Our home

  Every time we leave it we are overwhelmed by despair, and thus is the current world.

  The forest is our home, our one and true home. No matter how far we go, there it is.

  It isn't necessarily a place, but more a state of mind we’re always carrying with us.

  We started out there, millions of years ago, and we never truly left. The only thing removing us from it is civilization, is oppressive modern life. Everything else is pulling us to it. Our humanity is pulling hard to the deep and dark forests. It’s the moist and warm place of our hearts and minds and core. When it’s raining, in the middle of winter, we are still there. The reflection cast by its white bed shows our eyes everything we need to see. At summer we’re surrounded by life, fire and shadows.

  There is so much here, so much humanity, and so much spirit. The wilderness is a great place, but the woods are even more wilderness and twice as great.

  The forest can be almost anything to us.

My life as cycles (I)

  I see my life pretty much in cycles of between two and three years, give or take. When a certain amount of time has passed, I start or am started on another phase of my life. It isn't like I follow it with mathematical precision or anything, I most certainly do not, but when I feel ready or when circumstances, both positive and negative or neither dictate it, I move on to other things.

  The first cycle is the first seven years before I started school. It wasn't really that perfect or anything, but it’s what I see as real childhood. This was in the early sixties, before children stayed in kindergarten, so I stayed at home with friends, and we excelled playing in the vast wilderness surrounding us. I pretty much saw school immediately as I see it today, as a cruel limitation of life. Regimentation entered out lives and disempowered and destroyed as much as it possibly was able.

  «My schooling did me a great deal of harm and no good whatever; it was simply dragging a child's soul through the dirt».
                                                                             George Bernard Shaw

   Even as I excelled in pure learning the first few years, it eventually turned sour on me. It was just too damn meaningless and yet another method of regimentation, and I knew that, with every fiber of my being. The second phase is my first two years of school. At the start of the third I met a person that would become my good and trusted friend for many years. He accepted me as I was, but still kept challenging me to better myself. One of the few regrets I have in life is that, when the time came, I wasn't able to do the same for him.

  The third phase is the next four years at school, until we moved on to a new one and met new, even less impressive classmates. The three years following that, from I was thirteen to fifteen were just more of the same, more of the same unappealing bullshit. Everything good happened outside school. I had started writing my novels and my friends and I had lots of fun, especially during the long holidays, where the regimentation of school felt like something distant and immaterial. During the two months of summer we could almost forget all about it. We had long philosophical discussion in the night and learned to appreciate the beauty of the forest.

  Tenth grade was a little special at that time. It wasn't mandatory. Those attending did it to improve grades. The irony is almost too much…

  And, as it turned out: that year became more than a little special to us all. It started off fairly normal, with more of the same shit, but then, after a couple of months we got a new main, homeroom teacher. He basically ended up turning all our expectations about life upside down. That wasn't necessarily his intentions. The composition of the students also played a part, I guess. But what he did was to encourage us to grow on our own terms, to truly empower ourselves and not by learning lots of meaningless crap. He was an anarchist, a nihilist trapped in a world he disliked, and not necessarily very nice, but he helped us, truly helped us to find our footing, to find ourselves. He was only the third person to teach me my own value and he did that in abundance. That year was one of the best of our lives to that point. We reveled in our newfound freedom. Chaos erupted and grew the longer we stayed in that place. We, by our mere presence had become great and powerful Agents of Change. The others students began to emulate us and establishment held long meetings on how to deal with the situation. Establishment sighed with relief when the year ended.

  Among many things he taught us was to give the world the finger, and one of the results was that, at the end of the year all our grades had improved significantly. Even the teachers detesting him couldn't deny the results. We got better across the board, not just in the subjects he taught, but in all. I became a better writer that year, a better human being and made the first, nascent steps to become the truly independent human being I would eventually become.

  We, and the school were forever Changed…

  The next three years, during high school, we were back in purgatory, to the same, old shit. It was a colossal letdown. End of story. I call my thirteen years at school a beautiful disaster. At least, if nothing else it helped me decide what I didn't want.

  I had my first sexual experience beyond making out during those three years… and can still not recall anything about it. I had a blackout and I guess that is very symptomatic for those great high school years. I flunked, only in one subject, but the rest of my grades were so bad that it didn't really matter.

  So, here I was, twenty years old, without a viable education, and I felt nothing but base relief and joy, both because the suffering was over, and because of all the exciting plans I had for the rest of my life.

  On the day I turned twenty I swore I would change my life. I realized I mostly lived for others, to satisfy their expectations of me, and like a tape recorder repeated others' words and actions.

  I kept writing my novels and set up three main goals for myself to fulfill: I set out to truly become a writer, an author and to have my books published, to play poker for a living and travel around the world.

The wrong question

  During interviews, discussions and such I’m constantly asked one particular brand of questions. It can seemingly cover a number of subjects, but it all pretty much boils down to this:

  - Why are you a radical?

  In which I reply without thinking twice.

  - You ask the wrong question.

  And the questioner in question glare at me, stare baffled at me, even if we don’t necessarily sit face to face, and then, after pausing:

  - What is the right question?

  - The question you should ask yourself is, I say, stressing the point, making it practically impossible to miss, even to the most brainwashed journalist or lackluster observer: - Why you are asking that question.

  They come to me and other truly radical thinkers and observers and actors upon the stage with tons of baggage, a huge set of assumptions taught them by a society long since paralyzed by stale agreement. They are not used to have their perceptions challenged at all, and certainly not in such a fundamental manner.

  The answer to the initial question is usually very easy, like this: «Because it is right and because the world has become the horror it has become».

  But in those settings, the way I see it, it is wrong to answer such questions with the obvious answer, because it is far more important to challenge the preconceptions than to play the distractive game of questions and answers. As long as the world is a tennis court (and you the ball), or a stage (and you the audience) it is crucial to not play tyranny’s game, but turn it back on itself.

Drugged

  We, current humanity as a whole take way too much drugs. I’m not speaking about illegal substances here, but perfectly legal stuff. In the giant void of the modern world many of us ingest enough «medicine» to fight off depression to kill an elephant. It’s widespread, all over the world. We carry the void, the emptiness with us, wherever we go.

  There is enormous general suffering, and to keep the stark truth of the modern alienation at bay, we eat drugs like candy. The government and the Pharma-industry encourage this behavior, both because of greed and to keep our most powerful and (in their eyes) dangerous emotions from expression themselves.

  I have never used any kind of anti-depressive or its like. I love my emotions and love them even more when they ascend into disorder. There should be far more disorder. It’s a healthy reaction to an insane world.

  But most people prefer the even calm, the death of strong emotions. They don’t want to admit to themselves the horror that is their lives. And they do as they are told. Some, and an increasing number even kill themselves, because they can’t live with themselves and the world, as it has become.

  Ever more diseases and «psychological disorders» are introduced, are invented in order to explain away what those in charge don’t want explained.

  We are told to take a pill for any tiny malady and perceived mental instability and we do.

  Therapists and government spokespersons claim to be surprised when the use of anti-depressive drugs increases, but they aren't, of course. To them it’s both an expected and desirable development.

  I’m not surprised either. Anybody fairly aware isn't and shouldn't be. Once again: you don’t need a crystal ball to see the obvious.

  One more thing: I will encourage people to not kill themselves. They shouldn't, but should be angry, very angry.

  «I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore»! - Howard Beale - Network

  «In the postmodern void that is the United States today, tens of millions of all ages take anti-depressant and anti-anxiety medication. It’s not unimaginable that before long, psychotropic drugs will be routinely prescribed for everyone, beginning in infancy. And this is just one example in a list of well-known pathologies that bridge the personal and social spheres. Why are people willing, even eager, to accept a drug-induced state as normal in themselves and their children»?

  John Zerzan

9/11 - closer to the truth

  On 9/11 2001 the United States’ government and the forces behind it blew up World Trade Center in New York City and Pentagon in Washington DC and made most people believe that it was a terrorist attack executed by Islam Extremists.

  Those behind it was NOT the Jewish world conspiracy or Illuminati or other thousand year’s conspiracies, but far more prosaic and real forces like the arms industry, oil industry and American, pragmatic nationalists supporting Pax Americana, or as they call themselves these days; New American Century, a movement working for American Hegemony on the entire planet, a group working more or less in the open these days. They and others also desire more extensive legislation to deal with what they see as an unruly population, and the legislation, well established long before 9/11, really, has been approved on an assembly line afterwards.

  First and foremost: the official version, the pretext those in charge used to start in earnest the fake war on terror has long since been disproved like the obvious lie it is. There is nothing supporting it, except in the foggy minds of the tyranny’s loyal and mindless followers and supporters. The only «argument» they seem to have is that those rejecting the official lie are conspiracy theorists, a condescending method that has always been used to discredit true opposition.

  The next conviction striking critical minds is that the laws of gravity had to be suspended on that fateful day. There is no other explanation for what those in charge claim happened.

  What truly happened will probably never be completely revealed or known in detail. For that we will practically need recordings of the gang of higher public officials and private interests sitting there planning it, and even if these people are megalomaniacs I don’t think this is what they want posterity to remember them for.

  Like the movie Loose Change 2 shows it is doubtful if there actually was a plane hitting Pentagon. There just isn't any credible wreckage. Among other «details» missing are the plane’s enormous engines. The hole in the wall is also way too small and the wings have left no marks. They must evidently have fallen off before the impact…

  The collapse of the twin towers gives everybody looking at it associations of controlled explosions, not a collapse caused by the planes crashing into it. That planes did crash into the towers is fairly certain. But that wasn't bad enough for the true perpetrators, not enough deaths to justify the aggressive tyranny and the following blood baths in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the incarcerations of partly random people and everything else the servants of power were practically given free hands to do the last twelve years.

  A fireman witnessed how people placed something he later identified as explosives inside the buildings. Tower seven fell by itself many hours after the twin towers. Established media reported that Tower 7 had collapsed long before it actually did. People saw and heard explosions before the planes struck.

  It was said, more or less openly long before the actual date, by the people in the government that the United States needed a new Pearl Harbor. There was no lack of warnings that something was about to go down that day. People in key positions certainly believed that, since they had made sure they weren't anywhere near the danger before, during and just after the big moment…

  These are a few on the endless list of facts that have been given little or no attention in established media or in the official public sphere since the event. Anybody denying that there is something seriously wrong with this entire picture is unmistakably brainwashed. The case stinks to heaven and beyond. If you check the facts thoroughly without preconceptions and still think the perpetrators were a bunch of sinister-looking Arabs, you are seriously warped.

  Those in power have mobilized, of course. For every proof there is about their involvement a loyal sheep or ten steps forward with «evidence» to the contrary. Each and every one of us must decide which is most credible.

  To me there was a slow process of discovery. Even the most critical thinkers will rather not believe the worst. It took four years before I turned from my rather lax attitude concerning this subject and realized that the «morons» crying conspiracy were actually making sense.

More on the subject on Midnight Fire:

Conspiracy theories

Fear is the key

Watchdogs

Decency

The mother of all wars

Offensive

Doing it with mirrors

Established media censors those criticizing it

Tyrants manual - advanced reading

Other resources:

Was 9/11 an inside job?

911 Truth Org

Dyeing your hair will give you cancer

  Yet another part of modern industry has been under scrutiny the last decade or so for selling lethal products. Just in United Kingdom alone various hair-dyeing products sell for more than sixty million pounds each year, including both through hair dressers and individual purchases. The products and action are very popular, especially among women. Approximately sixty percent in the western world do it at even and uneven intervals. It’s yet another fashionable act, something «everyone» does, yet another area in today’s society where mindlessness dominates.

  Dyeing the hair increases the risk of contracting various types of cancer significantly. It can give cancer in the bladder and also certain types of leukemia. And there is higher risk of suffering genetic damages and of spontaneous abortion. In a study published in 2002 by Manuela Gago-Dominguez, a researcher in preventive medicine it was determined that nineteen percent of those suffering bladder cancer in Los Angeles County could be traced to hair-dyeing. That’s a very high number. Hair dressers are certainly even more exposed, five times more than average in a given population. Later surveys have confirmed this one. To use permanent colors are the most dangerous, since the skin quite simply suffers longtime exposure, but all dyeing is dangerous. The body gets rid of most of the chemicals, among them various forms of arylamines through the bladder, like it does with many compounds it doesn't want. What remains in the body may cause the before mentioned leukemia.

  The risk to the hairdressers was well known among researchers and aware people long before the study, but that all users risked cancer evidently came as a surprise. It shouldn't of course, since it has been well known since the sixties that dyeing products contain carcinogenic chemicals. This is quite simply yet another case where such knowledge doesn't become public and is basically ignored by those that could have banned the use of the chemicals.

  As always, the risk varies with the individual, but all users have an increased risk compared to those not dyeing their hair and the more often they color it, the more the risk increases.

  Lipstick, nail-polishing and cosmetics in general contain many of the same chemicals.

  My obvious advice is to stop dyeing your hair and stop covering your skin with lots of poison. Those finding good reasons to keep doing that after having read this, and/or countless similar warnings definitely have problems. People commit lots of stupid acts, but this is truly high on the list.

  The only people that keep claiming it isn't dangerous are those producing and selling this shit, and scientists and politicians paid by them, a pattern we have become quite used to as the list of dangerous and lethal chemicals in use becomes longer and longer and longer.

The world my playground

  From late December 2001 to late December 2003, during two of the best years of my life I traveled across the world, playing poker, seeking and meeting likeminded people, writing more poems than I’ve ever done before or after and being constantly high without any drug but life itself.

  What follows are mostly the main events. Describing it in more details will require an entire book.

  It began with London, as many things do for me. I traveled there just before New Year’s Eve and celebrated on Trafalgar Square. It wasn't that much. I had attended several memorable celebrations there a decade earlier, but that night in 2001 the cops had erected an iron ring around the Square and took care of even the smallest attempt at rebellion. It was like we were convicts let out in the yard.

  The path brought me to Ireland, to what would become good friends there. I spent several weeks in a cold house with a great fireplace and had a truly good time. I had already spent most of 2001 outdoors, so it wasn't that much of a trial to me.

  There were several other physical journeys between January and May, but they felt pretty much like a preparation of sorts, to my first visit to Las Vegas, Nevada and also what I consider my first trip to the United States.

  Las Vegas isn't much of a city, really. You can’t do much more than three things there. Those are drinking, fucking and playing. That was okay, even though I also did the other two I had come there to play poker. The first half hour at Mirage Casino I lost twice with pocket kings. During the weeks to come things (and my finances) improved dramatically.

  I drove around the south western United States for four weeks. Besides playing poker I also wrote lots of poems and walked in the tracks of my characters. The drive took me from Vegas to Los Angeles, San Francisco, back to Vegas, further on to Denver (through southern Utah), from Denver south to New Mexico, Arizona and back to Las Vegas.

 When I didn't find a live poker game I excelled on playing on the Internet, like I had done so successfully the entire year.

  I had reached a threshold, a watershed, where I could enjoy life to the max. For only the second time in my life I could say I had money enough to do pretty much what I wanted, especially since my needs were and are fairly modest. One of the dreams I had and goals I set for myself when I was twenty was to travel the world playing poker and now I did.

  I returned to Norway for a while and enjoyed its summer. I don’t enjoy traveling when everybody else is doing it. I have experienced crowded airports twice in my life and that made me more than fed up with it.

  During the fall I visited several European countries, several times and London, of course. Most of the northern winter I spent in Africa, Victoria Falls, South Africa, Morocco, Egypt, Kilimanjaro, other countries and other mountains, snow in Africa. Brrr. It was weird, but still satisfying. The snow was only at the peaks, of course. Everywhere else was heat and fire. It was such a great experience to hardly experience winter at all that year.

  I returned to London, to Las Vegas and visited New Orleans, my favorite city on Earth along with London and San Francisco. I learned to love fish in New Orleans and lots of other things besides. I love places of magick and melting pots of cultures. And I was there before Katrina, which is clearly significant.

  I returned to Norway for the summer, rested and wrote like I had never written before.

  In October I started on my most ambitious physical journey. I returned to New Orleans, playing poker, eating delicious fish and generally speaking enjoyed myself beyond words. I traveled westward, through Texas (and even survived it), through El Paso/Ciudad Juarez (before the later constant shootouts) and further into Mexico, traveling south, through the Yucatan peninsula and further into South America, Caracas, Sao Paulo, Rio the Janeiro, all the way to Tierra del Fuego. Sao Paulo is the London and New Orleans and San Francisco of the south. I will definitely return there if I ever get the chance. From Cape Horn I stared towards Antarctica in the mist. Everybody should go here, to experience a part of the Earth where not many ever go.

  I traveled back north along the western coast, Santiago, La Paz, the Peruvian Andes, with the ancient ruins, and then further on, across the Pacific, to Macao and Hong Kong, two cities where cards and money fly.

  Then India and Thailand, a month in Thailand with celebrations, great friends, peaceful beaches and stormy waters.

  Two years, twenty lifetimes’ worth of experiences I will always carry with me wherever I go, in the billions of years to come.

  I have been all over the world, in countless countries, except most of the former Soviet Union, most of China (Macao and Hong Kong can hardly be said to be part of China at all, the way I understand it) and Australia, New Zealand. And not the Canary Islands, where most other Scandinavians go every year.

  More, much more details later.