Thursday, September 05, 2013

Welcome to the Water Wars



All typed up in Courier-wet ink
poisoned at dawn, the two messengers
were hung with typewriters for counterweights
to keep stiff in the wind and rain on a sandstone hill

Last water! ... Last water! Beyond your first thirsts:
You cannot be a centrist in the undeclared aquifer war

Come, see Jerusalem, the Gasoline War is over
and they'll be begging for the drinks, me thinks,
from Damascus to all near-beer holes and the shores ...

For water is life for the timid and the meek,
for even satiated Kings and Queens
with red and blue bottles of perfumed wines,
for that sacred drop off the first morning vine

O sure, O, sure ... the autocrat will pour fresh
to soothe and wash their hands of this thing and that,
for the blood of their guilt of our lost daughters and sons,
but only from the sea will we ever so eternally run


I'm in a quiet little place, but then the dogs began to bark and I couldn't stand the silence anymore. I'd thought I'd gotten away from the noise pollution. Getting older, my sensitivity to noise increases. Then the builders came. Filled every atom of air with a turbulatin' conundrum. I came all the way out here, to a place where I can look over a valley of cottonwood trees and whitewashed cliffs on the other side, black hills and birds and insects flying around, and then the builders came. Civilization is chasing me.
As an embedded reporter here at the fort, I often notice the flag flying stiff in a ceaseless wind. Reminds me of Apache hunting days. That flag flying stiff and straight as the one planted on the moon. Stiff as the lockstep mindset of faraway leaders with the voice of god and cannon talking to them, pleading with them, making them do what they do.
Far away from that as I appear to be here, looking over the valley,this area is a porous channel for their energies. Everything I have done since my last post has been a slow crawl to find a new home. Well, here it is.
What I can report is the following: Education is dirt poor here and the dialect is rough. People are strange. That's the fun part. Call them hicks if you will but they are fairly entertaining. One of them asked the town council to set regulations for the proper care and maintenance of the flags. The flags around town are apparently not being properly cared for.
This same councilman has had little to say on other matters. The whole town is being vivisected by developers. Groves of cottonwood are being sold off by realtors for trailer parks. Everything related to town business is done because growth is necessary. Growth for its own sake. Apparently, getting bigger is always better. But on the flag matter, well now that's an issue he can get his mind around. We must care properly for our flags. And if we can't, if they get worn, well then, stiff penalties are needed.
Did you know it's also illegal to curse in a post office? Can't imagine why I would, other than this rule, but the local paper reported just that.
Back to flag maintenance. Apache hunting daze. Wind blowing in gusts to make me wonder if the earth energies are finally willing to burst. Flag maintenance. Quiet, shady real estate deals. Everything for sale. Open space needs to be filled in. Way up river, they are digging a well so deep a small community turning into a monster community just might dry up the last remaining perennial river of the Southwest because they believe bigger is better. Flag maintenance is needed. There must be a policy. Marshals in the trees. Dogs barking, sniffing out trouble. X-ray eyes, the Fourth Amendment has been run through by a Templar sword. Flag maintenance. Indeed.
Gotta keep track of this. I think I'll go down to the post office and quietly think to myself ... shit, shit, shit ... see if anybody notices.

SATURDAY, APRIL 27, 2013


Rorschach and Awe


They were perfect for each other
at the Double Drip Water Company,
keeping each other company,
certain fluid shapes matching
other fluid shapes,
shaping something
that look like a Rorschach test,
split into two-plus-two is one blob,
readable in the form of the One
being like the sister, the other One,
like a brother, but what was missing
was their components of lovers;
they being in oppositional
but equal forces,
creatives tapping fear as art,
the promise of pipers apart
when the long shadows
shorten overhead
as the sun rises,
with the purpose of war
in the offing, injured
at the office of longing

The retail recovery went up in smoke,
the sugar cookie cutter
people all left town
as they returned to the work floor
to mop it all up, living in the law
of only one font, flicking at the flint,
patting down fires within, living in sin,
the last waters left on earth
returning to become a cloud,
computing the clowns of commerce
which didn't even know where to stop
or even begin, like echoes of cannon
still shaking mad in the brain:
We, the nations of victims,
all pretty much the same

So they shook it off,
like a dead dog pulled
out of the flood, shaking on,
shaking off, trying to make it pay,
late for the train, early for the rumors
and militant displays, the banners,
jumping red, jumping out of bed,
nuking the moon to make it rain

They only ones they typically spoke to
were over-the-counter people
for more than half the day,
then things might get better,
someone might say hello or something,
the temperature rising, the winds drying
the lands streaking the profits for the week,
all revealed in stains the color of money


FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 2010


Kindle This: Decade long e-book quest is print-on-demand cautionary tale

TUESDAY, JULY 04, 2006


23 Roads to Mythville
An apocalyptic journey across America and meditation on the imposition of order in space, both cyber and dirt real. By experiential author Douglas McDaniel, who explores the mysteries of American networked life. Read more



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Ipswich at War
A few days after Sept. 11, 2001, poet and essayist Douglas McDaniel moved to Ipswich, on the North Shore of Massachusetts. A collection of poems from that period of fear and anxiety, as well as the polemic essay, "Media Arts and War."
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Glasnost Lost
As an act of defiance after the botched election of 2000, experiential author launched himself into a journey into the underworld of American life, or, what he calls: The Science of Descent. Read more



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Godz, Cars & Cannon
Experiential author Douglas McDaniel launches drives into the networked thickets of American life, looking for signs of myth and romance in the age of automotive machines.
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Many Moons the Mythville: The Collected Road Poems
Poetry written during a 10-year span of criss-crossing America in a roving-eye view of the turn-of-the-century landscape of Mythville, or, as the author puts it: "It's all a bunch of Mythville." With work from four separate books by Arizona-based author and poet Douglas McDaniel, the bard-inspired voices of Milton, Blake and Yeats, as well as the saturnine streak of early beat poesy, ring through this collection of poems and essays. From the southwestern deserts to the Atlantic and Pacific Coasts, "Many Moons to Mythville" is a foot-to-the-floor blast through the mythical roads of American life.
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Human Search Engine

The journey continues as the quest for myth in an age of information overload leads to online life as an editor for Access Internet Magazine. A story about all human search engines as they chase the ghost in the machine.
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William Blake in Cyberspace

Experiential author Douglas McDaniel takes on the visionary art and poetry of William Blake, comparing an otherworldly worldview to that revolutionary, romantic era to our own wild, wired, mythic world.
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The Kachina's Son

Poems about the Four Corners area written while author Douglas McDaniel was living in Telluride, Colorado.
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The Road to Mythville
A collection of poems on the new millennium in America, drawing from decade of bouncing across the country as a journalist and Kerouac-style poet, from the Southwestern deserts to the shores of New England and back again.
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SUNDAY, DECEMBER 19, 2004


Where Angels Fear to Tread

Snapshots in the life of Meria Heller, cybercaster at Meria.net, the alternative Internet's 'Mouth That Roars'

By Douglas McDaniel
Mythville.com

You walk into her life, or it walks into you, like a complete download of some disc mailed to you from Chapel Perilous, that many-roomed mansion of paranoia and apocalyptic dread. The information comes to you in torrents -- the media, that is, and the message. Think of her as the anti-Fox Network, as a razor-sharp scythe cutting through the pablum served by mainstream towers of so-called truth in journalism.
Author Greg Palast, author of the book, "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy," says of Heller: "Meria is the best weapon of Mass instruction we have."
Yes, she is loaded for the information way, and yes, there is a lot of highly organized stuff inside the North Phoenix home of Meria Heller, "The Mouth That Roars," among a top 20 or so alternative streaming media voices in the wilderness of the Web, one of a million of such voices in a sea of four billion Web pages, but as a cybercaster for five years at Meria.net, five years in the box, in the cage of the Web, roaring, the whole act comes through with undeniable force, enough to build a sizeable international following.
"I survive by my friends and people who listen to the show," she says at 8 a.m...., the coffee brewing, smokes fuming, as the 54-year-old Heller, a healer, a metaphysician, an incurable reader and absorber of empirical data, a chief priestess of the huffing and puffing leftist liberal media wing ("liberal," as in, "liberty"), a thrower of lightning bolts of rage at the New World Order, the Saudis, the Skull and Bones Society, whatever ... 911 running in her veins, the outrage for what she views as a clear cut black ops job, as in conspiracy dreamt up by the reptilian Republican machine ... it being a machine, being, well, everything.
It is 8:30 a.m. and the coffee is ready. Three cigarettes gone; yes, one begins to smoke heavily when Heller is talking. Her peculiar Capricorn gifts for absorbing so much information, then distilling it for communication after speed-reading say, 600 e-mail per day, a book or two for upcoming guests on her online talk show, would be for most people, too much input. But Heller thrives on it. Feeds on it. Sends it on back down the hill. It's 8:35 a.m., little more than an hour before she needs to prepare for the daily cybercast.
Right after more coffee, washing the sleep away, making the bed, perhaps a sip of Noni juice for the amps, since she is, in fact, a naturally gentle, communicative, loving soul, and yes, to cut through the morning's disinfo, another cig is needed out on the porch. A magical panache of lawn furniture, 14 angels, gnomes, chimes, and one large circle of stone, the Wheel, in the middle of the yard. For the NSA satellites to see, one presumes: Heller assumes. The stone circle, subject of her new book, "Reinventing the Wheel," she will clearly indicate, is one to enter with the right frame of mind.
The doorbell rings. A long-time friend and former student from a class on the medicine wheel, Ken, has come to visit, dropping off orange habanjero peppers. The former World War II artillery spotter for the Battle of the Bulge, the stocky retiree vet comes across and complete supporter for the show.
"She puts you at ease pretty fast," he says of her teaching methods. And of the show itself: "It's not one of those crossfire things. On her show, she conducts an interview on a humane, intellectual level." The list of guests reads like a who's who of the new cognoscenti of spy book authors and new age gurus and political insiders: The Web site lists "Nafeez Mossaddeq Ahmed, Jean Shinoda Bolen, Kristina Borgesson, Francis Boyle, Vincent Bugliosi, Helen Caldicott, Cliff Carnicom, Victoria Collier, Daniel Ellsberg, Mark R. Elsis, Catherine Austin Fitts, Bruce Gagnon, Dr. Arun Gandhi, Thom Hartmann, Kyle Hence, Stanley Hilton, Leonard Horowitz, David Icke, Mark Karlin, Charles M. Kelly, Dennis Kucinich, Paul Loeb, Howard Lyman, Henry Makow, Robert McChesney, Mark Crispin Miller, John Nichols, Greg Palast, Michael Parenti, William Rivers Pitt, Ted Rall, John Robbins, Marshall Rosenberg, Robert Gaylon Ross, Matthew
Rothschild, Danny Schechter, Karl Schwarz, David Sirota, Solara, Neil Solomon, David Suzuki, Webster Tarpley, Jeff Trueman, Mordechai Vanunu, Harvey Wasserman, The Yes Men, Howard Zinn ..." The wall of her home studio includes an astonishing mix of non-denominational paganism. She's a minister for the Universal Church, a teacher of Reiki therapy, as well as a practitioner ... a former leader in the New York East coast scene before coming to airy lands out West, organizations such as the Brotherhood of Four Directions, unity Spiritual Science, as well as a proclamation from officials from the city of Long Beach for a Earth Day celebration that was put on, peacefully, (that is, there was no damage to any property or machines).
The peppers fly back into the house, as Meria, arranging her kitchen, saying, "My father taught me how to make peppers into liquid fire." Her family, of Sicilian descent, first came to this country at the beginning of the last century, more or less in New York City. "My grandparents came here through Ellis Island in the early 1900s," she says. "I am a second generation American with lots of love for my country and my planet."
What is your ultimate hope for the Wheel book, which is more or less a manual on practicing use of the wheel in much the same way the Native Americans do, in terms of a regular ritual.
"My ultimate hope for the wheel book is to see people all over the world get the book, apply the information in it, and easily have a happy peaceful life and world."
Behind it all, global environmental awareness, especially how it corresponds to the spiritual components of the human psyche, is where Heller lives. According to co-editor Jaimie Dunn, who began to work with the wheel after she investigated the teachings of the book, "So many people are searching for spiritual solutions to their personal problems, and we feel so powerless to make any positive difference in the world we live in. Meria's book lets people know in very straightforward yet eloquent terms that they do have the power to heal themselves and make a positive impact wherever they are. Spirituality doesn't have to be complicated to be effective. Quite the opposite; truly spiritual people speak in very simple terms. Working with the wheel is a very easy and powerful way to begin to transform your life and be the change you seek."
The best type of information to distribute in terms of the looming environmental catastrophe: "The truth," she says. "Ten percent of all bird species to die out this century, the affects of global warming, the greed and result of oil and coal burning; 40 percent of the animal kingdom going extinct, and the eventual extinction of the human race through bastardization of our web of life. The stuff the media and government doesn't want you to know. The polluted air (chemtrails, weather manipulation).
When she makes appearances as various New Age events, gatherings, or oddities such as raves, where she can speak before young people, she says: "I tell them that their world is being stolen from them and they must speak out as loudly as possible to take back what is lost to them. The environment, the political system, the lying corrupt corporate media."
As an eight-year veteran working within both the metaphysical and political society in Arizona, she says the majority of the "new age" society in Arizona is no different than it is in it's entirety. "A lot of snake and oil salesmen," she says. "A lot of old outdated controlling thoughts and teachings. No different than any other religion or cult's control techniques to keep people 'following' instead of 'leading.' "
Her Long Island, New York upbringing gives her a streetwise sensibility, like she's wearing leather in life. You can see it in the punky streaks in her short-cropped hair and the way she comes across as nobody's fool. With "Don't support media that lies to you" as her bumper-sticker mantra, Meria.net broadcasts in a roar making the clowns on Air America look like, well, mere puppet show entertainers. If you register to her Web site, a conspiracy buff's dream of content will come streaming into your e-mail on a daily basis, in one day more than enough for one person to digest in a week. If you are into the "theys" of the so-called secret history of mankind (Knights Templar, Freemason, Bavarian Illuminati, plain old Illuminati, Bilderbergers, Trilateral Commission, on and on), then Meria Heller is the place to confirm your deepest fears.
You can now hear her voice down the hall as she strategies with this day's guest, Hepsehboah, who writes by the name, Thunderbird Woman, who wants to talk about alien travellers and assorted prophecies and what's in her book, "The Etherean Travellers & The Magical Child." Says Heller on her extensive list of radical book links at her Web site: "Meet Hepsehboah, a true Magical Child and Oracle from the Stars. Her story and her predictions are outstanding! I read the book in ONE day and booked her for the show. Spiritual knowledge, ritual and mind blowing prophecies with an outstanding record."
It is now 10 a.m. in North Phoenix, and the prophets are calling. "Good morning Meriiiiiiaaaa," says the flamboyant Mediterranean voice on the blak end of the mic. The Webcast creen pulses a green bar to radiate voice levels, a chat box pops open: "Hi, Meria." There's a smiling emoticon.
Of all that her guest then forecasts (including major trouble at the Democratic national convention ... which failed to transpire ... and Dubya's re-election, which did ... martial law, dogs and cats living together, to be announced), her new age prophet guest rails on about one-world government, the secret government that apparently rules America, concentration camps and secret bases beyond the borders of Canada, secret air bases for the Ethereans (alien watchers), too, Meria takes it in stride, like she's well familiar with the material: like she's heard it all before.
"The Ethereans are those that come out of the second universe," the guest, who was originally declared as dead as a breach birth, and has since experienced a childhood, upbringing and career as a sought-out mystic with a strange, even dangerous past. "They are being that evolved throughout the ages, serving the universe. They are close tot he earth, living underground in cities in Africa ..." and then, immediately after, "the island of Victoria in Canada will be the home of the New World order. There are big landing strips for ocean plans. underground, it's state of the art."
The woman just talks, is allowed to go out there as she says, "Rome is still working to eradicate history." Then, another chat box message comes in: "Nowhere in the Bible does it ever say to build churches."
After the show, it's a little after 11 a.m., and she complains about the mouse noise picked up by the mic, about the strange jamming she's been getting lately, the mercurial Web foes pulsating waves of discord on their own. There's more multi-tasking, chat, more phone. Usually, she says, she's drenched in sweat after the one-hour show. "Then I go to the gym, unwind," she says. "My life is an open book. i don't live in fear. Because I'm a fucking realist. This shit has been going on before I was around, and it will be around after I'm gone."
Since a frenzied period of activity since the Presidential Election, Heller's plans for the show include moving toward a more spiritual, and therefore environmental, branch of exploration. Her new book, "Reinventing the Wheel," is at the center of the effort as she sells and distributes the self-published work from the seat-of-her-pants basis of her Web site.
"It's done," she says of the election. "I'm going back to the spiritual stuff. It's time to get back to teaching. To wait, and watch."
By about 1 p.m. on any given day, Heller is likely to be found at the gym, channeling the excess energies on a cardiovascular device. With unbounded energy, it seems, she grouses about finding time to read all the books from her guests, but does it anyway, since she wouldn't allow for anything less than being fully informed before they go on the air together. Later in the day, she will go shopping with her grandchildren, paint, spend time with her life partner, Mark Rice, and, between the good stuff, tackle the problem of responding to and dishing out e-mail by approaching it at ritual intervals of morning, noon, afternoon and night. And at different points during the day, the universe gets peaceful, the rules of love apply and she keeps watching the wheel go round and round. On any given sunny day in the Valley, Leviathan is far away.
"I'm still here to have my life," she says. "I just didn't come to this world to figure out what Satan is up today."

Friday, May 17, 2013

All is Quiet on the Wild, Windy Western Front ... and That's My Report, Sir ... Thanks for Asking!


I'm in a quiet little place, but then the dogs began to bark and I couldn't stand the silence anymore. I'd thought I'd gotten away from the noise pollution. Getting older, my sensitivity to noise increases. Then the builders came. Filled every atom of air with a turbulatin' conundrum. I came all the way out here, to a place where I can look over a valley of cottonwood trees and whitewashed cliffs on the other side, black hills and birds and insects flying around, and then the builders came. Civilization is chasing me.
As an embedded reporter here at the fort, I often notice the flag flying stiff in a ceaseless wind. Reminds me of Apache hunting days. That flag flying stiff and straight as the one planted on the moon. Stiff as the lockstep mindset of faraway leaders with the voice of god and cannon talking to them, pleading with them, making them do what they do.
Far away from that as I appear to be here, looking over the valley,this area is a porous channel for their energies. Everything I have done since my last post has been a slow crawl to find a new home. Well, here it is.
What I can report is the following: Education is dirt poor here and the dialect is rough. People are strange. That's the fun part. Call them hicks if you will but they are fairly entertaining. One of them asked the town council to set regulations for the proper care and maintenance of the flags. The flags around town are apparently not being properly cared for.
This same councilman has had little to say on other matters. The whole town is being vivisected by developers. Groves of cottonwood are being sold off by realtors for trailer parks. Everything related to town business is done because growth is necessary. Growth for its own sake. Apparently, getting bigger is always better. But on the flag matter, well now that's an issue he can get his mind around. We must care properly for our flags. And if we can't, if they get worn, well then, stiff penalties are needed.
Did you know it's also illegal to curse in a post office? Can't imagine why I would, other than this rule, but the local paper reported just that.
Back to flag maintenance. Apache hunting daze. Wind blowing in gusts to make me wonder if the earth energies are finally willing to burst. Flag maintenance. Quiet, shady real estate deals. Everything for sale. Open space needs to be filled in. Way up river, they are digging a well so deep a small community turning into a monster community just might dry up the last remaining perennial river of the Southwest because they believe bigger is better. Flag maintenance is needed. There must be a policy. Marshals in the trees. Dogs barking, sniffing out trouble. X-ray eyes, the Fourth Amendment has been run through by a Templar sword. Flag maintenance. Indeed.
Gotta keep track of this. I think I'll go down to the post office and quietly think to myself ... shit, shit, shit ... see if anybody notices.

Saturday, April 27, 2013

Rorschach and Awe


They were perfect for each other
at the Double Drip Water Company,
keeping each other company,
certain fluid shapes matching
other fluid shapes,
shaping something
that look like a Rorschach test,
split into two-plus-two is one blob,
readable in the form of the One
being like the sister, the other One,
like a brother, but what was missing
was their components of lovers;
they being in oppositional
but equal forces,
creatives tapping fear as art,
the promise of pipers apart
when the long shadows
shorten overhead
as the sun rises,
with the purpose of war
in the offing, injured
at the office of longing

The retail recovery went up in smoke,
the sugar cookie cutter
people all left town
as they returned to the work floor
to mop it all up, living in the law
of only one font, flicking at the flint,
patting down fires within, living in sin,
the last waters left on earth
returning to become a cloud,
computing the clowns of commerce
which didn't even know where to stop
or even begin, like echoes of cannon
still shaking mad in the brain:
We, the nations of victims,
all pretty much the same

So they shook it off,
like a dead dog pulled
out of the flood, shaking on,
shaking off, trying to make it pay,
late for the train, early for the rumors
and militant displays, the banners,
jumping red, jumping out of bed,
nuking the moon to make it rain

They only ones they typically spoke to
were over-the-counter people
for more than half the day,
then things might get better,
someone might say hello or something,
the temperature rising, the winds drying
the lands streaking the profits for the week,
all revealed in stains the color of money