as dogs do

I am walking down a street behind a woman and her dog. The beast stops in the middle of the sidewalk to urinate. I step accidentally in the stream of piss spreading toward the gutter, but instead of reacting angrily, I think: The poor brute had to piss somewhere – why not right here in front of me? If the bitch had been curbed, I would not have stepped in its bowel movement, but since it was not, I must shake its piss from my shoe.

Animals eat and drink; they digest and must relieve themselves; they piss and shit when their bowels get full. As a member of the species homo sapiens as well as a bowel-moving, food-digesting animal, I shall, if necessary, make water into any nearby gutter or storm drain. (My trick is to stand behind a vehicle that is tall enough to hide my junk, pull out a cellphone, fake a call, and pee into the gutter while pretending to be engrossed in conversation.) In Amsterdam, the city provides public toilets; in Berlin, peeing into the gutter is a common practice; but he will be rudely awakened who tries to empty his bowels into the street in New York, Chicago, or San Francisco.

City-dwellers of America, let us end species-based discrimination by curbing ourselves and pissing in the street. This nation's draconian and Puritanical societal norms put us at risk of injury and death – they hinder our very pursuit of Happiness. Celebrate your animal nature by watering the asphalt landscape (phaltscape) with a golden shower. Empty the bladder to free the soul.

mentiri factorem fecit – 場黑麥

on changing perceptions

Every day, we get the chance to change our perspectives; every morning, with our first few conscious thoughts, we reshape for ourselves entire worlds, crafting from the aether of the Universe's chaotic jumble the seemingly ordered environments, things, and people to which our brains have become accustomed, all that our minds have come to expect from life. Such is the power of these perceptions, and so deeply ingrained are they within what we sometimes call the psyche, that we convince ourselves of their eternal and abiding presence, of their immutable and tactile realness; occasionally, however, some cursed and lucky few peoople among us step across the boundaries of our commonly-held, consensual hallucinations, mixing old thoughts with new ones and pulling stray bits of Truth from the Great Pulsing Void, from the Ever-Expanding Vastness of That Which Cannot Be Named.

The power of these strange and lateral movements is so great, and so broad are the Insecurities and Fears which buoy the petty and shallow ego, that the person who sees the Truth all too often runs away from his unanticipated and unwanted burden, forsaking an open mind for the rigid patterns of old and comfortable thought and burying his head in shifting and shallow sands, in booze or in sex or in the dim half-truths of his parents' religions. If I could but muster the courage to keep looking into the Truthful Void, if I could but bring myself to stare into the Generous Folds of God's Vagina, perhaps I could free myself from slavery to my small and pitiful needs, from my longing for this substance or that, from self-torment and sadness and pent-up old anger; I am too weak, however, and too spoiled, too pampered and worthless and small, to do any of these things, to rise above what I have been told for is Myself and cherish the Primal Simplicity that burns at the core of my deepest and most mystifying of cores. Oh, dear friend; oh, cherished reader; I am not worthy of the gifts I have received; I shall try harder, though, purging my soul of discontentment and allowing the shadows of this strange and beautiful world to pass me by unnoticed, and undisturbed. Please know that I love you, however, and that I take your sacrifice of time as among my greatest of rewards. Mahalo.

場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit