On Hunter-Gathers....

I rolled back into Austin yesterday evening, a grey and gloomy return.  A quick stop at Lift Cafe, then onto the hunt for Smokie and KB.  I'm riding by JackInTheBox when a shouted halloooooo stops me.

KB.

They're eating Jack hamburgers, praising them to the leaden skies.  Over coffee, we catch up on our lives.

They've upgraded to a Blackberry, and Smokie is investigating apps he can load to make it really...hot. 

KB found it, peeking out from under some leaves, and now it has found a new home.  Part of the little couple who is immersed in exposing the global coverups, etc.  Heliocopters flying by on dastardly missions.

Smokie says something when seems quite profound:  "See," he sez.  "We're working for the Universe, right?  Like...we're employees.  And if we're doing all this work for the Universe, then the Universe has to give us the tools to get the job done, right?"

I've never quite looked at it that way but it does make perfect sense to an old dharma bum.  Isn't that why so many angels of aloha have emerged to support this blog, this quest?

I run the past few months in a rapid rewind, a way-back.  And I can see the Cozmick Characters emerging right on time, perfectly.  I think of TJ, the guy with the bicycle powered by a chainsaw motor.  He said, "I'm always on time.  Even when I'm not."

And last night, sitting on the sleeping pad with Smokie and KB, I'm thinking of the early hunter-gatherer societies.  That's what we are, hunter-gatherers.  We awaken in the morning and set out on the daily quest:  food, a warm and dry place to stay, decent company to chat with.

I've checked Mobile Loaves & Fishes.  They're scheduled to come to Sunken Gardens this evening, so we'll make that rendezvous.  Much like hunters gathering at the watering hole, knowing that food in the form of megafauna will soon appear.

They have fallen over the edge, into that abyss of total commitment.  Their undestanding of the world as a massive conspiracy informs their thinking, that which they speak of. 

Well.  Certainly I can agree that the MSM, mainstream media, has failed us miserably.

Certainly I can agree that a relatively small percentage of the global population dominates the financial system.  That's empirically demonstrated.  Can't argue with it.

Now here's the kicker:  As one of six billion ppl on this planet, surely I am entitiled to one six-billionth of the whole thang.  Doesn't all this belong to all of us?  And not to just a privileged few who through the chance of birth came into possession of the skills to kick some major okole, financially-speaking?

Call me a closet socialist.

Or maybe...just someone who sees something radical:  that unless we as a global community come together in some kind of relationship with each other and the planet which is aloha-based, that we are doomed to destroy one another--and the planet, to boot.

I am not a Christian, but I do find the character of Jesus to be the most compelling and attractive of all the Cozmick Characters which have entered into our Collective Conscious.

Somehow we have to learn to share, to be responsible.  The book of Isaiah has some wonderful things to say ab out this most necessary of transformative visions.  It speaks of binding up the wounds of those who have been run down by a culture blindly headed for the precipice.  It speaks of an aloha which transcends the gimme-culture which now seems to dominate so much of what the MSM presents.

All this I can see, sign-off on.

Somehow I see the level of greed which has infected Wall Street as being an incredibly powerful virus, a killer, a destroyer.  Apollyon, it's been called.

To the extent that Smokie and KB can see and understand, they have placed themselves in the service of a solution which they think will work.

For that, I salute them.  Wish them Godspeed.

My particular mythic path is somewhat different.  But perhaps would be considered just as bizarre as any of the crackpot paradigms which stagger out onto Life's Stage.

So?  Tis mine, dammit, and I honor it.

A gloomy day today, my friends.  A day to find a warm place where your presence is not resented.  Where when I look around, the ppl are not staring at me with those dark little cartoon rainclouds hovering over their heads.

Isaiah says, "How beautiful on the mountain are the feet of those who publish peace."

Ahhhhhh.  What a lovely verse for a dharma bum blogger to keep in mind.

Peace, aloha, and joy,

Elijah from the street