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The Fog Catcher Tribe. New Myth #15. Video. By Willi Paul, planetshifter.com
The Fog Catcher Tribe. New Myth #15. Video. By Willi Paul

Please enjoy the video version.

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Neosporin skies.

Mechanical winds.

Barb wire and wicker baskets.

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Neosporin skies.

Mechanical winds.

Barb wire and wicker baskets.

After Occupy Wall Street left the park and hit the pavement to wage peace for a redistribution of wealth, rich 1%ers left for El Salvador, Compound Detroit , Cuba and other parachuteable places too fragile to fight back. The corruption that propelled them to leave left a huge emo-fissure in the urban landscapes across the US. Many with urban agri-guerrilla skills barricaded their families and friends on roof tops of abandoned skyscrapers; a mental re-trenching that cannot possibly heal the scars from the last American Revolution.

1243 feet straight up, no stairs, no elevator. All access down / up sealed after the last provisions were lifted to the roof.

The Tribe can travel horizontally to other roof top tribes on market exchange weekends with rope bridges. Fires are dearly feared as water is a premium resource and never to be stored at the level needed to put out the flame.

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Dewgunn was born in the howling winds of the 'scraper scene, an only child without time for innocence or doll houses. She has never seen the ocean or even a backyard – Dewgunn would not recognize an "island" even if she was looking at her reflection in a mirror.

She is not allowed to play near the edge of the building – or the composting pits or the converted cooling fans that crank 24/7; rapid rising air from within the tower's core that sparks a pagan-age electrical generator. Her domains are the cabin, the vertical food forest and the observatory.

The fog catchers are in play inside zone 0, and don't count into the normal skyscape risk assessment. Constructed with dead soil cob and old chairs during the initial fight and flight of OWS 6, these Easter Island-like domes passively grope and trickle water from the fog into 10 gallon restaurant buckets from a former restaurant on the 25th floor.

To Dewgunn, the sky is the ground and the windows from nearby office towers are stars. Some of her pals have taught her a kind of sign language that offers some human interaction. Tribal elders use flags on rope to speak over the deep chasm between them. Ships rock; buildings wave.

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Little in this rooftop hide-out can be considered sacred. The spiral-down of the collective's DNA is headed for a severe discontinuity. Season's come and go but survival claws down hard. Human births are not permitted, motherhood is uncelebrated. The best example of ritual in this age is the raising of the ropes when contact and barter is allowed between tribes. Dull-point arrows are whipped from one smile to another, twine in chase. In good times, the bridges remain in place for several days. In bad, corrupt tribespeople are exposed and perished with the false promises that brought them to the other side.

The foggers can only dream of the day when it will be safe to return to the ground land below.

They are running out of compost songs.