this author had

prepared something for today, a piece about an event that had happened recently in his life, but upon secondary reading he finds the essay of poor taste, and not fit for consumption. huzzah.

mentiri factorem fecit – 場黑麥

breaking old habits

As part of an overall attempt to restore balance and purpose to his life, this author has begun to do things he for a long time avoided and stopped doing things he for a long time has let himself do. He took a Finnish sauna, probed his psyche and had a few good cries, got a massage, and signed up for yoga teacher training; he has started speaking to himself and others more honestly; he has lost weight, quit smoking cigarettes et alii, regulated his diet in terms of quantity and quality, kept at his writing and photography without slacking too much, and learned a lot about how his mind and the world works. He reads from six different books each day and is slowly learning to understand his needs and feelings and emotions, slowly becoming human again. He is not trying to to count eggs or baskets here, merely spell out a few of the positive changes that the Universe has bestowed upon him. Huzzah.

mentiri factorem fecit – 場黑麥

bones of blog

Where will my blogs go once I stop updating them fifty years from now? And where will they go if the Interweb stops working, crashes, or is wiped out by virus or alien invasion? When elephants feel death approaching, researchers say they often remove themselves to secret areas littered with the bones of their pachyderm forebears, graveyards piled high with the massive skulls and valuable tusks of these smart, lumbering beasts. My blogs, I fear, are not much different: when their time is up and their duties have been served, they will either retreat quietly into the digital forest, randomized clusters of ones and zeros waiting to be re-born as a toddler's social media account, or they will sink forever into the shiny black carapace of some server tower humming away dutifully in the climate-controlled warrens of any one of countless South Asian server farms.

All the writing this author posted on those blogs will be gone if they themselves go: there are no hard copies of his body of work; no printed copies of the Grigovian fairy tales he composed; no tactile versions of the vituperative barbs he hurls at politicians and powerful persons alike; his legacy is 50% ethereal and 49% vacuous, and the few items that do exist for real resemble the ruined detritus of a foolish nonce who cowers in the dark shadows of the past while cursing the skies for making thunder and sending rain. No, his artistic effort will vanish when the systems crash, when the sky-brothers return for gold and human women, or upon the Singularity, whichever comes first, and he wouldn't have it any other way. Huzzah.

mentiri factorem fecit – 場黑麥

no news is

good news, as far as this liesmith is concerned; he is content to glance but briefly at the morning paper or foreign news-site; he can but poorly influence national politics, let alone world events; his vituperative and rabble-rousing writings of the past year sit unread and unwarranted, honest effort poured into broken chalices. huzzah

mentiri factorem fecit – 場黑麥

foreboding sits palpably

near, speckled with bright flecks of Happiness

Vicente v. Ord

This author is barely back a week from Los Angeles, and already he yearns for the runs. The velocipedist who reads this blog will recognize the Ord Run from previous writings: it starts at Marukai Market in Little Tokyo, heads up to Hill and Cesar E. Chavez, and mashes Sunset all the way over to where that boulevard hits Vine. Old man Ord, however, has a new companion, the San Vicente Run (i.e. Santo Viczenzo), which starts at where Wilshire crosses the 405 freeway and approaches Hollywood from the west, either via Elevado or Santa Monica Boulevard.

Both of these runs the author would make regularly, never ever standing to pedal, on an L.A.-made, fixed-gear, gray Retrospec bicycle with bright green wheels. He surfed Bay Street and the Venice Breakwater, hunted urban art from the Palisades to Elysian Park, and ran the runs whenever he was able to – during rush-hour or at 3 am, under skies clear and smoggy, his heart bursting joyfully with every passing foot, flashing spoke, and humming tire. And the Boba Fett nods he received from other smog-sledders (!!!), each glance-and-dip a barely perceivable acknowledgement of his worth as a self-respecting street cyclist, each quick look grudging recognition of the toughness commonly found among persons who mash California's sun-burnt boulevards.

Someday, I will once more reside in the fine Golden State, and run these runs whenever my heart desires, but, until then, be well in my absence, fair Angelinos, and mahalo.

mentiri factorem fecit – 場黑麥

ten trees fall

ten trees that were tall, dead and leaning but erect nonetheless, reminders of the inevitability of decay