Time Travelling at the Crossroads

Trailer Park Girl gave me permission to add posts retro-actively, and alter the date to suit the posting, so I have done a bit of time travelling. For example, at the very bottom of this blog I added a poem written on April 1st, and made the date of posting reflect that.

Past and present have been crossing paths for me lately. This does happen periodically in my life, and probably in yours too, so it doesn't freak me out too much. In my main case here, an old girlfriend showed up and left me a note at the shop, letting me know that her mother was in poor health and needing a visit from me. This lady, LD, was in fact a very big influence on my writing, being an author of short stories of edge-walker semi-biographical nature. We were arrested together the first time I got busted for an Earth First! protest. When she held the Dobie-Paisano fellowship and lived out on the ranch, I got to connect in a life-shaping way with Barton Creek, a chapter of my life not to be reopened for nearly 7 years later as my main Earth First! avocation. So her coming back into my life now that I've taken up this writing thing is fitting.

None of this was on my mind when, for seemingly no reason at all, this morning I pulled on my old purple Earth First! shirt, then ran into my old lover S, literally in the intersection (crossroads), who has just moved in down the street from me. I stopped in to tell him about LD, and to see what he knew, since he was the one who introduced us in the first place. He had heard about her health crises, and told me about the death of her man, and suggested, "Maybe she needs some love."

Well, yes, of course that is what we should do. S knows where she lives, and has a car...

Later on tonight another friend B looked at my shirt and quipped something about it being in honor of the anniversary, which went over the top of my head. Then later he informed me that it was the one-year anniversary of the conviction of a man, purportedly and Earth First!er, for burning SUV's and Hummers, and that a warning had been issued that Earth First! might make stikes against SUV's in honor of the anniversary of this man's conviction! Look, if I got this story all screwed up, it's 'cause I don't watch TV and wasn't even listening too good when B told me. I swear, its just coincidence that I wore this shirt! Still, I was more than a little paranoid on the way home, esp. considering the bit of time I planned to spend after midnight at my favorite (and very monitored) railroad crossing!

The other time-looping thing started some days ago, when I found a copy of a manual I wrote for the budding anti-corporate pro-democracy movement, a primer/how-to for groups to use facilitated consensus process, which I still believe could be made to work for a self-governing people. I will post it (in the past, naturally, like 1996) because everyone should know how to do this. It could become useful in the post-petroleum future. "Democracy In The Raw: Consensus Process for Facilitated Meetings," it's called. When I found it I thought of B, who was in Atlanta at the time, doing the work that is in continuum with the groups I was working with when I wrote this piece. Hmm, I wrote this on assignment after a conference that took place in Chicago, which is where my LoveMan is right now, he who drives an SUV, so see, I ain't goin' to be burning any, even if I am wearing an Earth First! shirt! Because that SUV driver might really be a homeless civil servant who lives in hisorher car! End of coincidence!