If happiness is the absence of greed, hatred and delusion - i’m on board; what could go wrong? I smoke and drink, and greed with regard to either of those proclivities just rains misery; that is easy enough to understand. As to acquisitions, owning the next generation iPhone so the security apparatus can monitor my shredded porn threads just makes no sense at all. There are many people where i live within bicycling distance who demonstrate little interest in enjoying, what my loving mother once described as “insufferable company”, how is casting the telephonic net wider going to change that metric? I know many, including myself who admire objects - it is a difficult addiction to ween oneself from · harder than tobacco and alcohol from my experience. I still pay an ransom to the storage unit in B-town were my life’s work gathers dust: some 13 stone carvings; various and sundry canvasses; a rollaway drawer full of drawings on paper that have not been burned and travel keepsakes with little value to anyone but myself, including a rosewood branch given to me by a 90 year-old Spanish Sculptor, my professor at the Art Students League of NYC when i was no more than a 20 year-old piss-and-vinegar wannabe artist. The burl branch end fits perfectly to the palm of my hand. I cracked the cane beating a rug in Santa Ana as a frustrated artist buck and repaired it extemporaneously with advanced fiberglass technology from the aerospace antenna factory that would ultimately finance my degree in English.
The factory was owned by the husband of a college chum of Ma’s. The couple were so rich from govt. contracts that when the City of Newport Beach declined their application to add a 2nd story to their Linda Isle property - he simply lifted the house up and built the 1st floor underneath. I last saw this mythical, however real friend · when i squired him, his Filipino factotum, and the Yorkie love totem to ma’s cellblock for the well-to-do just prior to my departure to where i now call "home". Amongst her last remarks to me during that, our last visit, was “you are obsequious.” The challenge for me is to understand as a human being what kind of pain she must feel to make such a remark in the midst of as loving a gesture as i could conceive while leaving within days to a foreign nation. I had invited the eldest brother to come and stand “shoulder to shoulder” in peaceful loving solidarity prior to my departure to ease any existential suffering she may feel; he never responded; i don’t know which of the two gestures pisses me off more - her senile but heartfelt admonition, or his wounded pride.
I never backed away from a quarrel with ma, not because i hate her, but because i cannot abide bullies. Before our father died, he invited me and the same elder brother to a pow-wowo/long-walk around the big block that defined Pop’s last free terrain. My understanding was that this was meant as an opportunity to clear the air and “burn the existential sage” so to speak. While paying close attention to my father regarding my choice of words - i could find no alarm, yet by the time we had come full circle - the eldest seething sibling had ceased to recognize me as a living creature · i meant no harm, only an open heart. It was an important last lesson from my father about the paradox of an open heart. This was a man who has been diagnosed with “dementia” and was in the process of being sequestered under tighter and tighter restrictions due to his "fading" mental capacity, yet between the time my brother “fled” the scene of the crime at the end of our walk and when, minutes later i caught back up with pop in the hallway of his “assisted living” facility, he had managed to change into a T-Shirt which read “Why do all of my good ideas turn out Bad?”
And here i sit planning my escape; to yet another quiet venue fit for introspection where i can tease the demons of my own unkindness from the aggression i seem to pull from the suppurating soul of mankind, almost as though you are all my family, and as such seemingly too ashamed to declare our relatedness for transgressions i exhale like others do air - my kin are good and fine humans and they are strong · you would be lucky to spend time in their company, but like so many i have met in my travels, you would need to gauge your faith in their words by virtue of their actions. My own behavior is the only sanctuary left to me, for i have found no place on this planet i belong except within the determination of my own purpose. I love you. If that frank expression leaves you uncomfortable, i understand - when i hear it from others i am left in doubt - however, that doubt is my problem, not yours·
The best i can muster at this late stage of my own existence is candor - the same manner of plain speaking my father forced me to face in my last walk with a brother of mine · i love them both for different reasons: he my father for demanding the very best from me in the company of my closest Sangha - family; he my brother for having the courage of heart to demonstrate to me how much my honesty harmed him. I do not know which i learned more from; the honor my father forced from my heart or my own confusion about how much pain my honest existence seems to cause one i love, but to whom i am under no obligation to submit. My father demanded such quaint formalities - obeisance to the father, to the extent he physically enforced his authority when transgressed - my eldest brother did not inherit that amongst all the benefits of having been born 6 years earlier than i. I do willingly - pay the brother his due respect · which like all others in my life is earned, not seized.
jts 03/12/2020
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