Excerpt WIP

What times, it’s hard to even know where to begin. There is no beginning, no end. There is only now, only the smashing present while our human minds swirl in wild abandon of what was, what is and what will be. Also on what we once thought was, what we once thought is now and what we thought would come. Fear and loathing in the collapse of America, fear and loathing in the crumbling of this delusional empire. You have to be crazy to understand what’s going on in the world right now. You have to be crazy to understand where we’ve really been. They’ll fight you to the last; your own mind will sometimes fight you, trying to beat off the nagging truths. It’s easy to get lost in it. It’s easy to feel paralyzed with fear and worry. Times like these make you appreciate all the more the people that came before you, those that fought tyranny, and those that put their lives on the line for an idea. The truly maddening part of it is watching your fellow people continue to engage in the false two party paradigms, those that still believe in the democrat/republican game. You know they are still so far off from the truth. They are still enabling a mortally flawed and corrupt system. You see visions of the future. If others could see these same visions they might start to begin to follow your lead. I am trying to lead but it is lonely out here on the perimeter. The challenge is to reject many of the beliefs that you once held and to accept this new reality while still staying sane enough to somehow continue to function in this new reality that is existing simultaneously within the old paradigm. I somehow just try to stay the line, stand here on this land even if I am all alone and full of fear, doubt and legitimate personal suffering. It seems a fool’s errand, a homey little Americana cliché “back to the land.” Well, for me, it is a life and death situation. For me there are sides forming all around, not just red vs. blue, not just white vs. black, gay vs. straight, Christian vs. Muslim, pro-life vs. pro-choice….all these divisions that do not serve us but only serve the corrupt paradigm that must be crushed. We have to learn to love each other. We have to learn to accept each other. We have to reach out to one another. We have to reject our consumption upbringing. There is a spirit that belies all things, an energy that vibrates. This spirit has as its antithesis a vibration of death and fear. We have been corrupted by the latter and forgotten about the former. We continually choose fear instead of faith. We need to turn it all on its head. We need to have faith, faith in ourselves, and faith in one another. We need to set down our phones and look each other in the eyes and start having a real conversation about this country, where we’ve been, where we are and in what direction we are moving. If screaming worked I would scream. If fasting worked I would fast. If killing worked I would kill. But the only thing that works and the only thing that has ever worked to combat these forces is love. How do we elevate love and sympathy over hate and prejudice? Ah there is the rub!
Why care? Why get involved? Why not just worry about yourself and your own concerns? I can’t answer that question. I’ve always cared. I hid it down deep for different periods of my life but it always came back. I tried to play along to the grand game being played on this chess board called modern life. But ever since I first took consciousness I have felt ill at ease at the social structures and strictures of this society. As a child I was the one who asked his parents’ questions like “Why do we go to war? Why do people have to kill each other? Why do so few have so much while so many have so little?” Questions like these will get a first class ticket to crazy town if you keep asking them and refuse to accept the “that’s just the way things are, honey” dismissals. My parents were raised during the nascent of the American empire, the 1950’s, when heavy manufacturing and industry in America were going to solve all ills. It was a glorious time so say the advertisements from that era. It’s a deep shock when you realize that your parents had been brainwashed just like you into believing in the American dream. Madison Avenue had us all figured out long ago. We weren’t difficult to buy. Not difficult to buy at all.
“So you’re saying progress is a joke and we should all go back to pre-industrial times?” Nope. I’m not saying that at all. I’m saying that progress in technology and industry has surpassed progress in the realm of human evolution. We are straddling two eras as they drift further apart from each other. I’m saying we need to take the best aspects of progress and apply these things to major world problems instead of making those problems worse by keeping this broken system on life support. I see visions of a future where small communities again thrive, where corporate outfits are seen as the enemy of the common man, where people begin to educate themselves again, a new renaissance in American individualism, commerce and society. When the spell is broken and we return to the goodness that is in all of us and turn away from the selfishness of blind consumerism. I don’t care if it is a lofty ideal and utopian fantasy. We have to carve out this place for ourselves. Any sort of social progress took place because of enlightenment and fierce determination and hard work in the face of overwhelming odds.
Living here on this farm these past few years has been an insanely evolutionary, luminary and revelatory experience. My mind is still in the process of taking in all the information and trying to make sense of it, trying to analyze it and figure out a way to go from here. In my mind I am already trying to live post-collapse and I often feel like a crazy person because of the thoughts in my head. I know I’m not alone but it is hard to tell when you are out in public who might be seeing the same things as you. I connect with different people from different backgrounds all the time who all share a commonality in that they see the monster rising just like I am witnessing it. These are frightening times that are electric with history and reverberations throughout time and space. A coming together of everything at once, all disparate elements and particles held together by the self-same glue. Everything is infinite but for some reason most of us are stuck in the prison of the finite even though the infinite is absolutely everywhere and everything. It is the grand illusion that has to be smashed; the separateness, the dissociation, the otherness, the “us” and the “them”, the inner and the outer.
Then there is the mind fuck that some of the ancients were most likely more intelligent than us, that we are not actually the apex of human evolution and consciousness but perhaps just a deeply demented and disturbed inbred off-shoot.

We Own the Shame.

Flickering light on the tomb,

the theme song from The Young & The Restless

permeating the womb.

Years upon years upon years of encoded electronic images.

Face the screen, look forward to the dream, plan your life

around the scene. Joystick, controller, touch tone, cell phone.

It’s new! It’s improved! This one’s smaller. This one’s wiser.

Keep your head buried in the wires. Addicted to the diction.

Too strange to be fiction.

Playtime for hours. Pavlovian towers. Devolution of a species.

Crap trap the whole thing's tapped. This is what we've been working towards.

Don’t call. Don’t talk. Text me. I don’t want to see your face or hear your voice.

Just send me the codes already. I don’t care.

These lies are becoming threadbare.

Reveal the zeal with which our souls are being stealed. (sic)

I don’t know but I’ve been told. Once there was a way,

but everything must be bought and sold.

A soul cries out in the wilderness, manna in the form of prana.

Or is it prana in the form of manna?

Must be electrix, must be Celebrex, must be freezone, ozone,

motorhome, no place to call your own.

Run that treadmill as fast as you can.

All hail the Toucan Sam. Slam bam, thank you Ma’am.

Great balls of fire, send me your ire.

Burn some tires, the flames licking higher.

The black smoke disappears into the atmosphere.

We’re here. We’re queer.

We’re funny little creatures, scurrying ants

in and out of the plants. Bubble canopies of rubber and steel,

aluminum, windshield glass, we got no class.

Burn that gas, tap that ass, work that dick.

What's making us tick? If everything is okay...

Well, then I guess I’m the one who’s sick.

But this shit’s got to change. Are you ready to name names?

CIA hurricane? Get ready. You know who’s to blame:

We are the game. We own the shame. We flew those planes.

Nothing will ever be the same.

The Art of Fetching Water

Carry two gallons of spring water

across the meadows.

Breathe deeply.

Heady air, cold hands.

Laboring breath.

Holy breath.

Black mountains wrap their arms around.

Twilight in the heavenly holler;

sleeping grey trunks of trees.

Focus mind meditation.

The pond is the mirrored mask of the skies.

Rippling water.

Two birds

take wing and fly.

You are here.

I don’t know if there is any rhyme or reason to it. It starts in the gut, rises up into the chest, surrounds the heart and presses against the rib cage straining to be free. It cannot escape so you choke it back down and try to find some purchase to pull yourself through. Everything fails. Social anxiety. Please don’t engage me. I don’t want you to see the darkness inside me. I am ashamed of the storm clouds in my belfry. These purple machinations of madness are for me and me alone. I am haunted by the past, dreadful of the future, spinning daisy chains in my mind of oh how I wish my world could be. I need to be loved and I need to love. For the past 10 years it seems I’ve fallen all over myself to push away anyone who has had the misfortune of trying to love me. There is a poison inside, a thick black tar of self-pity and fear, an adolescent mind in the body of a full grown man. Self-loathing is second nature to me, isolation my defense, solitude my crutch. In the deep cold of a star-struck night I feel connected for a few moments. I see the universe rotating overhead, planets shining, a bright white moon superimposed against a sea of blackened purple space and time.

“You think too much.”

“You are too sensitive.”

“You are too needy.”

If it weren’t for my little furry family of dogs I think I should have expired. Truth be told, it’s money matters, a brooding, self-centered sense of entitlement, a bitterness. I’ve got so much ugliness in my craw to release, so much phlegm and rotten dogma. I’ve knelt and prayed for hours on end for women I once loved, for them to be happy, for them to find some joy, love and peace in their lives. Almost without exception these prayers have been answered. And I am happy for them. I am happy they’ve found someone to share their lives with. But inside I am so very small and I think, “But what about me, God? Can’t I have someone too? Can’t I love someone and allow myself to be loved by them?”

I have slept alone for years. I wake alone; make coffee alone, soldier through weekends alone, holidays and years pile up like slabs of ice on the bank of some lost creek. At times I make peace with my loneliness, take pride in it. Other times I am filled to overflowing with sadness and longing. I stuff it down, way down, further now, be spirited away self-pity. Damn you covetous heart! It’s easier to allow yourself to turn to stone. It’s easier to turn again and again inside oneself. It’s easier to block out the world, to lay fresh mortar in the cracks of the wall. I am bitter over my career, what it’s taken from me. Nights, weekends, holidays…year after year, decade after decade serving smiling families and nuzzling couples. After the shift you go home to leftovers and an empty house. It’s madness. It’s untenable. And now I’m in this place, this place that is supposed to be my home, my motherland and I feel as ostracized, incomplete and unloved as ever before. There are moments of peace sure, ephemeral time-ticks of non-polarity, of oneness with my station and fellows, but they are few and far between. The standard is melancholy, not just a surface affliction but a deep, abiding sadness that has been extant since childhood and that I believe I was probably born with, a dis-ease with the human condition.

I really have no right to bemoan my lack of female companionship. I have reaped what I have sown. I have been reckless, thoughtless, unforgiving, cruel and merciless. Ask anyone who has had the misfortune of trying to love me. So many wonderful women have crossed my path. I’ve taken their love, balled it up in my hands and tossed it aside. By rights I DESERVE to be alone. I deserve the pain. Never mind that my cruelty and insensitivity were born from childhood traumas out of my control. One must grow and evolve, throw back the security blankets that once served so well. These blankets have grown so comfortable even as they are slowly suffocating me. I am so lucky to live in this place, lucky my grandfather purchased this land and that my parents kept it. I’ve not known what the hell I’ve been doing here. I had no real plan. Just move up here and figure it out later. I’m glad I didn’t know how I would be affected. I’m glad I didn’t allow the fear of the unknown to dissuade me. As fortunate as I am for the right to live here on this land there is so much for me to do to continue living here and I often feel overwhelmed. There have been many challenges and I feel I’ve risen to them. As one problem is solved a hundred more arise in its place. I am very far out of my comfort zone and of course, this was one of the chief reasons for making the move in the first place.

At night I step outside as if onto the surface of the moon. The only electric light I can see is that of a satellite in the sky that beams down television programs to dishes across the countryside. There are no other lights visible save for the lamplight creeping out of the windows of my house. When the moon is out and bright the mountains and fields and streams glitter in the lunar light. The mountains are dark and lovely against the heavens. Constellations make their ways across the universal sea. I stand on my two human legs, vapor from my breath rising hot from my face into the cold ether.

Sometimes the only answer you will hear is “You are here.”

“You are here. The rest is up to you.”

Hollow Man

God I can’t wait to get back home. I miss the grey-trunked trees, the primeval forest, the barren mountainsides, the cold earth littered with dry, dead leaves, the nothingness of the stark, star-studded night sky, the silence of the hills, the yawning emptiness. The quiet loneliness of the land reflects my own sadness back at me. The river winds its millennial path through the valleys, slipping over rocks and washing memory and emotion away with its cold clear waters. I need the emptiness; the soft, caressing touch of the invisible ether soothes my soul. The cold hard ground comforts me. The dead weather surrounds me and comforts me in my solitude and introspection. I need the crisp, clean air, the hushed stillness of desolation, the absence of any sort of love or care. These things fill my hollow husk of a heart. These things bring me what might be described as a kind of joy and peace. There are no judgments there, no reprisals, no longing or ambition. There is only the vacuum of space and time. I am aware that my heart is turning to stone. I am aware that I receive no love because I give no love. I am broken and I don’t care. And the mute mountains don’t care either. We were made for each other. I am the silent grey mountain and the silent grey mountain is me.

Bats!

The other night I was driving home from work. It was a bit foggy but not as bad as I had seen it before. The day was warm and the early evening saw brief, violent thunderstorms whose showers were now slowly, eerily rising up from the river valleys and blanketing entire watersheds in thick, dense, ethereal white wisps of fog. So I’m totally zoning out on the landscape all John Muir-style and shit while I’m driving along, around the turns, decelerate here, and speed up there for the long, slow climb out of Dunns into Camp Creek. I’m listening to tunes and keeping a sharp eye out for deer which gather in this valley by the hundreds at night. Then all of the sudden, out of the smoke and fog, a motherfucking bat smacks into my windshield, bounces up over the cab of the truck and disappears into the darkness. It happened in slow-motion; or rather my mind seems to have captured it that way. I saw him when he was about six feet from the windshield, shrouded in smoke and the fractured cones of headlight. His wings were spread as if he was trying to put on the brakes. The light from the truck shown through a pale grey scrim of tissue-thin fabric framed in the most beautiful black wing structure. The body was black as was his head. As the slow-motion frames click on his wings begin to flap wildly, click, click, I can see his face, click, click, his beady little blind eyes and his black head, click, click, his mouth gaping wide still filling his belly with insects…click, click, ...THUMP! He tumbles over the truck and into the darkness never to be seen or heard from again.

Several nights later I am at home, sleeping out on the screened-in porch when I have to get up to pee. I do this like a veteran somnambulist. I draw back the covers, slide my legs to the edge of the bed and drape them over, search with my feet until they find solid, unobstructed purchase on the floor. My eyes have not yet opened. With my feet firmly planted on the floor I then assume a sitting up position at the edge of the bed. Now I open my eyes, not open really, more like pryingly crease my lids so that the tiniest sliver of light makes it through. I am seeing my back porch through a forest of eyelash. Noting the floor is clear I stumble onto my feet and then gangle forward in a monster of Frankenstein manner, up the step, into the house, across the creaking pine floorboards, the moonlight casting on the boards and lighting my way, hands outstretched and probably mumbling to myself I awkwardly bumble along until I reach a threshold. A doorway! Hooray! I grasp it with both arms reassuringly and push my way through.

(Now just to pause for a moment and consider the quantities of urine that must have been pressing against my bladder to cause me to (semi) awaken, leave the Holy Sacred Warmth and Comfort of The Worshipful Bed and journey off into the night in hopes of relief.)

Through the doorway I shift my body to the left and lumber through an open sliding-glass doorway out onto the wooden deck. I’m multi-tasking now. As I lurch the last few steps I fish out my penis and ready it for draining. At last! I find a comfortable stance on the edge of the porch and just let it rip, full bore wide open high pressure fire hosing going down. I’m already beginning to feel the relief. I begin to smile, kinda laugh a little. Now I’m really getting into it, swaying back and forth with my hands on my hips, listening to the puddle form on the ground below when all of the sudden out of fucking nowhere this motherfucking crazy-ass bat dive bombs the shit out of me and gets all Kenneth Shuler up on top of my head. Somehow (the startling fright I guess) my valve immediately shut off as I 1. Screamed outloud. 2. Started waving my arms all around like a lunatic. 3. Lost my balance and ate shit onto the deck floor in my boxer shorts. I was pretty much asleep during this whole thing, up until the moment I hit the dirt and found myself wounded, on the ground, outside, at night, with my dick hanging out. In a matter of seconds my pack of dogs had me surrounded and was investigating the scene; barking loudly and charging fearlessly out into the front yard to attack. Three stayed behind and guarded me with cold noses and wet tongues. I gathered myself up, pulled myself together and stood up. I felt soreness and dull pain coming from my left knee and looked down to see a nice two inch gash cut across my kneecap and blood running down my shin and calf. Being somewhat used to this kind of thing I just said fuck it and got back in bed and went to sleep.

So if you ever see me waving my arms around wildly and muttering incoherently about “the god damn bats” you’ll know I’m being totally fucking serious.

Reckoning

It is mid-day and it is dark and ominous. Friday night I was sitting in the mountain house having dinner with my sister and a couple of friends. It had been hot as hell all day and we were sweltering inside the house while eating but no one seemed to mind too much. All of the sudden, literally out of nowhere, the wind picked up outside and began blowing HARD. The temperature immediately dropped about 20-30 degrees, the sun disappeared and the air was filled with a wild and frantic energy. The electric lights began to flicker on and off before finally deciding on “off.” We lit a candle and continued our dinner, just went right on with our evening. My friends went home and my sister retired to the cabin. I spent the night on my fold-out sofa on the screened in porch. It cooled down so much during the night I had to get up in my sleep and find more blankets. When the sun came up in the morning I shed the blankets as the light shone on my skin and I began to sweat.

When I left the farm to go see about work and my food at Mountain Creek the reality of the storm that seemed nothing more than an anomaly became apparent. Trees were knocked down everywhere, power lines dangling, branches snapped like twigs….and there was the eerie, ominous silence in which we have now became engulfed. I got into town and was startled by the long lines of cars at the gasoline pumps. The temperature kept rising and rising and the day was spent in a surreal mindscape of damage and ruin. The heartwarming aspect to all of this is how people behaved. People were patient and kind with one another, even in the gas pump lines, there was no cutting, no honking of horns, no yelling or bitching, just calm as if there was nothing out of the ordinary.

I wonder if this is how it will be when it all really goes down and goes down for good. We won’t know it’s for good at the time. We’ll think it’s just a matter of time before order is restored. But when it really happens order will not be restored, the power won’t return. We will be left to fend for ourselves. The small community I live in will survive. These are country people with country ways. Sustainability isn’t just a catch-word or a trend to these people; it is a way of life. Hell yesterday farmers were out cutting and bailing hay just as they would have been doing anyway. There was a slight air of panic in the towns from tourists coming off the interstate but the local people, for all their flaws and faults, were non-plussed and I found myself happy and proud that I was among them. My two years living in the cabin has prepared me for moments like this. All the trappings of civilization fall away and you find yourself surrounded by the silence of the real. I gave up TV over two months ago. I use the internet sparingly, a bit at work and a bit at a coffee shop in town. I can now live without these things without going mad. They don’t matter. What matters is the cool air at night, the feeding and watering of my dogs, the checking in on my neighbors and family.

I’ve long known there will be a reckoning…a reckoning we will see and experience in our lifetime, a reckoning that will make things worse before they get better. Storms come and go through time, it ain’t nothing new. But when a combination of events takes place, it will change. I don’t know if we are headed for a new dark age or not. I don’t know how it will all play out but I do know that our current civilization cannot continue on the path it is on without dire consequences. Our leaders are still completely blind to the truth. We are meant to believe that if the “economy” just gets better, things can go back to “normal.” Well, I’ve been alive for forty years now and I can tell you that there has been nothing normal about the past four decades. Our economy is a lie, it assumes continued growth. On a tiny planet among the stars there is only so much space, so many resources…it is up to the earth itself to shake off our beehive madness. Whether or not this is a conscious act of the planet or just a matter of cause and effect is irrelevant. We have grown beyond our means and it is beginning to show. We need a time-out. We need to pause and reflect. If we won’t do it on our own the earth will do it for us. It will knock down our towers and silence our televisions. It will remind us of the preciousness of clean water and healthy food. It will learn us to be kind to our neighbors, to look out for one another, to finally realize we can’t do this alone. Our addiction to fossil fuels and a way of life that is beyond our means will be broken sooner or later. There is a reckoning in this wind.