Roots are a most wondrous creation. Their neural highways reach far and wide, as they absorb ancient vibration. They channel the past into the future, as their divergent timelines return to their creator.
Roots are deep in nature. Their memories can be retraced to find their anchor in time. Their origin story is one of dualistic design, as they keep even the wildest dreams grounded in reality.
Roots are expeditions of life. As far out as they manage to travel, they never lose connection with the source. They are toes into the sand, a reminder of home, whose roadmap keeps us from ever becoming lost.
Roots pull energy from the core of creation, as they nourish the growth of new life. Their electric flow travels out into the universe, before once again returning heaven to Earth.
The roots of the past connect us to a time forgotten. As we deepen our reach into the heart of Unci Maka, we become more aware of the intricacies of our being. They provide us with the power to stand strong, as an interwoven family, whose unified efforts are the only defense against the erosive forces of nature. They are the foundation of life, and through the journey of our ancestors, can be found the pathways of tomorrow
*******
Speaking of roots, I could totally be into some hash browns for breakfast. I’d spent the night with the stars as I cuddled up next to the fire, it seemed like the only way to properly commemorate the magic of the day prior. The magical week, really. In fact, it’d been a pretty magical winter. And a magical year. Thank you Unci Maka, for this incredible lifetime of magic and wonder. I am in awe of the complexity of coincidence that has led me to be in this very ‘now.’ Please help me to walk in a good way as I continue this onward journey. Aho.
Now I could really dig some Potatoes. Would have loved to gather the wild blue variety that grows around here, but I haven’t gotten that merit badge yet. I woke with the Sun, it’s actually quite natural when your head is resting on the pulse of the planet, and I took off in search of the Rosebud root cellar. I kinda knew where it was, and Dean had tapped around a bit and thought he felt it under the snow, so I just started poking holes in the latest government cover-up of the oppression of indians. I was so excited to roll back to camp with an armful of spuds, but no go, couldn’t find it, maybe they filled it in after all, or maybe I was supposed to leave it for my post-apocalyptic pilgrimage. Root cellars work, without electricity, an Earthenware technology whose marketing team couldn’t figure out how to commoditize the cooler, so they simply let it become some obsolete novelty of the elders.
We still ate a proper breakfast of course, Rosebud doesn’t go hungry, plus I knew where some buried Buffalo was if we got pinched up. Full and happy, we filled the Jeep with as much trash as we could cram into the crevices. There were little bits all over that would takes weeks to sort out, and I didn’t touch anything that could possibly be someone’s manifested birthday gift waiting to be unwrapped, but there was one eyesore that we just couldn’t leave behind. It was a tarp trash explosion, assumedly part of the cleanup crew’s commission, so I poked around for my long lost apron, collected the cans for nuclear meltdown, and we piled the pile into the car. One last stop by the inipi as we tied some prayers, John had just enough for two sets, a bundle that a friend had sent with him for this very occasion. Stopped by a dumpster in Cannonball, got invited in next door for a coffee break, but we gotta get outta here before the flood rolls in.
*******
And as per a proper cyclical departure, we decided that maybe we should head to the line 3 camp in minnesota, a path of circular motion to keep the waves of water protection active. We could stay for a day, help gear down for the spring, pack in a few supplies, and who knows what I’d end up doing, I sure didn’t.
We tracked down some wifi at Sitting Bull College, imagined that their american history course is a bit different than ours, and I sent my mom a belated birthday confirmation of life. She’s the one tether to my roots of existence as I tumble my way through this adventure. Checking in with her provides us both with the comfort of each other’s presence. It’s gotta be scary for her to know that I’m out in the unknown, and I pray that her own connection continues to grow as she more clearly understands my path of protection. I crave a reconnection with the rest of my family as well, to be able to share my experience in a good way that brings us closer together, as we begin to heal the wounds of separation between us.
And most of all, I miss my son. I pray every single day that we will be reunited in a good way, and that he can feel the love pouring from my heart in his direction. I know that he knows that I love him, but that doesn’t negate the pain that I’m sure he feels as I am unable to be by his side. I haven’t seen him since before camp, his mother and I’s relationship was already stressed over money, and my disappearance into the wind of the snowstorm was the final blow. She is not at all aligned with my lifeway, the polar opposite in fact, but she’d have probably not kept me from him had I continued to pay rent.
And who can blame her, she has bills to pay, and how could I expect her to understand the condition I’m unable to process myself? I’m broken, at least in the terms of the only world she’s ever known, and no one who wasn’t there can truly understand the traumas we experienced, especially if they don’t understand the reason for going in the first place.
I cannot rejoin society. I cannot unsee what my eyes have been opened up to. I could have a panic attack at any moment out in that toxic world, and closing my heart in order to survive the system is simply not an option. I pray that she will come to an understanding of my path, and I pray that I hold only humility, patience, and my own understanding, as I send unconditional love in her direction as well. She is just a product of conditioning, as we all are, and I have the ultimate faith in Unci Maka that she will be awakened to the task at hand when the time is right.
The last message I sent to her tried to explain what I hardly understood at the time, and also a warning of times ahead, which elicited only a diagnosis of insanity and a demand of no further contact. I understand. She only wants what’s best for him, and I’ve obviously gone off the deep end as I eat the bugs of a wire-tapped paranoia.
I am patient. And I know that he follows his heart regardless of the indoctrinations of his environment. I don’t even know if he even knows that I was at Standing Rock though, I can only hope that a biased news report popped up and she credited the movement with my disappearance. He is connected to his phone as is every mainstream teenager, and as down on the device as I am, it keeps him free to discover the world outside of his racist red state. Technology may very well be the catalyst of demolition, but it might also be the mechanism of reunification.
If he looked up the movement, then he understands, but that doesn’t mean that he doesn’t feel abandoned. No youtube video can explain what we went through, the entire shattering of what we thought the world to be, so how can he understand that I have no choice but to continue to commit my life to this mission? Shouldn’t I want to be with him at all costs? Shouldn’t I feel the same pain he does? How can I expect him to understand what the rest of the world can’t, that this is the most important thing I could possibly be doing for his future.
And does that really justify my path? Dedicating my life to service, as he sits at home alone, creating yet another paternal disconnection as he’s left to figure out life without my guidance. I don’t want my path to blind him to his, I don’t want my absence to drive him down the darkened road of escape, how can I be willing to leave him fatherless as I run off to save the rest of the world?
But I just can’t exist in the world he lives in anymore, I just can’t. I pray so much everyday that he is awakening to the destruction around him, and that he sees my path for what it is, and that he commends me, not condemns me, and that he knows that I will be here for him at the moment he is ready to join me. I pray for strength in his heart as he has trouble understanding the broken world that engulfs him, and that without my perspectives of another way, that he is able to see beyond the walls of the cage that stifles his growth.
I understand that he is on his own journey, and that as bad as I want him in the movement, that it may also just be my ego wanting him to follow in my footsteps. But I don’t want that at all, I want him to take my understanding and run as far as he can ahead of me. I feel deep in my heart that this path of living in harmony with Unci Maka, is the only way to survive, and I want him to survive. And as hard as it is to be away from him as I feel the clouds of change sweeping in, I know for a fact that I am on the exact step of my path where I belong, so I can only put the faith in the universe that he is as well.
And maybe that means not being here, maybe it means being out there, so I pray every single day that he feels my love in his heart, and that it gives him the strength to follow it. I hope that my eastward travel holds reunion, but I am patient, though I do like to imagine that he asks me to break him out of that prison, as we reconvene and go on the run together.
I love you so much son, you are the most important person in my life, but I hope you can see that this is not about my life anymore. Please follow your heart, whatever you do, and know that we will be together when the time is right. It is my only prayer that hasn’t been answered yet, so I know it’s coming soon. There is a big change ahead, please don’t get lost in the mix, you are destined to play a vital role in the repairing of our planet. If I do not see you before it happens, then I know I will see you afterwards, just check in with the kitchen when you get to camp. Toksa.
*******
Or maybe he’s already at the enbridge camp, I know for sure that one of my closest sisters is. Bob and I had facetimed her last week, so nice to see her, even if it was on a soul capturing digital screen, and now I find myself less than a day’s drive away. We thought it would be a little closer to our estimated route, and we didn’t exactly know where it was so we messaged her from the college, but we landed on the responsible decision. We were really just going for recon and to visit our dear friend, I wasn’t ready to jump off of this bandwagon yet, so it seemed selfishly wasteful to burn an extra day’s gas just to visit an oil protest. And that sentiment resonated us both back into the car, as we continued our exploration of resistance.
They were in the thick of it up there, doing whatever it takes to slow the construction of destruction, I guess the only step up from there would be to cut them off at the steam driven extraction point. The tarsands. The dirty filthy frackin crude and rude tarsands, that are even more toxic to transport than Rockefeller’s standard oil. And if we could stop the flow altogether, then it wouldn’t matter how much pipe they had in the ground. But just imagine the security team they keep with their heads in the sand.
Ok then, so what about the other end of the flow? The refinery. Except that they’re probably just shipping the raw sludge across the ocean, so what’re we gonna do, hijack an oil freighter? And do what, put it back in the ground? Well, maybe we’re not quite ready to tackle that end of it yet, but what about our gross domestic product? It might not be dirty enbridge fracked oil, but the imported oils that we use to export oil, have all had their personal share of global devastation as well.
Remember that BP pipeline that leaked two hundred million gallons over the 87 days that it took them to fix it? 200,000,000 gallons of dirty crude poured directly into your planet’s radiator, the same one you get Crabs from, and the 16,000 miles of coastline directly affected are still finding oil washed ashore, eight years later. Or the Exxon Valdez tanker spill that spewed another eleven million gallons, over thirty years ago, enough time to have made major change in the policies of our planet, had the dollar bill not promised us that pipelines were a far safer alternative fuel source. Oil leaks are not a new thing, they’re inevitable, and there are already half a million miles of pipe waiting to burst under the surface of our country’s foundation. They are a crime against the Earth and an attack on her population, a violation that should certainly hold harsher punishments than peacefully praying for her health, and they do, but we will all be serving the deferred sentence soon enough.
Maybe people just don’t know. But they have to, that BP thing was all over the news, even the mainstream news, but it was only a simple segment among the clutter of misinformation that they bombard their nightly viewers with. The world is full of bad stuff happening all the time, at least that’s how the fear-based media keeps our attention on the tube. So, is a little oil in our water really the worst thing that could happen?
Those that have been personally devastated by oil spills, know that it is. Like in south dakota, where the keystone pipeline leaked 200,000 gallons, no, wait, they lied, it was actually over 400,000 gallons of oil into the farmlands of your produce aisle. And now they want to build the keystone XL, an even bigger badder pipe whose increased capacity should be able to break all kinds of oil spill records. Or exxon’s 200,000 gallons that dumped into the laps of residential arkansas, a knee-high wave of black gold that forced families to evacuate their permanent residences, not quite the motivation for nomadism I was looking for.
But look it up, the photos are appalling, especially once you find that the single most profitable corporation in the world has not only resumed the piping, but they’ve actually increased the flow, even though they claim to have no idea what caused the leak. Never saw that picture on the news, probably just got lost in the shuffle, but maybe if we just show the users of oil what the cost of gas really is, maybe that’ll stop ‘em from topping off their weekend excursion. Yeah right, but let’s go with it for a minute.
*******
So what if we printed stickers with the photos of devastation and a nice catch phrase like, “This is the real price of gas.” or “What if this was your backyard?” or “How’s this for fuel efficiency?” And then put them all around town. Or place them at the pump. That’s it, stick photos of exxon’s mess at their own pumps, no bombardment of terror to dilute the truth, just a single message to consider, for the twenty gallons that we already have your attention. It’s a good idea, and may actually get a few people to think for a change, but best case, they probably just start going to the BP across the street. But at least that would affect exxon’s bottom line, though I doubt it would even be noticed.
Well, what if we force them to notice? What if we disable the pumps? That causes both exxon to suffer, and the customer to wonder what in the world is going on. And there’s our sticker right up front - "This is what’s going on."
Again, would exxon even notice? Seems like only the individual proprietor would suffer. And the consumer. They’d be pissed. Already late to work and now there’s confusion at the gas station, the complexion of conundrum before they’ve even had their first taste of black brew, or they don’t even pause as they roll past the yellow out of order signs. Would we possibly gain their support, or just more resistance to the movement? But maybe we need them to get worked up. Not worrying about it, is how we got into the mess pictured in the above photo. Yeah, they’ll be pissed, especially when they have to drive all the way across the street to BP. And then that one’s disabled too.
When the entire exit has been gas-exed, or when it’s the only two stations for miles, or the best one is when it’s all of the stations in a downtown area, people will be pissed. There’s not too many pumps in a financial district, and often they’re the same brand, so just imagine the water cooler conversation at wells fargo, when nobody in town could get gas this morning. People would be pissed, but they would be talking about it, and about the stickers, which link to a website of spill info and the resistance of further devastation. It would bring awareness and open a dialog, it would force the sheep to pay attention for a moment, and it might even make the news.
And just imagine if other teams started doing it in other metropolitan areas around the country. It would cause mass hysteria. It would certainly cause a gas scare and price gouging, and heightened security at the pump, but if it caught on at that scale, then you know we’d have exxon’s attention. What if we focus on just one company, if exxons around the country all take a hit?
A single station strategy leaves the owner thinking that kids vandalized his business, but a mass uprising of national proportion, would get the execs as flustered as a Duck trying to swim in an oil puddle. And if they have to send a repairman to fix it, or if an abnormal amount of parts have to be suddenly ordered, just how long will the system be down? Oh, they’re gonna be pissed. And we’ve certainly crossed the line into domestic terrorism, ill will towards oil is a known threat to the owners of america, but I’m still claiming self-defense.
So nobody involved is going to be happy, even hippies headed to an oil protest might scoff, but if people aren’t willing to change the oil themselves, then it might take some drastic measures to save the planet from the humans. I don’t really give a shit if people are happy. This blinded behavior has enabled the annihilation of my mother’s well-being, and jeopardized the future of our children, none of us should be happy, and we should be doing something about it. Because if we don’t, she’s getting ready to, and it’s gonna be a lot worse than rush hour traffic.
It is time for a wake-up call, a drastic shift in our collective consciousness, and for your sake, let’s hope it happens before the alarms start going off. If we simply continue life as we know it, then we’re not gonna know very much after it’s too late, but if we come together as concerned citizens of our planet, then maybe we could do something about it. It’s easy to agree that we need a change, as you fill the tank on your daily commute. To fight the pipes firsthand, and then drive across the country. The only way that we’ll ever be able to make a difference, is to completely change the way we view the world around us, and to make a concerted effort to change our entire way of life.
And yeah, I still use gas to get around, for now, as I navigate within the system that I’m attempting to unravel. And yeah, even though I’ve greatly reduced my own footprint, there’s still tons of people who haven’t, which only seems to drown out my breath of fresh air. So yeah, while the change needs to begin on a personal level, that is not enough, we have to stand together and demand a transformation of the power grids that be. There are already alternative fuels on the market, and many more sequestered away in the pockets of petrol, but they will not voluntarily make the biofuel conversion until all accounts have been drained and deposits cashed in. At least until we rise up and demand cleaner energy implementation over the profits of corporate interest. We can’t view the Earth as a commodity, we have to understand that it is our home, and treat it like it’s the only one we have. Just this once, I’d be ok with an insistence on permanence. Please, let’s protect our planet, the future of humanity depends on it.
But my pleas are only going to reach those already on a path to waking up, nobody else is nuts enough to read this mess, so we have to do something to catch the attention of those still in a deep slumber. Those so caught up in the rat race, that they don’t realize they’re headed over a cliff. If we have any hope of not experiencing the planetary cleansing of our race, we must do something now, we are out of time. Today may be a good day to die, but I sure wouldn’t mind putting it off until tomorrow.
*******
So what can we do? Let’s head ‘em off at the pump. It’s the only place they’d even consider their addiction to oil. Plus, it hurts the despicable drug dealers in the process. If we rise up and alert the rest of the population that we are unwilling to let them destroy our children’s future, maybe they’ll listen to our pleas then, or maybe not, but we’re shutting the system down either way.
So cities, yeah, main targets, they’re the key to hitting the news and really going viral, but catching three small towns in a row, makes for one hefty commute on an empty tank. Or the few exits just outside the skyline, as commuters rush to miss morning traffic. And yeah yeah yeah, ok, I’m with the plan of forcing the public to see that we must change today, but how are we supposed to disable all those pumps?
Ah, thought you’d never ask, that bit is actually the easy part. I started out just wanting to cut the hoses and take the nozzles, but that seems a bit dangerous to just have open gas lines strewn about, especially with texting drivers who mindlessly swipe their cards and go boom. And that’s the main part to remember, we can’t set it up so that anybody gets hurt, and there can’t be any gas spills, it kinda defeats the point of our point. So we just render the handle useless. I like the poetic idea of coating the handles with dirty oil, then it covers their hand as they see the sticker of it covering the planet, but that only pisses off a few people before they simply clean the pump. Nope, we have to make it serious enough that they must contact the corporate office.
Epoxy. Not the liquid syringe kind, but the two part putty, check out Blue Magic’s QuikSteel or JB Weld’s SteelStik. You mix up a ball of it and stuff it in above the lever, there’s a piston up there that lets the gas flow, so once the epoxy hardens, the lever will simply not activate the pump. Anti-depressing. And that alone will gum up the works, as there will essentially be a steel blob wrapped around the operating mechanism.
Pretty simple, huh? Couple caveats with this one though. If it’s done in the middle of the night, no worries, but I would allegedly be planning to interrupt the daytime flow as well. The tricky bit is that once you push the blob in there and pull away, unless it’s had enough time to cure, it may still be too soft to stop the depression of the next consumer. Or it could harden around the piston while it’s in the open position, which could possibly cause a spillage. So you’ll have to stall a few minutes as it hardens, but there’s a caveat to that one too. If this starts happening a lot, they’ll check the security camera, and you’ll be the last one at the working pump.
*******
Ok, since all of this is obviously fiction and in no way a confession, plus, millions of devoted readers also have this exact same plan, the one that I’m pretty sure I saw on netflix somewhere, with no admission of guilt on the table, here’s how I see it going down.
The nighttime in small towns is easy enough, just don’t get shot, but the real heist is the middle of the day city maneuver. It takes a big team, you can’t just shut down one pump, you have to take out the entire location. Gotta get cheap burner cars, or cabs or something, fake plates of course, and in my movie we duplicate the tags of exxon executives. We all pull up, could actually get gas so as not to tip off the clerk, use a anonymous visa gift card, but I don’t think all of us even have to get gas. You’ve got a passenger mixing the putty, jam a big blob in there, and then the best part is that this is just phase one of a multi-tiered brain teaser.
You slide a small shard of a credit card into the reader, just like a quarter inch strip, enough so that another card can’t quite get all the way in. Or maybe just another blob of epoxy. And while you’re doing that, your partner mixes up some super-fast-curing liquid epoxy, sets in sixty seconds, you glob it onto the nozzle’s resting platform, so now it’s glued down and can’t even be picked up to begin with. And a sticker. Then everyone pulls out and hits the station across the street. Or the next town. You’ll have a bit of time, but don’t dillydally.
The next customer rolls up, probably tries the card reader first, doesn’t work, that’s strange, so now they have to go inside to pay. How inconvenient. Then they come out and can’t get the prepaid handle to move, WTF? They have to go back in, the clerk has no idea what’s going on, and then another customer has the same problem, and then another. Chaos ensues, long lines inside, gotta refund payments, and call the owner.
They would still think it was mere vandalism, but the sticker lets them know that we mean no business, but that thin layer of epoxy can probably be broken with a screwdriver or something. So the clerk or the maintenance guy spend a few hours chiseling away at the resistance, then they remove the card shard out of there, and now they should be back in the black. Oh wait, nevermind, there’s a giant steel blob that had plenty of time to cure as it encompasses the piston. This handle is trashed. All eight pumps are.
How many spare handles do you think they keep on hand? How many handles does exxon keep at the base? More than eight, less than eight hundred. And they’d notice if all of a sudden they had to send cases all over the country.
Oh, they’d notice, and they’d send private intelligence firms like TigerSwan to investigate, and probably the informants of the FBI, who will most likely look at the tapes. The culprits seem to all be wearing disguises, old lady wigs and stuff, though only prosthetics could outsmart the facial recognition found in your smartphone. The cameras are all in different locations at different stores, so case them first and know your good side. This will be a serious offense, messing with the oil companies is not as politically correct as shooting indians, be careful.
*******
Or schedule a three hundred person costumed flash mob around the pumps, just kneel down and tie your shoes as the fog and streamers take flight, the actual application process is pretty quick and inconspicuous. And if you opt to do it while they’re closed, then just walk up and do it, at least until they start waiting for us. The traceable cars are really the tricky part, and assembling the team, but in my hollywood montage, each crew member has a specialty and a cool nickname, and we have an accomplice buy cheap rides on craigslist, though now they’re definitely gonna look into that one. If this were to actually become a thing, we’re talking serious investigation, and serious jail time, or worse.
And here’s a problem, what if someone has an emergency and needs gas? What if they need to get to the hospital in a hurry? Yeah, I guess my official stance is not to try this at home, just another fictional delusion from yours truly.
And if we timed it with the flag flipping, oh man oh man oh man. So pick downtown stations with not too many pumps, in areas where there’s only a couple around, and preferably the same leaky brand. It might even be a few days before they recovered, and you’ll anonymously post a pic, but if we do it right, it’ll already be going viral as it catches national attention. And then another city gets hit. Same crew, different crew, who knows, I just read it in a book.
Well, good news, think I just made a few top ten lists with this one. Come and get me. I stand behind my words. I stand behind my actions. I stand behind the greatest planet in the history of the world. And in front of her. Something must be done to stop the devastation that our species insists upon. I am proud to be that person, but I cannot do it alone. No matter which avenue of action begins the toppling of the empire, they will frame us as the bad guys, as terrorists, and the sheep at home will believe them because that’s what they do, but they will only be able to keep it up for so long. Their only option will be to declare martial law, which will send some sheep inside, but the rest of us must rise up. Do not stand down. We are on the precipice of the most beautiful time in human history, I sure hope the humans are still around to see it.
*******