New moons approach. a committee of 24 commissars, the joint head of government, gather in the people's temple of the Moons. each of you have been elected as one of a pair, trio, or quintile. no one does the people's work alone, and this is respected in the structure of your mandate. your father's political patron, and yours, fierce enemy of your paternal grandfather but not on your mother's side, indeed nothing less then his brothers blood brother, and his own dear friend, and therefore inclined and invested and implicated in the career of this defector to his political cause cum scion in law , that ancient guerrilla fighter cum grandmaster secretariat, is even now preparing to hand off the privilege of serving as First Consul a post no one has held for longer then the length of a new moon to a new moon, for more than 10 years now. but ceremonial limits and material ones are jealous twins caught in a cosmogenetic feud, and there are powers behind the stone double throne where the First and Second Consuls swap their Wands of Office. this is his seventh time holding the Willow this year, no one beats that. he pays it the merely pro forma, yet notable exacting forma, which people have come to admire in this gurrella, now dusting the final days of his ninth decade even as he hands, peaceably, agreeably, precisely ** this or that sacramental ornament of office, aknoladging in a eulogy to a dusk now several hours past the penultimate status of this evening, his 23rd in

9 and a half years, and which even the loyalists now aknoladging cannot itself be much more than one of the very last moon terms. next year after all the political coalition with the dock and field workers in the south, and the shrine communities in the outerlying islands on the skanes of the continent, and the New Labor Revolutionary League and the New Revolutionary Workers Party, and the assembled workers front, the Ultradoxists, the hyperdoxists, the new renewed traditional workers shrine movement, the surrealist camps in their ever changing associations, memberships, aspirations, commitments, principles and habits, though almost always variations on demand for food and lodgings be accorded to this festival or that new round of sacred, often absurd games, honored accommodations for some visiting saint who walks the country side blowing bubbles while reciting whole books of gurta and the gita and The Gospel According to Winnie the Pooh , and everywhere he goes he goes fully nude, or in a tweed jacket covering his body of tattoos count as not nude. his harmlessness is assured by several assholes acolytes lol they probably are assholes tho, who go around carrying sheets hanging from long poles, a walking tent, which less his wisdom be unjustly withheld from the masses, necessitates the use of mega speakers. the whole display is absurdity made godlike, for the gurus do attract crowds of tens and thousands of onlookers in about equal intensities. two such sadhus came to the gurreilla forward open base camp you keep in theruins of office buildings where scribe's and accountants labor under terra catta roofs and adobe pillàrs wet with the sticking hail of the monsoons cold front. such a monsoon is blowing in today, just as the two honored visitors, heavily armed accolytes in tow, had broadcast that it would. meteorology is one of the would be prophets bread and butter, and even the most talented, which is or is not to say the most Inspirited, can't help but throw in a line about thunder and lightning if they know a storm will break later tonight and drive the point home. in addition to meteorology, the sages use psychogeography, Oracle cards of encyclopedic numerology, mythology, and teleology, automatic writing, self, mutual, and audience hypnosis, card tricks, pleeding, bullying, cursing, exorcisms, miracle cures, loan sharking, snuggling, drug dealing, wedding services, portraiture, competitive poetry recitals and rap battles, pumpkin judging officials, chronic reality tv show personalities, and message delivery for the various Godds, ghost, Spectres, principles, åâængels, archons, brahman, metacosmic machinery, and anyone else who might want to place a telepathic phonecall. your cousin whose partner just had a baby, for example, and so on addition to writing you a letter sent by carrier pigeon to the foundfamily's hacienda

these particular wiseman came following a star, they said they were on their way to see the birth of the baby sent to signal the end of the world. that he was the word made flesh, that when he uttered his first word it would start the doomsday clock for the end of humanities, said they intended to smother the newborn in his crib, or to abort the kid if possible, depending on if the remembered to bring the plan b. the kid wasnt conceived quite yet anyway, and the Magicians werent even certain his parent, who would have the kid either through immaculate conception or through an agender/transwoman inseminator, possible both, probably neither neither nor both, nor either, nor other, the scriptures were just a tad ambiguous on that point, but maybe the parent(s) were born or maybe the weren't, at least they thought his grand parents existed, at least they were sure his great to the seventh order were born, if not all of that generation, then most of it, else some of it, or just a fragmentary bit or part of it, or a single individual, or that individual's older sibling of the same year, or decade, or century, or if not century then probably millenia, unless the vetry oldest to live to see that coming millenia would not even be born early enough to be born to parents born early enough to be seen by the most distant descendent of anyone now living, or to have ever lived, who will remember anyone now living, or who ever lived, either directly, or through virtual reality, or history, or propaganda, or literature, or propaganda, or sacred myth, or b t family story, or urban legend, or rumor, or rumor of a rumor, or lie, or nursery rhyme, or Fortune coockie, or seance, or reunearthed mural, or tomb encryption, or cipher escription or “propaganda”, that any of us now living or to have ever lived existed, nor had any reason at all to believe so, but just in case, they were planning on smothering aa loaa lot of babies. of course, the acolytes explained that all this was q metaphor for valuing the moment, living in the present , charrishing those you have them in light of the cosmic improbability that any of you would exist in even remotely adjacent constellations as seen from an impossibly distant galaxy, ie one receiding at a faster than light rate , which can only gesture in our “direction”, as if that even meant anything. several of the disciples break off to inform your relatively spry secretary, a man in his late 70s, not as late as your late late 90s, that man who has been one of your personal secretaries for 45 years, the last of the guerrillas in your original foco to serve in that role, his wife and her lover having both passed on in the last 36 or 48 or 116 moons, how many it's been, you could number it but you deliberately refrain from working through the memories of time abstract and concrete. you have work to be done, this is the last but one night of your last fírst chairmanship for a while, the copoliticos in your political camp, and your based camp for that matter, keep you in the highest of circles, but they too demand time in the spotlight, time to forward petprojects and trade or cash in favors. the prestige as much as the power makes the anarchists and priests alike flush for different reasons, and your deliberately mindful but not too mindful way in which you strike an antiexacting exactitude carrying out the ornaments and rituals of office, coordinating with the commissars you brought in on your coattails, the ones you admitted under generous and exacting conditions, as well as their corresponding commissars, those not necessarily on the tickets you backed but who managed to be made commissar by supreme decree of the 4 Bridged, 12 Gated, 2 Hall 6 satelited Congress, where you yourself sit as a delegate sometimes of the show makers trade union (in your gurilla days you shined as a political organizer by leveraging your training in that industry in order to become every guerrillas best friend as soon as his or her or their or (in one case three different times, then three cases at one time all at one) xir best friend whenever hishertheirxir feet were blistered or fungiinfected or had a broken toe bone, missing a sole, or running out of extanct socks.

other times, you represent your still organized guerrilla forces directly, or your adopted hometown of Hasæsia, or your childhood hometown of Murrildèø, though the town elders, still absurdly older then you even now, spindly woodcutters and monks and witch-priestesses and irrigation mechanics in their 120s, 130s, 140s, 152s (twins), and one ridiculous, much-objected to 214 year old grandmaster of two temples over, stored in a shrine when not actually in use by the committee of revolutionary guidance, the new official name of the same body of indisputed local authorities, for the 214 year old master has of code been in a single meditative state for almost 45 years (he had to take a 4.5 hour break 3 and a half dozen moons in to write a letter to a relative he almost forgot to say goodbye to). this is only so far the second longest such run, and whether he will break his record of 50 dozen moons and one which originally earned him renown is of much speculation, including or discluding the 3 and a half years at the beginning. his pulse has been measured to be under 1 in 110 minutes, though for council meetings certain incense are burnt which are also used to signal to the monks meditating anywhere from an hour to a decade to a century certain crucial kinds of information. whether the monks can directly communicate back from within their states, not all of rich ensue of even permit the ability to recieve such signals, is a complex question for sacramentologists to debate and research, but certainly the monks can intercede with whatever powers they may or may not be in communication and or union with, and that is not nothing, except in the case of certain ontologically nihilistic brotherhoods, in which case it quite literally is Nothing, but even Nothing is Not Nothing.

you have such monks on your forward open base civil camp, though none as nearly longeviated as the 214 year old elder of elders back home, outpacing and thereby anchoring the council by an extra 62 years. the 1 day more elderly twin, merely 152, is his leitenant and by convention runs the meetings, but in the still so distant villages of the spiring mountains where devils perform tantric meditation for aeons in order to win a kind word from goddessling strolling and striking prey, mantis like, in the gardens of paradise, or to generate enough esoteric heat to destroy the universe, or win a boon in exchange for releasing the universe hostage, such as a kind glance from the very goddessling , or invincibility, usually that first since the goddesslings bring mantis like trend to immobilize and consume what they glance at, so invincibility is useful, plus then you might come back as one of the hatchlings she lays and grow up to be the demiurge of am entire Creation. in these ancient coves where the seas plunger hundreds of miles of fjords and cliffs, below hanging valies and tropical rainforests where monestaries and temples and 100,000,001 shrines and assemblies of caste priesthoods and their deputations send flat bronze and jade bowls burning with offerings 10,000 40,000, 260,00 feet, still the foothills of peaks which crest well into space, in these impossible high and vertical and sheer places, age is a factor of political sovereignty not easily eradicated, not when the gurreillas have communes to supply, bridge building projects to suppliment, bandits to deter, evil spirits to ward from the Shrins and watchtowers, plateaus and caves and hollow peaked volcanic altars, these superstitious projects and chores to gúerrillas service as social infrastructure to the guides and officiants, who are often as not their brothers and cosines and grandmothers and nephews in law, and often too themselves themselves. let the elders maintain their places of prestigie, the villagers and novice monks in the temple cities and flying yack hearders will find ways to make their objections and ambitions known in ways they make deliberate and pro forma all at once just as you do, moccisan maker, but the elders still view you, having only pursued with a casual dedication the arts and alchemies of longevity more constant ritual than routine to them, as both a youngster and a short timer, one over whose hanging urn they will deliver urte funeral rites then release over the cliff, probably going with each thunderstone that the rope will snap or swing so wildly as to crack the terra catta asunder on the cliffsides about the overhangs and arches where your people are suspended, ⚱️ enclosed, after death. in a profoundly fluid, even contradictory political conditions, you are an institution among men, and women, and xerings, and assemblies, and others. but that can only view you as a crude imitation of their own fixity.

no matter. you do not need the councils invitation to take up the mandate of the yac hearders and monks and cliff witches and guerrillas and garden masons, not that the mandate is offered by then very often either. truely a prophet has no honor in his hometown, not when it's an exurb or a backwater of a circumbyway of the new and not so new political spherés risíng ón the dying heat of the empires’ confrulgration. you have your cobblers and your guerrillas and your hometown and reversal other adopted hometowns besides, headquarters during periods of open campaign, and discrete retreats from headquarters during pre and post insurgency days, where your name is already carved in mirrorstone in the villages gravestones and a house prepared for your spirit to recuperate in , where you are yearly elected to honorary positions on councils of elders and assemblies of youths, committees for revolutionary education, public health campeigns, construction boards charged with stabilizing the plank bridge at the entrance to the village over the creek, or reinforcing a dike or building a playground for the children, the tradition of naming and associating and electing less then full participants of great renown is part of a subtle and unsubtle ecosystem of patronage and signifiers which the revolution unleashed as much as it resisted and reorganized. in exchange for being named Respected and Most Honorary Vice President of the ẞubcommittee on choosing a location for the construction of a secondary schoolhouse for the local children and adults to host guerrillas to come tech them to read and write in 8 or 9 of the local and transethnic writing systems, a post held in constellation with not without irony, the Emperor, Jesus, the village clown, the chief of the midwíves, a prostitute now employed by the guerrillas as a sex educator, touri g the same circuit where he used to and continues to ply his original trade, though not he is part of a union and works far fewer hours, sometimes, and many more commissions other times. the political implications are by no means immaterial--a basket of fruit from an orchard jealously gaurded by an imperiàl léiuteñtant whose political career you ended when you liberated the 3 valleys he oversaw, turning control of the orchard to the nuns who tended it. in thanks they deliver 1 basket of fruit to you or your representative every two weeks, one of innumerable favors and flows which the guerrillas then over to political clients, allies, allies clients, and clients allies, friends and rivals and opponents pampered or shamed into tapping into, if only pro forma and partly, the networks of resources and aid and information your movement has woven like a spider contravening and rending redundant similar and different networks of the empire, the elderocracies, the tribes and the clans and the moieties which currently move retrograde to the factions you could represent, were you to be asked, it's arrange to be asked, or areange to be not asked, or asked only and continuously under conditions where you are under no obligation to accept, though you would be well within your rights to do so. just saying

so it is significant they on this penultimate night of heightened power you are forwarding a motion to promote the projects of one of your neiphyte by blood brotherage and marriage, whose connections to you opened the door to a simultaneous term wwith you on the council of commissars during your premiership no less, and not just a pet project nor even a windfall appointment of some ally, expedition of some emergency aid to this or that estate in the form of an appointment of a sadhu or mystic child to the villages local temple, replete with the gifts of produce and luxury as thanks to the village for shouldering this collective responsibility to the revolution, to the people, to the gods, to the ancestors, to the aeons, the angels, the demon sages and sprites and hellfae and presences. no, you have been asked to forward the starting of an entire order, witg a grandtemple and at least one more temple besides, with broad portfolios and unmistakable patronage delling opportunities, with mystic license to preach even the most transcendenally intoxicating and destabilizing doctrines, under certain regulations yes, but fairly loose in theory and in nearly all cases almost impossible to enforce in practice. this new order will include many of your guerrillas, and your bloodsoninlaw will be chief priest-archotechet of the grandtemple , which is to be construxted in a slum where you are very popular in a city where you are very not in a province until now all but entirely a no go zone for the greater superfa tion you usually are enmeshed with but do not totally beholden to, not them to you. in a word: you are making a play, a bid, a bluff, or perhaps more, a promise, a relationship, a bond.