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

Gypsi Magi

1969, 31'  Airstream International.  N. Augusta SC.  Fate, destiny, and Will working together.


I'll blog about it one of these days


They say it's a land yacht.

They say if you control the water you control life

They say myth matters

follow your bliss, dreams reverse

wake up

Irradiated Zombies

One might wonder why somebody whom has resigned from the Matrix, and then subsequently removed himself from it, would want to waste any time fooling with the “interweb” (as my wife calls it). It would seem rather contradictory to quit the Matrix only to return to it. This blog is nothing if it's not a signal that I am broadcasting into it. “Hey agents, look over here,” is essentially what keeping a blog such as this one is doing. I can say a few things about that last point. The truth is that ever since I resigned from the navy, where I was employed (if you want to call it that) as a nuclear engineer, by way of missing ships movement and smoking all manner of herbs while UA (unauthorized absence), I've been on the radar, or list, or computer logarithm that concerns itself with all things command and control. Simply put, they've had their eyes on me ever since I was severed from the navy. As a side note, shortly before they severed me from the USN they sent my ass into solitary confinement for three days of bread and water in a class Charlie federal penitentiary in Bangor Washington. I'm not saying I've done hard time, or that I'm a convict, like is depicted for the newfangled myth of our time by the likes of Michael Schofield from Prison Break (he's the new MacGuiver, ), I just find it a particularly qualifying bit of personal past history.

My point is that they've been watching me since 2002 when I exited the navy. I had a classified clearance, which doesn't really mean shit seeing as how nuclear power ain't exactly a big secret these days. So while keeping this blog doesn't exactly help the cause for my broadcast blackout, I find it severely important as a service to humanity to help as many people as possible in learning the skills that are necessary for successful exit from the Matrix. Once you exit, your new life in the real world begins. That is where the hard work, although good work, comes in. Because it's not exactly as though we have many sane elders left any longer. That is a grave problem with severe consequences that are all tangled up with the iron bar to the collective head of modern society.

You know those pesky laws of thermodynamics that I spent so much time acquainting myself with while studying to be a nuke?  Which, as another detour from my point, I got shanghied into...I joined to be a deep sea diver and was flamboozled into standing ten feet next to a reactor looking through a periscope at the reactor once an hour during my five hour watch. All while launching jets off of the flight deck around the clock in response to the conspiracy that was 911...the great pretext to pounce on all of the oil in the middle east. Peak Oil anyone? Like the Government is clueless about PO. People who believe that shit are quit literally, as in very real, Zombies. Watch as you drive around...they can be seen walking, if you can believe that, on the side of roads and interstates these days. These ain't the hippies of yore either...they're vets recently returned from the desert where they busied themselves shooting women and babies in the face at point blank range. They're heavily medicated and unemployable waste generated by the military industrial complex that we were warned about. Do you actually believe that people can come back from that kind of shit and be anything resembling sane? If you believe that then stop reading now cause I'm not talking to you.

So back to the task at hand. Why am I keeping this blog active? In the risk analysis one must do, where exposure to the Matrix is concerned, the first check is “no longer broadcasting a signal into the Matrix via internet.” Well, I've already demonstrated why it doesn't change much for me. They know where I'm at, have known since the summer of 2002, and they know what I'm doing. I am exposing myself like this because I promised I wouldn't give up hope in my fellow man. That being the case, I need to help if and when I can.

I've been a writer my entire life. When I was in the first and second grade (I think...might have been 3^rd and fourth) I had to go to a reading and writing therapist...I think that's what he was called. I was behind in reading and writing for my age. I've been writing ever since and I was around 8 years old at the time. How's that for irony. Add to the fact that I recently found out that my half brother has Asperger's Syndrome which is carried by the father and he's my father's son. I took an online test and scored 70% in the affirmative. John Michael Greer, who's work I study, and whose organization I'm a member of (Ancient Order of Druids in America), and whom pretty much informs my current view of all things Druid, has it himself. If you connect enough dots it gets rather obvious what I'm getting at. Now, it must be said, that within that Syndrome, which is a very high functioning autism, I'm on the high functioning end of that. I believe I am particularly cut out for the job of liberating minds from this dying paradigm, this illusion, this hologram, this particular American Dream in this paricular Anti-Culture that is in the beginning stages of the compost heap. It's starting to heat up ain't it.

All of that to say this...I'm a leader. I've always been a leader, but all good leaders must also follow. I do that as well. I'm surfing this wave that will crash onto an island of hope and prosperity for nature and man. The work that needs to be done right now is the work of getting nature and man back on an even keel with one another. The consequences of Man's actions for the last couple hundred of years is beginning to mature into unavoidablity. We have to begin doing the work of crafting hope in the world. I believe Permaculture takes the Lion's share of that work for me, but an actual living spirituality is just as important. My particular path is Druidry. I consider myself a Druid because the truth is that I initiated myself last Alban Arthuan. I'm waving this flag because John Michael Greer is something like my Merlin.

I'm my own individual, just as my wife is, and just as you are. I'm broadcasting this signal into the Matrix because I've been called to do it by fate, destiny, and now will. It's an unavoidable part of where I'm going by necessity. Quit honestly, it's going to take magic to successfully deal with the future we are already in whether you want to believe it or not. I have faith that I will successfully navigate my way into the future. I don't know when I will blog again, and probably never on a schedule. I'm doing a lot of studying these days, but also a lot of doing in the World (specifically permaculture), and there's the matter of my son Ayden Zen that I must tend to on a daily basis. I will occasionally shout into the Matrix via this blog. 

 So here it goes...I am, and will continue defying the Matrix. I am doing it successfully. I'm typing this now to confirm that it does work. You can resign from the matrix, and if you follow your bliss, you will succeed. However, you must be ready to be attacked on a regular basis by agents. They will be your friends and your family. They can be anybody and everywhere. You have to be ready to constantly fend off their misery and remain authentic. It's very taxing work at times, to stay unplugged as a lifestyle, but it's necessary for the future of man on this living Earth. If enough of us do not head the call, the Earth will eventually shake us off like fleas...or perhaps we'll just irradiate ourselves into Zombies.

Zombie Zeitgeist

The photo and editing was all done by my amazing wife. 

Lately, the important corner of the blogosphere that I keep up with has been full of excellent writing.  William Hunter Duncan's latest blog on divinity is nothing short of fascinating with it's mind warping visual thought exercises.  Do you want to understand the difference between the model of reality, and reality, intellectually?  That is to say mentally.  Then there is Dimitri Orlov's latest on the differences between neuroses and psychoses in society as pertains to awakening from the American Hologram and seeing reality for what it is in reality rather than the empires illusion of progress.  I was going to write a blog similar to Dimitri's but decided against it due to the fact that he was thorough enough to remove the need for my blathering on the topic.  Lastly there is the latest Archdruid Report which has an unbelievable gem nestled inside of it.  I've been thinking a lot about hierarchy lately due to all of the buzzing on the topic emanating from the three blogs I just linked to.  John Michael Greer's latest blog outlines the specifics behind America's aristocracy and how they managed to get their heads lodged up their asses while never putting their noses down.  Apparently they have removable heads that makes the feat possible...er...rather they end up with removable heads once we the people decide we've had enough and reclaim our rightful power to exist on mom Gaia without being forced to stick our heads up our own asses.

There is a lot of head up own ass thinking that floats on the MSM bubbles coming from the bull shit black hole nowadays.  It's not hard to see the world clearly if that's what you want.  The only thing stopping you from removing your own head from your own ass is you, and that is the point behind my usage of the Zombie Zeitgeist...or meme in the title of my last blog.  I have dubbed myself a Zombie Whisperer.  Now, I want to make it clear that this is just a joke for those of us who understand because we see clearly (and it's not a meme yet).  I in no way mean this as an insult to the Zombies, or even a judgement being rendered.  It seems that defining what a zombie is to me would be helpful, and it will possibly remove any confusion that may arise in the future.  A zombie is anybody who believes that the MSM (main stream media) is true.  Believing that the MSM is true requires a few things.  First it means subscribing to the myth of progress paradigm, and secondly it means coloring your reality with the cogs of the machine world that's been carved out for human consumption.  It's a world that comes into focus through that specific lens...and it makes those who look through it very hungry.

The zombie whispering title is a product of my understanding of the necessity for community.  Not just any community either, but the one that is surrounding you where you are.  The people in your apartment complex, or the other residences of your culdesac, or the trailers surrounding you.  You mostly don't get to pick your neighbors in America, and we have learned how to deal with this.  We deal with it by ignoring our neighbors and choosing our own abstract communities be it church, a meetup group, a club, an online forum, or some stupid ass hobby that serves as a distraction for your lose of humanity and, more importantly, your lose of purpose .  I happen to live in the country right next to a moderately sized trailer park (as in 6 trailers on about 2 acres).  I have become a zombie whisperer due to necessity.  So what is a zombie whisperer?  Well...I'll tell you.  A zombie whisperer is somebody whom can exist amongst zombies while not actually being one themselves.  Further, he (or she) is a person whom can heard zombies and control them via dazzling them with bits of brain strategies.  The goal of a zombie whisperer is to out fox the zombies and survive...thrive even.  I'm still learning what it means to be one myself.  I didn't exactly have a teacher to hand down the art to me.  I'm learning it as I go.

I guess you could say that the art of zombie whispering is emergent now.  The goal of a zombie whisperer is to survive the zombie apocalypse that has recently kicked off in earnest.  I think the American Empire has already smashed to the ground and we've just been on our way back up temporarily before our collective fool head hits the damn asphalt once again.  Life is going to start getting a lot more interesting as the days proceed.  Nothing could be more important than learning how to deal with zombies.  It's one thing to ignore them while the box stores are shitting out cheap industrially produced pretend food, and quite another to attempt the same trick when the box store shelves are empty...just look at Katrina to understand how that looks.  That's where the original zombie outbreak happened.  Let there be no mistake that food is the immediate concern for our species.  What I mean is that you can't ignore hunger and there is going to be a lot of people learning this, and in America, before too long.  It goes without saying (so why am I saying it?) that water is more important for life.  Water is waaaayyyy up there on the we're about to be fucked radar, but I think food will become a problem much sooner due to the corn crop failure that's coming your way. 

The present reality is a dire and dim one.  Just because you won't hear it reported by anybody (at least not seriously) in the MSM, doesn't mean it's not true.  I'm becoming a leader where I'm at.  I have identified that people are going to be looking to me for what to do next.  The reasons for that are many, but one clear one is that they see what I'm doing.  They see the strange ways in which I spend my time using my body with hand tools to create food and capture water.  Now, granted, they are Zombies (mostly), but there is that bit about zombies being hungry.  I suppose the key to zombie whispering is to figure out how to convince them that if they don't eat you they may be able to have more to eat later...and sustainably at that.  You have to convince them to not only not eat you, but to help you by coexisting with you in reality cooperatively rather than in the hologram destructively.

Green Wizard Zombie Whispering Permie Ninjaness

The world is a hopeless messicus...just like I outlined in my last blog post.  Zombies jacked up on “bath salts” chewing each other’s faces off in public, never ending war for resources, financial melt down, prisons being ran by for profit corporations, healthcare for profit, debt slavery, destruction of our biosphere without scruples, 67% of the worlds prescription fuckitol prescribed here in the once united states, and the law of the land stating that nobody can send anybody to prison for no reason never to be heard from again.  You’d have to be a master of denial to not feel mostly despair for the future.  Nothing is going to save us from this trajectory of tragic destruction.  Is it really hopeless?  Without hope what is the point in continuing to breath?  Why bother living in a world with no hope?  As a self proclaimed optimistic pessimist doomer...let me attempt to make a case for something resembling hope...because that seems to be in very high demand just now for my kind.  My kind being members of the aspiring virtual Post Petroleum Human Tribe (with tribe being a grave abstraction from an actual tribe due to it’s mostly virtual nature). 
   
    I have some hope to offer.  Follow your bliss.  The world has always been a fucked up place.  It’s always been a place where joy is intermittent at best and suffering stays attached to each of us as a planet sized ball on an infinite chain.  “Life is suffering,” and to my knowledge this was the seed of the Buddha’s message.  Start from there and work your way to the joy, cause otherwise you’ll never find it.  But it’s not my intention to get all newfangled W.A.S.P (white anglo saxon protestant) spiritual on my kind readers (as I wrote this paragraph Zee Avi’s “Mileston Moon” was playing, and it seemed very fitting for the tone, mood, and message I’m trying to convey...so listen to it as you read.)  I suppose inserting “life is suffering” here was my disclaimer for ultimate truth.  I mean such being the case, what should we expect from reality?  Right?

    I’m supposed to be in Asheville NC right now, 70 miles away from my home, participating in the final weekend of the Permaculture in Action class I’ve been attending all summer.  Instead I’ve been catching up on blog reading and now blogging.  My internet time has spiraled to almost zero due to my laptop dying.  I was reading John Michael Greer’s blog a week ago when my computer screen blinked a couple of times and then went dark.  My first reaction was to take up cussing and get all bent out of shape about it...but I refrained from that action.  Instead I put my laptop in an obscure corner of our room and it has remained there.  Fuck it...I don’t need a laptop, or the internet.  Now I have occasional access via my wife’s work computer, so I won’t be blogging much going forward.  I will still be around on occasion, and I still have every intention of posting a new photojournal entry at some point soon.  In the past laptopless week I have taken to viewing it’s death as a blessing.  I just wish I had a way to listen to spotify out in the garage while smoking herbage from a bong. 

    It’s just another obstacle being removed from the path my bliss follows.  A couple of days after the laptop died I found myself with ten Delaware hens and a beautiful Rode Island Red rooster.  I also found myself planting a cherry weeping willow tree in the garden.  I dug nine two foot deep post holes and constructed a circular chicken run in a dandelion patch that I have let grow.  I have made peace with “weeds” in my garden.  I consider myself a weed gardener (and no, I’m not growing any marijuana).  I actually have some prized weeds that I have allowed to grow to great heights in my garden.  So if you cultivate weeds in your garden are they still weeds?  I love weeds.  I relate to them and draw strength from them.  What is stronger than a plant that can grow in concrete dividers on the interstates?  What is a better symbol for the magic in the plant world than a plant that can grow in concrete?  I want to revel in those weeds that will one day be the pioneers that cover up all of the vial and insidious destruction our species has wrought on Mam Gaia.  Isn’t there a word for hating your own species?  I mostly hate the human race because I mostly see nothing worth caring about.  No other species shows contempt for every other species on the Earth accept for ours.  Shit...I’m supposed to be outlining hope here aren’t I?

    I consider myself a Green Wizard...a sooth sayer, a prognosticator....I can see into the future...centuriessss into the future.  I’ve even been there lad!  And having been there, I can tell you that it’s fubar until we get to 2400 or so.  We are headed into a dark age, and that is based on factual reality and not on the delusional technotriumphalism aided and abetted by the likes of the MSM.  Where is the hope in a dark age?  Being a Green Wizard, I figured I’d give the other end of the popular strategy being offered by members of the PPHT (post petroleum human tribe) a chance.  Basically we have the Transistion/Permaculture end, and the Green Wizard end, and that’s what the PPHT spectrum of strategy looks like.  I became involved in permaculture because I was looking for some hope.  Asheville has a very healthy permaculture crowd, but where I live...not so much.  My dilemma is that Asheville is the closest Transition/Permaculture hub and that ain’t exactly local.  So start one here where I am right?  It’s not so easy as that.  You see if everyone in your community has their head up the American Hologram ass, what good are they going to be to your transition aspirations?  Yet, the cabin in the woods is doomed to failure.  What does that leave by way of strategy for dealing with the future?  To my estimation it leaves Green Wizardry. 

    I would start a Transition/Permaculture movement where I’m at, but unfortunately I’m too optimistically pessimistic for that.  Yet it is what I’m doing via my practice of green wizardry.  It’s just that I’m planning that transition for my neighbors, who care about football and fried cheese just now, for the future.  Which is pretty much what John Michael Greer has stated is the point in the practice.  Our job is to learn how to live in a de-industrialized and petroleum scarce civilization ahead of the collapse curve.  The predicament that is to be dealt with is the fact that nobody gives a shit about paying attention to much beyond the zombies chewing each other’s faces off in-between bouts of America’s got Stupid Fake Anti-reality Television show.  However, when the not reality, reality television goes away, and they are forced into accepting reality of the reality persuasion, they will begin to care about things like how to dig a permaculture hole and how to keep chickens happily poopin’ out food from their poop shoots.  They will care because they will be hungry.  That’s where I come in (and also where the hope I’ve been desperately trying to tease out of myself to offer it up here comes in...and here’s another song to bring you to the end of my rambling rambles)

     It’s not much hope, but it’s something.  So there are nothing but zombies in my community who enjoy yelling at their children for digging in the dirt (I heard one of the trailer’s next door cussing and yelling at their four year old for digging in the dirt “how many fucking times do I have to tell you to stop messin’ in the fuckin’ dirt?”  I had to endure that while digging in the dirt in my yard.  Their four year old was simply copying me, an adult, doing interesting things in the dirt).  Well we have chickens now, and they are very visible to the inhabitants of my anti-culture community.  My wife and I have decided to attempt to get the neighbors interested in buying our happy chicken eggs next door for two dollars a dozen.  It’s part of our “get to know the zombie neighbors” initiative.  There is nothing but a chain link fence separating us from them.  One would have to have one’s head up the American Hologram ass to not think that when the zombie apocalypse kicks off full steam ahead they ain’t gonna be jumpin’ the fence to ransack all of our green wizard creation for their bellies.  Might as well deal with it now and start trying to form relationships with them. 

    The thing I’ve realized is that zombies are very hungry.  So I’ve decided to work with that theme.  Therefore my strategy is going to involve Zombie Whispering.  I’m cultivating my son into a Green Wizard Zombie Whispering Permaculture Ninja, and I’m doing that by doing that myself.  Yes, I am a Green Wizzard Zombie Whispering Permaculture Ninja...want to fight about it?  Just be forewarned...I can shoot chicken shit out of my wand omnidirectionally and by design and at my command. 

    I enjoyed the permaculture gallivant I’ve been on this summer.  I’ve learned a lot and etched out a reputation amongst the Asheville permaculture scene as one bad ass hole digger.  I never knew that I had a proclivity and talent for digging holes.  I even have a mattock that’s been dubed Axcalibur by my wife.  I think the most important attribute about myself that I’ve come to terms with is that I’m a loner.  It’s an attribute that makes for good green wizardry, but not so much Transition.  I think it’s because I don’t like dealing with the hierarchy ingrained in our lower brains.  When you are in a group you have to deal with pecking orders.  I just want to be king...which is a topic for another blog.  I’m beginning to think that a monarchy ruled by a genuinely good king is the best way to organize ourselves as a species.  But then that’s the point of the once and future king isn’t it.  So that’s it...my ode to hope.  It’s the best I can do.  Learn how to grow food and keep food producing animals and prepare for your local hungry zombies because they are going to be interested in the holes you dig and the birds you keep one of these days. 

P.S.  smoking herb out of a bong also helps with the hope bit.  I find there isn’t much better therapy than watching the chickens that live in my back yard scratch in the strong weeds for bugs while stoned.

Hopless Messicus

What does it mean to prepare for the collapse of our petroleum laced convenience anti-culture? The easy answer is to learn how to grow your own food, but that's too easy. Growing food isn't easy but that answer is. "Ohh, just learn how to grow your own food, that will prepare you for the end of petroleum!!" Now walk out into your yard (which is probably surrounded by zombies) scratch the sod off and plant some seeds. Wa la...or as Merlin might say, "hockity pockity wockity wack." Now just go back into the house and turn the television back on secure in the knowledge that food is on the way. Well you might want to make sure that you have at least planted something that is going to yield a lot of energy...like taters. Now all we have to do is get everybody in this anti-culture to start planting taters in their yards and we'll all make it...won't we?

While the taters are growing, let's look at a few more items of concern for our petroleum people in this petroleum society which is made possible by...well...petroleum...and corn. The reality is that we have become fat and gooey in our air conditioning. About those taters that we just planted. It's wonderful that we don't have to worry about such things as colorado potato beetles or any of those other pesky pest insects. Let's not forget a few other factors we would have to worry about if it were not for technotriumphalism. Factors such as the unknown affect of GMO's on humanity, migrating insects that are in the wrong place at the wrong time due to the changing biosphere, or soil that looks more like the wore out innards of an elder prostitute. If it were not for those scientists out there pounding the "manipulating physical reality with cute gadget" pavement, we would have to worry about subjects like the laws of thermodynamics and biology.

Did you hear that ding? It was the sound of the potato that just got cooked in the ground. Thanks to nuclear power plants that are just leaking radioactive shit to beat the band out there in Aikido land, we no longer need microwaves to nuke what little bit of nutrition was left out of them taters. Now our genetically modified tater chips can add some nice radiation to our diet. Who needs radiation therapy any longer when you can just buy it for .99 cents at your local convenience store, and with free monosodium glutamate. Wait...but isn't that fighting the cancer causing agents with cancer? Okay, I'm confused. Phew...it's a good damn thing that high fructose petroleum sugar green guilt gulp drinks are so cheap. If they weren't so cheap, I might have to drink that even cheaper rain water complete with every fucking toxin you care to guess at. You know the space brother's are close when the rain water ain't fit for human consumption and we've got zombies chewin' each other's faces off on the side of the interstate due to "bath salts." Whatever the fuck that is...is that the slash and burn Walmart Meth that's causing all of these zombies? Is it true that people go to Walmart and gain everything they need to manufacture meth while there? And is it true that they even make the meth there and then use it and leave? I heard that was true.

Our world has past the point where fiction can go. Orwell and Huxely didn't even envision zombies chewin' each other's faces off as reality...at least not to my knowledge. Is this really reality now? I heard another story that broke my heart the other day. I heard that if you go to jail your gettin' strip searched. Better not go to jail for any reason. It's a good thing that the police can't just pull you over for no reason and then take you to jail because you are suspiciously acting suspicious. It's also great news that the federal government can't show up and take you away for doing nothing wrong. Wait...so you can get pulled over by the law for no reason and then never be seen or heard from again? It's a good thing I don't have a job to drive to, or I might have to put myself at risk of never being heard from again for no reason. I guess it really doesn't matter because just being alive gives you cancer these days. What a fucked up prize to inherit. It's a wonder I'm not a pessimist, or facetious for that matter.

We need to learn to let go as a species, and I'm not talking about Buddhism here either. I'm talking about learning to let go of the leisure we have all grown accustomed to for the last 100 years or so. I suppose the "middle class" didn't exist until after the second world war. That means this illusion we have been living in has only existed, this time around at least, for roughly 70 years (there's always the possibility that technologically advanced civilizations existed on Earth and vanished with no trace...like Atlantis). Everything we know as normal about society these days ain't even old enough to have died from old age yet. It's gettin' there though isn't it? Think of all of the things about our technopoly that we take for granted every second of every day. Drinkable running water (you won't die from a waterborne pathogen at least), electrical outlets, personal motorized transport, food that magically appears sterilized in grocery stores, climate control, free entertainment at your command, telecommunication technology. I could go on, but I've gone on long enough.

Knowing all of the above, who would remain optimistic about our future? Or as Archimedes might say, "Whoooo...I'ddd like to know Whoooo" (I've been brainwashing my son and I with Disney's Sword in the Stone"). My wife has baby fever now that my son's learning to use the potty. I'd love to have another child for many reasons. However...see above. The world is a clusterfuck and the prognosis is continual clusterfuck status for the next 100 years or so, and that's being optimistic. If we are to listen to magi's such as John Michael Greer, then we've got another 300 years before something like a steady state world will exist. That's 300 years of worse than the year before, for members of civilizations at least. I keep thinking that I need to inject some hope into this blog, but I can't seem to stop paying attention to reality. I feel like a fraud when I try to muster up some happy shit to say about the future.

I'm marinating in a permaculture tribe right now. I'm making connections with real people in person. The only problem is that I have to drive 70 miles to participate. I have to go up the mountain. How am I supposed to do this where I'm at? There's nothing but zombies out there...chewing each other's fucking faces off. They don't even have the decency to do it in private. That's the reality that I'm supposed to fight with optimism. I'm supposed to start my own tribe here in Stupidville, where they water their plants with electrolytes and they can't figure out why they won't grow. Where they think their vote for president counts and Coca Cola is good for them when they are sick. They go to the Dollar General to buy their sustenance for cryin' out loud. Let's not forget the shit house rat crazy southern baptists Christians that are the majority. These are people who like to spend their time exercisin' demon's in retard tongue. They don't have to worry themselves with reality because Chebus is coming to save them. It's enough to make a grown man cry. A majority class of people who never left their childhood.

I want so badly to believe that the 100th monkey is going to arrive for humanity before it's too late. Yet I know that it's already to late. What do you do when hope becomes gossamer delusion? Sometimes sadness is appropriate and healthy, and our society is a sad mess. There's a very real human drive inside of me to do something about this fucked up prognosis. I am doing something about it, but men can't be islands unto themselves. So I want to get on with it. The shit has already hit the fan but society is to anesthetized on stupid and ignorant to notice or give a shit. How am I supposed to grow a tribe in Stupidville? I can't leave because leaving takes letting go of any sense of stability on my families part. My wife and I fantasize about becoming gypsies, but it's just fantasies. This is where learning to live in the moment comes in handy. Much past the present moment and your just trying to kick water up hill. Why do we insist on trying to kick water up hill on our way to Hopeless Messicus?  I'd like to know. 

Magical Wealth at Society's Butt Hole

From Wiki: 

As electronic waste, CRTs are considered one of the hardest types to recycle.^[56] CRTs have relatively high concentration of lead and phosphors (not phosphorus), both of which are necessary for the display. There are several companies in the United States that charge a small fee to collect CRTs, then subsidize their labor by selling the harvested copper, wire, and printed circuit boards. The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) includes discarded CRT monitors in its category of "hazardous household waste"^[57] but considers CRTs that have been set aside for testing to be commodities if they are not discarded, speculatively accumulated, or left unprotected from weather and other damage.
Leaded CRT glass is sold to be remelted into other CRTs, or even broken down and used in road construction.

What is there to say that hasn't already been said? What is there to do in the face of this suspended decimation lumbering over the planet like a planet sized boulder? The last thread holding the entire shootin' match together is fit to bust any second now...and then what? We're in the waiting room with our number to be called any moment. What happens when our number is called? I'm certain that when that number is called it's going to include a large helping of pain and suffering for each of us. Think of a trip to the dentist before pain meds, anesthetics, or numbing agents. Think of the pain that can be generated in your body via the most scathing torture imaginable. Think of the emotional pain that is possible due to love's loss, or the torture of loved ones that you are forced to witness. Why would I be advocating for such a horrible exercise? Perspective.

I had a saying I used to share with the patients of mine who were in dire straights back when I was on the meat wagon. I only used this particular saying for special occasions and only with people who were actually gettin' pounded hard by life's prison gay guerrilla. I'd say to them, "as long as you are breathing it can get worse. When you stop breathing it can't get any worse then that." It sounds like a cruel thing to say now, in retrospect, but then it made perfect sense and was always received well. Picture you were just in a car wreck in which the car flipped a couple of times and your leg managed to make it out of the window during some of the flips. At some point during this process you might start flipping out about the state your leg is in, now enter the cynical, burned out, clinical, no business being a medic any longer medic telling you that it's really not that bad cause at least you are still breathing. Again this is really all a matter of perspective, or perhaps perception.

All humans excel in forgetting where they came from. We adapt notoriously well to better circumstances than before and then promptly forget before. It must be the same mechanism that allows us to make active use of JMG's magical "away" where all of the garbage we generate goes. Yesterday I went to my counties main waste management facility...next stop is the magical "away" that is hidden somewhere in our state...I guess. I had a truck load of "waste." Two garbage bags full of things that can't be recycled like poopy diapers (we used cloth for the first year but had to stop due to the moister conditions that assist in skin problems for my son...I'm all for being green until it affects my son's health) and all manner of consumer grade trash. I had a 50 gal trash bag full of "commingled" recycles (glass, and 1 and 2 plastics) and another 50 gal trash bag full of crushed cans. The reason I was at the main waste management facility and not the local satellite branch was because I had a television to deposit into "away." This was originally not my television.

I acquired this television because it was laying on the yard next to a large pile of trash waiting to be picked up by somebody to take it all to the magical away. My buddies neighbor had stopped paying his mortgage several years ago and the bank had finally gotten around to making his ass leave, hence this pile of garbage. Since I'm in touch with my scavenging place in our consumer society, I jumped into the "garbage" pile head first. I acquired a good bit of free trash to make use of including a nice wooden project table for my garage. Unfortunately for me I did not notice that the television's power chord had been cut until I had arrived at home 20 miles from said yard. Now I had a large bit of trash that was not allowed to be deposited into my magical local satellite away branch. 

I decided I would take the television completely apart to see what I could scavenge from it. This particular television was of the heavy cathode ray tube type. It was a flat screen CRT probably from the early 2000's. I ended up with a few useful clamps and an art piece I made out of the plastic frame and speakers that I'm using as a dvd storage container in my garage at present (I plan on hooking the speakers up to a microphone at some point). I was able to remove all of the guts to cart off to away in my house hold garbage. I was left with the CRT which was fastened to the glass via a metal wrap that had the whole thing welded together at 8 little points. There was no removing this band and therefore no more left for me to take apart. I thought about busting the thing up with a sledge hammer, but decided that it wasn't worth the mess and plus there was a little voice telling me not to seeing as how there was an X-ray emission warning on the CRT. 

This is what I was left with minus the bit on the end

 

It's a good thing I didn't break that CRT because according to the waste management manager, had I done one more thing it would have not only been illegal, it would have been a 25,000 dollar fine. He said that the CRT would have been mine for the rest of my life had I broken it. He told me there was a toxic gas inside of it but couldn't say what the gas was. I latter found out that CRT's are considered toxic because there are several toxic metals in the phosphors as well as lots of lead in the glass screen. Nice, I thought to myself. You can go to a any thrift store in the nation and pick one of these things up for cheap and set it in your house.  It will represent the centerpiece of our American anti-culture and be featured in the focal point of your home.  You can spend holidays starring at it with your loved ones and bond over reality television.  Just remove a few screws, clamps, and glued brackets and the thing becomes toxic waste. How perfect is that? 

For a few minutes I thought my ass was in legal trouble for scavenging this television that was left in an abandoned yard at the behest of BOA...I'm sure.  For a couple of seconds I thought an agent was gonna show up and cart my ass back into a cell for exposing the very real and dangerous toxicity of the matrix.  The manager told me to pull ahead and park to get me out of the way of the only way into this facility. There were people with their own truck loads of toxic waste to try to deposit into the magical land of away. Luckily I stopped when I did because I was aloud to deposit my acquired consumer toxicity with a stern warning to never again remove the screws, clamps, and glued brackets from a television. Next stop...the metal scrap yard to make my first benjamins in the scavenge economy (just as an aside, cause I don't know if it's true or not, but one of the dudes at the dump told me that the tube has gold and some diamond in it...apparently you can make a living on old televisions if you get the governments permission...I may look into this).

45 cents a pound was what I got for my cans and 11 cents a pound for the steel. That looked like this, 26 pounds of cans for $11.70 and 14 pounds of steel for $1.54. The steel was mostly the springs from a box spring mattress I took apart. I ended up with a lot of useable wood, a tarp, a metal lattice that I will eventually use for something (probably a cucumber trellis) and a bunch of metal springs which I turned into $1.54. This was a very interesting experience. I pulled up under this yards awning to get my money and a burly con looking 20 something year old, clearly full of exuberance for life, barely noticed my presence. "Whadaya got?" He asked me in-between thoughts of how bad his life sucked. Without saying anything he grabbed the bag of cans from my truck and weighed it, then grabbed the 30 gallon trash can full of the springs and weighed it. He then wrote on a piece of paper and handed it to me. "Do I need to take this somewhere to get my money?" He just pointed down a grimey hall. Once I arrived at the other side of the hall there was a portal of sorts. It was a metal tube that rotated so that I could place my slip in it for the clerk to read on the other side. There was a bullet proof glass pane no more than a foot high and wide for me to see into the office.

In order for me to receive my $13.24, I had to show my drivers license, get my picture taken, and sign my signature into the computer. I was entered into a database along with all of the drug addicts and cons. I mean what other type of self respecting citizen of our great empire would be out to gain $13.24 for some scavenged cans and leftover box spring metal? Clearly I was either a con, drug addict, homeless, or some combination or all three. When the toothless 50 something year old clerk asked me for my drivers license, and to sign, I said "why, am I being entered into some government data base?" I was informed that my "profile" had to be entered into the "system." Just after I asked that question another lady, probably the manager of this joint, starred at me for about 20 seconds and I starred back. In that stare she was probably comparing me to the pictures of local wanteds, assessing my drug usury status, and trying to figure if she recognized me from causing trouble before. I starred back to tell her that I was none of the above. Here's another bit of juicy information. Apparently there is only one way to sell aluminum without a license, and that is by the can. In fact, the only metal you can sell without a permit is aluminum cans and steel. Any other type and you must have the permission of your local government. I plan on getting that permission.

To be a scavenger is to align yourself with cons, drunks, drug addicts, and the homeless in our society. You become trash when you quit the matrix. I've spent more time with "garbage" since I resigned then I have in my entire life it seems. Why am I doing this? I'm just following my bliss. It seems my bliss is to rummage through this empires garbage heap. I'd rather pick through the shit then kiss the agents ass. I'd rather get on with the scarcity economy now while there's not much competition. This is what the future looks like, only more fighting and less potable water and food. What are we supposed to do with all of this end of empire/civilization due to the constraints that the laws of thermodynamics and simple physics place on reality? First go through all of the stages of grief. That took me about five years. It took that long because of the conditioning cemented into my psyche due to a life spent in the matrix. Once you finally get it, then decide what you are going to do about it. Just do something. Be the change you want to see in the world. I've decided to learn how to grow food and navigate my way through the scarcity economy that we are headed into. It's only going to get more difficult as time moves on. However, it can always get worse as long as you are breathing.

It's like this. The Buddha said "life is suffering." That's correct, and you have to internalize that before you are free to live joyously. Otherwise you are deluding yourself. Surrender to the empires shit pile and you may find some gems to trade for what you need in the process. Either way at some point your probably going to find yourself at said shit pile. If your not used to the smell it's just going to add to the suffering bit. It's uncanny what you can unearth in the magical land of away that's found at the business end of societies butt hole. Here's to finding those undigested peanuts in the shit.