Extinction Chronicles - 310520 ·

Memorial Day is one of those hinkey holidays like president’s day that used to have a date, but got shifted for commercial reasons - but don’t take my word for it · do your own research. I remember one Memorial Day, which 40 years or so later, remains memorable. I was back in Costa Mesa after conquering the art world of NYC, or so i’d convinced myself at the time & apparently for a long time afterwords; living in a house that was a nexus for many transitional adventures. I was working for “Crazy Cliff”, one of many characters that were about to enter and exit my life at the time. He was older and mysterious having been in prison for “marijuana sales” but living in his Mommy’s house in tony part of Eastside Costa Mesa. Cliff was the character “King Rat” from James Clavell’s novel, only as a felon he’d never served in the military. His business was landscaping and junk, with enough contracts to keep afloat and his right hand man in beer - i was considered temporary, and barely made enough for beer. This particular Memorial day after he’d set up is right hand man, he and i drove in his 54’ faded Teal Green 3/4 ton Chevy to one of the rental yards - i covet that truck to this day, may have even driven it once or twice. 

The only thing about Cliff that you could count on, was the unexpected - that morning was no different. We picked up a contraption that was the weirdest fucking lawnmower i’d ever seen, with metal wheels about 3 feet(1 meter) in diameter in the rear and some kind of swivel mechanism on the handles that made no sense at the time. Cliff liked being mysterious and when asked questions would just bulge his eyes out and look up into your face, because he was short and pugnacious in a gregarious kind of way. We drove some distance out of Costa Mesa using mostly alleys, and pulled up to a gate, yanking the contraption off the back. With some trouble, he was able to push the gate open to reveal a yard about the size of a little league diamond 60 feet(20 meters) to a side, could’a been smaller, but not by much. The weeds in the yard were foxtails taller than Cliff. The trick to operating this contraption was to push down on the handle such that rotary blades could be gently dropped onto the offending vegetation in such a way, one did not stall the engine or jam the rotors. It was late may, so the vegetation was no longer green, but early enough in the day for much of it close to the ground to me moist enough to gum up the rotors or stall the motor - 2 cycle engines have a rope crank, and i won’t try to explain what that means to all you, neophytes in the audience. 

Cliff made a cursory demonstration and was out the gate to be gone for the rest of that very long Memorial day. The owner of the house was a kindly sort and took pity after a 1/3 got cut to ground and brought water. I was goofy strong in those halcyon days, and actually got closer to completion prior to exhaustion than i would have imagined before this experience - like the man said “you gotta know your limitations.” I don’t remember the particulars, whether the debris was picked up, if it was dark before Cliff got back or whether i woke up the next day or not. He got the weirdest contracts: one time dragging trimmed Cypress off the glass enclosed patio where Coast Highway is no longer Corona Del Mar except the patio was lined by the early version of astro-turf and the owner was retentive to beat the band; another occasion a line of apartment yards fronting Susan Street in Santa Ana, easily 3 football fields in length, or it just seemed that way. Cliff was a character and was the first in my memory to suggest adversity was a great advantage rather than a curse to the idyllic Lotus Eating quest for the perfect high of the time. His expression, from his guru, (talk about your cognitive dissonance) problems are like traction in mud - they give you something to dig into.

Ultimately, Cliff was a Con to the bone because everything was based on keeping the other in the dark to your advantage, or retrieve castoffs he wanted to decorate his Mommy’s house with. I have to distrust those who are not forthright - who will not declare up front the agenda and intent, but i learned a lot from Cliff, like learning to see behind the curtain. In his case it was a 57 T-Bird 2-tone Coupe that you could just see through the smudged window of the garage in the back, if you moved the flower pot with the plastic flowers on the shelf full of pots of plastic flowers. Would that were all i learned from Cliff, or that i had learned more than i could have, my life may have been much different, but the story doesn’t end there. Some time later in the company of my new paramour who had either just become, or was to become my 1st wife, we visited Cliff, thinking she might be impressed by the caliber of people i knew - little did i know. In our short visit, Cliff proceeded to cock-block me and ask Joy point blank, “are you free and unencumbered.” I must have been in the thrall of both to ignore her affirmative response, but too hungry and ignorant to let her out at the next corner.

Instead we drove back to my back bedroom of a duplex the creative owner had divided into a triplex where upon she turned to me on the couch and said, “what can you tell me about Cliff?” In those days i had much repressed emotion that i didn’t pay much attention to, and little restraint on my behavior. The only response i could muster was to turn away from her and pivot in my seat to hit the wall with my closed fist. I had grown up in the modern houses whose walls were gypsum board with much give, but this house was old school - lathe and plaster and my outer 5th Metacarpal of my right hand gave way before the wall did. By the time this particular learning experience reached a conclusion i had married and divorced Joy, broke the same bone on my left hand and while it was in a cast rent a gash in my right arm requiring 60 stitches - 1976 was a long year, but ultimately very useful for distinguishing fact from fiction when faced with wants vs facts. It is difficult anymore to supersede the behavior of people with a desire born of an unexamined desire or belief. I may not want to die, but i am going to - i may want to kill you, but that doesn’t require me to act on that impulse. It is a good thing to live deep within one’s soul for there are few people who give a fuck about what they are experiencing, much less have an active interest in your understanding of the world - peace and love people · everything else is bullshit.

jts 31/05/2020

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com 

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Extinction Chronicles - 300520 ·

For two days i have written about problematic things, and for two days i have not posted - so for all my disclaimers to the contrary, i balk at sharing some things, or i process shit differently · and beat myself up for being different. Anymore, i’m not sure, and i feel safer there than with the conviction i listen to and watch in the world. My parents were both teachers, for a pa a vocation; ma, an escape pod. Hers was a torturous experience teaching art to the well-heeled children of Newport Beach, CA.; pa’s last transition included his “poetry class” coming to the locked facility where he was deemed safe from his “diagnosed” non compos mentis state of mind. He loved the process of helping others to find their passion - ma struggled with spoiled children who didn’t appreciate the opportunity she provided them to expand their horizons. He crashed into a low water-dam for the “designed-accessible” shower his next to last domicile had provided. Ma quit washing dishes about 15 years ago, and from what news i can gather from my passive-aggressive siblings with a penchant for hoarding news, she fares well in a Covid-19 high-risk old people place for the well-heeled.

Mark Twain said somewhere, and i’ve never been able to find where in hyper-text “those things I despise most in others, I find in myself to a greater or lesser degree.” And like Madam Paradox and her minion, this poses thorny issues each time i am inclined to point the “fickled-finger-of—fuck-off-and-die” at D_rump and his spiral descent into infamy. Much less my siblings whom i’ve deemed too toxic with whom to tarry, but find dislodging from the heart a cavernous task. Mostly because i find their echoes in each challenging relation, i’d rather not have. It is at precisely that locus where shit gets dodgy, for it is not the person i am resisting, but the aspect of my own unpalatable history which eludes resolution. Yet Madam Paradox dictates - non-acceptance is surrender to the lord god Ego. I think pop was hot on the trail when he was committed to a locked facility - Fun is the answer, for from fun, follows happiness. I am certain master Thich Nhat Hanh is enjoying a far more profound happiness with his measured breathing and relentless facing of facts, but still - a shot of good bourbon goes a long way in the struggle for joy.

Name of my first wife - Joy; that should give you a clue how much of a misnomer names can be. “Life” for example in the dictionary, “the condition that distinguishes animals and plants from inorganic matter, including the capacity for growth, reproduction, functional activity and continual change prior to death.” I’m not going to get tedious with a blow by blow contradiction, but to say that a rock does not grow, even if it grows smaller, or that if you cleave it just so, there are two where there was one, or that a step on a cathedral floor has no significant place in the universe - if anything · a rock like an irrational number will reduce itself to its constituent matter, but never be destroyed. “Newton’s Law of Conservation of Mass.” What in the world would suggest that we humans, or living matter would behave any differently than inanimate matter¿ that’s a question.?

If anything the intrusion of consciousness into the equation seems to render cogent creatures far dumber than their insentient counterparts who have no trouble with accepting their role in a chaotic universe; transitioning to different functions - entirely at peace with a single rule of the universe · “change is constant.” While we mortals make haste to preserve the unpreservable with myth and money as our primary levers to alter the inalterable · to stop change. This goofy ambition, so close to my heart as to condemn me to a life of carving 3-Dimensional objects i cannot see with my uniquely 2-Dimensional eyesight; small wonder i would hanker for a the hand of Madam Paradox - though she has exposed me repeatedly for the charlatan i am, and as which i will likely die · lucky me. So if life is all smoke and mirrors with each of us popping in and out the the other’s lives as though our presence has significance - who’s to say we don’t. Why is not possible that some curious youth didn’t read some editions of the “Extinction Chronicles” and decide for themself - “no i am not doomed” · it is a phantasmagoria and there is not determined outcome, but death .  ..  ···

Which according to Newton’s Law of “Conservation of Mass” and myself being comprised of mass, with a sentient twist cannot perish and so need no armature of myth or money to hold me aloft in the cosmos¿ it’s a fair question, however unlikely to be answered in this or any other chronicle found here on earth or in our hiccup of time. I will say, given the torment of the last two posts - it is a relief to once again find fun in the act of asking questions, questions without answers, but questions all the same. Now whether to move to Hue, or remain in the land of delusional hyper-entrepreneurial “build-it-and-the-will-come-and-destroy-5-centuries-of-agrarian-solidarity”, i don’t know. I do know when the borders open and the capitalists are reunited with their capital, it will be very difficult for the local farmers to resist the rampant speculation that breeds the blood-in-the-water behavior of every greedy soul that has walked the surface of our planet, and i know i’d rather be in the arms of a loving woman who admires the miles i’ve managed to endure with my unconventional approach to growth as pertains the species - so what am i gonna do · change the rhythm of the “Gimme, Gimme Tango” or find a sweetheart that wants to teach me how to grow ginger and turmeric for our romantic dinners - tough call · eh ¿? that’s not really a question .  .. ··· ciao baby, see ya’ in the funny papers.

jts 30/05/2020

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com 

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Extinction Chronicles - 290520 ·

Drinking my morning coffee and having my 1st cigarette of the day - i could not locate my walking stick and after a 1st, 2nd and 3rd search of the house · assumed the worst. My neighbor Mr. Tranh, was minding his own business and about to begin his day’s labor; I had to share my pain with somebody, he was it. I couldn’t contain my anguish and sweeping up the debris of the shedding tree was not enough to banish the evil suspicion that because i couldn’t find my walking stick, it thereby had to have been stolen by some hateful wretch who coveted my labor and wanted me to know how unwelcome i am Vietnam · i can only apologize for my unfair accusation about all the people of Vietnam. This meanness was born of an unwillingness to peer into the recesses of my own soul and confront the pettiness of my being and the scope of my own fears. And as Dr. “Mac” MacO’lash might have said to me - “well that’s kind of mean”

What began as a hideous day with fears about an entire nation ended with an exquisite downpour on the porch of my kind neighbors - the same people i as much as accused of stealing my conceit, as i had judged determined to vanquish me from this land of mystery. Nor is it the first time in my history i have experienced such irrational threat: driving to NYC, 1st or 2nd time i don’t remember - what i do remember is sitting in the passenger seat of a “cooperatively rented conveyance” at the apogee of the counter-culture entirely certain that the 10 or so other human beings reacting unfavorably to my obnoxious fear and contrary nature were arrayed and prepared to set my out of the van at the earliest opportunity. Sitting here now - i realize that my fears at that time echoed earlier journey’s whereupon older siblings in greater solidarity, excluded me and made clear my unwelcome · and today i have a younger sibling who has taken umbrage to my non-responsiveness to banking queries has, again “shut me out.” Not because he is a vicious mean spirited human being, but because he is approximating the feeling he experienced by not hearing from me in a timely manner about fiduciary concerns that he had kindly undertaken on my behalf.

“If you think everything is someone else’s fault, your will suffer a lot; when you realize that everything springs only from yourself, you will learn both peace and joy.” - 14 Dalai Lama · Man, when you’re right, you’re right. How do you argue with the facts. There is also talk about radical accountability, as an inveterate “free thinker” i have much to account for - and teasing guilt from shame is not always clear. I am, and have been in a great deal of pain for a very long time; i have yet to learn how to distinguish emotional from the physical. I know from personal experience that depression can animate physical distress, not just from my own experience but listening the to the stories of others as we try to understand our shared contours. Couple that with a righteous fury toward a family that has committed betrayals that were inexcusable as a unit, but entirely “passable” as grown ass adults. For example - left 4 years of drawings, as fine as i could make in a flat file within the jurisdiction of a mother who could barely stand my birth, much less my existence.

My eldest brother when the time came accused me of “living off the fat of the land” expecting to find my work in tact where i had left it.” That is an injustice that i must swallow for the vanity of a man that has turned his back to me from the time i squalled like a stuck pig at the torment he felt was my lot as the younger “identified patient” on the other side of his cloying and as vain as my beautiful mother could ever be if she lived to a “hundred” - she is 92 and going well in the midst of a viral epidemic · she has good teeth, the only useful thing my sister ever shared with me about our mutual upbringing, floss your teeth. I sustained myself growing up with “mea culpa”, but as i near my intersection with the great beyond, it lacks nutrients. What i struggle for in my end days is usefulness, either with words, actions or both. I would like to nurture you as much as i may with what patience i have left, yet i have learned at a late date - it is a good thing to “leave the table when love is no longer being served.” - Nina Simone.

So what to do - there has been a blessed rain storm today that has blunted the cruel heat that regardless of how acclimatized you might be, by birth or discipline will be become only more lethal as time marches across our once benign planet. I am not reconciled to this outcome, no matter how you dress it up as “development” or ______ fill in the blank: stupid people are making book on how stupid you are, and if that is not the height of folly, i don’t know what is. I have few years left - i would prefer they be spent in the loving embrace of one i can adore - the prospects are not good. The locals view me with patience and tolerance, because they have a war torn logic that separates the lethal, from the bullshit - it is what i love about VN. Whether that translates into a companionship with some loving other that can look past my decrepitude to the earnest lad still wondering where his mother’s hand went on the 1st day of school is anybody’s guess  - i know i am still wondering. 

jts 29/05/2020

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com 

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Extinction Chronicles - 280520 ·

The further we move toward our reckoning - the less confidence i have about a suitable outcome, and this will come to head just about the time i’ll be shuffling off this mortal coil · go ahead and tell me g_d is not a woman with a fulsome sense of irony. It is 12:33 and i put off rinsing the sweat from my morning ride expecting my friends would want to deliver earlier, than later, i was wrong. I have convinced myself the best way to stimulate the local economy is by spreading money where i can in copious quantities, but people being what they are and behaving how they’ve been trained that is a mixed bag at best. One young friend, abruptly found herself out of the optimum position as clerk in a homestay, filling the desk so the Madame could be gone from the yoke of the hospitality demand. A good gig for all as long as there are customers to fill the rooms. My friend now finds herself with child number 2 and no longer collecting a check; i help how i can but that doesn’t always square with expectations of others. She got it in her head that an Arcadian Cafe by the canal would magically fill the empty coffers, and that my skills would provide the necessary design; but when i asked point-blank questions, and suggested less expensive transitions - she closed off communication. It has to be an extremely difficult time for her, and my heart feels sorrow for her suffering, yet i am doing her no favor to encourage a project which she will not discuss, or confront alternatives.

Another leader in the local economy also found himself upside down by a change in location that was bogged down by severe restrictions of movement during the Covid-19 crisis, and now finds himself facing a deadline which cannot be comfortable any more than the arrival of the baby due for my other friend. It seems deadlines are all around us and not necessarily providing efficiency or good service. We have grown so far from the necessities, people no longer realize just how little is required to exist: food, clothing, shelter - what am i missing? Okay - i’ll give ya’ that · it would be nice to have the internet as part of our future; but is it really essential. i have spent one month out of the past year without internet, i am neither scarred, nor deprived. The people i’d like to communicate with are occupied, or i have mistaken the interest they had in maintaining a relationship with me. As to the language barrier - having translator has just made me lazy and arrogant. I attribute misunderstandings to my own impoliteness and lack of sensitivity - if you want to understand another, there are always means to be understood and ways to learn what the other requires or is trying to say.

Our world is lacking substance, more and more. I watch the farmer couple next door - more like i hear them over the wall · their life is rich and full, their family stays close and they love their babies’ babies. There is dissonance and tragedy, as there is in everyone’s life, nor are they immune to the impulse to spur their children toward better lives - one had the largest spa in the resort town i live in. However we spoke just after the shutdown from Covid-19, and he owned there was no time to see his parents when business was full. If time is the ultimate resource - he is now richer than he was before the shutdown. His father is indefatigable - out the door by 5:30 am; i’ve tried working with this man 5 years my senior, and i am humbled by my own poor choices which prevent me from making any real contribution to his work. For what? - i have a pension, and Social Security. It is not affordable to live on Social Security in the country i grew up in, were that that is the only impediment to living in the U.S. The corporate thugs have so surrounded the mind of the common man, i doubt if they could tell you up from down without turning on a screen of some sort.

However this is not a life i recommend to everyone; for the longest time i deluded myself into believing i was on a creative mission - that what i sacrificed years out of my life would eventually be recognized for the sincerity with which they were created. It isn’t gonna happen, and no amount of wish fulfillment is going to alter my work’s role in the history of culture from this obscure annotation in a digital media that will soon become indecipherable from shoe leather - if you can find that anywhere anymore. Gucci, i know sells shoes, but i’ve worn hand-me-downs loafers from my step-father the CEO, and i’d wager my 15 year-old, thrice re-soled sandals from Bali got more miles left in them than a brand new pair of Gucci loafers. I know my neighbor certainly has more years ahead of him, than i - but how do i translate that simple fact into cogent prose that might allow a younger member of the audience to repent their wayward consumer addictions and sedentary lifestyle and find a farmer they can intern with who is not spraying her field with glyphosate, and has incorporated yet?

I consider myself lucky to have been bypassed by the dream-machine; to have been forced to find meaning in dreams more basic and real than fame or fortune. I look at the work of known artists out of the modern epoch and find it staid and formulaic. I can barely sit in a gallery and listen to the effete discuss the finer points of any art on a wall, and it is a rare privilege to find anything reflecting a tangible struggle within the delicate ego-informed work that passes for avant-garde (having said that - know it is more a criticism of my own work than any honest evaluation of another’s efforts. The pinched, dried out lump that used to be my loving heart has been transformed into a hardened shell of delusional self protection waiting for the spark of life to vacate withered frame - Leonard Cohen had the courage to cleave to a spiritual discipline; whatever pact Bob Dylan at the crossroads, he’s honored by cranking out albums at 79 years of age, i’ll be lucky if i get through my bicycle circuit without accusing some unsuspecting passerby of committing every heinous act my tired mind conceives but won’t hold up to the light of reason long enough to verify - fact from fancy · i guess we all have our cross to bear .  ..  ···

jts 28/05/2020

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com 

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Extinction Chronicles - 270520 ·

Today, i did not ride my bicycle - maybe the first time in a month · maybe less; i stopped keeping track when i could no longer run; i really loved running, especially low tide between Santa Monica and Manhattan beach piers, earlier in the day the better: this in the days after the iPod shrank and i was still addicted to music. I am still addicted to music, but like whiskey, i have figured out how to sip and savor - if i could figure out how to do that with women - i may have figured out the secret of life itself. So we’re all clear on the concept, y’all understand that previous sentence is braggadocio and bullshit mixed with a dollop of liquid courage designed to aggrandize myself in your mind while diminishing my faults in my own - so we’re all clear · nothing quite like the end of life to clarify things. But man, what a good time we’ve had; look around you - somewhere close by there is a lovely woman doing some lovely thing, weather getting hotter, or colder depending on what pisses you off most, something in the background · just below the threshold of earshot, but interesting enough to get your attention; then that thing you thinking about when you woke up today, but forgot with your coffee.

I’m in a challenge with my neighbors about when and how to cool the walls off without making it obvious. It it is too obvious, then i’m made for weak-kneed foreigner currying favor, but if it remains at the threshold of simple kindness, it is no more than dharma - which g_d knows there ain’t near enough on the planet to carry us into nirvana, no matter what the tabloids say. What’s weird is how the “Lotus Eaters” from Homer’s Ulysses so resemble the destination junkies of todays planetary dystopia. I keep trying to imagine that i’m the first person it occurred to to go here ________ (fill in the blank), only to find a well-heeled confederacy of, again forgive me ________ (fill in the blank). Invariably it’s not a congenial lot, ‘cause you never know who’s on the payroll of the 0.01% and who is just petitioning for a seat at the grownups table. The trillions of $’s busting the seams has to be giving fits to the interns at Harvard’s MBA program hoping to rope a dope for that shot at Maisey and all the comes with the dreams of a “Great Gatsby” whether it is understood as that or not.

What i love about Pop and his memory is his intransigence - invariably he took the high road when he’d had so many opportunities to be otherwise. He got kicked the curb twice by women he’d endeavored to aid - the 3rd just took his coin collection as payment for her indulgence of his dotage. Yeah, i know that sounds harsh and bitter - as though their behavior was noble and nurturing. We are not going to get out of this cul-de-sac by playing patty-cake with bullshit. “Quid pro quo, tit for tat, piss on a rat, get your ankle bit for that,” however you want to characterize this phase in the extinction of our DNA - jump right in when the troll in you wants to say directly what you disagree with about what i say, otherwise sit and wonder about what you cannot parse because of your twisted motivation - could i be anymore clear¿ This morning my father’s cousin posted a photo of himself and his family the year i was born. The photo was a family portrait on a lake near where my younger brother would “trim tab” his life as Buckminster Fuller might have described, but the synchronicity does not stop there: true story - i spent a day, a week with one of the mental giants of the “digital age” whose claim to fame was “working out the geometry” of Bucky’s Domes; “what he and i did, that is noteworthy, was to swap out a VW bug engine using a skateboard - everything else seems hyperbole meant to separate you from you “wherewithal” rather than unite the kingdom of Homo Sapien as was promised in the increasingly rotten apple ads. 

Where to go - like there is someplace to escape to · hahaha, or as they say in other parts of the world, jajaja · I guess as long as no one has a knee at my neck, i am okay with how i die. So how do i go about making sure that the other human beings i share this miraculous, but diabolically threatened world with have the same opportunity to either work toward her rescue or whore your soul for the sake of a few convenient shekels to moisten your lips with upon death ¿ that is a question ? It is only just past the witching hour - meaning: the sun is somewhere over the yard arm · an expression i reminded of by a woman who bet the farm i would mortgage my last years to clean lift her out of what she presumed would become her sepulcher at death with me in mute attendance - it didn’t happen and still i love her and wish her peaceful passage. But the only way it seems to make that possible is to attend to one’s one passing. Ma, it seems has lined that trajectory up from an early age and dedicated remarkable portions of her existence to making that transition - how shall we say · “just so”

I don’t forecast that in my passing - rather i would welcome attendance after the fact in anyone who considers these faint missals as worthy of the time it took to decipher; 1st out of the vault of the “knuckleheads” who tried to consigned the fate of an entire DNA strand to the hubris of a conceit known as the “singularity”. This supposed point in human history where logic prevails over sentiment without the requisite pain that is inherent to our species. From the first time a human ran to ground flesh because he/she understood stamina better than the flesh being sought. Kid yourself with your balance or your influence - your future is no less threatened by the inordinate stupidity of greed - kid yourself not · we as a feature on the planet face extermination of no uncertain extent without radical reevaluation of what is our responsibility to all around us - not with regards to how they benefit us · but how we benefit them; pay heed, or be gone - please i beg you ·

jts 27/05/2020

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Extinction Chronicles - 260520 ·

Imagine being glib about the end of our species - imagine being anything but glib · i am what the self-help gurus describe as a “people-pleaser,” not that i am but it is easier for the classification that experts require in order to explain things to the non-experts. I say this because it pleases me to help old ladies across the road, give water to hot water buffalos and to jolly crying babies by making faces or distracting noises - here’s an irony · from what i’ve learned from experts diverting a child from its misery robs them of experiencing the fullness of their emotional terrain and trains them to seek comfort elsewhere than the solace that comes from mastering one’s own misery. Madame Paradox - she and i must have had a slam-bam-thank-you-mam history in some previous incarnation, because she do seem to haunt my every step in this life. And i’m not complaining, she’s far better company than the fake sojourners one gets seated next to on especially long flights. I know this mostly by my own failures as an excellent traveler : “A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving” - Lao Tzu · i wouldn’t even begin to know how to go about such a journey. These essays are as close as i have been able to get toward such adventure. I know i want to go wherever Zuké is not; he i have come to believe fancies himself as a “social engineer” of the 1st Order - elsewhys would he expend so much of his bandwidth determining who i should see and who should see me?

Love seems to be a completely foreign concept to Zuké and his Art Intel (AI) fb thugs on all accounts: from his initial betrayal of the band of brothers at Harvard to his total capitulation to the corporate overlords at DARPA - he could’a been a contenda’ - but became just another bum · soaked in greed and lavished in opulence. And i am no different, instead of greed i suck at the whiskey tit, and for opulence i claim time for my own. I’d like to think the difference is i care about people i’ve never met - the nurses and caregivers trading their lives and well being for a chance to give a light to your family dying from a malady that someone knows more about than they are saying, but lack simple gumption to declare - “i know this about that.” There is a fb friend who has been totally consumed by the fiction that Covid-19 is a “false-flag” operation and there is no foundation in fact for the death-count of millions that people cannot, or will not accept. What is frustrating to me, sitting here now writing into the “aether” is how avoidable all of our misery could be. It dumbfounds me how easily we are led to slaughter without a sideward glance at “how or why” - driven by fear and managed by greed?! where are our weapons - what is our reply?

If it was a brother or sister i struggled with for autonomy, which has been true for me in the past, i would say “fuck you very much, see you in the funny papers,” again. I would much rather by lying in the clover fields of romance, my hands wandering about the body of a lithesome broad who feels warmly toward me - only because i am sweet to her - not because i am obscenely wealthy and lack fear for any man, woman or child - but fear everything equally, (clinically known as Generalized Anxiety Disorder). In this world it is not unreasonable to be afraid, it is however, wrong to attribute your fear to another - no matter how fearsome · that other may be, and there are some straight-up ugly fuckers out there. And again with Mistress Paradox, they be the same pissants comprising 1% if the students in a room of 27 pre-pubescent adolescents, in any school, anywhere on the planet. The only difference being how each culture chooses to orient that maladaptive personality which is obviously, for lack of a better expression, “Nature, over nurture.” The trick will be to subvert the numbers “social engineers” have plucked to their advantage and to focus education for the benefit or the human rhizome, and geared toward mutual well being and survivability.

Profit is a fiction - you are going to die · period, end of sentence. Where i write right now is so hot, i cannot sleep without A/C; my neighbors do, so it can be done - but not by me. If i knew Dr. Faustus and found a way to that desk - i would ask how can i save my brethren · not because i am superior in character than Mssr bezos, but because i am less - my concept of “enlightened self-interest” includes the success of all those around me; not because i am superior, but because my intellect tells me without the success of most, there is no success for the least, and i am the least from what i can see by the behavior of those around me. Then again, “projection is a bitch, then you die” - A. Nonymous · the music i am listening to music of Trịnh Công Sơn is bringing tears to my eyes and i understand not a word of the lyrics. Nor can i explain why that is much less give a fuck if you do, or don’t understand such an absurd assertion.

The major advantage of the task i have set for myself is education, by whatever means. I don’t care much what you learn as long as you are earnest in your desire to discover something you did not know for certain before. There is a young woman on my fb feed who has gone over to the dark side and parrots only what she reads in the echo chamber zuké - in his conceit elects for her to see and support her position. I’d have been slapped silly trying that with Pop, however more gently he struck with age at his back - it still hurt. Why is that, when i am looking to amplify the good use of love as a strategy, recrimination and force insert themselves into the discussion, as though if i could intimidate your mind - you would succumb to the logic i bludgeon you with¿ that is a question? If we are to reach the survival milestone - it will take the same inchoate gesture that brings the heat-soaked grazing buffalo to the water trough, not because i dictated so, but because i learned to read the need of a creature i could not communicate with by language - not unlike casting my line out into this aether · thinking my logic useful; stranger things have happened - i know, only by my birth at this turn of human history, strange enough for me - i could give a fuck how odd it might be for you ·

like Mr. Dylan said, “I used to care, but things have changed.”

jts 26/05/2020

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com 

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Extinction Chronicles - 250520 ·

Rent is paid, but the laundry ain’t done and there’s no one here but us chickens to do it. I really like riding my bicycle, and i shouldn’t say that too loud or g_d’s gonna hear me and take it away, just like she did my last three wives. Just as well, we weren’t as happy as we could’ve been and ya’ can’t fault someone for seeking greener pastures. What i’ve learned about myself is i’m a sucker for a damsel in distress, but not real good at picking the nurturing ones. Or i’m just figuring out that if a broad is running down the street with the cops chasing her - i should wait until i hear both sides. My folks were a pretty good fit by my reckoning; he was a Scorpio, she is Cancer; there was only 4 years difference in age, so they were of a cohort; pop was movie star handsome and ma was beauty queen ravishing, her biggest flaw would have to be an unexplainable lack of confidence that could only really be seen by her ceaseless demeaning commentary on everything around her - she elevates herself, by diminishing others. Pop was more put together than that; not that he didn’t have a few screws loose himself, but by and large he was generous of spirit and kind to strangers.

Our home was a cross between Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, and Mel Brooks’s “Young Frankenstein,” for example - they took pains to landscape the new home Pop bought on the GI bill, and Ma was very “artistic”, even selling many driftwood collages to friends and neighbors. So the house was an olive green to match the olive trees, set off nicely with shades of green accents - The front door was a fire engine Orange · if that’s a color. Ma was a consummate cook, and our food was nutritious and wholesome, she did not favor the packaged meals that were just coming online at the time. Meal times were mannered as much as that is possible with 3 sons and a daughter, just under the oldest son. My parents worked hard, my father taking 2, sometimes 3 jobs to support feet that would outgrow shoes before the shoes wore out - me, i did my best to help by not wearing shoes from the last day of school to the first if i could get away with it. Sports were an integral part of family life as were regular excursions to the beach just down the road.

Vacations were the highlight with each of the kids getting to spend a week or two at the Aunt Jane, and Uncle Dwayne’s house - and some time during the summer an extended drive to some remote campground, or rendezvous with the Daffins - old family friends · always a good time, because Nell played the guitar and knew Woody Guthrie, and Ed stood 6 foot 14 inches tall and knew how to gut a fish, which came in real handy if you were fishing on the Yuba River. But shit was shifting in Happy Town, the American War in Vietnam was claiming more lives and more money, racism and the gaping wound left at the end of the Civil War was tearing at the fabric of exceptionalism, the abortion of manifest destiny, and on top of everything something called “anonymous incineration” was being prepared for with periodic bells during school hours whereupon we would all drop what we were doing and climb under our desks to kiss our asses good-by. Eventually this took its toll and drove an irrevocable wedge into the brave marriage of Ma & Pa. Vacations were no longer rejuvenating, and we 6 travelers who had driven as far as Acapulco Mexico couldn’t even get down the mountain from the Sequoias without a knock down drag out “IT’S ALL YOUR FAULT!”

This particular eruption began as we were exciting the campground on our way back to civilization. The station wagon was packed and my younger brother and myself managed to wrangle a ride on the tailgate - which was not standard operating procedure · but not so unusual that it distracted from the conflagration being fanned by both sides of the divide. I only just now realize how painful it must have been for the older siblings in their normally choice seats just behind the driver, but for my brother and i it was the “E” ticket from Disneyland on steroids. At first we dangled our feet with impunity, waiting for the inevitable “Get back in your seat” that never came, so like any enterprising lads on the ride of a lifetime, we giggled at each other and continued to bounce our feet off the curving pavement rolling out behind us like the ultimate magic carpet ride. And to be fair to our parents and our upbringing, when the road straightened and the car accelerated past 60 mph. eventually transitioning onto the 99 South, we took advantage of common sense and seated ourselves safely in the rear facing seat, probably making funny faces at the cars behind us trying to point out our predicament to our otherwise exemplary parents. 

Well, things cooled off in the cockpit, and the gas tank required attention; Pop raised the tailgate and may have even commended we two brothers for our good sense in taking our seat and fastening our seat belts. It was a pit stop, and Pop and i ended up in the latrine standing side by side, taking care of business - when pop looked over at me, in a kindly way · without a trace of the anger he and ma had been exchanging down the mountain for more than an hour, and said to me “your mother and I are not going to make it.” What was i gonna say, “pop, you know i’m 11 right?” Years later, many quarrels more under the bridge, between: he & ma; he & i; ma & i; i and everybody i ever met .  .. i realized with certainty that he had paid me the highest compliment i may ever receive. He as a man - a wounded man reached out to someone he trusted and confided pain; he shared this with confidence knowing me as his son and as a human being with his own history. I am not betraying him by sharing this story with you, for i’ve shared it before and have yet to be struck down by lightning. It was a lesson to me on the importance of simple clear communication during a time of difficulty and pain - i was not burdened or marred for life, rather his gesture helped me to be more whole and become a person who can share suffering with those he loves and those he tries to lo ve.  

jts 25/05/2020

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Extinction Chronicles - 240520 ·

Well yesterday’s writing was a crock of shit; i almost feel i should apologize - but then i think i should apologize for everything i can’t fix or make right (whatever the fuck right is). Today i listened to Bob Dylan discuss literature as it pertains to his Nobel Prize. He shared three primary influences: “Moby Dick” - Herman Melville, “All Quiet On the Western Front” - Eric Maria Remarque, and “The Odyssey” - attributed to Homer. It should tell me something about myself as a man of letters, that i know so little about “All Quiet On the Western Front,” confusing it with “Birth of a Nation,” no irony on ‘merican indoctrination with that disclosure. Today the theme seems to be shame, probably from an image in last night’s dream involving a gay Rasputin in my past informing my life today: C.G. Jung - “until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” I am no more conflicted than any adult male without a country, facing grave doubts about every aspect of his upbringing and seemingly besot on all sides by an inexplicable sense of shame. 

What is fascinating about Mr. Dylan’s conversation about why his work is considered literature was a laser-like focus on the points of stories and how they relate to his work - a universality if you will. I veer from hero worship having a brother seems as determined to destroy my self-image as i am to build the self-image of the brother below me - sanctimony was a blood sport where i grew up, so i mistrust either image - but Bob Dylan i trust · the brother of the boyhood chum who first introduced me to Bob Dylan’s music, later ruptured my right eardrum with a tossed firecracker somewhere around age 10 or 11. I have yet to find a way to weave that personal experience into as useful a narrative as Mr. Dylan has found for the stories he read around that same age. My father was a high school English teacher and had me reading Herman Hesse’s “Siddhartha” a few years later, so it is not as though i lack the literary influence but haven’t yet found a way to connect the homilies that made up so much of my conversations with my father to the daily confusion of my existence - save what you read before you.

Ego is a bitch and a useless handmaiden - and humility is nearly as worthless. It’s that paradox again - ma has been one of the most self-involved humans in my 65 year’s experience, and i mean that as the Aussies might, “in the nicest possible way.” Yet of the last of her many studies as a water colorist of not inconsiderable talent, was to try and reconcile what she found in the emerging images of the Hubble telescope via National Geographic by what her own hands and heart might translate. It is that sort of courage of her soul to peer into the unknown i cannot escape regardless how much animosity about her own life experience she unfairly attempted to attribute to my existence - this much i know, i am not alone with that conundrum. How could she look so attentively into the universe and fight so hard not to see the “i” who only wished to be loved¿? Back to the theme of the day “shame” - what is it, and how is it that those who would murder an adolescent elephant in the wild for a photo-op posses no shame?

I do not know how to animate my outrage about the extinction of our entire species into cogent prose that passes the “goombah” test - for anyone to read and recognize their relationship to the story. I operate at an instinctive level, but have been told by professionals about instincts; it has been said that my “instincts stink.” I accept this opinion of another as best i can and press on from a biological imperative - apparently my time is not yet nigh. So how am i to leverage a seemingly inexhaustible gift for pissing people off, coupled with a seemingly inexhaustible capacity for feeling the suffering of others to benefit a “dying species”? That is a fair question which has apparently been conveniently excised from the internet “Super Highway” by the recent absence of the voice of reason - Greta Thunberg · Am i the only person on the planet that feels the absence of this courageous young woman willing to assume the fate a species that would apparently shame her by ignoring her rather than accept her solidarity with all of us who want to live - from whence comes the fascist proclivities of Sweden would be my next question. 

Just like Yemen became the focal point for starving children, the Saudis became the “butt boys” for the Empresarios extraordinaire mssrs d_rump & cmpny, or vice-versa; i always get the two confused - who’s doing whom. We are not dogs, and i refuse to lay belly up for a gaggle of punks in pinstripe suits and large withdrawal balances, while brethren close and closer to them suffer death and mismanaged healthcare due to avarice and greed - so shoot me · i care. That i am to die alone and unloved is no longer important, but of every importance - because the harder i laugh at those around me arranging their entire lives based on how many likes they can acquire, the lower my “stock” sinks. My family won’t abide my renegade ways and i doubt from the peaks of the Himalayas to the ports of of Montevideo that my conceit will ever be forgiven - so i plunge forward and hope somehow, one word, one gesture - one disrespect will not be lost on a population that has clean forgot how to respect itself · neenerneenerneener .  ..  ··· 

jts 24/05/2020

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Extinction Chronicles - 230520 ·

Tomorrow is Bob Dylan’s Birthday - i was going to try and give him a surprise birthday party · but how do surprise someone who has “heard it all,” and i believe him when he says that. When i was studying literature instead of running after it like a runaway bus, the same talking heads that are telling us it’s joey biden or nothing were assuring we students of literature that there are no more than 6 stories in the history of the world and everything you read is a variation of one sort or another - i think it may be true, mostly because i may have married three of them. When i moved to the city i live in it was hot, and got hotter - so i researched “how do you cool public places” and found a ceramic tube construction that fits into an inverted arch that can reduce the temperature of multiple meters by considerable degrees C/orF. They scoffed at the time, as tourist i had no rank and as an expat i had no friend. 10 months later, degrees warmer than this time last year, not quite a tourist but definitely not an expat - this design would have contributed substantially to a cooler city by degrees - what Buckminster Fuller described as “trim tab” technology. I am no longer offended by the stupidity of those around me, nor the narrow self interests of those who would reform a nation that kicked the ass of the most powerful military force in the world at the time, (now supposedly 10x as lethal - but like my former loving wives, likely 10x as, (let me pick this expression carefully) ______ you fill in the blank, i lack the imagination necessary. 

Just like city i live in now lusting the profits of then - the senseless building continues · for a guest that nobody wants, but money everybody thinks they need. Just like the 6 stories i tried to share the logic of the lost opportunity to cool the city i live, but also question the presumed advantage of legions of tourists spending copious amounts of fictitious currency spreading suspect germs and undermining discipline that rendered the invulnerable - vanquished. As a child with the gift of an “encyclopedia britannica” at my beck and call - the Maginot Line was a perfect study for how to protect oneself from a world that grew more dangerous each moment one grew older - a strategy developed by the French “talking heads” at the end of “WWI” - the war to end all wars · yuk, yuk, yuk. etc., etc., etc. .. ···: The thinking of those responsible at the time and expense paid to the “principals” centered around an impermeable fortification capable of deflecting any invasion of the Huns, the Hungarians, the Austro-Hungarians . .. A’ lack no one envisioned herr fureur - petite, mais Magnifique · “fuck ‘em, we’ll just go around the impermeable “Maginot Line” - which he did, sort of like joey biden circumvented the “roadblock of the day” · “medicare for all would dishonor the death of my son” - said no on · ever.

But just like the irrational rejection of a rationally cooling prospect by an “unvetted” source - we stumble forward · alienated from each other for the dumbest of reasons: aping the elite conventional wisdom, “only the worthy remain comfortable” In the last of my conversations with Pop, he really enjoyed driving the point home, “Boy am i glad i’m old.” In my abundant conceit at the time - i’d jolly him along to the next happy expression i could elicit; today, sitting in insufferable late afternoon heat of where i live and what i have to work with, i continue to gain appreciation for his grasp of the “6 Stories” to be told. Today is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s birthday - “It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories; instead of theories to suit facts.” The fact is i am on the back slope of my “afternoon” figuratively and literally. Compared to the “6 Stories” i have participated in or have witnessed from a distance, delusion is what i face next. The idea the non-existence does not fill me with terror like every living entity on the planet regardless of its state of sensatus.

My ear and ear canal is and had been rotting in my head for over a year - and still the organism i inhabit fights for stasis - much like the mind that claims domain over its periphery. I like it more each day knowing my delusion of control for the fiction it represents to all life on the sphere of life i have grown so fond of - Terra 3 from Sol · i have met a family and a man who has named daughters in the same vein, Tem & Sol. I am not alone in knowing how close we Sapiens are to extinction. The anonymous vacant partner i chided in my last post is reading text about our kind, “Sapiens” There are people across our planet who are struggling, not just with the unnecessary interruption of a blood born malady promulgated by a nexus with the limited site of a pharmacological manipulation that no longer has any relation to health but is entirely enslaved to a profit motive of destructive consequence - that as Leonard Cohen stated so clearly, “Everybody Knows.” I’d like to say to you as some sort of vindication, i am glad to go -  but i’d be lying.

Pop, raised me right and would not allow my tongue to spout, what he described throughout my life as “Bullshit” with a capital “B.” Pop was tasked mightily in his last months - almost as though g_d in her infinite wisdom heard his imprecation - “what ?” · and gave hime surcease. My father was brave, and it was my privilege to fight my way to his side, only to find he needed me not - at all. This is a suspicion i grew up believing no matter how he tried to make me feel useful. It is unfortunately all i have to leave you who read searching for reason during an epoch seemingly designed to demonstrate - there is no why for, or why not · only greed. I just spent 5 minutes of my life i will never get back trying to capture an example of the greed that is being shoved down your throats, and don’t i feel stupid giving one more second to agencies determined to enslave you, by transplanting words onto loving speech i share loving with you that has no other intention that diverting you to your lowest possible achievement . fuck ‘em, they are dumber than i, and clearly that is pretty stupid to hold out hope to a dead branch of DNA that would rather titillate than educate itself - let me know how that worked out for you and your generations  

jts 23/05/2020

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com 

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Extinction Chronicles - 220520 ·

I just read a fascinating 1st hand account of a drug transaction that took place in a time and place nearly identical to one i know of with entirely different results. To distinguish between the two, we’ll call them D1 and D2. D1 is the account that i just read which is plausible in every way. I know the terrain, the landmarks and the types of characters involved and can fully understand why it was called off - D2 is more personal and involves hubris, ignorance, greed and betrayal; more like a cluster-fuck than a business deal. Sitting here just now preparing to relive the event i realize just how lucky i was to get taken for a ride at an early age rather than spend many years believing i am smarter than i actually am - so rather than tread water in some godforsaken memory · what useful personal experience can i plumb for the general benefit of you the reader¿ To begin with, am i abandoning the comparison of two correlates from envy? Do i secretly wish i possessed the acumen of D1 and rue my dealing debacle and rather than own that envy, slough it off like existential dead skin with sanctimony and high-handedness · that’s a fair question if i am to ask you the reader to use the lens of literature as a means to access the darker recesses of the human soul before it is entirely extinguished.

I feel better already - so fuck you · I watched the backside of woman wash vegetables today who had blown me off like so much dead skin. She is shapely and to ignore the view i was given in our short chat would demean the pleasure of a woman’s body - a pleasure that has animated a huge portion of my life · thank you dear, whether you were aware and just teasing me, as all beautiful women seem to do, or you were entirely oblivious to the pleasure you gave me watching your hips undulate in your brief (& i hate to say it only for the discomfort i know that cloth brings me) polyester garment. When i began this essay, i could barely see for the oppression breath in a tropical climate seems to do to my being. Normally i am in the bathtub soaking in cold water before noon, but today due to obligations - real and imagined i was out peddling in the lethal part of the day - and just to show you how fucking stupid that is, i left my hat sitting by my chair after a heavenly mango smoothie laced with rum, only to realize in the healthier part of the morning i clean forgot the hibiscus when i bought my eucalyptus and peppermint essential oils to fuck with the dust mites and the rats.

Sometimes it frightens me to realize what a diabolical asshole i can be - when i choose. But fun is simply the wiser strategy - bar none · Because of the kindness of a providence that could arrange a mango smoothie laced with rum seems to expand to temporary custody of a misshapen 

chapeau important to no one but me and any yutz that might covet such a loss. Upon my return to sanctuary, never mind how temporary - i could barely walk, much less think, or think about writing, yet here we are. My vittles are courtesy of the same establishment i abandoned the cover to my addled pate; my backup jug of water is in place and my miraculous farmer neighbors are in custody of a gift of seeds from the same kindly spirit that would laugh at my interest while in the next breath undulate her comely shape at me (in my secret life) while we spoke of nothing in particular - tell me life is not fucking amazing. I smoked entirely too much today, but know where i can find hibiscus to add to my DIY expectorant that seems to help me through most inflammation. 

I discovered i have not acclimated to ambient temperature for sleep, and so when it turned hot if found myself attending old wounds - laugh if you must. Almost a year ago i had a near death experience in what i had understood up until that point a placid South China Sea. My daily excursions into the mother salt water was accompanied by change of season waves that drove me under and onto the shore like the particle of sand i am. At age 10 or so, a tossed firecracker ruptured my right eardrum, and moisture and hearing seemed henceforth rended one from the other. It has taken almost a year to evacuate the sea water from my canal which was exacerbated the moment i resorted to A/C to sleep. Go the fuck ahead and tell me “everything is not connected” and i will wait until your back is turned and i am alone with my thoughts to laugh, mirthlessly perhaps, but laugh nonetheless at your .  ..  ··· ________ fill in the blank.

 I had a heartening conversation with a brave spirit this morning - the same kind spirit i forgot to buy hibiscus from, but also somehow managed to remind her of some neglected strategy - go ahead, tell me again how as Master Leonardo Da Vinci said “everything is connected” is some snarky bullshit expression designed by the communists to deprive you of your liberty, and again in the privacy of my own thoughts i will turn my back to you and either pray for your soul or regal in your monumental hubris - likely depending on the time of day, ambient temperature and exactly how much hind-tit i had to suck on to get where i was going. Some days it’s easier to get places than others. What is harder is to stay focused on the more meaningful tasks - “how can i help you to get better at helping others?” I don’t know and as i lean back in my chair, i  feel the sweltering heat laugh at my solitude, and i wonder all the more¿ who is here to rescue me, if i am not here to rescue you?

jts 22/05/2020

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Extinction Chronicles - 210520 ·

Last night in order to stay one step ahead of the goose-steppers, i deleted my user history only to find myself locked out of all my accounts and no idea which password went to what. Because of my age, i am in a unique position with regards to understanding computers. My first job in high school was working with a family of potters. The father had worked in aerospace and when the industry sacked its workforce (for the good of the shareholders), he built two kilns in an industrial complex and put his sizable family to work throwing pots, 5 sons can do a lot of damage if you are as smart as they were. Some years later visiting the same shop, which by then they had transitioned into an Apple outlet, probably not that long after Jobs and Wozniak had vacated their garage. I had no idea what these gizmos were, and asked the father of the five sons “what gives.” He in his carnival barker voice replied - “Well in timeline of history, these things will either compare in importance to the invention of the wheel, or the transition of our species from ‘carbon life form to silicon based life form’.” If i had to add valence to my life prior to or after computers - prior was much richer and far finer in too many ways to describe in a 5 paragraph essay.

I like computers and am no luddite, but i’m pretty sure if Art Intel, (AI) does reach singularity and becomes conscious of itself as forecasted in “The Terminator”, i will become one of the first to go. I once worked in a Computer Aided Design (CAD) laboratory where the sport for bored aerospace workers was to bring the server to its knees - and if you think you have a long memory. But again with the paradoxes, in my conceit i spend hours typing emotive content that because of the inability or disinterest in deciphering the plethora of text computers allow for, will likely evaporate on the rapidly heating hood of mankind’s engine; for example, the last years of Pop’s creative output representing poetry at the pinnacle of his gift was largely written onto 3.5” floppies on his vintage IBM 286 which he wrote poems on until he stopped writing - the computer as i understand it, now lies somewhere in the very moist crawlspace under my brother’s Washington state dwelling. So too for these quaint yammerings of a man dead, but not quite on the central shore of Viet Nam. So last night when i met my Catch-22 and from an abundance of caution deleted my “user history” and locked myself out of access because my recovery email was also locked to me - the only people on the planet with access to my files were the corporate thugs running the checkpoints on the “information Super-Highway”

Lucky for me in a lucid morning moment i remembered a password combination that unlocked the vault and i am able to continue this quixotic, however unimportant effort to document the end-days of a species that was given a paradise and managed to poison it to most forms of life, save those grown in petri dishes of the rich and famous. Back to our “Catch-22” of being locked out of the “Information Super-Highway,” i am reluctant to leave go my domain “Stoneartist.com” because its like that do-hickey you come across when you’re curious and remains long after you are no longer curious. I don’t know the day i gained control of my domain, but i do remember the high hopes of eternal recognition and vindication for my long-suffering creative efforts - what 15-20 years ago. I have never sold a single item from this domain that costs me some $100 per year to maintain; i no longer concede the conceit of a webpage - because who gives a fuck? Last night i had hoped it was the recovery address for my ill-fated purge of my user history, and what i found was a circle jerk. I could not get the googol recovery code because i could not remember the password of my domain email, which is the only reason to maintain the expense. But here is where it gets weird: i am not only paying tribute to my domain server, but i am also paying the salaries of those jackbooted knaves seizing my user history through “eminent domain” or was is “national security” i get the two confused. 

If instead of hitting my brake handle turning on to the coast road going North, i had hit the young mother and child on her moped going through the intersection, all the year’s of documenting my life’s work which is of no interest to anyone but myself, would have been at the mercy of an administrator who owes allegiance to no one but the share-holder. I could have been lying in some state of disrepair - perhaps unconscious, and the only people with access to my work would have been fascists combing my records for evidence of my - what¿? contempt for the status quo · if it were not for more level headed individuals: the Dalai Lama, Thich Nhat Hanh, Pema Chodron, Winston O’Mally; i could see it in my capacity to be committing treason to the “state” and sedition to the betrayal of the poor, by the rich. I did not end up on the pavement, and i still i “redress my grievances” but only for the fluke of having remembered my password. That act of memory doesn’t begin to amount to the number of human exchanges i had this morning on my bicycle, prior to and after the near miss and Cua Dai and the Coast Road: children looking to their parent; large trucks accommodating bicycles, small vendors looking to clients and many, many humans just looking to stay cool.

I am luckier than many i read on the fb channel, including the wannabe historical figure zuké trying to leverage the fluke of his water carrier place in the annals of corporate history into one of influence and meaning - but failing miserably · sadly, just like me. I think C.G.Jung was closer to the mark reflecting on the similarity of rhizomes to the human genome. I have ginger and turmeric growing in the space by my front door i reclaimed from a stump which i was too stupid at the time to realize it would grow back into a tree again just like the eucalyptus in the corner of the house i grew up in the grew back no less than 3 times after being blown down by the Santa Anas of my youth - i know this because some how it became my task to saw the trunk into fireplace size chunks. What will never cease is the growth that root demonstrated each time that all was left was a sprig growing from the stump, just like the one i viciously dug out for g_d knows what reason save that of vanity - that somehow my struggle would be sanctified and made meaningful if i could grow something more useful than the tangle of leaves and weeds that prevented my superior concept of herbs and leafy greens to grow - even now, i can’t tell you which was more useful to the people around me, or the people to come after i leave - “oh well, do your best; hydrate and try to have fun” said Mr. Natural to no one who could hear, or so he feared. 

jts 21/05/2020

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com 

reprinted with permission - all rights reserved

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