California Multilogue Four "Good Herbs"

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-JA

At the Village Fall Fest one can get one's face painted any way one wants so naturally I went. Along the way I'm recruited to join CHIPS and to be a sheriff's deputy plus a campaigner for Fans of the Earth. At the Chamber of Commerce tent I tell them I'm too busy with all these new responsibilities to take on anything else. No one leaves the Chamber of Commerce the guy with the broken oval facial hair says. P did, I say. Wasn't worth the fifteen bucks a month she told me. We fight about this, break a few chairs, spill over into the booth with the locally sourced honeys until the six year old karate masters kick their way in to break things up and now I'm sticky not to mention all the meetings and orientation sessions ahead and there goes my whole week.

Why'd you go in the first place? It was hot out but I needed a walk anyway, I say to the lady at Safeway. I want to know why there are no baskets in the store, only big bulky carts that make me feel like I'm driving a station wagon through the spice aisle. Baskets encourage single people and pedestrians, she says with bland confidence. She trained for months on how to recite that line. Outside there's no safe way (yep) across the parking lot so I hitch a ride from a guy in a white Camaro to the other side, by the bank. Thanks brother. Friends for life now.

Al and me on a windy road. He points up into the straw-yellow hills. Invisible houses of the rich and paranoid, he explains. All this dry grass everywhere it's like the place wants to be on fire. Built up latent energy waiting for a spark, how the Ancients thought the elements work. Bike symbols painted on the road like someone's idea of a sick prank. They call them grapes here, he says. I don't know why. Because they squash on the road like grapes I'm pretty sure.

Stop sign with a camera pointed at the road. Down to one lane on a blind curve. Normally there'd be a guy out here on this end with a walkie talkie talking to someone on the other end with a walkie talkie. Ok we're clear, etc. Instead it's a camera and the honor system. How many impatient drivers give up and lurch out into the road to find a caravan coming at them? And what's the fruit-themed word for them?

Feels like another country out here sometimes. In Chicago there's talk of war or something like it. When I was there a few weeks ago someone was saying you know they're gonna set up camps here, start pulling everyone with a MOM tattoo off the street, it's coming, man, and you better be ready. He sounded excited about it. Like it's an action movie he's been looking forward to all year. Where will we hide the Mexicans, someone says. Thing is Chicago is really really big. Not enough ICE or reluctant Guardsmen to patrol the whole place, only enough to make a big show of some ugly arrests to make sure they go viral. Inflection and pressure. Protesters baited into defending themselves.

I don't know if it gets worse. Of course it can but will it? Seems like there are plenty of controlling interests whose bottom line prefers some level of consumer stability, even if the end game is to turn most of us into serfs. They're at least halfway there already. All optics and manipulation of markets. Amalgamation of capital. To keep the middle class desperate and poor, to keep the liberals on edge, it's all part of their game and I don't want to play their fucking game but here I am looking down the barrel at jobs that make me feel like a traitor to the planet just so I can survive a few more months. It's a long reach from that other country to this one.

Hear that? Yeah. Might be an earthquake. I thought it was a door slamming shut. That's what they sound like sometimes. How do you know if it's an earthquake or a ghost? Different methods, different scales.