radical druid Posts

The point would be of course to keep going. After all to let such a talent go to waste would be so much worse than seeing it die young. Live fast, die young, and leave a beautiful annuity. How much better could it be? It’s almost nepotism in reverse. You get to hate your parents by making them famous. Think of how much energy that takes up. How many other really useful things you could be doing, some maybe also a little beneficial? Who knows? The possibilities are limitless.

There’s no shame in a little profit. Even in a pure bartering system there’s allowance for that. Everybody knows that somebody’s getting a better deal. The difference between ideal and actual capitalism is that in one case, each party thinks it’s them that won the deal, and in the other case, both parties think the other side won. They of course would both say that for both sides to be happy about that, either way, is socialism. But let sleeping dogs lie, I say.

So you keep going. Always something to prove to somebody, after all. Stuff upper lip. Someone is always going to find a yardstick that someone else just casually left lying around. These things happen by chance, right? No way you’re basing your conduct on some wildly pejorative control based stereotype used to prevent actual human connection. That would be some high level mind control shit, right? That’d cost a few Teslas, wouldn’t it?

It’s not wrong to say that’s not much of a point. That’s fair. That tenuous bit of wispy possibility nonsense is not a solid foundation for any kind of social improvement project, be it political, educational, motivational, vocational, spiritual, or correctional. But it’s something. If you can identify a touchstone in today’s world that everyone recognizes as the same thing, regardless of how differently it may symbolize or be manifested as something(s) quite more or at least more manifest, then you’ve really got something, haven’t you?

Not sure what that something is, but I think it has something to do with keeping on. Darwin suggested that natural selection provides an organically motivated means for limiting the overwhelming, exuberant, explosive, and completely self-absorbed energy that any species feels just upon realizing it is alive. The law of the jungle. Not actually the law of the jungle, but how a non jungle dwelling white man saw a system where he might not always win. That’s where laws come from, you know.

It’s like that old question the Shadow used to ask, “Who knows what Evil lurks in the hearts of men?”

Evil is in your mind. And it gets on your tongue. Then it gets in somebody’s ear. Then it’s in another mind. And another mouth. Then in somebody’s fist.

Or you could just spit it out.

Nothing is not an option. Nothing is what’s left if you make the wrong choice. It’s all that’s left either way. But losing it isn’t that big a deal.

Nothing lives forever. Everything is nothing. Nothing is everything.

That’s why you keep on keeping on. Because what else you got to do?

© 2026, John Litzenberg. All rights reserved.

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I never do what I want, that’s such an obvious reason. That makes everything that you want come and go like the seasons.

It doesn’t matter sometimes whether you’re coming or going. You either fight with the current or end where the river is flowing.

Sometimes I want to believe in what you’re selling, and other times I’m correcting your spelling,

but at some point it could all go either way. And if it does, well, who am I to say?

I never say what I mean, so that’s why I took up singing. Maybe there’s more than that, but that’s all the baggage that I’m bringing.

You only hear what I say, but that’s not a conversation. And without a connection, anyway, not even good vibrations.

Now maybe your kind of trauma and mine aren’t the same, but that’s the same water under different names

And all of it is wet in its own way. And if it isn’t, who am I to say?

19 APR 2026

© 2026, John Litzenberg. All rights reserved.

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Between the past that lingers on
and that not quite yet happened time
we call the future, but it’s not,
we plan and fret and carry on
as if all time were just a thing
we use to measure out, by spoon,
more ways to waste this precious life.

We live in shadows, then and yet,
because we choose not to forget
nor let the world unfold unless
we somehow guarantee success.

Between the past we cannot shake
and what we fear may come to pass,
the simple, straight, and direct now
is lost to celebrations of our sorrow.
Time is not a ribbon.
It is not a frozen frame of film
from some great movie of our lives.
To watch it that way is to destroy the camera.

We live in shadows, was and could,
because we think we must, and should,
control the way that life proceeds,
despite our thoughts, our dreams, our deeds.

17 APR 2026

© 2026, John Litzenberg. All rights reserved.

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It is what it seems to be OR it isn’t what it seems to be.

One of those seemingly diametric expressions of reality perception defines [and is the underlying fundamental truth of everything that ever was, is, or will be of] EVERY religion, philosophy, strategy, personality, catfish, con artist, politician, lobbyist, online persona, person in the mirror, and person YOU think that is.

That’s why I HATE the phrase, “It is what it is.”

Because YOU got you there. Ain’t nothing but your sweet, young, innocent, and satisfied [not “self-satisfied”, because some people think at birth you don’t immediately identify a separate Self until it is imprinted upon you by the next nearest living thing] self, hanging out and hanging on and taking it all in and processing it while you sleep. Plus all the decisions you made, every damned foolish you should have known better leapt before you looked choice (whether you think it was deliberate or not, because we all know deserve’s got nothing to do with) in your mad, lucky, never boring and always unpredictable life.

Shit, we all have SO much baggage. And the truth is, it doesn’t all come in on the first trip from the car. In fact, there’s some still in the trunk. And at your mama’s house. And in that storage unit you started paying for in your late teens. Maybe not Hannibal Lecter level stuff, but regardless of the physical space it takes up, it wastes much more area in your brain.

And whatever IT is, it ain’t that. Another reason I hate it is what it is. It’s not just a cop out, a way to shift the focus and blame away from what should have been you accepting your responsibility instead of abdicating it. Like “you can’t fight City Hall.” Completely and utterly self-defeating. Because if YOU can’t, who can? And if it’s just don’t or won’t, it’s a slow slippery decline to the ethical torpor of shouldn’t, wouldn’t, and couldn’t.

Not just that, though theoretically that should be enough.

It’s a lie.

That’s why I hate “it is what it is,” particularly the offhand, seriocomic, optimistically fatalist way most folks who fondle this expression tend to like it served.

So limiting. It is. It’s never, never, never, ever what you THINK it is. It doesn’t need your permission, imagination, authority, belief, faith, education, domination, subordination, inclination, dedication, participation OR perspiration.

That’s what it means to be. But being is only the beginning. The hard part comes next.

But it ain’t all that either. Because it’s not some Sartre-laced dichotomy between Being – and/or – Nothingness.

Everything is nothing. That is, everything is sacred – or nothing is. And there’s a lot of it out there.

Watch your step.

Like Johnny Winter quipped in the song Dallas, there’s so much shit going on around here you’re bound to step in some.

10 APR 2026

© 2026, John Litzenberg. All rights reserved.

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We always say we the people are going to see it done, right?

That’s because it’s so almost deliberately vague.

Every raging fire needs a single spark, any reader of Canetti’s #CrowdsAndPower could tell you that. So who exactly is it, this time? Is it you? Because sadly knowing my own limitations it’s not me. No balance of strategy and epater le bourgeoise. But it has to be someone specific. Must be. And they have to be manifestable in meatspace. But I’m not sure I’ve ever met them, and I’ve been around a while. Not that age is some great badge or indication or validation of maturity, wisdom, or any kind of intellectual or emotional growth whatsoever. But as a friend and I joked the other day, “Age may be only a number. But it’s a magic number.”

Take that as you will. Not like you’re wanting, needing, demanding, or otherwise considering my own permission. Everyone thinks what they want to think. The only thing everybody REALLY thinks is they are the final arbiter of taste opinion fashion absolution redemption out there. Yeah, we all know a few, right?

So we definitely don’t want to hand things over to THOSE people. Ever notice how you probably only ever met one of them in person, and all you learned in that encounter was how much you despise the part of you that they remind you of, right?

Getting personal (with someone else’s person) is serious business. It shouldn’t be YOUR business. Hell if you want the anarchist response, it’s isn’t ANYBODY’S business. We’re all just taking care of it as both it and we age into obscurity. But I digress (whenever possible). It’s the journey after all, not the destination that’s important.

That’s why we say “the people”. So it’s not our individual, personal responsibility or duty. When you blame everybody, nothing changes. Ever. Except body counts.

© 2026, John Litzenberg. All rights reserved.

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Let’s not forget the west is not the south, any more than the north is the east. They’re all geographic conveniences, mere topographic contrivances. So they really are all the same. They don’t define anything except temporarily useful illusions. Whatever that means. One’s palimpsest is personal. Or are we talking about people?

© 2026, John Litzenberg. All rights reserved.

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