For all i know, today is Pop’s birthday (111224); he was fond of muddying the waters and whenever asked declared his birthday “Veterans Day” though we invariably celebrated it on the 12th - his last wife called him “Steve” for the 20 some odd years of their union · His name was Harold Reed Stevens; and the last text message i kept on my phone for a full year and half after his death ended with the exclamation “Harold Reed Stevens, JUNIOR.” Ya’ gotta give it up to a raconteur who dissembled to the end of a life predicated on integrity - small wonder Madame Paradox and her offsprings are my closest confidants · “non, je ne sais pas où ils sont; ne me demande plus; s'il te plait” merci.
I am easily enough found, and while not entirely open to your questions - will help how i may with what i have available. We are about to extinguish an entire DNA sequence simply from greed and stupidity - near as i can tell · Yet it seems this sequence of my DNA wrap around the sun is all about learning and doubt seems to be about the only thing i am certain of anymore. I know i’m gonna die, while reincarnation sows doubt about even that simple reality. But 3 wives and 50 years of loneliness out of 66 years on the planet is enough to sew doubt about air, much less - life ever after. People, otherwise intelligent people are building and launching weapons convinced there is some path out from where we “shuffle off this mortal coil.”
I don’t much care anymore - i like it when the ducks and chickens heed my call and come close to the protection my friends the farmers provide · even if that enclosure is only a gate to the charnel floor we all approach. If reincarnation is a fact, i would have no reluctance to returning as a fowl in the yard i live next door to. I have eaten from that table, and knowing i will never ride a Buffalo to ground and pierce it’s brave heart with a bow and arrow - that doesn’t mean i couldn’t. As a man-child i found myself on a dirt road between the Isthmus on the Island of Santa Catalina and the northern lee side of the island. I was on a YMCA camping trip and in the company of principal parties in my future - a faux best friend; the to-be-dead brother of a wannabe best friend; and the sometime lover of she who-would-be-queen. We trudged and we were as brave and free as ignorant humans could be, laughing at earthquakes at the time as “Ground Swell.” Some live, some are dead and all are dear; myself counting coup for my journey into the ever after knowing i walked up to the placid beast which could have at any instant trampled me to a pulp and pulled his chin-whiskers.
I can die happy, not because i harmed another creature - which i didn’t, but because i looked into the face of death before my time and said as best i knew how at the time, “I love and respect you, thank you for allowing me to tease you without killing me for my ignorance.” Of my many “only hopes,” is that many are given a similar opportunity to dwell that close to their demise and come away with as much learning as i have been afforded. I communicate little with any of the grown men from that event, “May Tom · r · i · p · “ He and i tried, as have his brother and i attempted to create congruity from the mystery; it is not a path with road signs or indications other than the faintest memories which hold us to our earthly duty; i am grateful for the love in my heart held fast by such memories, for love it seems is more substantive than any other squall in our unruly hearts.
But what the fuck do i know¿ a besotted gimp pulling his laming leg behind him on the peddle of the conveyance he uses to deny the obvious - “you gonna die sucka’” · I’m happy at this point to gain a few more whiffs of good free air, and to declare my contempt for any who would deprive the balance of our kind the same privilege. It would seem the nation of my birth made that mandate clear, but from where i sit, and from where i stumble to my struggle to repose; that mandate is not so abundantly clear. Too many in my wannabe homeland were pulling for the “Nazi” in our midst for me to quietly; what’s the expression¿? resign. Big Shots will plague our kind as long as greed and cruelty are accepted as measures of power and competence, but as the wise rock & roll revolutionary Jimi Hendrix proclaimed accurately as well as musically, “When the power of Love, overcomes the Love of power - the world will know peace.” Live with logic you stupid motherfuckers or stay the fuck away from me, for as the “friend” Bob Dylan declared honestly and truthfully, “I’m not as cool or forgiving as I sound. I've seen enough heartache and strife.”
jts 12/11/2020
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