TENSION: The act or action of stretching...either of two balancing forces causing extension...a state of psychological unrest...state of latent hostility between individuals or groups...balance maintained in an artistic work between opposing forces or elements.

TETHER: something by which an animal is fastened so that it can range only within a set radius.

Centuries of groundwork, season after season of vacuous sitcoms, decades of network pro sports and their attendant sneaker promos, avalanches of ads so slick they barely get in the product name, their real purpose to give you your kicks without paying or even leaving your couch, term after term after term of sellout politicians with toothpaste smiles and well-timbred voices, years of fluoridated water and processed foods and allotropic medicines that singe the body's synergy, whistleblowers hanged in public as a lesson for all, innovators and reformers and innocent convicts spun into misfits and pariahs, investigators with integrity casolaroed into bathtubs in West Virginia motels, and is it any wonder there is No Tension in the Tethers?

Tensegrity in the cells, that ability to bounce back to shape like the Pillsbury Doughboy when you poke his belly. Admirable quality in a civilization. Mudslides in California? "I guess we'll rebuild." Drought in North Africa? "I guess we'll eat our goats, and when we run out of goats, there's always our children." Do the skyweathermakers paint Xes and Os over the Sahara, too? Or is that considered "rubbing it in?"

Klamath Valley farmers fight back and win a small victory, late in the growing season. Demonstrators described as "like a carnival that hadn’t quite left town." Joanne McGuckin gets out of jail free, after several weeks without bail. Will her children recognize her? Ah, but this is all out in Oregon and Idaho, places where you don't want to go because the woods are full of grizzlies. And militiamen, armed to the teeth and defiant of our Duly Elected Government. Relax, it's not happening here, take a pill and run Timmy off to Little League where he can be trained to compete.

Despite these vague occasional murmurs from the frontier country, America is still that little plastic bluebird chirping on the windowsill in the final scene of "Blue Velvet." And there is absolutely no tension in the tethers.

Vintage PLAYBOY cartoon, back before PLAYBOY became pornography for Republicans: Two explorers, pith helmets, shorts, etc., trapped in quicksand. The one in front is in up to his knees; the one behind him is up to his neck. The one in front turns and says, "See where struggling gets you?"

So there is no tension in the tethers.

Rumor Mill Crop Circle: I look at what appear to be two similar tapestries, one sent, one received, and I say okay. Then I look at a closeup of the face in the one received, and I can't find that image on the larger tapestry of what was received. The heads don't match.. Plus I can't identify a crosshatch pattern on this mystery face that leads to the conclusion the reply was sent telepathically. These are bent grains, for godssake. Is this some kind of gullibility test? Am I the only one who sees this? Or did I miss some fine print?

So I wonder, do I buy into this message from beyond? I think my hind foot is free. But in the end my sense of smell keeps me from making that joyous leap. So there is no tension in the tethers.

Since the Huddled Masses Yearning to be Free are instead Struggling to Pay the Rent and to Keep a Low Profile, there is no tension in the tethers. The War, such as it is, is being fought by Factions, for each of which you and I are but statistics. Oh, yes, an Admiral Q comes on every now and then to urge us to pray, but other than that, we are only observers.

The only sector that seems to sense something is afoot is the stock market. For months it has been a jagged, trending downward sawtooth, reacting to the slightest provocation. Otherwise, there is no sign of tension in the tethers.

Jesus wept; I drink.

I sit here knowing I'm in the crosshairs of some great campaign to separate sentiment from love, and it's a game in which my cat and my woman are hostages to that campaign, and they are both missing. And I remember Dr. John Lilly's remark, that "cosmic love is relentless and without pity."

Then there's Rumor Mill Vortex. A place where random metaphors coalesce into sentience.
Where earth changes pale behind the ethereal terra, and tribulations behind the Es(clear of Earth)--so free of it she can lead children into flames and feel no guilt--and a patriot is not a missile but a man of honor, and a miynd is one's own, and a hobie is a hobie, and in these shifting times like the terrain of the Sahara in the simoom, if there is no sign of tension in the tethers, there is at least here the stated truth that nothing will survive unless it can leave ground, oyes

here only butterflies are free.

Mygod Raye, what you have unleashed upon the tethered!

oliver