I can hear sarcasm and ridicule from rationalists, too nervous to desert their pints of proof, resounding about the cold, tiled Victorian toilets of their tiny minds, but what the fuck. I do read the I Ching sometimes, and I also read the Tao Te Ching, and hey, I study Lao Tzu. I find them all useful, representing a key philosophy in my understanding of life, and I thank God they are there for me.
Remembering this unexpected guidance, I spent this year of 2008 reiterating regularly to my nearest and dearest - who know me well enough to know that I tend to balance the artistic and irrational with the sublimely logical - to remember that the shit would really hit the fan in September. No, I kept saying, shit will REALLY hit the fan. It says here (points to HEXAGRAM 20)
Yes, but that's just you asking about your flat sale, came the reply.
Sure, I said, but if it's relevant, it will appear.
In all of these things, interpretation is important. So, I interpreted future events, it turns out, pretty accurately. And, I just had an idea that the fan would be big and this torrid pile of stinking capitalist shit would be spread wide - wide enough to affect my minor domestic transaction.
Thus, this year I have spent the past eight months quietly and deeply reorganising my life on the basis of this esoteric advice, as well as my own observations, and I'm ninety nine percent finished. I have been (and will be) steadily pruning this blog over the months - expect that to continue. Most of the posts over the past two months have been reprints - not that anyone noticed! I have started another blog which I will shortly reveal, it will not be public like this one, and those of you who want to come with me for the next ride, I'm very happy to have you along.
I set up a Yahoo group which you're welcome to join - email theothersideofeverything-subscribe@yahoogroups.com to stay in the funky loop or if you have a Yahoo ID already, go here. In the new place, you'll get more of the same stuff you've enjoyed here, but less censored, more colourful, certainly as honest, and hopefully as entertaining.
I will post the details of my next phase to this group.
Just one addition: while capitalism spasms like a dying man in need of medical intervention which it cannot afford, I've been finding some comfort in this remarkable conceptual framing of the situation and its possible outcomes by Dmitry Orlov, Closing the 'Collapse Gap'. As my friend The Obstructionist points out, you can find fault with some of Orlov's comparisons - especially if you're not prepared to see the vulnerability of the United States framed in terms of other dissimilar nations - but his detailed comparison of the US with the USSR at the end of communism is fascinating and absorbing reading.
See you on the vegetable plot.
This is not new, of course, and neither are 