Beltane is the ancient Gaelic/Celtic festival of the spring, mythologically, the time of the rebirth of the green man, god of the woods, resurrected by his consort goddess, Brigit. Elsewhere in Europe it is known as Walpurgis night, after the female saint Walpurga, also a festival of the spring - like Beltane, often involving dancing and a bonfire. It is also known as May Day. American Marxists co-opted May Day, calling it International Worker's day, as if they invented it, driving from it any association with the earth. Then Saint Reagan named it Law Day. Law Day. In observance of the Law, I guess. If there is any greater example of the poverty of the conservative mind in modern America, I'm not sure what that is.
This Beltane is a special one for me. I'm announcing the advent of my website, WilliamHunterDuncan.com. There, you will find my first two books, The Dream That Must Be Interpreted, and Green Man, available free for download in PDF format. Not ideal, I know, but the whole project is a work in progress. Hopefully soon I will have both books available in ebook format, for all the primary available ebook readers. You might be able to download the PDF to your ebook reader, if you have one, but it will probably look messy, if it is readable at all. If you print them, print on both side of the pages; or just download them and read them on your computer at your leisure, if you are so inclined. If you should read either book, or both, there is a donate option. If you feel like I should continue writing, I would greatly appreciate any amount.
There is also a third book, Progress Interrupted, the first chapter of which will be available to read at some point soon, the second chapter and the chapters that will appear at three week intervals, available for a subscription. The book is in progress, and will follow the course of 2012, and probably part of 2013, a novel imagining what would happen if the power went out tomorrow, and every day after. No electricity, no phone, no Internet, no more fossil fuels. It's an entirely possible, if not necessarily probable scenario, the novel more an exercise in examining where we are vulnerable to the collapse th`t is inevitable, though likely to come more gradually. Anyway, as soon as the Wordpress people get back to my webmaster about the subscription option, you should be able to read that first chapter.
It was important to me, to release the books, in whatever form, this Beltane, as it is associated with the Green Man, and I am in the midst of (another) radical transformation. I'm remodeling my house in anticipation of putting it up for sale, as all of my available options for employment have recently come to an end. That, and I can't otherwise seem to find any motivation to find employment for the sake of finding employment. The culture seems more corrupt to me than ever, and myself never more at odds with it. If ego death is a real phenomenon, than I suppose that is what I am going through right now. It is not very pleasant. My ego wants to imagine itself a working writer, et al, but not wanting any of the responsibility required. It wants none of this. It wants to go quietly to sleep, in anonymity. Imagining a life, but not really living.
What I truly want is to stay in this house, and continue the process of transforming the garden and the house into the most resilient model of a house and garden in Minneapolis. I am also ready to let go of the house and garden, and go to live in the Minnesota Wildlife Refuge for the rest of the summer, setting up a writing post, finishing Progress Interrupted, and that other book I was working on, the completion of the intended trilogy of memoir, before Progress Interrupted interrupted it, and the matter of making enough money to continue to pay the bills and continue the remodeling. I seem ready to just let go too, whatever that means, as the culture I live in is clearly beyond redemption, and this earth and this life I love so much, seems sure to be destroyed almost entirely by the insatiable, indifferent, alienated and otherwise lost species of which I am part.
I mean, it's not like the awareness that some radical, fundamental, profound transformation is necessary (and underway), isn't out there. If there is a more vibrant ongoing conversation anywhere on the Internet, than at the Energy Bulletin, I'm not aware of it. By contrast, most of what I read on Huffpost and listen to on Public Radio seems tired, willfully ignorant and deeply delusional. If Paul Krugman is a Nobel Laureate, then Charles Eisenstein is a prophet and the Nobel is no longer of any import. Arianna de huff couldn't fathom posting Charles, or this astute piece about the Goddess(published at Reality Sandwich.) Locally, the MN Dept of Transportation (our unaccountable equivalent to the Army Corp of Engineers) is in the process of deciding to eliminate all community gardens in right-of-ways it controls, while our legislature is maneuvering to build a billion dollar football stadium with public dollars and an expansion of gambling, for a perennial loser of an organization, and there are maybe a dozen people in this entire three million metro area who read my blog.
Which is too bad, because I've been thinking too, that if I had a few ten million readers, I'd plant a cannabis garden and psilocybe mushrooms besides, in the basement, and put it on youtube - like Ghandi making salt, in defiance of the British empire. And if you think one is any more or less important to the species than the other, then you don't know a thing about cannabis or psilocybin. Because if there is a fundamental cultural shift that is necessary right know, it is one of consciousness. An expansion, that is, to draw us out of the stagnation of institutional madness leading us toward economic and ecological oblivion. Empires and institutions persecute that which would destroy them, and they can't distinguish that which would destroy with violence, from that which affirms and rejoices in life, in love. If there is to be salvation, it is in restoring our relationship to the earth, and Her abundance.
So I don't know what will become of this blog. There will be a blog on my website too, though I don't really have a vision for that yet. It is like an egg, hatching (as is my career as a working writer.) I suppose as long as I remain in Minneapolis, I will continue with this blog, perhaps focusing on ecological and economic resiliency, with the political social commentary reserved for WilliamHunterDuncan.com. I don't even have a name for that blog yet, if there is to be one.
Any and all feedback is welcome, if you should go to the trouble of reading my other work. They are peculiar books for sure, as am I, in service to the Goddess, raving about divine beings, and energy, and economy, and plants, and collapse. If you think my stuff is worth reading, spread the word. Blessings, as always. Merry Beltane. This truly is a marvelous, wondrous life, when one remembers to look.
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