Diesel Powerd Murikan Roadkill

 

I took this picture with my iphone at a truck stop in Utah

It's 2 in the morning and a shape appears on the northern Indiana road in front of me. At 65 mph there are only a couple of seconds to decipher the image and react. It's quickly realized that there are two raccoon on the road, they are moving around, probably picking at some type of food. It's a mystery what they are doing, but in the next second there is a thud thud as the 80,000 pound semi tractor trailer continues on at 65 mph. It seems that racoon should be more intelligent than this. The next several minutes are followed by a lingering melancholy. I've just taken one, maybe two, lives, and senselessly with no premeditation. I've killed directly before, with a 30/30, but I killed intentionally from a tree stand 20 feet up in a tree. I also ate the meat.

As I drive on through the night and contemplate the death of those raccoon, I'm reminded of some things. I begin to ruminate on America, and why I have also unintentionally killed thousands of people.

17 years ago I was on a U.S. Aircraft carrier, the U.S.S. Carl Vinson, and planes crashed into the World Trade Centers in N.Y. City. That day changed this country. It changed all of the citizens. It changed me in irrevocable ways, and for different reasons than it changed most. The first Murikan bombs dropped on Afghanistan were from my ship, and I spent a lot of effort directly helping that reality, and I consequently spent even more effort trying to understand why. At the time I was a 21 year old idealist. I should have never enlisted in the military, but I was lost, and wandering, and searching for my own way in the world. I had grown up mostly fatherless, the product of a single mother. That too has gone a long way towards defining who I am now and why I was on that carrier in the first place. Constantly on a quest, searching for something that I defined as the truth. What was the world, and what was I supposed to do with it? I was not interested in money, but money is necessary in society.

I smelled a rat. I smelled a stinkin', no good, putrid, walking dead rat. At the time I couldn't put my finger on it, but I knew that it had something to do with my country, and my navy, and my conscience. Cognitive dissonance grew to lighting and thunder in my own mind. It shook me to insanity, and I ran away from any contribution to those bombs. Consequences be damned! I was 21. That decision has also continued to define me. Shortly after the terrorists attacked we were in Iraq looking for weapons of mass destruction as the military moved in. There were no WMD's, that was a lie, as was the effort in Afghanistan. A lot of evidence points towards the U.S. , at a bare minimum, being complicit towards the demise of the towers. The government at least allowed it to happen, and then used that tragedy they allowed to happen to accomplish a goal. Why is our military still in Afghanistan and Iraq? Nobody in Murika talks about the fact that Murika is still at war, and has been since 9/11 of 2001. If forced to think about it “keeping Murika safe from terrorism” will likely be regurgitated all patriotic and programmed meme like.  Well...it's really not correct to call what Murika is doing "war."  It's actually occupation, domination, and usurpation of formerly independent and autonomous nations at drone, bomb, missile, and gunpoint.   

Petroleum is the reason we have been at war for 17 years. More specifically gasoline and diesel is the reason. Petroleum is a limited resource, and that is an irrefutable fact of geology. It's an irrefutable scientific fact. Read that again, slowly, and for comprehension, and try to have a clue about what it means. Murikans are professional delusionists. I knew that we are completely dependent on petroleum before I took a job as a long haul flatbed trucker. Now I KNOW it. Everyday I burn somewhere between 50 and 100 gallons of diesel. Do you know how many truck drivers there are in Murika doing the same? It's somewhere around 4 million. It is just about impossible to buy anything with money that has not been on a truck at a minimum of once. It's more likely that the finished product you buy has been on 4 or 5 or 10 trucks (in many cases thousands..this would be your average car) and probably a ship and a train before you spend your money on it. In order to buy something that has not been on a truck it just about has to be made by human hands, locally, and from raw materials that have been harvested locally from nature.

Just before I took this job as a trucker I was busy learning how to do just that with bamboo. In fact you could have bought a basket from me, made by me, out of bamboo that I grew, harvested, cured, treated, split, and wove all by hand. You'd have to pay around 2 to 300 dollars for it because said item would have represented a minimum of 25 hours in direct artisan labor on my part. That's not counting the time it took to care for the groves, to harvest the cane, to process it, and then to cure it. That's just counting the time it took me to treat the cane with fire, and then to split the cane with a traditional Japanese bamboo splitting blade, and then to weave it. Next to nobody will pay 300 dollars for an artisan bamboo basket grown and crafted by artisan hands locally when they can go buy a plastic (petroleum) bucket from Lowes for $5. I also spent a number of years training in permaculture design. I made money with bamboo and permaculture, but not enough money to support myself in this world, much less a wife and two children.

Split bamboo next to whole canes.

A bamboo fence for my wife's garden spot

I was involved in Permaculture and bamboo, and both because I was following my bliss. That bliss was to live a natural life. That bliss was to use my hands to create beauty, and to be a good steward to the natural landscapes that sustain us as biological creatures. That bliss was to pay homage to the actual reality that is the natural processes that occur in nature to make things such as the air we breath, the water we drink, and the soil we grow our food in. That bliss was to treat the Earth as a living entity that, along with the sun, imbues and blesses us all with life. That bliss was an idealistic lie in this world. Alas, idealism does not pay any bills.

Weaving a door for the garden spot fence

Delusional bliss in action

A bamboo door

So what does roadkill have to do with Murika and petroleum and war and an idealistic hippie playing with bamboo and digging permaculture holes? I realized that America is this truck that I now drive for money, and those raccoon are the rest of the world. That is exactly how Murika treats the rest of the world, as well as the natural environment. It's just “collateral damage” (a term coined by the Murikan Military Industrial Complex to describe innocent civilian deaths in war) that is unfortunately necessary to keep us all up in the manner we have become accustomed. Just about nothing, with the exception of nature (and air brakes combined with engine compression brakes), can stop an 80,0000 pound truck at 65 mph. Anything that's in the way becomes roadkill...thud thud. Worse than that actually, because at least the scavenger birds can pick at the roadkill, and occasionally some crazy ass re-wilder may come along and take the roadkill home to eat it. 

Those raccoon may as well be the old me sitting in the road weaving my bamboo basket from bamboo grown in my yard, planting trees, and attempting to make my way in this world as a permaculturists specializing in bamboo. Now I'm at the wheel as well. I'm now a willing participant finally made complicit to the Murikan semi that's making a thud thud out of the rest of the planet...kickin' your brown ass and takin' your brown gas! If only the 21 year old me, getting himself kicked out of the navy on account of his idealism, could see me now! If he could see me he would disown me, or kill me before I could get out of control with complacency, apathy, and what he would see as cowardice while kneeling down before the puppet masters of the system for some pellets of comfortably numb conformity.

Ironically I love this job! I wasn't entirely a product of a single mother. My father was in my life, but minimally. I saw him a couple of times a year when I was a little boy. He was a trucker, but that wasn't why I didn't see him, that's ironically what enabled me to see him. I didn't see him because his second wife hated my mother, and she hated me because I was my mother's son. For a number of years he was under her spell (something he now recognizes), and so I rarely saw him. When I did see him it was to go with him over the road in his semi (and his wife had no idea, hence the afore mentioned irony). Such power fathers have over their children!  It's enough power to make them into truck drivers 30 years later on account of a couple of preteen memories!  Well, that, and a large helping of genetics.  

Deep down I love semi trucks and trailers. I'm sure it has a lot to do with the need I have to be a man, and a father, due to a wife and two of my own boys. My father was a trucker.  He was the only template on being a father I've ever had.  When I finally spent time with him it was to the sound of a diesel engine, and to the smell of diesel, and with the allure of the passing road. I love driving a semi, I love the power, and I love the mechanical accomplishment they represent. But if I'm completely honest, some part of me feels that I have finally grown to a man, and I am now providing money for my family. Men are supposed to provide, and in our society that means money. Yet the plague of cognitive dissonance continues to haunt me with it's furious sound of hypocrisy.

To be constantly going somewhere new, and to have everything I need with me, and to mostly be left alone...these are all things that I love about being a trucker. It's very peaceful to be left alone while listening to music, and my thoughts, as the landscape changes in front of me, as I fulfill my husbandly and fatherly requirement to get money. I never know where I will end up for the night to catch a shower and some sleep. Mostly I stay at truck stops, which are the places our society have created for the trucks to stop so that their human pilots may shower, do laundry, eat, and get coffee and cigarettes. There's also rest areas, company terminals, and occasionally a Walmart parking lot or the parking lot of a shipper or consignee. I imagine that I'm sailing a ship on the black bitumen sea, and I'm the captain. I'm also making twice as much money as I've ever made in my life doing this. I'm making twice as much as I made working as a medic on an ambulance after 8 years of service.

You see, permaculture and bamboo were not paying any bills. They were not presenting the promise of any type of stability for my wife and children. As much as I wanted to live in a world that did not exist...a world morally superior to the one we all inhabit, and a world that aught to exist, it was all just delusional thinking. Idealism made pernicious by business as usual. 

If Murika is the truck that splattered the racoon, than the Corporatocracy is at the wheel, and we're all just unique and individual diesel atoms. Murika is also a delusion, at least as it exist in the minds of most Murikans. The truth is that there are no lines on the map of the world any longer. At least not any lines that matter to the Corporatocracy. All of the inhabitants of this planet, both human and non-human, have no value to the corporate machine beyond the value of their contribution to the continuance of BAU. Business As Usual is business as it always has been. Since the rise of the first civilization the world has been dominated by the hierarchy of man. Man has taken by force using both his mind and his body. For a long time there were proper kingdoms which were ruled by kings. The king ruled by controlling the politics and the military of his kingdom. There were many different kingdoms that existed throughout the world of time and place.

One of my conventional landscape business clients had this pesky weed food growing, so I harvested it

Took it home and fed it to my family.  Bamboo shoots have more protein than any other vegetable

Now, for the first time in the known history of man, there is one kingdom that controls the entirety of the planet, and that is the Corporatocracy which has a capitol in Murika (not to be confused with capital...wait). It has control of the technology we use everyday. It controls the global military as well as the politics that control the global military. It controls all of the people of this world, and those that it does not control it kills wantonly and with no conscience. No one can stop this final rule of the Corporatocracy. The only things that have the potential to stop it are natural disaster and petroleum depletion. This is the reality that greed has formulated. The Corporatocracy's primary objective is profit for the share holders. All of the decisions that are made are made to keep those at the top at the top. They are at the top of a system that works for them, and they will continue perpetuating that system so long as they can because they are greedy and psychopathic.

What about the rest of us? Are we complicit in this unnatural disaster? We all contribute because we all need money to survive. We need money to buy food, shelter, clothing, education, healthcare, safety, stability, comfort, security, entertainment, convenience, and the electronic gadgets we need to participate in SwampBook, KnitTwitter, and all of the rest of the anti-social narcissism that currently defines the majority of the sleep walking wake walkers. There is no escaping the global matrix that controls the planet. At least there is no escape where you succeed and are still left breathing and above ground. To escape in reality, and to do so without contributing to BAU, would have to mean doing so without money. How many people do you know that are living without money? If you spend money then you are spending it on goods and services that are only possible due to this diesel powered Murika. This diesel powered Murika is only possible due to our military and the petroleum our military protects and enables. If you aren't contributing than you'll likely be turned roadkill by the semi trucks that make the American way of life possible.

The last bamboo basket I made before becoming a Trucker

Cognizant Dissonance Disorder

Almost five years ago I quit my career as a medic for an EMS service to pursue Permaculture.  The evidence that our way of life is going to collapse became overwhelming to me, and I was left with an urgent need to do something meaningful about it.  To my estimation Permaculture was the only meaningful response (and still is).  I was presented with a home in which I could live rent free.  My wife's aunt offered up her home to us, and since she owned it outright she needed nothing from us financially.  This enabled me to get off of the hamster wheel of working to pay debt and constantly coming up short.  

For the next couple of years I spent all of my time digging in the Earth to grow food in a Permaculture manner.  I trained in Permaculture.  In fact, a week before tendering my resignation to the Matrix (which is what I called what I was doing with my life) I signed up for a program out of Asheville called "Permaculture In Action."  This was hands on Permaculture training where we implemented permaculture design for home owners.  I learned a lot about permaculture in that program.  Two years later I received a PDC (permaculture design course certificate) from Spiral Ridge.  In parting words of wisdom Cliff Davis rightly told us all that "you can't eat your PDC."  

During all of this I was bitten by the bamboo bug.  That resulted in Environmental Control being called to my residence (while I was away taking the intensive PDC training).  Apparently the horse weed that I let grow up in the chicken run sent up a red flag that I was growing marijuana (I was not).  While they were there they took the opportunity to tell my aunt-in-law that she needed to cut all of the bamboo down to 16 inches or be fined.  They said it was a grass and therefore could be no taller than 16 inches...which is a complete joke, and come to find out not even true.  That was the message I was presented with upon returning from the permaculture design course.  I pulled onto the property and was instantly greeted by my hysterical aunt-in-law who had been fear mongered by the local environmental authorities.  I was told I had to cut all of the bamboo down or she'd have to pay $500.  I complied with Environmental Control by digging up all of my bamboo and putting it in pots.  All but one of the varieites I had growing.  I left Phyllostacys Aureasulcata f. Spectabilis in the ground. It was in it's first year that year.  All of the bamboo I had planted was planted that year.  

I left Spectabilis in the ground so that I could confront Environmental Control when they came.  I was going to have my wife video record the event.  I was going to have her record them telling me that I had to cut all of the canes down to 16 inches or that they would fine my aunt-in-law. I never got the chance to confront them because they came by the house unannounced when I was not home.  However, they cleared us of any infractions and said "it's not illegal to have a garden but you have to keep it weeded."  I immediately put all of my bamboo back in the ground where it has been ever since.  This is the third year at "Kitsune Bamboo Nursery," which is the name I gave my bamboo operation here at "The Fox Den."  Kitsune is Japanese for "fox."

Permaculture and bamboo can sustain every single human need.  Bamboo itself can sustain humanity.  In fact, all bamboo wants is to be honored by man.  It bends itself to us and beckons us to eat it's shoots, or to let them grow and then use the poles for whatever needs we have.  A grove that is managed properly is actually much healthier than a grove that is left to natures devices.  The quality of the bamboo wood becomes much better in a managed grove.  It becomes harder and resists splitting better than it's wild counterpart.  The problem with bamboo is that we do not have the culture for it here in America.  Bamboo can provide for every human need, but if we don't know how to use it then it just becomes an invasive weed that monopolizes the landscape much like kudzu does.  Kudzu is a similar story because it too is infinitely useful to our species.  It's a food, a medicine, and a fiber for us to use, but since we do not use it it simply becomes a scourge in our landscapes.  

I am interning with Keiji Oshima of Haiku Bamboo Nursery to learn the culture of bamboo.  I have learned to split bamboo with a traditional Japanese blade, and I have learned to make and play Shakuhachi flute.  Soon I'm going to start learning to weave with bamboo.  Along with learning the culture I am also learning how to manage bamboo groves for all of the various purposes.  A bamboo grove is managed based on what the purpose of that grove is.  Will it be for shoots, for poles, for a nursery, or just for esthetics?  I'm still learning the differences in management.  Every week I go up the mountain to Hendersonville to apprentice with Keiji...to learn the culture of bamboo.  

Now for the cognizant dissonance part of this blog.  I have found the answers to address the future of energy scarcity that we are on the precipice of.  I fear gasoline will not remain cheap for very much longer because it costs the energy companies more money to extract it than they can get in return on the market.  They can't raise the prices to where they need to be because doing so crashes the economy, but they can't not raise prices because not doing so means losing money.  If it costs more to retrieve and render useful the petroleum than is received for that effort than eventually that game has to come to an end.  If it costs you a dollar to do something that you only get .50 cents for, and you are a business and not a government, than you are a losing business.  

Secondly, all of this petroleum is going a long way to explain the rise in global CO2.  Combine all of the emissions of noxious chemicals into our atmosphere with the removal of our forests and you've got a global disaster in the making.  We are poisoning the biosphere that sustains us while at the same time cutting out it's organs.  Basically we are commiting suicide as a species.  Anthropogenic Global Warming is a real phenomenon.  It's not some global conspiracy perpetuated by the hands of the global climate scientists.  The fact of the matter is that effectively immediately we need to stop burning petroleum and begin addressing our climate problems.  Bamboo is more than ready to address those problems.  Bamboo takes up more CO2 than trees do.  Bamboo grows more biomass at a faster rate than trees do.  If taken seriously I believe that bamboo can save us and fix our climate problems.  

We need to be the change we want to see in our world.  I believe that to be true.  But what I've learned over the last few years is that you have to afford to be the change, and nobody can afford it.  Which is why I have ended up as an entrepreneur with my own landscaping business, Ancient Earth Landscaping.  Ancient Earth started off as Ancient Earth Design which was a permaculture business that a friend of mine and I started after Permaculture In Action.  For a while it seemed that we were going to be a success and then for some reason clients didn't have the money, and new clients stopped showing up.  My business parnter got tired of the struggle and went back to teaching.  I changed the name to Ancient Earth Landscaping (AEL) and kept chugging along.  

The point of business is to make money.  I did manage to find a couple of clients here in the Upstate of SC, and I made some money with permaculture design as AEL.  However, what was paying the bills for me was conventional landscape maintenance.  People don't pay for permaculture, but they pay lots of money to have their grass and shrubbery cut.  They pay even more money when nature gets out of hand and needs to be put back in a box.  AEL has becomes a phenomenal success.  I am at a place where I can no longer take on new clients because I can barely keep up with the clients I have.  I'm looking to hire help, but I can't because I need every dollar I can get.  In the South, when winter arrives, my business tanks.  That means I have to save for a three to four month period where I will not be making much money at all.  It is possible to make money in landscaping during the winter, but there is no guarantee.  Cutting grass is what sustains the landscape maintenance business because it relentlessly grows and therefore must be maintained.  If you don't cut your grass Environmental Control will show up and fine you $500.  My business is basically mandated by local ordinance.  

There are a lot of problems with what I have become.  I drive around using a 5.7 L hemi to pull a trailer full of engines and gasoline.  I use the power in that gasoline to violently control nature six days a week.  I try to not work on the weekends but lately I've had to in order to keep my clients satisfied with the services I provide.  I use weed eaters, hedge trimmers, back pack blowers, lawn mowers, a wood chipper, a chain saw, and other small engines to do my job.  I am contributing to all of the problems that I sought to address when I resigned from the Matrix.  I pollute the atmosphere more now than I ever have. 

The question I have asked myself over and over again is "why would a Druid ride a lawn mower?"  A Druid is the last person who should be riding a lawn mower for an entire army of reasons.  On the one hand I have the belief that nature is sacred, and that belief defines my spiritual practice and identity.  On the other I pollute and destroy nature everyday.  Why?  The answer is very simple.  The world of man requires me to make money.  Money is the problem.  I have a wife and children, and even without having to pay rent or a mortgage I still need money.  

Our civilization, the one that is teetering on the verge of collapse, requires me to make money.  That is what plugs us all into the Matrix.  I would love to spend all of my time farming bamboo, crafting with bamboo, and sustaining my needs with bamboo (and permaculture).  In order to do that I need land to do it on, and unfortunately the world of man constantly requires that I be making money.  Money doesn't care about the environment.  Money doesn't care about anything.  It's a bit like our ego is.  It's self perpetuating for the purposes of self perpetuation.  

And so I persist in this state of cognizant disonance.  I'm constantly yearning to awaken from this contradictory state of existence that is my daily life.  I am forced into hypocrisy to sustain myself and my family.  If I put all of the engines down and stop polluting and destroying that which is sacred than I lose my ability to make money.  If I hold onto those engines and continue successfully making a lot of money than I continue contributing to all of our real problems.  

It seems there is no way to win.  We are hopelessly left twisting in the winds of the imploding world of man that we all create everyday.  We are all guilty.  I'm sure of one thing.  Petroleum is a limited resource that will not be replaced by anything on Earth, or in outer space.  Petroleum is the fuel that enables our current global civilization.  We literally eat petroleum.  We chose the wrong substance to depend on, and now we are hopelessly addicted and in denial.  This losing game that we are all playing is bound to come to an end.  Until then...I guess we just keep playing.  It's a dog eat dog world.  I intend to win, and I've gotten just old enough to shed the majority of the idealism that has always lurked in my mind.  In the words of Cage The Elephant "I've got bills to pay and mouths to feed and ain't nothin' in this world for free."    

I suppose our saving grace is that there is a lot of beauty in the world.  The best we can do is to revel in that beauty.  Who knows, maybe a miracle will happen.  Maybe Jesus will come back and save us from ourselves.  In the meantime the Buddha is hear to point the way to salvation here and now.  He's pointing at a bamboo grove...at least when I look at him that's what he's pointing at.  I seek refuge in the bamboo that resides in nature.  After Hiroshima and Nagasaki destroyed everything on the surface, bamboo was the first life form to return.  There is much hope in bamboo.  

 

  

  

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.

Why Does a Druid Ride a Lawn Mower?

Our industrial civilization seems to me to be in a state of suspended de-animation. The narcissistic techno imagadget cyborg drones are anything but animated. Their avatars are all over the internet while their bodies are aimlessly burning fossil fuels in support of an insanity continually left unnoticed. A new reality has come into existence. It's a reality never before seen, and it's a direct result of the lottery our species won which has paid us in concentrated golden energy derived from the sun. Most first world inhabitants have no idea how this lottery pay off has distorted our collective reality, or that it's a miniscule fraction on the time line that is the human experience on this living Earth. The portal by which our first world society now sustains this ridiculous electronic virtual contrivance, is the imagadget "smart phone."

The smart phone may be smart, but it's made us stupid. It's become a perpetual soul vacuum that's sucked the human spirit into it's electronic clutches. It's attached horse blinders to our collective imagination and crushed our bodies into useless meat riddled with nuclear powered cancer and super bugs. Super bugs that are hard at work creating a future misery the likes of which our anesthetized imagination cannot imagine. We look through this device to see a matrix composed of artificial constructs designed to be nice. The device keeps us all endlessly distracted from looking at one another, all while we spend all of our time looking at one another while scrolling through a multitude of lives taking place virtually. What more does one need than the phenomenon that is the "selfie?" How have we come to a place where it is considered completely normal to take a picture of one's self and then post it amongst a cascade of other selfies? Everybody is looking at themselves through this electronic mirror. Narcissist's reflective pool broadcast ubiquitously and completely. It's come to a place where putting down the drug is no longer possible. The will just is not there. The truth is that we all know how pointless this distraction has become...at least deep down in the recesses of our collective psyche.

We continue to wake up day after day stuck in this suspended de-animation. There are simply to many disgusting creatures crawling around just beneath the surface of the early 21st century human experience for us to fathom. This pretend land we take selfies in is made possible by third world wage slavery. The clothing we pay too much for that is featured in our masturbated pics was stitched together by a people whom might as well be living in a dumpster full of our second hand hedonistic stickyness. A dumpster that receives the shitty end of the planned obsolescence they slave away to create for us. Then there is the Earth that supports us which we have turned into a sewer of cast off desires which catches the overflow from the dumpster those unfortunate slaves live in. Each of us kings and queens entitled to create suffocating trash in a ritual of daily consumption. Drones fly and innocent brown people die for the energy to keep this diseased tragedy going and growing. Of course, none of this matters in the nice imagadget reality we all inhabit. Well, maybe not all of us inhabit that reality. I don't.

My world mostly takes place outside. Everyday I make it a point to pay attention to the natural world. That world doesn't require a grid to sustain itself. It doesn't require ancient fossil energy either. What it requires is a willingness to participate in the struggle for life. I'm attempting to learn how to participate in that struggle with grace and equanimity. This dance happens on the bio side of biophobia, and it requires acceptance of the gooey, slimey, smelly, living bodily fluid that is required to support life. It crawls in the soil and smells of Earth. It grows out of the ground and has an enduring intelligence the likes of which we should strive to possess. It pays us in natural splendor, taste, and fertility. It's time takes place in rotations, tilts, and revolutions. It's life follows the sun and sleeps on the Earth. This marvelous happening dazzles the senses in slow motion. The natural magnificence I'm describing does not show up on the imagadget. It doesn't fit that artificial electronic mold.

Where does all of this leave me and people like me? It leaves us stuck between artificial sustenance and quality starvation. Between pointlessness and a natural sanity thought putrid and insane by the imagadget followers. Followers that do not support the efforts needed most to keep our species healthy and thriving in the nonindustrial future which we have guaranteed our children will get. Which isn't a bad thing, it's actually good, but there's a lot of pain between now and the backside of that good. There's a lot of disease, starvation, marshal law, war, death and suffering to go before anything like good will come of it. At least the imagadget will eventually go the way of the dodo. What this all means to me is that I must labor at destructive, soul crushing, BAU support to keep my family out of debt and fed. I'm a nuclear engineer medic turned riding lawn mower/weed eater operator. I've dropped out of everything this society has offered up to me. I've done so because none of it could stand up to my personal sense of ethics. The nuclear engineering created toxic waste and killed lots of brown people. The once healthcare turned wealthcare and supported nothing but rich fuckers and their corporations. We have a large industry that makes people rich by parasatizing human bodies, and I'm not talking about the war machine here either. I'm talking about our wealthcare system.

This is all how a Druid has come to ride a lawn mower for money. This is all why a Druid cuts down trees, pulls up vines, trims ornamental shrubbery, and does all of the other trappings of conventional landscaping for money. It's one of the most pressing ironies of my life (and my employer is a 69 year old retired army Sergeant Major to boot). I do battle with nature for money, and then I come home and practice permaculture. I have a permaculture business named Ancient Earth Design, but nobody wants to pay for permaculture because they don't see the need for edible landscaping. They all see a need for the most worthless plants imaginable. Plants that only yield pretty and nice, but not medicinal and edible...or even useful for that matter. All of the nice ornamental plant growth gets carted off to that dumpster full of our stupidity to rot in the landfill with the diapers. Society pays a lot of money to keep the grass and ornamental landscapes trimmed up and under control. Society won't pay shit to have whole systems implemented on their landscape. Natural systems that work with nature to create abundance by way of food producing plants and animals. Society has no use for food and medicine. They're to busy texting, sexting, selfying, and just plan virtual masturbating to care about the natural world that sustains us all.

Eventually the permaculture system I have in place here on this one acre I live on will mature, and maybe I won't have to work at cutting grass for other people as much then. I don't care about money, but money cares about me. I don't care much about society either, but here I am, cutting their damned grass. I've thought about going back to college, but then I realized that college doesn't result in a job, it just results in debt. I know how to read books, and books are free at the library. Even if college does result in a job it's just more BAU support. BAU does nothing but destroy life. It produces food by killing everything in the soil with multitudes of poisons. It turns brown people into wage slaves and gives everybody cancer. I suppose none of that matters because the selfie nation doesn't care. At any rate, in the morning I'm off to go ride a lawn mower and operate a weed eater. At least nature will forgive me...I hope. It has to forgive me. After all, I have five different species of bamboo growing on this acre. I'm nursing the bamboo monster in hopes that it will grow up and destroy BAU. Consider this your warning! The bamboo monster is coming to getcha, and when he does this Druid will stop riding god foresaken lawn mowers. I much prefer the sickle.

The Birth of Sun Harvesters

The above picture was taken from inside of a swale I just dug out at the Fox Den.  The fox in the picture is my companion fox, and she goes by Bo Beppa.  I was taking the picture when Bo Beppa jumped into the frame unexpectedly, making the image serendipitous. 

I dug this swale, measuring at about 2 feet deep by 2 feet wide, with an accompanying 2 1/2 foot berm, and about 50 feet or so long on contour, in two days by myself. 

I busted through South Carolina clay fit for a pottery wheel, and South Carolina rock that had bands that crumbled like salt.

I dug this swale to capture water and build soil.  During the spring, when we get torrential rain, I hope this swale stays full more often than not, and I hope that an underground lens of water forms.  If that happens, then another hole which I've dug at the lowest point on the property, about 25 yards away from the swale, may fill with water from that lens.  However, that biggest hole, at the bottom of the property, will fill with water because all of the water striking my property has been directed to that spot. 

I used an A Frame Level, which I constructed from scavenged and excavated bits.  I used an old broom stick, a piece of wood that was scrap from a previous project, a piece of trim from a 1969 Airstream International Sovereign land yacht, some cordage, and a rock I dug out of the ground in Asheville NC on a previous paid permaculture dig.  It was a crude instrument that I made simply to last for this one job. 

But an A Frame Level must be used because placing swales on contour is a counter intuitive thing.  You can't see that level of slope and land movement. 

one of the various rocks I dug up in Asheville NC

Today I jumped the chain link fence that separates my property from a trailer park.  And I racked up a shit load of leaves that fell from a massive oak tree and placed them on my side of the fence.  A few roads down I could smell the smoke from yahoos burning the leaves that fell on their property.  I suppose they lack the knowledge, or concern, or brain cells to know that burning leaves is a border line retarded thing to do. Concentrate them on the earth and let the earth worms eat them and shit them out.  Earth Worm poo is as fertile as soil fertility gets.  Building soil is not that complicated.  Concentrate organic matter, or biomass, and if you do nothing else it will eventually become fertile ground for life to grow. 

I placed many of those leaves on the back side of the berm I had just created.  I plan to place a couple inches of mulch on top of those leaves, once I drive back to the county dump to get another truck and trailer load of free mulch.  I have to fork that mulch myself, and I have to pic the trash out of it, but it's free and it's a very diverse mixture of woody plant material.  Lots of people worry about things like herbacides and pesticides accompanying the free mulch.  My argument is that the mostly perennial and ornamental woody plant material I see being trucked into the dump, to be ground into mulch, is not the type of plant usually sprayed by homeowners.  It's just pruned and driven to the dump, where the trash in the back of the pickup truck and trailer gets ground along with it. 

I'm building fertility on this acre of land that I've found myself a husband of.  I'm using the principles of permaculture to guide me.  I'll be starting a business one of these days, but I won't be calling it permaculture because that word is in the process of cooptation.  I won't be co opted, nor will any organization I'm involved with.  I'm doing ecological design.  I'm using my brain along with intuition and spiritual guidance to create a landscape that allows regeneration, fertility, and life all to flourish.

Zen busted open a dried out gourd on the concrete after an impromptu game of "kick the gourd."  It ended up in the future pond, and some type of green growth emerged on the gourd.  You can see four gourd seeds still attached.  It is sitting on top of mulch from the county dump. 

 This is what I spend my time doing these days.  I dig holes, direct water, collect and concentrate biomass, and I sift through the literal waste stream of an empire drunk and glutted on the end of the age of petroleum abundance.  I have dropped out of the Matrix and no longer pay in any attention.  Maybe my actions are futile due to radioactively contaminated Fukushima rain.  Maybe Obama's hench men will show up and cart my ass back off to the solitary cell they've created for my kind.  Mostly resistant to the bullshit destruction for pigmen profit, I carry on with my blissful work of concentrating the raw ingredients of renewal and regeneration.  I'm an earth moving alchemist concerned with the quality and ecology of living soil. 

The view from the top of my truck, before the swale.

The only meaningful action for anyone to take now, to give our children a chance to eat, is to begin concerning yourself with sustainable food production.  As in, we need to begin seeing ourselves as sun harvesters.  We need to design our society with this as our central purpose.  I see a symbiotic dance between the plants and animals on this Earth.  We can orchestrate this dance like conductors, and that should be our place.  To concentrate natural processes in an attempt to create the most life giving fertility possible is the loftiest of goals for our species just now. 

Zen swimming in the first pond I dug out after a good rain

So I've sort of rambled and ranted towards the summary of this particular photoblog.  I've got many more pics up at the SUN Foundation site www.sun4living.com  You can see them here

Hopefully someone with great means will show up and donate a large tract of land for the first Foxstead to materialize.  We are now a 501c3 foundation with a bank account.  Go and visit the SUN site to learn how you can help create a realistic alternative to the end of petroleum abundance.  A realistic strategy for dealing with the transition from a first world empire, to a third world slum.  Or just go back to your ithingy and mindless idiot panel entertainment in service of BAU pay checks and pointless poisonous existence. 

There is too much for us to be doing to be wasting our time in perpetuity for pay checks.  We can sustain our own universal needs if we just believe.  Even with radioactive rain falling from our corrosive chemical sky, we can seek shelter beneath a forest canopy under which we have built culture and food.  Even when it all burns down we can survive, and we can thrive under a new paradigm that honors our sacred connection with the natural world. 

This is what's left of the home I currently have a $744 per month mortgage on.  Hopefully Allstate does what they are supposed to do.  If they don't, my wife and I will default on this loan and my credit will resemble this burnt out shell.  Fortunately we have exited the Matrix and so none of this matters to us.  Yet, I brought my first baby boy home to this house.  I still can't believe it's reality.