Plaint of the Host, 30th Day of Spring, 526 M.E. (Aldebaran): Aldebaran is the first of the six-day week in the New Revised USC, the equivalent to a Monday in the Julian calendar. As I had traveled back from Knoxville and Big Ears yesterday and this is my first full day back home, today feels like a Monday to me. Fitting it's Aldebaran.

I sat today for the first time since the Fourth Day of the Zenith, the 22nd of Spring. I was too busy to sit during the festival - hell, most days I was too busy to eat or sleep, much less sit. Knowing a gap was coming up in my schedule, I allowed myself to also miss sitting on the day before I left, so I could complete some chores like laundry, shopping, packing, etc., so today was my first time sitting in nine days.

It was worse last year. My records show that in 2025 I missed 12 days around the Big Ears festival, and after resuming sitting twice, I missed another two weeks for some reason or another before I got back in the rhythm of sitting every other day again. That gap in last year's schedule is a stark reminder of the need for vigilance to maintain my practice. 

Axios reports that the oil shortage triggered by the Iran war will spread globally in a slow-motion crisis, much like the covids did five years ago. The shock will unfold sequentially rather than simultaneously, a rolling supply disruption moving westward, dictated by shipping times and buffered unevenly by regional inventories. Asia is feeling the pain of lost supply now, but the pain is still muted elsewhere.

The average gas price in the U.S. is $4.02 today, up from $3.06 in January and a preview of the pain to come. Prices could get high enough to force people and companies to stop using oil, eventually taking cars and trucks off the road, ships off the sea, and planes out of the sky.

In his post-apocalyptic, post-peak World Made by Hand novels, James Howard Kunstler imagines the downfall of society and the modern world begins with severe disruptions to the global supply chain. In the novels, the disruption is started by a terroristic act on a container vessel, but in the reality we're all living through now, the disruption is predicated by the Stable Genius' terrorism in Iran and followed by Iran's blockage of the Strait of Hormuz, which could eventually collapse the entire global supply chain.

As you might guess, things don't go well for the world in the novels.