Reaction formation to my congenital visual imbalance i think has made me a creature of uncommon regularity in my habits, but the times i have lived have helped me to welcome a plethora of cultural variations as normal - i spent my 17th birthday, minus parents, on a ferry between Amsterdam and Sussex, England where i lived a year, and though never declared “emancipated” - neither parent could say who was responsible for me after age 15. By the age of 18, i was living in the Lower East Side of NYC, where i stayed until age 20 - after that it became a blur. My 1st wife when i was 23 turned out to be a paranoid schizophrenic, according to the psychiatric intern living across the street - her only constructive remark in our month-long donnybrook was, “i’ve never known a man who shit on a more regular schedule than you.” I took that as a high compliment coming from a crazy Cherokee out of the city of Long Beach - it took me 8 years to recover from that propellor blade · though some of her delusions have corroded parts of my life to this day.
As well as prompted new growth and better awareness of others. Throughout my calamitous life regularity has dictated the wiser decisions. When in NYC, i was lucky to fall under the influence of a 90 year-old Spanish stonecutter who seemed to find something worthwhile in my cycloptic method of developing 3 Dimensional objects, enough so that for the next 40 years of my life i spent arranging ways to continue carving stone - welcomed or not wherever i was and with whomever i was with. Manic regularity and hand carving stone you’d think was a match made in heaven, until as Bob Dylan pointed out so well, “greed got in the way.” The 2nd stonecutter to hold sway in my creative journey, may he rest in peace, was a tradesman cum “artiste” who nearly convinced me that machines were the way to make-a-buck in the sculpting game. I am a journeyman stonecutter without accreditation, save 40 year of my life shearing stone in the service of beauty - though truth be told · i fought for fame and glory more than is healthy for anyone as sensitive as i, and listened to others when my first master had explained quite clearly how to listen to the stone, and yes Madame Paradox added an “emphasis on the syllable” by rendering me nearly deaf in one ear.
The gist of this convoluted explication is that i do not possess the physical capability to perceive 3 Dimensions - my life’s sculptural effort i cannot see 3 Dimensionally. My entire visual experience is comprised of oscillating 2 Dimensional glimpses of what you consider reality, while i remain in awe that i am able to walk through a door, much less lovingly ride a bicycle, though i say that in a whisper lest g_d, bless her heart, sees hubris in the last of my pleasures. Yet in her infinite wisdom i fear, truly fear that my life is not only not over but that there are many more manifest surprises in store simply through the act of breathing gently - in with the pain · out with simplicity, patience and compassion. Laugh if you must, but when it comes time to slumber, i’ve yet to find a more effective recourse than wishing well to the myriad of suffering we, meaning “i” have brought down on our own heads.
I am even encouraged to discover whether i may actually be able to continue drawing, even painting were i to find resources and a surface to struggle upon. I think my romantic delusions of a companionable model/business partner have been existentially excoriated from my ambitions, and if i could resume the struggle close to where i’d left off - 2D or 3D · i somehow remain free of the ravages of cancer or viral contamination, and may just be because i do not consult doctors. But i gauge my wellbeing by my capacity to exert and respirate while cycling and maintaining muscle mass. People are sometimes best avoided in that conceit though, my neighbor from Sơn Mỹ could barely restrain his pride, laughing at my aged visage compared to his much older father - but that is my problem · not his. He is young and the best i can do is to help him remain that way as long as possible. That is the reality of our collective future, find ways to enable the strength of those younger still facing a world-wide autocratic corporate putsch determined to enslave and monetize the very essence of our human existence.
But fuck ‘em - we’ve been struggling to be free since we crawled out from the caves of the last Ice Age. These mooks running the game seemingly designed to destroy anything but their conceit are short on courage and lacking character which has been the only determining factor in adaptation known to our species. The Dalai Lama is not spouting empty platitudes when he exhorts us to be “kind whenever possible, it is always possible,” he is clueing us about an existential reality that we know to be true in our hearts, but are afraid to accept because we fear death. There is no escape from that transition, nor is there cause for any more concern than that of becoming a husband from having been a single man - same circumstance for our sister women · We are human and change much like all the animals in our earthly domain. There is nothing, corporate, religious or philosophical that will change that reality - except you. The same life changes you face from life to death are the same life changes you make each time you breathe with one thought to the next. Fear is a construct that makes our existence yoked to a fiction which cannot be forestalled, nor should it be - we are dynamic like the waterfalls, like the butterflies, like the decomposing flesh of our ancestors that does not release them from our memory · sit back, relax and enjoy the ride.
jts 05/08/2020
http://stoanartst.blogspot.com
reprinted with permission - all rights reserved
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