Bath time : 3 hours later “Catch-22” is finished and my grime is down the drain for the time being. For a classic the story was hard to digest. This book had been touted as the definitive reply to war mongering, and yet for all its incisive wit was not up to the task of impeding the drums of war; what then will stop such folly¿ i am old and on my way out - my faculties fading and my influence nearly nil, i cannot have food delivered in a timely fashion nor incite the pretty young maids to learn all i know about the flesh, or more accurately, to teach me all they know about flesh. Master Thich Nhat Hanh spurns romantic relations and that proscription cuts me to the core. I had imagined my latter years much like what Rembrandt had organized - a young lass loving to see my wonder of her figure manifest in fine art. Instead i find the young lovelies are repelled by my vile decay and happy to ridicule my courtly approach: (cackling in the background).
I sit in a spillway to what was of the first expat properties in the boutique destination of Hoi An Viet Nam. My neighbors are salt of the earth and tolerant of my otherworldly ways. I have a bicycle that infuses my battered frame with a vigor that is more fantasy than fact. I am no longer dogged in my determination to learn language and therefore isolated from the simple pleasures of “Hey man, what the fuck is going on?” However, because it is a land informed by struggle of the honest sort - those activities that benefit the most abound; rice is harvested and dried on roadways knowing that traffic will respect the product. Elders are unmolested and food is communal, even to the unwashed foreigner that demonstrates proper respect. Where the nation in which i was raised now entertains petulant thugs spitting on simple pragmatic hygiene during a worldwide viral conflagration the population that surrounds me quietly endures measures that prevent the spread of a common enemy.
Still i am lost. I choose not to pursue the cliques that constitute cultural belonging available to foreigners for i have little in common with what i find - (i am a cultural snob, thinking my mining of the local reality is closer to truth than any other ‘disease of conceit). What i find in most cases is a predatory orientation that involves concealment of motives that are consistent with the dominant world view - “more is better; i have more stuff than you, so i am more powerful; or my motor is bigger, so the way you drive is stupid, etc. etc. Sadly it is most likely projection of my own fears onto others - glorifying, and romanticizing that which i identify with, and diminishing and dehumanizing that which i reject; the only real therapy i have available to me is this chronicle i pursue, now that i am going blind and no longer able to nurture any delusion of an artistic contribution to our species’s last gasps.
. . . sometime into the next day - last night was interesting, for i woke in the middle of the night to find the television i have never turned on on. I had left the two doors ajar for the heat is growing and i wanted to create normalcy of draft, knowing that it jeopardizes my security. Sure enough; the only conclusion i could make is that someone came in and cased the joint, leaving the television on without a station. Fortunately i am at the “fuckit” stage of existence so as i walked out to investigate - it was only “fight, no flight” available · My neighbors next door were sympathetic, but break-ins are a part of the texture of life in a formerly war-torn nation now harvesting as best it can the bounty of today’s “destination—economy-hipster-doofus-digital-late-stage-catpitalistic-where-can-i-get-drunk-and-not-arrested” higher aspirations. Then again there’s a lot of money riding on the SEA success of reversing Uncle Ho’s dangerous incursions into the hearts and minds of a population that has yet to be conquered by Chinese, French, ‘merican - or any other invading hoard unwilling to plumb the proper integration protocols of this mysterious Warrior/Scholar/Monk/Emeritus/Worker/People melange.
Because i am a good son, and mean to obey my father’s deathbed request that i never stop writing, i must persist. Whether this yields helpful ideas to those that live on and possess the curiosity and technical prowess to uncover these chronicles is not important, only that i do my best to honestly plumb the caverns of my dying being in such a way that others might be encouraged to see into the mystery of their own souls stripped of as much convention and indoctrination as i am able demonstrate through a candid discussion of my own fears and struggles to be a decent member of a dying species (Pop would chuckle, just about now - murmuring with his eyebrows ‘arrogant whelp’.) Gaslighting is a all that i can come up with as to why someone would take the trouble to invade my home in the dead of night to activate an electrical appliance which aside from my pc and knapsack are the only items of value here. Too bad for them if that is true that my curious upbringing includes graduate level studies in how to fake people out for one’s own aggrandizement - be advised, it is an empty ambition that only points deeper into one’s own delusions and gives little influence over any organism worthy of control.
jts 19-20/04/2020
http://stoanartst.blogspot.com se
reprinted with permission - all rights reserved
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