On New Year's Eve, 2010

Dog Poet Transmitting.......

Well, here I sit at the closing of the year. The past is behind me and the future is ahead and neither of them exists in real time, because there is only the present. One could say that the past put us where we are and that what we are likely to do with what lies ahead, is pretty much the result of what the present has made of us, with a whole lot of assistance and obstruction on our part in the past.

I don’t have much use for New Year’s Eve or New Year’s Day. This is one of two holidays when I stay around the home environs. The other holiday is The Fourth of July. Since no one celebrates the fourth where I am these days, I don’t have to concern myself with that period of bumper car mentality. There’s only this amateur night on the highway to contend with. A new year starts every day. People like the symbolism of New Years though. They like the idea of a fresh beginning, despite their certain tendency to repeat themselves according to the patterns of the past.

For some reason, New Years is an excuse to get really drunk and celebrate. I’ve looked into this, trying to discover what it is that they are celebrating and I must admit that it isn’t readily apparent. Neither is the justification to drink yourself into a state of embarrassing behavior and a glazed eyed frenzy that has no payoff but regret. I’ll admit to extended bouts of partying in the past because of a general excess of enthusiasm but I generally didn’t need a holiday to provide a reason.

Are they celebrating the fact that they are still around? Are they celebrating what they hope against hope will come to pass for them? I think they’re looking for meaning. They want what they have and do and pursue to mean something. The fact is that none of it does and the surest proof of that can be found by looking back a few hundred years and transposing what they see, from where they are looking into where they are (or were), while someone else is looking into them later on. That’s one of those sentences that maybe shouldn’t have gotten written (grin) but I hope you catch my drift.

The essential truth of life can be seen in a very simple way. Something is real and it endures. Everything else passes and the closer it is to the surface, the more quickly it passes. This indicates that what is real is deeper than everything else. Based on this, one could say that a successful life is one that is connected to something deeper and that unsuccessful lives are connected to the surface end of the equation. Of course, the inhabitants of the surface will argue otherwise but they’ll pretty much be arguing with each other because the deep doesn’t argue or even speak much at all.

On the surface, everything is an argument because everything is in conflict and competition with everything else. When you’re drunk and excited about something vague and unformed (and likely to stay that way, until you look back at it further on and define it your way) this is not what you will be thinking about. You’ll probably be overdosing on bonhomie, whose reason for existence will be much less clear the following day, or, you’ll be quietly or not so quietly angry. You won’t know the real reason and that will aggravate the anger more, because your resident truth awareness that’s locked out of sight will be agitating from the unseen location.

People think they know why they’re angry but usually they don’t. Something shows up to take the rap, of course, but that’s just a matter of convenience. People are angry because life doesn’t automatically adjust to their desires and they feel cheated when they find that the choices they made were bad ones. They looked much better at the time they were making them.

I’m trying to think what people should be celebrating this New Year’s Eve and, ironically, one of the reasons could well be that they are still here. At the same time, ironically, that could be no reason to celebrate. Time will tell.

I’m somewhere in the seeming wild, where you do not run into people while walking down the street. I don’t think I’ve ever had it happen in five years, day or night. I’ve had people come into my yard and I have neighbors a few hundred yards away and other neighbors that don’t live here but come around to work on their property, still, I can go for days without speaking to or even seeing another person. Interestingly, two medium sized towns are equidistantly about four k from me so I’ll be able to hear the explosions and maybe even occasional snatches of music this evening. People like blowing shit up on New Year’s Eve. I don’t grok that either. I’ve never been one for fireworks, even the spectacular displays but, of course, I take psychedelics and there are no fireworks on Earth to match that. In fact, there’s not much in ordinary existence, unless lived in extraordinary fashion, which does match it.

I know there are lots of people who have never taken them and are therefore authorities on the subject. Anyway, they’ve got alcohol and how could esoteric chemicals improve on that?

When I look at society I see a prison of conformity that takes its marching orders from a hierarchy of an oppressive minority that sets the standards for their behavior, without it applying to them. I see people willingly going to war for institutions that make war on them. I see madness, barely contained by threat of official response and... that’s not going to work for much longer. That is definitely not going to work for much longer because the veils are lifting by the day and no amount of Assange like distraction is going to be enough to convince hungry and homeless people that a luminous bridge will soon appear, along with the keys to the gates of a shining city on the hill.

Everyone knows that there is a lot of room for improvement in their lives. Hardly anyone wants to make the sacrifices necessary to achieve it. The reason is that it means sacrificing some of the things that they have convinced themselves makes their lives worth living. That’s why life cycles through its stages, toward a final period of confusions and regret. Senility and rigid, uncontrollable compulsion are the result of fighting against your own best interests for the sum of your life. Fewer and fewer people can even recognize what their own best interests are but it won’t stop them celebrating it tonight and hoping for the appearance of meaning in this bright and shiny new year.

Most people die in January and I suspect February is right up there. The fewest people die in August. It’s something to think about. People will argue this is all about the weather. My suspicion is that just about everything people base their beliefs on is false when considered in the light of how they understand them, compared with what they actually mean in the deep end; the unspeaking end, the quiet zone of eternal being, which is not friendly to the dreams of butterflies and debutantes. I’d like to see Pollyanna and Cassandra spend New Year’s Eve together so that I could eavesdrop.

Here I am at the end of this piece and you would have thought I would have accented on the positive throughout. You would think I would want to be encouraging and passing along some celebratory words... telling you that not only is it going to be great but that it’s going to be better than it’s ever been. Actually, it’s going to be a lot more like what it has been but with added dynamics and special effects.

It really is going to be great and better than fine if you are. We’re in a place where something is coming alive and it’s going to be pinging off of whatever housing contains it. If the housing has integrity then it’s going to ring when it pings. If it doesn’t then the structure of the housing will be experiencing a lack of structural integrity. That’s what happens when one age transposes into the next. What is authentic and true in respect of the needs of the new age, will find itself written into the institutions that come to represent the new way of things. What is not will be recycled. It’s a natural progression.

You have my good wishes that this year will grant you opportunity to make the changes that need to be made and then grant you the freedom that comes with it. You have my good wishes period. It’s going to be an interesting year.


End Transmission.......

Visible sings: ♫ Peace ♫
'Peace' is track no. 4 of 10 on Visible's eponymous 'Les Visible' Music Album
Lyrics (pops up)



The New Shangri-La.