haiku 24 Dec 2017

German pagan lore
And, well, the winter solstice
Are season’s reason

[ americanifesto / 場黑麥 / jpr / urbanartopia / whorphan ]

bovines and sheeps

Come outside my lovelies there's warm in the air and green tufts of life all around – everywhere! Our Massif of Yiptlong is coming alive with bees now emerging from their high-hung hives and birds now returning from their winter keeps and young being born to goats bovines and sheeps. Man Winter is crawling back into his cave, his white wispy beard and his long gnarled stave are dragging behind him for he's been left weak from making the landscape cold barren and bleak. The goddess of Springtime has taken his stead and soon to Man Summer she'll surely be wed and then we'll all bake under his restless eye that hangs in a tepid and sweltering sky. With thoughts of hot evenings and of hotter nights we turn our attention to conquering fright and vanquishing worry and hunger and pain and waking up from frigid slumber again the deep burning fires that keep our souls bright that wrap us in dazzling and near-blinding light. Air out the bed linens and sweep off the stair and weave a wee tulip up into your hair; rejoice at the coming of times filled with joy for each one among us – old young girl and boy.

​© americanifesto / 場黑麥

valiant lovely Nuuzstathena

Gaze north on a clear night from eastern Nuuzsh Gar, and look for the light that floats but is not star. With keen eyes you'll glimpse it (rejoice! it's good luck) the maiden picks wisely – not any old schmuck. Have done then with seeking, cast no further glance: the goddess is quick to lash out with her lance. She doesn't mind peeking but hates those who stare, at her shining breastplate and resplendent hair. The winds are her vessel, in dunes she resides, she calls forth the new moon, comfort she provides. She curses the greedy, blesses those who share, has made great kings cower with her flashing glare. Her wards are the artists and weavers and they, who charge into battle their foes there to slay. Look not at her Gorgon's head that Hercule won, or you'll turn to marble-stone and weight a ton. Her trusty companion is burrowing owl, who rides the high thermals always on the prowl. She watches us mostly, touches here and there, sometimes she is brutal always she is fair. To praise her be crafty and industrious, avoid wasteful shortcuts and don't make much fuss. Her feast-day is one week past Mid-Winter's night – spend time with friends, eat well, right wrongs, light a light. She welcomes all comes, from near and from far, fair goddess, wise patroness: Nuuzstathena!

© americanifesto / 場黑麥

Grigovians welcome winter

In the past, when greater Europe was wallowing in the cruel injustices of medieval depravity, winter in Grigovia was a time of communal sharing, a period of cooperative productivity. Even under the Soviet juggernaut's yoke, the people of this landlocked little republic managed to help one another out in times of scarcity, through diligent effort and clandestine communication maintaining a vast network of charity-driven black markets.

It should come as no surprise, then, that the old traditions still hold, that, when the first snows begin to fall in the dizzying mountain passes, the older high-valley denizens seal up their homes and hop buses into town while their younger counterparts break out snow-shoes and cross-country skis. “One learns to go without,” said ten year old Rathma Eroyip as she was carrying an armload of seasoned burning wood to an elderly neighbor's house. “I, for example, have come to terms with no longer being able to bicycle to school, and I know I must soon learn to ski so that I might continue attending classes in Grissend, which lies three kilometers to the east of here.” Rathma allowed us to escort her for the rest of the morning, during which she helped shovel out someone's back door, assisted in the manufacture of a thick woolen quilt, and learned how to attach and adjust the bindings on her first pair of cross-country skis. (The young lady's family had just recently moved up into the hills, to: “toughen these kids up a bit, and prepare them for life's exertions,” according to their mother.)

Wherever this news team went, Grigovians appeared to be contributing to the communal good in meaningful ways. We saw citizens handing out thick woolen blankets by the truckload, distributing baskets of hard cheeses and pickled vegetables in primarily immigrant neighborhoods, holding canned food drives and generally going out of their way to live up the notion that “Twigs in bundles become pillars”, Grigovia's unofficial national motto. “Instead of spending tax dollars on fleets of vehicles to plow the roads and contaminate the land with salts, we buried all power and telecommunications lines and created in even the smallest high-valley village satellite nodes for essential services where citizens can obtain medical care, educational materials, access to the national Wi-Fi network, and the materials needed to craft warm items for sharing with their elderly and disadvantaged neighbors,” said Qutomar Rastoyend, spokesman for the Ministry of the Interior's Winter Division. “Furthermore, we have added new buildings and installed new beds to the network of Care & Comfort facilities that stretches from Grig in the south to Pyltagrad in the north-west, where old and infirm alike can bed down for the winter, if they should so choose.” So it goes all across this fine little land: people bettering themselves by first bettering others.

© mentiri factorem fecit (場黑麥)

leisurely summer, “satisfying”

Choosing to lounge around in his boxer-shorts instead of going about his wood-chopping, garden-tending, and home-maintenance chores, 29 year-old Maryland native Frederick Rillenhof said just this morning that his summer of abject, sun-soaked leisure was far more satisfying than performing any of the duties he admitted were necessary to keep him alive through the upcoming winter. “I hope to have a job by fall,” the home-owner said while trying to find a way to make his window-mounted air-conditioning unit produce more cool air. ”And I'm going to need one to pay for all this electricity I'm using, and for all the heating oil I'll have to buy in order to keep this damn place warm when it starts to snow.”

Sitting by an open, southward-facing screen door of his four-bedroom home, Frederick, who lives alone, said he enjoyed feeling the cold air stream past him, because it cooled him off a bit before escaping into the blast-furnace heat outside. “I just love that,” he said while poking at a brand-new, touch-screen-equipped tablet computer. “Feeling the breeze that the A-C is making, knowing that I have a fridge full of food just waiting for me to eat. I got a call from my credit card company this morning asking for payment on last month's bill, but what are they going to do, cut me off? I pay my mortgage with that platinum card, bitches.”

While poking around in the tall weeds behind the house (after being shooed outside to pee unless we, “Wanted to go all the way up to the third floor to use that bathroom, since all the other ones are clogged”), this news team discovered a discarded ax and a decrepit bow-saw, both of which were rusting away atop a woodsman's sawhorse. Next to these forgotten tools was a large mound of good lumber, the ends of which were however beginning to show signs of rot. When we asked him about the wood wasting away in the backyard, Mr. Rillenhof declared that he was too busy watching a marathon session of a popular reality-television series that focuses on crab-fishing off the coast of Alaska to get to sawing or splitting anytime soon, and that he would handle it once the weather turned a bit cooler. He declined to comment on his vegetable garden, however, which was in a sorry state, indeed.

場黑麥 mentiri manufactorem fecit