When We Were Humans

I happened to be alone at the time the end of the world happened. I wandered off into the wilderness and never saw another human being again. I didn't take much with me, left quite suddenly. I would've left with someone if I knew I would really never be returning this time, anyone. When I look back on that time now I don't think about much, just all those people in the towns, all real people, not people of my fantasy or of my memory, but real living people that I could have asked to come with me and did not. I don't miss anyone in particular, none of my close friends and family, spread all around the world. I just wish I had asked someone to come with me, just a nearby person, to wander out into the wilderness forever.

It's amazing how quickly and completely it is possible to transform into a completely different lifestyle. I can't remember anymore what it feels like to sit in a little box-room with people all around me, to not want to be with them or to talk with them, to want to be alone. To have all the food I need just waiting for me to eat it, in the kitchen, to sleep in a warm dry cosy bed with a hot water bottle every night. And amidst this lifestyle, to be riddled with anxiety and dissatisfaction. To be weak and pathetic with the strength of human technology and organisation behind me. It delights me on quiet nights around the fire to imagine how I would use these things now, a kitchen with refrigerator, oven, stove, blender, electricity; all those people to share with and coordinate with and all those ways of communicating with them over long distances, phone, internet, mobile.

Now, I would love just to find someone to sleep beside in the night, to keep each other warm, to comfort one another. It amazes me that with all those people around we used to choose to sleep alone night after night, only sleeping with a single other person when we wanted to have sex with them, or if we were “in a relationship”. I can't quite put my finger on what that phrase used to mean. People used it all the time, but it was distinct from all the people we had relationships with, it meant something special, something more than just the people we had sex with. Maybe it did just mean the person we would sleep with every night, to keep each other warm and comforted.

I remember when I was living on the farm and the sow gave birth to nine little piglets. As soon as they were born they knew how to sleep. They would lay down in piles and if someone wasn't comfortable she would get up and squeeze back into the centre of the piggy pile. They were always warm and cosy, they were always together. As they got older and a lot less cute and more aggressive, competing for food, they would still lie together in piles to sleep. Even when they pissed each other off and oinked at each other they would consider no alternative to sleeping together in piles.

The sow would gather together some local long grass and dump it in a pile to make a soft bed for her and her piglets. The long grass would become hay in the sun and provide padding as well as insulation. Humans had been so good at this that we could just buy a mattress, buy sheets and blankets and arrange them in such a way, so brilliantly effectively, that we could sleep entirely alone and the body warmth of a single person would be enough to keep us warm all night. It was ingenious. Sad, to be alone, but brilliant that it was possible.

Sometimes in my wanderings now I come across the remains of what must have been an old farmhouse. There are a few remnants of what used to be there, usually a big square of hard brown dirt, not even much in the way of building materials. Usually the weeds and the grasses have already taken over the section where the house used to be. Usually everything has been taken, but once I found a little toy car in the long grass. It was all rusted over, so the wheels don't turn anymore. All the paint has chipped off and it's hard to know even what type of car it was. But I held on to that. It is so evocative of so many memories. I keep it very safe, wrapped up carefully in my pocket. Sometimes I take it out and look at it, just for a few seconds, and I am flooded with mountains of memories, huge waves of emotion, and I put it away and explore everything they offer me. I meditate on them, sitting alone by the fire after sunset, breathing into them. I can't really think about them, it's too much, but I think I am slowly starting to understand, somewhere in my mind beyond language, beyond thought. When I draw it forward into my conscious mind, what I usually use for important basic stuff like finding food and finding somewhere to sleep and looking out for firewood and potential predators, it just confuses and overwhelms me. I know now which brain is supposed to be used for which purpose.

When it's not raining I usually sleep in ditches, when I can find them. This is the closest I can find to sleeping in a bed, and where I feel safest. One day I was walking, rather absent-mindedly because I had eaten and it was still a while until night, and I saw another human. He was young and a man like me and he just came around the corner out of some trees. We both stopped suddenly and surprised and stared at each other in shock. When I first left I had seen a few humans wandering around, but I didn't realise how quickly they would disappear. I hadn't seen another human in a long time. There had been so many of them, then there were only a few and then none. No one, for so long. We stared at each for so long, both tense and not knowing what to expect. Suddenly I had an image flash into my mind. It was night and I was asleep, in a ditch, soft with dry grass, but this time there was a body beside me, warm and comforting. It was him! I felt a wave of excitement surge through my body and I made a slight movement towards the human. I saw a jolt move through his body as a result of my movement and he panicked and ran away. I knew I shouldn't chase him cos he would just run faster, so I waited for him. I sat down exactly where we had met so he could find me easily, and I waited for him to return. It got dark and I made a fire and slept right there. In the morning I waited again, all day without eating anything, relit my fire and again slept alone. The next day I wanted to look for food, but there wasn't much close to the spot where we had met and I didn't want to go far away. Every time I walked too far away from where we had met I would run back, just in case he returned and I wasn't there and he didn't know where to find me.

Eventually I got hungry and I didn't know why he would not yet have returned. I guess he's not coming back. I still think about him sometimes and expect him to suddenly come back. He's been looking for me for so long and didn't know where to find me, but he never does return. All I wanted was to sleep with him, to be warm and comforted in the night. I don't know why he was scared of me, like I would hurt him. There is no reason why I would hurt him. On the contrary, just walk with him in the day and lay with him in the night. Maybe even tell stories around the fire at night. That's what we used to do, when we were humans. I'm sure I could still tell stories, though I haven't spoken in so long. I used to talk to myself all the time, it would help me think. But I don't anymore. Occasionally I will make a sound with my mouth, just to hear my voice, to assure me that I can still make those sounds, but I don't bother to make even a word. I know I could still make a whole story, with a bit of practice, but I don't suppose I'll ever meet a human again to tell a story to.

~ ~ ~

Sadness offers a new lease on life. To a certain extent I can't afford to get sad, not like I used to. But even a little disappointment can spur me to change my world. I have the energy and the impetus now to set out into the world. I waited too long for that man to return and of course he never did. I happen to know that the world is a big place and I can go further than I have ever gone before. I may not know where to find my specific gardens, the garden I visit every season, but I trust I will find food wherever I go and if I die I accept that. I just need to go out into the world and find what is happening. It is no life alone. I have been alone too long.

I head towards the rising sun, choosing to travel east all the way, or at least until my nose leads me somewhere different. I pass through the bush that has always bounded my wandering area and emerge out into the sun. The clearing is choked with thick grass up to my neck. This grass would swallow anything and even makes me feel a little claustrophobic, but I just breathe myself into calm, trusting I will soon be out of it. I emerge from the dense grass onto the side of a hill overlooking a vast river valley and harbour. The hugeness of it overcomes me and I get the feeling, the strongest I have felt for years, of the bigness of the world, the variety, the possibility. I feel emotion surge through me at the thought that there might be other people out there. I remember having other people in my life, but I mostly remember being scared of them or irritated by them. I don't have any memories of just being quiet and appreciating their presence.

The sun is hot in the sky and I can hear the waves down in the harbour or out on the coast, crashing on the beach, and the sound travelling up the hill like an amphitheatre. I head down the hill with anticipation, which I try to calm. I know I'm not likely to find anyone and I don't want to be disappointed. So I convince myself that I'm just walking, I'm just exploring, I'm just finding what's out there to be found. I am seeing where the world leads me without attachment to what it will offer me and what it will deny me. I can follow this river for a while, I can drink some different water and see the sun rise and set from a different angle.

The days walking along the river are full of joy and excitement. Every day is radiant with hot sunshine and I swim in the river many times each day. As I dance on the grass by the river I get a vision of the man I saw for a few seconds all those months ago. I imagine that he has taken this trip with me and the two of us are dancing together like idiots on the grass here. I feel like I am about to cry but I push it up and out of my head as I furiously dance harder, leaping and shrieking until I get to a small tributary of the river I am following. I stop and look at it. It is narrow, though fast-moving, and I wouldn't even have to swim to get across, but I look at it. My eyes follow the stream up towards its source, a narrow dark gorge. After the sunshine and wide open space of the last days it seems silly to walk up into that dark gorge, but I happen to know that this is my route. I don't know, it may be an interesting detour, it may be the rest of my life.

The first night I find somewhere beautiful to sleep, in long grass that sinks into a soft bed beneath me, feeling secure beside a steep slope and some tall trees. In the morning I set off with great haste and determination and walk non-stop all day, up the slight slope into the gorge. It's like I know something is close and I'm almost running to get to it. It's like I know exactly where it is, like I'm just trying to get home through some familiar neighbourhood. It is like I've been here before, though I don't know how that would be possible. As the darkness slowly falls I try to continue, determined to find what I know to be just an arm's reach away. It is getting cold and it is finally the thought that whatever I pass I won't be able to see in the darkness that convinces me to stop for the night. It's too late for me to find a good bed or even make a fire, so I just focus on getting warm enough to sleep. I pile some grass under a low-hanging tree and try to make a bed. I lay there feeling silly, feeling unnaturally exposed on this flat open ground. Luckily it is is new moon and it is particularly dark and so the night shrouds me, this night that the earth cannot, and I eventually fall asleep.

I wake up to the first light before the sunrise and the sounds of birds singing. I feel strange, like I'm in a garden, not in the wilderness, slowly being reclaimed from human endeavour. For breakfast I eat the last grapefruit I carried from the tree down by the river. The juice drips down my fingers and my lips as I slowly fade from dream into the light of day. Today I'm not marching fast and determined into the gorge, today I wander and look at the sky and the tree-tops and the birds.

Suddenly, around a corner, I come across something that shocks me into stillness. It is a small wooden cabin, like a building, like humans used to live in. It is intact. Without broken windows and collapsed walls I feel like I am looking at something perfect, brand new, like an unreality, though it is clearly a part of its environment, having been here for a while. It might be what I have been looking for, but it terrifies me. I was not expecting it. It is not a person I can confront and communicate with, it is a dangerous structure that could contain anything and that I cannot know until I approach the danger and vulnerability of its threshold.

I leap behind some bushes and wait, watching and listening carefully, close to the familiar and comforting earth. The cabin is quiet and still and I eventually decide it must be empty. I slowly approach the door, which is open, and look inside. It is dry, clean and tidy in there. There are some well-made beds along the walls, with blankets and mattresses. I walk in and the unexpected familiarity and deliciousness of the smell hits me. Woodsmoke and dust and stale feet, cooking food and running water and fabric and that rich sexual emotional scent of human beings. Surely someone must live here, though it is so quiet and still so early in the morning, like no one has ever been here before me. It is like someone is here right now, but not inhabiting the same dimension as me, so we cannot see, hear or touch each other.

I wander through the details of the cabin like it is the spare bedroom that has been left me for the night and which is now mine alone, like no one will walk in and surprise me. I look at all the little tools and trinkets carefully placed on shelves and surfaces, everything having its place and its utility or sentimental beauty. I find a curious object like a long black wood chip that immediately draws me toward it. I pick it up and I know what to do with it. There is a circular button in the centre of the black chip and I press it long and slow. Some words come up on the screen but nothing else happens. I see another object, a couple of plastic buds attached to a long string, and I remember. I plug the buds into the chip and put them in my ears. I press the button again and hear the most amazing sound, loud and so overwhelming I have to sit down on the bed. I fall onto my back, close my eyes and let it wash over my body and my soul. It is music.

I had almost forgotten the sound of the human voice. It is a man's voice, old and rough, but full of intention and emotion. He sings of love and pain, expectation, disappointment, cynicism and hope. It brings too much of what I have not forgotten back to the surface, too much for me to confront, so I simply allow the music to wash over me and pulse through me. I can feel the intense reality of the music, the strength and meaning of the old man's voice, throb through my body and I let it take me over. I let the ecstasy encompass me and the music becomes my body, the vibrations of the soundwaves reverberating in my ear form a new temporary body which I inhabit as fully as I have inhabited my flesh body.

As the music fades into a dull warmth I turn my head and open my eyes, though I have heard no sound. There is a warm yellow glow and a man standing there facing me. I wait for my eyes to focus and see that it is the man I saw that day. He is staring at me with patient warmth, as if he had been waiting for me to open my eyes. I stare back at him, each of us as if he had only passed out of the room for a few minutes, as if we were expecting each other. He walks over the bed on which I am lying and climbs in beside me. I shuffle over to give him some space. We lie there together with our eyes closed and I can feel the warmth of his body and I can smell his scent. It is warm and dusty and familiar. I snuggle in closer to him and wrap one of my arms around him. He responds by wriggling in closer to me, fitting his body into the shape of my embrace. I even notice his scent change with the intimacy of our closeness, it is sweeter and more intoxicating. I allow the cosiness to overcome us.

I open my eyes again faintly and see again the warm glow and the order of the room, the tidiness, the convenience. My friend is still beside me, but somehow he is impersonal, like he's undeniably human, but not necessarily any particular person. I can hear a faint sound in the next room, a woman singing and the smell of warm comforting food being prepared wafts in. I feel like she is my mother and I am at home, like a child, and all my needs are taken care of. I feel safe and secure, though my mother never used to sing like that when she cooked. I tried to distinguish what the cooking smells were, but they were all familiar and yet mingled together and I could not tell. I again closed my eyes and held my warm companion

Feeling sleepy and only half-awake I move onto my back and stretch my legs and my body. I reach my arms out to the side in a stretch and feel my whole body respond, moving intuitively into the exact spot of tension or tightness, stretching and relaxing until my body feels good and ready to stand. I then realise that there is no one beside me and that this does not surprise me. I look around the room and it is as tidy and orderly as I remember it, everything one could need is present and close-at-hand. The room is exactly as I found it, but I notice the patch of warm sun that had been shining on me through the window was now forming a rectangular patch on the wooden floor.

I stand up and walk to the door. Outside is warm and calm and bright. There are huge tufts of grass and herbs, but no trees this side of the creek. I can hear the rushing of the creek and various birds singing in the trees maybe ten metres away. There are insects buzzing through the grasses. I recognise a few big bushes of edible herbs growing happily amongst the long grass and perhaps even some sort of citrus tree bearing fruit not far upstream. I feel a peace and a happiness as I sit down on the step to look out at the scene. I like this cabin and I like the feeling of sitting on something solid and dry, with the sun shining directly upon me. I feel rich, like the whole world is at my feet. A feeling of joys wells up inside me but fails to reach its full breadth when I realise there is no one to share this place with. How can I be rich if there is no one to welcome into my home and into my bed, no one to feed and laugh with? How can I feel blessed with abundance if I cannot give this abundance away? Otherwise, it is worthless. I can enjoy it for the rest of the day, and I can go to sleep in that clean dry bed, but I know that unless I plan to leave first thing in the morning, I won't be able to get out of bed. If my plan is to stay here the bed will paralyse me and I won't be able to move.

So I decide to leave in the morning. I'll build a little fire in that oven and make myself some food. I think I even saw a hot water cylinder, so if I get the fire hot enough I may be able to have a hot bath! I can sit by the fire and read a book, while waiting for the fire to get warm enough for my bath. I'll enjoy this cabin for just one night and then set off again into the wilderness to find my destiny, my life, a companion. I'll leave at first light, I won't even cook myself a breakfast. Maybe I'll take some fruit with me, but I will leave straight away. I won't carry anything else; no books, no bedding. I have to be light. I have to maintain my freedom. I have to follow that river upstream to its source.

Domesticated primates running digitally on extra-terrestrial software

Chris Kirk

6 October

I am a human being trapped in an alien landscape of domesticated primates running digitally on extra-terrestrial software. I personally don't identify with the culture in which I was born, but luckily I meet beautiful human beings who transcend their culture just for a moment with me sometimes, or sometimes for their whole life. I am glad I am here surrounded by these strange and fascinating people. I want to smell them and touch them and look into their eyes, but there are strange psychic barriers in the way sometimes. I don't know why.

Darius

Critical mass eventuates population collapse once environmental equilibrium unbalances to an extreme which creates a point of total instability. The bees are dying on mass.  If pesticides and fungicides are not completely eradicated global famine could result.  The US may default in 11 days, if their debt ceiling is not raised global economy will implode and world war could follow as per usual. If these 2 events do not manifest due to intervention there are many more potential actions of global human culture that are pushing the limits of tolerance that could collapse. Survive and contribute to writing the new paradigm that will naturally follow. Prepare, unite and survive.

Chris Kirk

I am ready. I am just gathering up health and sanity, cos I may need a stockpile. I can't handle this civilisation farce anymore. I wish the people who love me would just come be with me here in paradise. What the fuck are you all doing in the cities? Are you really trying to play that game? Have you noticed you are losing? Have you noticed that the people who are winning are more miserable than you are? Or that people are collapsing into sociopaths all around you? Withdraw, my friends, please. Come roll in the grass with me, swim in the ocean before it's totally radioactive, help me learn how to sprout and graft fruit trees. I don't want to come visit you in TV-land anymore.

Eva-psyphae Macula

All very well and nice. But if all the people leave the cities your little bush huts and self-sufficient circle jerks of xenophobic culture cringing will be lost and you'll just have crowded beach and trampled grass.

The console works just fine, the software needs updating, but all controls are still intact and the levels are all still fun. However I think its fair to say that we all need to chip in on a rather large power bill that's been stuck on the empty fridge door for centuries. Like any shared house situation, those that are accountable are not always responsible and others ended paying more than their share.

If the '60s and '70s can teach us anything, is that the '80s and '90s is what happens when that approach is taken. Abandoning the game does not finish the level. It just leaves a seriously fucked character with only a few lives left and the boss to face alone. Group hugs and acid won't fix this problem.  Nor will burning spears.

Coded language, psychic cyphers and data bombs will be our tools.  Our generation is that lost child who crawled his way through the flower fields of zombies and reality gameshow sets to find his tribe dancing in whirlpools of splintering metal tectonic bass, and screamed with ecstatic affirmation and agonizing confirmation in the middle of the moshpit, we are indeed fucked.

As the monitor flickers in the dark and the controller lays cold, the world burns.  The war dance is over.  It's time to take back the city.

Chris Kirk

I hope that one day I will take my children or my grandchildren on field trips to the cities. They will see the decaying buildings, skyscrapers with hundreds of glassless windows covered in vines, pavements cracking, streets of weeds preparing the soil, metal and concrete skeletons of alien technological non-entities from some dark fairytale that actually happened, unexpected reclamations of industrial, commercial, so-called "pubic" spaces, fungi consuming piles of plastic. 

I will walk them through like a museum of filth and perversion that is slowly collapsing back into the soil, the earth finding ways to consume it all over thousands of years. I will tell them stories about what went on there, the uniforms, the bureaucracy, the stress and the hopelessness, the cars and the pollution, the Economy and the shopping malls and stupormarkets. 

I will then take them home and tuck them into bed to dream of a better world, a world I am not capable of imagining, so compromised and traumatised by paranoia and cynicism. They will create a better world in the remains of what we are too scared to confront, disassemble and abandon.

Darius

Cities can be wonderful places which hold an important utility for humans and have for many millennia; I don't know why anyone would hope for their destruction. I think it makes much more sense to hope (and work to to create) in the future that cities and the people who live in and manage them evolve them to become clean places of artistic beauty, social vibrancy and environmental harmony.  It can be done, we have the knowledge to make it so globally.  There are many people all over the world right how who are working to make it so. 

To wish otherwise and to think the world can only be improved by destruction seems rather narrow minded, selfish, short sighted and ignorant. Cities don't take up alot of land area actually and many people greatly prefer living in them to living in the country side. Oh but you don't like them therefore they shouldn't exist at all and destruction should be hoped for and relished, despite all the good people that love them and would feel a great loss to live in a world without cities, who hope to and work at removing the negative effect they have environmentally.

Christy

Remember, dear friend, all is as it should be, if you are truly in the moment (reality). If you think it should be different, then you are arguing with reality.  Insanity.  They should, they shouldn't, he can't, I can't, etc.  Love what is.  If you don't love what is: PAIN.  The Work of Byron Katie. Highly recommend it. Peace brother.

Darius

Do you actually realise that if cities were all gone then there would be a lot less green spaces in the world. If there were weeds preparing soil then there would be much more soil being removed everywhere else. As I said cities take up far less land area per person than in the countryside since everything is built vertically, and since they are built from glass that means far less trees need to be cut down to build all the houses which would be needed if there were no cities. Besides it's a fact that cities pollute less than the countryside with all it's cattle.  Glass and steel don't eat cattle, people do, and they would whether they lived in a city or not.  If not, the meat would be transported further, rather than the singular small area cityscape, creating a greater carbon footprint.  Glass is made from sand which is abundant in the many desert waste lands on earth and steel is mined from isolated places. Deforestation, for lumber and cattle, and nuclear technology are what need to be removed.  As it is now, cities could be what is keeping the earth from destruction by population overload.  If everyone left them it would create even more strain on the environment due to lumber needs and energy used for greater travel-distances.  Everyone would need a personal car to visit family and friends and employment, rather than public transport. 

Not everyone wants to work from home, not everyone wants to grow their own veges.  (I fucking hate gardening with a passion, if I had to grow my own food rather than pay someone else for it I would consider that a misery and a waste of time.)  Though many others I know love the garden and almost always grow with a huge surplus.  Some of them love piano music but would hate to practice to hear it.  I love to eat fresh organic produce. The earth and everything and everyone in it need people to hope and work towards improvement, a greener environmentally harmonised city and countryside culture, simple. What it doesn't need are hyper-emotional, reactionary people who just want to see it all burn, who are just plain weak.

Chris Kirk

http://www.personaproductions.com/2013/10/paterson-by-allen-ginsberg.html

Ivanovic

And thank god for Chris Kirk also.

The world succumbs.

The world succumbs.
We are enveloped into the enfolding.
We join the retreating wave of biomass.
Another species no longer hoping.
No more convenient delusions to survive us.
No more development of our civilisation.
Science as ignorant as the day it was born.
Nothing to save us from ourselves.
No noble cause to die for.
No morality to alleviate our guilt.
Not even a home to return to at day-end.
Mother buried in the void beyond understanding.
Not even our children will survive us.

I am still here, facing certain death.
You are still here, I face you too.
Nothing to say beyond the wind of exhalation.
Surrounded by a deafening silence.
So much space and time to behave in.
Everything to do but nowhere to start.
So much love, but never enough.
Just the potential of 12 hrs of overcast sunlight every single day.

I am prepared to die

Now is the time for us to make revolution.
What a boring old-fashioned message.
Nothing will ever change.
Nationalism has failed us.
The Government will not save us.
The United States has collapsed.
The End Of The World has already happened.
Those of us who did not notice were presumably watching TV or wandering the shopping malls and the stupormarkets.
Every revolution that has preceded us has been entirely successful at bringing us to this moment.
The revolution only seems to fail because every time we attempt to project our ideologies onto reality we are faced with the contradictory nature of reality.
When we look at the world, all we see is the world.  One day, we hope, we will see the world we see in our head.
This day will never come.
Thank God/dess that every ideological revolution has failed.
Even the revolutions that have failed have caused great violence in our precious world.
The United States of America is supposed to be the revolution of modern industrial democracy.  It is a mistake that we, as a species, must repent and resolve.
There are no real barriers to the beginnings of sanity on this planet, only our own feelings of inadequacy.
"I don't deserve love because I am a naughty boy with perverse thoughts."
Therefore I will run for President of the World.
I have the perfect idea in my head of how the world should be and I intend to impose this perfect idea on the problematic reality of a chaotic world through the organisation and force of some institution, centuries old, brand new, revolutionary, conservative, secure, morally perfect.
We have created The Law, which we acknowledge does not exist but we promise we will enforce it as if it does exist.
We are prepared to use the violence that you are unwilling to carry out in the sanity of your loving homes.
We will require some of you to step out of your apathetic pajamas and into uniforms appropriate for the task of suppression of dissent.
We hate with the utmost love.  Please, love us with the hate of your ability to make a living at the expense of others.
When I die, I will be remembered as a hard worker, working hard to make other species extinct.
We've had a lot of revolutions, a lot of extinctions, a handful of apocalypses, wars to end all wars, and the trajectory of human development is a progressive genocide of all races on the planet in favour of Indo-European people.
Nothing will stop us from doing what we're not quite sure what it is yet.
The most advanced species on this planet is telling you to not panic and to remain within the realm of the culture you grew up in.
You are either a member of the correct, dominant culture, or your culture will be violently removed in as humane a manner as possible at the correct moment, with or without the desperation of your retaliation.
China does not exist.
The American Flag is the greatest religious symbol of our age, followed by the Coca-Cola Ribbon and the McDonald's M.
The world is not divided between Christianity and Islam or between Democracy and Communism.  The world is divided between Coca-Cola and Pepsi.
This was clear to me when I rode the bus through the highways of Guatemala and Mexico.  Every tiny poor village has a tienda and every tienda sells junkfood to the poor locals who really don't need money and every tienda is decorated with either a Coca-Cola or Pepsi logo.
One day all the world will be free and everyone will have the money to pay for carbonated soft drink.
Nothing you do will make any difference.
I disagree, I can make change.
When I quite smoking I intend to start dancing.
I intend to set up a huge organisation to stop corruption in Government and Industry.
I stopped paying rent when I was 24 years old.  I stopped paying for food when I was 26 years old.  Now, I feel utter repulsion at the thought of paying money to live.
I can hear your logical justification for paying money to live and I hear the gas released from your anus.  In both cases I heard you and I empathise with your difficulty in releasing the ideas and foods you have consumed.  I wish you all the best in your internal cleanse.
I contradict the ideologies of the culture I was raised to serve as I reject the poisons that were advertised at me.
I reject McDonald's and Coca-Cola and all the less-successful advertising campaigns disguised as food.
I reject heterosexual monogamy and every new sexual permutation devised to define the perversity and love emanating from my soul.
I reject the fools in uniforms who tell me that this food isn't mine, that I must pay before I can bring it home and share it.
I am only an animal of Planet Earth, I cannot be anything that I am not.
I cannot be a Capitalist, regardless of how much I am educated in its normality.  
I will always be an animal.
I will die an animal as I was born an animal, from my mother's womb.
I am the result of the loving coitus of my parents and I have grown up in this world largely because of the sustained love of the people around me.
It is not food or money that has kept me alive, but love.  If there was no other way to die from lack of love, I would have killed myself by now.
I have never gone hungry nor lacked warmth and shelter.  I have never lacked the love of my family, my friends and my tribe.
It is this network of love that makes life worth living and it is the strength of this love that makes things happen.
Everything I do is the result of the strength of love in my heart, in my body and in my life; because I have been loved and because I do love.
The ideologies and religions that impede us exist only in our fluffy minds.  They define our behaviour as long as we allow them to define our behaviour.
The institutions and laws that impede us exist only in our fluffy minds.  When we cease to dedicate our lives to their perpetuation they cease to exist and the people and resources that constitute these institutions can instantly be used to promote the cause of life on this planet.
I am not scared of pain or death.  I am not afraid that I will go to Hell or go to Prison.  My God/dess will not dessert me and s/he does not need to exist to be constantly in my heart.
Everyone who loves me will stand beside my grave as my naked body is lowered into the naked grave within which I will nourish the soil that has always nourished me.
Nothing will stop me from fully experiencing the life into which I was born.
There is no substitute for love, passion, beauty, pain and great death.

That day

Inspired by Terence McKenna's Novelty Theory.  After watching a YouTube video of McKenna with Lauren in 2008 I wrote this from my notes in 2009.

 "...And on that day..."
 His voice trailed off because no mind could know but only speculate
 and speculation is as rain thrashing against and dripping down a window pane.
 Truth in the desired form was inconceivable
 and therefore useless to these brain worshippers;
 but in regards the past, comprehension could be achieved with great difficulty.

 The year begins in confusion and apprehension,
 fear continues to rise as the institutions of government and economy crumble into chaos.
 Fear becomes anger and anger becomes hatred and hatred becomes violence in the utmost throes of fear,
 and soon the the cracked streets are strewn with bodies;
 the survivors are those who stare death in the face and do not blink.
 After this mass bloodshed there can be no mourning
 because the world merely took a long overdue shower and washed away her musty stink.
 A new day is declared and the refreshing scent of global peace drifts idly through the air like pollen in early spring
 and life continues and beauty gives birth to itself exponentially;
 and the illusion of perfect is so strong that peace is complete and perfection approximated;
 and all the love of all life on Earth combines to transform their planet into a glowing orb of beauty incomprehensible and indescribable.
 The Earth rises, glowing more brightly than the sun and illuminating the whole barren universe
 and the entire universe glows with the illumination of the love of all life on Earth
 and water breaks forth from the depths of the most desolate planets and life and love spread throughout an infinite universe
 and the sun and all his fellow stars grow extra bright to accommodate this new life
 and as the stars grow brighter so does the light of love intensify and this beauty that can never again be corrupted by fear becomes a throbbing intensifying mass emanating light and love to every corner of the universe
 and soon the stars, in their utter folly, grow so hot, and the planets around them in unison,
 that matter cannot sustain what it has developed.

 For those who experienced this event it felt merely like an exponential brightening of a light that climaxed as a blinding glare that permeated every atom and obliterated the entire physical universe in one painless moment
 and it was as pleasant and unconscious as a drift into sleep
 and the night of this sleep was long and images appeared and shifted
 and all life experienced differently old images and emotions they thought had been forever lost
 and all that had died returned
 and no one thought it strange.
 In fact no one though much at all, they merely glided through their images and emotions, briefly touching each other and drifting away, as if in a dream;
 and at one moment, in the midst of dream, a single entity realised that this is a dream and we are all asleep together forever
 and from this entity, like the ripples in a pool of water, this awareness spread through everything
 and it was a dream and therefore they could do anything and so they took to the air and flew their fill
 and then they embraced
 and all life embraced all life
 and it was a dream and matter did not exist
 and form entered form and love possessed love fully and equally
 and love was generosity and abundance
 and universal harmony focussed and condensed and compressed to one tiny pinprick of consciousness
 and this point became smaller and denser until all existence was so intensely focussed in on itself that it imploded once, with such ferocity that all the surrounding nothingness was sucked into a void
 and for a moment there was stillness and silence.

 But there was a big bang from the depths of the void
 and that big bang let there be light
 and there was light.

The night the poem died

I wrote a poem once, I can't even remember when.  It was more of a story than a poem really; or even a prophesy; but a mythical prophesy, not a literal prophesy.  I do think it's going to happen, but not like that.  When it happens it will be wonderful.  The poem was called Armageddon and I didn't know why I wrote it.  I thought it was nothing and yet like everything I write I stored it safely on my computer where I rediscovered it two years later to my great delight.  I had no memory of writing it and had no idea what inspired or provoked it.  I simply uncovered this ancient artifact buried deep within the memory of my five-year-old laptop.  I read it out loud to myself and I liked it.  I made a few small changes and I liked it a lot.  It had an alarmingly effective rhythm that got me every time and yet I did not understand what it was saying to me.  I knew precisely because I was so challenged and fascinated with this piece myself I couldn't possibly read it to an unsuspecting audience.  At least not until I finally found an audience who I knew could not only handle it but appreciate it; an audience in front of which I would feel comfortable to let myself go somewhere of which I was uncertain.

There was one night late around the fire when I got a specific request to read something from my manuscript that I carried around with me everywhere, in case of the likely possibility that someone would ask me to read or perform.  With such a diverse manuscript in my hands I am able to choose something specifically for the situation.  The energy around the fire that night was an intense calm, an unusual but beautiful combination.  Many people were smoking marijuana, expanding or shriveling their minds, and so I decided to read the piece that I dared not read before.  I sat cross-legged a meter away from the fire, facing my audience of less than ten people.  An audience that quickly expanded to everyone standing in the vicinity and everyone sitting around the fire.  I didn't mind that there were certain parts of the poem that were particularly confrontational or unexplainable because I would simply start reading and once I started I was inevitably reading the entire thing.  In fact once I start I cease to exist for the duration of the poem and the poem itself indeed takes over my body.  Even as I read I was passed a joint of bush buds and I took drags as I read about the impending eschaton.  Sometimes I am present for the performance of my writing, sometimes I am absent and this time as my body sat cross-legged on the grass reading Armageddon I listened along with everyone else and for the first time, after reading it so many times I had almost memorised it, I finally understood certain aspects of it that I could not possibly explain now because they were caught up in the context of the poem and the context of the moment.  It all made perfect profound sense for one alarmingly intense sacred moment.  Of course it's not just sacred poetry that creates these situations, it also takes sacred people willing to create a sacred moment in a sacred environment and in this case we combined all four briefly.

I realised when I returned to my body following the coda of the poem that this poem was written especially for this moment; the creation of this moment is the reason I wrote, edited and carried around this shamefully brilliant poem for so many years.  As we all sat in the heavy wake of this performance, something without an English word thick in the air, I experienced a strange mix of shame and pride and curiosity about the response of the others.  They all stared at me with awe and love as if I am from another planet.  (Am I from another planet?)  The intensity I felt throughout my body was almost unbearable.  I felt something moving through me and I became immeasurably cold.  I climbed to my knees and held out my arms and asked to be held.  I was in the right place and two beautiful humans held me.  The long hug was intense as the three of us shared this unexplainable surging energy.  The woman closed her eyes and took a far journey through dream into another dimension and in only a few seconds of clock time she returned exhilarated and exhausted.  Maybe she projected onto me the amazement she felt that the world is a much bigger place than we have been taught.  Maybe she understands now that our experience is as big or small as we want it to be.  We can live an entire lifetime in one closed-eyed marijuana-stoned post-Apocalyptic hug moment.

I am told that Armageddon is a place in Israel, but I write about an Armageddon that is deeply embedded in our collective unconscious and in the form of myth is increasingly frequently manifesting into consciousness.  What do I do with this poem I love and fear to perform now that the moment it was born for has passed and I am certain anybody with a career would never publish it?  We all know the end is coming soon and we constantly create myths to manifest our understandings and share them, to express the little deaths that are happening every day and anticipate the big death that will so soon annihilate all our illusions.  And so this precious powerful moment we created that night is not gone but still remains in our flesh through the sound vibrations created with its recital.  Everybody who experienced this sound vibration, and anybody who comes into contact with its diminishing aftereffects will possess within the memory of their flesh a powerful myth for the end of the world as we know it.  Perhaps we will all be a little more prepared and a little less scared when the time comes for us to accept the reality of death and live in a world where we have no choice but to love and honour each other and every form of life we share our environment with in all the dimensions we call home.

The end is nigh again

It seems the end is nigh again and some people are curious and some people are convinced and some people are scared. My brother is building a bomb shelter and I am sure I will be welcome there. However, unlike the terror of the Y2K disaster I don't think the world is going to end this time. On the contrary, I don't think the world exists. You may not believe me, and this is a good thing. Do not believe me. I do not know anything. But hear me out. We have built so many artificial structures in which to house our insecurities and accumulations and so-called civilisation that the world in which we live can indeed be considered non-existent. This may mean you are actually asleep, it may simply mean you need to find a way of reassessing from a different perspective what you consider to be "real". Personally, I am not building a bomb shelter to protect my CD and DVD collection; or even to protect my body. I'll be fine. I might die, of course, but I will be fine regardless of what happens. Of course if I die I certainly won't mind, but I am under the impression, mistaken or otherwise, that any change will be for the better. The bigger the change, the better the results. I am prepared for any eventuality. This is my symbolic bomb shelter. I don't need a physical hole to cower in because I have created of myself and my life a state in which I don't rely on anything tenuous like the economy or electicity. I feel like I will find a way of eating, sheltering and connecting with people in any type of situation. And if not I'll just die. No big deal. Being able to move, both physically around the world and amongst different people and cultures makes me feel like any post-apocalypse, post-economy, post-government, post-driving around world will actually be more exciting and challenging than the one I am living in at the moment, which I don't mind at all. The current world isn't bad. But it could only get better if all these structures that limit our behaviour crumble due to unsustainable practices like building high towers and exploiting the third world (who may actually be just as intelligent as us despite their lack of education). In my utter arrogance and intellectual independence I have compiled a list of ten suggestions for preparing yourself for the impending eschaton: 1. Share food. 2. Do not engage with conflict. 3. Love and respect all forms of life equally. 4. Do not watch television or follow "the news". 5. Engage with your environment. 6. Be entirely selfish, with every action serving to benefit your whole self. 7. Listen to your body. Give it the food it needs, rather than what you think you are addicted to. 8. Drink water; listen and express yourself frequently. 9. Love yourself and by extension everything that surrounds you to a distance of infinity in every direction. 10. Do not do anything you do not want to do, regardless of who suggests it. If you follow these suggestions, commandments we could say, you will or will not be prepared when that date inevitably comes around and something or nothing inevitably happens. Love Chris