Wicked Gusts
Sylvia Shawcross
Sometimes I think about the raccoons I fed during the orange sky days of a year ago, out there in the wilderness. Yesterday we had some wicked gusts of wind roiling up the branches and I could hear a soft whistle whisper at the eaves of the house I’d not heard before.
There was nothing there. It was as if the wind was singing to itself.
The cat and I listened for a long time until she decided to do her dementia routine and started her usual afternoon howling. She quite overshadowed the singing of the wind. She quite overshadows most noises here when she does that. I accept that this is her way of being now that she has grown so much older.
As I have. We all do.
One day perhaps I will wander about howling inconsolably. I’m surprised sometimes that I don’t do it now. I like to listen to the singing wind I guess.
I can only hope people will be kind then, when I’m howling. I don’t actually have much faith that they will be actually, in this world, where people make videos of broken people instead of aiding them. But perhaps that is just my thought for today. Perhaps robots taking care of us old people will be better than people. Someone will program them to be compassionate or at least pretend to be. Even the pretence is better than just simple diligence I figure.
In truth I still feed one raccoon. He is a small scraggly thing. I believe him to be the offspring of Myrtle-Godot because he knows how to play with the piece of plastic by the window to get my attention. The other odd ones I see don’t know how to do that. He must have been one of the wee little ones Myrtle-Godot showed me proudly last spring.
I call him Sinbad if only because I know I should not feed him. But I do.
He arrived with a terrible bite mark on his shoulder one day. Another day with a mass of burdocks in his rough hair. And when I feed him, he looks over to the front of the house with great fear… looking for the predators. It is a rough life out there for the little guy. I don’t know how long I’ll have him visiting.
I haven’t seen Myrtle Godot again. I hope she is playing in the forest. I like to think that anyway.
When I feed him now I think of the people who have suffered horribly for truth these last days in the drowning democracies. The embattled wearing burdocks and scars as surely as Sinbad does. They have fought and still fight for individual freedom. And I don’t know how long we will have them either.
There are greener pastures for the beleaguered and so many will surely find them. Few will stay to fight the global forces that run so many brutal games simultaneously because there is something horribly military about it all. About the precision and thinking behind the building of this new Utopia. As if we have to become soldiers in a war we didn’t get instructions for and aren’t trained for and certainly never wanted. And most certainly of all, never have really experienced in our lifetime.
Certainly Canadians are naive in that department. We all have learned or will soon learn what suffering as a society means. And that is a dark thought. And I am sorry to say it. That is the privilege of growing old. We just say it now. We don’t much care about the niceties the way we might have once.
But not to worry, we will one day own nothing and be happy! I want to tell that to Sinbad! “Look,” I’ll say, “out there you are looking for predators when it is really Utopia! Why can’t you see it?”
Can’t we all just see it! There are no bad predators out there. They are doing all this for your own good. They are saving the world. They are the good guys! See! Life will be beautiful. We will be happy.
Sylvia Shawcross is a writer from Canada. Visit her SubStack if you’re so inclined.
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Been gone for a few days. Freezing my buns off down in Illinois while watching the grand kids play sports in the rain and cold. 50 degrees F with 30mph wind gusts. I survived. While I was away a larger version of the raccoon family (black bear) was feeding out of my garbage tote. He bit a hole in an empty compressed air keyboard blower/cleaner can with one of his canines. Looked like a 9mm bullet hole. Then he reshaped my plastic finch feeder with a bite. It survived. Bears must be really hungry! One evening a bear may show up on your deck instead of a sick raccoon. That would be a surprise!
Wow. It doesn’t pay to be first at commenting on a given article. My comment, which went immediately into “Pending” has never surfaced. There was absolutely nothing untoward about it – yet someone somewhere didn’t think it appropriate to this article.
I’m beginning to formulate an opinion that the writers of OffG articles have more say in what gets into the forum than we thought. (I don’t care much for that thought but, to borrow something from CJ Hopkins’ latest article, It Is What It Is.)
Whew…I needed one of your articles. There is a freedom in your writing that somehow touches something in me that seldom gets touched these days. Gee, I wonder why.
Thank you.
I definitely will soon be howling…
Glad you are back towriting on off-G, Syl. You were missed. I too am elderly and starting to howl inappropriately.
‘Wicked gusts’ is not a euphemism for ‘cow farts’, is it ?
Today, Saturday 3 May 2025, Australians, believing that doing
the same thing over and over will give a different result, is not insanity.
They are going to the polls to vote for politicians hoping that, this time,
they’ll get an honest, trustworthy one…
We don’t have that problem here in America. We know that what we’ll end up with will be dishonest and untrustworthy. And we like it that way!
Thank you Sylvia.
when we were babies there were no filters, we just let it rip and the whole world got to know exactly how fed up we were with the nonsense we confronted
then came Socialization, or training in the high art of keeping your mouth shut and hoping the authorities decide to screw over someone else who is not so successful at remaining beneath their radar
in a supermarket, on a bus, a little kid will start bawling, and I invariably feel this rush of overpowering catharsis, vicarious release of pent-up frustration, swallowed-down humiliation and marginalization
you tell em! I think
that’s the spirit!
as far as the dream of the patient robot companions goes, it’s definitely something I can relate to myself as well
we’ve been inculcated with this idyllic hope of cyber-salvation from watching movies like “AI” and “Tomorrowland” where guardian-angel androids offer us the kind of empathic understanding we all crave so desperately
the reality is likely to be closer to a cross between the soulless Nurse Ratched of the “Cuckoo’s Nest” and that insufferable cartoon paper clip from Microsoft Orifice, sad to say
That shitstorm, rumbling. Getting ready to blow. Still out of sight…just.
It’s comforting, knowing that Sylvia knows. That others know too and can sense it. Feel it. Those bass notes, fanning out. A hum – low and long.
It will be epic.
Not long to go now.
Agree. With you and Sylvia we are three. One, two, many, and many can do where all previous generations failed to do.
We’ll achieve shit all. We’re too stupid – and even more lazy.
Frankly, we deserve all that’s coming our way.
We need to up our game.
The sickness in this world of people can be attributed to many powerful empires throughout history. In the NOW TIME, in my humble opinion, it is being manipulated by the unseen hand that is the CITY. This Square Mile is its own lord and master. It has manipulated wars into being for over 400 years, always blaming others. To know who owns the FED, you don’t have to search too far from the CITY. The richest people on this planet are not Musk or Bezos. They are bankers, of course, hiding behind secrecy rules. When we go digital, the bankers can gather in their money as it all belongs to them, and the interest will be every commodity this old world has left. AI and robotics will be the new slaves. The old flesh and bone men and women are past their sell-by date.
Im here in Old Scotland watching elections going on in England. Why the fk would any sane man or woman (I never use person) vote for any of these clowns? The world is dying, I fear. Laughter, fun, childhood, play and hope all but gone.
Anyway sun is still shining, the crops are in the field, my illegal chickens are clucking away, and a big fk off to all supposed authority.
Depends what you mean by bankers?
Bankers for the most part are employees, even the wealthiest of investment bankers. A proportion of their bonuses are paid in stock equity (shares) so, yes, they own a part of the bank, albeit a small part.
The real question is who really owns the banks?
Not just the pension funds, hedge funds and asset managers which hold percentages of the shares in banks which represent the investments of hundreds of millions of people, be it their private or employee pension funds or part of a share portfolio.
I believe that the real wealth is in the hands of certain families, who place their wealth in trusts. These people are effectively trustees (guardians) of hugh amounts of wealth, land and property included. They know they can’t take it with them when they die so they ensure their trusts consisting of many types of assets including holding company structures and special purpose vehicles outlive them and continue to be passed down through the generations.
Does Rothschild ring a bell?
Rothschild is either one of many bloodline family dynasties including the Venetian merchants and bankers who preceded them or the Rotten Shield took over every other family dynasty in history, in addition to the Vatican and the royal and aristocratic land owners, depending upon which versions of history you read.
In other words, that is a mystery that we will most likely never solve.
It’s not and never was about who owns the money. Bankers are not the problem. Money is. Money is the evil that keeps humanity forever chasing the brass ring on the Merry-Go-Round. Money has no intrinsic worth except one: everyone must have it to survive. We can go longer without food, water, clothing or shelter than we can without money.
And anyone who thinks they can be self-sufficient isn’t thinking it through. “I can go out in the woods, chop down a tree, build a house, plow a field, plant seed, grown my own food, dig a well, get water.”
And what do you chop down the tree with? build a house with? plow a field with? plant seed with? grown food with? dig a well with? get water with? Can you forge all those tools – or must you buy them? Societies are constructed in such a way that at some point everyone must purchase something somewhere.
Still, the ray of optimism from this last sentence sounds good, Scot! (I hope your illegal chickens are happy. Aren’t they happy?)
Thing is we know we are going in the pot. They dont.
And that’s why they are happy! (Ignorance is power)
True. The problem is the 90% who are ignorant determine the future of the 10% with some brain activity.
There’s something blowing in the singing wind Sylvia, though probably not the answer.
Hey Mister Tangerine man, stay well away from me,
I’m not stupid and there ain’t no place that’s safe from you.
Hey Mister Tangerine man, stay well away from me,
In the swindle scandal morning he’ll come swallowing you.
Oranges are not the only brute.
We’ve grown up being schooled about Good and Evil and, in particular, who the Good Guys are. Which is obviously “our lot”. But there are cracks appearing in the narrative, contradictions about who’s ‘bad’ and who’s ‘good’. Its leading to an obvious, but still largely unstated, question — “What if we were actually one of the Bad Guys?”. Not us personally, of course — I presume nearly everyone tries to live a decent, harmonious, life, getting on with others to the best of our abilities — but the society that represents us. This question is getting more relevant these days as our (US) Federal government is showing obvious signs of Fascism. Extending this thought experiment brings up other “What If” questions like “What if f ‘xxxx’ (fill in the name of your favorite bete noir — Russia, China, Iran, your next door neighbor, etc) was actually a good person who was just trying to survive in a world where they’re constantly being bothered?”. This kind of conjecture can get awkward and uncomfortable but I’m not the first or only person to do this — George Orwell, for example, first asked this about the colonial administration he worked for and then continued to ask this about his country and society.
Asking dumb questions is obviously why a country’s leadership prefers its population to be patriotic, preferably unquestioningly so. “My Country, Right of Wrong”, “America, Love It or Leave It”. Setting the right tone is the essential groundwork to get people to think and do the unthinkable. But every society has to have its jesters, its bubble prickers, because without them it becomes a victim of its own illusions.
For example:
“What if, hell, the anti-white Antifa/BLM fighters against ‘white supremacy’ who want white Americans and Europeans to forever bend their knees and end their ‘privileges’, and the gay+trans rights fighters who want your children to know from kindergarten (and later on in the curriculum) the reality that there are 100 genders instead of 2 boring biological sexes, and also be able to ‘reveal what they really are’, gay or trans, from an early age and be able to ‘be themselves’ and also ‘become themselves’, swallowing blockers, were actually good people who were just trying to survive in a world where they’re constantly being bothered?”.
If we are not nasty fascists (“like Trump and the ziomafia!!!”), we must give them all the rights without any restriction in the name of some imaginary “public good” (such as public good of the majority of US, Canadian and European citizens for their children to grow up without insane pressure to an destructive unreal reality… By the way, you know what the trans rights problem is? Probably, even with all the pressure and even more pressure, people are so “backward” that only 10% or 15, 20 (which is still a huge number) of children would listen and become gay or trans. The huge problem for parents, however, is that your child can always be among those 10%. And you don’t want that, whatever it is, but not that.)
“We are all human and we deserve a place under the sun,” “The public good and such terms are used by governments to impose their sinister plans to limit the rights of all of us.” Of course, everyone should have the opportunity to do whatever they decide (if it does not interfere with other people). And this can work; and it can be done with minimal state intervention, with clear regulations between free communities of people, which regulations will be voluntarily observed… In the dreams of anarcho-boomers.
The good news is that “Trump and the Conservatives (and the ziomafia!)” and “Democrats and the far-left” don’t exist separately, and everything goes according to plan. “Liberal people” are historically such a small percentage that they practically do not exist; there are normal people among whom there are many cowardly and more stupid who, under pressure (for example, to recognize the awokened reality as real, or to stab themselves with some injections in the name of the common good, or to support Ukraine against Putin-Bad), easily bend. This is 99% of modern “liberals” among normal people – bent under pressure people. When they are offered another reality (e.g. a “savior” from the mistaken false reality that they – in the name of their survival at work – were forced to accept), they will return to where they have always been: to the illiberal reality of normal people. And in no case would they want to return to the nightmare wrong reality; they would be willing to do much not to return.
Therefore, we have a “Savior”.
..and the Saviour only new a few good men to save the sheeple too.
But, if there is only One Lot/Noah/Samson/David in the whole bad guys city, the whole shit will be erased.
Age 23 in Afghanistan I woke up to the fact we aren’t fighting terrorists, we ARE the terrorists. I am 41 now and I am far more awake now than then. I live on the fringes of society, though I am comfortable with this now, for I no longer yearn to be accepted or understood by the masses. I know there are others like me, rare and scattered though they may be.
The wall-trembling storm god “Wotan” raged here:
But what must our thanks to us now finally sensi-
tized eyes behold: once again, Amalekite racists
dress up in traditional costumes and use the place
to pay homage to their condemnable ceremonies!
The problem of anti-Semitism, of xenophobia, remains
ineradicable as long as Amalek exist. The only final so-
lution to the problem can therefore only be to make the
Europeans themselves finally disappear. Imperceptibly,
of course, as the Talmud prescribes. Never again hatred!
And they will replace Amalek with easily controllable non-white masses, preferably immigrants from the third world, for whom even the greatest digital Noahid-totalitarianism would be far more acceptable than the sinister reality from which they come (open despotism)? The same Amalek who is the undisputed, absolutely historically proven, intellectual champion? They will replace Amalek because they are afraid he will defeat them and destroy them. The same Amalek that they (whoever they are) infinitely easily control in a “democratic way”; in fact, Amalek controls himself, voluntarily, through the voluntary use of smartphones, through which he customizes his preferred information environment that determines his mental reality. And this happens just before the time when at least a 50% reduction in jobs will come, which will be replaced by “intellectual technologies” (and the time when the most valuable slaves will be those who can most successfully interact with these technologies, which people are undoubtedly Amalek).
There’s something rotten, it smells like a story, narrative.
“Easily controllable non-white masses”
Hmm……..
I’ve always wondered where Kallergi got this idea from.
The opposite seems to be the case.
Scholli Hansen went from being a drug dealer
in Costa Rica to a shrimp fisherman in Büsum.