“The more things change, the more they remain the same” - Old French Proverb; i was just preparing to make some snarky argument about, “yeah well, you didn’t have Covid-19, or D._rump or . .. then i realized they had it in spades and we’re the lucky ones who don’t have the Bubonic Plague or Caligula, or . .. It would seem that everyone would like to believe their misery trumps all others - and i am as guilty as the next guy, likely more so. So where is the “meaning in the mere darkness of being” Jung describes. Why am a casting about to find some universal solvent to relieve the obvious burdens of others. It is so bad that today buying a handful of vegetables from a local stand, loading my 6 tomatoes into the scale that is supposed to have been part of civil reform preventing overcharging, and making the nice lady take more than she asked for, only to find when i got home she took back 2 tomatoes, leaving me 4 and charging me for 6. I feel for the torment that would drive someone to be so sharp, yet have it seems, i have no mercy in my heart for the billionaires who are consigning our species to death row.
Is that why i’ve been given this instant of awareness in a life that goes in and out of focus like a six-pack from the movie “Groundhog Day”? There are international readers who will likely have no clue what that reference might mean - think hangover that is only made better by the next beer · or in old-speak the fuck who got stuck rolling the boulder out of Hades forever. There are many stories about the eternal punishment we humans face because we search for meaning and control in a powerless existence, yet i feel very fortunate to have been born to parents who would ask such questions. So many humans today are forced into the delusional state that they know what the answer is, they hardly ever had a chance to ask a question - even my nemeses · the poor billionaires doomed to a life of smug luxury and denial. I can think of anything sadder than to have climbed over the dead bodies of those whose lives you had determined to be less important than your own and to find yourself on your deathbed like Ivan Ilyich with great doubt and no time to sort it out.
Not that sitting alone in Vietnam’s sweltering season with your skin telling you, “you’re not healthy” is any better position to be in - but at least i get to laugh at my own jokes from time to time, and occasionally find a singed soul that is not burnt to the core and has an honest to god smile which can’t be bought for love our money. Poor ‘merica, everything can be bought for love or money, but there’s not an item on the shelves that’ll last past its planned obsolescence expiration date; and if your thinking of buying it for your girlfriend, you’d be wise to make sure the price doesn’t include some backroom deal with the financing agent - Dr. Faustus. I would settle for a little happiness which from what i’ve learned thus far is best found trying to share what little you got, with someone who has less. It is not a path i recommend to everyone, for the simple reason that there are so many souls starving for a little happiness in the world that they will simply take all that you offer, and then pilfer whatever else they get away with.
I agree with Lao Tzu, the more you give away, the more you gain - though i was born to refugees from the Great Depression - not the great depression we’re facing today now that things are finally great again in ‘merica, i’m talking about the one just after the “War to End All Wars” WWI - and for all their progressive protestations otherwise, ma and pa were/are as tight fisted a couple as i’ve ever met. It is hard to give freely in the sense of (just spent a full 1/2 hour searching this expression) unconditional love, when the givers are starving. Then again my entire live may have no other reason for being than to gain a better understanding of this important concept - i’m sleeping better already · When i began this essay i wanted to talk about raison d’etre, and so went searching my files for a copy of the 1st sonnet i’d ever written - it was sappy and printed on a sheet with multiple images including a body outline left for me by the grufyti thugs in hollywood who’d taken exception to my scathing critiques of the effete scribbles, another essay, at another time.
This sonnet was written just as pop’s existential star was beginning to twinkle - he’d been herded into a locked facility by my oh-so-cautious siblings for exhibiting, for lack of a better expression - exactly who he was. The sonnet was full of conviction about how stone carving had encapsulated my my soul and was achieved in generational cooperation between a loving father and his son. I am not ashamed of the effort, nor will i live or die on discovering some version of it somewhere the digitally mismanaged ether. More it was the mutability of even in the short span of 15 years one’s purpose in life can be utterly altered by new discovery. If i was ever a sculptor, which 40 years of my life say i was - it was the “flawed genius” Emile Zola dared to use describing his childhood friend Paul Cezanne. Me, I could give a fuck - people talk and like Bob Dylan said most of them are “lying there dying in their own blood”. I sit here and think how fortunate i am to have lived at a time to actually hear Mr. Dylan sing in person - once in a sports stadium along with the Grateful Dead in the reactionary, now progressive county in which i grew up watching my, now 92 year-old mother taking a joint being passed around and sucking on it as though it might give life - apparently it did · she’s still kicking, long may she run . .. ···
jts 07/05/2020
http://stoanartst.blogspot.com
reprinted with permission - all rights reserved
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