I am frightened - heat bothers me · and it is very hot where i live. I am okay with injury, but do not know how to adjust the thermostat on my body to accept extreme conditions - hot or cold. That is not entirely true - i learned at an early age that if you drink a warm beverage on a hot day it will fool your body into cooling itself. I also learned when driving Horse Cabs in NYC, that you will be warmer the more you empty your bladder. It may just be i don’t like weather extremes, or i am using the weather to lament about other features of my life in a foreign nation, sort of like being married to someone who doesn’t treat you well, so you make a big thing out of the way they leave toothpaste in the sink - i really don’t know. People i admire suggest that happiness is the absence of three poisons to the spirit - Greed, Hatred and Delusion. Of course if you believe this premise it requires you to carefully consider each as it relates to your own behavior - a lot easier to think about than actually accomplish. Greed for example; am i greedy to believe at my age there is anything but decrepitude and increasing vulnerability? Is there doubt in my own mind about acquisitions - are there things that i wished to own that i didn’t fight hard enough to acquire¿ Do i envy those people who think nothing about running air conditioning day in and day out regardless of the cumulative cost to the entire planet - i just don’t know.
Hatred is an interesting behavior. For far too long i could only understand it in terms of the white hot fury that was the goto emotion for having your way while growing up. Anger and hatred are vastly different, and both nearly useless. Hatred in the Indo-European root is to aver - move away from. There was also lots of that growing up, but it manifested as judgement, more than avoidance, though there was still plenty of that. As i grow closer to my death i try to understand myself better, for there is no one else i have a better chance of understanding. Judgement is a nearly useless as a measure of self knowledge. Once you have arrived at that too convenient a place in reasoning, the mind tends to cease functioning and move on to other curiosities. Yet if i am as complex as my failures and successes would suggest there doesn’t seem to be a unified expression that explains my special brand of - what’s the word i’m looking for? You begin to see what i mean about the weakness of judgement as an analytical utility.
As for delusion - don’t even get me started · too late. The way i was raised, surrender was not an option. I’m pretty sure my father was a Jesuit Priest in another lifetime and was sent back to torment the world with the four minds of his children which he molded, cajoled and toyed with like some medieval sorcerer never accepting good enough as an excuse to cease whatever the pursuit was at the time. It is for this reason i’m reluctant to simply say it’s too fucking hot and move on to cooler, more temperate climates - which from what i’m reading is likely to be fewer and fewer locations on the planet. I once lived in a quonset hut that abutted abandoned railroad tracks in a former Beer Brewery. It was the 1st lodging my last wife and i shared. Life was good and there was nothing we could not conquer together. Cross ventilation was not easily managed for this cavernous space with two small window on the back wall and a large framed double door for the front. At the time i was renting my brain to the aerospace industry and so had access to very skilled thermal engineers. So for the cost of a Niçoise Salad conjured by French Dame we were able to learn that the best insulation yet discovered is air. However the prospect of creating an air pocket over the arched surface of our 40 foot ceilings would have been delusional - but now you the reader know why fiberglass makes for such good insulation - it’s not so much the material but the air pocket in creates.
I have seen a model of a swamp cooler using stacked ceramic cylinders that could quite easily be installed as an architectural accent in this water rich nation, yet i could not build excitement enough for it to take off. That is part of my delusional thinking that enthusiasm is enough to overcome inertia. The other more insidious aspect of my delusions would be wish fulfillment - as though to want something bad enough it will happen. This as i have come to learn is much different than many more mature and effective personalities operate. Say for example the billionaires who apparently want no more than a lot of money - where i would go and work very hard to fulfill my wished for objective - that’s how i arrived in Vietnam · a face i saw on FB, billionaires apparently don’t employ logic in the selection of their objectives. For example - i understand a face is not enough to establish a foundation for a relationship, but i also understand in order to make things happen it is necessary to build a foundation. I also understand that if you want to keep your disappointments to a minimum, you must keep your desires to a minimum - I want to be loved in return · so i love until i see it coming back and then move closer, or so i’ve convinced myself - remember we are discussing delusion.
With billionaires it starts out similarly. The bozo bezos i understand left Manhattan to piggyback on the mythos of garage startups of the gr8 Northwest - it is at this juncture mimicry as a form of flattery just gets fucking weird, for both apple and bezos · success was not enough, domination and comparing phalluses trumped hope and ambition. They, the digital overlords got lost in hubris - a malady as old as our species. Not to be sanctimonious, but when i arrived in VN and made contact with the mysterious face i deluded myself into traveling across the planet to meet, and she did not demonstrate reciprocal interest, my purpose and determination wilted and faded like another blossom on my “crazy tree”. Not so with the goobers running the virtual reality of our world into and an actual concrete conclusion - and they don’t seem to have a clue about what they are doing. My heart was not broken by some, probably very decent human being that cares not a whit for me except for how my extraordinary interest in her gooses her FB ratings; rather much older & hopefully a little wiser, i will wander down the road looking for the same “heart of gold” i have always sought, but remain entirely unwilling to stake the future of our entire species on whether i am successful - instead i will as he said so well so long ago - “go out not with a bang, but with a whimper” · lucky me .
jts 08/05/2020
http://stoanartst.blogspot.com
reprinted with permission - all rights reserved
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