Yesterday i spoke about pain with the authority of the wounded; and almost as though guided by the universe i stabbed myself in my Achilles Tendon while sitting outside on the low wall. If it wasn’t so dangerous to have a somewhat deep puncture wound in one’s foot in this microbe rich nation where i only wear sandals - it would almost be funny · actually it still is. From the number of injuries i’ve known large and small i was well aware the sooner i could smear Neosporin and seal the wound the better my odds of not adding insult to injury. The equivalent would be burning yourself on the stove and knocking people down in your haste to get ice on the wound because you had read somewhere the sooner you can reduce the temperature to a burn, the sooner the flesh stops cooking. And as long as you’re curious i do have personal experience with burns having spilled an industrial sized kettle of simmering spaghetti sauce across my forearm in unfortunate lesson in triage. But this is another day, and when i looked at the knife wound this morning while changing the dressing i was more than relieved to find it sealing up nicely as though i there had not been a 1/2 inch of razor sharp agricultural stiletto pulled from it within the last 12 hours.
You’d be right to be thinking “fucking clutz,” however - you’d be more accurate asking “how did that fuck get this far?” Last night pondering my klugey dressing and it’s toilet papered dollop of Neosporin, cut-in-half too large bandage finally affixed to my ankle with increasingly precious blue painter’s tape - were this wound to go septic, i’d have to seek “professional” help, which i am loathe to do · having developed a healthy mistrust and concomittant profound gratitude for the medical profession - those who have not sold their souls to the medical/insurance racket. But this discussion is about triage and the danger of focusing on one’s wounds when the objective is the stasis our remarkable human vehicles are built for. Somewhere along the line, we stopped listening to our own bodies - to the signals they give us about hunger, anger, happiness - the multitude of information our remarkable sensory apparatus provides us 24/7 for the entirety of our lives. We have been conditioned to ignore our own awareness of self and to substitute the questionable advice of those who have demonstrated repeatedly they could give a flying-fuck about our well being - sort of like that broad that blew in your ear late one night and left sometime before morning with your wallet, your confidence and your heart.
Are we really collectively that stupid; i have to ask because i know that collectively they can barely grab their asses with both hands. When i say “they,” i am not misogynistically referring to my better half, i am referring to the emotional ciphers that have condemned an entire planet to extinction for no more than a shiny bauble on their pinky finger. That my brothers and sisters is pain of the 1st Order and it is a complete paradox for me to summon my hard fought compassion to their aid - but then that is the nature of paradox, ¿mais oui? All the yammering about we’re all in this together only gets real when one holds solidarity with the lowest common denominator - i got that far in mathematics. What is hard to reconcile is the betrayal by those capable of understanding Dr. Einstein the best for no more than a tic in their stock portfolio. It gives one pause about the sacredness of science, and i was (emphasis on WAS) a believer in the magic of science. But like all disillusion - on both sides of the aisle · there is a limit to my faith. You cannot fuck all and hope to get away with it - that’s just plain stupid.
So i sit quietly with a self-inflicted knife wound in my ankle, alone in a foreign nation unwilling to surrender to a war i never started, but will damn sure fight to the end. I am human, and it is good. I have enjoyed the most remarkable experiences 6 disjointed sensory inputs can commingle; i have watched misery transformed in an instant into boundless joy and gratitude. Where else can you find such contrast, except “everywhere.” The delusion that there is a single way, a single form or a simple truth is almost like a strand from the conversations i had with my dying father. “Don’t get stuck in concrete” he would say to me as though he could se the tricycle wheels in my brain turning toward how can i make this “forever” when there is no forever, and there is nothing but forever . .. ···: The closer i get to death and the lower my liquor stock gets the more i understand what dear old dad was getting at. If you ain’t happy or safe where you are, anyplace you go will provide you that same conviction. Whereas if this is your stand, your hope, your dream - there ain’t fuck all that can relieve you of it - now matter what the “dream machine” says otherwise.
Humility about the, as Bob Dylan might say “greasy skid mark” you are is a start. There is no everlasting anything but the that which encourages your finest warmth, your heartiest hello and your most forlorn - oh fuck! How much better do you want it? You are in complete control and there is no other agency but your own heart. Be loving - no one owes you shit for it · yet there is no organization of thought or wealth on the planet that can provide you more than that which you freely give to yourself. Make it love, for that emotion is the only renewable resource our species has ever discovered. To love all cost your nothing and gives everything to everybody it encounters. Pain is not an excuse to close down - that is what greed does - it convinces you if you have not gained your heart’s desire that somehow you have failed - you have not. Our planet does not need us; you do not need me - i value you and will die defending my right to believe that, whether you are an emotional cipher preying on the bulk of humanity, a woman blinding me by her beauty or my own mother struggling to convince herself she loved me - it is my choice and my choice alone what i believe · you are fine, now do finer . .. ··· : PLEASE
jts 03/05/2020
http://stoanartst.blogspot.com
reprinted with permission - all rights reserved
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