part 2: you got there without drugs?!

I don't know if I ever told you, but the reason that I went back to school is that I got a message in my heart. The message was a response, from a force that answered to "God". It was summer 2008, and every day I was doing the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram, the Middle Pillar exercise, meditating, plus those 5 Tibetan Rites I posted about. These are energizing practices, practiced and designed to bring one's concentration to a quiet focus. I had the confidence to catalyze growing into my inner life, because I wanted more success in seeking my fortune in this world that felt like cruel and unforgiving. I could see, dimly, that those were both qualities within myself that I expereinced as coming from my environment. But more than from my mind, I also could see that the world can be a tricky place and that I needed some subtle power to penetrate and unlock the precise reality for which I feel seeded to blossom with. So using these techniques, passed on from sibs of the blossoming tree/rosy cross, I hacked out a free space for standing and channeling light.

It was spiritual calisthenics. Every day. Going to a forest clearing at the pinnacle of Enright ridgeline, to bellow the sacerdotal words of some barbarous semitic language. It was psychological isometrics in the basement of my girlfriend's apartment during the coldest months of winter. Bringing illumination into arenas of my being that I would no longer tolerate being isolated. I would stand in the snow by a frozen creek and guide LVX to stream up through my feet, all the way out the top of my skull. These exercises provided an opening for novel decisiveness to my yinned-out, self-critical personality.

excerpt from my journal, Thursday April 17th (2008)

"...God spoke to me today. I came through to him at the end of the Middle Pillar. My question: What to do with my life? Horticulturalist and shaman. Do the Work of Creation- express the Divine ideal by bringing forth permaculture lifeforms. This with the alchemical quintessence so well expressed that just being in the garden will resonate with our desire to pierce the veil. Awestruck by the Fathomless Beauty that'll be expressed at the scene, people will be be freer to transform themselves and manifest thier best in brightest in the vocation that speaks to them..."

It felt right to proceed farther, sometime around my birthday (5/13), with an experiment. I would address the source of my shift, which may have simply been the soothing seepage from my light-sensing pineal gland, as if it were a discrete, though completely interdependent, being of omnisentient benevolence. The question: WHAT I should be doing with my life to characterize its next phasze?! Cuz I had no fucking idea how to more fully manifest the Mars Silvanus, Greenman energy in my sphere of sensation. On the field of endeavor, I was feeling impatient and exhausted at what felt like a mighty effort and what looked like lolly-gagging on my destiny. I agreed that I would sincerely and fully explore whatever God told me directly was best for me to do, and that if the question needed further qualification, unforseen nuances and details could sort themselves out.


This is the stage that was known as Neophyte in the Golden Dawn. Probationary, testing you out to see what you're made of and whether you wanted to go on with more rigorous training. That's what being a Neophyte is about.

Eventually I was ready for the big mojo. In an epic session out by the overlook, beyond my momma's Eco-Village, did I span the inner space. Pentagrams on the pinnacle. "God, I've reprogrammed myself to believe that you, as a diffused benevolence that created the Universe and continues to act as the Prime Mover, truly enough exist to give me an answer. The ground of my being is enflamed with prayer, and the question is sincere. So even if it were only that part of my psyche which has the characteristics that I ascribe to you, I would still listen to you, because you have access to knowledge that normally now I can only dream of. So please tell me, what am I to do with my life at this stage so that I may fulfill my mission on Earth and enjoy myself to the fullest? I'm ready to execute whatever plan it is, and I'm ready to adhere to your version of it."


The answer was immediate, and very simple. "Go back to college."

"FUCCCCCCCCCCCCKKKKKKKKKK"

Whatever, I should have known that was coming. On some level I did, and it was unavoidable. I needed credibility, training, social skills wisdom experience. Connections and knowledge.

College. Getting there was Neophyte. That fall, I stood on Bong Hill, overlooking Athens and wondered what further progress was going to look like. Would I became a minor adept by the time I graduated? What would that feel like? What would that look like, and what would I be doing from an exhaulted station where the energy of the Sun could heat me and ray out of my heart to illuminate the world? I felt that it would happen. Then I plunged into a dark night of the soul, as I came to terms with the fact that I could not contain a successful student life in the container of poetic madness.

Fast forward through my life chapters that were shaped mainly by academics, qigong and N*. We may peer into my recent journal to read why now, I am calling myself Zelator, the task of whom is to zealously gain control of the foundations of one's being.

This is a journal entry that has been groomed for public consumption:

6/28/10

I experienced a kundalini awakening last night, at J!'s place. He is a recipe master of the sweat lodge.

There were 4 gates, corresponding with the four directions. We stripped off our outer garments and prayed by a blazing fire. Following that, we then went inside the towel-covered frame of woven boughs. We sat in a circle, our butts resting on boards over a sand floor. Sunken into the middle of the place was a brick invagination, where J! would lay down red glowing stones, saying "Welcome, all my relations" in Lakota/Sioux.

"Find your prayer", and "let the steam and the stones help you carry it up". These were my instructions… Opening to the possibility of transformation, I asked spirit to guide me and I vowed to follow its lead. The need to heal my Martian spirit, the body god of the heart, occurred to me. I saw that I had allowed my wholistic sense of self to be warped as I sacrificed balance to continue Beyond Coal battling through the Spring quarter, especially. I asked that my inner warrior be equilibritated with my ideally balanced and masculine self, so that I may laugh and feel the simple joy of living without feeling a constant desire to vault through life, driven always and solely by the battle daemon of Mars and instead welcoming in the equilibrating influence of, who would it be, Khamael according to the Big Tree Chart. I could feel this happening, as I experienced the thought in its fullness. Later, when the steam was burning my face and sweat poured from my chin, I began offering a verbalized prayer. J! opened the door to the lodge as I began, and I paused. A! sat to my left, and urged me to finish. Thank you, A!. It was my truth in the moment, and was an admirable declaration. When we emerged from the womb, there was lightening flashing in the sky and it continued for the rest of our time. Mars had heard me and showed his response with the flashing bolts of Thor. We talked about stars outside for a bit, me mentioning Astraea to the Scorpio and Libra audience. A! informed us about a cluster of guardians who live out by Titan, saying that a "mothership" is out that way also which can be seen with the naked eye.

I decided to do a ritual whereby I would fill myself with the pure planetary energies to experience them, and then wash myself clean with Lux. I had already gotten this experience with Mars, who is very close to home and responded with a happy, care-free side of me that I had not thought before as being the same part of me that can deal with conflict…. pause to read and rest…

God I have a killer stomach ache! I feel like a different person than whose consciousness was merged with such larger patterns last night. However, I know that the pain is something I need to work through... By recording this story, faithfully detailing the evidence of this truth that is no longer in the forefront of my thinking, it can find a home by integrating it into my habitual self. That will make the surface of this pond as good as clarified, because I know what lurks beneath and what is reflected from above (the daemonic and the angelic). The mead of inspiration hath ceased flowing, but fills my cup.
I'm indebted to Alan Chapman (page 25 Advanced Magick for Beginners) for elucidating this for me. I'm used to thinking of doing what has to be done in the ephemerally appropriate now as a chore, but the small haze of pain won’t keep me from harmonizing with the Dao. Doing so is easy and more richly gratifying than I previously realized.

Lodge. Returning, I filled myself with Venus, which I pictured as emerald plumes of color descending throughout my pa hui/jew cap area of the dome, and expanding into my whole body. Self-induced experience, the energy I was picturing introducing seemed to respond (remember to keep an objective tone, it will help you maintain an objective outlook) to my invitation as I felt: 1) a sentimental love, 2) generalized erotic loving for my self and 3)other, as if I and all were one unit of pleasing flesh. Truly a yummy feeling! I remember feeling this before, looking at myself in the mirror after a shower last week or the week before, and exclaiming that "Nobody's got curves like this!" in affection for the way my lower back transitions down. Then I purged the eroticism of Venus with white light followed. It took more work of will than flushing out Mars, and it seemed that I was aware of some other part of me that was there without filling with Venus energy, like part of the hardware of my physical makeup is governed by Venus and that I had stayed tuned into it after being completely awash. As I would write in my journal if I didn’t have the focus to be scientific, “But the excess energy did dissolve, overpowered by the Ain Soph.”

Next was a non-aroused Jupiter energy. It is happy, mild, not a boundary setter, but an affirmer. I felt myself bestowing a personal blessing on my experience as a whole; it was of the blue sphere based on the Kaballistic imprint. I did not feel uplifted by Jupiter, which surprised me at the time. I had expected to feel Jovial Green Dragon I've felt in my liver before, but did not. Silent mirth, happy in solitude, an inner chuckle is the kind of happiness if I had to personify the satisfaction. At this stage, J! began talking, and I had to interrupt my focus to pay attention to him, and when I focused again it was to do Mercury.

Mercury is the Magician archetype, by my reckoning: able to make connections before they are fully felt by communicating between disparate parts. I felt an orange energy down through my crown, the color I've seen in pictures of the planet's surface. The intellect. I felt more at peace with the Mercurial energy than I had during my first year at OU, because I am more fully developed and thinking is better complimented by emotional and social activity. Nonetheless, the 3 sisters project and the bioremediation I am thankful for, and I recall as I write this another experienced truth of appreciating this function earlier this year, which was a milestone I suppose- hopefully I wrote it down at the time and can transcribe it an put it on a timeline- spiraled on the wheel of the year?!!! See what I mean! While Jupiter's humor was slow and subtle, and Venus's was like a ink spreading blue dye from the chemistry lab spreading through a solute, Mercury I felt as the energy around my spinal column. THat seems to correspond with the central nervous system…

The steam got really intense after Mercury, and I realized that the Moon would be next, because there was just a full moon lunar eclipse on Saturday morning. It was so hot, my nostrils felt like they were burning, and so did my nipples.

I came outside and thought about the Moon- and suddenly it was connected to my sexuality! I did not continue the formula of inviting it in and then purging it, there was a truth happening in me of its own accord. In "The Mystical Kabbalah", Dion Fortune says something about how all the other energies are reposted in the Moon's, which brings it down to Malkuth, the Earth, the 4 directions that Amerindians use as a soul compass technology. I imagined different colored beams of light, the green, orange, blue and red that I had seen, entering into the Moon in a rainbow, that arced down into the sphere of my lower belly. Then yellow light appeared as the pre-eminent light, and the blue faded, and it was strengthened. The rainbow covenant was renewed, I realized: I do not need to hurt and strangle my body or emotions to grow and evolve them, and I vowed upon seeing the Rainbow that I was too beautiful to extinguish, ever.

I feel less certain of the chronology of the following events, but I will record them from memory as faithfully as possible, and perhaps return to offer elaborations and corrections later. Inside the tent for the third portal, the East, Rosco tells us that this is the place of beginnings, this is the direction which we evolutionarily are coming out of Dark Age in the heated South and getting more enlightened, so that space alien gods will return to conscious communication with our society and help us clean up the ecological messes we've made. I remember offering a homily to the Moon. I offered thanks to the Moon for her gifts of shaking and strengthening our imagination, so that we as earth poets could connect with the other energies too and figure out the work we need to do, and be the Gods who don't have to destroy everything to create anew! We remember, it is renewed, the Rainbow Covenant, I said. It was powerful, and I did not falter. A! offered a prayer to our DNA and ancestors and teachers before that; M! or Stephan-Eye offered something brief after. J! thanked us and said we should go into spontaneous singing. I began "Humble myself to the light of the Moon", but he overpowered me and the others with his voice, and asked us to "get low" as he dumped a ton of water on the rocks. I felt intensely angry, but then did not allow myself to retain the anger. This was a very important part of the process. I let anger pass through me, and out again like a barnacle goose’s acorn sinking through an uncovered well, and being carried out to sea on an underground river. Bending my forehead to the ground, the cord from base chakra to top chakra that my pal Farinacci suggested becoming aware of, became an upwards flowing motion. I could feel it move through me from base to top as I bent over and it flowed from I don't know where, it felt like, into the Earth, like I was a hose which somebody had dunked in water and then sucked on for some siphoning action. I was totally bent over my crossed legs. I stumbled out, my conscious mind a total annihilated blank.

J! and his interruption, what a coyote, setting me up to realize my higher need of allowing anger to pass through and back out again instead of into my sword arm.

After that third portal, I just lay in the grass. I could barely move. I was nauseous, feeling like the heat had done me in. I did facial massage but without the heat. A! came over and I took a hit of some smoke, which seemed super appropriate. I administered a resuscitating nose bridge rub. My fingers that meandered over to the left brow ridge, below my off-center third eye. I felt it quiver, and I blasted off!

This was the weirdest and most intense of the experience.

There was all this exchange between above and below energies, via the heart, and SOOO much imagery. I remember being reborn as a lux shen baby and being rocked by the virgin mother; I remember burning to a cinder and rising as a phoenix from heart to throat. I thought, "I should read Chuang Tze to see about his thinking on this. I remember INRI, strangely enough, and YHVH, and I felt the fire of creation sweep from letter to letter left to right. There were three consecutive serpents that took three paths from root to crown, each with fierce different face and temperament. One was definitely an asp or some venomous looking green snake with maroon banding, another was grayish. The first two I could feel as blazing verically, the green one kind of meandered. It got overwhelming after a while. I realized on the comedown, as others came out and started adjusting from their forth portal, that I loved this Gnosis and that I was salty to have to ever move again, because I could not express what I felt to the others and that living into it would be difficult to achieve and even more difficult to understand. Perhaps with further study, these super-dense experiences can reveal further meaning. That's a definite possibility! Anywho, when it got overwhelming, I said "These evolutions are what have happened to the World as a Whole, and I would be deluding myself if I was to view these events as my exclusive domain. The visions were of monumental, transpersonal transformation and I will learn and grow from integrating them into what I am, but on a human scale. I can’t get shredded by all this God energy."

I was rather discombobulated and couldn't communicate what happened to me to those around me, so much, but it was good. The next morning, this Monday morning, I cried after a belly rub, both for how intensely good it had been, and the great disconnect I felt between the mundane and the journey I had just come back from. I offered thanks, and remembered the Rainbow Covenant and the peaceable Martian were there supporting me.

On my way to 8 am Spanish class the morning after voyaging, I found my red bike, which had been stolen. Lavishing it with maintenance and riding it hard, I exercised the newly integrated pieces of my philosophy. I am feeling fucking amazed, enlivened and invigorated by it all.”

That bike will never have a rusty chain again. I am taking care of it from then on out, and moving straight from a stilled point, amidst the powerful fluctuations of the Lunar Flame, is what constitutes gaining control of your being. Here's to

__________________
This is what my old teacher C Duke said upon hearing my newly adopted title

"You are *not* a Zelator - you are always and only ever were *Ipsissimus*...
Enlightened and *Self-Initiated*

*Everything else is just someone else's hierarchy.*"

--------------------
Next I'll talk about the Solar achievement. After all this heavy duty focus on me, the next posts will be about girls and beer and la vida dulce.

recognizing the usefulness of a public face/private face dichotomy as i wander through nebulous cloudscapes

Readers: sometimes I make more polished work than this, for both of our benefits. If I come back to this and it doesn't communicate effectively the ideas that have come to roost in this mind, than I will edit it. Otherwise, the scatteredness is just where I'm at: imagining new shapes and patterns and living them with intention. Their trend is from fertile chaos towards greater coherence.

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

I have been wondering lately, about becoming steeped deep down towards my core, steeped in self-knowledge, vs being active in society and all that demands. I have experienced those two as contending poles, but I can anticipate this duality slackening as my wisdom and understanding deepen. Especially now that I am swinging back towards the pole of solitary pursuit, I can be my own strength as opposed to being fueled and ignited by what I sense and do on the public stage. This is the balanced middle pillar of Kaballah, and it is also the thrusting and governor's channels in the qigong that I am picking back up. I shelved it sometime in the autumn, I guess. The balance to be struck here won't be only the result of pragmatically using adderall to goose my mind into comprehending genetics homework, though that balance between school work and Beyond Coal was my challenge earlier this quarter. I must take stock of who I am and want to be now, because I've experienced so much since February that integration needs to happen so I can experience myself in fullness.

With the summer's being almost here, and so much change that it promises, I pay attention to the viscera's and subconscious promptings, training in self-knowledge even as activities would monumentally build my excitement and draw inner smile outwards. Welcoming back the light of my higher self, so the playfulness of the various daemonic energies, old and new, can work together in this cauldron of creation. O ho! To what collaborative effects I cannot yet say, besides that I am an ouroborros who regenerates faster than can be destroyed. Kan and Li in harmony. Seriously, beyond the self-affirming platitude, I have a confession. When who I was seemed painful- being alone with nothing but that shining cord at my chest, stretching into the distance but freshly severed and leaking the tears that I didn't want to shed- throwing myself into other pursuits was easy and attractive. As of most of winter quarter, and to a deliberately diminished degree this quarter. Now that I am returning to center, Gardening! Brewing! PAID UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH doing soil ecology, and the qigong practice that recommenced anew, tonight at sunset, are not escapes. They are the maze that I meditate in. I study and I learn.



The gist of this is, I am human and I'm done feeling immediate obligation to all that I love, because the love is way bigger than I. Bringing consciousness to a point to create an electromotive force to open my small circulation/microcosmic orbit demands this, and my latest notion is that it will eventually be emanated from the same source in my career work as a bioremediator so others will get a taste of the fruit of my discipline, a more genuine taste than I feel twas able to give through the following facebook post.

This one, that I just deleted from my wall; I remove it to here for the enjoyment of friends who would follow my thoughts. I intend for you to enjoy the music while you read.

"Started Bodhidharma's *Tendon Change Classic* today. Plant and Graft Division represent! It feels so amazing on all levels to be returning to Nei Dan training :)

p.s. a hug to anyone in my community, known or as yet undiscovered, who knows what I'm referring to. Would love to connect with fellow travelers if there be any in Southern Ohio or surrounding area."

Why did I delete this? I realized that I have 1,100 facebook friends, and it suddenly dawned on me that this is TMI (too much information) for that motley cast of characters. It is wonderfully specific by comparison to what could have been their varied responses and non-responses which I would in turn feel more self-conscious about than I want. I will undertake more specialized interaction with smaller, more select groups of people on this journey. Hahaha, this event of posting and unposting was the impetus for this burst of sharing.

Pulling attention inwards is not a matter of being shallow in public, or selfishly not sharing what's precious to me (I originally typed "shelfishly", haha). The costume is removed when there are meaningful, mutual exchanges taking place between I and Thou. Keepimg it vibrant and funky with inner circle, classy and true with all folks, and employing a mild and detached propriety towards those on distant wavelengths. Ahhhhhh, I feel more at peace having articulated my truth. Thank you, all and none, for receiving.

The Werebrock Institute for Spiritual Research, Bulletin No. 103/zzz

Author's Note:

This lunar month is the 50th year anniversary of Jack Kerouac's "On the Road". In honor of this grand wizard of hep cats, I give you the third and final chapter of the Water Saga in stream-of-consciousness form, as it was written in my berry-stained book of shadows. The trio of stories has been an experience to write home about, so I did. No idea who actually reads Noble Savagery, besides my family and a few friends; even so, it feels great putting them out there for everyone in the world who's paying attention.

I talk about my body as if it's not mine in this piece. What I'm trying to say, with this affectation, is that I feel like I've got this sensuous vessle on loan from the Big Whathaveyou.
__________________________________________________________________________

"The River is flowing,
rolling and moaning.
The River
is go-o-ing
down to the sea.

Ooo Mother, carry me,
Your child I will always be;
Ooo Mother carry me,
down to the Sea."

It has started to rain, Hallelujah! After securing my laundry, & sacrosanctly pooping, it dawned on me. After this long drought, during the fall of rain from the heavens, Now is the perfect time, period; and "ahem", this instant I should go down to the crick.

My pants came off and a towel wrapped itself around as the words to the Sarah/Kroka water song came flooding, no, welling, no, upsurging into my frontal cortex. I chanted them to the ground of the Gardens as I wended my way through the Phylostemnas & Colt's foot, down the driveway and across the lane.

Our tune changed as I honored the sky, the Father. Here were the words ushering from these lips:

"Humble myself 'fore
the Light of the Rain God. (bows head)
I gotta bend-a down low and
(Bend down low &
humble my self afore stuck left hand
the Light of the Rain God. out behind me)
I gotta know what you know and
weeeee (Made Pirate tube, with left hand,
will lift each other up. over 3rd Eye)
Higher and higher and weeeee (Thrust hand, palm up, high
Will lift each other up." as could be)

Had a happening, looking over the Garden of Roger. The sky is clearly visible because it's a clearing, and I could see rain streaking Earthwords, against the backdrop of towering oaks, whose tops waved with the wind. I waved in the wind, but not in imitation of them, but with them, for they are my progenitors & ancient elders.

There was an apple tree, in the middle of the Garden of Roger. It did not wave with the wind. It did not feel it. The Tree of Good and Evil does not know Change. "Huh," I think to my self, "those fruits would make a worthy gift, offtered to the Mountains on their highest peaks."

I stilled & walked towards the stream. You have to empty yourself to fill with the holy spirit. But is emptiness the same as stillness necessarily? Stepping past beds of glistening Gaylax & splashing through raindrops. Ducking under laurel branches, on and over the pile of smooth river stones. Finally, I catch site of her.



NTS: Restart, go through
and finish the Corpus
Hermeticum.

Fox-walked over stones of lustring gladness, for the rain was here. Now who is to say they were not?! Animism may be the reason I decide to keep the bulk of WISR bulletins secretted. Say you're an Animist, like the Brethren of the Free Spirit or the Kogis, & Mother Culture will surely try to dicksmack you.

Looked for a spot to lie. A bed of a boulder was beneath these feet. Here's an important part, dear non-determined readers. Snap your spine straight, take a deep breath that you exhale slowly, & focus your eyes on bestilled inner eyelids, cuz this is my first teaching.

Give yourself Over, to the Divine,
As the Free Spirit moves through,
the Path of Right Action will
unfold before you & you may stride down it without any
spiritual friction.

As that applies to the task at hand, I found that the towel layed down on the rock to form a perfect Mesa, which I loaded myself onto, naked of clothes as the day Badge Man was born. & I shut my eyes.

Then opened them. It was the rained-on stream & I, a trinity, that were to commune today; why should this not include casting ma gaze on the air-encircled water globs? It's them that make this time extra attractive, as they keep down most (I slap one) mosquitoes. Earlier in the Garden of Raja Roger, I had noticed that when I focused on one segment of the downpouring, it seemed at odds with other, self-cordoned-off segments. When i had relaxed & unwound these eyeballs, I saw all of the downpouring as one chaos harmony. Transcendentally, it was magnanimous to infinity. And now, laying on the mesa & looking up, I noticed another pro-fun ditty.

The water spaceships were coming towards my elevation RHYTHMICALLY. It was like the scene in Baraka, at a wide traffic intersection. You know, the scene in which camera speed is increasedly accelerated, and surges of pedestrians and motorcoaches wait their turn before crossing & absorbing into the plastic/metal border of your pixeled screen, followed by another surge, and another? Like that. These aerial rivulettes were taking turns, I swear it. Their rhythm gave me an idea for more.

I did a throated drum beat, a Pachamama cardio-pulse. This lasted a couple minutes, as my eyes & mind darted around to take their share of filler in.

Next, I realized that it was time to get personal with the stream. I did this by closing my eyes, mind & body relaxed by now. Waited but a hair, a hairlette of a hair, from the beard of Father Time, before she came. The Nyad of Moonshadow Valley.

I am laying naked, like this, on my back, & I feel the warmth of a kiss, below & to the right of these lips I have been entrusted with.




She came up out of the pool, in direction you'd see if you looked from this head, past the feet and a little to your right. She hugged me, & stroked this chest. Then I felt her, around my pubic area. I felt her as the drops which hit my consciousness in a more accutely noticed way, there. Then, she moved up to my grail, my tantien. Same feelings, these sensations she gave me. No erection. What she was giving me may be pondered more in depth later. Not to be cliche, though of course I can after saying that, but let's put down that she gave me liquid courage & charisma. (I'd asked an ex-girlfriend for these in dealing with another propsectful lady friend.) Moonshadow was my cosmic postwoman who delivered the package. I thanked her, and wondered what to give her. "A lock of your hair," she seemed to answer. "Get up and do it Now." She also suggested, at this time, that I offer apple(s) up on da Mountains.

I felt the back of my borrowed head, and there was a knot of hair under these finger tips that seemed the choice. Then it was the rock finding juncture- I need a tool to saw off my gift, right? The stone I found also happens to be part of the necklace that the Red Dragon gave to me, & therefor should expect & look for on this plane, some 8 or 11 months earlier. I kept the stone, & tossed the knot into a trickle-skeined rock face. The knot made its way into the lower pool, and then it was done & I came up here to write about it. That was a hundred and one minutes ago. Or maybe a hundred and three? But who's counting?

Glory Hole

Werebrock has pushed it to another level: hooray! O yeah, finding happiness and meaning in every second of every day, getting initiated in the new old Mystery. Sounds like a lot of hype, as I type it. You might be scoffing at the lack of seemingly-appropriate modesty. Surely it's not as boundlessly wonderful as all that? But Werebrock has taken to wearing a cape on his jogs through the countryside, and hype feels appropriate. Basically, he got turned on at the Gathering with E-Mack, and from there it just kept flowing into a wait and see.



This chapter starts a few months ago. It was Saturday morning, and Werebrock was setting out from the Gardens to find a hellbender. He put on his shoes, for this was to be an epic expedition; you can’t neglect your feet, however lofty or magnanimously low the destination. He took off at a run down the White Oak Creek, which came to meet the South Toe River two miles beyond. “The South Toe is filled with hellbenders.” Werebrock told himself matter of factly. “By comparison to the nightsoiled waters of my beloved Kentucky and Cincinnati rivers, it will be their bit of Paradise. Clear, cold, highly-oxygenated blood, pumping from the heart of the Blacks and Blue Ridge mountains. With the water level so low, what with the dryness of this season, those dinosaur-shaped gummy bears will have nowhere much to hide. If I don’t find one it will be because” That’s as far as his thought train went, for his qi was busy pumping through his legs.

To get to the point of this chapter, the author will brush with broad strokes over that most wonderful, watery day. Werebrock made it to the river without getting abducted by aliens or being hit by a car. He yukked it up with some trout fishermen as he steadied himself at their flowing edge. He got into character (method acting?) by floating down the river for a ways on his back, and after being tipped off by the Granny whose property he crawled out onto, he hitched a ride to the hellbender’s alleged favorite hangout. It was after a lack of success there, in a loch bordering the local Biodynamic farm, that he began to reassess the facts that had played under his earlier enthusiasm. “If my nose were harder and my eyeballs made of steel,” he rhymed tiredly to himself, “I would first have consulted experts, and seen what they’d revealed.” But wandering had been an unstated, secondary goal for the day. No reason to harumph hard.

Werebrock wasn’t left hardly harrumphing for very long, for he ran into the Italian pirate farmer. Everybody loves this guy, you cannot fail to. That day his words were particularly welcome:


“O Yeah, Daddy Bareback is balls-out for hellbenders.” He inclined his head past his cows, and down the road. “He lives just a hop skip and a jump down that way. He has underwater cameras and goggles, and takes his family out to look for the beasts. Sounds like your man.”

Werebrock hopped skipped and jumped in the direction he was pointed. After crossing a small stream, he met the Bareback family in a veggie field, working as one groovy little nuclear unit. They are some cool motheruppers! O, how nice it must be to have your parents and siblings together, merrily cultivating your favorite food plants. Even Bjorn has nothing but kind words for them, and he usually likes to joke about disemboweling the hippies of Celo for their lameness. Turns out Doc Bareback has spent his last ten winters naturalisting on the Bay of Baja, or whatever we’re calling it now that Cortez’s name has been properly disgraced. Werebrock has vacationed in Baja, so besides talking hellbenders, they happily blew hot air about that faraway place, where desert meets the sea.

If Werebrock himself were writing this chapter, without the distance of a third person perspective, he would (he WOULD!) speculate further. The resonations that echoed from the meeting of Doc Bareback and Werebrock would be shown to have sympathetically reverberated into the Otherworlds, to a significant degree. Werebrock has spent some time explaining to his friends that such a fortuitous meeting could only have come to be by the grace of his Hellbender (water) guardian spirit. But if you speak in too much detail of such secrets, they lose their specialness.

Da Bareback’s invited Werebrock on a hellbender exploratory expedition. With eye-bulging jubilation, Werebrock accepted. Months later, after a long drought that brought the water table to record lows, after Werebrock had undergone the emotional healing mentioned in Kyanite Drive, the invitation was ready for fulfillment. What happened next was really what I’ve been wanting to tell y’all about.

Another Bard joins the storyline. On Expedition Day, the old geezer who told a Creation Story to the Permaculture Gathering met Werebrock, partway to the Barebacks, and gave him a ride. It was the pair's first real time together. This elder is approaching authentic maturity in his demeanor and message, and they spoke their observations on the forest scene around them as they sped past the Italian Pirate Farm. They met the Barebacks at their house, and kicked at the manure pile awhile. The call of the mission kept ‘em from dallying long; Werebrock was so excited he started chasing the family’s lone rooster.

To get to the secret spot, the submerged Tibetan convent/monastery where Appalachian hellbenders do yoga all day, the group drove over private roads and parked in a homesteader’s driveway. They unloaded snorkels, masks and bodies, and plummeted down a root-secured path to where the river, even during that period of drought, ran swift and fairly deep. It fell rapidly over huge, wavy sections of bedrock that the party was standing on to gear up. These waters and rocks have been lovers for aeons . You may have inferred that, from mention of the steep descent, but it goes beyond the standard elevation gradient. The rocks looked how agitated blobs of water would, should you observe them struggling through outer space: all smooth curves, sinkholes and shrugs. Werebrock practiced his leaping, and chased skinks. When a snorkel ‘came available, he tore into the water like horny pre-pubescent children into a 6th grade romance. You know, us American kids that drink a lot of hormone-laced factory milk and T.V. and kill each other for Nikes? It was intense.

Hellbenders are picky about where they live. They only settle for the most pristine of stretch marks on Momma Earth’s belly. Buoyant and ebullient is all you can be in such a place. Werebrock went to churning his body, like a den of sleepwalking rattlesnakes. His limbs twirled out, to catch onto ledges, and explore crannies; his spine, temporarily released from its sworn oath against gravity, reacquainted itself with a suppleness it had forgotten having. He searched the gummy floor of the river for sign.

There were broken eggsacks clinging to rocks, and a sinkhole with a peculiarly murky complexion. Maybe the quarry was nearby. There was no indication of it below the pitter pattering stream mouth, which one could photograph and use to defend Steiner’s flowforms as naturally sacred geometry. The completely aquatic amphibians may have been sharing space with a giant trout under its equally giant boulder, but there was not enough room for Werebrock to safely get in there and check. He moseyed far over the river bottom, about 8 feet down. The search yielded a smooth white stone that our hero had been on the look out for, all these past 8 months. No hellbenders, though! The discovery of a deep, watery tunnel was promising. Werebrock raised a masked eyebrow and poked his head in. There were no hellbenders in sight. He came up to exclaim the non-discovery to his friends on the bank, then dived for another look.

The waterway must have had abundant oxygen, but it was not readily available to Werebrock's smooth neck. Scary thought, getting trapped down there with no gills. I'm happy to write that that is what this chapter has been building to. Past the outwordly inaudible voice who proffered to him a plunging. "Got any danger around here?" Werebrock giggled inwardly as he went deeper. His feet dissapeared into the glory hole.

The sight was murky- there was light, mud and current in equal amounts. Werebrock lightly plodded over the river bottom, his feet not touching the ground, his hands groping and pulling him forward. And forward... to a dead end? No, towards the light. There was a sharp turn in the passage, upwards and to the left. Werebrock probed the twist with his body, and began to get stuck at the shoulders. "Bad scene, bad scene!" He thrashed and gnashed (his teeth), until he was free and backed out to resurface.

"Hey y'all. I'm scopin' out that tunnel Little Gwion found. For a minute I got afraid up in there, but it's alright."

"I'm gonna go back down there, and go through it. It seems kinda dangerous. I'll be swimming against the current, so the river can help bring me back if I decide to reverse course." Good luck, dude. The Barebacks and the Bard look a tad worried.


Back down there. It's murkier than Leviticus, yet the little bit of light guided Werebrock, down, back and across a threshold of no easy return. He knifed together his double jointed arm sockets, fingers pointing forward, and surged around the troublesome bend. And then, dang it, if his giant hips didn't get stuck than my name is Ferdinand Flagellum! No time for bemoaning the time-sensitive, impulsive decision; there's barely enough time to see if he can ride this wave to shore. "One, two! One, two! And through and through", out Yemaya's snicker snatch. Or you'll be dead, and your head

will never finish the poem.

His hip joints popped through, and the cause for alarm increased. For the river's current rushed over the rocky lip that Werebrock's body was thrust sideways upon. Heave. RAUGH! "You've been down here too long!" Whoever the fuck is talking to Werebrock at this point would better shut up, for the part of him that can hear is draining away. Pull through, pull through. His mind blinks out, and with a squirt of superhuman bendiness, his legs momentarily seem to lose rigidity at the thighs and Werebrock is patting weakly at the water, his feet slip out of the gulf. His head emerges into the thin atmosphere.


Every day since then has been more magical and crazy, more clearheadedly and fully taken on. Werebrock *knows* that was his real death and rebirth as a shaman, and as a fairly impartial observer I cannot but say that his appraisal is apparently accurate. The Hellbender galumphs about in his inner spring, which bubbles up in him like a hopeful spring on the parched savannah.
_______________________________________________

Editor's Note:

Parts of this story were prematurely published under the title "hellbending pt. 2". That article has been pulled, for it was put out there with innapropriate haphazardness. I wistfully smile back upon it so you don't have to.

Kyanite Drive

This chapter begins on a hot and sunny Thursday afternoon. Werebrock was down near the road, assembling a rack of bamboo, twine and screws. This was for storing Mountain Gardens’ supply of extra giant grass culms. Bjorn was there as well. It was one of those tasks where two hands can be working all the time, and only sometimes a third and fourth are wanted. However, Bjorn’s company was not only giving Werebrock the faculty of Lord Ganesh’s four arms; no, his presence also lent the moral support of said elephantine lover of sweets. Werebrock was surfing on turbulent emotional waters, and on one level he appreciated Bjorn’s company, even as he could not express it.

Werebrock had donned his emotional blank mask. This was common practice, unfortunately, for his real face was unattractively contorted with pain. Besides hating to see that pain, reflected back at him as it would be from the tranquil water of a nearby lotus pond, he hated to subject the rest of the world to it. He grunted, and complained to Bjorn about the laziness of the other interns, as he threw himself into familiarization with appropriate power drill protocol. Drilling holes in tubular bamboo takes some getting used to, and the concentration it took to do so acted as a long-tethered life preserver for his conscious mind. It kept his head above the burbling waves of his inner sea, which were dangerously high, though exactly how high it is impossible to say because the waves were still miles out from the coast. Serpentine shadows danced below his bare feet, the emotions and futures he was failing to manifest. Those of Universal love and personal success were there, but also self-hatred from the fear of being a fuckup. He wanted to let his team of saurians spiral up, burst through the foam, and take him with them. He desperately needed to ride them away, and whip through the air like feathered snakes from the olde Mayan faith. But fear remained. What a shitty life preserver it makes. His cowering snakes got the cold shoulder, as did the mosquitoes drowning in his sweat; as did Bjorn. He avoided hating himself by projecting his problems onto friends, and mostly just stayed in character with his mask. The reader might want to hear that Werebrock has since made amends with these other characters… we’ll see what happens.

When it was time for lunch, Werebrock climbed the driveway and indulged in a bit of spelt bread. Spelt is a gluten-free grain, right? Why does good people propagate such lies?! Our newly realized, gluten-allergic protagonist experienced plummeting energy levels. The rest of the day would be devoted to a class on bamboo construction, and he had already spent weary hours in the field, so decided to take a long nap. As his eyes closed and his lips slowly smacked together, he dropped a silent curse on the grain addiction that had laid him out as surely as a punch in the face. His party animal totem, the Rolling Rock Beer ape, would not have been pleased.

**************

That evening was still. Over the vegetable garden, shards of sunlight overflowed from the tree’s canopies, and the motes they illuminated were full of fairy-looking creatures. These could only be seen plain if you squinted, paid attention to your peripheral vision and kept the lofty intellect’s floodlight respectfully dimmed. Werebrock woke to this laidback twilight vibe, so ideal for contemplating benevolent mischief, and his wretched Greek tragedy mask cracked and started falling off. He was feeling better after napping.

Happiness had not been in the forecast for this evening, as you probably surmised. But in Werebrock’s dreams, the serpents were brushing up against his legs in frustration with his square emotional loop, and they were tickling him and he had to laugh. Now, if he would just accept the mystery in his waking life… but no, he was still in the habit of pushing them away. His tired soul is not responding, and he ignores their frustrated play. To the badger/man’s credit, in some of the dreams and some of his waking hours, too, he’s been clawing through the smokescreens that separate us from the big Whathaveyou; he’s threading his life into the tie-dyed, balaclava-clad fringe of the emerging civilization’s tapestry, and it’s an uphill struggle. He’ll realize he can just hop on the wyrms and fly up the mountain. Soon. Eventually. Maybe. Whatever, El Mundo Bueno is worth all the struggle and heartache it takes to get there.

Werebrock peered through the bank of windows that lined his couch. With an air of courage, a woman of regal bearing and a fearsomely built warrior were striding up the herb-lined driveway. They turned out to be Ashevillage’s Cob Princess, and her partner Cuchulain. They were come for the night. ‘Parently, the Princess and the Big Cheese of Mountain Gardens go way back, and she had steered her crew here so she could catch up with him ‘afore the Gathering. “My gawd,” Werebrock thought to himself as he caught site of the Princess’s handmaidens, “I’D like to go way back with these dapper dames! Ummmm ummmmm.” Later, he would have the chance. But as has already been said, tonight he was being tired and unsure of himself. So instead of exerting with the effort to mesh with this new troupe, tattooed and bare-bellied cuties though they were, he flitted into the background and found the rest of the Mountain Gardens Crew, amicably kicking the manure pile. That is to say, they were shooting the shit, focusing on kicking the tires of the cosmos. Which is what they are usually doing. Werebrock joined in the stomp, for a bit, and then crawled back to his sett to sleep some more.

On Friday, our hero’s itinerary increased in density. An annual Gathering, where the local permaculturists can sparkle their souls for each other, was located just three miles away. He got there early with purpose two-fold. Though the festivities would not begin in earnest ‘til the morrow, he felt that politely asserting his right to not pay a bourgeois-priced gate fee shouldn’t be put off. Simple locals do not need the food & tent space being taxed for, he reasoned with the registrars. Also, it was fixing to be a busy weekend, and he wanted to put in some volunteer hours to defray the core group’s stress levels.

This pitching in consisted of a few hours of dishwashing & brushing shoulders with the Cob Princess’s handmaidens. They were versed in the arts of pleasing hippy tummies, while Werebrock was versed in the art of cleaning other people’s dirty tools. It worked out great, and the ladies were o so appreciative. As they chopped seaweed and boiled meaty vegetarian stews, they swayed leaped and sang through the close environment of a culinary stainless steel jungle gym. Golllley, grooving with touchy-feely scullions makes for a damn good time. He would have liked to stay longer than he did, but the pretext for rubbing shoulders with said sudsy coquettes drained away with the dishwater. Plus, he had to beat a hasty jog back to Mountain Gardens if he were to be on time; the estimated arrival hour of his due-in Dadio was fast approaching. O fuck, I forgot to mention! The Elder of the Mackateewa Mackipoo tribe which Werebrock will one day scion, was about to arrive at a dignifiedly late hour. Not too late to go drink elderberry/honey wine and stare at cavepeople T.V. with the Bears, of course. But I was late in the mentioning it. One thousand apologies, dear reader (;

Saturday morning the protagonist rose early, & cooked brown rice, with raisins, spice, pumpkin seeds & shredded coconut. He and E-Mack ate and moseyed amazingly prompt-like, considering their shared heritage of disrespect for clocks, and linear time in general. When they got down to the riverside happening, they found that some Gathering folks were already clamoring to visit Mountain Gardens. E-Mack himself, because of his night time arrival, had had no opportunity for visual appreciation of the grounds. Werebrock was duty-bound to give them a grand tour, so all wishful ogglers piled together in a gasoline-fired chariot and shot back up the mountain.

The shadowy figure of El Queso Grande hovered way up there, where only a trained eye could spot. He was hailed by Werebrock, but refused to come down. He suggested, with as few words as possible, that their newly arrived guests wander his wasteless land awhile. He then fully disappeared, back into his towering shack. Werebrock nudged the bewildered visitors into paradise and sat down for a breather.

After a short spell, the group converged on a patio. Queso G came to, carrying his game face. He explained ‘em around the geography with which they were newly acquainted. Both Mackipoos were inspired, and gurgled to each other in hushed tones of excitement. The stimulation was crashing through their minds, like a flash flood through a dessert canyon, lined by water wheels.

Werebrock: See, these evergreens are left over from the days when Joe paid the bills with a landscaping business. Now they’ve grown up and compartmentalized the garden into more manageable chunks.

E Mack: Hmm, very interesting. Back home, we could plant a couple rows of Christmas trees on our field’s border for privacy & windbreak. At the same time, we can plant a row of fruit trees alongside them. By the time we’d Christmassed the pines to extinction, the fruit trees would be ready to assume their tertiary functions, as well as, well, give fruit.

Werebrock: !

Twas great!

*******************************************

The Mackateewa Mackipoos spent the later portion of that day in workshops. E-Mack tackled head-on a demonic pyramid scheme. Nobody had expected to find one there, but somehow a green-clad vampire had latched on the brain of a workshop presenter.

Werebrock went on a “plant walk” with neo-primitive folk-hero Frank Cook. He is a wandering plant guru with much wisdom to share. When you read this blurb from a workshop he did last year, you could see how the two Mack Macks felt they’d experienced the far light and dark sides of da movement:

“October 6-8 Ancient Relations/Abundant Futures: A plant wisdom shindig and alchemical tea party With Chuck Marsh, Patrick Ironwood and Frank Cook

At MoonShadow in SE Tennessee. Contact their website: www.svionline.org for more information

This weekend will explore our connections to both wild and cultivated food and medicine plants. Our time together will be an opportunity to deepen your sacred connection to the plant kingdom through neo-shamanic practice, wild plant walks and gathering, plant processing (elixirs and ferments), an exploration of the cultivation and use of common and uncommon food and medicine plants, and strategies for incorporating them into your home and community landscapes. Join us as we celebrate the wondrous connections between plants and people, increase our plant skills and knowledge, and scheme ways toward an abundant future for all life.

Frank, Chuck, And Patrick are intrepid explorers of the many dimensions of the plant/human/ lifetime passion for discovering plant wisdom and cultivating the edges of a nurturing, conscious culture for our times.” (http://www.wildroots.org/frank/index.html)

“Awww, ya know,” drawled E-Mack with a sigh after the failed exorcism, “in the Bible it says ‘Where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more.’” This prompted Werebrock to relate his thoughts on possible Taoist and Permaculture variations on the proverb. Werebrock was having fun, and he was starting to get into the groove that he had missed out on while making the bamboo rack. A little later, the two settled into the planning group for the fire quadrant of that night’s community-wide ritual

Every year at this Gathering, the participants design a magical rit for communal performance. This year, the grand ceremony would be centered on mourning the loss of hemlock trees. This may warrant explanation, for y’all not living in the Eastern Deciduous Forest Biome. You may recall an entry on Noble Savagery from earlier in the season, in which Bjorn and Werebrock hailed one another over the span of a tree. Werebrock had climbed the tree, a hemlock tree, in order to spray soapy water over it’s friendly, awl-shaped needles. This was intended to surround a scad of little white masses that could be seen dotting the boughs, encasing them in bubbles and killing the rampaging insects inside. They are a prolifically fucking aphid species from Japan, which arrived in this country some 40 years ago by the hands of ignorant nursery-workers. The hemlock analogs in Southeast Asia have been dealing with this god-damned “wooly adelgide” for a long time, but our poor hemlocks don’t know what hit ‘em, ‘cept that it hit ‘em hard and hit ‘em where it hurts. The trees are getting their sap supped like Mina Harker by Dracula, and they’re dieing in droves. You can cry now. Yarg! Sniffle.

The fire folks brainstormed, and decided on doing symbolic dance, together with song, and an effigy burning. They considered Rainbow Family songs and Cherokee stomps, Chinese Dragon formations and head banging. Eventually their agreement alighted on a Nigerian dirge with symbolic fire language, together with a generic, lightly choreographed conga line (“Wave around like a flickering flame!”). After going through this routine a few times, the Mack Macks split off to privately reflect on the day. They also did some laundry, and discovered a surprisingly delicious Tex-Mex joint.

Ever since they were reunited, a Zen-tinged synergy grew to easily noticed levels between the son & the father. This report, having been ordinarily rare in the years before, took on a permanent feel. Doing the laundry was a particularly illustrative, outwardly visible symbol of these deeper changes; they were washing out more than mud. On the surface, all that happened was a pilgrimage to the Laundromat in a “campground”, which is actually a trailer park that the proprietors must mislabel, for fear of North Carolina government strictures against heavily stereotyped communities. On deeper levels, bad-smelling emotional sediment was washed from the family’s old, sore wounds, and they offered their hearts, clean, to the fresh air for healing.

Getting back to the Gathering, the Mack Macks joined with their fiery crowd. Trays of cookies were passed around, as one of the Community Elders offered a newly told Creation Myth. People helped the old one along with laughter, and kind, harmless jeering that was part of its telling. When that was done, the whole assembly rose as one and began ascending to the ceremonial glade. All the different groups chanted. At the head of the procession was a giant Wooly Adelgide model, woven from smartly split bamboo strips. The sun had sunk below the Black Mountains, and torches cast flickering shadows on the spectatorless parade.

At the glade, their Storyteller gave an invocation and, quite excitingly, started a sacred fire by bow drill. Everyone cheered and whooped. Then around the circle, the Wiccan elements- Fire in the South, Water in the West, Earth in the North, Air in the East and Spirit in the Center and throughout- were called up and invited to party. And party they did, as you would have seen had ya been there that night. In Werebrock’s humble opinion, the most beautiful and provoking performance was from the champions of the Earth quadrant. Their people leaped & stomped, & clacked rods together as they flamencoed with the giant, bamboo woolly adelgide effigy, who was illuminated with a strobed flashlight. Some of them were bare-chested, some were masked and some were caped. The Fire Group burnt a Chinese-style bamboo spirit-hut, as offering, which also carried some of their sadness for the hemlocks up in the smoke. After the 5 groups were finished, the circle was opened, and they walked in silent procession to the party glen. One can’t do better than to quote the letter Werebrock wrote immediately following his experience there:

“& this deserves its own paragraph. I just got back from a full on Dionysian frenzy. It was a dance around a big blazing fire, clothes flying off to the rhythm of a whole line of drummers. My Dad’s here for a visit, & I escaped back home with him (to Mountain Gardens) before his amazed in mind exploded,- (he hadn’t imbibed in that big, earthy, Hawaiian phallus/vulva thing ) and before I started screwin’ the nearest person in the mud- next to the fire- like a guppy.”

**********************

The eternal present had become the late hours of the following morning when the family woke. They had asserted their right to a good rest. Divine leisure, baby- let everything arise and happen on its own schedule! As soon as the Mack Macks were up and ready to socialize, a neighbor came by to claim a favor. He just needed help getting some special rocks out of a hole he’d dug up in the woods, & Werebrock, you wouldn’t mind coming to help for the 10 or 15 minutes it would take to get it down to my truck? Of course not, good sir, but on the condition that Sancho would accompany. Lonely old bachelor farmers can be creepy to hang out with alone, ya know?

After a fifteen-minute drive, the neighbor’s pickup began struggling up a windy gravel road. It slowly vvvroommmmed, past empty RV hookups and through a wide, freshly mowed parkland. There was short grass and tall trees and no humans to be seen. No wonder, the area had its original charm hacked away. “This damned place,” Werebrock muttered from the back of the auto. He crooned & hummed a joyful tune. Gatherings like that one they’d just experienced, they lift chips off your shoulder even as they fall on you. Also, they are especially good places to charge up your inner boombox.

Then, the car was at the end of the passable road. The neighbor led our Mack Macks half a mile up the mountain. They went through laurel hells, around ground bee nests & past giant holes, dug at random by 200+ years worth of rock hounds. “This place ain’t called Micahville for nothin’” intoned the laborious neighbor. “There are over 200 abandoned Micah mines in Yancey County alone. There are also emeralds, rubies, feldspar…” The dude is passionate about minerals, and this passion drove thee intrepid trio to the highest hole, where two boulders filled with kyanite awaited their robbery.

Somehow or other, the Mack Macks and Neighborino wrestled both boulders down through the forest. The author can’t say how, really. He dabbles in the absurd, but if he tried to tell you that Neighborweenie insisted on boxing up the first boulder and then tying it to a dolly, he would have to admit to being more than a bit silly sounding. And if he confided, that the group packed their semi-precious cargo out through the unsmiling thorns of smilax thickets, & past patches of semen-reeking lobster fungus, it might begin to sound unfortunate, which it was not. Did I mention that a nest of yellow jackets whose larvae had just been eaten by a bear waylaid the troupe? The hurrying humans were made to feel the wrath of these desperately grieving insects. On the second trip up, for the second boulder, the buggy wake was avoided.

Werebrock began to feel that this particular sojourn was a parable on human greed, one he had not intended to be written into. He wanted to make his ancestors proud as he could, under the circumstances, and so he just carried the second, larger boulder in his arms. What’s the point of having the build of a Sasquatch if you don’t enjoy performing such feats on occasion?

As the idiots drove home, Werebrock stared out the window. He was not at all proud of their subdued quarry. The early afternoon rays of Sunday sunlight streamed through a bank of clouds, and the mountains they partially veiled seemed to toss a half-spiteful spit wad at him. The kyanite boulders glittered. Eyes that his soul had borrowed from the Creator wandered down from the resentful mountains, and his gaze fell to a Baptist church as they sped by. It must have finished delivering its daily dose, he thought, for the zombie congregation was pouring onto the driveway. There, a shaggy, black dog, buzzing with shit flies and unanimated as the day before it was born, lay waiting, presumably to be devoured in communion with a certain bloodthirsty sky god. “Well, that’s not a bad omen,” Werebrock thought sarcastically. Somebody would surely be dieing in this story’s next chapter, but only the green and white “Kyanite Dr.” signpost heard his prediction. The pickup turned onto the main road and revved its engine.

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Hope you’ve enjoyed this as much as I have. All of the adventures of “Werebrock”, Badger Johnson’s sometimes alter ego and hero, are fictional. To a degree. Everything illegal that he does is COMPLETELY fictional, embellishment on the life of this law-abiding anarchist. So, if you understood that Werebrock ate some possibly psychedelic mushrooms, the reader is to take it that Badger has been ingesting only shitakes. Eating shitakes is a profound experience. After all, how many other sources of easily grown, near-complete vegetarian protein can you name off the top of your head?