The Colorado fires and the Batman shooting happened as I was still writing about JW, and so the two essays evolved together.
JW is part 1, I guess, and this is part 2. I never thought of it a short story as I was writing, but it kinda turned out that way, so that's why I'm posting it here. It seems that anything could be a potential trigger, so as always be aware of that possibility.
I like to think of this as just another scary story.
Hole in the Wall
In the early Spring following 9/11/2001, my friend and I floated the
Green... Near Hole In The Wall, where Butch and the Wild Bunch would hide from the llaw. No TV, no cellphones, no news, and not even another boater - for over a week! We couldn't have known if the World had ended. We rode atop the ripples and through the rapids and often stepped ashore; scouting the whitewater, or hiking the pathways through the wild wood, exploring kivas, caves, cliff dwellings, petroglyphs, abandoned homesteads, orchards, rivulets, pools... And there were critters of course. So many adventures... I damn near wrote a book!
I don't exactly remember when I quit getting out in the world; turning my journey inward, harkening to the past,
before I was even born, searching for where I'm at today. Like the future, I can still imagine a multitude of scenarios, and I'm lucky
not to be stuck on just one. Not yet! Sometimes the truth itself seems mutable. One can interpret
those rivulets in many ways. But, as I grow older, more and more, the future reminds me of
before... Shambling backward along that increasingly fine line we call the present - where the future becomes the past, and vice versa - the memories emerge, and sometimes merge, like holograms... that slo-ow me... Synchronicities abound... The air sparkles with wonder. And it's always possible that it's gonna be a helluva ride.
One morning, as I was floating alone on a sturdy inflatable kayak that we brought along to play in the chutes, the river rounded a bend and calmly widened, drifting from the chilly shadow of the canyon walls to the shimmering water where the sun shone warm. Laying back in the boat, soaking up the blue sky between those sedimentary eons - it dawned on me...
I'd been in this place before! But never in person... I had imagined it in my mind... As a part of my trance - before that deep, deep sleep - for a self hypnosis class that I took in college! It had been years, but I recognized this place - because I was there quite often for awhile! And now I was seeing it live! On the Green... I don't remember if I counted myself awake...
To set the stage for the opening scene,
the hottest summer in history began in March of this year; when a controlled burn
blew out of control! I posted a picture. Three residents burned to death, many homes were lost, and the area was ruined. It was a traumatic, sad and unneccesary mistake.
But, throughout the Spring and into the summer,
fire after fire blackened our vista. Huge conflagrations! One after another! So many were of suspicious origin -
that should've been extinquished before they grew -
it began to smell like a conspiracy cooking!The air was smoky and the highways were crowded. I've never seen so many smokies, bikers, limos, groups on buses, Homeland Security and FEMA convoys, motorcades, mega- vans, military transports, trainloads of equipment, various unusual aircraft, a UFO (!), drills, incidents, accidents, debris on the road, robocops, new uniforms, military haircuts and creeps!
It was smoky in Telluride when I heard the news. All day Saturday, the fire grew. Manitou was evacuated on Sunday. Monday, the evacuation was lifted, but the mountain was still on fire. Tuesday, I was taking some pictures around my house there, when the fire whipped up and blazed in the other direction - clear over the mountains and into Colorado Springs; where I happened to be headed,
so I shot some pictures there! An elderly couple suffered a fiery death, 348 homes were lost, and the cause is
still "Under Investigation" . Arson is suspected - as were many other fires in the area: $100,000 reward! But again, the fire in Waldo Canyon should've been nipped in the bud!
The scuttlebutt is that local Firefighters responded to Waldo Canyon on Friday night! To extinquish a small fire! "But 'the Forest Service' wouldn't let them, saying 'It was their jurisdiction and they would take care of it!'"Plopping in the easy chair for their fear, we're on the edge of our seat! People are continually shocked by the drama and violence - from all over the world -
everyday! Jahiliyya!? Can you blame us? Video games are psychopathic. The polidiots think they're funny. Media stars are sexy, violent, selfish, impulsive, non-thinking, weird, edgy, love their guns, and they're always ready for a fuck or a fight, or to Blow Shit Up... Hard-core or regular!
The dog days smelled like a campfire and we couldn't escape the smoke. Living in the City of Fear, in a State of Anxiety, that uneasy feeling was growing. Trauma is relative, but I was definitely attuned to the tension in the streets.
On the morning before the hammer dropped in Aurora, I specifically warned my buddy over breakfast that the Traffic Vibe was getting pissy - like just before 9/11! People are driving like assholes, I told him, even the women! Cutting each other off and flipping the finger. My friend just nodded his head as I continued: Remember how drivers were so abrasive and rude just before September 11th? And then so noticeably nicer after it happened? The niceness lasted a couple of months. That night, I went to bed early...
I heard a click and a light shone bright in my eyes. I woke up like a shot at 12:34! I had accidentally set a timer and rolled out of bed to switch the light off, slept for an hour and got up at 5... The headline slapped me like a chick at the bar. "14 dead and 50 shot at Aurora Theatre!"
On the TV, "Corbin Bates" was repeating his story. Every channel was reporting that there was a shooter, and another shooter on the loose... Maybe more! Then, I watched as another guy described two bloody women pounding on the back door of theatre 8, and how he let them in, and promptly locked the door behind them. Someone? He thinks the shooter jiggled the door for about 5 seconds.....
Whoa! Right off the
Bat... Man! It hit me like a baseball! A sleight of hand behind the slick production?
Like Columbine! Two Oswalds in the Texas Theatre ! Who else could have gone in, and then out with the panicking patrons?
Or into a car at the end of the block? Now, the official story is that this geeky psycho genius student named Holmes, bought a ticket and strolled into the front of theatre 9, stepped out the exit door behind the screen to answer the phone, blocked the door open, slipped to his car (which was all by itself?), donned body armor and a gas mask, a semi-automatic assault rifle, a shotgun, 2 Glock .45's, and hundreds of rounds of ammunition. Then, demonstrating a serious lack of a sense of humor and unidentifiable beneathe his garb, this Joker casually hauls all this gear back in through the door - all by himself, as the movie was playing, throws tear gas up into both sides of the theatre, raises his weapon(s), fires two rounds into the ceiling, and proceeds to shoot the place up - killing (at least) a dozen, horribly wounding 58 , and ruining the movie for everyone else!
Alas, I already knew... After a few hundred revelations, a picture, indistinct, in the emulsion (always changing), suddenly becomes more clear. Certain modi operandi began to appear.
We've been on this trip before, you know -
it is a stitch in time, you know... Solomon through Jesus through JFK, 9-11 and into the future, every generation has their cross to bear. The war games, the stand down, the insider trading, the demolition and disinformation... The war in Iraq...
Same as it ever was... Viewing the world through those smog colored glasses in the wake of the fires, my wretched imagination floating from one conspiracy to the next,
I saw a theatre full of actors,
assasination for hire, and a massacre staged with the perplexity of
Dallas,
Memphis, LA ,
OKC,
Littleton , Blacksburg, Dunblane,
London, Mumbai, Tucson, and Atoya... Gladio... AlQaida... A bunch of
Fungi(s)! The triggers are everywhere! "Very sophisticated!" "Booby traps!" "In the shooter's apartment!" "Loud music was blaring. His door was ajar and rigged to blow!!" Evacuate the block! What was Holmes thinking?
Was he incoherent in the car, or semi-lucid at the end of the block? Tennessee plates? Who warned the cops? Where is the video? Why no footprints in that blood in the back? Reading further, we learned that "Corbin Dates" was good in front of the camera because he happens to be an
actor- with half a dozen names. But, his description was clear: The shooter had help at the door, and the guy he saw was "5-8 - 5-9".
According to the FBI, Holmes is 6-3. Holmes says 6'. His arrest report says 5-11.
Such a strange string of stories surrounding Holmes's father and the LIBOR scandel, his potential handlers and psychiatrists, Jessica Ghawi and some of the other victims,
an eerily similiar drill for the identical theatre scenario being conducted that very day! Targetted assasinations? Michaael Chertoff was in town.
Holmes is an enigma reminiscent of MK-Ultra, Montauk, Monarch, Oswald, Brevik, Laughner, and Cho... If the Aurora theatre massacre was an Psy-op, and I'm pretty sure that it was, what is the thread that ties it together? Who has the ability to co-ordinate these military/civilian style 'special ops' with the co-operation of the media, law enforcement, Hollywood style, technological magic, University dynamics, the psychological board, and the Bench? Quite a team! Brought in a crew from the big, rotten apple. Judges with their pants down have no choice but to cover it up? Throw the sticks and hazard a guess... Money! Location, location, location... Hmmm... The country club!? (I don't know!) The Department of Justice knows who did it?
Caught in the act! Remember what Proutty said?
Why do they do it? (Whoever they are.) They have enough money!
Gun control? NWO? A lust for blood? To foster more fear!? Targeted assasinations? Libor scandel mitigation? Agenda 21? Maybe all those... All I know is what I read on the Net... The world beckons... I'm drifting away...
Wandering through these deep dark passages on an unbelievable journey into a sordid past, I feel like Tom Sawyer... The last vestige of a dynasty that shoulda, coulda been. Lost on the Sea of Apathy - immersed in the dollar - the dreaded well of hate and fear, am I breathing life into the grim reality that the sorcerers have envisioned? Triangulating the evil vibe to make it more real? Am I polluting the river? Or is the river polluting me? The challenge (for me now) is to embrace the future... Like it was in the sixties! Darn it! I need to think! "I'm so
Dizzy, my head is spinnin'..." Cute little Jessica: She looks like a girl in my fifth grade class... Never expected that from 'Debbie". She wore those glasses in the talent show, in a purple leotard, twirling a baton and dancing to the beat of Tommy Roe's hit. Even the teacher was laughing! Whenever I heard that song, I've always remembered that moment with a smile ... It was so cute! But now that moment is tainted... A sad caveat in my stream of consciousness. I don't care to imagine how Jessica's parents must feel.
She
stepped out her door, like so many mornings before. Her friends were waiting a few doors away - so they could walk to school with each other. But the door shut behind her and Jessica was gone. Three days later, her backpack was found. DNA samples were taken from more than 500 residents. Three days after that, trash men found a body "not intact" in an "open space" in the other direction. Such is the news in Colorado.
Another dead Jessica... Children are scared of strangers, Mothers are afraid for their kids. Everyday, an attempted abduction. Don't talk to anybody! Be afraid. Very Afraid!
A week after her body was found, a 17 year old suspect was turned in by his mother. Convicted by the media... (Apparently he confessed and the little girl's limbs were found in their crawl space.) He did it alone, of course!
"Truth. As terrible as death. But harder to find. I'm lucky." (PKD)
Extending the boundaries of finite dimensions, I see a method to the madness of the Devil behind the veil: A clever device to compel us into the reality of their making! Sympathizing with every major crisis, everyday, from all around the world, it feels like doom all the time! Legalized thievery, slavery, murder and mayhem, contrived by the ownership, for the good of us all...Isn't this a science we should studying??
As I grow older, more and more, shambling backward along that fine line we call the present - where the future becomes the past, and vice versa - memories emerge, and sometimes merge, like holograms that slo-ow me... Synchronicities abound... And the air sparkles with wonder. The whole World is alive.
Is every elemental dot of our space and time awareness
fractally manipulated from a dimension just beyond? (Or by a geek on a keyboard in his parent's garage?) Have you been burnt by the sun as it
travels accross the sky? Or grown the clouds or blown them away with the power of your mind? Each of us
has a perspective, you know, of this life that we share together, you know...
Making it up as we float along, we could split the World into cosmic dust, or turn it into a garden of Eden, or a reptile, or whatever we want...
The Law of Nature belongs to...
Me!? Oh Shit!Turn off the TV! (I tell myself.) Nihilism is the reason we strive to live. (Live = eviL spelled backward, of course.) The world is as it always was! Light and dark, yin and yang, Love and fear - a myriad of colors and unlimited pixels- forever and ever... (I tell myself:) You have an eternity to think about what you did, or didn't do in this life. Are we tortured Souls challenging themselves as we approach Enlightenment? Or forever stranded in the Abyss? All I know is - what I do now, whether I make others cry or smile, will haunt or delight me forever -and I don't want to let us down. (So, I tell myself: ) Imagine happiness! Think Love! Nourish the beauty - feed ourselves and not the beast.
And look for those blue skies between the canyon walls. ...---...
A simulation?
Of course!
Have I said this before?
Nevermind! The picture will develop soon enough.
Okay... On the count of three... Veni, vidi, vamoose... I hope it was scary.