I am a sleeper cell

The concept of a sleeper cell has been hijacked by violent fanatics. Sleeper cell has come to connote zombies who come to life in order to engage in acts of destruction, preferably against targets in Western societies where they've been living, studying and working.  

Echinopsis aka 'Sleeping Beauty'

I am not that sort of a sleeper cell. This blog is dedicated to the redemption of the concept of the sleeper cell.

I'm more like a Sleeping Beauty sort of sleeper cell, but maybe without a lot of mush and maybe not even that much beauty for that matter. 


I am a person who was socially radicalized during the late 1960s by–I may as well admit it right away–a pretty steady diet of sex and drugs and rock and roll.  That Vietnam War thing helped out a lot too.  The idea of getting shot so that the US could impose puppet dictatorships on Indo-China and extract a whole lot materiel from that part of the world while our own society choked on racism and a whole bunch of other isms had zero appeal to me.   

Bob Dylan got to me.  I'd get stoned and Dylan would show up singing inside my head.  He was speaking directly to me.  He can say whatever he wants to say now, but I don't think anyone who's been there has any doubt that he was there too.  No one wanted to be "Mr. Jones."  


I was an angry young man who knew how to have a good time.  


I was a flower child.  


I was a fairly upper class guy with a good education, refined manners, and a career path in investment banking I was about to throw under the bus. 

I was uncomfortable in a suit.   

I was infused with apocalyptic hope.

I saw the 60s die at Altamont.  I watched The Fat Man get beat over the head with billiard cues.  I am not a fan of Sonny Barger. 


By 1976, the Vietnam War was over.  It was becoming increasingly evident that the United States was turning the page.  The expectations that many of us had for a new age–spiritually, economically, politically–were becoming just that, expectations that weren't going to be realized.  I didn't know that at the time, but that's the way it's turned out...so far.


Time to get a job.


And that is what I did.  I got a good job, one I pretty much invented.  


But I've never forgotten nor abandoned the visions that have rained down on me my whole life: visions of illumination and extraordinary possibility and magical  enchantment that are always just a shot away.  

My work has been sort of a methodical approach toward that state of being, but a tipping point, a breakthrough to the other side is what I need.  It's my elixir. 


I'm not alone.


I figure that there are about three to four million of us waiting for that wake up call, that moment when we will be galvanized to act in a way that we thought we never would again but have always wanted to: the voice of destiny.  


We are sleeper cells.  


This blog is dedicated to our dawn, our heroism, our courage, our vitality, our future.


Let us awake.  Let us take it down and build it up.