The many mothers and fathers

This is also one I've carried in my head for a long time...

We were seekers, strangers seeking other strangers, artists and muses and bards and witches carrying manuscripts and typewriters and instruments in our suitcase. What we found, as individuals and a group inside and outside that little house in Hampton Court, London exceeded our expectations and reached far beyond our hopes and dreams. During those four years we grew beyond anything we had consciously envisioned and our growth keep pleasing us, to this very night and will for the rest of eternity.

It started on Midsummer Night 1988 where we participated in a massive ceremony of sex and magick in the middle of Hyde Park. Those of us staying together after that formed the fairly small collective in Hampton Park. After just a few nights of decision-making and a few weeks more of dealing with practical matters, fourteen people moved in with the couple owning the house. The building wasn’t in very good shape, but there was plenty of room and heart and passion and determination.

After that night in Hyde Park there was no pretense of monogamy and pietism anymore. There were those who felt ashamed and attempted to distance themselves from that event, but not among us. To the chagrin of our neighbors and the authorities we started living out all our hopes and dreams and desires. We managed to get hold of three king size beds, but we usually just used one at the time. We disregarded society’s narrow sense of morality and started living life to the fullest.

And then, after weeks of living bliss, so to speak we started reaching out, starting up our theater group and other creative activities, playing in the streets of Covent Garden and elsewhere in and around London. Among other things we played our modern, very modern and personal Shakespeare version, a mix of several of his plays, really, rising the mire of even more traditionalists.

Creativity soared. I wrote both «Dreams Belong to the Night» and «ShadowWalk» during that time period.

Kids were eventually born into the collective, quite a few of them. We knew who the biological mothers were, of course, but it was completely impossible to tell who the father of each child was, and it didn’t matter to us anyway.

The way we saw it was that every male and every female under that roof was mother and father to all the children, and it worked great. There were squabbles, like in any household, but we got along far better than most couples we knew or knew of. One of our happy slogans, «monogamy sucks» proved to be very true. The kids called everyone mother and father and it didn't seem weird at all. It felt, on the contrary very natural and right. Our children were bullied by others in the area, but, coming from a safer and far more harmonic home ours were far stronger and more confident than the bullies and handled them easily.

When we started our touring across Europe, we all traveled together, and the enjoyment, the delight persisted.

The collective broke up eventually, for various reasons, mostly because of the usual undue pressure from an uncaring society, but some of us stayed in touch. We decided to do genetic testing in 2006, and we found out the particulars, but it still didn’t change anything. We were still mothers and fathers to all the children and still are.

It still feels good and so very, very right.

This, a tribal society of equals and shared joy and responsibilities is the far more natural and better life of human beings. We all felt and feel that strongly. Monogamy, as the imposed standard it is, is fundamentally flawed, obviously so.

One full broken circle

I've come one full broken circle these nights. I started lending books from the local library as a child, and now I’ve started doing so again. They actually have a fairly extensive stock of English fantasy/Science Fiction/horror/paranormal/alternative books these nights, also many that stores no longer have in stock.

It was more or less a coincidence that brought me there and to the good stuff. I sought different avenues to meet and converse with friends, and one day I had lots of time on my hands I discovered that the place had changed quite a bit since the last time I had visited years ago.

Those who seek may easier find. Those seeking hard, all the time, will often find items and experiences they’re not even consciously looking for, and be better off because of it.

Strutting bias

Some people wanted to strut their bias, ignorance and intolerance on Twitter last night. In a more or less veiled attack on the Occupy movement and Oakland protesters they came up with the following beyond clever derogatory comment:

«Hippies: Afraid of hormones in milk, but take acid from strangers. You do the math».

I pointed out that I and many others I know who are occasionally dropping acid (LSD) only buy it from people we trust and that it was pretty insane to not be afraid of hormones and other horrors in one particular type of modern milk. I showed them how misinformed and grossly inaccurate their statements and viewpoints were, but as I kind of expected (sarcasm): it wasn’t appreciated.

I also attempted to challenge their ignorance, of course, to plain and simple educate them, and the perceived insults started flowing instantly. I’m quite used to that, though, and shrugged, as I do every time it happens. It takes a lot to truly insult me, also because what usually works on others doesn’t work on me. Heh heh.

But my point is that it was like talking to two pieces of rock. They «stood tall» in their ignorance.

Many mainstream people are strangely proud of being grossly misinformed and do their utmost to stay that way.

This is just one example of many, of course. I have written quite a bit about this kind of human earlier. I call them watchdogs because they are tyranny’s first line of defense against those who would fight it. I also call them tape recorders. They hardly do anything but mindlessly repeating the thoughts and action of others, living their entire life without an original and independent thought in their heads. Typically, they defend or are indifferent to the bad things, even very bad things in the present day world and attack everything smacking of being different or alternative or great. Beyond that they don’t really have anything to say.

A step or ten away from the consumer society

As a rule I don’t buy many things, period, not until I have to, really. I keep using things long after most people would throw it away. Every scarp of food is used, like for instance yesterday’s leftovers.

I still use most of the furniture my parents bought forty-five years ago. It’s clearly worn, but in tiptop shape, solid workmanship I’ll probably use until my death.

When the only television set I’ve ever bought broke down last year, I didn’t buy another, but stopped watching television altogether (and freed myself and my creativity from yet another prison and wrong focus). I’ve bought only three new computers and two cell phones in fifteen years. Owning the newest fad has never been very important to me. My current phone has only SMS and calling capability. I don’t need to be on the Internet all the time and I certainly don’t need to send people lots of photographs or listen to music while I go, and fairly old computers are completely, totally powerful enough these nights.

And don’t get me started on Apple and their popular products. I despise them, even before considering the horrible places their products are made. No one should buy Apple products, no one at all. It is difficult today to find any company with a deserved good reputation, but Apple is the worst of the worst. Steve Jobs was an asshole, to be kind and it is mind-boggling how some people look at him with awe in their eyes.

The reason I mention Apple here is because they are the typical form without content or form with fairly useless content company, selling and creating things people don’t need, fooling people into craving what is basically a mirage. They are not the only one doing that, but as stated one of the very worst.

When I buy something fairly expensive I do so after months of pondering. Even when I was fairly wealthy I didn’t waste my resources on baubles, but on what was further enhancing my enjoyment of life. My fundamental philosophy didn’t change at all. I could just do more of what I loved, that’s «all».

Fashion is definitely one of my pet peeves. I hate it with a passion and buy clothes only every second or third year or so. I have very little respect for people buying new clothes once a month, quite frankly. Even poor people use their meager funds on the latest popular item. They behave like idiots and help uphold a beyond insane system of consumerism. How empty their lives must be. Fashion is empty, like a broken eggshell.

And it's even worse than that (as it usually is). Children of poor parents are bullied when they don't show up with the good stuff, this month's clothes, cell phones and all. Some parents feel they have to use all their money on keeping their children «current».

It’s an old adage. People fill their existence with things, instead of getting a life. It’s yet another well known phenomenon of smoke and mirrors, but people keep getting fooled, keep surrendering to their automatic functions, to the brainwashing of the consumer society. Advertising and the stick and carrot method easily pushes their buttons. And advertising isn’t merely selling products we don’t need, but, and far more important, really also a way of life (or rather death). Unhealthy women, for instance are portrayed as the ideal, healthy women are implied to be fat. Many young girls suffer and die in anguish and despair because they don’t fit the current inch-deep society definition of successful or «perfect».

Those factors and others would be horrible even if they weren’t an integrated part of the process destroying life on Earth.

To save ourselves and life on the planet we need to do a lot more than to reject the consumer society, but that would be one great start, and it would make us human again, not objects to be measured and discarded like garbage.

It is possible, and not even hard, but just takes that simple shift in perspective, a few simple changes in attitude and action.

The Janus Clan - transformation and Change

The moment doesn’t catch us. Pray that it does. We don’t catch the moment. Pray that we don’t.

We are the Janus Clan. We brought ourselves into the world thousands of years ago.

Each time we touch the Earth we make it shake in joy and everybody shiver in terror. We bring transformation and Change beyond recall or regret. There is no return to the life that was.

Right from the start we burned with the prophecies of the Prime, the one that in a far, far future would come and liberate us all from the confines of the horrible Machine poisoning humanity’s spirit, the Machine destroying everything making life worth living. It will crumble the nuts and bolts to dust with a single wave of Its mighty hand. The twenty-one bells are heralding Its coming, Its first and second twenty double decades, Its thousand years.

Our visions burn at our core with expectation and terror. Past, present and future, it’s all the same and it’s all now.

When the Prime, the Phoenix, the fire and shadow of existence touches the Earth, when it catches the moment nothing will remain of the old world. Flesh and blood will turn water and land red.

I dream of Its coming, of the spark igniting the world. I can dream of nothing else.

Distant butterfly wings are flapping in the air, creating the first stirrings of the coming Storm. From perceived modest beginnings can come the most powerful of expressions.

Tales of the thousand fires

Chapter 1 verses 1 to 5

Seven years

I’m celebrating my seven years’ anniversary as a blogger these nights. My first article was posted January 5, 2005. Since then I’ve posted 300 entries on the Midnight Fire blog and almost thousand more other places. They cover everything of interest and passion to me, radical politics, environmental issues, transgression art/writing and similar. It’s all one to me, anyway.

It has been and is great fun and so satisfying to publish exactly what I want to publish without any kind of censorship, the censorship so prevalent in established media. I received death threats already before I started out on the internet in 1996. They have only increased in numbers and level since then, even more so after the blogging began.

«You will go to Hell and we will help you get there faster. We know you live in Bergen, Norway and we will search through every house until we find you».

Stuff like that. They «honor» me with their idiocy and intolerance and enmity, really.

I’m basically attacking the foundations for today’s oppressive society, even without trying, no matter what area I write about and pissing people off wholesale. Most people today aren’t used to have their brainwashing challenged.

People coming here are served a completely different dish than they are most other places. There are those great people that enjoy that, but most of my visitors get pissed, very pissed and incoherent.

It has been a great ride and perhaps the best is yet to come…

The bullies' ball

I am a boy with a certain taste
I pump iron and strike sacks
With my sore hands and strong feet
I love seeing fear in people's eyes

I played with kittens when I was a kid
They squealed and loved it
When I burned them with cigarettes
And beat them with sticks

My first girlfriend squealed in gratitude
When I showed her who is the boss
When I beat her ass sore
When I slapped her around

I am a girl with a certain taste
I pump iron and strike sacks
With my sore hands and strong feet
I love seeing fear in people's eyes

My first boyfriend
Didn't like it when it turned rough
When i tied him up
And whipped his ass

I made him cry out in joy
I made him beg for more
And gave him everything
That has become his heart's desire

I slammed punks on the street
And foureyes in the schoolyard
Throughout my enjoyable teens
It felt good, felt so very right

I struggled with finding my place
The world didn't seem quite right
Didn't really live up to my
Expectations, you know

Today is a big day
We received our uniforms
Our blue armor
Our shields and clubs
We stand with equals
In their eyes
We see acceptance
And the thrill
Of familiarity
We have found our calling
Become police officers
Accepting the accolades
Of an admiring world

Amos Keppler
2012-01-01
With special thanks to my friend Yngve, who told me he had nothing against police officers.
And to the great Occupy-movement, the people who have most recently suffered most of the bully's stick.