Pale Blue Popsicles, the most epic story ever told

I find that to get out the really classic idea, whatever it is, if we are ever going to find it at all, we start from a place of absolute absurdity and work our way backwards from there. We need not stay there forever, Beyond when it is no longer comfortable, but it is good to start from there to give the rest of the work flavor. if necessary for the point of the tale we can return there, but I for one think it all the better if we enjoy the weather a bit, even if we do have to stay under cover for the sake of preserving the work.

We can't have all our epic stories undone by having a little bit of rain upon them can we? it would be highly inappropriate, likely even un-beneficial if any harm were to come to this work.

In a sense, it is also most important that no-one know even that I am writing a story, much less this story, because it is so entirely epic a story that it may, if this author is so unlucky, shake to it's very bones the entire structure of our civilisation, much less the neighborhood.

as much as it troubles me to write this, (to live this!) it is my thinking that if the freedom this country claims so fervently to stand upon, it better ought to represent something real, something that people cherish and enjoy and gain real meaning from, rather than just a few words on some old canvass that a few old men agreed upon and declared had some real meaning, to stand forever to preserve liberty for all... Then along came Just'us, the ones who were supposed to provide for a more perfect union and protect us from thugs, started protecting us from ourselves... Because Just'us had run out of thugs to finger otherwise.

So Now we live in fear, like trapped cattle not really sure where or why or how they will come to find us, certain that eventually we will be caught unawares, a bit tipsy perhaps from the let-down of a good trip, doing our completely natural business in a place naturally pursuant to the sort of business we had been doing in the first place, and we had a good time right, and just when we propose to release a bit of that good time back into the world, is just when good old just'us happens to notice us, and Just who could blame them, really, for doing their jobs, being clearly inappropriate conduct for a civilized adult, in this municipality, as if anybody could explain whatever that means.

So how do we, uhh... civilized adults, propose to confront the reality of the uncivilized world before us, and the many ways in which it fails to accommodate anything natural, so that we will all very naturally expire if injunctive relief is not accomplished?

I think it is absolutely necessary that we be clear the solution of our problem is natural. Can we begin to comprehend what the number of individual species that our simple existance currently depends upon?

as I have said, the reality of confronting the issue, in whatever form it may take, is so critical to survival, and I think importantly to our survival in any meaningful way.

This need is like a child, screaming for help in a vast sea of voices that are silent and unwilling to act, not only for the child but especially for ourselves... so helpless we are in pursuit of an abject status of behavior that seems empowered to make decisions, yet fails to decisively act upon any task with significant meaning or consequence beyond the choice of what to eat, and the possibility that we may go hungry if we fail to act or decide...

As it is with most of us... first we avoid all potential consequences before we select a task, if we even take action at all... and so we go about our lives, silently picking the kernels from the floor in whatever most-obedient fashion we conceive for ourselves to act, without any consequential result, good or bad for us to contemplate, save the realty of the natural world we fail to respect or confront.

Here Before us is a realm of potential so full that it is thundering to escape and set free upon the world the force of ideas and of free thought, and yet we confront this mystery cold and alone, cold if only for the fear of another type of heat entirely, and the ways we insulate ourselves from that sort of attack.  We make many of these choices automatically, the only recourse for an idea of civilization so fraught with contradiction.

and so we go about our lives, telling a story with our actions that we dare not be willing to admit to, or the worse of the two, telling a story with our dreams that we never dare be willing to act upon.  And so we see the world in a state of suspended judgement, sometimes in fear of those living a life more substantial than our own, sometimes in fear of those living dead who's nature would contradict our very ability to exist naturally.

So we exist, Living, yet always thirsty for a sensation we are not even aware that we lack.  So we go about the business of living, not even aware (hopefully) of what potential possibilities we failed to realize.  In that sense it seems that if you have the benefit of knowledge, and knowingly take no action even simply to allow discovery by others, that they indeed posses the ability -if they so will it- to open the mind.

Truth is something that has a way of spreading exponentially that has consequences beyond the truth that we are immediately aware of, in a reality that confronts us in a way we never hoped to understand- complete with a set of consequences we completely failed to comprehend prior.  So we live in two worlds, Balanced on a tight rope between the two ideals of honesty and purity, on the one hand fully aware of the value of being fully honest with each other, on the other being petrified by the fragmented concept of purity that we have somehow imposed upon ourselves.

This is the reality of our story, the reality of the world we inhabit, and the basis for our perceptions of each other and the sheer volume of judgement that exists in the fabric of this reality...  Telling this story, shining the light of inquiry upon the actions of fellow travelers will inevitably have a number of consequences for an ever expanding cast of characters, in a number of cases close enough to the reality to potentially be disturbed by the details.

~

I once knew a man who told me in a moment of genuine sincerity with a wise and knowing look upon his eye that all people would follow in my footsteps. It was really the last time I ever saw the man, as he was checked into a state mental hospital about a week later. I spent the next two years hoping to see my friend again.  He was always telling me my own secrets in a very casual way, as if my thoughts had been broadcast via Alpha Bits Cereal.  His total absence of ego regarding the matter gave it all the air that he could read everybody's thoughts in his Alpha-bits.

When they took him, he was running the streets with not a scrap of clothing, somewhere between sniffing the bouquet of a rose and cursing the contradictions all around him in a volume not fitting the hour.  Whatever the story was, every time they released him that is what he would be doing the moment he got an opportunity.   At the time it seemed clear he had tipped himself out of sanity with the help of a few too many magic mushrooms... it took me a number of years to appreciate that reality, not the psychedelics, had drove him crazy.  The drugs had messed with his way of rationalizing all the ugly things that humans have been doing everywhere we exist.

All of that happened a few years ago now, and for me those events have remained vivid in the details of my memory, much more so than the rest of that year.

for a long time I assumed that the mushrooms had pushed him over the edge of a mental collapse... and for a while I lost my enthusiasm/ appetite for the little blue devils... the same that had helped me hurdle over significant obstacles and fears in my hand full of encounters with them...  The disturbance ran so deep in my own mind that my next encounter with them over a year later was no more visionary than a grocery store portabella despite what should have been a respectable dose.  If I were not so confident about my own ability to authenticate P. Cubensis I would have cried foul. I spent some time wondering how the good mind of my friend could be driven mad by a drug that my own mind had the power to disable entirely.

it was a small seed of an idea that eventually grew to realize the possibility that the world we have created with our actions is so far removed from the health and vitality of nature... the damage we do is psychotic. we have been trained and conditioned to accept, tolerate, and even enjoy a lifestyle that should be declared unfit for human consumption ~ our consumption being the primary item unfit.

I have never been able to fully embrace the concept of a systematic all powerful secret society that deliberately feeds from our demise, like some great machine separated from our control.. I do think that a lot of the behavior we learned from a long history of natural, dare say un-civilized behavior that has not been eradicated by our modern ways- no, our behavior now as a collective society is erratic, poorly conceived and always self serving.  Most of us stopped using a diaper as young children- As Adults we have learned  very civilized ways to shit exactly anywhere, and everywhere, with as much force as it takes to stimulate the economy.

That puts me a bit over the edge as well. Knowing that, trying to do anything to change the titanic reality of this sinking ship feels like taking off your floatation device, strapping it to the rail in the hope that it may preserve the ship for future generations... Giving up modern convenience brings up that same sort of feeling- you see the iceberg, you feel the impact, the water is rising, and even though it's totally clear that there are no lifeboats whatsoever, we feel it would be best if anyone came looking to help us, that they clearly find the wreckage of our planet, let them have no doubt as who to blame, pale blue Popsicles in single serving packages who thought they could survive the cold dark ocean of space, alone.

Giving up your only hope of being found dead is the same sort of thinking in my mind as stripping nude and screaming chicken little all over town until the padded wagon takes you away to the land of prescription sedatives and sleeping restraints.

At Least we tried.

~