Make no mistake, it has been a rough patch that I've travelled this last month. My goal of documenting the issues here has been repeatedly stalled by the new realities of my life. Unfortunately, my dogmatic insistence that I stay in business prevented me from creating any contingency plans, and I am only now confronting the fact that I am unemployed.

I will be writing more now that the dust is settling around the wreckage of what was my landscaping business. I am sure that once the Washington State Department of Revenue finds out that I closed up shop and am now broadcasting my complaints in this weblog, their tactics of intimidation, seizure and control will be stepped up. State government hates weblogs. It is important that I get it all down before this occurs.

I have been asked constantly by my friends, supporters and former customers the basic question which underlies my new journalistic endeavor - Why did I have to close my business? The answer is not an easy one to explain in short, and the long version makes me look like a whiner. I feel a multitude of emotions related to this drastic attempt to rescue my life from the quagmire of the choices I had before me just a few short months ago; disappointment, anger, sadness, disillusionment, regret, curiosity, trepidation, just to name a few. Replaying my options does nothing to mitigate my feelings, though intellectually I know that I had no other choice.

The momentum which propelled me off the cliff and into the seas of uncertainty began years ago, though I was just plain dumb and didn't see it until I was mid-air, freefalling with only the cold water below me. When I began landscaping those 30 years ago it was still a respectable profession to be in, with many opportunities for success. I spent many years learning the trade, honing my skills and making contacts in the industry. The inevitable result was the creation of my own business where I had ample opportunity to apply my learning in a productive, creative and, potentially, a profitable manner.

When I started my business in 1998, the approximate number of illegal immigrants in Washington state was approximately 135,000. As of last year that number had increased to approximately 170,000 workers. These workers have kept labor wages low for years by supplying companies and consumers with cheap labor which has devalued the industry which I helped to create. Even though I set my focus on higher-end projects which required more skill and creativity than general workers could produce, the bulk of my business was still based on basic landscape maintenance. I will address the issue of illegal immigration in more detail later.

2006 started strong for my business. By June, I had dialed in 7 or 8 major landscape installations in addition to my regular maintenance work. I thought at the time that the 8 years of my paying of dues, sweating and sacrifice had started to pay off. My reputation as a quality worker with integrity and fair prices for an excellent job had finally become established. And then, suddenly, something happened.

I'm still not sure what it was, but the effect was immediate and very noticeable. The second half of 2006 found me scrounging for work. It reminded me of an airplane stalling in the air; it goes up dramatically and then, with no lift or velocity to resist gravity any further, it nosedives. The formerly awesome construction market had begun to cool, and refinance rates were inching upwards. In addition, fuel prices and supply costs were rising as well. People began to readjust their spending and the belts were tightened. I was doing nothing differently in my day-to-day work so I assumed that it was just a slump, much like the many others I had to ride out before. I continued to be positive and waited for the tide to rise again.

In October, I was asked to look at a very large landscape project which I was highly recommended for. It was a monster residential job that would have taken care of my income needs for months. I set about to the design and bidding process that accompanies any such job. Meanwhile, the Department of Revenue was getting impatient regarding the taxes I had collected during the 'boomlet' of the first half of 2006. I reassured them that they would get their money as it came in and I followed up by sending them the maximum my budget would allow heading into winter, my slowest season.

November brought the record rains and peoples' interest in their landscapes was replaced by the battening of hatches. December was as bad, if not worse, as the power went out due to the big windstorm. My truck is fairly small, so I did not profit from the hauling, cutting and cleanup of all the trees freshly ravaged. As 2007 began, I continued in the process of bidding that large landscaping installation and I hoped for an early spring to begin the work that was becoming increasingly mine to do. The homeowner indicated that I was the guy for the job and we started drawing up plans to that end.

The intense snowfall and bitter cold of January knocked me out for almost 2 whole weeks, and I fell behind in bills, survival becoming my primary focus. For me to succeed into the advancing spring, I had to first remain alive to do so. Looking back, I see now that I should have quit then and looked for gainful employment. At the time, spring being so close and the big project moving towards a start date, it seemed the more logical choice was to hang in there, stay the course.

As February began, the homeowner and I had begun to shop for plants, rocks and finalize the design of the acre of landscaping I was ready to do. The weather was slow to turn and the overall activity of my business was still very slow. I had started to fill in the hole that January brought to my budget when the DOR made contact.

I hadn't heard from them since I got a call during the big freeze of January. I told Curtis that it was difficult to landscape with snow and ice all over, and he seemed to understand. The notice I got from the DOR insisted that I pay big right then and there or suffer the effect of a warrant and lien being filed upon my business. I began writing letters to them, describing the horrendous winter and slow economy in great detail. I asked them not to file a warrant as it would smudge my credit for 7 years and set me back even further. It took 7 years for me to establish my credit as sole proprietor businesses are generally looked down upon by creditors.

My optimism began to vanish into March. The weather was still miserable and no one was calling me to work. In addition, the big project that I had massaged all winter fell through, the homeowner going with another company that did both landscaping and irrigation. I saw the work in progress and was really dismayed to see my design and plan being executed by several Latino workers for a much bigger landscape company. Damn. I never made one dime from all my work. It proved to be a tremendous loss instead.

The DOR and I exchanged letters and phone calls through April and into May, some of mine to the Director of the DOR, Cindi Holmstrom, some to Rep. Skip Priest and some to the Governor's office. Nobody wanted to help me in any way in my request for time and the weather didn't help any, spring delayed until nearly June. I idled my way through routine maintenance tasks waiting and hoping for the usual spring rush of projects, ponds and patios and paths and landscapes. They never materialized. My constant begging for time and a stay of the warrant and lien resulted in the DOR issuing the warrant and lien anyway. My credit trashed, I couldn't even get a loan to pay my way out of the crosshairs of the DOR sharpshooters.

Their collection efforts, their extraction process, began in earnest and as of this writing I am still in the process of negotiating with the DOR, who remain unchecked in their power and control of my life despite the conclusion of my business. The summer was flat for business and my revenues were down over 50% from 2006 through no fault of my own. As fall neared, the writing was on the wall. For every dollar I earned it was another dime I owed The State. I could not afford to risk being slapped around by them anymore and with winter coming soon, I couldn't see business getting any better, so I quit. Chances are great that if I hadn't that they would have shut me down anyway.

When any government becomes too drunk with its own power, the chances are great that they will act without regard to the people who constitute their domain. I see it as inevitable that this power-fattened government will eventually turn on the citizens which granted them that power and devour them in order to maintain that power. Thomas Jefferson would and I do disagree with this reality. All I asked for was time, understanding of the 'circumstances beyond the control of the taxpayer', and I was given no quarter, no mercy and no chance to survive. As a sole proprietor, I don't think I was regarded as a small business but as an entrepreneur, gambling recklessly with The State's money.

During the whole process of attempting to defend myself and my customers from the effects of The State's collection methods, I learned much about how politics affect us directly, and just how little politicians care about those, like me, without deep pockets. Since I have been excluded from the process of politics as I have shown, I am just a voice in the wilderness; a political pirate. A big nobody. So be it.

So, if there's anybody reading this who is disappointed in my not being in business anymore, please understand that I did what I could to survive, intent on continuing to serve my clientele, but that the largely Democrat controlled Super Large Olympia Power Structure (SLOPS) needed to cripple me in order to protect the interests of the citizens of Washington state. I will take great care to thank them personally in the elections of 2008.

Until then, I am looking for a job. I will consider all offers of employment as I am not sure what career path that I will take. My talents and abilities transcend my 30 years of landscape gardening and I hope to find a career field to take advantage of my many intangible skills and knowledge. Who knows? A political journalist perhaps?

Poverty Bay Journal

2007-10-02T19:39:00.000-07:00

A full month has elapsed since the bad dreams began to affect my day-to-day life. Dreams of Bohr playing tennis.. of Tziggy The Wonder Dog... of Mokurai. No sound sleep as the SLOPS began devastating my life as I knew it.

My advisors are all still here, though, and I am thankful that they are. Captain Major, my military advisor. Harris, my spiritual advisor. Hu Lee, my chi advisor. Estaban, my conscience. Corky Kingston, my historical advisor and former producer of the late, great bluesman King Rowdy Nipdick. Papa D, my most conservative of conservative advisors. Landlubbers all, they serve a great purpose in the life of this very political landscaper, and their collective and individual contributions will be rewarded tenfold once my ship reaches dry land.

The dreams continue and multiply exponentially. I have begun to not be able to tell the dreams from reality as the SLOPS tear the figurative meat from my all-too-real bones and the lifeblood of business dwindles to a devastating and anti-climactic ending that I do not want to see. As our dreams direct, the reality of our lives become a hazy sort of mirage; heat baffles rising against the sun on a desert pitted with the carcasses of those who dared to dream. We see the need to move, to change. And it is against this patina of reality that we cast our hopes, thinking, for even a moment, that we might somehow escape our destiny.

I need my sleep. I knew it a month ago and I know it the same now. Without sleep, the body fatigues and the mind plays tricks, hoping to collapse the organism long enough to refresh; to replenish. This cannot go on much longer. My strength and resolve have been tested and strained, and I am strong, but these crazy dreams must stop or I will truly go mad with exhaustion.

Tziggy is real, this I know. He runs and barks and taunts the dogcatchers, all the while talking; endlessly talking. I long to run free beside him as he sniffs and snaps at the world around him. He must run free, and so must I.

So for the last month of non-entries, I have this to show. I have had my business strangled by the SLOPS, with no reprieve from The Queen. I have been made homeless by a wrecked economy and over-regulation by her goons. I am now, more than ever, like my friend Tziggy, as I run from the dogcatchers and try to continue my life despite the seemingly insurmountable forces working against me. My advisors and friends suggest alternatives, but I know, in my heart, that I must take a different path, heedless of their advice. They are dry-landers; landlubbers bound to their colonies, and I have become a pirate. They have no idea.

I took a piece of September and contemplated my options. A 'vision quest', if you will, to clear my mind and to try to restore some sense of normalcy to my day-to-day. I meditated, remembering the words of teachers long past, and tried to reach my 'calm center'. Moondog, MJ, Harris, Hu Lee and others weighed upon my mind, urging me to relax, to allow space to infuse my restless thoughts. I drifted in a long trance which led me to a vision, which spread before me as a panorama, as colorful and real as any day-to-day visions could be. I tried to resist at first, but soon realized the perfection of The Thing, The Chi; the gestalt of The Thing.

All at once I was taken from the full lotus of my perfect day-to-day and thrown recklessly into a dream sequence of sharp images conjured from days long past. The seas and tides of days gone by swirled around me like an October wind batting a tired windvane into a cold November. I held to my pranayama pose, but the vision was too strong to resist, and I was soon caught up in the full vision of how it would be for me as a former landlubber tossed into the swollen waters of an inevitable flood. Suddenly, the Jolly Roger flew above my head as I looked up and saw my future.

I awoke. Again.

I was aboard my sloop as I grasped the wheel and pulled hard against the tides. The winds filled my sails, but the current was too strong for one man, a lone sailor with no crew, to defend against. I set the riggings and tried to turn against the wind, tacking my course to pull with the currents as my ship was being swamped with waves and sea spray. Behind me, from the south, the armada of The Queen skulked ever closer to my sloop as I moved past Brown's Point and Dash Point heading north. Heading for the Strait of Juan de Fuca, I thought of Captain Cook and his pansy-assed dismissal of the entry to Puget Sound and how Peter Puget would later find the bottom of the fiord which would definitely not turn out to be the eastward passage that everyone looked for back in the late 1800's.

As I rounded Maury Island and turned north to pass Vashon, I heard a voice. Perhaps I didn't hear it as much as I felt it, but the effect was all the same. Sailors out on the sea for long stretches of time hear things, this I knew. I couldn't believe that I was such a pitiful soul, but I heard the voice just the same, and I could not ignore the clarity of the message it spoke to me. I listened again, mindful of the distance closing between my ship and The Queen's armada fast behind me.

I grasped the wheel tightly, strong in my resolve that any Captain could command a ship when the seas were calm, but that only a true sailor could hold the helm when the ocean grew angry. The voice became louder and I could not ignore it as The Queen's armada closed in on my tiny ship. They had sailed from Olympia with instructions that my ship be boarded and that my command be terminated, and their helmsmen were resolute in their aims and mission.

"You must scuttle your ship", the voice said.

"No", I cried, and spun the wheel harder, determined to make the Straits before I was overtaken. My ship rocked and smashed innocent wave after wave as I flailed, all the while watching as The Queen's armada grew closer.

"They will overtake you and you will be boarded if you don't. You must scuttle your ship." The voice began to sound familiar, but I heeded it not and tacked east to avoid the swell of the incoming tide.

Ignoring the voice, I pulled the sails full and tried to outrun the tide and the armada. The strain on the timbers of my mast creaked with an ominous sound as the wind and tide of the open Sound to the north pushed my ship back and to the east. I corrected for the impulse and swung the mainsail to let the current and wind move me eastward, my goal to let the armada take the full brunt of the tide as I slipped towards the shoals where they could not sail. Shallow waters could not hold their frigates, so I could at least buy some time until the tides turned.

As I neared the shallow waters of Poverty Bay, I again heard the voice; this time clearer and I knew at once who the voice belonged to.

"You must scuttle your ship". It was Mokurai, my teacher, my friend, my advisor. "It is the only way to avoid the armada of The Queen. If you do not, your ship will be boarded and The Queen will take everything that you have and leave you but a shell of a man, with no ship to command and no possessions or provisions with which to survive upon. If you scuttle your own ship, then you may have the time and space to regroup and to mount a counter-offensive against The Queen and the SLOPS in her service, but if you do not, then you will surely be boarded and your life and your ship will be Hers".

I will never forget that day. I sat in my meditative silence, the dream unfolding in front of my closed eyes. I had trusted Mokurai in the past and had nothing but faith left in my arsenal of the ship which was my life. As my ship neared the beach at Redondo, my sloop grazed the bottom of the shallow shoals of Poverty Bay and I knew all at once that Mokurai had spoken the truth to me yet again. The Queen's armada had slowed now, frightened by the sandbars and rocks of the bay too close to dry land. I turned the wheel and faced the advancing fleet full of The Queen's SLOPS and, with only a moment's hesitation, folded my sails to stop my forward motion.

My ship's hull scraped the sandy shoals of Poverty Bay and I scurried into the lower deck to retrieve my only cannon and dragged it to the upper deck. Tamping the powder flat and loading a decent sized maul into the barrell, I thought of all the adventures that I had undertaken flying the flag of The Queen for so many years. As I pointed the cannon towards the deck of my own ship, I found myself torn between my respect for the flag which I had flown in the service of The Queen and my disgust with the manner of her goons in the pursuit of my ship simply because I was no longer relevant to the goals and ends of the SLOPS.

I looked up for a moment, taken by the stark blue sky, the mountains in the distance and dreamed for a moment of what it would be like to be accepted and honored by The Queen as she gazed out over Her beautiful land. But the moment faded and the fuse was lit and my ship was blown to smithereens in the blink of an eye on that slow September day.

I hit the water hard and struggled to watch as my ship sank into the murky depths of Poverty Bay, my possessions and provisions bobbing in the water next to me. As I dragged myself to shore, grabbing what things I could from the tide, I watched as The Queen's armada moved off, sailing on to pillage other ships sailing The Queen's waters.

I resolved to avenge my ship's destruction and struggled towards the shore, determined to not remain a landlubber for too long. I would regroup and I would sail my own armada into The Queen's own waters of Olympia and I would not stop until I had caused her to scuttle her own ship and regret the day that she had sent her fleet to destroy a faithful servant like me.

As I pulled what belongings I could from the surf onto the beach at Poverty Bay, I shook my head and sat for a moment in despair. How could I possibly amass an armada sufficient to challenge The Queen and her SLOPS from a sandy beach near the birthplace of Federal Way?

And then the voice again, subtle yet severe.

"The same way Dorothy got the wicked witch of the west," as if I should have known.

It figures. Mokurai is a fan of old Hollywood movies.

Tziggy The Wonder Dog....

2007-08-14T22:29:00.000-07:00

And then I awoke.

I turned the TV off and trundled to bed. A bad dream, my bonsai and belongings unmolested by The State, I slept for a few hours after. Not much unbroken sleep these days, so a waking nightmare fit right in with the gestalt of my situation. My status quo. And I realized, after that bad dream, that all this chaos that I was living had to be connected to Tziggy, The Wonder Dog.

It was pretty weird to be riding in a truck with a talking dog. At first, he didn't talk, but one day he decided he'd had enough of my bad singing and expletive exclamations and told me off quite clearly.

"Would you please shut up", he said, plain as the fuzz on a peach. And I almost ran the Andrea Gail off the road when he did. I pulled over and looked at this dog that had adopted me a few exits back. He looked back and exclaimed, "What're ya', stoo-pid"? And our acquaintance was made in earnest.

Tziggy rode with me for miles and we talked of the universe and The State and the road and the stars. Among other things, we both loved that demon-born, evil rock and roll music. Any old way you use it.

And the day he left, I knew that things would not be the same. For me or for him. I knew that I would pay a high price for knowing a dog who talked and that the privilege and burden of this friendship would be mine and mine alone. Because of this faithful mutt I write these words. As he told me several times, "Nobody likes a dog who can talk". This is true. The Dogcatchers run themselves ragged chasing the very problem that keeps them employed; if there were no wild dogs running in the streets, then why would we need Dogcatchers at all? Tziggy must run free. The State depends on it.

The way he left, I remembered as I started to drift off that evening, was a simple misunderstanding between man and dog. I was angry and speculating a run to Canada, dead set on crashing the Artists' Scene there , the Andrea Gail loaded with provisions and our gas tank full. He jumped out and followed a rabbit's trail on that late spring day, and he left me alone, and I then changed my mind. But Tziggy was gone, determined to stay local, so I figure that I might see his shaggy ass around sometime if I do the same. And I do miss our long conversations.

So I will stake my claim on Poverty Bay, the only pirate left in this cove, and watch the beach at low tide to see if Tziggy is here, running against the wind and with the tides at sunset. After a time to reflect, I don't really mind the problems of knowing a talking dog when I get the benefits of knowing a talking dog. All in all, it's more fun this way.

So I try to distract the Dogcatchers and keep Tziggy free, and am rewarded amply by his indomitable attitude and his encouraging conversational abilities. In a dog's life, what else is there?