She died of Pride.

She died of Pride. This is truly a Green Zone story. Having been Born and Raised inside a Green Zone all her life, this was a Woman who had never known hunger. There can be a nasty Haughtiness Streak in the Zoners in the fact that they Live Well as others - Lessers - suffer, and this lady apparently had Rotted Away to the point to where this was all she had left. She had to live Better than others - or she was nothing. Or so she Believed.

Unholiness, she could not accept. When a Black War came to her zone and she was left out on the Wrong Side of it, her Way of Life disappeared forever. Yet she still looked down on the starving Outlanders she now lived among, despising their Hunger and loathing their Dirtiness. Their Wretchedness, she had always told herself, was the result of their own Failings. Her Comforts, on the other hand, were the result of her own Moral Superiority. Or so she Believed.

So she refused the Cramped and Ugly shelters, the food centers with Forced Preachings and disdained the Certainly Immoral handouts offered. So she died keeping up Appearances, clinging to a self-deception of Holiness. Had she chosen to live, her Tragedy in fact would have been a Golden Opportunity for change. But to her, that was Death. Or so she believed.

But maybe we aren't so Different from Her. Maybe this Whole Planet is dying of Pride.

The Twilight Soldier’s Ballad

When I saw this poem I thought it really spoke of our twilight times. I'm going mad I tell you! Mad!

"Screaming shells and screaming yells,
"Our black smoke fills the sky.
"I’ve lived through a thousand hells,
"Now horror gets me high.

"Apocalyptic thunder
"Becomes my only friend.
"Give glory to our blunder,
"We’re coming to the End.

"Man’s endless battles raging
"To see who’ll be the last.
"Insanity we’re waging
"To keep life of the past.

"I worship holy metal;
"Hardens my soul to steel.
"I mock the flower’s petal;
"Her softness I can’t feel.

"Compression and oppression
"Torment my splitting head.
"You’ll see my glad expression
"When you see me lying dead.

"God, I love unholy war!
"For this my life was bent.
"Better just to be a whore,
"For tears are my lament.

"This world, I see no future;
"So let’s ring in its death!
"For my heart, there’s no suture;
"I dare not waste a breath!

"The Hell in me surrounds me,
"My Chaos in my eyes.
"This life is what confounds me,
"My hopes I do despise.

"So join me in my desire!
"Kill the dreams of others!
"And we’ll set this world on fire!
"Never be as brothers!"

Some call this the New Age of Black Riders.

"Thundering Hooves of Doom
"Prowling through the night!
"In Terror they assume
"Your life has no right!"

"Black Rider's eyes hold
"No consternation!
"For it's in your death
"They see salvation!"
-Old World poem
Some call this the New Age of Black Riders. In the Old World, infamous Black Riders were the Sanctioned Soulless Scalpels of times we now call Backwards and Savage. A knock in the night and your life was over. The Wailing of those times still ring in our ears. The mere mention of These Beings conjures up a portrait of pure evil. No one ever wants to live with Such Beasts ever again.

And yet, they're back.

The Power Lords are rotting from an Inner Viral Fear. Their Comfy Spots well cocooned in the Green Zones are in danger if Change is indeed mandated. And this they Cannot tolerate. Despite all our Desperate Self-Propaganda, there is a growing sense of a Dire Outcome. And this has brought a gnawing Dissent. Maybe that's the real reason the Black Riders went away: we were all so unified in our opinion they simply were not needed. But maybe we aren't so Unified after all. And maybe we haven't Grown as much as we think.

So now there's a New Fear of Speaking Out. Most people are with the Power Lords and their Ways, so they remain Silent on the return of the Evil Menace. The Persecuted are only a small number right now, but that's how it all started before. Soon, everyone's suspect and the Hell Of Yore will have returned. But Dissent is not the true Enemy here. It's our own Guilt.

And the funny part is, even the Dissenters aren't proposing any actual Change.

Today I sat on the Edge of the World and gazed to the End of Time

"I don't know why it's the Way it is, I just know It Is."
-an Outlander when I asked him why we have to run the planet the way we do
Today I sat on the Edge of the World and gazed to the End of Time, and asked: What if?

I cannot live in the Green Zones but I can visit them. And in seeing their Places Unspoiled, I'm reminded of the magical beauty of this planet of ours. How an Intelligent Design permeates from the atom to the end of the Universe. All this time we've been searching for Paradise, and it's been right under our noses all along. As I sit here watching the Gentle Glistening of the water, I feel our Maker speak an Ancient Dream to me. And I wonder: Are we going to fuck this up beyond all repair?

Are we going to turn Day into Night and Joy into Fright? Will we continue on until this world simply has nothing left to give? And if so, what then? Do we die a death Unimaginable? As we wantonly destroy and consume, we place ourselves on a path with No Escape.

I don't know about you guys, but I want to live!

Darkness is the new hip. And Death is cool.

Darkness is the new hip. And Death is cool. But it wasn't always like this. During the Golden Age of our Blossoming, our songs and our art were about the coming Utopia. We spoke of our Dreams and the New Way of living to end all suffering. But once we found out the Price for our dreams - the abandonment of the Profit System - we turned our back on them.

So now those who once danced with Flowers now dance with the same exuberance for Death.To them it's all the same: celebrate the Wind - no matter which way it blows. Our songs and art glorify power, the "necessity" for evil and a disdain for Reality. No one speaks of the Old Dreams anymore.

We have a Shared Secret: our way of life is not viable. And this Silence is dragging us into a dark Hole. There are those who point to the despair on our planet, to fixes that need to be made and how the System could be made good. No one wants the Good Life to end. But never is it mentioned that Profits should not come before our lives. For they say a place of Darkness must be preserved.

Seems we have made our own death Fashionable.

Editor's Note: It was a hell of hells.

Editor's Note:

It was a hell of hells. Unimaginable horror. The last entry really got to me when first I read it. I pictured myself in a time when insanity ruled the day and fealty to it was actually expected. I literally could see the author drowning in his self-described "sea of madness", surrounded by an ocean of unfeeling eyes. And as the feeling of being futureless descended upon the Alpha Centaurians their hearts only became harder. Theirs is a sorrow that echoes across time. If only we could communicate with other worlds as they approach the crisis time to show them just how real the danger is. But only through their fires may they be purified.

It's 2 AM and both moons are out here in No Man's Land.

It's 2 AM and both moons are out here in No Man's Land. I am not able to generate the profits to live in a Green Zone bubble. But I am allowed to work there which affords me the ability to live on the outskirts so I can still escape the feared life in the Outlands. Since I run into both Outlanders and Green Zoners, I pretend to be whomever I meet as there is so much resistence between the two. The Outlanders merely see the Greenies as hoarders of resources, refusing to share the wealth. Green Zoners see the Outlanders as animals whose only intent is to take without giving. How is the Harmony of survival to come out of that??

A Political Man got in my face and demanded to know my Positions and Goals. I told him my only goal was to be Human. "That's selfish!" he chastised. "It's self-seeking and does not serve the Greater Good! Profits must be maintained and you must choose your system!" So I asked him: If you're goal is not to be human, then what is it? It was then he told me I am too stupid to understand politics.

I am lost in a sea of madness. No port I pull in to is safe harbor. It's like being on a planet of fire. Where is safety when all things are consumed? I can buy no more time by running to another land. Yet, I know somewhere there's an answer to life on a Dying Planet.

No one seems resigned to Love.

The Black Wars are the Essence of War.

The Black Wars are the Essence of War. It's a Dead Warrior's dream come true: constant, endless strife until the end of time. In the war zones, Anarchy of the Beast reigns supreme. Overhead, the steady flow of brooding, grey cargo planes passes over day and night to feed the insatiable War Machine. Many are those who Profit from the Black Wars but war means never having your own home.

The Black Wars got their name from their Black hearted nature. There've been reports of soldiers crying while firing, recoiling at the very devastation they wreak. The fighters' suicide rates have skyrocketed. It's a cannibalistic War. As a Green Zone dies, it divides itself in half with the two sides fighting over the remaining resources. The half that wins is the new Green Zone - until it starts to run dry and the war starts all over again.

It's a surreal nightmare these times are. Children run laughing through lush parks in the Green Zone, children run screaming in terror in the war zones. I myself have spent time hiding from nearby skirmishes, watching wide-eyed as the Soldiers of Despair pass by. Afterwards, as I walk the battlefield with its rising, black smoke and sickening stench of Death, I think of the Dream Killers who orchestrate this hell and how happy they would be at such a sight.

The war from without reflects the war from within.