Showing posts with label folktalez. Show all posts
Showing posts with label folktalez. Show all posts
Thursday, November 18, 2010
repotting the tree of knowledge
Henceforth I shall blog with a community of other writers at THESE OLD NEW TRADITIONS. Solve et Coagula, my voice is over there now. Peep it =)
Monday, November 24, 2008
Iron John
Just finished reading Iron John, by Robert Bly. He starts off describing most guys today as not having a well-established sense of identity. To change that situation, he reads a Grimm's faerie-tale as an archetypal male initiation sequence which was in effect since the Neolithic, and then unpacks his understanding of it.
I suppose that contemplating these ideas and progressively applying their principles into life, is supposed to catalyze one's personal development comparably to Iron John's initiation. These days, when I feel the force of an impersonal force from without or within I pay attention to it and see what I can learn. That's why I appreciate personal truth in much of Robert Bly's thinking and really enjoyed this book. The names of the days of the week come from Norse and Roman deities, + the 7 ancient astrological planets. Bly's roundup of male archetypes (The Wild Man, the Magician, the Warrior, the Trickster, the King, the Lover, and the Grief Man) enriches that understanding for me. Every day, I am reminded by cosmology to stir up and sip on and embody these previously ignored, hidden or forgotten qualities in my self.
I am also thankful for the literary criticism provided by Paul Wolf-Light, and Charles Upton. Society has changed a lot since the Neolithic; that the Wild Man has been going MIA in white culture since the rise of asceticism several thousand years ago reflects it. If there were bad reasons for his disappearance, I assume there were also some good ones. Inequality between the sexes has been rejected, so sexed archetypes that apply to both sexes can seem ridiculous. Also, if you're like me you got sick and spit up lots of the initiation/indoctrination of our native society. With climate chaos, zombies and robots running towards us, we have our work cut out! We are reinventing culture, keeping our subjective reality based on truth, and in the end passing a beautiful, sufficient way of life to our kids. I know my friends in the Little House in the Ghetto are doing this, anyway- investment analysts could learn a lot from you guys! Happy Thanksgiving!
Thursday, August 30, 2007
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.
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.
Saturday, August 25, 2007
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.
************************
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?
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
**********************
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.
************************
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?
Sunday, July 08, 2007
magic (un)school bus
last weekend i went on a neo-tribal bus excursion with the Bears. lemme pour you a glass.
i got bored, so i hollared at the Bears and biked over there. just kicked it, with them parents and the 5 kids. i'm a lil older than the eldest of them, and they treat me as if i'm a well-liked uncle. i dig it. we ate dinner and goofed around, watched the Big Lebowski. it's a well-told story, and very entertaining. set the tone for my whole weekend.
MG had gotten an open call to party, by some other herb garden. that night i extended the invitation to my hosts. "You (Bears) want to go to a giant party tommorrow night? It's supposedly gonna be 300 people on a Goldenseal Farm. Pizzas made there, we bring toppings. Then we dance around a bonfire at 3 o'clock in the morning, stay the night and leave after brunch on Sunday." acourse they were down.
it came out that we Mountain Gardeners needed a ride, and that Papa would want to bring folks too. as we thought about it, his eyes sparkled, and he sqirmed and giggled and arched his fingers. "Maybe we could take the bus! I'll have to ask Steph." i had registered the presence of a yellow blob in the far reaches of their yard, but junk cars are such a common site around here, ya know?
We walked over the patch of ground that used to be the barn, under the ramparts of a new deck, to where Steph was chasing chickens or children or someit. "Steph," Papa Bear said, nonchalantly, "I'm taking the bus to a big party tommorrow night." He was trying to hoodoo it over on her, pass it off like a done deal. Didn't work, of course. it would take some powerful mind tricks, or a gang of thugs, to browbeat a momma like that into anything. Eventually she agreed, though, and watched the littler ones when we went off to play.
The next morning was magic. I woke early and took a bath in the crick, and this school of small fish came over and nibbled my skin. Fish kisses. They were helping me get clean, like those little white birds, what are they, oxpeckers, on the backs of rhinos. Several cars passed without responding to the large naked dude right beside them, and I was not afraid. As Sharqui pointed out, the PPSM (pigs per square mile) reading is pretty low in the countryside, and the Baptists and Quakers ain't gonna say shit.
When I returned, we all entered the bus. Its previous incarnation was as a Mountain Justice Summer mobile, so twas already well on way down the unschooling path before Papa Bear converted it to run on veggie oil. We hooked up some speakers, swabbed the deck, topped off the fluids, took out the trash and squashed the wasps that were taking holiday above the front door. She was in good hands, so I went and helped Steph in the garden for a few hours. All aboard at 5 o'clock. We made the rounds and picked up all the local crazies, including Shaman Lee, who's a new character in ma story, and busted off into the unknown. The bus heaved and hawed to the beat of Tupac and laughter.
It started to get trippy. Shaman Lee didn't stop talking, neither did Herbal Gerbil/Crazy Steve. Pearls were richoteing all over the place! I learned that the local dump recovers the methane, burns it for electicity that goes into the grid and uses the waste heat to raise tilapia. Pleasant anticipation grew and grew and grew as we nibbled on snacks and watched the changing countryside. I remember feeling that exhalted state, where ya remove your scalp and the gods come on down to frollick in the hills and dales of the ridges of your brain, as easy as if you were just tipping your hat to 'em. The great psychonauts always rip on Mircea Eliade, because even though he knew his shit about ancient spititual mystery shit he said that using entheogens was a sign that the spirituality of the culture was waning, cuz they should be able to do straight-edge trances and spirit journeys. Not right, but he's wasn't wrong, either, becasue you CAN do crazy shit with your mind. This Iranian dude in the latest issue of Fortean Times grew a horn on the back of his head because he was really afraid a horn might grow on da back of his head. But what I was saying before, I thought to myself that I was was experiencing straighedge ecstasy again, and each time it gets less harsh and the comedown is better.
We got way back in a holler, and started goin' by backwoods shacks and over less maintained roads. It was a rollercoaster, ta be sure! People were yelping and whooping. then we had to pile out, cuz we were there. a ton of cars, a lil vegetable garden, and people playing volleyball. there was a middle ages jam band playin', and people were scarfing down homemade pizza.
i'm hot blooded, so i headed down the hill, way down the hill, and plooped into the river. it was the french broad, and it was slow, wide and shallow. algae grew on the rocks, and the warm water and tree studded valley, filled with laughing and splashing people, reminded me of what Cincinnati and the Ohio River Valley looked like 200 years ago. may it shine that way agin, and may i live to see it. reminds me of that picture i posted a year ago.
when i got back up to the party, it started going down hill. the "hippies" turned out to be bitter, straightlaced sellouts that don't crimethinc and repeat a statist, green capitalism mantra. and there was no drumming, 'cept ours. our little tribe of bears was all alone, and we mourned the hippydom of bygone days by sipping salvia divinorum tinctures and gettin' plastered. we didn't all keep aloff- one of the organizers of the party dragged Herbal Gerbil away from the musician's circle when he brought over his gourd rattle. i felt like popping a monster Mercury boner and smashing some Priuses with it, fo real.
we slept, woke up, ate a surprisingly honest brunch with the skeleton crew that had hung around, and voyaged back home. when i got back, i tried to write this story backwards and with feeling, but it came out as babble.
i got bored, so i hollared at the Bears and biked over there. just kicked it, with them parents and the 5 kids. i'm a lil older than the eldest of them, and they treat me as if i'm a well-liked uncle. i dig it. we ate dinner and goofed around, watched the Big Lebowski. it's a well-told story, and very entertaining. set the tone for my whole weekend.
MG had gotten an open call to party, by some other herb garden. that night i extended the invitation to my hosts. "You (Bears) want to go to a giant party tommorrow night? It's supposedly gonna be 300 people on a Goldenseal Farm. Pizzas made there, we bring toppings. Then we dance around a bonfire at 3 o'clock in the morning, stay the night and leave after brunch on Sunday." acourse they were down.
it came out that we Mountain Gardeners needed a ride, and that Papa would want to bring folks too. as we thought about it, his eyes sparkled, and he sqirmed and giggled and arched his fingers. "Maybe we could take the bus! I'll have to ask Steph." i had registered the presence of a yellow blob in the far reaches of their yard, but junk cars are such a common site around here, ya know?
We walked over the patch of ground that used to be the barn, under the ramparts of a new deck, to where Steph was chasing chickens or children or someit. "Steph," Papa Bear said, nonchalantly, "I'm taking the bus to a big party tommorrow night." He was trying to hoodoo it over on her, pass it off like a done deal. Didn't work, of course. it would take some powerful mind tricks, or a gang of thugs, to browbeat a momma like that into anything. Eventually she agreed, though, and watched the littler ones when we went off to play.
The next morning was magic. I woke early and took a bath in the crick, and this school of small fish came over and nibbled my skin. Fish kisses. They were helping me get clean, like those little white birds, what are they, oxpeckers, on the backs of rhinos. Several cars passed without responding to the large naked dude right beside them, and I was not afraid. As Sharqui pointed out, the PPSM (pigs per square mile) reading is pretty low in the countryside, and the Baptists and Quakers ain't gonna say shit.
When I returned, we all entered the bus. Its previous incarnation was as a Mountain Justice Summer mobile, so twas already well on way down the unschooling path before Papa Bear converted it to run on veggie oil. We hooked up some speakers, swabbed the deck, topped off the fluids, took out the trash and squashed the wasps that were taking holiday above the front door. She was in good hands, so I went and helped Steph in the garden for a few hours. All aboard at 5 o'clock. We made the rounds and picked up all the local crazies, including Shaman Lee, who's a new character in ma story, and busted off into the unknown. The bus heaved and hawed to the beat of Tupac and laughter.
It started to get trippy. Shaman Lee didn't stop talking, neither did Herbal Gerbil/Crazy Steve. Pearls were richoteing all over the place! I learned that the local dump recovers the methane, burns it for electicity that goes into the grid and uses the waste heat to raise tilapia. Pleasant anticipation grew and grew and grew as we nibbled on snacks and watched the changing countryside. I remember feeling that exhalted state, where ya remove your scalp and the gods come on down to frollick in the hills and dales of the ridges of your brain, as easy as if you were just tipping your hat to 'em. The great psychonauts always rip on Mircea Eliade, because even though he knew his shit about ancient spititual mystery shit he said that using entheogens was a sign that the spirituality of the culture was waning, cuz they should be able to do straight-edge trances and spirit journeys. Not right, but he's wasn't wrong, either, becasue you CAN do crazy shit with your mind. This Iranian dude in the latest issue of Fortean Times grew a horn on the back of his head because he was really afraid a horn might grow on da back of his head. But what I was saying before, I thought to myself that I was was experiencing straighedge ecstasy again, and each time it gets less harsh and the comedown is better.
We got way back in a holler, and started goin' by backwoods shacks and over less maintained roads. It was a rollercoaster, ta be sure! People were yelping and whooping. then we had to pile out, cuz we were there. a ton of cars, a lil vegetable garden, and people playing volleyball. there was a middle ages jam band playin', and people were scarfing down homemade pizza.
i'm hot blooded, so i headed down the hill, way down the hill, and plooped into the river. it was the french broad, and it was slow, wide and shallow. algae grew on the rocks, and the warm water and tree studded valley, filled with laughing and splashing people, reminded me of what Cincinnati and the Ohio River Valley looked like 200 years ago. may it shine that way agin, and may i live to see it. reminds me of that picture i posted a year ago.
when i got back up to the party, it started going down hill. the "hippies" turned out to be bitter, straightlaced sellouts that don't crimethinc and repeat a statist, green capitalism mantra. and there was no drumming, 'cept ours. our little tribe of bears was all alone, and we mourned the hippydom of bygone days by sipping salvia divinorum tinctures and gettin' plastered. we didn't all keep aloff- one of the organizers of the party dragged Herbal Gerbil away from the musician's circle when he brought over his gourd rattle. i felt like popping a monster Mercury boner and smashing some Priuses with it, fo real.
we slept, woke up, ate a surprisingly honest brunch with the skeleton crew that had hung around, and voyaged back home. when i got back, i tried to write this story backwards and with feeling, but it came out as babble.
Sunday, June 24, 2007
baja
i had a chillaxtastic vacation in Baja. let me tell you all about it.
a few weeks before leaving, i somehow lurched a couple steps toward enlightenment. sweet. so getting to baja was extra REAL, and filled with interesting characters. when you feel like you're sliding up the pole to shangri-la la land, i guess you put out pheremones, because people around me seemed more kind and sociable. maybe was just in headspace that allowed for me to appreciate them, and therefore for them to approach me. anyway, with good company and high spirits, i made my way across the landscape by dirty dog and metal bird. in the airport, i pulled my usual starbucks scams and ran 5+ miles of laps around the terminal. it's a great way to kill boredom and an even better way to use such weird, government restricted space.
when i got to atlanta, i had a dark chocolate bon bon and touseled my mom's hair. we talked all the way to Los Angeles airport. she's an amazing gal, really a point of light on the bleak, utopia-less map of the NPR Nation. if you're interested in forest gardening and you happen to be on the West side of the nasty 'Nati, check out her new spread.
anywho, the next morning we flew down to Loretto, which is halfway down the Baja penninsula on the Eastern side. there were several layers of growing green things, none of the shapes were at all familiar to me. my eyes were as big as a kracken's, trying to soak it all in. the majesty of great distances between our shuttle van and the magnanimous mountains was magnificent. there was a precocious young girl sitting next to me, for the ride to the ship. so entranced was she by our surroundings that her tongue hung out (though mostly so it could more liberally wag). just kidding, Alex.
the ship looked like a pregnant yacht. big, and white, with a stylized eye on its prow that looked a lot like the one on my ankle. we got aboard, and started drinking pina coladas, and i didn't stop for a week.
for the next 7 days, the boat took me and 50 other passengers, and 15 crew, to various unpeopled ports of call. in between, we saw whales and dolphins. a pod of the bigger whales swam right under our vessle, not 6 yards from my face. i think that some of my fellow fringe-dwellers, the ones who focus their imaginations and spirits on extraterrestrial intelligence, are missing the moon for the finger that points to it. we've already got non-human, earthbound sentient beings (the whales) to learn from.
i read Steinbeck's "Log from the Sea of Cortez", which i recommend to everybody who is reading this and hasn't read that. he caught onto the soul of Taoism, i think, when he and Ricketts came up with the idea of "non-teleological thinking". he also touched on the issue of egalitarian extropians and primitives, though not in that terminology.
Steinbeck said the big horn sheep of Baja are rumored to never drink water. it rains like not at all, and i didn't see a single oasis. there were these cactied landscapes, doing just fine in the bone dry soil. we saw chuckwallas, which are feral iguanas that the former hunter-gathering human inhabitants spread around the bay's islands for meat, and lots of psychoactive plants. i decided not to go crazy with those, but did some investigation.
there was sometin' called the pitaya dulce, whose ethnobotanical history caught my attention. for two months a year, it used to bestow copious tasty fruit to the old tribal humans. there was so much of the dense, watermellon tasting fruit that for its season, people stopped having to worry so much about food and could liesurely travel the peninsula, mixing it up with other tribes and generally getting their mojo on. for these two months, they would save all their shit and dry it out in the sun. when the fruit was gone and they'd gotten off their sugar high, they'd pick through the shit and take the pitaya seeds to grind for gruel.
me and a trio of boys from, would you believe it, Western North Carolina, hung out a fair bunch. we chilled out to funky jazz, and watched a bit o TV on their iPod. this was kind of nostalgic fo me, cuz most of the TV watching i ever did was socially, with whole families of friends. sigh. the stars were hella bright, and i learned to identify the Scorpio constellation. even though the boyz and i would stay up most of the night, (it seemed), and play Spades while drinking and smoking, i managed to peel myself out of bed in time for breakfast.
i also got to practice my Spanish, and played futbol with the crew. i realized that i want to end up somewhere where i don't speak English to my neighbors and some of my friends. the constraints of language as a communication tool are loosened if you're multilingual, ya know?
getting back was complicated, (i had to go on standby, and hitchhike, quite unexpectedly). and i got culture shock. i didn't expect it, after only a week, but i guess mainstream american culture is just that shocking. it's good but strange to be home.
a few weeks before leaving, i somehow lurched a couple steps toward enlightenment. sweet. so getting to baja was extra REAL, and filled with interesting characters. when you feel like you're sliding up the pole to shangri-la la land, i guess you put out pheremones, because people around me seemed more kind and sociable. maybe was just in headspace that allowed for me to appreciate them, and therefore for them to approach me. anyway, with good company and high spirits, i made my way across the landscape by dirty dog and metal bird. in the airport, i pulled my usual starbucks scams and ran 5+ miles of laps around the terminal. it's a great way to kill boredom and an even better way to use such weird, government restricted space.
when i got to atlanta, i had a dark chocolate bon bon and touseled my mom's hair. we talked all the way to Los Angeles airport. she's an amazing gal, really a point of light on the bleak, utopia-less map of the NPR Nation. if you're interested in forest gardening and you happen to be on the West side of the nasty 'Nati, check out her new spread.
anywho, the next morning we flew down to Loretto, which is halfway down the Baja penninsula on the Eastern side. there were several layers of growing green things, none of the shapes were at all familiar to me. my eyes were as big as a kracken's, trying to soak it all in. the majesty of great distances between our shuttle van and the magnanimous mountains was magnificent. there was a precocious young girl sitting next to me, for the ride to the ship. so entranced was she by our surroundings that her tongue hung out (though mostly so it could more liberally wag). just kidding, Alex.
the ship looked like a pregnant yacht. big, and white, with a stylized eye on its prow that looked a lot like the one on my ankle. we got aboard, and started drinking pina coladas, and i didn't stop for a week.
for the next 7 days, the boat took me and 50 other passengers, and 15 crew, to various unpeopled ports of call. in between, we saw whales and dolphins. a pod of the bigger whales swam right under our vessle, not 6 yards from my face. i think that some of my fellow fringe-dwellers, the ones who focus their imaginations and spirits on extraterrestrial intelligence, are missing the moon for the finger that points to it. we've already got non-human, earthbound sentient beings (the whales) to learn from.
i read Steinbeck's "Log from the Sea of Cortez", which i recommend to everybody who is reading this and hasn't read that. he caught onto the soul of Taoism, i think, when he and Ricketts came up with the idea of "non-teleological thinking". he also touched on the issue of egalitarian extropians and primitives, though not in that terminology.
Steinbeck said the big horn sheep of Baja are rumored to never drink water. it rains like not at all, and i didn't see a single oasis. there were these cactied landscapes, doing just fine in the bone dry soil. we saw chuckwallas, which are feral iguanas that the former hunter-gathering human inhabitants spread around the bay's islands for meat, and lots of psychoactive plants. i decided not to go crazy with those, but did some investigation.
there was sometin' called the pitaya dulce, whose ethnobotanical history caught my attention. for two months a year, it used to bestow copious tasty fruit to the old tribal humans. there was so much of the dense, watermellon tasting fruit that for its season, people stopped having to worry so much about food and could liesurely travel the peninsula, mixing it up with other tribes and generally getting their mojo on. for these two months, they would save all their shit and dry it out in the sun. when the fruit was gone and they'd gotten off their sugar high, they'd pick through the shit and take the pitaya seeds to grind for gruel.
me and a trio of boys from, would you believe it, Western North Carolina, hung out a fair bunch. we chilled out to funky jazz, and watched a bit o TV on their iPod. this was kind of nostalgic fo me, cuz most of the TV watching i ever did was socially, with whole families of friends. sigh. the stars were hella bright, and i learned to identify the Scorpio constellation. even though the boyz and i would stay up most of the night, (it seemed), and play Spades while drinking and smoking, i managed to peel myself out of bed in time for breakfast.
i also got to practice my Spanish, and played futbol with the crew. i realized that i want to end up somewhere where i don't speak English to my neighbors and some of my friends. the constraints of language as a communication tool are loosened if you're multilingual, ya know?
getting back was complicated, (i had to go on standby, and hitchhike, quite unexpectedly). and i got culture shock. i didn't expect it, after only a week, but i guess mainstream american culture is just that shocking. it's good but strange to be home.
Sunday, May 13, 2007
tearin' it down
Werebrock found Crazy Steve. “you ready to go, man?” Werebrock questioned. “I called ‘em, and it’s cool that we’re coming over.” It was a good evening, ‘specially since it had come to be so before the clock struck 5. “Well, yeah. I got some trout,” he gestured to the pot he was carrying. “I can smoke ‘em and be ready in 15 minutes.” Werebrock considered the merits of eating a fish, just pulled up outta the stream. “I already ate a sandwich, so you can keep it all for yourself.” Of course, Crazy Steve would not hear it, and so the two plus another student at the Joe Hollis School of Mad Wizardry enjoyed their first course. Wild trout is tastier than just about everything when you’re hungry in the holler.
They rolled out on four wheels, riding in high style. Perhaps there’d be a time when such luxuries would be beyond the grasp of the two staunch comrades, but for the time being they lay back and reveled, in their sweet ride. Werebrock appreciated the sunroof because, as an ogre, he had to hunch over in many of the motorized transports he’d ridden in. “I’m interested in this hydrogen fusion thingie our engineer friend is building.” So was Steve, who would maybe resent his car less if it ran on water.
The view of the clouds, above the mountains and veiling the sunset over the cow pasture, was a teacher that kept up with the mercurial auto. The vaporous structures extended lovingly opaque tendrils of nothingness down to the Taoist-flavored cloud ponderer in the passenger seat, shielding his reptile brain from a familiar chatter whose origin, he speculated, emanated from a spectral form who lived and guided him, somewhat, from somewhere beneath his face.
They arrived as the Bears were finishing their meal. “So what’s up, y’all?!” Back and forth banter is not tedious when you’re with friends. The engineering Bear expounded upon his hydrogen idea. “Basically, you expose water to a certain frequency of sound, and one of the hydrogen atoms breaks apart. This releases energy, which you can use for powering anything. It can use salt water, which ends up desalinated after the “H” two “O” molecules re-form at the end of the process. So we can solve our energy wants, desalinate water for drinking or irrigating deserts. And it’s really…” His daughter cut in. “But Da-a-a-d,” she moaned, “didn’t the guy who invented this get killed?” “Yes. He died over a plate of (suspect?) lasagna, and then the Defense Department bought up the patent from his widow.” He did some theater with shaking his head and blinking his eyes. “I just wanna get my car running on water, ‘sall.” His son had been foisting on Werebrock an illustrated encyclopedia of Vertebrates, enthusiastically pointing out the bats. “Theoretically,” Werebrock raised, “could you have a flying machine that skims the surface of the ocean to refuel? It would be like a bat that skims the lake to drink.” “Yes, that sounds plausible.”
The intrepid duo were much impressed by the simplicity of the machine’s design, when Engineer Bear show and telled. It was getting late, and being intoxicated, they decided to stay over. There was good bullshitting for hours into the night.
The next day was spent communally, the whole Bear family and their friends deconstructing a barn. It was strenuous. Electric screwdrivers whizzed the lumber back into component pieces, which were cleaned and sorted for reuse. Huge chunks of concrete were heaved, fiberglass insulation removal was endured; upon taking down the last ceiling panel, a large blacksnake fell on and past Werebrock, who was somewhat embarrassed to have called out to Jesus in a room full of pagans. Upon being re-pharmakoed, he decided it had been an omen, the Universe’s way of indicating that he was either a.) thinking too much, or b.) missing the point. He knew both were happening, and decided to ease off pushing his search for meaning up the hill.
Dirty jokes were smutted across the room, the uselessness of the president of the United States of Leviathan was speculated upon, and the denizens of the Bear Den autonomous zone struggled to get their minds around the vacant space their efforts were spreading across the lawn. The energy, the counterpower, the sweat and the sledgehammers. What a fine day. Cash did not change hands- company was shared, food was lovingly prepared, and Werebrock arranged to come back the next weekend and work some more, this time as a part-time employee. The bonds of friendship would subsidize the wages, to everyone's glee. Werebrock hearts the Bears!
They rolled out on four wheels, riding in high style. Perhaps there’d be a time when such luxuries would be beyond the grasp of the two staunch comrades, but for the time being they lay back and reveled, in their sweet ride. Werebrock appreciated the sunroof because, as an ogre, he had to hunch over in many of the motorized transports he’d ridden in. “I’m interested in this hydrogen fusion thingie our engineer friend is building.” So was Steve, who would maybe resent his car less if it ran on water.
The view of the clouds, above the mountains and veiling the sunset over the cow pasture, was a teacher that kept up with the mercurial auto. The vaporous structures extended lovingly opaque tendrils of nothingness down to the Taoist-flavored cloud ponderer in the passenger seat, shielding his reptile brain from a familiar chatter whose origin, he speculated, emanated from a spectral form who lived and guided him, somewhat, from somewhere beneath his face.
They arrived as the Bears were finishing their meal. “So what’s up, y’all?!” Back and forth banter is not tedious when you’re with friends. The engineering Bear expounded upon his hydrogen idea. “Basically, you expose water to a certain frequency of sound, and one of the hydrogen atoms breaks apart. This releases energy, which you can use for powering anything. It can use salt water, which ends up desalinated after the “H” two “O” molecules re-form at the end of the process. So we can solve our energy wants, desalinate water for drinking or irrigating deserts. And it’s really…” His daughter cut in. “But Da-a-a-d,” she moaned, “didn’t the guy who invented this get killed?” “Yes. He died over a plate of (suspect?) lasagna, and then the Defense Department bought up the patent from his widow.” He did some theater with shaking his head and blinking his eyes. “I just wanna get my car running on water, ‘sall.” His son had been foisting on Werebrock an illustrated encyclopedia of Vertebrates, enthusiastically pointing out the bats. “Theoretically,” Werebrock raised, “could you have a flying machine that skims the surface of the ocean to refuel? It would be like a bat that skims the lake to drink.” “Yes, that sounds plausible.”
The intrepid duo were much impressed by the simplicity of the machine’s design, when Engineer Bear show and telled. It was getting late, and being intoxicated, they decided to stay over. There was good bullshitting for hours into the night.
The next day was spent communally, the whole Bear family and their friends deconstructing a barn. It was strenuous. Electric screwdrivers whizzed the lumber back into component pieces, which were cleaned and sorted for reuse. Huge chunks of concrete were heaved, fiberglass insulation removal was endured; upon taking down the last ceiling panel, a large blacksnake fell on and past Werebrock, who was somewhat embarrassed to have called out to Jesus in a room full of pagans. Upon being re-pharmakoed, he decided it had been an omen, the Universe’s way of indicating that he was either a.) thinking too much, or b.) missing the point. He knew both were happening, and decided to ease off pushing his search for meaning up the hill.
Dirty jokes were smutted across the room, the uselessness of the president of the United States of Leviathan was speculated upon, and the denizens of the Bear Den autonomous zone struggled to get their minds around the vacant space their efforts were spreading across the lawn. The energy, the counterpower, the sweat and the sledgehammers. What a fine day. Cash did not change hands- company was shared, food was lovingly prepared, and Werebrock arranged to come back the next weekend and work some more, this time as a part-time employee. The bonds of friendship would subsidize the wages, to everyone's glee. Werebrock hearts the Bears!
Saturday, May 05, 2007
I Left My Car Behind Today
When petrol prices rose above $2 to stay there, Rich left his car behind. Having quit his gruntjob earlier that year, he wasn't about to spend money when he didn't have to. He stuffed a backpack with a book, qahve, bread, hummus, fruit. And the all-important water bottle. Stepping out onto the porch, he paused to smile. Eastside life certainly had its charms. Rich's unjobbers haven, the Chaos House, enjoyed a large yard lush with beautiful and useful weeds, and giant shady trees. His little neighborhood even had its own family grocery store. Traffic on the side streets was slow enough that he could mosey down the street like the school kids getting off the bus. Backwards through the bab he went, striding into the city.
Avoiding the tons of zooming metal and invisible odorless clouds of carbon monoxide on 11th Street, Rich instead went up the alley that would be 11 1/2th Street, or 11.111111111th Street, or something. Eventually his kidneys had filtered enough water and nitrogen out of his blood that he had to pee. It was too bad there were no public restrooms around, but it was OK because he was in an alley, where good Stanizens rarely go. Although he had left the Chaos House, he took his Semi-Permanent Autonomous Zone with him pretty much everywhere. So he took a leak in the SPAZ there in the alley. Hearing about this later, Rich's brother thought it could be cool for Alley Rats to maintain open-communal humanure stations scattered around the alleys on the Eastside, piles of sawdust and dumpstered 5-gallon buckets to pee in. These could be maintained at least near Vagabond squats, so some people with more attachment to the location can monitor and maintain the humanure system. This would, of course, properly composted, provide tons of fertility for the Eastside gardens and jungly permaculture weedlots and rooftops that are slowly overgrowing the unused stretches of pavement. The Maya weren't the last ones to abandon their pyramids for wildness.
SuperHiWay 5.6 arcs futuristically over the city, demarcating the Eastside piles of rubble from the sprawling star-shaped bubble city to the west (StanCity). SuperHiWay 5.6 funnels cars from the Fringes to Olde Main Street and its Olde Stan Capitol Experience. It also funnels lots of food and other products from the few remaining productive outlying regions, into the city. Rich has turned west from the 11th Street alley, and he gallivants along in the shadow of the tons of concrete and steel, the whizzing cars and consumers kept in their place by the sail-like silvery wisps of Screen, flashing giant ads to the cars, constantly changing ads selected according to the consumer profiles coming up the road, as read and processed by The Infinite Domain. Rich crosses beneath the SuperHiWay in a drainage ditch. He keeps an eye out for scraps of cloth, chalked or painted graffiti tags, and other subtle signs of the Vagabond underground, which might warn of new Peace Officer activity, or flooding in the drainage ditches, or might lead congregants to a gathering such as the weekly Burgoo Not Bombs.
A funny thing about diy technology is that it's much less susceptible to the surveillance measures put upon us, through our products, by the capitalist state. Rich is not carrying much that would be tagged with those wireless data grains, and he's not going near anything else so tagged, so he doesn't generate a signal in The Infinite Domain. He is effectively invisible to the machine. A random factor.
Later he arrives at the MaD House, a sprawling and layered old house on a busy corner. It attracts no attention from those in the pods in the street who simply wait, staring at the traffic lights, listening to UniCorp spewage, thinking nothing, drinking CleerTM, and maybe chatting with a disembodied voice. Living in the MaD House are various artists, poets, geeks, and freex. They subsist on marginal work, foraging, gardening, and dumpstering, enjoying the tribal wealth of everyone sharing and looking out for each other.
Some believe the MaD House people would be less emotionally stable if it weren't for the water. The city water supply, virtually a closed system, has concentrated the traces of everyone's medications found in everyone's pee, and now, low continual doses of every major medication are found in the drinking water. Everyone is finally perfectly medicated. The MaD people are still too passionate and irritable to be as stable as, say, a good Qb cog, but they do manage to hang together and ferment chaos. The paint fumes probably add to the zaniness. And, thanks to various Vagabonds on the Barrens, and the dervishes who carry the sacraments with them on their pilgrimages, the MaD House has a fairly reliable supply of highly reliable qahve.
Avoiding the tons of zooming metal and invisible odorless clouds of carbon monoxide on 11th Street, Rich instead went up the alley that would be 11 1/2th Street, or 11.111111111th Street, or something. Eventually his kidneys had filtered enough water and nitrogen out of his blood that he had to pee. It was too bad there were no public restrooms around, but it was OK because he was in an alley, where good Stanizens rarely go. Although he had left the Chaos House, he took his Semi-Permanent Autonomous Zone with him pretty much everywhere. So he took a leak in the SPAZ there in the alley. Hearing about this later, Rich's brother thought it could be cool for Alley Rats to maintain open-communal humanure stations scattered around the alleys on the Eastside, piles of sawdust and dumpstered 5-gallon buckets to pee in. These could be maintained at least near Vagabond squats, so some people with more attachment to the location can monitor and maintain the humanure system. This would, of course, properly composted, provide tons of fertility for the Eastside gardens and jungly permaculture weedlots and rooftops that are slowly overgrowing the unused stretches of pavement. The Maya weren't the last ones to abandon their pyramids for wildness.
SuperHiWay 5.6 arcs futuristically over the city, demarcating the Eastside piles of rubble from the sprawling star-shaped bubble city to the west (StanCity). SuperHiWay 5.6 funnels cars from the Fringes to Olde Main Street and its Olde Stan Capitol Experience. It also funnels lots of food and other products from the few remaining productive outlying regions, into the city. Rich has turned west from the 11th Street alley, and he gallivants along in the shadow of the tons of concrete and steel, the whizzing cars and consumers kept in their place by the sail-like silvery wisps of Screen, flashing giant ads to the cars, constantly changing ads selected according to the consumer profiles coming up the road, as read and processed by The Infinite Domain. Rich crosses beneath the SuperHiWay in a drainage ditch. He keeps an eye out for scraps of cloth, chalked or painted graffiti tags, and other subtle signs of the Vagabond underground, which might warn of new Peace Officer activity, or flooding in the drainage ditches, or might lead congregants to a gathering such as the weekly Burgoo Not Bombs.
A funny thing about diy technology is that it's much less susceptible to the surveillance measures put upon us, through our products, by the capitalist state. Rich is not carrying much that would be tagged with those wireless data grains, and he's not going near anything else so tagged, so he doesn't generate a signal in The Infinite Domain. He is effectively invisible to the machine. A random factor.
Later he arrives at the MaD House, a sprawling and layered old house on a busy corner. It attracts no attention from those in the pods in the street who simply wait, staring at the traffic lights, listening to UniCorp spewage, thinking nothing, drinking CleerTM, and maybe chatting with a disembodied voice. Living in the MaD House are various artists, poets, geeks, and freex. They subsist on marginal work, foraging, gardening, and dumpstering, enjoying the tribal wealth of everyone sharing and looking out for each other.
Some believe the MaD House people would be less emotionally stable if it weren't for the water. The city water supply, virtually a closed system, has concentrated the traces of everyone's medications found in everyone's pee, and now, low continual doses of every major medication are found in the drinking water. Everyone is finally perfectly medicated. The MaD people are still too passionate and irritable to be as stable as, say, a good Qb cog, but they do manage to hang together and ferment chaos. The paint fumes probably add to the zaniness. And, thanks to various Vagabonds on the Barrens, and the dervishes who carry the sacraments with them on their pilgrimages, the MaD House has a fairly reliable supply of highly reliable qahve.
Thursday, May 03, 2007
What the Hell Happened
Dervishy Daoud wonders what the hell happened. He sits and his back hurts. He remembers sort of how it happened. The Ludd Party started promoting "Bringing the Commons Together, Thru Technology." The Liberal Party joined with the Green Libertarian Party, and the Liberation Theology party joined with the Libertarian Green Party, and then they all joined each other into the United Party, and then any marginalized minority that wanted input into the system had to deal its way into the big machine. Somehow they figured out how to turn landfills back into something like crude oil, from which they could then extract "recycled energy" and fertilizers and pesticides. And the Bubble ballooned out of nowhere at the dawn of The MillenniumTM when The Great MallTM was re‑grand‑opened and everyone's screens were already always on and always connected, even when they were turned off. It wasn't long for the swarming chaos of information to surprisingly cohere into a higher order. But they still wouldn't allow prayer in the primordial ultra‑traditional soma‑sacrament manner. Not only not pray in schools, but especially not in schools. Kids who self‑initiated upon adolescence were quickly sniffed out by the tendrils and gently escorted to Kamp Kommunity. Many were rapidly reformed through the powerful entertaining mind‑sensitive The Infinite Domain. TID interfaces through screens and data grains and the Bubble which is a big screen of screens of screens. But some of those kids are wyrd and have the esoteric power to imagine themselves out of the Matrix. Then you find yourselves out on the Barrens. Be it the urbarrens of abandoned parking lots outside StanCity, or the Barrens way out there where a rich continent was plowed to desert and filled with trash. Patches of urbarrens litter the whole planet, oases of crumbling pavement among the sandy bedrock badlands deserts of Stanistan, all the way out to the Fringes. When you find yourself out on the Barrens you either run for your life back to the Bubble, or you begin to see reality and notice the cracks in the pavement and edible weeds and strange people half‑hidden smiling and prepared to welcome you if you greet them with peace.
Meanwhile, everyone inside is working along, powering the machine, believing what they're doing is somehow potentially hypothetically sustainable and just and they don't quite think about beauty very much. The screens everywhere always are projecting to each person a slightly appealing reality interlaced through and through with logos, jingles, and other advertising meant to perpetually attract consumers to the same old identical or nearly identical products, which are now all produced, distributed, and sold by subsidiaries of UniCorp, the corporation that finally bought all the other corporations, and then the government outsourced all its functions, so the Chamber of Commerce of StanCity really is the most powerful group of men in the world. But where does their power come from if not the Bubble‑screen‑fnords that surround them at all times, feeding them the information they want to know, or that TID thinks it should feed them based on its perception of what they think they want to know ....
And for many the only way out or way to cope is with qahve. The soma substitutes. Ranging from UniCorp.'s CLEERtm in its many guises, to independently produced and reciprocally gifted coffee, chai, chocolate, poppy milk, delicious homebrewed alcohol in many forms, Maricle (as ganja, charas, bhang & more), shrooms, isfand and so forth. A few people have the innate spiritual fortitude to focus themselves into transcendence and liberation through hole(s) in the Screen, but many find that soma‑sacraments not only help them along but may also instigate the tiny initial changes in condition that alter one's fate. Wyrd (the ability to alter fate). The forbidden wine‑qahve‑soma is what brings people together and brings the divine to people. Real religion. Real rebirth, revival, resurrection, insurrection, liberation. Your debts are forgotten. Shirk your duties to the unholy incompetent uninspired bungling burdensome Beast, and find yourself and your god all at once in your community of your friends, in your garden, you find yourself in the Garden. At least for a while, once in a while.
Dervishy Daoud feels he has taken one step in the right direction, and then one step off course, and he's disoriented and his face is still stuck to the screen a lot. He knows it won't make him enlightened. But the information .... so seductive .....
Meanwhile, everyone inside is working along, powering the machine, believing what they're doing is somehow potentially hypothetically sustainable and just and they don't quite think about beauty very much. The screens everywhere always are projecting to each person a slightly appealing reality interlaced through and through with logos, jingles, and other advertising meant to perpetually attract consumers to the same old identical or nearly identical products, which are now all produced, distributed, and sold by subsidiaries of UniCorp, the corporation that finally bought all the other corporations, and then the government outsourced all its functions, so the Chamber of Commerce of StanCity really is the most powerful group of men in the world. But where does their power come from if not the Bubble‑screen‑fnords that surround them at all times, feeding them the information they want to know, or that TID thinks it should feed them based on its perception of what they think they want to know ....
And for many the only way out or way to cope is with qahve. The soma substitutes. Ranging from UniCorp.'s CLEERtm in its many guises, to independently produced and reciprocally gifted coffee, chai, chocolate, poppy milk, delicious homebrewed alcohol in many forms, Maricle (as ganja, charas, bhang & more), shrooms, isfand and so forth. A few people have the innate spiritual fortitude to focus themselves into transcendence and liberation through hole(s) in the Screen, but many find that soma‑sacraments not only help them along but may also instigate the tiny initial changes in condition that alter one's fate. Wyrd (the ability to alter fate). The forbidden wine‑qahve‑soma is what brings people together and brings the divine to people. Real religion. Real rebirth, revival, resurrection, insurrection, liberation. Your debts are forgotten. Shirk your duties to the unholy incompetent uninspired bungling burdensome Beast, and find yourself and your god all at once in your community of your friends, in your garden, you find yourself in the Garden. At least for a while, once in a while.
Dervishy Daoud feels he has taken one step in the right direction, and then one step off course, and he's disoriented and his face is still stuck to the screen a lot. He knows it won't make him enlightened. But the information .... so seductive .....
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