030920 - Extinction Chronicles ·

Days of the week are one of the metrics the gerontologists use to track dementia - i am certainly demented · but we all knew that. I can’t even spell the word, so i don’t know what valid criticism i can make about the field of study, except to say i’m old as dirt and that should at least give me a high-chair at the table if not a corner seat. The nation i was raised in and where the storage space containing my life’s work is located is one calendar day behind where i live. This is only crucial at such times payments are not met and arrangements must be made with people who are sleeping while i panic - fuck panic · Let’s talk about love; all the best things in my life have occurred as a result of love, and the worst things - but that’s a different story. I have referred to L_____ in other vignettes; she was a petite dark haired beauty with an iron disposition, but i would only come to see that aspect of her character once the vault door of romance had closed. Unrequited love is how one sided romance is described; she and i managed to toss that reality back and forth across the net for a number of decades culminating in her current marriage to a class mate from a meeting at our 40 year high school reunion.

I will not be making it to our 50 year reunion, but wish her and hime continued happiness. Somewhere along the line, i lost the torch i carried for each of the loves i irrationally locked onto, almost without foundation - nothing more than the chemical reaction C.G. Jung described when two people meet · In discussions with ma, aside from her tangible disappointment about my solitary state, she would opine, “so you’re a romantic” when i would try and describe the feelings i have about someone i care deeply about. I can’t honestly say i know what motivates my mother toward love. I know she waited a good decade before remarrying the brother of an old friend. The two of them, she and the brother, were very happy - i believe, though there was much emotional violence, and some good measure of distrust woven into their complicated relationship. I know this because i met my last wife at their house one holiday meal and later discovered romantic intrigue was part of the equation.

As it is with all love - but this was a little too close to home · Many years after my wife and i were divorced, i was driving ma on errands from her retirement compound and while turning left toward the gate ma turned toward me in the seat of a car she promised me but gave to another and remarked, “you know M______ only married you because of my money.” I have to chuckle at the fragile ego of a parent who would undermine her own child in such a way, yet that is a feature of my upbringing that i either deny and by that denial thereby mute my own clarity and self awareness, or fully embrace that aspect of my family heritage, and then find ways to reconcile with the much different person than “he” who she was referring to; i opted for the latter though i really had no choice, for the disparity of her thinking with my own unusual personal experience allowed for very little middle ground. It seems that space is entirely occupied by my sycophantic siblings who really are in it for her money - as i see it from my limited perspective as “pariah” from a family of pretty people ·

It is not bitterness that you read, for i have had to live with my compromised reality from the age of 5 when it was commonly discussed whether an eye patch would cure my “duane’s retraction syndrome, or palsy of the 6th cranial nerve” depending on one’s reading, or whether the special insert in the sole of my shoe would correct my short-leg step. I am a two-eyed cyclops with a gimp leg and a mother who is so conceited that she thinks it is her fault, but blames me to anyone within listening distance. My only responsibility is to propagate out into the universe my gratitude for life, my love of family whether or not i allow them into my sphere and to be very mindful of how, and who i accept into close acquaintance. I love my mother for her unique contribution to a population that is facing extinction. I look past her unwillingness to love me openly and forgive me for not having been born as beautiful as her other offsprings - but i do not accept her judgment of my behavior behavior as being "bad" because i did my best with the circumstances with which i have been faced.

That is between me and my g_d - she, i believe will forgive me, with reservations perhaps, but ultimately loving forgiveness. I would like to attribute my personal decision to a better appreciation of my mother’s more obscure attributes, those qualities of character not hidden behind fear, and pain and vanity, but the qualities of character which allowed her to teach a semi-blind child to see, or a cripple to admit no impediment and demand that he shovel gravel with the best of them, and in her own way to try and see the best in siblings who would never understand his suffering much less hers. Ma is a crafty old woman, and for those who are changing her diaper and listening to her later day peremptory demands, listen carefully; please. There is much wisdom in the voice of my mother. She has taught me to seek love in the most difficult of places, to see nobility in the lowest of characters and to recognize that behind the cruelty and destruction of many amongst us, lies a simple yearning heart that wants no more than to be cared for - kindly · how kewl is that ¿?

jts 03/09/2020  

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com 

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020920 - Extinction Chronicles ·

Having no idea where you are i can’t say what your paradise looks like just now - mine is hot as fuck @ 2:57 pm · I’m beginning to get a sense about the war of attrition the ruling class is waging; for the longest time i could not fathom how they expected to lose such large segments of the population through starvation, climate devastation and disease but still maintain control. It is because a smaller more frightened body of consumers will be easier to cow into obedience - meanwhile back at the ranch · the technology is such that they, the ruling survivors can maintain isolated compounds and still access the now fully automated income stream from a sham economy that was never meant to support the 7 billion humans they forced into birth. Well that’s just kind of mean; not normal mean, but like Dorothy Parker might have said, “that is mean with raisins on top.”

The constant mechanical fan i resort to for wicking the sweat from my body is now just swirling hot air from one place to another - an apt simile for my exit strategy · wiggle until i can wiggle no more. I remain astonished, though at my good fortune for having been raised amongst funny people, who even in their profound sadness, still illicit a grin from me. Some expressly by their language, others just by the circumstances they resort to for comfort - my elder brother fancied himself the “working class hero” and so began to seize all the family assets to finance his rise to fame and fortune, while my sister wanted to be the 1st Nobel Laureate for poetry so she entangled her future with someone who could provide the necessary misery for such a literary endeavor - the youngest brother · the fair-haired-one never learned what it meant to fail so he didn’t, and i believe failure confuses him to this day.

I would wish my family on anyone reading this because they are grand people, but i don’t recommend you tell them that “Joe sent me,” rather try “Bernard, or Gloria” something that doesn’t smack of the pedestrian, for the more exotic might pique their interest. I’m being snarky and it’s hard to resist, yet i really do advocate you seek them out for your circle of acquaintances, if only because of the club they represent, the same club Groucho Marx said he’d never want to belong to - he didn’t want to belong to any club that would accept him as a member. I saw a photo of a Mar-a-Lago assembly of _rump supporters and was struck dumb by how sub-par they appeared to be. These were not characters out of “The Great Gatsby” these were mooks from the “Daily Inquirer” or the “Walmart Shopper’s Gazette,” the same characters you find in candid youtube uploads of the “poor but wannabe known” at check stands across ‘merica.

Still and all; if there was one existential conundrum that disturbs me more than any other of the many others conundrums in our world, that would be how difficult it has become for me to leave the world a better place than i found it. It feels as though i am pushing the rock up the hill more than the days the story of Sisyphus was written - my last roommate had determined tobacco as her method of demise, what she didn’t share in her proposal for cohabitation was that i should sweep up the ashes. I love her to this day and know not whether she draws breath in this plague infested world we share. The disease was not insurgent when i abandoned her to her fate in my home town. I chose to leave and meet mine where i now sit writing these giddy lamentations; am i foul - did i fail yet another human being, will i be punished for not having remained close to an unspoken demand¿ i d k ?

Hopefully, as my being expires and i grow closer to my own death i will not presume the same unspoken demand from anyone - another snarky remark toward someone you know nothing about, so it would seem i’m not positioning myself in the optimum place to die at peace having acquitted myself to the bone, but only as far as the skin of my own denial. Yeah, well - the bamboo got cut back, my laundry is done and i have rinsed the sweat from my own body · so give me a round of applause it would mean a lot to me were i to expire on my way down the long hallway to my last cigarette of the day and another solitary night, i’m beginning to realize would never be understood by a companion however much i loved them or honored them or promised them, because my fate is mine alone and cannot be absolved by another, but only through a constant refrain of loving kindness toward myself for my wayward, but ever loving ways.

jts 02/09/2020  

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com 

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010920 - Extinction Chronicles ·

“be kind whenever possible, it is always possible” - Dalai Lama · I have chosen to veer from excoriating prose in opposition to injustice in our world, toward enabling language which serves to dispel despair and replace it with “lead, follow or get the fuck out of the way” language; this should be interesting. Not because it is unnatural for me, but because i have found that others are jarred by the obvious - like “fuck _rump, he’s an empty suit" · giving him attention is like the pats on the head he gets from his corporate sponsors, or the thrill he might feel from licking Vladimir’s closed fist; (i can see this experiment in empowering prose is going to be a challenge). These characters are secondary to the the drama on the stage in front of us all - if “all the world’s a stage and we are but players” - William Shakespeare · our stage is on fire, and all the exits are blocked by stacks of money from those in the front row.

While we in the cheap seats look on bewildered imagining the story is supposed to be about us, yet no one we see is recognizable to those we love and those we know are suffering. My friends the farmers next door are superior to me in every way, and my ego chafes because i am built to serve, but am now faced with the very real possibility that what i possess is of little value to them. Conversely what they have to teach me may be beyond my capacity to learn. For example: the fallow peanut crop field has been trenched and furrowed in 4 days - picture a field the size of a major league diamond to the depth of 18” x 12. I tried to flatten the base path between 3rd base on home plate and got about 6’ before i expired for the day. I do not possess language enough to express my profound admiration for the strength and endurance of this 5’ nothing man with the sunshine smile and arms of steel, whose wife then shares their food with me - all i can come up with is shame and embarrassment for being a foreign burden.

And, that low opinion of myself is based entirely on my own conceit and vanity having absolutely nothing to do with the kind reception my neighbors have shown me; i know there is a lesson here somewhere; i believe it is based on the complete destruction of an identity i have barely learned enough about to criticize, much less abandon. So how is this useful if you are reading to learn how to evade “extinction”? a fair question, for which i have no answer. The best and most honest response i can give you is to keep asking questions. I am exceedingly uncomfortable with anyone who knows all the answers - one the greatest gifts my father gave to me in our later discussions. The person i had relied on all my life to correct my errant ways miraculously transfigured himself into a sceptic right before my very eyes.

Whether i can manage a similar transfiguration is a good question. I am an inveterate burro, some have used the expression “bulldog,” so the change for me to become fluid and open to the unending alteration of all i hold sacred is more than an academic question - i must alter my dreams to admit a fluidity about an existence i can barely tolerate for its strangeness to my own vision of “correctness,” much less embrace as a standard of behavior. I used to be open and nonjudgmental, and explored most every range of circumstances and cultures i could find, doing everything i could to learn from everyone and assume the best about each - somewhere on that road my essence became challenged and i resorted to my base nature · the being i’d been cautioned to become or ______ fill in the blank. It hasn’t worked out well, and i don’t quite know how to embrace that essence and discount any false understanding in order to once again participate in the flavorful bounty of all the world’s ways.

i am beginning to believe the process is more mysterious than the rationalists would have us believe, but i am not going to sweat defining conditions or things that define, or decline that which others believe. I fancy myself as a “freethinker” something i got from my 99 year-old at-death paternal great grandmother Munner (Alice Content Foster). She was a grand dame, a  family of three siblings - two sisters and a brother. In my limited relationship about the progeny out of that triumvirate · we have had much in common in ways that have nothing to do with common upbringing or mutual ambition; almost as though the branches of our family trees know how to grow amongst themselves to maximize some common, help me; what’s the word i’m looking for ______fill in the blank. But we as a species are so much more than “nature vs nurture,” though my own siblings more closely resemble the each of us in our common thread, it is almost as though that closeness breeds repellence for some eternal purpose. What i do know is that my branch bears more resemblance to your branch in all its discrepancy than my own branch bears resemblance to itself · i find encouragement in that belief to keep looking for kin amidst the kith .

jts 01/09/2020  

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com 

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310820 - Extinction Chronicles ·

“The blizzard of the world has crossed the threshold and overturned the order of the soul” - Leonard Cohen · in yesterday’s epistle i shared a pool hall story from my youth and when i retired to sample the youtube fare for “free movies” i elected a Whoopie Goldberg film “Kiss Shot.” I admire Whoopie for her independence and settled in to find it was about her using super poolroom skills at “nine-ball” to make her single-mother balloon payment. What are the odds that these two topics would intersect on the same day¿ i ask because i’ve managed data bases and have a working knowledge of the reach digital technicians had at one point in history, but can only guess at their “clickbait” skills today. Is it possible for today’s AI monstrosity to read an unpublished text file on my PC and correlate it to public domain fare regarding my viewing preferences¿ Or is it synchronicity of a more mystical nature that i could have engendered writing from my heart into the aether, a however unpublished aether akin to how Reiki is supposed to mend bodies across the metaphysical spectrum minus physical contact? I D K

I do know that the gazillions of bucks the ruling class is indebted to those whose wealth it actually is, can buy a whole lot of friendship in the context of today’s “i wanna climb to the top of the heap” ethos. Trying to figure that shit out is a fool’s errand of gargantuan proportion. Nor is it particularly interesting, i mean who gives a fuck if baldbezos is so sick that he would pay people to peer into private space to satisfy some _______fill in the blank kinky fetish. However just so we’re clear, that is not original thinking on my part, Leonard Cohen stipulated the conditions with his lines, “The rich have got their channels in the bedrooms of the poor, And there’s a mighty judgement coming, but i might be wrong. Ya’ see you hear these funny voices in the Tower of Song.”  I can only marvel at the odds of such an occurrence; sort of like having conscious awareness of an animation of the DNA that is uniquely my own at a time in the history of our kind when we may cease our multi-million year evolution for no better reason than greed - go figure ·

I’d rather link to the polar opposite of that consideration and posit to you who can read and suss at the same time; what would you do differently if you possessed the mythical magic wand - which BTW you do possess · this is not an academic question, but one i humbly suggest you explore post haste, at a time when even that expression borders on the arcane. Who would fuck with the post office - who does that kind of shit, and why do i feel like i’m the only one who cares? That is “angry making” language designed to illicit guilt for nothing you’ve done, but for what i haven’t done. It is similar to the gazillions of emails we each receive because these motherfuckers can’t or won’t think of anything better to spend the political slush funds on than the digital version of “junk mail.” It doesn’t have to be this way, i invariably feel better when i veer from my natural state of castigation, and explore how to convey to anyone listening how much i love them and appreciate their unique contribution to the skein of life that has become so fragile through no fault of our own.

It is for that reason i veer where possible from pointing the finger - the “you fuck” finger · which while providing a momentary feeling of having accomplished something, ultimately is nothing better than projecting the most destructive aspects of my interesting upbringing. I do not want to condemn you; i want to encourage you to see the remarkable spirit that you are. When you hear my “you fuck” voice, that is simply an echo from out of the caverns of my soul of an energy that tried to find residence but somehow was simply passed back out into the universe, hopefully somewhat attenuated by the loving language i try to find from my beaten-to-fuck existence. I came out of the womb folded like a "franks breech" pancake to a find a family of pretty people who had much worse problems than my dual-cyclops reality. Can you imagine, i feel guilty for not having the character required to comfort siblings who refuse me fb friendship¿ i am so confused?

In the end, it is not they who refused me, but i who refused them - it is an intractable however inaccurate sense of justice i adhere to · it is my monster ego which sees the pain they experience about my existence but which does not tender them gentle succor such that they can act on what i know is their intrinsic love. To blame them for my want is the equivalent of saying D.J._rump is at fault for the extermination of our species - he is not that powerful and his ideas carry no weight that i don’t give to him. He is more vulnerable than not to my love, my feeling of compassion for the suffering he cannot contain but acts on with such mindless fury to no avail; the only change he has accomplished, to my limited thinking, is to amplify a feature of our world that seems to be the only thing his pain can recognize - hate · i don’t like hate, so i basically do as any mindful parent might when faced with intractable unconscious demands of little use or consequence and point in the other direction: Oh Look ! is that a purple giraffe ¿!! Oh Girl, i don’t like purple giraffes; i LOVE purple giraffes - do you LOVE purple giraffes too ?!!! 

jts 31/08/2020  

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com 

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300820 - Extinction Chronicles ·

“Wherever you stand, be the soul of that place.” - Rumi · I have been unkind to myself for so long that it makes me afraid to take my soul anywhere but where i stand. I am not exactly sure why i have been so unfriendly to myself. I have learned to watch my behavior such that it has been described to me as “hyper vigilance.” I have learned that not everybody will claim that behavior, but i’ve met many who will act it out - for example, the leader of the free world, “he who would call himself my president” routinely spews falsehoods, if i had to take a guess it is because he doesn’t possess a very healthy self-image. I know this because as a teenager, i would embellish the truth about things, or circumstances about which i lacked confidence. A better example might be “reaction formation” to the circumstances where i now live. Originally i sought sanctuary from my native land because of the “fakeness” it had come to embrace about what it means to be successful - i brought my fakeness with me · regardless of my intention, i feel i am a contaminate ·

I had grown up in a Southern California suburban city in Orange Country - renown for its conservative demographics and home to the richest per-capita community in the nation, at the time, Corona Del Mar. As such “keeping up with the Joneses” took on a diabolical complexion that was schizophrenic on its face. My 2nd hometown after Santa Monica was known as Goat Hill; at the base of Goat Hill's cliffs, the price per square foot on the bay was the highest in the nation. There was no escape from the mythology of the “Haves and Have-nots.” When ma married her 2nd husband a CEO from an insurance brokerage firm and moved to Beverly Hills it tore the working class roots of my family’s history down the center and called into question every closely held prejudice i possessed. He, my stepfather loved my mother well and mended wounds she’d carried alone throughout my childhood, mostly because she and my father did not communicate well - and i believe he was tending to his own wounds without any help, ironically the same as she.

I loved my stepfather, but never held solidarity with his faith in wealth - my kin, not so much · Each, to my limited understanding about their lives and what they believe, embraced in part, or in whole, the notion that “life is like a shit sandwich, the more bread ya’ got, the less shit you have to eat;” it is, i believe a fiction that my native land has bought hook, line and sinker. But it also became my nation’s greatest export - the delusion of the “infinite growth paradigm.” This paradox has come home to roost in my magical window. I live adjacent to a farmer family who are as decent as the day is long and as indefatigable as the day is to the morning. At some point in our relationship as neighbors, food began to appear at my window. Simple meals and delicious - what is difficult to explain is that i had moved to this country because it allowed me to fend for myself as i have for the past 50 years, and still have enough left over to contribute. So no matter how i phrase my appreciation, and explain that i have more food than i can prepare, or how badly i feel about food i bought to eat going to waste - the window remains filled daily with delicious food, i would be a beast to decline.

There are worse dilemmas i know, but the paradox cuts to the core of our world - how to get what the haves have to the have nots · What i have found in my travels has been the recurring contingent of humanity bent on the reverse logic that is oh so popular with the Capital of my country - pun intended · Those fake entrepreneurs in their Brooks Brother suits that wouldn’t last a day in any market that i have shopped in for the past 5 years of my life are so brazen as to buy air time to convince poor people the only hope for success is to give more money to “empty suits” because that shows faith and good business sense. As a cocky kid i remember very clearly the first time i got “sharked” playing pool. The pool hall was close and housed a slot car track which allowed a lot of juvenile traffic. My neighbors at the time i was age 12-14 owned a pool table which i utilized a lot. This particular afternoon at the pool hall, my opponent set his hook and drew me in like a flopping fish out of water; i must have ridden my bike back to my secret stash of “summer allowance” a half dozen times before i had to accept the fact of superior forces - a hard, but long lived lesson·

I worry about lessons - self reliance was very nearly beaten into me by my pacifist, but not militant pacifist father · so when i am faced with a magic window that acts like a cornucopia, my inclination is to feed it rather than be fed; and “therein lies the rub” as Will might say. Wasichu is the name given to the white man in my native country - Wasichu means “he who takes the meatiest part of the bone.” So today in the midst of my existential conundrum, i determined to return the plate to the magical window with vittles from my day’s catch which included the long armature of a chicken; the paradox in a sentence is i chose the thigh for myself and cut off the drumstick to share with my friends, a gesture that sticks in my craw for its selfishness and exposure for the Wasichu i am, or the Wasichu i do not want to be. I D K. I know that until our generosity toward others is the same as we would show toward ourselves, regardless of self-image issues or assertions of fake kindness our world is gonna remain unfucked; the paradox for me is, i will never be able to give fully to another until i can completely accept that what i have is enough .  .. ··· go figure; what can i say? i like thighs - ask any one of my last 3 wives.

jts 30/08/2020  

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com 

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290820 - extinction chronicles ·

 “If you want to know me, look inside your heart.” - Lao Tzu · It seems in the midst of all the world’s current turmoil, the most difficult thing for me has been to help others; at least help in a way that aids them, not me. At another time in my development i’d chastise myself for ______fill in the blank, but sitting here puzzling the logic of contribution i realize that that frustration reveals my unacknowledged desire for approval. If i was honest with myself about my motivation to help others, failure would not factor into the equation, i would simply step back and readjust, and then seek a more effective way to serve. But my insatiable ego, my indestructible ego, my ever present ego - it’s almost as though the more i try to escape it, the stronger its hold on me · So do i simply let go and accept the “I” in my life reigns supreme and the ineffable, eternal soul i barely understand exists be abandoned¿ that is a question?

Even writing that i am aware of my facility for language that disturbs most and unsettles very nearly everyone i’ve ever known, except Winston, and Dave Simpson; et, very few al. Winston would simply look at me kindly and remark “you’re sick,” David’s strategy when faced with my withering repartee would whinny in his highest pitch mockery “CRAZY JOE” like the mutant hatchling clone from the bowels of aerospace hell that he could never be - just too human a guy · Russel Price took greater exception because we suffered similar maladies - mutual affection across party lines; David was invulnerable; he knew it and let it be, Russell was a reformer who felt if he could find the right formula, the correct combination of words - i would then understand and align myself with the killing work of the company. Our discourse finally distilled down to a barrier about knowledge - Russell asserting knowledge to be finite · i believing then, and now, in the infinite.

The irony being - regardless of the truth · we have only ourselves to blame. Were i to keel over right now struggling for the next word in this essay, the answer to our dialectic would have very little bearing, likely as true then as now. A truer discussion would include my affection for Russell as a person, and the loss i feel not knowing what he or David are experiencing right now. I left the computer lab where these semantic hijinks took place just as my 2nd marriage was collapsing - a move 400 miles North while in my 3rd semester of a Bachelor’s degree in English that did not improve my life much, but was a great career move for my wife · What that move did serve to do was clarify how exceedingly destructive my labor was, that no matter what bonhomie we’d conceived our computer lab tribe to possess - the fact remains our work made the lives of our children more precarious and less safe.

I accept that my attachment to that time in my life is the memory of belonging - i have always been drawn to periods of my experience when bonds were strong and enthusiasm high · in retrospect i felt the same alienation and self-doubt that plagues my steps today, but the feeling of mutual purpose and affection transcended, or deluded (depending on one’s perspective) much of the travail of that time, which in retrospect was as powerful then as now in its own way. How is this useful to the time we occupy facing the extinction of our species? I cannot recreate that delirious time, nor would i want to wander down that slippery slope of nostalgia. I think the more valuable lesson to take is to identify salient flags that might be recognizable in the path we all face. Our tribe was an unmanageable lot, and the smart leaders simply assigned us tasks and waited for outcomes. Mischief was a principle condition of the computer room we occupied - replete with an “apoplectic” button drawn on the blackboard for no other reason than to terrorize the sysadmin, for bringing the servers to their knees was routine sport for this band of renegades. 

And not - i can see it was the delusion of being within the “circle” and the sense of strength that feeling provides. It gives me sad insight into the reactionary base which the fascists are now playing like a bad fiddle. I know how it feels to draw strength from the frustrated ire of an opponent perceived to be outside of range. The zeal one draws from taunting the weakness of one or many who would restrict your agency and sovereignty, however real or imagined. This feeling is not all that much different than the personal strategies we each employ to retain the fictional control our egos demand about a world that is uncontrollable. Where i get into trouble is when i leave the moment and try to apply previous experience to current choices - a conceit that was beaten into me under the guise of learning from our mistakes · one must strongly believe that s/he has made a mistake to believe that something can be rectified; when in fact, if you are doing the wrong thing, just stop it. The world will adjust itself without your help.

jts 29/08/2020  

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com 

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280820 - Extinction Chronicles ·

I like pure chocolate without sugar and am not sure if it is because chocolate reminds me of my father’s excesses, or if my father’s excesses remind me of what is good about living. I worked a long time in engineering labs with people i considered very smart only to find that their well paid occupations determined far too much about that which they they believed. I was was lucky to have those the universe chose as my family - this even as 3 of the 6 are unified in their dismay of my ways and one whose maternal leadership was so confused as to render me a pariah for no more reason then my sibling’s apparent inability to individuate - or my own i’m sure, depending on where one is standing. Shit is in play and there is no conclusion until, as the renown bigot Yogi Berra was fond of opining - “the fat lady sings” · i’m not holding my breath anymore than i am relying on ma’s “intrinsic” confidence in my elder brother’s integrity about our shared estate.

Talk about your microcosm within macrocosm’s - and yes it is purely coincidental the elder brother favors cigars, unions and golf courses · talk about your “left-handed sleights. I tried the direct approach in our last conversation in the company of our father. My limited understanding of this particular visit - a walk around a very long block in our father’s last independent living circumstance · was candor. So i was honest and forthright about every reservation i had about the relationship of “our three.” It didn’t go well, no matter how much i implored the elder to “come clean” his only reply was the party line, “this isn’t about you,” like what the fuck is that supposed to even mean. I did my best, but hurt his feelings such that 10 years later he refuses to shed his nurtured hurt - it can’t be easy being him.

To pay me back for my effrontery for having candidly stated my reservations about my place in the family constellation - this same individual in whom ma had “intrinsic faith” in his integrity is so bitter as to share nothing about her condition with me, her estate, her frame of mind · much less how he feels to be the patriarch of a dying branch of a noble house. Do i sound bitter¿ do i sound open? do i care what you think. Should i admire by elder sibling for abdicating his responsibilities to openly and honestly share the state of our matriarch? I anticipated this pettiness and told ma early on, “I am not fighting my way to your side during your transition. You set this up and i will honor your desires to be left in the care of those who would judge me so harshly and describe it as your wish.” to which ma, bless her heart replied - thanks a lot ·

If you the reader experience this candid expression as a rant and vituperative reproach of one who is not present to defend themselves from baseless accusations; know that within the month i have forwarded a photo of a locale to my elder sibling which i’d hoped would be of benefit to the heart of a dying woman about a place she had described to me in our travels as having complex and rich memories - my sibling did not deign to reply or acknowledge my sharing of such, anymore than he accepted my request for “friendship” on facebook, the same as my sister who had also declined my similar request. I am not a dog; i may be faithful to you to no end - but there is a stop. I am old and alone, suffering with deep psychological scars from a family experience of which the valence has never been in my favor. From that experience i do not seek allegiance that comes with a price, nor do i veer from contributing to any circumstance i feel is necessary and worthwhile - as long as there are no trails to my efforts to help.

Am i superior - i am an asshole with violent often conflicting purpose · but i struggle with all the corpuscles of my being to remain neutral and observant, such that the actions i take are dictated by a higher purpose. “The high destiny of the individual is to serve rather than to rule.” - Albert Einstein · who the fuck am i to argue with cogent logic lacking argument to the contrary¿ that is a question? I do not fault my siblings, i fault my own failure to adhere to the exaltation of existence - i am old enough and have encountered the unexpected enough to welcome surprise, yet in my haste to define my demise, or what Leonard Cohen so euphemistically described as the “preliminaries,” i’d be a lying dog to say i am not afraid: i am afraid of the wounds on my body from lack of motion, i am afraid of the company of people i know not - i am afraid of my own myopic guilt about things i haven’t resolved in my heart · but i am not afraid to die; i have lived amongst too many brave people happily assuming the yoke of existence to fear that my absence will detract from that noble struggle, and so i mean to die in peace - and wish the same for you · to the sound of ducks quacking in the background .  .. ··· (if they only knew)

jts 28/08/2020  

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com 

reprinted with permission - all rights reserved

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