picking up where we left off...

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

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

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

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

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

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

a breed without soul

In a recent post concerning overpopulation, I mentioned the lack of identity among purchasing dependent overpopulators:

."..The next time you find yourself sitting in traffic, take a good look at your surroundings, take note of the decals emblazoned in obese fonts with neon hues on westerners' windsheilds, "American Patriot",  "I'm not a bitch, I'm THE Bitch" or the rednecks' fave, bin Laden pissing.  These indicate a desperation to stand out among the writhing masses, wouldn't you say, a loneliness so severe that attention is drawn by means of annoying hapless passersby?   You might also say its obvious they have no identity anymore (if they ever had any to begin with) and obscene decals are the best they could scrabble together in saying "I am alive, look at me, I count dammit!" ..."

... Overpopulators who in elbowing their ways through the journey atop Nascar rated tires or encased in overpriced lookalike cages behind gated walls,  the cabs and carriers of which include amenities such as surrogate identity where none actually exists, rooms and inhabitants displaying various cult features such as fashion. style, cosmetic surgery, meaningless logos and rude decals, never used tourbus campers, accessorized show pets, sculpture for the stupid tipped over on the tiny lawns and so forth which when distilled are banners hovering above their bodies as cartoon thought bubbles since the verbal skills of these cage dwellers are limited to uninspired overused phrases meted out under stress with matching facial expression instead of the age old middle finger hand signal which could, if employed outside the safety of shatterproof glass, bring on drastically unintended consequences.  For example, our mridang master met up with one of these PDO cultists last week, here is his description of the experience:

"On the 20th, in town, I was flipped off, cut off and almost rammed by a woman tearing in the exit to get in front of me at the gas pump. As she calmly got out I asked what the problem was. My eyes met the most icy cold, nobody-home, face I've seen in a long time. I was told to 'have a nice day'. Maybe I just don't get out much, and this is the new normal? Heavily meded-up was my take, and too close to the edge for me to pursue it further, as it was already disturbing enough...."

Hey, good move my man!  Too close to the edge indeed.  Call in the Astrologers or perhaps this event was yet another training exercise...
Shall we translate his tongue-tied  aggressor's meaning behind "Have a nice day", under those circumstances?  How about heated guilt?  Guilt so pure and intensely felt inside it burned in a wildfire of panic.  Caught, the pretender of rights to the pump was instantly reduced to a cheesy four words - words only used in that particular way by all the other countless guilty who know perfectly well they have destroyed your peace of mind by initiating deliberately violent and dangerous action proving for all who happen to be passing by, whatever they are doing is of more importance than whatever you could possibly be doing and are rendered speechless when the unexpected and unknown consequences of their reprehensible behavior suddenly confronts them face to face.   "Have a nice day" means Go away. I have no explanation for my actions, I don't even  know why I did what I did.  I can't apologize because that would give you (and me) living proof I was wrong.   Had it been anyone other than our musician confronting her, you can be certain she was aware her behavior was setting the stage for violence.  She took a wild gamble there and lucky for her, walked away to continue ruining the days of whomever else was so unfortunate as to be in her path.  I'm sure you've met plenty of these kinds of people, we all have, it is unavoidable, especially now as many of them have been born into a world ripped asunder, minus any comprehension of what exists inside themselves and others or even a shred of vague curiosity why the world is what it is today.  To question is to risk exposure.  They run the gauntlet and take their gambles and often lose, the losses piling high in their wake.  And when they don't lose, they still lose, because living a life in this manner makes them no friends.  There is something about being behind the wheel or any imaginary shield that ignites these wannabeWetikos like nothing else because out in the open they become sniveling cowards either looking for the nearest escape or threatening with a show of imaginary protections referring to friends in high places, but when you're looking at them, they are accompanied by no one.  Who could stand them?  They don't even like each other and are so worried their children won't turn out exactly like themselves, the kids are forced to stay indoors, losing their own curiosity and adding pounds watching candy bars broken in half and magically sealed back together on the wide screen.

Sad to say, I've been coming across this kind of thing too much. I try to stay apart, while being there with others, but alert, you never know what triggers another person's unsuspected anger.  Of course, this is not always the case, but it has happened enough in these times to be a recurrent phenomena.  However long and however well you think you might know someone, there is still a hidden, rather low level potential, you could, completely accidentally, set them off.  When that happens, you never forget, whatever you thought you had previous to that moment is gone, the trust betrayed.  The trust I am speaking about is a trust that we accept the totality of others, their baggage, their flaws, their bond with us until it is exposed as one sided, which isn't a bond at all.  Regardless of how fully we might join in smothering the outburst and make a long drawn-out show of loyalty, in your own mind and memory, the scene lives on.  You may think others have long overlooked your lapses too, but from your own experience, you know it is impossible and you can only hope the passage of time brings opportunities where you or she/he show themselves a better man than that deep, dark, secret memory you have of a seemingly out of character event.   Note it works not only both ways, but from an intermingling of angles. If you notice it happening repeatedly, you will eventually be forced to confront yourself, asking what are you in it for anyway?  Some know exactly why they engineer face to face crisis.   The Wetikos and their vain admirers play us like pianos, confident that following a successful guilt-inducing punishment, if you are still present, still forgiving, you are no threat to their existence. One might think they take it for granted no one is paying attention to the dynamic or how it charts itself in the memory-bank.  Over and over I see it going down, day after day, night after night, the same scenes enacted by countless human beings refusing to see the reality of what is happening, what they are doing, stumbling over the damage left in the wake of continuing crisis, poisoned to the gills from a steady diet of pesticides, loaded on mind glazing drugs, oblivious to the tortures they inflict and are being inflicted upon them. They are far beyond caring. What's more, they do not want you to point it out to them either, they already know they are in so deep there can be no escape during their lifetime.

I cannot imagine a life spent like that, can you?  They might as well just be lifers on the chain gang cultivating your crops.  We like to think somewhere down the road the human underneath will show up, but there is no evidence such a folly ever takes place.  That would be like hoping Jerry Sandusky mends his ways or George Zimmerman feels remorse.  Ladies and gentlemen, there is a breed out there that has no humanity and has laid claim to entire lifetimes without sensitivity, sorrow, suffering, love or compassion.  They have learned to blend in order to thrive and thrive at your expense they will.  This breed is one of the worst effects of overpopulation because you cannot avoid meeting up with them in crowds.  Avoid crowds.  Stay aware of your surroundings and keep a low profile. This breed thrives in a pampered and corrupt culture based on worship of the self.  In this way, you could call them vampires - energized by the blood of innocents.

We can also say Great Fortune shined upon our beloved musician while being shown the existence of this breed.  The fact the remainder of his day turned out so well, not to mention void of conflict escalation, speaks highly of his self-control.  That is a self-control we would all be wise to emulate.  Considering the bigger picture, with all its extending pressures and disappointments, the undeniable angst of a planet under siege, the refusal to address responsibility for extinction events immediately under way is leading westerners from denial and refusal into violence as if civility no longer matters.  To say civility has no place, is saying there is no love.  There will always be love, my friends.  No matter how unwieldy it gets, how freaky, how strange, how cruel, humiliating, devastating and physically painful, the one thing we can always count on is Love.  Love always wins. 

I  leave you with a link to an alarming report, Global Warming's Terrifying New Math, written by Bill McKibben and published for the August 2012 edition of Rolling Stone. I am sure some of you have seen it already. The fact that this piece was made available in that publication tells us citizens are meant to see it, share it and lose their cool over it.  Isn't that what Wetikos really want?  Ah, but I've got news for them, the majority of readers will be concerned only until the next personalized blinking ad grabs their eyes.

"... This record of failure means we know a lot about what strategies don't work. Green groups, for instance, have spent a lot of time trying to change individual lifestyles: the iconic twisty light bulb has been installed by the millions, but so have a new generation of energy-sucking flatscreen TVs. Most of us are fundamentally ambivalent about going green: We like cheap flights to warm places, and we're certainly not going to give them up if everyone else is still taking them. Since all of us are in some way the beneficiaries of cheap fossil fuel, tackling climate change has been like trying to build a movement against yourself – it's as if the gay-rights movement had to be constructed entirely from evangelical preachers, or the abolition movement from slaveholders. ..."

Meal tickets under glass

The circus continues.  What was not said here and that which was hinted the first time around are grotesquely obvious now.  The death penalty pundits make the political pundits look tame, tamed by their corporate masters rather like seals on skirted pedestals from one of many rings in which monstrous acts take place every day and every night under the Big Top until there is no memory of a beginning or any end in sight.  MSM prime time punditry would be fired for behaving as outrageously as the dagger death pundits, the couch potato noodle noosers bonbon-ing their ways into stampede wearing flip flops and halter tops, hair rollers and the ever present shopping bags overflowing with cameras, thumb twittering cell phones, awaiting their moment of a lifetime on youtube to imbed into the empty echos of their social networking sites.  Like?  One hundred and fifty million people liked this.  These particular pundits are insatiable and demanding, where's my panel? As the screen breaks up into squares of faces all speaking at once which means they have to yell in order to hear themselves as they are overridden by each others caterwauling.  I was hoping Bose earphones would sponsor this event, you know, those phones suggested to be worn in the presence of heavy machinery such as aircraft interiors.  Bose shows themselves to have somewhat more selective marketing moderation than underwrite death penalty pundits which are actually sponsored exhaustively by that shrill automotive insurance actress delivering her monologues as if she was in the front row at a Stones concert selling deep fried pretzels and pork rinds.

One of the events, many in fact, centered around the vivid technological displays of human decomposition by, heh, decomposition experts.  Who knew such gigs exist?  The crowds went gaga, you could hear the saliva quicken for the drools, quickly hidden by all manner of wipes.  The cries of disgust, the puking, things never before imagined in the actual slide shows of horror beyond all previous horrors as bone after bone was displayed accompanied by the imagined gnashing of animals chewing and dragging the toddler's torso through forested overgrowth.  So what I thought.  What did they think happens to the body in death anyway?  They think it must be pumped with formaldehyde, painted and hair-styled to look alive, gussied up in formal attire, rosy cheeked and merely asleep, sealed in an airtight gilded plastic and metal box six feet under the topsoil and guarded by armed security.  The point being there is big, big money in an industry to keep your true self cosmopolitaned for eternity and the circus audience stamps and screams in mass nausea if somehow one is revealed to have been flesh and blood all along, under all the frills and pretense, under the facade of the magazine mannequin, an unblemished, idealized product of the demographically targeted corporate consumer ... "Why God forbid!  Such a disturbance in thought is sheer blasphemy!"  Like?  Two hundred and sixty seven million people do not like this suggestive dialogue.

We've been all over that issue before, haven't we.  More times than I recall, here and at Su's, anywhere we have the opportunity to spread the word, the death industry is solitary incarceration extreme guaranteeing two thousand or so years from now you'll be dug up and showcased under glass in a natural history museum.  "Isn't he well preserved!  He looks so, so alive.  Beautiful work, taxidermists were real craftsmen then."  It all reminds me of people who have Elk heads on their wall, lacquered fish glued on plaques over the fireplace, the prized and princely testosterone den decor forevermore outdone, one upped by Jibbertongue Rumsfeld and his piece of a 911 airliner displayed on his former office of special plans wall.  A souvenir.  Perhaps it, like all of it, was just another high tech hologram.  Like?  Two hundred and ninety one million crazy baldheads do not think like this and will stamp their feet and screech at you for such wicked speech.  Why, they'll probably have a trial in the main ring complete with the prosecution's selection of experts yukking it up in their fifteen minutes of face time on TV, yeah! TV.  You are no one, you know, in this lonely beleaguered, hardass shell of a civilization unless you are on TV.  It doesn't matter if you are selling insurance or pork rinds, expertly analyzing computer generated news with your computer generated peers squeezed evermore tightly in between the headline banners, any airtime will do.  Of course, they have rules. The most sought after quality in addition to being fully integrated with your representative self so that the representative self is always in complete control, is high ratings appeal.  You'll note that the two most desirable qualities are actually one pure, homogenized quality unadulterated with any experience that cannot be easily explained.  There are no "ifs", no guesswork in questioning the possibility of something larger than can't be covered between trips to the pork rind bag and cerveza cooler.

In the trial, to date, still the question of a father for the toddler remains unasked and unmentioned.  This is a first, and how it is left to the unknown unmentioned is an amazing mystery, although, some dire and distant message comes through regardless and that would be, of course, the possibility in vitro fertilization at some point will be the future's sole legally controlled method for producing new generations of replacement representative selves.  In a throwback to early technology, designer DNA will be the cultural norm, children born never knowing what came before, true products of the moment, pudgy, steamrolled, cookie-cut and pundit-like in discourtesy, quick to condemn, always in control of themselves and their bleak surroundings seen as delightful, amusing, progressive, evidence of perfection everywhere because they can not possibly ever know what they like and don't like, in praise, always kneeling before the altars of quack dogma, the Big Top drawing in whole manufactured families to stare in awe at roadkill in sideshows unburdening them of their doubts.

There is nothing we think or do that someone somewhere can't figure out how to eek out a living off of you and in doing so, laws attempting to refunnel the cash flow are designed, voted and approved.  Legal or illegal.  There is also nothing that anyone anywhere does that cannot be defined by its opposite intention depending on the approval ratings within a culture.

It helps to understand these times in general by thinking about what isn't being presented and less about what is.  What drives the desires of entertainment seekers and what drives you.  While it may seem much like Shirley Jackson's short story, The Lottery, where the villagers drew lots to see who would be the annual stoning victim, it is only slightly more complicated being that approval ratings change as the situation worsens.  Ratings attempt to create a sense of growth and prosperity just around the corner in spite of the hopelessness of their tattered Big Tops and rigged sideshows of the fallen, shredded by the stampeding crowds lusting to be something more than a social networking wall, forever locked into the impression of free will and miraculously, never attending to the slightest concern they are the meal ticket du jour.

Granville Redmond, Malibu Coast Spring, c. 1929

... The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.
He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.

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.

This is how its going to be, will you be there?

Last year I wrote something similar for the deleted Deep Into Artlife West Stories blog and let it go when managing too many blogs became unwieldy. I am so glad to see John's work today, he says it all, as always. You will find his brand new short story in its entirety below. Many of you will have already seen it, however you must be a subscriber to his newsletter and if you want to see his new serial of works, Fade to Black, you'll have to subscribe to that as well. This is the only time I will put it up on this site, all the subscribing information lives on Survival Acres. But if you lose the link, which happens in a crash, I will be glad to share it. It is exciting to see how John easily switches to first person after so long publishing facts. I'm really looking forward to more. We do tire of nonsense, don't we? Denial and cover ups, like hey, just spill it. You see, they think we cannot handle the truth of their corruption, ah but we've been conditioned well during these recent Lost Decades of Lies.
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Short Story

I've got to get these words down before it's too late. I don't know how much time I have, they may have seen me come in here and I know if the find me, it's all over. For good this time.

I wish I had more time, but I don't, so bear with me, I'll try to get it all down as best I remember it.

The Thirty-Years war was finally over. Actually, it didn't last that long and some say it wasn't just a single war. Well, it wasn't, not really, but one war led to another with no break in between and it wasn't long before everyone was involved. It only stopped long enough for the nations to rearm themselves, so we never really did catch a break.

It doesn't matter anyway how long it lasted or what it's called, it happened, and it destroyed everything. By that, I mean EVERYTHING. There is nothing left. There's no water, no soil, no food, no cities, nothing. Not here. Maybe not anywhere, I don't know. It's all gone, dismantled and taken apart or blown to bits. Many areas are radioactive now, but you should know that, everybody knows that.

As far as the planet goes, well, we're fucked. Royally. I'm alive only because I got very, very lucky and because somebody else saw all this coming and he made it possible for me to be here today. But my time is running out. I'm sick now and the strompers are after me, I'm pretty sure they saw me head in this direction.

Sorry, I'll stick to the story. The year was 2010. This was the year we, I mean the planet broke all temperature records, at least it was hotter then it was before. It got worse later, like last year, it was really bad. The crop losses were huge then and the world plunged towards hunger and starvation. It was the poor countries that suffered the most. The rich countries continued to hoard food and energy resources (oil in those days) for themselves. Those that didn't have enough didn't get enough from anyone, anywhere.

The United Nations was still in existence back then, before they were taken over by the Global Legion. But they weren't able to do anything anyway. 2010 was bad, but this was only the beginning of the troubles we endured.

I wasn't even here then, not yet. My dad didn't buy into the promises the government was making and back then, you could still have as many kids as you wanted. Even though by now a lot of people knew that overpopulation would only make things worse then they already were.

I had two sisters and one brother. They're all dead now, both my sisters died from the Red Plague that killed those millions in the 20's. My brother was killed fighting in Angola. God only knows why he was stupid enough to go, although I don't suppose he had any real choice. Everyone was drafted back then, didn't matter who you were or where you lived, you fought. The Global Legion saw to that, everybody was "enlisted".

My dad called this conscription and slavery. I didn't go, because as far as the government was concerned, I never existed. That was hard, living and hiding and pretending I was one of "them", but I wasn't anybody. I worked at home with my dad, and when he died, well I just kept myself going, but I had my dad's library and research.

Our neighbors thought I was unable to fight, but they never asked either. My dad told me once that he'd fixed it for me somehow, and that they'd leave me alone. For that, I am eternally grateful, as I'm sure I'd be among the millions of dead that have been lost.

But I wasn't prepared for what came after my dad's death. It was his books, the ones he wrote himself and the other ones I found. And his journal. That was the most amazing piece of writing I have ever seen anywhere. It changed my life and my thinking and I became what my dad said I would. This was before I even knew what he was talking about. I became a "gojun", the word has several definitions. I like that one that means "fight from the spirit". I think my dad might even be the one who invented this word, but I'm not sure.

He died hard, but I think he knew that he would. The blood was everywhere, but he'd killed the three who killed him. I found him too late to do anything about it, and buried him up on our hill, at night when it was really dark and nobody could see. There wasn't anybody else there and I didn't know who I could trust back then, so it was just me and him in the cold ground. I cried a lot, I couldn't help myself, but I was glad I was able to do this for him. A lot of people had died, and nobody buried them. Entire cities had been destroyed in an instant and entire generations of families were instantly wiped out. By then, I was fourteen and it was 2028.

I didn't know what to say to the neighbors when they eventually asked, so I simply told them the truth. That's something else I learned from my dad, the truth was always better then a lie. They were sympathetic, and a couple had even come by to check up on me since, but I haven't seen anybody now for a long time. George told me that my father was a good man and had made a hell of a difference in the world. It wasn't until I had read my dad's books and his journal did I finally figure out what George meant by that. To me, he was just my dad, and then he was gone.

I didn't know what to do with myself for a long time, but I managed to stay alive. One reason that happened is my dad had made sure I'd have what I needed to do that. I won't tell you everything, 'cause he also said it's not a good idea to blab about everything, but he made sure that there would be the basic things I needed to stay alive and that's what I did.

By 2030, things were getting really bad. A lot of people that were still left had disappeared or died from one thing or another. The Red Plague took a lot of them, but others were killed by the strompers. They were forcing people to talk about all their neighbors then, back when they still thought some of us might have something still worth taking. It didn't matter what you might have, they'd take it. They'd even take the young boys and girls when they found them.

That's why they're after me, somebody talked, but I don't blame them, whoever it might have been. The strompers were brutal, I saw what they'd done to Kevin's family, back when he still had one.

This is where I got lucky. Something, I not sure what it was, told me it was time to clear out. I'd been pretty much planning on doing this anyway, knowing that if others were disappearing near here, it would be my turn soon too. So I'd been moving my stuff, just the essentials to my hidden spot, at night when I could get it done and nobody could see. It wasn't too far, but it was still hard work.

That's when they'd come looking for me, I could tell by the signs they left that they'd been there. But I'd been gone then and like usual, they came at night. They didn't find me, but they'd found some of my dad's guns and some of the food stash that I'd still had left behind. All these things were gone now and I knew they'd be back. But they didn't find the cellar and the hidden door, where my dad and I had hid all the really important things we needed to survive.

But I was out of time, there was no way I could move this stuff fast enough by myself. And there wasn't anybody I could ask to help either, almost everyone around here was gone now. So I decided to just move everything I could and hide it close by, and then try and get that all moved to my hidden spot where I was planning to live.

It took me all night to do it, but I got it done. There was a dense stand of trees still alive back then nearby, where my dad had planted them years before. He told me that this was our future firewood supply and it wasn't far away at all. So I made dozens of trips with a wheelbarrow and taking everything out of the cellar, I got it all stashed in the trees. By dawn, I was exhausted and I managed to drag myself away someplace where I could see if the strompers would come back.

They did too, but they didn't bother to look around much. They just checked the old house and crashed around breaking things, looking for more food and weapons. There wasn't much there, part of my dad's strategy had been to never appear to have too much. They left empty handed this time, having already taken everything that they wanted.

That night, I started making the trips to the hidden spot and getting everything moved. The weather turned cold by the time I was done, I could only do one trip a night loaded down. But nobody found that stash, which was a damned good thing, or I'd have long since been dead.

And this is where I stayed for the next seven years, hiding here, coming out only at night and never in the day. But now everything is dead, it happened so fast, you can see the gray ashes everywhere. And I'm sick, so I broke my own rule and tried to find some help. There's blood when I cough now and I don't know how to treat whatever it is that I've got. And that's how the strompers found me again. I'd left to see if I could find help, I didn't want to to die up here all alone.

I'd gone in the direction of town, but I hadn't been there now in many years. It took me two days of walking to get near, and I didn't see anybody. But when I got there, I realized I had made a mistake. There was nothing there, just some burned out hulks of buildings, but no sign of any people. The town had burned to the ground apparently, and was abandoned.

I decided to take another route back, but it was slow going. What had used to be a verdant forest way back now was now just a wasteland, but there was a great many downed dead trees I had to cross, and this is where they spotted me. I had just cleared the top of a ridge, the only living thing moving for miles around, or so I thought. But I'd skylined myself and the movement caught their eye.

They were down below me in a clearing, there was a camp of some sort with huge piles of junk piled up all around. They saw me about the same time I saw them. I disappeared back over the ridge before they could shoot. If they could shoot, I didn't know if they had any weapons still or any ammunition for them, but I recognized their uniforms or what passed for them. They were strompers alright, and I was certain that they'd kill me if they could find me.

I ran, jumped, leaped and crawled until my lungs tore through my chest, and then I ran some more. Once I thought I might have a little distance away from them, I started back tracking very carefully to hide my path. This was hard to do now, as the land was so badly damaged that going any direction, even backwards was slow going. And I was still coughing up blood, more now that I was exerting myself so hard.

I decided to not go directly back to my hidden spot. If they were able to track me, I'd lead them right to me. But I made another mistake, I didn't count on them not giving up. I was probably the only living thing they'd seen in a long time, I certainly hadn't seen anything alive.

It took me three days of hiding and evading to make it back here, but I'm pretty sure they're not far away now. I still need to tell you about what happened to the rest of the planet, as far as I know it to be. I'm not sure if anybody will ever find this, but I've got to try.

Well, I said we're fucked, and we are. I don't know how many people are still alive, but if they're like me, they didn't move far enough north to survive. Everything is dying around here and that means I can't grow any food or hunt any animals or even drink the water like before. I have to triple filter the water now and it might even be why I'm sick, but I don't know.

The war took everything and whatever was left, was destined to die from hordes of desperate people eating everything. Nothing was preserved. The forest and trees were cut down and what survived eventually died from the gray ash falling from the sky. The streams were choked with this stuff. The plants died, the animals died or migrated someplace else, but here, now -- there's nothing.

I heard the seas rose and flooded entire countries and all the low lying islands. My dad wrote about this in his journal, but I've never seen the ocean. He'd written that there were nearly two billion refugees before I was born, I can't even imagine that number. Where did those people go? My dad wrote about them only a little more, most of them disappeared into other lands and refugee camps, but almost all of them died in the wars that followed.

I didn't know where to go. I stayed hidden all those years, but leaving really didn't seem like an option. If I left, I'd probably have been caught, because by then you couldn't survive off in the woods by living on the land. They'd already wiped out almost every living thing that could be eaten and even though the gray ash hadn't come yet, there wasn't anything left to keep you alive. I survived this long only because I had food. I was one of the few, maybe even the only one who did. The strompers simply took their food from whoever they could, I heard that they had even eaten people after the animals disappeared.

But what I don't know, and I still don't know is if everybody is dead and dying everywhere else. My dad told me that there would be groups up north, far, far away up near the pole. He said they might live, if they were smart, and if they didn't kill everything off. He said it was possible and that's why I'm writing this all down. Maybe they'd like to know what happened down here as much as I'd like to have known what happened up there.

The radio quit working almost four years ago, so I have no idea what's happened elsewhere since then. But even then it was all propaganda like my dad said. They were still trying to force their rules and regulations on everyone, even though there were far fewer of us still around and everything was either dead or dying. But the radio fell and broke and I haven't heard another voice until a few days ago when the strompers tried to catch me. I've been very lonely, but I've been alone so long that I guess I'm pretty used to it by now.

But my story -- I watched everything die, all around me. It was gradual at first, but then it was faster and faster. It was almost as if someone had taken an eraser and was rubbing everything out. It was very sad to see. I loved the forest and the wilds but it became a harsh, bitter place with things dying everywhere. There wasn't enough rain and the forest fires were terrific. This accounted for the grey ash at first, but later there was more as the bombs fell.

The dying continued and it was a dark period for me. I couldn't help it, so I began to read more and more. I'd managed to save my dads book and his journal. It was his journal that saved me. I memorized every word. He had written about this time, predicting it all as he saw it in his own words and in his own time. He had felt that mankind would not learn from his mistakes and would push the entire planet past the breaking point. They called these "tipping points" and he was right.

All I ever saw was death and destruction. It didn't seem to even matter anymore, death was everywhere and humans were behind it. I'd learned to kill, from my father, but only when it was necessary and I'd never killed another human. But I didn't think humans were sacred, there was much too much death in them for me to believe that. I just never had cause to kill another human, but I was always armed for the occasion if it occurred.

My dad had lots of guns and he'd made sure I knew how to use them, clean them and make each shot count. Ammunition was absolutely priceless, even when I was young. Now, ammunition is probably worth a month's supply of food, but I bet you nobody would trade that kind of food for a bullet or even for a whole box of shells. Food is gone now, nobody has any food and what good is ammunition really going to do you if there is no food?

My dad said the same thing about gold and silver. People were hoarding this stuff, believing it was going to help them when things got bad. They found out that this wasn't true, people that had the stuff they needed weren't willing to trade it for useless metal. They'd only trade their stuff for important stuff, like medicine, sometimes liquor (which nobody really needs either, but it was something people in those days still seemed to want) and stuff like boots and warm clothing. Some people got stupid and got drunk and it got them dead pretty fast. My dad had a little of this, but I didn't bother to take it, it's probably still in the cellar.

I did take the guns though, but I don't see how they're going to help me much now. I need help, I'm weak and sick now and there's nobody around now that could help. If the strompers catch me, it won't matter anyway and then I'll use my guns on them. This place is pretty good, if I'm awake when they come, I'll see them first and these guns are pretty good, I can probably kill a dozen before they make it up here.

But I'll be honest, I don't see the point. Why are we still tearing each other apart? Why are we still fighting over the last scraps like this? Haven't we done enough damage? My dad said it would come to this. He saw this coming. He said that the last human would be surrounded by empty shell casing as he killed off the last surviving animals on earth -- which would be another human. I don't know if he thought that that man would be me, but if he did, he never said it.

I don't want this to be me. What a terrible legacy this is! I can't believe it's come to this now, this is too horrible to bear. I think I'm glad that I'm sick, I don't want this to be me. If I die here and nobody comes, at least I will die without that.

But I hope that somebody finds this letter. I really do. I want them to see if they can, that some of us finally understood that there has to be a better way. There was no need for all this fighting, even though I didn't fight, I still feel like I was a part of it. I hid, and I ran, and I stayed away as much as I could, but I didn't have any choice. That's fighting, isn't it? Isn't it really the same thing? We're not working together, we're not trying to make things better, we're still working against each other, tearing it all apart.

This is terrible, but I don't see how it could have turned out any other way. My dad said so too --- he said that we'd keep doing this to each other until we finally destroyed it all because we were stubborn and foolish and stupid and we'd not even believe the evidence before our own eyes. He wrote about that -- a lot. Back then, when he started his journal, they'd not believe anything it seemed, even if they were standing right over it looking at it. I found that hard to believe, but not anymore. I seen it, in the eyes of others and in what my dad had wrote. Nobody would believe it could happen to them.

I wish my dad was here, but it's probably better that he's not. I don't think he'd have known what do now anymore then I do, but I don't know. I sure do miss him though.

I think I hear them coming now, there's a sound down there that that shouldn't be there. I need to stop writing now and get ready. I hope someone finds this -- tell whoever is left that I didn't want it to end this way. Tell them that even in all this death and agony and gray and ash that I believe we could have done it better -- a lot better. Tell that that if we had embraced life and all things living, this place would still be here for us. This was our home. Our only home.

Tell them, if there are anyone else out there alive to still tell -- to never, EVER forget what we did.

Tell them that if they get to live -- to live it right.

And tell them to take my dad's books and his journal. You'll understand why when you read them.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Fade To Black

I've written a few chapters of a fictional book, "Fade To Black", that subscribers can sign up for. It's a free e-book of course, you will need to sign up to receive this.

Admin, Survival Acres

waiting for it to pass

Is it true? Am I getting the vibe we need a new post today? Have patience, maybe tonight or tomorrow. I'm working my way slowly through the results of proven stupidity as if we lived in the olden days when summer meant swimming and nothing could ever, ever harm us. We so badly want to go back there, we will subject ourselves brazenly to schizophrenia by jumping blind and deaf into icy water chlorinated and teeming with the germs of the new reptilian unknown. Weeks after the fact the truth comes home to roost. Is there any place untainted anymore? From Austria to Antioch, from the southern plantation doublewide to the Aylesbeare Commons to Little Big Horn, karma tells the story laying out the future in ways not even Tinseltown dare broadcast on our entertainment dishes. The legions of empty dwellings, flat colorless discs with bulging eyes, hanging sideways off the barbecue decks, are all that is left behind after recent human occupation, the family swansong, the dishes, pointing aimlessly at firesmoke skies reflecting orange on tumbleweed carried by the winds of these New World days. Beauty shields the beast within.
We nailed it down. My brother, his elegant adolescent daughter and I took the community plunge. The others lagged under a sunbrella browsing magazines. We got a nasty gift that keeps on giving, the control group remains healthy. It comes and goes with dizziness, getting-off-a-boat dizziness, and posting focus is weak at best.
Reading focus is remarkably intense. Is this the Vista flu I wondered? Where every effort to say something is blocked by security pop ups? Regardless, looking at art is redeeming. Looking at other people looking at art is almost as sweet as falling in love. We can still love, can't we, even though love is sorely lacking from the very hearts that need it most? I will recover from pool germs in a relatively short time, but I am convinced our love of culture is gravely ill.
Nurse, shake the shoulders of the former Veep and tell him he is without love, gravely misguided, lost and rasping hollow on the airwaves, no one believes a word, he speaks to whom?
And cleverly, AP wants to break our shattered piggybanks into shards of porcelain stuck between the fibers in the Berber, thus no links, its all smarting on your welcome pages anyway, headline after headline calling out, torturing a people chemicaled into homogenized, pasteurized, chlorinated and fluoridated, gum cracking, hip-hopping, ear-pieced, twittering, unnatural representatives of the dizzied body politic.

the end of the broken toy empire

Its that special time again, cleaning up the dinner dishes. Our dishwasher, and everyone else's around this hood, is spreading permanent white film on everything I put inside of it. The tap water is foamy. I came to find by reading a flagrag from a faraway county that our immediate area suffered a watermain break in the not too distant past, um, just about the time our problem showed itself.

When these things happen, and they happen with increasing frequency, things like NO SERVICE showing on the cellphone screen or calling into the corporatocracy about my promised Windows 7 upgrade and being told by an obviously outsourced and disinterested voice to call back in around 2 days since they were "in reset" at the moment, or the major artery into and out of a midwest hub has crumbled from the overweight of homebound commuters and everybody drove into the river, or the commuter trains in head-on collisions because the computerized traffic signals MALFUNCTIONED crushing at least 25 people to smithereens while the engineer twittered, we who are watching have little alternative but to weep in anguish that the world we thought was genuine is just a broken toy.

What did the plastics pushers think would happen when plastic breaks? Did they think at all? What did the mechanical engineers think when they put the rolls of plans into the hands of the Soprano's construction manager? What did the construction inspector think when he ran across entire regions of over-valued roach motels infected with lazy errors, bandaids, beerbottles, buckets of cheap labors' urine and Elmers glue-all? What is the community tax collector thinking when he outlaws wells and grazing animals, who is he in league with to declare self-defeating regulations and piles on surcharges and service fees to afford to send out meter bills on postcards anyone curious can read and will? We found one from the property tax assessors recently on a postcard declaring the value of the house. Everyone got one. Everyone knows everything, its their job. Puts food on the table for those outsourced by the corporatocracy too busy "creating" to handle the volume of eligible laptop users trying to sidle out of Vista's clutches. You don't "qualify" without active x going though your underwear drawer.

Oh, these tests and trials, they are the brillo pads of these times. Scrubbing bubbles foaming up the mores of our peeps. Little seratonin smileys leaving the station, gathering sweetly on the platform for their turn on the theme park's uptake inhibitor. We're not supposed to know the world is a box in the garage filled with broken toys that has come alive and threatens to consume the house, the neighborhood, the Interstates, the municipalities, the banks, the food chain, the great institutions of the great urban centers, the health of every living being who inhabits the gross intentional juxtaposition we find ourselves trapped inside today. Even our correctional institutions are privatized sleep away camps. No longer the private cells for two, heh, its bunkbeds dorm-style so everyone does as everyone else will. Cheaper to construct and faster, but when its feuding time its everyone's riot.

...Corrections officers got word that violence was brewing at the prison, prompting a lockdown imposed Thursday night. Tensions between Latino and black prisoners flared two days later, according to officers here.

But in the end, inmates of every race were involved, leaving the cause of the clash unclear...

At the end of the day, all these self-destructing tchatchke and their plastic parts and soldered chips and shims and safety pins are human waste for urban landfills upon which monster doziers glide atop pressing, flattening until the next delivery repeats the overflowing toybox history of superpower legoland in the 21st Century on Planet Earth.

This brings me to to dispel a common belief concerning the popular Fema Camps story. The riot pictures above will have you thinking about that. There will be no internment of dissidents, no meals, no bunks in dorms, no hour of outdoors because it will be all outdoors unless you've managed to squeeze your family into a tent city until they are outlawed and you end up hobos in the underbrush huddling in a lean-to. There is no money for camps, there will be ... nothing. At least imprisoned felons are earning their way through the system, but you? Nada. Its all broken anyway, yes, it says Built to Last right here on the cornerstone, but that's silly, isn't it. Its another logoslogan printed on a removable sticker. The joke's on you. Have another Kleenex. We're all going to be brushing our teeth with leaf paste and eating bark until Darth Vader arrives with his citations pad and leashed collection agents.

Let's say you could play that one out all the way - comforting yourself that later on by Obamagic you'll qualify for some kind of relief. Homecare perhaps (I don't think so) or one of those Adult Living Facilities (no, again)? I seriously doubt the luxury of a nursing home in your golden years will exist anywhere unless Satan is running the personnel department.

The truth is we're in a trap with the lid padlocked and the keycode lost in a fedex breakdown on the Ventura Freeway. Passwords and plastic toy parts and desperate resumes flying every which way into the never-ending wildfires and plastic netting holding back the mudslides until there's no more netting to be found, no matter the price. We are facing no escape, no bunkbeds in government camps, no waiting in meal lines, no place to rest your body and just be. From here on out. After we're lost in the demands of the elements long enough, we could easily forget how it was we ever got there.

Red suspenders holding up the energy wars

Well, well, we meet again. Fancy that. I tried to get away, really, I did, but it appears I've attached myself to this drafting stool with superglue, even as its doing its BAU falling apart. This forces me to look up and grin sheepishly, at least I'm shrugging my shoulders, palms up, cuz this is a weird position to be in, isn't it. Gentlemen, ladies, its coming at us from all angles now. The smart ones got away. Yes, I know, we thought we were smart, but you see we are not. No, we are idiots. About every 20 minutes or so I achieve another insight as to how it is exactly that we find ourselves in this position. I'd put them all up for you, but I suspect you're having them too. The only way I would sum it up at this point is to acknowledge that we all-know-now. Idiots who know. Doesn't that make us credible? Nope, something is going on, it has a thousand faces, it enacts and re-enacts itself over and over, every day, in thousands of costumes so we usually don't recognize its continuing presence - because we are idiots falling for it every time. We've been led to believe we must indulge it.

What is it?

It is Greed. It lives in our mailboxes screeching for attention. If you open the flap it will explode into seven billion hands running over your body, your clothing, your mind and throttle you into immediate insanity, sometimes even death. But death is not where it stops. Not even the cessation of your existence on Planet Earth amounts to a hill of beans to Greed. Greed survives off the pyramid of normal human experience. The memorial coming up for Jocko, for example, is a panorama of Greed slavering at the trough. Where is Jocko? He won't be around for that big tour, will he. How many bets went south on that one? They have to make up those losses somehow and it is through classic, vintage BAU that is exactly the way Greed is working its magic moonwalk this time, and every time, walking on the idiots.

Like a return to the FM payola days, the hits just keep on coming.

Why Greed? Haven't we advanced beyond it by now? Greed is what you see when two Crows fight over one dead squirrel. We're supposed to be a higher, sentient species, at least that's what we've been led to believe.

How about this, nothing is what it appears. It very well may be that everything we've been led to believe is well, a lie. And why not? When someone does something they've been led to believe is wrong, they were also led to believe they must present themselves in the most flattering light in order to avoid retribution. That lovely pink light they show upon their behavior is a lie. This would mean that the very words they use to define what has taken place are at best, inappropriate words. These are words that have taken on new meaning known only to the Liar Class. Blinded by the light and the waterfall of meaningless drivel, the average listener misinterprets Liar words. When this situation occurs at the pace it is now happening, textbooks, encyclopedias and dictionaries have to be rewritten. If you are working with an outdated understanding of language, you'll think you are in-sane.

When the population of our planet was half its present count, Greed was manageable to the extent that it did not get in your face as often as it does when exponentially multiplied. If you are thinking Greed is out of control now, just wait until the next stats are out. How many Nadya Sulemans are out there birthing neonatals and decide, unknown to those of us who are presently losing our minds, arms and legs to Greed, that having eight embryos implanted will perfect their collagen cloned, faux celeb lifestyles? How many of these secret creatures live among us, designing themselves to look like someone else with fantasies a bankrupt state will supply pampers for fourteen infants on a student grant?

Why are we in Afghanistan? It wouldn't be to build and protect pipelines or anything, would it. What is an insurgent anyway? That couldn't be someone furious their home was eminent domained because they happened to live where the pipelines snake through their land, naaaaw...

Greed works to redefine intention and reactions. They'll need to rewrite the laws now. Obviously, what was once criminal is now legal. What was legal is now criminal. We could do the rewrite for them. Just turn it all inside out and you have it. A toxic asset is now a desirable purchase. Foreclosure is redistribution. Torture is no and no is yes. Death is a winning credit default swap. Greed is good.

Back roads-eye view

On his way home from the jobsite, the fireteacher was passing though a hundred miles of bad road, lonely stretches of weeds, no dwellings, the occasional Sage families, around 6 p.m. Up ahead, he saw the taillights brake on a farmworker's pickup. The driver dumped something on the road and took off. The fireteacher slowed to look. There was Louis. When they got home, I was called outside and yes, it was an instant bond. At first I thought he looked like Peter Lorre, but that's all changed now. That night, Louis and I chatted in a shaft of moonlight from the tallest window. We talked about his suffering through abandonment, he wouldn't have lasted an hour out there, about what he might have experienced of life so far, especially as an unwanted pup on the verge of adolescence and assured him he was home at last. We've had a great time together ever since. He sleeps on the end of the bed already. He shines on a leash. Comes to his name. Its a lock. A win-win. I live in a houseful of males. That includes the Guinea Pigs. Louie's story is a metaphorical parallel to landing in Shambhala.

I hardly know what financial terror driven drivel is supporting the Illusion this week. It runs together like tears dripping down the page, smearing distinctions. It is stunning to me that there are not nearly as many intelligent people around as we would like to think. I had a few encounters with merchants over the past seven days and have nothing good to report. Ahem. While it was always grueling to go into town, these most recent sojourns have been less than chilly. Workers at every place I visited have lost their smiley face. They are able to glaze their ways through routine mechanical tasks, but they physically turn away when you look at the receipt and your stomach drops twenty feet. Its the same with the auto mechanics to the framers to the supermarket cashiers. Each of them lost in a paranoid thought bubble in a ballet class. You do not want to hear about all the nickle and diming going on out there, I'm sure you see it yourself as you start juggling which priorities you can live without. But why do these hourly rate types sink into stupor? And there is a difference between these workers and the salaried who exist in a leveraged universe currently in freefall ... They have always done the best they could in most situations, see themselves as good persons, going along with the program in a timely fashion only to arrive at this moment in history, juggling their own priorities, maybe they can slide another month on the rototiller ... some days they wonder what is going on when there is time to wonder. Except when the card goes in the little reader, then there is a spark of real communication, a shared knowing, but it passes quickly into bagging and what Admin at Survival Acres means when he says BAU, business as usual.

I know we like to wonder into the future, always thinking a little ahead, asking how this multiplies, perhaps it extends indefinitely, gradually worsening. At some point, there are no corners left to cut. Here we are again, why is all this happening? Resource depletion. Too many of us. These are the great Energy Wars trickling down to a hundred miles of bad road, lonely stretches of weeds, no dwellings, the occasional Sage families. Its a long road.