Day Shall Come Again

Winter holds us fast in his grasp.  2011 breathes its last.

2012 is upon us.  A new year, rising from the ashes of the old.  I have little doubt that it will be only a little less apocalyptic than the Maya foretold.  But we shall see.  I make no predictions tonight, other than this:  whatever darkness lies ahead, there will be another dawn.  It may not be sunny to some, but dawn it will be.

I vow to see it. 

"Last of all Hurin stood alone.  Then he cast aside his shield, and wielded an axe two-handed; and it is sung that the axe smoked in the black blood of the troll-guard of Gothmog until it withered, and each time that he slew Hurin cried:  'Aure entuluva!  Day shall come again!'  Seventy times he uttered that cry..."  -- J.R.R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion, Chapter 20:  "Of the Fifth Battle:  Nirnaeth Arnoediad"

Wassail, friends, and Happy New Year.

CANZUSUKI, and Why I Sleep Fine Nowadays

Last week, at one of those Eurozone-y meetings that seem to take place once every 26 hours, British Prime Minister David Cameron kind of told his Continental peers to suck it.  Bless his heart!  Now, the Brits had never adopted the Euro in the first place, but they became part of the trade zone anyway.  Now, with the seemingly imminent breakup of the Euro -- or its morphing into some kind of Franco-German Reichzone -- we see which way the UK leans.  With its usual detached-ness from the Continent becoming more marked by the day, it mirrors the detachment of the US and its other close (read:  English-speaking) allies from the rest of the Real World.  The unofficial nations of CANZUSUKI (Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Ireland*) are quickly becoming a bit irrelevant on the world stage, as history unfolds.

It's beginning to look a lot like the 1930's.  Or, at least feel like it.  There is a sense of futility and dread behind all the headlines.  We don't need the media to tell us that there's a shitstorm of global proportions brewing.  (Well, maybe some people do.  They're fucked.)  We're well past the beginning stages of the next Fourth Turning -- that is, the next Crisis.  The last was World War II; the one before that, the Civil War; before that, the American Revolution.  Eighty-year intervals, without fail.  So yeah, it's time.  How's it going to happen?  I believe war with Iran will start it, with either Israel acting unilaterally, or a NATO attack to knock out supposed nuclear sites.  This may have the effect of drawing Russia and China in on the side of Iran, and, well... there you go.  WWIII.  Easy-breezy-Ja-pa-nesy.  Won't that be fun?  I love to hear those of a hawkish bent boast about how we'll be able to mop up the Iranians before you can say knife; it reminds me that they said the same thing before we invaded Iraq, and before we invaded Afghanistan.  Will the country as a whole be able to make that same connection, when Hillary Clinton comes on TV to justify attacking Iran (which has not attacked another country in two or three hundred years, unlike ourselves)?  Yeah, sure.

I'm too old to fight in their wars now, thankfully; and by the time my daughter gets old enough to serve, the Crisis will be over, and whatever's left of the United States will begin a new era under a new paradigm.  You know, that is extremely comforting; and I am also comforted with the knowledge that I have done all I can humanly do to prepare for the changes currently under way.  I sleep more soundly, knowing that it's the fate of my generation -- Gen X, the modern equivalent to the Lost Generation of Hemingway, Tolkien, Patton, Truman, Eisenhower -- to do the hard work of managing our country through Collapse; to keep the Baby Boomers from destroying everything, and to keep the generation after us -- the Millenials, the next "Greatest Generation" -- from destroying the Boomers (though the latter may deserve it, as a whole).  It's what Gen Xers, the underprotected latchkey children of the 1970's and early 1980's, were raised to do, albeit indirectly.  We're survivors.  The events of the larger picture are out of our hands; we just have to make it through to the other side, and shepherd through some of the younger folk along with us.

"The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend.  Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again." -- Robert Jordan

Wassail, friends.

*I included Ireland, though like as not they will go off on their own, as is their wont.
 

Foradan

Literally "north-man."  Here, the meaning is more Winter-man.  Sindarin, of course.  Simply Sindarin.  I did not bother to look up the Quenya.

The trees slip deeper into sleep with each passing day.  Some still hang on, mainly the younger ones.  Their green leaves will be frostbitten soon, and they will not forget it.

I slow down as well.  I am done for the year.  No more big projects, aside from getting through this month's madness, to quiet, contemplative January.  I am Foradan, withdrawn as the December sun.

I realized that I have given myself a divorce from my country.  I hardly recognize it any more.  I am more familiar with the natural world:  the ebb and flow of natural energies, natural rhythms, sighing earth, listening trees, seasonal suns, and my own place within the great Ring.  Doctrine, dogma, rhetoric, debate, are all rendered pointless, insignificant, by the whir of a chickadee's wings.

Wassail, friends.  And bon hiver.

No Other Path to Wisdom

(Note:  This comes from Dave over at his Decline of the Empire blog (link provided at right).  I read Dave's stuff on an almost daily basis, and while it is never a waste of time, a recent posting of his regarding the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) protests was particularly good, and gave me pause.  I have lifted some paragraphs, giving the Red Font to lines I found especially noteworthy. -- Chris)

I am not going to belabor the point that nothing tangible will be accomplished. Eventually these protests will wither away, and our elite-ruled society will not have changed one iota. This is simply obvious, so there's no need to defend this view. Here at DOTE I refer to this kind of thing as Reality. Don't get confused about what is possible and what is not.

Then why do I say, agreeing with Salon's Glenn Greenwald, that personally, I think there's substantial value in these protests? Well, it's a lot like the difference between breathing and not breathing. The Wall Street protesters are alive, whereas most Americans are not. Most Americans I've known or met dwell among the Walking Dead. They sleepwalk through their miserable daily routine, clinging to this illusion or that, watching Fox News or The Daily Show, vaguely hoping tomorrow will be a better day. Shoulda, woulda, coulda. Every two years, about half of them vote for Tweedle Dee or Tweedle Dum. I don't call that living. I call that incarceration. In Thoreau's famous phrase, these people endure lives of quiet desperation.

And what about the "successful" ones who presumably don't have miserable daily routines? The ones who benefit from the status quo? Those in the elite, or those who got prosperous serving them? Watch the money pile grow in the morning, hit the links at two, a dry martini with filet mignon in the clubhouse, and then off for some blow and Dom Perignon on Buffy's boat. Well, these assholes are in jail too, only they don't know it. They, too, are asleep. Deeply asleep.

In fact, the more "successful" a person is in this corrupt, unjust society, the more hopeless they are in my eyes. I do not say this out of some sort of pathetic envy for their social success or riches. I say this from a position of absolute contempt. So, you're a Big Winner in Dante's Inferno (above, left), you're the "hottest" guy in Hell! Congratulations! How many people did you step on to get to that exalted position?

If I'm going to talk with somebody, I'll choose an occupy Wall Street protester every time. Screw these so-called "successful" people, their casual immorality, their tedious conventional thinking, their self-serving or corn-pone opinions. They don't know anything important, and never will. They do not represent an ideal others should shoot for. Wisdom is born out of suffering. Success gets you nowhere. There is no other path to wisdom.

Protesting an absurdly corrupt, unjust society is not the only way of taking life seriously, of acheiving a critical passion for living that goes far beyond merely breathing or achieving conventional success. But it's one way, and a good way too if it's done consciously. I would certainly hope that those occupying Wall Street are not delusional, that they already know (or will soon learn) that such protests are futile as far as getting anything accomplished is concerned. The Empire is in Decline. The relentless March of History is not on their side (or ours).

However, practical results are not the only things that matter in life. Abandoning the stifling status quo makes psychological breakthroughs possible, and might (ultimately) give birth to a sense of humor (albeit dark humor) about the Human Predicament. This engenders some healthy contemplation of the meaning of life itself. Getting outside the box is liberating. I'm talking about aiming toward The Good Life, where you make your own choices and don't take shit from anyone, at least not if you can help it.

(Wassail, friends. -- C.)

Semantics

Surfing through the various contrarian economic news sites, one cannot help but notice the large number of articles with the words "depression" and "recession" plopped here and there like cow patties in a pasture.  Everyone seems to recognize that either (a) the economy is relapsing into a recession (implying that we actually got out of the last one), or (b) that the economy is in a depression (implying that it wasn't in one already).  This kind of talk, to quote the character Maurice Minnifield of Northern Exposure, "makes my butt tired."  What precious few seem to realize -- especially the sociopaths in the Two Towers (Washington and Wall Street), it goes without saying -- is that neither the word "recession" nor the word "depression" can describe what is going on.  Those words were only appropriate for an economic paradigm that no longer exists.  The paradigm has shifted, is shifting, and will continue to shift, despite the ridiculous machinations of Orthanc and Barad-dur. 

Without getting into traditional definitions, both words imply a slump in economic activity -- and the word "slump" implies an upcurve at some point.  But there is no real upcurve on the other side of this:  there is, indeed, no other side.  What we have here -- failure to communicate aside -- is a general, civilization-wide  Leg Down.  Words like "depression" and "recession" limit our abilities to fathom the collapse at hand, effectively throwing up a mental barrier, so that our minds do not have to deal with the infinite darkness (literal and metaphorical*) that said collapse entails. 

I do not think this collapse is going to be a permanent thing, mind you, but I think that the socioeconomic paradigm that replaces the current one will be more recognizable to Laura Ingalls Wilder than it would to an American citizen of my own generation.

Wassail, friends.

*Prof. Em. Guy McPherson speculates "Stone Age by 2012."  I tend to think it will be more akin to the Dark Ages -- specifically, the early Middle Ages, between the fall of the last Roman Emperor in the West (Romulus Augustulus, early fifth century) and the Norman Conquest of England (1066), with some of the technology reminiscent of the early Industrial Revolution.  The political turmoil which will mark the world for the next few generations may give way to a more stable system, mirroring that of the High Middle Ages of the Crusader period.  Shit, now I'm just daydreaming, really...

Worthy of Success

The Fam and I drove over to the Confederate Cemetery located 1 mile south of Quitman, in Clarke County, MS.  I'd been wanting to take some pictures, to help me in finishing a short story which ends at that cemetery.  'Twas a wonderful Sunday morning for a drive.

Wassail, friends.

Whither the Warriors?

Those who know me -- you know who you are -- know that, buried down beneath all the built-up cynicism, the feigning self-deprecation, and the creeping contrarianism, lies a hopeless romantic.  This makes me unsuitable for many things, and suitable for few, but no matter.  Somehow we romantics manage to make our way in the wide world, despite the machinations of smaller men and women, who do not understand us, and as a result, both marvel at and fear us. 

Yet as we live in a world of small men and women, the romantic must needs find a way eke out a living, and maybe even to become comfortable (a dangerous thing for the romantic).  As I enter my third month of unemployment (in the conventional sense), I find that comfort eludes me, the physical needs of life outweighing everything else.  In order to live in this society -- which I mostly dislike -- I must, again, allow myself to become subservient to it.  And so, with the aim of making myself more "presentable" -- that is, only an individual up to a certain point -- I shaved my beard today.

What does this mean?  For many, or most, I suspect, shaving a beard elicits little if any real thought about meanings.  I can grow a full beard in about two weeks.  But cutting off this symbol of masculinity, this symbol of wildness, this symbol of defiance -- a fawning Celt conforming to his Roman conquerors -- I feel should only be done if the man feels the need to express himself thusly.  The cutting of the beard due to societal pressures and mores, well... that not only speaks volumes about that particular society, but about the ability and willingness of the man to stand up to it, to defy it.

I caved.  I cut the beard.  No doubt this will garner much approval from the brainwashed, eager as most of them are to see others conquered like themselves -- misery loves company.  This is not to say that all who shave are craven; many men choose the clean-shaven look because they like it that way, not because of any societal pressures.  I salute them. 

So today my inner barbarian rails, but knows there are other ways to sing the song of defiance, to walk the warrior's path in this wretched, wicked country.

     Nay, look down on the road
     From the ancient abode!
     Betwixt acre and field
     Shineth helm, shineth shield.

     And high over the heath
     Fares the bane in his sheath;
     For the wise men and bold
     Go their ways o'er the wold.

Now the Warrior hath given them heart and fair day,
Unbidden, undriven, they fare to the fray.
By the rock and the river the banners they bear,
And their battle-staves quiver 'neath halbert and spear;
On the hill's brow they gather, and hang o'er the Dale
As the clouds of the Father hang, laden wtih bale.

     Down shineth the sun
     On the war-deed half done;
     All the fore-doomed to die,
     In the pale dust they lie.
     There they leapt, there they fell,
     And their tale shall we tell;
     But we, e'en in the gate
     Of the war-garth we wait,

Till the drift of war-weather shall whistle us on,
And we tread all together the way to be won,
To the dear land, the dwelling for whose sake we came
To do deeds for the telling of song-becrowned fame.
Settle helm on the head then!  Heave sword for the Dale!
Nor be mocked of the dead men for deedless and pale.

                                       William Morris, The Roots of the Mountains

Wassail, friends.