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We are fortunate that the author Jack Kerouac lived when he did; if he were alive today, he would be in jail for vagrancy. His was a subtle and unique culture, one we lost when the era of the tramp came to a close, when we Americans came to see people who are perpetually on the move as threatening and dangerous, when we passed laws to outlaw their existence, effectively destroying a unique culture, language, and way of life. Kerouac wrote his book On The Road in the heyday of the vagabond, in that glorious period when hitch-hiking was not illegal, when strangers and transients were looked upon as humans rather than scum, when it was still possible for the auto-less to make their way across our fine continent on conveyances other than corporate-run buses, trains, or airliners. If the author would have attempted to live such a life in our current era, he'd have been marginalized, spat upon, and despised by uncaring people who gladly pay five dollars for an cup of coffee.

The life of the tramp had its inconveniences (bad weather, hunger) and its perils (dogs, floods, robbers), but it was also a deeply American condition, a restless embodiment of the notion that a new life awaits on the other side of this ridge, on the far bank of that river, on the shores of some distant ocean. The tramp trusted in the chalk marks left by of his fellow vagrants, ciphers that alerted him to a hostile town or to one with generous inhabitants, that told him where labor was available for the eager but wanderlustig. It is unlikely that we will ever have another author such as Kerouac, another person able to perambulate across the land in the manner of Herodotus and Pliny before him, absorbing and retelling the stories he heard, a person who has made the way his goal. In this country, we see greed and egocentricity as virtues, when, in my opinion, they are the beginning of folly, cul-de-sacs that nearly always end in mid-life-crises during which the individual lays down his lust for money to pursue something he knew would make himself and the people around him intrinsically Happy.

Today, we are a nation of clones, a people resigned to rigid conformity. We were founded, however, as a nation of Many who shared a common binding purpose: to make of ourselves One, to pursue a common Happiness in a thousand different ways. I fear, however, that we have over-legislated, that we have made so many things illegal in an effort to protect ourselves from potential harm that we may never again know the destructive but necessary process of upheaval. We have made it difficult to wander the land in search of an undefined yet important goal, a goal found neither in the cubicle farms of the corporation nor in the halls of our supermarkets, a goal that eschews materialism for spiritual tranquility. There is no going back – the child-like wonder and inherent purity exhibited by the characters in On The Road have been drowned out by the white noise of the television, supplanted by the ferocity of religious extremism, and paved over by the hatred that hides in an Us Versus Them mentality. Woe be unto us, for we have strayed from the Path and calcified in our ways, blinded to subtlety and humor, convinced that turban-wearing bogeymen lurk in every shadow, and wary of things we do not understand. If more of us cared less, if some of us could but wander for a spell in search of nothing in particular, we might all be better off.

mentiri factorem fecit – 場黑麥

encylopediamericanifesto - phaltworthiness

  The street art vagabond has sworn to preserve for Posterity the diversity of graffiti – it is her duty to capture, isolate, and upload photographs of any urban artwork she locates by bicycling or walking or skating around a city. Looking, however, does not always slake her thirst: in order to perpetuate the phenomenon of artwork that seems to appear suddenly on previously unadorned urban surfaces, and to prove her passage through the area, she leaves her unique mark, a hand-drawn image that serves as her Glyph of Personal Identification, her own meager tribute to the maddeningly prolific beautification campaign known as street art (or, alternately, as vandalism).

  The urban artist spends resources such as time and money on his efforts to fill the urban environment's many empty spaces with colorful and bizarre pictures; for his troubles he is hounded by police and harassed by them likewise. In addition to such acts of state-mandated repression, he suffers from repeated and chronic bouts of a newly classified condition known as phaltweariness (the individual suffering from this condition will commit frequent acts of frugality and self-sacrifice; his actions will reek of virtuous behavior, which he will act not out of a desire to prove himself to another person, or to claim for himself glory, but because the majesty of the human spirit has rewarded his sacrifice of time and self by filling him with a transcendent vigor not seen since the dawn of humankind).

  No grasp as fleeting as that of Big Brother might contain, however, the inexorable and all-nullifying tempest that is Virtuous Action. The street art vagabond therefore who hurls without ado the bounty of her artistic labor upon the phaltscape's expectant canvasses while showcasing freely upon w³  her fellow street artists' work (where it shall be judged and ignored until all servers crash at once), she who does these things simply because they need doing, she who refuses to claim ownership over any part of the process, that street artist is phaltworthy – she acts for the good of the world by leaving well enough alone.

  Spes Mea In Ratio Est - 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp

on phaltweariness - the automobile

  Today's city streets are pitted and rough as if mauled by large and powerful beasts, and the souls of the people who drive upon are similarly abused. Aggression and impatience descend without fail upon the poor buggers who drive upon today's maligned avenues.

  We the Smog Riders of the America Phaltscape (the asphalt landscape) look often with pity upon our neighbors of the road, they who spend long hours strapped tightly to chairs which are in turn bolted to the floors of a tiny metal boxes. After spending years in such torturous environments, they will have forgotten the satisfaction of moving their own bodies through space/time using nothing other than living muscle and some metal tubes bolted to a pair of pneumatic tires. Rather than the good sweat that stands upon the skin of the bicyclist after a healthy cross-town slog, the sweat of the car driver will be distressed and foul, an oozing sheen that tends to creep through his furrowed brow as he worries about the skyrocketing price of petroleum.

  The smog riding street-art vagabond knows as well to avoid paying for petrol as she does to remain always vigilant of the withering and debilitating affects of phaltweariness – it is her duty to preserve the chaotic super-abundance of Street Art, and to record for Posterity as much of it as she can. To fulfill this task, and to keep her feet on the pedals, she has learned the limits of her body's tolerance for dehydration, pain, and exhaustion, and she knows how to make herself well again.

  Given the phaltweariness, the stressed out drivers, and the miles spend cycling through the phaltscape, how does the vagabond capture every unique work of street art that is at risk of being torn down as soon as it goes up? She does not. But she does what she can do, photographing what pictures might cross her path with the road grit foulding her mouth and a song filling her heart.

  Spes Mea In Ratio Est - 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp

encyclopediamericanifesto entry - phaltweariness

  Phaltweariness is a state of fatigue caused by bicycling for many kilometers on sun-baked city streets. The phaltweary person is known to go to bed easily, to sleep well through the night, and to exhibit a healthy and flexible physique. People suffering from PW (the peedubs, the phaltweariness) will experience aching muscles, 1000 yard stares, and prolonged periods of wild-eyed, fundamental indifference.

  While any avid bicyclist will occasionally encounter PW, phaltweariness affects the street art vagabond in particular, that isolated individual who prowls the Earth's cities on foot or on bicycle taking pictures of street art and uploading those pictures to the available data networks. Although the forces of homogeneity and societal control look upon him with blatant mistrust, the street art vagabond labors to perpetuate and to preserve for posterity as digital photographs the beautiful diversity of posters, stickers, paintings, and other graffiti that constitute the global Street Art movement.

  Spes Mea In Ratio Est – 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp