Reality Based Community

Life in the Empire

"Things like “doubt” and “certainty” are almost meaningless in Slipspace."



Slipspace is all the space around you that is not being used. There are fine points here about molecules, but Slipspace is a place where certain ideas get you more easily. Yes, ideas get you… not the other-way
around. Stand on the center-line of a
great 20th century interstate highway… or a runway… on a cool
deserted moon-lit night. Slipspace hugs
the earth on a string straight to the dawn-star horizon.



Moving into Slipspace can be as easy as taking a step, but not likely. We are usually stepping toward our next space to occupy.
Slipspace can not be occupied… only moved through. We move through it in occupied bubbles as
large as a ship or as small as a bicycle.
In heavy traffic, the greater Slipspaces seem to be occupied, but this
is an illusion, a cavitation due in part to the velocity of the occupied
bubbles.



We are seeking the electrified Slipspace, where the thoughtscape is less occupied by direction and drone of engines. This is where one more easily senses the string of life-span and the thin thread of space-time.
It is said (just now, that is) that great practitioners of meditation
are able to become Slipspace. We are seeking to join creative energy in
Slipspace, occupied by ideas in their purest atomic form.



Closer to occupied space, ideas tend to clump into memes… like molecules. OK- so far, we have Slipspace, Uspace (space that’s being used), memes and molecules.
Let us now steal outside of the sleeping house and slip into a still
night with a bright .45 caliber bullet-hole moon and stars all the way to the
end. You could read a newspaper out here
and no wind would ruffle the pages. You
have no newspaper.



The scent of night is soft and the harness is cool to the touch. Technically, it’s illegal to do this… just like it’s probably illegal to pee in your yard. But nothing gets wet except maybe your palms
as you apply power and leap off the ground.
Now you feel the small invisible currents as the house-top slides below at
a safe distance. The other darkened
houses fan out below. There are a few
lighted windows.



But no one is up tonight. To the moonlit horizon in all directions, there is nothing but the stars and a turn toward the nearest thermal.
There’s one. Way out there. Another night-hawk, in time you are wheeling
opposites a thousand meters apart in the rising column of air. You have formed the diad, the
self-and-other. Fear of the “other”
stills before the idea that it’s an “other” just like you.



The other turns toward the big-box parking lot below, acres of moonlit asphalt with bright patches under the dangerous light-poles. You form the vertical helix. There are probably other night-hawks down there, whispering like school-girls in the shadows about a forbidden thrill on Blueberry
Hill curfew violation. Now you are in
the triadic state, aware of the interactions of “others” just like you.



“Other” is a tricky word, because what is the “self” but temporarily-occupied space? Whether it is being “used” or not is a value-judgment to be avoided like a
light-pole. Assume that it is. Like snowflakes, all supposedly different,
but ever-so-much the same; things like “difference” are of little account in
Slipspace, save the difference between the craft and Uspace. The stars close into a dome and the air
whispers, “…vorbei.”



The barn roof is a bright black patch below. The porch-light shows a wide strip of gravel driveway. Over the barn and aim at the spot. Stop behind the car and get out of
the harness. It will be safe here for now. The dew has beaded on the grass like
memes. Memes are the thoughts and
actions we learn and repeat almost unconsciously… a crazy mix of patriotism and
backward-ballcaps, macro-economics and mudflaps.



Now the dew beads on the boot whipping noodle grass circling a pass from Uspace into Slipspace and back. The door squeaks, and the smell of coffee means someone else in the
house is awake. “Wake up and smell the
coffee!” It’s a meme… and it’s the sort
of plops said when somebody thinks they are certain about something. Things like “doubt” and “certainty” are
almost meaningless in Slipspace.



Slipspace has its place in myth and meme. It’s where Dick Van Dyke danced and nobody sees it but the birds, stars and chimney-sweeps. Good Luck will rub off when I shake hands with you. All that poot-wheedle has no
place in Slipspace. One has to carry it
there like baggage… or fuel. Second star
to the right and straight on ‘til Morning.
Pan and Poppins and plops dew off in Slipspace.



Slipspace Manifesto



Slipspace should always be part of The Commons. No individual can own or occupy Slipspace. We intend to move through Slipspace to heal the illusion of “self” and “other.”



Where Slipspace touches personal Slipspace, we shall be kindly and at peace. Slipspace is the corridor between individual and collective, and as such is not only a physical
space but a mental and spiritual state as well.



Personal Slipspace is our portal to our Uspace. As such it is due respect but it must intrude as little as possible into Slipspace. We shall promote healing in Slipspace to sustain the well-being of all aboard our
planet.



We endorse the Comedy of The Commons.



This is where you hear the horn and the pie. The band hits, “How Ya Gonna Keep ‘Em Down on the Farm,” everybody does a “take” and exeunts, elbows a-bobbin, at the nonce for a place that aint onstage. We are
going to move into Slipspace like our great-grandparents did. Instead of barnstorming, something else… like
barning down the house. Times are going
to be interesting. They always have
been.



Write with grace from Slipspace. Remember the folks at home.



Views: 307

Comment by waldopaper on November 15, 2010 at 5:31pm
Crystal being moving in Slipspace

Hard to go to a big city and not think of a snowstorm. Or if luck really sucks, experience both at once. Even without snow, on the streets below human Uspace swirls through Slipspace, inches from each other and going in opposite directions, sometimes nodding—sometimes avoiding eye contact in great canyons of occupied Uspace. We are crystal structures like snow-- with our own configuration of much of the same memes.

It was beginning to blow harder, and the barn doors bowed inward away from the pushy vortices whirling around household Slipspace, clad only in snowflakes. The big city is far away but it lies heavy on the space-time rubber-sheet, drawing distraction down the sagging grid. Uspace usually takes a convergent trend, while Slipspace takes a divergent one. In such cold, the bonfire offers false comfort. Wolves avoid all fires.

Customs of ingress and egress must be respectfully observed along the Slipspace capillaries because we must be able to flee the conflagration or move toward the light, whether by foot or by flight, by wheel or water, when we gotta get where we otter be, we are not really in Slipspace. It’s more like tube-space. There are no wolves outside. Coyotes, maybe. But there’s a fire inside and plenty of wood.

The path to the woodpile is tubespace. It cracks the temperature portal and empties out in front of a nine-pound maul and a pile of wood. Beyond is Slipspace, now slapping with cold wind and snow individuals, far from soft summer night-hawks above the mall. Our self-myth is a spimey, spiky thing unlike the memetic blobject we think we imagine. Crystalline, with sharp edges to be sure. Feather-like in other places.

In that snowstorm dance there is one flake by chance, caught in a glance among millions of others. It winds a same pattern with sisters and brothers, porch-light the spotlight and wind-chimes on sound. It does the Hokey-Pokey and it fades into the ground. That’s what it’s all about. So an armload is enough, for the stove is small but efficient. No good to split wood in a storm. Crack the temperature portal slam. Somebody’s making coffee.

Hardwood bones clatter into the cradle, one soul is selected and coals flare red in the bed behind closed doors. It is time to wake up! We leap like a fire given fuel and oxygen, for we hold our own heat source as long as we live. In Slipspace we see the tubes connect, and that is kindling and draft for our ashen spirits. Like walking the waterline beside a great sea, scouting and surveying Slipspace is a usually solitary slip.

Generally Slipspace craft now weigh about 300 lbs. or less. The day is coming when they will weigh nothing at all. There is harvest soup in the kettle. No meat in it, but it doesn’t need any. It has potatoes and carrots and squash and onions and all kinds of stuff. A local diet and more time in Slipspace are cultural courses focused on harvesting energy. Light comes from LEDs when windows are inefficient.

You can write, draw, work, play or dream from Slipspace without physically being there.

Moving into Slipspace is moving out of tubespace. Slipspace is along the edge of every highway, the margin of every page, the thoughts that come without mediation. Power down the phone and the pod and all tendrils reaching out from tubespace. Solitude is almost essential to peep the paradox in the Commons’ heterodox black box orthodox tube socks picklocks.

It all goes to show. It goes on within and without us. We awake in Slipspace can read the program instead of watching the show or we can even leave the theatre without missing an act. The “Autographed Copy” is only a prop for the real prop on the air machine bundled in the barn awaiting calmer days. Now the harvest stew simmers and brews scents of free herb… and it thrills this old house.

The Future will be Green, one way or another. The Future Green is Truth. It’s where we walk with Jesus. It is the Eightfold Path where Krishna and Rabia Basri move in Slipspace. Prophets are more important here than profits and it’s just about the only place the Cluetrain makes deliveries any more. Don’t wait for it. It’s here now. Take your copy, read it and think about it. You can autograph it later.

We all need to “retire” now, and that includes people who have not even started “working” for a “living” yet. A non-harmful livelihood seems damned impossible to the awakened, so we have to invent our own. Do what you are good at… and if you don’t like it, do what you like and get good at it. If you are good enough, a “living” will come to you. This is not Rocket Science… unless you are a rocket scientist.

The hard rain drummed on the old roof all night long, patterning troubling dreams of Hungry Ghosts unaware of Slipspace. The rocket scientists must stop building ICBMs and start designing starships. Who will pay for it if they do that? Think of who will pay for it if they do not. The dawn-stars are burning away, and the birds are beginning to tweet, the first performers in Slipspace. Somebody’s making coffee.

Over the rising column, there are people who live plain and simple. They live much closer to Slipspace than more “worldly” folk, and they use their Slipspace craft almost exclusively. Both craft and folk are uncomfortable in tubespace because they can see the Hungry Ghosts. It will be a “Signed Original” for them, so make a new sign. Maybe they will help fund the next prototype. Thoughts for a fine spring morning.

The Good News lands near souls who watch from Slipspace. Unbundled by lantern light in the barn, the sail now smells of wind and stars and the waning-summer night-hawk encounter memory spark. Once aloft, there is the night-hawk playing morning lark. The craft and path are similar at least. Will it follow to the South or turn to the East? The sun has not yet arisen to losing sight turning toward his face.

They will write about power by battery hour… now coming off-line in Slipspace.
Comment by waldopaper on November 21, 2010 at 8:46pm
It was an agile craft of unknown design, silent in the morning air with blunt wings.

Slipspace is like a beach set on its edge. As you face the water, your perception of the beach changes depending on the size of the water. If it’s a farm pond, maybe not so much. But if it’s a great sea, ah then you have an immense picture of the two dimensions. We like to remove our shoes and allow cold water to ebb and flow over our bare feet and bare-brain the flat horizon. We rarely expose our skin.

The sea is above and land underfoot, eddy and wind ebbandflow over toe and the water and sand (or mud) is now beyond the blue horizon. You can still feel it, wonder. Ah, but turn around! Where once was woods and cabin, farm and field or even municipal pool is now atmosphere—transparent and heavy like safety glass, and beyond that… the stars! There is the origin of life, and it descends all the way to your fingertips. Slipspace!

The craft turns in to the rising sun, difficult to see. Full power climb to the north and with new altitude shallow dive heading 120, and there it is again, now climbing and headed toward the nearest thermal column. She is configured like a sailplane, so a climbing contest would be a waste of time… besides we are both now well into airspace. Wave away, and lower into Slipspace and solitude like a warm bath.

Easing into Slipspace is just about the only way to get into it, unless you are thrown from a wreck and have to walk home, that is, assuming one has a home. The homeless are the only human population in Slipspace. Everyone else is either a visitor or a traveler, and most travelers do so mainly in tubespace, an insulated pipe between Slipspace and Uspace. Slipspace is Holy Ground.

Truly ground has very little to do with the Holiness of Slipspace, save as a positive pole in a negative atmosphere. In Slipspace there is only the presence of God; the everything and no-thing, the Alpha and the Omega. Yet it is the path through the milling crowd that every city-dweller learns to see. It is the high cathedral of air and temperature and water that every country-dweller knows. Thunderhead bond is surly a slip of God.

Glide by the men in the field and wish them well. They are doing God’s work. They are farming. There is a great mass of theology bundled up in that book brother, and most of us English do the same. Few of us are fully aware of all we sow and harvest. The nighthawk, upon closer inspection, looked more like an antique than a sailplane. The color of your kinship in morning light; black aircraft.

Laughter inside helmet to think of the nighthawk originating from the plain community. She was electric to be sure, and did look old-fashioned. Tubespace is crawling below now, even with the cost of fuel and the lack of destinations. Now, the lack of origins… places for folk to call home. Scouting through Slipspace has revealed no gypsy encampments so far. Are other “black” aircraft looking for them?

On this fine morning equinox, there are two or three gliders working the thermal above the mall. One is a hang-glider trike, the others appear to be electric- a gyro and a proper little aeroplane. The black harness is not quite like any of them, and it is best to avoid the thermal Common for now. There are others passing the column, and now it is tubespace straight to the patch behind the barn that is screened by trees.

Like the Janus-faced trees, in Slipspace we see past our branches to the stars and roots into the earth. The dew-pearled buds slide by at an angle, and the clear air in the yard is beginning to warm and dry. The wings make the whup-whup sound in the sheltered space. Free now of helmet and harness, tow the little black wagon to the drive. Aircraft live in airspace, where you could jump into it with a parachute.

Slipspace is way below chute-level, even when the chute’s on a rocket. Slipspace is just above the corn. On a Halloween night with a bright harvest moon, there’s no better place to be but since night-flight is strictly forbidden, one can only imagine it. And lo, the winter is past. Slipspace is just above the water too, but you gotta watch out for boats. There is death hanging on wires at fence-post and house-top level.

The sensible and natural defense against the wired world is low speed. Slipspace craft can cruise at bicycle speed to walking speed. So can a car or buggy, but neither has to watch out for boats and are limited when crossing rivers. Haul the kite off to the side, bandy old legs slipping in the grass. The doors are open, and it smells like the kids are doing potatoes and onions in the iron skillet.


Ln 21 pg 6 11/21/10@4:46 pm
You guys have probably thought of this. What I propose to do is build an all-electric LittleWing Autogyro. I will be retiring as a college English teacher soon, so I should have both the time and the bread. I haven’t flown in years, and have maybe 1000 hours in a Grumman AA5A. Noise and expense, along with family and work ended that dream about 20 years ago. The electric powerplant may be the phoenix.

I believe I can fund R&D on the powerplant. There is a good source locally (Fort Wayne, IN), and I’m guessing they can meet thrust and weight requirements along with the engine/ battery combination. Choice of prop is probably best left to the great Herron and his experience with the craft. I am guessing most people (including me) cannot imagine electric flight until they see it.

I suppose the first thing to do is join PRA, get over to Mentone and get some time in a rotorcraft. Some taildragger time probably wouldn’t hurt either. I hope to use the craft to promote a book about the Slipspace Manifesto, which may include the adventure of getting the LittleWing aloft, which I guess could take five years or so. Could somebody send me an email and tell me where we might begin?

Thanks for your time!
(sig)

The boys like to cook breakfast, but they’re usually not up at this hour. There was something strange out there in Slipspace this morning, the presence of something unearthly… in an angelic sort of way. It has something to do with the nighthawk in that black Bleriot-looking thing. It has been just over 100 years since Louis Bleriot crossed the English Channel in a similar-looking monoplane.

Make straight in the desert a highway for our God. They made over 800 Type-XI Bleriot monoplanes, and what came later was the emergence of air machines from Slipspace and into airspace where they have been ever since. It’s not that Slipspace doesn’t exist in airspace—it does, just as on the face of the deep and in this room right now. Like God would need a highway to begin with. “Davon Jesaia sagt,” of which Isaiah spoke.

The highway is for us and it takes us toward the infinite like a mosey across the yard, growling belly whiffing snorts of onions and olive oil, speck und garlic. Screen door slam, and the crack sizzle just around the corner means eggs. The sign of new life we seek as children, dressed up like Sunday dolls, behind chair legs or even in bushes, eggs wearing Easter colors peeking back to ancient Pagan times.

Messengers had an audience then, approaching in Slipspace and speaking with the voice of many waters. They spoke to The People who lived on this very land thousands of years ago, on the edge of the Black Swamp, by the side of the great sea with the mountains of ice to the North. They slipped in their canoes and watercraft, following the grounded capillaries through reeds and branches.

Upon reaching tubespace, the water would sing and you would see many others on the surface or beside the liquid highway to the great sea. A messenger would arrive among them and tell of exchange with other messengers throughout Slipspace. Prophets and angels move through Slipspace, as do jackals and vagabonds, on a way known by Hermit and Holy since the very first on the African Savanna, standing upright into Slipspace.

Messengers have an audience now when we stand upright and look into Slipspace, seeing it as perhaps we have not seen it since those first days on the Serengeti. Our nostrils flare and our eyes narrow, peering into the distance from whence there will come a sign. It says, “Signed Originals: $50,” and they are given to the folk in exchange for conversation. “Er ist keine ander Gott,” they have their own specifics.

It is good to learn the Ordnung. Chop wood, carry water, that is Zen. It is in the pins instead of buttons, it is in the speech. Where the embryonic prairie slammed into sky on edge of Black Swamp, where the water could carry you from Europe to Japan in 1910. It still can, but the ships are gone. That is how many of the German immigrants came to be here where the grandchildren farm on the edge of Slipspace.

It is time to plant and sow, and sew so the Manifesto. Grind it and garden it into sheaves of text to be sold like cabbage-heads in Slipspace or given to those who may appreciate a small gift. It is scattering petals before the Buddha just over the horizon, just outside the event-cone. Or maybe it’s just littering the cattle-chute. If it helps the plain folk embrace Permaculture,

...we will all be ready for Jesus, sure as thunder.
Comment by waldopaper on November 22, 2010 at 1:57am
Storm clouds roll in Sommerwunder

The sky is black and forked lightning darts out of the base of what has to be an anvil-head. It’s as bad as thunderheads get, troping-out between forty and fifty thousand feet where it’s forty-below-zero and you will die up there without oxygen and heat. It is difficult to imagine the majesty of such a natural formation without being a pilot. Sailors have seen it, but few are sucked directly to heaven.

Perhaps there were some ancient mariners, like Gregory Peck, caught up in pursuit of “…ye damn-ed white whale…” in the flicker of theatre and the deserted swells of the south-Atlantic. Caught up in a waterspout, perhaps they meet the future shades of the new electric slip-spacers, sucked into a floating Everest of wind, water, and yes—electricity. The Leviathan swims among us now—turning and diving in provocation.

Electricity… over the cables and over the air and over the heads of plain folk who see and hear the Devil in the high-tension lines. There is just enough time to secure the harness tightly grounded as possible. A Blitzen lights up the world followed a millisecond later with a crack like a bomb. An upward glance is almost involuntary. The black craft darts silently overhead, barely above top of the barn.

May God wonder it all, these conditions are certain death for electra-flying slip-spacers. The black wings dip and flut like a bat in the dozens of demon vortices over the little prairie and its whirling car-wash brushes. It turns and is gone just as the heavy drops start to hit. Rain pelts and stings in sheets of Holy Tears on the way for the old house haven. Such a flight on such a night is surely death-wish craven.

The summer passed in savage shine on melting blacktop dusty gravel wheel-tracks. Jacob stopped the buggy and the horse lowered her head and snorted. Catch a glimpse of daughter’s wide blue eyes before she lowers them behind her cap. Jacob buys… yes—actually purchases with ten worn five-dollar bills, a “Signed Original.” He thumbed through the pages. He asks, “What’s it about?”

“It’s about you, one would guess.”
“That must be why she asked me to stop.”
“Your daughter?”
“Rachael. She is a willful girl. My name is Jacob.”
“Thank you for buying an original. Jacob. You have the only one.”
“Ja, I do,” he smiled, lightly touched the horse and clopped down the heat-wave road.

Maybe that was the one that needed to sell. In time, expanding permaculture plots could be seen growing from the garden and into the fields. Livestock was tended more closely now that more fields could be grazed because of the high-density garden yields. “Organic” too, and it sold quite fair. We should never have left the Garden for the fields. Too soon old and too late smart.

Summer fell away and exposed the Herbst heart. Pumpkins could be seen crowding the doorway at the food outlet in the mall below. You could see them in the daytime, anyway. At night they probably took them inside to discourage pumpkin rustling. It’s hard times when people rustle pumpkins. Just as hungry was the new harvest moon, although it was full-phase away from its own celestial rind.

Has it been over a year since first encountering the nighthawk? It was doubtful the pilot survived that terrible summer storm, but there was no word of it in Uspace, tubespace, cyberspace or Slipspace. It had to be the same craft, there are no other Bleriots in the area and the only other slip-spacer painted black is the one at hand. Probably for the same reason. Night flights are forbidden.

They don’t get much darker than this one, a new moon behind overcast. Push the Q-beam into the rubber harness and think about it. Sure, you could pop through the overcast like a Jack-O-Lantern where there are fighters and armed helicopters. To record, no pure fool had ever done so. It must be in the dark and well below the deck, fading night vision to boot. Almost on cue, there’s the nighthawk.

Buckle in, leap into the air and engage. Out-climb her as she turns south; lose her in the dark fields beyond the mall. Find her with a few sweeps of the Q-beam and hold her in the light as she flies straight, silent and low. Begin to realize that holding her in the beam will make both of you highly visible. She turns sharply to the right. The ground is less than 100 feet away, and rising briskly.

It may be too dangerous to climb out of here. Recollect there are power lines—big ones. The Q-beam must be used to avoid sinking into a sea of crash-ink. Spiral down in the beam and stop behind the nighthawk. She is standing in the root of the wing, blue dress and white cap, large eyes wide with all the starlight in Slipspace, focused on eternity. “I see you,” she smiles. Her teeth are crooked, tall skinny young wisp of a thing.

There is a lantern light to level high starboard, and the Q-beam goes off. Feel the heat as the light goes back into the holster. The wind smells like ripening grass. Age has made the eyes adapt to the lantern-light slowly, and father and daughter stand like apparitions in Holy Fire. The daughter turns and fades to black. “Is that you, Jacob? Do you have space for your land and my landing, Meine Brudder?”

“Ja, I do.” he smiled with the dream-face from the heat-wave oil-smelling dusty summer day. It was the same face and flatly echoing “Jaaaa… eye… dooooo…” flitting among the troubling dreams under old roof with the summer rain a-drumming. Now in the calm of the Second Coming she is clearly some sort of Madonna. She passed through the storm. “Your daughter should not fly on a night so dark, Jacob.”

“My daughter has been blind since birth. Would you like some coffee?”

Feel very very very strange. Like some kind of cold Holy terror spreading from the inside out, the heat drains from the center of the face. Blind. The Amish girl is flying blind. Somebody is always making coffee. Jacob steps back into the light and hands it over. Time passes like nothing suspended in dizzy think-I’m-gonna-pass-out strange. Tin cup burns the fingers but it is good and strong. It’s like getting vertigo.

“Do you mind if I sit inside it?”
“No, go ahead.”
“Will you hold my coffee for a second?
“Sure”
“This looks like a perfect replica of a 1910 Bleriot type-eleven model.”
“It’s not a replica.”

The vertigo feeling again. It makes no difference how dark it is. The girl is blind. But what about the power lines? How does she find her way back to the same place she started? Probably the same way she finds thermals…

“I can see things,” says a still, small voice in the dark. “I just don’t see them the same way you do. And we don’t see the same things. I can see the wind.” Vertigo feeling again. “I see you,” she said. Vertigo really bad. Slump onto the gunwale of the Bleriot and meditate on barfing, but decide it will not happen. Insist on staying with the craft of arrival, and the words are in-a-dream difficult.

“Ahhhm eyeee a shhhpirit nowwww?” wow. Wow. Wow.

“It is we who are shadows,” said the Madonna-voice. “Didn’t you ever read Charles Dickens? All my scholars read Charles Dickens.” She is a school-teacher. Jacob brings a blanket and says the airplane was purchased by his own great-grandfather in 1912. It is one hundred years old. It did not disobey the Ordnung at the time because nobody had ever heard of an airplane.

Besides, grandfather believed there would soon be another way to drive it rather than the loud, devilish and verboten gasoline engine that hunched it its nose like a gargoyle. The old people say he got it into the air one time behind horses, and came down with good advice on how to tile the fields. That’s what they say, and Jacob’s voice drums in and out of the lantern light, like the summer rain drumming the Hungry Ghost dreams.

The air is ripening grass and the dawn-stars are still in a brightening sky above the blanket and little flying machine. Take to the air with sunrise at two o’clock low. The lantern still burns in the yard below. “Be careful of fire,” said Jacob, but it would use too much juice now to spiral down and blow it out. It was said that grandfather even tried clockwork with springs. Did Jacob say that, or was it in the dream?

There was witchcraft. Something about witchcraft. And it was all false… all because of the black airplane.
Comment by waldopaper on December 10, 2010 at 11:30pm

Vati Jake’s letters

Become an event when the trees grow bare and the wind is too rough to stream Slipspace above.  Naomi died giving birth to Rachael on Reformation Day… or Halloween to the English,,, exactly 100 years after Jake’s great-grandfather purchased the section, sight unseen, from Ixheim.  Scarcely three slip miles away; the father and daughter send papers from a dream-world. 

 

Jealous of the juice that runs the printer that could be diverted to slipcraft, the gum of stamp-glue on tongue and buffeting walk to mailbox becomes a bridge across slipstream.  Slipspace craft can be vehicles or thoughts… and thoughts use words just like our bodies use Slipspace craft or slipships. Jake has launched a flurry of slipships, and filling them with return cargo has been time-consuming.  The air is cold now. 

 

Jake says the black-clad Bleriot flies of its own accord at least once every generation.  Naomi somehow managed to launch it, presumably by horse, on a dark Reformation Day evening and Old Man Scheiber looked her in the eye as she glided over the Scheiber outhouse toward Jake and Naomi’s place.  It was known that Old Man Scheiber was fond of strong drink, and few believed his outbursts of Naomi’s witchcraft. 

 

Still, Naomi died bringing Rachael into the world on the same day the following year.  The idea that Rachael was somehow “touched” has made her both admired and feared by her scholars ever since.  Rachael is the connection to the reformation taking place now among the last of the Flock… and the last shall be first.  The line it is drawn, the curse it is cast.  The folk must lead us into the new way, or so many more will die. 

 

A Slipspace Signal   

 

my dear brother jake as you see i have already broken ordnung.  No capitals.  No punctuation.  Incomplete sentences.  Ordnung is not in our heads, it’s on the paper.  We put it in our own heads.  It is probably not a “miracle,” any more than it is “witchcraft,” unless you apply metaphysics.  Are you not glad you looked up that word?  There is probably a perfectly Welt explanation in Cognitive Science.  Look it up! 

 

Rachael can fly because, as she says, she can “see” things we can not.  My guess is that she has not been exactly “blind” since birth, but that the physicians misdiagnosed the function of her eyes based on their (her eyes’) response.  Somehow Rachael developed a memory in her visual cortex, which I would imagine is very active (if you would only let the English doctors examine her).  I still respect your decision. 

 

It would not be honest to say I agree with it.  Aber, you are probably right about the goy, so I understand why you thought I was one of the black helicopters.  I believe you would not have known about the black helicopters unless you had really seen one.  Our LW-4 is the kind of thing they use for the kind of visit you describe.  Such an examination should be her choice as a way of helping others who have not developed her Sight. 

 

And I would not disagree that her Sight is her Faith in Jesus Christ.  I am just saying that He has a neurological phenomenon (please look up) as one of His instruments.  I do not think that Rachael’s knowledge of this will affect her judgment in matters of faith at all.  You are His instrument as well, and you asked for advice.  You are quick to say you do not have the answer to everything.  I, as a Weltkind, believe that I do. 

 

(Insert The Answer to Everything here) 

 

I dare say you have gotten good at what I call Permaculture and you call Gardening, how goes the discussion among your congregation as to whether it is the same or different from farming?  More important, you have found a faith awakening that I also dare-say obliges itself to be shared with others.  You have turned Rachel’s Sight toward Energy, Environment, Economy and Peace. 

 

I also dare-say… it is the Energy part that troubles the folk.  In my plain opinion, I do not see battery electricity as being tethered, and you will need to decide if it will drive your grandchildren into the world.  This is what I think, brother.  Your prayers are welcome and I appreciate them!  I would beg you to speak more on Gardening to those who would listen!  Many have told me your talk strengthens their faith. 

 

Aber, it is Rachael who touches their hearts!  She need never speak of flying nor say anything about her other skills.  As you know brother, I give little thought to metaphysics or causality beyond the text.  She speaks her own words, and reading them transcribed fills me with God’s Glory, and I am unworthy to pay heed to such things!  I will watch for the sign in the time you mentioned… a visit would be good. 

 

If I mail this today, it should reach you in time to talk about other times and places, depending upon God and His weather.  Give my blessings to the girls and my thanks to the boys for their hearty greetings at the store because “Vati Jake says you’re okay!”  Nur die Wurst hat zwei… when I mention a case of beer!  Ah, zu spat schlau, my friend.  The usual blessings and greets until we speak, (signature). 

 

By now it is dark and the air is a swirling cloud of the season’s first real snowfall.  It is about a mile to the neighborhood mail box, much safer than leaving it in the driveway box with the flag.  The crystals weave Rosetta stained-glass in the air, as in the nose of Notre Dame.  All this metaphysical lotion is one notion toward the stars.  Mailbox door bangs closed, and the wind cries Mary. 

 

Jacob stunned to think that anyone would consider the real physical existence of Jesus Christ “unimportant.”  To regard the angels and shepherds and Magi as a charm-tale for children does not diminish ein particle from the goodness, beauty and glory of the story.  It carries the same message whether it took place at some speck on time in the “carbon world” or not.  Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe! 

 

Yet Jacob could not get beyond the idea that if the events were “false,” then the Gospel itself would be false, which cannot be possible.  The structure crunches underfoot and dark winter night orbits through Slipspace.  The story, like the Ordnung, exists on paper and we put it in our heads.  It is not in our power to make it real, only to keep it real.  Why would we let the events eclipse the meaning?  Are they one and the same? 

 

Speck on time in the carbon world sizzles in iron skillet and scents warm inside with harvest onions and potatoes and Season spirits.  Was there really a Säemann who threw all those seeds?  Did anybody ask the Lord if the story was “true?”  Only those who would not see for the seeing or hear for the hearing!  There is cinnamon in the coffee celebrating the message scent to us.  We bay at the moon. 

 

Jacob can no longer regard them so harshly, those who lost the sent and bay at the moon.  Paid to stand on barren Land any try for sky lies belie them.  They are taught to take pride in winning, so humility in cooperation falls on them hard.  It will end by wrath in vintage thorn as it does on the trampling path.  Not far down the wheel write gambling road no chickens scratched the yard.  The suburbs starve and shiver by Living River. 

 

This house has vegetables.  The Lord commanded neighbor to help neighbor.  “Cyberspace by nature feels very big from the inside,” says Joe, and but nature by cyberspace feels small.  More slips to the carbon world started gatherings, slipcraft landing like crows in a field, ducks on a pond or gulls at a beach.  Many folk become accustomed to turning a blind eye toward the wood lot.  

 

There is always plenty of help in the gardens, and the gardens grow.  Panels grow up here, Freedom Shelters there, and in this season of wanton hunger an unknown population is filled with a New Gospel, source unknown.  “True be green,” they would say, often to recognize each other.  TBG in text.  Every young green motor-head is working on their rotor or controller.  Velomobiles whirr quietly in slip. 

 

The air buffets gently this still night under a cold Christmas moon.  Few lights blaze below like the fabled Star in the East.  Even above the flapping wind and whirr of the electric motor, the sound was unmistakable.  Scores of human voices, not all male, are singing.  “Oh Come All Ye Faithful,” drifts up from freezing darkness below.  Voices are young and strong.  Yes, they are coming from everywhere. 

 

They arrive quietly and disperse quietly, traveling silently for hundreds of miles each day in all directions.  There is food and shelter and juice at most stops on any slip.  Stops beyond the County are pure conjecture and second-hand information anyway, so turn back toward glow on the frosty edge of England.  With night fighters over the Channel we mock the Prince of Peace.  Jettison the deHaviland Mosquito fantasy and land. 

 

It Came Upon A Midnight Clear that we can not create energy, only transform it.  Stomp snow off inside breezeway and peel off propaganda only the Pharisees.  We are not running out of time.  There is time enough.  The old slipster wonders if it is like the old days, when for a brief time, we all recognized each other.  We may be running out of stop in this state.  Do not disgrace the stopping space, the stars our destination. 

 

Behold the Birth New Amish Nation. 

 

Comment by waldopaper on December 22, 2010 at 9:18pm

 

Kekionga

Slipcraft        

Cooperative

 

 

Now that we know Slipspace goes beyond physical space as we knew it, and we are aware that slipcraft is more than a vehicle… it is also a skill.  Willie the Bum became awakened to
slipcraft in a railroad tunnel through the Cascades in 1933.  Wilhelm Maches came from Rimschweiler as a
boy in 1910 and worked on the Slagle farm for almost twenty years.  When the Depression hit, he lit out on his
own. 

 

It was somewhere in northwestern Oregon where Willie was hoofing up a railroad grade, rounded a bend and went into the tunnel.  That’s when he heard the train.  He could have backed out of the tunnel, but heading toward the train seemed wrong. 
Willie saw the light at the end and began to run.  Sure he could make it, whistle screamed, Willie
became aware of headlight over shoulder, threw against the rock wall. 

 

Every crag and stone surrounded Willie like water.  There were inches of Slipspace between rock wall and freight train roaring in total darkness.  Willie was not aware the train had gone until he heard insects beyond the exit.  Willie
stepped out into the most majestic silence on God’s world and smiled.  “This is a queer thing,” Willie said to
himself, and he began to laugh.  Willie
Steinhaus laughed for the rest of his life. 

 

Willie went back to the Slagle farm just above New Haven and pitched in just like he hadn’t been gone for almost ten years.  There was not much difference between the Plain Folk and the English back in those days. 
Everybody did what they could, and most people had horses.  Then the War came along, and so did the
cars.  There were German prisoners to
help with the chores.  Trains brought
them.  Cars took them away. 

 

“Mother, I am so sorry for your loss,” said Willie, “have an apple.”  The scowling woman laughed,… the first time, said her husband, since Billy was killed at Anzio. 
Baggy pants flapping men snatch a slouch-hat gusto whip Nineteen Forties
gritty America
war wind wrapping skirts around leg make up. 
Fresh calves with eyebrow-pencil lines and powder puff trample a man not
doing his bit for Uncle high heels. 

 

Few people ever noticed that Willie had slipped at least two great wars.  Willie was just not the kind of man you could ever imagine killing anybody… or helping anybody else do it in
any way.  You could say he was wherever
the war was not, but not true,. Willie married Gunde after the war and never
joined the church.  They say Willie could
hear what you were thinking sometimes, even when he got old and blind. 

 

Willie is gone since Jake was a boy, but Willie told Jake about the wagons.  Gypsies, Roma, Tinkers, Travelers… every culture has a name for them… but now these people are
new to it.  You would see the slipcraft
gathering like crows, and then the velos running like deer.  Then the wagons will come to catch Rachel’s
Holy Fire.  She never gives “sermons,”
and it is unseemly to hang around their garden uninvited. 

 

Jake’s simple solution was to invite all… to prune, pick, shape and mend.  There was enough work, and time at days’ end for Rachel’s lessons. 
Now she had scholars of all ages. 
She would show how to can sweet potatoes, and sometimes (it is said-
just now) that the halt would walk and the blind would see.  This is hearsay, having never witnessed it
personally.  Jake does not mention it in
his letters. 

 

The Wayfarers have some of the best horse-whisperers and mechanics you’ve ever seen (we are told).  More are retiring to Slipspace now. Living is a gift that needs no
“earning,” but work keeps you warm and dry and fed.  Rachel is off now, visiting relatives, a
congregation out west (it is said).  Faith
is no longer a Christmas tree ornament; stories are witnessed instead of read
ink.  Tubespace beginning to shrink. 

 

Rachel’s letters arrive like a grand-daughter home from University, and while they do not make much sense now, they will in time.  She says they must wander in the wilderness like the Hebrews in the Story, “The league of sober folk, the Workers’ Earth:”
presume she means the Wayfers with their Freedom Shelters, panels and
slipcraft, their livestock and wagons days behind… or ahead… depending on the
scouts.  Just guessing. 

 

The homeless are slipping among us and whispering signs on the trellis and gateway and yard.  The ones who have heard the ones who have herd will be leaving it there like a bees
nest card flopping love in a glove on a silver tray hey-- brought in by sorcerers
and their appendixes documentation a vanishing nation gnat-sifting air and despair.  The diatoms die and the TV sets lie and still
people find it depressing. 

 

It is not hard to imagine Willie somewhere, a few smiles away as the crow slips between the words on the edge of a page.  Rachel writes of a small angel Corn Chip, growing in Slipspace and finding her age. 
Ma in her kerchief and I in my cap are hanging around for the paradigm
snap because slip is around Willie holding a sign it is yours at the mine and
not the bankers and cheatings.  Slipspace
state of Grace sign of the time wishes to you. 

 

Reason’s Greetings. 

 

Comment by waldopaper on January 16, 2011 at 8:43pm

The Enlightenment took 220 years to get here…

but with cities like forests… buildings like trees are a no-brainer.  Medium-of-exchange is still “…too far in for even a pinprick of light from either side,” but Clue Train rounds the bend.  Nobody knows how it will end.  Reading of signs and divergence of lines and yours and mines:  Permaculture trend.  “Argue as much as you like, but obey.”  That is what they used to say. 

 

Foucault comes around today.  A rare communication says that is what the scouts are talking about.  Clip on the wings and twist and shout and hit the sky-bound slipspace.  Climb for all the juice is worth to see far horizon curve and there it is:  an airship wearing a bright-green envelope like the Foucault with her technology and bloggers.  She is miles distant, easy to out-slip her to Jake’s farm where Rachael is said to be. 

 

Foucault is not a noisy smelly TV helicopter, nor does she seem to be military or “government.”  She is a true Slipspace-capable airship, whisper-quiet and likely powered by electricity.  Rumor has it the higher-performance scouts attempt to track her, and she takes refuge at insanely high altitudes well into restricted airspace.  She has been known to slip out of a dark field-fog and announce her presence with only her lights. 

 

It is blogged that there is nothing unusual inside the gondola; just a set of controls up front and a deck strewn with sleeping bags, computers and phones, outside a small spiny array of antennae.  The Foucault arrives above a picnic in the yard where Rachel is speaking with someone who has a phone.  She stares off at nothing.  Rachel is blind, you know.  The barn-size airship is housetop high, but none take hold of the line. 

 

Another line falls and two descend airship weathervanes into light breeze, pilot works hard to compensate for ballast.  One drives a pylon; the next wears a cyber-hat.  Rachel gave Foucault the slip, witnessed live across the internets.  Is she in the tent?  Approaching the back door, is she in the house?  Slipcraft of every description are streaming away.  People are cordial, but know nothing. 

 

Women of same description are crossing fields.  What will you do if they surround you by force?  What will you do when the trooper yields paths and roads and woodlots with blazing lights and armed slipcraft?  How was Foucault to know?  Rachel had slipped the troopers once, obeying an Ordnung appear at the nonce.  Rachel says armed slipcraft can not be.   Tethered to weapons is weight to slip free! 

 

The green Foucault begins to rise, sucking in cables like noodles and turning her nose to the wind and upward turn arc in round air green gondola noting the crew zipping into their bags and the pilot is changing the heading and course and seats and direction in all a reflection of brave mountaineers.  They will bolt for their sanctuary up in cloud-Everest leaving below won Vale of Spimes.  Then turns again like a big green weenie. 

 

Foucault is the wurst of times.  She turns and dips on a dime to slip full speed, fence-level hopping over woodlots dropping to slide refuge aside a wood unoccupied and looks like a sneaky gherkin trying to hide by a serving of broccoli.  Crew points up and military slice overhead at pattern altitude and are gone.  Wave to the crew and slip on home please.  Broccoli crawling with 44 peas. 

 

Brothers and sisters today we say The Awful Truth. 

 

(Insert The Awful Truth here) 

 

“Oh the foe will rise with the sleep still in their eyes, and they’ll jerk from their beds and think they’re dreamin’ ” 

 

Now we are conscience dreaming.  Now-unembraced millions of boomers awake to a world way different from the “working world” asleep in the teens.  They slap down sock-money on recumbent tadpoles congregate in dark mall parking lots with sk8erz, lecturing from 30 kph lawn-chair instigators.  They have little but themselves to blame after 40 years of stuffing self-serving crap into their brains. 

 

“There’s a breakdown at central control, blue midnight white thunder.  Will you dare to drive your soul where they gypsies wonder?” 

 

It is a long, long highway out to your wishing star.  Not everybody gets to golf away their final spark at Boca Woods, most of us were not pointed that direction to begin with and the gypsies wonder why anyone with a soul would do such a thing.  Slower travel along tubes and capillaries revealed a world unappealing to Slipcraft and Freedom Shelters.  The hipsters are now slipsters, slipping to all the places where Disney World is not. 

 

Cost that many had to pay to keep the few in fairyland never laid lash upon bare black conscience more than now.  The toilers and peak-oilers see golf course as garden trying to grow.  White coiffures in clown cars are relics of another age.  Their simulacra can not stand the sunshine.  Las Vegas gives way to starship where all aboard are crew.  Players find it more difficult to slip.  Better be crew than one of the few. 

 

Many black velos and wagons dot the yard as well as some familiar wings.  Turning down and on the ground, a teacher says farewell as Rachel slips away to saintly things.  Now it is said she has the power to heal while slipping along the tubes and capillaries where she is least likely to be known or recognized.  Foucault blogs about miracles along the road, but those lunatics will say anything to engorge a myth of an invisible culture. 

 

Reason and light are hidden in plain sight.  All who get sucked into larger tubes with vacuum-bag twits tweaking toxic TV pews will miss it like a bus on the other side of the world.  That leaves the rest of us to operate on the edge, to check in with the home office as little as possible and to slip the home office as soon as possible.  The 44 peas in the broccoli could be military—deployed as a slipspace division. 

 

The soldiers become detached in machines slipping five clicks a minute on nothing but night goggles and sunshine.  It got hard to tell who was commanding what or controlling whom.  Usually they would find the weapons stacked at the place where the tracker went dark, and soldier nor slipcraft were rarely heard from again.  There are exceptions, and among them the crazy contingent following the gas-bag Foucault. 

 

Some keep their comm. gear and some discard it with the weapons, but nobody leaves a stove or a panel behind.  They (whoever they are) say some military have slipped armed and wired.  It is usually hearsay, and those who know do not tell.  Most melted away, slipping to stay in the sight of their blind Madonna.  The old house is quiet now, and the boys will slip for the light or a fortnight or twilight.  These days it is hard to hear… 

 

...to stop without a farmhouse near. 

 

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