December 10, 2006
Much to do today, setting up the canopy (Casa la blanca) from last year - in a different way, getting water, going to town in the truck - whooeee, it don't get any better than this. I love this part of my life. OK, enough about me, what about you? I promised and warned about links to the left, and I'm putting them up now. There will be more each day until I cover all the bases. They are wildly divergent as our lives are, but they all have an element of what is coming.

Evening: Today was interrupted by emotions and life and some transition reaction. I did have a conversation in which one of the people who turned me on to Abraham-Hicks felt uncomfortable with what I am trying to weld together here. The feeling or the assumption is that I was being a cynical doomsayer and not getting into the understanding, the spirit of the idea that we create the world by our expectation. That is a very simple concatenation of a complicated concept, but you might find if you listen to some off the Abraham-Hicks material, or if you watch "What the Bleep", the movie, that both hold the idea that it matters very very much what you want and your clarity in asking for it.
We both understood that if you accept the idea that what you expect and allow in is what comes, then the implication is that if I'm not allowing solutions to be seen and worked toward, and if I do not believe in them, if I focus on all the worlds problems - that you can read about in depth on any discussion of Peak Oil - just as an example, then by focusing on the problem I make the problem exist and grow.
And that gets to the crux of it for me. I do not want to think or restate the problems that confront a world that has used up its resources and come to the edge of the Petri dish. Whether the end of good times is tomorrow or 10 years from now, the inescapable conclusion is that we are entering a new time, a new era of less, and less ability to produce what we do need in the future. So that is why I asked you to read each of the links I'll put up on the left just once. Get convinced and then forget it.

Instead it is now time to recognize what we think, and want, and believe in does matter, to us. I'll only say this one time on the board in this way, because what I believe is important only to me. It is important to me what you believe about yourself, and therefore who and what you attract to yourself. Sorry that is so abstract. Let me say it this way. Here is one scenario.
1. You and your neighbors continue exactly on as before, being surprised by the eventual rising cost of energy, and then surprised by the lack of goods on Walmart's shelves, and then by the huge money they want, oh, and you are surprised as they are when the Monday night football TV goes black with widening power outages, and of course you are surprised when you loose your job and can't find food to purchase at any price. You are surprised and angry. You know there is manipulation of prices, energy, availability, and that the "haves" probably have their food and fuel. Your anger organizes other angry people, and the crystalline seed of discontent turning to violence sleeps through our society and the necessary die off of about 5 billion people begins.
2. Scenario. 2. I, you, your neighbors, recognize that you indeed are on the tail of the dog that is being wagged by forces outside of your control. Instead of getting angry you begin to learn to do more yourself. You grow a garden, ride your bicycle more if you can. You move closer to farms in the areas outside the city, and you begin to feel, really feel how fortunate you are to live somewhere where you are allowed to change your job, location and how you think. You begin to feel better. You do some woodwork, and learn to build wood stoves. Yes, fuel prices begin to rise and the local store has trouble getting some items you need, but because you all have been working on this and happy about it, you have kept your local stores open and they are being supplied by small farmers close to you. You feel the pinch. Your working at home job fails and it is really expensive to go anywhere anymore, so you don't. You do manage to make an outing once a year to other land in cooler areas and maybe back again in the winter. Your fuel costs are low.
In this scenario you have begun to change what is important it you - the two most important things. One, your ability to learn new skills, and two, how you feel about yourself and how you can take care of yourself and your loved ones.
The second scenario, only briefly outlined here is not a scenario of what I think will happen, it is just one of a myriad courses that will be set by the nature of energy and currency collapses. What I'm circling around here, is that if some of us shake off the lethargic hypnosis of media and news, we begin to think, and contribute, even accidentally to others. If I start building stoves because I like to weld them out of junked hot water heaters, well then, some people end up asking me to make one for them too. And soon I have a connection with people who are doing instead of falling to sleep under the dome of "all is well" propaganda.
Here's the thing. Just because I say the proof that the sky is falling is irrefutable to me - and I give you the resources to go your own research and you conclude the same, I'm not creating that world, because I believe in the power of each of us to create the world we wish to have. I can't see how many of these problems can overcome, but that is not my job or yours. For me, my job is to understand that what I think and say and do matters. So I will learn to make stoves and bows and farm without plowing, and ride my little bicycle instead of driving the F250 460 engine Ford that gets 13 miles per gallon (except when I tow my home), and I will continue to make all my own electricity, and I will try to learn to compost shit and stop pumping into the river, and most of all, as Ran Prieur said a week ago on his website, I will learn to WANT LESS, BUY LESS, VALUE what I have more. Or as the old New England saying goes, "Use it up, wear it out, make do, do without." And to that I would add that already in the small steps I've taken over the last 7 years (been in the 22' Safari, full time for 6 years), I am happier and more aware, and I feel much more powerful. Last year many events occurred and I found myself run through with delight and power many times. I had never felt like that before. So I now know that there is something more than what is on TV, and there is something more that what has happened to me before. AND in this time of change that comes, I believe I will find that happiness and power many many times, as long as I shut off the media noise that seeks to put me to sleep, and walk my own path.
Whatever you might think of me or what you read here, I wish you only that you find the love in you that is there when each of us is born, and share it first with yourself, and then with another. Come this way. END SUNDAY

December 9, 2006
Who am I and why should your read this. Your choice. My qualifications are very extensive, but boil down to the absolute knowledge, the unshakeable truth that my mother thought I was special. She thought that before I thought much about anything, and so, despite attempts by many to the contrary, at the core of everything, even in my blackest depressed or wounded moments, I know I'm cool because mom said so. I hope your mom said the same thing about you.

It is Saturday. Weird didn't feel like Saturday. Without the normal day markers I have already lost the importance of marking days. Lots of "doing" today and just a little thinking. I've been meeting old friends, Mark, Phil, Tom, and Scott, Russ, and more. All of them pull me back as if I never left. When I'm in Eugene, this is a dream, the sun, dust, and ability to work during my most productive hours. When I'm here, I've never left, and my relationships are starting from a mid point rather than meeting people new. It makes it less the lonely vigil it was last year. If you remember last year I lost my cat, Barsik, within a day of being here, December 21st. I looked for him for a month, injuring my back and arm and going through a metamorphosis that was shocking for me. Those changes continue, but I'll not inflict them much upon you. I will show you my day, and then talk a bit about what is coming and here now for this Aftershock website.

First it was a project morning!!! Landing, and building the campsite, making the technology work to support my life, and then making the technology of my life support my emotions and most of all, all this technology is worthless if I can't dance in the wash in the dark and feel how much I like me. Do you like you? Check. I'll wait.
Yes? No? Well I didn't either for a very long time (56 years). Some day we'll talk more about that, but we were taking about you. Liking yourself is the key to surviving the coming stresses we will face together or apart. If I continually am angry at myself for letting my life define me from the outside, then maybe I will submarine myself. fail to avoid the stress of trying? Sound familiar? If not good, you're starting from a good self loving place. For me it is finding a moment alone (or months) and letting my hunger for this life be real. I don't want just to exist, I want and do put my head back and let it pour in and out. Joy in breathing, eating, fucking, shitting, washing, singing, . . . loving. The alternative is remorseless decay and death. That will be soon enough. But about my tasky day - in pictures below.

This morning started with good coffee and the sun waking up my solar panels and me. I'm in my warm and soft morning clothes.	I set out to get the solar shower in progress, and got the black paint out but noticed that the solar oven was hardly black and painted that first. I cooked chicken yesterday and a very nice soup today. Yam yesterday that was good too.
Here is my first idea for the solar water tank that will hang above me and drip it's precious clean water over my grungy body.	Here it is black - but you figured that out right?
then it was on to going for water using the bicycle and Burley trailer that I bought off of Craig's list while up in Eugene.	Fortunately it took mere moments to assemble and load up the 6 gallon water container. That's about 46 pounds of water which I thought we be a good test of the trailer.
Oh, and each day as I clean it up I will show you part of the trailer - at 22' it is so large that it will take days to do it justice. Above is the queen/king sized bed I promised last year, and tomorrow you'll see the work table, battery cover (carpeted) and my food table - which double as a second bed in a pinch. That's the stuffed Barsik sitting on the bed. The bed is a large single piece of foam that follows the curve of the trailer. I removed everything from the front and built more storage underneath (thank you to TJ for all the help!)	Here I am back from my water run without loosing anything. I'll haul a full 11 gallons on the next run to test it. After this it was off to town without the camera to visit friends (Scott, Russ, Tom) and eat pizza made by Otis! Looking at my face I can see why the strippers used to ask me if I was a cop. What a puss.

Phil stopped by in the afternoon and we talked about many things, including his work which I intend to have as one of the main sections on Aftershock. Currently planned are a section on self reliance and taking care of yourself, a section on what confronts the US society in the near future, and this blog. Well at least my blog for tonight.

December 8, 2006
Welcome to the new blog. If you are looking for comfort, and delightful information maybe you should look here: http://www.pandora.com . They let you choose music you already like and feed you exactly similar - you need not think or worry that you may be discomforted. Party ON!!

I'm using last years freechicken list for emailing out when there is a new post. If wish to be removed from the list of freechicken readers (and why wouldn't you?), then click here and say Remove me on the subject line.

What, you're still here? So what arrogance a blog is, isn't it. Like what I have to say matters. I would say it matters to my mother, but she's dead and long gone. So why am I doing it? Because sometimes I'm so exhilarated with what I read on the web that I want to link to it for everyone. Sometimes I experience and emotional epiphany like a snowflake in a New England storm and I just have to tell someone. Then there are times that I look at my heart and the sadness that lies there so often and think if I show it to someone it will be lighter.

But it is much more than that. This is me, not a website. It is noise in my head, coming out. It is the power I feel sometimes, a joy, that pierces the earth and blasts to the sky (told you you would be uncomfortable - go away, run). I see the end of these times coming. I see change logically, by computation, by thinking, and more than that by feeling. We have used it up, our world, our inheritance. There are too many of us.

Here in the desert bordering Quartzsite, living in my continually restoring 1965 Airstream Safari - linked by motosat to a satellite 22,000 miles over my head, I have the audacity to say we were wrong. We went down the wrong road. We used it up, we are up against the edge of the petri dish, the hard edge. We can't consume our way out of the lack of oil, the increasing carbon dioxide, the melting ice caps, the drowning islands, the fact of peak oil. All around us is currently an aberration, a large deviation for the globe, for our earth, and it may not recover from us. But hey, we left a mark.

I'll put links to all this stuff, I'm not talking out my ass, but forget that for this day's blog. Look in your own heart, don't you feel it? The senselessness of money, our jobs, the barrenness of our families, the lack of connection to the dirt outside. We are the boy in the bubble, each of us. We know the characters on the TV shows better than our friends and the neighbors. Who is we. Shut up alan - I'm talking about myself.

I'm just back in the desert. I work six months and then have six months off to try and find out what is happening with myself and the world and what the fuck should I do??? That will unfold here over time. Today is about the trip down, even though it took me long enough to get to it.

What was the best part of the trip from Eugene, OR to Quartzsite, AZ? Several moments contend. It would be so easy to tell you only the happy talk. You know happy talk, its when you get emails at work thanking everyone but the people who did the work, the necessary excrement of management to sustain their positions. Be polite if you can't do anything else. I'm not polite. I can do things. I'm the canon that broke loose and sinks the ship, I'm the trouble you don't see coming, I'm the bone that is blown into your soul and infects you with self doubt, I am the boy who loves you. (get me out of here - where's the music link, no I know, bunnies, yea that's it, bunny pictures?) See that's the odd thing. There is no anger in me at the world or at fate. I just think we are shadows of what we are when we are at our best; what we were supposed to be, our birthright. The struggle is to construct your life, my life to best use the part of us that loves, not just the part that does things, repetitively. Oh, and I want to investigate the ways we can find our way back to who we were before we became the enemy of the world, a world of lost boys and girls.

Back to my trip down. The best moment was a single instant when I realized I had once again ended up with the old dirty digital camera that I've carried to Belize, Korsae, Russia, and all over - and yet again the battery was dead. I went to the tiny grocery store in Quartzsite (population about 1200 in the summer), where they had two batteries for it last winter, when I made the same mistake. Jeanne at the counter had ordered one when I bought the last one's last year. My battery was waiting. There is a connection across complexity here that I can't nail down. She doesn't know me. I only know her in the context, and across the weird complexity of this modern life, there was a battery for me. Almost tears me up - well ok it was not a hugely eventful trip. Eugene to Quartzsite is a snap. South on I-5, turn left at Bakersfield, cross the Colorado River, turn right, go south, you're there. But it takes several days to achieve it (especially the way I drive - I stop at every rest stop - I take naps, make lunch and snacks, etc.)

Except for this. On the end of the second day - a 600 mile day, I was tired. The night before I had slept along some road at a truck stop, badly. I was tired of driving and I couldn't really remember why I was doing this. That's when the scrabbling dry claws sounded in the pit of my gut. It was the feeling of panic, fear, low down, below my ability to process it away. All my life when I get in situations that might call me to rise to fixing the unfixable, in the expectation of it, it becomes real and I am afraid. I sometimes just cry if I'm alone, but usually it is tied to feeling that the truck might break any moment - but this trip I realized I have felt it all my life. I am afraid of dying.

Other business.

I'll be putting all the anti civilization links along the left hand side. Peak oil, Ran Prieur, Kuntsler. Visit them only once. They are the big issues, but to dwell on them as I have for months, does nothing. These issues are large beyond our individual ability to correct. So this website is constructed, constrained by an attempt to unify mind and heart. I propose that we change what is changeable in ourselves and forget the larger issues entirely.

I propose and will talk about a return to sane daily behavior personally; living simply, less consumptive, and less frenzied. I propose going inside and seeing, and acting upon what really counts for you, for me. I am, and I will try to convince you to do the same thing.

If you think of a better way to create the future past oil and civilization let me know. Welcome to Aftershock, a confluence of "We create what we pay attention to" and "Why is my oil almost gone, I just got my Hummer!".

Pictures of today - December 8, 2006,

Started the day at Ed's hooking up a utility trailer for a VIN inspection. This Katie, on the left. Ed on the right and my truck behind him. He is wearing a coat because he lives here. I am in shorts and a tee. Below is a shot of Ed's trailer showing his URL. That's so that you go there and order some jewelry or click on the Google ads there and Ed gets money. .

This is dawn this morning with my trailer and dish visible. No breakfast but made good coffee.

This afternoon it was all about exploring the desert across the wash from the BLM campground. The BLM provides these toilets for weary travelers, I guess, but this one had been shot a number of times and there was porcelain everywhere.

Here I'm up at stone house, which if you kept up last year was on the blog. After I lost Barsik and then hurt my back it would take me about 45 minutes to walk here with my stick as a crutch. I flew here on the bicycle in about 8 minutes, sliding like a mad man all the way. That is almost a smile (why doesn't this guy smile?)

This is just a good shot of the wash and my handlebar. That's it for today my free chickies! Tomorrow there will be links to the old blog and website and the begriming of new links. mcnalan 12-08-06