Thu 4:13 pm and the gas tank has finally expired; am more and more amazed how the gummed edge of the rolling paper comes up licked to the outside, ah - the delectable pleasures of age. My saucepan was loaded and ready to simmer when the gas gave way, the local burger emporium is now open and fortunately willing to deliver, so if the creek don’t rise, i’ll have paid rent for a month; my stimulus check will have been deposited, ma may still be wheezing in Long Beach @ 92 in a high risk medical circumstance - nothing more than an intellect willing to face an early on and oft quoted “inconsolable” fear of death · go Mammy, Go ! At this point i could honestly give a fuck about my own passing, though i admit to an inordinate curiosity about what comes next. .. ... as it happens it was my vegetarian burger and bottle of cold rice wine - makes one almost want to “believe what the scriptures tell” - Bob Dylan. Grateful beyond measure to Pop, for being able to vomit prose though i am not sick in a world immersed in illness. My elixir of homemade expectorand and confused trachea managed to hack phlegm just at the moment i was utilizing the digital voice of google translate to convey my earnest gratitude to my neighbors and now i have an un-eaten vegetarian burger, likely made with much love; a saucepan lightly brazed with the end of a small bottle of olive oil and non response from my real estate agent whether the non response is reaction formation to an office environment likely resembling some perverse permutation of “Glengarry Glen Ross” - hold that thought · she’s notifying me on another channel . .. ···
1 paragraph down, 4 to go - like at the end of this mysterious journey with a dubious conclusion my sum total will be informed by this fluttering flag of - what would you call it ¿ it doesn’t even possess the resonance of a small bell ? Baha next door is moistening her verdant garden that yielded the only thing necessary to catch fish in the irrigation channel rent bare from its old growth bamboo by a sadly entirely understandable desire by an expat to have an unimpeded snapshot of how close their villa sits in proximity to the rice fields - a long ass earthworm. I once lived with a hoard of Staten Island immigrants in a two bedroom bungalow on a 1/4 acre of land in the city of Costa Mesa which i moved to at the age of 6. I met the point man of this influx while still at High School and could not know then what an impact on my life this passing wind would have. For two examples: my father and i stood at a hedge bordered by the much lauded picket fence and i peed during one momentary parental exchange - he had just told the local hero - Dave Haley how he hated anyone “darker than him.” Minutes later, the normally placid Hawaiian was at the overhang on the East 4o with a machete and a vehemence that did not mesh easily with his patient rehabilitation of a 650 Triumph which had been abandoned in the former cell of the Iguana who had recently languished in captivity.
2 paragraphs in i cannot, or will not disclose how difficult this personal disclosure is - for there is more, much more than the same Iguana wandering into the shower enclosure after you had watched it cram an Easter chicken thigh into its throat by swiping it back and forth against the recognizable glass door from some from abandoned suburban patio that had within months held all of the important parts of said 650 Triumph - whose running purr was a truly heavenly sound · Threatening insurrection i am playing “Thunder on the Mountain” in a backwater of Viet Nam where my entire existence is as Ricky Rivera might say “at your pleasure” I could give a fuck just about in the song where he sings “I don't give a damn about your dreams”. My front wheel squeaks like a motherfucker and i have just paid $100k vnd to a local mechanic to oversee and silence the concerns of my limited investment in this limited investment market. The same kind of community speakers that announced Muslim prayer in Lombak with similar fervor i hear the Karaoke singers of where i live now prepare for their post Corona defense of culture.
Oh boy 4of4 and i am delivered - if that is an expression for a 65 year old cohort to a 5o year old invading force that reeked untold destruction in a land minding its own business. In the interest of brutal candor i will share a story - a hard share · of an event in this land of _______ fill in the blank. I was struggling at the time for occupation and had fallen in with a local industry building “hang gliders” - a temporal conceit as though one could fly like “Icarus” - editorial note: of the family of 5 original members of W_____ W____g - only the unrelated manager eluded personal death with the destruction of his right Ulna - due it this labor deficit it was decided at the higher levels of management i would deliver the cardboard canisters to points South. It is at this point in the story where things become tragic. I had picked up a young couple hitchhiking south and invited them and their puppy to spend the night in CM. The puppy was hit by a car in the course of the night and i believed that i could put it out of its misery with a blow to the curb - i was wrong and this poor creature sustained many blows at my earnest hand to end its life · 45 years later i still grieve my inability to end life mercifully.
Now i witness an entire species dying on the vine, not because of error, but for a lack of necessary awareness that i do not possess now, anymore than i possessed then. I pray for the comfort of the life i could not take effectively and hope my own suffering created by my own defects does not contribute to other´s efforts to evade suffering while trying to live a happy life in unhappy times. My sincere hope is that by sharing as openly and honestly about reservations i have had in my myopic but sincere quest for happiness will animate another life to enjoy that remarkable pleasure of seeking the welfare of another though it is not clear how to help. I will not last much longer and to not know where my bones will come to rest, but i am not particularly concerned about that as much as somehow this small step i have taken full of fear will somehow add peace and comfort to someone's life i have never met.
jts 23/04/2020
http://stoanartst.blogspot.com se
reprinted with permission - all rights reserved
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