Series: Manual

A user’s guide to daily life. Bigger than the Bible (though much, much shorter).

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Posted on by Dave Bonta

How to make a face

This entry is part 21 of 39 in the series Manual

 


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Carve a bowl-shaped hollow at head height in a softwood tree and stand with your head in the hollow, embracing the trunk.

Stare into the darkness until it returns your gaze.

Accept no substitutes, neither love nor a mirror.

Remember: you’re not your reflection, much less the water in which it appears, but the dropped stone that shatters its composure.

Practice being smooth.

Learn laughter from schizophrenics, ecstacy from pornstars and outrage from politicians campaigning for office.

Shave your head so your face will have nowhere to hide.

When applying make-up, don’t forget to leave breathing holes!

Scowl at the moon. Don’t be its sycophant.

Your goal isn’t to make children laugh, but to make them love the façade.

When you feel yourself smiling for no reason, say: this is what happiness feels like.

Keep crayons and a paper bag handy for emergencies.

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How to sacrifice

This entry is part 22 of 39 in the series Manual

 


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Start with the cut that severs all connection with the earth.

Start slowly so the body can re-learn how to be whole after each amputation.

Start by living elsewhere, in another part of town. You’re better off not knowing.

Once you start giving things up, it becomes difficult to recapture the joy you felt in the presence of an adored partner or possession.

What happens to the worshipper who makes a gift of her worship and learns to do without?

What happens to service when the floor falls away and every salaam is infinite?

Let the child and the ram both go and place the knife on top of the stacked wood.

Too long have you thrilled to its militant conversation with the whetstone.

Let it go out like a phoenix, come back as a black wing.

Stay in the wilderness until someone calls you by a name you’ve never heard.

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How to take notes

This entry is part 23 of 39 in the series Manual

 


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Note-taking is a sacred duty. The first secretaries recorded the mandates of heaven, as divined from entrails or the cracks on tortoise shells.

Stay in character. Wear surgical gloves and carry a mute parrot under your hat.

Apprentice yourself to an earthworm, whose assiduous note-taking turns dirt into soil.

Don’t write what you hear—what good is that?—but how you hear it.

Never lift a pen from the page, even to dot an i, lest it become lost in lust for the flange of an ear.

Use unlined stationary and let your letters imbricate to better shed the sweat of your brow.

Staple your tongue to the moonlight until you learn how to shine with borrowed radiance.

The goal is become invisible, like a street photographer in the mountains.

Type rhythmically, in 4/4 time. Improvise a work song to make it go faster.

Have your way with semiquaver and crotchet, but beware the Franciscan Minims of the Perpetual Help of Mary.

Domesticate the hortatory: speak off a freshly laundered cuff, blank of ink.

Get speech recognition software and use it to transcribe whatever you babble in your sleep or in moments of ecstasy.

Invent the world’s most offhand shorthand, in which each letter is signified by a random mark.

There are certain sentences that can only be heard by note-takers. They lurk like puns, disguised as slips of the tongue, stammerings and clearings of the throat.

Notice everything.

Marry the slate to the chalk with a long claw’s screech.

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How to talk

This entry is part 24 of 39 in the series Manual

 


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Unless you’re in an opera, stop singing. There’s music in speech, true, but it comes from the ground rather than the sky.

Do not attempt to say everything at once. Take advantage of the fourth dimension: time.

Do worry syntax not about, out figure will it they.

Words are like moss: plants without roots that rely on each other for support.

Never think before you speak. That’s tantamount to speaking before you speak—rehearsing everything before an invariably appreciative audience of one.

To start a conversation, it’s not necessary to have something to say. Find someone who looks as if they have nothing to say and ask them about themselves.

True conversation requires listening. A basic audio surveillance bug can be purchased on Amazon for as little as $28.50.

When learning a new language, the second thing to master is the way pauses are filled, the way they say um and ah. Master the shapes and rhythms of the inarticulate and meaning will take care of itself.

The first thing to learn, of course, is how to curse, and the body language that goes along with that.

Only when you understand how to say what can’t be unsaid will the everyday rituals of giving and receiving, welcoming and taking leave, apologizing and expressing condolence begin to make sense.

To speak is to fabricate. This is why so often sociopaths are such charming speakers.

The god of silence, Harpocrates, never wore clothes.

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How to dig

This entry is part 25 of 39 in the series Manual

 


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Whatever you’re carrying, set it aside.

Can you dig it? If not, look for an area that is free of concrete, asphalt, paving bricks, or other impervious surfaces.

Digging need not involve a downward motion. Those who are buried may endeavor to dig themselves out.

When digging into your past or your subconscious, stay well above the high-tide mark.

An earthworm severed by a digging tool will only grow into two new earthworms if the split occurs between the 12th and 18th segments. The head will grow a new tail, the tail will grow a new head, and neither will need a spade to resume digging.

Dig quickly, before your excavation can cave in.

Dig slowly and take many breaks to enjoy the haunting music of the moles.

Don’t stop to fraternize with rocks. Daylight makes them dangerous. Boys have been known to turn them into weapons.

Don’t remove the top of a mountain unless the adjacent valley happens to be devoid of rich people.

The technical name for soil that has been forcibly relocated elsewhere is dirt.

If there’s nowhere else to put it, dirt can be eaten. Bake at 350 for two hours and season with vinegar.

Even in the softest soil, the human penis is a very inefficient digging tool, since it lacks a baculum. Try a trowel instead.

When digging through bedrock, resist the temptation to stretch out and take a nap.

If you’re in a hurry, there are many pre-existing excavations, such as old mine shafts and abandoned railway tunnels, that you can use to escape from the tyranny of the surface.

The deeper you go, the fewer options you have. Blindness is a mercy.

Don’t dig to plant or to unearth. Don’t dig for exercise. Just dig.

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How to sleep

This entry is part 26 of 39 in the series Manual

 


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Treat every night as if it were your last. Lay the alarm clock out for burial.

Practice uni-hemispheric sleep for greater productivity, for example while migrating.

Alternatively, take micro-naps every time you blink.

Build up enough fat stores to last till spring, waking only to chew off the calloused pads of your feet.

During REM sleep, mouth the lyrics to “Get Me Naked 2: Electric Boogaloo” by Minus the Bear. This will frighten off any intruders.

Keep a glass of water by your bedside to douse your partner or roommate at the first sound of snoring.

If you intend to sleep on a bus or a plane, be sure to bring pyjamas and a bootle of hooch.

Even if you wait for the sun to set before powering down, it’s still a good idea to close your eyes, as this usually triggers sleep mode.

Instead of sheep, count electric cars, which are quiet as cats and run on nothing but self-righteousness and coal.

As with tickling, the self-administered lullaby has little effect.

If all else fails, listen to the audio version of this manual.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

How to cast a shadow

This entry is part 27 of 39 in the series Manual

 


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Do not emit light yourself. You can glow, but only with radiance borrowed from elsewhere.

Take corporeal form. Acquire inertial mass.

Become at least partially diurnal, or failing that, inhabit a city that never sleeps.

Occlude.

Contrary to popular belief, it is not necessary to have a soul in order to have a shadow.

Maintain proximity with another body or surface, e.g. the ground, if you want visual evidence of your shadow.

Do not subsist mainly or entirely on a diet of blood.

If your shadow becomes inky, or disappears into Stygian darkness, you may need to dispense with the fedora and trenchcoat.

If you’re new to shadow-casting, work on getting a crisp, dark umbra before advancing to a penumbra and—for advanced students only—an antumbra.

To make your shadow dance, dance. To make your shadow talk, stand on a streambank.

Learn from your shadow. Broken glass won’t cut it, barbed wire can’t stop it, mud doesn’t stick.

Whether or not you have a dark side, you can do your part to keep the world from becoming a desert, blasted by the implacable light of reason.

At noon on the equator, your shadow will stretch into the earth like a vein of pyrite.

If your shadow is crossed by the shadow of a black cat, throw pepper over your shoulder.

Keep your friends close and your shadow closer.

Do not attempt to make love to your shadow. That’s been shown to cause amnesia in laboratory rats.

Don’t share your shadow with strangers. Ideally, everyone should cast his or her own.

If you see nothing, say nothing. The shadow government appreciates your cooperation.

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How to teem

This entry is part 28 of 39 in the series Manual

 


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When you go outside, bring the inside with you—a book, a magazine, a mobile phone—until the sky becomes the lid on a petri dish.

Let the Rapture play out in reverse: let everything you own ascend to a heaven of pure abstraction, leaving you only your solid bodies and the close proximity in which you find yourselves.

Alternatively, give all you have to the rich, who will know what to do with it so much better than you do.

It’s essential to be as poor as possible.

Surrender your personal space but not your personal agendas. You’re going for chaos, not collective action.

Avoid engagement with the natural world, to the extent that it persists in flaunting its pollen and its noisy card-shuffles of wings.

Pullulate. Flocculate. Agglomerate.

Whenever someone from another world appears among you, searching for proofs of his superiority, be sure to swarm in your best Brownian motion.

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How to fit in

This entry is part 29 of 39 in the series Manual

 


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Learn the stars. Everyone around here knows them by their first names.

Drink gin mixed with tears from the visitation room of a state penitentiary.

Who doesn’t enjoy the suffering of the despicable?

Tell jokes in which cats come to a violent end.

Communicate solely through IM and extemporized qasidas.

Wear clothes.

Start an office betting pool for the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition.

Stockpile dill pickles, ammunition and expurgated bibles.

Paint by the numbers.

When stopping to see a young lady who is not at home, the gentleman caller should leave a handsomely printed card.

Do things in groups that you would never do by yourself, e.g. burning a cross or playing Parcheesi.

Avoid unprocessed foods.

Have a conversion experience, but don’t let it stop you from being the same old asshole.

Read bestselling books, such as Business Secrets of the Zombies and The Joy Luck Sisterhood of the Traveling Hunger Games.

Two words: hand jive.

Two more words: accordion dirge.

When you meet the Buddha, capture the moment on your cellphone.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

How to sit

This entry is part 30 of 39 in the series Manual

 

Bend in two places. Ready yourself for the first origami fold.

When choosing a seat, remember: comfort is important. Don’t stint on the gluteal implants.

Get off your high horse and have it shot.

Sit on the earth like a bird brooding an enormous egg. Don’t be surprised if it takes a while to hatch.

Donate your wings to a soup kitchen for Wing Night Wednesday.

Why be normal? Straddle a chair backwards, you rebel you.

Wait until your number is called. Requests to be buried in a sitting position are usually honored.

Before accepting an endowed chair, make sure it isn’t too well endowed. That could get uncomfortable.

Seat belts are for cowards, and also for people riding in automobiles.

Rocking chairs are passé. Find a chair that throbs.

If the ground is rocky or uneven, simply levitate.

Let your legs atrophy like Daruma. Put the fun back in fundament.

Refuse to meditate for only three bowls of rice a day. Join a sit-down strike for some decent drugs.

Contrary to popular opinion, shutting the fuck up is not an inevitable consequence of sitting your ass down.

If you’re visiting the equator, sit down very carefully. The earth is spinning at 1,038 miles per hour!

Let sleeping kundalinis lie. Just between you and me, the subtle winds from the root chakra smell like shit.

Just sit. Sit! Good boy.