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Desnatchification

“Bodies devoid of mind are as statues in the market place.” Euripides

Have you ever seen Invasion of the Body Snatchers? I’m thinking particularly of the 1978 remake starring Donald Sutherland. I remember two things most vividly about the movie. First, the invading fungus (or fungus-like alien) left everyone it snatched seemingly unchanged on the outside, but on the inside those who got snatched were full of fungus. Hence the expression: the fungus amongus. Secondly, I had the distinct feeling the film was not fiction, but rather a docudrama. It seemed to me that Americans by the millions were being snatched and having their hearts and minds turned into sticky gray fungus; and I kept meeting these people and dating them.

“The problems that exist in the world today cannot be solved by the level of thinking that created them.” Albert Einstein

Now it is 2010, thirty-two years since I saw Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and here comes the news that a wealthy television producer just won a MacArthur Genius Award. If nothing about this news strikes you as strange or untoward, then I would say you have been snatched. The news that an award intended to support daring unknown artists has been given to a well-known commercial hack reminds me of that terrible day some years ago when the abominably sophomoric musical fungus A Chorus Line won the Pulitzer Prize. When I heard that news, the first thought that came to my mind was, “Those judges have been snatched.”

“Of one thing we can be sure. The quality of our life in the future will be determined by the quality of our thinking.” Edward de Bono

What do I mean by snatched, assuming the snatchee’s body and brain isn’t actually filled with alien fungus? To my way of thinking (which I grant you is not necessarily a simple or popular way of thinking) a person qualifies as snatched when he or she has surrendered his or her powers of discernment to propaganda disguised as contemporary culture. Sadly, horribly, fungaciously, this means we’ve all been at least partially snatched and live in constant danger of being totally snatched if we don’t take immediate action to counter the powerful and relentless fungal forces.

Appendix A: The body and soul snatchers have virtually no power over us in the absence of electricity and the myriad gizmos running on the stuff. Why is this? In two words: auric fields. Stay with me here. You won’t be sorry. Oh, maybe you will be sorry, but no more sorry than you’ll be if you go watch a half-hour of television instead of staying with me here.

An Aside (or is this a disclaimer?): I am well aware I run the risk of being called a crackpot for what I am about to write, but what is one to do if one truly believes in that which he is about to attempt to elucidate (because of personal experiences validating that belief) except to make an attempt to elucidate that belief? (Rhetorical)

The theory of physical illness and physical wellness and emotional distress and emotional well being I subscribe to posits that each of us has an aura, which in simple terms is a field of energy surrounding our body. Whether our auras emanate from us or are merely part of our totality, I don’t know, but there they are, our auras, otherwise known as auric fields. Not coincidentally, when our bodies die, our auras vanish.

This theory further states that the quality (color, texture, brightness, strength, vivacity, etc.) of our aura is determined by our thoughts, and most especially by our recurring thoughts. Furthermore, our aura is in constant communication with our chakras, which I understand to be energy concentrations in our bodies that are intimately and perpetually interacting with our internal organs, which interplay sets the tone for our experience of life. A grand oversimplification, to be sure, but in a nutshell, that’s where I’m coming from. Cognizant that you may now consider me full of hackneyed spiritual fungus, I will continue.

Thus we are receivers as well as broadcasters of energy. In the pre-electronic world, that natural world in which our species evolved, we were not being bombarded night and day with mind-numbing electronic sensory input as we are being bombarded today. Indeed, the sensory input bathing the senses of our founding homo sapiens (from whom we evolved) was not mind numbing at all, but rather mind-opening. Which is prefatory to saying that desnatchification, otherwise known as cleansing your aura of mass media fungus, may be achieved by periodically disengaging from all forms of electronica and connecting with our ancient ancestral roots by becoming an acoustic human being, and by acoustic I mean that which is not electronically enhanced or amplified, as in acoustic music.

Here are a few ways to desnatchify, cleanse, and invigorate your aura. These activities will also positively impact your chakras and make you feel much better and less fungal. 1. Making or listening to live well-played acoustic music. 2. Gardening. 3. Reading great literature 4. Becoming immersed in nature (a walk in the woods, a stroll on the beach, a dip in the sea). 5. Engaging in intimate equilibrious conversation. 6. Snuggling with a copasetic animal or animals (including cats, dogs, horses, and other humans). 7. Watching a spider spin a web.

Another important step in the desnatchification process is to strictly limit your intake of mainstream fungus. Alas, avoiding aura-snatching fungal books and movies and media is not easy, especially since the corporate purveyors are expert at dolling up the deleterious fungus to look like what we remember from long ago as the good stuff. However, almost without exception, if the book or movie or cultural goody comes from a neo-fascist multinational corporation, the book or movie or cultural goody is a body snatcher.

“Minds, like bodies, will often fall into a pimpled, ill-conditioned state from mere excess of comfort.” Charles Dickens

Now it may be that you enjoy much of what mainstream American culture has to offer. If so, I’m sure you stopped reading this article long ago. But if you have stayed with me here until now, the chances are good that you are still more acoustic than digital. And know this. You are not alone. True, almost everyone else has been snatched, but here and there, living among the fungus-infested zombies are your brothers and sisters who have secretly maintained their auric integrity. Seek them out. Establish covens of acoustic human to carry us through these dark ages and beyond the time when the fungal junk collapses under its own putrid weight, to a time when our culture is reborn, a culture for all of us, not just for totally, like, you know, fungal fourteen-year olds.

How will you know these other acoustic humans? And how will you signal to them that you are another who has not yet been snatched? You will…wait. What’s that sound? Oh, no. They’ve come for me. The fungus amongus! I must run. Be brave. Stay strong. Find the others!

(This memo originally appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser, October 2010)