I vacillate between fear and outrage - “social media” juggernaut fired a shot across my bow suspended my account for posting a dolphin dancing with a surfer, this after my having made inflammatory remarks concerning the cowardice of a United States senator referring to another United States senator - a female colleague as a “fucking bitch.” I should have included in my rebuke a more broadly phrased condemnation of the cowardice of the corporate overlords strangling the voice of dissent at a time when dissent is the only rational response to the straits into which our leaders have lead us, (i use the expression “leaders” advisedly, for there has been damn little of value coming out of the “have’s” that is of any real benefit to the “have nots”). And still i am in a quandary about what steps to take to contribute to the commonweal.
Violence is not an option, if you bring a knife into a street brawl - the likelihood of being stabbed with your own knife is about even. We are talking about militarized, goose-stepping thugs outside the boundaries of law and motivated by delusional dreams of resurrecting a “white” homeland that never existed. What is being lost on the melee is the fact that our environment is exhausted and the once powerful capacity of the earth to regenerate life is being subsumed by a continent sized hijacking of the very essence of life as we know it - trees. There are quotes from Henry Kissinger who in effect said diminishing or eliminatin populations of color is the first priority of the developing world - that my friends is lunacy on a grand scale.
At the personal level - to have been deprived access to fb “friends,” however virtual they may be for no better reason than my having posted a dancing dolphin on an ocean wave is a very clear indication of how removed our world is becoming from reality. Along with “wash and wear” i tend to be a what you see is what you get kind of guy. I don’t have time or energy to fashion some palatable public persona that is anything but what i feel when i feel it. I am not saying this is how all should be, but anything that pertains to our survival that is not rooted in the most ancient history of our species is suspect - concepts of the mind, the heart and economy all inclusive. What i see is a lot of flim-flam and little to show for it. I watch those who are at the pinnacle of achievement and find smug, snide and exclusive exuberance that reflects a remarkably selfish concept of advancement - mostly of the sort “i got mine - so fuck you.”
I try to distinguish personal reaction formation from the equation and remain objective without judgement, but it is very difficult to be around or influenced by people whose seemingly sole North Star is acquisition, if for no other reason - how stupid do you have to be to collect anything you can’t carry with you into the great beyond. Look at the Pharos and the enormous lengths they went to to design an ever after which was ultimately raided by plunderers seeking gold and defying curses just to convince themselves of their importance the same as those whose bones they plundered. More importantly to me today is to find a language that contributes to a greater appreciation of how remarkable is each breath we take or spectacular is each vision we see that reminds us of the power of the first time we saw such beauty.
I remember waking up on a summer morning after school was out and the prospect of an entire day playing baseball was not enough of a distraction to disturb the quiet outside my bedroom window. Monarch butterflies were in abundance and even the rank odor of peaches never meant to be eaten moldering from a flowering peach tree surrounded by a dank but richly fertilized Korean grass was not enough to disturb the quiet of birdsong filling the sky. These are not images i could find when i owned a phone and woke in the middle of the night to see what i missed, nor were they present when my excommunication from the church of zuké was reconsidered and i was once more allowed access to relationships, however tenuous and often insubstantial - but mine, and not remotely within the purview of some social engineer wannabe piling up kudos for exemplary scrutiny of shit that was none of his/her for his/her next performance review.
jts 30/07/2020
http://stoanartst.blogspot.com
reprinted with permission - all rights reserved
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