Spring Break

Smoking a joint on the cluttered back porch at 6AM on a Wednesday. Still dark, after the time change, and a cool 45 degrees.

Silver moonlight softens the brick pathway and a roof in the distance. Its back to half again after only a week ago being a full moon – the blood moon at 2AM on a Wednesday or so. I did not see it because I was in great pain from what I believe to be a kidney stone.

Yesterday I bought a tractor. To encourage me I had a giant margarita for lunch. Frozen with salt. A Kubota M6060. A lease tractor. I got it for the same price as the new smaller tractor. I suspect the dealer is making a killing on this, but I have heard he is a good self-made man, and Slade, the ABAC student who sold me the tractor, said he was going to stay down here after graduating rather than return to the out-burbs of Metro Atlanta in part because he really liked his job. So, I see this as an investment in my people.

The day before, I opened a business account at my bank so that I can write the tractor off my taxes. I am not sure how that works, but it appears to be what the upper middle class do. Around here its tractors and land. In the cities, where there’s no nature, people invest in art. I understand that in theory the purpose of the tax break on capital purchases is that it recycles money into the economy and like increased oxygen in a system, it provides more opportunity and creates a positive feedback loop of growth.

I was going to finance it – 0%. So, the finance rate would be far lower than the inflation rate. I was even willing to forego a $2000 rebate that came with not financing. But when I learned I would have to also pay $76 insurance each month I declined. I started to do the math and before I calculated it even roughly I realized that was more than I was willing to pay for 60 months. So I wrote a $38+K check from the business account opened the day before with 40k.

Since I began writing about the tractor I have felt uneasy about the materialistic nature of the topic. But materialistic isn’t even the right word. Materialistic is based on the spirit-matter binary, which I reject in its standard form.

Silver

After being introduced to it by a friend, I recently downloaded a star / constellation map app. It is pretty amazing. I took two quarters of astronomy in college and learned far less about constellations than I have in the last month of casually using this map.

Consider the relationship between reason, unreason, and happiness – to what extent should my actions be reasonable? To the most reasonable extent, of course. But what is that? Not quite the golden mean. More like a golden harmony. I prefer silver.

And above actual silver, the silver clouds in a blue sky casting shadows that reach down to shade a cultivated field lined by pine trees in the South Georgia farmland and pond homestead style. Thick rows of timber – shash pines, water oaks, pecan trees – that spring up along property lines, creek beds, and swamp.

They help with erosion and they please us aesthetically. I grew up within this landscape and ecosphere. Then I left and grew up some more. Then I returned to the eternally re turned fields and re dis covered the silver beauty of this place.

Beyond silver metal I prefer the silver clouds among blue skies over the Georgia coast, shifting slowly toward slivers of white silver reflecting alongside your canoe as you paddle determinately toward what appears to be a bluff on the far side of of the intercoastal waterway. Behind schedule because of the fierce winds early in the day and the small pod of Dionysian dolphins, participating in this interspecies celebration of a magical silver sunset.

The world is on fire

and there is no driver at the wheel …

Only because the sun is on fire are we alive. Life itself is but a complex flame.

One must still have chaos in oneself to give birth to a dancing star says Nietzsche’s Neo-Zarathustra.

The end of complexity is heat death and both are equality. But there are still flames in our world and – far more than there being potential revolution in the future – change remains the passionate norm.

The sky is on fire, and there is no driver at the wheel. There is no destination or telos. But in our world being is characterized by becoming. Becoming does not drive the world. They are one and the same.

Algiz

Algiz (ᛉ) is a rune from the Elder Futhark, the oldest runic alphabet used by Germanic tribes. Most commonly, it is associated with protection, defense, and higher awareness. However, it also signifies new beginnings, spiritual awakening, and even literal birth.

Though Algiz is not the rune most often linked to Odin / Wotan, I make this association because, following Jung, I view Wotan as the anthropomorphic embodiment of the forest people of the White Spirit. At the same time, I seek to preserve the mystical and knowledge-bearing aspects more commonly found in the Norse Odin. To me, both of these figures—Wotan as primal force and Odin as wisdom-seeker—are embodied in Algiz, representing both protection and rebirth. This is the foundation of the Pagan Renaissance.

At its core, Algiz is a protective rune, symbolizing the shelter and safeguarding of life—whether that be a child in the womb, the spiritual rebirth of an individual, or the preservation of a lineage. In broader Indo-European symbolism, protection and gestation are often intertwined—consider Yggdrasil, the world-tree that both nurtures and shields existence. In this same spirit, Algiz is the symbol of Pagan Renaissance Farm, also known as Hoddmímis Holt—the treasure of memory, where the seeds of the race are preserved and rebirth begins after the destruction of the gods at Ragnarök.

Pagan Renaissance Farm, evolving into a forest dwelling, serves as both a shelter from the impending collapse of this aeon and a place of rebirth for the White Spirit—that guiding breath of my people, lying beneath contemporary Western culture, Christianity, and even the pagan gods of our deep ancestry. Here, nourishment and protection converge to bring about renewal.

Algiz, rooted in the earth yet reaching skyward, embracing the sun and the totality of the world in the spirit of amor fati, symbolizes the liminal bridge between different states of being—between human and divine, material and spiritual, death and renewal. It is the rune of transition, endurance, and awakening, guiding the way forward through the cycles of destruction and rebirth.