After my first ‘day off’ I’m feeling rested, optimistic even, and quite pleased with the results of enabling comments (thanks, Mike!). No obvious trolls have yet surfaced; we’ll see. I’d like to think they’re staying away because they know you guys would shout them down. On the other hand, one or two may be laying in wait, making ‘positive’ or neutral comments for a while before unloading the NLP; this is the usual M.O. Anyway, in spite of the extra work, I’m stoked about the public feedback.
Yeah, we keep getting these. But say it with me: Fuck them!
Yesterday a couple of road buddies showed up here, whom I hadn’t seen in a couple years. Kurt and Pearl along with their canine sidekick Tucson. Tucson and Gus had a wild doggy reunion while the three of us caught up. We walked down the canal to say hi to Jim. We’d all met at the same dry camping desert area known as Borrego Springs some three years ago.
Making provisional friends is an aspect of living like this. Provisional meaning you don’t really know if you’ll see them again, or if so when and where. At least that’s the way the road people I hook up with do it. Other types are different: They’ll make fast friends, get out a map and plan where they’ll all go next.
I’m trying to imagine how Kurt & Pearl and Jim would react if I said, ‘Where can we meet up next, guys?’
Kurt, Pearl, Gus, and Tucson earlier today.
‘What the fuck are you talking about?’, words to that effect, would either be the thought or outright blurt by my companions, plus maybe an instinctive backwards body lean. In any event, I’d probably never see any of them again. Not that we try to avoid each other; far from it, but an intersection (in time and space) of travel routes is maybe best described as ‘contrived coincidence,’ a synchronicity of sorts. Email of course makes such a convergence much more likely… come to think of it, I have to admit that absent the Net this sort of lifestyle would be tough…
Addendum: Yes, quite a difference between this road trip and my original one in 1996, wherein hardly anyone heard a word from me for two years. (Upon return, I recall, when advised that Cosmic Banditos was stirring folks up on Amazon.com, I replied, ‘What does a wilderness outfitter have to do with my old book?’)
As you might expect, in my case another problem with making friends on the road is the state-of-consciousness of my fellow travelers, given my lack of patience with those who slumber on as world events careen toward full-blown catastrophe. And I have my subtle ways of sussing a fellow human’s general state of awareness. Give you an example… (Ahhh, I just realized where this post is really going! Consider the previous paragraphs a bit of ‘throat clearing.’)
A couple days ago a pair of middle-aged women eased in their RV nearby and set up camp. Around sundown, sidling in their direction while pretending to fiddle with my bike rack, I looked over at them sitting by their fire and asked if they’d arrived from inland. Aside from my ulterior motive, I was hoping for an update on the many wildfires currently devastating some of the most beautiful country in the western U.S.
This is an unnatural spread: too many, too close together.
Yes, they were from inland Oregon and yes, depending on the wind it was both hot and smoky back there. I remarked that the number of fires and how they were dispersed was highly unusual.
Slight nods, no verbal reply, so I fine-tuned my inquiry by asking if they’d seen the photographs of upside-down, half-melted cars. I held back the payoff, which would have been, ‘…remind you of 9/11?’
I in fact didn’t have to go that far to get an information-rich reaction: The two simultaneously, truly, as if on cue, turned their heads away, both bodies stiffening almost in fear, as if I’d just suggested we repair to their rig for a quick ménage a trois.
Me being me, I’m fully used to this sort of thing – on the level of the collective mentality of the town I used to live at, it was why I’d hit the road to begin with — but given the very serious and very personal repercussions of the wildfires that had us at that moment virtually surrounded, my disgust at their dead-headedness was such that I blurted a ‘Jesus Christ!’ as I beat my retreat. Sometimes I just flat lose it.
How did it get upside-down?
For some reason, out of all the similar reactions I’ve gotten over the years, this is the one that immediately came to mind: I’m at a supermarket god-knows-where, approach the pharmacist behind his counter in the back, and inquire if they carry toothpaste with no fluoride. The fellow’s eyes widen and he actually takes a step back, as if fearful that violence might be forthcoming, i.e., the fine line between ‘conspiracy theorist’ and terrorist, and so forth.
In fact these sorts of reactions are, in their own way, quite insightful; I mean in their instantaneousness. These folks didn’t have to think about it to know that even a brief mental pass at certain subjects would be fatal to their worldviews. No no, let’s give credit where it’s due. These are insightful people!
Yes, from 9/11…
What came instantaneously to the RV women the other day and to the pharmacist a while back took my Montauk friend Walter a few days to realize. Listen: It’s only about 12 minutes and I was sloppy with both sound and image, but if you haven’t seen it, please do so now because this video is my most important.
Most of you are smart enough that it should only take a nudge to get you to do some research of your own: The wildfires that surround me as I write are almost certainly part of the war being waged upon us.
Wait. War? Whadam I, nuts? Maybe but look at the spacing of the fires and especially at the damage done. The selective damage. Steel melted by a wood fire? A tree burning from the inside out? An upside-down car? Ring any bells? (It’s different, if also space-based, weaponry being used against us now as was first introduced on 9/11.)
With my title I ask What are we up against? A high tech war being waged upon us and the RV women turn away. That is what we’re up against and I don’t know which aspect is the more frightening.
How does a tree catch fire from the inside? Micro-waves will do it.
There is a diabolical genius at work, a method in the madness. I mean think about it. How much more obvious could they be (that they are waging open war upon us) in their raining down literal thunderbolts from the heavens?
Yet what is the takeaway for those of us who know what they’re doing? For me, and maybe for many of you, it’s simply this: They could at their will tender us to ashes. Boom. Poof. Bye bye. (This was surely an underlying message of 9/11, to those who would be a hindrance to their agenda.)
On the other hand, we have the RV women and the pharmacist.
Those who are awake are forewarned. Those asleep, sleep on. It’s genius, really.
Allan
A rare alignment.
Tonight (as I write) most of us will get a great view around sundown of the Moon, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. Quite an alignment. Does it portend anything? I’m no longer able to say Don’t be ridiculous!
Addendum: The photo at left didn’t reproduce well. You can go here to see what’s up in the heavens tonight.
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