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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