A whisper of hope

Listless eyes, a rolling glance they take.
First a beat then another pounding in his throat
Though they move not a sound do his lips make
A bird in the rigging, the rigging of a boat!

Was it a dream or was he gone away
What fate awaits this wondrous ride
He tried to turn himself to face her way
So near the end was he, she held his side

They drifted softy into the sea
The Sailor and Siren sang whisperly
She sang of his love ever so free
He sang of their new life under the sea

----
unga

Forever with Love - For helping me to find a voice when I had none

Washed Ashore

The songs that drove him to this end are not gone,
But have quietly become the gentle rush of the tide against his lifeless body.
The soft and lulling voice that drew him out to sea,
now replaced by the sounds - forever entrapped in the empty shell beside his.

What happened to my ship and compass, my sextant and sail?
Where did the desire and need to chance pass my lips against hers take me?
Is this that end, cast out of her like drift wood to dry bone white in the sun?
Am I now gone, to be consumed by the earthly hungry sea?

Will I be entombed in the bellies of a thousand beasts?
Will my heart make for fishes feasts?
Will your song again revive me true?
Will our end give way to timeless depths of oceans blue?

Is this a dream?
Your dream?
My dream?
A dream?

zero population growth - logan’s run vs Survivor

City of Mysteria Population Cap - thoughts on strategy


Zero population growth and a practical but unpopular method
of implementing a 'Logan's Run' paradigm vs Crashed mother ship senario.

Maintaining a finite population requires a stacking strategy to deal
with the order inwich population enters the society and exits the society.

If the population control were running as 'first in - first out' and everyone was in and out at the same time the ability to maintain an infrastructure would turn upside down everytime the population was purged.

If the population were running a first in last out then the elders of the community
would be the ones there throughout the life or the society., However that also implies that a last in first out was the other side and someone who just got in may be the first to be exiled next time around, while the ones to survive a few years would become more secure and the longer they survive the citizenship selection the more secure in their position they become. Many societies work like this and it is a common model of human society.

A blend of the two where a percentage of members of the population come from the 'all at once' and an 'elder or previous group' is also a way to maintain some continuity of character in the society with and influx of fresh ideas and contribution.

The elders at some time would be forced to 'die' and leave their roles and move on to other hunting grounds or the society would become stale and have settled at the max population for a long time. (some fraternal or closed member societies are like this)

---

However, all of the members of the society have an equal value - only in the 'all in - all out' process all are weighted equally and that is the one that creates the most dramatic (radical) change.

To explore this scenario, I propose a crash survivor strategy for annual population of the city.

Load all members of the society on a mother ship to a remote planet to start a colony (hypothetical planet of course). The ship crashes on an uncharted planet and only the ones to survive are now in the society.

That means that pairs and couples will be split, families will be broken apart, groups will be shredded with some, many or all of their members killed in the crash, people with specific (key) skills will also die in the crash... (sound familiar)

The survivors have a forum/congress of sorts where they can all interact, choose leaders, establish rules of conduct, and connect to form camps of common purpose (theme camps).

They will then work together to bring about a new society - they have to because there are no relief ships expected. Radical Self Reliance is the order of the day and they must survive.

YES it is possible for the organizers of the process to also die in the crash - that is why this is so radical. However, there is an organization that put the whole passenger/ship/destination plan together and for any hope of again seeing their friends and loved ones they will have to keep the outside operations running and plan for the next ship/crew/destination because the world will end anyway and they don't want to be on it when it happens.

So they will get a shot at getting to survive the crash next year and the next if they are lucky.

April Fools - I forgot how easy it really is to fool some people

I usually don't play jokes on people, but April Fools Day is one day that I have to pull atleast one tiny joke.

This year I decided to move Memorial Day... Yep that's right I moved memorial day.
Using the tried and true method of copying the same template the admin secretary uses to post official notices
to the staff, bar-b-q lunches, committee meetings and the like.

I got an email from the general manager letting me know "Folks were about to get in an uproar" over the holiday switch.

I guess they didn't think how Memorial Day, always on the last Monday was switched to a Friday two weeks earlier.

It's the pretext that does it, just state things in a believable way and some folks will bite.

Full circle - the winter solstice

It seems that the wheel of the year turns much faster as we get older. Maybe there is some comfort in the idea that I may live as long from this point as I have up until now, but that seems like a very short time. I somehow feel short changed being a species that lives a brief 70 to 120 years. Why can't we live to be 10,000 then there would be some perspective of events instead of the brief sliding window that we see the world through. Individuals and societies are all doomed to this myopic vision. Only through record are we able to pass the knowledge of the present to the future.

I can only hope that we one day find a cure to total death - a happy between state where you can stay concious and interactive living a full and joyous after body life in communication with the living world as if you are among them. Sort of a non-zombie post-hominid living in a techno-skeletal form.

One day we may not die, just upgrade to the next version of our physioform that adds physical interfaces to our being, Maybe vacation will be just an electronic transfer of our 'mind' into our vacation body located somewhere else. Then near light speed travel will be a matter of transmitting ourselves from one body to another time-share would take a whole new meaning.

just some thoughts ...

Ahhh It will be the future soon.

I’m in the little big time now - so famous so famous :D

JED (rockin' metal band) has chosen some of my artwork for their rocktoberfest poster! Hell Yea!.

If your in the Aberdeen, WA area around the Rocktober 20th time frame you should check this event out!

profile.myspace.com/ghrocktoberfest

Depression or Decompression

Decompression: It is a term used often in the burner community. For the benefit of others who may be going through this and not understand it and for the sake of getting a discussion going that one day may lead to a 'Burners Guide to Decompression', here is my take on the decompression phenomenon.

What does it mean?
What are the symptoms?
Will I have one?
How do I get through it?
Is there a cure?


What does it mean?

The best way I can think to describe the condition of decompression is to go back to the cause.

At a burn your world runs at a zillion miles an hour for 24 hours a day. During this time you experience a lot, so much so, that you don't have time to really process it. There is no time to really think about what you have just experienced before something new is happining to with and around you. The amount of stimulation is overwhelming to many people.

Another contributor to the condition is the lack of a commerce driven economy. When there is no competition for your money there is no reason to bombard you with messages that tell you how much you need something, how weak you are, how desperate you are, how unable to take care of your self you are, how much you need someone to do something for you in exchange for something from you. You must be radically self reliant and bring with you everything you will need and more. The gift economy allows you to give without expectation of return and to receive without expectation of a return of equal or greater value.

The only message is please and thank you.

Added to the lack of a society that has continuous victim dependenacy you are radically self expressing in ways that let you get more of the 'real' you to the outside. What you have been hiding inside is now accepted as part of who you are by the whole community.

Compounded further by the LNT (Leave No Trace) philosophy where you see people picking up their trash and even the trash of other people - reinforcing the desire to have a great time and what after a few days becomes a reflex to swing down and scoop the MOOP (matter out of place).

All of these things and more go into your 'Compression Experience', where you just soak it in and pack as much fun and amazement into your time at the burn as you can physically and mentally tollerate.

So to put it in simple terms it's like a deep sea diver, you are at the city of Atlantis, when you arrived it was so freaking weird and you felt pressure from people hugging you (never had that happen before maybe especially from stangers) and welcoming you "home" whatever that meant. After all it is your first time at a burn, you don't really know people so why is a girl in a unicorn hat and a guy in an orange fur jock stap hugging you and asking you questions about water, trash bags, porta-pots and using weird words like L-N-T and MOOP?

You adjust, it doesn't take long either. Soon you are just naturally hugging people, smiling, eating, drinking, lounging, dancing and playing. What an amazing place and your eyes just get wider and wider open. The art and creativity start to pour out of the participants in this wonderous community that has unfolded before you.

But you have been down here in Atlantis for a few days and have gotten used to the pressure and atmosphere. All that other world has been almost forgotten. So it's time to return to the surface world where all those other things you used to love are waiting.

decompression - go up a bit, pause and adjust to the pressure.
decompression - go up a bit, pause and adjust to the pressure.
decompression - go up a bit, pause and adjust to the pressure.
decompression - go up a bit, pause and adjust to the pressure.
decompression - go up a bit, pause and adjust to the pressure.

Keep doing this until you feel that you can function in your daily life.
To decompress safely you may need some help.


What are the symptoms?

Everything is a symptom!

The sudden smack in the face by your first interaction with the default world (what you get for a world if you do nothing) - Your driving or riding in a car on the street. Almost like the surreal feeling you are now in a capsule traveling through time and space at over a mile a minute. Unless you drove an art car or rode in one a lot, the fastest you may have gone in 3 days is about 4 miles an hour, now it's 70 MPH and these people are crazy and you are afraid they will kill you because they just don't care. It is all starting to hit you.

No sooner than your car hits the highway you see billboards, signs, logo's all offering you comfort, food, necessities in exchange for your money. Ah, money that thing that you have not touched in three days to a week. You forgot what it was. You had all the love comfort and necessity you needed for a weekend or a week if you go to a long burn, all for the cost of a hug and a smile and some preparation on your part before you arrived there.

Even lyrics of songs start to mean something different than they did before your burn experience. You just didn't think about the messages they boasted and how much we reward people for giving up and begging other people to 'save me, because I can't save my self'. They are not asking for help they are demanding that someone do it for them.

The people and things around you are all now saying something different than they seemed to be the last time you saw them, they were just background noise and you didn't notice them. In the same way the tangle of criss crossing phone, cable and power lines just dissapear when we look through them, we blocked it all out and our filter has somehow become thinner or maybe even removed from our mind.

You could have wide ranging emotions. One moment you could look at a plastic water bottle or a candy wrapper being tossed on the ground without a care by someone you would have never noticed BEFORE the burn and feel total rage, the next moment feel like crying because there are so many pieces of trash on the ground you would go insane and die if you tried to pick them all up.

Grief because you are the only one who seems to care in a world where people think absolutly nothing of tossing their shit on your planet.

Guilt because no matter how much you would like to dedicate your whole life to cleaning up this mess around you there is now way to do it. It's you against the world and you feel it crushing down on you just like you are a rolly-polly under the giant steel drum of a steam roller.

Back at the rent paying job you feel boxed in by the rules and expectations of glum zombies who can only see that the way to happiness is another disappointing purchase from a shopping channel spokes model telling them that this tablet or articulated exercize contraption will make them the person they dream of and that once the three easy payments of $39.95 are made they will be loved by all who walk the earth and will be beautiful and rich and have no worries. You feel their misery and smell their dissapointment in life - you are wanting to tell them about this amazing experience, but they just don't get it, they won't get it, they can't get it, they just don't care either. They are slave zombies and there is no way to save them and this makes you feel so alone that you want to ball up under a desk and cry.

The symptoms are all personal or societal and can not be listed like those of a spider bite or sunburn.


Will I have one?

Damn! I hope so! - What? you want me to suffer through all of this stuff?
It is not that I want someone to suffer through their decompression, It's through this experience you are able to realize what the full experience of the burn is. How much our lives have gotten out of our own control. How much we no longer THINK or feel. How far we have gone from what the founders of our country or our ancient ancestors envisioned as freedom of the individual to seek happiness, prosperity, or liberty. How we have been hobbled and boxed in, coraled like cattle and branded with the mark of economy, how we can no longer look at the earth and see what we are doing, How much of a hipocrite we have been all of that time, how small we have been thinking and that the limits we have on us have all been our own fault if we chose to bear them, or that we limit ourselves out of fear of reprisal from others and we have seen no way out of that place (until now).

How do I get through it?

If you have access to the Internet: Read and join discussion groups with other burners who have just attended the same event and other burn events that you have not even heard of until now. Look at their pictures, watch the videos, read their stories and give them honest feedback. Start your dialog. These people are your support network.

Read their posts. Note that many of them will use phrases like: I miss my new home. I wish I were back there. Reality Sucks. Everything sucks, why is this so messed up here, why are people so angry, confused hateful...


These people are also decompressing and you all NEED each other now more than you think.

Attend a meet and greet in your area, if there is not one within a few weeks maybe 3 or 4 at the most, have a party and invite all the people who live within a few hours of you to come over - a "Burner Party", have space for some fire spinning if people want to do that, encourage costumes or have a place for people to change. Crash space in the yard if there is room for a few tents or on the floor and maybe pancakes and bacon breakfast. Practice LNT on your hosts land or in their home. If you have some privacy for your M&G then all the better. Talk and re-live a lot of the common experiences and hear how much you didn't see or hear. Share pictures and videos at the party. At a burn you can't be everywhere and thats what all of these other people become, they become your eyes and ears to experiences you haven't had yet. Have a good time and make more connections with people. You will need them as much as they will need you - am I repeating myself?

Attend another burn or 'burner related' event as soon as you can afford the time and expense (yes it takes default world money to pay for all this) to go build your own place in the world where you can be free to be you without the crushing pressure of overt society to comply to the will of the folks who just don't get you.


Is there a cure?

Other than total amnesia? Nope! And I hope I don't find one. The decompression experience is different for everyone. It will be different for each burn and may last hours, days, weeks, or months or a lifetime if you are lucky. It is in this period of time that you are AWARE of the world as it is around you. Comming to grips with who you are inside and what you feel about the world and what you would like it to be will give you incentive to make the next burn experience one where you WILL make your experience richer and give back to the community what you got and have learned through your decompression experience.



Dedicated to Siryn and all my first time burn friends from Alchemy 2007



Unga Bunga John
From the City of Payne
In the Land of MaconGa

it's time.. the evolution engine is reving-up!

The planet goes through changes and life cycles, that is well observed in the fossil record. When we hear about mass extinctions they are often over hundreds of thousands of years and they are replaced by other species that were able to adapt and thrive in the new environment.

As articles purport the demise of species like great apes ( news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070...ed_gorillas ) others note that there is massive differentiation in species like salamanders ( www.unisci.com/stories/20012/0629015.htm ).

Some articles claim that the planet is dying! HOLY CRAP! It's dying! We're all doomed DOOMED!

For every species that is unable to adapt to the changes in the world (that have happened over and over for millions of years) there is another that has filled the gap and carved out a niche to better its survival. Why is there some supposed moral requirement for every species to ever develope to a level of success to maintain that success while yielding to other species competing for the same resource.

Is it not really Immoral to protect a species that is failing to adapt at the cost of the emerging species that is succeding where the previous has failed?

Where will we be in this future world in a thousand years? - Are we going to adapt our bodies or has technology and our adapting mind allowed us to sidestep evolution and create a long living but progressively more feeble body through the adaptation of our environment through technology instead of the natural adaptation of our bodies.

Just something I'm pondering today ....

Home Sick for BRC!

The first burning man pods are posted TV Free Burning Man

The first two pods are posted from this years burning man,
Damn I wish I were there more than ever right now!
Seeing these just makes me feel like I'm missing the bestest, mostest, biggest thing I could ever do,,, ever!

www.current.tv/burningman/

A Sea of Dreams

Softly her finger drew down his lower lip
shhh, a whisper as she breathed in deep a kiss
powerless to open his eyes his lids weakly lifted
her calming scent of flowers and salty sweat filled him

Soon a spinning and drifting sensation ran deep within him
he reached outward expecting her waist or gown
but found only air and warm sunlight dappled across his hand
the day had come and once again she had slipped away

The bottom of the steps welcomed his boots this morning
with a fresh cup of coffee from the crew lead
"We'll be full in port b'mid morn captain", said the lanky lad
"Then I'll be in the wheel house after walking the deck", he replied

Not much in life was better than standing on the rail
with a steady breeze and a sour cup of galley mud in his hand
except those fleeting moments somewhere at the end of sleep when she comes to him
barely there and just as quickly she fades into the light of the morning

Two bells from the bow and he downed all but a swig of coffee
flinging the rest across the sea twenty feet below
she was a fine ship and had served him well these three years
a deep breath and full chested sigh then a long drag up the stairs

This would be his last time he thought, last climb to the wheelhouse
a hearty "Captain on deck!", was sounded and cheers from the wheel crew
as he lowered his cap and stepped up through the door
deep swells of emotion he felt welling up in him, his cheeks pulling down

Through storm and calm, high sea and doldrums she had always held true
now the portsman called too, placing a hand on her shiny brass compass
he closed his eyes and felt her gentle sway rocking him
her peaceful ways had comforted him in hard times and consoled him in worse

Now it was time to let her go her own way and he to his
at port was another love and she calls him away
her lines sleek and sail rolled tightly stayed
it was time, for time for them, the time they both had made

The past is past and if luck has a way, will never be forgotten
the warm nights and struggles of his younger days will serve him well
in the complicated and rewarding waters of his waiting life
her song she sings and calls him true she gets him through the night

Its his need for her that calls him now to leave this worthy crew
and make his way down the graying planks to where she lie berthed
as he turns to step onto her walk he pauses and starts to grin
sun setting warmly on patient bones he casts off his trailing line

She rolls so slight as he guides the wheel, his heel agains a rail
and nightward far under stars he drifts, his heart feels lifted light
the sky grew gray as the horizon came so quick in to view
they were alone at last, on the sea he cast a rose to call her name

He closed his eyes and dragged his finger through the water down the side
and drifted away to where he may have heard her singing soon
he felt her say in sweet whispery ways that soon they both could stay
and like the rose with a tiny note into the dark they rode

Each day he woke and wrote a note to tell her of his love
when the dark of night and lack of light filled his waning heart
he sliped it off the side to call her back to kiss him back to life
warmly wet he felt her breath she kissed his sleeping eyes

So softly stroked her finger drew across his wanting lips
shhh, a whisper as she breathed then they deeply kissed
his desire grew to consume them both, his firey passion she'd lit
her steaming scented heaves he hungered for, her salty sweat he drank

Spinning and drifting his passions drove him deep into her warmth
he reached out toward her and touched her waist and gown
his fingers found her hair and warm soft sunlight dappled across her skin
his eyes he opened the day had come, she smiled and giggled then slipped away

Unga Bunga John (John Faherty)