V. The Next
Seeds are a most wondrous creation. The origin of creation. The infinitely small singularity that explodes new life into this universe.
Seeds are masters of patience. Prepared to wait through eternity, until their travels bring them to the precise moment when they are awakened into action.
Seeds exist only in the now. They are a culmination of the past, and they contain the entirety of the future. They are the physical manifestation of evolution.
Seeds are the containers of spirit. They await to be unlocked by the vibrational energies of the universe. They sprout new pathways through the forest of connection.
The seed of creation is inside of your DNA, it is up to you to nourish it so that it may bloom into abundance. The gateway to Eden is within us all, and your internal evolution of light, is the key to unlocking the whole thing. My words are not enough to bring you with me, but I pray that they are enough to spark a desire inside, one that inspires you to begin your own journey towards the cosmic understanding of the creator within.
*******
Speaking of seeds, I figured I should hop onto the hotel’s internet, and plant the idea that I might be coming home soon, and with no permanent home, that meant I needed a couch or two. Once again, I conversed with Ziggy, and his place wasn’t too far off of our route, and I would be driving, and I wasn’t sure that I could handle a cross country trip with my current benefactor.
He confirmed that I could stay with him, all it would take is pulling over for gas and running with the wind. I loved the image of perplexion that this plan aroused, it almost left me hoping that the mountain pass was rocky enough to instigate my escape, but as we departed, I was reassured of my path by a Bald Eagle that escorted us out of town.
We drove through the night, and soon enough it was over. Somehow this had been the hardest week of the whole year, which included Standing Rock, but certainly it had all been for a reason. It had forced me to muster every bit of the humility that I had been accumulating, and I did it. I was proud that I’d managed to remain humble through it all. World’s most humble, indeed. And now I felt prepared to step back into colonization. If I could survive what I just had, I could handle whatever civilization had to throw at me. And as they dropped me off downtown, I was right back in the middle of it all.
Just a block from my buddies at the Moog synthesizer factory, where they were all caught up on the current administration's import tax, which was ineffectively going to force an export of precious american jobs. They invented the synthesizer, in america, and most of the assembly still occurs domestically, but a few of the electronic components are no longer available outside of our outsourced obsession. So now the working class audiophiles are worried that they'll be shipped overseas, as if their fingers could ever be small enough to compete in that caged of a market. But at least they're still analog.
A Moog instrument is a wood paneled work of art, their commitment to pure vibration has solidified their permanence in the great cosmic jam scene, and they might actually hold a few secrets of the universe. The uni-verse, the culmination of each and every vibration in existence, as they weave the soundtrack of returning to unity. Their unparalleled signal flow, begins with a wave-making oscillator, an electronic component that produces a pure uncorrupted vibration. A full and complete spiral of energy, tuned-in to the great cosmic bass player. Like our oscillating Sun, or our oscillating planet, or her biggest oscillating fans.
It starts with a single sine wave, the fundamental building block of our entire vibratory existence, and the illusion begins to materialize as sine waves multiply with each other, creating increasingly complex forms of unobstructed wave particles. But this is what they call a 'subtractive synthesizer', and while its earliest phases of vibration were composed of exponential expansion, it is only through a filtered lens that the all inclusive soundscape is perceived as anything musical.
The raw energy of this infinite loop exists outside of any concept of time, and as it is propelled from the source of its creation, it travels through the 'amp envelope', which shapes the fundamental waveform as it embarks on its journey into the material universe. The envelope guides the growth of the sound's life cycle, it predetermines the character traits of the spiral's code, but its path still holds an endless schematic into the unknown.
The real magic starts to happen once this vessel of vibration enters the timeline of the notation, where it is now subjected to a world of conditioning, as it flows through the filter of experience. The 'filter' module of the conductor's keyboard, is where she can unlock the complexities of possibility, turn some knobs and push a few buttons, and all of a sudden the newborn noisemaker has evolved into a fully developed member of the jam.
The unfiltered waveform is too full, too complete, only once the frequency spectrum has been clouded into a myriad of custom designs, is the aural observer capable of understanding the mechanics of the instrumentation. The vibration now breathes, and beats, and seems to rise up as its resonance is amplified. It's my very favorite set of knobs to tweak on any piece of gear, there's an infinite realm of sounds to play into existence, and they can all be carved out of that very first fundamental frequency.
The initial energy of the everything, composes the energy of everything, yet no two sounds sound alike. And as they all find their own place among the harmonic structure of the chord chart, the entire electric orchestra builds toward the ultimate moment of complete unison, a grand finale of astronomical proportions, and the entire melodic universe is resolved as it returns to the root note of its own creation.
*******
There's of course a lot more to it than that, like the LFO, the 'low frequency oscillator', an unseen modulator of the waveform's journey. It's long spanning cycles cannot be heard directly, but its orbital influence still plays a big part in our sound's lifeline, as its invisible push and pull of knobs seems to reveal the destiny of the rock stars.
And these are all analog synthesizers, an internal circuitry that empowers an actual vibration to flow within. A handed-down integrity of life to its fullest, quality over quantity, and all in a world that seems to be converting over to a digital database. I used to do it for a job, though it didn't take much work at all. I had a piece of gear called an 'A to D converter', analog to digital, and as I recorded the honest-to-God spoken word, it was captured and rewritten as a scrambled string of ones and zeroes. A real live vibration traveled from a real live person, into a real live microphone, through a real live cable, and was then converted into some made up facsimile of something that could never be as real as live music.
Any proper groupie knows this already, live music is where it's at, and it's not just because of the parking lot scene. You're traversing a truly analog experience, actual vibrations as they combine to create actual music to your ears, and each individual listener has a unique perspective as they move across the dancefloor of destiny. And as far as playback devices go, every hipster knows that you can't beat vinyl. It just sounds fuller than the earbuds of your ipod, and that's because it is, because it is a genuine audio vibration that was singled out, captured, and carved into an impressionable piece of hot wax. And as the dj spins a tale of harmonious living, the needle-tip regurgitates a real life vibration.
And that's where I come in, as I convert the complexities of an unscribable musical experience, into a tangible unit of empirical measure. The digital revolution certainly offers the convenience of skipping the occasional moments of disharmony, but a good album tells a cohesive story from start to finish, even if a few of the songs aren't as catchy as the hits, and any skip of the needle would ensure that the dj remains a broke musician.
In order to preserve the semblance of tonality, the studio engineer must sample the wave of reality, and let the computer calculate its best sketch of how it thinks the wave should sound to an organic observer. Every second, it captures thousands of 'samples' from the incoming vibration, snapshots of the waveform in time, and it will then reconstruct a digital version by connecting the dots.
When you listen from a distance, a dot-connected masterpiece is more than recognizable as art, but the closer you zoom in, the more it just resembles a zigzag graphic of design. No artist renders a choppy curvature of the Earth, except maybe a binary etch-a-sketcher, or perhaps a patriarchal policymaker who prefers the straight lines of conformity, over the flowing nature of our mother's freedom. Ones and zeroes build boxes, not curves, and as we zoom through the shrinking of technology, we see the squares failing to find the swing of our timeless tune.
So this manmade digital copy can only ever get so close to an actual reality. The convolution of convenience enhances the resolution of the stand-in, but this infinitely complex life vibration can simply not be contained. It 'sounds' pretty good, but there's an entire spectrum of overtones that can only be 'felt', frequencies that we are evolved to perceive, but not with our ears.
Think of the 'sample rate' as the aural resolution of life vibration, and it can also be understood as the 'frame rate' of your favorite disney film, yet another fictitious forgery of an actual storyline. We also see this conversion with the pics of pixel size, an analog light vibration is captured, and a digital artifact is all that remains. The conversion of analog to digital is not a natural evolution of life, it is a systematic downsampling of our universal energies, as they are simply added to the inventory of the machine. The architecture of our current civilization, is built on a permanent foundation of colonial conversion. From the flattened waveforms of our once curvy rivers, to the migratory flows that now reside in the cubicles of the cattleyard, the Earth is being undermined, and her energy is being converted into the machine that is destroying her, and so are we.
*******
We are approaching the gateway of an evolution of humankind. I’m hoping that we take the Hopi’s advice and return to our Earth Mama’s side, but if the deciders of american privilege were to make the choice today, I’m afraid that they would choose door number two. A techno-dystopia that looks much more like a matrix of monocropped slaves, than it does any futuristic garden that I could ever dream up. We’re being nudged along the path of complete conformity, and the microchips they’ve begun installing are just a single step of the plan, as they slowly convert a diverse population into a homogenized legion of mindless minions. Man and the machine are merging, just like with the computerized ecology of RoboBees, and the official plan has been coined transhumanism, augmented brains, bodies, and lifespans, no conspiracy, this one was even written up in Forbes magazine. Only we can stop the mechanized takeover of our genome, but we only ask for more.
The 5G smartgrid will be rolling out soon as well, at least that’s what Tom Wheeler says, and he should know, the current administration placed him at the head of the FCC. And of course he’s as qualified as the rest of the conflicted appointments, like, he used to be the president and CEO of a major cellular communications corporation. He’s pretty sure that this new 5G thing will be great for business, so much so that he’s announced that there’s no need to wait for industry regulations, we’ll just let the corporations release whatever they want, and let the public test the safety of it all. He cited that the economic gain is the most important thing, that this will be bigger than electricity, and that it’ll be the forth stage of the industrial revolution. Oh boy.
It’ll be the “Internet of Things”, and everything in the world will be connected to it, from “pill bottles to plant waterers”, and it’ll be so convenient… to make sure that you swallow your pills. They plan to encase the entire planet in a web of radiation, an insanely high frequency that will be inescapable to even the remotest islander. No choice of vibrational freedom, and they’ve already begun installing the grid against the wishes of many mayors, but their governors already cashed the check. There’s also the rumors that these frequencies can greatly alter brainwaves and stuff, but even without the scientifically-backed conspiracy theories, the official story is scary enough. They are fast-tracking the release of their new world, as they order a future of forced compliance and complete disconnection, and all we seem to care about is the convenience of eCommerce.
*******
I get the allure of convenience. I’m not trying to act like I’m too good to appreciate the range of experiences that are only possible through colonization. Only through my drastic removal from it, have I been able to see it for what it is, and even now I find myself getting sucked back into the brainwash of the mainstream. It only takes a single visit to youtube to lose a day down a Rabbit hole of video crack, especially when I can rationalize it because I’m watching stuff that pertains to my path, and there’s even the synchronicity of what the universal youtube gods recommend for me next. Plus, I gotta binge watch the latest season of my stories.
This constant stream of content, is no doubt a distraction from what actually matters in this world, but the flipside is that without it, most of us would be completely unaware of what’s really going on out there. It is only through the internet that I slowly began my path away from the church and eventually into spirituality, it has since greatly deepened my assumed understanding of esoteric knowledge, and it was most certainly responsible for bringing me to Standing Rock in the first place.
I most assuredly believe that a life of prayer and living in a good way, is where true wisdom and universal understandings come from, but knowing that most people in the world don’t live that way, we might still need to use some data as we get it all figured out. Without this world of technology, most people would still be boxed into the small towns of their local close-minded communities, as the entire genealogy leading up to them was. But now, we’re empowered to share ideas and come together, as we collectively dream the new world. So I can’t quite completely denounce the use of the web to break free of the cage, at least not until enough people download this thing.
Of course, I’m using the powers of google for good, I’m sure way more people are lost in the infinite barrage of preoccupation, and I don’t mean that time when the indians lived happily ever before. The internet is an endless stream of consciousness, from which each individual computer, is capable of experiencing a completely unique perspective of the digital world around them. Each computer is merely an electrical conductance machine, and it is only through the flow of connection to the source of all knowledge, that the hardware offers the illusion of intelligence. But the computer is not sentient, it is merely a vessel for you to harness the infinite power of our collective consciousness, and through the traditional pathways of an aggregated search engine, we are more apt to successfully navigate the overwhelming energy of the universe. Now that’s convenient.
*******
And so’s the food out there. I love it. Cheese and meat and tropical fruit and chinese take-out and take out the trash, cause all of it was wrapped in plastic. I’ve been eating the refuse of the colon diet ever since I left the farm, but out here in this world, I’m inundated with endless option of aisle after aisle of every conceivable concoction of commercial consumption. My personal path of navigating the fine line between abundance and excess, has me in line three, as I refine my sugar selection between the twenty-seven varieties of reese’s.
And I love to cook, as do many who have helped me along my path, and those who don’t, insist on exploiting my new hazardous occupation. And we’re in the city, no room to forage outside of a dumpster, so what option is there but to buy into the american dream?
At least asheville is aware, so there’s several options of fair trade. Like the Whole Foods, the biggest corporate name in eating clean, and now that they’ve been bought by Amazon, they can send a drone right to your doorstep, no need for any vibrational exchange with any step of your food’s production. And on the other end of the spectrum, are the multitude of farmer’s markets around town, a much more local alternative, with far less pretty packaging. Small farms, the freshest of foods, and you get to speak with those who spoke to the seeds of life that you will consume.
Artisan cheese that came from the hippest of happy cows, though they were still enslaved as they were exploited for the profit of another. But how can I knock the small farmer? Certainly way better than a kraft food feed lot, for the environment and for our bodies, and the alternative is that they close up shop, get a real job, have their food airlifted in, and join the homogenization of the monsanto machine.
Local farms are probably needed during our transition into the next, but they can’t be about growing a business, they must be about growing healthy food to share with the community. The entire community, not just the human community. They can’t be focused on efficiency, on profit per acre, on the convenience of modern machinery as it disconnects us from the vibrations of life. There’s no room for technology in what should be the most sacred act of all, and no need for it, once we’ve removed the quotas of capitalism.
And what about after the collapse? No more deliveries out of town, so no pressure to maximize cashflow, and as the survivors gravitate away from the city and into the countryside, they’ll have plenty of time to help tend the land. Those who live close enough to eat the food, will be the ones helping to grow it, and as they ingest the Sun’s vibrations rooted in that particular landscape, they will be updated with the most current flows of cosmic connection. I trust that as this process organically develops, the Earth will guide us in the rebuilding of her gardens. Or maybe the unbuilding of her gardens.
And the fences have to go. We have no right to hold claim to any piece of land, or the life that blooms out of it. If the rest of life has any chance at becoming unendangered, it is only through our development of the ability to share. And as far as the cheese goes, the only ethical solution is to build a symbiotic partnership with our sisters in the Cow Nation. Sorry brothers, but Bull cheese just sounds a little too nuts, even for me.
*******
But Cashew cheese, now we might be onto something. Sure, it’s technically not really cheese, but technically neither is cheese whiz. I’m not making this one up, you can get it airdropped from Whole Foods, plastic pack and all, or you can make it yourself like I did. Well, a friend did most of the work, but then I made a most delicious pizza pie without contributing to the incarceration of the animal kingdom.
A friend from a previous life had relocated to a-town for a new job as a wetland biologist, an actual water protector. Needless to say, we had plenty to say. She was an activist too, had wanted to come to Standing Rock, but she had that pesky job thing to worry about. She had done stuff like stream restoration in the past, but this gig was on the other end of it, she calculated the environmental impact of development, and permitted the demolition of nature.
She wasn’t without dilemma in accepting the position, but the majority of jobs in the developed world are centered around the further development of the world. And she understood the importance of having someone who cares about the Earth, employed to monitor the final stage of destroying it. She got to spend her workdays in the woods, had relationships with the plant life, was more than meticulous with her ecological review of endangered species, but in the end, she was the last person that would ever see these pristine habitats again. The occupations of colonization only further the occupation of colonization.
She saw the destruction of development up close and personal, and intricately understood the implications of impact on the water, like the toxic runoff of golf courses, or the side effects of paving paradise into a parking lot, or the mysterious sludge pipe flowing into the river from an abandoned lithium mine. Or a three foot natural gas pipeline that’s carving through the mountaintops of our home state.
She wasn’t involved in any of our east coast pipes, but that’s the kind of thing she does, although they probably prefer a much less active inspection process. But wouldn’t that be something, if my magic path crossed with an inside window into the path of the pipe? Or if her expertise of endangered species, just so happened to find them popping up in the way? Geez, what a coincidence.
She had somehow managed to find a rental in town that still had woods all around it, and no tv or internet, and a fire pit, um, can I stay here for a bit? She was a vegan, and I love meat, but I was also realizing more and more of the true impact of a colonial diet. So we made Cashew cheese pizza, and tempeh indian tacos, and Almond milk ice cream. She played me music on her banjo, and I sang indian songs with her drum. We spent time by the fire discussing issues of impact, I shared Cedar with the flame, as I shared tales of my spiritual journey with her wide open heart.
She had experienced a life of prayer in the past, but had fallen away from it as she reached full fledged adulthood, instead focusing her energy on saving the world. She had transitioned into a life of connection with nature, instead of a connection to spirit, and my dedication to both, inspired her to see that they are not mutually exclusive. We prayed at every meal and she picked back up her forgotten traditions, she sang along with my prayer songs, and I was beginning to see just how real my role of spiritual midwife is gonna be.
She also cashed in her retirement and bought a school bus to pimp out for the next Standing Rock. Dope. I know just the family to ask for advice. And she’s ready to leave the job when the time comes, as are so many protectors in plain sight, but if everybody is waiting until the next time, then when will it ever happen? Not that she’s sitting docile until we set up against the east coast pipes, my camp experience also inspired her to spend christmas in puerto rico, helping the victims rebuild after hurricane Maria.
It sounds like it’s got a similar vibe to Standing Rock, minus the ice and assault rifles, and throw in some alcohol to forget the trouble it creates, but still a coming together of the people to build community. Or rebuild it, I guess. No government support, so the people are figuring it out on their own, plus volunteers fly down to help for a week at a time. They’re obviously reestablishing agriculture to feed themselves, and to feed our addiction to refining our sugar dependence, but what’s the alternative, to not rebuild a civilization on a storm-torn island whose rebuilding process only adds to the problem?
But how can I ask someone to leave the place they’ve lived forever, just because our sedentary way of life has destroyed the stability of the climate that is vital to their ocean view? And how many times will we rebuild it in the coming days, before we realize that we can’t? They may not want to leave, just like those in miami don’t, but closing your eyes to the reality of the near future is only imposing devastation onto your children. And the latest reality byte I caught from the mainstream, is that our government wants to make puerto rico a natural gas and petroleum energy hub, a filling station, on an island with proven hurricane vulnerability. Buckle up boys, looks like we may not have to wait that long after all.
*******
I visited old friends, made Prickly Pear syrup, and even hung out in my old neighborhood bar. Everybody still knew my name, the same old characters, same old jobs, same old alcoholics, but at least some things never change in this world. Hung out with a friend who had read the book and loved it, she of course could hear my sarcastic tone in its delivery, but it also resonated with the angst that she’d been feeling as she tried to connect in a world built of disconnection. So she quit her job, cut the excess out of her life, and signed up to join the movement. And I talked to another friend who had started giving away their material world, and another who had been praying with their garlic, and then another asked me to pray at their dinner table, after he’d been to an indian taco party that I’d thrown together. Holy Geez Louise, it’s actually working.
I spent thanksgiving with my old roommate, who last thanksgiving had been feeling compelled to go to Standing Rock, which had helped in my own inspiration. That previous thanksgiving, just before I left my previous life behind, had been the last time I’d seen my sister and her family. For some reason, it was upsetting to her when I disappeared for months into a government standoff on an iceberg. Her kids asked where I was, and that only made it worse, because she didn’t know.
And then I reemerged alive and well, mostly, but I couldn’t promise not to leave again, in fact, I could almost promise the opposite. How can I reassure her that I’m ok and doing what I must, and in the same breath confirm that I have given up everything we’ve ever known, to stand up to an evil military regime? And how dumb does that sound? I’m no secret agent, I’m just her brother, some hippie that’s always got a new music thing going on, and this is just the next passing fad, but somehow I’ve sacrificed our relationship so that I can run off and save the world.
Why can’t I just be the old me and live a normal life like everyone else? Why can’t I wake up tomorrow and be asleep like I used to be. Why can’t I replace the veil that has been lifted from the world around me? Why do I have to get anxiety when I’m engulfed in the conversations of colonization? Why do I get panic attacks in crowds of ‘normal’ people? Why can’t I come to thanksgiving dinner, and not be completely cynical about the celebration of genocide?
I know that’s not why you celebrate, it’s not why anybody does, it’s all about food and family and togetherness, but when your kids ask me about the indians on thanksgiving, I will not be able to shelter them from the truth of our country’s origin. Nor should I. This unwillingness to take an honest look at ourselves, is what has raised a population of macy’s day consumers, while there are currently indians being murdered by america. I know it’s not your fault, I know there’s nothing you can do about it, but there is absolutely something I can do, and I must.
I’m sorry that I can not simply forget about what my eyes have been opened up to. I understand that this must be confusing, as I denounce the entire way of life that we grew up in together, but I have been called for a purpose far greater than my life alone. I have dedicated my existence to ensuring that our kids will have one.
I pray for the humility to remember that as strongly as I feel about my task at hand, I am causing a ripple of hurt in the process, and I seek the understanding of how we may find a way to repair our broken connection. I’m incredibly sorry that I have caused you pain throughout my journey, and I will do all that I can to spread healing between us, as we begin to regrow the bond that is so important to us both. I think of the kids everyday and miss them dearly, please don’t take my absence as a sign of my indifference, and I beg you to somehow take a moment and try to see the world from my puzzling perspective, as I pray that you’ll understand how terrified I am of what the future holds for them.
I think that unless drastic measures are taken to change the way that we live on this Earth, that they are destined to a life of devastation and disease. At the same time, I think that this coming age will usher in the beauty of new abundant life, and our kids