I AM ISBISTER !

== Yes, I have some animus issues.

You got a problem with that?
~
Everyone has seen "Spartacus" I assume. Oh, really ... well, here's the Cliff Notes version in 6:53.

Back already? Good. I have this recurring dream that's a beautiful riff on it that I want to share.

We have won the Revolution. As prophesied by Gil Scott-Heron, the sucker was NOT televised and there will be no highlights at eleven. The Capitol dome is awash in a psychedelic light show and we're rounding the bastards up and herding them down to the Interstate. They're all yowling and terrified and, of course, we're all passing huge spliffs. People are dancing in the streets and wearing Volcanoes on strapped to their heads, and we're all singing chorus after chorus of 'O Freedom' at the top of our lungs. Sounds pretty damn good from people who aren't supposed to have lungs anymore, bouncing down the windswept corridors of semi-beautiful downtown Lansing.

Here and there an assistant principal or a night shift manager is briefly glimpsed running down an alley, eyes wide and mouth agape as a sea of torches swarms after them ... for years they feared that the PTA would light up and descend at the first sign of acquiesence to those drug-crazed hippie perverts ... but in the end it is the Stoners dipping their torches in the hemp oil buckets and going forth to seek Justice.

We've get 'em all, too. Thirty years worth of Cowards and Bigots and Tyrants, the Uncaring and the Hypocrites, the Self-Serving, the Selfish, and the Fools. They're all here. These are the so-called 'public servants' who turned their backs on us, mocked and marginalized us, had us arrested and jailed, sentenced us to lives of pain and struggle and suffering. How many of us have they hunted and jailed? How many have they killed? What kind of god spawned this vermin ...

Isbister is a Quisling, the Iago of the medical cannabis movement in Michigan. A Public Health Department official, he collaborated with NIDA in the 1980 program and attempted to sabotage it by providing substandard federal cannabis that NIDA knew to be "unfit for therapeutic use" to our cancer patients. He was willing to jeopardize their health, their lives, their pain to his false gods, the Administriviators of NIDA who had themselves been chastised from our bordwers and were afraid to return. They simply turned their Quisling ...

In real life, I'm told the bastard dropped dead of a massive heart attack during the life of the program, back in the 1980's. A poolside heart attack, cigar in one hand and a scotch in the other, fitting end for a thoracic surgeon. Probably apocryphal, but too good to pass up telling the story. At least one minister familiar with Isbister and friendly to us interpreted it as Divine Intervention. Who am I to argue with Christians?

But in my dream, we are hunting for him, passing the word that he is to be brought forward. He apparently thinks he's getting the Lasker Prize and staggers to his feet, cigar in one hand, careful not to spill his drunk. "I am Isbister!" he warbles, waving the cigar overhead.

One of his DPH Toadies realizes his Supervisor isn't getting any prize, and hoping for a really strong Performance Review, stumbles to his feet.

"I am Isbister!"

We've always known these jerks to be delusional, and now they prove it. "I am Isbister!" comes a voice from down near the underpass. "I am Isbister" is the cry from the median. The chorus swells. "I am Isbister ... I am Isbister ... "

And we take them all and impale them on the sixteenth poles and snow fences lining Interstate 96 all the way to Detroit, along the same route along which Chuck and Betty Kile pushed their son Curtis in a wheelchair to Lansing during the summer of '79. All the way down to Hart Plaza we impale the pissants, a hundred miles of them on poles with their lives running down their legs ...

I passed this dream on to a young woman coming back to Michigan after college, already an accomplished Grower. She told me she'd be pretty pissed too if she was in the struggle ten times as long as she has.

I sure hope that never happens.


= 10 Jan 09

BASKETBALL KNEES (REDUX)

=

Where am I to go,
Now that I've gone too far
Soon you will come to know
When the bullet hits the bone
- Golden Earring - Twiliter Zone

Let me tell you a little about living on my knees, just so you know. I work well into the evening ~ I'm bi-coastal (North and West), remember? ~ and have no trouble sleeping, per se. Buyt when you sleep your circulation isn't what it is when you're active, and your joints aren't getting their lube either. Mine start to hurt after a couple hours - I can sit up. pop .2gr into bowl and be okay, but I've interrupted my sleep. Louis d'Labrador sleeps at bottom of bed. There's been a Labbie down there for near three decades and having a big black foot-warmer is one of my life's creature comforts, but sometimes he really snuggles and its a real challenge hard to roll over or change my leg position adequately. So I'm up early ~ 4:30 seems to be the witching hour here.

Sitting up isn't easy - it hurts. So does maneuvering out of bed, which is not unlike Nick Nolte's unfolding in "North Dallas Forty." That hurts a lot, and so does hobbling to the bathroom and down the stairs where I put on my carbon-filament knee braces. Takes about ten minutes to slip on sleeves and adjust velcro straps (six per leg) properly. These things keep my joints aligned, stop my legs from rotating out and gravity from eroding my ruined joints any faster. They're a necessary part of my life, and with them I'm off to the races. I'll wear them until I'm ready to sack out tonight. I'll wear them, or artificial knees, for the rest of my life.

Helps if you love the sound of Velcro in the morning.

Early hours aren't bad. Get a couple tenths (gram, not Oz) into me as prophylactic to Pain and get to work for hours, now even before going to therapy or the gym around sunrise. I have to devote an early morning hour three times a week for each, former with therapist and latter with trainer; just use a trainer in California, the Minnie-Soter Seabee. I have a long way to go and they all work me pretty good, which is what I want.

I can deal with the day. I work, and I do most of the shopping and errands ~ I used to cook and want to again, but for the moment I can't stand in place to work at stove or counter, so that's gone, so I frequently walk to the Avenue for my evening meal at either a Thai or Italian joint on the block. But my gait is stiff and awkward, stiff-legged. I wear warmup pants to allow me to get at my braces during the day. I sling a bag slung over my shoulder and carry a cane, a substantial 19th century light chestnut with metal tip ~ used to sail the Sheepshead Bay on a three-master with Old Joe Ford, and it is just a dandy Social Distance Arbitrator for crowded sidewalks and errant bicyclists.

I was told I wouldn't know when I was wearing the braces. That isn't quite true - I always have pain, and when I'm wearing the braces I'm always aware that they're on me, but you develop an ability to pretty much forget about both Pain and the braces. What I really notice is taking them off. That's when I'm weak, wobbly, and bounce off things, and when Pain comes back.

When the day is long, my knees tell me what they think of what I've been doing. Sometimes they're fairly laid back and there's not much beyond the normal 24/7 background noise. They're pretty good in California, where I have no stairs to contend with; here they're fuckin killing me. Again. Can't eat when I hurt all the time (can you?) and I'm down about 30# this year.

Hadn't been back in MIchigan twenty-four hours and knees already felt like exploding. Climbing the thirteen steps up to bedroom & office is like climbing Everest = one laborious, painful riser at a time. Yes, I'm crawling again; coming down on my ass, too, also one step at a time. Can't even eat. Am right back where I was four months ago and know I'm in for a rough winter. This is really Not Good.
~
Had a long huddle with Surgeon.

He's okay on the cannabis recommendation, will write it as soon as his Clinic clears its administrivia & muddifications ~ he's University affiliated, you know. Had been sweating that out, but indication now is that his sports med clinic is going to buy in and make referrals. Have always been transparent with him and all he ever wanted to know is "Does it work?" He much prefers cannabis to my other choices of pain medications, all of which are quite capable of killing me and for which he's written the Rx. Gave him a M3A button. He gave me some hip x-rays and another pair of surgeries to look forward to, somewhere down the pike.
~
There was a basketball on the sleeping platform this afternoon. I haven't touched one in years ... not months, literally haven't as much as touched one. Can't even remember the last time, much less when I put up a shot ... just haven't wanted to remind myself of what I was missing.

I hesitated to move it, knowing what it would feel like, and how I would feel.

Tucked it under my arm and struggled to my feet, moving quickly across hall into my office. Settled into my work chair [oak swivel w/ rocker seat, a bloody great chair] and just held ball above my lap, fingertips cradling it ever so softly staring at its pebbling as if we I were exploring a lover's skin and crying like a baby. Just fuckin broke down and if you can't understand that, then you never really loved a Sport or an Art, never had a working relationship with a Tool like I had with a basketball.

The feel is just so familiar, even after years. I cradle its 29" diameter, gently heft its 20 ounces ... this one is rubberized, a college souvenir ball and not the grand old leather jobs, not one of the Grandfathers ... Yes I remember laces on the ball, but forget it, that's vestigial memory (never played with one, so leave me outta that one) ~ I'm a product of the Modern Game. My heroes were Cousy & Russell, Wilt & the Pearl. I've seen em All, and learned from the Best. Pete Newell died not long ago, and like any Old School post I learned my inside footwork from his manuals, the dropsteps and hip pins and when & where to go and how to hold my hands and what to do with my off arm {this, not often in the manuals ... ;}. I've forgotten more about basketball than a lot of these Norts Spew guys are ever gonna learn.

And I know I'm never going to play again. Hell, I'm not likely to ever step on a court again, after how many thousands of games and practices and empty gyms. Its not something that gnaws on me, but there are times I long to go find an empty court and put up a few shots just for the feel of it, to lose myself in it again if only for a few minutes ... to be Perfectly Here, Perfectly Now, feeling the last soft touch of the ball's surface sitting on just two fingertips like a butterfly, then leaving on its way to the net, the sound of it settling through and falling to the court ... there are times than there is nothing more in the world I'd rather do, and its a very real sense of Loss I'm feeling.

I know, what difference does it make to an Old Fart ... yeah, well, lissen up Chump, you wanna step out here with this Old Fart, I'll still give you choices of how you wanna go down. Wanna just let me square you up and bury you with a painless rain of 3-balls? Or you prefer bruises with your beating and wanna do downtown, let me work you over for a while, show you what can be done with that off-arm ~ bet I can do my Mikan drills right over your top, and I don't care how tall you are or how many legs I got, you ain't got Enough of Nuthin to do much about it.

Well, at least that part of me ain't goin' anywhere.


= 8 Jan 09

FILLING PANDORA'S BOX

= The Lawyers, Guns & Money have started to arrive ...

Have they ever!

Michigan's new potlaw has an Administrative Rules process regarding how the Patient Registration & Identification are to be handled, and they tried to blow it by the Public Comment Period ~ notice buried on a Friday, hearing set for first day of business in obscure bureaucratic nook southwest of Lansing. We're digging out of a snowstorm, didn't pout out any sort of Call on the hearing, just made sure we had Our Peeps lined up to spend a morning taking these proposals down and apart, and generally letting folks know we haven't spent the last thirty years sitting on the couch wrapped around a bong watching Nickleodeon reruns (the way my Lifelong Alcoholic (now Demented) Father watches The Simpsons? That's another story ... ).

We have been filling Pandora's Box, we have, haven't we?

The Unveiling began today.


= 4 Jan 09

BUSTED

= No, not me ...

But tell you what, Sport ... if you've been around the block more than once, sit down and count how many times you've been 'this close' to being busted. You're gonna be surprised.

~

I did just that not long ago ... sat down swappin stories with another Olde Head, but new to the ways of the Cannabinista. Thought I had a couple or three scrapes to retell, but by time the Review was in, number had risen to ten. Ten! Ten times to the brink ... and back again ?!

O man, somebody is watchin' over me.

Let me count the ways ~

(this is an incremental recreation ~ don't expect everything at once)

1. Observing but not Seeing (c.1967)

Straight outta high school and into pot, this was first cannabis-related brush with The Law, of which Sherlock Holmes has a salient observation.

There must have been a dozen of us Idiots hanging out one evening at Timmy D's downtown apartment. A year or two out of high school, we weren't doing anything other than talk & laugh & maybe pass a couple or three joints around. We smoked 'joints' then, Bongheads, and Timmy was one of those who kept a Roach Jar on the book shelf ~twas a quart Mason jar pretty near full of pretty good-sized nubs, quite a hedge in those days against Times of No Pot. In the refrigerator was another quart jar of an LSD solution ~ Timmy was going to spend the weekend making blotter acid, as I dimly recall.

Comes the Knock and we're 'inviting' an older plainclothes city cop who had been riding Timmy for whatever reason to join us and give him some more shit ... damn. Must have been too many of us, too much coming & going for him to just line us all up against the wall and do the routines, inevitably leading the lot of us to go Downtown overnight ~ he just yammered at us about how he was keeping his eyes open, watching us, then left. The whole time I'm staring at him, trying hard to not see the Roach Jar on the shelf at Cop's guy's left ear for fear I'd bust out laughing and get us all sent downtown.

"You see, but you do not observe," Holmes chided Watson. You'd think a Cop would know how to pay attention, eh?

All I can say is ... phew!

*

2. Paddy Wagon (c.1968)

Although not resulting in a drug bust, and ultimately resolving in favor of Truth & Justice, such as they were, if not the 'Merikan Way, this one was a MoFo Miracle and subsequently became something of a Yokel Legend. Could have been a really, really bad scene ...

Confirmed a lot of suspicions, too.

3. FBI !? (c.1968)

Only thing that saved me here was that I was more trouble than it seemed ... fellow had No Idea what he was taking a Pass on. This one would have been an FBI Water-Cooler Legend, too. College, 60's, get the picture? Lived in 4-unit building adjacent large campus ~ Filbert downstairs was son of a career CIA "population relocation" specialist who seems to have specialized in negating democratic elections (Greece, Vietnam, etc), was in Laos, where he died ... Filbert's enterprising younger brother, who was In Country with rest of family, had presence of mind to stuff an easy chair with a bale of this sinful, almost black Laotian pressed bricks. Pops was coming back Air America sans Customs, you see.

So we were awash in the season's best herb, by far.

4. Bicentennial Revolutionary Road Tour (1976)

Where were you on the Bicentennial 4th of July ? Lemme guess ~ out in your brother-in-law's backyard eating burnt burgers, swilling horsepiss beer in anticipation of fireworks at the park. I was in a city park too ... in heart of West Philadelphia ghetto amongst Black Panthers, AIMsters, Puerto Rican Nationalist and only the FBI knows how many other counter-colonials banded together in the biggest downpour I'd seen in years. I was with Bernie the Attorney and 'Cowboy' the Saginaw Potato Farmer on our way to NYC and the Tall Ships ... Hunter Thompson, the jerk, had nothing on this, and I don't care how good your fireworks were ~ this was a pretty damn good road trip, eh?

Required getting cut a break by a Michigan Trooper or never would have got out of the blocks ...

The Professor - who was then 'just'the Postal Worker, for those of you who like American Sucfcess Stories - dropped Bernie & me off on I-96 and had barely pulled away when the second car stopped. It was Cowboy, not long out of high school. July is not silly season on the potato plantations, apparently, and Pops had kicked the Cowboy out of the house for the weekend, insisting he go somewhere and do something besides tend to his taters. He had no idea where he was going and we didn't much care, so it was off to the East together in search of ... whatever.

All we needed was a couple munchkins, and damned if we didn't come up with a set not far down the road ...


5. Green Cross Delivery (1977)

This one would have been interesting. It was a Green Cross delivery going north, and I had a Kroger shopping bag about half full of cannabis donated for delivery to medical users. Turned right on red, legally. Community College cop switched lanes and came after me, which was strange given he was nowhere near his campus. Dumbass was writing me up for illegal turn, telling me there was a sign prohibiting same (nope ~ this was a Home Town thing and while there was such a sign, it had come down earlier in year). Tried to tell him he was mistaken and that was a mistake, so I shut up and sat still while he went back to squad car to write me my souvenir. Was irritating to know I'd have to go to court to prove this Fool wrong but made sure bag was closed and just sat still. Arrives Galahad in form of a City squad car. "What's the problem?" he asks me. (?!) "College boy thinks you can't turn right on red back there. Says there''s a sign." There's no such thing as Class in America, of course, but I'll take my chaces on it. "I'll take care of this."

College Coplet disappears in a blast of hot air and I am on my way, mentally kicking myself.

Never again ! = Put the Goods in a Container in the Trunk ~ think 'box in a box in a box ...'

*

6.

7. Why I Hate Airports (198x)

Coming back from a NORML Convention in DC, I was, sharply dressed & all fired up, even wearing a pretty high-quality goldleaf pin in my lapel. Sat on plane next to a Service Wife going home from husband's deployment. Three kids, the eldest a toddler ~ I didn't envy this woman.
So I schmoozed with her, and when we deplaned in Cleveburg I carried her bag and one of the kids down the ramp. There at the bottom were a table of LaRouchies and an old uniformed cop rocking on his heels at their side. One of the LaRouchies, a woman who looked a little better than a scarecrow, zeroed in on my lapel pin and rose fro the table, moving toward me like a shark toward its bleeding prey.

I instantly moved quickly toward the cop. Ukranian, by the name on his plate, he was a typical Cleveland ethnic ~ at heart a gentleman, of course - Pops probably belted it into hum by age 6]. It was No Contest ~ I had barely to open my mouth and he slid to intercede himself between me and the onrushing LaRouchie. He literally took my arm and motioned the Harpie away as he escorted me, still holding Service Wife's child. She was moving right along with us, toddler in tow and babe in arms, probably wondering where the police escort came from.

I was tickled pink to get thru Cleveburg without these idiots glomming into me ~ no telling where that could have led, and right under that lapel pin I was packing a tight little load of some of the first really prime, fresh NoCal 'sensimilla' I had ever seen. Got off the plane in Detroit, slid thru the terminal, jacked around a corner near the entrance smack into the rear end of a pair of drug-sniffing German Shepherds.

Executed a perfect 180 and walked right back where I came from, fast and found my way out of the terminal in the middle of a crowd, just going with the flow.

Fuckin airports ... and this was long before 9-11. Not long after I did some work with PATCO (remember them?) and got inside the Tower at Detroit Metro. I ain't been near an airplane ever again, much less fo near one with anything that would get me busted.

*

8.

9.

10. Beware of Pizza Huts (2008)

You know about cops & Pizza Huts, right? Rolled thru a country berg at 40 in a 25 smack at the dinner bell, got whooped over in front of ... Knew the sucker was gonna write me up soon as he stepped out of the car. A tad over 5', maybe, and no man that short ever cut me an even break. I didn't mind getting written up - relatively speaking - but I had a problem ~ there was a cooler in the back seat, and in the bottom of the cooler was a well-sealed package of high-grade Meds. No problem with them, but Smokestack el Ropo must have goat-roped my brain because sitting at the top of the cooler was an unsealed pack of NoCal goodies I had picked up for recreational purposes. Russell's Finest ~ think it was four 8's, a Kush Sampler for The Professor. it was. Cop opens the cooler and its like walking into a Grow ... what in the fuck could I tell him it is [anyone got a good answer for that?]? Damn !

He was hungry I guess and I rolled on my way with a $60 Lesson Learned.

Never again ! = Use packaging meant for the task and stow gear properly.

*

~ ~ ~

Okay, everybody ~ I'll hum a few bars and y'all can sing along with me ... I have a real no-shit bud of 99 Headband ~ the mothership here, folks, nothing downstream ~ don't see these things laying around every day when wholesale is upwards of $5000# so I figure the Smoke i'm gonna blow to the skies to close this list is Appropriate Offering. gitchi gitchi megwich ...

All the Federales say
They could have had him any day.
They only let him hang around
Out of kindness I suppose

Townes Van Zandt

JOURNEYS

=| The Estonian Roadwraith ...

She just popped up last spring. I was gassing up on the PCH just south of the Pepperdine campus in Malibu after a shopping trip to Green Angel, thinking the $4.50/gallon I was paying was a personal record.

Standing not 15' from where I'm feeding the car is a young woman with a backpack bigger then she is. It's a bad stretch to catch a ride = narrow, hard to stop ...

"Where you heading?"

"Alaska!"

She had me. Motioned her to come stow her gear in the back of the Benz and I'd get her up into Ventura County. I figured her for a college student taking off for The Trip she'll tell her grand-kids about.

"Where you coming from?"

"Estonia."

She wasn't kidding.

Threw the pack on the back seat and as we tooled north she unfolded a world map with her path marked ... east from the Baltics across the old Soviet Union, south across the Gobi and the mountains of western China, across the Korean peninsula, a north-south traverse of Japan, and finally a flight from Tokyo to LA ... good lord, this woman is a friggin' Trooper !

--

She was genuinely surprised that I not only had heard of Estonia, I knew where it was and something of its history. Not twenty-four hours in the country and she thinks we're all dumbasses ... the road is just starting its first serious stretch of Beautiful north of LA and she's awe-struck. Wants to know about Indians ... "Do they all live in tipis?" I kid you not ... I understand this, it is vestige of a social movement stemming from bad fiction she's drawing from, somewhat akin to Trekkie phenomenon (they're everywhere, like Deadheads), not uncommon among euros.

"No, they live just like us. Except they're Indians." Someday she'll understand what she heard.

Took her home where she met met Pinay, African, & Hungarian women ~all of them accomplished, worldly people who could hardly believe what this Traveler was doing (me too, frankly ~ ). She swam in a heated pool, took long hot shower, slept in real bed ~ 'felt like a princess.' Flew in last night from Tokyo, ended up at a Buddhist monastery, and I snagged her soon as she got set up on the PCH. Next day we went up the road a piece and she met the Chumash Ethnobotanist. Welcome to America.

Two people more physically different would be hard to imagine. He's dark-skinned, thick, she's light as day, ethereal. They sat a few feet apart in a darkened room with Rottweilers and small children moving about, telling each of their childhoods a world apart. Carina's family saga is of Stalin and the Gulags. Her entire family was shipped off, and it took years to make their way back, moving among forest communities in the Coldlands ... only her grand-mother made it back.

Ethnobotanist and his brother were among the last wave to be passed through the meatgrinder of the assimilationist boarding school, their hair cut and language washed from their mouths. This after years of foster homes brought on by their presence at the end of the Alcatraz Occupation. Parallel colonialization experiences ~ Gulags or Boarding Schools, purpose was the same. They understood each other perfectly, didn't have to say anything more. I sat silently on the floor between the Rotts, listening, watching ... on the wall behind me were swordfish blades, symbolizing the Ethnobotanist's familials. I could see the arc of both these lives quite clearly, and I knew I was in a gitchi powerful place.

I gave her over to these Chumash and she headed north through the fires to Alaska and beyond.

You gotta see where she is ~ and where she's been ~ for yourself ...

By Believing
in his dreams
a man burns them
into reality.

- Herge

=