Friend
I grew up in a household of fairytale handsome whip smart human beings with the clinically abysmal self-esteem which comes parceled with narcissist parenting methodology - life’s lottery favored me early with strabismus and the luck-of-the-draw unelected office of ‘identified patient.’ Like most family constellations many traits, roles, and academically identifiable characteristics can be found evenly distributed within the spectrum of college-educated post WWII Dr. Spock aficionados. I am an addict like the rest of my tribe; where they collected friends, I was fond of peculiarities, which would promptly find their way into my back pocket, still do though i’m old. Just yesterday i bent over what i thought was a yellow beaded earring, which before my slow bend reached it appeared to be cameo-like reliquary and ultimately turned out to be a much flattened bottle cap i could not resist adding to my collection, never having quite figured out the rubric for friendship: i may have one or two out there, but like all good cowboys, i’ve no idea who, or where.
Which is why i burst from bed today intent on fashioning an essay for the ages declaring the rock solid relationship between the sacred character ‘friend’ has represented throughout our human history and retrieving its meaning from the clutches of capitalist decay restoring its dynamic force for good and possibly forestalling humanity’s foolish immolation at the hands of Shakespeare’s demons still loosed in the world. So like most creative’s full of piss, vinegar, and hubris the first step was to promptly text a snide putdown to a boyhood chum who’d had the effrontery to run for cover after a nearly hysterical out-of-the-blue (seemingly mutual) exchange only childhood chums sharing anxiety are able to manifest - precipitated the night before April Fool’s 2o26 as googol and fakebook were tuning the integration of “a iEye” in the midst of 47’s slow motion ‘ithinkicanithinkican’ project2o25 putsch cum psychopathic bombing harkening the ’techbros’ Sovereignty wet dream about divvying up what’s left of Dame Liberty’s noble experiment - ‘merica · Long May She Wave.
“A friend is a gift you give yourself:” Wisdom detritus from a job i had manufacturing wallet organizers, pre-computer. Nearly 50 years ago, i read this aphorism printed on a press in tiny linotype at the bottom of one of 365 pages to be parsed, sliced, and assembled into an accessory containing 364 other homilies, the idea was powerful enough to last these many long years in my mind, enough to be shared with you along with “The palest ink is more powerful than the strongest memory.” I carried that organizer long after the address book had no bearing, but was still legible. This compared to the carcass of Pop’s IBM ‘amber screen’ containing all his writings during the last 20 years of his life, even though it utilized 3.5” floppies (long since lost), the hard-drive was adequate and possible well enough engineered to survive the past 20 years in the likely damp but never flooded crawlspace of my brother’s Pacific Northwest home. I may never know, only because the ‘leaping from my bed’ i alluded to at the beginning of this essay was entirely figurative, rather than literal, for i now more resemble the avatar of my youth Hephaestus, with the fallen arch of my younger days devolving into degenerative osteoarthritis, lending emphasis to my distinguished ‘grey ponytail’ with a bonafide gimp.
So much for an ageless essay articulating inexorable logic compelling a return to actual amity between our kind rather than the virtual “a iEye” friend parading across the +/- 5v proskenion cum scrolling/screen tethered to the end of humanity’s wrist guzzling what water is left after the excavation-economy could fracked the last moisture from Gaia’s desiccated crevices - not very friendly. However, the fact that i can stand; after carving a smattering and write whatever the fuck i want is the highest form of self-care my beaten frame can conjure. My thinking is to apply what i deem ‘Enlightened’ self-interest to locate my ‘tribe’, and gain sanctuary to Thich Nhat Hanh’s perfectly logical, however much possible mythical sangha. Not for lack of trying, but i have yet to find ‘Sangha’; be this due ‘psychological projection’; ‘camel through the eye-of-the-needle-implausibility’; or ‘simple laziness, the requisite compassion or sincerity to satisfy this leery man/child, whose tender heart still remembers sitting in the ‘wannabe warmth’ of our family’s home in the process of being trimmed with the trappings of the season and commiserating with a character from a story about which i’d only seen television snippets; but am still moved in solidarity today by the boy’s open heart wanting blessings for his family.
Of the many blessings in my life a great one has been the procession of characters, real and not so real, just like friends. One person in particular stands out: D.E. Tuppins who resembled an odd blend of Duke Ellington and Cab Calloway - built like ‘The Laughing Buddha’, yet when you weren’t looking, could sound like a bad impression of W.C. Fields. He was north of 70, his wife was south of 25, and they lived in Senior Housing in the city of Santa Ana; as part of the ‘liberal’ give-aways still available at the time. I was participating in the ‘Comprehensive Educational Training Act’, a thoroughly practical program that provided a stipend for schooling which was partly funded through part-time employment as a guard at the Bower’s Museum of Santa Ana. I had hours to do little more than tell eager doyennes not to touch the art, and to listen to D.E. Tuppins who was raised in Detroit and old enough to share Tap Dancing tips with the Psychiatrist’s wife from across Bishop; they were good days until, wife number one arrived on the scene - a Cherokee who the Doctor told me afterwards, was a paranoid schizophrenic. Between the Dr. and D.E. Tuppins it would have to be a tossup whose advice was more valuable: the Dr. whose enthusiasm for all things allopathic; visceral and cerebral, influenced me to be seen by his Doctor, a young internist then, ’making his bones’ who thought it prudent to biopsy my, now arthritic femoral articulation because it was, in his professional estimation, too ‘taut’, or Mr. Tuppins who, on more than one occasion, commented while passing through the many doorways of our appointed rounds, “After me, you come first.”
solidarność
(˚ㄥ _˚)
6 April 2o26
http://ExtinctionChronicles.blogspot.com
http://JosephTStevens.blogspot.com
http://Stoanartst.blogspot.com
prohibited from AI sampling in any form
reprinted with permission; all rights reserved
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