the demonstration of a test

It was easily three weeks ago I was doing my usual, walking the Hound.  It was an extended period of multiple tests, one after another, coinciding with each other, piling on one another, you might be experiencing the same thing, my mind stretched grid-like in the demonstrations arising, working out the balancing act required to meet each one, confidently, making the most of each as they were  presented and recognized for what they were.  The Hound snatched something nasty from the bushes at night and whomped it down before I could inspect.  He became ill, of course.  In the course of getting him to the vet, the rockbuggy would have to be charged and a new starter meant getting to the car guy.    These are classic everyday tests we experience in overpopulation, nothing is as it would be today if only ...  You may have noticed these tests come in bunches.  Certainly someone, or one key element, along the chain of multiple tasks required would flake and more, each test required it be done correctly in order to proceed to the next.  As soon as it came to me the combination of dog, vet and auto mechanic was a test and the scenery and cast were all part of the demonstration, all doubt vanished.  And still, I barely know my way around in this place.  Driving around is always a sort of hunt and peck affair, but its small here in my quadrant and with enough time, you can reach whatever destination you want.  I was up to the challenge.  As a person who has lived jungle and rural for half of their life, to find my way around a complicated maze of ramps and overpasses in that special searching style explains my lack of interest in knowing where anything else is located, with the exception of what it is I want to find within every sector of post NWO structures, or would that be Neo-NWO, whale-gulping our Mother's resources in every skinflint shape and flavor.  I refused the GPS app for a similar reason, why do we need this shit?  GPS addicts tell me how fabulous and convenient are these talking beltway devices, but they should know better by now.  I would take offense, if such a thing were possible, except I can't be offended by not being interested in mass consumer hypnotics to quiet the methane-belching cattle.

There are some days or nights or both that run by us magically in their perfection.  Its as if you were looking at a tapestry of the hours woven as it happens, where the yarns, blending colors and weave explain it all in seamless mesh, as one activity naturally leads to another, each demonstration sweetly paves the way into the middle of the next.  The Pup is cool now thanks to his vet who did what I wanted her to do and relinquished her own plan for dog te$ting and just handed over the goodies.  I'd done my homework online.  The rockbuggy took us there because 1) I got an unexpectedly easy charge for the battery, and 2) the car guy did his replacement at the speed of, heh, light.  

There's more, two beat up strays were hanging around the 'hood during this same period.  You could see they'd had it rough and for a long time.  Various neighbors were leaving out food and water, but not taking them in.  It was pretty cold too.  I worried about their nights, under bushes, escaping the MAN, but the way they were roaming around the houses after dark said they were hungry, tired of exposure to the elements and in need of family.  My own pup was worried too.  For him, the message was loud and clear.  I called a friend who has adoption connections and was told if I could bring them to her, she would get them medical attention.  Ah ... the test took a sudden turn.  I'll save some space here and just mention they now live permanently in a nice big heavily-fenced house with dog door, huge backyard and pool and are brushed, bathed and putting on weight, best of all, they are cherished.  You might think I denied them their freedom, but the city kill shelter is reportedly worse than Abu Graib.  The same people who would call the dogcatcher, and there are multitudes of them, are the same patriotic Roundup Ready racist fringe who  are devoted to their version of cleanliness is Godliness. 

The list of tests goes on, those I mentioned were important, but apparently not final.  The tests are actually life, why we are here.  Sometimes, a test will appear as minor, the reason for that is to gauge your ability to acknowledge they are tests.  To use a TAO-like balancing example, without awareness of what it is that is taking place on a higher level, there is no understanding at all, i.e.; ignorance.  Further, failing a challenge that you arranged, attaches itself to your core, negatively, from negativity into certain defeat and self pity. 

An interesting test is giving small sums, if it is done compassionately, without expectation of reward such as currying favor or calculating return, there is no element of debt which changes everything that the recipient was preparing himself to feel badly about in advance of asking for what it was he needed. There is a beautiful Universe that exists where expectation and anticipation, rewards and dishonor are erased from the activity.  There is no hypocrisy, no building of pre- and post-fabricated animosity.  It can be for some a very difficult test especially in overpopulation, everyone you know running short of funds and thus quickly friendless, rampant corruption all around and the fear of being labeled with trash nicknames behind their backs. It works both ways when done wrong, the giver is a sucker and the taker is a deadbeat.

I well remember being so crazy hungry I actually called home collect, thousands of miles away, to beg, and looked down at the Lower East Side street beneath my bare feet before the call connected and staring back at me was a twenty lying on the pavement.  In terms of demonstrations and tests, the message was clear and it was multipart on numerous levels, all of them corrections and lasting lessons.   None of them forgotten to this day, especially the part about the futility of dwelling so intensely on fear of the future.  Given awareness, all works out as it was designed.

Just because I am posting about beautiful things such as tests in no way negates the egregious, bloody happenings "out there".  The time has arrived to make serious plans to secure a more survivable future.  As a reminder, I am reposting Scrapwood's contribution of T'ao Ch'ien's  After Liu Ch'ai-Sang's Poem ...

I'd long felt these mountains and lakes
beckoning, and wouldn't have thought twice,
but my family and friends couldn't bear
talk of living apart. Then one lucky day
a strange feeling came over me, and I left,
walking-stick in hand, for my western farm.
No one was going back home: on those outland
roads, farm after farm lay in empty ruins,
but our thatch hut's already good as ever,
and you'd think our new fields had been
tended for years. When valley winds turn
cold, spring wine eases hunger and work,
and though it isn't strong, just baby-girl
wine, it's better than nothing for worry.
Distant -- as months and years pass away here,
the bustling world's racket grows distant.
Plowing and weaving provide all we use.
Who needs anything more?
Away, ever away into this hundred-year life and
beyond, my story and I vanish together like this.

decisions, and decisions, and decisions, creeps in this petty pace ...

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

Macbeth, Act 5, Scene 5

If sticking with blogger translates to censorship, a further dumbing-down of the greater dumbdown which incidentally is a major whiplash into absolute slavedom, then the idea of packing up and moving one's blog somewhere else is unnerving to say the least.  Who is to say which is worse, staying or leaving?  Of course, moving elsewhere can be done, supposedly easily if you buy the hype, but the downside is finding yourself spending infinitely MORE time online than you already do, without the interaction, the discoveries, the visuals and the building on each others spiritual foundations.  Moving the blog technically is demanding enough for non-geeks, but the rearrangement of visuals is an unnecessary chore because we've already done it and can't imagine anything more potentially irritating than revising a finished work without the tools we trained ourselves to use developed over many years and through many "supposedly" more efficient ways of doing what we do here.   There is a  lot more to it than we are being led to believe, deleting the photos Picasa has accumulated in disregard to the fact we have already have offline photo storage and of course, the very big issue of starting all over again with a different email service.  I've tried a number of them over the years and found g-mail a lot faster to use, although you don't have any of the graphics choices other email systems provide.  And then there is the search feature, too, etc.

I've had a hunch from the beginning of this blog D day was coming because once you sign on to the blogger experience, you are encouraged to open a lot of strange doors, all of them leading back inside the grand spider web.  If you don't want to be eaten alive, you'll need to find the exit.  If you are uncomfortable with google's widely posted changes to come, don't let it turn into the procrastinator's indecisive wait and see. 

If we leave things as they are, after March 1st or 12th, I'm not exactly sure of the date, it appears we automatically turn into a Facebooky social networking situation, an all-inclusive, systematically tracked and profiled, total void of privacy; whatever is said in blogs, comments and emails will be scrutinized for the stated purpose of personalized advertisements popping up apparently whenever we connect to the web.  And where we go, we are advised, will be linked with where we've been, where we go next and how they classify the individual user, all wrapped in one tidy package to improve our overall individual internet experience.  Really!  Then count on whomever else comes into the mix up the road apiece, someone with the innovative moxie of the moment, as pretty much a guarantee to take it even further and deeper into previously unknown dimensions of connectivity and hog snorting glee as the anticipated profits rain down.  You will have to decide for yourself what those dimensions of the future could mean and how they could affect you.  It may suddenly take on new weight in your thoughts concerning your participation in the program. 

I am of two minds on this.  One mind, not my better, higher mind, says "So what, I'm okay with things as they are." The other mind sees this situation as dangerous, dangerous because anything anyone says is open to interpretation by technology, how reliable is that?  There certainly is no logical reason to be lackadaisical since whatever is going on today is already racing to change itself towards superseding unlimited growth, imagine that, infinite mutations of pituitary gigantism also known as Launois syndrome; downgrades and bankruptcy likely being the feared classic consequences they probably envision lie ahead without immediately monetizing every cluster of binary numbers.  Do note this change comes directly on the heels of Facebook's IPO filing.  If this gives you the chills, try to remember we're talking about personhoods here, not flesh and blood. 

Try telling them it isn't necessary, stop fiddling with what isn't broken.  Ah, but you know you cannot argue with machines armed with computer generated stats promising profit for economic innovation.  Have you ever tried to contact blogger for tech support?  Where are the people, the human beings wearing ear pieces and mouth mics, to fix your foibles?  We shouldn't wonder what happened to the human personality that used to be so gracious.  Once autobots replaced the human being your query into tech support in ANY situation no longer encouraged or required courtesy.  Once you figured out you could pay your bills by cellphone, online or just by authorizing creditors to trawl your bank account, you didn't have to write legibly either.  Mostly we learned to check boxes and copy/paste the rest.  How encouraging are conversations with other voices where you respond with only "yes" or "no" and hang up on them?  Every one of us is at least guilty of that.  That is what they want.  These antisocial actions only create more of the same antisocial behaviors.  If we are willing to cooperate this much, how much more will we cooperate with before signing out for the last time?  Are we even close?  Remotely close?  Some will be more than happy to go away and do something else, something real, something that does not lead to ennui.  Believe it or not, there is still a beautiful world out there, we will never find it the longer we stay glued to this unnatural relationship.

By the time it takes to deliver munitions over Iran, internet use will stampede, that is if it has not already reached everyone its going to reach.  We all have our own personalized arguments against this medium of communications, small or large, and it is strange to see ourselves continuing to take the beating all the while knowing we pay a heavy price to play.  I feel like the last person on the planet sometimes, hanging on to dial-up.  Every time I investigate the range of high speed options, I walk away disgusted, they think we use our laptops to watch TV!  Yes, that is always the first thing asked by DSL sales reps, "How much television viewing do you do online?"  When I say "None", there is a blank pause as if some alien broke into the connection.  And fer cryin' out loud, who in their right mind would want to pay more for something we already have and really, really don't want or need more?  If you read this blog's previous posts you might have come across a brilliant comment from someone who has been through it all and was at a complete loss to say what he's gained personally over the past decade from his internet experience.  I agree.  How about ah, less than nothing?  Nothing we didn't already know or would have discerned anyway or found at the local library if we were so moved.  Somehow, out of all these years of living we share, we have arrived here today intact, did we really need keyboards and autobots to ease us inside the corral?  Isn't this easing simply another avenue of humiliation and diminishment on the way to the ultimate goal? That the citizen animal is of no more worth to this planet than a useless eater taking up space that could be mangled into profitability with a little shift in perception accomplished though the multitaskers' attention deficit hyperactivity disorder information storm pulsating with blazing personalized come-ons?  See cryptogon's take.

My decision is made, seriously, is there any decision?  I'm merely looking for some unlikely argument for the other side in case I missed something.  I've been through this before with an earlier blog hosted on our former ISP and it turned out badly making blogger seem such a good find.  I was shut out of my original blog because the visitor limit was exceeded, which was, ahem, a shock.  Just a few minutes ago I tried to access that blog and the message reads forbidden access on their server which says only their ISP customers are allowed to visit, provided those visitors remain under whatever viewing limit is being imposed.  Its no great loss, but typical of the surprises you come across in these strange days.  If we go by recent history, it can only become more of what it already is.

In closing, I have to say, it does appear another long term relationship is in the throes of crashing.  It did not have to be this way fellas.

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

Interruptions During a Cage Match

Anyone still confused at this late stage?  On a personal level, as metaphor, we live our lives in a series of situations, for the most part, floating through the days and hours as if there is no ending. There are always things to do and be done, the incredible variety of living species in our situations that require attention, and often there are little jams to be unraveled, which we unravel and continue on with our journeys.  In other words, we're coping, as best we know how at any given time ... until something like these times comes into focus and digs its way into our minds as a bad cloud.  No matter what happens, the bad cloud is carried within.  Every now and then it rolls itself into a hurricane or tornado and whatever else is going on within has to take a back seat.  Lately we've found ourselves unwittingly embroiled in bullying bs boiling over in the very kitchens of the bad cloud's panic promotional.  Ages ago I put up a line from the original film Wall Street where Bud Fox's Dad says to him "A man lives long enough, he sees everything."

And yet, what we are seeing is part and parcel of events that have been years in the making.  As we grew up, there were plenty of  signs and omens, generally misinterpreted as if such "very fine people" couldn't possibly be behind the growing evil.  Here's one thing I know, which I learned early.  Very fine people do not wear white ties. Tacky, tacky, tacky.  You can imagine my utter dismay every time one of these very fine people makes some televised, i.e.; visual, statement about anything going on in the bad cloud and how really, really, its a good cloud, while adorned in absolutely fatal fashion statements.  You may think I am kidding, but I am serious.  Only factual, dyed-in-the-wool handmaidens to the Devil himself, slimeball Mobsters wear white ties, or pink, or yellow or anything bordering on pastels.  Have you ever looked at those ties on camera?  Dancing pixels sending bizarre rays into your pupils.  You will note, they appear to possess a dress code as well as common purpose among them.  Their fawning grocery clerks, errand boys/girls and celebrity punditry adopt all of it to better drive home the Mission.   Personally, I got out of that car a long time ago.  I'm not sure exactly what it was, it might have been the pastel neck-wear. it might have been the always misfit trying to fit in all the wrong places with all the wrong people.  It might have been a particular hallucination where peaking, suddenly everyone grew very small, something like looking through a telescope backwards, crystal clear, everything was the same so I perceived, except the amazingly sharp reduction of everyone and everything within view.  I might not have come back from that had it not been for a rescue to another artist's hideaway except he was one of these artists who liked to grind a subject into its abstract which can be done if you work at it long enough, a stage which he had not yet reached still being a literalist making O's in primaries.  His studio aka free room  in the squatter's commune was painted with every color and size circle the way you'd roll whole walls and ceiling in soft white, right down to the floor, the fabrics, the fireplace and so on.  My problem was they were all spinning like wild crayola cheerios blown from a cannon which created a kind of whirling nausea and yearning for the outdoors, for something real, Nature and its comfort which eventually I found crawling downstairs, to the door, to freedom in the anonymity of city streets, one foot and the next until I led myself to green pastures lying down with wildflowers in the meadow watching clouds move, meet and move again, they were good clouds.  I looked sideways long enough to see friends join in.  It seemed we lay there centuries.  We might have.

I'm still not sure of any tipping point where it all gelled.  Not a day, lately an hour, passes without some intrusive nonsense like the "jobless recovery".  As much as I would love to be done with it, it smarts.  While today we might find we are not affected, surely tomorrow we will be?  We have all been affected, perhaps not all at one time, but we would not allow bad clouds the opportunity to linger, even distantly, if we were not personally familiar with the extremes of pain they are capable of producing.   We remember a moment in time, we have memories of disaster, we have had our hopes and expectations dashed to smithereens, we have lost loved ones, we have seen others lose everything and lost too much ourselves along the way.  We believe in redemption, we trust in resurrection even without visual confirmation we have confidence in the goodness of living, that it is holy, that life itself is holy and that interior perfection of every living being is all the proof necessary and nothing can take that perfection away.

Do yourself a huge favor and read these links, if you have not already, in any order, order hardly matters, although I realize I have implied some order, it won't take up all that much of your time since you are already online reading, here are a few things to absorb that should stick, I know, so little sticks anymore, but give it a try:

From Mick:
The Handbook of Human Ownership for New Tax Farmers

From Vivek:
Hey America ...

From James Kunstler's CN comments:
The Great Global Debt Depression: Its All Greek to Me

From Paul Craig Roberts:
An Economy Destroyed

Done yet?  Go and finish them now, at least one of them, I'm not going anywhere and I know the last two are particularly lengthy, but important!  If you get fidgety, a typically addicted to convenience and/or chaos-driven western citizens' trait, just read the last one first (backwards is a great way to go since front is back and back is front now) all the way through and return later as you carve out space in your offline Word calendar for sincere acknowledgement of self through definition of the Apocalyptic experience in which we all share, like it or not ... or just make a Sticky Note for your monitor.

Let's get down to business

It seems that the deficit ceiling is replacing the Casey Anthony trial, with Cantor and Boner vs. our leader.  Have you ever seen Grown Men behave in this way?  And these are our representatives of the peeps.  Hey, put 'em in a cage match for cryin' out loud and leave us out of it.  If you knew these people in real life, as neighbors or a clique at the local swimming pool, would you have ANYthing to do with them?  Who uses Vitalis anymore? As usual, we are forced to ask, what else is going on that we're not hearing about.  And suddenly, practically written on the wind, Norway!  Last check the death toll is under one hundred, but the figure is growing and will likely be higher by sigh, tomorrow.  And speaking of Wetiko wickedness, could care-less-ness, those freak outbursts I mentioned last posting and a few posts before that, are on the increase.  The ignorant on the ground, probably illiterate too, due to the fact all of  this "toxic waste" is widely available through every expanding format of shining electronic delivery, are bursting loose from the jobless recovery to imitate the very activities dreamed up by "very fine people".  Things come and go at breakneck speed, each dive surpassing former dives into deeper and deeper, never before unexplored depths of the raging cesspool of evil.  Everything about them flys red flags and nothing happens.  They can wear GO OLIGARCHY tie tacks on their pale gold ties and nothing happens.  They can publicly scorn each other mere inches away from hand to hand combat with lies and denials and ... nothing happens.

Way down below in the secret cache of an overstressed, oversized, over-produced population where mostly everything has gotten completely out of control because people no longer want to know what is happening around them since their entire lives have become Adventures in Narcissism 24/7, there are horrors and very difficult to describe drastic abuses of the innocent and unaware surfacing for a few hours, a day or two, before the deficit ceiling cage match blows them off the platform.  Weird things like the Leiby Kletzy tragedy and the Coronado mansion double murder.  When the celebrity pundit reads the teleprompter saying "Why Norway?" do you grimace at her sheer idiocy or weep for the Libyans who on another planet, one with good clouds, would be filling the bellies of the Somalis instead of under hijack at the crazed insistence of  the followers of economic nirvana which is not a resilient or even remotely sustainable system... as we are reminded this week after thinking about the far reaching implications in the Archdruid's excellent essay. Even Libya has vanished from the news as if its another ho hum long term occupation in the making and we're to just go shopping or something.  Its always unnerving how quickly we have these things analyzed for us since we are too dumbed down now to read the blood on the wall.  How long did it take Bush to declare Bin Laden did it?  How long did it take CNN to read their prepared statement claiming the little potty or the base is responsible for Norway's attacks?  Fifteen minutes?  An hour?  And, gosh, we haven't even touched on the highly contagious cell hacking disease spreading paranoia and opening wallets across the pond, its not necessary my friends, is it.  My only question while admitting I aspire to know nothing because I can't stand to know, its too disgusting, is: Where's the forensics on the guy who lay dead in the portapotty for twelve hours?  In't this one like the Coronado mistress found bound and hung from a backyard balcony, in that suicide is often disguised to appear as homicide, they say.  Or is that homicide is often disguised to appear as suicide? Gimme a break!  We are looking at updated Wellstonings, stories for the stupid, damaged cells dividing and multiplying, exacerbating, exaggerating initial damage.

So I'm with Mick and Vivek.  You will have some feelings about those links and I request we stay on subject for this post, if possible, and share them in the comments, again, if possible.  If you have something else you have to say, of course that is always welcome, but for this post and those links, we'll need to talk.  I've held off publishing them until now because the ubiquitous crescendo of the greedy oligarchs wrapping around the globe and destroying all life on Earth cannot be ignored or denied anymore.  I should add that all the evils noted above are taking place as the Earth crumbles in anthropogenic climate chaos which must be something like living  it up in an inescapable gated seaside community next door to six nuclear power plants, six months before a super quake and tsunami.  In other words, its getting dangerous out there. 

You do understand, don't you, its not going away.  It only grows, like all living species subject to the variations of Malthusian prophecy, build it and they will come, and keep coming and coming on, until ...

On that dire precipice which appears to have no possible live landing in sight,  I leave you with the best line from Vanilla Sky - "Every passing minute is a chance to turn it all around." 
Within us is that power.

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.

Listening to the wind

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

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

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

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

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

Bella's little girls, 15 minutes into the world

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

Stella working on a treat

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

food wagon at the Sphinx

Please go to the Gallery.

If you are on dial-up and have to wait for the images to download, here's something to digest in the interum.

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

the gift that keeps on giving

You can't always get what you want, But if you try sometimes you just might find, You just might find, You get what you need, ah yes ... The Rolling Stones

The weather in my region has been all over the charts, I'd almost expect summer next week, except snow is predicted and the temps are way down, but lush green grass carpets the canyons and fallen leaves blanket the drive and deck.  Spring and autumn have come together to welcome winter, officially on the 21st of this month.  Cullen would have loved these grasses and I cannot help but think of him while I'm walking Bernie when we always bagged genuine organic grass for The Little Guy.  Normally, I couldn't do that until early spring, like March.  Is this how its going to be from here on out?  Seasons interwoven with each other, the more painful aspects of each dominating?  Its getting very interesting.  My latest theory on twirling chemtrails (definitely not art) is they are contracted to disperse industrial smog aka hiding the ugly secret we may be far worse off than we think ... Of course you are aware that no one denies Climate Chaos anymore unless its in the comment section of a tinseltown website appealing to IQs under 80: "Why is it so cold in global warming?"  Heh. 

Our beloved Scrappy Scrapwood turned me onto the following which could have been written for each of us, answering the old question of why so many Americans are self-unaware, emotionally stunted and in a near constant state of denial undertowed by sleepless anxieties.  Short answer is because they are force taught the wrong thing at the wrong time, the very time they should be exploring, using their imaginations and developing their creativity.  Here is some of Scrap's borrowed wisdom which he reminded me [...] its not for us, its for our children and our grandchildren:

From: The Wisdom of Hands Blog

Member Whole

Froebel's concept of Gliedganzes or "member-whole" was an important part of his educational philosophy. It means that a child is not merely a child but also a member of a family, a community, a state and a nation. Aristotle and Hegel both discussed the same notion, and for Froebel the idea helped to explain what he had observed in nature.

"The fundamental law of vegetable life is that each successive stage of development is a higher growth of the preceding one--e.g., the petals are transformed ordinary leaves, the stamens and pistils transformed petals. Each successive formation present the essential nature of the plant in a more subtle garb, until at last it seems clothed only in a delicate perfume."

Consistent with this thought, Froebel believed that "to become conscious of self is the first business of the child and the whole business of man."

What if we as teachers, parents, guardians and promoters of wisdom and growth were to see children in their full dimensions, not as mere children, but as growing into membership of family, community, state and nation, and more? Assisting that unfolding of consciousness is the most important goal of education. The following is from Susan E. Blow who founded the first public school kindergarten in the US.

The greatest mistakes in education are rooted in the failure to recognize and conform to the different stages of natural development. Educational theorists are constantly pointing out this error; educational practice is constantly repeating it. Notwithstanding all that has been said and written, we still make knowledge our idol, and continue to fill the child's mind with foreign material, under the gratuitous assumption that at a later age he will be able, through some magic transubstantiation, to make it a vital part of his own thought. This is like loading his stomach with food which he can not digest, under the delusive hope that he may be able to digest it when he is a man. It is forcing the mind to move painfully forward under a heavy weight, instead of running, leaping and flying under the incitement of its own energy and the allurement of its own perceived ideal. The attempt to force a premature activity of reason can result only in repulsion of his sympathies and the stultification of his mind.

There have been a number of articles recently about how desperately misinformed people are, how little they know about science, geography, and/or any other subject. They have a huge number of deeply held opinions about everything, nonetheless. Much of what we see in the media regarding moronic political discourse, anger toward academia and science, the calling of names like leftist and socialist, the fixation in the media with characters like balloon boy, Joe the plumber and Sarah Palin are the direct consequences of the schooling that Susan E. Blow describes. Her words were written in 1894. Can it be that by neglecting the education of our children's hands, we are turning their minds to mush? There is a direct one-to-one correlation between the decline of the manual arts in education and the rapid rise of the American pinhead.

Froebel, like other German educators of the time, was influenced by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who said, "“Each has his own happiness in his hands, as the artist handles the rude clay he seeks to reshape it into a figure; yet it is the same with this art as with all others: only the capacity for it is innate; the art itself must be learned and painstaking”

I will harp on a point I have made many times in the blog that relates to Ms. Blow's point of conforming to natural stages of development. In Finland students become better readers in 37 1/2 percent less time by beginning at age 8. Here in the US, we seem desperate to reside in idiocy. [...]

Got that? Now, here we are in the holidays which in addition to the prototypical holiday behaviors, always brings up a few tattered memories of Christmas past.  Confession: I admit to a slight sadness the one thing I really wanted I never got, realizing what I wanted I would have to give myself in my own way.  As the years rolled along I did just that, but it was too late.  You must begin ballet training very early, between three and five, no older than eight, if you are going to dance professionally with a successful company.  All those childhood nights after school, the tears, the anguish, the cruel words and ambiance of abuse permeated the dining room homework sessions as I sweated out memorizing multiplication tables hating the deal that was my setup for failure.  If I made an A+ in math I would get ballet lessons, which never happened.  To see the variations of the Nutcracker now, I see what I could have been doing and am not.  Instead, in art school, I supplemented my course work with dance training, I loved every minute, was a natural, made "A"s effortlessly, every time, but even then it was far too late.  Don't get me wrong, art IS my raison d'etre, but it always existed alongside my other gift, the one I was denied until I could earn the means and the scholarships to do it myself.

Did something like this happen to Edward Degas?

One day helping out in the principal's office I peeked at my file.  I saw my IQ score.  There are nonsense rules against seeing it, if I been caught, I'd have been punished.  Detentions or notes home, something ghastly and embarrassing, but the deed was done and life suddenly much improved.  I suppose it was hard for my teachers to reconcile how such a child could not memorize multiplication tables, but they didn't know about the deals being made over homework when I longed with all my being to be doing arabesques and petite burrees on point. My longing obliterated the value of whatever lay before me.

The truth was, and I figured this out early too, dancers were thought of as fallen women, burlesque performers, at least as my parent's zeitgeist trained them.  I must have been raised to be rich, even though we were not rich that I could see by any means, have servants, nannies for the children, spend summers sailing at a family compound, perhaps they imagined me a surgeon's wife, provided he was well educated and from a good family, mostly I think I was supposed to be off to lunch with other rich ladies and write checks to popular charities at society balls.  I know a lot of women who were raised to be exactly the same thing, unconsciously transmitted to them by equally well-intentioned mothers and fathers.  Sometimes we joke with one another at our mutual reversals of fortune and the myths we were born into which fell drastically apart once we were on our own, because nothing we learned in school gave us skills to deal with real life.  It was as if we had been raised to do nothing while appearing to be doing something beneficial.  Everything I really needed to know I've learned by the seat of my jeans.

We cannot change the past, we can only move on and make the best of what we've got.  I don't blame my parents for their child rearing practices, my father abroad for months, my mother sliding down the social ladder from socialite to department store saleslady, repeatedly relocated far from anything she'd ever known, they were only operating within the sole system available in their gradually diminishing circumstances, however, the next generation and the generations following need our help right now as they enter their journey into a new world with new systems and options previously unheard of or lock into lifestyles previously demeaned.  Here is another very important and helpful persuader.  When you really think about the system as it exists today, anything healthy about the typical American education is being slashed from state budgets, so why even bother?  I have much praise for homeschooling and even more for children who are comfortable in their own skin, free to go all the way into their areas of interest as far as they want.  Is there a problem with that?  The only problem is the same problem unacknowledged inside the preoccupied din of the ever-creative errand boys operating as delivery men for the gnashing beast demanding obedience.

As recessions rose and laid dormant only to reoccur, what one person once snubbed as beneath them, i.e.; not good enough, became another person's valued employment as the little people en masse are at last forced back against the wall to accept total loss as normal everyday phenomena. Conversely, what was once refined and respected is now uniformly trashed as FUBAR and vice versa: any job will do, flip burgers, push mops, greet consumers, scrub toilet stalls, who cares, everyone has to eat.  The people who perform those jobs that Americans wouldn't do, deserve our sincere respect for doing them now. Thus, looking around, you'll see the revolution is already in full swing.  It is also violent, but not what we were taught a violent revolution was in world history class.  Now  violence takes place in protests, pitted against masked Darths and their thuggish, brutal street tortures, it takes place in undeclared wars far away from our vision, it happens in the too-frequent and violent crimes discussed in my last post, the kind of crime people resort to committing when they simply explode from a lifetime of abuse via suppression, backwards and upside down to the needs of the authentic self - that real self deep inside us who reaches out unthinkingly to carry a crying baby dolphin to shore as happened in the active phase of the BP debacle.  The kind of crimes that are a release from and attack against the abusive, often religious morality imposed from birth that denied whomever else it was the criminal could have been had he/she been treated with respect, insight to interest and encouragement of those interests, exemplified by the tragic fate of Shaquan Duley and her young sons:

[...] What is it that makes one child oblivious to abuse and another cower and fall ill at the moment its shadow appears over the horizon? What is it that allows one person to be unfeeling towards someones suffering but another experience compassion? [...]

As with everything else, if we want something to happen we have to do it ourselves.  Its too late for many of us reading here, our pasts are already yesterday's tire treads petroglyphed along forgotten trails, a permanent reminder those who inhabit our future might someday find themselves travelling the same destructive paths.  We can make it easier for them if homo sapiens are to survive.  And should they survive, which I am not exactly confident they will, we can at least allow them to possess peace of mind and meaningful lives free of irresponsible value judgements and at all times fully aware of self-worth and skilled in the creation and stewardship required for sustaining life on Earth.  If we cannot leave them material things, as used to be and still is for a certain minority, a yardstick for some kind of unearned accomplishment, we can give them a better trip.  That is the only gift that matters.

Coincidentally, from Visible's essay today, A Transmission from the Visible Planes:

If your idea of loving someone is to give them things in place of the love, you’re going to have a front row seat through the years to what that policy accomplishes. [...]

Photo: Degas oil c. Google Images

crime and consumption inside the pyramid of limited growth

Welcome to the end of 2010 AD, the hottest year on record where climate catastrophe expresses itself in ice storms, blizzards, tornadoes, droughts, massive displacement from record floods, the unleashing of the Gulf Stream, the death of our oceans and slaughter of sea life, as the manipulators of the markets trawl the planet for hidden treasure.  The wars and threats, the sly turns of phrase concealing nefarious intent, the untying of entire social fabrics into homelessness and penury, human against human, the survival of the most unfit with imitation mullahs, Jesus theme parks, the celebrated Sarah Palin gaffing with the stars ...  Next?

I had to get into town yesterday, prepare my mind, stagger my lists of our most dire needs, the idea was a quick turn around, the vision: brief inconveniences, but a zoom-thru. I was wrong. Every day is Black Friday now, every retailer anticipating the every need of the breathless consumer, too consumed in consuming to gift wrap the items being purchased. Thus, gift wrapping service is back, restructured in prototypical style for today's overworked workers - such as men's plaid pajama pants prewrapped for your convenience in a matching plaid flannel, gold-corded drawstring bag. "Just throw it under the tree".  Many people will.  (Then why bother to wrap anything at all?) I looked at them briefly, in sideways glances appearing to look beyond them, wondering what their lives must be like.  I wondered now that unemployment benefits are on hiatus again, WHAT were they thinking standing between the cashier and the card reader, ashen-faced, waiting for approval.  Approval.  And believe you me, this place was not Neiman's.  No, this prefab aluminum freestanding HVAC'd energy whale was only one of millions dotting the face of our tortured planet providing an all under one roof multi-aisled mall.  You may call them by their brand names, but they bear little separation from their engineering department's prototype illustrated in the engineering manual belonging to the mother ship.  That is why they all look alike and feel alike.  The little guys just can't get on board unless they are too absorbable to fail, meaning they statistically clocked-in with a profitable niche and bear AAA rated potential for mass consumption suitable for whichever targeted age and income demographic is most available for pocket picking.  Enter the Marketeers. This too is all in the manual as a No Child Left Behind sort of thing.

Everything out there has its place in someones shopping cart, maybe not ours, but someone who doesn't know when enough is enough.  Oh, I'm sure they mean well, but they have no, not even a basic low-level unacknowledged passing concern, self-awareness or grasp of free will to hold themselves back from dubious decisions.  You could surmise they've operated on auto-pilot throughout eternity. Such is the round scripted lifestyle of which the human being is but a square peg on which minute-by-minute the chisels work to make us fit the prototype.  The model. I passed children's dresses trying to find an exit and overheard the clerk tell a customer, "I'm taking this off the model because I have to have it, but come back later, we're restocking tonight."  Actually, I was amazed I heard anything above the roar of gnashing consumption.  It has a sound of its own like a sports stadium filled with puking migraine sufferers and crying babies.


Since it is impossible to shape us any more than we already shape ourselves, it chafes - some a great deal more than others (those in particular who go along to get along, the incurious) as we see in the almost daily, once  infrequent, bizarre crimes against other people they inflict as if their actions are fully justified by helpless lapses into sheer irrationality.  I hate to say this, but these home grown crimes are becoming commonly more gruesome as they unfold.  Fact: Too many rats in a cage will fight to the death.  We now expect stealth plotting, preplanned multiples of misleading illogical excuses, gang rape, death and dismemberment as another extension of WWT (worldwide terror).


For this many people populating our dying planet squeezed under unbearable restrictions growing stricter, like a house where the windowless rooms grow smaller, tighter, in every dimension, the unbalanced, the beaten-down, the confused, well, somethings gotta blow and many are blowing now.  In the Culture of Extinction (Charles' title), the tight lids "always-misfits" hide under are coming unglued.  They seem to arrive from diseased (dis-eased) roots, early on find solace in imitation, but poisoned by BGH and weed killer, never fitting into any mold whatsoever.  They grew misanthropic over time except for what survival for themselves could be appropriated through innocent others, whether in a volcanic release of roiling under the surface pent-up energies or a pure expression of hatred of humanity manifesting through acting-out a perceived satanic part in the great comedy.  Couple this stark void of self-awareness and lack of free will with all else happening environmentally and politically throughout the globe, sprinkle on stubborn chemtrails, the unpunished crimes of political criminals, increasing indebtedness and a representative-self dictating survival by any means within immediate reach and you get deformed, crippled behaviors that by their very grossness, further infect and upend everything surrounding them never to return to anything resembling even remote stability. Prison and programs are mere placeholders because the thing unrecognized is the healing required to eliminate these crimes against the innocent comes only from within.  As long as everyone going along to get along appears to survive in the Culture of Extinction, the example from on high set in stone and widely approved, the crippled mannequin, the failed prototype, still imitating, sees himself as deserving his role in that culture.   Giving vent to his rage is just a small part of an evolving malevolent philosophy likely glimpsed during the formative years with self-inflicted unhealthy and repetitive doses of pcp tranched with speed.

Ambient abuse turned to domestic violence is always wildly exacerbated by money issues.  Its like cremating a simmering pot. The slightest and most unexpected thing sets them off.  Thus, sitting directly under our noses we have a huge violent domestic crisis drowned out by apples and androids and yet, why this is so is rarely questioned. Every cultural trigger still exists.  The safety remains on off.


Somehow, in the immediate aftermath of 911, I came across a plastic flag pin and wore it.  I participated in the lights on all night solidarity of the masses.   I stayed online, seeking information while the TV alternated between hurricane warnings and Bushisms.  This went on for about two days, soundtracked by hammers slamming up storm shutters until hurricane pundits were all that was on 24 hours straight, drowning out the bullhorns and crazy pilots.  And then the power went out.  The winds howled, the foundations shook, the trees were breaking, sheets of rain beat its way into every crevice, the animals racing around the interior, horrified.  It came to me our present was all that mattered and would always be all that matters.  Everything else is extraneous manufactured prototypical stuffing except for the fundamental basics, our loved ones peace of mind which means of course, we have to be there for them in whatever way is possible.  This is why, especially in these harsh times, we dutifully get up every day and square off with dragons so that our loved ones will not have the same struggle.


We know just by observing the direction daily drastic events are heading, things are going to get worse.  Again, adjusting your program in support of your loved ones is priority.  Some of us do it naturally as we've always done and some of us will need to force the effort.  If you should find yourself feeling like rusty brillo, short and abrasive, swallow your pride.  A great love of my life, a brilliant orphaned, highschool dropout with a remarkable sensitivity to the complex nuances of jazz once said "Revolution begins at home..."  I would only add that revolution first begins with self-awareness.

I am thoroughly depleted by the bickering, contradictory Sopranos and their spiteful, worshiping errand boys so we won't even go there this week.  There are other more helpful and compassionate places to be.