while sitting alone

Someone who has spent the majority of his life - twenty-five years in fact - hiding from his emotions by a variety of means will of course face some difficulty when he decides to sober up and face the realities of human existence. As he delves ever more deeply into the shadowed inner realms, his dreams will likely intensify. As he puts aside the childish pursuits of purely physical pleasure, it will soon become clear to him that his duty is to take up more virtuous and worthwhile endeavors.

The temptation will be large to keep hiding, to return to the well-worn and welcoming patterns, to indulge in wantonly indulgent behavior or fleeting sexual gratification. He knows those pathways and patterns, however, and knows to where they lead, and would rather sit quietly by himself in a room, with incense burning.

Great wonders, much joy, and fathomless treasures can be found while sitting alone in a room. With incense burning.

americanifesto / 場黑麥 / jpr / urbanartopia / whorphan

no voice superior

Beethoven's 3rd Symphony was the piece I chose to listen to while composing this piece. As I stared out the window watching the remnants of a tropical storm hammer us with rain and trying to think what I should write about, a pattern coalesced before my mind's eye. In it, I could see the unity and balance that characterizes the forces raging within me, those of immune and nervous and endocrine systems, of musculature and skeleton, of tendon and vessel and fiber, that rather than having to judge them I could merely accept that they were all pieces and parts of the greater awareness I have come to know as Me, and that they are all of equal importance in the grand scheme of my existence. I knew suddenly of this unity as I sat pondering on the wondrous vibrations of the Ludwig Van, music that always quickens my heart and helps me to focus on the task at hand, be it driving, studying, writing, jogging, musing, or simply being. It was instantly clear to me that no single instrument in the orchestra that had performed the piece was greater or more important than the other, that every note was in just the right place to do exactly as was intended that it do, that the 3rd Symphony was something magical, something far greater than just the sum of its parts. I am nearly finished reading Molecules of Emotion by Dr. Candace Pert, and just last week I finished Anatomy of the Spirit by Caroline Myss, and so I am not surprised to be experiencing events such as a clarification of my inner vision and the patience needed to recognize and incorporate Fundamental Truths. Living in the modern Western world we learn to think in forms of strict delineation, to think of one thing as superior to another, as one cellphone or political party or style of clothing or automobile or hairstyle or lipstick or television show to be the best, the greatest, the non-plus-ultra, and it is only with due diligence and conscious humility that we can step back from this worldview and retrain ourselves to look for beauty in all things, to marvel at the whole rather than squabbling over the pieces. In the words of Lao Tzu: Piece by piece the treasure of the world is amassed. Mahalo.

© americanifesto / 場黑麥

on avoiding traffic

Recently, I wrote an article about sponging anger, and how when I am bicycling I would often get angry for reasons I could not place. After carefully analyzing this hatred and noting when it tended to arise I have concluded that I am allowing myself to be controlled by the mostly negative emotions of the drivers I come into contact with while out on the road. Oh how they must hate me for daring to ride on the sliver of pavement that runs to the right of the single white line and to the left of the edge of the road, as witnessed by a recent increase in the number of cowards who shout out of their windows at me as they speed by, often saying things such as, “Get out of the road,” and, “Move over.” (Soon, I hope to find the courage to stop responding by telling drivers to go fuck themselves.) I have taken to occupying the entire lane while climbing a particular hill on the last stretch of byway before the last turn toward my house, as in the past on this short rise people tended to floor their engines and squeeze daringly between me and opposing traffic as we were all trying to squeeze up a blind, sharp incline. During this maneuver the transference of hatred and loathing from the drivers to me is particularly strong, as I take up the entire lane for fifteen whole seconds while powering my way up to the top of the rise, dragging myself across the asphalt landscape silently and without belching noxious fumes from a metal tailpipe. Once I reach the top I immediately vacate the lane to allow the vehicle that has been tailgating me to roar past toward business that – I am certain – has to do with curing cancer and saving a stranded kitten and eliminating hunger in the Global South. I am happy to be doing my part to honor and conserve the mineral resources of this our only Earth, and to be saving hundreds of dollars a year on car maintenance and fuel and registrations and fees and taxes and fines. I have been lucky up to now, for which I thank the gods of the traveler, among them Legba and Ganesha and Christopher and Hermes, lifting my supplications to the heavens and saying: “Please guard these travelers along their path, keep them this day from Fate's patient wrath.” Aho.

© americanifesto / 場黑麥

habit flung Westward

This morning, after nearly 12 hours of sleep, having slept in for the first time in more than a month, I took an old, stuck thought, and buried it in that most endless of burial grounds, the West. Thinking the thought – a memory of how someone had sneakily insulted me in front of some of my relatives nearly a year ago – for perhaps the thousandth time, I recognized it as a self-deprecating habit, investigated it at its root, congratulated myself for having caught myself in the process of self-mutilation, took out my little leather salt -pouch, and focused all of the negative emotions and pent-up frustrations surrounding the memory into the salt-pouch and from there into the welcoming arms of the House of Death. Black is the soil of West, and deep, and I am slowly learning how to bury my toxic and useless habits there so as to free up my energies for such thoughts and actions that will be helpful rather than detrimental to me and to mankind. Aho.

mentiri factorem fecit – 場黑麥

on disc golf & Taoism

  The game of disc golf (in which players, in the fewest number of tosses, throw discus-like plastic discs from a designated point to a specially-designed metal catch basket) is in certain aspects akin to the elusive tenets of Taoism. Similar to the enduringly simple (but all-encompassing) message that Lao Tzu bound up in the Tao Teh Ching, the game of disc golf is at root an easy task, one that increases in difficulty, however, in tandem with the player's internal stress levels.

  The more pressure the player puts on herself to make, say, a difficult shot into the wind around a copse of trees, the harder that shot, and her subsequent shots, will be. She will be trying to force her body to move so that the disc goes in a very specific direction, but, from her rigid posture and from her attempted dominance over her body, her shot will fly foul. As in Taoism, so in disc golf we must always remember that any attempt to subjugate the Universe to one's own will is bound to backfire, and the most coveted things (such as making that nasty headwind bank-shot) are the hardest to get. (Therefore, the Tao teaches us not to covet anything, as coveting leads invariably to ruin.) The more the player pushes to make the shot the way she thinks the shot should be made, the less she is tapping into her body's inherent ability to not only make the shot, but to do it with finesse and without pride.

  The effective disc golfer is he who can put his ego aside. The great disc golfer she who can revert to a pure animal state by incorporating her ego into herself (thus neutralizing it), a pure animal state that allows her to throw her disc far and straight, her body moving in its own curious rhythms, her mind freed from sadness and joy, her entire being focused solely on the fraction of time at which the disc leaves her calloused fingers. In my humble opinion, this is the magical, secret point that forms the center of the teachings of Taoism: rather than telling you to worship in such way to that god at this time of year, the Tao Teh Ching focuses on reducing you to your most basic and fundamental forms, forms that compel you to act with complete impartiality, intent only on breaking time from This Moment to The Next. Taoism helps you to clear your mind of all the clutter and pollution of modern society; with the Tao, you can more readily realize your deep, latent potential: you can learn to express it. The Tao focuses on deeds, not words, on completing tasks with skill and aplomb but without taking pride in them, or letting them influence your emotional state.

  So is it, at times, with the sport of disc golf. The less thought-interference there is during the throwing phase, the more fluid your body motion. The less the ego is involved, the greater the chance that you will make that daring sidewinder shot around that group of bushes. So keep on diminishing and diminishing until there is nothing left – the Tao is like a bellows that is never made empty, even though it seems hollowed out. The more you draw from it, the harder it works; the less emphasis you put on your own personal achievement, the more you operate for the good of the world, an island of calm in a sea of chaos. One of the trickiest parts, however, is learning not to covet the Tao. To covet anything is to destroy it, so toss your discs with quiet competence, without ever yearning for success, your only desire a state of primal simplicity.

  Your body knows what to do. Now all you have to do is get your mind out of the way.

Ultima Ratio Regum - 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp