*Snark*
Kunstler made a statement today:
Reality doesn’t care if we are on-board with its mandates or not. The human race has to get with whatever program reality is serving up at a particular time.
which has helped me understand that tricky philosophy bit about everyones’ reality being their own. Because my reality is waaaay different than 99.9999% of folks I know, know of or can imagine. And I can’t imagine anyone dropping in to my reality tunnel and digging it like I do – that much has been proven by three different doomers who have come and gone. Thing is, that’s getting to be okay with me. If my livelihood was dependent upon my ability to show up at 8am, punch in and put Tab A into Slot B for 8 hours, punch out and repeat five days a week, 50 weeks a year I’d be a dead man. I imagine that a factory drone would starve out here if he had to do what I piddle around with on the ol homestead. A guy who blogs as old horseman once said most people would starve if you handed them a hog in a crate and a sharp knife. My reality tunnel incorporates the ability to head out with a K-bar, entrenching tool and a 5 dollar tarp and make out fairly well, but saying yassah to some fat balding mid level manager is right out.
Some days I dream of getting all Wild Man of Borneo but that’s usually on a day when I gotta crawl around under the house and drill new holes through the floor to re-route the cable line ‘cuz we moved the tv to a new location in our great game of Musical House. When walls go, things change, y’know. Not that I mind getting rid of pesky shit like ratshit laden insulation and ceiling tiles, but when joists and roof bracing goes engineering collar ties becomes sorta critical. I truly would rather eat grubs and roadkill skunk than staple insulation batts to rafters, but winter sorta snuck up on me. It’s not like the three years it took to go from dirt out the back door to picking grapes from a chair on the patio/ grape arbor… Eventually, what we’ll see when we look up will be tongue and groove pine on a vaulted ceiling with lofts on both ends of the living area instead of a low, nasty, and beat up acoustic tile ceiling. Some people walk over and turn the thermostat up a notch – I re-engineer the damn house. Reality tunnels.
I’m out of touch with today’s – this day’s – reality. I can make a phone call and cut a check to Al’s Gas and get 500 gallons of propane delivered, reinstall the central heat unit that I purposefully removed two years ago in a Foxfire wood burning state of mind, and spend the days surfing and watching tv while working in some of that domestic type stuff. But my “today’s” reality is interlocked with my tunnel’s view of tomorrow… one where the power is out and no amount of propane will run the unit’s electric fan and the toes get cold. That makes me technically insane, right? Maybe we’re all insane by that standard… putting money into an IRA for a comfy retirement is pretty much the same thing – assuming the state of affairs further down the timeline?
Robert Anton Wilson said you might as well create the funnest. coolest reality tunnel you can for every moment. I’m heading back underneath the house now – I’m On The List and working my way through my escape tunnel fleeing from the FEMA/dot gov goons…
nice.
I’ve lived many realities, and yours is way better than my cubicle.
I’m working on it, though…
All Along The Watchtower
“There must be some way out of here,” said the joker to the thief,
“There’s too much confusion, I can’t get no relief.
Businessmen, they drink my wine, plowmen dig my earth,
None of them along the line know what any of it is worth.”
“No reason to get excited,” the thief, he kindly spoke,
“There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke.
But you and I, we’ve been through that, and this is not our fate,
So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late.”
All along the watchtower, princes kept the view
While all the women came and went, barefoot servants, too.
Outside in the distance a wildcat did growl,
Two riders were approaching, the wind began to howl.
Nevermind the IRA, Pelousy wants to tax them out of existence… Tangibles are becoming the new “retirement nest egg”. Paid for tangibles. Screw gold, can’t eat it, can’t wear it, and unless you got a freakin’ mountain of it you can’t live in it. It don’t burn to keep you warm…. I guess if one had enough paper stocks and bonds it might make a good fire. ‘Trons on a computer screen aren’t worth a damn thing. Yessir, I’ll take those beans, bandaids, and bullets….
I’d rather barter for firewood than wage work for heating oil. I’m helping a guy wire his off-grid house. He fills my truck with wood. It’s all good.
“Reality doesn’t care if we are on-board with its mandates or not.
The CHUCKY race has to get with whatever program reality is
serving up at a particular time.”
Your reality fits this “particular time”, and so does Chucky’s. Yet both realities are 180 deg. apart. Strange world.
Sorry to hear about your failed doomers. You have noble intentions but maybe you are meant to save only you & yours.
Comrade,
It is interesting that the poorest person I know is the happiest. We deliver milk once a week to an Amish gal who rides a bike and sells walking sticks and Amish dolls by the side of the road. She has a homemade treadle sewing machine she stashes in the brush where she works and sells. No building, just a chair and an umbrella and a bike with a homemade trailer.
Seems like most of us burn our resources at a pretty maximal rate. It doesn’t seem to matter if it is firewood, energy or money. In a hurry to move on and get to the next thing just seems to be the nature of most of us. I’m afraid for some folks that around the corner they will be in a hurry to be cold and hungry.
Interesting that you should quote Kunstler. I do agree fairly often with what he says and almost never with what he does. He is one who could do with equal time on the shovel handle for all those hours he spends packing his ass around the world in an airplane so he can tell us just how bad the rest of us are that put our backs into our work.
Seems that this reality connection thing gets a bit of enhancement when you get up in the morning and take the time to look at what needs to be done and put on your dirty bibs and go do it. I tried helping to get a local food group going in the area, and had vision of seed swaps and tractor shares and labor pools, but consistently the spandex bicycle organic juice crowd outnumbered the producers by anywhere from 20 to 100 to one. Mostly I was the only producer (me and my 1/4 acre garden) and occasionally another dairy goat buddy. Hell, we couldn’t have fed the folks in the room over a year let alone our communities. The fact that the world does not run by consumption alone seems o be lost on more than just the government types.
I guess that reality here is that I’ll keep puttin’ the firewood in the stove at a rate that keeps me warm, and growin’ the garden at a pace that keeps me and the critters fed. Likely keep my own council best I can since it seems pretty difficult to find too many whose sense of reality are a good match with mine. Hey, that’s what you just said……
tired john
Comrade,
I recently found your site via rocket stove searches and have been catching up on the blog. Just wanted to say thanks for putting your commentary out there for the rest of us to read.
Most welcome, anon. Ya might want to pick a better name, though ;D
Pub, to much hendrix and I get flashbacks heh heh.
Mayberry, look around you. Your landbase is being destroyed and you’re focused on politics? Deciding whether this or that member of the elite rulers is better is sorta pointless if both are hip to keeping the slave system intact… especially if you’re one of them slaves…
sixbears – “I’d rather barter for firewood than wage work for heating oil.”
Makes more sense down deep doesn’t it? Person to person rather than person to corporation…
and finally, tired john, I read kunstler to understand and keep up with the suv driving kumbaya solar will save us crowd. Doomers in pink. Gas is 5 bucks a gallon? Well, let’s take the bus! It’s so… Marie Antoinette hahaha.
And here’s the real kicker – I see nothing more than an entitlement mentality in someone who expects to trade slave chit FRN for home grown whole food. They ain’t getting my turnips…
Thanks for the comments, all.
Comrade:
Hendrix made that song famous, but Bob Dylan wrote it.
Dylan makes me wanna chug wine, bwahahaha
Comrad, I’ve been following your blog off & on since I first found your rocket stove threads.
I just want to say, no, you are not insane. Insanity is doing the same thing, over & over again, expecting a different result. Do we feel insane sometimes? You bet yer doomer ass we do.
Like when I tried to talk to people about humanure. ACK! You wanna compost poop? People poop? Like it’s somehow different from using animal poop. I mean, I’m a mom, I’ve changed my fair share of diapers. It’s not that big of a deal. How long could one conceivably use the same bush without leaching nitrogren & fecal matter into their water? Flushing drinking water away with fecal matter? That’s the insanity. Relying on a major corporation or government for your heat, food, water & maybe even shelter. That’s insanity. Ignoring all the problems facing us today? That’s the insanity. We’re not insane, we’re just too sane for the sheep that call themselves people.
Thanks crunch… I hope to be posting more once the holiday season is over. Kinda busy, y’know.
Why no details about the departure of the three doomers? I believe the guitar player was last visitor to your farm, yes? May this story brighten your tunnel…..
One day a young Buddhist on his journey home, came to the banks of a wide river. Staring hopelessly at the great obstacle in front of him , he pondered for hours on just how to cross such a wide barrier. Just as he was about to give up his pursuit to continue his journey he saw a great teacher on the other side of the river. The young Buddhist yells over to the teacher “Oh wise one , can you tell me how to get to the other side of this river”?
The teacher ponders for a moment looks up and down the river and yells back “My son, you are on the other side” .
Merry Christmas comrade & a happy and healthy new year
Chucky
..
Merry Christmas, Happy New Year
..