I danced so hard I left in someone else’s shoes. I’ll do my best to return the actual Hey Dude slip-ons I mistook as my own. However, the idea remains: I walked in somebody else’s shoes and didn’t realize it until this morning. My shoes are cleaner! Was it the happy elves I read about? The ones that cobbled together all those shoes for the desperate cobbler with the starving family?
No. I did what I have done for years—lose something. Keeping track of objects and possessing nice things is not more forte. Perhaps it explains my anti-materialist quarks.
INNER ME: Why buy expensive things when you lose everything? You have disappeared more things than Copperfield! And you actually make them cease to exist!
Anyway, I walked in someone else’s shoes after traveling deep within. I love dancing at Rhythm Sanctuary. I love ecstatic dance. There is deep prayer in this space. However, like with all groups I associate with…I’m not 100% sold on the philosophy. I explain part of my issues with these communities in my fourth novel—Dark Harvest.
NOVEL PROMOTION: A new age spirituality group allies with a migrant species of intelligent life to help peaceably gather up humanity for mass slaughter.
The idea is not new to literature, but it is my take on the allegory of false prophets and the pleasure motive. I digress. I have wondered if I hadn’t predicted the trap I’ve been ensnared by. Some folks in my other communities are certain that I’ve been recruited by a new age cult. Maybe so. These brothers and sisters of mine are dancing to the same old “different drum” many of their grandparents beat in the 60s & 70s. There is plenty enough to scandalize the fundamentalist-right into demanding police budgets get every tax paid penny.
SCANDALIZED BYSTANDER: Defund public education and liberal arts programs!
Even if the morality police debuted in Denver, it wouldn’t stifle my dance tribe. The blood of the martyrs is the life force of any movement. Ask Jesus. Spreading the gospel once guaranteed poverty, imprisonment, and death. Loving and courageous outcasts started His church.
JESUS: It certainly wasn’t financially responsible conformists I entrusted The Church too.
My dance tribe is a community of people willing to live off thin soup and thrift store clothing. No need for expensive meat! Learn to love having less. If the financial system collapses tomorrow, many of these folks will survive on turnips and leeks. Shared housing, no problem. Live nomadic lifestyles? Absolutely. So long as there is fire, drums, and dancing they will enjoy the technological-apocalypse.
It will drive the other brands of survivalists insane. This jealousy is already here. Why should those hippies be having fun while we’re bracing for the worst! H.S.T. once said we were all wired into a survival trip now. It’s true. A group of this “one nation’s” zealots hoards guns, ammunition, and freeze dried food like a dung beetle goes for shit.
HOARDER: It’s better to have it and not need it! You might not have to fend off zombies or non-diseased but starving humans right now, but who knows what will happen when the national debt exceeds 50 trillion?
I sigh. Can’t these opposing groups of survivalists agree they both like trail mix and high-tech sleeping bags? Sure the worst may come. The economy and ecosystem could collapse, sending us all back to the ways of the tribal era that started this whole civilization scene. Some argue it’s happened before.
We are all scared. However I’ll bet that the reality of our fears are much less dramatic than the fear-mongers would have us believe. They talk about the BIG problems while tickling our secret insecurity. One political party caters to a subset of our society who fears nothing more than the thought of outliving their retirement savings while dying alone. Another party caters to the folks who are terrified of dying without ever having lived. No time to waste on the corporate ladder. Either way we’re all worried about the end. Either way, someone may be playing on our fear of death. The fear there’s nothing next despite our highest hopes and sacrifices. Or if there is something next, that it’s lame.
But what do I know about it? I’m just a guy who walks around in someone else’s shoes. But if it makes sense to you, maybe you should read my books.
Books 👉: https://linktr.ee/gajohnson
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