This Modern Life

Fifty years ago the world was a bigger place.
The size of the actual ball of mud, rock and water wasn’t any different than it is today (give or take a few tons of ore that have been hurled into space never to return since 1956, a truly insignificant thing to a planet), but it was a bigger place. And fifty years before that I was even bigger still.
So, you're probably asking, if it wasn’t bigger in physical size, then how was it bigger?
It was bigger in solely one fashion; The room a man had to live in it was bigger.
People could come and go as they pleased. They could live in the city next to their neighbors and with the immediate convenience of the close urban quarters, or they could live in the country and see no one for miles and miles around and spend days and days alone pursuing their interests. A person could make a living, living out - Be it off the land or off their works which they took into town once in awhile and sold, one could make a good living and remain as far from neighbors and the supposed "convenience" of the city as they liked.
Today the world is a much smaller place, and the universal consciousness is turned more inwards, into the city and the close knit urban vibe of it all. In the heads of most people is an idea, so subconscious it’s actually more just a sense, a feeling, that unless they are surrounded by others they are in dangerous territory. They want to have neighbors, they want the hubbub of modern living all mashed together right on top of their subdivisions and washing around their minivans.
You see this in how people drive when they get out on the interstate in between cities and towns. I live in a state with a, thankfully, fairly low population density, and there is a lot of wide open country between places, I do a lot of driving. And I see it. People coming from the city get onto the interstate and instead of finding a nice open stretch and maintaining their solidarity for a casual drive they get right up behind someone else, who is in turn right up behind another someone else, and they keep it up until you get these little undulating conglomerations of five to ten vehicles moving down the interstate, constantly jockeying for new but in no way superior positions within the herd.
They cannot, possibly, be alone. If you happen to come along one of these poor helpless creatures when they are alone, they will inevitably be driving quite slowly fearfully looking about or talking on their cell phones to someone back in the city about how "awful" and "empty" open country and open road are. Then, you will pass them in an attempt to leave their slow moving wagon of banality and despair behind, to maintain your oneness, your solitary leisurely place on the road. Suddenly they will speed up and will drop right in behind you, and stick there like they've harpooned you until they decide to pass, only to be in front where they can slow down lest they leave the "safety zone" of another human presence.
These people are "the people" anymore, they live, work, play and function as the baseline of society. Everyone else is a statistical anomaly. The mass consciousness, the one that drives marketing, trends in entertainment, fashion and everything else, the consciousness that writes the unwritten rules and guidelines of society that PTA's use to write rules and guidelines for the next generations and that are used to win (and lose) elections, is the consciousness of these "baseline" individuals. These people who cannot bring themselves to be alone on the open road are the society in America.
They want all the service, all the convenience, all the pleasure and most certainly all the profit and none of the responsibility. They go to work, they pay their taxes, and they want everything else to be guaranteed, insured and immediately available day and night.
They want someone to save them from fire, burglars, kiddy diddlers and flat tires. They want someone to insure that new laws are made to better "protect" them from fires, burglars, kiddy diddlers and yes flat tires. They want the supermarket shelves to be full, they want their skies to be blue, they want their neighbors to have nice lawns that compliment the Norman Rockwell picture perfect essence of their own front yard. They want it all, and they want none of the responsibility of getting it, maintaining it or protecting it. That is someone else’s job. The kind of person who would suggest differently is most certainly the same sort of horrible individual who would drive by themselves along those long open stretches of road.
But they are conflicted - The urban lifestyle with traffic and stoplights and fire departments and cable television and lawn care specialists and a gas station on the corner has them demanding and wanting, of course. This is the life they know, it is the life the consciousness of the nation is telling them is the good life and they believe in that message, and why not? It’s hard not to when it grows just a little stronger every day.
But there is another message, another signal from the universal consciousness, that is slowly being pushed out, its bandwidth decreasing - It is in fact dying, as all old things must. It carries the idea that land is a good thing to have, and that open spaces aren’t so bad, and the good life is having the land to enjoy the open spaces and be away from the maddening roar of it all. It is an idea kept alive by an older generation still working, and by a few rebels and radicals who, the urban dweller must admit when alone and contemplative, have some positive characteristics, a certain charm to their ideas of independence.
These two signals meet, and in a violent cataclysm the newer, stronger, signal tears asunder much of the older one and in the friction of such the ideas fuse. Out of this confusion comes the idea "We will live out of town, out in the country, but we will bring all of our friends with it and they can live out there too, and along with us we will bring all the conveniences of town". So they do, and pretty soon, "out there" has grown and meets up with town, and becomes just another neighborhood. Some developments, further out back of beyond, will take longer to do so, and some may become towns of their own, but in the end it is all still the same.
Those of us who drive alone on the interstate, we anomalies, who have lived out there since before there was anywhere else to live, are simply left to watch in horror as people who do not belong come and fill up our world, surrounding us and smothering us with their way of life.

There are places in the world where most people do not belong. Most people, and that probably means most of you who will read this, do not belong way out back of beyond. You don’t understand it, and cannot truly appreciate it, and you certainly can’t conserve it.
Such people are the teeming, screaming, masses who choose to live in the city, who choose not to break free of the disease of the mind that lifestyle promotes, and they are mentally incapable of doing good for the places where they settle when they move out of the city.
There is no equality between those people and people like me, people who understand and appreciate the land, and want the space and freedom it affords and are willing to live without the supposed "necessities" of city living to have those things.
In the end those whose blood burns for freedom (in the bigger sense than just what that old song with the bits about the bombs bursting in air talks about), and those whose mind is polluted with the fundamental ideas of the current social consciousness are mortal enemies.
But it is a losing war. There are too many people, and despite the ravages of disease, disaster and human destruction they are never going to go away. People will keep consuming, and destroying, and in the end yes the planet, that ancient organism of smaller organisms chained together in symbiosis, that old god we barely understand, will sneeze use off like dust in a cosmic nostril, but before we reach that end what hope is there for the man of freedom and wide open spaces?
He is an antique, a creature of the past, a reverse Neanderthal too smart and too capable for the "good" of society as society has deemed.

We, Who Are About to Die

Fortuna Audaces Iuvat - Fortune Favors the Bold
"Who Dares, Wins" - Special Air Service motto

Today is the twentieth anniversary of the Challenger shuttle disaster. On that cold January morning the space shuttle Challenger rocketed into the sky, its solid rocket boosters burning rapidly towards a failing joint and rubber O-Ring seal that had cracked in the cold. Seventy-three seconds into the flight when the fire hit the joint it blew out the side, and hit the fuel tanks like a blow from an angry and fearful god of the skies. The explosion took the lives of seven crewmembers, six astronauts and one civilian who were daring to follow mankind’s dreams of the stars.
Astronauts Ellison Onizuka, Mike Smith, Dick Scobee, Greg Jarvis, Ron McNair and Judy Resnick, and schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe experienced one minute and thirteen seconds of the dream before their lives were cut short in a fireball and they took the bigger journey into the greater unknown.
But they were not the first to die chasing that dream, nor would they be the last.
On January 27^th 1967 Virgil “Gus” Grissom, Edward White and Roger Chaffee died aboard Apollo 1, still on the launch pad, when a spark ignited the pure oxygen atmosphere of the sealed capsule during pre-flight tests.
On April 24^th 1964 Vladimir Komarov reentered the earths atmosphere in the malfunctioning Soyuz 1 capsule and died when the parachute lines tangled plummeting Soyuz 1 into the earth at two hundred miles an hour.
In May of 1967 the crew of Soyuz 11, Georgi Dobrovolsky, Viktor Patsayev, and Vladislav Volkov, died when a malfunctioning valve caused the capsule to depressurize just prior to reentry.
No astronaut or cosmonaut would die engaged in a mission again until the Challenger disaster, and then it would be fifteen years before another sacrifice would be demanded by the fates of dreams and the sky.
On February 1^st 2003 the crew of the space shuttle Columbia, Rick Husband, William McCool, Michael Anderson, David Brown, Dr. Kalpana Chawla, Laurel B. Clark and Ilan Ramon, died when the shuttle, suffering damage to its protective tiles, blew up over the western United States during reentry. It is quite possible that these seven people knew or at least suspected they were going to die, well ahead of time, and proceeded ahead, chasing the dream to infinity.

We live in a world of sports hero’s, movie stars and rock gods. People who, on whole, are shallow, fatuous, and often as not disgusting and disagreeable people, more concerned with image, money and whatever “cause of the month” will get them the most attention. Among them are rapists, thieves, murderers, people who use drugs to avoid the really real world, and narcissists of the highest order who have no greater dream or vision, and no desire to live for something greater, and certainly, perhaps most certainly of all, no strength to die for something greater.
While those people are made hero’s there are quieter, smarter, stronger men and women who dare to brave the unknown, the unknowable, and the dangerous to chase down what may be the greatest dream of the human race: The secrets of the heavens - The glittering lights and shimmering sights of that great expanse of space, the realm of new worlds and gods.
In the end, it will not be the movie gods and rock stars who will carry mankind into the future, into new hope, new worlds. It will not be the sports hero’s who open the doors for us all. It will be these quiet people willing to serve a dream, live a dream, and die for that dream.
It is my prayer, whispered desperately to those heavens, that we will hold on long enough, that they may deliver that dream to us before it is lost to the murky depths of forgotten consciousness.
”Go! at throttle up” the stars are ahead.

Unity

"Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of captivity. But one hundred years later, we must face the tragic fact that the Negro is still not free.

One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languishing in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land.

So we have come here today to dramatize an appalling condition. In a sense we have come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir.

This note was a promise that all men would be guaranteed the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check which has come back marked "insufficient funds." But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation.

So we have come to cash this check -- a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice. We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to open the doors of opportunity to all of God's children. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood.

It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment and to underestimate the determination of the Negro. This sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. Those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights.

The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges. But there is something that I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.

We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. we must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.

The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny and their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom.

We cannot walk alone. And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall march ahead. We cannot turn back. There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, "When will you be satisfied?" we can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro's basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.

I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive.

Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed. Let us not wallow in the valley of despair. I say to you today, my friends, that in spite of the difficulties and frustrations of the moment, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal." I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slaveowners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood. I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a desert state, sweltering with the heat of injustice and oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day the state of Alabama, whose governor's lips are presently dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, will be transformed into a situation where little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls and walk together as sisters and brothers. I have a dream today. I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together. This is our hope. This is the faith with which I return to the South. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

This will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with a new meaning, "My country, 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim's pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring." And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true. So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania! Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado! Let freedom ring from the curvaceous peaks of California! But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia! Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee! Let freedom ring from every hill and every molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!" Dr. Martin Luther King

Today we have lost sight of the real meaning of this speech. It has become a talismanic icon, not an actual message, not a manifesto. Come Monday this will be truer than ever as we hear about the need to celebrate diversity, and how far the diverse minorities in America have come, and so on and so on.
And not half of it will be true to what Dr. King wanted, what he preached, what he spoke for in that famous speech.
Dr. King did not preach diversity. He did not preach minority. He preached Unity. Unity is something we have not achieved. We are still classifying people by colour and by creed - Celebrating diversity, encouraging minority development, all of these things sound good but in the end, in truth, they are simply polite ways of maintaining racial barriers.
Diversity is not a good thing - It says "We are different - We cannot be alike - We are not brothers". Minority implies that some people are less than others because of their ethnicity, it says "You are Black, Asian, Indian, or White, and I am not Black, Asian, Indian or White - We cannot be brothers".
This is not what Dr. King wanted.

"The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny and their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom.
"I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.'"

That is what Dr. King wanted - Unity, Not Diversity.

The Gift of Misanthropy (It Aint Christmas Until You've Had Fisting...)

So, this morning, I received my second piece of Christmas Themed Fisting spam of the week. It truly is not Christmas until you've seen one chick in a santa bikini pounding her fist into the nethers of another chick in a santa bikini...
Or transvestites. Could always be transvestites.

I love Christmas. Or want to.
I like the American Christmas tradition - I am not religious, and if anything I am more likely to celebrate the winter solstice with vim and vigor than the birth of Christ - but the stereotypical, Norman Rockwell, Christmas is something I love.
Of course, Norman Rockwell never painted the madness that the holiday has become. The decorations going up in September in the stores. The buying and gifting and wanting and having, let it begin early and let the bucks flow freely. The spirit of Christmas, is by GAWD, spending money on a ton of other people, of whom you probably only really care about a third or less.

And of course, Christmas is the time of year when all the relatives congregate, and out comes the hate, just a wee bit ahead of the knives.
My cuz, Whickey (Whitney, but when I was three I couldnt say it... said Whickey... she's whickey, tough shit) wasnt going to be allowed to my aunts for Christmas with the rest of the fam, because she is, gasp, living with a black man. Apparently something changed, because Whit. was there today, thank god... someone I didnt want to strangle.

So yes... Christmas time makes me hate people. It makes me appreciate a few individuals a lot more, but it brings out the misanthrope in me in a big way.
But, at the same time... I like the season, I like winter. I just think the ideal way to spend it would be up in the high country, away from all the madness, with a nice soft warm woman to curl up with on the cold nights, and a pretty little tree with the antique glass balls on it glimmering and glittering in the light of the fireplace across the room. Thats my Christmas wish, if I have one.
Instead... I have lesbian fisting to enjoy. Merry Christmas, and to all a good night.

Delusion of Finality

There is a self-satisfied dogmatism with which mankind at each period of its history cherishes the delusion of the finality of existing modes of knowledge. Alfred North Whitehead

I am amazed that I've never run across this quote before - it so perfectly sums up one of my core feelings about the ills of society.

I Feel Entropy

I'm Twenty today.
One of the benefits of having an interesting life and an excellent memory is that, at Twenty, I feel old. And young, at the same time. I can look back on my life, particularly the last ten years, with a great sense of accomplishment - and a great deal of experience, hard learned lessons and hard won wisdom. And with that in mind, I can look forward with a great sense of curiosity. It can only get more interesting.
At Twenty, I have never had a real job. I've worked for my family business (a cattle ranch), and been paid for various work on neighbors ranches, or similar services, but I have never had a formal "job". That said, I have successfully run my own business for the last five years.
I am a published writer and poet.

I grew up fast, as a kid. I've always been mature.
Some days I feel like I missed out on having childlike sense of wonder... others, I can spend twenty minutes watching a red-tailed hawk floating on a thermal without once moving his wings, and wish as hard as I can that I could feel what that was like.
Every day I am thankful for my experiences, even (maybe especially) the hardships. What does not kill you, makes you stronger. I am not dead yet... not for a long long time.
I have much journey left to complete... and I am looking forward to it with an intense desire and passion.