Catastrophic Event....

Was in a house with my old room mate James and there was a tremendous storm outside.  It was pouring rain.  I went out to the hall way and realized that there was rain pouring in, and i remember thinking I was angry at the landlord for not taking better care of the place.... Then I heard a tremendous roar.  I went to the window and outside Cars were sliding down the road as if the earth was being turned on its side..... the house we were in broke free from the foundation and slid.  While it was happening it was a tremendous experience, and looking out the window as we slid I could see that other houses had broken away from their foundation.  When finally all was done, we got into Jame's truck and I asked him to drive me down town to see my parents. 

The city had clearly had had a bad storm.  People walked through the streets, through the ruble and the vibe was like "what are we going to do now."  I walked past them into a store fron, where there was a series of welded steel frames.  I tried to climb them as if they were a ladder, while someone narrated in ragamuffin style... The frames were leaning against a second floor balcony but as I got high enough, the weight of my body pulled them away from the surface they were leaning on and they fell on me.  The ragamuffin song went on, and I realized I was in a record store.... I thought I'd put some dub on the turn tables, but then saw that a mob of skateboarders had formed outside and was trying to get in.   I walked up some stairs, thinking that they might lead me to my parents, but ended up getting lost in a maze of corridors.  Finally I found my parents, their apartment was a corridor jammed with many people their space separated only by curtains.  I kept thinking... If only we had prepared and stored some food.  Alas by now it was too late.

Sacred Waters and Fear of Falling

I was sitting at a restraunt table with a bunch of people I barely knew.  On the table was a crystal ball with an ashtray on top.  I asked the woman sitting next to me what it was, but she wouldn't tell me.  I realized that the whole table was in a cart speeding around the curves on a two lane mountain highway with a drop to the sea on one side.  We were going to a very sacred and mysterious natural place.  A place with water, and waterfalls and rocks.  It had a mystical almost magical quality to it.  The driver was letting dogs loose from the front of our vehicle and I realized that we were being pulled by 8 dogs.  They knew the way to the water place though, and their knowledge was critical to our arriving.  Some of the people riding with us were going to make a video at some water fall, but I specifically didn't feel included in their plans.  When we arrived I jumped of our vehicle and knowing I had to pee moved away from the group.  There was an enormous bridge over head, and walked under the support beans to a concrete pillar where I climbed up on a pylon to pee in privacy.  I could see a large strip of the sacred place.  The water was very clean.  To my right was a place where huge boulders formed a natural swimming hole and kids played in the water.  In front of me there was a small lake.  As I peed I felt that i was swinging over the lake which I attributed to magnetic anomalies at this sacred place.  The swinging feeling became more pronounced and I realized that I was actually swinging high above the lake and if I didn't hold on I would fall hundreds of feet.  I pressed my right foot into a small ledge.  My neck and upper back I could press into a 2 foot ledge above me and then I could reach up and around to grab on to some flat polished screws.  I barely had a grip.  I realized that we were moving now through the city and that the structure I was clinging to was attached to a city bus.  Hundreds of feet below me was concrete and people.  No one could see me no one knew I was slipping.  I saw a bald man walking and yelled down to him.  He saw me and was excited not realizing that I was slipping.  After 2 stops I was able to communicate to him that I was in danger and he told the driver to stop the bus.  The fire department came and lifted a ladder up to me.  There was a fireman on the ladder, but for liability he told me to grab the ladder and hold on my self which I was happy to do.

Walking Through the Water

Walking through waist high water.  My brother, Jaina, Me, Aima and Asata, Truth Maze?, Imani and Lerin.  We were trying to Get to "Lake Calhoun, but we were in some kind wetland, which had brick ruins of some industrial past.  The strange thing is that no one was particularly alarmed about being wet.  We had driven the minivan there and I had been concerned because we didn't have enough car seats for everyone, so there were four babies sleeping on the back seat with out car seats...  Earlier Ben and I had been in a 50s style Hardware Store sitting at the table in the front with three girls who were affiliated with the Sacred Woman movementl  Ben was acting kind of spastic, but it was charming them.  In fact an Older woman came up and asked for his number so she could hire him for landscape design.  

So wet, and wearing my army surplus parachute pants, in this wetland area I felt very at peace.  Happy with the company, and unconcerned about the elements ..... I don't know how it happened, but suddenly realized that this was Costa Rica and a semi fascist guy and his two henchmen sons had a plan to borrow millions of dollars from the Costa Rican Government to set up a "completely modern" hotel resort.  I could see him sitting at a corporate style desk talking, but at the same time I was flying over a natural landscape of grassy prairies and muddy roads.  I realized that nothing that he was saying made any sense, it was only persuasive because of the emotional quality he conveyed with the inflections of his voice.

The Grid had Fallen :

The grid had fallen and I was living on land outside of Ashville with a bunch of other people.   We were farming, though not enough.  We had some weapons and some herbs for medicine.  The region had errupted into some violence, as people who weren't willing to collaborate had to be eliminated.  Some of my communities leaders were trying to get "high" off chlorella, which I said was too powerful a medicinal to use wastefully.  I became convinced that I needed to go back to AVL to get the rest of my herbs, because I saw sickness or plague as an inevitability and wanted to be as prepared as would be possible.  No one wanted to go with me.  I first asked the largest member of the community a guy name Bear.  Everyone said that it was too dangerous.  My dad was living there.  He was old.  He was stepping back from living an active life and I could tell that he was very sad.  I told him I loved him so much and I cried. 

Finally Someone agreed to go to AVL with me on a mission to get the herbs.  It was Mos Def of all people.  We had some kind of weapon, between the two of us.  We went first to a yoga raw foods community that had been barely surviving by eating junk food and Ironically Mcdonalds ( I don't know how they preserved it, maybe it had enough preservatives to keep it edible).  They were tired but had mantained a strong spiritual practice I have to way they seemed at peace with the imminence of their death. 

After leaving there we went to the UNCA campus.  The students were defending the campus and when we arrived a student wearing a police uniform tried to stop us with a home made gun rigged to shoot nails.  WE were able to dis arm him.  We continued into campus.  The students were organized.  Many of them were wearing campus security outfits, but they were relatively unarmed, and even though they wanted to take us out, me and Mos were able to move through freely.

I had the sense that the story wasn't over, but woke up.

In that moment I realized that a huge reason that I have been focused on health and nutrition and wellness, not just for my self, but for my family is because I am trying in vain to stop time.  On some level I have been motivated by the unconscious belief that if I could get my family to eat well and take the right herbs and supplements, we could postpone death, and thus suffering.  In my lucid waking moment I understood that this is futile.  Death will come when it comes regardless of what preparations we take.  I knew I needed to release my resistance to loosing my loved ones.

I know that I will continue to practice yoga, and herbalism and conscious nutrition but I open to practicing without attachment to the outcome.  I open up to the inevitability of death, my death and the death of everyone I love.