Watching the fires in Los Angeles last night, I sat back and thought about this last year. I lived most of my adult life in Southern California. I know how it changed over the years. How the fire season became a year round event. And I was flooded with a deep sense of dread.
I couldn’t shake the feeling that this was a harbinger. That we are entering a new Dark Age. I can feel it in my skin. In my blood. In my bones. Maybe you can too. But we are constantly told to practice wellness. To be inured to the madness. The ecological devastation. The violence. The unraveling.
I thought about watching a genocide being livestreamed on my Instagram. The firebombing of children. Of the elderly. Of the sick. In hospitals in Gaza. Scorched earth, just as in Los Angeles. And the starvation. The humiliation. The annihilation. Funded by our tax dollars. All coupled with a kind of numbing agent, as if I was sitting in a chair at the dentist office waiting for a tooth to be pulled.
“It’s all ok. Make sure to practice self-care. You are doom scrolling too much!” The messaging seems constant.
Yet, everything feels surreal. As if we are in an AI generated reality. And we seem to accept it all through a tyranny of miniature screens we hold closest to our skin. Closer than we hold actual humans or animals. Closer than we hold ourselves.
We are in a different world now. A world rapidly devolving. Climate change, fascism, and the predations of late capitalism. A world where nonsense is elevated. AI generated content is taken as truth. Where starving or burning children alive is normalized. Where the unhoused and the poor are criminalized. Where the marginalized are easily dehumanized. Where billionaires are viewed as demigods. But even the billionaires are running now as their mansions are devoured by an angry earth. Oh, how the gods fall before us.
And the rise of one man to the seat of power in the strongest empire the world has ever seen is ushering in an age of chaos. Because that is what he does best. He brings chaos. He is already doing that and he isn’t even in office.
I keep seeing people say that “it will be a long four years.” And my response is no, my friend, it won’t.
I have come to believe that his ascent to the throne of American Empire signifies the beginning of the end for organized human civilization on this planet. It isn’t he that is bringing this to us. He is merely a symbol of our age. An emblem of narcissistic privilege. A personified and collective id we are afraid to acknowledge.
Hyperbolic? Maybe. But the so-called Doomsday Clock devised by concerned scientists puts us closer to the midnight hour than ever before. And what do we get in response? Lies and bromides. Platitudes and veiled threats. But the veil has been slipping for some time now.
I hope I am wrong. I really do. And I will celebrate my wrongness. But I’ve seen nothing to change my mind thus far.
Resist. Defend. Love. For some reason, these words keep repeating in my mind.
And I guess that is because, at this point, it is literally all we have left to us.
Kenn Orphan, January 2025
*Photo is a satellite image of the fires in Los Angeles.
Kenn Orfanos 
Ken, it’s so horrific. It’s the stuff of my nightmares. I lived in California, although in San Luis Obispo when I was a kid.
And I stayed also with the girlfriend several years ago in town, will drive her to work in Hollywood. I’ve always had a romantic, nostalgic love affair with California, and LA. It now being so heartbreaking, to see this world being tipped within the scales, losing balance.
While, this has been a lifelong awakening, of course, our bearing witness.
Like a slow burning nightmare.
I remember, as a teenager, watching the film Koyaanisqatsi… that was a defining moment for me… around the same time I got into the punk scene… as the darkening whispers that I’d felt all my life from a childhood on,suddenly started to take form as a rebellious response.:. to the stranglehold of the monstrous human course.:. as the thousands years harbingers of doom.
One of my most influential and beloved friends and inspirations, the writer and genius, filmmaker, Antero Ali but sometimes tease me when I would post about extinction, then the suffering world, the other living beings, and the floor on Fana being traveled for so long under careless and ignorant, by the true evil of ignorance, human destruction, and he will respond with these cryptic, or at least to me surprising responses… about how the Earth will take care of itself… and more: that I can’t quite repeat, or do justice, as express as elegantly as he would have said it; while after thinking about what he meant, and the course of my study and path, I’ve grown to understand more of what he meant…
…which includes the possibility that the life of this earth, and our life, as we know it m. being some type of Bardo…
… an in between,… and this is not any way of diminishing or betraying the precious moments, or the life of this world, or these forms and our impermanence, or the glory of this life… yes, what he was currently getting at, was that, as I found in other ways, allow other paths… this life is not the only life… these forms are not the only forms… this life we experience is somehow within the path of other realms, and other life beyond what we experience as the immortal.
This has been revealed to me, beyond any doubt whatsoever, while I cannot prove it, I can hardly convey it, yet I know beyond any doubt whatsoever to be genuine.
So, this does now move me towards believing that this life is lived is some sort of form does it as I have commune with other living aspects of this life, the trees, for one… as it turns out that they are sentient, and that what we call spirit or soul is all true… I don’t know your thoughts on things such as these, and I rarely talk about it…
..Because of the ridiculous and absurd nature how hard it is to convey or discuss among the settings of rational, thinking on eye, and the hypnotic trance of realities that people operate from out; but I feel the need now to remind you…
That this is a form we’re in, and there is every chance that the deaths and extinctions and tragedies of this life are not the end of the story, not of those particular stories nor of any other!
And this fascinate me to the end, it is one of the things that when I despair, which, for years, I was depressed, even suicidal at points, because of the horrors and suffering caused by humanity, and it’s torture and trampling of all the other flora and fauna of life, strangling and suffocating another way of seeing, and living from becoming ascendant… this having to do with whispering world… what’s called the soul. and spirit, the sentient mind or heart of the world; whereas now I do not believe that the soul or spirit or animated force of us, nor the world. is so easily ruined, or that endings are ultimate endings.
Because, I know that death is not the end, and I know that we are living in forms, that move onto other forms or other existences… and that all the life is “sentient”… that all is alive, that the story of human life is not the only story.
It reminds me of how those who have taken Ayahuasca, in serious rites, often say that the most bizarre, bewildering aspect of the experience is not only the sense of losing one’s idea of oneself… but also that the greater ocean of being is not human-centric.
None of this, is any attempt to deny, or not feel that enormity of the horrors of our time, of the disasters unfolding, nor the wildfires, or death or destruction as anything less than tragic and terrible…
…as one cannot witness suffering, witness these disasters increasing because of the imbalance that mankind has wrought upon this nurturing world, the mother, the home of all that is our life.
Only fools would not turn and see, and look to what the thousands years path of the separations, and the ignorance of mankind have done, and rot… The true evil and the true devils that humanity have become as walking ignorance… walking delusion, incarnate…
…as there’s no doubt about it, everyone from the Buddha to any other messiah or wise one worth a damn, has basically pointed out the walking, talking delusional nature of humanity; now we see as clearly as could ever be seen, the catastrophe of the imbalance caused by humanity…
…while, this is the oldest story… this, the story of delusional humanity.
In many ways, humans are the walking, talking monsters and devils of this earth, that out of their insane ideas of separation… torturing of the living earth, and every being on it, including humans…
…as the longest trajectory of ignorance as evil… also, humanity as seen by other beings as shadowed beings… people as offering and contagious misery, thrashing and clutching at each other… in desperation and horror just under the skin words of “sanity “.
This being humanity and the shadowed blight, as seen by other beings… yet there is also the transcendent, the beautifully tender, luminously loving, aspects of humanity…
…revealing that there is the dearth of heinous ignorance, and also those heights luminescent, consciousness as grandeur, as majestic release, and that these things are available in this life in this form… and, not only the two poles of mad ignorance as evil, and at the other end the rescuing transcendence.
There is all the world of the In Between, as the wider life, alive between these poles.
Meaning that the transcendent, the gnostic aspects of illumination. and the revelations of all that need to be cherished, and grown, and rescued… are all here; amid the horrors, amid the wildfires, amid the death, amid the murder, amid the tortured earth and the faces of it’s passengers.
And this gives me something that is hopeful, yet not merely hope; it shows me through the eye, it shows me through the heart of hearts, it delivers me to the homecoming of the heart; which is The light, the glory, of the transcendent consciousness…
…and these are all words, of course, of tortured, tired, beaten up symbols as ghost words, having as many silly and ridiculous connotations as anything revealing or profound …
…marked through their years of being tangled, making anything I say to you partly pathetic, somewhat trite, stereotypical. clichéd mess… by virtue of being used-words, having lost too much of their power… while they are all, or I should say, all of this… is an ode to the “inexplicable mystery”.
Another aspect way of saying this is that all things born of light and love continue all that is lived is in the or Oroborus of this world…
… with the endlessly interweaved vistas minuscule and massive, easily sm discernible… as there can be no debate regarding this existence being composed of saved dimensions, or realities within cascading realities… there is no arguing that it has been seen, that our sense of existence is determined by what is looked upon…
…worlds between worlds… forms amid the metamorphosis of forms, as obvious as anything coujd ever be, just under the cognitive veil, the mark of absurd nothingness that is the lying face if too much beleaguered humanity as idiotic culture; yet, everywhere and everything is the beckoning whispers of the sentient life…
…just as the wonders of the microscopic to the intergalactic experience and can be seen by us here in this form, on this earth, in this life… Kaleidoscopic extensions… never ending… from one form of life into weaving with others… worlds within worlds…visible from the microscopic cities in the world that are in each club of mass on trees…
…for instance; do you know. that there are little bodies of water within the moss clumps of trees, in the Pacific Northwest and elsewhere?
And these little bodies of water there are living creatures that are more of the ocean, are more sea creatures, than of the land?
This is studies and has been found within the little clumps of moss and what to us appears as tiny worlds, existing on tree branches. If the idea of scale is toyed with, and the idea that the size of something doesn’t determine its importance, and that the breath of how large it is is only a matter of perspective and position, everything is suddenlyseen far differently.
so, none of what I’m saying, can be so easily dismissed as fantasy, or neediness or wanting there to be significance or any of the other garbage that overly rot, rational, thinking, the hegemony of this nightmares, bowling culture of diminished consciousness; the intellectual dearth of know-nothingness, engender; as in, the brightest, was highly intelligent, are too often the victims and the victimizers of a world, smashing disbelief, and anything beyond the strict, and awful ideas that they have been pounded by, not even the most fiercely, intelligent, gifted, or eviscerated, and gutted, and held within the silliest and dumbest of realities.
While, to some, if not most… talking of forms, of worlds within the worlds, of things that are considered by them to be impossible, to be some type of religion, to be some type of garbage, some type of fantasy, some type of needy and wanting hallucinations by being caught and avoid of nothingness, and insignificance, that they see is being pathetic… I feel it’s pretty easy to see that what they believe to be nothing, within the glory, and majesty of everything that is sacred, profound, and wondrously majestic, is the true farce… and the true ignorance.
all this goes to say that this life is not the end… this form, this earth, this world, is not the end point or any ending, it is a cellular aspect within other beings, or a larger life, the wider life exposes this kaleidoscopic, veined, inter, weaving, dimensions; into this look, because this has to do with those we love not being over when they die, immortal, death, and our stories not being done in the ends of the chapters…
…it also points to this living earth, tortured by humanity, yet the Earth is itself more poetry, or as much, as the physical world within in which we see, experience in inhabit… this signifying that the story continues… that tragedy, and death, and the horrors of murder, and extinctions, are not the end of the story.
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Ken, it’s so horrific. It’s the stuff of my nightmares. I lived in California, although in San Luis Obispo when I was a kid.
And I stayed also with the girlfriend several years ago in town, will drive her to work in Hollywood. I’ve always had a romantic, nostalgic love affair with California, and LA. It now being so heartbreaking, to see this world being tipped within the scales, losing balance.
While, this has been a lifelong awakening, of course, our bearing witness.
Like a slow burning nightmare.
I remember, as a teenager, watching the film Koyaanisqatsi… that was a defining moment for me… around the same time I got into the punk scene… as the darkening whispers that I’d felt all my life from a childhood on,suddenly started to take form as a rebellious response.:. to the stranglehold of the monstrous human course.:. as the thousands years harbingers of doom.
One of my most influential and beloved friends and inspirations, the writer and genius, filmmaker, Antero Ali but sometimes tease me when I would post about extinction, then the suffering world, the other living beings, and the floor on Fana being traveled for so long under careless and ignorant, by the true evil of ignorance, human destruction, and he will respond with these cryptic, or at least to me surprising responses… about how the Earth will take care of itself… and more: that I can’t quite repeat, or do justice, as express as elegantly as he would have said it; while after thinking about what he meant, and the course of my study and path, I’ve grown to understand more of what he meant…
…which includes the possibility that the life of this earth, and our life, as we know it m. being some type of Bardo…
… an in between,… and this is not any way of diminishing or betraying the precious moments, or the life of this world, or these forms and our impermanence, or the glory of this life… yes, what he was currently getting at, was that, as I found in other ways, allow other paths… this life is not the only life… these forms are not the only forms… this life we experience is somehow within the path of other realms, and other life beyond what we experience as the immortal.
This has been revealed to me, beyond any doubt whatsoever, while I cannot prove it, I can hardly convey it, yet I know beyond any doubt whatsoever to be genuine.
So, this does now move me towards believing that this life is lived is some sort of form does it as I have commune with other living aspects of this life, the trees, for one… as it turns out that they are sentient, and that what we call spirit or soul is all true… I don’t know your thoughts on things such as these, and I rarely talk about it…
..Because of the ridiculous and absurd nature how hard it is to convey or discuss among the settings of rational, thinking on eye, and the hypnotic trance of realities that people operate from out; but I feel the need now to remind you…
That this is a form we’re in, and there is every chance that the deaths and extinctions and tragedies of this life are not the end of the story, not of those particular stories nor of any other!
And this fascinate me to the end, it is one of the things that when I despair, which, for years, I was depressed, even suicidal at points, because of the horrors and suffering caused by humanity, and it’s torture and trampling of all the other flora and fauna of life, strangling and suffocating another way of seeing, and living from becoming ascendant… this having to do with whispering world… what’s called the soul. and spirit, the sentient mind or heart of the world; whereas now I do not believe that the soul or spirit or animated force of us, nor the world. is so easily ruined, or that endings are ultimate endings.
Because, I know that death is not the end, and I know that we are living in forms, that move onto other forms or other existences… and that all the life is “sentient”… that all is alive, that the story of human life is not the only story.
It reminds me of how those who have taken Ayahuasca, in serious rites, often say that the most bizarre, bewildering aspect of the experience is not only the sense of losing one’s idea of oneself… but also that the greater ocean of being is not human-centric.
None of this, is any attempt to deny, or not feel that enormity of the horrors of our time, of the disasters unfolding, nor the wildfires, or death or destruction as anything less than tragic and terrible…
…as one cannot witness suffering, witness these disasters increasing because of the imbalance that mankind has wrought upon this nurturing world, the mother, the home of all that is our life.
Only fools would not turn and see, and look to what the thousands years path of the separations, and the ignorance of mankind have done, and rot… The true evil and the true devils that humanity have become as walking ignorance… walking delusion, incarnate…
…as there’s no doubt about it, everyone from the Buddha to any other messiah or wise one worth a damn, has basically pointed out the walking, talking delusional nature of humanity; now we see as clearly as could ever be seen, the catastrophe of the imbalance caused by humanity…
…while, this is the oldest story… this, the story of delusional humanity.
In many ways, humans are the walking, talking monsters and devils of this earth, that out of their insane ideas of separation… torturing of the living earth, and every being on it, including humans…
…as the longest trajectory of ignorance as evil… also, humanity as seen by other beings as shadowed beings… people as offering and contagious misery, thrashing and clutching at each other… in desperation and horror just under the skin words of “sanity “.
This being humanity and the shadowed blight, as seen by other beings… yet there is also the transcendent, the beautifully tender, luminously loving, aspects of humanity…
…revealing that there is the dearth of heinous ignorance, and also those heights luminescent, consciousness as grandeur, as majestic release, and that these things are available in this life in this form… and, not only the two poles of mad ignorance as evil, and at the other end the rescuing transcendence.
There is all the world of the In Between, as the wider life, alive between these poles.
Meaning that the transcendent, the gnostic aspects of illumination. and the revelations of all that need to be cherished, and grown, and rescued… are all here; amid the horrors, amid the wildfires, amid the death, amid the murder, amid the tortured earth and the faces of it’s passengers.
And this gives me something that is hopeful, yet not merely hope; it shows me through the eye, it shows me through the heart of hearts, it delivers me to the homecoming of the heart; which is The light, the glory, of the transcendent consciousness…
…and these are all words, of course, of tortured, tired, beaten up symbols as ghost words, having as many silly and ridiculous connotations as anything revealing or profound …
…marked through their years of being tangled, making anything I say to you partly pathetic, somewhat trite, stereotypical. clichéd mess… by virtue of being used-words, having lost too much of their power… while they are all, or I should say, all of this… is an ode to the “inexplicable mystery”.
Another aspect way of saying this is that all things born of light and love continue all that is lived is in the or Oroborus of this world…
… with the endlessly interweaved vistas minuscule and massive, easily sm discernible… as there can be no debate regarding this existence being composed of saved dimensions, or realities within cascading realities… there is no arguing that it has been seen, that our sense of existence is determined by what is looked upon…
…worlds between worlds… forms amid the metamorphosis of forms, as obvious as anything coujd ever be, just under the cognitive veil, the mark of absurd nothingness that is the lying face if too much beleaguered humanity as idiotic culture; yet, everywhere and everything is the beckoning whispers of the sentient life…
…just as the wonders of the microscopic to the intergalactic experience and can be seen by us here in this form, on this earth, in this life… Kaleidoscopic extensions… never ending… from one form of life into weaving with others… worlds within worlds…visible from the microscopic cities in the world that are in each club of mass on trees…
…for instance; do you know. that there are little bodies of water within the moss clumps of trees, in the Pacific Northwest and elsewhere?
And these little bodies of water there are living creatures that are more of the ocean, are more sea creatures, than of the land?
This is studies and has been found within the little clumps of moss and what to us appears as tiny worlds, existing on tree branches. If the idea of scale is toyed with, and the idea that the size of something doesn’t determine its importance, and that the breath of how large it is is only a matter of perspective and position, everything is suddenlyseen far differently.
so, none of what I’m saying, can be so easily dismissed as fantasy, or neediness or wanting there to be significance or any of the other garbage that overly rot, rational, thinking, the hegemony of this nightmares, bowling culture of diminished consciousness; the intellectual dearth of know-nothingness, engender; as in, the brightest, was highly intelligent, are too often the victims and the victimizers of a world, smashing disbelief, and anything beyond the strict, and awful ideas that they have been pounded by, not even the most fiercely, intelligent, gifted, or eviscerated, and gutted, and held within the silliest and dumbest of realities.
While, to some, if not most… talking of forms, of worlds within the worlds, of things that are considered by them to be impossible, to be some type of religion, to be some type of garbage, some type of fantasy, some type of needy and wanting hallucinations by being caught and avoid of nothingness, and insignificance, that they see is being pathetic… I feel it’s pretty easy to see that what they believe to be nothing, within the glory, and majesty of everything that is sacred, profound, and wondrously majestic, is the true farce… and the true ignorance.
all this goes to say that this life is not the end… this form, this earth, this world, is not the end point or any ending, it is a cellular aspect within other beings, or a larger life, the wider life exposes this kaleidoscopic, veined, inter, weaving, dimensions; into this look, because this has to do with those we love not being over when they die, immortal, death, and our stories not being done in the ends of the chapters…
…it also points to this living earth, tortured by humanity, yet the Earth is itself more poetry, or as much, as the physical world within in which we see, experience in inhabit… this signifying that the story continues… that tragedy, and death, and the horrors of murder, and extinctions, are not the end of the story.
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