LOST WORLDS OF OUR BEGINNINGS

     underwater terraces yonaguni island western japan



Surfing YouTube earlier, I came upon some ufo videos and some videos about ancient civilization, massive, perfectly cut rocks fitting together so even a sliver of paper can't pass between them. I found some photos of evidence on Mars of habitation, grids of more or less straight lines, the face on Mars, evidence of a beach, 5-sided pyramids. Since satellites now have images of every inch of earth from above, a pyramid and city have been discovered in Bulgaria. Pyramids in China. Layouts of cities under the ocean, where cities had been. Along the east coast of southern Mexico I understand there are remains of cities just below the water's surface that can be visited by divers. South America is loaded with archaeology of the very earliest civilization that continued until the Spanish destroyed their civilization and took their gold. The Spanish civilization came through Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greece, Rome and Europe. Evidently the civilization of South America began where Peru is now, spreading, evolving and devolving until discovered by the civilization begun in Africa, when it was destroyed upon discovery. As in all conflicts, the rule of thumb applies that the side with the most advanced technology wins. Remains of their civilization are archived in our civilization's museums.


I've an idea when China opens enough that their pyramids can be excavated and studied, if they aren't already, and surely they are, the results may show that another civilization began there that became Asian civilization. Other pyramids have been discovered all over the earth. Mexico is loaded with them, the Yucatan peninsula, especially, where the Mayans were. Evidences have been found all over the earth of a round of civilization that preceded this one. All of it went away, is buried under the ground. Places have a way of coming and going. Didn't Jesus say that Galilee would vanish from the earth such that traces would never be found. Archaeologists, to my understanding, have not yet been able to find where Galilee once was. That's just a couple thousand years. Land masses rise and fall during earthquakes. The ones that fall would be underwater. Over the last century, archaeological discoveries have revealed that the earth has had at least two completely separate in time rounds of civilization, possibly more. Cosmic time, the ages of stone in relation to our short-lived time of walking/thinking self-centered meat, is so long that from our point of view it's almost eternal. It's as foundational as solid rock. That rock was once liquid, and before that it was gas, before that spirit, and it started as a whim.


Zacharias Sitchin has written very convincingly in The Twelfth Planet that we were "seeded" here on earth at a place, if I remember correctly, on the west coast of South Africa, by "extra-terrestrials," released to evolve through the whole process from tribalism to nationalism and beyond. Graham Hancock has a fascinating book, Fingerprints of The Gods: The Evidence of Earth's Lost Civilization, where he finds the origins of our civilizations in the most ancient archaeology. He has another fascinating book on Mars, The Mars Mystery. He makes a convincing case for what happened to life on Mars, civilization, water. Evidently, the planet, which is half the size of earth, was T-boned, a direct hit by an asteroid twice the size of Texas, a cannonball, that penetrated the surface and is lodged inside the planet. The picture most often seen of Mars, the side with the big bulge and the split across it, is the opposite end from where the asteroid hit. When it penetrated the planet, it was pushing its way out the other side when it stopped inside. The planet died from a gunshot wound to the heart. It's a risk out in the universe, in a galaxy, in a solar system. Debris. Our atmosphere burns up most of the debris we come into contact with, but sometimes a chunk comes through that is too big to burn up. Meteorites. They come in all sizes from grain of sand on up to a boulder that could come through the roof, the ceiling, the floor, the cement basement floor and stick in the ground in a nano-second, the resistance the same as none.


So much has come up in the last century, thanks largely to the scientific method, in the way of archaeology, anthropology, astronomy, geology, it will take at least a thousand years for the people of civilization that follow this time of discovery to assimilate it. These studies have just begun. One thing I see coming about after a thousand years of scientific examination is nobody ever saying, "I don't believe in that." Like with evolution or gravity or any other natural law, certain humans believe it matters whether they believe something or not. It doesn't matter at all what I believe to be the case. What is the case remains the case, whatever I believe of it. Somebody tells me they don't "believe in" evolution. I don't care. That changes nothing. I can say I don't believe in bananas. That doesn't stop bananas from growing.  


*

SPARTA IN FURS

agamemnon

I picked up a paper at Betty's Dollar Mart to see what adult white male has been arrested for sex play with a pre-school little girl this week. I personally consider this one of the great crimes against humanity. Humanity is one human being the same as it is all human beings. Adults playing with pre-pubescent children "in the family way" bypasses conscience. I started to say is without conscience. But I know these men and know them to have conscience. It's denying conscience its purpose. It amounts to turning one's gaze away when passing a picture of Jesus on the wall, ashamed in the light. It does that to the grownup involved, and what it does to the child for the entire length of that person's life is particular to each one, but what's the same is a head preoccupied with shame and guilt. Swiss psychologist, Alice Miller, wrote a book on child abuse, FOR YOUR OWN GOOD. I received from her writing some of the most profound knowledge of my life. At the time I was reading it, a pre-school daughter of friends, and herself a dear friend to me, was played with by an adult. I recognized it in her the moment I saw her, the day she couldn't run to the truck when I parked in the driveway and jump on me like she always did. She stood on the deck beside the door with her fingers in her mouth, trembling. Alice Miller gave the solution to restoring the child's mental health, I shared it with her parents, they followed Miller's recommendations and little girl came through the ordeal whole. I believe it was God's grace that had me reading this book in the time of her need.


I know both of these guys charged in the last few weeks. I prefer to believe there is nothing to either charge, the trial finding them falsely charged. If there is anything to it, they are personally responsible for wrecking the lives of one person apiece, or more that could be unknown. I don't like the idea of seeing two men I know carted off to prison for a long time. I don't like the idea of two men I know playing with little kids, either. It makes me want to give one in particular a meaningful cussing in his face for being stupid; even worse, acting on it. I don't like to call somebody stupid, but Forrest Gump's mother rings in my head, Stupid is as stupid does. I say all this presuming where there is smoke there is fire. I don't want to believe either charge and I do want to wait for the trial to determine guilt. I would not be allowed on either jury, because I'd be as much interested in the well-being of the two men as I would the two (or more) kids. All will suffer, and I want nobody to suffer. This is what the law's about: what's done is done.


My belly-laugh for the day was seeing at the bottom of the front page this "presentation on possible street changes" on Hwy 21 running through Sparta. Everyone forgets, or never thought of it to start with, that there is not one sign on Hwy 21 in Sparta that says Main St. It was the Michigan-to-Florida Hwy 26 before interstates. It's a highway with three redlight intersections as it passes through Sparta. Everyone with a business on Hwy 21 knows the cars passing through are not stopping. They're not shopping. They're on the road from one place to another, looking neither left nor right, going to work, going home from work, driving from Independence to Winston-Salem and back. We haven't had "tourism" since the beginning of the Bush administration. I was laughing at widening the sidewalks and narrowing the road, taking out the left turn lanes and replacing them with trees that nobody wants. The Methodist church cut down the most beautiful trees in Sparta for an electronic gizmo and a better view of the parking lot. SRC cut down all the trees on the courthouse lawn. The two maples beside Farmer's Hardware are about it for what's left of Sparta trees. Thanks, Marsha. Planting new trees in the street? I don't think so. I've an idea the principal planner left out the context of Hwy 21 being a canyon through which passes the air flow of Twin Oaks Gap. It's not always a gentle breeze through there. It's rough on non-native trees; they would never consider planting native trees.


Trees down the middle of Hwy 21 in Sparta, shutting down possibilities to make a left turn off Hwy 21 for the trees, narrowing the road and widening the sidewalks. Has anyone noticed that what could pass for pedestrian traffic compared to the automotive traffic is like about 1 to 1000? Or 1 to 10,000? Has anyone noticed we have sidewalks that are not being used nearly all the time? Has anyone noticed the traffic on Hwy 21 is continuous? Has anyone noticed that if they would remove those ugly plastic tubs full of dead plant matter and cigarette filters eleven months of the year, the sidewalks would instantly be three feet wider. Voila! And Sparta would be instantly beautified, for free. No grants, no taxes. Easy. This, however, is not the point. The point is SRC wants to shut down "Main Street" to vehicular traffic and put up a pretty plywood reproduction of Blowing Rock that will attract wealth only, like Western town facades put up for 50s tv shows and movies, Boot Hill. Characteristic of SRC is the ongoing attempt to make Sparta into something it is not. They don't know it yet, though it seems like they'd be getting it by now, but Sparta will bend to their will about like any mountain man in a pickup will bend for them. They will have to break Sparta. Meaning, they will have to kill it. Sparta is a mountain town, not a suburb of Charlotte.


This is what I love about Sparta, that Sparta is itself. It is what or who it is, depending on how you look at it. I look at it "who," a living entity. And the only truth I have found that applies to Sparta any and every way you look at it, Sparta is different. Not better, not worse. Different. Sparta is itself, like every (with exceptions) man and woman of these mountains is his and her own self. It's only since the white tsunami of suburban middle-class summer-home exurbanites (including myself) that need has arisen to make Sparta into something it is not. I see Sparta allowing a cosmetic makeover about like I see putting Margaret Evans Crouse in a Lady Gaga outfit for church. It aint gonna happen. For one thing, if "Main Street" gets shut down to traffic flow, what about the line of SUVs with moms taking their kids to school in the morning, a line that stretches from the light at Betty's Dollar Mart to the light at Hardee's and beyond? No left turns. A stop sign at every intersection to stop traffic flow. Appears to me it's something about like dumping a dumptruck load of gravel into a stream to increase water flow. Of course, grants would pay for it. Until the grant money ran out and the facade is half done. Sparta is not a fake facade-friendly town. Maybe I don't get it, and maybe I don't know Sparta, but this is how I see it anyway.


They will have to kill the spirit of the town, which ultimately, and not very far away, will be done. And they won't care. I've seen over and over for many years their determination to put makeup on Sparta. What if Sparta's spirit might be masculine and doesn't like wearing makeup? Sparta's name, itself, is ultra-masculine. The Spartan warrior is about as fiercely masculine as the Viking in legends of our collective history. Why go against what Sparta is and frill it up like a trailer park pajama party? Ever thought of calming down, getting acquainted with Sparta as Sparta is? Get to know Sparta, become friends with Sparta, not like you would with a dog, but with respect. Maybe Sparta prefers blue to pink. Maybe Sparta prefers a haircut to a perm. Kermit the barber is right there on the corner. Every bit of this new plan for Sparta is shutting down its flow. The focal point of Sparta, the cross-hairs, has moved from where Hwy 21 crosses Hwy 18 down to where Hwy 21 crosses the entrance to the shopping center parking lot at Grandview, Fifth/Third and Hardees. The part of town by the old courthouse shut down long ago for want of parking. This is the age of easy access parking. Sparta is a dynamic unto itself, even with its own personality. A long book could be filled with all the grants that have been written for money to put false eyelashes and lipstick on what might be the equivalent of a statue of a general like Agamemnon, warrior of warriors, dysfunctional patriarch. And the rain keeps washing the mess off.


*

THE NEWS IS DADA POETRY

          stanley whitney, first fire, 2009

In the bed awake for a few hours, comfortable enough to be able to lie there and and not get tired of what was running through my head. It came to me to write down phrases from the 5 minutes of news on the hour, no regard for subject, just words or phrases as I hear them. Again, no attention given to subject or meaning. Make a kind of Dada poem of it, the only progression being the order of the subjects. The first one came from BBC, the other from NPR. Same day, just 2 hours apart. Content radically different. It's a stretch of the imagination to make them seem like the same day. It's not a conscious attempt to make a kind of sense that tells a new story. It's a lot of news language with subjects removed, or sprinkled in by chance.

Writing down these phrases as I heard them, I was wanting to be as free of mental associations as possible, allowing words to be written as my ear hears them, not my mind. Keeping mind out of it is the purpose. It's not that it makes a poem or a work of art. It amounts to what we're left with after listening to 5 minutes of rapid-fire news clips, a head full of garbled news-speak. It's fun. Something to do when there's nothing to do. I do like, however, the way these gatherings of phrases do well representing the residue left in our heads. If I had to take a test at the end of the 5 minutes, I doubt I'd do well at all.

Iran...representatives...talks with negotiations in Istanbul

...last chance for diplomacy to work...willing to engage seriously

...new initiative to talks...two districts reported to come under fire

...one in one of the suburbs of Damascus

...that Kofi Annan wants to get in

...to remove one very major source of friction

...a day after failure to put a satellite into space

...Mr Ocampo...number of agents of the US Secret Service

...misconduct might...prostitutes...but Austria is objecting

...if Slovenia is successful in its bid

...BBC NEWS, 14 April, 2012.


|::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::|

Secret Service...Mitt Romney...Obama

...broad themes of freedom

...stand up to the rights of hunters

...guns in the past...differences with NRA

...South Korean warships searching Yellow Sea

...two UN sanctions resolutions...agree on an appropriate response

...strengthened in 2009...Syria...a draft resolution

...some shelling by government troops today

...Chinese fishing boats in the South China Sea

...diplomatic talks between...Philippines authorities

...discovered at least eight...and confiscate the catch

...the shoal is well within its territory...centuries old map

...events are being held around the world today...an iceberg

...more than 1500 crew and passengers died...edutopia.org

...NPR NEWS, 14 April 2012.


*

DRESSED LIKE ONE, WALKS LIKE ONE

     the eye in the sky

I can't help but think about the Florida man, Zimmerman, what must be going through his head. Not so much the content of his thought, but the never-ending obsession with one moment in his life he would happily erase, undo, be done with, hit reset. Finally charged with second-degree, a charge that has a pretty good chance to stick considering no visual witnesses, no "beyond a shadow of a doubt" pre-meditation. The whole thing is a shame all the way around. I've an idea nobody knows this better than Zimmerman since the moment he pulled the trigger. I see it as one of those moments we regret that can never be taken back, apologized for, forgiven; just have to carry it around the neck like a dead chicken, the dead chicken of fear and uncertainty. Oh God, what have I done? Some people then shoot themselves, unable to live with what they've done. Some try to cover it up and get out of it. Trayvon couldn't be covered up, buried with lime, nothing. There it was, before he could think about it, Zimmerman looking at a corpse and it was his doing, no undoing.

I see him with that law in his mind, wanting to kill somebody and justify it with a law claiming self-defense. Please don't think I'm attempting to read his mind, rather am looking at possibilities my mind comes up with as if it were me or various men I know. It's like when you pay monthly for insurance for years and years, there comes a time you start wanting a return on that investment. Some people become hypochondriacs, wanting something back for all that money they're using to build skyscrapers with and putting swimming pools in the back yards of executives. Won't it be interesting when all the swimming pools in the country are full of rainwater and have become living eco systems, watering holes for the dog packs and herds of roaming cattle in the time of Mad Max and the Road Warriors. We've come into such a hair-raising time for all of us, when the heat is turned up that high for everybody, the weakest links in the chain will break, and they do, over and over.


Gore Vidal came to mind, his book of essays about Tim McVeigh and the Oklahoma City bombing. Couldn't remember the title. Went to amazon to run through Vidal titles, couldn't find it. Don't know if it's just not there--after 10 pages of Vidal books I got a good education in the obvious fact that he writes every minute of every day. Looking for the title I couldn't remember, I came upon his essays on the American Empire, the United States of Amnesia. Ordered a copy. He says it so well, is direct, lives in the ruling class and has a heart for the peasantry. That's cool with me. There's nobody in the peasantry with Vidal's knowledge and quick-minded intelligence. Like during the Bush Junta, Michael Moore was the only public dissident we had; like him or don't, he's all we had. Gore Vidal has been our Michael Moore of the essay form and his close readings of American history with the blinders of American denial stripped away.


His book of essays on Tim McVeigh show different views from what corporate.gov allows us access to via media. He got it articulately from McVeigh that he was intending to start the revolution. His bombing act was revenge for the ordeal of the FBI killing a small village of white people outside Waco, Texas, a little too close to the Bush ranch, the white people crazies, of course. Ruby Ridge in Idaho or Montana where FBI killed a man's wife with a sniper shot through the kitchen screen door. At home. Vidal tells McVeigh's beliefs and reasons. Evidently, McVeigh misread the timing in the sequence of events. The revolution was not ready to be sparked by a lone dog act. He had help, but it was his baby. All I'm attempting to get at is he misread the times. He thought he was starting the revolution that he perceived to be more pervasive among white men than it turned out to be. No telling what heroic role he saw for himself. Does loser apply here? Seems to me it's the natural next word. Another weak link in the chain that's been popping all over the country in surprise places for a large number of years. It's a curious kind of Surrealist rage. In the time of the French Surrealists, one of them maintained that the ultimate Surrealist act is to stand in a crowd of people with a revolver and shoot anyone at random. The idea was never embraced by the other Surrealists. Whichever one it was who thought it up, he forgot that love was the only theme of Surrealism. 


I didn't mean to digress away from Zimmerman as much as to give him context. I doubt the trial will allow the defense to ask some of the men he worked with if he listened to Limbaugh and how he talked about Limbaugh subjects. There, again, all that's popping is a weak link. I'd venture half the white men in US of Amnesia listen to Limbaugh, and they're not all doing these things, only the weak links. Maybe turning down the heat will help, but that's not going to happen before the whole chain shatters to smithereens. Let's hope the armed white male population doesn't go collectively berzerk in the wake of some incendiary news event, as McVeigh believed he foresaw happening. After half a century and more of throwing off decency generally, throwing off regard for others but as targets to influence; narcissis self cut loose to fall into the mirror and drown in self-indulgence. It's going to be hell to pay when a huge part of the population is urban and everybody has guns and everything goes to shit one day as a result of something on the news. I prefer to think God loves us and wants to give us the easy way through this torrent of the time called the Tribulation. It's a hang on with all your might kind of time. Like centrifugal force that makes things fly off of something that's spinning.


One thing I'm having a hard time with in this Trayvon issue is that it is making Al Sharpton look good, even sound like he has something to say worth hearing. Even though Zimmerman wasn't pure "white," he did a white man thing, a profile killing. Looks like one, walks like one, dresses like one, talks on a cell phone like one, must be one. Pit bull watch dog. Down boy. Down boy. Zimmerman will surely do some time, now that he's been charged. This trial may or may not be an examination of the self-defense law unto its withdrawal, but I really wouldn't put my money on withdrawal. It's a republican law and republican laws never get repealed. Maybe the trial could set a precedent for taking the thrill out of the "stand yer ground" law. The publicity around Zimmerman and his necessary isolation, for self-defense, surely makes him want to be in jail, prison, whatever, for protection. At least in prison, he'll have the Latin gangs at his back, which he won't have outside prison. I am glad I don't have his head right now. Peace of mind he does not have and will not have for a very long time, no matter which way the trial goes.


*