helmet now doff

She knows all the shortcuts and all driving tricks for she is the roadway goddess Ganestryx. Each turn that we make on the footpath of living relies on the protections that she is giving so do pause to give thanks ere you now set off and to her good guidance your helmet now doff. Much like fair Ganesha – her longtime good mate – can she set up obstacles to make you late or make them all vanish and make your road clear and help you to smile from left to right ear. We here in Grigovia worship her much with festival dances and prayers and such so praise this great power with whom we all mix: the mighty wise merciful great Ganestryx.

© americanifesto / 場黑麥

I am enough

Now what is the origin what is the cause of this tendency to balk hesitate pause? The girl is right there her intentions are clear and yet I can't seem to grasp what is so near. I talked and I reasoned my way out of getting and giving a bit of genital subletting. The root of this failure sits deep in my core but slowly I'm learning to know it some more but slowly I'm learning to not let it win to allow such healing that's needed begin. Though it may sound sappy and like cheesy stuff I say here once for all this: I am enough!

© americanifesto / 場黑麥

like burbling brooks

Without much confusion held there in his heart he sat down to hammer away at his art. The words they flow at times like burbling brooks at times he must search for them in reference books. Perhaps the true purpose of this here existence is to keep creating with patient persistence at something at anything ne'er before seen is to keep on finding what's hidden between those everyday notions that stand there and rust that lie around collecting mountains of dust. To distill some truth from the essence of nuance is all that the artist desires and wants for this is the highest that he can achieve – to pull the decisive card out of his sleeve to bring forth some thinking from minds sad or dull to fashion for fledgling dreams a solid hull. So take up that pencil or take up that brush and set aside due time for art can't be rushed yet do it not for you do it for our race for all humans living in every place.

© americanifesto / 場黑麥

on forces' awakening

I went to see Star Wars VII, and cried. The last time I'd seen a movie from this franchise in theaters was in 1983, at the age of 6, when my parents were still alive. As soon as I saw the opening text-scroll and the opening music came bursting out of the speakers, memories of Mom flooded into my heart, and it was as if she were there with me. The theater in which I sat was in Bali, Indonesia, and most of the theater-goers were middle-class Indonesians, yet, for a couple of hours, we rejoiced in a common love for a galaxy far, far away, one that exists only in our minds. Thankfully, the wooden dialogue of the first six movies was largely absent, and, with a brown-skinned as well as a female main character rather than such characters being relegated to racially-stereotyped bit roles, the movie was fresh and modern without ever sacrificing its roots. A weak-willed antagonist too puny to live up to his grandfather's legacy rounded out the film, giving new hope to a franchise that is among my earliest memories. Thanks for being there to enjoy it with me, Mom. Requiescat in pacem, and mahalo.

© americanifesto / 場黑麥

and effort long

Time is short and effort long and thus I'll keep short this here song. From the start back to the end the ego one must learn to bend and break upon the rocks of silence with pure love not ever violence.

© americanifesto / 場黑麥

on vegan killers

Over the weekend, I engaged with a staunchly vegan friend in heated debate about the taking of life. At root, my argument was that in order for us humans to stay alive, something else must die. Each living human sends tens of thousands of living bacteria to perish in a lake of his stomach acid every time he swallow. Each vegan takes the life of a broccoli plant when he lops its head off; he denies the soy plant the ability to live when he eats its beans instead of planting them; he kills countless bacteria every time he washes his hands with soap or spills a drop of vodka onto a wooden bar-top. Hence, the only thing a person can do to avoid killing other living things, every day, is to die.

In my experience, certain vegans rationalize their dietary and life choices according to the 'cute and cuddly' argument: since a cow can turn supposedly doleful eyes back at its butcher and certain emotions can be interpreted into its gaze, it should not be killed. Another is what I call the 'flight' argument: since a chicken can run away from a person trying to catch it (whereas an onion cannot), it wants to stay alive and must therefore not be killed. A third argument is 'it has eyes, and a mother, and should therefore not be killed.' My vegan friend made extensive use of the 'it has eyes' argument; indeed, it seemed to sit at the core of his very existence. That, and saying that since he can't see bacteria with his own eyes, I could not prove to him that they were alive, fled from danger, or even existed. Oh, and trying to shame me into admitting I would eat the liver of a human baby if one were served up to me mixed up in a bowl with the livers of other animals. (For myself, on the day-to-day, I choose to eat only plant products, but since I will eat whatever a host puts in front of me while a guest in his home, I without shame admitted that I would probably – but not willingly – eat a member of my own species...) When I made the point that potatoes have eyes, my counterpart argued that this was only a matter of definition, to which I countered with something like, “So, if we started calling the sight organs of animals something other than 'eyes,' would it be OK to eat them?” He responded by launching back into shaming mode and accusing me of wanting to eat babies. After nearly an hour of cyclical conversation and me admitting to being a monster and a (potential) cannibal, I brought things to a point, asking my vegan friend if he agreed that by eating a tomato, a soy bean, or an apple, he was a taker of life. A killer. He responded by saying that, according to what he referred to as the 'food chain,' it is natural for humans to eat not only plants but also the products of plants. That, for him, eating the seed of a plant is not killing. That, since plants cannot run away and he cannot hear their screams of agony (certain pine trees scream at frequencies inaudible to humans when they're dying of thirst), they're freely giving up their fruits, and their lives. At that point, we ended the conversation, agreeing to disagree.

In my opinion, since a chicken's egg can grow up to become a chicken, it contains life, or at least the potential for life. In my opinion, since a soy (or any other) bean can grow up to become a soy (or any other) plant, it contains life, or at least the potential for life. Therefore, for me, there's no difference between a chicken's egg and a soy bean. I am a vegetarian primarily because I like the way my body and mind feel when I'm vegetarian. Also, I do not wish to support an animal husbandry industry that causes undue suffering to the lives in its care, destroying Earth's environment, and overusing antibiotics. Plus. I find that eating a lot of meat causes my blood-chemistry to become unbalanced. Before each meal, whether it should contain meat or plant products, I try to take a moment to thank the food for sacrificing itself so that I might live. George Bernard Shaw once wrote: 'Animals are my friends... and I don't eat my friends.' Every time I hear Shaw's quote used by a vegan person to self-aggrandize his or her dietary and life decisions, however, I want to add this: 'But plants? Fuck plants – I'll kill and eat the shit out a fucking plant.' I will write more on this subject once my passions have subsided and my tone is more rational. Essentially, however, all life is precious, and we would do well to be thankful for everything that dies to keep us alive, no matter how stationary, unattractive, or small it may be. In this way, we can start to develop compassion for all things living, not just those we might want to cuddle.

© americanifesto / 場黑麥

just before dark

We leave our rented house in southwest Banyuwangi prefecture, East Java, just before dark. Our mount is a Kijang sports utility vehicle borrowed from a local Hindu man, big for the skinny roads. Fast. Nimble. Gold-embroidered sergeant's chevrons hang from the rear-view mirror. The car's radio doesn't work, but its suspension system is solid enough to propel us in relative comfort over the ruts and pits of the poorly maintained roads. To stay awake after a long few days of competitive surfing, Bob and I chain-smoke cigarettes and chat, leisurely, sweating in the evening heat. With a six hour round-trip drive ahead of us, not counting the time we'll spend at temple, our talk meanders from one topic to the next as he guns our ride past pushcart-vendors and men riding motorcycles with large bags of cut grass balanced on their heads. “Don't worry, bro, I'm not going to kill you,” Bob says when he sees how tense I am after a few narrowly-avoided collisions with other vehicles driving just as recklessly as we are. I adjust the belt securing to my waist a ceremonial kamben, or men's Balinese sarong, and light smokes for both of us.

Half-way there, we run over a cat, its pelt white with black splotches. From the driver's side darkness it leaps suddenly, directly in front of us, straight under our wheels. We pull over to check the undercarriage for signs of blood or fur. Nothing. Lights go on in a couple of the houses that line the road. We ask a resident if he knows to whom the cat belongs, but the man claims not to know of any cat, goes back inside, and turns off his porch-light. In the night sky above us, a full moon shines radiantly. We spend a few more minutes peering into the sparse and roadside bushes, but neither hear nor see anything. The faint aroma of fresh cat-shit hits me as we are getting back into the car, however, and I suspect that our journey to the temple of Kali, the goddess of destruction and renewal, on her birthday, under a full moon, required a death sacrifice of some sort. The Universe, as always, provides.

A few kilometers before we enter the national park within which Kali's temple sits we pass some dragon-fruit plantations, neat rows of small trees strung with lights, one suspended above each tree, eerie grids of brightness that stand out along the otherwise unlit road. The path that leads to the entrance of the national park is worse than all others before it, potholes a half-meter deep, thick paving stones that kick up and bang against the car's undercarriage. A cluster of eyes flash red in the darkness ahead, a herd of deer that quickly moves into the brush as we approach. “Where there are kijang, or deer, there are big cats that hunt them,” Bob says, “so while we're at temple keep an eye on the trees above.”

Once we've payed our entrance fee (around $1.50 each) and have parked in an otherwise empty lot near the temple grounds, a monk's attendant comes sleepily out of his quarters and approaches us, to see what we're after. I make the mistake of placing the plastic bag containing our temple offerings on the ground in order to shake his hand and bow to him properly, whereupon Bob goes into the concession stand to buy offerings, or upakara, untainted by Western ignorance. Somewhere nearby, a large diesel generator pumps out electricity; the temple sits at least 8 kilometers from the nearest settlement. After a quick wash of foot and hand in a nearby row of water basins, we meet the monk, or mangku, who agrees to be our psychopomp, and lead us in ceremony. The attendant, older than the mangku and nearly deaf, lights a kerosene lantern and walks us over to the outer temple while the mangku rides over on a motorbike so that he can open the door and have a look around. Faces peer out from the red-brick outer temple's swirling facades, and I pause, briefly, to feel if I am allowed to pass the stone threshold guardians, or raksasa; since my heart is pure and my body washed, I sense I am welcome, and follow the others up the steep stairs. In the outer temple's courtyard, which can easily seat 300 people, Bob speaks with the mangku in Indonesian, talking about family and religion, desires and wants, concerns and delights. I understand perhaps a third of it. Upon the monk's chest is a round, golden pin displaying a swastika, and while standing across from him and listening to them talk, I imagine that swastika – a more than 10,000 year-old symbol that brings good luck and repels bad – shining at my third chakra, the diaphragm. I settle down into a butterfly seating position and am soon overwhelmed with emotion. Memories of my dearly departed fill mind- and heart-space. First, visions of mother and father, then more, countless ancestors bubbling up through eons of genetic transmission, and I weep, quietly, there upon the uneven paving stones of an East Javanese Hindu temple. Once various things have been fetched from different parts of the temple and the accouterments of worship are prepared, incense has been lit, and Bob and I have arranged our upakara on the sandstone before us, the monk begins the first ceremony, his bell ringing into the still, dark night, his voice uttering Sanskrit mantras foreign to my ear but on some level comforting, protective. I keep crying as Bob coaches me through purifying my hands in the rising incense smoke and choosing the correct flowers from the upakara at the correct times, which we wedge above our ears once we've held them between the fingertips of hands pressed together in prayer. The attendant sprinkles first our heads with holy water and then our outstretched, cupped hands. We sip it four times, but on the fifth sprinkling the deaf man stops me from sipping, incorrectly, a fifth time. I follow Bob's lead and wash my face and neck with the water, instead. Then, we take grains of broken rice from a proffered woven basket and dab them to forehead and throat. Soon after, the mangku's bell stops ringing, and we rise. As the mangku puts all his tools away, Bob and I stuff donations into a box near the exit. The tears dry upon my cheeks, and the swastika in my chest has begun to spin, its colors turning from gold to black, gold to black.

Once again, the mangku drives off into the darkness. Once more, the attendant lights his lamp, and we follow him through the darkness toward, I assume, Kali's own inner sanctum. Above us, the brilliant moon winks and dances through gaps in the treetops. Somewhere in the forest, a bird starts up its song, then stops. The night air is pregnant with energy. Curiously still. And then it's into the main temple, this one far smaller than the first, room for maybe 20 people to sit. A massive banyan tree, or strangler-fig, grows from one corner, its black and white checkered sarong stained and frayed. The monk walks to a dark, irregular stone topped by a wooden framework supporting a golden curtain, which he draws back, revealing a row of smaller dark stones arranged atop the larger one. (During the drive, my companion had explained that the temple is one of the holiest shrines in all of Indonesian Hinduism, the stones the holiest of holy relics.) With upakara before us and incense lit, Bob and I sit down just behind our psychopomp. He launches into chanting and bell ringing a bit too fast for Bob's liking, who interrupts his labor to ask him to slow down. I settle into meditation and feel for the swastika, which is now spinning so rapidly it's almost torquing my torso physically. A few minutes into the ceremony, Bob, to my right, stars groaning and cackling. I slit my eyes and see him bent over at the waist, frothing at the mouth and speaking with a voice I've never heard him use before, a voice as old and dauntless as time itself. The beast-like grunts escaping him cause the hairs on my neck and arms to stand up as I shut my eyes and settle back into Self. I sense an profound agony in him and resist the desire to reach out blindly and pat his back in reassurance. Such are the whipping beams of null-energy lashing out of his fourth or heart chakra that all I can do is sit up straighter, bask in their tearing escape, and taste of their hue, onyx-black bands with brilliant white edges. The beams seem to be simply passing through the mangku, who in my mind's eye is but a fog of focused obeisance suspended in prayer. Bob's agony increases and I let a deep love for him well up in my heart of hearts. I'm shaking from the energy coursing out of him and into the swastika at my diaphragm, which is now completely black and seems to be exponentially growing in size. I summon up every ounce of loving compassion I can muster and feed that love into him, closing the circuit with whatever channel, whatever force or god, he opened, whereupon he stands up, shuffles over to the irregular rock, and falls to his knees before it, weeping and groaning anew. As the energies escaping him diminish, my swastika shrinks in size but not in strength. I feel it sear and settle into my soul's matrix, jet-black and brimming with power. The mangku enters the 'Om' phase of prayer, signaling its imminent end. Next to me, Bob starts breathing normally again, and the ceremony ends. As the mangku is gathering up his rite-making implements and chatting with Bob about the state of life and religion in Bali, I notice a change in the attendant, who turns on a hand-held torch with which to illuminates the treetops above us. I remember the warning about big cats but, for some reason, am not in the least concerned. After a haphazard scan of the canopy above, he switches the light back off and goes outside to lead us back to our car.

As we are driving back down the pitted track, I connect with something, or someone, out in the inky-black woods, that I cannot even see with my physical eyes, and the intensity of our exchange makes me smile. “What happened back there?” Bob asks after reminding me not to throw cigarette butts out of the window until after we've left the park. (I've been collecting all my butts in a small plastic bag the entire time and thrown exactly zero butts out of the window.) “I don't remember anything,” he says, “after we sat down in front of the stones.” I explain everything I felt and heard and saw and did, and he admonishes me for reaching into him the way I did, for completing the circuit, as, he explains, a part of my energies now live inside him, which could lead him to become sick, or die. I apologize to him, thank him for taking me along, and light up a few more cigarettes. The bright moon overhead gives us a dim sense of the road ahead, but we're no longer in a hurry, cruising along and enjoying the cool night air. The seed of something vast and immutable pulses inside me, its contours bent, black, old as mankind itself. I place a hand on top of my belly, smile, and silently thank goddess Kali for a strange and wonderful night.

© americanifesto / 場黑麥

prepped and willing

It was with much joy that he opened his soul to one and all each of them brave timid old. They peered and they prod at its outlines and depths and oft at the sign of compassion he wept. For they were all giving and all needy too; to pierce at his shielding was all he could do; to pry at, keep open, the covers he'd made upon heart and gut-space where they'd too long stayed. Now he's got a gemstone set there in his core that's prepped ready willing to give out much more that can soak up energies dark dim or bright and keep out bad forces from morning to night. To find it he had to move through past regrets and let go of memories huddled and wet and step from the darkness that had kept him down to take up his terrible world-rending crown. In him burns a fire too black yet to see that smolders deep inside his tender belly that will set injustice and hatred ablaze and leave men who steal from us wary stunned dazed. The big fight is waiting before him somewhere but with his new powers he'll righteously stare straight back at the evils that now plague us all to render them helpless weak shaken and small. It's there in his sockets it's there on his chest and he does forthwith pledge to give life his best for all of the children and babies unborn he'll march on the citadel freed of his scorn but filled with conviction and justice and Light to all who hate Freedom a terrible sight.

© americanifesto / 場黑麥

dream-state writing – Bali

I was standing on a white, sandy beach that stretched roughly a mile into the distance. Before me was a fence of finely-meshed metal, eye-like segments kept upright by slender, silvery poles. On my side of the fence were shallow pools and small waves crashing upon the sand but little vegetation or other signs of life. On the far side of the fence, however, was a lush, thick, dark jungle whose tendrils, here and there, had crept through the fencing, low green feelers. I then became aware of a figure standing directly opposite me, on the far side. Tall and fit, she had dark brown, almost black skin, and breasts without nipples. Upon her shoulders were epaulets of some sort, golden metal covers attached to one another with a golden chain or rope. About her waist was a belt of some sort, round and golden segments that shimmered in the bright sunlight. What appeared to be wings sprouted from her back where the center of a human's scapula would be, sharp edges with concave endings and eye-like adornments similar to the fence's meshing, too many of them to count, moving so fast they could also have not been moving at all. Her dark and unblinking eyes were scanning the horizon behind me, but then she turned to match my enraptured gaze and suddenly her head grew tenfold in size and all I could see was her enormous, dark-brown face between the thin mesh links of the silvery fence, and there was something in the center of her forehead I could not fully make out and her great mane of black hair appeared to shimmered in the dazzling light but all I could really see were her eyes, dark pits of impartial nothingness, as inconceivable and deep as the cusp of an event horizon, yet they contained a certain spark, or presence, an essence that while invisible was nonetheless there, nonetheless, on some level of my consciousness, tangible. Her head shrank to its former size, she turned, and in her wings was that same impartial nothingness, that same pregnant and chaotic void I had seen in her gaze, but there were also innumerable eyes looking back out of the unfathomable darkness there, eyes I could not really see but feel as they probed my spirit and all that I am and ever was. She turned to look at me once more then vanished and reappeared perhaps 200 meters down the fence, turned again to look at me, then teleported two more times, each time a bit further down the far side of the fence, four times turning back to look at me. When she had reached the farthest point of the island I could see, she vanished altogether.

I awoke deeply moved by the experience, humbled before the unimaginable power my dream-visitor possessed, and knowing, somewhere deep down, that she had been and would forever more be watching me, my every thought and feeling, that if I chose a path of Light and Truthfulness I might one day join her on the far side of the fence but if I chose a path of Darkness and Deceit I would forever stay upon the barren sand, burned by the brilliant sun and denied the riches the far jungle had to offer. I thank this mighty force for paying me a visit and love her beyond mere words can say. Mahalo, suksma, namaste.

© americanifesto / 場黑麥

my or mine

His time he did offer for that's all he had and no one could call that there sacrifice bad. To give up not money or gemstone or cash but rather the thing that is gone in a flash is to show to others their true worthiness to bring out their smiles and their very best. So stop for a minute or stop for an hour and share in the subtle but unbridled power of spending a moment of your precious time on something quite other than me my or mine.

© americanifesto / 場黑麥