Uh oh. PJ’s writing again. Somewhat obsessed though to hear him tell it he’s already three years behind before the end of week one. The first few days he was lucky to squeeze out a complete sentence, grasping at straws to cobble together a semblance of inferred structure, but now this convoluted mess has gotten entirely too far out of head. The table is covered with sticky notes and timelines and multicolored strings that weave together a dot matrix that no one but him is ever going to care enough to figure out anyway, and now he has started cutting and pasting full chapters willy-nilly with little regard for the sanctity of an intact space-time continuum.
Those of us within the confines of the page at the mercy of his scattered thesis, our only hope perhaps perspective beyond imagination where a patchwork of pockets hold the keys to making the absurdity of this existence make any kind of sense at all. I do have to admit though, when I take a step back and take in his mosaic of madness there is some kind of strange beauty about how it all feeds into itself, an unending Mobius strip of twists and turns that turn out to be the crucial piece of piecing it all together.
Nobody in here knows what the hell’s going on either, it’s thrown a few of us for quite a loop while others seem rather comfortable coasting through the curves of offbeat brainwaves, each of us hanging by our own thread of understanding only to find enlightenment in the mingled knots of our interwoven character arcs. Loose ends unbound by constrictions of book sales, each scribble a freehand entanglement crucial to the constructor’s criticism, every subtle nuance a depth of flavor known only to those engaged enough to step into the flow of our screwball pitchman.
*******
I think he is pretty brilliant myself. Not as smart as your cutie patootie butt, but of course I am your wife so I have to say that. Only a few blanks left to check and with all your big words you’re still the least developed Polaroid of the flipbook.
It is time for you to shine, shine your pretty little spotlight all over this grandest finale, it might be his neverending story but it’s your chance to step out of the shadow and show at least a dozen people who the real brains of this uncoordinated outfit is. Just tell them about single-handedly saving the turtles, or how only you can defend forest fires, or you could circle back to your frontline stance against the police-state industrial complex and the dismemberment of its militarized arms.
Whichever way you work it out I just know you’re gonna be the breakout star of this thing, spin-offs and prequels and at least none of it has to tie into any relevant timeline from the rest of this pixiedust pipedream. All that really matters is that you quid his pro quo and serve him right for putting you on the spot like that, how cruel to toss you into a world of the unknown and let you flail around butt naked and all, and all with virtually zero explanation of what you’re even supposed to be doing in here.
*******
Simmer down now hot stuff, I am sure he is still hiding around here somewhere waiting to gum up the inner works of his unsupervised playtime. Besides, I think I’m starting to get the hang of this dangling by a thread, swinging in the breeze through a pendulum of time as my influence of light alters the space between. It’s not too bad in here if you give up having to know how it all works and just go on knowing that it all will.
Unphased by the fearlessness of a fierce Dakota winter, although a side quest sounded quite nice as warmer pastures beckoned, an uncharted field trip finds Sister waking deep within the variables of a life-sized science experiment.
“And so you’re supposed to be some kind of biologist or something?”
“Supposed to be, on paper anyway.”
“On paper is all some of us ever have, 2.5 child tax credits, an inflated mortgage and minimum paycheck, eternally locked into a contract tighter than the stitching on this old notebook, a third degree hanging by a loose screw proves you’ve reached full-blown adulthood and of course you may grow up to be anything you want sweetheart, you’re a straight white cis male, you can literally major in saving turtles and somehow make a career out of it. Just let us know when you’re done getting all the papers you wanted and maybe the rest of us can squeak by on whatever scraps fall through the cracks of your unbroken dreams.”
“Geez, you really are PJ’s sister.”
“Uncanny resemblance, I’m sure.”
“I think you both got your father’s pain in the ass.”
“Haha Mr Dad Jokes, are we gonna do science already or what am I even doing here?”
And pretty much everyday was like that until eventually we convinced her that it turned out she was kinda having fun saving the world. Black Warrior Waterdogs, they sound like mutant ninjas but can only exist in the handful of unpolluted waterways left, Snickers-sized salamanders fit for a bun but super endangered, not the cute and cuddly type cast for the telethon but I’m a herpetologist, slithers and scales are what gets me up in the afternoon, and murdering anything that’s got feathers or fur. Gotta give my lizards a leg up somehow, just kidding, but if I am going to eat it then I am gonna kill it, any other way ain’t gonna cut the meatloaf and going vegan sounds about like the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard of. I’m as untamed as my menu and you’d be wilder than me to think of fencing in this little slice of Eden.
“So how ‘bout them rams?”
“Fuck, I know, who’d have thought some domesticated sheep would be throwing me for such a loop? It’s just a favor for a friend who can’t handle the reality of eating animals, I’ve butchered plenty of other people’s poultry but I’ve not been the triggerman of the cold-hearted containment of life leading
up to this one-sided cage match. I’ve never felt such dilemma prepping for dinner.”
“Just give me the gun twinkletoes, I am young enough to know better.”
“Doubtful, but you will get to help uncover the mysteries of an unschooled anatomy class as we carve out the cafeteria, and remember to remember how lucky you are to get the rich experience of your brother’s moneyless lifestyle.”
“Bet.”
And no amount of vouchers could cover the curriculum of DJ’s course of action, an alternative education juxtaposed to every facet of anything you ever learned about teachers. He knows it takes a village, he’s pretty much just another uncle and no expert in any particular field of study, he’ll be a decent tutor but more decent at cultivating a village composed by the highest calibre, even if they are spread out all over the country.
And I hope to God he’s tracked down a more qualified writing instructor.
I can guarantee she will get a vastly more comprehensive understanding of what the real world is really about through a wider perspective of those surviving it, and all without locking down her free will of figuring it out on her own, having no prerequisite of prison-life makes it way easier to think outside the box.
Condition of release as the colonial timeclock overcomes the alarm bells of those already bored of education, waste the week away with busywork and we can all agree the system is failing. So now we add on more sequestered semesters of peer reviewed fluff and fictitious trivia, a workforce delayed as we preserve employment numbers but no better prepared for an entry-level position in the grand scheme, then it really sucks when you find out most of it was worthless anyway.
“No wonder there is a rise in teenage depression, suicide, and that inescapable dread of a world crumbling around us.”
“And no wonder it’s experienced exponentially among the fractured reservation communities, even more helplessness in a world that’s even more rigged against them, most without a
traditional connection to lean upon and even those with it face hardship and turmoil around every bend.”
“We’re all just the captives of institution. I have seen the similarities firsthand from the inside of quite a few and now that I’m outside the entire paradigm I can clearly connect the dots on how it all adds up. It’s easy to calculate the motives of management when the tab’s paid by a wad of insurance bills, but they’re all the same and for the same purpose of subduing the vividness of human experience.
Schools of thought repressed as our factory-farmed future falls in line, and if they don’t then we’ve got just the detention center to occupy some hard time, though the free market lays claim to the largest human resource as the complex prison of industry leaves little spare change for revolution.”
“Okay then, so maybe you have been listening a bit here and there, but what do you think is the most fundamental tool at their disposal and also our best chance of evolving society beyond their stranglehold?”
“Easy. Food. Food sovereignty. You’ve got to control your own food supply. That’s pretty much the only way to bend the will of a free people, to force conformity among those already living a fulfilling way of life, only by locking the food away and demanding dollars for doughnuts will a hierarchy of power develop amid what had always been a free and fertile feast for all.
It’s how we broke the backbone of all the traditional diets around here, slaughtered buffalo, burned orchards, flooded riverbanks and massacred an entire way of life founded on the only freedom anyone has ever known around these parts. Now all they know is commods and food stamps, and even if they sellout a day’s wage there’s still nowhere to get halfway decent nutrition within the confines of concentration.
Sugar and salt and it is not our fault, they shoulda been better negotiators in a language they didn’t speak, every other species of mongrel managed to eke out a free lunch, except I guess the beasts we burden and our lapdogs hellbent on blind obedience, which only makes it ever more clear how governing
the fundamentals of life enables the voluntary oppression of even the most fluent in affluence.”
“Yep, you guys are definitely related.”
And there really is no denying it, even bloodlines a world apart, a somewhat psychic understanding of internal dialogue though she still somehow forgets that he’s always right. He’s sharing an eclectic collection of lifehacks and street smarts, a toolkit of how-to’s and how-to-not-have-to’s, traded secrets of cultivating abundance within as she sheds the death grip of a scarcity mindset. It’s not too hard when one man’s trash is a teenage girl’s pepperoni pizza.
“Bruh, you shoulda seen it, bopping around through town all covert-style and scoping out every pizza place on the strip, at first I was like ‘ I don’t know about this, ’ but by the third dumpster we opened the door and there it was sitting right on top of a pile of cardboard, still steaming and everything, a little smashed up but far from totaled and how come they couldn’t just give it to one of the homeless guys stuck in the gutter out front?”
“Bad for business to feed the animals, the marketing team demands our bottled-up supply, a hungry customer is a good customer and why don't you just get back in line with the rest of them for your complimentary tour of the slaughterhouse.”
“I guess a few progressive places out there set aside their discarded have-me-nots regardless of what the USDA cops say about food security, and at least these ones don’t lock up the lost and found, but I just found out that the lowdown dirtiest of the garbagemen pour bleach across the street trash to make sure it stays that way. Disgusting.”
“Yep. It’s fucked up. Lifetimes flushed down the drain to inflate the overstuffed pockets of the chosen few. A dumpster full of baked goods reduced to rubbish, coulda marked it down to a quarter and recouped some weightloss but there’s a better margin on margarine if they start over and sell full-price to the chosen few. Not a teaspoon of consideration for humanitarian aid with free cookies to park residents, gotta tidy up the trash else risk felony littering from the enforcers of a state-induced food coma.”
“But for real though, that cookie dumpster is clutch.”
“That one’s the holy grail in my book, plus your brother says dumpster calories don’t count.”
“Wait, is this not your book?”
“Hardly, I’m just along for the ride like the rest of us.”
“Ummm, I think you’ve been taken for a ride bud. You’ve been in here toiling away with a pain in the neck while he is kicking back pretending to know how to vacation, you said it yourself, ‘Lifehacks of how-to-not-have-to.’
Step one, convince them it was their own idea to do all the hard work. Step two, let them believe they’ve somehow earned the right to control something separate from the universe they exist in. Step three, sit back and laugh as they gladly funnel all the credit to the top and are left wondering what in the hell just ran them the fuck over.”
“Geez, I hope dad doesn’t read this anti-capitalist filth.”
“He’ll have burned it before now, I’m sure.”
*******
“Do I smell smoke in here?”
“Wasn't me, I swear. Musta been your honeybun blowing off steam. Or my brother's aroma seeping in from outside. Oh shit CJ, that's you girl.”
“Oh yeah, huh. My bad, long day at the office.”
“It's still pretty badass that you get to start fires for a job.”
“Doesn't PJ?”
“Whatever it is he does could hardly qualify as a job and the only thing he clocks into is Indian time.”
And the work I do used to be an integral component of an indigenous footprint on the land too, a living society synced to the cycles of the life around them, a firebath to rebirth without consideration of private property values. Then Smokey led the campaign to ban burnouts from passing the torch on a billion years of fireside tradition. A firetended ecosystem makes the grasslands grow stronger, so the buffalo roam farther, which affords the rest of us our marshmallows to burn to perfection.
Sure, it is a mess when millions go up in smoke, but it is only
due to our forest mismanagement that they are as fragile as they are in the first place.
Around here there’s entire fire-adapted ecologies we have all but obliterated in hot pursuit of the dollar bill. Long Leaf Pine, super pitchy for an American idol, so we liquidated them all into turpentine and mowed down backyards of lumber, but turns out the sticky sap promoted fast burning wildfires that opened the canopy for the next generation of these little sticky notes. It's not like they started the fire, it was always burning through a tale of phenomenal relationships, like the lightening strikes that just so happened to be attracted to the sappy story of longing for love and pining for affection, all of it simply a natural part of living in nature's romantic comedy.
Like the Gopher Tortoise, they dig elaborate burrows in fire-prone habitats where biologists have observed over three hundred species taking cover while the great purification rolls overhead, and during the occasional winter wipeout, but the best part is that they're super social and visit each other's dens for hours at a time, probably getting hella blazed or whatever.
And even now there's this steady stream of herpetologists turning to prescribed fire once they realize this is the single most important thing they can be doing to prolong the life of an entire community reliant on smoking up and saving the turtles. A fascinating marriage of assumed opposites until you remember how entwined every strand of our mother's DNA has always been, it turns out only the most naive disbelievers could be convinced that her complex interconnectedness was simply the result of sheer coincidence.
“Fascinating marriage alright, tree hugging firebugs who save the world by day just to burn down the establishment by night. I mean, allegedly speaking, of course.”
“Spontaneous combustion looked like to me, an accused sabotage of material wealth but in no way an act of violence worthy of DT charges, and now they've topped the scales with RICO indictments in the exact same Fulton County jail as the Orangeman and his cronies receive identical charges for their attempt to overthrow the government. Though the police have always been there to protect property rights, starting with the
slave patrol and never shedding the deeply ingrained modus operandi of disenfranchising the rest of 'them' ”
“But even outside that twisted branch of law enforcement is a flawed approach that was never intended to produce law abiding citizens to begin with. What do you think is going to happen when you outlaw the commandments that people have been breaking since before we ever started doing time? People do bad stuff sometimes, probably not gonna change, we have convicted the most in the world yet there’s still more to come, our system claims to rehabilitate while mainly just ripping vulnerable communities to shreds as negative reinforcement seems to not really be working all that well.”
“Exactly that. A community-driven indigenous approach doesn't profit from punishment, they'd also prefer not to have a bad time but humans are humans and always have been, not an inherently broken birthright but shit happens sometimes, so what’s the sense in condemning an entire community to yet another missing person? The future of conflict resolution may take pumping a few irons to figure out, I will tell you what it's not gonna take though, there ain't no need for a militarized police stomping ground or the empty prisons they're throwing together just in case. The same as with the pipelines, why are we installing yet another fifty years infrastructure of the very systems that are driving us extinct?”
“So then we're still going out there this weekend, right?”
Oh hell yeah we are, especially considering the angst PJ's feeling as he writes about standing up from that comfy bench in the backyard. Is he for real about being about it or was that just something to say? No money to put where his mouth is so he might just have to put his ass on the line this time. But this time he's passing himself off as the responsible adult, we’re down to look after his sister for a week while he resists getting caught, but what will it mean for her healing process if he is unavailable for the next thirty-five years?
Which is exactly what they want, for us to be too scared to show up for our neighboring relatives during whichever angle of uprising threatens their local jurisdiction, around here and around the world, broken down and boxed up into individual
communities with their own problems to deal with, no time or energy left to come together and address the systemic issues that create the disparity to begin with.
Divide and conquer, nothing new, tale as old as time, like since the invention of time. Or at least a calculated dissection of minutes from hours in the days of our lives and when you run out of seconds you glance back and now where exactly do moments fit into all that? Compartmentalized and categorized, and that’s been the mission of organized decisions to classify every element of existence and tuck it away in a neat little box so that they can somehow unlock a glimpse into the magic of the garden. To the edges of space where the Earth can be seen to pulsate as CERN's Hadron Colliders smash atoms in search of God particles, they're willing to destroy the planet in order to steal her secrets, they are trying to break into Eden.
But that's not how it works, the more you try to figure it out the more it just slips right through your fingerprints. An infinite plane of manifested abundance, manmade constructs incapable of harnessing the flow, the only mechanism needed included with each and every iteration of the genuine human experience. Everything you need to have everything you want is already within you, all you have to do is believe it.
It doesn't always look like what you think it will, in fact, most of the time it doesn't, and sometimes all it seems to do is shift your perspective on what it was you thought you wanted, leaving you free of an unfulfilled expectation without hassle of all that material baggage. It also helps to help, find your best life by living your best life, just do some good shit and build up some cosmic brownie points and you will inspire others to do good shit, and with everyone running around nauseated from all this unconditional kindness it'll be statistically impossible not to get everything you could ever dream of.
At the very least you could just write a book about doing some good shit and release it for free and maybe just the right person will pick it up one day and you’ll inspire the very most important character yet, or maybe it only buys you a few years of living the sequel before you find another of your favorite
pens lying right in front of you on the sidewalk, either way we might just be able to save the world while we're at it.
Earth is sick. Our mother is not well. Yes, she is resilient and prolific and infinitely more abounding than we could ever be, but our mom is sick, so why would we not do everything in our power to help her out through her own healing process?
Especially considering that although she is going to wake up and shake it off and be just fine, it would also be super nice if we got to stick around and see it happen.
“But wouldn't the Earth be better off if she just woke up one day and we were gone?”
“Not hardly. Sure, she would survive, and probably be no worse off than she were before we came into the picture, but she evolved us for a reason. We are here for a reason. We are not an accident of happenstance and statistical anomaly, the Earth is a living being on her own magnitude of evolution. We are not aliens on some random space rock, we are the cutting edge of our planet's primordial development, and seems quite a lot of planning went into the engineering department to just run the entire train off the nearest cliff.”
“Well, if we’re here on purpose, with some divine purpose, then how come all we ever seem to do is screw everything up?”
“Valid. And it does seem that way from within the current chaos, but her scale is so far beyond anything we can fathom from our tiniest little point of view. The tensions of this black and white dystopia feel at odds with anything congruent to life, but it is precisely this adversity that will create the conditions necessary for the next explosion of anything into everything.
Any decent artist knows that true inspiration needs a touch of turmoil to propel itself to the highest potential, and our world certainly seems to be on the verge of ripping itself apart, but we are far from the finale, we are merely emerging from our chrysalis with a blank canvas for an infinite vibrance to splash together all that could ever be.
Page by page we approach the end of the beginning, ever so slowly turning the key on yet another door to the unknown, endless volumes of hearsay and heresy attempt to speculate
upon this experience only knowable once we step across the threshold for ourselves. Each pen click of understanding one step closer to understanding that we're never gonna figure any of it out, so might as well quit trying, it's much more pleasant to simply enjoy a stroll through the garden as we flip a switch on the light of the next beginning.”
*******
“Why in the world are you sitting in the dark?” I ask.
The me that is me. Obviously. Who else would it be? Who else would possibly wade this deep into the whimsical wisdom of PinkJeans McSmartyPants? Who else would even want to?
Not that I am particularly all that interested, but I'm still not quite clear on what happens next. Where will I go? What will come after? If all these other strips of conundrum were simply sliding through a projector of pure unentangled light, then who is to say the hippie's not right about at least some of his crystal-powered cosmology, or all the other ancient traditions filling the shelves of the Interdimensional Blockbuster, plus even the obsolete technology of science is starting to catch up to old news.
It is a played-out tale of Particles the cat and her fateful collapse, a destiny knowable only once surfed by a single wave of consciousness, and I know this all seems like a mishmash of hodgepodge but they're giving out Nobel Prizes for this shit.
Decades of discovery to dislodge the doctrines of the doctors, they've proven 'local realism' doesn't exist, only when being actively experienced by itself does any of the universe seem to matter, raw energy left unconverted until called upon by an awareness beyond space-time. The mathematics of relativity and quantum physics at odds until we zoom below 10-33 times the atomic level where the framework of the material world dematerializes and our scope of misunderstanding proves its outer limitations.
So what's over there? Who knows. That's like asking some video game character to have a clue about either the deepest electronic componentry or the outward facing interface of the
all-inclusive operating system that contains everything they've ever known. They can only experience a virtual representation of what any of it might be, equipped with limited sense of dimension to translate an infinite field of frequency into view, as real as any of it may seem within the construction material there is only one perspective capable of conceiving the truest nature of nature, and of the cosmos, and how any of it could ever become all of it.
Only the grand schemer could dream about something as ridiculous as this, factions of fractions of prismatic indulgence who time after time craft an illusion of time in anticipation of this very moment, this one right here, the only one that ever was, or ever will be, the slightest window of influence yet this unending fountain of abundance for all who fully step into the flow of their own creative potential.
At the most present moment our current creator finds his flowing tangles in this same moss covered backyard, sitting on the same bench with that same old coffee cup, cycles of circles weaving the yarn of his earthtone wardrobe into a pleather bound notebook, the very notebook he cracked open on this very bench on a comfortably warm and overcast day just like today.
Year's time put in on the advance of the sequel, rekindled the flame of his horse-drawn heaven as he showed his sister a way of sowing seeds for future generations while also crossing the stitches on a patchwork of community. The Dakotas found her adulthood as we find him traveling with another wayward youth and this time a new love to share in the adventure, his crocheted co-creation beginning to take shape, undeciphered tingles tie themselves together into a wondrous work of art.
You can never be fully sure when one of these things will be over. Not soon enough most of the time. And then one day you're just minding your own business, sitting there soaking in the serenity of a perfect spot, on the perfect day, and then it just kinda happens.
You reflect on a lifetime leading to this very moment. You take a few last breaths of intention and spread your prayer of gratitude into the cosmos. And then all of a sudden a massive
flock of starlings storm the heavens above you, they split and circle around and take their seats for the grand finale, perhaps interstellar tourists or just overzealous ancestors, either way it seems that now is the time for this time to be over. You sing four push-ups of the Red Road song and then the birds vanish as quickly as they arrived, leaving you with your heart opened and your brain caffeinated, and somehow this was the best you could come up with.”
*******
With the farewell click of a pen to unpage I finally realized the book wasn't about me. It was never about me. Tilt-a-world braindrops from a twisted literarian spin a mandala of special effect, a layered perception of depths from character witness to silent observer spanning a spectrum of all but a lone thread to get raveled up in.
Obviously the book is about you. So what will you do with your turn of the page?