Jack Burns Lives!

The Hopi word meaning “life out of balance” or “weird craziness, man.” Abbey wrote about it when discussing the insane growth in and around Tucson, but it accurately describes life all across these not so United States of America. And perhaps no more so than in Texas, which is experiencing one of the worst droughts in that region’s history. Massive expansion of human populations in cities, unsustainable demands for water in homes, in recreation, industrial agriculture and energy production equals a cluster-fuck of immense proportions.

Today’s New York Times has an article about the emerging water wars in Texas, which are most assuredly going to worsen as the population continue to expand and resources become more and more scarce.

It was drought that lead to the collapse of the Comanche empire. Their massive horse herds competed with buffalo for water during a ten year drought, taking the best watering holes and driving the buffalo north. An instance where American Indian land use practices weren’t so smart, since the buffalo where critical to their existence on the plains. In a weakened state, they started raiding cattle, which didn’t sit too well with anglo settlers. The Feds and Texas Rangers intervened and the rest, as they say, is history.

Now it’s our turn to face the music.

“The purpose and function of government is not to preside over change but to prevent change. By political methods when unavoidable, by violence when convenient.”-Edward Abbey

I’m been helping a friend with the maintenance of a Facebook page dedicated to Cactus Ed. He’s in the middle of a move and needed a hand with posting daily Abbey quotes.
When the plea for help went out, I eagerly volunteered, figuring the worst case scenario was I’d have to pull out all of my Abbey books and start looking up quotes. Sounds like a nice way to spend a day. I could take the easy way out and go to the quote database at the Abbeyweb, but decided to be a stubborn purist and pull the quotes directly from my own collection of books.
After all, books are now a threatened species, thanks to the emergence of digital readers. On one level, they seem like a sensible way to maintain a large volume of information in a single, easily accessible place, but I’m not sold. I like the book in my hand. I like to make notes in the margins, dog ear pages. I get comfort from seeing all my books along my walls. And all of this digital information resides somewhere, and that somewhere is a data center that requires massive amounts of energy to keep it up and running. Of course, it takes energy to produce and transport the books, perhaps more. Who knows, but I want the book in my hand. Old school. Always resist “progress.”
Each evening, I pull out “an Abbey” (they’re like works of art to me) and start reading. Sometimes, I just scan a few pages searching for one of his hundreds of gems (it doesn’t take a long to find one), but most days, I indulge myself with several of his essays, underlining, making notes, just like I did when I first discovered Cactus Ed. It’s been a refreshing fun ride, reading some essays and passages I haven’t read in several years.
And after all these years, his words are fresh, and his spot on prescience never fails to amaze me. With honesty and clarity, he accurately identified the enemy, clearly explained our predicament and offered reasonable suggestions on how to resist. He made it clear we have a moral obligation to resist and made clear he didn’t suffer fence straddlers.
Neither do I. Either join us or gird your loins.
Who is “us?” We’re the earth lovers. People that love our home, our natural home and our only home, and feel it is our moral obligation to stand against mindless industrialism, tyranny and oppression. We follow the truth, no matter where it leads us. We speak for the voiceless, and we stand for what we stand on.
We thank Cactus Ed for leading the way, and though Ed is sadly no longer with us, his ideas and his words live. The Abbeyeistas still ride.
Onward, compadres!

“If industrial man continues to multiply his numbers and expand his operations he will succeed in his apparent intention, to seal himself off from the natural world and isolate himself within a synthetic prison of his making. He will make himself an exile from the earth and then will know at last, if he is still capable of feeling anything, the pain and agony of final loss. He will understand what the captive Zia Indians meant when they made a song of their sickness for home:

My home over there,
Now I remember it;
And when I see that mountain far away,
Why then I weep,
Why then I weep,
Remembering my home.”

Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire, “Down the River”

I can’t get out of here fast enough. Surely there’s a place in the mountains of New Mexico or in the Southern San Juan’s where I can get away from these people. As a people, Christians are by far and away the most violent people on this continent. They’re the ones that want to wipe out other cultures. Just ask an American Indian.

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This is a 25 minute short proposal for the long form documentary feature entitled NOT WELCOME by Eric Allen Bell.

NOT FOR COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION

We know about the technical glitches and will be fixing those shortly.

The website is not up yet. This is just an early rough cut to show friends.

CONTACT: Eric@BellMedia.org

Authorities befuddled by decentralized, non-violent movements….what can they do if people simply choose not to participate in the dominant, corporate culture?

“Which way did he go, which way did he go….”

May 28, 2011
The New York Times
For Anarchist, Details of Life as F.B.I. Target
By COLIN MOYNIHAN and SCOTT SHANE
AUSTIN, Tex. — A fat sheaf of F.B.I. reports meticulously details the surveillance that counterterrorism agents directed at the one-story house in East Austin. For at least three years, they traced the license plates of cars parked out front, recorded the comings and goings of residents and guests and, in one case, speculated about a suspicious flat object spread out across the driveway.

“The content could not be determined from the street,” an agent observing from his car reported one day in 2005. “It had a large number of multi-colored blocks, with figures and/or lettering,” the report said, and “may be a sign that is to be used in an upcoming protest.”

Actually, the item in question was more mundane.

“It was a quilt,” said Scott Crow, marveling over the papers at the dining table of his ramshackle home, where he lives with his wife, a housemate and a backyard menagerie that includes two goats, a dozen chickens and a turkey. “For a kids’ after-school program.”

Mr. Crow, 44, a self-described anarchist and veteran organizer of anticorporate demonstrations, is among dozens of political activists across the country known to have come under scrutiny from the F.B.I.’s increased counterterrorism operations since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Other targets of bureau surveillance, which has been criticized by civil liberties groups and mildly faulted by the Justice Department’s inspector general, have included antiwar activists in Pittsburgh, animal rights advocates in Virginia and liberal Roman Catholics in Nebraska. When such investigations produce no criminal charges, their methods rarely come to light publicly.

But Mr. Crow, a lanky Texas native who works at a recycling center, is one of several Austin activists who asked the F.B.I. for their files, citing the Freedom of Information Act. The 440 heavily-redacted pages he received, many bearing the rubric “Domestic Terrorism,” provide a revealing window on the efforts of the bureau, backed by other federal, state and local police agencies, to keep an eye on people it deems dangerous.

The rest is here.

“Be of good cheer: We’ll yet live to piss on the graves of our enemies.”-Edward Abbey

A recent article in our local newspaper caught my attention. It was all too typical, a story about a wealthy developer clearing a swath of land to build new mega-homes. Nothing new here, except the fact the developer is trying to dress it up and call it a “sustainable” development when it surely isn’t. Where are those materials coming from? How is a house of more than 5,000 square feet “sustainable? ” The lots alone cost $400,000, and while that may seem cheap to folks in California, around here, it’s a princely sum. Add the $500,000 house, and it’s a million dollar home.

Despite what the brochure says, they’ll suck more energy than a Ford F-250 drinks gas, and then there’s the landscaping. Oh, those perfect lawns, little monocultures created with chemicals, all of which are endocrine disruptors so little Winthrop and his mummy can develop bizarre tumors and learning disabilities while wiping out the local amphibian population. If there’s such a thing as putting lipstick on a pig, this is it.

I decided to post some comments on the paper’s website. As you might expect, they were critical comments and met with a fusillade of attacks from the conservative, pro-development, crowd. The comments were typical, some were even funny:

“We’ll live however we want to live!” I believe that’s been well established.
“You’re just jealous. You probably don’t even have a job.” I wish I didn’t.
“You’ve got to be the grumpiest person I’ve ever seen.” Thank you. Best compliment I’ve received thus far. Guilty as charged.
“This is just left wing dribble.” I think he meant “drivel,” but language and reading comprehension has never been a strong suit of conservatives.

One suggested I was crazy. Didn’t Edward Abbey say only the half-mad were wholly alive?

One suggested that everyone should pay close attention to what I was saying (please do), since my “positions reflect much of what is be espoused by the current administration in Washington, DC.” Oh, how I wish that where true.

But the best one of the day was the lady, “coacheswife,” that suggested I “take a happy pill.” Actually, a profound statement since that seems to be the answer to coping in our over-industrialized, fascist society. All of the sudden, sprawl and packed interstate highways look like dreamy landscapes filled with opportunity for all. I don’t live in Memphis. I live in Candyland. Running for the shelter of mommy’s little helper is standard operating procedure in my own community. Thousands of nervous, evangelical soccer moms and doctors wives (U. suburbanus), jacked up on Xanax and Chardonay, texting, driving their 8,000 pound steel mastadons at excessive rates of speed so they won’t be late for Jazzersize or Bible study. Terrified their doctor husbands will leave them if they have a normal body weight, their diets consist mostly of Diet Cokes and a few crackers with a single grape. They have a strange look in their eyes, a sort of deranged look combined with a eerie smile that makes you immediately think “Stepford Wives” or “Mommy Dearest.”

But I don’t want to sound like a grumpy, over-generalizing, stereotyping, misogynist, since it’s mostly greedy, pig-headed (apologies to pigs) men doing all the damage. Men driven by greed and their oversized egos. Men willing to do whatever is necessary to fatten their own wallets, even if it means terrorism in their own backyards.

What can be done? Probably nothing, at least until oil hits $200 per barrel or higher. That’s the only hope we have of slowing the growth locomotive. Until then, just pass the bourbon and the pills.

“You know, sometimes it takes a lot more courage to live than it does to die.”
(From the film “Two Road Together,” 1961)

Thoughts on Lew Welch

I thought of killing myself
But I looked at a flower
it opened its petals
wide
to the sun
it embraced the warmth
it embraced life
and then I thought
why shouldn’t I?

postscript: I’ve always been a huge fan of Lew Welch. He’s one of the great Beat poets and very inspirational to me as a writer and as a human being. He was a giant of his generation but a tragic story. On May 23, 1971, he walked out of poet Gary Snyder’s house in the mountains of California, leaving behind a suicide note. He had carried his rifle, and his body was never found.

So, another lunatic has predicted the rapture, the Christian fantasy that all of Christ’s followers will be gathered in the sky with Him, safe and sound and out of harms way of this big old nasty earth so full of evil. The earth that, as Christians tell it, “shall pass away.”

To be followed by the Tribulation, a period of great torment. Seems like we might be there already, because as I survey the landscape, what I see is mostly death, destruction and mayhem. Perpetual war and genocide in the Middle East, the theft of public lands in the U.S., the destruction of ecosystems courtesy of multi-national corporations and class war on the aged, the infirm and the less fortunate.

How can it get any worse? I guess another WalMart could open in my neighborhood, so yes, it can always be worse.

It seems to me that life would be so much better if humans focused on the here and the now and stopped viewing life as little more than a warmup for eternity. This is the big show. Nirvana is now.

All of this talk of living forever. Thank god we don’t live forever. There’s too many of us humans roaming around already. As Abbey said, old time desert rats can’t breathe properly without at least a cubic mile of unshared space about them. Can you imagine what the earth will look like if the average life expectancy of a human reaches 90? The Catholics want women to be baby machines, and Christians of all stripes are infiltrating political positions so they can monitor women’s uteri and destroy birth control education. Christians want the planet crawling with humans, and it seems they’re winning the ideological battle.

Humans, of course, think they’re in control, but they’re not. Ole Ma Nature rears up every once in a while, kicks us in the butt and restores the balance. Viruses and bacteria mutate and evolve. Tornados ignore radar and weathermen and go as they please. The Mighty Mississippi flows as she wishes. Humans hang on, but never seem to learn the earth is not ours to “subdue.” We’re lucky to be here. Every day is a gift.

Myself, I experience rapture every time I see a thunderstorm make its way over a mesa. Each time I see a towering Century plant in the desert. When I’m fortunate enough to see U. americanus in the Smokies. When I hold my wife’s hand as I walk down a long, winding trail in the Southern San Juans to find a remote alpine lake. When we enjoy a hearty meal with our children and our friends. When I read a good book, and when flowers and tomatoes bloom in my garden.

“What does the desert mean? It means what it is. It is there, it will be there when we are gone. But for a while we living things-men, women, birds, that coyote howling far off on yonder stony ridge-we were a part of it all. That should be enough.” Edward Abbey, Beyond The Wall, “Desert Images”

It is enough.

“We should restore the practice of dueling. It might improve manners around here.”-Edward Abbey

Scattered amongst the trees on a perfect spring day, dozens of species of birds sing beautifully in celebration. Separate but seemingly in rhythm, they produce a symphony of delightful song. I imagine them going about their daily business, gathering nesting materials and finding food while maintaining a careful lookout for their powerful red-tailed cousin lurking above in the azure sky. The garden is pallet of color, reds, blues and pinks and my young, fragile plants reach for the sun.

Then, from less than a quarter mile away, just beyond a row of houses on the west side of the garden, a shrill, dissonant sound, a high pitched squeal, penetrates the air. It grows steadily, increasing in volume, then briefly decreases, changes directions and pitch, but remains. Soon, it’s joined by a similar sound and then another, until there’s a cacophony of noise permeating the landscape, drowning out all other sounds.

The peace of the afternoon is shattered.

Lying in the sun, I imagine a man on horseback confronting the abomination. An anachronism, his clothes are trail worn, and his boots are caked in dust. His hair, slightly curly and light brown, is long for his age and reaches his jacket. And although his face is weathered, he posses a youthful look, a face that beams with confidence and determination, dominated by blue eyes that seem to waiver between between sadness and rage.

He stands for what he stands on.

Before him stand three men, each holding a leaf blower. The man on horseback studies them, slowly shaking his head as if amazed by their ignorance. The men stare at him in equal befuddlement, holding their machines by their sides like weapons, idling, burning fuel. Suddenly, the rider’s gaze hardens. Beneath his wide brimmed hat, his frightening blue eyes focus doggedly upon the men. He judges them and sets the sentence, then focuses on the man closest to him. The rider pulls a Winchester rifle from his scabbard, points it at the leaf blower and fires. The unmistakable sound of the Winchester lever action rifle pierces the air like a scythe, and the plastic casing of the leaf blower explodes as the .30-30 slug buries itself in the machine, leaving the man holding holding nothing but the handle. The rider again cocks his rifle, points at the second leaf blower and fires. Same result. The third man tries to run, but it’s useless. In seconds, the rider steadies his horse, aims the rifle, holds his breath and fires, knocking the device from the man’s hands. All three devices lie on the ground, inoperable.

The men scatter for their truck like roaches caught in the light. Order is restored.