010720 - Extinction Chronicles ·

I never would have thought myself fortunate to think like a rat, yet here i sit in a 1st rain-soaked sort-of modern home in an agrarian foreign gulag of a UNESCO site. I beat back the vermin invasion with no more than odor - who’d have thought a boutique “peppermint” essential odor would render me the pied piper of an ancient asian trading post - up to its gills with predatory capitalists · and it just gets weirder and weirder. The rats are not happy that i burned peppermint incense just as their domicile received its 1st rain, and i feel their pain. Sort or like seeing images of Mussollini’s hanging upside down at the end of WWII. Fascists are rats for no more than they are at the service of corporate thugs, and have always been .;

and i am no better for my cultural arrogance - in U.S. today understood as “white privilege”. This cultural assertion is not something i have always understood - during the 60’s i often envied Black Men the solidarity they seem to enjoy by belonging to a cohort that was indivisible. I grew up in a suburban Southern California demographic that claimed a whole lot more than it delivered. The police arrested me on numerous occasions - some; on infractions, some on no more than “differences of opinions.” In the high school i attended, that was enough, but once those i disagreed with became authorities, that was no longer enough.

Now i sit wondering who gives a fuck about my rotting body and it’s no longer funny. .. 020720 so i stopped pressing and went to relax. Now a day later and another bicycle circuit under my belt, and while not entirely feeling better i am more at peace and comfortable about where i am at - alone, older and still curious · i am not seeking counsel outside of what comes to me from my interior; nor is it always palatable. I have always been sexual which doesn’t dovetail easily with a solitary stature that that corresponds to a fallacious belief that others are more worthy of company than myself. After 20 years of intensive psychoanalytic psychotherapy and another 65 years of sacred devotion to plumbing the mystery of life, i have found no easy answers - but i am more comfortable with the bad answers i find and no longer evaluate my success or failures based on other’s approval · i hope.

Nor is that a cut & dry condition with many cul-de-sacs and false starts, but i no longer berate myself for using cliches, or ending a sentence with preposition. Whatever compensation i utilize in defense of reaction formation get vetted with what one therapist described as “hyper vigilance,” actually two separate Doctors described the behavior in different ways - one using the description i just described; the other Doctor using jokes to illuminate one oblivious to the good around them: for the sake of literary development, we’ll try abbreviating both - the first was a Jew seated next to two SS operatives during the 2nd WW; Jew oblivious to his danger and thirsty, “Oye, am I thirsty, oye am i thirsty & on & on.” finally Heinrich tells Drumpf, “for god’s sake give the schmuck some wasser to shut him the fuck up.” Drumpf good nazi that he was obeys orders and gives the poor schmuck a drink of wasser, only to hear; “Oye was i thirsty, oye was i .  ..” The 2nd was about a sophisticated traveling salesman who got a flat tire in the wilds of the cornfields of Iowa and had nothing he could do but walk because there was a time when cell phones didn’t exist. This salesman, walked and walked and talked to himself a lot. “Fucking hicks, here in the middle of nowhere - what am i gonna find but fucking hicks. Mile after mile and hour after hour until finally the poor wound up city slicker spied a farmhouse alight, but it was too late for when he knocked on the door to ask for help, all he could articulate was - “Fuck you, you can keep your goddamn jack and spare tire, i wouldn’t use them if you begged me.”

We all could benefit from therapy, not the over inflated “wellbeing for a profit” kind found in the US of A and those medical industries modeling such a selfish business model, but the kind oriented by suffering of those around us who have been helped by a consistent attention to probing the difficulties we each face in daily life · probing in such a way that helps each of us move toward wellness as we conceive that state to be. I should have died any number of times in my life, beginning with pneumonia at age one - that i have not yet died does not make me feel brash, nor has it cornered me in a state of constant fear wherein i believe my next move could be my last. And my survival has not encouraged me to be reckless with the time i have left, nor manic about making every last second count for something. I sit closer to wonder than i ever have, and i’ve always sat fairly close to that state of confusion. What i strive for in these chronicles is to establish and maintain a friendship with one the world has not often been fair to, nor friendly with - myself. .. continued on 020720

jts 01/07/2020

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300620 - Extinction Chronicles ·

“Make it simple, but not simpler” - Albert Einstein; Lao Tzu - “Simplicity, patience, compassion · these are my three greatest treasures.”

That two of the smartest guys in human history would advocate simplicity should tell us something about a world where corporations are selling, at a premium, electrical gadgets that require an advanced degree in Computer Science to open, much less operate, and like most flimflam have a “backdoor” used by the house to skim even more off the top. Don’t believe me, look at your own bills and count up how much you spend on shit you cannot touch, have no way to save and likely have forgotten 3 days hence. Nor do i advocate that you toss your phone, because paradoxically, one adds a layer of complexity to one’s existence trying to unshackle the +/- 5v shackle ostensibly there to ease your suffering, but in reality, something you yoked to your own wrist with greed and hubris & pay for the privilege of doing so - they tell me i’m crazy · you should listen .

But in the scheme of things the nation i was born to is burning up in a conflagration of disease which has oddly increased the wealth of its richest citizens:

• U.S. billionaires saw their fortunes soar by $434 billion during the nation’s lockdown between mid-March and mid-May, according to a new report.
• Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg had the biggest gains.
• Bezos added $34.6 billion to his wealth and Zuckerberg picked up $25 billion.

This my friends, if any are still alive does not bespeak a world aright, rather a world in “Dire Straits” described well by the “Talking Heads” song - ‘burning down the house’· However intellectually satisfying such a question might be, it does not absolve all who read this sappy renunciation of the status quo to formulate a rational reaction to my statement of despair based on no more than reading as Bob Dylan “the writing on the wall”. Aren’t ya’ glad you took time out of your busy “shelter in place” schedule to soak your soul in more “OH FUCK”¿? I can’t help myself, or more accurately, i don’t want to stop; these chronicles are the only itch that scratching satisfies my dying being just now. 

I do not want you to die - What i want is for you and your relations · all of them good and bad to make it through this rough patch. Moreover, my deepest purpose as my days wane is for each of you to find some venue for our DNA to resolve itself into new life - free from and unencumbered by cortisol: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cortisol, this is just a guess, but i’d be willing to stake a portion of my meager fortune of “my nut” that is principle and not leveraged by debt to pay for concrete evidence that if one were to look deeply enough there would be trail of “capital” related to cortisol as it affects health directly into the pharmaceutical’s revenue stream - the hunt is on · “so i declare that 15% of my net worth goes to the first actionable discovery that the HNWI are betting on stress manufactured by their fiduciaries to harvest your cortisol for profit.”

Me, i think love is where the “smart” money is going go - though not with a fuck whole lot more transparency than exists today. We human beings are not necessarily a stupid species, and there are a lot who are not so distant from as Garrison Keillor, pointed out - “Even in a time of elephantine vanity and greed, one never has to look far to see the campfires of gentle people.” Small wonder that John Lennon used “Imagine” as a catch basin for his evolved thinking. Our species seems so enthralled with the “bells and whistles” that come each new packaged tchotchke, we would like to ascribe our adherence to sobriety societally palatable conformance, because that behavior denies the abandon of the unknown that is dangerous to the “economy.” I posit, and am convinced the only rational economy for our planet is one that enriches from the bottom up. I am not willing to debate this logic with anyone, but am entirely open to exploiting how this superior survival tactic can be enacted - because i am an asshole, and you are not ·

Just to add “emphasis on the syllable”; i’d just about abandoned you without your due fill - a 5 paragraph essay deserves its conclusion · don’t be a jerk and let your entire DNA strand, strand itself because you were too vain, or too stupid to act in a timely manner. I’d like to be polite and encourage cordial exchanges wherever possible, but given there is all the planet’s wherewithal in the hands of a maniacal cabal bent on kissing each other’s arses into the apocalypse, i think i’ll just abstain and picture myself in the arms of one or another of the more sexually intriguing trysts that see past my withered frame into the ardent heart of my “i hope you feel my love;” it hurts me to imagine Thay’s disapproval of my standards for “Sangha,” yet somehow - what he, Master Thich Hhat Hanh has taught me about breathing and love, i remain confident that the universe will forgive me whatever soft embrace i might find on my path to death - as i hope the universe blesses you for your kind touch for all .

jts 30/06/2020

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290620 - Extinction Chronicles ·

“this could be heaven or this could be hell” - Hotel California · It is hot where i am but heavenly; lucky me my father was an “existentialist” given to slapping me upside the head anytime i veered from parental wisdom, kidding, sort of. Yet here i sit 5 decades after the conversation facing heaven or hell knowing in my heart that he was right and the responsibility rests squarely in my lap which i will find. The paradox is that things are not always what they seem and heaven sometimes has horns, while through hell can appear to be the only path to heaven. I do not nest well with other birds of my species because my visage is different - the children i grew up with told me my eyes were “crossed,” professionals assured me it was either “Dwayne’s Retraction”, or “Palsy of the Sixth Cranial Nerve” in either case there is no escaping the 2nd take one sees when encountering strangers. For the longest time, i’d have sold my soul to be normal - even pretty like the rest of my family · the longer i live the more i realize my appearance has been a gift to me in a world demanding convention.

I couldn’t be conventional if i tried, and we’ll never know which came first: the chicken or egg. There is a sweet gentle core so deep inside of me that i have found few kindred spirits in my travels. To be fair, i have been described as “espinoso,” though i’d be hard-pressed to say honestly how much was projection from the observer, and how much was reaction formation on my part to be confronted by an unappealing perception from a relative stranger. Lao Tzu - “Care what other’s think and you will always be their prisoner.” What i struggle with today is taking no prisoners, yet here i sit searching for prose to convince you the reader to take pity on yourself and save the human race. It is almost enough to welcome the end; how much more confusion can one mind take? I live in a land where the language is not my own, so i must resort to body language and inference - communication modalities that were the norm in my emotionally retarded family, so when you factor in my growing blindness, ya’ may as well add a factor for blind terror.

My first wife was a schizophrenic Cherokee - our time together was less than 6 weeks · that year i broke the outside metacarpal in both hands and sliced my inside right forearm requiring 60 stitches and poured 60 gallons of simmering spaghetti sauce across the front of that same forearm - i sought therapeutic aid in resolving my stress · The friend i turned to was an MD intern in psychiatry living across the street in Santa Ana who remains a friend to this day, but he would not therapize me; only advocate on behalf of “psychoanalytic psychotherapy.” What he didn’t tell me in his role as mentor to mentee was that when he ridiculed my notions about unconventional thought, primarily metaphysics, was that he was parroting a party line about Freudian superiority to the, at the time, much disparaged take on the mind’s workings by a student and close confidant to Freud, C.G. Jung. It is entirely forgivable that my friend would labor strenuously to disparage unscientific thinking, but he did not own his prejudice, nor cross the threshold to explain his fascination with fine art as pertained his relationship to me.

People are not honest, or better said, are as honest as they are able to face their own existence. It is why i take pains to uncover in this chronicle a naked truth about myself, for i no longer have anywhere else to turn. I find the characters in my world today as frightened as any i’ve met - fear is not a positive motivator for candor, unless that fear is so great that in can shred your ego and leave your soul flapping in the wind. I do not find that sort of fear where i live - the fear here in VN is too contemporary and digitally manipulated to be of any real use · the corporate overlords and their Artificial Intelligence thug have so chopped and diced the channels of communication that there is no “commons” only the pandering clickbait of economic functionaries interpreting what responses that can be mined, and regurgitating that data back onto the population’s screens as “what you should BUY, if you really want to be happy.”

As angry as i now understand that i am with the cowardly abandonment of my family when faced with my “differentness,” i would still prefer 5 minutes of laughing at their effete reasoning than spend a day hearing what the googol bully thinks i need to watch or pay any attention at all to zuké the wannabe nazi, or his opinion of who are my friends. There is much to be said for independence; authoritarian regimes rely on clusters - the sort of cliques that make high school marketing such a success and fine art such a failure. Any shame i feel about my life cannot be attributed to poor parenting, sibling rivalry or lousy interpersonal skills - not being kind to myself is the only explanation for any unfriendliness i experience deep at night when reconciling the pleasure of deep sleep with the very real need to peer into the deepest recesses of my own discomfort and unhappiness we all share alone with ourselves and no one else because at heart we care about those around us and do not want them to feel pain - peace ·

jts 29/06/2020

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280620 - Extinction Chronicles ·

The esprit d’corps of the Marines says rather than flee, their response is to run toward “gunfire.” I don’t hold with martial - anything, and share this because we as a species are in a fight like no other we have ever witnessed · so much so: we hear no cannon fire; we see no bombs bursting in air, and yet more people have died on our planet in the last 3 months than have died in all the wars for the past ________ years. We are experiencing “battle fatigue” and all we have to defend ourselves is a mask and clean hands. I am fortunate to be of an age where “The Twilight Zone” has more contextual meaning than a line item on the googol feed. There have been times in my existence where when possible i literally devised my weekend around a Twilight Zone Marathon, and was happy for it; if only because today in a world awash with a pathogen of lethal dimension i find myself at an age nearing death in one of a handful of nations on the planet who has managed to stymie the virulent reproduction of that pathogen - tell me that’s not weird ·

It doesn’t mean anything really more than my lifespan is now predicated more on my personal habits (which doesn’t bode well for the home team) than my zipcode. Where i grew up is aflame in death because of an irrational and arrogant response to the same threat i now face with all the world, even closer to the pathogen’s origin, yet paradoxically safer in a zero-case zone, biding my time for the death tormenting so many others on the planet. What am i to do with that “found” time¿ it is not the first time in my life that serendipity has rewarded my personal misfortune with questionable favor. Shenanigans from my youth blew out an eardrum that was rendered a monetary value due to “white privilege” that was within a few years lost to greed from my own lumpin proletariate ignorance. Whether that lost monetary value translated into any worldly use - who knows · who cares ?

At 65 years old, i believe, maybe for the first time in my life, deep inside that someone does care - it is me · i care about me. Laugh if you must, it strikes me kind of dumb as well. My core is more at peace accepting that there may be no one else but myself to look down upon me as i die, while relinquishing any fantasy of being loved by others to the end is important. I no longer wake daily wondering which account i may have neglected that might render me - alone at the “end” · The weird result of that introspection is i am more liberated to search for ways to relieve others of discomfort they might face; however knowing their suffering will not be relived by any action i might take, only by the actions that they themselves take - if i can help good · if i cannot help good.

The world will not be rescued by any virtue i have been able to articulate here in these chronicles - nor is she condemned by any lapse in rectitude i might enjoy · horn dog that i am, and hopefully for the sake of the species, remain. My responsibility as near as i can tell is to cause no harm - and that, my friends is a conundrum to beat all · given the prissy sensitivity our species has been trained to respond to: “if your toilet paper is not soft enough, buy everyone else’s until you find one that makes your butthole feel clean; if she does not want to kiss you, keep changing your toothpaste until she does; if he doesn’t recognize your beauty, make him suffer until he does.” and the beat goes on & on while your wallet grows lighter and and lighter and your happiness falls further and further away.

I do not know what the answer is to all the misery i describe herein - i do know for myself the more simple i make my life · the happier i am. I no longer share my thinking seeking allies; more like i try to imagine what my friends look like in my heart so that when i finally see them with my eyes coming toward me, i will not be distracted by their disheveled, broken and faithless appearances - but rather will be guided by the gentle kindness toward those around them and their glee at still being alive. If we are not living on behalf of the generation 6 times away from the one we are enduring - we are already dead and deserve no more from the universe than whatever quiet death we have asked for, if that is what we have beseeched. 

I believe my father died because he had convinced himself he was no longer useful - but he was valiant to the end · Poetry had been the “identity” he had given himself where his life experience did not enrich his sould; so he taught poetry to the end of his days, or at least until convinced his poetry no longer mattered. Maybe it is the same for me - he and i warred all through my adolescent years · he the high school English teacher, me: no one’s student. He managed to hammer into my mind the good use of a “5  paragraph essay” - the thesis in paragraph One describing what you believe followed by Three examples you will use to demonstrate your logic; with a conclusion in paragraph Five describing how you had used your Three examples to establish the validity of your thesis. How anyone ever managed to convince my father that he was no longer useful is unimportant; what is important is that i do my level best to find enough Five Paragraph essays to discover, uncover and expand useful work that can be accomplished by every woman, man and child on the planet which may result in the survival of our species - 6 generations hence · are we having fun yet¿ 

jts 28/06/2020

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270620 - Extinction Chronicles ·

I woke up this morning profoundly troubled, but not so put off-balance as to abandon my training; the unexplained sneering of the Banh Mi maker had to stay with her, and i suspect it is conflict about believing she had been “looked at” admiringly by one of my aged cohort - i am very careful who i admire here in VN · as i am anywhere in the world. My game is intact, but largely removed from the arena, for i have little patience any longer with dalliance - a game for the young · i am far too old. I seek the “heart of gold” i heard sung about in my youth, but never found or found but was too emotionally retarded to know. I ended up with a nap prior to writing that invigorated me more than i’d have thought possible given my suspicion about other’s ideas as to what benefits me. My friends in Oaxaca are suffering from their recent earth surfing “set”, and there is not fuck all i can do - i am finding that truth more and more common the weirder my life gets.

For example; in the midst of a perfectly reasonable emotional miasma facing death in a foreign nation where i had quixotically fantasized a “worker’s paradise”, is more likely a resort enclave surrounded by reactionary billionaire “investment” money, yet i also enjoy from a tree growing adjacent to my wall a plethora of grapefruit that my lily white, most likely cajun sympathizing Nova Scotian paternal great grandmother Munner ate religiously which i am sure aided her in reaching the ripe old age of 99 before giving up the ghost. My father her grandson once explained to me when asked “why did you become an English Teacher” - “because i love to play with words” he remarked without losing a beat. Munner’s vocabulary, at least the one she used with me, was uniformly “superlative.” Every action, thought or childish exclamation was met with some variation of “how Grand, how Wonderful - how Remarkable.” It is a small wonder that my father had been a high school cheerleader at Bell High School, before he became a B-17 pilot to fight Nazis - it would seem · the same Nazis occupying the White House today, some 77 years later.

So I shouldn’t be too surprised to find myself at times shoulder to shoulder in VN with _rumpf emisaries who nurse aspirations of reeducating Ho Chi Minh’s warriors to the superior wisdom of “Anarchistic Capitalism,” i mean look at how successful the Koch Bros’ health care for profit has been in combating the latest plague to hit the planet - like “greed” wasn’t the preeminent threat to our species. It’s not. When i woke this morning i had a brief encounter with a friend in Uruguay on FB. If it was 10 sentences i would be surprised; but because we had once shared air, i as a lodger - her comments cut to the core of my waking pain and i felt touched · soothed. I would welcome the ability to accomplish that on command, but all i seem to manage is to deflect aggression with some withering response that i had learned somewhere in the emotional battlefield and now have great difficulty dissolving, or at least transforming to a more constructive end. I do not want all close to me - many i find are too toxic to my bizarre makeup and only wish to be far from before they see in my eyes how little attraction they have for my attention.

Or more accurately, how difficult it is for me to suggest another approach toward communicating; my father and mother were both teachers and in their own way struggled to help each of us to learn. I was unable to make the leap and utilize teaching as a platform for propagating thought, maybe because i am crazy or maybe because the schools in which i tried to teach were - it doesn’t matter · all that matters is that someone learns. Not knowledge which can be forged and appropriated to dubious ends, but the ability to see each condition one faces in a unique light and make the most constructive use of that vision to aid the next person in line. C.G. Jung - described our species as a rhizome, living just under the surface of death/dirt but alighting new to the turning of the seasons full with each lesson we had learned from a previous turn at breathing - i fantasize and he said no such thing, but you get the gist.

We face a similar quandary about how to perpetuate our deeper knowledge to children and parents who will be literally plagued by much worse than what to eat, or where to stay - the world we are leaving our posterity will involve more fundamental issues, like how to breathe in a superheated environment, what collective behavior will aid the propagation of food and protection of water in a world laid wast by generations of greed; what steps can be taken to neutralize: atomic, chemical and nutritional degradation ? This is not an academic consideration, but simple logic that needs be addressed with what little resource remains to the commonweal. Scientists have been coopted - my own family contains executives of corporate concerns feathering their nests with proceeds from asbestos as talc for POC - and these are decent caring people who have more to gain by ignoring the consequence of their complicity than they do by pulling up stakes and throwing their lot in with all who have been abandoned by the “economy.”

fuck the economy - protect your brothers and sisters as best you can with whatever emotional wherewithal you can find close · love, might be a good place to start. “But what do I know” - Michel de Montaigne 

jts 27/06/2020

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260620 - Extinction Chronicles ·

Pema Chodron rightly describes hate as covering fear, and that behind the fear is a soft core of humanity within each of us that is unquenchable. Lao Tzu said similarly that each individual contains a kernel of goodness and it is our collective responsibility to uncover and nurture that kernel in all we meet. The challenge is to fulfill that wisdom within ourselves before we succumb to the honest desire to help others. I miss that vulnerable place in myself that used to be so accessible and invulnerable to what Leonard Cohen described about when the “blizzard of the world has crossed the threshold and overturned the order of the soul.” It is i who determines my fate - not the purveyors of style or the gatekeepers of “attention.” You’d do your soul well to reverse your click-bait mentality for larger game than the lemmings your corporate overlords have deemed worthy of you fierce and hungry skill.

I was young once and there was no wound that could lay me low, save that of love - she was as she is · just waiting for the right moment to render me helpless. Why it is that women need for men to be infants to work their magic, i do not understand; but clearly all the force that is leaking from my once formidable frame is useless in the struggle i would have hoped we could have engaged in together. Instead i find “her” yoked to Amazonian fantasies of value and worth based on a materialism she has been shamefully seduced to with assurances that the more you own - the safer will be your children · much like the bigger his muscles the safer will be your pussy. When will we once again work as a well-ordered team, me slitting its throat, while you restrain its weakening limbs? I don’t see this time coming soon enough to save our species, but i comfort myself for having tried.

My mother couldn’t destroy me, so she ordered her children to perceive me as “ugly” in a family of “beauty.” What she discounted, ma - was that as one of her progeny however deformed or “odd” i held her well-being close to my heart and have trained myself to love her hatred of me, because it was good for her. This does not make me a saint - simply practical, for when one is born to find she who you were born to holds hatred for this act the only practical avenue available is to help. Nearly 7 billion people on the planet earth are faced with this same dialectic - they did not ask to be born, yet from the moment of their inception they have been hounded, and herded and attacked for little more reason than breathing air - that is not right.

I would change the conditions of existence for all if i could, i cannot - i have tried. The only person i have control over is myself and there are damn few who give a flying fuck about how it is going for me. It would take me a number of lifetimes to explain why something so obvious has taken so long to manifest - let us remain with first things first · These are the “Extinction Chronicles” which means you are reading for clues about what destruction is taking place that will materially affect you, or what steps you can take to protect those you love and those you hope to love from what you can see with your own native intelligence about what is coming down the “pike.” It ain’t pretty, but we as a species have faced worse. The “64$ question” is how much game do you have on the ball, how determined are you to remain free and independent, and how deeply can you see into the “bullshit” that is propagated as development, or distinguish what is of your own reasoning vs what you are told?

Don’t whine to me about complexities; i live in a country my birth nation tried to destroy, and 89% or so of the population i meet on a daily basis, sees me as “white devil” aged invader or opportunistic predator looking for profits to skim off the top. Meanwhile, the reality is i am a tired old man, not angry, not vengeful, without a friend looking for some quiet corner of the world to die peacefully murmuring nonsense to all save those who would like to create a loving world for any who follow however how few that number might be because of reckless stupidity by “responsible” members of a mythical economy designed to aid a “one” rather than a “one” x 1,00o,ooo,ooo . go figure ¿

jts 26/06/2020

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250620 - Extinction Chronicles ·

“What fresh hell can this be?” - Dorothy Parker · The euphemism used to describe heat in Viet Nam during June is “oppressive,” horrid i think from today’s ambient condition would be more accurate, but i’m a whiny occidental, what do i know¿ This morning i was invited to a lunch with former neighbors, some of whom were conspicuously absent to the degree i felt awkward having accepted the invitation. I will be 66 on my next birthday and am as far from a place to rest as i’ve ever been - i spent my 16th birthday sleeping off a drunk on the deck of the ferry between Antwerp and London · Yet, everything will turn out okay. I refuse to accept that this is the best our species can accomplish - capitulation to corporate trust-fund babies posing as govt. thugs, or dislocated religious charlatans pitching for pennies in Kathmandu or organizing pay as you go Moon Trance Dances in Phucket Thailand.

I am no better, and that is disconcerting that after a lifetime of sanctimonious denial all the further i have gotten is 3 rude wives, and a two-room bungalow on a rice field in the lower rent district of a pony world heritage site in a war ravaged nation willing to do most anything to retrieve the world respect it commanded having handed “Uncle Sam” his ass on a platter only to find the “god almighty buck” was never even wagered in the war. No the only patriots in today’s world are obscure wraiths condemned to mysterious deaths like Aaron Swartz whose soul objective was to free data from the corporate overlords - or Michael Rapaport who coined the all too accurate levy - “infinite growth paradigm” · In my early days hoping to reclaim territorial family respect, i would sign on to any program that might elicit some regard to the lengths i was willing to go to - “be one” · with the program. 

Remember please the concept i was chasing was supposedly progressive and solidarity for all things decent and upstanding - as upstanding as a family could be where my greate grandfather was a doctor in the Confederate Army. Cognitive dissonance was literally mother’s milk for me - given ma was a collegiate beauty queen and i 3rd born Breech Birth with Dwayne’s Retraction who suffered pneumonia in his first year requiring material expense that deprived the two already-arrived-pretty-children of time and emotional nutrition - already the “enemy” at age 1 what chance was there for rapprochement¿ 65 years later, i’d have to say little - ironically you’d think this inclination toward muteness would agree with all concerned · save the telling of one’s own story that should never be sacrificed to the “sacred cow” of any cause, heterodoxy, or orthodoxy.

I find at this late hour Mssr Montaigne’s focus on cabbage for why and wherefore, or Κύριος. Σωκράτης reasons for learning a new song useful:

“While they were preparing the hemlock, Socrates was learning how to play a new tune on the flute. “What will be the use of that?” he was asked. “To know this tune before dying.” If I dare repeat this reply long since trivialized by the handbooks, it is because it seems to me the sole serious justification of any desire to know, whether exercised on the brink of death or at any other moment of existence.”

― Emil Cioran, Drawn and Quartered

What we are facing now as a species preparing to vacate our opportunity in paradise are issues of content and meaning: how have we misunderstood the privilege of breathing, of loving, of growing in favor of concepts which Maya Angelou nailed - 'Hate, it has caused a lot of problems in the world, but has not solved one yet.' In my minimalist ways had to look up “hate” and its origins - it’s not prejudice, it’s not fury; it is closer to “aver.” This made more sense to me for it explained my personal confusion with the expression “unconditional love”. I mean this to happen, yet like Neil Simon’s “Cool Cool River” there is no safety in numbers, nor in isolation · as a reality that defies logic when we are simply wiggling protoplasm looking to be comfortable. Today giving Kiwi fruit as an offering, i could not but be mindful of some previously imagined “faux pas” regarding Kiwi; ’scuse me, let it go.

I want no harm to you or your ego, and i shrink from every illumination you feel i must see that says otherwise. I know for certain at this stage of my decrepitude, it would give me great giggles to surreptitiously execute the god of greed in the hearts of all - and foster an angel of generosity to minister to the dying of a species · i’m not holding my breath; as a matter of fact i’m doing all those things advocated by the wise: de-stressing, defenestrating fake friends - ego oriented projects and anything robbing me of wholesome reflection with peace in my heart · I do not recommend this course for anyone; it is lonely, there is no reinforcement and as Leonard Cohen remarked “the judgements can be severe. Though i have to say as the air becomes more rarified and the clamoring dies to a din one can almost hear the echo of a soul born into a world created to crush souls and elevate the vacuous to a pedestal that can be easily monetized and sold off to the empty of heart hungry for purpose.

jts 25/06/2020

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