One would hope that decisions became easier with age, but gone are the years of impulsive behavior, for as Joni Mitchell sang 40 years ago, “I’ve seen some hot, hot blazes come down to smoke and ash.” Why has it taken me 4 decades to understand something she was writing about in her twenty’s? Is this why the kings and queens of Old Europe would finance fleets of ocean going barks to search out the “Fountain of Youth.” Would i take a gulp of that elixir even if i found it? If i am not prepared to die this minute, i didn’t learn well the lessons of Elementary School when the alarms would sound and like good citizen everywhere, we young faithful kiddies would climb under our desks and prepare our souls for anonymous incineration. I don’t know how the kids do it today, with the threat of slow-motion incineration from cataclysmic heating of the atmosphere - at least it was a dice roll for us if we were allowed back up to the land of the living · life was good; until the next alarm.
I am not sure how i feel about this aging process, in many ways it’s a gas caring less and less what anyone might have to say, yet caring more and more what people feel; those that are not too numb to share. And i really like murdering my own sacred cows, though i’m largely a vegetarian it is a glorious feeling to watch the specter of an ancient delusion light up like a Roman Candle and flicker into nothingness. But to recognize the dread in someone’s eyes only because you have felt that yourself is not the sort of prescription lens i was looking for; then Madam Paradox peeks around the corner winking at me, because she knows i know there is not fuck all i can do to relieve the suffering of anyone who is not already asses and elbows relieving their own misery.
The downside is that Mommy ain’t coming back, and if i don’t learn how to take care of myself, it’s a safe bet i’d be as useless as tit’s on bull helping anyone else - again with my obnoxiously constant companion Madame Paradox · this just at that turn in my own evolution when i grow certain that one tap root for happiness is found in service to others. I can even hear the Chorus chortling, “fool.” I used to think globally, picturing those steps necessary for disarmament, because that is what was trotted out by the leaders as the next step in the process of “Detente.” But somehow a successful detente translated into more spending on armaments, i guess because unending war has worked out so well for everyone - i know it put me through school · Joseph (T.he fucking hypocrite) Stevens, there’s a testimonial for ya’.
So too are gone the answers; i remember a time in my life when you could ask me anything and i would have an answer; today you could ask me if i got up this morning and i’d have say “let me check, and get back to you.” Laugh if you must, but of my many fading memories is as an idiot savant wire harness wrangler sitting across the table from a workmate, as old then as i am now listening to him commend me on my bear-trap recall, while describing what a sieve his own had become. That was a scant 25 years ago, and all i can hope for is that he remains well, walks incessantly and feels happy to be alive. What i remember from Pop when he was at that elder stage is his sardonic refrain, “Man am i glad i’m old.” This morning i did not fall back into that last leg of rest so important to a good day and so joy seems to be sticking in my craw, or there is some unresolved issue i am evading and so require convenient attribution.
My first wife’s name was Joy, and if i had been as smart as i thought i was, i’d have quit while i was ahead; instead after 3 marriages, i’m still searching for love like some bad country western song, or better yet, a Sufi Kōan that has no answer and is simply meant as a distraction to your thoughts, like the monkeys swinging through the trees of your mind as Lao Tzu describes. There is no achieving love for it is the medium within which we swim, upstream/downstream, with the tide, against the tide, breathing or not - there is no other state for what we describe as consciousness than being · nor certainty for what we don’t understand about consciousness than the same. Stephen Hawking in the end was convinced that though the escape velocity from the surface of a black hole is greater than the speed of light - the most rapid measurement we can make for our known universe · he knew that black holes emit radiation; funny how our conscious and unconscious states so resemble “Black Holes” - eh ?
jts 28/12/2020
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