Extinction Chronicles - 280520 ·

The further we move toward our reckoning - the less confidence i have about a suitable outcome, and this will come to head just about the time i’ll be shuffling off this mortal coil · go ahead and tell me g_d is not a woman with a fulsome sense of irony. It is 12:33 and i put off rinsing the sweat from my morning ride expecting my friends would want to deliver earlier, than later, i was wrong. I have convinced myself the best way to stimulate the local economy is by spreading money where i can in copious quantities, but people being what they are and behaving how they’ve been trained that is a mixed bag at best. One young friend, abruptly found herself out of the optimum position as clerk in a homestay, filling the desk so the Madame could be gone from the yoke of the hospitality demand. A good gig for all as long as there are customers to fill the rooms. My friend now finds herself with child number 2 and no longer collecting a check; i help how i can but that doesn’t always square with expectations of others. She got it in her head that an Arcadian Cafe by the canal would magically fill the empty coffers, and that my skills would provide the necessary design; but when i asked point-blank questions, and suggested less expensive transitions - she closed off communication. It has to be an extremely difficult time for her, and my heart feels sorrow for her suffering, yet i am doing her no favor to encourage a project which she will not discuss, or confront alternatives.

Another leader in the local economy also found himself upside down by a change in location that was bogged down by severe restrictions of movement during the Covid-19 crisis, and now finds himself facing a deadline which cannot be comfortable any more than the arrival of the baby due for my other friend. It seems deadlines are all around us and not necessarily providing efficiency or good service. We have grown so far from the necessities, people no longer realize just how little is required to exist: food, clothing, shelter - what am i missing? Okay - i’ll give ya’ that · it would be nice to have the internet as part of our future; but is it really essential. i have spent one month out of the past year without internet, i am neither scarred, nor deprived. The people i’d like to communicate with are occupied, or i have mistaken the interest they had in maintaining a relationship with me. As to the language barrier - having translator has just made me lazy and arrogant. I attribute misunderstandings to my own impoliteness and lack of sensitivity - if you want to understand another, there are always means to be understood and ways to learn what the other requires or is trying to say.

Our world is lacking substance, more and more. I watch the farmer couple next door - more like i hear them over the wall · their life is rich and full, their family stays close and they love their babies’ babies. There is dissonance and tragedy, as there is in everyone’s life, nor are they immune to the impulse to spur their children toward better lives - one had the largest spa in the resort town i live in. However we spoke just after the shutdown from Covid-19, and he owned there was no time to see his parents when business was full. If time is the ultimate resource - he is now richer than he was before the shutdown. His father is indefatigable - out the door by 5:30 am; i’ve tried working with this man 5 years my senior, and i am humbled by my own poor choices which prevent me from making any real contribution to his work. For what? - i have a pension, and Social Security. It is not affordable to live on Social Security in the country i grew up in, were that that is the only impediment to living in the U.S. The corporate thugs have so surrounded the mind of the common man, i doubt if they could tell you up from down without turning on a screen of some sort.

However this is not a life i recommend to everyone; for the longest time i deluded myself into believing i was on a creative mission - that what i sacrificed years out of my life would eventually be recognized for the sincerity with which they were created. It isn’t gonna happen, and no amount of wish fulfillment is going to alter my work’s role in the history of culture from this obscure annotation in a digital media that will soon become indecipherable from shoe leather - if you can find that anywhere anymore. Gucci, i know sells shoes, but i’ve worn hand-me-downs loafers from my step-father the CEO, and i’d wager my 15 year-old, thrice re-soled sandals from Bali got more miles left in them than a brand new pair of Gucci loafers. I know my neighbor certainly has more years ahead of him, than i - but how do i translate that simple fact into cogent prose that might allow a younger member of the audience to repent their wayward consumer addictions and sedentary lifestyle and find a farmer they can intern with who is not spraying her field with glyphosate, and has incorporated yet?

I consider myself lucky to have been bypassed by the dream-machine; to have been forced to find meaning in dreams more basic and real than fame or fortune. I look at the work of known artists out of the modern epoch and find it staid and formulaic. I can barely sit in a gallery and listen to the effete discuss the finer points of any art on a wall, and it is a rare privilege to find anything reflecting a tangible struggle within the delicate ego-informed work that passes for avant-garde (having said that - know it is more a criticism of my own work than any honest evaluation of another’s efforts. The pinched, dried out lump that used to be my loving heart has been transformed into a hardened shell of delusional self protection waiting for the spark of life to vacate withered frame - Leonard Cohen had the courage to cleave to a spiritual discipline; whatever pact Bob Dylan at the crossroads, he’s honored by cranking out albums at 79 years of age, i’ll be lucky if i get through my bicycle circuit without accusing some unsuspecting passerby of committing every heinous act my tired mind conceives but won’t hold up to the light of reason long enough to verify - fact from fancy · i guess we all have our cross to bear .  ..  ···

jts 28/05/2020

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com 

reprinted with permission - all rights reserved

 ∞ 

Extinction Chronicles - 270520 ·

Today, i did not ride my bicycle - maybe the first time in a month · maybe less; i stopped keeping track when i could no longer run; i really loved running, especially low tide between Santa Monica and Manhattan beach piers, earlier in the day the better: this in the days after the iPod shrank and i was still addicted to music. I am still addicted to music, but like whiskey, i have figured out how to sip and savor - if i could figure out how to do that with women - i may have figured out the secret of life itself. So we’re all clear on the concept, y’all understand that previous sentence is braggadocio and bullshit mixed with a dollop of liquid courage designed to aggrandize myself in your mind while diminishing my faults in my own - so we’re all clear · nothing quite like the end of life to clarify things. But man, what a good time we’ve had; look around you - somewhere close by there is a lovely woman doing some lovely thing, weather getting hotter, or colder depending on what pisses you off most, something in the background · just below the threshold of earshot, but interesting enough to get your attention; then that thing you thinking about when you woke up today, but forgot with your coffee.

I’m in a challenge with my neighbors about when and how to cool the walls off without making it obvious. It it is too obvious, then i’m made for weak-kneed foreigner currying favor, but if it remains at the threshold of simple kindness, it is no more than dharma - which g_d knows there ain’t near enough on the planet to carry us into nirvana, no matter what the tabloids say. What’s weird is how the “Lotus Eaters” from Homer’s Ulysses so resemble the destination junkies of todays planetary dystopia. I keep trying to imagine that i’m the first person it occurred to to go here ________ (fill in the blank), only to find a well-heeled confederacy of, again forgive me ________ (fill in the blank). Invariably it’s not a congenial lot, ‘cause you never know who’s on the payroll of the 0.01% and who is just petitioning for a seat at the grownups table. The trillions of $’s busting the seams has to be giving fits to the interns at Harvard’s MBA program hoping to rope a dope for that shot at Maisey and all the comes with the dreams of a “Great Gatsby” whether it is understood as that or not.

What i love about Pop and his memory is his intransigence - invariably he took the high road when he’d had so many opportunities to be otherwise. He got kicked the curb twice by women he’d endeavored to aid - the 3rd just took his coin collection as payment for her indulgence of his dotage. Yeah, i know that sounds harsh and bitter - as though their behavior was noble and nurturing. We are not going to get out of this cul-de-sac by playing patty-cake with bullshit. “Quid pro quo, tit for tat, piss on a rat, get your ankle bit for that,” however you want to characterize this phase in the extinction of our DNA - jump right in when the troll in you wants to say directly what you disagree with about what i say, otherwise sit and wonder about what you cannot parse because of your twisted motivation - could i be anymore clear¿ This morning my father’s cousin posted a photo of himself and his family the year i was born. The photo was a family portrait on a lake near where my younger brother would “trim tab” his life as Buckminster Fuller might have described, but the synchronicity does not stop there: true story - i spent a day, a week with one of the mental giants of the “digital age” whose claim to fame was “working out the geometry” of Bucky’s Domes; “what he and i did, that is noteworthy, was to swap out a VW bug engine using a skateboard - everything else seems hyperbole meant to separate you from you “wherewithal” rather than unite the kingdom of Homo Sapien as was promised in the increasingly rotten apple ads. 

Where to go - like there is someplace to escape to · hahaha, or as they say in other parts of the world, jajaja · I guess as long as no one has a knee at my neck, i am okay with how i die. So how do i go about making sure that the other human beings i share this miraculous, but diabolically threatened world with have the same opportunity to either work toward her rescue or whore your soul for the sake of a few convenient shekels to moisten your lips with upon death ¿ that is a question ? It is only just past the witching hour - meaning: the sun is somewhere over the yard arm · an expression i reminded of by a woman who bet the farm i would mortgage my last years to clean lift her out of what she presumed would become her sepulcher at death with me in mute attendance - it didn’t happen and still i love her and wish her peaceful passage. But the only way it seems to make that possible is to attend to one’s one passing. Ma, it seems has lined that trajectory up from an early age and dedicated remarkable portions of her existence to making that transition - how shall we say · “just so”

I don’t forecast that in my passing - rather i would welcome attendance after the fact in anyone who considers these faint missals as worthy of the time it took to decipher; 1st out of the vault of the “knuckleheads” who tried to consigned the fate of an entire DNA strand to the hubris of a conceit known as the “singularity”. This supposed point in human history where logic prevails over sentiment without the requisite pain that is inherent to our species. From the first time a human ran to ground flesh because he/she understood stamina better than the flesh being sought. Kid yourself with your balance or your influence - your future is no less threatened by the inordinate stupidity of greed - kid yourself not · we as a feature on the planet face extermination of no uncertain extent without radical reevaluation of what is our responsibility to all around us - not with regards to how they benefit us · but how we benefit them; pay heed, or be gone - please i beg you ·

jts 27/05/2020

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com 

reprinted with permission - all rights reserved

 ∞ 

Extinction Chronicles - 260520 ·

Imagine being glib about the end of our species - imagine being anything but glib · i am what the self-help gurus describe as a “people-pleaser,” not that i am but it is easier for the classification that experts require in order to explain things to the non-experts. I say this because it pleases me to help old ladies across the road, give water to hot water buffalos and to jolly crying babies by making faces or distracting noises - here’s an irony · from what i’ve learned from experts diverting a child from its misery robs them of experiencing the fullness of their emotional terrain and trains them to seek comfort elsewhere than the solace that comes from mastering one’s own misery. Madame Paradox - she and i must have had a slam-bam-thank-you-mam history in some previous incarnation, because she do seem to haunt my every step in this life. And i’m not complaining, she’s far better company than the fake sojourners one gets seated next to on especially long flights. I know this mostly by my own failures as an excellent traveler : “A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving” - Lao Tzu · i wouldn’t even begin to know how to go about such a journey. These essays are as close as i have been able to get toward such adventure. I know i want to go wherever Zuké is not; he i have come to believe fancies himself as a “social engineer” of the 1st Order - elsewhys would he expend so much of his bandwidth determining who i should see and who should see me?

Love seems to be a completely foreign concept to Zuké and his Art Intel (AI) fb thugs on all accounts: from his initial betrayal of the band of brothers at Harvard to his total capitulation to the corporate overlords at DARPA - he could’a been a contenda’ - but became just another bum · soaked in greed and lavished in opulence. And i am no different, instead of greed i suck at the whiskey tit, and for opulence i claim time for my own. I’d like to think the difference is i care about people i’ve never met - the nurses and caregivers trading their lives and well being for a chance to give a light to your family dying from a malady that someone knows more about than they are saying, but lack simple gumption to declare - “i know this about that.” There is a fb friend who has been totally consumed by the fiction that Covid-19 is a “false-flag” operation and there is no foundation in fact for the death-count of millions that people cannot, or will not accept. What is frustrating to me, sitting here now writing into the “aether” is how avoidable all of our misery could be. It dumbfounds me how easily we are led to slaughter without a sideward glance at “how or why” - driven by fear and managed by greed?! where are our weapons - what is our reply?

If it was a brother or sister i struggled with for autonomy, which has been true for me in the past, i would say “fuck you very much, see you in the funny papers,” again. I would much rather by lying in the clover fields of romance, my hands wandering about the body of a lithesome broad who feels warmly toward me - only because i am sweet to her - not because i am obscenely wealthy and lack fear for any man, woman or child - but fear everything equally, (clinically known as Generalized Anxiety Disorder). In this world it is not unreasonable to be afraid, it is however, wrong to attribute your fear to another - no matter how fearsome · that other may be, and there are some straight-up ugly fuckers out there. And again with Mistress Paradox, they be the same pissants comprising 1% if the students in a room of 27 pre-pubescent adolescents, in any school, anywhere on the planet. The only difference being how each culture chooses to orient that maladaptive personality which is obviously, for lack of a better expression, “Nature, over nurture.” The trick will be to subvert the numbers “social engineers” have plucked to their advantage and to focus education for the benefit or the human rhizome, and geared toward mutual well being and survivability.

Profit is a fiction - you are going to die · period, end of sentence. Where i write right now is so hot, i cannot sleep without A/C; my neighbors do, so it can be done - but not by me. If i knew Dr. Faustus and found a way to that desk - i would ask how can i save my brethren · not because i am superior in character than Mssr bezos, but because i am less - my concept of “enlightened self-interest” includes the success of all those around me; not because i am superior, but because my intellect tells me without the success of most, there is no success for the least, and i am the least from what i can see by the behavior of those around me. Then again, “projection is a bitch, then you die” - A. Nonymous · the music i am listening to music of Trịnh Công Sơn is bringing tears to my eyes and i understand not a word of the lyrics. Nor can i explain why that is much less give a fuck if you do, or don’t understand such an absurd assertion.

The major advantage of the task i have set for myself is education, by whatever means. I don’t care much what you learn as long as you are earnest in your desire to discover something you did not know for certain before. There is a young woman on my fb feed who has gone over to the dark side and parrots only what she reads in the echo chamber zuké - in his conceit elects for her to see and support her position. I’d have been slapped silly trying that with Pop, however more gently he struck with age at his back - it still hurt. Why is that, when i am looking to amplify the good use of love as a strategy, recrimination and force insert themselves into the discussion, as though if i could intimidate your mind - you would succumb to the logic i bludgeon you with¿ that is a question? If we are to reach the survival milestone - it will take the same inchoate gesture that brings the heat-soaked grazing buffalo to the water trough, not because i dictated so, but because i learned to read the need of a creature i could not communicate with by language - not unlike casting my line out into this aether · thinking my logic useful; stranger things have happened - i know, only by my birth at this turn of human history, strange enough for me - i could give a fuck how odd it might be for you ·

like Mr. Dylan said, “I used to care, but things have changed.”

jts 26/05/2020

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com 

reprinted with permission - all rights reserved

 ∞ 

Extinction Chronicles - 250520 ·

Rent is paid, but the laundry ain’t done and there’s no one here but us chickens to do it. I really like riding my bicycle, and i shouldn’t say that too loud or g_d’s gonna hear me and take it away, just like she did my last three wives. Just as well, we weren’t as happy as we could’ve been and ya’ can’t fault someone for seeking greener pastures. What i’ve learned about myself is i’m a sucker for a damsel in distress, but not real good at picking the nurturing ones. Or i’m just figuring out that if a broad is running down the street with the cops chasing her - i should wait until i hear both sides. My folks were a pretty good fit by my reckoning; he was a Scorpio, she is Cancer; there was only 4 years difference in age, so they were of a cohort; pop was movie star handsome and ma was beauty queen ravishing, her biggest flaw would have to be an unexplainable lack of confidence that could only really be seen by her ceaseless demeaning commentary on everything around her - she elevates herself, by diminishing others. Pop was more put together than that; not that he didn’t have a few screws loose himself, but by and large he was generous of spirit and kind to strangers.

Our home was a cross between Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, and Mel Brooks’s “Young Frankenstein,” for example - they took pains to landscape the new home Pop bought on the GI bill, and Ma was very “artistic”, even selling many driftwood collages to friends and neighbors. So the house was an olive green to match the olive trees, set off nicely with shades of green accents - The front door was a fire engine Orange · if that’s a color. Ma was a consummate cook, and our food was nutritious and wholesome, she did not favor the packaged meals that were just coming online at the time. Meal times were mannered as much as that is possible with 3 sons and a daughter, just under the oldest son. My parents worked hard, my father taking 2, sometimes 3 jobs to support feet that would outgrow shoes before the shoes wore out - me, i did my best to help by not wearing shoes from the last day of school to the first if i could get away with it. Sports were an integral part of family life as were regular excursions to the beach just down the road.

Vacations were the highlight with each of the kids getting to spend a week or two at the Aunt Jane, and Uncle Dwayne’s house - and some time during the summer an extended drive to some remote campground, or rendezvous with the Daffins - old family friends · always a good time, because Nell played the guitar and knew Woody Guthrie, and Ed stood 6 foot 14 inches tall and knew how to gut a fish, which came in real handy if you were fishing on the Yuba River. But shit was shifting in Happy Town, the American War in Vietnam was claiming more lives and more money, racism and the gaping wound left at the end of the Civil War was tearing at the fabric of exceptionalism, the abortion of manifest destiny, and on top of everything something called “anonymous incineration” was being prepared for with periodic bells during school hours whereupon we would all drop what we were doing and climb under our desks to kiss our asses good-by. Eventually this took its toll and drove an irrevocable wedge into the brave marriage of Ma & Pa. Vacations were no longer rejuvenating, and we 6 travelers who had driven as far as Acapulco Mexico couldn’t even get down the mountain from the Sequoias without a knock down drag out “IT’S ALL YOUR FAULT!”

This particular eruption began as we were exciting the campground on our way back to civilization. The station wagon was packed and my younger brother and myself managed to wrangle a ride on the tailgate - which was not standard operating procedure · but not so unusual that it distracted from the conflagration being fanned by both sides of the divide. I only just now realize how painful it must have been for the older siblings in their normally choice seats just behind the driver, but for my brother and i it was the “E” ticket from Disneyland on steroids. At first we dangled our feet with impunity, waiting for the inevitable “Get back in your seat” that never came, so like any enterprising lads on the ride of a lifetime, we giggled at each other and continued to bounce our feet off the curving pavement rolling out behind us like the ultimate magic carpet ride. And to be fair to our parents and our upbringing, when the road straightened and the car accelerated past 60 mph. eventually transitioning onto the 99 South, we took advantage of common sense and seated ourselves safely in the rear facing seat, probably making funny faces at the cars behind us trying to point out our predicament to our otherwise exemplary parents. 

Well, things cooled off in the cockpit, and the gas tank required attention; Pop raised the tailgate and may have even commended we two brothers for our good sense in taking our seat and fastening our seat belts. It was a pit stop, and Pop and i ended up in the latrine standing side by side, taking care of business - when pop looked over at me, in a kindly way · without a trace of the anger he and ma had been exchanging down the mountain for more than an hour, and said to me “your mother and I are not going to make it.” What was i gonna say, “pop, you know i’m 11 right?” Years later, many quarrels more under the bridge, between: he & ma; he & i; ma & i; i and everybody i ever met .  .. i realized with certainty that he had paid me the highest compliment i may ever receive. He as a man - a wounded man reached out to someone he trusted and confided pain; he shared this with confidence knowing me as his son and as a human being with his own history. I am not betraying him by sharing this story with you, for i’ve shared it before and have yet to be struck down by lightning. It was a lesson to me on the importance of simple clear communication during a time of difficulty and pain - i was not burdened or marred for life, rather his gesture helped me to be more whole and become a person who can share suffering with those he loves and those he tries to lo ve.  

jts 25/05/2020

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com 

reprinted with permission - all rights reserved

 ∞ 

Extinction Chronicles - 240520 ·

Well yesterday’s writing was a crock of shit; i almost feel i should apologize - but then i think i should apologize for everything i can’t fix or make right (whatever the fuck right is). Today i listened to Bob Dylan discuss literature as it pertains to his Nobel Prize. He shared three primary influences: “Moby Dick” - Herman Melville, “All Quiet On the Western Front” - Eric Maria Remarque, and “The Odyssey” - attributed to Homer. It should tell me something about myself as a man of letters, that i know so little about “All Quiet On the Western Front,” confusing it with “Birth of a Nation,” no irony on ‘merican indoctrination with that disclosure. Today the theme seems to be shame, probably from an image in last night’s dream involving a gay Rasputin in my past informing my life today: C.G. Jung - “until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” I am no more conflicted than any adult male without a country, facing grave doubts about every aspect of his upbringing and seemingly besot on all sides by an inexplicable sense of shame. 

What is fascinating about Mr. Dylan’s conversation about why his work is considered literature was a laser-like focus on the points of stories and how they relate to his work - a universality if you will. I veer from hero worship having a brother seems as determined to destroy my self-image as i am to build the self-image of the brother below me - sanctimony was a blood sport where i grew up, so i mistrust either image - but Bob Dylan i trust · the brother of the boyhood chum who first introduced me to Bob Dylan’s music, later ruptured my right eardrum with a tossed firecracker somewhere around age 10 or 11. I have yet to find a way to weave that personal experience into as useful a narrative as Mr. Dylan has found for the stories he read around that same age. My father was a high school English teacher and had me reading Herman Hesse’s “Siddhartha” a few years later, so it is not as though i lack the literary influence but haven’t yet found a way to connect the homilies that made up so much of my conversations with my father to the daily confusion of my existence - save what you read before you.

Ego is a bitch and a useless handmaiden - and humility is nearly as worthless. It’s that paradox again - ma has been one of the most self-involved humans in my 65 year’s experience, and i mean that as the Aussies might, “in the nicest possible way.” Yet of the last of her many studies as a water colorist of not inconsiderable talent, was to try and reconcile what she found in the emerging images of the Hubble telescope via National Geographic by what her own hands and heart might translate. It is that sort of courage of her soul to peer into the unknown i cannot escape regardless how much animosity about her own life experience she unfairly attempted to attribute to my existence - this much i know, i am not alone with that conundrum. How could she look so attentively into the universe and fight so hard not to see the “i” who only wished to be loved¿? Back to the theme of the day “shame” - what is it, and how is it that those who would murder an adolescent elephant in the wild for a photo-op posses no shame?

I do not know how to animate my outrage about the extinction of our entire species into cogent prose that passes the “goombah” test - for anyone to read and recognize their relationship to the story. I operate at an instinctive level, but have been told by professionals about instincts; it has been said that my “instincts stink.” I accept this opinion of another as best i can and press on from a biological imperative - apparently my time is not yet nigh. So how am i to leverage a seemingly inexhaustible gift for pissing people off, coupled with a seemingly inexhaustible capacity for feeling the suffering of others to benefit a “dying species”? That is a fair question which has apparently been conveniently excised from the internet “Super Highway” by the recent absence of the voice of reason - Greta Thunberg · Am i the only person on the planet that feels the absence of this courageous young woman willing to assume the fate a species that would apparently shame her by ignoring her rather than accept her solidarity with all of us who want to live - from whence comes the fascist proclivities of Sweden would be my next question. 

Just like Yemen became the focal point for starving children, the Saudis became the “butt boys” for the Empresarios extraordinaire mssrs d_rump & cmpny, or vice-versa; i always get the two confused - who’s doing whom. We are not dogs, and i refuse to lay belly up for a gaggle of punks in pinstripe suits and large withdrawal balances, while brethren close and closer to them suffer death and mismanaged healthcare due to avarice and greed - so shoot me · i care. That i am to die alone and unloved is no longer important, but of every importance - because the harder i laugh at those around me arranging their entire lives based on how many likes they can acquire, the lower my “stock” sinks. My family won’t abide my renegade ways and i doubt from the peaks of the Himalayas to the ports of of Montevideo that my conceit will ever be forgiven - so i plunge forward and hope somehow, one word, one gesture - one disrespect will not be lost on a population that has clean forgot how to respect itself · neenerneenerneener .  ..  ··· 

jts 24/05/2020

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com 

reprinted with permission - all rights reserved

 ∞ 

Extinction Chronicles - 230520 ·

Tomorrow is Bob Dylan’s Birthday - i was going to try and give him a surprise birthday party · but how do surprise someone who has “heard it all,” and i believe him when he says that. When i was studying literature instead of running after it like a runaway bus, the same talking heads that are telling us it’s joey biden or nothing were assuring we students of literature that there are no more than 6 stories in the history of the world and everything you read is a variation of one sort or another - i think it may be true, mostly because i may have married three of them. When i moved to the city i live in it was hot, and got hotter - so i researched “how do you cool public places” and found a ceramic tube construction that fits into an inverted arch that can reduce the temperature of multiple meters by considerable degrees C/orF. They scoffed at the time, as tourist i had no rank and as an expat i had no friend. 10 months later, degrees warmer than this time last year, not quite a tourist but definitely not an expat - this design would have contributed substantially to a cooler city by degrees - what Buckminster Fuller described as “trim tab” technology. I am no longer offended by the stupidity of those around me, nor the narrow self interests of those who would reform a nation that kicked the ass of the most powerful military force in the world at the time, (now supposedly 10x as lethal - but like my former loving wives, likely 10x as, (let me pick this expression carefully) ______ you fill in the blank, i lack the imagination necessary. 

Just like city i live in now lusting the profits of then - the senseless building continues · for a guest that nobody wants, but money everybody thinks they need. Just like the 6 stories i tried to share the logic of the lost opportunity to cool the city i live, but also question the presumed advantage of legions of tourists spending copious amounts of fictitious currency spreading suspect germs and undermining discipline that rendered the invulnerable - vanquished. As a child with the gift of an “encyclopedia britannica” at my beck and call - the Maginot Line was a perfect study for how to protect oneself from a world that grew more dangerous each moment one grew older - a strategy developed by the French “talking heads” at the end of “WWI” - the war to end all wars · yuk, yuk, yuk. etc., etc., etc. .. ···: The thinking of those responsible at the time and expense paid to the “principals” centered around an impermeable fortification capable of deflecting any invasion of the Huns, the Hungarians, the Austro-Hungarians . .. A’ lack no one envisioned herr fureur - petite, mais Magnifique · “fuck ‘em, we’ll just go around the impermeable “Maginot Line” - which he did, sort of like joey biden circumvented the “roadblock of the day” · “medicare for all would dishonor the death of my son” - said no on · ever.

But just like the irrational rejection of a rationally cooling prospect by an “unvetted” source - we stumble forward · alienated from each other for the dumbest of reasons: aping the elite conventional wisdom, “only the worthy remain comfortable” In the last of my conversations with Pop, he really enjoyed driving the point home, “Boy am i glad i’m old.” In my abundant conceit at the time - i’d jolly him along to the next happy expression i could elicit; today, sitting in insufferable late afternoon heat of where i live and what i have to work with, i continue to gain appreciation for his grasp of the “6 Stories” to be told. Today is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s birthday - “It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories; instead of theories to suit facts.” The fact is i am on the back slope of my “afternoon” figuratively and literally. Compared to the “6 Stories” i have participated in or have witnessed from a distance, delusion is what i face next. The idea the non-existence does not fill me with terror like every living entity on the planet regardless of its state of sensatus.

My ear and ear canal is and had been rotting in my head for over a year - and still the organism i inhabit fights for stasis - much like the mind that claims domain over its periphery. I like it more each day knowing my delusion of control for the fiction it represents to all life on the sphere of life i have grown so fond of - Terra 3 from Sol · i have met a family and a man who has named daughters in the same vein, Tem & Sol. I am not alone in knowing how close we Sapiens are to extinction. The anonymous vacant partner i chided in my last post is reading text about our kind, “Sapiens” There are people across our planet who are struggling, not just with the unnecessary interruption of a blood born malady promulgated by a nexus with the limited site of a pharmacological manipulation that no longer has any relation to health but is entirely enslaved to a profit motive of destructive consequence - that as Leonard Cohen stated so clearly, “Everybody Knows.” I’d like to say to you as some sort of vindication, i am glad to go -  but i’d be lying.

Pop, raised me right and would not allow my tongue to spout, what he described throughout my life as “Bullshit” with a capital “B.” Pop was tasked mightily in his last months - almost as though g_d in her infinite wisdom heard his imprecation - “what ?” · and gave hime surcease. My father was brave, and it was my privilege to fight my way to his side, only to find he needed me not - at all. This is a suspicion i grew up believing no matter how he tried to make me feel useful. It is unfortunately all i have to leave you who read searching for reason during an epoch seemingly designed to demonstrate - there is no why for, or why not · only greed. I just spent 5 minutes of my life i will never get back trying to capture an example of the greed that is being shoved down your throats, and don’t i feel stupid giving one more second to agencies determined to enslave you, by transplanting words onto loving speech i share loving with you that has no other intention that diverting you to your lowest possible achievement . fuck ‘em, they are dumber than i, and clearly that is pretty stupid to hold out hope to a dead branch of DNA that would rather titillate than educate itself - let me know how that worked out for you and your generations  

jts 23/05/2020

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com 

reprinted with permission - all rights reserved

 ∞ 

Extinction Chronicles - 220520 ·

I just read a fascinating 1st hand account of a drug transaction that took place in a time and place nearly identical to one i know of with entirely different results. To distinguish between the two, we’ll call them D1 and D2. D1 is the account that i just read which is plausible in every way. I know the terrain, the landmarks and the types of characters involved and can fully understand why it was called off - D2 is more personal and involves hubris, ignorance, greed and betrayal; more like a cluster-fuck than a business deal. Sitting here just now preparing to relive the event i realize just how lucky i was to get taken for a ride at an early age rather than spend many years believing i am smarter than i actually am - so rather than tread water in some godforsaken memory · what useful personal experience can i plumb for the general benefit of you the reader¿ To begin with, am i abandoning the comparison of two correlates from envy? Do i secretly wish i possessed the acumen of D1 and rue my dealing debacle and rather than own that envy, slough it off like existential dead skin with sanctimony and high-handedness · that’s a fair question if i am to ask you the reader to use the lens of literature as a means to access the darker recesses of the human soul before it is entirely extinguished.

I feel better already - so fuck you · I watched the backside of woman wash vegetables today who had blown me off like so much dead skin. She is shapely and to ignore the view i was given in our short chat would demean the pleasure of a woman’s body - a pleasure that has animated a huge portion of my life · thank you dear, whether you were aware and just teasing me, as all beautiful women seem to do, or you were entirely oblivious to the pleasure you gave me watching your hips undulate in your brief (& i hate to say it only for the discomfort i know that cloth brings me) polyester garment. When i began this essay, i could barely see for the oppression breath in a tropical climate seems to do to my being. Normally i am in the bathtub soaking in cold water before noon, but today due to obligations - real and imagined i was out peddling in the lethal part of the day - and just to show you how fucking stupid that is, i left my hat sitting by my chair after a heavenly mango smoothie laced with rum, only to realize in the healthier part of the morning i clean forgot the hibiscus when i bought my eucalyptus and peppermint essential oils to fuck with the dust mites and the rats.

Sometimes it frightens me to realize what a diabolical asshole i can be - when i choose. But fun is simply the wiser strategy - bar none · Because of the kindness of a providence that could arrange a mango smoothie laced with rum seems to expand to temporary custody of a misshapen 

chapeau important to no one but me and any yutz that might covet such a loss. Upon my return to sanctuary, never mind how temporary - i could barely walk, much less think, or think about writing, yet here we are. My vittles are courtesy of the same establishment i abandoned the cover to my addled pate; my backup jug of water is in place and my miraculous farmer neighbors are in custody of a gift of seeds from the same kindly spirit that would laugh at my interest while in the next breath undulate her comely shape at me (in my secret life) while we spoke of nothing in particular - tell me life is not fucking amazing. I smoked entirely too much today, but know where i can find hibiscus to add to my DIY expectorant that seems to help me through most inflammation. 

I discovered i have not acclimated to ambient temperature for sleep, and so when it turned hot if found myself attending old wounds - laugh if you must. Almost a year ago i had a near death experience in what i had understood up until that point a placid South China Sea. My daily excursions into the mother salt water was accompanied by change of season waves that drove me under and onto the shore like the particle of sand i am. At age 10 or so, a tossed firecracker ruptured my right eardrum, and moisture and hearing seemed henceforth rended one from the other. It has taken almost a year to evacuate the sea water from my canal which was exacerbated the moment i resorted to A/C to sleep. Go the fuck ahead and tell me “everything is not connected” and i will wait until your back is turned and i am alone with my thoughts to laugh, mirthlessly perhaps, but laugh nonetheless at your .  ..  ··· ________ fill in the blank.

 I had a heartening conversation with a brave spirit this morning - the same kind spirit i forgot to buy hibiscus from, but also somehow managed to remind her of some neglected strategy - go ahead, tell me again how as Master Leonardo Da Vinci said “everything is connected” is some snarky bullshit expression designed by the communists to deprive you of your liberty, and again in the privacy of my own thoughts i will turn my back to you and either pray for your soul or regal in your monumental hubris - likely depending on the time of day, ambient temperature and exactly how much hind-tit i had to suck on to get where i was going. Some days it’s easier to get places than others. What is harder is to stay focused on the more meaningful tasks - “how can i help you to get better at helping others?” I don’t know and as i lean back in my chair, i  feel the sweltering heat laugh at my solitude, and i wonder all the more¿ who is here to rescue me, if i am not here to rescue you?

jts 22/05/2020

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com 

reprinted with permission - all rights reserved

 ∞