One can only marvel when conceit slaps itself across one’s own forehead, like a gift from god minus the interpretation. I am alone and lost - sort of · I know enough to conjure a bowl of noodles and vegetables to my own specifications, share an apple with a toddler, father and grandfather while pitching a fundraising notion of cash per bicycle lap around the "big circuit" and quietly question my own motivation without imposing sanctions; . .. 061220 ··· i had to stretch yesterday’s 5 paragraphs across 2 days; sometimes the spirit is willing but not the flesh - i expect what i am feeling is a sloughing off of existential dead skin from some sort of internal sea change i do not understand, and the tension is taxing my get-a-long. Yet this morning when the opportunity to once again bicycle my circuit after a week of rain, there was juice enough left over to cook a pot of chicken soup a la Belgiqué in an effort to demonstrate my appreciation for the generosity of my neighbor friends - The Farmers · i feel good.
The past four months of rain have shoehorned a torpor into my already taxed genial nature. I find that on balance i have had very little in common with those expats i've met of the 1,000 on this capitalist beach head; i also have to accept that my own intransigent, altogether too exacting standards of what is "fair dinkum" has played a large a role in the standoff. I am engaged in personal discovery of one who resorted early on to kindness to foil the unasked for, now unacceptable role of “identified patient” in my family constellation. So when i encounter self-involved personalities who presume my sincere efforts to nurture what i perceive is a poor self image that often manifests as a need for attention - i hit a wall. My understanding about giving and nurturing is that it is extremely important there be no expectation attached, otherwise the whole exchange becomes a quid pro quo game of perpetual imbalance · The difficulty i am having is from an internal disconnect in which my internal harangue about “worthlessness” and otherwise unsavory self-talk is sapping the growth of healthy healing self-love necessary to emerge from this existential hibernation with a vocabulary of unconditional warm regard for all i meet.
For example a boyhood swain of my painfully attractive sister requested friendship on fb - he was an elder and the only thing we have in common is his interest in my sibling · i accept that. He had taken up painting stylized surfing scenes some long time ago, think Ed “Big Daddy” Roth does psychedelic waves. They are unique enough, but there is only so much you can do with a wave and a surfer. Here is where it gets dodgy - he is and always has been a charismatic sort and so his work sells, and garners much acclaim from the same high school clique we shared. I have many artist contacts from across the planet on fb and will often post kudos because i understand how important acknowledgement can be - when after a time it becomes clear there is no reciprocity, i will taper off my encouragement to a trickle; because after all, art is a business, or is it¿ am i sharing this now because i am envious, or is it because i do not want one more unequal relationship where i do the right thing and chafe when i find a lack of mutual respect?
I think it is because somewhere i have let the world take more than it gives - let me rephrase that · i have grown doubtful that what i want can be found outside of my own heart, and have resorted to blaming others for not providing what i do not give myself. Bob Dylan has issued a new channel - drawings for each of his songs with hand lettered lyrics; no doubt they are moving like hot cakes even if it’s a little too much like buying a painting from Sylvester Stallone. It’s the conflation with the art con, i take exception to. There was a story about Salvador Dalí and a truck load of signed blank sheets for sale; another about a young artist asking Pablo Picasso for his opinion - “your work is shit, you will never become an artist,” was his reply. The young fellow hung himself that afternoon. Creativity is important, i would not have lived my life under any other umbrella for no other reason than the richness it has given me in this drab world that capitalism and greed have wrought from stunning wild beauty.
I realize sitting here just now my challenge is to see past the delusion of esthetic market value which will always be manipulated by egos rather than any real interest in beauty. To survive with a happy creative heart to my death, i must reach out to that competent fiercely unorthodox youth who burned his way through what Leonard Cohen described as “20 years of boredom” only to lose his visual acuity when he'd at last bought his soul back out of economic “hock.” Regardless of their selfish stupidity, i must maintain solidarity with all my creative comrades on this dying planet, however venal and corrupt their ambitions might be at the high alter of imagination. I choose to nurture the small clear flame of my own curiosity about all around me and not be dismayed by the narrow spectrum of thinking the corporate overlords are stuffing down the mental gullet of minds too preoccupied by fear and greed to see how delicate and yearning-for-care is the fabric of our astonishing biosphere.
Well, that should about hold me to my last gasp · d’ya think . ..
jts 05/12/2020
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