Down and Out in Mendocino

Below is The California Bear Story, extracted from Down and Out in Mendocino.

Clean version…from free (through 7/12/20) ebook

​“Wake up Rolland. It’s time to get up and go to work. You have to work now, bro. You think you’re all rebellious and political and shoot, when you’re just a slave to the American dream just like everybody else. You might as well be fricking selling insurance online at this point to save up to get a house with a white picket fence all tapped into the grid in Fort Bragg. Look at me talking about picket fences. I can’t believe this shoot! I can’t believe what that fricking bear did to me! What it did to us! Look what it did to us man! You might as well sell insurance now Rolland. And what should I do? What am I going to do?”
​
“Fricking bear.” Rolland coughed up in agreement.

And then Potter continued his normal routine AM rabble rousing, cursing like an incarcerated war veteran about work, what he termed the whole American way thing, the oil wars, the drug war and the popularity of sugar -a result of the slave trade, promotion of the flawed global political system and Rolland’s overall attitude about life all in the two minutes it took for Rolland to become coherent, all while sloshing around in a hand towel and his flip flops, and tossing toilet paper about a soupy mess in apparent attempts to clean.

Potter was a homeless marijuana broker by trade, a middleman for various friends and friends of friends. And he was a pure Bohemian, the type Thoreau would be proud of. He believed that the majority of the world were spoiled bourgeois eaters who just wanted to possess things and capitalize on people and place. None of this was out of step with anyone else around, but Potter believed the primary way the infernal maintained their control and kept people concerned about materialism instead of reality, was with electrical power. Electrical powered housing was the root of all the world’s problems as Potter saw it, keeping people boxed up and boxed in. He believed homeowners were simply following unrecognized Neanderthalistic impulses to have well-lit caves whereas more mentally developed people refused such caveman practices to observe the stars.

Potter never left Mendo to conduct business and rarely left Mendo at all, except under extreme duress and for various annual festival pilgrimages. He considered town his own federally recognized homeland. Potter never even once contemplated obtaining a driver’s license, calculating it to be a clear breach of his ethics, but also essentially signing over permission to state to kill you and take your organs if you were simply unconscious in an accident. He walked, biked, hitchhiked and tagged along all across the county with only rare dilemmas and the occasional night spent ditch sleeping.

Potter believed the rest of the world was ‘enslaved by the white devil control grid’ of electrical power and that Mendo was one of the last free places left. Potter imagined some far off remote places, he knew not where, must be like Mendo, enclaves of freedom just far enough away from the hypnotic control of the white devil control grid to be decent, but he knew not where and dared not to seek them out.

He called white sugar, white devil powder, but sniffed up anything of any color intoxicant as if it were not devilish. He himself was near albino with brown hair that somehow reflected a pink tint that was the texture of a Brillo pad. His white devil control grid idea was from taking acid and watching the film The Matrix. Since then, Mendo was Potter’s Zion and he was Neo, in the learning phase, before he could fly, surrounded by unwitting slaves to the matrix.

Potter lived in total disregard for popular establishment and proudly practiced civil disobedience 24/7, primarily through constant intoxication and his refusal to partake in any ‘materialistic quests.’ He refused to rent or own housing and refused to own or wear shoes, becoming a master repairer of flip flops with feet impervious to thistle and cold. He referred to himself as ‘a master outdoorsmen’ compared to what others called him, ‘the barefoot vagrant.’ He slept outside or on people’s floors where he believed minimal electrical interference took place.

He constantly compared electricity and world events to the film The Matrix, but only the first one as he noted the others were crap and he declared were obviously written by people who stole the original. To Potter having a home and paying electrical companies for use of cancerous amperage and voltage was akin to surgically inserting wiring up one’s chakras. He introduced himself to newcomers as Maverick and imagined himself a guardian of Mendo, his Zion, a protector from outside evils standing against the agencies of white devils and the control grid of electrical housing.

Rolland was much more interested in the nonfiction story of The Matrix manuscript as opposed to the fictional story itself. The Matrix is science fiction about people battling the architecture of a biological historical criminal discrepancy. But the script, supposedly about the future return of the Christ consciousness and the machines sent to kill him, was rumored to be plagiarism of sorts. Rolland felt there was archetypal value in the plot of the film certainly, but also in the unfolding nonfiction story surrounding the manuscript in real life and its possible exposure of Hollywood corruption around a story about the return of Christ and robots trying to kill him. Potter didn’t pay much attention to all that. He assumed everything, especially Hollywood, was corrupt to the very core, a city surrounded by the electrical industry of entertainment and its lighting, audio and visual machines is bound to result in evil he would propose.

“…And to think I used to stand up in class and pledge allegiance to the California state bear. Frick that. There’s no more church and no more state and no more bears either! I mean I can’t believe anybody even goes to church anymore! Or takes any pride in any flag! But I do feel like praying Rolland to anything. I feel like going to church man. That bear might have made us into white devils Rolland! I might have to get a job. And who knows maybe selling insurance too, with you, the both of us working the biggest scam on Earth!”

Rolland moaned. He was blurry and unstable just like in his dream. The blank void he drank himself into was dissipating. Everything was coming back. Everyone considered Rolland to be a writer. And they imagined he considered himself to be a writer too, but Rolland knew he was a note taker at best. Writers have completed written works after all and authors have published material. Rolland had only shoeboxes full of notes and corkboards of quotes, newspaper articles and erratic ideas for his would be treatise, which without translation and elaboration, wouldn’t make sense to a federal code breaker. Rolland had several outlines, each he had considered and reconsidered, but every time he sat down to write he couldn’t perfect the first sentence or paragraph. And without the perfect first sentence and paragraph he saw no reason to continue.

This compulsion more than slowed his progress, it pretty much prevented him from putting together anything nominally close to a first draft. The closest thing he had to a treatise was a succession of first paragraph attempts. It was not the best way to go about writing and he knew it. But Rolland also knew, or had it in his mind anyway, that the first sentence and first paragraph are the most important words of any book and if they began off track, his vector would bring him to Albuquerque instead of his intended destination. Rolland knew that once he tuned the first sentence and paragraph perfectly, the rest of the first page would flow where it needed to go and then the first chapter would run its course and the second chapter, etcetera. He figured with the perfect first sentence the entire book would practically write itself.

This was his silent tradition ever since he started thinking about writing; until the perfect first sentence and paragraph came to him it was not worth continuing, for otherwise it would just be slop exponential of the first sentence. Writing was like travelling in space, if you are off by just .0001 degree in the beginning you’re lost in the end. Until he plotted the perfect first sentence, the perfect vector, he read, researched, took notes ceaselessly and churned the whole thing over in his head to the point it now regularly haunted his dreams. Even his dreams about Uma, which until then had been preserved by his subconscious as visions rather than dreams, were now harassed and penetrated by the treatise.

Rolland’s interests were as varied as any ne’er do well in the area or writer anywhere. His would-be treatise focused on the crime of politics; all the shady criminality of politics and the politics of crime; the unwritten rules of criminals.

One rejected first sentence read, “The following is about crime, from the crack house to the White House.” The task of growing marijuana had taken up most of his time recently, sporadic notes were all he had time for, and all he seemed to be good at anyway. He had been trying to save up and buy property with some sort of rain proof structure where he could concentrate on dialing in the first paragraph and grow yard weed to feed himself. He figured he could write then, but this took money. And money required weed. And his weed was gone, pretty much. There were a few stalks hanging in Kyle’s living room over his head, of which one-quarter was his, but it was mostly gone.

He had been trying to save up a down payment on land for years, but some said Rolland was a writer with bad luck. Rolland knew differently. He was harassed and made a failure by a power from the beyond, it wasn’t his fault. Rolland was acutely aware that his bad luck was charmed by his nemesis, an ethereal torturer of mortals. Reviewing the week, it was no surprise to him that he totaled his car, blew his chances with one of the few single women around, and lost his all weed in a matter of days. The entity tortured all people, but had been paying particular attention to Rolland for some time. Rolland guessed she dwelled in the redwoods and taunted everyone in the area. The people who called Rolland a writer would simply call her bad luck. Of course Rolland called her by her real name, a name he rarely said aloud and only then in the softest whisper, in fear she would hear him and be reminded to smite him. Her name is Miss Chance. She had foiled his plans repeatedly, instilling him with writer’s block, and most recently turning all the fruits of all his labors into vapors. It was her fault, Rolland knew it. Miss Chance had a dark sense of humor only immortals would enjoy, mortals would refer to her version of agreeable punch lines as baseless torture. Whenever something happened, good or bad, Rolland blamed or thanked Miss Chance, silently.

Rolland thought about his dream which made him want to rework his chapter list. He knew he had to expand on the phenomenon of the rule of the elements and the inebriated. He rubbed his head. Decision making in Mendo was inarguably rooted in sunshine and sobriety, their contrasting abundance or absence from the equation, hence the rule of the elements and the inebriated.

The whole reason Rolland decided to drink last night resulting in his hangover was directly traceable to the cumulative weather patterns the last couple of months, the drought. The drought that drove the bear to look for berries or bark, the bear they cursed every waking hour since the encounter. And as Potter, draped in a damp hand towel, threw wads of toilet paper around the kitchen, Rolland knew that rare weather phenomenon and reaction to narcotics, the rule of the elements and the inebriated, was the only explanation for his behavior too.

The past and the present, briefly blanked with drunken dreams, coalesced. Reality set in. Holding hands with Uma would remain in the nether region. Rolland rose up off the camping mat on Kyle’s living room floor and brushed against the hanging pot. The pot was hanging amid the cluttered room covered with relics from two generations of Mendonesians. The hangover pulsed and Potter was cursing at him as he did to everyone who slept longer than he did, victims of the cumulative effects of amperage as he saw it. Rolland grabbed his pen and scribbled down a reminder to rethink and expand the rule of the elements and the inebriated. He also wrote down the phrase whiffs and shadows, until his dream he had never thought of the expression.

Rolland relentlessly thought about the main theme of the treatise, what he termed the historical criminal discrepancy. He estimated that all political and historical activity contains some measure of it. He himself was born because of it. His father received a life sentence for the murder of a drug dealer. That’s all he knew about that, pretty much. And when you start researching the drug war you realize anybody who has been killed or jailed in it, fell victim to the historical criminal discrepancy.

The story of East of Eden that replayed on TV all night is set in the time period leading up to World War One with several historical criminal discrepancies provoking the scene. The lies perpetrated in the buildup to World War One centered on exaggerating the evil atrocities of one side and euphemizing the measured atrocities of the other. The lies leading up to World War One, the historical criminal discrepancy and the rule of the elements and the inebriated set the tone to the story East of Eden, as they do pretty much every story, as Rolland saw it.

All build up to war contains stark examples of the historical criminal discrepancy and it’s tolerated by more or less everybody when it concerns war. The funny thing, and it’s only funny at all just recently, about the fighting in the muddy, bloody trenches of World War One; people on both sides were fighting for freedom and liberty and believed the other side was evil. Rolland called this constant in war the freedom atrocity rule, each side believes they are good and godly and that the other side is abominable. In one note Rolland labeled World War One the war to incite all lies.

Last night Rolland got wasted, not to stop thinking about the historical criminal discrepancy or the freedom atrocity rule, or Uma, but in order to stop thinking about his failed endeavors in the dope game and the most outrageous act of sabotage he ever experienced from Miss Chance yet. Rolland, Guy and Potter all got wasted to forget about the heavy handed smack down and loss they experienced.

Kyle soberly chauffeured them to a pre-Halloween costume party, without costumes. They had each claimed to be dressed up as one another which was a perfect way to cast insults at each other and everyone for that matter. They spent most of their time at the party retelling the story of their bout with Miss Chance, strictly in military terminology to underscore the atrocity of it all.

“We suffered heavy losses. Pretty much a hundred percent casualty rate, most dead and gone, some mortally wounded, repairable.”

“Strategically we didn’t prepare for it, we were caught off guard.”

“Now I know what PTSD must be like.”

They over-drank, except for Kyle the sober driver. He did so not out of any sense of responsibility or moral obligation, he had none of that. Kyle was on probation and forbidden to drink by the state of California and because the consequences were so great, doubled down over the years, he had to obey this time. His last brush with trouble was a drunken battle with two Fort Braggers resulting in his arrest and being forced to plea to one thing or another just to breathe fresh air.

Everyone in Mendo has some eccentric hobby or strange collection. Kyle’s hobbies included verbal harassment, physical confrontation and adorning himself with offensive tattoos. He collected Mendocino memorabilia of all sorts, mostly consisting of coffee cups, trinkets and tee shirts. His Mendocino movie collection was his pride and joy and had been accumulated since he first saw East of Eden. He also collected guns, gold, cash too. Most of which he buried, admittedly losing track of one stash, informing his few friends of where he thought it was, in case something happened to him and somebody were desperate and energetic. Kyle was embittered from losing his buried stash, from being on probation and just about everything. Everything made him pissed, except for maybe his Mendo memorabilia and his cherished Mendo movie collection.

Reality hit Rolland, as reality tends to do the morning after drinking. He reviewed last week as he came to terms with his hangover, which led to drinking last night and waking up on Kyle’s living room floor again. He thought about everything that happened to him and how the whole thing could be traced back to an instance of the historical criminal discrepancy and the rule of the elements and the inebriated, all orchestrated by Miss Chance, the puppet master.

Rolland, Potter, Kyle and Guy had been growing pot together since high school, for over ten years, and almost a week ago they reached the culmination of their combined experience and efforts of another season of clandestine manual labor; the harvest. Potter contributed the least man hours into the whole operation, as was typical as far as his contribution to anything went. He of course promised to be thoroughly involved in cleaning and selling it, when the gamble was over. A gamble they had lost before.

To be specific, the four of them had been trying to grow pot together since they were in high school. They had years of experience and had learned exactly what to do, mostly through doing things the wrong way and realizing so. They learned the hard way, through annual failures over a decade of guerilla growing. Truthfully they never pulled more than a few pounds of swag that they had to sit on until there was a drought so as to be able to sell it, pretty much.

This year though, last week, they actually harvested successfully. They pulled thirty contractor bags out of the woods, three pickup loads. This year they finally had done it. They found water and sun, they dodged cops and robbers and made it home safe and sound. They actually had time to even joke about their good fortune and look at it all drying, before it all went to shoot.

Edited version extracted from the Free Ebook, through 7/14/20