UNDERCURRENTS

Date: 7-14-06
Time: 1:36 a.m.
Place: Blacktop County Rd. 9
.....A loud rumbling noise wakes me. I hurry outside into the darkness. There is a strong smell of hot asphalt & tar in the cool night air. Cautiously I walk down the gravel driveway towards the blacktop road. There, standing with a pair of dogs is this woman (photo). She asks if I have lost my dogs, saying she found them nearby. I tell the woman the dogs are not mine.
It is difficult to breath. The tar road is hissing and popping, acrid vapors steaming from the melting tar. The air is hot on my face. The road appears to slither in pain.
This strange woman suggests I take a photo of the dogs in order to show neighbors who may have lost them. I agree, retrieving my camera from the house. Darkness makes it difficult, but manage to get a shot. The heat and smell is overpowering, and I must back away, up the driveway.
She thanks me, turns and begins walking barefoot down the sizzling twisted road. It was then I asked her where she lives, in the case the dogs' owner is found. No answer from the darkness.
Then she appears once again, slowly walking from the darkness to within several feet from where I stand on the gravel. Almost in a whisper, barely audible above the hissing hot tar below, she says, " I live in you", and she melts into the darkness once more.
I sleep very little that night.

__________________________

Odsessively Ambitious Johnny

Driving along listening to radio. They are discussing early education, namely preschool. The guest stresses how critical these years be. An obsessively ambitious mother calls in to make several points, one being this: children by-passing preschool environment are much more likely to become criminal. She states that "it is too late, it is too late" if children miss preschool. Apparently she believes these children's destiny are then known....criminal dysfunctional incompetence. This woman's totally irrational comments are astounding. And there is no questioning of this ridiculous statement from either the guest or program host.
I begin to suspect a number of weak-kneed quivering yuppie couples are already signing up their little Johnny into a "pre" capitalized public education. Their years of absentee parenting is increased. In fourteen years Johnny will have been hammered and molded into an acceptable product, embracing artificial ethics and morals. But what is an artificial ethic? One example is tactical volunteerism, cleverly designed volunteerism that grooms a college application. His helicopter parents text him from work congratulating him. He avoided criminal activity in dark inner-city alleys, but his lack of real ethics is a sure ticket down the slimy wasteland of Wallstreet. Johnny's corrupt dealings in finance will be met with passive resignation from his now financially struggling parents. They're not sure why Johnny is a back-stabbing crook. They have yet to accept their responsibility in creating him. It is easier for them to blame an influx of crooked politicians. But then where did they come from? The neighbor's kids.
Now Johnny is planning and sculpting his own family. His pregnant wife attends pre-conception school. Little Johnny Jr. must be prepared for an obsessively ambitious life.

CAUGHT WORSHIPPING

Yes, I saw it and heard it once more. It is proof. A ghost?..... An alien? Not so lucky am I. No, I once again witnessed worshippers paying their respects to their god. A very subtle gesture indeed. But I caught it.

The subject was politics on a news program. The guest was doing his best not to blame anyone in particular for the economic meltdown....you know, the usual bullshit. When the words "wallstreet" and "bankers" slipped from his forked tongue I detected a change in tone or inflection. Very subtle. Very. But it was there. No crossing himself. No eyes lifted towards the heavens. No, just an instinctual sign of reverence to his god. As was said long ago...."Thou shalt not take the name of your god in vain" and "Do not bite the hand that feeds you". Even if that hand is filled with maggots.
So long corrupt virtueless bankers remain in power the puppet politicians and subservient public will perpetuate their evils. The public yet has the choice of hanging these bastards by their toes till they rot. Or do they? To challenge one's god is heresy....and deadly. Though not wiser, it is safer to fill the banks with your tithings in hopes you will be 'saved'.
"Blessed be the bankers, for they are the keepers of my finances, my childrens future, and my soul."

Some things in life go relatively unnoticed until they are over.
For some people it is childhood. For some friendship. For some family ties. For others a good job. And for many life itself. For those starving to death-----is it all something of a lie, something beyond nightmares, something beyond a mother’s smile? Yes, life was a lie, a promise unkempt, a body denied, a mind spoiled, a soul unnoticed by man…..and their god. Though not unnoticed by God. Will starvation ever end? No. Will humans notice? Not really. Human reaction to suffering is instinctive, self-preserving. The idea of Christ’s love and compassion is inhuman. Modern day ‘christs’ are superheroes, who notice evil, but cannot see deprivation of the body as worth their time. These ‘heroes’ reflect our lack of compassion for starving masses. If we notice starvation we may put ourselves in peril.
The corpses are noticed, the body count tallied. Counting the dead is a job, a secure job. Reinstituting the lie is another. What is the lie?---that the starving matter. Be sure to notice the lie. Then be sure to do nothing.

Do you still believe the IT myth?

The latest Newsweek cover story attempts to perpetuate the IT myth....that IT is saving the human race. The article wreaks of self interest and east coast patronizing. The droids can fry eggs for breakfast, but they cannot stop 30,000 humans from starving to death each day. It appears the Google and Apple nerds don't give a rip either.
The droids tell the nerds that IT remains a profitable investment, since more humans are being born than dying.

THE SIXTIES

The other day sittin around bitchin and moaning about how I missed out on the Sixties. You know,....how my parents never let us off the farm; how life would have been so different, so better.

No one sitting at the picnic table outside the apartment complex is buying my bitching. Their eyes range from boredom to skepticism to loathing. A voice interrupts our debate, a voice from above....from the second floor stairway.

"The Sixties is internal." She smiles at us all puffing on our cigs. She smiles on our weak dispositions. She smiles down upon our confusion and sense of being lost. I turn away from her, to the table of companions for help. But there is no one to be seen. How odd. Where had my companions gone so quickly? Where had.......gone? I couldn't remember his name. I couldn't remember any of their names. Bizarre!!

"Don't worry about them. You never really needed any of that crowd." She speaks as my eyes search the courtyard for signs of my friends.

"Did you see where they went," I ask increduously?
"They're gone.....just like The Sixties." Her calm voice is firm, definitive.
"Bullshit!!" Fear is creeping in like a fog.....cold and clamy.
"It's true," she says. "You create things in your mind."

Now she is closer, near the bottom of the stairway. I feel threatened.

"So what's your story?.....what are you doing here," I say defensively?
She pauses on the steps...... that mischievious smile, those piercing eyes. She speaks.
"Of course.......that is entirely up to you."

Tornado Aftermath

Terence and I are helping a hay customer clean up his alfalfa fields after the storm. He lives northwest of AL near Manchester. The place where we are working is an old abandoned farm place where this guy built some huge sheds to store hay, and he also parks farm equipment there. An old dilapidated abandoned house sits on a high spot in the yard. The old house survived. It now looks about at utter destruction. Tree trunk stubs, a foot and a half in diameter. Metal sheds lay in a twisted heap. Grain bins full of grain toppled over. Augers and equipment tossed about. Huge sheets of metal wrapped around a field cultivator like a piece of tin foil. Debris from a neighbor's destroyed garage lays scattered in the fields. Pieces of heavy corrugated metal from somewhere, ripped and mutilated into small pieces.

A child's toy tractor, its axles bent, lays lost and alone in the hay field.
The old house, with it's dark empty windows, looks further. The path of this monster appears to be nearly a half mile wide. Maybe there were multiple tornadoes? The further the house looks the more destruction....more sheds destroyed. Groves of old stand oaks shredded and mangled, the remaining leaves turning gray and black from the abuse. Roofs gone from houses. There is the smell of burning wood as people cremate massive piles of destroyed trees. The mangled remains of a large grain bin lays in a road ditch, rolled across a corn field like a toy. A machine shed... the strongest made.. has imploded, destroying equipment inside.


The old house can see the damage stretches to the horizon in either direction, mile after mile of destruction. It is amazed at how many houses survived utter destruction about. One house has been lifted from its foundation and set down nearly 50 feet away, still intact!

The old house saved many memories over the years. It will not forget this monster storm.