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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