301020 - Extinction Chronicles ·

Curiosity is what dame Chodron proffered for why to continue on the path of Dharma, regardless of the dislocation of getting “tossed out of the nest,” weekly, daily or hourly. I go in and out of focus depending on how easily what constitutes "i" can slip away from the mantle of “ego,” which however shredded or fractured, seems to cling to my mortal coil like the stink of muck from some bad plumbing assignment. Still when despair is the alternative and the thrill of happiness punctures the day’s events like the trill of a happy chick or quacking duck - i know she, dame Chodron is right in the deepest places of my heart. Just know i am listening to Grandpa Tran mimicking clucking sounds for his latest attentive grand baby and i know all is right and will be right in the world as long as such simple exchanges are made; i can hear baby Tao mimicking sounds and the two of them are utterly absorbed in the bliss of life and i am redeemed, though i can hear barely with one ear and know nothing of the words they exchange - except for the language of love ·

My storm ravaged meal concoction is simmering and i walk the continual plank of vaporizing too much nutrition from the mixture while fashioning some elixir that purges the mold from my eustachian tubes and am just grateful i have an internet pulse with which to check spelling. All of the staging and fantasy about fashioning powerful prose has evaporated with the dull throb of congestion in my troubled ear canal complicated by a silly addiction to the tar of tobacco and the defect of character for not riding in the rain soaked pathways of where i’m still not sure why i remain. Judgement is the theme i dwelled on prior to sitting down to actually write - thoughts full of self recrimination and forgiveness and all the whys and wherefores of such self absorbed nonsense · however useful and necessary for self awareness and growth. I don’t give a fuck about you is what i tell myself, yet the truth is i am never far from the voice that renders one prisoner when you care what others think - channeling Lao Tzu ·

I sleep well enough, maybe too well and reflect on relationships that barely reach the threshold of such. I fantasize about the angel of my death who will hover over my shroud and lament my passing after she has allowed me days, weeks maybe even years of study of her supple young body informed by tender expressions of her value for my living breath tempered with fierce protection for my fragile state that she misconstrues and continually relents and warms to my tender caresses at the end of each long day's work: drawing, painting, sculpting or just fucking. Go ahead tell me i’m not delusional and i will happily concur with you if it wasn’t for the decades of preparation i’ve applied to such a passing.

I began serious study of the female anatomy before my 21st birthday in the city of New York at the prestigious Art Student’s League. I was a custodian and otherwise on full scholarship. I was a renegade and smoked pot on the roof where now rests the pointed coccyx of the capitalist’s Sword of Damocles comprised of Penthouses cantilevered over my Alma Mater because a gangster whore ingratiated himself into a leadership function and then brokered the sale of the “air rights” over the school for blood money from Nordstroms for their penthouse super tower. It was shoved through by greed, threat and financial might - no different than ensconcing the current fascist administration in what was once a “Great Notion.” Now 4 years into the 4th Reich ‘merican traitors are enjoying 230,000 deaths and still voting for their demise.

Form follows function was a platitude of the intellectual art class that sold its soul long before Pablo Picasso the master Art Speculator stooped to withholding 80% of his known works from the marketplace for no other reason than to goose the price of his work - and you wonder why we can’t have nice things. Artists are human and as such are subject to the same greed as amoral, asocial, narcissistic trust fund babies faced with the choice between a lifetime of opulence at the expense of a starving humanity besieged by climate havoc wrought by a bunch of petronazis and the spoils of a merchant class hooked up to the “Digital Information Super Highway” milliseconds ahead of any other investment dollar, shekel, dong - what have you · It can only be from “bitter searching of the heart” that any of us will have the remotest effect on the survival of our collective species - wake the fuck up and VOTE · then “praise the lord and pass the ammunition” - A. Nonymous ·

jts 30/10/2020 

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291020 - Extinction Chronicles ·

Anyone thinking the storm has passed is not paying attention; near as i can tell there are a lot of people not paying attention - especially those with no storm in their laps, as yet · yet even those knee deep in muck or ash depending on the “fire or ice” in their particular universe are resorting to business as usual and leading with their chins hoping the “market” will recover, progressives secretly pulling for the herd immunity his highness the “stable genius, father to Barron _rump has glommed onto as a foil for further perfidy and mayhem the rubes just seem to gobble up. Makes one wish for the good old days when they just made movies about the “Rainmaker” instead of whole scale slaughter in the wake of “Sturgis Hog Day.” And again it comes down to what night star you are following, and whether or not that illumination is a star, or a stain on the emotional lens through which you perceive your particular corner of the universe. 

Of late, i’m coming to the blindingly bright dawn of realization that i’m not the dewey-eyed romantic i over-compensated with using my emotionally starved childhood as foundation for making ignorant decisions about unavailable companions attributing qualities of character fashioned out of whole cloth to satisfy the slightest fantasy of acceptance not unlike growing up in my family of narcissistic predators - i jest, sort of. Any defect i attribute to them, is but a myopic amplification of my own hunger for respect and belonging twisted into some justification for feelings that are my own but that i’m just too fucking scared to deal with in between super Typhoon #9 and the possibly even greater #s 10 & 11 soon to follow - if not this year than next - lucky us ·

I used to be funny, but now i feel like the cartoon character in Paul Simon’s “Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes.” My floor is beginning to feel slimy from the crushed ants and the spilled beer from late-in-the-evening denial and the vinegar dripping from my ceiling in an organic attempt to abate the rain induced mold from capitalism’s ultimate product - neglect. Yet all in all, i’m sitting upright, have some wherewithal to do lord knows not what with, and my heart is light enough to crack “wise,” though again it is braggadocio of too much solitude coupled with too much conceit and not enough self awareness to render an accurate description however much i try. I accept, without the guidance of a loving companion or admission to a sangha that embraces freaks such as myself - there is not much left to me, but complaint; try as i might.

I routinely lose track of paragraphs much less trains of thought, i seem only able to discipline an unfortunate indoctrination about attributing to others feelings that are clearly mine own - how fucking embarrassing is that ¿? It would be cool if i remained stout and stalwart, but i’m barely able to navigate a slippery patio without mincing baby steps, and any chauvinistic response i might have had for the wannabe shrews in our midst is now reduced to sniping and simple avoidance of loud and aggressive people, for i have lost most delusions of a gentle ending to my violent life regardless of any sanctimonious efforts on my part to shore up the persona whose wrist i clutch because i fear it would slip out of a hand hold.

And still i try, because that is how i was raised, both mother and father had endured enough adversity in their lives to make every effort to fortify this misbegotten soul to a life of futility, however delusional that sanctuary has become as haven. I would rather have endured 20 lifetimes in which to achieve a single noble fantasy they entertained watching over the gangly loudmouth cyclops they alone had courage to own. They, my parents in the brave conceit of victors from a single war against the fascist incursion and flush with feelings of success as “the greatest generation” lived and live utterly oblivious to the betrayal and subterfuge enacted on their noble “dimes” by the agents for deceit and betrayal “voted” on daily in boardrooms of the barely conscious fascist overlords to achieve what Mein Furer _rumpf has stomped his foot about - this time · putsch by fit of pique, who knew ¿? save maybe those few who can remember the tantrums of Herr Adolf .  ..  ···

jts 29/10/2020 

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281020 - Extinction Chronicles ·

Who knew a typhoon could be so instructional and so mysterious at the same time. Yesterday late afternoon, early evening my friend the mystic artist posted a meme about “gentle raindrops falling” with a time stamp of 6:58 pm, earlier another artist sage had included photographic instructions for lashing two doorknobs together for reinforcement. I have since learned you can sleep through a typhoon if you are willing to sleep with one eye open; that if “she who would be queen” is being testy - let her; my farmer friends are kind to the bone, braving the 100km per hour winds to render their duck friends, albeit future dinners · comfort in the intervening time; and some how leaves blew through the secured back door to land over the drain on the plastic stool and create a lake puddle from droplets unwilling to stay outside - my friend the rat who i’m sure is related to the movie star rat from “Ben”, boosted two of my three candles in the dead of night - leaving her teethmarks on the 3rd · and somehow an offering in folded yellow waxy paper with pictograph writing was left at my doorstep containing a very plausible copy of a $100 C note - as they say in East L.A. “s’plain me.”

The meme with the kindly time stamp, now provides realtime information for predicting the duration of the blackout - cam on Anh Ay Duc Bet · the missing candles, simply fortify my anthropomorphic theory about my house guest Madame Rat, and sure enough moments later i found her teeth marks on the cap of the bootleg plastic bottle of rice wine - the night before i had interrupted her slurping of my pot-au-feu a-la-poulet that i left on the stove; as she lept off the counter after i disturbed her meal, i can swear like the current ‘merican president that she gave me the “Bronx Cheer” - ‘thrbbppp’, were my vision sharper i’d likely seen the 3rd digit of her paw in salut, but will not chance her next visit by leaving the container exposed for her to topple and slurp all that distinguishes me from sleepless despair, and sleepless hungry despair; kidding, sort of.

These two paragraphs have cost me 5% of the 89% left i left myself after arrogantly not recharging during this morning's fb activism just prior to being cutoff from the electrical trough for thoroughly rational and commendable civic precautions at a time when leaves can be blown through closed door and puddles made on random stools. My prayers are that the sticks of incense i reflexively burn, while wondering whether they are simply of no help, or that without them the massive natural calamity befalling friends of mine and enemies alike would just be that much greater - i d f k · I do know i’m glad i got to the rice wine before my wannabe rodent house guest figured out how to topple the bottle and consume my precarious store of liquid courage.

And in the midst of all this solipsistic bullshit i feel for “she who would be queen”, so accustomed to stopping men in their tracks with a glance to find my frozen heart not responding to a fury that serves neither her nor her ambitions, much less something i fear. I fear; i do not understand why when i toss cabbage, oatmeal and nut crumbs to the duck cluster outside my window, they seem more afraid of me than the storm. Days earlier, i’d crushed mollusks with Anh Ay Tran that is apparently the ducks staple, but their foraging appetite seemed stifled with the ravaging 100 km per hour winds; what i don’t know about mother Gaia and her kin will fill the unfilled volumes of my thinking when i pass - how sad, and not. There will be others wanting to learn from farmer Tran and his family about how to nurture food and livestock while weathering fierce and more fierce storms from a paradigm based on greed no one questioned them about nor obviously learned much from observing them. Hopefully the chemical traces left in my synapses at my moment of death will constitute some information somehow for those facing an extinction not at all of their making.

My friends the ducks have returned to their semi-protected aisle between our two buildings - whether my nutritional offering in the midst of this typhoon was useful or useless, i may never know - but i tried · what is left to decide for that interminable silence between reconnection to the “information super-highway” when electricity is restored and my flickering house lights can once again pose a danger to me from electrocution is anybody’s guess, like not knowing the mind of a woman or learning how to fathom one’s own heart after a lifetime of indoctrination · I accept fully that compared to the force of nature, mine own ambition and life is vastly insignificant; i am struggling to understand how much that will affect my end days. Right now i am trying to track the effects of mold on my ear canal from an ancient wound, and the toxic repercussions of a dissipated youth squandered too far into my dissipated dotage @ 77% battery charge, hoping for electricity at 3:07 pm is little different than hoping the mold growing on my walls will not influence the disease of rot from my early on broken eardrum, so i will now go and fashion some gruel of oatmeal and pot-au-feu that will retain enough coldness in my electric-less “icebox” and provide nutrition to combat the emotional stress i feel while wishing you all a wholesome future full with courage and wisdom to prevail over a handful of capitalist weasels who care not a whit about you, but what you can pay them.

Good luck to us all.

jts 28/10/2020 

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271020 - Extinction Chronicles ·

In 2005 i awoke from an emergency appendectomy - 6 days later my wife of 13 years took a powder while i was at work · In no position to recuperate i walked the 2 miles down Figueroa to the local hipster doofus art gallery to, as they are fond of saying in East L.A., represent at an art "opening" my soon to be ex could be found. I share this for no other reason than the qualitative feeling of being alive during that 4 mile trek. Against the 13 years of an increasingly blunted emotional reality of, as master Hank Williams Sr sang, a half-hearted love, each step of that 4 mile meditation rang with a vividness of existence i’d not known, for too overlong. I’m okay with that, sort of. Each day after that long night walk seared into my being the precarious ecstasy of living fully in the moment. Much pain has followed from those events, which has precluded the convenience of pointing any finger of responsibility for anything, anywhere but in my own face; so now 15 years later, in another part of world entirely feeling the same blunted emotional affect of that time, there is only myself to comfort.

And not, i have found great exhilaration through consideration of other - the more anonymous the better. Almost as though the paradigm of hooks associated with generosity i was raised to believe; if abandoned could decouple karma with each anonymous unexpected contribution; and not. The beast ego is never far from the killing floor, but how to defame greed with one hand and inspire kindness with the other remains a Gordian Knot. There is no transforming another - there is only self to change · It’s not like we don’t have roadmaps throughout history for “right thinking, right speech and right action.” The problem for me is i’m an amorous bohemian who only wishes to cuddle and dwell on some creative approximation of, as they say “the twist of a woman’s ankle.” Not really, that is an example of braggadocio my generation was weaned on - Pop who evolved to be the most kind and loving feminists i still now know of though he be dead ·

When 13 as a 2-eyed ugly and loud cyclops amidst a family of beauties, i asked this same man - how do you know if a woman likes you, i’d not yet reached the stage of romantic idealization that a girl could love me · his honest and heartfelt advice at the time was; “when she submits to you.” His beatific belief at the time revealed nothing more than the sum total of his upbringing and his paternal reaction to an exploded atomic family, becoming a father of 4 within 8 years of marriage to a woman he’d known for as many weeks having met Ma - a “checker” at one of the 1st Ralph’s Supermarkets in post “WWII” ‘merica. His sincerity and authenticity as a human allows me to quietly march to my death alone, or with some lucky broad who wants to be ravished and adored as long as i draw breath and she remains honest. Don’t laugh, stranger things have happened; i’ve already been married 3 times so i know more than a lot of lads playing the “gimme, gimme” game. 

The problem for her, whoever she be is i’m in no hurry to become a beast of burden unless i could more resemble my neighbor farmer Ong Tran. The sun is setting, and storm #9 is gathering a head of steam to crash the coast sometime before morning - still he is pounding corrugated tin into shields against an unknown force, for no other reason i can see than to protect his courageous loving wife Comrade Baha and their poultry. Early on, i’d leap to emulate this brave couple but emulating those in my family constellation has taught me well that what you see is not necessarily what you get. My brethren are loving decent people doing their level best and you would be lucky to expire next to anyone of them - if you weren’t i · That conditional love is not what i want for my passing, rather i’d like to learn the courage that gives the Oxen heart to Anh Ay Tran, or the stalwart courage Comrade Baha demonstrates with each stride from one loving activity to the next. I count myself fortunate to have shared air with these people if storm #9 determines my end before i can rise in the morrow. 

You see what happens when you get old - paragraph 5 gets neglected · May you learn to know how that feels. I have done all i could do to vote in onrushing election, however much master Orwell’s honest estimate of our collective future of a “boot stomping on a human face, forever" haunts my sleep and animates my days. To give you an idea of Pop and his cheerfulness which will be covered ground for anyone not just tuning in - during our last lessons together, during which i would ask endless inquiries hoping to forestall that “last question,” he would eventually reply, “I don’t know, but I’m sure glad I’m old.” I’m now reaching a point a decade later where i can appreciate better the comfort he must have been feeling from staring into the abyss. Just now, wanting to aid my friend the farmer, i turned on the kitchen lights i never use hoping the additional light could help his stalwart heart face the storm and his last licks with the hammer, i realized then that the “ground fault” that renders the bulbs in my bedroom always glowing, flickers all the lights in the house i live, and which has been drenched to a point where mold now covers a good 60% of my ceilings, and that the coming 100 mph hour winds could conceivably create voltage enough  to stop my heart; now i must rest like us all · good night friends.

jts 27/10/2020 

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261020 - Extinction Chronicles ·

This should be interesting, i’m commencing the day’s writing chore at a time i’d normally be wrapping up, and i’m tweaking my normally rigid routine. I realized that i enjoy sipping whiskey because you get more bang for the buck, and you pee less nor feel bloated like when drinking beer. I accept i will offend some in the audience delving into the shameful practice of altered states, but without a regular "squeeze" one relates as best as one can. When a younger fellow, i shared my drinking theory with a mental health professional, he remarked, “oh, you’re a scientific drinker,” that coupled with a passing observation by an examining physician, one of many after Dr. Welby M.D. retired, this examining physician opined - drink for taste, not the high · The problem with whiskey is not unlike a woman who clutches; it’s a great feeling when both of you are in the groove, but lord help you if one wants distance and can’t explain why. I stopped drinking for a decade after my 3rd wife bailed 6 days after i enjoyed an emergency appendectomy. It was a great 10 years.  .. Tobacco free, I ran the L.A. Marathon, enjoyed dopamine addiction like a boss running 20 miles a week for a decade.

I can say i ran an hour in Death Valley at noon in late July the year my father died - ultimately what i accomplished was oblonging my short-leg socket so when i fell off the rock truck in Romblon, Philippines onto my short-leg flank all i did was make a satchel size bruise that left enough coagulated blood deposits to inform me of the very real need for a disciplined and consistent range-of-motion regime well into my elder years if i expect to remain standing past 66 - my luck just seems to be the gift that keeps on giving. Just the other day i read the Dalai Lama expound on the role of toxins in battling disease; while i believe the allusion he was creating centered on language and the unfortunate, but sometimes very necessary use of excoriating phrases, that is not inconsistent with the sage Lao Tzu who also observed “the truth is not always beautiful, nor beautiful words the truth.” I’m pretty sure that when i die which we all do, my incarnation will be as the triplet sibling to Madam Paradox’s twins - “T’is and T’isn’t”

If my luck holds, as it has this lifetime, i will be born to Madam Paradox as “T’ain’t” which for the libertines in the audience know to be the region in the “nether realm” as the highly erotic gap between the gonads and the anus, if not that than the bottom step in the mausoleum memorial to the senseless deaths from the plague of 2020, after mankind had come to her senses and put the greedy war monger capitalist class back on a short leash and intentionally utilized the intensity of their pathological greed to illuminate mushroom farms that had miraculously sprung up devouring the plastic particles which ultimately failed in their effort to achieve a sentient state. This was just about the time AI went off the rails in its own arrogant attempt to achieve singularity, for just like its progenitors the narcissistic billionaire coders responsible for that testimony to hubris, right at the moment when it became self-aware - it, AI was blinded by its own beauty and went into a backdoor loop calculating Pi to its last place · t’was never heard from again.

Storm #9 is bearing down on Vietnam and the people of the city where i live are rising to the occasion with aplomb and loving courage. My artist friends are propagating an exquisite meme demonstrating how to lash door knobs together for French doors giving added strength. This storm is predicted to be 16 on a scale that ends at 17, so it’s anybody’s guess what that’s going to look like. I marvel at the resiliency and generosity of spirit of this population; as an example, Murphy’a Law dictated my toilet paper would run out just about dead center of the eye of the storm, but when i stopped at the local bodega, all she could do is shake her head pointing to the empty shelf, miming 4 fingers when asked about how long before the next delivery. From no more than a wince from my cheek, she removed herself to a hallway and returned with two rolls - i can only grimace realizing in the land of my birth, people have been shot in struggles over toilet paper post Covid-19. 

paragraph 5 can be found in the realm of prayer for all who suffer in order to embrace the unbearable and to extend to the unextendable.

"I heard a voice at the dusk of day sayin', 'be gentle brother, be gentle and pray'." - courtesy of the loving heart of Bob Dylan ·

jts 26/10/2020 

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com

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251020 - Extinction Chronicles ·

Ran out of whiskey just as storm #8 is about to shed its first torrents - oh well · I have garlic, some so-so potato salad, cold pot-au-fue and some warm beer, what could go wrong. I have little ego sanctuary left to protect myself from myself and accept that the thoughts passing through my withering frame hungry for its bicycle time are entirely my own and bear no relationship to reality other than they might contain events that could inform choices i must certainly make, or not. “Tempest” is playing because i wanted to hear ‘Soon After Midnight.” I’ve thrown open all the possible ventilation, and have 2nd thoughts about that as a moisture strategy. Trying to keep the house in some order i chucked the banana peel from the morning’s oatmeal and got savaged by the black ant who’d apparently not got its fill. An interesting contrast, these micro beasts that in a nanosecond can raise welts that more resemble an emerging boil possess footprints that could easily be confused with peppercorn shavings. The neighbors are perturbed and i am sorry their friend the landlord has opted to justify her neglect for the mold on her walls by questioning my habits using the blood sport of Hoi An - gossip ·

I am sorry that it hasn’t worked out well for me here, but i don’t see how i can fit with Zukee’s digital running dogs, or the front men for _rump’s post-election loss agitation for reactionary behavior in support of “unfettered” capitalism to save the world from itself everywhere. It took me a year to begin to appreciate how many undercover Nazis are establishing a beach head here in this too cute world heritage site right at the symbolic fault line between the two fictional Viet Nam’s conjured in the minds of Kissinger, Dean Rusk and the “wunderkind” from Camelot, while poor John was looking over his shoulder for the bullet that came from on high to the right. The resulting ‘bamboo curtain’ for Southeast Asia showed clearly who was building barriers and who was building solidarity. Ho Chi Minh won the election and the results were tossed out by Dulles and his thugs who resurrected a French appointee as president of the supposed free South.

Any more these historical demarcations are of no importance for capital is fluid at the higher echelons and as Bob Dylan observed “shallow and weak” at the lower demographics - so i am sharing this why, when full 50% of the reading population does not parse the word “demographic”? Today fb fired across my bow for violating “community standards” disputing some cobbled together meme about Goebbels strategy for muting intellectuals - the claim even by the fact checkers was deemed “partly true;” the larger concern is why the behemoth billion dollar company would be quibbling and threatening me with “access” to what is a public utility for highlighting a “partly true” about a Nazi criminal responsible for distorting the same truths that the current administration is attempting to get re-elected spewing is the question. Where do you stand Zuckee, are you in or are you out - do you think buying swaths of an island state and transferring human initiative to Kurzwell’s AI henchmen in anticipation of the singularity is gonna get you some choice location in the digital intellect you fuckers are planning to upload after you have ravaged this planet ¿? what kind of monsters you - besides lacking spine or honor.

I have just found myself yoked into the violence of thought propagated by the social engineers to keep people terminally off-balance and unable to frame one peaceful thought after another. I think i’ll save that passion for the next vagina that presents itself to my voracious imagination for stimulation. Don’t worry boys, i’m old and the tempting pussy is banking on the GQ thing you got oozing out of the Gucci bags all the broads seem to believe represent real power - so kudos to your advertising wizards in subverting an entire breeding cohort to satisfying the pain of disease and death with the palliative of unending consumer appetizers. I’d laugh if i didn’t believe in my heart of hearts you were able to conjure this temptation for a dying species through the abject poverty of your souls. You’ve lived so long in the penthouse level and livery service of door to door limousines there is no anchor of responsibility to others except for how they feature in satisfying your every whim. In your mind that is power - to determine for others what they will do for you; where we part company is in my commitment to aid others in fulfilling their destiny, not mine.

I’d rather be so evolved that my prose was inclusive enough to appeal to your vanity, but those who read these daily ______ fill in the blank have excavated through mind numbing distractions to find material hopefully dealing, with the whole of our species and not just the “target demographics” your Power Point wizards use to spoon feed you bite-size ideas from which you can make incisive decisions utilizing the narrower and narrower gates humanity is herded through the Dream Machine X.O on their way to the cash register, or whatever current form for that action where you separate the earnings from the herdees for the benefit of the herders. If i was a smart man, i would take lessons from your laser-like focus and accept 1) there is no accommodating your greed. 2) you cannot be reformed. 3) your function is redundant and therefore should be eliminated. I left my megalomania at the door and so am only concerned with recognizing and amending my own defects, of which i contain, as Mr. Dylan once again said so much better, multitudes. I hope the logic of 1-3 makes sense to some enterprising reader who might begin a study group for how to accomplish that, short of any miracle - i will no plunge into my next chronicle.

jts 25/10/2020 

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com

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241020 - Extinction Chronicles ·

C.G. Jung - “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”

Not a path i would recommend to many, but if you wish to suck the life blood of the essence of your existence, i haven’t found a more honest declaration of the terms and conditions for awakening. The difficulty is that there is no guide but yourself and what you feel. I have averred and attributed to others so much of what i feel for so long, it is a challenge just to feel and dwell with what i find. Social creature that i am in spite of my recluse ways, it’s become more than interesting to discover how others respond to my best efforts to stand naked without apology or demand. Music remains a solace, and Madame Paradox in her infinite wisdom has bestowed the “the tin ear” of our planet to me, so i am left with sole pleasure of plunging my last cogent tendrils as deep as i may into the melodic pistil nearest my heartstring - just now it is “Murder Most Foul” - Bob Dylan ·

Storm #8 is banking its fires just off shore and my landlady is understandably ignoring my concerns about the mold growing from the leaking ceilings on 60% of a domicile i pay too much for even prior to the the Covid vacancies. Suffering seems to be a perfect topic to listen to Mr. Dylan serenade the ghost of a dead John Kennedy. I can’t blame people i meet for being frightened; ironically it never occurred to me that anyone but those i’d deliberately menace for no more than distance or time to make an escape until a woman i grieve for not knowing whether she breathes or is dead in the hunting cabin she enticed me back to in the city i was raised, suggested to me “it may be that people are afraid of you.” We didn’t quite parse that move far enough to surmount the bugaboo of flesh on flesh after i'd learned that all she wanted was an escort for her corpse out the door and someone to sweep up the detritus so’s that her “loving son” would not be inconvenienced. I was too far gone down the existential rabbit hole to countenance such a con - but remain grateful for that important lesson so late in life.

More grateful that the first thing that occurred to me after setting my kettle of vittles on and spritzing the vinegar on the ceilings of an investment property apparently believed by the owners will magically repair itself and that i will continue overpaying for the privilege of being rained on and having to send my laundry out because there is no room dry enough or free from mold such that i can wash clothes and expect them to dry within 2 days is concern for those who are far worse off than i, and what can i do to help? I no longer feel like a chump being touched by sharper characters because they confuse my kindness for an easy touch, rather i am more discriminating about discerning the con from the beleaguered. This may be because i do not parade my misery for a purpose or that i am willing to share my discomfort more openly because i realize how connected we all are; if it could be that - i am just too fucking tired anymore to care.

- care about how i appear · yet when i bagged my clothes to send to my friend’s newly launched laundry service, i realized i had been parading the “greasy stain” one gets from too long on the bicycle without paying careful attention to one’s retreat, part of the joys and pleasures of living in a too damp environment that has been over moist, for over long. Mine is a minor complaint compared to the 1,000s of displaced families from the recent floods - but does that makes my suffering any less, nor a basis for my landlady to ignore my requests that she attend to her moldy ceilings or release me to find healthier lodgings. Though how i could ever find lodgings healthier than a back door i can call ducks home to thinking i’m helping my stalwart farmer friends, or where i can contribute to the local economy by contracting with their enterprising, genial and entirely excellent son’s laundry service while enjoying the benefit of cultural wisdom one cannot gain by any other means than living in the midst of it, is doubtful. 

So, where to die - in the tradition of my much admired Lakota Sioux brethren i would pick my time and wander out to find the place where the “great spirit” will accept my skin back into the spiritual realm of all creatures, great and small. The best i can hope for today, here and now is that my laundry load has not proven so great that the pittance they will accept for the great benefit of exchanging damp and sullied clothes for dry and folded cloth is of more benefit to my friends than it is to me - and to me that is an excellent exchange whatever the cost. Next Day: true to form, my friend’s delivered the cleanest and driest laundry i’ve had in the year and 3 months i’ve lived here, and as expected they would not accept a farthing more for a service that provided sleep at the onset of another storm, #8 in as many weeks. My landlords having gorged themselves on my latest rental payment are nowhere to be found now that the walls and ceilings in 60% of my boutique villa are oozing mold, and all i can do is cling to my dry sheets hoping i do not wake up to another creek in the hallway. I’m reluctant to ventilate with open windows and doors until the “all clear" is given, but have no one i can trust for good counsel about how much mold on the walls is considered tolerable or whether as a foreign devil i even enjoy the right to object to what i consider “unhealthy” conditions. now to begin the next day’s paragraphs with joy in my heart and hope in my imagination . ..

jts 24/10/2020 

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231020 - Extinction Chronicles ·

Unacknowledged emotion is dangerous and makes for a shallow existence. I feel deeply and have not quite bridged the autonomy gap where self-soothing is adequate to the task of taking the wounded child in me by the hand and walk him home. Nor do the stopgaps of tobacco and alcohol stifle the emptiness as they once had - insincere romance provides less and less sustenance for the heart and ego aspirations shimmer more and yield less solid contentment · Yet i am an organism plagued by fatigue and hunger; my crude sensory appendages are weary from cortisol poisoning and i suffer from endorphin withdrawal from concessions to a “once noble but run hard put away wet too often” physique. However, more and more answers to longstanding questions seem to rise like submerged ancient edifices emerging again from a draining muck. Maybe i should get my meal cooking . ..¿

I was raised on a diet of metaphor and was never quite sure when pop was waxing poetic; or simply yanking my chain. He did in the end resort to demands for concrete examples when our discussions wandered to far off course. I am living in a coastal town of Viet Nam - it is full to the rafters with grifters and charlatans mixed in amongst a hard to uncover cadre of loving hearts - how much of that statement is projection and how much observation, i struggle to discern daily · Phone prompting is not part of my rituals any longer, but from prior experience as a private detective in the texting-rich reality of the Los Angeles Superior Court i know there exists a tribal conceit based largely on access to numbers that somehow translate into relationships which sometimes intersect reality but from what i could tell mostly resembles a lot of people in a noisy bar trying to get noticed. 

Reality for me now is the death rate in the land of my birth being presided over by thugs anointed by mid-level managers from the corporate overlords masquerading as captain of industry but are more likely now 1st, 2nd and 3rd generation “trust fund” babies wallowing in more dividends than most of the planet would ever know, even if they realized biblical lives of 1,000 2,000 or 3,000 year’s. For example, on fb this morning i saw information i have no doubt is relatively accurate: 3 men have more wealth than half of all of ‘merica & 8 men have more wealth the 3.5 billion people on the planet, roughly 1/2 of all living people. It’s small wonder i grow weary of foreigners i meet propagating the party line of “Greed is Good” in the midst of a nation they spend more time and effort attempting to transplant their previous lifestyle while simultaneously convincing themselves _______fill in the blank. I grow weary of trying to decipher the “who’s in, who’s out” of the high school clique politik used to justify ______fill in the blank.

And just like discussing my own conflicted feelings about a family i have all but disowned, you must understand these are decent, caring, loving people i am alluding to - and know much less about than they apparently do me. I miss running, i miss my family, i miss drawing-painting&carving, i miss love. It pleases me that i’ve reached a state in my demise where i can take unabashed pleasure in using those things which have always seemed to create the most difficulty in my life - words, or is it ideas ¿? the two are barely distinguishable any longer. I remember declaring repeatedly as pop was in the process of shuffling off his mortal coil, “if he can string two words together, they are words worth paying attention to. Today on my way back from a necessary foray into society, i stopped to purchase fried bananas for my neighbors - there is always a plethora of people about and i hoped the greasy banana pulp would blunt the dreariness of 8 weeks of shade and 6 weeks of brutal to less brutal rainfall. Their stalwart leaning into the calamity is a lesson i hope i never forget.

But before i could return back with my sumptuous booty, i circled back to the old man sitting at the bench gnawing on his apple, and before i could even get the bag of six fried bananas opened - i was faced with as many open hands from the local renegade, but ever beauteous hag cotillion with their perfect polka dot hats, and clear confidence that what was in my bag, would be theirs - he the old man sat on bemused, but clearly disinterested in what i’d turned full circle to offer, then and later after i’d replenished my humble offering. If this event is the last notable occurrence in my continuing trek to death, i have to number myself as one of the more fortunate persons in these the seeming last days of our human species, if for no other reason than to meet face-to-face some of the bravest, most resilient and cheerful members of our species - yet being unable to convey the full scope of that miracle · somehow feeling forgiven, when i could barely do so for myself. AIN’T LIFE GRAND ¿?

jts 23/10/2020 

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221020 - Extinction Chronicles ·

A wonderful day full of lopsided joy and uneven happiness - faces full of caution, generosity and pain · i’m really beginning to enjoy this living shit, but i’m at a dead loss as to explain how. Very little of what i was raised to believe constitutes “success” is evident in the life i live, yet like some bizarre existential kaleidoscope, i cannot turn a corner without finding some budding growth of a previous planting. I am just now listening to Willy Nelson and his Sons sing an homage to John Lennon - “Watching the Wheels Turn,” an act so simple yet so plagued by overlord search engine intrusion that the title required a second search, i d k ¿ how do you spell “ c l i c k b a i t f o r p r o f i t “ ? It gets really lonely trying to explain the ignorant travesty of such greed and how its parasitic behavior is driving our species to extinction, yet does not mitigate my personal responsibility to laugh, and inspire laughter at such insipid stupidity - you digital wizards, can go fuck yourselves if you had a clue what sex looked like having been cloned in the googol laboratories of Chief Nazi Scientist Kurzwell and his manservant Jeron Lanier. 

Next day - Thur 22 · tried to return to the beach i was able to pitch in anonymously the day before, but the local lads were justifiably perturbed that an aged foreigner garnered photos and attention for a few whacks at a few piles of sand, while the mass of effort was quietly accomplished without recognition for many more long hours than my paltry attempt at aid. I understand, but do not know how to explain this fact to the stranger who, i’m sure had the best intentions, snapped my photo and propagated it as though it was important. The cadre of youth and community leaders who have coalesced into a human barrier against an angry sea are the heroes, but they are heroes i hope who will take a cold hard look at what they are defending and why. I learned that the shore road and artery to the downtown were once part of an estuary and natural waterway that became thoroughfares, which i’m sure seemed like a good idea at the time with a placid climate and habitations already lining the banks. Mother nature, however had determined these routes to be waterways from eons of drenching and re-drenching, and by god, she is going to have her way come hell through high-water.

Just like it was ignorant and delusional to think at my age and state of physical conditioning i had anything to contribute when in denial i waded into the fray, so to is it unwise to continue building on a shore that may have decades, if not years left as shoreline before it becomes coastal waters. Part of what i am experiencing is a reckoning with lifestyle choices i have made to the detriment of my physical health, ostensibly as a catalyst for a creative trance state i’d convinced myself would, like some sort of bacchanalian  existential steroid might push me over the bar from mediocre wannabe artist to bonafide “somebody.” I was wrong, maybe. I am no longer deluded about passing into the great beyond with having left no more than memories with the scores of individuals who have kindly encouraged me on the creative path and the many who in some small or many large ways helped - Thank you ·

I was speaking with a stranger i’d met today who was describing the relief of having relinquished his lifetime collection just prior to moving to Viet Nam; i understand all too clearly the dynamic and had to bite my tongue to keep from commenting on the aftermath of being aged in a foreign land with little of the memorabilia around that comforts more conventional lives. My father was spirited away from his last independent living circumstance to an “assisted living” domicile - read supervised. I took a lot of smack from siblings for bringing him from his now digs to witness the dismantling of his former castle keep. It affected me deeply to see the look of surprise on his face while people were breaking down the years of thoughtful assemblage he’d concocted, but i was more struck by the presumption my siblings made under the mantle of protecting him from himself - the arrogant, self important choices they took under the guise of “protecting” him · from what i still have to ask, himself?

I am finding it difficult to transmute the repulsion i felt, however inaccurate, for what i perceived as self-serving injustice by my siblings. From that experience, i determined to remove myself as much as possible from the passing of my Mere. It has caused enormous internal turmoil of which i am determined to own as much as possible, but am finding myself ill-equipped to face the task alone · As my 2nd wife was so fond of fatalistically expressing at the most inopportune times, oh well. 92 year-old Ma has Covid, and my siblings in their muted fury share nothing about her condition with me, because when growing up we all witnessed shunning as a blood-sport, yet i as a born mimic, foreshadowing my loving regard for Leonard Cohen’s emotional acuity I, “Like a baby stillborn, like a beast with his horn, I have torn everyone who reached out for me.” So you see why i must transfigure my suffering, because until i do there will be no unconditional love in my life, i will not find ways to relieve the suffering of others because there will always be a hook with anything i do until i learn to show myself the love that i wish for others to find everywhere they turn.

jts 22/10/2020 

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201020/211020 - Extinction Chronicles ·

it’s now 2 hours and 22 minutes into my “writing time.” Nor am i standing still and picking my nose, slogging just seems to take on an added dimension when wading through fecal saturated flood waters watching the faces of people who have lost loved ones needlessly. i do not wade anymore, my anatomy doesn’t fight infection like it used to and meningitis takes on a new complexion in my memory banks for my youngest brother’s brush with 7 year-old death is haunted by ancient, but whispered distinctions between “viral and bacterial.” - a day later · 211020 . . . i went to the well, and the well was dry. This morning i committed to sandbagging for things are so dire on the shore where i live, even the limping efforts of an out-of-shape foreigner are useful when bulwarking an angry China Sea. It breaks my heart to know in my scientifically artistic mind that dreams of staunching the rising tide are more akin to the children’s story of the emperor so enamored of his power he drowned in his throne when the sea did not obey his command, than the stouthearted cheery face of the crowd who graciously gave me access to the help line.

I only wish i was still the working fool of my youth, instead i am a caricature of some aged hippy looking for Further, as though i’d recognize it if it rolled over my big toe. There is no way to recapture youth and vitality except for right living, good companions and a cheery disposition. I find i am of that cohort, who is oddly more kind to strangers than my own self, or at least aspects of my self. I’ve always been something of a libertine with exotic erotic proclivities, only by the time i reached a point in my emotional development where i could openly share those fantasies, animal magnetism had turned to rusty iron, and the stench of rotting teeth from too much tobacco and not enough flossing. I was never good at the vanity game having grown up as the two-eyed cyclops with the congenital bald spot over his left temporal lobe in a family of lookers · think intensely attractive people such that i could never quite understand what the eldest brother saw when standing in front of a mirror for hours, or how it could take Pop and hour and a half to trim his beard.

I realize now how very fortunate i have been to not have an external image to live up to - or stand behind depending on your perspective · rather i have been forced to consider appearance as a very minor component to that persona which fronts my path on this earth. It would be grand to declare my unconscious is that which you experience in your dealings with me, but even resorting to the “me” demonstrates how vain that fantasy is, however worthy. I have saddled my unconscious with a variety of “me’s” from different epochs in my journey. This morning for example goofing with the impresario of the local bistro i’ve grown quite fond of, he pulled from his riff-line the kung fu pose we two old men tease each other with when feeling frisky or wishing to bolster the other’s fearsome character, and rather than assume the stance i said to him after he holstered his lethal fist, “would you like to see it again?” using my best Clint Eastwood “do you feel lucky punk, well do ya’,” glance - it took him a second, but before he could reply i asked him if he’d ever picked up his teeth with broken fingers?

And this is man-playing, or me posing in hats i’d needed to feel safe in some environments i’ve lived. The sad truth is few men say anything encouraging, “nice shot; fine looking shirt; I admire your kindness,” instead the competition for poon tang that nobody wants to discuss demands that we prevail over others to demonstrate the viability of our sperm, as though somehow one’s ability to dominate another is the best indication of furthering the gene pool. Feminists don’t want to talk about this because _______fill in the blank, but they are as responsible as either gender for the “toxic masculinity” that has become the convenient scapegoat in current, “blame everybody but me - point the finger - the fucking ship is going down, i can’t swim,” panic one of the many post civilization narratives. Nor are we lost and condemned to a senseless end, devoid of meaning. My morning effort, however slight, buoyed me more than i have words to express, not for any personal reason, but to witness a community assess-and-elbows contributing gallantly to each other’s wellbeing - however inexorable be the rising seas ·

Stick a fork in me, i’m done; i’d come here, ostensibly chasing a romantic fiction, and substantiated that flaccid logic with the addendum - “if anyplace in the world can turn the tide of our extinction by our own hand, and demonstrate leadership for a path out, it would be Vietnam.” · i may be right; though i’ve met more acolytes of the fascist regime entrenched in my native land and being hounded out of office as we speak; i’ve met more predatory entrepreneurs selling digital snake oil than i’d have wished for, and a tourist industry that is one step removed from Hollywood Blvd’s lock on destination addiction, yet i stay; hopefully i continue to have my nose rubbed in my cultural presumptions in a way which learning is the only option available and a loving self awareness becomes a path less lonely with a loving other who finds my ignorant charm more irresistible than my myopic self-loathing is resistible; stranger things have happened - you're still reading ·

jts 20/10/2020-21/10/20 

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191020 - Extinction Chronicles ·

Pop was about the funnest person i’ve ever known - and to be unable to get his take on events we all face constitutes the greatest misery for me of his passing nine long years ago · Yet he made me swear, knowing the “burro” in me that i would never stop writing. Lo and behold in these, some of the darkest days in my life of more than enough sorrow, i grinned just now facing the “tabula rasa” of today’s work; go figure. Ma’s gonna die soon; i’ve been grieving her loss nearly all my life at which time the reality she apparently attempted to beat into my “Peter Pan” take on existence, will simply transition from stabbing pain, to dull ache. She is a fine dame, and i’ve yet to meet another who could goad so much of whatever it is i have to leave in this world. I hope that she will pass in peace, not for what she has accomplished with my sullied soul, but from understanding better what pain she must feel to behave the way she has toward me.

Whether that translates into any, as Pema Chodron describes, “unwinding of karma,” the voice you are reading cannot say, but the heart you might feel from the words you read will tell. I’m an asshole, and from that i see all the jerks who trumpet such behavior in a different light than the simple “fuck you” repulsion, i feel toward them similarly to the compassion i excavate from my being for the hatred toward me of my own family - a family who would keep me in the dark about our mother’s covid condition - almost as though my awareness of her discomfort could constitute  proof of my responsibility for her suffering · how fucking stupid is that ¿? Yet without that doubt, i’d have never begun to understand Madam Paradox and her two offsprings: “T’is & T’ain’t.” What saddems to me, is for all her efforts as i understand them to be, to help me accept my “weirdness” in an un-weird world - it is her disappointment that i seem to be most responsive.

Today i practiced “random acts of kindness as best i could. I don’t feel strong, nor in the midst of any happy band of renegades, rather more like Obi Wan in some fucking canyon hiding my presence from mean-spirited creatures who remain distant from fear, rather than respect. I don’t think my old age will in anyway resemble the nimble repose of my much better prepared mother, but this is the same person who on road trips would make great proclamations of sharing expenses and then neglect to make good those obligations. It is this and other vacant assurances which break faith with my natural inclination - g_d knows where it came from · to do right by the world, regardless of the facts. I don’t want to die, feeling betrayed and now realize i am the only one who could possibly be my own “best friend,” but this does not obviate my personal responsibility to do as much good for as many as i can for as long as i can - even if that pablum was uttered by Henry Ford · Nazi and agent provocateur originator of that sappy however efficient ad copy.

My friend’s son just walked me through the cavalcade of egregious defects in the boutique mini-but-not-too-ostentatious villa i tried to live in unobtrusively. To my credit i was still laboring under the delusion of a useful graphic output for a world that is no longer starving for “fine art,” it is just starving. This neat correlation nestles sweetly with the my soon to be lingering disease of the poverty where only aged, undiscovered - however diligent artist egos perish · lucky me. It is not just my bitterness and repulsion for every value propagated by the art industiralists, but a real and virulent resistance to your disrespect in favor of profit at the expense of every beautiful work achieved outside of your narrow - pecuniary speculation at the negligible cost of one more crushed creative soul for the dreck hung on the walls of casa versailles du bezos · fuck you and the horse you rode in on.

I am about to flee from a property into which an entirely decent family has sunk their wherewithal, yet by hoping to realize a few points of gain, sacrificing necessary maintenance they are only harvesting mold rendering their investment uninhabitable · i spit on profit speculation having worked cheek to jowl with the poser nobility of that real estate scam. There is no place where you can negate the foul disrespect you have shown a “marketplace” you proclaim as “holy ground," but treat as a charnel floor. I will crawl to my grave for no better reason than to see the purulence of your greed ooze into the foul repository of your mortal being after it has been sapped of all earthly energy the same as you have attempted to suck lifeblood at gunpoint from a worldwide population wanting no more than to raise loving children to loving parents in loving homes - atone and die ·

jts 19/10/2020 

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181020 - Extinction Chronicles ·

It is a dank and dreary day with just enough sunlight to de-moisten my pillow; de-film my floor, but not enough to rouse me from my lethargy nor vitalize my version of Camus’ - “invincible summer.” Oh fucking well; within a day's drive there are people: old people, young people, babies resorting to temporary floating housing because of a pernicious rain exacerbated by a cloud cover capable of retaining far greater amounts of water than ever before in the known history of our species. This emerging anomaly is due to the unflagging greed of petro-nazis hell-bent on squeezing every last farthing from their myopic trust fund accounts which they have mostly inherited and have lived large by through no effort of their own other than a pathological disregard for human existence best exemplified by the about-to-be-deposed Mssr. _rump. So that another puppet less conspicuous in its consumption may rest upon the throne of our withering ruling class responsible for extinguishing human life on our planet and 3/4 of the other species who shared their home with us.

Ironically the selfishness and greed responsible for our eviction from this planet, is the same behavior for which i have the greatest difficulty in demonstrating “unconditional love.” This behavior is not writ large, nor particularly obvious in daily exchanges: people cutting in line, merchants short changing or keeping paid-for items, punking to gain prestige and prominence in most social circles, i mostly avoid but at times am forced to traverse. At first i thought the punking reflex was a gender issue; protecting the “fair damsel” from unwelcome advances, but later learned its origins are spawned in the uniquely feminine, but sadly unconscious “biological imperative” where the much smarter dames in our herd winnow champion sperm donors by contests for which the brutes remain blissfully oblivious, and readily engage in just for a whiff of poontang.

Unfortunately this is the same yoke the “masters” utilize by allure and the bait-and-switch of modern advertising - the whiff of poontang · I like pussy and some of my finest memories are between the sheets with an enthusiastic loving other. This inclination sufficed through the first of two marriages and got me into and out of a 3rd. My best friend who happened to be present when i’d met my last wife, apparently smelled the same thing, but didn’t possess the backbone to come at my claim frontally, rather convinced her piecemeal his prospects were superior - and she believed him, apparently. Neither carried their audacity to the doorstep of my heart, rather chose to slink away in the dark of night - she days after the emergency appendectomy my karma provided her for the daring escape, and he, nothing more than the same wish for being loved that i devoted to her, and from which i can only hope he learned nearly as much as i.

It’s a lot of fun to be removed enough from those events to try and jest, however sardonic it may sound to others. The feeling is not dissimilar from parting company with violent minds - however much might be discovered by remaining composed near hateful thoughts, it is a relief to pull the blinds aside and be once more aware of the larger peace of our passing lives. My pain is so constant that it is a challenge to be aware and accepting of the loving hearts with whom i am constantly surrounded. “I” the ego can struggle to take action relieving suffering which i perceive, but is often confused by the fact, it is the “i” who am being relieved of suffering. Fucking “Madame Paradox” and her coterie of tricksters only convinces me further of our proximity to a solution for all, rather than the seduction to _______fill in the blank, that those who claim high ground resort to preserve a power so vacuous and empty that even they do not believe, rather remain in a state of constant persuasion that all those who would follow must  emulate or be trampled in the stampede for conformity.

I could give a fuck if you believe me or not, and even by the language i use, if you are alert and awake, will see the lie of my statement. I am dying; my body is wracked by a disease that is not how the practitioners would have you believe - i have broken myself by my own hand and an unwillingness to comply with the simple logic of body and spiritual health. I have dwelled overlong in the terrain of hate and envy; my suffering is at my own hand and any cowardice i attribute to others is a lesson i have not completed · that is truth as near as i can tell. This doesn’t mean i do not possess much detritus from past conceits: the delusion of passion on my person; the faith that i can heal another with devotion, or the fantasy i have any effect on the outcome of any other person’s life by choices i make, or they on mine. More to the fact that time is long and life is short - “And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.” - Lennon/McCartney · et., al.

jts 18/10/2020 

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