I see it happening. I feel the once strong grip wavering in the grasp of things large and small. I smell the fermenting of flesh as bone screeches against bursa. The touch of dispassion handing out marching orders. My hearings not so great these days, but inside I hear each heart beat, like a countdown to a moon launch insinuating patience, silent focus and faith beyond reason. There comes a time when reflection trumps action. When wandering aimless gathers information like a kite catching wind, darting about with only the invisible providing support. A time when an idea, a seed point,  gathers momentum and constructs a shrine to stillness. A point from which all things emerge; a point to which all things return. Hello darlin'. Put him out to pasture already. He's worked the fields too long. His back is sagging and his hooves are worn to a shine. His teeth hardly plow through jello and he walks into the side of the barn. Too good for glue, not good enough for stew. A legacy inspired by an irrational belief in the miraculous. What a maroon. Put him out to pasture. But the tan, the tan is something to behold. Its beyond Boehner. The tan is like all that cabbage on the chest of a brigadier general, or the blue ribbon hanging around the neck of that Bichon Frise that just won best in show. I can point to the tan without pointing and testify without saying. "You cannot fuck with this tan. This tan is the shiznitz." Its what I've got to show. Its worth so much more than dough. This craggy smoldering outer coating. This leathery soft pouch, each day describing a landscape more complex yet less perplexing. The tan endures as all else becomes part of a muddled epithet. A pure white cockatiel appeared on July fourth. It sat, comfy and coy like on the shade cloth roof of the lower leghorn paddock. I'm thinkin', "this is cool". I hearken back to the days of "Bigboy" or "Alii Nui", the magnificent blue and gold mackaw that, out of the sky graced our lives with his splendor for many months until taken captive by heartless monks, who leased him out to the avian porn industry, where he ended up burned out on booze, buds and birdseed. I looked over at Tyler and told him he should check this out. He came into the leghorn domain and broke a smile. "Cool". Cool indeed. We found a small tear in the fabric of the roof and widened it a bit to allow her access to my hand. Turned out to be easy to coax her (not sure of the gender, but the feel is all girl ) down and through the hole in the roof onto my hand due to a small pile of chick starter that Ty had deposited in my palm. After pulling her gently through the roof, she hopped onto my shoulder like a lifelong sidekick and hung out there while I cleaned up some eggs for market. Didn't seem like there were any bearings to get. Know what I mean? Ty chauffeured her around for awhile and we all walked up to the house. I put out a pu'pu platter. A little papaya, guava, orange and fig with a small pile of birdseed on the side, some leafy greens and a big old hunk of mozerella cheese. She did a little dance around the plate, ruffled her feathers a bit and began sampling the fare. After a nibble or two, she dipped her beak into a saki cup full of water and went on to pick out all the millet from the pile of bird seed mix. She then became very still, puffed up, shuddered a bit and took a crap. She became visibly calmer. We hung out throughout the afternoon, her grooming my moustache, me giving her nose hits, and when I went out back to hang by the lily pond, she flew off. "Buhby. Thanks for stopping in. What a lovely Independence Day blessing its been." So the next day, I've finished up with the gruelling work of bossing people around and making them feel inferior in every way possible and proceeded on to the business of sharpening up the ol' golf skills. I'm hitting balls into a net that's hung from a piece of pvc pipe that's tied to some tree limbs and getting the feel for my new clubs, when in an act of perfect timing, she flutters down onto my head in the midst of a solid follow through. O.k., actually she had to scratch and claw at my hair to maintain her footing on my head. It freaked me out. In a good way. Short story a bit longer, we refurbed an old rabbit cage, where she rests content, is free to roam at will and spent most of the morning riding the shoulder horsey, becoming familiar with farm chores. We expect that she'll be mending fence, planting seeds and tilling soil before long. Natalie named her Sugar. Sugar it is. We are making a feeble attempt to find out who may be missing her. We will continue in our feeble attempt, all the while helping her in her exploration of millet addiction. She practically dove into my bowl of scrambled eggs and shitake mushrooms this morning. An opportunitarian if ever there was one. In other avian news, we are proud mamma's and papa's to fifty five broilers. Plump little yella' fella's, already somewhat lethargic at four days old. They really are very mellow birds, and if left to live a reasonably stress free life roaming tall grass in the flickering shade of a banana patch, will live out their eight week existence in a kind of harmony with nature that few creatures will ever know. I'm not sure that its a sense of satisfaction that goes along with seeing a process like this through so much as it is a relief to know that its still possible to have experiences that describe the whole adorably bloody awful gathering of meat to satisfy the food chains ipsissimus. Enough meat birds are raised each year to provide everyone on earth with eight chickens. Where, oh where does all the poop go? Not to wax scatological, but the poop problem is real. Here at the rancho we keep about two hundred laying chickens whose poop serves the overall good by pumping up the nutrients in the soils of their enclosures as well as the orchards they roam. We have a couple of collection areas under roosts where stalwart wwoofers go on gathering missions periodically. They scrape and shovel and bag. They sift together dirt and poop and re bag. They scatter this fine mix around the young papaya trees where the chickens sift through it for seconds. Re-poop. Our other roosting areas get regular servings of glycine vine, trimmings of various kinds and kitchen scraps which in turn get eaten and shat upon. This scrummy mix serves as a fertile mulch. Bananas love the stuff. Along with Natty's compost tea that gets used as a foliar spray we are pumping up the microbes and encouraging a feeding frenzy. In her usual unassuming and self effacing way, Natalie dearest has whipped the gardens into the kind of shape that would make Richard Simmons swoon. She has embarked on a quest. Her goal, to grow produce for market in order to a.) do what she loves to do, and b.) avoid working some dumbass job. In a mere three weeks, she's well on her way with the main garden planted, the lower garden prepped and a nursery full of starts. Aside from the occasional unwelcome predator munching leaves and bouts with self doubt that inevitably result from the undertaking of new endeavors the elfin garden princess proceeds to leave Splendid in her wake. Lets see, what else? Oh yeah, it appears as though much of the staggering polarization of the worlds population due to socio/economic disparity, domination and exploitation is approaching some sort of tipping point in which realities clash and paradigms crash. And that's just the sideshow. The main attraction is the big distraction, as hackers keep pace with hiders and veils fall away in a swirl of hips and seductive lips. Is there a naked Truth? Is all this gnashing of teeth the collective zeitgeist needed to transform. Will there be a moment of Truth in which the great AhHa fills us with a joy beyond measure seconds before our heads explode? It could happen. It could just be about seeing one in all and all in one and simply slipping into another reality. One in which subject and object merge, never again to feel separation. Never again to feel fear. Never again to strike out in anger. Never again. He's been rode hard and put up wet. Put him out to pasture already, for goodness sake. The more you show, the more we'll grow. Jp -