“On The Meridian Of Time...

“On the meridian of time there is no injustice: there is only the poetry of motion creating the illusion of truth and drama. If at any moment anywhere one comes face to face with the absolute, that great sympathy which makes men like Gautama and Jesus seem divine freezes away; the monstrous thing is not that men have created roses out of this dung heap, but that, for some reason or other, they should want roses. For some reason or other man looks for the miracle, and to accomplish it he will wade through blood. He will debauch himself with ideas, he will reduce himself to a shadow if for only one second of his life he can close his eyes to the hideousness of reality. Everything is endured – disgrace, humiliation, poverty, war, crime, ennui – in the belief that overnight something will occur, a miracle, which will render life tolerable.”

- Henry Miller

"Write Your Worries On The Sand..."

“I walked slowly out on the beach.

A few yards below high-water mark I stopped and read the words again:

WRITE YOUR WORRIES ON THE SAND.

I let the paper blow away, reached down and picked up a fragment of shell.

Kneeling there under the vault of the sky,

I wrote several words, one above the other.

Then I walked away, and I did not look back.

I had written my troubles on the sand.

The tide was coming in.”

- Arthur Gordon

The Poet: Mary Oliver, "Mysteries, Yes"

"Mysteries, Yes"

"Truly, we live with mysteries too marvelous

to be understood.

How grass can be nourishing in the

mouths of the lambs.

How rivers and stones are forever

in allegiance with gravity

while we ourselves dream of rising.

How two hands touch and the bonds

will never be broken.

How people come, from delight or the

scars of damage,

to the comfort of a poem.

Let me keep my distance, always, from those

who think they have the answers.

Let me keep company always with those who say

"Look!" and laugh in astonishment,

and bow their heads."

~ Mary Oliver

"I Am An Enemy..."

“Our laws make law impossible; our liberties destroy all freedom; our property is organized robbery; our morality an impudent hypocrisy; our wisdom is administered by inexperienced or mal-experienced dupes; our power wielded by cowards and weaklings; and our honor false in all its points. I am an enemy of the existing order for good reasons.”

- George Bernard Shaw

The Daily "Near You?"

Waxhaw, North Carolina, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"Emergency Food; Food Shortage; Empty Shelves"

Full screen recommended.

Tommy Bites Homestead - Prepping, PM 1/23/22:

"Emergency Food; Food Shortage; Empty Shelves"

Gregory Mannarino, "Markets, A Look Ahead: This Week Will Make Or Break The Market"

Gregory Mannarino, PM 1/23/22:

"Markets, A Look Ahead: 

This Week Will Make Or Break The Market"

- https://traderschoice.net/

"Once You Eliminate The Impossible..."

"Most Do Not Fully See..."

“Most do not fully see this truth that life is difficult. Instead they moan more or less incessantly, noisily or subtly, about the enormity of their problems, their burdens, and their difficulties as if life were generally easy, as if life should be easy. They voice their belief, noisily or subtly, that their difficulties represent a unique kind of affliction that should not be and that has somehow been especially visited upon them, or else upon their families, their tribe, their class, their nation, their race or even their species, and not upon others. Problems do not go away. They must be worked through or else they remain, forever a barrier to the growth and development of the spirit.”

- M. Scott Peck

"$1 Billion a Day - That’s How Much Top 10 

U.S. Billionaires Added to Their Fortunes During Pandemic"

by Jake Johnson

"The 10 wealthiest billionaires in the U.S. have added roughly $1 billion to their collective fortune every day - or around $12,600 per second - since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, which has killed millions of people across the globe and thrown countless lives into chaos.

The billionaire wealth update comes courtesy of the progressive advocacy group Americans for Tax Fairness (ATF), which released an analysis Wednesday estimating that the combined net worth of the 10 richest people in the U.S. has more than doubled since March 2020, reaching $1.35 trillion this week. “The pandemic has been very good to American billionaires, especially the top 10,” said ATF executive director Frank Clemente, who noted that billionaires’ pandemic profits will likely not be taxed because they consist largely of unrealized capital gains.

Sen. Ron Wyden’s (D-Ore.) proposal to subject the unrealized capital gains of the mega-wealthy to taxation has gone nowhere in Congress. “Their obscene rise in wealth - all of it potentially untaxed - stands in stark contrast to the lot of America’s working families, who’ve struggled through almost two years of a health crisis and economic uncertainty including most recently, rising prices,” Clemente said. “Chairman Wyden’s Billionaires Income Tax would better align the fortunes of America’s richest of the rich with the needs of average Americans.”

That breaks down to $1 billion every day. Each made about the same in a single minute as the average American household earns in an entire year.

This can't continue. pic.twitter.com/gcaxL7ZN7M

- Americans For Tax Fairness (@4TaxFairness) January 19, 2022

ATF’s analysis is the latest in a series of new studies highlighting the extent to which the coronavirus pandemic has accelerated the decades-long trend of soaring wealth inequality in the U.S. and worldwide. Earlier this week, as Common Dreams reported, Oxfam International released an analysis showing that the 10 richest men in the world have doubled their combined wealth since the pandemic began. Meanwhile, the anti-poverty group noted, “the incomes of 99% of humanity are worse off because of Covid-19.”

On Tuesday, a coalition of progressive organizations including the Fight Inequality Alliance and the Institute for Policy Studies estimated that a modest annual wealth tax on global millionaires and billionaires would raise $2.52 trillion dollars a year, enough money to lift 2.3 billion people out of poverty.

In an open letter published Wednesday morning, a group of more than 100 rich individuals voiced support for such a tax, warning that “history paints a pretty bleak picture of what the endgame of extremely unequal societies looks like.” “For all our well-being - rich and poor alike - it’s time to confront inequality and choose to tax the rich,” reads the letter, which was addressed to political and economic elites. “If you don’t, then all the private talks won’t change what’s coming - it’s taxes or pitchforks. Let’s listen to history and choose wisely.”

- https://www.theburningplatform.com/

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Madame DeFarge, where are you now that we need you?

"How It Really Is"

Greg Hunter, "Vax Die-Off for Next Three Years"

"Vax Die-Off for Next Three Years"

by Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com 

"Clif High is an Internet data mining expert who uses “Predictive Linguistics” and computer programs to sort through billions of bits of information on the Internet to predict future trends and events. Some of his most disturbing trends he has spotted in his data analysis surround the CV19 vax. High is seeing the vax narrative breaking down. It may only be a matter of weeks before the restrictions and coerced injections are over, but that does not mean it’s clear sailing. According to High, the worst by far is yet to come. High explains, “So, it’s breaking down. The real horror is yet awaiting us, and that’s when all of the people who have been harmed by these injections wake up and realize they have been harmed and will have the natural emotions that accompany that.

The CDC is now reporting a 40% increase in death totals for 2021. The reports are saying the huge increase is “unexplained.” High and many others say the CV19 injections explain it all, and it’s only going to get much harder to explain. High’s analysis says, “I think we are looking at three years here before it peaks: 2022, 2023 and 2024. There is a lot of stuff in the data that says 2024 will be the tail-off of it. So, we have a number of very rough years ahead of us. Each year in succession will have more people dying than the year before. There is also going to be more infirmities, more illness and more of a drain on the system. 

In this three years, we will take the globalists to task and hold them accountable for their crimes. We are going to have a ‘red pill’ moment that’s coming soon. It’s not going to take months. It’s not going to take weeks. It’s going to take a short period of time, and many of them are going to go ballistic. So, I expect frequent, irregular, episodic, periods of chaos. They won’t be lashing out at society at large. They will be lashing out at their abusers... You will need to stand back. People will need to understand that there will be a section of the social order that is going to go crazy in anger, grief and all of this. These will be very violent reactions to having been poisoned, and some of them will be spectacularly so in terms of the violence of it. It’s not going to be wise to hang out around these elite guys.”

High’s analysis now says at least “30 million people will die from the CV19 injections” one way or another in the next few years, and that could be a very low estimate.

Clif High talks about many subjects including the so-called “financial reset,” China, Bitcoin, gold, silver (which High predicts will be more expensive that gold one day), the 2022 Election and why 28 Democrat Congressmen are not running for re-election, the crash of the financial system as we know it in 2022, the Petro dollar, inflation, why you need cash, and the Fed that High says is dying and the Fed knows it. That and a lot more in this one hour and ten-minute in-depth interview."

- https://usawatchdog.com/

Join Greg Hunter on Rumble as he goes 

One-on-One with data mining expert Clif High:

- https://rumble.com/

"Beware of Bank Bail-Ins - A Bail Out Using Your Money"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, iAllegedly PM 1/22/22:

"Beware of Bank Bail-Ins - A Bail Out Using Your Money"

"Banks are in a precarious spot right now. Banks are complaining that they cannot get employees and they are in serious need of help. The last time our economy took a dive the banks for bailed out by the government. That will not happen this time because the banks will be bailed out by the depositors. This is called a bail in."

"Empty Shelves At Kroger Marketplace, And Prices Are Skyrocketing"

Full screen recommended.

Adventures with Danno, 1/22/22:

"Empty Shelves At Kroger Marketplace, 

And Prices Are Skyrocketing"

"In today's vlog we visit Kroger Marketplace, and witness a lot of soaring prices. With stores struggling to get in products we are also dealing with another issue of skyrocketing prices. We will also check out the shelves as stores all across the country are having trouble."

Musical Interlude: Yanni, "1001"

Full screen recommended.

Yanni, "1001"

"A Look to the Heavens"

"A gorgeous spiral galaxy some 100 million light-years distant, NGC 1309 lies on the banks of the constellation of the River (Eridanus). NGC 1309 spans about 30,000 light-years, making it about one third the size of our larger Milky Way galaxy. Bluish clusters of young stars and dust lanes are seen to trace out NGC 1309's spiral arms as they wind around an older yellowish star population at its core.

Not just another pretty face-on spiral galaxy, observations of NGC 1309's recent supernova and Cepheid variable stars contribute to the calibration of the expansion of the Universe. Still, after you get over this beautiful galaxy's grand design, check out the array of more distant background galaxies also recorded in this sharp, reprocessed, Hubble Space Telescope view.”

- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap130116.

"You Think..."

“You think you will never forget any of this, you will remember it always just the way it was. But you can’t remember it the way it was. To know it, you have to be living in the presence of it right as it is happening. It can return only by surprise. Speaking of these things tells you that there are no words for them that are equal to them or that can restore them to your mind. And so you have a life that you are living only now, now and now and now, gone before you can speak of it, and you must be thankful for living day by day, moment by moment, in this presence. But you have a life too that you remember. It stays with you. You have lived a life in the breath and pulse and living light of the present, and your memories of it, remember now, are of a different life in a different world and time. When you remember the past, you are not remembering it as it was. You are remembering it as it is. It is a vision or a dream, present with you in the present, alive with you in the only time you are alive.”

~ Wendell Berry

"Fools And Knaves..."

“In the mass of mankind, I fear, there is too great a majority of

fools and knaves; who, singly from their number, must to a certain

degree be respected, though they are by no means respectable.”

- Philip Stanhope

“There are more fools than knaves in the world,

else the knaves would not have enough to live upon.”

- Samuel Butler

"We Know..."

“We have not overcome our condition, and yet we know it better. We know that we live in contradiction, but we also know that we must refuse this contradiction and do what is needed to reduce it. Our task as humans is to find the few principles that will calm the infinite anguish of free souls. We must mend what has been torn apart, make justice imaginable again in a world so obviously unjust, give happiness a meaning once more to peoples poisoned by the misery of the century. Naturally, it is a superhuman task. But superhuman is the term for tasks we take a long time to accomplish, that’s all.

Let us know our aims then, holding fast to the mind, even if force puts on a thoughtful or a comfortable face in order to seduce us. The first thing is not to despair. Let us not listen too much to those who proclaim that the world is at an end. Civilizations do not die so easily, and even if our world were to collapse, it would not have been the first. It is indeed true that we live in tragic times. But too many people confuse tragedy with despair. “Tragedy,” D.H. Lawrence said, “ought to be a great kick at misery.” This is a healthy and immediately applicable thought. There are many things today deserving such a kick.”

- Albert Camus

The Daily "Near You?"

St. James, Michigan, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

don Miguel Ruiz, “The Power of Doubt”

“The Power of Doubt”

by don Miguel Ruiz

“Have you ever asked yourself if something you heard was actually true? Have you ever wondered if someone was lying to you, or worse yet, have you ever wondered, “Am I lying to myself?” Do you believe those voices in your head that are giving you opinions? Do you tend to believe other people’s opinions? If you answered yes to any of these questions, you will understand when being skeptical is a good thing.

Right now, you’re delivering a message to yourself and to everyone around you. You’re always delivering messages, and you’re always receiving messages from one mind to another mind. But the most important messages are the ones you deliver to yourself. What are those messages? The word is a force you cannot see, but you can see the manifestation of that force, the expression of the word, which is your own life. The way to measure the impeccability of your word is to ask yourself: Am I happy or am I suffering? If you’re suffering, it’s because you’re telling yourself a story that isn’t true, but you believe it.

When you look at yourself in a mirror, do you like what you see, or do you judge your body and use the word to tell yourself lies? If you believe that you are not attractive enough, then you believe a lie, and you are using the word against yourself, against the truth.

Is it really true that you are too heavy or too thin? Is it really true that you are not beautiful? If you’re telling yourself: “I’m fat. I’m ugly. I’m old. I’m not good enough. I’ll never make it,” then be skeptical. Don’t believe yourself, because none of these messages come from truth, from life. These messages are distorted; they’re nothing but lies. The truth is, there are no ugly people. There’s no universal book of law where any of these judgments are true. Every judgment is just an opinion - it’s just a point of view - and that point of view wasn’t there when you were born.

Everything you think about yourself, everything you believe about yourself, is because you learned it. You learned the opinions from Mom, Dad, siblings and society. They sent all those images of how a body should look; they expressed all those opinions about the way you are, the way you are not, the way you should be. They delivered a message, and you agreed with that message. And now you think so many things about what you are, but are they the truth?

What is the truth and what is the lie? Humans believe so many lies because we aren’t aware. We ignore the truth or we just don’t see the truth. When we are educated, we accumulate a lot of knowledge, and all that knowledge is just like a wall of fog that doesn’t allow us to perceive the truth, what really is. We only see what we want to see; we only hear what we want to hear. Our belief system is just like a mirror that only shows us what we believe.

In our development, as we grow throughout our lives, the structure of our beliefs becomes very complicated, and we make it even more complicated because we make the assumption that what we believe is the absolute truth. We never stop to consider that our beliefs are only a relative truth that’s always going to be distorted by all the knowledge we have stored in our memory. As children, we are innocent; we believe almost everything that we learn, but everything that we learn isn’t true. We put our faith in lies, we give them power, and soon those lies are ruling our lives.

Just imagine becoming the way you used to be as a very young child, before you understood the meaning of any word, before opinions took over your mind. The real you is loving, joyful and free. The real you is just like a flower, just like the wind, just like the ocean, just like the sun. There is nothing to justify, nothing to believe. You have no mission except to enjoy life. You are here just to be, for no reason. Then the only thing you need to be is the real you. Be happiness. Be love. Be yourself. That’s wisdom. It’s the complete acceptance of yourself just the way you are, and the complete acceptance of everybody else just the way they are. The reward is your eternal happiness.

But first you have to unlearn a lot, and you only have one tool to do this. That tool is doubt. Being skeptical is an important part of recovering what you really are because it uses the power of doubt to break all those spells you’ve been under. Whenever you hear a message from yourself, or from someone else, simply ask: Is it really true? With the power of doubt, you challenge every message you deliver and receive. You challenge every belief that rules your life. Then you challenge all the beliefs that rule society, until you break the spell of all the lies and superstitions that control your world.

Once you recover all the power you invested in lies, you can see what is real; you can feel what is real. Even though lies still exist, you no longer believe them. You don’t believe everything anymore, but you can see, and what you can see is the truth. The truth doesn’t need you to believe it. The truth simply is, and it survives – believe it or not. Lies need you to believe them. If you don’t believe lies, they don’t survive your skepticism, and they simply disappear.

Centuries ago, people believed that the earth was flat. Some said that elephants were supporting the earth, and that made them feel safe. The belief that the earth was flat was considered the truth, and almost everybody agreed, but did that make it true? It was nothing but a superstition, and I can assure you that we still live in a world of superstition. The question is: Are we aware of it?

Wherever you go, you will hear all kinds of opinions and stories from other people. You will find great storytellers wanting to tell you what you should do with your life: “You should do this, you should do that, you should do whatever.” Don’t believe them. Be skeptical, but learn to listen and then make your choices. Be responsible for every choice you make in your life. This is your life; it’s nobody else’s life, and you will find that it’s nobody else’s business what you do with your life.

For centuries, there have been prophets who predicted big catastrophes in the world. Not that long ago, there were people who predicted that in the year 2000 all the computers would fail and society as we know it would disappear. The day arrived, and what happened? Nothing happened. Thousands of years ago, just like today, there were prophets who were waiting for the end of the world. At that time, a great master said: “There will be many false prophets who claim to be speaking the word of God. Don’t believe.” You see, being skeptical is nothing new. Doubt takes you behind the words and helps you to discern the truth from lies. And this is a good thing.”

- http://www.oprah.com/spirit/The-Power-of-Doubt

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"And, Of Course..."

 

“The acceptance of ambiguity implies more than the commonplace understanding that some good things and some bad things happen to us. It means that we know that good and evil are inextricably intermixed in human affairs; that they contain, and sometimes embrace, their opposites; that success may involve failure of a different kind, and failure may be a kind of triumph.”

- Sydney J. Harris

And, of course, the universal and inevitable excuse…

“A person who is going to commit an inhuman act invariably 

excuses himself to himself by saying, “I’m only human, after all.”

- Sydney J. Harris

I've always wondered...

Everyone says “Only human…” compared to what?

"Could Be Worse..."

"I'd been in hairier situations than this one. Actually, it's sort of depressing, thinking how many times I'd been in them. But if experience had taught me anything, it was this: No matter how screwed up things are, they can get a whole lot worse."

- Jim Butcher

Dig your way out, they said...

"Divide and Conquer"

"Divide and Conquer"

by Martin Armstrong

"Make yourselves sheep and the wolves will eat you."

- Benjamin Franklin

"This strategy includes the termination of free speech which is what we are seeing. For example, a letter of self-proclaimed 270 experts wants the Swedish audio streaming service to terminate “The Joe Rogan Experience” show, claiming he is spreading disinformation. I do not listen to his show, but the very idea of a free society means that we must tolerate those opinions we disagree with. To demand silence from the opposition leads only to communism.

Nikolai Dmitriyevich Kondratieff (1892-1938) was a Russian economist. Following the 1917 Russian Revolution, Kondratieff, an economics professor, was called upon by the new government to create the first Soviet Five-Year Plan. Kondratieff was thus given the opportunity to draw the economic plan for Russia, he assumed, upon a blank slate. He explored the past to gather empirical data upon which to construct the new economy. What he observed was the cyclical nature of society through its booms and busts, and that knowledge would later cost him his life.

In 1926, Kondratieff published his conclusions after investigating history, entitling his work "Long Waves in Economic Life". Kondratieff discovered that there were progressive wave formations running spans of 50 to 60 years in length. He had reviewed historical events beginning in 1789 up to the date of his publication in 1926 and described three great waves, with highs of around 1820, 1864, and 1920 that were closely linked to wars. During this time period, the economy, even in the United States, was largely about 70% agrarian. By 1929, the United States’ economy was still about 40% agrarian, and this naturally provided an undertone to his work.

Even without war, adding the maximum time span of one of Kondratieff’s cycles of 60 years to 1920 brings us to 1980, the peak in OPEC oil and gold. Kondratieff effectively reached the conclusion that the economy was driven by cyclical activity, and thus this was implicitly against Hegel and Marx to the extent that no government would be able to reach some perfect state of synthesis. For this reason, Kondratieff’s work was seen as a criticism of Stalin’s goals. He was arrested in July 1930 and accused of being a member of the non-existent “Peasants’ Labour Party,” and was imprisoned for eight years. Stalin wanted him dead and expressed this in a letter dated August 1930. When his eight-year sentence was complete, he was put on trial again under new charges during the Great Purge and sentenced to ten years in prison.

However, upon his sentencing on September 17, 1938, he was taken outside and shot at the age of 46. Kondratieff died as a political prisoner, the government has done its best to destroy his research and to prevent its influence.

The powers in New York already tried to exterminate me. I have no doubt at some point they will think assassinating ANYONE or imprisoning them on fake charges will silence their opposition to the Great Reset. They will assume that silencing anyone who opposes them ensures their success. It will not. What they are doing is exterminating human rights. This is a standard agenda that has been played out countless times throughout history. It is what Patrick Henry explained: “Give me liberty or give me death!” Indeed, I saw the world they are creating behind the Berlin Wall. Death is preferable to living like that and being afraid to speak to anyone. There is no other way to judge the future than to look at the past."

- https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/

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Click image for larger size.

Freely download "Long Waves In Economic Life", 

by Nikolai Dmitriyevich Kondratieff, here

- https://www.cannonfinancial.com/

"Survival..."

 

The Poet: John O’Donohue, “In These Times”

“In These Times”

“In these times when anger

Is turned into anxiety,

And someone has stolen

The horizons and mountains,

Our small emperors on parade

Never expect our indifference

To disturb their nakedness.

They keep their heads down,

And their eyes gleam with reflection

From aluminum economic ground,

The media wraps everything

In a cellophane of sound,

And the ghost surface of the virtual

Overlays the breathing earth.

The industry of distraction

Makes us forget

That we live in a universe.

We have become converts

To the religion of stress

And its deity of progress;

That we may have courage

To turn aside from it all

And come to kneel down before the poor,

To discover what we must do,

How to turn anxiety

Back into anger,

How to find our way home.”

~ John O’Donohue,

from “To Bless the Space Between Us”

○

“Do not lose heart. We were made for these times.”

– Clarissa Pinkola Estes

"Not Such An Easy Business...”

“Over the years you get to see what a struggle life is for most people, how tough it is, how easy it is to be judgmental and criticize and stand outside of situations and impart your wisdom and judgment. But over the decades I've got more tolerant of people's flaws and mistakes. Everybody makes a lot of them. When you're younger you feel: "Hey, this person is evil" or "This person is a jerk" or stupid or "What's wrong with them?" Then you go through life and you think: "Well, it's not so easy." There's a lot of mystery and suffering and complication. Everybody's out there trying to do the best they can. And it's not such an easy business.”

- Woody Allen

Musical Interlude: Soothing Relaxation, "Dance of Life"

Full screen recommended.

Soothing Relaxation, "Dance of Life"

"Relaxing fantasy music, "Dance of Life" 

by Peder B. Helland, for relaxation and meditation."

"The Heart of Humanity"

"The Heart of Humanity"

by Madisyn Taylor, The DailyOM

"Sitting with our sadness takes the courage to believe that we can bear the pain and we will come out the other side. The last thing most of us want to hear or think about when we are dealing with profound feelings of sadness is that deep learning can be found in this place. In the midst of our pain, we often feel picked on by life, or overwhelmed by the enormity of some loss, or simply too exhausted to try and examine the situation. We may feel far too disappointed and angry to look for anything resembling a bright side to our suffering. Still, somewhere in our hearts, we know that we will eventually emerge from the depths into the light of greater awareness. Remembering this truth, no matter how elusive it seems, can help.

The other thing we often would rather not hear when we are dealing with intense sadness is that the only way out of it is through it. Sitting with our sadness takes the courage to believe that we can bear the pain and the faith that we will come out the other side. With courage, we can allow ourselves to cycle through the grieving process with full inner permission to experience it. This is a powerful teaching that sadness has to offer us - the ability to surrender and the acceptance of change go hand in hand.

Another teaching of sadness is compassion for others who are in pain, because it is only in feeling our own pain that we can really understand and allow for someone else’s. Sadness is something we all go through, and we all learn from it and are deepened by its presence in our lives. While our own individual experiences of sadness carry with them unique lessons, the implications of what we learn are universal. The wisdom we gain from going through the process of feeling loss, heartbreak, or deep disappointment gives us access to the heart of humanity."

- http://www.dailyom.com/

"A Language Older Than Words"

"A Language Older Than Words"

"There are times the lies get to me, times I weary of battering myself against the obstacles of denial, hatred, fear-induced stupidity, and greed, times I want to curl up and fall into the problem, let it sweep me away as it so obviously sweeps away so many others. I remember a spring day a few years ago, a spring day much like this one, only a little more sun, and warmer. I sat on this same couch and looked out this same window at the same ponderosa pine.

I was frightened, and lonely. Frightened of a future that looks dark, and darker with each passing species, and lonely because for every person actively trying to shut down the timber industry, stop abuse, or otherwise bring about a sustainable and sane way of living, there are thousands who are helping along this not-so-slow train to oblivion. I began to cry.

The tears stopped soon enough. I realized we are not so outnumbered. We are not outnumbered at all. I looked closely, and saw one blade of wild grass, and another. I saw the sun reflecting bright off the needles of pine trees, and I heard the hum of flies. I saw ants walking single file through the dust, and a spider crawling toward the corner of the ceiling. I knew in that moment, as I've known ever since, that it is no longer possible to be lonely, that every creature on earth is pulling in the direction of life - every grasshopper, every struggling salmon, every unhatched chick, every cell of every blue whale - and it is only our own fear that sets us apart. All humans, too, are struggling to be sane, struggling to live in harmony with our surroundings, but it's really hard to let go. And so we lie, destroy, rape, murder, experiment, and extirpate, all to control this wildly uncontrollable symphony, and failing that, to destroy it."

- Derrick Jensen