Whilst waging war bodily against the false but deeply entrenched Baltimorean idea that pedestrians do not enjoy the right-of-way while crossing a road using a crosswalk, I have had this standard response hurled frequently my way:
“Get the fuck out of the road, dumbass.”
Regardless of his apparent social or economic class, these tend to be the first words from a driver’s lips when forced (by nothing but my raised hand) to abide by the laws of the state of Maryland and bring his gasoline-powered steel battering-ram to a halt using slight pressure applied to a hinged pedal by one of his feet so as to avoid running headlong into a foot-mobile fellow citizen who is seeking to gain lawfully the other side of a roadway. To protect myself in the event of someone violently violating my pedestrian rights in a premeditated fashion, I have taken to using my cellphone to capture video of oncoming vehicles while negotiating a crosswalk, which seems to have the desired effect of forcing drivers to stop. Otherwise, few people operating automobiles appear to find anything wrong with driving in such a manner as to barely miss hitting me as they race toward the next group of cars stopped at the next red light.
Among the worst offenders are Baltimore city police officers, who as a whole don’t seem to mind breaking state law §21-502, which is but one among many of the laws they swore a sacred oath to uphold.
americanifesto / 場黑麥 / jpr / urbanartopia / whorphan
Showing posts with label way. Show all posts
Showing posts with label way. Show all posts
15 September 2017
24 March 2017
a dreaming carnivore
To my rear was a broad and flat stretch of railway bordered by a low metal fence. To my left, parked upon a darkened cobblestone street, sat a police car. From within it I was being watched by something of infinite and massive proportions, That Which Cannot Be Named.
I had bought a piece of meat in a nearby store, which I cooked using a pocket-sized flamethrower. The thick steak bent in upon itself sharply as it reacted to the scorching heat. Every juicy tendon and sinewy muscle fiber, the milky envelope of fascia, was clear to me, as was the essence of the beast slaughtered to produce it. (Soon after awakening, I realized that eating animals raised in conditions of torture and neglect contributes to sad and aggressive thought patterns.)
Other dreams followed in the hours I spent sleeping rather than practicing my usual morning meditations. They have vanished, however, from memory.
americanifesto / JPR / whorphan / 場黑麥
I had bought a piece of meat in a nearby store, which I cooked using a pocket-sized flamethrower. The thick steak bent in upon itself sharply as it reacted to the scorching heat. Every juicy tendon and sinewy muscle fiber, the milky envelope of fascia, was clear to me, as was the essence of the beast slaughtered to produce it. (Soon after awakening, I realized that eating animals raised in conditions of torture and neglect contributes to sad and aggressive thought patterns.)
Other dreams followed in the hours I spent sleeping rather than practicing my usual morning meditations. They have vanished, however, from memory.
americanifesto / JPR / whorphan / 場黑麥
02 October 2013
on sponging anger
During my yoga teacher training, I discovered that I have powerful skills of empathy. When persons choose to direct their feelings and emotions at me, in my current condition I receive that power mostly intact and largely unfiltered. If others direct love at me I am learning to let it buoy my heart; if they thank me I am trying to wallow in gratitude for as long as I am able to; but if it is anger or disgust or discontentment that they feel toward me my heart grows cold, rage builds in my chest, and I become deeply irate. At some point in my life I learned that sponging anger in this way makes me feel powerful, that it is proper to answer like with like, hatred with hatred. My fellow Americans exhibit this type of behavior frequently, and over the years I have been wont to retreat into it much as my compatriots do. As however I study the ancient truths and leave behind the clouded and the confused path for that of the warrior I am beginning to understand that anger and hatred frighten Spirit and that our connection to the Divine is severed if instead of compassion and grace we cultivate in our hearts loathing, coldness, and fear. My path is for me alone to walk and I am not saying that other people are acting incorrectly, only that they seem to have abandoned action for reaction, consciousness for unconsciousness, beauty for ugliness, and that it shall take a lot of effort on the part of each individual, individually, for our the soul of our nation to become bright, once more. The greatest journeys of the world start with just one person stepping forward, and so I lift my foot. Mahalo.
© americanifesto / 場黑麥
© americanifesto / 場黑麥
06 March 2013
on shambles
Small were the stumbles that brought him to his knees, old the pitfalls that sent his card-house tumbling. Still chained he is to bells rung too soon, to sloppy routines that once helped but now harm. He won't explain his torment too openly, lest he appear pitiful and lacking in direction. Wise words and simple advice on deaf ears fall.
Caused less by the ever-present specter of failure, his torment is rooted instead in the potential for success, Happiness, and contentment. Part of his psyche is malicious and evil; as long as he is alive, it will never fully go away, nor will it ever stop being a part of him. (For him, this is a new and exciting revelation.) His hope for controlling and channeling the evil that lives inside him lies in showering it with love during yoga and remaining vigilant of its power for the rest of his life.
For some years now, he has scoffed at the saying, “fall down seven times, stand up eight.” He thought it a groovy way for people who had their shit together to gloat about being resilient, tough, and smart. Now, however, he realizes that this whole falling down and standing up business happens not at one particular fulcrum point but every day. By staying in the moment, taking nothing for granted, and learning to cherish those things he has for so long tried to destroy, he can find salvation as well as a way back to where he had strayed from the path. What good fortune that it always sits at at his feet, waiting.
mentiri factorem fecit – 場黑麥
Caused less by the ever-present specter of failure, his torment is rooted instead in the potential for success, Happiness, and contentment. Part of his psyche is malicious and evil; as long as he is alive, it will never fully go away, nor will it ever stop being a part of him. (For him, this is a new and exciting revelation.) His hope for controlling and channeling the evil that lives inside him lies in showering it with love during yoga and remaining vigilant of its power for the rest of his life.
For some years now, he has scoffed at the saying, “fall down seven times, stand up eight.” He thought it a groovy way for people who had their shit together to gloat about being resilient, tough, and smart. Now, however, he realizes that this whole falling down and standing up business happens not at one particular fulcrum point but every day. By staying in the moment, taking nothing for granted, and learning to cherish those things he has for so long tried to destroy, he can find salvation as well as a way back to where he had strayed from the path. What good fortune that it always sits at at his feet, waiting.
mentiri factorem fecit – 場黑麥
03 August 2012
right of way
Recently, NPR aired a show which included mention of efforts undertaken during the first decades of the Twentieth Century to teach the American public to cowtow to the automobile, explaining that Americans had to be trained to think that roads were the domain of cars, the rightful place of automobiles, and that citizens not driving cars had no right to be on them. As a velocipedist – an avid and regular bicyclist – I suffer daily of the affects of this mis-education of my fellow upstanding Yankee, who now sees the car as an almost sacred thing, whereas persons not trapped within the stifling confines of these glass-and-metal prisons are seen as bothersome interlopers upon our tens of thousands of miles of commonly-owned bituminous track.
A car is nothing more than a hunk of steel and glass and plastic with a person or persons sitting on its plush seats and being moved around through space-time by the internal combustion of gasoline, a byproduct of oil, for which our brave brothers and sister pour out their blood and tears in distant and dusty places; oil is a poisonous thing that must be pulled from deep below the earth and refined before it can be used, whereas a bicycle is a few pounds of metal and rubber that allows a person to move himself around through space-time using little more than the muscles rippling beneath his taut and ruddy skin. And yet – daily – I am confronted by at least one person who considers his souped up, gasoline-guzzling shitbox, and his business, to be far more important than the car, conveyance, or business of anyone else.
Just two days ago, in fact, as I was approaching a blind intersection on my way to the local public library, I heard a motor behind me rev up, as if the vehicle's owner intended to pass me in the scant thirty feet that separated us from the stop sign. Putting myself squarely in the lane, I balanced for a moment, waiting for a gap in the approaching vehicles before shooting down a narrow side alley. Riding squarely in the center of the alley, the impatient driver approached to within a few feet of my bicycle's rear wheel, revving his engine and making as if to pass me where there was no room to pass. Flying into the next, two-landed road (the alley ends in a yield, not a stop, sign) and barely making it in front of an approaching car, I had moved to the far right side of the lane and was approaching my next right-hand turn when I heard that same engine rev up behind me. Turning around to see what was the matter, I made eye-contact with the impatient driver, whose vehicle – a black SUV – was so close to the silver Volvo behind me that I could see neither grill nor bumper. Passing the car in front of it, the truck screeched to a halt directly next to me, restricting all north-south traffic by completely Blocking The Box, the man within it staring at me menacingly.
Turning after having made the appropriate hand-signal (I signal all turns, and am loathe to ride at night without running-lights fore and aft), I glanced back again, laughing at the impatient man and giving him a little fare-thee-well hand flick. These egregious actions caused the man to reverse his vehicle very quickly (on a one-way street, into oncoming traffic), whereupon he, with squealing tires, raced down the road toward me, screeching to a halt next to me on the sidewalk where I had taken refuge near a tall brick building. “You're a real tough-guy, eh?” the man said, pushing his finger against some sort of box on his throat. Scrambling to keep moving, I bounced down the sidewalk and started to pedal onward, glancing back and noticing the black car had a Harley-Davidson front plate. The man pulled into a gravel lane, threw open his door, jumped out, and began to stalk toward me, chest puffed up and face fixed in the tortured rictus of a man whose heart is calcified with fearful hatred. Seeing that I had bruised his ego, and knowing the human ego to be one of the most terrifying and murderous of foul things ever to grace the planes of our fair Universe, I kept moving. “You're a real tough guy, eh?” the man said again, to which I responded with a shouted, “Slow down!” The man, of course, shouted back, “You slow down!”, touching a finger to his tracheal collar before speaking, each time.
A number of things became clear to me during yesterday's altercation. First, the man's business was so inconsequential (even though he seemed in a terrible hurry) that he could take time out of his schedule to run down and harass a bicyclist who had dared to retain right of way. Second, the man considered himself more important than anyone else on the road, riding everyone's ass and generally being a poor sport about things. Third, seeing that his belly resembled a beer keg and that his throat was perforated with a plastic speaking-collar, the man had ruined his health and body by eating too much, smoking too much, and drinking too much, which had obviously filled his heart with such frustration and self-loathing as to make him a Danger To Others. And, finally, he had allowed himself to be brainwashed into thinking that roads were made for cars (or, at least, for vehicles with gasoline-combustible engines), and that roads were the domain of nothing else, causing him to menace persons who happened to have left their own homes a few moments before he did, putting them, unwittingly, in his hateful path, riding, of all fucking things, bicycles.
To persons who insist on driving cars everywhere they go (even though, of course, buying gasoline puts cash in the pockets of Saudi Arabians, who use our money to fund terrorist groups such as al-Qaida), please remember that bicyclists are simply persons who have freed themselves from the prison-like confines of internally-combustible vehicles, flinging off the foul fat-folds of sloth and moving their bodies around using only muscle power. So, dear friends, please give other persons the right of way, even if they are not burning as much oil as you are burning while out-and-about; and, of course, please share generously of our common roadways, byways, highways, paths, alleys, lanes, and streets; but, most importantly, keep a smile on your face, a song in your heart, and your head on a fucking swivel. Mahalo.
場黑麥 mentiri manufactorem fecit
A car is nothing more than a hunk of steel and glass and plastic with a person or persons sitting on its plush seats and being moved around through space-time by the internal combustion of gasoline, a byproduct of oil, for which our brave brothers and sister pour out their blood and tears in distant and dusty places; oil is a poisonous thing that must be pulled from deep below the earth and refined before it can be used, whereas a bicycle is a few pounds of metal and rubber that allows a person to move himself around through space-time using little more than the muscles rippling beneath his taut and ruddy skin. And yet – daily – I am confronted by at least one person who considers his souped up, gasoline-guzzling shitbox, and his business, to be far more important than the car, conveyance, or business of anyone else.
Just two days ago, in fact, as I was approaching a blind intersection on my way to the local public library, I heard a motor behind me rev up, as if the vehicle's owner intended to pass me in the scant thirty feet that separated us from the stop sign. Putting myself squarely in the lane, I balanced for a moment, waiting for a gap in the approaching vehicles before shooting down a narrow side alley. Riding squarely in the center of the alley, the impatient driver approached to within a few feet of my bicycle's rear wheel, revving his engine and making as if to pass me where there was no room to pass. Flying into the next, two-landed road (the alley ends in a yield, not a stop, sign) and barely making it in front of an approaching car, I had moved to the far right side of the lane and was approaching my next right-hand turn when I heard that same engine rev up behind me. Turning around to see what was the matter, I made eye-contact with the impatient driver, whose vehicle – a black SUV – was so close to the silver Volvo behind me that I could see neither grill nor bumper. Passing the car in front of it, the truck screeched to a halt directly next to me, restricting all north-south traffic by completely Blocking The Box, the man within it staring at me menacingly.
Turning after having made the appropriate hand-signal (I signal all turns, and am loathe to ride at night without running-lights fore and aft), I glanced back again, laughing at the impatient man and giving him a little fare-thee-well hand flick. These egregious actions caused the man to reverse his vehicle very quickly (on a one-way street, into oncoming traffic), whereupon he, with squealing tires, raced down the road toward me, screeching to a halt next to me on the sidewalk where I had taken refuge near a tall brick building. “You're a real tough-guy, eh?” the man said, pushing his finger against some sort of box on his throat. Scrambling to keep moving, I bounced down the sidewalk and started to pedal onward, glancing back and noticing the black car had a Harley-Davidson front plate. The man pulled into a gravel lane, threw open his door, jumped out, and began to stalk toward me, chest puffed up and face fixed in the tortured rictus of a man whose heart is calcified with fearful hatred. Seeing that I had bruised his ego, and knowing the human ego to be one of the most terrifying and murderous of foul things ever to grace the planes of our fair Universe, I kept moving. “You're a real tough guy, eh?” the man said again, to which I responded with a shouted, “Slow down!” The man, of course, shouted back, “You slow down!”, touching a finger to his tracheal collar before speaking, each time.
A number of things became clear to me during yesterday's altercation. First, the man's business was so inconsequential (even though he seemed in a terrible hurry) that he could take time out of his schedule to run down and harass a bicyclist who had dared to retain right of way. Second, the man considered himself more important than anyone else on the road, riding everyone's ass and generally being a poor sport about things. Third, seeing that his belly resembled a beer keg and that his throat was perforated with a plastic speaking-collar, the man had ruined his health and body by eating too much, smoking too much, and drinking too much, which had obviously filled his heart with such frustration and self-loathing as to make him a Danger To Others. And, finally, he had allowed himself to be brainwashed into thinking that roads were made for cars (or, at least, for vehicles with gasoline-combustible engines), and that roads were the domain of nothing else, causing him to menace persons who happened to have left their own homes a few moments before he did, putting them, unwittingly, in his hateful path, riding, of all fucking things, bicycles.
To persons who insist on driving cars everywhere they go (even though, of course, buying gasoline puts cash in the pockets of Saudi Arabians, who use our money to fund terrorist groups such as al-Qaida), please remember that bicyclists are simply persons who have freed themselves from the prison-like confines of internally-combustible vehicles, flinging off the foul fat-folds of sloth and moving their bodies around using only muscle power. So, dear friends, please give other persons the right of way, even if they are not burning as much oil as you are burning while out-and-about; and, of course, please share generously of our common roadways, byways, highways, paths, alleys, lanes, and streets; but, most importantly, keep a smile on your face, a song in your heart, and your head on a fucking swivel. Mahalo.
場黑麥 mentiri manufactorem fecit
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