.. counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike; they’ve all come to look for America ~ Simon & Garfunkel

Have you found America?

Held ragdoll-close, a sea of fractured mirages jostle to lead on memory’s stage.

Snatching money in the wind is less bootless than pursuing mind ephemera in flickering dim persistence.

Lives flow enigmatic in zero-sum fruitless futility, weaving culture in mind’s montage.

Media detritus taunts, echoing relentlessly tinnient our frayed and cherished memories.

Collaged in colloidal silvered cellulose, ink-smeared headers, and crackly acetate audio, American annals precipitate beyond culture to caricature.

Ouroboros marketers wield art-as-corporate blenders in ceaseless rebirths of modern America, puréed to crass cliché.

Trail-blazing frontier heydays, a forgotten 19th parade of decayed decades in these e-times, fossilize sessile beside the 20th in Hollywood’s hubristic faux follies.

Did you find America in fatherland’s flame or motherland’s mystique?

A poorly tended orphan, our nation coalesced to juvenescence then fluoresced at pubescence in two tumultuous centuries. These long, pivotal, busy years occupy barely a blink, mostly a blank, in the public mind.

Débutante as Papal gift to Spain, this homeland’s less scenic circuit saw attrition of native owners, spirited witch hunts, desperate preachings, wrangles with European overlords, uncivil slavery, and can-do capitalism .. from which chaotic nonage wearily emerged The Union, bearing but a buck and a Bill of Rights.

Gilded Age founded imperialism that inexorably begat soul-sapping world wars and two apocalyptic flash-bangs. The world took careful note. Capable of equally revengeful spite, of such Hollywoodesque it was not. Post-war euphoria waned Cold War-soured till extinguished by futility in Asian-Arab crusades.

Premature news of our death was only slightly so, arriving with delicious but heart-stilling irony, in a sense by our own hand. Earth’s greatest empire slain by a home-grown virus. A virulent, highly-praised export variant. Best practice, world class, and best of breed.

Greed.

Which brings us to speed on where we stand in the smoking ruin that was America, and why we might seek what it was, and thus what we are .. or were.

"They’ve all come to look for America" (still searching, by the way) implies not just a tribal ache, but some grasp of the nationhood to which we long to belong.

No-one knows what America, or God, looks like, except those claiming to have seen Her, or Him. Yet all live equally doubtless She is His America.

“God bless America and nowhere else” resonates as classroom oath, if facetious doggerel.

That a combustion-fed tolled artery delivers pilgrims to the City of Ghosts in search of genesis is irony enough.

Irony traveled with those who, from the sea, sought a dream yet to exist, so founded a Mephistophelian metropolis before surging westward (and ho). It led their descendents to pay the piper, and the turnpike, in return inutile quest to this Trimenjous Apple, seeing in it their seeding, as does indeed the entire nation.

Who seeks America?

The addled call West Coast home, in which honey pot limbo they stickily struggle.

True believers came, saw, collected $200, then backscattered eastwards to bigger smokes.

Heartlanders be dull, but with hint of shiny and a glint in the eye know America is beyond daily drear.

Geekocracy, oblivious to the quest, tweets & buzzes;  i-gadgetry addicted eCitizens understanding only The cYbeRst4tes oF aamricc4 (and virtually nowh3r3 else).

Real people adopt tinted orphans, flaunt fashion for flashbulbs, party bare-pussy, frame epoxy teeth in botulinum lips. Smug smiles juxtapose facial twitches that grate of guilt or harbor hysteria.

Is America the land, sullied by our thoughtless greedy hand? Pre-Columbian purity pales to polluted post-apocalyptic pestilence.

Do we seek America by filling it with people and place names, pandering to progress, prostrate before prodigence? 300 million searching for … 400 million? A billion. Do we stop now or is eternal growth the plan? (There’s a plan?)

The world found America without seeking

International opinion of us wanes with global frost and thaw, seasonal or political. Knowing the beast too well it backs slowly towards the door, looking instead to lateral liaisons with Aspirant Asia, Gulf of Lucre, or Crown Prince Europe.

Oppressed and starving craved bounteous freedom in our virgin frontiers but their dreams mired in thread-bare hardship and a genocidal slave culture. And still they arrive, over sea or beneath border, to shatter hopeful longings and languish as Latino latter-day slaves of white wealth.

Marketing, ever our game, drew migrants by symbols rendered as reality. Cowboy and gold rush cloaked ruinous labor. Coca Cola and Chevrolet bestrode dark steeds of economic imperialism, dazzling distant peasants while their birthright siphoned stateside.

Disquiet and delight greeted 9-11. Ensuing crusades blinded-not a media-savvy world that pierced indulgent embedded reportage and found only nakedly hooded prisoners of humiliation.

We, the Americans who seek this elusive illusion, live amongst its trees unwitting of forest’s malignant extent or mischievous intent. We drive its cars, eat its burgers, bail out its banks, laissez its faire, build its weapons of mass misconception, and quell qualms of deep schisms in a reality slippery and thin as spring ice.

And ..

.. while the fortunate of working poor savor septuagenarian jobs  .. while middle class indebted choose which finger of several severed selling the house enables reattachment of  .. while overpaid geeks squander gizmo-lavish lives online  .. while rich and famous pantomime their good and considerable fortune in the preceding’s faces ..

.. the fervent distraction of an entire nation asserts Vidal’s United States of Amnesia in comatose acquiescence to dreamland’s Gordian fabric.

A child puzzles why hordes throng in consumptive frenzy and frenetic confusion.

"Where are they going, Dear Parents?"

"To find America, young one, where else?"

"But that way is perfidious, a circus of illusion, the devil’s torment, bubbles of falsity (of investment, he would say if older).”

The child ponders, and adds (with naïve clarity, of which only our favorite observer is capable):

“America lies within."

  .

… our power alone cannot protect us, nor does it entitle us to do as we please. … our power grows through its prudent use; our security emanates from the justness of our cause, the force of our example, the tempering qualities of humility and restraint.”

As xenophobic organizations across the United States of America polished their AK47s, a statesman-like Negro, literally an “African-American,” ascended to the nation’s top job.

As bankers and market touts paused briefly from emptying treasury coffers, then redoubled quick-time their public theft, a statesman-like Negro, literally an “African-American,” ascended to the nation’s top job.

As legions of corporate bagmen paused not in their daily pilgrimage to Capitol Hill to lubricate the wheels of politics the American way, a statesman-like Negro, literally an “African-American,” ascended to the nation’s top job.

As fattened spook agencies tapped phones and renditioned unfortunates of middle eastern appearance, a statesman-like Negro, literally an “African-American,” ascended to the nation’s top job.

As munitions makers and defense contractors burdened the people’s economy with weapons of yet greater complexity and obfuscate utility, a statesman-like Negro, literally “African-American,” ascended to the nation’s top job.

As unfettered laissez faire markets created artificial needs then merrily met consumptive demand, its selfish cankers stifling humankind’s faltering and increasingly ignoble destiny, a statesman-like Negro, literally an “African-American,” ascended to the nation’s top job.

And as oil cartels and automakers rubbed their hands in ecstasy celebrating the passing of peak oil, a statesman-like Negro, literally an “African-American,” ascended to the nation’s top job.

An African-American statesman, the hope of millions.

Or just another American President, at worst a factional stooge, at best simply human?

For more read Jake Mossback’s “Not Just the Crowd” on the inauguration of Barack Obama

G’day, yes it’s Leif on one of my rare posts at this dusty lanolin-stained unfashionable z-list outpost.

I should be rapping on DigitalWildWest.com, but this greasy rag finds a more, shall I say, circumspect readership (and I use the term cautiously, since Dr. Collin says most arrive anonymized searching/seeking “silicon sex doll.”

What stirred me?

Security blogger Dancho Danchev’s irresistible high-priest disdain of the filth that soil this most marvelous of humankind’s creations, our webbly cyber world. In particular his derisive shout to some hapless malware pathetic, who he begrudgingly admires as probably raking it in, cash-wise.

And then his mention of “Cyber Jihadists.”

WTF? As in Weapons of Transient Futility, otherwise, What IS That? Global Islamic Media Front? Did I miss something when I slept through a scene in Life of Brian?

You can stick those two words adjacent and imagine that a cyber jihadist does to the www what his bomb belted brother does to your downtown market at peak hour. But I still needed more of a handle.

I have an image oracle that brings me up to speed on anything in the known (and/or Rumsfeld’s unknown) universe.

Image, right: Click to enlarge, and note the dialogue ” .. yada .. Setup Wizard .. this will install E-Jihad 3.0 on your computer  ..”

Nothing so crude as a Google image search, it generates a cyber montage paralleling real-world stirrings – much the way of noise2news.com with language. The image oracle illustrates not only this article, it seductively also does most of SheepOverboard, a mechanized eking of picturesque essence from obscurity – counterpoised, of course, by Angel Boligán’s acerbic crayon.

As gleaned from the nearest pix above, “cyber jihadist” leads to “E-Jihad” the program. And that is, you ask ..?  The full story awaits here:

 JIHAD is the term used for struggle against evil. Electronic jihad or simply, E-JIHAD, is the jihad in cyberspace against all the propagandas and false allegations against the message of truth. E-JIHAD is the struggle in cyber space against all false and evil disciplines, ideology and forces of evil.

Sigh. I guess there’s just a limit to how many ways the oppressed can describe their oppression. And as much as we cyber-sophisticates might sneer at the naive confused gibberish marking your average religious crusader (on both sides – and one man’s devout is another’s infidel) if you were on the receiving end of Dubya’s ideology for the last 8 years, you’d be feeling a touch Jihadic yourself.

On a purist note, Dancho’s the man. From his wrap of cyber Jihadist hacking teams, this conclusion (is this not command of the milieu?):

The bottom line, script kiddies cyber Jihadists dominate, PSYOPS fill the gaps where there’s zero technical know-how, mentors are slowly emerging and providing interactive tutorials to reach a wider audience, localization of knowledge from English2Arabic is taking place the way propaganda is also localized from Arabic2English, and there’s also an ongoing networking going on between cyber Jihadists and Turkish hacktivists converting into such on a religious level. Case in point – MuslimWarriors.Org defacement campaigns with “anti-infidel” related messages.

I getcha.

We spend our lives bein’ referred t’great years: th’ crash of ‘29, Pearl Harbour ‘42, th’ Boston Tea Party of 1773.

Wal, mah friends, we is retchin’ th’ end of an histo’ic year indeed, an’ one we acshully lived!

This hyar is th’ year wo’ld narrative confess’d th’ devastatin’ truth of climate change an’ peak oil, we endured th’ greatess collapse in financial histo’y, an’ a black man was elecked President of South Car’lina.

Not jest enny black man. An intelleckual, an orato’, a statesman – a an’ a Warshin’ton outsider.

Menny of mah white feller South Car’linans is whisperin’ Obama will deport us t’Guantanamo Bay, o’ wo’se, th’ Ivory Coast.

Mo’e wo’se, he will give th’ rich folks’ hard-won money back t’th’ pore fum whom they fus’t stole it.

They say th’ Presidential cavalcade will sport mo’e bling than a Harlem pimp wif rim-spinnin’ SUVs an’ 20-stone black fro’d bouncers, an’ a Secret Service full of unnercovah brothers.

An’ Paint it Black be th’ noo nashunal anthem, eff’n not th’ fate of th’ White House, which insiders cruelly suggess will soon resemble th’ Soul Plane.

So, yoo want th’ real deal on Bareek Obama, our noo Comman’er in Chief?

Click hyar t’read mah eleckshun roun’up.

Burn, baby, burn!

It should take them only a decade to create the most prosperous and smart nation on the planet .. and leave us in their dust. Why are they so dumb that they haven’t done it?

She’s right. What is wrong with these people?

My ex-boss’ IQ well-exceeded 150 and I marvelled at his tolerance, neither hiring more like genii to take some load off,  nor treating me like the lap dog I was. Perhaps those practiced knowing looks and dry sarcasm kept him in check. I had cunning to fall back on, after all.

And precocious kids. No matter how brilliant the student, they aim no higher than military-industrial footsoldier and “hope to be a scientist.” Sigh. Even beauty pageant wannabes set the bar at world peace!

Science fiction authors have long toyed with scenarios of scientists forming communes of intellect.

Howard Fast’s “The First Men” painted an unlikely but ultimate outcome: his advanced society began as a military experiment that isolated itself just in time to survive the predictable reaction of a feeble-minded society – so often portrayed in film and novel – to destroy the advanced or mutated species as a survival threat to resident room-temperature plodders.

Fred Hoyle based Ossian’s Ride on off-planet interlopers sealing off some of Ireland, with much detail on security and organization. Herbie Wells smote us all with a comet to clear the planet of woe, while John Wyndham’s Midwich Cuckoos – though alien and malevolently implanted – showed what a bunch of really smart kids (with supernatural abilities) might do.

But what if the smarties have done it already? Where the heck are they?

Have they created utopia but cunningly present as a failed state, like the rest of us. If so, can someone kindly blow the whistle?

Is it Iceland, New Zealand, Tasmania, Sweden, Monaco, Anguilla, Maui, Liechtenstein? The United States of America?

On that trail, why haven’t the world’s wealthy – who also are typically smarter – purchased, or simply invaded, a big fat tropical island and set up their own bank and government – eliminating taxes and controlling security?

While they like to hole-up in luxurious ghettos in quieter precincts of certain cities, that isn’t a plan, it’s a reflex.

My reader and I again plead:

• - If anyone knows the whereabouts of an advanced collective of altruistic, scientific minds, kindly reveal
  
• - If certain it exists not, explain then why smart people are so dumb .. in terms we, the dumber, might understand. 

Every facet of our species’ brilliant and ever-advancing career finds us, whichever specialty, not quite in control.

With disorder tamed to an acceptable death rate, expertise is claimed.

When un-garbage in equals un-garbage out, design defers to mass production – with mass recall a hair-breadth off.

As matters progress quite swimmingly we are proud masters of our domain. But humans being people, a train wreck usually looms.

And so, as another paramount year unfurls, the entirety of this planet’s mug punters find their fortunes astride some lurching blindfolded mule, shattered in dismay it’s not the magnificent sure-footed stallion the guy in the suit told them to bet a life’s savings on.

A snowboarder hurled from chopper onto 60 degrees of powdery snow chances life, if not avalanche. Likewise, and with bells, entrusting the world’s inventory of toil, manufacture, plant, and property to a self-serving recursive bubble of avarice begs eversion, if not oblivion.

If democracy is the worst possible system of government, except what follows when it fails, then financial bedlam is the nightmare sequela to a brief flirtation last century with public ownership, to the governance of science and knowledge-based national planning, and even respect (if grudging) for social visionaries and an intellectual elite.

While all stood deluded by concepts of equality, societal perfection, and control of human destiny, economic dogmatists stole the fleeting moment, like the arrogant ignorant greedy thieves they are.

And now these self-congratulating fools, these “Alpha Beings” who would save us from the perils of socialism, nanny states, and utopian pipe-dreamery, stand revealed in their finest moment as masters of .. that train wreck.

But don’t mind too greatly for their well being, as governments across the globe, having privatised profits of social infrastructure, now nationalize the debt of its gutted carcase. Our captains of gluttony stand, as always, to inherit the skimpy surfeits of dullards like you and me, whichever way the wind blows. It’s the natural order of things. Didn’t they explain this at school?

Well, for we bottom-feeders as usual nothing much differs. Still a world of animal indifference and jungle law from which we imagined struggling through endless millennia to emerge in celebration of human intellect. Still sustained by much day dreaming of equality, religious salvation, social justice, or portentous proletariat proselytising.

Parting clouds long ago snapped shut on any chance of an efficient, measured, benevolent, and dare I lament ’spiritual,’ procession to the future. Demented as any religious fundamentalist, free market zealots engendered a tsunami of greed that rolls its selfish deconstruction across the shores of every nation and doorstep of each life, endlessly, mindlessly, and each day more irretrievably.

Ha! Another Utopia rant, you might sneer. And you are right .. except to sneer.

In no corner of science do two eminences agree on nature’s intention, or if it has one. Moving from cold hard yet disputed facts to softer mental pursuits, like economics, finds but an Armageddon of pseudo-intellectual mayhem to rip the heart of hope from any foolish optimist on this craven little mudball.

Turning finally to fellow salts-of-the-earth for inspiration, hope, or salvation, finds in their deluded greed-lit faces only the cause of our eternal distress.

What part of moderation do 6 billion opportunists not understand?

Who will concede “I only need this much to live; others have greater need”?

When does social narrative admit our existence and future is predicated on consumptive madness and blind unsustainable growth?

Almost delicious, watching the world’s economic powerhouse unravel in viral greed and utter stupidity.

Except it’s my house, too.

Doom-saying newsprint headlines dematerialised while pessimistic leads went oddly volatile from news caches.

Events faded from human memory horizons – indeed, too, from Gaia’s.

All creatures paused an atomic heartbeat in vague unease, then, as if startled from a dream, resumed in tedium their virtual toil.

The surreal dreamscape of an unreal world persists – to allow this transient report – till dreams ascend, end, presents desist, and awareness leaches to void.

At 9.28am GMT, September 10, 2008, in a former reality – as two streams of protesting protons tore, deflected 27Km circular by the most powerful of supercooled magnets – an oscilloscopic double-trace brought unalloyed exultation to the virtual faces of dozens of science doyens pressed into an evanescent control centre.

Euphoria, as do wave-fronts, spread, echoing elation to the ghost-like countenances of thousands of former beings on a non-existent globe, centre of a distorting blane merely 8 minutes from an unconcerned star named Sol.

Forgotten in this throng of self-congratulation a prophetic exchange 25 years earlier between scientists from NYC’s Columbia University:

Dr. Egon Spengler: There’s something very important I forgot to tell you.
Dr. Peter Venkman: What?
Dr. Egon Spengler: Don’t cross the streams.
Dr. Peter Venkman: Why?
Dr. Egon Spengler: It would be bad.
Dr. Peter Venkman: I’m fuzzy on the whole good/bad thing. What do you mean, "bad"?
Dr. Egon Spengler: Try to imagine all life as you know it stopping instantaneously and every molecule in your body exploding at the speed of light.
Dr Ray Stantz: Total protonic reversal.
Dr. Peter Venkman: Right. That’s bad. Okay. All right. Important safety tip. Thanks, Egon.

The blackhole tree tightly refutes risk from any renegade, matter-munching, mini black holes (pacman holes).

Should one not instantly evaporate, the algorithm asserts, or shoot from Earth’s proximity like its wild high-energy cousins, a duration much greater than the Universe’s age must transpire before it might expropriate the earthly mass from beneath our unwitting feet.

In unison, scientific intelligentsia piffled suggestions that CERN’s Large Hadron Collider risked human existence, as did predecessors that the first atomic detonation might ignite planetary atmosphere, or strangelets might transmute this earthly realm into another.

This eminent consensus ultimately rested on indisputable proofs supplied by a working universe, that such events go on endlessly without cataclysm on and within Earth, the moon, the sun, red giants, white dwarfs – and of course, in, on and around relatively static and indisputably real and rather larger black holes.

Other, however, than on Earth would unlikely be found teams of human engineers, directed by postulating boffins, misdirecting the forces of nature … as they had ever since opposing thumbs dammed rivers, burned forests, combusted fossil fuels, or harnessed horses, if not nuclei.

Nowhere else in the universe had bridges, dams and burning World Trade Centres collapsed, or cryogenic inner-triplet focusing-quadrapole magnet supports broken during pressure testing in oversight of "very simple balance of forces" despite four engineering reviews.

Not to mention, so I do, had (from engineering oversight) planes, trains, cranes or cars collided or crashed on a scale elsewhere unseen, except  upon this brownish little bluish planet.

Nature’s impersonal perverseness might smite civilizations or cruelly terminate lineages of creatures, yet only humans could both ensure and accelerate such chaos.

Nature supplied the raw ingredients for TNT yet man brought these together to blow himself up. Nature danced more protons within the smallest sun than humankind could ever imagine – yet only this arrogant ape chose to concentrate them in pipes to leap in glee at the collisions.

A naked ape that chose to spend 6 billion Euros over 2 decades on a project to selfishly preoccupy the most valuable intellects on Earth – while nations cried in misery and the planet wilted from environmental assault.

It chose to ignore a trillion dollars thrown at a war to nowhere in Iraq.

It plundered neighbors and their lands while breeding a human plague – staggering blind stupidity from which we shall never recover.

Whether it was yesterday, September 10, 2008, or some time further into the future, that we chanced in flukish fumbling a billionth-billionth possibility and managed to demolish it – or dully, slowly cook it – I will never know.

Dreams fade in memories volatile and something went wrong, that’s all I know.

How could we not have noticed?

That our ovine friends might sink like a lanolin brick is an unhappy possibility.

Take a splash wearing 10 pounds-weight of soaked wool with just hooves for paddling and see how well you fare.

Images at right: By Turkadactyl, from his YouTube video – see below.

As do greased bird feathers, the oily fibres slowly waterlog and floatation must increasingly rely on forward motion.

Fatigue from strong currents or ocean waves would eventually doom our hapless, incongruously-placed cousin.

Though able to instinctively handle flooding and rivers, it is not their element, and animal rescuers report seeing them stuck upside-down struggling, or drowned.

The tale of our beloved “Sheep Overboard” signage starts 4 centuries ago and involves one Samuel de Champlain, of Quebec City fame, and lovingly coined “Father of New France.”

His derring-do, like all great white heroes of that era, might be condense to ignoble exploits thus:

Champlain fired his arquebus and killed 2 of them (Iroquois chieftains) with one shot. One of his men killed the third. The Iroquois turned and fled. This was to set the tone for French-Iroquois relations for the next one hundred years.

Champlain, and fellow thieves de Monts and Dugua, were perusing the coast of Nova Scotia seeking to purloin chunks of native title in the name of France, God, and Greed, when legend has it the sheep became excited at the sight of land, leaping overboard and swimming to what is now named Port Mouton, Nova Scotia.

More seasoned hands among us cynicaly reckon the sheep’s enthusiasm for the deep six resided in sore crutches from their two-legged colleagues’ relentless carnal appetite. Or not.

So, can sheep truly swim?

The argument is moot, dear ovinophiles, as Mr. and Ms. Turkadactyl, God bless their sheep-lovin’ hearts, offer video evidence to put the mess of innuendo and urban legend – passing for informed comment on the Internet regarding this contentious improbability – resoundingly down.

From the man who is a cross between a pterodactyl and a turkey, who has literally tried (with video proof) to stare down a sheep Crocodile Dundee-style, comes this fortuitous and delightful video of Peter, an intrepid but distressed Scottish Blackface sheep who – after his bellowing failed to bring opposite shores together – decided to swim back to his mum, a furious 2-minute sheep paddle across the Loch.

One has the fear, watching, that he might tire and float away. As minutes elapse Peter’s head seems to sink, and one has the fleeting horror his unlikely floatational speed-walking cannot be sustained.

The significance of this recording is that Peter evaluated the considerable (and unknown) risk, judged it do-able, then chose to leap and swim. Unlike, I assume, the creatures below which have been cajoled by humans into a herdlike habit.

Image above: Of course they can swim – every farmer know it.  From Abdul Sayed’s wonderful YouTube collection.

Turkadactyl joins the ranks of esteemed ovine sociologists with his suite of 32 videos, including the invaluable sheep chewing, Pterodactyl encounter and retaliation, sneaking up on sheep, teasing sheep, and interviewing sheep. These he recorded on Island of Mull, Scotland, at the Camas Centre.

A river of images – family, friend, or fickle fate itself – captive in the stream of electronic imagery now sustaining us.

From the well-worn email circuit we daily find the most astounding images.

When graphics gurus garrulously grapple garrisons of God we get images the equivalent of SheepOverboard’s news articles – fascinating yet faked affairs fabulously fabricated but falteringly fraudulent.

A quick laugh, flick to a friend, forget.

Many are breathtakingly beautiful, pure works of nature exquisite, patiently sculpted on fragile fascia for eons. Others, imperceptibly improbable juxtapositions of coordinated complexity stunningly staged in a split scintillating second.

Or perhaps you just wish to view our album.

Life is inevitably pain, sickness, death and decay.

Everything is touched by the shadow of dissatisfaction, imperfection, disillusion.

No one escapes.

Sound familiar? Not just my pathetic publisher on a good day, nor just any of us on our 50th birthday.

Simply the first Noble Truth of Buddhism, philosophy 101, lesson numero oono for every child when a parent dies –

You grow old. You die. Life Sucks

If you’re lucky, you don’t grow old.

SheepOverboard is obsessed with life, the universe, and everything. Especially (and increasingly with age) the moment our bodies fail, launching a dismembering of mind, spirit and matter.

Left alive in this flickering moment we ponder dying or rotting flesh, shell of a person who was, such corpora delicti of life’s offence against itself that draws our bewildered incomprehension toward that dimly perceived and feared Transition, the doorway where time stops, where life’s experience is said to replay, where light claims the pure and burning darkness the fallen, where big bang merges with Omega – where ‘we’ step beyond the paradox of eternity.

Images of Death

Images of death circulate freely now on the net.

We who don’t work with recently and violently deceased, nor have experienced the vileness of war, tend to be morbidly curious – if somewhat nauseous – at first sight of stark destroyed bodies.

Belief – suspended for carnage in horror flicks – returns with vengeance when the victim is real, playing a tortuous kaleidoscope of emotions on an area of mind normally tightly shut.

The Jumper ~ Transformed in the blink of an eye from a human being to its component parts, decelerating from 120 miles per hour to zero – instantly.

Bear’s Meal ~ A sixteen-hundred pounds-weight, 14 foot-high bear ate this unhappy camper’s leg, amongst other tidbits. The creature, later killed, had acquired four 38 caliber and twelve 7mm bullets.

Croc’s Meal ~ (alligator?) Hand of fate. Stomach contents of man-eating reptile, a coffin none of us would wish, at least the way of getting into it.

Snake’s Meal ~ Per the crocodile, above.

Foetus ~ somewhat taboo, but this haunting iconic image can only provoke wonder.

Worse than Death

Most sickening, however, our impunity to a vast community of less fortunate fellow beings who live close to death, in abject misery.

I feel guilty sitting here publishing the image below.

As if it’s going to help anyone and my duty is done.

You feel strongly too, but don’t know what to do, right?

Well, that at least is the first step. Let the feeling grow inside and an opportunity to effectively help will present itself. The saint-like are out there helping, so don’t panic. The more you learn and think, the more effective your help will be when the moment arrives, and how you might help becomes suddenly obvious.

Reflect a little more here with this essay on our Gluttony.