View From Crumbling Rooftop

Looking East?

Bureaucratic lunacy has once again thrown Oggy's life into turmoil. I simply want to eat tacos and play guitar until my congenital heart disease finally kicks in, but this will not be my fate because I am periodically forced into action. The latest issue is my personal and vehicle visa, which is kind of joke considering the army of undocumented minor immigrants Guatemala sends to The United States. Like they can't take ONE undocumented political refugee from California*? No, I'm going to try to keep my political paperwork legal, like it matters in the bleak future.



This time, I had to leave Guatemala because I already extended the passport with one trip to the capitol. So, I took a shuttle to San Cristobal De Las Casas, Mexico and I gotta say it's worth the trip. The Internet is probably filled with instaglam filter photos of posing gringos in San Cristobal so I won't add to them. It's nice, like all Spanish Conquistador cities with large churches and large plazas, festivals. San Cristobal is in Chiapas and is the headquarters of the Zapatistas, who still operate but not quite as violently as a decade ago. I don't know a whole lot about them so your assignment is to do some research. You'll need it as one resident of San Cristobal told me the police state of the U.S. is gearing up for street exercises in civic oppression this summer. Pretty funny the local St. Louis police are taking tips from Iraq by militarizing against citizens. The strong marketing campaign of Democracy is the only thing keeping the blood from flowing in the streets but the cracks are becoming larger and larger.

I was really dwelling on the trends of humanity during this trip and after 20 years of concentrated investigation into U.S. culture I reached some conclusions:
1) It's not healthy
2) It's trending toward total decay
3) Citizens are not demonstrating clear thinking
4) It's not salvageable and will disintegrate
5) Any attempt to avoid anarchy, will actually expedite the anarchy

It's five simple conclusions but it took 20 years to reach them definitively and places like San Cristobal highlight the fact there are places with a healthy culture, trending toward more health, with citizens thinking clearly. But that's a kind of editorializing that is something I don't want to spend too much time with. My epic and futuristic treatise on homelessness will be my final word on these topics if I can ever embrace the mental serenity to write it.

I accept that in a sea of delusion and bad decisions and responsibilities it is sometimes unavoidable to remain in a sinking ship or to justify stepping on someone's face to survive, supporting corruption, enabling injustice. The liberty that I sought and achieved allows me options that others don't have and that may mean default allegiance to a poisonous culture, or it may mean nothing.

The fundamental quest that irked my ignorant superiors so much was simply an investigation of all the elements of the culture I was born into. Is it worth investing any time into? I took the culture on its own terms, met the people in their natural habitat. Is it perverse or not? I've reached my conclusions but I understand the effort it took to reach them and not everyone has the liberty to do the same and won't take my word for it so it's intractable. The time required to reach conclusions is only available to a few, and those few will be ignored by the majority who made no attempt to investigate the cultural patterns. The old saying that 'we see the world as we are' also echos in my mind; maybe I am the one who is poisoned and I project my poison onto the culture. That's possible. And it's also possible that the culture is poisoned and then also poisoned me by contact so we are both poisoned. Either way, something is poisoned.

A 20 year old can not, and should not, write manifestos, but a 44 year old arguably has the experience to write them. And a 44 year old may not have many years left to investigate anything except for what his body plumbing is doing so he should go ahead and put pen to paper. He will be ignored no matter what.

The cultural trends I've noticed are all very bleak. I'm not overly upset by individual assaults on liberty and reason as much as trends toward the dissolution of all forms of health and the subsequent citizen response. Was anyone paying attention when the Egyptian independence revolution was looking for a model example of a national constitution and one of the U.S. Supreme Court justices pointed them toward the current South African constitution as the U.S. constitution has fundamental flaws that are apparently insurmountable for the living legislative branch? Probably not. Well, it happened, and that's like a Ford dealer saying, "Wouldn't you be happier in a Toyota?"

It's actually another paradox because I'm supposed to justify that Ruth Bader Ginsburg isn't fit for her job, but in this one case she has a good point. Well, if she's not fit for her job then why is this one point accurate? She could also be wrong about this opinion. Contradictions like this irk me.

Brian Wilson had a self-titled comeback solo album in 1988 that I ignored because Def Leppard totally poured some sugar on me that year. That's kind of a metaphor for my overall point; the answers are indeed under our noses but we follow our baser senses toward cool guitar riffs and stripper anthems. San Cristobal de Las Casas seemed to be a place where baser instincts were traditionally ignored in favor of wholesome ones.

If you do go to San Cristobal then assign a day to explore the Sumidero Canyon. I have no photos of the canyon because I didn't go.

"Love and mercy that's what you need tonight
So, love and mercy to you and your friends tonight"
Brian Wilson

*Recent events have compelled me to tell people I'm from California because Texas has become an embarrassment and I don't want anyone to think I affiliate myself with that state.