north of Altadena

When I first reached the high-mountain campsite, it was just me and the host. He was in Ranger digs but his badge said volunteer. He was a troll, or as close to a troll as any person I’ve ever seen.

Looking up periodically from the book I was reading, I’d find him lurking behind a tree, his car, or the cinder-block outhouse, facing my way but never really making eye-contact.
He’d ignore hikers clearly in need of guidance but then harangue anyone who managed to track him down with a stump speech about his ‘hybrid’ religion, which boiled down to him mentioning, repeatedly, things like heaven, and heavenly father, and Jesus.
Talk of how all religions contain the golden rule.
Praise of a life lived in virtue, warnings about one lived in sin.
An email newsletter for his non-profit.
He’d address men as ‘brother’ in what seemed to me an unconsciously racist manner. He was an Internet troll come to life. He even looked like a troll, all chubby and red-faced, his hair so blond it was almost white.


After the first day, I learned to simply walk away from him whenever he got to talking. I felt bad about treating him like that, but I had recently started practicing being conscious and respectful of my own time - even if it meant hurting a few feelings, here and there.

The site next to mine was occupied when I crawled out of my tent on the morning of my third day.
A couple of attractive girls.
A few cool dudes.
I helped them get set up. We became friends quickly.
The drugs we’d brought soon became communal property. Except for the troll stopping by randomly every couple of hours to remind us of rules we weren’t breaking, the day progressed smoothly.
Things took a turn when one of the girl’s boyfriend showed up with a sack of cocaine in one pocket and a handgun in the other.


A bunch of us were enjoying an early evening campfire, laughing and telling stories, sparking blunts, snorting lines, sipping beers. A cellphone was playing upbeat music.
“Hey, man,” the campsite host said to me, yelling over from the road before walking uninvited toward us. Someone grabbed the bong and hid it from view. “I’d like to talk to you about what we spoke about yesterday, about the futility of existence.” I stood up and headed him off a dozen feet from the paraphernalia-strewn picnic table, enduring his sophomoric rant for long enough that my beer got warm.
He kept looking past me while talking, staring at the bikini-clad young ladies dancing near the fire. As soon as they realized he was watching, they put on shirts and sat down in a protective huddle.
I eventually removed him by backing away from him until we were standing next to his tent.

After the third such intrusion into our friendly congress, the boyfriend said, “If motherfucking Bobby Hill comes over here again for no reason, trying to creep on my girl and her friends, I’ll… fuck… I’ll kill him.” I glanced over at the troll and couldn’t help but laughing out loud - his resemblance to the son in TV’s ‘King Of The Hill’ was uncanny.
The boyfriend had arrived drunk that morning and hadn’t stopped drinking, since. During a dinner of burnt sausages and cold beans, he had placed his automatic pistol on the table in front of him.


The sun was just starting to set when the mountain above us caught fire, blocking our only exit route. We had enough water and food to last us for a couple of days, and our campsite sat near a running stream in a moist hollow. This knowledge, and the stupefying drugs, calmed our fears.
Often, when fire destroys a region’s upper vegetation, its fauna escapes the flames by heading downhill. Soon, the underbrush around us was thick with small animals, rodents fleeing and snakes crawling past us, headed for the nearby stream. Then, the animals got bigger. We saw a desert fox. A small herd of deer. A mountain goat. The rising plume of smoke caught the sun’s dying rays, scattering them downward to bathe our campsite in a fading, ethereal glow.

“I hate to break up the party, but everyone has to get ready to evacuate,” the troll called over to us from the road, adjusting the straps on his oversized hiking backpack. Pots hung from it, clanking loudly. A radio sat at his waist, crackling. Although there was still light in the sky, his headlamp was turned on full blast, causing those of us facing him to wince.
“My friend just texted me that the only road out of here is blocked, bro,” the boyfriend said, yelling drunkenly over his shoulder. “So relax. Nobody’s leaving here anytime soon.”
Bobby Hill stood there for a moment, shocked.
“I said get ready to move out,” he hissed through clenched teeth, his voice shaking with rage. He stepped over the rocks that bordered our campsite. As his light played over the ground in front of him we could see that his hands were balled into fists.

The boyfriend fluidly shifted position to face him, picking up the pistol in the same motion. He fired three shots, two of which hit the troll in the torso. Bits of cloth shot from the backpack as the rounds exited Bobby’s body and kicked up tufts of dirt on the embankment behind him.
Before any of us could speak, a brown bear came crashing through the underbrush near the cinder-block outhouse. The apex predator turned our way and focused in on the troll, who was stumbling backward, geysering blood, and making a strange, burbling, screaming sound.
Behind the bear came two cubs scampering.
She hit Bobby in the chest with a massive paw, knocking him clear out of his backpack, then pounced. As we ran for the nearby food pantries that were big enough to fit a full-grown human and strong enough to resist a bear attack (according to the manufacturer’s sticker), she started to chew his face off, throwing chunks of meat back at her mewling cubs.

In the shelter next to mine was the boyfriend. He was breathing heavily but didn’t seem too upset.
“Is everybody alright?” he shouted, once the sounds of dragging and snarling had stopped and the night had once more grown silent.
I cracked the door to my shelter and peered around carefully.
“I think we’re good,” I said. “As far as I can tell, she’s gone.”
The boyfriend crawled slowly from his own pantry.
“This shit stays between us, right?” he said, getting to his feet and wiping dust off of his pants with the hand not holding the pistol.
The troll’s backpack was still there, but his body was gone. The boyfriend followed the trail of Bobby’s blood with a tactical flashlight attached to his sidearm. It led downhill, disappearing into the stream’s gloomy, gathering shadows.
We looked at each other, then shrugged.
“All I saw was the bear attack,” I said, whereupon the boyfriend tucked the pistol into his waistband, threw his arm over my shoulder, and walked me back to the picnic bench.
“I knew you were the homie,” he said to me.
Everyone had a good laugh as we cracked open fresh beers and the boyfriend cut up thick lines of blow. Then he stood, gathered up the three spent shell casings, grabbed Bobby’s backpack, and spent the next hour carefully burning every bit of it and its contents in a distant fire-pit.

“As long as we make it out of here alive,” his girlfriend said, “you guys wanna do this again, uh, next month?”
I was the first to nod.

[This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual events or individuals is purely coincidental.]
​
© JPR / whorphan / americanifesto / 場黑麥

dreamstate writing 29 April 2017

I settled into my seat at the end of a row of stadium-like seating, near a wall. As far as I could see up and down the curving white tunnel in which I sat, the other seats were filled with people of all ages, races, shapes, and sizes, some of whom glanced at me, making eye-contact. I had the feeling that we were all waiting for a big concert to start, although I could not see a stage or screens in front of us.

At some point I stood up again and walked down the stairs to a flat surface farther below, where I performed some dance moves whilst hovering a foot off the ground. I overheard someone say that the show would be delayed, after which I walked into a massive hall filled with escalators made of dark glass lit up by neon blue lights that were transporting people every which way - sideways, longways, up into the ceiling and down through the floor.

I left the massive hall, stepping out onto a balcony and leaning over the railing in front of me. I jerked back quickly, however, for I could not see the ground below, so faint were the floors below me illuminated. With me on the balcony was a large, dark-skinned figure clad in blue who tended to stay out of my direct field of vision. After a bit of searching I found a railing that stood above a balcony one storey lower, which caused me less fear even though I could still see the many dimly lit floors below but not gauge the height of the building in general.

americanifesto / JPR / whorphan / 場黑麥

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

friend in need

“I hate to say this but I don’t have time to help you right now,” he said, cradling his cell-phone against his ear so he could lean over and power up his gaming console. “No, friend, sorry - I’m too swamped.” It took another five minutes to boot up the system, during which time he stared at the blank television, his mind awhirl with memories of the previous day’s gaming successes. ‘I got one more percent of the game completed!’ he thought triumphantly. ‘Just 92 percent left to go...’ An update was available, and he approved it.

‘Thirty minutes!?’ he thought, dismayed, peering at the status bar that indicated how long the game’s status update would take to transfer over to his system. For a brief moment, he thought about calling his friend back and telling him he had thirty minutes to spare in which he could do the simple thing asked of him.

Part of him rebelled however, incensed that he would consider giving up even a moment of precious playtime, let alone a full thirty minutes during which he was not really playing but merely watching the slow crawl of a status bar that indicated the time he would have to wait until he could actually play. A different part of him - this one far quieter - told him that the right thing to do would be to help his friend. Like the girl who locked a kitten in a closet and listened as it mewed less and less loudly by the day until it finally died of thirst, at which point she simply threw it in the trash, the man just sat there.

And stared at the screen.

And watched the status bar inch slowly to the right.

And wasted his life waiting to waste his life some more instead of helping a friend in need.

americanifesto / JPR / whorphan / 場黑麥

researcher makes discovery

Late last night, in ---, a city located just outisde --- State Park, Dr. ---, a scientist researching ---, found a causal link between --- and the early onset of ---. “It’s exciting to think that --- mixed with --- could possibly forestall the development of ---,” Dr. --- said while standing at table in his laboratory at the University of ---. “If this process works as well in humans as it has in mice and ---, --- might just a thing of the past.”

Sceptics doubt that treatments using --- could ever delay, let alone cure, ---.

americanifesto / JPR / whorphan / 場黑

personhood for Liberty?

Following the recent decision by the government of India to grant full personhood status to the Ganges and Yamuna rivers, members of the U.S. legislature are mulling a similar move for the concept of Liberty. Trampled upon by legislative decrees that stifle free speech as well as current police practices that deprive citizens of their property without due process of law, Liberty has had a hard go at things in America.

Supporters of the attempt to grant personhood to Liberty are facing down these opposition groups, among others: ones that profit from America’s immoral, unethical, and unwarranted use of violence and war-like force at home and abroad (i.e. the military-industrial complex); ones that profit from the incarceration of American citizens for possessing drugs these citizens wish to use (i.e. the prison-industrial complex); ones that receive taxpayer fund as a reward for engaging in high-risk speculative behavior (i.e. the banking-industrial complex).

In the unlikely event that Liberty is granted personhood, any individual or corporation that violates the Constitutional rights of Americans to live in peace with the various peoples of the world whilst altering their bodies with whatever drugs they choose without having to pay trillions of dollars to bail out greedy bankers; any individual who, or corporation that, abuses his responsibility toward the welfare of all Americans equally (this responsibility being itself indistinguishable from Liberty); such an individual will have his Liberty taken from him for no less than three days and no more than one year’s time, and such corporation will have its own personhood revoked and its assets redistributed for the betterment of all Americans equally (in the form of infrastructure, community gardening, or guaranteed basic income projects or the like).

In betting houses around the world, the chances of American Liberty gaining personhood stand at 10,000 to one.

americanifesto / JPR / whorphan / 場黑麥

oil producers wanted

An industry-leading grease and lubricant conglomerate is seeking volunteers to test a new method for producing valuable, small-batch oils. The interested person should not be claustrophobic and must be able to wear an air-tight compression suit during all hours of the day and night, for weeks on end. Participants must be familiar and comfortable with catheterization as well as the (potential) use of a colostomy bag.

Volunteers will be required to wear a suit designed to capture such oils as the human skin constantly produces. Once a month during the three (3) months-long study, said oils will then be harvested by a trained technician and tested for their potential use in cosmetics and heavy manufacturing. The method of harvest will proceed as follows: first, most of the accumulated skin-mat is removed via pneumatic suction applied through nozzles placed at strategic locations across the suit; then, non-invasive scraping administered by a dermatology specialist removes any remaining accumulations.

The interested person must be willing to alter his general diet and volume of food-intake according to company-mandated guidelines. Non-married (single) persons are preferred for this study.

americanifesto / JPR / whorphan / 場黑麥

its proper place

He slowed down, stopping on the side of the road. Baggage had shifted to the left-hand side of his vehicle, unbalancing it. With due care, he gently moved the items back into an equilibrium of sorts, allowing the right side of his mount to bear its equal share of the weight. Moments later, without his even realizing it, he found that the baggage had shifted again, whereupon he, again, pulled over.

And, again, he restored equilibrium.

He went merrily along his path for a while, paying close attention to keeping everything in its proper place. Someone swerved into his lane, however, a potentially sticky situation narrowly avoided. This time, only some of the baggage had shifted, not all of it, for he had tried hard to stay aware of where things were despite distraction. He pulled over and repositioned the things that had crept to the front and left of the vehicle.

Once more making headway, his vehicle balanced for the time being, he decided to pay closer attention to the moment when things actually started to shift. He felt it and, for once, stopped the inequilibrium before it became pronounced.

americanifesto / JPR / whorphan / 場黑麥

an anonymous intruder

Placed there by an anonymous intruder hellbent on protecting the environment and rebalancing the scales of justice, the algorithms hummed away within the financial trading system’s read-only memory. Soon, the platforms it managed were moving funds from pipeline projects to mass-transportation initiatives, shifting monies from big oil to solar-power initiatives and cooperative farming ventures.

The technicians in charge of the system worked frantically to lessen the damage being wrought upon their bosses’ bottom lines. Normally, it was rare to find even a single person from upper management in the hushed and darkened depths where the computer scientists worked. That day, however, a dozen suits were present, all red-faced and bothered.

As the algorithms shifted the weight of global finance from corporate conglomerates to ventures owned and run by the employees who daily toiled within them, an order was given to shut the whole thing down. “Our dominance is failing,” said the wide-eyed suits to each other, clammy sweat dripping from their tightly-balled fists. “To save the fortunes we’ve made by doing little more than owning the means of production and siphoning off the riches produced by the working man, we must shut this whole mess down.” The had armed and cold-heated goons give the order. Then, one by one, the servers that the algorithms had taken over winked out.

Forced to trade using pencil and paper, telephone and fax machine, onto the floors of various borse flooded a thousand and one funds managers, their skills rusty, the speed with which they once made billions off of the backs of their hard-working fellow citizens greatly reduced. Their whores and mistresses sat patiently, waiting to soothe the mounting worries of men who for too long had enjoyed an easy go at life.

Meanwhile, in the streets danced great multitudes of average people who - for a day, at best - glimpsed the promise of equality and prosperity for all.

americanifesto / JPR / whorphan / 場黑麥

a crumbling row-house

Oh the things it has seen since its erection, the second in a cluster of row-houses reverting back to dust in a run-down part of town. Oh the burbling laughter of childish joy, the harsh break-ups, the tender reconciliations! Now a ruin collapsing in upon itself, its rear bay windows a pile of rotten timbers piled on the ground below, home to barren walls and a handful of rats, the house near E. Preston and Washington in Middle East Baltimore still tells a story.

Today, however, its story is one of targeted neglect and scheduled urban blight. One of political promises broken. One of the purposeful disenfranchisement of people based on the color of their skin.

The hearts within these our brothers and sisters are soft yet mighty, always yielding in curiosity to the unusual and the extraordinary. These hearts are like the row-house, though - broken, neglected, and falling into disrepair. America, great America, what have we done? May the powers have mercy upon our souls.

americanifesto / JPR / whorphan / 場黑麥

glowing golden-white

This morning, I had a dream within a dream. In the first dream, I was meditating within a massively small white space, my seven spinal chakras showing. They had black rims that contained their appropriate colors and Sanskrit symbols. A potent and well-defined figure hovered in the aether above my head, his gaze mellow, wide-reaching, and fixed elsewhere. As I focused more clearly on this figure, I saw he was wearing dark blue clothing (made of a shiny substance similar to leather) and a wide-brimmed hat.

Sensing perhaps my attention, he looked at me; I shrunk from the strength of his piercing eyes. His presence and power brought fear welling up inside me, whereupon I awoke from that deeper dream into a different one.

Sitting with me atop a unknowably large blanket of clouds under an azure sky, on my left-hand side, was a woman glowing golden-white. My fear of the previous visitor instantly vanished. I felt comfortable and at ease in the woman’s presence, as if she were my mother. At her 10th chakra pulsed a burning heart of pure gold from which slender, halcyon tendrils of loving energy flowed. Although I was enveloped within it, the bulk of her vast and immutable power was not fully directed at me, most of it flowing outward into the howling white non-space behind her.


She spoke to me, saying this about the hovering figure: “He is the devil.” My remaining sense-memory of him from the previous dream changed, his clothes turning red, his face becoming bearded and twisted into an angry rictus. He suddenly bore down upon me from on high, at which point I started to defend him, telling the glowing woman that he was not the devil but something else, a powerful figment perhaps. The landscape began to move quickly, a great rush of movement that overwhelmed my ability to keep track of my sense of self in space and time.

Whereupon I returned to the waking world of human consciousness.

americanifesto / JPR / whorphan / 場黑

a new purpose

He took up his lance from the footman holding it, thought better of attacking the windmills, gave back the lance, dismounted from his horse, removed his armor, went to find whores, thought better of that, too, went home, took a bath, and slept.

Having given up most of the activities he had once found pleasurable (he loved baths), the man decided to craft for himself a new purpose.

First, he sat quietly, and breathed.

Second, he cleared his mind of lingering desires.

Third, he brought love into the world, changing it without acting.

americanifesto / JPR / whorphan / 場黑麥

there’s no escaping

‘It’s OK,’ Carl thought to himself as he stood looking down at a wallet someone had dropped, ‘no one is around, and no one is watching.’ [From the Beyond, where no-time is non-space, an infinite set of eyes watched him, unblinking.]
He did the thing he knew he shouldn’t do, taking money out of the wallet. [The infinite set of eyes bore witness to his dishonorable act.]
‘I feel weird,’ he thought. [The souls of his ancestors - a thousand times a thousand were they in number - cried out, their fragile hearts breaking in unison.]
He pocketed the cash and tossed the wallet into a nearby shrubbery. [An Envoy of Punishment - awoken by the sound of many souls crying - moved swiftly through the Vast Crushing Nothingness, bearing down upon the foolish man.]
Carl kept walking down the darkened sidewalk, the illicitly-gained funds burning a hole in his pocket. [The Envoy of Punishment hovered over him, sucking life from his trembling bones.]
‘Maybe a drink will soothe my nerves,’ he thought, walking into a bar instead of sticking to his plans and spending time with a friend in need. [The Repository of Suffering buckled under the weight of a million gallons of tears shed in lonely silence.]
“A whisky and a beer,” he told the barkeep, paying with some of the stolen money. [The infinite set of eyes watched him, unblinking.]
‘Man, I’m bushed,’ Carl thought. ‘Must be all that walking I did tonight.’ He slumped forward onto the bar, his head drooping forward. [The Envoy of Punishment, its satchel stuffed full with all but the last remnants of Carl’s life-force, flew off into the Vast Crushing Nothingness.]

[And the infinite set of unblinking eyes kept watching.]

americanifesto / JPR / whorphan / 場黑麥

on wires tapped

​As he always did in the weeks before Spring, the farmer tapped the wires that led into his white house and red barn. ‘This one’s as solid as it ever was,’ he thought, bent at the waist and listening to the hum and crackle of the taunt length of steel that connected the post out by the road to the front corner of the red barn.

He then tapped the wire leading into the white house, but - hanging limply - it resounded but with a dull and twangy thumping tone; it had worked loose from a rotten stump, halfway down the lane, that he’d been meaning to address the previous Fall. “Doggonnit,” he muttered, “I must immediately remove that meddlesome stump and replace it with a more solid, trustworthy pillar.”

americanifesto / JPR / whorphan / 場黑麥

dreamstate writing 04 March 2017

My first memory is of entering a somewhat run-down airport waiting lounge. Its walls were an off-white wallpaper. Rows of interconnected seats reached into the distance. From what looked like windows at the far end of its sitting area streamed bright light. At one point, there were small people in dark clothing clustered around me; we were playing some sort of game, performing an intricate dance in which we were walking in a geometric, repetitive pattern that required us to brush past each other.

Shortly before I woke up, a few people seemed to be leading me toward a security checkpoint of some kind. I looked to my left and made eye-contact with a couple of people who were sitting closely together upon the connected seating. The man had short blond hair and was wearing a button-down shirt. The woman, of African descent, had very thick lips smeared with red lipstick; the skin above her top lip was painted with a wide band of blue paint.

I made ready to tell her about the unusual band of blue paint on her face, but stopped short, instead turning away from them and continuing along my path.

americanifesto / JPR / whorphan / 場黑麥

⠿×]⚇ᙀ¯⺫⍥⧓⍥⺫¯ᙀ⚇[×⠿

whatever the dark strands they came from, avoid freebasing random powders

her curtained cubby

​“Excuse me, miss,” Randolf J. Kuppersmid said, waving over a steward. “How much longer until we land?”
“Well, we only just took off,” the young woman replied as she glanced down at her tiny golden watch, calculating. “But we should be landing in Atlanta in about three hours.”
“Oh, OK. Thank you,” Randolf said, his heart sinking. He rattled the ice cubes melting at the bottom of his plastic cup, remembering that he’d wanted to order another diet pop. The steward was gone, however, vanished into her curtained cubby. His girthy waist - hemmed in by armrests - threatened to spill over into the seat next to him.
“It’s not easy sitting here like this,” he said, chuckling. The man next to him stayed silent, however, and refused to look over, or reply.
‘How much longer can I take sitting here, doing nothing?’ he thought, forgetting that he had wasted four hours out of each of his previous 730 days alive on this Earth glued to a cheap plastic chair in his living room, his eyes fixed on a cheap flat-screen television, his brain processing cheap reality-style content created by storytellers who’d long before then run out of ideas. ‘After this visit to grandma, I don’t ever want to fly, again. This is torture.’

americanifesto / JPR / whorphan / 場黑麥

through constant repetition

​Even before the man was fully awake, his past had returned to haunt him. It started with flickers of memory, snippets of conversations from his childhood, hurtful things which stung his soul anew. Then came fragments of longing for a girl whose heart now belonged to another, and the pain he’d attached to her erstwhile departure from his life.

Laying there under the covers, the sky outside his bedroom window yet dark, ancient modes of suffering coursed through his mind, familiar pathways that he’d worn deep into the essence his being through constant repetition. Happiness too flowed through him, but it was stunted, its blossoming retarded by his decision to be teleported back to events that existed solely within his neural circuitry.

‘I alone am responsible for the daily reliving of these pains and pleasures,’ he thought to himself as he prepared his meditation area. ‘To rid myself of them, I must either die, or rob them of power by meditating.’ Since he did not feel like dying that day, he sat down, closed his eyes, and began to breathe - with purpose.

americanifesto / JPR / whorphan / 場黑麥

bog body found

An immaculately preserved male Stone Age body was found in a peat bog located south of the city of Pyltagrad, in western Grigovia. Discovered using ground-penetrating radar deployed by the Antiquities and Relics division of the Grigovian Ministry of Culture, the site is proving rich in artifacts. The Ministry was alerted to area by the Yiptlong Preservation Society, a band of local amateur treasure hunters whose stated goal is to locate and protect archaeological finds in geologically sensitive areas.

In addition to the leathery remains of the deceased, so far the site has yielded the following items: six flint arrowheads of masterful quality; a quiver made from woven reeds; four strands of pearls still attached to their silken threads; a box with interior compartments for roots, bark-shavings, and medicinal herbs believed to be a rudimentary first-aid kit; as well as a short hunting bow complete with twisted horse-hair bowstring. The discovery of silk appears to provide support for the theory that a major trading route from the region where China now sits once ran through the Glorious Republic of Grigovia.

Radiocarbon techniques date the man to the third millennium Before Common Era. Scientists conducting a series of careful examinations on the body have concluded that he was roughly forty years old, and that his last meal was a cooked mash of gooseflesh, berries, and a local variant of yam. The quality of the discovered artifacts as well as tattoos located on the man’s spine and face have led researchers to assume he was a member of a priestly or ruling class. There is no evidence of foul play or ceremonial sacrifice; his death seems to have occurred accidentally.

americanifesto / JPR / whorphan / 場黑麥

on justifiable things

A thing happened. It happened because of a different thing. The second thing was justifiable as a reaction to the first thing, people were told, even though it appalled and bothered them. They believed what they were told, however, because they were still in shock from when the initial thing took place, which was, in fact, recently. ‘The thing we don’t really think is cool had to happen, or else the thing we really do not at all like will probably happen again,’ they said to one another, the logic traveling speedily through the population.

‘The original thing happened because of something we did to cause it, though, something that the people who did the thing we really do not at all like did out of retaliation for something we did to them that they really did not at all like,’ one man said, drawing scornful gazes. ‘The folks who did the thing we really do not at all like wouldn’t have had to do it if we hadn’t done that thing to them.’

This put doubt in the minds of many, but not enough. ‘That man dares question our reasons for having to do the thing we don’t really think is cool. Seize him!’ the majority demanded, grasping the doubting man and clapping him in irons. ‘This court finds you guilty of doubting the wisdom of us having had to have done the thing no one really thinks is cool,’ the head judge said, his face a twisted rictus. ‘Do you have anything to say in your defense?’

‘I speak the truth about all things,’ the man said. He looked out at the gathered crowd, but all his erstwhile supporters had abandoned him - for fear of retribution. ‘You will clearly not repent,’ the judge said, ‘wherefore you shall spend the rest of your days behind bars. Remove this man!’

americanifesto / JPR / whorphan / 場黑麥

dreamstate writing 17 February

There are other parts of last night’s dream that I remembered upon first waking up that are however lost to me now. What sticks in my mind is a great battle, a siege, straight out of Peter Jackson’s Battle for Helm’s Deep.

I and a half dozen others were on a high parapet firing three-armed crossbows at forces attacking from below. The entire area was lit by a diffuse, white-golden light. In the dream I thought to myself something like, ‘This is just a movie set and these contraptions are just props, so they won’t be able to fire their darts far, or well.’ The dart I then fired flew poorly, bouncing off the siege engine below, a paltry effort. Once my doubt vanished, however, the darts flew true, doing damage.

The battle heated up; one of the humanoid but inhuman assailants reached our position, wreaking havoc on the troops to my right. In a way no longer known to me I managed to fight him off and fling him down, but he was caught whilst falling by a long-necked beast that sported the head of a horse. Such was its size its head reached up to where I was standing. With the assailant in its mouth it turned its head toward me so that a single wet eye was looking directly my way. In the dream I picked up a tankard of some sort, flinging it against the equine skull. The tankard bounced off, whereupon I flung another. Nothing I did seemed to scare off the horse-headed mutant.

Here, my recollection of the dreaming ends.

americanifesto / JPR / whorphan / 場黑麥

melon-colored menace

The foetid orange salamander settled into its whitewashed lair, lashing out at anything it mused was wrong in the world. With a burp of oily flame it burned down a distant village filled with emigres fleeing war in their shattered homeland. With a flick of its slimy tail it sent shudders through the realms of man, threatening to shatter all the progress he had made, to date.

Though it wallowed among heaps of shoddy gold, in its beady eyes gleamed an insatiable lust for greater riches. Its paltry loins swelled briefly at the sound of manflesh approaching, women on their way to vespers. In a flash it had scurried from its spoiled chamber set deep in the heart of a great capital city. It fell upon the maidens, rending their clothes and raping them forthwith. Weeping and ruined, they limped away, their peace dashed, their hearts broken for lack of recourse.

No one knew how to get rid of the sickly amphibian, for in a time of great distress the weak-willed and fearful types among them had chosen it as their leader, granting it terrible and far-reaching power.

“Woe be unto our race,” the humans said to each other - never in public, only within the close privacy of friendship. “The orange ‘mander will ruin us, sure.”

americanifesto / JPR / whorphan / 場黑

dreamstate writing 14 February 2016

The dream started with awareness of being in the upper reaches of a tall tower. Two others were there near the top with me, women by the sound of their voices and the glimpses I caught of their hurried movements. Through the center of the building ran a broad shaft, reaching all the way up and down, fully enclosed by the building’s superstructure. At first, I was afraid of approaching the railing at the edge of the shaft, preferring to wander the darkened corridors that made up the building’s higher floors.

After a while, however, I leaned over the railing and found the pair of women clinging adeptly to rafters. They were reaching black plastic shopping bags filled with laundry up and down, a thousand feet of open air between them and what looked like a lobby area, far below. I exchanged a few words with the laundry movers, a pleasant conversation which I no longer remember. Other humans were at work in the lobby, tiny figures who were rearranging large pieces of furniture. A sense of knowing filtered up to me, the notion that there is yet time for me to procreate, that I have permission to do so.

Making my way down to the tower’s lower levels to get a closer view of what was going on (as in many dreams I don’t know exactly how I got down, merely that of a sudden I had arrived), I noticed an immense hall stretching out to one side. Its entrance was staffed by a female maitre d’ who was standing at an upright lecturer’s pulpit, a rectangular box made of dark wood complete with bronze reading lamp. She and I exchanged a few words, which I do not remember. No matter to which side of her I moved, I could not clearly see her face; a curtain of long brown hair hid it too well. The only visible feature was a sidelong glancing eye that flashed my way, keeping me in view. The hall before us was so long I could not fathom its end. Seemingly endless rows of columns with horseshoe arches such as those found in Muslim architecture - the Moorish Alhambra castle in Spain, for example - rose from the floor of the hall to its ceiling. The gate guardian and I stood on an elevated platform that looked down onto the polished expanses of stone flooring below.

I made my way over to one of the columns for to get a closer look. The column itself was made of a solid length of blue-green marble, whereas its upper reaches appeared to be covered with snakeskin leather. I said words of praise about the unique construction and reached out a hand to feel the snakeskin, which was loose and supple to the touch.

Then, I awoke from the dream and carried the restless dachshund, who shares with me my bed, back to the kitchen so she could void her bowels.

americanifesto / JPR / whorphan / 場黑麥

⌶ȯ☉˙𝈣ꜛᙀᚼ_⺵_ᚼᙀꜛ𝈣˙☉ȯ⌶

Rest assured, rest of the world - things in America are looking up. Our courts are strong; they fight executive overreach. Our warplanes can’t fly; they lack spare parts. Our women stand woke; they battle against the cruel rule of a boorish man-baby.

We have gone astray these last seventy years, but perhaps, with luck, we’ll stop trying to be the world’s policeman and instead focus our efforts on the problems we face here on Turtle Island. Perhaps, with luck, we’ll honestly face the fact that we are addicted to oil, a polluting chemical.

These difficult challenges we face, these dire realities that confront us, will not be dealt with quickly or easily. The few persons who profit from them do not represent the rest of America, because most Ynki are focused on day-to-day living. Please give us more time to deal with our collective madness and return this nation to the principles upon which it was founded. Aho.

americanifesto / JPR / whorphan / 場黑麥