A NOBLE VISITOR

I once found myself in a unique international situation, which I would like to describe to you as accurately as possible.  But before I do, I must press urgently to you that this situation (which you shall soon come to know very well) has never, to my knowledge, been experienced by any other human (or animal, for that matter), and is therefore potentially of great value to journalists, publishers, profit-seekers, television producers, screenwriters, and countless others.  I am eager to pursue offers of business, so please do not hesitate to contact me with such prospects.  My story is as follows:

I had been traveling in the Third World for some time as a volunteer for various peace and world hunger projects, when I found myself in a small, charming restaurant that was much more labor-friendly than any other I had ever encountered.  The workers each called themselves “My Good Friend”, so as to create an immediate atmosphere of camaraderie.
Instead of being served food in the conventional manner that we know in the First World’s restaurants, a moderate “donation” of $10 gave me access to the kitchen and various rationed ingredients.  My Good Friends looked over my shoulder and gave a good deal of advice and subtle suggestions, but by no means interfered with my work.   In the beginning I was quite shocked by the seeming reversal of roles, but soon came to appreciate this way of doing things, the least of reasons being the assured hygiene with which I prepared my meal (you see, there was no concept of toilet paper in this village.  There was a seating area in the back with numbered tables where I was instructed to take my tray of food.  Table 7, which was my assigned table, was already full, save for my seat, which was reserved.  My table “friends” shared in my food and drink, and we had a jolly meal together.  Occasionally I would be required to prepare some more food when it ran out, or pour drinks for my new friends.  A posted sign also required customers to give “at least, if you’re stingy” 1/3 of their personal helping to the various animals that roamed near the tables, most of which were hogs.  At one point I asked if the meat I had prepared was pork, but was assured that indeed it was not meat at all, but a very realistic substitute.  I was glad, because otherwise I might have thought I was eating one of the fine hogs that I had shared my meal with!
At the end of the meal, a colorful troupe of children in native outfit huddled around me, and one of My Good Friends took many Polaroid photographs, which I was allowed to purchase for a very reasonable price, considering the rare opportunity to be with real natives (and children, nonetheless!)  Upon preparing my leave, I realized quite suddenly that my wallet was misplaced.  Of course I didn’t immediately suspect one of the children, but I was aware that other less tolerant individuals might have quickly assumed so.  Like any concerned person in my situation, I carefully retraced my steps. In the kitchen I noticed a small trail of blood coming from behind a closed door and heard loud squealing.  My Good Friend told me it was a ritual ceremony and I shouldn’t interfere.
Of course I didn’t disbelieve him, but to be honest with the dear reader, I didn’t completely understand him (with such thick accent to his voice), and deduced that this was the only room I hadn’t yet searched for my wallet.  Inside I was horrified to find what looked like a butcher’s shop, with hog corpses dangling from hooks.  My Good Friends quickly explained that they suspected my wallet to have been consumed by one of the animals, and were dutifully helping me in my search by “cleansing” the suspected hogs.  Apparently it is a ritual here to slaughter hogs when a stranger loses a wallet.  I felt much beholden, and apologized for interfering at all.  Alas, my wallet was never found, but a local Shaman generously offered to induce a vision of where it had gone in exchange for my watch.  It wasn’t that I purposely inclined to break the thing before I gave it to him, but it so happened that the watch was dropped in the exchange, and in my confusion I stepped on it repeatedly.  He was understanding, though, and went through with the vision quest.  What I learned was incredible.  Apparently it had been harboring an evil spirit and the local God had confiscated my wallet.  As punishment for bringing the spirit, the God conveyed to the trustworthy Shaman that I was to be “cleansed” in a ritual ceremony, which involved a relinquishing of all my possessions, including the very clothes on my back.  Now I wasn’t at all bothered by the giving up of everything I had to my person, although I must admit that it was something of a conundrum as to how I would get home naked and without a passport.  However, as much as I wanted to please the local God (which I believe is completely equal in quality and validity as our Christian God, mind you), I was troubled by the proposed “cleansing”.  Not that these natives were capable of any harm or malice, but the truth is I was in the mood for a jog anyway, and just happened to lose track of distance and direction and ended up relocating to a different village entirely.  I wanted to go back for my “cleansing”, I truly did, but unfortunately I couldn’t recall any names or references that I might use to solicit directions.  Being tired, I didn’t have the energy to interact much with the locals, so there is nothing interesting to tell of this village that I found myself in, only that I saw several imitation “native” children that were not nearly as decorated as the ones I had met earlier, and therefore I did not donate one cent to them.

WALMART EMPLOYEE TRAMPLED TO DEATH

This is disgusting. Let’s just love each other, please.

By ROBERT D. McFADDEN and ANGELA MACROPOULOS

The throng of Wal-Mart shoppers had been building all night, filling sidewalks and stretching across a vast parking lot at the Green Acres Mall in Valley Stream, N.Y. At 3:30 a.m., the Nassau County police had to be called in for crowd control, and an officer with a bullhorn pleaded for order.

Tension grew as the 5 a.m. opening neared. Someone taped up a crude poster: “Blitz Line Starts Here.”

By 4:55, with no police officers in sight, the crowd of more than 2,000 had become a rabble, and could be held back no longer. Fists banged and shoulders pressed on the sliding-glass double doors, which bowed in with the weight of the assault. Six to 10 workers inside tried to push back, but it was hopeless.

Suddenly, witnesses and the police said, the doors shattered, and the shrieking mob surged through in a blind rush for holiday bargains. One worker, Jdimytai Damour, 34, was thrown back onto the black linoleum tiles and trampled in the stampede that streamed over and around him. Others who had stood alongside Mr. Damour trying to hold the doors were also hurled back and run over, witnesses said.

Some workers who saw what was happening fought their way through the surge to get to Mr. Damour, but he had been fatally injured, the police said. Emergency workers tried to revive Mr. Damour, a temporary worker hired for the holiday season, at the scene, but he was pronounced dead an hour later at Franklin Hospital Medical Center in Valley Stream.

Four other people, including a 28-year-old woman who was described as eight months pregnant, were treated at the hospital for minor injuries.

Detective Lt. Michael Fleming, who is in charge of the investigation for the Nassau police, said the store lacked adequate security. He called the scene “utter chaos” and said the “crowd was out of control.” As for those who had run over the victim, criminal charges were possible, the lieutenant said. “I’ve heard other people call this an accident, but it is not,” he said. “Certainly it was a foreseeable act.”

But even with videos from the store’s surveillance cameras and the accounts of witnesses, Lieutenant Fleming and other officials acknowledged that it would be difficult to identify those responsible, let alone to prove culpability.

Some shoppers who had seen the stampede said they were shocked. One of them, Kimberly Cribbs of Queens, said the crowd had acted like “savages.” Shoppers behaved badly even as the store was being cleared, she recalled.

“When they were saying they had to leave, that an employee got killed, people were yelling, ‘I’ve been on line since yesterday morning,’ ” Ms. Cribbs told The Associated Press. “They kept shopping.”

Wal-Mart security officials and the police cleared the store, swept up the shattered glass and locked the doors until 1 p.m., when it reopened to a steady stream of calmer shoppers who passed through the missing doors and battered door jambs, apparently unaware that anything had happened.

Ugly shopping scenes, a few involving injuries, have become commonplace during the bargain-hunting ritual known as Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving. The nation’s largest retail group, the National Retail Federation, said it had never heard of a worker being killed on Black Friday.

Wal-Mart declined to provide details of the stampede, but said in a statement that it had tried to prepare by adding staff members. Still, it was unclear how many security workers it had at the Valley Stream store for the opening on Friday. The Green Acres Mall provides its own security to supplement the staffs of some large stores, but it did not appear that Wal-Mart was one of them.

A Wal-Mart spokesman, Dan Folgleman, called it a “tragic situation,” and said the victim had been hired from a temporary staffing agency and assigned to maintenance work. Wal-Mart, in a statement issued at its headquarters in Bentonville, Ark., said: “The safety and security of our customers and associates is our top priority. Our thoughts and prayers are with them and their families at this tragic time.”

Wal-Mart has successfully resisted unionization of its employees. New York State’s largest grocery union, Local 1500 of the United Food and Commercial Workers, called the death of Mr. Damour “avoidable” and demanded investigations.

“Where were the safety barriers?” said Bruce Both, the union president. “Where was security? How did store management not see dangerous numbers of customers barreling down on the store in such an unsafe manner? This is not just tragic; it rises to a level of blatant irresponsibility by Wal-Mart.”

While other Wal-Mart stores dot the suburbs around the city, the outlet at Valley Stream, less than two miles from New York City’s southeastern border, draws customers from Queens, Brooklyn and the densely populated suburbs of Nassau County. And it was not the only store in the Green Acres Mall that attracted large crowds.

Witnesses said the crowd outside Wal-Mart began gathering at 9 p.m. on Thursday. The night was not bitterly cold, and the early mood was relaxed. By the early morning hours, the throngs had grown, and officers of the Fifth Precinct of the Nassau County Police Department, who patrol Valley Stream, were out in force, checking on crowds at the mall.

Mr. Damour, who lived in Queens, went into the store sometime during the night to stock shelves and perform maintenance work.

On Friday night, Mr. Damour’s father, Ogera Charles, 67, said his son had spent Thursday evening having Thanksgiving dinner at a half sister’s house in Queens before going directly to work. Mr. Charles said his son, known as Jimmy, was raised in Queens by his mother and worked at various stores in the area after graduating from high school.

Mr. Charles said he had not seen his son in three months, and heard about his death about 7 a.m. Friday, when a friend of Mr. Damour’s called him at home. He arrived at Franklin Hospital Medical Center an hour later to identify the body. Mr. Charles said he was angry that no one from Wal-Mart had contacted him or had explained how his son had died. Maria Damour, Mr. Damour’s mother, was in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, but was on her way back to the United States, Mr. Charles said.

About the time that Mr. Damour was killed, a shopper at a Wal-Mart in Farmingdale, 15 miles east of Valley Stream, said she was trampled by a crowd of overeager customers, the Suffolk County police reported. The woman sustained a cut on her leg, but finished her shopping before filing the police report, an officer said.

Let us not cage our divinity into the dead spheres of morpgs like SecondLife, where our imaginations, oppressed by our own fears, blossom into drunk, sleeping pixels. Curious creature! Be curious in the REAL. Denial of reality is the cold, black glove that the murderer slips over his hand to separate himself from his deed. Hungry for meaning? Cure your irony with a dose of love, dear friend. Throw off those “vintage” American Apparel prescriptionless granny glasses ($55)– don’t worry, I know you are a smart one– and renounce the ontological negation that is Hipsterdom. As you chew into the sweet, barbequed flesh of a fellow creature-citizen, ask yourself: does your spirit feel the sting of fear that shuddered through that living animal body as the blade breached the throat, or is that suffering just another distant pixel that materialized on a screen you never saw?  Let’s love.  Let’s reach out across this very real sea of air and *touch* each other.  Let us speak.  Let us share.  Let us pet each other’s worlds, curious as we are.  Your sober consciousness can carry you as far into wonder as the best dose of fungal shamanism.  Do NOT deny reality.  Down with denial!

READ ME:

Life as the End of Empire, Adbusters #79

“Peak oil, mass extinction, catastrophic climate change. With every passing day, the signs are becoming more and more difficult to deny. But we deny them anyway. We swear we’ll curb emissions. We pledge to actively pursue an alternative energy policy. We don’t believe we have a problem. We can stop anytime we want. Just not today.”

Please indulge in this sumptuous gift of information that Hakim Bey has so dearly taken the care to prepare in order to share with such fellow human creatures as yourself, Lovely:

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Sorcery

THE UNIVERSE WANTS TO PLAY. Those who refuse out of dry spiritual greed & choose pure contemplation forfeit their humanity–those who refuse out of dull anguish, those who hesitate, lose their chance at divinity–those who mold themselves blind masks of Ideas & thrash around seeking some proof of their own solidity end by seeing out of dead men’s eyes.

Sorcery: the systematic cultivation of enhanced consciousness or non-ordinary awareness & its deployment in the world of deeds & objects to bring about desired results.

The incremental openings of perception gradually banish the false selves, our cacophonous ghosts–the “black magic” of envy & vendetta backfires because Desire cannot be forced. Where our knowledge of beauty harmonizes with the ludus naturae, sorcery begins.

No, not spoon-bending or horoscopy, not the Golden Dawn or make-believe shamanism, astral projection or the Satanic Mass–if it’s mumbo jumbo you want go for the real stuff, banking, politics, social science–not that weak blavatskian crap.

Sorcery works at creating around itself a psychic/physical space or openings into a space of untrammeled expression– the metamorphosis of quotidian place into angelic sphere. This involves the manipulation of symbols (which are also things) & of people (who are also symbolic)–the archetypes supply a vocabulary for this process & therefore are treated as if they were both real & unreal, like words. Imaginal Yoga.

The sorcerer is a Simple Realist: the world is real–but then so must consciousness be real since its effects are so tangible. The dullard finds even wine tasteless but the sorcerer can be intoxicated by the mere sight of water. Quality of perception defines the world of intoxication–but to sustain it & expand it to include others demands activity of a certain kind–sorcery. Sorcery breaks no law of nature because there is no Natural Law, only the spontaneity of natura naturans, the tao. Sorcery violates laws which seek to chain this flow– priests, kings, hierophants, mystics, scientists & shopkeepers all brand the sorcerer enemy for threatening the power of their charade, the tensile strength of their illusory web.

A poem can act as a spell & vice versa–but sorcery refuses to be a metaphor for mere literature–it insists that symbols must cause events as well as private epiphanies. It is not a critique but a re-making. It rejects all eschatology & metaphysics of removal, all bleary nostalgia & strident futurismo, in favor of a paroxysm or seizure of presence.

Incense & crystal, dagger & sword, wand, robes, rum, cigars, candles, herbs like dried dreams–the virgin boy staring into a bowl of ink–wine & ganja, meat, yantras & gestures– rituals of pleasure, the garden of houris & sakis–the sorcerer climbs these snakes & ladders to a moment which is fully saturated with its own color, where mountains are mountains & trees are trees, where the body becomes all time, the beloved all space.
-Hakim Bey

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A wizard of the deep. Let us learn from such wise masters: