What You Need, What You Want
What You Need, What You Want
“Life, what a fucking mystery”. My youngest daughter, #2, is quite the Oracle. She has some intense awareness at levels she is not aware of yet. I marvel sometimes when she speaks about heart matters or world politics. She’s usually right on…and with gusto.
She became a helicopter pilot on her own, no military training or Iraqi war subsidization. She took out a student loan and went for it. Now she is one of maybe 150 women that have their CFII which means she can not only teach private pilot for helicopter but she can also teach instrument rating as well. Rare.
When she turned 16 she borrowed her older sister’s new car, a tricked out California VW with a big engine, tinted in the glass windows, front lowered and raked chassis, wide tires, and a totally clean white Emron aircraft paint job with chrome mini bumpers. It was a classy car built by my friend and air-cooled only VW mechanic BB. I paid him 5K cash under the living room table for that artwork. Heads always turned when it cruised by. Her older sister had just gotten it for her 18th birthday from me and her mom so it wasn’t even christened. Younger daughter borrowed it and rolled it 3 times behind her high school while zooming around an S-curve on the gravel encrusted pavement there. Gravel won.
Life gives us messages and signs whether we recognize them or not. Wise folk are those that when needed can and do something, anything, to change the path they are headed down. The Chinese have a saying, actually many sayings but this is one of the more memorable thoughts of theirs, “If we are not careful we will end up where we are headed”. If only we could. My second favorite Chinese aphorism is, “Money can by you a clock, but not time”. Indeed.
I know you can relate. If you’re growing weed then you’ve felt the heat. It comes from going beyond the norm and searching for something personal. Green gardening, surfing, motocross, extreme skiing, skydiving, base jumping, knife throwing, stamp collecting whatever. If you’ve crossed the line you can never go back.
I recall some hippies who lived in a classic yellow school bus and sold hash, Peyote, and weed to the multitudes in my quiet little town in the Verde Valley back in the early 1970’s. They had a pack of kids and rarely got a shower being on the road so much. They dropped anchor in my little central Arizona town one day and began plying their trade in earnest. Busted came next and the family was in a tizzy. Changes abounded and soon they were Born Agains, selling you know who. My VW mechanic mastermind, BB, said it best when he described them, “Anyone who used to sell Peyote and switched to selling Jesus is totally fucked up”. That’s what can happen if you don’t hear the vibe and make changes. And I know they certainly had warnings.
How does one know when to make a change? And I mean a significant life-altering move. When the messages rain down sufficiently, so much that we can’t live in denial any longer, how do we change? My view is that most of us, at such a momentous tipping point in our life, unconsciously allow the Universe to choose for us. The result is not always fun, easy, or what we may have wanted had we made the choice ourselves, but it sure is clear. It’s when in that instant moment in time that you think to yourself, “If only I had…..”.
Fill in the spaces, they’re all the same. You know what I mean. It’s so much better to be self-correcting in response to the feedback all around you. It’s definitely less costly if you make the changes yourself rather than have changes made to you. Ken Kesey said, “Always stay in your own movie”. If you don’t then someone else is the director.
Daughter #2 became a careful and excellent driver after that incident. That day she kicked out the windshield so her friend and she could escape, climbed out of her sister’s totaled car, and while in shock had a revelation that no parent could have provided no matter how hard they tried. Reality is the best, though not the kindest, teacher. Awakenings aren’t always inexpensive. Now she wears night-vision goggles when she flies in the pitch dark out to remote spots on the interstate and lands to meet paramedics. The casualty, sometimes just a lifeless body, lies next to her as she returns to an emergency room, stretched out awkwardly, as they boogie through the sky toward hope.
Some messages take repeating. In every grower’s life comes a point when they should have walked away from a deal, a remote growsite, a new contact, or their overused rental home. Rock stars have bad concerts but they still get paid; lawyers, even if they lose a case, still walk out with a hefty fee. Everyday people involved in illegal acts rarely get the prize, though, and often get the hammer instead.
What goes around comes around. My good friend Peter and I were down on our luck. Our Colombo connection had moved into coke and we resisted. We were herbmen and though we powdered our noses whenever it was free, we didn’t want the Karma of becoming “Coke Dealers”. Just the name made straight people hate you back then even though the in-crowd loved a man with a pile of powder, oh how they loved them. During the Disco Days it seemed like everyone we knew had been hypnotized and started moving white powder. What the hell, the ladies sure responded. Who doesn’t remember, if you were witness to those days, the split when weed people were left behind in favor of the powder?
I was loading trucks at a warehouse depot in Phoenix for lack of a better livelihood. I had with two little girls and I didn’t want to become a dealer like so many of my pals. The work was not that hard, driving electric carts and forklifts, and the days shot past quickly. I was planning my second shot at guerilla growing, this time on my own and without my previous partner, so I knew it was just a matter of time before my day in the sun (literally) would come. In the meantime I was working the docks, biding my time.
John the driver was one of the truckers that came by weekly and picked up or dropped off loads. We became good friends in the sense that we liked to talk about interesting subjects, not the usual sports team mumbo jumbo that consumed most of the other dock loaders and truckers. I could care less and so did he. Our talks rambled toward the forbidden realms.
One fine day John showed up to drop a heavily loaded trailer and began talking about his weekend. Little did I know how skilled he was in so many ways. John, it turns out, could fly airplanes, even larger twin engines, as well as helicopters. 16-wheelers were child’s play, because he also operated heavy equipment like D-9 Cats and had run a few road graders in Nam as well. If it could be driven or flown, John was at home.
I imagine you think you know where I’m going with this line of thinking. You’re partly right and partly wrong. John was excited that day because on his weekend he had been flying over the Barry Goldwater Bombing Range west of Ajo at the edge of Organ Pipe National Monument and had seen a large fuel tank nose down in the dirt. He theorized that it might be filled with weed and was thinking of driving out to check on it. His question for me was, “If I find it and bring back several hundred pounds of marijuana, could you sell it?”
Actually I was quite taken aback. How did he know that I could possibly sell it in the first place. I had cut my waist-length hair when I entered the job market and went to work at the warehouse. I never talked smack about weed or drugs with anyone at work, let alone him. So what gave me away?
I didn’t ask him and merely said yes. He smiled and went on with his day, moving out once his truck was picked clean by the fleet of hungry forklifts swarming the docks that day. I went home with a renewed sense of hope and dreamt of colas packed tightly in a jettisoned fuel tank. I was excited because it could just be the way out that I needed for my next big move back into herb cultivation. Peter was revved up as well and could use the excitement more than the pay in the interim between his own familia’s next shipment. Any cash I made would free me for better things. It was my 26 year-old mind hallucinating big time, but I didn’t know it was.
Weeks passed without a visit to the docks by John. I began getting paranoid. What if he was merely testing me, what if he was undercover, what if he was a snitch setting me up, blah blah blah… My mind ran over the details and came up with the conclusion that John was what he appeared to be. He was skilled at piloting and driving but he was not clever, sneaky, or conniving. With him, what you saw was what you got. I felt relieved as I still anticipated him showing up with good news one day soon.
John did finally show up but he wasn’t smiling. He told me how he had driven way out into the bombing range, illegally of course, with his 3 kids and a far-fetched alibi just in case he got nabbed off-road in the forbidden zone. Once, long ago at night, I drove next to this same area as I traveled north from Ajo toward Gila Bend. I was coming back from a quick recon of the Pinacates, the psychedelic volcanic crater zone just north of Rocky Point. I was totally transfixed by the endless bursts of light and loud explosions way out in the desert that hot July night. I never saw one of the jets but I heard them as they pushed back and forth across the target zone. I was witnessing a night-time war scene, like one of those dark moments in Apocalypse Now. So cool, man. And we were high.
John had found the jettisoned fuel tank, but that was exactly all it was, an empty fuel tank smashed into the dirt. At that moment our weed dreams disappeared into thin air. But something occurred to me just then when I was about to say, “Oh well” and let it all go. I had found the ultimate pilot and driver. I had an expert who wanted to get involved in the shadow economy. John was ready for an assignment. His name rose to the top of my Rolodex for future tasks. Why, we could have him pick up our harvest, already boxed of course, and fly it out of our remote canyon; it could save the many round-trip hikes necessary by 4 or 5 people carrying big frame packs loaded with harvest herb if we were as successful as I hoped that year, and it could…. dreamer, dreamer, come back, come back!
Over the next few months I saw John regularly but we only made small talk. Why talk about paradise lost? Then, near the last quarter of the year, around harvest time south of the border, John showed up at the docks with a big dog smile and laid it on me. Some Mexican friends had finally contacted him and wanted him to fly down to the Guadalajara area and pick up a load. Though John had never even seen a joint let alone smoked one, his motors were already on an imaginary runway taking off to mota land and flying back the prize. As if! Here he was, like me, hallucinating without any experience in a field that was fraught with agents, snitches, guns, wiretaps, and true life-or-death danger. this was big time.
Not far from his initial thoughts, a few weeks later he actually was sippin’ a margarita in motaville. Just a slight twist was injected into this cozy vision though; John did fly down to Guadalajara but in a stolen twin-engine Cessna that the cartel wanted real bad. It was his initiation and he jumped at the opportunity. One day a straight trucker, the next day a full-on drug pilot transporting stolen goods across international lines. I was floored and laughed in his face. Composing myself I asked him what he would be doing from then on and he replied that he would only have to wait for loads to come to him. it seems that the brothers in Mexico had bigger plans for John and didn’t want to waste him on weed runs. He bluffed and had told them that he had friends who could easily move weight. You can probably guess where this went. Though none of knew, all of us suspected.
I grew up loving James Bond movies and had read The Craft of Intelligence, an autographed copy in fact signed for me personally by the author Allen Dulles, head of the CIA. Whether it was Michael Caine in the groundbreaking spy movie “The Ipcress File” or reading more history of spies in WWII and the Cold War, I admired their tradecraft. I knew it was probably not as glorious as it appeared in the movies but being a young guy I still was hooked. I began my collection of spy tool catalogs, eavesdropping equipment catalogs, and every book on spies I could find in print when I was 16. I was certifiable. That knowledge helped immensely once I walked the path of weed.
Months passed with no contact from John. Slowly but surely I continued my life and forgot about him. I was planning my next guerilla grow and had been on several recons in a likely canyon-filled area. One of those exploratory trips became the deciding factor in my herb’s brand name, Madjag, and I wrote about that mountain lion experience earlier on this thread. Visions of loads flying in had retreated to the back of my mind.
Ring-ring, ring-ring. I grabbed the proverbial kitchen phone (an A.T.&T. Princess phone!) and there he was, John, mumbling quickly and unable to focus his words. It didn’t take nut a second to decipher his message, though: not only had he delivered the Cessna, he had also escorted a nice Bell Ranger helicopter south as well. My oh my, what would be next? A jet? All kinds of thoughts melted and mixed in my mind as he continued to rant excitedly. “The load is going to be here next week, are you ready?,” is what I incredulously thought he said. “They need an airstrip for the drop and will be on the ground only long enough to toss out the bales, 500 kilos.” We were in for it.
Thanks to my earlier training in the secretive arts as well as in reconnaissance, the plan evolved lightning fast. My team was assembled and it was their first time in action. Everyone was mighty fidgety as we spent the night camped in the field, preparing for military-grade timing and a smooth execution of our plan. I was the only real spy in the group so I had been the driving force in the plan’s design. My friends were more than willing once they heard the pay, 2500 each for two days work as well as cost on any herb they wanted to buy later. Damn, for poor growers and small-time dealers this was a landfall.
Only one problem, where the hell were we going to sell 1200 pounds? Each one of us had a friend who had a friend that knew a guy who could move weight, but none of us had ever entered that world or knew exactly what it would take to do so. It turned out to be easy, though, and we all left that week with fond memories and a fat wallet. Later loads would prove even easier once we had all of our ducks in a row. John was our new hero and though we didn’t move in the same world that he did we still met once in awhile to discuss the next time.
We met John in the next phase of our relationship at a groovy bar in Scotthe thieving con-man's placeale, one of those nouveau trendy places. The restaurant and bar, Dr. Munchies, was about as nouveau as you could find in the desert back then. The maitre’d wore a full-length tuxedo and had wild black hair down to his waist. The place had great food and was always packed from 10pm on. Sometimes there was actually a line of hipsters waiting to get in, something hitherto not seen before those days of wine and roses. Our short string of drop loads had come to an end and at that point my partner and I were thinking about next year’s serious canyon time. John showed up at the bar with a brand new look. Instead of John the everyday trucker he was now sporting a big cowboy fedora, several gold necklaces, and a fancy western-look outfit including some flashy boots. He also had one of the first mobile phones I had ever seen up close, the type they used in Miami Vice that were the size of a quart bottle. He was driving a brand-new Camaro and had a girlfriend 20 years younger than him.
It was a sign. The Universe was talking and luckily we had no problem listening. We were not happy. John had gone from 0 – 60 in like five seconds and had not been able to keep track of where the road was leading. Money came so large and fast that he had forgotten what a day’s work actually paid on Planet Earth and had become used to his new found wealth. Still a redneck at heart, John worked hard to fit his new image. Still, his path diverged from ours the moment he said the word “coke”. We were herb men and heeded the signs. The few loads we pulled off at that little public airstrip funded our next year as we delved into our canyon growing season. Our families were covered and the only work we had to do for the next 12 months was to prepare, grow, harvest, and sell. It was still all good after we cut ties with our friend. We didn’t have to deliberate long in order to give him our answer. It had all been in the name of supporting our passion for growing the weed so we never looked back.
We heard through the grapevine and later on in the local news that John had become fabulously wealthy. He also caught the flu in a big way and had to spend 10 years getting well. I never forgot my friend John, though unfortunately I did forget some of the lessons of his story. I too let fast money go to my head and one day got sick myself. I had to spend a couple of years at the monastery because I didn’t remember to heed the signs that were coming from all directions in a multitude of forms. It took me about 10, perhaps even 15 years to fully recover to where I had left off. Looking back I realized that the signs were so plain and obvious that I had definitely been suffering from a case of denial. I had wanted something so deeply that I couldn’t see the messages telling me to take a break and reconsider what it was that I truly wanted.
It’s rarely money or power we want. They just make it seemingly easier to get what we think we want. Once you deeply examine your passion and know that you can follow that path forever if you don’t stray, you become tuned into signs in a whole new way. It becomes second nature to question. You “sleep” on it more often, allowing time to pass before you make a major decision. You find that many things turn out to be equal in value and only a few shine above the rest. Those that do are usually free for the taking, and giving, if you learn to see.
As Castaneda’s teacher Don Juan said, “ The trick is in what one emphasizes. One either makes oneself strong or one makes oneself miserable. The amount of work is the same.” Most people will disagree. It seems so much easier to be unhappy or unfulfilled. It’s an attitude of gratitude, though, that can make the difference in understanding this little parable. Signs are everywhere. We’re all sent them. Do you see them? Do you pay attention and at least allow your body to feel their message? Like the ensuing high that comes from a toke, signs come in many forms and flavors but always can be felt on some level. Take your time to know what you truly want, stay aware, and you’re home free.
Peace.
What You Need, What You Want
“Life, what a fucking mystery”. My youngest daughter, #2, is quite the Oracle. She has some intense awareness at levels she is not aware of yet. I marvel sometimes when she speaks about heart matters or world politics. She’s usually right on…and with gusto.
She became a helicopter pilot on her own, no military training or Iraqi war subsidization. She took out a student loan and went for it. Now she is one of maybe 150 women that have their CFII which means she can not only teach private pilot for helicopter but she can also teach instrument rating as well. Rare.
When she turned 16 she borrowed her older sister’s new car, a tricked out California VW with a big engine, tinted in the glass windows, front lowered and raked chassis, wide tires, and a totally clean white Emron aircraft paint job with chrome mini bumpers. It was a classy car built by my friend and air-cooled only VW mechanic BB. I paid him 5K cash under the living room table for that artwork. Heads always turned when it cruised by. Her older sister had just gotten it for her 18th birthday from me and her mom so it wasn’t even christened. Younger daughter borrowed it and rolled it 3 times behind her high school while zooming around an S-curve on the gravel encrusted pavement there. Gravel won.
Life gives us messages and signs whether we recognize them or not. Wise folk are those that when needed can and do something, anything, to change the path they are headed down. The Chinese have a saying, actually many sayings but this is one of the more memorable thoughts of theirs, “If we are not careful we will end up where we are headed”. If only we could. My second favorite Chinese aphorism is, “Money can by you a clock, but not time”. Indeed.
I know you can relate. If you’re growing weed then you’ve felt the heat. It comes from going beyond the norm and searching for something personal. Green gardening, surfing, motocross, extreme skiing, skydiving, base jumping, knife throwing, stamp collecting whatever. If you’ve crossed the line you can never go back.
I recall some hippies who lived in a classic yellow school bus and sold hash, Peyote, and weed to the multitudes in my quiet little town in the Verde Valley back in the early 1970’s. They had a pack of kids and rarely got a shower being on the road so much. They dropped anchor in my little central Arizona town one day and began plying their trade in earnest. Busted came next and the family was in a tizzy. Changes abounded and soon they were Born Agains, selling you know who. My VW mechanic mastermind, BB, said it best when he described them, “Anyone who used to sell Peyote and switched to selling Jesus is totally fucked up”. That’s what can happen if you don’t hear the vibe and make changes. And I know they certainly had warnings.
How does one know when to make a change? And I mean a significant life-altering move. When the messages rain down sufficiently, so much that we can’t live in denial any longer, how do we change? My view is that most of us, at such a momentous tipping point in our life, unconsciously allow the Universe to choose for us. The result is not always fun, easy, or what we may have wanted had we made the choice ourselves, but it sure is clear. It’s when in that instant moment in time that you think to yourself, “If only I had…..”.
Fill in the spaces, they’re all the same. You know what I mean. It’s so much better to be self-correcting in response to the feedback all around you. It’s definitely less costly if you make the changes yourself rather than have changes made to you. Ken Kesey said, “Always stay in your own movie”. If you don’t then someone else is the director.
Daughter #2 became a careful and excellent driver after that incident. That day she kicked out the windshield so her friend and she could escape, climbed out of her sister’s totaled car, and while in shock had a revelation that no parent could have provided no matter how hard they tried. Reality is the best, though not the kindest, teacher. Awakenings aren’t always inexpensive. Now she wears night-vision goggles when she flies in the pitch dark out to remote spots on the interstate and lands to meet paramedics. The casualty, sometimes just a lifeless body, lies next to her as she returns to an emergency room, stretched out awkwardly, as they boogie through the sky toward hope.
Some messages take repeating. In every grower’s life comes a point when they should have walked away from a deal, a remote growsite, a new contact, or their overused rental home. Rock stars have bad concerts but they still get paid; lawyers, even if they lose a case, still walk out with a hefty fee. Everyday people involved in illegal acts rarely get the prize, though, and often get the hammer instead.
What goes around comes around. My good friend Peter and I were down on our luck. Our Colombo connection had moved into coke and we resisted. We were herbmen and though we powdered our noses whenever it was free, we didn’t want the Karma of becoming “Coke Dealers”. Just the name made straight people hate you back then even though the in-crowd loved a man with a pile of powder, oh how they loved them. During the Disco Days it seemed like everyone we knew had been hypnotized and started moving white powder. What the hell, the ladies sure responded. Who doesn’t remember, if you were witness to those days, the split when weed people were left behind in favor of the powder?
I was loading trucks at a warehouse depot in Phoenix for lack of a better livelihood. I had with two little girls and I didn’t want to become a dealer like so many of my pals. The work was not that hard, driving electric carts and forklifts, and the days shot past quickly. I was planning my second shot at guerilla growing, this time on my own and without my previous partner, so I knew it was just a matter of time before my day in the sun (literally) would come. In the meantime I was working the docks, biding my time.
John the driver was one of the truckers that came by weekly and picked up or dropped off loads. We became good friends in the sense that we liked to talk about interesting subjects, not the usual sports team mumbo jumbo that consumed most of the other dock loaders and truckers. I could care less and so did he. Our talks rambled toward the forbidden realms.
One fine day John showed up to drop a heavily loaded trailer and began talking about his weekend. Little did I know how skilled he was in so many ways. John, it turns out, could fly airplanes, even larger twin engines, as well as helicopters. 16-wheelers were child’s play, because he also operated heavy equipment like D-9 Cats and had run a few road graders in Nam as well. If it could be driven or flown, John was at home.
I imagine you think you know where I’m going with this line of thinking. You’re partly right and partly wrong. John was excited that day because on his weekend he had been flying over the Barry Goldwater Bombing Range west of Ajo at the edge of Organ Pipe National Monument and had seen a large fuel tank nose down in the dirt. He theorized that it might be filled with weed and was thinking of driving out to check on it. His question for me was, “If I find it and bring back several hundred pounds of marijuana, could you sell it?”
Actually I was quite taken aback. How did he know that I could possibly sell it in the first place. I had cut my waist-length hair when I entered the job market and went to work at the warehouse. I never talked smack about weed or drugs with anyone at work, let alone him. So what gave me away?
I didn’t ask him and merely said yes. He smiled and went on with his day, moving out once his truck was picked clean by the fleet of hungry forklifts swarming the docks that day. I went home with a renewed sense of hope and dreamt of colas packed tightly in a jettisoned fuel tank. I was excited because it could just be the way out that I needed for my next big move back into herb cultivation. Peter was revved up as well and could use the excitement more than the pay in the interim between his own familia’s next shipment. Any cash I made would free me for better things. It was my 26 year-old mind hallucinating big time, but I didn’t know it was.
Weeks passed without a visit to the docks by John. I began getting paranoid. What if he was merely testing me, what if he was undercover, what if he was a snitch setting me up, blah blah blah… My mind ran over the details and came up with the conclusion that John was what he appeared to be. He was skilled at piloting and driving but he was not clever, sneaky, or conniving. With him, what you saw was what you got. I felt relieved as I still anticipated him showing up with good news one day soon.
John did finally show up but he wasn’t smiling. He told me how he had driven way out into the bombing range, illegally of course, with his 3 kids and a far-fetched alibi just in case he got nabbed off-road in the forbidden zone. Once, long ago at night, I drove next to this same area as I traveled north from Ajo toward Gila Bend. I was coming back from a quick recon of the Pinacates, the psychedelic volcanic crater zone just north of Rocky Point. I was totally transfixed by the endless bursts of light and loud explosions way out in the desert that hot July night. I never saw one of the jets but I heard them as they pushed back and forth across the target zone. I was witnessing a night-time war scene, like one of those dark moments in Apocalypse Now. So cool, man. And we were high.
John had found the jettisoned fuel tank, but that was exactly all it was, an empty fuel tank smashed into the dirt. At that moment our weed dreams disappeared into thin air. But something occurred to me just then when I was about to say, “Oh well” and let it all go. I had found the ultimate pilot and driver. I had an expert who wanted to get involved in the shadow economy. John was ready for an assignment. His name rose to the top of my Rolodex for future tasks. Why, we could have him pick up our harvest, already boxed of course, and fly it out of our remote canyon; it could save the many round-trip hikes necessary by 4 or 5 people carrying big frame packs loaded with harvest herb if we were as successful as I hoped that year, and it could…. dreamer, dreamer, come back, come back!
Over the next few months I saw John regularly but we only made small talk. Why talk about paradise lost? Then, near the last quarter of the year, around harvest time south of the border, John showed up at the docks with a big dog smile and laid it on me. Some Mexican friends had finally contacted him and wanted him to fly down to the Guadalajara area and pick up a load. Though John had never even seen a joint let alone smoked one, his motors were already on an imaginary runway taking off to mota land and flying back the prize. As if! Here he was, like me, hallucinating without any experience in a field that was fraught with agents, snitches, guns, wiretaps, and true life-or-death danger. this was big time.
Not far from his initial thoughts, a few weeks later he actually was sippin’ a margarita in motaville. Just a slight twist was injected into this cozy vision though; John did fly down to Guadalajara but in a stolen twin-engine Cessna that the cartel wanted real bad. It was his initiation and he jumped at the opportunity. One day a straight trucker, the next day a full-on drug pilot transporting stolen goods across international lines. I was floored and laughed in his face. Composing myself I asked him what he would be doing from then on and he replied that he would only have to wait for loads to come to him. it seems that the brothers in Mexico had bigger plans for John and didn’t want to waste him on weed runs. He bluffed and had told them that he had friends who could easily move weight. You can probably guess where this went. Though none of knew, all of us suspected.
I grew up loving James Bond movies and had read The Craft of Intelligence, an autographed copy in fact signed for me personally by the author Allen Dulles, head of the CIA. Whether it was Michael Caine in the groundbreaking spy movie “The Ipcress File” or reading more history of spies in WWII and the Cold War, I admired their tradecraft. I knew it was probably not as glorious as it appeared in the movies but being a young guy I still was hooked. I began my collection of spy tool catalogs, eavesdropping equipment catalogs, and every book on spies I could find in print when I was 16. I was certifiable. That knowledge helped immensely once I walked the path of weed.
Months passed with no contact from John. Slowly but surely I continued my life and forgot about him. I was planning my next guerilla grow and had been on several recons in a likely canyon-filled area. One of those exploratory trips became the deciding factor in my herb’s brand name, Madjag, and I wrote about that mountain lion experience earlier on this thread. Visions of loads flying in had retreated to the back of my mind.
Ring-ring, ring-ring. I grabbed the proverbial kitchen phone (an A.T.&T. Princess phone!) and there he was, John, mumbling quickly and unable to focus his words. It didn’t take nut a second to decipher his message, though: not only had he delivered the Cessna, he had also escorted a nice Bell Ranger helicopter south as well. My oh my, what would be next? A jet? All kinds of thoughts melted and mixed in my mind as he continued to rant excitedly. “The load is going to be here next week, are you ready?,” is what I incredulously thought he said. “They need an airstrip for the drop and will be on the ground only long enough to toss out the bales, 500 kilos.” We were in for it.
Thanks to my earlier training in the secretive arts as well as in reconnaissance, the plan evolved lightning fast. My team was assembled and it was their first time in action. Everyone was mighty fidgety as we spent the night camped in the field, preparing for military-grade timing and a smooth execution of our plan. I was the only real spy in the group so I had been the driving force in the plan’s design. My friends were more than willing once they heard the pay, 2500 each for two days work as well as cost on any herb they wanted to buy later. Damn, for poor growers and small-time dealers this was a landfall.
Only one problem, where the hell were we going to sell 1200 pounds? Each one of us had a friend who had a friend that knew a guy who could move weight, but none of us had ever entered that world or knew exactly what it would take to do so. It turned out to be easy, though, and we all left that week with fond memories and a fat wallet. Later loads would prove even easier once we had all of our ducks in a row. John was our new hero and though we didn’t move in the same world that he did we still met once in awhile to discuss the next time.
We met John in the next phase of our relationship at a groovy bar in Scotthe thieving con-man's placeale, one of those nouveau trendy places. The restaurant and bar, Dr. Munchies, was about as nouveau as you could find in the desert back then. The maitre’d wore a full-length tuxedo and had wild black hair down to his waist. The place had great food and was always packed from 10pm on. Sometimes there was actually a line of hipsters waiting to get in, something hitherto not seen before those days of wine and roses. Our short string of drop loads had come to an end and at that point my partner and I were thinking about next year’s serious canyon time. John showed up at the bar with a brand new look. Instead of John the everyday trucker he was now sporting a big cowboy fedora, several gold necklaces, and a fancy western-look outfit including some flashy boots. He also had one of the first mobile phones I had ever seen up close, the type they used in Miami Vice that were the size of a quart bottle. He was driving a brand-new Camaro and had a girlfriend 20 years younger than him.
It’s rarely money or power we want. They just make it seemingly easier to get what we think we want. Once you deeply examine your passion and know that you can follow that path forever if you don’t stray, you become tuned into signs in a whole new way. It becomes second nature to question. You “sleep” on it more often, allowing time to pass before you make a major decision. You find that many things turn out to be equal in value and only a few shine above the rest. Those that do are usually free for the taking, and giving, if you learn to see.
As Castaneda’s teacher Don Juan said, “ The trick is in what one emphasizes. One either makes oneself strong or one makes oneself miserable. The amount of work is the same.” Most people will disagree. It seems so much easier to be unhappy or unfulfilled. It’s an attitude of gratitude, though, that can make the difference in understanding this little parable. Signs are everywhere. We’re all sent them. Do you see them? Do you pay attention and at least allow your body to feel their message? Like the ensuing high that comes from a toke, signs come in many forms and flavors but always can be felt on some level. Take your time to know what you truly want, stay aware, and you’re home free.
Peace.
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too many people are too comfortable with the idea that nothing unusual ever happens, and the universe Will Only Ever Be the way some guy in a lab coat says it is.
