THE PORKY CHRONICLES, Part 1:
The Mind Runs through Barbed Wire

It's not easy to imagine the things that rampage through an alien landowner-gardener-householder's mind at discovering in the morning that the inoshishi (wild pigs) have again rooted with feral anarchy all over his property like they did the other night for the first time in the 20 years he's lived here, but fortunately I am such a guy and can directly relate the trauma of all those heedless porky noses harrowing my tender garden soil, soil carefully prepped over decades, noses that (thankfully) ignored the trampled organic peppers, dangling organic zukes and uprooted organic cukes in preference to earthworms of all things, then rooted at the stony bases of my deck supports, and in the small deck garden - wild madness there - rooted deeply at the foot of the huge boulder that could topple either onto the deck and house or onto pig and deck, my own wild side sensing that naturally-natural pigs are way less likely to be mistaken than a delusional gardener, so it's the house-and-deck that will get the big rock, given the ways of the universe.

Plus there's all that here-and-there gravel the pigs have rooted into, leaving quarry holes, and the small boulders toppled from stone walls onto the driveway, the large and heavy slabs of granite tossed left and right like giant stale potato chips, the scattered edging rocks-- Monkeys were never this rampant or nonfood focused; what the hell do you do about recurring visits of  ruthless wormslavering hogs who have no compunction about toppling your house with you inside if there’s an earthworm underneath, and from the look of things those noses could do it.

The inoshishi trap that comes immediately to mind is a huge truck-borne rebar cage that would take up the entire driveway, so where do I put the car for a week or two and what do I do when I come out one morning on the way to work and find in there a trapped 80 kilo boar rumbling hungry frothing and gnashing his tusks with whom I have to deal in person, plus I need a costly license to enjoy that experience.

Some folks might want to be nice to the beast, since they're - well - green, which I can understand, wild things being so zoozy cute on the Discovery channel and YouTube and imgur, but when it's your property and your decades of effort, your eyes widen a bit with ancient rage and you too are wild, you've got fangs growing, feelslike, and a bloodthirst; had it in you all along. But nonetheless in time you come to your wisened senses, death is but a last resort, though a night-eyed boar clacking his tusks at me in his path to food will not think along those lines; such is the distance we have traveled to empathy.
   
I know this will all soon end, for this year at least, and anyway I've gotten what I consider my share of the vegs out of what I still perversely think of as my garden, but these pigs and their piglets, and all the piglets after them on down the countless porky generations, intuit this property in the deepest sense, that it formally belongs to them, as it has for thousands of eons thus far; they have simply reclaimed it, left their marks here and there, so they'll be back, one way or another, one inoshishi or another - How long the mind on the train wanders amid strange themes - lost vegetables and saved, rifles, toppled walls, night watches, poison, traps, spears, the price of wild pork, barbed wire, wolf urine (expensive!) and at the end emerges as from a cave of night, heads for what the hell is an office, where he is a modern man, doing modern things...

THE LACKADAISICALITY INDEX

It's because I'm generally not lackadaisical that my experience with wild pigs is limited. However, because I've only seen one monkey in the last few months, my LI (Lackadaisicality Index) has plunged. You see at once how this all fits together. Monkeys keep me on my toes, LI-wise, and if you're on your toes in regard to monkeys, you're on stilts when it comes to wild pigs. If you're not thus on your toes, then you are a welcome mat for the porkers. That's my deep philosophical lesson of the week.

To begin not too long after the beginning: while making my breakfast tea this morning I looked out the big window in the kitchen and noticed that out in the garden, inside the high net fence, the large bucket of bokashi juice had fallen over. I knew I had not been so careless as to place it in such a way that it could be toppled by a strong wind. Anyway it was ¾ full, and heavy.  I also knew that monkeys would not have toppled it, because there was no reward in doing so, and monkeys do not do anything for nothing; they're almost as bad as Wall Street. I couldn't see any other signs of destruction out there, which also mitigated against monkeys. In rural shamus fashion I would check it out after breakfast, on my way to work.

As to my LI, I've been leaving the garden gate open lately because as I say I'd only seen one monkey in a long while, that one cowering behind a rice paddy downmountain; anyway the thieving beasts don't need gates unless they're infirm, and there aren't many infirm monkeys. A mother with clinging infant might opt for a gate rather than climb the high net, but that's another time of year. You can see I've got this all figured out. The deer take advantage of the open gate when there's Spring spinach to be had, but there's so much fresh wild food everywhere for deer to eat now that we don't even see deer any more, they haven't come into the garden in quite a while; no need for them to leave the forest. Couldn't be Littlefoot, he never leaves a mess. My LI was pretty well justified, if you ask me. So what had happened? What had I overlooked? Were my tromboncino now under threat? My cukes? My peppers and pumpkins? Tomatoes? Nobody bothers hot peppers or goyas, thank goodness...

When I got out there for a quick check it appeared that all was well, oddly enough; then when I reached the far end I saw that the soil of one entire corner, perhaps 6 square meters, had been deeply and violently ripped up. I'd seen this before, elsewhere: wild pigs after earthworms. Also, I had planted potatoes there last year. An irresistible combination to wild pigs deprived of the fresh rice growing all around them but out of reach behind electric fences - you can imagine the frustration - but fortunately Mr. Nice Guy of the declining LI was living nearby. The snouty beasts work at night, quietly, so I hadn't heard a sound. Didn't touch the nearby tomatoes and just missed some goya and cuke vines, though one cuke vine had to be listed as collateral damage; nothing else. Those big porky bodies had no problem shouldering that heavy bucket out of the way of fine dining.

This is the first time I've ever been invaded by wild pigs, but only because of my gradual LI reversal. There's a big lesson for the world somewhere in there, but there's no point in throwing pearls before politicians. For their part, the porkos probably broke up their garden party at dawn, but I bet they'll be back for more: tonight one garden corner, tomorrow you know what. My gate, for one, will be closed.

You've been warned. Metaphorically too.

SHOULDER OF THE WILD

In the noon phase of typhoon #6, on the way back upmountain from dropping Echo off at the station I stop on the road by the big bamboo grove to watch one of the most beautiful and elegant dances in the world: bamboo in mountain wind.

In the edgy light from the east against the dark green of the mountains and the thunder gray of the typhoon clouds, the pale jade bamboo stems in their tall slim splendor, like 15-meter earthfeathers with golden quills, sway back and forth in a slow, soft roil that shows the edges of the wind as the green arms move in the spirit of waves, with soft bows and gentle gestures, all of an elegance that dancers seek to imitate, the racing wind producing only slow green response in the whole of the grove, much the way tall seaweed sways in an ocean storm.

Inside the bamboo grove stand an old oak and a cedar, imparting darkness and depth, rising in their relative rigidity, and it is easy to see why oaks and cedars blow over all the time, but bamboo never: bamboo knows how to dance.

THE TAO OF THE PIG

Coming up the road from the train last night I was rolling slowly on the motorcycle because on my way home at this special time of year I'm always gazing at the beauty of the old-ivory crescent moon dangling before the blue velvet tapestry sprinkled with diamonds above the pale gray mountain shadows (as I've posted about before), which esthetic activity can lead straight into a concrete telephone pole if you're traveling at even moderate speed through darkness along a curvy mountain road - especially if, like me, you're also wearing your reading glasses to keep the bugs out of your eyes - so as I say it was a good thing I was going slowly, even moreso because just as I rounded the second curve through the rice paddies I saw at the bottom of my vision a blurry brown something in the roadway and slowed even more -- what was it, a dog? No, it was an inoshishi (wild pig) almost as big as my motorcycle, galloping panicly toward me down the road in and out of my headlight, seeking escape, when just a moment before it had, in the way of all pigs in these nights of these parts, been trying to find a way through the low electric pro tem fence to get at the tender rice grains dangling in savory bunches just inches away from yearning pork teeth, all ready to devour.

But there in the face of porcine efforts, suddenly blocking the gourmet way, came a roaring creature with one big blinding eye, advancing relentlessly onward - the pig at first rushed toward me, trying maybe to get by and keep going downhill, but because of the headlight, it couldn't be sure how wide I was, so gave up on that and turned uphill, always the less desirable choice when escaping pursuit, and began trotting upward, now and then nervously glancing back over its shoulder to see if the roary monster was gaining, with possibly giant fangs.

Apparently the pig hadn't had much close-up experience with one-eyed monsters, nor had I any close-up motorcycling experience with solo nervous porkers, so I didn't want to try to race past a panicky pig either, I just kept traveling upward at pig trotting speed, gunning the motor now and then to urge the beast onward and upward, which the pig agreed was best: head for the safety of the woods above, there are no one-eyed monsters in the woods, but when I began to fall behind, the pig began to slow down too, so I beeped the horn and the pig perked up considerably, trotting quickly up the road - as pigs in front of motorcycles should damn well do in all cases - and, leaping at last into the welcome darkness and quiet of the woods, let the bright-eyed monster roar by, leaving darkness and silence in its wake.

In the Tao of the Pig, as in The Tao of the Human, the way is that by which one avoids consequences.