It is a time of freedom and fear, of Gaia and of borders, of many paths and the widening of a universal toll road, emptying country and swelling cities, of the public bought into privacy and the privacy of the public sold into invisible data banks and knowing algorithms. It is the time of the warrior's peace and the miser's charity, when the planting of a seed is an act of conscientious objection.

These are the times when maps fade and direction is lost. Forwards is backwards now, so we glance sideways at the strange lands through which we are all passing, knowing for certain only that our destination has disappeared. We are unready to meet these times, but we proceed nonetheless, adapting as we wander, reshaping the Earth with every tread.

Behind us we have left the old times, the standard times, the high times. Welcome to the irregular times.


 

A tidbit: I regularly play at a site called NewsFutures, at which you compete against thousands of others to make pretend money by essentially betting that news events either will occur or won't occur. My fate on the site follows a sadly predictable trend. By sensibly betting on the outcome of world events, I slowly accumulate loads of pretend cash. Then, giddy with my success, I toss all my winnings into a questionable bet that has better odds. Double or nothing! Time after time, I either lose or, after winning, push my luck again and again until I do lose everything. Back to square one. "I won't make rash bets this time," I say to myself. But then, after weeks of sensible actions, I always do. I can't resist pushing my luck, even when I know it isn't entirely sensible. As a result, I betray my intellect and lose it all "big time" (as our Vice President Dick would put it). I'd never make a good gambler, because eventually I let my gut instincts overrule rational sense.

Another tidbit: When I was growing up, my brothers and I had a plan: if there was going to be a nuclear war, we'd stockpile supplies and head north to the woods, where we'd build a cabin, live off the land, and wait everything out.

I just woke from a dream. The dream started where we are now, with the United States having pursued war in the Middle East to achieve its political ends. I dreamed one brother, J. Clifford, was consulting with a construction firm in Boston when he walked into a demonstration in which police forces were firing rubber bullets and wooden dowels at protesters. He got hit between the eyes by a rubber bullet and ended up lingering in a coma for months before dying. I flew into a rage. I found the people responsible and cornered them in a room, promising them I'd rip their heads off. No such luck, however: at that moment, the city block of Boston I was raging in was incinerated by a bomb blast, set off by the parents of an Iraqi killed in this past war. Now I was dead, too. But, dreams being what they are, I was able to keep my disembodied self in the world by force of will. I visited my wife and child to kiss them goodbye, but I couldn't touch them without a body. I visited my mother and asked her to tell me the latest news. My sister-in-law and nephew, along with my own wife and child, had moved to another state. I asked her if my dead brother ever came to ask questions. Yes, she said. But he only asks whether the sun is shining. She said they dropped a nuke on Bagdad in retaliation for Boston, and someone fired a nuke back: who knew how this was going to end? Finally, I visited my other brother, T. Andrew. I told him it was time for us to head north into the woods. That's a good idea, he said, but you can't go. You're dead, after all. No second chance for you.

I just woke from this dream. It felt real -- but with a difference. I was still alive. In my gut, it felt like a warning. But I'm not superstitious, and I know that when I follow my gut feelings despite my rational misgivings on NewsFutures, I end up losing everything. So what does that mean here? Is it that I should ignore my gut feelings and continue to live my daily life, rationally confident that world events will not lead themselves to my doorstep? Should I just calm myself down? Or is the shit starting to hit the fan? So many things have already happened that I thought never would: arrests without charges and without trial, Orwellian information agencies, calls of "treason" for dissent, pre-emptive war, plans for the tactical use of nuclear weapons in future battle. It doesn't feel like we've passed a tipping point, a point from which there is no return and the momentum of events becomes overwhelming. But three years ago, if you'd asked me whether these things would come to pass I would have said that you were crazy, that we'd never veer so far so fast. Our ship of state is being steered by a man with his own inscrutable, divinely inspired, drunkenly weaving direction. Recovered from a dream, my gut tells me that at least in the United States, we're still all safe from the aftermath of the Bush Wars -- but my gut has failed me before. I don't think it's time to head for those woods yet. But one of these days, it might be a good idea to figure out what to pack.

Posted by James Cook at 7:04 AM. # (permalink)




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