Author’s Proof

…

Dust Cover

Across America a word burglar wends an odd way across a waning world. Under skies weirdly transformed, the writer tries to make sense of humanity’s devolutionary norm.

Extended Dust Cover

In an effort to stave off madness, an itinerant graphomaniac attempts a word sketch of a civilization in its death throes. Feasting on its own children, in the languid grips of a pan-addiction, a Saturnalian nation is drawn from the vantage of a mere meat gob fallen from its gobbling maul.

…

Inspirational Quote

“… They [Rome] create a desolation and call it peace.”

-Calgacus, Gaelic Chief, Battle at Mount Graupius

Dedication

For Seth, who has invited this tramp into his home.

…

Author’s Inquiry

In five states over two months I have lived under skies of the likes I have never seen in the 60 years I am able to recall. Those I stay with, who also go outside beyond air control, have noted the same turmoil above, of the likes I have previously only seen in the cold April of 2022 in Missouri—and but briefly. Last week, a local weather forecaster began an advertisement for his next news cast by saying, “Why do we have Seattle skies?”

Yesterday and last night, as I did chores for the Matriarch, myself and an old Collie observed 7.5 hours of uninterupted thunder. I have never experienced more than half that span of continuous sky drumming. Warnings flashed on electronic devices. Newscasters used radar to explain what was happening, that there were no clouds, thunder or rain over us on the map, as we were drenched in darkness and rain. The swirling vortex of thunder and rain, wind and some hail, was said to be 30 miles towards Philadelphia as it yet drenched us. Afterwards, the retrospective newscasts pretended they had not been gaslighting us.

The family, said, ‘Oh, it must be so—it is over.”

Thunder rumbled above.

The dog said to me, “This is bullshit.”

What is happening to the sky?

What of the people under it—do they even take notice?

Of those that see, do they believe their eyes?

What of their holy oracles?

A weak ago, a lady from Thailand looked at the building storm above, walked outside, looked again, and cried. The Americans all around barely noticed as they scampered from one air-conditioned place to another.

Across Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland and Virginia, people I have lived with have noted that all, ALL, that EVERY one of the weather forecasts are wrong, when most used to be spot on.

The defense mechanism among most people is to imbibe the gaslight, to say, after a life time of believing weather forecasts, which were most often accurate as to current temperature, time of snowfall and rain fall, quantity to be expected, to lie to themselves and others and say, “Weather prediction has never been an accurate science,” when it was just last year and for most of my life. Many a time I recall a blizzard or storm was forecast with exacting accuracy down to the half hour and to the inch of snow. As a grocer, I ordered toilet paper accordingly. These past two months in the maw of the beastly east I have stood next to proximate temperature measurement devices, while the news has been read to me by another person declaring that the current temperature, right here, right now, down to the zip code, is ten to fifteen degrees warmer than what we feel and read on house or car devices. My fellows have forgotten the decades of forecasts that were accurate and informed them as they scoffed at me for waiting to look out the window to determine what to wear, confident the weather would not kill me.

A few days ago in my son’s yard, playing basketball with my grandson, it thundered all around for hours, without a drop. The clouds come in five varieties at the same time. Tornadoes, small ones, are popping up in small areas and shredding houses where they had never done so in my life time. But my fellows go with the gaslight and talk about how reporting has improved, and that previously we were ill-informed by well-meaning news people and that tornadoes and local hurricanes have always plagued the area when we never knew a person in our lives to experience one. It is as if Apollo gave Phaeton an etch-a-sketch and let him paint the sky.

Now, some young people, and a few old weirdos, have noted to me that forecasts are now always wrong. I have noted that the forecasts begin dead wrong 24 hours out, and improve by the hour, and that most of what passes for forecasts are real time radar reporting, and that these are altered not to reflect realty in real time, then further modified to mis-represent the immediate past of an hour ago. The real time weather reporting is ritualistically repetitive and focused on whipping up hysteria and warning about imminent personal harm.

The mechanics by which collective awareness is shaped into the very opposite of individual observation strikes a sinister chord in the alienated mind.

Is this no more than a cycle of bumbling ineptitude and face-saving compensation in regards to our most observable shared context?

Are our minds being disabled?

I have enjoyed the constant changing beauty of these skies. Compared to the skies of my childhood, youth, prime and middle years, the skies of my decline render those earlier sights as drab as a church lady in a tent like dress drawing water compared to a dancing girl swaying before a fire.

Further, these clouds, being born above rather then blown in, created from clear blue skies, first as lines, than as mists, then wisps, budding clouds, flowering clouds, towering thunder heads, inky under clouds, sheet-like over clouds, these are created before these weary eyes, not scudded into place as in the old days. Once created on the spot, these cyclopean forms then lurch across the world with the grace denied those of the maze herd that graze below.

Are we seeing the “whirl-eyed” cyclops of storm, the Aegis “storm-shield” of Zeus-Athena, returned?

It is this writer’s goal to merely describe the new skies, perhaps destined to be future skies, or a passing anomaly about which we will be told lies. The absurd superstitions of Science will not be plumbed by this reviled idiot what yet believes in gods, angels, devils and demons. Rather, I only describe the conduct of a funeral procession, its mourners decked in wedding lace and conducted with youthful haste to the shining chapel that roofs their grave.

The birds and weeds love it. The sun is rarely seen for more than half the day, other then from behind vaporous shrouds.

This was printed on yellow legal paper some four days ago at Uncle Ted’s most unlikely drop zone.

The final page reads, in retard print of all capital:

Northeast Baltimore City, under billowing black-streaked and darkly under-hung thunder clouds. Three rabbits grazing on the clover and wild strawberry in the yard are seeking cover as the swaying trees shiver under skies that have not yet seen the sun this day. [That sun was never seen that day.]

-Friday, 2:41 PM, June 27, 2025

Days Later at White-Flight East

Lines, where no plane has traversed, line the eastern sky and are forming into extended cloud banks into this weird under sky.

A thunder burst sounds in the west.

The western sky is building cloud, vapor forming in place in the still sky space.

The northern sky is clear.

The southern sky is clear, but now traced by a vapor line.

I am buying steaks and taking them over to my son’s family for my grandson’s 3rd birthday. By then I hope to be caught in whatever the sky is building, which will come and pass, then be forgotten and replaced by the oracles who do our Unknown Masters’ shilling.

Abingdon, MD, Tuesday, 7:36 AM, July 1, 2025