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.