regarding the invisible

Central to the human condition is a fundamental belief in unseen things. In our modern age, we believe in unseen wireless radio signals that our laptops and cellphones use to connect to the Internet. We depend on unseen air currents to carry our airplanes across the firmament. We eat of plants and use of plant products that grow from seeds planted, out of sight, into dark and loamy soils. Many of us trust in the compassion that flows from, and the justice meted out by, an unseen higher power - That Which Cannot Be Named. We use knowledge gained from books no longer directly in front of us to make sound and wise decisions. We believe in the unseen bonds we share with family and friends, relying on them for comfort, and support; we trust that these invisible support networks will assist us in times of confusion, need, or want.

On a more personal level, unseen information guides our every daily action via thought, urge, and feeling. To live a more meaningful life it is crucial to delve into the unseen inner world accessible through meditation. The root of our belief in the unseen resides in a place the naked eye can’t venture.

Close the eyes, sit quietly, and free the mind of attachment and dross. From the unseen inner world, all power comes; it is the wellspring of humanity’s salvation.

americanifesto / JPR / whorphan / 場黑麥

spies swine plastic

There are spies in my cell-phone. They were planted by clandestine government agents whose job is to promote corporate profits at the expense of democracy and human rights.

There are swine in the white house. They were installed by people who live their lives in fear of whatever their television sets tell them to fear.

There are children starving in America. They starve because capitalism is the most efficient system ever created to drain resources from the many in order to enrich the few.

Plastic pollutes all waters both salt and fresh. This plastic pollution exists because people living in the Western world have bought into the false notion that some things can be discarded after having been used only once.

As long as billionaires profit from the aforementioned imbalances, they will persist. As long as I and the population at large continue to pursue comfortable lives instead of virtuously meaningful ones, these injustices will continue. I’m waking up. Are you?

americanifesto / JPR / whorphan / 場黑麥

my inner thighs

​The old Muslim man at the end of our street liked to massage my inner thighs. He owned a warung, a combination of general store and roadside eatery, that served Halal foods and traditional beverages such as sweet iced tea and hot orange juice. A few blocks away sat the Canggu Permai local mosque, and on Sundays his restaurant would be filled with pious eaters still decked out in their sarongs and cylindrical black hats.

On a Thursday, I walked to the corner from my small efficiency apartment down the gang, saying hello to him on my way past. I got a take-away portion of rice, tofu, and vegetables and was headed back out when he padded the seat next to him, smiling invitingly. Uncomfortable with his physical intimacy, I had been avoiding him for many weeks, always claiming to be busy, but that day I decided to humor him. The left side of his body had been lamed by stroke, but his right arm was strong, the fingernails on that hand long, and sharp.

As soon as I sat down he leaned over and got to work. “No good, no good,” he said as he was digging his nails into the varicose veins that run up the inside of my right thigh. “You must come to me for massage, more often.” Wincing from the pain caused by his sharp nails digging into the tender flesh of my inner thighs, I looked up and made eye-contact with a group of Javanese construction workers building a house across the street. All four of them had ceased their labors to stare at the uncommon sight of a tall, blond, Ynki surfer getting his sensitives rubbed by an elderly, partially paralyzed, Balinese-Muslim restaurateur. A couple of hijab-clad young ladies perched atop a motorized scooter rode past, their eyebrows rising in apparent wonderment. The absurdity of the situation overwhelmed me; I started laughing. Such was my outpouring joy that Bapak Resto was soon laughing with me, our deep belly laughs shaking the makeshift bamboo bench upon which we sat.

Within moments, the old man’s son came running out, wide-eyed with terror. Apparently, he thought his father was having another stroke. At that, I took my leave, shaking hands with and bowing deeply toward my ailing masseuse, whom I visited at least once a week, thereafter.

americanifesto / JPR / whorphan / 場黑麥

silence is power

In many cases, choosing not to speak is more powerful than choosing to speak. Take for example an unexpected verbal assault launched by either a stranger or a person you know and trust. The first instinct for many Americans is to go on the defensive and respond in kind, using violent or aggressive words. Such a response, however, feeds power to the attacker; it shows him that his target will dance to his tune and respond to injury with injury.

One method for retaining personal power in such a situation is to stay silent. Even a brief pause - taken to gather the wits - is likely to throw off the offender. Nine times out of ten he will make a fool of himself should his anger sit out there in the aether, unanswered. His one-sided aggressive energy will soon sour, leading to visible changes in his physical appearance such as bulging eyes, a reddened face, and balled-up fists. 

Most of the world’s major religious teachings encourage their followers to requite injury with kindness, to steer clear of wrong, to turn the other cheek. In his book Man’s Search For Meaning, Viktor Frankl reiterates this point. A victim of injustice perpetrated by the Nazis, he reminds his readers that though they may wallow under the harshest of imaginable conditions, in order to remain human they should stick to kindness, mercy, and nonviolence. Though this suggestion may fly in the face of the social standards of many Western industrial societies, I urge you, dear reader, to give it a try. Aho, mahalo, and om swastiastu!

americanifesto / JPR / whorphan / 場黑

dreamstate writing 05 March 2017

​The dream started with me trying to get to a large white building to my fore. The way was blocked, however, by crowds of women pushing past me. Some of their faces I could see, faces of what looked to be Thai women. The others had long hair that always seemed to shield their faces from my view. A tuk-tuk joined the pressing masses, its shiny chrome frame bending somehow in the same manner of a human trying to worm his way through a crowd. I worked my way around to a railing at the edge of the thronging people and finally began to make headway.

Then, I was running into a stairwell and found it blocked by scores of women standing here and there upon the stairs. Each one had her back turned toward me. Each one had long hair. As I started climbing the stairs, the women would crowd me, preventing forward progress. After laboring to make it to the last few steps, I became exacerbated and turned around to voice my frustration, telling the women (who at that point were all facing me) to get out of my way and let me go about my business, claiming that I had to meet a friend and that their actions were hindering me from fulfilling a commitment. As one, in lockstep, the women turned their backs on me and started filing down the stairs, at which point I awoke.

americanifesto / JPR / whorphan / 場黑麥

dreamstate writing 3 Mar 2017

​In this morning’s dream, I was walking around outside (in an overgrown lot) looking for a place to bed down for the night. There was little ambient light, the sky above me a gray blanket trimmed with the rosy promise of dawn. Rounding the side of a one-storey brick building, I started to make my way through the trees and bushes that grew beside and behind it. Treading carefully so as not to alert to my presence the people living nearby (three-storey inhabited brick structures stood beyond a chain-link fence on a rise above the first building), I made noise nonetheless, the underbrush below my feet crackling loudly. On my way to the rear of the building I passed two makeshift blinds, one a flimsy construction of bent cardboard, the other a sturdier model made from a metal framework and some type of plastic cloth. Behind each blind was a pillow and a worn-down area where someone seemed to have slept recently.

Security lights turned on, illuminating the area brilliantly, and I became aware of what looked like many cameras watching, unblinking eyes that tracked my every move. Little red lights glowed upon them, indicating that they were recording. I attempted to lay down in an effort to avoid their gaze, but a thin beam of piercing white light shot through the chain-link fence, thwarting my efforts to escape it.

Time passed, for the sky had lightened considerably. I was standing in front of the one-storey brick building speaking to its apparent proprietress. She had dark hair, an attractive face, and the type of exaggeratedly-proportioned body normally found on girls' fashion dolls. Apparently, this woman realized I found her attractive, for she turned to one side to show me her large breasts and slender waist. Then, a different woman - this one with blond hair tucked into a tattered baseball cap and wearing a bulky coat - walked out from behind my field of vision to enter the brick building, a basket of what looked like soiled clothing in her arms. I then examined the structure in front of me more closely, leaning over to look past the dark-haired gal, and discovered it was a laundry-mat of sorts. The last thing I remember before waking up was that all of its washers appeared to be running, full steam.

Huzzah, mahalo, and om swastiastu.

americanifesto / JPR / whorphan / 場黑麥

on cutting hair

I’ve been cutting my own hair for more than two decades now. It took me a while to figure out how to hold a mirror in one hand (while facing away from the wall-mounted mirror behind me) and the clippers in the other so as to cut the hair at the back of my head in an appealing fashion. Initially, my brain would move one hand or the other in the wrong direction, resulting in a choppy fade-line.

Now, however, I’ve trained the synapses so well that this type of maneuver comes naturally. Averaging a haircut every two weeks at a cost of about 15 dollars each time, I’ve saved nearly nine thousand dollars by cutting my own hair. I know I did a good job if no one comments on the fact that I got a haircut. This means that the new ‘do isn’t a glaring and apparent failure.

Just yesterday, I purchased a new set of battery-powered clippers to replace the last one I bought, five years ago. The old clippers had been jamming, their cutting faces apparently too worn down. The new clippers turned out to be a waste of 14 dollars. I dug the old model out of the trash, oiled it from the small bottle of lubricant that came with the newer model, and fixed the damage I’d wrought trying to cut the thick hairs at the back of my head using a cheap device apparently designed to tackle the facial stubble of a prepubescent female teenager. Caveat emptor.

americanifesto / JPR / whorphan / 場黑麥