haiku 30 Dec 2018

In lieu of presents

Next year I want nothing but

To know your presence

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

ridesharing driver also living in car

Three minutes into their trip to the grand reopening of an old neighborhood bar, friends Sandy J. and Thalia F. realized that the vehicle transporting them was also their driver’s home. “Oh my god I think he might be sleeping in here,” Thalia said, leaning over to whisper in her companion’s ear whilst pointing out to her a tube of toothpaste and toothbrush poking from a seat-back pocket of the 2007 Toyota Tercel. Sandy responded by wincing and scrunching up her nose at the suddenly weird but previously nonexistent smells her brain began to conjure into being. “There’s a lot of room in here, actually, for sleeping,” she said, glancing up at the vehicle’s generously high roof and giggling, which prompted her friend to giggle too, which then lead to both women giggling uproariously for a few minutes.

Sensing his customers’ mockery of him, their driver shuddered internally and choked back an upwelling of tears as he begged That Which Cannot Be Named to not let either of the women submit a bad report to his dispatching company and take away his ability to pick up and drop off people - the job being primary means of him supporting himself and his family back in Belarus and him living in it being his only option given skyrocketing area rents.

americanifesto / 場黑麥 / jpr / urbanartopia / whorphan ]

haiku 23 Oct 2018

Yesterday is gone

Perhaps, tomorrow will come
Right now is tops, though

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

haiku 11 Sep 2018

To cherish good friends

Call in and hand out favors

In equal measure

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

aid she flew

Now there is a tale of a woman in white who lead some lost children back home of a night. They'd been on a journey to visit their kin when in the thick forest a snowstorm set in. The light it was failing the snow piled deep and soon the hill-slope became ragged and steep. One by one they tumbled on down to its base with but a few scratches on hand-pad and face then huddled there freezing knew not what to do and that's when the maiden to their aid she flew. She came out of no-where from out of the night and cured them of worry and lessened their fright and draped them in robes that could have been her hair and led them forthwith to a mountaineer's lair. A fire was burning and much wood was stacked there in that wee shelter that wanderer's shack and rich stew was cooking and so was hot tea to which they responded with exhausted glee. Each ate to his liking each drank to her full and then settled down on soft beds of thick wool and woke in the morning to knocks on the door and heavy boots stamping on the outside floor. Some woodsmen had gathered and were shocked to find all children accounted for none left behind and asked how they'd come to the shelter although the paths through the forest were covered in snow. The children they mentioned the woman in white who had saved their hides on the previous night the woodsmen they nodded not one of them smiled and led then the children back out of the wild but paused to give thanks at some shrines on the way as they headed back to the brightness of day.

© americanifesto / 場黑麥

sleepy, sleepy Yyeirdoyesst

There did live once a sleepy man who'd snooze away the day, and slumber deep as cow and crook would make off with his hay. He'd rake again, the very next, and lament his undoing, but afterward, he'd choose to sleep, neglectful of his shooing. He slept so much that mountains sprites those nasty mischief-makers, hatched plan one night to make things right and filled up their dream-shakers. They stole upon the sleeping gent young Yyeirdoyesst his name was, and covered him from head to toe in sparkling shiny sleep-dust. You did too much (said leader-sprite, admonishing his cousin) for now this man will sleep not nights but years – perhaps five dozen. The sprites they panicked, cried and fled, they raced on back to hearths they knew, they wailed and gnashed and foamed with dread, young Yyeirdoyesst they left for dead. But here a goddess came along, her life a careless happy song, she saw the poor man sitting there, with ruddy cheeks and golden hair, and spied the mischief all too soon, and bore him off for home, the moon. Oh what is done?! (she cried aloud, remembering the veils and shrouds that guard the waters of the moon from mortal man's intrusion) act is act, for worse or better; with me he stays but not in fetters. And so she ceased his magic slumber, hoping he would soon recover. Yyeirdoyesst he sat upright, looked around, realized his plight, shrugged his shoulders, lay back down, then bid the goddess fair good-night. Enraged his sloth did made her, mere death it could not slake her, she quickly conjured up his doom, then cast his mug upon the moon, then cast his body down below, and now his face will ever show, on lunar surface brightly.

mentiri factorem fecit – 場黑麥

Grigovian folk belief

Theirs is a society founded on strongly secular roots, but the Grigovian people do practice some forms of folk religion, a select few of which are examined here. First, and perhaps most widespread, is Sighting First Rays, a ceremony held every morning after the daily yoga practice in honor of the first shining tendrils of sunlight to grace the resplendent peaks of the towering Yiptlong massif. This ceremony consists of pausing one's actions, moving so as to be able to see the Yiptlong massif, and watching closely as its peaks are drenched in sunlight. Second-most widespread after Sighting First Rays is a ceremony known as Clarified Unity, in which one sits quietly for a certain amount of time in order to clarify the inner vision and unify the often competing energies of body ​and stomach and mind. A meditative custom, practitioners of Clarified Unity swear that it helps to reduce distress and worry and to lessen the ravenous cravings of addiction – including those involving food, sex, and self-mutilation. The third most widespread religious practice is Seeing Smallest Beauty, a process by which people look for symmetry in all things, even in those instances – death or destruction or illness – that other societies vilify. Seeing Smallest Beauty leads directly into Walking Beautifully; practitioners of these closely interrelated methods remain detached from the notions of honor and dishonor, profit and loss, benefit and harm, following rather the dictates of their hearts and acting in accordance with Universal patterns. The final belief system examined here is Honoring Good & Bad, a ritual that acknowledges the fickle whims of the Tunnel Pixies. Sometimes helpful and sometimes harmful, Tunnel Pixies are blamed not only for leading children miraculously unharmed out of caved-in sections of tunnel but also for having caused the cave-ins in the first place. Belief in these mischievous beings stretches back to at least the 15th Century, when Briny the Younger – Grigovia's preeminent medieval bard – sang, 'Here they pull on loose brick, and there they light the way, their moods are not for wondering, for these shift with each day.' Examined here are but a few of the customs of the Glorious Republic of Grigovia. Come visit, and discover more for yourself!

mentiri factorem fecit – 場黑麥