today in USA

Now back in the homeland, there's cops everywhere, they intimidate us and keep us all scared, they tail and they follow us, guilty or not, we shan't move too quickly or else we'd be shot. Wide bottoms abound here, as do wide ass cars, as do drive-thru windows and seedy beer bars, where poor people sit around drinking their tears, impressing their barstools and wasting their years. Aggression is common, infectious, and welcome, it drives up the heart rate – how much? lots, and then some – it seeps into all of the facets of life, it's born of malfeasance and envy and strife. This house it is filthy, infested, and base, it is a most lowly and unhappy place, to flee from its confines and borders I must, otherwise my soul shall continue to rust, and whither away in this shelter of doom, this hovel of seemingly unending gloom. I'll keep up my spirits with thoughts of Bali, with practicing yoga and hot cups of tea, with reading and writing and perchance a song, my darling I know I'll see you before long.

© americanifesto / 場黑麥

on reprogramming memories

Under the guidance the Embodying Enoughness series by Turbo Dog Yoga Chicago, I am learning how to change the null-loops that infest my brains. The process is simple; it is honest; to borrow from the language of the computer, it uses the basic technique of writing over old memories with new data. After a thorough yoga session, one lies in corpse pose and delves deeply into the psyche, rooting around for stuck or toxic patterns. Then, once one has selected a memory and it is playing before the mind's eye, one re-imagines it as if it had had the best of possible outcomes, as if all the bad things that happened were instead good things, as if pain and suffering had instead been relaxation and joy. It is liberating to be able to change one's personal perception of the past in this way; it is a salubrious activity to step back from daily self-flagellation and free oneself from attachment to past events, lost hopes, and broken dreams. To walk this path requires guts, and determination; it is not for the weak of heart, or for those people who are not yet ready to heal. But once begun, addictive is a fitting term for the process of exhuming one's buried skeletons and snipping loose the threads of thought that tend to tether one to events and people reachable only within the time machine we call the mind. Chest up, breathe hugely, self-liberate! Aho.

© americanifesto / 場黑麥

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

biohazard in Houston

In the last day, I met a dozen new people, was forced to move rooms due to a biohazard incident, completed my first yoga teacher training session, cried for at least fifteen minutes straight, got to know the Westheimer strip in Midtown pretty well, and bought three matching, light blue women's exercise shorts. If nothing else, change is in the air (and I don't mean the pennies I just threw at that pesky fucking rock pigeon).

mentiri factorem fecit – 場黑麥

on protocols

A person who follows daily routines chooses a certain set of protocols to regulate her life. Protocols can bring about either positive or negative change, but rarely both. To clarify, the author provides two scenarios. First, a man skips breakfast, drives to work in a motorized vehicle, sits at a desk all day without regular movement breaks, eats a large lunch, drives home, eats a large dinner, and then watches television until he checks the time and forces himself to go to sleep. Second, a woman arises before dawn, does an hour of yoga, eats a moderately-sized breakfast, bicycles to work, gets up once every couple of hours simply to walk around, eats a moderately-sized lunch, bicycles home, eats at least one fruit and one vegetable with her dinner, spends an hour being creative (writing, drawing, molding with clay, etc.), reads for an hour or two from four different books on unrelated subjects, watches half of a feature film, and collapses into her bed a few hours after sunset.

In my experience, the first scenario plays itself out too often in America, today. So many of us drive everywhere we go, eat more than we would need to satisfy our hunger, and spend our time staring mindlessly at flickering, fancy boxes. The protocols followed by the first person are likely to lead to diseases associated with overeating and lack of exercise; after a few decades, the creative parts of his mind will rebel against his refusal so do anything more productive with his life than simply working to eat, drive, and watch TV. He will suffer from a debilitating mid-life crisis, during which he will scramble to lead a healthier and happier life. His attempts, however, will become fouled up in the old protocols; he will falter, fail, and retreat into his bad old habits. In contrast, the person in the second scenario leads a life she knows will satisfy her inner need for enduring personal meaningfulness while keeping her digestive system healthy and her muscles sharp and twitching. Her protocols celebrate the majesty of the human spirit and glorify the fathomless might of both mind and body. By having studied for decades, she is bursting with knowledge but clever enough not to force it upon others; by having disciplined herself in terms of consumption, she needs little food, less gasoline, and almost no commercialized content to keep herself happy.

It may seem difficult to live a life similar to the person in the second example, but, with a few small adjustment to one's daily protocols, anything but the most absurd is possible. (Unassisted human flight, for example, is out). Via the epigenetic superstructure, both we and the environments we inhabit affect which of our genes are read and to what degree they are expressed. By changing the parameters of our daily lives and gradually adopting healthier routines, we can fortify the foundations of the deep and abiding Happiness that yearns to hover at the center of our every act, our every decision, our every breath. To examine one's daily protocols is to take the first step in making sure they are worthwhile, wholesome, and good. A saying from the business world comes to mind: They who are not evolving are dying. Plant the seeds of tomorrow's joy by turning off your television, today. Mahalo.

mentiri factorem fecit © 場黑麥

yoga – its power

Self-healing, discipline, inner peace, awakening the animal spirit – all these things yoga brings, and more, so many more that I struggle to find words simple enough to describe its endless benefits. An ancient method for keeping the body limber by stretching out its limbs, yoga is practiced by millions of people around the world, every day. A boon to all aspects of this clumsy and poorly-executed stab at being human, since doing yoga daily my life has improved considerably.

First, my digestive system is functioning regularly and with little discomfort, and I can feel layers of muscle in the area of my core that I have not felt since childhood. Second, my injured shoulders are moving in ways that allow me to perform hours of hard labor every day, activities such as taking down trees and sawing and splitting wood that, without yoga, would be difficult and painful; with yoga, however, the arm-joints are loose and ready for work, popping and creaking nicely as I wind them through my sun salutations. Third, I am bringing my left leg back into such alignment with hip and spine it had before I crashed while snowboarding with improperly-adjusted bindings, tearing its Achilles-tendon. Fourth, yoga gives me something to do that I myself must do, and to which I must give my full concentration, something that must be done correctly and that cannot be cheated, short-cut, or jury-rigged, something that is honest, simple, and pure. And, finally, for the first time since my mother died a dozen years ago, I am building positive connections with that mysterious inner power that some people call god, others the soul, and others the voice of the ancestors, but, lacking a more appropriate term, that I style Tao, that tiny inner voice that is all too easily lost in the avalanche of sensory input coming from tablet, cellphone, listening device, billboard, bus-ad, HD television, and satellite radio.

The individual seeking to lay aside the artificial concerns and demands of this fascinating modern age in which we live clears herself and her mind of self-interested materialism and the need to be speaking constantly by doing yoga. This peaceful martial art reveals within her heaving bosom the very secrets of the universe itself, helping her to live a virtuous life replete with non-acts of selfless honor and enduring goodness, giving her the tools she needs to delve into her hidden deeps and to clear her mind of torment and woe. So broad is its reach, so uncomplicated are its moves, that one can do yoga anywhere and at any time; so great are its benefits that I can hardly imagine how I managed to lead a decent life before I doing yoga daily. (I realize in retrospect that I was living a less than decent life.) As with any activity, avoid charlatans merely seeking financial gain, and learn either from an instructional video or from a teacher whose stated goal is the student's personal betterment, not her own, personal wealth. With yoga, dear friend, life's little torments lose their sting, life's little joys are magnified tenfold, and the secrets of eternity blossom from deep within the glittering folds of mankind's everlasting and indomitable spirit. So quit your bitching, get to stretching, and, as always, keep a song in your heart and your head on a fucking swivel. Mahalo.

場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit

routine – its power

Following a daily routine for the first time in many years, this poor, worthless whorphan has noticed his life improving. At the baseline of my routine are yoga exercises at dawn, noon, and sunset, three sessions of ten minutes each that have changed my life by bridging the gaps in the mind-body-interface, a deficiency common to Westerners. Then, I am losing weight and getting into shape by bicycling and by performing roughly four hours of yard or garden duty daily, including the hand-watering of three separate gardens. Thirdly but by no means less importantly, I am, even now, abiding by what I call EBOS, which stands for Entire Battery Operating Session, which means that every day after breaking my fast I use this netbook to write, to process pictures, and to edit graphics until its battery drains to about 15% capacity, at which time I turn it off because it starts to complain about needing juice. Fourth, I maintain and monitor a 45-watt, three panel battery array that charges a 12-volt, deep-cycle marine battery, from which I can charge headlamp and netbook and cellphone batteries and watch DVD movies occasionally, thus avoiding high electricity bills. Fifth, I allot a certain period of time each day to reading, to learning languages (I am currently learning Netherlandish), and to perusing various periodical, spiritual, and educational texts, so as to store in my brains as much as I possibly can of the information they contain (in order to know how to do many different things during the upcoming complete societal collapse commonly referred to as the Zombie Apocalypse).

I have not always followed routines – in fact, I avoided them for most of my life, preferring to shoot from the hip and to frustrate my potential by not exploring it or employing it effectively. One of the main reasons that I have begun to follow them now is that I discovered that a daily yoga routine helps me control my attention-deficit-disorder and its associated lesser maladies such as depression, binge-eating, and sloth. Another reason that I now follow routines is that I read somewhere that doctors who follow routines and maintain checklists are less likely to make mistakes when treating patients and more likely to operate efficiently and with less undue stress. While I am not a doctor, I try to emulate those fine and intelligent people when possible, trusting them to puzzle out the most effective methods and poaching their most effective and simple methods for success.

Please understand that I am not trying to boast about all the things that I am getting done, merely that I am exploring how I came to act instead of thinking and what methods I have used to bring my life back under my control and to deal with my illness, which is also called minor brain dysfunction. In routine, dear friend, I have found some salvation from the jumbled stew that is my mind; in yoga, dear friend, I have found an effective means of getting back in touch with the deep and subtle feelings, with the foul and the blessed urges, and with the abiding glory that is my inner animal. Thanks for reading, and mahalo.

場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit