The Roar of Señor Volcán & the Conquer Lines of Creation
Part Two • At the summit of Santiaguito • What the Gods Didn't Tell us
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Santiaguito • By Matt Karsten • The Expert Vagabond
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Volcán Santiaguito erupts • by Steve Devas
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~~oo~~OO~~OO~~OO~~oo~~
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Art makes bearable
that which otherwise
cannot be endured
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~~oo~~OO~~OO~~OO~~oo~~
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Greetings my fellow free spirits!
¡Saludos mis compañeros espíritus libres!
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I left off the last chapter sitting on the lookout overlooking Volcán Santiaguito. Marty had just concluded the legend of Tecún Umán's last stand and now the second ash and steam eruption is about to begin. I've moved a few yards away to a small outcrop where, as well as being alone, I can get an uninterrupted view of the volcano as it begins its cauliflower billow of hot sulphurous smoke.
Before I continue I want to digress for a few moments. It's always difficult journaling the real-time course of events because I don't write on site. It often takes a while for me to get to my laptop with uninterrupted time at my disposal; which I need, because I'm a slow writer. Then there's research. I'm a glutton for Truth and sometimes it's as if some force, or an angel, grabs me by the hand and says, Steve, you have to read this. But that takes me out of the zone. It's hard to write after reading about Gaza.
I want to assure readers who have joined me in the last few weeks—hey, welcome guys!—that there is a point to this journaling and what seems like a slow detour round the summit of our end-point, which is the wholesale removal of the Anglo-American Ruling Classes.
I also want to tell you about a random café meeting I had a few days ago. But nothing is ever random because later I realised that Nancy is exactly why I write the Kionist Magicfesto.
Nancy is an old Berkeley activist. I ran into her at Rustic Bakery, our local fave café on Calle 7 (If you're ever in Xela, Bonny's soups and croissants are to die for!) The café is very small and it was full. Nancy came in and I had a space at my table so I offered her a seat. We exchanged names and in a few minutes I learnt that Nancy had sold her possessions and bought a caravan to live in her daughter's back yard up in Seattle. Other than her daughter and two young grandchildren she didn't know anyone else in Seattle. She disliked the cold and the rain and she was going to miss all her old Berkeley friends. This was her last visit to Guatemala; back in the eighties she'd been part of the free Nicaragua movement and had done peace vigils outside naval and military bases in the Bay Area. I told her I was an activist myself, that I wrote a Substack blog and that I took a big picture approach to power. I went on to suggest that what the Guatemalan military did to the Mayans in the eighties is essentially no different to what's going on in Gaza right now. Except that the Israelis are much more—
Stop, stop, she begged. Don't talk about Gaza. I'm over it. Shaking her head sadly, she told me: I've done all I can for the world. I can't take it any more. I can't bear the news. Let someone else do the work. Then she added, I'll be babysitting and walking my grandkids to school; that's all I care about now.
I knew Nancy would find joy with being around her young grandchildren but from the way she spoke it wasn't enough. The fire had gone out. I was looking into the sadness and despair of a burnt-out activist. After finding out the ages of her grandkids I smiled and left.
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Talk of Gaza brings us back to Tecún Umán. The line of connection between the Kʼicheʼ hero and the trigger happy IDF troops in Rafah is pervasive. It is a connection that is like the mighty Amazon, except it flows through the hands of men: a long river of barbarity with many tributaries that over the centuries have delivered riches to a few and suffering to many.
The mission of Fearless Arts and the Kionist Manifesto is to do what other writers do not. I am grateful to all the other truth researches out there; I couldn't do without them. But so far none have drawn all the threads together to deliver a comprehensive vision for how we remove Empire. Nor do they tell us what happens after that. This is why I stepped in. My vision is big and it takes us on a long journey. We too are like a great river; one that flows through the rainforest of the mind. There are many tributaries that flow into the main narrative and in these early days of writing we are getting used to the geography. I believe it is a beautiful vision and hope it will inspire you with Fiery Knowing. At that point we can get into more specific strategies about how we create Brevolution.
Fiery Knowing brings me back to the meeting with Nancy. I've told you before I do meetings with remarkable anybody and Nancy was no exception. I tried to inspire her, but I couldn't reach her. Which is okay. But she weighs on my heart, which is okay too. Her words live in me. And she reminds me of my mission: to bring hope, promise and Fiery Knowing to the shattered hearts of a collapsing world.
More and more I write with a powerful sense of hope in my heart. I'm happy; I can feel La Bella Futura in my bones. I'm certain we can win this thing. The point of these stacks is to try and give you the same hope too.
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As I breathed into the misty outpourings of Volcán Santiaguito I couldn't help thinking about the tragedy of Tecún Umán that Marty had just told us. What unfathomable karma deprived an entire continent of its land, its heritage and its liberty to a small band of bloodthirsty bootleggers?
On 20 February 1524 the Spanish and Kʼicheʼ armies met in a clash that sealed the fate of Southern México, later Guatemala, for the next five centuries. The Battle of El Pinar took place at Cantel, a small pueblo five miles west of our lookout. Ten thousand Kʼicheʼ warriors lost their lives.
On that awful day the gods deserted Tecún Umán. And Dessa Quetzal lost her voice.
The decisive victory by the handsome, swaggering and entirely ruthless Pedro Alvarado catapulted the Mayan tribes into five centuries of slavery along with a land appropriation that continues to this day.
Snaking over the same five hundred years of Henly-rowing Oxford-crowing European Enlightenment lies a conquer line of infamy. From Pedro Alvarado to Bibi Netanyahu its path, like that of a shot arrow, is as straight as its unerring accuracy is deadly.
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Santiaguito summit is surrounded by constant out-wreathings • By Steve Devas
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Santiaguito summit is surrounded by constant out-wreathings of white steam. As when water runs out of mud and rocks on a hill, so too with volcano steam: there are no visible holes; the steam issues from between the rocks and clings to the mountain, hissing upwards for ten yards before dissipating into the stony silence. Even this is spectacular to watch. One is drawn to a mood of mystery. Modern geography has spoilt the mood of wonder. We know the earth is hot and there is magma down there; but to watch the mountain exude its sultry vapours is to enter into a world where white robed steam-druids are chanting rock mantras from the dawn of time.
An excess of steam from one of the southwest vents of Volcán Santiaguito means the man eruption is about to begin.
A shiver of excitement ripples through my veins. But underneath the Nagual there's a menace in the air.
In the middle of the rainforest rises up something that is not of sap and bud. Something hot and menacing has pushed itself into the world of green and life, something that even Señor Jaguar cannot match.
Señor Volcán has thrust his way between the vines and the canopy to thundannounce the ancient curse against the gods who, when day knew not the night, chained up matter so earth could rise above the quantum force of nothing. And now, high up on his chosen peak, Señor Volcán spews and roars and belches out his pumice-curse of grey and rage against the Vulcan gods who took the mighty hammer of creation to batter down on pure nothing; hammer, hammer, hammer, until pure nothing squeezed out little drops of something, primal something, unstable something, the unstable rage of battered nothings that must be chained together so matter could bind to matter and not shatter back to primal void.
Señor Volcán is hurting. He feels the ancient pain.
That is why the barren pumice-grey slopes of Santiaguito are devoid of life and green. Nothing can live here. We have arrived at a dead part of the world. No sooner than I uttered this thought, the dead thought, than the spirits of Señor Volcán hiding in writhing rocks shot back—
We are life!
I gasped. Of course; the rocks are alive!
Why did I not feel that? Here on the summit of Volcán Santiaguito I have come on pilgrimage to learn to learn that rocks are alive. Rocks have story. Bones have story. And now they have something to say. They will speak in sulphur, charnel fumes and magma fire. I must listen.
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The steam on the south west side of the mountain quickly began to swell, change colour and rise up; dark brown rumbles began venting out, swiftly turning into rolly-growing blisters of puffy brown gobble curling in, turning out and expanding into ever increasing froth-balls of smoke, hot ash and magma-sweat rising up to meet the great blue stranger in the sky.
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Mighty Volcán roars • Santiaguito • By Top Latin Daddy • From google maps
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Then mighty Volcán roared.
From the dawn of time when time sat still and sleepeth; unknown the north for ice, down south creepeth not the crawlies over mud and desert wastes, when earth was brim and hot, cometh now the Ogre-roar from the belly of the fire-beast. Great thunder reverberating across the granite wastes of eternity, shud-shud-shudder from the pounding kettle drums of time, boom-boom-booming of worlds thudding together and with a cataclastic crunch huge bolts fling apart, Chronos-Ogre's trapdoor wrenches open and the beasts of the deep emerge with their chariots of smoke and ashes to hound the gracious blue of sky above.
Deep-earth must have its say. Bones must vent. Bones that give the body shape and form; bones of earth now come alive; bones, burnt bones; unbound deep-earth bones of matter burnt to pyroclastic pumice rising up in cauliflowering white and brown concatenations of crushed matter bursting into life, bones to dust, dust to shifting shapes of ancient bones, every shape a thousand stories; the heated, hotted anger of thousand ogres, seething ogres, atlas-weary ogres in dispute with that which they must carry; a thousand hissy-visaged faces raging in a thousand agonies of contortion, a thousand ogres roiling upwards; the lanced boil of matter exploding into the firmament; puk-puk-puk as hot-squeezed acne clot spatters into cloud and dust, seething into space; anger, anger, anger, fuck you life, fuck you gods, we exist, we are alive, we are the molten sinews of that damned orb of yours; the unseen burden buffaloes of creation; fun and games for you, 'tis our sweated strength that pulls the warp and weft of space apart so you may toss your juggling balls round the spectral wastes of cannon pitch and black hole space; for I am Atlas-Ogre, King of the bellows beasts, we who toil to turn that darling blob of yours on its voyage around the sun; 'tis I who holds gravity in my arms, you're nothing without us; kiss my quantum, schmontum; we're the molten deal of all that's ultimate and real
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fie, fie, fie, for I am Atlas
and for aeons have I laboured in the pits beneath the skies
for aeons have I waited here
for you to recognise
the sacrifice of nothing
to make the sun arise
the sacrifice of nothing
that made the bed of matter
on which you humans lie
fie, fie, fie, I am Atlas, I am angry, and a thankless earth shall die
why? why? why?,
because you humans went awry
and put your trust in Oppenheimer
that godless blot who opened up the primer
to the fountains of creation
and rent the fabric of the sky
fie, fie, fie, he turned the quantum key
and broke the bounds of matter
on which the laws rely
with the primal promise sundered
the probing bipeds blundered
war! war! war! the mighty cannon thundered
and now above the stony wastes I hear the vultures cry
ack, ack, ack, death lies waiting in the cracks
now there's no obstruction
to the ultimate destruction
as balling chains and hammer-jacks
clat-clat-clatter in the canon black below
and mighty Atlas roars
bat-bat-batter
you broke the bounds of matter
you cannot bring it back
shat-shat-shatter
the Shatterer will attack
primal promise sundered; with sulphur and eruption
I'll scatter wrath and anger and poison all your skies
fie, fie, fie, I am Atlas, I am angry, and thankless you shall die
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can this be?
do I hear the wisdom fruit has turned to ash and stone
the ancient promise broken for which we must atone?
watch! watch! take note of Señor Volcán and all he has to say
see how, with tough and sulphurous love his fuméd magma rises
but endless blue is endless and sky can quell the rage
for now, for now, for now,
endless sky is loving
and all the world's a stage
we actors have our part, the future's yet unwrit
and Atlas is a part of it and Deep-earth has its say
there's anger in the earth but but sky will have her way
for now, for now, for now
there's anger in the earth but sun still lights the day
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What snarky beast is this? With tough and sulphurous love the fuméd magma rises • By Guillermo Vasquez • Google maps
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how long, oh Sun, how long? but anger, anger I can see; rock obvious anger is rising up in front of me: a gargoyle mass of twisted anger-spats raging in a thousand agonies of contortion, a pyroclastic mushroom cloud of crunchy-grinning, inward spinning cauliflower wobble blots all blistering, bubbling up and bursting out in thick blobby spats; the phuc-phuc spats of boiling magma in a cauldron, pop, spat, pop-pop, phuc, spat, phuc-phuc-phuc, each blister-boil a roiling grimace, the anger of a thousand grim-visaged gods of war, gargoyle-grey Mars-gods rising, contorting, metamorphosing into the next apparition, each one popping out more and more little anger bubbles with their own little phuc-phuc sounds but sky is kind and sky is gracious and sky is endless and I can take it she says and with her blue-blue smile she spreads her legs as the majestic spume reaches higher and higher into the sky, swelling and growing this way and that until in an ecstasy of release the agony comes to an end.
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With a gasp of shock and wonder I realised Earth had fucked the sky.
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★ ★ ★
If this be magik
there's method in't
★ ★ ★
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~~oo~~OO~~OO~~OO~~oo~~
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Santiaguito • el-caliente-eruption-lg • Internet
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Grim-visaged Ahriman • North Tower • World Trade Centre • 9/11
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