The First Diner Convocation

In 2007 I read James Howard Kunstler's The Long Emergency, and my life changed irrevocably due to the information I received from that book. Shortly after, I joined the Kunstlercast forum and posted many threads and had many in depth conversations about collapse, peak oil, and the ramifications of our infinite growth on a finite planet paradigm. I also began digesting collapse related books with precision and efficiency, and I would often order five or six books at a time by authors like Richard Heinberg, Dmitry Orlov, John Michael Greer, Michael Ruppert, and Jared Diamond just to name a few. Figuring out what the collapse of our modern petroleum dependent civilization meant to me was no easy task. I'm an Aspie, so it wasn't an emotional affair for me to deal with, but it was stressful nonetheless, and collapse became a "special interest," and it's a special interest that is still current for me. Mostly because I'm unable to not abide in the truth of things. It seems this to is part of my Aspie brain (I'll be writing about Asperger's Syndrome much more in the coming months because I have just recently stopped being in denial about the diagnosis...but this particular blog is not the time to do that).

I was a daily contributor over at the Kunstlercast, and it was the first forum I'd ever been a member of. I greatly enjoyed communicating with like minds on that forum via the written medium. I fell in love with it actually, and the regular contributors became my friends (which was great since IRL friends are difficult for me to acquire). This was a set of people whom would talk about the truths surrounding PO with me for hours on end, which is still next to impossible to do with people IRL. Threads that would stretch for days and days. I was a conspiracy theorist at this time in my life and had been for about five years. The "Kcats," as we called ourselves, helped open my eyes a bit about the nature of conspiracy theories and their many half truths. Around 2009 or so I got tired of the same old shit being discussed over and over again via countless incarnations on the Kunstlercast forum. It got boring and I decided to leave the forum without a word about it really. I just sorta left one day and never went back. I also deleted my facebook account around this same time and focused all of my writing on this blog.

The only blog I was reading at this time was John Michael Greer's Archdruid Report. He came up with the concept of the Green Wizard, and a forum was devoted to the project, which I frequented for a while. I had shifted my focus from understanding the nature of our predicament to wanting to act on the information. What became important to me was the answer to the question "what am I going to do about collapse?" The Green Wizard Project (GWP) was exactly what I needed. The GWP was mostly designed for solitary green wizards, and it was about using appropriate tech and about developing strategies that would help with minimizing the impact that the Long Descent would have on the GWP participants. The psychological component of the GWP can be summed up by JMG's own acronym "LESS." Less entertainment, stuff, and stimulation. JMG advises us all to step back into voluntary simplicity and learn how to live more in tune with the natural world and it's cycles and it's renewable pace. I became a Druid as well. For the next couple of years practicing green wizardry was sufficient for me as a response to collapse, but that to began to change as my understanding of our predicament began intensifying.

I realized that the only chance of survival in a shit hits the fan scenario, or even just a long descent scenario, would be real community. As far as I can tell, real community has gone extinct in our imagadget, narcissistic, techno delusional, American Hologram deployed and Matrix controlled consumer waste generating stank of a society. I had found fellow blogger William Hunter Duncan's blog, Off The Grid in Minneapolis, via a comment he left over at the Archdruid Report. William resonated very strongly with me (which interestingly enough, William now works with autistic people as his job). I began following his blog, and he began following mine. He may well have been the first "follower" of mine on this blog. We became good virtual friends and even exchanged books we were writing for back and forth criticism and suggestions. He told me about a new forum that he was an administrator for called the Doomstead Diner. I went and had a look, but I still had a sour taste in my mouth after boring with the Kunstlercast forum. I looked around and it appeared to be just about the exact same thing as the Kcast forum with different avatars. After a short visit I decided that I wasn't interested in joining as a member (and I just found out, via going to the kunstlercast forum to copy the web address for the hyperlink for this blog that I've been banned from the Kunstlercast Forum for some unknown reason).  

Several months later I left a comment on Morris Berman's blog and RE, the man responsible for the existence of the Doomstead Diner, saw it and it peaked his interest enough to come over here to see what I was about. William had commented on that blog and RE saw this and apparently formed the opinion that I may be a good match as a cross poster on the Diner. It felt good to have somebody seek me out for my writing, and I was more than happy to have my essays published on the Diner. I figured since I was going to be publishing my blog on the Diner that I might as well have a more focused look around to see what was shakin' in the Diner world. I've been an active participant and a Diner ever since. Not long after I arrived at the Diner fellow Diner Roamer arrived and posted a thread titled "Community OwnedDoomstead." That thread lit a spark that found good tinder and began smoking. Roamer knew about 150 acres in NC that an elderly couple owned and were interested in allowing more able bodied individuals to cultivate the land in permaculture fashion. My wife Gypsy Mama and son Ayden Zen and I all drove to NC to meet Roamer in person along with his on again off again lady friend. We met in a coffee shop across the street from the university my wife graduated from, and we all instantly liked each other. It was the first time I had ever met a virtual friend in real life...making Roamer an "in real life" friend as well. This was a very exciting and important step for the Diner. As it turns out, Roamer, GM and I's meeting was foreshadowing the now not too distant future. The 150 acres didn't work out on account of dementia and Cat Food Carol, but that's a long story (and you likely already know it if you're reading this blog). We came a pubic hair away from the first Sunstead (at the time it had been dubbed the Foxstead) within weeks of the first attempt that the Diner's made for a community owned doomstead.

We've since been working towards figuring out how to bioneer our way into a petroleum scarce world. We've been trying to figure out how we move forward from this point. How do we structure a new way to inhabit the land and use it's resources to meet our basic human needs in a sustainable and healing way? We don't want a commune, but we want something intentional that empowers the Sunsteaders, and gives us autonomy and meaningful community at the same time. Eventually the new effort was dubbed the SUN project (sustaining universal needs). Our driving ethic is to "save as many as you can." This translating into a tribal unit we are currently calling the "Sunstead." We want the Sunstead to be a self replicating template that will pop up like mushrooms in spite of the Near Term Human Extinction (NTHE) meme. NTHE being the idea that all life on Earth will be going extinct sometime in the next two decades (as soon as five years from now) due to run away positive feedback loops running amok in the climate control mechanisms of our planet. They may be right, but I refuse to live in a world with no hope, and I recognize that there is no way anybody can know what the planet will do. While our civilization is definitely collapsing, and while we are doing our level best to shit all over the planet that sustains us with our incessant chemical creation and consumptive waste generation, our planet is a living organism which we cannot study under a microscope.  We can't possibly know how the Earth will react.

The Sun Foundation is now a 501c3 non-profit organization, and we are currently waiting for the magic government letter to arrive so that we can begin accepting charitable donations from people like you, whom care about the reality outside of the Matrix, and our engagement with the wasteland we've inherited. In a little under two weeks a select few Diner members are going to converge on the Toothstead in Texas for the purposes of the first Diner Convocation, and for training in Monolithic Dome construction. 

The coming Convocation is proof that we're not just a bunch of keyboards circle jerking into the endless night about how fucked it all is. We want to do something in the real world about the predicament our civilization's in. The writing is on the wall, and food prices are fit to bust any time now due to drought and ever increasing super storms. I could go on about all of the problems our crumbling civilization is dealing with, but I've done that countless times here already. If you don't know what the problems are at this point than it's because you are willfully deluding yourself, or just don't have the desire to extricate yourself from the Matrix's mesmerizing hologram. We're going to meet in Texas, in person, as a symbolic act, to look each other in the eyes and validate the reality of our typed expressions, desires, goals, and to engage with reality of the real, rather than reality of the virtual persuasion. We're going to drink beer and break bread at a real Doomstead Diner table. We're going to study Monolithic construction and plant some real seeds of change. We're going to build a rocket mass heater, have a hole diggin' contest, possibly film a spoof on the NTHE movie trailer 22 After, and get to know a handful of Diner's in person. I'll be bringing my family and my boomerangs.

Most importantly we're going to ferment in a real life think tank. That's what the Convocation is ultimately about. For me, it's a vetting, and it's a chance to look my fellow Diners in the eyes (I know, ironic considering my Aspie status, but I've always been atypical even amongst the atypical...consider that the majority of the medics thought I was weird when I worked EMS to gauge how weird I am...as it turns out, not weird just not neurotypical) and see what I see. Is the SUN Foundation worth my time? Is it something that can be real? Can we actually bioneer a Sunstead, or a Waterstead, or a Foxstead, or a Doomstead? Can we actually be the force that begins fixing this clusterfuck of a predicamentation civilization? Does RE really smoke six packs of cigarettes a day? Is William really bald and in love with the Goddess? Can Eddie fix my fucked up mouth full of metal (just kiddin' Eddie...at least this time). Will Haniel and I see Aspie to Aspie and relate to one another?

I'm looking forward to finding out the answer to all of those questions. For me, the Convocation is my chance to show everybody that I really am a 6' 4" bad ass Aikido ninja permaculture green wizard druid Aspie Diner. It's my chance to look them all in the eyes, Haniel included, in an attempt to pull as much of their true intentions out so that I can shine my hyperfocused understanding of the human psyche onto them. Here's hoping we'll all be comfortable, and that William won't get his feelings hurt when I dig a bigger hole in the Texas dirt. My wife Gypsy Mama, and my children Ayden Zen and Harper Tribann will be there as well (as far as I know they're the only children Diners...hell, Harper Tribann was born a Diner). Several Diners will converge in two weeks. To hear RE tell about it, you'll all get a chance to participate in real time on the net. I hear he's bought all of the recording devices he could find. If nothing else, for the first time, Diners will break bread at a real Diner table...in Texas...and I'll get too drunk and throw my boomerangs.

Totem Shift

Jumping to the Grave

Around about the time I resigned from the Matrix I had a dream in which the fox came to me. He scampered out of the woods and made himself visible to me, and he looked me in the eyes to transfer his magic. To prepare my mind for entrance into a glitch which would allow me to mostly be left unhindered from the Matrix's control. Fox imbues the magic of invisibility in plain site. I recognized him, and his teaching, and then he disappeared back into the woods, and I woke up. It was a dream vision. I dubbed our new home the "Fox Den" and gave the fox a pedestal at Epiphany Now. About a year after my resignation a real fox was delivered to the Fox Den, and her name was Pepper (but she went by Bo Beppa). She was born from domestic dog parents, but she was no dog, she was a fox. She was the most beautiful animal I've ever had the pleasure of knowing.

Diggin' a fox hole

A couple of months ago I was digging in my yard, preparing a hole for a five gallon bucket full of table scraps. The area I dug in, behind a swale and berm, is the worst hard compacted clay SC has to offer. I was tired that day, and I just couldn't get the hole to the proper dimensions. Pepper loved scrutinizing my holes. She got in the hole, laid down, flipped on her back, and looked up at me as if to say "this will do," although I only know that in retrospect. I figured since she was enjoying the hole, and I wasn't going to be dumping five gallons of table scraps in it, that I would just leave it for her. My wife and I had hypothesized that she was actually sleeping in a hole she had dug in my first hugel bed. She dug holes into all of my six hugel beds on a regular basis. So I thought maybe she liked the hole better than what she had dug. At any rate, I moved onto digging a new hole in a different place in the yard where the soil wasn't quite so compact.

Around this same time I had a dream that I was throwing a boomerang in our yard. I've never thrown a boomerang before, and I had no idea what the dream meant, but I decided to go online and purchase a rang. Whatever the reason, I took to throwing boomerangs like I imagine birds enjoy their flight. It has become a meditation for me, and a spiritual practice. Boomerangs connect you to the sky and the wind. They teach you to be still and patient, especially when the wind is blowing too hard. Half of throwing a boomerang is ability to read the wind. If you want it to come back to you than you've got to first know which way the wind is blowing and how hard. Then you have to figure out how much layover, how hard to throw, which direction, how high of a release angle, and lastly you just have to get lucky (at least when the wind is blowing), and if all that is done properly the boomerang will come back to you.

We decided to get Pepper fixed around this time. She was right at a year old, and we didn't want to breed another dog (I mean fox) because we have two kids and one pet is enough extra responsibility. Getting her spayed changed her psychology, or maybe it was just because I was in the fields throwing my boomerang and she wanted to get out of the fence with me. Whatever the case, she started escaping from our yard on a regular basis. She'd run off chasing field mice, or voles, or whatever else caught her noses attention. We live off of a pretty busy two lane road. About a quarter of a mile before our house the speed limit goes from 45 to 55, and people regularly travel 60 to 65 mph.  Knuckle heads will occasionally use that stretch as a temporary drag strip. It's one of the most dangerous roads I've seen, and this is coming from an opinion informed by 6 years on a meat wagon. People get killed all of the time on this road, and near this house to boot.

I came home from an ecological design dig in Asheville NC that day. I was tired from moving large logs and Earth around for a massive hugelspiral construction we were creating. I got home and left our fence open. Pepper got out and got herself ran over on that road. The people across the street called the house, it was about 9 pm, and they asked "is your dog in the house?" No, I replied. "Well there's a dog out here on the road that's been run over, looks like it might be yours." I put my clothes back on and went out to see about it. There was a large lifted 4X4 truck pulled over with a kid no older than 20 standing there with a dip in his mouth. "Over here." He took me to where she lay dead on the side of the road. I was relieved to see that she was actually dead because I did not want to have to put her down to stop her suffering. She lay there in the ditch, with her tongue hanging out, and just a trickle of blood. Her skin was all in tact, which I still think is strange having been run over by a large truck. I picked her head up and sure enough her neck was broken. I offered my hand to the kid whom had run her over, and I said "it's not your fault man." He said "I know it's not my fault," got in his truck and sped off.

I carried her remains through the dark to that hole I had dug, placed her in it, got the shovel out of the bed of my truck, and committed her to the Earth. I cried a lot about Pepper for the next couple of days. I could still cry about her if I wanted to. In fact, weeks later, it's still hard not to. It was more than just the lose of a beloved pet, it felt like a dark magic had descended on the Fox Den. It felt suspicious and as if some intentional evil had been done. It felt like I had lost some very important magic myself, as if something was trying to take it from me. I haven't lost any magic, in fact, I have gained some. Pepper's job was complete. The fox world vetted me, and she was the instrument. Pepper was sent to teach me the ways of the fox, so that I may study them and know them. I like to think that she knew her body would eternally rest in that hole we dug together. She's there now, protecting the Fox Den always. I told our three year old son Ayden Zen that Bo Beppa was invisible now, that she is with us in spirit but that he would likely not see her again, and I took him to her grave to let him say good bye.

A new totem was to arrive shortly after the Fox was finished teaching me his, or her in this case, lesson. The robin showed up shortly after Pepper's death. I was in the garden, meditating next to Pepper, and a Robin landed close to me. The robin looked at me, just as that fox had looked at me in my dream vision. Only now this was no dream, this was waking life. I walked over to the robin and he led me around the yard for a while, not letting me get closer than five feet. That robin just hung out with me for a while, beckoning me to listen to what it had to say, wondering if I would accept the next phase of my totem progression. "I've seen you throwing that boomerang," robin said to me, "do you really want to know how to fly?" That was the question robin was asking me. Throwing that boomerang is like flying. Every time I throw it my spirit elates with the magical flight path and remains connected to it. It's as if I'm flying there with it, and apparently the bird world has taken notice.

Around the same time all of this was happening our house burnt to the ground. We were renting the house, the only house my wife and I have ever owned, the one we brought Zen home to from the hospital after his birth.  We were renting the house to renters because I could not resign from the Matrix and afford the mortgage. New renters were moving in that night, and they set a box on the counter in the kitchen next to the stove top. The element got kicked on, and 25,000 gallons of water later the fire was out and the house was gone. Nobody was hurt. Allstate paid the mortgage off and wrote us a check for the remainder of the policy. The Phoenix is rising from those ashes, and it has sent robin to teach me the magic of flight.

Just before our house burned down I decided, uncharacteristically, that what I needed was to go to the local park by myself. I drove to the park, got out of my truck, stretched, and then started running (I hadn't gone for a run in probably 7 years). It was spontaneous, and it was as if I was not in control of it. Why had I chosen to run in the park on that day? So I ran into the woods and onto a disc golf course. The path started to climb, and I had run about a mile at this point, and so I decided to walk a bit. Before I knew it I was walking along a creek, and so I sat down next to the creek to meditate. Something told me to go 20 yards to my right, up stream, and so I did, and there in the middle of the creek, a foot beneath the water, was a disc somebody had lost. I've never played disc golf, but I had always wanted to, so I started throwing the disc along the path of the course. Five holes later, and I was on the back nine of the course. I was kneeling down, looking for the next disc golf basket, trying to figure the course out. A man in his 70's appeared with a very large dog. I was eyeballing them pretty hard (probably because of the size of the dog) and eventually the man asked me "are you security." "No," I said, and we sort of walked towards each other and started talking.

He reminded me of the cover of my copy of John Steinbeck's Travels with Charlie.  Permaculture came up, as did Bamboo. "I have bamboo," the man said with elation. His dog's name is Bodey. I have a cousin named Bodey, it's not a common name, especially not for a dog, and so my attention was gotten. I had been drawn to bamboo shortly before this meeting. We swapped cell numbers and he invited me to come by his house to check out the bamboo he'd planted. A couple of months went by (in which all of the above story happened), and my wife had started regularly trying to get me to call the man from the park (Gary is his name). We were talking about installing a bamboo stand as a privacy screen, and so I had good reason to go pick his brain. Being Aspergian, however, it's damn near impossible to get me to reach out to people via phone. Wendy was persistent, and eventually I gave in and called Gary.

So we packed up our family of four, and went to a man's house whom I'd met only once several months ago. Our son Ayden Zen appears to be having difficulty with speech. Wendy thinks he may have a lisp (I just think it's cause he's 3 and a half). At any rate, Gary's wife had written several books on phonetics...what is this synchronicity? Gary and I talked bamboo for a while and then he handed me a business card that he had gotten via his love of Bamboo for a near by company specializing in bamboo. I put the card in my wallet where it stayed for a couple of weeks.

I began researching bamboo online, and then I began digging a trench to create a bamboo island. The next client for my ecological design business is a female shaman, and she wants a living privacy hedge. I'm hopeful I can convince her that there is none better than bamboo for a privacy hedge. It creates a complete visual block within 4 years. It's the fastest growing plant on planet earth. Wiki reports that bamboo has been recorded as growing 98 inches in 24 hours. This is nothing short of amazing, and science is still trying to figure out just how it's possible for bamboo to achieve this phenomenal growth. At any rate, it's apparently time for me to learn all things bamboo, and so I emailed the email address on that business card, and I asked if I could come pick their brains on all things bamboo. The business is run by a married couple. Their nursery is really not a nursery, but more of an experiment in bamboo prowess. I'll have to pick this story up in the next installment here at Epiphany Now.

However, I'll leave the story with this bit of synchronicity and numerology mystery. The day before I went to meet John I looked at the clock at 111, 222, and 444 pm, I never do that.  I usually catch it once where all the numbers are the same.  The bamboo business is actually located in the same county I moved from after resigning from the Matrix. The same county I worked EMS in for 6 years. In fact, my first EMS job, was actually working for the rescue squad that services the town the grove is in. That town's not far from where our burnt down house resides. The same burnt down house that has that Phoenix rising from it's ashes. We drove to the Bamboo Forest yesterday with Zen and Tribann, to tour it, to learn all things bamboo so that I can convince a shaman. We pulled up to the field just in front of this endearingly magical place on Earth, and there I met John and his beautiful wife. John has a scruffy beard, he's from California, and he has Aspergers (if you don't know, I'm from California and I have Aspergers). The day that would follow would prove to be amongst the most magical days of my life. I'll tell that story next time.

Part of Bamboo Island