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

i love canggu

The shirt says 'I Love Canggu – Bali' on it, just that Love is a huge red heart half the size of my chest. With black and white striped boardshorts underneath it and a pair of white $1 thongs on my feet I look as much the tourist and feel as much the surfer as I have looked or felt for most of my life. I receive a warm welcome from my local friend and his family; he and I sit in his compound and eat before everyone else and smoke cigarettes and drink local beers and he tells me about which of his relatives live with him and which live elsewhere, at his farm near the Bratan volcano or other villages by the sea. His older son and daughter come and go, friends and paramours stopping by and leaving again, just as suddenly. A beautiful young lady plays us a song on a Les Paul electric guitar while singing along and I find myself falling in love with her as soon as she starts playfully demanding in Indonesian that he and I leave the room.

After dinner I get two sarongs (or kamen, since they are for men) wrapped around me and tied at the waist and a three-cornered cloth (already folded and held in shape with a piece of internal wire) placed atop my head. The white button-down shirt they give me is too small for my chest so we leave it open at the front, my Love for Canggu – Bali visible to all. We go first to the family's own temple, where my friend's father performs our rights after we have purified ourselves with incense smoke and prayed three times with our hands together in front of our heads and different-colored flowers grasped between the tips of our longest fingers. The priest splashes holy water into the upheld palms of our right hands four times. I peek over at my friend's six-year-old daughter to see what I should be doing and she flashes me a gap-toothed smile, so I suck the water into my mouth just as she and her father are doing but am not sure what to do with the last splash and decide to follow their lead and rub it on my face and neck. The priest sprinkles a few grains of white rice into our palms and we use the remnants of holy water lingering there to stick them to the middle of our foreheads. My friend says to me that it is now OK to ask the gods for things and so I start saying my Thank Yous and asking that my friends and family be blessed with peace, prosperity, and Happiness. Overwhelmed with relief and gratitude, tears run down my cheeks, to gather in my beard. The girl looks over with a puzzled face as the tall bulé Westerner next to her cries, sitting in the dirt floor atop a Disney-themed floor mat with frayed edges. Without wiping the tears from my face I follow my friend and his daughter to a second temple, one for the wider family, where his uncle performs the rituals for us and we stuff more flowers behind our ears and stick more rice onto our foreheads.

The process is short, not lasting more than ten minutes, and before I know it we are walking through the darkened streets back to my friend's house, to drink more beers and smoke more smokes. He shares with me insider information about some cheap parcels of land near the river not far from his house that are sure to jump in value once the government paves the big road there with asphalt. After inquiring my friend agrees that it would be acceptable for me to make a donation at the larger family temple. With his daughter in hand he leads me back over to it and I feel terrible entering without my kamen on yet am greeted with warmth and smiles and press a folded up one-hundred-thousand rupiah note into a priest's hands. He bows his head to me with his hands together at the forehead and as I turn to take my leave he and his attendants gesture at me to take some fruit, which I have now just eaten. Oh, to be sure, I Love Canggu – Bali.

© americanifesto / 場黑麥

with moonlight above

There are many things one must be conscious of when driving in Bali with moonlight above. The pavement is pitted and not always whole; one often encounters wide cracks and deep holes. There is also wildlife moving around, dogs darting or sprawled out right there on the ground, and bats by the hundreds that hang from their toes then race through the sky eating up mosquitoes. Animals cross or just chill out on roads – rats, geckos, and lizards; some cats; a few toads – these pale when compared to the tall mounds and heaps of dirt, rock, and soil that fill half the street. In order to avoid the heat and sunlight there are also workers who toil at night, who prop up a small branch, some leaves, or a twig to warn of a massive, car-swallowing dig. Far worse are the riders who drive without lights, or who use nothing but their high-beams, their brights, whose swift, iron horses can't see or be seen whereby it's a sure bet their hides will be clean. I have but a few, simple words of advice: drive slowly, use blinkers, and always look twice, have patience and strap a helmet to your dome lest you should be shipped in a box back to home.

© americanifesto / 場黑麥

contours and longitudes

The contours and longitudes of this fine land I'm learning as well as the back of my hand. To do this I drive off and race through the night, with deep breathing exercise conquer my fright, then get lost and trust in my deepest instinct while clearing the dust from my eyes with a blink. It helps that Agung has a strong steady pull, that in her vast presence I feel subtly full of confidence, harmony, stillness, and joy though I may see nothing but rice, corn, and soy. With luck I'll be able to fully explore this place and her people, their customs and more, their laughter and smiles, their tendencies too, on Bali I find myself daily anew.

© americanifesto / 場黑麥

life-giving sod

Upon this here island – the one of the Gods – is much rich, volcanic, and life-giving sod. Sent down from the peaks of Agung and Batur it nurtures a people both mighty and pure. Through smart cultivation they grow rice in it, manured with great heaps of holy cow shit, they coax from it mountains of fruits and veggies that mass on green bushes and bunch up in trees. We eat of this bounty most every day, so long as deities still grant us our stay, until life's inevitable strikes us down and turns us right back into life-giving ground. So eat up, my hearties, do not miss a grain, lest all of that labor should have been in vain, but finish each morsel that lands on your plate for she is a fickle and tricky one (Fate).

© americanifesto / 場黑麥

today in USA

Now back in the homeland, there's cops everywhere, they intimidate us and keep us all scared, they tail and they follow us, guilty or not, we shan't move too quickly or else we'd be shot. Wide bottoms abound here, as do wide ass cars, as do drive-thru windows and seedy beer bars, where poor people sit around drinking their tears, impressing their barstools and wasting their years. Aggression is common, infectious, and welcome, it drives up the heart rate – how much? lots, and then some – it seeps into all of the facets of life, it's born of malfeasance and envy and strife. This house it is filthy, infested, and base, it is a most lowly and unhappy place, to flee from its confines and borders I must, otherwise my soul shall continue to rust, and whither away in this shelter of doom, this hovel of seemingly unending gloom. I'll keep up my spirits with thoughts of Bali, with practicing yoga and hot cups of tea, with reading and writing and perchance a song, my darling I know I'll see you before long.

© americanifesto / 場黑麥

discing on codorus lake, 8FEB2014