this could have been anyone of us

In this story right here, I find a very familiar young man:

went to evergreen and became slightly radicalized. got a girlfriend and did what he thought was best -- take action instead of talk. got caught and ran for his life to Dali, a place i know well. ran around the town and got into the drug trade there, got caught up in the dragnet last year that we all knew about when it went down. none of my people got got, except for this kid right here, whom i never met.

good luck kid.

i got brothers

i have been many things in my life, some good, some bad and some ugly. i have seen my brothers be those as well. what i have learned is that only through the fire can the secrets of these ancient bonds be learned and earned. i also believe that time heals all and everything works the way it should. so when my brothers and me find ourselves estranged, back in the day or right now, i feel it and it hurts because no matter what i have been, i have always loved deeper than i myself know and this in me and in you keeps the flame burning forever. ya'll know what i mean. don't trip. when i am alone i look at me and find whats black and toy with it. do the same. then go and break bread.

i'll keep keepin on till i earn what i have been given.

One.

This shit really happens

In the Sanctuary in Oakland with my main men Big Scott and Johnny Frizzle. Today we tore the house up to try and find my passport. We all had different vague recollections of having stowed it away somewhere in the house, but it turns out I left it at a completely different sanctuary up north a bit. My mind is playing tricks on me.

I find myself feeling quite sad about a homie of mine, real old school. We had big issues earlier this year. He stabbed me in the back for a string of flimsy reasons and my crew made moves to reconcile the whole thing and it ended up that we met again and forgave each other. I suppose i had to forgive a lot more than he did. My brothers came through for me and no real damage was done to me. But now my old school homie is floating about and none of my crew wants anything really to do with him -- because he stabbed me, but also because he is a wild card. Leaves me in a weird space. I feel responsible and sad. Responsible because I made my brothers deal with this shit and sad because the shit involved an old school brother. I had hoped to merge crews and see a unification of minds. But in the end i stand alone at the bridge and I got to turn my way and do my thing. So thats that.

I had a dream last night that left me shaken. I went into a brothel to visit a girl I knew. She was in love with me and treated my visits like bright shining lights of hope in her sordid life of Johns and Pimps and otherwise bad men. In my dream, I took advantage of her love just so I could get some. We had sex and she told me it wasn't about my dick, that it went so much deeper than that. Her sadness was the old stale sorrow of a love and a life almost snuffed. I observed and catalogued this face of hers, just because it was a human experience i knew i could recall and perhaps insert into a story of mine. Three black men came into the brothel and demanded her. They wanted to inflict physical pain on this defenseless woman and at first I tried to defend her. But this was one of those dreams in which my blows glanced harmlessly off of them and they laughed at me and threw me aside.

This is where it gets brutal and horrifying. So don't read any more if you don't want to hear what really happens in brothels like these.

They took a stick and started shoving it in her anus, slamming it and jerking it and breaking it off. She started screaming in pain. I heard the screams and they were so real, so raw, so dumb and drunk with pain that it no longer was a dream, but a dimension in which Sascha the man in this world was awake and subjected to his own cowardice and his own complicity in the act. She screamed and i ran out of the brothel and i felt the stick in my chest and the screams became my own and they said

this shit really happens this shit really happens this shit really happens

to women all over the world.

I read once about a prostitute in China who had been murdered by some pimp, He killed her by ramming a toothbrush up her nose. Once, as a courier for a travel agency in Frankfurt, I delivered tickets and cash to a brothel and saw a big German beat a little Thai woman because she didn't want to work anymore. I once saw a young prostitute in China shed one big tear and whisper just inside of ear shot that she didn't want to lead this life.

Wo bu yao zhezhong shenghuo. I dont want this life.

This shit really happens.

Sigh

Headed back Here

And just to make it even more lovely, i read more about Chinese products ONCE AGAIN making consumers sick and otherwise doing everything they should not be doing.

My lady wants to stay just one year or so, because in 2011 a chemical plant will be built just a an hour or so down river from us. And it makes her feel nauseous to have me buy baby stuff here in the US -- although the same stuff is available in China -- because she does not dare buy stuff over there.

there is, of course, a silver lining. Its called Dujiangyan, Qing Cheng Shan and the Min River. I keep that in my head along with the courtyard enclosed home i dream of -- it can still be all good, even in the very belly of the belching beast.

My Rainy Poem

Zhang Yushi -- Yu means rain, Shi mean poem or poetry or poet ... depending.

i met her for the first time back in the days when i was a real rake and rastabout. tenzin my man and i were playing chess in the ole cafe in Fanghua Gai in Yulin. I remember two giggling girls watching us play the fools for them. that was about 7 years ago. a little over one year ago, we bumped into each other again. i didn't remember it, but you know when you get that feeling, like something is about to change forever? well i had that feeling but i didn't really know it, i just thought it was a chance for me to -- for one time -- not seduce a girl and just be her friend and brother and confidante. so for a time, Yushi came to my rundown country house and hung out. she brought her stanky dog around, stole tenzin's steak, frowned at the weird shit i was cooking, listened to me preach, became my Shifu's favorite, impressed my sage homie Zhuang with her quick mind and ability to pierce through the bullshit.

she helped take care of my kitties, rolled with me into the earthquake spot, helped me mend fences with my neighbors, took walks with me at night in the last days of the village i lived in. she became friends with Andreas and Julia the photographers and one by one my friends wondered aloud to her and me, what plans did we have? where was this going? I loudly proclaimed that i was her protector and brother and teacher and friend and all that. she just kinda looked at me.

i made her lose her job at the newspaper, when i asked her to help me with a story i am working on and she decided to come with me rather then to her job. i never heard her mother's voice, she died in february, but i spoke to her just minutes before she did and i can feel her. her pops came up with a name for my tea house Ma Bang Cha Yi, which means ... Horse Camp Tea Tent. He feels me. He once told Bean (her nickname, which she got on a ride through the mtns to my Shifu's school) "nide ba de zhongguo wenhua xvyao liangge ren zai bi de shang!" which means ... your pops got game!

She tells me about myself in way that hurts because its all true. its like looking at a painting and seeing a red woman and then tilting your head and seeing the house and hills behind her and maybe the expression on her face if you tilt another way. i can only see red, at best, she points out all the other stuff.

at one point, i rolled to beijing for the olympics and before i did i asked my boy how did he know about his girl and he said, when you roll somewhere, she's the one you think about. i thought about her all the time. Still do.

we gonna write books together, raise a god together and grow shrooms and bud in china and spread the Word together.

I'm done with work and in a week i fly out.

Well well well

What Providence, What Divine Intelligence ...

so i am leaving the Wagon today and headed to a different brighter spot up the road a bit. I am looking forward to it very much and i believe its the best way to get my thing going before i head to China and begin life as a family man. Holy Jesus.

I haven't dropped any of that story on here until now, for whatever reasons i may have had, they remain mine alone and now they have become irrelevant and so it is time to letchaya'll know the deal:

Zhang Yushi is 6 months pregnant with my son and the due date is in February. It came as a surprise and it was definitely unplanned -- in a manner of speaking -- but its something i have wanted for a long time and I am excited to get this thing going.

So, sure it was unplanned. I did not want to put the cart before the horse and I assumed i would be hit by lightning before i settled down with a woman, but at the same time i have been willing this for so long -- the entire time i was in China as a matter of fact. I was given multiple chances to be a father but each one was cast aside by fear and doubt and simple fact that the future held too much suffering for me to contemplate. This time, I can see a beautiful future ahead of me and it seems so damn ordained that for me to run this time would be the end of me as a man and the completion of the devil's plan for me. I would become the demon that I have feared for so long and end up sucking the souls of others for sustenance till my ass got got by a man with morals somewhere sometime.

Thankg God that didn't happen. Instead I made the right choice and in a few short months I'll post pics of my son (or daughter, still ain't 100% yet) and then I guess this blog will be filled with those words and those inspirations ... for some time to come.

mazeltov.

A Photo Project and a Photographer's ish:

the ABC's of photography

and peep the Yosemite B&W's here ....

Chirp Out Day

Chirp Out is the day of freedom and joy for my Tribe. Its the day when we hit the road again after a season of trimming and farting and smoking and such. we hold councils on the daily and estimate the exact date of the final chirp chirp. we figure less than 10 days. maybe one week. after all of this, i might walk with around 6k. its not what i was hoping, but its good money in a good spot with good people and eachtime i come here i get stronger (and maybe weaker?) in some way or another.

So i have this homeboy SUPABOY in brzil right now and he is a shaman. we all knew this and to hear it from the horse's mouth is just confirmation of long held beliefs. the questions i ask myslef these days basically revolve around my increasingly tenuous hold on this reality coupled with the fact that i am going to be a father in about four months. so i have a family to take care of and a seed to nurture and at the same time my own individual experience tells me that the time is nigh. i know hippies and such talk about 2012 in whispers and loud proclamations. i believe in some of what they say even as i deride hippies for being the shades that they are. why should i sneer at a hippy goddess when she is just giving voice to what is in my head anywayz? perhaps because i feel that my path is more righteous in some way.

and getting into that, there is a dude at the ranch that judges all paths according to his particular experience and he does a lot of sneering. i find myslef laughing at him too. so i just bide my time and do battle with doubts. in the end, life has taught me that my free will brings me to where i need to be ... the path might be straight, but i needs be wandering off into the underbrush before i am reminded that the way is laid out. its what the universe wants anyway. complexity -- because the universe in the beginning was lonely and continues to be so until every single atom and molecule sings along with the one voice.

these thoughts collide with the very present needs of baby formula, nice house, clothes and the proximity of me to them and them to me (my family here is what i speak of) and the merging of all this into one clear train of action and thought is, i guess, what it all is.

i am with my crew and our energies crackle out loud and i can feel that even as we grow closer and stronger something holds us all back into our own perceptions. it is only me and my and I that will face the truth alone. and it is only with my crew and family and brothers that i can face the truth alone. the dichotomy of it all makes me sit and watch and observe, because any action is fraught with its twin: inaction.

safety and sanity vs. the unknown and the only thing we should know.

i feel ready to shatter and impervious to all weapons at the same time.

a sentence that hit me while i was on break from dry trim smoking one on the wagon's porch:

"sunlight through the scrub oak, a sparrow flies between them on wings of gold."

thats what it looked like to me. and even my homie hans had a halo when he stood before the oak below the nest and chuckled to himself about something as low low low as the deuce he just dropped in an overflowing outhouse. only by writing these things down can i keep the threads of my reality together just long enough to be there for all my family and people when they need me. I used to worry (and sometimes i still do) that all this writing is just for me and myself but every now and then a brother or sister will read it and feel it and laugh with me and say in a low whisper by a rain spattered window above the street that

i was thinking the same thing just now.

The Wagon Part Deux

in darkness and in light


even as alli said in the last post is true, so is the sweetness of the old lady and the steady drifting of the old man in from the cold. she wants to be our grandmother and it takes time for her to manage the movement from skeksi to mystic, but if you have seen the movie dark crystal, then you know they are one.

the gorging of the skeksi sustains the mystic sheperd during the trek through the valley of death.

what i learned is that although the sheperd does his duty and brings them all through, the pain and suffering that cascades down the black valley walls does not ebb or dissipate or go away. no, the mystic takes it upon himself and drinks from the vile rivers so the weak may walk as children do.

i learned this during the penultimate phase of the moon on a veranda bathed in white light and the scatterings of tribal factions mimicing the protonic movements of free radicals searching searching ...

so the wagon is both. abode of demons and hearth for the lost.