How the covid episode changed my life, part 3

Transforming the covidians' death cult into a life force

Third Ascent, photogravure etching

1. A no-brainer

The covid episode brought death to millions, from both the lab-crafted virus and its gene-hacking pseudo-antidote. With screaming headlines, body counts, and vivid descriptions of the course of illness, the covid episode made awareness of death a daily universal preoccupation. It told us 'You too could die, imminently, unless you take this injection. Then you will be safe.' Both of these assertions were false, but they presented at the time (early 2020) what seemed like a 'no-brainer'. A telling phrase, intended to stimulate action so certainly beneficial that no one could possibly question it. Ironically this phrase also indicated a state of mind designed to neutralize thinking and turn the brain into a reflexive organ, rather than the locus of consciousness. This was global-scale mind control, and it was inescapable. The proposition or threat made everyone on earth aware of his own demise, in a direct and personal way.

I was no exception. Initially I too felt mortally threatened, and therefore inclined to heed the advice of public health authorities, experts, doctors, broadcasters, friends, and... well, it seemed like everyone. As I later discovered, this apparently universal consensus was also designed-in, using the network effect to reinforce the urgency of quick and thoughtless action, before there was any chance to consider the consequences. But at the time, I was very much concerned, and my mental reflex quite resembled everyone else's: 'Do what they say, or die'. Only one shot would be required, we were told at the time. But the envelope had tickets for two free injections (plus two-way taxi coupons!). I kept it handy just in case. My own precious life, otherwise lost perhaps, might be saved by this miracle of science.

2. Walking through the valley of the shadow of death

Upon reflection, curiously, I did not find the prospect of my own demise alarming. As a child I had lived in the shadow of nuclear annihilation, with mock drills in elementary school, everyone cowering under desks on cue. Fallout-shelter signs decorated many public buildings. The bright yellow glow-in-the-dark signs proved irresistible as illicit home decor. The Cuban missile crisis of 1962 moved the atomic scientists' doomsday clock¹ to within three minutes of midnight. My hometown Pittsburgh, a northern outpost of Appalachia, once the steel-making center of America, would have been a prime target. The more scientifically-minded among us high-school students² calculated the size of the bomb crater, the radius of lethal radiation, the height of the mushroom cloud, and the temperatures at Ground Zero. Much later, I learned that but for Russian Vice-Admiral Vasily Arkhipov, of Russian Submarine B-59, countermanding an order to launch a World War III-triggering torpedo and prepare to dive in order to launch a nuclear-tipped missile³, millions of Americans (including my own young self) would have died in the ensuing nuclear exchange. President Kennedy, who put out word that he had ended the crisis with his blockade of Cuba, knew the real story, which scared him more than anyone else at the time knew. He agreed, with Khrushchev, to end nuclear weapons forever after the 1964 election, unaware what danger this decision posed for himself.

The murder of JFK in November 1963 brought home to me and my friends as teenagers the cold finality of death, as images of his blasted head were displayed on front pages and on network news. It was like losing a close friend, and a part of ourselves. A cottage industry of necrophilia arose then, endlessly examining the ballistics, trajectories, and effects of the fatal bullet(s), never clearly identifying the killer(s).⁴

After that, images of death appeared almost routinely, from the bombed-out villages of Vietnam to the big cities of America, and from tropical jungles to arid wastelands inhabited by made-in-U.S.A. death cults.⁵ So, in what sounds like the title of a grade-B movie, for me and for everyone growing up in late 20th-century America, 'death was no stranger'.

For the Time Being, photogravure etching

3. An accident, and other near-death experiences

Nor did my own person escape unscathed. Without reciting the gory details of a run-in with a Buick that might have ended my young life, enough to say I am immensely grateful for the life-saving medical and rehabilitative care I received. My insurance, using an elaborate cost-minimizing rating system, paid my doctors a pittance, which I was unable to supplement. They all professed sincere satisfaction that seeing me well was the only compensation they needed. I determined then that I would always be physically active, using to the fullest extent what was nearly taken away, and after some time, recovered.

In fulfilling that promise, skiing and mountain-climbing have occasionally (and unintentionally) entailed survival risks. In one instance, a blizzard whiteout with strong winds in Hokkaido left me so disoriented that I felt like I was still moving even after stopping to try to get my bearings. Nobody was nearby. I had no idea where the course was, and only the vaguest notion that proceeding downward (but not too steeply) was probably the right thing to do. It was a curious sensation, knowing by a process of deduction that I had better keep moving, but not knowing where to, and at the same time observing with light-headed amusement how sky, ground, fog, and wind all merged with one another. So I simply let the skis decide, their motion determining the direction, which eventually led to more visible surroundings, and warm cocoa.

Some hiking routes in the Japan Alps pass along knife-edge ridges. These 'kiretto', as they are known, are often the only way to get from one peak to another. Prefectural borders may follow these lines. Mountain-hut owners like to joke that if you fall off one way, Nagano Prefecture would be responsible for the cleanup, the other way would be Yamanashi Prefecture's responsibility. This was daunting, realizing that one false step could be my last. But the experience gives new meaning to the common expression 'watch your step', thoroughly cleanses the mind of all flatland distractions, and teaches concentration on the immediate moment. Indeed Zen, which originated as a mental discipline of preparation for battle, re-enacts such moments when survival is immediately at stake. On the highest peaks, such concentration occurs automatically without prompting, else the trek would end quickly.

One more near-death experience sculpted my response to the covid episode. Returning from a ski trip to Hokkaido by underground train from Haneda Airport on March 11, 2011 at 2:46 pm, the train stopped, and shook sideways with very wide amplitude for at least 30 seconds. The shaking did not feel violent, but (to me) felt like a large animal playing with the rail-car. All the passengers knew it was a very large earthquake, but kept calm and quiet. I turned to my wife and said 'Ima ma-de, yokatta' -- everything's been good up to now. These could have been my last words. My calmness surprised me. My own fate, whatever it might be, simply did not seem something to get upset about. After emerging into the daylight, I learned that some 20,000 people had been swept away by the tsunami. And the nuclear cores of the Fukushima reactors, deprived of electricity- and battery-driven cooling water, had melted down. European and American diplomats fled in panic. I received many offers of sanctuary outside Japan. Meanwhile I learned from a Health-Physics 'listserv' (as group blogs were called then), and from an M.I.T. radiation physicist, that a slight increase in background radiation posed no health risk, and might even be beneficial. Ordinary bananas would set off a radiation detector. I turned down the kind offers of sanctuary with thanks, and observed the mass panic with no desire to become immersed in it.

4. Common-sense and expert opinion

These experiences had prepared me for both elements of the covid proposition or threat. My demise doesn't frighten me, and the drugs offered to avert it elicit skepticism. This response, though instinctive, is borne out by the numbers that emerged from hiding much later. Reported covid deaths were vastly exaggerated by subterfuges like changing cause-of-death protocols such that those who died primarily of other diseases were counted as having died from covid. With false reports cleared away, the risk of death from covid is 0.15 percent to 0.2 percent, about the same as for influenza.

As many have unfortunately learned the hard way, neither one nor two nor any number of shots prevents viral infection or transmission. In fact, the purported antidotes increase the likelihood of dying (through various forms of spike-protein toxicity), as excess death counts⁶ of 10 percent to 20 percent or more have been registered in every country that keeps such records; the higher the number of people injected, the higher the all-cause mortality. This is what might have been expected of an experimental drug that takes over and damages the body's immune system. For more than three years, I waited for expert opinion to catch up with common-sense.

5. Passing on

I believe no one will greet news of my death with a sigh of relief and a feeling of 'good riddance!'; nor will anyone be inconsolable, at least not for very long. Those who know or have known me may miss me for a while after I'm gone, then get on with their lives without me. I hope they will remember my kindnesses to them (if any), so I'd better renew those acts of kindness while I'm still around.

Have I 'made a difference'? Naturally I have made a difference for my descendants, whose existence I am partially responsible for, and for my lifetime collaborator in that endeavor, and I like to think it's a positive difference. For others, in momentary ways, perhaps a little happiness or enlightenment or unexpected pleasure conferred here and there; nothing permanent, but that's in the nature of such benefices. They don't last and must be constantly renewed. I don't flatter myself that being a fossil-fuel-burning white person makes any difference for the planet, and I don't feel the slightest guilt about that, nor for any other privilege I have enjoyed. Having been pestered enough by those who make it their business to extort other people's earnings by way of fabricated guilt, I am immune to such appeals. My personal environmental footprint is close to nil -- no car, no meat, no unnecessary travel, a thriving organic garden, etc. -- but these are personal preferences, conducive to good health, rather than moral imperatives. I don't feel a burning desire to 'save the planet', and consider that persuasion a delusion or a hoax or both.

6. Recognition

I have not received enough recognition for my artistic accomplishments, which in my own mind are quite substantial: a body of work consisting of some 330 original etched photogravure copperplates and singular impressions made on my etching press from them. This is a very difficult technique to master, and it is equally difficult to 'graduate' from technical mastery to the heights and depths of graphic expression. From the outset of my intaglio printmaking, I aspired to comparison with Rembrandt and Whistler, and the acceptance of my prints in the permanent collections of Museums in France, Italy, the U.K., Norway, Switzerland, Russia, the United States, and Japan, signifies some such affinity. But I have had a hard time reconciling my desire for recognition with my disdain for self-promotion, expecting the work to 'speak for itself'. Mostly it doesn't, except in the few cases of those who renounce intellectual convention and enjoy direct sensory experience, communing with the memories and anticipations it brings forth in their beings. There are so many distractions nowadays, though. Charlatans and celebrities, and those who cater to the depraved tastes of degenerates, have captured the honors and prizes that should have come to me. I will have to do without the adulation of the masses. My mission of having large numbers of viewers experience graphic epiphanies transcending ordinary existence has not succeeded as much as I would like, but at least it has succeeded with a few!

When I started photogravure etching in 1991, I intended to make and publish 1,000 editions during my lifetime. As time goes on, that numerical ambition recedes further and further away. And due to my practice of printing only part of an edition at a time, only the 'best-selling' editions are complete. The number of impressions actually printed is called the 'tirage'. One concession I've made to the possibility of my death sooner rather than later is to note the tirage of each print at my website. This number is of course less than that of the projected edition, and would become the actual edition upon my death.

Perhaps I am not destined to be famous, not that I desire celebrity for itself, you understand, but only as a means of expanding the domain of happiness and enlightenment. This is especially important now (2023), as it seems to me so many industries and social programs are manufacturing misery. The pharmaceutical industry, the weapons industry, the race-hatred industry, the immigration industry, and their servants in government and non-government, are hell-bent on inflicting physical, emotional, and mental distress on all. Their motivations are nothing new: self-enrichment and personal domination. What can a few hundred etchings do to counter these forces? Not much, I have to admit, but even if only a select few see their way clear to a point of departure through the graphic expressions I have created, that is something worth doing.

7. More or less

I'd also like to get to those travel destinations that have eluded me so far, while my mobility is unimpaired. There's no checklist or bucket-list, and no interest in merely covering a lot of territory. It's more important to do each trip right, with advance reading of the history and mythology of the region, and enough time in each locale to explore and experience the feeling of living there. Patrick Fermor walking around Europe fully aware of the tribes and races who preceded him, the unique marks of their presence they left, not only the soaring cathedrals, but also the patterns of speech and custom, and other legacies of millennia that still exist and are freely available to such observers -- that's my ideal of how to travel.

Patrick Leigh Fermor

Mary McCarthy's views of Venice and Florence mingle the past and present life of those cities in ways that go far beyond mere sight-seeing.

Mary McCarthy

The arcane discipline of heraldry, the study of coats-of-arms, flags, and ensigns, practiced by a departed friend, also enhances the travel experience. So, much as I enjoy being at home much more than I would have thought possible before the covid episode, there is still more to see and do in the rest of the world.

Yet along with the urge to do more, I feel an equal and opposite urge to do less. It really isn't necessary to get anything done, like, yesterday. Enjoying the moment, watching how bees approach, select, and mine flowers, noticing what the wind is doing, how people walk, exploring a chain of Internet links, reading history -- all these things and more are at least as urgent as the routine items on my to-do list. Rushing around to meetings, meeting deadlines, finishing chores are all occasional rather than essential; I gaze bemusedly at the busywork that occupies some as I might peer into the curious customs of another planet. My vacation from travel removes much of the preoccupation with deadlines and schedules that would otherwise dominate, and I fully enjoy the freedom from airline regimentation, being herded from one cattle pen to another, and so on, as mentioned in Part 1.

Time-filling activities that merely distract creative or philosophical thought are of no use to me. The covid episode has made me more careful to use whatever time remains to greatest advantage.

Simplifying my life is not as easy as it might seem. Removing physical and digital clutter is unexpectedly difficult, as each item carries some personal memory or possible future utility. Financial records have to be kept for five years, lest some authority descend on me with demands for even more of my earnings. File cabinets bulge with accumulated papers, held in case their contents must be recalled someday. Computer files, casually acquired, stored for future reading but not yet read, email messages years later still awaiting a response, travel photos lovingly sorted by destination and date, scanned photos waiting to be sorted, movies downloaded, music ripped from CDs for easy access in air transit (essential for getting through a long flight), are only a few of the varieties of the 350 gigabytes of data in my computer. Only the most rigorous pruning keeps it within even that voluminous limit.

8. Apocalypse anytime

I had expected these years to be free of distractions, business, planning, and scheming. But merely surviving and remaining financially solvent requires constant attention, as the forces of destruction epitomized by the covidians refuse to leave us alone. I must constantly guard against that complacent somnolence that I mistakenly thought was owed to me after many years of hard work. Perhaps I should even be grateful to the covid episode for whatever mental alertness I can muster. In response to the extraordinary distortions of the social and economic landscape, wrought by a series of disastrous social and medical experiments, I have had to abandon long-held assumptions: America is no longer a free country. Its authorities can no longer be trusted, and are in fact acting only in their own selfish interest. Bereft of legal legitimacy, their only recourse is to rule by coercion and 'psy-ops' mind-control. However, this type of regime is inherently fragile; nothing shows this more tellingly than its censorship of the slightest departure from party-line positioning. The U.S. Dollar, the de facto currency of the world, is no longer a stable currency. Confidence in the U.S. Dollar is slipping away, and the possibility of complete collapse making the currency worthless can no longer be ruled out of future considerations.

Such apocalyptic consequences might not be probable or imminent, but nevertheless have become part of my thinking and planning. The covid episode brought real chaos as officials spread fear and panic far out of proportion to the actual threat. It showed how they would abuse their positions in a more serious crisis. Preparing for the collapse of governments and fiat currencies no longer seems loony -- it could be prudent. Accordingly various 'prepping' sources appear more reliable than traditional news outlets, because the former take into account these dire prospects and provide practical guidance on how to surmount them. As noted in Part 1, I have already started on this path by growing food and herbs. While complete self-sufficiency is unattainable, it is useful for present purposes to know how various crops do in local climatic conditions, long-term food storage techniques, what to do in an emergency if medical help is not immediately available, how to collect rainwater and store it safely, how to keep the lights on in an extended grid-down situation, diversifying savings, what supplies are best in a barter economy, and things like that. These are useful skills here and now, and could become survival skills if worse comes to worst. Prepper communities, developing in many areas, could become the core of a new social order simply by virtue of their superior survival skills and resources.

So the morbid death cult of the covidians, in a curious twist of irony, has taught me how to live better. Rather than fret over my inability to cure the psycho-pathology of greedy, power-mad officials and their credulous followers, I concentrate on acquiring new skills and re-learning old ones for their present value regardless of what the future may bring. I haven't given up on the larger society, hence this blog, my other on-line activities, and my continuing artistic activities. I truly enjoy these voluntary associations, these comings-together devoid of hierarchical administrivia -- they are a new form of kinship.

1. The nuclear scientists who had devised the bomb thought they would be given a say in how the weapon would be used. They were sadly mistaken. Refugees from Nazi-devastated Europe, they thought it would be used to defeat Nazi Germany. But after the Nazi defeat, some were horrified that their brainchild would be used against innocent civilians in Japan. Only one of the physicists, Leo Szilard, spoke out against this. But his was a lone voice. Later, perhaps by way of atonement, veterans of the Manhattan Project published the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists with the doomsday clock on the cover, keyed to the imminence of nuclear holocaust made possible by their ingenuity.

2. The Russians' Sputnik circling the earth in 1957 stimulated greatly increased funding for math and science in the years following.

3. U.S. National Security Archive, memoirs of Vice-Admiral Vasily Arkhipov.

4. My best guess is that it was a tragic accident resulting from a poorly trained and inexperienced Secret Service agent, unfamiliar with a new kind of rifle, standing up with the safety off, in the open car following JFK's. As Oswald's shot rang out, and missed its intended target, the drivers of both cars braked suddenly, causing the Secret Service agent to fire the fatal shot at close range, accidentally. The enormous size of the hole, the obvious rear-entry and front-exit, the angle of impact, and other ballistic evidence, all point clearly to this one source. Connally was probably wounded by shrapnel, not by another bullet. Oswald was known to be an erratic CIA asset, as was Jack Ruby who murdered him. The ensuing CIA coverup was probably intended to hide not only the Agency's own involvement, but also the even greater urgency of avoiding anyone's having to admit 'Oops, we killed the President' by accident. Nobody in CIA was sorry to see JFK dead, as he had been pestering them to kill Castro, also the Agency believed peace with the Soviet Union would be chimerical at best.

5. The murders of Senator Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King contiinued the carnage. The mass suicide in Jonestown, Guyana, engineered by San Francisco Democrat Jim Jones (an acolyte of Mayor George Moscone and Nancy Pelosi, who got him an appointment as SF Housing Commissioner) was an early experiment in using mind-control techniques to get large numbers of people to 'drink the Kool-aid' containing cyanide. The murders of actress Sharon Tate by a Charles Manson-manipulated cult member in Los Angeles showed how mind-control techniques could overcome even the strongest natural inhibitions. And the Black Panther Party's rampages anticipated those of Black Lives Matter zealots a half-century later.

6. Excess deaths are those beyond the usual number, which is one of the most constant numbers in all of epidemiology. An increase of 10 to 20 percent in all cause-mortality is extremely unusual. Since these increases occurred in tandem with rates of covid genetic injections, after the peak of covid infection had passed, injections of the experimental drugs were the likely cause.