The Coming Desert: The Sands of Time

"Sittin' Here Thinkin'"
The original song was "Sittin' Here Drinkin'" but I'm not drinkin' I'm thinkin', longing as I think for the cold, cold wilds. Wiles. Will. Lost out in a cold wilderness is the perfect place to be for the Thinker. The thinking animal. All animals thinking in the wilderness. Stopping every now and then to dig the situation. Listening for foreign sounds. Foreign sounds easy to distinguish in the cold wilderness. Were I a drinker, I wouldn't have to think. Drinkin'd be enough. You know, like washing away your troubles in drink! Using the Devil's Holy Water to damn your abstract problems straight to the pits of the Holiest of Plain Ole Hells! I use a lot of Christian analogies and that bothers me. Out in the cold wilderness, where the beast in me wants to be, analogies don't matter; there is no abstract in the cold wilderness.

Living out on the ice. I suppose it's the same as sitting alone in the heart of the Sahara. Paul Bowles said the Sahara was so vast and silent and under the bell jar of the earth's atmosphere (the Cosmos--the planet earth's brains) that it was like being totally on your own under the fierce judgment of the planet's master, Sol, Sun, Ra, the Light of the World, what ever the hell you wanna call him--is the Sun really a male? Is all power of the male gender? Is the Power Elite I'm so lately enthralled with male in gender? YES. YES. Power is male. Submission is female. That's the male point of view, isn't it? I'm thinking now not drinking. I'm thinking like a male animal. Can I boil it down that simply? Boiling. The witches of Shakespeare stirring up magical shenanigans all about me. Youth-giving elixir or death-inviting toxic tonic? That is the question. I see my adversaries as witches. Witches of the female gender. And aren't all witches of the female gender!

Under barbarianism--the white European human ruling class in this country--females are the possession of the power males, the Alpha males in my anthropomorphized state. And I hear ya! yes, there are Alpha females! And I know Alpha females--I was raised by Alpha females! Substitute males. Females left without dominant males develop dominant male characteristics. Yet, even Alpha females, females are still the possessions of the Power males! Oh how entangled I am now in C. Wright Mills's Power Elite theory. It's so simple. We have been ruled since ancient times--since we were apes--since we were baboons--since we were chimps--since we were Neanderthals...Lucies...Hobbits--by a Power Elite, a male dominated Power Elite--the priests, the kings, the princes, the landholders, the sports stars, the military leaders, the plantation owners, the inheritors, the estatemakers--male-dominated institutions--estates--the only place they don't yet RULE is the COLD WILDERNESS, and they are working day and night to rule that....

And as G.W. Bush leaves office, he's still giving away our cold wilderness to those who drill deep holes into Mother Earth's (aha, Nature is female--isn't that ironic? Civilization, therefore, is MALE! What have I empirically uncovered here as I'm sittin' here thinkin'!) flesh--drilling deep into our old mother's soul to drain it of her life's blood and energy juices--drainin' her dry--

And the Rich versus the Poor becomes Male Dominance versus its Mother's Submission--the Rich are dominant males--the Poor are under the Mother's wing!

Man, I'd love to be out in the wilds of those northern parts of the Yukon--Yukon King! "On King; mush, you huskies."

The Power Elite in the Arabia Deserta
The caravaners pass the ruined and abandoned kellas with curses between their teeth, which they cast, I know not how justly, at the Haj officers and say "all the birkets leak and there is no water for the hajjaj; every year there is money paid out of the treasury that should be for the maintenance of the buildings; these embezzling pashas swallow the public silver; we may hardly draw now of any cistern before Maan, but after the long marches must send far to seek it, and that we may find is not good to drink." Turkish peculation is notorious in all the Haj service, which somewhat to abate certain Greek Christians, Syrians, are always bursars in Damascus of the great Mohammedan pilgrimage: - this is the law of the road, that all look through their fingers. The decay of the road is also, because much less of the public treasure is now spent for the Haj service. The impoverished Ottoman government has withdrawn the not long established camp at Maan, and greatly diminished the kella allowances; but the yearly cost of the Haj road is said to be yet 50,000 [Pounds Sterling], levied from the province of Syria, where the Christians cry out, it is tyranny that they too must pay from their slender purses, for this seeking hallows of the Moslemîn. A yearly loss to the empire is the surra or "bundles of money" to buy a peaceful passage of the abhorred Beduins: the half part of Western Arabia is fed thereby, and yet it were of more cost, for the military escort to pass "by the sword." The destitute Beduins will abate nothing of their yearly pension: that which was paid to their fathers, they believe should be always due to them out of the treasures of the "Sooltan" and if any less be proffered them they would say "The unfaithful pashas have devoured it!" the pilgrimage should not pass, and none might persuade them, although the Dowla (Sultan's Empire) were perishing. It were news to them that the Sultan of Islam is but a Turk and of strange blood: they take him to be as the personage of a prophet, king of the world by the divine will, unto whom all owe obedience. Malcontent, as has been often seen, they would assault the Haj march or set upon some corner of the camp by night, hoping to drive off a booty of camels: in warfare they beset the strait places, where the firing down of a hundred beggarly matchlocks upon the thick multitude must cost many lives; so an Egyptian army of Ibrahåm Pasha was defeated in the south country of Harb Beduins.

from Charles M. Doughty's great Arabia Deserta

thegrowlingwolf
for The Daily Growler

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