The wheels are coming off our world.
And it's a steep downgrade with blind hairpin turns the whole way down. Don't waver to stare at the view: you'll fly off into it and crash in a sickening crumple. Hands tight on the wheel of pure action. Tight but easy around the curves. Down at the bottom it finally gentles out. Down the long alluvial slope, into the orchards and villages of a new old country. So new there's no King yet.
Something I wrote in my journal last June:
The time of waking up from the consumerist trance has arrived. It is and will be a *rude* awakening, a forced arousal brought about by the collapsing economy. But it is what it is, and will be a very *good* thing to the extent we can embrace reality and learn to make do and even thrive in non-monetary ways. Growing food. Making and fixing things. Helping each other out.