The pattern repeats. I sign off for the night, and come back a few minutes later with some off-the-wall wacky shit to write about. Maybe I really should split this up into 2 blogs: One for those who care to read about the mundane day-to-day events of my life, and another to talk about real-world sorcery, the Crash of Civilization, and the latest child molestation cabal theory on Rigorous Intuition. For tonight, I'll pick number 2: The Crash. Specifically, I want to discuss when it was that I realized, at a level that goes beyond reading fringe websites and monitoring oil prices, that it is all coming down.

The topic comes to the surface now because tonight, I was playing my mp3 of Perpetuous Dreamer's "The Sound of Goodbye", a beautiful dance composition from the studio of Armin Van Buuren, feauturing a rich female vocalist who sings over the techno rhythm and electronic strings.

If I had to pin it down to one moment, I think that would be Sunday, August 11, 2002, sometime around 23:00, give or take a few minutes. It was on that night, after I had wandered the streets of downtown Denver, that I had my vision. After that night, I would spend months pouring over it, trying to understand what I might do with the timelapsed scenarios I had imagined (or foreseen).

Before I go on, let's add a little context. August 11, 2002. This was at least a year and a half before I began to read the writings of Ran Prieur or any of his cohorts. I did not know anything about "Peak Oil", nor was I versed in primitivist idealogy. I had, however, read most of David C Korten's The Post-Corporate World, so I wasn't entirely ignorant of the crop of ideas about working toward a more sustainable, enviro-centric future.

This was also a good 7 months before the Iraq war began. But it was a month after (according to the Downing Street memo) George Bush had decided he wanted to go to war, and pressured Tony Blair to join him.

Oh yes, in case anyone's memory is fuzzy, it was also 4 days before I lost my job. But it had also been preceded by 4 workdays of unproductive lunacy, followed by 4 worknights during which I barely kept myself from going over the edge completely. Plus a weekend in which I did go over that edge several times. Don't believe me? It's okay. You'd have to have been there. But even then, it probably wouldn't have made much sense.

So anyway, Sunday night. I was driving back from the club. And I knew what was going to happen. The airplanes (except military) were going to stop flying. I could see it as if it were already happening. Soon after, there wouldn't be enough gas to keep the cars going. Quick cross-country transportation would become a thing of the past for everyone except the extremely rich. People would get stuck in whichever cities they happened to be, only leaving at great expense. Some who had journied far away from home wouldn't be able to make it back to their families. They would be lost in a strange land. Moreover, most wouldn't even know it. By that time, they would be too mind-drunk to care.

I could see it happening already. The government/corporate establishment was putting everyone into a slow lull of flashing logos, fenced in enclosures (not necessarily real, but if the illusion of a wall is strong enough, it doesn't matter because nobody is going to try to go through it). People would go into buildings, thinking they would just eat dinner, and they would never come out. Some would be turned into slaves by force and tortured. Others would just go to sleep and never wake up. But most, already conditioned to docility, would willingly submit without really even be aware of what they were doing.

It was all being orchestrated by the highest levels of power; they too knew what was coming. But the one thing was never clear to me, and shifted back and forth in alternating patterns. Were they motivated by maliciousness or mercy? When an animal is injured to the point that it will suffer every moment for the rest of its life, is it really so bad to just put it to sleep?

With the loss of easy transportation, I saw the United States breaking down into small feifdoms, some run by tyrants like prisons, others more free and happy than ever before, where people live in harmony with one another and nature. Plus everything in between these extremes. But either way, the big cities would be the most dramatic, the scariest, the most interesting, and the most difficult to escape from. In some cases, the attachment would be caused by threat of physical force, but for others addiction/dependence would be enough.

The message in the music was unmistakable. Ironically, the music itself was also a form of anesthesia. It helped both to wake me up to what was going on with its thinly veiled messages, and dulled the pain of loss. Subconsciously it was preparing listeners to leave behind the world we knew. Was the station being supported by a generous billionaire, or was it a government operation? It had to be something out of the ordinary, because during at least the first nine months of operation, it never aired a single commercial, nor was there ever any annoying talking; I would have known if it had, because I kept it on all the time in my car.

The music was so far beyond anything the other stations were playing, you just had to hear to it. But if you really listened to the lyrics, and read between the lines, the message was unmistakable: This is all going away soon. Enjoy what you have while it's still here. When it all goes away, you can either go into a blissful sleep, or stay awake, feel the pain, and discover the truth.

In the months that followed, I wondered whether what I had envisioned was just the product of a delusional mind, or whether there might be something to it. Was the world going to end? Was our civilization really about to go over the precipice? At the time, it seemed outlandish, but I couldn't shake the feeling that there was at least some element of reality to what I had experienced.

As events have played out since then, both in my life, and in the world, I have found many things to confirm that my vision was indeed a fairly accurate picture of where we might be going, and there are also an increasing number of others out there who see the same trends occurring. Yet still, the cars continue to run, business goes on as usual, and most of the people I see in my daily life exhibit no inkling that it will ever be any different, at least not in their lifetimes.

So again, the question comes: What do I do with this knowledge, assuming "knowledge" is even what it is? Do I keep it to myself, for fear that sharing might get me branded a lunatic? (Yes, I do, most of the time.) Do I talk about it with friends? (Occassionally.) Do I conclude that my perceptions are in error, along with those of the few others online who have self-selected into a cross-confirming echo chamber? (Uncertain, but generally no.)

Maybe I just bide my time, wait and see what happens, and try to stay awake through it all (spiritually speaking).

On that note, it is now way past my bedtime, and the chemicals are exerting their desired effect, so I shall not hinder them. This concludes tonight's wacky tangent.