Too late 11 am - i was about to conduct a sober test to find out if my writing was still accessible without the chin oil that libation liberates. Lo the spin cycle has commenced so those clothes must now be hung to dry and i will needs be get my heart rate up and buy blue cheese. My real hope that that some resentful local will not demonstrate h/her disrespect for my humble efforts toward reparations while i am out infusing the local economy with what little i have coming to me from Uncle Sam. So clearly the bitterness that fuels so much of my literary efforts is not much blunted by any lack of alcohol. That’s a big relief, i’d hate to think that nirvana was simply a question of putting the cork in the bottle. Truth be told, i am as much of an endorphin addict as dependent on any substance i’ve discovered in my long history of “looking for love in all the wrong places.” So while i cannot yet run again from some perfect storm of physical maladies which visit old people, i have found that once i got moving, i was able to harness much muscle memory and do quite well here in bicycle heaven, so take note and be sure to flag any obvious differences between sober me, and drunken me - said Rip Van “wannabe” Winkle to no one ever . .. ···
2 pm fortified with 2 liters of Pomelo IPA, clean sheets and 2 borrowed hammers i am well on my way to resurrection. As i’ve noted elsewhere in other chronicles i once spent a year commuting with the purloined right femur of the class skeleton because i was in the process of carving a granite femur and the commute seemed a perfect time to study a form this form that defied my feeble comprehension. For anybody who has ever carved granite, they would understand the pace and very real requirement of a hammer hand capable of sustained accurate throws - lest one’s cutting hand bear the brunt of shots off the mark. Ergo in addition to my driving distraction of sublimating an impossible form into the inner recesses of my being - twirled a forged Trow & Holden 2 lb hammerhead affixed to a Trow & Holden hickory bell handle long after the femur was complete. So as my enforced lethargy broken by spurts of sanctioned bicycle rides aids my lower extremities and neglected core - my upper body strength has dwindled. Just now as i type single handed, i’m amused by the ghastly image of my borrowed exercise tool whiffling down at the drop cycle of an errant twirl and clipping a 1 x 1” isosceles triangle from my latest laptop . .. ···
Though i woke late last night from the 1st deep rest i’ve had in weeks; (there is nothing in my schedule that can account for such slumber) - more accurately, i lost the thread and had to find filler. The downside of drunken writing - that profound insight evaporates more quickly than the digits can execute, nor ao much different than arriving back from an LSD journey only to find the celestial discovery remained back in the dimension you’d just returned from. As an aging intellect wounded from life battles, this lapse in concentration is not unfamiliar (mostly pointing to Thich Nhat Hanh’s kind advocacy of “mindfulness”) But we are talking about extinction and not reminiscence. The world is at a standstill relative to days earlier, and if we’re not careful along with awareness of just how WRONG things were going prior to the standstill. Besides the blatant corporate assault on human existence, our species is facing a reevaluation of its very purpose - are we living to support a handful of “hateful appetites” dressed up as leaders, or are we going to fully appreciate this pause to refocus and utilize the mindfulness Master Thay points to ?
I came to Viet Nam because of fantasy born of loneliness fueled by a virtual relationship with someone i’d “just missed” in more ways than one. My rationalization became this is a land that has a demonstrated capacity to beat the odds. Viet Nam essentially told Uncle Sam to “get the fuggoudda here” and made it stick. In accordance to my left-brain mechanics, i figured if any cultural entity was going to be able to establish a protocol for perpetuating our endangered DNA it was going to get a better chance here than the dozen or so other cultures i’d recently domiciled in search of study i now find is not longer really required - [details for another chronicle]. Politically i find myself shoehorned against new-age entrepreneurs off-loaded from the cell-channel into the virtual imagination of the world. No, i don’t own a phone; why do you ask¿ not even sure how long i’ll be able to make that claim in post Corona-19 anti-body-id hysteria. And like Pop said - “man am i glad i’m old”
Fun anymore is what i think constitutes leadership - yet here i sit chomping goobers infused with condensed milk parsing what a childhood hero George Washington Carver declared about the unlimited potential of peanuts against what i later learned about candida and gut health relative to excess peanuts. It is just this dichotomy our species faces not me alone trying to write with milk greased fingers and returning one of two hammers because i only need the one. And not to add insult to injury - the hammer i kept had a huge divet just at the neck, and though i had a Jr. High school shop teacher slam the bellyboard fin off my project because i had the temerity to reconsider a 3/4 incursion to the fin a structurally insignificant wound - i now 60 years later realize that i could possibly add 100 years to the life of my borrowed and well hafted hammer with small effort and great gain - i’m going for it. The sky has darkened, my sheets, while not crisp and sunny will not mold before i saturate them with sweated salt enough from my fitful rest. My larder is full enough, i’ve retrieved adequate funds for my billet for another month - i have 2 months and some days on my visa and enough left over to lighten the load of many whose burden is greater than my own - life is good, and i am lucky · i share willingly any link you might make to such good fortune.
jts 22/04/2020
http://stoanartst.blogspot.com se
reprinted with permission - all rights reserved
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