This Day In History

as above, so below

It was the last day of the much hyped Mayan calendar, the day our sun aligned itself with the great dark rift at the centre of the milky way galaxy, and the beginning of the fourteenth Baktun.

This cosmic event happens approximately once every 26 000 years, yet on that day, I can remember how our consciousness level had been still so very underdeveloped. 

A few had allegedly been predicting some kind of 'apocalypse', no names come to mind, then or now, because I never actually met anybody who believed this fallacy to be true. I suspect that it had been a very fearful minority, exploited by a media whose very purpose was intimately intertwined with reporting, and thus supporting, that base level of consciousness.

The word 'Apocalypse' does not mean disaster, or doomsday, it simply means 'revealing', and through the process of apophatic negation, much had been revealed on that day.

Those who had been looking for some kind of transformative external event were sadly disappointed. It seems our sun's passing through 'the great dark rift' wasn't good enough for most, nor the magnificence of the ancient Mayan's astronomy to detect this. The true power of that fateful day could not be seen at the time, we had been simply too close to adjust our myopic focus. I had felt something though, it was subtle, yes, but significant. 

Many whose attentions were transfixed by the external world, and the vaunted judgements of others, had taken the opportunity that day to mock an alleged belief system to which no sane person had ever subscribed, and it was really quite sad. They had naively revealed their deepest fears, and put on display for anyone who cared to notice. 

By mocking 'doomsday' they had revealed their denied yet understandable fear of death, and the inevitable annihilation of their temporal egos. Their yellow laughter had revealed their profound fear of being ostracized from the greater whole, as they vainly attempted to prove to the collective that they were beings of sound mind, and not in any way deluded or manipulated by paranoid folly... my belated 'congratulations' to them.

Like the infamous blinking fuel gage light, which had warned world war two pilots attempting to fly across the pacific, humanity had now passed it's 'point of no return'. The wise among us had known that it was 'now or never', a time to chose between the spiritual and the material; turn back in safety and in fear, or proceed onward to our inevitable rendezvous with destiny.

Future CT  Village 5,  Nova Avalon.   Year 17 P.T.E.

A Girl And Her Boy, or 'Shock Collar' (part 2)

About a month or so ago, I overheard a conversation in a Nova Avalon cafe. Well I've recently had the good fortune of eavesdropping some more, as the Mother of the girl has once again been overheard blabbing away, and extolling the virtues of her 'charming' little daughter. 

(FoM = Friend of Mother, Mot = Mother)

FoM: Dare I ask, how's your daughter doing?

Mot: Working hard as usual, but quite well thank you.

FoM: …and her boy?

Mot: That seems to be working out rather well.

FoM: Is he still wearing that 'shock-collar'?

Mot: From time to time yes, but not as much as before, he seems to have learned a good deal behaviourally.

FoM: Just as Pavlov's dogs learned too?!

Mot: I wouldn't put it exactly that way, but essentially yes.

FoM: I don't mean to belittle him, but Pavlov's dogs had no say in the matter either.

Mot: Yes, but the boy does have a say, he's always had a say.

FoM: but the restrictions imposed on him were always quite tight. Eventually you'd think he would get fed up with always having to do everything your daughter's way.

Mot: Yes, about a month ago it was really beginning to take it's toll on him, so they had to come up with a different approach.

FoM:  A new approach, how so?

Mot: Well, the boy was becoming very depressed. My daughter tried everything she could to please the poor kid without having to remove his collar. But nothing seemed to work.

FoM: So what happened?

Mot: He became even more depressed, once He realized he was trapped; how he wouldn't be able to bear being without her, as his spirits continued to spiral downward due to lack of freedom.

FoM: So what was their solution?

Mot: My daughter came up with the brilliant idea of sub-contracting his disciplinary duties to some older girls at school, this was intended to free her up so she could enjoy the simple pleasures of being a young woman without having to worry about her boyfriend slipping back into his old bad habits.

FoM: Whoah! Back up! Are you telling me she's hired a third party to administer to his discipline? That's fucked up!

Mot: What's the difference who does the training so long as the program remains the same? You must realize, disciplining an unruly boyfriend can be a very taxing and draining experience. Instead, these sub-contractor girls have loads of energy and are paid handsomely for their time.

FoM: Paid? where does your daughter get the money to pay for her boyfriend's 'care'?

Mot: Oh, she just takes it from his wages…when he works his shifts at the gas-station, he's paid weekly, the boy then hands his cheque over to her, and she uses most of that money to help pay for his 'maintenance'.

FoM: Does the boy get to keep any of his hard earned money?

Mot: Oh yeah, a bit… she gives him an allowance…and he's free to spend it on anything he wants..chocolate, beer, video-games, Mp3 downloads, comic books, that kind of stuff... However the majority of his wages goes directly to the sub-contractors.

FoM: You say 'sub-contractors', with an 's', does that mean there's more than one person tending to his discipline?

Mot: It wouldn't be fair if the boy didn't have a choice, would it? My daughter is a very fair person, so she lets him chose which contractor may handle him from time to time.

FoM: How many 'sub-contractors' does he have to chose from?

Mot: Usually two.

FoM: TWO?! that's not much of a choice..Hitler or Stalin, take your pick?!

Mot: Another girl takes part from time to time, so very often he's got three choices, but my daughter is not too keen on her, she's too soft on him, so she prefers to limit his choices to two.

FoM: And what's YOUR opinion on these girls.

Mot: Well, one of the girls is very generous, but can also be a cruel task-mistress, The other doesn't show much interest in his development, nor does she emphasize any kind of work ethic, I think she's just in it because she enjoys the physical aspects of disciplining him.

FoM: You mean she's a sadist.

Mot: That's a bit of a harsh judgement, but essentially correct.

FoM: So let me get this straight. Your daughter has grown tired of discipling her boyfriend, and has sought out some older girls at school to tend to his disciplinary duties; Paying these girls handsomely with money taken from the wages of the young man's job, and then grants him the lone privilege of choosing which task-mistress will serve as his temporary disciplinarian? That's totally fucked!!!

Mot: Fucked? Yes it is... but I prefer to call it 'Democracy'!

To read part 1, click here

Future CT   Village 5, Nova Avalon.    Year 17 P.T.E.

Squaring The Numerological Circle

Also Known As: XII

Thank god it had been the last of those numerological antagonistic days: The twelfth day of the twelfth month of the twelfth year. It was the culmination of a sequence which had begun almost twelve years earlier on January 1st 2001(or 01/01/01). 

We'd been having one of these über-numerological days every year, with each synchronistic day coming exactly one year, one month, and one day later. The actor who had played the debonair lothario Ken Barlow on the UK soap opera Coronation Street had once declared that 12/12/12 was going to be a great day, one where the dark forces would exit, and the light entities would take over (or something to that effect).

I remember how 04/04/04 had been considered to be a significant day in Asia, due to negative superstitious beliefs in some cultures surrounding the number four.

Two years, two months and two days later, and six years, six months, and six days before Ken Barlow's 'big day', 06/06/06 had come and gone without any significant event occurring… although I distinctly remember Al Qaeda's Iraqi commander in chief Abu Musab Al Zaqari had supposedly been killed on that day. The reason why I say 'supposedly' is because alleged Al Qaeda leaders had only ever been seen 'play acting' on crude videotape, and never ever EVER seen live in the 'real world' (ie: interviewed on 60 Minutes, BBC or Larry King LIVE!)  The significance of Zaqari's death, one could argue, was that his name had an eery similarity to Nostradamus' enigmatic third Anti-Christ, one which he'd identified as being someone named: 'Mabus'.

Then on 08/08/08 another crop circle had appeared in England displaying 'the infinity sign', or the number 8… OK, whatever.

On 11/11/11 my bike was stolen.

From 12/12/12 to 12/21/12

The only thing more disturbing than the handful of kooks who actually thought the world would be coming to an end on December 21st, was the meme spread throughout the corporate media that this apocalyptic belief had been common among those within the New Age community.

My research into this phenomenon at the time had revealed precious few who actually thought the world would be 'coming to an end' on 12/21/12, and how when the end didn't come, the smarty-pants skeptics had then proceeded to serenade us with their predictable and condescending "I told ya sos".

One thing the Mayan calendar had shown us was what a remarkably complex level of understanding they had of the cosmos; having had a profound knowledge of our solar system and how it orbits the galactic centre approximately every 26 000 years, and their ability to pinpoint the exact day on which our sun would be directly aligned with the galactic centre. This had certainly made mayan cosmology and culture worthy of further study.

Here in Nova Avalon, few memories exist of that cultural anomaly known as the '2012 meme', but it's significance should not be underestimated. We humans can make incredible leaps in consciousness by the process of apophatic negation (knowing what is, by determining what isn't). For this reason in the very least, the '2012 meme' had served a subtle yet important role.

My question is: Had they decided to fire up the Large Hadron Super Collider at CERN in the days leading up to the 21st as a possible method of plausible deniability? That is to say, if something were to have happened on that day, 'the powers that be' could have turned around and said that it had all been a result of experiments conducted with the particle accelerator, and nothing to do with mayan prophecy.

Science and mysticism were still at war in your day, fortunately our inevitable rendezvous with destiny had acted as a catalyst reconciling much of that counterproductive and time consuming debate.

There's precious few artifacts remaining, of that once celebrated twice forgotten year lying around these days. One kid in the next village has a 2012 lunchbox. and my backyard neighbour still has his 2012 Mayan Pin-Up Girl Calendar.

Future CT   Village 5,  Nova Avalon.    Year 17 P.T.E.

Return From The Abyss (Journals 33-36)

Journal #33: Forced Haircut!

Journal #34: Wizard of Oz 2.0 (part 1)

Journal #35: Wizard of Oz 2.0 (part 2)

Journal #36: Footprints Of The Gods

Café Culture and The Flirtation Void

Nova Avalon has only three local café's, and one of them, Lilly and Wally, doesn't even serve coffee anymore, since the stuff is just too scarce here in the vast and peaty wildness of 45º north.

I still enjoy having one from time to time, but it's really a luxury nowadays, a luxury we had all taken for granted way back in the day, in that woeful time we now call: The Great Forgetting.

Walk into any Starbucks or local café, in those dark and early years of the 21st century, and you could usually observe five of the following: 

A: A disproportionate amount of men to women sitting sipping their hot beverages, with hungry eyes glancing over from whatever they may have been reading, discretely surveying whatever lovely women may have been sitting within airborne striking distance of their masculine pheromones.

B: Women deeply immersed in their laptops, often with stacks of textbooks, papers and matronly coats scattered and draped across a table intended for communal sharing; Their unobstructed focus punctuated occasionally by upward glances to make sure some crazed knife wielding psycho hadn't just walked into the café (as seen on TV!).

C: An assorted selection of men and women queuing in line. The men would then proceed to take their drink over to a seat of their choice, while most of the women would usually take their drinks 'to go', stopping ever briefly to hastily add some sweetener whilst texting any one of their 814 Facebook friends (remember, women of your time period had led very busy lives).

D: The ubiquitous Male 'baristas' with effeminate voices and designer facial hair sporting absurdly stretched pierced ears (usually with some sort of nodule inserted into what remained of their god-given earlobes).

E: Cops standing in line to buy a quick tea or coffee (perhaps trying to clean up their former unfair image as mere doughnut consuming tax-collectors).

The Flirtation Void

Much had changed since the happy-go-lucky days of the roaring 1990's. Many women had long since exchanged the social prop cigarette packs for mobile self-phones, bad breath for carpal tunnel syndrome, and lung cancer for brain tumours.

The men had by this point been thoroughly beaten down by their newly acquired subordinate roles as passive social observers, and were desperately trying not to reveal the raging sexual impulses generated from their throbbing testosterone, terrorizing their otherwise vain attempts to appear at all times 'under control', and never 'needy'.

It was a tough time to be a guy, for sure!  Gone were the days when the western male could hone his essential flirtation skills with the opposite sex by engaging in witty banter with a pretty waitress. 

Ever since the advent of the thinly-aproned drone-male dominated service industry, this natural social facilitator mechanism had suddenly vanished, leaving regular guys no place to brush up on their flirtation skills in a safe and controlled environment. The result of this had helped accelerate a phenomenon sometimes known as Westernized Underdeveloped Sexual Syndrome, or better known as: W.U.S.S. 

The waitress/client dynamic had been a vital social tool for men of all stature, but with this vital component of our culture having been stealthily removed, the only confidence building mechanism left for most men had been relegated to brief interactions at strip joints or sometimes (egads!)… with telemarketers.

Back here on the farm, human beings are much too busy taking pleasure pleasing one another to bother wasting time and resources frequenting the MDF decorated haunts of soulless corporate café's… and besides, there's just too many damn chores to do anyway, and precious little time available to while away the hours sipping expensive flavoured water.

Future CT    Village 5, Nova Avalon.    Year 17 P.T.E.

Footprints Of The Gods

Not since Leonard Nimoy (AKA Mr. Spock) spooked us on his seminal program In Search Of, and the Six Million Dollar Man, (AKA Steve Austin: a man barely alive) fought Bigfoot (AKA Andre The Giant) back in the 1970's over a bottle of Neo-Traxin and the tender affections of Stephanie Powers, had interest in the Sasquatch been so high.

Even the Skeptics community had determined the supposed Sasquatch DNA evidence to be 'interesting', which from them was practically an admission in and of itself.

That Stephanie Powers, she's quite a gal

It had certainly appeared that Bigfoot was in fact real, a man/ ape bipedal humanoid (or something like that) living in the vast forested wilderness of continental North America. The timing of the announcement was an interesting one too, perhaps having deflected some of the cosmic attention from the 2012 meme. 

Or perhaps it had been an attempt to redirect public attention from important things, like systemic financial malfeasance, the mistreatment of underclass ethnic groups in politically sensitive regions of the globe, or the recent closing of the factory that had produced for us all those delicious Hostess Twinkies.

Many within the scientific community had then been poised to accept the inevitability that if Bigfoot existed, then his Asian cousin, the Yeti, must also be 'alive and well' too, as abominable a prospect as that may have seemed.

It was the Yeti's finest hour

I sure hoped so (in those days)... but had I known how people were going to handle it, I probably should have hoped otherwise.

Hunting licenses, prize reward money, appearances on The Late Show, along with the ubiquitous 5$ petting zoos, had soon become 'all the rage', courtesy of the entrepreneurial good-graces of profiteering scumbags.  

Across the pacific, the chinese had set up a million man 'search and rescue' operation to methodically comb the daunting expanse of the Tibetan plateau, looking possibly to find themselves yet another Yeti.  

At least we North Americans had had the decency to treat these gentle creatures as curious oddities… our oriental friends were anxiously devising cantonese cookbooks, and ingesting their chafed yellow toenails as a cure for erectile dysfunction.

These days though, we have no problem with the idea of mythical beings populating our planet, in fact we think it's really cool. If someone walks out and says they saw a pterodactyl, or Elvis, then sure, we generally believe them… even though pterodactyls have been extinct for about 60 million years (give or take 8000 centuries), or that Elvis would have been 'one hundred and five' three weeks from tuesday. 

Future CT    Village 5,  Nova Avalon      Year 17 P.T.E.

End Of The Beginning

Do you catch my D Rift?

The Mayan calendar had finally completed another celestial cycle, and was at last heralding the birth of a brand new era. 

The sad faces of those who had desperately longed for some kind of 'doomsday' had to wait 26 000 more years for their chance to take another bite of the 'cosmic burrito'. It was a long time to wait indeed, but the alternative was to accept a universe in a constant state of flux, growth and wonder, which was for some perhaps too much to bear.

Those who understood the significance of this calendar, and the purpose of prophecy in general, saw our solar alignment with 'the great dark rift' as a potential catalyst for personal transformation, and an opportunity to press one's metaphorical 'reset button', something which would prove critical as our inevitable rendezvous with destiny approached.

We were living through a very tumultuous period in Earth's history, and much of our dysfunctional and idealistic paradigms were beginning to crumble under constant pressure from that well forgotten 'weak force' we had once called truth.

One could now argue that the year '2012' might have been the very final year of the 'old world'; the time of the great forgetting.  

The profound subtlety of change which had occurred on that fateful day had become as a planted seed patiently germinating within the fabric of our craven new world; the full effects of which would not be seen until many years later, as the coming 'schism', foreseen by the wise and prophetic, was now hastily beginning to widen. 

Meanwhile, 'rational men' had been too busy patting themselves on the back to really notice, choosing instead to pontificate in self-congratulatory homilies for having had the clarity to see through all the 2012 hype, and amid the mild chuckling and condescending smirks of their devoted followers, they used this 'non-event' to further publicly admonish those weak minded enough to have bought into the pseudo-spirituality and mock-mysticism peddled by the New Age's most slovenly charlatans.

New Word Order

Instant global communication via the internet was quickly altering the method of how cultures educated and communicated with one another, and it was putting insurmountable pressure on previously unchallenged pillars of our social control systems.

Advancements in science, and it's possible more sinister uses, was rapidly transforming into a 'Techno-Hydra' for systemic abuse, but for the sense infatuated consumers of personal gratification, addicted to rewarding the pleasure centres of their reptilian brains, no ancient guatemalan guideposts or honduran harbingers would ever help salvage what remained of their soggy spiritual flotsam.

By a process of apophatic negation, those who had viewed the 2012 meme through a spiritual perspective, had found themselves seeing the world with a more 'Gnostic' spiritual filter, bridging the otherwise gaping and meaningless void left by the advancement of the materialist worldview, with the essential human need to commune with the sacred, and the divine.

Looking back from the comfort of my stone cabin, toasted warmly under my woolly blanket near a peaty hearth, can I now only begin to truly grasp the subtle power of that enigmatic December day all those many many years ago… and how about you?

Future CT     Village 5,  Nova Avalon.         Year 17 P.T.E.