120720 - Extinction Chronicles ·

"Wars are fought over who owns the land, but in the end it is she who owns us. Does not one who dares to claim to possess it rest under it?"

 - Cochise, Apache Chiricahua

I was not refreshed on waking - i think it’s because Bob Dylan was telling me something in my dreams · Lucky me; now if i could only spread the good fortune i’d feel better about what i do. Just singed the vegetables, did not wash the bicycle; learned an ugly truth about an icon i’d elevated in my moral cosmology based on my myopic perception, and realized at the beginning of today’s writing, i’d stiffed my readership of 3, their 5th paragraph; so how’s your day going? The upside: i pulled more dead skin from my wounded ear; managed a nap that seemed to refresh the painful part of last night’s rest and am still willing to pull my heart out through my fingertips for no other reason than to help the human species survive itself.

Maybe if i keep the paragraphs short i won’t be tempted to finish abruptly. What confounds me is the dichotomy of expressing clarity in a world “off-the-rails.” A handful of profiteers have so polluted the environment with plastic that it is now found in the organisms at the deepest parts of our oceans; i’ve read that 91% of the plastic made which has increased 200 fold between 1950 and 2015 is not recycled, and as of 20 December 2017 the “talking heads” expect an increase of 40% over the next decade - just for laughs you might look at the graph describing that increase and the one describing Covid-19 infections in the U.S.

I’ve said this elsewhere in my writing trying to convey the complexities of dear old dad - but when we would shoot the shit, me on some street corner in Hollywood and he in some supervised capacity thanks to my elder siblings; when the discussion came around to the “the world” and what was going on, however he understood that to mean at the time, his quip was usually the same, “man am i glad i’m old.” He was a deeply caring man who suffered all that any pilot who crushed one of his own crew due to failed brakes on a B-17 bomber might, yet his orientation was always in support of the “little guy.” He put his money where his mouth was as a career High School English teacher and long time union representative. 

As one of his sons who witnessed his life up close, it is for those reasons i refuse to relinquish the floor to the mythology of meaning that the social engineers today are shoving down the gullet of a population faced with its own extinction for no better reason than the caprice of a pampered gentry made fat on no more than the +/- 5v impulses flashing before your very eyes as you try to decipher my meaning. The only weapons in my arsenal of resistance are words, and logic to put them in an order that might help you to understand the danger you are in, and to encourage you to save yourselves and the lives of those you love.

If that is even possible - the chief scientist at googol is staking the future of our species on the transformation from the carbon-based organisms we inhabit to some silicon based android of an indeterminate but corporate sponsored design. The conceit is based on a mythical state of technological development described as the singularity - "a hypothetical point in time at which technological growth becomes uncontrollable and and irreversible, resulting in unforeseeable changes to human civilization." It is for this reason and others that the princes of the world seem to have no compunction about hoarding the world’s wherewithal, for they like the nazi sympathizer Walt Disney, whose remains are stored in liquid nitrogen, are waiting to “upload” what they believe to be invaluable about the human condition - their minds, ergo their egos. You and the struggles you have lived through are unimportant to these conceited fools. The only thing they believe is important is the preservation of their silly egos - and on that note · i bid you good night and sweet dreams.

jts 12/07/2020

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com 

reprinted with permission - all rights reserved

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110720 - Extinction Chronicles ·

Back again walking the tightrope of expression in a world that has way too much hear - that is not a complaint, i’m accustomed to being ignored · just not reconciled to it as “terms of endearment.” It is important to me to learn how to hear what others want to express, for i lost most of the hearing in my right ear at a young age and it took a great deal of determination just to get as far as i have & you’d be amazed at how interesting the stories are of those people around you - even just now, if you take the time to look around you and wonder what each person you see is experiencing. My father was an ace; as the “ex husband” who had been kicked to the curb by my mother because he didn’t make adequate income for her concept of security - i watched him attend one of her soirees in Beverly Hills at the house of her and my stepfather, a CEO of an insurance brokerage firm taking notes in his spiral notebook interviewing any guest that caught his attention, just to find out something more than when he arrived · the 3rd wheel of all 3rd wheels. 

Sitting here now in a foreign nation as a “3rd Wheel” i realize what testis it took to be his authentic self in hostile territory. I had sat in similar soirees in this same house where Ma had recounted embarrassing stories in his absence of their young married life e.g. when he had hit on a known lesbian oblivious to that fact; ma ridiculed pop in the same household where he was then taking copious notes (probably to many of the same people who had laughed at ma’s betrayal; at the party i remember he was only interested in learning what was important to the person he was speaking to at the time - that my friends is disinterested decency · may we all find some. I’ve nothing to protect as he had at the time, carrying his tarnished “knight’s armor” on his back like some knackered knapsack, but he did it with heart. Ma too - they both rose to the occasion for the sake of their children. Everybody i find is doing their best with what they have to work with at the time, some just have more to work with than others. That doesn’t make them superior people which was the “blood sport” of the household i grew up in - it just aids each of us in finding our place in the spectrum.

Death is a fascinating prospect compared to the mysteries i’ve encountered thus far; anything the frees me from the insipid vanity of broken souls looking to strengthen themselves at the expense of others, which seems, forgive the cliche, “de rigueur,” sort of like the urbane apple spellcheck that doesn’t recognize a foreign expression, no matter how much tax revenue it can steal for its effete product. There is no continuum, save this moment, i write and you read which paradoxically is not at the same time. I can live with that, for so much of my life has been occupied by fantasies of either future events or past circumstance that it has nearly blinded me to the splendor of the moment - this with the vivid memory of reading Baba Ram Dass’s purple book “Be Here Now” some 45 years ago in a barn in Santa Cruz, CA trying to figure out what “the marijuana growers handbook” meant by changing the plant from diploid to polyploid oranism. 

“Everything i believed has been proven wrong” - Bob Dylan. Tom Waits was right · there is no magic bullet and the more Sober AF you can become the better off our entire planet will be; having said that, Dionysius was here for a reason - transcendent states as Daniel Odier stated can be provoked by substance, Maria Sabina altered the course of modern history by betraying her knowledge to fools, but how was she to know that the ego states she was communicating with had little more than self-aggrandizement in mind. We have resources, scientific, metaphysical, philosophical and empirical such that with what Buckminster Fuller described as “trim tab” application we could almost save ourselves from the cresting destruction we have allowed into our Arcadian world. Without love - we are doomed · Leonard Cohen nailed it when he sang “love is the only engine of survival.” This complex metaphor is beyond the reach of the 5 second intellect being nurtured by the digital overlords. The beneficiaries may never know what hit them, but i know and i will continue to expound with my addle-pated ways until i breathe no more, or have been muted by the big “button pusher” in the sky. So until that happens love and peace to one and all .

note: if you want the 5th paragraph - you’ll have to send a written request ·

jts 11/07/2020

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com 

reprinted with permission - all rights reserved

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100720 - Extinction Chronicles ·

The heat has relented to a point where i am cogent - with help from the kind local bistro that delivered sliced fresh vegetables that i can either sauté, or eat raw. My power is waning and it is disconcerting to accept that i am past the zenith of any force i ever imagined i possessed as a puny human - and i’m okay with that. Now it becomes an issue of meting out the droplets of my time left in such a way that benefit the most with the least effort on my part · sort of like every other day of my life. There is no lock, there is no, as Leonard Cohen said so well, “perfect offering.” There is a gruesome future we all face that can be mitigated with kindness and determination. Heat is nothing new to our species as is ignorance and stupidity. That my birth culture is facing a massive comeuppance for heinous behavior is nothing new - whether she contains, again as Leonard Cohen suggested “the best and of the worst” · remains to be seen. The world has now witnessed our dirty laundry, whether there is any grace left in the fabric remains to be seen.

As a young turk, utterly convinced of my worthwhile contribution to the legacy of fine art i was absorbed by fashioning my link to the chain of fine art that Master Cézanne  described; today i would be content that anything i ever made was treated kindly with some respect for the sincerity of my efforts - and i possess grave doubts about that hope. I was raised by inordinately creative parents · with all the detritus that comes from that volatile mix. They spun so heavily against each other that they barely made it out of their 2nd decade together, yet they bore four powerful children who demonstrate much of the dissonance one might find considering closely their life together. That discomfort is less and less important to me as i approach my own demise as finding out what was successful in their pairing and advocate on behalf of more.

I read Buckminster Fuller and find little sunlight between his thinking and my own (plagiarism in its most useful form.) - one quote of particular interest at this turn is “There is no energy crisis, food crisis or environmental crisis; there is only a crisis of ignorance.” It is beyond belief that we as a species can aggregate for the celebration of physical prowess, but cannot manifest cooperation enough to protect the medical community from an airborne particle. I believe it is rooted in passive aggressive resentment toward a medical industry that routinely charges $50 for a single aspirin, but lacks the gumption to question why a medical MBA executive is more valuable to the world community than any individual scrubbing a lethal microbe from the floors of any hospital on our suffering planet? Consider me mystified.

But not acquiescent. My father was a tough motherfucker for a high school English teacher/poet. It seems he saved his hardest lessons for me; he gave no quarter, and i gave him none, but in the end it was his death alone that taught me the value of loss and love. Ma, she’s an entirely different equation that demonstrates thoroughly his attraction for her as mate and mother of his children, but belies understanding of her as an individual. She has sat in a room full of our nuclear family and stated to all that i had suffered more than any of the other children, and yet has heaped more abuse on my shoulders than any of my siblings for reasons that elude me to this date - July 10, 2020, in nine days she will turn 92, and by her design as near as i can tell she wants me no where near her for that event. 

As it happens i am quarantined in one of the few nations Covid-19 free, and i wouldn’t put it past her to have arranged this circumstance, by hook or crook. She is my mother and i love her dearly, though she would deny that to anyone listening, as she has maligned me to each of my siblings for some sacred purpose only she can know. My task is only to love her as best as i can with the cards that have been dealt me - alone as i feel she wishes to be when she faces her greatest adversary - death · She is not the warm fuzzy mama depicted on all the channels we read, as i have learned is more common than any of us wish to share. My mother is an uncommonly decent human who was confused by shotgun blasts in desert cabins and hitched rides through barren wastelands when no more than a little girl - i accept that about my parent and hope that she feels the deep love i feel for her struggle to pass into the great beyond with some measure of peace at a time when the entire planet is struggling to do the same - love to all · with intransigent peace. 

jts 10/07/2020

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com 

reprinted with permission - all rights reserved

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090720 - Extinction Chronicles ·

Yesterday i attempted an essay on simplicity which devolved into more esoteric complexity, but at least i am trying. At the conclusion of yesterday’s writing, i had the good fortune of being visited by the buffalo herder. I take the inclusion as a great honor, and was rewarded by the calf taking a drink of the water i put out each time they visit. The herder returned today and is standing at the back of my chair watching me write which i do not find offensive or threatening in any way. The struggle is to find a way for him to feel at home where i live while he takes his charges from fallow field to fallow field. It is possibly delusional to think that i can contribute to relieving his suffering, if in fact it is suffering he experiences. His life is rural - his friends are patient buffalos and i know nothing more about his life than that · yet we share tobacco and he seems content to watch me write.

Somehow this constitutes success for me - to be accepted as a feature of the landscape and a resource like the poem about the “shade tree” the children in the school in Nepal would recite when their teacher was not available. As an elder traveler without family or knowledge about who is friend and who is not, this peculiar arrangement leaves me happy. Whether it will detract from an already goofy writing regime, we’ll just have to wait and see. When he returned this afternoon, i knew that i must establish a priority for this chronicling, otherwise it would become fictional posing of an effort to recount life at what may be the end days of our species. I have written in many environments since i took up the banner of writing after my father pulled me by the collar to his face and made me promise to never stop writing - this after he broke his hip and was in the midst of expiring.

My vision is such that drawing which had once been a great comfort is now more like looking for water with a witching stick than the culmination of a lifetime of chasing the “masterpiece.” I am luckier than most to have backup outlets, but it doesn’t relieve me of the responsibility to do my level best at some meaningful expression regardless of the form. I used to say that it didn’t matter about pop’s senility, if he was reduced to a vocabulary of two words, those two words would have more meaning than much of the noise that passes for literature, or in the modern vernacular - “content”. I just had the most meaningful conversation with a buffalo herder through googol translate than i’ve had in the past year. The buffalo herder is open and curious surrounded by a supposedly sophisticated closed culture - tell me i’m not the luckiest duck on a planet about to ________ fill in the blank.

The manager’s of content have successfully conjured as Noam Chomsky suggested they might: “The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum.” I’ve heard expressions of “turnkey tyranny” with regards to what had once been euphemistically described as the “information super-highway” - more like “highway to hell” · 3 years into the 1st fascist of the free world’s rape of Washington D.C. and what had once been the cradle of democracy now struggles with the fundamental logic of masks in a plague, or whether to preserve the lives of children by removing them from school. My family has for too long enjoyed the delusion that shutting me up would some how benefit the family’s honor and i find their honor is as dishonest as the honor of my birth nation which today murders people with impunity based on skin color and rewards corruption with greater and greater ill-gotten gain.

My friend the herder let himself out the door when i described “back to work,” i can only hope he returns and brings friends. I welcome friends, not allies - because those days are long past - the delusion that there is anything that separates us as a species but each other is suspect. I welcome the flesh of a lithe loving companion, but am unwilling to abdicate the values i’ve fought hard to learn, much less apply. I know what i know, not from conventional allegiance, but from pain and confusion that Pop was able to show is the lot of each and every one of us - anyone claiming that fictional state of arrival · is suspect and all who cluster to share their anguish, their pain · their open hearts are welcome at whatever table i sit, but if you come to persuade me of my evil, my weakness or my dishonor, i can only ask that you look deeper into your own reason for seeking my company. peace and love friends. 

jts 09/07/2020

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com 

reprinted with permission - all rights reserved

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080720 - Extinction Chronicles ·

Metacognition is the ability to think about your thinking - sort of like a gateway to the breakdown of the ego · until you have a way to witness your own processes it is impossible to exert control, or lack thereof on one’s behavior. Simplicity is the topic i wish to pursue today and by having stated that, i can now monitor how closely this stream-of-consciousness experiment of mine hews to that vein. With regards simplicity, if you don’t write, you have nothing to edit, and the threads of your thinking simply evaporate over time. Whereas, by design i pick a time and build my day around that schedule to expunge my doubts, pain, fear and fantasy into letters on a page building words that hopefully create sentences of cogent thinking - so goes the theory. Age, fatigue, love, psychoactive substance all clamor for a role in this revelatory effort, and like any good batter of cake mix it depends on how the shit rises whether others will enjoy the repast or spit it out behind your attentive back.

For those tuning in - parts of the previous paragraph are what could be described as metaphor · a superficially facile concept which when it works is a nearly transparent vehicle for instant understanding, but when handled ham-fisted, creates hokum like what we all hear in the relentless hipster-doofus media. We all know what it is like to sit next to someone in close conversation that elicits a ping-pong effect of comprehension; sometimes it lasts for hours or years, and sometimes it is for no more than an instant of understanding in a lifetime of solitude, but an instant that is worth everything. Simplicity dictates our wiggling frames of protoplasm want little more than to be happy - lucky us · the corporate overlords have hijacked this simple metric and yoked to their pathetic engine of profit for the few, FUCK YOU.

And i mean that as the anti-royalist Australians i’ve been privileged to serve with might say “in the nicest possible way”. This is not international combat against some invading force - what we face is treason within the ranks of our species. We, humanity - all of humanity are fighting an agency that cares nothing about our future and everything about an instant of comfort that might be found on the pillow of an ocean going Yacht pieced together with the skins of human beings it has trampled upon on a bizarre effort to “have more than others”; i’m sorry but even in the most scurrilous nightmares of my wannabe proletariate family can i find a more treacherous segment of the population than those who propagate - “let us all get rich” when only but the dumbest amongst us understand there are no riches but the unbidden love of friend, family and history. 

Who’s kidding who? you buy a plastic bag - where the fuck do you think it is going to go · do you once think for a moment the riches you are creating are for some mook in an air conditioned office feeding off the poison your children will pay for with cancer and endocrine illness that that same mook is going to profit from because he/she owns and ownership interest in the medical facility you must take your loved ones to because the medical industry owns the cures for the poisons you feed to yourself and your family - that is a question? Nobody likes being played for stupid - i know i don’t · but i cannot blame you for stupid choices i have made in service of my own greed, that is my problem and something i will have to die looking at.

However if i make no effort to alert those who follow in our weirder and weirder continuum then there would be then as now - no place to hide · You are my brothers and sisters, though those of my blood branch would deny my existence, i cannot give a fuck about their vanity any longer than i can accept your silly posturing for prominence at a time when billions are in jeopardy - not just your dog, your ma, or your husband. We have no one to blame but ourselves for this havoc we have created; the good news is there is no one else but ourselves who will save us. You do your best by the next person you meet in your travels and you will have rendered all of our species a blessing. I cannot think of anything more empowering than that simple fact; you are in complete control of the future of the entire human race on our planet - what a happy thought · go get ‘em tigers  

jts 08/07/2020

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com 

reprinted with permission - all rights reserved

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070720 - Extinction Chronicles ·

I’m back writing at Circle Cafe, for D-Deli has gone further down the road; am out mostly to mix it up - took a spill on my bicycle this morning, i could have avoided. If i hadn’t motivated out the door the wound may have festered; one thing i’ve learned it is better to get up as soon as you’ve been knocked to the ground if for no other reason than to see if there is a better place to fall. I’m of an age when the epic falls of friends cannot be ignored, yet repercussions therefrom cannot be allowed to restrict, rather animate wind in the sails of whatever voyages that are left to you and your intrepid journeys, for if you are alive and moving anywhere in today’s world - there is little else that can describe your travels · i could hope for loving, but that might be construed as greedy .  ..

Tomorrow i will file for an extension on my visa. I would like to live where i am to the end of my days but the curse of hyper-vigilance dictates that once the borders are opened again the curse of density will result in beaucoup tourist revenue to feed a pent-up hunger for profit in an old world destination with a taste of the luxury that a “boom or bust” economy can provide and indifferent to the consequences of the one dimensional economy that “tourism at all costs” has had on its people. The challenge of these writings is to render them transparent to location or culture and identify common ground for economic success for all people in all phases of the economic spectrum: the downside for HNWI of “anarchistic capitalism” & the upside of “enlightened self-interest”; the downside of “burn it down” & the upside of urban agriculture providing “food for all”; and the immutable law that violence within the species’ stock can no longer stand in any form - gender, racial, class or interpersonal.  

We are in an existential lifeboat containing the last useful stories of our species, though we have never been asked how we’d like them to be curated. I have little patience with anyone who insist how i am to depict them and even less patience with anyone intent on telling my story outside my own agency - that may seem a contradiction of terms. Here is my thinking - i see others through great limitations of vision, emotional capacity and existential myopia and so make every effort to be clear that i am making statements from my limited perspective and assuming no more than a passing impression through the filter of my experience · i can only imagine it is as difficult for others to understand my story and so make every effort to be candid about what i feel at any given moment about events that i am experiencing while inviting as much input and revelation from others as they can muster.

I make no claims to reality outside of the limited perimeters of my perception - twisted as it is. But i do not back away from interpreting events, behaviors and assertions of others as they pertain to me. This language and prose has grown obnoxiously esoteric, which is why i make every effort to cleave to the personal - mine is the only story that i have any real sense for · all others is conjecture and fantasy. This is not to say that what i opine is without value or accuracy, only that the only truth i can speak to is my own. I took a fall today on my bicycle in a foreign nation at the age of 65 - the heat is relenting, and my domicile is in question; i live in the midst of a moderately hostile and ambivalent population that has made it quite clear my expenditures are more important to them than what i feel, and i understand - not to say i like it, but i accept that reality.

It is my responsibility to moderate, adjust or ignore. The other member of our accident today fled the scene making clear he didn’t give a fuck whether i had broken a bone, my bicycle or wounded the 3rd party. I have to accept that as a reality of where i live and prepare for future events based on that fact. Whether i allow the behavior of another to impair my ability to assimilate and make where i live home to the day i day is not his responsibility, but my own. The obverse is as equally true - if i let this event affect my ability to take a mate i believe is loving and caring is not his responsibility but my own. This reality runs contrary to my cultural upbringing which has dictated the anger and repugnance my family has made clear it feels about me is my responsibility for having been a failed human in their eyes, rather than choices they each have made, just as i have had to make choices of my own based on my best guess - it is a paradox · but i believe in my heart it is helping me to better understand my resistance 

jts 07/07/2020

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com 

reprinted with permission - all rights reserved

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060720 - Extinction Chronicles ·

I hated going to elementary school - my crossed eyes drew attention, and my gentle manner encouraged cruelty · Because of this childishness of mine and others, i chose to forge my mind into a cruel weapon that could peer into the souls of others and force them to spontaneously combust at any moment of my choosing - there was a lot of ash and debris in my younger years. At some magical moment, i began to see the pain of others and could no longer sustain the anger necessary to inflict “spontaneous combustion” at will; i think it was Patsy Donahue’s fault, because she wouldn’t stop smiling at me. I’m probably the only master villain in history to be turned into a chump by a little girl. Nor am i complaining, for my life has been richer and more meaningful, albeit more dangerous due to my lifelong study of the female’s smile.

60 years later, i have to admit - i am a rank amateur · but i wouldn’t trade the smiles i’ve tried to fathom for any scholar’s certain knowledge about what they mean. From what little i’ve learned, it may be our future is inextricably linked to the number of smiles men can create on the faces of women; but i’m just guessing. Here’s the logic behind my guess, and i don’t have a 60 year-old database with columns and check boxes to back up my claim, but i’d be willing to stake my social security check on this fact - good shit happens when women smile · Call me a wild-eyed romantic making things up to suit some nefarious plot to overthrow the fascists posing with their mitts on “The” joystick just now, and you’d be right; but it’s more than that - you know in your heart what i’m saying is true just by closing your eyes and picturing all the good shit that has happened to you · “there was a woman close by smiling”.

The obverse is true as well. If you’ve ever woken up to see the scowling face of some woman hovering over you - you can bet something shitty is about to take place · don’t believe me, look back over your own life experience and tell me i’m lying. It is this immutable law of human nature i believe is freaking out all the “tough guy” conservatives, they know the truth of what i’m saying, AND they probably couldn’t tell you the last time a woman smiled them: sneered, yes; snarled, certainly; gritted her teeth, no doubt; but smiled, not likely. I’d go so far to posit donny hasn’t seen a woman smile at him with love in her heart since his Mama peered into the crib and realized she had spawned the devil’s own son. Can you imagine what kind of a life poor, pathetic donny has lived¿ if he wasn’t such an asshole, i’d almost feel sorry for the putz. 

Actually that is part of my current self-improvement plan. I figure if i can locate compassion in my heart for a putz like donny; it should make it a lot easier to be kind to the mooks i meet in my day-to-day suffering. Many are very fine human beings near as i can tell, but like the smile on the face of every woman i meet my pea brain quakes at the infinite possibilities behind that expression. I’ve tried questions like “how are you?”, but somehow the answer i see on her face doesn’t seem to match the answer i hear - but i’m kind of “deef” due to a childhood accident, and g_d in her infinite wisdom made me kind of blind, so i’m never quite sure if the distortion i’m experiencing is my own heart; her appearance; or some amalgamation of what i thought i heard. Paradoxically the “iffy” sort of reality i experience on a day-to-day basis corresponds to the mystery of meaning i’m only beginning to appreciate at age 65 - lucky me ·

Or, i’m just an excellent student harvesting the fruit of a lifelong study of the female smile, and from what i’ve learned so far, it’s pretty clear i won’t know until many years after i’m dead and gone. Nor do i feel too bad about that, ‘cause that reality is getting closer all the time. The challenge that remains to me is how many smiles i can create in as many woman as a find. Not in a greedy manic kind of way, ‘cause making a woman smile is as ethereal as chasing happiness - Odysseus found the “lotus eaters” as dangerous a lot as any in his travels and i’ve never found reason to disbelieve his wisdom. I think the Dalai Lama is more clued-in than most and when he says look to your own heart for the source of your suffering as well as the root of your happiness, from what little i’ve learned, he ain’t lying; not only is he not lying, he has staked his reputation for truth as the 14th in a chain of holy men going back a long ways. My prayer to you who read this is that you find in your heart what it takes to help a woman smile - from which i argue, the whole world will be made a little better · thank you for that .

jts 06/07/2020

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com 

reprinted with permission - all rights reserved

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