Archive for the ‘Newsletter’ Category

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 -

This is getting exciting. The tides of creativity, faith and collective longing desperately attempting to outpace civilizations not so sublime death wish. Ever been driving and you try to pull over a lane to find that a car got caught in your blind spot? So the guy leans on his horn and you pull back unscathed with only the revelation of the blind spot connecting to every other event that made you realize that you don't have to be stupid to be a knucklehead. We're a distracted bunch of bananas, hanging there wondering if there's gonna be enough rain or sun, or if that nice man is gonna come and trim our leaves and stroke our greenies. Wondering when we'll turn yellow and be loved enough to get eaten. Wondering if that bloody fruit sucking moth will leave us withered and rotting without a chance of getting a shot at life's ultimate adventure, being peeled, chewed, swallowed and riding the wild alimentary canal. Surrounding ourselves with all the trust we can muster, we cope. Tuning in to the signals that resonate true, we maintain hope.  Aware of the noise, we learn to eat it; turn it into modern day mantras, stop the bleating, stabilize the signal. The good part about so much noise is that it becomes hard to miss the signal, once acquired. So the question becomes, are you noise maker or noise eater. There's an easy test to determine which one you are. If, at days end your head swims with what if''s, or how come's or I shoulda's, the noise has won out. If, on the other hand, at days end your breathing is steady and deep, your head is clear and ready to launch, and your day has been one long unbiased observation leading to meaning, you've gobbled yourself some noise. Why is this important? Because signal to noise ratio is Everything. From the tweensiest oscillations of a sperm cell emanate a signal which through some act of magic opens the egg to the possibility of life. From the ancient apprehension of the sounds of planetary rotation was born the pentatonic scale. What if those guys had wives and saber toothed tigers that nagged at them all the time and created enough noise to make them oblivious to the signal. Music might never have come to be. Imagine a life without music. The biochemical signals being sent constantly throughout all organic life forms is the basis of our sanity, health and well being. It is our sense of "connectedness". Our biochemistry has been surrounded by and engulfed in a sea of toxins so comprehensive and for so long,  its small wonder that the ratio of sane to bat shit is growing with a certain exponential rapidity. Its a little like the strategy of modifying a crop to be able to withstand an herbicide capable of killing off not only weeds but itsy bitsy unsuspecting soil organisms, thereby destroying the very soil upon which your life depends and creating a class of superweeds capable of capturing and eating small children and domesticated pets. Somewhere in there, the signal got sidetracked. But polarity is the name of the game when bat shit insane. And the game now is to make noise that sounds just like signal so that the masses will gobgob gobble it up with a grin and proceed to their nearest Walmart,  army recruiting center, favorite fast food chain or 3-d porn mall to take full advantage of the infotainment consumptive paradigm injected constantly into societies psychic playground. Control the signal unt U rUle ze ViRld. The methods of Permaculture tend to keep the signal strong and the noise at a minimum. In a design, the first step is to observe the characteristics of the environment. It's hilly, it's got some timber, it's five acres, there's wildlife, clay loam soils, winds prevail from the north and so on. Simple observations which can then lead to meaning. F'rinstance, you've observed that there are deer trails crossing the property. This opens the door to many possible inquiries into the characteristics of the species, from its origin to its browsing and reproductive habits, to its potential for creating chaos,  its tasty tenderloin and on and on. With that information in hand, the designer can figure out what kind of fencing or plantings will be necessary to protect the property from damage and to create a trap or a blind to harvest deer from time to time, providing food, hide and bone for a variety of uses. One observation, which signals the connections between design strategies and reduces the noise created by a deer "problem". From simple observation comes meaning and from meaning, pathways to solutions manifest. The signal is strengthened and the noise.................what noise? Still battling the onslaught of grasses and vines that overtook our winter here at the Rancho. The feel of dry weather is in the air, but the rain keeps hanging around. Hard to say what "normal" is when it comes to our oscillating weather patterns. Fact is that no matter how much the left brain insists on keeping things orderly and linear like, there's quantum chaos bustin' out everywhere. An amalgam of stable instability and sparse abundance. There's spiders everywhere this spring. Webs spanning the inside dimensions of a segment of chicken wire to spacious poly dimensional crab spider colonies that are to be admired for their tenacity and efficacy and shunned for their intrusiveness, strangely weird looks and web in the face encounters. I'm pretty sure there is some category of fetish minded elite who might enjoy the feeling of them crawling around their skivvies or up their bum, or some gourmand who would drool over the notion of hundreds of them deep fried in krill oil and served over a bed of spicy arugula. Marketing is everything. We got sixty layers in about a month back. Leghorns and Americaunas, 'cause we have too many brown eggs and need to create balance with more white and blue ones. I know, slightly obsessive compulsive. Really has nothing to do with the customers. More like some deep seated need to be in control, to create balance, to wow the Universe with symmetry and attention to detail,  and to help my egg cartons find the peace they so richly deserve. We also got twenty five "broilers". Rock/Cornish crosses which fatten up to five/six pounds in eight weeks. They are breasts that walk, or actually bounce around on thick sapling legs. They have noticeable cleavage and huge feet to support their ungainly plumpness. I actually saw a couple of them lay down to eat, and they're only four and a half weeks old. Word is that they can actually break their legs if they hustle about too much (so no more hacky sack), that they are poor foragers, have a low feed conversion ratio ( two pounds of feed gives you four pounds of bird) and are in danger of having heart attacks later in life if confronted by too much excitement, a mirror or a frying pan. It's looking like raising them ourselves will save us about half to two thirds the cost of buying chicken of that quality and should satisfy our blood lust for some time to come. Nothin' like choppin' heads and pullin' guts to make you feel alive. We're goin' the whole hog and building a plucker. I figured that the old layers are gonna need thinning eventually and if the meat birds work out, we might just add them in to our menu of products. The plucker is basically a tub in a frame that stands about three feet tall, has a rotating plate on the bottom with plucker "fingers" on the bottom plate and sides of the tub. The fingers are about four inches long, tapered and ribbed and fit securely into the holes drilled in the contraption. So what you do is you scald the chicken to loosen the feathers, fire up the motor that spins the rotating "feather" plate and drop the bird on in there. It goes bouncin' around like a busy night at Hooters while you hose the feathers out into a collector beneath. Takes less than a minute and you can do two or three birds at a time. Booya! Let's see, what else? Oh yeah, in the interest of community outreach I thought I'd share on of my favorite techniques for re-acquiring signal when the noise mounts. I have found through some serious investigative protocols that when trauma looms one of my best "go to" therapies is to cup the soundblasters around my ears, place a large chunk of dark chocolate in my mouth, mount the back swing, invert my body fully, let the blood flood my noggin and turn up the volume on Frank Zappa's "Weasels ripped my flesh" while the melting chocolate drips into my throat. This music is so infused with chaotic indifference and dissonant explitives as to make it a purgative, a musical vermifuge removing the parasites that feast on peace of mind. In the pursuit of sustainable agricultural ideals, there is a great deal of satisfaction but not much peace of mind. There is a great deal of feeling Human while strangely out of touch. The constancy of the challenge, the frailty of our grasp; these things compel us onward while holding us back. Its a very humanizing process which at its best brings in a meager living and can as easily grow a crop of heartache as an ear of corn. That's why I'm selling this rock pile and buying into Thailand with a resident visa. Open me a little jazz club a stones throw from the beach and breathe deep the scent of Buddhist mindset mingled with bacon wrapped shrimp and sweet chili sauce. I mean who needs this crap. I'm sixty three fer' chrissake. Just kidding.                                                    Or IS he? The more you show, the more we'll grow. Peace, Jp

Now farmers will tell you that your animals are not pets. They're there for layin' eggs or givin' milk,  grazin' pasture or Sunday dinner. They're there to pollinate the flowering citrus trees and poop in the pond for fertilizer tea. Farmers will tell you not to give them names or start conversations with them. Don't be talkin' about your childhood and such. They'll tell you to treat them well while being dispassionate and indifferent. So when I found Smarty Pantz dead in the driveway a couple of afternoons ago I realized that I'm not much of a farmer. It's not so much that I broke down into a blubbering mass of supermanly emotion, or that I felt like life would never be the same, but I thought about how significant her energy had become over the years and how her story was one of overcoming the odds to find her little dream life roosting in the monkey pod tree by night and prowling the orchard for tasty morsels by day. She was hatched out at Ideal Poultry some years back. One of millions upon millions of chicks bred every year at one the country's biggest nurseries. It's gotta be pretty long odds when it comes down to being shipped to Maui for an uncaged  life on the slopes of Haleakala. Yes, chickens have karma too. She arrived after an overnight flight from Texas. Her travel mates included some buff leghorns, lakenvelders, and americaunas. About sixty birds in all. A little smorgyborg. We raised them all up together and as they puffed up it became obvious who's who. Being a Speckled Sussex, she had the typical brown and white "speckled" pattern throughout with a slight green iridescence on her sunlit feather tips. She would lay medium sized tan colored eggs. She also had a british accent. Pretty early on in her life, the Pantzer had an eye poked to blindness by another chicklet. Looked like she had a case of glaucoma in her left eye. It didn't seem to phase her. She adjusted quickly to the fact that she only had vision out the right side of her little face. In fact she seemed to become more nimble than the others and somehow picked up on the feeding routine a bit more quickly than her sisters. She'd follow my moves and circle around my feet awaiting the yummy shower of lay pellets. Occasionally she'd seize the opportunity to jump up, balance on the edge of the feed bucket and chow down until I stopped laughing long enough to escort her to the ground. There was a time when all the layers were free ranging in the orchard. The eggs were catch as catch can. They had several nests in the the tall grass and we'd just try to keep up. Turns out that if you leave an egg or two behind they'll keep going to that spot, although they're quite fickle and the smallest change in routine can make them abandon the nest in a twinkle. Contrary to popular opinion, they don't respond to golf balls. Who wants to lay a round egg with a hundred and twenty seven dimples? We decided that it would be better to build enclosures to house the feathered raptors, making feeding and egg collection a whole lot easier. This worked out well for us but not so good for Smarty pantz. I began to notice that due to her blind side, she was getting somewhat beat up during feeding time until finally she started looking like she might, at any moment need a defibrillator. I decided to take her out of the flock and put her into the intensive care unit of the Rancho Relaxzo bird infirmary where she recovered quite nicely and was back in fine fettle within a week. At this point, her life changed because I decided that she should just be allowed to be the full free ranger. No more competing for food or water. No more pecking order. No more being heckled for her disability or her accent. She just took to hanging out with the ducks and roaming around the orchard in an ecstatic little dance. In time, three others joined her by virtue of their escape artist tendencies and the tender mercies of sister Natalie, blessed be thy name. So there she was, D'artagnon to the three musketeers. She staked her claim to a low lying limb of the big old Monkeypod tree behind the wwoof domain, mostly, I think to be within jumping distance of the feed containers. She found a cozy spot underneath a feed bag at the base of the tree that had formed a little cave and she'd give us a couple of eggs every few days. Not bad for a five year old. Death is disturbing. Not so much for its finality but on the contrary for its endurance. Lucky for us that Loves, large and small empower our hearts to absorb, embrace and emit the compassion that comes from such experiences. The form that was the Pantzer is now slowly decomposing beneath a young olive tree on a south facing slope of Rancho Relaxzo. She provides macro and micro nutrients to billions upon billions of organisms which turn those elements into plant food, rich soil and olive oil. Will we ever be able to eat an olive from that tree without seeing her? Too much shmaltz? The pantzer is dead, long live the pantzer. I found a small feather on her roost and sewed it on to my eyelid. O.k, I'm done. Enter Eudocima Fullonia. That's right, you heard me. The nocturnal FRUIT SUCKING MOTH. A creature sent from insect hell to add one more element of frustration to further peak my irascible nature. There really is no rest for the wicked. In all likelihood we have had these winged demons here for awhile, however due to the wet winter and certain invasive vines that provide breeding grounds for the larval forms, they are having the moth equivalent of Burning Man on our white sapote trees. Fermented white sapote juice fuels their frenzy as they attack the green orbs with saw toothed proboscis probing, penetrating and sucking the sweet life force. In their wake are vectored a couple of species of bacteria that make short work of the rotting process, rendering the fruit entirely useless in days. The ground is carpeted with squwishy remains. Oh, and the scent that the bacteria create acts as homing device for the fruitbat wannabe's. This would all be casually edumacational if it wasn't making me throw up every few hours. Oh yeah, forgot to mention that they thrive on EVERY kind of fruit we grow. I was telling the knucklehead about this dilemma when I saw the wheels turning behind those steel gray eyes. Imagining all manner of eradication techniques as well as culinary applications is his specialty. He came out of his micro trance and started enumerating the various ways that we could take our revenge. " If you don't care about the remaining fruit that much, we could just strap on our headlamps, get the shotguns and start blasting away after dark. Or, if you wanna save the fruit, we could go out with a couple of million candle power flashlights and watch their heads explode as they fly toward them. Or, we could release the Kraken. Oh, and I bet Nattie could find a way to make the wings into earings and you could embed them in your chocolate avocado mousse as a special signature trademark." All of that in one breath. I stroked his forehead to bring the fever down and gave silent thanks for having a son such as this. Finally, I'll leave you with an excerpt from the latest contract that Monsanto is offering to its farm customers concerning liability. Reading is weeping. "GROWER'S EXCLUSIVE LIMITED REMEDY: THE EXCLUSIVE REMEDY OF THE GROWER AND THE LIMIT OF THE LIABILITY OF MONSANTO OR ANY SELLER FOR ANY AND ALL LOSSES, INJURY OR DAMAGES RESULTING FROM THE USE OR HANDLING OF SEED (INCLUDING CLAIMS BASED IN CONTRACT, NEGLIGENCE, PRODUCT LIABILITY, STRICT LIABILITY, TORT, OR OTHERWISE) SHALL BE THE PRICE PAID BY THE GROWER FOR THE QUANTITY OF THE SEED INVOLVED OR, AT THE ELECTION OF MONSANTO OR THE SEED SELLER, THE REPLACEMENT OF THE SEED. IN NO EVENT SHALL MONSANTO OR ANY SELLER BE LIABLE FOR ANY INCIDENTAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, SPECIAL, OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES." Such a deal. The more you show, the more we'll grow. Aloha, Jp

Suppose there were some sort of super force of intelligent spirit. Disembodied if you wish. Cloaked in goo if you like. Primal by nature. At one with the whole shmegeggles. Basking in the ever present glory of being witness to perfection unfolding and flowering in every moment, every thought, every word, every deed. Call it Carl. No deep philosophical meaning to ferret out. No worldly treasure measuring up. No afterlife to get bent out of shape about. More like playing great golf on a perfect day with sunset views, naked food cart girls and endless energy. Normally I wouldn't go for a sports analogy, but I've been playing out of my mind lately. For Carl, time has lost all meaning, swallowed up in the greater code, the next more complex encryption. "See, it was an illusion all along." So what's a Carl to do with this new found wellspring?  This consummate placement in a spiraling scheme so grand that our pea brains can barely scratch the surface without exploding. Carl can Tinker. You see, Carl knows that sooner or later any code can be broken, and so why not create mysteries which when unraveled give birth to this sublime apprehension. If you know where all paths converge, it's easy to leave clues. Feeling that all this swirling mentation and erupting emotion is just Carl tinkering gives me some hope. Hope in the fact that clues are strewn, embedded in the fabric of day to day life. Flashing out numbers and letters, sounds and sights. Giving the opportunity to, at any moment put the puzzle together and cry Bingo, bingo, oh my god, bingo me now. And if Carl can tinker, so can I, if only in my spluttering and pathetic ways. I've been planting trees for thirty some odd years now and Still put them too close together. Baby steps, good. Beating head with stick, bad. So I resolve, in this year still fresh, that my one and only pursuit will be to seek Carl in everything. I will see him in the folds of steaming chow fun noodles. I will smell him in the dampness of my work socks. I will taste him in the glaze of a sticky bun. I will touch him in the place where fun meets fear. I will hear him in the clockwork waiting to chime. Glad I got that out of the way. Any more old business to discuss? No. O.k. then, on to new business. We've been trying to negotiate a truce with the Leghorns, who have been forced by the invoking of eminent domain to vacate their current paddock and move to what we like to think of as the Golan Heights. Yes, the terrain is steeper and pocked with treacherous pitfalls, and yes, they get all verklempt when you disrupt their forage and laying patterns, but relocate they must. Reason being that they have scratched out their current enclosure down to the molten iron surrounding the earths core and we're tired of collecting eggs that have already been cooked. I had a sit down with the beta female yesterday. The conversation went something like this. "You have to understand, the ground is just too hot here. You must move to higher ground." "Bkk,bk." "But there's plenty of food and fresh water. New coops and greenery everywhere." "Bkk, bk, bkgock." "Well you don't have to get nasty." "Bk kk." "Tell you what, whoever follows the food gets to stay and the rest of you will be hunted down by new wwoof Matt who stalks chickens like a hungry puma on a plump prairie dog. "Bbaaawwwwk bggok, bkk, bk." "I'm not bluffing beeotch. Get your troops organized and I'll see you at feeding time." She demures, turns away and goes over to huddle up with the other girls, one of whom is rubbing her feet against a piece of bluestone as if to sharpen her claws. Good thing those new Kevlar chicken suits arrived. That may be a bit of an exaggeration. Really just one more step in the process of creating binary systems that allow the feathered nincompoops to forage fields of fowl friendly plantings, thus reducing the need for feed, putting a sparkle in their eyes and a proper flop to their combs. The Americaunas went back into their primary paddock a few weeks ago and have taken a serious bite out of the poultry pasture plants we had seeded in during the time of McGuire. Methinks that denser coverage of the fallow paddocks will help. Have to figure out how to get the cycle synced up so that what they eat is matched by fully mature greenery in the fallow paddock. This involves growing times of the various plant material and volume of consumption by the birds going through said plant material, all of which varies according to season and weather patterns. I bought a copy of calculus for dummy's and a slide rule the other day. I'm hoping one of these college edumacated interns will figure it all out and slap together a slick power point presentation which we'll turn into a dvd, distribute worldwide, make oodles of money and be able to retire to the south of France where we'll bask in the sun by day, frolic and gambol by night and get medical and dental for free. The guard has changed with the departure of wwoofer Supremicus and all around Sweetness, Natalie. After investing a year of her time in our little warp, she has flown off to adventure her way through Asia. I imagine her scaling the heights of Kinabalu, bungy jumping in Phuket, stalking sacred temple sites, milking pit vipers for their venom and snorkeling the cool clear waters of the south china sea. We had a moment of trauma prior to her departure. Natty wasn't sure whether or not to travel with her wooby. She still has her baby blanket and has never really traveled without it. Now I can almost feel the collective Aawwwwww resonating with those of you who understand the nature of the wooby. And lets face it, we all go there. Think about that article of clothing that's always the first thing you reach for when in relaxzo mode and which you'll wear until so decompsed that its remains can only be used as kitty litter. So, during the two week packing protocol which all women go through prior to a long journey, she decided against taking it in spite of the obvious anxiety created by the thought of leaving it behind. I said, "why not just cut off a piece and take it with". She snarled ever so slightly while looking directly at my crotch. I got the message. Well, after a few more days and a small measure of agonizing, she lovingly deposited and vacuum sealed it in a plastic bag filled with Nitrogen gas, placed it on a shelf in the closet, looked at me and said, "I think it's time I let go. You can do whatever you want with it. I don't care if its here when I return." Her eyes welled up a bit as she turned to leave the room and I grabbed her hand, looked into her soul and said, "are you sure, babe?" She could only give me a trembling little nod. Sooo, I listed it on Ebay with a little historical blurb and got $15,632 from some transsexual pedophile in Trenton. Praise Carl. The more you show, the more we'll grow. Safe travels my love, Jp

We have to give thanks and praises to Maury Maverick, attorney from Texas who, on May 21st 1944 coined the term gobbledygook while describing the pompous outpourings of politico's and pundits everywhere. He said they just go struttin' around gob, gob gobbling about this and that, ending up with the characteristic "gook" sound (sort of like a turkey clearing its throat) that follows the fowl's rantings. The man knew his turkeys. We are hitting a peak of gobbledy-gookery hitherto unknown. Check out the mountain of gook surrounding wikileaks founder Julian Assange, a PhD physicist  who appears to be one of the most calm, rational, well spoken, single minded advocates for unearthing scumbaggery wherever it may be found. Witness the piles of gook surrounding things like repealing "don't ask don't tell"  (whoopee, we can wear pink chiffon to the mess hall), and passing unemployment extensions (a given to anyone who runs sane), while off on the sidelines the largest defense budget in the galaxy passes, leaving us free to continue wars, ill begotten, illegal and immoral on six fronts. G-g-g-gook. And while the gook gobbledy's, Monsanto hires out Xe (formerly Blackwater), because every wondrous deadly chemical, nature meddlin' pecker-wood corporation should rent its own mercenary army, if only to cover security on corporate junkets to Dubai and to assist traditional subsistence farmers in the transition from their land to the Nike factory. I'm not terribly political, but to follow the action is to have the equivalent of a socio/cultural sanity barometer hanging next to the conventional weather variety. One whose settings range between "so what" and "get the fuck outahere", with intermediate settings at "mildly interesting", "gonna look into that", "happy to know that", "you can't be serious", " not amused," and "no freakin' way." These days, I'm not amused. Anyone? In that sphere, where the definition of sane behavior has become so elastic as to allow for prominent political showmen to call for the assassination of Assange without anyone batting an eyelash leaves me a tweensy bit unnerved. Anyone? Bit of a V for Vendetta scenario coalescing. Here's hoping it doesn't lead to the Big Ugly. I'm buying a Guy Fawkes mask just in case. There have been predictions for a wet winter this year. So far, that's been a radical understatement. It's all we can do to keep up with the explosive growth brought on by regular and sometimes heavy rains. I think we've probably gotten nine or ten inches in the past couple of weeks. That's nearly half our annual average. Nice comeback. Now those of us who have settled in out here on the dry side have done so 'cause we like it dry. Wet is nice as a novelty, but too much causes a weepy kind of gnashing. A kind of irrational fear that the sun has forsaken us. A searching of the soul as to what sins of commission or omission have been committed that would lead to such karma. Six strait days of wet!! Is this a rain forest in Borneo? Can those be rain clouds building on the mountain yet Again? Is climate change caused by me? Hail Mary, full of Grace..................... Aside from the state of dementia I am reduced to in such wetness, the orchard trees can be affected in a number of ways. For instance, trees flowering during such times are likely to set less fruit. Trees not flowering are likely to go into maxed out vegetative growth and potentially forget about reproducing till the next dry time. And trees that are bearing fruit are likely to lose more to rot and insect damage, but they look spectacular doing so. On the positive side of the ledger, the fruits that hang unharmed, plump up like Oprah on holiday. Then there's the mosquitoes. We're just not used to mosquitoes like the folks from the wet side. They just know its not prudent to set foot outside during certain times of day. They dress appropriately. They have caches of mosquito coils at arms reach and bathe in citronella as a matter of course. I've heard that if you stuff a mating pair inside a marshmallow, roast it and eat it, it acts as a homeopathic remedy. Around here we forget that when its wet, the mosquitoes find ways to drop their spawn in obscure pockets of water that collect in out of the way places spewing squadrons of flighted bloodsuckers whose only purpose in life is to seek out mammalian hemoglobin. Following trails of CO2 and their relentless instinctual urge to reproduce, they home in on our unprotected bodies and before we know it, we grow faint, somehow recalling every vampire film we've every seen before our vision begins to blur. Finally, the dim humming sound of the swarm clues us in to the dozens of small red sacs hanging off our arms and legs, growing impossibly large as the little vermin wax giddy with the taste of sun soaked human. We recoil in horror as they detach from their fleshy moorings, frantically beating their wings to stay afloat for long enough to attract a male of the species whose pecker is so hard by then that the rendezvous and docking goes off hitch free. Most of the little duck ponds and water features have these cute guppy lookin' fish called Gambusia that consider mosquito larvae to be like unto truffles to a pig. Why, I've seen a duck pond infested with larvae get cleared out within days of putting a couple of dozen of the little darlings in their midst. They must act as a psychedelic 'cause I sometimes see the fish swimming  in sync forming Jewish stars and I Ching hexagrams. One time they came together to form a thousand petaled lotus floating above the head of Alfred E. Newman. What, me worry? All the tribulations, large and small that accompany this farm, this rag tag family diggin' in the dirt, this life of toil and contentment are but a distant echo compared to the day and night struggles of billions of people living without adequate anything. The degree to which our expectations that this vast disparity in living standards can or should be maintained carries with it the scent of rot and the promise of despair. Not the kind that we see day to day like those who have to walk for miles to get drinkable water, but the kind that eats away at some core of common sense that compels us to fight for the kinds of changes that bring back equilibrium and restore health to the whole system. With senses bombarded by information oozing out of every media pore, we save up the seeds of wisdom that pass through our hearts and plant the seeds of sustenance that guide our hands. We can Only do So much. An oxymoron brimming with hidden hope. I'd like to say Happy New Year, so I will, knowing that there is a certain hollowness to the phrase. Knowing that the zeitgeist doesn't merit the sentiment and that optimism without a coherent plan is like a grizzled old tom cat peeing on your favorite alpaca sweater. Got Plan? See you on the flip side. The more you show, the more we'll grow. Peace, Jp

So first off, I've got an announcement. Ta dahhh. My good buddy Micro Dot called me the other day to inform me that the acts she had booked for the December fifth upcountry Sundays at Casanova's had bagged on her and she was thinkin' it might be cool if we convened the usual gang of scofflaws and nincompoops who show up for parties out here and have one massive holiday jam session, Rancho Relaxzo style. I know, I know you're probably thinking, oh great, a bunch of proto hippies trying to relive the musical glory days that they never actually had. Just keep in mind that there will be a core of players whose first gig together was the Magna Carta signing party, so if nothing else, we'll look comfy and relaxed on stage. I'm thinking of it as a party at my place with pizza and no cleanup. We knew that if we got Grimes to sign on that the rest would fall in place like a bunch of drunken dominoes. He agreed to do it for half the door. We're giving him the half with the knob. So come on out on December fifth and support Mana'o radio at Casanova's between two and five. The Rancho Relaxzo All Star Jam Band will be doing their very first, and quite likely last road gig, so don't miss it. And for those of you who are far, far away pining over the fact that you can't be there, tune in at www.manaoradio.com where the music streams live, worldwide. Passed Thanksgiving quietly. Took my traditional route of fasting. A small measure of austerity designed to bring focus to things easily overlooked on a churning stomach. I also figure that since the scales of gluttony are tipped toward overindulgence, might as well do my bit to create some semblance of balance in the skinny vs. porker equation. Fasting is a bit like having the sight of something stop you in your tracks,  like a pheasant taking flight from underbrush that's just a stones throw away. It's an immediate look into the body/mind relationship to food. For a brief moment one goes from subjective processing to objective innerview. The alimentary canal keeps chugging along, but there's nothing much to process so the body can heave a bit of a sigh and relax. Relax in a way that the body can't while processing food. Relax enough to sense the fundamental  health benefits of the practice. The body often encourages the effects and yearns for more. The mind however, is a different kettle of guppies. Any manner of scam available will be deployed in an effort to direct my attention to a steaming hot pizza backed by a cold beer. I mean how else will I overcome this foolhardy notion that starving myself will result in anything useful. All manner of zoozoo and gooball parades before my minds eye imploring me to give up this meaningless self flagellation. I resist. Driving down to the airport to pick up an arriving Wwoofer becomes a study in not blowing it. Nearly wolfed down a stack of peanut butter cups at the gas station. I still resist. Wwoofmeister Natalie cooked up a wonderful venison stew with lots of stuff from the garden and agreed to defer to my silliness by only giving me a small ration of shit for not eating it on Thanksgiving day. All in all, a Thanksgiving well spent. Hope the same was true for yooz. (your favorite emoticon here) We're seeing some good results from the broadcasting of pasture poultry seed in paddock one, of two paddocks that the Ameraucana's roam. It's a blend of common flax, ladino clover, birdsfoot trefoil, alfalfa, red cowpeas and buckwheat. Mmmmm, yummy. Actually sounds like it would make a great breakfast gruel with a drizzle of honey. Being the worst keeper of records in the known galaxy, I can only guestimate that it was planted five, six weeks ago (maybe more), and is now looking lush and green with flower heads popping and the promise of reduced feed cost and eggs rich in omega 3 fatty acids. The mix itself costs about three fitty a pound, which covers about twelve hundred square feet.  I know, its kinda boring, but when you crunch the numbers out, the savings leave me with enough to stop calling my mom collect. Now there's several factors that come into play equaling the kind of strange flowering patterns we're seeing this year. Many of the fruiting trees so coveted by humans have a habit of bearing sporadically. One year, choke, next year, pinchy. We've got five varieties of avo and all but two said in avospeak, "sorry mate, takin' a break. Tired of holding up all that bloody fruit while you walk around gloating  over futures prices." Yes, they're Australian cultivars. The mangoes held their own this year, and owing to high mortality rates in feral fowl populations (due to the drought and predation), not much damage to the fruits due to famished tweeters. But here's how quirky it gets. I've got two Keitt mango trees side by side. Both planted on the same day and now some eighteen years old. Both trees flowered like crazy. One bore a couple of hundred fruit, the other, three. We suspect that its the fertile duck pond water that empties onto the tree that set all the fruit. The longan didn't appear to flower much at all, setting little fruit, but a month and a half later a few of the trees are full of flowers, making for a longan harvest in February/March instead of November. The white sapotes are also acting a bit lolo and unresponsive to somewhat established patterns. The Jaboticaba is flowering two months later than usual, atemoya and cherimoya are sparse and small. The drought played no small role in putting things kapa kahi most of the year, and while having enough inexpensive water to keep things flourishing has been great, it also makes for trees that don't feel as threatened by drought into producing a lot of seed. Finding the balance. It's hard, being human. More esoteric factors include chem trails of aluminum, barium and strontium meant to geo-engineer a cooler planet by creating "clouds", but having secondary effects which include but are not limited to reduced phosphate uptake in the soil and elevated pH and heavy metal residues in soil and water. I'm thinking that the plants are getting their version of Asthma and Alzheimer's . So what appears to be up is that I am, in Natures eye, a particle of whimsy, an amusement, a droll distraction, and that the entirety of the plant kingdom has been put in place for the sole purpose of using me for mulch after having mugged forty years of service out of this bent and wrinkled frame. This peripatetic life had made pathways where before only weeds stood tall. I have schlepped trees over rock and hill to assure them a singularly nurtured existence with food, water and sunset views. I have forsaken fortune, fame and my very own playstation for a shot at the ipsissimus of mans desires. To be merged with life unbroken, to feel the seamless integrity of the Grand Plan, to question no more the endless profusion of perfect. What a maroon. The more you show, the more we'll grow. Peace, Jp

Didja miss me? There have been moments in the Rancho's history when the passing on of wwoofs has left a sadly dispersed proximity, but the sense that the very fabric of the place has been changed for the better. This has never been more true than in the recent passing of Team McGuire whose pattern in the tapestry that is the story of Rancho Relaxzo stands out for its unassuming  brilliance. They have gone on to the mystical Land of Main, where they will experience any number of  realms available to those who brave the journey. Joshua will be reunited with his four legged woofer and Lyndsey may cross the border and become a cat servant after having experienced the wonders of the Rancho's purring bed warmers. They will work in a community and bring their considerable skill and energy to do I'm not exactly sure what yet, but I'll keep you posted on that. It's in Lyndsey's nature to stir up the fire. To send tiny embers afloat in the clear night sky, twisting and dancing their way to soft gray ash, then off to stir a fire somewhere else. It's in Joshua's nature to be rock solid in his support and persevering in his need to know and act from the heart.  He confirms my theory that any Scorpio born with fewer than four planets in Libra should be discarded at birth. He's got five. Of course, while this is no real dying off and the connection established grows in the invisible realm held together by heart-string and bone, they will be missed in a" honey can I make you some french toast" sort of way. Lindsey had, in her zeal to spread light made up some music discs entitled "rockin' at the rancho". First tune, disc one is a hoedown with the first two lines of the chorus being "yer gonna die someday, yer' gonna fade away", which she featured as being so catchy and plainly true that it was about the only greeting issuing forth from her cheerleader lips for the next several weeks. It will, no doubt be the anthem that connects us for years to come. I'm considering having it carved into a slab of nice wood, varnishing it and hanging it on the entry gate to the property right under the "welcome to rancho relaxzo" part. Just a friendly reminder. In the relatively short period since the last post, the surrounding hills, parched to dust for months have soaked in the recent rains like a starving Sponge Bob in a vat of clam chowder. Now, resplendent in tall green clumps of Buffel grass,  the rolling terrain seems to be laughing its way down to Kihei.  The cattle actually get up on their hind legs, jump up and click their heels together every now and then. Everywhere they look, a feast. This is where we turn a corner described by the difference between keeping things mulched and watered and keeping the marauding hordes of desert flora from overtaking the joint.  It's the time of year when we pray to the gods of wwooof for a weed whacker jockey with triple crown credentials. The kind of person that sees him/herself as living the Agroid's ultimate first person shooter fantasy. Armed with serrated cutting tool, pruning knives, pole saw, weed whacker and chain saw, there is no foe gnarly enough to overcome the pure joy taken in shredding to teeny bits the grasses, vines and shrubs overtaking pathways and fruit trees alike. Pathways which, in the mind of Commander Whacker represent the way to ultimate freedom.  The vanquishing of evil. The release of goodness as personified by the perfectly tree ripened mango, which at days end will be his and his alone to devour having slain the invasive hordes and left their twitching, leafless bodies to be picked through by a small pack of feathered raptors, otherwise known as chickens. He/she will end the day covered in the lifeless remains of the once vital enemy, knowing that even now, as the adrenalin subsides and the taste of mango brings rapture to every bud, the enemy grows. Plots its revenge. Plans its assault. And as long as the rains persist, the armies of evil will march. So, as the Commander beds down for the night one thought lingers. The only good weed is a dead weed, or at least sufficiently cut back enough so that the boss will bring home some pastries from La Provence restaurant. It is a time of wonder here at the Rancho as both my mamoosh and my hanai son are in residence. Its a rare blending of energies not unlike the cocktail one might make from the remains of all the drinks at the Kopfelmans table in the wake of their sons Bar Mitzvah. Family, scary good. Moms here for a few weeks and Tyler for two. Both were in need of a sustained break. Mom, of course just finished her annual mud wrestling tour through the deep south where they insist upon using lard instead of mud. Makes the clean up a bear. Her skin looks better already. Ty just got elected to the House of Representatives from the sixteenth district in Alabama, where he ran on the motto "shoot first and don't ask".  He came home to run his agenda by me and see if it could use any tweaks. Basically, he figures to scare the turds out of the populace with thruthy hyperbole while offering enhanced home security systems through a company operating under the auspices of a shell corporation headquartered in Vanuatu.  Told him the only thing I might add would be a free wwll bayonet with each system purchased. Army surplus, there when you need it. It is deeply satisfying to see the generations merge with a certain ease and lack of constraint. The Rancho helps, but mostly its their mutual love of wrestling. I love it when they hit the deck and go at it. Moms eighty eight, but if she gets you in a headlock, its lights out. There is something of a changing of the guard in the wwoof population these days what with the McGuires gone and our wonderful "flashwwoof" (stay of one month or less) Justin returned to the ivory tower to digest his permaculture primer.  We have representatives from France, Chicago and Washington state on deck and due in for short to medium stays after which I must do what is not possible to do, find a replacement for dearest Natalie who even now plots her escape to exotic lands eastward. Places with funny names and short, mocha colored people talking fast and smiling far too much. Places too hot to even really imagine for a Minnesotan, but beyond resistance for this diminutive adventuress. She has slowly and steadily left her mark on every inch of this land. She has become that one pure gold thread that runs through an ornate tapestry and gives it the beauty that goes beyond mere value. She has become the best of friends and an enduring accomplice. I feel certain that any journey she takes will find those whose path she crosses enhanced by the experience. So here's my theory du jour. We have reached a tipping point. A tipping point triggered by the consumption of large sea creatures awash with mercury and other heavy metals which have diligently worked their way up the food chain to settle in the fleshy tissue of that tuna you just had for lunch. Now it doesn't happen overnight, but over ten years or so, neural networks start to break down and the world becomes more and more cartoon like. More and more susceptible to the whimsy of decaying gray matter. More and more capable of making fact arise from fiction, and fiction pose for fact. Being the kind of guy who feels everything happens as it should, I will concede that this free for all of ideas and opinions may be riddled with inconsistency, but that without this polarization we never get to whats next. So whats next? I know, but I'm not tellin'. Work has begun on what a paniolo pal of mine said was going to be a very ornate and elaborate entry way to the Winfrey interstate which begins at the bottom of Kealakapu road and follows its nose down to Kihei. From what I heard it then merges with a hidden tunnel which splits off in five directions and uses a supersonic railway system to allow access to any island within six minutes. There goes the neighborhood. The more you show, the more we'll grow. Happy holidays, Jp

We've got  a routine in the mornings around the Rancho which, among other things involves feeding, freshening the water for and collecting the eggs of our multi cultural assortment of feathered enigmas.  It's always the same and always different. The escape artists continue to mystify as to how they manage to break out daily but can't for the life of them find their way back in. They stand there by the entrance waiting for the shiny swinging bucket attached to a large bi-ped to rain down pellets of ambrosia, not unlike Sai Baba's manifestations of sacred ash. So, we get them all tidied up and fill their gizzards for the morning and carefully collect the eggs. This involves trips to four separate paddocks with the same watering and feeding routine. Not particularly time consuming, although delving into the mystery that is chicken can keep one in a spectrum of observation ranging from enchanted to fully flummoxed . We leave them happily clucking and scratching and gulping down water. From time to time they get a bucket load of garden scraps and fruit peels which brings on heightened conversation and a visible adrenalin rush. True chicken skin. With the mornings pre breakfast bantering and blustering calmed, we go about cleaning up the eggs that have indeed been pooped on and pass along, without cleaning, the ones that are certified poop free by inspector general Joshua who knows his poop. I like this particular job. It's a meditation of sorts. Losing focus means fractured eggs. It means holding a cracked egg in one's hand and knowing that if you just throw it away, there's the danger of the free ranger posse getting a taste and being transported to a state of inner knowing. A revelation that only cyclic completion can bring. But alas, the experience fades as the tasty yolk and slurpy mucus are digested. But the memory, the memory lingers as she pecks away at the shell, instinctively reconstructing the shape from which this amazing nectar issued forth. The other option would be to get up, and deposit the broken egg into the compost, or carry it gently to the kitchen and put it in a bowl. Well, you lost me at "get up". Now one of the worst things to do with a flock of layers is to give them egg shells to eat that haven't been thoroughly washed. If they get a taste of their own essence they'll eat em' as fast as they lay em'. There's nothing you can do with a chicken that's hooked on eggs. Might as well fire up the grill and get to pluckin'. So in spite of the fact that I would always try to pitch the broken eggs into some brush or under a low branching tree, it turns out that Smarty Pantz, the one eyed wonder, managed to imbibe of the soma often enough to have figured out the mystery that is Chicken-ness. The other day after finishing cleaning and boxing up the days take, I left three slightly damaged (cracked but not broken) eggs sitting on the table and proceeded to take the cartons into the kitchen. When I came back outside after fiddling around in the kitchen for a few minutes, the pantzer was up on the table finishing egg number two. She had her blind eye to me and couldn't see me approach. She was totally transformed by the experience. Her feathers were fluttering like the eye lids of an ingenue in a swoon. You could practically see the yolk passing through the blood brain barrier. Her entire face was covered in goo. It looked like the money shot in a poultry porn film. I kind of snuck up on her and in my best distressed chicken voice said, "Bbuu Bbaaahhhhkk?!? She immediately went into hunker down mode, not knowing quite what she had done, but knowing that master was not amused. Its hard to get pissed at this poor little receptacle of human projections whose antics more than make up for small indiscretions. Fortunately for all involved, Smarty Pantz is queen of the free rangers and as such poses no danger to the egg population in the layer enclosures. I shoooed her off the table and suggested she get over it. We've consulted ol' doc Bebockbok the poultry puncturist and his lovely wife nurse Sally to see if there is a rehab facility nearby that isn't too expensive and doesn't have a wait list as long as your arm. Lot of paranoid birds out there after the big salmonella recall. He also suggested putting out a couple of busted eggs with a drop or two of essence of bobcat on the shell. Said that should do the trick. I think I'll just try to be a little more careful in how I approach this and all repetitive tasks and try to be ever more mindful of the spin off. Really nice to get some rain over the past week or ten days. Brings everything to life. The place breathes a collective sigh of relief. Been a lot of progress at the Rancho what with team Mcguire bringing their turbocharged focus to any and all tasks. Nurse Natty has passed into the realm of longest internship ever and makes her gentle and loving presence known in everything she lays her hands on. Given the big picture world wide, we're managing our little microcosm with an enthused amusement and hoping to move, step by step closer to feeling free of the ties that bind us to illusion. Free to do the hard work of fending for ourselves and doing what we can to build bridges to cultural memes that embody that work and embrace the idea that without making the connection to our place in the natural order of things, dark times approach. Can any amount of preparation make those times easier? Probably not, but that"s the beauty of not giving a shit 'cause your too busy eating mango's. If we're goin' down, we're goin' down with full bellies and sticky fingers. You can check us out at the Makawao farmers market on Wednesdays across from Rodeo General Store. Otherwise you will find us languishing in the labyrinth of growing ties that bind us to this creature called Rancho Relaxzo. The more you show, the more we'll grow. Peace, Jp

The time has once again come. The final day of the solar year that is the clock to which my life is set. A time to reflect. A time to observe. A time to be thankful for another turn around the track.

The homunculus who uses the inside of my skull as an amusement park is quick to point out that all the reflecting, observing and thanks giving are no match for the true misery that life delivers and that in the end I will grow bitter and lash out at bad drivers and small yipping dogs carried by large yapping women. That I will start talking out loud to inanimate objects and barnyard animals as I make my limping way toward the crematorium and at best get to be potash,  bone meal, cannabis residues and trace minerals for some mango tree. Will the fruit taste of me? I think not. Will one hear violin strings tremble when they take a bite? Heavens to Betsy no.

I scoff at his doom and gloom stance. His denial of the joy. His disdain for life's true meaning.  I face off with him inside my skull and wag my finger as I read him chapter and verse on the wonders of discovery and tell him that his only reason for existence is to create the polarity necessary to embrace and transcend the cycle of doubt and fear that so haunts us all. I tell him he should have taken music lessons as a demon tyke.

He looks and moves like Charles Laughten in the Hunchback of Notre Dam, only he's about two inches tall and with a bigger forehead and shorter legs. Mostly he sleeps the sleep of the drunk, but at times like this he is strangely engaged in the process of attempting to break down all that is good and true and beautiful.

"Why don't you throw the I Ching, you dumbass", he oozes. "That should give you some groovy insight into your ridiculous quest for meaning". " I really can't believe you haven't just hit the sauce and gone into the kind of alcoholic stupor reserved for burned out visionaries. You and Alan Watts could share a suite in the Penthouse Towers of Hotel Getagrip." He's on his back now, laughing so hard that he squirts a little poop on to my medulla oblongata.

"Now see here, you little toad. I will not countenance your pooping on my brain. Keep it clean or return to the realm of the Rakshasa's from whence you came, and always remember that you are a fragment of My imagining and not vicey versey." He demures, "just kidding", and with a shy smile recedes into the folds of my frontal lobe.

There is no rest from the conflict. It is an addiction of sorts. The sport of humanity. How far left, how far right? We find no middle ground until the posturing passes. Until the ego agrees that enough is, in fact enough. Until eyes open to the connection that links us, to the surrender that informs us, to the work that enlivens us.

"What a pile of horse hockey. Dontcha watch the news, numbskull? Its all about opposing forces and polemics designed to daze and confuse. Its like a moment of projectile vomiting spewing forth nascent chaos to a public too apathetic to do anything but chew it up and spit it out again at the water cooler during lunch break at the factory of life. Thus has it always been and so shall it always be."

I must admit that for such a shrimp of a homunculus, he makes a good argument for deep despair. He is, in so many ways my dark little joy. My passport to the purgatory in which the hungry ghosts conjure up one dreadful scenario after another and cheer for the ultimate demise of the human race. A demise so irrevocably caught up in our own actions that it is increasingly difficult to see any meaningful solution on the event horizon of this rapidly failing experiment.

I take a puff off the wonderful Corona that the beautiful elfin Natalie got me for my birthday and follow it up with a swallow of Patron silver on ice with a splash of tangor juice. It is, after all the eve of my birthday and any right of passage should be enjoined by the sacraments that make it all better. By the things that beat back the nasty little fucker inhabiting the folds of my frontal lobe, creating fire storms in the corpus collosum capable of ejecting any sense of hope into the cold dark space between galaxies where one gets to be amused at the passing of the occasional hydrogen atom. Whoopdedoo.

On the other hand, when I awoke this morning, I had the choice of five varieties of mango to mix with my morning yogurt. With such ease comes the end of outer darkness. Has anyone tried injecting mango stem cells into the spines of those with political aspirations? My feeling is that it would create a shift in perspective tantamount to the difference between the slow descent into ever more noxious and sociopathic behavior and behavior given over to the idea that multiple orgasms should become a national priority.

Speaking of which, "what did the egg say to the pot of boiling water? Give me a minute to get hard, I just got laid by that chick over there."  Thanks Dinah. I needed that.

So you see, when it all comes down to it, we are here to keep each other amused and stir up the creative juices that are the only tonic to this veil of tears. Of course, a little gin with that tonic never hurt.

You will all be pleased to find out the Smarty Pantz has transcended her need to be broody, coincidental to her being sprayed for the mites crawling gleefully through her feathers and no doubt driving her cookoo. She has resumed her perennial stance as the sight challenged alpha female and continues to provide a presence which reminds us of how stupid we can be when we fail to notice the small things.

We are now all but fenced off from the insidious attacks of starving deer. Our benevolence knows no end as in doing so we have ended the cycle of violence and taken one more step toward a meaningful relationship with the fauna of the area. In other words, thank God you aren't destroying our trees anymore, go bug someone else and thanks for inhabiting our freezer from time to time. I really should be thanking the dept of land and natural resources for providing us with this "resource", as it is they, who in their wisdom decided to import the cuteness for the amusement of the hunter classes.  Seriously, will the stupidity never end?

So I'm heading up the road to the farmers market the other day to load up my stuff and head home. Josh and Lynsey are looking after the stand while I pull up and realize that the spot I was going to take was taken. Now I have a choice, either circle until a space opens or pull into the space in front of the driveway, load up and head out. I opted for the latter. In so doing, I grazed the left front end of a classic maui cruiser and managed to tear the bumper off. Shit. Now as I survey this situation, I realize that the bumper was actually attached to the front end of the car with two lag screws screwed into a couple of blocks of wood attached to the bumper frame. As I'm checking this out, this kid about five or six saunters over to me, looks at the bumper laying in the road and then looks at me and with a deadpan expression says, "duct tape'.  To my dying day I will never forget that moment.

I ended up finding a crescent wrench in my truck and with the help of Josh, re-attached the bumper, left a note of apology and offer of further assistance with my phone number and headed home with laughter overcoming me every time I saw the face of that kid saying duct tape. No calls yet.

The more you show, the more we'll grow. Peace out, Jp

The Pantzer, once queen of the free rangers, roaming the orchard like Godzilla and riding herd over chickens and ducks alike has gone broody. This is not an unusual occurrence and normally dealt with by removing the broody bird from its enclosure, leaving it out for a few days so as to give her time to drop the habit and then letting her back in with the flock to pursue a more normal routine.

In this case, she already is out and is so funny to watch that I can't bring myself to catch and confine her. She can be found, day after day sitting the one egg in her nest under the house. Her one good eye rests at half mast giving her the look of a stressed to delirium  mom after having washed down a ten milligram valium with a high ball.

She shows up when she hears the feed bucket dig into the layer pellets stored in garbage cans. She transforms herself from half comatose squat to swept wing banshee, firing out from under the house and sweeping into the midst of the rest of the free rangers with wings spread and fully extended and tail feathers fanned and standing on end. Even the feathers surrounding her cloaca  ( google it) seem to stiffen. She moves in zig zags and semi circles hoping for the great pellet shower to manifest on her good eye side. She jumps up on the pallet  of feed bags to inspect my every move. She lays in wait for the chance to simply jump into the garbage can when i'm not looking and have the chicken equivalent of a peak experience, floating on a bottomless sea of layer pellets.

When the scramble for scraps is over, she makes a bee line to her nest under the house,  hunkers down,  rolls her good eye back and goes into deep meggitation until the sound of bucket meeting pellet pulls her from her swoon. A perfect image for modern times. Sitting on a nest egg that's never gonna hatch.

Nurse Lyndsey participated in  the poetry slam at casanova's a couple of nights ago. She proceeded to take the stage and open up a can of whoopass . There were ten contestants who, when the dust settled really didn't stand a chance. Even the guy going to the nationals. So a big huzz huzzah and woohoo to the poet in residence. Long may you slam.

The property is pretty much fenced off now. The main gate has been adorned with mexican fan palm leaves to discourage any deer or pigs from sneaking under. Pathways where once fresh hoof prints appeared every morning are now smoothing out and aside from an occasional unsuccessful attempt at breaching the southern border, it's beginning to look like we've discouraged the feral hordes. The plan from here is to begin planting a living fence adjacent to the wire fence so that eventually animals will be kept at bay by a wall of vegetation consisting of multiple species combined in such a way as to create an abundance of useful byproducts as secondary spin off to the primary purpose of sheltering the property from animals as well as creating wind breaks and corridors of privacy. We do, after all like to get naked on the trampoline from time to time and feel it's only correct to spare any passerby the trauma of witnessing my wad flopping up and down as I attempt a back flip.

Let me take this opportunity to announce the Fourteenth annual Fiftieth Birthday Party, to be held at Rancho Relaxzo on Sunday the twenty second of August, the year of the bored, twenty ten. Ms. Betz will of course be in attendance and being my senior by twenty two hours will be deferred to in all matters as Dame Dorothy, wisdom be thy name, or Da'wiz for short.  We've received word that Oprah will be bringing Mick Jagger as her date and that there will be a door prize involving chantilly lace,  polish sausage and a still beating heart.  The usual fiveish start time. Pot luck (keep your fucking hands off the peach cobbler).  Let's just think of it as the annual meeting of the Union of Maui Knuckleheads which we are compelled to attend in order to secure federal funds for next years meeting. All in favor?

Made up a Rancho Relaxzo business card for Nurse Natalie in celebration of her passing the six month mark on the farm. She has now entered the preliminary stages of Kama'aina status. You know, where the sense of living anywhere but the tropics begins to recede and the feel of warm sand around your toes represents a certain baseline requirement for mental stability. Thanks Natty, your energy lies at the heart of this place.

I was having a bit of a nap the other day. I Really like napping, especially on hot windy days. I do tend to come out of it in a kind of ghoulish mood ( the nurses refer to it as a "nilknarf" moment). Anyway, I was dozing away and had a kind of vision really. Not so much a dream.

It was an unusually warm day in D.C. for January and the inauguration of president Gingrich was taking place at the pentagon with vice president Palin holding the bible. Owing to the occurrences of late twenty twelve the swearing in had to take place in the most secure of all locations. There were "immigrants" of all kinds roaming the streets with just one thing in mind. Gimme. Gimme mine. Gimme mine now.

Then a voice out of the haze said, " they scared, them white foke scared fo sure. They over there in they armor plated rooms figurin' how they gonna get the res' of are money. Why my famly been laundering money fo' the rich folk for years now. Thas' right, we goes an' picks up they old doity money an' takes it to the wash n' dry down the block, cleans it up and takes it home to iern. They don't want they money lookin' bad when they takes it to be boined. Give us a penny an' a half onna dollah ta' do it. Got woid the other day that they gonna cut that in half. Lawdy on a popsicle stick. They so scared. They know they caint eat money or drink diamonds. Only thing they got is scarin' other folk. Now it all comin' back at em', an they scared.

There was the random sound of gun shots with helicopters chopping  overhead and dropping what looked like gas canisters into the streets and parks below. I wanted to wake up but felt strangely compelled to remain engaged in the unfolding of this eerie vision.

The swearing in ended and at that moment, Palin stuck her hand down Gingrich's trousers and squeezed his pecker so hard that he started squeaking in tongues which apparently was the intended effect because Palin slowly transformed into a foul smelling horned gila monster sort of creature that wrapped its slimy tongue around Gingrich and swallowed him whole, making her the fifty fifth president of these here united states. I came too thinking, "cool, at least a reptile has good instincts."

"Always looking for that silver lining, huh unky Jp?"

"That's right little fella, only way to go."

"Even as the world turns to shit before our eyes?"

"Hold your nose little fella, hold your nose."

Dzinah Faloley wrote the other day on matters of state and included this joke of her own creation.

What do you call an old, barefoot wizard with bad breath?

A Supercallousedfragilemystichexedbyhalitosis.

My diagnosis for ms. Foley would be an advanced case of Miles Davis mind. Jam on.

The more you show, the more we'll grow.  Big kiss, Jp.