It was only a matter of time with all that goes on in the world - i have a rash on my forearm · not the 1st and i’m sure not the last. I tend to cleanliness and so i wonder if i am suffering from hygiene fatigue after more than a month in quarantine. When i stabbed my heal, i determined to hold off bicycling until i was sure there was no danger of infection or damage to my tendon - fresh air helps everything. But the body is a mystery, i’d once had a catheter wound turn to MRSA, and later watched a recluse spider bite on the same hand begin to cannibalize my flesh in the same manner as MRSA. Yet the emotional component of the immune system cannot be blown off as metaphysics. I once spent the night at a young friend’s house where i was so uncomfortable i gave myself Hives, which if you’ve never enjoyed, is something i’d only really recommend for your next lifetime. With all the foul chemicals scientists have poured into our environment, i wonder how we are able to breath at all, much less ever trust science again. I was raised by rational thinkers, and so even doubting the wisdom of science is almost heretical, though the very foundation of its practice is to question.
My sense is we crossed over the boundaries when we created authority. I believe in civil order, for i’ve been in to many rock and roll riots to have much faith in mobs or the congenial nature of humans in mass, however much i wish it were otherwise. Part of the reason i experience cognitive dissonance regarding the effectiveness of science is a learned belief that study of the subject can solve nearly any problem. And here we sit barely 20 years into the 21st millennium and our species may not last to the end of the century for no other reason i can see than greed; not even greed from the majority of our species but phenomenal greed from less then .01% of the entire population. I know a lot of smart people, and i can’t seem to explain myself well enough to demonstrate the problem, much less gain cooperation in solving the problem of our eminent demise. The mechanistic view of existence no longer squares with my growing suspicion of synchronicity and the relationship of the unknowable with our high defined experience.
I just finished a fascinating story by Celeste Ng - “Little Fires Everywhere”. It had the seamless quality to it which Jane Austen mastered so well. What is troubling is the predictable outcome; not with regards the denouement which was satisfactory and logical - but just its very presence seemed illogical for a novel about an open-ended existence vs a structured life. Shit is not neat and tidy, people are sketchy - even the stalwart ones. Family is no bulwark against anything nothing ends with the last chapter, no matter how well nested it is. So why do we as a species yearn for this “unified theory” with which, Mr. Einstein cursed us all [with], and who the fuck determined a sentence cannot end in a preposition¿ (or prepositional phrase?) for that matter - damn, did it again. Of Pop’s many favorite expressions distilled from a lifetime of humble, yet thorough scholarship was “don’t get stuck in concrete”. I know he’d say this to me specifically, as well as i know he shared this personal truth with anyone else it would seem to fit. He came to believe this i believe responding to my youthful and oft times shrill declarations of “FACT” - an intellectual cul-de-sac i am still winding my way from - fucking prepositions.
I’ve now crossed over the line of pre-hydration post-saturation barrier where we are now traveling as pilots of old might say, by the seat-of-our-pants. Trinh Cong Son plays, though i still have to googol the unfamiliar name - hazards of cross-cultural intrusion. My mission is to have some fun while i try to document as honestly as a sculptor-cyclops-refugee might in the later days of his happy life. When i say synchronicity, chew on this: where i now sit with population of 95 million people has had less than 300 cases of Covid-19 and O deaths, the nation where i lived last with a population of 328 million - 2/3 larger, has had 1.18M cases, and 68k deaths, for the math challenged that is 68,000 more deaths than where i now live. Why is that? It explains for me why i feel grateful to live here - yet, mindful i do not belong. Where and why i feel such kinship for here and now, is love: love has no location and does not understand my complaint - in a good way. I can whinge and wiggle as much as i like, but cannot ignore my appreciation of a way of life which i would like to contribute, but must accept as one more wound, i can only hope to find a way to mend - just like where and when i started out from what i thought was home 5o years ago.
For many years i owned a tool box which resembled a compressed version of what i tried to carry with me from my youth; affixed to the outside of this miniaturized cubbyhole toolbox was a prescient green plastic 5¢ imprint used in markets no longer, but will prompt thought until it falls off - don’t say i didn’t warn you of the coming wrinkle · i am afraid of dying, though i have decreed otherwise throughout my life. It is disconcerting to have no other body to say this to, but you. I am not troubled by your confusion, for if you have gotten this far in this “essay”, it is not my interest that is carrying you forward, but yours. For my money, the kindest thing i’ve heard in many months about our collective troubles is s pure warm-heartedness for being curious about what comes next. I can’t say whether this is a function of literary training and its inherent demand for tidy endings as regards storylines, or if it just make sense to remain open about the future until we again see patterns of behavior emerging that dictate stupid decisions in which 68k out of 328M human beings are murdered by greed, contrasted with 0 people dying out of a population of 95M who are then encouraged to continue struggling toward fulfillment - however you understand that word to mean.
a quiet adherence to some principles does not preclude happiness
jts 04/05/2020
http://stoanartst.blogspot.com
reprinted with permission - all rights reserved
∞
No comments:
Post a Comment