- Tuesday 23 September 2o25 ·

 

Yesterday morning 5:30 am or so - i swallowed 3 grams of a dried plant that had an orangish cap and a dried stringy stalk · the taste was not unappetizing, nor was chewing an arduous task; it was a very interesting morning. I finished up the morning journaling my therapist who is helping me with assimilation and various aspects of aging in a foreign country during great worldwide upheaval; (she is a very understanding human being). I then walked to deliver a level i had borrowed to verify that in fact the floor where i live is sloped, and my balance or lack thereof is within limits. I also stopped to visit with the ’Simi’, Doctora who has been very gracious and wise conducting medical procedures of an ‘allopathic’ nature. In the process of walking, I was heckled by my detractors, cleaned the dog leavings from the storefront my young friend/compadre whose mother is keeping the nascent enterprise afloat while he works through existential issues; took smack from local store owners who still chafe at gringo ‘inversion’ and y who apparently remain unsure how to channel their ‘xenophobia’; some who modeled their’s while living within the “Belly of the Beast”- Uncle Sam’s very own lair - “The land of Milk and Honey”.

I fell asleep physically exhausted; spiritually at ease; psychologically at peace but still wondering how my organic supplement ight affect sleep patterns that have been ’tweaked’ since my TBI in Bakersfield CA @ the end of 2o23 just before my return here to Oaxaca. When i did fall back out after my ‘pee break’, i slept through to early morning closer to my internal ‘alarm’ than i’d been able to in months. I was still ‘metacognating’ as i am given to perseveration from early on - filling in the wee nocturnal hours with puerile ‘reaction formation’ about issues of impermanence and death with emerging literary conceits encouraged by my father’s liberal concepts of appropriate literature for 8,9,10 .  .. year olds - truth be told, Ma’s own eclectic interest in all things ‘book’, had as much bearing on my mental formation as Pop’s very self-consciously aberrant intellectual pursuits.

Now pushing 10:30 am the following day, i feel the same calm which arrived with me from whatever region of the ‘near and far’ i visited yesterday. As a very visually cued individual, i’d like to explain the parameters using descriptive language, but as close i seem able to get is the anatomical weaving of somatic awareness; for example, my discipline late at night is to resort to deep breathing, certainly in some twisted ‘wishful thinking’ about my dissipated youth and bouts with the demons of smoke inhalation, be that as it may, i also have empirical experience with the onset of abdominal hernias as manifest in the tender regions of healing my infernally ‘strong’ stone cutter’s physique - (i can only imagine how reading that feels, from having to write it¿).

I’ve long abandoned the uniquely human conceit of anatomical symmetry, and am in the throes of formulating a ‘unified theory of wounds’ based on the I Ching’s apt passages describing the blindness of what what one cannot see behind one’s back. This hunger for understanding is warranted during our human corruption of knowledge when ‘experts’ trumpet how much we can see with the new-improved digital lens in space, yet for me to explain to my well-versed brother about what i meant by ‘obtusize’ a mildly acute internal angle on a poured concrete staircase sandwiched by brick walls and ceiling to an interior auxiliary bathroom in the highly mold-susceptable clime of the city in the clouds where i now call home, i had to fotograph the puddle with my ‘stupid’ fone, in order to take a ‘photobooth’ shot off of my laptop, because walking items up and down stairs in my multilevel domestic heaven precluded the possible drop of my laptop while trying to negotiate morning errands with ‘arm’s full’ - if that make any more sense than ‘obtusize’, than i am improving as a ‘communicator’ of Horace’s obscure.

Part of the impulse to use myself as a ‘laboratory rat’ has been to gain a better sense of the internal and external reality of perception. By all accounts as the son of an inveterate ‘existentialist’, to the extent the possible corruption of solipsism infecting my objectivity caused psychic disquiet. Nor am i any closer to the ‘eureka’ of is that all there is¿ However, i more than welcome the ease one gains from being at peace within one’s skin, whether as a result of foreign substance, the outcome of mental discipline foreswearing the flimflam that constituted the interludes of Sheriff John or Jimminy Cricket’s anomalous efforts to inculcate a population with ’wisdom’, while simultaneously reconciling the very real possibility of anonymous incineration:

at this turn i’d settle for a glimpse of how to aid the 7th generation removed from where i sit ..  .         

 

stay tuned .  ..     

until L8r (help yourself to other creative vagaries below) ·

(˚ ㄥ _˚)                    

jts Tuesday 23 September 2o25

http://ExtinctionChronicles.blogspot.com 

http://JosephTStevens.blogspot.com 

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com

prohibited from AI sampling in any form

reprinted with permission; all rights reserved

∞

- Sunday 21 September 2o25 · hapybirtdayfieldcommanderCohenr.i·p*∞

Dog yapping; plastic, and dirty assholes: Europeans, Vietnamese and South Americans allowed themselves the convenient investment/industry of folding drying racks while others are consigned the fate of clotheslines, mechanical dryers or other capitalist deficiencies in the name of 'civilization' - why is that¿ what is it about plastic and filth that seems to draw one to the other? anybody who has picked up enough trash knows exactly what i’m talking about, almost as though a plastic bag is a ‘dirt magnet’. I’m wondering if polyester cloth behaves the same way which is why the ‘extraction economy’ is so big on eliminating cotton from the market place; the dirtier the cloth, the easier it is to flog ‘chemical additives’ to brighten ‘dingy’ clothes? pretty sinister thinking for a Sunday‘ Tamale Day’. 

Yet, what if it is not so sinister to look into the face of a planet besot with war, greed, inequality - all of which are easily attenuated behaviors of a quiescent population distracted by mind numbing __________fill in the blank? (that is a question) What if the ‘lord god capitalism’ is just another fatted calf in the long lineage of demigods and self-serving rulers looking to extract the most for the least - what if ‘ReignaReigna’ the tamale lady is closer to the bone of reality than ‘google generations’ of Elonys or Donnys and all their circumstantial wealth or computing capacity¿ (another question)

What got me thinking about this was the difficulty in maintaining personal hygiene, be it physical, spiritual or even audio. Anybody who has hand washed enough of their own laundry knows how much more difficult it is to remove a stain from polyester cloth, or been driven to distraction by the incessant volume of modern electronics - almost as though every aspect of modern life is, rather than designed for human ‘wellbeing’, created for the convenience and enrichment of another class - the unspoken class; the ‘fascist class’ of parasites? (another question, however much inferred - still a question)

The more this premise, however unlikely or even permissible is used to parse our existence the more certain events begin to make sense ‘unwin-able’ wars, inequality for some: excess for others - answers without application. Still the specter of the ‘on high’ wisdom, the ‘justifiable reasons’ for violence to: women, children, other races; education to what end? because for all the expense and sacrifice our education and knowledge has cost our species, the end result does not seem to serve any purpose except for more and greater oppression and deceit.

Is there a secret formula, or is it as Thich Nhat Hanh et.al. have said - “The way out is in.” My father was a fan of existentialism amongst other intellectual curiosities. As an adolescent intensely interested in all things my father looked at, I tried to understand this philosophy. “Pop what is existentialism?” - “Well son, it is the belief that each choice you make represents a choice for all other human beings.” It wasn’t until much later when the convergence of Balinese Hinduism and the logic of Omnism began to converge in my thinking - my understanding of which is simply: humankind represent spiritual forces that are engaged in a great battle between ‘good and evil’, our human contribution is represented by our ‘acts, dharma, existentialist behavior, atonement, reverence etc., etc., etc. tipping the scale one way or da’ other.

stay tuned .  ..     

until L8r (help yourself to other creative vagaries below) ·

(˚ ㄥ _˚)                    

jts Sunday 21 September 2o25

http://ExtinctionChronicles.blogspot.com 

http://JosephTStevens.blogspot.com 

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com

prohibited from AI sampling in any form

reprinted with permission; all rights reserved

∞

- Saturday 20 September 2o25 ·

 

How; what steps to take; why to eliminate ’self’ from the equation; when does it become now; where do we go from here?

Thich Nhat Hanh used volition as the lever mechanism to lift the world, but was also able to conflate the perspective of ‘self and other.’ I’ve no doubt the discipline of Buddhist thinking is a boon to the possible future of our species, yet the contradiction of being mandated to rise at 3:oo A.M., separate by gender are all regulations from diverse faiths including the Balinese Hindu; school of Syble in Costa Mesa, or the rice paddy Couple Loving of Viet Nam; (4:oo A.M. like clockwork, one would rise and motor off returning minutes later, with without peeping out my curtains, could only surmise one had fetched Coffee, for the ‘later sleeper’), how’s that for fictionalized fantasy posing as fact¿

The point is each loving habit in the long history of human kind creates a wake, or ring of positive influence, for as much as rising early in Viet Nam, manifested some ease, so does waking in Bali to a ‘continental breakfast’ on the veranda, while the corrosive counterpart of what i’ll dub the “Kirk Effect” (deal in rancor, you’ll find it or it you), is certainly true: it’s not rocket science, so why does our reasoning species continue down the roads of ‘greed, rage, discursive reasoning in service of chaos’¿ why @ 7:oo A.M. straight up am i jonesing for a whiff of the spliff, when after so long a preparation and so short an executing period would i allow myself the distraction if in fact my ambition is to create¿

In the ever evolving, chain of monkeys swinging through the trees of my mind, simplify comes more and more to the fore. ‘Holding forth’ is not what develops positive results, yet the prospect of encouraging a following is as equally distasteful; for example, the further i get from caring much whether these words are ever read and accepting of that outcome, the easier it becomes to cast off the extraneous and excavate for the core of meaning, nor am i quite sure why. How much to pare? is ‘activity’ the false idol our kind has been indoctrinated into obeisance. If that is true someone will have and uphill battle convincing my father had a nefarious objective in his ‘Jesuit Training’ of my mind or that despite her ‘lunacy’, Ma was not as humbled as any saint by the results of her existential experience.

I’m beginning to think garlic and bitter chocolate are at the core of existence, but if you partake too much like ‘noise’ it creates dissonance, rather than consonance. But i digress, if in fact i am trying to communicate by my efforts the same as a singer, musician, painter, dancer, philosopher or other active human does how do my efforts not result in more dialogue or exchange of ideas? Why does it always seem as though people i share my work with are not encouraged to attendant expression i.e. ‘that stinks’, ‘how grand’, or ‘what in the hell is it¿’

Or when i find myself most disaffected, why is it more often when another is demanding my attention? Is it reaction formation/projection for an unaddressed hunger for attention, if so is it an ancient hunger as the psychologists contend¿ where is the font of curiosity that will yield the magic distillation of questions/answers. Moments ago, i was formulating an argument opposing “formulas”, yet here i sit like the sated Cookie Monster, gorged on the endorphins of accomplishment for the simple fact i woke up and wrote a ‘five paragraph essay’ - go figure, or as Albert said “make it simple, but not simpler.” 

 

until L8r (help yourself to other creative vagaries below) ·

(˚ ㄥ _˚)                    

jts Saturday 20 September 2o25

http://ExtinctionChronicles.blogspot.com 

http://JosephTStevens.blogspot.com 

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com

prohibited from AI sampling in any form

reprinted with permission; all rights reserved

∞

- Thursday/Fri 18/19 September 2o25 ·

 

Extinction Chronicles

- Thursday/Fri 18/19 September 2o25 ·

Just the name Extinction Chronicles aught to be enough to give pause, and yet .  .. rather than a primer on how to prepare one’s soul for a life of deprivation in service of developing an open loving heart, i parse the grammar lessons, dodge the “a iEye” hobgoblin and like the little boy looking for his parents at the mall cast about for an approving glance - pretty much like us all · The Bukowski quote about dying being enough to ‘flatten us’, never gets old. How do you compete, why would you ¿ when everything in the universe points to “when the student is ready, the teacher will come.” What are priorities, what is sacrifice, for what? ambition, narrow focus gains, ego¿ what is clarity compared to the intransigence of death, much less the end of our species.

Joy is a requisite to good health, is why those who would employ measures for coercion undermine wellbeing, encourage discursive logic and activities, agitate for unease. Or i am undergoing transformation whereby i identify that which pleases me and encourage others to do the same. If, for example, you are reading this after some manifestation of the ’6th Great Extinction’, you may find resonance in the relationship of joy to health, or find leverage in a perception of ‘dis-ease’ that may have been obscured - for whatever reason · or by whatever dynamic. What if stasis is not mutually exclusive to the state of flux and that part of our mental acuity predicated from our flexibility and is as Jung postulated “the pendulum of the mind does not alternate between right and wrong, but between sense and nonsense.” 

Is the same true for communication? what is the role of recounting in storytelling, how does one wield ‘incitement t0-; e.g. (Friday 19 September) a young impresario running a similar business model to the store over which i live sold me the desk from which i hope to resume painting. In the process of purchasing the desk, the impresario made clear his admiration for a ‘gringo’ by giving me a book this ‘marshal’ expat wrote; i say marshal because he writes under a pseudonym, and was clear about his Military/VieNam training. Some time back while conferring with an Apache Kola from the Hollywood ‘Y’, Junza commented in passing that many special forces operatives were making their way to Oaxaca, but didn’t go into any detail. I aver from govt forces, and so am unsure about fbfriending ‘Quetzal’s’ author friend. I am sharing because it is a paradox of the expat life to be isolated and unclear about people’s orientations politically. I found the difficulties of trust and suspicion in the voting process as it manifested in Oaxaca.

This dilution/infiltration of community is realistic, for the reactionary forces are far better financed and make much better use of subterfuge and deception. Nevertheless, if this author/expat is more than an agent provocateur it will be an important step in gathering compadres for the arduous battles of liberty which lay ahead for what is left of a free humanity. 

I returned my new geared bike for my former heavier framed single speed better balanced beast and very glad i did, gears or no gears. 

Received another foto from sister K, and am encouraged by its simplicity to attempt a portrait of the illimitable expression on her lovely countenance, a pleasure fraught with potentially corrosive memories and delusional cul-de-sacs of emotion, or a mine of rich undeveloped healing feeling for us both. It feels like such a complex issue; for example the single mother where i live rides her daughter to school on the bicycle and in my ‘self serving’ everlovingfantasy i landed on the oblique gesture of providing helmets for as many children in similar straits as i could manifest until the community sees it was ‘their’ idea - “The secret of human freedom is to act well without attachment to the results.” - Bhagavad Gita ·

until L8r (help yourself to other creative vagaries below) ·

(˚ ㄥ _˚)                    

jts Thursday/Fri 18/19 September 2o25

http://ExtinctionChronicles.blogspot.com 

http://JosephTStevens.blogspot.com 

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com

prohibited from AI sampling in any form

reprinted with permission; all rights reserved

∞

- Monday 15 thru Wednesday 17 September 2o25 ·

15th

Ordering

toools

life

pallet

freedom

dismay

!0:30 am or so went downstairs to workout what i’d hoped to become a painting out the front door of what i’d paid for and weathered the end of winter rain · someone had torn up the purslane, tore down the dog bed, tossed the root i dug up at my last domestic fracaso:

- Wednesday 17 September 2o25 · my birtday

it took a full day for me to recover the curiosity and joy i felt commencing a new work - went riding Tuesday to pick up turmeric rhizomes from the local market and to see about modifying my former bike with higher gearing · the store was closed, streets were quiet because of Mexican Independence Day the 16th. The house was buttoned down, my compah had reappeared the midnight before from his alcohol hibernation; which somehow he and his father telepathically participated pretty sure unbeknownst to each other while the mother set about putting things to right and the daughter kept her child active having attended some celebration requiring solemnity and finer clothing. 

Ordered my tools and was surprised the office in Vermont did not acknowledge receipt as i’d requested; following up with sister K; hoping to make sense of our estrangement to help stabilize what i still hope will become a very productive two decades-putting me at 92 when i die (as though). I like people, but don’t understand the melange or how to formulate a rubric the greatest number can perceive when i have trouble teasing out the personal from the objective. For example, as i rode up with my basket from the market errand, though i’d not gotten fresh Turmeric to plant in my ‘masetas’, Sister of Josephine, Elia intervened and served me Pozole from her own pot when the merchant across the ‘mall’ snubbed my request for take out saying ‘out.’ punking foreigners is now sport, may have always been, but beats the shit out of getting shot.

When Mero Mero Marino saw me riding up, he wrapped up a coffeeklatch(gossipsession) with the welder Jesus, smirking ‘i’m busy’ afer i greeted him affably enough on his way to his storefront, my rejoinder ‘tu eres falso’, didn’t help, i still like people and know he’s up to his ass in alligators having spontaneously shared ‘my family is all pissed off at me’ a week earlier. It helps to see the struggle others are engaged in when my solipsism kicks into high gear, my food is running thin, ergo shopping errands rise to the top and tweaking my design to get fermented, unprocessed comestibles from this agricultural rich region delivered enough to what exercise i engage in is to strengthen, educate and encourage others. One is dialoguing - father and son are so in tune they each uncorked a ‘spat’ i believe unknown to the other; while father’s slaughter of my landscape scene was more commentary on son’s promise to provide - x,y, and z of yard maintenance, a father reduced to enlarging the hole used to latch the big gate on the side yard and a mother tending the son’s greater ambition, the ‘flea market’ which makes perfect sense.

I worry about the grandmother who took a fall to the face, because she doesn’t want to be seen as needing a cane though she’s in her nineties - the moral sea anchor of the family. “Youth is wasted on the young.” is a fraught quote; more smarm, than wit. I’m glad being able to include kissing her hand to list of outrageous i’ve managed. For example i once hosted a surprise birthday masquerade for myself in a dance studio at the corner of 4th and Maine in Santa Ana - one of the most successful events i can recall, if only measured by the mescal ‘caballo’ with which i commenced drinking beer from the keg and finished with many hours later; included in that spectacle was one of the grandest dupes of all time the aging hipster doofus ‘eye’talian engineer, cum hipster doofus replete with (combed-over-balding-pate) semi-professional parachuter/pilot completely smitten by the parts runner he’d never have given the time of day in our work-a-day lives through the artifice of a mask over her eyes, a gypsy blouse off her shoulders with flowing bright red skirt ensconcing her wordless presence in an auxiliary wheelchair to enjoy for hours the doting suitor never to learn of his ___________-fill in the blank.

This birtday, i’ll be content to blow a little pot, eat some day-old-two beans & rice turn a creative moment into two moments and/or visit with unexpected surprises that result in ‘another’s’ happiness. “Wear gratitude like a cloak and it will feed all the corners of your life.” - Rumi ·  Driven has caused so much misery in our lives i wonder about the role of ambition, what is it to want vs need - the rolling stones nailed it, though i don’t understand the distinction. 

What i like best about my creative life is the feeling of accomplishment - ‘time well spent’ · in my spiritual focus this innocence conflicts with the real ego-driven wish for recognition. Is that our human lot to be held in suspension by the faintest of tension; is there surcease, the ’nirvana’ spoken of; the ‘holy grail’ sought ever since it was ¿ Birthdays have taken the position of the Sacrosanct in my existence in keeping with my narcissistic heritage, however harsh that may sound - without verisimilitude where is the weight that allows for the ineffable gravitas of awe. Birtday discovery - getting old allows one to wash 1st then dig in the garden. It has been an exceptional day, mostly due to a rich vein of volition with chocolate to match. The flashes of synchronicity “I strive to be brief and thereby become obscure.” - Horace · via BDTTRH, along with 

Holyfuck - time flies when you’re having fun · 3:31 pm and there’s fuckall i can do to slow the clock, not that i would if i could; just spent too much time searching for Brother Jefferson’s quote about ‘dissent’ being the highest form of patriotism - while Samual Johnson’s quote about patriotism being the last refuge of the scoundrel rattles around the brain pan (that i could hit that 3-point quote) leaves me ready for another year. I pray for ways to discover how to use what i’ve learned to relieve suffering without bearing its corrosive nature, or rather utilize ways to amplify the joy so that others may bear their weight more comfortably - lord willing while i learn to mindmyownbusiness.   

until L8r (help yourself to other creative vagaries below) ·

(˚ ㄥ _˚)                    

jts Monday 15 thru Wednesday 17 September 2o25

http://ExtinctionChronicles.blogspot.com 

http://JosephTStevens.blogspot.com 

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com

prohibited from AI sampling in any form

reprinted with permission; all rights reserved

∞