Wildflower Seed

      It was a turn-down day at the side of the Coast Highway and Derrol was sitting on his pack, staring at the Queen Anne Lace growing at his feet... the flushing whiz of the passing cars found him rubbing his thumb against his jacket... wouldn't any of them stop? The cold winter wind and grey overcast fog, unusual for this time of year, only made his desire for a lift more urgent.

     O, the mild and raging child, he waits at the side of the road. Meeting yourself at this point on the roadside, like a stranger you never knew.

     “ I’m not your little daisy” he sang to himself 

     “I’m not the one you thought you knew.”

     He plucked a little on the mandolin which hung around his neck by a green braided cord.

     The destination was the home of a group of people he had met a couple of years before.

     “I once knew many who turned their genitals into bicycle seats, in the service of the corporate gears, they were but ground beef in its cogs, with some rapidity.

     “But leading hippies to work is like fitting shoes on kangaroos.”

     Derrol was not stupid, either, even if he was sometimes deluded. He had a full wallet, last week’s pay stuffing it to the gills, so far as he knew. It was time to exchange green energy for green energy.

     The hash pipe was going round the table when he got there. A nice dude in a silver Corvair had stopped, and they had floated along in the space time continuum, the relativity of the passing highway fences like the blurry wings of a flight of swallows.

     Past the Pizza House, the Rattan Chicken Coop, the Femur Arts Collective, the Corvair cut as if a cutlass through the misty fog, headlights diffusing in the headwind. As they passed the Post Office and Liquor Store he cut the car into the parking lot, to buy a fifth of bourbon and pack of cigarettes. Just another half mile, and he dropped Derrol at the edge of the highway where another street, across the highway, led out toward the ocean. He made a left turn under a pair of century-old cypress, and there he was, at the Tarantula House. The concrete patio clicked beneath his boot heels.

     The Tarantula House was so named because one year, a tarantula came climbing out of the peyote cactus growing on the hearth of an old stone fitted fireplace. It had been home to a revolving panoply of characters over a five year period, some staying the entire time, some coming and going over shifts of two to three years, on average.

     Andy and Darcy were Derrol’s longtime connections. The couple grew a little in their henhouse, disguised with some one way glass utilizing an open–sun roof, as the rest of the spread was at the mercy of a flock of chickens. Darcy and Andy were free-lovers, meaning all and anyone might be subject to a hug, or an invitation to soak in their wooden-shingle hot tub. Their marriage was more open than Pandora’s Box, and attended by about as many goblins. But Derrol was one of the high points, the friendship went back years. Along with the Andy-Darcy Axis were Melange, Nuestra Starre, and Sandra, three single, unattached, and frivoluous women, indulging their freedom in the only way that could be done in the pre-HIV/AIDS era.

As Andy handed over the hash pipe, Melange caught Derrol’s eye.

“Hey there dude, nice to see you again!” she winked at him. Within a few more moments, as Derrol blinked, she seemed to be outright leering at him. She flexed the muscles in her thighs, highly visible beneath a tight corduroy skirt that ended somewhere south of her upper thighs, but just only not very.
     He winked back, took a hit off the pipe, and passed it to Nuestra on his right.

     She began laughing, as she spilled out a billow of smoke which ended leaving her pursed lips in staccato bursts of white-grey smoke cloud. The wisps surrounded her curly hair like the halo round that of a saint. Only her saintliness was underdone, and her main ken was a wanton one. She pumped her legs, shook her ass at him, and giggled.

“If I was you, brother, I’d take on Melange. She’s got in in for you, you know. “

     Derrol looked up. “Really?” he thought. “I’d be lucky as a duck on an ice-cream truck.”

Melange followed his eyes silently, and slowly blinked, herself.

     “Tonight is our Peyote Night, Derrol you came just in time.”

     Darcy drew Derrol a glass of red wine from the half-gallon wine jar that sat at the center of the upturned telephone cable spool which was the dining room table. Darcy took a shoebox from her seat and began counting out peyote buttons for as many as there were, four per person. The hash pipe had made another circle and Derrol smiled as Andy began regaling him of current exploits. He held before Derrol a block of hashish in the form of a shoe heel. It had made it past customs as the sole of someone’s four inch platform disco-heels. Derrol placed a roll of his pay- a small portion, although, in relation to what he was not taking out, as quite a large percentage… and Andy began to work the piece of hashish with a pocketknife. Derrol was patient, and while he watied, Melange and Nuestra Starre kept working him up and down with their eyes.

     "It’s Afghani” said Andy. “Brown. You will see how well it powders up when you want a bowl of it.”

     Derrol thanked Andy and slid the hunk of hash into the side of his own boot. It could live there for the next day or two, when he made it back over the hill in time for another week of avoiding classes.      The peyote was going round, dried apricots and orange juice and water as well as a number of hand-rolled cigarettes went round as the partakers took their turns at button, juice, apricot, drag of cigarette, around and around until each had consumed four buttons and the magic- or trial- was about to begin for them all.

     Amazingly on this round, nobody threw up. Most had had the cactus before, and had begun researching other delicti cacti such as St John’s and Diego Padre. So none were tenderfeet, an this helped the cameraderie considerably, since nobody would feel the sense of betrayal of many a novice, who ingests and resists the urge to puke and let the medicine clear the mind.

     With internal retinal starbursts and constellations, the medicine cleared the mind.

     Melange curled up beside him in the empty space to his right on the eight foot couch.

She began rubbing herself against him, licking his ear and his neck, and soon they were wrapped around each other like a pair of cobras, It would not take much more to get Derrol spinning in his sleeping bag.

     So she led him by the hand behind the glass door to the room just off the living room which was hers. She pressed a button on a ghetto blaster cassette deck, and the sound of Shine On Crazy Diamond by Pink Floyd came on.

     With each rippling blast of Gilmour’s guitar, she pulled off another bit of her clothing. First the turtleneck sweater. Then, out of the just-barely-south of the upper-thigh; tight hiphugging skirt, then the brassiere, and lastly, her panties, now showing the slickness of her excitement and urgency.

     After they had balled Derrol dreamt as he slept in her arms, the peyote visions of his dream seeping in; being indistinguishable now from the waking lands. Benjamin Franklin sat in a chair at the table, his enigmatic smile-frown glancing back at Derrol, unperturbed.
     “ I had a few myself, “ said Ben. “As well as a pipe of that hemp conserve. I am now happy to say you have brought me to a new understanding of insight.”

     Franklin bowed, and stepped out of the doorway. Sunlight in a bright ray flooded down, and Derrol’s mind’s eye shaded it with a free arm, as though he were watching the arrival of the Extraterrestrials. And the next thing he knew…

     In the morning, after he had fucked her bowlegged all night and they had slept the sleep of babes, and she now hobbled around the yard between the main and the hen houses, Derrol came up behind her and gave her an affectionate, gentle squeeze on the ass. “That was something else, thank you.”

     “No, thank you, gentle traveler. Would you like to spend the day out near the cliffs with me?” The coyness in her glance and her dipping eyelashes completed the cow’s moo she played to his rousing bull.

     “Our Lady of the Cosmic Sea”,” he prayed, as they sat at the edge of the cliffs and began the picnic they had made from a few additions from the store and a number of items off Melange’s shelf,      “Please grant us the serenity to accept our minimal immunity and maximum vulnerabilty to the slings and outrageous arrows of our fortune. May we tune our selves to Your Guiding Star, and lead ourselves back home to our Source deep within Thee. Thanks for lunch, Amen.”

     She held his hand and they sat together silent, watching the waves together, for a very long time.

They demolished a loaf of fresh french bread from the bakery in Half Moon Bay and drank a quart of wine and it was not long before, as though materializing from the mist and the wooded green, Nuestra Starre stood before them, a bottle of her own in hand. She walked tipsy through the portulaca at the edge, considering what a swan dive off the edge might do to knock these two chuckleheads together. Pole dancer, striptease artist, and girlfriend of Darcy and Andy’s resident photographer, Lars Darndorff, Nuestra Starre actually contributed the majority of the rent on the backwater farmhouse, and brought a ton of hardcore energy with her when she had moved in. Not that anyone around her were gangsterish enough to deal in automatic weapons. But they were rough customers regardless, with a fondness for black leather, brass knuckles and switchblades, and Harley motorcycles.

     One afternoon the Fronteros- that was their club name- were hanging at the entrance to the spread, pickin’ their teeth with switchblades, thumbs in belt loops, chewin’ the fat with the local dogs., and Nuestra Starre came out of the house and told them all to split, that these hippie freaks was cool, and only to come around if she is doing a shoot, or something. That worked, and just like she planned it, the protection only hung out when Ms. Starre’s microphone-and-videography boom team were by. Which came about once every two weeks. Derrol had never seen one of these, but Darcy and Andy certainly had. Nuestra’s videography team were, in fact, some of the goblins out of Pandora’s box.

     So now, Nuestra had her fun getting high with all of the residents and the residents didn’t have to fear the heat of drawing scrutiny of local law enforcement. No, everyone was about as far away from the surveillance state as they could get, except for when planes flew over forom Half Moon Bay airport to get a good look at the women sunbathing bare-chested on hot clear sunny days.

     And now, Nuestra Starre had joined Derrol and Melange in a menage-a-trois. If Derrol could manage this, he would be luckier than two ducks driving two ice cream trucks.

     “Nuestra, I wonder if you could help me- um- adjust this here?”

Melange was pulling on the strap to her wraparound blouse. It was looking more and more to Derrol like this was meaningful seduction, intended perhaps for his pleasure, but also, maybe more for their own. As the girls kissed Derrol remembered he left some hash in his jeans. He took out the little stone and the pipe and lit up. Over across the tidepools at the entrance of the cove a small trawler was parked. The overlook was brightened by the high sun- yesterday’s inclemence being forgotten in the morning, when they all had sat on the patio drinking after-peyote coffee. Sharing tobacco from the can which sat on the coffee table with a pack of rolling papers for anyone to pinch at need. Sharing more of Andy’s product. A bong as long as an arm served with the coffee and fresh melons and people discussed what thing had meant for them. Derrol recalled meeting Benjamin Franklin in his dream, and everyone laughed and said,yeah, for real, too much, he would go to a peyote meeting, wouldn’t he? Otherwise, he had lain all morning in the bed with Melange, in several varying positions and arrangements befitting two ingenues of the Kama Sutra. Until the light was out and the dew had begun to puddle and the daylight blinking off the green leaves of the cypress left indelible impressions on the brain.

Derrol plucked on his mandolin as the women made out in front of him, but soon, Nuestra had shut off the mandolin by insisting his membership should come to the party, and the afternoon was passed, in plain and public view, the enjoyment of three blips in the pod on the cliffs by the high sea in the midday winter sunshine.

     Meanwhile, Candy Kane-- stuck her tongue in Patricio's ear, sucking and probing, before withdrawing with a playful bite...Patricio's mind was in confusion. Was the parting bite a tease, an invitation, or was it a warning of impending danger?

     A hand, which was Andy’s, grabbed Patricio by the collar, and dragged him into the living room…

     Where he was greeted by the sight of every female in the house disrobed and the SXLR camera of Lars Dorkendorf whiring and clicking like a pulsating hummingbird.

     Patricio had one half of the back half of the Tarantula House, in a room with a dutch door opening out toward the goat pen. The onus was on ‘em. The women were like caged tigers, waiting for their meal of men. It was over pretty fast, the lionesses licking their chops at the spilled lengths of the men in their cups, all of them, from Andy to the Dorkendorff home video tripod, every male was erected, and had been erected only to feed the belly lust of the pride. They purred in contentment, no more contentions, and that night the house was quiet, with the highway bleeding on behind them until rooster crow the next day…

     The men woke up the next day, disoriented, ashamed, and shattered. They had been used, abused, sucked dry, and thrown aside, like so much trash... Never before had any of them ever felt so exploited and objectified. The scene had been so wild; the women had been so vicious- Pat would need many years of therapy before he could even have a normal conversation with a female...and he knew that he would never trust a woman completely, even if she was Mother Teresa. 

     Life is hard…

     as hard as the rocket in the pocket…

     The house steamed in the early morning light…

Derrol had no such problems. The morning after the second night of the weekend, he had been up early sorting out his pack in the kitchen, when Lori came in. Lori was nine years older and trying to  make up for lost time. She walked into the kitchen, took out a skillet and a wooden cutting board and began to slice vegetables while Derrol rummaged his stuff. He hid the hashish a little deeper than usual, so that it would  be hard for him or anyone else to get back into. This would be the afternoon he went home, and he needed things in order just to know they’d remain that way.

     Lori’s long skirt was soft cotton and her ass smooth against it. Her legs smooth against it as well, and the tilt of her nipples perking beneath her tank top was having quite an effect. She noted him noting them. Without saying another word she lifted one of her ample breasts out from beneath it and was offering it to Derrol for his taste.

        Obliging, he took it in his mouth and rubbed his tongue across its swollen aureole. The morning was breaking and the coffee bums would soon be up and clamoring but Lori wanted to share what she was having with him, as well as, continue where she had let off with him the night before. At least where she thought she had. She shrugged him off and began working once more on breakfast. Into the skillet, she dumped a pile of freshly diced onions. After these had sweated awhile, she ladled in a bean, rice, and lentil mixture she had prepared a day or two ahead, and had retrieved out of the fridge. She poured more olive oil over the top of this. After that was smooth, moving and bubbling, she piled in some green vegetable leaves out of the garden and some fresh basil. Then she lowered the heat, put on a lid, and cooked it, stirring it now and then. When she poured it out onto his plate and served it with a piece of fresh bread and a pat of butter, Derrol was in heaven. This was breakfast for a king, done up poor man’s style. And undoubtedly healthy.

     After their meal, they took their own stroll out to the cliffs by the ocean. And something like what happened the day before happened to Derrol, again. This time it was no interruption from Nuestra Starre (who lay back at the shack, hunkered deep down in her bed, sleeping away morning, until sun was tall overhead) but they were met by Patricio and his friend Jock-O.

Jock-O was something of a gadfly lumberjack. At least he was a lumberjack when he was up north, in the Salmon River country, but down here on the Coastside, he was Mad Jock-O, prone to answering the doorbell in his birthday suit. He liked dividing his year into : Summer in the Mountains, Winter at the Ocean. The Tarantula House was owned by his mother, who, being sensitive and empathetic, often visited the place to party with the inhabitants, if all were in the proper mood. Lori found Jock-O insufferable, and wasted little time letting Derrol know.

“Well, you see… he isn’t exactly MY friend, he’s Patricio’s.”
     “I think he’s a little rough around the edges”

     “Like a spiky chainsaw, that’s for sure.”

     “Well, Patricio is one thing, but he’s another. I’m goin’ back to the house.”

Lori gathered up her jacket and her thermos and began walking back toward the Coast Highway and the Tarantula House. That left Derrol to stare toward China with Patricio and Jock-O. They were seated at a picnic table someone had dragged there on a whim, and set back about twenty feet from the cliff ledge. Patricio got up to stretch his legs. As he walked to the ledge, and looked down over, he spotted a man and woman lying together in the portulaca which covered the small rock shelf about twelve feet further down the cliff face. The man was naked, and his loins were working with the woman, and she was moving beneath him, and her eyes met Patricio’s-

     And she smiled.

Patricio smiled back, and she gave a short half-knuckled wave as the man continued his grooving and she continued her own, breaking off the moment. Patricio smiled, felt a little lucky, like, the universe is on my side for once, today, I’m lucky…

Derrol was sitting at the table and Jock-O had walked over to be with Patricio. But when Jock-O saw the couple it was a whole other story.

     “Hey, hey! Yeah!” he shouted, “Now That’s what bein’ outdoors is FOR!” And Jock-O began walking down the trail toward the ledge, As he did so, the couple were hurriedly rushing to put on their clothes. The man was hopping into his jeans, one leg at a time, trying to balance and at the same time not fall to the rocks at the bottom of the cliff. Jock-O continued to make his way to the ledge, but as he did so, the couple finally were confident they could move and ran past him, up the hill, and the smile dropped from Jock’O’s face, as he realized they were not in any mood to share their fun.

     “Man, they were cool, ‘til you did that,” scolded Patricio.

     “Shit-fire man , that chick was HOT!”

     “I thought she was kind of nice.” 

Said Patricio, feeling his disappointment. Now he felt like Jock-O had blown wide apart the trust that the woman’s smile had brought into his mind, and now, he was just another dork like Jock-O, swaggering an hollering his way through the minefields of life.

Derrol had watched the entire thing, or what he could see of it, and shook his head wearily at Patricio as Jock-O had turned his back to take a piss off the cliff. It looked like the afternoon might be a waste. Derrol decided to turn around and walk back to the house. They left Jock-O on the cliff edge, thumbing his nose at the Red Chinese.

     When they got back to the house, they found Andy and Lars the Photographer hanging in the living room with a large fire going, and Beauricardo, a friend of the house from San Francisco, their spade-cred black-hippie-queer friend, was sitting in a rocking chair by the window looking over the creek. “Hey, Patricio!” Beauricado rose from the chair and walked to the doorway where Patricio and Derrol looked in, and hugged him. Beauricardo was affectionate without being cloying, or putting on moves. The Photographer and Andy were looking over a proof sheet from the orgy pics that had been shot the night before.

“Oh, this one, this one of Lori and Darcy- shit!”

“:And that one. Darcy trying to get her arm around Pat’s leg. Hah!”

“Let me see there…”

     Patricio moved closer to the table to observe the pictures. He began to feel like a bird in a cage, or a fly trapped in amber, like his bliss somehow had been captured and preserved to spend a century waiting as flotsam on the shore until someone came along- (some pervert, out of Photographer Lars’s SCREW! magazine collection) and took the moment to incorporate into their own brief wet moments… But these were not bad.

     Darndorff liked using Nuestra for her sexiness, but he also enjoyed funny juxtapositions of people and other people’s organs and genitals and limbs. So this picture, Pat thought, was amusing. In an annoying way. He knew the photographer’s tastes all too well by this point, he’d lived there a good eight or nine months already.

     Beauricardo lit up a pipe of Andy’s hash and passed it to Derrol, who had moved in closer to the fire.

     “You been up to see Crosby last week?” he asked.

     “I did. Derrol didn’t. Some of these folks went.”

     “I seen Crosby one day he was toolin’ down 1 in his red sports car. I waved. He didn’t stop.”

“Well it’s another world folks like that live in. They might be our ‘brothers’ from up on stage, but not brother enough to spare a lift.” Derrol was more than annoyed at the thought of leaving in another couple hours, and dealing with the trip home over the hill maybe needing to take just as long. This was a weekend and most of the traffic would be families in get-back-home mode. Few would be stopping for hairy single males who looked like refugees from the Three Penny Opera.

     His mandolin sat on the hearth, and he picked it up and began playing. From the room in the rear he could hear Lori and Nuestra fighting. They were annoying, catlike sounds, but at least everyone knew the two women would be back at peace in minutes. One of the problems of the Tarantula House was a condition of privacy. While it might not matter to some people who craps while they are showering, for some people, crapping while watching someone shower isn’t the first best choice.         They’re both captives to each other, for the duration.

     The other problems usually arose over who left what in the refrigerator and who was entitled to it when and why. If things were not clearly labeled with a pen and tape then anything could be up for grabs. And the whole gang chipped in together many nights, which would leave a giant bowl of leftovers anyone could go for- except, usually, when someone did, it was someone like Derrol who wasn't planning to make another market trip soon, and was only overnighting.

While Andy and Lars continued perusing the large stack of proofs and Patricio sat at the fire, reading a newspaper, Beuaricardo knitted a wool sweater for his mother. The two women in back had shut up, but now, Melange and Candy Kane were coming through the year, carrying an enormous laundry basket filled tall with clean clothing. Everyone had decided to throw laundry together as well, and the two women, each week, made the round the horn trip to a coin laundry in Half Moon Bay to wash and dry the clothes of all the Tarantulans. 

     “NO, we don’t fold them!” they explained, and so the wash day ritual finished with everyone rummaging through the baskets until they had retrieved everything they contributed, and usually there always was some stray sock or a t-shirt someone didn’t recall that sat all week in the basket and ended up in the next go round.

     Melange dumped the clothes into a pile on the couch, and flopped down beside it. “I am beat, man”

     “You so beat, the eggs in the kitchen are nervous” chuckled Beuaricardo.

     “That’s what you think, faggot!” Melange laughed. Her bicep tattoo rippled with a quick flex of the wrist. “PUMPED!” it read. But she was no body builder. She was one of the most feminine people Derrol had ever yet met, and on top of that, she liked him. The tattoo was ne of those unadvised adolescent whims which some people are prone to. It signified absolutely nothing relevant to her current life. She laughed at Beauricardo mockingly. “Boy you sure ain’t much to write home about- you ain’t even that much to ride home on!”

     The other males around the room laughed or supressed chuckles. Beauricardo didn’t mind, he had known much worse abuse. He sat back and quietly kept knitting, listening to the records he others played on the stereo. Eventually, he got into his own sportscar outside and left.

     When Beuaricardo left, another guest showed up. This was Pippi, Derrol’s friend from UC Santa Cruz. She was a German exchange student. She lived in the hills of Soquel, a small wild woodsy little place just south of Santa Cruz, a blip going by on the highway. Pippi wore orange clothing every day and had a locket with the guru Rajneesh on a string of wooden beads worn round her neck. A pair of regulation People’s Republican Army slippers was on her feet. She had curly blonde hair, blue eyes, and an intense love of nature. She enjoyed the visits to the Tarantula House as many others did- in fact, besides the people who lived there, an average of about (at least) twenty other guests would be in and out over the course of a month. She carried with her a bedroll and small knapsack with the Tolkeinian rune ‘L’ for Legolas embroidered on the flap. She carried her own little hash pipe, and being German, had the bad habit of always smoking her hash with a bit of rolling tobacco. The fact there was always a large tin of free tobacco at the Tarantula house apparently had an appeal for a lot of the broke smokers of the coastside who were part of the Tarantella Circle.

     She gave Derrol a hug and immediately started in with Andy making a deal for her own little hash rock. That being transacted, Andy disappeared into his room and came back laughing loudly.     

“Happiness is finding a gram of weed you didn’t know you had!” and held three large buds spread in his palm. He set them on the rolling and cutting tray that sat beneath the stack of photos, setting all of them aside. Lars demurred and began collecting them to withdraw back into his own lair.

Pippi had a love of nature. This she affirmed at any chance, either fully disrobing or more often, just baring her chest. Andy and the others saw so many tits per day, it was nothing. The fact that their friends might come from miles around just for the chances to do it didn’t phase Andy either. The more the merrier. Hell, the world should let go. Clothes were for protection from the wind and rain. When there’s no wind and no rain what the hell.

     Now that Pippi was here, Derrol contemplated the wisdom of leaving so soon. Perhaps he could stretch things a couple more hours past his projected departure. It would mean getting home after dark, but an afternoon with Pippi was better than an afternoon alone. So he decided he would stay, at least until closer to the six o’clock limit, when the light would begin to fail, and drivers would get even more cocoonish. Pippi dug into her knapsack.

     “ Here, this is for you! Thank you for letting me read it! I love it!” The book was Big Sur and the Oranges of Heironymous Bosch, by Henry Miller. Derrol had lent it to her eight months before and forgotten it completely. In that time Pippi had read it four times.

     Derrol and Pippi went back. They had met in Santa Cruz on a day Deroll had spent busking for change on the mall. She dragged him over to a free spaghetti feed and by evening’s end they had shared a bottle of wine, weed, and a bed. It was very chummy.

Now here she was, and handing back the Henry Miller book. It had become something of a crusade with Derrol and Patrick, turning friends on to these various books which had livened the long dreary fogbound afternoons inside the fishbowl of the Tarantula House.

The Tarantella Circle had basically composed itself of friends of friends of friends of people who had traveled the highways, north south east west, from Vancouver to San Diego and SF to Philadelphia. Andy himself had the habit of picking up hitch hikers and treating them to some of the house’s utopian blessings. Derrol had also given her a copy of Be Here Now, but when he visited her he found he had been surplussed, as she already had that book as well as three other books by Ram Dass on her shelf as it was. Not to mention, everything Rajneesh had ever wrote, and even Gurdjieff’s “Beezlebub’s Letters to this Grandson.” They had hung out frequently for a number of months until one weekend they went skinnidipping together in the local big river and got busted. Pippi had almost ended up deported, and at juts that time, her Heimlat byfriend showed up, and that was that for Derrol in Pippi’s bedroom. But not before they had scared the neighbors once or twice with her sighs and moans of delight.

Bob Dylan and The Band were now screaming out of the stereo “…but you know you could be WRONG!” 

     Pippi loved them. So did Andy, and most of the others. Andy even had the early bootleg “Great White Wonder” comprised of clips form Dylan’s original Basemant Tapes and old recordings from his Minnetsota days. Andy loved bootlegs and bootleggers. He collected everything he could that was pirate vinyl. It was less an obsession to collect everything some artist had ever done, than it was the curiosity to see how that artist had done anything on any particular day. Andy’s record shelf took up an entire line of milk crates across the back wall. Not only one line, but stacks of them atop stacks of them. The Berkeley Farms Dairy Co. would have had an interesting time of it, had they ever chosen to submit Andy to the “Full Prosecution of Law” stamped as a threat on every plastic carrying case.

     That is, if they ever got past Andy’s front gate in the first place.

     Derrol thought it would be better to spend a little time with Pippi than it would be to just take off, after all, Pippi was dear to his heart, in his own way, and even her heimlat boyfriend could not compare, he thought, with all the wild romance he could conjure… being as he was himself a romantic half-outlaw perched on the precarious shoal of the Great Frontier Western Earthquake Coast.

     Andy was playing some of that Dylan record on the stereo, now. Listening to Dylan rasp about a Room 118 in New Orleans and climbing over a barbed wire fence. Pippi was arguing with Andy about Dylan and saying she loved Blood On the Tracks, why was Andy wasting his time with all these old demos? Andy rebutted her saying that anything Dylan did was going to be tons better than most of the crap coming off the radio and that this was a piece of history itself. Pippi disagreed. She felt that the music an artist released meant he felt it passed his own muster. Dylan had never released any of the Basement Tapes because the recordings just weren’t quality. She knew what she was talking about, but, Andy being the dominant male of the house, Andy usually got the last word. Pippi sulked but turned aside and began making out with Derrol. Derrol much preferred that to sitting in the center of another argument with Andy, when in this case, he acually agreed with Pippi.

     Next came the issue of the weekend orgies, and Andy trying to hint to Derrol that if he came back next week, there might be another one. Orgies, he pontificated, are the best fun people can have with their clothes off. What is more, all the party materials are free, since the particpants are already equipped. While Andy continued on this line, there came a yelling and screeching from the room Sandra and Lori shared. Soon they were running from the room, out onto the concrete patio, and within minutes they both had corralled Jock-O and hauled him inside.

     “This frigging peeper! We caught him checking us out through our window!”

     Jock-O was blushing and had little to say. He had been walking outside the house and caught a brief glimpse of female skin, and had come closer to their window and peered in, as Sandra sat nude atop Lori’s face, he pulled back, but not before Sandra had caught a view of his eyes turning aside, and his pale skin showing flush against the window glass.

     “What do we do with the sexist peeping Tom?” she yelled, “can’t he get his rocks off without intruding on us? I am pissed. He might be the landlady’s son but that does not give him the right to peep on us!” 

     Sandra was indignant and began throwing garments from the clothes pile at Jock-O. Jock-O just sat there, smiling, believing Andy would defend him.

     But it was Darcy who spoke out. 

     “Jock-O, you know, you really shouldn’t be so hung up about stuff. You should come to next weekend’s party, too. We’ll make sure… your needs… are considered…” 

     Darcy was always trying to be the voice of moderation and reconciliation.
     Derrol gave Pippi a hug, and as they walked out together to the patio, he told her he’d be visiting her in Santa Cruz within a month or two. As they walked talking along the driveway leading out to the street, that led to the highway, Derrol could hear the continued screams and screeching of Sandra as once more the argument escalated inside. He was glad he had chosen the right moment to depart. Pippi handed him his pack and pulled him close to her and gave him another kiss, then turned, and walked back to the house, as the sun was setting to the west, and Derrol adjusted to the idea and necessity of thumbing down a ride headed south.

     A red Cadillac convertible pulled itself over to the shoulder, blaring Johnny Horton’s Battle of New Orleans. Derrol recognized the driver. It was Angelo Spoonful, on his way to LA, he told Derrol, to become a studio musician. Angelo wore a long ponytail and shades. Derrol grinned and tossed his pack and mandolin onto the rear seat, already holding Angelo’s guitar case flat against the naugahyde cushion.

     Angelo and Derrol did not have a long time to talk before Highway 92 and Derrol’s stop had come up. He told Derrol to say hello to Sandra the next time he saw her. Angelo had been a frequent visitor to the Tarantula House at the time when Sandra had been his girlfriend, and when Sandra had been more interested, as she put it, “in men”. Angelo would travel on down the Coast Highway until he hit LA and from there, would keep on going in a world Derrol hardly made. For the moment, Derrol was happy to be kickin’ it, and played a farewell chorus of “Deal” for Angelo as the Cadillac disappeared off into the growing darkness. Once he had crossed the highway and found a good turnoff spot by the side of 92 he took up his thumbing again, punctuating each passing car with a strummed major chord.

     The peyote had cleansed him, the large stash of hash reassured him, the cameraderie had uplifted him, the surroundings encouraged him, and he was, all in all, gratified to be alive and young.

Musings from the Big Top

     Recently there's been even more disturbances on the circus stage we know as Washington DC.
The latest big buzz is about how the former director of the CIA is experiencing "repression of his free speech rights" by having had (long overdue) his security clearance pulled. Well, it is a security clearance, his still free to spread his blather, just cannot do so from that point of privilege. What is so wrong with that? The privilege of a security clearance is not the same as a right.
       Now, it used to be, once upon a time, (about the same time John Brennan voted for the head of the Communist Party USA for president), that Democrats were the leading and fiercest critics of the CIA. Ah, but now that he's had his security clearance taken away, he's their latest martyr in the grand slaughter which has accompanied President Stumpy's great stumble into the driver's seat of the ship of state. No, now they're all quite upset Mr Brennan cannot use what he learns from available secrets to make his comments and drive his continued attempts to help create an authoritarian state in the US. Of course, if that's what he'd like, we've got an authoritarian at the helm now, but then for the last eighteen years we've had something of the same thing going on, just trading places. He just wants one that will pay him better, (politics and prostitution being somewhat kin to each other in their methodologies.)
     In a world where both political parties have major blood on their hands, they are both reduced to finger painting with the sanguine knowledge that, if I'm as bad as you are, then I'm OK, and you're just sick, bro. {And I guess by extension they were also all OK with his spying on members of Congress, and Obama's drone assassination program, etc etc et al}
     Of course for Democrats,when the Republicans run the CIA, it's evil, but when the Democrats do, it isn't. This is bullshit too. The entire beast must be deconstructed and slate wiped clean if we are to regain the control of our government to the People and not these various cabals, composed of various members of both parties, which have turned our country into something like a simmering caldron of civil war inspiring grievances. And it will only get worse.
                                                                           *****
    But hey -what a great country America is, where even a boy who votes for a Communist for president can grow up to become Director of the CIA!
                                                                           *****
      Americans should be (but they do not seem to be) outraged that an American war profiteer, Lockheed Martin, built the missile that slammed into a Yemeni school bus and killed 49 obvious enemies of the Saudi Arabian state. Nope, it's just business as usual for Lockheed Martin, for the various folks who signed off on the deal to ship these weapons to the Saudis, and those who work for Lockheed Martin, sleeping comfortably in their American homes, where bombs will most likely never fall on a school bus carrying their kids to school. That's our tax dollars at work bro. Are you still OK with this? I haven't seen much evidence yet to the contrary. Americans just love their bombs, doesn't natter who is using them, is the only conclusion one can take.
                                                                          *****
It's also sad when you see people who you consider longtime friends to be taking sides in this entire thing based on their political allegiances and not critical thinking, and drawing the conclusion that if you hold a position in any way contrary to their own, then you are A) a Stumpy supporter or B) a Stumpy-hater.  (If you are not for A, then you must be for B, and vice versa!) Actually you can be Stumpy-indifferent, which I still am. Presidents do not impress me, even boorish real estate guys that get there by appealing to the lowest common denominator of  public thought. And neither do any presidents intimidate me, not even Obama with his "collect it all" NSA and his "indefinite detention privileges." The only answer I can draw from the whole "Russiagate" farce is that there's a lot of KoolAid drinkers out there. It doesn't matter who mixes it- the poison is still central to the brew.
To sip from the chalice of American politics is to slip into the deep well of Alice's Wonderland, for reals.

The Prince and the Apsaris

We've been gone a whole year! Well, we're back. I've spent the year transcribing a number of musical scores into some new software and completed a project that was on the shelf for twenty years, s well as made a few new tacks of even earlier material, to compile in CD frmat sometime later in the year I have begun composing a new work which will take most of spring and summer and will begin transcribing two other pieces to go on the cd - but for the time being this is a sample from a fiction work in progress titled "By the Waters of Oblivion"...

CHAPTER 3.

Prince Padmarana was riding his horse along the river trail about ten miles south of the castle. It was spring morning, the drongo birds were chattering, and there was a slight mist rising from the river which hid the prince from the view of the small group of musicians playing under a grove of jacaranda trees.
They were a group of young women, five in number, two of whom played small drums (tablas and pakavaj), while the other three played flute, sarod, and vina. Padmarana stopped his horse and hid behind a mulberry bush, set back a ways from the jacaranda grove. The mist came and went, and he would get glimpses of the girls as they played, the music cutting through the fog with clear precision.

The two that played the drums lid out a hypnotic and repetitive rythmn, as the flute and sarod played a melodic counterpoint to the beat. Once in a while, one of the drummers would lead with a vocalised “takka ta diga takata ta ta” and the flute and sarod would follow, the girl with the vina seemed to float serenely above the rest, glissandos of fluid grace finding their way between all the others.

Padmarana had stumbled upon a group of apsarasi—divinely inspired and magically endowed musicians capable of enchanting the ears of a royal prince. They all came from a village just a bowshot away to the east of the river, not so far from where the young women had now gathered.
They were dressed in the local traditional tribal costume—cotton saris worn with bangles on their wrists and delicate chains of bells about their ankles. At various intervals, one or another would shake out her foot, and the bells would add an accent to the rythmn which insistently never wavered.  Their hair was plaited braided into long braids they wore in loops from the back of their head back up tucked under and into the hair at the base of their necks just above the shoulder.
Padmarana found his thoughts wandering. The music entrained with his breath and pulse and somehow he could not move but only stare, transfixed. Padmarana’s trance lasted as long as the apsarasis kept playing. His horse whinnied, and rather than possibly give away his position and startling the girls, he reluctantly mounted, and rode his horse away.
But all that day and night the strange experience stayed with him. He made his way back, a little earlier in the morning of the next day, and found the same group of girls playing at the same spot.
Once again, the music drew him in.He felt like he was in a meditative state, but he couldn’t say whether or not it was or wasn’t actually a daydream. But this time, when his horse became impatient, it couldn’t be hidden from the girls.
They stopped, and the girl with the vina set down her slide and laughed, approaching him.
Her eyes danced, just as her fingers had across the vina. Prince Padmarana drew back, embarrassed to have been found out.
“Oh, don’t be shy, friend! Come and join us!:
Padmarana slowly and shyly led his horse closer, and tied it to one of the trees.
“Now that we see you like to listen, join us and give us the pleasure of playing to you more directly!:
Padmarana worried that perhaps they might guess his nobility, from his finely cut and elegant clothing and the signet ring on his left hand. But if so the girls made no mention as they took up their instruments again and played, this time a new tala.
“trikata ta ta trika TA trika TA” the new beat laid down ad set out a new raga into motion. The flute and sarod this time doubling around each other, repetitively chasing each other through an eight minute forest of garlanded srutis......)

The girl with the vina would now and then cast her eye his way and beyond the enchantment her music cast, Padmarana found himself returning her smile, and by the end of their new raga, he felt a new emotion rising from his feet to his head—a new feeling not unlike being thrown into a whirlpool of passion. (Jadugar-the wizard no doubt would chide him for such an emotion, such a thought!)
But he could not deny it. When the players stopped, this time, the girl set down her vina and walked up to him, taking his hand.
“Come, my friend! I am sure there are many other things I could teach you than to just sit her and listen to our silly games!”
The other young women took up their instruments just then and all ran off, giggling an laughing, in the direction of the village.
Padmarana remained with the girl.
“My name is Aruna. And you are—?”
Padmarana stumbled over the word.
“P—P—P—Padma—Padmarana!”
“Oh! I hear there is a Padmarana who is the prince of King Mohan who lives in the castle of Jadusagar Gadh! Can you be he?”
Now his cover completely blown, Padmarana could only hang his head abashedly and nod.
“Well then, I am blessed twice today!” She clapped her hands in glee.
“Let me show you how I caress the prince of this land! His grace is manifest, his young heart is perhaps new to the game of love...”
Love! So that was what he had been feeling? Yes! Love! He loved this strange girl and her laughing eyes and her enchanting, magical music, and the strange forward manner, so unlike how the Brahmins and courtesans of the castle treated him.
“Let me bestow a blessing upon you, my prince!”
And she leaned over into him and kissed him, first tentatively, then with more self assurance, he returned it. They fell into each other’s arms, and he tasted, tested her, brought the entire experience into his full attention, in the sweet fresh spring cress, until the dew dampened their clothing and until clothing could no longer barricade their virtue.

While Padmarana had ridden back to the castle, and threw himself into writing an amateurish and impassioned love letter to Aruna, Aruna herself had spent her afternoon in her parent’s humble cottage, cooking the meal that would be their night-time dinner, and then had been buttonholed by her three friends as she walked from the cottage to gather mangoes.
“Aruna! Is it true, he is the prince?”
“Aruna, did he make love to you at the music grove?”
Aruna, did he tell you you will be his princess?”
“Aruna, did you let him....”
“Aruna, are his kisses like the honey dew and the fresh wine?”
“Enough!” shouted Aruna. “I will answer for myself, not for him. No he did not make love to me. No his kisses are not like melons and wine! No! He is not experienced. This I can tell. As for making me his princess—I should think things have much much farther to go than to be even thinking such things, Sunila!”
“But he came back to listen...”
“And be sure, he will again! When he comes tomorrow, I want none of you to badger him or even let on what he has told me, that he is the prince of the castle! He will be our special audience. This should have been clear to you from the start, as it is, Sunila! And play well! When we see him, his thoughts should be wrapped up in the music, not on having his way with me!”
“But was he gentle...?”
“Of course! He was gentle! A man who barely knows what he is doing, he was cautious like a mongoose! Sunila you silly goose! I have much to think about. And now, I have to go and get milk for my bapu.”

Padmarana, home in his study, sheltered from the heat of the day by billowing curtains, the cool breeze calming his perspiring brow, had sat down with his pen and tried to write what he was feeling. This was a new feeling, unlike anything he could really compare, actually! Love? or was it... lust? Was the stirring of his loins something he should be ashamed or afraid of? What if she had some other lover, who would need to be his rival? Should he be like his father, and make a mess out of rivalry, plot to have his rival purged, what then?
The words did not come easy to him but at the end, he had written on two sides of a banana leaf in his most elegant script all that he knew- that he had met someone special, that her kisses inspired him “to do great things, and soar to the clouds,” and that in all the world perhaps there might be nobody else like Aruna, he would ever hope to find, and when he went to bed that night and looked up toward the stars and the galaxies, he swore upon the Mahabarhata that he would never feel just this way, for anyone else in the world, and dreams of Aruna fed his subconscious as he slumbered.

In the morning, rising earlier than was his custom, then, before the sun, actually, had blazed its way up above the line of the mountains to the East, he saddled his horse, clad this time in the simple garb of a commoner. White salwar kameez, no turban, no jewelry. He did not wish to make himself especially known to those of Aruna’s village, for he knew, somehow, that there would be more than just Aruna and her friends to listen to their morning puja-concert.

At the riverbank grove, Sunila, Eesha, Mahika, Kiya, and Aruna gathered as they customarily did. However, the four other girls were dressed in much finer materials than usual. There was no difference, however in Aruna’s. She wore just what she had the day before, and the day before that. Eesha, the tabla player, sat with a frog’s smile on her face, and Mahika, her partner, the pakavaji, loosened and tightened the straps along the drum head somewhat nervously, tapping it at intervals, testing it with short taps to the smaller tabla to tune it. Kiya, who played the flute, wove a garland from flowers growing on the riverbank her flute now ignored. And the sarod player, Sunila, and Aruna, tuned their strings and agreed on what their rasas this morning would be saying.
“Today, our music will speak of nothing impure, but only noble thought and action. We will build our alap with teental  and trikita-ta, and at the jor, we will not become abandoned. At the moment of approximation, there we will break off. We will leave the prince wanting more. Do you agree?”
The other girls nodded, and they sat in the misty morning light, waiting for the sound of Padmarana’s horse, and they were not long in waiting.
Again, he tied the horse on one of the trees, and left it room to drink from the river as well as graze on the sweet grass.
“I came early— I did not wish to miss any of your performance!” he blushed.
“And I wish now to introduce you to my friends! This is Eesha, and Mahika. The two drummers pranamed a namaste gesture, and Aruna moved on. Indicating Kiya- this is Kiya, my oldest friend, who plays the flute.”
“You sound almost as good as Lord Krishna!” Padmarana blurted.
“Oh, I am not so perfect as the Lord, good sir.” Now it was Kiya who was blushing.
“And here, this is Sunila, my next oldest friend, who plays the sarod...”
“Your playing is like... Well, I can only say, the sound of all of you together had me... in raptures the last few days!”
Such a thing would not have been impossible, since not only were these “common girls” experienced music players, but they were, indeed, apsarasis, and as such, their music channeled divine energy, effortlessly, expressing the ten thousand things as all, separately and together.
And as apsarasis, they were, indeed, appreciated by others in the community. It would not be a lie to say that, because the word gets around in a small town, that the girls and Padmarana were the only eyes and ears present. For all around the edges of the grove, silently, noiselessly, a number of villagers held back from the circle, keeping their distance, but all eagerly anxious to get a glimpse of the great prince who lived in the great castle of the great king, Mohan!
Eesha lit a stick of incense and set it by her drums. Aruna looked to the drummers and together, they started the tala that would drive their morning raga, Bhairavi. Then the drummers began laying down the tala that would be the basis and frame of the raga. After a brief pause, the others started in, with Kiya and Aruna lading the way, Sunila adding drone as well as some basic large patterns beneath them.
Where Padmarana sat, the villagers who had come more to see him than listen to the music had begun to edge from their safe distance to a point much closer. Still withdrawn, however, they had begun to argue amongst themselves.
“Hush, Giddhi! We want to hear the music too!”
“Kaua, the music is not so important. These girls do this every day. How often to we get to see our prince?”
“Stupid Gaanji! If we were meant to see our prince then he would have come to the village! Keep back! Let him enjoy his music too!”
“You are impossible, Bodhiman-Ghadda! I would give the prince the carpet off my own floor if he would but honor me with a visit!”
“Shutup, Ghodesachaara! The prince would never stand such a thing. What would (the wife) feed him, if not just chapatis ghee and sweat curry?”
The group laughed together at the thought, but none of them edged back any further. They were just beyond Padmarana’s earshot, but he did notice that the crowd had edged on in closer, and so, he drew his blanket-cloak closer around him, and leaned in to hear the music better.
Kiya and Sunila were now engaged in a back-and-forth, and the drummers began playing with that, as well. Back and forth, back and forth, one would set a pattern, the next would answer, and the flute and vine each took turns answering. it was getting more involved by the second, and at this point, Padmarana closed his eyes and allowed the apsarais to weave an internal vision for him. He felt... suspended above the river, borne by the flute and the rippling slide-sounds of the vina, and the drum patterns became rock and boulders beneath his floating consciousness. It was as if he were floating on a mattress made of sound...
The villagers, however, got ever more edgy. The more Padmarana closed his eyes and edged himself into the music, the more the crowd inched closer, tugging, nudging, bumping one another, until now, they were but five feet from Padmarana’s back. Suddenly, the most irritated of the mass, the one called Ghiddi, an older man with few teeth but a wicked stick he used as a staff, began to pound it along to the rhythm.
“Aya, aya, Ghiddi! Let the enchanters be!”
There were sounds of clicking as some snapped their fingers and began in time to clap their hands along with the drums. Some of them began to make a mocking dance. But none of this was noticed by the girls who played on, drawn ever more intricately into the web they were spinning themselves. Then they picked up the tempo, twice now three times as fast. The wave broke over the crowd, and then all was still, and the slow part of the raga began again, with some variation from how it had sounded at the start, but still, recognizable in melody.
The drummers now sat tapping the drums in a much quieter mode, and the flute and vina were left to weave another sinuous line. Padmarana’s eyes were still closed. Only now, he imagined Aruna as his consort, and again, imagined her kisses, her body beside him, her mind flashing brightly along with his own. As the music picked up in tempo again for a final recapitulation and climax, the one in the crowd called Kaua stumbled, and fell forward, bumping his elbows against Padmarana.
“Travesty!” cried Bodhiman-Ghadda. “Sudras must never touch the Prince! He has been defiled!” The villagers now drew back as though, this gross breach of social distance had been, as it might have indeed been had it occurred in Mohan’s court, some error near to fatal on Kaua’s part. Bodhiman-Ghadda shoved Kaua, shoved him to the back of the little crowd, pushed him away, shooed him with a motion of his arm that was immediately understandable as “begone!”
Padmarana, though, had barely noticed the occurrence. The musicians built up their jor to conclusion, and ended. When they had, they rested, their eyes on Padmarana. had the prince been pleased, they beseeched him with only their eyes.
Padmarana stood up. Behind him, the various villagers now drew back, as if he were a rampant cobra, and hustled themselves to what was once more a safe distance.
“Thank you, my friends. That was a marvelous piece! I thank you for your skill and your inventiveness! Well, now I suppose I must be on...”
Aruna interrupted him. “No, Prince, stay! Stay here with me today. Come and see where we live, our humble village! We have never had anyone from the castle visit us like this. We would be happy to show you our wealth, our fields, our animals!”
Muttering among themselves the villagers looked askance to each other.
“What is she proposing? That the prince will come to our village! Quick, we must go and prepare!”
They broke off running, for each of them knew just the state of their humble hut, and what the prince was likely to find there. If they could but have a half hour’s time they could make arrangements so he saw them at their best...
Padmarana nodded to Aruna, and drew close to her. he took a flower from the jacaranda tree nearest him, and set it in her ear. Behind her, her friends gasped- what a royal favor! Aruna was not blind to the meaning of this gesture, and blushing, she smiled to him.
“Come to my home, prince! I will give you the best I can of a royal meal! And you may meet my poor parents...”
The other girls took their instruments and hurriedly ran off in the direction of the village as well, in the dust of the villagers who had gone before them. Laughing and giggling and talking and gossiping amongst themselves, again, they were sure to do more of it when they got Aruna to themselves again, much later in the day...

Neocon Zeppelin Crashes & Burns

The election of Donald Trump as President of the United States of America has sent shock waves through America’s political elites and Establishment. They were all so sure they had it in the bag- Indeed- this election was always Hillary Clinton’s to lose, and so, she has.

There are a good many reasons I’m not completely displeased by these results, personally. I found Ms. Clinton’s delusional ranting about “the Russians” to be hyper-bloviating nonsense, and I’m certainly breathing easier knowing that finally we will have a president that’s deciding that the US and Russia ought to get along. The idea of my friends in Siberia vanishing in a cloud of plutonium-impacted fallout will be just that- an idea, something from a bad dream.

Of course, that’s not to say Hillary and her crowd of now discredited warhawk “experts” won’t keep rattling their wheelbarrows about the asylum screaming yet, “The Russians did it! The Russians rigged Our Election!” and waving their limp dicks at Julian Assange and Wikileaks for their uncovering the vast and dirty secrets that lie beneath the mud in the Democratic Party, the nerve of them, informing the American People as to how politics is actually conducted in the USA.

And the Republican Establishment is no doubt sucking their thumbs in wonder as well, most of them having defected to Hillary’s camp, most notably, both Bush presidents, Henry Kissinger, and the Wolfowitz-inspired war criminals at the New American Century. Weren’t they all hoping for more of the same “humanitarian” interventions and regime change, more international entanglements, and wars where they could get ‘em. No, the election of a populist Trump has set them in a tizzy, and expect them to be out and about raising as much dust as they might continue to, in the hopes that Trump will be every inch as interventionist as Ms. Clinton. Except that, he won’t.

Trump stated in the second debate he would NOT resort to first use of nuclear weapons, but most of that seemed to have gone right over the Democrats' heads as they continued their rants about how Trump “can’t be trusted” with The Button. If anyone could not be trusted with The Button it was Hillary Clinton, who has shown the American public, and the world, what her type of diplomacy actually means- drones, falling bombs, endless wars, and millions more refuges on the unarmed roads of flight across the Middle East. There won’t be any more speculation as to “Russian aggression” since what amounts to :Russian aggression” was is and will always be the Russians taking care of their own sphere of influence as it is, reacting to US and NATO pressures on their borders.

Hillary’s fanatical hatred of Putin won’t get any play, either. Wouldn't sensible people rather get along with a large country like Russia, especially since they’ve also got The Bomb, and they’re actually doing more at the moment to contain and defeat ISIS? Haven’t the US done enough by arms sales to Israel and Saudi Arabia to inflame the conflicts of the ME into further unsolvable conundrums than they already were?

All these worries will vanish like a bad headache now. Ms. Clinton can go back to New York, or Arkansas, or Illinois, or wherever it is she is actually from, shake her doddering head, and remove herself from the political arena like a good Grandma. For after all, Americans apparently still prefer assholes to bitches when it comes to Presidents.

Bicycling

 Recently I ran across a book titled “Cycling” (subtitle:  “Philosophy for Everyone.”)  And it’s full of a good number of essays, memoirs, and such, expounding on the various authors’ views about bicycling, what turns them on about it. Halfway through the book though I was a little bit more than turned off by the tone taken by a good many of the writers, who seem to be into bicycling as “racers.”  I think you know the sorts of bicyclist I mean. you often see them every morning on their daily commutes, dressed in their flash Spandex with the various company-whore logos splashed across the ass and the chest, their heads down as they force themselves forward as though the ride to work were another Tour de France, or something.

Nearly all of those people also drive cars, which is something they’re not ashamed of, but somehow cycling to work looking “like a pro bicyclist” helps them assuage the guilt that might come from their not using a bike to get around, everywhere, which , thankfully, there are a few essayists in the book who take the time to defend. I mean you could say that about most bicyclists on America’s roads- that they also own a car, and they will use it “when necessary.”

Unlike those types, though, I am not that sort of bicyclist. I do not rely on the proposition that “new endeavors need new clothes” and I am not into the idea of making a commute to my job (as a school crossing guard, defending the children of ultra-rich Los Altos, California, from the even more maniacal and demonic drivers who take up the other two lanes of traffic on the Foothill Expressway) another race for the finish. I wear what it is, whatever, I choose for my daily wear, since there’s no need to shower and change into “real world clothes” when I am in the “real world” enough as it is already.
I am also not so infected with the need for “speed” as are three fifths of other Americans, which also includes a high percentage of the drivers, almost uniformly. When I go someplace n a bike, I take the time to take my time. If I need to be somewhere on time, I take the time to be sure I’ll get there on schedule, but being on my bike, I really don’t care to ever be in a rush about things.

There are qualities of bicycling that are transformational, and one of these is the ability to look at the world going past your wheels, being in the world as you travel in it, un-insulated from it by tons of steel and glass. As a person on a bike, I like  the fact I am going slower than all the cars. I like the human pace of being on a bike, of not being part of the rat race, of being closer and more in tune with my surroundings, less caught up in the bullshit of the “human game.” I will get there when I get there, and not before. So why not smell the roses? Why not take the time to look at the houses, the gardens, the trees, the various things which are nature  despite man’s desperate rush to reinvent his environment in his own image?

In the old days, Indians would travel the length and breadth of their lands seeing, noticing, taking into account all the various differences in their trails. By the time they had walked ten miles, they knew every rock and tree on their way. This is one of the things bicyclists have over cars. When we are up and riding we are much more influenced by the different textures of the roadway, to a degree travelers in autos are not. A three inch rock or a  seven inch broken tree branch in our path  may present no problem to a car, but for us could mean a spinout or even a flip. So we have to notice these things. We notice the dead squirrels, the skunks, the possums, raccoons, birds, and pets and other fellow Earthlings the cars left as road kill in their wake. Maybe we reflect on them, maybe we don’t. But we are much more aware of them than were the drivers who sent them to eternity.

Riding a bicycle is one way to help defeat the awful guilt of having a “carbon footprint” which is in any case inevitable for any people who live in our society. Yet a bicyclist’s is just that much less. Regardless, like I say, two thirds of the other “bikers” on the road have their own automobiles, which they will revert to in times of inclement weather. Unfortunately I have no such luxury. The job I hold as a crossing guard demands me to be there, rain or shine, and this of necessity demands I ride in whatever weather is out there. I have rain gear, which has vastly improved my morale over the years I rode without so much (rain pants having been the best and biggest agent of change.)  And yet there are times when riding in the rain, itself, can be a “pleasant experience”. After all, one can only get “so” wet. At such times the best thing to do is surrender to the idea of being wet, and act accordingly. Splash that puddle! Excelsior! But it’s also few people who would face the weather in such fashion. Even the kids going to school who on sunny days ride their bikes are riding past me in their parents’ cars when it rains. There are a hardcore few who continue on whether it’s rain or not, but for the most part, the number of kids I need to cross diminishes by a factor of five on a rainy day.

My trip up to the job involves four miles of steady, uphill grind climbing. Twice a day. Of course, that eight miles up means a fast cool eight miles back down. But my aging knees have begun to protest. The current bike I‘ve ridden for the past seven years hereabouts is a rather heavy British-made Raleigh mountain bike- the Mojave 2.0. It qualifies as both mountain and road bike, but I have adapted it or commuter use, since mountain biking, like racing, is a bit too outré for my personal tastes or style in riding. I am going to be retiring good old “Pony Boy” real soon, however, in favor of an electric bike. Which will make a difference, one would hope, in the manner in which I am able to endure those eight miles up everyday, and hang onto this crossing guard job, which despite its close proximity to the “cars vs. peds” and “cars vs. bikes” wars, is nonetheless a stable income, even if it isn’t quite the hours I’d prefer (I have a night job, so all the bases do get covered.)

As for the cars vs. bikes wars- I have found that, despite the advice from many bike authors, it’s best not to maintain much eye contact with the “road cagers” and “oil serfs” except when absolutely necessary. When they  are pulling out, of course, I want them to see me, so I always ding my little bell just so I know that they saw me. And at times when making headway against left turners. But for the most part, eye contact seems only to increase the road rage on both sides of the game. They probably don’t even think people on bikes are “real people”- at least, that is a sentiment I have seen expressed in more than one anti-bike newspaper opinion letter- but for the most art, it’s been working out OK. The only accidents I have been involved in were both the fault of the driver- one ran a red light, the other "didn't see me” as I started to cross a junction near some train tracks- but for the most part, it's true, nobody wants to collide with anyone else on purpose, and I am always super-cautious as can be in so far as :riding defensively: is concerned. I never make aggressive moves, nor do I tend to test yellow lights or roll on stop signs. After all, I need to be consistent, don’t I? I couldn’t work in traffic safety and fail to attempt to set a good example for others.

There are a few pet peeves I have with both drivers and other bikers. One of them is the "hot dog” syndrome. This usually involves a “racer consciousness” bike coming up on my left to pass me, but making no noise about it. Whoom, they are just there, and they gave no warning! And they just have to get somewhere faster, no doubt. Although these types are just as hung up with speed as the drivers are. There’s assholes in cars and as many on bikes, apparently the spread is even throughout the road populations. And just like the status players with fast foreign sport cars, there’s the status players on bicycles. You can spot them a mile away because they are the ones who needed new clothes before they got on their bikes. But their bikes are always racer drop-bars, titanium wheels, ultra-lite carbon fiber frames, and usually cost them somewhere in the neighborhood of five grand. Back when Facebook went public and gave their employees giganto dividend bonuses you saw a lot of brand new bikes showing up on the street. Around here, workers in the high tech industry have their own interior office cults devoted to road racing, and form little cliques and clubs to indulge it (we call this type “Google ponies,” around here.)  And usually they all also own cars. SO they can’t be accused of pro-bicycle lifestyle activism with any degree of sincerity, for the most part. Nope, it’s all on a par with “keeping ahead of the Joneses” so to speak.

And we have the “new clothes” issue. God help me if I eve get into a suit of spandex with a heap of bike shop logos plastered all over it! Nothing in the world looks worse than an over fifty, overweight  male with a muffin top crammed into a pair of lycra bike shorts. These were obviously contrived for bicyclists in their twenties and thirties, and even then thirty or forty is usually pushing it. There’s no way to hide the flab the wrinkles or the obvious fact you were out of shape when you started and you’re going to still be pushed out of shape once you squeeze into those ridiculous things. I could never take that route. I wear what I am wearing and the hell with it! No pretending to be Lance Armstrong, or part of the weekend warrior club. The bike is my everyday transportation, no more or less, and I am going to keep it that way.

All things considered I am glad to ride my bike and not spend a penny on auto maintenance or insurance. my failure to do so, of course, sets me apart from the “real” people, but, that’s a distinction I don’t mind so much as yet. Yes, being a performing musician has suffered since I left the city for the country-suburbs, without a car, there’s not the same ease of toting an amp to gigs as there was when I had a cab or a bus to hail and that was that. But my conscience is still clean and that means a lot. I won’t be the one you can pin the ass-tail on for being hypocritical about my carbon footprint, not  just yet, anyway. Even if I were to one day surrender to the oil-serf lifestyle, even then I would only use a car to get to a gig, or to visit friends a long way off (and so doing, save myself a plane ride.) Bikes are great. You are closer to the real world you live in, you are in some ways, closer to danger, you are doing something about, rather than acceding to, those problems human society digs itself into. And for the time being, that’s the gist of my thoughts on Biking.

A Parable

The following is dedicated to any who believe that the previous blogpost is somehow evidence of "inaction", "copping out" or somehow "not meaning to live responsibly in the face of evidence. (What evidence? Show me.)

Lemming Leap

You are at the edge of a serious pair of precipices.

Whichever lemming leader amasses the tallest pile of dead lemmings at the bottom of the cliff will be judged “the winner.” It has also been said among lemmings that to take part in this “great sacrifice” is one’s “highest civic duty.” “If you don’t jump, don’t complain about who wins!”

It’s not your fault - all the other lemmings have driven you there,  but,  now  they have split in two directions. One set of lemmings is headed one way- toward a 100 foot cliff. The other is headed to a 200 foot drop.

At the bottom of each is a massive pile of the skeletons of other lemmings, from previous jumps. 

No matter how many lemmings die, the ritual is to be re-enacted, every four years.

The thought occurs: “Either way I go if I fall (or I am pushed) I’m gonna die!”

“Choose the lesser of two evils! Minimize the damage!” yells a voice behind you.

You take the 100 foot fall.

At the bottom, you are still dead, just as dead as the lemmings on the 200 foot fall (only that they had twice as long to think about where they were headed, while falling, theoretically.)

You’re dead! So then you see the ghost (or the actual body of) your leader! 

“Congratulations. You jumped with us, but thank god, you are so lucky, you will sit tonight with God and the angels because you chose the lesser of the two evils, you didn’t let THEM win!”

My my, you think, My jump meant as much -or more!-  as that of all the others!

OR:

Your other choice would have been- step back from the precipices, let all your fellow lemmings choose whichever hell-death- they chose for themselves, turn to the leaders and say “Aw,fuck you, I’ll be just as dead as the rest of you, I want none of this!”

Looking down at the two piles of your dead lemming brothers and sisters, all you can say is

“What a bunch of dumbshits!”

Value added question:

Which lemming exercised critical thinking best?

The Most Insulting Election In History

The Most Insulting Election in History

It’s that season again, folks. Everywhere across the land, neighbors are oiling their automatics and sharpening their pitchforks. Yes, it’s another Presidential Election, and it looks as though this one is bound to be a doozy. In fact, it could be said, we have never had an election like this in our lifetimes. Just look- One candidate has been under scrutiny by the FBI for improper use of governmental communications (and just happened to squeak past judgment, on the recommendation of a coy FBI Director, who did all but say, the lady is just stupid, folks) and a real estate con artist up for a civil lawsuit regarding some shady practices enticing his “students” into tutelage at his “university”- on charges of fraud. Well. since when have politicians ever been innocent of stupidity and fraud?

Let us look at the two candidates which the major political parties have chosen to foist upon us, as this year’s “choice.” Let’s go with the one who looks like she leads the pack, because her polls show 75% likelihood of winning this highly corrupted and incurably evil office, the Democrat, Mrs. Clinton. You know, I don’t call her the “Teflon Goddess” for nothing. Mrs. Clinton has been the source of a good number of scandals and political imbroglios over the years, and yet, somehow, has managed to eke her way past each and every rapid without nary a scratch. Some would lay claim that this is somehow “proof” of her incipient innocence of all allegations. Others, like myself, just call it “1%er privilege”.

It is no secret she has taken great sums of money from the same big Wall Street donors that gave huge sums to the election of the current president, who also contributed to the meltdown of 2008, and like the Teflon Goddess, suffered no recriminations from the justice system for their machinations. Mrs. Clinton’s refusal to release transcription of the speeches she gave for six figure pocketbook change equals the refusal of her adversary to release  his recent tax returns. But we’re not at him just yet. She managed, during her term as secretary of state, to destroy the regimes in at least two nations, engineer chaos in a third, and create for the US two new bellicosities (Libya and Syria)  and is now setting us up for a shooting match with another nation with whom we have no actual beef- Russia.

Killgrrl’s recent embrace of a draft for women assures us that yes, not only will our sons continue to be brutalized into PTSD situations, but, our daughters too. And what better reason to start up the roll for the slaughterhouse than another unpopular, undeclared, presidential fiat war? Of course, operatives of the Democratic National Committee are already ginning it up, with their so far unproven allegations that “the Russians” leaked the Committee’s emails to that treasonous Julian Assange’s Wikileaks. No matter that the emails themselves reveal even more of the sort of Dirty Tricks Killgirrls’ first Washington job (on the Watergate Committee) was graciously uncovering on behalf of the American public during the Nixon years. Oh and did  mention she was actually fired by the head of the committee, Samuel Dash, for being (in his words) “a liar?” But again, we don’t call her the Teflon Goddess for nothing.

Killgrrl makes a big to do about how her use of a private email server to conduct official US Government business as head of the State Department exposes her inherent stupidity as well. What would get her fired from her local construction company gets her walking papers from the FBI, and from her erstwhile, belittled, and cheated Democratic  opponent. Is it any wonder folks feel they can’t trust her? Apparently, the scepter of a “two-family presidency” just hasn’t struck a shadow of fear enough into a vast majority of Democrats, as if, the Bush family wasn’t enough in the first place.

And then there is her opponent on the Elephant party side, in the corner, Mr. Orange Julius himself, Donald Drumpf (as John Oliver would have us remember, is his natural original pre-immigration family name). There aren’t enough words, perhaps to describe him, he must be seen to be believed, but believe me, he is now giving the Teflon Goddess a run for her money. A conniver, a reality TV star, a Real Estate mogul (perhaps the second most odious occupation in America today besides that of politician) whose business practices are under scrutiny in a court of civil law. Dare we trust another used car salesman at the head of our nation? At least Mr. Drumpf is making sense on the issue of a “WWIII” with Russia. he would rather have us gain the support of Russia’ president in fighting the international threat of ISIS than pick a fight with him. This may be the only part of his platform that makes sense to me, but indeed it does. The rest of his program seems to be an inflation of Barry Spybot’s mass surveillance cyberstate, directed against those of Mexican or Muslim persuasion, and promising a new Great Wall. Like most operations of Drumpf, it will have to have his name spelled out in big lights, it will offer 24/7 casinos, and “Princess Towers” every ten miles so you  can drive your family there for a great vacation overlooking the wild and wooly Rio Grande. Of course, he promises that Mexico is going to pay for it, and not only that, more than likely the labor involved will be those poor deportees awaiting the next lane back across the border.

It’s pretty obvious to me that nobody ever seeks the office of President of the United States without a long consideration beforehand of the powers attendant to it. Thanks to Barry Spybot, these powers now include the ability to assassinate anybody anywhere on the planet, with drones, if necessary, to hold in detention for indefinite periods anyone consider suspect of “terrorism” (however some future president chooses to define it) and the ability for the US Army to act in civilian operations, as they did in Boston, committing house to house searches while residents “sheltered in place.” These powers ought to be particularly attractive to a narcissistic egoist like Drumpf, but, having tasted her share already of some of the benefits of the office (being First Lady just wasn’t good enough) they are damned attractive to the Teflon Goddess, herself.

Let us look though a little closer. Nobody honest, and certainly that goes for Mr. Sanders, who ran an admirable campaign against the Goddess only to sell out when the chips were down, will ever hold the office of Killer-In-Chief. The office itself is incurably corrupted and corruptible. Whoever wins it must sell their soul to the devil- figuratively, or perhaps, even literally- to hold the title of “most powerful person in the world.” Wasn’t that the very same temptation offered to Jesus in the desert by Beelzebub? “Dominion over all the nations and peoples of the earth?” How could you refuse!!! Because the office now wields these (“awesome”-G. W. Bush- powers) and therefore is no longer a presidency, but a kingship- I feel as though I cannot “consent to be governed” any longer by any man, or woman, who is elected to it.

Nay, I do not feel, as a well informed, educated American voter, that I can offer any consent at all to any future holder of the office, nor even grant the consent implied by vote, for the foreseeable future of my lifetime, unless, and until, these powers are repealed. And who gave Barry these “awesome” powers? Why, a shitting-their-pants Congress, of both Republicans AND Democrats, afraid of the terrorist under the bed, drunk on the possibilities that somewhere, somehow, the US will have to come to grips with some of those very forces they themselves unleashed on the world- like the Afghan Mujahedin that became Al Qaeda, the “Syrian Rebels” who became ISIS, or any number of homegrown whackjobs intoxicated with maladjusted interpretations of the Koran.  I cannot, by casting my vote in any direction, give my consent for these ideas, that the President is a King and not subordinate to the Congress any longer, nor to accountability under national and international law. People say it is our civic “duty” to vote. No, it is not a “duty.”

     Voting is a right and a privilege, and it is our right to exercise it where, and when we choose, in secret, and nobody has the right to tell us how or even when we must, if we choose to use it, or not. “Duty “ is something that matters only when you are helping the neighbors take out the invading North Korean Army barricaded down at the end of the block, or getting a jury summons, or filling out an IRS 1040 return. Don’t give me that bullshit about voting being a “duty.” I will vote as, if, and when I choose. And that’s why I come to, in conclusion, saying that, this is the most insulting election in US history. Two very questionable and obnoxious characters are competing for the role of “King and Queen” of the world. And I just don’t buy it.