Fri 5:07 pm Running late, but the gas tank got filled, so i am able to cook - i have no fever different from that fucking love bug that has haunted my steps from an early age; don’t believe me, ask anyone of my 3 wives and they will tell you the same - convince me that you love me and i am putty in your hands · & and i have been molded into some damn funny shapes. What took longer to form than those funny caricatures i was left wearing at the end of each marriage as each wife took a powder for a variety of very good reasons, is the person writing to you now who loves themself. Enough so, that i take pains to be clear to people i’ve never met about truths i barely understand about myself. Today i stepped on the tail of my fate, and you could have pushed me over with a feather. I was slogging through my day attempting to rekindle the simple joy of not dying from a plague whose danger has been plastered over the skien of screens which now virtually controls, at least the digits of a majority of the world population.
As i rode up to a small vegetarian bistro of unique character today after businesses had been reopened in the ancient coastal city where i have been cloistered for over a month - I was met quite unexpectedly by a person of ebullient vibration who had until recently been a neighbor adjacent to the “foreigner” hovel i live in. When i say hovel, i mean: flushing toilets, well appointed cabinets, no exits out the back and walls that can be easily scaled, but a gate that cannot be broken open - all the luxuries people seeking protection from those around them might need. I was saddened when this person and his young growing family disappeared in the course of a day - the language/cultural barrier precluded pointed questions so i cast banknotes toward the wind of his family’s upcoming birth and let it go, like so many other mysteries about where i live. I had taken it upon myself to obscurely replenish the tills of this bistro during this passing downturn but seeing my friend and his wife looking at me as i rode up - i knew i had been made.
You can run, but you cannot hide was said by many much wiser than myself - i’d like to think i am a professional at hiding · but i’d be bullshitting you my only reader; this i refuse to do, however painful. I am fake as fuck, but not like i’m trying to deceive you for some seedy reason, but because i am uncomfortable with anyone knowing how tender i am and how easily broken i can be. The magic of the event today is that my selfish conceit and ulterior motive - the “con” Pema Chodron so sagely descibes was thrown up into my face like a windswept sheet from a no longer whole newspaper being blown up into your face, or the more dangerous variety of a car hood improperly latched suddenly blocking your view as you are entering the freeway. I have met few people with which i resonate; i no longer demand fault from myself for this isolation so when someone looks at me kindly it is terribly apparent. I returned to this bistro and tried to contribute anonymously during the “shelter in place” order simply because i was treated kindly. I accept that my contribution was self-serving, but make no apologies for wanting to protect such kindness.
It is the delusion i must now face - in the confusion of ordering my meal once again and joining my former neighbor at a prominent table rather than my preferred quiet corner i had to accept that the entire restaurant now recognized my appreciation of this young woman’s kindness and, not to add insult to injury - my ebullient father-to-be-former-neighbor-friend wanted to memorialize the event with a photo revealing in living color my beaten-to-fuck visage in a sadly accurate depiction of my surprise and despair - yeah life is good · but it gets better; my hungry heart has not yet surrendered and so there are echoes of “would you like to¿; can we look at this together?; what about if we . ..¿” floating all over this backwater asian port that i am responsible for. I believe strongly in love karma and if you fuck with someone’s heart - someone is going to fuck with yours. It is a tightrope in today’s superheated, consumer fueled hall of mirrors, but i try to thread the needle and continue to drag this battered core of love i have found deep in my being to each possible, help me what’s the word i’m looking for ¿ love ?
So while i accept there are many, many who are wildly distracted by issues of death, loss, and fear about something no one can foretell - the future. i am grateful that you the reader could be amused enough about something as simple as the pleasure of another person looking without seeing and read this far. The reason i feel such strong attraction for this young woman is that when i looked into her eyes of her already mask-covered face prior to the outbreak, i found curiosity. From a young age as basically a cyclops with two eyes, i have faced many expressions from family to friends to wives to thieves and so have an internal reservoir full with feeling about each new expression i face. The difficulty has always been that the gaze runs both ways - inside and out. For far too long my inner hatred for that which i was unable to become for others colored much of my perception about others - i was deficient, but it also was a cauldron of sorts that burnt away a lot of bullshit that people often are completely unaware of when they are looking at someone else’s face - my dumb luck with my failing vision is i can no longer see the burnt away bullshit, but where someone is looking when they look at me - is it my heart, or theirs¿
jts 24/04/2020
http://stoanartst.blogspot.com se
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