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

Atlantis off the starboard bow

Sometimes we miss important things because we are shown something else. Now, that something else has validity too, or we wouldn't be pointed in that direction, the best action being to look everywhere and ye shall find - that is if you are interested in finding. I'm not talking intentional diversion here, I am speaking of trusted sources that want us to know what they are thinking about a situation. As always, we, the readers, are expected to make of it what we will. We've seen a lot of worthy sources slammed and you know, anything positive can be argued to its negative if you happen to be arguing truths with a good con, a better con than yourself. Me, I don't take cons well, I don't know enough about anything to be good at debating the opposite side from which I stand which means I will fiercely defend the side on which I stand. A case in point would be a site I visited until recently, recently because I've since removed any reference to him, where the author took it upon himself to point out rudely why the views belonging to a noted member in good standing with our little love community here were flawed. This pissed me off no end because it was a con job in action revealing that the con artist had never taken the time to examine our friend's views in their entirety as well as revealing the con artist's motive which was to make himself appear all knowing, all seeing which to the best of my knowledge are not exactly human traits. "Out of context" hearsay does not make a case. Another example that comes to mind is one friend with some literary weight slamming another friend's blog, a tome of nothing but hard truth on the basis that the author was a heh, spook, like who cares? If spooks are telling truths, sign me up. Whenever I run into these things, its hurts me, saddens me, to see that so many forget what we are doing here at all. Now here we are on a new post today and I'm planning on using a few links for a little more in-depth analysis and I want to make it clear, please read them with your own interpretations. Put aside hearsay and pay attention to the content. That is all I ask, make up your mind about the content under discussion for yourself. Perhaps it is best to let go forming any opinions at all and just digest the material. After you do that long enough, an opinion will come about on its own and it will be all your's, no one else's. And once you have opinions based solely on your own interpretation, you will have something fairly close to the truth. It almost doesn't matter where the information comes from as long as you've taken in a broad spectrum so that a bigger picture emerges.

Here is a typically large batch of binary numbers representing a terrible truth from a source that is somewhat questionable only because they do not, for the most part, pass the famous Wikileaks litmus test. Yet, I go there anyway and very often find something worthwhile in the mix, which today is this essay by Hirose Takashi. It is translated from Japanese and a little sketchy at first, but the message is completely clear. I liken all of us busy or not so busy human beings doing whatever we do, however we do it, to life in the final days of Atlantis. In doing so and seeing ourselves as compassionate people, can you put yourself in the shoes (gaeta) of the Japanese? Try it. Imagination is integral to compassion. Feel it? There they are, living inside the bizarre circumstance of globalism along with the rest of the developed nations and doing the best they can, as we do, with the little they have, as we do, going about the business of ordinary life, as we do, until one normal evening suddenly everything not sucked into the giant washing machine of the homicidal tsunami went up in radioactive steam. For real, my friends, as the evacuation zone widens, more and more human beings are getting the word, you can never go home again. Worse, this condition is growing exponentially as the Pacific Plate refuses to settle down and the globe is dotted with egregious cauldrons of death. Adaptation to instant annihilation is a state of existence we need to explore and grow comfortable with since there is little doubt it will happen, at anytime, anywhere, which includes it happening to every one of us. This state of existence presently binds most of the Japanese population, whether its on the schmooze or not. In fact, when it is not stated or understated, it is deliberate because in the event all the innocent and trusting simple folk get the idea they've been super-conned, who knows what could happen? A lot more people know subliminally what is going on than we realize, be assured the deniers have made a pact with themselves not to think about it. It doesn't exist. Nuclear energy is the way of the future. That much IS true since in the future entire continents will be uninhabitable.

We are already bumping up hard against what is coming, its too obvious for the outspoken among us to stay silent for long. We are seeing the death of species, the land, the oceans, its too much to destroy all at once, and too hardy while seemingly delicate. Life is fragile after all. Without an Earth-sized asteroid crashing into our planet taking everything out at once, the hit and run style we are witnessing commits its own suicide, here, over there, in front of you and behind you. It is a miracle you have been spared to this moment. But will you be spared in the next? If we look too long, or dwell on impending and current disasters too often, are we setting our own table for disaster? No, when we look as long as we feel is necessary, we invite compassion into our hearts regardless of what may or may not happen to us.

Meanwhile, the mighty shuck and jive train keeps a rollin' as if Tomorrow, tomorrow, the sun will come out tomorrow, its only a day away. Lots of money and a purchased judiciary make fine insulators from fate, temporarily I might add. Holograms, stunt men and tinseltown special FX don't have feelings or intelligence. You can, in your hour of need, like now, just tune it all out. Oh indeed, you have that magical ability unless you are being gang-raped in the hoosegow while under interrogation from hired mercenaries. Sometimes it appears our masters of the Universe would like us to feel sorry for them and sympathize with their shameful platter of impossibly difficult decisions. And certainly, it must be a hard thing to save the people, keep everyone calm, satisfy their needs, feed the hungry, the poor, if that was actually the case except its not. The Judas' shortcuts are too easy and convenience IS the hallmark of western democracies. These so-called democracies are the exact opposite of true democracy, which we could have had and will not live to see. We could have been great, we could have done it right, we could have had peace on Earth and good will instead we exist in a flimsy multi-generational toxic bubble readying to burst.

If you have ever seen some of the Discovery Channel documentaries on how life began you would be awed that we turned out in the forms we did. We could have taken any form, or shape, we could have had two heads for example although Nature is not random, Nature is too efficient knowing two heads would spend a lifetime trying to kill each other for sole control over the one body. Evolution an interesting concept to dwell on while you are struggling to keep your one head above water, what a silly little world we have made to play on, how cleverly ergonomic we are with our digitized hands built for survival the same way Mountain Goats' hoofs work for their survival and birds/insects wings allow them to fly to nutrition atop the tallest trees, but those fingers of mankind are useful for molding weaponry, pulling triggers, yanking the joystick, slaughtering whole families and thumb texting, overdeveloping and then calling in the wrecking ball, rather like building little communities with those tiny German toy blocks in the mesh bag complete with farm animals, schools, work buildings and clock towers. It was fun, wasn't it, until somebody came along and jackbooted it all sky high. Well, it wasn't permanent anyway, nothing is, with the exception of course, being love.

There is a remarkable Oak up in the mountains where we live, it has grown itself around an old stag, a former Oak, now a Woodpeckers' acorn bank. I previously posted it uncropped when the emphasis was on the newborn Lambs. Only lately have I stood under it to figure out just exactly what happened there. The whole ensemble stands as living proof that Nature has a will of its own, and yet the ignorance and lust of humans in this tawdry epoch never gave it the credence it deserves and now it is too late. This is no longer a matter of revolution against tyrants or undergoing a revolution within ourselves. Mankind has no power over the Tectonic plates. And, hey, while we're at it, tell me what power mankind has over the sea? As a longtime sailor I can tell you what we used to tell ourselves in dread weather, no land in sight, radio broken, lost in uncharted territory, down to half cup of water per day, dreaming I was on land and waking to see sunlight pouring in the hatch above my bunk knowing the dream was a brief escape from the living nightmare, you can survive the sea, but you can never master it. Which is very much the same place we find ourselves today, on or off land, wherever you happen to be. You might survive disaster, but you can never control it. Interpret that any way you want interspersing any conditions lying in the minefield of these times.

I recommend seeing a beautiful Mongolian documentary, The Weeping Camel. You can watch it in full at the site. Leaving our roots behind and following along with the nonsense of unlimited growth and progress while warring against those who do not participate, is just one, but likely the dominate fault causing our demise. The truth is we're not good enough to deserve this planet. We didn't love it enough, and now we are losing it.
Sayonara

Oaks and Lamb photograph, c. 2011 Deep into Artlife West
Weeping Camels Photograph by Juliane/nationalgeographic.com

under a fuchsia sky

It is a trick of the human mind to sweeten our past and dissect our present thus the term fond memories, as if the past was our personal interactive 20th century movie and the present is all that is real, true, yes, but still we dress ourselves in comparisons with then and now, now and then to the point that now is a jagged edge of zigging and zagging events and nonevents while events from the past have a way of being some scripted kind of rise to salvation where everything was bent towards happily ever after.  In our physical present it is not happily ever after, rather in many cases sheer survival.  According to memory, all was less arduous to bear in the past, we sort of sailed through rough spots arriving intact to today only to ponder again the question of The Open Boat: Why, how, after all the harrowing and resolved thrills of then, did we, do we, arrive here, in this long, drawn out series of worsening, humiliating conflicts, personal and political?  Maybe I'm just feeling a way today and maybe not.  Maybe in the cold clear light of this winter morning seeing January present itself as early May, we can say "Hold it, this never happened before, but it is happening now."  If we are still around in ten years, will this particular time zone presently under today's experience be fond?  Most of you reading here will say no, that decade was a run up to TEOTWAKI and the present is engulfed in world wide suffering and upheaval, although its always been that way we just did not realize how ruthless is the journey of life in the long run. We did not grasp the fall out of war.  Worse, we drastically underestimated suffering.  We underestimated evil.  You will think this is new.  It is new when its new to us. 

We are in a precarious stage at the present. It is a malevolent present, portending worse to come and this attitude is fully accepted as the way it is, as if we are caught helplessly in some satanic vice squeezing out our ability to self-resurrect.  Everyday we go through the motions, in freefall designed by ourselves for self-preservation while completely unknown to ourselves as the architects of our experience.  Nothing we do has impact on the mass psychosis of the present while everything we do is consciously performed to create our perceived version of what route the future takes.  Everyone has their crutches.  Some garden extensively, others meditate or count on whatever saving grace is available to them to reroute their tomorrows and when tomorrow becomes today did it help or was it just more whirling in freefall while time marched on?

Migrant workers housing Weedpatch government camp,
watercololor on Arches

Overpopulation is perhaps the greatest and least acknowledged problem here.  All those minds with bodies coming from every angle and more, all of them needing something to do and they do it.  In this respect, the past was better, overpopulation had not yet reached the density it has today and will reach, regardless of population watchers telling us it is leveling-off in certain more educated (spelled western) societies.  When the Industrial Revolution's blind detour is corrected, as it cannot help but be corrected, overpopulation will bulge out into anything it can grab to survive and see itself as worthy of having existence which is just an extension of what we already see.  Overpopulation has rights, legal personhood, it is a protected condition encouraged by child molesters.  As humans are boxed-in more efficiently into accepting no life, still more life is on the way ensuring no life at all for anything breathing.  Ran Prieur once said our planet could likely support overpopulation, the real problem was mismanagement, an observation that may well be correct, he's a pretty smart observer.  But since human nature is an iffy proposition in general, beneficial management of seven billion minds may not be possible regardless of management.  Many so-called humans are equally as predatory as animals.  Once someone sets themselves up mentally as an authority, something happens to their humility.  They tend to focus on top down control benefiting themselves and whatever good intentions originally drove them are lost, usually forever.  For example, our leaders of today are not leading.  Over time they have become biased towards self-interest and deathmatch concealment of personal motive.  In this way, they are like a pack of dogeared baseball cards, traded and finding completeness in sets.  It is impossible to integrate them into the general population again, the line was crossed, the pacts permanently sealed.  They hang out with each  other, using each other as yardsticks and justification, its the civilized way, imitation is flattery.  And yet, we know thanks to the news under the news, its more than flattery, its denial by design.  Have you been denied lately?  Oh, you have?  One hundred times a day every single day?  Nights too?  It wasn't always that way, was it.  I do not recall seeing horizontal blinking colored lights floating in the heavens, the Flying J's of the Universe, begging for attention from possible passersby.

I'm in agreement with bholanath who commented last week on the flexible timetable of prophecy.  What we have here is a steadily deteriorating situation without foreseeable schedules.  Name one edict, one plan, one rollback or reform that halts the onslaught of worse.  You see, once it started it could not be stopped and here we are in growing lunacy contrary to all things good and right. I don't have any answers as nonspecific thunder rumbles in the background with lightening bolts scattering over any sequestered region/s self-possessed and sustainable under most conditions, but let me welcome you to the new conditions.  Oh, its official.  These are the new conditions and so much worse is on the way I cannot imagine it.  I've tried.  So embroiled in what was are we that what is to come has no reality.  Must we delve into corruption to be decent?  When everything appears to be heading into chaos, must we too be chaotic?  Scrambling for breathing room, dirty dealing, concealing our one true deepest and inescapable motive, that of our own survival?   No.  J'objecte!

Aside from the occasional personal niceties, the mailbox bears very bad will.  Everyday it is jammed with corruption.  If you want to bring bad karma into your home, get the mail, open it, sign the forms and send them back in the self-addressed, no postage required envelopes now obese with forms filled to completion.  It is a guaranteed self-fulfilling nightmare that will return again and again with more papers, more signature lines, more coercions in ever increasing sizes of packets until you are bleary with exhaustion even before the cell phone chimes with hundreds of unknown phone numbers, heh, kinda like a chain letter, the returns are amazing, but what is more amazing is the masses are actually participating and if they are not participating, where are the objections?  Some of us who are amazed would have made excellent fish, refusing to bite the bait and all.  But the creators of bait catch enough fish to make the expense worthwhile or they wouldn't do it.  Do beware, the trawlers are working now and its sink or swim.

Do note also that no one is stepping up to the microphones to make promises of aid following Pakistan's 7.4 earthquake at the northeast border with Afghanistan (massacre alert, clear the property alert, evacuate immediately alert) or offering C-130s to evacuate flood victims and carry medical supplies and food to anguished Australians and South Africans.  They don't even bother anymore, they're too busy watching Baby Doc free himself in order to power grab during Haiti's election crises before HAARPing on sudden shifts in the tectonic plates.  There's a lot to watch on their phone screens besides porn.  Mostly they watch Hu since his last visit was accompanied with little if any fanfare and now, trillions in national debt, likely quadrillions in world debt, Hu gets his state dinner.  All the little things going down add up.  They won't deny what is happening, they must deny it to the bond holders or there will be margin calls.  While we stretch out what is left of our days, languishing in doubt and wonder, China turns into us and we become the cheap knock-off we were merely slightly known for once upon a time by any astute travelers who left the state and discovered the real thing.  It seems that China created its wealth from the US buyer so its only right the US be bailed out by them, at least temporarily, but isn't this how wars begin?  Anyone challenging our financials, our imperial rights, should be cautious, it looks like the whole thing is going to blow.  Yes, I know, there are many reasons going all the way back to repeal of Glass-Stegall that brought us so low so fast, and it was fast.  Faster than we recall since everything was rosy then.  And now ... well I needn't go into it further.  They say it is always darkest before the dawn. 

Bulletin board:

Please do not miss bholanath's video, Kali Stuti, I downloaded it to the library and played it again late Saturday night reminding myself we are truly blessed to be among musical genius.  It is shockingly, hauntingly exquisite and takes you far into the realm of great beauty and holiness.  If you already played it, all I can say is Play it Again and again.  Every time I hear it there are previously undiscovered nuances.

Prayers of gratitude and pure love are due for Susana Su-nami who saved her son's chance at a full life over the past week in an agonizing balancing act completing a perfect Yin Yang. 
Blessings abound, one love.

The Cycle of Life

What are we doing?

One day I just won't do this anymore. Call me a self-hating blogger. Considering the amount of time spent surfing during a typical week, my headstone will read "nina, Blogger", that is if I get a headstone vs. an Amadeus paupers' crater. And yet, that would not be a bad thing. It would be a terrible thing to be buried in steel and gilded plastic. AGHHHHH. The contents of such expensive, claustrophobic casing doesn't allow the body to break down naturally into the process required to complete the journey above ground as one rejoins with Mother Earth's system. How thrilling it would be to have memory during the process and find myself a lucky acorn fallen into some undisturbed pasture in wet weather. And equally as wonderful, to be carted away in a horse drawn wagon, clip clops in the mud on a dark rainy day. I hope to watch it pass in the mist.

We're right where they want us and we're doing what we're supposed to be doing, at home, with our valued family values and spoiled pets which have a cute way of being beloved boats with holes. We're watching a million channels of all corporate marketing models - all the time TV and pouring our angst into blogs on our breaks from the blitz. The calm before the storm? Not if you actually read entertainment newslinks as if the protagonist was your next door neighbor. You reported him, huh? Who goes to theaters anymore? The convenience culture has squeezed itself into a home appliance. An electric wok. Ah, you might put away that electric can opener sitting over there on your granite countertop (cough cough). Its a little much for more than a few fragile megachurch enthusiasts.

After a post has been up say, around four days, I'm doing something else - and why not? I know and you know there is something terribly unnatural with the totality of life consisting of technology. When I get busy with the new horse down the road, making friends and feeding carrots, its ludicrous to break away just to open up the plastic box again. There is no end to the things I can do around here, like pondering the sage.

I found out tonight that horse is named Chip. nice. He could have been my consort in a past life. An older Appie, his spots moved to his face and trunk as he matured. We'd been calling him Freckles. Those spots are Dalmation-like, my favorite pattern. This is a guy I can talk to. I am quite serious, he pulls the angry whinny thing if I don't visit daily. Here is how I got him on my friend list: I brought him some 3rd cut Timothy hay I keep around for my elder Guinea Pig. Its hot stuff, Alfalfa hay is about as exciting as it gets for horses, the hay I brought appears to have affected him like fresh Coconut water and herb would effect us.

There's been a lot of talk about California legalizing pot. Its made it to the voting ballot. Heh. You are free to interpret that cynical Heh any way you want. Prediction: In less than one decade, it will be as common as viagra ads, with similar concerns tranched inside the romance scene.

A few years ago, some officially sponsored hikers found what was officially claimed to be the official original sage in one of our biggest official southwest deserts, apparently it was massive and did what sages do, spawned seeds in a circle around itself which prompted all the spawned little sage-lings to sprout in the same fashion until a mammoth circular ocean of sage spread into the foothills and up and down the mountainsides. Now, millenia later, we have sage canyons and sage flanks. Sage is THE moisture stealer par excellence, more brittle and hardy than competing species, and usually wins the competition for water unless a bulldozer comes along and flattens the land for development which is known as disturbing the land. Disturbed land can be good, as in dozers carving out firebreaks in grassland, evacuation routes and encircling wildfires as parts of containment strategy. However, disturbed land also creates habitat for unwanted species, such as fire ants who have taken to building underground tunnels floating a pavement ceiling, curbs and man-made structures, i.e.; home slabs, barns and outbuildings, strip malls, whole towns, extended cities underneath cities and suburbs, exurbs all the way into out there, deep into fallow pastures and rugged terrain far from the elbowing crowds.

The squirrels enjoy every area where the ants haven't built, employing a similar system of underground connections including personal sleeping pods connected to the great room. They are equally as industrious as the ants. There is life moving around, building, foraging and populating just underneath a thin layer of dirt and vegetation, all of it in competition with each other for survival. We're not really counting the birds' nests in the grasses, but we are counting prairie dogs, moles, voles, mice and gophers, centipedes and other underground/burrowing species.

Peak oil and the financial collapse don't really matter to survival. Throughout the world there are some cultures who have never experienced the glories of the industrial revolution and at the rate they are being eliminated, they never will. Surely the Yanamano tribes of Rio Amazona and its tributaries are on the to-do list. Anyone and everything not enamored with debtors' fever and petro sludge and its by-products, is being annihilated if not by spills and blowouts, by takeover, or as in COIN, counter insurgency i.e.; merger/hostile takeover. If the Earth hangs on another century, Saudi Arabia has potential to be the last standing superpower running this show (perhaps they already possess that distinction? There are many good arguments for thinking that) with backup from Russia's and Bolivia's fresh water resources. So who are WE? What ARE we? These are bold, sweeping questions, but as usual, I'm not concerned with the day to day, tomorrow and tomorrow creeps at this petty pace political details, rather a bigger picture taking into account what really matters for humanity's survival, beyond convenience and the remote control weeding out of everything standing in the way of the reach of Corporatocracy. What happens on the ground is how it is, that much we're forced to divine on our own. Obviously, there is nothing we can do about it either, no matter how many online links to anthropogenic mass destruction, extinctions, slow death, displacement, loss of livelihood and morality's demise. As many of you have commented, "What can we do?" The Earth is never still, cycling through stages of development on a timetable of its own, of course this latest turn of events would come about, and we, along with all life, will adapt as we are doing without realizing it. We are not conscious of the movement of the Earth as we live upon it, either. Learning creates change, educated change and because we have so much occupying our minds, it seems barely noticeable, if at all. Try to keep in mind we are still coming out from under having our brains malfunctioned in Bizarro World. Nothing happens all at once - and something is always happening.

I didn't read the news today, oh boy. I don't feel like messing up the morning with catastrophic horrors and scary tea parties. The news is just more torture, designed to threaten and phobiatize readers. You get the feeling its a softening up the target as if EVERY ONE in a decision making capacity knows exactly what you know and manipulates fact to fit agenda so that fact is falsehood. Try justifying your way through that. Its not easy unless you are Thomas Cromwell, First Earl of Essex, or fortunate to have some out-of-the-blue, blessed sartorial moment of truth in which clarity of thought prevails. Until such a moment occurs, all of us live in a subliminally depressed state of partial awareness knowing some things, the remainder elusive. That we do not know more is guilt inducing in having placed trust in beliefs that show themselves to be wishful thinking. In times like this, it is comforting to bathe one's being in bolanath's grandmothers' healing Net of Light.

While pondering sage oceans it came to me the reason we fail as a species is buried guilt. "So what?" we say, guilt is for criminals who deserve and receive justice, end of story. This gets confusing because media's definition of guilt is reserved for those who commit acts of wrongdoing. Our language partnering with pundits has co-opted depth of analysis, for example, the concepts of justice and wrongdoing. When I think of those words, it always brings Shirley Jackson's short story, The Lottery (p. 1948) to mind. As long as white people harbor guilt, the lotteries of life continue, suspended in wait are the crowd pleasing stone throwers eager to bury their bredren. The Wahabbi stonings are just us, or the former us before self-education, out in front of the frosting and lace put on justice and wrongdoing. Since the western world carries mountains of buried guilt for having massacred, executed, tortured, threatened, renditioned, lied and stolen property throughout recorded history, the western majority cannot and will not tolerate the weight of that guilt and must dispose of those free from denial of stoning or distortion of intent and action. In other words, if you speak what you see, you are not tolerated because you are naming blame, not owning blame. The real blame then remains stuck in denial aka defense of imaginary concepts such as states, borders, rules on movement, being in love with ideas of division which have no basis in reality. One Love.

Into this world we are born, little sagelings thirsting for survival, spawning and sprouting our ways though time, a blink in the eye of our planet which somehow survives us, minimalizes us, we are Aborigines looking into the sky waiting for God's care package to this day.

Behind each seed a string of seemingly small, but meaningful actions taken, involuntarily, and worse, actions not taken at all, guilt builds for participation in the competition for survival in nothing more than an ego construct. It would help if we just dropped the pretense and spoke in semi-monosyllables, to ourselves and to the Universe. I'm sorry. I love you. I never wanted to hurt anything, nothing! The real wrongdoing here is how few get that AND live it. You think the SCOTUS can fix that with justice?

... All language is a system of symbology, that is, sounds strung together that mean something relating to the external reality we experience.

This symbology is unique to the individual person due to the fact that all of our individual experiences are normally unique events relating to the individual, with same exceptions. But, in almost all cases, the interpretation of those events will be different than other individuals sharing the event. This has been tested over and over again to the same conclusion. .... murph

The list of ego constructs grows in perfect proportion to humanity's helplessness. To acknowledge disingenuously or not to acknowledge at all is the greatest wrongdoing throughout history, our existence predefined for us, soap operatic in scope and lack of something real, where does one draw the line? Is anyone angry? Or, are our laptops the epitome of the addicts' compromise? Slowly, ever so gradually, we arrive at this point each in his own time. Tattered, torn, straddling the the chasm between the real and the great lie, we participate in slowing adaptation which spreads the guilt around enough to keep the big lie going, and growing, a little longer.

artwork: Fritz in Hibernation
transparent watercolor inks on Arches
18" x 24" | 2005
concept c. Helga Sermat

As the Hourglass Empties...

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

THE LOON

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

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

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

George Charles Selden 1893

INDIAN SUMMER

At last there came

The sudden fall of frost, when Time

Dreaming through russet September days

Suddenly awoke, and lifting his head, strode

Swiftly forward--made one vast desolating sweep

Of his scythe, then, rapt with the glory

That burned under his feet, fell dreaming again.

And the clouds soared and the crickets sang

In the brief heat of noon; the corn,

So green, grew sere and dry--

And in the mist the ploughman's team

Moved silently, as if in dream--

And it was Indian summer on the plain.

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

Part XXII: Hiawatha's Departure

By the shore of Gitche Gumee,

By the shining Big-Sea-Water,

At the doorway of his wigwam,

In the pleasant Summer morning,

Hiawatha stood and waited.

All the air was full of freshness,

All the earth was bright and joyous,

And before him, through the sunshine,

Westward toward the neighboring forest

Passed in golden swarms the Ahmo,

Passed the bees, the honey-makers,

Burning, singing In the sunshine.

Bright above him shone the heavens,

Level spread the lake before him;

From its bosom leaped the sturgeon,

Sparkling, flashing in the sunshine;

On its margin the great forest

Stood reflected in the water,

Every tree-top had its shadow,

Motionless beneath the water.

From the brow of Hiawatha

Gone was every trace of sorrow,

As the fog from off the water,

As the mist from off the meadow.

With a smile of joy and triumph,

With a look of exultation,

As of one who in a vision

Sees what is to be, but is not,

Stood and waited Hiawatha.

Toward the sun his hands were lifted,

Both the palms spread out against it,

And between the parted fingers

Fell the sunshine on his features,

Flecked with light his naked shoulders,

As it falls and flecks an oak-tree

Through the rifted leaves and branches.

O'er the water floating, flying,

Something in the hazy distance,

Something in the mists of morning,

Loomed and lifted from the water,

Now seemed floating, now seemed flying,

Coming nearer, nearer, nearer.

Was it Shingebis the diver?

Or the pelican, the Shada?

Or the heron, the Shuh-shuh-gah?

Or the white goose, Waw-be-wawa,

With the water dripping, flashing,

From its glossy neck and feathers?

It was neither goose nor diver,

Neither pelican nor heron,

O'er the water floating, flying,

Through the shining mist of morning,

But a birch canoe with paddles,

Rising, sinking on the water,

Dripping, flashing in the sunshine;

And within it came a people

From the distant land of Wabun,

From the farthest realms of morning

Came the Black-Robe chief, the Prophet,

He the Priest of Prayer, the Pale-face,

With his guides and his companions.

And the noble Hiawatha,

With his hands aloft extended,

Held aloft in sign of welcome,

Waited, full of exultation,

Till the birch canoe with paddles

Grated on the shining pebbles,

Stranded on the sandy margin,

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

With the cross upon his bosom,

Landed on the sandy margin.

Then the joyous Hiawatha

Cried aloud and spake in this wise:

"Beautiful is the sun, O strangers,

When you come so far to see us!

All our town in peace awaits you,

All our doors stand open for you;

You shall enter all our wigwams,

For the heart's right hand we give you.

"Never bloomed the earth so gayly,

Never shone the sun so brightly,

As to-day they shine and blossom

When you come so far to see us!

Never was our lake so tranquil,

Nor so free from rocks, and sand-bars;

For your birch canoe in passing

Has removed both rock and sand-bar.

"Never before had our tobacco

Such a sweet and pleasant flavor,

Never the broad leaves of our cornfields

Were so beautiful to look on,

As they seem to us this morning,

When you come so far to see us!'

And the Black-Robe chief made answer,

Stammered In his speech a little,

Speaking words yet unfamiliar:

"Peace be with you, Hiawatha,

Peace be with you and your people,

Peace of prayer, and peace of pardon,

Peace of Christ, and joy of Mary!"

Then the generous Hiawatha

Led the strangers to his wigwam,

Seated them on skins of bison,

Seated them on skins of ermine,

And the careful old Nokomis

Brought them food in bowls of basswood,

Water brought in birchen dippers,

And the calumet, the peace-pipe,

Filled and lighted for their smoking.

All the old men of the village,

All the warriors of the nation,

All the Jossakeeds, the Prophets,

The magicians, the Wabenos,

And the Medicine-men, the Medas,

Came to bid the strangers welcome;

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

That you come so far to see us!"

In a circle round the doorway,

With their pipes they sat In silence,

Waiting to behold the strangers,

Waiting to receive their message;

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

From the wigwam came to greet them,

Stammering in his speech a little,

Speaking words yet unfamiliar;

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

That you come so far to see us!"

Then the Black-Robe chief, the Prophet,

Told his message to the people,

Told the purport of his mission,

Told them of the Virgin Mary,

And her blessed Son, the Saviour,

How in distant lands and ages

He had lived on earth as we do;

How he fasted, prayed, and labored;

How the Jews, the tribe accursed,

Mocked him, scourged him, crucified him;

How he rose from where they laid him,

Walked again with his disciples,

And ascended into heaven.

And the chiefs made answer, saying:

"We have listened to your message,

We have heard your words of wisdom,

We will think on what you tell us.

It is well for us, O brothers,

That you come so far to see us!"

Then they rose up and departed

Each one homeward to his wigwam,

To the young men and the women

Told the story of the strangers

Whom the Master of Life had sent them

From the shining land of Wabun.

Heavy with the heat and silence

Grew the afternoon of Summer;

With a drowsy sound the forest

Whispered round the sultry wigwam,

With a sound of sleep the water

Rippled on the beach below it;

From the cornfields shrill and ceaseless

Sang the grasshopper, Pah-puk-keena;

And the guests of Hiawatha,

Weary with the heat of Summer,

Slumbered in the sultry wigwam.

Slowly o'er the simmering landscape

Fell the evening's dusk and coolness,

And the long and level sunbeams

Shot their spears into the forest,

Breaking through its shields of shadow,

Rushed into each secret ambush,

Searched each thicket, dingle, hollow;

Still the guests of Hiawatha

Slumbered In the silent wigwam.

From his place rose Hiawatha,

Bade farewell to old Nokomis,

Spake in whispers, spake in this wise,

Did not wake the guests, that slumbered.

"I am going, O Nokomis,

On a long and distant journey,

To the portals of the Sunset.

To the regions of the home-wind,

Of the Northwest-Wind, Keewaydin.

But these guests I leave behind me,

In your watch and ward I leave them;

See that never harm comes near them,

See that never fear molests them,

Never danger nor suspicion,

Never want of food or shelter,

In the lodge of Hiawatha!"

Forth into the village went he,

Bade farewell to all the warriors,

Bade farewell to all the young men,

Spake persuading, spake in this wise:

I am going, O my people,

On a long and distant journey;

Many moons and many winters

Will have come, and will have vanished,

Ere I come again to see you.

But my guests I leave behind me;

Listen to their words of wisdom,

Listen to the truth they tell you,

For the Master of Life has sent them

From the land of light and morning!"

On the shore stood Hiawatha,

Turned and waved his hand at parting;

On the clear and luminous water

Launched his birch canoe for sailing,

From the pebbles of the margin

Shoved it forth into the water;

Whispered to it, "Westward! westward!"

And with speed it darted forward.

And the evening sun descending

Set the clouds on fire with redness,

Burned the broad sky, like a prairie,

Left upon the level water

One long track and trail of splendor,

Down whose stream, as down a river,

Westward, westward Hiawatha

Sailed into the fiery sunset,

Sailed into the purple vapors,

Sailed into the dusk of evening:

And the people from the margin

Watched him floating, rising, sinking,

Till the birch canoe seemed lifted

High into that sea of splendor,

Till it sank into the vapors

Like the new moon slowly, slowly

Sinking in the purple distance.

And they said, "Farewell forever!"

Said, "Farewell, O Hiawatha!"

And the forests, dark and lonely,

Moved through all their depths of darkness,

Sighed, "Farewell, O Hiawatha!"

And the waves upon the margin

Rising, rippling on the pebbles,

Sobbed, "Farewell, O Hiawatha!"

And the heron, the Shuh-shuh-gah,

From her haunts among the fen-lands,

Screamed, "Farewell, O Hiawatha!"

Thus departed Hiawatha,

Hiawatha the Beloved,

In the glory of the sunset,.

In the purple mists of evening,

To the regions of the home-wind,

Of the Northwest-Wind, Keewaydin,

To the Islands of the Blessed,

To the Kingdom of Ponemah,

To the Land of the Hereafter!

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


THE ROAD NOT TAKEN

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

sharp left for roots

After a visit from my sister whom I had not seen in five years, I'm exhausted and re-energized. A great time was had by all, topped off with a day long hike up the peaks sharing my spiritual world. Better company I've never had. Because of our DNA, we were able to inspire one another reaching greater spiritual insights than we make alone. I'll be mentioning some of them as we go along.

We live as long as we are supposed to, according to the Creator who sees fit we live long enough to see our children into adulthood. These fine machines, our bodies, exquisitely fine tuned, built to last you could say, are richly composed of exactly what we need for our Earth experience. Wondering why such magnificence actually lasts as long as it does, the answer is of course to nurture our offspring as all living creatures do, especially visible in the Avian World whose babies quickly often outweigh their parents and still must stay with them to learn those important birdlife defences and survival strategies during which many tests and trials are passed through under their parents' coaching. Let's say you had your first child around twenty-five, you would want to be able to provide lifelines when that child is twenty-five, as well as to his/her offspring. For example, the Western Flicker, a year round geography-specific Woodpecker's children and the Western Blue-jays' offspring are adult sized birds when they start coming around to feed here. You could confuse the adult with the child except for the open beaks squawking in voracious hunger same as they did, half their current size, in the nest so recently. The Flicker has a lifespan of + - ten years which tells us it takes several years for these birdlings to grow capable and hip to their own survival. This is the reason the nonmigratory stick around the same neighborhood they were taught to forage for their needs. Nature has it all taken care of. Once it was a rite of passage for humans, too. Some of us are operating in a pattern similar to and based in wildlife's pecking order- as we should. However, as we're all too aware, party-balloon growth and pyramids of systems heaped upon failed systems make the majority of westernized Homo Sapiens abandon the pecking order in favor of convenience: an adjective rooted in rejection of Nature's and God's intents brought about by outside-in materialism vs. inside-out awareness. Are we clear?

The above is a nut shelling of the kind of concepts we kicked about. Heh. Meanwhile, I peeked in here periodically to keep up. All who sent email with links, I appreciated it and visited every one. Mon Dieu!

Every day, we are presented with exponentially bizarre twists and turns in our Maseratis doing the break-neck Monte Carlo straight into the abyss. If you didn't see this link - and you should, its simplified for easy understanding of the ongoing Depressing Redistribution Rip. (Thanks Ran, thanks Gonzalo, thanks Charles)

In this environment more and more bloggers are putting up at least one essay questioning the utility of their presence on the web. It appears to be a phase, we doubt the efficacy of posting, rightly, it has no impact on reality. A humus pile a laptop does not make, neither is it a necessity to take your cellphone on a hike into God's heavenly home. I doubt any mountain critter is impressed by a cellphone. Such a thing does not exist in their reality. If you must prepare yourself to meet God, perhaps it is the wiser trek to travel where you'll have nothing to fear.

Maybe we have to ask what is reality anyway? It is our turn now to man the helm, as adults, literal orphans in matured bodies. If we did not succumb to corpodictocracy, we've had to create our own and live 24/7 in support of whatever reality we make ... in addition to the harsh reality on the ground. Daily the two trains meet. Even out here in the mountains, as rural as it is, the train is traveling through our lives, there is never a single day its reality does not impact ours. Even at this very moment, just over the laptop, vegetation abounds but there are no Honeybees and far fewer bugs (how awful for our avian bredren). The Fireteacher is recovering from overdraft hell despite working nonstop seven days. The family visit while a beautiful respite, for my sister culminated in that now common experience of airport hell, jogging ahead on the moving sidewalk making
connections, hauling the hefty carryon, coughing up $25.00 to store a single bag in the belly and $6.00 for a vending machine-sized bag of pretzels compounding the punishments of shoeless lines submitting to security scans which I hear went bonkers as she, a guitarded artist, was carrying "found" hubcaps on which to paint her astounding unschooled "primitives". Those former burger flippers have no interior resources enabling them to grasp her reality. If they were not sifting through the sandwich bags of toiletries, they'd be in Afpak today eyeballing the poppy fields between memorizing paragraphs in their McChrystalized COIN bibles. Last Sunday, while we were on foot, taking in the majesty of western heights and cloudless skies painted in rich cornflower blue, we came upon two women leading horses. (This scene could have been reversed, it could have been us leading the horses and them walking as we discovered the two women were also sisters. I wondered if we somehow crossed into a mirror.) It came out the smaller horse was recovering from severe starvation, dehydration and malnutrition that happened during a horse-boarding experience where the stable owner was called to war suddenly leaving a corralled domesticated living being without knowledgeable caretakers, on her own, like us, flapping in the wind. One of the sisters, her owner, has been working to beef her up and she was looking good stopping to bend for flake after flake of beautiful light green hay. May blessings from St. Francis find their way to that sister. A flake of hay, by the way, is a full patch pulled off from the bale.

As I mentioned earlier, train come, whistle blowing in the distance, regardless of what, where and who you are.

The boomers don't know what to do except grab any straw that looks like a return to Consumer Fantasia. Grabbing and desperation is not sustainable nor a path to peace. We've been at this game long enough to have picked up a few insights in that department, have we not? Review your days, add them up in neat columns of importance relative to this journey we call life. Did your ancestors greet the day with the ringing of the cell, creating conversations sold to the highest bidder which is whomever reviews our conversations looking for that special someone who refuses to board the train? As your day progresses, do you wander into the central living space only to peer into a box of opinions and models portraying the maturing human whose wrinkles you can remove or intensify with the mouse-pad. After brain wracking to recall at least three approved passwords, coffee flavored with high fructose and syrupy white non-dairy "creamer" here you are, the whistle grows louder, the train is nearing, the microwave having pasteurized your individual size packet of instant oatmeal into steaming hot rubber mush. Wooooo oo woooo. Ch, ch, chug ... up the track... wait, its pill time. Line up the bottles, one of these , one of those, heh. Did we ever need so many? Do we need them or do they need us? By taking them we grow dependent on them, I have not seen the Western Flickers ever pick up pills, but I have seen humans clinging to their overflowing medicine cabinets, steering their Maseratis at mach nine into expanded illness sooner or later requiring multiple, invasive tests, hospitals and rehabilitation facilities, fully accepting a diminishing quality of life as better than no life at all. Every time we see this, we know it could have been different, don't we. I have taken many a shower visiting friends only to have to work my way through vast accumulations of consumer products before finding a sole bar of soap.

What we find most heartbreaking is the number of friends on the train to nowhere. It happens often and never fails to disappoint. You say something that reaches into the soul of the other and meet them at the level it counts. Everybody feels good. Later on, it comes out, that moment was reality for you, but temporary for them. This happens unfailingly over the construct of money. Money is racist, like credit ratings. The cocktail car for one, louvered boxcars for the rest. Ch, ch, chug ... Woooo oo woooo ...

Whatever else family does to and for us, the inheritance of IQ is on your side. Not only is it helpful to speak with people who know your patterns, you know theirs, most importantly we know why such patterns exist. These things can be discussed into resolution with mutual understanding and trust, and do not demand context as it was shared from day one. Even the only child gets busy building a lifetime family of friends. The wise parent creates opportunities for this to take place as we are social animals after all and have more than enough room in our hearts to embrace and nurture others as we do our own.

There is a spring in the jungle that feeds a lagoon in which everyone gathers at various times throughout the day peeled down to their skivvies and bathing their bodies. The dreads have locks twisted in piles on their head or shake them free of glistening drops making rain on us. Mostly, nobody talks much, we're bathing after all, under giant cascading Dasheen umbrellas surrounding the waterfall. We might be Gilded Flickers in our natural habitat, free of constructs, doing what living species do without careening trains and whistles, without product logos, petroleum based body lotions and RFD tracking. The medicine cabinet exists in the lush foliage and the elders confer with the little youths while you dunk your head under the waterfall and after, rub down with Baba's coconut oil. Exuberance is a natural state as is spirituality and its accompanying insights (inside-out vs. outside-in), often someone is thumping out a rhythm on the boulders and nothing but God and sun and love is real.


Dasheen
a member of the Taro, tuber, African "FooFoo" family, large leaves sprout from the rootball, a common staple, starchy vegetable, grows under dirt "beetstyle", tastes better, nuttier and less mushy than potato. Peel, cut chunky and boil, salt and butter. Turns speckly grey after cooking. Thrives in high humidity, daily rains. Dasheen leaves often measure anywhere from 1 1/2' to 3' or more across. In the open markets, Dasheen rootball looks like a brown, hairy coconut. Mostly free as it grows every where conditions listed above are present.

Photo Credits:
Western Flicker c.google images
1937 Maserati at Monte Carlo c. google images
Boxcar c. Danny Robie
Jet Airliner #35 c. Josef Hoflener 2009
Dasheen c. google images

The Lunacy Escalates

06.13.10 UPDATE:

U.S. Gives BP Capacity Deadline as Cameron Expresses ‘Sadness’ Concentrate for a moment on what this says about the situation.

... BP recovered about 7,570 barrels of oil from midnight to noon yesterday ...

... In its application for the well, BP told the government it was prepared for a worst-case oil spill of 250,000 barrels a day...

BP gets deadline from government, told to have new containment plan for oil spill by Sunday night

And what then if it does NOT have a new containment plan ready by the deadline? Who will take them to task? Knock, knock, anybody home? As a duck himself, did Scrooge McDuck worry about his defenseless avian bredren while stacking golden coins in his counting room?

Lucky ...

Rescued: Two endangered Kemp's Ridley turtles recover in individual tanks. As the oil spreads in the Gulf of Mexico due to the BP oil spill, many turtles are winding up in shallower waters and feeding on fishing lines, possibly due to hunger. These two were caught by fishermen.

Not so lucky ...

Casualty: Becky Winstead, a research assistant at the Institute for Marine Mammal Studies in Gulfport, Miss., takes swabs of a dead Kemp's Ridley turtle that washed up on the beach in Gulfport, La. Over 300 turtles have been found dead over the last month between Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. Further testing will be done to determine what happened to the turtle. Over 20 turtles were found in one day this week. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times / June 13, 2010) [red emphasis, mine.]

See: Photos: Turtles amid the oil spill | Photo Gallery

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It is my contention that the thread of these disasters running through this era of which we are witness is an unnatural connivance designed to bring home a message. In the GOM, the Gulf of Mexico, the message is clear, the little people are shown the price of convenience is extinction, fomenting a return to what is perceived as hard labor at the wheel. Yes, that is a message most reading here already understood clearly, we are hard wired on one side, that side being the side of the Creator. For those ignorant of our finite resources or invested in resource mutilation is where the bell tolls. If they didn't get it before, they're not going to miss it now - providing they are open to possibility. If they are not, and there are always those who cannot be helped, forgive them for they know not what they do.

As the sun rises on this side of the planet, bringing illumination to everything God and Nature has given us, we awaken inside the most critical disaster yet, still the debates and newscasts rage on evermore dire, evermore fruitless, extending indefinitely. With each passing hour of each passing day, resolution evades the morphing perpetrators proving the limit to our planet's carrying capacity was reached many decades ago. The Industrial Revolution made possible a breach in planetary contract, surely we are not the first or only planet to have detoured so grossly from what could have been? The question is will we find our way home. At anytime, with the volume of slaughter committed counting from this minute long into the past, we cannot. For every word blared globally of reassurance, billions more fill the bandwidth declaring clean energy is the way of future. Once again, we've arrived in that snowstorm, hoping, wishing, blaming, allowing brief consolation assuaging anguish to guide us nowhere, we remain in place stupefied while the shadow of eclipse increases.

If there had been honesty and accountability all along, none of the disasters would have been. If there were no manipulative humans manufacturing personal gain involved, none of these disasters would even be perceived as disaster. Nature must do what she does, it is only fools who see themselves as too big to fail and too powerful and clever to lose that interfere with Earth's natural behavior as they are doing now. However, it is not them I wish to talk about, or their destructive definitions of their fellows such as terriers, malcontents and misanthropes. After enough years of disaster, our primary concerns are with the violations of sanctity taking place. Remove "loss of livelihoods" from the mix and you get genocide exactly as other genocides, which are continuing simultaneous to the GOM genocide, which is one not all that singular in its potential for mass destruction when you consider the complex vegetable matter being laid to waste globally on a continuing basis.

We are past peak everything, the seams are bursting, the planet is obese with corruption and lack of spirituality. All that is and was sacred has been made a mockery by self aggrandizing self representatives of empty shells crippled by cult. Jim Jones was only one of millions. They would like us to go without the convenience of the recent past, okay, we're ready, many already there, but they themselves will not. We're not supposed to notice they talk the talk but do not walk the walk. As the talk is projected enlarged, more volcanoes of disaster erupt, the lava flows freely and things around us change for the worse. Natural attrition is off the table in favor of nuclear devolution as a far more effective method for wealth accumulation.
After you see it a few times, you know what is happening and you know while you personally had nothing to do with it, it is leading the way for much more, much worse (is that possible?).

Put a picture in your mind of Hiroshima/Nagasaki a mile deep in the GOM. They could do it, that one is on the table. Speaking of choices, an alternative to this method is the Nigerian debacle which is doing nothing and which is why BP snuck into the region without trepidations. " So what if we have a problem? This is the way of the world. We're heroes doing heroic works!" Behind every failure lies the glorious promise of infallibility made possible by breaking that timeless contract with Mother Earth.

It doesn't matter what legal minds press for justice or injustice, it doesn't matter what bigger fish swallow up the smaller reckless fish. It can never matter what punishments will or won't be applied here. There is no torture mankind could inflict that would outweigh the damage done and to come.

Has it ever occurred to anyone reading here that we may be the aliens in the mix? That our perceptions of right and wrong were formed though landing in hostile territory while attempting to reverse the ongoing destruction? If so, the mission just may be impossible.

The majority of leadership has always known the Earth is finite and attempt to conceal that knowledge in order to systematize the populations leading us into global slavery. It is the very act of concealing and the foul intention of enslavement that make this world go round. You would have to say then, this mission was exploratory, painful and not terribly educational. It is fun sometimes, but mostly those times are not recognized until you have something to relate with them such as extended disasters, mass poverty and sickness, genocides and never ending war. It is painful indeed to see them killing off all of that on which they depend for survival.

For the record, there is one item of genuine progress to report which is the search effort for Abby Sunderland, the 16 year-old soloing the globe by sail, who lost communications and suffered a broken mast in 30' waves during which the Australian Maritime Safety Authority located her, at great peril to the search plane, without compensation. They say they responded because they want other countries to respond to Australians in trouble.
Already the Family Values Fundies are organizing ... never ones to let opportunity go unnoticed. In a perfect world, AMSA would set the standards.