OccupySacto.org

Happy Holidays, friends. Here is a little Xmas offering on the moment when the millennial clock turned over and the days of Occupy v. The Dark Ages began. It's the sequel to my long work, "The Ballad of Emma Good" which tells the story of the the arrival of the Beast and the few brave souls who were on hand in a small southwestern valley to try and stop it on its way to eat the planet. I hope to have the Ballad posted on Christmas eve for its 11th Annual anti-traditional Xmas offering. Meanwhile this is where things are now:

The Long Now - How I Got To The Sacramento Occupation


The reprise on the musings of Doctori Sadisco:

"The great wheel of time of the Mayans predicts the end of an entire cycle of time and the beginning of a new one. Often people speculate various scenarios of doom, with millions dead, and a very dark period, out of which arises a golden age for mankind. I believe today marks the day the predicted end and new beginning blossom open. Today signals the end of the rule of the Selfish, who will not take this easily, and the beginning of the rule of Compassion, heralding a new golden age. How many perish, what terrible things we must endure remain totally in our own hands and by our own decisions."

- Doctori Sadisco , from the facebook group of , '100 Thousand Poets for Change'

Doc - I feel so synched-sympatico with you that I speculate we must sometime have been the bastard children of the same pineal gland. I generally reckon the ancient rise&fall calendar into three, three-thousand year cycles (with early, middle and late periods in both the cycles and epicycles), into which the Asian, Incan/mayan and Indo-European histories also seemed to fit nicely, though it has been 40 years since I last considered the matter so I'm rusty about my old blueprints. Anyway, the historical timelines seemed consonant, and rhythms seem about right for the dance of our species, from dream, to awakening, to hubris, to sleep, perchance to dream again. It has some connection with the breath of the planet, I suppose. The Grand Prana Yoga of humanity, if you will. - red.

The Long Night - Or, how I traversed the distance from When to the Occupation of Sacramento

Within the smaller epicycle, I also noticed the 1000 year chunking, in which some node of decision or another seems periodically in the offering. It is as if some great umpire were asking, "Well folks, how would you like to play the next round?" The last three times this happened, it appears evident that the beast has renewed the contract with those forces born, not so much in evil, but in fear from which they strike out blindly to survive. The mode of fear is always war and terror, enclave and division. It can't help itself. It is too frightened to do anything else.

This millennial closing, however, was rather unique. It was the late-phase end of all three cyclic rhythms at once - the 9000 year cycle, the 3000 year epicycle and the millennial rotation. Yeats' prophecy was about to visit us again. Our only miscalculation was that scholars had identified the prophecy with the local events of Yeats' life and times - the European theaters of war, the Irish civil war or the Russian revolution. The beast was closing in, to be sure, but it would take another eighty years for it to arrive in Bethlehem. Perhaps, I thought, the long night of the last millennium is about to end and the dream from which we will soon awaken is about to begin? I waited and held my breath through the twenty-four hours of celebrations around the world that heralded the arrival of the new millennium.

Hardly had the clock struck new dawn at Greenwich and the last sounds of celebration faded, when the night began to thicken and knot about itself. The clock ticked again and the Bush era arrived with its unmistakable evidence that the nightmare was not to end so quickly or surely. The matter in grave doubt, the narrative ambiguity written into the conclusion of my "Ballad of Emma Good", I began to dissolve into images of the four horseman loose in the world and the lid of Pandora's box slowly opening, poised once again to swallow the world with its nightmare.

I would not give up so easily, though. I scrambled for some holding thread to save my rapidly dwindling convictions. I made a strategic retreat and regrouped. Ah, I thought, the millennial clock does not tick so quickly as the second hand that marks its passage on the vellum of the ordinary day. A second in millennial time could be years or decades in real time. I held onto my shredded dreams and waited. The years passed and things became only darker. A decade passed, still no dream, not even a glimmer. The Horseman were more savage than I could ever remember; Pandora unleashed more numerous and malevolent furies than all previous history had described. I could do nothing but watch helplessly. I made my second retreat.

They're in full stride now. Only a fool could fail to notice that. Surely the beast has arrived. "Arrived, yes!" I screamed, as I reached for any escape hatch I could find. But what if the contract has not yet been signed? What could possible make a difference now? I reached for the last of my ink, for some ray that might forestall what was rapidly turning into inevitable catastrophe. I scribbled "Renewal Time, ( http://poems4change.org/Poems/renewaltime.html ) in the last hours of the night. It was frightfully iffish. The sequel to a longer, if more ambivalent assessment I'd done a decade earlier. but it was about all I could muster at this late date. My second retreat flickered on the screen in front of me. I waited.



Renewal Time

Time for renewal, the old boys said, a pro forma thing
in our pockets. Let's have it done and get on with the plan
to put some more grease on the sockets that wobble
and creak, as if this is simply another repair and the magic
required, a mere sleight-of-hand. Take one part shock-doctrine,
to two parts of word, add a little distraction
and laugh at the rest, as though it all very absurd.
The world's made of magic, and magic of word;
which is what we manipulate best.

On Millennial Day, the boys showed up prompt,
unsaddled from black SUVs. They'd cut a quick deal,
return as they came, with the contract firmly in hand;
for next thousand years, all the loot they can plunder
and the goo that lies under the sand. The terms were the usual
with minor revisions, there'd be war and division sufficient;
occasions for mayhem and fuel for the engines,
a bone for the hungry, with fat and provisions
for those who held guaranteed shares.

They entered a room that was bare as a bunker,
only a long empty table. Upon it a codex, so ancient a volume,
its contents unknown but for fragments of fable, that few
had survived as they murdered each other in frantic confusion,
and those who were left had nowhere to hide from the one
that had stalked them and knew all their weakness,
scattered the tribe to the winds; save those who resolved
they'd someday return, to challenge the beast once again.

One placed a paper face down on the table, the rest
absently glanced without wonder. They knew what was on it,
a thousand times over, clauses they'd written themselves
were upon it, and none need consider the minor revisions,
that kept it all moving along. Nothing had changed
since that long ago day, and little would ever go wrong.
What they'd cut for themselves was all that now mattered,
no matter who paid for the feast. It only remained
to be signed and then sealed; delivered, this day, to the beast.

The Great Door widened for the gyre of death,
though none in the room grasped the fact
that the hour come round had not quite arrived;
nor were they prepared for what happened next.
Through that portal there came, uninvited, a guest,
a flute and a lyre in hand; the one made of reed,
the other of string, were now carefully set by the text.

The poet appeared without fanfare or trumpet,
taking a seat at the table. "Let me remind you
that all isn't settled," putting a hand on the codex.
"You seem to forget what this contract contains,
and the clause that might someday enable."
The men looked at each other, and each at his brother;
as surely those old bones did rattle, "Just so," said the poet,
"your role was ordained on a day long ago,
when it seemed all was lost and whatever remained
of us scattered. All that you've done, all that you've ruined
has been only a practice for battle."

The men rose as one, no more need be said
as they took back the contract, unsigned and unsealed.
They would try it again on another day, small details
needed attention, that's all; but for the few not so certain
that everything would go their way, nor might they choose
to so have it, now that something else was in play:
the fine print included a perpetual clause,
our fall from grace remained undecided,
the dark voice that gave them reason to pause,

"YOU'RE NOT IN CHARGE HERE, OR ANYWHERE ELSE,
DON'T EVER FORGET WHO HAS STATIONED YOU SO
OR JUST WHAT YOU OWE TO THE ONE YOU REGRET,
FOR I'VE MADE IT SO AND MAY UNMAKE IT YET."


I scrawled a few hurried post-notes before the blank and pitiless sun made its way to my window:

1. Lewis Mumford observed that those who think they are in control, the heads of our corporations and institutions, are not really in charge. They, too, are expendable and, in any case, can do little to change the course of the machinery they operate. The machinery has become larger than any who might think that a mere change of command will mend its way or tame its savagery. We have set loose the spawn of a beast in the world that has no intention of yielding to our demands.

2. Contrary to Santayana's classic remark, ""Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it", I have observed that, Those who only remember history are doomed to repeat it. We know history, yet we keep on repeating it. Unless, that is, we find a way to rid ourselves of the delusion that history is all there is of our species.

3. Magic is very powerful. For its most violent and virulent forms it may be necessary, but never sufficient, to banish it. It will always return again and again; often in some more potent and destructive appearance. Killing it once and for all may seem to be the only other prudent thing to do. Yet, that option is taken at great cost. For, once murdered, that magic is gone forever; not simply its evil mask, but its force and its power as well. It is far better when we find a way to use magic without magic using us; to put a leash on it; to constrain and control it. Yes, there is always a risk. But magic was originally a gift, neither good nor evil in and of itself. It is only we, our species, who determine which aspect magic will show to us. Therein, the beast of the matter lies. Not in the magic, but in the magician. That is where the battle must be engaged.

4. The Legend: It was at the very beginning, when we were so few and so fragile, hardly clinging to this planet by a nail. It caught our scent and was so dangerous and powerful that nearly all of us were destroyed in the first blow. Those that remained to fight were confronted with weapons more deadly than its physical might. We were deluded and turned on ourselves. The thing each of us feared most was flung back at us until fathers slew sons and Mothers slew daughters, and each of us turned on their brothers and sisters. Hardly any remained alive after that onslaught. The precious few who were left, scattered and hid. Our wounds were not merely of the flesh, but of something that was indelibly etched in our minds. Something that would never be forgotten, not for the tens of thousands of millennia that followed. It was a catastrophe that not only shaped all that we did from then on, but shaped what we were to become; as a species, as a being among beings. All that remained of what we once were, what we might have become, was that single, fragile moment of catastrophe. Whether it connected one of us, or many, no one can say. Only this much is certain: Someday, in some distant future, we would return to battle again. This time, we would be equipped to meet the beast on equal terms. We would be toughened, not only by the millions of years of experience, but by coming to terms with our own fears and delusions about who and what we are. It has burned in us ever since, a bright chord that unites us each with each other and all with everything else: that someday we would lift our eyes from the ground and gaze upon the gardens of the sky. ["The Legend of the Beast", as told by Red Slider.]

4. Jenny Dawn's Last Sacrament:

"A long forgotten healer's art
of speech made fast within
that string the bow tips of the heart
to sing the quivering.

Of reed, the flute; of string, the lyre,
to warrior was given;
earth prepares what heaven provides,
the dead divide the living.

Warrior! Stretch upon thy deed
bend thy bow to fit thy word,
take such strength from dexterous reed,
in that, be what is heard."

- Red Slider; fr. "The Ballad of Emma Good"; BigBridge Press, 1999.

"In 1920, when he spotted the beast from a distance, it appeared to that poet to be moving on slow thighs. Yeats miscalculated. Nine or ten-thousand years before, perhaps, when it first infected the origins of our civilization, it might have been moving very slowly. Certainly it was then that our modern customs of slaughter and deceit, ambition and power were first leveraged into the foundations of our mythos. But, for the past three-thousand years of the modern epicycle, we have been running full-tilt like a pack of lemmings, yet the beast has never failed to keep up and one suspects it can overtake and devour us at any moment it desires."
- op.cit. Forward, (1999)


The second retreat was finished. The sun rose as usual. And so did everything else under it.

The second hand ticked again, another year had almost passed. December 19th. Mohamed Bouazizi sets himself on fire over the seizure of his vegetable cart. I took little notice. Just another horror in the long night of horrors; horrors past and to come. The protests begin. More battles, more protests. They spread, the Arab Spring begins to unfold. But with each battle come the familiar false promises, distortions, played hopes. The spectacle continues to wear the cloth of night - has all the earmarks you'd expect of tyrants who have just had their contract renewed and now set about exercising its terms, sowing their seeds of destruction in ever widening circles. The Arab Spring is in full swing, but indistinguishable from so many revolutions before. Those who hold power have all the power they need to crush it before it has barely gotten to its feet. I wait some more.

Adbuster posts a notice online. "Occupy Wall Street" is just another faceless name in the sea of names being checked and disappeared by the Boyz, almost as soon as they appear. The charade continues, the ruling class stage false-flag events. Dog&pony shows sprout everywhere, from Congress to the local dog-catcher. I have given up trying to preserve the last large urban public commons in California. I hardly glance at the news on the Sacramento ruling class's latest sports-palace toy they intend line their pockets with, or the medley of lies their mindless cheering sections in purple shirts yelling "Go Kings" parade around town. How apt, "The Sacramento Kings." Do they mean the team, or the City Council? The only thing that appears to be spreading is the verge of collapse. That and the looming thousand years of sorrow sure to follow. There is little reason to wait anymore. A few more groups join up, a strategy session is held. Typical sound and fury. I have been stood up and I know it.

September 17th. More of the same, a thousand people arrive at Wall Street and take up their positions in Zuccotti Park. 99% stickers begin to appear. Nothing the Boyz can't handle. No cause for hope, it will go on this way until I die. It will go on for another thousand years. The end of my life will be a consolation. At least I won't have to the watch this spectacle of horrors after I'm dead. It will just have to proceed without me to witness it.

Sept. 18th. Sept. 21st. Sept... I begin to notice what the media is doing with these events. Most are ignoring it in the weeks after the Zuccotti occupation begins. My local paper, the Sacramento Bee will almost entirely ignore it or bury it, well-spinned, on the back pages of an inside section; just as they have always done with anything outside the marriage bed they share with the 1%. Just as they continue to do, at the moment of writing these lines. Still, a few papers are taking the effort to report and dismiss it as a bunch of hippies and some "anarchist types". I am turning to the live online videos of the action. I watch, I listen. I stop waiting...

The media that is covering the spectacle has little to base their selective assessments on. It is not a bunch of hippies and anarchists (at least not for the reasons the press would employ such usage), and it is growing by the hour; spreading by the day and by the week.

Keith Olbermann notices the same thing I do and begins to publicly ask why? I'm alert now. The waiting is finished. When the media ignore, they are just exercising their First Amendment right to be biased. But, when they misreport, spin, or try to convert reality into what they say it is, you can be sure something else is going on. We have transited from the "ignore stage" to the "laugh stage". Ridicule, sarcasm and dismissal replace silence as the weapons of choice. When that happens, you can be certain they are scared of something. That, or their masters are scared and have called down to change the game plan. Either way, the next stage has been broached and it is not the same game anymore.

The "laugh stage" has not quite ended yet. The skirmishes at the occupy zones are still just that, skirmishes. But as surely as Yeats identified the beast and where it was headed, the occupation of America is no side-show in the knots of darkness that the 1% planned to tie us up with for the next millennium or so.

I think back to Mr. Bouazizi and his vegetable cart. He no longer appears as simply one more tragic casualty of the long night. In retrospect, he appears more as the first candle lit to help find our way out of this nightmare and wake up. He seems like a candle set at the table so we can look over the new contract to find the empty line awaiting our signature. It was a long tick of the millennial clock, nearly 23,497,200 seconds of ordinary time from December 19,2010, when Mr. Bouazizi set himself on fire in protest and despair, to September 17, when the first thousand occupiers arrived in Zucotti Park and it began to dawn on me that the contract for renewal might not have been signed; might still be up for bid.

Less than a month after that, when Occupy Sacramento took Cesar Chavez Park, I put a candle in my hand to join with tens of thousands of other candles across nation. What if the spigot for the drop of dark has been turned off? What if this longest night in the history of our species is about to come to a close? It may take some time to pull back the curtain of that Long Now, but surely, we have only to pick up our pens and raise our voices to make it so. If only our awakened imagination arrives in Bethlehem before the beast does. The second hand ticks again...



© October 14, 2011, red slider. All rights reserved.