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.

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell by William Blake (p1-15)

THE ARGUMENT

Rintrah roars & shakes his fire in the burdened air;

Hungry clouds swag on the deep.

Once meek, and in a perilous path,

The just man kept his course along

The vale of death.

Roses are planted where thorns grow,

And on the barren heath

Sing the honey bees.

Then the perilous path was planted:

And a river, and a spring

On every cliff and tomb;

And on the bleached bones

Red clay brought forth.

Till the villain left the paths of ease,

To walk in perilous paths, and drive

The just man into barren climes.

Now the sneaking serpent walks

In mild humility.

And the just man rages in the wilds

Where lions roam.

Rintrah roars & shakes his fires in the burdened air;

Hungry clouds swag on the deep.

~  ~  ~

As a new heaven is begun, and it is now thirty-three years since its advent: the Eternal Hell revives.  And lo! Swedenborg is the Angel sitting at the tomb; his writings are the linen clothes folded up.  Now is the dominion of Edom, & the return of Adam into Paradise; see Isiah XXXIV & XXXV chap:

Without Contraries is no progression.  Attraction and repulsion, reason and energy, love and hate, are necessary to human existence.

From these contraries spring what the religious call Good & Evil.  Good is the passive that obeys Reason.  Evil is the active springing from Energy.

Good is Heaven.  Evil is Hell.

~  ~  ~

THE VOICE OF THE DEVIL

All Bibles or sacred codes have been the causes of the following errors.

1.  That Man has two real existing principles, viz: a Body & a Soul.

2.  That Energy, called Evil, is alone from the Body, & that Reason, called Good, is alone from the Soul.

3.  That God will torment Man in Eternity for following his Energies.

But the following contraries to these are true.

1.  Man has no Body distinct from his Soul for that called Body is a portion of Soul discerned by the five senses, the chief inlets of Soul in this age.

2.  Energy is the only life and is from the Body, and Reason is the bound or outward circumference of Energy.

3.  Energy is Eternal Delight.

~  ~  ~

Those who restrain desire, do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained; and the restrainer, or reason, usurps its place & governs the unwilling.

And being restrained it by degrees becomes passive till it is only the shadow of desire.

The history of this is written in Paradise Lost, & the Governor, or Reason, is called Messiah.

And the original Archangel, or possessor of the command of the heavenly host, is called the Devil or Satan and his children are called Sin & Death.

But in the book of Job Milton's Messiah is called Satan.

For this history has been adopted by both parties.

It indeed appeared to Reason as if Desire was cast out, but the Devil's account is that the Messiah fell, & formed a heaven of what he stole from the Abyss.

This is shown in the Gospel, where he prays to the Father to send the comforter, or Desire, that Reason may have ideas to build on, the Jehovah of the Bible being no other than he who dwells in flaming fire.

Know that after Christ's death, he became Jehovah.

But in Milton; the Father is Destiny, the Son, a Ratio of the five senses, & the Holy-ghost, Vacuum!

Note.  The reason Milton wrote  in fetters when he wrote of Angels & God, and at liberty when of Devils and Hell, is because he was a true Poet and of the Devil's party without knowing it.

 A MEMORABLE FANCY

 As I was walking among the fires of hell, delighted with the enjoyments of Genius, which to Angels look like torment and insanity, I collected some of their proverbs; thinking that the sayings used in a nation mark its character, so the Proverbs of Hell show the nature of Infernal wisdom better than any description of buildings or garments.

When I came home: on the abyss of the five senses, where a flat sided steep frowns over the present world, I saw a mighty Devil folded in black clouds, hovering on the sides of the rock: with corroding fires he wrote the following sentences now perceived by the minds of men, & read by them on the earth:

     How do you know but ev'ry Bird that cuts the airy way,

     Is an immense world of delight, clos'd by your senses five?

PROVERBS OF HELL

In seed time learn, in harvest teach, in winter enjoy.

Drive your cart and your plow over the bones of the dead.

The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.

Prudence is a rich, ugly old maid courted by Incapacity.

He who desires but acts not breeds pestilence.

The cut worm forgives the plow.

Dip him in the river who loves water.

A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees.

He whose face gives no light, shall never become a star.

Eternity is in love with the productions of time.

The busy bee has no time for sorrow.

The hours of folly are measured by the clock; but of wisdom, no clock can measure.

All wholesome food is caught without a net or a trap.

Bring out number, weight & measure in a year of dearth.

No bird soars too high, if he soars with his own wings.

A dead body revenges not injuries.

The most sublime act is to set another before you.

If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise.

Folly is the cloak of knavery.
Shame is Pride's cloak.

~  ~  ~

Prisons are built with stones of Law, Brothels with bricks of Religion.

The pride of the peacock is the glory of God.
The lust of the goat is the bounty of God.
The wrath of the lion is the wisdom of God.
The nakedness of woman is the work of God.
Excess of sorrow laughs.  Excess of joy weeps.

The roaring of lions, the howling of wolves, the raging of the stormy sea, and the destructive sword, are portions of eternity, too great for the eye of man.

The fox condemns the trap, not himself.

Joys impregnate.  Sorrows bring forth.

Let man wear the fell of the lion, woman the fleece of the sheep.

The bird a nest, the spider a web, man friendship.

The selfish, smiling fool, & the sullen, frowning fool shall be both thought wise, that they may be a rod.

What is now proved was once only imagined.

The rat, the mouse, the fox, the rabbit watch the roots; the lion, the tyger, the horse, the elephant watch the fruits.

The cistern contains: the fountain overflows.
One thought fills immensity.

Always be ready to speak your mind, and a base man will avoid you.

Every thing possible to be believed is an image of truth.

The eagle never lost so much time as when he submitted to learn of the crow.

~  ~  ~

The fox provides for himself, but God provides for the lion.

Think in the morning.  Act in the noon.  Eat in the evening.  Sleep in the night.

He who has suffered you to impose on him, knows you.

As the plow follows words, so God rewards prayers.

The tygers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction.

Expect poison from the standing water.

You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough.

Listen to the fool's reproach! it is a kingly title!

The eyes of fire, the nostrils of air, the mouth of water, the beard of earth.

The weak in courage is strong in cunning.

The apple tree never asks the beech how he shall grow; nor the lion, the horse, how he shall take his prey.

The thankful receiver bears a plentiful harvest.

If others had not been foolish, we should be so.

The soul of sweet delight can never be defiled.

When thou seest an Eagle, thou seest a portion of Genius; lift up thy head!

As the caterpillar chooses the fairest leaves to lay her eggs on, so the priest lays his curse on the fairest joys.

To create a little flower is the labour of ages.

Damn braces: Bless relaxes.

The best wine is the oldest, the best water the newest.

Prayers plow not!  Praises reap not!
Joys laugh not!  Sorrows weep not!

~  ~  ~

The head Sublime, the heart Pathos, the genitals Beauty, the hands & feet Proportion.

As the air to a bird or the sea to a fish, so is contempt to the contemptible.

The crow wished everything was black, the owl that everything was white.

Exuberance is Beauty.

If the lion was advised by the fox, he would be cunning.

Improvement makes straight roads; but the crooked roads without improvement are roads of Genius.

Sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires.

Where man is not, nature is barren.

Truth can never be told so as to be understood, and not be believed.

Enough! or Too much.

~  ~  ~

The ancient Poets animated all sensible objects with Gods or Geniuses, calling them by the names and adorning them with the properties of woods, rivers, mountains, lakes, cities, nations, and whatever their enlarged & numerous senses could perceive.

And particularly they studied the genius of each city and country, placing it under its mental deity;

Till a system was formed, which some took advantage of, & enslaved the vulgar by attempting to realise or abstract the mental deities from their objects: thus began Priesthood;

Choosing forms of worship from poetic tales.

And at length they pronounced that the Gods had ordered such things.

Thus men forgot that All deities reside in the human breast.

~  ~  ~

 A memorable Fancy

The Prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel dined with me, and I asked them how they dared so roundly to assert that God spoke to them; and whether they did not think at the time that they would be misunderstood, & so be the cause of imposition.

Isaiah answered: "I saw no God, nor heard any, in a finite organical perception; but my senses discovered the infinite in everything, and as I was then persuaded, & remain confirmed, that the voice of honest indignation is the voice of God, I cared not for consequences, but wrote."

Then I asked: "Does a firm persuasion that a thing is so, make it so?"

He replied: "All poets believe that it does, & in ages of imagination this firm persuasion moved mountains; but many are not capable of a firm persuasion of anything."

Then Ezekiel said: "The philosophy of the east taught the first principles of human perception: some nations held one principle for the origin, & some another: we of Israel taught that the Poetic Genius (as you now call it) was the first principle and all the others merely derivative, which was the cause of our despising the Priests & Philosophers of other countries, and prophesying that all Gods would at last be proved to originate in ours & be the tributaries of the Poetic Genius; it was this that our great poet, King David, desired so fervently & invokes so pathetic'ly, saying by this he conquers enemies & governs kingdoms; and we so loved our God, that we cursed in his name all the deities of surrounding nations, and asserted that they had rebelled: from these opinions the vulgar came to think that all nations would at least be subject to the jews."

"This," said he, "like all firm persuasions, is come to pass; for all nations believe the jews' code and worship the jews' god, and what greater subjection can be?"

I heard with some wonder, & must confess my own conviction.  After dinner I asked Isaiah to favour the world with his lost works; he said none of equal value was lost.  Ezekiel said the same of his.

I also asked Isaiah what made him go naked and barefoot three years?  He answered: "The same thing that made our friend Diogenes, the Grecian."

I then asked Ezekiel why he ate dung, & lay so long on his right and left side?  He answered: "The desire of raising other men into a perception of the infinite: this the North American tribes practice, & is he honest who resists his genius or conscience only for the sake of present ease or gratification?"

~  ~  ~

The ancient tradition that the world will be consumed in fire at the end of six thousand years is true, as I have heard from Hell.

For the cherub with his flaming sword is hereby commanded to leave his guard at tree of life, and when he does the whole creation will be consumed, and appear infinite and holy, whereas it now appears finite and corrupt.

This will come to pass by an improvement of sensual enjoyment.

But first the notion that man has a body distinct from his soul is to be expunged; this I shall do by printing in the infernal method, by corrosives, which in Hell are salutary and medicinal, melting apparent surfaces away and displaying the infinite that was hid.

If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is: Infinite.

For man has closed himself up, 'til he sees all things through narrow chinks of his cavern.

 

~  ~  ~ 

 

A memorable fancy 

I was in a Printing house in Hell & saw the method in which knowledge is transmitted from generation to generation.

In the first chamber was a Dragon-Man, clearing away the rubbish from a cave's mouth; within, a number of Dragons were hollowing the cave.

In the second chamber was a Viper folding around the rock & the cave,  and others adorning it with gold, silver and precious stones.

In the third chamber was an Eagle with wings and feathers of air: he caused the inside of the cave to be infinite; around were numbers of Eagle-like men, who built palaces in the immense cliffs.

In the fourth chamber were Lions of flaming fire, raging around & melting the metals into living fluids.

In the fifth chamber were Unnamed forms, which cast the metals into the expanse.

There they were received by Men who occupied the sixth chamber, and took the form of books & were arranged in libraries.

Old Women Hating; by Ursula Le Guin

Told aloud by Thorn of High Porch House in Sinshan.

Where High Porch House now stands in Sinshan, a long time ago there was a house called After the Earthquake House.  It had stood there a long time, too long.  The stone thresholds and the floor tiles were worn hollow.  Doors hung crooked in their frames.  Boards had come loose.  The walls were full of mice and the space under the roof was stuffed with birds' nests and wasps' nests and bat dung.  The house was so old nobody remembered what family built it to start with.  Nobody wanted to repair it or keep it clean.  It was a house like an old, old dog who doesn't care for anybody and nobody cares for it, and it lives dirty and silent, scratching its fleas.  The people in Sinshan then must have been careless, to let that house get so old and dirty; it would have been better to take it down, take it apart and use the good boards and stones, unbuild it and build a new house.  But sometimes people don't do what's better, or what's good.  Things get going along and they are as they are and who's going to change them?  It's the wheel gets turning.  It's hard to be mindful of everything.  And it's hard to interfere in what your neighbors do, too.

Well, there were two households in that old After the Earthquake House: one Red Adobe and one Obsidian.  Each household had a grandmother.  Those two women had lived there all their lives hating each other.  They didn't get on.  They wouldn't speak to each other.  How did it begin?  What did they want?  I don't know.  Nobody who told the story knew.  Hating gets going, it goes round, it gets older and tighter and older and tighter, until it holds a person inside it like a fist holds a stick.  So there they were, the Red Adobe woman on the first floor under the roof, and the Obsidian woman on the second floor over the cellars, hating each other.  The Adobe woman would say, "Smell the stink of that cooking coming up here!  Tell that person to quit stinking the house!"  And her son-in-law would go downstairs, and say that to the Obsidian old woman.  She would say nothing to him, but say to her son-in-law, "What is that noise?  A dog yapping somewhere?  A toilet running?  There are unpleasant noises in this house.  People walking upstairs, stupid people talking and talking.  Tell them to stop making so much noise."

In the Adobe household there were two daughters, and one of them had two daughters, all married, so there were four sons-in-law, and some younger children, a big household, living in all those old, dirty rooms under the roof.  They didn't mend the roof.  When it leaked they made a hole in the floor by the wall and let the water drip down on the people underneath.  The Adobe old woman said, "Water always goes downhill."  Down there the Obsidian grandmother lived with her two daughters; one of them didn't marry, the other had a husband and one daughter.  So they weren't very many people in that household, and they were ungenerous, silent and keeping to themselves, not dancing at the festivals.  Nobody else ever went into their rooms, and people said, "They must hoard, in that household.  They must have things, they must be keeping things in there."

Other people said something like, "What makes you say that?  They never make anything.  There's a couple of sheep that go with the town flock, the cow died, they farm a little land down by Rattlesnake Clearing but they don't grow anything but corn, they don't gather anything but mushrooms, they never make anything to give, their clothes are old, their pots and baskets are old and dirty - what makes you say they have a lot of things?"

People saw an iron pan one of the Obsidian women put into the scrap bin; it was scraped and burned right through in the middle, but they could see she had been using it, frying in it around the hole in it.  But some of them said that that proved the family must be hoarding, if they were so stingy they went on cooking with a worn-out pan.

The family upstairs in the old house never gave anything either except food, but nobody said they were rich.  They kept all the doors open and anybody could see what they had and how dirty it was.  All the sons-in-law hunted, so they had plenty of venison if not much else; and the daughters made cheese.  They were the only people in Sinshan that made much cheese, then.  People that wanted it brought them the milk, and they got some milch goats, and milked their ewes.  They ripened the cheese in the ground floor of the house, which was half underground, good cellarage for cheese or wine - the cellars under High Porch House now are partly those old cellars.  None of them ever farmed, even though they were Red Adobe people.  The men were always over on the hunting side, up on Sinshan Mountain and She Watches and clear over to Fir Mountain.  The old woman didn't like to eat anything but venison.  They were generous with the game, and gave the cheese they made to people who gave them things they needed; but they were people who took things and lost them, broke things and didn't mend them.  They were inconsequent, shiftless, small-minded people.  None of them would be worth telling a story about, except for the hatred between the grandmothers.  That was great: a great hatred, all in one house, inside the walls.

Year after year it went on, and that was why the house was dirty and leaking and full of flies and fleas, that was why the people in it were mean and unforgiving and dull: they were all fuel, fuel for that hatred between the two old women.  Everything they did or said went into the fire of that hatred.  If game was scarce, the Obsidian family were glad because the people upstairs came back without a deer.  If there was a drought, the Red Adobe family were glad because the people downstairs didn't harvest much corn.  If the cheese cae out bitter or dry, the Adobe women said that the Obsidian women had put sand or lye in the crocks in the cellar.  If one of the Obsidian family slipped on the doorstep, they said it was because the people upstairs had dripped deerfat on it.  If the wiring got crazy and the walls split and the balconies and staircases got hanging loose, neither household would see to repairs, saying it was the other household's fault.  Everything that went wrong, the old women would say, "It's her fault, it's her doing!  That one!"

The eldest son-in-law of the Adobe family was going up their stairs, and they were so rotten that he broke right through, and tried to catch himself falling, and fell wrong, and broke his back.  He didn't die straight off, but took a while doing it.  People came from the Doctors Lodge and the Black Adobe Lodge to help him die, and they were singing the Going Westward to the Sunrise songs with him when his wife's mother began talking and shouting: "It was that one!  That woman!  She made the step come loose, she took out the pegs, she did it!"

The Obsidian grandmother sat in her room underneath and rocked her body and listened with her mouth open, laughing.  She said to her family, "Listen to that one, up there.  That's how she sings when somebody's dying.  Let her wait and hear how I sing when she's dying!"

But her son-in-law, who never talked, and always did everything the women of the household told him to do, began saying, "Something bad is going to happen.  I didn't take out the pegs.  I didn't make the step come loose.  Oh, something bad is happening.  I am going to die!"  And he began singing the Going Westward songs out loud, not the songs others sing to the dying person, but the songs the person dying sings.

The old woman was superstitious.  She thought singing those songs would make you die.  She began screaming, "Make him be quiet!  What is he trying to do to us!  Nobody in this household is dying!  Only up there, only up there, let them die up there!"

So the daughters got the man to be quiet.  The people upstairs had been listening, because they had heard the shouting.  You could hear everything in that house.  They had loosened the boards and made holes so they could hear each other and feed their hatred.  So everything was silent for a while.  Then the dying man upstairs began to snore and rattle in his throat.  The people with him began singing the third song.  The grandmother downstairs sat listening.

Her son-in-law was crazy, after that.  He sat inside the house and never went outdoors.  He never worked, but sat in corners picking at his arms and legs, picking at fleabites and scabs.

The Black Adobe people who had been at the singing for the dying man came to talk to both grandmothers, because they had seen and heard that night what kind of hatred those people had for one another.  Before that it had all been shut inside the house, and other people hadn't thought about it.  The Black Adobe people said: "This is no good.  You're hurting yourselves and the rest of us here in town.  If you won't give up hating each other, maybe one family should leave After the Earthquake House."

The Red Adobe grandmother listened to that and said, "There are only five of them down there, and they have things, all kinds of things.  The house is full of mice and creatures that breed in the grain they hoard, the house is full of moths that breed in the clothes they hide.  They have ornaments and wakwa costumes and feathers and iron and copper in boxes under the floorboards.  They never share anything, they never give anything, they have all kinds of things.  Let them build themselves a new house!"

The Obsidian grandmother said, "Let those shiftless breeders go live over on the hunting side, if they like.  This is my house."

So the Black Adobe people had to begin to talk with other people in town about those two households to see if there was something that should be done.  While they were doing that, the elder daughter of the downstairs family feel sick very suddenly.  She went into convulsions and then fell into coma.  Her crazy husband paid no attention, but went on picking at his sores in a corner of the room.  The grandmother sent the sister crying to the Doctors Lodge - "She had been poisoned!  They put poisonous mushrooms with our mushrooms!"

The doctors said it was mushroom poisoning, but they showed the sister that in among the mushrooms she and the dying woman had gathered and dried there were several feituli, and one of those kills, or half of one of those.  But she cried that they had never gathered those, somebody else had put them among their mushrooms.  She kept saying that and paying no attention to her sister, who was dying.  Then the grandmother heaved herself up and stood on the porch, at the foot of the stairs to the balcony above.  She stood there and screamed at the family up there, "You think you can kill my daughter?  You think you can do that?  What makes you think you can do that?  Nobody can kill my daughter!"  Everybody in Sinshan heard that, and saw her standing there, shaking her fists, shaking her arms and screaming.

The Adobe old woman came out on the porch above.  She said, "What's all the noise?  Did I hear that a dog was dying?"

The Obsidian old woman began to scream without words, and started to go up the stairs, but people had gathered, and they stopped her and held her arms and brought her back into her own household.  Doctors Lodge people and Black Adobe people and her granddaughter held her and calmed her until she could be quiet while her daughter died and they sang the songs for her.

Upstairs, the other old woman called out once, "There's a bad smell, some dog is dead somewhere."  But her own daughters and sons-in-law made her be still.

They were fed up.  They were ashamed by all this hatred which all the people in town had seen and heard.

After the cremation, people from the upstairs family came to the Black Adobe Lodge to talk.  They said, "We are sick of this hatred between our mother and that other woman downstairs.  They're old and we can't change them, but we don't want to go on with it.  Tell us what would be good to do, and we'll do as you say."

But while they were talking about it in the lodge on Big Knoll, a child came yelling, "Fire!  Fire in town!"

They all ran back into Sinshan, and there the pumps were pouring water from the big hoe into After the Earthquake House, and flaring flakes and lumps of fire were spinning up where the roof was burning.

After her family had left the house, the Adobe old woman was lone upstairs there, and she had poured oil down the holes in the floors and set it alight to burn the people downstairs.  The smoke got so thick it confused her, and she didn't get out, if she tried to get out.  She was suffocated, up there in her rooms alone.

The Obsidian old woman and the others ran out when they smelled the fire and saw burning oil dripping down their walls inside.  They had to pull the son-in-law out.  The Obsidian old woman was standing outside the house crying and singing the songs for the dying, and people were holding her to keep her from trying to get back inside the burning house.

Once they had brought out the Adobe old woman and knew she was dead, people said, "Let the house go on burning.  Let it burn itself down!"

So they wet down the roofs and walls of the nearby houses; the ground was wet, since it was in the rainy season; and they let the house destroy itself.

People from all the heyimas gave the two households what they needed to start housekeeping again.  The Obsidian family went to the ground floor of Old Red House, and the Adobe family split up, some of them going to live for a while in a hunting camp on Sinshan Mountain, and others to Drum House, where they had cousins of their House.

They said there was nothing left in the ashes of that house worth putting in the scrap bin, not a board nor a bed nor a doorhinge, only ashes and cinders and trash.

After a few seasons, people of the Blue Clay built on the old foundations, extending them a little on the southwest side, and building them higher aboveground; so now there is High Porch House.  They say sometimes you can hear something like old women's voices whispering in the old parts of the cellars; but I live there, and I never have heard them.

NOTE:
re: "...nobody said they were rich."
The Kesh adjective meaning "rich" is weambad, from the word ambad, which as a verb means to give or be generous and as a noun means wealth or generosity.  But the word Thorn used telling the story was wetotop.  That comes from the word top, which as a verb means to have or to keep or to own, and as a noun means possessions, things used; in its doubled form, totop, it means to hoard, treasure, possessions hidden or unused.  And the adjective form wetotop describes a hoarder, a miser.  In such terms, people who don't own much because they keep giving things away are rich, while those who give little and so own much are poor.  To keep the sense clear I had to translate "poor" as "rich" - but the relation of our words miser and misery, miserable, shows that the Kesh view has not always been foreign to us.

from Always Coming Home by Ursula Le Guin

The Valley, home of the people who call themselves the Kesh, exists somewhere in the far future - in the area now known as Northern California.

Always Coming Home weave together the stories, histories, strange and familiar customs, art, architecture, technology, poetry, drama and music of this extraordinary imagined people into a new kind of book.  It is both a novel and an archeology of the future.

 

Voting

It seems pertinent, in this time of electionary foment here in Aotearoa, to address the current political crisis.

Here in Aotearoa we are currently being bombarded with propaganda and hysteria regarding the impending democratic ritual that justifies the authority of what is known as the New Zealand Government.  This process involves the shameless fixation on characters and either building or demolishing their esteem.  For reasons I do not understand, people respond to this process as if it was in some way meaningful.  They respond to it in exactly the same way they would  a soap-opera or a "reality" TV show in which their favourite characters may get "voted out".  These people fail to in any way to contextualise the phenomenon or to objectively consider the information they are receiving from the media.

There are others who take themselves more seriously and apply more analysis of the various candidates by discussing "issues" or "policies".  They apply a more sophisticated form of character politics by constructing what they perceive to be personal images of all the political parties based on what they promise to do after the election.  The promises, while appearing to be serious issues affecting peoples' lives, society and the environment, are as fictitious as the characters ritually raised and burned periodically because everybody knows that promises are not kept.  The political parties, in listing their post-election policies, are merely drawing an image of themselves to appeal to their particular corner of the so-called "public".  Like those who choose their favourite Idol contestant, the one with whom they can most identify, they choose their favourite political party, to define and elevate themselves, like those who say, "We won," when their favourite sports team wins.

We define ourselves and thus create boundaries.  We are supposed to place ourselves on a spectrum between left and right, to separate ourselves from the idiots or the scum on the other end of the spectrum.  Are these scum the same people we have an enjoyable conversation with until we suddenly find out who they are voting for?  Is this left-right spectrum a meaningful way of separating ourselves from our fellows?  The left-right spectrum is simply a difference in economic policy, whether the mechanisms of politics are set up in a way that channels money to those with or without resources.  It is an admission of the success of capitalism to redistribute the wealth and the moral right associated with it, or an ambivalence or lack of faith in the mechanisms of capitalism.  This in no way defines me as a person and I refuse to place myself on this spectrum.

In fact, I refuse to define myself on any of these party-politic images.  I refuse to distance myself from those around me with arbitrary boundaries imposed from above.  We are told we live in a post-colonial period, that we live in a reasonable social democracy, and that we should be grateful.

Why should I bother to vote?

In Aotearoa, perhaps more than any other English-speaking country, the indigenous people we tried to squash are in the process of reclaiming their mana, though perhaps only in relation to the rest of us, who were colonised thousands of years before the Māori.  We are all colonised and we all continue to be distanced from a direct experience of the world in which we live, instead settling for a mediated, commentated experience.  We denounce military coups and forget how our own government was established.  We imbed ourselves in an abstract and arbitrary universe in which the news media is the oracle, the economy is god and the government is the heavenly hierarchy and then we lament that our false reality is not translating successfully to our actual lives.

"The desire to live, to continue, becomes more and more indecisive, more and more phantom-like."
(Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth)

I vote because there is only one thing worse than thinking voting will change anything; thinking that not voting will change anything.  I sympathise with my friends in Australia and USA who don't bother to vote and I do vote for the very same reason.  Here in Aotearoa in 2014 we actually have someone to vote for.  I am not suggesting we will make huge political progress as a result, I am not saying that I believe in or am even aware of their stance on blah-blah 1 or blah-blah 2, but I witness, in my peripheral observation of the political process and its noisy media emanation, a modicum of integrity, a delicate and almost miraculous quality to maintain in the political arena.  While we drive full-speed towards the political failures of Australia and USA we have the opportunity to redirect the train.  We have an intelligent engagement with a political process that can still be influenced.  I would never put myself in that situation, so I can respect reasonable individuals who place themselves in the political world and, however naively or cynically, try to influence it.

My faith lies in the hope that it will collapse, and in the meantime we can only minimise damage.  It is clear that nothing of value can be achieved on a political level, and so I vote for those in whom I can see integrity, because I trust the strength of the human soul, not ground down with political dogma and heirarchy, to stand up against stupidity and violence.  Meanwhile, real change is manifested with real responsibility, in our lives, in our society, in our environment.

from The White Goddess; by Robert Graves

My thesis is that the language of poetic myth anciently current in the Mediterranean and Northern Europe was a magical language bound up with popular religious ceremonies in honour of the Moon-goddess, or Muse, some of them dating from the Old Stone Age, and that this remains the language of true poetry - "true" in the nostalgic modern sense of "the unimprovable original, not a synthetic substitute".  The language was tampered with in late Minoan times when invaders from Central Asia began to substitute patrilinear for matrilinear institutions and remodel or falsify the myths to justify the social changes.  Then came the early Greek philosophers who were strongly opposed to magical poetry as threatening their new religion of logic, and under their influence a rational poetic language (now called the Classical) was elaborated in honour of their patron Apollo and imposed on the world as the last word in spiritual illumination: a view that has prevailed practically ever since in European schools and universities, where myths are now studied only as quaint relics of the nursery age of mankind.

Kombucha

 Kombucha is a living organism.  The kombucha itself is actually a living symbiosis of different, beneficial bacteria and special yeast cultures.  It looks like tough, rubbery jelly and varies in colour from cream to browny yellow.  Because it is a living organism it grows to fit the shape of the container.  New layers grow on top of the old and can be peeled off to start new cultures.

 The first step is to obtain a healthy kombucha.  Ask around your friends, or sometimes you can buy them in organic stores.

In some parts of old China and Japan, it was often the custom for families to give a new bride a kombucha as a wedding gift.  This was nurtured throughout her marriage and then passed on to her own daughter.

Keeping a Healthy Kombucha

The Kombucha organism will literally last for centuries (because it continually renews itself) - but it must have the right conditions in which to grow.

Avoid:

• allowing the Kombucha to be contaminated by cigarette smoke - nicotine will kill Kombucha.
• allowing it to come into contact with metal - remove rings before handling your Kombucha; use only wooden or plastic spoons to stir; keep in a pottery or glass container.
• extremes of temperature - Kombucha grows best in a warm environment (not hot). Keep it on the kitchen bench, or in a cupboard, away from sunny windows and ovens.
• allowing dust to contaminate your brew - keep it tightly covered with a gauze, muslin or fine cotton cloth secured with a rubberband.
• allowing insects to contaminate your brew - they'll be attracted to it, so keeping it tightly covered (as above) will keep them away.
• using oily herbal teas - oils can spoil the Kombucha.
   

Recipe for Kombucha Tea

I have found my Kombucha brews best in large jars.

3 litres of boiling water

1 cup of raw sugar

4-6 tea bags (whatever flavour you like; I use Green Tea Berry, Black Tea Chai Spice, Black Adder Liquorice)

1 healthy Kombucha organism

1 cup of Kombucha fermented brew (mother tea) as a starter

NOTE: As you become acquainted with the process and the needs of your kombucha friend, you can alter the recipe for the health of the kombucha and your personal taste.

Method

Use clean utensils.

Wash hands thoroughly.
We have a very hot water temperature, which is perfect for sterilising all objects involved.
Infuse tea bags in boiling water until desired strength; remove tea bags.
Dissolve sugar in hot water and add to tea.

Add the mother brew to the cooled tea mixture and then float the Kombucha on the top.
Cover tightly with cloth and rubber band.  It needs to breathe, hence a lid is not appropriate, but it also needs to avoid contamination.

Place the Kombucha brew where it can sit undisturbed for a week. It doesn't require any light, so it can be left in a cupboard during this time.

You know the Komucha is ready to drink when it is neither sweet (because all the sugar has been consumed) nor sour (because the organisms have not been starved).

After a week or longer of fermentation it is ready to drink.  However, I prefer to bottle for a second fermentation.

Second fermentation

Sterilise glass bottles (wine bottles work well), a funnel and a porous cloth.
Remove the Kombucha organism temporarily from the jar into a dish where it is safe from contamination.
Filter the brew through the cloth into the bottles, leaving half a cup of space at the top of each bottle.
Leave one cup of brew in the jar for next week's batch.
Dissolve 1/4 cup of sugar in 1/2 cup of water and add to each bottle.  The bottle should be full.
Seal the bottle and leave to brew for another week or two.
This second fermentation in the sealed bottle should produce an effervescent carbonated effect.
Repeat the above process, adding infused tea and dissolved sugar to the mother brew and floating the Kombucha organism on top.
I like to wash the organism in cold water before replacing it, rubbing off any dark spots or contamination.

You can bottle the resulting brew and store it in the fridge. if you leave it out, it will continue to grow and ferment. It will still grow, but at a slower pace in the fridge.

Any small piece of the Kombucha will also start to grow, so you may need to strain it again before you drink it.

Once you have the knowledge of how to keep the organism healthy and happy, you can try different tastes.  The brew should be neither too sweet nor too sour.  If it is too sweet, then the organism simply hasn't consumed the sugar yet.  If it becomes acidic then you have been brewing it for too long; feed it a little more sugar and leave for another few days.  Seven days is usually a good time to make a brew, but I like to check on them every few days to make sure there is no contamination and that they are not becoming acidic. 

How much should I drink?

Kombucha is a probiotic drink, so it adds to your intestinal fauna positively.
It is controversial amongst those who resent people taking responsibility for their own health.  The only possible side-effect I have found in my research is rare cases of lactic acidosis, which is caused by excess consumption of lactic acid (i.e. vinegar).  Only improperly over-fermented Kombucha is high in lactic acid.
Start with a small serve - 1/4 to 1/3 cup - take it first thing in the morning (to aid digestion) or last thing at night.

Gradually increase your intake until you find a suitable level - up to two cups per day is beneficial.

Often your Kombucha will be effervescent.  It depends on the mixture and the temperature. Water supply will also effect the taste.

Experiment with different combinations of teas and waters and enjoy the experience.

Care of your Kombucha

You will notice that your Kombucha grows new upper layers very quickly. When it becomes too thick, you can separate the layers where they naturally part and either give them away or use them yourself and discard the older, bottom layers.

When dividing and replacing your Kombucha, ensure that you've removed any rings, that your hands and all utensils are spotlessly clean. The Kombucha is easily contaminated and this will spoil your brew.

You can wash the Kombucha in cooled, boiled water to remove any darker strings that often grow.

Leave the Kombucha on a clean dish with a little of its brew while you clean the container.

Always keep a back up Kombucha in case your main organism is damaged in any way.
My Kombucha organisms grow so quickly I can't resist expanding my production and brewing more.

Other Uses for Kombucha

Don't simply throw out any excess organisms.  If you can't give them away, you can use them as;

• poultices - if you have a burn or minor injury, cut small pieces of Kombucha and bandage them to your skin - the antiseptic qualities of the Kombucha help healing.
• indoor garden compost - cut into manageable pieces and bury just below the surface in your pot plants to give them a lift.
• outdoor compost - if you have a prolific grower, use the excess on your fruit trees and garden plants (bury just below the surface).

Thank you for the information, Jennifer Stewart:

http://www.write101.com/kombucharecipes.htm

Strip Ourselves

I am barren with desolation.
My life is a well of emptiness with a ladder that I choose not to climb up and out of.
I am trapped in my own assumptions and conveniences.
Pity me not, but love me and desire me and invite me to foreign paradises.
Become a yearning throbbing genital of the earth and draw me in, become my lover or my confidant, exist with me in the most intense sobriety of presence.
Cry with me, become pathetic, sob into my warm body and slap me 'til I sob too.
Let our naked bodies feel exposed and safe together, let our genitals meet in calm acceptance.
And then we shall dive into the ocean and she shall take us as we are and strip us of our pretensions.
We do not enter her with togs or with surfboards to hide from her or conquer her, we allow her salty goodness to refresh us and deposit us in a sandy sunny world not entirely the same as the one we dived in from.
And then we burn our hair and our clothes in a fire of driftwood and we no longer subscribe to the shame and personality that have obscured our power most of our lives.
I am naked beneath my clothes and I am a real living human being beneath my culture.
I am hot-blooded, breathing and desiring, weeping alone and overwhelmed with the beauty of a veiled humanity before me.
I cannot rave at the masses because my sanity holds me back almost as much as my fear of arrest.
I am the masses and I am listening carefully for the secret to unlock my life from the profane time adulthood has thrust upon me.
I remember sacred time from childhood, and I have rediscovered it in the wild, in the pure wilderness of earth, in the wildman in my body and in the purity of my fellows.
How can I tell you I want to eat you without appearing as a sexual predator?
How can I tell the world I want to be eaten when I am so comfortably marginalised by my comfy social democracy?

I transform the moment I am experiencing into the eternity we all deserve.  I reject the historical crisis we have talked ourselves into as I reject the culture that has structured this conversation.  Time begins anew whenever we choose, when we celebrate the New Year, when we submit to the ocean, when we strip ourselves and walk out into the night.

Free the Earth Day

I need some feedback on an idea, my friends.  I have a potential solution to some of the many problems which face us as a global community.  I wouldn't even consider this a possibility if I hadn't personally witnessed the global communication and coordination that made Occupy occur simultaneously in 1600 cities in 80 countries around the world.

My idea is that simultaneously all around the world many people, on the same day, stop paying rent and stop paying their mortgage.  That we all declare that from today onwards our home is ours and that we no longer have to pay to live on the planet that we were born on.

The primary benefits, as I see it, are that economic disparity would be drastically leveled, the global economy would be severely damaged and many people would not only have a significant financial burden lifted, but would be able to actively pursue an increasingly money-free life from the base of having a secure home.

What do people I think?  I am curious both about what you think the consequences would be, and how this could become a succinct meme to be successful on a global stage.  The best meme structure I have so far constructed - I'm sure we can do better - is Free the Earth Day.  "From this day on the earth is free and we don't have to pay to live here anymore."

Feedback, my friends!

The Gospel According to John 1:1-27; a translation for those who share my cultural and linguistic paradigm

In the beginning was language
and with the language is God
and the language is a god.

Language created all forms, no form was created without language.

In creation was life; and creation is the light of humanity.

And the light of creation shines in the darkness of the void;
and the darkness does not understand.

And creation spoke through the human form.

Humanity came to experience life,
to create form,
that all life might be manifest in form.

Humanity is not that form,
humanity experiences form.

Creation is the light of humanity
and everyone is a creator.

Humanity identified with language,
language was spoken by humanity,
but humanity did not recognise its own voice.

-

Creation speaks,
but humanity disregards what it hears.

Those who listen receive the power of creation
because they understand that they are not the form,
they are not the created,
they are the creator.

Language creates
and we live in its creation.
We can see the aura of form,
the aural rhythm emanating from language,
its beauty and its honesty.

We experience the voice, that which emanates,
and we announce,
This is the source of which we spoke;
that which endures our form is compelling
because it also preceded our form.

In the revelation of this experience we receive the strength and inspiration to create.

Much has been created before us, but nothing compares to the truth and beauty inside of us.

-

No one has seen the truth of reality.
Within our form we are imminent in the womb of the creator,
we have been declared.

The believers come and ask,
"Who are you?"
"I am not the messiah."
"Are you Elijah?"
"I am not."
"Are you the prophet?"
"No."
"Who are you then?  We cannot return without an answer."

"I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness.
Open up the gates for the way of God,
as you claim you have always intended."

They are believers who ask,
"Why speak then, if you are not the prophet?"

"I speak merely with the language of my birth;
but there is a truth amongst you which cannot be spoken.
It will endure and it has preceded.
I can barely insinuate a single detail of its vastness."

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