I find radical accountability very compelling, especially in these days of sloughing off to others what one would rather not own personally. I make big noise about the wrongness of using money as speech, but have discovered myself exerting the same high-handed influence to resolve a conflict of my own possible misperception. Where i live i am culturally blind, by ignorance, language and lack of experience - but i do my best. So after i had purchased a case of beer prior to the recent typhoon and said, as i paid my bill “there is no rush to deliver.” 6 days later, and 3 days after the squall had passed, my anxiety focused solely on the lack of delivery. interpreting it as an affront, based on my ego, and fear. Rather than communicate my disquiet directly to my friends along with questions, i contracted to have my paid-for commodity picked up and delivered - embarrassing myself, the establishment to whom i had fancied myself as friend, as well as the delivery agent in the process. This is not to say that i had assessed the lack of service incorrectly as passive aggressive behavior to “keep me in my place,” or that ”my resistance" to a chronic hostility and imbalance in amicable exchange was pure fantasy - only that my actions rather than “unwinding karma” added to suffering. I have no one to blame, but myself · i am sorry, please forgive me.
And i got my butt kicked playing pool last night; it was the 1st time shooting in 6 years since Bejing, but what a good time last night was - hopefully not because i finally won the last game · I think it was the open conversation during the game, as well as later recounting our exploits to a mutual friend in harmonious surroundings · i d k. I know the fish dinner i ate at the bistro of the missing player was the finest cooked fish i’d eaten since i can remember. I also remember that the closeness i felt was so jarring that i put people whom i like at arm’s length thinking that might somehow quell the anxiety of being close and confidential in a world i’d deluded myself into thinking i could hide in. There is no hiding - run all you like but there is no place on this planet or this universe where it is possible to obscure one’s nakedness · don’t believe me, try it yourself and let me know how that works out for you.
I am what one movie in recent history described to the wannabe thug audience as a “Dead Man Walking,” and while surfing the TV archives, Clint Eastwood of “Dirty Harry” fame sauntered through a very similar morality play in an episode of “Rawhide” circa 1965 - one of the least attractive characters to me in my pantheon of actors, Martin Milner of “Adam 12” fame died today and i have to give it up - for no other reason than to my place in line. For all of our vaunted quests for the promised land of “fame and fortune” we are a lethargic herd of lemmings slowly promenading toward our doom, much like the perennial xmas waltz of Tchaikovsky's sugar plum fairies to the tune of Czarist drumbeats that sadly echo doom akin to the burning plumes of the Amazon Rain forests - once described as the lungs of our planet - after the bleaching of the “Great Barrier Reef”, or the melting of the polar ice caps NORTH AND SOUTH · in obeisance to the greed of a handful of Petro-Nazis-pathological-hoarders dismantling the lungs and limbs of our entire planet to satisfy an insatiable quest for more Villas and gold bathroom fixtures.
The digital corporate goons are orchestrating roles-to-play for the hoards of wannabe robber barons lacking gumption or vision enough to call a halt to stupidity on a scale our world has never known, or has always known but lacked imagination enough to call a halt to. Here we all sit at the apex of human achievement punked by a handful of smarmy, haters sticking their gummy fingers into any pocket open enough to admit their covert cowardice. This includes the tight knit property owners here where i have sought sanctuary; some who are leasing property to “alleged” but likely Lumpen Proletariate making income by robbing from the farmers whose sweat and decency are all that stands between starvation and nutrition.
I grew up in a land which transformed before my very eyes from a “Camelot and City on the Hill" of historical guidance and good will, to a dystopia of “Animal Farm” proportions and find very little discussion from anyone about its resultant, tragic and entirely unnecessary conclusion to our species, much less atonement to all those other creatures whose end was predicated on little more than heedless greed in service of a debased conclusion to our once noble species - of my earliest memories is hatching eggs in Mrs. MacAdoo’s 1st, or 2nd grade class · shit gets hazy 60+ years hence. She brought into our class what was described to us as an “incubator” from which after days, or weeks of patient attention emerged a gaggle of ducks. Some of us were fortunate enough to possess signed warrants from our parents, allowing us to take possession of the baby creatures. “Ducky Daddles” was a delight and as i recall survived the local canine and feline dangers of suburbia; and who enjoyed waddles down the sidewalk on Baker St. at the end of a leash up until my kind and loving parents determined it was time to release my bird baby into the wilds of O’Neil Park where i would hope still, that generations of my Mallard friend frequent and thrive.
jts 01/10/2020
http://stoanartst.blogspot.com
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