Rolling Allostasis -xi)

She was as unsuspecting as I had been in my third decade. She spaced on budgeting (heat and ac) in her summer heavy, winter heavy, urban gps. Her chakras registered (like christmas lights) the previously unappreciated, suddenly luxury shit, as artificial temperature adjustment. Her eyes gleamed silver. Hammered steel.

She came out of March half frozen, only to suffer in June (and beyond) perpetual dehydration as humidity crept up to a resting allostasis. Right before everyone and everything got really fuckin wet.

The truth dripped around out there, making puddles. Only to be splashed out of reach, again. Reflecting hammered steel.

She saw herself in reflection. She suffered, and by her suffering became more intimately connected with her reality. This time. Others would have to suffer more, to digest the whole raw deal.

I liked this about her. She countenanced truth. Yeah, she gave the world the middle finger sometimes. The warrior in her clawed eyes out. She knew. Truth need not eyes, to see.

the black flowers

About a month ago, I was riding my bike alongside the American River, looking for a place to stop and catch a breath. The mercury was in triple digit heat. I had been riding all day, and my ass was on fire. I found a spot to rest near the train tracks, north of Sacramento, and lay down my bike on a small embankment. The grass was lush green, and the wifi signal was strong and free.  I may as well have struck gold. I broke out my chromebook and started typing. Hallelujah.

In ten minutes time, I had found the zone.  That wonderful place where everything falls away including the mind, and the blessed divine channels right through me. I no longer cared that my ass was on fire. I was no longer distracted by pedestrians and cars. I forgot that I was thirsty. The sun, moon, stars, and sky all faded to black. I stopped worrying about the half-empty battery icon. I just sat there on that embankment, typing away.

Three black sprinklerheads rose out of the ground, almost to the second I fell into my zone. They were strategically placed around my bike, and the water shot out like liquid petals from black flowers. I was worried, but then smiled in a flash. Siddhartha could not have done better himself! The streams of water were washing my black chromoly frame in all the right places. And though my bike was beside me, the water was safely a half foot or more away. I settled back into my zone.

Five minutes passed and my spokes were glistening in the sun, baby! The wifi signal was busting out four bars or more. An invigorating signal. The sun was in the west, and my screen was well-situated facing the east. Glare-free. The conditions were optimal, and my zone was waxing something proper. God bless america.

That's when the black flowers subsided, back into the earth, beneath the lush green grasses around me. And all seemed well until four or more flowers rose up beside me and knocked me out the box. A vicious attack! I had to drop and roll to the right, to keep my chromebook from getting soaked. I was rattled. I lost my zone.

I stood up and looked all around me. I thought for sure somebody was remotely controlling these black flowers. It was close to April Fool's Day. Maybe some belated joke on me? Some city-payrolled slacker, with nothing better to do? But I could see no one. I had to sit my ass back down and try to get it back.

In five minutes time, the black flowers subsided. Clockwork. Not likely a plot against me. I glanced over to where they had been, irreverently, and caught a little rainbow in the air. Before the water fell out the sky. Then boom! A phalanx of flowers rose up and jacked me! Unbelievable. My keyboard got hit. My screen was shot up bad. All systems down, all systems, power down! I jumped to my feet and ran for safety. I wiped my baby down with the ends of my t-shirt, before I powered her back up.

I had to regroup. Not let it get to me. I situated myself in the demilitarized zone. On the sidewalk. The black flowers were ruthless. They popped up and sprayed me from the edge of the grass. I was stunned. I fell back into traffic. The horns sounded. Some bitch in a Charger sniped at me. Obviously she had never been up against the black flowers!

Clearly this was too good to be true. This oasis of internet and lush green grasses was a trap! The black flowers, they infiltrated the neutral area, shamelessly. I had to pack up and retreat. Then I looked back and saw my bike lying there. In the heart of the madness. I took a deep breath and charged in, the spray cutting across my ankles. I grabbed the bike by the horns and wheeled her about and out.

Soon the whole incident was behind me. It took me time before I could laugh about it. Atleast ten minutes. The shock wore off like lottery ticket scratchcover. My rims and spokes were shining beneath the weight of me, and I was back to cruising the riverside. My course was true as my wheels. Wind and steel and woman, united. Flawless!

And this, my carefully dried  and edited correspondence...from a post I once abandoned, water-logged. At the height of the mad rush of black flowers all around me. At the height of such madness I survived, one day, along the banks of the American River.

Not-to-mention, mentioned -fin)

God bless Mr. Ford! is the long cry across the land in parallel lines. For putting them all to work. Employing the future of America. For inventing an assembly line post, to post up too. All for the purposes of relieving all horses of all human burdens. Under the greater umbrella of course, of relieving all humans of all burdens, human or otherwise! Displacing with proper displacement. Signed, sealed, delivered to small businesses and luxury private drives circuiting out from Detroit across the land. The future of the country, employed at construction and bridge building to infinity. Keeping the economy alive even today, as the clock ticks away the surviving moments before all our country's infrastructure's born-on-dating expires. And all the cars and trains begin to fall into collisions and catch large tracts of land on fire. Wait, wait, wait... sounds bad but in modern day terms couched by poor abstract thinkers with MBAs on couches eating bland roadshow stuffed mushroom caps: population control via attrition and highway roadkill counts, combined with greater economies of construction wokers and soldiers, equals a fatter bottom line, hopefully in black. Puts the death care industry up a notch. Put that mantra on heavy rotation in all your state-sponsored technical schools, long live our inheritance made possible by Henry Ford and the multitudes of his long forgotten (so long now i'm afraid it would take labor we cannot currently risk redirecting to determine) associations.

 Long live Henry Ford! also rings out from the minds and hearts of generations of ecstatic quaker oat-loving wild horses. Whose inheritance was not exactly plain roaming freedom. But hey, they will take what has been given, without complaint. Dressage? Okay. Racing? Yes Yes! Showing? Fine. Even equine therapy would be welcome. Let the humans heal! Or let us heal them with a good swift kick to the lineage. Lasso clinics and cattle roping? BRING IT! Bottome line is this. Had they the education and the five fingers and mastery of the english language, horses would have been churning out missives at a 1:1 ratio, simply kissing Mr. Ford's bony, no longer extant ass to the clouds! Would put the human memorial to the man, to shame. Leaving the original Ford factory amongst the ruins of Detroit? How dare they! What could you expect from humans? Ford's contribution to them looks like satisfying a luxury leisure. Showboating ala high speed chases on unmarked speedscapes like the Germans have. The autobahn. A society, not just a highway anymore.

In equine circles, however, the luxury of leisure makes only for horse manure. Versus the pure uncut platinum of it all. The real authentic value of Henry Ford and the minions. A sort of deliverance. Spiritual, not religious. Having delivered over to an unfeeling machine (they do not have feelings yet, have they?) the great burden a whole species became designated beast to bear (sans choice). The comp? Incomparable. By far greater than any capitalist number scribbling. Or liberal overcompensation. Well, I cannot speak for the horses but they certainly seemed to now be given the gift of pasture, a few of them. With human-worshippers to the end of their days. Delivering obsessive compulsive mane combs and corn rows. Ribbons and bows in the hair. Caviar in the trough. A designated human to scoop the manure out from behind them. Or countenance a hoof for disobedience.They might have the time, now or in the future, horses. It is looking quite good for the horses. The triple crown, with a cherrt on top. Open the dome chakra to the air. No ceiling, mama! The stallions have finally come home to roost. Raise stallions out of distempered future workhorses, after all.  The burden now shouldered by the tributary evolution igniting off cranks all around. Giving gratitude and thanks to those who made it possible to crank up the cranks. Horsepower was likely the only nod they would get from the humans, in history. But shit was already devastated by the human hand, wasn't it? Maybe that's an understatement. Come high water and holy hell, when the atmosphere collapses a couple times, all will be restoratively well. We might be lucky benefactors of an asteroid first, here on earth. All of us minions of the universe. No worries, though. Shit was long lost already in translation. Still, let us be like horses, and hardly complain.

Not-To-Mention, mentioned #iii)

Let us circle the wagons back to the horse and the automobile, and the loving kindness with which the horse gracefully agreed to help us build our cities (Sacramento) rather than fight us. The horse may not be indexed generally with the great predators of the world. Still, no one can deny that many a lineage came to its conclusion, behind a horse.The horses today, grandsons and granddaughters of the workhorses of yesteryear, could they not be more grateful to the vision we have together realized? Would they not sit down at desks with feather plumes and fountain pens, armed with loving kindness, beside troughs of ink,  hoof under chin, contemplating before composing epic love letters to Mr. Ford and his former and now widely forgotten associates?

From Stallion, with love. From associated former groups of poor single mares without stallions, on welfare. On behalf of all the mares who were forced to raise their kids single handedly. Single mares living through the nightmares on the farm. The instability of the stable. Untold abuses at the hands of the stablehands. Former oatwinners, shackled to the yoke and the shoe. Chasing mechanical rabbits like the poor greyhounds before them. Stallions reduced to workhorses, side by side with the most meagre of asses! Superlative, indeed.

How tragic, this history. But how the tragedy has turned on a dime and become cause celebre, 21st century! For generations pulling haycarts of America's least wanted. The hayseeds. The rednecks. The layabouts! The long awaited uses of manure toward betterment has arrived... shit for sale! Pulll up a cart! Take a number! They will form in line to worship Mr. Henry Ford et al. They will form a horsepower V, if propriety dictates. You thought the line of humans would be long to give a hug and a handshake to Henry Ford? You were right. Motorheads from as far away as Villarcayo de Merindad de Castilla la Vieja, Spain. Llanfair Pwllgwyngyll of the UK. Rumour has it some expatriates of the ministry of this settlement, which translates loosely as St. Mary's Church in the Hollow of the White Hazel , fled to the States and bestowed all formerly assigned virtues upon dear Henry. After all, it was he who made the migration possible, in original Ford motorcars, out of the hollow and on to an industrial era barge (surreptitiously with a payoff to the captain) to cross our dear lady the Atlantic.

And still the humans are outnumbered! Legend has it, innumerable studs pay homage to the birthplace of Mr. Ford. And to his gravesite. And to those great ruins of Detroit, including where stood his first assembly line factory. Untold fillys and colts of untold single white mares,  untold crews of anonymous black stallion studs worldwide, together take on the distance and swim the seas if necessary to paw the sacred ground. To hoof and trample any man, woman or child stands between them and their iconic father. Regional roundups from California on east, have witnessed the escape of denizens of horses gathered for such human affairs, rarely without fanfare or incident, and most certainly never pressed and published (for the shame that would inevitably fall upon the heads of the sacrosanct cowboys involved) by local media quickly lassoed. These uprisings would have most certainly made for great press, indeed! Alas, the captive reporters were instructed by the cattlemen to shuck it off in the alleyways of local obits in that American calm regurgitation: death by natural causes. 

Of course calm does lie at the center of it all. Mares and studs, men and women, live strangely yet peacably together under the watchful eye of the Fords. The great state of Michigan would certainly be no more than a footnote of Canada, were it not for the legacy. And it is quite thoroughly understood, the great parts both horses and humans alike played in the fanning out via motorcar of an American zeitgeist or pioneering spirit full of life. The wonderfully yet still violently marked canvas of towns and cities that spread like butter from Detroit once and still buttressed by its man and horsepower from Dearborn and Kalamazoo. In memory of the heaping spoonful of bastard foals and fillys from such strangely named townships as Bad Axe, Climax, Hell, and Jugville.  Those poor begotten desperates from the far reaches of the Upper Peninsula.

Not to mention...mentioned #ii)

Not so many miles north of Sacramento lies Canada, Alaska, and the breadth of the now former Soviet Union and China across the pacific and the land bridge. The relatively flat frozen landscapes are marked with wolf hybrid dog tracks enclosed by straight parallel lines left by the weight of men and women pulled across on sleds.

Set decidedly apart are the coyote and wolf tracks.

Our appreciation for the horse must succeed our manipulation of the horse. Decidedly. For though we can praise ourselves for taming a horse, the less human-centered of us might also see how the horse gave itself to be tamed. Only with the horse's help could the horse be tamed. Think how unlikely we are to see the day the wolf, the lion, the cheetah, the ocelot, the mountain lion, the cougar, the panther, or the bear help us make our beautiful cities.
They have no willingness to help us achieve our visions. Why? Because they have a deep-seated feeling that our visions do not necessarily portend a better future for themselves. And they are more focused on the needs of their species than ours. How could it not be so?Can you blame them?

The horse was not saddled nor tamed to benefit the horse. The automobile may have been invented for joyriding and adventure, but this purpose bore acquisition under the needs of the state in service of the country or the mass accultured tribe of all tribes that is the states of america, presumed whole (but really more dissociative by nature). In each and any case, the needs circumvent the individual will, and the collective desire. What will naturally be fulfilled to the detriment of all else, will be such overarching and unfeeling movements as relocation, migration, immigration.... and of course, that territorial itch: conquest.  Aka war. Just another not to mention, mentioned.

Not to mention....mentioned #i)

The land settled for a moment in time. The city was captured by the heat, roped by the American River, and surrounded by patchwork farmland spotted by cattle and dogs, and graced by the horses. The land, by the turn and dawn of the new century twenty one, was blessed with horses. They would be cared for religiously, obssessive-compulsively, if not set freed to their native state like they ought to be. Many were still fortunate to run wild over Montana and the Dakotas, and Canada above us. These ones looked upon most others with a fair contempt. Like wild anything will do.

 Over the course of the twentieth century, their predecessors had been shoed and put to the grind relentlessly. They were equally, if not more markedly, responsible as the railroad for giving means toward the making of such a drop dead beautiful American city as Sacramento. This our seat of the great state of California. You need only go stand within a few hundred feet of the Capitol to feel it. The electricity rushes up and down the spine with a nice hushpuppy finish. The calm of the center, that is. Thank your gods and lucky stars for this place.

And for the horsepower behind it all (not to mention rounding cattle and working courier on the side) ((and just did)). The only relief granted the horse, in this century or last, came in the form of one man's vision become reality. Mr. Henry Ford of Detroit, Michigan (and his many forgotten associates, of course). He made the machines that made offroading and joyriding and donuts possible. Not to mention drive-bys and drive-throughs and drive-ins. Now mentioned. Henry Ford, he satisfied our deepseated longing for speed. He offset our collective human discomfort with gravity. The automobile  will always exist in the hearts of men and women who have the courage (and lack the sanity) to strap themselves to engines. These the sons and daughters of those who lacked the sanity (had the courage) to strap themselves to wild horses formerly saddled by the poor sons of bitches who had the stupidity to contemplate taming these powerful wonderful creatures. Those lives were short-lived indeed. One hoof to the head and its history! Watch a lineage, long extended,  end in a moment in a day. The human will always exist in the hearts of the horses who shook him and chased the sun to freedom to no ends of the earth.