Thoughts on Life arising from a Quiet Conversation with a Gentleman Farmer. 11/14/07

It’s fun to be young and pessimistic, defying authority and praying for the collapse of the social order. Latching on to a pseudo-anarchic philosophy, you take as your hero some fictional badass like Tyler Durden and do your best to garner whatever scraps of attention that society tosses your way. The awkward pain of growing up is dampened by the highs you glean off your petty shenanigans and your newfound interest in literature and the arts. You delight in chaos. Your sanity is maintained through a tightly-regulated system of careful self-deception and the calming effects of sweet, sweet shadenfreude. Fuck the world, but let me watch.

The problem is, that with each successive blow you deal out to the evil and corrupt system, you remove a small chunk of your preconceived notion of reality. Other messy complications arise at the fault lines where your super-awesome-new philosophy and unquestioned childhood truths fail to coincide. To compound this mental discomfort, putting your new thoughts into action sometimes elicits unforeseen social reactions that can’t always be explained by the unenlightened ignorance of the other party. Then there’s the dreaded dip into the murk of morality and faith, concepts that require regular practice as well as simple belief.

Oh shit, you’re starting to think for yourself.

This is heavy.

Your reliance on chaos and nihilism do little to calm that hideous feeling you get when you contemplate that crusty motherfucker of a dilemma of a nightmare of a cosmic conundrum that is good old Death. Issues of little concern to the teenager have a nasty habit of compounding as the individual passes through higher education, personal tragedy, and other complicating factors that those other sheep don’t have to worry about; but you, as a liberated soul, are suddenly confused and very much alone, lost in your precious freedom.

Is this hideous fear of the unknown the dark force that herds folks into churches, powers the world’s societies, or pushes some folks into outlandish extremes simply to justify their existence? Sure, all those wise philosophers whose books you briefly glanced at in the school library have their own explanations, but maybe those don’t work for you, the individualist individual with the freedom to be individual in your individuality. And what about all those other little questions that arose when your beliefs failed miserably?

Luckily, as a homo sapien, you possess a powerful mental tool for the job. You can change your mind. That ability to adapt to change is an overarching paradigm thats roots leech into every substance of your being, including the arrangement of neurotransmitters and their corresponding receptors that actually allow you to substitute one idea for another. And that’s what makes you an adult. You now possess not only the tools, but also the experience, to learn from your mistakes and shine a light into that darkness. It’s a gift that separates you from the the real morons and monsters of the world who fail to utilize it properly. The ability to change will make or break your life.

And, if you’re smart, you won’t forget it.

The Old Man

The event was a perilous culmination of chaos and chance, besieged on all sides by various catastrophes and stalked by a malevolent shadow of dread… but it never quite caught us. Somehow, we pulled the thing off, despite the forces of Man and Nature levied against our cause. Defying all odds, its organizers, guests, and audience deemed it a resounding success which lasted deep into the balmy evening. It managed to spawn a lifeforce of its own to pull it through the tempest, a serendipitous core of unabashed humility and genuine love that could only be the work of The Old Man.

He was one of many who rose from the mists of the fallen Empire to grab the weathered reigns of his bastard society and pull it out of the cradle, hurling it spitting and screaming into the Wilsonian gathering of modern nations. He’s a product of that strange quirk of humanity that drives races to mingle in even the most hostile circumstances, where slaves and servants, overseers and oligarchs, combine in some twisted social Stockholm Syndrome that breeds as much festering resentment as it does national pride and social unity. His family tree is more like a rainforest, and only a select few academic institutions and government agencies possess the technology needed to sort out his bloodline, which is, by my opinion, nonlinear in nature.

Long ago, our hero realized that education, hard work, and Byzantine rural politics could elevate him to a greater order. Armed with ruthless determination and haunted by the specters of his broken parents, who worked like dogs for men who were little better than dogs themselves, the Young Man built his business and assumed a position of political leadership in his fiefdom. Now came the favors, the requests, the deals and the unspoken obligations, the vast web of friendly words and vicious emotions that dribble down into the red soil, culminating in the magnificent cesspool of local politics.

Unlike many of his peers, who went on to seek higher offices to plunder, he returned to his family. Taking a mid-level government job, he started church youth groups and a town council. Now almost into his seventh decade, he dreams of change. Latching on to the modern concepts of sustainability and environmentalism, he draws parallels with the frugality and responsible industry of his parents. The fierce criticism he so lovingly cultivates for the government is only offset by an almost ecstatic hatred of laziness, an evil he never tires of pointing out in all its insidious manifestations.

His energy is legendary, as each of his 17 children, and his wife, can attest. I feel ashamed when he praises my work ethic, which often falls victim to his slothful arch-nemesis. Still, just being around the guy makes you feel happy and alive. His personality is composed of so much condensed righteousness that it boasts its own gravitational pull, and I was sucked into its orbit during a particularly dark time in my travels. I’ve committed my sword to his crusade.

So, after the myriad fuck-ups, the lapses in judgment, and the many failures of planning; after the worried looks and exasperated murmurs of his lieutenants, after every twist that fate could summon, and after Poseidon’s magnificent downpour left most everything wet and miserable, the Old Man stood at the podium beaming, gazed over the shifting crowd, and thanked his god for such a wonderful day.

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Happy World

10PM and all is quiet in Buvrox. The road shines under the streetlights, and everything sports a soft silver glaze from the recent rain. Mortality takes a backseat as I light up another Craven and breathe a cloud of silken smoke into the night. Frogs. Crickets. Sounds of sleeping town. The air is cool and laden with the lazy essence of a place where nothing is permanent but change is slow in coming. In the shadows beyond the realm of manmade light the jungle waits, drawing on its infinite patience, always ready to reclaim the land once man has finished his stay. He will leave only ghosts. The jungle will take the rest. What, I wonder, will I leave?

Let’s talk about the world for a sec, put some shit in perspective.

China, nation of 1.3 billion people and awkward new player to the world stage is set to host the Olympics for the first time in it’s 2,229 year history, thus signaling it’s official rise into the community of superpowers and completing its formal course in modern nationalism, begun by that lovable old bastard Deng Xiaoping, successor to the even-more lovable nightmare that was Mao Zedong. Nevermind the thousands of political prisoners, institutionalized abortion, ghastly consumption rates of natural resources, those pesky, ungrateful Sherpas who obnoxiously refer to themselves as Tibetans, or the fact that the Yellow River now runs black, the country has come a long way from the days of the Cultural Revolution and Great Leap Forward. It just came a little too late for the 40-50 million ghosts wandering its abandoned re-education centers and collective farms.

But God also wants in on the action, so he shook things up yesterday with a 7.9 magnitude earthquake that leveled whole towns and sports a death toll estimated right now at 10,000. This, of course, was an encore performance obviously meant to complement Cyclone Nargis that pwned Burma last week, a country best known for its brutal military suppression of protesting Buddhist monks last fall and its wacky name changing. The reputation of its esteemed military leadership for batshit-crazy xenophobia was further enhanced when they first requested foreign aid, but then denied foreign manpower. The military generals, sporting their stylish Aussie bush hats, insisted that their 10 functioning helicopters and a few hundred trucks could easily distribute thousands of tons of food and medical supplies to nearly 2 million people scattered throughout the jungles and river deltas of Southern Indochina, after a rigid preferential screening of “the most needy” communities was performed and after the USAID logos were scratched out. While they organize government elections to get more power, 100,000 corpses rot in its rivers and reservoirs and thousands fall victim to disease from the conditions. Kawaii ^_^!

What a happy world it is, but it gets better! The Iranian Revolutionary Guard and its minions in Hezbollah are going after Beirut again, a move that could spark another Israeli invasion, which is exactly what the aggressors would love to see. Pakistan still creaks by on the precipice of anarchy, with its party leaders bickering on how and or when to reinstate its Supreme Court Justices that Perez swept away last year. Robert Mugabe carries on the proud tradition of African political chaos by effectively putting the government on life support and ceasing everything in Zimbabwe, as its currency continues to decline, now worth half as much as its equivalent in toilet paper (one ply). Add to that the fact that due to the food crisis, a few well placed famines could off millions in the coming years, but no one really cares about that, it’s just a little crisis now.

Up north Medvedev takes the stand in Moscow with Putin standing in the shadows, holding the strings. A few days ago Russia held its WWII Victory Day Parade in Red Square, complete with goose-stepping legions of troops in new uniforms, rows of tanks, grizzled old vets in full Soviet regalia, and even a few next generation ICBMs made an appearance to the cheering crowd. It was the biggest public show of military hardware since the old days, and if you looked closely enough at Vladimir, you could see the hammer and sickle in his eyes.

But our media and much of the world remains transfixed on a couple Ivy league lawyers and a tough but unsure old man who each think they can sit in the big chair, roll eggs on the Whitehouse lawn, pardon the turkey at Thanksgiving, and direct the most awesome mechanism for war that humanity, or the lack thereof, has created. The true capabilities of our country’s military to develop, control, and project destructive or coercive power, be it conventional, biological, chemical, digital, mental, sociological, economic, or political, could make the average citizen simultaneously swell with pride for his nation and weep with despair for his species. I hope I never find out.

The presidential race is a tedious infomercial of regurgitated talking points and vapid observations made by people who do not exist outside of TV. It’s about as interesting as watching the kicker practice into the net before the game, while you’re trying to decide whether you should start standing in line for the bathroom or get yourself another beer. Gone are the days of Hunter Thompson rampaging around the country in a mescaline haze, firing off frantic articles under the specter of Nixon and trying to maintain his press credentials as he wraps himself in the fabric of society and dives screaming into the chaotic unknown.

As it is, the Dems head to West Virginia soon, a state that has already consigned Obama to the seventh circle realm of settingkittensonfire-style hatred normally reserved for child-molesters, necrophiliacs, and furries. That really doesn’t matter because no one gives a shit about West Virginia anyway, and it’s looking like Hillary and Bill are not going back to their old dream home, no matter how many soot-covered high school dropouts they have backing them. McCain totters on, awaking from his turbulent dreams of helicopters and rice patties to hold a town hall meeting every now and then and wait for the black, ultra elitist Muslim to slip up. And somewhere along the outer edges of Mordor, talk is heard of an unholy last ditch plan being hatched by Ron Paul and his necromancers to make one last futile grab for the gold. Creepy.

Such an entertaining nightmare that we live in. It never fails to impress me. I hope the sun rises tomorrow.

There is no title awesome enough to describe this event. So you must read it.

Amazing, glorious things have just happened. I was a witness to an epic battle that spanned the heavens. Two fearsome lizards battled for the honor of consuming the largest moth I’ve ever seen. It flapped about my bathroom like a gin-soaked pterodactyl. The lizards would race around, tracking the moth, but then freeze when their prey was perfectly in range… OMG! The suspense of the moment was almost painful, like staring into the sun. Like ancient dragons pitted against a mighty phoenix the warriors clambered in a vertical dance of impending doom until the smaller one lurched forth and bit down on the beastly insect’s head. The moth fought back, and frantically pummeled the lizard at 3000rpm with its flailing wings. It broke free and flittered about in a daze, scraping the wall and moving in random directions. But it’s angelic tenacity was no match for reptilian precision! My eyes widened as I spotted the big lizard, practically a small iguana actually, race forth and consume the front half of the stunned moth. This time there was no suspense about who would triumph. The moth surrendered itself to the greater force and the prehistoric battle in my bathroom drew to a grisly end. I crept away and left them in the darkness, my heart pounding. I was lucky to escape.

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The Visionary

I find it hard to believe that Nature produced this man.

There’s nothing natural about him.

He’s one of those souls that bubbles up from the cosmic cauldron of Creation every eon or so, a being that defies its environment to the point where it seems he was forged not of this Earth, but somewhere in the Great Beyond by God and his minions to march into Babylon from the bush and usher in a divine skullfucking of the establishment and its excesses.

The man defies all Western logic and his words would leave all but the wisest Zenmasters scratching their heads at the nebula of contradictions that loosely hold together his existence. Without them, the profound singularity of the Truth he brings would tear the fabric of space time, rendering Reality as we know it to a faint mist of gamma particles and tears flashing in some event horizon around a massive black hole that was once the epicenter of our solar system. He must be Tathagata, or a Prophet of the Ragnarok, because there are no alternative explanations for him, regardless of what school of logic you adhere to.

He certainly doesn’t belong to this time, or any other. Quoting Bob Marley, the Bible, and George Bush Sr. in a single sentence, he treks through the bush spreading the Gospel of anti-corporate environmentalism through nutraceutical agriculture and community-based agroprocessing/ ecotourism ventures focusing on natural medicines while extolling the virtues of herbal research and youth intervention for the continued protection and low-impact development of the Rio Pedro Watershed. He is the Prophet. The Scourge of Babylon.

He can’t sit still. His eyes flash wildly when he speaks. He mumbles and sings to himself during meetings and bursts into polemic orations during presentations. He swears the cures for Alzheimer’s, Autism, Hypertension, AIDS, MS, Cancer, Hair Loss, Influenza, Malaria, Herpes, Gingivitis, Leukemia, Downs Syndrome, and Diabetes are all growing in the hills of St. Catherine, but the insidious pharmaceutical conglomerates and bauxite miners are covering it all up. He has devoted his life and his sanity to uplifting the community, bringing forth utopian unity, but he trusts no one and treats his plans like some kind of backwoods Manhattan Project.

His personality is a glorious Mobius strip of contradiction. He rants about the idleness of his countrymen while laying back and rolling his 4th spliff of the morning. Over cups of white rum he boasts of how he gave up drinking, but not for “medicinal” purposes. He’s a development worker’s nightmare: Stubborn, strong, and way too smart, he isn’t interested in anything that deviates from his dreams, especially if it means sharing them with members of the community; nest of rabid vipers that they are, or at least that’s what he perceives them to be.

He knows all the tricks. Compromise is just another word for Slavery. We shall fight on alone, never ceasing!… unless it rains… then we’ll take the month off.

And yet, I admired him, as Sancho Panza admired Don Quixote. The senseless futility of his methods and the vaulted Valhalla of his visions makes me wish he gets what he’s searching for. I know it’s the wrong place to be, but his madness is so inspiring that I find myself giving serious thought as to where the International Medicinal Plant Research Center will be located and how many Cray supercomputers will be needed to run the gene sequencer.

Stashed beneath the layers of madness, and beyond the web of paranoia lies some great Truth that cannot be conveyed through mere words or even actions, but solely through the energies of a well-tuned mind. He’s a wily old goat, and he knows nothing but the dream and the fight.

The Retards wear maroon

But I didn’t know that as I boarded the bus and slipped half a dolla to the driver. I made my way to my usual spot in whatever area seemed slightly more defensible and gripped a hold of the handbar, moving my feet to the ready position as I prepared to embark on yet another round of bus-surfing. An elderly lady had boarded with me and I noticed the gang of school kids at my sides. I leaned down to the nearest boy and muttered in a broken dialect: “My yute, why ya no get up, give a fi you seat a Auntie, be a bigman.” The kid gawked at the freakish white alien who had attempted to contact him and unsteadily rose as the the bus jerked to the side, beginning its usual convulsions. The old lady sat. I searched her face for a look of thanks but received nothing, which is typical, and I take as a sign that all is well.

Since I was feeling full of myself about being such a goddamn awesome gentleman I started chatting with the kid, which elicited nervous giggles from his friends, who demanded my attention as well. At about this point I noticed that a few of them were in wheelchairs, and I’d never encountered the handicapped on public transportation. I looked around, some of the kids were noticeably  developmentally disabled. I looked down  at the kid I’d first spoken to, noticed for the first time that he was a microcephalic, and read the name of the school on his maroon and tan uniform: “Institute for the Mentally Handicapped.” Oh, wonderful, I’d stumbled into the Short Bus. Fantastic. Perfect way to suffer through downtown traffic.

As the ride dragged on, I soon realized that this bus ride was different in another way… it was quieter. The kids were still chatting and laughing happily, touching my arms and backpack, but mostly well-behaved. They weren’t smacking each other or hurling things out the windows like normal children. Their conversations were much more simple, but not laced with profanity and sex acts like what I was used to hearing during the after school rush. Add to that the fact that the driver had to actually drive like a human due to the wheelchairs on board and I quickly decided this was the most pleasant city bus ride I’d ever been on.

The teachers were on the bus too and most were also disabled in some form. I started up a conversation with one, a paraplegic gym teacher who credited his job with saving his life after a car accident severed his spinal cord. A math teacher, not to be outdone, proudly announced her multiple sclerosis and how proud she is of her work with the kids. They went on and on, pointing out every kid on the bus, giving detailed case histories and performance landmarks, sharing 20 life stories with me before we reached the bus park. When I told her my profession she gushed and said I was doing God’s work. Hearing it coming from her made me feel cold.

God’s work. God’s work standing in a bus filled with God’s mistakes. Or were they God’s triumphs? After that conversation, I dont think I’ll be giving an unbiased opinion on the issue for sometime.

You can always judge the worth of a society based on how it treats its lowliest members. With the exception of certain self-ascribed sexual deviants, these people really band together to care for their own. The kids were happy and the teachers were wonderful, despite battling their own maladies in a place where it’s hard enough to get by when you’re healthy. Beggars are nonexistent outside of the larger towns. Even the animal shelter I went to wasn’t nearly as horribly depressing as I had expected. For all their problems with poverty and politics, the folks out here can come together for the common good, and that still gives me hope.

As for God’s work, I have enough trouble keeping track of my own.

A stroll through eternity

Rode back from Constant Spring on Billy’s bus today. Of the two times I have legitimately feared for my life here, both instances occurred on Billy’s taxi. It’s strangely comforting to know that if I die, it’s most likely going to be gazing through the side window as we take a skidding turn into an oncoming sand truck or gloriously careen off the side of Allman Pass. I only hope they can separate enough of our remains, so at least the majority of my genetic material is buried in my casket, and not along with whats left of Billy in his.

Billy drives a nondescript mid-90’s Chevy van, which would be ideally suited for service in the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade. Just pack it with ammonium nitrate and a few jugs of diesel and take her for a spin into the local UN compound. Or, if you’re Billy, pack it with 20 helpless souls and take off at top speed through the hills

The interior has been stripped down so the maximum value of flesh can be uncomfortably wedged into its threadbare seats. I rode with my ear set against one of the massive speakers hung at the corners. For some reason, I’ve never heard them actually play music. Instead, they emit a high-pitched electric whine, the frequency of which correlates with the van’s acceleration.

Everyone rides in grim silence. A few mutter soft epithets torn away by the screaming wind. I think I’ve heard a prayer or two, not just the ubiquitous “Oh Jesus”. Closing your eyes and treating Billy’s taxi like a sensory deprivation chamber is one of the more spiritual highs I’ve reached lately. Just shift your trust to whatever deity or enlightened principle you prefer and let the screeching tires and rocking chassis transport you home. Whether it’s your earthly home or your home in an etherial sense is largely up to the weather, road conditions, and Billy’s sobriety.

After thumbing my nose at fate, I loitered for a while in the square and had a beer at the pub. Or bar. They call it both. British and American words are interchanged often, depending on what country the speaker has emigrated to or from recently. Most of the country is on a long-term stopover between the two. I’ve met folks who’ve seen more of my country than I have. It’s not uncommon for a fellow to have lived in my state, and know my city or suburb intimately.

Walking back along the main road to my house, I regurgitate smiles for anyone who cares to notice me anymore. I’ve long-since passed the phase of being a local spectacle. A quick stop to the shop for toilet paper and gossip and I’m back on my front porch before sundown. That affords me a few precious moments to break open a frozen box juice and snipe hellos and good evenings at unsuspecting passersby. Athena is happy to see me, because she’s equated me with food and attention. Good cat.

The sun sets on another day. Regardless of what I did or did not accomplish, I can’t help but smile at the colors the atmosphere still manages to summon for the grand finale, another composition to file in a lost gallery of countless masterpieces.

No thinking

Go.

It’s funny how a simple two letter word is all that was needed to blast through the Wall of steel-reinforced procrastination that I have painstakingly constructed over the last 10 months. It’s been the greatest adventure of my life and the only chronicles I’ve made of it are a few frenzied scribblings in sweat-stained notebooks and a few letters written during those pitiful moment when I just really needed a hug but all I had was a leaking pen, a few sheets of rain-warped paper, and alot of free time.

I’ve come a long way from those days. I’ve adapted and thrived. I know good people and awesome places. I don’t worry about my insignificant standing in the universe as much. I’m confident in my work and projects, and I hardly ever break down into a sobbing mass of tears and urine anymore… and I haven’t done it in public in at least 3 weeks. Take that, deep-seated insecurities!

So that’s where I stand. I could summarize the cruel parade of chaotic moments in eternity that have brought me to this point, but you don’t want to read them and I don’t want to type them. I’ll refer to particular adventures that I feel warrant notice, regardless of the damage done to my mind and or dignity. Now, set forth thy sails and pray thy bearing true, destiny cannot awaits, and it can be a real bitch if you give it time to fuck with you.