Extinction Chronicles - 100620 ·

Where to begin - the cow was left to trim the last of the peanut crop and my genial nature wanted water for her · the bucket was stolen from her station before i could retrieve it in the morning, (returned the following day). That’s how my day started after a fretful night hoping to resolve shit started by others, but waking to know for certain the problem resides entirely within my “mortal coil.” - oh Joy.! Yet here i sit a scant 10 hours later, happy as a pig in mud for no other reason than to be able to offer the same cow more water in another bucket i don’t even own. I tried, this morning to replace the one stolen, but could not easily locate the “object of my desire” though i am certain there are 100’s if not thousands within a good golf swing from where i live. Just now i am occupied by mightier concerns, like how to lay into as many seams of the “drop roof” with peppermint essential oil onto the high ceilings of my aged but rat infested villa in the oh-so-tony-zip-code-of-Hoi-An.

Yet, despite the theft of a water bucket i did not own, used mostly for the moistening of a water buffalo that may, or may not have been thirsty - i am delivered. The cow came back and her driver allowed me to share tobacco with him. I lacked the existential courage to leave a second bucket to be pilfered but do not feel all that bad about it. The joy of knowing my friend the cow knew i wanted her to slack her thirst in the midst of cultural confusion that includes the “greed” of destination junkies for rice field views of the 3rd world to assuage their unexamined guilt about propagating exploitation as a survival strategy was trumped. 

So much so, i feel no guilt, or very little for shorting you the 2nd paragraph of a chronicle which is unwelcome and un acknowledged as much as the years of drawings i sweated bullets to produce only to have stolen by unconscious members of my own family for apparently no better reason than “i am crazy” - go figure. The heat is oppressive where i think i have chosen to die. The best looking women are considering their mates in a far more biologically savvy metric than any broad i ever met in any Orange County, or U.S. bar looking for the right “genes” for her oh-so-precious ovulation. And i wish them all the best; from the few families that have allowed me to peer further than the mercantile stand that tourists are allowed to see into the dynamic culture of the only nation in the past 200 hundred years to serve “defeat on a platter” to the U.S., i can appreciate that my wrinkled, withered and generally confused person is less than a “catch,” more of a curiosity.

What the darlings don’t quite see, is that i have been a “curiosity” from the day of my birth, and will likely remain a curiosity to the day i die, whether that innate capacity contributes to the greater good is a fucking mystery to me - my selfish ambition to to love and to be loved, yet throughout my time on this planet my ambition seems to be a bone of contention for myself and others; and i have no clear reason why or wherefore. I know as a small child it bothered me terribly by the death of even the smallest of creatures - this before i could grasp the cessation of life. Now as an old man facing certain end, it confuses me no less. I see people around me who suffer, and i try to aid how i can, but find literal admonishments from valid sources - “try and help someone sometimes you end up making things a thousand times worse.” How does one argue with logic like that which squares with your own experience?

We reside right now at a nexus in our history where our best intentions can aid the survival of our entire DNA strand, or destroy 10,000’s of years of humping and laughing about it to the detriment of and entire species. I find this sad, and hopeful beyond compare. There is no need for you to destroy me in your mind or in your heart - i am gone and have been gone for more generations than i can count. What i have been unable to ignite in your selfish ambition it the green pastures of your futures; i am no longer deranged by my inability to foster a loving future for you, because if you do not choose to help yourselves there is no one following on my heels that will want more for you than i have declared openly and without restraint - be kind to yourselves and all you meet · that is your future.   

jts 10/06/2020

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com 

reprinted with permission - all rights reserved

 ∞ 

Extinction Chronicles - 090620 ·

It is nearly miraculous to accept how little humans require to enjoy stasis. Maslow and others have attempted to quantify, and document human wellness factors - facts · which were then subverted to evil ends by the corporate overlords at Abu Ghraib, Buchenwald, Andersonville, Bastille, The Tombs: etc., etc., etc. The powers that be, advised no doubt by their “affective challenged” administrative assistant - Artificial Intelligence, (Art Intel) that they, the ruling class have reached the optimum economy of scale that prisons for profit can yield and must consider more effective management of the “Captured Capital” to date by expanding the model of “cultures under siege” as the Hebrews have been experimenting with in Palestine and points east. There has been of course collaboration with the remnants of the 3rd Reich occupying neighborhoods of the District of Columbia with franchises throughout the greater metropolitan police districts nationwide. I’m sorry to report, gentleman and members of the jury - but your concept of justice and summary executions are counter productive and have, in general disappointed management which was assured at the signing of a smooth and efficient transition from Freedom to Tyranny. With regret we must explore the options remaining to us for world dominance through other means - Sincerely, your lords and masters

And yet here we sit collectively at a precipice, i’m fairly certain none would wish. Ironically the decision was, has been and will be ours - good morning for all those just waking up. When i say it is nearly miraculous how little we require as a species to survive; i make this statement not as a platitude in a world up to its asshole in platitudes, but simple pragmatic information. For when you read, whatever on what you consider your valid “reality” channel, it is always good to bump ideas off of incongruous walls, just to see how the shit you’re imagining meshes with what shouldn’t make sense. “Unconditional Love” for me holds that place saver reservation for me in the media’s constant demand for confidence, within a world full to the brim with feints to your place of well being - be that dominance of your clique, financial superiority within an impoverished world, or certain spiritual purity within a material cesspool spiraling into a drain no one seems to see, but you. 

Daily, i find many to bless after, during and before i have done some of the hard work befriending my demons which haunt my days and night. To be fair, demons and angels is a more accurate a description of how i am trying to discipline the chemicals in my cortex to meet my intersection with the mystery that has wrought the vortex of our mutual delusions. There is not all that big a surprise, given the chemical nature of light we transform in our crude “carbon train” - balancing between, human induced fission and universally transformative fusion. I use to think the “secret” was in deciphering frequency, and have begun to search “scale” for the fulcrum Archimedes searched the world over to fit his lever. Each of you reading these flapping flags of language in a world in the process of cutting the “tongue” of communication from the mouth of humanity - “to what end, each of us must protest with each vacant moment in pursuit of the answer about the ‘ circle without circumference’.

What’s my hurry, i ask - why do i rush to present an idea to an inchoate bio-organism that can barely shed the enticing remnants of it voluptuous and soon to be ravaged figure - the very thought between what we as a species could perceive while executing the the spectral curves we could discern then in the caves of “Lascaux· vs what we, of our most resourceful of our collective blood line can manage in the caves of Vermont Blvd. and _____ fill in the blank. As i can provide little succor to my Dame, i can provide little to you my vacant reader. Am i discouraged by the prospect of spending so much of what i have so little of - Time, is not the issue. More importantly is you, who have found this secret cache of love, manages to convert one substance - myth, into another substance · fact. In Bali there is a grand tradition for learning which is accomplished by taking the hand of that spirit you wish to enable and simply walking through the steps together; cut this by doing that, hold this balanced so that does this · what is remarkable about this sort of learning process is how early in one’s live it becomes “nature” in effect ending the Western conundrum of “nature, vs nurture”; fact - do right and right grows - do wrong, and dig the same.

I ride each day and am in an entirely disinterested circuit that is base solely on the endorphins i can encourage and sleep that is less - anxious. i have found that if i sample one channel of old movies vs the “squeal” of newsfeed, it translates directly into disquiet during my rest. Where i sit, vs where i thought to be is vast. This dichotomy creates anxiety for my decrepitude i must face as well as all we who consider ourselves human. There is no future at the ripe old age of 65 - the myth of Rembrandt sidling up to a young entrepreneuse, must needs be abandoned - at least until such some nubile nymph declares her libidinous independence and gloms on to my stalwart frame, suggesting “happy days” - what am i gonna do · decline¿ Kidding sort of. I watch young squeezes wander off with assholes far more toxic than anything my tame tendencies could conjure - so why not¿? · it don’t really matter ‘cause me future is a damn sight more compressed than my past. I am mostly interested, ironically in what Henry Ford advocated, “do as much good as you can, for as many as you can, for as long as you can” - sounds like a plan to me: 

Editorial Note - and if you still doubt Mme. Paradox isn't a close personal friend of mine · chew on the fact that Henry Ford is one of the biggest Nazi supporters in the history of the good ole' U.S. of A. 

jts 09/06/2020

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com 

reprinted with permission - all rights reserved

 ∞ 

Extinction Chronicles - 080620 ·

I don’t know, and that may be the smartest i’ve been since i discovered “intellect” and began bludgeoning the world with speech - a world which i could barely see much less understand why it would wish me harm? That is an infantile fantasy - to feel something and attribute that feeling to the unknown. Now i am at the other end of the life cycle and am no better oriented than when i arrived, which is not entirely true; just now i listen to the farmer family next to me and know enough about their reality to understand that the 70 year old patriarch at the end of what has to have been a brutal day of sowing the new rice fields in a heat that is not oppressive, more like lethal. What i hear across my wall is a grandparent finding more sustenance in the squeals of joy from his granddaughter than the bowls of food at his table to provide him strength. I am not lessened by my envy, rather hopeful for all around him who cannot but be influenced by the power of his love for his family - not a fake, chest thumping love one finds on every media channel within the reach of the digital overlords · but the love only a small child can hear, understand, and from which gather necessary nutrition for a precarious future the grandfather knows too well; whether he knows it or not he is inoculating her from with his simple, pure expression.

The cataclysm our kind is about to encounter has no example in our recorded history, except by those who take interest in what “science” has revealed about our precarious development as a species on a volatile orb in a vacuum of “dark matter” we conjecture constitutes the bulk of our physical reality. What we are “paying” attention to are silly-ass vibrations bouncing off eardrums, or flickerings of an optical spectrum which we discern partially - very partially. In my art training i had a visceral reaction to Paul Gaugin - a spiritual kinship i was not completely surprised to learn in my later years coincided with a predatory and largely destructive relationship to the islands of Tahiti. My kinship with his work was at a time where my ego was centered on recognition of an earthly nature - as though, because i could understand his palette spiritually, i had entre to his - what’s the word i am looking for ¿ ilk ? yeah, that’s it ! ilk. What i wanted to do was abandon my art training and all its noble ideas; parle what i’d learned and instinctively knew into a studio with patrons standing around admiring my earnest and noble efforts to add a link per Paul Cezanne’s instructions to the sacred “chain of art.”

So you might see why i feel so much better thinking “i don’t understand,” than taking some lame ass position about ________ fill in the blank. I’m pretty sure in the end it has something to do with resting my head on the pillow, or rock nearest me as my lungs cease their autonomic rhythm and i leave go with the residual sentiment i was unable to articulate about what i was thinking at the time - jaja, fearsome inferno of an intellect · little more than a tiny Bic lighter barely able to light a joint much less a fire under the ass of a species that had allowed themselves to be yoked to an ass, like mssr. d_rump. You’d be right, if you felt that i might be laughing at you - i am · as much as i am laughing at myself; likely, i’m far funnier than you, only because i am more closely related to Madame Paradox, i’m sure. Arrogance was a blood sport where i grew up honed on the teeth of fact: i remember one occasion backing my (little - parenthetical only because i know he hates the moniker) brother,  into a corner of the yard - as i had learned from my older to dominate. To his credit, he kept his handhold on the galvanized pipe stub that was part of our suburban landscape and as i made my move to enforce my opinion over his, the pipe in his hand hit my right front tooth that was no longer a baby tooth.

It was a perfect fracture that required no squealing to the authorities, who never knew the better - a corner of my smile chipped into the aether at an early age, barely visible even now, but having forged a lesson about limits lasting to this day. I have no idea what comparable lessons he might learned from me during his lifetime - he, as a near as i can tell, is angry with me and has refused to share the name of an antibiotic ear drop i once found in his medicine cabinet. He may be concerned for his nurse-wife prescribing without a licence, why i can’t say - what am i gonna do; sue them for malpractice?. I do know he labors under an onus of fictional responsibility for me foisted on him by both parents that is/nor was autonomous or liberating. Pop when he returned from his sabbatical in Europe during our teen years, brought meaningful souvenirs for us each - carved wooden pens from Spain, mine of Don Quixote, and my brother - Sancho Panza. That cannot have been easy to swallow for a man of his capacity, to be subordinated not only in family placement as the “bambino”, but literally and metaphorically to me the crazy older brother. My kid brother is a good decent human being, as much as any i’ve met in my years on earth - and his resolution to his own fate has been complex as any i’ve known. He and his wife literally plucked three children from dire straits; giving them more than a fighting chance at a meaningful existence - yet for my brother the cost has been great · his will and its corresponding force, borders on sadistic, i believe this only from a limited understanding of what i have learned about my own capacity for cruelty.

And here i sit, looking to share useful insights to a reader who may or may not have access to anything written herein due to corporate charnel floor vetting logic of who gets to read what for what reason - talk about “quixotic” fantasies. Please understand i love the people i am maligning in as wholesome a way as i can, and know that what i share is a reflection of my defects as i have come to understand them more than any valid accusation of people you have never met, nor ever will. Ma, lamented my birth arrival to my face i’m sure, and periodically thereafter throughout my lifetime. For a woman who had been described as a “Miss Goody-Two-Shoes” by a sister-in-law whose CEo brother rescued Ma no differently than Sir Galahad had rescued _____ fill in the blank, she relished the high ground like few generals in the history of the world. But vis-a-vis my kid brother it is hard to forgive the yoke she served on him as a lad. Much later in our lives Ma would wax nostalgic, when not telling me my teeth were “dirty” and ask “have you heard from C_____¿” and i would say “no, we’re not close” - without missing a stitch or seemingly having heard a word, Ma would look wistfully at me and remark, “he’s been a ‘good little friend to you, hasn’t he?’” I fault neither she nor he for attempting to fill in missing places in this world with whatever strategies they might find useful - for me · i cannot, but die without peering as deeply as i am able into the chasm as my the blindness from my delusion permits - may you find similar clarity. 

jts 08/06/2020

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com 

reprinted with permission - all rights reserved

 ∞ 

Extinction Chronicles - 070620 ·

“Gonna forget about myself for a while, gonna go out and see what others need.” - Bob Dylan

Ole’ mama paradox got me by the short hairs with that one - papa Lao Tzu, says knowing oneself is true wisdom and Ms. Roosevelt says, “Great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events and small minds discuss people.” We are not lacking in instruction, just common sense. Do we want our species to survive¿ if the answer is “yes,” then what steps do we take to help make that happen? When stated like that, things don’t seem quite so complicated. To be fair, when i say survive, i mean, minus the regimentation the fascists are advocating - one cluster here doing this, another cluster there doing that - neither communicating with the other, and both wholly subservient to the task master. That just don’t float with my radical existentialist indoctrination. I am so much a “free thinker” my family has created language lists for each of their households and security clearances for access to the secrets deemed necessary for the latest “intellectually vetted concepts”. No, i’m not terribly popular in the family reunions i crash; and both nephews had me banned at their weddings due to my heretical influence - right thinking, after all requires the “right” conditions for fruition · just ask hillary, barack and joe.

This from an individual who wholly embraces the concept that one creates one’s own misery; conversely i truly believe the demarcation is not so great - the larger irony is our collective future more resembles the human anatomy than the bankers balance sheet; let me explain - it is a fact that for a human to smile, it requires fewer muscles in the face: ergo the most efficient distribution of wealth is not from greed, whereupon each is unhappy at the conclusion of a transaction, but from generosity that creates smiles for all involved. We’ve been lied to, but sadly it seems the most vulnerable amongst us have been the targets of this lie - deceive the stupid first. Each of, i’m sure has had a big dumb friend that managed her way through the world by bullying others. Mine was a broad who walked down the steps of the Art Student’s League and patted my head like i was a dog - my response to her condescension, which apparently no one previously had dared, was to slap her lesbian patronizing gesture back into her lap. These days i speak of were just past the 60’s and “politically correct” was practiced, but not articulated; i defied then and defy now any accepted practice that does not include my own agency; she and i made peace within minutes based on no more than direct communication.

Our world is starving for communication and all there is are “code words” and cliques one petitions one’s way into whether it is Ithica, NY - or Pico Aliso, CA. I cannot abide a catechism which absolves me from personal responsibility for each choice i make. I do not want strength that is gained from absolving myself of my liberty, anymore than i welcome conjoining with a group that would want me to exclude another such as myself, or as Groucho Marx described so well - “I wouldn’t want to be a member of any club that would have have me.” Independence seems to have become a lost art in these days of fear - all would want to belong, just as i would fervently beg admission to a family which, try as they might cannot exclude me - so i am stuck with the residue of “what did i do wrong; how have i transgressed; what must i do to belong once again to my birthright - breathing, and no more. There are many masters that explain the way · nurture the small child in your midst, befriend yourself to befriend others - find peace in your heart to share peace with others. We are not lacking in knowledge - just lacking in will.

I’d like to say i am inured by my learning from the pain i host in my body - i´d be lying through my teeth, but it would seem the only friendliness i can find is that which i show to myself - and that by happenstance from the voice of Dame Pema, who channels Master Thay - obeying the Dalai Lama, each of which is most certainly only reflecting the love they find in each of your hearts. It is our lot to die, and our chance to die as close to our origin of love where upon one vesicle entered the egg of another to create being. How it ever became ejaculation for money is anybody’s guess, but until we sit fore-square in front of the equation and ask ourselves how we could have allowed such vital event to be hijacked for the salacious curiosity of a disturbed segment of our DNA strand, we’ll never surmount the cul-de-sac we have backed into. I refuse to shame myself for your dubious interest and remain naked to your touch because without it it, i am dying on the vine.

Old or no has no valence in the issue - it is whether you can retain enough agency over your own corpuscles to propagate a free species, or whether you allow your keystrokes to establish a fictional exchange that subjugates your DNA strands to devious, and dishonest future for the exclusive benefit of cowards unwilling to stand up on their hind legs and say “by hook or crook, you and yours are mine and there is fuck all you can do about it,” which is the state our species is in. You are reading these words at the express permission of a pissant billionaire lacking the courage to reveal his face or purpose to you, rather s/he entices you with clickbait and convenience you assume has any relationship to your wants or desires without ever having had an opportunity or moment to stop and ask yourself “what do i want and what is my agency in the decisions i am making?” - good luck to you and us all.

jts 07/06/2020

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com 

reprinted with permission - all rights reserved

 ∞ 

Extinction Chronicles - 060620 ·

What a blessing to be able to go one more round with the only asshole i could never better - myself · As an ugly child in a family of pretty people; one learns the “terms of endearment” quickly or gets quashed quickly - my heart goes out to the youngest who had not only me to contend with, but also the Machiavellian machinations of my elder siblings, the two prettiest people to predominate the popularity politics of late 1960 Orange County, CA. Yeah, i know - over-the-top snarky, but you go with your strengths. Little wonder the two glommed onto each other when faced with the other-worldly weirdness of the lower middle child - older middler sister’s affectionate nickname for me · odd Todd. Of the few times i can remember my poet papa becoming violent with me was when i called her a “bitch” and when i declared my intention to grow my hair long: for the first infraction Pop got me in the older brothers room and “bitch slapped” my head from side to side - the 2nd infraction my have been closed fist · what i remember was leaving the house for not the first time, with his sacred vow in my ears “no son of mine is going to have hair growing below his collar.” 50 years later bald and all, she’s still a bitch, and my hair is down to the middle of my back, though there is no longer enough on top to braid.

And i love my sister - it is just that she is inordinately vain · quantifiably stupid, and instinctually cruel. We all work with what we got; she got ma - i got Pop · Oscar Wilde - ‘all daughters become like their mothers; that is their tragedy, no man does - that is his.’ This is the family i have to work with, and work i do as best as i am able. Little brother was finally shamed to respond to 2 weeks of email inquiries; mostly wanting to know if he was alive, or dead in the midst of the plague we all find ourselves. His wan reply advising me that i could find a cheap solution to my “health issues” through the “expat” network that must be around me was more condescending than angry. This reply is very helpful only to know that what my little brother suffers is great, and that he fears i might prosecute a malpractice suit against him and his Nurse Practitioner wife were they to recommend from afar an antibiotic drop for a middle ear complication i have lived with for 50 years.

I do not hate my people - i am angry with each of my siblings for different reasons which i make every effort to keep contemporary based on behavior. I don’t find them quite so fastidious nor honest in their behavior as they presume to be, rather i find them at the end of a DNA strand we share, clinging to objects and ego that they would deny me. The ego aspect of our family rupture is no great loss, for it was mostly “smoke and mirrors” as near as i can gather from 65 years of interactions, but the substance is simple “theft.” (hidden behind proletariate proclamations, and progressive assertions buried under - gimme, gimme, gimme.) At least the looters who are waging war for the crumbs of the capitalist capitulation have the courage to be up front about their desires. My family, as i experience them are attempting to legitimize their theft of a family heritage on no more than a fiction of moral worth, which i again spit on for anyone not wanting to share all the booty with all the people.

Now i feel obligated to finish my dance of 5 paragraphs for an audience that hasn’t the courtesy to acknowledge the same disrespect i would pay them face to face for their conceits. I drink, i smoke, i masturbate, because i am alone and i am as ugly as any version of Quasi Modo - but if you think Charles Laughton was menacing, come and be by my side while i expire after the live i have lived, trying to help the people i have tried to help survive. And in front of me is a refrigerator with a spot of singed vegetables, the mewling of a neighbor child waiting for kewl air - the curiosity of a landed gentry without land · and a planet laying into its own surrender to a greed manufactured at the core of its own troubled heart.

I could die right this moment in peace, without a woman in my arms or a child at my tangle - happily. I have done my best, which was not always good, and tried to help others more powerful than me to achieve more than i could · not always successfully - but sometimes so. I welcome the the end of the strife i have made and look forward to the kindness i will never see from minds i never knew. Just now, before i eat and finish my last smoke and drink, i hear the mewling of a child barely an infant being humored and jollied just like myself when young. I am relieved to know the best amongst us is stronger than the least amongst us no matter what pain i may feel in its absence.

addendum: today is D-Day + 76 years; this is worthy of mention as a significant date in the defeat of the Fascist Axis during WWII, and there was not a peep on my newsfeed - save the accusations of the current Attorney General claiming U.S. unrest is due to Antifa (Anti Fascist) provocations. 

jts 06/06/2020

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com 

reprinted with permission - all rights reserved

 ∞ 

Extinction Chronicles - 050620 ·

It is overcast and dark at 3:30 pm, but that does not necessarily mean rain - the thunder suggests otherwise, but again that is no guarantee - sort of like saying d_rump ain’t gonna make a touchdown just ‘cause he’s Nazi president in an allied country instrumental in defeating the last Nazi president on the planet · there are no locks. You’d think they’d pay attention to that logic when they use a handful of corporate traitors in an effort to lock up 330 million wildcard patriots; it just rained. I have felt great pain for the better part of today from a younger brother who just like the oldest brother and older sister seem to feel comfortable shunning me, yet object violently for finding the same in return. You see, i am also guilty of the crime of turning my back on family, and feeling perfectly justified in doing so. I could plead my case here in the court of “public opinion” which i guess is exactly what i am doing by disclosing dirty laundry, but in as high a tradition of “a novel of manners” as i can manage in a 5 paragraph essay - you know not who i refer to or much else but what their relation to me might be. I am hardly casting aspersions when you know them not nor they you. We live in the days of anonymity and i may as well make bank on the opportunity to purge my bile as they say.

The youngest brother in question who long ago had to make peace with his loyalties, which just so happened to not include me. An ex-wife (the crazy Cherokee-propellor blade) shared a sexual fiction with my younger that was nobody’s business but ours, (i can really pick ‘em); it was beyond wild monkey sex, and encouraged a smug superiority for my little brother who aped that demeanor from myself certainly, but more likely the conceit of our older siblings who were really pretty before they got greedy and important. which has flowed manifest associations, founded and unfounded. It is true that i have stated repeatedly, in private and in public - “i would fuck a snake, if i could find someone to hold it,” and this libidinous inclination remains an aspect of my being and my character i do not apologize for, but have corralled as well and better than most of our world leaders. I like to fuck - i relish the feel of flesh in ways only an artist who has spent decades of his life trying to fathom can appreciate. At the same time, my heart is tame and wishes no violence on any life form, including unwilling snakes. I make no apologies for my appetite, and do not ask your permission to feel what i feel - it is this disobedience that rankles my family the most · i would imagine, imagine only because they are constrained by an emotional dishonesty that legitimizes the inherent violence of shunning - a behavior we all share, but for which it seems, i alone must acknowledge.

“Fuck you - and the horse your rode in on” · was an expression i learned from my mother’s 2nd husband. I found it useful after finding myself introduced to my 3rd wife at a “Thanksgiving Dinner” where, she and i were ‘thrown together’ and not. I had asked my stepfather about this attractive guest who was making nice with her eyes; his reply - “fuck you, she’s too old for you,” to which i responded, in our first dislocation from the “mutual admiration society” we had enjoyed since we met-; i could see that he had an honest and genuine love for my mother; but that Thanksgiving, what could i say¿ ‘no L____ fuck you’. M_____ and i were cohabitating within the week; 7 years later, we were married, the same year i was to learn she and L____ had some side game that did not include ma. I am not “washing dirty laundry in public,” rather i am peering as deeply as i am able into the circumstances of my pain and owning what is mine, while disavowing that which is not. Own your pain, each of you - and please dear g_d in whatever form or sex you reveal yourself in · show me the error in my ways. i want to learn, and i want my species of thrive; not as the pale echo that is illumined on each of our screens, but by the very impulse we each possess, each time we encounter another that catches our fancy and inspires our fantasies.

Forgive me not if you are offended by what you read here, for i would spit in your face had you the courage to say what you feel to me. I pray for your future generations that they are not infected by the cowardice of my own DNA strand that causes me great pain regardless of my existential efforts to own what is mine and to dismiss what t’is da’other’s. I am not good at that discernment, but my incompetence no more absolves me from my responsibilities for radical accountability, than d_rump’s diminished soul absolves him from his fate, or my family from theirs. My obligation to my time in this wondrous sphere of blue H2o is to amplify and facilitate as much love as my imagination can manage. My particular challenge at this turn, is to maximize what i don’t understand without as the “Dalai Lama” said so well ‘if you can, help others; if you cannot do that, at least do no harm’ - fucking Madam Paradox, if she wasn’t my mother, she should have been. 

My pain endures, even after an afternoon of writing, pleading and resolving - i remain unconvinced that those i value most, value what i proffer. My relationship to my family is my problem alone, yet it seems to affect so many i have come into contact with prior to and during my travels that it makes me wonder. I can protest, ‘i wish you no harm, and hold solidarity with you against those who do’, yet in my own heart i feel the aggression of siblings who behave toward me like, as Lyle Sears and i had commiserated about our common affliction, like i am “a piece of shit.” From where i sit now, it is not possible that so many who have been treated so badly, or treat others so badly - have not experienced this aggressive thinking at some level in their own experience. It is at this point the whole equation of how to change the world gets “dicey.” To act like you do not understand while protesting ‘white on black; man on woman; majority on minority; immigrant on local; old on young, or young on old, or g_d on human violence’ - you are bullshitting you and me, and i got no time for horse shit ‘cause we all about to perish. BTW, where did #GretaThundberg ¿ get to on your newsfeed - just askin’? ·

jts 05/06/2020

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com 

reprinted with permission - all rights reserved

 ∞ 

Extinction Chronicles - 040620 ·

Bad mouthing people is chickenshit; ennobling people is a gas (especially if you can do it without leaving tracks). Pain can be very educational, i’m not a very good student; there was one vacation i remember particularly, wherein my siblings thought it great sport to offer me money if i could last the 2 week journey without crying - i’m really glad i lost that money, but wish i was still that honest about what i feel. These essays are, in part, an effort to preserve that sensibility. Today i look around me at efforts by the social engineering “shot-callers” pulling the levers and cranks on this vast Rube-Goldberg digital contraption we are all so enamored of, and feel much like i did crawling into the bed of a prostitute, maybe my first, in Santa Ana, CA and wondering how there could be such a difference between my first loves and how we touched each other just a few short years earlier? As an art student in NYC i had the privilege of studying anatomy with a remarkable professor from an August family of Doctors who managed to make his general patrician contempt for all, seem specific to me, (a gift of the emotionally retarded) or so i imagined with my own outsized ego starved for love and attention. He posed a question to the students in my class which i doubt anyone but myself ever solved - more outsized ego, bullshit ·

“Why” he asked, “does a child, just learning to draw invariably show the eyes near the top of the head in its drawing?” - the answer came to me 4o years or so later; it is because of foreshortening - one of the thorniest issues for sincere artists to grasp, an intersection of what one has been trained to know and what one can see. Much like we puny humans loved in our parents arms, only to be introduced into a world of strife and cruelty - talk about your cognitive dissonance. The difficulty for me with my family is how people i was raised to share with; to love - to admire and defer to could be the same people who would betray my kindness, my confidence and my love for a meager advantage? It confused me as a child and it confuses me as an adult, an aged adult. My parents were intellectuals parroting all the popular progressive mantras of the time - outrage at the assassination of a sitting president by a cabal so entrenched that the lords of justice cowered before the truth. 

Who’s kidding who - the digital overlords filtering the speech you pour into your feeble skullcaps to suit their nefarious whims, or the outraged hoards pounding at the gates of heaven - “give me liberty, or give me death”¿?  What is reality; how is it parsed by what we have determined is “civilization”? Not very well as near as i can tell. In the year 2020 we are paying thugs to thug us, with the same lame guarantee, “the last Gr8 war” as soon as these mongrels _______ fill in the blank, are eliminated from the landscape - you will be safe once again. I struggle now with the accomplishment of my task - 5 paragraphs each day · But in the back of my mind i know, it is as dishonest as my siblings bribing me not to cry and so disturb their tranquil story of a family and its Arcadian journey toward stories that can be recounted and shared demonstrating some mythological solidarity with a happiness borne from compliance. I spit on your approbation and welcome my death as a relief from this festering lie that shackles the weakest i see each day and lauds the arrogant and most selfish i find, regardless of where i find myself on the planet.

We have available to us every instrument to feed, clothe and educate every man woman and child on the planet, but allow ourselves to be divided by fears that are solely resident within our own experience. I veer from you, not because i know anything about you or your struggles, but because it was what i have been taught by people looking to exploit my need for belonging. Ironically, the same affect you find most offensive about me - my reluctance to join in your frolic is the same affect that demonstrates as best i can my love and affection for you as a member of my same species. I do not cluster for fear, but from respect for your capacity to make your own judgements - conversely, my contempt and disregard for your opinion is based on your demonstrated need for support about what you think. I love to know others - i relish each opportunity to learn about the struggles of everyone i encounter and am as equally prepared to sever any union that yokes me to your agenda without your having asked - how do you feel about ____ fill in the blank.

I do not trust easily, and yet i do nothing but trust in every action of every person i encounter - except myself · that truth, however is changing the closer i move toward the death i will share with no one. Not because i am selfish or unwilling to share with those interested to learn what i have discovered, but because every discussion i have read about the experience, which in reality is, that that and birth, are the only things any of us do share. As much as i would want to discover language that might encourage you to fun, or love, or solidarity - you are alone as much as i am: no matter how popular you become, or beautiful you are acknowledged to be, there is no more knowledge you can learn or possess than what you can know about your own self and your ability to orient in a cosmology we presume to be reality, but in fact we can barely discern within the fabric of space and time we occupy. I can tell you this with candor and love; i wish you pleasure; i wish you comfort and i wish you deep experience in a place that seemingly presumes to know better than you what it is you find in front, around or on top of you - be well, be happy; comfort all you find · for it and they are you.

jts 04/06/2020

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com 

reprinted with permission - all rights reserved

 ∞