130820 - Extinction Chronicles ·

Here i sit, once again - staring at a blank page · delicate flower that i am, that blank page almost feels violent. Age, however, precludes that easy assumption and i realize at some level i am simply staring at my own emptiness. When younger and full with ego, i might have seen a rich future of recognition and understanding of my valiant effort to help mankind, help herself. Now it is just one more opportunity to honor the privilege of breathing at a time in human history when so many are being robbed of that simple pleasure. I say robbed, because i am certain this plague is manageable and has only risen to a threat due to incompetence and greed, again by that same August Body of “leaders” who are no doubt clustering in highly sanitized bunkers and possibly too frightened to count their money, much less take a vanguard position to save others. We, all of us already know in our hearts how little the “powerful” in this struggling world of ours esteem our wellbeing and safety, for if it is not war that gets us, then it will be: poverty, gratuitous destruction of the eco-system; arrogant technical manipulation of the agency of free people, racist division of the species in service of war from that same technical manipulation; or just plain old fucking fatigue.

Last night, i spent the better part of the night in a twilight zone of a semi-conscious state, not from excessive substance abuse, but from a conscious decision to pray as best i know how by chanting my homegrown mantra believing more and more with each breath that we are powerful in what we think, and what we hope for - a power that is magnified a gazillion times when it is on behalf of people we know, and a googol times more powerful when we pray on behalf of people we don’t know. Don’t believe me, i’m crazy, but i’m happy. When i woke finally after having given myself permission to sleep my fill, it was not with the weight of the world that had kept me semi-conscious throughout the night, but with the joy of having tried to help, however stupid my effort may have sounded at the time to my rational indoctrination. Peace of heart is important, don’t believe me, ask the Dalai Lama, but more importantly ask yourself if you have ever gained an inch from strife.

My young family life was fraught with the conceit of the time - later to be described by the Neo-Liberals as exceptionalism · what a crock of shit, John Kennedy was shot dead by a cabal of petrol nazis and there was nary a peep from the “Sargent of Arms” as though Bob Dylan was more than a minstrel but an actual agent of the great beyond trying to warn us against our own hubris. My family is comprised of decent people to a fault, parents and progeny. We lived next door to a family who were soon to become Mormons and who to this day i hold dear to my heart, though young T____dy in our few exchanges after 4o years, soon deteriorated into a vituperative rant of such violent and indiscernible nature i yanked the plug within hours. His namesake father was a kind gentle man, though daughters within the home suffered from physical violence i only understood 30 years after the fact. My family’s violence was more genteel and of an insidious nature that is now described as “gaslighting.”

We are awash in violence, and to keep one’s head above water is a continual challenge - while the greater challenge is to not return fire. This is hard for me, for i had no example but the streets and the bare knuckle vernacular that allows wounded people worldwide to love in a violent world. For the longest time i wanted to believe the repartee i had learned in the streets was received in the same vein i had delivered it - tongue in cheek · that violent dishonesty is my own covert violence toward myself and personal shame for a softness i protected without really knowing why. I am slowly understanding better that the insults that came so quick to my tongue were defensive in nature for a fiction i had constructed about the nature of a world i experienced, and continue to experience as cruel and unfeeling. What i discounted was the force of my own orientation and responsibility for wounding people who were not even aware of their unkindness, much less in a position to defend themselves against fantasies that were in large part created out of my own fears.

Now i am going to die, if not tomorrow or the next day, much sooner than my date of birth. When i was very young i tried to conceive of what the word heaven used by adults meant. At the time there was much writing that got filtered down, even to the young about cosmology and what the expanse of the universe might be; this may have even predated the “big bang” theory of spontaneous expansion and certainly was before any “string theory,” but there was enough vague references about the enormity of our universe to capture my young imagination. Just like all thinking, i had difficulty embracing any thought that did not include my family constellation, much less the concept of death - but i tried, because that is how my family rolled, at that time. Later such visions of family became much more self-centered and narrow from renegotiation and betrayal, which is the inherent process of all learning. Today, i don’t know; which is the single most valuable lesson i have taken from my upbringing. Sometimes that ignorance is so overwhelming i am fraught with fear, but due to the focus on curiosity from my parents it always gives way to the same feeling i might have had on an early summer morning wondering what new adventures i could find in that long coming day in front of me.

jts 13/08/2020

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com 

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120820 - Extinction Chronicles ·

"Sirena"

Then there is synchronicity - another 40 minutes i’ll never get back, opening the not to open easily-serrated cap to my newest bottle of whiskey · also robbing me of the dolorous timber of thunder heralding the pitter patter of the coming rain. I wanted to open this with a description of the strident voices of fear across the road from me, from whom i have learned are visitors to the ward where i live. Just as i was formulating my question of whether i sound that strident in my writing after a few belts - i was faced with the mechanical refusal of access to my attachment · an attachment my conceit has convinced me i am free from. So now rather than being 2 1/2 paragraphs into my daily responsibility, i face 4 1/4 of emotive honor to fulfill what it is allows me to dwell in the comfort of my sleepless nights figuring out how i might have done better. (note: the abbreviated 1st paragraph - the indication of a con on the horizon)

Peace has become such a convoluted equation for me, i no longer understand friend from foe. When i arrived where i now live i reached out to the artist community, out of habit and from a consultation i’d once had with a local authority in the volatile Los Angeles art world - “make friends with local artists” he said; i am still searching for that mythological companion after 20 or more years. L.A. was super-heated at the time and i lived in an artist ghetto known as the “Brewery.” I made friends, even married the dame that introduced me to the locale - a deeply wounded Belgium paper maker · hooked up and 7 years older than i, but all i could see was her blue eyes and svelte, seemingly sexually luxurious physique; lousy model that she turned out to be. I  quickly realized that there was little interest in raising the art bar in L.A. but great interest in getting known which included a slavish adherence to the “Banksky” school of art, modeled on the FB school of patrons “move fast and break things.”

I had arrived in Los Angeles at the tail end of that delusional episode at financing my own art production through education and had gambled big on the support of a creative companion in mutual pursuit of a better world; i failed; we failed, but we tried. In the end i was left like a flopping fish out of water in the wilds of a post-creative Hollywood that was, sucking any and all funds from the tanking, but not yet vanquished “dream machine.” My father died - my family disintegrated · i left for the Far East. What i found is that the same ailments and delusions you bring with you anywhere, will be transplanted and nurtured wherever you land. However i was too vain and determined that i would not be thwarted in my effort to justify the years i had spent chasing “fame and fortune,” and sought seclusion upon my return in the high desert of the Southern Sierras. I met the _rump army coming and fled, because by that time i knew i was neither brave nor noble.

I was, however deluded that art was important to the world in which i lived and began a journey in search of where to make art with the support of the local culture, but first i did penance as a school teacher in Nepal, a roll for which i was wholly unprepared. I believed at the time what had been useful to me from my training would translate into usefulness by students who trudged 3-5 kilometers uphill and 3-5 kilometers downhill just to glory in the conceit of educators believing they knew better than 1,000s of years of information being conveyed word of mouth, fuck by fuck and with a heart that can only be gained by trudging across mountain paths for generation by generation. My humiliation was not yet then complete, and i sought more fertile fields of sharing in the South Americas - again, my conceit prevented me from sharing much less from learning anything but how wrong i was · however helpful that has been, still of little value to the people i’d hoped to “enlighten.”

Ultimately i resorted to the fiction of love after having wallowed in a nostalgic, sensual, but ultimately vain reconstruction of a family adventure gone wrong and returned to my hometown a beaten man to attend the death throes of a woman who deemed me worthy of sweeping up her funeral bier, but not worthy of her candor. “No fool, like an old fool,” and when my dear, dear friend made her request more unctuous through threat and guilt of a time long since gone - i gathered the shreds of my existence and cast them into the vortex of unrequited love and found myself in a mythological circumstance entirely of my own doing · old, alone and unprepared for what Leonard Cohen had so eloquently described as the “preliminaries” to what is all of our great transition. Then Covid-19 came and explained how a fascist had absconded with every honorable thing from where i had been raised and i sit facing a “tabula rasa” daily because it is the only decent thing i have left with which to describe my future · go figure.

jts 12/08/2020

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com 

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110820 - Extinction Chronicles ·

So doing my part to protect the community and gorging myself on what youtube fare has been left in the public domain, i stumbled across a delightful “film” - i use the term loosely · “Billionaire Ransom ·” That is an hour and some odd minutes i will never get back, but i was mesmerized by its sheer mendacity in service of the billionaires who are only now capping off their greed tanks, and as has been said better elsewhere, “rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.” On one hand i was disheartened to the core knowing how much money is being spent framing the worth or our economic parasites in a positive light, and on the other hand i cannot remember when my moral compass writhed with such mirth at the utter cupidity of such stupidity; (and yes, tommy cruise could be found in the equation, tangentially - like all things tommy cruise; why do you ask ¿?). I mean that in the nicest possible way to all the Scientologists in the audience.

What pains me more is how many seemingly intelligent, well meaning - even forward thinking humans i know who would have no clue about the naked aggression of this inept, however innocuous “action film” of the early 2010s is. The story arc advocated redemption; something of which everyone on the planet is in favor, and in need. What was glossed over throughout the storyline is truth - the white washing of vacant personal responsibility of a drunken driving accident · the unrealistic rehabilitation of lifelong habits of disregard for the value and worth of all people through vacuous casting and vicious dishonesty about a mythological “rainbow bridge” at the higher echelons of society. However, critiquing this yellow journalism is not how i wish to spend my afternoon; if you are tempted to make your own evaluation about a hack film, by hack artists about a hack gentry, please do - but on this subject · i bid you adieu. 

MLK Jr. - “Those who love peace must learn to organize as effectively as those who love war” ·

In that regard the capitalists got it right, and Upton Sinclair had is righter - “it is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” I put myself through college designing war components, and it is a fucking crying shame that what i learned during that time could not be put to better use now with what we face as an occupied species. I do what i can and use what i learned after refusing to participate in the warehousing and indoctrination of children of color in the Los Angeles Unified School District. I liked teaching, kids are way more fun to be around, and they are by far the better teachers of the important things in life; like how to hide a lie, bully the weaker, make war with anyone who is different .  .. 

My greatest experience in teaching was at a school on Sunset Blvd in East Hollywood. Of the diverse student body in LAUSD at the time this was the most diverse with nearly even split between Armenian and Latino with the remaining 20% divvied up between a dozen other demographics of color. It was maddening to watch the needless deterioration of relations between the two dominant cultures when they had so much in common - love of music, beauty, independence and fierceness. But nothing i could do or say with the time i was allotted could bridge the gulf - and so it is with likely every other warring faction on the planet, including the pissant billionaires. It makes no sense to struggle for another’s discomfort when everyone on the planet is so uncomfortable. I was, and am at a loss as to how to reason that gulf into the awareness of anyone who does not want to know otherwise. 

I don’t do billionaires, because they seem to be terminally tone deaf and i prefer to work with musical people. Men and women have no excuse, for they are the progenitors of our species and have enslaved themselves to a dichotomy seemingly based on vanity which serves neither. As a man it would be normal for me to point the finger, but i also know what a remote asshole i can be, so i think it better to own that defect and search for understanding with she whom i have loved so often and on occasion found sanctuary from the pain. I have not yet learned how to not cause suffering, but i think Lao Tzu knew the way when he advocated that we each show compassion to ourselves and thereby become reconciled with the world; when i figure that one out, you’ll be the 1st to know .  .. now for the love of g_d, go wash your hands; you know in your heart she knows best.

jts 11/08/2020

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com 

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100820 - Extinction Chronicles ·

My parents were both pedants - literally and philosophically · I don’t mean that in the pejorative of someone constantly parroting things they’ve not reflected on deeply, though there is that, but that they earned a living as teachers, and were both very interested in learning the lessons this life offers in its myriad ways · learning and teaching, a combination that is almost paradoxically mutually exclusive, one from the other. I am currently experiencing a crisis in faith, for i had been raised with a rock solid conceit in the efficacy of scientific thinking; just now in history the most fascistic combine of corporate power and religious fundamentalism is doing all in its power to discredit the entire “age of reason,” and there is much to what they say. Science has provided the corporate laboratories limitless funds to create poisons based on fossil fuel extraction that are purported to be for the benefit of our species; psychology has been employed by the “military industrial complex” to devise ways to penetrate and undermine the will of the individual on an unparalleled scale and the entire computer technology has been subsumed into a deviant effort to peep on people without warrant or invitation in order to override the “1st law of salesmanship” - you cannot create motivation.

I would surrender if i could find someone brave enough or worthy to whom i could deliver my weapon of reason, but the enemy lacks gumption enough to step out from the shadows and say “it is my algorithm that has enslaved you,” or “it is my ad campaign that has captured your attention,” rather i am surrounded by surrogates of the ruling class proclaiming their fierce independent thinking all the while measuring their success by how many adherents they bring to the fray. It is on rare occasion i meet anyone willing to dialogue about the peril our world faces without them bringing all those who concur with their thinking as though that is foundation enough to believe what they say. We live in a world where coercion is the lingua franca, and if you can intimidate enough that should suffice - the old saw · “might makes right.” I say bullshit, i’m old and growing more feeble by the day, but unfortunately for the powers-that-be, i have less and less to lose daily from my outright defiance of the status quo. 

The only advantage the ruling class possesses over me is the outmoded belief that i am responsible for whatever change i can accomplish - no retreat, no surrender · so to speak. But that ego oriented metric won’t last much longer, for what had once been the corral within which i have been kept docile; that irrational and impossible quest for approval and sanction dims daily. My mission is to distill language that cannot be twisted - to find logic that is impermeable to the legions of greed sucking the last resources of the delicate orb of moisture that has decanted our mysterious human elixir of misery and marvel; compassion and cruelty; of accomplishment and abysmal failure. I believe the solution lies in individual confidence - not the blustering foolishness of the business end of a weapon, but the conviction of each person that what they experience, whatever the valence +/- is of worth, and that each individual is not only expected but valued for contributing their best effort.

The capitalists have contrived this to mean “he who dies with the most toys, wins.” and nearly every person with whom i attended high school believes just that - my own semi-proletariate progressive, hipster doofus brethren are believers, as long as you adhere to what they tell you to adhere to. One of the profound ironies of the entire Ayn Rand epoch is the subornation of the individual to the will of the “one” - the one that got there 1st, the one with more “seniority”, the one with more friends on the “inside,” the one that won’t show him/herself to the light of open and transparent dealings. People have been trained to follow the leader to such an extent, that anyone who veers from leadership is a threat, rather than a fresh thinker, or new influence or fertilizer for growth. Those i meet where i live give great lip service to bonhomme, but in fact level enormous restrictions on who is “in” and who is “out.” This is nothing unique to where i live, for i have lived in 4 continents in 5 years. I am 65 and can tell you there is nothing unique about clustering for comfort.

Why the fuck do you think 2,000 billionaires are able to bullshit their way through the heist of the Holocene era - they picture in their heart of hearts · that they are worthy of 90% of the world’s wealth when in fact they are only worthy of 0.000028571429% .  The great fiction of the conservative battle cry of “individualism” is its missing component - the golden rule · The ruling class interprets “do unto others as you’d have them do unto you” as “those who have the gold, make the rules.” I’ve lived with these bullshit artists all my life - they were big shots in the high school cafeteria; big shots @ far too many art openings to say; and in every corporate environment i’ve ever been in where their only contribution was how many they could cow by bluster or bullshit; all the while the important work that was worthy of recognition waited patiently with dignity for a hearing - not from fear, but from correctness. If what you do is worthwhile there is no need to trumpet or bully, the work itself speaks. The ruling class has found if you are loud enough you can make bank on bullshit, all the while everyone in the room knows that you are no more than a naked emperor wearing an "empty suit."

the truth hurts, then you die.

jts 10/08/2020

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com 

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090820 - Extinction Chronicles ·

“do dum dum dum de do dum dum; do dum dum dum de do dum dum, do dum dum dum de do dum dum .  ..” - Leonard Cohen (the secret of the ages) · Leonard don’t lie.

“There’s always a reason why someone’s life has been spared.” - Bob Dylan, & Bob don’t lie.

What are we doing if not for each other? I cannot think of a single instance in my life where the quality of my life has been enhanced ignoring the need of another. This is not to say that i have always been able to provide what another needs, or that my needs complete the purpose for another - but we are connected. Not in the back-channel gossipy way that phones enable cliques to try and define the nonconformist - that shit goes back to barnyard wisdom about how when once one chicken is bloodied, the rest go in for the kill; you can see that shit in any gang in Los Angeles, fierce battle-ready vatos armed and cold, ready to kill whomever the “mero mero deems kill worthy. The irony is getting the go-ahead from the shot-caller, always the shot-caller. These are a bunch of mama’s boys unable to stand upto “blood in, blood out” thinking that makes them men because they have been indoctrinated to believe the creed will protect their back, even after they have seen their homies murdered by a word from the “mero mero;” i’m talking about the Nelson Mandela kind of cajones that resists an entire regime alone and unprotected by anything but his integrity.

Where i live, a lone monk refused both sides of an international conflagration - siding with the population in favor of peace and personal growth, regardless of the political outcome · he was banished from his homeland, and only allowed back after many years. I commend both; he for his integrity and love, they who allowed his return for their wisdom and compassion. We as a species will not survive without an independent agency for the solitary individual. If we succumb to the ever popular “like” meter contrived by the Ad Men of the vanquished handful of capitalists currently holding an entire planet hostage to greed, there is no reason to continue the struggle. The beauty of our planet has been supplanted by conceit of consumer vanity wholly fabricated for no more than the “good life” of 2,000 people out of 7 billion - that my friends is stupid. I am no longer welcome in my family because i would not brooch injustice in the distribution of our commonweal. My siblings, who proclaim progressive values, seize more than is their fair share and wish to quiet my objection to their excessive greed - ergo i am “persona non-grata” and they are _______fill in the blank.

I thank them for their banishment, without which i would not be attempting to formulate logic worthy of the survival of species now - not that that is what you are reading, but at least i am trying and not sleepwalking myself into a sanctimonious demise convinced that what i have done is right, rather invite anyone with gumption enough to say to my face, “call me out.” I’m not hard to find, though i own no phone for i eschew surreptitious surveillance preferring to listen to those with balls or pussy enough to object directly to my face my admittedly seditious ambitions. We, our species, are on a trajectory toward self-destruction with nary a peep .  .. let me rephrase that - there are mass protests to the authoritarian usurpation of a free people · what is missing is the determination of all to protect the sanctity of the individual. I favor solidarity with all my heart, but a solidarity that is based not on subscription to a cause, but one born of deep reflection on what it means to be alone and alive and a respect for that mystery.

“Any power must be an enemy of mankind which enslaves the individual by terror and force, whether it arises under the Fascist or the Communist flag. All that is valuable in human society depends upon the opportunity for development accorded to the individual.” - Albert Einstein

I just spent 45 minutes simply looking for an unexpurgated version of that quote, “the powers that be” have made sure it is not easily discoverable or transferrable - that is evil · by a company which had the hutzpah to, when a member of the human race, to state in a “not quite” mission statement · “do no evil.” (kurzwell, you a punk) and your punk puppy jaron lanier ain’t far behind - or i guess he’s really close to your behind · These are otherwise ordinary human beings who were given an opportunity to be great and opted for greed. There is no reason on g_d’s green earth why the above quote should not be easily rediscovered and propagated, unless some prissy executive with access to social upheaval computer models ordered her/his AI thug to bury the search criteria where no one could find it - laugh if you must · it’s good for your immune system.

I am old, i cannot carry the cart uphill and it looks like i will be censored from your newsfeed simply because what i say and the way i say it is unpalatable to the effete reigning over your doom. Know this, i have tried with all my might to be honest and open about what i see and what i believe is intentionally hidden from you - not because your are stupid or disinterested, but because you are not bold and  are wounded from repeated betrayals by those you have loved and have tried to love. Do not give up the fight; you are powerful and that is why “they” spend so much energy and your money convincing you that you ain’t shit without them - that my lovely friends is a pile of bullshit. You do not need much to be happy and anyone that tries to convince you that you are useless without them is suspect and possibly dangerous to your wellbeing depending on how much LOVE you have learned to wield like a sword and how much of your useless ego has been sheared from your soul by the growth of your loving self. 

jts 09/08/2020

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com 

reprinted with permission - all rights reserved

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080820 - Extinction Chronicles ·

That is the curse of the age we occupy - everything is supposed to be a big deal · However the big deals get lost in the translation, each time a bloom opens, a web is spun, an infant chuckles for the first time; those are important, the death toll here, or there i hate to say is unimportant, or of relative importance. Our attention has been hijacked by professional manipulators of attention, so much so we are no longer even aware when someone or something has usurped our agency. Leonard Cohen said it well, “The blizzard of the world has crossed the threshold and overturned the order of the soul.” Just now i am listening to Bob Dylan’s “Thunder on the Mountain,” it has an oddly calming effect on my soul, which while not in torment is certainly in the throes of growth and lonely - and not · My existential luck seems to be holding, but it is more likely the result of good hydration after two abbreviated laps around the community i am lucky to be locked in.

Yet, to be true most of the communities i’ve lived in in the past 5 years on 4 continents would yield in some similar way a like feeling, for the world is truly full with love and loving people is that is what you are fronting. I use that vernacular loosely because i found long ago i have no switches - there is no back channel · What you see is what you get. At least that is the public persona i strive for, but the longer i explore the “con” Pema Chodron zeroed in on, the more i find the frightened hurt child to whom Master Thich Nhat Hanh says simply, “be kind.” It is a very useful admonition for one cannot really avert misery nor evade pain. I remember the Harris Ceramic Shop when i was still wet behind the ears, and looking up into the face of John the father of 5 wooly sons one of which is my “Indian Guide blood brother”, saying simply and with conviction while explaining his reading of the history of Buddha and the 4 noble truths - “Life is Suffering” ·

What dumb luck to be exposed to such a timeless truth at such a tender age, a truth which still evades my full understanding some 50 years later. The acceleration that the motor wrought is fairly useless in trying to comprehend something as profound as that, so why do we bother with motors¿ that is a question? I can tell you for certain i do not have the answer for you - it is difficult enough to answer most of the questions i ask myself · why is it that i find comfort in those questions i ask myself, for example? I know that terror is not a natural state of being for our kind or for most any other form of life on our planet - who benefits when i am afraid¿ who is responsible for my fear · the terrorist, or myself? who has greater control over what i feel, myself or others¿?

I struggle with the abstruse aspects of learning, most especially when experts parse the simple into finer and finer points - until what you are hearing is just nonsense. I can sympathize with those who mistrust science for that reason. I’ve spent more time in computer rooms than i’d like to admit; most of that time was hiding my ignorance while seeking out those who enjoyed sharing the mysteries of a language that was useful only as far is it gained you greater access to the core, or raised your income for your ability to parley. I studied the science and even had an opportunity to become a computer scientist, but my heart was occupied with the recommendation of a professional who fathomed my raison d’etre as an instructor of English in the middle schools of Los Angeles.

He was myopic in only the way that professionals can be - knowing my father was a High School English teacher was all it took for him to say in his professional opinion that that is what i ought to do. And i gave it a go, but found the cloistered environment of a cadre of indoctrinators bent on bending the will of open minds to the yoke or socialization more than that to which i could or would apply myself. Lucky me - trained by a High School English teacher to be a “non-teacher,” now 4 1/2 paragraphs into this essay, i am lost. But that is okay; in something as vast as this network of interconnected unknowns, it is more than natural to be disoriented - it was the notion of compassion which grounded me to the finish · i need no affirmation or confirmation or permission for any of what i do as long as i can find space in my heart to want the best for you and what you are struggling with, i am okay - PEACE ·

jts 08/08/2020

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com 

reprinted with permission - all rights reserved

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070820 - Extinction Chronicles ·

There seems to be a point where the creative appetite blends with my baser feelings of satiety and work proceeds peacefully - tuning that point seems to be the big challenge of my existence just now · I think this is because i know in my heart i am not the buddha, but that i love her reason for being. I am devoted to love, but understand i may not possess it while i resist kindness to myself, a kindness i accept that can only be embraced while peering deeply into the pain of existence i have sheltered in my heart away from the light of awareness. Our family was rural at its core and took long vacations into the flora and fauna that was within driving range of our semi-stable home in Orange County California. This meant that between the ages of 5 and 15 i may have been driven in an enclosed space with the other 5 members of my atomic family as far South as Acapulco Mexico and as far North as Pocatello Idaho - small wonder that of the 5 remaining alive, 4 are in a fictional close concert of “family”, while enjoying the conceit that i have abandoned them.

I have abandoned many in my life, rightly and wrongly - but not my family · The seemingly unbridgeable gulf between us is that i will not accept less from them with regards to simple kindness than i will from any stranger i meet in any land that i find myself - be nice to me and i will remain, be unkind to me and i will recede · It is the same for loyalty, love and allegiance, any other formula is greater than i am. I agree with Lao Tzu that a bad man is a good man’s job and a good man is a bad man’s teacher; i have taught in schools where it is necessary to get the questionable student’s attention before the lesson can begin, so i have a fairly wide repertoire of metrics that i draw from in any given learning opportunity. Mostly i rely on how that my “sainted” father would respond: for example, he would not abide in my interrupting him, and so would simply cease communicating until i listened.

The rough and tumble of back and forth often breaks the kinder shoots of compassion, but i do not, or have not yet learned a more consistent method to be heard. My family listened mostly to the matriarch, as did i - my mother was convinced my voice was excessive and expanded a great deal of emotional capital stifling me · me to myself, me to my siblings and me to the world; i know now that she simply did not want to know what i needed desperately for her to hear. My fantasy is that she felt so shitty personally for suffering that was not of her doing and because she enjoys a certain narcissism that came from a brutal upbringing it is difficult for her to distinguish self and other - still whether my effort to understand why it has been so important to her to curb my tongue is accurate or fictional · the only point of reference i can rely on is my own heart. 

My mother would say to me about what i expressed to her “it feels as though you are bludgeoning me with your words.” I am not that man, that child, or even that infant; mostly i cannot squash a bug, shoot a murderer or censor a sociopath - so my emotional life has been a very precarious effort to discern friend from foe and to act accordingly without malice; i don’t need the karma and most of the punks i’ve encountered trying to subordinate me (male or female) realize how little interest i have in that sort of relationship until i am long gone and out of range. I am tired of evading anyone and more and more simply say up front - “fuck off and die” which in the vernacular is simply meant as “excuse me, but i have other things to do that do not include your input.”

What i yearn for and which i move toward slowly but surely is the ability to safely and openly express my love and affection for this unique living experience. It bores me to be in an environment describing need - when if you step out to the curb anywhere in the world there are bags of discarded, but useful things · food, clothing, ideas and relationships. I barely have the body necessary to cook all that has been given me in this “Covid-19” emergency. I am afraid of contracting the spooky, unexplained condition that renders one DOA, but i was DOA within a year of my existence so once again - i am surrounded by abundance. I cannot rescue you with words, for i am not allowed by design to communicate my ideas with you. I will continue to monitor your suffering and learn from you how you have embraced the last moments of your existence for the benefit of those around you; but otherwise i will finish my moderate beer and whiskey, pull a few more deadly reams of smoke into my remarkable respiratory tract and view some, hopefully useful, edifying entertainment fare while i work my way into a rest that will allow me to rise again tomorrow and travel the bicycle paths i use to evade the haters of the world - i know exist but refuse to believe in ·

jts 07/08/2020

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com 

reprinted with permission - all rights reserved

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