“be kind whenever possible, it is always possible” - Dalai Lama · I have chosen to veer from excoriating prose in opposition to injustice in our world, toward enabling language which serves to dispel despair and replace it with “lead, follow or get the fuck out of the way” language; this should be interesting. Not because it is unnatural for me, but because i have found that others are jarred by the obvious - like “fuck _rump, he’s an empty suit" · giving him attention is like the pats on the head he gets from his corporate sponsors, or the thrill he might feel from licking Vladimir’s closed fist; (i can see this experiment in empowering prose is going to be a challenge). These characters are secondary to the the drama on the stage in front of us all - if “all the world’s a stage and we are but players” - William Shakespeare · our stage is on fire, and all the exits are blocked by stacks of money from those in the front row.
While we in the cheap seats look on bewildered imagining the story is supposed to be about us, yet no one we see is recognizable to those we love and those we know are suffering. My friends the farmers next door are superior to me in every way, and my ego chafes because i am built to serve, but am now faced with the very real possibility that what i possess is of little value to them. Conversely what they have to teach me may be beyond my capacity to learn. For example: the fallow peanut crop field has been trenched and furrowed in 4 days - picture a field the size of a major league diamond to the depth of 18” x 12. I tried to flatten the base path between 3rd base on home plate and got about 6’ before i expired for the day. I do not possess language enough to express my profound admiration for the strength and endurance of this 5’ nothing man with the sunshine smile and arms of steel, whose wife then shares their food with me - all i can come up with is shame and embarrassment for being a foreign burden.
And, that low opinion of myself is based entirely on my own conceit and vanity having absolutely nothing to do with the kind reception my neighbors have shown me; i know there is a lesson here somewhere; i believe it is based on the complete destruction of an identity i have barely learned enough about to criticize, much less abandon. So how is this useful if you are reading to learn how to evade “extinction”? a fair question, for which i have no answer. The best and most honest response i can give you is to keep asking questions. I am exceedingly uncomfortable with anyone who knows all the answers - one the greatest gifts my father gave to me in our later discussions. The person i had relied on all my life to correct my errant ways miraculously transfigured himself into a sceptic right before my very eyes.
Whether i can manage a similar transfiguration is a good question. I am an inveterate burro, some have used the expression “bulldog,” so the change for me to become fluid and open to the unending alteration of all i hold sacred is more than an academic question - i must alter my dreams to admit a fluidity about an existence i can barely tolerate for its strangeness to my own vision of “correctness,” much less embrace as a standard of behavior. I used to be open and nonjudgmental, and explored most every range of circumstances and cultures i could find, doing everything i could to learn from everyone and assume the best about each - somewhere on that road my essence became challenged and i resorted to my base nature · the being i’d been cautioned to become or ______ fill in the blank. It hasn’t worked out well, and i don’t quite know how to embrace that essence and discount any false understanding in order to once again participate in the flavorful bounty of all the world’s ways.
i am beginning to believe the process is more mysterious than the rationalists would have us believe, but i am not going to sweat defining conditions or things that define, or decline that which others believe. I fancy myself as a “freethinker” something i got from my 99 year-old at-death paternal great grandmother Munner (Alice Content Foster). She was a grand dame, a family of three siblings - two sisters and a brother. In my limited relationship about the progeny out of that triumvirate · we have had much in common in ways that have nothing to do with common upbringing or mutual ambition; almost as though the branches of our family trees know how to grow amongst themselves to maximize some common, help me; what’s the word i’m looking for ______fill in the blank. But we as a species are so much more than “nature vs nurture,” though my own siblings more closely resemble the each of us in our common thread, it is almost as though that closeness breeds repellence for some eternal purpose. What i do know is that my branch bears more resemblance to your branch in all its discrepancy than my own branch bears resemblance to itself · i find encouragement in that belief to keep looking for kin amidst the kith .
jts 01/09/2020
http://stoanartst.blogspot.com
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