Sunday, January 15, 2006

From the Cave: Desert Life

The quality of people that one meets in the desert is not a real issue. One’s own quality of being a solitary wanderer at times necessitates saying little or nothing to the great masses of people who do congregate. A community of desert does not necessitate survival instincts; it necessitates the provisioning of well kept buckets. One essentially for the gold, the other for shit. This is the best analogy for desert work that I have ever been told or read. It is so indelicate in its simplicity. You become highly aware of your own impact upon successes or failures in your own attitudes or goals. You have enough time to delve into a few layers of transcontinental media coverages that certainly colour the rose coloured glasses most of us wear for our own, as opposed to others we may not know.

Our cultures and medias do colour our perspectives, inherent to the preservation of tradition and society in general. We are all many shades of grey, wrapped in mysteries. But do we bury our curiosities about the world in unfinished business? Can one create and revisit a view of convoys and affiliations, naval ports of trade, wear a work of art, witnesses of arrivals. Quite simply, one cannot. At Nomadic levels, essential takes on various forms. Some cultures, have often never been more than lifeboats.

Western technologies do not load well upon the backs of the world’s poor. Cultural legacies and oral histories are being lost all over the world. Due to the overwhelming deluge one could call consumerism. Corporate structure is not really to blame. Inevitable human nature is inescapable. Many cultures exist in a perpetual state of near chaos, economic, social upheaval, crumbling infrastructures, it’s a wonder the world didn’t end centuries ago already. Even as far back as H.G. Wells, there was always a powerful weapon set to doom existence itself. Relative size and power of weapon dry had no relevance in the past. More efficient destruction did.

Do significant harm to all tribal cultures of the earth. Food sources are often in balance with human populations. Never before have we had the technology to effectively feed everyone, and still it is not yet a profit making industry. This is the mindset that has never predicated in the business community at large. The workmanship present in many of the world’s disappearing cultures is often preserved like a frozen wreck at the bottom of a sea. Structural dynamic of many key greenfield investments do not stimulate local cooperatives to develop similar competitive industries. In effect, foreign dominated ownerships without proper content regulations do not benefit local economies. They determine tribalism, based on economic regional factors.

Some of the fields near by home in the Annapolis Valley feed a Sheik’s horses. Another is an acrobatic circus, where I am the trained bear or monkey a la Chun-chong. Instead of pets, I keep wild owls and deer or rabbits in house and home. Birds may come and go. I take pack to the hill sides and the tea countries, the waterfalls, the older forests, the spice gardens, the coral reefs, the low risk peaks. The lesser pyramids, the shorter the climb, the better the sunset view. Where I grew far from brand new.
What I want most is a job with few real responsibilities to merely minion about, a decent pension, and a home built in the woods. But I realized that with all I have gone through already, I prefer a less than direct path. Where many views are obtained, levels of difficulty change breaks available on some of the best vistas. There are more to be found, simply from the shore, soft pieces of wood burn the brightest, but give off little heat.

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