TO WALK THE RED ROAD

I feel more every day like I'm understanding the time Herman Melville was in before and while writing Moby Dick. He saw the nation dividing into factions that fell into hating each other unto wanting to kill the other by way of war. Corporate propagandists today have divided us into factions that hate each other. I can't tell if it is getting more intense daily or if I'm just recently aware of it. The division has always been there. It has never been a problem before, under the American belief that each man and woman has a right to their own way of seeing. We have been consciously divided by way of propaganda since 1980, a step at a time. Expressions of racism today have a hard edge of hate out in the open, arrogance. Before, the racism was the same, it was kept to oneself and one's circles. Much as I dislike seeing such vehement hatred out in the open and increasing, I also see that these dark shadows in a culture are the same as dark shadows in individuals--to be dealt with, we need to bring them to the surface to assess how to deal with them. Hatred surfaces, works itself up and needs to be burnt off by way of a fight or a war. War amounts to, essentially, burning off hate. The hate the right-wing media pumps into their audiences appears to me without conscience. Political ideologies don't do conscience. Neither do belief systems, nor corporate coups. I read Moby Dick made aware by Melville himself that hate was swirling in the political air of his time and he saw the American experiment, democracy, in peril. The white whale, white supremacy, broke and sank the ship of state, a democracy of people from all over the world, Captain Ahab dead and tied to the whale's side by harpoon ropes, Ahab a teabagger of the day without compromise.

I tried to read Moby Dick again a few years ago and could not get with it. I found John Huston's 1957 film of Moby Dick with Gregory Peck playing Ahab. It was a remarkable American film. Orson Wells delivered the sermon in the seaman's chapel. It was old-time New England Primitive Baptist style. I felt throughout Melville's story a civil war on its way. I feel the direction American politics has taken in this time is toward civil war. Again, the justification is immigrants of color. I have the division in myself. Last summer I came face to face, not by my choice, with Reaganista Supreme Parrot, the Congress person of my district in NC, who does not represent me in any way, Virginia Foxx. I felt like hell opened up and this presence emerged before my eyes. I backed away automatically. She put out her hand to shake and I could not touch her. I would have had to go straight home and soak my hand in kerosene to exterminate the cooties. I acted like I didn't recognize her, I, a demographic profile of a Fake tv viewer and Limbaugh listener. This angry old white man was angry with her. I could not speak. I froze inside. It was awkward and she handled it well, distracted herself with someone else. The next one paid no attention to the news, cared nothing about politics, had no idea who she was and did not care. She handed me a business card fancy with gold print, which I dropped in the trash soon after. Then took it back out of the trash, thinking it would go good with my collection of things it's really weird for me to have. 

Earlier in the day I was on the phone with my friend Lee, who lives in New Mexico. We talked some about how we both love this period of our lives the best of any other. We both like to stay at home, like being at home, prefer and enjoy the solitary life. In both our cases, we've become comfortable enough with ourselves we don't need to go looking for distraction. I stopped in at the grocery store for some coffee filters I forgot to buy two days before. At the register, from behind, a familiar voice, Hi. We spoke and hugged. She said, "What are you doing?" I would not let self say, Standing in line at the grocery store. Too redundant. I said, "Staying at home." She showed a long face like to say, Bummer. I said, "There is nothing sad about it." She said, "Really?" I said, "There's no place I'd rather be than home." She just accepted it, already knew I was weird. Glad our conversation was cut short by the momentum at the register, I said, Bye, and proceeded on my way. Somebody from the past, from a chapter that ended long ago, a few cycles back. Six years ago I trimmed down the people I see to the people I care about who care about me. In this time of the life, I know who those people are. I've done my time having superficial associations. I don't do it anymore, and don't care who it pisses off. I'm flowing with this cycle, happy with it, staying at home. I don't even like to cross the county line, except knowing I'll be back to sleep in my own bed. I have my purpose for coming to the mountains, which I am still living, and will go on living. This is the place I walk my spiritual path. It is the only reason I'm here. I don't mix socially, never have. Got the name arrogant on account of it, not my concern. 

I did a lot of spiritual reading for a lot of years and came to what all the masters had said, reading is not it. It is in experience. Paying attention to experience, living in the world as it is, allowing others to be themselves, allowing same with self. My spiritual reading in this time of the life has trimmed down to the Tao te Ching. It's all there in beautiful verse form. It's about honoring the god in others. It's about allowing God, not expecting of God. It's about allowing the flow, going with the flow, using the flow to find a tranquil life. And finding a tranquil life, allowing it. I never enter a lottery for fear of winning. I do not want money messing up my life. I'm able to meet expenses and have a little bit of fun too, quiet, at home fun like movies, reading, music, art projects, donkeys, and Caterpillar. The car runs good and all is well. I trouble my mind with news less and less, though continue to be traumatized when I give it any attention, disturbed every day at the rate American cops are killing black people, man, woman or child. It's shameful and shameless. I'm one of few people I know who think anything of it. And what can I do about it? Send a twitter? Leave a comment? I remind myself it's not my world out there on the news. It's not mine until the swat team breaks down my door and blows me away, saying, Whoops, wrong address. Shit happens. As long as my door is still on its hinges, I'll go on staying at home being a detached viewer.         

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LINES IN THE SKY OF THE MIND

1:30pm

This is one of the most unusual sights of my life. I've never seen six parallel lines cross the sky to horizon and not fade for a very long time. I have seen the crosshatching in the sky of chemtrails. I saw them from Pine Swamp looking like they were possibly over Wilkes county. The parallel lines above are in the same part of the sky I saw the crosshatching. They went NE to SW. Basic deduction points to chemtrails. This picture was taken about 1:30 looking south. The bright light is the sun. I don't know that I've ever seen contrails stretch that far. In times of commuter traffic, the contrails go all over the sky like a web spun by a spider on lsd. The sky looks completely out of order in the early mornings of winter, yet I look at them and see that it is a very distinct order. If I knew where the planes were going to and from, I'd see perfect order in the lines. It's one of those odd things about civilization in our time, looking completely out of order and being in perfect order. Getting a little closer, it's looking something like seeing the world around us a chaos of free will and self-advertising. It appears so much out of order it justifies replacing democracy with fascism. Yet, when I look at it from afar, from a metaphorical God's eye view, it's in perfect order, I think of the play of humanity all over the earth something like a seemingly infinite Persian carpet with the design slowly and constantly changing. When I see the parallel lines in the sky in this light, it's just another interesting thing to see. When I think about them as chemtrails and what they're doing to us, I want the whole of the Western world's economy to collapse, let the American-Israeli war on the Arab world begin in earnest and take it so far it depletes humanity to survivors, the start-over place. Reset. I waver between these two points of view.

 

1:30pm

 

One thing I've learned along the way is worst-case scenarios seldom work out. I've also learned that when I dread going someplace, like a gathering of white people standing up and talking fast as they can go, it turns out to be a fun occasion I'm glad I went to. It's actually turned out that the more I dread something, the more I enjoy it. I talk to myself about giving up dread, but it creeps in anyway. I don't pay attention to it much anymore, by now seeing the dread as a measure of good times ahead. In like manner, I can tell myself that dread of the direction corporate government has taken us by making the laws against us, will turn out all right. The only way I can see that happening is spontaneous revolt from all the 99%. I don't see that happening, but I also don't see the future. That's where I jump off this track of thinking. The unforeseen is around every corner. Who would have ever guessed a pope would come onto the scene in this time bypassing centuries of dogma and corruption to bring the red lettered words in the gospels up to date? Its no longer about sheep and goats, but Wall Street and massive poverty around the globe. He is even being threatened by rich American Catholics, remembering the Sicilian mafia has a powerful grip on the Vatican, and he takes the threats as nothing. He may die soon of "natural" causes, but he has already reformed the Church. Pope Francis has become for me a reminder not to assess the future with any notion of certainty. Obama came on as a big surprise, but the surprise soon fell away. It was a faux surprise. 

 

1:30pm

 

The part I didn't see coming about Obama, though in hindsight it's obvious, is how definitively he brought racism to the surface in white American men. And what the white men don't get is he's there for them, not the black men. Obama promised change, though the only change I see that I can attribute to him is he brought racism to the surface in America. It wasn't his agenda to start that fire. It took a life of its own because it needed to bubble to the surface. It was time. Up from the grave of denial. Poe's story, The Fall of the House of Usher, makes a good illustration of how denial functions. Herman Melville's white whale that sinks the ship of state, the ship of men from around the world, every race, fetching whale oil that was used for light in the time before unforeseen electricity, was obsessive white man racism in the time before the Civil War. I felt like Melville wrote the story as a warning that the hate in the air around racism had a strong potential to sink American democracy. The Civil War was next. We're in that time again where racism is threatening to sink the ship of state. Then it was a civil war; now it's corporate police state and prisons, glossed as security by corporate press. It looks like everything is going down the metaphorical drain, and it may be, for all I know. I see something entirely different when I pull away from it and remind myself it is part of the Divine Plan, whatever that is, something we're only able to see in hindsight, if then. I tend to see this time we're going through as the waist of the hourglass from one level of collective consciousness into a whole new understanding of ourselves in the cosmos, a few at a time until all make it through.      

 

11:30am

I saw this scene earlier in the day, again NE to SW, two hours before seeing the newer ones pictured above. The odd part about this view is that I was not able to find the trails the other side of the cloud it looks like they're coming out of. They stretched all the way across the sky, the cloud their apparent origin. This was the best the camera's frame could do. I'm struck by how what looks like vapor trails stay together like a stream of water. I've not seen any do this before. Could it be a light show put on by UFOs to attract our attention? Back in the summer, I was riding back from town on hwy 18 in Whitehead with Lucas and Judy Carpenter. We were facing west toward Ashe county, and five very distinct white lines looked like they were going straight up from beyond Jane Taylor mountain, though much further, then leveled at the same altitude and flew in a straight line above us across the sky, west to east, approximately. None of us could find a source for the white lines, much broader and thicker than contrails. We regretted not having camera or binoculars. We all have aging eyes, of course, but we can still see a silver plane in the sky. The sources of the trails were evidently too small for us to see. They puzzled us until we agreed we had nothing to go by for what it might be. White, very unnatural contrails flying in military formation. We wondered if they might be chemtrail drones. It was CIA or UFO; either one was out of our league. We agreed it is more interesting to sit on the deck with wine, look at the trees and sky, and talk about our everyday life experiences, than to fuss over something we'll never know what it was.   

 

 

 

 

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MANIPULATING ILLUSION

It feels good to have the temperature up in the 50s for a change from in the 20s. Some people are talking like this is the end of winter, but I'm not going to count on that. Though global warming is ending winters sooner than before, still this is early March. Our blizzards come in late March. However, as we change toward warmer weather, when the blizzards happen will change too. I would like to see early March be the end of winter, but don't think I'll count on it this year. Maybe in a few more years winter will end this early. Winter is already ending a month before it used to. I'm grateful winters don't get as cold as they used to, start later and end earlier. As the people who study weather conditions are saying, the heat is set to go way up real fast in the near future. Is this why the rich are moving underground? Through Faux Noose the 1% keep the 99% fooled, at odds with each other and completely unprepared to save ourselves from the condition created by the 1% in process of draining resources from the 99%. We the American people have been plundered unto peasantry in my lifetime. It's weird to see, considering what I was taught in school about American government is every bit as irrelevant as evangelist Pat Robertson. In the time of Reagan I saw him making us into a Third World country. We are there. It has happened.

In this new century I see Latin America passing us by. Asia already has passed us. Europe is way out there beyond us. Africa will be passing us too. The wheel of fortune is turning, "What goes up, must come down, spinning wheel, spinning round." The Reaganista strategy of funnelling the money of the working people up to Cayman's Island bank accounts that are tax free, has pulled the rug out from We The People. Our whole nation is on the downward run. I can't help recalling CIA director with the Reagan Junta, William Casey's quote, "We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American people believe is false." So far, the Republican half of the population has fallen for the disinformation. With Faux Noose the Republican tv network, they ought to keep their idiocy to themselves. It looks really bad from outside the fold. They have become the "party of stupid" by believing their own disinformation. That's the funny part. I'm not going to tell them they have become self-defeating. They wouldn't listen anyway. I like seeing the party itself destroyed from within. The Republican party has become a cancer in American life. I'm glad to see the cancer they created is consuming them first. I'd like to see McConnell and Boner both put out in the next election. Of course, they'll be replaced by even worse than they are, but I won't have to see their ugly faces anymore and their deer-in-the-headlights eyes.

The party of stupid is holding back the rest of the country like the dumbest kids in class hold the class back for everybody else. The Republican party has become a ball and chain around the ankles of our country. If we have that many really dumb people, we don't have a chance. They want us uneducated so we'll be easier to manipulte. Plus, the uneducated tend not to vote. Working against education is Republican strategy to further block voting. They know as well as I know that voting doesn't matter, but it keeps the population believing in Santa Claus. Whoever wins an election is ruled by the 1%. All allegiance to the voters is over the moment the ballot count is announced. Running for election was playing pretend, and upon winning, the game continues to be pretend. Manipulating illusion. I question myself paying attention to them, and answer that I need to know that they are working against me, not for me. They hype that they're for me, but their actions show quite a different purpose. Again, white man's belief that he is superior to black man, Asian man, Latin man and all women is what is behind the Fall of America. The Reagan Junta was the puff of wind that started the fall of the tower of cards.

Herman Melville was writing in the 1850s that white man racism will bring down the ship of state. No one paid attention. The Civil War happened. Moby Dick wasn't read at all in this country. It was read and appreciated a little bit in London. It applies again today, again in a population that hasn't read Moby Dick and doesn't intend to. A century and a half later we're at the same place again, a nation divided unto civil war, the racists creating the problems and blaming the non-racist half of the white population called liberals. We, as a nation, do these things over and over because we, collectively, have no regard for history or education. To paraphrase Gore Vidal again, when the American people can't recognize stupid, we're done for. I've come to see it that alas, we do recognize stupid. It's what the majority wants. It's the Land of Oz, color tv round the clock, a hundred channels, only misinformation coming through the corporate media "news." Everything on television is saying: Stupid is beautiful. They say it's a big dumbing down of America, but I see dumb is what the population wants. It's American culture. White man is in crisis. White man has shown himself with no bottom to how low he will go to keep power over all other races and women. This is what I'm seeing happening in Congress and Senate, white man hysterical in crisis, so hysterical that they let their stupid hang out, like when you get so mad you start blubbering. Going by the pictures I see of Teabaggers, white man is very angry unto freaking out.


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CANNED LAUGHTER RAMBLE

This time we're in makes me think of Herman Melville's Moby Dick warning a country that did not read his book when it was new that a civil war brought on by white racism was at hand. It was. We're back there again, a century and a half later, our so-called leaders at odds with each other over Reaganism (another spelling for racism) that I hope to see coming to an end. I was hoping the Obama election would be the end of it. No. It's the continuation of it. Now this "sequester" bashing of our economy consciously by Reaganistas, taking it to that place Boner said in the recent past, "gave us 98% of what we wanted." The Reaganistas let the "sequester" happen because it's what they've been working toward for the last 30 years. They're like the Bush-Cheney-Rummy-Rice Junta that took power by judicial fiat in a Reagan court, they don't care about majority. They have learned how to screw us against our will and us like it. How can we get pregnant from a rape? Isn't it their belief that the trauma of rape shuts down the reproductive system? Why do we even let people like this take over our government? It's obviously not against our will. Stripping us down to police state and one peasant class, talk about equality, is easily done with the propaganda device television.

I don't know why it happened to me and nobody else that I can recall from childhood intent to live my adult life without television. Then, it was because the programming was generic and I didn't feel like generic satisfied me. Reading books I found my own particular entertainment to my liking that was not being seen simultaneously by however many million viewers. No Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha whenever a character says something. Even in my beginnings I did not like canned laughter. The whole concept of it freaks me out. A "studio audience" is instructed to laugh when the LAUGH light flashes on. Why? So we won't feel alone, so we'll feel like other people are watching with us. How discomforting. I suppose today the canned laughter is done by the director, or somebody, pushing a button in the control room. It gives me the creeps when I'm at somebody's house, a sitcom is on and canned laughter happens over and over. I look to see what's funny, and nothing is funny. I look at the level of intelligence of characters in sitcoms and I shudder that this is the art form of choice in the world I live in. I left television when I left parents. Over the years, people who can't stand it I don't watch tv have offered me their throw-away tvs when they buy new ones. I decline and it makes them mad.


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