the sad slow-mo blues of history unfolding

As a pre-adolescent, I asked my Chess partner, was it not possible that when he left this room he turned into a solitary cardboard figure and only reanimated in the face of further human interaction.
My Father's response was "That's a very Zen thought."
We continued the game until I was checkmated, as usual, but I knew I was on to something. That something, all these years later, turns out to be freedom.
Yes, I was fortunate. My Father was the definition of a "good man", honest, kind, loyal. His end in that body/envelope came at least a decade or more too soon as I see it, murdered by an anonymous blow with a ball peen hammer in the empty hallway of an ALF where he'd taken rooms to be close to my Mother in the Alzheimer's wing. The Chief Surgeon revealed his findings to us behind closed doors. Our investigations led nowhere of course, especially not in the Corporatocracy. Fast forwarding to the present, his being not around in a physical state to witness and experience the last wheezes and groans of all that which he held sacred is somewhat of a panacea for the surviving family, myself included, living through these times, day by day, complication by extenuating complication, up close and personal, along with every one of you reading this far. Somehow, we make do. But, not always. No, not always.
The worst argument my Father and I ever had was inspired by another early free thinking observation when I asked him how he knew if our votes counted. The reaction to my question was literally an exercise in blood pumping anguish as I ended up on top of his upright piano and he sank into the cabbage rose covered armchair, "You're gonna give me a heart attack one of these days." Again, I knew I was on to something.

Sometimes I just can't bring myself to blog. I get revelations coming on top of previous revelations compounded with reflections borne from the five senses that to pause and post it all is arduous and defies everything we already know about our toying with these curious technologies. At best, its advertising, at its worst its advertising having taken over our civilization so that we've misplaced our roots, our raison d'etre, in a global contest of hustle, scam and cruel oxymorons. When you hear and read morons saying and commenting in the same voice, most of it multiple repeats of a once-original zinger, spoken to present themselves as clever, in the know, superior to whatever zeitgeist community they see themselves inhabiting, "how's that working out for you"?

There is no longer any question we are a deluded and deeply conflicted species. How is that working out for us now?

I want you to tell me, baby, tell me
What are we gonna do?

You'll be interested in this week's links of honorable mention while we wait at the depot to board the Shambhala Express:

Somalia's Degrading Environment

...Since the state collapse in 1991, country's environmental degradation has accelerated, especially the rate of deforestation has steadily accelerated while toxic waste dumping became newly established business. Because of the country's political condition and the lack of central system of government, many foreign private companies, which are taking full advantages of the lawlessness and lack of central government in Somalia, started to either plunder or pollute country's natural resources...

The complicated issue of Piracy and the Law of the Sea Treaty

ANY QUESTIONS?

Root Causes of Somali Piracy

...As is apparent these days, one man's pirate is another man's coast guard.

Somali Piracy and American Foreign Policy

...we paralyzed an already weak market, giving hand-outs rather than hand-ups, and extinguishing local farming through a disastrous IMF structural adjustment program.

Americans are in a frenzy over the advance of Somali thugs upon American merchants. What they do not understand is our country’s role in undoing the very fabric of Somali society..

The Titanic's Great Pumps Finally Fail

In honor of the sinking of the great ship Titanic on April 15, 1912, we extend the analogy of its sinking to our current financial situation... from Charles Hugh Smith | Of Two Minds

Dispatch from Victorville: Levine Starts His Journey Into the Heart of America’s Foreclosure Nightmare

... a complicated system of speculator fraud meant to do only one thing: transfer money from the lower-class suckers straight into executive bonuses. For that they needed a constant supply of fresh meat, and Victorville performed exceedingly well. In 2007, a year in which five million Americans migrated to shitholes just like this, Victorville was the second-fastest growing one of them...

(click chart to enlarge)

One final mention, we had snow this Tuesday. You know what's coming ... and they know it too. They have known all along. Believe me, they fear our reactions more than the consequences or it would be known as truth to all without the need for any diversionary debate monkeyshines. They could make themselves heroes, but they'd rather hide.

Why is everything so weird?

My friend at Survival Acres just sent me this link. He must be psychic or we are witness to another example of the one mind at work, which it is both, the one mind and psychic actually mean the same thing, but we're not supposed to think it does. Psychic carries visual Miss Cleo baggage and to our great disadvantage the one mind falls into new age Feng Shui candle kits. None of which this article is really about, except if you are able to absorb the greater meanings, it is this and so much more.

Here is a peek. Joe Bageant: Escape from the Zombie Food Court

...You are as conditioned as any trained chicken in a carnival. So am I. When we go to the ATM machine and punch the buttons to make cash fall out, we are doing the same thing as the chickens that peck the colored buttons make corn drop from the feeder...

You definitely don't want to miss this one.

Survival Diary # ?

I don't keep count any more. The physical experience is all that matters. It is just something we do now, like breathing. Its a heave-ho, do it or stay out of the way lifestyle, definitely not for sissies. Every single day, especially weekends, the Fireteacher leaves at sunrise and comes back with his truck spilling fat logs all over his ruts in the dirt drive. This is not exactly what you would call a landscaped property although it has its charms. My brother has called it idyllic. An appraiser would call it messy. But its mess is like an art studio, projects are going on all over the place in various stages of "becoming". All of it necessary if we are going to stay on top of our game.

If we lived in a housing development like some of those alien gated communities I've seen all over North America, we'd be in prison for violations, we'd have too many rooms and not enough space, we'd be tied up in court battles with an HOA for sitting on the porch doing nothing, they'd call the men in white coats for the amount of time I spend outside studying the galaxies, that is IF they could afford to nab wondering skywatchers. Perhaps they've overlooked a tax opportunity there...

The Fireteacher has lots of deals going on in the region, as a finish carpenter that needs firewood, the surrounding mountain communities are always interested in his deals. So here we are, in the thick of trading services for goods, locally, and its gotten us through the winter far better than I'd imagined. We're already into next winter, sawing and stacking and using what we've learned over the past year to polish our style for the next and the next after that. I'm not allowed to use the chain saw. "Its too dangerous." My job is to pick it all up and put it somewhere, which was going well. Now he's gotten into patterned stacking systems.

I was stacking expertly it appeared, but he decided no, he's got a better way which should eliminate the unsightly broken tooth appearance possessed by our logpiles of the past as portions are removed indoors. His new method seemed to me to be "cross hatch" stacking. But that isn't all. Its now cross-hatch stacking divided into subsystems according to species and age.

Young Oak is cross-hatched against the outbuilding farthest away to season for a year or more. Older Pine is cross-hatched closer to the primary dwelling. A mixture of seasoned Oak and Pine stays on the deck within immediate reach in the ever-changing temps that come with our altitude and those unpredictable out-of-season-surprises. We have a lot more of those surprises lately, I would even go so far as to say the timing of the seasons has been pushed up, wildflowers and lush long grasses lay under the weight of February's snow. You'd have to have seen it to believe it. Even the Hibernators were out looking for love and nibbling greens. Its not natural.

Look for yourself. Take a long look. At this very moment, hanging over the valley below us, are massive dark snow clouds. Shall we debate reality? The debate over global warming you'll notice bears all the hallmarks of the debate over Evolution vs. Intelligent Design. There is nothing to debate. Your senses are being toyed with as usual. More perverse, petty hallmarks, crafted to keep you from figuring out the truth so you stay behind the apartheid wall where
you are supposed to remain groveling, increasing in weight, decreasing in sensibility. Toying with our senses is debeaking to keep the caged chickens in line, a widespread REPREHENSIBLE practice. They love that word, don't they, maybe almost as much as they love CONDEMN, HARSH and GROOMED.

Okay, I really want to say that the good feeling in survival labor is that wonderful feeling of freedom. Do you remember what that felt like? I feel as close to my wheelbarrow as I feel to my brushes. Had it not been for some cruel twists of fate so many years ago, I would not have known this freedom today. Cruel twists of fate are actually doors of opportunity disguised in tragic costume. You have to come to this realization on your own and it usually comes around only after great suffering, neither of which anyone else can do for you. You have to be all alone on the highway to complete annihilation with no remedy remotely possible to see the beauty of the situation. The beauty is on the other side of the door.

If you make it though, the most obvious thing you'll notice is the absence of fear. That in itself is one key to the kingdom. Survival tip: Any time you lose that key, and there will be times it appears as lost, you can find it again right away through humility.

hu-mil-i-ty – noun
the quality or condition of being humble; modest opinion or estimate of one's own importance

short takes

Speaking of the possibility that whatever window of opportunity may have existed may well be closed and speaking of its likeness to teetering at the top of the roller coaster before it suddenly lurches downhill, increasing in speed towards free fall as a metaphor for slip sliding off peak on the bell curve at warp into an unknown, uncharted abyss, this piece from Survival Acres is worth serious review: The Point of No Return

More tomorrow if I am up to it. I am in the middle of a new work and have flu symptoms. This isn't the real flu, its a stupefying side effect of a prescription med from the doctor's sample closet. Only after the chills and fever started up did I get around to googling the problem and there it was.