smog settles in

The town of Rykles Hollow, NM (population 3012 as of publication) is unique in the western United States. “There is one other settlement, over in Nevada, whose conditions nearly match these,” said geologist Eluttibandt “Tibby” Dannand of the New Mexico State University, Las Cruces. “This town is much higher in elevation than its counterpart, however, and although it lies far from any major metropolis, the bad air somehow keeps coming.” The bad air, as Mr. Dannand puts it, is very bad, indeed. Tests performed by a seemingly endless succession of forensic meteorologists have shown what the local people have long suspected: their micro-climate contains toxic levels of many long-chain artificial molecules, industrial chemicals, carbon dioxide, methane, DDT, a healthy dose of that new-car smell, and most of the particles that make up smog. State and federal investigators, who change the filters on their gas masks every day – nearly religiously – frequently express surprise upon seeing locals who breathe the air unfiltered still walking around the next day. “I live on a fixed income,” said 82 year-old longtime resident Ida Rimmbrandt-Morales while hoeing a patch of carrots growing in her back yard. “I can't afford new filters for the gas masks the government keeps sending me, so I do without. My vegetables love these conditions, but my doctor and my grandkids keep begging me to stay inside.”

Despite years of intensive study, no one can say for sure why or how so much pollution finds its way into Canyon Escondir Paz Del Mundo, the box canyon's official name. Some theories point to its steep, cliff-like walls and deep, wide basin; others insist that the area just so happens to sit where pollutants from cities farther West, among them San Diego and Los Angeles, make landfall again after having been picked up by sea-borne breezes and blown eastward across the southern Rockies. “I used to ride my horses up through the scrub, all day,” said Jain Nanhoven, 38, the owner of a hermetically-sealed, perpetually-ventilated roadside tavern. “But after Delia, my Bay mare, died of a lung infection, I sold the rest of my livestock to a cousin in Idaho. Now, I barely even go outside. It's a shame.”

Some local businesses, however, are seeking to make profitable use of local conditions. The High Stakes Growers Association, which specializes in running greenhouses and other such industrial farming operations at high altitudes, among other such companies, considers Rykles Hollow to be the prime location for a new venture. “What with skilled labor sitting idle and atmospheric conditions perfect for growing squash and pole beans, we have begun looking for parcels of land for sale outside of town. Our workers will get used to wearing respirators when they see how fast things grow up here, and how quickly their common shares gain in value.” Most residents seem content to stay, and adapt. “I grew up here,” Ida said as she sat drinking tea by an open window near her back door. “And I shall die here.”

mentiri factorem fecit © 場黑麥

encylopediamericanifesto: phaltweariness - dehydration

  Among the many serious dangers the smog rider faces daily is the risk of dehydration. A condition easy to overlook but deadly if ignored, the body's dehydration distress call resembles closely the distress call it makes to signal hunger; additional telltale signs of dehydration are crankiness and fatigue. A few reports say that within smog rider packs it is common for the incessantly whining and inexplicably binge-eating member to be forced to hydrate by the IPM (the Instant & Perpetual Militia, i.e. the smog-packs' ubiquitous, fully meritocratic agents of enforcement), however our trust in the source for these reports is shaken.

  Multiple trustworthy sources report that when cycling in desert climates the smog rider adjusts his body to the local variances for temperature and humidity, a somewhat risky process in which he trains his body to need less water than it needs in more northern-lying areas. The first step he takes in this process is to eat of the local soil, and to pledge his fealty to the spirits of the land, and to praise the things growing in it, and to celebrate the things scampering across its face (a curious custom akin to the practices of First People tribes). Once he has ingested of the local earth, he cuts back on water gradually until he needs only a liter of it a day, and perhaps a few ounces more if he should exercise vigorously.

  An active person and avid reader alike, the smog rider learned some of the eternal lessons of the desert by reading tales about Rommel and Lawrence of Arabia, tales of Westerners surviving in the desert on minimal amounts of water using methods they learned from the Bedouin people. (In fact, he considers himself deep down an adjunct member of the hard-scrabble group of desert dwelling bad-asses know as the Fremen, from in Frank Herbert's book Dune.)

  But he is not Fremen, and he is not Bedouin – he is a smog-riding street-art vagabond, a man free of scorn and haste whose heart is pure, and in whom there is no room for death.

  Spes Mea In Ratio Est - 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp

on phaltweariness - the automobile

  Today's city streets are pitted and rough as if mauled by large and powerful beasts, and the souls of the people who drive upon are similarly abused. Aggression and impatience descend without fail upon the poor buggers who drive upon today's maligned avenues.

  We the Smog Riders of the America Phaltscape (the asphalt landscape) look often with pity upon our neighbors of the road, they who spend long hours strapped tightly to chairs which are in turn bolted to the floors of a tiny metal boxes. After spending years in such torturous environments, they will have forgotten the satisfaction of moving their own bodies through space/time using nothing other than living muscle and some metal tubes bolted to a pair of pneumatic tires. Rather than the good sweat that stands upon the skin of the bicyclist after a healthy cross-town slog, the sweat of the car driver will be distressed and foul, an oozing sheen that tends to creep through his furrowed brow as he worries about the skyrocketing price of petroleum.

  The smog riding street-art vagabond knows as well to avoid paying for petrol as she does to remain always vigilant of the withering and debilitating affects of phaltweariness – it is her duty to preserve the chaotic super-abundance of Street Art, and to record for Posterity as much of it as she can. To fulfill this task, and to keep her feet on the pedals, she has learned the limits of her body's tolerance for dehydration, pain, and exhaustion, and she knows how to make herself well again.

  Given the phaltweariness, the stressed out drivers, and the miles spend cycling through the phaltscape, how does the vagabond capture every unique work of street art that is at risk of being torn down as soon as it goes up? She does not. But she does what she can do, photographing what pictures might cross her path with the road grit fouling her mouth and a song filling her heart.

Spes Mea In Ratio Est - 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp