Alarums of Reality - alternative description

The end is the beginning. The beginning is the end…

Chloe Webster is dead, and no one seems to know why…

Did the estranged, former husband kill her? Was it the scorned girlfriend of a lover, or an unknown assailant she encountered during her nightly excursions into the unknown and dangerous parts of human existence?

Chloe was a seeker, a dabbler in the occult, a frequent participant in such obscure circles.

All her life she sought what’s hidden, what rests (or doesn’t rest) below the surface of everyday life, and those claiming knowledge of such things claim that she finally found it, found what she was looking for.

She was observed while she moved into the old hotel, the old building by the lake, observed while casting spells and performing occult ceremonies in the dead of night. Witness-accounts place her at dozens of seedy bars and occult stores and events around the world. Her life, also the final seven nights is fairly well documented. There is little controversy over the facts, but lots of it over what’s mysteriously absent. The final, revealing clues elude private and official investigators alike.

After years of rabid research she returned to the shores of the lake, on her path to her destiny, to what many call her predestined fate. Truth, unquestionable and unopposed awaits her in the land and streets by the lake, and the distant and ancient and beyond mysterious Caine Manor…

Actual back cover description

The Storyteller in the wilderness - a tiny profile

In a society placing great value on imposed learning, Amos Keppler has taught himself everything he knows. Among those things are writing, acting, photography and playing music and theater. He is a radical environmental activist, an eclectic witch emphasizing humanity’s unbreakable bond with nature.

Alarums of Reality is the ninth book he has published in less than two years. He isn’t really that prolific, though, but just had lots of books ready for publication.

His stories are inherently controversial. They go far beyond what most people consider acceptable...

Diary of a traveling man - the mundane

2012-02-16... Norway:

This is a different kind of Journey, one into the mundane...

It's my neck. It needs treatment and preferably healing, poor thing. So I've come to this health "clinic" in an attempt to fix it. I'm usually good at self-healing, but I haven't succeeded with this one.

So I come here for three weeks of pause and contemplation, which is great, really.

I have to get well. Which translates into: «All other priorities rescinded».

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 five 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.