprinkled plant food where the tap root would be placed and tamped the Earth over the food and around the base of the tree, tying the trunk to stakes so the tree would stand.  That was months ago it seems.  I've been watering him delicately, chatting all along, encouraging, smoothing his wounds with my fingertips and over the past two weeks bundles of sweet little leaves suddenly appeared.  His spring buds are late, he probably won't do showy flowers this year either, but it matters not at all.

The World Beyond:
With the incredibly beautiful exceptions of those with whom we form mental connection, trust, lifelong love and appreciation, within any and all species, that other world, the World Beyond, is nowhere.  A huge meaningless void of false urgency on its way into oblivion.  Remember your job, its the only job that is worth doing because there is nothing else.  If you can possibly imagine anything more thrilling than living your true purpose, I'd like to hear about it.

A final word on the outcome of the TotMom Debacle, due you of course, since my last two entries centered on crude circus behavior - now that the object of hatred for the mass mind, fundamentally inspired by gnashing pundits themselves twisted by their own wishful thinking, seeking higher and higher ratings and vast acknowledgement of their celebrity appeal, stumbling over one another analyzing every facial tick and supposed legal trick delivered at ear-torturing volume with over zealous beached hair jobs, Korean nails, stark evidence of various youth-preserving cosmetic surgeries and an astounding absence of sensitivity toward their fellows has been found Not Guilty and will NOT be lethally injected, law enforcement has roadblocked entry into the family's suburban Orlando neighborhood, obviously the mass mind is clamoring excitedly for a little Strange Fruit.  But who are they angry with now?  Can it be they are suddenly left lacking an object of hatred, can it be they will now have to look to themselves and the absurd situations in which they exist, unemployed and underwater, facing diminishing resources and expiring incomes, empty dreams and giant metal pods sitting on dehydrating front lawns jammed to the gills with stuff they have no use for now and never did?  Oh, of course not...
Someone ought to figure out how to harness all that wasted energy.

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.

Two worlds ... One love

Anybody can be the bad guy.  The gene exists in all of us, the trick is to remain aware of your surroundings and the people with whom you are dealing.  Check yourself and live up to the spirituality you profess to possess.  Keep giving and when that doesn't go over, give more.  There is no limit to your love and how much you can spare.  The multiples of recent events in human behavior show us how completely love is rejected because that part, the most perfect part of mankind, is ruthlessly promoted as terror meaning terrifying to the perpetrators and the terrifying consequences lying in wait for their victims.  One day, you're ridin' high in the saddle, it appears as if all is under your control and nothing will ever happen to upend that picture, the next, you can find yourself homeless or incarcerated, lost in the maze of just-us, wondering what happened.  As the years pass in your new state, since you lately have hours and months, whole seasons, even years to spend looking into the situation, the answer will come and it was probably as forgivable as a brief gap in your awareness of presence.

In the new world we now occupy, mostly as unwilling witness, its always about the money, which is what Lucifer is to Jehovah.  And while the money pits grow higher, the fear of loss of fortune grows in parallel like a fungus on an Oak limb, at some point, in the carelessness of riding so high, loss is inevitable.  This leaves open the question of where all that money goes.  At last look, it isn't going into anything related to love.  The money, which was the point all along, is far more than currency. It is position, power, influence, the ability to create and destroy at will and all the people who haven't figured that out, who like to think its about gross materialism, have no clue.  Money is the greatest and most deadly weapon of mass destruction known to the Universe.  Money's first and last priority is to destroy love and it is extremely successful in its endeavors to do so.

For many of us reading here, these were foreign thoughts not too long ago.  We led our innocent lives unaware  Lucifer was on track to take over humanity.  As you now know there is no palm left ungreased, eight lane parades of grasping fingers await our every action or non-action and there is nothing to be done about it except remove yourself from the insanity even if means you failed in your attempt to give.  Money is almost impossible to move.  It is granite, without emotional content other than fear and false desire, there are many people and places that will never see it our way and we have to accept that.  But that in no way means we stop giving.  Not until fortunes are lost repeatedly does one begin any sort of healing process and there is no guarantee the healing process will be seen through to its fruition.  That is just another part of possessing too much of it, the memory will press many into corrupting compromise which will strain credulity to the breaking point.  In time, healing comes and it may not come until catastrophe brings it around.  At least you will have left the peace of your person behind when an example is required which is all the more reason to give more, love more, wherever the opportunity exists.

We cannot forget the picture of the stunned Japanese official weeping because he'd shown more respect to his working life than to his lost loved ones.

We live in two worlds, two zeitgeists simultaneously, that of the illusion and that of our own.  Every single day the illusion projects its force upon us and every single day we reconcile the damage done while living in love.  This is why there is nothing to be done about it, it is with us by design and to be overcome in this lifetime.  It appears that the most evil of our species has the capacity to overcome, but until their own personal moment of reconciliation presents itself, you will have no impact.  Love and compassion can be nurtured in children, but adults are too hardened to the punishments created by the illusion's perception of love as immaterial and foolish bordering on amusing but stupid.  We are incessantly pushed to join up with behaviors we would never naturally agree.  The illusion has managed to billow out over our species to steal our sweat labor and destroy our minds.  It dangles lies in our faces and tempts with come-ons which are mere water on a duck's back for the true believer.  These two worlds cannot possibly meet in the present.  Protests are met with violence, sudden legal entanglements which place you directly in the center of their microscope where anything you cherished is taken and divided among themselves while you try to meditate in solitary confinement.  You do understand, this is no "game".  The illusion takes itself very seriously and yet, I am reminded of Fyodor Dostoevsky who wrote circa 1880, that there would be no need for a justice system if everyone believed in God.

I take that to mean the God within who prevents us from criminal behavior and keeps us living in love, giving and caring, this God lives in everyone naturally if they allow it.  But a system of flexible do's and don't's backed up with bloodletting, violence, massive destruction and evil incarnate is a masterful generator of wealth, power and influence and was developed over the centuries by madmen and women of monarchy obligated only to the empire of religious dogma, some of them very ill, mentally unstable, paranoid, inbreds, whose behaviors were emulated by the weak-willed acquiescent having lost any sense of reality through close proximity to treasure.  And the world of the illusion grew legs and arms and fangs.

What they missed and miss still is incalculable. The loss is a loss difficult to encompass in its totality unless you can feel compassion for their misery in spite of all the damage done and to come.  First, you have to wipe clean your hearts and minds of revenge for revenge (just-us) is not a natural state of being.  Accept the powerlessness of the situation and know your power within is infinite.  Even if you think its not there, it is there because you thought about it.

this wire fencing

Take every chance that comes your way to involve yourself with our world.  Recently I commented about the sheep escapes and poor ewe Bella, new mom, getting her head caught in the wire fencing.  She'd worked through one of the openings, stretching the wire around her neck to get grass beyond the pen and was stuck, bellowing in pain.  I realized in the emergency no one else was around or would be for many hours.  There was no choice, no thought, but to pull apart the wire with my fingers and squeeze her back inside.  And it worked.  Whew!  She was very grateful, following me around, letting me know how good she felt someone was there to help.  I massaged her neck for a good while and chatted about her foible, but the truth was I felt good too.  I was grateful to her, for her trust in what I was doing, at some points during the rescue I know my fingers made the noose feel even tighter, but all turned out well which leads me to the next event.

Buffalo in wool

It was announced the pen would be moving across the wash back up on the hill.  I made it known any fence work would require my presence since I was the expert now in group safety.  The next day I worked my freekin' ass off like never before, taking down the posts, baling the wire, hiking it all across the Amazon Jungle-style wash (deep, winding rainwater trench, high potential for rattlers) and up the hill, surveying the new parameters, slamming the post pounder and securing the wire to the posts with a needlenose.  The amazing part was keeping Amos the Ram separated from the females, not an easy feat since I've nicknamed him Buffalo.  Right away, Laurie put up a temporary gated holding pen, a "catch pen", which we used to divide them, the gate led to the pasture, which Amos was baited into.

In jackets, on a chilly spring day, with my friend who has a Master's in Ag Science which means I had an amazing running commentary on the keeping of livestock. (Did you know that sheep have four stomach chambers and that is why you will never see one lying on its side?  When they sit, its always up, like the Sphinx.) So there we were, two human ewes, two days living in the best part of the history of humanity.  It felt so good.  The sheep eat the long grasses which is fire fuel, if you don't mow, get some grazers whom you will nurture and they will give you back your life or if you think you never had one, show you what life is really all about in more ways than I have space to list here.

Bondye se gade

It takes a keen mind to perceive that what we have here is a conundrum, a riddle with a joke as the punchline.  It doesn't have to be funny, especially when the joke is on us.  The joke is how far away we've veered from what IS.  Oh, we've veered far.  Maybe on your first visit to a shrink you might have stated your reason for undergoing shrinking was not being able to tell the difference between reality and fantasy.  And maybe he/she asked in nonthreatening tones that you define, as best you were able, reality.  Even then you could have realized how such a question is not very different than trying to define normal.

 ... science acquires a certain comical swagger for making things you can squeeze out of tubes, in order to process the contents through other tubes that process the contents into waste products. ...  Love in the Time of the Hadron Collider, by Visible

Not a day goes by I don't think about how toyish and absurd the present has become and like you, examine the reasons why this happened and more, what can we do about it?  Maybe our complaint has something subliminal to do with a lack of communication between the past and the present, as if our ancestors would please step forward now and show us how they lived without constant nonsense.  Surely they would find our convenience and comfort inventions, such as a tie-on shearling toilet seat cover, insane. Perhaps they would be glad they didn't stick around longer.

The Internet is a another conundrum for all of us who labor in creation sharing online be it words, art, information, poetry, music, because we've learned the net has some kind of master off switch accessible to heads of state and more, in a post Apocalyptic world (The Road alert, The Book of Eli alert) all of our published efforts will vanish into that nebulous place they call Cyberspace, perhaps the Yucca Mountain of moons, never to be recovered, just hidden behind planets and overlaid with dust rings.  You can say that's impossible, the Internet is here to stay, but we all know its just another one of those technological variations made of petroleum derivatives and precious metals, it might as well have been made of whatever is squeezed out of those tubes Visible brought to our attention, all of which will no doubt disrupt the rediscovery of reality again and again until reality liquidates your personal space. 

Not that there is any such thing as heh, personal space anymore.  Yes, there once was, but that was only more of the lunacy much like This is mine, that is yours, except if it comes from the Earth, its not either of ours and since Everything comes from Earth, well ... Only if you'd bought into the entire fantasy would you think you possessed anything other than your own mind/body and even those are up for question.  It remains another chapter in the universal conundrum why people can't see the immensely evil violations committed through false possession.  And yet, the excuses for doing so are specifically designed to point out the vacancy in an intellect you actually possess.  This is one of the hard parts of being a love person, we are easy to take advantage of and this feature is not lost on those who love to hate, use, take advantage, ridicule, lie to and steal from.  It thrills them to convince themselves they are smarter than you to whomever they desire to impress, mostly themselves, with their quickness of mind and attache of predictable criticisms.

... Alyosha was convinced that there was not a man in the world who would wish to offend him or, for that matter, could offend him.  He had accepted that once and for all as a self-evident truth, and so he had no misgivings ... The Brothers Karamazov, by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Love people simply cannot be offended.  They may experience a brief confusion during attack since any attack worthy of your attention contains truth upended, as in a full polar shift, but the fundamental mind/body of a love person always understands from where and why any attack comes.  It comes from buried pain experienced somehow, somewhere in vague flickers of the past belonging to an attacker, deep, unrealized and covered over with layer upon layer of dirt and drivel burying any hope reality could possibly surface as long as this thing we call western civilization with all of its ridiculous trappings exists.  In order for a departure in reality to prevail, you need a military industrial economy with attack personalities designated, among themselves, as official pack leaders.  You need a common mindset of Possession, a sort of me only wrongheaded survival tactic writ large, very, very large, large enough to present an overall appearance of total agreement that by necessity black is white and vice versa.

It was never a good plan to purchase control of human lives, translated for the incurious as "aid" when the real strategy all along has been funneling Earth's resources to distant locations where there are slim to none.  It was a guarantee that given enough time, the plan would self-destruct.  Everything not borne from reality destructs with enough latitude - which is where we find ourselves today.  When virtual reality falls, everything goes with it into the Black Hole, there is no discrimination.  So few, perhaps no one at all, have any idea how to replace the social order of corruption with a mutually beneficial cooperation between ourselves and the planet, i.e.; reality.  We think we know, but reality will prove us wrong. We don't actually know anything for certain. Leadership authorizing possession of entire peoples is a tried and true impossibility.  Fairness and cooperation with Nature could have only been possible starting from the day the composition of the Earth spawned life, not now.  Reality has been made silly, vulnerable to ridicule and punishment, punishments insisting on your allegiance and dependence on what mankind has made of itself, a bloated monster killing machine looting, thieving, possessing and controlling, incessantly reproducing variants on the theme with petroleum-based, easily breakable and lost, tiny, seemingly insignificant plastic parts and variations of zeitgeist languages and mores that have lost any semblance of reality whatsoever, the more reality attempts emergence, the more omnipresent the tubes, tubed band aids on top of soul gashing wounds fracking through the globe. 

The categorization of phenotypes, skin colors and nationalities, the fiction of borders and property divisions, credit ratings, purchasing power and the swarms of fantasy industries and localized dictatorships that arise in the crevices like roach infestations, feeding off the primary illusory elements, only lead us deeper into make-believe. Tinseltown's red carpet, high style, creative direction, sports figure idolatry, bargain bonanzas, tweeting, political partisanship, speeches, anthems and invocations, amazing stuff, isn't it?  And all of it beholden to boardroom charts.  Love people could definitely waver in this never-ending torrent of idiocy emulated throughout the globe, but it won't last indefinitely.  The stagelights are dimming under the heat generated by their bizarre creations, oversexed-over-population and over-consumption.  At this moment we're seeing a glistening thick Roy G. Biv climate chaos rainbow breaking over the horizon through the once impenetrable fog of sheer nonsense.  Something is downloading as we speak and its not what it initially appears, it is impossible to define until it shows itself in full.

We do not need psychedelics to understand this.  We only need quiet thoughts, and we need to remain aware of those thoughts so they are not fleeting.  The co-opted psychedelia, the personalities, the raves and the newer, evermore powerful reality alterations have been reigning down upon our culture in phosphorescent colors, stealing our attentions and robbing all under the influence, further distorting lives in a distorted, disoriented world.  While we were entertained with sumptuous pleasures, we inadvertently added to the foolishness, only in this way can we bear some responsibility.  Little did we realize or care we were being taken advantage of in broad daylight as dawn rose in the west and the appearance of normalcy still stood even though we knew it couldn't possibly be so, but it was.  As the years passed and keeping up with the insanity "culture" continued enlarged, the vulnerability of the little people was ripe for the take.  If they could get away with it here and there, why not do it again! Its happened so many times we cannot count them all or ever know of most of them, they are excluded from "education" and media, but this time it is different.  Through massive overpopulation we have exceeded the planet's carrying capacity yet the pillars of extreme possession stand firmly in place to ensure the continuity of over-consumption. This is the new reality.  The kinds of deviations and concealments practiced now will never have an opportunity to reoccur after they self-extinct and as you have noticed, they are self-extincting at this very moment and for some reason known only to the Forces, we are in the middle of it all. 

I'm not so sure there is any cause to celebrate or inch towards optimism.  What I'm seeing in the sudden protests in so many locations suggests foment by an entity behind them all desirous of removing less cooperative, leeching dictators and replacing them with younger, less expensive, fresh puppetry ready to acquiesce to their masters in a fashion similar to Wall Street rotating its heavy muscle from private enterprise to the halls of the superpower.   The repeating irony of these revolutons in the hearts and minds of the participants are pitted against what people think they want (or what they've been tutored to demand) and what people actually need. Added to this irony is the gross reversal of the people's real primary needs into leaderships' agenda, always helped along through behind-the-scenes finagling, with foreign policies coming at them from all sides, creating an untenable situation because again, they are not based in reality.

They are based in obsequious transference of wealth and finite resources.  Reality is health, reality is enough nutritious food to sustain the body, clean air, fresh unadulterated water, the fruits of Mother Earth for all species on the planet, trusting relationships with family, friends, the world at large including animals, sea creatures and bird life, legal stewardship of Nature, moderation in all things and the God given freedom to live in a peaceful state without interference and love, in all the ways that matter to you, loving the Earth, loving mankind, loving your activities, loving the land enough to refrain from overbuilding, love of our fellows enough to do unto others as you would have them do unto you, love of our offspring enough to leave them a lovable world so they too may love life enough as it is without costuming it or dividing it or trampling it according to the dictates of possession and its abusive dangling participles, fear and punishment.

So blind and far along in the madness, exponentially encouraging the Culture of Extinction (thanks, Charles) with vanity and pompous over-consumption, reduced to never ending war for the survival of the fantasy in the very face of undeniable climate chaos, our battle appears futile, but while we won't see much progress, it is of huge consequence. Even if the planet doesn't make it, Bondye se gade, Creole for God is watching, as are his other inhabitants of the Universe.

Let's say for discussion purposes, that God isn't watching.  If you are an authentic love person grounded in the reality of what IS, it would not change anything for you, because the power is your own, within, to love, to nurture, to understand, to feel for others, to care and to give whatever you have in any way you can.  You would have long ago accepted your own strength of character, once and for all time, as self-evident truth.

the carpet too, is moving under you

...You must leave now
Take what you need you think will last
But whatever you wish to keep
You better grab it fast... 
Bob Dylan

According to recent weather updates, from the extreme eastern regions of So-Cal, up and across the Southwest and throughout the Great Plains region, ballooning north, south and east, on into whiny Manhattan and the Great North beyond, a two by four is attempting to awaken the slackers.  I say whiny Manhattan because only in Overpopulation would New Yorkers be moved to speak up about their streets.  (Ever tried to cab cross-town midday?)  It used to be that losing one's vehicle in the snow was so freekin' normal you just got down to business and found the right lump.  Personally, I enjoy those kinds of activities. They're sort of mysterious and compelling, a game you usually win, the somewhat slim chance of loss drives you to win.  Its not addicting, it is the rarity, not your every day miracle, although to car thieves and the underground parts industry, heavy snow, mass disaster in general, is miraculous opportunity.

We who still have functioning electrical power know already how weather is poised to be Egypt's alternate story.  So many questions, so much hurt, too many people, no solutions.  Of course, there are big solutions available, but after all these long years of hearing about peace and stability, ever ask yourself what that really means?  It means free and unfettered reach to do as one pleases.  It means purchasing a situation where the world's populations silently turn over every resource the energy whales require without uttering the slightest dissent which is impossible given human nature.  You cannot remove the small portion of Earth upon which a man stands without him falling down.  You cannot take away his right to stand up and yet this is what is going on wherever a foothold can be bought.  Once again the markets rear up in defiance, Moody's downgraded Egypt and the markets were shut down hoping to quell the flight of liquidity which will only worsen when they reopen.  This is how the world works and their last hope at that unfettered free reach.  It works sometimes, in some already barren, beaten down places because people need to eat, but considering the unrest in Egypt was called for by a 28 year-old girl using Facebook, the youth of this planet is about to put a stop to all the whipping humans experience worldwide simply trying to survive. Jah praise the yout.

... Egypt and the country's military have grown accustomed to American support and will want the money to keep flowing. It is the flow of this money that ensures the purchase of the replacement government. Because the US dollar is the world reserve currency, the US government has financial dominance and the ability to financially isolate other countries ... Paul Craig Roberts

Enough of that.  Inevitable is inevitable.  Anyone reading this far is prepared to think on their feet, right?  Don't let me be a downer, but the fantasy is never the reality. And no doubt a part of you was positive you were exempt.  No little person is exempt, you should know that by now.  There is no WHO fanfare concerning this disease, no Rumsfeld vaccine, not now when everybody is wiping the sleep from their eyes.  They may not yet have the details in order and maybe they will never see the whole picture, but people naturally question and wonder - how it ever got to be this way.  It is due to the selective bulletins, the omissions, the twisting of evil into the language of altruism, that chemtrails are suspect as well.  And now HAARP.  When was the last time anyone revealed what's up on Diego Garcia?  On days like this, after hearing Hoseme try to see out his term by watered-down compromise, everything is up for question.  The disease is collectively so much farther along than you or I could possibly imagine.  These are people from another parallel having invaded ours and now insist on sticking around and driving humanity into oblivion.  They wrecked their original parallel with this behavior, no lessons were learned, that mindset is unable to perceive lessons.  They exist to destruct.  They are completely immune to pain or suffering.  They look human, but that's just a trick of blending into our parallel to better spread their psychosis.  You might say this is nonsense, but what is happening throughout the world is equally as nonsensical.  In order to understand, you have to forget everything you ever thought previously and get weird.  Nothing logical is logical anymore.  Every road a cul de sac, a detour looping from nowhere to nowhere.

I don't want to waste our time talking about them. It gets too heavy, too distracting, too quickly, it will kill you if you allow it to through mere overload of evil costuming itself in western dress, pearls and Jane Harmon's platinum frosted do.  When you are dragged to the doctor no one will believe what happened, blaming your condition on your shabby lifestyle and lack of mandated health insurance.  Never mind you were occupied by force far away from any choice on your own where you cried out for assistance time and again and no one in a position to help ever heard a peep.  In fact, your peeps were stifled intentionally for statistical charting purposes.  You existed nowhere on any chart published by any entity, without apology you do not count because if you did you might be heard and they can't have that.  I do not expect lasting change for the Egyptian people or for anyone actually. Humanity is up against too many stacked decks and shifty characters pulling out all the stops.  There is no such thing as a half win.  The people standing up have our admiration and our support, the problem is too many things have to happen before there will ever be a genuinely united win, we are not the deciders of fate at this moment, the deciders are still casting fate.  Just how much casting takes place is revealed more literally by the hour.  Financial weapons of mass destruction are the first and last resort in deciding fate and will not give up, hardened as they are, just as the truth behind that 2001 moment of reckoning will never be brought to light.  Its all related, one action leads to another and ripples out into the atmosphere poisoning survival of the species.  Were we born into this world only to die correcting it? If you are passionate about your life experience, that may well answer the question of life itself.  Why are we here, now?  We could have been reincarnated into any previous or future time and would we find the same situations, patterns, repeating as cells split, multiply and split again?  Is it all merely science?  If it doesn't work out in Egypt, where will it work out?  And what will it take?  I realize we greatly credit Orwell already with wisdom and vision beyond the typical mind, but likely he saw this day coming in a way few, if any, have ever willingly put to paper.  It is unusual no religions have sprung up around his insights, perhaps because it isn't exactly lucrative, although Orwell's observations came to pass while a so-called civilized world went along with it, willingly, even greedily, begging for more. Apparently no one wants to create a magachurch dedicated to the police state although it still could happen, if, and that's a big IF, there were time for it to happen.  At some point, climate chaos takes over and all the plans of the Wetikos will be buried under the scramble.

Allow me to briefly move away from the horrors and misery imprisoning little people everywhere.  The Mustang princess Stella, is back from boarding during those climate chaos rains that muddied up her apartment.  They plaited her mane  She's grown the most amazing winter coat, its fur.  Imagine chestnut fur with her blond mane and two white diamonds on her forehead.  I'm going to be the official photographer when she goes into labor.  Yes, of course, I will post the best ones.  Chip, the Appy, went to a relative's farm which is very cool, his old stomping grounds.  It seems with animals especially, we have to recognize that we will miss them, but love is wanting the best for them. 

Gosh, I almost got away from the Wetikos there.  I'd so rather involve myself into what's happening with the animals.  Its the animals' non-verbal communication and their appearance, its spare, its exactly functional for exactly what each animal requires and no more, no shoe fetishes, no preening in the zeitgeist pyramid, its a lifetime of come-as-you-are.  Now to get back to the dark side ... oh, let's not.  Its an important move to dedicate some portion of your day to your animal family including livestock.  Take them herbivore/grazer treats, hays, carrots and apples.  Never doubt your friendship.  Be as affectionate as possible.  Just like any friendship, go slow and see how it develops.  This can all be simplified by just saying use your manners.  If you don't have manners, I can't help you.  I probably could, but I wouldn't want to. 

Between the the catastrophes of climate change and Egypt, that should be enough, but its obviously not.  It never is now.  This is real, my friends.  Multiples of happenings growing towards some distant, final crescendo.  I don't know about you, but I grab the good stuff where I can.  If there is something beautiful taking my full attention, so be it.  We are typing on varying sizes and styles of little boxes that can give us any detail of anything we'd ever want to know, anywhere, what is far more fascinating and real exists outside, offline.  Kindle that.  In your life, are there not moments of clarity every now and then in which you see yourself?  There is no technology, at least not yet - which means never, that can bring that around.  Wherever there is revolution, the people in revolt have gone deep within themselves, each one of them, to recover spiritually for without awareness there is nothing.