It’s nice to be nice - and there is no amount of criminal thuggery i’ve ever witnessed or have been aware of that will contravene my decision · The problem gets to be when fakeness gets into the equation, for example; nice thuggery, what is euphemistically described as coercion. I once spent months carving a statue of a gargoyle based on this dishonesty. It was part of a slice of a 36” marble column that had been turned on a machine in Italy at no small expense, only to find a recalcitrant municipal inspector who declared its mass was insufficient support and required a steel girder to bolster that particular architectural feature - picture a package of “Lifesavers” with a wedge cut out from it’s length so that a piece of metal could be inserted longitudinally in order to support a 5 lb bag of sand · I carved two pieces from this ugly piece of stone, one - “Liza Doolittle sans patrons” · the other my beloved “Gargoyle”.
The outer curve became his wings, and the inner diameter constituted the portal to hell which he was tasked to guard against incursions from the nether regions of hell. It was a challenge to fit this into a short semi-round piece of marble, but i’m a two-eyed cyclops carving 3-Dimensional statues i can’t even see because my world is comprised of 2-Dimensional glimpses toggling back and forth searching for mass; challenging designs don’t really enter into the mix; i’m lucky if i make it through the door, much less execute a work of art. The idea for the persona of this guardian whose mission is to be scarier than evil, was to evince the face of the “ultimate salesmen” with his penis in his hands, because everyone knows how frightened the world is of an erection, especially one that is being used for purposes other than the loving procreation of our species.
I was showing an emerging version to my friend the door-maker/carpenter and he asked “well what are the two hands supposed to be doing¿” - a fair question which i tried to explain, after which he asked, “why not just show the penis?” I had no good answer, and could find no good reason to not, forgive the pun, “cut it to the bone.” I don’t regret the decision, and have never had any real evil befall me or my world that i’m aware of since its creation; so i guess it was a good idea. There sits Mr. Gargoyle, salesman par Excellance ready to face any unwilling vendor from the depths of hell with even better explanations than what that demon might try to sell in our world. We are surrounded by men selling shit no one wants or needs until they are told “you are incomplete until you own ______” fill in the blank - to me that is a scary abdication of personal agency. I decide what i want, what makes me whole, what helps me to be more human than when i was born.
Yet here i sit arguing metaphysical realities about which i have no substantive proof, while the entirely rational world i am supposed to have faith in is on fire and the leadership so corrupt that a thug family has cowed a 250 year-old democracy into subservience and the caretakers of that tradition have been entirely overrun by racist minions advocating death or slavery to all non-white citizens. The rule of law in the land i was raised has been suborned by corporate entities claiming person-hood, but remain entirely unwilling to assume the mantel of civic responsibility, rather they would replace the legal apparatus with an Artificial Intelligence (AI) upon whose android frame deviant intellectuals are planning to infuse uploaded emulations of the human experience - and they say metaphysics is bullshit science?
I can only marvel at the kindness of my neighbors who have welcomed me into the bosom of their community as much as that is possible for one who can only parrot simple phrases much less wend his way through the eons of nuances of a culture capable of not only resisting, but defeating the empire my once vibrant democracy has mutated into. Writing this i realize i am in no hurry to die, and welcome the opportunity to limp with my gimp to a future that may possibly turn out more favorably than my dystopian-flavored education might have anticipated. The most encouraging truth i face is even at this late date i accept how little i know, and how much i have to grow - something i may still do with a little help from my friends, known and unknown.
jts 09/09/2020
http://stoanartst.blogspot.com
reprinted with permission - all rights reserved
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