Take a look. Take a good, close look. Posted by the blogger Nezua (”The Unapologetic Mexican”) in a piece called “One More Moment Before We Bomb,” these images of Iranian life are stunning and will grab you by the throat.

Interesting blog… I’m rather envious of his graphics skills. [FarrFeed looks like tarpaper by comparison.] The writing shows considerable sensitivity. And dig the really cool favicon! Okay, into the sidebar listing for now.

This relates to the previous post about Mark Morford’s Friday column and came to me while I was trying to respond to my old West Texas high-school buddy’s comments. Just for fun, here is where I think the field is moving:

The perceived strength of the planet-eating fascist Xian loonies is essentially an illusion. While they control our government and can still inflict great evil on the world, their embracing of the apocalyptic archetype that resonates in all of us creates the power. It’s like a great naked beast, wallowing in the pit, trying to drag the world in with it: fight the thing directly, in you go!

Realizing this equals liberation. There has to be a third way, then, besides becoming an enemy of the state or poking out your eyes. No, I don’t know what it is, I’m just another idiot, but I know it’s not to buy the madness or the farm. Is this a great state of being, or what?

Hot damn, I think I’ll go get myself a little snack.

Ah, so nice. I think Mark Morford’s latest column sums up the war and us quite perfectly. I do in fact believe he’s made my day.

He calls it “Iraq, Deep in Your Bones.” Go have a look, if you’re inclined. You’ll need to start at the beginning to understand the “two dueling Americas,” or maybe you won’t. What follows are the last three paragraphs.

Because truly, many in the alternative set, the lightworkers and the gurus and the healers and the deep teachers, those who think outside the war room and beyond the bland academic platitudes, these people tend see Iraq, BushCo, the American right and all the sanctimonious bleakness surrounding them as merely the inky remnants of a passing disease, the last, vicious gasp of a dying ideology, the violent struggle of resistance that always erupts before any great cosmic shift.

Which is to say: The screeching of the Christian right, the shrill alarmism from cultural conservatives regarding everything from sex and drugs and music to gays and nipples and creationism, the rejection of science, the attacks on women’s rights, the abuse of the environment, all the way up to the bleakest and ugliest manisfestation of all, a brutal and unwinnable war — taken as a whole, these can, if you so choose, be seen as merely the embers of a hugely failed — and yes, nearly extinct — worldview.

Here is the hesitant optimism, the hint of the new, the tentative suggestion that all is not lost: By many measures, the worst of it is over. There really is light coming, a new awareness, a shift away from the bleakness and the rot and the wallowing in bland violence. Perhaps you can feel it. Or perhaps you need to be ready to feel it. Either way, it’s there. You have but to do the most easy/difficult thing of all: you must look behind the veil, see the two dueling Americas, and make your choice.

What a time, boy howdy.

I’ve been dreading the anniversary of 9/11 for weeks, convinced that an attack on Iran would begin today in some kind of perverse Monumental-War-Crime-as-”Revenge” scenario. Waking up in the mornings overcome with fear and loathing, intimations of unspeakable disaster. So far, nothing, thank the Lord.

But to show you how this works, yesterday on the way back from Albuquerque I saw three different black Ford vans, windowless, with U.S. government plates, each separated by about 20 miles, on Interstate 25 heading north — and it really freaked me out. Shiny black vans, heavy-duty, driven by guys in civilian clothes. Could have been anything, right? Just like the “mysteriously” cancelled flights we saw at the airport. My personal life has been filled with emotional turbulence far outstripping the obvious provocations, too.

With a huge nuclear-armed war machine sitting with the engine running in the Persian Gulf (at great danger and expense), we’re all affected, whether we recognize it or not. This isn’t paranoia, all this stuff is really there. No one on the planet can be completely calm or sane under the circumstances, and anyone claiming to be or exhibiting unbreachable certainty should be viewed with great suspicion. (I don’t suppose this describes anyone you know…)

The blogosphere seems quite unhelpful in this regard. When I dropped in briefly for a visit last week after a still-ongoing blogfast (now at six weeks and counting), everything was just the same! It simply blew my mind: “Look how CNN and the Washington Post have got it all wrong, so-and-so’s a bloody liar, email this Senator, call this Congressman, isn’t this an outrage,” etc. etc. All absolutely true as far as it goes, but at this point, only pouring energy into the feedback loop. No one saying “To hell with this, let’s go throw rocks,” or “Fuck it man, I’m off to Maui.” No, of course not, I’m not advocating either of those, though I might go for “Let’s all grow beans and learn to run real fast!” It’s just that we live in a malleable world, but in this oh-so-crucial area, nothing changes…

(Billmon knew. If I keep saying that, he’s liable to pop up and contradict me, but I think he knew.)

I think it’s some kind of cosmic test. Either we all jump up to the next level and watch ourselves react, or we go on being marionettes. I’m as bad as anybody else — mysterious government vans??? — but as a species, how many times do we have to have our noses rubbed in it? I’m just sayin’.

I’m really uptight today, much more so than usual (haha). I have no idea what it can be, but if anyone else feels it too, go ahead and chime in.

No, it isn’t the Greenland ice cap. That’s too distant, and I live in the mountains. It certainly isn’t the Chinese nail clippers that keep coming apart in my pocket. This is more like underlying elemental terror, existential angst cranked up to “11.” What on earth? Maybe it’s this. How the hell do I know?

Maybe, when all is said and done, it’s just little ol’ me…

UPDATE (morning of 9-9): Woke up today with a ghastly premonition that the administration would launch a war of “revenge” on September 11th. War Crime City, chilluns, and I certainly hope not, but what’s to stop them unless the generals revolt?

Interesting times. May they soon pass.

Arthur Silber rides the vortex every day. I don’t know how he survives.

We’ve exchanged a few emails in the past, and I know he “gets it” in a way that isn’t obvious on his blog, unless you have empathy enough to understand what’s behind the pain. I certainly do, because I feel the same way when I get pulled in. It’s really courageous, what he’s doing, allowing himself to feel in such full measure, like he’s sacrificing himself for our behalf. You may find some of his blog posts extremely negative and bitter, even dangerous for your emotional health, but a) is a thing “negative” if true? and b) this is a soulful person. Like I said, he rides the vortex.

What brings this forward now are his savage takedowns of the progressive blogosphere, what he calls the “liberal blogs,” in his most recent posts. He’s so right, I can hardly stand it, especially on their relationship to “the next world war.” I have friends, kindred spirits too, deeply and conscientiously engaged in the enterprise of blogging for political change, so it isn’t easy for me to say this: it’s like instead of enabling revolution as they imagine, the blogs have eaten it …and there isn’t any left.

(An inadvertent pun, but let it be.)

Arthur may be right about the war. I don’t want that. He’s hard up, so go send him a donation to pay the rent and buy some decent food. He may get so happy, he’ll stop telling us the truth.

It’s so difficult to write about this. The psycho-emotional pitfalls are huge and deadly.

But from all indications, the same people who brought you the Iraq war are preparing to attack and do their best to permanently cripple the sovereign country of Iran, ancient Persia, a land with over 70 million people — more human beings than live in France, just for the record. Millions more will die, and no one will stop them, either. (Arthur Silber is the best writer I know on the subject of our moral collapse, and I urge you to drop by and leave him a donation.) This is what we have become, at any rate, and there truly is nothing to be “done” about it. Politics are useless. When the rest of the world fully absorbs this lesson, it will have no choice but to shut us down, one way or the other, and we will deserve whatever happens to us. This is as predictable as the sunset, unless something unforeseen interrupts the slide, as it very well might.

Hmm. A paradox?

Although most people don’t believe it, everyday reality is instantaneously malleable and responds immediately to different levels of awareness. That’s what’s behind the buzz about the Mayan calendar: the “end of the world” could be a perceptual shift that suddenly alters mass behavior, for example. I doubt it, though. That seems to me to be just another deus ex machina fantasy to relieve us all from individual responsibility. If my own life is anything to go on, absolutely nothing counts more than consciousness itself. Grow or die, you might say. Wake up or be utterly forlorn. If anything’s to come from the first perfect alignment of the sun, the earth, and the exact center of the Milky Way galaxy in 26,000 years (!), it might be the collective effect of subtle changes in the way a critical number of us experience our lives.

Meanwhile (or regardless), we have what we have. They will claim to do this in our names, but I reject it with the full force of my being, as I similarly reject all actions taken in my name since Sept. 11, 2001. Every bit of it, from the needless slaughter to our national self-debasement — they can go to hell and certainly will. The trick here is to be aware of all this but not allow possession by fear or anger, because once you do, you’re lost (unconscious)! It’s the scariest high-wire performance ever and the only game in town. I usually fail miserably every day.

Yet this too is a test. It’s like the struggle isn’t a political or even a moral one, but an individual challenge to grow or die. Runs counter to everything we’ve ever learned, right? No movements, no petitions, no parties, no government… which is why I think it stands out from the darkness: this is something I can do.

That’s the view from Taos on this rainy Wednesday. If my wife were looking over my shoulder, she’d yell “LULU!” (Lighten Up, Loosen Up) God, I’m lucky. Anyway, you should have heard her when the bombs began to fall on Baghdad: if Bush had been in the room, his balls would have dropped clean off.

More posting later, after actual work.

Well, I’m still not reading blogs and hardly any news, going on over a month now. That either makes me a potentially enlightened sumbitch or a better Wal-Mart shopper.

I did skim a news service article a while back about candidates going to Yearly Kos and how some bloggers were all excited about being a bigger influence on politics. Can that really be true? — and how would that make any difference if it is? Not burning questions, by any means. But the it’s still Wars-R-Us, right? So I am curious why people are still trying to elect more Democrats. Is it something in their food? I’m perfectly serious. It’s like, if you stand there with your mouth open long enough, a Holy Fly will come inside!

Me, all I hear is pants falling to the floor. The other day I was rambling on to my wife about how we could keep perishables cold if there were no electricity any more. Much more to the point, I’d think, but she was not amused.