things heat up

As the temperature rises, memories of comfort fade from mind. The pedals whirl and spin and my legs under my pants' cinched cuffs begin to sweat. I drag my bicycle and myself up a low hill flanked by rows of tall and swaying corn, the wheels humming across the baking asphalt, moving swiftly and quietly across the Pennsylvania countryside. It is half 3 in the afternoon and I am returning from getting my new photo driver's license at the DMV in Gettysburg. Having taken main roads on the way there, riding in the breakdown lane next to semi-trucks and speeding drivers, I am returning on country byways. Safely back home, I can feel the dehydration settle into my bones. The next day I use a muscle-powered push mower to trim the lawn, once again working in the afternoon, once again sweating through a number of t-shirts, afterward aggressively hydrating using electrolyte tablets and copious amounts of hot tea. The day after that, I trim my septuagenarian neighbors' hedge and cut down some of their bushes, chipping the cut pieces with a gasoline-powered chipper, once again sweating entirely through my clothes. Today, friend, today I've really felt it, the major muscle groups aching through my 2 hours of personal yoga practice and subsequent hour of teaching, the fibers and tendons gearing up for more manual labor this afternoon, another hedgerow to trim and gather and chip. Yes, oh yes, things are heating up.

mentiri factorem fecit – 場黑麥

on growing wild

Grig, the capital of the Glorious Republic of Grigovia, is encouraging its citizens to let their lawns grow wild. The gir, as denizens of the city are called, who eschews a Western-style grass mono-culture in favor of a biotope of wild plants native to the high steppe upon which Grig sits will see their municipal taxes decrease. “Fewer boring lawns means greater overall happiness,” said Enddo Slamnyust, the city's mayor. “Also, there will be fewer pesticides and chemical fertilizers entering our sewers and more places for birds and beneficial insects to nest, feed, and grow. My planning committee and I expect the increased levels of shade to help control the heat of summer, and more good bugs means increased yields of fruits and vegetables from the community gardens that are being installed on rooftops across our fine metropolis. Wild lawns make Grig a friendlier, healthier place.”

mentiri factorem fecit – 場黑麥

on EBOS

Last year, I made up the acronym EBOS. It stands for Entire Battery Operating Session, or the amount of time I pledge to spend each day using my computer to manipulate words, images, and websites. During the couple of months before I bought a new and larger netbook battery, EBOS kept shrinking until I could barely get a solid hour in before the lights started flashing and my system began reminding me every few minutes to save any unsaved material and prepare for imminent shutdown. I read somewhere that batteries work best when they are drained to the last before being filled back up again, but I read somewhere else that such behavior damages lithium-ion batteries. (I have not noticed a significant or rapid decrease in battery life resulting from wringing the last electrons out of the battery before recharging it to its maximum.) Running Ubuntu – Precise Pangolin helps stretch battery life; I have installed a widget to manage CPU usage and learned that making backups to my 3 external drives sucks juice like a mugfug. So far, EBOS has been a success: I blog 6 days a week; my unique page-views (across 8 different sites, without using paid advertising of any sort) number in the hundreds each month; and I just launched a number of new, stand-alone sites based on what I have learned about how to use the Internets good. Huzzah. Blog-writers of the world, EBOS!

mentiri factorem fecit – 場黑麥

on Phyrgian caps

While the American republic was still being formed – that is, before it outgrew its britches and started pining for global full spectrum dominance – the concept of Liberty was vibrant, and alive. Today, however, as we approach the 9th month of the year 2013, the colors of Liberty have faded from her shores; preferring conformity and convenience to individuality and self-sufficiency, preferring television and nutritionism to simple pleasures and real food, the American people are in a sorry state. How do we shake them out of their stupor? How do we shock them back into passionate dialog and community-conscious living? One method for awakening them from their trance is to show them that most actions done with a car can be done on a bicycle. Another way to quicken their tepid fluids is to don a Phyrgian cap and prove to a candid world that we few who are mocked and ridiculed and looked upon with scorn have doffed the shackles of materialism and freed ourselves from greed and need and avarice by wearing a red and floppy hat. Look no further than the War Office Seal, which features a Liberty cap; find its collapsed contours in the symbols of the American Revolution's own Sons of Liberty. Perhaps we pampered modern Ynki would be able to pull this land out of its tyrannical tailspin if we emulated the men and women who risked Fortune and sacred Honor to create a nation dedicated to the principle that all persons are created equal, a republic founded on the notion that all choices and thoughts and decisions should be allow so long as they do not directly violate the Life, Liberty, or Property of another person. If, however, a majority of the public keeps pumping gasoline into slaves' chariots and numbing itself out to five hours of TV each day, the idea of Liberty will continue to sputter and wheeze, suffocating from lack of believers. Citizens of America, awake!

mentiri factorem fecit – 場黑麥

on stealing fire

Cultures around the world celebrate the bringer of fire, the bringer of knowledge. In the Christian tradition, the bringer is called Lucifer, who fell from heaven, whose name in Latin means Light-Carrier. In First-People traditions of the Pacific Northwest, the trickster-god Raven steals the sun from the world-house and gives it to humans, bestowing understanding upon them. In Greek mythology, Prometheus steals fire from a lofty perch and hands it over to mankind; as punishment for his actions he is chained to a rock and must endure having his liver pecked out by an eagle every day (until his rescue by Heracles). These examples from historically and geographically divergent areas speak of the same idea – that some external force physically descended form somewhere above the terrestrial plain and downloaded into the fabric of the human race the ability to ponder and think and reason. And these are but a few of this type of story; many others tell of the sudden arrival of knowledge from somewhere else, of the ability to reckon and mull and fly fancily unexpectedly arising in the minds of theretofore troglodytic bipedal mammals. Did we uplift ourselves, our intelligence arising of its own accord out of the vast and inky aether? (David Brin explores this concept in Startide Rising and his other Uplift books.) Were we genetically manipulated by a rogue extraterrestrial visitor who decided to fuck up his boss' plans and infect us homos sapiens with a full dose of thought's holy fire? These questions have kept our race up at night since the beginning of recorded history, and I don't intend to find answers for them here. I shall hazard to say, however, that I think I see a pattern emerging in the belief-systems of peoples living largely independently of one other, a pattern that suggests that we are not the only sentient beings hurtling through space-time. Keep one eyes on the stars and the other on your six. Mahalo.

mentiri factorem fecit – 場黑麥

on hidden enemies

Lo these many years I have thought that my foes lurked on the outside, when all along they have enjoyed free rent inside my brains. I have been blinding myself to reality, forgetting that the very classification of something or someone as an enemy destroys the tender inner balance, forgetting that a self-deprecating mindset is not predisposition or life sentence but daily choice. How simple the Way is, and how easy it is to grasp, once one has burned and breathed and cleansed through the ego's incessant attempts to hijack the thought process and pervert it to devious ends. Lay aside the ranger, indeed.

mentiri factorem fecit – 場黑麥

beyond all control

No matter how magnanimous or calm I am, no matter how understanding or sober, I shall never be good enough for some people; their moods will remain forever beyond my control. The need to be accepted and liked by people is a holdover from my life before I completed the training, when I tended to tether myself to others' opinions and moods, before I came to understand how strong is my empathy, how powerfully I am affected by the energies people emit when they think or talk about me. The Warrior's Path differs from that of the average mortal in that it entails breathing through and unlearning one's habits rather than repeating or perpetuating them; it helps one center body and spirit rather than flying off the handle and always blaming the world for one's problems. For me, this means staying quiet and not responding when others heap fear and woe and frustration upon me, feeding their egos silence instead of the hatred and discontentment they so desperately wish me to bounce back at them, maintaining purity of vision instead of letting it become clouded with rage. Few are they who know this Path, fewer still who walk it. Aho.

mentiri factorem fecit – 場黑麥

on waking up

This morning, I woke up in my Kelty Tempest 2 tent feeling an urgent need to pee. As I crawled out onto the lawn to relieve myself, I had the sneaking suspicion that I would not be getting any more rest. Before I had even expelled the last drops, my alarm sounded, signaling 3:45am. I reached into the gear loft, put the alarm on snooze, finished my business, crawled back into the tent, zipped up all the zippers, and dove back into the last remnants of my dream, in which I was a pregnant woman wearing a jacket stiffened with ropes living in the collapsible racks of a big-box store right next to a train station. Moments before I had climbed into a train that was carrying a large bronze frieze honoring the persons involved in China's Long March, the buzzer rang once more, waking me up fully. I went inside, did my 2 hours of yoga, bicycled into town, taught another hour of yoga, and am now blogging and handling biz. So far, it's been a good day.

mentiri factorem fecit – 場黑麥

on strong temptations

The urge is great to meet anger with anger, frustration with frustration, pettiness with spite. Many people in my life do this; they seem to expect to be belittled and spoken over, ignored and verbally abused, browbeaten, denigrated, and ridiculed. I am learning once again to breathe deeply before speaking, to pause before responding, to hew to the ancient codes I have studies for the past dozen years, to hold myself to a higher standard than that of the average mortal. All the tools are here before me, now I must but use them. Aho.

mentiri factorem fecit – 場黑麥

actio = reactio

America should not be surprised to find itself under attack by extremists of all stripe – for a century, the United States has installed dictators in Central America (see the actions of its School of the Americas), fucked up Middle Eastern politics, and engaged in illegal wars of agression against the sovereign nations of Iraq and Afghanistan. The old saying goes: Every action will have an appropriate and timely reaction. Keeping this in mind, it should be obvious that the attacks of 11 September 2001 were little more than a fraction of the woe and heartbreak and torment and bloodshed that the Ynki has visited upon the innocent peoples of the world being visited back upon himself. I do not condone terror, nor do I support war or hostility of any sort; what I am saying is that given America's track record of genocide and destruction her citizens should not be surprised that other people have begun to fight back, and hit them where it hurts. If Americans wish to be safe from similar attacks in the future, they would do well to ring up, email, or visit their representatives in their houses of parliament (the House and the Senate) and demand that their federal government stop waging wars, selling arms overseas, warmongering, and imposing sanctions upon or otherwise blockading foreign nations, that it cast aside the arrows of war and lift up the laurels of peace. A dictatorship of fear has descended over the American nation, and only when her citizens stand as one and call for an end to fascism and officially-sanctioned corruption will she once again join the ranks of competent and just nations. Let us pray this happens soon.

mentiri factorem fecit – 場黑麥

third time combing

Thrice now I open the boxes of my parents' household, perusing the remnants of the past for things of worth and beauty. Some of the boxes were first packed up in 1989; they moved with us to Germany, stayed shut there and forgotten, then came back in 2000, when circumstance dictated our return. My mother was an artist – what to do with all her art? I digitize what fits to scan, but where do all these framed works go? I've thrown out the brush-nubs and pencil-stubs, yet still remain mounds of useful artist's tools. Her Noah woodblocks, full of meaning, give the house a westward leaning. On Katherine von Bora, she gathered much, great stacks and reams, thee binders all but bursting with a lifetime's shortened focus. My own stuff I take out, but most of it's junk, I add it to trash-bags that line the far curb, the fruits of a lifetime all bound for the dump. My father was pastor and seaman and drunk, his sermons and watch-caps, his beer-steins and stoles – to keep them or trash them, to let them grow mold, to stuff them in storage and further delay, the simple decisions that face me today? By times it's rewarding, by times it is hard, to comb through the stacks of shit my parents prized, to toss what is useless and keep what is good. Enough of this writing, more boxes await, I welcome the challenge and accept my fate. Aho.

mentiri factorem fecit – 場黑麥

with scrawls aplenty

Their screams are silent, free of sound, their fates are fickle, market-bound, who tether heart and hope and soul, to present body-frequency. Not much remains but pent-up rage, at king and country, wife and knave, at things far past an easy grasp, at politics – elephant, ass. With scrawls aplenty they do fill, their fleeting time on earthly crust, updating Bob and Jack and Jill, and countless others they mistrust. Now all that's left are silly rhymes and windless talks about old times, all filler-words and fancy -isms, the listeners they droop and nod, they sit down heavy with their pods to reblog sleepy puffball kittens. So all things are proper, and nothing's awry, young hearts they are empty, and old eyes are dry, the talk it will go on, as rightly it should, we'll not sit and judge or choose bad over good, but welcome each syllable, jape dig and jest, we poor foolish humans, we men of the West.

mentiri factorem fecit – 場黑麥

on going deeper

This morning, I awoke at 3:45 and stumbled over to sit on the toilet. There I sat for 7 minutes, dozing and finishing up the rest of my dream. With a start, I forced myself awake, stood up, pulled on my underthings, and went into the back room, for yoga. I lit sage and prayed to the four directions, sang three morning songs, and at around 4:10 am started my two hours of sweat-lodge yoga. It was a new class, one I had not done before today, one focused entirely on going deeper and peeling back the layers of self-mutilation with the intention of healing the psyche's rotten core. After stretches but before starting abdominals I paused the playback and went into the living room (taking care to keep the heat in by shutting the sliding door) in order to write down the fading details of the dream I had been having just before I woke up. (In this dream, I was about to run cross a 6-lane freeway during heavy traffic, even though I had the option of using a nearby bridge to cross over it.) After writing down the details of my dream I stepped back onto the mat to do many sets of abs with a roll and as well as twisting abs with a roll, during which I began to feel muscles and tendons in my pelvis that I haven't felt in an age. The class continued and I followed the spoken instructions, breathing into and peeling back layers of hatred and self-doubt, delving with each pose deeper into the ripples of my mind, rooting around in the dank and fetid cellars of my​ soul. Oh what I found there! Thoughts and feelings, heartbreaks and ecstasy, all types of energies twisted up into complex knots and pulsating balls, all types of memories choking the free flow of chi, of prana, of joy. The distress I felt upon discovering these choke-points was so great that I turned off the recording and finished my session on my own, warming down gradually and granting myself a long final resting. I know that these blockages won't dissolve by themselves; it will take many more years of effort and breathing and yoga to loosen their deathly grasp, to bring healing to the zones they but poorly hide. Sitting there on the mat frustrated with myself for ending class prematurely, I remembered that in my dream, just before waking up, I had run through a gap in traffic and successfully crossed the freeway, eschewing the beckoning footbridge and landing in an entirely new world, in a place with giant walking robots and mists shining in soothing neon light. Patience, I told myself, salvation lies in patience, in practice, and in persistence. What tomorrow holds is mystery, but today is drenched in hope. Aho.

mentiri factorem fecit – 場黑麥

on morning dreamings

I awoke this morning in a panic, convinced I was being accused of larceny by a ticket collector on a train in Russia. In this dream I had gone to the restroom after plugging in my cellphone and was making my way back to my seat when the uniformed agent approached, whereupon I discovered that my passport was missing from my person and my luggage was missing from the rack. So vivid and lifelike was this dream that I woke up, had a look around, ascertained my whereabouts, went back to sleep, and dove right back into the tale, only to realize I was clawing my hands bloody looking for my stolen things in huge bins of jagged ice. (There were other people on the train with me who also had their things stolen; I have forgotten their faces but not their aura.) So great was the clarity of this dream, and so flawless were the details, that I am 50% convinced that I was looking through the eyes of a person who was actually enduring this trauma, a person on the other side of the world who had been robbed of his passport and cellphone and who was about to spend the weekend in a Russian jail. Let's hope the poor sop cleared his name. Aho.

mentiri factorem fecit – 場黑麥