An Unlikely Convocation

There's a Knight standing next to me now. He's got a peace necklace on and he's holding two black and white feathers found in Texas. Before that, while he was still in Texas, he was holding flowers. He was a gift given to me by a stoned and druken WASP shaman from Minnesota. What he was doing in Texas is hard to say, but so is saying what I was doing there. I was there to meet people I've been in written communication with for the last several years. Those in attendance included a shaman, two ritual magicians, a Dentist, a webmaster hermit shut in from Alaska, a Druid, a Shaman Witch (for now at least, and born during the Convocation), and two Druid/Shaman Witch children.

There were wigs, and boomerangs, and 50 year old Texas spider monkey dentists 30 feet up in a tree trying to retrieve a stuck boomerang, and weather magic, and shamanistic happenings, and a 200 year old pecan tree that was actually Old Man Time, and tractor joy rides ending in busted hydraulic lines, and Monolithic dome building, and out door showers erected complete with a Diner noose, hugel beds constructed, gray water retention snake heads (I dug a big ass hole), and my wife walked naked down a limestone dry creek bed by full moonlight...ohh, and I had an actual fox run across my path. Ayden Zen was in communion with the fox just before I walked up and interrupted.

You should have been there for this meeting of minds and souls. I can speak to what I was doing there now. I was there with my family looking for some hope. It's looking pretty hopeless out there these days, what with the writing on the wall and whatnot. BAU continues until it doesn't. So some Diners got together in Bum Fuck Egypt Texas to figure on some hope, and to learn how to build Monolithic domes, which are earthquake, hurricane, tornado, and fire proof domiciles that can be built for less money than a stick built piece of shit of the same square footage. These are domiciles that have withstood 300 mph winds and American Apache helicopter strikes, and simply need you to shut the door when a fire breaks out (they're so air tight that the fire will starve for oxygen before it can do much damage...and anyways concrete doesn't burn).

What's the point of a fox crossing my path, or any of the other oddities encountered during the first Diner Convocation? I'm still trying to figure all of that out, and there's a lot that happened that I won't be writing about (including what happened after I found my wife walking naked down the limestone creek bed by moonlight). Interestingly, while all of this real life magic was going down in Bum Fuck Texas, trolls were hard a work lambasting the very thing that was allowing all of the real world magic to occur. Why is that? I think it's because they are afraid. They don't want to admit that it's come to a group of internet forum friends meeting in Texas for difference to be made in this rigged catastrophe of a petroleum dependent clustercuss. They don't want to admit that technotriumphalism is not going to save a damn thing...accept maybe some people from dealing with the thermodynamic constraints we're all forced to adhere to.

Will we build domes as a result of this meeting? Is there a chance for prosperity for normal people in the near future? Is the Orwellian New World Bravely going to persist and even evolve into draconian dystopians unimagined by the doomerist doomers? Why does BAU continue unabated?

For my part, and the part of my family, we've only just begun on this journey that started here at Epiphany Now and migrated to the Doomstead Diner, and now the SUN. My family is planning a trip to California soon. We'll be burning a lot of petroleum by way of the internal combustion engine in our Saturn Vue to make it there. We'll be camping in state parks just like we did to and from the Convocation. I've got a cousin getting married, and we've got a tribe to meet in Fresno. The tribe is a coven of magicians. While at the Convocation I had visions filled with symbols I'm not ready to understand yet. My family slept outside of the Toothstead house in an REI tent titled the "Hobitat." I awoke from these mysterious visions at the beginning of the Convocation to a monstrous clap of thunder followed by a torrential downpour. The day before this I saw intentional weather magic being worked, as well as a group rain dance in which I supplied the shamanistic beats. Beats I didn't even know I had. Beats accompanied by impromptu musical instruments made by using common kitchen utensils (I was using a 3 gallon bucket myself to drive this thing). This downpour happened amidst a terrible Texas drought.

I was confused by all of this meaning. I was depressed after it was over and we returned to our trailer park Whoville everywhere America. I'm still depressed by how beautiful it could be and yet isn't. How it could all just mean nothing, and how we could remain stuck here where the Zombies will eat our table for lunch. Some things in life do not make sense, and yet they are magical in spite of Cartesian, Newtonian, and Apollonian logic. I chose to believe that all of the Convoction magic was just that, magic. It's not as if anyone can prove me wrong, not when we know that the act of scientific observation changes the outcome of the observation. Not when the truth is that we make our own meaning, our own myths, and our own minds. What's your mind doing about infinite growth on a finite planet? Mine is creating 21st century living tribes out of the virtual reality of the net. We've met, in person, in Bum Fuck Egypt Texas, and we still like each other. We're all who we said we were. Here's to the first Diner Dome we're gonna build. Here's to a future where some of us survive and even thrive. Some of us...likely not many...but at least my new tribe is trying. How about yours? RIP Mike Ruppert. I'm already not the slowest camper. It may be that my tribe is the fastest. However unlikely our Convocation.

Druid Permaculture Gypsy Magic

    

     Wendy and I recently bought a 31 foot, 1969, International, Sovereign, Land Yacht, Airstream.  In it’s day it was the king of kings as far as mobile living is concerned.  In 1969 it sold for nearly 10,000 dollars.  Today, the equivalent Airstream sells for $70,000 dollars.  It took us about two weeks of craiglist searching, and driving all over tarnation looking to finally arrive at the one we purchased.  We set 17 one hundred dollar bills down on a desk, received the title, and hooked up to the behemoth and towed it 140 miles to our home. 

    The only incident was that one of the rather large windows, approximately 3 feet long by 2 feet wide, flew off of the airstream and hit the side of a fedex trailer.  We had no idea until the fedex driver pulled up next to us and blew his horn, passed us, cut us off, and began slowing down while signaling to follow him onto the off ramp.  He informed me that the window had hit is trailer, but not to worry because he didn’t think Fedex would notice the minor damage.  He then told us that he owned an RV dealership two exits down.  He was quite certain that they might have a replacement window.  Thanks but no thanks Captain Coincidence.  I got back on the interstate and continued yankin’ that airliner fuselage down the road with my buddies Ford F-350, 7.3 liter, superduty, diesel truck.  Apparently this is the largest diesel engine one can buy without acquiring a CDL.  From the front of the truck, (which is taller than me and I’m 6'3") to the back of the trailer we were well over 50 feet long.  Ironically this set up was completely legal. 
   
     This isn’t exactly a true story you would expect to read on a dedicated peak oiler/permaculturalist’s blog is it?  Well, it’s not fiction, it’s true.  First off let me say that I am not a hypocrite, and this in no way makes me one.  However I do understand how contradictory and paradoxical this all may seem.  Let me explain.

    The need for this arrangement was a long time in the making.  The largest irony here is that this land yacht weights about 3000 pounds, completely gutted, as it stands now.  How many energy slaves does it take to move a 31' trailer up the side of a mountain?  I live 115 miles down the mountain in the hills.  In order to get to Asheville I have to climb the famed Saluda grade (7% grade).  Not to mention the Green River Gorge.  To get a 31' trailer from the upstate of SC to Ashville NC it takes a lot of fucking raw fossil fuel power.  As my wife said the other day while sitting in the cab behind that 7.3 liter diesel engine, “I think I just grew a dick.”  It’s amazing what that kind of power will do to the psyche. 

    So why would I do something like this?  Our global civilization is chillin’ somewhere in the ghetto of the bumpy plateau that might as well be the gate to the downward side of Hubbert’s peak.  All I can say is that it makes sense to me.  The greatest paradox is that my wife and I are embracing our gypsy natures all while cultivating a homestead.  Homesteads require daily work to be done and don’t stand up well to the homesteaders leaving for months at a time.  Yet they can go fallow, and we have begun designing our homestead to withstand months of our absence.  The bottom line is that people don’t take kindly to permaculture, druid, gypsy, ninjas round these parts.  I think Zombie Whispering may be a bust as a career path.  It’s a great skill to have, but only for short term interatctions with zombies.  You can’t live amongst them and not be them in the long term.  Hence the need for our behemoth airline fuselage.
   
    This is what it looks like to us.  We bought a home for 17 one hundred dollar bills.  The undercarriage, towing hardware, and skin of this vessel are all in great condition.  We bought it road worthy (we’re in the process of replacing all of the windows with plexiglass).  We are also in the process of profiting off of all of the vintage vanity that composed the guts.  When we are done with it we will have acquired a portable aluminum home at no cost.  I’m not trying to justify what we have done.  I’m just trying to tease my way through the illusory conundrum.

    Here are my plans for the Airstream.  I’m going to craft a solar hot water heater onto the top.  It will be placed where the airconditioning unit is now (after we sell it for good money due to it being 1969 original and still blowing cold air).  I’m designing a system of rain water catchment for the top as well.  I plan on connecting one sink to the hot water and placing a 55 gallon drum over the wheel’s for a cistern to collect the water.  It will also double as a heat source for the inside of the trailer, which I plan on superinsulating.  I also plan on one solar panel that will run one deep freezer and keep us able to plug into the matrix.  That will be the only need for electricity.  If you have a freezer you don’t need a refrigerator.  Gallon glass jugs half full of water and frozen, and then placed in coolers, provide an ample refrigerator.  There will also be a pantry built into the trailer that will hold bulk dry food (which is pretty much what we live on now...oats, rice, polenta, beans, eggs, and dairy consists of the majority of our diet). 

    This is my plan for the kitchen.  It will be an indoor/outdoor kitchen.  I plan on one propane tank to run the original gas oven and my two burner camping stove.  This will be the only thing we will need fuel for when stationary.  Yet we will not need this fuel to meet our needs.  Propane will simply be for convenience.  The oven also doubles as a heat source in the winter.  The majority of our cooking will be down with a solar oven and a rocket stove.  However we are also installing a small two burner, antique coal burning stove (the stove is from the early 20th century, and I will use small twigs for heat as the firebox is pretty small). 

    The bathroom will be a composting toilet on the inside as well as a camping style shower.  To shower one will simply take the lid off of the 55 gallon cistern, fill the bag, and then hang the bag in what will be a very small showering area on the inside of the airstream.  The water will just drain overboard and be collected in another container for reuse elsewhere. 

    Another aspect I’ve been playing with is a small scale biodiesel set up.  The idea will be to remain in place seasonally and only move as the seasons dictate.  So we will move no more than three times a year.  I figure three to four months is plenty of time to acquire the feedstock and make 30 gallons of fuel or so.  My permaculture associate has operated a biodiesel business in the past, so navigating the various ins and outs and what-have-you’s won’t be difficult.  The next phase of this plan is to acquire an old diesel truck.  However, it’s not necessary due to the fact that I have a 7.3 liter and a 6.3 liter at my disposal. 

    I’m not delusional about the transient nature of security that this plan provides us.  It requires lots of moving parts, but only to move on occasion.  Once in place, we will not need the grid for my families survival, and we will have the ability to go wherever sanity needs us.  I’m throwing all in on permaculture.  It is already providing me with community, but that community is up the mountain.  This is the only plan that will enable me to move my family there due to the hand I have been dealt. Staying in Zombieville is not an option long term.  However we can’t leave now, so this is the best we can do.  The matter of security is one in which I find the majority of us peak oiler’s don’t want to talk about.  I’ve said it before, Zombies are first and foremost insatiably hungry beings.  Zombie children are ravenous feral little evil fuckers that I want to limit my interaction with.  Don’t be mistaken about my intentions.  I have a healthy and open line of communication with the reality of the future.  The Airstream will have a weapon safe.  Essentially this is the vessel that we intend on surviving the long emergency in. 

    I suppose this is fate.  I’ve always been a nomad...it’s just my style.  So Druid Permaculture Gypsy Magic is the final form it would seem...for me and my family.  We still have a homestead here, in the hills, and we still have an obligation to care for our elder.  However that doesn’t mean that we have an obligation to stay in Zombieville.  I intend on surviving whatever the future throws my way.  As for the plans for the rest of the space in our spacecraft.  The first ten feet of trailer, in the front, is going to be nothing but bean bags, oversize pillows, a full size memory foam mattress, and a nice plush circular couch.  That’s right...an oversize chill room great for taken her easy as much as possible while surviving the downside of Hubbert's Peak. 

     As an interesting aside.  The Apollo 11 crew was quarantined in a 1969 airstream for 21 days after returning to Earth.   I suppose if it was good enough for the American legends that walked on the surface of the moon...it's good enough for my family.  The irony in this symbolism is so sweat that it's uniquely beautiful.  The airstream truly is an American Icon that represents the height of American engineering applied to recreation.  I find this a perfect symbol to make an abode to travel into the long descent with.  It's a very real American vessel ripe with space age overtones.  I think what we are doing is necessary, logical, and unavoidable.  If nothing else, the psychological security blanket that this project is providing my family is worth it.  All of us who are aware of the reality of the long descent want to feel that we can do something constructive to combat the helplessness.  There is great value for my families psychological health in this vessel.  This is a very real spacecraft that we are designing to navigate our way into the long descent. 

Talking to President Nixon while in Quarantine

Mobile Quarantine 

On the side of the USS Hornet

What We Contemplate We Will Imitate

John Michael Greer's voice has permeated my consciousness quite deeply for the last couple of years. I've been following his blog for as long, and in that time I have read four of his books and I'm about to start reading the latest "Apocalypse Not." As far as I can tell his influence on my life has brought great balance through advanced philosophical thinking tempered in a reality that's hard to find elsewhere. I first ran into JMG by stumbling across his blog due to my interest in Peak Oil. That journey started for me in 2007 when I found myself in a local Books A Million searching for a new book to read. I was in the "Social Events" section and James Howard Kunstler's "The Long Emergency's" spine caught my attention as it was no doubt designed to do.

I was just looking for a good read as related to current affairs in our world. At the time I was at the end of a five year journey through the conspiracy theory as pertains to the projection of society. That particular adventure landed me in the controlling propaganda of one Alex Jones. Mr. Jones uses a lot of truth to convince his listeners that the Illuminati, a group that supposedly traces their lineage all the way to the "Knights Templar," and then clear up to the eye of the All Seeing Eye on top of the pyramid featured on the United States Dollar and hidden beyond the 33 degree of Free Masonry. This group supposedly also has ties to the Zionist Jew's who seek to control the world completely via their ties with Satan's plan which will culminate in the Christian Apocalypse. All of this got started in earnest with the conspiracy of 9/11, which no doubt was a conspiracy, but more on the part of psychopathic Oligarchs who compose the 1% that the Occupy Wall Streeter's are so pissed at. Their group of cohorts is wrapped up almost entirely with the Bilderberger's which further delineates into the Council on Foreign Relations, Nato, the United Nation's, the World Bank, World Health Organization, and the IMF which all conspire to formulate the NewWorld Order that Bush Sr. was supposedly talking about. All of this conspiracy theory makes a lot of sense, especially if you are Christian. No doubt this particular superbly crafted conspiracy theory lends itself to the Christian mind quite nicely. After all, if you believe in Heaven, Hell, Satan, God, Jesus and Revelations than this is all a reality that gets it's roots from the foundation of your beliefs about reality. If you believe in all of the requirements of Christianity than believing in a cabal such as the Illuminati is really no stretch.

I got wrapped up in all of this because of a dream I had which was brought on by the viewing of "The Passion of the Christ." It was a brief dream in which I experienced what I felt to be the incarnation of pure evil. It scared the wits out of me and I found myself briefly descending into a concentrated study of Christian end times. I quickly became a "Revelation's Scholar," and found myself deep in the bowels of the conspiracy theory mentioned above. If nothing else it's extremely entertaining and meaningful where applied to the view of the world that expounds from Christian belief. This theorizing about Satan's own conspiracy provides a deep seated house for man's age old belief about good and evil. This great binary is actually a fiction; albeit a widely believed fiction. One I fell victim to. For me it provided a meaningful framework for how my life had turned out. As I have said, if you believe in Revelation's than believing in this conspiracy theory is no great leap. In fact it's written into the very narrative that the Bible provides. That same narrative springs from our evolutionary method of thinking that is so deeply implanted in our brains. That conspiracy theory is the final product of thousands of years of connecting the dots in a Christian world. In that world the conspiracy is indeed true, but that world is not true. That world is a black and white, good and evil, dualistic binary split. It is not the product of reality but the product of fantasy. It has nothing to do with reality beyond the religious imagination so ubiquitous in our world. However, that world was the world I was to begin climbing out of with the discovery of James Howard Kunstler's "The Long Emergency."

What I knew was that something was drastically wrong with the world I was living in. TLE provided me with a realistic out from the conspiracy world I was living in. However, Peak Oil, true as it is, still functions very well in that world of binary thinking. In this new picture Peak Oil became good and all of the populace who had no idea about it provided the evil. I had escaped from the religious overtones but not from binary thinking. This is where John Michael Greer enters in to provide the final exercise in thinking that would exercise me from that binary world. First, however, he provided me with a meaningful response to the draconian ramifications that Peak Oil created. The "Green Wizard Project," launched shortly after I became an avid follower of "The ArchdruidReport, John Michael Greer's weekly blog, provided the outline for that response. The basic message he was disseminating was that Peak Oil was true, and definitely had drastic consequences, but not necessarily apocalyptic ones. In his brilliance, he did not just come right out with the message that nobody in the Peak Oil movement wanted to hear; that message is that Peak Oil does not spell the end of humanity. It does not spell Mad Max, or complete anarchy in an epidemic ravaged world where only lone survivors in cabins in the woods can weather. His message was a slow message starting with "The Long Descent" and continuing on into his present message. The present message finally focuses our sites on his most controversial role as a leader within the Peak Oil movement, Magic.

Indeed, the irony of John Michael Greer is that he is the most logical and realistically down to Earth voice in the Peak Oil literature while at the same time filling a position of an Arch Druid in the Occult world of magical thinking. Surprisingly enough, with a blog titled "The Arch Druid Report," he still managed to dodge what should have otherwise been cause for nobody taking him seriously, and he did it in plain site. He could have titled his blog something completely unrelated to that kooky, fringe thinking world of Occult Magic, but he didn't. Again, this turns out to be a testament to his brilliance as a writer and social critic concerning matters of the near and distant future of mankind. For many years his position as an Occult leader was never addressed in his blog concerning the realities of Peak Oil. Now he is purposefully and adeptly transmitting the message which emanates from his position as an Arch Druid. Whether this was his ultimate goal can only be known by him as of now. Now, however, he has found himself in a position to address the issues of Magic in a world of thinkers who should have distanced themselves from him from the beginning due solely to the title of his blog.

His current project is explaining the relevance of Occult training in the tradition of magic to a world reeling in harsh realities brought on by it's own supposedly logical and scientific thinking. The worship of science over the last couple of hundred of years has brought us face to face with a potential apocalypse. The apocalypse created by our worship of cheap, abundant, and concentrated energy. A slow motion apocalypse that will no doubt equal a lot of suffering on the part of humanity. Greer does not argue that there won't be large scale austerity, but that there won't necessarily be a fast collapse of western industrial civilization. He paints a picture that features a "Long Descent" into an Ecotechnic future making it's grand appearance slowly in a couple hundred of years. This is not a dramatic portrait that we will see in our lifetimes and therefore not much fun. There is nothing sensational about a slow descent into the future which is a product of Greer's ternary thinking. What he is doing now, I believe, is attempting to coach humanity into a realistic option for addressing the realities brought on by the truth of Peak Oil. Yes, we have to address these issues, and no it doesn't necessarily mean that Satan is going to descend onto humanity via plague, starvation, and Illuminati, police state marshal law in an inevitable reduction of humanity by approximately 6 billion miserable deaths. So how are we to avoid that apocalyptic future so prevalent due to the issue of Peak Oil? That seems to be the lesson that John Michael Greer is teaching us now. I challenge anybody reading this to read the Archdruid Report and point out any lunacy therein. I understand that clearly a self titled Arch Druid of Druidism cannot possibly have any answers to be taken seriously. At least I understand how one might think that.

Is it possible that maybe your scientific view of reality has been usurped by the absence of imagination?  The fact of the matter is that reality does not belong to Science alone. It belongs to the picture that emerges in the collective mind of humanity. Science does not understand that mind entirely, but it is a product of it. Followers of Science take on the same qualities as followers of Christianity. Both claim to know the truth crafted by the binary thinking so prevalent amongst both branches of reality. Both skew the truth through their chosen lens. That truth can only be viewed through either the scientific or religious lenses. Greer seeks to point out that there is indeed a third lens one can use. That lens includes the other two and synthesizes them into a new reality. A reality that just might be the best possible truth. Thesis, antithesis and synthesis. My understanding is that he is leading us down the middle path found between the dualistic extremes. What he is providing is a message that has been hidden in plain site. He is deciphering the language of reality for us. In so doing he is providing us with our own power. The power to influence the world in the best possible way. John Michael Greer is providing your evolutionary mind with an out. He's clearly outlining a worm hole that will take us into the future we will hopefully create. If it catches on, and enough of us believe in the power of human imagination harnessed by our collective will, than maybe we can craft an Ecotechnic future that will become reality. A true transcendence with enough room for hope. Without hope we are nothing worth caring about. Our future does not have to be a tragic one. That is the message and the hope that John Michael Greer is providing to those who will listen. The message, transmitted in his latest blog: "what you contemplate you imitate." I think we will do well to contemplate his message for obvious reasons. We should apply his message to Aristotle's own and at least entertain the thought. Only mankind has the ability to save him from himself. Wishful thinking devoid of any reality will not accomplish that rescue, but magical thinking? That is a divine irony in a divine-less world.