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THE FARM ON THE HILL

Story from the start

What I didn't realize at the time was that the whole area, that upper part of the Sacramento Valley was filled with people like the one's at Rasputin's place. They weren't necessarily on communes but they were esconsed in the woods, down along the streams and Sacramento River. And one time they put on a music fest of sorts. It was really an excuse to drink and meet, talk and zone out as the musicians had their way. They came by truck and car, some even walked the several miles up the old road from the broken down old town. They came with guitars, drums, jugs, zithers, violins, harmonicas, marimbas, cymbals, and anything that made a sound not human or animal but itself as only it could make it. There were instruments there I couldn't identify, maybe the instrument of old tribes in Africa or the Middle-east. I can't say how many but they spread throughout the little valley, up into the hillside, all throughout the housing and gardens, the shack I stayed in, the chicken coop and more than a few went up the creek to the waterfall and skinny dipped. The thing was, no one could hear them. There was no one to disturb them. And while there was drunkeness and other intoxications, love making, and loud conversations there was no fighting. That was amazing to me. Not one fight broke out.

A few had tried to organize it in some fashion so people could play their music in a reasonable order. But when it came to it it was each musician for him or herself. And at times a lot played at the same time and the people just took it all in. There were little amplifiers but once the musicians broke out among themselves and started to competing a voracious sound rose up and bounced off the hills and back down to the crowds that had gathered. They danced. The women danced gracefully as if that's what they were born to do. I danced with Mona. I danced for the first time in a long time. She got me up to do it. I was like an awkward gooney bird and flopped around hoping no one noticed how bad I was but it didn't matter. I was drunk I admit it. How could you not get drunk when the sun was high in the sky and the music flowing from some center of the Earth itself, flowing up and spreading all around until the spirit itself was dancing in the trees?

I was a celebrant but my old reporter instincts came back and I sat among the strange variety of persons during that day and interviewed them in a soft, kind way. They liked the slow, old way of rolling with nature and, like my friends, had contempt for the cities they were from. But they all agreed to one fact. "We don't have much more time on this planet. The nukes will do us in or industrial waste or pure greed. The aliens will find us." It was always something to ensure there wasn't a future. They had sculpted a life to live without expectation of a future. Music and dope fastened them to the ground, to the here and now and it was all they needed, they said.

Not that I didn't have my own episodes with apocylpse. I remember up at the falls I had been hypnotised by the flow of water until everything was undulating out of control. I realized to the depths that nature is all, that nature would survive total annhilation and seeds would sail from the broken Earth and find their way to another planet. Then I had a vision of how huge and complex the Earth was, how it wasn't going anywhere, and that the Earth itself was much more than our reality we experienced just walking around.

Like many I talked to I felt I was ready for anything. That if the Earth were suddenly to break apart and the end was near that I would collect myself and know myself as profoundly as I was capable of and realize life in ways I couldn't imagine. The annhiliation could take me in peace.

August 30, 2024

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Why the Democrats are in Trouble

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