Sunday, Sunday, Sunday...

Sunday here at the Gable Grey, a day usually given over to relaxation and minor yard-work and various acts of Errantry on behalf of my long-suffering wife, and on again-off again consultations with the holo-oracle about the week ending, with a mind towards the one ahead.  From my vantage point among the trees here, things look bleak in the world without.

The last week ended very badly for Wall Street, with the DJA closing below the magic 10,000 mark for the first time in months.  This was due to a number of factors, of course, including a less than stellar jobs report, and some words from the Prime Minister of Hungary (!), who let slip the fact that his country -- a member of the EU, but not one that adopted the Euro -- most likely has at best only a slim chance of not defaulting on its national debt.  This had the effect of further pushing the Euro into Eu-rine territory.  Hungary can now be added to the growing list of PIIGS nations, which comprise Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, and Spain.  As one writer put it, throw the 'H' in there and you get PIGSHI.  (Watch out, Turkey.)

The Gulf of Goo continues its sorry story.  Mike Ruppert over at the From the Wilderness Blog wrote that he thinks the catastrophe could bring down the U.S. Government.  That may be a bit far-fetched, but I think it could change the political landscape of the Gulf states.  Case in point:  our own governor here, Haley Barbour, stated that the gusher has only been at worst a "minor inconvenience" to the State of Mississippi.  Sure, Haley.  We'll see how much of a minor inconvenience it will be for you in the next election.  (Who the hell am I kidding?  He'll win by a landslide, again.  Mississippi deserves nothing less.)

As is usual for me on Sundays, and on Monday mornings (while I wait for Kunstler to post his usual Monday morning essay), I wonder if this week will be, definitively, the End of the World As We Know It (TEOTWAWKI).  Based off the events of last week, I would advise any and all Isaiahs out there to keep your ear to the ground, nose to the wind, and eyes on the skyline (all at the same time, of course).  Like as not it will only be yet another slow, grinding week in the slow collapse of western industrial civilization; but events could come to a head right quick. 

I've been feeling a lot like Viggo Mortensen's character in the film 'The Road,' who basically watches the Shit Hit the Fan, in increments, from inside his house.  (It's a great film adaptation of the cheery book by Cormac McCarthy.)  Like him, too, I am trying to adapt to a harsh reality; and like him, I have not given up to despair.  I will be ordering another book soon, Sacred Demise by Carolyn Baker.  Ruppert recommended it.  Like John Wesley, Rawles over at SurvivalBlog, Ruppert believes strongly in spiritual strength to help individuals get through this transition to post-industrial society; unlike the devoutly Christian JWR, however, Ruppert's journey, with the help of Baker's book, incorporates elements from many major beliefs, including Eastern philosophies and indigenous cultures, as well as Christianity.  This is more palatable to my near-atheist sensibilities, which have been wooed of late by the Druidic magic of John Michael Greer and my own pagan tendencies.  I look forward to Baker's book.  Maybe it will become a key guide in walking a sacred path up the Dark Mountain of un-civilization.  Or is it down?...

"You never know you are in prison unless you try the door."  -- Joe Bageant, Deer Hunting with Jesus

The Gulf of Nurnen

I spent the last four days -- a long Memorial Day weekend, if you will -- in the vicinity of the shore of the Gulf of Mexico.  My in-laws live in Gautier, MS, between Ocean Springs and Pascagoula.  It was a good trip; I ate a tremendous amount of food, drank (for me) a tremendous amount of beer, swam in the pool, and lazed quite a bit.  I am not used to relaxing trips from home, but this was one, mostly.

The drive down Highways 49 and 90, and Interstate 10, was easy.  Traffic was relatively light for a holiday weekend on the Gulf Coast.  There were also few people on the beaches.  Both those signs should've been fair warning that all was not as it should be.

We generally listened to classic rock on the radio, our only options being what passes for country music these days, R & B, and Shock Gospel.  Interspersed between the obligatory CCR and Lynyrd Skynyrd and the usual commercial babble about the latest "deal" to be found at the "Coast's Premier Auto" deal-ers, was something new:  info-ads proclaiming the beauty and excitement and extreme visit-ability of the Mississippi Gulf Coast.  Later the wife reminded me that the local Chambers of Commerce had provided those ads, courtesy of an injection of cash from British Petroleum.

We visited the creaking, fading Aquarium of the Americas in New Orleans on the third day.  Afterward, leaving the Hilton-Riverwalk parking garage, we got stuck behind a real live Protest -- albeit one on wheels.  A veritable throng of bicyclists were wheeling through the French Quarter and the Business District, protesting offshore oil drilling with slogans like "NO DRILL, NO SPILL, NO KILL."  I wanted to lean out the window and cheer, but decided it would be unwise, what with my father-in-law driving the vehicle and all.

On the morning of the fourth day -- Saturday, 29 May -- the wife and kid and I decided to go to the beach with her brother and his wife and their two little ones, ages 2 1/2 and 9 months.  So we headed to Biloxi Beach, and found what we believed to be a nice swathe of sand, with real beachgoers and gulls and everything.  There was no oil to be seen.  Gulls were plucking fish from the brown water.  There was even a fisherman who'd waded out into the water about a hundred yards (an easy meal for a Great White, I couldn't help thinking).  There was also the usual litter, including a sock and a child's discarded green plastic shovel; a Wal-Mart bag floated like a ghostly fish in the surf.

While my brother-in-law and I struggled to assemble the canopy he'd brought, my daughter wandered into ankle-deep surf.  Presently she called out, "Daddy, I found a jellyfish!"  I promptly went to investigate, remembering the multiple run-ins I'd had with a single jellyfish in Pensacola when I was a kid.  (That motherfucker lingered in the same spot, waiting for me, the whole time we stayed.  I know, because I monitored him from the balcony of our upstairs suite at the Howard Johnson's, after the stingings.)  I sure as hell didn't want my five-year old girl getting stung by some bastard jellyfish, much less my little neice and nephew.  So I walked down to where she stood bent over, pigtails pointing downward at the clear, still mass of stinging cells lying in the sand.

"It's okay, it's dead," I called over my shoulder; then told my daughter to leave it be.

Then I looked in the water itself.  More of the same kind of jellyfish floated there.  I walked down the surf, looking.  There were jellyfish everywhere, all dead or dying.  I imagine there were probably hundreds, maybe a few thousand, of them just in the few hundred yards of beach in my line of vision.  I scooped up one the size of a small lemon and studied it.  After a minute, I felt the stinging in my palm.

Naturally we packed up and got the fuck outta there.

The sheer horror of what's happening in the Gulf of Mexico right now has been heavy on my psyche since it began.  Now the cold reality of it has really set in on me, adding to -- not taking the place of -- the horror and the overwhelming sadness.  I don't know what killed those jellies -- the oil, the dispersant, or the lack of oxygen caused by algal bloom, caused in turn by fertilizer runoff, that had already established a dead zone in the Gulf before the Deepwater Horizon disaster -- but I know one thing:  I will not go back. 

"...But there was in Thranduil's heart a still deeper shadow.  He had seen the horror of Mordor and could not forget it.  If ever he looked south its memory dimmed the light of the Sun..."

 -- J.R.R. Tolkien, Unfinished Tales, Chapter IV:  "The History of Galadriel and Celeborn and of Amroth King of Lorien."

Become the Sky...

Collapse, Transition, the Great Turning, why words matter

by Carolyn Baker

As the work I do circulates around the nation and the world, I frequently encounter resistance to the use of the word "collapse" to describe the unprecedented changes that humans and the earth community is now experiencing. Many people insist that we should focus only on "Transition" and the "Great Turning" because these words make more bearable and palatable the challenges of present and future time. The word collapse, they argue, should be ditched.


I disagree and feel adamant about using the term for a number of reasons. In the first place, I am an historian, and as I endeavor to make sense of human history, I notice that monumental changes do not occur in one fell swoop, but over time through a variety of stages. Personally, I am deeply involved in the Transition movement, and I am also strongly aligned philosophically with individuals such as Joanna Macy and David Korten who frequently use the words Great Turning. I could not agree more that in the larger scheme of the unprecedented changes we are navigating, a Great Turning is indeed occurring. However, I believe that it is crucial to hold both the larger picture and the current predicament in our consciousness simultaneously in order to remain effectively present in this moment, as well as in a state of preparation and anticipation for a more redemptive future.


What is more, the Great Turning/Transition is a process, and like all processes, each stage is important. While it is tempting to minimize the stages in favor of our natural human longing for the desirable end result, we may actually jeopardize our appreciation of the destination by refusing to be present with each segment of the journey. The stage in which we happen to find ourselves at this present moment is the collapse of every institution within industrial civilization. I challenge anyone reading these words to give an example of one institution that is not in a state of obvious, irrevocable decline. While in the larger scheme of things, we are in Transition and also experiencing a Great Turning, we are profoundly in the early stages of a shattering unraveling such as our planet has never experienced in human history. That must not be minimized.


In addition, inhabitants of industrial civilization who have not yet understood its consequences seem particularly averse to the word "collapse". Unlike millions of indigenous and dispossessed peoples throughout the world who have been unconscionably devastated by it, their identities remain invested in the false security that it promises and the hope that the next two or three decades will somehow deliver an extension of what life in present time is like. Therefore, I believe that coming to terms with the reality of myriad, ubiquitous forms of collapse in the first decade of this century is imperative. Long term, a great turning is occurring, and we are in transition, yet we have only to observe the breathtaking changes that have transpired in the past three years to notice an undeniable unraveling of this civilization. A collapse by any other name is nevertheless a collapse.


Within the human psyche reside many themes, including death and rebirth. The two always travel together without exception because both are integral aspects of the human story. Attempt to minimize or eliminate one, and you invariably minimize or distort the other. We all wish to be "in" the later stages of the Great Turning, but we aren't, period. We are where we are, and where we are is painful, sad, frightening, enraging, uncertain, and yes, dark. Who would not wish to be basking in the light of the journey's end or near-end? Who would not prefer to look in the rear view mirror (oops, I use an expression from pre-Peak Oil days) and see clearly that we have come through the ordeal, and we are now on the other side of it--free to live out the new paradigm in all of its promise? We can hardly contain our elation as we contemplate that possibility, right?


But we are not in that stage of the journey yet; we have just begun. Our work now is to be present with what is, even as we hold the larger vision in our hearts. To be present means to be willing to look, and the beautiful thing about being present in this moment is that we can utilize all of the qualities of our deliciously imagined future to buoy us in the here and now. In fact, as I emphasize repeatedly in Sacred Demise: Walking The Spiritual Path of Industrial Civilization's Collapse, without savoring and practicing those attributes moment to moment, we cannot endure the future emotionally or spiritually.


Notice I said cannot. I am profoundly frightened for the numbers of people I meet who are highly collapse-aware, but who are doing nothing to prepare emotionally and spiritually. Without that preparation, they are extremely vulnerable to breaking down; with it, they are more likely to break through.

The proper response to death is respect and ritual. Respect literally means "to look again." When people die, we review their lives and renew our appreciation for their contributions and accomplishments. We create rituals to honor those and to express our gratitude for their presence in our lives. Ritual simply means "to fit together" which is to say, we reconnect the broken, separated pieces and in doing so attempt to find meaning in the experience. Given the Great American Death Phobia, this culture is particularly challenged in its capacity to respect death as a part of life and find meaning in it. I believe this may be the principal reason for resistance to words like collapse or unraveling.


What is most challenging for us to hold in the throes of the magnitude of the current oil spill, in the face of being daily deluged with increasingly frightening information about climate change, witnessing around us the beginning of the obliteration of world financial markets and possibly the end of money as we have known it, witnessing the extinction of species at previously unimaginable rates, finding ourselves surrounded with unrelenting natural disasters-this, all of this IS the Great Turning. And at the same time, in this moment, it also IS the collapse of industrial civilization.


Who would not want to be reveling in rebirth? Yet rebirth does not, cannot occur, without death. In present time we may feel marinated in death as its ubiquitous presence threatens to overwhelm us. It is as if we are being asked to walk through a war zone, witnessing around us the fallen everywhere and not knowing if we ourselves will survive. And we my wonder, why can't we just get to the other side and as Thomas Paine said, "begin the world all over again"?


It may be that our species, tortured and toxified by industrial civilization as it has been, is incapable of beginning the world all over again without having lived through the ghastly consequences of what unprecedented growth and disconnection from the earth invariably produce. Perhaps we need this death in order to mould, shape, treasure, and protect the new life we ache to create.

In present time, what we can do with the unraveling is honor and respect what everything that is dying has given us. We can creatively construct rituals that erupt out of our hearts and out of the earth, acknowledging what the oceans, the land, the animals, and all other treasures of this beautiful planet have provided. We can thank and bless them, and we can invite our loved ones to join and co-create rituals with us.


Above all, it appears that we are being asked to allow our old way of life to die. Something in us is dying as we walk through the war zone. Something in us is dying with maybe as much as 100,000 gallons of oil being released daily into the Gulf of Mexico, now slithering into the loop current of the Atlantic Ocean. Something in us is dying with all the life that this cataclysm is extinguishing. Perhaps we need that death in us in order to unequivocally grasp in every cell of our bodies that disconnection, endless growth, competition, and entitlement kill everything in the universe. Perhaps humanity requires devastation of this magnitude in order to become a new kind of species-the kind of species that will never again allow such madness to prevail on this planet.


A very old myth written in myriad versions in ancient texts may be instructive in this collapse/transition/Great Turning journey, namely, the story of our old friend Noah who was instructed to build a lifeboat. Storyteller and author Michael Meade, in his latest book The World Behind The World, offers a timely, poetic appreciation of Noah's mission and ours:

The problem wasn't that the end of the world had come; rather the issue was how to act when it seemed that way. Secretly, each of us is a Noah sent on a distinct and seemingly foolish errand that can help the world as well as fulfill us....Noah stands for the timeless dreamer in the human soul who knows what to do when the floods of change gather and the sense of dissolution grows. (102, 120)

I do not wish to imply that we cannot experience joy or celebration until the Great Turning is complete. Even in the face of horror, we can have moments of humor, play, and elation. Our vision of a "greatly turned" humanity can sustain and inspire us, producing periods of unprecedented community and conviviality in the here and now. The turning is happening, and the collapsing of a way of life that does not work is a pivotal piece in the process. In fact, accepting the natural process of collapse as the first step in the Great Turning is profoundly liberating and empowering.


As always, the poets say it better than prose, especially the mystical poets who catapult our minds to the depths then propel us back up into clear-eyed, laser awareness. So often when they speak of love, they are not referring to human love or romance, but to the soul and the unbounded freedom our intimacy with it generously offers us. Within the cacophony of civilization's demise, Rumi whispers:

Inside this new love, die

Your way begins on the other side

Become the sky

Take an axe to the prison wall

Escape

Walk out like someone suddenly

born into colour

Do it now

You're covered with thick cloud

Slide out the side.

Die, and be quiet

Quietness is the surest sign

that you have died

Your old life was a frantic running

from silence

The speechless full moon comes out now.

Transition, Great Turning, Collapse? The words matter and don't matter at the same time. It's all about being fully present where we are while holding the vision of being somewhere incomparably different.

F the Politicians

Forget the Politicians George Carlin The politicians are put there to give you the idea that  you have freedom of choice ... you don't. You have no  choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own,  and control the corporations. They've long since bought,  and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the state houses,  the city halls, they got the judges in their back pockets  and they own all the big media companies, so they control just about all of the news and information you  get to hear. They got you by the balls. They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying ... lobbying, to  get what they want ... Well, we know what they want.  They want more for themselves and less for everybody  else, but I'll tell you what they don't want ... they don't want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking.  They don't want well informed, well educated people capable of critical thinking. They're not interested in that ... that doesn't help them. That's against their interests. That's right. They don't want people who are  smart enough to sit around a kitchen table and think about how badly they're getting fucked by a system that  threw them overboard 30 fuckin' years ago. They don't  want that. You know what they want? They want obedient workers ... Obedient workers, people who are  just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork. And just dumb enough to passively accept  all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime and vanishing pension that disappears the  minute you go to collect it, and now they're coming for  your Social Security money. They want your fuckin' retirement money. They want it back so they can give  it to their criminal friends on Wall Street, and you know  something? They'll get it ... they'll get it all from you sooner or later cause they own this fuckin' place. It's  a big club and you ain't in it. You and I are not in The  big club. By the way, it's the same big club they use to beat you over the head with all day long when they  tell you what to believe. All day long beating you over  the head with their media telling you what to believe, what to think and what to buy. The table has tilted folks.  The game is rigged and nobody seems to notice. Nobody seems to care. Good honest hard-working people ... white collar, blue collar it doesn't matter what  color shirt you have on. Good honest hard-working people continue, these are people of modest means ...  continue to elect these rich cocksuckers who don't give  a fuck about you. They don't give a fuck about you ... they  don't give a fuck about you. They don't care about you at all ... at all ... at all, and nobody seems to notice. Nobody  seems to care. That's what the owners count on. The fact  that Americans will probably remain willfully ignorant of the big red, white and blue dick that's being jammed up  their assholes everyday, because the owners of this country know the truth. It's called the American Dream  cause you have to be asleep to believe it ...

Dark Have Been My Dreams of Late

It is here, it is upon us:  the Paradigm Shift is in full swing.  Great change is afoot among peoples, in the Sea, and in the land.  The Earth itself is disturbed in its slumber.  Awareness of the change weighs heavily upon me, constantly; and yet I still cannot clearly see the way forward.  All the old measures of economy, of society, daily render meaningless my compass.  The scope and scale of the Paradigm Shift is vast, bounded only by human experience.  I do not know what to do, other than what I am and have been doing; but that does not seem to be enough. 

We must keep an ear to the ground, nose to the wind, eyes on the skyline.  Those still ignorant of the Paradigm Shift, those still under the spell of Saruman (and they are the majority), will depend on us who have come to reject the Ring, in the dark days ahead.

That said, it is yet an incredible time to be alive.  Anything is possible.