The Quiet Mule Prophecies

I feel it is time to part from my usual predictions of the future and romantic pondering of the present for now. All of that gives me a headache. Today I would like to relate you some of the past, although it gives me an even bigger headache.

As I’ve said previously, before I settled down in the forest with Bakey Man as my transcriber and assistant in living, I was a journalist in the human world. For reasons I will not delve into here, at this time I looked very much like a human and could pass as one during everyday interactions and business transactions. However, if I happened to take off my pants anyone in the room would realize that I was indeed not human, so as a result I was resigned to be celibate. This was unfortunate, because there were many women on the newspaper crew that were sexually pleasing on multiple levels.

On a daily basis I would travel liberally to different parts of the United States and conduct interviews, attend events and observe them, and engage in research at prominent institutions. I would then, like any reporter, compile the data I had assembled, and organize it into a satisfactory report or article. Numerous people liked my writing, numerous people thought I was a genius. But as I began to look more and more like a donkey, I had to give up the profession. My staff at the paper begged and pleaded, but I tightened my hood and waved them goodbye.

In my long career I had written on a plethora of topics, but most often my writing centered around what was to me a crucial issue: fire and smoke safety. I had discovered what the situation was like in many American homes. Five or six people, living under one roof, with often no properly assembled fire alarms. Often a few people in the house were smokers as well, and a good number of basements had improper ventilation for their wood stoves.

But it was no real loss for me. By the time my face had changed over fully to that of a mule, I really had no sentimental attachment to humans and their homes. Let them burn if they like ciggies and leave them out, let the smoke rise and choke the lungs. Sprinkler systems are being built into homes right and left, and I just laugh. If I was out in the world today I would be writing a large, generous article on these sprinkler systems, praising them for their safety innovations. But now that I sit planted at a distance and see the home with its ludicrous shrub bushes and fence, I don’t care if it burns to the ground. That’s what you get. That’s just nature bringing it down to the natural state. The dirt is the only real home for me.

What is dirt? This is a substance that has constantly eluded me. Only when I have my head snuffed deep in a pit of it do I even barely understand it. When I am immersed in it, the dirt going up the nose and into the system, the distinction between the living, breathing organism and the decomposing matter dissapears. I rise up fully satisfied.

But, as with all good feelings, this always ends up going away. As soon as I percieve the brown clumps with my eyes I start inferencing about it’s properties, it’s purpose, it’s concentration of lime and acid. I can’t help it. I am an analytical being. But perhaps I am just forcing myself to be. If I really wanted to I could lay still beneath the ground, and the worms would trail into my mouth and eventually land in my stomach, and my pores would absorb all the water that came down from the skies and soaked the dirt, and that would be that, nature would take care of me and I would subsist as a being, as a harmonious part of all the other beings and non-beings.

No, I am sorry to say I cannot voluntarily choose this way of life. I can never trust nature, it has betrayed my trust, by letting these humans go astray. It would be alright if only bits and pieces of this earth were on the inevitable road to destruction, but I am afraid that it is the vast majority. I must oppose that elusive force.

I will do it, brothers and sisters. I will do it and you can all rest. Go to sleep in the grass. Climb the trees! Suck on the berries and swim with the water currents! It is time to relax. There is no other advice I can give.

Good evening, friends and enemies. I hope you have not forgotten my function as a prophet after such lengthy introductions to my life and philosophy. Although I do enjoy talking about myself, the main purpose of this blog is to make the reader aware of the fate of human existence in the future. N0, I am not a born prophet…I acquired my skill as one acquires any skill…hard, hard work and determination. These are overrated traits, but they’re useful for a man such as I, with so much responsibility. (Sigh) I really have to stop calling myself a man.

Thus, this blog serves a function like no other. The fact that I am using this as the sole way in which I communicate my visions of the future to the masses makes it an extremely important publication. In all honesty, this may be the only blog that actually matters.

I receive my prophetic visions through a device known as a commercial stereoscope. (In common terminology, a View-Master) I insert the slides of various different topics, and then snap the device very quickly, spending only a few moments on each image. Eventually, this rapid succession, if done correctly, produces a window into time from which I can garner the potential pathways open to man.

Unfortunately, my view of the future is limited to the approximate area on earth displayed in the View-Master, so I have to go through multiple sets of slides in order to develop an adequate understanding of what I see, and arrive at implications for what is to come. Bakey Man kindly scanned a slide that I use often, at the Internet Cafe in which he earns a meager portion of his living, pictured below. Interestingly, the sets that work most often in opening up a portal are “Contemporary Italian Figurines” and “Architectural Landmarks of New England,” so you can guess how limited my viewpoint can be.

Although I have a number of Prophecies that should be brought to light, I want to begin by revealing to you my most general interpretation, and then we’ll get more specific from there. As far as I can tell, the progress of humanity has in store for it two mutually exclusive conclusions.  I see a future ahead of us without time, or at least where time is not taken seriously, a new age where people finally come to terms with Einstein’s theories. So “conclusion” in this sense means a final end to time and progress.

The first vision I have of this timeless world is one of harmony and selfless cooperation, where humans live without consideration of the future in unchanging togetherness, with each other and nature. Aside from the inevitability of death (which wouldn’t concern these people much anyway), this scenario would much resemble the Christian idea of Heaven, without the relinquishing of individuality for absorption into an all powerful god-thing.

The other vision is too one of unconscious nothingness, but on the other end of the spectrum. I see human life as being total mundane misery, with minimal interaction between members of the species. Everyone exists as self-serving separate entities that interact with others as “objects in the shape of humans,” as the philosopher Brian Hioe put it. Being that the natural elements that worked together to create conditions for life will be destroyed, similar structures and systems will be artificially manufactured to make up for this loss of balance. Like the former prospect, time will cease to be a mode of perspective utilized by the human mind, but in this case it will have negative consequences. After endless hours of staring at screens, this ability will disappear, and no one will have the foresight to prevent increasing amounts of suffering that people inflict on themselves. Again inaccurately quoting Brian Hioe, “What the enablers of this future want to do is stop change.” This scenario resembles the Christian notion of hell. As we can see with the current trend of global warming, the earth is already preparing for this outcome.

Some may see these visions as overly simplistic Utopian and Dystopian renderings of the future, the first being too idealistic and the other as being too pessimistic. However, I did observe some slight variations. For example, the second proposed future may not be dreary, because there will still be a sun. Apparently it takes too much effort to destroy it and replace it with something man-made. As for the happy “ending,” it seems to me that Blogs will cease to exist, because there will be no immature insecurity to fuel the effort to write and publish them. In which case, you know what, don’t do anything to prevent the progression towards existential hell. I need an audience.

Last night I stayed up until I was completely exhausted. I was mulling over in my mind my life thus far, and strained myself in doing so. The memory of my time in the human world is fading rapidly every day I spend in the forest, so it takes a great deal of effort on my part to try to remember it, although for much of my history I did consult Bakey Man on the more specific details. His memories are generally unaffected by living in the woods, because he so often ventures out of here to work for money that he keeps a strong grasp on his humanness. This is not to say he is not becoming a wild, highly sentient creature like me, because every day he is losing his attachment and association with the outside world, it’s just that his remembrance of his former self remains untouched.

You can say Bakey Man is becoming a replica of me without the depression and with more childlike innocence. This is very good. I wish more people and animals would become like me. I think the result would be a very productive, worthwhile society. In my mind, the depression is part of this. Out of the mud…springs the bud. The bud of a flower. On the other hand, if Bakey Man managed to summon enough willpower and intelligence to craft a new world, it would inevitably fall apart because he does not possess the ability to see beyond his own happy nose.

One must recognize that the evil of humanity sprouted from the peaceful mountains and mounds of dirt. It is important that one must always be on the lookout for that which is unfavorable coming out of the goodness, which is what is bound to happen, unless the creative forces of the long-gone, lonely rejects oppose this bitter cycle. You see, I love all this, the trees that surround me and all, but I am always on guard. Nothing can be trusted, and it is my purpose to not trust anything. If only a small amount of people can persist in this way, in harmonious resistance to all of existence, the rest can live in utter happiness. Anyway, that is how I see things.

Bakey Man does not even understand these very words that I am making him transcribe. His eyebrows twitch in obvious confusion, although he tries to hide it. I’m sorry for making you so self conscious, but I am only using you as an example. You are a good friend and servant.

So you see, it is easy for me to be resigned to living in agony, because I realize that this is why I am alive. No, the “universe” or “nature” did not inject this meaning into me. I bred it into my very own bones. That is the beauty of the unknown realm; individuality actually exists, trust me.

When I last laid eyes upon this sad world, it was the fall. All news from the outside world, the Americas in which I live, and the lands and oceans beyond, made me retire deeper and deeper into myself, for it was all so ignorant. The men and women that populate the land, those who live in the houses, and the rooms in the high-rise buildings, they all hope for some big, final death to come and release them from their frustration. Everyone hopes to die; it is something they would go through together, the last semblance of community that their cowardly hearts would aim for. To kill yourself, with no one else to accompany you into the great chasm, is sad and pathetic and looked down upon. But to die with the rest of the human race is acceptable…then the blame is watered down so no one feels like a fool.

But what can I say? I am also a coward. I am afraid of many things, most things in fact. The only world I can stand is one without other deep thoughts, without intelligence. I am happy to be the only one in this forest who knows what a lawnmower is. The birds think that the grass just gets cut, and that there’s no problem with this. I see that the grass that grows long in the prairie is the real grass. How do I know what is real? It cannot be put into words. And that is why I will forever be regarded as a crazy.

But, honestly, living in this natural landscape, taking pleasure in the dirt and the blood and the nakedness, I can’t say I am able to truly commune with the other animals, even the plants. Perhaps this is why I am still a dejected soul, even though I see the heavens surrounding me. The truth is, I have been tainted by humanity. If another mule walks in to this forest, I can guarantee you they will not like me. I am an animal with a human mind. And because of this hindrance, I will never be free.

I complain, I whine, I look at the blue sky, I remember that I’m a complainer, that only stupid people complain, I should really say nothing at all and accept it, but once I forget this, I am back to the thoughts again. I complain louder, and I get rowdier than before; sometimes I even scare every animal in my vicinity away. I don’t want to say there’s nothing I can do. But that’s all that comes to my mind.

If you have read this long, there must be some way in which I connect with you. Although I can’t stop hating these men and women, (reading their blogs, sipping coffees) I figure there must be somebody like me. You know, when I worked as a journalist in the “real” world, I found that the people that most related to me, my worldview, they were the quiet people. The losers, the intro-spectives, the depressed, the lonely assholes. I write this blog for you, hoping there is still something left.

Honestly, where does the forest end and the city begin? It is a notion I am constantly struggling with.