Extinction Chronicles - 140620 ·

I have been watching reruns of series from u.S. television - 70’s to 80’s to 90’s · if you asked me why, i’d likely spew vomit explaining such stupidity; yet from an anthropological place it makes sense to try and understand from whence you came. But does it inoculate me from what comes next - will my having witnessed my surrender twice make my betrayal of truth any less venal¿ Let us together walk that road and find some truth - yes? At 65 years of age i am barely digging out from under shit poured on my soul by people i loved and trusted, so forgive me if i find your disinterest in what i share worthless.

I no longer understand what others need, yet i have a compulsion to give; this irrational behavior give others my quotient of beer because somehow i believe it helps them to feel “not ripped off” - i cannot protect you from what you feel, i can barely keep straight what goes on within me. I love and am betrayed, time and again - it is not the other’s fault but my own. My only responsibility to the world we live in is to continue my solitary effort to love and be loved.

It is lonely, and sad, but also rich with learning. I accept that what i feel is mine alone and not the result of any other spirit or prior payback. If i go after someone for revenge that is on me; i have long since given up the irrational belief that if i can cause pain in another, somehow my suffering will be lessened. What i have yet to arrive at is coincidence with love whereupon the joy i have felt and understand is available with each breath is also a birthright that is not removed from me for wrong behavior. I do not behave wrongly when i have a choice; sometimes i am repulsed by the ugliness i perceive in others - only to find that perception resides wholly within me.

If i find no friends in my life - it is not because i do not have friends, but because i insist on a version of reality that conforms with a spurious assumption · i am unlovable. There is no one on the planet that can remedy such a delusion but myself, and that is a hard pill to swallow. This also means that if there is love in my world, it is as the Beatles righteously declared “.  .. in the end the love you take is equal to the love, you make.” What a privilege to live within such dynamic bookends of a civilization that still, as we speak remains viable and capable of distributing care and concern to a population of over 7 billion human beings torn and wounded by their own minds by the minds of a handful for other humans who deserve little more than patient compassion for a wound inflicted by greed and solidified by hatred. 

The fact remains that there is nothing we cannot accomplish using what C.G. Jung described as “archetypal awareness” of our collective subconscious - and i hate to tell you this, this late in the game - but his reasoning makes a whole lot more sense than a lot of bullshit i hear, and read on a daily basis. From here on out in this, today’s daily purge, i am “phoning it in.” Sign off as though there is anything else to be gained by reading to the bitter end - but know this · if you take an incense stick and soak it in Peppermint oil and burn it in a house full of any size rat Mischief, they will turn tail and run just like telling a fascist to his face - you’re not only ugly, but you’re stupid · SOLIDARITY  

jts 14/06/2020

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com 

reprinted with permission - all rights reserved

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Extinction Chronicles - 130620 ·

“To begin depriving death of its greatest advantage over us, let us adopt a way clean contrary to that common one; let us deprive death of its strangeness, let us frequent it, let us get used to it; let us have nothing more often in mind than death... We do not know where death awaits us: so let us wait for it everywhere." 

"To practice death is to practice freedom. A man who has learned how to die has unlearned how to be a slave.”

― Michel de Montaigne

The talking heads are bandying about with figures of 120,000-140,000 Americans dead by the 4th of July - today, there are 116,000 · according to the NY Times. There are still medical personnel wearing trash bags for scrubs while police in the latest military assault uniforms have arrested 10,000 people protesting the murder of George Floyd and continuing assault by police against citizens exercising their constitutional right to redress their grievances. The 2nd wave of virus death has not begun, but the 3rd wave of climate havoc is only a faint swell still far out at sea - how are you doing ?

If you feel the need to give jeffery bezos one more thin dime to bolster your flagging self-esteem with another vanity purchase, i propose instead that you send me a nickel of that dime and i will personally send you an authored paragraph affirming my respect for you as an valiant resistor of consumer fraud and my solidarity with you on the front lines of change. Each and every nickel you send to me will go to buying food for hungry children. Laugh if you must, but you also know that what i say is true and it beats the shit out of buying gilded toilet paper for one of jeffery’s palaces - you’d be 5¢ richer, instead 10¢ poorer, you do the math. This is not rocket science - $50 billion in stimulus money, aka your tax dollar went to schnooks lacking the testicles to step up and their ill-gotten gains out of the public trough - what kind of chickenshit tough guy are you to let a “suit” rob you without a raising a finger in your defense - i don’t give a fuck how deep in the heart of Texas you life · you a punk in the neighborhoods i’ve spit on grufyti in.

It is love that will preserve us, and if you look to your left or to your right - you will find yourself sitting next to somebody who cares more deeply about your world than any avatar you hope to find scrolling on this contraption. Don’t believe me, i’ve been trolling for love in the digital universe since before 976 party lines and have yet to find one sincere exchange more meaningful than the “fuck you” in the eyes of the clerk i paid good money to for a wilted cheeseburger or broken bean burrito. The flip side of the coin is that each of you who are reading this chronicle has a personal story about having had a bad day reversed by one simple - “i feel you” · or “thanks for your kind comment.” It is this power of horizontal distribution that the corporate digital overlords have attempted to hijack for personal gain - rather than propagate as a greater good · ladies and gentleman, that manifestation of greed is rather than pathetic - an abomination worthy of outrage, censure and stringent closure like an gaping wound in your body you understand must be staunched and then healed.

Again, it is not rocket science. Due to my goofy eyesight i’d be willing to bet i have enjoyed more personal injuries than odds dictate. From that unique roll of dice, i possess a formidable understanding about capacity for healing which few of you reading this could begin to imagine - even the homies with multiple gunshot & knife wounds would be hard-pressed to match misery with misery · lucky me. I built a surfboard in the garage of the house i grew up in; after waiting patiently for the fiberglass to cure i used a double boiler to melt the paraffin to pour over the virgin surface - the aged saucepan didn’t make it to the surface of the virgin board and instead poured over my bare foot, possibly the same foot which the 5th metatarsal was to be broken a few short years later on the same right side i was to pour an industrial vat of spaghetti sauce over my forearm which was to own a broken 5th metacarpal a few short years after - it is not “accident prone” it is luck of the draw. Just like you born at the moment an entire species became aware of its fragile mortality.

I refuse to accept that all the spirits and misbegotten lives i have intersected with in my short trajectory on the “3rd Rock from the Sun” has been for naught; sitting just now on my porch nursing the last of my “medicine”, i believe it is possible to make another stand regardless of the of simpletons arrayed in front of me. I have been carving stone for the better part of my life, enough to have more than years of labor stolen for no other reason than gratuitous greed. I am inured somewhat to the cruelty of our times and remain faithful to the origin of our species - cooperation. We did not crawl out from under animal blood lust without a healthy measure of mutual organization - the sort of organization that is not found in the back channels of sordid transactions between amoral corporate cowards and other amoral corporate cowards. I am addressing the sort of initial cooperation between stalwart humans capable and willing to outrun an animal buck for the protein it could afford a small tribe of like minded hominids. I could give a fuck, if you are Neanderthal or pure bred Australopithecus, as long as you are gentle with children and kind to old people.    

jts 13/06/2020

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com 

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Extinction Chronicles - 120620 ·

The thing about getting old is there is nothing you can can learn about how to do it - it is literally make it up as you go along. I remember the pains i took as a young man to design an existence which would result in _______fill in the blank. The blank changed from decade to decade and from wife to wife, but my training never really allowed that there was nothing but awareness to buoy me up in this, as Tom Waits sings so well, “Sea of Love”. So now as i grow close to the big portal, while portals all around me are closing - there is the portal of death from which no one can deprive me access - that is a remarkably liberating notion in a world up to its eyeballs in fake secrets. If you don’t feed someone, they die, if you don’t touch someone, they wither, if you don’t listen to someone, you never learn - that’s me with my deaf one ear advocating listening · there’s a hoot for ya’.

Sadness is one part biological - hangover, breakup, fatigue · and too parts surrender. I agree with MLK about refusing to allow a man to drag me so low as to hate him, but there is also “illegitimus nonstoppus carbarundom” - don’t let the bastards grind you down · Pop was a high school cheerleader and incorrigibly cheerful, you’d need to have known his grandmother Alice Content Foster to understand. Ma in her faux sophistication liked to demean Pop for his “cuteness.” I love because she is my dame, but that yoke of birth has not blinded me to her gratuitous cruelty from unexamined fears she foisted onto any available surrogate - which all too often meant, me. My siblings were no help, for i am sure that occurred to them - “better ye than me.”· I was angry for too much of my life about this convenient arrangement, until i began to understand my own anger and how utterly useless it had become. Nothing will change anyone else based on rage - that is a fact, and i would be happy to argue the point if you have no objections about leaving such an argument - naked and trembling · the same way you came in.

I was raised with all the progressive tropes of the time, but it mostly consisted of contempt for the other position. I can understand the fear of conservative men about being emasculated by strong women, because it is not a fantasy and brute force is no reply. She, whoever she is must answer for her own cowardice at the crucial moment she crushed his ego with her love - to use such a powerful emotion for destruction is nothing but cowardice. I compensated, and continue to compensate for the intellectual inequity, the same as i advocate for liberation from all exploitation, be it white on black, black on white, elder on younger or younger on elder. Force is tired and describes a spirit lacking imagination and faith. We are, and have been a lazy lot enjoying a scant 200 years of industrial muscle - muscle we have tragically mismanaged as we have our rich and wondrous sentiment.

I am in favor of a drastic reduction of the population, for no other reason than as Ricky Rivera said “it’s gonna happen.” What do we do with a rotted festering core of a former ecological paradise full of indigenous wisdom and vast compassion for the delicacy of all the life our world support¿ that is a question? Reform is a word i am terribly uncomfortable with only because there have been so many close to me clamoring for mine. I would, but like Leonard said “when they said repent, i wondered what the meant.” I don’t want to change you as much as i would celebrate your own embrace of a radical re-evaluation of all you cherish. I remember as a prepubescent teenager listening to the “Association” sing “Cherish” on the 45 long play turntable and the sacred feeling of love that song elicited in my heart; the same turntable that she who a few short years later would bring the hammer down on my heart with the good-bye xmas gift of Stephen Stills singing “Love the one you’re with.”

How can we as a collective organism commiserate with the misery of a dumb as a post constituency with the pitchforks and wrinkled heart muscle to find enough common ground to defend all of ourselves from an amoral corporate demographic camouflaged as a “person” and using funny money as not-so-funny speech, holding the collective economic might of 7 billion humans hostage in Cayman Island accounts using nothing more than a “flick of the wrist”¿ that again, is a question? Computer modeling allows what had been the sage advice of consorts and charlatans holding the ear of monarchs - now they are simply bought and paid for geeks, having digital sight, but lacking what Helen Keller described as “vision.” I have been through enough gangland logic to know, there is no loyalty within the cohort of the uber-greedy; watch carefully, clearly enough and long enough - the rat bastards will demonstrate their betrayal - whether we as a species have backbone enough to quarantine such contamination from the commonweal is the only real question left to us as a population of free people - and no i do not consider “corporations as people” or “money as speech” · come and get get me, if you possess the gumption and courage you think your incognito status has provided you despite the face of fact that you are few and we are many.

jts 12/06/2020

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com 

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Extinction Chronicles - 110620 ·

How to transform these chronicles from extinction to “existence chronicles”? Perhaps i just have - were it that simple · Yet, everywhere people are doing their level best with what they have to work with. The capitalists are not going to simply abandon the castle, and layoff the killers they employ to maintain order. A lot of really smart people  recommend to ignore the existing system altogether and let it collapse from its own exhaustion; rather it is suggested to focus on what manner of distribution of labor best serves the greatest number clients and to develop from that premise. Helen Keller had said “the only thing worse than being blind is having sight but no vision.” I am convinced that the extravagance we have been trained to ape from the ruling class’s concept of the “good life” which while lavish is ultimately self-defeating. I won’t say i’ve ever known what it is to not have to work, but i have been close enough to the uber-rich to evaluate the effect such an existence has on the individuals who advocate conspicuous consumption. 

Predatory is not the word i would use to describe the character of someone who believes they are worth, not just a free ride - but “The” free ride. I’d say delusional is a more accurate description of anyone who believes in their heart that it is better to take, than to give; If not delusional, it is certainly a very limited concept of existence. Such an orientation about the miracle of life is the basis for the original “might makes right” argument which has left its bloody trail throughout human history - and not. Dominance is not the spark between man and woman which creates loving families, rather force is the breech of faith where one member of a couple exploits the other for selfish reasons - with misery and suffering its offspring. Friendship - the fraternity or sorority of our kind · where strength is shared and multiplied, while tragedy is also shared and diminished will not last ages when it is not a reciprocal relationship - no one will suffer the exploitation of one’s heart for any significant period of time. Don’t believe me, look back across the bridges you have burned and argue with them.

Conversely those who have helped you to grow through loving care are never forgotten, by years or distance - living or dead, and the joy of having lessened one burden from one friend one time can never be erased, even if the friendship has fallen by the wayside; that is a powerful dynamic. It took me many years to let go of the belief, that i was needed - the only person on the planet that needs me is myself · if i am as thoughtful toward others as i have trained myself to believe and to behave, than anyone i know has but to say “i need this,” and i will respond; maybe not in the material sense of reversing circumstances i have no control over, but in the solidarity of a willingness to work through any problem that person faces. It is not a selfish inclination that prevents me from assuming more responsibility than is mine, but love. I’d be lying through my teeth to say i have not at one time or another wanted the “high life” - that chimera of abundance one has only to peek into the ubiquitous screen from which to find examples. I have tamed my wants to a pillow to rest, and a slumber i can wake from long enough to serve anyone in need - again, as D.E. Tuppins of Detroit said so well before he died, “after me, you come first.”

But that is not all, Mr. Tuppins though he was 6 decades older than any other dancer in the makeshift workshops organized for him, imparted vaudevillian tap-dance routines to an entirely new cohort, related by nothing more than a common desire to preserve a cultural art form - that is not selfishness · that is generosity from the heart. What if the sham culture scrolling across our screens proclaiming “fame” around the next corner was attenuated to “learn what your heart loves to do, and do it.” Why is that anymore absurd a concept than “defund the pohleece” or “Refuse War” translated into lennonspeak as “War is Over¿” We are nothing more than barely animated wiggling organisms floating on a molten core of super-heated iron in orbit around a spontaneously combusted hydrogen fission mass emitting wavelengths that allow for the “carbon chain” that feeds our energy cycles to accomplish - things.

Those things you choose to accomplish are entirely within your jurisdiction. There will be no punishment for mssr. d_rumpf anymore severe than any of our own metabolic burn minus consciousness, and i choose not to wish any greater burden on those molecules of his which have been forced by time and circumstance to share close proximity with the “unexamined life” he has chosen for himself; to quote the late gr8, A. Nonymous - “not my circus, not my monkeys.” But is you want a simple explanation of how close we are to peaceful coexistence - for the past 9 months i have been plagued by “mischief” of rats - bold enough to gnaw at the wall to my bedroom and leave droppings on the porch to declare territory, little differently than jeffery bezos when he peeps into my digital traffic to exploit some impulse i may not be conscious of but may be of value to his seemingly limitless “bottom line” - rats do not like the scent of Peppermint · so much so, that with strategic use of essential peppermint oil a habitation for this particular “mischief” of rats; vacated. I guarantee humanity jeffery is no different and with the proper application of the appropriate essential oil, that same rat bastard will pull up his tent stakes and seek more propitious markets for his particular brand of “human generosity” - don’t believe me; try it yourself · lord knows there’re enough rats out there on which to experiment; go ahead ask her, she don’t lie.  

jts 11/06/2020

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com 

reprinted with permission - all rights reserved

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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 

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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 

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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 

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