011220 - Extinction Chronicles ·

So once again, like a deer caught in the headlights of oncoming traffic, all my good words flee and i am faced with a blank page. It is unbelievable to me that i could have ever reached a saturation with rain where enough became too much - enough already · 3 months ago at the beginning of September a character on the expat page posted a line from “Forrest Gump” - ‘then one day it began raining and it rained for the next four months’, pretty sure neither of us gave much credence to the anthropological reference; nothing i’d seen in my previous year would suggest truth to what i’m sure was meant as humor; yet here 3 months past and 13 typhoons later - still it rains · At my college graduation - the quote on my cake read from William Blake’s “Marriage of Heaven and Hell” · ‘Enough or Too Much;’ that wife did not make it past the emergency appendectomy, but the memory of my University graduation did. I elected to forgo the trappings of cap and gown, then found myself glommed onto by the only other person in the crowd of graduates to leave go his cap and gown.

Writing now, i feel nothing but compassion that person having made such a daring choice, or economic, idk, then clutch at the only other recognizable individual in the crowd. The error is mine for not having the moral courage and compassion to open my heart and embrace him like a brother, rather than a rival for notoriety that his all too human gesture then represented to my fledgling, however aged intellect. It was only the beginning of a long road of lessons from that day day forward. I was a 50 year-old college graduate, but by g_d i was a graduate. Pop could not remember where he parked the car, foreshadowing a memory fade which served to rend the tender fabric of a never-close family to shreds soon. Some within that constellation would argue the point given their conceit of strong family ties, but from where i stand, he my father was left alone searching for the car that carried the memories of a loving family to his mission at the church of learning. My stepfather couldn’t wait, and so it was a graduation dinner fraught with all that was to define the later days of that merry band of fellows - myself included ·

My stepfather was a complicated factor in a complicated equation - suffice it to say he conned me to gain the love of my mother · and that is enough. She will die happy because he loved her as best he could with the cards he was dealt. Much havoc was wrought however with the collision of his patrician old money roots and the working class DNA Ma had finagled herself out of. I believe to this day that the walk my stepfather and i took the day we first met with nothing but a tennis ball between us was an honest and decent exchange of positions and that his intentions were honorable - that they moved their household and the economic center of gravity of our conjoined families to the deepest recesses of the canyons of Beverly Hills is an entirely different issue. Leo was a CEO of an insurance brokerage firm and as such swam in waters which none in my family knew - including Ma. The ensuing confusion involved, basic loyalties, to the extent, i once stood in the exiting aisles of a cultural event torn between the call of my father and my mother’s husband. I apologize Pa, i selected wrong and followed the wrong leader.

Again, none of these humans i describe herein are evil; i am simply attempting to describe the inequity that wealth can wreak on normal relations - including that of one’s own understanding of self. Leo came ill, an inexplicable wasting and i tried to ameliorate using metaphysical therapy based on an arrogant, however plausible quote by Pablo Picasso - “When art is properly understood, it will cure the toothache.” At great personal sacrifice with little regard for my effort i transported a 5’ granite femur to a window in the desert where my stepfather could see it as he lay wasting away for no other reason than he favored it. I am not claiming to be all “that,” nor was my gesture devoid of self-interest. My gesture did not save him from his destiny; whether it provided him any comfort, i’ll never know. I do know that same femur gained my last wife a dental implant when she sold it at a loss to my “best friend,” unbeknownst to me, while our marriage was collapsing which mostly added grist to that mill of domestic destruction.

Neither of those two characters are in a position to gain much traction with me, nor are they vile or despicable creatures simply because they betrayed me at my most vulnerable; if anything they have become Professors Emeritus at the University of J.Todd; helping me to better understand the character of those i know, those i’ve known and those i may someday think i know. For example, having spent 22 years gaining a Bachelors Degree in English - i understand better than most the cost of education, and having spent nearly as many years in one institution of Fine Art Study or another - i know what i know, and what i don’t know · I know i would have to live a 1,000 lifetimes to begin to appreciate the ineffable quality of really fine art, i can also tell you at a glance, what is dreck, what is fake and who is in it for the money; i’m not going to tell you what i’ve learned for it might rob me of my last great amusement - laughter.     

jts 01/12/2020 

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com 

all rights reserved

∞

12/1/20 - Extinction Chronicles ·

I watched a fetching film today from a story by John Steinbeck - i was transformed back to life, and i am grateful · “Red Pony” I have struggled for overlong to be approved. Any more, i could give a fuck about your opinion - that is not to say i do not care about you, i do, but what you think has only to do with your behavior, not mine. Albert Einstein - “All that is valuable in human society depends upon the opportunity for development accorded the individual.” For all its bluster and promise digital electronics drag us daily further and further from this simple fact.” For days, weeks, months and years i have disciplined my life to fashion the highest art i know - and what i have managed is far better than nearly all i’ve witnessed · For anyone who knows me, they would understand how difficult a statement that is for me to make, not because i’m not an arrogant prick who routinely burns bridges - i am, but Because my standards are nearly impossible to acheive and my ambition for excellence is relentless. Years ago that narrow allegiance to art de-coupled from the sinking ship our planet is yoked to, and simply became a question of raison d’etre.

If we are not here on this planet to help each other survive, why not just surrender now and accept Jim Jones and his Kool-Aid fix¿?

For my part it is because my story is unfinished. Just now standing at the back window where i smoke and drink all the sentences i would share rose and fell in quick succession, i didn’t run back and write then down because of fear - fear that you would see me clearly and not like what you see. It is an honest reaction; the dysfunction in my family communication manifested in derogatory remarks like “everything you say begins with ‘I’.” like that is supposed to be a bad thing. Any other notion i expound on about another or circumstances in general is fantasy, so what is left to speak about? We as a civilization have created a body of fiction in substitution for our fears. Homer’s “Iliad” is based on our mortal fear of confronting our basest instincts and so we substitute fictional characters to act out our primal emotions - all great literature and expression is based on this sleight-of-hand.

We love poetry because it is alleged to be distilled language devoid of subterfuge, yet even one of the greatest of the Western Romantic Poets, Percy Bysshe Shelley couldn’t get his heart buried based on ______fill in the blank. How fucking gory is that to have to collect your husband’s dead heart based on a fictional novel your mother wrote? What if Mary Shelley had simply dialogued with her mother Mary Wollstonecraft about the “Rights of Women” and let the dead rest? How much different are we today struggling to resolve the Poetry of the Great Ho Chi Minh or to understand the dialectics of Chairman Mao, much less resolve what the fuck the founding fathers were thinking parsing people of color into 3/5s of a person. You can begin to see why as i close in on my death what you think about what i write or what i’ve expressed about what i’ve witnessed grows less and less pertinent with each breath i take.

Rather my entire focus is shredding the chaff of socialization and de-coupling from the demands the few make on the many while tuning my ear and my resources to serve the greater good in each of us. And again the irony being the only logical way to accomplish that is to alter my own self, for every defect that others seem to possess in adequate quantity to offend my unctuous sensibilities is never their offense, but always my own supercilious reaction to another. That is goofy, and i only know this because it is always the mote in mine own eye - as the good book says. But enough with good books, if we don’t find a way to clue the young to bullshit games empty souls will play to gain an upper hand in daily dealing, we're fucked.

“Empty Souls” is a harsh and unnecessary brand to be throwing around when i declare my purpose is to attenuate hatred and encourage kinship. I can only attribute my use of such an inflammatory expression to my years of experience in the essentially dishonest discipline of rhetoric and advertising. I am ashamed to admit it has become 2nd nature to use language which rather than encourage learning and sharing is designed to ridicule and diminish - the very same language and behavior i rail against - that has to tell you something about my myopia · it may even be a terminal case, and we all be dying of one thing or another.

(˚ ㄥ _˚)

jts 12/1/2020

http://ExtinctionChronicles.blogspot.com

http://JosephTStevens.blogspot.com

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com

prohibited from AI sampling in any form

reprinted with permission; all rights reserved

∞

301120 - Extinction Chronicles ·

There are some, read many, things that can only be learned from experience: failure, love, triumph, loss, compassion .  .. yet our world is predicated on book learning and reverence for the written, even spoken word. All of that manner of learning is based on interpretation - one’s ability to clearly understand an experience and to the transform that knowledge into clear language such that others may also learn. Nobody writes neutrally, no one reads neutrally each process brings in another layer of interpretation over the original experience. Only someone who has looked into a lover’s eyes as they bid you adieu can know that feeling, and then it is only through the prism of the perceiver's prejudice will it be processed.

It is a small wonder we have gotten this far with the crude instruments for communication we are saddled with. The much maligned animal mind is not besot with such conceits as ours; animals are able to sense the temblor by physicality, and act on pheromones for sex minus the glib conceits of ever-after love from romantic delusions. This is just at the one-on-one, which when multiplied by nodes of socialization from “degrees of separation” gets goofy with strangers weighing in on issues about shit for persons they’ve never spoken to and you can begin to see how societies get obnoxious AF in a hurry - i generally avoid society, finding it lame and full of obtuse intellects which remind me too much of myself to ever really be comfortable.

And there’s another of life’s paradoxes - growing up i had an elder brother separated by a sister, both magnificent specimens of beauty and grace, even of penetrating intellect. He, my brother would stand for hours in front of the mirror in the bathroom we 4 children shared. I could never understand what he found so fascinating, partly because of my vision - i assumed he saw something i could not because he was able to see himself without glasses, which for me without glasses i could not read the fingers in front my face. I realize now decades later he was engaged as best as he could with trying to understand himself. Ma the artist, the very left-handed artist in a family of 6 in which half were also left handed might help to explain what anchor my brother might have been searching to release himself from.

Unfortunately for him, he was too pretty and popular to suffer enough to give him that additional juice that comes from failure. So as near as i can tell, he has stumbled through life, probably still looking for the “magic” mirror that all in my family have sought wracked with pain all the world feels but cannot or will not see, for it is each of our interiors through which we reflect the world around us. For those in the audience clued in - that last sentence would be in literary terms “Deux ex Machina;” how can an interior serve one and at the same time as lens and reflective surface¿ that is a question? Mirroring is an early childhood development method to show a developing human how they appear - the trick, as i understand is to do so neutrally in order for the human being mirrored to begin to perceive itself through the eyes of others. Our mother, while graced with much, was, and likely remains at 92 as has been said better elsewhere given much and asked of much - Lo ! what she reflected was not so much what she perceived as much as what she felt.

I know this because much later in our charged relationship she would remark with the authority only a parent can pull off - “you are bludgeoning me with your words” · she was not content with relating this fantasy about my reality to me, but would recount it as fact to all who would listen. This is very likely how she mirrored me to myself as a “Toddler” - through the prism of her own highly charged interior. My challenge as an adult is how to understand her, but also to forgive her for egregious falsehoods about who and what i am as a human. I know this; i love my mother for her magnificence - a truly indomitable spirit in a world of dreck · i commiserate with her for her suffering and forgive her at the time she has spent riding on my back because she was too weak from her delusions to fend for herself; emotionally and intellectually - what i resist and will do so to my grave, is accept her interpretation of my experience as reality, nor will i cede to any living or algorithmic creature that prerogative. 

Note: cyber spooks; consider my candor a line in the sand rather than paranoia, you fucking effete pussies are too spooked to show your faces and wage conflict like true warriors; i mean that in the nicest possible way. 

 

(˚ ㄥ _˚)

jts 11/30/2020

http://ExtinctionChronicles.blogspot.com

http://JosephTStevens.blogspot.com

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com

prohibited from AI sampling in any form

reprinted with permission; all rights reserved

∞

281120 - Extinction Chronicles ·

I think there is good reason Lao Tzu described the “Tao” as that which cannot be named. People love to establish authority with words and people love to be controlled by authorities using words - a  hand-and-glove fit, except for its sheer stupidity · For example, a baby learns the pleasure of defecation at an early age, i’ve even had friends who struggle with boundaries describing their perfect “shits,” online, yet one of the 1st trainable events in a human’s life is how and where to shit, something the former leader of the “free world” apparently never learned and is about to be dismissed from the world stage for ignoring his earliest training and giving free rein to his earliest pleasures and shitting in semi-public; enough so that his habits are being recounted in the tabloids. If Madam Paradox and her two offsprings “t’is & t’ain’t” aren’t the godhead - they aught to be ·

I’d swear sitting in the back hallway nursing my tobacco addiction that i was just now being haunted by my father in the guise of a fly. This fucking fly feared nothing, wanted to land on every part of my relatively washed person and refused to be guided out the door: two-things occurred to me, a memory of my father the “fly hunter” with a rolled up newspaper in the middle of our evening meal stalking one such errant creature; pop could be murderous in his uniquely relentless way; the other image is the gazillions of ruling class buck$ lying lazily in offshore accounts coupled with the pent up egos of digital whiz kids chomping to save the free world using micro-robotics and Presto-Change-O a relentless fly capable of drone espionage to protect the next “Côte d'Azur does South East Asia” from the likes of free thinking riff-raff, such as myself.

Yes you’d be right - clearly too much time on my hands with a dodgy family history and not enough sex · but whaddya gonna do¿ Mar-a-Lago is under indictment and all the easy money has fled to P-elect Joe’s “make ‘merica gr8, once again PAC” making those who were days earlier the the most powerful Gofers' on the planet, now soontobe unemployed traitors - hat in hand waiting for permission to be recognized. For all we know what is being played out is some grand domestic squabble between Zukee and Mrs Zuckee, who has thrown the hammer down on an ego that has trouble understanding boundaries little different than donny getting spanked on his diapered bottom by a ruling class that has trouble conceiving life that is not accompanied by a train of zeroes.

But of course i am joshing ya’, right. “Are we not men, Devo” - battle cry of the artist warrior we all resort to just to listen to Mother Mary singing to us in our times of trouble - “Let it be, let it be.” As long as we as a species envision ourselves as anything more the flecks on the planetary windshield we’ve managed to desecrate with our greed and our hatred, there is no hope. Until we can begin to identify the wondrous gifts each born baby brings into the world and nurture it as though it is Release 1.0 and making that child only more powerful in its ability to contribute to all the babies that follow - we as a species are, excuse the vernacular · FUCKED.

Don’t believe me, look on your terminals and handsets beyond your temporary conceit and pathological need to be "liked" & accepted and think like the organism you are - enough to see why the “stable genius” in diapers could so easily convince so many that hate is the more powerful motivation, there is no moving forward for any of us. The individual and the development and respect accorded that solitary figure in our future is all we have to bank on. The billionaires are failures for the simple reason they know nothing more than taking and have developed very little concept about the importance of placing all others first. That is okay, i am old and will not attempt to convince you otherwise because i believe you are wiser than i and will not allow your best to be taken from you without your having first considered that highest best purpose of what you are and what you and yours can bring to the world. I have faith.  

jts 28/11/2020 

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com 

all rights reserved

∞

25/26/271120 - Extinction Chronicles ·

The “Infinite growth paradigm” is an economic postulate formulated by anarchistic capitalists; and: bozo bezos is its biggest cheerleader - BTW, you all are his bitches · (my apology to bitches everywhere.) This narrow approach to the complex issue of human contentment is at the core of whether we survive as a species or launch some goofy googol satellite containing the silicon equivalent of human existence hoping to intersect “singularity” - a corporate conceit describing the hubris of an inanimate algorithm, “self-awareness” with what you already enjoy if you have ducks, children and streams in your immediate proximity. I am afraid, but i refuse to live in the fear these capitalist mooks need to enforce their ignorant concept of human happiness. I don’t know what the answer is for you to be happy, but am willing to bet the farm that it is not based on how many plastic gadgets you can accumulate, or the number of “friends” you can claim on a social platform built on its ability to force your fingers to do things - a social platform owning 1/4 of all the known wealth in our world.

261120 - Extinction Chronicles ·

“The Butterfly Effect”

by srw poetry

You need to stay. And you need to stay loudly. You’re afraid of making bad choices but the truth is this: the tiniest actions will influence the course of the rest of your life and you cannot control it. So many factors play a part in you being here today: a delayed train, an extra cup of tea, the number of seconds your parents took to cross the street. This is chaos theory. Sensitivity. Mathematics. You are here. And every choice you have ever made has led you to right now, reading this. While you exist every movement and moment matters; those bad choices led you to the best days of your life, if you were to play it all in rewind. Change will come, even if you are standing still. Butterflies will keep flapping their wings and causing hurricanes. So, make your choices and make them loud. Trust your gut. Trust energy. And if you ceased to exist? Oh, the universe would notice. The mess that would make. The hearts that would break. So just stay. Stay for bad choices. Stay for great ones. Stay. Cause a few hurricanes.

271120 - Extinction Chronicles ·

The neighbor’s baby is squalling; i watched a deposed snake oil salesman sell more snake oil on a googol channel publishing fox news and rode my bicycle to a turkey sandwich topped off by a Randolph Scott cowboy western, never quite able to unring the image of him and Cary Grant grappling with each other in their Malibu hideaway - a little like picturing Hillary pegging Bill in the oval office · but what are ya’ gonna do¿ “The Ruling Class” with Peter O’Toole is not taught as a cautionary tale, while Orwell’s “1984” is being used as an instruction manual for the trust-fund babies about to inherit the world’s wealth. Yes, as a matter of fact i do feel a tad “snarky,” not a proud feeling. I do not like being played - an echo from exclamations from my family when i would awkwardly “mirror” the manipulative mannerisms , i witnessed all around me; mixed in with genuine progressive tropes about: authenticity, owning one’s emotions, transparency, etc., etc., etc. .. ···

I often think we as species gained “self awareness too soon” and would have fared better with a resonating frequency closer to basalt @ 1,012 Hz than our spongy human 5-10 Hz. This may be why googol’s Dr Kurzwell Frankenstein and his sidekick Jaron Feldman have such high hopes for making mankind’s appointment with its karmic appointment, “singularity” using the interval of silicon’s resonating frequency of 350 Hz - just a guess · a sick guess, but a guess nonetheless. As examples; by all impartial accounts the idiot savant _rumpf targeted the oval office mostly for its capacity to “brand.” meister elon musk - the same · stole the name Tesla, branded it to a revenue stream and defended that cascade of cash with the lives of all he employed, much the same as Snake Oil Entrepreneur - chief executive “shits in his pants” has treated the nation he would make great - 270,000 dead and they’re still dropping like flies.

This is bullshit friends, bullshit on a scale that would embarrass anyone with a family remotely capable of regenerating another link in the chain, much less hoping for great grandchildren. Here is where it gets weird - Ma is 92 and surviving covid · my family, (at her behest) is keeping me in my place by with-holding all pertinent information about her condition. The only logical assumption i can make about such ______fill in the blank behavior is they, my brethren, believe in their heart of hearts that if i had such knowledge i might act contrary to her wellbeing - that or they are so emotionally obtuse and self-involved that they cannot, or will not peer outside the media echo chamber within which they’re cocooned - just like me ·

The difference is that if and when i’ve been in that position i err on the side of compassion, so all i can imagine is that they, my own flesh and blood are in such pain as to wish pain onto one of their own; not that is so much different than when i unleashed a toy rifle against the ribs of the eldest brother after having endured bullying beyond my youthful capacity, a capacity not all that much greater today, but i keep hoping. Ma gleefully announced one languid afternoon, “I don’t think they think about you as much as you think they do.” While seemingly harsh, i think Ma, knew even then that if she wasn’t surrounded by people entirely focused on her, it was likely she would die alone - small wonder her fascination and perplexion with the mother figure in Charlie Sheen’s comedy sitcom “Two and a Half Men.” Ma, between you me and 3 readers who sample this chronicle - i love you entirely and am kind of real glad you had no clue when we watched that show together · you’re a Grand Dame, and you did it all on the courage of your own cowardice - i should die so brave ·

jts 25,26,27/11/2020 ,

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com 

all rights reserved

∞

241120 - Extinction Chronicles ·

.  .. and just like that i wiped a luao thanksgiving clean off the calendar; unless you have achieved nirvana all dharma stinks of some manner of self-interest, regardless of altruistic intention, and that for me remains a fucking paradox. Not insurmountable, because if you wait long enough, another bus comes along - just as Siddhartha saw the faces of all his lost friends in the river he returned to · Yet how to translate knowledge into useful information for a population facing its extinction and so broke it can’t “pay attention” is anybody’s guess. The idea of purchasing our way out of this cul-de-sac is an anathema to me, given the fact that 80 pennies of every dollar you spend goes directly into the pocket of “Bezo the Bozo Show,” which isn’t much of an argument in favor of buying more of anything.

I’d like to think i could alter misery for others by guiding them to a happy project of burying fowl, coals, stones and banana leaves, which when uncovered and eaten would magically fill the empty places of their souls, but that is not anymore truth than making ‘merica gr8 by embracing the leadership of a pathological narcissist who is so bereft of love that he actually believes his white skin and inheritance entitles him to anything more than the cup of coffee that a $5 bill will buy you @ any 7-11. What troubles me more is not understanding how truly sick this former leader of the free world is; i watched an exposé which described how d._rump’s drug addictions rendered him incontinent to the point where members of his entourage understood that changing his diapers was more than a political cartoon - but part and parcel of their job description.

I struggle to be as open and honest with what i share as is practical and useful to anyone reading without divulging shame i might feel that would be of no practical purpose to you or me - only that it exists and that i deal with it as i do conflicts with those i encounter as well as suffering i do not know how to resolve without open expression - resolve in such a way that is useful to my own healing without becoming burdensome to others. I preferred the Arcadian activity of resolving facets of expression on the faces of women who allowed me the privilege of learning their character in my manic fashion through portraiture - it can be an intense experience to be loved by one so removed, but so insistent as to be uncomfortable · so i’ve been told. This is the paradox of sensitivity. The exposé i watched about the deposed leader of ‘merica described how this “leader of the free world” would insert his fingers into the mouths of beauty pageant contestants for inspection of their teeth - because he could ·

I do not know how to process such information given my own familiarity with the erotic and too oft-time misperception of others and their suffering. It is as though we as a species are swimming in a quagmire of desire and depravation, while lacking the rudimentary skills to comfort each other, much less be mindful of their suffering. While considering petitioning for a place in the Sangha of master Thich Nhat Hahn, i was put off by the separation between the sexes - a similar proscription i found in the hills of the Himalayas by one sect from the Brahma Kumari · It does not seem logical to seek growth for the human species that does not include full and open erotic agendas, and i am stymied as to how to reconcile the logical proscription of “desire” just as i struggle with the utility of substance as a vehicle for a more fluid awareness of the human id. Daniel Odier wrote eloquently about the benefits and limits in “Tantric Quest;” i do not know any answers, but approach my own demise more confidently unsure, than with what the alternative demands .  ..

And here i sit 4 paragraphs into my daily responsibilities with an aching heart and an empty glass - “there are no accidents” · yet when writing more resembles pressing pus from a suppurating wound than the development of literature, it is time to wonder, as though it is not always time to wonder. Lao Tzu - “truth is not always beautiful, nor beautiful words truth,” and i possess more confidence, however much an echo from an iconic character dead for 1,000s of years than i do for many who look me in the face as much as i allow, proclaiming _____fill in the blank. I do not wish harm to any sentient being, and know only of my capacity to confuse my good intentions with delusional ambition. I’m beginning to think i am the anti-_rump - and that my friends, is not as delusional as it may sound; simply based on the U.S. Election results substantial enough to preclude a coup d’etat at a time in world history when 80% of the human population is hooked up to the dream machine, which i’ve read elsewhere is little more than a “turnkey tyranny.” may freedom ring 

jts 24/11/2020 ,

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com 

all rights reserved

∞

231120 - Extinction Chronicles ·

I have taught middle school where 60% of the students did not share a common language - 30% of the remaining student body were in constant strife with the same percentage of the other percentage of students · it was more funny than sad, only because the warring factions were so close in so many ways, that they could not see. Today i am considering the entirely implausible however useful consecration of thanks in the most unlikely location amongst the most unlikely participants, and i feel better about that than most of what i’ve done in the past 12 months of my life, such as is left to me. It will entail initializing participation and contribution from vastly different cohorts that are still reeling from a plague lockdown, economic downturn, cultural blowback - a generally shitty number of events leaving a wannabe loving, and industrious population isolated and separated and weaker at a time when solidarity and cohesiveness is the only viable option, not just to the normally separate selfish interests of a wary demographic, but to a planet itself on the brink of destruction.

The trick will be to remain unidentifiable when like my visual appearance since birth is a virtual impossibility - another reason why virtual is such a bullshit expression. The only thing to be lost is the potential of creating an event of thanksgiving that wears well in the heart of every person able to see deeper into their own power to know how much their kindness benefits all whom they touch with love. It is scary to me, for i am a normally very shy and retiring individual and this action requires me to stretch beyond a pernicious and unkind self image that i accept is inaccurate, but also not my responsibility to alter. I am responsible only for how i respond to other’s suffering, not to the steps they take to ameliorate such misconceptions.

I know this event is marginally possible from previous experience - a thanksgiving when the elder brother disappeared throwing all logistical reality into the 4 winds. Drinking played a roll, as it does for all interesting mutation. As it happened for the event i'm trying to describe, all concerned learned early enough in the day to make what turned out to be a miraculous experience. What began as a desolate feeling of a cancelled holiday mutated into the magical acquisition of two frozen ducks, instead of Turkey - though still fowl · after the dilemma of thawing 2 x 4 lb birds, the next logistical hurdle was a guest list; holidays (especially in 'merica) always contain enough refugees so before dinner was served, we had a table full of professors, scientists, artists, authors, machinists and homemakers - more than interesting conversation ensued, however temporal and short lived as all miracles aught be ·

Whether, as most scientific experiments demand that it can be repeated under vastly different circumstances and radically different constituents remains to be seen - but worthy of a look if only because the stakes are vastly more relevant than that of a the sociologically predictable decay of family constellations in pre-9/11 'merica. I share this not with hardness of heart for with a heart full of love experienced a prior thanksgiving comprised of an actual family constellation which occurred at the almost exact moment an electrical blackout which shut down the electric oven roasting an overlarge turkey - it was ultimately served with a collection of candles and warm entreaties to each of each present from an almost equally divergent body of humanity as what i am implausibly considering late on this Monday afternoon very far from anything that might resemble support unless you consider the relentless appetite of mosquitoes born of a historic deluge from 13 typhoons of cataclysmic proportion.

Healthy little bloodsuckers they are, and i can only cringe considering the septic contamination mixed with the rice stalks the real estate predators pay massive money to witness growing. But i am weaning myself from gossip, as i curtail my love of tobacco and alcohol reasoning that this modified behavior might somehow transform my withered frame back into the virile thug i was conquering hearts i didn't quite grasp might also be the source of salvation in this vale of tears - better late than never · even if i do not find care i now understand exists in the company of others, i can still attempt to point the way for young bucks too stuck in their pain to provide kindness to those angels nearby in their lives who clearly require such nurturing love to guide our world to a better place.

jts 23/11/2020 ,

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com 

all rights reserved

∞