300920 - Extinction Chronicles ·

Sleep is becoming a mystery to me - dreams have never been really accessible to me unless i pressed myself to access my unconscious through that avenue. I prefer to remain in the present as an observer of my actions and from that commune with my interior as a steady state. A form of metacognition whereby i accept my thoughts as they occur and make every effort to give them no weight or pass judgement, but simply listen. Of course i listen more carefully to the loving thoughts because it is often more informative about where the “green growth,” can be found, yet despair and darkness often contain much mulch for growth - if one can stand the stench without being overwhelmed by its ceaseless tendrils into painful events and frustrated endings. I am going to play pool this afternoon, and it will be interesting to see how i am shooting. There was a time in my life when i would go in search of a pool table just to know what my insides were up to, the way some mystics use pendulums to access the spirit world.

I have an electrician friend looking at my wiring because some weeks ago i woke up in the middle of the night to find the lamp over my bed glowing - something it had never done in the 3 months i have lived in this house. It coincided with a bill that had grown 20% from the last charge without any great variation in usage. Electricity is something that i have studied in a variety of ways - houses, cars, machinery and aircraft · but not something i can say i have anything approaching competence with or interest in mastering. It is akin to mathematics; the principles of each is fascinating, but not the sort of activity my mind is given to; i prefer writing, drawing or carving. I remember the 1st time i stood in front of a canvas guided by a man who must have been a friend in some other lifetime for the way he could bring alive concepts that had been dormant in my heart waiting to be awakened. It was the same for carving stone - different guide, but same intense pleasure from discovery.

My disinterest in electricity could be from something as simple as it has mostly been in a compensated environment when i was challenged to master the knowledge. I’ve had many assignments which required computer research and have always been amazed at how many questions would arise not related to my task, yet when freed from the “wage slavery” environment and sitting in front of my own processor - i would draw a blank preferring, i guess the odor and memories of hours in libraries for hunting knowledge to the leering screen and yoked wrists of the modern computer station. Or it may be that my competence with electronics never reached the level where my inherent affinity for creativity felt free to play, to wander and frolic in the world of “what if?” That may be why pool and the creative arts are so close to my heart - the constant decision about “what happens if i do this, what happens if i do that?”

Just now my young friend is absorbed in tracking down a fault in the wiring he believes he correctly determined and is searching for the connectivity solution to break that ground fault - he is absorbed and happy, even invigorated by the challenge. I believe that is a natural state of the human being to be enthusiastic about the challenge in front of them. Our world has been subsumed by tacky little bean counters who are shaving more and more moments from people’s lives whether from actuary tables or pay grades that have absolutely no relationship to the questions those metrics are supposed to answer. When Pop was old and still had access to a phone i would call on a daily basis, peppering him with questions, “what about this, what about that?” One of his most stunning observations was when i asked “what do you see as the biggest problem our world faces today?” Without dropping a stitch, he remarked, “Values, I don’t understand what people are thinking about Values.”

This was supposed to be a man suffering from dementia, so much so that he was subjected to a locked environment - something he oddly acquiesced to more readily than i’d have ever thought possible. Then again my own memory may be embellishing in deference to his memory. Values are fucked up in this era of extinction - we are looking to the wrong people for leadership and turning our backs on those who know best what is needed. It is almost 180 degrees out - “if you want something done, find the person who is asses and elbows at work” - old ‘merican aphorism, not the schmuck who spends most of his time in transit between his many estates and villa because s/he doesn’t know where he wants to be; a lot like the old adage “someone who has one watch always knows what time it is, the person with two is never quite sure. It is not much different with our species - faced with all the options for distraction it is difficult to hear what one’s soul is calling out for much less what to value in a world where the first casualty has been regard for truth.

jts 30/09/2020 

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com

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290920 - Extinction Chronicles ·

Sometimes the simplest things are monumental and the most epochal challenges are a walk-in-the-park - the DIY authors have grown rich jotting down theories for popular consumption · which like the rules of proper governance has only changed continuously for the past ______fill in the blank, but as yet has demonstrated nothing more solid than what Doctors recommend after major/minor and everything in between surgery; it still boils down to: if you shit, you live; if you don’t you die. I loved running, but came to it late in life, and so only enjoyed a decade or so of pacing far and near enough to appreciate the relationship between stride and just about every other thing in one’s life. The best runs were barefoot early at low tide between piers with an actually "random" iPod selection which were rare enough to be memorable, but not so much as to want to become an apple professional at managing what should have been provided by what is now the richest company in the world and as rotten as anything Eve ever offered Adam.

Yet that fable was created by men about a betrayal that speaks volumes about their weakness but says nothing about the generosity of Eve - offering nutrition to her man, minus malice or anything but the best intentions · Small wonder the world has gotten no further in the past 2,000 years of patriarchy. I received a bulletin this morning from a Cooperative home i’d applied to years ago in Berkeley, CA: old house, large rooms, thorough vetting but currently occupied by a 7 to 1 ratio of women to men. I dismissed this out of hand, not because of any misogyny i feel, but from certainty that i would not last a month were i to gain admittance. As a product of the 60s i have seen too many benign orthodoxies seized and transformed into litmus tests for participation predicated solely on compliance, adherence and conformity. Ironically it was my 99 year old Episcopalian “free thinking” great grandmother Munner who inured me to joining any group that smacked of propriety.

Her grandson, my father, was a devout Existentialist of the most robust variety - post WWII victor/pedagogue who possessed a messianic faith in all those he came in contact with to become their very best “selves.” Whole cadres of Orange County California youth have become the vanguard of a bulwark that transformed the most rigidly conservative county on the west coast into a “blue” county for the 1st time in the history of the state during the last presidential election - it is not inconceivable that my father’s intransigent goodwill toward the “little guy” might become the strongest thread keeping our once great nation from a downward spiral into fascism · just sayin.’ I am not hero worshiping - he was an asshole like me with the most vain proclivities, and irrational impulses one could acquire · but he was human to the bone and the best example of decency one could hope for from a parent.

One of the many vivid memories of my father is being yanked through his door - regardless of the swirling influence of company and being enveloped in a bear hug which was always accompanied by some manner of theatrical grunt - i suspect now it was his way of apologizing for having swallowed your hand in a grip which could only be honorably responded to by repositioning one’s own hand to such a place as to demonstrate - parity · it only took a decade of such behavior modification events for him to accede, my grip was as sincere and without surrender as his own. I did not then, nor now understand this person as fully as i would wish but accept that failing is not mine to own, but a product of some unreconciled modesty of his which demanded privacy and solitude, even from his own son.

It troubled me for many years the partition of his professional world and my curiosity about what his world looked like. We could be standing at the ice cream counter at Thrifty’s Drug Store and someone would present themselves to him like he was a potentate, rather than the jocular, but not-to-be-fucked-with reality i lived with and woke up to as he marched out the door to his responsibilities. Sometimes he would allow us to massage his bald head, like that was going to make hair sprout, or if we were really lucky, earn extra dimes shining his ancient shoes with the even more ancient brushes of his polishing kit. My parents did not have to divorce, and i do not blame either for the dislocation caused by their decision, but from where i sit - 5 decades later with a world of my own empirical proof, they would have had more satisfying lives, had they toughed it out rather than succumb to the popular media depictions of “life on the other side of marriage” - “be your own everything, not his/her fulfillment” · “there is only one life to live, and it is not her’s/his” · “But what do I know?” - Michel de Montaigne ·  

jts 29/09/2020 

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com

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280920 - Extinction Chronicles ·

My mother was big for her age and a drop-dead auburn-haired adolescent beauty in the desert of Nevada at the same time troop-trains full of WWII recruits wended their way to the front lines on rails to and from everywhere the war machine needed their expendable flesh in the fight against fascism; tell me again how there is no Madame Paradox. She married a B-17 pilot whose only kill of the war was his bombardier in the nose my father’s plane when the brakes failed while taxiing after a training mission. Years later when Pop would wake from nightmares, Ma would report this very personal experience and other judgements about my father to her children as some kind of justification for their marriage dissolution during the divorce-crazy early 1960’s ‘merica. Ma is a complex loving woman who has a heart of gold, as long you are obedient, compliant and dare not puncture her vanity with criticism - valid or not. It is from this cauldron of very real human emotion that i have tempered my determination to love at all costs, yet accept nothing but love in return. 

It’s not working out real well - that’s not a complaint, just a simple truth as clearly as i can state it. I’m sure my conceit about knowing what truth is and what it is not is part of what sets her hair on fire anytime we share air; but i also believes it is what gives her confidence when i say to her, “Ma, i love you,” she gags it down with fewer grains of salt than what is necessary when listening to the other more politic members of her brood. I don’t know that even if i had the magic wand of “unconditional love” stapled to the inside of my skull i would want to be different than what i have become - as gritty as the grains of sand in the deserts of her youth · gritty, but loving; tell me again how there is no such thing as the spirit woman Madame Paradox, please; i want to fall at her feet and crawl to the nape of her neck with adoration of her supple flesh until she whimpers in loving surrender.

I who at 66 with 3 wives under my belt can still be searching for a loving other is nothing short of a miracle, but one in which i believe; that my odds are pretty good; is truly a miracle - i owe it to Ma, Pa too; because it is his language of the heart that i emulate - while it is Ma’s language of the body that i listen to. There is still much holiness in our dying world to find and with which to resonate. It is not always clear with the dissonant images demanding our attention flickering in front of our quivering fingers, but in can be done - we as a species have far more sophisticated visceral knowledge than the digital titans teasing our collapsing attention spans with pablum and saccharin dreams of multiple zeroes that has somehow come to represent power, prestige and success which are as vacant as the downtown we all hail from, but now only dream about returning to - if we ever get out of quarantine ·

The corporations must be de-coupled from the dream machine - a contraption that can only dwell within the hearts of each of us. As long as we expect deliverance from any agency, ideology or alliance that does not honor our independence and resourcefulness as thinking feeling, suffering, and loving creatures how can we expect them to fulfill any promise they make of assistance, wisdom or allegiance. It is the same for me as i size up my next mate - if she is not demanding more from me based on what she can perceive about who i am, how can i possibly turn over to her the keys to the kingdom, and ask vice versa. Why would i want to hand over my arsenal to someone who thinks so little of herself as to presume me so inept and dense as to perceive only her ravishing beauty and contrived appeal to be the extent of her luxuriant, but long suffering soul¿ that is a question for which after being cuckolded by 3 different wives i feel entitled to an honest answer - don’t you?

And then there’s Ma; and her ever ready left-turns out of nowhere - this particular afternoon it was North off of Los Alamitos into her Leisure World compound to which i was pointedly refused a gate pass during the last years of her tenancy, ostensibly because i was so scary; she turned in her seat toward me and remarked; “you know Madeleine (my last wife) only married you because of my money.” Some who have followed my misbegotten exploits for anytime, are familiar with this story, but context is everything. It is telling about what an aged parent fears for their child when making such provocative remarks; the professionals amongst us would like to attribute such an expression to “early onset dementia” and other scholarly analysis, mostly because it precludes participating in any meaningful way with the pathology of the atomic family, but for me it was as literal and historical as anything Chaucer might have imagined, only it was my mother’s horror story - not mine. I have made peace with as much of my history as pain permits, and remain lovable and worthy of admiration and respect even to one has hard-bitten as my dusty mother · what remains important is that this sad frightened woman who once confided to me her adolescent “inconsolable fear of death” would try to steel me to my future and fortify my defenses against demons that she has faced, utterly unaware that to survive i had to digest such beasts and shit them out long since - may you rest easy you fearsome woman · my Ma.

jts 28/09/2020 

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com

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270920 - Extinction Chronicles ·

 

I began a drawing yesterday, and it felt good. I stopped previously after 60+ years, because i felt my growing blindness impaired my ability to create worthwhile product - that is a capitalist trap which suggests if your efforts are not “marketable”, then they have no value. The market does not determine my worth, i do. My life has been spent peering into the faces of countless strangers, lovers and loved ones attempting to tease understanding from their expressions. And Madame Paradox in her infinite wisdom is robbing me of visual acuity at that same moment i feel i begin to understand what i am looking at · here is the paradox, it is not for approval that i work, but for release from what i do not understand; i will not understand more if i cease looking however faint my vision becomes, or scribbled my efforts appear.

Much like these chronicles - were they predicated on other’s comprehension of the importance to continue struggling against seemingly overwhelming odds · then we do not deserve anyplace in the pantheon of living species. William Blake - “Those who restrain desire, do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained.” I used to believe that desire was the undulating flesh of a loving woman abandoned to her passion - a fiction from my father who tried to teach me that love of the woman could be best understood from her submission to my will. He was a lover, and not in the conventional pejorative connotation so popular with the resurrected Calvinists in our midst, but the opulent loving meaning from the Tantric tradition where it is not only legitimate, but holy to plumb love to its deepest feeling.

Our sterile screen existence that has been exacerbated by “social distancing” - wounded male worth while a cosmetic subornation of woman’s beauty to that of “hydra on steroids and lip gloss.” My pop was a thoughtful poet whose late in life writings lay in the murky crawlspace beneath my youngest sibling’s best guess of success - a 2nd home close enough to Redmond, WA to enjoy the economic gravity, far enough away to demonstrate a semblance of independent thought. If this prose smacks of Snark, it is because you are reading clearly; you know this individual not at all, and possible know less about me - the narrator · It is my lack of clarity conveying the feelings of frustration i possess, but do not own about hurt which he may have knowingly or unknowingly inflicted, but which is my own to resolve rather than propagate out into a miasma of swirling pain that is equal to, or much greater than anything i am willing to face - our world · like it or not.

I contemplated “fear” when formulating today’s writing - i thought about it with all the bluster and denial i was about to call down on the heads of all those driven by fear, but for whom i have yet to find the abundant compassion necessary to share honestly about my own without compounding what is so clear to me about theirs. I accept within my own soul some scope of the feelings of fear i possess - some modern, much ancient. From this emerging awareness i realize how vacant an emotion fear is · sort of. If i cannot dwell closer to my own there is no way that i can communicate easily with anyone else drowning in theirs. There are agents of evil taking notes as we speak, attempting to amplify my open-hearted expression to manipulate your own possibly aware, and possibly sensed unease - these salacious peepers no longer make me afraid, because i am not responsible for frightening you, anymore than you are responsible for frightening me.

If you choose that path - to be afraid · you must walk alone, i cannot join you any longer. I see no percentage in allowing another to influence my distress, much less to enhance my comfort. I believe now that what i feel is perhaps the only domain i can call my own any longer. I am weak about this to the extent i do not have the conviction to spend much time in the company of frightened people, especially those whose fear manifests in some effort to increase my own. I’ve known this fact for sometime and use to resist such efforts by  an outwardly confrontational demeanor - there is no interpersonal strategy available for a person who wants to appear scary that will alter that behavior except a profound personal scrutiny of what is important. What is important to me is being able to understand and embrace loving people who care deeply about themselves, and from which are able to calm not only their own anxieties, but be comfortable and confident enough to accept my own tentative steps toward loving them as best as i can with what i possess at the time.

 

jts 27/09/2020 

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com

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260920 - Extinction Chronicles ·

The upside of being “hyper-sensitive” is i can sit in a new shirt and shorts made of cotton cloth and discern the difference of the hated sweat containment of oil-based polyester cloth from the welcome respiration of cotton fiber - there’s a paradox and a story there somewhere, how these stupid motherfuckers could enslave a people to pick a natural fiber most resilient and useful to our species, unless you’re a renegade like me who finds wisdom in the resurrection of the good name of sister hemp, in which case we find a win-win combination that must be terrifying to the pissants of profit watching their nazi-petro dollars plummet from a shrinking market demand that is likely too scary for their pea brain imaginations to comprehend - sort of like the _rump family cooling their heels in Rikers Island · don’t laugh, as Ricky Rivera so sagely opined, however obtusely observed, “it’s gonna happen.”

“Mean people suck” - A. Nonymous · My challenge as an aging dying man is to reconcile my history with the facts. When at fifteen years of age and ma well into one of her liquored states turned to her as much drunken friend to remark smirking at me, “how do you communicate with something that has fangs” - funny to her at the time and i’m sure her friend, my soon-to-be aunt-in-law tittering her assent, but to me now just another revolting truth in my march toward forgiveness for cruelties not of my own making. The challenge remains, though - what part of that hazy history is mine own to possess; what part of me is still capable and willing to wound another sensitive human being in the oft brutal exchange of “terms of endearment”?

I don’t know; what i am certain of is until we conjoin with the painful lessons of brother Thich Nhat Hanh; sister Pema Chodron and father Dalai Lama about how to release our hold on causing pain to those we love - our world remains in jeopardy · a threat we are barely able to perceive through the mismanagement of reality by the greedy agents of profit, but a threat that grows daily in our censored objections to the injustice each of us knows and is reacting to, rather than acting upon. I remember the thrill of bare feet on green grass of a spring day with nothing but hours baseball in front of me - i liked it but not as much as my first kiss with a girl i hoped would feel the same about me as i felt about her. From there, it just seemed to cascade down the canyon of despair and disillusionment, only to find myself in the whirlpool of responsibility with not a soul on the planet to blame but myself.

Tell me again how the indigenous savages missed it and are worthy of the sacrilegious     excavation of so many of their holy sites for the desecration by racist invaders and to suffer the highest murder rates by police in the free world (if there ever was a free world), when one of the greater native icons is master coyote “the joker¿” What is worthy of note, is the resolutely peaceful nature of Native American Resistance in this the most violent and oppressive of onslaughts they have faced in their years of foreign invasion. What is the key to understanding the resolute nobility of a people capable of choking the “Black Snake” and seizing the battlefield initiative once again from “Wasichu”¿ answer this question and we as a species may find a path out from under the miasma of “doubt” - an item that is the only tangible product from the interminable shopping list the ruling class can offer for existential purpose.

I do not ask to be accepted back into the tribe, because for all my sincerity and loving embrace of 1st nation logic - i am wounded and am dying from an infection to the core by the greed and shame of my fore bearers. I accept this responsibility without reservation and pray my hope to blunt the karma of my people be answered with forgiveness and forbearance by those my culture has transgressed: black, yellow, red, brown people worldwide and historically. I am not your enemy and have found it necessary to reflect back to you what is often viable and realistic rage for injustice; however i am compelled by my own personal growth to resist personal attacks on me for deeds i have not done - the same as i must assume responsibility for my own anathema toward those who have done me no wrong but by assumptions of their own conceit may feel entitled to fury toward me by the language of others who know me not at all, but speak with great authority about what i am - like my family whom i know longer recognize but wish well as i would you, if i knew you better.

 

jts 26/09/2020 

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com

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250920 - Extinction Chronicles ·

What a peculiar fantasy this is - that by writing words into a xptr screen there could be alteration in what seems to be an inexorable conclusion to our species · I like it, almost as much as i enjoy my morning bicycle rides. That change is the only constant, is inarguable; though like the donkey to discipline i was raised to be, i resist each fluctuation in my daily routine unless it has been guided by some accompanying thought or new awareness of an external constant. I have come to realize that most of my complaints about the behavior of others is almost certainly a result of some new understanding about my own thinking - exclusively a criticism of myself and my own behaviors that gains traction in my external awareness of others. That in and of itself is a dicey proposition for a human so keenly trained to serve his parents and mind his precarious place in a constellation of superheated egos - not terribly different than the avatar world zuké and company have contrived for us all.

The difference being, when a sibling puts their hand in my pocket to steal, i have a pretty good idea, what is theirs and what is mine - stealing from family is a distinguishable cowardice · stealing using a “keystroke” is harder to be aware of. Yesterday i spent too much time searching for a quote that, given a broader return from googol would have saved me much time, but which also alerted me to how much it is in the corporate interest to obscure information from a restive population when trying to propagate a world-view that a dozen human beings remain unmolested while they use purloined gazillion$ to accomplish what every tyrant from the dawn of history has tried - subordination of the human spirit. Anyone who does not accept that the digital tycoons of today are in complete concurrence with the relentless and entirely complicit anointing of a “tyranny” as a solution to late stage capitalism is too stupid for me to address. 

The ants - small vicious little fuckers left pus marks up and down my hands and wrists when i dared interrupt their rout of my paper-bagged sunflower seeds and the accompanying peanut flavored spoon. I refuse to call down the petroleum based poison gods and paid for it with the pustules from their venomous bites - they do not like black pepper and i welcomed retrieving my about-to-be-devoured vegetable banh mi from their clutches. It is unfortunate that my kitchen is liberally peppered with crushed black pepper, but a good thing for the kind neighbor lady who i hope feels amply compensated for rinsing my floor in the weird-wired villa whose lamps glow from inexplicably inept cross-wiring to ground. I am no electrical engineer anymore than i am a mathematician, but i have been on enough jobs sites to recognize bullshit when i see it.

200,000 deaths in the land i was born to, and still there is some question that the nazi billionaire will be selected, not elected and/or refuse to cede office, or that the corporate handlers will simply post affirmative prompts on the screens of those minds they have determined through data mining are within their control - are we having fun yet¿? · We as a species are now so normalized to the constant drumbeat of fear that we no longer recognize our natural state of ease. We must pay professional “gig-economy” geeks to teach us how to breathe, how to fuck, how to eat - i refuse, and for that reluctance, i remain on the outside of every conventional environment i approach · such is happiness in the post 2020 era. Lucky me, i wouldn’t recognize 20/20 vision if it landed in my lap and gave me head into the next century.

What i do recognize, is gratuitous cruelty in the service of _____fill in the blank. I have been subjected to bullies from the time of my initial socialization and those with normal vision pointing their stubby little fingers in my face ridiculing my “crossed-eyes.” Again, lucky me, for i have had all of the rest of my life to search for explanations for such ignorant behavior, so that as i approach my demise i no longer need acclimate to the stupidity of others, but rather feel my way through the hoards watching how those of power behave toward others. Bullies are easy to recognize because they are big and physically imposing, but often dense and short on insight - easily dismembered. The challenge remains for how to inoculate the frightened and oppressed amongst us to a point where they once again accept their rightful power on the planet and exert their hard-won wisdom on behalf of all other people suffering from the stupidity of a handful of _____fill in the blank.

 

jts 25/09/2020  

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com

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240920 - Extinction Chronicles ·

Yesterday was my friend Lyle Sears’ birthday; he’s been dead these many long years - this morning his daughter, who remains wisely vacant from the fictional FB world posted a photo of what i have to believe is her rolly-polly newborn baby. Seeing new life and the loving language my friend’s daughter used to describe this baby filled places in my being i didn’t even know had been emptied. Lyle and i shared a heritage of rebellion having been children of the 60’s, though from vastly different sides of the political spectrum. His son, ironically has pursued a law enforcement career path that given the branding of his father as "incorrigible" and subsequent incarceration in his adolescent years, oddly mirrors the bizarre embrace of my nephew as a financial wizard given my own brother’s sworn fidelity to the “proletariate.” These are the paradoxes of our time. The difference being a license for independent thought that is vanishing from our species like spit on the hood of the policeman’s war wagon as he chains you to your prosecution regardless of your faith in freedom, and now almost entirely predicated on the color of your skin.

Today i read the leader of the “free world” is disavowing ballots and priming the pump for “continuation” rather than the peaceful transition of power that has marked the previous 225 years of history for the country to which i was born. I fear that even if my friend who possessed the character to embrace me as friend, however much it antagonized the sycophants that had surrounded his parent’s pool table in our adolescent years, would have found common cause with the manufactured “white pride” so easily accessed in the obtuse socially engineered media message of today’s contempt for thinking people everywhere. But i cannot leave go this thread without conveying the irony of being schooled by my friend’s youngest son of the betrayal of freedom for the Palestinian people - a politically independent position entirely unexpected but undeniable in its truth · as they say in Santa Ana, s`plain that to me, please.

I now live in what in my own history had been the fault line between two waring ideologies but which has now morphed into some hide-and-seek game of who has “dirty pictures of who” and who is the traitor or who is the patriot of what? As a 12 year old playing with GI Joes, it was cut and dry - you are with me, or you are against me. I remember my parent’s angst, or as much angst as an 11 year old boy could muster, when the HO train set they had taken pains to provide at Xmas time on top of the commandeered pingpong table got transformed into a battlefield full of overturned freight cars creating caves and avenues of escape for the partisans. The gift of the model train set was a feature of my parents wholly wholesome hope to elicit dreams of engineering exploits to fortify their good name as righteous parents of an unusual child in an exemplary family, but only resulted in caves of blown up rail cars mimicking the proximity of a sensitive child to a warlike ethos from TV viewing that couldn’t be easily hidden.

And here i sit 50 years later on the “demilitarized” zone of their Television Horror show faced with unresolved antagonisms about quarrels that were never meant to be concluded - but exploited by a world leadership looking for easy pickings amongst the uneducated and easily moved - not unlike my childhood friend Lyle · had he lived longer, he might have become a nazi of the _rump style; he was always a very conventional kind of guy, except as i was to learn in struggles that we shared about very personal issues. One drunken New Year’s morning telephone call, we discovered common cause about having been raised to erroneously believe ourselves to be “pieces of shit” by the rolls into which our family's attempted to consign us - and from that point forward our shorthand in times of duress at least until his demise was the greeting, “you’re not a piece of shit” and we had some grand chuckles about that · a laughter i miss and have found rare in my later years.´

Our world is largely fake, and people in positions of power are determined to portray an authenticity that doesn’t exist - it cannot be right in a world where the aged and the infirm amongst us are in the greatest jeopardy, while the rich and the powerful laud their exploits for having rescued us all from a destruction of their design and execution, but which no one wants to admit to - i say, FUCK YOU, AND THE HORSE YOUR RODE IN ON.” The planet is simmering; people have lost simple respect for age old wisdom and want to describe it as “trendy” or popular; again i say FUCK YOU AND THE HORSE YOU RODE IN ON.” I learned this expression at the dinner table of the 2nd man to marry my mother, i loved and respected him, though i was to later learn i’d been played, and not. I brought a 200 lb granite femur i had carved to his death bed, for no other reason than he enjoyed it - a fact my family or anyone else familiar with the circumstances of his death - wants to ignore · i do not, nor i think did he. We can only do our best to love those in our world and pray that it is enough. Don’t believe me - look into your own heart and ask whether you have done all you can to help our species to survive.

jts 24/09/2020  

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230920 - Extinction Chronicles ·

It has taken me 66 years to be able to distinguish hatred from anger - i’m emotionally retarded like that · The home i grew up in was full of both, so it is natural that these two vastly different sentiments became indistinguishable from each other, like so much else in my visually challenged existence. Ma is repulsed by many things other than her 3rd child, me. That in sanskrit is the root of hatred - to aver, (sort of like apple disavowing the spelling of “sanskrit” as a word in its lexicon). One of my earlier memories is her standing at the doorway muttering about “Abbot and Costello” - a late stage vaudevillian comedy team trotted out by the early media overlords as crossover entertainment · “I hate them.” What do you do with such an inexplicable opinion; how could anyone detest “who’s on first, what’s on second,” especially if it is one’s own mother the giver and taker of all good things in the world¿ To this day, it is difficult for me to enjoy the A&B schtick, without a twinge of guilt; that is sick.

When you multiply such passing influence on the minds of the billions of impressionable minds gazing into their surrogate parent - that borrowed handset, one can begin to see the danger of abdicating the development of what C.G. Jung described as the “collective unconscious” to a gaggle of post-pubescent computer billionaires tasked with the dubious technology of teasing keystrokes from formative and naturally curious minds based on the illegal and intrusive data capture demanded by their managers and the merchants of social engineering profiteering by the subornation of the human soul - do i exaggerate · i think not. Based only on the sleight and filtered number of thinking humans that will be allowed to read this now federally vetted text, much less on the highly scrutinized profiles of those who might be pre-disposed to object, much less able to critically analyze and act on any logic found herein.

Paranoid, maybe; caring who could tell in this intellectually sterile world where 200,000 human lives are sacrificed on the alter of political correctness deformed beyond all measure with nary a peep from what had once been lauded as the “4th Estate,” a bulwark for human freedom now so compromised as to constitute a career path to “white house spokesman.” And the "maybe new 'blue' administration is now in the process of “kiting” names for a new “chief of staff” so confident are they that their outsider candidacy will be confirmed by a population reeling from police assassinations and legislative manipulation of the democratic process as to be numb to anything resembling “voice of the people.”

How are we to survive such self-serving manipulation of the the human spirit at a time when “all hands on deck” is the only reasonable call to our species¿ Who is a captain that can be trusted to guide the aged and infirm to safety, when the leaders are trumpeting “death to all who oppose ‘us’,” whoever the us is that the corporate sponsors have designated as the enemy? Wherein lies the spirit of question¿ who maintains the stockade of honesty within our ranks if it is not each of everyone one of us? How can the initiative of personal agency be seized back from a platform of uniformity dictated by whomever is manning the “message” switch at the corporate choke point of human consciousness¿ i apologize that i do not have an answer for you, but feel better going to my doom, giving you nothing but questions, where those who would murder you for profit give you nothing but answers.

I do not wish to engage in this fray, except to broadcast my position in solidarity with those voices of dissent. The gazillions of moolah that have been harbored in offshore accounts, sifted from the sweat of every working person on the planet buys a lot of friends - those who sell themselves cheap can count themselves as my enemies; and i am not afraid, for just like the cowardice of your employers to hide their purpose behind subterfuge and dishonesty, so to do they declare their allegiance to the agents of greed and deny themselves any solidarity with decency and the sacred purpose of supporting all of humanity for survival rather than licking the boots of the very rich doormen at the gates of HNWI hiding their excesses in some fantasy of evading a meaningless life behind the opulence of purchased cowardice. 

jts 23/09/2020  

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com

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220920 - Extinction Chronicles ·

I have lost faith with the teachings of my youth - a reality i had thought long since resolved but which continues to rear its disagreeable face by way of adding “emphasis on the syllable.” It is not enough to object to war as an industry, or hate as a social convention; more like Albert Einstein’s quote, “I am not a pacifist, but a militant pacifist.” Today is, or as close as a bi-spherical individual can be, “World Peace Day.” A neat little convention the rulers contrived to keep the lid on upheaval of their own making. For example: Martin Luther King’s birthday did not become a national holiday until 20 years after his assassination by the FBI, or agents of the now very clearly entrenched white supremacists within the government of the U.S. of ‘merica. And though it was meant to pacify a legitimate outrage by a righteously aggrieved segment of the ‘merican demographic - it has in no way impeded the ruthless and continuous assault on people of color within the continental states of ‘merica.

These contradictions and others constitute my grave misgivings about a peaceful transition from the nazi regime currently occupying the seats of power within my native land, and those who have infiltrated the civil agencies ostensibly described as “peacekeepers” but whose mission has been revealed in word and deed as “occupation” of the multicultural legacy of a “once great nation.” However because these same agents of hatred and division had piggybacked their obtuse and evil intention on the back of an ideal embraced by most nations on our planet - the “Trojan Horse” of hatred now has entree into very nearly every government on the planet - it’s name is GREED and its beneficiaries are but a handful of the world’s population.

I could give a fuck about this oh-so-obvious invasion into the peace of my later years were it not for the disruption of my own personal plans for a loving death surrounded by gentle people; some i could help and others who will hate me to my grave for reasons of my own limited ability to understand the more profound aspects of human nature. However this does not absolve me of my own responsibility to continue on my path toward a pacific end and hopefully fruitful contribution to the species into which i was born, without, as Bob Dylan pointed out so well, “my permission.” It’s okay, and it has been more than interesting, i mostly regret having been unable to convey the curious fact to more of the tortured souls i have encountered in my short time here on terra firma. (side note: AI is not your friend if it insists on a spelling prompt for such a fundamental expression as “terra firma.”

Any more than i should have confidence in any information yielded or deprived me by the ubiquitous and questionable assistance of the computer overlord’s selection of word usage. The geek squad remains uniformly unimpressive, from zukè to the googol billionaire bros to the bozo bezos - gazillions fell into these mooks laps through little more than happenstance, yet at the pitch moment within which the species they ostensibly belong to is facing extinction they are tangled up in their panties about whose dick is biggest, and the only apparent way they could conceive to measure such a timeless question about virility is by way of “accumulated booty” - the rapists from hell · how fucking tired and unimaginative is that i ask you all¿?

It doesn’t matter because they gonna die, i’m gonna die and you gonna die; it is likely best for us all to turn our backs on the titans of “zeroes” and seek something closer to the joy on the face of my neighbor the farmer and his loving “tough as nails” wife for some solution to the question you may or may not ask yourself with your dying breath - “what does it all mean?”  · i’d wager my soul before you and g_d however she reveals herself that my friends the farmers will have a richer more meaningful reply to that question. And if they don’t; guess what, i’m still gonna die and all that i assert is all for naught but had you listened and found yourself a loving life close to loving people making honest food for an honest planet - i can hope that you found some small measure of happiness like i find in the faces of my farmer friends who likely still know not what to make of their strange neighbor the cross-eyed cyclops from next door.

jts 22/09/2020  

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com

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210920 - Extinction Chronicles ·

It would seem the portal of change is opening once again before me - i came to the country i now live in immersed in yet another fantasy · yes, about a woman, why do you ask? My journey took 4 days and i landed about 1,000 km from the person of my interest and many more miles from anything that was recognizable to me. An oddly wise decision, for it has taken me more than a year to get my bearings, something i could manage in days or weeks at an earlier age but now seems to take much longer. I can’t say whether that is because my ship of state has greater draught or i just get dumber the farther i go. It has not been an idle time though i’m sure by some standards pouring over expired youtube television serials hardly counts as forward motion; i’ve learned much both about myself and the land where i have found myself, enough to know how little i know, but also how to learn more - by listening to myself. The question remains whether the time has come to sally forth to meet my fate with what is left of my wherewithal.

As much as i love the life i have created here it becomes increasingly clear i am not of this locale. Lao Tzu - “The excellence of a residence is in the suitability of the place.” I have lived in cloistered communities enough to know unless you resonate with the “vibe” there is no point in remaining. I have come close often, and have had to face the roll of my own unique peculiarities for whether or not it was an homogeneous fit. Where i live now is a hothouse full of exotic personalities formulating travel blogs of their exploits for recounting at dinner parties, a little too much like my time in Hollywood and lacking the camouflage i find i require to protect my anonymity. As a cross-eyed cyclops given to severe independence - the passive sublimation necessary for easy assimilation into this “close knit” melange of well-heeled travelers is more than i care to spend to join its society.

What i have discovered in my time here is how much my own conceit plays in such standoffs as this, for it is not the first time in my travels that i have managed to offend the status quo with little or no effort. I am aiming at the more entrenched HNWI of our planet, and this funny little community where i live is certainly flush with persons guided by that dubious intention - the irrational accumulation of vast wealth for seemingly no more reason than climbing the highest mountain in ever country you’ve been to, or visiting ever country on the planet for that matter. However sequestering wealth is a more insidious and dangerous ambition, for it by its nature saps the vitality of any economy that it targets. I knew when i found a drone photo of the castle being built by some unnamed expat, or whom i assume to be expat - that my days were numbered in this quaint echo of a terrain so familiar to me from an earlier time life in my life.

It may not be possible to escape anywhere any longer - the tendrils of corporate poison have grown stronger and their reach greater · i did laundry two days ago which corresponded with a cultural misalignment which one grows accustomed to living in foreign lands, so when i passed one sleepless or near sleepless night, i figured “anxiety,” though the rank odor of the endocrine disruptors so popular in today’s detergents could not be entirely mssked by their faux fragrance. So this morning when i could smell the vile odor of poison wafting from my sweating body, i realized that the mixture of cleaning solvents i’d added to my wash was permeated with these pernicious poisons, and so rinsed again the bedding i had tried to sleep on - lo and behold · a welcome respite came to this afternoon’s nap without which i’d never have gotten this far in today’s work. I share this for, just now stepping outside for my writing smoke because of the sleeping infant child in the bistro i am writing in, i found my shady spot comprised of 1 1/2” to 3” diameter electrical conduits and sort of shuddered, and sort of vibrated with the pulse my friends the farmers have not yet found important to protect themselves from - like the deadly cleaning agents my native land has exported for fun and profit.

So as long as where i travel to next which looks to be one more large city, simply based on the ease of dissolving into the fabric of humanity than in this hyper-celebrity conscious hipster doofus town i have enjoyed, and not, for the past 18 months of my existential journey. What will be interesting to learn is whether i will be allowed audience with the damsel i originally came to this land tracking. We have had near misses over the decade and a half we have flirted and winked at each other using social media as an excuse for some chemical mix that feels more real today than when i took flight to her native land - i was fleeing at that time, now i am being drawn. Or my fantasy deciphering the intrusive prompts FB now employs in its social engineering mission to dictate to us all what we want - fuck you zuké · i’ll go where i choose and sniff what i like without your help you little fascist wannabe twig. (and i mean that in the nicest possible way.)  

jts 21/09/2020  

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com

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200920 - Extinction Chronicles ·

I don’t like being played - however the only logical foundation for that feeling is a conflict within myself about playing others · Madame Paradox is a bitch, then you die. I prefer the straightforward to the roundabout, when someone says “can you do this for me¿”, but what they mean is “will you do this for me?” Women are masters of this duplicity, and i’ve come to believe it is because they have learned to view their brothers with contempt for the ease with which we are manipulated. My anima, for the longest time has mimicked, often poorly this double standard by inferring my wants through artifice and guile, rather than face the frontal assault of “please” and then to live with the yes or no. But i am getting better, i often do not ask for much, rather let the gravity of “what happened” serve as a confirmation of my own predisposition. I find that i so misunderstand the world and lack fundamental confidence in my own ______fill in the blank, it is easier to accept outcomes not directly of my making than to place myself in the breech of intention and say full front to the universe this _____fill in the blank, is what i want.

I am not complaining about my strategy for it has left me fairly free to pursue those avenues of curiosity which the opinion of others often impairs, and it has forced me to carefully consider that which i desire, for there is no external agency with whom to conspire, but that of my own wants. I do not want much - i’ve gotten that far, but what i want, i want strongly. I want to be cared for, in the same manner that i find i have found myself capable of caring for others; and it is a weird mix to be sure. I once sat on a plane with a stranger whom i subsequently included in an seemingly endless pilgrimage of letters to my Mother with whom i had once again become estranged from. My thinking was that i did not want to say anything to my mother which i could not also openly express to a woman who had entirely captivated my imagination in a 4 hour flight out of Bali. At the time I was living an entirely isolated life in high desert of California and it seemed to be the most constructive use of that time.

I have no regrets nor shame for selling my house at the end of that 3 year retreat and flying to Paris to confirm the reality of my fantasies. Whether i punked out, or she did; we’ll never know, for when she explained that she and he would be out of town from - to, and i said “good i will call you then to rendezvous, but that is the only call i will make,” she did not pick up and i moved on. I am donkey like that; it has been pointed out to me by professionals that the i lose the “forest for the trees,” but i have yet to be cured of my weirdness after decades of what can only be described as extremely lucrative assistance from them, so i figure i must be suffering from terminal weirdness and so seek my tribe to die with, or at least near; though they remain in hiding, i am hopeful, for that is a unique symptom of my particular malady.

I gather from having been shunned by my family on FB and in real life that they believe my illness to be contagious; it may just be my weirdness, not the outward manifestation of hope, which i can’t seem to shake. My father was a high school cheerleader which for the year 1940 was not all that unusual, but for the pre-Dallas Cheerleaders of my generation his history gave me great pause. Now i have come to understand it was simply Pop being Pop to the core - he a tireless advocate of human potential, and that excellent example has truly been infectious. But not without its controversy; at his wake when my sister pronounced in a passing eulogy that “he embarrassed all of us” and i could only but interrupt, “No, he challenged us.” I would apologize to my sister for interrupting her misery, but that would only further confirm her myopic estimation of me as “victim” an insight she is not entirely entitled to, but one which i can empathize with for its inherent projection; another feature of our shared malady.

I do not blame Ma for her cruelty, or Pop for his, however much misunderstood, inexhaustible optimism. They were and are human beings having done their best, and to whom i will remain eternally grateful. Now it is our time to vacate the field with as much good effort as we can muster for the benefit of the “greater good,” not because that is how i was raised to roll which i was, but because it is the only right way to roll. I cannot say what comes next, and am beginning to understand that that is not my call to make - the only options before me are how to eliminate from my life that which does not aid my ambition for personal happiness as best i can fathom what that means, and to eliminate as much of my own contribution to the collective misery of those with whom i share this miraculous moment in time. We are in the midst of an eternity, and if that means we can put some small spin on that existential ball in favor of just that much more love and kindness, i’m all in; “but when you talk about destruction, Don’t you know you can count me out.” - John Lennon  

jts 20/09/2020  

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com

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190920 - Extinction Chronicles

Once again the laundry is done, so the terror of having no clean underwear recedes into the future for another 19 days, baring unforeseen events. I am awash in food which feels contemptible when so much of the world is living hand to mouth. I have allowed the kindness of strangers to prevail over my own organization, and it confuses me. My last wife cooked a kettle full of vegetable soup the night of her great escape. I had been back from the hospital from an emergency appendectomy for 2 days, and preparing to work the next day. She stood over this kettle of simmering vegetables muttering to herself, “I love this man, I love this man,” and so thought little more of her declaration when she had picked me up at the hospital - “I am leaving you.” Gimping back from the Yellow Line train stop the next day, the neighbor kids trailed me from the corner asking where are you moving to?

My wife had left, and after that kettle was gone, i continued cooking variations of vegetables for the next 2 years. So when the wife of my current neighbors, the farmers, began placing dishes of prepared food in my window, it was disconcerting but also coincided with a time in my own development when i wanted to stop resisting the universe. However it has played havoc with my well developed sense of self-reliance, not to mention meal planning. The more complicated aspect of this conundrum is the effect of criticism on people’s good intentions. She i imagine is feeling compassion for a solitary stranger and as i understand it wants to relieve my suffering. I have tried to explain that i can happily manage my meals, and our arrangement has created a waste of food which i feel very badly about - to no avail. The language barrier is real, but the cultural barrier is more real.

For my birthday, i was gifted new sandals for reasons i’m not entirely clear about, but i think it was concern about my appearance because i prefer my well worn pair to the new ones i’d bought sometime back - a pair she the kind "gifter", knew nothing about. Again it is the lack of communication that is complicating matters. The individual in question could quite conceivably ask me to commit murder, which i might or might not comply with, but she has no real concept of her power of command. However, he is unable to ask me what it is i would want or need for my birthday. I am guilty of the same lack of communication and had made an extravagant gesture for her birthday the year before without verifying whether it would be useful or even desired. This lack of communication has created an imbalance i did not wish for or plan.

In the den of my scholarship, i often lose sight of the real world effect my fantasies might have. I have deluded myself into believing that as long as my intentions are pure and i honor my interior as honestly as i know how, the world and its response to my being be damned. I’m in no haste to unlearn that at a time in human history when so few are effectively controlling the wants and desires of so many. But along with that commitment to personal integrity, i struggle to listen carefully to those with whom i interact. This often results in what i understand to be “reaction formation.” My personal strategy to retire from society has left more of a footprint than i’d have thought possible, and the reaction of people being listened to has created more attention than i am comfortable with. When i say reaction formation, i mean i have also found very few who have any desire or capacity to learn about my wants or feelings, rather they view me, as i experience it, as a “Tabula Rasa” waiting for their imprint of what they imagine i am, or want.

I have curtailed my desires much, but i have not as yet satisfied my desire for a companionable partner looking for a quiet creative life; she the model/muse and proprietress of whatever we can collaboratively create, and i the errant knight struggling to comprehend and honor her quiet anima; an anima that no longer requires consumer objects to satisfy and support her desire for security, but who understands that with the years i have left and the resources i have accumulated i want nothing more than to love and cherish her gentle ways without defending her from the suitors she needs me not to repeal. I seek a helpmate to negotiate our wants and desires interdependently, rather than petition the wide world individually. I wish a couple-hood that welcomes my manic doting, and often severe solitude, someone whom i can explore with abandon, and to whom i can revel in my nakedness; at this point in my life it makes no sense to live for less.  

jts 19/09/2020  

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com

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