Another all day rainy day. Sprinkles, nowhere near a gully-washer, a soak into the ground kind of rain, the kind that waters everything gently and raises the receding water table. It's a beautiful day with the leaves everywhere glossy reflecting silver sky. The wild violet stems extend straight up, leaf open to receive the damp air, dance when struck by a drop fallen from the tree above. Trees soften the force of the rain hitting the ground like they soften the wind and summer sunlight. I must live at least near, preferably among trees. I've never understood the determined American genocide on trees. I do, but also don't. Money is the answer and the passion for money disregards everything else. Mammon is not a benevolent god. I must go to netflix and bring up that Jeff Goldblum movie, Independence Day. I remember being disappointed by its Hollywood silliness, but also remember it had quite a lot to say. Big alien mining spaceships were killing off everything living and scooping up the earth's crust for the minerals. We had no defense. They were scooping up everything, already had half the USA and heading this way. Koch Brothers. Exxon. And a long list more. They have the money. They control the economy. The Appalachian chain, source of water for the eastern half of the continent, is being fracked from one end to the other. Our continent is being made into a desert under our feet, the politicians advancing the desolation kept popular among the people by propaganda. When Yellowstone blows, the western half of the US continent will be rendered desert. The eastern half will turn desert without water. No force is powerful enough to reverse this momentum. It will be known on maps as the Great American Desert. Too many people controlling so much money they have bought our government and turned it against us. We'll soon see the military, too. It's documented in the news every day, we're all watching helplessly, hopelessly, not wanting to admit it. Take another happy pill. Burn anothern. Thank you, Jesus.
I really did not want to go there. It's so ridiculous now, noticing the obvious is called liberal. Pay the least attention to the obvious and you're a liberal. Liberal, BR (Before Reagan), meant something. Left meant something. AR (After Reagan), liberal and left wing mean, admits to observing the obvious. Conservative and right wing mean, buys hate propaganda. Neither side of the artificial divide created by propaganda has anything to say for itself, but plenty to say about hate for the other side and everyone concerned. The economic depression is artificially created. Major corporations are expatriating themselves, like Walgreen moving its offices to Switzerland, to evade paying US taxes for soaking us. The one percent are talking about the ninety-nine percent coming to get them with pitchforks. What arrogance. Delights me that the Worthington coat of arms has pitchforks. Now that we have a party for teabaggers, why not a party for pitchforkers. Only problem is, I want simple, not complicated. How about no party at all. How about I just stop paying attention to the irrelevant. The American political system has rendered itself irrelevant. So why pay it any mind? Why reward ignorance with attention? I can't stop them, can't change them. They have all power over me. So the Supreme Court appoints Sarah Palin president. What can I do? Watch it on tv. I have no power over them, not even recourse. Best thing for me to do is hunker down at home and feed carrots to donkeys, amen. I must clear my head of the garbage. At the same time, the world around me is crumbling, falling apart, breaking down. How can I ignore it? It doesn't touch me here at my donkey meadow, yet. I go into town and see a few people I know and we speak for a few minutes, friendly.
I remind self the people I live among, the people I know, facebook friends, are my world. The rest of it is a mental construct in my head built with imaginary Legos of false information. Why occupy mind with false information that is propaganda anyway. What do I lose by withdrawing my attention from the false? Nothing. What do I gain from more attention to my immediate surroundings, to the people in my life, to cat and donkeys? Everything. My life. Among the people I know, on my mountain with cat, donkeys, facebook and blogger is where my attention belongs, not feeling hopeless and helpless witnessing democracy go away out in the open and its demise be a popular thing. The water on my mountain has been poisoned by Christmas tree cultivation. The native trout that survived Waterfalls Creek being fished out and DDT runoff several decades ago have been wiped out at last by fake notions about the Christ. What can I do but laugh and go on? I'm glad the water table went down from subdivision use; it dried up my spring so I can't drink poison water from it. The water I drink now comes from a well, a few layers of rock below, but poison nonetheless. They ask why so much cancer is going around, blaming everything except that the water of the eastern half of the USA is poisoned at its source, the springs in the mountains, all up and down the Appalachian chain. Poisoning the water has too much money invested in it to stop. I find it heartening that I don't have a great deal longer. In Homelandia, as it is becoming with our ethical foundations being swept away by the television and affection for money, together, adding up to a great black hole of emptiness in greater American culture. Why do I feel so compelled to pay attention to the false workings of the Death Star that are false at the core? Drama? Am I afraid I'll miss something? Am I seeing history unfold? It's engagingly interesting to look at it as history, though the line must be drawn and adhered to, to keep emotion out of it. How do I do that when I think I care? Educate myself to uncare? Yes. What is it to care about? It doesn't care about me.
by constantine manos
a greek portfolio
I was trained from childhood up to care about America the Democracy, not Homelandia. Now I have nothing where my-country-tis-of-thee is concerned. The feeling is something like it must have felt to be Hungarian when the Soviet Union incorporated Hungary. How could Hungarians care when missiles, tank cannons, an entire army and air force were aimed at them? No recourse. Hunker down, let it be. Follow Voltaire's counsel, mind my own garden. I'll shepherd my own flock, tend my donkeys, visit with friends, stay home and pursue my art interests, hold Caterpillar, go on doing what I do, but keep my mind out of the swirling cesspool of false values. Why not give more mind to thinking about the nature of God? It's a subject infinitely interesting, something like sailing; no matter how many years you've done it, how much or what kind of experience you've had, there is always something new to learn. I must lift the sights of my interior world, raise self above paying attention to ignorance, read in scriptures instead. Wouldn't that be a good exercise. Keep a Tao te Ching at hand to open it when I feel the impulse to turn on radio news. Read a verse from Lao Tzu and dwell in it for five minutes. I daresay it is a tempting exercise. It could be done at first when I feel like it, then maybe as an exercise for a day, kind of like stopping smoking a day at a time. Let go of paying attention to propaganda called news, clear my head of it a day at a time. Let it go like a helium balloon, watch it shrink to a pinpoint in blue sky and vanish. What do I care about current history anymore? I'd rather read Henry Miller's Rosy Crucifixion. I'd rather look at pictures in a book of photographs by Constantine Manos, A Greek Portfolio, photographs of rural island people who continue to live the traditional ways. People living so remotely they don't know what is going on in Athens but through rumor, changed to unrecognizable by the time it reaches them, and they really don't want to know. That's what I want to be, a donkey herder in the mountains. I must let go of the interest that holds my ear to the daily soap opera from the dark side and tune attention more to the light side, to poetry, good writing, scriptures, music, rain.
color photos by tj worthington
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