Boston destroys heritage

In the wake of apparently deliberate acts of art desecration, the city of Boston, Massachusetts, USA, lies stripped of much of its artistic and cultural heritage. Irreparably damaged are thousands of unique works posted at significant personal risk by scores of talented individuals; gone are untold treasures, wiped from the face of the Earth by the censor’s brush and scraper. Once a place which people visited to marvel at the ingenuity of the human imagination, Boston has joined the ranks of many other American cities that view street art as entirely devoid of intrinsic worth, something to be rooted out, painted over, and destroyed. As someone who travels to cities around the world in order to curate their graffiti, I weep at the destruction wrought by the city of Boston upon its open-air art galleries. Light poles once adorned with riots of colorful stickers now stand bare; walls once covered by compellingly crafted murals now display nothing more than a coating of drab paint. Does Boston at least photograph these works of art before forcibly removing them from view? Would it allow an art-loving citizen such as me to precede its roving Art Desecration Squads so that I can at least photograph each piece before it is scraped off or painted over? Likely, it would not, as such a concession might lend credibility to the artistic endeavors of rogue but creative individuals who spend their time and money on trying to make the world a more colorful and exciting place. In our American police state, it appears, the only works of art that have the right to exist in public are politically correct advertisements selling us drugs and clothes, snacks and cellphones. To be fair, there are some street artists whose primary aim appears to be the destruction of property. The majority of these elusive and cunning individuals, however, seem to be acting out of a desire to challenge the sterilization of our communal spaces, to bring color and design to areas devoid of both. Mankind’s oldest form of artistic expression, the application of graffiti spans millennia, continents, and cultures. From the Egyptian pyramids to the caves at Lascaux, from America’s oldest structures to ancient Southeast Asian cities, graffiti - more than perhaps any other form of artistic expression - unites mankind. To the graffiti lovers of the world: avoid Boston! Little remains here of our unique and exuberant cultural heritage.

© JPR / whorphan / americanifesto / 場黑麥

importance of metrics

Americans – and, by extension, peoples in all parts of the world who are yearning for Liberty – appear to have lost sight of the more important things in life. Bombarded by constant advertisements telling us we need this new thing and that new service, this new skirt and that new car, we long ago gave in, affording these things by burying ourselves under mountains of personal and high-interest debt. Furthermore, we have come to define ourselves primarily by our current occupations; we have come to accept monikers such as Blue Collar, Middle Class, Working Poor, and the like, without batting an eye, without a single question, without the slightest outcry, without even taking a moment to see how such narrow definitions are deflating our once-buoyant and once-vibrant individual souls.

To accept such monikers, or to strive to be seen by others as belonging to one specific class or the other, is to step willingly into the artificial world that advertisers and their corporate slave-masters try so hard to craft for us (in order to get our money); to talk constantly about What We Do For A Living – to start every single fucking conversation with that exact question – is to declare that our lives are primarily boring, devoid of personal development, lacking in spiritual humility, focused mostly on grabbing and taking instead of offering and giving. When trying to remember when was the last time I spoke with someone about my recent efforts to increase my own Liberty or that of another person, my mind draws a blank; when trying to talk to the average Someone about the use of negative space within an artistic composition, or the importance of cadence in prose, they immediately change subjects and want to discuss the upcoming release of the blue-ray diskette of the fourth season of some worthless fucking TV show about super-models-turned-moms who run secret subterranean cabbage farms.

I am beginning to suspect that I am largely alone in my conscious rejection of modern consumerist culture, that my efforts to cultivate a shred of individuality – not by hoarding cash or working 70 hours a week but by reading books on a dozen different topics and trying to reawaken my artistic abilities – that my efforts to make myself a slightly better and more interesting person are being matched by few, if any, of my peers. Please understand that I am not trying to say that I am cooler or more valuable to society for rejecting its more knee-jerk and pitiful aspects, merely that I feel largely alone, a poor sob adrift on a sea of self-banishment that is fed by my own tears, a snake for whom the once-familiar tones have lost their charming edge. My disappointment with society is likely the reason why few people bother to read these blogs, anymore – my bleating has turned sour; my whining, incessant; and my holier-than-thou attitude has become so stale that even I am bored with it. Perhaps I too should just give in, work a nine-to-five, worry above all else about my choice of cable-TV provider, and gain 75 pounds of pure belly-fat. Probably not, though, because I've given up on so many other things in my life that I could hardly live with giving up on becoming the best person I can possibly be. (If The Best Person I Can Possibly Be is not a metric of its own, a tiny little box into which I am trying to force my bursting and exuberant soul, then I have no idea what a metric is, anymore.) To my knowledge, though, few Americans self-identify with artificial names and metrics dreamed up by content-hungry newscasters, and this judgmental thunder-and-brimstone that I compose is just wasting space on a perfectly good server farm, somewhere. Oh well; mahalo.

場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit

routine – its power

Following a daily routine for the first time in many years, this poor, worthless whorphan has noticed his life improving. At the baseline of my routine are yoga exercises at dawn, noon, and sunset, three sessions of ten minutes each that have changed my life by bridging the gaps in the mind-body-interface, a deficiency common to Westerners. Then, I am losing weight and getting into shape by bicycling and by performing roughly four hours of yard or garden duty daily, including the hand-watering of three separate gardens. Thirdly but by no means less importantly, I am, even now, abiding by what I call EBOS, which stands for Entire Battery Operating Session, which means that every day after breaking my fast I use this netbook to write, to process pictures, and to edit graphics until its battery drains to about 15% capacity, at which time I turn it off because it starts to complain about needing juice. Fourth, I maintain and monitor a 45-watt, three panel battery array that charges a 12-volt, deep-cycle marine battery, from which I can charge headlamp and netbook and cellphone batteries and watch DVD movies occasionally, thus avoiding high electricity bills. Fifth, I allot a certain period of time each day to reading, to learning languages (I am currently learning Netherlandish), and to perusing various periodical, spiritual, and educational texts, so as to store in my brains as much as I possibly can of the information they contain (in order to know how to do many different things during the upcoming complete societal collapse commonly referred to as the Zombie Apocalypse).

I have not always followed routines – in fact, I avoided them for most of my life, preferring to shoot from the hip and to frustrate my potential by not exploring it or employing it effectively. One of the main reasons that I have begun to follow them now is that I discovered that a daily yoga routine helps me control my attention-deficit-disorder and its associated lesser maladies such as depression, binge-eating, and sloth. Another reason that I now follow routines is that I read somewhere that doctors who follow routines and maintain checklists are less likely to make mistakes when treating patients and more likely to operate efficiently and with less undue stress. While I am not a doctor, I try to emulate those fine and intelligent people when possible, trusting them to puzzle out the most effective methods and poaching their most effective and simple methods for success.

Please understand that I am not trying to boast about all the things that I am getting done, merely that I am exploring how I came to act instead of thinking and what methods I have used to bring my life back under my control and to deal with my illness, which is also called minor brain dysfunction. In routine, dear friend, I have found some salvation from the jumbled stew that is my mind; in yoga, dear friend, I have found an effective means of getting back in touch with the deep and subtle feelings, with the foul and the blessed urges, and with the abiding glory that is my inner animal. Thanks for reading, and mahalo.

場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit