on fighting raccoons

Today, a young boy saved a toy bear who had spent the evening fighting an angry raccoon. The bear had wrapped himself in a plastic blanket and hid himself in a woodpile but not before leaving clues around the backyard of the house to help his young friend find him. The boy and his aunt and uncle and father had been alerted to the plight of the bear, named Guy by a text message Guy had sent from the cellphone he took off the angry raccoon before the angry raccoon had fled into the night. Now that the boy and his bear are reunited, all is well. Aho.

© americanifesto / 場黑麥

on sleeping late

Some people have no official business to attend to on a regular basis and they choose to sleep in until noon and do little more with their lives than eat and shit and sleep. Other people have no official business to attend to on a regular basis and they choose to fill up their lives with activities such as yoga, writing, drawing, bicycling, and reading books on topics as apparently unrelated as medicine for mountaineering, the etymology of English, Andean fairy-tales, and the history of modern China. Is the one type of individual better off in the long run even though everything that is alive at some point dies? Can a person be happy in a state of lethargic ignorance or does joy come from living in enlightened and self-respecting effortless activity? These questions will likely persist through time, and at the end of the day they must be answered by the person himself without undue outside influence.

© americanifesto / 場黑麥

on slavery, briefly

Last Tuesday, I watched 12 Years A Slave, a film adaptation of the autobiography of Solomon Northrup directed by Steve McQueen. Never in my life have I been closer to the reality of slavery, to its horror and misery, to its psychopathy, to its cruelty and incessant malice, than while watching this movie; the two hours and fifteen minutes of the movie's length afforded me a glimpse into a period of American history that lasted more than two hundred and fifty years, a short and comfortable look at a wrong done to innocent humans, at insanity beyond reckoning, at the very worst mankind has to offer. Since last Tuesday I have had nightmares about being myself a slave, and I have caught myself at work looking over my shoulder to make sure someone wasn't sneaking up on me with a bull-whip so as to hurt and rend my flesh. The image the movie portrayed of a life lived in slavery reminded me of growing up in the same house as an alcoholic parent and living in a world populated by a sociopath who struck without warning, who took and punished rather than giving and rewarding, where one was never safe from rebuke or threat or injury and where one could never be good enough because one was seen as having no intrinsic worth. While I was a teenager living in Germany our Gymnasium made all its students walk down to the theater and watch the movie Schindler's List as soon as it released, and in my opinion America's schools would do well to show this movie to everyone in employ and attendance. The Constitution of the United States of America doesn't even ban slavery, it merely relegates it to a form of legal punishment known today as prison. My name is Platt, and I'm a slave from Georgia. Oh, brother, I weep with shame.

© americanifesto / 場黑麥

on mastering puppets

Often, people become entrenched in their ways to the point that they are incapable of making meaningful change. Once one has determined this to be the case, however, all one really has to do is keep playing into the person's hand in order to keep them feeling as if they were in charge and on top of things. These people dance to the tune played by an outside force; they have allowed themselves to become puppets of entities outside of their immediate control; and their lives progress to rhythms other than those dictated by the shifting circumstances of life, which is in a constant state of flux. Such is its changeability that the only way to really thrive in it is to be on one's toes, to keep the head on a swivel, and to be wary of falling into the rut of the comfortable and the familiar. Huzzah then, and mahalo.

© americanifesto / 場黑麥

on meeting babes

In the past couple of weeks, three different beautiful women have waltzed into my life only to promptly waltz back out of it. In response to this good fortune I stayed polite, was well-mannered, and acted in no way aggressively. Consequently, I wrote down no telephone numbers, got no new names, have no new leads, and continue to go to bed without hugs or snuggles or kisses goodnight. On some level it is rude of me not to pursue these women and honor the urges and desires that surge through me when I cast my eyes upon them – the universe was kind enough to thrust these beautiful creatures into my path, and I am savvy enough to pick up on the possibility of them maybe liking me enough and finding me attractive enough to want to spend time with me, and it is in some ways insulting to the Fates and to God herself for me to stay mum, alone, and silent. But on another level I refrain from acting because I understand that when I pursue something, when I grasp after an external goal, that thing nearly invariably eludes me, and on another level I simply cannot fathom how anyone could be attracted to me sexually. My perceptions, then, are what are keeping me back more than most anything else, and it is my brains that prohibit me from experiencing something akin to a healthy and happy sex life. So many synapses mixed and entwined, slow is the process of changing the mind. Huzzah.

© americanifesto / 場黑麥

on failure

For most of my life, indeed from a young age, I was taught to avoid failure at all cost. As a younger man I encountered failure in the form of poor marks at school and rejection from the pretty girls whose orbits overlapped with mine. In my twenties and early thirties, failure was still something to be avoided, only that it had grown and morphed into a concept of monumental and cataclysmic disintegration of career and independence, the idea that my entire self-worth hinged upon my ability to meet some arguably low expectations and pay my bills on time. Since having started exploring a virtuous and simple life of yoga and meditation and writing and just being Me, however, my understanding of failure has changed dramatically. On some level, I know that I am indistinguishable from the Great Omnipresent Knowledge that is everything we know and see and everything we cannot fathom; some part of me understands that I am the Deity, the Chosen One, the Kwisatz Haderach, and, therefore, on a cosmic level, nothing I do will ever be wrong, and nothing I have ever done was a mistake. For the time being, though, I inhabit a human form, and my human form lives in a society of other humans, and the others call themselves Americans, and with this common Ynki horde I share certain mores and customs, traditions and habits, dreams and hopes and fears. Instead of looking upon the concept of failure with disdain, however, I am learning how to embrace it, redefine it, use it, cherish it, and harness the its power to achieve the spiritual calm and personal fulfillment that I never managed to find in success. As I stand before the precipice of grand and life-changing decisions I find myself acknowledging the dozens of little failures I achieve every day, things such as not holding a yoga pose for as long as I could have held it or letting my thoughts dictate my actions instead of breathing and taking a moment to become clear. I am adept at seeing my shortcomings but nearly blind to recognizing my own success, and instead of continuing to bash my head into that thick brick wall I am trying to trick myself into a positive state of mind by cherishing failure, that ubiquitous bogeyman, that damaging wraith. Ultimately, I am learning how to give myself permission to fail, which is perhaps one of the greatest of all of life's lessons. Aho.

© americanifesto / 場黑麥

delighting in misfortune

For most of my adult life, I have delighted in others' misfortune. One part of my tendency to find joy in the sadness of others comes from having been educated to a high standard in the German gymnasium system, so that now I have the capacity to intellectually browbeat most persons I meet. Also, I am a multilingual American mutt raised by a self-loathing, genius-level, alcoholic country pastor and his codependent, artist wife; one of the things I am good at is reading another person's weaknesses and relentlessly exploiting them to my own short-term personal gain. Furthermore, I stand about six feet four inches tall, with a muscular and athletic build, and I am accustomed to using my physical presence as a means to tap into deep-seated fears that many people have of persons taller than they are. More than a dozen years ago, however, I began to follow a path other than that followed by most of the people I meet, a method for living codified in five hundred Before Common Error by a warrior-scholar named Lao Tzu. Chapter thirty-one of his book contains a simple guideline for living a virtuous life: If one is bound to action, proud of victory, or delights in the misfortune of others, one will never gain a thing from this world below Heaven. Over the years my ability to understand and practice this lesson has changed and evolved, but my recent dedication to a daily practice of yoga and meditation has greatly strengthened my grasp of the deeper meaning of the Tao Teh Ching. In modern American society it is difficult not to delight in the misfortune of others – the tendency to do so is popular among hosts of television and radio programming, so much so that it is unusual for these role-models to treat the people around them respectfully and with feelings of universal love. How can one avoid finding delight in the misfortune of others? By breathing instead of speaking, by staying silent instead of hurling that delicious verbal barb, by rooting out the source of one's own dissatisfaction and desire instead of blindly following the knee-jerk reactions that pettiness and neediness demand. Not one thing slips by the Great Aether, not mine nor yours nor those guys' either. Huzzah.

© americanifesto / 場黑麥

on being comfortable

A desire has gripped me this winter – to be comfortable, and warm. When arriving home from a shopping trip or bicycling adventure I don thick woolen socks and finish outstanding business quickly then throw myself onto the couch and crawl under a well-padded blanket. Since we turned our clocks back a few weeks ago, this desire for warmth has seen me falling asleep before 8 p.m., as I tend to snuggle into the covers after dinner instead of chasing away the deep cold of my unheated house by making a fire; once my feet thaw out my eyelids begin to droop and I slip unwittingly into Morpheus's embrace. By following this pattern I write less and sleep more, which has me sitting by myself after my seasonal job trying to come up with interesting and useful things to write about here and on my other blogs. On some level, it is easier to get warm using my own body heat than it is to use wood or oil – it costs less, it produces fewer greenhouse-gas emissions, and it runs solely on the food churning through my guts. Guests change my house's heating dynamic entirely, especially guests young, attractive, and female, of which there are however few. So long as I keep the peeps away and stick to my lonesome this winter season, wiling away the evenings in a heavy-lidded stupor, my carbon footprint will be as low as my self-esteem. Huzzah.

© americanifesto / 場黑麥

ban the trans

On the radio tonight I heard that the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) of the federal government of the United States of America (the fed) is planning to ban trans-fats from foods. I learned something from one of the specialists on the news program: trans-fats are bad because of their tendency to clump and harden within blood vessels, which can cause heart-attacks and disease. We are long overdue in this country for a serious reconsideration of the continued legality and general public acceptance of alcohol as the drug of choice for weddings, funerals, cookouts, romantic encounters, fraternity parties, afternoon outings, Christmases, and New Year's Eves. Deaths in America resulting from the consumption of alcohol outnumber those resulting from the eating of trans-fats by a ratio of 10 to 1, yet alcohol is still legal. Alcohol is involved in most reported cases of domestic violence, yet sports teams across this land proudly play in stadiums built and named by Coors and Busch and their ilk, drug manufacturers and drug distributors who profit from continually undermining the foundations of an orderly and safe society. When soldiers return from war with post traumatic stress disorder, they often reach to alcohol, thus compounding damage already sustained and confounding efforts toward recovery: we owe it to our mentally challenged servicepeople to provide them with treatment and help in their time of need, and the last thing we should be doing is standing idly and feeding them fifths of Beam by as they crawl down the rabbit hole of chronic alcohol intoxication. One avenue for the fed to consider is the Swedish model, which involves making alcohol prohibitively expensive to purchase in the hopes that sticker-shock will keep people from drinking; the other paths for the fed to take is to deregulate and legalize all drugs and get the fuck out of the personal business of 337 million Americans, which however would mean admitting that its meddling and its guidelines and its nitpicking were total crap from the get-go, and that it used tens of trillions of taxpayer dollars to build a massively bloated, heavily armed, hyper-paranoid nanny state. Fuck that noise; it's time for anther motherfucking revolution.

© americanifesto / 場黑麥

on being enough

Last week, on Thursday, I finished the Embodying Enoughness (EE) series by Turbodog Yoga, Chicago. For persons who use yoga to heal themselves body and soul, I recommend completing two full rounds of EE in six weeks time, with classes four times a week. Using but a handful of meditations and just six different classes made up of Hatha yoga poses in the Forrest style (with some exceptions thrown in), the people at Turbodog Yoga helped me rekindle a feeling of wholeness and spiritual calm that I have not felt in years. Due perhaps to the great strength of my newly rediscoverd feelings but mostly to my tendency to try to operate in isolation, however, soon after completion I engaged in the harmful practice of excessive and habitual consumption of the sweet sweet sticky, which since completing my training I have been largely able to avoid. And, lo!, I am now laid up, sweating through two nights of fever-dreams and aching in muscle and bone, one molar infected and confidence in self and abilities wavering. Perhaps the lesson here is that the practice is the goal, and that few things come easily that are worthwhile. Healing oneself from psychological damage and harm done in the past is a lifelong endeavor, something one would do well neither to rush nor judge too harshly. Through practice man reaches god. Huzzah.

© americanifesto / 場黑麥

on spinning plates

For a number of reasons, I have not been working as much lately as I could have been working. I used to organize my days as I saw fit, with long segments set aside for writing and reading and studying and drawing. Now, however, I am once again an employee of somewhere, and while there are no set hours I still have to be somewhere beside where I maybe totally want to be for a good five hours each day. No more putting off writing until I'm in the mood – it is now part of my new evening routine, coming right after supper (and before the grumpies set in). No more mashing pedal into downtown to blog without having written anything yet confident in my ability to pull kazoo and huzzah and whizzbang out of my arse – now I must be prepared, ready, steeled, and focused. On top of writing I am finishing up the homework for yoga teacher's training, reading many books and a thick binder and writing many book and binder reports. But few of my plates are spinning – how on Earth do people it who have children and full-time jobs and significant others and emails and phone calls? I cannot really fathom being so very busy with my life that I could neglect friends and family and acquaintances more than I do, now. In essence, I have tasted a stress-free and productive (though not affluent or all-too exciting) style of living, and I like it. Take your dozen plates and spin them – I'll be just fine eating rice, making art, and bicycling. Aho.

© americanifesto / 場黑麥

on being clear

For many years I have lived in this hunting shack frugally and quietly. During that time, I finished writing a book, stopped smoking cigarettes, became a yoga teacher, and started using a bicycle as my primary means of transportation. The transformation from wild-eyed, self-mutilating addict to calm-hearted, self-respecting mastermind is just beginning, and I'm not sure where it will take me or who I will be at the end. Certain things are beginning to make sense now; certain things are becoming clear; and with a daily yoga practice and a renewed dedication to living a virtuous life (one devoid of attachment and suffering), I think I am finally on a path that leads away from slavery, deceit, and gluttony. One of the single, clear lessons I have learned is that I must take responsibility for myself in the Now, in the Here And Now, and not worry about what came in the past or what may come in the future. There is great clarity, I find, in abandoning undue concerns for things completely outside of my control, in allowing life around me to unfold without my conscious intervention and in treasuring equally calamity and success, heartbreak and joy, delight and misfortune. In the paraphrased words of Lao Tzu: Prize calamities as your own body, for without your body, what calamities can you have? Huzzah.

© americanifesto / 場黑麥