Mark's Work: Color My World

“‘All right, men, discipline’s getting pretty lax around here. Why, I remember just last week, when I asked for volunteers to go weed out that marijuana patch, I damn near got stampeded to death. Talkin’ ‘bout them-where in the hell are they? They been gone a week now.’

‘They’re still out on patrol, Sir.’” Cheech and Chong

That’s me, recently, with discipline getting pretty lax in the writing department. No posts in November? Only four in October, following two in September? As I say to my little sister JT, “If I’m not writing, there’s probably hard times going on.”

One of my favorite recent "floats..."

The reality is that life is a parade of hard times, intermingled with the occasional float, inundated with flowers, breathtakingly beautiful, which keeps us all in our seats. The rest of the parade involves the day-to-day existence which can pass with almost no remembrance, if you are so inclined.

For two months I have worked primarily indoors, twelve hours at least, every day I have been on the mountain. The work is tedious but immensely rewarding at the same time, and to be quite honest, a welcome respite from the frantic pace of the last six weeks of summer.

Removing the flowers from
the stalk (bucking)

Building the storage unit and relocating the four, floor-to-ceiling cabinets, proved most challenging, and various components of my 66-year-old self began to complain, as they are wont to do. Praise be for cannabis, the sole form of pain relief to which I have access. I am forever grateful for this gentle giant of herbs.

I will always prefer cannabis over opiates because I have a most irrational contempt for Big Pharma. This is a concept that was not even hatched until 1973, when the ban against making money off of medicine was lifted under Tricky Dick. I turned 21 in 1973, while overseas. Imagine, if you can, a society in which there was a disdain for profiting off of the misery of others.

I hear you. Me neither.

Once a cure-all for everything medicinal, cannabis was swept under the rug in the 1930’s, by a few powerful, rich, white men, hell-bent on destroying the concept of democracy. These men demonized cannabis, which must have confused a large percentage of the general population. They were eager to replace democracy with our current form of government, an oligarchy, or rule by a few.

Bucked but not trimmed

So I grow my own medicine and it serves me well. Nonetheless, the best medicine for a cranky shoulder is to sit for two months and let the hands carry the load. I do walk Ellie Mae up the driveway to Bell Springs Road every morning, and as long as I can do that, I am reasonably good to go.

Once the harvest work is completed, I have high hopes of attacking the kitchen, in similar fashion to that of my bathroom/laundry room remodel of last winter, so I need this “rest” time, even if I am putting in twelve hours a day. Besides, with my schedule, that still leaves close to eight hours every day, to really get something done.

The life of a manic is certainly productive.

No, the hard times to which I alluded earlier, deal simply with the reality of living most of the time by myself. Gluten-Free Mama resides in Willits, where she can be close to her primary health provider. Like a ping-pong ball, I go back and forth. The irony of my having to drive, after being-for the most part-chauffeured around for thirty years by GF Mama, is rich indeed.

Processing apples...

I strongly suspect that not being able to drive a car, due to health-related matters, “drives” GF Mama right up the proverbial wall. If I let three days pass, and then jet down to Willits for a day, I can be her personal chauffeur and run her around town to take care of the errands that need addressing.

Sometimes that even means treating ourselves to lunch at Lumberjack’s, where our waitress, Audrey, commented recently, “I am seeing my old teachers here since I came to work. Mr. Bowles was just in here the other day.”

I laughed and responded, “I could say the same about former students; besides you, there is Krissy and I just saw Adam the other day.”

GF Mama likes that Lumberjack’s will wrap a burger in lettuce, as will Cafe 101, the other spot we will hit when we are of a mind. I have been to Buster’s but it’s too everything for me: too bright, too loud and too much of what I struggle with for comfort.

As for not writing, I have found it difficult to take pen in hand when so much of what is whirling around me, refuses to pause. There is too much outrage in me, threatening to overflow, if I am not careful. I stopped writing about the daily atrocities emanating forth from the White House a long time ago because it’s pointless.

Money drives all in this country, and big money crushes every glimpse of humanity right out of existence. The corruption oozing from every pore of Corp’rate ‘Merica is palpable, all under the guise of democracy. For a hearty chuckle, talk to the Koch brothers about democracy.

Certainly one of my favorite all-time photos. Gluten-Free Mama
and I in Old Paint, our VW bus, heading out from a snowy
Bell Springs Road.

Today, however, one of the most brilliant floats of all is traveling the parade circuit, and that is the one that presents itself every December 1st, the day of our wedding anniversary. Thirty-six years ago, on a remarkably similar day, weatherize, Gluten-Free Mama and I got hitched up in Ukiah, in a five-minute ceremony in the chambers of the Honorable James Luther.

So I am taking word-processor in hand and celebrating that fact. And what’s even sweeter, GF Mama was swooped from Willits by HeadSodBuster and whisked back up here on the mountain last night. I have the house warm and toasty, even as I write.

Color my world dazzling.