Had much fun yesterday, so much it catapulted me up to 2am in my sometime bifurcated sleeping habits. Yet now i feel fresh and fruitful with a renewed determination to simplify and continue my plunge into the ‘deep end’. Where i live is fraught with death, delusion, prevarication; all the parts of life which makes it so interesting. As recently as this past Monday i was preparing to launch/boogey/bolt - not the most efficient response to controversy, but one plays to one’s strengths, while explaining why i feel so ‘oppressed’ by the evasive behavior of everyone around me¿ Laugh if you must, it’s not you who is appealing to an unknown reader for understanding. Much like my inclination to relocate at the 1st sign of conflict, i vacillate about the extreme focus on myself to which one of my chosen disciplines yokes me. For too long the concomitant guilt about holding forth was like an itch which could only be scratched by me, but over time the guilt was simply pulverized as grist for the mill ll’be. (the red underling of my contraction for ‘mill will be’ - has been deemed unfit for public consumption by a series of +/- 5v electrical impulses directed by an algorithm of unknown origin; and i’m supposed to be goofy ‘cause i resist capitalizing “i”)
My heart is full of love and relief, not sure about the ‘gas tank’, but i’m having more fun than i can remember when, nor am i sure why. As soon as i figure it out, i’ll share here; until that time, we’ll needs be slog, ‘cause that is what i’ve learned best - the word itself may be part of the fatigue i feel. Confluence is a peculiar reality of the ‘digital’ overwhelm facing the species, for example just now by way of keeping movement part and parcel of the process, i glanced out my upstairs window to witness the indifference (pointed indifference) of the local transit workers. My umbrage at strewn trash is as ancient as customs for which side of the sidewalk men are supposed to escort their love interest ‘depending on which streets received what refuse tossed from which window. The paradox is the transit workers are as often as not simply oblivious, but suffer from institutional helplessness woven into the ‘ruling class’ narrative designed to neuter the objection anyone struggling to preserve that childish belief Don Quixote might have applied in his zeal to help ‘the world be what it could be, as opposed to what it is’.
Can you imagine being stuck in honking traffic for years just to earn scratch enough to feed a family of ______fill in the blank, yeah me neither. Now the rat bastard “Epstein Class” to rub said driver’s nose in what he/she could buy to increment their way out of and into the ‘reality’ found only in the magical screen; what no one is telling the carefully groomed ‘consumer’, is that there is ‘no there, there’. Edward Bernays, Sigmund Freud’s nephew and invented the “infinite growth paradigm’ upon which “Anarchistic Capitalism” rests held in place by the tax code which elects the public servants responsible for ‘socializing the risk and privatizing the profit’ civilization’s “Hamster Wheel” economy. Coincidentally the same reasons i used for ‘creating’ and whose carefully devised “point of diminishing returns” gradually transformed my existential vision from a mystical portal into a deeper comprehension of the world and its inhabitants into the failed state of “if you’d only_____”fill in the blank.
And yet rather than insightful sharing in service of an unknown reader; so much of what i read in review of my efforts is self-serving solipsistic blather; along with why it is called ‘essay’ at least i am trying and moreover seeing the needlessly self-destructive language serves to aid me in breaking the cycle to a more generous approach to life in what time is left to me; Thich Nhat Hanh as with much else wisely declared, “the way out is in.” He also clued into the ‘inter-are’ challenge we face in the supposedly ‘connected’ digital age. I recall early on the radical absence of conventional courtesies with which i’d been raised. I still remember the vivid disconcerting feeling of being in the midst of an enthralling interpersonal exchange and reading on my screen, “ggfn”, gobsmacked doesn’t begin to describe the free fall; neophyte me eventually understood acronyms and found out ggfn, was an ‘alert’ for bolting. What wasn’t in place for me were the repercussions, however sophomoric and puerile they may have appeared to another, the simple ‘brute force’ of cutting someone off at least gave the illusion of some type of self-care, whereas the wide open ‘here-one-minute-gone-the-next nature of digital threads reminds me of the wonderful passage in “Inherit the Wind” whereupon the character of Clarence Darrow drew thoughtful contrasts highlighting the sacrifices modernity has wrought - the venal ‘lookatme’ outcome of traffic makes much insight highly refined like the processed goop passing for nutrition today.
I’ve lost much interest in whether anyone ever goes through the necessary effort to ‘see me’, yet if that were really true there would be no need to make such a statement¿ I have a unreasonable repulsion of normal interaction with and proximity to other humans many enjoy. Therapy has been useful providing a vocabulary to explore this what i increasingly consider a curiosity rather than the malady characterized by my highly judgmental birth family; “Why yes¡ i am also highly judgmental, why do you ask¿” An indispensable for anyone in the creative disciplines, for without the ability to discern and combine the most appropriate relationships, one is left with a miasma - a condition which by definition is repulsive. Here is where the confluence of creation with creator gets interesting; Rumi - “The cure for pain, is in the pain.” · I don’t know what art is, but i know what i like. Paul Cezanne had described a successful work as one when held up against nature was not jarring. Another art marketing advocate; advised ‘fine art is defined by a very small group of “authorities.” And i remember the affront i felt when reading in the preface of no less and authority for language than the Webster Collegiate; “If you want to know what is proper grammar, ask me” - William F. Buckley · whom i saw, not without some satisfaction, his professional dignity shredded by an intransigently gentle, but inexorably logical James Baldwin. All of this is to say regardless of my hyperbole, i am human and relish someone else’s existential confusion from the eviscerating pain of ’comeuppance’ as much as any sanctimonious, vindictive, mean-spirited hater when it’s not me being skewered; as Dame Paradox and her two whelps “T’is & T’ain’t” shout from the wings: “GOOD ENOUGH FUCKING REASON to inhale, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 . .. - embrace your suffering and exhale 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 . .. · simplicity, patience and compassion.”
solidarność
(˚ㄥ _˚)
1 April 2o26
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
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