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

I have a day off today so i am in a cafe catching up on things and trying to get into contact with people. somehow i racked up a $234 phone bill even though i lost my phone 2 weeks ago. that hurts. AT&T really takes it out of my ass. thats 234 i did not think i would have to pay ...

speaking of pay.

i worked the past two weeks on a weed ranch in the hills north of San Francisco. We spent the first 10 days or so cutting down massive weed plants in the corn garden and pond garden (all outdoor weed) and wet trimming them into manageable chunks. What that means is, we take the plant and cut it up and remove all of the big leaves and useless scrapple weed and then take the buds and classify them according to a "hanger" and "tray" system. Hangers are large buds -- often the colas or tops of the plant -- and they can be hung from metal cages or hooks in the drying room. Tray bud are smaller buds that need to be placed in trays with screens to dry. So we took all these plants and brought them into a room and 6-8 of us trim them down and slowly move them to the dry room.

At the same time, it seems that the couple running the farm are in need of cash (yeah right, i'll get to that in a sec) and so they have a few guys dry trimming as well. Dry trimming is the trim process that happens just before the bud gets (hopefully cured) and packaged for sale.

After about 10 or 12 days of this, we moved into the greenhouse to wet trim that bud.

but first

the owner is a 60+ year old man who drives around on a four-wheeler from 5am to about 2am doing all sorts of stuff. moving piles of metal from here to there. digging holes over here and filling others over there. stacking bikes. erecting roofs and digging new outhouses. running pipes and installing septic systems. all sorts of shit. he has barrels and barrels filled with every type of screw and nail you can think of. He hammers out bent nails and stores them, feel me? he can't stop moving and i firmly believe the day that all the work is done on that farm is the day he drops and dies.

but it goes so much deeper and weirder than that. it twists and turns around a history of secretive scandalous behavior that ropes in young meth addicts turned indentured serf asking tentatively over a walkie talkie if he can have some cereal.

"No" crackles the gruff old geezer.

meth and porn in a Spartan Mansion spray painted on the outside (Pikey Camp) and oozing with cigarette butts and stiff yellowing tissues inside. armless Hulk dolls with big black dildos stuffed deep inside and lubes and douches and boxes of Ramen and 12 packs strewn about in the aftermath of a drug hazed rage session involving binding oneself and bonding a shred of a soul to the ranch and its horrors and insanities. he was alone with all of that stuff and only a small candle or a dying fire was there.

A girl's voice haunts us sometimes and some of us think we heard it down in the valley between the trailers and the horse barn. others in the house next door, empty save for boxes of the mistress's cloth. Or in the barn itself, the horses twitch strangely in the dusk as if ghostly hands stroke them. she argues with someone.

the old man braves the darkness of his land to be with his little girl but he is not really with her so he keeps the tasks coming. when all is silent his chest implodes and he is ripped apart by deeds farmhands whisper about. all we really know is that the engines are still running when sleep catches up to us.

The woman of the ranch is a skeksi. she sucks the blood of the farmhands and her face, sweet and old and haggard and dripping out of the corner of a farmhand's eye becomes a howl of fury and poisonous festering vengeance the undead dying hold for the undying life that can withstand any bombardment as long as the pay comes in -- even if the skeksi bitch takes her 10% tithe of hatred and gurgling mucus covered greed. her eyes bulge when our backs are turned and her clawed old bones grasp at my neck. i turn and she smiles with an old cookie in her hand and unsalted lentils raised up from a dripping spoon i swear i saw black shit drip but i slurp anyway cuz the paycheck the paycheck the paycheck is freedom in a satchel.

you think i'm playin dontchu. She brought in a rabbi to exorcise the ranch. some farmhands saw her standing above the old man shaking a finger and screaming in old Hebrew. She wants the ghosts to finally stay dead, but the old man would have to stop moving. If he stops moving she has no funds to support her grasping clan and her trips abroad. they find a way to live together.

so we swerve in and out of the work and waves of resentment content with "hey, she is really being sweet" and "i see the good in him" cuz we have to believe that no matter what anyone can be turned. anyone.

A 51 year old father of seven handyman with fingers missing and a heart of gold takes the place of the runaway meth addict porn hound chain smoking delusional and now he spits and screams when anyone is watching and bows and scrapes when the old man's four wheeler comes wheeling into pikey camp or when his voice says

"Dave where are you?"

"where do you want me to be?"

This compulsive old workaholic and his skeksi wife with their secrets and hatreds and schemings neglected the greenhouse so we humble farmhands had to cut the branches of diseased no flayed weed plants as little white carcasses drifted down like god's dandruff into our eyes, ears, nose, mouth, shirts. Worms dug deep into the bud and became something else. aphids marched and sucked and bled the plants brown. earwigs lurked and scattered. mold infested to boot.

So we took these fetid sores and broke them down in an isolated quarantine spot and atomized each branch with water to wash the filth and neglect and rot off of each bud. hung them to dry. we wait to trim them down so this old man and his womanthing can sell it off and bury their loot and tilt their dishonest scales further in favor of a life here, in hell, rather than face the demons of the night and the voice of the girl and the lonely torture of the serfs that get caught in the web and the boiling resentment and determination of a crew of farmhands who have always managed to escape.

The Weed Game

I watched the CNBC documentary on weed in Cali, Marijuana, INC. and it was a straight War on Drugs propagan(ja) piece. Trish Regan interviewd weed farmers and the look in her eye said: "this is so crazy, these people are not like (look into the camera with a Palinesque wink) US!"

So that was too bad. They focused on the money and the problems, not the money problems that bring this about.

Shall we discuss Medical Marijuana? Shall we talk about the dangers of Alcohol vs. the dangers of Weed?

I think it might be more interesting to note that the people in Cali are running after the American Dream that for some only a fat crop can help them attain. Think about this: You can work a job thats legit for 10-15 an hour and make maybe 1500USD a month after taxes and do that all your life, thinking to yourself that, yeah, sure if I do this for 20 years I can have a mortgage on my crib and save enough for my kids to go to college. Maybe. Or I can grow a crop that is legal in California and make 100K in one year selling weed legally over the counter to weed heads and cancer patients that want this product cuz it makes them feel better.

What it is is the meeting of two cultures: the weed culture of the 1990s and our parents, who consider it all to be Drug-Related. Its young families with ideas about 2012, holistic lives, multiculturalism and a new "back to the Land" vision sitting down and thinking to themselves: the contract I signed with the society (go to college and get a job) seems sour to me and I dont want it. What can I do? How can i live happily? what can i do to support my people my wife my kids and still adhere to my code of honor and living? how do i not sell out like all those before me but still get enough money to live a life that doesn't make me a slave to the sell outs?

For many, its the weed game. Search for a job that pays a young creative or be young and creative ... is that the question?

How do YOU feel about the weed game??

(I'm back)

Bumpin Raekwon & Drinking Dew

My sister is in Paris alone ... hoping that my old friend will visit and show her around, listen to her and give her a word or two of advice that she can carry back.

I am in Northern Cali in the midst of the harvest season. Billions of dollars of green gold erupting out of the earth and spilling out as far as NYC and Hawaii. Everyone is in on it on some level or another and it seems to be the oil that greases, eases or helps one carry on a separate legit biz that momz can know about and wifey can be proud of.

gotta go and get some supplies right now, there is a tab can of trichomes sitting next to my screen i rub it and its greasy and brown and its worth a new car.

the Cali sun

is hard to locate not because the clouds are there, but because they're absent.

I haven't seen a sky like this one in I don't even know when. Ate a power breakfast of Inca berries, Goji berries, chicken broth infused brown rice, pineapples and bananas and a huge dollop of yogurt.

Did Big Scott's pushup exercise and found a new appreciation for the toad.