Eustace Conway and Gov Predation

I've railed repeatedly in this blog, against the perceived tyranny of government. Twice the city has tried to condemn my house, once for not having the water turned on, once for not having the electricity hooked up. I have endured threats of confiscation, I have been fined thousands of dollars, this house has been labelled by the city as an official nuisance: the latest, a $472 fee for the removal of that white pine I had dropped in my driveway.

I had complied with the order to move them, distributing them around the garden, but the city hired contractors to come and take five of them away, and then charged me for it, as much as I make working two weeks @ big retail outlet. A week later, a guy shows up at my door and says, 'hey, I've been looking at the those logs in your front lawn and I was wondering if I could carve those with my chainsaw [for free].

But my troubles are as nothing, compared to what Eustace Conway has gone through. Eustace is something of a famous case, a force of nature best described by Elizabeth Gilbert (before her phenomenally popular Eat, Pray, Love), in her book titled The Last American Man. Among those exploits of Eustace Conway chronicled there and elsewhere: being self-trained in the art of wilderness survival from a young age; the riding of a horse across America (twice); the walking of the entire Appalachian trail; the teaching of wilderness skills all across the south, compiling enough money to purchase 1000 acres of remote Appalachia, Watauga County, North Carolina; building there according to traditional methods, 20 buildings, and establishing a school on building in traditional ways, gardening, and wilderness skills, calling it Turtle Island Preserve. He's also been on the History Channel, on Mountain Men, (detailing some previous legal troubles, a property lien, people attempting to take the land.)

When I first heard about his recent troubles, I assumed he merely received a letter in the mail, it was all just a bureaucratic snafu, government gears grinding. Here is what actually happened, according to the staff of Turtle Island Preserve:

Recently, local county government authorities have targeted Turtle Island Preserve, attacking our way of life, and forcing our educational camp to close to visitors. 

On the morning of September 19th, eleven county officials (being paid by tax payers) barged into our living room unannounced, uninvited, and unwelcome. A large caravan of county vehicles blocked our private road, miles away from any public area. The men (some armed) presented a search warrant two and half miles into the interior of our private land, a most intimate zone of refuge where we do not even take visitors, and then spent the next half of the day violating our privacy and photographing our buildings and personal homes. The unwanted invasion team came prepared with topographic maps, aerial photographs, GPS equipment to discern coordinates, laptops, pages of highlighted photographs of unknown origins, and even a county 4-wheeler to more easily get around the property. Much time and tax-payer money had clearly been spent preparing for this deployment against our 501c3 non-profit education center.

Code violations, indeed.

If you look at Watauga County on the map, it's hard to imagine what all the fuss is about. This is remote Appalachia. Then I read this, from the Watauga County website:

Tuesday, May 21, 2013
Public Hearing Notice - Potential Abolishment of the Board of Social Services

---

THE WATAUGA COUNTY BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS WILL HOLD A PUBLIC HEARING AT 6:00 P.M. ON TUESDAY, MAY 21, 2013, IN THE COMMISSIONERS’ BOARD ROOM OF THE WATAUGA COUNTY ADMINISTRATION BUILDING LOCATED AT 814 WEST KING STREET, BOONE, NORTH CAROLINA.  THE PURPOSE OF THE HEARING SHALL BE TO ALLOW PUBLIC COMMENT ON THE POTENTIAL ABOLISHMENT OF THE WATAUGA COUNTY BOARD OF SOCIAL SERVICES.  INTERESTED PARTIES ARE ENCOURAGED TO ATTEND.  FOR INFORMATION OR QUESTIONS, PLEASE CALL (828) 265-8000.
 
And then I realized, Watauga County population equals 163 persons/sq. mile, which is three times the density of the rural Midwestern county I grew up in, just as white but with a full quarter+ of the population living below the poverty line; (whereas one-tenth+ where I grew up.) And then one begins to wonder about revenue, County finances, and that thousand acres just isn't generating enough revenue apparently, by county standards, we need to generate more so we can abolish social services (?!); So if we can take Turtle Island Preserve, divy it up between developers, who will build according to code to generate more tax revenue? At the very least, force Turtle Island Preserve to spend $200,000-$300,000, to meet code, call that stimulating the economy. One has to wonder also, what those "county officials" were really looking for, with all those topo maps and guns and full-property search warrants? One cannabis plant would speed up the confiscation process right quick. But just as well, tax and fine and adjudicate Turtle Island Preserve out of existence.

Which if this is code,

but this isn't

Then one wonders what is really behind the drive toward International code adherence. Agenda 21 comes to mind, to excite every right wing absolutist Christian survivalist/prepper/Patriot/Tea Partier; but then, Eustace wears his hair like some hippy savage and he lives too much like an Indian; and so Eustace finds himself without a constituency, liberals otherwise being so in love with liberal government, and just as cornucopian as the right-wing nut, as if code were the Word of God; meanwhile the gears of government grind infinitely fine, the petty stuff of petty tyranny, as mundane as can be. As a former builder (officially), I'm inclined to think that most building code is just that, official forced adherence to a uniform and obsolete building paradigm, which also happens to be a particular screw to drive a particular kind of economic activity, the more exploitative the better, grossly energy wasting to boot (speaking of a boot on the face of humanity forever.) Dimitri Orlov is even more dubious than I am. Which Eustace is reminding us, there is an extraordinary beauty in living in rhythm with the earth, and I suppose they hate him for it.

Meanwhile the County of Watauga practices intransigence, the proverbial waiting game, letting the wheels grind on, it is progress, code must be followed. Maybe they merely want to take Turtle Preserve, turn it into a theme park, hire college kids to wear costumes; but no one actually gets to live there long term, whatever food is grown there is just for show, all proceeds flow to the County, and every body will shit and piss in flush toilets! Another roadside attraction for happy motoring unto eternity. Or burn down the buildings and turn all thousand acres into a 4-wheeler race track. How's that for earth spirit, motherfucker? Hippy faggot.

Whereas, I'm more like, Turtle Island Preserve is about the past, and the future; and about how to live in the present, meaningfully. The loss of that as a model would be, to use a particular phrase of those maniac globalist code enforcers, a crime against humanity. Turtle Island Preserve is about treating the earth with reverence. Watauga County, contrary to the name Watauga, "translations ranging from beautiful water, whispering waters, village of many springs, and river of islands," contrary to that most favored of American ideals, the home of the free and the brave, showing what a stupid, abusive, humorless, domineering nation of lawz we have become.

So if you have any particular concern for saving what remains of the beauty and abundance of this earth, before governments and corporations conspire together to grind it into uniformity, every square inch of this beautiful earth, I encourage you to follow the progress of Turtle Island Preserve, and share whatever, however you can. Have a say.

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

After some reflection, it is no longer clear what is going on @ Turtle Island Preserve. They have a website, but they do not return emails, at least not mine. There is no mention whatever on their website, about the problems with the county. There is even word second-hand that Watauga County is working diligently on changing the code, to accommodate Turtle Island Preserve. I wrote this piece in response to a blog-a-thon on the Doomstead Diner, in support of Turtle Island Preserve. There are 10 pages or more of commentary in the forum.

What is most striking about that commentary, is the intense critique of Eustace Conway's media presence and economics, with almost no reflection on government overreach, threatened confiscation, threatened economic dissolution. Indeed, some there acted as if government code is as inevitable as God, and so treated Eustace as a kind of Heretic, some with an almost glee-like attitude, in the idea that he might lose that 1000 acres to gov predation.

Which brings me back to my latest confrontation with the City of Minneapolis. They charged me $472, or two weeks pay, to remove those white pine logs in my driveway. I wrote a letter, detailing my objections, and the history of abuse I have received here from the City. I was granted a hearing @ City Hall. A lawyer named Jack was the arbitrator (traitor).

Which hearing was a joke. There is nothing I could have said to change the outcome. Jack did not ask me one meaningful question, before he told me I'd have to wait two weeks for a decision. He signed the decision THAT DAY (but could not tell me the decision to my face): TO BE PAID IN FULL. I can contest it again, in District Court, which I would expect to be an even more grotesque formality. I've no doubt Jack was paid more by the City to spend that hour or two formalizing for the City it's decisions, against myself and whoever else showed up that day, than I make in two weeks. Based on what I saw, I doubt Jack has EVER decreed on behalf of the prey. Which I take him to be part of the predator class, mining poor saps like me for whatever they can, to maintain and perpetually improve their standard of living.

Meanwhile I continue to work as hard as I have ever worked, for less and less money. I was declined an interview again, to work as a Garden Coordinator for a local non-profit, though the person who referred me knows someone inside, and the man I applied with, interned and worked for one of their farming Heroes. It seems the only work I can get these days is to do the heavy lifting, grunt/dirty work for major corporations, for paupers wages. The fact that I make less and less money every year, has no bearing of course on what I am expected to pay to live, which continues to climb just as relentlessly.

In fact I just rode my bike to work and back on my day off to pick up my pay check, which I was told yesterday would be there today, but was not there because next Friday is pay day. So I guess I was just hoping, and believed what I was told, out of desperation, seeing as I have been broke for several days, my website address expired, my phone is about to expire and so is my internet. Got to finish this blog post before the lights go out (I owe the Electric co. bookoo bucks too.) Every centavo of that check when it does arrive is called for, and then some. On top of that, the IRS is after me now, because I didn't file a 2011 return, because I didn't make sufficient money to surpass the grotesquely low poverty line of $11,484 (consider 2000 hours (Full Time) @ federal minimum wage = $14,500. A living wage in Minneapolis is considered $22,000. Which shows what these scumbag legislators really think about their constituency.) Meanwhile I hear Amazon.com paid less in UK corporate taxes than they received in government grants in 2012. Don't imagine that is much different here in the good ol' USofA. One fine day recently at uber Garden Center we sold $94,000 dollars of merchandise, during which time I made about $60 after taxes, lifting and moving about 20 tons of material in 40-60lbs increments, etc.

So you see, the predators of the world are growing increasingly ravenous, while the prey gets blamed for getting eaten. And the only thing that matters apparently, for the typical predator AND prey, is that BAU ravaging of the earth continues unabated. With groundwater rushing into the busted Fukushima reactors, and serious talk now about pouring that ceaseless flow of radiation-laden water into the sea, because that is better apparently than storing it in visible caskets above ground; that there is nothing they can do about it, even though the global economy is humming along more or less, and there are another 400 such facilities world-wide, and resource constraints pretty much guarantee a global financial collapse, and the whole world yawns as every body in a gate kept profession and otherwise, stares into their smart phone oblivion, it's pretty much guaranteed that...

So, whatever. I don't want your money. I am content to starve. I am content knowing I have spoken clearly, that I have not lied to you, that I have not told you a bullshit story to maintain my standard of living. That I have not made a practice of mining people for money.

What stings though is that I have been declared by the City of Minneapolis an official "nuisance." Because I do things like transform this:

To this:

And when I tell people about my troubles, they just laugh. Or they are appalled, and then treat it like any story they consume, as of no consequence. When I know, my fate will be the fate of all.

So I continue to dance and sing through life, reducing my philos to this: to be good and kind to people, and to watch out for them. Even if the people of Minneapolis allow this:

to be turned into this:

 

or this.

Lingering Winter

It has been more than a month now, since I last posted here. Indeed, I have not even been checking in. Winter lingers in Minnesota - I was harvesting aspargus this time last year, and I am looking now at the remnants of nine inches of snow that fell three days ago. In addition I've been employed 27 hours a week at big box retail outlet, I've been working on a prospectus/biz plan/manifesto with my friend Roamer, I've been installing a beech floor at a friend's new fermentables store-front, and I've been preparing this house for potential sale. Plus, with all the energy swirling around Boston, I've refrained from commenting much at all, on much of anything, on any of the on-line venues I am known to haunt.

May 01 is Beltane, a propitious time. Last year, I released my website WilliamHunterDuncan.com, which I promptly abandoned. This year, just today, Roamer and I released the prospectus, to the Doomstead Diner crew, to let them hash it out. Roamer and I have also applied locally, to a women's institute, jointly, for the position of Garden Coordinator, of an urban farm. Roamer was raised a dairy farmer, most recently an engineer at a major grid, coal burning power plant. He is roaming again, on a small cache of cash, and otherwise in need of a farm to manage. This young man needs a farm to manage. He thinks, as I do, that this house and all that I've dreamed of here - greenhouses, solar heat and electrical generation, hydroponics, aquaponics, fungi propagation, methane digester, etc - would make an excellent microcosm model for the macro-farm we have outlined in the prospectus. Meanwhile, my house is only partially finished, conventionally speaking, I am making $400+/- every two weeks at big box retail, which barely covers the mortgage, and the house is expected to be on the market by 01 May.

The idea is, behind the prospectus/biz plan/manifesto, land is effectively off limits for those who want to return to it. If one is not flush with sufficient cash - and after 40 years of hyper/exponential inflation, that is a lot of cash - one is either in bondage to the big banks, or to "the lord of the manor". Many would like to return to the land, to heal it, to farm it, to make a living, to be empowered economically. But there are no resources, not financial capital sufficient to overcome the land barrier, for most; though there remains enormous untapped human capital, and tools and technology and knowledge more than sufficient to unleash that human capital, while healing the land, if only a few talented, open, vibrant people of character would change the terms of the American Dream.

Meanwhile, America is hungry again for vengeance. It was distressing to me, very much, the goings on in Boston and nationally, in the immediate aftermath of the bombings. The object lesson in this is, America will believe whatever the FBI tells them. Without any real evidence but the word of the FBI, the American people appeared to me to lust after the killing and capture of these brothers; that they fought back, only confirmation that they were/are scum bag killers. Never mind the FBI has been engaged in nurturing angry young Muslim men in this country, again and again, by their own admission - soon you will hear, after a faux public chastising of FBI negligence, and a sacrificial scapegoat or two, that there are not enough agents, the FBI budget is not big enough to keep track of every malcontent, if there were only more agents....

Who were those private security agents in plain dress with those big black backpacks, in the immediate vicinity of the bombing prior to the bombing, who were later so intimate with the FBI bomb squad? That is not for you to consider, says the FBI. If the pictures and video aren't sanctioned by the FBI and the official story, they are not "credible."

"For clarity, these images should be the only ones—the only ones—that the public should view to assist us. Other photos should not be deemed credible and unnecessarily divert the public’s attention in the wrong direction and create undue work for vital law enforcement resources.
                  - Remarks of Special Agent in Charge Richard DesLauriers at Press Conference on Bombing Investigation  at the press conference introducing suspects #1 and #2
 
Which makes me realize, in the aftermath of some hideous tragedy, if the FBI wanted to be rid of me, hypothetically speaking, they need only get google to disappear this blog, and Wordpress to cancel my website, paint a carefully contrived picture via the MSM, and the American people on the whole would thirst for my blood. The FBI might not even have to bother erasing my online commentary, as most of America wouldn't be curious enough to seek it out themselves. They could even pull a few phrases out of context, sufficient to condemn me, to a people right and left who take the official story to be Gospel. To hear the MSM, you might think the FBI, to a man and a woman, Saints, if only over-worked in need of more money. Or, the Federal Government can simply declare me an enemy combatant, contrary to all evidence, and everything I have ever said or written or done will be considered state secrets.

Whatever. FBI. Feds. Grow stuff, build stuff, is what I have to say about that. Cultivate terrorists in the name of security, to the effect of maintaining and expanding budgets/global hegemony? Or cultivate plants and animals and human care and concern for the earth and each other? I choose the latter.

So, to that end, at such time as the Diner crew is sufficiently satisfied with the prospectus/biz plan/manifesto, I will be posting it here, in search of investment and donation. Thanks for your patience. :)



 
   

Twilight of the Standard Model

I consider physics to be one of the great spiritual triumphs of modern society. In a way, quantum physics is like coming full circle - a reintroduction to mystery in the universe. Indeed, if the point of civilization is to come to know our place in the physical universe, Science (with a capital S) could be said to be one of the great triumphs of the coming-of-age of humanity.

But then, it is not as though Science sees physics as a spiritual triumph, but more a triumph over nature. Thinking so, it cannot see that Science is in part responsible for the proliferation of nuclear material: in major facilities next to people, nuclear tipped missiles, and out of the barrel of guns (depleted uranium bullets). Phlatlets, chemicals, GMO and nano-particles released into the biosphere with near-total abandon. The wanton use of antibiotics threatening new plagues, while industrial methods dependent entirely upon fossil fuels threaten the exhaustion of the land, waters and air. The machinery of quantum mechanics looks to turn the entirety of the earth into a wasteland.

Which the news last week, that the Higgs Boson is semi-officially discovered, "giving" mass to the universe as we know it, under the standard model of physics, should have been considered another great triumph. Alas, word is, the discovery of the Higgs was supposed to open up new vistas of ethereal landscape, in the elucidation of dark matter, gravity, angular momentum, the "vacuum catastrophe". It was not meant to be a dead end. To reiterate, the standard model of physics, and the elucidation of the Higgs, does not account for that mysterious substance referred to as dark matter, or gravity, or why anything in this universe spins or spirals, or why quantum physics suggests that empty space is in fact denser than matter by an order of magnitude running to infinity. Consider again the devastation wrought by the fruit of Science, and then you might begin to comprehend, that the standard model of physics can be seen as a dismal failure.

Scientists are still hopeful. They are doubling the energy of their Hadron Collider, ever attempting to unlock the mysteries of the universe by FORCE. Meanwhile, the earth and it's people languish, under ever increasing aggression, as a million and one ideologies seek to silence every other, as every one and their mother attempts to catch, grab and hold what they can of what remains of the once abundant earth, among a population growing exponentially in a way that would not have been possible without Science. And only a very few on the margins are dedicated to healing.

Do you suppose it is mere coincidence, that the twilight of the standard model of physics arrives, at the same time humanity appears to have reached the carrying capacity of the earth, at the same time war is threatened everywhere, as if we are preparing for one last great conflagration, at the same time the financial system seems on the verge of collapse? Does it surprise you that the fiercest of new "superbugs" should arise out of hospitals? Does it surprise you that the "green revolution", the proliferation of industrial agriculture, should threaten famine unforeseen at any point in human history? Should it surprise you that in a time when their are so few jobs to be had, they are making machines to replace people in many of the jobs that remain? It should not surprise you, if you have not made a god out of the technology wrought by the ingenuity of humans. It should not surprise you, if you are unconvinced that scientific progress is an unequivocal good, for the betterment of humanity. It should not surprise you if you do not believe that Science is the be-all, end-all of human understanding.

Science will never unlock the full mystery of the physical universe, as long as it is assumed that to understand a thing, you must destroy it, as they do so energetically with the Hadron Collider, as they do with cells by tearing them apart. Science is an extension, at this point, of the will to power, of the will to dominate. Science has driven spirit from life, and in so doing, has stultified. Making of the material universe material ONLY, scientists have closed themselves off to themselves. By banishing the irrational, they have closed themselves off to the full breadth of life. In short, scientists need to get HIGH.

Which I think accounts for some of the recent attempt to de-stigmatize cannabis here in America, a kind of unconscious awakening to the fact that what passes for answers in this culture of high tech this-and-that, are not answers at all, but more like gratification of our basest desires, our most cruel assumptions about what life is and what life is about. Consider that modern Science has desired to understand every material thing in the universe, except that most useful of all plants here on earth, except any plant or fungi that can be considered hallucinogenic. Which is to say, Science has closed itself off to the full breadth of the universe of the mind. To claim the mind as a weak and flawed piece of meat, elecro-chemically active but otherwise inert, is to diminish it and humans and life, in a self-similar way as Religion (with a capital R) cut human consciousness away from the earth (which is precisely why the only thing on this earth as rigid as a fundamentalist for God, is a dogmatic scientific atheist.)

More and more, I do hear scientists talking sense. Referring to the human body as an ecosystem, a kind of mirror of the earth outside. It should follow then, that you cannot poison the body of the one and expect it to thrive, any more than you can poison the body of the whole and expect it to support abundant life. Four hundred years after Francis Bacon, Rene Descartes', Sir Isaac Newton, et al, elucidated for us the scientific method, Science is beginning to comprehend the bombast, the crudity of it's ways. Too little too late? We shall see. At the same time I hear some Scientists talking about mimicking Nature, I hear others talking about bio-engineering, as a solution to climate change (and really every other problem there is), which is just more of the same over-weening hubris, a fundamental lack of ability to self-reflect. A most paternalistic and immature desire to control everything.

I wonder sometimes if most of what has been wrought, will have to be lost, before we awaken to the error of our ways? If most of that has arisen from the ingenuity of men (mostly), will have to be lost, before we will accept that the universe and life is considerably more mysterious than we like or care to believe? I wonder too if Science will help lead to the total destruction of the earth and biosphere upon which the species depends, and there will never be anything like a search for understanding, by any human, ever again?

It is not merely the twilight of the standard model of physics. It is the twilight of the standard model of everything human.

Embrace the mystery.

Justice, Tranquility, Welfare, Blessings, Liberty, Posterity

It feels like an eternity since I last posted. I know it's been only two weeks, but you try to encapsulate the last two weeks in any way that anyone can comprehend. LOL. If you are listening, the "noise" is getting LOUD; perhaps you know how wild things are becoming. I was a news junkie long before I knew it to be newz - when I was nine, I scored 9 or 10 out of 10, on every weekly news quiz we took in the fourth grade - I might still be able to do that, but it depends on who's asking. If it's MSM news, no problem. Too simple. But if you ask me what's really going on, well, I'd still bet I'd score high, though I have to wonder if anybody really knows wtf is going on. LOL. Still, I'm overwhelmed. A balance has shifted.

I heard a joke the other day. It goes like this:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

I remember another version, Saturday morning cartoons:


I especially like that part where the judge sticks his fingers in the barrels of the guns, of the duellers, and the guys with the guns point the barrels to the sky and the guns turn into flowers. I don't like so much how it ends, the forest cut down and the tract homes (suburbs). I can still sing the preamble.

Meanwhile, the Federal Government and the Liberty Movement are gearing up for internal war. Really. The State is increasingly appearing in the garb and manner of the para-military. In the way of releasing whatever chemical into the biosphere, they are now releasing nano-particles in consumer materials, which are released into the water, and taken into plants - almost entirely without oversight, for the basest of reasons. I'm fairly convinced Colorado-ites legalized marijuana in part unconsciously, because they know deep down how much cancer they are likely to have to contend with, with all that fracking going on, and increasing. The sun is in a strange lull, and asteroids and meteorites are whizzing by and crashing into the earth with a seeming increasing regularity (there have been others since this link appeared.) But you'll be happy to know the former CFO of Lehman Bros is trying to have a baby, and Housing is on the rebound. And Obama wont TARGET you with a drone here in America, IF you are a NON-COMBATANT (but if you are a combatant, for ANY reason, well then... Oh, and if you are collateral damage it doesn't count.) Oh and Jeb Bush is running for President, because I guess the first two Bush's were so great for America, what with GHWBs New World Order, and Father and Son's combined wars, (and by extension, the nazi-financing patriarch, Prescott, Jeb's and G-dubs grandpa.) Jeb wants to bring approx. 40+ million people to America, to even out the demographic. Because there are so many jobs I guess (and what with the across the-board militarization, and drones, and chemicals, phtlatlets and nanoparticles, and Jebs desired expansion of fracking of the DICK Cheney-unregulated industry, well, what kind of psycho nazi motherfuckers do you intend to immigrate, Jeb?)

Which is why I hesitate to blog, these days, I guess, too. I'd very much like to get away to some wilderness somewhere. But there is no wilderness anywhere remaining, with this kind of reach, when no living thing cannot escape the menace of it. Did I mention we were 7 billion people?  Have you seen the condition of Hanford? Have you followed the progress of Fukushima? What faith do you have that this is not going to be the condition of every single one of the the existing nuclear facilities and weapons, when the status quo accepts that? What's that? Henry Paulson wants to move to Puerto Rico? I guess you can with 9.5 billion, Treasury Secretary. Alexander Hamilton was born somewhere 'round the Caribbean, remember. LOL. God Bless America. But I'm not sure Puerto Rico is going to be far enough, if every one of those nuclear facilities goes by way of gross negligence in the event of social upheaval brought on by economic meltdown? BTW - have you heard that antibiotics have ever only put off a day of reckoning?

Well, it's not 1984 anymore. O wait, I turned 11 then. What was going on?


I know. Creepy. And in my experience it rarely performs the true promise of it.

Take heart though. George Mobus is optimistic, this is a time of evolutional change.

I agree. There are seeds of a new Aeon. Something about a shift, from fish to water bearer. I know, you think that's an old joke, a song, of the past. The Age of Aquarius. But it's a fact, a cycle embedded in the stars, and you can't stop it, you can only accept it, or fight it (or I suppose remain indifferent). Which I keep telling people, there's more to that Mayan 2012 thing than you think :)

Which btw, I still very much like to sing the preamble. Here's some more homework - which of the ten Amendments of the Bill of Rights have been effectively nullified? (Hint, it's most of 'em.)

Which, I forgot to mention, I distributed those white pine logs around the garden.

- I hope they'll attract a buyer, once the remodel is complete, and they're all proped up, with potted plants on top? And I got a new job. I get to talk to people about gardening all day! (Granted, I'll be making early industrial era wages - somebody somewhere will be making big money, but not me - but more on that later.)

[Hat tip to JoeP, and the rest of the diner Newz crew, who help keep me up-to-date these days.]

 

Totems

Rabbits ate most of my young fruit trees.

Rabbits are abundant in my garden. I usually don't mind. I have more clover in the pathways than grass, and they are content with the clover mostly, all seasons. They eat it all winter, pooping all over the garden, fertilizing it. We have a snow pack for the first time in awhile, it's a thick heavy snow, and they can't get to the clover. Ringed the trees as high as they could reach; they particularly enjoyed the pears, eating through the inner bark and cambium and into the wood, eighteen inches up. They picked at the peach and the new apple. They clipped the short sour cherry from the top down. They chewed up much of the western sand cherry too. It's my fault, of course; they are just being rabbits, and I certainly could have protected the trees without much trouble. Though I'm reminded, I didn't add the rabbits last week, to the list of the things that will keep me from starving :)

There's an interesting story on right now, on MPR (Minnesota Public Radio), about the wolf hunt here in MN. It's sort of like the division in the abortion debate. One side wants no hunt, the other side thinks its a freedom (except the sides are turned, relative to the abortion division). There are an estimated 3300 wolves in Minnesota (or were): 417 were killed in the hunt, another 300 shot and trapped for depredations on pets and livestock, and hit by cars (no one ever asks, what are cattle farms doing in the north woods?) No number given for the illegal kill, but the guy in favor of the hunt, on the radio, did say early on, [parapharasing], "I don't know how many are killed illegally, you can say whatever, 1000, 2000." It's probably more like 300-400 (it does show how "scientific" his "scientific" claim really is, how much he really cares about wolves.)

On the Doomstead Diner, we've been discussing animal totems. I mentioned when I was a young man I identified with the wolf. Which is to say, some people see animals as totems, and some see them merely as a resource, or a menace; other's still would be fine with exterminating all animals (except humans of course). The guy (on the radio) who wants a moratorium on the hunt is talking now, about that totem feeling, native concerns, and I'm pretty sure I just heard the other guy laugh.

I think, when a guy had to kill a wolf with a bow, he might have had cause to "wear" that pelt as an ornament. Instituting a 30-40 percent reduction in population yearly, is a holocaust.

My neighbor just called in. LOL He just said we don't need to count the wolves. He said there's been a big reduction in deer, rabbit and grouse. He said there's a need to "do something" about all the predators in this state (though he gave a full reprieve to bald eagles). He mentioned most of the predators, of course, except human. He's going on and on now, just about to the limit, before they interrupt. He's well spoken (if mistaken - it's not wolves killing all those animals, it's hungry people in hard times.) The lady talking now is saying something about "the lords of nature." My neighbor, the same one that called in, will likely trap and eat the rabbits that ate my fruit trees. He traps about fifty a year, in the neighborhood. He and his wife eat them.

Which, looking at the rabbit as a totem, I see them eating my fruit trees, as a kind of release. A gesture. Permission to let go of this house, this land.

And a warning. Protect the fruit bearing from predation.

 Meanwhile, opportunities abound.

Late Winter

I keep writing blog posts and throwing them out. I write them in my dreams too, but those I rarely transcribe (they aren't that profound.) It's late winter now in Minnesota, the blah is setting in, and all of my interpretations of what is going on in the world seem unpalatable to just about everyone, and I don't really need to write that way for myself to make sense of it anymore, if you know what I mean. Basically I don't feel like I have much that's positive to say, right now. I can say I love this life and love spending time with family, friends and kids. The earth truly is a beautiful garden.

Which I've felt something very much like the glory of God in this garden. It's hardest to feel that, this time of year, but sitting here in the kitchen writing, looking out at my peach tree, the tall mullein shrouded with snow like dry cacti sentinels, my peacock trellis I found in the alley (I tried to grow cucumbers on, too deep in the shade, bitter cukes.) The grapevines, white ambrosia and frontenac, on the fence, the volunteer mulberry growing out of the fence, leaning out over the 100+ frontenac starts; the volunteer Artemesia absinthium, the stand of bergamot out in the center, negra hollyhock by the bedroom downspout, the one tilting spiked and balled rattlesnake master; my favorite wild leadplant; three South American nicotiana which sprouted from second generation seed, from the jungle-like shade of the leadplant, late in the season, which may not have had time to make a third generation; the golden rod, solidago. All in the frame of this one window, snow falling, sun shining down.

I'm out of money again. Well, not really, but cash is down to maybe $75. I got a $514 phone bill yesterday. In the last month I've downloaded almost 2000 books, watched dozens of documentaries and sang along to hundreds of youtube videos. Oops, never had phone Internet before, $440 in usage charges. It's looking like I might not have phone or Internet, come April. At which time the house is likely to be up for sale. It's almost sure to sell at a loss to an investor, who would probably tear down the house and bulldoze the lot. With a thousand dollars I could spruce the place up and make it super cool and livable; in anticipation of the sale, there's a new furnace (burning fracked natural gas, which dad paid for. Which is wracking up more debt, but does make the house more comfortable than I've ever known it.) Costing not as much to heat the whole house, I think, as the $700 or so that I owe the electric company, for the two oil filled radiators to heat the kitchen, bedroom and bath, late October - mid February.

Employers are not exactly breaking down my door, two months after my little dance at big bank. I haven't been trying very hard, either. (Seems like the twilight of empire to me.)

I have until the 28th of this month to resolve the several tons of asphalt piled in the driveway, after the paver work I did, and the white pine I had intended to prop up around the garden as plant stands, otherwise the city will remove it and charge me another $500+/-. Ran out of screws, to finish the garage greenhouse. LOL.

 

At the same time, I turn 40 this summer. Which I heard Dr. Drew on the teevee the other day, elaborating, after that sad Mindy McCready thing, and he was like, (paraphrasing, my emphasis) if people start giving away their things, have them committed against their will, drug them into oblivion, label them clinical depressives, effectively institutionalize them for the remainder of their days (In Rome they used to kill the Christians for such a thing)...and I was like, that's it! Idiot! Give it all away. LOL. Except maybe my camping gear, so I can get the hell off this crazy train for the whole of the summer at least. Disappear myself into the wilderness for 120 days and find out what knowledge I really have that isn't basically coming from google. lol

But, alas, if you think Doctor Drew is an ass, what do you suppose big bank would have to say about giving a house and garden away?

Otherwise, don't worry about me. I've got at least 100 pounds of potatoes, cabbage, kale, assorted berries, beans, rice and flour, and about 60 bottles of house wine. Asparagus and lambs quarter will be up in six-eight weeks. Legally they can't shut off the utilities for another month at least. Oh yeah, that condemnation thing. LOL :)

Black Arts

When I say that the MSM is become a black art of dissimulation, there are few better illustrations of that than the film Zero Dark Thirty. Which rears it's ugly hydran head again on NPR today - soon again, with the Oscars. A conversation about torture, and whether or not the film sanctifies it. Some people say of the forty minutes of torture scenes (we are a sadistic culture and need our fix) that that one clue worked out - indeed, that it shows torture at all - means the film justifies torture. Others say it's a 'true' representation of a dirty but necessary business, and is merely a reflection for us to ponder, whether or not that's a course we want to continue as a culture. Others think torture is great. Others are freaked out about the very idea of torture, and that this supposed good country could ever justify it in any context; for them the film is repugnant. But again, all-in-all, the message is, this is a discussion about State authorized
torture.

I haven't seen the movie. I don't know that I want to condition my brain and body to that kind of scenery if I don't have to. I'm certainly not going to pay movie theatre prices. Maybe I'll see it when they show it at the Riverview theatre ($2 ticket), or here at the house out of the Red Box ($1, if I bring it back the next day). But again, it's a bullshit story at it's core, so why pay to be duped? Which I don't have to see the movie to comment on the meaning of it, the effect of it, as I see that on my culture and in other people; and knowing what a skilled filmmaker Katherine Bigelow is; which I did see her Hurt Locker, and got off on it like a lot of guys did. She was married to James Cameron, btw, at one point, the Titanic/Avatar guy who used that money to reach the bottom of Marianas Trench, and want's to use it to mine the solar system (!) Katherine Bigelow knows what drives powerful men. Fascinated by the violence of it, she tells it well.

Which it is sort of comical to me, the way the Left has gotten so uppity about torture (which was a GWBush introduction to law) but not drone killings of Americans or anyone, really; or Indefinite Detention of Americans (or anyone); or O's Libyan escapade, getting our Ambassador killed and destabilizing the whole of North Africa; or that gun running into Mexico; continuation of the Patriot Act, etc.

But hey, we got Osama, Left and Right rejoice. We spent billions, billions of dollars were spent tracking down and killing Osama Bin Laden. How much was spent in the investigation of 9/11? I've heard numbers as low as $600,000. I don't know that there is any evidence pointing Osama bin Laden to 9/11; as time goes by, he looks more and more like a CIA asset turned patsy. There's plenty of evidence to suggest our Federal government, or rather some cabal within the government, perpetrated 9/11, but again, mostly all you'll ever hear from the MSM is Mockingbird piping, from Anderson Cooper to Glenn Beck.
 
Torture in this case becoming like a red herring then, in the terminology of State propaganda, to hide the fact that something very like a coup took place on 9/11. Surveillance state America. Which might be a conversation America might want to pursue, but not one that is ever going to be addressed in any meaningful way but to denigrate, by the MSM.

Which story Katherine Bigelow in all her genius is never going to get to tell, nor would she want to, Ms self-styled rebel. You know what I mean, the story about the coup, by the rotten beating Western heart of the Military Industrial Global Banking Surveillance State. The true story of the centralization of power.

Instead, she made a movie that says basically, the State exists to protect you, the story it has told about Osama bin Laden and 9/11 is true, and so the War on Terror is justified. State propaganda, in other words, masquerading skillfully as Art. Which they really would just about have to force me to watch. Plenty of people payed though, $11-15, and ate it up, like true institutional wards. Getting off on Katherine Bigelow's machismo. LOL She is hot.

 

Every Imperial State having it's message managers. Katherine Bigelow being an exemplar. 

   

God and Football

God made an appearance, during the Super Bowl fiesta, did you see that?

Or was that the devil everywhere? I'm not sure anymore, between the two, but then, there's football to think about, so, all's good.

I mean, what a dramatic game! A very dramatic Super Bowl - with even a game shifting power outage, following an astounding halftime show; WHAT TECH! And Beyonce' "killed" it (which for you old timers, is a euphemism for "totally rocked"). I found myself totally cheering for the 49'ers, for old time's sake, amazed at the strength and accuracy of the arm, of the young man Kaepernick - who, check it out, wrote a letter when he was a kid that he wanted to play in the Super Bowl for the 49ers! Flacco and the Ravens showed extreme poise, and unified vision. The brothers angle was special too, the two opposing head coaches (between whom there is enough antipathy that they could not even embrace after the game.) The ending was a drag, literally, a weird non-call on the last play from scrimmage for the 49ers, and then the punter for the Ravens running around in the end zone, but on the whole it was a great game, and Ray Lewis finally got his title.

As for God, He showed up early, before the game, just like He always does. Ray Lewis gave an interview. Among other things, asked about the man he supposedly killed 13 years ago. To paraphase, "God is perfect, and He wouldn't ever let a man who could have done what was accused of me, to accomplish what I've accomplished." After which, it was revealed that the interview was recorded before it was revealed that he had used a banned pharmaceutical to heal more quickly from a triceps injury.

Kaepernick called out God's name too, though Colin compared to Ray Lewis, seems a genuine "babe in the woods," though it might not seem that way to conservative America, what with all those tatoos. FAITH being most prominent on the golden biceps he is so fond of kissing. Too bad though, God showed up for the bad guy, this time.

Beyonce' called out to God too, from that fabulous stage. She seemed classy about it too, IMO, thanking the audience at the end, some 111 million Americans, for the opportunity. What an opportunity! One wonders, or at least I do, what would have happened had she called out to the Goddess, instead. LOL. The horror of it.

The devil was more prominent in the commercials. He appeared as Willem Dafoe, for Mercedes (did anyone else notice the Mercedes emblem hovering over it all, at the peak of the Superdome?), and several times, as Stevie Wonder/witchdoctor/Bud Light pimp. There was plenty of mayhem, as Kunstler pointed out:

Did anyone notice how violent and psychotic the Superbowl advertising was this year? An Oreo commercial that depicted a mob of nerds destroying a library --  huh? The Doritos spot where "Daddy" and his male buddies transform themselves into an insane clown posse of cross-dressers. The Fast and Furious 6 trailer featuring the destruction of every vehicle known to man and a few office buildings, too. The third-quarter power failure was a neat harbinger of things-to-come in the Most Exceptional United States of America. Party on, peeps! 

 The coup de grace' did not actually come, until after the game, a contrived Elementary strip tease, and then the slaughter of two doctors, two nurses and a policeman, shot in the head, and throats slit. I only saw three people die the rest of that show, shot in the head and stabbed in the neck, though I never finished watching it. Sometime much later, I caught three minutes of a CSI episode, a middle class woman chained to a bed, mouth covered with duct tape - close-up on her face as she is stabbed to death with an ice pic - her death-image repeated about 50 times in the next 2 minutes, spasmodically.

I have a few theories about that power outage. I didn't actually know until almost game time, that the game was being played in the New Orleans Superdome. I didn't want to be a downer during the game, so I didn't mention all the people who died in that building, post-Katrina. The first thing out of my mouth when the power went out was, "The ghost of Katrina rises!" Or ghosts. It might have been intentional too: the lights out in HALF the building. Notice, the 49er's were 3rd and 14, down 28-6, early in the third quarter. That's a lot of advertising that isn't going to be watched ($), and another 34 minutes of downtime to show them. It worked, great. DHS is sure to make use of the power outage, too, in their propaganda to take over the internet. Maybe it was God though, maybe it was, a little harbinger of what is to come, like Kunstler says.

After the game, I went to a local bar with my brother in law. The ending of that Elementary show was on the TV, the psychotic killer of nurses and doctors in some nice apartment, in a battle of wits with the protagonist, Holmes. Rather than follow along with the captioning, I started talking to the guy next to me, about the tv show, and how weird it was there was so much violence, immediately following the game. He started analyzing it in a sort of comatose and not necessarily overly-drunken way, like, why was it necessary to kill those two nurses, as if those first two dead health care professional/doctors and the police man made sense, dramatically speaking - identifying with the mass murderer, without really knowing he was doing it. He wasn't a bad guy; banal would be the word, eating up a "morality" tale on the relative righteousness of revenge killing/psychopathic slaughter. Which there seems to me a great many like him. People who don't think very well, basically, inured to the imagery of violence. For instance, I hear some hesitatingly harsh talk today about the extreme sexuality of Beyonce's performance. Violence, on the other hand, is being discussed on NPR right now as I write this, with about as much detached apprehension as that everyman at the bar. If I had to say, what is TV about, after last night's foray, myself not watching TV very often, I'd say it's more and more about training people to be killers, clinical like.

So, stepping into the archetype of the raving mystic, for a moment, making a Prophecy, my take-away from Super Bowl XLVII (you might want to avert your eyes):

Ravens will pick from the bones of the dead, 
before the descendents of flower children shall rise;
with gold and precious metals, to make a new way 
to communicate freely, or to enslave, 
or be enslaved if they are not wary









   

Gun Control, Mental Illness and violence

The hearings on gun control in Congress Wednesday were instructive, not so much for what was said, but what wasn't. I'm not about to argue with Gabby Giffords though; anyone who gets shot in the head and survives can say pretty much whatever they want, in front of Congress, IMO. Which everything she said is basically true, esp that there are too many children dying violent deaths.

Who's children is an important point too, though most conversations about children in this country are sure to be confused. The Right would argue for the fetus to be declared a child, as example, but don't on the whole give a damn about chemical industrial pollutants in the womb, or that a blanket social taboo against abortion would inevitably terrorize every woman who miscarries, on top of her sorrow, that she will be accused and suffer the consequences of righteously outlawed abortion. The Left would presume to shelter every child from every harm, but fail to question their beloved President for dropping bombs on kids, and by extension the global economic/military empire we maintain, terrorizing kids everywhere. The Left and the Right will generally drug their children with a panoply of hard core pharmaceuticals before they would say, throw out the TV? When I was in the ninth grade I had a history teacher who was also a football coach, who made us "memorize" a list of accomplishments of every President, all of it out of context of course. Presumably my time might have been better spent learning something useful (like the meaning of fractional reserve currency, privately controlled, perhaps, and where it fits in the historical context.) 

I was in a school the other day, at my niece's science camp. It was mostly a lesson in waste, and the extraordinary patience of teachers. I was offered a meal, with everything - sandwich, carrots, cheese, egg, greens, fruit - individually wrapped, and the whole wrapped again. I was hungry but I declined it. I heard a Microsoft guy tell all the kids that the future was about robotics and ALL the good paying jobs would be in engineering, and robots will do everything else. If the kids had actually been listening, I might have interrupted, "well what is everyone else who isn't an engineer going to be doing?" He probably would have said, 'watching tv,' and all the kids would have laughed. To which I would have replied if it had seemed appropriate, 'well, you don't think all those people who aren't going to have jobs are expendable, do you?' The moral of all this, being, some of us have a more nuanced threshold of what can be characterized as violence.
         
There are several things you will not ever hear about in the American mainstream media, Left or Right, in the current gun-control debate - not the least of which is the relationship between American consumption of heavy weaponry, and our vast military empire. (The Left being in denial about said empire, the Right champions of.) Almost no one in the MSM is asking Obama to stop killing people including Americans, including women and children, with drones. Meanwhile this Democratic Administration leads America ever closer to a total surveillance state. The Constitutional Lawyer President having given himself the right to detain Americans indefinitely, and kill them, gets re-elected and the Left and Right would give this guy a de-facto database of every gun purchaser in the country. But the Right NEVER criticizes the guy for his predation on civil liberties otherwise, unless said civil liberties have to do with guns, or the plunder of earth's resources basically (that they think, contrary to all available evidence, that O stands in the way of their oil and gas fracking, pipeline building, etc.)

Like I said in a recent article at the Doomstead Diner:

MSM, it is safe to say, is become a black art of dissimulation, Bernays vision fully realized. For a brief moment, let us focus on the gun debate. First of all, there was never supposed to be a standing military here in America. Standing armies, the founders knew, become a fraternity of mercenaries and professional soldiers, who care to do little but soldiering, who become the tools of tyrants who destroy the core principles of any republic (generally ) Second of all, any weapon, standard-issue in time of war, to the infantry, should be available to ANY adult citizen who displays competency. Such a well regulated militia was meant to be the guard against the herding unto tyranny/war/genocide. Third, we were never supposed to be entangled in other country’s bizness....

 I do not own a gun. I do not intend on buying one. I figure, if I ever need one, the universe will provide. That's good enough for me.

In part I don't worry about owning a gun, because guns feel perfectly comfortable in my hands, after a child-hood and young-adulthood hunting. At the same time, many of my fellow Americans seem to be of the opinion that there is not hardware enough. Many of them I am assuming not having any idea how to shoot such hardware. Meanwhile, the Feds and law enforcement generally, increasingly militarized. Again, from 2013: Thus Far, America:

So what are they talking about now? National database, gun “buy backs”, guns left at the shooting range? (See Australia) What did the MSM have to say about the 450 Million .40 cal hollow point rounds, DHS alone purchased in 2012, or the billion+ rounds they purchased total, of various calibre? Nada. Nothing. And that hardware is just DHS. That doesn’t include CIA, FBI, NSA, DEA, ATF, et al Fed, State and Local law enforcement, and all the decommissioned weaponry of Afghanistan and Iraq, heaped upon them. From a strictly strategic standpoint, American’s are going to need a hell of a lot of AR-15 .223cal rifles, well-organized, to fend off the State with all those .40cal hollow points, domestic surveillance apparatus, drones, etc. That doesn’t even count the Military. Assuming all that hardware is facing the people, and not turned back against the State, of course, should trouble start (see, I do have faith in Americans). But the job of the MSM, you see, is to support the State, not question it

In case no one has noticed, war making and law enforcement is a thing that after 12 years of war, is deeply embeded in our troubled economy, ever seeking to justify itself economically, to wield what power it has and to gain more. You will not hear the MSM discuss how afraid the rest of the world is of our military strength any more than you will hear it discussed, American's fear of their government, and of our law enforcement that has become deeply predatory - except to mock our fear. It is legal in this country, in this State, for the Minneapolis police, Hennepin County Sheriff, Minnesota State Troopers, NSA, DHS, FBI, DEA, any of these guys, to come into this house, find the flower of the most useful plant on the planet, cannabis, or not! and take my house and land from me, and everything in it. This sort of thing happens every day in America, though more, it is the seizure of cash, and cars, and otherwise a general sadist humiliation and criminalization - a lot worse than that going on, too. Meanwhile if you are an International banker you get to launder billions of dollars of illicit (and CIA) drug money. Meanwhile there are more drones in the sky every day. It's pretty clear at this point, any kind of weaponized uprising, in any isolated spot in America would be snuffed out without any great difficulty. So yeah, many Americans are terrified of their government. But again, you don't hear about any of that in the MSM, except to mock it, like I said.

I mean, who isn't aware that here in America, there are more people in jail or under the thumb of law enforcement, than anywhere else in history, in real numbers and per-capita. Many of these prisons PRIVATELY OWNED, INCENTIVIZED. The CEO of the largest private prison system in America makes more money in 2.5 days than I have ever made in one year in my life. (See military, deeply imbedded in troubled economy.) 

Meanwhile, the debate about gun control as defined by the MSM has been about identifying the mentally ill? LOL. Brave New World America. Where we LOVE our servitude. Which, if you think locking down on private gun ownership while failing to address rampant consumerism or militaristic imperialism or predatory authority or privately controlled currency, is going to do something to end violence, yer by def. loony tunes.

That said, I council not dwelling on imagery of violence. No sense in cultivating more of what is mono-culturally sewn, widely. Better to cultivate your own private mental garden, where peace and quiet reign. And maybe figure out a way to steer clear of the lunacy on both sides, sort of like a fox, or something like it? The control freaks Left and Right are sure to kill each other off, eventually, right?

I mean, do you get that these guys at the NRA are basically asking for the same thing the Feds want? A de-facto national database, a military/police presence in the schools (and in public generally eventually), and as much fuckin HARDWARE as can be produced. They say background check information will legally have to be erased within 24 hrs, bla bla, but if you think this government that is hell-bent on capturing every digital communication on earth, and perhaps even on the verge of it, if not already there, is going to erase info that says who is buying a gun (or isn't going to make buying and owning a gun basically contingent on an oath to the military/police state?) If you trust these guys, I have an island for sale, cheap. It's super cold there, but it's melting. More like a continent actually, and it's kinda hard to get to, and there's some other claims, but it's big and mostly empty...LOL

There used to be a name for that sort of thing, military presence in schools and such: Fascism, creeping. The death of fun indeed. I mean, you do get that all these money changers and uber-government types are basically the descendents of Augustus unt Mein Fuhrer, right? And the money changers are funding all sides, flooding the world with weaponry? 

Well, like John said in the comments of my elegy to Aaron Swartz, if Brave New World doesn't work out, there's always 1984 as a template.

(The garden is a template too. Something about the eating of the fruit of the Tree of Life, that we might recover our immortality? Just sayin'. Er, I guess, turn the whole world into a war zone/wasteland.)

BTW - Blessed Imbolc, said Brighid

And some great advice I heard from a master fishing-pole builder, Mel Dickie, 92: "stay alive, and enjoy life."

asima IV

Readers: The last of my four part series on asima, an initial response from me to the death of Aaron Swartz. I'll be back with a regular post, later this week.  Here, the grandchild wakes up early...

"It is very early, the sun's not up yet. Grandfather and grandmother are sleeping still. I was dreaming. I was flying, yes; in my dream I was flying! I think I'll go to the hokum now. Something grandmother said about the wasteland, has me curious! I cannot sleep any more today, for sure. Quietly, I go.

Into the hokum room! Sitting now on my knees like I like, closing my eyes like I was taught. Calming myself. I would lay down but it is very early, and I might fall asleep. Far to run I think, in the hokum, before grandmother and grandfather wake up; unless I can fly, like I did in my dream, like I did last night with grandmother!

Stop. Relax. breathe.

Here I am. In the hokum. On the teaching platform. Grounding myself...whoa...it's always weird, the transition, so wobbly, like I'm floating...there, here I am. Take a deep breath, yes, it's still dark. My feet are planted. The moon is full, low in the West.

Fly! Fly!

Alright, I'll run, but I'll keep trying. Which way? Follow the river! Upstream, follow the river upstream toward the West!

Running, running. I want to fly, it would be so much faster, but I can't yet, I have to run. It's not that different, running by the river, just like the river that I run by sometimes, next to Bella Forge, in waking life; but I'm always watchful, because grandpa likes to play tricks. There was that time that tree reached down and picked me up, and threw me to the other tree that caught me, and then I was sitting in that tree like it was any other tree, and I had got there all by myself. There was that time by the pond when I was watching dragonflys by the shore, and then right in front of me a frog jumped up out of the water and grabbed a dragonfly right out of the sky, and then I looked up, and the biggest water monster EVER rose up out of the pond and then went under water again, just like a snake, like the whole hokum was an island floating on some massive ocean - except there was only the little pond hardly big enough for little fish, and no other water anywhere anyone could see, and then the monster was gone and it was just me and the dragonflys and the frog. So I watch out, because you never know what might show up out of nowhere.

Here where the river splits, right here, is the "landmark", the skunk plant, which is as far as I've been. It's all woods and then a clearing, and then there's this one plant, right in the middle, one flower, super weird, taller than I am, like a cactus, but red, and stinking like DEATH, like a dead animal. Like a warning. In waking life, the real flower only flowers one day ever, in it's entire life - but this thing is like eternal. This is as far as I've gone. Yuck. I pass by. I'll follow the river; stay out of the woods, the woods is trouble.

Running, running. It's getting lighter, a little bit, the sky. Rosy, rosy in the east, a little bit, bit by bit; I like to run; the crickets, the frogs, the rushing water; stop, a hermit thrush! Run, run, run, running again, skip, skip; how far I wonder, before I come to the wasteland? What does it look like? Probably like nothing I've ever seen before, probably like what grandmother says about the Aeons of Empire. The sky is getting brighter; there are hardly any clouds. That cloud looks like a dog.

That's strange. The river comes from underground; there's only woods beyond - what now? No river to follow. North, East or West now. I don't know. What did grandmother say, the further from the core, the weaker the hokum. But there's no wasteland yet. North, into the woods.

Running, running. Faster than the Sun rises! Faster! Faster! Leap! off the rock! Duck, under the fallen log covered with moss and dripping water. Run. run, faster than the sun! This woods is not so scary; no tree has reached down and grabbed me, thrown me yet.

I come to a clearing, a meadow. Look at the flowers, the bees, the sunlight! How did it get so sunny, so soon! Look, a deer, a fawn, in the meadow, in the sun, glowing, almost white! What if I had my bow and arrow. Wait! My bow and arrow, in my hand. asima! Tall grass, in the meadow, I duck low, like a cat, leaving the forest, through the raspberries at the forest edge.

Nearly in the middle of this meadow in the tall grass, close to the deer, something spooks it, it runs off. Out of range of my bow. If I move, it moves. How I want to be able to show grandfather! Alright, I give up. But the sun is warm, the meadow is beautiful, many flowers I recognize, late summer flowers like the asters and the goldenrod; but that's strange, because it's closer to the spring, than fall, and the hokum is always like a reflection...

Wait. Something is not right. wait. what is happeninggggg, the meadow, cold, my bowww, no bow, no arroow...the meadow is breaking, apart...i SEE STARS...now everything's .a. WASTELAND...smoldering fires....cars and ruined buildings...bodies......cold...breaking apart again, the meadow...stars...the wasteland...the deer!..............................

Grandmother!"

"Look me in the eyes child. Do you see where we are? The golden glow around us now, your grandfather just beyond and everywhere around us, the swirling vortex', the myriad red desert-colored whirlwinds innumerable, each like an intention of its own, blown by a wind like none ever seen on this earth? That is your grandfather, and whatever that was that was after you, it will be lucky to wake tomorrow. Do you feel Her?"

"Grandmother! What happened! I was in a meadow, stalking a golden deer..."

"This is the wasteland we are in, child, protected by this golden globe provided for you by myself and Gaia, thank you very much...I would have liked to sleep another hour, I might have liked to share a quite morning with your grandfather, which it is, a quiet morning...IN THE WAKING WORLD, where you are supposed to be in bed!"

"Grandmother! What is Grandfather doing!"

"That is a thing he learned from Jupiter. Don't gaze too long. Focus on the golden orb surrounding us, the interior, us together, far calmer than that summer meadow where thought you were hunting deer, more like a cradle, like an egg, like a womb."

"What happened, grandmother?"

"You crossed into the wasteland, though you thought it was a meadow, because while you thought you were hunting, you were being hunted by a thing outside the hokum."

"I thought I was going to drift off into space. It got very cold!"

"Whatever it was, it beguiled you, to bring about your destruction. Had you followed that deer beyond the boundary of the hokum you would have crossed into asima, into the stream, before you were ready. Time in asima is not the same as it is in waking life. Once in the stream you would be difficult to find, even for Gaia. You might grow old and die before waking again."

"What is going on with grandfather, grandmother? The whirlwinds grow wilder, more intense, I feel an increased shaking, even through this golden glowing egg, the safety of you and Gaia. I feel a shaking!"

"Calm, child. Your fear can only weaken us. Remember where you are. Remember where you are truly. We are here in this golden orb with Gaia, yes - but you are seated, in the hokum room, in the waking world. Now I am going to reach out, from this golden orb - stay focused, stay calm - and I am going to take hold of your grandfather's leg...there, do you feel that, the Jupiter whirlwind thing, dissipating. It will take awhile. Once unleashed - this is only the second time I've see it - like a virus that could overwhelm the system. At the same time, both times it has been protection. Damned Jupiter! He could not lend a thing that would destroy the network, could he? I think not. Yet, both times your grandfather has unleashed it he has needed my help to pull it back, the threat not so much that he would destroy the system, maybe, but that he would entropy unto oblivion, frizzle out, so to speak - don't tell him I said that."

"Whatever, grandmother."

"Whatever?" Excuse me? Impertinent wretch! Of the three of us, who wandered into the wasteland in the morning twilight alone without protection? Or in fact, never having seen the wasteland, or knowing what to expect! Fool child! You have put us all at risk! Silence now."

(He said) "You thought you would, what, show us how travelling through asima is done?"

"Grandfather! The whirlwinds, gone, the golden orb, gone too. Grandmother! The wasteland, all around us!"

"Fool child! What do you know of what just happened?"

"Only what grandmother has told me, that I was hunted, and nearly fell into the stream. That I might not have been found, if I had."

"Look around you. This is what you wanted to see, this is what nearly cost you your life. The Aeons of Empire, ended in carnage. Few survived. Here, look at this!"

"Grandfather!"

"This, is the inside of a plane. Look out this window here, how high above the earth we are, now -  a different kind of flying. How loud it is! Woops, we are outside the plane now, floating in the sky, look at the plane, flying away. Look, the plane shits, like a bird. Wait. Wait. That isn't shit. Look at the way the shit explodes, the raging fires. Let's have a closer look, shall we?

Here we are, back on the earth again, the shit/bombs dropping all around us, the deafening noise, the concussion knocking buildings down, crushing people, the screaming, the terror! I will spare you the sight of burning babies. Here!

Look at that. People, ragged and filthy, herded like cattle.

Wait. Look at this shiny street, these glass towers, the people, looking so smart, confident, arrogant, oblivious!

Here we are, high above the city now, flying again, look there, in the distance another city; wait, there goes the city, not a bunch of shit/bombs but ONE, one big bomb to burn them all!

Back to the hokum hole proper. Let's take a tour of the wasteland, shall we, a little tour of ancient horrors. Shall we? Fly the round?"

"Grandfather! (crying)"

"Fine then. Here we are, at the teaching platform. Wake up now in waking life, go to the sanctuary by the river, and stay there until someone retrieves you. Go now!" (the child goes)

"That was something you stirred up there, in that hokum hole yesterday, more than you thought, man?"

"Woman, it was. Not so powerful as insidious. Devoid of caring. Pure, cruel ruthlessness. I stung it though."

"I would not want to be caught inside whatever it was you were doing there, enough to discombobulate the mind for certain. Though it seemed to me the thing was set almost to do such a thing to you, something like a candle burning out."

"Thank you, for that help. It was not so bad as you imagine, but yes there is a danger. It could wipe my mind, if I hold too tight to it. Whatever, that, here we are alive. I have sent a message to the honor/bound, I expect a contingency here in the hokum, this afternoon. I think I will rest, now. I might have shown the child too much. A result, I think, of having unleashed the whirlwinds, the fury of it. The child will need some comforting; to the sanctuary, if you would care to pick up after me? I will reconcile tonight, after the meeting."

"The child is made of firmer stuff than you think, grandfather. But yes, as it concerns the child, perhaps pause before acting out of anger, next time. Though I'm not prepared yet to judge, if what you showed the child was too much, too early. I will offer comfort, yes. I'll make lunch and dinner too. You can reconcile tonight while you do the dishes."

"Agreed. I am going back to bed now, thank you."