Vanishing Point

The preceding entry features a photo of a grim urban street receding to what is known as a "vanishing point" in terms of artistic perception. Perhaps the best known early example of this technique can be found in Myndert Hobbema's 1689 "Avenue at Middelharnis," a large canvas that immediately draws the eye down the avenue as soon as one enters the room in which the painting is hung in London's National Gallery.

Forty five years have passed since I first entered the room in which the 40 3/4" x 55 1/2" (103.5 x 141 cm) canvas held pride of place, and I can see it in my mind's eye as clearly as if it were yesterday that I saw it, so strong was its impact.

What I saw yesterday is pictured above, beneath the Hobbema painting. This is an avenue of poplars in Mendoza province, where poplars abound both as windbreaks and for their value as lumber.

This particular view lies along Route 146 between Goudge and Monte Comán in the San Rafael "Department" (similar to a county). Sunday, Aug 16th, was the village feast day in Monte Comán, so things were jumping when I arrived at "La Vaca" a little after one p.m. As promised, here is a photo of this delightful little roadside oasis.

When the rush subsided, I had a chat with Manolo (the owner) about the Catacombs project, mentioning that the San Rafael Department seemed a good possibility for Catacombers, based on the fertility of the land, the prices I'd seen in La Veloz, a local classified ad sheet, and proximity to San Rafael city, a pleasant place with a small town feel in spite of its recent growth spurt. Manolo is a lifelong resident of the area and La Vaca is a Monte Comán landmark, so his collaboration with the project is most welcome.

When will northern hemisphere residents begin to consider that the vanishing point for the old paradigm has nearly been reached? What will it take? Must the stock market collapse? How many banks need to fail before panic sets in? What kind of damage might a drought do to food production? What would fuel shortages mean to distribution systems? How many new and oppressive laws must be passed before travel is restricted, capital export controlled, housing and nearly every other aspect of life become so highly regulated that freedoms which have been taken for granted themselves reach the vanishing point?

The northern hemisphere nations as constituted fifty years ago are no more, at least not with respect to the sort of societies they were. Those simpler, sounder societies have passed the vanishing point and disappeared into the mists of time and the memories of those of us who have survived to become elders. But a new societal vanishing point has appeared on the horizon, and what lies beyond it does not bear close contemplation.

Harsh weather in Patagonia led me to postpone my trip to the monastery and the surrounding area, but I am quite pleased with the preliminary findings in the San Rafael area, particularly with respect to the area between San Rafael and Monte Comán, an area in which in addition to truck crops for the home vegetable larder, it is possible to grow olives, grapes and a considerable variety of fruit trees, which in good years can yield profits of "a Hilux (the popular Toyota 4 x 4 pickup truck) or two," in the words of a San Rafael farmer.

The area is certainly not overpopulated! While driving the 220 km (137.5 miles) between Monte Comán and San Luis, I saw 14 vehicles: four trucks, nine cars and a motorcycle. I also saw come right down to the edge of the road a pair of peccaries, but before I could stop and get the camera out, they'd scurried away back into the underbrush.

While opportunities for the good life may be approaching the vanishing point in the northern hemisphere, down here in Catacombs country they seem to be making an appearance.

Recce

Time to go forth from the Catacombs and explore other potential Catacomber relocation centers.

Tomorrow Traslasierra will be left behind for a week to ten days and To the Catacombs will be silent during that time. First stop will be in the province of Mendoza, at a tiny four table restaurant called La Vaca (The Cow) which doubles as a tiny grocery store. I have been eating there for two years now, whenever I pass through Monte Coman, the ghost town in which La Vaca is located. I came upon the place coincidentally: I was passing through at lunchtime, and Monte Coman is about four hours from Catacombs Headquarters. To give you an idea what sort of country this is, once I had passed through the nearby town of Villa Dolores, some twelve miles from here, there was not another traffic light to be seen for the duration of the 280 mile (448 km) journey.

La Vaca is a classic road food joint, and photos of it will appear in the not-too-distant future.

We (my son is here) will then go on to Real del Padre, where the father of a friend (if you read Spanish, check out his Museo Comechingon site) will meet us to give us some good old fashioned local guidance for the San Rafael area. An English couple who classify as Catacombers will also be visited. Hopefully, I will return with good news about available land for those ready to make the move.

Next on the itinerary is El Bolsón, down at the 42nd parallel, where the price of gasoline is cut in half and one can think of oneself as truly being In Patagonia. There we will go visit the monks at what I have nicknamed Leibowitz Abbey, then see if we can get together with the folks at nearby La Confluencia. We will likely go down into the province of Chubut, to Cholila (refuge of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid), Trevelyn (settle by the Welsh and still a supplier of good scones) and Esquel, keeping our eyes skinned for Catacomber possibilities.


The news from the North continues to alarm me, so much so that I find myself listening more often to the now twenty five years old Third World anthem El Sur También Existe. Is the USA fated to go the way of the USSR? Is there a North American Union in the offing? Is Europe destined to become a perverted remake of the Roman Empire? Questions, questions...

My answer was to voluntarily devolve to a simpler standard of living, a simpler way of life, and it suits me well so far. Yes, I still have a car and will enjoy the use of it for as long as is possible. Yes, I have electricity and broadband, wireless internet, and a freezer and power tools, but no, I don't have television, no, I don't have air conditioning or non-wood heating, and no, I don't have a cell phone or a Blackberry or even an electric razor.

This reconnaissance mission will be the first of a number to be undertaken with the intention of finding likely sites for Catacomb creation. Please don't forget me while I'm away, and stop back in a week or so to see what I've turned up in my travels.

Meanwhile: ¡Vaya con Dios!

Rebuilding Bountiful

Hint: the neighborhood pictured on the right is not within my community-of-the-mind called Bountiful. Look down that road between the people-coops, how it recedes in perfect perspective to a vanishing point beyond which lies a lights-out horizon, wastelands, badlands, no-man's lands... but most definitely not the lane that leads to Bountiful.

The "Bountiful" I have in mind is a simple community that was the object of a fictional journey--one might even say pilgrimage--portrayed in the 1986 movie The Trip to Bountiful on which a Depression-era elderly lady wants to return to her childhood home just once more before the Reaper comes a-callin'.

"Bountiful" to me calls to mind the cornucopia, the fabled horn of plenty, rich harvests and rural life. It calls to mind life on the land with trips to town or village, trips made on foot or bike or horseback, trips that provide time to smell the sweet grass, the rich, newly turned earth, ripened fruits, autumn leaves...

Rebuilding Bountiful requires a devolution (yes, you read that correctly: "devolution" with a "d," not "revolution" with an "r") that diminishes the megalopoli and does away with industrial agriculture. Rebuilding Bountiful requires a return to religiosity--I'm suspicious of so-called "spirituality--and a reverence for life and its bounty. My own pilgrimage of the soul led me to Traditional Catholicism, the Social Teachings of which merit much further study than is currently accorded them, but The Catacombs here in the Southern Cone are non-sectarian, non-denominational and non-discriminatory, though the coordinator is firm in his faith and beliefs and pleased to proselytize when permitted.

There is no guarantee that "returning to Bountiful" will provide an idyllic life, but staying behind in the cities is almost certain to ensure that an idyllic life will not be on one's agenda.

Dirt

"Plain as dirt," people will say contemptuously. "Dumb as dirt."

Really?

Dirt is as important as air and water; without it, we die. And not just any dirt, either: humankind depends on arable dirt, dirt in which plants grow that can in turn support animal life.

That's my dirt to the right, dirt enriched with hundreds of pounds of dried sheep poop and kept moist so that in spite of the one-week-long nighttime freezes (in the 20s) we've been having, those broad beans are doing quite well, thank you, as of this morning, as the date stamp (European style: date first, then the month) shows.

When I left the northern hemisphere behind, I'd made up my mind to sacrifice a certain degree of comfort, convenience and city/suburban style consumer variety for good dirt. Say what you will: when the chips are down, few things compare with twenty inches of good topsoil.

I found my topsoil here in Traslasierra, far from the flaccid, overfed kine that wobble down the Wal-Mart aisles snatching at gaudily packaged snacks they can stuff in their gobs while, glassy-eyed, they gape at the flickering flat-screen, oblivious to the elitists' yoke sliding down upon their thick, wattled throats. They come in all shapes and sizes, all creeds and colors, male and female, young and old, of all political persuasions, though economically, rich and poor rarely applies: these are the poor, the near-poor and the remnants of the lower middle class, the plebs, the lumpen, the Great Unwashed, unlettered and barely able to do simple math. Naturally, neither you nor I belong to this rabble; we are above all that. Those people, after all, are dumber than dirt.

They may be, but then again, so may be the Greenwich Gang, the Hamptons Hideaway crew, shallow materialists who in spite of their money piles live lives of stunning superficiality bounded by status and a narcissistic wound that not even scads of money can scab over, never mind heal. I live far from them too, far from the Social Register listees whose identity and self-worth must be reaffirmed by looking at a hardbound telephone book in black and red, folks who drop names and brands as often as bats in a cave drop guano.

Far from leftist loonies fossilized in the amber of the Sixties, spouting the same tired slogans, their eternal whine-a-thon tempting one to borrow a pair of bovver boots from the nearest skinhead for a quick game of kick-the-cranium. The intellectual elite--left, right, center--seldom takes anything more than an academic interest in dirt, though there are exceptions, among whom I like to include (hem, hem, kaff-kaff) myself, but only because I am such a smart fellow according to my credentials. Well, all right: I believe I'm bright enough to have done a lot of reading, retained a great deal of what I've learned, and managed to assemble this montage of factual info into an integrated worldview that led me to conclude that my place in the sun was not in an academic or financial ivory tower, but down here in the dirt far, far from the madding crowd.

Dirt.

This is about dirt, and how it behooves the Paradigm Changer to seek out the best dirt s/he can find. How 'bout that! Gender-neutral language! Hope everyone likes it and my effort is appreciated. Personally, gender-neutral language and much that goes with it calls to mind the substance with which I fertilize my dirt, but I digress.

Few of us these days are qualified to gauge the value of dirt with respect to raising food; for this, omnipresent government provides us with well-educated professionals. But can we count on them to fulfill their obligations to assist us? Not in my neck of the woods, as I have learned to my chagrin. As the saying goes here: "Mucho ruido, pocas nueces," which for you poor, unfortunate Anglo monoglots means, in the words of the immortal James Brown: "Talkin' loud and sayin' nothin." I certainly hope agricultural extension agents up north honor their word more than do the gravy-train riders down here. Our local glad-handers have asked me to address a community meeting of small agricultural and artisanal entrepreneurs, and the meeting is the day after tomorrow, and I've heard nothing further. Okay. And all the promises the Peronistas have made to me about help with my own efforts... nada de nada. I suggest y'all may enjoy Sunday's post, because I'm going to treat them to some self-righteous Irish rage on Saturday.

I learned about my dirt on my own, thanks. I recommend you do so too. I will say this, however: down here in Catacombs Country, we've got some dirt you'd be thrilled to have under your fingernails. 'Nuff said?

Get down 'n dirty, boys and girls, or prepare to live like serfs without your own dirt.

If not, then I recommend you read up on dirt. If you need help in finding resources, let me know.

Get some dirt, get it soon.

Sic Transit Gloria Urbis

Detroit is a model for urban failure in the US, likely just the first of many more to come. The list of cities that will have to shrink to fiscally survive grows by leaps and bounds, while empty houses are now being targeted for bulldozing. Not a pretty picture, and not a place one would want to be, or even be near. Yet it is in the vast megalopoli that much of the world's population can be found, at least for the present.

One wonders for how much longer this will be so.

There could be a trigger even that collapses a city overnight, but a more likely scenario is slow and steady deterioration combined with increasing distribution difficulties in essential services, plus widespread unemployment and rising crime that make large parts of cities no longer viable as communities.

One thinks of Robocop when one thinks of private corporations taking over control of city services, of cities themselves, as is apparently becoming the case in Detroit.

Born in NYC, I no longer enjoy visits to even small cities, never mind the megalopoli (NY, Sevilla, Rabat) in which I once lived. The time of the great cities is passing, and may end with a bang rather than a whimper.

Friend's Day: Dia del Amigo

July 20th was "Friend's Day"--el Día del Amigo--in the Spanish-speaking world, and it is taken quite seriously, as are friendships. I attended five separate parties over the weekend, given that one has varying groups of friends, and this was in a city not my own!

The holiday--not an official one--was invented here in Argentina thirty years ago. The date was chosen because it was the anniversary of humankind's first landing on the moon. The rationale was that on that day, all of us here on Earth were friends of the three astronauts.

"Friends" should mean something more than the name of a situation comedy. Friends follow family in intimacy and are those with whom we choose to be close, so setting aside a special day to honor them is... well, not at all a bad idea.

Argentines are a very hospitable people and far less inhibited about showing affection than tends to be the case with those of us of northern European ancestry. It is customary to greet female friends and even new acquaintances with a kiss on the cheek, and in some provinces a male friend as well, though there is nothing "romantic" about this practice.

This pleasant little holiday, cause for festivities and reunions, is the sort of thing that makes living in the Southern Cone--and this country in particular--a pleasure.

I have made many friends over he course of the five years I have been here, friends from all walks of life and in disparate parts of this vast country. Over the weekend, in Santiago del Estero, I visited with some thirty or more, and came home with new addresses and promises (which I am sure will be kept) of future get-togethers there and at my home. The nearly seven hour drive was well worth it.

I salute my friends, here and elsewhere, old and new, living and deceased, spread far and wide over the surface of this Earth, , of many colors, creeds, countries and ways of life. I have been blessed to know these people and would love it if it were possible to have them all together at a great Friend's Day party, but that, I suspect, will have to wait for the hereafter.

And if we have not met, my reader friend, I wish you as well a...

Happy Friend's Day!

Going Forward Back-o-the-Mountains

Mister Potato Head waves bye-bye to those who choose to stay behind in the Old Paradigm, signs "so-long-it's-been-good-to-know-ya'" to those like a couple cited in a comment on The Oil Drum who declared that "they didn't wish to be the "sort of people" who stored potatoes," and when the commenter pointed out to them that "they'd actually be wise to have a bit of food stored in their home for unforeseen circumstances and offered to pay for it myself," "his wife simply said "we'd rather die" and that ended that discussion."

It would, wouldn't it?

Discovery channel has come up with a show for those who would rather live: it's called The Colony, "where real people from a wide variety of backgrounds and skills will be challenged to rebuild their own civilization in a devastated world."

The Catacombs is looking to build a New Paradigm from a civilization not yet devastated but already endangered in a world that needs changing if it is to provide a decent life for our progeny yet unborn.

The Catacombs intends to be a community-driven Paradigm Change site, not a hunker-down, rugged individualist survival bolthole, and it is the creation of similar communities this site hopes to promote.

We are looking forward, not Looking Backward, to the "resplendent vision of life in a socialist utopia" that was Edward Bellamy's fever dream looking forward to the year 2000. Bellamy would have felt right at home at a Bilderberg conference, or sharing a glass with Gramsci, perhaps. A conclave here at The Catacombs would favor G.K. Chesterton over Bellamy and be more confortable sharing a locally brewed beer with Wilhelm Ropke.

Preparations for August 1st's Valley-wide "Great Seed Swap" continue apace. Down here, we're the sort of people who store spuds, seeds and what-have-you, the sort of people who jerry-rig repair materials when store-bought isn't possible, the sort of people who believe with William Faulkner what he stated in Stockholm in December of 1950 when awarded the Nobel Prize for literature: "I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal simply because he will endure: that when the last ding-dong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking. I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance."

We wouldn't "rather die" than store potatoes. We will endure, we will prevail long past the time when the foolish, infantile and narcissistic suburbanites have died and their way of life become extinct. It is they who look backward: we look ahead; we are going forward.

Independence Day

Yesterday, July 4th, was "Independence Day" in the United States of America, where "independence," like so much else in the post-modern era, is relative.

Independence Day for me is Sept. 24th, the day I moved into my just-completed straw bale house on my own property, not a penny owed on any of it. Three months and a bit from now, I'll celebrate my fourth anniversary in this home, although two years ago, the wife who entered it with me preferred to return permanently to apartment living in Sevilla, Spain, after repeated false starts with respect to living in another country. The rural, self-sufficient life made for a nice fantasy, but the reality was something else again. In retrospect, I suspect she had been humoring me, not believing that I was serious. I was and am. I was saddened by her departure, but not about to commit financial and psychological suicide, trading this for a sardine tin in a noisy city in a country that I was sure was soon to experience exactly what it is experiencing now, and worse to come.

Living alone in a 2700 sq. ft. house on three acres is not easy at 62, but when I reflect upon what my life would likely be in any northern hemisphere country, without wholly owned property not subject to confiscatory taxation, without my own trees and gardens producing food, without all the free range eggs and chickens, the pig I fatten and have butchered right here, the fresh milk straight from the cow, the homemade cheeses, the crystalline air, the gurgle of the arroyo, the birds, the peace and quiet... without any of this, well, it wouldn't be a harder life: it wouldn't be any sort of a life at all, not for me.

Independence.

The local people here are very poor by northern standards, but they have free health care (often they grow old waiting for the doctor, but...) and for the most part are content with their extremely simple lives; the young, however, are tempted by the allure (false, of course, but that takes time to learn) of bright lights, big city, at least for a while. Very, very few have full-time jobs, but neither do they have mortgages or pay rent in most cases. The have no debt. NO DEBT!! They are FREE!

More and more previously docile folk are beginning to chafe at the growing restriction upon even the mildest sorts of freedom once available in the north. One sees more and more rebellion talk, "throw-the-bums-out" talk with respect to governments, advice offered as to how to become independent once more. Here's one that I found particularly relevant to what I'd like to accomplish down here in the Catacombs: Fifty Things to Do NOW! Many of them have been advocated here and elsewhere, but it's encouraging that more and more systematization is being applied to the freedom and independence issue.

The new "Cap-and-Trade" Law is an abomination, pure and simple, and if it passes, it could be the straw that breaks the back of the up-to-now ruminant population that has been willing to swallow the "Patriot" Act, all the thievery entailed in the bailout programs, but this... As I joked in a separate post with respect to a different topic: "In my twenty years on the force I thought I'd seen everything, but this...this...". Will those in the northern hemisphere take back their rights and their countries? The jury is still out, but one fears it may have been "got to."

Hard copy those Fifty Things and begin putting them into practice if independence means more to you than a barbecue; firecrackers have been illegal up there for so long now, that...

And remember, here at The Catacombs, you've got a friend; in fact, more and more every day.