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Money is vile and the sweat of men and whoever has none wanders alive among the dead dollar heads.

At the château spliffing up with govweed is a definite no no. The Kommune insists upon home grown organic dope. Soil nourished, cultivated in sunlight and wind. The active ingredient of THC limited to 100 mgs or there about. To sooth rather than annihilate one’s critical faculties. Smoked in the lottie, it alleviates the boredom and physical pain of manual labour. Calculus refers to it as Halfling’s Leaf or Indian tobacco. No matter, it smells as sweet by any (other) name!

Shortly before i was born, the majority of Europa’s southern states legalised cannabis. Available in edible form, too. With the proviso that the state controlled its supply. To ensure its quality, they argue.

Society’s mores change fast with a money incentive, lolly-pops soon laced with state c.

Govweed: the new opium of the masses. Marx can smoke his heart out.

Wilders’ weed…

… is not quite as innocuous as Martha likes to believe. We always know when she has been on the Kommune c. There is, even allowing for her illness, her exaggeratedly slow gait. And she is liable to break into song. In the early stages of her illness Martha referred to it as ‘The Medicine,’ for it diminished the pain of cramps and dulled the aches in her limbs. Unfortunately its effects gradually wore off.

To coincide with the biannual Season Switch, Koockie will make a chocolate hash soup. The ‘special’ ingredient being an open secret. Good for the nervous system, he says. i concur. Tis my favourite head and hunger fix. A bowlful of bliss. Despite scoffing a bellyful i always end up asking, like Oliver, for more. Ever so politely, that is!

Koockie has this annoying habit of putting acid in the chai without telling anyone. What else would you expect from a drummer with a penchant for swigging entire flasks of Cretan wine to quench his thirst? That is when he isn’t wandering the woods with an eye on locating fungi, destined for either the (frying) pan or (dream) pot.

Hallucinogenic intoxication is all well and good, but i prefer knowing in advance. Calculus refuses to castigate Koockie, holding that perceptual oddity helps to keep us on our toes. Pan predictability being the bane of human existence. It is a good thing, he says, to defamiliarize ourselves; to challenge our minds dulled by habit. Unexpected outcomes are therefore to be welcomed, even when ‘negative’!

i dream of paper… 500 sheet blocks of the loveliest fibrous pulpy stuff imaginable. The only luxury i permit myself to covet.

i speak of paper paper. Not of the paper, monetary slang for money.

Come, chill out… in a smoky solar yurt. Sit yourself down on the Moroccan floor rug with out-sized palm trees. Don’t you just dig those camels?

What’s THAT? i can see you thinking.

We call it the Crucible of Dreams. Once used in the preparation of opium pipes in China. An ancient artefact of vice! The crucible has other (more prosaic) duties; serving as a stand for the boiling of water to make sweet mint tea.

The receptacle is a goat’s horn – shorn accidentally by a neighbour’s tractor.

Shall we first light an incense stick. Citrus? i love it when the burning stick goes pale red at its tip. Incense, blood orange like that of the moon, coiling up into still air. i find the atmosphere’s slightly cloying. Do you mind its sweetness?

Strayleaf i want to impress upon you that this place is SAFE. The yurt secure from surveillance of every imaginable kind. (As imagined by Wally and Calculus.)

This is a Kommune rite that Josef A has outlawed. (Classed an arch vice, which only adds to our enjoyment! Prior to heating the bombs we kindle charcoal in the crucible. Now i am quarter filling the goat’s horn quarter with powder. Place in boiling water and the result is a delectable vapour and an explosion of unadulterated sensual pleasure.

To pick up a piece a paper and scribble down impromptu thoughts. The writing equivalent of a footy kickabout. Freestyle in thought.Ink to paper, a power phenomenon of the mind.

Doled out to boost concentration levels. The reasoning goes as follows. Humans are chemicals, they require chemical aid. An aid i have stubbornly resisted to date. i have a fierce aversion to the classroom and the lessons launched by that sinister chime in F sharp major.

Lessons in what?

Endurance.

Enduring the fuzzy (regularly misfiring) e-holograms. Enduring the tedium.

Sentences come ready made with Bright Start, a free software package heavily favoured by state run pedagogical centres.

Optimum learning conditions to nurture the infant intellect: fibre optic lighting; temperature levels set at a constant 20 °C, and Bright Start running on Microserf Xpreme 16 OS.

… is the genuine article, adorned with concentric dot patterns in earth browns and sand reds: once alien hues in the lands of South Europa. Of course the continent now has a desert of its own, replete with cacti and heat hazes to jelly the air.

Playing the didgeridoo exercises abdominal muscles and purges toxic emotions. Unfortunately the instrument is not as health enhancing for those within earshot of my playing it. According to Manu i am producing rounds of ‘dud air bullets.’ Manu knows of what he speaks. He, unlike me, has mastered the mouth movements. In goes Manu’s spit flecked puff, out comes the instrument’s sweet sonic essence.

Big storm last night. In heavy downpours the roof becomes a gigantic glockenspiel, wet globular notes bouncing off it. Other drops of rain sluice through, in a descanting descent, to strike and slither off the deer hide yurt cladding.

Deer hide…

… stretched taut over a lattice framework of willow; a tough canvas impermeable to water. Allows a yurt’s occupant to sleep dry and undisturbed by puddles of cloud juice forming outside. (Cold wet feet await anyone inattentively exiting their yurt.)

When new holes in the roof appear or old holes widen, the yurts are shifted to a dry(er) spot. This is not a task we lightly undertake. The dismantling of heavy hide and numerous pieces of wood being a most onerous business.

Yurt transhumance

In summer we move the château yurts outside, positioning them in a circle about the solar time yurt. A formation that contrasts with the parallel rows of Western housing. Circular beating rectilinear!

In winter the yurts are moved back inside, their openings aligned with the château’s windows. So much more civilised to be gently awoken by natural light than a graceless alarm clock.

Contrary to what the general public believes, you get no easy ride in the Kingdom of Hippie.

One time i crashed Wild Rover, crawling out from underneath with both my body and dignity somewhat bruised. After having established that i’d broken no bones or sustained any internal injuries, Calculus sent me off to fulfil my assigned duty of the day: milking the goats. Their milk, squirted in a wooden pail, reddened with blood, which might well have been mine. Calculus did not think so, and had me inspect the goats’ teats for seeping sores. Not a comfortable task at the best of (accident free) times. The Kommune allowing the goat’s horns to grow. Burning heads at 1000 Degrees Celsius to prevent horn growth is barbaric.

Calculus realised that in moving to Mount Wilders he could fulfil the same wish that Coleridge had had for his son; to nourish freedom of movement in both a physical and mental sense. At certain altitudes the conventions of a mercantile and digital society cease to apply. There are no walls, no fences. Literally and figuratively.

Calculus was not alone in having this insight.

You can broadly bracket the people moving to the region of Wilders as belonging to the alternative kind. Society drop ups, misfits and idealists, all heading for the hills with hope in their hearts and drugs in their backpacks.

i # diligently wield my hoe (in the lotti).

i sedulously smoke my bongs.

i conscientiously climb and hug our trees (sweet chestnut).

i actively acknowledge (in Martha’s presence) adverbs and adjectives.

i huff and puff away on my didgeridoo.

# i – (ego busting) lower case. Always.