GUIDED LEAF.
The Ultimate Life Guidance system.
Raven on the roof with our makeshift safety rope.
Let me set the scene…
As a young man I was a proponent of Prime Causation
The philosophical principles I strongly held to were:
If It happened to me I caused it somehow.
If it exists without my knowledge it exists without my permission.
I am the absolute boss of everything in my life.
The ONE CRAZIER SYSTEM.
The DECIDE NOW SYSTEM.
These systems had got me a certain distance in life. But shit was sure hard, when you can never back down, won’t admit your wrong and you assume you automatically know best in every situation…
I had become friends with Raven, a 23 year old hippy wanderer detailed in the Shaman series of stories starting here:
He probably thought I was nuts, but being a Canadian hippy, was far to polite and tolerant to let me know this. I had buddied up with him for the summer because he was a survivor and always had some good money making scam running. He also needed my guidance. He had recently returned from Guatemala with a pregnant Village girl and needed to show his rich Doctor parents that he was playing their game. Making money and working so they would love him and help him.
… the story series above goes into this in far more detail.
There is nothing more batshit than driven young men in their early 20s, who have given up drugs and embraced spirituality. Still not healed or detoxed from the Weed, Mescaline, Mushroom and LSD brain fungus / crystal damage… yet forging ahead in life despite, and with this damage.
There is nothing more meat hook brutal than wholly believing reality is an illusion, yet declining to continually mash yourself into hallucinatory numbness with drugs to soften the beatings that reality deals out.
It’s all fine and dandy to trip balls and blaze weed, go to raves and live in your brothers basement while believing your actions don’t matter….and when you get a sneaking suspicion that things might…just hit the bong again…
But try to raw dog life drug free, while eating well, trying to make money, dealing with all the people in the world, thinking about, working towards and planning your future and also going to Vegan Yoga Potlucks where people talk about injustice and the environment for hours at a stretch.
You wind up in the corner of these potlucks wanting to peel your skin off like a mandarin.
Indeed, Raven and I were grappling with exactly those above things. And so we had fled to an Island off the coast of Vancouver for a job for a rich guy he knew. We were both roofers and Raven had got us a job putting a new sheet metal roof on his house while living in his Catamaran.
Through the balmy summer days we slowly worked on the roof and ranted philosophically back and forth.
After a slow and chill day of work we would skate to the top of the hill, up to the center of the Island and eat at a pub. It was a special and awesome time, of politely chatting with pretty girls ( both of us were engaged and celibate ) and listening to live music. At the end of the night doing the downhill run lying on our skateboards all the way back to our Catamaran bedrooms.
Bliss.
Playing is my mate Jeremy Fisher, he was on a bicycle/music tour around BC's Gulf Islands. Randomly was playing in this Pub. Our paths had crossed many months before where he had put me and my Fiance up in his house in Victoria for a few nights even though he didn’t know us at all.
https://www.jeremyfishermusic.com/
Music and fun.
These hotties are now over 50. Bless us all.
I borrowed a rifle from our Employer and shot a small deer on our fourth day there. Showing Raven how to butcher it, we stored it in our employers shed freezer.
His wife was rude and posh, she would not let us into the house or talk to us. They would not feed us… so the deer meat is all we had after we ran out of the meager rations we had brought. We barbequed deer meat chunks for breakfast and lunch every day. Eating so much of it, after a few weeks we started shaking and feeling ghostly and fucking wak. The only thing that stopped the shaking was eating a huge burger and fries at the pub each night. Later when I got back to Civilization, I Net Searched “TOO MUCH DEER MEAT HANDS SHAKING FEEL WEIRD”.
Fat starvation or Rabbit starvation was the verdict.
Rabbit starvation, also known as protein poisoning, occurs when a person consumes a diet that is excessively high in lean protein, like rabbit meat, without enough fat or carbohydrates. This can lead to malnutrition and serious health issues due to the body's inability to process the excess protein effectively.
What we lived on. Got through it all. Carnivore Diet before it was cool.
Raven had the genius Idea to use the deer head on a string to catch crabs off the side of the wharf. So we feasted on crabs for two days till it was picked clean.
OK …so that’s the scene…
so ….GUIDED LEAF.
Ravens philosophy was that one was just a leaf being blown on the winds of fate!
There was nothing one could do to influence this. It was all preordained by some great cosmic rhythm. He even had BALANCE tattooed on his back.
That tattoo is what got me started.
I had the tattoo of A circle with a triangle on my shoulder. This means the Will, over the Universe. We were opposites.
“BALANCE! Fuck Balance man! You will get nothing done if you seek Balance!
Seek AWESOMENESS!”
Seeking AWESOMENESS, I was to discover was not a thing to crow about in Hippy Canada at the start of the Iraq war.
Seeking AWESOMENESS is what Yanks do with Bombs apparently.
I learned to keep that one to myself after a while.
I tore his arguments to pieces. I explained all my choices had led me to this roof having this discussion with him, and one could not only control one’s destiny, but one’s own will was ALL there was in the UNIVERSE.
One’s own will all the time non stop through time and space for eternity.
He mellowly came back with “What about babies that die randomly ?” “What about the effects of Karma and past lives” What about the spirit world, your higher self, God’s will and all the rest of it.”
Well I honestly couldn’t discount those things …
He had been raised by wealthy Doctors who had controlled every inch of his life from birth until very recently. I liked to think he was hanging out with me because he liked the freedom, personal direction and certainty I espoused.
But his mindset was of course as it was due to the overwhelming control his parents and Canadian Society had mashed into him.
I was raised by wolves in rural New Zealand and then fled into the wild world at 16 to kill and win on my own. If you want to know how me and my bullshit ideas were formed, scroll down to my first story and start reading from how it all starts at the age of 6 being babysat by a retarded kid. Each Story is the details of me trying to carve out a life for myself as the entire world tries to kick me in the nuts and then stand on my neck until I expire, while I try to scam food, money, sex and friendship from other humans.
Anyway….
Round and round we went…
We were not studied enough at that time to know we were engaging in the ancient Greek Dialectic method. We were just two young hairy arse roofers… on Galiano Island off the coast of Canada in the summer of 2003.
But we were indeed channeling Socrates and he would have been proud of us.
The dialectical method, refers originally to dialogue between people holding different points of view about a subject but wishing to arrive at the truth through reasoned argument. The concept excludes elements such as emotional appeal. It has its origins in ancient philosophy and continued to be developed in the Middle Ages.
—
A dialogue of arguments and counter-arguments, advocating propositions (theses) and counter-propositions (anti-theses). The outcome of such a dialectic might be a synthesis, a combination of the opposing assertions.
Well after three weeks of non stop ranting about free will and individual power on my part, or hopeless other-determinism, on his part, we came to the resolution.
GUIDED LEAF.
The SYNTHESIS.
We were both right.
HERE IS IS: GUIDED LEAF.
One is a LEAF blowing on the winds of fate, BUT if you push like a motherfucker with your drive and will, you can GUIDE the leaf.
You may go into puddles, and down drains, hit cars and get sucked into gutters, shat on, torn and smashed… but if you keep pushing you can get that leaf going in the direction you want.
I use GUIDED LEAF to this day.
We completed this guys roof and as you can see my backpack with all my worldly possessions sits on the lawn ready to be shouldered and carried to my next adventure.
The rich dude tried to STIFF US.
Raven had not fully negotiated the price of our job, as he did not enforce his divine will on people.
The rich island boomer tried to give us 250$ each.
Obviously Stuck in some deranged boomer 80s illusion.
It had taken us three weeks… we did work kind of slow but we did a good job.
Well… this was a time for me to shine. Cracking this old cunts Illusions right here on his porch.
I used a trifecta of Systems. CROSSING THE STREAMS!
The GUIDED part of GUIDED LEAF, followed by ONE CRAZIER followed by DECIDE NOW! To win the day.
“Here you go guys, I think 500$ is fair”
Raven looked a bit shocked and sad…. but starts to put the money away.
ME: “No sir. A job like this would cost you about 3000$ Minimum. You are giving us 1000$ each, and that’s us giving you a fucking great deal.”
Initiate: STARING SPARKLY CRAZY EYES TECHNIQUE.
Raven perked up.
DERANGED BOOMER: “No, this is all Im paying”.
ME: Without hesitation. “You are giving us $1000 each or I’m going to climb right back up there, undo all the roofing screws and start throwing the sheets right back on the ground bending the fuck out of them!”
Raven laughs nervously.
DERANGED BOOMER: Mouth open like a hooked bass… thinks I’m not Serious….pauses too long.
I see I have to go ONE CRAZIER.
"ME: Then if you still don’t pay, I’m going to take that axe over there and chop through the hull of your Catamaran, before disappearing into the bush. I’ll be down 1000 dollars and on the run, but you will have no roof and a sunk boat.”
I paused for a second before yelling “DECIDE NOW!!!”
The realization that he’s dealing with a crazy man wakes him up. He goes pale and stiffly says “I’ll go get the money”.
By some miracle this boomer had $2000 cash.
His face was like a smacked bum as he handed it over.
We fled to the Ferry, Sure he was going to call the Mounties on us…
I was slightly pooing because I heard “They always get their man”.
He didn’t call them. I fucking won.
On the Ferry looking back at the island, Raven was thoughtful and silent. staring down at his mini Gangsta roll of crisp Hundys… which only an hour ago was going to be a paltry $250…
he said…
“You know, I now think you right, that we forge our own destinys….”
I said “Fuck man… I thought we agreed on Guided Leaf!”
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Love your chutzpah! Love that you were faithful and celibate. Love people who live with integrity. Great read.
Well done 😁