haiku 11 Sep 2017

Corporations claim
That they fix problems better
Harvey proves them wrong

americanifesto / 場黑麥 / jpr / urbanartopia / whorphan

dreamstate writing 16 June 2017

I was in a house that was in the process of being renovated. With me were people I knew well. We talked for a long time, the people and I, whilst sitting cross-legged in a circle in one of the nearly finished rooms. The others and I were wearing tan colored ankle-length robes of some kind. The room had many windows, it was brightly lit, and its walls were painted white.

After our talk was finished we stood up for to have a stretch, whereupon I for some reason entered a smaller neighboring room, to change clothes or just have a look around. The room was empty but for a floor lamp burning a standard incandescent bulb that cast a yellow light. The room had wooden parquet flooring, wooden panels that covered the walls to hip-height, and dark green paint, above. Someone entered the room behind me and I had the feeling I wasn’t supposed to be in there.

When I turned around to leave I saw that a square section of the roof above the green-walled room had been crudely sawed away, leaving a yawning gap that someone had tried to cover with a blue tarpaulin of some sort. Knowing I could mend it better, I went to a closet where supplies for fixing such a hole were kept, gathering up a ladder, hammer and nails, a square piece of plywood, some fiberglass insulation board, as well as roofing shingles and metal flashing. As I was removing the blue tarpaulin I discovered it was instead a heavy-duty Manduka yoga mat I had once owned. The mat was thinner than I remembered and smelled of ozone and heat, however, having sat under the hot sun for so long. I started shoving insulation into the gap and installing bridge-beams to carry the plywood and replacement asphalt shingles, which I had to wedge up under the existing clay tiles. 

americanifesto / JPR / whorphan / 場黑

plumbing problems solved

For years now, I have been living with two separate leaky joins in the copper pipes that distribute water from the well-pump to the kitchen and bathroom. Decades ago, it appears that someone other than I treated the leaking t-joint by wrapping a roll of electrical tape around it, and the leaking elbow-joint by simply reapplying plaster to the wall below it when such coverings got wet and fell off; therefore, I did as the Romans do, worrying about this problem while racking my brains constantly for a way to stop these two separate joints from constantly moistening the things stored in the basement and causing strange mushrooms to grow from the soaked and sodden concrete floor.

Finally, just days ago, I took action, shutting off power to the water pump and using a borrowed miniature tube cutter to slowly cut out the two offending connectors. Upon closer inspection, it turns out that whoever had originally installed the copper pipes had done a poor job sealing the terminals, mangling the pipe-ends badly and failing to seat them properly. Such was the damage to one of the pipes leading into the t-joint that it pulled away from its housing effortlessly, paper-thin metal crumbling to the touch.

Luckily for fools such as me, a local home-improvement retailer sells (nearly) fool-proof replacement connectors of the push-fit, compression type, with which I am able to solve my problems without setting the basement on fire trying to sweat a line that sits within the house's wooden superstructure. I say nearly because I have proven myself to be a fool, not following directions and erring in the installation of one of the new joints, which I must now remove, and replace. This time, however, I shall double-check things and take my time, as I should have done in the first place, worthless and impatient blockhead that I am. While it is not so bad urinating off of the rear deck and washing the dishes using rain-water, I am loathe to let solid wastes sit for too long in the toilet bowl, since they stink quickly and must be flushed with creek-water, which is a bitch to haul. Soon enough, however, fellow fault fixers, I shall rectify this plumbing problem, celebrating my return to the ranks of the modern and the civilized person by having a nice, leisurely dump, inside.

場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit

on the slave's chariot

Oh, how much we Americans suffer for our petty conveniences, and how terribly we abuse the Earth to maintain them. It is not entirely our fault, perhaps, that we lock ourselves in shiny metal boxes whose insides are constantly exploding – in part, our opinions have been shaped by a century of false intelligence that touts the benefits of the automobile and its socialist highway network while obfuscating the true cost of motor-vehicle ownership. Imagine someone today describing the car's negative effects – suburban sprawl, pollution, high maintenance costs, the alienation of the individual from society – and imagine your reaction. Would you jump for joy? Would you sign up at your local dealership in order to spend a year's salary on a combustion-driven steel battering-ram that is lined with miles of tiny wires and sensitive rubber hoses? Would you say, “Of course, Mr. Ford, Toyota-San, Herr Benz, of course I shall take on that second job so that I can drive to work, to school, to the store, to the post office, back to the store, to school a second time, perhaps to a publick-house, and then to my home?” If you are an clear-thinking and self-respecting American living today, your answer may not be the resounding Yes issued by previous generations.

One of the main reasons that we mere three hundred millions of Americans use more gasoline than billions of other people combined is that we have transformed our society into one that is wholly dependent on the automobile – we wantonly waste petroleum and wage war over oil because we choose to perpetuate self-enslavement to the notion that one's body can be moved around through space-time without expending much physical effort rather than to accommodate and promote the frugal and simple life of the bicyclist.

Compared to the slave-charioteer, the smog-rider knows how hard it is to move her body around, and that certain things take time, and that certain things take effort, and because she knows these things, she plans ahead and maintains time discipline while seeing to her own physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being. By liberating herself from the artificial demands of a lumbering blunderbox filled with volatile chemicals, she keeps her soul free of sadness, discontent, and desire. By fixing her bicycle and keeping it road-worthy for an entire year for less cost than a single oil change, she spends her resources wisely. Her mouth, not a twisted metal pipe, is her exhaust port; her beating heart, not a cast-iron maze of tubes, is the motor that drags her across the phaltscape; her legs, not a row of oil-drenched, whirling plugs, are the pistons that turn the crank that sees her on her way.

The velocipedist, her heart buoyant and her soul aroused, lives the life of honest and healthy labor, while the car driver, that poor wretch sitting in his glass prison of perpetual payment, lives the life of one enslaved to the demands of a hardwood-accented beast. His mount of choice requires specialized and costly repairs, whereas the cyclist can pinpoint and fix problems easily and while on the go; his conveyance is the nation's problem, the bicycle, it's solution. Therefore, dear reader, please consider switching from a high-cost slave's chariot to a low-cost wire horse, and rejoice as your spirits, and your savings, rise.

場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit