ribbon of river

It was a clear, fine day. The sun warmed the clay wall behind him and danced off patches of snow that dotted the distant mountain highlands. Before him spread the dusty valley in which he had grown up. Far below, a slender ribbon of river had begun to flow, a sure sign that Spring was coming.

The sheep grazing on the craggy slope in front of him were not his own, but those of his mother’s brother, a stern-faced man who disliked him. The shepherd cared not for politics or religion, only that the animals under his care made it home safely, each night, and that he could feed his wife and young son.

In the skies above him he heard what sounded like a broken motorcycle. Then the ground shook, his world went black, and the man who’d spent his life in honest toil was in an instant radicalized.

americanifesto / JPR / whorphan / 場黑麥

Liberty grew lopsided

The Tree of Liberty grew lopsided, one side of it green and youthful, the other brown and decayed. Watered for many decades only by the blood of patriots, we the American people had all but forgotten the Tree planted to mark the sacrifices our ancestors had made to free us from foreign oppression.

Since the days when the yoke of British domination had been shrugged off, the fetters that had enslaved us to the will of a distant king cast away, we had allowed instead a domestic tyranny to sink its roots deep into our fertile soil. Wide it had spread its tendrils, grasping vines dripping with poison that had permeated all branches of government in such a way as to make it indistinguishable from the dominating fetters long before shattered. Such was the reach of this tyranny that it had climbed halfway up the Tree of Liberty, to choke the last of its life away. When one of its roots was dug out, however, the other roots would grow thicker, the persons empowered by this tyranny too rich and greedy, their stranglehold on the throat of Lady Justice too firm. But the blood of tyrants could water the Tree of Liberty back to her former glory, and but through united effort could We the People rid ourselves of the oligarchy that ate daily of our sustenance. We had allowed the vines of tyranny to cut us off from one another, though, its sickly leaves our tablets, televisions, and cell-phones through which broadcast the hollow speech of angry talking heads.

Only by standing together, three hundred millions united and strong, could we prevail against these tyrannical injustices. Splintered as we are, however, the sacrifices made by our brave forebears will come to naught, and the Tree they planted for us will soon be pulled crashing down.

americanifesto / JPR / whorphan / 場黑麥

thousand souls spoke

Each second, a thousand times a thousand souls spoke the god’s name. It was Thor’s day, or Thursday, and the Norse deity of lightning swelled with power whenever a person uttered his name.

The day before had been Wednesday, or Wotan’s day, named for the All Father. Buoyed with spoken supplications, Old One-Eye now lounged, fat and happy, upon his nearby perch, absently counting the runes stored in his pouch. Wotan cared not that millions of people voiced the name of Thor just one day after they voiced his, for he knew that, in six short days hence, his coffers would once more fill.

Thor could not bank the power he received and therefore spent it, loosening his bolts upon land and sea, striking at swaying antenna, steadfast building, and leafy tree alike. Pausing in his labors he glanced over at Freya. Her day was Friday, and she was languidly strapping cat to chariot in preparation for spreading fertility and love upon those who dared speak her name.

americanifesto / JPR / whorphan / 場黑麥

not necessarily now

“I can’t believe you’re making me do this,” the man said. Even though no one was forcing him to do anything, he started to do the thing he didn’t really want to do but had pledged to do. It was a trifling job that required, at most, ten minutes of full concentration.
“We’re not making you do it,” the others replied, puzzled looks creasing their faces.
“Yes you are!” the man ejaculated, the color rising in his cheeks. “You’re making me do this because you asked me to do it earlier, and because you’re all looking at me and expecting me to do the thing I said I would do - at some point - not necessarily now.”
“Then don’t do it now,” the others replied.
“But if I don’t do it now,” he said, momentarily abandoning the task and standing up so as to address them face-on, “you’ll keep looking at me with expectation on your faces, with silent judgement lurking behind your gazes, and I can’t stand that type of pressure.”
“We won’t think less of you if you don’t do what you said you would do, what you agreed to do in exchange for what we already did for you,” the others said calmly.
Again he abandoned the task, which was almost finished, and sat down, dejected. “This is taking so long, guys,” he said. “I have better things to do.” He pulled out his cellphone and started mindlessly paging through social media apps.
“The reason it’s taking you so long to complete this task is that you keep interrupting your own work to complain to us that you’re doing it,” they said. “Based on your comments, we now assume you never intended to keep your word and do the thing you said you’d do in exchange for what we did for you.”
Realization dawned upon the man’s face, only to be suffocated by his acquired habit of complaining, whining, and blaming everyone else but himself for his lot in life. He bent once more to his labors.
“There,” he said, stepping away from the task and throwing down the tools he’d used to complete it. “Are you happy now?”
They stepped forward to inspect what he’d done. “It looks like you did a poor job of things, meaning we’ll have to spend our own time fixing your work. Plus, you didn’t clean up your tools, meaning we’ll have to gather them up and put them away, ourselves.”
“It’s all vinegar with you guys, and very little sugar. Consider that the last nice thing I ever do for you.”

[The author has himself witnessed a similar exchange, and thinks that this text highlights the self-centered  and short-sighted tendencies of many Westerners living today.]

americanifesto / JPR / whorphan / 場黑麥

🝚𝈱 Ƹ.␣⚲ᚃ𝈣ᚃ⚲␣.Ʒ 𝈱🝚

though hidden, they’re visible; smaller, not bigger - the complex reactions that some will call triggers

shameless war criminal

The fascist gave the order then sat back, elated, to watch the launch of more than two score cruise missiles. The fascist owned stock in the company that had sold the missiles to the government he headed. He would profit personally from the launch, and he knew it. Most of the missiles hit their targets, an airfield being used by the sovereign military to fight terrorists in nearby Palmyra. At least one missile veered off course, however, and struck a nearby village, killing nine people.

Four of those nine people were children, but the fascist didn’t seem to care, since his personal wealth had increased in the aftermath of the illegal act of aggression. Soon after the missiles impacted on the airfield (which had been largely cleared of military personnel following a warning given by the fascist), a group of religious-extremist terrorists launched assaults on nearby military garrisons.

The strike, therefore, appeared to many observers to have been a way to provide air support for violent extremists who’d long ago abandoned the last vestiges of their humanity. The fascist, it seems, had also abandoned the last vestiges of his own humanity to appease Mammon and Moloch, bloodthirsty gods who shower worldly prosperity upon those who make sacrifice of human blood to them.

americanifesto / JPR / whorphan / 場黑

dreamstate writing 11 April 2017

I had climbed into a rail-mounted, bullet-shaped carriage in order to visit a subterranean Harry-Potter-themed attraction. With me in the carriage was another entity, a male figure who has been for the last couple of nights leading me through massive hollow structures that are poorly lit and full of shadows. The structures remind me of abandoned airport terminals. I encounter few other entities in these massive structures. The shadows, however, are often alive with fearful and stunted figments that follow me, tracking my movements.

The carriage had stopped at the door to the attraction. A backlit panel displayed the logo and name of the attraction as well as a clock showing the minutes left until we could enter. Feeling confined and cramped in the suddenly tiny space (my head and torso had been bent backward on the way into the narrow tunnel), I had jumped out, whereupon I found myself on a flat plain lit as if by a full moon shining in the sky on my right-hand side. Dead trees and ruined buildings stood upon the plain, their outlines at times pixelated, at times clearly defined. To my left was a three-storey building, dark, decrepit, scary.

A few hundred meters in front of me was a line of tall buildings that appeared to form the boundary of the plain. A shadow moved there, jet-black eyes winking open in a jet-black body. It oozed swiftly my way, flitting from shadow to shadow. As it came closer it took the shape of a giant dog. Panicked and full of fear, I cast about for a way to escape the bounding beast’s gnashing jaws. I noticed an open door in the collapsing building to my left but resisted the urge to leap through it. Instead, I lifted my right arm. The shadow-dog grasped my right hand in its mouth but its teeth found no purchase, and no matter how hard it whipped its head around, it could do me no harm.

americanifesto / JPR / whorphan / 場黑麥

keep in power

In a perfect example of autonomous self-degradation, two members of the working class today butted heads regarding an illegal act of war-like aggression carried out by the person legally in charge of the nation-state in which they lived. Instead of turning their energies toward toppling the existing power-structure and reclaiming for the American people resources badly needed to fund education, health care, and infrastructure, the pair spent time and effort arguing over who was more foolish, who less well-informed, who more of a snowflake, pansy, weakling, whose life was worth less in the overall scheme of things.

Instead of marching in the streets to protest the killing of innocent children by a war-mongering proto-fascist, they threw words back and forth across the wireless aether, neither side winning, both sides losing. Wasting their lives in this way, they played right into the hands of - and helped keep in power - the few thousand individuals who own all the money and property in the world.

americanifesto / JPR / whorphan / 場黑麥

corporate shrine opens

After more than 130 years of planning and construction, the immortal quasi-entity known as the American Telephone and Telegraph company (AT&T) proudly opened its first officially sanctioned religious shrine. Half of the funds used to build the shrine came from a special federal tax credit granted in 1946 and renewed every years since then thanks to intensive lobbying efforts.

Nestled into a grove of lacebark elm and desert willow on the western edge of the corporation’s sprawling Dallas campus, the glass and steel structure was blessed by company monks in a three-day ceremony that ended 4 April 2017. To commemorate the government-sanctioned monopoly over communications that AT&T has enjoyed throughout most of its existence, and as an expression of thanks for the many favors and gifts they have received for allowing said monopoly to continue, all members of both the U.S. Congress and Senate unanimously declared 4 April a national holiday - Your World - Delivered © Day As Brought To You By AT&T. (The name is the holiday is subject to change according to the whim and fancy of said corporation’s marketing department.)

The shrine features kneeling cushions as well as benches for sitting. Its inner wooden walls are adorned with images of the company’s various logos, which it has changed over the years to signify not only its fantastic might but also its anti-free-market, artificial, un-American dominance over domestic and international channels of communication. Persons seeking to pray at the shrine and worship the holy corporate iconography should wear closed-toed shoes and dress appropriately - women in blouses and dresses that cover the ankle; men in button-down long-sleeved shirts and slacks. The faithful should arrive before the crack of dawn in order to be assured a spot at which to genuflect before the omniscient and immortal corporate entity that is AT&T.

[This article is satire; no part of it is intended to be taken as a factual representation of any corporation, entity, notion, party, person or persons, living, dead or immortal.]

americanifesto / JPR / whorphan / 場黑麥

nary a meter

He worked furiously to keep the balloon afloat, rushing about here and there gluing on bits of canvas to the many holes that riddled its exterior. Inside the balloon was only hot air, of course, agitated gases he replenished frequently using a burning brazier tethered to the underbelly of the ungainly airship.

He dared not stray too high, into the realm of the gods, where the strong and mighty winds live, out of fear they would rend the balloon fully and send him plummeting to the ground. He avoided straying too low, however, into the realm of demons, where the base and greedy urges wallow, out of fear he’d heed the siren-calls of booish pleasure and forfeit the sacrifices he’d made to lift off in the first place.

For a brief moment, his airborne mount stayed level, nary a leak sprung, nary a meter gained or lost. As he loosened the knots and closed the gates, the contraption in which he had for so long ridden suddenly vanished. And he floated there - serene, unmoved, filled with nothingness.

americanifesto / JPR / whorphan / 場黑麥

one drop more

The bladder was dry. No matter how much he twisted or squeezed it, he could not wring from it even one drop more.

Frustrated, he took a seat upon the dusty soil, carefully tucking his legs into half lotus, or Sanpan, the closest he could get to full lotus, or Shuang Pan. In his lap sat the empty bladder.

In concentric circles all around him, multitudes of people clamored for a drink. In pairs they came, in dozens and in scores, each person drawn to the promise of relief from thirst by forces their minds could but poorly comprehend. Within him also lived parched and starving friends, tender souls he’d neglected over decades. For many years he’d chosen to let the bladder pour out into the dust, onto the sandy soil.

He felt the bladder grow heavier, a slight shift in weight. With tremendous effort he overcame the desire to please those clamoring without and drank from the bladder himself, not to quench his own thirst but to nourish the friends within. The first few sips went to them, and they slept, finally, their needs for once met.

But then his mind got involved. Greed blossomed, and he drank to appease his mortal body. Of a sudden, the bladder was dry... and he could wring not one drop more from it.

americanifesto / JPR / whorphan / 場黑麥