She begs for fish-juice
Then cleans herself with great care
Eyes like slits, watching
americanifesto / 場黑麥 / jpr / urbanartopia / whorphan
Showing posts with label cat. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cat. Show all posts
25 October 2017
07 July 2017
a seaside promenade
The dream started inside a building, which I escaped through a side door that opened onto a street paved with cobblestones. The outside was lit by a bright, white light. With me (on the right-hand side) was as always my psychopomp, as well as a female (on the left-hand side) whose face and features have faded from memory.
Together, we climbed through the open rear door into a automobile that looked like a standard, black Londonite taxicab. It was hitched via leather strapping to four-legged beasts that at first glance appeared to be cats. The driver’s perch had been mounted onto the roof, meaning that I had to climb up through the car’s open sunroof to man the reins.
We took off, rounding corners at speed, and were soon riding astride a seaside promenade made using cut blue granite and featuring an iron railing. People in Victorian-era dress strolled along the sidewalk to our right. Below and beyond them stretched the sea - deep blue and vastly calm, nary a wave or ripple. The vehicle stopped and I leaped off to see if there was a beach at the base of the cut-stone promenade. Using a nearby flight of stairs, I climbed down to its blond sands (with someone or something else in tow), and had just dipped a toe in (to check the waters) when I awoke.
americanifesto / 場黑麥 / jpr / urbanartopia / whorphan
Together, we climbed through the open rear door into a automobile that looked like a standard, black Londonite taxicab. It was hitched via leather strapping to four-legged beasts that at first glance appeared to be cats. The driver’s perch had been mounted onto the roof, meaning that I had to climb up through the car’s open sunroof to man the reins.
We took off, rounding corners at speed, and were soon riding astride a seaside promenade made using cut blue granite and featuring an iron railing. People in Victorian-era dress strolled along the sidewalk to our right. Below and beyond them stretched the sea - deep blue and vastly calm, nary a wave or ripple. The vehicle stopped and I leaped off to see if there was a beach at the base of the cut-stone promenade. Using a nearby flight of stairs, I climbed down to its blond sands (with someone or something else in tow), and had just dipped a toe in (to check the waters) when I awoke.
americanifesto / 場黑麥 / jpr / urbanartopia / whorphan
23 April 2017
dreamstate writing 23 April 2017 - wristwatch of cheap
I had pulled over on the side of a packed dirt road that rose out of a valley in which lay a lake. Earlier in the dream I had stolen a tank from an underground facility. On my way out, a wall-mounted camera had swiveled to take a picture of the vehicle as it emerged. The tank looked like an updated M4 Sherman with a set of advanced, modern treads. Its turret housing was studded with sensors, and it was painted in NATO snow camouflage, large mottled specks of blue, black, and white.
For some reason I had exited the tank and was over by a copse of trees near the edge of the dirt road - to pee perhaps. In a heap of brown leaves I saw a curled-up patch of fur, a bar-coded collar, and a pair of alert feline ears. I made the rapid whistling sounds necessary to get any cat’s attention, whereupon the animal lifted its head and turned its face toward me. It was wearing a disposable dust mask of maroon color under a metal muzzle affixed firmly with an adjustable leather strap to its head. The muzzle covered its entire nose and mouth and was made of an oval of scratched steel with some sort of alphanumerics stamped onto it.
The beast stood up, its tail flicking upward in the manner of a curious and approachable feline. It started walking my way, and I cast mine eyes about for a food or water dish, concerned that with the muzzle on its face the cat could neither eat nor drink. Just before the dream changed radically I noticed a tarnished, worn wristwatch of cheap gold strapped to one of the cat’s forelimbs, again over a patch of maroon cloth.
americanifesto / JPR / whorphan / 場黑麥
For some reason I had exited the tank and was over by a copse of trees near the edge of the dirt road - to pee perhaps. In a heap of brown leaves I saw a curled-up patch of fur, a bar-coded collar, and a pair of alert feline ears. I made the rapid whistling sounds necessary to get any cat’s attention, whereupon the animal lifted its head and turned its face toward me. It was wearing a disposable dust mask of maroon color under a metal muzzle affixed firmly with an adjustable leather strap to its head. The muzzle covered its entire nose and mouth and was made of an oval of scratched steel with some sort of alphanumerics stamped onto it.
The beast stood up, its tail flicking upward in the manner of a curious and approachable feline. It started walking my way, and I cast mine eyes about for a food or water dish, concerned that with the muzzle on its face the cat could neither eat nor drink. Just before the dream changed radically I noticed a tarnished, worn wristwatch of cheap gold strapped to one of the cat’s forelimbs, again over a patch of maroon cloth.
americanifesto / JPR / whorphan / 場黑麥
12 December 2015
just before dark
We leave our rented house in southwest Banyuwangi prefecture, East Java, just before dark. Our mount is a Kijang sports utility vehicle borrowed from a local Hindu man, big for the skinny roads. Fast. Nimble. Gold-embroidered sergeant's chevrons hang from the rear-view mirror. The car's radio doesn't work, but its suspension system is solid enough to propel us in relative comfort over the ruts and pits of the poorly maintained roads. To stay awake after a long few days of competitive surfing, Bob and I chain-smoke cigarettes and chat, leisurely, sweating in the evening heat. With a six hour round-trip drive ahead of us, not counting the time we'll spend at temple, our talk meanders from one topic to the next as he guns our ride past pushcart-vendors and men riding motorcycles with large bags of cut grass balanced on their heads. “Don't worry, bro, I'm not going to kill you,” Bob says when he sees how tense I am after a few narrowly-avoided collisions with other vehicles driving just as recklessly as we are. I adjust the belt securing to my waist a ceremonial kamben, or men's Balinese sarong, and light smokes for both of us.
Half-way there, we run over a cat, its pelt white with black splotches. From the driver's side darkness it leaps suddenly, directly in front of us, straight under our wheels. We pull over to check the undercarriage for signs of blood or fur. Nothing. Lights go on in a couple of the houses that line the road. We ask a resident if he knows to whom the cat belongs, but the man claims not to know of any cat, goes back inside, and turns off his porch-light. In the night sky above us, a full moon shines radiantly. We spend a few more minutes peering into the sparse and roadside bushes, but neither hear nor see anything. The faint aroma of fresh cat-shit hits me as we are getting back into the car, however, and I suspect that our journey to the temple of Kali, the goddess of destruction and renewal, on her birthday, under a full moon, required a death sacrifice of some sort. The Universe, as always, provides.
A few kilometers before we enter the national park within which Kali's temple sits we pass some dragon-fruit plantations, neat rows of small trees strung with lights, one suspended above each tree, eerie grids of brightness that stand out along the otherwise unlit road. The path that leads to the entrance of the national park is worse than all others before it, potholes a half-meter deep, thick paving stones that kick up and bang against the car's undercarriage. A cluster of eyes flash red in the darkness ahead, a herd of deer that quickly moves into the brush as we approach. “Where there are kijang, or deer, there are big cats that hunt them,” Bob says, “so while we're at temple keep an eye on the trees above.”
Once we've payed our entrance fee (around $1.50 each) and have parked in an otherwise empty lot near the temple grounds, a monk's attendant comes sleepily out of his quarters and approaches us, to see what we're after. I make the mistake of placing the plastic bag containing our temple offerings on the ground in order to shake his hand and bow to him properly, whereupon Bob goes into the concession stand to buy offerings, or upakara, untainted by Western ignorance. Somewhere nearby, a large diesel generator pumps out electricity; the temple sits at least 8 kilometers from the nearest settlement. After a quick wash of foot and hand in a nearby row of water basins, we meet the monk, or mangku, who agrees to be our psychopomp, and lead us in ceremony. The attendant, older than the mangku and nearly deaf, lights a kerosene lantern and walks us over to the outer temple while the mangku rides over on a motorbike so that he can open the door and have a look around. Faces peer out from the red-brick outer temple's swirling facades, and I pause, briefly, to feel if I am allowed to pass the stone threshold guardians, or raksasa; since my heart is pure and my body washed, I sense I am welcome, and follow the others up the steep stairs. In the outer temple's courtyard, which can easily seat 300 people, Bob speaks with the mangku in Indonesian, talking about family and religion, desires and wants, concerns and delights. I understand perhaps a third of it. Upon the monk's chest is a round, golden pin displaying a swastika, and while standing across from him and listening to them talk, I imagine that swastika – a more than 10,000 year-old symbol that brings good luck and repels bad – shining at my third chakra, the diaphragm. I settle down into a butterfly seating position and am soon overwhelmed with emotion. Memories of my dearly departed fill mind- and heart-space. First, visions of mother and father, then more, countless ancestors bubbling up through eons of genetic transmission, and I weep, quietly, there upon the uneven paving stones of an East Javanese Hindu temple. Once various things have been fetched from different parts of the temple and the accouterments of worship are prepared, incense has been lit, and Bob and I have arranged our upakara on the sandstone before us, the monk begins the first ceremony, his bell ringing into the still, dark night, his voice uttering Sanskrit mantras foreign to my ear but on some level comforting, protective. I keep crying as Bob coaches me through purifying my hands in the rising incense smoke and choosing the correct flowers from the upakara at the correct times, which we wedge above our ears once we've held them between the fingertips of hands pressed together in prayer. The attendant sprinkles first our heads with holy water and then our outstretched, cupped hands. We sip it four times, but on the fifth sprinkling the deaf man stops me from sipping, incorrectly, a fifth time. I follow Bob's lead and wash my face and neck with the water, instead. Then, we take grains of broken rice from a proffered woven basket and dab them to forehead and throat. Soon after, the mangku's bell stops ringing, and we rise. As the mangku puts all his tools away, Bob and I stuff donations into a box near the exit. The tears dry upon my cheeks, and the swastika in my chest has begun to spin, its colors turning from gold to black, gold to black.
Once again, the mangku drives off into the darkness. Once more, the attendant lights his lamp, and we follow him through the darkness toward, I assume, Kali's own inner sanctum. Above us, the brilliant moon winks and dances through gaps in the treetops. Somewhere in the forest, a bird starts up its song, then stops. The night air is pregnant with energy. Curiously still. And then it's into the main temple, this one far smaller than the first, room for maybe 20 people to sit. A massive banyan tree, or strangler-fig, grows from one corner, its black and white checkered sarong stained and frayed. The monk walks to a dark, irregular stone topped by a wooden framework supporting a golden curtain, which he draws back, revealing a row of smaller dark stones arranged atop the larger one. (During the drive, my companion had explained that the temple is one of the holiest shrines in all of Indonesian Hinduism, the stones the holiest of holy relics.) With upakara before us and incense lit, Bob and I sit down just behind our psychopomp. He launches into chanting and bell ringing a bit too fast for Bob's liking, who interrupts his labor to ask him to slow down. I settle into meditation and feel for the swastika, which is now spinning so rapidly it's almost torquing my torso physically. A few minutes into the ceremony, Bob, to my right, stars groaning and cackling. I slit my eyes and see him bent over at the waist, frothing at the mouth and speaking with a voice I've never heard him use before, a voice as old and dauntless as time itself. The beast-like grunts escaping him cause the hairs on my neck and arms to stand up as I shut my eyes and settle back into Self. I sense an profound agony in him and resist the desire to reach out blindly and pat his back in reassurance. Such are the whipping beams of null-energy lashing out of his fourth or heart chakra that all I can do is sit up straighter, bask in their tearing escape, and taste of their hue, onyx-black bands with brilliant white edges. The beams seem to be simply passing through the mangku, who in my mind's eye is but a fog of focused obeisance suspended in prayer. Bob's agony increases and I let a deep love for him well up in my heart of hearts. I'm shaking from the energy coursing out of him and into the swastika at my diaphragm, which is now completely black and seems to be exponentially growing in size. I summon up every ounce of loving compassion I can muster and feed that love into him, closing the circuit with whatever channel, whatever force or god, he opened, whereupon he stands up, shuffles over to the irregular rock, and falls to his knees before it, weeping and groaning anew. As the energies escaping him diminish, my swastika shrinks in size but not in strength. I feel it sear and settle into my soul's matrix, jet-black and brimming with power. The mangku enters the 'Om' phase of prayer, signaling its imminent end. Next to me, Bob starts breathing normally again, and the ceremony ends. As the mangku is gathering up his rite-making implements and chatting with Bob about the state of life and religion in Bali, I notice a change in the attendant, who turns on a hand-held torch with which to illuminates the treetops above us. I remember the warning about big cats but, for some reason, am not in the least concerned. After a haphazard scan of the canopy above, he switches the light back off and goes outside to lead us back to our car.
As we are driving back down the pitted track, I connect with something, or someone, out in the inky-black woods, that I cannot even see with my physical eyes, and the intensity of our exchange makes me smile. “What happened back there?” Bob asks after reminding me not to throw cigarette butts out of the window until after we've left the park. (I've been collecting all my butts in a small plastic bag the entire time and thrown exactly zero butts out of the window.) “I don't remember anything,” he says, “after we sat down in front of the stones.” I explain everything I felt and heard and saw and did, and he admonishes me for reaching into him the way I did, for completing the circuit, as, he explains, a part of my energies now live inside him, which could lead him to become sick, or die. I apologize to him, thank him for taking me along, and light up a few more cigarettes. The bright moon overhead gives us a dim sense of the road ahead, but we're no longer in a hurry, cruising along and enjoying the cool night air. The seed of something vast and immutable pulses inside me, its contours bent, black, old as mankind itself. I place a hand on top of my belly, smile, and silently thank goddess Kali for a strange and wonderful night.
© americanifesto / 場黑麥
Half-way there, we run over a cat, its pelt white with black splotches. From the driver's side darkness it leaps suddenly, directly in front of us, straight under our wheels. We pull over to check the undercarriage for signs of blood or fur. Nothing. Lights go on in a couple of the houses that line the road. We ask a resident if he knows to whom the cat belongs, but the man claims not to know of any cat, goes back inside, and turns off his porch-light. In the night sky above us, a full moon shines radiantly. We spend a few more minutes peering into the sparse and roadside bushes, but neither hear nor see anything. The faint aroma of fresh cat-shit hits me as we are getting back into the car, however, and I suspect that our journey to the temple of Kali, the goddess of destruction and renewal, on her birthday, under a full moon, required a death sacrifice of some sort. The Universe, as always, provides.
A few kilometers before we enter the national park within which Kali's temple sits we pass some dragon-fruit plantations, neat rows of small trees strung with lights, one suspended above each tree, eerie grids of brightness that stand out along the otherwise unlit road. The path that leads to the entrance of the national park is worse than all others before it, potholes a half-meter deep, thick paving stones that kick up and bang against the car's undercarriage. A cluster of eyes flash red in the darkness ahead, a herd of deer that quickly moves into the brush as we approach. “Where there are kijang, or deer, there are big cats that hunt them,” Bob says, “so while we're at temple keep an eye on the trees above.”
Once we've payed our entrance fee (around $1.50 each) and have parked in an otherwise empty lot near the temple grounds, a monk's attendant comes sleepily out of his quarters and approaches us, to see what we're after. I make the mistake of placing the plastic bag containing our temple offerings on the ground in order to shake his hand and bow to him properly, whereupon Bob goes into the concession stand to buy offerings, or upakara, untainted by Western ignorance. Somewhere nearby, a large diesel generator pumps out electricity; the temple sits at least 8 kilometers from the nearest settlement. After a quick wash of foot and hand in a nearby row of water basins, we meet the monk, or mangku, who agrees to be our psychopomp, and lead us in ceremony. The attendant, older than the mangku and nearly deaf, lights a kerosene lantern and walks us over to the outer temple while the mangku rides over on a motorbike so that he can open the door and have a look around. Faces peer out from the red-brick outer temple's swirling facades, and I pause, briefly, to feel if I am allowed to pass the stone threshold guardians, or raksasa; since my heart is pure and my body washed, I sense I am welcome, and follow the others up the steep stairs. In the outer temple's courtyard, which can easily seat 300 people, Bob speaks with the mangku in Indonesian, talking about family and religion, desires and wants, concerns and delights. I understand perhaps a third of it. Upon the monk's chest is a round, golden pin displaying a swastika, and while standing across from him and listening to them talk, I imagine that swastika – a more than 10,000 year-old symbol that brings good luck and repels bad – shining at my third chakra, the diaphragm. I settle down into a butterfly seating position and am soon overwhelmed with emotion. Memories of my dearly departed fill mind- and heart-space. First, visions of mother and father, then more, countless ancestors bubbling up through eons of genetic transmission, and I weep, quietly, there upon the uneven paving stones of an East Javanese Hindu temple. Once various things have been fetched from different parts of the temple and the accouterments of worship are prepared, incense has been lit, and Bob and I have arranged our upakara on the sandstone before us, the monk begins the first ceremony, his bell ringing into the still, dark night, his voice uttering Sanskrit mantras foreign to my ear but on some level comforting, protective. I keep crying as Bob coaches me through purifying my hands in the rising incense smoke and choosing the correct flowers from the upakara at the correct times, which we wedge above our ears once we've held them between the fingertips of hands pressed together in prayer. The attendant sprinkles first our heads with holy water and then our outstretched, cupped hands. We sip it four times, but on the fifth sprinkling the deaf man stops me from sipping, incorrectly, a fifth time. I follow Bob's lead and wash my face and neck with the water, instead. Then, we take grains of broken rice from a proffered woven basket and dab them to forehead and throat. Soon after, the mangku's bell stops ringing, and we rise. As the mangku puts all his tools away, Bob and I stuff donations into a box near the exit. The tears dry upon my cheeks, and the swastika in my chest has begun to spin, its colors turning from gold to black, gold to black.
Once again, the mangku drives off into the darkness. Once more, the attendant lights his lamp, and we follow him through the darkness toward, I assume, Kali's own inner sanctum. Above us, the brilliant moon winks and dances through gaps in the treetops. Somewhere in the forest, a bird starts up its song, then stops. The night air is pregnant with energy. Curiously still. And then it's into the main temple, this one far smaller than the first, room for maybe 20 people to sit. A massive banyan tree, or strangler-fig, grows from one corner, its black and white checkered sarong stained and frayed. The monk walks to a dark, irregular stone topped by a wooden framework supporting a golden curtain, which he draws back, revealing a row of smaller dark stones arranged atop the larger one. (During the drive, my companion had explained that the temple is one of the holiest shrines in all of Indonesian Hinduism, the stones the holiest of holy relics.) With upakara before us and incense lit, Bob and I sit down just behind our psychopomp. He launches into chanting and bell ringing a bit too fast for Bob's liking, who interrupts his labor to ask him to slow down. I settle into meditation and feel for the swastika, which is now spinning so rapidly it's almost torquing my torso physically. A few minutes into the ceremony, Bob, to my right, stars groaning and cackling. I slit my eyes and see him bent over at the waist, frothing at the mouth and speaking with a voice I've never heard him use before, a voice as old and dauntless as time itself. The beast-like grunts escaping him cause the hairs on my neck and arms to stand up as I shut my eyes and settle back into Self. I sense an profound agony in him and resist the desire to reach out blindly and pat his back in reassurance. Such are the whipping beams of null-energy lashing out of his fourth or heart chakra that all I can do is sit up straighter, bask in their tearing escape, and taste of their hue, onyx-black bands with brilliant white edges. The beams seem to be simply passing through the mangku, who in my mind's eye is but a fog of focused obeisance suspended in prayer. Bob's agony increases and I let a deep love for him well up in my heart of hearts. I'm shaking from the energy coursing out of him and into the swastika at my diaphragm, which is now completely black and seems to be exponentially growing in size. I summon up every ounce of loving compassion I can muster and feed that love into him, closing the circuit with whatever channel, whatever force or god, he opened, whereupon he stands up, shuffles over to the irregular rock, and falls to his knees before it, weeping and groaning anew. As the energies escaping him diminish, my swastika shrinks in size but not in strength. I feel it sear and settle into my soul's matrix, jet-black and brimming with power. The mangku enters the 'Om' phase of prayer, signaling its imminent end. Next to me, Bob starts breathing normally again, and the ceremony ends. As the mangku is gathering up his rite-making implements and chatting with Bob about the state of life and religion in Bali, I notice a change in the attendant, who turns on a hand-held torch with which to illuminates the treetops above us. I remember the warning about big cats but, for some reason, am not in the least concerned. After a haphazard scan of the canopy above, he switches the light back off and goes outside to lead us back to our car.
As we are driving back down the pitted track, I connect with something, or someone, out in the inky-black woods, that I cannot even see with my physical eyes, and the intensity of our exchange makes me smile. “What happened back there?” Bob asks after reminding me not to throw cigarette butts out of the window until after we've left the park. (I've been collecting all my butts in a small plastic bag the entire time and thrown exactly zero butts out of the window.) “I don't remember anything,” he says, “after we sat down in front of the stones.” I explain everything I felt and heard and saw and did, and he admonishes me for reaching into him the way I did, for completing the circuit, as, he explains, a part of my energies now live inside him, which could lead him to become sick, or die. I apologize to him, thank him for taking me along, and light up a few more cigarettes. The bright moon overhead gives us a dim sense of the road ahead, but we're no longer in a hurry, cruising along and enjoying the cool night air. The seed of something vast and immutable pulses inside me, its contours bent, black, old as mankind itself. I place a hand on top of my belly, smile, and silently thank goddess Kali for a strange and wonderful night.
© americanifesto / 場黑麥
16 March 2012
on fliers and vandalism
America's cities are waging war against those of their citizens who beautify with graffiti the visually sterile urban environment. Deemed a nuisance and incarcerated frequently on charges of vandalism, today's street artist is treated with revulsion and disdain and badgered incessantly by city councils and police forces alike. These brave and selfless individuals venture forth constantly in their efforts to bring color and joy to the bland and unadorned phaltscape. Yet beyond these fearless individuals, there are others who do much as graffiti artists do, but who act without fear of repercussion or punishment – those people who put up fliers for lost and missing cats or dogs, to offer home cleaning or grooming services, and to guerrilla-advertise goods and services somewhere other than in a penny publication.
The self-advertising city dweller will tape her message to her neighborhood telephone pole with many turns from a roll of clear packaging tape, or she will staple it to her local tree enough times to keep it affixed even in gale-force winds. But unlike the graffiti artist, this city dweller will go about her business in full daylight without being talked to, approached by, or otherwise harassed by John Law. To harness this new and liberating reality, and to prove to the world that they are not ashamed of their actions, SDUBS (self-directed urban beautification specialists) in major metropolitan areas across America are setting up websites that parallel the messages they apply to physical sites in order to justify their beautification efforts as those of self-promotion (should such justification be necessary, which it rarely is, as SDUBS go about their business with cat-like stealth and formidable deliberation).
Beyond the positive effect of making bland cities more colorful, these newest, cross-genre efforts by America's SDUBS increase the number of people visiting their respective cities by showcasing the artwork they have labored so hard to produce, artwork which they apply freely and without demanding recompense. And unlike his self-promoting, guerrilla-advertising, house-cleaning-while-hair-cutting neighbor, the street artist is not trying to sell anything – he wishes only to pursue his Happiness without restriction, and to beautify his drab surroundings in peace.
場黑麥 ioanni elymucampus fecit
The self-advertising city dweller will tape her message to her neighborhood telephone pole with many turns from a roll of clear packaging tape, or she will staple it to her local tree enough times to keep it affixed even in gale-force winds. But unlike the graffiti artist, this city dweller will go about her business in full daylight without being talked to, approached by, or otherwise harassed by John Law. To harness this new and liberating reality, and to prove to the world that they are not ashamed of their actions, SDUBS (self-directed urban beautification specialists) in major metropolitan areas across America are setting up websites that parallel the messages they apply to physical sites in order to justify their beautification efforts as those of self-promotion (should such justification be necessary, which it rarely is, as SDUBS go about their business with cat-like stealth and formidable deliberation).
Beyond the positive effect of making bland cities more colorful, these newest, cross-genre efforts by America's SDUBS increase the number of people visiting their respective cities by showcasing the artwork they have labored so hard to produce, artwork which they apply freely and without demanding recompense. And unlike his self-promoting, guerrilla-advertising, house-cleaning-while-hair-cutting neighbor, the street artist is not trying to sell anything – he wishes only to pursue his Happiness without restriction, and to beautify his drab surroundings in peace.
場黑麥 ioanni elymucampus fecit
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