on changing natures

These americanifesto blogs have been significantly altered in the past few months; no longer does the author feel it necessary to vituperate and spew at situations he cannot change, or hurl barbs at politicians and luminaries he has never met. Instead, he is in the middle of a big change, a momentous shift in the fundamental nature of his life, the death of his old self and the birth of a new state of mind, a being in some ways different but in many ways wholly unlike the person he used to be, before this time.    

As he shifts, and receives new names and new skills and the power to harness mind and body, so he feels his blogs should shift, to reflect his evolving role upon this earth. May the ancestors be praised and the future generations cherished, the old walls torn down and a new hope built upon broad and solid ground. Huzzah, mahalo, and aho.

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on new name

Two days ago, this author sang his death song and perished during death meditation. He died as would a hero going home, as Chief Tecumseh likely urged those facing death to do. From Great Spirit, this author received new name, which he guards closely and cannot share with just any average bloke, so don't ask. Some things he lost, others he gained, including a piece of soul lost during a previous, unassisted and unguided Voyage Across the Terrible Threshold, that place where this life stops and the next begins. The old life is now behind him, and the first steps on his new journey are begun. Huzzah, mahalo, and aho.

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whom we honor

Today, we honor ten thousand dead children in Iraq; we honor five hundred murdered children in Pakistan; we honor scores of toddlers killed by American Hellfire missiles in Yemen, Afghanistan, and Somalia. Beyond that, we weep for every other person whose life has been tainted by mankind's continuing insistence on war and death-dealing, which means we honor every man, woman, and child who has every lived.

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salvation in screams

When frustration and self-doubt and inner voices get too loud, and it feels as if I were hoisting the problems of the world on my shoulders, it helps to scream as loud as I can into a folded towel, a banshee wailing in the stillness.

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miles for pizza

They walked a couple of miles each way, the two men from south India did, through a muggy Houston heat, carrying a single pizza from Domino's with them, which they happily scarfed down sitting at a table near the front door. Outside, in the pool, a water polo game was starting up, and the gay man washing everyone's dishes in the kitchen admitted to being a slut.

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no news is

Good news, so long as one watches more than just mainstream media, and gets one's news from places such as Al Jazeera, the Onion, and discarded chewing-gum wrappers.

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biohazard in Houston

In the last day, I met a dozen new people, was forced to move rooms due to a biohazard incident, completed my first yoga teacher training session, cried for at least fifteen minutes straight, got to know the Westheimer strip in Midtown pretty well, and bought three matching, light blue women's exercise shorts. If nothing else, change is in the air (and I don't mean the pennies I just threw at that pesky fucking rock pigeon).

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this author had

prepared something for today, a piece about an event that had happened recently in his life, but upon secondary reading he finds the essay of poor taste, and not fit for consumption. huzzah.

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breaking old habits

As part of an overall attempt to restore balance and purpose to his life, this author has begun to do things he for a long time avoided and stopped doing things he for a long time has let himself do. He took a Finnish sauna, probed his psyche and had a few good cries, got a massage, and signed up for yoga teacher training; he has started speaking to himself and others more honestly; he has lost weight, quit smoking cigarettes et alii, regulated his diet in terms of quantity and quality, kept at his writing and photography without slacking too much, and learned a lot about how his mind and the world works. He reads from six different books each day and is slowly learning to understand his needs and feelings and emotions, slowly becoming human again. He is not trying to to count eggs or baskets here, merely spell out a few of the positive changes that the Universe has bestowed upon him. Huzzah.

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bones of blog

Where will my blogs go once I stop updating them fifty years from now? And where will they go if the Interweb stops working, crashes, or is wiped out by virus or alien invasion? When elephants feel death approaching, researchers say they often remove themselves to secret areas littered with the bones of their pachyderm forebears, graveyards piled high with the massive skulls and valuable tusks of these smart, lumbering beasts. My blogs, I fear, are not much different: when their time is up and their duties have been served, they will either retreat quietly into the digital forest, randomized clusters of ones and zeros waiting to be re-born as a toddler's social media account, or they will sink forever into the shiny black carapace of some server tower humming away dutifully in the climate-controlled warrens of any one of countless South Asian server farms.

All the writing this author posted on those blogs will be gone if they themselves go: there are no hard copies of his body of work; no printed copies of the Grigovian fairy tales he composed; no tactile versions of the vituperative barbs he hurls at politicians and powerful persons alike; his legacy is 50% ethereal and 49% vacuous, and the few items that do exist for real resemble the ruined detritus of a foolish nonce who cowers in the dark shadows of the past while cursing the skies for making thunder and sending rain. No, his artistic effort will vanish when the systems crash, when the sky-brothers return for gold and human women, or upon the Singularity, whichever comes first, and he wouldn't have it any other way. Huzzah.

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no news is

good news, as far as this liesmith is concerned; he is content to glance but briefly at the morning paper or foreign news-site; he can but poorly influence national politics, let alone world events; his vituperative and rabble-rousing writings of the past year sit unread and unwarranted, honest effort poured into broken chalices. huzzah

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foreboding sits palpably

near, speckled with bright flecks of Happiness

Vicente v. Ord

This author is barely back a week from Los Angeles, and already he yearns for the runs. The velocipedist who reads this blog will recognize the Ord Run from previous writings: it starts at Marukai Market in Little Tokyo, heads up to Hill and Cesar E. Chavez, and mashes Sunset all the way over to where that boulevard hits Vine. Old man Ord, however, has a new companion, the San Vicente Run (i.e. Santo Viczenzo), which starts at where Wilshire crosses the 405 freeway and approaches Hollywood from the west, either via Elevado or Santa Monica Boulevard.

Both of these runs the author would make regularly, never ever standing to pedal, on an L.A.-made, fixed-gear, gray Retrospec bicycle with bright green wheels. He surfed Bay Street and the Venice Breakwater, hunted urban art from the Palisades to Elysian Park, and ran the runs whenever he was able to – during rush-hour or at 3 am, under skies clear and smoggy, his heart bursting joyfully with every passing foot, flashing spoke, and humming tire. And the Boba Fett nods he received from other smog-sledders (!!!), each glance-and-dip a barely perceivable acknowledgement of his worth as a self-respecting street cyclist, each quick look grudging recognition of the toughness commonly found among persons who mash California's sun-burnt boulevards.

Someday, I will once more reside in the fine Golden State, and run these runs whenever my heart desires, but, until then, be well in my absence, fair Angelinos, and mahalo.

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ten trees fall

ten trees that were tall, dead and leaning but erect nonetheless, reminders of the inevitability of decay