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The New Independent Home
by Michael Potts
from chapter 11 :
Ark Maui:
Wittt Billlman's story |
At the precipice's edge on Maui's east shore, Wittt Billlman, musician and political theoretician (as you will see), lives in a simple, off-the-grid home. As he talked, whales breached in the ocean far below us while the nearly constant trade winds buffeted the banyan trees. Himself an exotic, he has naturalized himself and become a strong and conscientious voice for the natives.
As I get more serious about my endeavors, the more I am considered a comedian. Or a karmedian. You can spell karma with the H or without, depending on how Tibetan you are feeling. Spelling is a very important subject, so be sure you get my name right, triple T, triple L. I favor everyone adding a personalized twenty-seventh letter to the alphabet, so we can play with the jokers, too. Fifty-two letters doesn't seem to be enough in these times.
I came to Maui on a triple: I was looking for my high school math teacher, Jim Loomis, and I knew he was here; I was in a ten-piece Brazilian dance band then, playing a gig in Portland, Oregon, and a woman came up to me and said I was going to Maui, she could see it in my eyes; I still didn't take it seriously until I met another woman who said she was going to Maui, and asked me if I would come with her. It ended up all three of them lived on the same road, within a short distance of where I've been living nine days a week ever since (I bought the land from George Harrison, and I know it took him eight days a week to get it, and I'm sure I work longer hours). We're all from two different galaxies, you know: the Pleiades . . . and the Work-days.
The first ten years I lived on candle power. Water comes from rain and gravity flow. I've experienced duress, expense, and time-loss keeping the utilities out of our neighborhood. My energy needs evolved, and I got one solar module, although I've recently been considering getting grid of it. It powers my electric piano, but I'm thinking about going acoustic, and using the power to dehumidify the baby grand instead. I like that image: a row of bulbs inside the piano keeping it warm and dry, and at night, when we need light, we open the top. I've written a new song for the Billary Allegory in the White House (isn't that just a primer coat?). Would you like to hear the song? I call it, "Inhale to the Chief."
Politics is very important to me. Right now I'm running from office, with the Party party, and have been making all the right moves: I have a political insultant, and a full-time champagne manager. Originally I had no platform, because I think everybody should have both feet on the ground (assuming they have two feet, of course. I sincerely don't mean to insult anybody). My supporters have pressured me to get a platform, so I've adopted one with a big hole in the middle, so I can stand on the ground, surrounded by platform.
When Hawaii becomes a non-nation, those are the offices I'm especially interested in running from. We hope that Hawaii sets such a prezident (that's with a Z, because we're near the end, and should be using more Zs than ever). We're working very hard on Ark Maui. Did you know that 87 percent of the endangered species are in the Islands, 60 percent on Maui, and that 30 percent of America's endangered species live only on Maui? We are pleased that more people are starting to kNoah-bout the Ark.
Money is a symptom of centralization, and I believe we have to decentralize to survive. Since we went on the uranium standard, I've come to favor hundred-dollar bills over ones, seeing as how both really cost the government two cents to print. Lots of bananas and papayas grow on our land, and that's how we survive . . . until lunch. We have a little salad garden, some sweet potatoes, so with a little fish, we don't have many food needs. Our taxes started at two dollars twenty years ago, then twenty, two hundred, three thousand! That's 15,000 percent inflation. We pasturized our land, dedicated it to agriculture, and the taxes rolled back to one thousand.
Except for that, the county doesn't bother us much. I was working on a house for a neighbor the only time I ever saw the building inspector. By coincidence, I was just gluing the last joint in the water system, and a big rain cloud was coming up over the mountain when he showed up. He got out of his truck and looked around, so I went over and said, "May I help you?" He looked me over and said, "Some folks call you hippy, but I call you pioneer." He got back in his truck and drove off.
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