091220 - Extinction Chronicles ·

I am going on Sunday to visit the scene of an American massacre on foreign ground - Son Mỹ, what ‘mericans understand as Mỹ Lai · The leader of this murderous rampage was pardoned by Richard Nixon. I was 14 years old at the time of the killings and feel as responsible today as if i had been there 16 March 1968. It would be a comfort to me if this was the only travesty i feel personally responsible for in the world, and with gentle application of loving mindfulness, i will find comfort. For now, i feel it is important to make an effort to atone for actions which the culture i was born to has taken - reparations for the racist slaughter of black lives · honoring the treaties made in the name of my forbearers; crimes against love that i have committed in the thrall of lust · and acts of hostility toward myself lacking foundation or justification.

A tall order, but what are ya’ gonna do. We as a species are sleepwalking to our doom, goaded on by accountants and posers acting out their agendas no differently than Charles Starkweather of “Nebraska” fame. I cannot rectify the 3,000+ gratuitous deaths that have occurred in the land of my birth just yesterday, much less atone for the lives taken for profit since greed was introduced into the imagination of human development. What i lack today is a cohort of allies for altering that vocabulary of self-interest into one of compassionate concern for generations yet born. I am not sure how to proceed, when all i really want to do is disrobe fine looking women and spend hours depicting their ineluctable figures for hours and hours before i explore their neglected libidos for years to come.

Laugh if you must, but that is how i spent many decades after art training - searching for a muse/model companion/business partner, when from much practice i had determined i was not suitable husband material because of this unconventional approach to interpersonal relations - i then wandered off into the desert - literally living in Klan Valley of the lower Sierras before fleeing across continents in search of a woman compatible with my desire for a quiet life of loving creation · what could go wrong, except everything? My first stop was a French fantasy that i fled my homeland for was unwilling to acknowledge the extent of my graphic and physical commitment to her beauty and i too wounded from romantic delusion to stick around. It is at this point atonement confused all my ambition and i left for Nepal to “aid” a people in the process of deluding their own earthquake savaged selves about the generosity of a planet yearning to exculpate its sins with contribution, by contributing to the delusion of the usefulness of a “volunteer economy.” 

I left Nepal for Ecuador and found the level of corruption enough to drive me to the other side of the continent Uruguay, it’s polar opposite. Much like the song “I Left my Heart in San Francisco” so too it is very possibly my muse/model companion/business partner lies supine waiting for my return once i get all this “atonement” bullshit out of my system. Yet here i sit in the land my country attempted to “bomb into the stone age” in the name of liberty and freedom preparing to visit the site of a massacre that is eerily similar to the school shootings enabled by the NRA of my birth nation. How do i explain to friends here that i think i have made, and enemies who have picked me based on the demographic i so obviously represent that the savage mass murder was nothing personal - more likely a function of the same heinous corporate influence that is attempting to normalize “anarchistic capitalism” in this same valiant nation of worker comrades 52 years after the fact?

I don’t know, but i’m beginning to understand that the atonement i am am seeking must begin with forgiving myself for following my innocent heart to naked women, moderate inebriation and unrelenting service to the planet and its people - is that so much to ask? We are a remarkable species full of contradictions, but i have found on balance that when left to our own devices we can be very kind, loving and creative beings. It seems a shame to end our DNA strand for the benefit of a handful of deluded capitalists enamored of a digital upload of human consciousness to a silicon platform guided by an algorithm developed by billionaire coding geeks whose refuge to their left brain disability has been to add more bells and whistles to wristwatches worldwide than Prince John would pay for to compute Longitude on the planet - literally a “king’s ransom.” The saddest aspect of these chronicles is the certain knowledge of how much fun our species could have surviving without the capitalist incitement to profit using “greed, hatred and delusion” as its “Clarion Call to Civilize.”

jts 09/12/2020 

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com 

all rights reserved

∞

081220 - Extinction Chronicles ·

I’d be lying through my teeth to say i did not become an artist for fortune and fame; i’d be as equally dishonest to not say that pursuit has revealed more to me about the world than i will ever be able to express competently regardless of whatever virtuosity i might dredge up from the depths of my soul - talk about being humbled (lord g_d above, were it that simple) · Circumstances placed me in England just after my 17th birthday, alone, and it was a great lark. I lodged in the home of a retired U.S. Army Sargent Major and his English wife in the city of Hastings a few miles from the city of Rye where the “Bastard” William captured England and made compacts with his English allies which limited the “divine right of kings” and became the basis for the Magna Carta - the foundation of modern “common law.” This agreement concerning the rights of men was enough to get our species through almost two millennium of relative peace until the “industrial revolution” upended scale such that supply has exceeded demand for the past 200 years and like the “Boxer Rebellion” to protect the Chinese market from imperialist aggression the ruling class brought in number 45 who has ruled over the “Covid-19 Massacre of 2020,” also in support of open markets.

I can tell you as an artist, the markets are not open, and just like the hoards of “hood hoopers” dreaming of their shot at the NBA - i’d be pissin’ in the wind to think otherwise about my place at the Guggenheim - lucky me. Poverty and obscurity are ideal environments to nurture creativity of spirit. Our world is now faced with an Artificial Intelligence appetite for all things human, including what Einstein described as the impenetrable - G_d herself. But leave it to the hubris of modern day “thinkers” absorbed in their world of ones and zeroes, which like all engineering master plans  hews to the axiom, “the last thing to fix on any project is blame.” - A. Nonymous · So we now have a cobbled together “world of the internet” that lacks a soul, and adheres to an axiomatic truth of computer engineering, “Garbage In, Garbage Out” - (GIGO) · Yet we as end users are too enamored of the flashing lights and shiny baubles, similar to the 1st Nation tribe on Manhattan when it really was the big apple, we will buy anything - in our case as long as it can be found on amazon; never mind that what used to be the Amazon is now reduced to a few acres bordering the rice fields that are being transplanted from South East Asia because they are such wonderful draws for HNWI and the latest rage in their bloated portfolios - portable villas.

I understand from good sources that instead of houseboats, the smart money is building floating villas that can be towed anywhere in the world and set in place where estuaries require constant dredging due to torrential rainfall and lack of vegetation sufficient to support marsh lands; From a googol model for optimum Real Estate value, the excess funds from defaulted mortgages now create faux reed skirts around the innovative floating villas which gives them the added esthetic appeal of an organic tutu - very popular with the Russian Oligarchs, especially during the festive Noel Season. Rather than big box shopping center "anchors," to accommodate consumer demand for the caretakers of these flotillas of the Uber-rich, Floating consumer circuses like feeder fish for whales have developed their own maritime communities, each one tailored to an appropriate region with floating tent cities to accommodate, for example, Hanukkah which can then easily be transformed into prayer tents appropriate for Ramadan. The magic of these synergistic niche market enterprises, is like the armies of old they require an in-place support entourage that by their very nature are multicultural and like most “wage slaves economies” are fat with disposable income. IPSO facto - sustainable capitalism.

These floating leviathans are no longer yoked to the temporal effects of pollution, war or political unrest and simply up-anchor with their portable encampments and move from quiet patch of earth to quiet patch of earth heedless of the wrack and ruin anarchistic capitalism has left in its wake; de-coupled from any responsibility to those whose lives their excavation of clean water, and disturbance of the delicate conditions which foster attractive temperate climates, they all the while gorge on capital infusions of gold, potable water, and the universal resource which 22 caliber shells provide. However, after the collapse of the NWO, googol's chief scientist Herr Kurzwell found it necessary to program a buffer into AI for the complexities of uploading of the “.01%” mental deficiencies which required an unforeseen additional 15 minutes he hadn’t calculated into the Singularity Countdown. Rest assured world, things are moving along according to the googol post-post-pandemic human-intellect-upload scenario with just a few minor glitches. Due to a spike in deaths at googol campuses from an unexpected resistance to masks related to rogue units within the white supremacist cells of the middle manager cohort, unexpected revenue streams from betting pools on the number of deaths from the custodial pool had to be diverted to refrigeration units for the “essential essentials” vaccinations of higher level managers in line for cerebral upload to the mother ship - Mama Singularity ·

Storm Troopers disguised as homeless intruders are now in place at staging areas of the “ain’t never gonna happen” Inauguration of Joseph the “Thief” Biden; the elite shock troops of Erik Prince’s Blackstone Army, all seasoned, and rested from their successful campaigns in the Portlandia Wars have created alternate channels for internet traffic of real news from @TheRealD_rump Channel can be found @ “1 Kremlin Place, Moscow, Russia.” If you are still reading this i suggest you immediately download your entire hard disc and toss your xptr platform out the window because you have 17 seconds before your motherboard melts and melds with gasses from your delaminating monitor to create a 6th generation Zylon-z gas courtesy of Bayer, nee Monsanto. The bad news is you will never have to worry about retirement, you are now wheezing to your doom; the good news is your grandchildren will never have to worry about apocalypse because all life is scheduled to cease 3 days after the singularity, scheduled for 13 March 2021 - i am paraphrasing all of the foregoing from purloined galleys of Kurzwell’s next book, “How to fuck an entire species without ever pulling out your dick.” found under the pseudonym I. Dont Haveone

jts 08/12/2020 

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com 

all rights reserved

∞

071220 - Extinction Chronicles ·

7 December 2020 - another day in infamy · Not to take anything away from Kateryna Bilokur, googol’s “i’m feeling lucky” pushed content. Do you think it is the corporate overlord’s quiet normalization of fascism in general to not include the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor 7 December 1941 and the ostensible reason that ‘merica no longer dithered about aiding with its European allies who had been battling the _rump prototype Adolph since he invaded France 10 May 1940 - a full 19 months earlier. That same slimy telescoping of commitment seems to be transpiring as we speak in the nation of my birth - with the Nazi front man Mitch McConnell brokering the sale of the good ole’ U.S. of A. to the highest bidder like some chicken shit chop shop in the back alleys of East L.A. ese.

Yet everywhere i look i see resourceful, however, frightened humans taking steps to circumvent the lock on “Public Opinion goes-down-on Conventional Wisdom”. I’m no porn addict, but have no trouble with keeping my libido handy (no pun intended). I once lived in the home of a Oaxacan Don - a loving family with all the graces of Mexican formality and courtesy, as well as the same cultural and class confusion that halted the Spanish invasion of Mexico on the slopes of Monte Alban. That dear friend, and i say that honestly full with love and regard, expressed his admiration for the current outgoing Chief Executive of the U.S. of A. d_rump, expressing a stated belief in the need for a “strong leader” in any position of power. What astonished me at the time and to this day, is what he conceived of as “power.” I came to learn it meant anything that correlated to his and his family’s advantage. For example, a great show would be made of weighing the laundry such that all was in accordance with justice, but when a t-shirt of mine went missing and eventually turned back up in his possession - that confusion was made to sound as though it was my fault for having asked "where is my shirt?"

Bob Dylan sings well about the rolls we are assigned; “you dance with who they tell you to, or you don’t dance at all.” Where he and i, my Oaxacan friend ran afoul was his concept of enrichment based on strength - he did not conceive of a “strongman" rendering us both powerful, but that schema which provided him whatever he desired - not much different than 45’s seizing the commonweal, not to enrich his followers but to make wealthier those who could enrich him. That is high schoolish organizing - “be my friend, and together we can exclude him.” I have yet to meet my tribe who revels in my success, who finds excitement in our mutual enlargement. I struggle to not be animated by personal aggrandizement, but strongly resist those that would diminish me for their enrichment - that behavior is tired and obtuse self-seeking, so i veer away.

Besides, it is way more fun to discover paths that make people around you stronger and happier - especially in this target rich environment of selfish narrow spectrum gain - be it attention, food, love or money. Each of these it is clear can be cornered and extracted from like all the markets in our world, including information, surveillance or deceit. There are many masters with whom to study, from ad managers, to time managers, to health managers to spiritual managers, but so very few stating out of the gate - “i suffer, please help me.” Thich Nhat Hanh said openly that this is the most difficult of some 4 dharma tasks - “I see you, I feel your suffering, I am here for you; I suffer, please help me.” I believe him, only because it remains one the most difficult things in my journey - to admit to another i need help.

That is a defect in normal behavior i believe worthy of rectifying, and while i am perfectly okay interjecting myself between a bully and anyone under assault, it remains horribly complicated for me to admit to another - “i need you.”· Why is that¿ Lord knows i’ve faced some unwarranted misfortune, as though there is any ‘warranted misfortune’. Nor am i certain there is a formula for helping those in need which doesn’t further complicate the matter - again with Bob Dylan, “sometimes you try and help someone and end up making it a 1,000 times worse.” It would seem the careful listening to of someone’s plaintive cries has to be key to knowing how to help, even if that help is nothing more than cheering on someone in labor to “breathe, dammit, breathe;" i guess the question remains how many of us are in the throes of birthing some existential baby of our very own?

jts 07/12/2020 

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com 

all rights reserved

∞

051220/061220 - Extinction Chronicles ·

One can only marvel when conceit slaps itself across one’s own forehead, like a gift from god minus the interpretation. I am alone and lost - sort of · I know enough to conjure a bowl of noodles and vegetables to my own specifications, share an apple with a toddler, father and grandfather while pitching a fundraising notion of cash per bicycle lap around the "big circuit" and quietly question my own motivation without imposing sanctions; .  .. 061220 ··· i had to stretch yesterday’s 5 paragraphs across 2 days; sometimes the spirit is willing but not the flesh - i expect what i am feeling is a sloughing off of existential dead skin from some sort of internal sea change i do not understand, and the tension is taxing my get-a-long. Yet this morning when the opportunity to once again bicycle my circuit after a week of rain, there was juice enough left over to cook a pot of chicken soup a la Belgiqué in an effort to demonstrate my appreciation for the generosity of my neighbor friends - The Farmers · i feel good.

The past four months of rain have shoehorned a torpor into my already taxed genial nature. I find that on balance i have had very little in common with those expats i've met of the 1,000 on this capitalist beach head; i also have to accept that my own intransigent, altogether too exacting standards of what is "fair dinkum" has played a large a role in the standoff. I am engaged in personal discovery of one who resorted early on to kindness to foil the unasked for, now unacceptable role of “identified patient” in my family constellation. So when i encounter self-involved personalities who presume my sincere efforts to nurture what i perceive is a poor self image that often manifests as a need for attention - i hit a wall. My understanding about giving and nurturing is that it is extremely important there be no expectation attached, otherwise the whole exchange becomes a quid pro quo game of perpetual imbalance · The difficulty i am having is from an internal disconnect in which my internal harangue about “worthlessness” and otherwise unsavory self-talk is sapping the growth of healthy healing self-love necessary to emerge from this existential hibernation with a vocabulary of unconditional warm regard for all i meet.

For example a boyhood swain of my painfully attractive sister requested friendship on fb - he was an elder and the only thing we have in common is his interest in my sibling · i accept that. He had taken up painting stylized surfing scenes some long time ago, think Ed “Big Daddy” Roth does psychedelic waves. They are unique enough, but there is only so much you can do with a wave and a surfer. Here is where it gets dodgy - he is and always has been a charismatic sort and so his work sells, and garners much acclaim from the same high school clique we shared. I have many artist contacts from across the planet on fb and will often post kudos because i understand how important acknowledgement can be - when after a time it becomes clear there is no reciprocity, i will taper off my encouragement to a trickle; because after all, art is a business, or is it¿ am i sharing this now because i am envious, or is it because i do not want one more unequal relationship where i do the right thing and chafe when i find a lack of mutual respect?

I think it is because somewhere i have let the world take more than it gives - let me rephrase that · i have grown doubtful that what i want can be found outside of my own heart, and have resorted to blaming others for not providing what i do not give myself. Bob Dylan has issued a new channel - drawings for each of his songs with hand lettered lyrics; no doubt they are moving like hot cakes even if it’s a little too much like buying a painting from Sylvester Stallone. It’s the conflation with the art con, i take exception to. There was a story about Salvador Dalí and a truck load of signed blank sheets for sale; another about a young artist asking Pablo Picasso for his opinion - “your work is shit, you will never become an artist,” was his reply. The young fellow hung himself that afternoon. Creativity is important, i would not have lived my life under any other umbrella for no other reason than the richness it has given me in this drab world that capitalism and greed have wrought from stunning wild beauty. 

I realize sitting here just now my challenge is to see past the delusion of esthetic market value which will always be manipulated by egos rather than any real interest in beauty. To survive with a happy creative heart to my death, i must reach out to that competent fiercely unorthodox youth who burned his way through what Leonard Cohen described as “20 years of boredom” only to lose his visual acuity when he'd at last bought his soul back out of economic “hock.” Regardless of their selfish stupidity, i must maintain solidarity with all my creative comrades on this dying planet, however venal and corrupt their ambitions might be at the high alter of imagination. I choose to nurture the small clear flame of my own curiosity about all around me and not be dismayed by the narrow spectrum of thinking the corporate overlords are stuffing down the mental gullet of minds too preoccupied by fear and greed to see how delicate and yearning-for-care is the fabric of our astonishing biosphere. 

Well, that should about hold me to my last gasp · d’ya think .  ..

jts 05/12/2020 

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com 

all rights reserved

∞

041220 - Extinction Chronicles ·

Where i live fancies itself as ______fill in the blank - what it is, is a 600 year-old fishing hamlet on the central coast of a land’s end which meets every storm coming out of the South China Sea, and in the inexorable coming days of “climate change” means conditions of increasing severity for the foreseeable future, or extinction - whichever comes first. It is a magic land populated by a warrior class adequate to bring Uncle Sam to his knees, but wise enough to invite its aggressors back to the table in order to study lessons on the economic advantages of “market economy.” What resulted was a gaggle of hipster doofuses advocating a “Kiosk Economy” which had enriched them so mightily as they dismantled one quiet cohesive community after another in capitalism’s mighty march to the sea. It is only a question of time before these road agents for bezos are marketing DIY “big box” discount warehouses for the local population to gorge itself on all the plastic gewgaws the petro-nazis can produce in late-stage capitalism.

It begins with the consumer holidays - tacking a little baby turkey here · a little tinsel there, and Shazam! you have an entire population spending what they don’t have, disappointed for their children and feeling shame for not providing them the good life seen on the ubiquitous mobile screen they can’t seem to put down. It is times like this i wish i was an actual writer able to clearly explicate the fraud unfolding in front of me. But just like my dysfunctional family raised in the “belly of the beast” i am contaminated to the degree that my mere presence is an echo of some prior transgression. I am old and white, the same age as the murderers of Mai Lai (My Son); the same rat bastards that left a quagmire of Agent Orange the size of Los Angeles County that is still leeching into the water table some 50 years later - who’s gonna listen to me? I can’t even get served Pho without chagrin - and justifiably so.

It is no longer a nationalist issue - it is a class issue · the rich think they have won; i disagree and spit on the notion that transforming a self-sustaining 600 year-old culture into a destination venue is in the best interest of all concerned; i don’t much care who knows that. Today a stand up contributor to the fb“expat” page in my region was forced to question an inappropriate post by an anal retentive beastial-conflicted libertine foreigner trolling for underage trysts with transgender youth. It doesn’t faze me what your proclivities are, what is repugnant is for anyone to inflict their morality on others. Where i live is a conservative community and as such requires a degree of conformance to norms, nor is this the first instance of self-serving lascivious oppression by individuals lacking respect and restraint in cultures i've visited. When i entertained a possible life on a marble outcropping in the middle of the Philippine archipelago, my neighbor in the lagoon we shared happened to have been chased off of a neighboring island for preying on youth - a prototypical predatory pedophile · one might even say an acolyte to the deposed leader of the free world Herr #45.

I was mortified at the time and made more so when i understood this punk-ass fuck had lodged with the full knowledge and consent of the local governor - his 1st Counsel being my landlord · I do not believe in morality, i believe in decency; what you do as a consenting adult is your own business, but when you wish to import and overlay your concept of acceptable onto ancient traditions, you are no better than a “carpet bagger” at the end of the ‘merican Civil War. It is in this spirit with which i comment on possible outcomes to the climate ravaged region i now reside; Nepal in her majestic spiritual poverty allowed for a notion of “voluntarism” to root and believe as sustainable. Whether it was some sad outcome of having conquered Mount Everest, or cagey geo-politic savvy by the ethereally seductive Dames from the slopes of the Himalayas, i can’t, or won’t say - i can say that anything that denudes the power of whatever contributed to the established community before this conceit of Noblesse Oblige rooted is bullshit · including the words you read herein.

Our planet needs no more people to replicate our goofy DNA strand, but to thrive, we must welcome each new member with love and regard borne of 10’s of thousands of years of human history, not the sappy proclamations by intern ad-masters climbing the corporate abyss to nowhere. To master adversity and succeed in business it is necessary to take a cold hard look at real world conditions and market to that reality. Where i live has experienced 13 typhoons in as many weeks - where do you go to scientifically study the behavior of typhoons¿; how do you translate the human toll of storm ravaged coastlines except to find every possible solution from every possible empirical experience¿ Who do you confer with, but those most affected over the greatest length of time? What are my brethren expats doing - inviting more “destination junkies” to come and buy more Tchotchkes to take home to Berlin, Seoul and Hoboken and creating a plethora of boutique kitchens to gorge the un-empty stomachs of already fat enough travelers, while ignoring the existing authorities on the planet about the ravages of where typhoons meet coastline after 600 + years of indigenous wisdom - what you must ask yourselves is who is getting enriched¿? or to paraphrase the famous late great Dashiell Hammett regarding “monetary mysteries.” .. ··· ‘follow the money’ with one eye open while swimming for the deep end (Mssr Hammett never said what’s not in quotes, but it looks great on paper).

 

jts 04/12/2020 

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com 

all rights reservedou f

∞

031220 - Extinction Chronicles ·

If happiness is the absence of greed, hatred and delusion - i’m on board; what could go wrong? I smoke and drink, and greed with regard to either of those proclivities just rains misery; that is easy enough to understand. As to acquisitions, owning the next generation iPhone so the security apparatus can monitor my shredded porn threads just makes no sense at all. There are many people where i live within bicycling distance who demonstrate little interest in enjoying, what my loving mother once described as “insufferable company”, how is casting the telephonic net wider going to change that metric? I know many, including myself who admire objects - it is a difficult addiction to ween oneself from · harder than tobacco and alcohol from my experience. I still pay an ransom to the storage unit in B-town were my life’s work gathers dust: some 13 stone carvings; various and sundry canvasses; a rollaway drawer full of drawings on paper that have not been burned and travel keepsakes with little value to anyone but myself, including a rosewood branch given to me by a 90 year-old Spanish Sculptor, my professor at the Art Students League of NYC when i was no more than a 20 year-old piss-and-vinegar wannabe artist. The burl branch end fits perfectly to the palm of my hand. I cracked the cane beating a rug in Santa Ana as a frustrated artist buck and repaired it extemporaneously with advanced fiberglass technology from the aerospace antenna factory that would ultimately finance my degree in English.

The factory was owned by the husband of a college chum of Ma’s. The couple were so rich from govt. contracts that when the City of Newport Beach declined their application to add a 2nd story to their Linda Isle property - he simply lifted the house up and built the 1st floor underneath. I last saw this mythical, however real friend · when i squired him, his Filipino factotum, and the Yorkie love totem to ma’s cellblock for the well-to-do just prior to my departure to where i now call "home". Amongst her last remarks to me during that, our last visit, was “you are obsequious.” The challenge for me is to understand as a human being what kind of pain she must feel to make such a remark in the midst of as loving a gesture as i could conceive while leaving within days to a foreign nation. I had invited the eldest brother to come and stand “shoulder to shoulder” in peaceful loving solidarity prior to my departure to ease any existential suffering she may feel; he never responded; i don’t know which of the two gestures pisses me off more - her senile but heartfelt admonition, or his wounded pride.

I never backed away from a quarrel with ma, not because i hate her, but because i cannot abide bullies. Before our father died, he invited me and the same elder brother to a pow-wowo/long-walk around the big block that defined Pop’s last free terrain. My understanding was that this was meant as an opportunity to clear the air and “burn the existential sage” so to speak. While paying close attention to my father regarding my choice of words - i could find no alarm, yet by the time we had come full circle - the eldest seething sibling had ceased to recognize me as a living creature · i meant no harm, only an open heart. It was an important last lesson from my father about the paradox of an open heart. This was a man who has been diagnosed with “dementia” and was in the process of being sequestered under tighter and tighter restrictions due to his "fading" mental capacity, yet between the time my brother “fled” the scene of the crime at the end of our walk and when, minutes later i caught back up with pop in the hallway of his “assisted living” facility, he had managed to change into a T-Shirt which read “Why do all of my good ideas turn out Bad?”

And here i sit planning my escape; to yet another quiet venue fit for introspection where i can tease the demons of my own unkindness from the aggression i seem to pull from the suppurating soul of mankind, almost as though you are all my family, and as such seemingly too ashamed to declare our relatedness for transgressions i exhale like others do air - my kin are good and fine humans and they are strong · you would be lucky to spend time in their company, but like so many i have met in my travels, you would need to gauge your faith in their words by virtue of their actions. My own behavior is the only sanctuary left to me, for i have found no place on this planet i belong except within the determination of my own purpose. I love you. If that frank expression leaves you uncomfortable, i understand - when i hear it from others i am left in doubt - however, that doubt is my problem, not yours·

The best i can muster at this late stage of my own existence is candor - the same manner of plain speaking my father forced me to face in my last walk with a brother of mine · i love them both for different reasons: he my father for demanding the very best from me in the company of my closest Sangha - family; he my brother for having the courage of heart to demonstrate to me how much my honesty harmed him. I do not know which i learned more from; the honor my father forced from my heart or my own confusion about how much pain my honest existence seems to cause one i love, but to whom i am under no obligation to submit. My father demanded such quaint formalities - obeisance to the father, to the extent he physically enforced his authority when transgressed - my eldest brother did not inherit that amongst all the benefits of having been born 6 years earlier than i. I do willingly - pay the brother his due respect · which like all others in my life is earned, not seized. 

jts 03/12/2020 

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com 

all rights reserved

∞

021220 - Extinction Chronicles ·

I believe that synchronicity exists - that it is mysterious and not given to human manipulation just as love is not manipulatable, but something to become aware of as deeply as one’s sensibilities allow. Today there were two posts that came up on my “news feed,” always a source of knowledge to hold at arm’s length like a venomous reptile or drunken thug. One was a quote from Muhammad Ali - “I don’t believe in taking the right decision; I believe in taking a decision and making it right.”, the other Oscar Wilde - “I have to make everything that has happened to me good for me . . . There is not a single degradation of the body which I must not try and make into a spiritualizing of the soul.” As a wise prize fighter, it is easy to understand how Muhammad’s orientation would sound willful, even brash, where Oscar’s more passive, however penetrating awareness might sound resigned - It is the role of self in each quote that intrigues me. Muhammad’s declaration got a rise out of me, sounding so contrary to my current “following the flow” discipline from the Tao, yet not. His remark is at the core of the Tao honoring self-knowledge, and inspiring right action of “non-action.” 

Oscar’s statement is more Zen at many levels: accepting the essential nature of existence without judgement - even harkening to Lao Tzu’s question of whether one has the patience to wait until the mud settles to see clearly. Each is predicated on a profound self-respect that i find lacking in so much of the media content i allow myself to study. First the mechanics of online activity, i remember the 1st time i’d heard the expression “click-bait;” it was from a visiting 14 year old nephew - it was an expression i instantly understood. We were both guests at my mother’s home, and i don’t see him often; communication was awkward; for example when i asked what he was studying in school, he replied “Physics;” i then asked what interested him most, and his reply was, “I’ve learned it all.” If you don’t believe me about synchronicity; that awkwardness i felt then was not terribly different than the strained friendship i have with a young fellow who will occasionally pick up items for me and just left; he the husband of a very kindly couple and toddler to whom i try to contribute how i may; times are hard everywhere, but especially where i live. The easy rapport, one hopes for when searching for solutions trails off into silence and i cannot press · where there is too much pain to talk.

One of those paradoxes - that very vehicle of language that has allowed me at best to communicate with myself, and at worst to incite thinking in others. Were i wise, i could find language which when read allows the reader to sense more readily that which had already occurred to them - The sky is blue, was it always that blue? Her eyes have language about them, if i could only learn their vocabulary. How can such a smile feel so dangerous? Rhetoric is a dangerous study if it is taught as anything but a lens for self-perception. When people are trained to parse stupidity in others, a flawed duality creates winners and losers - a specious objective in a world collapsing under the glut of greed at what’s commonly referred to as its pinnacle, but which is near as i can tell is little more than a cavernous morass of acquisitive pimply bean counters surrounded by a shit pot of beans. 

Not very kind, i know - here’s an irony for you, and i’d be very surprised if i were far wrong. Due to a lack of cultural sensitivity and simple emotional stupidity my young friend may very well conceive me as a member of that same cavernous morass, and what’s most troubling is he might be right. Every time i look outside of myself for what is wrong in the world i find some avatar of myself grinning back at me in one form or another. I’d read a quote by Mark Twain once that struck me dumb for its simple logic, and have yet been able to locate in on WWW.information_super.hwy “All those things i hate most in other people, i find in myself to greater or lesser degree.” I am an Omnist no doubt, though RTF spellcheck hasn’t anointed it a proper word, just yet. The more varied my hunt for spiritual logic gets, the more crossover i find; it is a hopeful discovery suggesting i might be on the right track.

There is no enlightenment that doesn’t occur within our own Buddha hearts, and every person; you meet in your journey possesses that same Buddha heart. Lao Tzu said “what is a good man but a bad man’s teacher - what is a bad man, but a good man’s job;” Thich Nhat Hanh distills it further and just describes right action, “I see you; I feel your suffering; I am here for you; I suffer; please help me.” I don’t know if this is what Leonard Cohen means in “Villanelle For Our Time” when he describes a, bitter searching of the heart. I do know that the deeper i go into my own questionable behavior the more painful it becomes; yet like the itch you have to back into a sharp corner to scratch because you have no one to turn to - when i face full front my pain honestly and try to understand from whence it comes, the answer invariably is - me · There’s an irony; by that logic the most effective way to lessen another’s suffering is to help them to dwell in their own suffering. Tell me again how god is not a woman with an obnoxious sense of humor. 

jts 02/12/2020 

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com 

all rights reservedou f

∞