Extinction Chronicles - 310520 ·

Memorial Day is one of those hinkey holidays like president’s day that used to have a date, but got shifted for commercial reasons - but don’t take my word for it · do your own research. I remember one Memorial Day, which 40 years or so later, remains memorable. I was back in Costa Mesa after conquering the art world of NYC, or so i’d convinced myself at the time & apparently for a long time afterwords; living in a house that was a nexus for many transitional adventures. I was working for “Crazy Cliff”, one of many characters that were about to enter and exit my life at the time. He was older and mysterious having been in prison for “marijuana sales” but living in his Mommy’s house in tony part of Eastside Costa Mesa. Cliff was the character “King Rat” from James Clavell’s novel, only as a felon he’d never served in the military. His business was landscaping and junk, with enough contracts to keep afloat and his right hand man in beer - i was considered temporary, and barely made enough for beer. This particular Memorial day after he’d set up is right hand man, he and i drove in his 54’ faded Teal Green 3/4 ton Chevy to one of the rental yards - i covet that truck to this day, may have even driven it once or twice. 

The only thing about Cliff that you could count on, was the unexpected - that morning was no different. We picked up a contraption that was the weirdest fucking lawnmower i’d ever seen, with metal wheels about 3 feet(1 meter) in diameter in the rear and some kind of swivel mechanism on the handles that made no sense at the time. Cliff liked being mysterious and when asked questions would just bulge his eyes out and look up into your face, because he was short and pugnacious in a gregarious kind of way. We drove some distance out of Costa Mesa using mostly alleys, and pulled up to a gate, yanking the contraption off the back. With some trouble, he was able to push the gate open to reveal a yard about the size of a little league diamond 60 feet(20 meters) to a side, could’a been smaller, but not by much. The weeds in the yard were foxtails taller than Cliff. The trick to operating this contraption was to push down on the handle such that rotary blades could be gently dropped onto the offending vegetation in such a way, one did not stall the engine or jam the rotors. It was late may, so the vegetation was no longer green, but early enough in the day for much of it close to the ground to me moist enough to gum up the rotors or stall the motor - 2 cycle engines have a rope crank, and i won’t try to explain what that means to all you, neophytes in the audience. 

Cliff made a cursory demonstration and was out the gate to be gone for the rest of that very long Memorial day. The owner of the house was a kindly sort and took pity after a 1/3 got cut to ground and brought water. I was goofy strong in those halcyon days, and actually got closer to completion prior to exhaustion than i would have imagined before this experience - like the man said “you gotta know your limitations.” I don’t remember the particulars, whether the debris was picked up, if it was dark before Cliff got back or whether i woke up the next day or not. He got the weirdest contracts: one time dragging trimmed Cypress off the glass enclosed patio where Coast Highway is no longer Corona Del Mar except the patio was lined by the early version of astro-turf and the owner was retentive to beat the band; another occasion a line of apartment yards fronting Susan Street in Santa Ana, easily 3 football fields in length, or it just seemed that way. Cliff was a character and was the first in my memory to suggest adversity was a great advantage rather than a curse to the idyllic Lotus Eating quest for the perfect high of the time. His expression, from his guru, (talk about your cognitive dissonance) problems are like traction in mud - they give you something to dig into.

Ultimately, Cliff was a Con to the bone because everything was based on keeping the other in the dark to your advantage, or retrieve castoffs he wanted to decorate his Mommy’s house with. I have to distrust those who are not forthright - who will not declare up front the agenda and intent, but i learned a lot from Cliff, like learning to see behind the curtain. In his case it was a 57 T-Bird 2-tone Coupe that you could just see through the smudged window of the garage in the back, if you moved the flower pot with the plastic flowers on the shelf full of pots of plastic flowers. Would that were all i learned from Cliff, or that i had learned more than i could have, my life may have been much different, but the story doesn’t end there. Some time later in the company of my new paramour who had either just become, or was to become my 1st wife, we visited Cliff, thinking she might be impressed by the caliber of people i knew - little did i know. In our short visit, Cliff proceeded to cock-block me and ask Joy point blank, “are you free and unencumbered.” I must have been in the thrall of both to ignore her affirmative response, but too hungry and ignorant to let her out at the next corner.

Instead we drove back to my back bedroom of a duplex the creative owner had divided into a triplex where upon she turned to me on the couch and said, “what can you tell me about Cliff?” In those days i had much repressed emotion that i didn’t pay much attention to, and little restraint on my behavior. The only response i could muster was to turn away from her and pivot in my seat to hit the wall with my closed fist. I had grown up in the modern houses whose walls were gypsum board with much give, but this house was old school - lathe and plaster and my outer 5th Metacarpal of my right hand gave way before the wall did. By the time this particular learning experience reached a conclusion i had married and divorced Joy, broke the same bone on my left hand and while it was in a cast rent a gash in my right arm requiring 60 stitches - 1976 was a long year, but ultimately very useful for distinguishing fact from fiction when faced with wants vs facts. It is difficult anymore to supersede the behavior of people with a desire born of an unexamined desire or belief. I may not want to die, but i am going to - i may want to kill you, but that doesn’t require me to act on that impulse. It is a good thing to live deep within one’s soul for there are few people who give a fuck about what they are experiencing, much less have an active interest in your understanding of the world - peace and love people · everything else is bullshit.

jts 31/05/2020

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com 

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Extinction Chronicles - 300520 ·

For two days i have written about problematic things, and for two days i have not posted - so for all my disclaimers to the contrary, i balk at sharing some things, or i process shit differently · and beat myself up for being different. Anymore, i’m not sure, and i feel safer there than with the conviction i listen to and watch in the world. My parents were both teachers, for a pa a vocation; ma, an escape pod. Hers was a torturous experience teaching art to the well-heeled children of Newport Beach, CA.; pa’s last transition included his “poetry class” coming to the locked facility where he was deemed safe from his “diagnosed” non compos mentis state of mind. He loved the process of helping others to find their passion - ma struggled with spoiled children who didn’t appreciate the opportunity she provided them to expand their horizons. He crashed into a low water-dam for the “designed-accessible” shower his next to last domicile had provided. Ma quit washing dishes about 15 years ago, and from what news i can gather from my passive-aggressive siblings with a penchant for hoarding news, she fares well in a Covid-19 high-risk old people place for the well-heeled.

Mark Twain said somewhere, and i’ve never been able to find where in hyper-text “those things I despise most in others, I find in myself to a greater or lesser degree.” And like Madam Paradox and her minion, this poses thorny issues each time i am inclined to point the “fickled-finger-of—fuck-off-and-die” at D_rump and his spiral descent into infamy. Much less my siblings whom i’ve deemed too toxic with whom to tarry, but find dislodging from the heart a cavernous task. Mostly because i find their echoes in each challenging relation, i’d rather not have. It is at precisely that locus where shit gets dodgy, for it is not the person i am resisting, but the aspect of my own unpalatable history which eludes resolution. Yet Madam Paradox dictates - non-acceptance is surrender to the lord god Ego. I think pop was hot on the trail when he was committed to a locked facility - Fun is the answer, for from fun, follows happiness. I am certain master Thich Nhat Hanh is enjoying a far more profound happiness with his measured breathing and relentless facing of facts, but still - a shot of good bourbon goes a long way in the struggle for joy.

Name of my first wife - Joy; that should give you a clue how much of a misnomer names can be. “Life” for example in the dictionary, “the condition that distinguishes animals and plants from inorganic matter, including the capacity for growth, reproduction, functional activity and continual change prior to death.” I’m not going to get tedious with a blow by blow contradiction, but to say that a rock does not grow, even if it grows smaller, or that if you cleave it just so, there are two where there was one, or that a step on a cathedral floor has no significant place in the universe - if anything · a rock like an irrational number will reduce itself to its constituent matter, but never be destroyed. “Newton’s Law of Conservation of Mass.” What in the world would suggest that we humans, or living matter would behave any differently than inanimate matter¿ that’s a question.?

If anything the intrusion of consciousness into the equation seems to render cogent creatures far dumber than their insentient counterparts who have no trouble with accepting their role in a chaotic universe; transitioning to different functions - entirely at peace with a single rule of the universe · “change is constant.” While we mortals make haste to preserve the unpreservable with myth and money as our primary levers to alter the inalterable · to stop change. This goofy ambition, so close to my heart as to condemn me to a life of carving 3-Dimensional objects i cannot see with my uniquely 2-Dimensional eyesight; small wonder i would hanker for a the hand of Madam Paradox - though she has exposed me repeatedly for the charlatan i am, and as which i will likely die · lucky me. So if life is all smoke and mirrors with each of us popping in and out the the other’s lives as though our presence has significance - who’s to say we don’t. Why is not possible that some curious youth didn’t read some editions of the “Extinction Chronicles” and decide for themself - “no i am not doomed” · it is a phantasmagoria and there is not determined outcome, but death .  ..  ···

Which according to Newton’s Law of “Conservation of Mass” and myself being comprised of mass, with a sentient twist cannot perish and so need no armature of myth or money to hold me aloft in the cosmos¿ it’s a fair question, however unlikely to be answered in this or any other chronicle found here on earth or in our hiccup of time. I will say, given the torment of the last two posts - it is a relief to once again find fun in the act of asking questions, questions without answers, but questions all the same. Now whether to move to Hue, or remain in the land of delusional hyper-entrepreneurial “build-it-and-the-will-come-and-destroy-5-centuries-of-agrarian-solidarity”, i don’t know. I do know when the borders open and the capitalists are reunited with their capital, it will be very difficult for the local farmers to resist the rampant speculation that breeds the blood-in-the-water behavior of every greedy soul that has walked the surface of our planet, and i know i’d rather be in the arms of a loving woman who admires the miles i’ve managed to endure with my unconventional approach to growth as pertains the species - so what am i gonna do · change the rhythm of the “Gimme, Gimme Tango” or find a sweetheart that wants to teach me how to grow ginger and turmeric for our romantic dinners - tough call · eh ¿? that’s not really a question .  .. ··· ciao baby, see ya’ in the funny papers.

jts 30/05/2020

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com 

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Extinction Chronicles - 290520 ·

Drinking my morning coffee and having my 1st cigarette of the day - i could not locate my walking stick and after a 1st, 2nd and 3rd search of the house · assumed the worst. My neighbor Mr. Tranh, was minding his own business and about to begin his day’s labor; I had to share my pain with somebody, he was it. I couldn’t contain my anguish and sweeping up the debris of the shedding tree was not enough to banish the evil suspicion that because i couldn’t find my walking stick, it thereby had to have been stolen by some hateful wretch who coveted my labor and wanted me to know how unwelcome i am Vietnam · i can only apologize for my unfair accusation about all the people of Vietnam. This meanness was born of an unwillingness to peer into the recesses of my own soul and confront the pettiness of my being and the scope of my own fears. And as Dr. “Mac” MacO’lash might have said to me - “well that’s kind of mean”

What began as a hideous day with fears about an entire nation ended with an exquisite downpour on the porch of my kind neighbors - the same people i as much as accused of stealing my conceit, as i had judged determined to vanquish me from this land of mystery. Nor is it the first time in my history i have experienced such irrational threat: driving to NYC, 1st or 2nd time i don’t remember - what i do remember is sitting in the passenger seat of a “cooperatively rented conveyance” at the apogee of the counter-culture entirely certain that the 10 or so other human beings reacting unfavorably to my obnoxious fear and contrary nature were arrayed and prepared to set my out of the van at the earliest opportunity. Sitting here now - i realize that my fears at that time echoed earlier journey’s whereupon older siblings in greater solidarity, excluded me and made clear my unwelcome · and today i have a younger sibling who has taken umbrage to my non-responsiveness to banking queries has, again “shut me out.” Not because he is a vicious mean spirited human being, but because he is approximating the feeling he experienced by not hearing from me in a timely manner about fiduciary concerns that he had kindly undertaken on my behalf.

“If you think everything is someone else’s fault, your will suffer a lot; when you realize that everything springs only from yourself, you will learn both peace and joy.” - 14 Dalai Lama · Man, when you’re right, you’re right. How do you argue with the facts. There is also talk about radical accountability, as an inveterate “free thinker” i have much to account for - and teasing guilt from shame is not always clear. I am, and have been in a great deal of pain for a very long time; i have yet to learn how to distinguish emotional from the physical. I know from personal experience that depression can animate physical distress, not just from my own experience but listening the to the stories of others as we try to understand our shared contours. Couple that with a righteous fury toward a family that has committed betrayals that were inexcusable as a unit, but entirely “passable” as grown ass adults. For example - left 4 years of drawings, as fine as i could make in a flat file within the jurisdiction of a mother who could barely stand my birth, much less my existence.

My eldest brother when the time came accused me of “living off the fat of the land” expecting to find my work in tact where i had left it.” That is an injustice that i must swallow for the vanity of a man that has turned his back to me from the time i squalled like a stuck pig at the torment he felt was my lot as the younger “identified patient” on the other side of his cloying and as vain as my beautiful mother could ever be if she lived to a “hundred” - she is 92 and going well in the midst of a viral epidemic · she has good teeth, the only useful thing my sister ever shared with me about our mutual upbringing, floss your teeth. I sustained myself growing up with “mea culpa”, but as i near my intersection with the great beyond, it lacks nutrients. What i struggle for in my end days is usefulness, either with words, actions or both. I would like to nurture you as much as i may with what patience i have left, yet i have learned at a late date - it is a good thing to “leave the table when love is no longer being served.” - Nina Simone.

So what to do - there has been a blessed rain storm today that has blunted the cruel heat that regardless of how acclimatized you might be, by birth or discipline will be become only more lethal as time marches across our once benign planet. I am not reconciled to this outcome, no matter how you dress it up as “development” or ______ fill in the blank: stupid people are making book on how stupid you are, and if that is not the height of folly, i don’t know what is. I have few years left - i would prefer they be spent in the loving embrace of one i can adore - the prospects are not good. The locals view me with patience and tolerance, because they have a war torn logic that separates the lethal, from the bullshit - it is what i love about VN. Whether that translates into a companionship with some loving other that can look past my decrepitude to the earnest lad still wondering where his mother’s hand went on the 1st day of school is anybody’s guess  - i know i am still wondering. 

jts 29/05/2020

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com 

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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 

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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

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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

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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

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