While the world rejoices, i reflect on the year 1976 - i broke the 5th metacarpal in both hands months apart in unrelated “accidents” · met, married & and divorced my 1st wife and gained 60 stitches along the inner length of my right forearm, missing, as the Dr. described at the time, my ulnar nerve by millimeters; my left hand was in a cast at the time - Lucky me · That my birthday corresponds to the date of the signing of the Constitution in 1787, has always provided me some solace given its rugged construction as well as its namesake, the still floating “Old Ironsides;” (next day) sail on oh mighty ship of state, sang Leonard Cohen in his ode to Democracy - so near, yet so far; opined Master Shakespeare. However, these are not named the “Arcadian Chronicles” because our future is assured just because we dodged a bullet from a 3rd-rate con artist who declared, prior to his election, that he could commit murder on 5th Ave in NYC with impunity, and who then went on to condemn at the time of this writing 239,000 American Citizens to unnecessary deaths - a number which could have been a fraction of that count, but for incompetence, arrogance and a general contempt for life.
This essay began with a gruesome recounting of personal misfortunes - not to establish a “false intimacy” but for one lesson of caution from that time. My employer - an energetic mouse of a man who exemplified “too many irons in the fire” - Bill Mor_tz · and his long suffering family, none of whom i can tell you a thing about 44 years later. This was a man who could drink a case of Michelob beer before lunch, and another half before dinner and still manage to break his transaxle attempting to climb the, at the time accessible hills behind one of my Alma Maters, Estancia HS in his Jeep Cherokee. There are still homeowners in the Westside of Costa Mesa, who either curse his name or name children after him - what i learned about a jackhammer attempting to perforate the concrete and rebar of his unwanted backyard swimming pool, i believe would allow me to walk onto any jobsite on the planet and honestly declare, i know “Jack Hammer.” Again the purpose of this recounting of a homily he shared sitting in the camper shell parked on his driveway that served as office to “Mor_tz Construction Company.” I sat and listened patiently after sharing my confusion about a crazy woman for a wife i didn’t have two weeks earlier, this while one hand was in a cast from a bone i broke myself hitting a wall, and an arm up to the elbow in gauze from sutures closing the rend in my arm from dragging it across an unwinding coil of flashing as i stepped into a covered roof hole from the previous day’s labor.
Bill looked at me and pulled on his beer and peered at my two useless appendages that he was still paying wages for, because it was his roofing job, and he was that kind of guy. “Joseph” he said, “Pain is stupid, it is so stupid that you can outsmart it. We’ll take this sledgehammer outside and i’ll drop it on your foot. I promise, you won’t remember a thing about this woman or either one of your wounds.” I don’t doubt he was right about that however much else in his business he got wrong, at the worst possible time. For example - an installation down the coast - a San Clemente subdivision with houses stepped up a slope · some 20’ of elevation between slabs. Bill contracted to carve a 20’ block-wall “V” into the upslope side yard and install a spa/hothub. This “V” shaped wall required 18” footings below grade - almost like the universe was demonstrating to me, that no matter how bad my own misfortunes, there is greater misery in the world. We finished cutting the earth and would have begun pouring the footings the next day, when it began to rain and continued for the next 6 weeks.
During those weeks labor on what had been a neatly cut engineering feat anticipating many hours of hot water soaking in a plush Southern California enclave, deteriorated into a quagmire of wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow of nothing but mud and misery. Where had once been the apex of a wall-ready wedge of earth became a rivulet of concern to a torrent that eventually undercut the very foundation of the upslope home. A cavity of many meters opened wider daily which took as many hours to prevent as did the increasingly questionable strategy of pouring concrete into a mud hole that grew greater daily during the relentless rain - Payroll eventually ran out before i learned whether our Herculean efforts kept the house upslope from sliding downslope, or if the homeowners ended up with a “V” shaped spa with a slender view of the California Coast.
An ambition that oddly echoes the cantilevered penthouses of the Nordstrom’s jutting over another of my Alma Maters, The Art Students League of NYC. Only we will not hear or know of the mayhem caused by a handful of tenants able to pay goofy money to have a northern penthouse view of Central Park - only because what will become an eventuality · tons of rich people’s homes falling onto the roof of a “sellout Atelier” of a once democratic art school will not occur until we are all dead and gone, that is why it was allowed; why the “economy - red or blue” is allowed to turn profit’s blind eye to destruction of life and property for no better reason than “it didn’t happen on my watch, sort of.” It may be that i was torn at this time in history for no other reason than to learn better what it means to care for others better than i care for myself - this idea itself a paradox, for the wisest i’ve heard say you cannot be compassionate to others more than you understand compassion for yourself. D.J. Trump may be the saddest person on the entire planet for all i know about him; that he apparently cares nothing at all for the people in my immediate community who are suffering great flood damage through no fault of their own does not absolve me concern for the “lowest of the low,” and if it not be me, it must be he. Madame Paradox - please get a life other than your intrusive philosophical interest in mine, for your questions about what is right and what is wrong are starting to piss me off - signed, your humble servant · the Hulk.
jts 10/11/20-09/11/2020
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