Last night in order to stay one step ahead of the goose-steppers, i deleted my user history only to find myself locked out of all my accounts and no idea which password went to what. Because of my age, i am in a unique position with regards to understanding computers. My first job in high school was working with a family of potters. The father had worked in aerospace and when the industry sacked its workforce (for the good of the shareholders), he built two kilns in an industrial complex and put his sizable family to work throwing pots, 5 sons can do a lot of damage if you are as smart as they were. Some years later visiting the same shop, which by then they had transitioned into an Apple outlet, probably not that long after Jobs and Wozniak had vacated their garage. I had no idea what these gizmos were, and asked the father of the five sons “what gives.” He in his carnival barker voice replied - “Well in timeline of history, these things will either compare in importance to the invention of the wheel, or the transition of our species from ‘carbon life form to silicon based life form’.” If i had to add valence to my life prior to or after computers - prior was much richer and far finer in too many ways to describe in a 5 paragraph essay.
I like computers and am no luddite, but i’m pretty sure if Art Intel, (AI) does reach singularity and becomes conscious of itself as forecasted in “The Terminator”, i will become one of the first to go. I once worked in a Computer Aided Design (CAD) laboratory where the sport for bored aerospace workers was to bring the server to its knees - and if you think you have a long memory. But again with the paradoxes, in my conceit i spend hours typing emotive content that because of the inability or disinterest in deciphering the plethora of text computers allow for, will likely evaporate on the rapidly heating hood of mankind’s engine; for example, the last years of Pop’s creative output representing poetry at the pinnacle of his gift was largely written onto 3.5” floppies on his vintage IBM 286 which he wrote poems on until he stopped writing - the computer as i understand it, now lies somewhere in the very moist crawlspace under my brother’s Washington state dwelling. So too for these quaint yammerings of a man dead, but not quite on the central shore of Viet Nam. So last night when i met my Catch-22 and from an abundance of caution deleted my “user history” and locked myself out of access because my recovery email was also locked to me - the only people on the planet with access to my files were the corporate thugs running the checkpoints on the “information Super-Highway”
Lucky for me in a lucid morning moment i remembered a password combination that unlocked the vault and i am able to continue this quixotic, however unimportant effort to document the end-days of a species that was given a paradise and managed to poison it to most forms of life, save those grown in petri dishes of the rich and famous. Back to our “Catch-22” of being locked out of the “Information Super-Highway,” i am reluctant to leave go my domain “Stoneartist.com” because its like that do-hickey you come across when you’re curious and remains long after you are no longer curious. I don’t know the day i gained control of my domain, but i do remember the high hopes of eternal recognition and vindication for my long-suffering creative efforts - what 15-20 years ago. I have never sold a single item from this domain that costs me some $100 per year to maintain; i no longer concede the conceit of a webpage - because who gives a fuck? Last night i had hoped it was the recovery address for my ill-fated purge of my user history, and what i found was a circle jerk. I could not get the googol recovery code because i could not remember the password of my domain email, which is the only reason to maintain the expense. But here is where it gets weird: i am not only paying tribute to my domain server, but i am also paying the salaries of those jackbooted knaves seizing my user history through “eminent domain” or was is “national security” i get the two confused.
If instead of hitting my brake handle turning on to the coast road going North, i had hit the young mother and child on her moped going through the intersection, all the year’s of documenting my life’s work which is of no interest to anyone but myself, would have been at the mercy of an administrator who owes allegiance to no one but the share-holder. I could have been lying in some state of disrepair - perhaps unconscious, and the only people with access to my work would have been fascists combing my records for evidence of my - what¿? contempt for the status quo · if it were not for more level headed individuals: the Dalai Lama, Thich Nhat Hanh, Pema Chodron, Winston O’Mally; i could see it in my capacity to be committing treason to the “state” and sedition to the betrayal of the poor, by the rich. I did not end up on the pavement, and i still i “redress my grievances” but only for the fluke of having remembered my password. That act of memory doesn’t begin to amount to the number of human exchanges i had this morning on my bicycle, prior to and after the near miss and Cua Dai and the Coast Road: children looking to their parent; large trucks accommodating bicycles, small vendors looking to clients and many, many humans just looking to stay cool.
I am luckier than many i read on the fb channel, including the wannabe historical figure zuké trying to leverage the fluke of his water carrier place in the annals of corporate history into one of influence and meaning - but failing miserably · sadly, just like me. I think C.G.Jung was closer to the mark reflecting on the similarity of rhizomes to the human genome. I have ginger and turmeric growing in the space by my front door i reclaimed from a stump which i was too stupid at the time to realize it would grow back into a tree again just like the eucalyptus in the corner of the house i grew up in the grew back no less than 3 times after being blown down by the Santa Anas of my youth - i know this because some how it became my task to saw the trunk into fireplace size chunks. What will never cease is the growth that root demonstrated each time that all was left was a sprig growing from the stump, just like the one i viciously dug out for g_d knows what reason save that of vanity - that somehow my struggle would be sanctified and made meaningful if i could grow something more useful than the tangle of leaves and weeds that prevented my superior concept of herbs and leafy greens to grow - even now, i can’t tell you which was more useful to the people around me, or the people to come after i leave - “oh well, do your best; hydrate and try to have fun” said Mr. Natural to no one who could hear, or so he feared.
jts 21/05/2020
http://stoanartst.blogspot.com
reprinted with permission - all rights reserved
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