The Diamond Island

So me, the folks, and K are doing the loch walkaround.  We’re coming into the final lap through the square before the final uphill closure.  We pass a large piece of dirt that looks like a dried dog-doo, surrounded by tinier pieces.  I stop to take a closer look, because I sense something powerful about it.  In the space of a few seconds I believe I see a turtle shell covered by dried dirt.

I call the clan to hold up, and crouch down to get a closer look.  They think I’m picking up a dog-dropper and have gone nuts.  I pick up the little creature and get a closer look, the camouflage at last seen through—it’s a baby snapping turtle.  I recognize the long, slender, whip-like tail and curved claws.  The strong, snub beak that snaps shut like a steel trap.

The bulbous eyes blink as it shrinks into tight shell immobility.  Still alive!  How on earth it got all the way over here I don’t know, but we decide to carry it back down the path to the loch side.  I place the turtle on a flat rock half out of the water, surrounded by plants, safe to enter the water when ready.  I’ve seen huge snapping turtles in the shallows of the loch, and once in the road in the morning, so I know they exist.

This little one must have erupted from an egg in the dirt and gotten lost on that left turn in albuquerque.  Well, may the turtle find delicious morsels and grow to enormous size in the grand waters of the loch!  I’m going to bust out in song here, watch me work now:

Gamera is really neat,
He is full of turtle meat,
We all love you Gam-e-ra!

In the movie The Bermuda Depths, it’s the hatching of the baby giant monster sea turtle that creates the bond between the young Magnus and the ghostly Jennie.  There’s a familiar struggling in that story, I think, of lost souls for understanding of a love beyond mortal and immortal ability.  We create things through caring which descend into the deep and resonate with a mystery.

Some might search for the hard truth of that mystery, and get exactly that—with a locker courtesy of Davy Jones (another name for the Devil).  Others wander in and out of the mystery, finally walking away with a reluctance to face the vulnerable reflection that is revealed.  Meanwhile, clues attach themselves to minor actors we only get a few walk on scenes to notice and contemplate.  Lucky is the person who can rewind and reflect upon a slight turn of the light!

The star-crossed lovers never reach the unspoken dream.  Magnus returns Jennie’s talisman to the sea—which to me says he rightly sacrifices his old life.  Jennie keeps her promise and returns to the depths.  Given the misfortune she has spread by returning to see Magnus, this is a mercy for us on the surface.  Yet, carved in the shell of a mutual connection are their initials within a heart.

Is it a monster this mixed partnership creates, or is it perhaps we as the audience wish only to see the horror of the inconceivable?  There is an individual crumb in there that speaks again of the hybrid, if we as audience would only pull the sword from the stone of our own mind.

In the computer game Civilization 3, you can play a number of rulers during ancient times.  You can, for example, play the Sumerians and develop things like chariots and mining.  One of the civilization advances I found most interesting in that game was “worker housing”.

Basically, you develop the ability to concentrate labor into immense camps.  It’s the prototype of the company store idea.  Workers eat, sleep, and raise families in these camps so you can have them concentrate their efforts on building things you want your city to have.

See, the rulers didn’t have construction machinery to control yet.  All they had was physical labor.  The only way to say, build huge monuments to your greatness, was to find an efficient way to gather workers together and keep them moving at a large-scale, steady pace.  These may have been the first attempts at industry.

This is based on real discoveries.  For example, in Egypt they found the remains of large camps of worker housing that were likely used to build the pyramids.

Now that we have fossil fuel powered machinery and access to tremendous energy, we don’t need worker housing for industry.  Or do we?

I would say that advances have allowed industry to expand to a point where worker housing as a concept applies across a broader field of vision.  We might not need a camp of thousands of construction workers, but we do need cities composed of teams of workers and their associated support staff.  If you ever read Richard Scary’s What Do People Do All Day? You can get a sense for how complicated and interrelated each “worker” is.

I look at fast food places.  They exist to give people access to cheap, quick food.  In and out so you can gobble down something for lunch, or feed your family when people are too tired or time-stretched to cook.  Places like McDonald’s, Burger King and Taco Bell exist to keep the workforce fed so they can be kept working as much as possible.

In other words, these establishments exist as a room in today’s “worker housing”.  Instead of building pyramids we’re mining coal, driving trucks, filing papers and cleaning restrooms to keep the industrial system going.

What’s this industry building, besides massive fortunes for a lucky few?  Maybe a kind of unconscious, worldwide tower of Babel.  Hrm.  I think I shouldn’t have eaten that last chicken soft taco.

This effort is supported by cheap, abundant energy in the form of oil.  An oil supply which has reached the peak of production and will now slowly recede like a tide.  Unless we start a new Manhattan-sized project and invent an entirely new form of energy that’s never been known before, that energy is going to disappear from the system.  Nothing we have will replace oil’s scale of energy and versatility — not coal, not nuclear, not solar or whatever else “process” we have on the blackboard right now.

What this means is the end of fast food.

When oil becomes scarcer (and therefore more expensive), the cost of petrochemicals will increase.  That affects the use of countless things.  Fertilizer and pesticides used to grow the crops that feed the cattle that go into your burger.  The electricity that powers the factory that processes the corn syrup in your drink.  The diesel that fuels the trucks that deliver the processed food packages used to make your burrito.  The feedstock used to manufacture the plastic of your large drink cup.

It simply will not be cost-effective to maintain networks of fast food.  I mean, I look at all the KFCs, Pizza Huts, and Subways and I see obsolescence gnawing at their foundations like a hungry badger.   The Happy Meal is going to turn into a high-priced collector’s novelty like an eight track tape.  Then it’s going to be something you get tired of hearing Grandpa ramble on about, all the way into a topic you learn about in history class.

That doesn’t mean some new form of worker housing won’t take the place of the current model.  We will always have oil, just not enough to keep the old model going.  Any change is likely to be a slow, gradual process.  We might even get really lucky and discover a new energy source to help with the transition into the post-oil age.  Whatever ends up happening, we’re in for some adjustments.

So enjoy your chicken-farm nuggets and processed slopper sandwiches.  The limits of growth inherent in the laws of nature are going to wipe out what decades of awareness activism couldn’t accomplish.

Yes, exciting updates for those who desire non-returnable and un-consumer Mr. Nice Car exposure.  It’s all about the mysterious sightings when it comes to avoiding the “go back 3 spaces, now go back 1 space, now go back 5 spaces, now go back to start” phenomenon.

My favorite month of the year is right around the corner, and the weather is taking a turn towards a new season of attempts to request unlimited credit.  I’m just trying to keep my brain pan clear of any banker tendencies, just in case Count of Monte Cristo random encounter comes a-callin’.

So what’s in the psychic hopper?  Still have some garden goods in the line-up, and the herbs are still going.  But definitely this is the wind-down to post-harvest.  Tomatoes are canned, and all the major events are taken care of.  It’s only a matter of time before the basil gives up the ghost, for example.

Ran into my super-duper, techno-webmaster friend for lunch.  The monolith-monster barrier reefs were impossible to pass, so it was hard for us to have a bite and catch up.  We parked right next to each other in the parking lot, but looked for each other on opposite ends of the food trough mall.  That’s how it’s been—connected by the roots, but branched out at different angles due to the wind.

He’s a wise old turtle, reminding me that “it’s nice to be important, but it’s more important to be nice.”  Thanks for busting through the reefs man.

Now that the currents have changed, all sorts of things have been stirring up out of the nutrient stream.  I’m particularly excited about the imminent publishing of Carl Jung’s Red Book.  This is a journal the psychoanalyst started during a period of mental turmoil in his life.  He decided to use active imagination to explore the depths and meaning of his, well to put it mildly, schizophrenic crack-up.  When Jung passed away his family locked the thing away in a Swiss vault.

I’ve caught glimpses of the vividly stunning pictures and nakedly personal writings, enough to make me wish I could be one of a dozen people who had ever seen the thing.  Now in a month I’ll have a chance to behold the journey into madness and insight myself.  I can hardly wait.  Since when do I ever get excited about stuff that’s coming down the line?

Well, I’m also excited about Crumb’s graphic novel take on the Book of Genesis.  This too, promises to be awesome.  The guy’s art is a national treasure, every tortured line of his artistry both difficult and energizing to behold.  Rumor has it he started out on the project with a irreverent take, but then decided that wasn’t working.  He started over and played it straight.

From the previews I’ve seen, I think this was the right way to go.  If he was going for mockery or sarcasm, then his own artistic style is enough to carry that through on an as-is presentation.  This allows the reader to bring their own take to the material and come away with a richer panorama.  But I’ll have to see for sure with the book in my hands and see what the impact is.  Reading Crumb is a personal meditation, just as contemplation of any great artist tends to be.

On the semi-manga bandwagon, I’ve been reading parts 2, 3 and 4 of the Scott Pilgrim series, as well as the newest batch of Courtney Crumrin.

Scott Pilgrim faces the usual slacker challenges of growing up, while working on his relationship with Ramona Flowers (his true love).  Of course, he still has to defeat her seven evil ex-boyfriends in kung-fu video game challenges.

I’m enjoying how the story is unfolding, but the 3 volumes I read didn’t pack any of the gobsmacking punch of the first volume.  I literally was stunned with laughter and delight at the style and execution of that first volume.  In 2-4 the complications just don’t flow as well.  Creative, amusing, but something I just can’t put my foot on is draining the momentum.

Maybe it should have been three evil ex-boyfriends.

Courtney Crumrin is as well drawn and skillfully executed as ever.  The previous three volumes I think are destined to become classic graphic novels.  The latest in what I presume will be another series, Courtney Crumrin’s Monstrous Holiday, is like a bonus round of birthday presents.  I’ve been itching to know what would happen on the trip that ends the previous series.

Courtney the witch and her warlock great-grand uncle go on a tour of Europe in a two-part adventure.  The old theme of “bad things happen sometimes” continues, first with an opposite ends of the tracks love story in which Courtney tries to lend some help.  Then a “bad news” boyfriend who has a not-so-healthy hunger for Courtney.

The young witch is learning about love and limitations.  Hopefully, she is learning from her poor (if very understandable) decisions.  Uncle Aloysius is looking like he might not be there for her for much longer.  Definitely a more mature book than the ones we’ve seen before.  Moar pleez!

The new honeycomb hideout has an interesting feature in the backyard.  Our neighbor has placed a statue of Mother Mary on a pedestal, flanked on either side by golden angels blaring trumpets.  So every time I look outside, her head pokes above the fence to keep an eye on me, angels blaring away on their trumpets.  Talk about having a sacred and watchful eye on one’s self.

There’s a catnip plant for the kitties in the front yard.  Since we moved in it’s been taking off like gangbusters.  We give the kitties a leaf each now and then, but only as a special treat.  I swear, right off the plant the cats go right to their happy place and purr contentedly.  I mean, when you have Cat Town, after two years of haunted house duty, I’d be a honey tiger too.

I’m guessing that in a while the kitties will be adapted to the new wonder and begin bugging us with new ideas.  But for now I’m so happy to have them on a peaceful recovery.  Who knows how many zomboids and ghostaloos they lazored for us when the hell house was in full effect.

Mother Mary’s short duration personal assistant came by the other day.  She had with her a bottle of RC cola and a pack of ice.  Whoa, our haunted freezer refused to accept ice bags, as it was dimensionally not set up for anything beyond TV dinner sized.  She pours me a tall glass of RC on ice and pushes the sudsy spray right up to my nose.

“Close your eyes and sniff,” she says.

Oh man, I forgot how much fun it is to bring the suds of an icy poured drink up to your nose and let the bubbles tickle your spine.  It’s like a fizzy lifting alchemy, making your nose sticky and damp at the same time as the noise crackles in your ears.

“Have you been doing your exercises?”

Uh, like no.  Kind of been in emergency evacuate mode.  Still recovering.  She rolls with it, tells me I’ll be get back to my body awareness exercises once I’m ready.  In the meantime, she prescribes a musical training to supplement my psychic kung fu.  Says I have to complete the gaps in my wholeness.  This I won’t be able to get away from, she says.  I’m like, yeah cool, I’m committed.

She laughs.  All I had to do was say yes.  The rest will handle itself.

I guess so!  She’s got things to do, people to see, so we cut it short.  Outside, cicadas are chirring like nobody’s business.  I spot a discarded cicada exoskeleton on the exploding-with-growth tomato plant in the front yard as I wave to her.

Which is funny, because a friend of mine was just complaining about how cicadas keep showing up in the literature he’s been reading, as symbols of remembrance–days when one was young.  I do admit there’s something primal about cicadas.  But my youthful nostalgia evocative sound is trucks on a highway.  Sends me back to when I lived in a car.

And fizzy cola on the nose is also an evocative sensation for me.  As a kid I would run right up to glasses and yell, “suds!”  So maybe that’s the lesson.  Getting back in touch, after being in the hopper for two years.

Michael Jackson.

Yeah, I said it.  I agree with Chomsky’s “IdontcareaboutMJ” stance on Twitter—there are much more vital issues right now than the death of some old rock star.  I also understand the haters out there who say “good riddance” and “stop talking about him already!”  I felt the urge to wave a torch at the Frankenstein monster as he plunged into the quicksand pit myself.

But just like the horror in a monster movie, our phantasm of the performer keeps on coming back from the grave to frighten us a little more.  See, the image we projected upon this person is our own creature of the night.  We couldn’t live it out for ourselves, so we had someone else do it for us.  This happens all the time in many different forms.

Anyway, the story.  K and I are at the grocery store buying our essentials, trying to avoid the psychic contagions of others like usual.  We’re through the check-out line and passing the gumball machines when I spot a new dispenser.

Yes, you got it, the King of Dump himself.  Stickers, fifty cents.  Well, as I am a certified Sticker Stasher seeker, I’m on this.  Haven’t had many clues or encounters of ol’ Sticker Stasher for months.  So here come my quarters.  I have enough for two stickers.

What I get are two of the same sticker.  A close up of his face probably cropped from the Thriller LP cover.  Awesome, I can think of some great applications for Halloween cards.  Hek, I imagine a few friends of mine would find the sticker a hoot on their holiday cards this year.  But the point is, my collection gets a little bit of a twist.

I put the stickers in a thick book to flatten them out of their gumball machine-enforced embryonic folding.  As I stare at them, I realize there’s a clue in this.  Two faces, the same person.  That about sums up what I always thought of the man.  An outward persona of innocence, childishness, and victimization.  But inwardly very alert, ambitious, and narcissistic.  Perhaps even obsessively controlling.

One gets that impression when reading the behind the scenes stories in the studio.  This guy was obsessed with his own image, with wowing a psychological audience of people he imagined needed to be impressed, and he missed nothing.  He was a perfectionist and that allowed him to accomplish some amazing feats.

There’s a picture I saw of the guy, hanging out at Studio 54.  On one side of him the part owner Steve Rubell, on the other Steven Tyler of Aerosmith looking bombed out of his mind.  You could make the case that MJ was just an innocent, or a naïve fellow moving through a realm of decadence and shaky morals.  I see it as more a picture of three comparable peers in the world of the entertainment industry (which is another name for the second capital of the United States).

This guy knew what he was doing.

A week later I pass the same gumball machine and decide to spend another fifty cents.  I get a third sticker, and it’s the exact same one.  A third face?  I have to delve deeper.

I like a number of the man’s songs, and for a brief moment in time during my freshman year in high school I wanted to dress and dance like him.  But I think there’s a lesson here about the figure of the vampire that I will keep in mind.  Dodge the impersonal demands of the collective unconscious, lest you too be turned into a vampire.  Nobody’s back is strong enough to carry that load.

A figure that is seductive, hypnotic and irresistible.  Also a vehicle through which we experience the fear of unredeemed evil and the thrill of the night.  Not actually being alive, pretense is a large part of the vampire’s mode of operation.  Can this creature be sincere when it casts no reflection?  It holds up a mirror to us, but who holds the mirror up to a vampire?

I imagine a narcissistic vampire might search the vacant mirror endlessly, seeking a reflection that is never there.  Perhaps hoping to see something mirrored in other people.  But the only thing other people will likely say is, “Dude, you’re a vampire.”

The thing is, even a non-reflection is something.  No soul is still a thing that can be defined.  Your greatest weakness can become your greatest strength.  So often the temptation is to believe that because there’s no hope there’s no reason to act responsibly.  If there’s nothing there but grotesque monstrosity, then nothing’s lost by redefining what that means.

I think that’s why so many people looked the other way.  Secretly, they hoped there would be a road to Damascus moment.  But looking at the manner in which a case is building against the personal physician, I wonder if somebody might have unconsciously hammered in a stake instead.

Me?  I neither condemn nor praise.  I just feel sad, and I’m pleased to have some new stickers.

Tomato canning season is upon the clan once more.  We’ve been shifting strategies over time.  The most significant to date has been the staggering out of the bushels.  Rather than do 6 in one fell swoop, struggling to finish the tail end before they turn to mush we do them in rounds.  1 here, 2 there.  Takes longer, but we get to rest in between cycles of canning.

Well, now we’ve upgraded the process significantly, with the Norpro Sauce Master Foodstrainer.  Before, we had to boil the tomatoes, scoop ’em into a bowl, and while still hot skin and slice the little hot coals.  That’s all ancient history now.  Just dump in the hopper, crank twist, and the pulp and juice comes out into the bowl.

Skins and seeds are left behind, and the jar gets filled with puree.  No need to open a jar and dump it in the blender first.  This stuff is raw material nutrient plus, mutha-scratcha!  It’s a little disconcerting to see a major part of the equation completely removed.  No more need to develop asbestos hands, no more nicks and cuts on the fingers from handling a knife willy-nilly for days on end.

I’d say that easily we’ve cut our time requirements in half.  The boiling of the filled jars still has to take the time it does, but now we can move the loads along without any delay due to not having enough pulp on hand to do a load.

Oh, man, and the delicious wonder of having a tasty treat in storage in the winter.  It’s awesome, being able to open a jar of tomatoes as fresh as harvest day, popping the lid open with a snap.  This is what it means to do honor to the fruits of the earth.  And all those skins and seeds?  Oh yeah, compost baby, microbes will be getting busy to-night.  Down the line for next year’s garden, oh you know the earthworms will be eating good on next year’s menu Hek-yeah.

The other day I was in a conversation where the topic became the lazy boyfriend and his frustrated girlfriend.  You know—the middle-aged boy drifting about, unable to get their life together.  Talk about another one of the huge challenges of today’s un-modern, devolutionary society.

I don’t have my former teacher’s gift for words when addressing all possibilities.  So I’m going to trust those of you who don’t fall within the dominant cultural identities to queer the text if necessary.

Ambition isn’t whipping someone else’s fanny to achieve your goals; it’s whipping your own fanny to achieve your goals.  You can’t rely on someone else to hold the world up for you and manifest your dreams.  This is the road of dependency, of giving away your power to someone else.

People are always looking for someone else to show them how to get power or tell them they have power.  In comes the popular pastime of stealing it from others—there are plenty of people who will pretend to embody the qualities you imagine your partner in crime ought to have.  These people are looking to exploit your power for themselves, to live off your dependency for their own ends.

There are also a lot of people looking for dependent heaps they think they can mold into a programmable automaton who will do their bidding.  I see relationships that run on just this sort of weird symbiotic puppetry.

The thing is, no one can give you power.  That is, the ability to live your life as a human being, with the understanding of being alive.  It has to be seized from within by your own action.  People can help you along the way, give you the tools to work it out yourself, but the final step always has to be yours.

Getting down to the bum, the person who is unformed and dependent, the boy who refuses to “cowboy up” and get serious.  “Be a man,” “grow up” and “do something with your life” are common mantras from observers.  I think this sort of blame waving, while legitimate, tends to reinforce this kind of behavior.  Yes, ultimately we have to do the last important task ourselves.  We are responsible for our lives at the crossroads, wherever that is.

But too often what the person hears is “You’re not a cowboy.  You’re not a man.  You haven’t grown up.  You’re doing nothing with your life.”  Who’s stealing power from whom, I wonder.

A boy has to willingly and deliberately choose to “sacrifice the son”.  Meaning their dependence on their mother and insistence that every woman he will ever meet gratify his needs.  A willingness to relinquish that part of us we associate with boyish qualities—vitality, creativity, joy.  In effect, a psychological castration.  Who would ever want to do that?  That’s crazy talk.

Girls too.  Both must relinquish their need for a counterpart to embody the providing force of love and affection.  The other person is not the doctor.  Withdraw and reclaim your projections so you can see the other person as they really are.

Life spirals on.  So if you do not willingly accomplish this task you will find yourself dragged along.  Often painfully.

The question is, how does one find it in them to make the sacrifice?  Not from the admonitions of others who wish they’d “get it together”.

A person must be blessed.  They must be recognized for their weaknesses and limits, as well as their legitimate talents.

The first step is to acknowledge that you need an audience, to be seen and acknowledged.  There’s a royal force within us, an ordering principle that builds structure out of the dysfunction of our lives.  You don’t need to “cowboy up”, you only need to say “yes”.

The movie Exorcist 2: The Heretic has been soundly trashed as one of the most awful movies of all time. I’ve seen awful movies and this one doesn’t even come close. I’m not a fan of the original, as it seems to me to be more about the disruption of the conventional as a result of people’s messed up expectations than about actual possession, which is a genuine problem today.

I am a fan of Exorcist 3, which truly is a sequel to the original. It deals more with issues of disbelief and unredeemed longing than possession, but it does so dramatically and with narrative wholeness. We are answered, by a self that is both guide and daemonic adversary.

Exorcist 2 is a development on the ideas of the first film, yet it stands on it’s own. It actually deals with issues of possession, using the locust swarm as a metaphor for the outbreaks of collective insanity in our world. Issues of obsession and willful denial make appearances in the plot, as expressed through the priest’s search for meaning and the doctor’s attempt to hide from the supernatural.

Linda Blair plays a more mature, post-exorcist girl named Regan who remembers everything of her horrific ordeal, and appears to be dealing with it quite well. Her ordeal isn’t over, but it’s obvious she has healed way ahead of anyone’s mundane views of her. In fact, she’s taking the next step in discovering that her experience has given her the ability to rescue those still in darkness.

I hesitate to support the narrative premise of “the way for women to gain power is to get jacked first.” That position too often leads to stories where heroines are violated as a means for them to move forward. But I don’t want to shy away from reality with rose-tinted glasses either.

Maybe the heroine’s journey that begins with a sparagmos (a crucifixion or tearing apart by the darkness) is the archetype we still need to come to terms with through a certain base popular culture.  I’m just keeping an eye on what I think is a little too much of one thing to be balanced.

Here, in this movie, it’s what Regan is dealing with; she’s working stuff out and not flinching. And this is some dangerous psychic material she’s working with, totally radioactive stuff that messes up the people around her. The main character is meant to be the priest, but his journey is our journey of getting on board with the real deal: A young woman’s coming to terms with how she has changed as a result of her possession.

The film is far from perfect—Richard Burton delivers solid actingas the priest at times, but for much of the film he’s off his game.  The film suffers from an undeveloped script, offering scant answers at times when a fuller revelation would have resonance. The timing on many actions is poor. There are moments when a hesitation or a cutting of scene time might have made things more clear.

However, there are ideas here that need worth thinking about. The main idea is that people who have been tainted by evil and have recovered can help other people who are possessed. There is the larger theme of how nature is working towards creating people (known as “good locusts”) who have the power to lead the rest of us out of confusion and back to harmony again. A constant theme is the interconnectedness of all things, the connection we all share unconsciously, and the forces of evil, which are both guides and adversaries.

There’s ambiguity, the hybrid effect of the individuated being, in all the characters. Regan wears white, is attracted to dove symbolism, and is sweetly friendly. Yet she has a knowing resolve, a crazy element to her that no one understands, and there’s the wicked side of her drawn out by contact with the demon. The demon itself is dangerously harmful and disruptive, yet also an instrument of destiny, with parts that can be understood and even assimilated into ourselves.

This dichotomy extends to the other characters as well, good and evil being relative, but still both aspects that can’t be ignored. The lines between science and mysticism are blurred.

At the end of the movie, surrounded by the collapse of the world, Regan discovers her true calling and completes herself, stilling the world back into harmony. The other characters still lack a complete picture, but they’re learning. Scarred, looking for the puzzle piece they have yet to find in themselves. But Regan stands out as an example of how we can find the good locust in all of us. The harvest of our lives and of others can still be saved and the hidden violence in our nature redeemed.

Like all good fairy tales (and the better Terry Gilliam films) we are brought back into the world to regard what we have witnessed. The flash of the synchronizer upon the doctor’s face as the movie fades to black leaves us with the knowledge that the struggle continues; even as nature creates a garden we have yet to notice. Given that at this point time and space are fluid, the doctor’s point of view becomes a remembering (with who as witness and/or participant?) of the last time she saw Regan and the priest.

Is the doctor showing us what she has witnessed? Are we the subject sitting on the other side of the synchronizer, descending into the earth of the unconscious so she might show us what she knows and feels first hand? The movie itself might be seen as our own “going deeper” via the synchronizer; to see how things are working out in other people’s lives, the present examining the past while the future watches the present. The connection crosses all time-space barriers because it is irrational.

The disease of possession might be something our bodies are adapting to, building up a psychic immunity, or rather more properly forcing the phenomenon to reckon with us as an evolving organism and establish ties with.

The hybrid, the cyborg, the tainted angel. Crossing boundaries and making us whole in all times and spaces.

I wasn’t going to post this one. Sometimes what I cook up, trawl out of the nets for a glimpse and witness in the wild woods is a little too personal, somewhat disturbing, or not ready for prime time viewing. This one skirts the edges, perhaps in need of a twist and turn to the spoon, a light touch on the strands, or a respectful pretending not to see quite what one sees in the shadows.

I mean, maybe I make it look easy. This dancing through the darkness of the other world for fun and Hek of it, with a slight hope that what I find might be of use to the larger us of us. Sometimes you have to show mercy to the unknown, and throw back what you catch. Generosity is required when one is immersed in such matters. That quality requires a foundation of focus, else things turn to goblin gold (that is, sand and bones) in the light.

“Don’t turn around,” says the scary voice of our dragon enemy-forward slash-instrument of destiny, “there might be something behind you.” Can you dig the Behinder? It creeps up from the past and jack moves you. That horrific aspect of yourself that makes sure you don’t escape the sins of your past. But oh-ho, without sin there can be no redemption. Or so I heard from a wise man dressed in red and offering me a get-out-of-jail-free card if I would only confess.

I confessed for real, and got that card. But as surely as one can’t buy redemption for the price of one’s soul, knowing isn’t always the same as understanding. I still had work to do.

Like getting down with the psychic planting of community seeds. We do this thing—leave seeds in the psychic ground of the people we meet. When the time is right, those full bore crops call to us to complete the cycle. Maybe this is too complex for how life really is. I mean, who can keep track of most of the impressions we make on people?

Maybe the folks we make impressions on do it for us. It’s a complex, social-contract thing that might seem complex, but which is really easy. Because that’s how we’re made, how we’ve become made. And we don’t know what seeds people are carrying. It might not be for them at all, it might be for us, and handing it off helps them move forward in whatever strange winding pathway they choose to explore.

So what the Hek am I doing carrying all these seeds for other people? What kind of reality am I experiencing where I have ground for people to drop by and plant a few? Am I a peddler, wandering about with a huge backpack on my shoulders, plants galore growing out of it, my hands full of all-you-can-eat seeds?

I have a few secret entrances here, so I’m going to pry one open and meander through a while so I can make sense of this one.

It’s irrational, this watering and fertilizing of other people’s burdens in the deep tunnels of the sideshow life. What’s it got to do with me?

Everything. I want to scream EV-RY-THNG, but that’s just blowing off steam that isn’t mine. Hek, who says the plot I’m standing in is even mine? What if I’m just the lamp showing people where to try?

Past the wind-swept tunnels of hillside regurgitated youth I roam, until I find the flowering I’ve been seeking. I don’t know whose backyard plot I’m trespassing on, or even if I haven’t gone in a circle and ended up back on my own immediate brain-garden.

You always return to yourself. Where else would the fruits of your own soul come to light? I’m thinking you have to take care of your own business, with a mindful realization of the selfishness yet still able to be yourself. Hard stuff to take care of our business, when so many outside demands and inside eruptions distract us. It’s a balancing act.

I got gardening to do. So I head over to the plot. Where the weeds are driving miss daisy crazy and the ground is making me feel full effect. The big tomatoes are all huge and green, but still not turning, even after a ferocious, record rainfall yesterday.

Let’s see. There’s a gray, mole like rodent thing moving through the plants and over to the horseradish to hide. Until I water that area. See, I keep a section open for the weeds to run free, just because I’m crazy like that. Bermuda grass, thistles, morning glory spiral pests—they all get to play in that plot.

I spot a spider with an egg sac clutched below its abdomen, migrating to the next safe zone. Gotta stop at the intersection and let her pass. A carpenter bee takes some time to examine the weak spot of my wooden border. Yellow finches fly overhead looking for physical seeds to eat (physical hunger needs a physical food, spiritual hunger needs…you get the idea).

An elder ladybug of many spots shows up, hanging out on a thistle leaf. I move aside a wooden board to hand-scrabble some earth and find myself face to face with a blackish-crimson, squishy salamander. Whoops, that’s somebody’s home, gotta make course adjustments.

I leave the critters to their own devices and dig up some earth, coming across several rocks. The plot is far from having been cleared of obstacles. Rocks are like storage batteries. They hold minerals, particles, nutrients for us until we need them. Likewise, they hold truths for us until we need them. I feel bad putting them into a pile to be tossed into the woods when I’m done.

I pick a bunch of small cherry tomatoes that are definitely done. The smaller fruits are ready faster than the larger ones I suppose. As I pick these gifts I stare back at the plot where the weeds grow taller than me.

I remember last year, a woman working on the plot, trying to get her two sons to help her. She’s serious, striving, taking care of business. That year she got a lot of great peppers and pumpkins. The sons are all bored and squirming, as if this is the worst thing in their lives they have ever had to endure.

Funny thing is, I know what those kids are feeling. I remember when my mom dragged me over here and made me help her bust sod and fill water jugs. I was like, why do all this work when we could just buy it at the store? Complain, fuss, moan and resist. Yet, here I am decades later plunging head first into the struggle of my own free will to snatch a smidgen of something worthwhile.

Seeds planted, full bloom.

I talked like that plot was a graveyard of those who tried and failed. But for all I know, the two-second look of encouragement I gave those kids, the chitchat I had with the mother, placed seeds in a plot not visible. An appreciation of something difficult for its own sake. Or they might pass those seeds along to someone who needs to have that experience.

We’re pollinators of psychic flowers like dat.

My mom drops by and gives me a bunch of tomatoes from her plot. Overflow procedure, too much to use. Same here. I got my hands full of little tasty morsels. I’ll bring them into work, where I know a bunch of folks will revel in the gift. People need what we generate. Generosity, as we march along the weird road of understanding.

I mean, yeah, the seeds that are exploding in you right this very moment. They’re going to last a brief while or they’ll go dormant and come back next year, but it’s a cycle. Down into the dirt again. Is that any reason not to water yourself? What flowers, what fruits of your life are you hiding under a bushel because of the crows you grant power to?

Let yourself grow, to fill the mammoth form you inhabit. There’s a bursting forth right this moment, having been laid in the ground with care or scattered carelessly, but ready for you to connect the dots. And you have, you just don’t want to admit it.

You know about the special bonus plants right?

What if your harvest is the one that gives others the margin of survival?

Or gives you the margin of survival?

Some people deposit crops in you because it’s their quest. What, you thought it was just some fed-ex XP thing they had to do? Yeah it was, and who knows who designed their adventure. Look around your immediate psychic hang-out. Stuff is growing that you have no clue what it is. Some people dump a load on you, and it’s fertilizer man, you just got to roll with it. Other times you’re so messed up it’s God’s good humor and a wheel of fortune as to whether you let anything sprout.

One things for sure, yesterday is becoming today and tomorrow. It’s in yur plot growin yur foodz.

It’s all about farm games.

K and I break out the tea collection and get busy organizing the life support system module number tea-oh-yeah.  My friend Snow would be modestly and politely moved by our devotion, as so Level 3 it is to her Level twenty-four forward-slash seven, know what I’m sayin’?

Side note:  I mean it.  When you’re that level, you are big dudette generous and make it look easy.  “Here, have everything you need to start.  Here’s a location on a map.  Get adventurin’ and maybe you’ll connect with ultra-power tea-ness your own special way.”

Back to K and I.  We’ve bought a number of glass milk jars from the local upper-cruster Whole Foods.  Plastic caps, but what the hey weeds have to make do with what they have right?  While we do have tea bags, our focus is on resealable containers of loose-leaves for mix and match.  Since I’m a honey-freak, I have my honey in the rough for getting my freak on.

Now K is pretty crafty.  We get tired of boiling the water the usual way, so she investigates a location on the map and we find ourselves with the bonus round—an electric teapot that rapid-boils water in less than five minutes.  Just fill with water, plug in, flip the switch, and pow.  Yes, this is very much dependency on instrumentality (not to mention electricity), but as I said this is the approach of the lightning age (which is very aquarian).

So now we can make large quantities of water for brewing tea.  When it’s cool we fill the jars and put them in the fridge.  Goodbye, buying high priced tea in the store!  I’m also a soda-fiend, so anything that alleviates my vice for soda varieties is good.  Water’s too boring for me, juice too strong, milk too bland and coffee too strong.  Tea gives me the watery goodness, and a flavor, so I can drink lots of it and not burn out.

Special bonus:  I tell Snow about this amazing teapot and she’s floored.  I give her the info hookup and I get the feeling she teleports one to her kitchen while I’m standing there talking to her.  Next week I run into her again and she tells me the thing opened up a new level for her in the tea-realm, allowing her to adventure in a new area.

The teacher shares what they know and maybe it’ll pay off in those hidden rooms you missed when you were fighting the tea ogre with squid tentacles back on level eleven.  When you hold onto that hunger for knowledge, keep striving with joy for what you do, it pays off.  Snow polishes that gemstone of a hankering she has a little more, while K and I get life support system bonus for more XP.  That’s what generosity does for you.

So what does this have to do with farm games?  Well, seems like on Facebook lately there’s been a surge in farming games.  You socialize with your friends, care for each other’s farms, raise crops and harvest goodies.  Mainly in the dungeon and dragons kind of reward cycle—you kill monsters so you can get better at killing monsters, only here it’s grow crops so you can get better at growing crops.

It’s a slight paradigm shift in games, I think, which bears careful watching.  Is this the seed that falls in the right ground at the right time, the spark that kindles a new way of thinking that will grow grow grow?

The thing is, there’s a growing interest in resource management games (SimCity, the Sims, Civilization, and so on).  The shoot-em-ups and the side-scrollers are still there.  But now you have a growing awareness of “Hey, it’s fun to farm.  To raise animals, plant corn, and build wells.”

Yes, the reality is hard work and thankless repetition.  But it depends on how you look at the reward cycle.  K and I are looking to be healthier and happier.  This formula (of many) is about the reward of having something we make that keeps us going without resorting to the kiddie pool that is mainline industrial food production for loyal, stunned workers.  For Snow it’s about a passion for the pursuit of what interests her.

Both operate under systems that farm games mimic to a degree.  You look for stuff, gather stuff, make stuff, improve your skill with stuff, and then the stuff benefits you.

Then you get into complex games like Harvest Moon: Tree of Tranquility, where you need to have good relationships with people to get the stuff.  There’s lots of stuff to master—mining stuff, cooking stuff, animal stuff, plant stuff, clothing stuff.  You’re in the realm of a community and the need to ration your time to develop the stuff you need.  The ultimate goal:  To be the best “stuff” person you can be, in this case the archetype of the farmer who are their own means of production.

What does being a good farmer mean?  That you can court a partner and raise a family (and the game allows you to do this, ending only when it is the next generation’s turn to find their fortune), and you can also save the world (or the world of this game anyway)—your knowledge as a farmer revives the Goddess of the land and brings blessings back to the community.

You got that?  Your ability to beat things up here is worth zilch.  Your ability to be patient, adaptable and friendly can save the world for everybody!  Or allow you to have a happy home life—either as a farmer who just loves making bread for the Hek of it or as a family person moving things forward to the next spiral of that life that is greater than ours.

I’m living it a little, others are living it, and the games are representing it.  What level is your watering can skill yo?  Can you make perfect pickles?  How’s that ability to make butter?

I’m wondering what the next signpost will be to what’s evolving right before our eyes.  In the meantime, I need to get more and better skills, talk people up more, and get busy on the farm!

Because I think there’s a comprehensive picture here forming.