At the end
The wealthy
Had no shoes
Shoeless, like the rest

At the end
Everyone will learn
That souls are not soles
Never so easily cleaned

At the end
Everyone trudges
Like workers in Metropolis
No longer awake

At the end
In the deeper sleep
Dreams are called
But no longer come

At the end
Everyone wants to avoid it
All want another chance
Too late now, too late

Forty-five years now since Jackson Browne penned his visionary song, Before the Deluge. Year after year it becomes more piercing, more trenchant, more a lament for our time.

Listen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SX-HFcSIoU

Here are the lyrics:

Before the Deluge
Jackson Browne

Some of them were dreamers
And some of them were fools
Who were making plans and thinking of the future
With the energy of the innocent
They were gathering the tools
They would need to make their journey back to nature
While the sand slipped through the opening
And their hands reached for the golden ring
With their hearts they turned to each other's hearts for refuge
In the troubled years that came before the deluge
Some of them knew pleasure
And some of them knew pain
And for some of them it was only the moment that mattered
And on the brave and crazy wings of youth
They went flying around in the rain
And their feathers, once so fine, grew torn and tattered
And in the end they traded their tired wings
For the resignation that living brings
And exchanged love's bright and fragile glow
For the glitter and the rouge
And in a moment they were swept before the deluge
Let the music keep our spirits high
Let the buildings keep our children dry
Let creation reveal its secrets by and by, by and by
When the light that's lost within us reaches the sky
Some of them were angry
At the way the earth was abused
By the men who learned how to forge her beauty into power
And they struggled to protect her from them
Only to be confused
By the magnitude of her fury in the final hour
And when the sand was gone and the time arrived
In the naked dawn only a few survived
And in attempts to understand a thing so simple and so huge
Believed that they were meant to live after the deluge
Let the music keep our spirits high
Let the buildings keep our children dry
Let creation reveal it's secrets by and by, by and by
When the light that's lost within us reaches the sky

Professor Jam Bendell's paper, "Deep Adaptation: A Map for Navigating Climate Tragedy," after extensive examination of the most recent research, concluded that "collapse is inevitable." His paper was refused publication because such a conclusion was "irresponsible." Bendell has instead made his paper freely available to everyone. He argues that the inevitability of collapse now makes business as usual--even the business of trying to mitigate the many dimensions of climate change--is no longer what is essential. Rather, what is essential is what we do, individually and collectively, about the consequences of collapse. There is essentially no literature on this reality, a reality denied at all levels.

Here is the link to Professor Bendell's first contribution to this urgent reality: http://www.lifeworth.com/deepadaptation.pdf

Catherine Ingram's stone cold sober essay, "Facing Extinction," is a valuable follow-up to Rupert Reed's "This Civilization is Finished." A long time friend of Leonard Cohen, she fleshes out Cohen's song line, "I've seen the future, Brother. It is murder." Like Dahr Jamail, she is a truth teller, and does not hide behind "hopium." This is an essential piece to take in at a slow pace, to reflect on, and to find resonance in the deeper truth of what we are facing.
http://www.catherineingram.com/facingextinction/?fbclid=IwAR3jenfnSVfa7ckSiixrppwVNsWNpnu36aHQcMt7NckRAZHr_As0jS91IYI

This lecture, by Rupert Read, is essential to take in and digest. Here is the link:

Dreams, Bones, & the Future: Queries & Speculations by Russell Lockhart and Paco Mitchell will be published and available on Amazon shortly. We thought you might like to see the cover.

Lost in reverie, helped along by the amber light playing dapple with the rustling leaves, enjoying the morning sun along the wooded trail. A jay screeching near by breaks the spell and I see an old man, bent and supported by a cane that looks older than his eighty or so years, approaching me. 

"Good morning," I say, smiling and nodding. 

"Is it?" he replies in gruff and grouchy tones.

"Well, it has been for me I must say." My smile continues to meet his frown. 

"Well, still, you must paint the red sun." 

"What?" I am thrown off balance by this sudden change in what had been a simple exchange of greetings even if a bit off-putting on his part. I have no idea what to say. 

"But why?" I blurted out.

"So, you can see what is coming and so others can see," he said. And then, "You must promise to do so."

I closed my eyes and looked down trying to make sense of the stranger's command and request. I couldn't make any sense of it at all. I looked up and opened my eyes.

As I was waking up from this dream, an image of a red sun presented itself and though I had not promised in the dream, I decided to paint the image. 

The man was gone. I looked in each direction. Nowhere to be seen. He had disappeared. 

So I could see.

So you could see. 

Here is my first effort to capture the image as I saw it.

Shoshana Zuboff's

The age of surveillance capitalism: the fight for a human future at the new frontier of power

Bruce Schneier wrote that "surveillance is the business model of the internet." Now Zuboff has laid out the details and the implications. You have no idea how deeply entangled you are, we all are. Will write more about this on my blog soon at http://ralockhart.com/WP

The excellence of
time is unremarked
amid the din of
"not enough"
"too much"
"too fast"
"too slow"

The secret of time
lies in its absence
in its lack of mathematics
in its silence
in its going nowhere
while everyone chases it
or, in fear, flees it

John Woodcock has posted (on Facebook) a significant response to my dream poem, "Stepping Into A Forest of Dreams." (See below) I have responded here and on Facebook (see below).

 Russ, I am not sure if I said this last year: there is, as you know, enormous desperate efforts going on across disciplines to find the unifying symbol, the Sophia, the one-ness, interconnectedness, etc. But overwhelmingly this work is theoretical, ie researchers are looking for the desperately needed connectedness conceptually. Your dream is something else entirely. You PERCEIVE the Rhizome, what abstract theory calls, "the Field". The ground is transparent "solid but crystal clear". It doesn't feel the same as Hillman's "seeing through" at all. A clue is that it is "revealed to you". Not a "looking at in order to find". Revelatory! You are granted a vision of something alive, there all the time, underground. What kind of consciousness is this? Is this the secret to an actual experience of what we crave? Much food for thought. Thanks, Russ, j

Hi John. Thank you for your reflections. Yes, “revelatory: is the precise characterization. And, I agree, it is not the same as Hillamn’s “seeing through.” You ask “what kind of consciousness is this?” As you know, it is reflexive to consider the dreamer in the dream as “equal” to the dreamer’s ego or to the dreamer all together. I have never been happy with this equation. I consider the figure in the dream that is “me” (whether imaged or just awareness) to be as “constructed” by the dream maker (for want of a better term) as anything else in the dream. So the “me” in the dream is a “semblance” of me (in the more archaic sense of this word) and I can generally identify with this “me” without a second thought. But second thoughts are in order here. The revelation of the dream and its numinous effect occurs to the dream “me” which I then remember upon waking. But my ego consciousness has no direct experience of these things as the “me” did in the dream. All this now flows from memory. When we see ourselves in a photograph, some part of our waking ego reaction disavows this “semblance’ in the picture. And certainly, we do not say, “Oh! There’s my ego.” My point is that to answer your question about what kind of consciousness this is, I want to break down the automatic assumption that the dream “me” is my ego consciousness. It is not. So, in this sense, it is a way to open up the “secret” to an actual experience we crave. It is the dream “me” we need more connection with both for the experience of the futurity of dreams as well as the fictive purpose of dreams. Our waking consciousness is not nearly enough aware of this.