1057 – Bon Tons | Spice Friends 6

Episode 1057 – Bon Tons | Spice Friends 6

 

[START OF RECORDING]

 

SCOOTER:    Friends beyond the binary, here I am to plant a seed.  How come they don’t say berry seed?  You say plant a seed, right?  Is there a difference?  You say, is it…I mean, you say man, that seed’s coming…place the seed under the dirt; that’s another way you could say it.  Give a seed some place under the ground or in a…lay a seed in a bed of dirt.  How about that?  I hope I can lay your thoughts aside so you can get into your bed.  Since…I don’t know what to…this probably isn’t the summertime of year, so you don’t have to worry about brushing that sand outta there.  So, tucking you in with stuff that doesn’t…if you say, what is this person talking about?  You’re…may be in the right place, ‘cause it’s time for Sleep With Me, the podcast that puts you to sleep.  Here’s a couple ways we’re able to bring it to you for free twice a week.  Thank you so much, my patron peeps.  I may have forgotten to say friends beyond the binary, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, so I just said it again just in case.  Alright Scoots, take it away.

 

INTRO:    [INTRO MUSIC] Hey, are you up all night tossing, turning, mind racing?  Trouble getting to sleep?  Trouble staying asleep?  Well, welcome.  This is Sleep With Me, the podcast that puts you to sleep.  We do it with a bedtime story.  Alls you need to do is get in bed, turn out the lights, and press play.  I’m gonna do the rest.  What I’m going to attempt to do is create a safe place where you could set aside whatever’s keeping you awake.  It could be thoughts on your mind that you’re thinking about, so thoughts.  It could be feelings, anything coming up for you emotionally or physically that you’re experiencing.  Maybe you’re having thoughts about those.  Maybe it’s related to those thoughts.

 

Maybe it’s something else; change in time, temperature, routine, something coming up, something that just went by, somebody visiting, something else.  Whatever’s keeping you awake, I’m here to be your friend in the deep, dark night.  That’s really my job.  Hey, I’m your bedtime bud, your bore-bae, your bore-sib, your bore-bestie, your bore-bor, your neigh-bore, your bore-bae.  What does that mean if you’re new?  I’m here to keep you company and get mixed up ‘cause I already forgot.  Oh, the way I’m gonna do it…oh, so that you could fall asleep.  It really is.  My primary purpose is to keep you company in a way that you don’t have to pay any attention to me so that you could fall asleep.  So, what…how do I propose to do that, is I’m gonna send my voice across the deep, dark night.

 

I’m gonna use lulling, soothing, creaky, dulcet tones.  Oh, so creaky are my tones, pointless meanders, superfluous tangents, which means I’m gonna go off-topic, I’m gonna get mixed up, I’m gonna get confused, then I’m gonna say stuff that doesn’t make any sense, and I’ll say wait a second.  Then I’ll go back, and then I’ll…and my thoughts will get interrupted while I’m talking, and then I’ll…so, I get mixed up.  All of that to keep you company so that you could fall asleep.  The most important thing I’m gonna say…I’ll say it right now; you deserve a good night’s sleep.  That’s why I’m here.  Now, I can’t provide it for everybody, which I’ll explain more of, but I want you to know that you deserve a bedtime that you don’t have to dread, and something where you could get the sleep you need to be functional, that your life feels manageable, and eventually you get enough rest where you could be out there flourishing.

 

One, because you deserve it.  Two, it’s important to me ‘cause I know how it feels.  I’ve been there tossing, turning, mind racing, trouble getting to sleep, trouble staying asleep, trouble waking up early, trouble think…mind racing, trouble…yeah, all that stuff.  So, I know how it feels, and really, underneath it all, for me at least, it feels pretty…I can feel…I can have a lot of strong feelings about it, right?  It can hurt a little bit, I guess, to use a strong word.  So, it’s important for me to be able to help because not only do you deserve a good night’s sleep, if you get the rest you need, like I said, our world is a better place when you’re rested.  Your world’s better, that means our world is better, and there’s lots of other people listening.

 

Now, maybe there’s the possibility no one has been through the same thing you’re going through right now that’s keeping you up, but I can tell you a lot of us probably know how it feels.  So, that’s the most important thing I’m gonna say.  Now, to go back to what I said, this podcast does not work for everybody.  Not only does it not work for everybody, it doesn’t work for almost…an…almost nobody.  I just thought of the Charlie song You Are Everybody or whatever from the TV show Lost.  Just popped in my head for some reason.  Oh, boy.  That’s probably…you say Scoots, that’s not the song.  You All Everybody?  You Are Everybody?  I don’t know.  But so, oh boy, that took me off-track.  Oh, this doesn’t work for everybody, but it almost works for no one on the first try, and that’s because it’s very different, one.

 

If you’ve been struggling to get to sleep, you probably tried a bunch of stuff and none of it’s worked consistently.  That’s why you’re here, so you may be skeptical or frustrated already when you get here.  Totally normal.  Then this show, on top of it, is very, very different, so it takes some getting used to.  But I’ll try to tell you what are some of the things that take getting used to just so you know.  But I could tell you from feedback of hundreds of thousands of people, it takes two or three tries to get used to this show.  Also from feedback from a equal or more number of people, it doesn’t work for everybody, and some people have very, very, very strong feelings about how it doesn’t work for them.

 

Understandable, but instead of expressing your feelings to me, I want you to check out sleepwithmepodcast.com/nothankyou if it doesn’t work for you, or you say I just don’t…I prefer never listening to you again, Scoots.  I’d say, great.  Sleepwithmepodcast.com/nothankyou has a list of other sleep podcasts and sleepy audio that’s a different style than this show.  You might even say those have a style.  But so, okay, what is different about this show that might throw me off?  Okay, one, this is a podcast you don’t really listen to.  Most podcasts, almost by definition, is something you listen to with your ears and your mind or whatever.  I don’t know.  Technically I have no idea.

 

Sleep With Me is more of reflective listening, so I think technically something happens with the vibration of a tympanium or something, and then your ear, and then it comes…electrons and all that kinda stuff, and your brain says okay, I hear what you’re saying.  With Sleep With Me, it’s more like reflective listening.  It could just bounce off.  It doesn’t even have to get in…it could just bounce off the outside of your ear if you need to.  You say, I’m aware there’s some vibrations happening.  I’m not sure they make any sense.  Another image that may be more preferable is watching clouds float by.  You say well, I’m aware there’s clouds in the sky.  They are in shapes, and maybe that’s a poofy shape and maybe that’s more of a wispy shape.  They’re not bad.  Clouds; a lot of times, not bad.

 

That’s a com…it’s not a…sometimes absolutely stupendous, but sometimes…clouds; sometimes…I don’t need to apologize for sometimes barely paying you any mind.  Clouds; they do just fine on their own.  That’s what they say to me in their notes.  They say, don’t worry about us.  We weren’t even aware you existed, Scoots, ‘til it was brought to our attention, and that was imaginary anyway.  I had to send myself an imaginary note from a cloud.  I guess that says more about me than the clouds.  So, oh, so this is a podcast…obviously I’m not qualified to be listened to, so just kinda barely listen at first, or don’t…and that’s why it takes a couple tries, ‘cause you say oh, I can’t figure this podcast out ‘cause it’s disassembled.  Still functioning, but totally disassembled.  It’s also not a podcast that puts you to sleep.

 

I keep you company in the deep, dark night, and you fall asleep while you’re not listening to me or just barely paying attention.  I’m here to be your friend, to make the deep, dark night feel less alone, or less lonely, and if you can’t sleep, I’ll be here to the very end.  You can listen to me, but that’s kinda what works about the show.  You can listen, but you don’t need to.  Probably you won’t…even if you listen to me, you say, what was he talking about again?  Don’t know.  Something about Charlie…he tried…I don’t know.  He said…was it Overdrive or Driveshaft?  It was definitely Driveshaft.  Whatever it is.  So, you say, what…he was talking about cars?  You say, no.  I don’t know.  Maybe he said he had a matchbox Charlie Bucket bucket car.  Well, what’s a bucket car, honey?  I don’t know, but I slept so good.

 

Maybe he put matchbox cars in a bucket while singing?  I don’t know, but he…oh boy, do…yeah, I feel so rested.  So, it’s a podcast you don’t really listen to.  Doesn’t put you to sleep.  Give us the good news, Scoots.  Oh, it also has a strange structure that serves some very specific purposes.  So, the structure of the show, it starts off with a greeting; friends beyond the binary, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, so you feel greeted, you feel welcome.  Hopefully you feel seen.  Then I say something that pops in my head, or maybe I wrote it down on a piece of scrap paper that may be mildly senseless but amusing.  You say okay, it’s a little bit silly, too.  So, that’s the greeting.  Then there’s the show, or then there’s the…oh, and the support.  So, there’s support for the show because the goal is to have the podcast come out twice a week for free on all podcast platforms.

 

The sponsors and the listeners who support the show financially by membership are what enable us to do that.  So, you could listen for free.  Totally optional to pay for it, and wherever you want to listen, so that’s one of my goals.  Then there’s support for listeners in case you have some extra needs right now, there’s support for communities around the show, then there’s the intro, which is separate from the support stuff.  It’s a show within a show and it goes anywhere from ten to twenty minutes.  It’s where I try to introduce the podcast unsuccessfully over a thousand tries, and I’ve been unsuccessful all of them.  But I’m successful in some other things.  The intro also serves another purpose which is to ease the transition into bedtime.

 

So, for a lot of listeners, the intro is something…it’s part of their wind-down routine, whether they’re getting ready for bed, they’re doing some chill activity, lying on the floor, foam rolling, drawing, stretching, needling, or point…whatever.  I don’t know, point…hooking or whatever, and…or just getting comfortable, or some listeners are asleep.  2% or 3% of people skip ahead.  A couple thousand people listen to story-only episodes on Patreon.  So, there’s…at first, at least, kinda see how it goes, ‘cause it’s supposed to ease you into bedtime.  That’s why the intro goes on and on and on.  It’s based on feedback over the past eight years and my own experience of having a bedtime routine to slowly get to sleep, which can be frustrating.  I totally understand it, but it’s the only thing that’s consistently worked for me, and one of the few consistent things that lines up with what everybody says about sleep, which everybody…you know how it is because you’ve been there.

 

Everybody knows everything about sleep, right?  They say oh, you’re doing it wrong.  I say well, let me ease you into bedtime at least, and see how that goes.  So, that’s the intro.  Then there’s business between the intro and the show, again so the show…so it can be optional to pay for the podcast and you can listen wherever you want.  Then there’s the episode.  Tonight it’ll be our episodically modular series, a bedtime story about Spice Friends.  That’ll be nice.  Then there’s some thank-yous at the end.  So, that’s the structure of the show.  That’s why I make the show.  I’m really glad you’re here.  I work really hard, I yearn and I strive, and I really hope I can help you fall asleep.  Thanks again for coming by, and here’s a couple ways I’m able to do it for you for free twice a week.

 

Alright everybody, Scoots here.  It’s time for another episode…another…what is this?  An episodically modular…another episode of Spice Friends, our episodically modular series with seriality.  But you can listen to it in any order ‘cause I’m gonna catch you up right now on most of it, but also, this one, a little spoiler; part of the story will be catching you up, too.  But I’ll catch you up on everything, so if this is your first episode, don’t worry.  I’m gonna tuck you in here and then I’m gonna tuck you in again.  So, Spice Friends is a tale of a world just like ours.  Maybe a little bit in the future, and…or maybe say…and maybe say whoa, wait; that wasn’t fiction, I guess, where at some point during the history of human beings, we discovered there was these big…what you would call maybe titans.

 

Sometimes there was gorillas, sometimes there was dinosaur types or a moth type.  Giant beings, right?  They would walk around.  Sometimes they would step on cars and stuff, knock over power lines and more, and they would yell and stuff like that.  It was very intrusive, obviously, on our way of life, and humanity as a whole tried to…at first we were…oh, wait a second, it’s something about those materials we have that have half-lives, especially the ones we use offensively that get their attention.  So, they got all the Big Ones on a big…a atoll, Big Ones Atoll, right?  That worked for a while, but then…and there was treaties and stuff.  They said no more offensive half-life.  Then they said well, we’re using it for power.  Then the Big Ones said wait a second, you’re using it for…you’re not being honest.

 

So, then they returned and they started stepping on stuff again.  This was when we had President Smith and President Smith’s daughter, President…the Vice President Smith.  I think during…sometime during that history, they also got in touch with some planet called Planet Zipper.  Not a lot of details in this show about this, so you just gonna kinda roll with it.  I didn’t get…there’s not a lot of memorandums I was able to page through.  But they sent this team of astronauts to Planet Zipper, and Planet Zipper said hey, we got some solutions.  Send us some astronauts; we’ll teach them.  They said we’re also working on something, but meanwhile, President Smith had to take action because one of the big dinosaur ones came over and was messing everything up.  President Smith tried a bunch of things.

 

Finally, President Smith…they had some sort of serum.  Maybe it was from Planet Zipper.  Not important, I don’t think, right now for me to remember where the serum was from…or ray or something.  I don’t know.  But President Smith turned into a Big One, lured the Big Ones to Big Ones Atoll.  Oh, I guess it was from Planet Zipper, ‘cause then Planet Zipper used this big beam or something to cause all of Earth to go into hibernation for a time.  Your hibernation would wear off I guess based on size, so the Big Ones were the last ones to wake up.  By the time they woke up, that’s where our story kinda started.  They were getting ready to wake up.  The astronauts were supposed to come back.  Only one astronaut returned, and they said okay, we have a solution for the Big Ones when they wake up.

 

Now, President Smith had gone away, dealt with it.  Time had passed; I’m talking probably decades.  Vice President Smith had left politics but had returned ‘cause the way politics worked had changed in that time, after mass-hibernation and then waiting around for giant beings to get woken back up.  People changed their priorities.  But Vice President Smith had become President of the World, which really just meant president or chairperson or something of the Collective Nations, CN.  So, she was working with this astronaut and they…she said, we follow all the plans you set, but it was children’s programming.  The astronaut basically said yep, we’re gonna do this positive joy through song and dance and dealing with seeing your feelings and feeling your feelings.  That’s gonna manifest a solution to these Big Ones.

 

The President…Vice…or, no, Vice President Smith said I’m the President of the World.  This is not…doesn’t sound like…there’s…how’s this gonna work?  It doesn’t…this is a bit foo-foo, I would say.  The astronaut said well, this is the solution I’ve come with.  Can you trust me?  President Smith said well, I can trust you mostly.  So, they moved forward with this plan which actually worked, creating through song and dance and children’s programming, mostly, and really leaning in, you would manifest these Spice Friends which were giant spice-based beings.  Thus far, they’ve helped mitigate some of the Big Ones; Moth Breath, the Boggy or something, some sort of bog…giant bog being.  I don’t know, there was another…there was one other one, I think, or two other ones.  I’m not even sure.

 

Oh, no, no, there was a garlic Spice Friend that helped and there was a Cinnamon Spice.  So, they helped make things better.  They were still trying…the president, the astronaut, and their team of children’s programming…not…creatives and executives, I guess.  I don’t think you’re an executive though, ‘cause it’s like you’re working for some sort of…you’re actually…I wouldn’t say you’re a bureaucrat.  I wonder if they had any walks, policy walks.  I don’t know what even that means, but I just say huh, that’s interesting.  I wonder if they had any gadflies.  Oh, that’s not the time to…my brain just said this isn’t the time to ponder those questions.  But so, they were working with trying to create these Spice Friends to deal with the Big Ones.

 

Now meanwhile, the Collective Nations were trying to work together, but there was other city states and oligarchs, the whole nine yards, just like you hear about in the great boring tales at Sleep With Me.  They had their own agendas and there was a lot of stuff going on.  Some people just wanted a clear-cut solution just like the president did.  He said, what?  You’re gonna…’cause no one knew about it.  They just knew the Spice Friends would appear every once in a while.  So, they were looking for a more clear-cut solution.  President Smith, she intervened, though.  But it ended up that Big Ones Atoll went away, and the Big Ones separated…left Big Ones Atoll and spread out across the world.  We’ll find out, I guess, coming up here.  I know…I can tell you this, that just like Willow says, all will be well.

 

So, that’s…I guess without further ado, here’s another episode of Spice Friends, and here’s our Hollywood announcer, Mr. Antonio Banderas.  The ladies, the gentlemen, the boys, the girls, it’s time for my friends beyond the binary to join us in another tale of Spice Friends.  Spicy…yeah.  Thanks.  That’s Mr. Antonio Banderas.  Now, Antonio and I, I guess we’re gonna…if he can remain silent for the next seventy minutes without…’cause another thing I noticed is your hair makes a noise now.  Now that you’ve…your smile…you’ve learned to control the twinkling of your smile and whatever that spiritual joy that comes out of the inside of you or whatever.  I’ve noticed your hair also makes a sound.

 

It doesn’t sound the…it sounds like if there was icicles in heaven and someone had a…some sort of magical drumstick or something, and they ran it across…they were playing icicles as a instrument.  Not on Earth though, because on Earth it would just probably sound like clump.  Your hair makes a sound like that.  I’m pretty sure I’m hearing it.  It’s very faint, probably ‘cause it’s come…I don’t know if that’s what heaven does.  If there’s a heaven and they’re watching your hair…this is probably what happens.  Maybe I’ll just get you a hairnet.  Oh no, I have one next to my bed for you.  That was my way of indirectly introducing the…now you have to wear a hairnet, Antonio.  But I’m pretty sure what’s happening is heaven is watching your hair and there’s some sort of angel, or I don’t know, I guess it would be a sprite or a nymph.

 

When they see your hair move, they start playing icicles.  Not like a xylophone because most of them are higher-pitched and heavenly sounding.  My mic pics…at least my ear…I can hear it and it’s distracting, so that’s why you have to wear a hairnet.  That is how…all…drives all the way from LA, now wearing a hairnet and lying in my bed with those booties on on top of a comforter I put on top of my comforter, and not moving at all except what’s necessary is Mister…our Hollywood announcer.  We’re always grateful.  Mr. Antonio Banderas, thank you so much, and this is Spice Friends.  Thanks, everybody.

 

Okay, madam President, it’s been a while since we’ve…I mean, I haven’t heard any recordings from you and it’s been quite a while since I’ve done any recordings, but we’re here.  I guess what I believe…I believe we’re at a turning point, and I have no idea when the last recording I made was.  That was because we got busy.  We were working very closely together.  I guess I didn’t realize the benefit of making these recordings until we reached a point where we’re at a turning point, but we’re spinning around and around and around.  Then we’re stumbling, like when you put your head on the pole, kinda thing.  Then you say no, go back to the circle; spin around…which…where are you turning to?

 

I don’t know if that’s the correct metaphor, but…so, how do I catch you up if you’re listening to this and you say, where are we and how did we get here?  Well, I have no idea how much time elapsed.  I’d have to…so I guess that’s not as important as what has happened since then.  We got you back after your trip to Big Ones Island and flying around on a kaffir lime leaf on the back of a flying feathered friend, or not friend, or whatever.  Big Ones Atoll sunk beneath the sea.  I believe the kaffir lime leaf and Long Feather headed below the sea to a sea vent that you instructed them…the rest of the Big Ones left Big Ones Atoll and spread out across the globe, eventually.  That was not popular…well, I guess not popular.  How do we define popular?

 

Your choice received a lot of scrutiny, and you understandably as a leader were willing to be the projection…have that choice projected on you.  Oh, we were able to find…give people the choice that…have people deal with the consequences of how they dealt with you within our…your administration, our administration, our teams.  Okay, so…oh, but what happened?  So, the Big Ones…I’m just trying to say, could I do this in a way that gets to the point?  But this is how we think things out, you and I, or one of the ways we’ve discovered it.  So, the Big Ones spread out across the globe, slowly.  The globe had strong feelings about it.  First, they were kinda searching for remnants of that element that you had fed them that powered the device that was supposed to change the movement of the tectonic plates.

 

Luckily, the…we were able to work with the entire planet for a while, and relocate the processed parts of that element to isolated areas.  So, first, the Big Ones spread out and we reacted, and they went to these isolated areas.  Now, no area’s totally isolated, so we also had to work on some humanitarian work and relocate people…well, hopefully temporarily.  Again, that was an opportunity for some.  For us and for other people, it was either an opportunity or not an opportunity.  I don’t…I guess part of me is…used to think that was a 40/40/20; 40% of the people were like okay, this is…this change…I didn’t expect a Big One to show up at our home here, but I’ll have to do my best.  Okay, we’ll move there.  Then 40% of people were very upset, and 20% of people said I’m sorry, what?  So, yeah.  So, there’s that.

 

That was our status, and everybody was very concerned with…what are we gonna do about the Big Ones?  I feel like there was a sense of confidence, at least deep down with you and most of our team and the people that believed in your leadership.  I guess I go back to that same idea.  I said, this is probably 40% of the Collected Nations had say…or the Cooperative Nations; 80% of Cooperative Nations believed in you and the people, and maybe the rest of the world, they…that was 20%.  I don’t know.  But so, that Big…we could bring the Spice Friends where we needed them and that we were coming up with a plan to deal with the Big Ones once these elements were consumed or they were throwing the elements around, all those things.

 

What we didn’t quite realize was that while we were trying to come up with a plan in the Cooperative Nations, many people…a lot of times people come up with an idea and they think they’re the first person that thought of it.  But sometimes…in this case, it was all…it was a synchronicity.  Is that the right word?  Of an idea.  A lot of the people had the same idea where people that were used to collecting power…or groups that were used to collecting power…for some it was political power and some it was financial power.  Most of those personality types were people that were…you’d say, use the word strong-arm to describe their behavior.  It could be a subtle version of that.  But they all had this idea within a few months of each other; what if we brought the Big Ones…could…can the Big Ones be controlled?

 

That was an idea that’s always been asked.  What does it mean if a Big One comes to our country?  What does this element have to do with things?  So, then we reached a period and…that led to us to our turning point where the Big…people started inviting Big Ones to their countries, or drawing them to their countries, and that the Big Ones seemed…it was weird; they seemed to respond, and each one responded to a different call.  I don’t know.  I need to take a break now because I just feel like I’m still spinning around in circles, but I’m hoping you’re gonna leave me a message, too, to help me process it and you’re listening…you’ll listen to this message and it’ll help you process things.

 

Okay, President of the United States recording.  I said the United States.  Can’t get my father out of my mind, I guess.  But yeah, I’m recording this message and hopefully you’re listening to it, but whoever’s listening to it, you could take that as the…that you’re listening to it.  I’m reviewing things and…here.  It’s been a while since I’ve sat down and recorded myself to review things.  Quite a lot has changed; I got taken to Big Ones Atoll without my permission.  My team and I, we had to come up…think on our feet and work with the team here to deal with that situation.  Big Ones Atoll was sunk beneath the Earth.  The Big Ones spread out across the globe.  First an unpopulated…low-population areas; excuse me.  Low-population areas, and eventually…how do I say this?

 

Without showing how strongly I feel about it, but certain people with inflated…strong lead…strong…meglo…I don’t know how to describe it, but certain countries and places within countries started trying to attract the Big Ones there, thinking they could use them defensively or offensively, thinking of the Big Ones in some sense as a symbol of their power.  It’s still behavior that I do not quite understand, and how more than one of these oli…all these archs.  There’s some…yeah, you have a committee.  Oh boy, you have a committee of strong-arms — that’s great for you — attracting the Big Ones there.  It’s not like the Big One came and sat down and had some tea with you.  You could still see the Big One walking around.  I guess this gets into insulation.

 

Oh, well, you live in a place that’s insulated from the impacts of your actions, and so, you didn’t have to deal with the Big One walking around the low-lying parts of your nation or your city state or whatever it was.   You could afford to move the elements around.  Then we got into this place where at least you were able to listen to reason, because at least I knew not to fight you, that in the face of this behavior I didn’t understand, I’d learned from my father, from my mother, and from a lot of other intelligent people, to set aside the people and the problems.  I say hey, there’s people that don’t want to be in this nation with a Big One stomping around.  Can you let them leave and they can come here and live in one of the CN-aligned nations?

 

Only if they…and then you said okay, but what if people want to come live in our place?  You had incentives.  We made agreements.  I said okay, well, yeah, free passage or paid passage, even, if people wanted to leave or wanted to come.  Again, it was beyond my understanding why a large portion of people…well, I guess it’s not…yeah, it’s beyond my understanding, but I can see it happening and I believe it happened.  Say well, yeah, I want to live in that…I like that leader.  I like the style.  They tell it like it is and they have a vision; having a giant…whatever that…hawk…chicken hawk or whatever it is.  Cat; it’s a cat.  But whatever.  Oh, we’ll live…you know.  That’s a place where you could be you and say it like it is, or whatever.  I can’t understand it, but I can grasp it.  So, that all happened.

 

One of the pieces of good news somewhat was that by giving this…your territories to one Big One, we…guess we didn’t quite realize that they were territorial and that their behavior…and this is…I can’t believe I’m saying this ‘cause it isn’t acceptable, but we’re adapting to it is that oh, okay, so the Big Ones’ behavior did change.  It still caused chaos and destruction, still unpredictable, but just not as unpredictable or aggro as when we stood in opposition of the Big One, or tried to hide something from the Big One.  But that doesn’t mean it’s okay, which is where we’re at with these decisions we’re trying to enact and figure out what to do and what our responsibility is, also longer and mid-term, what all of you are up to with your Big Ones.

 

But it kinda seemed childish in some sense, and maybe that’s just me and my own issue of this behavior.  Oh, now we have this living titan in our…where we live, and we have a leader who is connected to the titan.  We can identify with it and wear clothes and praise it, belief systems that are thousands of years old, and now…I don’t know.  But in some sense, when godlike beings are…say, didn’t…wouldn’t you say a godlike being behaves with some sort of…?  I don’t know.  Those are my things.  Again, this is getting in the way of us reaching where we…what we need to do next.  But that’s where we are, or where we thought we were, is…okay, we have the CN nations.  We have things we set in place.  Now, no new Spice Friends have come forward because…since…there were some Spice Friends that we needed since Kaffir Lime Leaf.

 

When some of the Big Ones started leaving…but anyway, no current Spice Friends.  We do have the ability to consistently…I think we know the process that usually will result in the creation of a Spice Friend if there is the need to, which is the one part that’s quite a variable.  But the rest of the parts…we know the process, right?  It’s a process-based process.  So, there was a little bit less stress, right?  We had this exodus and influx of people, and that caused some changes and some strong feelings here, and in other places.  Again, under my leadership and the…with the leaders I work with, we’ve taken accountability for our actions and tried to do…make the best decisions we can for everyone that we can make those decisions for and with, and trying to adjust and say okay, well, this is where you’ve settled or this is where…these are the places we can house you.

 

This is our plan, or why don’t you take a part in the process?  This is kind of where the setup is, is that most of the people that chose to leave these Big One…I forgot the term you were saying; Big One-affiliated nations or something.  But they’re…they were in…they chose to come, and they…so, they have been very involved, and in a good way.  That kinda was a distraction between…so, you have the people that seem happy with this one way of being in a Big One-dominated area, and then you have the people that wanted to get away from that.  But what we were distracted from was the people in-between.  I don’t know if that’s the right word.  They use the word ‘apathy’ sometimes, but I don’t think that’s an apt description of it.

 

It was people…I don’t know if we forgot them as so much as…that we missed an entire layer of people that are being impacted by the behavior of the Big Ones, that again, a behavior I can’t quite understand.  So, I don’t know.  I think I should listen to whatever you’ve recorded to…before I can even parse out what we should even do.  I don’t know.  It’s just…its anniversary’s coming up and it has me distracted, too.  So, I think that’s a part of it.  So, I’m gonna take a break here.

 

Okay, madam President.  I listened to your recording and we’ve kinda talked about it, too.  So…and you, as the leader and as a person that’s wired for leadership and has the heart for leadership and the mind and the spirit and the soul for leadership, you want to prepare and control what you can control, right?  Because you see these Big One nations, and that’s the term bonds.  You forgot; bon-bons we would joke about.  But you see them as eventually becoming a offensive thing, and that that’s where we need to focus our attention, that either we have to be prepared defensively or create Spice Friends to lure the Big Ones out of the big bonds and deal with them.

 

But I guess I have been adamant, and I know your heart’s been adamant too about…those people have chosen not to act, who have said they don’t care, or they just want to stay.  They won’t want to be bothered, even though the Big Ones are bothering them, that is it confusing.  They won’t leave, they’re…but they’re not exactly happy with the circumstances.  Who could be?  You know, I pitched you and you went through with multiple failures that I was…that I and some of our team proposed, because no one voted, I guess is the thing.  We had a public vote that we got the bonds to agree to, and said hey, you could make a public vote.  Do you want to stay…the exodus was a part of that, but that was more voting with your feet.  But this one said hey, just vote and then we’ll arrange for you to exit or enter.

 

Again, we…I think more people left the CN, but it wasn’t a large number of people.  So, then we said okay, we’ll do a secret vote.  If you’re concerned for some reason…I mean, what’s amazing is, I guess because the bonds consider themselves in such a strong position, that they didn’t really care if you stay or go.  Or maybe there’s some other more insidious layer that they know you’re not gonna act.  I don’t know.  So, they had this secret vote, right?  That didn’t do anything.  We tried different ones; we said okay, so you don’t want to vote by the…electronically.  Well, it’s…fly a flag.  Okay, well, that’s where you live.  Okay.  Send us…message it…we didn’t do a message in a bottle.  That was on the idea board, though.  So, none of that worked.

 

Of course, we came back to the fact…and actually, it was you that said why don’t they just vote with their hearts?  But they’re not…that’s where you got very strong…you said they’re not gonna vote with their hearts.  Their hearts aren’t voting, is the thing.  See, the people here that chose to go there chose to come here.  They voted with their feet, but their hearts were in it.  So, they can’t vote with their hearts, so what do we do?  Again, another thing of unsuccess; we tried some programming and to put on some shows, and…using the Spice Friends and the Big Emojis and everything we had, all our characters, to teach people how to vote with their heart.  But I think because our intention was ahead of our actions or something, that it…or, what response did we have?  Again, this is baffling.

 

I understand it because I feel that way inside sometimes, too, wanting to lie down, and…it’s something inside me, right?  But there was just nothing doing.  Again, there was more…the Big Ones were still walking around and then people being kind of…I don’t know that you really talked about this in your recording, but having to work serving the Big Ones in these bonds.  People still not saying okay, so, your job now is to bring food to the Big One, or you had to leave where you lived and move somewhere else so the Big One could just lie down on that side of that hill.  It was tense, and really, really, not a lot of seeing eye-to-eye because…just, no one knew what to do.  It’s exasperating, right?  We tried everything, but I guess we tried from the wrong direction, because…it was you that said it.

 

At first you said it to me; you said there’s something getting in the way of us getting to the answer of how to do this.  Why don’t you look at what’s bothering you?  But like any good leader, any real leader, you did it first for yourself.  That’s why I have so much respect for you and why I have confidence.  I have hope.  I brought…I tried to bring hope to you, but you sparked the hope within me.  I guess I need to…hopefully you’re listening to this and we’re finding a way to move forward, as you moved forward with what’s going on with you.

 

President of the Collective Nations recording again.  Okay, so, I don’t remember the last thing I was talking about.  I know we’ve had some conversation since then, but where we were at, what the turning point is, maybe I should define that…is what you would call bystandards, people without a…that have no side, or they…maybe they would describe themselves; they say well, I don’t want to get involved.  I don’t have a side.  They’re…live in a Big One’s nation but they’re not aligned with the Big One.  But they say well, this is where I…this is what happened.  These are the circumstances.  We say well, we want to take you out.  What if we don’t want to go?  Okay, well, what…do you want to be…what’s our responsibility to those people?

 

Then the idea that we were trying to get people to vote and trying to get them to do what we thought they should do, and that just didn’t work, this head-on bumping and bumping and bumping.  It was you that said maybe we have to soften the seed before we plant it.  Then I said okay, you said it was my idea, but I think it was your idea.  I said you’re right.  What is this seed that I can’t even let be planted within me?  I know what it…one of them, among many.  I was very, very frustrated, but when I started to try to put myself there and say, how am I like that?  How can…when am I resistant?  I’m vulnerable but I…I feel vulnerable.

 

I said oh, this stuff with my dad…I’ve gotta work through that and think about how…what I’m angry about, what I’m having…grieved about, and what I’m powerless over and what I’m sad about and balance those things with being in the present moment and dealing with life, taking action.  What do you do?  I said well, I guess I know what to do now, is to work with you and work through it and through this process, and work through it in the eyes of children, with children.  I mean, I was a lot younger when my father had to make really hard choices to keep people safe from the Big Ones.  Here I am, trying to create a safe place, and I have to help myself through song and dance and joy, work through those feelings, let them be there, let myself be sad, let myself be mad, let myself be a person with feelings that are real and legitimate.

 

Again, not worrying about…I don’t know, just experiencing that and…I guess it’s funny, as an aside, is if there was another world where none of this ever happened but this show, it could have changed everything too, you know?  Maybe, or maybe…or would we be like those people just watching the Big Ones out their window and saying well, oh bummer, here I am and there they go?  Hope my house isn’t the one they sit on today.  Or would…I don’t know.  That’s too much of a speculation, but…so, while I’ve been talking about this, we’ve been…and while we’ve been work…where I’ve been working through my feelings, we also maybe came up with the…we’re about to see if this is gonna work.  Okay, thank you, madam President, for all of your input and your inspiration and your vulnerability.

 

Watching you…I’ve just learned so much just from watching you be willing to try and to try to have hope that these things will work and that these things can be worked through.  That’s kinda what inspired that, this thing of the cumin seed, right?  The great cumin…it’s hard for me to say, but the Great Cumin Spice Friend Giveaway was what I first called it.  But then you said Cumin Cuties.  I said, Cumin Cute…Cumin…I…you said, yeah.  They could laugh about that on the playground, too.  But it’s Cumin…and I said, Cumin Cuties.  Cute Cumin Cuties.  You said, just Cumin Cuties, the Great Cumin Cutie Giveaway.  In some sense, a vote.  If you wanted a free…we started the cumin programming with the Cumin Cuties.  They were Spice Friends, they were singers, they were full of song and dance and joy, but they were made up…instead of being just one spice, they were a collection of cumin seeds.

 

We talked and we said well, this could be something with magnetized…not real seeds for the toys, but that are bendable and shapeable and danceable.  Then we said okay, what if people could get these for free anywhere in the world?  In the bonds or in the CNs.  What if you could just order and sign up and we’d send you a Cumin Cutie of your own?  That would be a way to vote with your heart, for a friend to play with.  It worked, and it…the best part was with all the newcomers to the CN and everybody that is involved gave people more things to be engaged and involved with, helping make these toys, these gifts to give away, to give away…you were working on them for the people in your community that wanted them and across the world.  You were involved in it, you were watching it.  Families were working on it.

 

We had a cause to work together on, and it’s been beautiful to witness.  Of course, the Cumin Cuties, they are cute.  They’re…they’ve just been…oh boy.  All of the…all the possibilities the creative team have been able to come up with; so impressive.  But that was also when we became aware of the change in one of the Big Ones right here in the former United States, on the other side of the Rockies; the Hairy Ape and some of the observations that had been going on, and one of the teams saying…I’ve been observing the Hairy Ape and it’s my belief they’ve been changing in size.  We said oh, like…?  No, not changing and getting smaller, but getting larger.  This person said, and not just larger in a slow, consistent way, but in a progressively larger way.

 

You said well, it’s time to take action, because it’s also a part of this giveaway…did trigger some change in those countries, in those places where people said you know what?  I could be a part of the…oh, the Cumin Cutie Crew, you called it.  That was their…that’s what people that worked on making the Cumin Cuties called themselves.  People in the bonds started to say hey, I want to leave.  I want to be in the Cumin Cutie Crew.  First, for a time, the bond leaders, they didn’t care because they had the people that wanted to be there, that were engaged in their ruling and praising their Big Ones.  I don’t know if this is what’s related to the growth in the big Hairy Ape, but it’s not good.  Then the nations and bonds said no, no, no; no more leaving, particularly here on the other side of the Rockies, the middle.

 

I don’t even…so, you know, I…that’s where I grew up, in the Great Plains.  So, that’s why it…my heart is heavy thinking about it, that every…so, okay, so now we’ve…I guess madam President, I guess I’ll wait to see.  We’re about to try to send…to create a Cumin Cutie of our own, a Spice Friend, and follow our protocols and actually using what you used to heal some of your feelings with your father and your mother, your siblings.  So, let’s see how it goes.  I’ll be talking to you in a second.

 

Okay, this is the president of the Collective Nations recording, and…okay, well, this…you filled me in on the Cumin Cuties, which was a success, and you taught me to kinda express and work through my feelings and feel my feelings.  Then we played that out to a larger audience on a consistent basis, and we had a Cumin Cutie.  Just one, but a Cumin Cutie.  It appeared on our side of the Rockies or on our…well, yeah.  It was cute.  It was a Cumin Cutie.  It was singing, it was walking; it could reshape itself.  Very playful, but it also knew it had to go deal with the Hairy Ape who would groan and was acting more chaotic.  But now they’d closed the borders there and wouldn’t let anybody leave.  It was time for a change.  The Cumin Cutie headed through the Rockies and the Hairy Ape…Big Hairy Ape was waiting.

 

Eventually they started to dance, in a sense, especially since the Cumin Cutie was singing.  That was when we got our first glimpse of how large the hairy ape had grown, to be the Big Hairy Ape even though it was big to begin with, and that it was much larger than the Cumin…even I…I guess now I’m saying it like you, but our Cumin Friend.  Cumin…yeah, it’s Cumin Cutie.  I want to say Cumin Spice Friend, but it’s Cumin Cutie.  At first, the dancing or whatever you want to call it, offensive dancing, defensive dancing, it seemed like it could go either way because of the ability of the seeds to reformulate themselves.  It kinda off-sent the…offset the size advantage of the Big Hairy Ape.  But it went on for a while, and it went on in a way that there was swathes of people impacted by the dancing, and it went on for some time with only some breaks.

 

We tried to keep inspiring song and dance in people’s hearts, and people around the world using their Cumin Cuties to express their feelings and work through their feelings; not all of them good feelings.  Or you…what you would choose is good.  I remember you showing me that wheel of feelings and saying…when you were talking to me or I was talking to you about where I felt blocked with my sadness and that there was this one thing on the wheel I noticed; pensive.  I cant remember it now, but pensive, sad, and grieving.  Now, on the other side of it was service and joy, I think, and that that was the spirit of the Cumin Cutie, right?  I guess, I don’t know, I’ve been distracted now because…so, the Cumin Cutie and the Big Hairy Ape, they went back and forth.

 

Eventually…I guess when you say Big Hairy Ape, it sounds a little bit not nice, but this big, hairy ape was also keen and it was learning.  I think at the time, we were assuming that was not the case.  So, at some point, the Big Hairy Ape got…figured out that one had a size advantage, and two, that the Cumin Cutie was made up of…that its advantage was also a disadvantage, that it was made from collective seeds, and we didn’t even notice it at first, that the Big Hairy Ape would have a back-and-forth, a dance-off.  But each time…and then it would retreat off and rest, and it was acting like it stubbed its toe or something and it needed to get away.  But really, it was grabbing small handfuls of cumin seeds, taking them out and burying them, or throwing them in the rivers.

 

It wasn’t for a few days that we noticed the Cumin Cutie was getting smaller and smaller, and then much to our chagrin, smaller and smaller and smaller even after we realized it.  At first, that seemed like it was going to be a giant problem, right?  The Cumin Cutie kept getting smaller and smaller, but it never stopped.  Eventually…it never…it got to a size that it was still very large, because of the huge size of the Big Hairy Ape, but next to the Big Hairy Ape, it looked like a little toy.  The Big Hairy Ape started picking it up and holding it and…in a somewhat way that at least for me felt evocative of how the Big One nations were being run.  It was a patronizing way, it was a paternal but not a loving paternal way.  It was a way like a B-U-L-L-Y, in a sense, and those images were playing out everywhere.

 

Our reaction with the creative team and you kind of leading them…to say okay, people are gonna have strong feelings about this.  What can we do that’s the opposite of that?  Again, with the Cumin Cutie being so beloved and trying to understand that, another behavior that’s not quite understandable but we have feelings about.  More and more people…but I think the fact that so many people also had this joy and service connected to it, that something totally unexpected happened, which was that one night, all the Cumin Cuties…and I think that more and more people…we started to get more and more orders during this time.  They were still free, you could still order them, and we were still using means to sneak the Big One…Cumin Cuties into the Big Ones’ nations, or people were giving them to their neighbors to use.

 

People were posting ways to make your own Cumin Cutie, and that the Cumin Cuties started talking to people and calming them, interacting, I guess, just a little bit, that they were…I don’t think…again, we’re…still don’t understand it because it’s not happening anymore, but that they didn’t come to life as so much as communicate a message somehow.  Then what did people do, but they took their Cumin Cuties outside, even if they weren’t in the Midwest, former Midwest, the plains.  They took their Cumin Cuties outside and played with them in a fun way and danced with them with joy and with the knowledge that this Cumin Cutie came from service from someone else giving it to them.  There was some remnant of that interaction, like in the hearts of the people, I guess, somehow.

 

Somehow, that changed how the Big Hairy Ape started to deal with their Cumin Cutie, and that they…the Big Hairy Ape must have witnessed it, but it must have felt it as well.  The Big Hairy Ape started to get smaller and smaller and smaller, too.  Now, still fairly large in size, but took its Cumin Cutie and headed off to a isolated part of the Rockies and seems to have burrowed in, just playing joyfully with its toy.  I don’t know what it means.  I don’t know what it means for the rest of the Big Ones’ nations, the other Big Ones, but I do know that there is this new awakening that I can feel of people saying oh, wait, I would like a little bit more of that joy.  Can I get it through this service?  Can I get it through these feelings?  Can I get it through this song and dance?  Can I get it by playing with this Cumin Cutie?  I don’t know.

 

Maybe I’ll try.  So, I’m in a place now where it’s like, I don’t know what we’re going to try next, but I hope I stay willing to try to solve things.  Then as long as I can, I can help lead us to the next stage that we have to cover.  So, I gotta get some rest.  I hope you’re resting too, astronaut, and I know we’ll talk soon.  Goodnight.

 

[END OF RECORDING]

(www.leahtranscribes.com)

Notable Language:

• A bit foofoo
• The Great Cumin Spice Friend Giveaway
• Wonk

Notable Culture:

• “You All Everybody” song from Lost
• Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
• Antonio Banderas

Notable Talking Points:

• Clouds: Sometimes they’re just fine on their own
• Maybe we have to soften the seed before we plant it
• Burrowed in, playing joyfully with its toy