Original

When it comes to un-shooting the “we claim it for ourselves” imperialism gun, we may be all but lost. Certainty in quantum reality is not entirely certain, however, the runaway event train of the modern 21st Century world sure looks like it is on a collision course with an intense destiny. The industrial age trigger was pulled in the late 17-early 1800’s in near lockstep with an unrestrained central bank push. During a century long tug of economic and currency war, money interests that maintained a full court press pushed a premium debt slave system through neophyte America’s branches of government. The full magnitude of this social forming banking blitz and social engineering programming resides in what today might be called an amnesiac imaginarium. It does not seem at all unfair to suggest that by and large the general population has no effective idea at all about what is going on in the world in which we ourselves are endeavoring to live. Mainstream operating systems on this earth today are so seriously damning that it’s almost impossible to quantify. We are really up against it. Spy-crafting had become a refined art form even before computer driven virtual reality appeared. As such, history is a distorted secret. Each day is its own twisted head scratch. The future is like some meta guess about where it all went sideways on the path to perfection. For all we know, there is like some kind of technological black hole over unity generator pulling the entire field of perceptible reality into a singularity of its own hallucination. The kleptomaniac drivers of what would be a corporate controlled everything have dumped all the factoids of truth into a blender. Any chance of understanding Gaia’s true nature is left to the Akashic, and good luck reading that. In the ancient future, of the here and now, it might be wise to drop the weapons of modernity from cell phone to Ritalin. There’s a dramatic butterfly effect proceeding from what has become the automatic gun fire of the industrial complex firing squad. The excitement, intrigue, and personalities are interesting, although the poisoning, harm, and interruption of liberties is damning. For discussion sake, let’s say that the experiment of the gun is metaphorically determined. Until there’s enough emotional maturity evolved into species to responsibly act, leave the gun un-assembled. There would be no reason to un-shoot something that can’t be shot.

The ramifications of the Industrial – Atomic – Information lineage have enough substance of lesson to occupy study for ions. The consciousness impact on this timeline is compelling. The idea that enough people identify as a cat to merit leaving litter boxes in public restrooms is intriguing. Persuasions leading to this feline identification may or may not have helped that person become themselves in full. However, it may be equally likely that they are far away from their own meant to be. Either way, the substance of some affairs resides in what could be a civil debate. The civility breaks down, in my view, when a conclusive expression of someone is left in the form of their frozen shadow cast from the flash of an atomic explosion. This timeline lineage has extended well into the century beyond those shadows. This proposition is heavy. An operating system that produces this kind of stuff deserves evaluation. Stop for a second, or maybe a minute, and think about it before moving on with the industrial agreement. What happens if the evolution does proceed? Look around.

On the merry go round of history repeating itself turning and turning, it looks like the “Nero Decree’ has come back around. With defeat looming, scorch everything. You don’t need to be Nostradamus, at this point, to see that there is massive severity bearing down on certain people in societal leadership positions. How close it has come to resemble Hitler’s bunker in the chambers of the attack minsters, who knows. Part of the prayer here is that an Albert Spear or two is out there that sees through the disaster of the scorched earth leave nothing behind orders, and can help mitigate this crashing collapse. Gasping flailing of failed madmen can only be masked as victory strategies so long. For whatever it’s worth, from this vantage point it looks like suicide. The nature of the involvement makes it murder-suicide; mass scale murder-suicide. Apparently everything must run its course. Pinch. Pinch. Pinch. Whatever kind of dream this is, it is hard to wake up from, and even harder to believe.

It would be good to end this entry with a tone…. Om………

The option of ignoring certain elements of the modern world condition is expiring. Mass extinction, environmental collapse, debt slavery bankruptcy, and sustainable perpetual war head the list of head in the sand crashing circumstances for which normalcy biased justification solutions will no longer support. Just because the engineers of the klepto heist of every imaginable resource have duped entire populations into an apathetic malaise, doesn’t mean that the societal vehicle we are all traveling in isn’t crashing. At the end of the day the most massive military industrial complex may not be American, although it has leveraged enough flim flam to have been able to root itself in America. Thank you to generations of fraudulent political whores for having helped launder ever more intense military munitions into existence. The goes around comes around cosmic karma can’t not boomerang. Almost all the things one would likely never want to face is, right now, is breaking down the door. Emminent reckoning is at hand.

How long can the nation that houses the industrial complex pumping out anti personnel and weapons of mass destruction like candy avoid having attacks happen at home? Other than the fantastically staged events in America for like over a century now, there is this ominous immunity from attack. From the MOVE eviction in West Philadelphia, to Waco, through Oklahoma City, to 9-11 military violence in the U.S. is self inflicted, not to mention all the open air biological “testing”, MK Ultra weaponization, food and medicine poisoning, or the media (whores that launder propaganda) pushing promotion of innumerable external threats. Meanwhile, there is Stockholm syndrome driven normalcy biased heartbeat that has a stunting arrhythmia in a land of antiquated infrastructure (other than the surveillance stuff) there are over 1,300 Superfund sites, waiting lines at cancer, dialysis, and esoteric disease treatment centers, almost incalculable geoengineering flights jetting about, and a weird entertainment fixation suggesting cultural decay. On top of that the war corporations are pumping out product as fast as possible. Right now, I am sure that almost none of us in America can comprehend having a rocket with military intent come through the window, however, there is a lot to the notion, that what goes around comes around. I honestly don’t see how there isn’t a rocket heading in the direction of an American target. If there’s an interruption to this war missile madness in store. It better break quick.

The walls are closing in this current gaggle of western fascists that have insisted on a stop at nothing plan of world resource domination. Even with advanced propaganda and mind control nearly decapitating people’s ability to critically think, there are still intrepid intuitive people looking through the maelstrom of deliberate fact perversion and distortion to hold space for those that wake up to the hostile relationship societal leaders (engineers) have with the members of the societies they heavy handedly insistently look to dominate. Systems of domination and control are clearly tempting to history’s self serving agents and agencies. They have been running in what appears to be Earth’s recorded history as long as history has been recorded. It’s hard to get an effective handle on history’s exact nature with all the levels of security perimeter fraud. The event procession we call history sure seems to be one of increasing rate. It’s picking up speed. Since 9-11 the pace has become blinding.

9-11 is a metaphor for unrestrained aggression and cosmically bold narrative control. The authors of the official story have had to cope with skeptics of their story, and are now face a runaway train of enlightened souls that no longer buy into the boxcutter fairy tale. The prevailing loss of narrative control combined with a laundry list of damning criminal activities is forcing the corporate kleptocrats and their political puppet front people into panic distraction mode. A primary distraction tool is war. Hence war zone fields are persistently and deliberately prepared with intentionally uncooperative derelict diplomacy, non-stop propaganda, and unprincipled advances. The membrane of purposely built tension is then torn by attack when some key individual, or group, in the web of criminality faces political jeopardy. So whether it is a stain on blue dress in 1998, the $2.3 trillion unaccounted for by the U.S. Department of Defense in 2001, the Israeli Prime Minister’s corruption trial in 2023, or today’s socialite financier child abduction, slave, trade, abuse/ murder syndication. Which, by the way, is an obvious black mail syndicate. It’s amazing how many people fell into that well. Regardless, the black mail machinations are in full swing. The fallout and response is very high impact, and we have arrived, yet again, at a cultural nadir characterized by high velocity inhumanity and ultra violence. War actions have an almost incalculably heavy karma load. That’s one wall. The other wall is the truth. The walls are closing in.

Once experienced, it’s hard to un-realize coherencies of truth. The procession of efforts to suppress truth, by those that have self interests which metaphysical truths undermine is running full throttle. This theme runs through the history of civilization from beginning to now. Clarity regarding the threat that truth is to the liars of antiquity is a feature of critical thought evolution. In reality, who’s kidding who? It’s kind of easy to detach from considering any of today’s war mongering criminals as legitimate. It’s also kind of easy to withhold consent from any social programming that deprives anyone of their freedom or liberty. Finding uncontaminated space in the modern world, however, is tricky. And just in case someone is confused about who is really under attack, remember that weaponized programming has permeated the fabric of both the social and natural environment. From geoengineering, to weaponized viruses, to rigged social systems, and beyond temporal reality is saturated with control elements from which the administrators appear to be experiencing the squeeze of accuracy awareness popping up everywhere for no other reason than the flagrant obviousness which their own actions drive. Those that order the missile strike really don’t appear to realize that the whole attack is boomeranging. There’s no lie that can hide it now.

With all due respect and honor for the recognition of a monetary contribution, in the form of tax, to the greater societal good, these taxes are paid with a no munitions intention. I do not consent to the application of these funds to be used militarily in any way.

Man, you wanna talk about ill advised. How many empires have to over extend themselves before one realizes that overextension is a harbinger of collapse?

The suggestion that there should be any resuscitation, cultivation, or continuation of the industrial processes that have been in practice during the industrial revolution is, in one person’s view, totally absurd. The trajectory of the results which are following in the wake of this kind of progress look devastating. A simple search of a quick random three brief subjects regarding the current state of nature came back punctually and hard. Bird population, insect population, and ocean dead zones were the three searches. In order, Nearly 3 Billion Birds Gone, A new study finds deep, long-term losses across virtually all groups of birds in the U.S. and Canada, CornellLab, The Collapse of Insects, The most diverse group of organisms on the planet are in trouble, with recent research suggesting insect populations are declining at an unprecedented rate, Reuters, Ocean Dead Zones: A Growing Crisis Beneath the Waves, oceansresearch.com. Each of these, and more, reports become more dire the deeper you dive. There is handwriting all over the wall. Look! Where is this reality really going? Where in the heck do we think this is going?

The Industrial Age has been a securities and bankers bonanza of exploitation and abuse. It doesn’t matter how many unfulfilled promises turn to ashes. Bombardment of the masses with intense propaganda over generations has crippled discernment, quarantined effective criticism, and compounded cognitive dissonance. It looks like outrage or apathy for much of today’s citizenry. Outrage is a barrier against understanding. Apathy is just this side of doom. The modern malaise of the human mind is a graphic demonstration sense corrosion. We’re collectively being herded off a cliff, don’t see it and don’t care. To say that this entire paradigm requires some severe re-evaluation is a goofy understatement. To go on like this, however, seems like little more than suicide on an installment plan. You wanna talk about asleep at the wheel!? We’re all walking around commenting on gaslit global warming, political idiocy, sports games, terrorism, and the weather for crying out loud. All the while, we are in a severe civilizational place in which we not just depend on exhausted resources, we demand them. At this rate there will be no way to make an emergency crash landing. It’s just going to be a crash.

Maybe a kind of controlled fall can happen, so that something other than dead everything may result. The hope here is that there may be some quantum relief associated with the fact that not everyone has a “grind it up till it’s gone” attitude. The people making real sacrifices of their own consumption, and not dismissing the ideas of free energy suppressed technologies may burgeon a consciousness which can serve as an exit avenue from this carbon based fuel insistence. The masters of the Industrial Age paradigm are always using the petroleum standard of living lever to hold general society over a barrel (No pun intended) They are not going to yield. So, pumping oil, and banking the loot, will not screech to halt, but the demand for the current standards might. Sooner or later, this has to become a people’s choice on balance with the natural disaster that, right now, is all but impossible to miss.

Speaking of impossible to miss. There are modern world events happening that seriously challenge the boundaries of sanity. The glaring incoherence that societal leaders are demonstrating right now is stunning. For example, in the United States there is a recent executive order to push the production and distribution of glyphosate. This order is being supported by a person, also working in the federal government, that previously sued the companies that produce glyphosate over the illnesses the product causes. That suit resulted in the companies paying out like $270 million in damages. Not only do these mutually exclusive facts exist simultaneously, the companies that produce glyphosate are publicly preparing for future compensations costing in the billions. Talk about in your face!? Anyone, really anyone, paying any attention to this announcement, and making any kind of connection of one and the other, would be hard pressed to not scratch their head. Would it rally matter how brainwashed, or braindead, you were? The now advanced evolution of the Industrial Age is falling on its face. It’s impossible to miss. These puppet people in positions of modern world political favor are apologists for the brutally failed industrial world living standard.

Thanks to the technological age overlapping the industrial, a complexity of confusion has gone exponential. Thankfully leaders are failing as fast as the system they are trying to perpetuate. The train of modern society has run out of track. It’s off the tracks, but still rumbling. A discursive of the wizardry the draconian overlords that have insisted on running the world into ruin can wait. For now, suffice it to say that there is no more question, really, where the modern industrial, technological, world is going. It has fallen like Chicken Little’s sky. It is dire. Every end is a new beginning. Moving on.

Things are changing a bit; quite a bit. The daily race pace is slowing. Stopping one morning after completing some ordinary task, like taking out the garbage, I sat. A sense of settling was happening while sitting in a chair by the cellar door in this quiet old home. It was calm and quiet. The floor, walls, windows, ceiling, and doors all appear comfortably familiar. There’s a resting. Without any notice or signal the shoulders relax. The entire body soothes a fluid sensation at rest. Novel comfort. No motion. No need. The air becomes sense-able. The air is touching me with an amiable pressure. I can feel it. It is still. There is a stillness. I get the sense that the stillness is intentional. Everything is at rest in it. I arrived in a place I did not know existed. I’ve heard about the still point. I understand it to be a fundamental feature and fixture of reality. Everything feels whole, complete. Is this an immovable something in which things are grounded? It has me. The sense of okay ness sky rockets. Nothing is out of place. Random sounds break the silence, but nothing disturbs it. Could this is be the transcendental extension of the Eternal; the stillness of the still? There’s no reason to move at this point. A type of involuntary meditation carried the moment. Without losing coherence or context of the verities of my own existence, facts of life didn’t seem right, wrong, unnecessary, in, or out of place. What I would now refer to as a relationship with awareness of is and isn’t comes on. Without disturbance my now comfortable body stands. The intentional standing and subsequent motion is involved with, and in, a stillness field of capacities that make me wonder. The return is awesome in that there doesn’t appear to be resistance inside me to getting right with what is.

Reconciliation of confusion and chaos can be challenging. Discerning what is the next thing to do and/or say can be confounding. Knowing/caring whether or not something is helpful or hurtful is often an unconscious guess. Guarding my own self interest without considering a balance with the greater good is a difficult attitude to escape. There’s an unconsciousness component about life and living that may very well have a life of its own. Some unconscious mindless reactions to existential stimuli that are based on programming, both genetic and installed, that has never been critically evaluated. How does one begin to account for that? How often it seems like a very common response to fixing, gaining, achieving anything is too hurry up. “We’ve got to get to this right away.” Hence an accelerating pace of reaction time, internet speed, gratification, response, answers, and the subsequent activity to bring get results. Heaven forbid that the results are not satisfactory. Now this situation needs to be straightened out even quicker. A manifestation of this may be the oft surprisingly long Amazon return line down at the local Staples. How long before I’m failing on a George Jetson high speed dog walking treadmill that sucks me under, and reduces me to chasing my one tail as fast as possible with no relief in sight? The metaphor for the modern age might as well be Ritalin. The only stillness in this equation may very well be a full stop at the end of a dead end.

“The faster we go, the rounder we get.” – That’s it for the Other One, Grateful Dead. How spun out would I like to get? It has never been a primary objective of trying to keep up with the rat race, and with that said it still gets mad hectic. With a novel calling for calm, I think I’ve heard the no call calling from stillness. With a motionless move towards a rumored eternal ground, everything freezes. Gong… Slow down. You’ll get there faster.

There? Where? I wonder…

The Atomic Cafe is a gripping film and a gruesome comedy. The documentary is a compilation of artifacts that have been used to allay national fears of apocalyptic doomsday devices. The Atomic Cafe may not provide the same satirical grin that Dr. Strangelove does, however, it does initiate ponderous wonder of how determined some are too anesthetize the masses into consenting to their own demise. The legend, and evolution, of pro nuke propaganda has effectively, and successfully, brought about an almost universal tacit consent, not to mention, malaise of “who cares” that objectively dismisses the radical toxicity of the entire nuclear option. Perhaps the preeminent metaphor for terrestrial termination, the nuclear bomb.

Joseph Campbell pointed out the destructive, technological, and impersonal power represented by the nuclear weapon has an antidote. The Grateful Dead, and the community of fans are “the answer to the atom bomb”. In this, the culture phenomenon of music enthusiasts that dedicate themselves to staying involved with the roots and rituals of together life / living performance art becomes its own metaphor. The Grateful Dead experience runs deep with connectivity. American and world musical heritage permeates the material. The diversity, universality, and intimacy of the songs, structures, and organically free forms tug at personal and collective DNA in ways that are perpetually novel to discover. One may likely find themselves in the music that is finding itself in us. We do this together collectively alone and together. It is no wonder that the Dead musical catalogue is among the most played, most referenced, and most relied on. The Grateful Dead’s founders came from different parts of American musical tradition. The amalgam, that is us, may get sensed and felt. In it is a connection the Bomb can’t blow apart. It is constructive, organic, and personal with resonant frequencies that transcend apparent differences. Mystically, community is spawned with memories we don’t know we have, spontaneities that defy restriction, liberties rooted in justice, and freedoms that can’t be contained.

The modern world has its fair share of high profile public figures telling us either what we need to do, or what they are doing in our name. Despicable reprobates running around talking about ‘what’s right” while making casual references to termination devices and nuclear weapons; not to mention covering up secretive savage depravity. The uneasy feeling associated with riding on a bus being driven by blind drunk madmen racing to doom keeps intensifying. Ya know what? What if you’re not the kind of person that’s willing to sign off on this modern insistence of impersonal hostility? It wouldn’t so serious, perhaps, if all the vulgar order givers were quarantined into a cell in which they feed on each other. These heads of modern world governments and corporations, however, are exercising some bizarre expanse of their own permission to mess with us. This corporate industrial insistence that technology is the path to higher living standards is a paradigm that can crack, for whatever that’s worth. Transcend the device of doom.

In a sense, the atomic age has served a real purpose. It has shown in stark relief what may, very well, be the last thing to do. Since the genie is out of the bottle, there’s no choice but to work with it. Hence, the ritual, the dance, the Dionysian creativity crack, and the Grateful Dead. Music matters in a myriad of sources and forms. This Dead vintage is thankfully widespread. The tunes are serving, fracturing time, and creating bubbles of space in which disorder blown apart and reassembled in present tense. Members of societies and communities are like cells in a body. Who’s to say there can’t be a healthy cell in a sick body? The choice of illness and wellness can be quite tricky. Yet, there’s nothing too tricky about streaming roots American music, or heading down the path of world heritage music chasing out a lead. It is out there to be found.

• Maybe you’ll find direction / Around some corner where it’s been waiting to meet you -Box of Rain

The cultural and musical phenomenon that is The Grateful Dead is deep, and deeply rooted. The reverberations of the group’s impact ripple through our whole culture’s body; resonating with many. As evidenced by the hundreds, if not thousands, of bands that are dedicated to playing the songs the band immortalized, and Dead-ifying a bunch more. The mystique, intrigue, and openness of the Dead art form lends itself to a freedom of expression that never stops opening. Hence, it often feels new in spite of overlapping familiarity. It’s the music, and it’s alive.

There’s a community that grew up around the music, and the band. The Deadhead community might be a bit of a sleeper in its reach and scale. The community goes far and wide with an organic interconnectedness manifest as a unified group that is very likely to all at once stop at certain moments; like when the first chords of Eyes of the World, Goin’ Down the Road, St. Stephen… get heard. There are always people listening for this sound. A lot of us seek it out, often returning to the people and places where we’ve found it. It’s dance music. It’s rock and roll. It’s rooted in American musical heritage, out of The Beat Generation, opened in a cultural renaissance, and has big staying power. There’s no doubt the music has real value in recorded ways, however, its premium is as a performance art form. Among others, there is a group out there right now that is raising the music terrifically well. They’ve been playing together now for a couple-three years, and they just had a coming out party.

I got tipped off to Shakedown Citi about a year ago, and first saw them at Garcia’s in The Capitol Theatre, Port Chester NY, January 29, 2025. There was a small crowd there. I’m not good with numbers. Maybe there were 50 or 75 people in the club. Either way, they got ready. Without much to do they leaned into The Golden Road. Ironically, the first tune I hear them play also happens to be the first track on the first Grateful Dead album. A little serendipity, and the wheel keeps right on turning. It clicked. I was conscious of not emotionally jumping the gun, however, these guys were not three songs into the set, and they had my attention. The tightness of the group, the choice of songs, the ability of these players, and their “fingers on a hand” cohesion as an ensemble was unmistakable. And did they jam?!?! By the set break I’m pinching myself. These guys are freakin’ great! It happens to have been right space/right time for this music head. It was a little surprising to see people leave. In the head, I’m thinking, “Where are you going?” It was hard to figure. By the time it was all said and done, it was like the band had emptied the tank. It was a great rock and roll performance. It was authentic, rigorous, spontaneous, and excellent. I don’t want to exaggerate but there were like a dozen of us left, maybe 15. It was astonishing how few people were left in Garcia’s. Total head scratcher. I’m thinking people on the sidewalk would hear it and come in, not be in here and split. Whatever…. For what it’s worth, thanks to the ultra small crowd, I had chance to kind of introduce myself to these guys. I let them know how much I thought about what they were doing. They seemed like interesting people, easy to talk to, with a lack of pretense that was quite endearing. Nice guys to meet.

2025 has been an exceptionally good year for performance art. Shakedown Citi is a big part of that. Up and down the Hudson Valley, and into Connecticut the path has wandered. From the groovy Lark Hall in Albany, down through Woodstock and Marlboro, to Beacon, back to Garcia’s with an excursion to Robin’s backyard in rural CT, and to the neat Infiniti Hall in Hartford it’s been a great year. There were no really big crowds or swelling rooms. The Falcon and Colony Theaters, however, later in the year began to have some stronger people pulse. It says something about these guys that they never mailed one in that I saw. They never frowned, and never took their collective foot off the accelerator. That’s really right on.

A couple of weeks ago in Beacon NY, at The Towne Crier, we caught up with them again. There was a pretty damn noticeable anticipatory buzz leading up to the show. You could feel it. Shakedown Citi hit the floor running again with Hell in a Bucket, and didn’t look back. Joy, interest, and moments, if not periods, of bliss happens during these performances. Twice, there was this roaring collective response to climaxes in the jam. One with the soaring Big Railroad Blues crescendo after the tune had slid neatly in out of Looks Like Rain, and again when the music blasted back into Terrapin Station out of the Terrapin Suite . The performance finished up with a buzz. Brooklyn Bowl on the horizon. It turned out to be a let’s go, let’s go week. Some of that touring with The Dead cadence was back. Saturday we made our first trip to the bowling alley/music club in Brooklyn.

Sometimes things are just right on. There was a very good feel to the scene down there. The logistical wrinkles of finding our way into the bowling ally, in the busy borough, seemed to iron themselves out. Most everything about the setting seemed like a ready welcome. The juxtaposition of numbers in attendance was fun to see. There was a real party atmosphere. High vibes of interest, curiosity, and some wonder created a real event feel. We know some people in the band and community. It was cool to see who we did. DJ Cheetatah was a smiling, sparkly, happy, groove spinner, mixing souinds along the way. Mitch and Snake warmed up with Readicculus. That group was Phishing, and didn’t hold anything back. Ready, ready, and more ready energy, excitement. Shakedown Citi full in the moment. Those guys seemed right in their element, and if they didn’t deliver?! Great rock and roll show! This is why we do it, have done it, and, God willing, will continue too. It’s alive! The music truly has never stopped. You never know who’s going to be feeling it. Right now The Grateful Dead musical catalogue is being tapped by some seriously excellent musicians that clearly love music, get off on the vibe, find creative ways to jam through the groove, and do some of the best music ever serious justice by playing the hell right out of it. Fare the very well. That was as crafty as a 7-10 split and as righteous as a strike. Strike! Strike!

Word… Rest In Peace Bobby Weir

Like an angel standing in a shaft of light / Rising up to paradise, we know you’re gonna shine! -Estimated Prophet. Bob Weir / John Barlow