Kitsune Bamboo Nursery

This is the first Epiphany Now post to emmerge from my space phone blogger app bluetooth keyboard device.  I hope all goes well, and the many batteries it requies stay charged long enough to complete this communication (although currently I could just plug in and recharge but that doesn't sound as dramatic).  I plan to write much more here at Epiphany Now, but for now I'm just unveiling some intention into the digital cloud.

Shortly after dropping out of the Matrix I moved to my current residence.  My intention for my new unplugged lifestyle was to learn Permaculture and to create a garden of eatin' into the landscape.  I was following my bliss (and still am) and activeily writing the story of my destiny.  My words shapped the land and fostered the birth of an ecologically healthy landscape filled with intentional spiritual energy and meaning.  Essentially I've created a Druid food forrest painted in the Ogam ( the Ogam, or Ogham, is a celtic tree alphabet I happen to study).  

I bet I sound crazy as a shit house rat to a lot of people reading these words.  I don't care really what I sound like.  I'm authentically on fire and refuse to apologize for it.  

Anyways, when I moved here I dubbed my abode, outside of the actual house, "The Fox Den."  I mostly live outside.  Being that I'm domesticated I am forced to spend time indoors, but I am constantly attempting to minimize that time.  I blame it on Aspergers, at least to use the modern psychiatric explanation for my irregularities (than's an entire other bag of worms).  I'm a shaman at heart, and I have a theory that Aspergers may be displaced shamans, displaced by suburban sprawl and cookie cutter jobs complete with required behavior patterns.  It may be that I'm not an aspie, but a shaman, and it just so happens that the diagnosis for Aspergers overlaps qualities of a shaman.  Whatever the case, I have a very strong need to minimize my interaction with people.  I'm perfectly fine one on one, however, which would make sense following my shaman theory.  

I want to make it clear that I have no desire to fill some egoic need to be special.  I'm no more, or less special, than you or anybody else.  However, I am fundamentally different, and science explains that via a neurological difference...so be it.  

Kitsune is the Japanesse word for a fox, but it has strong mystical and magical associations in Japanese folklore culture as well (if you want an interesting read on the subject than I'd reccommend the wiki article for Kitsune).  When I moved here, and essentially devoted my life to Permaculture and Druidry, I had just found the fox to be a spirit animal that was following me around.  I resonated with fox, and so embraced that friendship and guidance that was being offered.  

Then the Bamboo Monster revealed itself to me.  I fell in love with that monster and was unable to resist the overwhelming need to suddenly begin digging up bamboo to plant it at the Fox Den.  Bamboo even began showing up at the Fox Den in pots due to a serrendipitous friendship that started one magical day in the woods at a near by park.  I have since began an internship with Keiji Oshima of Haiku Bamboo Nursery.  He has been teaching me everything he thinks I'm ready to learn about bamboo.  I am interested in the culture of bamboo and not just the growing of it.  Bamboo is very familiar to the shaman in me, and I know that is because I have known bamboo intimately before, just as I have known Kitsune.  

Therefore, to honor the relationship that I have with fox, bamboo, and Japanesse culture, I have decided to dub this bamboo nursery (with very heavy Permaculture overtones) Kitsune Bamboo Nursery.  To kick off the declaration I figured that I would share pictures of all the characters of bamboo that reside here.  I also want to publicly decree that the Bamboo Monster regurlarly hangs out here at Kitsune, but don't worry because he's a nice, and useful monster.  

Here at Kitsune Bamboo Nursery we have 11 varieites of bamboo (not counting two which we're trying to propagate rhizomally which are Moso, and Makinoi).  Two of those varieties are in pots only, they are Green Onion, and Koi.  Currently we have only Buddha Belly and Medake for sale, however next fall we will have several other varieties for sale.  Within four years all of our varieities will be for sale, hopefully.  I'd also like to note that I plan to have only four varieties growing at this site.  We will be moving bamboos to our Rock HIll property as they grow and we run out of room.  Kitsune Bamboo is already expanding habitate for the Bamboo Monster to inhabit.  

The picture below is a fall Madake shoot (phyllostachys bambusoides), planted August 2015, given to KBN (Kitsune Bamboo Nursery) by HBN (Haiku Bamboo Nursery) and showing how bamboo plays with water.  The presence of morning dew on bamboo auricles is considered a sign of good health.  This, however, is rain water.

The same Madake plant showing rhizomal character.  Phyllostachys like to snake in and out of the ground.  I'm performing an experient with this rhizome.  If you look closely at the left hand sid eof the picture you can barely see a rhizome leaf about to hit that rock.  I placed that rock there, and one under it in the ground, to study what the rhizome will due upon encontering it.  It appears that it is already aware of the rock and is simply going to go up and over it...but I'll see as time moves forward.  

Same Madake plant with a gift given to Ayden Zen by Stefani Oshima at the final intern day of the 2015 season.  Madake is one of the two most useful bamboos (according to Japanesse Culture, the other is Medake featured later).  Madake is a timber bamboo capable of 72 foot tall canes that are 6 inches in diameter.  Madake is very hard and it grows straight.  It's great for building structures or for splitting and weaving.  Madake is my favorite bamboo because it's the most useful to humans.  It's also used to make flutes (which Keiji Oshima makes and sales).

Koi (phyllostachy aurea 'Koi'

Some potted Buddha belly (phyllostachys Aurea).  This was the first bamboo plant I ever dug up.  Buddha Belly is valued due to its ornamental appeal for crafts because of it's compressed internodes.

Some more Buddha Belly, in the ground, with Hairy Vetch planted as a nitrogen fixing cover crop.  I'm trying to keep the bermuda at bay.

Medake (Pleioblastus simonii) purchased at HBN and planted here spring of 2015.  Medake and Madake are considered the most useful bamboos in Japan, and with good reason.

This is Phyllostachys Vivax which I propagated rhizomally.  The rhizomes were given to me by Gary McPhee (the serendipitous friend I met at the park)

This is fall growth.  Here you can see how beautiful this variety of Vivax is.  It's a timber bamboo that is celebrated for it's beauty.  It's wood is not very hard and often breaks due to the weight of ice in the winter.

Phyllostachys Aureosulcata f. Spectabalis.  This bamboo has the most character and a lot of beauty in my opinion.  It has variagation on the leafs like Koi, it geniculates (the can zig zags as it finishes the growth of the last couple of internodes), it changes colors in the sun, and it has the green sulcus with bright yellow canes.  It truly is a spectacular site to behold, but it is not a very useful bamboo...just beautiful.  

Showing the green sulcus of Spectabilis

Another timber bamboo I propagated early spring of 2015.  This is Phyllostachys Nigra Boryana, also known as snake skin bamboo.  Right now it's a sleeping giant capable of 60 foot canes that are 4 inches in diameter.

Bamboo island with two species of bamboo.

This is Phyllostachy Nigra Henon.  This is another bamboo that is considered to be one of the most beautiful, especially in Japan.  This is the original "Nigra," although it does not have black culms.  It's a very useful bamboo.

Close up of a Henon culm showing how it plays with slight color variations.

Psuedosasa Japonica, or Arrow bamboo, so called because the Japanesse used to make arrows with it due to it's straight growth and perfect diameter for crafting arrows.  It also makes a very effective screen for making neighbors dissappear.

This is yet another planting of Buddha Belly with some new growth.  This growth is from the last month.

The End of BAU

For the last six years I've made it my business to understand the plethora of fibers that compose our modern day reality. We live in a society that requires the rest of the world to function. Our modern industrial civilization has engulfed the entire globe. Our oceans are acidifying as we busy ourselves with destroying the last bastion of oxygen production, the great lungs of Gaia, the Amazon. Our species is very sick, but just like a patient with pancreatitis, hepatitis C, and cirrhosis we can't put the bottle down. No matter how much pain it will cause us, we can't bring ourselves to stop drinking. The fun has long since past, and now we just do it out of desperation; we do it because we don't want to feel the immense pain that we have and are creating. We also continue drinking because we are scared of the future. The bottle we are drinking from does not contain liquor. It contains a fermented liquid that the Earth concocted using lots of algae, high pressure, and millions of years. Like liquor, this liquid had the ability to produce a great delusion for the human race. It's this delusion that is responsible for our reckless destruction. It's this same delusion that has us destroying the only home we know of in this infinite expanse of space. We are hopelessly addicted to this magical substance that might as well be the Earth's blood. Like vampires we stick our fangs in the Earth and suck it's blood to quench our addiction. We don't care who pays the price so long as we can get another fix.

Our children are the ones who will pay the price. They are suffering from our debt in this toxic environment that their physical brains must mature in. Trying to figure out why this has happened is about like trying to figure out why a drunk continues to drink. His addiction has him homeless, laid out in the freezing cold street in his urine soaked stitchless rags, and yet he doesn't care because that's what his dark substance provides him. He's in unfathomable pain, and yet he can't feel any of it. Not until there is no liquor left will he finally be forced to face the reality. He wakes up in the cold street, piss soaked pants, peels himself off of the sidewalk, and begins begging for more. Death would be much better for him. This is our species. Drunk on oil. Until that oil is gone the delusion will remain. Business as usual. We don't even care that our children will pay the price for our recklessness.

Maybe the irreversible damage is done and there is no point trying to repair our diseased organs. In which case, I suppose we might as well just stay drunk until we're dead. Maybe it's just going to be too painful to bear the sober burden waiting for us. Could it be that this pain has grown so monstrously large that changing is impossible? Is there a Rubicon that our collective pain has crossed? If this is true than we might as well get on with it and put ourselves out of this misery. Save our children from the misery that we are ensuring for them with every action of every miserable day. If we are to just continue this madness than I would prefer we put an end to it. Problem is, I'm a father, so I don't have that luxury. I've got to find a way to conjure up some hope for my sons to believe in. Yet every place I turn to find just a miniscule fiber of hope I'm met by the blindness that is a pervasive aspect of the holograms programming. It's hard wired into the falsity that the hologram projects. How our species got to this point can only make sense metaphysically. It can only make sense in the quadrants of existence that the Matrix cannot detect. We have collectively lost touch with spirit. In our quest to conquer knowledge and nature we have lost our connection to the natural processes that are created by that spirit in the first place. We need nature to exist, but nature does not need us.

Those who control the work at the power plant that burns the Earth's blood to perpetuate the Matrix's hologram programing are not to be trusted, nor is their message. They are the catalysts that keep this drunken delusion disseminated to each and every human mind. Their intoxicating message must be ignored. Unfortunately everything about BAU is designed to continue perpetuating BAU as an endless positive feedback loop. Communication technology has become the great controlling opus of BAU. Cell phones, the internet, and television are how this great evil ensures it's continual existence within the human psyche. These things ensure that the message is being projected and received. If there is to be any hope, it will be found in learning to use these things to reverse this destructive process. The solution to our problems is staggeringly easy to understand. However it won't be easy to employ. I'm positive that it's going to be painful. We just have to accept that fact and move forward regardless.

The solution to all of our problems is to begin ignoring BAU, but in order to successfully do that, we must extract ourselves from its clutches. Ultimately, BAU is kept going by the electricity that is created by burning hydrocarbons. The electrical infrastructure is the Matrix's Achilles tendon. Electricity is magic, and by itself is neither good nor bad, but the system uses it to keep us all enslaved. This magical force used to be the product of nature alone by way of what might as well be called lightning, and our species seems to be proving that it should have stayed that way. We proved incapable of wielding that one...fire on the other hand. It's starting to look like the Amish were at least correct about the nature of electricity. I want to make it clear here that I'm NOT saying electricity should not be used, or that it's even evil by its own nature. What I am saying is that it should not be used if it's coming from the Matrix's infrastructure. This one step would ensure our extraction. Simply put, in order to fight the Matrix, we must remove ourselves from its physical clutches. Our species flourished long before the grid, and it will flourish after it. But if we do not begin taking the necessary steps towards extraction than our species will lose the chance to flourish.

Our spiritual amnesia must also be addressed. Unplugging from the grid would allow each one of us to once again remember sacred and natural divinity. The white noise emitted from the hologram blocks our spiritual receptors. The incessant drivel that is audible beyond the white noise is about nothing of consequence and is projected to every mind plugged into the grid. The last time I heard about that drivel, I was enjoying traditional Mexican cuisine, and it was intrusively going on and on about some poo poo cruise that the entire world was watching...and for some reason it was considered normal that those poor souls had to continue eating onion sandwiches and shitting on the deck. Some vacation...at least they got to shit in the great outdoors...albeit on the deck of a cruise ship. I bet those processed loaf bread and onion sandwichs were some god awful smelling turds . Come on people, my chickens have more dignity and sense than that and they shit all over the damn place 24/7.  

I was talking about spirit. That noise from the machine...it's function is to ensure we don't get the chance to contemplate spirit. Our minds and bodies are being filled with corporate programing when they need to be filled with sacredness. Yet they are so full with the former that there is no room left for the later. The cup has runneth over with the hologram. It's far beyond the mental realm. We are controlled on a physical level as well. Man made chemicals are ubiquitous in the very cells that compose our bodies. You need electron microscopes to even study that level of control. Some of these chemicals are prescribed to us by the Ministry of Health, others we willingly ingest, but the majority we have absolutely no control over. Our bodies absorb those toxins autonomically. Between the Matrix's mental control, and the physical chemicals pervading our biosphere, we are left almost hopeless. This is why we must begin extracting ourselves from these horrible mechanisms of control and destruction.

I understand that advocating for the avoidance of hydrocarbon fueled electricity seems excessive. That's because it is. It's excessive, purist, anal, unrealistic, idealistic, and probably impossible, and yet it's our only hope. Unless the amount of petroleum we are capable of getting at is less than what will be needed to bring the Earth's biosphere to it's catastrophic environmental threshold of chaos. We can pray that this will be the case, but just hoping is not good enough. We must begin turning our backs on the way we have done things for the last 200 years. The only successful strategy we can have towards righting our wrongs is to begin ignoring the Matrix and it's delusional hologram. Protesting does not produce results. The machine simply does not care what we think. Its got it's own momentum now, and it views itself as unstoppable.

Fact, our way of life is going to destroy the biosphere to the point where it will no longer sustain human life. If we continue BAU that will be the outcome. That being the case, I don't think there is anything that is too extreme if it can reverse that outcome. If the solution is unrealistic should that matter? Should it stop those of us who have identified the problem from trying to correct it? I don't think the solution being unrealistic should matter to us. Maybe it is too late. Maybe there really is nothing that can be done at this point. Yet without hope there can be no point to existence. If we are just doomed to failure as a species than we might as well destroy ourselves and get it over with. I don't think that is the case. I want to believe that we can fix our biosphere so that it will once again become healthy for our children. 

There is a great spirit that has all of the answers. In Druidry we call it AWEN (pronounced Ahhh Ohhh Ennnn). Funny how that word sounds like AMEN isn't it? I wonder if that's just a coincidence?  We have lost touch with that source. Unless we learn to once again sensitize ourselves to the stone, we will destroy all current life on Earth. This is the message that needs to be heard right now. This is what we need to wake up to. Our job is to awaken that spirit in as many people as possible. The only way to accomplish that goal is going to be to use the Matrix and it's hologram against itself. Somehow we are going to have to find a way to channel all of that Energy that is being created by burning the Earth's blood into consciously destroying the Matrix. I don't know how to do that, but that's what needs to be done. The solution may reside in enough people realizing that a different way is not just necessary and possible, but that it is most importantly desirable.  I happen to believe that the 100th monkey is about to wake.  But he won't if you don't.  That's the point...isn't it.  It's easy...wake up...

Some Piedmont Hope from the land of the Fox.

 

Fateolysis and Destiniogenesis

Can one change one's fate? I've been thinking about this a lot lately, and I've come to some conclusions on the matter. Before this question can really be answered there are some perspectives that must first be fermented to produce a living understanding. I think we are guaranteed a certain amount of fate regardless of our actions or inaction's. There are miniscule roots that run for miles from our DNA that were forged in a cauldron located in the millenniums before us. There are aspects of our fate that require magi status to do anything about, and even then I'm not so sure they can be gotten to and manipulated. This isn't to say that there is an omniscient God who cares about the outcome. It's more a matter of interconnection emanating from the proverbial butterfly's wings. Simply put, fate will happen and requires no consciousness on your part. This might as well be a metaphysical law. It probably is, but I don't have the occult background to know if there is such a law. I'm sure some of my readers might be able to illuminate the subject.

There is magnificent alchemical work that can be done to accomplish a chosen destiny. Achieving destiny requires your active participation and much discipline. It requires foresight, focus, and fateolysis, because in order to achieve destiny it requires the building blocks of fate to be teased out and manipulated. Fate must first be broken down in a conscious cauldron of change using all catalysts and enzymatic agents at ones disposal. Without this process destiny becomes a blind process subject to the whims of DNA and flying insects. I think the conclusion is that fate can't really be changed...just broken down and altered. How much fate has happened before you even become aware of it? What age where you when you started thinking about attempting to change it? Until one becomes conscious of the process it's all produced by fate alone. The nature of our existence, on this plane at least, is to constantly move forward while growing older. The adept's apprentice knows that he must become consciously involved in this process of reality manipulation if a chosen destiny is to have any chance of descending and solidifying into reality.

The trick is to become responsible for your choices for movement in this fluid field of existence. Then all agents concerned with one's movements must be identified and studied. The more of these agents that becomes successfully ousted, the better your chances of a chosen future. This is the act of Neo seeing the agents for the programming that they are and receiving the ability to stop bullets in response. He performs fateolysis by entering into the frame of the agent and exploding it from within. This is the point where Neo adds the final enzyme into the cauldron of his fate and destiny to create a manageable merger of the two. Fate can't be ignored and destiny must be maintained.

I've become very interested in the fate of my children. Realizing the workings of these matters in my own life has allowed me to consciously manipulate them for my sons. DNA can be changed. I believe that my offspring's DNA is slightly different from my own. Well at least the half that I'm responsible for. I think it's possible that innate abilities can be created and passed on. I want to be clear here because I'm NOT saying that I'm going to attempt to change who my son's are. It is however my ultimate and prime responsibility as a parent to manipulate their fates. Things are operating now that they have no control over. But I, and my wife, do have control over them. We are responsible for their existence. That responsibility is a heavy burden that must be cherished.

Take my in utero son, whom we have named Harper Tribann McCarty (although my wife want's to drop one of the n's and I'd like to keep it for authenticity's sake...marriage is a continual act of compromise), for example. He has no choice about the types of chemicals that are accompanying this critical time of his physical development. It is true that man has made a mess of the planet where health of life is concerned. Man has been a chemical making monkey for the last hundred years or so. Those chemicals are so ubiquitous in our reality that we develop in utero with them. This part of my son's fate I can do little about. The quality of food that my wife eats is something we can control to an extent. The nutrients that we give him for development we can do something about. In forging my own destiny chickens have arrived. They poop out happy backyard chicken eggs for my family. My wife eats those happy chicken eggs with their brilliant deep crimson yolks swimming with the building blocks of life. Those eggs nourish Harper's environment and provide his cauldron with quality natural resources. This is just one example in a universe of examples where my destiny is contributing to a better fate for my child.

My wife makes bread with pure, simple, natural ingredients; flour, salt, water, and yeast. The final product is influenced by natural alchemy and imbued with her intentional love. The final product removes a trivial amount of those malevolent chemicals, but it's yet one more act of us influencing our child's destiny. My 2 and a half out of utero son is beyond my comprehension. I'm obviously biased here, but this is not about being megalomaniacal or hyperegoic. He is an amazing human being that has his own destiny to contend with. I get to be a part of that process. He can do nothing about his fate while under his mother and fathers care. We can influence his fate, and we must do so. If my children are to have a chance in the long descent than I, and my wife, must do all that we can to better their fate in that climate. Chicken eggs, occasionally happy chicken meat protein, homemade bread, homegrown organic veggies, fermented foods made from pure and quality ingredients, compost, lots of tolerance and love, and an eye for the reality of reality will all help assist my son's in their journey through this anthropogenic clusterfuck of an environment.

In return, my son, soon to be sons, have influenced my destiny by their very existence. It's largely symbiotic. My own dysfunction in life has allowed me to access a moral compass that is derived from wisdom. Many of the problems that are a product of my own dysfunctional psyche have been outed, dealt with, and banished. It's a good thing to, because those things are all a product of my fate and they could have easily created a negative fate for my sons. My wife has done this same work. This past year she has been vigorously scrutinizing her fate. She has picked it apart and placed it in that cauldron. We are consciously manipulating this reality landscape with our wills. There are many factors tethered to our fate that we must learn to deal with because they will not go away. These factors were solidified into place before we even knew about them. They have already interacted with the future in ways we can do nothing about. Such is the nature of fate. It's irrevocably present. The best one can do is to identify it's parts and workings. This is how fateolysis is produced. One must know the proper enzymes to place in the cauldron to produce the desired destiny.

From my fateolysis comes the raw parts of a new destiniogenesis. My destiny is to be a Druid. Nature must be embraced by man. Our desire to control nature is destroying our biosphere. If we are to have a chance of continual survival on this planet than we must honor nature. We must stop this psychotic control, which is nothing more than an illusion anyways, and begin the process of making nature sacred again. This is something that can only be done one person at a time. I'm largely trapped in the matrix. At least for now. I'm trapped because I can see no other way to maintain a healthy family in our current world without access to money. I have to play the game in our nations "academic" business to earn my position in the outer party at the ministry of health in our dying empire. By 2015 I'll have a piece of paper that will say "Registered Nurse" on it. That piece of paper will give me access to a job that will pay me good money. Money that will allow me to maximize the environment to raise little druid sons. A safe environment tucked away from the madness of man. An environment surrounded by sacred nature. Nature that will influence, guide, and illuminate my sons Ayden Zen and Harper Tribann (or Triban depending on the compromise involved in marital negotiations). This is my chosen destiny. The destiny that will influence the fate of my sons. I only hope that when they reach the age of reason they will agree with me that nature is sacred. Hopefully enough druids will rise up to the challenge and begin the process of relinquishing that delusional and illusional control over nature.