The other morning I had a moment where I felt a certain kind of tightening of the gut, a tensioning of all the muscles in a fight or flee response. I was listening to the President of the United States say, in his own words, apparently it was supposed to be a scripted press conference, but the Shrub wanted to get something off his chest. Now I recall when Jon was a pre-teen how he would sometimes get caught in some fabrication of the truth, there was a way that he circled around the lie, building up a case for something approaching what he was going to say and make sure he was explaining all the reasons why this direction was not circuitous, but straight and trustworthy, backed by all the facts any human could detect. And then he'd lie. And when he lied he would open his eyes and stare at me unblinking, because he was young and thought "open" and "he blinked" meant you weren't supposed to blink if you were telling the truth. And when he looked at me that way and said what was obviously a whole-cloth fabrication or some twisting of the space time continuoum. And George looked and sounded that way that morning. I thought he was announcing martial law, and in a way he was, because he was making the case that as we were in a war, authorized by Congress and conducted by himself, George Bush, President, that the Constitution and the Law said he could do this thing and not only DID he do it in the past, he was gonna keepa doin' it tuh keep Amurika FREE...

They keep lists, these people. They always keep lists. Not the list where you write your daily to-do's... these are lists of names of people who aren't part of the New Solution. What happens when things slide out of control is that sometimes new names get added to the lists by, oh, ex-husbands, girlfriends, co-workers, neighbors, people with the power, the motive and plenty of opportunities to get back at someone who has wronged them, or potentially might wrong them in the case of the Bush family, it seems. In Florida you can carry a gun and if you see someone who looks like they are threatening your life, you have the right to gun them down. George's brother seems to think that is a good way for people to live. I get a little nervous. I just know somebody out there might want to put my name on a list and sometimes what happens is that you may not be sentenced to some punishment, your loved ones might. These people, these people who keep lists, they can be very angry at times, like when Condi is defending her Man, and she trembles and twitches on her face come and go, she may spit a bit.... they get angry. And the thing is, when people who feel they have God-delivered absolute power over everyone everywhere at any time of the day or night, well that kind of responsibility weighs heavy and they dollop it out on those close to them, giving them portions of absolute power. This is the basis of this New Solution, and I suppose the reason I get nervous is the deja-vu feling, having been a student of world history in a deletante kind of a way. I just could almost take my finger to the book and page wherein people with absolute power give large chunks of it to people who tremble with fury and spit at people before them. I just get a bad feeling about this one.

So, some of the more psychotic add-ons might be savy enough to build search engines, or even to Google, and they could make lists, and merge lists and soon the whole thing becomes a vast list, a complicated database which cannot really have an answer or a New Solution, it just ends up acting like one of the old ones, one of the ones that didn't work before because it flies in the face of things like Reality and Law. I suppose anyone who ever said things in a blog that might offend someone else... gosh... might feel nervous. Beyond that first tightening of the gut, that first deja-vu feeling, I don't feel as nervous so much as determined. If you go on heightened observation, into a more meerkat kind of consciousness, I think you can go about your business without too much trouble. But you should know you're on a list and you should notice men in grey suits and dark glasses, especially if someone takes your picture. Trouble is, now everybody is James Bond, everybody with a cell phone. In a way, that's good for our side. We can email pics of funny people to our accounts and cross check them with pics we sent from other days. That way we can se if that guy really is following us, or if we need to talk about our feelings more. Trouble is, to live like that is really more of a rodent kind of life, a mouse in the woodpile kind of life. But as a pagan I certainly can see where a smaller form, a lessening of the target might be a real rational kind of way to be. Getting off the grid is okay and a good start, but to build a compound and send out leaflets is cross-purposing. I like the idea of growing beans and tomatoes and herbs and oninons and just keeping a low profile. Of course there is the matter of dharma and karma and even free will to consider, but that's a long debate and maybe with too many voices.

So with winter before me, winter beside me, winter above and behind me, I take hope that the Lady below me will get done sucking her pomegranate seeds and get back up to the surface. There's always an exit strategy, there's always a door into summer. That was the story of Pandora the explora too. She found there was always hope. I don't see hope as a tiny little Tinkerbell kind of fairy, no, I see it as my sculpture Persephone with thunder-thighs and big forearms, pushing through the crowd to confront the sun full tilt. Then we get Spring, then the snow will melt. All the mulch I put down will be worm food and the worms will be busy this spring, for sure. There's a lot of work to be done in the garden, and if the roots are not severed the garden will prosper. Yup, that's about it.