After Work


The shack and a few trees
float in the blowing fog

I pull out your blouse,
warm my cold hands
on your breasts.
you laugh and shudder
peeling garlic by the
hot iron stove.
bring in the axe, the rake,
the wood


we'll lean on the wall
against each other
stew simmering on the fire
as it grows dark
drinking wine.

-Gary Snyder



Gary Snyder longs to get home to his wife. He needs to feel her skin on his and taste the sweet tang of the wine they share, along with their unrequitted love. He's working, working but not having his whole mind in it. Gary is day dreaming and is in nostalgia, hoping that when he gets home, all will be well. He is invisioning his happy wife 'laugh and shudder, peeling garlic by the hot iron stove" and this makes him hungry. His wife's cooking is such a good ending to the day. Even being with her is better than the work he has to get through to be home.

"And who am I?"


"I dunno, maybe you're Goat."

"Goat?"

"Maybe you're Mudface."

"Who's Mudface?"

"Mudface is the mud in your goatface. What would you say if someone was asked the question 'Does a dog have a Buddha nature?' and said 'Woof!'"

-The Dharma Bums

Every where you go, you leave a part of you. and you take a part of that place with you. The light shows where you've been, or maybe where you're heading. The path you're walking down. or walking back from.

Notes 2 & 3.

I've decided nostalgia is my topic. Simply because 'remembrance' was too hard to fulfill. A YouTube video that matches my topic is The Tree of Life-You Spoke To Me. click on the link to watch.

This video has such a beautiful, nostalgic feeling to it that you can't help but smile and be at peace. It shows a connection between both husband and wife, as it does to parents and their soon-to-be-born child. The parents reflect back to the days when their little boy was in the making; it was easier then. Unborn children fend for themselves in the warm, womb they call home. Once out in the real world, babies are prey to predators that the parents and guardians must protect them from. The choice of camera angles and sweet sounds incorporated into this scene is nostalgic in a way that you almost can't wait to experience this on your own, yearning to hold this feeling in your own heart.

The second artifact I decided to use was a song by Iron & wine:


"Give this stone to my brother

Cuz we found it playing in the barnyard

Many years ago

Give this bone to my father
He'll remember hunting in the hills
When I was 10 years old

May my love reach you all
I lost it in myself and buried it too long
Now that I come to fall
Please say it's not too late
Now that I'm dead and gone

Give this string to my mother
It pulled the baby teeth she keeps inside the drawer
Give this ring to my lover
I was scared and stupid not to ask
For her hand long before

May my love reach you all
I lost it in myself and buried it too long
Now that I come to fall
Please say it's not too late
Now that I'm dead and gone"


Each different verse makes separate people look back on their lives. This dying man makes sure that these people will remember old memories and he dies. Though death is near "please don't say it's too late now that I'm dead and gone." It gives a peaceful feeling to death saying that you don't have to say goodbye, you can live again in someones thoughts.

The Electric Kool-Aid Acid test and graduation.

Mountain Girl returns home because she's pregnant, probably with Kesey's child, and another member has neautological problems from his intense drug use. Kesey spends the night in a graveyard and comes up with the idea for the acid test. The test will be about energy and even though it doesn't reach out to the whole world, it has a good start. The begin advertising their acid test at a rolling stones concert. Kesey talks to the man from before who is in the Grateful Dead and the band agrees to play at this acid test party the pranksters are throwing. They throw it on a beach, after changing locations once, and reveal their new toy, STROBE LIGHTS. Everyone has taken LSD including Owlsey, the man in the band, whom no body has every seen trip. Owlsey has one of the most remembered, bad trips nad will be talked about for years to come. Kesey puts on the biggest acid test ever at a stadium but of course, the cops shut it down. The police try to arrest all of the pranksters but their attorneys bail them out. Kesey gets three years porbation and a little service work but he is off the radar. When someone calls the cops on the group for being rowdy they come into Kesey's home and find that he had merijuana in his possesion and this begins most of Kesy's legal troubles all over again. He is not supposed to go to the Trips Festival they've been planning and he is not supposed to hang out with the Merry Pranksters anymore but of course, he can't bail on this. The Festival lasts three days and begins to be a weekly thing. Wolfe says 'the Haight-Ashbury era began that weekend'.
Kesey is forced to move and has a warrant out for his arrest so he moves in with Babb's to his home. The Pranksters help fake his suicide while they smuggle him into mexico where he'll become an outlaw.

I'm not going to spoil the ending of the book, and a lot of things happen, but if this interests you at all, I highly reccommend reading it! Just be sure you have no distractions because it's a bit hard to follow.

Hell's Angels and the frozen jug band

The group decided to invite the Hell's angels, A well known gang, to party with them in La Honda. They plan a big party at Kesey's place and all the 'Angels' show up on their defening, loud harleys. The pranksters has the trees all ready and painted with day glo with speakers booming from the trees. Hell's Angels didn't know what to expect or how to react but once the Pranksters gave them LSD everyone had a good time. The cops are watching but as of now, they aren't breaking any rules besides for public nudity so the cops stay at a distance. The cops still don't break up the party even after two days, and a gang rape. Members of a church had become curious with what the Pranksters were up to so they invited the group to join them during a serman. Kesey is getting caught up in the fact that he can easily manipulate people and the power is all going to his head. He starts to turn the young people of the church againt the older priests and such and with this Kesey realizes he can control more people than who's just in the Merry Pranksters. Kesey is overwhelmed with this new found power and while having a bad trip, believes he can control anything, including cars rushing past him.

The Pranksters hear word that the Beatles are coming to play in San Francisco. Kesey gets 30 tickets to the sold out show from his acid dealer so they are set and ready to go. They all trip acid and play popular Beatles songs as they're on their way to the concerts in costumes and everything.On the way while tripping on acid, they all begin to experience a 'transcendental experience'. Wolfe describes it as: "no one even has to look at another because they not only know that everyone else is seeing it at once, they feel, they feel it flowing through one brain, Atman and Brahman, all one on the bus and all one with the writhing mass sun reflector ripple sun bomb prisms." Wolfe describes this feeling of complete intersubjectivity and transcendence as "CLOUD," when they could "draw the whole universe into...the movie." The venue is an old cattle herding/ slaughter house converted into a place for a concert and their trip starts going terribly bad. Mountain Girl says it looks like a concentration camp and they all soon feel lost in the crowd of people. When the show is over they all feel as though they're getting trampled and someone spred false word about the Beatles coming to La honda. On the way home they try and find their 'Cloud' of a trip but everyone is still too down and all they care about is getting home. Once the get there they are welcomed by a crowd of hundreds of people and Kesey storms into the house. One of the guys in the crowd, however, catches Kesey's eye and Wolfe starts to give background information. This man was the biggest acid dealer in the states and was well known for his quality of drugs. He and his friend had started the band Grateful Dead and began the wave of acid rock. The Beatles 'come up with' the idea for the Magical Mystery Tour where they all dress up and take acid on a bus but of course, thie was the Merry Pranksters idea first.
Kesey gets asked to be a keyspeaker for a rally against the war but instead of speaking, they decide to do a prank. Instead of protesting they decide to play music which confuses the crowd but they eventually die down. Someone throws teargas into the group of people and everyone dispurses.

We Are Hunted.

(I found this in my drafts section and realized I never published it. I'll keep it short)
We are hunted is a music site that has a sense of an underground, hole-in-the-wall kind of feel which everyone thrives on. Using the word 'underground' very loosely meaning they have artists whom are not huge, lady gaga or chris brown kind of famous. More like just below the surface. A few of the people on the site are famous, but still fit in with underground crowd. If you're looking for new music, I reccomend it.