Tolstoy.  Descartes.  Boeing.  Names that used to have meaning, and here, in Santa Cruz, have been adopted with new meanings.  I have no doubt that the mountain folk have an idea what Boeing was, or who Tolstoy and Descartes were, but they have disconnected themselves from history to become this new breed of man.

One can see, with each passing moment, with each inevitable confrontation, the makings of a new human tribal culture.  I am attempting to be an outside observer, but strangely part of me has begun to adopt the figuration of the self that makes up the remaining factions of Santa Cruz.  The mountain folk, however, remain an enigma.  What has driven them to cannibalism and extremist insanity?  They seemed to have no purpose.  No note was given during the recent attacks, no indication that they had any demands.  What do they want, if anything?

I recall, here, a movie, one not too far removed from the world of today, but somehow relevant here.  It was called The Dark Knight—by no means a perfect film, nor, at the time, conceived as one of the most important films of recent decades.  Based on the Batman comic books, probably now burned to ashes or buried somewhere in some long-dead social introvert’s closet, this film introduced us to the ultimate of terrifying enemies:  the human who wishes only to create chaos, and for no other purpose.  If the people here remembered that film, and some of them must have seen it, then perhaps they have already made the connection I see now.  The Joker, that seminal, wicked version of man, has been multiplied by harsh circumstances.  They roam the mountains, streams, and what remains of the forests, with no logical direction except the most basic of impulses:  the drives to create havoc and sustenance.

Or maybe they are zombies.  Would that seem more fitting?  I am not an anthropologist and can only consider the mountain folk from an uneducated position.  In doing so, I think we come closer to an understanding of humanity in chaos.  We can see what we are already so close to becoming–nostalgia for a past we can hardly remember.

Only a few nights from the first incident and the people here, the ones who live off the land and refuse to resort to the unethical means of survival, are considering whether the lives they have fashioned for themselves in former-Santa Cruz are worth fighting for, worth saving.

“We can only save so much of our humanity,” one woman told me, “before whatever is left is not worth much at all.”  The mountain folk have lost that—their humanity.  The question seems to be:  how much of our humanity can we lose before we descend into chaos?  A philosophical question, for sure, but one we have to consider as we fight off this end of the world time.

I will see that loss of humanity face to face soon.  The mountain folk are coming again.  This time, the people here will be ready.

The Santa Cruz area is no longer safe.  Something has upset the balance, set things moving in directions unexpected and unwanted.  The people here are leaving in droves, the good ones, anyway.  Those that have decided to stay behind, including me and what remains of my crew, are suffering the consequences of too many years without order.  Logic does not work with the mountain folk; they have no interest in such things.

The dominance of anarchic subcultures is remarkable.  How swift we have de-evolved culturally.  We’ve shed our comforts in exchange for brute force and emotionless survival.  By we, I mean them, the mountain folk, the regular citizens of the Santa Cruz area—never mind that I am already talking in the guise of nationalist ideals.  Citizens?  “Inhabitants” is more appropriate.

Unfortunate as all this has become, the work I am doing is necessary.  We must understand this to grasp the worldwide situation.  To say so much of the environment, but to ignore these people, is to warrant the continued collapse of what little remains of order in the last vestiges of Western civilization.  The dream is all but dead, clinging to the last thread of flesh; it has already died here.

Philosophy aside, there will be a burial tonight.  Thirty-seven are dead, more than I had reported the other night.  The numbers are dwindling and already the locals on what used to be beach front property are gearing for a civil war.  With half their stores gone, it is hardly unfair for them to take to the most violent of ways.  Some are suggesting a counterattack.

To think that I had intended to report these people as a different kind of social de-evolution, a quasi-violent mob of likeminded individuals quite literally operating on a stiff hierarchy.  That hierarchy is collapsing, because, of the thirty-seven, twelve were in the upper echelons.  You might call them lords, if such a title could ever exist.  Their voices commanded a respect that I was only beginning to understand.  Now they are gone.  I feel nothing, because I had no connection to them.  Arriving here felt so much like what Columbus must have experienced when he ad his crew first met the Native Americans.  They are curious, but disconnected from the world that I know—a privileged world that only knows the old ways and yet must move beyond the destitution of mere survival.

I expect when this civil war erupts, I will have much to say.  But, for now, it is a waiting game.  Above me lingers the future shrouded in darkness.  Poetics serve only to dampen the sensation created here.

Some years ago, a nameless man once said:  “In action we forget who we are, but in sleep we remember the old as if it were forever present; we remember ourselves when dreams know no bounds.”  Think of it what you will.  I know that in my waking days I see mankind remembering a past we had only recently forgotten.  It makes savages of honorable men.  This is the world we live in.

An apology must be made for my absence.  There was a raid several weeks ago.  We’re not sure who was behind it, but fifteen people were killed, including a small boy named Jeremy.  I was going to say something about him before the raid, but it seems an obituary would be more fitting.  The only bit of mercy the raiders gave his mother was a swift death, otherwise she might have spent the rest of her life alone, barren from age and the lack of medical care in these parts.

None of my men were killed, but one was shot and the other kidnapped.  I suspect he won’t live long, not if the raiders were cannibals.  They’ve become bold as of late, apparently.  A short food supply might have forced them into entering the city, or maybe they aren’t satisfied scrounging along the edges and want to test the strength of the locals here.  The city folk failed that test and some of them believe the raiders will be back again soon.  I’m not waiting for them.  We’re building up some defensive structures and sending armed men on patrol.  When I say we, I mean the people in charge.  I have nothing to do with their decisions.  I’m an outsider, destined to observe like a weird museum creature.

I’ll have more to say soon.  Right now communications are limited and this is the first time I’ve been able to access the networks.  I suspect there will be much more to say soon.

To all those out there struggling to survive in this God forsaken world:  stay safe.

I met a man named Nex Anhelo today.  His name means “death breather,” but the way he carries himself suggests to me that he is not the man his name implies.  It seems that here, in the swamplands of Fleshtown, a name makes the man; who you are perceived to be centers on your name.  Ithius, apparently, is a strong name here, but Nex tells me it will only get me so far.  I’ll have to earn passage into the inner portions of the city, to the banished spaces, and even to the darker portions of the Santa Cruz Mountains.  I’m still learning what that will take.

I’m not alone here, thankfully.  It would be suicide to be here alone.  I’ve had to call up a few favors through my father’s old business.  You could say I have an entourage, but these people only have my safety in mind.  There are two:  Erin and Bruce.  The latter has been here before.  He told me the other day that he fled the area after the big quake in January, the one that split the mountains right through where Highway 17 wound its way from San Jose to Santa Cruz.  You’d have to see the split to believe it.  It cannot compete with the Grand Canyon, but it has a demonic look to it:  gnarled brambles, spiked rock, and ash run-offs from the fires.  Fires still rage out in the deep mountains–old brush and overdue forests torn down by the heat, poor weather, and lightning storms.  Those are parts of the mountains where most people never go; it’s too dangerous.  If Mother Nature doesn’t get you, the mountain folk will.  I’d rather Mother Nature took my life, if I were to die out here.

In any case, Nex tells me that there have been rumors of the mountain folk moving downhill into what is left of the city.  I haven’t seen them, but Nex knew they had been about when a few farmers stumbled into Mission Quarter yesterday in rough shape.  The farmers had been raided by an enormous party of cannibals–at least fifty men and women, but probably more.  What was once a farming community of a hundred people had been reduced to a dozen or so people.  The rest?  Nex didn’t ask.  But you can guess where most of them have ended up.

I’ll end this with a word of advice given to me by Nex’s son, Vita:  ”When the trees shift and you hear unfamiliar voices in the dark; run.  An unfamiliar voice is a demon in the night.”  Poetic, sure, but out here and in these times, it couldn’t be any more true.  Santa Cruz is no place to be when the sun sets.

The Santa Cruz Mountains are surprisingly lush this time of year, even considering all that has happened. You’d think, given the massive earthquakes that brought San Francisco and much of Santa Cruz to its knees, the flooding of much of the coastal areas, and resurgence of tribal cultures in the area, thriving redwood forests would be the last thing to find a haven here. But if you have an armed escort, you can escape, find a nice grassy knoll tucked away somewhere, surrounded by trees, fuzzy ferns, and banana slugs: a refuge from the things happening below along what is left of Highway 17.

You can’t stay out at night here, though. It turns into a bad post-apocalyptic movie, a mixture of Rhona Mitra and George Romero. Cannibals and territorial “natives,” if that’s what you can call them. But who am I to judge? Who are we all to judge the ways humans cope with disaster? These people have been through things I cannot imagine. Flash floods, raging fires, earthquakes, massive landslides, cruel winters, the list can go on.

I’m from the Northern Block, where Montana used to be. We had storms, sure, but these people, folks we used to know as hippies and Santa Cruzians, have seen some of the worst conditions imaginable. And they have largely been incapable of leaving, not with the blockades along the San Jose Front or the swampy sinkhole that is now San Francisco to the north.

This whole area made up Santa Cruz County and used to be part of California, back when States and Unions meant something. Now? I don’t know what it is. They call this place Reverb City, after the constant fluctuations of earthquakes, and Fleshtown, for various reasons. Before long, the Santa Cruz Mountains may succumb to fires and logging. But that may be some years from now.

There’s a lot to be learned here about how things have turned out—the rules, the culture, the people. We’ll see how long I can last before the locals and the conditions force me to skip town.

–Ithius Sinclair