rroderickrowe

[rroderickrowe]

So much of what I built into the introduction series of the world of Paradigm Lost can be found in this one statement. What do I offer that's different? A way out! Read the Apocrypha of the Knight Shamans to learn how the mystic masters have described to escape from the prisonous scabs modern society built onto our souls!

Not to know one's true identity is to be a mad, disensouled thing — a golem. And, indeed, this image, sickeningly Orwellian, applies to the mass of human beings now living in the high-tech industrial democracies. Their authenticity lies in their ability to obey and follow mass style changes that are conveyed through the media. Immersed in junk food, trash media, and cryp-tofascist politics, they are condemned to toxic lives of low awareness. Sedated by the prescripted daily television fix, they are a living dead, lost to all but the act of consuming.

Terence McKenna

[rroderickrowe]

So much of what I've built into the earliest days of the Elk Creek Tribe in the imaginary town of Milltown Village in Southern Oregon is encapsulated in this one statement! What do I offer that this doesn't? The way out! Read the first two books of the Apocrypha of the Knight Shamans and you can learn how to uncover your soul from the scabs our current society covers it over with!

Not to know one's true identity is to be a mad, disensouled thing — a golem. And, indeed, this image, sickeningly Orwellian, applies to the mass of human beings now living in the high-tech industrial democracies. Their authenticity lies in their ability to obey and follow mass style changes that are conveyed through the media. Immersed in junk food, trash media, and cryp-tofascist politics, they are condemned to toxic lives of low awareness. Sedated by the prescripted daily television fix, they are a living dead, lost to all but the act of consuming.

Terence McKenna

[rroderickrowe]

The Abyss Wears My Silence

There is a rupture in me,

a place I have walked by countless times

but refuse to step into for too long.

Not because I don’t want to see it—

I’ve seen enough to know what’s waiting—

but because I fear the weight of recognition.

It is a weight I cannot set down.

If I go deeper,

it’s not curiosity that drives me.

It’s compulsion.

The way your body pulls itself toward pain,

if only to test that it’s still alive.

I descend not with courage

but with resignation,

because I know there’s no living

without asking what the ache means.

The shadow in me is not unfamiliar.

I’ve met it before,

in the quiet hours when the world is asleep

and my distractions fall apart.

It doesn’t haunt me.

It *is* me.

And I hate how much it knows.

It turns my gaze inward,

forces me to sit in the dim corners of my mind

where the versions of myself I’ve abandoned

still wait,

still watch,

still ask to be remembered.

There is no map for this journey.

No guide. No path forward,

only the endless close of myself pressing in.

I run my hands along the walls inside me,

and they’re slick with something I don’t want to name.

Some days, I think it’s fear.

Other days, regret.

Most of the time, it’s both,

woven so tightly together

I can’t tell where one ends

and the other begins.

The air grows heavier.

I lose track of time.

This space doesn’t answer the "when" or "how long."

It only echoes instead:

Why? Why? Why?

And I don’t know what it wants of me

because I don’t even trust myself to ask the right questions.

But I feel the pull to go deeper.

To chip away at the bedrock of my defenses,

to pry apart the layers I’ve glued over my softest places

just to keep the world from leaving more marks.

Every step inward feels like a betrayal

of the delicate armor I’ve spent my life crafting.

I want to stop.

But I can’t.

And part of me doesn’t even want to.

If I get quiet enough,

I can hear the shadows breathing.

They don’t sound angry,

just tired.

Tired of waiting for me to face them squarely,

of being buried under a million things I told myself

were more important than listening.

I sit with them now,

heavier than I’ve ever been,

and feel their weight settle into my lungs.

At the core of it, I find not a monster,

but something terrifying in its simplicity:

a truth I’ve tried to outrun.

It is small but vast,

sharp in its clarity.

It speaks no words,

but it fills me with the kinds of answers

I wish I could ignore.

And it occurs to me, finally,

that this abyss is not my enemy.

It is not a punishment,

nor something to conquer.

It is a mirror I’ve spent a lifetime averting my eyes from.

The things it holds are only the things I gave it:

regret, silence, fear,

potential tucked away for some future

that never came.

I sit there until the silence changes.

It softens.

Not into peace—peace is a lie.

But into something quieter,

something closer to surrender.

I run my hands over the jagged fractures of myself,

not to fix them,

but to feel that they are real.

To remind myself that I have survived them.

And slowly, I turn back.

I leave the abyss each time

a little heavier for knowing it,

a little emptier where it hollowed me out

to make space for the truths I carried back.

In the end, it’s not the descent that haunts me.

It’s the climb,

when the weight of what I’ve seen

follows me into the light.

[rroderickrowe]

Such an amazing way with words! I LOVE this poem!

"Bleed the Sky"

The sky bursts open,

not gently,

not softly,

but like a body breaking,

like something holding on for too long

finally letting go.

The first drop hits—

hot asphalt hisses,

dust rises like ghosts startled awake,

and the earth opens her mouth

like she’s starving.

There’s no beauty here.

No poetry.

Just the raw writhing of water finding cracks,

finding hunger,

finding every place that aches or crumbles or waits.

The rain doesn’t ask permission.

It doesn’t care where it falls—

forest, rooftop, desert, skin.

It pounds against leaves as if to punish them

for turning their faces away,

fills the throats of rivers

until they choke on their own rushing,

slides down windowpanes like tears

too heavy to hold back.

And it keeps going.

There is no tenderness in this.

This is not about grace.

This is about gravity and surrender,

the weight of billions of tiny impacts

stripping the world bare.

And something in you loosens—

against your will,

unraveling in the rhythm,

in the relentless pounding that reminds you of your own breaking,

of the times you couldn’t stop falling.

You stand there,

letting it hit you,

letting it drench everything you thought was safe.

Maybe this is what healing feels like:

not silent, not soft,

not clean.

But messy.

Wet hands in the dirt,

skin soaked,

blurry vision as everything spills.

The rain knows.

It always knows.

It comes to destroy,

and in the destruction

it leaves something you didn’t know you were—

raw, gasping,

and growing.

[rroderickrowe]

[rroderickrowe]

Okay, this just blows my mind. Everyone agrees that they're not real -- ghosts, faeries, trolls, etc., but also, everyone takes precautions against offending or encountering them. So ... ?

[rroderickrowe]

OMG! Hit me in the feels! Ten years ago when I wrote the first novel in the Paradigm Lost world, I was certain it could never come true. Now, things I saw as only a faint potential have actually come true and they are NOT the good things!

An early reader asked me "What about Trump supporters?" I answered they are NOT my readers! I want people to read this who can fight against Trump supporters!

people will look at classic dystopian sci-fi like "wow how did the author predict this would happen" and the answer is they didn't. they hoped and hoped this wouldn't happen. (some of them, the lucky few perhaps, even died believing the worst had been averted.) these writers took a look at terrible things happening around them, and imagined a future where these terrible things dominated and warped reality, and they held it up to the audience and said "see? does this future not appall you??? it has already begun."

dystopian fiction isn't a prediction. it is a warning and a PLEA

[rroderickrowe]

It's also okay to seek out your guardian spirit and ask it's help to shield you when necessary. Sometimes, if you're a healer, you have to face the energy sucker in order to heal it. Don't face it alone!

[rroderickrowe]

[rroderickrowe]

Peter is only ten when he enters his first battles in the never-ending wars that came after the great quakes. When he meets the army of the Elk Creek Tribe, he's already had 6 kills to his name. You grow up quick when the corporations abandon your entire region.

[rroderickrowe]

[rroderickrowe]

Now LIVE! Second Book in the Apocrypha of the Knight Shamans. Tenth Book in the world of Paradigm Lost!

An In-Your-Face, Outta-My-Way you fascist pigs, post-apocalyptic adventure in Oregon's near future.

[rroderickrowe]

[rroderickrowe]

[rroderickrowe]

[rroderickrowe]

[rroderickrowe]

A person's success and happiness depend on how much he listens to himself. The speed of fulfillment of a dream depends on the inner state. It may require both acceleration, activity and communication, and deceleration, inactivity and solitude. The main thing is that you should take into account and consider the requests and wishes of your Soul. Then you will always be in resource, even if you are in negative states, because there is a whole cosmos of creative power in them too, if you live emotions consciously and without claims to yourself.