Notes from the back pasture over the surreal course of a bizarre fortnight:

At this moment the Blue convention is up in the gathering hall stretched on the wide screen and loud.  The Red was last weeks' coliseum event.  The point of view in this environment is that of "Everyone must watch" both freak fests.  I snuk away a lot.  I have things to do, I live here, so the story goes.  With that excuse, I was able to avoid possible contagion of TVPTSD, a condition we hear about frequently as these thugs in 2D are apparently fatally afflicted with pornographic fantasies of medieval punishments against anyone who does not hold their views.  Every so often, the Crisis Management Consultants let the leash out "accidentally" (Now, why would they do that?) and one of the feeble minded exposes how irreparably FUBAR are the Reptilian brains of these fools.  I know it is not wholesome to criticize the beliefs of others, but we'll pretend I don't know that because the beliefs these dudes are living with in their heads are ... well ... culturally corrupt old wives tales passed around by Eraserheads in pastel ties who comfort themselves with multiple, illiterate abuses of the flesh in which violence is but one header, under which many sub-categories are filled in with mindbenders that were disproven and we thought, discontinued from the lexicon of normal  intellect after humans moved passed the Dark Ages. We know better now, don't we?  Some of us do, quite a lot do not.  The only thing you can do about that is nothing, as in non-doing.  Tell yourself the truth.  These things are made for TVLCD moments in the same way fund raising rock festivals and Pope, Schiavo, Jocko, Jocko's Doctor Trial, Indy 500 TV is.  The networks love it.  The hotels and restaurants love it.  Hookers love it.  (Although, the African American business mens  associations in and around Orlando are rightly put out the Red conventioneers sent ZERO monetary support into their communities which tells you the racial makeup and ignorant blunders of the vulture capitalism fans.)  In that case, perhaps they would prefer kill teams?  Seriously, the pomp and glory supposedly surrounding these fan club meetups wore thin even before we became aware of each other.  I never got it.  Ever. Why should we be subject to copywriter-profit-enthusiasts blue-toothing through the wooden lips of Charlie McCarthy?  I have been direct about having no interest in either of these whiz-bang affairs, but that goes nowhere, there are those who prefer an excuse having nothing to do with the matter at hand. It is a hard thing to grasp, but when you feel it you know how to respond.  Recall the lesson: They want it that way.  


People all over the world were just going about their business - all the while a stealth MIC sequestered a steadily growing plan.  Leaks were initially scoffed as implausible, then drew in friends of friends, then drew in the right bullhorns and the big money which led all the way to the mother-lode leviathan treasure chest, the little people heathens, an endless pyramid Ponzi could be arranged with some twists here and there, amping the gullibility and greed that suddenly burst out from the shadows setting off the tripwire that was to free the plot, reverse bad into good, cruel into kind, life into death, stupid into smart, wise into illiterate, love into irrelevance, compassion into fear.  The lists of things you can not do are long, the lists of things they can do to you are even longer - because they have let us know through every medium, human and inhuman, everything is on the table, including you - comatosed and costumed as apple-in-mouth wild boar, wheeled into the state dining room on a silver trolley.


 Of course, we are not exactly there yet, but what will they turn to when Mother Nature denies them their racks of ribs because the candycorn fed the livestock after the rain stopped falling made the cattle unable to reproduce and all the real corn was confiscated for biofuels?  Let us not underestimate how far away into the future this situation could be upon us, made legal in refrigerated glass display cases by the powerful human tissue sales approvals department exactly like many of the sad dressed fish that are now lying on ice, fish you never heard of until recently that are now showing up everywhere, ground and mutilated into anything that satisfies protein content.  People will go for all of it in the name of convenience and low prices.  I've seen it, they're dragging shopping carts of unknown carcasses into their houses every night, bags of frozen somethings or take out, more unknown somethings in styrofoam boxes.  Sigh. They-want-it-that-way.  They want you to know there are levels to cannibalism such as "Its okay in restaurants" or "I didn't have time to shop", or my favorite, "I forgot." Just before the heatwaves, wildfires, power outs and drought got going enough to melt their vegetable gardens, it was exactly the opposite situation. It seems as if all that we have attempted to promote through the venue of the web has vanished in the passing of time, that the recovery BS was actually believed as carved on the tablets of the Ten Commandments triggering some inner tricycle bell allowing all those feeling deprived to jump back into the rush of consumerism nonstop, a day is not complete without running to Wal*Mart, for example, including the rental of an entertainment DVD so that NO time is ever spent considering the mystery and wonder of the Universe or comparisons made between that world and their everyday upside down, backwards world on the ground.  You might say such escapism is non-doing, but in such a state, one is constantly busy, busy, busy, selecting, making financial decisions, making lists, collecting coupons, scrambling for the bank cards and allegiance discount cards, running mental cost analysis as they plow through towering aisles of joblot imports vacuous in self-drive seated dodgems with front loading baskets.  Because, as the collections of low-in-the-water freighters sat idled at anchor, bows to the wind, China grew anxious Americans were not consuming enough of their slave labors and considering the deal, that was unacceptable. The situation was remedied in a few ways, all of them blared altruistically as anything other than what they were, funnymoney and foodstamps sprinkled from the skies.  Just as magical, not a single little person actually saw any of it.  However, the idea, vague and coded in acronyms, was enough to break down the locked doors of the empty malls. Against all logic it worked.


A decade in vain?  ... and the music starts again, which numbered sectors were chosen for this year's Hunger Games?   Let's guess:  The regions showing the lowest IQ scores, recently endangered by horrific disaster and already existing in a softened state of extreme need.


Notes about the notes:

We can aspire to anything we want, but only if we know what it is we want. On a deeper level, which is the higher level, if one can remove WANT from their mental list of immediate shoulds and musts and future shoulds and musts and due by dates, you can get a lot of what you really need, often too because what you want and need most comes directly to you without any strings attached other than to acknowledge love which has no strings.  If you want nothing, if you never think of acquiring, if you are satisfied with all you have or don't have and when presented with the possibility of additional material goods or promotional adjustments, harbor no interest, you are non-doing and you would be doing very well.  You can mingle with all sorts of people and situations in all stations of life and find it all rather painless, joyous in fact, because you are non-doing.  I will say for beginners, once you get Visible the way he intends you to get him, and that way is fraught with painful rewinds and seemingly impossible fast forwards, non-doing is easier and the transcendental state far more lasting.  I think I was in this state already, by some miracle of Jah, Respects, Eteeopieah, meaning that I am able to interact while at the same time stand back and watch.  Ah, but the real thrill is in discovering new escalators to Heaven, it pays to listen to the suggestions of wise others. We were put here and there was a reason why.  We are the bridge as the refrain is to the verse.  It is important to make the effort to try to stay on course, regardless that everything we meet on the path is designed to waylay you for years paralyzed in place.  While it is okay to explain this to friendlies who notice what you've already noticed, there has been no change for the better, it is worse than ever due to a brief pause in the demonstration where the mind to please was hijacked again.  But down the road apiece, you might just come to the conclusion, it is best to go about your business, silent in non-doing.  Whatever insights you discover on your own are permanent.  A light may show the way, but it is you who must choose to step forward.

Ital vs. the Tudors, the beauties of collapse

I must apologize for not tending to the blog or I should have told you I was not going to put anything up for awhile, but those are the ruinous musts and shoulds so let's just get on with it. We have some lovely weather here these days, last week was deep snow and cabin fever. The more I go out, the better it feels. Then I don't have to twist my mind around why I am doing or not doing what I must or should, you understand. None of that changes the course of destruction we are on regardless of wanting to be involved, or wanting nothing to do with anything under the heavy, pressing webbed paws of the Illusion.

I dislike TV with the exception of the Tudors series. Last Sunday night's episodes were just as backbiting and evil as anticipated. The courtiers and titled ladies all seem to be working towards the goal of getting someone's head whacked off or conniving to see a supposed seditionist, heretic or treasonist burned at the stake. To do this, first they must curry favor with His Majesty, while behind his back, lay a trap for whomever it is that is felt to need a good lesson without allowance for an aftermath in which they might have been able to show repentance, although, as the sentenced head up the stairs to their execution, purse in hand to pay said executioner for his labors, you can imagine the pleas and denials, the promises, the apologies, the beggings for forgiveness and so forth. Detail for detail, trap for trap, it runs a course parallel to what we hear unfolds in the Palace of the Illusion among the your graces and lords. The only difference is the costuming and candelight. An important aside, you will note, if you watch carefully and if you've traveled through Europe, incredible cathedrals and castles are shown to have been built eight centuries before the industrial revolution sucked dry the easy oil. The scriptwriters know this - why have they not made it known? I'm thinking eight centuries because the Italian Renaissance c. 1400's due in large part to lavish sponsorship from the Medicis, took place two hundred years before such grandiosity (mastery of frills and frosting) spread to other parts of that continent where THE Renaissance, two hundred years later, was recognized as the only one of its kind throughout all of time. While we think of the history of the Humanities, and all that was accomplished long before big oil/big ag put a key into the ignition of the overpopulation machine (more people, more sales) let's look at Charles's wonderful discovery of a 1905 postcard, a real life photograph of Market Street in San Francisco.

To me, this finding is of equal importance as the photo I received of our Rasta's spar, Neil, just cooking food. It is a blessing to be sent such reminders, its is a blessing to have faraway friends who like to throw reality checks at the little people from time to time. I lived Ital as well in my youth. Returning to the US remains a culture shock in more ways that I can describe. I still suffer somewhat from the weirdness of our contrived lifestyle and revert to common sense simplicity when necessary just to get something done that in America means generally trying to work with something broken, dysfunctional, can't get a part or replacement because X company merged with Y company who was bought out by Z company in China. A lot of gadget distress has to do with plastic being breakable, it wears out much more quickly than old fashioned cast iron, wood or bamboo. I think just about everyone busting their chops at one of these outsourced corporate manufacturing sweatshop assembly lines knows this, too. Do they think we're silly? No, they think we are extremely rich and silly. They can't wait to get here. It is a measure of Illusory progress that our Rasta tells me they aren't so hot to expatriate anymore, because ... sigh ... because they can just fly back and forth to the great mall that is the US. Many have seen the light. (Those that live in ignorance to this day are those who are ignorant of their history as Arizona will show them soon enough. You can come to spend and go, but you may not come to hang around and drain the system unless you adopt the system in full = pay heavily as you go or go.)

Last time in heaven, I mostly hung out with a longtime Beekeeper, on his land in the unmapped jungle, with his extended family, under a galvanized roof held up by four wood poles under which a large cast iron cookpot fed everyone and anyone who happened along. If the mood struck, and something about being outdoors with people you know and love is the right mood for a little jungle jam, there were huge drums and a wooden/bamboo xylophone, flutes and more. But the most interesting thing of all was the Beekeeper's coffeebean shelling apparatus. He's taken a washboard and cylindrical grater, more about graters in a minute, attached a handcarved wooden crank to the grater so that each bean's coat was lifted off as it funneled through, rolling down the washboard and passing under the grater much the same way the early washing machine squeezed wet clothes into a tub. He gave me a thick chunk of beeswax to chew while we discussed how his machine worked. Nice. His granddaughter, everyone in the extended family lives at home, was an angelically beautiful three year-old child born deaf, but fell right in with everyone else working or playing, it seemed not to hold her back in any way, but allowed the elders to smother her with open affection. No one, I mean no one, would ever think of removing her from the tribe and sending her away to some official center for special needs children. I carried her in my arms and we danced to the pounding of the percussion instruments. She feels it. At one point, the Beekeeper got us involved in moving a mature chocolate tree to a more spacious location in which to branch freely out of the way of its neighbors. Everyone joined in, you would have thought it was the Alabama chain gang building a railroad, the rhythms and the chants made it easy to do a chore most little people insist on doing with lifts and pulleys, gasoline chain saws and tractors. You push on the down beat and hang back on the up. There is an art to it which is to remove the me from the moment. A little beeswax, a little chocolate tree moving, a little dancing with the baby and the me vanishes without knowing or thinking about it at all. You are just there, with the moment, of the moment. With them, of them.
It took a month or two to realize I had completely lost any sense of skin color, other than to be in the habit as all were, of using it as a tool for definition: "You know who I mean, the clear skin girl." or "No, he's the red one." In the beginning, I was pretty young then, fresh from the states and thought everyone looked alike. This of course, caused a lot of confusion, having an idea of whom I was conversing with only to discover we'd never met before, so too often I'd find I was on familiar terms with a total stranger, however, this half-bond turns out to be a fearless way to make friends. Sometime later, wading and rock climbing alone at sunset it struck me I was recognizing everyone all the time and then more, I had lost my white. I tried dreadlocks, but they didn't suit me at all, I always looked like I just fell out of bed. This goes over badly when you have some sort of bureaucratic mission to accomplish.

In complete reversal, in Bubblovia, I find I remain the clear-skinned girl only to myself, not really at home in civilization and often irritated to be pressured into dependence on plastic, convenience and entertainment technologies. Somehow its not fair. But then what is fair? If you watch the Tudors next weekend you'll see nothing was ever fair. The story of Cain and Abel isn't fair, either. Collapse is not fair. Life in full is not fair. I prefer a world where there is no unfair or fair, where things just are because they give and take with Nature - naturally. A grater for citrus peel or cheese is a square foot of galvanized aluminum pounded to remove the ripples, and pounded with nails to make holes. Take the "holed" galvanized and roll it into a half cylinder so the scratchy side faces outwards and secure each end with a single piece of wood, nail each strip of wood into place tightly across the ends making handles and securing permanently the half-cylinder shape. (If you're really good, you'll use wooden pegs.) You can grate comfortably for at least an hour as well as pass it down to your daughter for her household, etc. I've mentioned some of these "differences" in the comments section at various times and I think it is important we realize we don't need to keep stocking our lives with useless gadgets with brief lifespans in order to get something done. The same principle applies equally well to communication devices, unnecessary when people gather casually among each other on a daily/nightly basis. They love to gossip - and what is writing about and commenting on the activities of the Illusion but gossip on a plastic and precious metals communication device that makes lots of money and provides jobs to sweat labor in "developing" countries? Word always gets around.

More to come on this subject, in series - eventually. Collapse can be beautiful.