041020 - Extinction Chronicles ·

Today i posited on fb that _rump is faking the virus simply to evade prosecution - the greater reality is that the digital overlords and their thug AI algorithms that determine who sees what on your “newsfeed” will never allow that post to see the light of day (Michael Moore conjectured the same the following day) · It is not each other we struggle with any longer, but the wraiths and demons conjured up on our screens by unscrupulous but highly indoctrinated and well compensated geeks. Don’t believe me, ask Julian Assange who is about to be murdered no differently than the pedophile procurer to the rich and famous, Jeffery Epstein. Each was in a position and willing to betray sordid details about the extent that you are dominated by cowards unwilling and unable to argue their positions, because they don’t care what you think or feel - they don’t feel they have to. 

Until human beings resist the further slaughter than the 3/4 of the other species with whom we once shared this miraculous moist blue lit sphere in the nether regions of a universe full with what they've only been able to describe thus fare as being comprised of “dark matter,” you haven’t got a hope in hell of fulfilling much more than an empty existence punctuated by moments of visceral delight that have cost you more than you will make in a lifetime, much less in the 40 hours of weekly servitude you shackle yourselves to for a “kiss and a promise,” don’t believe me - look at your bills · then look at your paycheck. My family lived “on the square” or as a broker i once served described as dealing with both hands on the table - popular Wild West allusions mostly fall short of picturing at any deep level, like the insult of being called a “tin horn” which is to say that your horns will crumple like tin should you ever really want to gore someone.

These allusions to power and strength fall short of the human’s innate capacity to rise to the occasion. Mahatma Gandhi a man with a dubious loyalty to all the oppressed in the world, but lauded for his leveraging one colonial oppressor from the scene so that the Hindu caste system could more completely decimate the Dalit “Untouchables” and their equally legitimate quest for liberation that has simply given way to _rump’s homie Modi who has no more qualms about obliterating the Dalits than Bolsinero has of murdering the rain forests on behalf of the fast food industry to provide Palm Oil and industrial level bovine flesh to the corporate slough that is used in the post-industrial Pre-Soylent Green era of our mutual climate demise. Talk about your tin horns. These fuckers don’t possess the gonads to come out and describe what they are doing to you and your family - they pass that tax-deductible expense along through to the “Ad Men” tasked with making poison, not just palatable but addictive.

Hysterical you might mutter to yourself, if you’ve managed to choke down your star-spangled bile this far into this essay - nightmarish in its own way as the “bell that cannot be unrung,” for anyone capable of parsing such arcane prose or comprehending the grammatical logic of considered rhetoric - is also likely of the ilk that shops organic, drives tesla vehicles, contributes to “quell the mayhem in yemen” and all other manner of hipster doofus cognitive dissonance that allows a $500k salary to drive past the homeless despair that is getting harder and harder to evade by route, but soon will have an app for navigating the more lethal districts until such time the corporate compounds are entirely self-contained and you can live within the castle walls like the vassals you be and your computer controlled environments protect you from - that is everything but yourselves.

I no longer feel threatened by my deeper intentions - as erotic, and impassioned and egocentric as they have been · i find the longer i dwell with the beast i’ve been raised to fear, my self; the more i prefer it to the vagaries and empty loyalties i’ve encountered in my travels. Whatever is the shape of my existence is less vile and more loving than the assertions of those who would condemn me, or more accurately, condemn my back. Few people anymore will come right out and say to your face - "you are a fuck, and these are the reasons why .  .." · More importantly is all the loving kindness from others that i have fought off for having felt myself unworthy based on vain and short-sided reasons that others will have to deal with here on out, i don’t see it. The avatar of a person in front of you on your screen is correctible to a fault, as long as you have your ducks in a row and respond to what it is, and will articulate what it is i am guilty of rather than vacuous positioning to enforce some concept you are too frightened to assert or play on what you may perceive as my excessive sensibilities - they are that indeed, but only in service of our mutual pleasure · so, by all means get at it, or get gone; time’s a wasting and we all be dying until someone shouts loud enough - LET US FUCKING LIVE · i’ll be there, if not in the flesh, at least in spirit.  

 

jts 04/10/2020 

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com

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031020 - Extinction Chronicles ·

I don’t think, nor feel i’ve ever lived in as loving a country as where i now reside - without counting · i’d imagine that to be 12+, but i also used to tout a 1,000 as the number of different jobs i’ve turned my hand to - an inflated number, but not by much · It mystifies me how i can find so much dense affection for existence as i feel from the people i pass daily on my bike ride. They barely notice me, a blessing in and of itself; the culture from which i flee is subsumed by celebrity - the “who is” and the “who ain’t” of modern consumer marketing. I fear that fictional identity is not far off from this culture given the pernicious infiltration of fb ideology of who likes what and who doesn’t like who. This morning at the end of my ride with the last wheezes of my withered frame, my kind neighbor allowed me to confiscate his garden utensil to pull a few weed roots from the crop ground. He and his friend were more than gracious as i spewed sweat after 10 minutes of desultory tilling and surrendered my commandeered tool back to the masters of the soil.

Nor am i being kind to them anymore than they me - i don’t possess the discipline or standing to evoke the growth they have teased from a war torn and ignominiously poisoned fertile soil, patiently revitalized crop after crop and year after year, but i appreciate the generosity of soul they demonstrate, allowing me to take, as the say where i hail from, “a whack at it.” This is not to say that as i mend and my heart grows more acclimated to the toil born of decency, that i may too contribute more substantial effort than my few arrogant whacks, that i am even allowed the handle of a tool is more than the rigid hierarchy of job development designed by the bean-counters of my homeland. There anymore, one cannot deliver newspapers on a bicycle, because all the stories are now published on phones that have been programmed by wannabe digital tycoons based on the “bezos ‘take it all and let them eat cake’ school of economics.”

I had to chuckle coming back down the hallway from my last cigarette chewing on Pema Chodron’s observation about “getting kicked out the nest again.” Were i politic, i’d restrain my tongue, or in this case, fingers and find quiet language like what my family had tried to evince from my confused cycloptic existence - from where i stand evrything that has had any meaning to my socialization has been ripped from me by a universe clearly more informed about my future than those sage voices who murmur, “if you would only do this .  ..” life would become _____fill in the blank. I don’t want that life. I want to hear from myself an inexplicable love, i feel but rarely find. I have tried many strategies to encourage its presence, but all seem hollow efforts to effectuate the normal pattern of existence - love begets love · I’m not sure at this stage of my death whether my lack of understanding about love explains my seeming predicament or whether my delusion about predicaments explains my understanding about love.

It doesn’t matter, for i shall certainly pass and without children; what you read here are my only progeny - (look it up, language is your friend · opinion not so much) Why shouldn’t i be entertained by an angel of the caliber Master George Carlin enjoyed ¿? Where is it written in the everlasting log of “rightness” that my base desires and expressed wants constitute devaluation of my wants and desires for the well being and comfort of all my brethren - known friend or known enemy ¿? What does that even mean anymore ¿? We as a species are on the brink of extinction - we, as near as i can tell have exterminated ourselves based on manipulation and misrepresentation between ourselves of our more noble instincts by a selfish cadre of greedy souls who bear less resemblance to the greater number of humans than your knowledge of who i am is based on, what i have written - don’t be that stupid · stand up and fight for your loved ones; present, past and future.

 

jts 03/10/2020 

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com

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021020 - Extinction Chronicles

You know it’s been a good year, if you’ve lost your glasses so completely that it takes hours to find them again - it’s been a good year · I am constantly amazed at my own good fortune, despite my best efforts otherwise. Once while shooting arrows in the Arroyo Seco my release also ripped my frame from my face - you have to imagine the similarities of old growth oak twigs and desiccated oak leaves to a far flung, but who-the-fuck-knows how far, frame of prescription gold frame sunglasses in a well-trampled pile of compost many hundreds of years or weeks old - hundreds of miles away from your bedroll · and you can’t see “fuck” without your glasses; imagine that and you'd be welcome to my morning. Ultimately i found the grey frames and clear lenses lost this morning just after 6:30 AM in the camouflage of grey-tiled lens shaped design patterned patio; i’d heard them fall onto in my not-enough sleep 1st cup of Ca Phe - but remembered that being the kitchen floor · ain’t life grand ¿?

I was fortunate in this “hard-target-search” after a 2nd hour sweep to be in the company of a friend who was divining his own curiosity in an electrical fault he signed onto to resolve, but would accept “NO PAYMENT” when after 6 hours over two days of fruitless research into the previous work of others could not explain or resolve why the bulb over my bed glows when the switch is thrown off, and who gave up a good hour and 1/2 to 2 hours hounding the corners of my home for my lost lenses to no avail - that my friends, to the unknown audience of this peculiar chronicle is what describes honor · The young fellow in question has a wife and child to whom he holds personal responsibility, but who also is unwilling to the point of obstinacy refused a dime spent for searching for my glasses. Am pretty sure i'd have stepped on them before i discovered them late in day without his kind assistance.

I’m at a loss to explain the paradox for a community teetering on the brink of poverty wherein a young father with a child and wife would expend hours attempting to resolve a mechanical defect in a property not of his own making and to then spend additional hours searching for missing spectacles of an old foreign man without standing in the community - if you understand this generosity of spirit, please explain it to me, but more importantly, if you have any notion how i might make good such decency when i am as demonstrably flawed as i recount - guide me, please · I fluctuate between sinking deep roots where i sit for many reasons similar to what i have just shared and fleeing for points unknown for reasons that i have tried to describe as candidly elsewhere in these chronicles - i am not inviting you to make choices for me, but to dialogue in ways that might aid me to make better informed decisions than those i have made in the past.

I am considering a last stand with a young woman who has done mo more kindness for me than covering my bicycle seat on a hot day at a bistro i frequent - is that hegemony or enlightened self interest? Would my coupling with a young woman out of my league deprive her of a more fulfilled existence with someone of her own ilk and save her from a despairing attendance at my death that she may be unable to comprehend, but could possibly provoke a body of work based on a deferred, but necessary patience of my own previous existential conceits ¿ i do not know? but as long as i am asking such questions, my own tormented end may yet conclude with a result useful to not only her final days, but a happy end to my own.

There is nothing of greater worth than to hope a happy end to people and places you’ve visited or have yet to visit. I am essentially trapped by circumstance and fate on a peninsula that more than oddly resembles out of scope real estate from the province in which i was raised - when i say out of scope, i mean that within 15 miles of where i was raised the aggregate income of those in the spit of land i refer to is the highest per capita income in the entire United States of America, then and likely now. Helicopters ferry the CEO’s of aerospace companies routinely from and to their aeries of destructive doom over the pancake houses of fictive serenity published on webpages posing as normality when in fact the tide pools i waded through as a child are scourged of every natural nutrient and ecological balance they have enjoyed through multiple millenniums for no better reason than to add a zero to a buck based on zeroes - go figure · 

jts 02/10/2020 

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com

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011020 - Extinction Chronicles ·

I find radical accountability very compelling, especially in these days of sloughing off to others what one would rather not own personally. I make big noise about the wrongness of using money as speech, but have discovered myself exerting the same high-handed influence to resolve a conflict of my own possible misperception. Where i live i am culturally blind, by ignorance, language and lack of experience - but i do my best. So after i had purchased a case of beer prior to the recent typhoon and said, as i paid my bill “there is no rush to deliver.” 6 days later, and 3 days after the squall had passed, my anxiety focused solely on the lack of delivery. interpreting it as an affront, based on my ego, and fear. Rather than communicate my disquiet directly to my friends along with questions, i contracted to have my paid-for commodity picked up and delivered - embarrassing myself, the establishment to whom i had fancied myself as friend, as well as the delivery agent in the process. This is not to say that i had assessed the lack of service incorrectly as passive aggressive behavior to “keep me in my place,” or that ”my resistance" to a chronic hostility and imbalance in amicable exchange was pure fantasy - only that my actions rather than “unwinding karma” added to suffering. I have no one to blame, but myself · i am sorry, please forgive me.

And i got my butt kicked playing pool last night; it was the 1st time shooting in 6 years  since Bejing, but what a good time last night was - hopefully not because i finally won the last game · I think it was the open conversation during the game, as well as later recounting our exploits to a mutual friend in harmonious surroundings · i d k. I know the fish dinner i ate at the bistro of the missing player was the finest cooked fish i’d eaten since i can remember. I also remember that the closeness i felt was so jarring that i put people whom i like at arm’s length thinking that might somehow quell the anxiety of being close and confidential in a world i’d deluded myself into thinking i could hide in. There is no hiding - run all you like but there is no place on this planet or this universe where it is possible to obscure one’s nakedness · don’t believe me, try it yourself and let me know how that works out for you.

I am what one movie in recent history described to the wannabe thug audience as a “Dead Man Walking,” and while surfing the TV archives, Clint Eastwood of “Dirty Harry” fame sauntered through a very similar morality play in an episode of “Rawhide” circa 1965 - one of the least attractive characters to me in my pantheon of actors, Martin Milner of “Adam 12” fame died today and i have to give it up - for no other reason than to my place in line. For all of our vaunted quests for the promised land of “fame and fortune” we are a lethargic herd of lemmings slowly promenading toward our doom, much like the perennial xmas waltz of Tchaikovsky's sugar plum fairies to the tune of Czarist drumbeats that sadly echo doom akin to the burning plumes of the Amazon Rain forests - once described as the lungs of our planet - after the bleaching of the “Great Barrier Reef”, or the melting of the polar ice caps NORTH AND SOUTH · in obeisance to the greed of a handful of Petro-Nazis-pathological-hoarders  dismantling the lungs and limbs of our entire planet to satisfy an insatiable quest for more Villas and gold bathroom fixtures.

The digital corporate goons are orchestrating roles-to-play for the hoards of wannabe robber barons lacking gumption or vision enough to call a halt to stupidity on a scale our world has never known, or has always known but lacked imagination enough to call a halt to. Here we all sit at the apex of human achievement punked by a handful of smarmy, haters sticking their gummy fingers into any pocket open enough to admit their covert cowardice. This includes the tight knit property owners here where i have sought sanctuary; some who are leasing property to “alleged” but likely Lumpen Proletariate making income by robbing from the farmers whose sweat and decency are all that stands between starvation and nutrition.

I grew up in a land which transformed before my very eyes from a “Camelot and City on the Hill" of historical guidance and good will, to a dystopia of “Animal Farm” proportions and find very little discussion from anyone about its resultant, tragic and entirely unnecessary conclusion to our species, much less atonement to all those other creatures whose end was predicated on little more than heedless greed in service of a debased conclusion to our once noble species - of my earliest memories is hatching eggs in Mrs. MacAdoo’s 1st, or 2nd grade class · shit gets hazy 60+ years hence. She brought into our class what was described to us as an “incubator” from which after days, or weeks of patient attention emerged a gaggle of ducks. Some of us were fortunate enough to possess signed warrants from our parents, allowing us to take possession of the baby creatures. “Ducky Daddles” was a delight and as i recall survived the local canine and feline dangers of suburbia; and who enjoyed waddles down the sidewalk on Baker St. at the end of a leash up until my kind and loving parents determined it was time to release my bird baby into the wilds of O’Neil Park where i would hope still, that generations of my Mallard friend frequent and thrive.

jts 01/10/2020 

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com

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300920 - Extinction Chronicles ·

Sleep is becoming a mystery to me - dreams have never been really accessible to me unless i pressed myself to access my unconscious through that avenue. I prefer to remain in the present as an observer of my actions and from that commune with my interior as a steady state. A form of metacognition whereby i accept my thoughts as they occur and make every effort to give them no weight or pass judgement, but simply listen. Of course i listen more carefully to the loving thoughts because it is often more informative about where the “green growth,” can be found, yet despair and darkness often contain much mulch for growth - if one can stand the stench without being overwhelmed by its ceaseless tendrils into painful events and frustrated endings. I am going to play pool this afternoon, and it will be interesting to see how i am shooting. There was a time in my life when i would go in search of a pool table just to know what my insides were up to, the way some mystics use pendulums to access the spirit world.

I have an electrician friend looking at my wiring because some weeks ago i woke up in the middle of the night to find the lamp over my bed glowing - something it had never done in the 3 months i have lived in this house. It coincided with a bill that had grown 20% from the last charge without any great variation in usage. Electricity is something that i have studied in a variety of ways - houses, cars, machinery and aircraft · but not something i can say i have anything approaching competence with or interest in mastering. It is akin to mathematics; the principles of each is fascinating, but not the sort of activity my mind is given to; i prefer writing, drawing or carving. I remember the 1st time i stood in front of a canvas guided by a man who must have been a friend in some other lifetime for the way he could bring alive concepts that had been dormant in my heart waiting to be awakened. It was the same for carving stone - different guide, but same intense pleasure from discovery.

My disinterest in electricity could be from something as simple as it has mostly been in a compensated environment when i was challenged to master the knowledge. I’ve had many assignments which required computer research and have always been amazed at how many questions would arise not related to my task, yet when freed from the “wage slavery” environment and sitting in front of my own processor - i would draw a blank preferring, i guess the odor and memories of hours in libraries for hunting knowledge to the leering screen and yoked wrists of the modern computer station. Or it may be that my competence with electronics never reached the level where my inherent affinity for creativity felt free to play, to wander and frolic in the world of “what if?” That may be why pool and the creative arts are so close to my heart - the constant decision about “what happens if i do this, what happens if i do that?”

Just now my young friend is absorbed in tracking down a fault in the wiring he believes he correctly determined and is searching for the connectivity solution to break that ground fault - he is absorbed and happy, even invigorated by the challenge. I believe that is a natural state of the human being to be enthusiastic about the challenge in front of them. Our world has been subsumed by tacky little bean counters who are shaving more and more moments from people’s lives whether from actuary tables or pay grades that have absolutely no relationship to the questions those metrics are supposed to answer. When Pop was old and still had access to a phone i would call on a daily basis, peppering him with questions, “what about this, what about that?” One of his most stunning observations was when i asked “what do you see as the biggest problem our world faces today?” Without dropping a stitch, he remarked, “Values, I don’t understand what people are thinking about Values.”

This was supposed to be a man suffering from dementia, so much so that he was subjected to a locked environment - something he oddly acquiesced to more readily than i’d have ever thought possible. Then again my own memory may be embellishing in deference to his memory. Values are fucked up in this era of extinction - we are looking to the wrong people for leadership and turning our backs on those who know best what is needed. It is almost 180 degrees out - “if you want something done, find the person who is asses and elbows at work” - old ‘merican aphorism, not the schmuck who spends most of his time in transit between his many estates and villa because s/he doesn’t know where he wants to be; a lot like the old adage “someone who has one watch always knows what time it is, the person with two is never quite sure. It is not much different with our species - faced with all the options for distraction it is difficult to hear what one’s soul is calling out for much less what to value in a world where the first casualty has been regard for truth.

jts 30/09/2020 

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com

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290920 - Extinction Chronicles ·

Sometimes the simplest things are monumental and the most epochal challenges are a walk-in-the-park - the DIY authors have grown rich jotting down theories for popular consumption · which like the rules of proper governance has only changed continuously for the past ______fill in the blank, but as yet has demonstrated nothing more solid than what Doctors recommend after major/minor and everything in between surgery; it still boils down to: if you shit, you live; if you don’t you die. I loved running, but came to it late in life, and so only enjoyed a decade or so of pacing far and near enough to appreciate the relationship between stride and just about every other thing in one’s life. The best runs were barefoot early at low tide between piers with an actually "random" iPod selection which were rare enough to be memorable, but not so much as to want to become an apple professional at managing what should have been provided by what is now the richest company in the world and as rotten as anything Eve ever offered Adam.

Yet that fable was created by men about a betrayal that speaks volumes about their weakness but says nothing about the generosity of Eve - offering nutrition to her man, minus malice or anything but the best intentions · Small wonder the world has gotten no further in the past 2,000 years of patriarchy. I received a bulletin this morning from a Cooperative home i’d applied to years ago in Berkeley, CA: old house, large rooms, thorough vetting but currently occupied by a 7 to 1 ratio of women to men. I dismissed this out of hand, not because of any misogyny i feel, but from certainty that i would not last a month were i to gain admittance. As a product of the 60s i have seen too many benign orthodoxies seized and transformed into litmus tests for participation predicated solely on compliance, adherence and conformity. Ironically it was my 99 year old Episcopalian “free thinking” great grandmother Munner who inured me to joining any group that smacked of propriety.

Her grandson, my father, was a devout Existentialist of the most robust variety - post WWII victor/pedagogue who possessed a messianic faith in all those he came in contact with to become their very best “selves.” Whole cadres of Orange County California youth have become the vanguard of a bulwark that transformed the most rigidly conservative county on the west coast into a “blue” county for the 1st time in the history of the state during the last presidential election - it is not inconceivable that my father’s intransigent goodwill toward the “little guy” might become the strongest thread keeping our once great nation from a downward spiral into fascism · just sayin.’ I am not hero worshiping - he was an asshole like me with the most vain proclivities, and irrational impulses one could acquire · but he was human to the bone and the best example of decency one could hope for from a parent.

One of the many vivid memories of my father is being yanked through his door - regardless of the swirling influence of company and being enveloped in a bear hug which was always accompanied by some manner of theatrical grunt - i suspect now it was his way of apologizing for having swallowed your hand in a grip which could only be honorably responded to by repositioning one’s own hand to such a place as to demonstrate - parity · it only took a decade of such behavior modification events for him to accede, my grip was as sincere and without surrender as his own. I did not then, nor now understand this person as fully as i would wish but accept that failing is not mine to own, but a product of some unreconciled modesty of his which demanded privacy and solitude, even from his own son.

It troubled me for many years the partition of his professional world and my curiosity about what his world looked like. We could be standing at the ice cream counter at Thrifty’s Drug Store and someone would present themselves to him like he was a potentate, rather than the jocular, but not-to-be-fucked-with reality i lived with and woke up to as he marched out the door to his responsibilities. Sometimes he would allow us to massage his bald head, like that was going to make hair sprout, or if we were really lucky, earn extra dimes shining his ancient shoes with the even more ancient brushes of his polishing kit. My parents did not have to divorce, and i do not blame either for the dislocation caused by their decision, but from where i sit - 5 decades later with a world of my own empirical proof, they would have had more satisfying lives, had they toughed it out rather than succumb to the popular media depictions of “life on the other side of marriage” - “be your own everything, not his/her fulfillment” · “there is only one life to live, and it is not her’s/his” · “But what do I know?” - Michel de Montaigne ·  

jts 29/09/2020 

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com

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280920 - Extinction Chronicles ·

My mother was big for her age and a drop-dead auburn-haired adolescent beauty in the desert of Nevada at the same time troop-trains full of WWII recruits wended their way to the front lines on rails to and from everywhere the war machine needed their expendable flesh in the fight against fascism; tell me again how there is no Madame Paradox. She married a B-17 pilot whose only kill of the war was his bombardier in the nose my father’s plane when the brakes failed while taxiing after a training mission. Years later when Pop would wake from nightmares, Ma would report this very personal experience and other judgements about my father to her children as some kind of justification for their marriage dissolution during the divorce-crazy early 1960’s ‘merica. Ma is a complex loving woman who has a heart of gold, as long you are obedient, compliant and dare not puncture her vanity with criticism - valid or not. It is from this cauldron of very real human emotion that i have tempered my determination to love at all costs, yet accept nothing but love in return. 

It’s not working out real well - that’s not a complaint, just a simple truth as clearly as i can state it. I’m sure my conceit about knowing what truth is and what it is not is part of what sets her hair on fire anytime we share air; but i also believes it is what gives her confidence when i say to her, “Ma, i love you,” she gags it down with fewer grains of salt than what is necessary when listening to the other more politic members of her brood. I don’t know that even if i had the magic wand of “unconditional love” stapled to the inside of my skull i would want to be different than what i have become - as gritty as the grains of sand in the deserts of her youth · gritty, but loving; tell me again how there is no such thing as the spirit woman Madame Paradox, please; i want to fall at her feet and crawl to the nape of her neck with adoration of her supple flesh until she whimpers in loving surrender.

I who at 66 with 3 wives under my belt can still be searching for a loving other is nothing short of a miracle, but one in which i believe; that my odds are pretty good; is truly a miracle - i owe it to Ma, Pa too; because it is his language of the heart that i emulate - while it is Ma’s language of the body that i listen to. There is still much holiness in our dying world to find and with which to resonate. It is not always clear with the dissonant images demanding our attention flickering in front of our quivering fingers, but in can be done - we as a species have far more sophisticated visceral knowledge than the digital titans teasing our collapsing attention spans with pablum and saccharin dreams of multiple zeroes that has somehow come to represent power, prestige and success which are as vacant as the downtown we all hail from, but now only dream about returning to - if we ever get out of quarantine ·

The corporations must be de-coupled from the dream machine - a contraption that can only dwell within the hearts of each of us. As long as we expect deliverance from any agency, ideology or alliance that does not honor our independence and resourcefulness as thinking feeling, suffering, and loving creatures how can we expect them to fulfill any promise they make of assistance, wisdom or allegiance. It is the same for me as i size up my next mate - if she is not demanding more from me based on what she can perceive about who i am, how can i possibly turn over to her the keys to the kingdom, and ask vice versa. Why would i want to hand over my arsenal to someone who thinks so little of herself as to presume me so inept and dense as to perceive only her ravishing beauty and contrived appeal to be the extent of her luxuriant, but long suffering soul¿ that is a question for which after being cuckolded by 3 different wives i feel entitled to an honest answer - don’t you?

And then there’s Ma; and her ever ready left-turns out of nowhere - this particular afternoon it was North off of Los Alamitos into her Leisure World compound to which i was pointedly refused a gate pass during the last years of her tenancy, ostensibly because i was so scary; she turned in her seat toward me and remarked; “you know Madeleine (my last wife) only married you because of my money.” Some who have followed my misbegotten exploits for anytime, are familiar with this story, but context is everything. It is telling about what an aged parent fears for their child when making such provocative remarks; the professionals amongst us would like to attribute such an expression to “early onset dementia” and other scholarly analysis, mostly because it precludes participating in any meaningful way with the pathology of the atomic family, but for me it was as literal and historical as anything Chaucer might have imagined, only it was my mother’s horror story - not mine. I have made peace with as much of my history as pain permits, and remain lovable and worthy of admiration and respect even to one has hard-bitten as my dusty mother · what remains important is that this sad frightened woman who once confided to me her adolescent “inconsolable fear of death” would try to steel me to my future and fortify my defenses against demons that she has faced, utterly unaware that to survive i had to digest such beasts and shit them out long since - may you rest easy you fearsome woman · my Ma.

jts 28/09/2020 

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com

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