a surfing paean

It's not just for any old wavelength we'll settle; we seek out the big ones that punish our mettle that drag us and tumble us into the deep with harsh pulling suction and swift faces steep. Between them we float bobble swim through the sea to wherever our chances greatest may be to snatch fleeting glory from a swollen peak – our serious business is not for the meek. There's crab sea-lice jellie trash urchin and shark, there's thunderstorm board-rash log impending dark, there's lobster-net newbie and lightning-strike too, there's shattered plank sunburn and discarded shoe. And still we will go out and enter the churn because deep within us a passion does burn for danger excitement and warm muggy climes; we dream of the perfect wave all waking times.

© americanifesto / 場黑麥

poised to escape

There's one thing I'm proud of, it's not joke nor jape – I am always ready and poised to escape. My things can be packed up in an hour flat, my wallet is stuffed with cash, brimming and fat, my ties to surroundings I can as soon shed as a snake that twists out of skins dry and dead. I can walk ten miles or jog without lag while carrying both of my traveling bags, and leap over rivers and speak many tongues, and mingle with peoples old foreign and young. I'll sleep under bridges or on the bare ground, I'm friends with most beasts ant owl kitten and hound, I know to stay hydrated when things get hot or layer on extra clothes when they are not. These things I have learned from a life spent afoot, spent walking the alleys, feet covered in soot, and smudged up and dirty and bleeding and cut, from clambering out of innumerable ruts. Some say I'm not grounded, that I am aloof; I answer with jolly-good oh-yeah forsooth, then pick up my hiking stick and my backpack and walk away from them without looking back. AKM – Alpha Kilo Michael – Always Keep Moving.

© americanifesto / 場黑麥

insight and honing

Just half of a fortnight I've been here, back home; at times with some people but often alone. To spend all one's hours with others is neat but there's not a person Alone Time can beat, for gathering insight and honing the mind I find in the Stillness a magical time, when I can speak little and sit by myself, do yoga or inspect the things on a shelf. I have faced harsh critics who judged my lone ways, who said I should not waste away my short days by sitting in solitude with my door locked, nor seeking out others to run down the clock. Where this path will take me no person can tell, I have learned to love myself thorough and well, I have learned to accept my gifts and not dwell on things that contort my mind into a Hell.

© americanifesto / 場黑麥

presence and words

Just once in a lifetime (or maybe it's twice, or if one is lucky it might happen thrice), one meets a fair person, who helps the heart lift, whose physical presence and words are a gift. Should such an occurrence be served on your plate then take not a breather nor dare hesitate, for time's of the essence, it is fleeting too, and none but you yourself can know what to do. Seek not foreign council nor ask for advice but let honest sweet tender clear words suffice, to confess your feelings and lay them all out lest the other person should think you a lout and tell you quite rudely to, “Be gone, get out.”

© americanifesto / 場黑麥

in Mao's mausoleum

We approach the site where Our Benevolent and Wise Leader Chairman Mao lies sleeping, but it is closed, even though the sign says it should be open. By making the detour we also miss our chance to enter the Forbidden City; it has been sealed early to accommodate a Canadian delegation in town for the Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC). Tired from having walked the compound's entire circumference we squeeze ourselves into a city bus for the trip back to her car, paying the cashier sitting in the one twentieth of a U.S. dollar. My companion warns me not to wander around the area at night due to trigger-happy soldiers who roam the streets keeping safe the Chinese equivalent of America's White House, which lies nearby. The next morning, she makes sure I dress warmly although my system is already accustomed to the cold and I tend to run hot, but I follow her instructions and put on a long-sleeved shirt before donning her wool-lined, leather men's jacket. The day before, she had informed me that on the night prior to my arrival Something Had Happened with her ex-ex-boyfriend, and that she is hence reluctant to continue the physical tryst we had started in Bali one month before. I wonder, briefly, if the jacket is his. Such is life. Due to traffic control regulations we cannot drive her car as its license plate number ends in one that is odd and this is an even day. Therefore, we walk then bus our way over to a Metro line that will take us to Tienanmen Square, direct. At least a hundred people are queued up to enter the system, some pushing but most dutifully putting their bags through the x-ray scanners and enduring the pat-downs and wandings. At the Square, we go through another security checkpoint, and again another to enter the mausoleum grounds, where my companion is escorted briskly out for having an actual camera in her bag. (My Chinese-made ASUS cellphone, with its built-in camera, passes muster.) Alone, I walk a serpentine path made by a high-tech, movable pedestrian corral that leads up to the building's front door, pausing only to buy a single white flower, which seems appropriate and only costs sixty cents. Plain-clothed security men wearing aviator sunglasses prowl the antechamber, which is overflowing with flowers, and I pause for a moment to admire the room's tasteful adornments and wood paneling, to my eye built during the late Seventies. Then it is into the inner chamber itself, where Our Benevolent and Wise Leader Chairman Mao (or, as some would later say, a wax likeness thereof) lies in state. A security man gestures to a pair of cushions to pad the knees when kneeling but I do not immediately understand and before I know it am being hurried along by other security men (and women) past Our Benevolent and Wise Leader Chairman Mao (or, as some would later say, a wax likeness thereof) and back out in sunshine and a clear blue sky, my duty completed and my heart at rest. Requiescat in pacem, pater.

© americanifesto / 場黑麥