With the bewitching liquor's smokey spirit still stirring behind my eyes I stepped in to a ratty van on its way out of Oaxaca City. I was going to a high mountain town known for it's magic mushrooms and sweat ceremonies. There was a tall Australian man with dreads and glasses that owned a little hostel on the hill above town. It was a simple place with a few stand alone shacks, one full of bunk beds the other acting as a kitchen. There was a good view out into the pine filled valleys and mountains and off the to the arid plains to the East. I met a young woman named Milly and together we went off on a trek to a distant village of reputed beauty. Without much idea where we were going we set off, making river crossing after river crossing in the well wooded valley. Several times we wondered if we had gotten lost. Milly hazarded a crossing with her shoes on and dunked them fully so that she was now walking on sponges. At one point she reasoned it would be better to hike without them and resolved to continue barefoot on the pointed stones of the road. After a full day of wandering we finally made it to a paved road that led at last to the village we had heard of. Indeed it was beautiful there on a small shelf tucked into the mountains. The place we had been planning to go for some food was closed comically, so we started to search around on little paths that wound through the homes, chicken coops roughly clabbered goat pens. We were invited in to a small dirt floored kitchen with a woman cooking on open flames. She made us up something delicious as we sat in the plastic chairs laughing about our misadventures. By the time we wandered back into the heart of the small town the sun had gone behind the western ridge and night was settling in. Negotiating a pickup truck ride back to the town where our hostel was proved challenging. It's sometimes hard to know if you are getting fleeced or not by the locals so things got a little heated, at least for Milly. she was so pissed that he changed the agreed upon price that she threw her empty beer can in the truck bed "here, he can have that!" she said laughing cynically. I climbed back in the truck and grabbed it despite her protests.
The owner of the Hostel also cooked dinner for the guests though he spent most of the night smoking giant spliffs with a Belgium girl named Elfje who was sharing his bunk. When he finally made food it was 930 at night and I ate the full plate right before laying down. My body rebelled and filled the bunk house with crazy farts the whole night through. I was surprised that the guy on the bottom bunk was nice to me in the morning, he was from the state of San Luis Potosi further to the North in Mexico and was heading to the same town as me out on the coast.
On the road into Mazunte I realized that I had been there before about a decade ago during an epic hitchhiking journey from Chiapas back to my fathers boat anchored in Zihautenejo. Back then I had chanced upon this town after sleeping in someones dirt lot at the crossroads with the main highway and hiked in on a hunch. I had been blown away to find many of the traveling eccentrics in that small town, whom I had come to know in the Chiapas jungle during a harrowing encampment deemed "The Intergalactic Rainbow Gathering." I had slept out on the peninsula, bathed in the sea and given a large gemstone to the tribe's tarot reader, though I declined a reading. However that was a decade ago and somehow the peninsula didn't look as inviting as it had, so I shacked up at the same hostel as my new friend Pedro. The place was made of bamboo built right on the sand with mosquito nets over simple beds. Pedro was involved in the arts community in his hometown, he photographed dancers and performers and had also learned excellent english at his university. So we talked about our lives, how different they were but still with common ground to connect on.
Pedro and I would travel to San Cristobal De Las Casas together as well, where we spent Christmas and where he took me out to the street vendors to introduce me to the various forms of homemade fireworks for sale. On Christmas night we stocked up on a variety of small explosives, many simply made from gunpowder wrapped in newspaper and glue with a fuse sticking out. We also bought handfuls of little rockets that came taped to sticks and would shoot out with a trail of sparks and a deafening whistle. "But the strongest one by far" he said grinning while picking it up from the table "Is this one here" It was a bit larger than my palm shaped out of cardboard and painted to look like the Devil's head, eyes glaring wildly from a brooding red face. We filled a few bags with our shotty ordinance and took to the street. Sitting outside the main cathedral eating traditional holiday fare, hot chocolate and fried food he told me of fond memories growing up, raising hell at midnight on the holidays, the sound of loud music and explosives filled in behind his words. Sometime around 11 that night we went out into what seemed like a cheerful battle zone. We started the nights tirade in the cathedrals plaza, I quickly learned how dangerous the little things could be. I lit a rocket and before I could aim it properly it went of, hurtling at great speed through the air nearly taking out a family walking across the plaza. Then another one flew over to the street and ricochetted off a building nearly taking out a couple. Pedro laughed hysterically at my reaction, as I reached out hopelessly to try and stop it or alter it's course. It wasn't until we started lighting off the big stuff on the old plaza stones that the police that had been watching the whole time came over and told us to move along. We walked off into the narrow cobbled streets in darkness punctuated by bright flashes, it smelled of gunpowder everywhere, the gutters filling up with burnt scraps of newspaper. Suddenly out of a side alley flew a little homemade grenade blowing up before us. Laughing like mad men we lit and threw a few of ours back indiscriminately. One of pedro's devil heads failed to detonate, he picked it up and saw that the fuse had went out just before reaching the powder. He lit a match and held it to the nub. Before I could get out the words "what the hell are you doing?" I felt the impact of the explosion on my chest as it went off mid air a few feet away. Wide eyed and deranged we sauntered off cackling into the maze of smokey streets.
Monday, February 25, 2019
Wednesday, January 16, 2019
Mexico City to Oaxaca City 2015
I disembarked the boeing 737 near midnight in Mexico City. It was the first time I had been to the capital but not the first time in the country. My friend and I had ventured nearby right after graduating high school in search of our spiritual leader, Don Juan (didn't find him).
On my way to the hostel I was propositioned by a handful of prostitutes of varying genders. It took some time to find where I was going, a mega hostel somewhere in the heart of downtown. Finally I laid down on the shot spring bunk in a room full of stinking youth and fell asleep.
The city was huge and bustling, coated in a thick layer of smog and punctuated by colonial architecture and modern art. I packed onto the busses and humid subways in a frantic mode of exploration, getting my bearings on a map and heading off like an ant in a maze searching for an abandoned lollypop. I remember a transcendental moment walking through a flower stall, swallowed by the full-bodied smells and insanely vibrant colors, a smiling man swung out of the inner market in and matched my pace, a large bunch of frilly flowers in his hand, floating like some beautiful planet, I was drawn along by it like a butterfly into the din of mid-day traffic. At night I tried to look sketchy to keep the sketchy people away, it worked. During one of these late night wanderings I found quite possibly the master of tacos. I'm talking about the world's best taco maker, a taco deity. He labored over a long sizzling hot plate in a hole in the wall the size of a closet. Locals were packed in, obscured by smoke, hunched over their food, lost in weird ecstasy. I sat down on the street side stool and everyone looked, some stared with a quizzical expression on their face. I was surrounded by a halo of a thousand colored lights blinking and sparkling madly from a market across the street.
As is always the case when staying at hostels, I ganged up with a bunch of other white folks and we went and gawked at the ancient Aztec ruins just outside of town. On top of the sun ziggurat I stretched my hands up trying to feel the power of Huitzilopochtli coursing through my nerves (I think I felt something). The ancient cultures of Mesoamerica were really on to something. Ok so there were human sacrifices and they warred with neighboring tribes, yeah, but the layout of that ancient city was so intentional, so artfully crafted and powerful. Modern capitalist megalopoli didn't even come close to that magic.
This was the beginning of an incredible journey. It was more than I ever expected and it showed me how far a dream can be realized, the limits are only with how clear your vision is... and what you have stuffed in the bank account. Often I closed my eyes and thanked the whole web of creation for the chance just to walk the strange Earth in search of nothing at all.
On my way from Mexico City South I stepped off the bus in a small town at the foot of twin mountain peaks, one smoking with volcanic eruptions, the other beckoning with rocky outcroppings that pierced the swirling cloud gods. I was hungry so I ducked into a market stall and ordered something I didn't understand, soupy spicy stuff, "is that skin floating around in there?". The son of the old lady cook was trying to set me up with a ride up the hill for a lofty sum. He said it was the only way up (likely story). Politely I refused and told him I would come back if I couldn't find anything else. Through broken spanish I asked a passing bus for a ride further up and made it half way. I got a little ripped off by a taxi driver for the rest of the way to the saddle. There wasn't much up there, a ranger station where I payed the fee and then vanished off onto the trail, a bag of groceries wedged between the top of my pack and the back of my neck. I didn't have a map or any real idea what was up ahead but I could see the mountain I was aiming for through holes in the mist. My body was aching something terrible with my awkward setup. I also carried a gallon of water in my hand, cheap plastic cutting off circulation. Sweaty and panting, a little lost in the misty chaparral. Finally I caught sight of a convoy rumbling up a dirt road and I went down to see if they were heading somewhere that made sense. They were there just to get out and stare at the thick grey of fog before turning around... I crawled back into the bush. Finally as night approached I found a clearing with a few shacks and what I thought looked like a fire at one. The chill had settled in when night fell. As I approached, three or four dark figures lifted their heads and tried make out who I was in the dusk. I asked in Spanish if I could join them at their small bucket fire and they all consented with half interest. We sat there outside the wood shack with our hands hovering around the embers, scattered chatting.
It was too cold that night for my old sleeping bag, before I had sewed duck tape patches over the holes a handful of goose feathers had escaped. My feat became numb as I struggled to get comfortable on the wooden table where I had chosen to sleep. Finally I decided to scrounge around for twigs to build a fire, there weren't enough to keep a blaze going for long so I heated up some rocks with it and placed them around the foot of my bag, slept little.
In the morning that crisp mountain air lifted my system like coffee and though I hadn't slept much I looked up at the peak undaunted. Crunching up the steep switch-backs in loose shale I discovered my old work boots were lacking in traction. As I scurried along a steep portion of the trail I started to lose footing and slid perilously close to the edge of a deadly drop. after this happened a handful of times I decided to take my boots off entirely and try the hike barefoot. The shale cut into my soft skin and made going slow enough that when I reached a high saddle that afforded a beautiful view I accepted that as my summit. Just across from the jagged mountain I was scrambling on smoked it's volcanic twin, a sentinel ready to burst into magma and flames. I watched her smoke signals rise and mingle with passing clouds morphing into massive beings, headed South.
When I made it back to the road in the mid-day heat I noticed a flow of pilgrims coming from the state of Puebla up over the pass. Most had nothing but their cheap sandals, a bed role and a large statue of the Virgin Mary strapped to their back. I couldn't glean much from my inquiries other than it was a pilgrimage in her name. I was satisfied just to witness the spectacle, the dedication to Mother of God's son as they saw it, likely linked to ancient pagan rituals for fertility, abundance. Then again the divine mother can signify almost anything as life itself came from her birthing canal. I got into a negotiation with a taxi driver who swore he was the only one heading South of the pass that day and quoted me a ridiculous price. I talked him down a lot but it was still too high. Suddenly he lowered the price as I saw another van cresting the ridge, loaded with locals. I looked at him with a hint of guile and saw his "uh oh" face. I walked over to hop in and he ran to the driver telling him to charge me more, then smiled at me with his metallic shit eating grin.
We wound down the narrow bumpy road, dodging the constant flow of farmers and workers from the lowlands carrying their statues and meager belongings up the mountain. The further we descended the more locals piled on, many who had been collecting fragrant pine boughs in the woodlands which filled the cab with it's clean sweet aroma. I was crammed on top of a stack of tires by a bag of pine, the other passengers just staring at me blankly, I smiled a little and continued looking out the window. The roadside was cluttered with haphazard taco shacks made from tarps and plywood thrown together for the pilgrims, smoke and sizzling meat, bright colored large women and cackling men in their hats and worn jeans bending plastic chairs with wild gesticulation.
When at last we reached the small town at the bottom of the mountain I handed the driver what I knew the ride to be worth. He exploded that he was promised double, I told him that the other driver was a liar and I would pay the normal fair, he sped away angrily. His passengers still staring at me in that persistent detached way.
I landed in the strange, proud city of Puebla, staying in a a cheep hostel loaded with broken mattresses on shaky bunk beds. There's a couple who seem to be following me as I change beds trying to escape their late night blow job sessions on the bottom bunk. They aren't even good looking so no chance of a pornographic satisfaction from their shameless exploits. I wake up in disgust, all of my clothes are dirty, I have already smell tested the socks and it's clear; time to find a laundromat . I take my bundle and sling it over my shoulder. All that is left to wear are some colorful african pajama pants, in the sleek colonial feel of Puebla I suddenly become uncomfortable. So as not to spend the next several hours a complete spectacle I begin a quest for second hand pants. Dipping into a variety of clothing stores I eventually learn the word for second hand pants and narrow my search. It turns out that there is a bit of an emporium of used things near an abandoned market further out from the city center. In a small, loosely bolted bus, I rumble through the smoggy streets away from the prestige of downtown, into the din of daily life among the common hustle. I get off where I had been told and duck through stalls of decapitated animals and colorful fruit to the other side where tarps hang as shelters for the second hand vendors. There is a grumpy man by a table loaded 3 feet high with mixed pants. I find one that is the right size and ask him the price. Shit! Clothes aren't cheap and he is impervious to negotiation. I am in desperate need to change out of my colorful pajamas so I pay the price. Now with the newly acquired pants in my hand I am left with a new question, where do I put these things on? Maybe the nearby abandoned market has a corner I can change in. I enter through the open garage like door into a maze of dark decaying stalls. There are beds made of cardboard on the filthy concrete and hovels where addicts curl into balls at night. Down the narrow hall I see shady figures making a deal. Tucking into a corner next to a stack of tires I remove my jazzy pajamas (free balling below). You don't know what vulnerable is until you are naked in one of these places. Just as I tug the new pants up a group of large bull dog like men appear in front of me immediately asking what the hell I am doing there. I freeze up for a second and then rapidly begin to explain that my other pair of pants were "broken" and I had to change. As I point to where I had put my pajamas I notice that they have fallen into the center of the stack of tires. Then I explain to them that I have lost my "broken pants" in the stack of tires and they watch, growing more and more amused as I start to remove the tires, suddenly I pull the african pants from the crud they were sitting in and show them with a terror concealing smile on my face. All at once they get it and start to laugh. They have decided not to jump me and steel my wallet because I now seem a penniless fool to them. The largest leader of the pack then comes in a little closer and asks me what kind of drugs I want and I politely refuse as he lists off every conceivable illicit substance. Then he holds out his fist and I again politely refuse. 'No, no, no' he says, 'I will show you the poor peoples hand shake.' Oh I get it. We bump fists and do a few more hand fist combinations before the initiation is complete. I walk from the dark din of the abandoned market suddenly feeling a narcotic sense of relief, not so much because of the pants but because I wasn't killed by a gang of drug dealers.
Dipping down to the deep desert, through the dry stands of cactus and sun spilled hills of Eastern Oaxaca. The bus creeks and shudders down the winding roads, the day stretches on endlessly to the hum of the grumbling bus engine, my back sweats on the vinyl seats. When we finally arrive in Oaxaca City I am full of the exhaustion that only a long road can bring. I know from word of mouth that this is the land of Mezcal, which I have discovered is my favorite of the spirits. So as I huddle into a dark narrow road and discover a shed door open to a small 'mezcalaria' I sling my pack off my shoulders and take up a stool. I have the woman poor me a glass of local 'espadine'. It is the taste of smoked cinnamon and earth that arouses every sense in my body, to my bones.
Sauntering to my hostel I dream of what a magic land I have entered, rich and impoverished, holy and profane, grinding up against the new world with the full weight of it's heavy stone facades and walkways. At the top of a hill overlooking the city center a woman is toasting up some truly amazing cheese stuffed corn cakes. I sit there on a small unstable plastic stool letting the hot cheese burn holes in my mouth. burn the pain away. In time I discover some fascinating hole in the wall mezcalarias serving the profound intoxicant from large bulbous carafes. The psychedelic art that clutters the walls pulls me deeper into the experience until I feel something like love. In a drunken fuzz surrounded by the wavering orange street bulbs, all paths leading me back to the cheese lady.
One morning the fascination of the spirit and art of mezcal is pulling at me and on a whim I begin to ask if there is some way I can go and work with the agave and see how it is all made. The first guy I ask is a young lad who has just showed up at the restaurant where he works, in daze, he says he had drank a toxic dose the night before but yes! He knows of someone I must meet on my quest. He leads me over to another restaurant around the corner owned by a young hip guy from texas, there at the bar are two men, one a mezcal sales rep, not the sleek well trimmed salesmen you would find selling wine or ties but a 7 o'clock stubble, salt and pepper hair, tanned skin with a sturdy grip of the spanish language kind of salesman. He says, "if you want to meet a mezcalero come with us man, but you've got to be ready in 15 minutes, can you do that?"
"Yes, yes of course I can."
I rush back to the Hostel and throw my stuff together and stumble in just as they are loading up the truck. We drive out on a dusty highway to a small mining town at the base of the scrub covered mountains. There in a large shed is an end of the year party in full swing. I gave the driving force behind the business, the Jefe's daughter, three pineapples I had picked up along the way. They were all a bit confused at how I had ended up there. All I said was "well I am just very curious about how mezcal is made and I would like to volunteer some time to work out in the fields" She looked at me quizzically and then at the gringo who had brought me, she sort of shrugged and said "ok we will talk to the Jefe." By simply showing up I was suddenly part of the festivities, sitting down to delicious Oaxacan food and several bottles of their magic spirits.
Chico, who I mistook for a complete wash-up drunk was so faded he could barely stand on his own feet. Swaying from one shoulder to another he would occasionally challenge me to a fight or tell me he loved me, depending on which tack he was on. I later discovered he was the hardest worker of the crew. There was another completely faded older man there with his hat on sideways and a harmonica that he didn't know how to play but played loudly nonetheless. After everyone took a swing at a pinata things started to wind down.
Graciela the Jefe's daughter and PR powerhouse, eventually told me that she had talked with her father and I could come back and work in two days time. So that night I took a ride back to Oaxaca City with the salesman.
Two days later I was on a series of small mostly empty buses out to the old mining town where the party had been. I got there sometime in the night and had no way of contacting the family I was going to stay with, I followed the written directions as best I could until I came to a thick metal door in the middle of an old painted concrete wall. I knocked and no one answered. Sitting for a moment to collect my thoughts and gather up my courage to start asking the few locals still out at this hour where I might find the family I was looking for. After asking a few folks I was finally directed to a door across the street from where I had been knocking. It was Graciela's house and she wasn't really expecting to see me. "Oh, oh right, you were coming out today, ummm.... let me see if father is home" Some yelling over the wall finally produced a response.
I was let inside there humble home, the kitchen, living room and I presume the bedroom all followed the wall in a long rectangular shape. The door opened to a room that had a gas powered corn mill that looked like it had been in constant use since the 70's. The living room was lit by a fluorescent bulb, the Simpsons were playing on the TV poorly dubbed in spanish. I sat there in occasionally broken silence with their grandson who was about 16. My spanish wasn't quite good enough to carry on a long conversation so after the first few questions I was at a loss.
The Jefe took me to where I would be sleeping, an unfinished room open on one side with a tile floor. They were in the middle of building a new home out back, the majority of it was still half rebar.
I rolled out my small air mat and sleeping back, I laid down and tried to get comfortable on the hard tile, blowing out the Jesus candle they let me borrow. I woke feeling a bit feverish in the middle of the night and realized I was being eaten alive by mosquitos. I tried best as I could to cover whatever skin was exposed. After a fitful night sleep I woke feeling haggard and sauntered out to the courtyard. There the crew was just walking through the door with curved scythes and large machetes in their hands. Chico started to sharpen his scythe on a stone at the base of one of the courtyard trees. We ate very little for breakfast, some sugary wafers and some instant coffee and went out to the road to load into the truck.
The truck was a large lumbering beast with wooden side walls and the stain of agave juice that gave off a boozy smell. I stood in the back with the crew as we sped down the highway, our hair blowing in the wind. We finally reached a side road that we turned off on, it quickly turned to dirt as it snaked it's way into the deep desert chaparral.
We parked near a dry creek bed surrounded by thick spiny plants of all kinds. All the plants in this desert were on the defense, protecting what little water and nutrients they had absorbed with crazy long thorns. The agave was the king of thorns, the first thing we had to do was strip off it's long saber like leaves with our scythes. You had to reach down close to the heart of it to do this and get stabbed and scrapped by the saw like sides until you bled in little droplets on the dry sand. All day we hunted through the unforgiving landscape, looking for agave that had been growing there for 10 or 15 years. Some, the Jefe said, had been planted by his father. By the time the sun was sending up golden waining light on the hills I was near dead with exhaustion, the juice of the agave whose hearts we carved into balls with our giant machetes had soaked my arms and neck which now broke out into a painful rash. "La racha!" Chico said with a sinister grin on his face "two or three months of working and it will go away." That night I slept fitfully again, being eaten by mosquitos, waking, swatting dizzily drifting back to sleep.
We went back into the desert to finish our work, shouldering the hearts that sometimes weighed upwards of 90 pounds and took two men to lift onto my shoulder. Slashed and worked to the bone we stopped at a little concrete box on the side of the road. Inside was a long plastic table with a cooler at one end filled with coke and beer, the other side had a rack full of little plastic bags of snacks. The Jefe ordered us all beers and a coke for himself, he didn't drink. He told me that he used to drink morning until night but he had to quit the sauce because it was taking over his life. We sat there at the long table chain smoking "faro" cigarettes and drinking our beers. The shop owner brought out a massive speaker on a stand and placed it at the head of the table. He put on some ranchero music at top volume and blasted us as we sat. Outside the only door was the expanse of the desert punctuated by a derelict quarry, it's rusting metal bulwarks coated by the same dust that swirled in fits into our little shack. After the first beer Chico got a wild look in his eyes and started ordering more and more until the boss finally put an end to it and we were back on the road in the fading sundown light.
That night they offered me cold chicken skin soup for dinner and I passed out on the tile floor feeling destroyed. In the morning after our customary coffee and biscuit breakfast, all five of us packed into the cab of the work truck. The boss pulled out his pack of Faros and we all started smoking, filling the cab with thick acrid smoke. Ranchero music was barely making it through the old wiring as we wound up the mountain side. Today we were collecting a different type of agave entirely. It was a high altitude variety called Tobala. The leaves of tobala undulated in a beautiful lotus like blossom and the hearts were smaller too, making the distilled spirits more valuable and much to my liking.
We wouldn't actually be harvesting these today, they had been collected by a team of men from the high country that deftly loaded pack mules with as many agave hearts as they could carry.
In order to make them easier to handle the men had fastened steaks of wood that they stabbed into either side of the heart, making handles. Once we had filled the back of our truck it was time to descend once again to the mining town.
When we arrived and emptied it's contents next to the giant volcano like pit they called the oven. It was time to clear out the volcanic stone that filled this giant pit in order to start a fire to roast the hearts and once again load with stone. The stone would take the heat of the fire and hold it for a great deal longer and roast the hearts to perfection.
After three days of this demanding labor and poor nights of rest on the tile floor I was pretty well exhausted so when the Jefe told me we were postponing roasting for another day and that he was going into town to sell his spirits, I decided to take a ride with him back to the relative comfort of a hostel bed and a shower to wash my now completely red rash covered skin. I was a bit surprised when I went to buy a bottle of his Mezcal that he didn't offer me one in exchange for all the work I had done. Being from the United States automatically means you are rich, so I kind of shrugged it off and payed the price (not cheap). Also I had a good share of the stuff at their party so it all evens out in the end. With a few more kind words I took my bottle and left the little square where the farmers market was getting underway.
That night, after uploading a few pictures on social media and telling a little of my story while sipping my mezcal I went out and got proper hickup drunk at one of my favorite little mezcalarias.
wondering down the road, chuckling, swaying, covered in rashes from head to toe with every muscle aching. I felt a deep happiness floating around in my chest, or was that the mezcal?
On my way to the hostel I was propositioned by a handful of prostitutes of varying genders. It took some time to find where I was going, a mega hostel somewhere in the heart of downtown. Finally I laid down on the shot spring bunk in a room full of stinking youth and fell asleep.
The city was huge and bustling, coated in a thick layer of smog and punctuated by colonial architecture and modern art. I packed onto the busses and humid subways in a frantic mode of exploration, getting my bearings on a map and heading off like an ant in a maze searching for an abandoned lollypop. I remember a transcendental moment walking through a flower stall, swallowed by the full-bodied smells and insanely vibrant colors, a smiling man swung out of the inner market in and matched my pace, a large bunch of frilly flowers in his hand, floating like some beautiful planet, I was drawn along by it like a butterfly into the din of mid-day traffic. At night I tried to look sketchy to keep the sketchy people away, it worked. During one of these late night wanderings I found quite possibly the master of tacos. I'm talking about the world's best taco maker, a taco deity. He labored over a long sizzling hot plate in a hole in the wall the size of a closet. Locals were packed in, obscured by smoke, hunched over their food, lost in weird ecstasy. I sat down on the street side stool and everyone looked, some stared with a quizzical expression on their face. I was surrounded by a halo of a thousand colored lights blinking and sparkling madly from a market across the street.
As is always the case when staying at hostels, I ganged up with a bunch of other white folks and we went and gawked at the ancient Aztec ruins just outside of town. On top of the sun ziggurat I stretched my hands up trying to feel the power of Huitzilopochtli coursing through my nerves (I think I felt something). The ancient cultures of Mesoamerica were really on to something. Ok so there were human sacrifices and they warred with neighboring tribes, yeah, but the layout of that ancient city was so intentional, so artfully crafted and powerful. Modern capitalist megalopoli didn't even come close to that magic.
This was the beginning of an incredible journey. It was more than I ever expected and it showed me how far a dream can be realized, the limits are only with how clear your vision is... and what you have stuffed in the bank account. Often I closed my eyes and thanked the whole web of creation for the chance just to walk the strange Earth in search of nothing at all.
On my way from Mexico City South I stepped off the bus in a small town at the foot of twin mountain peaks, one smoking with volcanic eruptions, the other beckoning with rocky outcroppings that pierced the swirling cloud gods. I was hungry so I ducked into a market stall and ordered something I didn't understand, soupy spicy stuff, "is that skin floating around in there?". The son of the old lady cook was trying to set me up with a ride up the hill for a lofty sum. He said it was the only way up (likely story). Politely I refused and told him I would come back if I couldn't find anything else. Through broken spanish I asked a passing bus for a ride further up and made it half way. I got a little ripped off by a taxi driver for the rest of the way to the saddle. There wasn't much up there, a ranger station where I payed the fee and then vanished off onto the trail, a bag of groceries wedged between the top of my pack and the back of my neck. I didn't have a map or any real idea what was up ahead but I could see the mountain I was aiming for through holes in the mist. My body was aching something terrible with my awkward setup. I also carried a gallon of water in my hand, cheap plastic cutting off circulation. Sweaty and panting, a little lost in the misty chaparral. Finally I caught sight of a convoy rumbling up a dirt road and I went down to see if they were heading somewhere that made sense. They were there just to get out and stare at the thick grey of fog before turning around... I crawled back into the bush. Finally as night approached I found a clearing with a few shacks and what I thought looked like a fire at one. The chill had settled in when night fell. As I approached, three or four dark figures lifted their heads and tried make out who I was in the dusk. I asked in Spanish if I could join them at their small bucket fire and they all consented with half interest. We sat there outside the wood shack with our hands hovering around the embers, scattered chatting.
It was too cold that night for my old sleeping bag, before I had sewed duck tape patches over the holes a handful of goose feathers had escaped. My feat became numb as I struggled to get comfortable on the wooden table where I had chosen to sleep. Finally I decided to scrounge around for twigs to build a fire, there weren't enough to keep a blaze going for long so I heated up some rocks with it and placed them around the foot of my bag, slept little.
In the morning that crisp mountain air lifted my system like coffee and though I hadn't slept much I looked up at the peak undaunted. Crunching up the steep switch-backs in loose shale I discovered my old work boots were lacking in traction. As I scurried along a steep portion of the trail I started to lose footing and slid perilously close to the edge of a deadly drop. after this happened a handful of times I decided to take my boots off entirely and try the hike barefoot. The shale cut into my soft skin and made going slow enough that when I reached a high saddle that afforded a beautiful view I accepted that as my summit. Just across from the jagged mountain I was scrambling on smoked it's volcanic twin, a sentinel ready to burst into magma and flames. I watched her smoke signals rise and mingle with passing clouds morphing into massive beings, headed South.
When I made it back to the road in the mid-day heat I noticed a flow of pilgrims coming from the state of Puebla up over the pass. Most had nothing but their cheap sandals, a bed role and a large statue of the Virgin Mary strapped to their back. I couldn't glean much from my inquiries other than it was a pilgrimage in her name. I was satisfied just to witness the spectacle, the dedication to Mother of God's son as they saw it, likely linked to ancient pagan rituals for fertility, abundance. Then again the divine mother can signify almost anything as life itself came from her birthing canal. I got into a negotiation with a taxi driver who swore he was the only one heading South of the pass that day and quoted me a ridiculous price. I talked him down a lot but it was still too high. Suddenly he lowered the price as I saw another van cresting the ridge, loaded with locals. I looked at him with a hint of guile and saw his "uh oh" face. I walked over to hop in and he ran to the driver telling him to charge me more, then smiled at me with his metallic shit eating grin.
We wound down the narrow bumpy road, dodging the constant flow of farmers and workers from the lowlands carrying their statues and meager belongings up the mountain. The further we descended the more locals piled on, many who had been collecting fragrant pine boughs in the woodlands which filled the cab with it's clean sweet aroma. I was crammed on top of a stack of tires by a bag of pine, the other passengers just staring at me blankly, I smiled a little and continued looking out the window. The roadside was cluttered with haphazard taco shacks made from tarps and plywood thrown together for the pilgrims, smoke and sizzling meat, bright colored large women and cackling men in their hats and worn jeans bending plastic chairs with wild gesticulation.
When at last we reached the small town at the bottom of the mountain I handed the driver what I knew the ride to be worth. He exploded that he was promised double, I told him that the other driver was a liar and I would pay the normal fair, he sped away angrily. His passengers still staring at me in that persistent detached way.
I landed in the strange, proud city of Puebla, staying in a a cheep hostel loaded with broken mattresses on shaky bunk beds. There's a couple who seem to be following me as I change beds trying to escape their late night blow job sessions on the bottom bunk. They aren't even good looking so no chance of a pornographic satisfaction from their shameless exploits. I wake up in disgust, all of my clothes are dirty, I have already smell tested the socks and it's clear; time to find a laundromat . I take my bundle and sling it over my shoulder. All that is left to wear are some colorful african pajama pants, in the sleek colonial feel of Puebla I suddenly become uncomfortable. So as not to spend the next several hours a complete spectacle I begin a quest for second hand pants. Dipping into a variety of clothing stores I eventually learn the word for second hand pants and narrow my search. It turns out that there is a bit of an emporium of used things near an abandoned market further out from the city center. In a small, loosely bolted bus, I rumble through the smoggy streets away from the prestige of downtown, into the din of daily life among the common hustle. I get off where I had been told and duck through stalls of decapitated animals and colorful fruit to the other side where tarps hang as shelters for the second hand vendors. There is a grumpy man by a table loaded 3 feet high with mixed pants. I find one that is the right size and ask him the price. Shit! Clothes aren't cheap and he is impervious to negotiation. I am in desperate need to change out of my colorful pajamas so I pay the price. Now with the newly acquired pants in my hand I am left with a new question, where do I put these things on? Maybe the nearby abandoned market has a corner I can change in. I enter through the open garage like door into a maze of dark decaying stalls. There are beds made of cardboard on the filthy concrete and hovels where addicts curl into balls at night. Down the narrow hall I see shady figures making a deal. Tucking into a corner next to a stack of tires I remove my jazzy pajamas (free balling below). You don't know what vulnerable is until you are naked in one of these places. Just as I tug the new pants up a group of large bull dog like men appear in front of me immediately asking what the hell I am doing there. I freeze up for a second and then rapidly begin to explain that my other pair of pants were "broken" and I had to change. As I point to where I had put my pajamas I notice that they have fallen into the center of the stack of tires. Then I explain to them that I have lost my "broken pants" in the stack of tires and they watch, growing more and more amused as I start to remove the tires, suddenly I pull the african pants from the crud they were sitting in and show them with a terror concealing smile on my face. All at once they get it and start to laugh. They have decided not to jump me and steel my wallet because I now seem a penniless fool to them. The largest leader of the pack then comes in a little closer and asks me what kind of drugs I want and I politely refuse as he lists off every conceivable illicit substance. Then he holds out his fist and I again politely refuse. 'No, no, no' he says, 'I will show you the poor peoples hand shake.' Oh I get it. We bump fists and do a few more hand fist combinations before the initiation is complete. I walk from the dark din of the abandoned market suddenly feeling a narcotic sense of relief, not so much because of the pants but because I wasn't killed by a gang of drug dealers.
Dipping down to the deep desert, through the dry stands of cactus and sun spilled hills of Eastern Oaxaca. The bus creeks and shudders down the winding roads, the day stretches on endlessly to the hum of the grumbling bus engine, my back sweats on the vinyl seats. When we finally arrive in Oaxaca City I am full of the exhaustion that only a long road can bring. I know from word of mouth that this is the land of Mezcal, which I have discovered is my favorite of the spirits. So as I huddle into a dark narrow road and discover a shed door open to a small 'mezcalaria' I sling my pack off my shoulders and take up a stool. I have the woman poor me a glass of local 'espadine'. It is the taste of smoked cinnamon and earth that arouses every sense in my body, to my bones.
Sauntering to my hostel I dream of what a magic land I have entered, rich and impoverished, holy and profane, grinding up against the new world with the full weight of it's heavy stone facades and walkways. At the top of a hill overlooking the city center a woman is toasting up some truly amazing cheese stuffed corn cakes. I sit there on a small unstable plastic stool letting the hot cheese burn holes in my mouth. burn the pain away. In time I discover some fascinating hole in the wall mezcalarias serving the profound intoxicant from large bulbous carafes. The psychedelic art that clutters the walls pulls me deeper into the experience until I feel something like love. In a drunken fuzz surrounded by the wavering orange street bulbs, all paths leading me back to the cheese lady.
One morning the fascination of the spirit and art of mezcal is pulling at me and on a whim I begin to ask if there is some way I can go and work with the agave and see how it is all made. The first guy I ask is a young lad who has just showed up at the restaurant where he works, in daze, he says he had drank a toxic dose the night before but yes! He knows of someone I must meet on my quest. He leads me over to another restaurant around the corner owned by a young hip guy from texas, there at the bar are two men, one a mezcal sales rep, not the sleek well trimmed salesmen you would find selling wine or ties but a 7 o'clock stubble, salt and pepper hair, tanned skin with a sturdy grip of the spanish language kind of salesman. He says, "if you want to meet a mezcalero come with us man, but you've got to be ready in 15 minutes, can you do that?"
"Yes, yes of course I can."
I rush back to the Hostel and throw my stuff together and stumble in just as they are loading up the truck. We drive out on a dusty highway to a small mining town at the base of the scrub covered mountains. There in a large shed is an end of the year party in full swing. I gave the driving force behind the business, the Jefe's daughter, three pineapples I had picked up along the way. They were all a bit confused at how I had ended up there. All I said was "well I am just very curious about how mezcal is made and I would like to volunteer some time to work out in the fields" She looked at me quizzically and then at the gringo who had brought me, she sort of shrugged and said "ok we will talk to the Jefe." By simply showing up I was suddenly part of the festivities, sitting down to delicious Oaxacan food and several bottles of their magic spirits.
Chico, who I mistook for a complete wash-up drunk was so faded he could barely stand on his own feet. Swaying from one shoulder to another he would occasionally challenge me to a fight or tell me he loved me, depending on which tack he was on. I later discovered he was the hardest worker of the crew. There was another completely faded older man there with his hat on sideways and a harmonica that he didn't know how to play but played loudly nonetheless. After everyone took a swing at a pinata things started to wind down.
Graciela the Jefe's daughter and PR powerhouse, eventually told me that she had talked with her father and I could come back and work in two days time. So that night I took a ride back to Oaxaca City with the salesman.
Two days later I was on a series of small mostly empty buses out to the old mining town where the party had been. I got there sometime in the night and had no way of contacting the family I was going to stay with, I followed the written directions as best I could until I came to a thick metal door in the middle of an old painted concrete wall. I knocked and no one answered. Sitting for a moment to collect my thoughts and gather up my courage to start asking the few locals still out at this hour where I might find the family I was looking for. After asking a few folks I was finally directed to a door across the street from where I had been knocking. It was Graciela's house and she wasn't really expecting to see me. "Oh, oh right, you were coming out today, ummm.... let me see if father is home" Some yelling over the wall finally produced a response.
I was let inside there humble home, the kitchen, living room and I presume the bedroom all followed the wall in a long rectangular shape. The door opened to a room that had a gas powered corn mill that looked like it had been in constant use since the 70's. The living room was lit by a fluorescent bulb, the Simpsons were playing on the TV poorly dubbed in spanish. I sat there in occasionally broken silence with their grandson who was about 16. My spanish wasn't quite good enough to carry on a long conversation so after the first few questions I was at a loss.
The Jefe took me to where I would be sleeping, an unfinished room open on one side with a tile floor. They were in the middle of building a new home out back, the majority of it was still half rebar.
I rolled out my small air mat and sleeping back, I laid down and tried to get comfortable on the hard tile, blowing out the Jesus candle they let me borrow. I woke feeling a bit feverish in the middle of the night and realized I was being eaten alive by mosquitos. I tried best as I could to cover whatever skin was exposed. After a fitful night sleep I woke feeling haggard and sauntered out to the courtyard. There the crew was just walking through the door with curved scythes and large machetes in their hands. Chico started to sharpen his scythe on a stone at the base of one of the courtyard trees. We ate very little for breakfast, some sugary wafers and some instant coffee and went out to the road to load into the truck.
The truck was a large lumbering beast with wooden side walls and the stain of agave juice that gave off a boozy smell. I stood in the back with the crew as we sped down the highway, our hair blowing in the wind. We finally reached a side road that we turned off on, it quickly turned to dirt as it snaked it's way into the deep desert chaparral.
We parked near a dry creek bed surrounded by thick spiny plants of all kinds. All the plants in this desert were on the defense, protecting what little water and nutrients they had absorbed with crazy long thorns. The agave was the king of thorns, the first thing we had to do was strip off it's long saber like leaves with our scythes. You had to reach down close to the heart of it to do this and get stabbed and scrapped by the saw like sides until you bled in little droplets on the dry sand. All day we hunted through the unforgiving landscape, looking for agave that had been growing there for 10 or 15 years. Some, the Jefe said, had been planted by his father. By the time the sun was sending up golden waining light on the hills I was near dead with exhaustion, the juice of the agave whose hearts we carved into balls with our giant machetes had soaked my arms and neck which now broke out into a painful rash. "La racha!" Chico said with a sinister grin on his face "two or three months of working and it will go away." That night I slept fitfully again, being eaten by mosquitos, waking, swatting dizzily drifting back to sleep.
We went back into the desert to finish our work, shouldering the hearts that sometimes weighed upwards of 90 pounds and took two men to lift onto my shoulder. Slashed and worked to the bone we stopped at a little concrete box on the side of the road. Inside was a long plastic table with a cooler at one end filled with coke and beer, the other side had a rack full of little plastic bags of snacks. The Jefe ordered us all beers and a coke for himself, he didn't drink. He told me that he used to drink morning until night but he had to quit the sauce because it was taking over his life. We sat there at the long table chain smoking "faro" cigarettes and drinking our beers. The shop owner brought out a massive speaker on a stand and placed it at the head of the table. He put on some ranchero music at top volume and blasted us as we sat. Outside the only door was the expanse of the desert punctuated by a derelict quarry, it's rusting metal bulwarks coated by the same dust that swirled in fits into our little shack. After the first beer Chico got a wild look in his eyes and started ordering more and more until the boss finally put an end to it and we were back on the road in the fading sundown light.
That night they offered me cold chicken skin soup for dinner and I passed out on the tile floor feeling destroyed. In the morning after our customary coffee and biscuit breakfast, all five of us packed into the cab of the work truck. The boss pulled out his pack of Faros and we all started smoking, filling the cab with thick acrid smoke. Ranchero music was barely making it through the old wiring as we wound up the mountain side. Today we were collecting a different type of agave entirely. It was a high altitude variety called Tobala. The leaves of tobala undulated in a beautiful lotus like blossom and the hearts were smaller too, making the distilled spirits more valuable and much to my liking.
We wouldn't actually be harvesting these today, they had been collected by a team of men from the high country that deftly loaded pack mules with as many agave hearts as they could carry.
In order to make them easier to handle the men had fastened steaks of wood that they stabbed into either side of the heart, making handles. Once we had filled the back of our truck it was time to descend once again to the mining town.
When we arrived and emptied it's contents next to the giant volcano like pit they called the oven. It was time to clear out the volcanic stone that filled this giant pit in order to start a fire to roast the hearts and once again load with stone. The stone would take the heat of the fire and hold it for a great deal longer and roast the hearts to perfection.
After three days of this demanding labor and poor nights of rest on the tile floor I was pretty well exhausted so when the Jefe told me we were postponing roasting for another day and that he was going into town to sell his spirits, I decided to take a ride with him back to the relative comfort of a hostel bed and a shower to wash my now completely red rash covered skin. I was a bit surprised when I went to buy a bottle of his Mezcal that he didn't offer me one in exchange for all the work I had done. Being from the United States automatically means you are rich, so I kind of shrugged it off and payed the price (not cheap). Also I had a good share of the stuff at their party so it all evens out in the end. With a few more kind words I took my bottle and left the little square where the farmers market was getting underway.
That night, after uploading a few pictures on social media and telling a little of my story while sipping my mezcal I went out and got proper hickup drunk at one of my favorite little mezcalarias.
wondering down the road, chuckling, swaying, covered in rashes from head to toe with every muscle aching. I felt a deep happiness floating around in my chest, or was that the mezcal?
Wednesday, March 15, 2017
Emerald Triangle Blowout
Acid bath on Halloween night in Arcada California. I took three Altoids from the tin and dropped the clear liquid, one on each, in the palms of my two friends and myself. We looked each other in the eyes, commotion all around us, the madness of Humboldt County in trim season bustling in the town square. Spearmint hit my tung, we stood and started moving and everything went with us. The night was a blur, with the tequila and psychedelics just tossing the chaos into a great whirlwind of colors and sounds, I do remember a woman who really looked dead staggering wide eyed in the rain, drenched in blood and a parking lot sometime around three when, against my better judgement I stuck out my tung, still fizzy from guzzling a Mickeys and that second drop of mind fuck hitting me. We laid beneath a barren tree blowing in the breeze with a light sprinkle falling on our faces, feeling like pools of electric liquid. Then at some point I opened my eyes and a spliff was thrust into my mouth, a man with shock pink hair was playing cumbia in the farmhouse living room. Then the hard jab of a seatbelt in my side, waking up after two hours sleep in the cab of my truck to a pale foggy morning.
My friends and I had been logging ridiculous hours in a half finished house in the boondocks East of Garberville, gunshots in the woods at random hours, tattooed women talking about the bad drugs and pitbulls, always pitbulls. Tedious trim work in a plywood box, one old couch, fold out chairs, a tangle of cables and hanging lights all over. Bins upon bins of dried weed, some of it molding or too scrappy to be worth your time. This was how I was earning extra money for a trip I had been dreaming of for years. I worked during those years that I dreamt but it still wasn't quite enough to pull it off. So this is what somewhat well connected Californians do and for that matter everyone else who wants fast cash in the Fall. It's risky, often shitty work and many people who come from all over the world hoping to make a bunch of money and smoke a bunch of weed just end up doing the latter and spending the former.
After my mind bender on Halloween which was followed by a day in the redwoods trying to see something other than a thousand screaming faces on the back of my eyelids, we went back for another marathon week and I walked away with thousands of dollars in my socks.
My heart sailed when I finally ripped the various packets of money duck taped to the inside of my truck and deposited in the bank. The teller looked at me with a smirk, he knew what time of year it was and I didn't look like a professional of any sort. My mind slowed time down as the cash hit the electric counter, savoring the flitting noise, each flit another day on the road.
My friends and I had been logging ridiculous hours in a half finished house in the boondocks East of Garberville, gunshots in the woods at random hours, tattooed women talking about the bad drugs and pitbulls, always pitbulls. Tedious trim work in a plywood box, one old couch, fold out chairs, a tangle of cables and hanging lights all over. Bins upon bins of dried weed, some of it molding or too scrappy to be worth your time. This was how I was earning extra money for a trip I had been dreaming of for years. I worked during those years that I dreamt but it still wasn't quite enough to pull it off. So this is what somewhat well connected Californians do and for that matter everyone else who wants fast cash in the Fall. It's risky, often shitty work and many people who come from all over the world hoping to make a bunch of money and smoke a bunch of weed just end up doing the latter and spending the former.
After my mind bender on Halloween which was followed by a day in the redwoods trying to see something other than a thousand screaming faces on the back of my eyelids, we went back for another marathon week and I walked away with thousands of dollars in my socks.
My heart sailed when I finally ripped the various packets of money duck taped to the inside of my truck and deposited in the bank. The teller looked at me with a smirk, he knew what time of year it was and I didn't look like a professional of any sort. My mind slowed time down as the cash hit the electric counter, savoring the flitting noise, each flit another day on the road.
Monday, August 8, 2016
Eat Pie!
While pickling and canning at Happy Girl Kitchen I had the chance to meet alot of the local farmers as they stopped by with loads of precariously loaded produce in dust coated trucks. Or in the case of David, a neat little hatchback. David was the cook/ reluctant educator at Pie Ranch who lived in sunny Bonny Doon and worked in a big beautiful outdoor kitchen, I thought to myself "that guy has a sweet job" and the thought stuck with me. So when it was nearing the end of our one year lease in PG I decided to sign up for the internship offered at the ranch. A few months later I found myself fingers locked around the teets of a moody goat milking away.
The summer interns stayed in a little cleared out patch beneath a walnut tree in what ever shelters we brought. The first night it drizzled a bit and a stocky, hardy chap by the name of Coal hadn't brought anything but a Mexican blanket. he just rolled up in it and passed out near the trunk of the tree, sleeping better than anyone else. He was half Native American and half country badass, wearing a thick cross made of stone on a necklace and a cowboy hat that shaded his dusty face, wide grin and squinty knowing eyes. He had a way with the animals, they skipped and pranced when he came to the pasture. He also devised a way to corral the unruly adolescent chickens into the coup for the night rather than grabbing them by the legs and tossing them in which had been the practice. The other summer intern was Li, a lovely intelligent woman who had graduated from UC Berkeley and decided to play in the dirt instead. Li was from Monterey, a town I had, for one reason or another, come to know very well. She played the cello and sung folk songs on a steel string. Looking back we all seemed pretty country, down to Earth kind of kids. At first there was a clear division between us and the apprentices. Some amount of camaraderie is innate just from sleeping outdoors together rather than in the ancient farm house with the year round apprentices. There was a certain amount of disenchantment within the year round group, maybe too much work, too little time. The second year apprentices were frustrated with the plaintive nature of the group and were hoping for the golden times that must have been a big part of last years crew. As the summer progressed we started to meld together and as we bonded through the hard labor of harvest, riding on the back of jostling trucks packed over full of radish, tomato, kale, carrots and everything you could ever want to eat.
The animals were a whole new layer of life that I hadn't experienced at all before. Zelda our stubborn lady goat, the only one who had survived repeated cougar attacks on the herd, was a real chore. Hard to get into the stanchion and moody once in place, she would often kick the bucket while you milked, tossing the whole thing to the ground or flinging a flake of poop into the perfect frothy white. She was also a diligent escape artist. backing up and kicking at the ground before leaping over the four foot fence. She wanted to be with the cows and would run baaing over to where they were grazing and munch defiantly on the stubble. Dulce, by name and manner was the sweetest of the cows, the only true jersey, her offspring and granddaughter were a hot headed mix of beef cow and jersey, an error from the AI guy. Dulce was easy to milk and only kicked the bucket when she wanted a little more alfalfa in her feed. Her milk was prolific and fatty, golden in color and rich with flavor. She let you come up and pat her large horned head as she glanced at you somewhat suspiciously but with resignation. Soon it became apparent that she was pregnant. How this was a surprise to the farmers is a mystery to me. You think that you would have remembered something like impregnating your star cow. When she gave birth she was already taking care of her daughter Ginger's calf who was neglected by her angry mother. So now Dulce was mothering two calves and we couldn't milk her anymore. Naturally this left us to milk moody Ginger who had to have her legs tied tight so that she wouldnt kick your hand with full cow fury, but nothing was stopping her shit covered tail from wipping you in the eyes while you tried to suction her teets to the machine. Yes, no hand milking for this one, she wouldn't allow it. She would get so crazy that she would break free from the rope and kick the skin off your hand or take a shit on your legs or break from free from the stanchion and go bucking around in angry circles. Needless to say, when it was your turn to milk her your early morning was a solemn march to the barn because you knew you were in for a beating.
The summer interns stayed in a little cleared out patch beneath a walnut tree in what ever shelters we brought. The first night it drizzled a bit and a stocky, hardy chap by the name of Coal hadn't brought anything but a Mexican blanket. he just rolled up in it and passed out near the trunk of the tree, sleeping better than anyone else. He was half Native American and half country badass, wearing a thick cross made of stone on a necklace and a cowboy hat that shaded his dusty face, wide grin and squinty knowing eyes. He had a way with the animals, they skipped and pranced when he came to the pasture. He also devised a way to corral the unruly adolescent chickens into the coup for the night rather than grabbing them by the legs and tossing them in which had been the practice. The other summer intern was Li, a lovely intelligent woman who had graduated from UC Berkeley and decided to play in the dirt instead. Li was from Monterey, a town I had, for one reason or another, come to know very well. She played the cello and sung folk songs on a steel string. Looking back we all seemed pretty country, down to Earth kind of kids. At first there was a clear division between us and the apprentices. Some amount of camaraderie is innate just from sleeping outdoors together rather than in the ancient farm house with the year round apprentices. There was a certain amount of disenchantment within the year round group, maybe too much work, too little time. The second year apprentices were frustrated with the plaintive nature of the group and were hoping for the golden times that must have been a big part of last years crew. As the summer progressed we started to meld together and as we bonded through the hard labor of harvest, riding on the back of jostling trucks packed over full of radish, tomato, kale, carrots and everything you could ever want to eat.
The animals were a whole new layer of life that I hadn't experienced at all before. Zelda our stubborn lady goat, the only one who had survived repeated cougar attacks on the herd, was a real chore. Hard to get into the stanchion and moody once in place, she would often kick the bucket while you milked, tossing the whole thing to the ground or flinging a flake of poop into the perfect frothy white. She was also a diligent escape artist. backing up and kicking at the ground before leaping over the four foot fence. She wanted to be with the cows and would run baaing over to where they were grazing and munch defiantly on the stubble. Dulce, by name and manner was the sweetest of the cows, the only true jersey, her offspring and granddaughter were a hot headed mix of beef cow and jersey, an error from the AI guy. Dulce was easy to milk and only kicked the bucket when she wanted a little more alfalfa in her feed. Her milk was prolific and fatty, golden in color and rich with flavor. She let you come up and pat her large horned head as she glanced at you somewhat suspiciously but with resignation. Soon it became apparent that she was pregnant. How this was a surprise to the farmers is a mystery to me. You think that you would have remembered something like impregnating your star cow. When she gave birth she was already taking care of her daughter Ginger's calf who was neglected by her angry mother. So now Dulce was mothering two calves and we couldn't milk her anymore. Naturally this left us to milk moody Ginger who had to have her legs tied tight so that she wouldnt kick your hand with full cow fury, but nothing was stopping her shit covered tail from wipping you in the eyes while you tried to suction her teets to the machine. Yes, no hand milking for this one, she wouldn't allow it. She would get so crazy that she would break free from the rope and kick the skin off your hand or take a shit on your legs or break from free from the stanchion and go bucking around in angry circles. Needless to say, when it was your turn to milk her your early morning was a solemn march to the barn because you knew you were in for a beating.
Thursday, June 30, 2016
"This Is An Uprising" the most important book to read right now.
This book is dense but at the very end in a chapter titled "Conclusion" the key points of successful non-violent resistance are summarized as such:
"Momentum driven organizing uses tools of civil resistance to consciously spark, amplify, and harness mass protest. It highlights the importance of hybrid organizations... which can build decentralized networks to sustain protest mobilizations through multiple waves of activity. It goes beyond transactional goals by also advancing a transformational agenda, and it wins by swaying public opinion and pulling the pillars of support. It is attentive to the symbolic properties of campaigns, showing how these can sometimes be just as important as instrumental demands, if not more so. It uses disruption, sacrifice, and escalation to build tension and bring overlooked issues into the public spotlight. It aspires, at its peak, to create moments of the whirlwind, when outbreaks of decentralized action extend far outside the institutional limits of any one organization. It is willing to polarize public opinion and risk controversy with bold protest, but it maintains non-violent discipline to ensure that it does not undermine broad-based support for its cause. And it is conscious of the need to work with other organizing traditions in order to institutionalize gains and foster alternative communities that can sustain resistance over the long term."
Got that? Good, now lets bring down Big Oil!
"Momentum driven organizing uses tools of civil resistance to consciously spark, amplify, and harness mass protest. It highlights the importance of hybrid organizations... which can build decentralized networks to sustain protest mobilizations through multiple waves of activity. It goes beyond transactional goals by also advancing a transformational agenda, and it wins by swaying public opinion and pulling the pillars of support. It is attentive to the symbolic properties of campaigns, showing how these can sometimes be just as important as instrumental demands, if not more so. It uses disruption, sacrifice, and escalation to build tension and bring overlooked issues into the public spotlight. It aspires, at its peak, to create moments of the whirlwind, when outbreaks of decentralized action extend far outside the institutional limits of any one organization. It is willing to polarize public opinion and risk controversy with bold protest, but it maintains non-violent discipline to ensure that it does not undermine broad-based support for its cause. And it is conscious of the need to work with other organizing traditions in order to institutionalize gains and foster alternative communities that can sustain resistance over the long term."
Got that? Good, now lets bring down Big Oil!
Saturday, June 25, 2016
Summer of 2012
I had returned to California after the long trip across country and was feeling, well, a bit randy. It was a hot summer and Big Sur was charged as ever with energy that drew me in. Celebrating my 27th birthday aboard the Raindancer with my Dad, brother Forrest and great friend Sam. We smoked and joked on the calm seas as we cut along, three sails in the wind. Later Sam and I found ourselves buzzed to our boots in the dark wood of a Big Sur bar. I was smoking my lungs off, laughing, drinking, cackling, birthday stuff. The next weekend found us dancing and drumming beneath the full blue moon wild and free. We were on our way to Oakland to play a show with our new outfit 'Nature Fortress', a name we came to in the hulk of a large driftwood shelter on the soft sand out at the Cove. We woke in the morning feeling fresh, having slept a little by the river and using its cold water to splash the sleep from our faces. The venue in the city was small, attended by the local activist crowd. We played our short set of technical chanty melodies and never missed a beet. At least one guy was really impressed. That night we drove all the way back to Big Sur and hurled ourselves into a crowd who gathered electrified, jostling at the foot of some space-time traveling band from Tokyo. I worked my way to the front with my double sided wolf sweatshirt and danced like a lunatic. I had a charge going that drew in the eyes of the curious and before long I was sitting by a lovely lady getting a little touchy feely. Out of the blur and on to the road we went, south to Esalen. Miraculously the gate guard just let us in, no charge no questions. We went straight for the pools and it being three in the morning found ourselves alone, bonded at the lips, really enjoying the night. We made our way back to the valley in the pale dawn and slept maybe an hour tangled on the car seat. I found Sam sleeping in his Honda in the morning and I closed the door as I sat down beside him feeling like I had just stepped off of a carnival ride of carnal bliss.
Thursday, August 16, 2012
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