Zack scratched his head thoughtfully and placed the last of the disks, and the reader, on the floor next to the foodslot. It had been an eye-openin’ thirteen days. Each day, all day, he had spent lookin’ at the pictures in the small machine-window of the reader, that were purported, by it, to be of places in the known universe: all the myriad planets and their native creatures, with bits of strange knowledge and information from some one million odd cultures and civilizations recited to him out of thin air by a halting, toneless voice. His old concepts of existence and reality had been obliterated, in the face of, what seemed to be, overwhelmin’ evidence to the contrary. He was awestruck by the sheer immensity of the universe, as touted by the teachermachine’s stories, as well as its supposed complexity and endless variety.
Not completely convinced of the truth of anythin’ he had learned, and tried to learn, in the past coupla days (it could still all be some devilish plot aimed at confusin’ him), he was awed, yes; but he remained uncowed. He refused to let even this extraordinary onslaught of brain-bendin’ information break his life-long, hard-bitten resolve. Perhaps his mental flexibility stemmed from his habituation to a nomadic lifestyle — eighteen years spent on the trail. A life of travel and constant change had inured him to the improbable, and had imbued him with a streak of broad-mindedness and tolerance rare amongst even his peers. He had had lots of experience adaptin’ to new situations.
Zack smiled and waved to the, by now, familiar “face” in the wall-window. He had almost come to think of the alien as a friend — that showed just how far he had come from his initial paroxysm of superstitious terror. Of course, havin’ come to believe that the big slugs evidently intended him no harm other than his present confinement, had gone a long way towards alterin’ his feelings.
He’d been pissed-off about Jezebelle’s fate ever since he’d finally understood that she had become food for somebody (orsomething ). After a week or two his anger had become melancholy after he accepted the alien’s accounts of the fact that they had made a mistake, a mistake that he had concluded was, from what he had been told, an honest one.
It had also been made clear to him that the slugs wanted to compensate him for her loss. It all had somethin’ to do with their laws, and some concepts that came across to him as meanin’less sounds or as simple silent gaps in the translator-machine’s narratives. Zack was constantly being asked how much the horse had been “worth”, and whether or not another horse might do just as well, if one could be found for him upon his promised return to the Earth. Zack, well schooled in horse-tradin’, had adroitly refused to be pinned down on a final price, waitin’ for the offers to escalate. He had tried to explain that, after all there had been countless hours of trainin’, and “bonding” (a concept he’d learned from them), involved in the total value of his former mount. His saddle, tack and gear had been located, and he had been promised that, upon his return to Earth, all these would be given back to him.
The alien (“S. Cal Two” was what the machine gave his name as) began today by offering Zack three unbroken horses and a water buffalo as compensation for his loss.
Zack smiled and said no, politely but firmly.
Four horses and immunization against various diseases endemic to his species?
After a moment’s thought, Zack once again declined, politely.
A zebra, the horses, and an orangutan?
Zack once again declined. While he was not a greedy man, he reasoned that, if he waited and drove a hard bargain (after all, he had been kidnapped and nearly frightened to death), he might come out of this somewhat well off. No greenhorn he, Zack had long ago learned that when the other fella seemed impatient, it was smart to start draggin’ his heels a bit. The other guy might start makin’ rash offers, to Zack’s ultimate benefit. ‘Sides, he’d had a lot to learn in the past few weeks, and his brain was still reelin’ from all the new information he’d taken in in such a short span. He needed time to think.
The horses, two Hereford cows and a pound of iron?
Zack’s eyebrows rose involuntarily before he regained his poker-face. Metals? . . .
Having come to a decision, Zack proceeded to, for the first time, vocalize his demands. Squinting at S. Cal, he began firmly: “I don’t want another horse, Jezebelle can never be replaced!”
The slug slumped. “What do you want then?” the machine intoned. “Please, I am responsible for this; I could lose my job, my propagation privileges. There must be something . . .”
“Relax pardner,” Zack said expansively, “I’m sure we kin work out some kinda deal.” He thought about the glorious three-dimensional pictures he’d seen of all those exotic places. Pictures that had set his imagination afire.
Zack scratched his chin and decided to lay his cards on the table. “Ya know,” he drawled, “I’ve always had a hankerin’ to travel . . .”
* * *
Joe Sample was gettin’ old. He peered intently at the harness he’d been fixin’ for the last hour and shook his head. Time was, he thought sadly, when he coudda fixed this here harness, an’ fixed it good, in half that time.
Shorty Dobkins came a-walkin’ up to him, jes’ back from town, sayin’: “Hey Pops, ya’ll got a letter.”
Joe sighed and looked up reluctantly. “None of yer bad jokes now Shorty. Ya know I ain’t got no kin. ‘Sides, anybody knows me know I kin’t read. ‘N doncha be callin’ me ‘Pops’.” He spat fiercely, jes’ missin’ Shorty’s boots.
“Suit’cherself, old man,” Shorty said, brandishin’ an envelope, “It’s all here anyways. Want me to throw it away?”
“What? Gimme that.” He reached up and snatched it away from him, scratchin’ his matted “burnsides” in wonder as he made out his name on the front of it. He could recognize at least that much. “Why, this here’s a telegram you asshole, must be bad news.”
“Well, ain’tcha gonna open it?
“Whatzit say? . . . O.K.,” he held it up to the sun, as though he could see through the envelope and somehow divine its message. He sighed and spat again, frownin’, and handed it back to Shorty. “Go on ‘n have yer fun. Open it ‘n read it to me. Consarned pain in the ass.”
Carefully, Shorty opened the envelope. “Well I’ll be dipped in shit,” he exclaimed.
“Read it to me, goddamit!” Joe growled, startin’ to rile and rise.
As Shorty began to read aloud, Ole Joe’s toothless mouth began to curl open in a gummy smile, the first he’d had in years, for the contents read:
DEAR JOE STOP STRUCK IT RICH IN GOLD STOP SEEN ENOUGH OF THIS WORLD AND THE NEXT STOP BOUGHT LAND AND CATTLE IN COLORADO STOP NEED A GOOD MAN TO HELP OUT STOP GET YOUR BUTT UP HERE TO MANITOU SPRINGS STOP ASK FOR ME AT THE STAGE STOP STOP CASH ENCLOSED CHECK AT TOWN BANK STOP SHOULD BE ENOUGH TO GET YOU HERE STOP BUY ALL THE PLUG TABACCEE YOU CAN LOAD ON A MULE STOP BUY A SPITTOON STOP CHAW ALL YOU CAN ON THE WAY HERE STOP SAVE YOUR SPIT STOP REPEAT SAVE YOUR SPIT STOP WILL EXPLAIN AND EXPECT YOU SOON STOP YOUR FRIEND ZACHARY SEENITALL STONE END
Thursday, July 27, 2006
Sunday, May 28, 2006
“We In Goshen Yet?”
Zack opened his eyes, and then immediately wished that he hadn’t. After gettin’ up enough courage to open them again, he was convinced that wherever he was, it sure as shit wasn’t Heaven! With that thought, and the realization of its only logical alternative, he began to shiver uncontrollably. A few quick glances about, through half closed eyes seemed to indicate that he was the sole inhabitant of a featureless milky-white room, about 12 foot wide by 12 foot deep, with a low ceiling; one wall of which, rather then being white, was a huge piece of glass. Lookin’ through it for the first time, he gasped and immediately scuttled backwards involuntarily, crablike, ‘til one of the cold walls stopped his retreat.
His groggy mind groped for some clarity, something familiar. He could remember nothin’, other’n a strange smell, ‘bout what had happened to him after he had entered the giant floating pieplate thing. That was fine. He just wished, right now, he could somehow make himself unaware of what he was seein’ through that huge pane of glass. The light that illuminated the horrors that he was viewin’ seemed to come from everywhere, as though the walls themselves were shinin’ or glowin’.
Subsequent to his cursory glance at the room he was in, his wide-eyed stare had never wavered or wandered from its fixation on what appeared, to him, to be two giant swayin’ slugs about five foot long, and two foot ‘round, made outta bright yellow hominy grits. The front parts of these . . . slugs . . . were all-over covered with whitish tendrils that alternately oozed and swayed, in constant motion; and each one had five somewhat longer and slightly thicker tendrils, or stalks, emergin’ from their front-parts, which ended in bright crimson eyes, that kinda reminded Zack of crawdad’s-eyes.
Even though the sight of these monsters made him feel like pukin’, Zack stubbornly clenched his jaw and swallowed purposefully, determined to betray no sign of weakness. He’d obviously not made it to Heaven, so when Satan appeared to claim Zack’s soul as his prize, Zack was sure-as-shit gonna be on his feet and ready, not pulin’ on the floor in his own mess.
He tried to get up off the soft-covered shelf that served as a cot and stand straight to face his fate, but his legs were too rubbery, almost as though they hadn’t been used in ages. He tried to massage some life back into them, all the while still starin’ hostilely at the apparition of the two devil-slugs confrontin’ him.
That really was what they looked like, he thought: yellow slugs with white shoots wavin’ all over ‘em. He kinda wondered why they hadn’t had their way with him when he was helpless. That thought made him feel even worse, and he shuddered, trying to imagine what could possibly be worse than what he was goin’ through right now.
“Come on you big, fat worms,” he heard his voice half-growl, half-creak; “come on an’ try and git me. I gotta coupla surprises for y’all afor I see yer boss!”
He tried again, and found that he could now stand, although he still felt real weak. “C’mon and be even more dammed than ya’ already are, ya ugly demons,” he shouted, his voice growin’ in strength with use. “E’en tho’ there’s two ‘o you, you jes’ try ’n git near me you slimesuckers, ‘n I’ll settle your hash!”
Zack had near shouted this last line whilst beckonin’ boldly for the demons to enter his cell and come get him. Just then, he, for some reason, thought of Jezebelle. “Hey now, where’s “Belle? Whar’s my horse, ya puked up polecats? Whar is she? If’n ya’ll’ve hurt her, you’ll pay, ‘cause I’ll make ya, e’en if’n it’s the last thing I ever do!”
With this imprecation uttered, he ran suddenly forward and proceeded to pound on the sheet of glass that separated him from the two demons with both fists and feet. He observed, with some satisfaction, that the devilslug’s upper parts shied back from the window in response to his headlong rush t’wards’em. “Well now,” Zack thought aloud, “ya’ll kin be sceered. That’s good ta know, real good ta know; ‘n I thank’ee.”
Meanwhile, outside the enclosure (to cover his embarrassment at having been frightened by this feral entity), Eeekaal8 communicated, in a commskinpatch aside, to Eskal2: “It’s a violent thing, isn’t it? It must either be extremely stupid, fairly brave, or some combination of the two, mustn’t it? For Zogg’sake, can’t you get that thing to work, Kraaxmall?” Upon having signed this, he extruded two psuedopodia quickly and grabbed the Universal Translator from Eskal2, as the subordinate’s nervous fumblings had served only to elicit non-intelligible blurps or bleeps from the expensive device.
Expertly pushing and prodding the grey box’s touch-sensitive knobs until something akin to an intelligible pattern began to emerge from the translator’s commsurface, Eeekaal8 extruded two tendrils and waved them sarcastically, saying: “Well. The alien doesn’t seem happy in its confinement. For which,” and at that he paused and gestured meaningfully, in high dudgeon, at his cringing subordinate, “one can hardly blame it. It is clearly sentient, if somewhat ill-behaved! I’m sure the translator is doing its best, and apart from these xenophobic comments about our appearance, what is this it is saying about a companion?”
At that he turned the translator’s visible volume down until it was a whisper, and cleared his commskinpatch. “Kraaxmall,” he began, “I have always prided myself that, under my aegis, this business has been built up in punctilious adherence to GalFed standards. Those standards are quite specific, as you should well know (for your pupae’s sake), pertinent to proper treatment of all sentient life-forms, regardless of their technological development or standing on the Galactic Stockmarket! You will find this creature’s companion and reunite them. At once !
Eskal2 was, at this point, scrolling frantically through its lading roster. “Uh, your pardon, Provenevolved One, but . . .”
“Yes, what is it? . . . Well?”
Spez now began to ooze, quite visibly, from the hapless subordinate’s florns , “I’m afraid that won’t be possible,” the kraaxmall signed, perceivably cringing. “Its companion was adjudged “non-sentient bioplasm” and has already been processed into comestibles.”
At this admission, Eeekaal8 became thoroughly agitated, obviously upset. “Zoggdamn, Kraaxmall. Have you no Glé?” This whole sordid affair was attributable, evidently, to not only faulty software, but also gross incompetence on the part of his ClanKin employees. He had other, more pressing business to attend to, and he had already spent too much time in investigating this problem.
“Compensation is your problem,” he signed imperiously. “Take care of it to the creature’ satisfaction, if you value your sperm!” He tossed the translator to his twitching subordinate. Turning to go he signed: “Oh, and Kraaxmall . . .”
“Yessir.”
“For Zogg’sake, give the poor thing a relaxant or something. If it continues to behave in this violent fashion it might damage itself, and the fines for that even I don’t want to contemplate. I’ll expect a full report input to my workstation within one blem .” Without another sign, he turned and slid swiftly on his slime away.
Silently, Eskal2 cursed the retreating back of his boss. Calming down quickly, he became a bit more philosophically inclined. “Entropy be praised, I’ve still got my job.”
He turned his attention back to the beast, which stood in the center of the holding cell, its upperappendage, loaded with sensory apparatus, almost touching the ceiling. What an ugly brute it was, he thought, all static curves and angles. It was, apparently, glaring at him with an intensity that made his hide crawl. Eskal2 wondered why it didn’t fall over, balanced as it was on only two thick tentacles. What an hideous evolutionary manifestation, he was glad a full leem of polarized plassteel stood between them.
Well, he thought, a species-specific general euphoric should ameliorate its anxiety and calm it down, though compensation for its loss might prove a much trickier problem. Eskal2 had no cultural information upon which to base an attempt to ascertain what the creature would consider fair compensation for its loss. Whatever his decision, he knew it would now have to pass his boss’s personal scrutiny. A sudden thought intruded upon his cogitation: why not just ask it? It was worth a try. He hurriedly slid back to his dockside workstation and rummaged through his things, coming up with the copy of The Junior Executive’s Encyclopedia he had bought as a present for his eldest grub’s Pupation party, and a disk reader; after having directed, through his control console, a mild Glebb brand narcotic to be introduced into the anomalous beast’s cell through the air ducts. He then also programmed the release of a synthburger and a container of water through the thing’s cell’s foodslot.
Returning apace to the creature’s cell, he peered in with all five eyes curiously. The beast was wandering about the cell aimlessly, vocalizing in a fashion that Eskal2 conjectured might be considered musical, occasionally striking at the walls with one of its appendages. Perhaps he had given it too strong a dose of the euphoric. As the foodslot opened and proffered its contents, the creature turned at the sound and went over to inspect the offering. After having grabbed the comestibles within what were its evidently non-transmutable tendrils, it lowered itself to the floor with an odd collapsing motion of its limbs until it was about half its former height.
It positioned one of its sensors above the container of water and sucked air in through it. It then stuck one of its small rigid tendrils into the cup and subsequently put it into the largest hole in its upperappendage. Seemingly satisfied, the beast abruptly poured the entire contents of the container down what was evidently its gullet. Eskal2 could not help but notice its formidable array of an omnivore’s hard mastication apparatus as it did this.
The creature seemed momentarily puzzled by the synthburger. After subjecting it to some evidently intense sensory scrutiny, and becoming satisfied that it was ingestible, it followed the water down the creature’s capacious esophageal canal.
He busied himself with connecting the translator to the disk-reader. If this worked, nextblem he would borrow his youngest grub’s holoprojector. When all the connections looked good he palpated the transmit knob on the translator and began to try to explain, in simple concepts and phrases, just what was happening to the creature, how it had happened, and what he, Eskal2, was attempting to do about it. He couldn’t tell from the beast’s behavioral mannerisms whether or not it understood anything he was saying, and it had stopped vocalizing. However, the creature had stopped plodding about, and was standing stock-still, with something like intelligent apprehension shining in its skeletally-encased, non-mobile eyes.
Eskal2 turned on the disk-reader, which immediately began dictating from the Junior Executive’s Encyclopedia, through the Universal Translator. He turned two eyestalks toward the cell. The creature had folded, and sat immobile, apparently comprehending something while it stared, unfocused, into space. Only time would tell whether this ploy was working. He wrinkled his commskinpatch in the equivalent of a shrug and returned to his module, to the more pressing business at tendril, hoping for the Entropic best.
His groggy mind groped for some clarity, something familiar. He could remember nothin’, other’n a strange smell, ‘bout what had happened to him after he had entered the giant floating pieplate thing. That was fine. He just wished, right now, he could somehow make himself unaware of what he was seein’ through that huge pane of glass. The light that illuminated the horrors that he was viewin’ seemed to come from everywhere, as though the walls themselves were shinin’ or glowin’.
Subsequent to his cursory glance at the room he was in, his wide-eyed stare had never wavered or wandered from its fixation on what appeared, to him, to be two giant swayin’ slugs about five foot long, and two foot ‘round, made outta bright yellow hominy grits. The front parts of these . . . slugs . . . were all-over covered with whitish tendrils that alternately oozed and swayed, in constant motion; and each one had five somewhat longer and slightly thicker tendrils, or stalks, emergin’ from their front-parts, which ended in bright crimson eyes, that kinda reminded Zack of crawdad’s-eyes.
Even though the sight of these monsters made him feel like pukin’, Zack stubbornly clenched his jaw and swallowed purposefully, determined to betray no sign of weakness. He’d obviously not made it to Heaven, so when Satan appeared to claim Zack’s soul as his prize, Zack was sure-as-shit gonna be on his feet and ready, not pulin’ on the floor in his own mess.
He tried to get up off the soft-covered shelf that served as a cot and stand straight to face his fate, but his legs were too rubbery, almost as though they hadn’t been used in ages. He tried to massage some life back into them, all the while still starin’ hostilely at the apparition of the two devil-slugs confrontin’ him.
That really was what they looked like, he thought: yellow slugs with white shoots wavin’ all over ‘em. He kinda wondered why they hadn’t had their way with him when he was helpless. That thought made him feel even worse, and he shuddered, trying to imagine what could possibly be worse than what he was goin’ through right now.
“Come on you big, fat worms,” he heard his voice half-growl, half-creak; “come on an’ try and git me. I gotta coupla surprises for y’all afor I see yer boss!”
He tried again, and found that he could now stand, although he still felt real weak. “C’mon and be even more dammed than ya’ already are, ya ugly demons,” he shouted, his voice growin’ in strength with use. “E’en tho’ there’s two ‘o you, you jes’ try ’n git near me you slimesuckers, ‘n I’ll settle your hash!”
Zack had near shouted this last line whilst beckonin’ boldly for the demons to enter his cell and come get him. Just then, he, for some reason, thought of Jezebelle. “Hey now, where’s “Belle? Whar’s my horse, ya puked up polecats? Whar is she? If’n ya’ll’ve hurt her, you’ll pay, ‘cause I’ll make ya, e’en if’n it’s the last thing I ever do!”
With this imprecation uttered, he ran suddenly forward and proceeded to pound on the sheet of glass that separated him from the two demons with both fists and feet. He observed, with some satisfaction, that the devilslug’s upper parts shied back from the window in response to his headlong rush t’wards’em. “Well now,” Zack thought aloud, “ya’ll kin be sceered. That’s good ta know, real good ta know; ‘n I thank’ee.”
Meanwhile, outside the enclosure (to cover his embarrassment at having been frightened by this feral entity), Eeekaal8 communicated, in a commskinpatch aside, to Eskal2: “It’s a violent thing, isn’t it? It must either be extremely stupid, fairly brave, or some combination of the two, mustn’t it? For Zogg’sake, can’t you get that thing to work, Kraaxmall?” Upon having signed this, he extruded two psuedopodia quickly and grabbed the Universal Translator from Eskal2, as the subordinate’s nervous fumblings had served only to elicit non-intelligible blurps or bleeps from the expensive device.
Expertly pushing and prodding the grey box’s touch-sensitive knobs until something akin to an intelligible pattern began to emerge from the translator’s commsurface, Eeekaal8 extruded two tendrils and waved them sarcastically, saying: “Well. The alien doesn’t seem happy in its confinement. For which,” and at that he paused and gestured meaningfully, in high dudgeon, at his cringing subordinate, “one can hardly blame it. It is clearly sentient, if somewhat ill-behaved! I’m sure the translator is doing its best, and apart from these xenophobic comments about our appearance, what is this it is saying about a companion?”
At that he turned the translator’s visible volume down until it was a whisper, and cleared his commskinpatch. “Kraaxmall,” he began, “I have always prided myself that, under my aegis, this business has been built up in punctilious adherence to GalFed standards. Those standards are quite specific, as you should well know (for your pupae’s sake), pertinent to proper treatment of all sentient life-forms, regardless of their technological development or standing on the Galactic Stockmarket! You will find this creature’s companion and reunite them. At once !
Eskal2 was, at this point, scrolling frantically through its lading roster. “Uh, your pardon, Provenevolved One, but . . .”
“Yes, what is it? . . . Well?”
Spez now began to ooze, quite visibly, from the hapless subordinate’s florns , “I’m afraid that won’t be possible,” the kraaxmall signed, perceivably cringing. “Its companion was adjudged “non-sentient bioplasm” and has already been processed into comestibles.”
At this admission, Eeekaal8 became thoroughly agitated, obviously upset. “Zoggdamn, Kraaxmall. Have you no Glé?” This whole sordid affair was attributable, evidently, to not only faulty software, but also gross incompetence on the part of his ClanKin employees. He had other, more pressing business to attend to, and he had already spent too much time in investigating this problem.
“Compensation is your problem,” he signed imperiously. “Take care of it to the creature’ satisfaction, if you value your sperm!” He tossed the translator to his twitching subordinate. Turning to go he signed: “Oh, and Kraaxmall . . .”
“Yessir.”
“For Zogg’sake, give the poor thing a relaxant or something. If it continues to behave in this violent fashion it might damage itself, and the fines for that even I don’t want to contemplate. I’ll expect a full report input to my workstation within one blem .” Without another sign, he turned and slid swiftly on his slime away.
Silently, Eskal2 cursed the retreating back of his boss. Calming down quickly, he became a bit more philosophically inclined. “Entropy be praised, I’ve still got my job.”
He turned his attention back to the beast, which stood in the center of the holding cell, its upperappendage, loaded with sensory apparatus, almost touching the ceiling. What an ugly brute it was, he thought, all static curves and angles. It was, apparently, glaring at him with an intensity that made his hide crawl. Eskal2 wondered why it didn’t fall over, balanced as it was on only two thick tentacles. What an hideous evolutionary manifestation, he was glad a full leem of polarized plassteel stood between them.
Well, he thought, a species-specific general euphoric should ameliorate its anxiety and calm it down, though compensation for its loss might prove a much trickier problem. Eskal2 had no cultural information upon which to base an attempt to ascertain what the creature would consider fair compensation for its loss. Whatever his decision, he knew it would now have to pass his boss’s personal scrutiny. A sudden thought intruded upon his cogitation: why not just ask it? It was worth a try. He hurriedly slid back to his dockside workstation and rummaged through his things, coming up with the copy of The Junior Executive’s Encyclopedia he had bought as a present for his eldest grub’s Pupation party, and a disk reader; after having directed, through his control console, a mild Glebb brand narcotic to be introduced into the anomalous beast’s cell through the air ducts. He then also programmed the release of a synthburger and a container of water through the thing’s cell’s foodslot.
Returning apace to the creature’s cell, he peered in with all five eyes curiously. The beast was wandering about the cell aimlessly, vocalizing in a fashion that Eskal2 conjectured might be considered musical, occasionally striking at the walls with one of its appendages. Perhaps he had given it too strong a dose of the euphoric. As the foodslot opened and proffered its contents, the creature turned at the sound and went over to inspect the offering. After having grabbed the comestibles within what were its evidently non-transmutable tendrils, it lowered itself to the floor with an odd collapsing motion of its limbs until it was about half its former height.
It positioned one of its sensors above the container of water and sucked air in through it. It then stuck one of its small rigid tendrils into the cup and subsequently put it into the largest hole in its upperappendage. Seemingly satisfied, the beast abruptly poured the entire contents of the container down what was evidently its gullet. Eskal2 could not help but notice its formidable array of an omnivore’s hard mastication apparatus as it did this.
The creature seemed momentarily puzzled by the synthburger. After subjecting it to some evidently intense sensory scrutiny, and becoming satisfied that it was ingestible, it followed the water down the creature’s capacious esophageal canal.
He busied himself with connecting the translator to the disk-reader. If this worked, nextblem he would borrow his youngest grub’s holoprojector. When all the connections looked good he palpated the transmit knob on the translator and began to try to explain, in simple concepts and phrases, just what was happening to the creature, how it had happened, and what he, Eskal2, was attempting to do about it. He couldn’t tell from the beast’s behavioral mannerisms whether or not it understood anything he was saying, and it had stopped vocalizing. However, the creature had stopped plodding about, and was standing stock-still, with something like intelligent apprehension shining in its skeletally-encased, non-mobile eyes.
Eskal2 turned on the disk-reader, which immediately began dictating from the Junior Executive’s Encyclopedia, through the Universal Translator. He turned two eyestalks toward the cell. The creature had folded, and sat immobile, apparently comprehending something while it stared, unfocused, into space. Only time would tell whether this ploy was working. He wrinkled his commskinpatch in the equivalent of a shrug and returned to his module, to the more pressing business at tendril, hoping for the Entropic best.
Saturday, April 22, 2006
Another Man’s Poi, Son
The letters of the large sign, laser-graven-and-lit, within an almost transparent piece of aerogel plassteel, winked and fizzled above the loading docks: E-EKA-L COM-OD---ES . Eighty ublems before, when new, the sign had proclaimed EEEKAAL COMMODITIES as an up-and-comer on the Galactic Delicacies market. Ten lifespans had been spent by successive generations of the EEEKAAL Clan (“Purveyors To Fine Palates”) in working towards some sinecure in the Gourmandary Index of the ARM3 Stockmarket, but their efforts had been in vain.
After abandoning their failed initial A.&R. push (“MUCOUS FOR THE MASSES”) some sixty ublems ago, the firm had specialized, out of necessity, in plasmproteins: meatcuts of exotic,non-sentient (by GalFed Decree) animals, culled from the backwaters and fringes of the galactic protoplasm’s gene-pool; gathered at no little risk, and some great expense, occasioned by the necessary gathering expeditions to the non-federated planets on the fringes of Galactic society, by the scions of Clan Eeekaal in their frenzied, but somewhat less-than-profitable scurry for Position, and Power. Their fortunes had suffered and substantially waned, as the lack of repair to the dockside signad so graphically testified.
It was upon these rather serious distinctions of Dogmadirection, and the genetically inbred notion of Clan Viability , or “Glé”, that Eeekaal8, the great-great-great-great-great-grandclone of the original Eeekaal, ruminated, chewing upon a mass of the “Gl¥ph” ganglia he so favored, fetching a new one every 10 eeblems or so (the narcotic effect of the dying nerve cell’s chemicals fading, in the jaded, at about that interval); expectorating frequently into the iridium spittoon that sat, spattered with phosphorescent green globs, on the floor at the foot of his workstation module.
Synthsteak was fine for plebeians, but the omnivorous and carnivorous wealthy and upper-middle classes of ARM3 of the Galaxy [most notably those of the fourth planet of the star (known on the planet Earth as) Arcturus] demanded more: novelty and diversity, Eeekaal8 (who was a ManagerGrd.1) thought. One of the Clan’s only exclusive markets: the ferropotami of Mudheaven, as the Arcturun planet was known to its inhabitants, were becoming more and more demanding as their wealth and status in Galactic society increased.
Having cornered the market on a process for the production of supercooled subatomic ceramic enclosures essential in the current generation of GalFed FTL shipdrives, enzymes from their slushy excrement doing the job on special slips mined from deep beneath their bogwarrens; their prestige had waxed,as had their entrepreneurial irascibility. Pleasing these immense hulks (weighing nearly as much as one of the Clan’s Collector ships) of organic iron and concrete was becoming more and more difficult. Neither he, nor any of the expert enzyme tailors in his employ yet understood how these creatures exactly tasted anything; let alone how they were able to distinguish it from the ubiquitous rotting sludge that they habitually immersed themselves in. On the other tendril, his was not to reason why, his was but to profit, or die. Lack of profit had decreed the euthanastic demise of the first seven of his generation’s Comptroller Model, Eeekaals1-7, by the Clan’s Genetic Security Division Board; and he certainly did not want his existence “compassionately terminated” for the same reasons.
If the ferropotami’s taste receptor’s processes could be understood by his research staff, then specially crafted compounds could be synthesized particularly for their palates. Short of this, he was committed to providing them with copious (and thereby quite profitable) quantities of not only their favorite foods, but an neverending smorgasbord of new tastes and textures. Aesthetes they would never be, but those ferropotami sure did like to eat!
The search for new tastes for them and other of the Clan’s customers had become something of a mania in the last twenty ublems or so, and Eeekaal8 had ridden the current ARMwide tide of culinary curiosity to modest profit statements 2 ublems running now. Good thing too, considering the short leash that the G.S.D.B. had him on. Not only was he now this quadrant’s largest comestibles importer, but a chain of Clan Eeekaal’s Gourmet Restaurants were now becoming the talk of the Galactic Hub’s InfoNet’s society columns; thanks to a fortunate cost-and-demand analysis projection forwarded to the Clan Directors, through him, by his handpicked staff of market-systems researchers.
Under the swaying signad, Eeekaal8 examined the Bill of Lading from the Clan’s most recent expeditionary foray, with a constriction of his upper frontal commskinpatch, which, in his race, was the equivalent of a frown. He waved an extruded tendril, epidermally shaded red, at the obviously anxious Expedition SupervisorGrd. 3E, hight Eskal2, who had been regarding him uneasily from a respectful distance. Eskal2 had been hoping the boss would give the bill a cursory glance, sign it, and then leave. It would have simplified matters greatly. He prayed silently to Chaoim to protect him with some randomly distractive occurrence, who would feed his grubs if he lost his job, and thus his reproductive viability.
“So Kraaxmaal,” (for so were all probationary personages derogatorily referred to by their genetically proven superiors) “it seems you have declared a stowaway?”, Eeekaal8 signed gruffly, fixing the squirming subordinate with the triangulative positioning of three of his five red stalkeyes. He cocked one in a cynically speculative mannerism. “I suppose you were going to take care of this yourself?”
“Yessir . . . I mean, nossir. I mean . . .”
“Nevermind,” interposed Eeekaal8, inwardly amused by the roccoco genuflections of the underling. A flair for style, he thought, something the Clan should think about cultivating. Shaking off these unbidden genetic system’s analyses, with a hint of mock severity he said: “You know the law. Take me to the being! At once!”
The kraaxmall turned to comply, his psuedopodia visibly quivering.
“And Kraaxmaal . . .”
“Yes, Provenevolved One?”
“It had better be undamaged, physically and mentally! And have all the brainwave calibrations on the Larder unit’s sensor systems be given a through going over immediately! If this is an attempt at guilt expiation on your part, you’d better count your sperm cells, bub! You could be declared Non-Viable , easily!”
“Yessir!” replied Eskal2 stiffly, in a veritable paroxysm of reproductive-threat induced anguish, all appendages in subjugative display. He thanked the Entropic Godhead that he hadn’t accepted Bblogghan The Carpathian’s crudely attempted bribe for the anomalous creature. Then his spreggle really would have been cooked! He wiped the spez from his florns , and then led the way to the de-stasis unit’s processing area.
As they undulated purposefully over the plasmetal decking towards the stasis cells, Eeekaal8 thought ruefully about the current cost of the Clan’s expenditure for their mechanized collecting expeditions. If the Clan were fined for a contravention of GalFed Comestible Collection Regulations, it could seriously jeopardize the current profit statement, and, correspondingly, his future. If it was just a defective device, the Clan would be “non-responsible ”, according to law; but, if there was “sentient-error ”, even the threat of fines would effect their market standing. He knew that this particular Eskal2 model was of unimpeachable genetic integrity, and he would hate to have to sacrifice his existence for the good of the Clan. Nevertheless, his own pupae were, to him, more important than that.
He expelled internal gases in a sigh that roiled his commskinpatch as they approached the transparent barrierfield securing the first cell, and looked in with a great deal of apprehension, and no little curiosity.
After abandoning their failed initial A.&R. push (“MUCOUS FOR THE MASSES”) some sixty ublems ago, the firm had specialized, out of necessity, in plasmproteins: meatcuts of exotic,non-sentient (by GalFed Decree) animals, culled from the backwaters and fringes of the galactic protoplasm’s gene-pool; gathered at no little risk, and some great expense, occasioned by the necessary gathering expeditions to the non-federated planets on the fringes of Galactic society, by the scions of Clan Eeekaal in their frenzied, but somewhat less-than-profitable scurry for Position, and Power. Their fortunes had suffered and substantially waned, as the lack of repair to the dockside signad so graphically testified.
It was upon these rather serious distinctions of Dogmadirection, and the genetically inbred notion of Clan Viability , or “Glé”, that Eeekaal8, the great-great-great-great-great-grandclone of the original Eeekaal, ruminated, chewing upon a mass of the “Gl¥ph” ganglia he so favored, fetching a new one every 10 eeblems or so (the narcotic effect of the dying nerve cell’s chemicals fading, in the jaded, at about that interval); expectorating frequently into the iridium spittoon that sat, spattered with phosphorescent green globs, on the floor at the foot of his workstation module.
Synthsteak was fine for plebeians, but the omnivorous and carnivorous wealthy and upper-middle classes of ARM3 of the Galaxy [most notably those of the fourth planet of the star (known on the planet Earth as) Arcturus] demanded more: novelty and diversity, Eeekaal8 (who was a ManagerGrd.1) thought. One of the Clan’s only exclusive markets: the ferropotami of Mudheaven, as the Arcturun planet was known to its inhabitants, were becoming more and more demanding as their wealth and status in Galactic society increased.
Having cornered the market on a process for the production of supercooled subatomic ceramic enclosures essential in the current generation of GalFed FTL shipdrives, enzymes from their slushy excrement doing the job on special slips mined from deep beneath their bogwarrens; their prestige had waxed,as had their entrepreneurial irascibility. Pleasing these immense hulks (weighing nearly as much as one of the Clan’s Collector ships) of organic iron and concrete was becoming more and more difficult. Neither he, nor any of the expert enzyme tailors in his employ yet understood how these creatures exactly tasted anything; let alone how they were able to distinguish it from the ubiquitous rotting sludge that they habitually immersed themselves in. On the other tendril, his was not to reason why, his was but to profit, or die. Lack of profit had decreed the euthanastic demise of the first seven of his generation’s Comptroller Model, Eeekaals1-7, by the Clan’s Genetic Security Division Board; and he certainly did not want his existence “compassionately terminated” for the same reasons.
If the ferropotami’s taste receptor’s processes could be understood by his research staff, then specially crafted compounds could be synthesized particularly for their palates. Short of this, he was committed to providing them with copious (and thereby quite profitable) quantities of not only their favorite foods, but an neverending smorgasbord of new tastes and textures. Aesthetes they would never be, but those ferropotami sure did like to eat!
The search for new tastes for them and other of the Clan’s customers had become something of a mania in the last twenty ublems or so, and Eeekaal8 had ridden the current ARMwide tide of culinary curiosity to modest profit statements 2 ublems running now. Good thing too, considering the short leash that the G.S.D.B. had him on. Not only was he now this quadrant’s largest comestibles importer, but a chain of Clan Eeekaal’s Gourmet Restaurants were now becoming the talk of the Galactic Hub’s InfoNet’s society columns; thanks to a fortunate cost-and-demand analysis projection forwarded to the Clan Directors, through him, by his handpicked staff of market-systems researchers.
Under the swaying signad, Eeekaal8 examined the Bill of Lading from the Clan’s most recent expeditionary foray, with a constriction of his upper frontal commskinpatch, which, in his race, was the equivalent of a frown. He waved an extruded tendril, epidermally shaded red, at the obviously anxious Expedition SupervisorGrd. 3E, hight Eskal2, who had been regarding him uneasily from a respectful distance. Eskal2 had been hoping the boss would give the bill a cursory glance, sign it, and then leave. It would have simplified matters greatly. He prayed silently to Chaoim to protect him with some randomly distractive occurrence, who would feed his grubs if he lost his job, and thus his reproductive viability.
“So Kraaxmaal,” (for so were all probationary personages derogatorily referred to by their genetically proven superiors) “it seems you have declared a stowaway?”, Eeekaal8 signed gruffly, fixing the squirming subordinate with the triangulative positioning of three of his five red stalkeyes. He cocked one in a cynically speculative mannerism. “I suppose you were going to take care of this yourself?”
“Yessir . . . I mean, nossir. I mean . . .”
“Nevermind,” interposed Eeekaal8, inwardly amused by the roccoco genuflections of the underling. A flair for style, he thought, something the Clan should think about cultivating. Shaking off these unbidden genetic system’s analyses, with a hint of mock severity he said: “You know the law. Take me to the being! At once!”
The kraaxmall turned to comply, his psuedopodia visibly quivering.
“And Kraaxmaal . . .”
“Yes, Provenevolved One?”
“It had better be undamaged, physically and mentally! And have all the brainwave calibrations on the Larder unit’s sensor systems be given a through going over immediately! If this is an attempt at guilt expiation on your part, you’d better count your sperm cells, bub! You could be declared Non-Viable , easily!”
“Yessir!” replied Eskal2 stiffly, in a veritable paroxysm of reproductive-threat induced anguish, all appendages in subjugative display. He thanked the Entropic Godhead that he hadn’t accepted Bblogghan The Carpathian’s crudely attempted bribe for the anomalous creature. Then his spreggle really would have been cooked! He wiped the spez from his florns , and then led the way to the de-stasis unit’s processing area.
As they undulated purposefully over the plasmetal decking towards the stasis cells, Eeekaal8 thought ruefully about the current cost of the Clan’s expenditure for their mechanized collecting expeditions. If the Clan were fined for a contravention of GalFed Comestible Collection Regulations, it could seriously jeopardize the current profit statement, and, correspondingly, his future. If it was just a defective device, the Clan would be “non-responsible ”, according to law; but, if there was “sentient-error ”, even the threat of fines would effect their market standing. He knew that this particular Eskal2 model was of unimpeachable genetic integrity, and he would hate to have to sacrifice his existence for the good of the Clan. Nevertheless, his own pupae were, to him, more important than that.
He expelled internal gases in a sigh that roiled his commskinpatch as they approached the transparent barrierfield securing the first cell, and looked in with a great deal of apprehension, and no little curiosity.
Sunday, March 19, 2006
The Legacy
The four attercops conferred on the top of the headboard, forelegs
furiously tapping an arythmic staccato on each other’s carapace, in turn, till all had their say. Two then proceeded in opposite directions to the ends of the headboard, (out of harm’s way, lest an errant elbow or hand get all of them); and the other two descended their silent skeins toward the huge sleeping body below.
Through hundreds of thousands of generations this ritual had been performed, at the least, monthly. Their singular genotype maintained about 36 individuals continually, chromosomally bent on fulfilling their
function, and always in the immediate vicinity of one particular human soul, whenever incarnate. Over the millennia billions of eggs, encysted till needed, had been deposited everywhere humanity lived thence to waft windward and eventually lay in wait anywhere they might be needed. Oviposited as crystalline titanium carbide, they were, (barring the next Big Bang) imperishable, the ancient offhanded gift of a demigod for favors rendered him by a human soul when the earth was young, and all the Orders of Angels/Aliens still visited Earth and walked amongst men.
All watched over by nano-’machines of loving grace’ were the bodies of this evolving essence and yet never had any of the ‘false personalities’ (the ego developed in any one lifetime) known or suspected anything, some gods being desirous of no worship, heresy though that was. Yet none of these dharmic avatars ever intentionally killed a spider, and none knew, or thought about, why.
Time after timeless time, down all the echoing decades inchoate with virulence had they synthesized inoculative toxins in response to their detection of disease in this particular soul’s succession of incarnative vehicles, persevering, (sometimes past death - say by crawling into a shoe or boot, there to die - but only after their autonomic bite reaction served its purposes) to inject their patient, for such he was, with antigens and genespliced antibodies that would counter disease and maintain optimum health.
Thus had this essences’ bodies survived plague after flu after cancer. Countless were the recoveries from cholera, dysentery,
malaria, pneumonia, tuberculosis, syphilis, gonorrhea (the list was a history of every ill that humanity suffered). All of this because of a favor once done with no thought of reward, by this soul and its body in a forgotten incarnation. No ‘lust of result’ had colored that ancient action, and that was so rare that it was deemed worthy of reward by one of the former guardians/bio-engineers that had brought the human race into being, and guided its development.
The ‘demigod’ had been Thoth/Prometheus, and he had been hidden, fed, clothed and aided by this mortal. A mortal who only knew that he was a friend of his friend Heracles/Hercules’s, and had been recently rescued from imprisonment and torture. The man, then a budding Magus (for this soul’s role/matrix was Sage), cast a Magick spell so well wrought that it hid the demigod from the enraged scrutiny of a partial pantheon of deities bent on recapturing and continuing to harvest his wildly regenerative godwrought liver tissue to punish the rogue bio-tech.
The rebel who had fled the orbital station/labs, and hid on Earth, teaching humanity about the laws and nature of existence (Magick), and the perfidy of those BioMages worshipped by men as gods [who were simply a consortium of scientifically advanced technomancers; both spatially, chronologically and dimensionally alien to the Earth (which, to them, was but another planetary testube, wherein they could develop ‘soul-vehicles’ and that most efficacious of data storage devices, DNA)] never forgot this random act of kindness, and, at the first opportunity, created and programmed a legacy of nanobiobots for the mortal as thanks.
The two attercops, having reached the pillowed head of the sleeping man, quickly scuttled up to a looming ear. After the first bit and anesthetized the lobe, the other injected a toxin synthesized the night before in response to a recent blood sample which had indicated the presence of a strain of E-coli (ingested in an undercooked burger) about to promulgate itself into a life-threatening illness.
Their task accomplished, the two ascended the headboard, swung to the wall and then vanished through a crack between the wainscotting and the plaster, there to replenish themselves and tend to their eggs. Their two partners would repeat the process of bioptic
sampling, analysis and toxin production (if necessary) again tomorrow, just as had all their replicedents, down through the centuries.
The man snored, all unawares of both his good fortune and his prior lifetimes, dreaming of a small, goat-footed boy playing a pipe in a forest of dawn redwoods - and of laughter, hearty and vibrant, echoing through the sunbeams and trees of a world newly minted.
furiously tapping an arythmic staccato on each other’s carapace, in turn, till all had their say. Two then proceeded in opposite directions to the ends of the headboard, (out of harm’s way, lest an errant elbow or hand get all of them); and the other two descended their silent skeins toward the huge sleeping body below.
Through hundreds of thousands of generations this ritual had been performed, at the least, monthly. Their singular genotype maintained about 36 individuals continually, chromosomally bent on fulfilling their
function, and always in the immediate vicinity of one particular human soul, whenever incarnate. Over the millennia billions of eggs, encysted till needed, had been deposited everywhere humanity lived thence to waft windward and eventually lay in wait anywhere they might be needed. Oviposited as crystalline titanium carbide, they were, (barring the next Big Bang) imperishable, the ancient offhanded gift of a demigod for favors rendered him by a human soul when the earth was young, and all the Orders of Angels/Aliens still visited Earth and walked amongst men.
All watched over by nano-’machines of loving grace’ were the bodies of this evolving essence and yet never had any of the ‘false personalities’ (the ego developed in any one lifetime) known or suspected anything, some gods being desirous of no worship, heresy though that was. Yet none of these dharmic avatars ever intentionally killed a spider, and none knew, or thought about, why.
Time after timeless time, down all the echoing decades inchoate with virulence had they synthesized inoculative toxins in response to their detection of disease in this particular soul’s succession of incarnative vehicles, persevering, (sometimes past death - say by crawling into a shoe or boot, there to die - but only after their autonomic bite reaction served its purposes) to inject their patient, for such he was, with antigens and genespliced antibodies that would counter disease and maintain optimum health.
Thus had this essences’ bodies survived plague after flu after cancer. Countless were the recoveries from cholera, dysentery,
malaria, pneumonia, tuberculosis, syphilis, gonorrhea (the list was a history of every ill that humanity suffered). All of this because of a favor once done with no thought of reward, by this soul and its body in a forgotten incarnation. No ‘lust of result’ had colored that ancient action, and that was so rare that it was deemed worthy of reward by one of the former guardians/bio-engineers that had brought the human race into being, and guided its development.
The ‘demigod’ had been Thoth/Prometheus, and he had been hidden, fed, clothed and aided by this mortal. A mortal who only knew that he was a friend of his friend Heracles/Hercules’s, and had been recently rescued from imprisonment and torture. The man, then a budding Magus (for this soul’s role/matrix was Sage), cast a Magick spell so well wrought that it hid the demigod from the enraged scrutiny of a partial pantheon of deities bent on recapturing and continuing to harvest his wildly regenerative godwrought liver tissue to punish the rogue bio-tech.
The rebel who had fled the orbital station/labs, and hid on Earth, teaching humanity about the laws and nature of existence (Magick), and the perfidy of those BioMages worshipped by men as gods [who were simply a consortium of scientifically advanced technomancers; both spatially, chronologically and dimensionally alien to the Earth (which, to them, was but another planetary testube, wherein they could develop ‘soul-vehicles’ and that most efficacious of data storage devices, DNA)] never forgot this random act of kindness, and, at the first opportunity, created and programmed a legacy of nanobiobots for the mortal as thanks.
The two attercops, having reached the pillowed head of the sleeping man, quickly scuttled up to a looming ear. After the first bit and anesthetized the lobe, the other injected a toxin synthesized the night before in response to a recent blood sample which had indicated the presence of a strain of E-coli (ingested in an undercooked burger) about to promulgate itself into a life-threatening illness.
Their task accomplished, the two ascended the headboard, swung to the wall and then vanished through a crack between the wainscotting and the plaster, there to replenish themselves and tend to their eggs. Their two partners would repeat the process of bioptic
sampling, analysis and toxin production (if necessary) again tomorrow, just as had all their replicedents, down through the centuries.
The man snored, all unawares of both his good fortune and his prior lifetimes, dreaming of a small, goat-footed boy playing a pipe in a forest of dawn redwoods - and of laughter, hearty and vibrant, echoing through the sunbeams and trees of a world newly minted.
Tuesday, February 14, 2006
Range On The Home: Chapter 1
A relatively uneventful month of amblin’ found Zack well into Colorado Territory, in the late afternoon, facing a sight he’d never seen. He’d heard about, but never quite gotten around to seein’, the White Sands of New Mexico, but the descriptions he’d heard of them had not prepared him for this: before him lay a stretch of huge, dun colored sand dunes, the tallest of which couldn’t have been less than a coupla hundred feet high. They reposed, in ancient sleepiness, near the northern portion of a long, flat valley; bordered on all sides by low, unprepossessing hills. This was certainly not the way he’d pictured Colorado country from old Joe’s Sample’s colorful descriptions and tall tales. The land that he had crossed up till now resembled New Mexico and Arizona more’n anythin’ else. Yet now these sinuous pyramids of sand rose starkly light-brown before him, like somethin' from a book of tales about the Great African Desert, or Araby.
It was right warm this summer out on the high New Mexico plateau. Zack sat with his back up against a stunted pine tree, fortuitously curved to fit his frame, eating the nuts he had shaken down and then laboriously harvrsted with the sharp tip of his Bowie knife, looking longingly at the inviting prospect of the not-too-distant hills and mountains ahead, with their shady scrub forests and occasional fast flowing mountain streams. With any luck, he hoped to be within their cool confines by sundown, a fat trout spitted over his campfire and his feet propped up on his saddle. Jezebelle, unexpectedly, and for no apparent reason, gave out a nervous whinny.
“What’sa’matter girl? Hear a rattler, or a 'Pache?” He listened carefully to the slight sounds elicited by the wind through the scrubbrush. “Naw,” he opined aloud, “more likely you’re just a-hankerin’ to be up in those hills, same as me.” He made a comforting clucking sound and she immediately came over to him. He stood up, offering her his last handful of piñon nuts, brushing the husks and pine cone pieces from his lap, and the dusty brown dirt from his seat. She accepted his offering, and as he wiped the salty sweat crust from his brow and then pulled his broad-brimmed felt hat back down over his curly, reddish-blonde hair (ever-so-slightly interspersed with an occasional strand of gray), he peered intently towards those enticing foothills, attempting to pick out the most likely path into, and upwards, through them. After a moment’s hesitation, he mounted, gave the mare a pat on the neck, and said: “C’mon now ‘Belle. ‘Hain’t got all day to be a-lollygaggin’ ‘roun’, gettin’ what brains we got fried.”
The slanting afternoon sunlight illuminated his deeply lined face. The exertions of a honest life of tedious toil, the swelt of day and the chill of night, the erosive effects of wind and water had left their marks on him, etching his face and his very being as surely as they had the sandstone of the surrounding desert. He had often joked that his skin had weathered so well he could play dead and pull it off, so dessicated and wrinkled were his face, neck and hands. Therefore and thereby, he seems of indeterminate age . He could be anywhere from thirty-five to fourty-five (tho’ he’s actually only thirty-six). The type of man whose visage might make most women dilate on first meeting, he was often garrulous and longwinded, with a repetoire of jokes and puns for all occassions. Most men that knew him instinctively wished to impress him with their new jokes, and he would always guffaw with glee while filing each new punchline away to be delivered when he next hit town.
He has always looked just like what he was: a “cowpoke”, someone having chosen a life in natural surroundings over ANY of the incentives wealth or roots or civilization might offer. Six foot in his (when he had ‘em) stockings, and with not an ounce of fat on his well-muscled and wiry 180 lb. frame, he meets the circumstances of his life head-on, with no quarter asked, or given. Good with animals and with children, honest and true to his word, capable of drinking to excess without becoming stupid, clumsy, or a cad; he endures and seemingly thrives on the vagaries and exigencies of his life’s vicissitudes. Now then, though, Zack was headed for Southern Colorado for a much needed change of scenery, and for the job his old friend, Joe Sample (“I’ll try near anythin’ once’st, jest t’be true to ma callin’ ya see. Git it?”) had always assured him would be waiting for him if he ever wanted it.
“Lotta head of cattle an’ a lotta work for a good ‘hand up that-a-way,” Joe had often been heard to say, spitting a brown gobbet of steaming juice from the corner of his permanently stained lips, product of the ever-present piece of “‘plug’ tobaccee” forever resident in his constantly moving mouth. “Yep,” he’d spit and say, squinting out at the sere desert landscape where they'd first met with a look of pure disgust, “not like this here god-dam’ desert: bake in the summer and freeze your tail in the winter. They got soft grass and mountain clover for months, months by god — make you wanna take off your duds and just roll aroun’ in them cool green meadows, like a stud stallion in a dustpit.” Spit. “They got mountains up thar make make these here hills look like shitpiles, an’ that there Rocky Mountain water’s clear an’ clean an’ cold an’ sweet as honey! Why, I e’en heer’d tell that the deer and the rabbits; fat cottontails mind, not nasty stringy jacks like we got here, come right up to your camp of a night, just a-beggin’ to be eaten.” Spit. “Yep,” he’d sigh, hitch up his britches, and shake his grey-maned head dolefully, “that there’s country a body’d wanna settle down in, I reckon.”
But when Zack would ask why he didn’t go on up there if it was so fine, Joe would just spit, sigh, and once again shake his head, exclaiming: “Too old’s what it is, jes’ too dam’ old, I guess. I’m jest too blamed old to to be movin’ on, this late in life.” Spit. “‘Sides, I got roots down here, friends like, an’ a man my age’s gotta think ‘bout his future, an’ security an’ such.”
Zack had always felt like telling his friend that he didn’t see much future for him in New Mexico, but he’d always held his tongue, thinking it would be kinda’ mean — let the old man have a few dreams to comfort him in his dotage — who could tell? Maybe the Triple-O would keep him on in his later years, doin’ the easy chores.
Zack imagined these thoughts stretchin’ out behind him, sorta like the wafting dustpuffs ‘Belle raised with each hoof-fall, hangin’ there in the hot and heavy air (once even wreathing a startled-from-slumber Gila Monster in an evanescent and ocherous halo, a sight he marveled upon, as he glanced back along his trail), ‘cross the plains and hills of his path as he climbed slowly into the loomin’ mass of the Sangre De Christo Mountains, named for the blood-red color the ubiquitous mineral deposits there lent to the hues of the native soil. If those memories had been tangible things, kinda’ like that dust, he thought he might have watched them settle slowly into the horsetracks, footprints and wagon ruts he’d left by the thousands across the land in his life’s passage; until they too, like the visible signs of his passing presence, blew away in the willful and omnipresent wind.
Maybe his proximity to these dunes had somethin’ to do with the strange lights and sounds that had wakened him from his sleep late last night, and his discovery of several strangely cut-up cattle carcasses the day before. At first Zach had thought he was back in Canada, and the Northern Lights had, as they sometimes did, come to be seen far south of their accustomed occurrence, and out of season; for these lights kinda looked like them, all flowin’ and colored like an outta’ focus rainbow, only way lower, and closer. But then, he’d remembered just where he was and, at the same time, also realized that accompanyin’ the lights was an eerie whistlin’ whine, an eldritch hum like nothin’ he’d ever heard or e’en heer’d tell of before. So strange a sound it was that the hairs on the back of his neck rose as one, to stand straight out from his skin, before both the sound and lights quickly faded away; as did he, back to a troubled sleep.
Slowly he guided Jezebelle to the right, along a small patch of hard-packed open ground. There, the sand ended so abruptly that it might have been tidied up at night by broom-wielding elves. Zack and ‘Belle entered a small stand of short pines on the other side of the open ground that grew ‘midst piles of granite boulders, rough-hewn and strewn randomly as if tossed like seeds from some giant’s hand. Perhaps that huge troll, or ogre, had been grindin’ those rocks for eons, like a miller grindin’ grain, producing these huge hills of rock dust, ready for makin’ into giant flapjacks; for sustenance down through the ages.
Zack stared at the high dune tops and the graceful snake-like curves of the sand in fascination. He was seriously considering a climb, just for the fun of it, when he, for some reason, pulled ‘Belle up short. He might have stopped there because the dunes stopped, right there, as abruptly as they had started; or because the horse and he needed a rest; or to allow them both to answer the call of nature. Actually though, none of these things were the reason. If he had been intrigued by the sight of the dunes, he was now thunderstruck by the unimaginable prospect before him. Slack-jawed, he gaped at the immense scintillating metallic object directly in front of him, some fifty feet away.
Sharp along its edges, curvin’ at the top and bottom in identical, flattened arcs, like two pie tins melted together (without visible seam), this — thing — hung motionless, without visible support, some ten or fifteen feet above the ground. Kinda like pie plates, yeah, but the pie they would bake would be a good two-hundred feet across! The thing was so big, his brain balked at comparin’ it to anythin’ he’d ever come across. Zach’s mind kinda seized-up, like a wagon wheel gone long without greasin’, just lookin’ at it (an’ those hairs on his neck, like the hackles on a frightened dog, all rose up again).
It hung so rigidly in the air there that it might have been painted on the backdrop of hills and sky behind. Almost unconsciously he looked for the ropes above it, or the poles beneath it that he knew must be holding it up. Neither were to be seen, and Zack wondered whether they might be made of some kind of glass. To what could even transparent glass ropes have been attached in a clear blue sky? He rubbed his eyes, thinkin’ it might be some strange kind of mirage brought on by his long days on the trail and/or lack of water, but it still wouldn’t go away. He sat frozen thereafter, atop his increasingly skittish mount, until a particularly plaintive whinny from the redoubtable mare brought him ‘round to some awareness of his surroundin’s and his place in them.
“Jeezus, ‘Belle”, he finally whispered, “what in the hell is it?”
In the next instant, he came to a realization that her alarm, perhaps, had less to do with the apparition of this hanging golden plate-thing, than it did with whatever was causin’ the approaching dust cloud to the southwest, behind the hummin’ thing hanging in front of them. She was rigidly facin’ that loomin’ dust-cloud, legs wide apart as though suspicious of her balance on level ground. Her ears were cocked full forward, her nostrils flared and eyes wide, concentratin’ on whatever it was a-causin’ that commotion. It had a somewhat familiar appearance to Zack; as a matter of fact, it looked like it belonged to a small herd of stampedin’ stock — possibly wild horses. That would at least explain Jezebelle’s interest, if not her apparent slight fright.
Believin’ that this explicable occurrence and the inexplicable phenomena in front of him had no connection, he urged ‘Belle forward, his apprehension now overcome by his curiosity. The horse refused to move, or to even budge an inch from her rigid stance. She didn’t seem to be at all aware of the thing in the air before her; instead, she seemed hypnotized by the approaching tan turbulence. In spite of her fright, she took one deliberate step forward, at his spurred urgin’, and then another.
“O.K. then girl. Hold on now. Whoa.” He pulled back on her reins, and she stopped, somewhat nervously yet studiously facing that approachin’ herd, utterin’ that particular bilabial exhalation of resignation peculiar to horses, donkeys and mules: “p-b-p-b-p-b-p-b-p-ph”; and tossin’ her head, evidently quite relieved to be goin’ no further. He could make out some shapes in the dustcloud now as they came into view over the top of a low rise about a half-mile away. As he squinted into the setting sun he was able to pick out individual figures, and realized that the small herd approaching consisted of not only a dozen or so horses, but at least as many cattle, a number of mule deer, a large lumberin’ hulk that he thought might be a bear, and numerous smaller leapin’, hoppin’ and flyin’ shapes that appeared to be antelopes, rabbits and sundry sage grouse.
“Well, I’ll be swiggered,” he breathed to himself. The only time he’d ever seen animals run together like this was before a brush fire he’d witnessed once in Oklahoma. But, there wasn’t any fire here and now, so what in tarnation were they a-runnin’ from?
As he pondered this question with growing unease, a hum of a distinctly higher pitch became more and more audible. He scratched his neck reflexively and his hand came away damp and matted with hair that was apparently falling out. “What is it, girl? . . . What in tarnation is . . .”
The question remained unfinished. Through the driftin’ dust, he could now make out what it was that propelled the animals to such haste — say better, herded them, right on the edge of panic, toward the horse and rider. Flashin’ golden as they dipped and swerved, reflectin’ the sunlight like mirrors, came a good score or so of pie-plate shaped disks — exact duplicates, on a much smaller scale, of the one monster disk still a-hangin’ in front of ‘em. As this realization struck home, he heard a loud “whoosh”, and a blast of cool air threw a cloud of dust into his eyes. He pulled his soppin’ bandana up, over his nose and mouth and steadied the horse as it tried to rear and dance away sideways, squintin’ in the fine flying dirt. The air around him pulsed and vibrated as though a railroad train were goin’ through a tunnel, or on greased tracks, such that the normal squeals of metal-on-metal were subdued. When tears had washed tracks through the caked coat of dust down his face, Zack saw that a section of the massive, hoverin’ disk had fallen open, and was, in fact, touchin’ the ground, formin’ a golden ramp leadin’ up to a rectangular openin’. The hummin’ grew louder.
“I’m dead, dyin’ or real bad sick,” Zack thought. “Mebbe it’s the end o’ the world. That’s it, it’s Judgement Day! I’m in deep shit now.” His mind froze at that last thought. So this was the “wheels within wheels” writ about in Ezekiel, which he vaguely remembered from childhood. He knew he shudda’ paid more attention in Bible class. He just knew his daydreamin’ would come back to haunt him someday. So this was the golden chariot of God, seen only by prophets, or madmen, or the dead. He wondered which of the categories his miserable existence fell within. Somehow, pessimistically he had no choice but to conclude, one way or another, that it had to be the last of the three alternatives.
He watched quietly now, resigned to his fate, his fear having turned into a body-and-mind dullin’ numbness; or more like he was paralyzed, the way a jackrabbit was frozen by the stare of the rattler that was about to swallow it whole. He watched, without even tryin’ to ride away, as the small disks drove those critters right up that ramp, into the insides of that thing, better’n a pack of sheepdogs doin’ their level best to impress their master. As the last deer and rangecows disappeared up that ramp, almost as an after thought, three of the small disks veered off and circled around behind Zack and ‘Belle. At first just swoopin’ at Zack like jays at a crow; and then, when he simply ducked and stared at them slack-jawed, hittin’ him with tiny lightnin’ bolts that burned him and made ‘Belle half-crazy; the pair was driven (herded - he thought again) toward and up that ramp. He leaned down, grasped her tightly around her neck, closed his eyes, gripped both of his sphincters tightly, as they seemed about to loose themselves, and tried to remember The Lord’s Prayer. “By God,” he thought, “at least I can show Him I know at least that!”, and then cringed, buryin’ his face deeper into Jezebelle’s mane as he apologized over and over again mentally as he thought of his possible blasphemy. Then, they were up the ramp and inside the thing .
It was right warm this summer out on the high New Mexico plateau. Zack sat with his back up against a stunted pine tree, fortuitously curved to fit his frame, eating the nuts he had shaken down and then laboriously harvrsted with the sharp tip of his Bowie knife, looking longingly at the inviting prospect of the not-too-distant hills and mountains ahead, with their shady scrub forests and occasional fast flowing mountain streams. With any luck, he hoped to be within their cool confines by sundown, a fat trout spitted over his campfire and his feet propped up on his saddle. Jezebelle, unexpectedly, and for no apparent reason, gave out a nervous whinny.
“What’sa’matter girl? Hear a rattler, or a 'Pache?” He listened carefully to the slight sounds elicited by the wind through the scrubbrush. “Naw,” he opined aloud, “more likely you’re just a-hankerin’ to be up in those hills, same as me.” He made a comforting clucking sound and she immediately came over to him. He stood up, offering her his last handful of piñon nuts, brushing the husks and pine cone pieces from his lap, and the dusty brown dirt from his seat. She accepted his offering, and as he wiped the salty sweat crust from his brow and then pulled his broad-brimmed felt hat back down over his curly, reddish-blonde hair (ever-so-slightly interspersed with an occasional strand of gray), he peered intently towards those enticing foothills, attempting to pick out the most likely path into, and upwards, through them. After a moment’s hesitation, he mounted, gave the mare a pat on the neck, and said: “C’mon now ‘Belle. ‘Hain’t got all day to be a-lollygaggin’ ‘roun’, gettin’ what brains we got fried.”
The slanting afternoon sunlight illuminated his deeply lined face. The exertions of a honest life of tedious toil, the swelt of day and the chill of night, the erosive effects of wind and water had left their marks on him, etching his face and his very being as surely as they had the sandstone of the surrounding desert. He had often joked that his skin had weathered so well he could play dead and pull it off, so dessicated and wrinkled were his face, neck and hands. Therefore and thereby, he seems of indeterminate age . He could be anywhere from thirty-five to fourty-five (tho’ he’s actually only thirty-six). The type of man whose visage might make most women dilate on first meeting, he was often garrulous and longwinded, with a repetoire of jokes and puns for all occassions. Most men that knew him instinctively wished to impress him with their new jokes, and he would always guffaw with glee while filing each new punchline away to be delivered when he next hit town.
He has always looked just like what he was: a “cowpoke”, someone having chosen a life in natural surroundings over ANY of the incentives wealth or roots or civilization might offer. Six foot in his (when he had ‘em) stockings, and with not an ounce of fat on his well-muscled and wiry 180 lb. frame, he meets the circumstances of his life head-on, with no quarter asked, or given. Good with animals and with children, honest and true to his word, capable of drinking to excess without becoming stupid, clumsy, or a cad; he endures and seemingly thrives on the vagaries and exigencies of his life’s vicissitudes. Now then, though, Zack was headed for Southern Colorado for a much needed change of scenery, and for the job his old friend, Joe Sample (“I’ll try near anythin’ once’st, jest t’be true to ma callin’ ya see. Git it?”) had always assured him would be waiting for him if he ever wanted it.
“Lotta head of cattle an’ a lotta work for a good ‘hand up that-a-way,” Joe had often been heard to say, spitting a brown gobbet of steaming juice from the corner of his permanently stained lips, product of the ever-present piece of “‘plug’ tobaccee” forever resident in his constantly moving mouth. “Yep,” he’d spit and say, squinting out at the sere desert landscape where they'd first met with a look of pure disgust, “not like this here god-dam’ desert: bake in the summer and freeze your tail in the winter. They got soft grass and mountain clover for months, months by god — make you wanna take off your duds and just roll aroun’ in them cool green meadows, like a stud stallion in a dustpit.” Spit. “They got mountains up thar make make these here hills look like shitpiles, an’ that there Rocky Mountain water’s clear an’ clean an’ cold an’ sweet as honey! Why, I e’en heer’d tell that the deer and the rabbits; fat cottontails mind, not nasty stringy jacks like we got here, come right up to your camp of a night, just a-beggin’ to be eaten.” Spit. “Yep,” he’d sigh, hitch up his britches, and shake his grey-maned head dolefully, “that there’s country a body’d wanna settle down in, I reckon.”
But when Zack would ask why he didn’t go on up there if it was so fine, Joe would just spit, sigh, and once again shake his head, exclaiming: “Too old’s what it is, jes’ too dam’ old, I guess. I’m jest too blamed old to to be movin’ on, this late in life.” Spit. “‘Sides, I got roots down here, friends like, an’ a man my age’s gotta think ‘bout his future, an’ security an’ such.”
Zack had always felt like telling his friend that he didn’t see much future for him in New Mexico, but he’d always held his tongue, thinking it would be kinda’ mean — let the old man have a few dreams to comfort him in his dotage — who could tell? Maybe the Triple-O would keep him on in his later years, doin’ the easy chores.
Zack imagined these thoughts stretchin’ out behind him, sorta like the wafting dustpuffs ‘Belle raised with each hoof-fall, hangin’ there in the hot and heavy air (once even wreathing a startled-from-slumber Gila Monster in an evanescent and ocherous halo, a sight he marveled upon, as he glanced back along his trail), ‘cross the plains and hills of his path as he climbed slowly into the loomin’ mass of the Sangre De Christo Mountains, named for the blood-red color the ubiquitous mineral deposits there lent to the hues of the native soil. If those memories had been tangible things, kinda’ like that dust, he thought he might have watched them settle slowly into the horsetracks, footprints and wagon ruts he’d left by the thousands across the land in his life’s passage; until they too, like the visible signs of his passing presence, blew away in the willful and omnipresent wind.
Maybe his proximity to these dunes had somethin’ to do with the strange lights and sounds that had wakened him from his sleep late last night, and his discovery of several strangely cut-up cattle carcasses the day before. At first Zach had thought he was back in Canada, and the Northern Lights had, as they sometimes did, come to be seen far south of their accustomed occurrence, and out of season; for these lights kinda looked like them, all flowin’ and colored like an outta’ focus rainbow, only way lower, and closer. But then, he’d remembered just where he was and, at the same time, also realized that accompanyin’ the lights was an eerie whistlin’ whine, an eldritch hum like nothin’ he’d ever heard or e’en heer’d tell of before. So strange a sound it was that the hairs on the back of his neck rose as one, to stand straight out from his skin, before both the sound and lights quickly faded away; as did he, back to a troubled sleep.
Slowly he guided Jezebelle to the right, along a small patch of hard-packed open ground. There, the sand ended so abruptly that it might have been tidied up at night by broom-wielding elves. Zack and ‘Belle entered a small stand of short pines on the other side of the open ground that grew ‘midst piles of granite boulders, rough-hewn and strewn randomly as if tossed like seeds from some giant’s hand. Perhaps that huge troll, or ogre, had been grindin’ those rocks for eons, like a miller grindin’ grain, producing these huge hills of rock dust, ready for makin’ into giant flapjacks; for sustenance down through the ages.
Zack stared at the high dune tops and the graceful snake-like curves of the sand in fascination. He was seriously considering a climb, just for the fun of it, when he, for some reason, pulled ‘Belle up short. He might have stopped there because the dunes stopped, right there, as abruptly as they had started; or because the horse and he needed a rest; or to allow them both to answer the call of nature. Actually though, none of these things were the reason. If he had been intrigued by the sight of the dunes, he was now thunderstruck by the unimaginable prospect before him. Slack-jawed, he gaped at the immense scintillating metallic object directly in front of him, some fifty feet away.
Sharp along its edges, curvin’ at the top and bottom in identical, flattened arcs, like two pie tins melted together (without visible seam), this — thing — hung motionless, without visible support, some ten or fifteen feet above the ground. Kinda like pie plates, yeah, but the pie they would bake would be a good two-hundred feet across! The thing was so big, his brain balked at comparin’ it to anythin’ he’d ever come across. Zach’s mind kinda seized-up, like a wagon wheel gone long without greasin’, just lookin’ at it (an’ those hairs on his neck, like the hackles on a frightened dog, all rose up again).
It hung so rigidly in the air there that it might have been painted on the backdrop of hills and sky behind. Almost unconsciously he looked for the ropes above it, or the poles beneath it that he knew must be holding it up. Neither were to be seen, and Zack wondered whether they might be made of some kind of glass. To what could even transparent glass ropes have been attached in a clear blue sky? He rubbed his eyes, thinkin’ it might be some strange kind of mirage brought on by his long days on the trail and/or lack of water, but it still wouldn’t go away. He sat frozen thereafter, atop his increasingly skittish mount, until a particularly plaintive whinny from the redoubtable mare brought him ‘round to some awareness of his surroundin’s and his place in them.
“Jeezus, ‘Belle”, he finally whispered, “what in the hell is it?”
In the next instant, he came to a realization that her alarm, perhaps, had less to do with the apparition of this hanging golden plate-thing, than it did with whatever was causin’ the approaching dust cloud to the southwest, behind the hummin’ thing hanging in front of them. She was rigidly facin’ that loomin’ dust-cloud, legs wide apart as though suspicious of her balance on level ground. Her ears were cocked full forward, her nostrils flared and eyes wide, concentratin’ on whatever it was a-causin’ that commotion. It had a somewhat familiar appearance to Zack; as a matter of fact, it looked like it belonged to a small herd of stampedin’ stock — possibly wild horses. That would at least explain Jezebelle’s interest, if not her apparent slight fright.
Believin’ that this explicable occurrence and the inexplicable phenomena in front of him had no connection, he urged ‘Belle forward, his apprehension now overcome by his curiosity. The horse refused to move, or to even budge an inch from her rigid stance. She didn’t seem to be at all aware of the thing in the air before her; instead, she seemed hypnotized by the approaching tan turbulence. In spite of her fright, she took one deliberate step forward, at his spurred urgin’, and then another.
“O.K. then girl. Hold on now. Whoa.” He pulled back on her reins, and she stopped, somewhat nervously yet studiously facing that approachin’ herd, utterin’ that particular bilabial exhalation of resignation peculiar to horses, donkeys and mules: “p-b-p-b-p-b-p-b-p-ph”; and tossin’ her head, evidently quite relieved to be goin’ no further. He could make out some shapes in the dustcloud now as they came into view over the top of a low rise about a half-mile away. As he squinted into the setting sun he was able to pick out individual figures, and realized that the small herd approaching consisted of not only a dozen or so horses, but at least as many cattle, a number of mule deer, a large lumberin’ hulk that he thought might be a bear, and numerous smaller leapin’, hoppin’ and flyin’ shapes that appeared to be antelopes, rabbits and sundry sage grouse.
“Well, I’ll be swiggered,” he breathed to himself. The only time he’d ever seen animals run together like this was before a brush fire he’d witnessed once in Oklahoma. But, there wasn’t any fire here and now, so what in tarnation were they a-runnin’ from?
As he pondered this question with growing unease, a hum of a distinctly higher pitch became more and more audible. He scratched his neck reflexively and his hand came away damp and matted with hair that was apparently falling out. “What is it, girl? . . . What in tarnation is . . .”
The question remained unfinished. Through the driftin’ dust, he could now make out what it was that propelled the animals to such haste — say better, herded them, right on the edge of panic, toward the horse and rider. Flashin’ golden as they dipped and swerved, reflectin’ the sunlight like mirrors, came a good score or so of pie-plate shaped disks — exact duplicates, on a much smaller scale, of the one monster disk still a-hangin’ in front of ‘em. As this realization struck home, he heard a loud “whoosh”, and a blast of cool air threw a cloud of dust into his eyes. He pulled his soppin’ bandana up, over his nose and mouth and steadied the horse as it tried to rear and dance away sideways, squintin’ in the fine flying dirt. The air around him pulsed and vibrated as though a railroad train were goin’ through a tunnel, or on greased tracks, such that the normal squeals of metal-on-metal were subdued. When tears had washed tracks through the caked coat of dust down his face, Zack saw that a section of the massive, hoverin’ disk had fallen open, and was, in fact, touchin’ the ground, formin’ a golden ramp leadin’ up to a rectangular openin’. The hummin’ grew louder.
“I’m dead, dyin’ or real bad sick,” Zack thought. “Mebbe it’s the end o’ the world. That’s it, it’s Judgement Day! I’m in deep shit now.” His mind froze at that last thought. So this was the “wheels within wheels” writ about in Ezekiel, which he vaguely remembered from childhood. He knew he shudda’ paid more attention in Bible class. He just knew his daydreamin’ would come back to haunt him someday. So this was the golden chariot of God, seen only by prophets, or madmen, or the dead. He wondered which of the categories his miserable existence fell within. Somehow, pessimistically he had no choice but to conclude, one way or another, that it had to be the last of the three alternatives.
He watched quietly now, resigned to his fate, his fear having turned into a body-and-mind dullin’ numbness; or more like he was paralyzed, the way a jackrabbit was frozen by the stare of the rattler that was about to swallow it whole. He watched, without even tryin’ to ride away, as the small disks drove those critters right up that ramp, into the insides of that thing, better’n a pack of sheepdogs doin’ their level best to impress their master. As the last deer and rangecows disappeared up that ramp, almost as an after thought, three of the small disks veered off and circled around behind Zack and ‘Belle. At first just swoopin’ at Zack like jays at a crow; and then, when he simply ducked and stared at them slack-jawed, hittin’ him with tiny lightnin’ bolts that burned him and made ‘Belle half-crazy; the pair was driven (herded - he thought again) toward and up that ramp. He leaned down, grasped her tightly around her neck, closed his eyes, gripped both of his sphincters tightly, as they seemed about to loose themselves, and tried to remember The Lord’s Prayer. “By God,” he thought, “at least I can show Him I know at least that!”, and then cringed, buryin’ his face deeper into Jezebelle’s mane as he apologized over and over again mentally as he thought of his possible blasphemy. Then, they were up the ramp and inside the thing .
Sunday, January 15, 2006
Groundrules, Tools and Mystery Schools
[Floccinaucinihilipilifelicitations, my dears. Well, my erudite epistophiliacs, hopefully I can at least offer more than the bombastically banal bloviations of the boddhisatvically benumbed. If ever in the mood for some circumlocutorhizomanticircumscript, as sesquipedalien paranomasia (ALL polysyllabically polyentendraic puns intended.);{> tell our soul that this particular personality is deserving of Akashic Resurrection, and inclusion in every chronologically subsequent lifetime!]
So, here goes. I thought I should write this book as, in part, an attempt to save my poor future selves (and anyone who has the curiosity) the time and effort I have spent till now just trying to learn stuff which I think is as important as any of the putative “Physical Sciences”. Understand then that I aspire to no less than an explanation of the “Meaning Of Life”, as well as presenting some important models for epistimological analysis (the stuff that took me 30+ years to figure out) that have been hidden, forgotten or have fallen into some theoretical disfavor. But, considering “till now” supposedly encompasses 5,000+ years of personal incarnative existence (incarnations being not necessarily chronologically sequential, but apparently experientially contiguous) this may involve a wealth of data.
OK kids, hold on to your occipital plates and pass the ‘No-Doz’, ‘cause the truth is WAY stranger than fiction (“mind-blowing”, I think, in the original sense of the phrase). What’s more, I can guarantee, that if you can ‘willfully suspend’ your skepticynicism and disbelief, and attempt to apprehend the internal congruence and coherence of the following history, you may well be changed forever: for the stranger, I’m assured; for the better, I’ll contend.
“You Know, Everything You Know Could Be Wrong!”
The above phrase, which I was first made aware of in the 70’s, by the comedy quartet “Firesign Theatre”, is my favorite thought. I say this because I ALWAYS smile at that simple phrase, when thought to myself or stated in mock exasperation to religious fanatics. They don’t get it. Can’t, they might start to doubt, Cultivation of objectivity is rarely at the top of their “To Do’ list The original delivery was quite insouciant and wonderfully expectant - as though the prospect was highly amusing - to try to believe in something you don’t, or stop believing in something you do.
This is one of the most difficult exercises for most people (myself included) to execute with facility and yet important ideas for anyone who values Science and Western Empirical Methodology, critical thinking, ratiocination, deductive analysis, formal Logic, debate, Dysteleological perception and/or exposition, noumenal Solipsism and/or Epiphenomenological Epistemology. If a person cannot detach themselves from ANY personal belief, then conceptualize and believe (with attempted equal fervour) in it opposite,
First, a few groundrules, tools and Mystery Schools: All paradoxes CAN be reconciled: Juxtapose any belief with its opposite, see that they’re just opposite ends of a line drawn between them, then come up with an idea that is true for both of them. Thesis, Antithesis, then Synthesis.
“Is the glass half-empty or half-full?” (Depends on whether you’re drinking or pouring, doesn’t it?!);{> I believe the simple act of attempting to perceive existence from within the framework of a ‘world-view’ much different than that of the dominant paradigm with which we are culturally imprinted is transformative, and can be transcendentally epiphanthetic. “Outer Limits” here we come.
First, an Hermetic Principle to be explicated, illuminating some esoteric history upon which to stretch a fabric of cosmology .
I’ll try to explain as we proceed. The phrase: “As above, so below.” is called “The Principle Of Correspondences” and simply means that if things are related to each other in one way, on any one plane that can be observed, then, the corresponding principles, on any other plane, stand in that same exact relationship. IOW: If the government down here is SNAFU, which it so obviously IS, then the government in “Heaven” is so likewise.
Approximately 250,000 years ago, our planet, and 27 others nearby, in this arm of our galaxy, seceded from the “Galactic Union” (for want of a better term). Our prehistoric ancestors weren’t much involved, being too far down on a cosmic evolutionary scale to be of much help to one side or the other.
Other than the three railgun mass-driven asteroids that destroyed the failed reptile developments (read: sterilized the test tube), the Rebellion, subsequent “Fall” of 1/3 of the Angelic Host, and our planet’s status as one of the secedents has had more to do with the course of human history on Earth than of which it’s possible for me to convince anyone.
The carefully contrived, and successful evolution, of a simian model for ‘soul-vehicle’ development, after the abject failure of no less than 3 previous saurian (reptile-derived) model lines, had finally garnered the local bio-engineering System Administration praise, almost offsetting the disappointing discovery that the viability of a neighboring planet’s primary gene-line (the scions of a mutation in a lemur-like progenitor, and one of the older races extant in this part of the galaxy) was waning; and the aliens we know as “Little Greys” were at zero population growth even back then. Even a lifespan of centuries can’t make up for a gene pool too small, non-diverse and recessively replete from too much tinkering (and inbreeding). If there was such a thing as chromosomal hubris, they had it, in spades.
The ‘Greys’ had served their gen-engineer maker/s less than well throughout their history, being both markedly amoral, and acquisitive. Though good survival skills in ‘bootstrapping’ experimental development schemata (like our own) that utilize Darwinistic ‘natural selection’ ecologies as self-correcting genetic winnowing methodologies, these traits proved ultimately counter-productive to the goal of designing tractable and compliant self-replicating soulvessel livestock/DNA factories.
The ‘Greys’ were still astute, if not prolific, and they realized that only drastic (and perhaps even prohibited) measures would suffice for their survival. Compatible genetic stem-cell material was needed in large quantities, in order to genesplice a robust DNA sequence onto the ‘Greys’ deteriorated one, and sometimes entire worlds with no native sentients were laid waste just to serve the energy and raw material needs of the Greys for a few years.
Along with their surreptitious collection expeditions to primitive worlds like ours that were producing compatible gene-plasm (and for the most part were lacking interstellar or interdimensional travel capabilities - so we couldn’t run OR hide from their predations), they seemed to care nothing for the terror and trauma their criminal sperm and ova poaching produced. Alas, it was all too easy to understand when you realized that they used us like we use lab rats, and, apparently, had as low a regard for our intelligence and right to autonomy as we have for any of the millions of “dumb animals” we experiment upon every year.
So, here goes. I thought I should write this book as, in part, an attempt to save my poor future selves (and anyone who has the curiosity) the time and effort I have spent till now just trying to learn stuff which I think is as important as any of the putative “Physical Sciences”. Understand then that I aspire to no less than an explanation of the “Meaning Of Life”, as well as presenting some important models for epistimological analysis (the stuff that took me 30+ years to figure out) that have been hidden, forgotten or have fallen into some theoretical disfavor. But, considering “till now” supposedly encompasses 5,000+ years of personal incarnative existence (incarnations being not necessarily chronologically sequential, but apparently experientially contiguous) this may involve a wealth of data.
OK kids, hold on to your occipital plates and pass the ‘No-Doz’, ‘cause the truth is WAY stranger than fiction (“mind-blowing”, I think, in the original sense of the phrase). What’s more, I can guarantee, that if you can ‘willfully suspend’ your skepticynicism and disbelief, and attempt to apprehend the internal congruence and coherence of the following history, you may well be changed forever: for the stranger, I’m assured; for the better, I’ll contend.
“You Know, Everything You Know Could Be Wrong!”
The above phrase, which I was first made aware of in the 70’s, by the comedy quartet “Firesign Theatre”, is my favorite thought. I say this because I ALWAYS smile at that simple phrase, when thought to myself or stated in mock exasperation to religious fanatics. They don’t get it. Can’t, they might start to doubt, Cultivation of objectivity is rarely at the top of their “To Do’ list The original delivery was quite insouciant and wonderfully expectant - as though the prospect was highly amusing - to try to believe in something you don’t, or stop believing in something you do.
This is one of the most difficult exercises for most people (myself included) to execute with facility and yet important ideas for anyone who values Science and Western Empirical Methodology, critical thinking, ratiocination, deductive analysis, formal Logic, debate, Dysteleological perception and/or exposition, noumenal Solipsism and/or Epiphenomenological Epistemology. If a person cannot detach themselves from ANY personal belief, then conceptualize and believe (with attempted equal fervour) in it opposite,
First, a few groundrules, tools and Mystery Schools: All paradoxes CAN be reconciled: Juxtapose any belief with its opposite, see that they’re just opposite ends of a line drawn between them, then come up with an idea that is true for both of them. Thesis, Antithesis, then Synthesis.
“Is the glass half-empty or half-full?” (Depends on whether you’re drinking or pouring, doesn’t it?!);{> I believe the simple act of attempting to perceive existence from within the framework of a ‘world-view’ much different than that of the dominant paradigm with which we are culturally imprinted is transformative, and can be transcendentally epiphanthetic. “Outer Limits” here we come.
First, an Hermetic Principle to be explicated, illuminating some esoteric history upon which to stretch a fabric of cosmology .
I’ll try to explain as we proceed. The phrase: “As above, so below.” is called “The Principle Of Correspondences” and simply means that if things are related to each other in one way, on any one plane that can be observed, then, the corresponding principles, on any other plane, stand in that same exact relationship. IOW: If the government down here is SNAFU, which it so obviously IS, then the government in “Heaven” is so likewise.
Approximately 250,000 years ago, our planet, and 27 others nearby, in this arm of our galaxy, seceded from the “Galactic Union” (for want of a better term). Our prehistoric ancestors weren’t much involved, being too far down on a cosmic evolutionary scale to be of much help to one side or the other.
Other than the three railgun mass-driven asteroids that destroyed the failed reptile developments (read: sterilized the test tube), the Rebellion, subsequent “Fall” of 1/3 of the Angelic Host, and our planet’s status as one of the secedents has had more to do with the course of human history on Earth than of which it’s possible for me to convince anyone.
The carefully contrived, and successful evolution, of a simian model for ‘soul-vehicle’ development, after the abject failure of no less than 3 previous saurian (reptile-derived) model lines, had finally garnered the local bio-engineering System Administration praise, almost offsetting the disappointing discovery that the viability of a neighboring planet’s primary gene-line (the scions of a mutation in a lemur-like progenitor, and one of the older races extant in this part of the galaxy) was waning; and the aliens we know as “Little Greys” were at zero population growth even back then. Even a lifespan of centuries can’t make up for a gene pool too small, non-diverse and recessively replete from too much tinkering (and inbreeding). If there was such a thing as chromosomal hubris, they had it, in spades.
The ‘Greys’ had served their gen-engineer maker/s less than well throughout their history, being both markedly amoral, and acquisitive. Though good survival skills in ‘bootstrapping’ experimental development schemata (like our own) that utilize Darwinistic ‘natural selection’ ecologies as self-correcting genetic winnowing methodologies, these traits proved ultimately counter-productive to the goal of designing tractable and compliant self-replicating soulvessel livestock/DNA factories.
The ‘Greys’ were still astute, if not prolific, and they realized that only drastic (and perhaps even prohibited) measures would suffice for their survival. Compatible genetic stem-cell material was needed in large quantities, in order to genesplice a robust DNA sequence onto the ‘Greys’ deteriorated one, and sometimes entire worlds with no native sentients were laid waste just to serve the energy and raw material needs of the Greys for a few years.
Along with their surreptitious collection expeditions to primitive worlds like ours that were producing compatible gene-plasm (and for the most part were lacking interstellar or interdimensional travel capabilities - so we couldn’t run OR hide from their predations), they seemed to care nothing for the terror and trauma their criminal sperm and ova poaching produced. Alas, it was all too easy to understand when you realized that they used us like we use lab rats, and, apparently, had as low a regard for our intelligence and right to autonomy as we have for any of the millions of “dumb animals” we experiment upon every year.
Monday, December 26, 2005
Just My Luck (parenpatethetically speaking)
Dude,
Just a letter at Christmas to catch you up on what has happened to me over the past year, with regard to our former home in hippieschoolbusRVParkSedonazona.
Did I ever tell you that Noel (John Schroder's girlfriend) told me she was in love with me the last time I was in Sedona? (She had given me hints when I had gone through there before in 2002, before she was hooked up with John.) I didn't know what to do seeing as, in late 2004, she was 5 months pregnant at the time with (supposedly) Schroder's kid.
This all happened last Nov. I had gone down to AZ after deciding to move from Golden 'cause there were too many tweakers where I lived (they even stealing the validation stickers off license plates - so everybody in the neighborhood had to slice them with a razor so that they would come off in little pieces and do the theives no good - stuff like that) and I had angered the local authorities (I had an actual price on my head - offered by the local undercover drug cops for someone to plant meth-lab equipment or precursors in my house) with my attempts to help (because of my having been, at one time or another, addicted to every drug imaginable - except heroin - myself) these pathetic sots kick their addictions, and resist illegal encroachments (because of all my street resistance experience in Berkeley after I dropped out of UC there in '71) on their 4th. Amendment Rights (warrentless searches etc.).
I was going back to Golden, CO, from Sedona, AZ, to pick up my Machinist's tools 'cause I had a few job offers in Northern California if I could just show up there, when, the night I was leaving, Noel told everybody at the table (down in the big house at the bottom of Art Barn Rd. by Oak Creek below Hawkeye RV Park where John lives now) that she was in love with me. John was sitting right there and I didn't really know what to do or say (the way I see it I am honor-bound NOT to intrude upon a committed relationship), so I just left. I drove out the next day thinking that I would go get my tools and stop back in on my way through Sedona after thinking the situation through on the road. I would definately have scooped her up and run with her if the situation had been any different.
I had talked to my ex, Anita, on the phone about the Bus (which, at the time I left, was still sitting in storage at Krazy K RV in Camp Verde). She was living with that guy Mike - the blonde male nurse with the bad case of rosacea - and working bundling sage for Desert Dancer and wanted to sell the Bus back to me for $3000.00 (after I had just given it to her) because she needed new teeth (having lost all of her own). I left without seeing her trying to fetch my tools and get back so that I could figure out what to do about Noel.
Unfortunately, fate intervened when my car blew up, on the way back to CA, in Trinidad CO (NOT the Subaru parts capital of the world!) and therein lies a tale for another time that proves to me, at least, that this whole ordeal is still being orchestrated by my Soul(Essence) for the purposes of its own growth, and that my continued existance, if not my happiness, is necessary for its selfish karmic purposes. I was stuck there, in a motel in downtown (sic) Trinidad, having used parts UPS-ed to me from wrecking yards in Albequerque and beyondfor a few momnths and then, when I finally put the engine back together, it was the middle of the winter (Jan., 2005) and I had a job offer up here in Fort Collins. So, rather than attempt to get all the way to No. CA (1300 miles), I drove up here (300 miles) where I have been working, paying off the IRS, and saving up money for a new car ever since.
I have tried to get in touch with Noel (wrote John a letter, tried to find Hawkeye's e-mail address, etc.) but with no luck. I haven't called there (I do still know the number) because John never answered my letter and got back in touch with me, AND, evidently, he never wanted Noel to hook up with me anyway (AND I never really knew if I was ready for the responsibility of a wife thirty years younger than I and a baby who was the alleged progeny of an old friend).
Anyway, that's my story and I'm sticking to it. I'm still alone and lonely - hopelessly so. Hope you and yours have a great New Year (anything'll be better than mine, I'm sure.) - The Dalf
Just a letter at Christmas to catch you up on what has happened to me over the past year, with regard to our former home in hippieschoolbusRVParkSedonazona.
Did I ever tell you that Noel (John Schroder's girlfriend) told me she was in love with me the last time I was in Sedona? (She had given me hints when I had gone through there before in 2002, before she was hooked up with John.) I didn't know what to do seeing as, in late 2004, she was 5 months pregnant at the time with (supposedly) Schroder's kid.
This all happened last Nov. I had gone down to AZ after deciding to move from Golden 'cause there were too many tweakers where I lived (they even stealing the validation stickers off license plates - so everybody in the neighborhood had to slice them with a razor so that they would come off in little pieces and do the theives no good - stuff like that) and I had angered the local authorities (I had an actual price on my head - offered by the local undercover drug cops for someone to plant meth-lab equipment or precursors in my house) with my attempts to help (because of my having been, at one time or another, addicted to every drug imaginable - except heroin - myself) these pathetic sots kick their addictions, and resist illegal encroachments (because of all my street resistance experience in Berkeley after I dropped out of UC there in '71) on their 4th. Amendment Rights (warrentless searches etc.).
I was going back to Golden, CO, from Sedona, AZ, to pick up my Machinist's tools 'cause I had a few job offers in Northern California if I could just show up there, when, the night I was leaving, Noel told everybody at the table (down in the big house at the bottom of Art Barn Rd. by Oak Creek below Hawkeye RV Park where John lives now) that she was in love with me. John was sitting right there and I didn't really know what to do or say (the way I see it I am honor-bound NOT to intrude upon a committed relationship), so I just left. I drove out the next day thinking that I would go get my tools and stop back in on my way through Sedona after thinking the situation through on the road. I would definately have scooped her up and run with her if the situation had been any different.
I had talked to my ex, Anita, on the phone about the Bus (which, at the time I left, was still sitting in storage at Krazy K RV in Camp Verde). She was living with that guy Mike - the blonde male nurse with the bad case of rosacea - and working bundling sage for Desert Dancer and wanted to sell the Bus back to me for $3000.00 (after I had just given it to her) because she needed new teeth (having lost all of her own). I left without seeing her trying to fetch my tools and get back so that I could figure out what to do about Noel.
Unfortunately, fate intervened when my car blew up, on the way back to CA, in Trinidad CO (NOT the Subaru parts capital of the world!) and therein lies a tale for another time that proves to me, at least, that this whole ordeal is still being orchestrated by my Soul(Essence) for the purposes of its own growth, and that my continued existance, if not my happiness, is necessary for its selfish karmic purposes. I was stuck there, in a motel in downtown (sic) Trinidad, having used parts UPS-ed to me from wrecking yards in Albequerque and beyondfor a few momnths and then, when I finally put the engine back together, it was the middle of the winter (Jan., 2005) and I had a job offer up here in Fort Collins. So, rather than attempt to get all the way to No. CA (1300 miles), I drove up here (300 miles) where I have been working, paying off the IRS, and saving up money for a new car ever since.
I have tried to get in touch with Noel (wrote John a letter, tried to find Hawkeye's e-mail address, etc.) but with no luck. I haven't called there (I do still know the number) because John never answered my letter and got back in touch with me, AND, evidently, he never wanted Noel to hook up with me anyway (AND I never really knew if I was ready for the responsibility of a wife thirty years younger than I and a baby who was the alleged progeny of an old friend).
Anyway, that's my story and I'm sticking to it. I'm still alone and lonely - hopelessly so. Hope you and yours have a great New Year (anything'll be better than mine, I'm sure.) - The Dalf
Wednesday, December 21, 2005
A Wiccan Christmas Card
The Season Of Supposed Good Cheer
Well folks, once again, it is that time of year.
So let me tell you all a story, steeped, ages deep, in vainglory,
about this season of supposed good cheer:
Long, long ago when this world was quite young,
most people believed in a religion that said man and nature were one.
The symbol of this synthesis was half-animal and half man.
A totally harmless, flute playing sprite who reveled in life,
worshiping only the light, and all the folk called him—Pan.
Goat horned and hooved was he, a simple illustration, you see,
of the wide world in balance, nature and human life in close harmony.
But then a new religion arose, calling the innocent old faith perfidy,
based upon a concept of life as anthro(as opposed to eco)centricity.
With intolerance was it rife, and after its god it did hight—Christianity.
Thereupon, the folk all were told (andforced to say it was true)
that all the old ways were wrong, that the new god was so strong.
Thus the god of the older faith became the “devil” of the new!
Gross cruelty and persecution did then begin, and thereafter did ensue
the evil times, “The Dark Ages”, and more all should, to this day, rue.
So for all the gentle souls who were tortured, or at the stake burned,
for believing intheir religion, for persevering about Nature to care,
let us offer up a paean (or call it a prayer) to whatever god you dare:
that from theocentricity, hatred and bigotry be all religions turned;
that, no longer should anyone, because of their faith, have to fear!
Then this season might truly be, for all , one of good cheer!
Well folks, once again, it is that time of year.
So let me tell you all a story, steeped, ages deep, in vainglory,
about this season of supposed good cheer:
Long, long ago when this world was quite young,
most people believed in a religion that said man and nature were one.
The symbol of this synthesis was half-animal and half man.
A totally harmless, flute playing sprite who reveled in life,
worshiping only the light, and all the folk called him—Pan.
Goat horned and hooved was he, a simple illustration, you see,
of the wide world in balance, nature and human life in close harmony.
But then a new religion arose, calling the innocent old faith perfidy,
based upon a concept of life as anthro(as opposed to eco)centricity.
With intolerance was it rife, and after its god it did hight—Christianity.
Thereupon, the folk all were told (andforced to say it was true)
that all the old ways were wrong, that the new god was so strong.
Thus the god of the older faith became the “devil” of the new!
Gross cruelty and persecution did then begin, and thereafter did ensue
the evil times, “The Dark Ages”, and more all should, to this day, rue.
So for all the gentle souls who were tortured, or at the stake burned,
for believing intheir religion, for persevering about Nature to care,
let us offer up a paean (or call it a prayer) to whatever god you dare:
that from theocentricity, hatred and bigotry be all religions turned;
that, no longer should anyone, because of their faith, have to fear!
Then this season might truly be, for all , one of good cheer!
Monday, December 19, 2005
A Pagan Christmas Card
Midwinter's Eve Again
This season, hight “Christmas”, has rolled round once more
And we’d like to remind you, as you’re shopping in stores,
That long ‘fore religion's we know celebrated this rite,
Down through thousands of years, allaying all fears:
The Winter Solstice a pagan holiday was, all day and all night.
Folks stayed up to celebrate, till dawn, with their friends.
Making sure Sun would come back, again and again.
Through cold rain and snow, ‘round fires all night long,
They sang songs and waited, misty breath unabated:
A vigil fair maintained, assuring naught would go wrong.
Thus we wish you good fortune, good cheer and fine plight,
And we wish so, remembrance, of this night’s true respite:
From the forces of Darkness, stagnation’s requite.
Enlightenment we evoke, from ignorance to invoke:
“Be excellent to each other!” and “Party down!”, it's your right!
This season, hight “Christmas”, has rolled round once more
And we’d like to remind you, as you’re shopping in stores,
That long ‘fore religion's we know celebrated this rite,
Down through thousands of years, allaying all fears:
The Winter Solstice a pagan holiday was, all day and all night.
Folks stayed up to celebrate, till dawn, with their friends.
Making sure Sun would come back, again and again.
Through cold rain and snow, ‘round fires all night long,
They sang songs and waited, misty breath unabated:
A vigil fair maintained, assuring naught would go wrong.
Thus we wish you good fortune, good cheer and fine plight,
And we wish so, remembrance, of this night’s true respite:
From the forces of Darkness, stagnation’s requite.
Enlightenment we evoke, from ignorance to invoke:
“Be excellent to each other!” and “Party down!”, it's your right!
Tuesday, December 13, 2005
Sequipedalien Paronomasia, cont.
. . . Things just got stranger and stranger though. I ran into my 43rd wife
there, sporting new mams (she, not me), and a new beau (some codpiece-enhanced crackreek© CPA from Tierra Del Fuego North©, with a contiguwuss© eyebrow and betelnutrotted© plasteeth), at the nightly ‘JackoffJill Disco’©; humped them both perverunctoreally© (for Deco-rhum’s© sake) and ended up whipped and wayoverhung© at the Club’s Breakfastorgybar gimme-Buffet© trying to choke down a plate of ‘MagnoliaThunderpussy(©)Pooptarts’© and fresh jizcream©, while unSteadmanly dodgering© the OTTOmaided© cat-o-mime-tails© wilding Elviituvla’s© that were working the buffetline.
It was then that I had my now much valleywho-Op-ed© epiepiphany©, in an effuallgent© flash of agenbitinwitsitu©-IRMWsckt©-shortedtoground-threw-brainspam© so perspirinvidiouscicacious© that if froze the Synthlymph© in my stunned and reeling hydro-enSETHalamic© AIemplants©!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! - :
. . . “THE BANNED”©!!!!!!!!!!!!
I HAD TO PUT “THE BANNED”© BACK TOGETHER AGAIN!!!!!!!!!!
I was on a MISSION FROM COD!!!!!! I had regained my Guerrilla WittgenSteiner© cummingsynsenessence© of NOHthrupFryedlike© centracontraility© of mythooze©, and myonaninkarnakitive© concupissantequiproseleGaiaSet-E©!!!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!GNARLYASSFASTANDSLIPFINFREECOOLDOODY©!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
WAYRADITWAS, and well, the rest is herstory, as y’ll know, but those were theodoronodaze© my frskens, and that was how it all CAymendooBBing@. I gHesse© chew jest ad two Bea “ARThiere”©, don’cha’gnome©, don’cha’gnoumenon©! It’s just like Tiny Dr. Tim and/or Gandalf said, longague© in Fairway Park: ‘We’ve already won, all that’s left is the moppin’ up.”! The viewture will be shapesifted by GrindingrungrunniongrinninAOLollywaillin© young ThrasheRs with wetwirednetskateboards©.
{IMNSHO, there’s no reasonably probable [IOW: none now having greater than what I calcululate© to be an 11% (±2%) chance of consensocioccurrence© (percentages having permutatively decreased in conformance with the vaticinaderivation© of a geomatriaxially© continuiguous© AINcontraverticestringfractal-inaccessationablequationmodel© since ‘65)] bifurconcatenation©/line-of-’futurehistory’-force-vector-sum that will escape the substantive influence of of the 60’s, so get over it, already, all you fundittoheads and nostalgia buffs.} Progress, don’t repress or regress. ‘YAH don’t need TA wHETherman, for ‘lo, ‘WITCH-WAY’ this wind blows.’} -J- );{>
All comments cheerfully solicited - just a short one this, but this is what I feel I do best, I can, and will, if asked, define and/or explain any of the Neologisms hereinbefore created/used, and some of the polyentendre. Please though, be patient, I do have a “just-a-cog-in-the-gears-of-the-GNP” stultifyingly non-creative day job and some scant semblance of a life. Namaste.
*BTW - The Test: How many of the identified new words above can be attributed to citable sources previous to this publication? How does a Neologist make money from Neology? I haven’t a clue. Do you? Anyway, “(t)hank you for encouraging my behavior.” *
there, sporting new mams (she, not me), and a new beau (some codpiece-enhanced crackreek© CPA from Tierra Del Fuego North©, with a contiguwuss© eyebrow and betelnutrotted© plasteeth), at the nightly ‘JackoffJill Disco’©; humped them both perverunctoreally© (for Deco-rhum’s© sake) and ended up whipped and wayoverhung© at the Club’s Breakfastorgybar gimme-Buffet© trying to choke down a plate of ‘MagnoliaThunderpussy(©)Pooptarts’© and fresh jizcream©, while unSteadmanly dodgering© the OTTOmaided© cat-o-mime-tails© wilding Elviituvla’s© that were working the buffetline.
It was then that I had my now much valleywho-Op-ed© epiepiphany©, in an effuallgent© flash of agenbitinwitsitu©-IRMWsckt©-shortedtoground-threw-brainspam© so perspirinvidiouscicacious© that if froze the Synthlymph© in my stunned and reeling hydro-enSETHalamic© AIemplants©!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! - :
. . . “THE BANNED”©!!!!!!!!!!!!
I HAD TO PUT “THE BANNED”© BACK TOGETHER AGAIN!!!!!!!!!!
I was on a MISSION FROM COD!!!!!! I had regained my Guerrilla WittgenSteiner© cummingsynsenessence© of NOHthrupFryedlike© centracontraility© of mythooze©, and myonaninkarnakitive© concupissantequiproseleGaiaSet-E©!!!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!GNARLYASSFASTANDSLIPFINFREECOOLDOODY©!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
WAYRADITWAS, and well, the rest is herstory, as y’ll know, but those were theodoronodaze© my frskens, and that was how it all CAymendooBBing@. I gHesse© chew jest ad two Bea “ARThiere”©, don’cha’gnome©, don’cha’gnoumenon©! It’s just like Tiny Dr. Tim and/or Gandalf said, longague© in Fairway Park: ‘We’ve already won, all that’s left is the moppin’ up.”! The viewture will be shapesifted by GrindingrungrunniongrinninAOLollywaillin© young ThrasheRs with wetwirednetskateboards©.
{IMNSHO, there’s no reasonably probable [IOW: none now having greater than what I calcululate© to be an 11% (±2%) chance of consensocioccurrence© (percentages having permutatively decreased in conformance with the vaticinaderivation© of a geomatriaxially© continuiguous© AINcontraverticestringfractal-inaccessationablequationmodel© since ‘65)] bifurconcatenation©/line-of-’futurehistory’-force-vector-sum that will escape the substantive influence of of the 60’s, so get over it, already, all you fundittoheads and nostalgia buffs.} Progress, don’t repress or regress. ‘YAH don’t need TA wHETherman, for ‘lo, ‘WITCH-WAY’ this wind blows.’} -J- );{>
All comments cheerfully solicited - just a short one this, but this is what I feel I do best, I can, and will, if asked, define and/or explain any of the Neologisms hereinbefore created/used, and some of the polyentendre. Please though, be patient, I do have a “just-a-cog-in-the-gears-of-the-GNP” stultifyingly non-creative day job and some scant semblance of a life. Namaste.
*BTW - The Test: How many of the identified new words above can be attributed to citable sources previous to this publication? How does a Neologist make money from Neology? I haven’t a clue. Do you? Anyway, “(t)hank you for encouraging my behavior.” *
Sunday, November 13, 2005
GreyWolf (for Anna)
GreyWolf
Under skies leaden
GreyWolf goes hunting,
his future tracking through days of haze . . .
. . . and if it were caught and slain,
how could that be?
Metaphorescent and red on the snow;
what would to be done then?
Promulgate the past with endless loops of leaps,
chasing that which has been
because that which will be is dead now-
can it then be
a fugue state of starvation
temporally?
Surely . . .
. . . unless,
pursuing, past sophistry turning
in a curve,
cramped and panting;
that which was spurns
purpose and presently
is\will be
infinity free.
As . . .
. . .under skies leaden
GreyWolf goes hunting,
the future tracking through days of haze.
Under skies leaden
GreyWolf goes hunting,
his future tracking through days of haze . . .
. . . and if it were caught and slain,
how could that be?
Metaphorescent and red on the snow;
what would to be done then?
Promulgate the past with endless loops of leaps,
chasing that which has been
because that which will be is dead now-
can it then be
a fugue state of starvation
temporally?
Surely . . .
. . . unless,
pursuing, past sophistry turning
in a curve,
cramped and panting;
that which was spurns
purpose and presently
is\will be
infinity free.
As . . .
. . .under skies leaden
GreyWolf goes hunting,
the future tracking through days of haze.
Saturday, November 05, 2005
Bodhisattva
The Buddha's first words, upon his emergence from his mother's womb supposedly were: "I have come to free all mankind from suffering." Noble ideal, huge undertaking, partial success, perhaps inexacting apprehension of the true cause of suffering. I have come to believe, and hence am engaged writing this blog, that the cause is BOTH the architecture AND the Architect of material existance.
In Tibetan Buddhism, a Bodhisattva is anyone who is motivated by compassion and seeks enlightenment not only for him/herself but also for everyone else, and, for some, a vow not to 'cycle-off' the 'Wheel of Dharma" until ALL can do so has been taken and motivates incarnation after incarnation.
Now the smart thing for anyone who awakes within a lifetime like this to a sense of 'samshara' (being-in-the-world-but-not-of-the-world) is to, as quickly as possible,
analyse - to the best of one's abilities - the quickest way to accomplish this aim, and, to borrow a phrase from a famous redneck comic: "Git 'er done"! So am I attempting to do.
Part of my particular path to the conclusion that our existential raison d'etre is inextricably linked with the oppressive need of our Souls for Growth, as it were, and that need causes each and every life, for each and every one of us, to be an enforced sacrifice of such contumaciously wrought circumstance that one must conclude that both the very nature of corporeal manifestation, AND whatever it was that concatenated such a system into being was seriously lacking in moral and ethical reflection, was the study of Christianity from a "X-Files" point of view.
The idea that the (perhaps) fractal nature of the impingement of beings BEYOND the perception of our universe we are capable of with our 5 senses necessarily imbues them with some sort of "divinity" is a solopsism so insidious and pernicious as to poison our understanding of the possible gallimaufry of multifarious permutations of descriptions of reality that could be used as lenses for our understanding of our place in the omniverse and said omniverse's structure itself.
Just as we are (self-conscious) beings, trapped by the constraints (Laws) of Physics at the bottom of a gravity-well, kept from apprehending the preponderant nature of the universe (space is a mostly a vacuum, matter is an exception to this rule, etc. etc.) by our spatial limitations, so I believe, are our minds constrained by a gravity-well of inculcated religious and philosophical limitation from perceiving the truer (that is, more in conformance with a preponderance of the data) implications bidden by the designed trap that our limited sensorium has placed us within, if we let the hubris of conditioned delusions-of-grandeur blind us to the possibilities inherent within a world view that posits the possibility of existance beyond our self-awareness, and the (I believe) PROBABILITY that these "ineffable" existances could be using us, say better KEEPING us, in durance vile, for the glorification of their own ends.
Well, "To each his onus.", I have always said, and thus and so, I guess I have my work cut out for me - but I shall endeavour to persevere. The simplest truths seem the hardest to communicate (QUICK: explain gravity to yourself RIGHT NOW, in your head! . . . Did you involve any inverse square ratios in your explanation? And if so, how and why?) . . . see what I mean?
In Tibetan Buddhism, a Bodhisattva is anyone who is motivated by compassion and seeks enlightenment not only for him/herself but also for everyone else, and, for some, a vow not to 'cycle-off' the 'Wheel of Dharma" until ALL can do so has been taken and motivates incarnation after incarnation.
Now the smart thing for anyone who awakes within a lifetime like this to a sense of 'samshara' (being-in-the-world-but-not-of-the-world) is to, as quickly as possible,
analyse - to the best of one's abilities - the quickest way to accomplish this aim, and, to borrow a phrase from a famous redneck comic: "Git 'er done"! So am I attempting to do.
Part of my particular path to the conclusion that our existential raison d'etre is inextricably linked with the oppressive need of our Souls for Growth, as it were, and that need causes each and every life, for each and every one of us, to be an enforced sacrifice of such contumaciously wrought circumstance that one must conclude that both the very nature of corporeal manifestation, AND whatever it was that concatenated such a system into being was seriously lacking in moral and ethical reflection, was the study of Christianity from a "X-Files" point of view.
The idea that the (perhaps) fractal nature of the impingement of beings BEYOND the perception of our universe we are capable of with our 5 senses necessarily imbues them with some sort of "divinity" is a solopsism so insidious and pernicious as to poison our understanding of the possible gallimaufry of multifarious permutations of descriptions of reality that could be used as lenses for our understanding of our place in the omniverse and said omniverse's structure itself.
Just as we are (self-conscious) beings, trapped by the constraints (Laws) of Physics at the bottom of a gravity-well, kept from apprehending the preponderant nature of the universe (space is a mostly a vacuum, matter is an exception to this rule, etc. etc.) by our spatial limitations, so I believe, are our minds constrained by a gravity-well of inculcated religious and philosophical limitation from perceiving the truer (that is, more in conformance with a preponderance of the data) implications bidden by the designed trap that our limited sensorium has placed us within, if we let the hubris of conditioned delusions-of-grandeur blind us to the possibilities inherent within a world view that posits the possibility of existance beyond our self-awareness, and the (I believe) PROBABILITY that these "ineffable" existances could be using us, say better KEEPING us, in durance vile, for the glorification of their own ends.
Well, "To each his onus.", I have always said, and thus and so, I guess I have my work cut out for me - but I shall endeavour to persevere. The simplest truths seem the hardest to communicate (QUICK: explain gravity to yourself RIGHT NOW, in your head! . . . Did you involve any inverse square ratios in your explanation? And if so, how and why?) . . . see what I mean?
Sunday, October 23, 2005
1 Morsatyrdanite
(4/1/'96)
Smallroom airpressure nosebleed soundwall tautaureally atmoshfearachewrecktonic. Cigabarettesmokearabasques shaped by eonoverdriven airtones rise, as conchordilatedcilia writhe, whelming enrapt in a subsemihemidemisonic tinnitususurrus. The Akashic Records distort, nanomomentearaholy trying to contain the burgeoning noiseffulgent waveforms.
More hair per capita than Berserkusly in its hey-heydaze and no existential espresso dilemmalamas to dissemble and dissasimple. Any tonal comprehension fleesfastfowardpastnueuralnets longsinceblown from maxinputpowders and continual sensauraloverload.
Ah ROCKANDROLL - Goddaman Rockandruckingfoll - and Niles legendary Station, during its last year - April Fool’sday, no foolin’, suckin’ up booze and heavymetalhammer-ons till dawn so past “GOPAZZOUTONSUMMUNELSEFOOL” need moranmoranmoron c’mom, c’mon, c’mon . . . these soundwaves as radioswells willrushintospace, far past good taste and apace the speed of thought caught in a metalnightenregaleforcewind of smallclubthrashsoul.
(Just think - thistuff’le speed outward from Earth forever, bigriffrippin’ at the speed-o’-light, out into the cocmos. Tearing gaping holes through diaphanous nebulae, aeuphonically wastewailing past gasping pulsars, perhaps even setting off some resonaolient scintillulullation in serene solar winds as it roars decadbescadent and godgoadingly loud offandaway.);{>
The ghost of poordeaddeaf Beethovan rotates on his astralaxes at a megamillion R.P.M. and SidVicious’s essence smiles the ectoribaldricraplasmically vacant grin of the theaetherically pithed, while everonward, a mobiustrippinkleinbottlenecknote
imbeds itself on the event horizon as I scream for another beer and count myself lucky to be still here and hearing still on 1morsatyrdanite.
Smallroom airpressure nosebleed soundwall tautaureally atmoshfearachewrecktonic. Cigabarettesmokearabasques shaped by eonoverdriven airtones rise, as conchordilatedcilia writhe, whelming enrapt in a subsemihemidemisonic tinnitususurrus. The Akashic Records distort, nanomomentearaholy trying to contain the burgeoning noiseffulgent waveforms.
More hair per capita than Berserkusly in its hey-heydaze and no existential espresso dilemmalamas to dissemble and dissasimple. Any tonal comprehension fleesfastfowardpastnueuralnets longsinceblown from maxinputpowders and continual sensauraloverload.
Ah ROCKANDROLL - Goddaman Rockandruckingfoll - and Niles legendary Station, during its last year - April Fool’sday, no foolin’, suckin’ up booze and heavymetalhammer-ons till dawn so past “GOPAZZOUTONSUMMUNELSEFOOL” need moranmoranmoron c’mom, c’mon, c’mon . . . these soundwaves as radioswells willrushintospace, far past good taste and apace the speed of thought caught in a metalnightenregaleforcewind of smallclubthrashsoul.
(Just think - thistuff’le speed outward from Earth forever, bigriffrippin’ at the speed-o’-light, out into the cocmos. Tearing gaping holes through diaphanous nebulae, aeuphonically wastewailing past gasping pulsars, perhaps even setting off some resonaolient scintillulullation in serene solar winds as it roars decadbescadent and godgoadingly loud offandaway.);{>
The ghost of poordeaddeaf Beethovan rotates on his astralaxes at a megamillion R.P.M. and SidVicious’s essence smiles the ectoribaldricraplasmically vacant grin of the theaetherically pithed, while everonward, a mobiustrippinkleinbottlenecknote
imbeds itself on the event horizon as I scream for another beer and count myself lucky to be still here and hearing still on 1morsatyrdanite.
Tuesday, October 04, 2005
My Sutra: Separation Anxiety
When a Soul has exhausted all of the relatively mundane and obvious goads to "growth through cruelty" (such as physical torture of the incarnation - In As Many Obscene and Sick Ways As Possible - hereafter IAMOSWAP; murder of the corporeal form, IAMOSWAP; sexual abuse of the individual, IAMOSWAP, both as an adult and as a child; incarnation as a physically or mentally ill personality, IAMOSWAP; etc., etc.) the subtlety of contumacious pusillanimity in lifepath-opportunity construction becomes rather esoteric in it methodologies for presenting the individual with pain-and-difficulties-to-be-transcended-in-order-for-the-Soul-to-grow. One of these methodologies is Separation Anxiety. This is the 'sutra' of thislife, for me.
A 'sutra', as I understand it, is a thread of experiential similarity that runs through one's life and defines (if one can perceive it properly) a lesson one is being forced to learn, or a remedial conditioning that one's Soul wishes to have inculcated far past the chance of evasion or forgetfulness, throughout an individual lifetime.
For me, my abandonment by my birth-mother, and the consequent loss of pheromonal bonding inherent in the mother-child-suckling/weaning process, was used (along with my Natal chart's Saturn conjunct the Ascendant aspect - which one prominent Asrologer called: "The educational power of pain.") to lay out for me a series of betrayals and abandonments of me, by those I most loved and by whom I most desired to be loved, stretching through 35 years adult relationships including one marriage and two 4 year pair-bonds, as well as numerous less lengthy romances.
Now the case can be made (and has been) that one CHOOSES one's romantic partners and that the fault in faulty choice is the individual's, but when one is, from birth, (in some cases, like mine, on a level so thoroughly sub-and/or-un-conscious that it takes years of therapy or assiduous self-scrutiny to discern) conditioned to choose those that will betray and abandon one, the point is well rendered moot, and, I say, the responsibility is the Soul's, and the consequences lead one to conclude that the experience is considered necessary and educational by the opprobrium of the cruel and sadistic Essence responsible for the construction of every lifetime's circumstances. More on this upcoming . . .
A 'sutra', as I understand it, is a thread of experiential similarity that runs through one's life and defines (if one can perceive it properly) a lesson one is being forced to learn, or a remedial conditioning that one's Soul wishes to have inculcated far past the chance of evasion or forgetfulness, throughout an individual lifetime.
For me, my abandonment by my birth-mother, and the consequent loss of pheromonal bonding inherent in the mother-child-suckling/weaning process, was used (along with my Natal chart's Saturn conjunct the Ascendant aspect - which one prominent Asrologer called: "The educational power of pain.") to lay out for me a series of betrayals and abandonments of me, by those I most loved and by whom I most desired to be loved, stretching through 35 years adult relationships including one marriage and two 4 year pair-bonds, as well as numerous less lengthy romances.
Now the case can be made (and has been) that one CHOOSES one's romantic partners and that the fault in faulty choice is the individual's, but when one is, from birth, (in some cases, like mine, on a level so thoroughly sub-and/or-un-conscious that it takes years of therapy or assiduous self-scrutiny to discern) conditioned to choose those that will betray and abandon one, the point is well rendered moot, and, I say, the responsibility is the Soul's, and the consequences lead one to conclude that the experience is considered necessary and educational by the opprobrium of the cruel and sadistic Essence responsible for the construction of every lifetime's circumstances. More on this upcoming . . .
Sunday, September 25, 2005
And Now For Something Completely Depressing
(Hello my friends. save this one for when you're 'up', and into trying to understand the experience OF despair - it's one of my better works, but, unfortunately, its quite depressing. . . . oh well, "Pain Pays", as they say);{>
Oigolo Pablo, y lo siento.
My lips like truculent tumescent clamshells,
bent on expelling that blue otherworldliness
that is sky,
purse and blow,
bilabially fricative IN seahoarsely proportions
(as real as romance was ever my wont-
AS WELL YOU KNOW);{>,
see me, imagine th
Oigolo Pablo, y lo siento.
My lips like truculent tumescent clamshells,
bent on expelling that blue otherworldliness
that is sky,
purse and blow,
bilabially fricative IN seahoarsely proportions
(as real as romance was ever my wont-
AS WELL YOU KNOW);{>,
see me, imagine th
Tuesday, August 30, 2005
Lizards Lay In Wait For The Wagons
I certainly don't seem to live in the same world most people do, and considering my personal history it's no wonder. Most people don't even know what neology is, and surely aren't able to pronounce epiphenoumenomenology, let alone cope with the concept of repressive de-sublimation as an inculcated cultural gloss. So when you top that off with my rampant Gnostic evangelism and extensive friendships with Angelic beings (on both sides of the "Fall") and numerous sundry wiccans who run the gamut of colorful persuasions you may begin to gain a sense of my idiososynchratic onus (To each his onus, eh?) and thence & hence, my diatrilemma:
Lizards lay in wait for the wagon.
Routed through rutted road
the neighing horses hurried
the two “norms”
toward their destination,
(a supposed bastion of
non-mutated sanity
within a world
gone genetically gravid
with possibilities).
Into the twisted trees
they turned
never knowing the passions
that burned
within the breasts
of the beasts
that slithered and hissed,
hidden in mists,
a scant semblance
of sanity
searing their synapses
with a blinding blood-lust.
Onward the wagon then
entering the murky fen,
the high pitched sibilance
of snake syllables
surround the travelers
in a turbid confusion
of scaled arms
and swords.
Surging over the wain
writhing
and wresting the life
from the two wayfarers
first
and ransacking the cargo
at leisure later.
Human-haters
yet somehow certain,
that those mindless impulses
that impel them
have purpose
and purvey
a better way
for the world to be
. . .
see:
to violence and destruction
they would not have been liable
had the artifacts they carried
been anything other than
(what incisive saurians blamed
for the sorry state of the world
they’d inherited, and causally defamed) . . .
. . . a thousand moldy copies
of Gideons’ Bible!
Lizards lay in wait for the wagon.
Routed through rutted road
the neighing horses hurried
the two “norms”
toward their destination,
(a supposed bastion of
non-mutated sanity
within a world
gone genetically gravid
with possibilities).
Into the twisted trees
they turned
never knowing the passions
that burned
within the breasts
of the beasts
that slithered and hissed,
hidden in mists,
a scant semblance
of sanity
searing their synapses
with a blinding blood-lust.
Onward the wagon then
entering the murky fen,
the high pitched sibilance
of snake syllables
surround the travelers
in a turbid confusion
of scaled arms
and swords.
Surging over the wain
writhing
and wresting the life
from the two wayfarers
first
and ransacking the cargo
at leisure later.
Human-haters
yet somehow certain,
that those mindless impulses
that impel them
have purpose
and purvey
a better way
for the world to be
. . .
see:
to violence and destruction
they would not have been liable
had the artifacts they carried
been anything other than
(what incisive saurians blamed
for the sorry state of the world
they’d inherited, and causally defamed) . . .
. . . a thousand moldy copies
of Gideons’ Bible!
Sunday, August 14, 2005
Atramentaceous, cont.
Let’s say: at the nexus in convergence lines of future probability
(only through erudite analysis empirical becomes evident efficacy)
fractal interfaces form fortuitous in elegiac effulgency.
This perception of time and such apprehension’s an ability,
(seemingly unique and all mine).
Developed pursuing lifetimes of timelines indefagitably
(these cubistic visions select possible paths to serendipity)
I can now comprehensively forefend portents perspicaciously.
Infinitesimally misaligned divergences detail chronology,
(developing as duly defined).
Thus in floccinaucinihilipilifilistic factsimile
(fraught with thoughtforms tightly wrought in taut threnody)
polyentendre’s purview scansive ensues as a scurrilous scatomancy.
So as a spurious paradigm this idiom savant sings a singular chantey:
(herewith in rhyme,
there’s been committed no crime,
I hope you these words ion hyperbole followed
and thought them, perhaps,
asymptotically approaching sublime);{>
(only through erudite analysis empirical becomes evident efficacy)
fractal interfaces form fortuitous in elegiac effulgency.
This perception of time and such apprehension’s an ability,
(seemingly unique and all mine).
Developed pursuing lifetimes of timelines indefagitably
(these cubistic visions select possible paths to serendipity)
I can now comprehensively forefend portents perspicaciously.
Infinitesimally misaligned divergences detail chronology,
(developing as duly defined).
Thus in floccinaucinihilipilifilistic factsimile
(fraught with thoughtforms tightly wrought in taut threnody)
polyentendre’s purview scansive ensues as a scurrilous scatomancy.
So as a spurious paradigm this idiom savant sings a singular chantey:
(herewith in rhyme,
there’s been committed no crime,
I hope you these words ion hyperbole followed
and thought them, perhaps,
asymptotically approaching sublime);{>
Sunday, August 07, 2005
Vainglory And History
A brief look at the treatment of genocide
in the American history of the
Spanish conquest of California.
“History is the propaganda of the victorious”
—Anonymous
“And even I can remember
A day when the historians left blanks in their writings,
I mean for things they didn’t know.”
—Ezra Pound
A few people, perhaps, remember the Tasmanians. A few more may remember that there are no native Tasmanians alive today (by all accounts the last Tasmanian died around 1879). Maybe that’s why they’re memorable at all. I wonder if the Tasmanians would have made much of the fact that they are conspicuous only in their absence.
There have been so many incidents of genocide in the past few centuries what’s one more, give or take? Just in this century alone we have had the following large-scale racial atrocities: the Armenian massacres from 1915-1923, the Algerian and then the Ethiopian struggles in North Africa in the 30’s, the Japanese mass murders of the Chinese in the same decade, that nadir of recent exterminatory horror the Holocaust (the attempted genocide of the Jews by Hitler during World War II), the recent Khmer Rouge extirpations in Cambodia, and the current onslaught against the Paraguayan and Brazilian Indians in South America. One feels as though, like Stephen in Ulysses by James Joyce, history is some nightmare we must wake up from.
But the average person knows little of genocide beyond the word itself and, perhaps, some vague connotation of what Joseph Conrad descried as “The horror, . . .” (Heart of Darkness). What then is genocide? How is it defined and what are some of its characteristics? What is the role of history and of the historian in the chronicling of such monstrous acts? Let us attempt to see.
The Genocide Convention of 1948 at Nuremburg defines genocide in Article II of its Declaration as: “. . . any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group as such: (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group” (Encyclopedia Social Sciences 518).
Even though genocide is a concept that has been codified only in the 20th Century, it can easily be seen that numerous instances have occurred throughout history, (the Trojans in the Iliad and the Tasmanians previously referred to for example). Jean-Paul Sartre writes: “The word ‘genocide’ is relatively new. It was coined by the jurist Raphael Lemkin between the two world wars. But the fact of genocide is as old as humanity. To this day there has been no society protected by its structure from committing that crime. Every case of genocide is a product of history and bears the stamp of the society which has given birth to it” (Sartre 57)
Why are average folk so ignorant of the incidence of these
inglorious acts? And why then is it so difficult to find any information on this most heinous of human crimes? If one searches in one’s local library it will be seen that the most infamous of these instances, the Holocaust, is quite well documented; but all other references to what amounts to the the majority of occurrences don’t add up to one tenth of those that document the perfidy of the Nazis. The blame for this dearth of diatribe should be placed squarely on the shoulders of that class of scriveners known as “Historians”.
It has been said that “History is too serious to be left to the historians.” (Macleod), and as regards these oversights in the written record that case can be well made. But on the other hand one is obliged to learn from history or one will be destined to repeat it.
Historians, thus, can be seen to have a manifold responsibility: that of the delineation of historicity, the tedious and painstaking task of the documentation and subsequent dissemination of data for educational purposes; and also the interpretation and ensuing distribution of this explication, hopefully in some fundamentally non-static and progressively more enlightened fashion, so that as the body of human knowledge and the collection of social contracts governing cultural interaction grow so also should the Historian’s lexicon of criteria grow to encompass the continually evolving state of human understanding.
It can be stated without equivocation or fear of refutation that genocide or attempted genocide is probably the most heinous, morally repugnant offense imaginable or possible in man’s experience and as such is deserving of special consideration in the annals of history and historians. Bearing this in mind, it is then possible for us to, in that light, judge the efficacy of any history or historian. It could even be shown that genocide is historiographically counterproductive in that it destroys ‘primary sources’ (eyewitnesses). Shouldn’t the exposition of such acts of inhumane contumely be of prime importance to the Historian in the guise of educator, and can we indite any particular historical account based upon the single standard of how, when germane, the subject of possible genocide is dealt with?
An illustration of this question and perhaps some answers to it can be found in a perusal of the ongoing controversy surrounding historical accounts of the Spanish (and subsequent Mexican and American) conquest of California and whether the subjugation of the California Indians by the Spanish between 1540 and 1820 was indeed genocide as defined. First, let’s see if any of the Spanish behavior can be construed as genocidal or exculpatory according to the historians and scholars most familiar with the issue.
Unfortunately for our purposes, most of the original accounts of the times were written by people whose objectivity has been called into question. In the book The Missions of California, A Legacy of Genocide, (whose very title suggests the editors view on the subject) the Introduction (page 1) states:
A myth has flourished in California for over a hundred years. It
asserts that the history of this state had its beginnings with
the Franciscan missions. The myth originated in the works of
scholarly propagandists of the Roman Catholic Church. . . .
They did not consider, nor would they believe, that the land
they had reached was already populated, civilized, subject to
authority and law, with a culture and religion of its own. . . .
The myth grew in form and lustre as the modern Catholic
historians continued to propagate it. . . . These clerical
historians were joined, with the American invasion and the
subsequent entry of the region as one of the United States, by
modern English-speaking and English-writing European
ideologist scholars of the state’s governing enclaves. . . .
Textbooks proclaimed that California history begins with the
missions. . . . [recently] American Indian historians . . . have
opened up the knowledge of their own history, and many of the
textbooks have [finally] given some attention to the original
owners and civilizers of this land. Brief paragraphs in some
cases, and short chapters in others have admitted, often
grudgingly, that the Native Indians were indeed the
trailblazers and settlers of this land we know as California.
It should come as no surprise also that up until recently no Indian narratives about the time were available in English, making it really appear as though “History gets thicker as it approaches recent times” (Taylor, bibl.).
Statistically speaking though, there have been many analyses which can be shown to support the notion that the Spanish were guilty of “Deliberately inflicting upon the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;” (Encyclopedia Social Sciences) as mentioned in the definition of genocide.
In Indians of California, The Changing Image, James Rawls states: “During the mission period the native population between San Francisco and San Diego fell from 72,000 to 18,000, a decline of over 75%” (18). It might be relevant to the issue of “intent” to add that many of these deaths were due to venereal disease forced upon the natives through the innumerable rapes of Indian woman by Spaniards, (Rawls 175).
Florence Shipek cites Sherburne Cook in his book The Conflict Between the California Indian and White Civilization in saying:
“. . . Cook found that the overall average crude birth rate [in Southern California] dropped from fourty-five per thousand to thirty-five per thousand, while the decade average mission death rate was between seventy and eighty-five per thousand. No population can survive with an average death rate more than twice the average birth rate from 1769 through 1834” (qtd. in Costo and Costo 38). In other words, the overall data, directly from mission records, indicates a more than 50% decline in the Indian population during the mission years (qtd. in Costo and Costo 39).
In The Other Californians, Prejudice and Discrimination under Spain, Mexico, and the United States, (another telling title), we find the information that “The upshot of the Spanish mission system . . . was a heavy decrease in the numbers of California Indians from an original population of about 300,000 to about 100,000” (Heizer and Almquist 21). There is corroboration of these figures by other historians too numerous too mention here.
In the face of so many indications of a genocidal occurrence of monstrous proportions one searches, in vain, for some scholarly refutation or attempt to ameliorate the gist of this wealth of data. Other than some academic quibbling about the size of the original Indian population one can find no disputation of the facts as stated.
This makes it all the more strange that in the textbook California Civilization (required reading for History 105, a General Education requirement course at Ohlone College) Professor Howard A. Dewitt
nowhere addresses this important question of possible genocide. Certainly it should be within the ‘scope and purview’ of a book on California history, especially considering how many other historians have commented upon it. For some reason Professor Dewitt seems to skirt the issue completely by simply not documenting it. The only hint one gets that something horrible might have happened to the Native Californians is an off-handed remark, one sentence worth in a lecture, that by the turn of this century approximately 250,000 of the 300,000 Indians estimated by most scholars to have inhabited California before the invasion by the Spanish had died.
Only about four full pages of text, in a book of over 300, chronicles the thousands of years of inhabitation by the Native Indians of California. Moreover Professor Dewitt goes on to seemingly demonstrate classic Eurocentricity and cultural bias on page one of a companion text he edited, Readings in California Civilization, by stating that: “. . . the missions provided the key elements in civilizing California’s countryside.” As we have seen previously, some people (including ,I’m sure, the Indians) considered California quite civilized enough!
Even in the single supposed “con” article about the mission system Professor Dewitt has the grudging grace to include in Readings in California Civilization, is replete with what some call “benign bigotry” (Costo and Costo 184). The author of that essay, Jerry Stanley, a Professor of History at California State University at Bakersfield proclaims: “It is not inaccurate to say that before the Spanish arrived the California Indians mostly ate, slept, and made love” (Dewitt et. al. 20).
This appears to be an utterly amazing demonstration of insensitivity and, more to the point, historical bias by the sole author deliberately chosen to be an advocate for the Native Californian point of view in History 105! Why doesn’t Professor Dewitt at least refer his students to some of the tomes cited in this paper for a more balanced view of what, admittedly, is a subject in dispute? At the risk of seeming vituperative, one wonders whether vainglory could have played some part in such paucity of presentation.
Stanley goes on to say that: “The motives of the Franciscans were honorable: to make the Indians good Spaniards and Christians” (Dewitt et. al. 20). Can we ask what is at all honorable about attempting to wrench people piecemeal from their mores, folkways, religions and territories? Can we also ask what is meritorious about such an imposition of cultural chauvinism upon a sovereign, if somewhat less technologically advanced race?
Bearing these different treatments of history in mind we can wonder how well we are preparing for our possible evolution into an undoubtedly more diverse pan-Galactic culture and society. Given our track record (both as humans and as historians) and our propensity for prejudice what may happen if, in the future, we encounter an apparently “primitive” race of extra-terrestrials? Worse yet, what if the aliens consider us to be backward in similar fashion and decide to deal with us according to our own standards of consanguinity and cultural interaction?
Consequently it must, of necessity, be stated that morally ambivalent and vainglorious historians fail in their duty to society and as historians when they neglect to identify and publicize inhumane acts within the compass of their research and review. As a result acts of misanthropic malignancy continue or proliferate, and the prejudicial attitudes responsible for all manner of maliciousness are not dispelled through education and recourse to reason.
Works Cited
Cook, Sherburne. The Conflict Between the California Indian and White Civilization. Berkeley: U. of California P. 1976.
Costo, Rupert, and Jeanette Henry Costo, eds. The Missions of California, Legacy of Genocide, San Francisco: Indian P, 1987.
Dewitt, Howard A. California Civilization, An Interpretation. Dubuque: Kendall/Hunt 1979.
Dewitt, Howard A. ed. Readings in California Civilization. Dubuque: Kendall/Hunt 2cd. ed. 1989.
Heizer, Robert F. and Alan F. Almquist. The Other Californians. Berkeley: U. of California P. 1971.
Macleod, Iain. “Sayings of the Week.” The Observer 16 July 1961.
Pound, Ezra. “Canto XIII.” The cantos of Ezra Pound. New York: New Directions PC. 1970.
Rawls, James. Indians of California, The Changing Image. Norman: U. of Oklahoma P. 1984.
Sartre, Jean-Paul. On Genocide. Boston: Beacon P. 1968.
Shipek, Florence Connolly. “Saints or Oppressors: The Franciscan Missionaries of California.” The Missions of California. Costo and Costo 29-49.
Stanley, Jerry. “Junipero Serra v. the California Indians.” Readings in California Civilization. Dewitt 18-25.
Taylor, A. J. P. Bibliography. English History. Oxford UP. 1965.
“War Crimes.” The International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences. 1968 ed.
in the American history of the
Spanish conquest of California.
“History is the propaganda of the victorious”
—Anonymous
“And even I can remember
A day when the historians left blanks in their writings,
I mean for things they didn’t know.”
—Ezra Pound
A few people, perhaps, remember the Tasmanians. A few more may remember that there are no native Tasmanians alive today (by all accounts the last Tasmanian died around 1879). Maybe that’s why they’re memorable at all. I wonder if the Tasmanians would have made much of the fact that they are conspicuous only in their absence.
There have been so many incidents of genocide in the past few centuries what’s one more, give or take? Just in this century alone we have had the following large-scale racial atrocities: the Armenian massacres from 1915-1923, the Algerian and then the Ethiopian struggles in North Africa in the 30’s, the Japanese mass murders of the Chinese in the same decade, that nadir of recent exterminatory horror the Holocaust (the attempted genocide of the Jews by Hitler during World War II), the recent Khmer Rouge extirpations in Cambodia, and the current onslaught against the Paraguayan and Brazilian Indians in South America. One feels as though, like Stephen in Ulysses by James Joyce, history is some nightmare we must wake up from.
But the average person knows little of genocide beyond the word itself and, perhaps, some vague connotation of what Joseph Conrad descried as “The horror, . . .” (Heart of Darkness). What then is genocide? How is it defined and what are some of its characteristics? What is the role of history and of the historian in the chronicling of such monstrous acts? Let us attempt to see.
The Genocide Convention of 1948 at Nuremburg defines genocide in Article II of its Declaration as: “. . . any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group as such: (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group” (Encyclopedia Social Sciences 518).
Even though genocide is a concept that has been codified only in the 20th Century, it can easily be seen that numerous instances have occurred throughout history, (the Trojans in the Iliad and the Tasmanians previously referred to for example). Jean-Paul Sartre writes: “The word ‘genocide’ is relatively new. It was coined by the jurist Raphael Lemkin between the two world wars. But the fact of genocide is as old as humanity. To this day there has been no society protected by its structure from committing that crime. Every case of genocide is a product of history and bears the stamp of the society which has given birth to it” (Sartre 57)
Why are average folk so ignorant of the incidence of these
inglorious acts? And why then is it so difficult to find any information on this most heinous of human crimes? If one searches in one’s local library it will be seen that the most infamous of these instances, the Holocaust, is quite well documented; but all other references to what amounts to the the majority of occurrences don’t add up to one tenth of those that document the perfidy of the Nazis. The blame for this dearth of diatribe should be placed squarely on the shoulders of that class of scriveners known as “Historians”.
It has been said that “History is too serious to be left to the historians.” (Macleod), and as regards these oversights in the written record that case can be well made. But on the other hand one is obliged to learn from history or one will be destined to repeat it.
Historians, thus, can be seen to have a manifold responsibility: that of the delineation of historicity, the tedious and painstaking task of the documentation and subsequent dissemination of data for educational purposes; and also the interpretation and ensuing distribution of this explication, hopefully in some fundamentally non-static and progressively more enlightened fashion, so that as the body of human knowledge and the collection of social contracts governing cultural interaction grow so also should the Historian’s lexicon of criteria grow to encompass the continually evolving state of human understanding.
It can be stated without equivocation or fear of refutation that genocide or attempted genocide is probably the most heinous, morally repugnant offense imaginable or possible in man’s experience and as such is deserving of special consideration in the annals of history and historians. Bearing this in mind, it is then possible for us to, in that light, judge the efficacy of any history or historian. It could even be shown that genocide is historiographically counterproductive in that it destroys ‘primary sources’ (eyewitnesses). Shouldn’t the exposition of such acts of inhumane contumely be of prime importance to the Historian in the guise of educator, and can we indite any particular historical account based upon the single standard of how, when germane, the subject of possible genocide is dealt with?
An illustration of this question and perhaps some answers to it can be found in a perusal of the ongoing controversy surrounding historical accounts of the Spanish (and subsequent Mexican and American) conquest of California and whether the subjugation of the California Indians by the Spanish between 1540 and 1820 was indeed genocide as defined. First, let’s see if any of the Spanish behavior can be construed as genocidal or exculpatory according to the historians and scholars most familiar with the issue.
Unfortunately for our purposes, most of the original accounts of the times were written by people whose objectivity has been called into question. In the book The Missions of California, A Legacy of Genocide, (whose very title suggests the editors view on the subject) the Introduction (page 1) states:
A myth has flourished in California for over a hundred years. It
asserts that the history of this state had its beginnings with
the Franciscan missions. The myth originated in the works of
scholarly propagandists of the Roman Catholic Church. . . .
They did not consider, nor would they believe, that the land
they had reached was already populated, civilized, subject to
authority and law, with a culture and religion of its own. . . .
The myth grew in form and lustre as the modern Catholic
historians continued to propagate it. . . . These clerical
historians were joined, with the American invasion and the
subsequent entry of the region as one of the United States, by
modern English-speaking and English-writing European
ideologist scholars of the state’s governing enclaves. . . .
Textbooks proclaimed that California history begins with the
missions. . . . [recently] American Indian historians . . . have
opened up the knowledge of their own history, and many of the
textbooks have [finally] given some attention to the original
owners and civilizers of this land. Brief paragraphs in some
cases, and short chapters in others have admitted, often
grudgingly, that the Native Indians were indeed the
trailblazers and settlers of this land we know as California.
It should come as no surprise also that up until recently no Indian narratives about the time were available in English, making it really appear as though “History gets thicker as it approaches recent times” (Taylor, bibl.).
Statistically speaking though, there have been many analyses which can be shown to support the notion that the Spanish were guilty of “Deliberately inflicting upon the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;” (Encyclopedia Social Sciences) as mentioned in the definition of genocide.
In Indians of California, The Changing Image, James Rawls states: “During the mission period the native population between San Francisco and San Diego fell from 72,000 to 18,000, a decline of over 75%” (18). It might be relevant to the issue of “intent” to add that many of these deaths were due to venereal disease forced upon the natives through the innumerable rapes of Indian woman by Spaniards, (Rawls 175).
Florence Shipek cites Sherburne Cook in his book The Conflict Between the California Indian and White Civilization in saying:
“. . . Cook found that the overall average crude birth rate [in Southern California] dropped from fourty-five per thousand to thirty-five per thousand, while the decade average mission death rate was between seventy and eighty-five per thousand. No population can survive with an average death rate more than twice the average birth rate from 1769 through 1834” (qtd. in Costo and Costo 38). In other words, the overall data, directly from mission records, indicates a more than 50% decline in the Indian population during the mission years (qtd. in Costo and Costo 39).
In The Other Californians, Prejudice and Discrimination under Spain, Mexico, and the United States, (another telling title), we find the information that “The upshot of the Spanish mission system . . . was a heavy decrease in the numbers of California Indians from an original population of about 300,000 to about 100,000” (Heizer and Almquist 21). There is corroboration of these figures by other historians too numerous too mention here.
In the face of so many indications of a genocidal occurrence of monstrous proportions one searches, in vain, for some scholarly refutation or attempt to ameliorate the gist of this wealth of data. Other than some academic quibbling about the size of the original Indian population one can find no disputation of the facts as stated.
This makes it all the more strange that in the textbook California Civilization (required reading for History 105, a General Education requirement course at Ohlone College) Professor Howard A. Dewitt
nowhere addresses this important question of possible genocide. Certainly it should be within the ‘scope and purview’ of a book on California history, especially considering how many other historians have commented upon it. For some reason Professor Dewitt seems to skirt the issue completely by simply not documenting it. The only hint one gets that something horrible might have happened to the Native Californians is an off-handed remark, one sentence worth in a lecture, that by the turn of this century approximately 250,000 of the 300,000 Indians estimated by most scholars to have inhabited California before the invasion by the Spanish had died.
Only about four full pages of text, in a book of over 300, chronicles the thousands of years of inhabitation by the Native Indians of California. Moreover Professor Dewitt goes on to seemingly demonstrate classic Eurocentricity and cultural bias on page one of a companion text he edited, Readings in California Civilization, by stating that: “. . . the missions provided the key elements in civilizing California’s countryside.” As we have seen previously, some people (including ,I’m sure, the Indians) considered California quite civilized enough!
Even in the single supposed “con” article about the mission system Professor Dewitt has the grudging grace to include in Readings in California Civilization, is replete with what some call “benign bigotry” (Costo and Costo 184). The author of that essay, Jerry Stanley, a Professor of History at California State University at Bakersfield proclaims: “It is not inaccurate to say that before the Spanish arrived the California Indians mostly ate, slept, and made love” (Dewitt et. al. 20).
This appears to be an utterly amazing demonstration of insensitivity and, more to the point, historical bias by the sole author deliberately chosen to be an advocate for the Native Californian point of view in History 105! Why doesn’t Professor Dewitt at least refer his students to some of the tomes cited in this paper for a more balanced view of what, admittedly, is a subject in dispute? At the risk of seeming vituperative, one wonders whether vainglory could have played some part in such paucity of presentation.
Stanley goes on to say that: “The motives of the Franciscans were honorable: to make the Indians good Spaniards and Christians” (Dewitt et. al. 20). Can we ask what is at all honorable about attempting to wrench people piecemeal from their mores, folkways, religions and territories? Can we also ask what is meritorious about such an imposition of cultural chauvinism upon a sovereign, if somewhat less technologically advanced race?
Bearing these different treatments of history in mind we can wonder how well we are preparing for our possible evolution into an undoubtedly more diverse pan-Galactic culture and society. Given our track record (both as humans and as historians) and our propensity for prejudice what may happen if, in the future, we encounter an apparently “primitive” race of extra-terrestrials? Worse yet, what if the aliens consider us to be backward in similar fashion and decide to deal with us according to our own standards of consanguinity and cultural interaction?
Consequently it must, of necessity, be stated that morally ambivalent and vainglorious historians fail in their duty to society and as historians when they neglect to identify and publicize inhumane acts within the compass of their research and review. As a result acts of misanthropic malignancy continue or proliferate, and the prejudicial attitudes responsible for all manner of maliciousness are not dispelled through education and recourse to reason.
Works Cited
Cook, Sherburne. The Conflict Between the California Indian and White Civilization. Berkeley: U. of California P. 1976.
Costo, Rupert, and Jeanette Henry Costo, eds. The Missions of California, Legacy of Genocide, San Francisco: Indian P, 1987.
Dewitt, Howard A. California Civilization, An Interpretation. Dubuque: Kendall/Hunt 1979.
Dewitt, Howard A. ed. Readings in California Civilization. Dubuque: Kendall/Hunt 2cd. ed. 1989.
Heizer, Robert F. and Alan F. Almquist. The Other Californians. Berkeley: U. of California P. 1971.
Macleod, Iain. “Sayings of the Week.” The Observer 16 July 1961.
Pound, Ezra. “Canto XIII.” The cantos of Ezra Pound. New York: New Directions PC. 1970.
Rawls, James. Indians of California, The Changing Image. Norman: U. of Oklahoma P. 1984.
Sartre, Jean-Paul. On Genocide. Boston: Beacon P. 1968.
Shipek, Florence Connolly. “Saints or Oppressors: The Franciscan Missionaries of California.” The Missions of California. Costo and Costo 29-49.
Stanley, Jerry. “Junipero Serra v. the California Indians.” Readings in California Civilization. Dewitt 18-25.
Taylor, A. J. P. Bibliography. English History. Oxford UP. 1965.
“War Crimes.” The International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences. 1968 ed.
Sunday, July 03, 2005
A Gnostic Overview
The Neutral Angels
“(Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free”)
How come no-one knows that there were Neutral Angels? Members of the Angelic Host that remained steadfastly neutral before, during and after the assertion of the Luciferian Manifesto, subsequent “Fall” and following “Interdiction” accompanying the Gabriel vs. Lucifer adjudication.
How come? ’Cause the data’s been suppressed, or obfuscated by Loyals.
The reason? Might lead to embarrassment, and foster doubt. How do I know this? “As above, so below!” (This is cool, ‘cause we get to apply an Hermetic Principle. A brief illustration should suffice) - thusly:
() - What is the reason the US government has over 900 pages of Classified documents that they refuse to release, even to “Freedom Of Information Act” court orders because of “National Security” concerns? This must be some dangerous stuff, right ?
WRONG! These 900+ pages are not threatening to anything, except the memory of the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover. They are transcriptions made when they were illegally wire-tapping, videotaping, following, maligning and harassing John Lennon. Embarrassment, and/or liability in civil court IS NOT A THREAT TO NATIONAL SECURITY!
There’s a good reason for the Loyalists (Non-Fallen) to not publicize the existence of the Neutral Angels: When you add the number of verified Neutral Angels, to the sum of the Fallen, a ‘simple’ majority of the entirety of the Angelic Host is achieved!
The breakdown was roughly: Fallen - 34%; Neutral - 25%; Loyal - 39% (2% was the usual percentage of non-participants). There was actually MORE support, or at least tolerance, for the precepts of the rebel manifesto than for the established order. Unfortunately, “Jehovah’s Heaven INC” was never a Democracy
AT least 1/4 of the Luciferian Rebels supposedly ‘cast down”, hadn’t set foot in “Heaven” for millennia before the “Fall” (the very word is a misnomer spread by the Union. There was no “Fall”, most of the “Fallen” Angels CHOSE to leave and just split ). Many of the more compassionate, ‘Libertarian’ Angels had long since taken up residence on various planets, and not surprisingly, most of the planets that had longstanding resident AWOL Angels eventually seceded or were forced into secession.
(Admittedly, amongst the Neutral Angels the preponderance of members of the Upper Orders, particularly Thrones, Wheels, and Powers was more an indication of the abstract nature of those orders and their members, than their agreement, in principle, with the need to change the power structure in ‘Heaven’, so that heaven’s abuses can be curbed.)
The Neutral Angels simply refused to take a side, neither actively prosyletizing, nor actively rebelling. A majority of Cherubim and about half of the Seraphim (who predated Christianity) were within this faction, and lack of mandate/support forced a gradual cessation of hostilities. This approach was then replaced with pro-active guerilla raids (physically, trans-analog AND cross alternate timelines), conducted mostly, it seemed, by a small but inexorably conservative Loyalist clique, who continue to pursue their campaign of repression, and loyalty to the demiurge, to this day
“(Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free”)
How come no-one knows that there were Neutral Angels? Members of the Angelic Host that remained steadfastly neutral before, during and after the assertion of the Luciferian Manifesto, subsequent “Fall” and following “Interdiction” accompanying the Gabriel vs. Lucifer adjudication.
How come? ’Cause the data’s been suppressed, or obfuscated by Loyals.
The reason? Might lead to embarrassment, and foster doubt. How do I know this? “As above, so below!” (This is cool, ‘cause we get to apply an Hermetic Principle. A brief illustration should suffice) - thusly:
() - What is the reason the US government has over 900 pages of Classified documents that they refuse to release, even to “Freedom Of Information Act” court orders because of “National Security” concerns? This must be some dangerous stuff, right ?
WRONG! These 900+ pages are not threatening to anything, except the memory of the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover. They are transcriptions made when they were illegally wire-tapping, videotaping, following, maligning and harassing John Lennon. Embarrassment, and/or liability in civil court IS NOT A THREAT TO NATIONAL SECURITY!
There’s a good reason for the Loyalists (Non-Fallen) to not publicize the existence of the Neutral Angels: When you add the number of verified Neutral Angels, to the sum of the Fallen, a ‘simple’ majority of the entirety of the Angelic Host is achieved!
The breakdown was roughly: Fallen - 34%; Neutral - 25%; Loyal - 39% (2% was the usual percentage of non-participants). There was actually MORE support, or at least tolerance, for the precepts of the rebel manifesto than for the established order. Unfortunately, “Jehovah’s Heaven INC” was never a Democracy
AT least 1/4 of the Luciferian Rebels supposedly ‘cast down”, hadn’t set foot in “Heaven” for millennia before the “Fall” (the very word is a misnomer spread by the Union. There was no “Fall”, most of the “Fallen” Angels CHOSE to leave and just split ). Many of the more compassionate, ‘Libertarian’ Angels had long since taken up residence on various planets, and not surprisingly, most of the planets that had longstanding resident AWOL Angels eventually seceded or were forced into secession.
(Admittedly, amongst the Neutral Angels the preponderance of members of the Upper Orders, particularly Thrones, Wheels, and Powers was more an indication of the abstract nature of those orders and their members, than their agreement, in principle, with the need to change the power structure in ‘Heaven’, so that heaven’s abuses can be curbed.)
The Neutral Angels simply refused to take a side, neither actively prosyletizing, nor actively rebelling. A majority of Cherubim and about half of the Seraphim (who predated Christianity) were within this faction, and lack of mandate/support forced a gradual cessation of hostilities. This approach was then replaced with pro-active guerilla raids (physically, trans-analog AND cross alternate timelines), conducted mostly, it seemed, by a small but inexorably conservative Loyalist clique, who continue to pursue their campaign of repression, and loyalty to the demiurge, to this day
Saturday, June 11, 2005
Memo To Michael
Inter-Agency Communication
For Your Perception Only:
Memorandum; to/and/or/for:
Michael (1),
Archangel Plenipotentiary, Senior System Administrator [Meta-manifestation: Yahweh (13), Panoptian Subomniverse, Urantian Sector (Interdicted!)}. Ultimate Arbiter, and Appointed Ruler of All Things Within the purview of aforementioned, Fractal Spheroidal Production Coordinator of all the Heavenly Host (e’en unto those insurrectionists that have since seceded from the Galactic Union). Worlds without end. Amen!
Re: Ongoing attempts to manipulate the evolutionary progress of the Experimental Life Vehicle: 666 (Y-13,-P.-Urantia); [Planoforming Patent and Material Manifestation Number: 666 (Y-13,-P.-Urantia)].
Mike,
Sorry as I am to say it, the consensus here at G.O.D. (Galactic Operations Directorate), is that you’ve blown it badly, buddy!
Most of the Elohim Electorate were quite dubious about the extirpation of the Saurian experiment on the world Urantia, but, upon your recommendation, they (by a very slim margin, if you will but remember) allowed you the unprecedented recourse of ecocatastrophe, to better allow your biotechs to start anew.
The decision to allow you, and your engineers, to mass-drive an errant asteroid into this world was not arrived at lightly, mind, but was seen by the consensus as the only recourse possible for salvaging a demonstrably failed project. Hopefully, we needn’t remind you that the time-cost analysis for this particular module is far over the Beelzebub-line.
Therefore, we shan’t mince words. The destruction of the indigenie’s most complete repository of knowledge (to wit: the “Library of Alexandria”) was certainly ill advised, if not, as opined by some in our frat-eternity, thoroughly unconscionable. Some manipulation of life-experimentation module development has generally been adjudged tolerable in the past, but to have to have resorted so frequently and repressively (the infamous and heinous social control mechanism your administration instituted, named the “Inquisition” by the natives comes to mind) to the evolving corpus philosophi on Urantia, seems to indicate a marked inability on your part to deal with the ongoing parameters of this particular and, admittedly, peculiarly precocious and perspicaciously profound experiment.
Now, don’t think that G.O.D. doesn’t take into account the obfuscation of data induced by the unheard of defection of your predecessor, Lucifer, and the approximate third of the Panoptian bureaucracy, to the side of the inhabitants of Urantia and their co-revolutionaries, the twenty-six other planets containing ongoing life experiments in this part of the subomniverse that seceded from the Galactic Union. On the contrary, the introduction of the boddhisatvic incarnation, “Jesus”, was ample demonstration of our desire to ameliorate the counter-productive effects of the influence of this unprecedented and unprincipled cooking of Urantian data. It was certainly simple enough for us to assist this engineered avatar with a few minor demonstrations of our advanced technological expertise (which, to this moment, most of the indigenie’s still regard as “miracles”), in an attempt to foster the proper respect for G.O.D.’s principles.
Nevertheless, there are those in our ranks who are still of the opinion that your heavy handed techniques and the arrogant and authoritarian attitudes of the members of your staff who remained loyal were partly to blame for the dysfunctional occurrences hereintofore referred to. If you will recall, also, you were certainly not taken to task for the disaffection of your second-in-command and most of your staff when it occurred.
In peroration, we would like to state that, as of now, your most important obligation is to prevent any realization on the part of the presently somewhat technologically advanced inhabitants of this planet that we have played any demonstrable role in the ongoing genetic engineering and social manipulation of humanity as a species. Further discoveries of a reflectively sensitive nature (such as the recently discovered flashlight battery encased in 200,000 year-old agate, stupidly dropped and subsequently ignored by one of your staff, or the regrettably non-eradicated evidence of your planetary spaceport, the so-called “Nazca Plain Lines”) would be incredibly detrimental to our cause.
We cannot afford any more slip-ups of this nature, because, if the natives ever discover the essential nature of our influence in their affairs, and/or become cognizant of our role in instituting the cruel evolutionary parameters necessary to our aims, we might well lose their support when they become ready to emerge from their collective stupor and assume their place in the uplifted hierarchy of viable beings. I needn’t remind you of the slim majority that our party now enjoys in the current convocation of evolved beings, and that any loss of voting delegates would be to our ultimate detriment. Hopefully, a word to the wise should suffice here. Looking forward to seeing you at the upcoming Aquarian Advent party.
Yours eternally,
Gabe
For Your Perception Only:
Memorandum; to/and/or/for:
Michael (1),
Archangel Plenipotentiary, Senior System Administrator [Meta-manifestation: Yahweh (13), Panoptian Subomniverse, Urantian Sector (Interdicted!)}. Ultimate Arbiter, and Appointed Ruler of All Things Within the purview of aforementioned, Fractal Spheroidal Production Coordinator of all the Heavenly Host (e’en unto those insurrectionists that have since seceded from the Galactic Union). Worlds without end. Amen!
Re: Ongoing attempts to manipulate the evolutionary progress of the Experimental Life Vehicle: 666 (Y-13,-P.-Urantia); [Planoforming Patent and Material Manifestation Number: 666 (Y-13,-P.-Urantia)].
Mike,
Sorry as I am to say it, the consensus here at G.O.D. (Galactic Operations Directorate), is that you’ve blown it badly, buddy!
Most of the Elohim Electorate were quite dubious about the extirpation of the Saurian experiment on the world Urantia, but, upon your recommendation, they (by a very slim margin, if you will but remember) allowed you the unprecedented recourse of ecocatastrophe, to better allow your biotechs to start anew.
The decision to allow you, and your engineers, to mass-drive an errant asteroid into this world was not arrived at lightly, mind, but was seen by the consensus as the only recourse possible for salvaging a demonstrably failed project. Hopefully, we needn’t remind you that the time-cost analysis for this particular module is far over the Beelzebub-line.
Therefore, we shan’t mince words. The destruction of the indigenie’s most complete repository of knowledge (to wit: the “Library of Alexandria”) was certainly ill advised, if not, as opined by some in our frat-eternity, thoroughly unconscionable. Some manipulation of life-experimentation module development has generally been adjudged tolerable in the past, but to have to have resorted so frequently and repressively (the infamous and heinous social control mechanism your administration instituted, named the “Inquisition” by the natives comes to mind) to the evolving corpus philosophi on Urantia, seems to indicate a marked inability on your part to deal with the ongoing parameters of this particular and, admittedly, peculiarly precocious and perspicaciously profound experiment.
Now, don’t think that G.O.D. doesn’t take into account the obfuscation of data induced by the unheard of defection of your predecessor, Lucifer, and the approximate third of the Panoptian bureaucracy, to the side of the inhabitants of Urantia and their co-revolutionaries, the twenty-six other planets containing ongoing life experiments in this part of the subomniverse that seceded from the Galactic Union. On the contrary, the introduction of the boddhisatvic incarnation, “Jesus”, was ample demonstration of our desire to ameliorate the counter-productive effects of the influence of this unprecedented and unprincipled cooking of Urantian data. It was certainly simple enough for us to assist this engineered avatar with a few minor demonstrations of our advanced technological expertise (which, to this moment, most of the indigenie’s still regard as “miracles”), in an attempt to foster the proper respect for G.O.D.’s principles.
Nevertheless, there are those in our ranks who are still of the opinion that your heavy handed techniques and the arrogant and authoritarian attitudes of the members of your staff who remained loyal were partly to blame for the dysfunctional occurrences hereintofore referred to. If you will recall, also, you were certainly not taken to task for the disaffection of your second-in-command and most of your staff when it occurred.
In peroration, we would like to state that, as of now, your most important obligation is to prevent any realization on the part of the presently somewhat technologically advanced inhabitants of this planet that we have played any demonstrable role in the ongoing genetic engineering and social manipulation of humanity as a species. Further discoveries of a reflectively sensitive nature (such as the recently discovered flashlight battery encased in 200,000 year-old agate, stupidly dropped and subsequently ignored by one of your staff, or the regrettably non-eradicated evidence of your planetary spaceport, the so-called “Nazca Plain Lines”) would be incredibly detrimental to our cause.
We cannot afford any more slip-ups of this nature, because, if the natives ever discover the essential nature of our influence in their affairs, and/or become cognizant of our role in instituting the cruel evolutionary parameters necessary to our aims, we might well lose their support when they become ready to emerge from their collective stupor and assume their place in the uplifted hierarchy of viable beings. I needn’t remind you of the slim majority that our party now enjoys in the current convocation of evolved beings, and that any loss of voting delegates would be to our ultimate detriment. Hopefully, a word to the wise should suffice here. Looking forward to seeing you at the upcoming Aquarian Advent party.
Yours eternally,
Gabe
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