Dingo-deli use to be my favorite writing location, yet when i realized i couldn’t order my delivered veggies and had to travel, even if it is as copacetic a location as D-d it was adaptive time. As i rode away from my clean laundry hangin on the open windows, i fantasized them getting blown into the pile dirtdung in which my earthworms had recently arrived and it just sort of sucked the wind out of my sails; never mind that it is 91 degrees and 62% humidity; or that D-d no longer offers whiskey for my beer . .. i must write because it is the most worthwhile activity i can conceive of doing in these perilous times we all live. And i like to write, now that drawing is more and more difficult with my vision dimming - not just ocular, but dreams of recognition for my years of hard work and ostensible sacred devotion; albeit impure and ego-driven, however much moments of creative ecstasy may have whispered otherwise. Yet it is all the same road and those lessons i fought hard for continue to inform my work. G_d bless pop and his keen training and insistence on discipline, for it has rendered me productive and relatively sober where without his guidance, i’d have been just one more schlock dilettante, drunk at openings and lazy in front whatever fake shit i wanted to call art, instead of the sterling example of a flawed genius you read before you.
With drawings i struggled mightily to convey what i could see about the character of my chosen subject, and i was coming close just as my already visual dicey acuity fogged beyond any workaround that i have found yet - besides it was no longer a fun chase, whereas the prospect of describing with words any one of the many characters i meet in a day remains eminently accessible, once i get over the spelling hump. For example, i’ve always been attracted to beauty; it goes back a long ways - aside from the fact ma was a beauty queen and sister K___ was not just freshman princess, but homecoming Queen taboot.he One of my earliest memories is standing at the shoreline on an overcast day with a young girl ugly boys are accustomed to being thrown together with. Blustering my way forward i asked her about her boyfriends and she shared her love interest in the honest way the children are want to do - my crestfallen response was to declare before god and nature, “i could beat him up,” and her entirely understandable response was to pick her feet up from the washed over sand of our patient happy feet and move yards down the shore - the pretty girls are still moving down the shore · and i have no more clue today about the feminine now, than i did when i was 7 or so.
But these are the “Extinction Chronicles” and i owe you the reader at least a nod in the direction of solidarity about what to expect, much less what to do about it. We’re in a pile of shit and not understanding each others has a lot to do with it. I wouldn’t look to FB or the computer screen for a way out - the less you understand about yourselves or what is happening the more pliable and easily fooled you are. Look around you - is anybody close that you can trust? If you are within a cloistered community of likeminded people, you might answer yes - depending on your age. The young tend to keep the faith more easily, perhaps because their betrayals have not damaged them too deeply yet, or they know something important about life, as i did when i was young, like solidarity. Just now one of the kingpins of the expat community where i live rode up and studiously passed me without a nod. Were i young, i might have been stung to the core, now i accept it as a fact of life - what good is power if you cannot diminish others. I understand that Hitler was so mindful of this fact that the chairs on the other side of his desk were inches shorter than his own - only so those he spoke with had a physical reminder of something he didn’t believe himself · superiority.
I find this behavior of asserting superiority through ranking rampant in this tiny agrarian community i find myself ensconced in, nor is it entirely racial. Locals who have bet the farm on wealthy tourists naming Hoi An as a worldwide destination have sacrificed much believing in the generosity of a cohort of privilege and merit that lacks any foundation in fact. The “rich” as Billie Holliday sang so well are generous as long as you don’t ask for too much; that this conceit ripples its way back down the consumer chain is what drives me to distraction. We will not survive as long as we laud the selfish as an example of the good life. There is nothing i have found in my life that would suggest possession of excessive wealth has ever made anyone more generous. Elon Musk - the electric car entrepreneur who finagled himself into “progressive automaker kingdom” has shown his true colors in post the post virus economy by abandoning his workers like his was a slaughterhouse lord in the deep south - we do not have the margin for benefit of doubt at this turn in our species` evolution · you support all or you are an enemy.
I have trouble with the expression “enemy,” for when i saw _rump coagulating the ill-gotten gains of the DNC and assuming his path to emperor was a foregone conclusion, i had no reason to disbelieve. Even the channel, whatever that may be you read these earnest feelings on is subject to the whims of a finely tuned digital thug - Art Intel (AI). If the internet had been allowed to propagate information in its original configuration, there would be no priority - first come, first served. The traitors to the species have altered this to include, if you wanna play - you pay. Unfortunately for them there are wild cards in the hypertext that are not so easily channeled and for those seeking to grow and survive; there are paths open, for now. Just like it is not necessary for me to pay obeisance to supposed kingpins of the vagaries of my particular social construct - my obligation to the future is to be more generous in my thinking and to not accept assumption i make that are born of ancient and foreign wounds while struggling to see more deeply into the known native goodness that is our birthright as human beings.
jts 13/05/2020
http://stoanartst.blogspot.com
reprinted with permission - all rights reserved
∞
No comments:
Post a Comment