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| Arch of Janus, Rome |
At the threshold of a new year
I pray to the ancient god of beginnings.
The ancient god of doorways.
Janus.
Before me the vista is fresh,
A complete transformation of landscape
Totally dissimilar from the previous landscape
In which I lived.
I have departed the jungle of Puna Hawaii,
Have left behind me the lava flows of Kalapana
And the turquoise waves of Pohoiki,
Have left behind me all the hard times
Of my nine years in Hawaii,
Have left behind all the good times, too.
Have left behind heaven and hell.
Never will I forget the demonic entities
That swept out of the astral plane
And attacked me in Hilo.
Long torturous hours, weeks of onslaught
During which I could not sleep
And was forced to listen to their conniving stories,
But survived them, though they tried
To kill me.
Now I wander the Mojave Desert of Nevada
And gaze upon the surrounding mountains,
Steep and barren, blazing in winter sunlight.
The Sheep Range and the Las Vegas Range.
Their austere beauty is consoling.
The terrain before me
Is one that I have mapped out
Over the course of many years.
Long have I envisioned this course of action.
In so doing,
I have given over my life
To chance.
Long ago I gave it over
To faith.
I rest my fate in the arbitrary hands
Of the ancient Roman goddess, Fortuna,
A goddess who has become for me a tutelary
I now supplicate daily.
How could it be otherwise?
I bounce and roll like a pair of dice
Thrown by the blindfolded goddess.
I come to a halt
Inside the doorway where I stand
In spirit with the ancient god, Bicephalic Janus,
Who looks in two directions at once.
I too project myself into the past and future.
I examine both intensely
For misunderstandings and delusions.
My sense of things, however, is split.
In the present I am confused and ambivalent
About the course I have chosen.
How does Janus see things?
What I see
Fills me with a deep sense of uncertainty
And at times, trepidation.
It is a huge change to leave Hawaii
And I am taking a huge chance
To come to this dessert,
The Mojave,
And this city,
Las Vegas.
Though I will survive somehow
It is not clear during the brief time
That I have been here
That I am on the right track or in the right place.
At times I feel such a deep-seated feeling of uneasiness here.
Nevertheless, I will forge onward
As best I can for as long as I can
In the desert of Nevada.
This time of my life called for a bold new direction.
Today, New Year's Eve, 2022
I pray to the god of beginnings
And pray to the goddess of fortune,
Two uniquely Roman gods
Whom the Greeks had no counterparts for
Whose origins arise out of the mistiest realms
Of Roman history, the age of Roman Kings.
I dwell in those mists
And I dwell in their eternal munificence.
The door to tomorrow and a new year
Is cracked open.
The light of the future pours in.
The wheel spins.
I stand at the inflection point
Between one place and another,
At the inflection point
Between one age and another, it seems.
The curvature of the world is changing
In ways that I find chilling.
The entire shape of the world
Seems to be transforming in so many places
Into a broad-based tyranny.
I see the horizon darkening
For what a human being can think,
For what a human being can say.
I see the horizon darkening
For human freedom.
I see the children confused, deluded;
Their teachers madder than they are.
So many bad ideas are being taught.
So many bad ideas are being spread
By "tarantulas" who have spun their webs
In institutions of all shape and size,
Tarantulas that need to be crushed
And the hold of their tricky webs swept away.
The bastard child of Marx,
Identity politics and cultural revolution,
Bawls like a wretched brat
With its erroneous critique
Of Western civilization,
A critique fueled by the curdled resentment, deceit, and arrogance
Of psychopaths.
They claim to champion the marginalized, but
They espouse hatred for competence and merit,
The only things that can raise a person up.
In the name of their so-called justice
That masks their tyranny of revenge
They demand conformity to their lies.
Sordidly, many of the "tarantulas" state
That there is no truth.
They have little regard for reason.
They are enemies of both truth and reason.
All thought stops when the tarantulas speak.
They have usurped power
Through subversions, perversions, and inversions
Of the Truth,
And people quail before their accusations.
People succumb to their faulty assertions
In the face of the demanded conformity
Of the "tarantula" mob who have infiltrated
Many institutions and taken control of
The wheel, pulleys and levers of those institutions.
A fight is on for the soul of the country,
But not just the country but that of the western world.
All of Western civilization is under attack
By these psychopaths.
It's beautiful and noble soul
Assailed by these barbarians.
They must be rolled back.
I see the boorish, aggressive, bellicose behavior of China,
A place I once lived for three years
And came to loath.
I traveled widely there, lived in 6 cities
And saw many more.
It is not a pretty place nor an honorable and noble one.
It has much in common with the tarantulas.
It too has usurped power.
It too specializes in subversions, perversions, and inversions
Of the truth.
It lies, it cheats, it steals, it commits tyranny on mass scale,
Then it claims victimhood when it is called out.
It whines, it snivels, it has temper-tantrums
Like them, too.
By the CCP the sovereignty of the Chinese individual
Has long been under siege.
The ruling regime has an enduring history of internal genocide
And its tyranny and totalitarian oppression
Are like the fangs and maw of a titanic monster
No longer satisfied to feed upon its own people
But now wants to devour the rest of the world.
The world, they think, is to be crushed by China's hammer
And cut down by its scythe.
They must be rolled back.
And I see the oligarchs, all the oligarchs of the world.
I see that the world is in many ways a huge oligarchy
Operating successfully in the shadows
And probably always has been,
Or has at least always been menaced by them
From their wealthy, dark hiding places.
All freedom, opportunity, and justice
Is and always has been obstructed by the oligarchs
Of this world.
Their immense greed for money and power
Is inhuman.
They must be rolled back.
I see that humanity stands at the inflection point
Of a world subverted, perverted, and inverted by these 3 tyrants,
But there is a strong hope that all them
Can still be vanquished.
I have faith that this can and will happen.
The soul of humanity will be perfected
In building the pyre for these tyrants.
In needs to do so or the course
Of the remainder of this century
Will take horrific directions.
Through all this, I envision a better life and world for myself.
I see myself improving, becoming more
Meritorious, more competent, more spiritually fit.
I see humanity becoming so, too,
But only if the horizon can be reclaimed
From these liars and tyrants.
Much is at stake in this coming year.
As I enter the final years of my life
I am committed to the perfecting of my soul
In the fire of struggle and strife
In what time remains for me.
I am indomitable in the face of tyranny.
I am indomitable in the face of misfortune.
I shall survive and more.
I am immortal.
I have nothing to fear.
