In today’s world, it’s easy to get drowned out. The tide of voices has risen so high. The terror of total inconsequence and loss of power overreaches the moment — it is a desert within the desert. With a worn backpack and a queer compass, we bushwhack through the crowds and anonymity. Finding power from within first then joining with others. That is The Play. That is The Song. We must sing our Song together to be heard. The circumstances demand it. We must be up to the challenge. For why were we born, why did we leave those astral gardens of thought and intent. We open to the That-Which-Moves, the drumbeat within.
 We Sun Dogs weave our spells in the world. In the misty grove. In the tortured spotlight. As we share our hearts and minds, we near concordance in spirit. We approach the alter of Original Creation. We gather to us more of us. The concept of Them sublimates. And Us becomes what is. Regardless of difference or agreement, we are in the end, all Us. Come and join us.
 At least that is our preposterous gesture in this world.
 Let’s Rock.
 Now.    — Liner notes of  CD Rebellion of the Angels
 

 Peter wondered: “How in hell did I end up here?”
 After eight weeks of driving from upstate New York, there he was in the middle of this godforsaken desert. The dry wind pinched his reddened cheeks and the white sun nipped at the back of his eyeballs. The beginnings of a migraine, the woozy swirling, the blanking out of patches of his vision, raised his sense of urgency to do something. But what, he thought.
 Last night could have been a dream. In his desire to escape the roar of the interstate superhighway, he decided to get onto the side roads. They were as straight as the highway, he figured, and certainly alot quieter. As he drove on these side roads, he looked for a place to stop and rest. No rest stops here, Peter soon realized. And with all the pot I’m holding, I can’t just pull off and be discovered by some redneck cop in the middle of the night.
 So Peter turned on the next road, then the next, then the next, till he found himself a peaceful little gully where he could park his rusty pickup truck. Clambering into the back where he had made a rough bed, he fell quickly asleep.
 Now earlier that morning it seemed as if he could find his way back with no problem. Yet every turn seemed to lead him further and further afield until he stopped, gas gauge near empty, engine making funny noises and despair in his heart.
 What should I do?  His heart became a significant presence in chest, pounding out a double-time back beat. I got to do something. He reached for his stash bag and rolled a huge joint to fend off the insidiously approaching migraine and to inspire him in some way. After a few tokes, his heart slowed down and he began to look around.
 Well, it’s not so bad to be here, it’s actually quite beautiful. Peter smoked and wandered off. High above the cree of a falcon was heard.
 Peter turned slowly around and around as he walked. Life endures the harsh landscape and presents a stark beauty. He had seen pictures of the desert in bloom but that wasn’t the scene now. This was high summer desert. Yucca and Sage clung to the dusty hard ground. Scraggly and delicate, the tan grass stirred in the dry wind.  Peter followed the intricate system of gullies, occasionally coming to a rise to see mountains: sharp, blue-gray, snow-tipped and probably a great distance away.
 He wasn’t planning to go very far but one interesting thing lead to another till he got to a place where he wondered about the way back to his truck.
 I don’t know how I get myself in these situations, Peter thought. Maybe I should think before I act. But that wouldn’t be as much fun would it now? Peter giggled to himself. “Dear me,” Peter said outloud, “I’m lost in the middle of this stinking desert and I don’t really care.” Peter gave a wild yip and yowl, echoes ricocheted around him like marbles in a bathhouse.
 Then, far-off, Peter heard a similar yip and yowl. What is that? Should I respond? Why not? And he yipped and howled again. Again he got a reply and he scrambled in its general direction. Yip and yowl, yip and howl. He drew closer and closer. Then Peter stopped.
 On a rise about fifty feet away stood a tall man, he worn a white robe with a hood, it was gathered at the waist with a red sash. “Hello,” he bellowed and pulled back his hood to appear less menacing, a bright flash startled Peter. The tall man called. “Come over here, I’m not as strong as I use to be.”
 Peter rambled over to where this man stood. Somewhat out of breath, Peter asked, “Where am I?”
 “You’re with me. Come along, you’ve been out in the sun too long and quite ill-prepared by the look of it.” The man pulled his hood back on, turned with a flourish and walked quickly over the gritty reddish landscape. Peter tagged after him.
 
 This tall man didn’t speak until they approached a small adobe house. “My name is Thomas and this my home. Welcome.” Thomas opened the door and turned to Peter. “I pray that my kindness will not be repaid in deceit.” Thomas’ eyes bore into Peter for a moment, alarming Peter with feelings of guilt and shame. Peter shook his head from side to side. “Good.” Thomas’ eyes softened as he allowed Peter to pass over his threshold.
 Thomas removed his white robe and was dressed quite normally underneath, light brown pants and loose-fitting shirt open at the collar. The first thing that stood out was his shaven head and his piercing eyes. His face was thin and long with a generous smile. “Come, I’ll show you around a bit then you can get washed up.”
 They stepped onto a platform, Thomas pulled a small baby gate behind them, pushed a button and they began their descent. “Most of the house is underground, the part above is quite small in comparison to the rest. You’ll notice the comfortable temperature, it’s due to the excellent insulating qualities of the earth itself, cool in the summer and warm in the winter.” The elevator slowed to a stop, Thomas stepped out and Peter followed quietly behind him becoming more and more astonished.
 “This is the main living area. Here is the kitchen, I’m sure you’ll need to make use of that soon. The bathroom is over here. And here,” Thomas settled into a chair, “is where we can sit and exchange our personal stories for a moment or two.” Thomas looked at Peter expectantly.
 After a few false starts, Peter launched into his tale. As Peter went into more detail about The Sun Dogs, The Applegate Farm and getting kicked off by George Applegate, Thomas listened attentively, asking only such questions that would clarify the sequence of events, the backgrounds of the persons involved and their place in the community. For the most part he was silent. Peter described his cross-country exodus explaining how he had sold everything he owned to buy gas and food. Peter rambled on and on until he felt dizzy and said as much.
 “Oh pardon me, I was so intrigued by your story that I neglected your obvious exposure to the elements. Please sit and I’ll get something for us to eat and drink, then you can shower. Later we’ll continue our conversation.”
 
 After he showered, Peter wore some clothes that Thomas gave him. The soft linen shirt felt strange but good; he had been wearing that old army gear for so long. Too long perhaps.
 Thomas presented a meal of soup and sandwiches accompanied by a pitcher of iced mint tea. He himself only nibbled while Peter wolfed down his food.
 “So, you say you are the lead songwriter for The Sun Dogs?  Are you aware that your latest record is becoming very popular recently and they’re making some impression on the media?” Thomas raised one eyebrow.
 “Really?” Peter chewed, “I didn’t know that. I haven’t listened to the radio much and generally ignore TeeVee and the newspapers. I wondered what’s been happening with those folks. How did you find out about that? It’s a little far for the paperboy to come.”
 “Oh, I have my ways. Have you eaten your fill? Good, I’ll show you some more of my home.” Thomas lead Peter into a side room. “Although my place appears isolated, I’m really very well-connected. Most of the light during the day is supplied by these light vents which, using fiber-optics, bring the light from up there down to here. My electrical needs are served by solar photovoltaic panels that keep a battery array fully charged and then some. My communication with the outside world is assisted with this tool.” Thomas touched a switch and a large screen lit up. With a few strokes on the keyboard, some symbols appeared and danced around for a few moments. This must be a computer, Peter thought, but not like any I’ve seen. “I’m hooked up with the world-wide satellite network,” Thomas continued, “From here I can access any newspaper, magazine, radio/television report as well as the rumor mill of the electronic user-groups. I have these highly sophisticated search robots that continually patrol the internet for subjects of interest to me. I also have some codes that get me into some very special, uh, places.” Thomas touched the huge flat screen monitor and it responded instantly. “Yes, that’s it, here’s the file I collected while you were freshening up.”
 On the screen appeared the front page of the New York Times. There were two pictures next to each other that were very familiar to Peter: George Applegate and the Rev. William Power. “It was the name George Applegate that struck a chord when you began to tell your story. I had heard about him. Some of my friends suggested I’d read his book.” The story detailed the events surrounding the controversy of George’s book and the reaction of the fundamentalist Christians; it was written about three months ago. A few more touches and a page appeared from the Arts section, dated just a few weeks ago. Peter read the story with bland interest at first then with increasing wonder and alarm. It started by describing the Sun Dogs concert at Central Park during the Summer Solstice: the large and bizarre crowds present, the violent clashes between the fundamentalists and the Pagans, the rocketing success of the new CD. There was a few quotes from Osha, Jill and Inka. They defended the concept of the new album and touched briefly on the general philosophy of the band. Then the writer of the article mentioned the songs. Burn Your Bible was banned from the commercial airwaves although it was a regular on some college stations. Clacking Sticks was approaching the number one slot. The album was selling like hotcakes on a Sunday morning. The article mentioned that the lyricist of these songs could not be contacted. “Mr. Osha stated recently: ‘Peter is not one for the limelight, he’s taking some time off with some friends. Hopefully he’ll have a statement prepared in a week or so.’”
 “Fuck! Osha’s lying, he doesn’t know where I am, he’s just stalling for time or something.”
 Thomas nodded. “That seems apparent but what are you going to do now? Are these people your friends? Do you think they need you now? Do you think they’re worried about you?”
 Peter thought about Inka calling out his name as he drove off. His throat tightened and he found he couldn’t speak. He just looked into Thomas’ eyes. Thomas nodded. “I’ll help you get back to your friends but not today. I’m very tired and my servants took the truck into town for supplies. You may be my guest for as long as is necessary. It would please me if you didn’t leave immediately, there are so few new faces around here. Besides I think you need a couple days to plan your strategy; you’re caught by the maelstrom of events and the forces at work here are more powerful and entrenched than you could imagine. I need to rest now. Please make yourself at home.” Thomas left Peter standing there basked by the glow of the computer monitor. Peter went to the Sun Dogs’ web site and left an email for the gang telling them that he’s alright and somewhere in New Mexico thought he wasn’t sure exactly where or exactly with whom. Feeling weary, Peter went to his bed and fell quickly asleep.
 
 Peter awoke. The illuminated light tube sparkled with a bright white light. How long had he slept? He got out of bed and found some clothes laid out, apparently for him. Getting dressed, he wandered out to the kitchen to find something to eat. While sitting down with a bowl of cereal, Thomas walked in.
 “Good morning, young man. I hope you had a good rest. I’m glad to see you’ve made yourself at home. Today we’re going to take a stroll in the desert together. Would you like that?”
 “Sure,” Peter said, “especially if I could wear one of those Lawrence of Arabia get-ups.”
 Thomas laughed. “But of course, time is a-wasting though and let us be on our way before the sun gets too high.”

 Thomas and Peter stood on top of a knoll, resplendent in their white robes in the splintered sunlight. Peter smoked a joint to prevent a migraine from coming on. When Peter had asked Thomas if he would mind, Thomas said no, not now, although he had tried it on occasion these last few years when he felt sick to his stomach. In the distance rose the Sangre de Cristos mountains. The air trembled in the morning with the sound of insects and birds. Only a slight stirring of wind disturbed the transparent blue sky.
 Peter frowned. “What a desolation this is. Why would anything want to live out here, man or beast. There are so many better places to live.”
 “Well, I live out here precisely because there are so few people,” Thomas said, “and so few distractions. I suppose that the plants and animals tough it out here because of the same reason, less competition and so, in an odd way, it is an easier life for them. Those who couldn’t adapt simply perished. With all the problems on this planet, environmental, population, spiritual, we humans, as a species, should look very carefully for what qualities we’ll need to survive the upcoming changes.”
 “What changes are those?”
 Thomas looked at Peter silently with the look of a stern schoolteacher. Peter realized that he already knew what changes that could kill us as a human race. Race wars, weapons of mass destruction, environmental degradation. Peter needed to think of a smarter question to get something out of Thomas.
 “What qualities do you think will be important?” Peter queried.
 Thomas chuckled. “I only wish I knew. It all depends on what happens, I suppose. Some of these survivalists contend that developing a life where you require very little from the outside world will assure them of survival. A paltry kind of survival if you ask me. I wouldn’t want to be one of a scattered few on a planet scoured by who-knows-what catastrophe. The survival I’m referring to is that of our species as a whole. For too many years the reigning philosophy of humans, especially of the western world, has been one of hierarchy and dominance. We viewed the world as a hostile place that needed to be subdued and that we were the rightful masters to carry out such a plan.
 “Unfortunately, such a viewpoint has brought us to the brink of world death; at least the extinction of our species and civilization as we know it. Ah, it won’t be long I’m afraid.”
 “What can we do?” Peter asked, “With the way things are going, the inertia of the last few thousand years cannot be turned very easily. It would be like changing the course of a river.”
 “That’s a good question and, as you no doubt aware, many people have been wrestling with that question for many years now. Yet lately some of us have had an increasing sense of urgency in this regard. Let’s go back to the homestead and I’ll show you something that gives me a little hope and more than a little insight.”

 Thomas lead Peter into the room where that strange computer lived. Thomas put on a head set and began talking and the computer turned on and all sorts of odd symbols began dancing around each other. The room swirled with phantasmagorical lights reflected from that huge screen.
 “Here, look here, my friend.” Peter watched the screen intently. The screen was filled with swirls and eddies of rainbow colors and crinkly patterns that seemed to simultaneously expand and contract. “This is the Mandelbrot Set, a fractal program. It depicts the transition zone between static order and nameless random disorder, the experts call it Chaos. Now this is merely a graphical representation of a specific type of equation that is solved again and again using the result of the previous mathematical statement into the next one. Now if we use a different equation,“ Thomas muttered into his headset, “we get something like this.” The wild psychedelic pattern disappeared and a simple triangle appeared on the screen. Peter was disappointed to lose that cool picture but soon the triangle began to change, to transmogrify, Peter thought, by degrees until it looked like, “A snowflake!” Peter said.
 “Yes!” Thomas smiled approvingly. “In a manner of speaking, it is — though one entirely invented with this computer software. Let’s save this image and we’ll change the constant in the original equation by, oh, point zero zero zero one. Let’s see what happens. This is my favorite part,” Thomas winked. The figure started out as before, a simple triangle, but as it transmuted it followed a very different path and when it stopped it looked like a snowflake as well but one very different from the previously created one. “See, with only a slight variation in the equation we get a very different outcome. Enough of the show, now I want to explain to you what this really means.”
 
 “Ah, tea is served, thank you Bonny, we’ll take it here.” Peter curled up on a pile of soft pillows near the low table and watched the beautiful dark woman lay out the small repast and then leave with a meek smile. The light tubes bathed the area in a porous white glow. Peter felt oddly peaceful. Thomas poured out the tea deliberately. They sipped in silence for a minute or so. Peter thought how just paying attention, the simplest things take on a fuller meaning.
 Thomas cleared his throat. “Chaos theory basically states that nothing acts independently from anything else, that the beating of a butterfly’s wings in the Amazon could effect the specifics of a thunderstorm here. Thus any system that we look at, whether it’s the weather, the flocking of birds, the development of a child in the womb; it’s impossible to accurately predict any of it. This revelation came as a source of anxiety to scientists who depend on replication of experiment to prove its theories. The closer they looked at nature the more difficult and, ultimately, the impossibility of the accurate replication of phenomenon that serves as the basis for their understanding.
 “But along comes fractals, the graphical rendering of these non-linear equations which puzzled and annoyed mathematicians for so long. These non-linear equations are special because whatever you put into the unknown variable, the ‘X’, its impossible to say what the result will be. To serve as a contrast, in linear equations, if you put, let’s say, ‘2’ in the unknown variable slot you get a certain result that you can put on a graph. If you put in ‘2.0002’ then you can safely assume that the next point would be darn close to the first one. With non-linear equations this isn’t the case, no, not at all; those two points could be light years away from each other.
 “Now the most interesting part is that the patterns in nature, from storms, to branches, to snowflakes, they all tend to resemble the results of solving these non-linear equations. It shows that even small changes can alter the result in wildly divergent ways but they always present a pattern, albeit one that dances between rigid order and the despair of total randomness.
 “Now, to return to what we were originally discussing: what is the likelihood of the survival of the planet as we know it. Well, based on this understanding of Chaos Theory and using these fractals as mathematical demonstrations of the theory, it assures me that small changes, if they are the right ones, could alter the social pattern of our society away from destruction towards sustainability. If we make the right changes at the right time, we could arrive at a significantly different result. Instead of collapse, salvation!”
 “Wow,” Peter said. “But it comes back to what can we do?”
 “That, my friend, is not the point. We know what to do. The problem is getting enough people, groups, organizations, governments to do it. That is the sticky wicket. Believe it or not, there are people in the world who do not share our concern for the planet and whose influence, which is considerable, has been at work for the last thousand years or so to control the people and resources of the entire world. I discovered many groups, while I was a spy for various governments, that would prefer to keep things just the way they are.”
 “You were a spy?” Peter said wide-eyed, “You don’t look like a spy.”
 Thomas roared, “Peter, it is refreshing to have you here. Yes, I was a spy for awhile. It’s a boring business actually. I also was a diplomatic courier, an ambassador, a consultant to a few presidents and Congress, and … other things. Be that as it may, at this point in my life, I am simply Thomas.” Thomas raised his cup.
 “Thomas, you are a cool dude,”  Peter announced. “I’d like to hang out with you some more, learn more cool stuff. Do you think that’s possible?”
 “Anything’s possible. But you’ll have to return to your friends fairly soon, if what you say is true, I wager that they are worried about you. As well, I think we could use the energy of this group of yours to effect some changes, changes that may help this poor world of ours. Stay for another day or so, I’ll arrange for you to meet your friends wherever they may be. Also I’ll give you some numbers so that you can get in contact with me when you do leave. There is so much to discuss but time is short. Ah, I do feel quite weary, I need to lie down for awhile. Please make yourself comfortable.” Thomas rose and slowly made his way to his bedroom.

 
Shrodinger’s Ox
 

I ride an Ox to the oceanside
In between the moon and tide
Crescent horns, a smooth black hide.
Down I go
 A stick in hand
   Does it show
     I’m not real.
 

I touch the earth — she touches me
A sudden moment of ecstasy
It seems so odd, how could this be.
Now I go
 Change my face
   Does it show
     A thin veil.
 

So many paths trod, my Ox and I
We search for answers, create lies
Pausing briefly we can’t decide.
So we go
 Into the mist
   Does it show
     we’re not real.
 

Yes I go
 A narrow way
   Does it really show
      I’m not real.