“What fresh hell can this be?” - Dorothy Parker · The euphemism used to describe heat in Viet Nam during June is “oppressive,” horrid i think from today’s ambient condition would be more accurate, but i’m a whiny occidental, what do i know¿ This morning i was invited to a lunch with former neighbors, some of whom were conspicuously absent to the degree i felt awkward having accepted the invitation. I will be 66 on my next birthday and am as far from a place to rest as i’ve ever been - i spent my 16th birthday sleeping off a drunk on the deck of the ferry between Antwerp and London · Yet, everything will turn out okay. I refuse to accept that this is the best our species can accomplish - capitulation to corporate trust-fund babies posing as govt. thugs, or dislocated religious charlatans pitching for pennies in Kathmandu or organizing pay as you go Moon Trance Dances in Phucket Thailand.
I am no better, and that is disconcerting that after a lifetime of sanctimonious denial all the further i have gotten is 3 rude wives, and a two-room bungalow on a rice field in the lower rent district of a pony world heritage site in a war ravaged nation willing to do most anything to retrieve the world respect it commanded having handed “Uncle Sam” his ass on a platter only to find the “god almighty buck” was never even wagered in the war. No the only patriots in today’s world are obscure wraiths condemned to mysterious deaths like Aaron Swartz whose soul objective was to free data from the corporate overlords - or Michael Rapaport who coined the all too accurate levy - “infinite growth paradigm” · In my early days hoping to reclaim territorial family respect, i would sign on to any program that might elicit some regard to the lengths i was willing to go to - “be one” · with the program.
Remember please the concept i was chasing was supposedly progressive and solidarity for all things decent and upstanding - as upstanding as a family could be where my greate grandfather was a doctor in the Confederate Army. Cognitive dissonance was literally mother’s milk for me - given ma was a collegiate beauty queen and i 3rd born Breech Birth with Dwayne’s Retraction who suffered pneumonia in his first year requiring material expense that deprived the two already-arrived-pretty-children of time and emotional nutrition - already the “enemy” at age 1 what chance was there for rapprochement¿ 65 years later, i’d have to say little - ironically you’d think this inclination toward muteness would agree with all concerned · save the telling of one’s own story that should never be sacrificed to the “sacred cow” of any cause, heterodoxy, or orthodoxy.
I find at this late hour Mssr Montaigne’s focus on cabbage for why and wherefore, or Κύριος. Σωκράτης reasons for learning a new song useful:
“While they were preparing the hemlock, Socrates was learning how to play a new tune on the flute. “What will be the use of that?” he was asked. “To know this tune before dying.” If I dare repeat this reply long since trivialized by the handbooks, it is because it seems to me the sole serious justification of any desire to know, whether exercised on the brink of death or at any other moment of existence.”
― Emil Cioran, Drawn and Quartered
What we are facing now as a species preparing to vacate our opportunity in paradise are issues of content and meaning: how have we misunderstood the privilege of breathing, of loving, of growing in favor of concepts which Maya Angelou nailed - 'Hate, it has caused a lot of problems in the world, but has not solved one yet.' In my minimalist ways had to look up “hate” and its origins - it’s not prejudice, it’s not fury; it is closer to “aver.” This made more sense to me for it explained my personal confusion with the expression “unconditional love”. I mean this to happen, yet like Neil Simon’s “Cool Cool River” there is no safety in numbers, nor in isolation · as a reality that defies logic when we are simply wiggling protoplasm looking to be comfortable. Today giving Kiwi fruit as an offering, i could not but be mindful of some previously imagined “faux pas” regarding Kiwi; ’scuse me, let it go.
I want no harm to you or your ego, and i shrink from every illumination you feel i must see that says otherwise. I know for certain at this stage of my decrepitude, it would give me great giggles to surreptitiously execute the god of greed in the hearts of all - and foster an angel of generosity to minister to the dying of a species · i’m not holding my breath; as a matter of fact i’m doing all those things advocated by the wise: de-stressing, defenestrating fake friends - ego oriented projects and anything robbing me of wholesome reflection with peace in my heart · I do not recommend this course for anyone; it is lonely, there is no reinforcement and as Leonard Cohen remarked “the judgements can be severe. Though i have to say as the air becomes more rarified and the clamoring dies to a din one can almost hear the echo of a soul born into a world created to crush souls and elevate the vacuous to a pedestal that can be easily monetized and sold off to the empty of heart hungry for purpose.
jts 25/06/2020
http://stoanartst.blogspot.com
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