[MD] Welcome to the Jungle

[John Carl]

Welcome to the jungle

We got fun 'n' games

We got everything you want

Honey we know the names

We are the people that can find

Whatever you may need

If you got the money honey

We got your disease



umm yes... where was I? oh yeah,  lonely in the crowded  desert, harsh winds
a-blowin', the heat is on  and only a nerd and my sips for protection.


Maybe I should describe the layout of the place and my orientation to it.  I
don't know what kind of co-ordinate systems you use, but the BMers use the
alphabet and the clock.  A big circle divided by 12 roads and expanding
inner circles from "A" to "J" with The Man  in the middle.


More letters bequeathed as needed, the year I went I believe we got up to
"M".


As I came in on monday night, I drove around looking for the right spot.  I
needed lots of room to unload the trailer, build the floor and then erect
the SIPs.  We were coming in kind of late, which meant that the good spots
(closer to the center) were already taken.  Around 4:30 and J, I found a
nice big wide space with plenty of room - next to the port-a-potties.


Why would there be a wide space around the porta potties?  The smell of
course.  But the smell didn't bother me.  Kinda comforted me, in fact.  I
don't mind the smell of those little plastic cubicles.  Those little plastic
cubicles are my break room about 300 days a year for the previous 25 years.
A homey smell in a strange place reminding me of a  refuge away from the
foreman's (or the crew's for that matter) gaze, place to think, have a
smoke, get out of the sun.


But the smell bothered other people greatly, and thus they all left a wide
accommodating space around  the 60 shacks in two rows of 30, back to back.


Another plus  was Chris and I didn't have to walk far when we needed to use
the crapper.  And another was that every single person in the immediate
vicinity who had to use them a couple times a day had to walk right by us
which  meant my dwelling got a lot of exposure and comment, which was what I
was there for, as well as the fact that from my shaded front porch chair,  I
had a pretty good perusal of my neighbors - more than half of whom were
pretty girls, and more than half of them half naked.  Yeah, it turned out to
be a good spot.  The "J" circle wasn't called "J".  It was called "Jungle".
Welcome to it, indeed.


Welcome to the jungle

We take it day by day

If you want it you can get it

blood is the price you pay

When you are  sexy girl

That's very hard to please

You can taste the bright lights honey,

but they won't come for free


The Iconoclastic TP was designed with the goal to total self-sufficiency -
solar panels, high insulation and composting toilet - so that once acquired,
a man's existence need not take up anymore resource than the square feet of
planet it resides upon and whatever food and water the clever monkey inside
can find.  Not a hard concept to grasp, and you'd think that in our modern
age of intellectual superiority, we'd all get it for ourselves.


I hear a great deal of longing for self-sufficiency - in conversation and
narrative, sopken and written.   A universal longing for freedom from the
tyranny of being chained to a job you hate, a lifestyle you despise and a
world that makes you do things wrong.


I need to recycle my kitchen greywater, but the State of California says I
can't.


I should add another bathroom, since I have four women in the house and only
one, but the county says I can't.


I should quit my job and join an ashram, but my wife says I can't.


No, no, no from all around and everywhere but mostly from inside peoples own
ideas  and that's all.   For the truth is, there's a lot more possibility
than people realize, but their pre-concieved reality that they think they
are stuck with, is actually an ongoing conscious choice they make.  Their
prison is, ultimately, their own creation.


And mine too, I guess.  A troubling state of affairs.


The first night was magic.  Driving in the long entryway with all the
excitement and crowds, the feeling of time and space opening up before us.
The poetry along the road in burma shave regularity but shaped by a
wordsmith that really knew what they were doing... I tried to photo-memorize
it, but most of my shots didn't come out and what I really remember the most
clearly was "Welcome to the Vacant Heart of the Desert"  and that's the
important thing.  Not the images captured with a camera but the images
captured with the heart.


Those words resonated with my own heart and the way the huge flat, white
lake bed beckoned as a canvas for me to write my own reality for a week.


Quality is defined in Experience.


Experience is found in a game with  Reality.


Reality is Real Estate.


Thus Quality is defined in Real Estate.


Quality Real Estate is defined in circle; an expanding one.


so with uplifted hearts, Chris and I faced the gates to this beckoning
wonderland, me with happiness and hope, him with fear and trepidation.