291120 - Extinction Chronicles ·

There are some, read many, things that can only be learned from experience: failure, love, triumph, loss, compassion .  .. yet our world is predicated on book learning and reverence for the written, even spoken word. All of that manner of learning is based on interpretation - one’s ability to clearly understand an experience and to the transform that knowledge into clear language such that others may also learn. Nobody writes neutrally, no one reads neutrally each process brings in another layer of interpretation over the original experience. Only someone who has looked into a lover’s eyes as they bid you adieu can know that feeling, and then it is only through the prism of the perceiver's prejudice will it be processed.

It is a small wonder we have gotten this far with the crude instruments for communication we are saddled with. The much maligned animal mind is not besot with such conceits as ours; animals are able to sense the temblor by physicality, and act on pheromones for sex minus the glib conceits of ever-after love from romantic delusions. This is just at the one-on-one, which when multiplied by nodes of socialization from “degrees of separation” gets goofy with strangers weighing in on issues about shit for persons they’ve never spoken to and you can begin to see how societies get obnoxious AF in a hurry - i generally avoid society, finding it lame and full of obtuse intellects which remind me too much of myself to ever really be comfortable.

And there’s another of life’s paradoxes - growing up i had an elder brother separated by a sister, both magnificent specimens of beauty and grace, even of penetrating intellect. He, my brother would stand for hours in front of the mirror in the bathroom we 4 children shared. I could never understand what he found so fascinating, partly because of my vision - i assumed he saw something i could not because he was able to see himself without glasses, which for me without glasses i could not read the fingers in front my face. I realize now decades later he was engaged as best as he could with trying to understand himself. Ma the artist, the very left-handed artist in a family of 6 in which half were also left handed might help to explain what anchor my brother might have been searching to release himself from.

Unfortunately for him, he was too pretty and popular to suffer enough to give him that additional juice that comes from failure. So as near as i can tell, he has stumbled through life, probably still looking for the “magic” mirror that all in my family have sought wracked with pain all the world feels but cannot or will not see, for it is each of our interiors through which we reflect the world around us. For those in the audience clued in - that last sentence would be in literary terms “Deux ex Machina;” how can an interior serve one and at the same time as lens and reflective surface¿ that is a question? Mirroring is an early childhood development method to show a developing human how they appear - the trick, as i understand is to do so neutrally in order for the human being mirrored to begin to perceive itself through the eyes of others. Our mother, while graced with much, was, and likely remains at 92 as has been said better elsewhere given much and asked of much - Lo ! what she reflected was not so much what she perceived as much as what she felt.

I know this because much later in our charged relationship she would remark with the authority only a parent can pull off - “you are bludgeoning me with your words” · she was not content with relating this fantasy about my reality to me, but would recount it as fact to all who would listen. This is very likely how she mirrored me to myself as a “Toddler” - through the prism of her own highly charged interior. My challenge as an adult is how to understand her, but also to forgive her for egregious falsehoods about who and what i am as a human. I know this; i love my mother for her magnificence - a truly indomitable spirit in a world of dreck · i commiserate with her for her suffering and forgive her at the time she has spent riding on my back because she was too weak from her delusions to fend for herself; emotionally and intellectually - what i resist and will do so to my grave, is accept her interpretation of my experience as reality, nor will i cede to any living or algorithmic creature that prerogative. 

Note: cyber spooks; consider my candor a line in the sand rather than paranoia, you fucking effete pussies too spooked to show your faces and wage conflict like true warriors; i mean that in the nicest possible way.  

jts 29/11/2020 

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281120 - Extinction Chronicles ·

I think there is good reason Lao Tzu described the “Tao” as that which cannot be named. People love to establish authority with words and people love to be controlled by authorities using words - a  hand-and-glove fit, except for its sheer stupidity · For example, a baby learns the pleasure of defecation at an early age, i’ve even had friends who struggle with boundaries describing their perfect “shits,” online, yet one of the 1st trainable events in a human’s life is how and where to shit, something the former leader of the “free world” apparently never learned and is about to be dismissed from the world stage for ignoring his earliest training and giving free rein to his earliest pleasures and shitting in semi-public; enough so that his habits are being recounted in the tabloids. If Madam Paradox and her two offsprings “t’is & t’ain’t” aren’t the godhead - they aught to be ·

I’d swear sitting in the back hallway nursing my tobacco addiction that i was just now being haunted by my father in the guise of a fly. This fucking fly feared nothing, wanted to land on every part of my relatively washed person and refused to be guided out the door: two-things occurred to me, a memory of my father the “fly hunter” with a rolled up newspaper in the middle of our evening meal stalking one such errant creature; pop could be murderous in his uniquely relentless way; the other image is the gazillions of ruling class buck$ lying lazily in offshore accounts coupled with the pent up egos of digital whiz kids chomping to save the free world using micro-robotics and Presto-Change-O a relentless fly capable of drone espionage to protect the next “Côte d'Azur does South East Asia” from the likes of free thinking riff-raff, such as myself.

Yes you’d be right - clearly too much time on my hands with a dodgy family history and not enough sex · but whaddya gonna do¿ Mar-a-Lago is under indictment and all the easy money has fled to P-elect Joe’s “make ‘merica gr8, once again PAC” making those who were days earlier the the most powerful Gofers' on the planet, now soontobe unemployed traitors - hat in hand waiting for permission to be recognized. For all we know what is being played out is some grand domestic squabble between Zukee and Mrs Zuckee, who has thrown the hammer down on an ego that has trouble understanding boundaries little different than donny getting spanked on his diapered bottom by a ruling class that has trouble conceiving life that is not accompanied by a train of zeroes.

But of course i am joshing ya’, right. “Are we not men, Devo” - battle cry of the artist warrior we all resort to just to listen to Mother Mary singing to us in our times of trouble - “Let it be, let it be.” As long as we as a species envision ourselves as anything more the flecks on the planetary windshield we’ve managed to desecrate with our greed and our hatred, there is no hope. Until we can begin to identify the wondrous gifts each born baby brings into the world and nurture it as though it is Release 1.0 and making that child only more powerful in its ability to contribute to all the babies that follow - we as a species are, excuse the vernacular · FUCKED.

Don’t believe me, look on your terminals and handsets beyond your temporary conceit and pathological need to be "liked" & accepted and think like the organism you are - enough to see why the “stable genius” in diapers could so easily convince so many that hate is the more powerful motivation, there is no moving forward for any of us. The individual and the development and respect accorded that solitary figure in our future is all we have to bank on. The billionaires are failures for the simple reason they know nothing more than taking and have developed very little concept about the importance of placing all others first. That is okay, i am old and will not attempt to convince you otherwise because i believe you are wiser than i and will not allow your best to be taken from you without your having first considered that highest best purpose of what you are and what you and yours can bring to the world. I have faith.  

jts 28/11/2020 

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25/26/271120 - Extinction Chronicles ·

The “Infinite growth paradigm” is an economic postulate formulated by anarchistic capitalists; and: bozo bezos is its biggest cheerleader - BTW, you all are his bitches · (my apology to bitches everywhere.) This narrow approach to the complex issue of human contentment is at the core of whether we survive as a species or launch some goofy googol satellite containing the silicon equivalent of human existence hoping to intersect “singularity” - a corporate conceit describing the hubris of an inanimate algorithm, “self-awareness” with what you already enjoy if you have ducks, children and streams in your immediate proximity. I am afraid, but i refuse to live in the fear these capitalist mooks need to enforce their ignorant concept of human happiness. I don’t know what the answer is for you to be happy, but am willing to bet the farm that it is not based on how many plastic gadgets you can accumulate, or the number of “friends” you can claim on a social platform built on its ability to force your fingers to do things - a social platform owning 1/4 of all the known wealth in our world.

261120 - Extinction Chronicles ·

“The Butterfly Effect”

by srw poetry

You need to stay. And you need to stay loudly. You’re afraid of making bad choices but the truth is this: the tiniest actions will influence the course of the rest of your life and you cannot control it. So many factors play a part in you being here today: a delayed train, an extra cup of tea, the number of seconds your parents took to cross the street. This is chaos theory. Sensitivity. Mathematics. You are here. And every choice you have ever made has led you to right now, reading this. While you exist every movement and moment matters; those bad choices led you to the best days of your life, if you were to play it all in rewind. Change will come, even if you are standing still. Butterflies will keep flapping their wings and causing hurricanes. So, make your choices and make them loud. Trust your gut. Trust energy. And if you ceased to exist? Oh, the universe would notice. The mess that would make. The hearts that would break. So just stay. Stay for bad choices. Stay for great ones. Stay. Cause a few hurricanes.

271120 - Extinction Chronicles ·

The neighbor’s baby is squalling; i watched a deposed snake oil salesman sell more snake oil on a googol channel publishing fox news and rode my bicycle to a turkey sandwich topped off by a Randolph Scott cowboy western, never quite able to unring the image of him and Cary Grant grappling with each other in their Malibu hideaway - a little like picturing Hillary pegging Bill in the oval office · but what are ya’ gonna do¿ “The Ruling Class” with Peter O’Toole is not taught as a cautionary tale, while Orwell’s “1984” is being used as an instruction manual for the trust-fund babies about to inherit the world’s wealth. Yes, as a matter of fact i do feel a tad “snarky,” not a proud feeling. I do not like being played - an echo from exclamations from my family when i would awkwardly “mirror” the manipulative mannerisms , i witnessed all around me; mixed in with genuine progressive tropes about: authenticity, owning one’s emotions, transparency, etc., etc., etc. .. ···

I often think we as species gained “self awareness too soon” and would have fared better with a resonating frequency closer to basalt @ 1,012 Hz than our spongy human 5-10 Hz. This may be why googol’s Dr Kurzwell Frankenstein and his sidekick Jaron Feldman have such high hopes for making mankind’s appointment with its karmic appointment, “singularity” using the interval of silicon’s resonating frequency of 350 Hz - just a guess · a sick guess, but a guess nonetheless. As examples; by all impartial accounts the idiot savant _rumpf targeted the oval office mostly for its capacity to “brand.” meister elon musk - the same · stole the name Tesla, branded it to a revenue stream and defended that cascade of cash with the lives of all he employed, much the same as Snake Oil Entrepreneur - chief executive “shits in his pants” has treated the nation he would make great - 270,000 dead and they’re still dropping like flies.

This is bullshit friends, bullshit on a scale that would embarrass anyone with a family remotely capable of regenerating another link in the chain, much less hoping for great grandchildren. Here is where it gets weird - Ma is 92 and surviving covid · my family, (at her behest) is keeping me in my place by with-holding all pertinent information about her condition. The only logical assumption i can make about such ______fill in the blank behavior is they, my brethren, believe in their heart of hearts that if i had such knowledge i might act contrary to her wellbeing - that or they are so emotionally obtuse and self-involved that they cannot, or will not peer outside the media echo chamber within which they’re cocooned - just like me ·

The difference is that if and when i’ve been in that position i err on the side of compassion, so all i can imagine is that they, my own flesh and blood are in such pain as to wish pain onto one of their own; not that is so much different than when i unleashed a toy rifle against the ribs of the eldest brother after having endured bullying beyond my youthful capacity, a capacity not all that much greater today, but i keep hoping. Ma gleefully announced one languid afternoon, “I don’t think they think about you as much as you think they do.” While seemingly harsh, i think Ma, knew even then that if she wasn’t surrounded by people entirely focused on her, it was likely she would die alone - small wonder her fascination and perplexion with the mother figure in Charlie Sheen’s comedy sitcom “Two and a Half Men.” Ma, between you me and 3 readers who sample this chronicle - i love you entirely and am kind of real glad you had no clue when we watched that show together · you’re a Grand Dame, and you did it all on the courage of your own cowardice - i should die so brave ·

jts 25,26,27/11/2020 ,

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241120 - Extinction Chronicles ·

.  .. and just like that i wiped a luao thanksgiving clean off the calendar; unless you have achieved nirvana all dharma stinks of some manner of self-interest, regardless of altruistic intention, and that for me remains a fucking paradox. Not insurmountable, because if you wait long enough, another bus comes along - just as Siddhartha saw the faces of all his lost friends in the river he returned to · Yet how to translate knowledge into useful information for a population facing its extinction and so broke it can’t “pay attention” is anybody’s guess. The idea of purchasing our way out of this cul-de-sac is an anathema to me, given the fact that 80 pennies of every dollar you spend goes directly into the pocket of “Bezo the Bozo Show,” which isn’t much of an argument in favor of buying more of anything.

I’d like to think i could alter misery for others by guiding them to a happy project of burying fowl, coals, stones and banana leaves, which when uncovered and eaten would magically fill the empty places of their souls, but that is not anymore truth than making ‘merica gr8 by embracing the leadership of a pathological narcissist who is so bereft of love that he actually believes his white skin and inheritance entitles him to anything more than the cup of coffee that a $5 bill will buy you @ any 7-11. What troubles me more is not understanding how truly sick this former leader of the free world is; i watched an exposé which described how d._rump’s drug addictions rendered him incontinent to the point where members of his entourage understood that changing his diapers was more than a political cartoon - but part and parcel of their job description.

I struggle to be as open and honest with what i share as is practical and useful to anyone reading without divulging shame i might feel that would be of no practical purpose to you or me - only that it exists and that i deal with it as i do conflicts with those i encounter as well as suffering i do not know how to resolve without open expression - resolve in such a way that is useful to my own healing without becoming burdensome to others. I preferred the Arcadian activity of resolving facets of expression on the faces of women who allowed me the privilege of learning their character in my manic fashion through portraiture - it can be an intense experience to be loved by one so removed, but so insistent as to be uncomfortable · so i’ve been told. This is the paradox of sensitivity. The exposé i watched about the deposed leader of ‘merica described how this “leader of the free world” would insert his fingers into the mouths of beauty pageant contestants for inspection of their teeth - because he could ·

I do not know how to process such information given my own familiarity with the erotic and too oft-time misperception of others and their suffering. It is as though we as a species are swimming in a quagmire of desire and depravation, while lacking the rudimentary skills to comfort each other, much less be mindful of their suffering. While considering petitioning for a place in the Sangha of master Thich Nhat Hahn, i was put off by the separation between the sexes - a similar proscription i found in the hills of the Himalayas by one sect from the Brahma Kumari · It does not seem logical to seek growth for the human species that does not include full and open erotic agendas, and i am stymied as to how to reconcile the logical proscription of “desire” just as i struggle with the utility of substance as a vehicle for a more fluid awareness of the human id. Daniel Odier wrote eloquently about the benefits and limits in “Tantric Quest;” i do not know any answers, but approach my own demise more confidently unsure, than with what the alternative demands .  ..

And here i sit 4 paragraphs into my daily responsibilities with an aching heart and an empty glass - “there are no accidents” · yet when writing more resembles pressing pus from a suppurating wound than the development of literature, it is time to wonder, as though it is not always time to wonder. Lao Tzu - “truth is not always beautiful, nor beautiful words truth,” and i possess more confidence, however much an echo from an iconic character dead for 1,000s of years than i do for many who look me in the face as much as i allow, proclaiming _____fill in the blank. I do not wish harm to any sentient being, and know only of my capacity to confuse my good intentions with delusional ambition. I’m beginning to think i am the anti-_rump - and that my friends, is not as delusional as it may sound; simply based on the U.S. Election results substantial enough to preclude a coup d’etat at a time in world history when 80% of the human population is hooked up to the dream machine, which i’ve read elsewhere is little more than a “turnkey tyranny.” may freedom ring 

jts 24/11/2020 ,

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231120 - Extinction Chronicles ·

I have taught middle school where 60% of the students did not share a common language - 30% of the remaining student body were in constant strife with the same percentage of the other percentage of students · it was more funny than sad, only because the warring factions were so close in so many ways, that they could not see. Today i am considering the entirely implausible however useful consecration of thanks in the most unlikely location amongst the most unlikely participants, and i feel better about that than most of what i’ve done in the past 12 months of my life, such as is left to me. It will entail initializing participation and contribution from vastly different cohorts that are still reeling from a plague lockdown, economic downturn, cultural blowback - a generally shitty number of events leaving a wannabe loving, and industrious population isolated and separated and weaker at a time when solidarity and cohesiveness is the only viable option, not just to the normally separate selfish interests of a wary demographic, but to a planet itself on the brink of destruction.

The trick will be to remain unidentifiable when like my visual appearance since birth is a virtual impossibility - another reason why virtual is such a bullshit expression. The only thing to be lost is the potential of creating an event of thanksgiving that wears well in the heart of every person able to see deeper into their own power to know how much their kindness benefits all whom they touch with love. It is scary to me, for i am a normally very shy and retiring individual and this action requires me to stretch beyond a pernicious and unkind self image that i accept is inaccurate, but also not my responsibility to alter. I am responsible only for how i respond to other’s suffering, not to the steps they take to ameliorate such misconceptions.

I know this event is marginally possible from previous experience - a thanksgiving when the elder brother disappeared throwing all logistical reality into the 4 winds. Drinking played a roll, as it does for all interesting mutation. As it happened for the event i'm trying to describe, all concerned learned early enough in the day to make what turned out to be a miraculous experience. What began as a desolate feeling of a cancelled holiday mutated into the magical acquisition of two frozen ducks, instead of Turkey - though still fowl · after the dilemma of thawing 2 x 4 lb birds, the next logistical hurdle was a guest list; holidays (especially in 'merica) always contain enough refugees so before dinner was served, we had a table full of professors, scientists, artists, authors, machinists and homemakers - more than interesting conversation ensued, however temporal and short lived as all miracles aught be ·

Whether, as most scientific experiments demand that it can be repeated under vastly different circumstances and radically different constituents remains to be seen - but worthy of a look if only because the stakes are vastly more relevant than that of a the sociologically predictable decay of family constellations in pre-9/11 'merica. I share this not with hardness of heart for with a heart full of love experienced a prior thanksgiving comprised of an actual family constellation which occurred at the almost exact moment an electrical blackout which shut down the electric oven roasting an overlarge turkey - it was ultimately served with a collection of candles and warm entreaties to each of each present from an almost equally divergent body of humanity as what i am implausibly considering late on this Monday afternoon very far from anything that might resemble support unless you consider the relentless appetite of mosquitoes born of a historic deluge from 13 typhoons of cataclysmic proportion.

Healthy little bloodsuckers they are, and i can only cringe considering the septic contamination mixed with the rice stalks the real estate predators pay massive money to witness growing. But i am weaning myself from gossip, as i curtail my love of tobacco and alcohol reasoning that this modified behavior might somehow transform my withered frame back into the virile thug i was conquering hearts i didn't quite grasp might also be the source of salvation in this vale of tears - better late than never · even if i do not find care i now understand exists in the company of others, i can still attempt to point the way for young bucks too stuck in their pain to provide kindness to those angels nearby in their lives who clearly require such nurturing love to guide our world to a better place.

jts 23/11/2020 ,

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221120 - Extinction Chronicles ·

cut away to a storm ravaged coastline - beaucoup pentup investment velocity on a planet dying from an excess of trustfund babies gorging on foi gras in one form or another · surrounded by earnest hard working victors of the only war ‘merica could not wiggle free from without “defeat” all over its delusional pre-MAGA fascist wannabe cap. The most revolting truth of the previous passage is how successfully the “dream machine” managed to dress these same victorious warrior people in MAGA caps - little different than the fact that invariably the greatest death tolls from the recent plague are in those districts favoring fascism over indigenous wisdom - the same wisdom that handed to “BlUE” corporate overlords victory over the “RED” corporate overlords, not because it was right, but because it was profitable. How to atone to a population that would deliver to its oppressor an opportunity to place the stomping Orwell boot on the face of mankind; once again to save that same oppressor's ass from self-destruction¿ that is a question?

Just now i am inhaling fumes from an unknown source of a fumigant designed to kill ants, but which more accurately disrupts the endocrine system of every human that breathes it. And i do not like these ants, they are small, very savvy about nutrition, preferring the protein of sunflower seeds to copious amounts of rice remnants. This is the brave new world we are being delivered into by the merchant’s minions of chemistry giving blow jobs to the lords of wealth. Capitalism is a bitter old woman who has no sexual appeal any longer and has for so long lived with a broken heart that she cares nothing about the lives she disrupts to keep her coffers full - coffers that yoke the weaker souls to her will. 

Don’t believe me, believe the illness your children endure to allow you more hours at work and has allowed you to pay for the telephonic yoke used to satisfy your guilt about abandoning your family to an unholy quest for “enough” that you will once again be free to be the loving person you used to be. Bullshit, and you know it is the excess you yearn for and not the depravation required from harder but more fulfilling existence you would have if you bought less and gardened more. Admit to yourself that the image you see just out of your reach has deluded you to abandon your deeper convictions, more honorable friends and separated you from kindness you were born to but got trampled somewhere underfoot on your march to liberation from the same slavery you are paying the corporate overlords to preserve for you.

Harsh i know - you have to ask yourself am i lying¿ if so, to what end? You’ve paid nothing but the connection fee if any you use to access this channel. I know you not and wish nothing from you for the time it has taken you to read these thoughts of mine. But more to the point, to leave now, you must answer in your own heart if i lie. Are you not better off leaving profit and acquisition to others with more empty souls than your own, because if you have read this far, there is something compelling about the logic of caring more for your soul and the wellbeing of your immediate cohort than the opinion of some vague screen designation of “success,” issued by a questionable source who is already charging you to read their opinion.

I am dying; we are all dying - the question is how do we collectively wish to face this fact of our weird as fuck existence · do we believe capitalists who have enslaved our next 10 generations to a debt whose interest only they feed upon, or do we seize the serendipity of a plague they could not contain, but very likely created for military purposes? Do we revert to form and look into the places of each of our own hearts that only we can hear and listen to what we believe is the highest best purpose we can achieve with the “time” allotted us by a universe that cannot be comprehended with innumerable degrees, countless anointing or wealth that would embarrass Croesus himself: you are the wisdom you seek and the source of knowledge enough to guide your steps and the steps of that family you have been borne to and love more than life itself.  

jts 22/11/2020 ,

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211120 - Extinction Chronicles ·

I’m now 5 days and 1,000s of miles from “Thanksgiving Day” in the land of my birth, and so full of thanks, i could just shit. I’m not sure how to parlay that into gratitude for the multitudes, but from everything else i’ve been watching - it could be worth the effort · I am surrounded by the stink of greed and am really struggling with whether the stink is my own or others; this pleases me. Pop was an OG (original gangster) by every decent standard that title was ever meant to convey - he attended Bell High School in the 1940’s prior to applying to fighter pilot squadrons flying the “Lightning” P-38s, then successfully combatting fascism in the later stages of WWII South Pacific - instead he was assigned to piloting the B-17 “Flying Fortresses” of “Catch 22” fame · a synchronicity that well harkened to the next 6 decades of his life.

I’d love to speak with authority about what that time meant to the man i knew as “Pop” and whom i revered as well as i knew how until the day he died. What i learned from him that is most valuable today is his distrust of those who “have all the answers.” He was a High School English teacher for nearly 4 decades and who later taught poetry to any whose lapels fell close enough for him to grab in his later years. It is testimony to the conceit of our civilization how much of his disciplined literary output is moldering in a crawlspace in the gr8 Northwest where his - at the time of his death · 40 year old 286 processor got stored after the 6 grocery bags full of his poetry got lost in the rapacious dismantling  of his last man-cave; that my friends is a future we all face.

The faux führer donny is as we speak being foisted on his own petard as another previous traitor, Spiro t. described as being left “twisting in the wind.” While the “new boss, same as the old boss” joey is populating the liberating leadership cabinet with whores (apologies to sex workers worldwide) from the same corporate ranks into whose pockets donny was draining ‘merican wealth while making the modern cradle of democracy Gr8 Again. My vituperation isn’t much help to you - lets try this tack · every umbrage you read herein, whether it be a grievance about inequality of income distribution, sexist assault, racism or contempt for big shots of every stripe and walk of life is in someway an unresolved resentment and conflict within my own being and only couched as dispassionate discourse because i lack the moral fiber to own it to the bone - so fuck you, and the horse you rode in on.

My candor has often been interpreted as an opening for leveraging the great conceit of our epoch - mental control over another · I do not wish to control another, and struggle against that inclination with all my mortal might, but find within that personal resistance the cesspool of my own fragile fear. Today i found myself staring at the new shoots of bamboo in what passes for a backyard where i live; what came to mind was Dame Pema Chodron describing what is behind hate - fear, while behind fear is the “soft spot” that remains of our essential being. The logic of the Dame is unassailable, which does not render the undoing of its pernicious influence any easier - just more informative · At least i gain a better understand about what i struggle against knowing it is not you - whoever the fuck you be.

Nor do i give a fuck any longer for concurrence, but rather strive for, as Sensei Bruce Lee loved into the aether, the “strength to endure a difficult life”. If i can manage to love with the little i understand about what that means, to the end of my days, than i’ve done the most with what i have. It also allows me “wiggle room” to suck a little more pussy, drink a little more booze and exert more of what is left of my legendary muscle in support of good shit and not live in fear about retaliation from the bullies roaming our planet - I am that bully, and it shames me to understand that my hatred toward bullies is in reality toward the least favorable aspect of my own character. It also heartens me to know that with each step i take toward my own fear, brings me that much closer to the soft loving core of a being Dame Pema Chodron describes and whom i hope to take with me to the grave, rather than the crafted illusionary “fool” the presumptive social engineers would imagine they have created - again · go fuck yourselves zukee, company and the digital AI horse you rode in on.

jts 21/11/2020 ,

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201120 - Extinction Chronicles ·

It may be that the most useful information the internet has ever provided me is a quote from Albert Einstein - “The most important decision we make is whether we believe we live in a friendly or hostile universe” · What i like most about this quote is how much internal disquiet to which it opens my calcifying mind. I can recite any number of mantras and discipline to pacify my fury until i’m blue in the face, but which side of the fulcrum i rest the weight of my choices may well determine futures i cannot comprehend. Nor is facile denial adequate to the task - i hurt when people are cruel to me, and many are; i’ve come far enough in my own journey to understand those many are often oblivious to their own pain, much less the consequence of their behavior (just as i am); which leaves me again sitting in a corner with Lao Tzu whining about what i should do. There is no choice: just as there is no depriving death its due. I guess the question is what do you wish to have on your mind as you pass - “wasn’t that fun¿” or “why wasn’t that fun?” ·

I have been amongst friends to the degree i know something about who is, and who ain’t. What i don’t understand is how and why so many feel the need to fake it - including myself. I understand from my own loneliness that i am too ready to see friends everywhere i go in every face i find; i also understand more and more that friendship is rare and my hunger for kindness and fraternity is not a useful guide. What is not clear to me as i wander in search of my tribe is how not to harm the capacity for likeminded strangers i meet to find their tribe but for whatever reason have fallen short of my admittedly, too severe criteria for trust and confidence to be included in my too, too exclusive company. The conundrum, as always, is that same criteria is always a dagger pointing at my own heart, and the rejection i employ is always to some degree a rejection of that part of my self i find repulsive and, to quote, Albert Einstein - “hostile” ·

It may be that Madame Paradox and her offsprings “t’is  & t’ain’t” is some emotional sleight of hand i use to abrogate the anger i feel toward a negligent parent who lay dying; i don’t know, but suspect it is so. Those troublesome aspects of my anima which peer into the souls of all i meet, while useful in fantasy, are not always useful in interpersonal relations. Ma, by all accounts has had real difficulty with boundaries, and was not what you might call the example for mirroring youngsters to themselves. Again, i don’t know - i do know that she has confused boundaries about what she feels to constitute reality and what i know to be true about myself. I don’t mean this observation as a defamation about someone who is not here to defend herself, only as a metric for understanding my own assumptions about what i perceive about others vs what can be an entirely different reality to them - most especially siblings, who logically are behaving the same too much so to be comfortable.

But back to the, as Frank Zappa remarked so well, “crux of the biscuit,” is my world friendly or hostile¿ When it involves my own company and i am able to reflect quietly about exchanges, i find i error on the side of “friendly,” but when faced with what i understand to be an intractable exchange, i revert to “donkey mode” and as my last wife demonstrated in her European fashion dragging her hands down across her face to her lap declaring “closed,” i understood her meaning all too well. The challenge is temporal, for nothing, most especially this chimera of emotion we wallow in that reflects the larger arc of transformation we pass through every second of our existence - my bladder fills, i pee; my hunger, or emotion grows, i eat; my fantasy intercedes and i run like a rutting pony for the panoche - but none of this describes the dwelling mind i knew as an infant/child trying to understand a harried human female towering over me with 2 other squalling children demanding that she look at them instead of me.

Yet even the Gaia “she” in my constellation of fixed fantasies is waning as my own life force is ebbing on a planet searching for renewal. I do not know how to reconcile those real conditions with the tenuous future i want to cast as a sea anchor into some sort of comfortable death, preferably with copious amounts of nudity, erotic drawings, searching application of a lifetime of aesthetic contemplation salted with nutritious meals and romping tunes compacting comforting composure into the very nether cavities of my soul - is that too much to ask¿ I have no one else to blame, and find no percentage in seeking justification for such scabrous behavior within what i am coming to understand as my own native innocence; Yet how a ribald character as i’ve discovered my “self” to be could ever expect tolerance, much less acceptance is beyond the scope of even my fervent imagination - but what fun envisioning a life like that · it’s enough to give one hope, however audacious that hope may be.

jts 20/11/2020 

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191120 - Extinction Chronicles ·

Interesting day in paradise - went to extract money from the magic machine in a foreign land to pay rent in my overpriced moldy villa and was told “pin length characters exceeded” - a message i’d read earlier in a cloistered fb site for expats and paid little attention to · but this was rent day, which i do pay attention to. I headed for the local foreigner’s bistro to get the lowdown and was blown off on the way by my visa broker when i stopped for any information he might have. Information is gold, and i learned at the bistro through judicious inquiry it was a transient fault circulating through the ATM networks; ultimately i gained 3 new fb friends i’d shared air with - always the preferably species of virtual friends. Had another bowl of Pho from an imaginative local artist’s adaptation to the economic downturn and found myself stretching the limits of propriety, by questioning the foundation of wealth with a youngster retiree local who made a killing in my next-to-last occupation, Commercial Real Estate.

I found in my last occupation herding dead people’s estates through the corrupt probate process at the L.A. Superior Courthouse that any job that linked me to public relations was probably not a good fit - in less than an hour i manage to antagonize the nice enough young man with my concerns about real estate speculation and its deleterious effect on local economies as well as disparage the whole concept of “Greed is Good;” from there it only got worse as i explained to the kindly landlady that i would not be staying because the “bare minimum” maintenance schedule that rendered my roof permeable and home a mold swamp was not someplace i’d like to stay. It was not a happy morning in the world heritage site i live in, now reeling from 13 consecutive typhoons, and a population accustomed to the “boom or bust” tobacco economies of early Virginia.

The smartest thing i’ve done with these chronicles is to de-couple from the immediate anxiety i might feel to the actual existential threat we as a species face. My personal tribulations are relatively inconsequential given the nature of extinction - it is more than comforting to veer from my own whining to the more manly occupation of saving our species from its own stupidity. I own more than my fair share stupidity - that uniquely human trait and when i say “more” than my fair share, i mean i’ve wasted far too much time listening to the shrill and unnecessarily unkind self talk devaluing mine own worthy and decent objectives thus diverting positive energy from worthy contribution to our mutual survival. You don’t have to agree with my thinking, nor do i accept the devaluation of other’s narrow concepts of “right and wrong.” To give you an idea of how distorted my own personal cues have become, when the yelp of some winsome expat squeeze bemoaned the “caveman look” on a fb page, i nearly took the bit in hand to believe it was personal, rather than another frightened human being attempting to control their environment by dictating appropriateness for others.

This squirt with her likely  long legs and carefully cultivated “come hither” command of each and every semen donor in her nightly romps in the “2-kewl-4-school-hipster-doofus-venues” i’m sure she frequents to assuage her wounded feminine mystique, got my goat enough for me to comment here and now - though not enough to engage her “Karen” thinking more than to self-soothe my own wounded vanity that she is likely blind to, and therefore freed from any wound these words might cause. More to the point would be my taking an opportunity during my exit interview with the kind-hearted but profit-hungry landlord to defamed my struggling neighbor for raising the sidewalk cement in front of his entryway such that it deflected mud from any deluge to settle in front of her property, rather than finding a mutually beneficial evacuation for all - his behavior to my thinking, was selfish and consistent with his _rump loyalty and my discomfort in his presence.

It is this fortunate choice to learn through writing about my own behavior using the lens of “others” i am most grateful for; it supports a program of transforming my own personal wounds into thinking that will aid in reducing the suffering of all i encounter while training my mind to the ultimate conclusion of passing with peace for any who witness my demise. If i am lucky; i will be alone and none will be affected by my confusion about the transition - if i am less lucky, but still within range, I will be in the “saddle” so to speak and the woman i am ejaculating into will see love and compassion in my funny looking eyes mixed with tenderness as i expire; if i have no luck left to me whatsoever, i will die defending my right to breathe from someone who had mistaken my gentleness as forbearance and had attempted to take by force something that is only mine to relinquish and was facing the full force and fury of one who loves life and was entirely unwilling to cede ground to greed or hate.

jts 19/11/2020 

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181120 - Extinction Chronicles ·

“Keep your desires simple, and your disappointments will follow suit.” - Lao Tzu · it always seems to come down to definition; for example, my understanding of what constitutes simplicity has grown geometrically in the course of this season’s 13 typhoons; altered, rather than grown might be more apt. When i enlarged my search parameters for the perfect studio after the death of my father, it was because there was nothing really holding me to my nation of birth. I won’t go into the sordid details, but the handwriting was on the wall that i would not be welcomed at my mother’s death bed - whether my conceit created that reality, or my spooky sensitivity informed that decision is anybody’s guess - I had ma cut off my hair before i left and set out for parts unknown · 1st stop France to feast on the reality sandwich of what is romance, and what ain’t. Regardless of the outcome, i stood at the grave of Paul Cezanne and paid my respects with love in my heart and a small measure more of clarity.

Clarity is what i love about his work; as a man-child artist at the museums i could find examples of his work, i stood transfixed in front of paintings depicting ceramic - of my first gainful employments was in the mini-factory of a laid-off aerospace engineer who put his 5 sons to work manufacturing all manners of vitrified clay, from an unsuccessful attempt at the 1st clay time piece, to a tiled replica of a Babylonian Lion the size of a single mattress. So when i say i was transfixed by this painter’s ability to transform one media - clay, to another, paint, i know from which i speak. Standing in front of his paintings, i swear it felt like i could reach out and plink a teapot or saucer and it would ring, glaze and all; that is the standard of verisimilitude i have striven for my entire art existence.

The art school i attended included an instructor who Mark Rothko named executor of his estate with instructions to destroy his paintings at his death - Theodoros Stamos, who instead marketed the work to the “ruling class” through the auspices of Marlborough Galleries · it is with this betrayal in mind that i have formulated and created for the past 40 many odd years of my existence. Fortunately for me, i am, and mean to remain an unknown influence in the trajectory of art history. That is not to say i intend to remain silent about the betrayal of the higher echelons of our so-called civilization. If anything, it would seem i have been thrown by the majestic synchronicity of Madame Paradox and her offsprings “t’is and t’aint” into close quarters with everything i find most repugnant about my choice of vocations - greed, and her suitors the minions of stupidity ·

Never long on visual acuity, it would seem fighting for sleep viewing telephonic screens and a maniacal final oeuvre i’d imagined to be the height of simplicity and practicality - portraits in colored pencils, taxed the capacity of my anatomy to refocus, or attenuate visual correction, and am now unable to continue what i spent a lifetime understanding 3 dimensions, with 2-dimensional vision. I’m not whining on your dime, because i don’t expect you to care, i am sharing in the venue that remains available to me - language · a left hemisphere adaptation i had to learn early on due to the influence of my benign but maniacal wannabe poet parent, Pop the High School English teacher, who also had me sawing railroad ties into fireplace lengths with a crosscut saw for $2 bucks a tie; and who put me on the roof with a towel and 2”x4” seat to choke off the drain exhaust when he taught the family how to unclog the kitchen sink drain using a garden hose and simple physics; i use that thread of learning to this day.

Mostly it is the indomitable nature of his influence which demanded i go toe-to-toe with his will, or be forever swallowed up in the paw he proffered every time he answered the door and dragged into my step-mother’s home, formerly his “lair” · a myopic concession of disloyalty i may never learn to understand, for it extended to my brethren who cottoned to, and have adhered to that exclusionary paradigm of family to this day. These are thoroughly decent human beings i speak of - blood if you will · i recount through a prism of remorse, and guilt but absolve myself from emotions and confusion i parse to this day always struggling on the side of kindness, however painful and ofttimes contradictory that feels. I cannot change anyone - i know that with every fibre of my heart muscle · my best hope is that there is enough “piss and vinegar” left in the corpuscles of my being to alter that self in ways the human i believe myself to have become would approve.

jts 18/11/2020 

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171120 - Extinction Chronicles ·

Ya’ gotta give it up to Dame ‘Merica - how many nations on the planet could have been conned so thoroughly and still come wise to the bullshit and own it · I know this from my own capacity for fooling myself in service of stupidity (a harsh, but sometimes useful realization). Nor can i say i’ve acquitted myself with the same courageous dispatch as the noble franchised electorate of my native land who now hold the future of our planet by a thread of will pinched between their fingers - fingers that continue to be ignored by the purveyors of “capital = voice” clutching their lambskin bicycle briefs to their pinched scrotums while they puppeteer a puppet dead on the vine.

It’s invigorating to know how few of the rulers of our world have the capacity to parse the above paragraph, much less make logical sequence of its meaning. Don’t believe me, listen to the sons of “he who deems himself _______ fill in the blank” I went to school with these punks; some who have risen to the occasion and some who still wallow in the conceit that might makes right and white makes might. But sadly skin tone is nothing more than a metaphor for limited thinking about _______ fill in the blank. It could be the woman you are wooing or the immigration agent parroting the vomit her drunken uncle spewed into her impressionable mind, someone you meet soon is going to be demonstrating the limits of their conceptual repertoire, and possibly take your life in the process.

Ask me again about stupid, out of the gate. I live on a coastline “big money banked on brokering business and real estate profits and which was just carved up naturally by the same investment dollars they used to leverage castles and hipster doofus kingdoms of “profit” and raves of kewlness and opportunities the “locals” would have never known, but now thanks to hand of g_d, who is never quite clear in her intent until too late - such investments are but a coastline smear waiting for the bathing beauties to return in their demureness and fictions of allure for the next wave of investment dollars to congeal and once again assault the logic of 1,000s of years of cultural development for no more than the egregious and putrid excess of 

“the handful.”

The handful seems to be a constant in the maladaptive history of our species. I taught middle school long enough to learn that within any cohort, regardless of its demographic mix 1-2% will demand and receive 80-90% of the class time instruction. Whereas the scabrous assertions you patiently evaluate herein are born of actual moldy walls, demonstrably crushed egos and ascertainably abandoned markets; because that is what capital does - finds the weakest link and exploits that to its fullest advantage and then cuts its losses. Don’t believe me - look at the Con-in-Chief who managed to parlay an inheritance of $1,000,000 into a debt of $350,000,000 and still find others to blame.

The elusive game i track is that prey which grows braver with my aim; an elusive creature which does not render more nutrition for me, but all those on whose behalf i hunt, for what good is it feed my ample belly from my years of skill if not to feed the lovely face of even one of the many starving beautiful humans in our midst. Nutrition is a tricky business, the ruling class, in its clumsy manner narrowed it down to “things” - doesn’t much matter what kind of things, just so that people want them is good enough · so contrary to all gentle wisdom guiding human wellbeing what do they the rulers of content and information do¿ inflame the passion of desire for all to want everything .  .. with a special emphasis on providing the goods those poor saps who want to emulate the rulers desire - fast cars, pretty women, rippling abdomens, Ban Ray Sunglasses and all the attention we as humans were deprived of as our parents were occupied with chasing the “better life” for their children.

man what a racket 

jts 17/11/2020 

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161120 - Extinction Chronicles ·

After typhoon #13 Vamco has gone, i sit a changed man, as though there is any other condition available to our species, but change. Yet to learn how pitilessly negligible is my desire in the face of the sometime munificent character of our atmosphere compared to the intractable reality of the physics of its potential is a lesson in humility. It would seem the lessons i’ve failed to learn from the women in my life, have simply moved sidewise into the realm of Mama Gaia for upper-division remedial instruction - lucky me · I’m happy to have become as ignorant as i am, however precarious that position may be in this information predicated environment that has been created for us - seemingly by those holding the reins on all “valuable knowledge". Having worked in “super-secret” environments i feel a great affinity for Peggy Lee’s poignant refrain, “is that all there is?”

“Early Roman Kings” is playing as loud as i can on my narrow profile Macbook Pro - and there is so little attenuation from such a diminutive protest, i have to accept i live in the “echo chamber” allotted me, or i realize there is no one to communicate with but my self · Mr. Dylan does not allow public distribution of this tract; i don’t know why; "the election" is in mid-air, and from where i sit it is not clear who stands where. The philanthropic money is gathering steam to reset the yoga patios, the yogurt bars and the martini lounges where "real" decisions are made for people who have no voice but that which is granted them by economic velocity - having watched Mama Gaia wipe out an entire economic projection and learning more about what real planetary velocity feels like, my contempt for modern economic models congeals.

The daylight is waning, my life force is ebbing - riding my bicycle was grand, sort of like peppering the tail of a snail with only so much salt to sting, but not enough to destroy. I know few people where i live, and the fault is my own. I am fairly certain the same cast of characters i veer from can be found in any destination i've arrived at only because greed is and has has been sung in “Villanelle For Our Time” a result of steering by the venal chart, but with oh so little “Bitter Searching of the Heart.” How i ever became such a scold, i’ll never know, but it is more than tired, please take this badge off of me, or arm me to the core with love enough to protect all i see that which is vulnerable and save me from that greed that threatens our world.

Better yet, enlarge my phallus to the point where every woman that beholds my fragile frame can imagine nothing more than “fucking my brains out,” lord knows thinking hasn’t done all that much for me or the world i know. Are we that removed from wiggling protoplasm¿ if so, how is it a handful of “suits” with backup have cornered an entire species to where everyone is afraid of everything¿? What bullshit is that; i’ve just past through winds which obey nothing but the physics of moisture, heat and  oxygen. Near as i can tell, the force washing entire economies out to sea asked no permission and sought no notice of consumer specs - pretty much acted like most beautiful women i’ve ever known - lacking consideration for anything but pure attention ·

Fine - my mother is an incomparable “beaut” · i miss her, and would rather have been at her side for this passage of her rich existence; she arranged it differently. Why is that, i have to ask myself, much as i did at age 15 when she changed the locks on the doors to the house i grew up in. If it was for education, i cannot deny i’ve learned a lot - i’m now 66 and accept that if i am not at home where i sit - there is no other place. Yet like the wizened indian father from the land i hail from who would walk out into the brush to find a place to meet his maker, i now search for my place to die; from that thinking, the issues held close to my skin by the ghost of my ego, flutter in the wind and no longer carry weight. I do spend a fair amount of psychic energy imagining the life of my 92 year-old mother and can honestly say with love in my heart, adieu. There are few i know, or have met i can say that to with the same feeling - g_d speed Ma · 

jts 16/11/2020 

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