americanifesto: soul

Hopes fails, dreams shatter. Sadness emerges, and, with it, fear. Concern for one’s own future sharpens, fear blossoming into anger. And then anger mutates into self-righteous indignation at anything perceived to be the root cause of one’s problems. Even if the people or choices targeted actually have nothing to do with one’s problems, they become the focus of one’s hatred.

Within the morally vacuous, cacophonous self-pity factories that social media sites and other internet message boards often are, one’s indignation grows while at the same time, however, the size and origin of one’s problems stay the same. Soon, anger spills over into aggression, hot and sour words hurled unnecessarily at others in one’s web of contacts. The hurt doesn’t go away, prompting one to pile on the grief in an effort to smother it. Still, it lingers, now a sucking and festering wound wrapped tightly around the once-soothing tendrils of ever-loving heartspace.

Gradually, one’s web of social contacts shrinks, its individual strands broken, severed, neglected. More and more isolated does one then become, so isolated and lonely in fact that fear and anger appear more and more real. Suddenly, it’s all one can seem to think about, how stupid and foolish and misguided everyone else is, how simple the solutions to this nation’s and this city’s and this block’s problems are. ‘If only people would just listen to me,’ one thinks, an angry, lonely voice screaming into the yawning void. Pitiable, the soul struggling to withstand twin onslaughts of negativity and self-loathing, the world suddenly an evil and unwelcoming place, the last strands give out.

Yet there within the charred and blackened ruins of one’s real and online lives glimmer, diamond-like, the compressed jewels of love, hope, and compassion. And rebirth beckons.

americanifesto / 場黑麥 / jpr / urbanartopia / whorphan

05 August 2013

on going deeper

This morning, I awoke at 3:45 and stumbled over to sit on the toilet. There I sat for 7 minutes, dozing and finishing up the rest of my dream. With a start, I forced myself awake, stood up, pulled on my underthings, and went into the back room, for yoga. I lit sage and prayed to the four directions, sang three morning songs, and at around 4:10 am started my two hours of sweat-lodge yoga. It was a new class, one I had not done before today, one focused entirely on going deeper and peeling back the layers of self-mutilation with the intention of healing the psyche's rotten core. After stretches but before starting abdominals I paused the playback and went into the living room (taking care to keep the heat in by shutting the sliding door) in order to write down the fading details of the dream I had been having just before I woke up. (In this dream, I was about to run cross a 6-lane freeway during heavy traffic, even though I had the option of using a nearby bridge to cross over it.) After writing down the details of my dream I stepped back onto the mat to do many sets of abs with a roll and as well as twisting abs with a roll, during which I began to feel muscles and tendons in my pelvis that I haven't felt in an age. The class continued and I followed the spoken instructions, breathing into and peeling back layers of hatred and self-doubt, delving with each pose deeper into the ripples of my mind, rooting around in the dank and fetid cellars of my soul. Oh what I found there! Thoughts and feelings, heartbreaks and ecstasy, all types of energies twisted up into complex knots and pulsating balls, all types of memories choking the free flow of chi, of prana, of joy. The distress I felt upon discovering these choke-points was so great that I turned off the recording and finished my session on my own, warming down gradually and granting myself a long final resting. I know that these blockages won't dissolve by themselves; it will take many more years of effort and breathing and yoga to loosen their deathly grasp, to bring healing to the zones they but poorly hide. Sitting there on the mat frustrated with myself for ending class prematurely, I remembered that in my dream, just before waking up, I had run through a gap in traffic and successfully crossed the freeway, eschewing the beckoning footbridge and landing in an entirely new world, in a place with giant walking robots and mists shining in soothing neon light. Patience, I told myself, salvation lies in patience, in practice, and in persistence. What tomorrow holds is mystery, but today is drenched in hope. Aho.

mentiri factorem fecit – 場黑麥

20 March 2013

bare and spill

Having spent the past year experimenting on his friends and family (without their consent, of course) and probing just how far he could push an ego until it fought back, this liesmith finds that many Americans have grown accustomed to a person baring his soul and spilling his guts at the drop of a hat, and that baring and spilling is now so commonplace that it causes a stir if does not occur as expected. Instead of being a rare, cathartic event during which one party helps the other deal with or process a traumatic or important event, baring and spilling has become as routine as saying Thank You to a door held open out of politeness – if it does not occur, the person who refuses to bare and spill is looked upon with contempt, and treated with disdain. (This bad habit has an evil twin: that of saying “I Love You" 70 times a day to persons one doesn't really love quite enough to merit saying it to them constantly.) Taking his experiment one step further, the author has stopped baring and spilling to persons to whom he had previously talked unfettered about everything, which has lead to a variety of changes in a number of relationships.

In part, he blames daytime television shows for this overall shift in American habits; their tendency to thrust behavior previously reserved for the therapist's office before the eyes of emotionally-repressed Ynki housewives seems to have helped convince these women to search for the same kind of emotional release in their relationships with girlfriend and husband. (Rarely if ever do the daytime hosts warn of or outline the risks associated with undertaking psychological counseling on one's own.) Guests to these talk shows would routinely break down, releasing their pent-up angers and fears and joys and proclaiming how wonderfully purified they felt after having bared their souls. Housewives whose lives are often ruled by routine soon became addicted to the idea of release and emotional excitement without fully understanding the dangers associated with unassisted, amateur psychology. Some stones are best left unturned, and some secrets were never intended to leave the mental closets in which they reside, but the addiction to backyard pseudo-psychology grew, and spread; it has become so intricately enmeshed in our current society as to be one of its more common features. Today, we seldom accept statements at face value or respect the right of our counterpart to his modicum of privacy, preferring rather to keep prying and peeling back the layers until – for good or ill – we have peered into the tenderest folds of our victim's most dark and dismal core. (The author is guilty of this behavior, just like most other Americans.)

People who pry so incessantly rarely care about helping others lessen emotional turmoil or improve mental well-being; they care more about the power they feel watching a being just as fragile as they are flounder about before he descends into a spiritual malaise of his own making. How, though, might one avoid the trap of the pseudo-psychologist and maintain a pure and honest heart? By staying quiet, politely refusing to play along, and keeping one's business to oneself. We who understand the raw and awesome power of full disclosure, therefore, sparingly spill and barely bare; some beasts are simply best left chained.

mentiri factorem fecit – 場黑麥

11 January 2013

trees tease amputees

Trees are fascinating creatures. If one should lop the top off of a sapling, the growth-nodes directly below the cut will send forth shoots that, if left to their own devices, will keep reaching for the sky until they erase all but the last signs of injury. Some trees, such as hybrid poplars, grow so large within a few decades that they become hazardous to power lines and dwellings alike. The speed with which these poplars attain great height and wide circumference means that they will provide much useful lumber once they are felled. Their felling, however, shall require specialized equipment, many thousands of dollars, and much personal risk, which is why they still stand, today. On the one hand, these poplars are a nuisance; on the other hand, they are beautiful and majestic beings that are only doing what they were designed to do: to grow tall, quickly.

Human bodies function differently. Our limbs don't grow back once they are removed, and our bodies tend to stop growing once they have reached a terminal height. We surmise that an individual's maximal height is determined by a range of factors, including epigenetic markers, food supply, and such environmental conditions as average daily temperatures and levels of atmospheric pollution. Human minds, however, and our elusive but ebullient spirits, are more akin to the tree than we might image. Cut someone down to size, and she springs right back. Hack away (verbally, of course) at a person's high-flying dreams, and she aspires merely to greater heights. Such is the resilience of the soul that it will emerge from the ashes of its erstwhile destruction time and again, through Holocaust, gulag, and Inquisition, suffering the slings of televised content and the arrows of religious fervor but always and again re-inhabiting the pulsating core of these our poor mortal coils.

Human amputees often suffer from something called phantom limb syndrome, a condition characterized by the experiencing of pain in such parts of the body as are no longer attached to it. Do trees suffer from phantom branch syndrome, always yearning for tops that were lopped off and pining evermore for twigs and berries that will never be? I think that, similar to the more psychologically-resilient persons among us, trees accept the lot thrust upon them by the shifting winds of Fortune and make do with such gifts as they receive, even ones that come cloaked as curses. To conquer the desire to judge things as good or bad according to a narrow, human view of the universe is among our greatest challenges. Who among us can know for certain that what is lamb today won't be wolf tomorrow? Not I, dear friend, but, then, I am but a lowly whorphan of poor and stunted intellect.

(The author does not intend to disparage of amputees, human or otherwise.)

mentiri factorem fecit © 場黑麥

15 June 2012

on fighting fear

I am stumbled into the viper's pit, into a home suffused with Fear. That force against which all upstanding and self-respecting persons fight diligently and with indomitable passion reigns here nearly supreme; its stifling cloak has settled over most aspects of life within this home; its sinister influence has calcified upon the brains of this home's mother, poisoning nearly every thought that sparks within her mind and every tone that sounds within her mouth. The father – the SAR of whom was written just this week, on the moon's day – he contends with this his most deadly foe, but he fights it head-on rather than by the round-about, directly rather than sneakily, with thinly-veiled contempt rather than with clandestine, consummate compassion.

Our wartime President Roosevelt said, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” These words ring true now more than they ever have; America is being pulled under by the slowly sinking wreck of consumption-driven capitalism, downspiraling into ignorance and small-mindedness by the hollow promise of convenience, brainwashed by the 24-hour news cycle as it drowns slowly in the brackish and sugary waters that seep from our society's crumbling foundations. As with everything else, however, as with obesity and sloth and the loss of independent thought, as with all the other ills that plague this once-fine land, fear's stranglehold is rooted in the propensity of humankind to take the path of least resistance, or what appears to be the Easy Way Out. Especially for a person whose daily activities revolve around the twin pillars of watching television and eating, it is easier to fear that to trust, easier to hate than to love, easier to despise than to praise. Especially for someone whose parents never modeled for her that love and compassion spring only from hard work and patience, dedication and sacrifice, who rather than teaching her that life is neither fair nor easy complained constantly of what they did not have while cursing other persons who appeared to have more, especially for a woman such as this – even though she is not fully to blame for her pitiable state of mind, since she has during her life neither known, nor thought to search for, a different path – fear comes easily, and it comes quickly.

It would be fine if the aforementioned woman kept her fear to herself, but, being a person averse to physical exertion and one addicted to such soothing, creeping soul-death as is addiction to television (and playing the lottery, buying name-brand foodstuffs, being driven around to nail and hair salons, and always looking for something to complain about), she talks about her problems over and over and over again instead of doing something about them. Fear has suffused her life to the point that it – rather than inherent rationality or latent compassion – is the first thing that springs from her lips; fear, which quickly becomes mistrust, which quickly becomes malcontent, which quickly becomes hatred, fear is her baseline mode of operation, the jumping-off-point from which she plans the steps of her life. How does one combat fear? By slowly and gradually showing it that it has no power, that it has no business lurking in the hearts of this nation's more gullible persons. Better this way that the other – to combat fear directly, with spiteful and equal malice – because combating fear with anger serves only to fuel fear, to make it grow and blossom so that it sinks its roots deep into the psyche. Just listen to the tone of this article: it is suffused with fear, as I have allowed evil into my heart. Oh, brother. Mahalo.

場黑麥 menterefecterem fecit

30 May 2012

on the proxy identity

The American citizen is lost, floundering in a sea of substitute identities. It is not really his fault, however – he has learned it from his parents, from television, from his great aunts, step-uncles, and distant neighbors. We lack in this nation even a loose consensus on What It Means To Be An Upstanding And Self-Respecting Individual; no organization has stoop up and said, If you do this and that you will be different from everyone else and not walk around wearing the same shirt bought at the same giant discount retailer as everyone else. Our unique national character is being watered down by those goods as are sold at only a handful of retail locations that can be found in nearly every city, town, and village from coast to shining coast; our individual taste, our very ability to be one-in-a-million, has been substituted for faceless homogenization by corporate marketing committees who make hefty profits by paying overseas manufacturers to mass-produce cheap products featuring pictures of the hottest movies and books and then convincing us through a ceaseless avalanche of advertising to buy them (while lobbying to keep it illegal for the American people to ourselves make our own products printed with the same pictures).

Instead of delving into the nether-regions of our souls, and finding therein peace, or enlightenment, today's American busies himself with memorizing football statistics and with discussing those statistics with others; instead of making sketches or painting a picture of the bright and verdant out-of-doors, he watches hour upon hour of television while his latent artistic ability sits dormant, and unused; instead of educating and understanding himself to the extent that he can make intelligent, non-sports related conversation about a breadth of topics, he purchases – at a significant mark-up – a name-brand motorcycle and the name-brand clothing to go with it. But, it seems, people will choose the path of least resistance every time, doing whatever everyone else is doing and getting really, really mad when someone points out that they are acting as if they were sheep being led to the slaughter. And a slaughter it is – more like a sacrifice – with our best talents wasted on leisure, our best minds ruined by TV, our best personalities crushed by the petty demands of consumption-driven capitalism, our best bodies ridden to oblivion on the backs of terrorism-supporting motorcycles. We may have once been a proud and shining People, but, today, we are little more than clones bought and sold by our avaricious corporate slave-masters; America delenda est.

場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit

14 January 2012

encylopediamericanifesto entry - phaltweary II

Persons suffering from phaltweariness tend to make calls, whoops, war-whoops, cat-calls, hoots, whistles, hollers, brays, and shouts loudly and often. Making loud noises with the speaking organ saves lives – absent a car's horn, uttering a piercing blast of blood-curdling gibberish is a proper way for a cyclist to signal to a nearby motor-vehicle operator that he is about to be cut off mercilessly. As to the general appearance of a peedubser (phaltweariness sufferer):

His sun-dazzled eyes will dance with a light of their own, especially at night; his phaltburnt lips will be cracked and fissured; his dry tongue will grate across the roof of his mouth; and from his throat will issue forth a cry so foul, so loathsome, as to make the even the most wicked human among us tremble with abject loathing.

The peedubzer will sound a signature call regardless of audience, circumstance, or location – although she war-whoops to signal lane changes and close calls alike, by yelling she loosens briefly the fetters upon her soul, her vitality radiant and pure, with every joyous breath celebrating life's fleeting tumble.

Spes Mea In Ratio Est – 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp

19 December 2011

on LA, briefly

I love LA. My fluids suffuse her soils, yet she always provides spoils. Too easily she drags me in, enticing me with perfect asses, teasing me with furtive glances, breaking my heart a thousand times a day, my own insecurities and fears amplified against the foul tympanum of her heaving cracked pavement. Within her envelope I walk and wander gladly, casting about clumsily for the dim remnants of tenacious glory, my eyes grating like those of a madman, my soul zigzagging between high elation and base surrender. She knows me as would my mother, yet she denies me all but that which I might truly obtain.

Bear with me, courageous readers. I am not yet over my culture shock, and shall resume my regular posting schedule when it has abated.

Sincerely, JP