You know, I've sported a stealth tin foil hat for the majority of my life now. You take the shapes you need to to navigate this labyrinth. But I'm tired of accepting the stigma given those who question authority, official narratives, and complacency in the face of clear corruption. Everyone is aware on some level that we have deep problems on this planet, regardless of how aggressive their denial or how oblivious they are through circumstance. I'm less concerned with blame and more interested in solutions. From now on I'll wear my crazy like a crown.

A lot of people think all the high strangeness flickering across their screens popped out of a Russian data bomb in election season, but this goes back as long as people. International intrigue, political theater, blackmail and bogeymen are just the ripples on the surface of very deep water. These things are symptoms. Conspiracy is an emergent property of civilization, or at least, this one. Curiosity is innate among the living. The streams cross for many, more all the time. Call it what you want, it's here to stay. This is the time of unveiling. The world's closets are having a skeleton liquidation, and everything must go! Even the status quo can't avoid it, though the main stream is full of red herrings.

In these post-truth times of fake news and faker news and pageantry and public ritual, it's all too much for just about anyone, probably by design. Weary folk don't have the juice to fight until their backs hit the wall. It's no wonder then that people escape ever deeper into the portable data-mining virtual reality portals we call "phones." It's no wonder so many people are wearing their stress on their sleeves, in their voice, in the eyes that won't meet yours. Once you start to see the bones of this world, you don't get to stop. I can't blame people for opting out.

I've accepted that we're sleepwalking as a species, with our dreams being harmonized to corporate interests. Some of us do fall awake long enough to see the weather on the horizon and add it to the storehouse of situational awareness. Sometimes all you can do is know, and do your best to avoid adding to whatever phantom showed itself for an instant. Possibly because of a history of insomnia and a comical number of near death and baffling spiritual experiences I've had a foot in both worlds a long time now. It's old hat to me, though even a seasoned crackpot like myself is shocked at the currents that are flirting with visibility. One gets a certain vertigo when dots grow together in the clear light.

I came from the days when one's introduction to the fringe came in the form of being curious in dusty used bookstores and prowling the text based ancestors of the Internet over land lines and I'll tell you, I do long for that innocence and simplicity at times. Now there are things like communities encircling the pursuit of truths, but in the little corners where people whisper or shout about what they find between the lines, we're in the days of AI shilling, hashtag erasure, YouTube jail and Google memory holes. The hive is aggressive and does not appreciate autonomy, despite what it might tell you in car commercials.

There's too much data being sprayed at us and collected on us. Demographics have been replaced by psychographics. The old pillars of the press are riddled with cracks. The new delivery systems have different agendas. There's too much news, fake or otherwise (it's a trick question). People are exhausted, and can barely keep up with the omnidirectional information overload. The signal to noise ratio is painfully bad.

The alphabet studios seem married to the alphabet agencies and the strain you hear in the voice of opposition comes from the choke chain around its throat. We keep trying to become the media by producing rather than consuming, but the mold is really stubborn in this tenement. Since you could set type and put ink on a page some stiff was ready with a pail of whitewash. There's always a new form of the old game, which is always to squelch all opposition to the narrative. These are strange days in what could become the slave new world if we keep hitting snooze on the consciousness clock. As long as people have been trying to figure out the shape of things behind the curtain there have been stubborn pests: disinformation campaigns, fear mongering, and people making a buck off dread.

But what's also been here the whole time is a that still small voice that waits for us to shut up and hear it, that gentle pulse of guiding light toward hope. And I see it in the damnedest places these days and I love to catch it working through us. The meme wars are real, and ancient, and will be won in good time. The shadowsphere is aging poorly, and it's running out of tricks to pull. With every generation comes a population of mutants upon which the old trance won't hold for long.

Whatever happened to us as individuals to re-awaken the thrust and thirst for truth, it seems the Great Work has been taken back from the would be architects who corrupted it. It seems it's being crowdsourced to us, the new eyes and ears of The Search. This time, it's spreading to other generations, new populations, and it is finding its way around the familiar traps.

Perhaps this turn in the great game the veils will be shredded for good. Perhaps this time, all the walls between us will come tumbling down at last. What world will we build then? It's hard to guess. But at least we can see what has been built around us, and do our best to learn as we transcend the damage done.

I am driven to know, even if I never can. I went deep into many rabbit holes that will be familiar to some of you. At times I was overcome with amusement at the absurdity of what I found and at other times got very sad and very scared at what I found there, pregnant as it was with the gravity of unspeakable apparent truth. But in these pitch dark tunnels, I found that I could see in a new way. I had discovered how to read the signs and symbols by my own light, to do my best to discern and decipher.

I wager so have you. Here we are in a domain that allows us to compare our views. What a time! We have all come from different directions and seek to uncover paths that do not always cross. Even when we employ our better natures and avoid petty conflicts, discord is sown to disrupt or for malice's sake. But this won't work forever. We don't need to be the same to work together. We can stick apart and compare notes. It may be the best way to work around the old traps.

We all take turns being the darkness as we look for the light. But we can't allow ourselves to stay divided. We all have some pieces of wisdom to trade. We are all here to help each other. As we cross paths and build maps, I hope we will collaborate rather than compete. Best to each of you and to us all. Keep digging, keep pulling weeds, and keep growing this garden. Day must always dance with night, but out of darkness cometh light!