Spring into Summer

Ain't Misbehaving, neither me nor Louie. It's a drab and dreary day, typical for the time of year. You have two types of weather, too hot and too damp. It's as if a sauna had escaped and was roaming the hills. But that's life and that's the way it goes. Could be worse, could be a skeeter dodging drops and looking in vein for an arm.

I haven't seen Jon in many weeks thanks to the old back and this transitional weather. It takes a couple days to uncontract my muscles and get limber enough to chance a 100 mile drive. Then it rains again. But the beans need it. We have a nice garden started here, beans and taters, tomatoes and peppers. It is an exercise in control and chaos. I build the tepees and plant the beans and then see how many sprout. This year all my pole beans were raptured up apparently. I planted them twice to make sure and now I know Kentucky Wonders are either good Christian beans or the moles like them.

We have a new puppy, a 2 year old named Buddha whom we call Buddy. Like Wrigley he is a half Corgi but this half is a Pembroke Corgi which comes with no tail. The other half is Beagle so he has the nose and the body. He's more stubborn than Wrigley was, he is willing to stand for several minutes leaning into the leash in an effort to go THAT way instead of the way I want to go. I have proven more stubborn by leaning the other way for several minutes and then I simply sit down and wait. I guess waiting for Jon to get a break has honed my patience. I should wind up a bunch of rings and make more chain mail. I still haven't finished Jess' shirt.

There is something going on in Washington and I doubt it means Good Times for one and all. I suspect it has to do with our 14 trillion dollar debt and our inability to raise enough taxes to pay the interest on it.  Japan gets Washington state, Oregon goes to India and California goes to China. Debt settled and we can go on from there, borrowing from the Chinese to pay for our 4-5 wars.

What does the Creator think about all these bodies? It must be like seeing your blackboard being erased by the chalk. Is it possible for the Creator to become afraid of his creations? Sure, says so in the Bible. He was afraid we'd get not only as smart but as immortal as He and the angels. So he killed the Tree. Now when people die, they are Dead. Or that's the way it is for Yahwist people. Pagans like me keep coming around. Not sure which idea I like best, but the idea of having billions of "first kisses" is a Hell of a great idea! Looking at my son being born, and my daughter being born... and my beautiful wife on our wedding day... to be able to do all that again certainly is a great reason to go through the process. I think Yahweh hasn't been the same since he got his divorce. he needs to get out and meet some nice divinities of the female persuasion. Do a world of good!

Equinox -Spring 2011

It should be remembered that the All, in it's infinite purity, hasn't a quirk to hang a personality on, nor a flaw which offers a lesson, yet it does; that lack of flaws must be balanced by an infinity of flaws in a infinite field. Thus all those flaws concentrate upon finite Things, if it is a flawed Thing, or a psychosis if it is of the Mind. It requires no trick of the imagination to determine that Infinity must be balanced and if it is, then does not Evil equal Good? In a Way, yes, in the Way that the sun is halfway through it's Path from Solstice to Solstice. It happens, every time it is time to and it doesn't last long, not really, it just feels that way when it's happening to you. So one should remember that Evil is no Quirk of the Infinite One, it is a Quirk of something further down the way to Nothing. Humanity in the form of one person can be “quirky” enough to be called evil, but not Evil itself.

Like the equinox, evil happens in an instant and the echoes of that happening, the reverberating memory pains upon receiving this evil, are what seem to never end. Now an eclipse can last for several minutes, and you might not think of it as an instant of time, yet how does the Moon feels about that brief encounter with a shadow? Hardly a blink. It happens, then it's gone. But it has an impact. People have died, by hand or by happenstance, people have looked up to see death. Thousands have washed up onshore, crushed and rent by some insane hatred of order and balance. They will mine for flesh amid the rubble and drowned debris for weeks and months, but the cities and towns of Japan that have been so torn asunder and drowned are now being irradiated by the unwillingness of humans to face reality for years and years. Is that evil? All those deaths and all that destruction seem to point to a malice behind it all. So we could call it Evil and give it a pitchfork or lightning bolt, or we could even imagine that the Universe itself is inherently Evil to turn a blind eye on those people now gone forever, with grieving loved ones left behind. Some are able to make the kindly Grandfather in the Clouds an occasional wife beater and child molester, but all of that is trying to hang a personality on that which can have none. The quake, the wave, the burning debris floating on the ocean all leave you feeling weak and sick to your stomach. You feel like tearing your hair and screaming. You close your eyes and try to find a quiet center, someplace where it makes sense. 

Where is the balance point at the Equinox, the point at which the egg can stand on it's head? Both science and Belief tells us that the point is within our heart, in the way we see ourselves and our place in it all. It is the point where change can happen. When you find that balancing egg in your heart and know the moment is passing, which side will the egg topple to, guided by gravity and what's inside? You can't know, because there are an infinite number of rays streaming from that point, pointing to where the egg will fall. The further from that point the more room there is for more rays, and more ways to fall. This is where personality comes in and takes a stand. This is where you know where you are going from this moment on. We cannot face the next wave of evil while we refuse to move from the last. We should not want to be part of the next pile of debris, so it's good to think and act and to think about higher ground. In acting, you become a creator, you create a future for yourself. You move, and all things which move are alive. So be alive in your new world, your new creation. At the equinox point you may fall, but you have a chance to determine the direction. If I say you will fall in the direction at which you are looking, remember that in science we know that some basic elements of the universe are determined by the thoughts and actions of the observer. Thus, as your personality perceives the Universe rushing up at it, it knows which way to go, guided by what's inside it.

So at this time of year take your philosophy out and set it on the table standing on it's end. Decide which way it will fall and be ready when it does.

Looking At It

With Wrigley dead there is very little to smile about. I can understand why the Universe would want to hurt me, I'm an asshole sometimes, a real arrogant twerp. So it would make sense to hit my head while bitching about losing a flashlight as if someone else moved the thing, which by the way would be in my coat pocket. So that makes a certain sense. But here's the Thing: what possible Universe would prefer it if the most perfect, intelligent, frisky and kind animal in the world, ever, were to be dead. I repeat the word because a sentient creature will recoil from the illogical and this makes no sense.

Now there are these religions I have read about which imply the Creator is a Cosmic Micro-Manager and can take full responsibility for unkind deaths, wars, virii and SDS as well as Saint Somebody and Doctor Izzo. I can, to a degree see logic in that, but it produces such a Psychotic Creator, such a murderous mind that I cannot associate that with Creation at all. From there I have to go to a Mother-like Creator, because only a female can extract life from Her own body. Only a Female Entity can give birth. As Below, So Above. This makes sense to me, and Mothers raise kids differently, and Grandmothers more so. As you go from the One to the Family to the Tribe you still get more progress from Mothers than from Fathers, especially Psychotic Father in Heaven raining down fire and lava and burning napalm. I'm even willing to extend the metaphor to include mercy killing of mal-formed kittens. But you should not enjoy and anticipate it.

Then there are religions which are much more self-in-All oriented. Life and Universe are co-equal. The Universe can in fact rain down fire and burning napalm on children and mothers. It can even produce the elements of a body to supply a home for Life, but only Life will make that a Home.

It is within the soul of man to confuse one for the other. It is within the mind of man to have the curiosity to constantly test the truth of both. But here there can be no mistake: my friend Wrigley is dead and I have to take home his ashes. There is an expression: all is ashes. This carries with it the image of a burned dwelling, Life has fled. There are but shattered walls and blackness under the gray. But I have images, too, of a tiny pine tree growing from a half-melted stump, aglow with moss and tiny flowers, all eating away at the air, the dew, the stump. What is left behind becomes part of the Universe and what leaves returns to Life.

A religion is not a faith. I have no religion but I have a faith. I believe in myself first of all, from this island of being I can sense both seen and unseen, tasted and untasted. My mind can feel other mind. That which is felt is also feeling, that which is alive is also changing, we change ourselves just by breathing in a particular piece of air. If you hold your breath just in time to avoid that virus which would have killed you, is this not a miracle? Yet no one is applauding, no one noticed.

Two people noticed when Wrigley was hit. Each had a truck and although Wrigley loved trucks and loved new people, he was under my truck and would not let the other man near him. So I picked him up and I put him in the truck, our truck HIS truck and I drove him to a place I thought might just have to kill him, like Hidey the cat was killed. But he was sleepy and in pain and I stroked his head and like I tell my son every time I see him, "You're a good boy. I am so proud of you. I love you so much." But I will not know in a sure way if he heard me because Wrigley was always pretty quiet in the truck. He liked to sleep while I drove.

I'm Being Watched

I have evidence that I am being read. They never leave their name and they don't always write in American, but they seem to enjoy reading what I have written. Interesting. Just in time for my acquiring fans my knuckles are getting bigger, the finger tips are pointing the wrong directions and my toes hurt. The edges are fraying. I always feel that my pains are from my son, in order to bear his pains. That would be about right, his hands are curled and useless and my fingers are throbbing. His feet have dropped and my toes can't stand pressure. IN a perfect world a son would inherit what his father left behind. In my world the father fades and curls like an Autumn leaf in a fire, burning in the passion a father feels for an injured child. My words are also my children, and they can't leave this page any more than Jon can walk away from the Center. But it's nice to know somebody has come visiting and left a kind word. Now if Jon fares as well, he will smile and focus his eyes on something nice.

Amazing

I am really surprised to find someone who is incapable of wrapping their heads around the concept of the universality of soul, I would find it unnerving to think that we are all of us divided by our souls rather than joined to Soul. Curiously though I am able to begin to pin down when that idea took hold, that we are all "Us" and the rest are "Them". The walls that some have built are as formidable as the ones which encircled Berlin and now Gaza. And perhaps for the same reasons. If a portion of the Humanity believes that the Many are, in fact, at the Essence One, and a portion believe that the concept of individual Souls created by the One is Truth, is there an equation to find a Law to encompass both Truths?

Clearly, the answer is Yes. but a lot will not like it, they can't wrap their heads around the idea. I believe that Adam and Eve suffered from this when they ate of the Tree of Knowledge and discovered a lot all at once. They were in shock, as I have been from time to time at an "AH" moment. So the tendency is to take it slow and await for a little aha moment. I favor sudden smart blows to the mind. Like a mace. The mace is short and to the point and it means what it says. So is an enlightenment, but lately we are bombarded throughout our daily lives with other people telling us what to think, how we think and why we all want to get laid. Or sometimes NOT get laid. But to take it slow can just prolong and delay the inevitable shift in thinking.

Imagine the Milky Way Galaxy with the center mass and the streaming arms. They cluster around a central arm and the whole pattern is repeated down until the Solar System with it's streaming planets, comets and meteors. It's what they call fractal. Now imagine that each bit of each bite is a personality or epiphany of that fractal pearl. That's Us and the other bites are Them. And that's the Truth. However, that set of bites, their Truths and their planet, are all bits of the Galaxy, the Milky Way, named after a very old story of a Cow who licked the icy brine to create Gods. Someone kicked the bucket. That Cow, those briny Gods and Goddesses all are part of a Pantheon of a Society filled with Functionalities and Celebrities and Administrations and Corporations and All of those are Persons under the Law, which we assert, Rules All.

I actually do not enjoy working in a union shop because I am forced to send part of my check to administer the rest of the money they take. I prefer to work alone, mostly, alone. So I understand the allure of thinking ones soul was unique and alone from all the Other souls, yet we have to admit that Soul and soul do look a lot alike. Something there...It's as if one were a pattern for the other. Like a fractal looks like the Milky Way, or the black spots on a cow in a field wanting to get milked.

I make no apologies for having borrowed from several sources to construct what I feel helps the whole AHA moment work. For example: you can only see a certain range of light waves and only feel a few more. It's not nearly enough to cover the full spectrum, so how reasonable is it to say you "see" something? Yet we do, and we mostly know what Others mean when they say they See something too. You can wear goggles to see into the infra-red ranges and see things you never saw before. In that universe things can blend together if their heat ranges are the same, if they have empathy for one another you might say. Like a warm sheet and a warm body, they can be said to have blended in a way, into a red-yellow spot. That would be a true vision and would convey a Truth. When we shake hands, or kiss, or slap, or strangle we merge in some level and become one form, maybe several levels.  If I had a person whose goggles had been strapped on for some time they would no doubt be having interesting thoughts. Suppose we upped the ante and tossed in ultra-violet? merge the two visions and what would we see then when two people or more touched?

Naturally if someone had never heard of nor seen infrared goggles they could not be faulted for not being able to wrap their minds around the idea that at various levels we are all linked as a common Being, the One, and yet we are also capable of, as this Infinite Being Knows, Being in a very small bite of the Cosmic Muffin. The difficulty is when people cannot find it in their hearts to admit they cannot see into the infrared and insist that heat does not "radiate" and there are no fields of amorphous blobs in amazing colors which not only surround us, but which link us to every other living thing, although it would include a lot of what we might call "inanimate" but which a Shinto believer would suggest it had a Soul. Big stones in the sun, for instance would certainly blend into a person's field when near. What does this mean, what lesson does it contain? Don't try to touch a big hot rock.

And beyond the Milky Way are other galaxies which do what they do so well, they spin like Dervishes around one another, getting dizzy and losing themselves in the Dance. I too am lost in a dance, in a trance, seeing things which others do not, and don't we All?

On the loss of Memory

Virtually everyone knows about the loss of short term memory. They heard about it when they started smoking weed and when they did other less civilized ways of dealing with short term sexual tension. But then there's Age and it brings with you short term memory loss and immediate memory loss and brief totally fictional memory, i.e.implanted memory... so many ways to lose your way. But, there is a way of memory that you might call the Way of Mid-Term memory loss.

We all know how the next breed of humans are not prime material to face a world of competition. But we don't breed humans for the most part, only for sport and never for politics. The thing is you can't judge a buck by his cover.

When a blacksmith has in their hand a piece of work so fine, so just no better, they, in the end, are holding iron, metal of some antiquity and a Master of working iron is standing on the shoulders of those who worked bronze. There are books with detailed instructions on the theory and execution of a carburetor producing a dose of gasoline fumes and oxygen in a compressed cylinder while being struck with a spark in the midst. This can move people to want more power over their lives. They may want to move without horses!

There was a time when men of some experience would hang out a shingle of wood with a sign showing what they thought they knew. For many real and political reasons the Blacksmith would be found at the edge of town, mostly near a bridge if they had one. A Smith would hang out a sign of an anvil and if another Smith should come around, the newcomer would no doubt have a reason to doubt the first Smith's territory and skill, so he would dispute the first and a competition would occur, a great occasion for  folks of all ages. The Smiths would go thru all the usual blacksmith accomplishments and move into the more esoteric, producing more and more complex pieces of work, lances that never dulled and puzzles for the little ones. People would bring in things to repair and sharpen and the meet would go on for hours, perhaps but at some point one Smith would concede defeat and the folk would go home and no doubt the Smiths would go sauna or drink and chat about what was going on here and around here, down that road from which had come the new Blacksmith. Perhaps here he planned to make a stand, to teach the skills of iron, bronze and copper. A Smith could locate ore, smelt and refine the ore using local clays, stone, wood and fire brought from the Smith in a little bowl.

Once smelted, the iron, bronze or copper could be shaped by Master Smiths into any shape you could imagine, and any device you could imagine they could build. There were lone Masters who lived apart and repaired odd things and made one-off devices or jewelry. They were harder to find and were almost always very old by the time you did in fact find them and present them with your great-grandfathers mantle clock which no longer chimes or runs. But they took great care handling the clock and looking inside like a sloth counting ants on a hive.

Boots were repaired by elves behind closed doors. Everyone knew that. I, myself, have had a pair of excellent leather boots repaired, re-soled by a tiny little man with a thousand nails in his mouth and he Knew what to do. A few days later, a new pair of wonderful, excellent-fitting boots would appear on his counter and you would leave a small offering of odd metal chips for the Master to take home. This was a time when the coins were worth their weight in whatever.

So that was the Smith. There was also the Rag Man. He usually had a wooden cart filled with things and a pile of this and that. He did also have a pile of rags which his wife might turn into quality quilts for sale later, or she might repair certain gowns. But things got repaired and delivered and sometimes message, too, if the wagon went a certain way. It was a kind of Facebook, an early Facebook. Now, all Farmers need Smiths sooner or later, just as Astarte needed Vulcan. The Smith and Farmer both needed big families to run the shops and barns and such. In some towns a certain Master might work in fine metals or in glass, and they might catch the attention of locals as having Special skills

Gardener was a Son of Farmer, and he worked very hard or sometimes She worked very hard at growing herbs and spices and oils, infusions, rubs, and decompression techniques for the overworked. She lived on the outskirts of Town, which is where two roads came to-gather. And roads were named from roods, or reeds, which is what the Sumerians used as a unit of measurement of distance, ala along a road.  Where is your Smith today?

Most of our society will argue away the Smiths and the tinsmith and the Herbalist or Hedge-witch or all those mid range Masters who would hang out a shingle so people knew who to go to if something needed help.

Now, hold onto this thought: You don't know any tailors, so you cannot clothe yourself. You do not know a Blacksmith, so you cannot have tools made to work your trade. You cannot heal when you need it, and when things go wrong, as they often do, you only "know" the Yellow Pages. As we got rid of all the Masters who were not familiar enough to ply their trades locally, we could do with some one with a big dog to watch over our sacks of wheat and rye and taters and onions etc what makes up a society. We have no muzzled or not monster to slow down the would-be sackers of humanity.

Mercury was a Messenger, trusty-worthy or not, He was it for getting the word out. There were people hanging out around banks and barbers to take the occasional message for the occasional chip of copper, a common metal. These might be Mercury!  But he got the job done and he did not form gangs with inappropriate tattoos on their necks and faces. They did not go cutting off peoples heads. Among themselves they told tall tales about their messages and their travels and they argued about which was the greatest, fastest, most cool messenger of all times. Now nobody needs someone to take a message without stopping, just get it to this person and there's a piece of silver for you if you get it there by the tenth bell. Without all these half-starved kids running all over town with notes they could not read we would not now have the hydrogen bomb!

Suppose every small hydro-dam generator looked like an ancient crumbled mill? would that satisfy the People? Think of it... you are riding down Main Street in a two pony cart and your driver gave the Boy to run ahead and tell Granny you were coming! O! What a lovely day- 2025 AD! If we wanted it to be...But we probably won't want all that humming so close to our bedrooms, so I guess not. Frankenstein did it, the Doctor, not the monster. But not new York City, for all it's watery options.

Who needs a tinker when all we have is un-repairable? Who needs a Rat-Boy or a Messenger, or a Flower-Girl, a basket-weaver, a Miller? When our Apple juice and Chicken jerky dog treats comes from China dare we ask where our eggs and flour have come from? Who maintains the quality? We have been told there isn't any money for all of that, just enough money to hire enough Thugs to collect the taxes. Not enough to heal the sick or educate the illiterate, just enough for Power to apply to the masses. and In the process the Smiths have vanished, the Barber is gone and there are no Potters or Bone-Setters either. We are on our own.

You can design a house in your head, or maybe a room, but you cannot think of what the house down the road has to do with the house you want to live in. But is it upstream or down, does it shade your land or not, and in a pinch does the person living there like you enough to give you shelter if you Needed it?

Do you know who in the neighborhood knows CPR, to put a modern spin on things? Do we even know the occupations of our neighbors' neighbor? Not much of a neighborhood, but a start. Who knows how to make bricks? who knows how to make glass? who knows how to grow food?, who knows how to drill wells? But we can go to the moon...or can we? The Saturn V booster is the greatest strongest machine we ever built and yet the last one is rotting on the ground because we don't do that any more. We don't build hydrogen blimps anymore either. We don't bend wood into a circle so we can roll our asses across the ground instead of walking!

The loss of a key element can set a society back generations. The less we know, the less we can go.

Studio Views

In the winter when the snow is about two feet thick and it's almost into the negative temps, I often stop off at the studio, after closing the hen house, and fire up the propane heater so the room gets more tolerable. You can't work frozen clay and glue does not flow at 2 F, but pencils work and I can rearrange sculptures and look at things a new way. Before it got very cold I was able to tear apart pine cones and glue the shingles on my bird houses. Hope to sell some in the spring. The other things, the nearly abstracted objects and rearranged stuff, I try to see old things as new. So I get some roots and objects and stack them up and stir them up and stare at them awhile until I have a neat little vision of what might be.

The Green man face is mounted onto a honeysuckle clump and pine cones are stuffed here and there to produce an amalgam of images, flowing into one another and writhing in your mind. I doubt I will show this one. Years ago I obtained part of a hat form and it sits in the studio waiting. I took "The Nurse" mask and mounted it on the form to see if it might be good for posing masks for studio pics. Now I am looking at and wondering about what this means. In anthropology they tend to declare objects are religious artifacts if they don't know what it means. So if my sculptures are religious, in what way? So I study my own work to see if I can figure out what kind of societal purpose they might have had if I had found them in a ruin. Funny way to look at one's own work, but it makes things old somewhat new again.

Sticks and stones and white tail bones, antlers, branches and string. What can we do with this old leather shoe and what will the spring time bring?

Once You Know

Once you know, once it really sinks in, you don't move for a moment, and then you just straighten up. You want to face this head on. Cats can both hold objects with their paws, but they can also sell them on eBay! This is what Wrigley had been trying to say.

Suppose, and this is just "suppose', there were ways for thinking entities somewhere "else" to affect things here? Suppose limes were just lemons who in another dimension were not yet ripe? Suppose except for avocados NO fruit got green when ripe? Oh yeah, I know what you are thinking, sure and what about beans? But beans are always and forever Veggies, or vegetables, because they are all kinds of colors anyway. I myself grow purple green beans... or red streaked white beans. never could get lima beans to grow much. Too much rain I suspect, at the wrong time. But I digress.


Obviously if invisible beings permeated the atmosphere we'd feel them if we couldn't see them. And yet we do feel something in the air, something cold coming down from the north... and when Uncle Heath dies in January from the Grippe, does anyone not think it was bad spirits which took him? Unless, of course, you have enough money to have professional Undertakers to relieve you of that Burden which Fate has cast aside... like his jacket and his wallet and his, oh yeah- his body. But say it ain't as bad as those Indians who burn their loved ones on the banks of a sacred river and then cast the ashes into the waters! Better to contaminate the Los Angel's water shed and leave the Ganges for the downstream rice farmers. But we still shit off our skin cells after death and so our bladders, and so our brains, no doubt, but I swear by Erda before me I will go out as befits a Great Ape, noisily; thus making damn sure I attract the attention of a Chaos god...no...no, that's in that computer game I play. No Chaos Gods here. Everything makes some kind of sense, unless you get distracted, and then none of it makes sense. Life is like talking to Abbot and Costello and You are on second base.

A Question of Morals

Recently I found myself being "friends" in Facebook with people who, like myself, are caring for a person with TBI. Brain injuries can unite some very disparate peoples, as in this case. But the real world is a funny place. I enjoy learning basic skills, like surviving in the woods, building fires, making knives etc, so when I encountered this family and their friends I was pretty pleased. They hunted with black powder guns, hand ground the meat and made sausages and smoked meat... pretty cool stuff. Then the "xmas" holidays came in and things changed. Yesterday morning one of the members of the extended family decided to post a comment which ran something like this: "All morals come from God (YHWH) and if you don't believe in God and Jesus you can't have any morals." It's hard to sit still for this so I wrote a quick, polite response wherein I declared that I am not a Christian but that I thought I was a moral person; I don't lie, cheat, steal, hurt people, I honor my parents, I am a devoted friend and I am also a devout pagan. So this gentleman replied with essentially this: "If you don't believe in God you cannot have any morals because all morals come from Him." Well I am also something of a logician and I find it hard to listen to bigotry, illogical arguments, circular thinking and lies. I happen to have a pretty good grasp of where YHWHism comes from and it's history, which is not very moral  by our current standards. Read the text! We have lies, murders, rapes, incest... all of this by the good guys! The bad guys seem to be getting killed off not because of their actions, but their very existence. People were slaughtered simply because all their lives they lived in a land that the YHWHists desired. So they took the land, killed the men, raped the women and sold the children into slavery for the sin of existing. This is an example of "morals" in the YHWH world. Again, read the text.

Now, the person who insulted several billion people with his simplistic world view must have a set of values which comprise his moral dimension. Probably things like murder, rape, stealing, lying are all included, but if you asked him about the lands the YHWHists stole violently with many innocent deaths he will say that the Lord gave the land to the Jews and that's the final word on that. Apparently their deity is outside of the moral universe, and by "trickle down" the followers are also de-facto moral people no matter what they do, so long as it does not involve worshiping other deities. I follow a different path, ergo I am immoral no matter what I do. It's a curiously circular form of thinking and it allows someone who is not a very nice person, like Dick Cheney, to get away with mass murder simply by praying in a Christian church. Amazing.

But what about the billions of people who live away from the Middle East and never heard of the Jews, never heard of Yeshua and yet conduct themselves in a moral environment with respect for the rights of others and a respect for the life of the land? They apparently are in a no-win situation. They cannot be moral because they never read the Bible and never were dunked or something by a priest. Back in AZ I had a similar situation wherein a Christian was lecturing me on my paganism and how I was doomed to Hell. I suggested that a person could live a moral life, a good life, without ever hearing of the Ten Commandments. Alas, he could not hear of this. A Pagan was by definition an immoral and bad person. Around this time was the Jim Jones incident and being a bug, I mentioned the Bibles old Jim Jones read from while he pouring poison into the kool-aid. Not a great idea. Jones was an evil man ruled by Satan, but of course it was years before they figured this out, prior to that he was a holy man preaching the Lord's words. Then he killed everybody. My point was that I did not kill people, did not steal from people, did not lie to people and so I had a shot at being "moral". Nope, not so, impossible. Nobody who follows the Goddess can be seen as moral, and no matter what I did or said I would always be a lost soul, an immoral man and doomed to Hell because I did not worship the Jewish god YHWH. This sort of thing always puts a bug up my ass.

My pagan faith has one commandment and there is no direct punishment for failing to obey that commandment. It is, "If it harms none, do what you will." Pretty basic foundation for a decent set of morals, I think. So I can study the Bible, I can study the Koran, I can study Wicca, and so forth, so long as I am harming no one. I cannot steal because it harms, I cannot murder for the same reason. I cannot go to war, I am faithful to my wife and my family. But I do so out of a sense of responsibility to myself because you cannot be loved if you do not love others. I want people in my family to be able to love me, so I follow the Pagan Way and try to harm nobody in the process. Now if we study the history of Judaism, Christianity and other related faiths we see a disturbing pattern of violating all the commandments when it suits them. Christians dropped the nuclear bombs that decimated two entire cities filled with old people, men, women, children, pets and even Allied POWs! We knew all those people were there, the POWs were less than a half mile from the target zone. Apparently we wanted to be sure to vaporize them. Well, we did, and to this day we refuse to offer any assistance to those people suffering from radiation induced abnormalities, birth defects and cancers. We do nothing to help the sick, nothing to help the broken children. This from a Christian nation which even now is fighting, trying to get the Bible into all the classrooms. No Pagan could vaporize and irradiate a city, it is such a crime against Nature that no one who believes in Life could handle the guilt. But Christians not only can handle it, they worked to make sure it could happen again. We now own enough nuclear death to kill every major city on Earth, all built and designed by Christians. Prove me wrong.

This man who has judged me as immoral and inferior goes out to kill deer and other forms of life. He never considers the soul of the animal, as would a pagan. He never prays forgiveness to the animal he is about to kill, and he will pray to his God for allowing his bullet or arrow to find it's mark. No thanks to the unlucky deer. This seems twisted to me, but his God is a micro-manager who inserts His way into every detail of life, except sometimes. Like when a crazy man rapes and murders a little girl, apparently YHWH is not there to help her. He certainly would not be there to help a Pagan girl. In Iraq a number of Christian Marines raped and murdered a 14 year old Muslim girl and then murdered her family. Then they burned down the house to destroy the bodies and went back to play pool and prepare for the next day of occupation and slaughter of civilians. I find this hard to understand,  but it seems it is okay to do this to a non-Christian because their souls are lost anyway. Like Joshua entering those cities to rape and murder, with a holy Get Out of Hell Free card.

I encourage every Pagan to read the Bible, as many translations as you can. Read the Koran translations, too, because fundamentalist Muslims are as bad as Christians in twisting a tale of Peace into a tale of Slaughter. It's important to understand the kind of thinking that goes into these faiths because many people are stuck in them, trying to be good people but having to reconcile the various stories with the various Commandments. How does one wage war if Thou Shall Not Kill? I suppose you could use paintballs, but they don't. They seem to like real weapons better. In comparative religion we find many stories of one faith fighting another. Muslims today are killing Muslims over a political dispute almost 1000 years old. Jews are still killing cities filled with Palestinians and occupying their lands, bulldozing down the ancient olive groves and poisoning the wells. We have not gotten very far following YHWH and His derivatives. Pagans seem to be doing a bit better, being more than willing to adopt science as a means of further understanding the Deity, our Goddess. Ecological movements are based firmly in the Pagan principles of harming none, taking care of the Earth. The name of this planet is derived from one of the names of the Goddess, Urda. Our days are named after Pagan gods and goddesses. Our months are named after Pagan deities and Roman dictators. Our life is rich in Pagan traditions because in part the YHWHists stole even those and twisted them to connect with the YHWH faith. Easter comes to mind, as does Christmas, both Pagan holy days twisted into YHWH's holy days, but the spring Goddess was so important to the masses that they kept Her name for that Holy Day. I'm thinking hypocrisy here.

I guess if that Christian would consider reading this I would like him to come away with the idea that all faiths have hypocrites and power mongers and politics can soil any garment. A moral person is not moral out of fear, but out of love for their fellow humans and the life that surrounds us. This does not require ell fires or homicidal Deities tossing fire and brimstone. What Yeshua was teaching, apparently, and what got him in hot water with the Priests, was incredibly similar to what the Pagan faiths convey: "Harm none." He did not think that giving offerings were enough, that helping humanity was more important, and that cut into the Temple's wealth, so he had to go. It was not Pagans who turned him in and demanded he be killed, it was YHWHists. The Romans killed him because his followers were promoting him as their King, and their Emperor did not allow that, so the leader of the cult had to be removed for treason. Simple politics, nothing to do with religion.

So, looking back on things, I have to say that regardless of how effective I am at it, I strive to be a moral person. I try not to be too judgmental and I try to be more helpful. This is not good enough for my judging friends in the YHWH camp. But it seems to be good enough for my Lady of Life and since She gave birth to the Lord of Light I suppose it's good enough for me. Like the YHWH and Yeshua cults, the followers don't always get it right, or maybe they get it too Right and their minds explode. One thing I do know for sure is that unlike Her consort and son, YHWH, the Goddess will accept each and every one of us upon our deaths. She will hold us and love us and return us to life in due Time and that is something that works for me.

Waking the Witch

I had a dream the other night, when everything stood still. I thought I heard King Arthur, a-comin' down the hill. A buckwheat cake was in his mouth and a tear was in his eye, but his true nature became clear when the babies came to cry. Their hungers was aflame with need, their arms were whisper thin, I thought I saw King Arthur, not once but thrice again.

People understand, but animals believe. There was no way to stop the wren from shitting on my sleeve. A buckwheat cake was in his mouth or so the label said, but what was running thru his veins was nowhere near true red.

He compulsively wipes his hands across his beard, wiping away this feeling he had, this thin skin of hydrocarbons. It's just another skin, one of many. He sniffs it anyway, hands it to his Dog and He sniffs it and falls asleep, farting without sound. The Dog can do with yoga what other men talk about online.

Hudson River Valley-Winter

This morning we missed the bus for work and I had to drive down to Albany. Margaret made it to work and Wrigley and I met a nice man and his dog in Washington Park. It was cold and both dogs seemed determined to smell each other for many more minutes than my poor fingers could stand. We bid a "Happy Holidays" to one another and Wrigley and I trotted back to the car. I decided to take the old River Road, Rte 4 because after a really cold night you sometimes see some fantastic ice below Schuylerville. Sure enough, when we got to the gate to the Saratoga Battle Grounds we started seeing geese flying in and out of the river. I parked the car and trekked in to the riverside. Thousands of Canadian Geese were sitting, standing and flying on the river. It was a study in grey scale. I took about 50 photos of the geese and the river and turned back to the car where Wrigley no doubt napped. As I crunched through the flooded field I started noting the patterns in the layers of ice. Then I saw this scene and snapped it. I am reminded of a frozen rice paddy somewhere south of Kyoto.

Quoting Will

I am finding lately that more than ads for Russian porn sites I am also getting legit comments from people wanting to "back link" or otherwise share my blog. I have no problem with that, in fact I tried to put up a note to that effect. As far as I am concerned my thoughts are free. One problem has been that they leave their notes with no way to contact them, they sign "Anonymous" and that limits me to 6 billion other people. So if you leave such a note, you find my thoughts interesting enough to share, then by all means drop me an email or something.

I am thinking about suing for my son's body. No, he's not dead but he's not officially alive either. They have moved his prognosis into "permanent vegetative state". I would like to point out that the AMA says this is a non-starter. There is nowhere to go from that point except to wait for death. That will not do, not for my boy! I insist they declare what they intend to do if my son continues to live but not respond to them. He responds to me, slight movements, slight expressions, a small smile. I'll take it. I think he's in there, floating in a white fog and occasionally floating by the windows of his soul and spotting old Dad sitting there holding his hand. What else can I do?

I am thinking about suing for my son's body to be returned to a hospital nearby so I can begin the wake. Oh, the heart beats and the lungs work and he is said to be in pain once in awhile, but they give him Oxycontin to ease his pain. Yet, how can a vegetable feel anything? The fact is they give him pain to lessen his suffering, and how can a vegetable suffer? They're trying to have it both ways and that won't do. If he is suffering, then he is self aware, yes? If he is self aware he is not a vegetable, no? So a non-vegetable gets therapy and the non-vegetable may take up time and resources that are wearing thin these days in NY. So they want it both ways. they want him dead and alive. Dead, he causes no trouble. Alive, he counts as a warm body for reimbursement by Medicare. If I take him away they get less money. So I am thinking about suing for my son's body. What else can I do?

Shipwreck

As the rest of the ship broke apart
   and the other victims sank
      --out of sight--
The Lady drifted
    for awhile
          at that level
                 Looking up.
Her gown fluttered about her
showing nothing
             anymore
Then, as by some
                unseen signal
She sank
and became
food for thought.

New Bricks Arriving, Old Friend Leaving

Thanks to an old pal who is leaving fascist America for the Netherlands, I just acquired enough insulating fire brick to add to my collection of hard bricks and finish my wish list for my new kiln. Not only that, but Mike sold me a complete burner set up for propane firings with cutoff valves equipped with temperature sensors ($10!!) This completes the first phase. Now I build a nice 6' tall, single arch kiln/oven which can be fired with either wood or propane and used as either a big bread oven using wood for fuel or a nice sculpture kiln using the gas. Wow! I can now also convert the big noborigama kiln to use either gas or wood or both. Amazing. All I need now is a slab roller to go along with the pug mill Mike sold me. I can process my old clays, roll them into slabs and cut the slabs into tiles, plates, saucers, bowls etc and bisque them in the electric and fire them in the new kiln. Probably can't get started exactly until the spring...unless the winter is relatively easy on me. I might be able to build the base from cinder blocks. yay!

Dear Mr. Murdoch

Dear Mr. Murdoch,

I noticed today an article in which it was stated that every Republican potential candidate for President in 2012 is employed by you. Congratulations on your finalizing the takeover of American government. Now that you own Congress, the Supreme Court and the White House you can complete the conversion from a "democratic" republic to a true fascist state. I have to assume you will then announce that America's debts are not the debts of New America, or whatever you plan to call it. I expect you will retain the name to help the people adjust. Anyway, that seems logical. The Chinese will object, as will India and Japan, and for obvious reasons Great Britain will not. If you want my take on it I would suggest that China might be willing to have California and Hawaii in order to wash the slate clean for them. Maybe Japan should get Hawaii, that would be so ironic. 8-)
I am not writing this to sing your praises and make suggestions, actually. I am asking you if you expect the "wrong thinkers" will be allowed to leave the country or if you plan mass executions. The reason I ask is that my family and I will likely fall into one of the categories flagged for removal. I am 60 years old, disabled with a back condition so I require a lot of medication. I also have never voted Republican, and although I only occasionally voted Democrat I am sure the Tea Partiers would consider me a liberal. Personally I consider myself to be a financial conservative and a social liberal. So it seems logical that my family would be sent to the camps. That being the case I would like to have a chance at political asylum in a European country like Holland or Sweden. I doubt very much European countries will welcome a flood of refugees so I would like to start the process now. If you would indicate how scapegoated minorities will be treated in the New America it would save you and yours a great deal of effort and money by allowing people like me to leave before things get hot around here.
Traditionally a new fascist government cements it's power over the population by creating a mass sin for all to share. Germany used the Death Camps. With all the people having supported the camps by supporting the fascists they would obviously share the blame and the effort to ensure they won the war. I expect you are too savvy to have an actual war per se since your background is more along the lines of a financial manipulator. This would save the damage to real property and livestock. So a propaganda war and a redistribution of the wealth is the likeliest path. The war to be won, then, would be a paper war to see which corporation ends up on top. I would not forget the religious element here. The neo-Muslims continue to be a violent component in the Mideast and like you the leaders are eager to expand their sphere of influence. A treaty of some kind is the most probable tack to take with them, probably offering them most of the Mideast save Israel. That done it would be simple to sign a fuel and resource agreement with the Saudi family and others.
I'm thinking it's a done deal since there is no force nor government capable of stopping you, with the possible exception of the Neo-Muslims and as noted above they can be bought. So the most important thing for me is an indication about the deposition of the scapegoats to allow me to start applying for refugee status or arranging for some kind of safety net for my family. I'd very much appreciate it. I realize there is no Earthly reason for you to reply since I'm a nobody, but I am hoping your sense of humor might be a factor and my plight amuse you. In that case we might work an arrangement. I hope so.

Sincerely,
Will Shirley
poet, philosopher and artist

Lately

I am something of a news junkie, or rather I am a seeker of truth. There you go, in the 21st century we'll be able to read news stories as they happen everywhere in the world! So I do. And I find that the world I thought I lived in, the world of America the democratic republic with the mandate to rule the world, is even more disgusting. Our boys in green are collecting souvenirs in Afghanistan. Do you know where that is or anything about it's history? Let me briefly clue you in on a good thing to know: barbarians are not at the gate, they are in your mind. So we have our boys in green collecting fingers for necklaces (like in the movies) and skulls, maybe to make a goblet out of (like in the movies). I suppose we needn't become alarmed until they start peeling the tattoos off the dead for lampshades, I guess. We're still better than somebody in the past. What about Genghis Khan? Well, what about him? Wasn't he a barbarian who cut off heads and took body parts as trophies? Yup. Where did he do all that? Mongolia and places west during his takeover of much of the known world. OH, and Afghanistan. He didn't last very long there, nobody does.

The poppy crop is down, the CIA will be very disappointed. There goes their Xmas bonuses. It wasn't because we burned the crops, oh no. Mother Nature brought over a fungus which killed half the plants. We were trying to save the crop so the government would have a nice source of income. Lord knows they can't export rocks. OH wait! They can. We now have a great reason for our boys in green to be killing and collecting: mineral wealth. We just read a decades old report from the Russians, who also failed to conquer Afghanistan by force of arms. Seems Afghanistan is lousy with mineral wealth of the particular type of mineral wealth which makes computers possible. So we ain't never going to go away. That means in the future there will be a small market in body parts collected by Americans as they won the hearts and minds of the Afghan people.Like how in America 2075 poor folks have to sell kidneys in order to get served at Health Care Inc. It's a small but important part of our future economy.

The My Lai  massacre led to the failing of the American delusion that we were the "good guys". We have never been the good guys so long as our cars drive across the graves of the natives who we massacred for over 300 years to take and hold their dirt and the stuff underneath it. Of course they never had ownership of that dirt, it was sort of a caretaker position. Now we own the damn Earth and we will drill and burn and excavate until the last useful rock is melted, smelted and purified into liquid Plutonium for our furnaces. But if there are enough of the Aghan version of My Lai around, enough necklaces of fingers, ears, skulls, rape stories told over at Joe's Bar after a few beers, maybe people will see that supporting the "bad guys" makes us bad guys. Makes us targets for the real "good guys", the ones avenging dead sisters, dead sons, dead parents. We have been hit a bit, but the blood still flows so we can expect another, soon. Unless...

Unless somewhere there is in America a "lawyer" who actually believes in the Rule of Law and he arrests the previous administration and issues a warrant for this administration for crimes against humanity and war crimes, we have no way out but to tear their houses down and send them all to the World Court. Then we will be the "good guys" and we can hold our heads up in international waters.

Do the world a huge favor and if a buddy, a brother or a sister tells you that they have a necklace of fingers, go to the police, the FBI, and the press and see to it that others know about it. If we actually act like people with ethics and morals perhaps the next sky scrapers to fall will do so to build a multi-cultural center where people can learn about people in other lands, with other religions and the same love and respect for human life.

Colors

If you look at the house we seem surrounded by a golden cloud. It's the Jewel weed, mostly. That's about chest high and somewhat golden orange with spots and speckles. It trembles with the beating wings of the hummingbird checking out each bloom. Sometimes the shaking of the flowers causes the seed pods to pop, reminding me of the other name for the Jewel weed: "Touch-me-not".Great fun to watch them curl and scatter their seeds. Mixed in with the Jewel weed is Goldenrod and there are many kinds. Some have a huge single clump of bright golden fluff while other weeds have multiple heads, smaller but more exciting. They look like golden fireworks. Down the way we have many sunflowers, giant grey striped sunflowers and dozens of Jerusalem artichokes. I have actually pulled a few and examined the little tubers, like water chestnuts. They seem like the kind of food a wild man must eat, like Solomon's seal and bolete mushrooms. A lot of the yard is edible.

The flowers that I bought and are hanging from the front of the house are dead and dried, whereas the colorful weeds and volunteers are big and beautiful. The golden cloud around the house continues to the rear and is mixed in with the pinks and lavenders. This time of year we have one or two bright fuchsia roses growing next to the funny Turtleheads, whose pouty mouths grump in four directions. They are as much fun as snapdragons, which oddly enough don't like to grow here. Too many competitors I guess. There are maybe a half dozen lilacs of various shades growing flowerless in the late summer morning. Each year I am surprised by the increasing size and volume of flowers on the lilacs. Another shock is the wandering and misnamed Obedience Plant. Half the one bed is covered in pink flowers and spiky leaves. I have long since forgotten where I first planted them. They struggle with an un-named weed whose nasty stickers are a handful all the way onto the roots. It has small flowers which are not pretty enough to forgive the pricks over but whose roots apparently have wandered all over the beds. I pull them up by the handfuls and they come back nastier. I suppose I should boil and eat them just to scare them away but we can't be sure if they are poisonous or not. It's a desperate plan developed from an observation that certain weeds become less intrusive once I realize a use for them. The valerian root is great for back pain, so now they grow in more attractive groupings where the wonderful scent of the pinkish flowers can startle and delight the walker by.

An odd yellow surprise are the number of squash plants which not only volunteered to grow this year, but who volunteered to grow in funny places, like out by the well head, near the garden path, and of course where the old compost heap used to be. I expected either tomatoes or squash and got them both. the pumpkins gave us two fruit, both big enough to carve or small enough to eat. The blue Hubbard squash was planted from a packet of seeds last year and has come back to haunt me this year. It overran the path to the hammock and wandered over the obedience plants, mixing it up with the evil prick weed. yet all the plants manage to get along better than the residents of New York City do when politics are in the air. Two avocado trees from the compost have sprouted and are about a foot and a half. that's still a far cry from the ten foot tree we grew last year. I had it in a pot and eventually the head was so tall I had to move it to the deck, where the cold autumn air finally got to it. Let's see how the twins do this winter.

The Goldfinches have found the Jerusalem artichokes and are picking away at the flowers. They leap from choke to sunflower to chicory, looking for all the world like animated sunflowers. Over their shoulders is the more thorough hummingbird buzzing from the hibiscus to the Jewel weed, one flower at a time. After putting up the hummingbird feeder I am startled to find a little hummer poised in the air about two feet from my face, examining my features and perhaps evaluating my intent. She buzzes off, satisfied that the feeder is safe enough and later she comes by to see if it is, and it is safe and tasty. But as she sips a male comes by, chipping and buzzing, slamming her in the air and chasing her off. Then the male goes over to the hibiscus plant to sip and watch the feeder. I'm not sure why he doesn't just feed at the feeder or share the hibiscus, but that's hummers for you, too busy to think.

Decomposing America

I've been having a "debate" with a right wing nut over in social group land. He claims to be a millionaire businessman but Margaret thinks he's a poser. Nevertheless it has been interesting seeing just how angry and pissed off he is. He sees the changes coming up in our economy as being a direct threat to his way of life. He's in construction but he thinks the new economy will not help him out much. The "New Economy?" you ask? Yes, the old one was getting frayed around the edges so we got a new one coming in. The essence of it is that the corporations running the government have been devouring one another for some time now and we are reaching a tipping point. The Fascist Regime which is America is part of an older template for human social interaction based primarily on relative wealth. Read: class war. The money has been trickling up to such an extent that businesses have been happily sending factories east to make even more profits. A problem with this short sightedness is that the unemployed buy very few things, no matter how "affordable" they are. But the reason for this older form of economy is the transformation of labor into money. The flaw lies in the nature of money and it's perversion by our society.

Money is a tally device, a means by which labor completed or promised is kept track of by counters of metal or paper strips. The coins are fair for metalworking and the colored strips of paper make lousy toilet paper but good eyeglass wipes. If a person should work for ten hours they get a counter marking their rate of pay and hours worked. it is possible then to transfer this counter to another person in exchange for their labor. This is a sort of Ponzi scheme where everything works until the papers fail to deliver. For instance, say a ditch digger works ten hours and gets a paper saying ten hours @ $10/hr equals $100. In point of fact the dollars have very little intrinsic value but they represent ten hours labor @ $10/hr. If that $100 is given to a doctor, say, one might find that it covers one hour of labor, not ten. So, although the numerical markings on the paper have not changed the value of the paper has. Furthermore it is possible for someone to get their paws on a pile of paper when they have done nothing to earn it. It might be a promise or it might be theft. Let's say I find a wallet with $1000 in it and I keep the papers for myself. Aside from the question of right or wrong there is the displacement of labor contained in this act. I can now hire ten men to dig ten hours at $10.hr and get my basement fixed. Nevertheless it can be argued that there is an imbalance which will have to be reckoned with eventually.

In our society here in America, we can also write our own script through checks and money orders. We can write contracts for millions of hours of labor with no coins or paper passing hands. In short, currency has little or no value except to tally labor completed and/or promised. In recent years more and more of the tally markers are numbers on a computer screen. Eventually it would be possible to remove money from the system and replace it with a tally board of relative labor values and time spent in labor activities. Labor is not passive, it changes things. An hour with a doctor might result in a headache being cured or it might be a tumor detected and saving a person's life. Money takes on a local value determined by the value of that person's skill set. It is further modified by the immediate need for that skill set. When a pipe is not leaking a plumber's time is not so valuable.

Money was invented by the rich and powerful to hold sway over the poor. It tips the scales in society. If a person were to accumulate a considerable amount of money they would hold sway over those with none in a time of universal need. In a drought the money could be used to hire diggers to make a canal from a river to the farmlands. But nothing stops the diggers from digging before any money passes hands. The money is not even the motivation for digging, the water is. In a moneyless society the ditch would still get dug and all would benefit, but in a monied society if enough money is not present the ditch does not get dug and the farms suffer. An example is in Haiti where a lady owned several mango trees but hadn't enough water to grow more. The river was a few yards away and she needed a ditch. Arrangements were made for the ditch to be dug but because this was in a money environment it took many weeks of negotiating over who would get how many paper tokens in exchange for the use of the land and the transportation of the water for irrigation. It might be noted that the ditch can serve more than one farm. In a moneyless society it would quickly be determined that the ditch had value and workers would dig the ditch to increase the mango yield, serving many people in need.

I have had people question my contention that money per se has no real value and actually slows down an economy which is dependent on it. Prior to the invention of money work was accomplished by people in exchange for the common good. Like rice farmers working together for the common harvest things got done. We have used money for so long we have forgotten how to make things happen without it. I suggested recently that we have thousands of empty houses in America and thousands of homeless people. In a moneyless society it is obviously for the greater good to get those people into those houses. I am told that people who get houses "for free" will not appreciate the houses and will trash them. The bigotry revealed in this statement is really pretty obvious: the poor are slobs. The benefit to society should be obvious as well. People in houses get sick less often than people who live on park benches. There is no good reason for keeping the homeless as homeless, anymore than it is reasonable to keep people from working. Our bridges and roads are unsafe, we haven't enough light rail lines and virtually no way to move people around large cities without polluting the environment. All of these issues can be solved by people working together for the common good, and this labor pool would need to live in houses. The solution should be clear.

We would be surprised if firemen came to our burning home and declared their rates for saving the house, yet that is exactly how it worked a few years ago. Public financing of fire protection became a group effort because of the group impact of fires. Nobody goes to a fire with their hand out. Things change and we should be open to the passing of outmoded ways of getting things done. If we made food, housing and health care basic human rights afforded to all we could eliminate money, which would eliminate economic classes. People would work one on one with a fair exchange of goods and services being set up by the parties directly involved. One more item to scratch off the list of governmental functions.

My Nation, My Loss

Yeah, it's time for a serious one. Maybe it was last night's migraine that is still throbbing in the background of my head, but a few thoughts and words keep bouncing around ahead of the throb. Here's an image I cannot shake: Glenn Beck on the cover of some magazine in a Nazi uniform, grinning like a shit eating skunk. Not a piece of fiction, dear reader, Google up the image if you like. But, see, when Prince Henry dressed like an SS officer he looked like an officer, which he is. Beck looked like Mussolini, which he isn't supposed to be. For the terribly young, again, Google it.

Why is this important? Cut to a sound bite, Donald Rumsfeld, the Murderer of Iraq: "A treaty is just words on paper. That's all, words on paper." And he of course meant the same for all legal documents including the Constitution, all words on paper. Like the Bible for what that's worth. Like the oath of office Bush took: words on paper, signifying nothing. Now pan back to look at the administrations say all the way to Nixon. Look at the NAMES. Curious, when you consider how many people live in America, that so few have worked so long to run this country into the ground and the monies into their bank accounts. The same damn names over and over, a good old boy network that includes the 'right" kind of woman. Think Condi down on her knees doing Georgy Boy while he works on a puzzle.

Slip of the brain, sorry. So, no conspiracy, no plots written in blood by the night light. Actually these kind of people like rituals where somebody gets bloody, somebody gets off and nobody talks. So aside from that, let's get down to generalities. In a math problem the limits are known and finite. It is impossible to lie about one plus one equals two. You can jimmy up a form of math where analogies are made and substitutions are made, but still within that system the parameters have been spelled out and the rules are well known. One such form of math deals with chaos, the ruling deity of the Western world. You can use it's rules and parameters to follow a flock of birds for some distance before new data has to be added so they don't fly off. You can "see" how people will walk around a mall or in a stadium how the seats will fill up. Most of the time if you have enough variables spelled out you get pretty close. But chaos math still has rules and parameters, edges a little fuzzy but we have a handle on what the fuzz looks like up close.

Now take Don Rumsfeld and his words on paper. Let's ask Don to predict the flight path of a set number of particles being acted upon by Mars gravity and a forward uniform acceleration... ah! Now Don has folded his paper and snapped the pencil in half. He picks up his blackberry and calls up an engineer he owns and gives him the question. He hands the blackberry in and goes and buys another. See, math is just words and numbers on paper and Don has no time for that. he buys knowledge and owns people to remember for him. The one who knew about the Constitution fell down a mine shaft and exploded. But he never read Mein Kampf either, more words on paper. He is, however, living the books he never read, minus the death camps. Ours are much smaller so as not to attract a lot of attention.

Beck in a suit, Don with a blackberry and Bush with his girlfriend and millions of dollars. Toss in Rush and the rest of the wealthy assholes who think laws are for suckers and ethics get you killed, as if Hitler had a shred of ethics in his soul. In business, according to American standard fierce capitalism, it is a dog eat dog world. It is also a dog blackmail, murder, torture, slander world. Now in the theory set forth by Benito Mussolini, (by the way, Don, Benito actually wrote whole books of words on paper.) a fascist state is the result of a corrupted republic and republics are always going to corrupt because you put a small number of the wealthy elite in charge of all the money and power. He personally felt that this dog eat dog mechanism was part of a perfect state of eternal warfare wherein the best rose to the top. Social Darwinism is rampant in the writings(?!) of the right wing in America. They bought into the concept without understanding, I hope, who promulgated the concept. Now, a fascist state should more properly be called a corporate state and fascism is actually corporatism because the biggest corporations run the government for their own advantage while waging constant wars to keep up their bottom line. Nothing is so wasteful as a war. It uses up materials and people so fast that the factories and maternity wards can barely keep up with it. Nazi Germany and fascist Italy used slave labor from the countries they ate up. America uses Americans as slaves with the illusion that they have choices, when in fact none of the possible choices amount to a rats spitball. How many channels of pure crap do Americans have to choose from and yet how many corporations control the news sources for these American consumer-bots? Damn fucking few, and there is a reason for that and it is found in chaos theory.

A corporation is words on paper that a certain number of people or other corporations must agree with. Too few units and the thing is unable to protect itself from larger, nastier entities. Too big and it takes a government to support the appetite of the Beast. A country is words on paper tied to a physical location in which the document itself defines who shall be included. Note that it is identical to a corporation except for one small point: land. Multinational corporations are not like countries because they are oblivious to geography except as it relates to commodities and resources. They don't care if their actions destroy a country and send it's people into exile. they don't care because nowhere in the Corpora does it state that they care, so they don't. In the Constitution, dear reader, there is no mention of caring for people, not people caring for people. There are mentions of the government having responsibilities, duties and powers, but nothing about giving a damn about the old, the sick, the homeless. So they don't.

They are the people who run the corporation that is America, a huge, multinational corporation whose main product is death. It runs on human souls and bodies and has been in charge of my country for about 40 years that I know of. The ultra rich in America are not always the ones with the most dollars. In times of war, constant, never-ending war the real wealthy invest in things like gold, slaves, countries. Nothing has changed in 8,000 years except the words on the paper and they signify nothing.

The only thing that never changes, according to Fred Brighton, PhD, poet, philosopher and author of "It Takes A Real Prick to Screw America", is inconsistency. And per his Theory of 1957: "The only true consistency is inconsistency, and the only true inconsistency is inconsistent inconsistency." So you may go for 200 years thinking you lived in a democracy or a democratic republic, only to wake up in a failed empire collapsing into a fascist state, or Uber-Corporation. But in one or two years it might suddenly shift into a simple society of farmers and hunters linked by fiber and separated by miles of dangerous, toxic wastelands. It's all good! Nobody gets to live forever, no matter what words there are on paper. Cheney is kidding himself that bathing in babies blood while fucking your daughter will make you immortal.

Gulf Coast Fairwell

Now that the SC has declared corporations to be People, BP can run for President, buy the election, and proclaim the Gulf of Mexico disaster to be a minor, cyclical aberration that had nothing to to do with oil drilling. That would all be legal in the world of modern America.

Lately they have been playing clips of the Twin Towers burning and collapsing. Watching the second Tower come down I was reminded of a collapsing empire, how it teeters and rebounds, slips, and burns, until finally it's obvious to everyone what is happening and it collapses the last few feet. The Empire has collapsed into it's component parts. Then everybody around is breathing unhealthy air, contaminated water and debris falling, floating and blocking all the unlucky survivors. You don't want to be too close to the center of either the Empire or the Tower.

This oil will reach the Stream and poison beaches along the Atlantic seaboard. As it slowly kills off the fish population and the bottom feeders we can expect major changes to the chemistry of the sea water. Look at pictures of "dead zones". Now, here's the thing: unless this has a cooling impact on the waters we will continue to see the ice caps melt. Should they do so as the temperature rises we can expect more active, destructive hurricanes-born in the Gulf. So we have chemical stews of poisonous brews being tossed up above the flood lines by massive CAT 5 storms hitting a beach which is several hundred feet higher anyway because the oceans are rising! Got that? Whew. The oceans become lifeless here and there, especially in the Gulf, where we used to get a lot of our fish from, since the Atlantic fish are being fished out. They also get higher all over as the ice caps melt and the Greenland icecap especially melts. Now, as I said before, unless something happens to slow the melt... and that is a done deal by now, way too much inertia behind the warming... the storms continue to get larger and faster, influenced by our constant adding to the oceans chemicals which kill off our food supply. If we dumped this crap on our soils we would have to import all our food from China.

The good news is that with decreased salinity and increased petrochemicals the Gulf Stream may not stay on course. If it does not flow north, past Iceland and down past Britain, and back around to Florida or Cuba. That's part of the reason that hurricanes spin like that. And as the air mass expands due to heating, it doesn't gain mass, it gains volume, which allows for a bigger storm ceiling, and that changes weather patterns. I am hoping their various computer simulations included such a possibility. The Stream changing course, I mean. Although that might make Paris more like Montreal or Seattle. Alas for Boston! The City That never Sleeps will finally lay down and close her eyes, perhaps for good.

Filth, death, and poison, flavored with lies and stupidity all coming towards Washington is nothing new, but this time it's not a Party, it's a multinational corporation. In other words just a guy, a person like you or me... according to the Supreme Court.