and rebirth beckons

Hopes fails, dreams shatter. Sadness emerges, and, with it, fear. Concern for one’s own future sharpens, fear blossoming into anger. And then anger mutates into self-righteous indignation at anything perceived to be the root cause of one’s problems. Even if the people or choices targeted actually have nothing to do with one’s problems, they become the focus of one’s hatred.

Within the morally vacuous, cacophonous self-pity factories that social media sites and other internet message boards often are, one’s indignation grows while at the same time, however, the size and origin of one’s problems stay the same. Soon, anger spills over into aggression, hot and sour words hurled unnecessarily at others in one’s web of contacts. The hurt doesn’t go away, prompting one to pile on the grief in an effort to smother it. Still, it lingers, now a sucking and festering wound wrapped tightly around the once-soothing tendrils of ever-loving heartspace.

Gradually, one’s web of social contacts shrinks, its individual strands broken, severed, neglected. More and more isolated does one then become, so isolated and lonely in fact that fear and anger appear more and more real. Suddenly, it’s all one can seem to think about, how stupid and foolish and misguided everyone else is, how simple the solutions to this nation’s and this city’s and this block’s problems are. ‘If only people would just listen to me,’ one thinks, an angry, lonely voice screaming into the yawning void. Pitiable, the soul struggling to withstand twin onslaughts of negativity and self-loathing, the world suddenly an evil and unwelcoming place, the last strands give out.

Yet there within the charred and blackened ruins of one’s real and online lives glimmer, diamond-like, the compressed jewels of love, hope, and compassion. And rebirth beckons.

americanifesto / 場黑麥 / jpr / urbanartopia / whorphan

on getting drilled

For the past ten years, I have endured pain stemming from a number of cavities. Year after year, the caries would grow bigger, creeping ever deeper into the center of my molars, sharp flashes of wince-inducing pain shooting ever more frequently throughout my nervous system. The damage accelerated in 2005 when I moved to Los Angeles and got caught up in the Hollywood bar scene, evaporating into anything-goes partying and the sure-I'll-do-those type of decision making. (“Hey let me just go home real quick and grab my toothbrush,” is not something one is prone to say before embaring on a week-long bender.) Since coming into some cash late in the last century, I kept telling myself: “You have to get your teeth fixed; you have to get your teeth fixed,” but rather than take care of my chompers, I chose to self-medicate and travel to Thailand for three weeks. Finally, though, last week, I bit the bullet (ha!) and placed a call to my local budget dentist, who within two days and for one quarter of the cost of my plane ticket to balmy Siam drilled out the rotten cores of my teeth, swabbed in some medication, filled the holes with durable epoxy, performed a thorough cleaning, and sent me on my way. Oh what joy to be able to chew once more! By refusing to take care of myself and my teeth, I was self-mutilating, and I shall not soon repeat these offenses. Aho.

mentiri factorem fecit – 場黑麥

no more BofA

It is done, friends: this lowly whorphan closed his last account with Bank of America (BofA), telling them in the cancellation letter that my reasons for termination included their involvement in causing the ongoing world economic crisis known by some as the Great Recession. The air of freedom is sweet, I tell you, and tinged with victory's acerbic bite; oh how I fill my lungs with it, though, expressing my joy through the majesty of song. While I cannot remember where exactly I read it or from whom I poached the idea – whether it was a sign held by an Occupier or an article on truth-out.org – but somebody was calling upon members of the general public to close their accounts with BofA in order to punish that bank for its rapacious and greed-based policies. Having active accounts with BofA has bugged me day in and day out since seeing that sign; how good it is to have stopped funding one of the most despicable institutions that has ever dared claim to be Of this fine and shining land and Of this industrious and upstanding people. In short, Bank of America is not of us, for us, or by us, but of the shareholder, for the shareholder, by the shareholder; it behooves us to do our business with financial institutions other than one that operates for the benefit of wealthy people-in-the-know.

My decision to close these accounts was founded on more than just a whimsical moral fancy or the passing desire to distance myself from one of the foundational pillars of our equality-destroying, Nature-ravaging, un-American system of consumption-oriented capitalism: I was sick of paying seven dollars in maintenance fees – per month, per account – for the privilege of having a check-book, and I had paid enough overdraft fees and account penalties to finance a brief South Asian border war. Comparatively, my accounts at USAA incur few penalties, and I do not feel guilty for banking with that institution because it takes care of its own without getting too heavily involved in credit-default-swaps or high stakes stock-market gambling. On some level, of course, it is impossible to fully distance oneself from the banks that caused the Great Recession, unless one is dead or 100% self sufficient. Therefore, I am partly to blame for this whole Recession business, because I banked with BofA and because I cannot yet grow all of the food and harvest all of the electricity I need to live and work without undue stress or worry. Guilty with me in this is Congress, the Senate, and the White House, for not punishing the multi-millionaire executive officers of TARP-fund-receiving banks and for allowing the statute of limitations for punishing them to lapse, which means that these crooks stay free and rich while millions of honest and hard-working Americans sit around poor and in debt, their savings and hopes and dreams having vanished into the silken pockets of fat-cat, too-big-to-fail bankers.

Regardless, however, of my complicity in these matters, I feel a great relief that I never have to enter another BofA branch or use another BofA ATM ever again for the rest of my life; now that I am no longer part of the problem, I can become part of the solution. Huzzah for liberty, victory, and justice! Mahalo.

場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit