Rumi - “Live life as though everything is rigged in your favor” · It was not the quote i was searching for, but it will do. I am surrounded by death and yet am able to do exactly what it is i want. The nation i grew up in is either experiencing growing pains, or death throes, and i am too far removed to know which. Early on i found that if i drink too much i do not rest and have reached a point where i am threading that needle fairly well. Bruce Lee said to become “one with your enemy” which i interpreted liberally applying to conflict, study, relationships, personal habits etc., etc., etc. Tobacco recedes further and further from demand and more and more toward the sacred that i have quested for since watching Ernesto Herrera, et al, smoke one cigarette a day. One of my earliest art projects was a driftwood pipe holder i carved for my father who inherited Winna’s husband Henry the Polynesian’s pipes when i was 7 or so. It didn’t occur to me that i’d never seen Pop pick up a pipe, but that didn’t prevent me from finishing his birthday present by going to the Market Basket and adding a pouch of Prince Henry tobacco to my proud gift.
But tobacco is a powerful sacrament, and doesn’t give a shit if you’re kid or not, so when Michael Lambert proposed we steal the 6th grade teacher, Mr. Paulsen’s Winston cigarettes from his coat pocket behind the backstop while he pitched during lunch hour, i was ripe for larceny, and if i remember correctly Michael was nowhere around. Be that as it may, what a coup. We met back up in the dump truck stacks of dirt behind the Kenny’s Shoe store that had become bicycle heaven long before motocross was even on the horizon and i was feeling, but not knowing, too big for my britches. Couldn’t resist calling out to Scott Anderson in my brother’s grade just passing by in the alley minding his own business. “Hey Scott, come here” where Mike and i sat furiously puffing on the demon weed. “Look, i’m smoking, but i don’t want you to tell anyone - okay?” Off he rode peddling furiously to rat me out to Pop who showed up minutes later to put me in lockdown and then “play” with my brother’s and sister - first time in months · or at least how i remember it. (talk about your punishment.)
So effective was that punishment, 55+ years later i’m still grousing about the injustice of my own acts; imagine what our species is going to look like at the seat of g_d whining about how the capitalists came in and took over everything and shared nothing that we couldn’t buy or steal. Michael died 20 years or so ago from acute alcohol poisoning - having distinguished himself by releasing himself from military duty by driving a U.S. Army tank off the base where he was stationed in Germany so he could have a beer at the local beer hall. His father, Mark had made a killing as an Ad Man, creating a character for Builder’s Emporium which allowed him to become a fine artist as a 1st or 2nd generation Afghani out of Detroit into the quiet OC suburbia where much of this chapter took place. These are my people, my sangha, and when i write this down i see how futile it is for me to search for my community in the world of today - as an embarrassed yank, i have to accept the “traitor in office” may just make good his boast.
Our country might become great again, but only through profound humiliation and failure of its claim for exceptional manifest destiny. Rather we are like all entities who have tripped up on our own conceits and have fallen face first into the pit of hubris where all arrogance lands. Mike’s father Mark found his place in painting and AA, as my own brother found his place in labor activism and AA. I may not have a place, but because of my father i have a quest - i am comfortable with the unease · i can sit with my appetites for women, for fame for accomplishment, not well, but well enough to function with pain, solitude and old age in a foreign nation while the world is in peril. I may not be the keen revolutionary of my youth, but i have not surrendered to despair or depression. I do the things i need to to keep my teeth, my independence and my love in tack.
I’m even curious about what the future brings. I’ve learned enough about the world to accept the dichotomy of opposites; what i haven’t discovered is the path to unity, if there is a path, or if there is unity. They say that Einstein still struggled for the “unified field theory” up to his dying day - a way to reconcile the threads of his thinking which diverged unexpectedly but tantalized him with the possibility of correlation. I am not convinced that my life is meaningless though i possess none of the outward signs of success, i have no companion, no family that will acknowledge that truth - no wealth outside of what i can give away as much as is practical and my friends are mostly otherwise occupied, still i am happy. Not because the “easy open” can of beans just now cost me 4 minutes out my life because the fastener would not unfasten, or because i am soused seven sheets to the wind from despair - which i`m not · nor do i envy the readership of those with greater internet social savvy. I am happy because i am doing what i want to do and am mindful of the importance of that simple truth.
jts 04/08/2020
http://stoanartst.blogspot.com
reprinted with permission - all rights reserved
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