Mountain Child Musings

Mountain Child Musings

MOUNTAIN CHILD MUSINGS: LOGIC IN AN ILLOGICAL TIME

By Jake Zawlacki

March 24, 2020 (San Diego’s East County) -- I love watching zombie movies. They’re gruesome and grotesque and impossible. For all their entertainment value, I could never take them seriously. I knew that people didn’t act like that. They didn’t lose their minds when a slow-moving threat came into the world. They didn’t raid everything and kill people out of fear. I knew those things, until I went into a supermarket yesterday.

The current global situation is a unique one, but it’s not one that has to scare everyone to scurry like rats in their holes. It can also allow us to unite and do our part to help mitigate this phenomenon, to not act selfishly, and to leave food and supplies in the aisles for everyone else.


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MOUNTAIN CHILD MUSINGS: THE HUMAN OIL CHANGE

By Jake Zawlacki
 
February 17, 2020 (San Diego’s East County) -- Last week, I received a call from the local blood bank and was told there was a current patient in need of my blood. I made an appointment, and days later I gave my donation. As the nurse was taking down my information, I heard my name mentioned outside the door with a couple people using the word “special.” My nurse then informed me, as well as two other nurses throughout my short visit, that it was indeed a rare event in which a donor would be donating their blood to a predetermined patient. I happened to be that rare event.
 
I asked what happened to the rest of the blood, imagining huge tanks of boiling human blood lined up in a high-ceilinged warehouse where spigots would fill empty barrels and buckets held by black rubber gloved hands.

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MOUNTAIN CHILD MUSINGS: SHOCK AND PAUSE

By Jake Zawlacki
File photo: Peter Carzis, speaking at a 2015 La Mesa City Council meeting
 
January 23, 2020 (La Mesa) -- The night I heard of Peter Carzis’ arrest, I was shocked. I was shocked because I had often gone to Peter’s Men’s Apparel, his eponymous men’s clothing store in La Mesa, and had always known him to be a kind man. He had reminded me of the old Hollywood-type black and white movies with their pressed suits and greased hair and salesman type of smile. He was cool in the old sense of the word.

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MOUNTAIN CHILD MUSINGS: AN ASTRAL NEW YEAR

By Jake Zawlacki
 
January 14, 2020 (San Diego’s East County) -- You may have spent your New Year’s Eve getting drinks, watching a big plastic ball drop, or looking at fireworks. I didn’t. I brought my New Year in a little early, on December 29th. And it arrived in three steps, in a separate dimension.
 
First, my astral body walked through blue flames, my many negative life experiences burning like kindling.
 
Next, my body walked through yellow flames, the many positive attributes cultivated over a millennia of past lives rejoining my earthly self.

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MOUNTAIN CHILD MUSINGS: A MAGICAL PLACE

By Jake Zawlacki

December 30, 2019 (Santee) -- As we are all in the thick of holiday magic, I‘d like to write about the most magical place in East County: The Santee Swap Meet. I’ve been swap-meeting since my youth, and I’ve never spent a dull morning walking the wide aisles of other people’s junk. For the uninitiated, the Santee Swap Meet is located on the same premises as the Santee Drive In. Cost of entry for buyers is $2 and the cost for a space to sell is $28 on Saturday and $35 on Sunday. 

The Swap Meet is a relic of a forgotten era. Sure, there’s still Spring Valley and Kobey’s going strong, but most sellers there are vendors importing crap from China or India or Mexico and selling it for profit. It’s a full-time job. The Santee Swap Meet is not that place.

It’s the only time in East County I heard a gunshot, but wasn’t worried. Somebody was just testing it out. It’s the only public place where I’ve seen Nazi regalia for sale without hearing a single protest. And it’s the only place I’ve ever seen ancient Chinese erotic paraphernalia made of jade and serpentine. It’s an unusual kind of place.


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MOUNTAIN CHILD MUSINGS: AN ANALOG MIND

By Jake Zawlacki

Photo by Toby A. Cox

 

December 9, 2019 (San Diego’s East County) -- I would like to jump into some crazy stuff, but I feel like you’re just getting to know me; the satire and controversy can wait. I want  to build a foundation, but I first need to define my mind. I have an analog mind, and the only way to really define it is against a digital one. The best way to understand the difference between analog and digital is that analog is based on infinite gradation whereas digital is all 0s and 1s. A wave can have an infinite amount of unique points. A 0 or 1 cannot. They are either 0 or 1. There is no in between.


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MOUNTAIN CHILD MUSINGS: WHAT IS A MOUNTAIN CHILD?







By Jake Zawlacki

Photo Credit Fern Bowen, 1947

November 25, 2019 (Jamul) -- “Mountain child” is a term I first heard when looking at a class photo of my grandfather. In the small Lyons Valley elementary school of 1947, he stood amongst two of his sisters, he and the youngest with a particularly stern face.

“Look at them. They’re like wild mountain children,” my Dad said, smiling at the black and white photo. It was true; they looked more like children of the corn than civilization standing in the dirt, some with bare feet. But most looked happy.


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