Not A Pretty Picture

Around eight o'clock at night and the quiet is veritably rent by a bellowing, ranting, screaming human voice. The man across the street is communicating with his female partner. The epithets are not very pleasant, either - if I had children in the house, I really wouldn't want them to hear most of the invective which flows from his mouth like pus from a wound.

The yelling is really at full volume too; the entire street of maybe twenty households are treated to this son-sans-lumiere maybe twice a week- more likely three or four times in the summer. And this has been a feature of our lives for over eight years, ever since I bought this little house in the quiet suburb .Goodness knows how long it has been a part of the lives of the family across the street, who are unfortunate enough to include this childish man among their members.

Yes, I said childish. This is a fully-grown adult male, probably in his late '40s, who cannot communicate with his wife, his children or his dogs without frequently descending into a rage more suitable to a two-year-old with teething problems.

Sure, we all yell sometimes. We all feel, and express, rage, outrage, hatred and loathing - unless we're some kind of saint or bodhisattva. But to keep this up as a mode of communication for over eight years speaks of an ego in full command of the body and soul; an ego denied its perceived status and needs, a petulant, pouting, rancorous sphere of me,me,me: hear me, or I bellow. Give me due deference, or I will call you a whore.

And this appears to me, more and more, to be the level and the capacity at which much of Western, modern-day people have settled - that of the screaming child deprived of what it wants. And every time it opens its eyes it sees more that it wants. The covetousness and selfish greed of humanity given full expression in a hate-filled, ear-shattering temper tantrum which the individual never seems to move to correct in himself (and yes, I use the word himself advisedly). This is humanity at its peak, in full flower and at the pinnacle of its radiant beauty.

Not a pretty picture, is it?

Aaargh

How the hell is anyone expected to concentrate on a logical and mathematical problem - and code that problem as a database query - while seated in a high-traffic area, being interrupted every ten minutes by sundry colleagues and even by workmen wanting to change the light?
I don't know. But I won't be trying it again any time soon.

The minute a big query needs to be written on the fly I'm going to politely refuse to do it. It's not worth the stress and strain.

I think the high point of today was when I asked the guys on ladders over my desk if they would mind finishing my SQL coding for me.

And, in totally unrelated news, this is the blog on my son's website.

Have I mentioned lately how proud I am of him?

I Chose This

Well, this is an unusual space for me to be in - not that I never get depressed, but that it happens so rarely that I forget each time how to handle it.

Like a swiftly drawn curtain of rough hemp, the disconnection settles into my soul. I suddenly find myself surrounded by complete idiots - heedless, thoughtless, conscious-less avatars of the mediocre culture which anchors humankind. At such a time, I find any number of life forms better company than my own race - plant people, bird people, dog people - all appear possessed of an understanding and a light which outstrips, not just my human kins', but my own feeble luminosity as well.

Ah, the dark and dreadful caverns of despair! How Gothic and melodramatic I do sound.

Yet I must remember, when my spirit shrinks into the lightless holes which are all I see, that I chose this. Not just within the spacetime frame of one human incarnation, but long before and after this life, I actually selected these conditions for mySelf, in this interval.

And really, how bad is it after all? I have gifted myself with a greater than normal human intelligence in this lifetime, and a potential for understanding which  - to be baldly honest - I see in very few of my 'peers'. I have come through the dismemberment of a Shamanic initiation, this time around, and learned so much through pain and death that I am, most of the time, a very happy and contented - ofttimes even ecstatic - little ego-self indeed.

And here, as the sun sets a couple of weeks before an equinox, wrapped in the love of my landbase, the care of my Ancestors, the benison of the Deities and the exuberance of my nonhuman companions: here, I whine about my self-imposed isolation, and feel depressed that no human within hailing distance of my physical aura has an inkling of understanding. How self absorbed. How silly. How downright un bloody grateful.

Ah yes - that's better. A swift kick to my own arse from my own dear Self has done the trick, again.

Pic: The Hermit by KKL

Colonials

The Council of South African Students has called for the immediate closure of Afrikaans medium schools, saying:

Cosas condemns any racial tendencies that seeks to close doors of learning for the black African students, who are indigenous people of this country and Africa at large by having foreign, un-original Afrikaans as a medium of instruction in some racist schools, more especially in the West Rand region under racist Afrikaners management,

Apart from the excruciating use of English by COSAS (and don't argue that it's not your first language - you are encouraged by our constitution to express yourself in any one of our 11 official languages), I am flummoxed as usual by the Bantu population's insistence on being thought of as indigenous.

Of course you're not indigenous. You started the massacre of the true indigenous people yourselves.
Now, get over it.

Take Back Your Life

There are any number of reasons why cell phones are number one on my ‘kill’ list, not the least of those being the way they turn a fairly normal, connected and aware individual into an instant dead zone zombie, existing in an alternate configuration of reality and surrounded by a personal space in which no one else actually registers.

I mean, you must have seen it. In any social situation, or gods forefend even a boardroom meeting, you’ll see this relatively accessible, awake human being transformed by the ringing of a bell into a shambling denizen of , if not the netherworld, at least a corner of the cosmos not immediately apparent to the rest of us.

A woman ahead of me on the street will suddenly press her ear to her phone and begin wandering in circles, talking as if a half a dozen people hadn’t just narrowly averted a collision with her.

A man driving home in rush hour traffic will be transmogrified on the instant into a lethal demon, his normally-competent brain too subdivided to avoid swerving into the young mother in the next car.

An interesting and compelling conversation will suddenly fall apart in embarrassment as one of the main protagonists answers his buzzing pocket. What a farce. What a bunch of rude barbarians we have become, all at the behest of a tiny, portable communication device.

But what has set me off today is yet another aspect of these infernal devices, often touted as a feature – and that is their ability to receive and send emails. To and from the office. In your out-of-office time, yet.

Wait, people – I thought we were supposed to savour the multitudinous aspects and formats of this incarnation we have taken on, this time? Since when has it become a virtue to be always and forever connected to your place of work - nibbling at your nervous system, undermining your relationships, taking you over as a corporate undead citizen forever and ever, amen?

Cut the Power. Kill the Machines.

More Pastry - For Shame, For Shame

I've only just heard about the disgraceful assault on Lierre Keith at an Anarchist Book Fair, and quite frankly, I'm shocked cold.

I have supported the acts of the Black Bloc in the past - but I'm now willing to change my mind.

I have supported the acts of courage of the Vegan Anarchists in the past, but I'm now distinctly on the edge of changing my mind.

I have supported the Animal Liberation Front in the past, but now I'm thinking twice about lending them any credence whatsoever.

It's great that people can come to such a sensitivity for non-human life that they find themselves unable to eat that life to stay alive themselves. But for fuck's sake, people, develop your souls a little further, can't you?

If we all felt for the agony of the animals we kill and eat, there'd be an improvement in the world, that's for sure - but then what? Can we start to feel the pain on the spinach as it is ripped from the earth and sliced up, alive, to be digested by a human? Raw, for gods' sakes.
Will we balk at the slaughter of millions of microbial life forms every day - every hour, every second - as we continue on with our lives?

How have these people arrested their spiritual growth so that they no longer recognise that we are incarnate upon the Earth, and that this implies a continued cycle of destruction, death, creation and birth?

For this is the pact we have entered into as meat animals: that we kill to survive, and in turn are food ourselves. It's a beautiful, deadly, grisly and awesome ballet we perform.

And yet some folks have twisted their understanding so far that they are willing to physically assault someone with the guts to explain an alternative (and, to me, highly realistic and Earth-loving) view. It is sick, and so symptomatic of the culture we're embedded in at this turn of the spiral Time.

And one last thing, radical Vegans - if I ever need to rethink my position on Veganism, I will do so by holding your actions uppermost in my mind. Go back to square one, and start again.

Buying Our Way

I see people all the time who think that they can buy their way out of their own personal boredom, anguish, or sense of self-worthlessness.

Most of these people, of course, are perfectly correct to feel unworthy. They are blank-brained idiots who see something which makes them go ahh and want to buy it, to appease their inherent need for -what? - love, gratification,power?

I am so disgusted I can’t begin to explain the sense of loathing I feel towards such people.

And yet, they are all around me. And all around you, too.
They are the marching morons, the zombie population who are driving this machine called civilization.

It’s an appalling selfishness which informs this – I like it, I’ll buy it – mentality.

Tell you what – give me the choice of bombing the hell out of the big corporations and bombing the hel out of these small, brainless, vain ego-centric individuals, and I’ll choose the murder of the millions every time.
This planet, and all life on it, truly does not need their vacuous stupidity.

I wrote that about three hours ago, and due to the fact that I’m at work, couldn’t find time to post it on the blog. It was sparked by a woman – a woman, by all that’s holy! – who thinks that she can buy a wild creature just because it’s cute.

You cannot buy the force which moves the stars and binds the molecules. You cannot indulge in commerce with the root of all that’s sacred. You cannot…arrrgh.

I’m displaying it now as an example of my own Rage.

But oh hel I needed that lesson.

Needed to know that, however lulled into semi-somnolence I might be on occasion, I am still very much embedded in the Wetiko Culture.

The culture which sees the All as commodity, to be bought, sold, and above all consumed.

The Cannibal culture which not only eats its young, but all Life, including itself .
Let me never forget that.

And in the meantime, let me try to not be eternally surprised when I rub the sleep from my eyes and find that I’m surrounded by fatuous evil.

A Word On Halloween

Ugh.

That's the word I would choose to describe Halloween as celebrated in the Southern Hemisphere at the beginning of the Summer season.

I have a string of paper pumpkins hanging above my desk, at work. And a ream of fake cobweb resembling snot with a plastic spider caught in it. Skeletons (also plastic) leer at me from the Support section of the office, and my own department has its very own 'pumpkin' to carve - which is, in fact, a large warty green-skinned Hubbard Squash, painted yellow.

I'm trying very hard not to rest my head on my desk in despair.
What are the Human Resources Department thinking when they reckon it's a good idea to celebrate Halloween at this time of year?

Try explaining the origins of Halloween and see those lights fail to go on. Try presenting the idea of 'season' and 'locality' in conjunction with 'Winter', 'final harvest' and 'beloved dead' and watch in awe as the minds continue to trundle along in their well-worn grooves.

I believe that they're not really thinking at all. The lack of consciousness should, I suppose, be expected. People celebrate most holidays without considering what the hel they're doing, except spending money and 'having fun'.

Tell you what - on Easter, let's all dress up as crucified saviours, or better yet, as dying-and-resurrected gods. Let's decorate the office in fake blood and plastic Roman soldiers' swords. Let's party without raising our minds from their accustomed slumber, just as we always do.

Just as we always do.

Pic: That's Hubbard squash. And no, I'm not making it up - they painted the bloody thing yellow.

You Bastards

A photographer in Denver has leaked pictures of the carnage caused by breed specific legislation.

These were all someone's companions.
Yes, it really does matter what you look like - the fucking machine will murder you for it.

Off to the Sabbat

I'm going to be offline for a few days - I've taken some time off to celebrate White Water and gods know I need a break from the Machine.

Recently I've found myself wandering the streets of Wokingham, where I spent my years of 6 to 13, in daytime trance. I know every road very well. Even the flagstones are brightly limned as I pace through this Elizabethan market town.
Odd how I know each pore in the face of a place where I spent just 7 years, and yet I can get lost in Joburg, where I've been for much longer. It's almost like my spirit still haunts that little English town. I could draw you a map.

But I won't do that - there is some reason for my temporary dislocation in time and space, and I expect I'll learn what it is shortly. In the meantime, I'm having to hold myself down from yelling and screaming at the idiotic culture I find myself embedded in - a culture peopled by sleepwalkers, none of whom appear to have had any education at all. I would have been considered only partially educated, with my degree in Physics and Astronomy, by a previous generation. And yet the generation after me apparently has never been taught to read. This sounds like a recipe for despair, but in me it translates to rage. The bloody zombies, marching over the cliff edge...

Wishing you all a blessed White Water or Rushing Dark Water, depending upon your hemisphere.

Oh, and go listen to the action from the G20 on Rustbelt Radio, if you've got a moment.

No Part of Us...

"Dread Lord of Death and Resurrection,Lord of Death and Resurrection, Of Life, and the Giver of Life; Lord within ourselves, whose name is Mystery of Mysteries; Encourage our hearts, Let the Light crystallize itself in our blood, Fulfilling us of resurrection; For there is no part of us that is not of the Gods.."

Thus I stand, tonight, calling to Him: Blood Red Lord of the Hunt; Awakening Pack Leader of all the World;He who was born at Yule as the Child of Promise and who is now striding upon the Earth.

Yet, in all things, He is subject to Her rule.

Not under domination - this is just the way things are. All Life belongs to Her, and there is not one thing which is not of Her.

Which is why I always find reports like this one so troubling:

A 32-year-old woman who allegedly aborted and dumped a foetus in a drain appeared in the Johannesburg Magistrate's Court on Thursday, police said.

"The suspect allegedly went to Coronation hospital complaining of labour pains on Friday. Examinations by the hospital found that she had already committed abortion," said Captain Bhekizizwe Mavundla.

The hospital reported the incident to the police and the woman was arrested on Sunday.

On Wednesday, she led police to a stormwater drain in Craighall Park, north of Johannesburg, where the foetus was found wrapped in a hospital cloth.

She faced charges of concealment of death, said Mavundla. - Sapa

Actually, Mavundla means "concealment of birth", for it is under that piece of legislation that they're going to prosecute the woman.

Originally a sort of fall-back legal route for dealing with suspicion of abortion before it was legal, this bizarre law remains on our books, and, worse, the onus is on the accused to prove that she didn't intend to conceal a birth.

"Any person who disposes of the body of any child with intent to conceal its birth, whether the child died before, during or after birth, shall be guilty of an offence and liable on conviction to a fine... or imprisonment."

Every time I hear of this, I feel a little sick in my gut. The woman, maybe too poor to afford regular contraception, but in any case firmly embedded in the patriarchal culture, has few ways open to her for preventing pregnancy.
Believe me, here it is certainly not a woman's right to say no to a man, among a very large proportion of our population.

This prosecuting of the woman after she has aborted the foetus seems just another way the Sky Father, that is, his Men of the Patriarchy, try their damnedest to control the wild and natural force that is Herself. And the result is, as it always has been, tragic.

Since The Machine

There was talk yesterday and this morning on the local radio station of a magistrate who had adjourned the day's proceedings after hearing that her dog had gone missing.

The Sowetan story refers.

"... a call had come informing the magistrate that her dog had gone missing.


“The court had to come to a standstill because the magistrate was crying for her lost dog,” said a lawyer.

“This shows that the life of a dog is more valuable than that of a person.”

He said some of the cases that were supposed to be heard on that day had to be set aside because of time constraints when the court finally resumed in the afternoon.


The lawyers accused Harrison of incompetence and demanded that she be replaced. "

I looked this story up because of the tenor of the comments and sms which were coming into the Talk Radio station. The way that this magistrate has been lambasted by the public is mind boggling. Calls for her removal, comments on her incompetence and lack of professionalism were the order of the day. Few and far between were the voices demonstrating understanding.

If the magistrate had received a call to say that her daughter was missing, I highly doubt we would have heard the round of condemnation of her actions which we were treated to.

One sms writer called the judicial lady 'insane'. That's right.

I'm not even referencing so-called dog lovers here. My question is: from where arises this incredible notion that human beings are automatically more important than any other form of life?

To the point that radio talk-show commentators - that's the general public, aka you and me - can pronounce the magistrate as insane and not have that judgement questioned.

I think many of us know where this mindset comes from. It's the ubiquitous Machine at work once more. Most people are so marinated in the culture of humans first, last and only that it really never occurs to them to question this presupposition.

We have forgotten that humankind was formed in the matrix of this planet. That the animals, plants, minerals and molecules of Earth are our very building blocks. That we are immersed in, and dependent upon, all other forms of life for our own.

Civilisation has violently disconnected humans from their natural setting, and replaced it with the - literally - mechanistic medium of The Machine, wherein all we notice, all we give headspace to and consideration for, are Man and the Creations of Man. The car, the house, the shopping mall, the cellphone - and the people attached to these creations - are all many of us are capable of considering.

We have been torn from our field of Life and we don't even acknowledge that fact.

And no, going to the Kruger Park once a year to 'view' the Big Five from an upholstered hideaway is not Reconnecting With Nature. It's a toxic mimic of it.

Who is truly insane here - the magistrate who cares so deeply for her canine companion that she must have at least the beginnings of an understanding that we are animals dependent upon other life forms, or the legions of public who have branded her as worse than a criminal?

An Aura of Ancient Evil

Despite the fact that I don't believe that democracy ever did the All much good, and despite the fact that there is not a politician whom I actually like in this country, and despite the fact that I support anarchists all over the world - I still went out and voted on Wednesday.

On the third day afterwards, the purple stain remains on my thumb to remind me that I did in fact do the least of what I was capable of - I voted against the ANC.

Helen Zille I dislike, but I cast my vote for her. It's not really about personalities, anyway.

Or is it?

I'm admitting here to a huge personal distaste for the leader of the ANC, Jacob Zuma. The man gives me the flat-out creeps. From his multiple wives (and his apparent inability to stop screwing around despite that) to his mad scramble to avoid being charged in court, he is an exemplar of the worst in the Bantu civilisation. And civilisation it is, in a very patriarchal, chief-worshipping,indigenous-people-killing, earth-ignoring manner.

Zuma himself seems bent on accruing personal power and wealth at all costs. His body language disgusts me, and his rhetoric makes me want to cover my ears.
But in his self-seeking, self-aggrandising manner, he is a perfect representative of the majority of his constituents.

We have indeed got the president we deserve.

Edit: I've just read Thorn's post today. Thanks - I so needed this reminder:

"..What in me does not wish to look upon my anger, or my fear, or my grief, or my sense of betrayal? What in me seeks these out?.."

But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being, and who among us is willing to destroy a piece of their own heart?- Alexsandr Solzhenitsyn

Edit Squared: ..and no, Zuma is not an indigenous president. This is what an indigenous president looks like.

No, We're Not

Every nanometer of the universe is inside of me – I enclose it all, as an outer skin of All That Is.

Likewise, the Universe encloses me – the liminal space which is my skin is not serious barrier.

There is really no inside and outside- it all depends upon where you are standing.

And so a human is not the peak of some fabulously constructed pyramid, with Mankind at the top and all else at varying levels beneath us – yet we’ve been behaving like this pyramid was real ever since Yahweh awoke from his slumber in the desert and called mankind to himself.

There is not top, not bottom, no higher forms or lower. Only forms.

True, I will move to protect those I love in this life, placing my own body – or that of another human – between my beloveds and a bullet. And my beloveds are not all of the human kind.

No, humans are not more important than other life.

More destructive, more fucked up, more likely to kill without a reason.

But not more important.

The only way we can make ourselves believe that we hold some kind of intrinsic greater-worthiness than all other life is to imprint the environment with our marks.

Saying ’Mankind was here’ has been a part of our civilisation for many thousand years now. And it’s a murderous, destructive practice.

You know , if it was just our human selves we were wiping off the face of the Earth, I would be sad – but I could live with it. But no, we’re so damned full of ourselves and our central importance in this cosmos that we won’t settle for anything less than taking the whole damned creation down with us.

Selling Endangered Species jigsaw puzzles isn’t going to do it , either- not when we can look at pretty pictures from our disconnected state and say what a shame it all is.

Pope Loses Mind

...oh no, hang on, he'd have to have a functioning one in the first place, wouldn't he?

The BBC reports that Ratzi the ex Nazi has said

..that saving humanity from homosexual or transsexual behaviour is just as important as saving the rainforest from destruction.

Now, quite apart from the blinkered, fearful, frankly insulting view he takes of gay and transgendered people - although why we'd expect anything else from a past member of Hitler Youth is beyond me - he's just not getting the issues.

The issues are about the planet, Ratzi - our landbase, of which we so far have only one, you know? - and not so much about humankind. Although I think that you and I are seeing two entirely different planets, going on your follow-up quote:

..that defending God's creation was not limited to saving the environment, but also about protecting man from self-destruction.

Umm. No. How do I put this to such a knucklehead?

It's mankind causing the destruction of everything, O Pope.

It's been Mankind thinking himself lord of all creation that's brought us to the place where now we're about to lose an entire planet.

It's been Mankind believing that he is more important than any other form of Life that has allowed us to murder that Life with relative impunity.

It's been Mankind thinking that he is the one animal which the mythical One Creator made who is worthy of salvation that keeps the culture of death-dealing humming along nicely.

Mankind the planet can thrive without, but without the planet Mankind is toast.

Thus if we can fail to save Mankind from destroying himself, we're doing all other forms of Life - and the planet Herself - an immense , immeasurable favour.

Male gender forms throughout this blogpost deliberately brought to you by Terri, the entirely rabid feminist.

Hat tip to both Spicy and Thorn

Horrible pic found at YellowDogJim's blog

What's It Worth To You?

Please hold your stomachs for a nauseating ride through a recent email I received (I make no apology for the lack of formatting):

In a brief conversation, a man asked a woman he was pursuing the question...... "What kind of man are you looking for?" She sat quietly for a moment before looking him in the eye and asking. "Do you really want to know?" Reluctantly, he said, "Yes." She began to expound... As a woman in this day and age, I am in a position to ask a man what he can do for me that I can't do for myself. I pay my own bills.I take care of my household without the help of any man. I am in the position to ask, "What can you bring to the table?" The man looked at her. Clearly he thought that she was referring to money. She quickly corrected his thought and stated, "I am not referring to money. I need something more." I need a man who is striving for perfection in every aspect of life." He sat back in his chair, folded his arms, and asked her to explain. She said, "I am looking for someone who is striving for perfection mentally because I need conversation and mental stimulation. I don't need a simple-minded man." I am looking for someone who is striving for perfection spiritually because I don't need to be unequally yoked... believers mixed with unbelievers is a recipe for disaster. I need a man who is striving for perfection financially because I don't need a financial burden. I am looking for someone who is sensitive enough to understand what I go through as a woman, but strong enough to keep me grounded. I am looking for someone who I can respect. In order to be submissive, I must respect him. I cannot be submissive to a man who isn't taking care of his business. I have no problem being submissive...he just has to be worthy. God made woman to be a helpmate for man. I can't help a man if he can't help himself. When she finished her spill, she looked at him. He sat there with a puzzled look on his face. He said, "You're asking a lot." She replied, "I'm worth a lot." Send this to every woman who's worth a lot and every man who needs to know that.




Right, when you've finished throwing up - what kind of crap is this to be storing in your brain, people?

(Quite apart from the obvious bullshit-markers of words like 'unequally yoked' and 'submissive', which mark this as an evangelical Christian attempt and the young lady who sent it to me should have bloody known better!)

For about a minute, I wondered why I was so immediately offended by the email, and then I got it: you're being encouraged (you're still being encouraged, after all the Sisters who have fought and died) to consider yourself in terms of your fucking worth, either to some man, society as a whole, or to YAJ.

(After all, he sacrificed himself to himself just for you, you know – what a great worth you must have!)

We’re expected from childhood to strive to increase our worth - through being a good student, playing by the rules “contributing” to our society, Being a “good parent”, “good daughter”, “good citizen”, i.e. not operating outside of the cultural boundaries which ensure we’ll never look up, from the day of birth to the day of death, and really see the Machine.

Just look around you and try to evaluate the ways you’re being encouraged to be worthy.

Advertising/Marketing is a pervasive evil message that we don’t quite measure up, can never measure up, to the ideal standards being portrayed in glossy mag and screaming billboard. But you knew that.

Look at our relationships and the words we use to describe them, often: “he wasn’t good enough for me”, “she was more trouble than she was worth”, “this was a valuable partnership”. Then ask yourself: valuable to whom? Good enough in terms of what?

Are we so used to evaluating everything in economic terms that we put prices on interrelationships, too? Of course we do. When it's the relationship itself which is the thing, not its value on some hierarchically determined scale.

A human or nonhuman animal, mineral or vegetable is not defined in terms of its worth to another – or shouldn’t be, rather.

We have no price. Price is an insane concept born of a society which thinks wealth is the name of the game. We are. We have been. We shall be. World without end.

I Have Never Dreamt of Bicycles

There are dream spaces which evoke such a sense of beauty and wonder that I derive joy just remembering them.

No, not the Brontosaurus chasing me through a deserted city of my nine-year-old self.
Nor the huge, threatening big cats which menaced my loved ones eight and nine years ago. Nor all the dreams of half empty bottles of alcohol secreted and quickly drunk from.

Those are warnings and indicators of tricky, dangerous or deadly paths.

But the company of Witches in endless meadows of flowers; the exquisite opening of a corn blue flower;the enormous house upon the cliff top, which I know is my soul's representation in dreams.

Most of all, the deepest jewel-blue and silver frosted waves on the shore and in the lagoon of a location I both know and have forgotten - the moon glorious in the sky illuminating the night time scene. There is movement and there is colour here I have not seen upon the earth in millennia.

These 'scapes are the soul's reminder that we are still capable of apprehending Beauty.

In tandem I appreciate them with a morning spent under the bright African sun, slowly deadheading a monstrous climbing rose, while in the background rise the wails and screeches of a humanity gone so insane that they believe that racing bicycles through the streets of one of the busiest, dirtiest, most toxic cities on the continent is some kind of fun.

Come on people. If you want to race, take it somewhere else. Most of us most assuredly do not want to be forced to participate in your unhealthy preoccupation.

And the next time I come across six of you riding abreast at four in the morning, I'm going to do my damnedest to give you enough of a fright to maybe knock some gods damned sense into your empty little heads.

A Culture of Make Believe

Gods, I'm talkative today. Abraxas' fault.

Here are two scenarios which actually happened, on Monday and Tuesday this week:

1) 5:30 am and the road is quiet - just a big white bakkie coming the other way, and us on the road. A few metres after passing the bakkie, we see a limp mass in the road. A cat has been knocked over.

Stopping, I see it is a half-grown kitten. Somebody's family, judging by the pink-and-white collar with a bell around hir neck.


The cat is trying to get up, but can't - hir injuries must be extensive. She looks at me out of huge hazel eyes and breathes slowly. Warren gets a sign board and we move hir onto it. In the next few moments, bubbles of blood form at mouth and nose, and all hir sphincters let go.


S/he's passed, and I whisper a little encouragement to hir spirit.
We move cat and board onto the side of the road, so that when the family comes looking, they won't find an unidentifiable heap of guts and fur.


At least their family member didn't die alone on the road.


But please don't tell me that driver of the white bakkie didn't know he'd hit an animal - I don't believe it.

2)From the Osiris smokers' balcony we look down across the first-floor smokers' balcony, which is planted with Petunias and Agapanthus along the edge, as well as 3 small Cape Ash trees.

Why Cape Ash, I don't know-these trees can grow fairly big, and then there will either be a ripping and tearing of cement, or more likely the trees will be tossed.

For some unknown godsdamned reason, the company who 'owns' these trees (I'm looking at you, Brandhouse) wants them pruned into shapes resembling giant lollipops. The garden service comes along and obliges, showering the courtyard below with twigs, leaves - and an inhabited Sparrows' nest.

These two Sparrows are a regular feature of our mornings at work. Having been born inside our company offices a couple of years ago, they've nested in the immediate area long enough to raise two families of chicks.

Now here comes these giant shears swooping in from nowhere, demolishing their carefully-wrought home.


OK, I know what a Sparrow's nest looks like - no work of art to you or me, but it's their functional, living home, by all that's holy.


These gardening-service-folks are lambasted by myself and The Moffie, but all they do is grin while admitting they've thrown the nest over the railing.

Now, I don't mean to imply that the white bakkie driver or the gardening service employees are arch villains whose actions will bring an end to the natural world all by themselves.By no means. They're just ordinary Joes, going about their business daily.

What these two incidents do illustrate very, very clearly is the principle of hierarchical violence.



It may only legitimately flow in one direction, you see - down the pyramid. Anyone lower in the order who attempts to commit violence up the slope will find themselves dead pretty damn quickly. And their voices silenced.


Imagine those two Sparrows attacking the gardeners successfully. It's not going to happen, and if it did, those'd be two stone dead Sparrows, I guarantee you.

Violence from 'higher' to 'lower' in the hierarchy is, on the other hand, frequently invisible and never retaliated against. Try petrol bombing a bank sometime.

This is the culture we live in. The Culture of Make Believe, where nonhuman animals are not considered to be life, but resources, and disposable ones at that.

The continuation of this mindset, this hierarchy, this civilisation is what is destroying our Mother and leaving ourselves and our children, and all the nonhuman life within Her, without a landbase. Or with a landbase so virulently poisoned that it is totally nonviable.

It's got to stop. It’s got to stop now.

Jump

We interrupt this regular countdown to Calan Haf to bring you the following message:

"Jump, capitalist pig -- the party is over!

Jump, because you do not deserve any bailout, especially with what remains of the taxpayers' money.

Jump, it is only right, as you have looted and plundered the land of your birth without any regard of the consequences for your friends and neighbors or the future of our children.

Jump, you rotten bastards in your three-piece suits, your wingtip shoes, your Rolex watches and your damned suspenders, you who threw good hard-working men with dirt under their fingernails out of work.

Jump, you stinking rats who lied to the American worker, who bribed and corrupted the representatives of the people to send Americas good paying jobs to sweatshops in Mexico, China, to India, leaving in their wake minimum wage jobs while you stuffed your pockets at the expense of your fellow Americans.

Jump, you bastards, who called it business when it was really treason when you sold out your Nation for profit.

Jump, you miserable scum, as you have destroyed the American family, forcing mothers to leave their children with strangers to make ends meet.

Jump, for having sold your fellow human beings into financial slavery, chained to a lifetime of debt without end.

Jump, for making Americas currency all but worthless.Jump, for throwing families off their farms, for taking away peoples homes, for the stagnating wages.

Jump, you bastards for influencing the foreign policy of America to make war in order for your corporations and banks to seize and control the resources of other nations.

Jump, for you have the blood of the innocent on your hands, murdered in the name of corporate greed.

Jump, you bastards, for helping to give us Bush and Cheney who would turn America into a corporate controlled fascist state.

Jump, you capitalist exploiters of humanity, at least give us, your victims, the satisfaction of seeing you jump, along with all the other Wall St practitioners of soulless greed and exploitation."

"Jump!" - Leon Fisher (leonjfisher@webtv.net), http://www.unknownnews.org/0809-30LF.htm

(My emphasis)

Brought to my attention on the Derrick Jensen forums, and via that Coyote Prime fellow in my sidebar.

Returning you to Beltane shortly...

Not Just Sick

I've been taking part in an Endgame reading and discussion group over at the Derrick Jensen Forums. The classes are led by the author himself, so it's a great experience.

We've been going through the chapters about two at a time, and pondering questions which Derrick asks about them. I'm finding my reaction to having the proofs that this society is insane paraded before me is more analytical than when I first read this important book (two books, actually, but Vol 1 is the heavier-hitter from a neophyte point of view).

Don't get me wrong - I'm still angry as all hel that we've allowed this destructive, deathly culture to prosper and dominate. I'm just in a better position to look more closely at the signs of this sick society.

"What are the signs of a sick society?" Dr. Baldwin asks Friday. The last and most telling sign, in Heinlein's opinion, is a loss of good manners. That the society exhibiting such a loss feels that this is a sign of its strength is moreover the sign of a dying society.

I offer Heinlein's view as an example of one person's opinion.

As we read in Endgame, the producer Brian de Palma, upon being criticised for putting females in positions of mortal peril in all his movies, opines that this is merely '..a genre convention..', somewhat akin to using violins when people fall in love.

Let me get this straight Mr. de Palma - chopping up the female body in extremely violent scenes is a genre convention? What sick, leprosy-ridden genre are we talking about here then? Oh yes, snuff flicks.

If the public appetite for such fare does not start you thinking there's something wrong here, well - there's something wrong, here.

So I'm on the highway this morning, predawn, a very good time for thinking, and I'm turning over a couple of examples I've bumped my nose against recently that point to the ill health of this culture.

Firstly, I recall a couple of days ago seeing a beautiful young woman who had called in to our offices. She was, I was told, a "Life Coach".

What the fuck?

We've actually reached the point where we're willing to pay people quite a lot of money to teach us how to live? I don't think I need to elaborate, except to note this - said Life Coach is the mother of 6 offspring.

The other example I had in mind was Viagra. I'm not sure that any but a sick society would give so much hype, so much money, and make quite so much use of an expensive blue pill which allows men to get their erections back.

I suppose there must not be enough unnecessary death and suffering on this globe after all, if we can afford to chase the maintaining of the male organ in a state of uprightness so seriously.

There are many signs that this society is sick. When I turn them over for more than half an hour in my mind I reach the same conclusion every time:

Not just sick, but insane.

Premise Ten: The culture as a whole and most of its members are insane. The culture is driven by a death urge, an urge to destroy life.

Pic: Dave Ehlen