NCAB Newsletter | March 2010

The morning hours are tempered by fatigue and dizziness as everything begins to collapse. It is much like the collapse of the body due to being in shock. One cannot remember anything. Time elapses slowly and utterly, without purpose. One stands still, listless and unenergetic on the peripheral of life. Nothing escapes the brutality of the collapse of being. The stomach has shrunk down to a small fist. The temperature rises and falls with extreme fluctuations. The system cannot protect itself against the flashes, like a collapsed bag that flutters in the wind. Your head races, and your back throbs from pangs of pain as the bones recede from lack of calcium.

Fatigue robs you of sleep. Your body rests because it is spent, but you cannot move. You're wrapped in a fog of discomfort languishing in dull, aching pain and resolute you push on but you can only with great effort.

It is a slow death; famine and starvation. There is nothing you can do about it. There is nowhere to turn and nothing that one can do to escape the inevitable loss. You pray that someone will come and assist you to do the most ordinary functions like putting on and taking off your clothing, untying your shoes, taking small steps, going up and downstairs, keeping your balance, and even gasping for air.

Dying by starvation is one of the most fundamentally painful activities of existence. It shirks sustenance and sustaining life because one lets go of the will to eat, to drink, to nourish and swallow. The mouth is always thirsty, and going from one place to another is untenable. Pain becomes greater as one exerts energy, and you simply want to lie there waiting for death.

It is easy to lull the body into a sense of stasis waiting and hoping to be released. One carries on as decimated as possible until there is no way to evacuate wastes. One begins to smell like a putrid, open sore. The elements are waiting the final outcome, and reclaim the rich resources that are left on the parched landscape.

Observing this apparition one makes an effort to touch the person and realizes that all of the skin and bone are fused together. There is no separation and no effort to account for the loss of color and movement other than the loss of will.

The final outcome for most of the world is stark and foreboding. We stand at the brink of what it is like to live in this way as a person. There is no food and there is no water. Life is like a drowning baby swallowing its own waste and sputtering. There is no escape from suffocation, which is slow and deliberate. The mother clinging to her carcass with sunken eyes and bony hands, clinging to her breasts, and hopelessly stares at what was once within her trembling flesh.

How can we believe that this scenario is justified when we have nothing to offer but everything; which is within our grasp? We must believe that this situation can breed nothing except brutality and pain for the growing nightmare of a desolate and inconsolable world, devoid of hope, passion, and spirit. What we must do is awaken the sleeping consciousness; saving the earth before everything else is swallowed and perishes due to affixation.

The seers say, "Peace be with you," the refrain is always "And also with you." What more can we wish for than to assuage the consciousness and gnawing appetite? We shuffle off to our protective circles of isolation and safety thinking that we have escaped. We let out a mournful gasp and shudder that we do not have to endure the ignominious harshness and bitterness of that world. In this state of awareness we shirk both responsibility and connection. There is no tomorrow for the world's starving orphans, and we're content to slumber at peace with our full bellies and conviction that we are chosen, special, and privileged.

Our dreams carry us away from this earthly morass to a place of refuge and at once, solicitude for the condemned as though this way of life for the majority of the earth's citizens was a fantasy concocted by a piece of undigested chocolate pudding still clinging to our rotund esophagus. We expel a satisfied belch, while rolling over and turning away from the sight and confidence. When we open our eyes, all of this unfortunate phantom will have vanished in the air as a wisp of fog in the misty dawn.

All too well understanding the inevitable that most sentient beings will be sacrificed for our safety and well being, we yawn and stretch like a tabby on its throne.

--Submitted by: Randel Loeb, Denver, Colorado