dispatch 2 - NYC

On her second day in New York, she got a ticket for drinking in public. She’d been on foot, exploring the southern tip of Manhattan island. She’d bought a can of beer from a corner shop and sat in the park to drink it. In Grigovia, she thought to herself, adults are allowed to make adult decisions. In front of her stood a pair of police-officers. Tall female, shorter male.
“Why am I being punished?” she asked them, her olive complexion turning slightly darker.
The cops shared a knowing glance, shook their heads slowly, and smiled. The taller officer showed her partner the ticket. He nodded, smiling, his hands resting on his thickly-studded weapons belt.
“The public consumption of alcohol is forbidden in New York City.”
Erya Rovend looked over at the sidewalk seating area of a nearby cafe. At a few of the tables, people were drinking what, to her, clearly appeared to be alcohol. Bottles of wine. Glasses of beer.
“Next time, maybe put it in a plastic cup,” said the woman as she tore a paper slip from her notepad and handed it to Erya. She took out her leather passport holder and slipped the ticket into it.
“You stay out of trouble now,” the man-cop said.
He and his partner sauntered away into the park.

Walking over a bridge later that same afternoon, the former Grigovian ambassador to the United Nations noticed a couple of young men scaling a chainlink fence nearby, dropping down onto the train tracks below, and rushing quickly out of sight. The way the men were dressed - their hooded sweatshirts and paint-stained backpacks - reminded her of friends back in Grig who did graffiti. She scaled the same fence as they had, dropped down also, and walked confidently into the gloom ahead. Soon enough, she could hear the familiar rattling of cans, the soft whooshing of paint being propelled out of steel cylinders. Pausing to look around at the walls of the tunnel, she found them to be covered in a riot of designs and shapes, words and figures blasted onto the surrounding concrete by countless former vandals.
“Now this is good stuff,” she said aloud, whistling quietly, in appreciation.
“You hear something?” one of the nearby artists hissed.
“No need to worry, friends,” Erya started to say as she turned to face their general direction, stepping accidentally onto a piece of broken wood that spun away to break a discarded liquor bottle.
There followed a flurry of zipping and cursing. The sound of people running. Then, silence.
Climbing over the train that had separated them, Era Rovend discovered that the men had vanished, their good graffiti work unfinished. An unfinished piece glistened in the faint light coming from the tunnel’s mouth. To her it looked like a group of citizens standing their ground against a phalanx of riot police. Under it was written in black and glaring letters the following statement:
Man The Barricades; Black Lives Matter.

© JPR / whorphan / americanifesto / 場黑麥

on visting wakiya

Loudly they came, and quickly receeded, the thunderbirds that visited today. Oh the tears that streamed down these mortal cheeks as the sky-brothers danced overhead, eyes flashing and wings flapping with thunderously clacking claps; shiver I did as their twisting lightning snakes wove into and out of the snake-roots that worm and twine from the break-point at my middle back; rejoice I did as the cooling rains poured from the skies and penetrated into our makeshift hogan, a rift in the ceiling letting in the blessed healing waters. Thank you, wakiya, mighty and terrible beasts, for blessing our smudging, and for honoring our ceremony with your awesome presence. Aho.

mentiri factorem fecit – 場黑麥

goddess alights

Without fanfare – without plume of smoke, clap of thunder, or blinding bolt of light – goddess Athena made landfall in a town in the Mid-Atlantic region of the republic of America. She looked into homes, offices, and shops, but found little to hold her attention. Cloaked in the guise of a world-weary old man, she tried to buy a drink from a store with a red-and-green-striped sign.

Broke and hung-over from a friend's bachelor party, the store clerk stared at the thick gold disc the old bum had just given him, palming it as he dropped three Sacajawea coins onto the rest of the change. Pallas Athena, she who blesses the labors of artist and warrior alike, feeling spited and ill-received, stood her ground – she threw back the worthless tender and demanded the return of her golden coin. After a while, the police arrived, summoned by a silent alarm. Before they could arrest the strange old man, however, he escaped into the store's cramped rear storage-quarters, from which, strangely, no door leads to the outside.

Brave and majestic Athena, she who lifts the hearts of flagging friends, having made herself invisible so as to escape the clutches of what she could tell were bad people bent on doing her harm, had already folded the Gorgon's head to the fore of her Aegis breastplate when mercy stayed her hand; one last turn of the endlessly shifting cloth and that dreadful weapon would have peeked forth. Instead of turning her assailants to stone, however, the goddess relented. She erased the police officers' memories and cursed the clerk to a pitiful life of abject wage-slavery devoid of pleasure, in which direction she figured he was heading, anyway.

mentiri factorem fecit – 場黑麥

Rovend in Manhattan

Erya Rovend traveled to New York City (NYC) recently as the spokesperson of the Grigovian delegation to the United Nations. Chosen for the role at Grigovia's recent Summit to Secure our Sovereignty, the young lady – an avid equestrian and spiritual leader of the Farflung Free Nations, a Yaelong tribe – asked us to condense her interview into the following piece.

In many ways, the American metropolis known as the Big Apple rivals fair, cosmopolitan Grig. Both are world cities with extensive public transportation networks and lively, vibrant night-life; both are regional powerhouses to which the young and the ambitious flock, places where dreams are made real as often as they are crushed and the opportunity for rebirth and renewal is always there, waiting. Grig's Ring of Woods cannot compete with the sheer size of Central Park; however, its green-spaces, while generally smaller, are spaced about town more evenly while offering more amenities, such as clean public bathrooms, high-speed Wi-Fi, and performance spaces within which artists and members of the public can perform, share, and congregate, year-round. In New York City, prostitutes and drug dealers have been forced to retreat behind closed doors and to execute their trades away from the public eye; in Grig, though, as in most other Grigovian cities, these specialty services have their own districts and unions, colors and routines, circumstances which conspire to improve the health and wellbeing of such citizens as are interested in buying clean sex or unadulterated cocaine. (A glaring exception is alcohol. Grigovians, who are intelligent enough to apply the lessons learned through scientific inquiry, classify booze as a hard drug; it is sold only to persons of legal age; those who abuse it are treated similarly to the poor, lost souls who have succumbed to meth-amphetamine or heroin.)

Another differences between these two cities is the number of police officers roaming NYC. Whereas in Grig the streets are kept safe by the united vigilance and mutual respect of its inhabitants, and people go about their business without fear of institutionalized reproach or admonition, in New York one is constantly watching one's back to make sure there are no cops snooping, or spying. The police state that exists within Gotham closely resembles that of Nazi Germany during the 1930s and -40s, with the modern addition of cameras and other surveillance technology, facial-recognition-software, and crime-prediction algorithms. To top things off, legions of homeless children populate this city's dirty and forgotten places, where they are exposed to violence, hatred, and filth, while in Grig, these too-easily disenfranchised individuals have access to resources and programs which provide them with the tools they need to become productive and happy members of society, once more. That this American metropolis allows its young people to huddle and shiver, ignored and unwanted, in the shadows of glass-and-steel temples that reach into the skies in honor of greed says a lot about its dark and twisted soul.

In all, according to Erya, New York is a nice city to visit, so long as one has money to burn. (Miss Rovend spent less than a quarter of the funds allotted her for her stay by the Glorious Republic of Grigovia, preferring modest quarters to presidential suites, simple meals to lavish feasts, and the freedom of walking to the mobile prison of a taxi-cab.) She invites every American to come see Grig, where they might learn a lesson or two about the benefits of mutual prosperity through individual modesty and communal sacrifice.

mentiri factorem fecit © 場黑麥