or jungle beyond

(dream-state writing March 2016)

I spend Balinese New Year's Day, or Nyepi, house-sitting my friend's villa in Umalas, north Kuta. During the day of silence I do yoga, meditate, play video games, contemplate my place in the universe, and star-gaze. The next morning, after having scaled the wall into his own compound, he wakes me up by banging on the downstairs room's door, whereupon I stumble out of bed mumbling apologies in Indonesian. Mightily groggy and feeling a strong tug to keep dreaming, I decline his invitation to have a morning surf, pack my few belongings, and head back to Canggu Permai. As the morning is hot, I turn on the air-conditioning, wait for the room to cool down a bit, then crawl under my light blanket, tossing and turning a few times before I fall back asleep. My ensuing dreams are recorded here, to the best of memory.

A convoy of vehicles and pedestrians is making its way along an elevated roadway that runs through both unkempt plots and well-maintained rice paddies. I am pushing a bicycle piled high with goods of some sort, but realize that I forgot my flip-flops on the road behind me, let my bicycle drive itself, and sprint-hover (a form of locomotion I often experience in my dreams, a type of bouncing that allows me to cover large distances quickly) back along the left-hand side of the road. My feet do not sting or hurt as I hurry along although the road is made of pitted and crumbling paving stones. As I am passing a number of shiny cars (whose drivers are staring straight ahead and not making eye-contact with me), a part of my conscious mind wonders why the convoy is still moving even though I had just abandoned my bike. As soon as I slip into my thongs, the dream changes. I have a vague memory of bartering for a coconut, which I drink, leaving the spoon that came with it on the edge of the now-deserted causeway, whereupon I remember a few elements of bartering for the coconut from a woman standing amidst heaps of rubble and broken houses by the side of the cobble-stone road. Still carrying the coconut, I reach a break in the elevated roadway, which has for some time been running alongside deep, stone pits filled with crystal-clear water. Leaning over the barrier installed above the break, I look down to find a pagoda (wooden pillars, roof of fired red tiles with adorned ridges) floating in the water, which is blocking mounds of water-borne trash from entering a lake on my right. Ahead of the break is no elevated roadway insight, only an open field of dry earth with a darkened wood, or jungle, beyond. I hurl my coconut down onto a slab of broken concrete, but instead of breaking it bounces out of sight. Moving carefully through the rubble, I make my way down the right side of the elevated roadway and step onto the pagoda, which tilts and begins to sink under my weight, whereupon some loose bits of plastic and other trash wash over my feet. I look down into the clear water and see great seams in the sunken rocks, as if it had been built by man. As I step off of the pagoda onto dry land, the dream changes again.

Next, I'm in a courtyard paved with gray stones. It has buildings on three sides of it and a wrought-iron, sliding gateway to my right. I'm facing a row of planting boxes in which are growing bushes and small trees. In front of me is a basin filled with water. In my hand is a piece of an engine which I am taking apart with a knife. I am using a short-bladed knife to cut away at the piece, which suddenly resembles a carburetor made entirely of rubber, and when I have sliced it in two, a reptile pokes its head of out the piece in my left hand. Standing up, I dump the piece in the basin of water, which I can see is about 2 meters deep, nearly 1 meter square, and lined with white, porcelain tiles. Bending over to look into the basin I see a large frog (possibly female) whose limbs are strong and human-shaped, dressed in a brightly-colored kimono decorated with the image of an Asiatic woman holding a parasol. The frog is also wearing a traditional Chinese scholar's hat, complete with red tassel; it turns to look at me, then kicks its legs and swims deeper into the basin, allowing me a full glimpse of the colorful image imprinted on the kimono. There are 5 or 6 other frogs in the basin as well as some swirling debris. The frogs are all past the tadpole stage but their rear legs are of different sizes. All have long flaps of skin that connect front to hind legs, in the manner of butterfly wings. I reach into the basin and pull out a bit of debris, a length of furry vegetation that I throw into the yard behind me. Excited at the sight of the kimono, I exit the yard through the gate and call to my neighbor, a blond woman, to come see, but she for some reason cannot get past the gate – her long dress keeps getting stuck on a hook of some sorts on the other side of the gate. The dream changes.

The next thing I remember is sitting in the lobby of what looks like a hospital. There's a counter to my left, a door behind me, a door to my left, a door in front of me, and another, larger door to my right. Through the large door on the right I can see sunlight as well as people and cars coming and going. Across from me are two rows of chairs with three seats each set up so they are facing each other. Five or six people are sitting there, but I can only make out a man sitting cross-legged on a seat closest to me, on the right-hand row. I'm on the phone with some sort of customer service representative, a woman, who asks for my new phone number, whereupon I start trying to find it while yelling into the phone's mouthpiece for her to be patient. At that point, the cross-legged man starts yelling louder and louder until I become annoyed enough to hang up my phone and confront him. I am not aware of walking across to him, only that I'm suddenly standing over him. The five other people seated there with him are only dimly visible. He looks away from me, down to the right, and I realize that he's yelling pure gibberish, non-sense sounds, whilst flapping his jaw in an exaggerated fashion that mimics talking. Taken aback at his offensive behavior, I lean away, whereupon he looks back up at me. His torso and legs are blurry but I can see his face and arms more clearly. He has reddish hair with a somewhat bloated and freckled face that looks a bit like my own, and his right arm is tattooed almost entirely with elaborate tribal designs, though his left arm has but few tattoos. At that point, I wake up, feeling refreshed.

© americanifesto / 場黑麥

fury and power

By making a pattern a plan for what's next I aim to be focused and far less perplexed. It starts with outlining the things that I know and making a blueprint for where I'm to go and making a schedule to keep me on mission away from the patterns that lead to remission. My object's attainable as are my few goals and when I look on them do feel I'll know how best to proceed and what I must avoid and how to stay wary lest I be destroyed. The goddess is with me – I hope so at least – as I make a new plan to conquer the beasts that still live inside me that hurt flense and wound and into their absence let Happiness bloom. Wish me luck dear readers this task will be tough as I set about to let go of such stuff that I've kept within me these woebegone years as I turn to witness my sadness and fears as I set aside all the shackles of hate and watch as their fury and power abates.

© americanifesto / 場黑麥

behind the central

My alarm in the waking world sounds at 7 a.m., but a part of me really wants to go back to sleep. I can sense a chasm of promise awaiting me back in Morpheus's grasp, a pit of pregnant nothingness that must be explored. After getting up to shut off the alarm I go back to bed, roll over onto my side, and slip immediately into dreaming. Twice more I wake up, each time the pull of the chasm, the nothingness, less strong but still present. When I finally awake feeling rested, memories of my dreams linger. They are recorded here.

I'm on a bus that has no roof driving through a brightly sunny landscape, sitting toward the rear, just behind the central doors. It's unclear to me where we're going but I recognize features outside and feel the journey has purpose. A few other persons (4, excluding the driver) are on the bus, also, all toward the front, all with their backs turned toward me, although I can tell they are aware of my presence. The bus slows to a halt in the middle of some featureless scrub and 2 more persons clamber aboard. They sit next to and slightly behind me. I turn to look at them. They are talking to each other and both are in military uniforms of sort. Neither of their uniforms bear insignia. Further from me is a woman with curly blond hair and an attractive but acne-scarred face wearing a light blue shirt, dark blue long pants, and a black belt. Closer to me is man in what could be Marine Corps blues. He has closely-cropped dark hair and his seemingly crippled hands are raised in front of his chest, fingers curled and spread wide. His eye-sockets are scarred and sunken pits devoid of eyeballs. He asks me what branch of the service I'm in, and I tell him something akin to 'I've never served.' The two talk to each other for a while and when I look back, the woman is sitting a row further back, low in the seat with her crotch thrust forward. I imagine briefly if I have a chance to make sex to her but the notion evaporates immediately.

The bus accelerates. We're driving down a snow-covered dirt track through a wintry scrub landscape at high speed and I remark at the driver's skill in negotiating the narrow and hilly path. I can see fresh tire-marks in the snows that cover the road. We pass a road-marker for the 'York Historical Society,' a bronze plaque atop an iron post that features a picture of an old barn or covered bridge. I'm speaking with the service-members about where I come from, explaining to them that I was in a sad place for a long time, much like the town the bus is driving into. The road is lined with boarded-up houses, burned-out cars, and weedy lawns. Because of an obstruction up ahead, the bus driver stops, reveres, and is doing a 3-point-turn when he runs us into one of the houses, cracking its barn-like sliding door. At that point I awake, refreshed.

© americanifesto / 場黑麥

dream writing February 2016

I'm on a bus with perhaps a dozen people I seem to know. We're traveling through a tropical countryside; and outside are dense green bushes; and I'm familiar with the inside of the bus, its seat-backs and the bend of its window-frames, as though I'd been on it for a while. For some reason I exit the bus (although I don't remember actually doing so) and am walking down a roadway made of crushed white stone in the bright sun when I suddenly I realize want to get back on the bus again. I walk to the end of the roadway and see it driving down an asphalt road, away from me, but know I cannot reach it by running toward it. I turn and run-leap (a type of movement similar to that used by people moving about the lunar surface) down the white roadway, stopping at an intersection to check for the bus. I'm in a densely built-up neighborhood and cannot see the asphalt road, wherefore I enter a nearby hotel via a narrow, poured-concrete ramp. To each side of the ramp are flowers growing, and one side has a pond with fish in it.

Once inside, I approach the reception desk and speak to the person working there. She has dark hair and is wearing a uniform of sorts with a name-badge. She looks Balinese and doesn't quiet understand what I want. My cellphone doesn't have signal, so I can't use my translation application, and wonder if I can get On-Line somewhere. I turn to try to talk to another worker, a man, who however walks into a nearby, darkened room. The room has a block of cubicles in it with more activity – people walking around – behind the cubicles. To one side is what looks like an ATM, which I try to enter, but after going inside it turns out that the ATM has been removed, and as I'm walking out I hit my head on a sign announcing the machine's removal, which although it hangs very low I somehow missed on the way in. On the other side of the block of cubicles, which are partially filled by people sitting there with their heads down, I see a conference or school room with rows of computers on them, some of which have people sitting at them. I try to go into this room with the intention of getting on the Internet and telling the people in the bus where I am but every time I try to go in the darkened room's layout changes, and the people in the conference room start getting up and walking past me, somewhat upset at my attempts to enter. Soon thereafter, the dream ends and I wake up.

© americanifesto / 場黑麥

Indo roadway anarchy

Driving in Indonesia is a perilous pursuit. With narrow lanes, abundant potholes, stray dogs, and overflowing drainage ditches, operating a vehicle upon the Nusantara, or Islands In-Between, requires as much skill as it does luck. Little enforcement of laws means that people often drive at night with no lights, transport large and heavy loads balanced precariously, and enter roadways without stopping or looking around, and whoever is larger, louder, or faster tends to usurp the right-of-way. As with surfing, anarchy is the name of the game, however. By definition, anarchy is the absence of rulers but not rules; if everyone were to follow a few simple rules, everyone could live in peace and happiness, without need for armed wardens to keep order. Therefore, here are a few simple guidelines for operating a motor vehicle in proper anarchist fashion.

1) When driving, drive. Don't sightsee, text, talk to other drivers, slow down to point at something or adjust a pants-leg, or fiddle with something in a pocket. 2) Each car-sized lane has two motorbike lanes within it, one closer to the edge of the road, the other closer to the middle; if traveling slowly, stay on the outside so other drivers have room to pass. 3) Crossing into the other lane whilst negotiating a turn – especially when said turn is blind – endangers the health and safety of oncoming individuals. Crossing over might reduce overall travel time by half a second, and the adrenalin surge it causes might feel good, but it's just not worth the risk. 4) Persons traveling on a main road or turning off of it have right-of-way; someone turning into flowing traffic from a side road must wait to enter until it is safe to do so. 5) Adjust to oncoming traffic as soon as it is feasible, not at the last second (see rule #3). Better yet, drive as if there were always oncoming traffic, especially if there is none immediately visible (see rule #3); by driving in a manner of one's own choosing instead of making emergency adjustments to account for the presence of others, one retains not only control over one's own path but also a consistent speed upon it. 6) If necessary, go left in order to go right, turning left from the lane's left-hand side and right from its right-hand side. This means if the lane going left is clear, turn left, perform a u-turn, then go back the other way. Such a maneuver not only saves everyone else time but also displays ingenious cunning. 7) If it is necessary to stop, remove as much of the vehicle and the self as possible from the roadway. Please, please don't block an entire motorcycle lane (see rule #2) just to check a map or talk to a friend. 8) If walking or standing in the road, walk or stand facing into – against – traffic. People who can see the belching lumps of powered steel racing toward tend to get out of the way, whereas people who walk or stand with their backs to traffic tend to wander out into the middle of the road, endangering themselves and others. 9) Hearing is as important as seeing whilst driving; few living people drive blindfolded, so don't drive with ear-buds in place and music blasting. 10) Every second of driving is a death-defying task, so keep the hands on the handlebars, the eyes on the road, and two fingers on each brake. Also, please wear a helmet, as hitting a wall headfirst can be deadly, even at 7 kilometers an hour.

Many persons among us consider themselves the best drivers in the world, but there are more persons out there on the road who don't give a fuck about others' safety or right to exist. So keep that head on a swivel, know how fast the bike can speed up and slow down, and remember this: haste makes waste, always; slow the fuck down, give way, give thanks, and get home safely.

© americanifesto / 場黑麥

hurdles and love

To stay in the now in this moment right here is to keep the balance of life-forces near: the dark ones they well up without conscious thought; the light ones from vigilant wakefulness wrought. To stay in the present I must sit and breathe and seek not in mind-space a comfy reprieve from life's twisting fortunes from life's ups and downs but feel through these hurdles and love through these bounds. My ego says 'No! Don't! It's better like this!' then tricks with the falsehood of ignorant bliss then tricks with the fancy of fleeting desire and quenches the light of the deep holy fire. The Powers are watching through these my two eyes they scoff at the petty and poorly-formed lies that spring from the ego that sound true and wise. Here now I am judging what happens inside when I ought to watch it sans judgment or pride; I'll return patient observing forthwith – which is a most truthful and virtuous gift.

© americanifesto / 場黑麥

good and fast

There is a war waging here inside my mind between what I feel and what ego defines. The ego it clings to the sins of the past to sadness and torment it holds good and fast to lies and to treason to pity and woe and back to its portion it won't quickly go. It hides in a recess behind my left eye and sallies forth quickly whenever I try to open my heart up to make myself whole and use love to clean up the dregs of my soul. I'm learning its contours and tasting its form and tracing thought-patterns that it's deeply worn into many actions and many ideas that have so long plagued me since my early years. As feeling awakens down in lower places I find deep inside me a great many faces that peer up and peer out of warrens constructed to hide them from evil deeps I have conducted. 'Don't go there, it's dangerous, ' the ego's plea – a voice in the head-space that sounds just like me – but all that I've learned in this lifetime has taught that to live in fear is to live less than naught. Where once I turned from it I now turn and face the ego up there in its dark hiding place and sample its worries to search for its root to render its speaking quite helpless and moot. Please wish me luck, dear friend, upon this here task; for patient compassion is all that I ask; on this road I'm taking no other can tread as I alone must chase this scourge from my head. Aho, then, mahalo, and a namaste and thank you for reading this writing today; perhaps on the morrow I'll be somewhat clearer should freedom from fearfulness have drawn any nearer.

© americanifesto / 場黑麥