haiku 28 August 2017

The old wounds linger
Never fully healing well
There’s no cure for grief

americanifesto / 場黑麥 / jpr / urbanartopia / whorphan

on false compassion

On Tuesday night, the dog came back from the veterinarian's office, with droopy eyes and a ridiculously large cone around her neck. For the fourth time in less than two weeks, the poor beast – a two-hundred pound English mastiff – had undergone surgery to have her tail shortened, or, better said, to have the open mess of flesh and bone sewn back shut after she had chewed out the sutures. Why, you must be asking yourself, was she allowed to even get her mouth anywhere close to the freshly-closed wound? The answer, dear friends, is because of false compassion.

Her primary owner – a housewife in her forties with children of high-school age – had left the large, hurting bitch unsupervised on a number of occasions without properly restricting her ability to access the source of her pain. The woman had said repeatedly that she felt sorry because the dog had trouble getting around the house, bumping into things constantly with her plastic cone of shameful ridicule. Given her puffy eyes and despondent mood, oh, wouldn't it be nice to lift her suffering a bit by removing said shameful device and letting her lounge around, outside, by herself, next to her favorite tree. This woman's actions, of course, only added to the dog's suffering; her compassion proved false, harmful to her pet's well-being, dangerous, even, to its very life. The mastiff came within inches of death; had her owner not decided to spend another one-and-a-half thousand dollars to get the tail sewn back shut for the fourth time, the big bitch would have either been put down and cremated or taken into a nearby field, shot, and buried.

False compassion is similar to such false economy as is very often practiced by today's emotion-driven Americans, we who have been told to go with whatever our hearts tell us and that we can always buy whatever we want to buy in order to placate our slightest impulsive craving at our local convenience store, which is sure to open even at this time of night. Rather than practicing a bit of self-denial and self-control, we bash around and do what we think our gut is telling us to do rather than having a nice quiet sit and thinking about things for a while before acting. It was no better at the emergency room for pets, where I witnessed dozens of people fork over thousands of dollars for teeth cleaning, to buy a chemotherapy session for a fucking cat, and to try and save the life of a fourteen-year-old blind dog that was in its death throes, its body rigid and locked in seizure.

This is a touchy subject, one regarding which, I find while writing this article, I am in a sort of inner turmoil. At which point does one allow a giant dog into one's house, a dog recently rescued, a dog that shits and pisses on the floor every night for weeks, a dog that whacks her tail against the walls so badly when her new mistress returns from even the most brief trip outside that she develops a festering open wound that sprays droplets of blood with every wag? At which point does the damage caused to inter-human relationships by all the urine and blood and feces covering the inside of one's home compel one to give the dog away, to install a fenced-in kennel in the back yard, or to put the dog down quickly and quietly? The answers to these questions are hard to come by, but one question – whether to leave on the cone of shame or to let the dog waltz around a bit without it – has an easy answer: to reduce the bitch's overall suffering, one must leave the damn thing on, no matter her crocodile tears or pitiable whimpering.

場黑麥 mentiri manufactorem fecit

on free and ancient medicines

  Sickness, like death, is a condition every living body must occasionally endure. Ailments come and go, ravaging this organ or that, sometimes effecting permanent damage, sometimes only causing the nodes to swell and the skin to appear loose and bloodless. In response to states of sickness, many Americans resort to traditional Western remedies passed down through the centuries, remedies designed to treat rather than to prevent. Often, these remedies fall short, their powers too weak to reverse the affects of neglect, procrastination, or downright abuse. With a significant portion of the American public lacking proper health coverage (see here), we are now witnessing twofold: steady increases in the costs of medical care (see here); growing numbers of individuals who, for whatever reasons, have allowed their potentially preventable conditions to become full-blown disorders (see here).
  Yet the individual is not solely to blame – the political leaders of this country have too long focused on their own re-elections and on fulfilling the demands of their friends and allies, forgetting that the sole expressed purpose of government, the only justifiable reason for its existence, is to make the American people Safe and Happy. Good health is the foundation upon which all actions and aspirations are built; it is a component central to the industrial, artistic, and spiritual endeavors that nourish us in body and mind; without good health, safety is a cruel and clumsy lie, happiness but a distant memory of better and brighter days.
  We could seek assistance in these matters from our elected officials; we could demand that our government provide ceaselessly for the general Welfare; we could rise up and say, “Happiness and Safety mean little if our bodies are weak and failing.” However, we would be fools to expect measured and timely response from houses and chambers that have too long now stopped their ears to the needs of the body politic while they with golden horns trumpet the causes and interests of an affluent plutocracy that now considers itself the rightful recipient of a disproportionately large portion of this nation's wealth.
  Rather than relying on intervention or assistance from without, let us take matters into our own hands, and educate ourselves to the healing powers of common plants. What many have been told to eradicate are in reality species both hardy and ubiquitous, plants that spring readily from the soil in most any temperate zone. Among these plants are: plantago lanceolata, plantago major, woodsorrels (oxalis acetosella), salvia officinalis, and the lowly dandelion. Among the benefits gained from the proper use of these plants are: lower blood pressure, rapid external wound healing, self-dissolution of bladder and gall stones, purified kidneys, cleansed livers, a strengthened immune system, reduced arthritic swelling, cleared sinuses, and soothed bronchial tubes.

  These plants go wherever the soil has been split or abused, crushed or laid bare by the passing of many feet, and at the edges of forests and pathways. They do not require regular care or special attention, and will grow in the least likely of places. When harvested at the proper time and consumed in the correct fashion (as teas, syrups, spreads, or powders), they can provide relief from many and various common conditions, from upset stomach and diarrhea to headaches, skin rashes, gout, and ill affects stemming from menopause.

  If the healing plants are consumed regularly, they can help the human body to run smoothly and efficiently, managing the frequency and severity of ailments rather than addressing them when they have become problematic. Unlike pharmaceutical agents, the side-affects associated with the healing plants are either mild or non-existent, which all but eliminates the probability of wrecking one's liver in the pursuit of, say, lower blood pressure. Unlike newer methods of treatment relied upon today, the healing power of these plants has been known to wise-men, shamans, and philosophers in many different regions across the globe for close to a thousand years. So powerful are they that even the beasts of marsh and field use them.

  Americans, awake! No longer must you suffer from lack of medical care. No longer must you live in pain or discomfort because you cannot afford your pills. No longer must you live in fear of sickness, hoping against hope that the inevitable will not occur, cursing big pharma and wishing that your elected officials had done more to fulfill the parameters of the Constitution. With the healing plants, you can conquer disease, cure ailments, and bring your body back into the harmony that nature readily and freely provides.

  For wherever the earth's abused and ignored, there grow leaves that heal and reward.

場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp