Well yesterday’s writing was a crock of shit; i almost feel i should apologize - but then i think i should apologize for everything i can’t fix or make right (whatever the fuck right is). Today i listened to Bob Dylan discuss literature as it pertains to his Nobel Prize. He shared three primary influences: “Moby Dick” - Herman Melville, “All Quiet On the Western Front” - Eric Maria Remarque, and “The Odyssey” - attributed to Homer. It should tell me something about myself as a man of letters, that i know so little about “All Quiet On the Western Front,” confusing it with “Birth of a Nation,” no irony on ‘merican indoctrination with that disclosure. Today the theme seems to be shame, probably from an image in last night’s dream involving a gay Rasputin in my past informing my life today: C.G. Jung - “until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” I am no more conflicted than any adult male without a country, facing grave doubts about every aspect of his upbringing and seemingly besot on all sides by an inexplicable sense of shame.
What is fascinating about Mr. Dylan’s conversation about why his work is considered literature was a laser-like focus on the points of stories and how they relate to his work - a universality if you will. I veer from hero worship having a brother seems as determined to destroy my self-image as i am to build the self-image of the brother below me - sanctimony was a blood sport where i grew up, so i mistrust either image - but Bob Dylan i trust · the brother of the boyhood chum who first introduced me to Bob Dylan’s music, later ruptured my right eardrum with a tossed firecracker somewhere around age 10 or 11. I have yet to find a way to weave that personal experience into as useful a narrative as Mr. Dylan has found for the stories he read around that same age. My father was a high school English teacher and had me reading Herman Hesse’s “Siddhartha” a few years later, so it is not as though i lack the literary influence but haven’t yet found a way to connect the homilies that made up so much of my conversations with my father to the daily confusion of my existence - save what you read before you.
Ego is a bitch and a useless handmaiden - and humility is nearly as worthless. It’s that paradox again - ma has been one of the most self-involved humans in my 65 year’s experience, and i mean that as the Aussies might, “in the nicest possible way.” Yet of the last of her many studies as a water colorist of not inconsiderable talent, was to try and reconcile what she found in the emerging images of the Hubble telescope via National Geographic by what her own hands and heart might translate. It is that sort of courage of her soul to peer into the unknown i cannot escape regardless how much animosity about her own life experience she unfairly attempted to attribute to my existence - this much i know, i am not alone with that conundrum. How could she look so attentively into the universe and fight so hard not to see the “i” who only wished to be loved¿? Back to the theme of the day “shame” - what is it, and how is it that those who would murder an adolescent elephant in the wild for a photo-op posses no shame?
I do not know how to animate my outrage about the extinction of our entire species into cogent prose that passes the “goombah” test - for anyone to read and recognize their relationship to the story. I operate at an instinctive level, but have been told by professionals about instincts; it has been said that my “instincts stink.” I accept this opinion of another as best i can and press on from a biological imperative - apparently my time is not yet nigh. So how am i to leverage a seemingly inexhaustible gift for pissing people off, coupled with a seemingly inexhaustible capacity for feeling the suffering of others to benefit a “dying species”? That is a fair question which has apparently been conveniently excised from the internet “Super Highway” by the recent absence of the voice of reason - Greta Thunberg · Am i the only person on the planet that feels the absence of this courageous young woman willing to assume the fate a species that would apparently shame her by ignoring her rather than accept her solidarity with all of us who want to live - from whence comes the fascist proclivities of Sweden would be my next question.
Just like Yemen became the focal point for starving children, the Saudis became the “butt boys” for the Empresarios extraordinaire mssrs d_rump & cmpny, or vice-versa; i always get the two confused - who’s doing whom. We are not dogs, and i refuse to lay belly up for a gaggle of punks in pinstripe suits and large withdrawal balances, while brethren close and closer to them suffer death and mismanaged healthcare due to avarice and greed - so shoot me · i care. That i am to die alone and unloved is no longer important, but of every importance - because the harder i laugh at those around me arranging their entire lives based on how many likes they can acquire, the lower my “stock” sinks. My family won’t abide my renegade ways and i doubt from the peaks of the Himalayas to the ports of of Montevideo that my conceit will ever be forgiven - so i plunge forward and hope somehow, one word, one gesture - one disrespect will not be lost on a population that has clean forgot how to respect itself · neenerneenerneener . .. ···
jts 24/05/2020
http://stoanartst.blogspot.com
reprinted with permission - all rights reserved
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