There seems to be a point where the creative appetite blends with my baser feelings of satiety and work proceeds peacefully - tuning that point seems to be the big challenge of my existence just now · I think this is because i know in my heart i am not the buddha, but that i love her reason for being. I am devoted to love, but understand i may not possess it while i resist kindness to myself, a kindness i accept that can only be embraced while peering deeply into the pain of existence i have sheltered in my heart away from the light of awareness. Our family was rural at its core and took long vacations into the flora and fauna that was within driving range of our semi-stable home in Orange County California. This meant that between the ages of 5 and 15 i may have been driven in an enclosed space with the other 5 members of my atomic family as far South as Acapulco Mexico and as far North as Pocatello Idaho - small wonder that of the 5 remaining alive, 4 are in a fictional close concert of “family”, while enjoying the conceit that i have abandoned them.
I have abandoned many in my life, rightly and wrongly - but not my family · The seemingly unbridgeable gulf between us is that i will not accept less from them with regards to simple kindness than i will from any stranger i meet in any land that i find myself - be nice to me and i will remain, be unkind to me and i will recede · It is the same for loyalty, love and allegiance, any other formula is greater than i am. I agree with Lao Tzu that a bad man is a good man’s job and a good man is a bad man’s teacher; i have taught in schools where it is necessary to get the questionable student’s attention before the lesson can begin, so i have a fairly wide repertoire of metrics that i draw from in any given learning opportunity. Mostly i rely on how that my “sainted” father would respond: for example, he would not abide in my interrupting him, and so would simply cease communicating until i listened.
The rough and tumble of back and forth often breaks the kinder shoots of compassion, but i do not, or have not yet learned a more consistent method to be heard. My family listened mostly to the matriarch, as did i - my mother was convinced my voice was excessive and expanded a great deal of emotional capital stifling me · me to myself, me to my siblings and me to the world; i know now that she simply did not want to know what i needed desperately for her to hear. My fantasy is that she felt so shitty personally for suffering that was not of her doing and because she enjoys a certain narcissism that came from a brutal upbringing it is difficult for her to distinguish self and other - still whether my effort to understand why it has been so important to her to curb my tongue is accurate or fictional · the only point of reference i can rely on is my own heart.
My mother would say to me about what i expressed to her “it feels as though you are bludgeoning me with your words.” I am not that man, that child, or even that infant; mostly i cannot squash a bug, shoot a murderer or censor a sociopath - so my emotional life has been a very precarious effort to discern friend from foe and to act accordingly without malice; i don’t need the karma and most of the punks i’ve encountered trying to subordinate me (male or female) realize how little interest i have in that sort of relationship until i am long gone and out of range. I am tired of evading anyone and more and more simply say up front - “fuck off and die” which in the vernacular is simply meant as “excuse me, but i have other things to do that do not include your input.”
What i yearn for and which i move toward slowly but surely is the ability to safely and openly express my love and affection for this unique living experience. It bores me to be in an environment describing need - when if you step out to the curb anywhere in the world there are bags of discarded, but useful things · food, clothing, ideas and relationships. I barely have the body necessary to cook all that has been given me in this “Covid-19” emergency. I am afraid of contracting the spooky, unexplained condition that renders one DOA, but i was DOA within a year of my existence so once again - i am surrounded by abundance. I cannot rescue you with words, for i am not allowed by design to communicate my ideas with you. I will continue to monitor your suffering and learn from you how you have embraced the last moments of your existence for the benefit of those around you; but otherwise i will finish my moderate beer and whiskey, pull a few more deadly reams of smoke into my remarkable respiratory tract and view some, hopefully useful, edifying entertainment fare while i work my way into a rest that will allow me to rise again tomorrow and travel the bicycle paths i use to evade the haters of the world - i know exist but refuse to believe in ·
jts 07/08/2020
http://stoanartst.blogspot.com
reprinted with permission - all rights reserved
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