Crack the code, solve the crime

"I'm lying on the floor of my room in a great deal of pain and a pool of blood. I was trying to chase down a wood tick. Being shot is not as bad as I thought it might be," begins FBI Agent Dale Cooper.

Cooper exhibits second tier tendencies in all his interactions as he attempts to solve the mystery of Laura Palmer's murder in Twin Peaks. E was pontificating about this point last night, while we ate our slices of Cosmic Karma and sipped our Kashmir Ale. I think he's right.

First of all, though Agent Cooper is very bright and must deal with the towns-people and the local law enforcement agents, people who are all at various levels of development, he never condescends to anyone. He meets them where they are. He's a keen observer. He doesn't exaggerate facts. He analyzes his dreams with care, as if they are offering a mysterious code which, if cracked, will help him solve the crime. He rejoices in simple things, a cup of black coffee. A piece of blueberry pie.

As Cooper discovers, hidden beneath the peaceful veneer of Twin Peaks runs a poison thread of violence and degenerate moral enterprise that connects the entire community. The murderer, Bob, is not a person, but an owl, a breeze, a shape-shifting force whose actions cause untold suffering, and maintain the illusion of separation from the Ground of Being. Bob is Samsara.

Consider "Coop's" spontaneous litany of desire, while lying on his hotel room floor after having been shot at close range -- an experience he describes as similar to having three nine-pound bowling balls dropped on your chest from a height of twenty feet. Waiting for help to arrive, and hoping that his electronic recording device is set for voice-activation (it is), he calmly addresses Diane, back at his home office.

"I would like, in general, to treat people with much more care and respect.
I would like to climb a tall hill, not too tall, and sit in the cool grass, not too cool, and feel the sun on my face.
I wish I had cracked the Lindberg kidnapping case.
I would like very much to make love to a beautiful woman I have genuine affection for.
And of course, it goes without saying that I would like to visit Tibet.
I wish the Dalai Lama could return, I wish they could get their country back.
All in all, a very interesting experience."

Plus, it's a hell of a way to kill a wood tick.

Earthship disaster

Here's where I peer clearly into the not-so-distant past at the earthship disaster. E and I walked onto the scene like Bambi v. Godzilla. We were Bambi. However, there is no bad guy here, although I used to think so. No Godzilla, just a pathetically dysfunctional situation involving a retro-romantic vision of sustainable living, and a couple of libertarian yahoos. That would be us.

To begin with, E and I committed sin numero uno: we made assumptions. I know! Looking back, having recently removed my retro-romantic lenses, it's easy to see where and when things began to go awry. But at that time, I was so psyched to leap into a new living situation that seemed to provide a lot of solutions to the problems of modern life as I saw it. So ready, that when E and I took our first step inside the first earthship we visited, we basically decided right there on the spot that we would like to build one and live in it.

And we figured, why not build and live right there in that very community? The people were cool, at least the ones we'd met so far, and since it was legal to build alternative housing there (at least to build an earthship), it would save us the hassle of looking for an appropriate piece of land where the building codes allowed for alternative building. We'd done a bit of research and knew that could be a major obstacle.