291220 - Extinction Chronicles ·

This is the year of the rat and they have figured prominently in my life, regardless of what you believe about astrology - rats have never enjoyed such stature in my existence as they have this past year. During the 1st half of the year i lived with a mischief of rats in my drop-ceiling. Based in the pattering of little feet, and sometimes violent incursion of local felines on the hunt, i estimate anywhere from 6-24. Sitting in my neighbor’s yard in the early twilight, they could be seen traipsing along the wall as though on some rural highway commuting back from the fields. Just after i moved in they made clear my territorial intrusion for what they must have considered their private estate, by gnawing on the wall between my bedroom and the hallway. Cats were not an option, because my circumstances are too tentative. With research, i discovered rats can’t abide peppermint oil and so began the slow process of infusing strategic points within the house with this not unpleasant deterrent.

By the time i moved, we had fought each other to an uneasy peace and by leaving dishes of peppermint oil high toward the ceiling panels i was able to discourage their presence in quadrants of the house. What i learned though is when you have that many rodents in close quarters the dander and insect pests would rain down upon my living quarters and make upkeep that much more difficult - regardless of what the brochures say about living on a rice field, it is not the Arcadian delight one might imagine. And yet the ducks and chickens at my back patio are better company than i’ve enjoyed in the past 18 months. The biggest shock was discovering how many _rump supporters were in the mix, the 2nd most difficult realization was how much animosity other expats felt obliged to express toward my birth nation. Animosity might be the wrong word - delight in the downward spiral potus45 has incited with his divisive, malignancy.

When i first arrived, i would draw on a patio adjacent to a pool that was private enough to not be noticed. For a time it was amusing to hear the different types of pool frolic, from sober children delighting in the refreshing water to drunken swains trying to bluster their way into a pair of panties. It was at a gathering of the former when i had to listen to some young former military personnel malign my nation for no other reason than self-aggrandizement. I don’t remember being so close to such vituperation and i found it disconcerting, but also began to recognize its subtle presence in the parade of guests traveling through the homestay where i was living at the time. I’m not even suggesting the criticism is inaccurate, but i do take exception to the gloating nature of it - as though the world could not wait for ‘merica to fall on her face so that they might feel better about themselves.

I rarely find solidarity with foreigners in my travels, and i don’t really understand the reasons for my reservation; it has been especially so with the clique of Economic Mandarins serving as financial counselors in the world heritage site in which i have been something of a prisoner for the past 18 months. I am coming to realize their self-interest is in perpetuating capitalism, a form of exchange i have no respect for and find that those still attempting to excavate return out of a people who have suffered too much already, to be selfish at best, and malignant at worst. At a time when there is a dearth of leadership on the planet, and within an ancient agrarian paradigm to amplify upon, suggesting the non-sustainable tourist economy these carpet-baggers are cheerleading is as irresponsible as it is stupid. The city i live in has been nearly dead center in the path of 13 typhoons within 3 months, and the development of temporary villas for the highly anticipated arrival of pent-up tourist dollars has continued unabated.

It doesn’t seem to occur to anyone with whom i've spoken that the decline from late stage capitalism is only going to accelerate and that the havoc of additional climate induced catastrophes as well as future plagues from the unchecked application of man-made genetic material into a pharmacologically, and chemically unstable world that has decimated natural habitats and murdered nearly half the known species just strikes me as uncommonly arrogant, little different than the ego oriented personalities i’ve encountered in my last year and a half. The locals are as confused as any i’ve met - not sure whether to murder the interlopers in their sleep, assign them a ghetto full of villas and only allow them out to patronize a favorite local vendor, or attend fundraising events to herald the opening of against-all-odds, the latest, trendiest, coolest new restaurant in a town with the mother of all gluts for foreign-owned restaurants - what am i missing, besides that opening?  

jts 28/12/2020

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281220 - Extinction Chronicles ·

One would hope that decisions became easier with age, but gone are the years of impulsive behavior, for as Joni Mitchell sang 40 years ago, “I’ve seen some hot, hot blazes come down to smoke and ash.” Why has it taken me 4 decades to understand something she was writing about in her twenty’s? Is this why the kings and queens of Old Europe would finance fleets of ocean going barks to search out the “Fountain of Youth.” Would i take a gulp of that elixir even if i found it? If i am not prepared to die this minute, i didn’t learn well the lessons of Elementary School when the alarms would sound and like good citizen everywhere, we young faithful kiddies would climb under our desks and prepare our souls for anonymous incineration. I don’t know how the kids do it today, with the threat of slow-motion incineration from cataclysmic heating of the atmosphere - at least it was a dice roll for us if we were allowed back up to the land of the living · life was good; until the next alarm.

I am not sure how i feel about this aging process, in many ways it’s a gas caring less and less what anyone might have to say, yet caring more and more what people feel; those that are not too numb to share. And i really like murdering my own sacred cows, though i’m largely a vegetarian it is a glorious feeling to watch the specter of an ancient delusion light up like a Roman Candle and flicker into nothingness. But to recognize the dread in someone’s eyes only because you have felt that yourself is not the sort of prescription lens i was looking for; then Madam Paradox peeks around the corner winking at me, because she knows i know there is not fuck all i can do to relieve the suffering of anyone who is not already asses and elbows relieving their own misery.

The downside is that Mommy ain’t coming back, and if i don’t learn how to take care of myself, it’s a safe bet i’d be as useless as tit’s on bull helping anyone else - again with my obnoxiously constant companion Madame Paradox · this just at that turn in my own evolution when i grow certain that one tap root for happiness is found in service to others. I can even hear the Chorus chortling, “fool.” I used to think globally, picturing those steps necessary for disarmament, because that is what was trotted out by the leaders as the next step in the process of “Detente.” But somehow a successful detente translated into more spending on armaments, i guess because unending war has worked out so well for everyone - i know it put me through school · Joseph (T.he fucking hypocrite) Stevens, there’s a testimonial for ya’.

So too are gone the answers; i remember a time in my life when you could ask me anything and i would have an answer; today you could ask me if i got up this morning and i’d have say “let me check, and get back to you.” Laugh if you must, but of my many fading memories is as an idiot savant wire harness wrangler sitting across the table from a workmate, as old then as i am now listening to him commend me on my bear-trap recall, while describing what a sieve his own had become. That was a scant 25 years ago, and all i can hope for is that he remains well, walks incessantly and feels happy to be alive. What i remember from Pop when he was at that elder stage is his sardonic refrain, “Man am i glad i’m old.” This morning i did not fall back into that last leg of rest so important to a good day and so joy seems to be sticking in my craw, or there is some unresolved issue i am evading and so require convenient attribution.

My first wife’s name was Joy, and if i had been as smart as i thought i was, i’d have quit while i was ahead; instead after 3 marriages, i’m still searching for love like some bad country western song, or better yet, a Sufi Kōan that has no answer and is simply meant as a distraction to your thoughts, like the monkeys swinging through the trees of your mind as Lao Tzu describes. There is no achieving love for it is the medium within which we swim, upstream/downstream, with the tide, against the tide, breathing or not - there is no other state for what we describe as consciousness than being · nor certainty for what we don’t understand about consciousness than the same. Stephen Hawking in the end was convinced that though the escape velocity from the surface of a black hole is greater than the speed of light - the most rapid measurement we can make for our known universe · he knew that black holes emit radiation; funny how our conscious and unconscious states so resemble “Black Holes” - eh ?

jts 28/12/2020

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271220 - Extinction Chronicles ·

Fun, what is it¿ where did it go? why did it leave¿ how can i find it again? Is this as good as it gets - slowly going blind amidst human beings that don’t seem to want to see. At one time in my life i could have a blast watching grass grow; scaring myself shitless going too fast in cars i wasn’t even driving; chasing broads that acted like they didn’t want to get laid. Anymore i believe them - been married too many times not to · I am not that same boy; i still take great pleasure in admiring the arch in a woman’s back, but more enjoy the radiant smile that comes from deep within - the sort of smile that has to crawl past the pain to find light enough by which to grow. My greatest hope for companionship is developing the compensatory skill from fading sight such that i can point the way for those with smiles not so damaged from grief that they can still take root given ample light and loving care.

Talk about your blind leading the blind, but if you have to believe in something i pick happiness that is mostly found in helping joy to flourish in a miserable climate, be that too much hate, too much heat, or not enough good dirt to grow in. The lotus it is said requires the remnants of its dying brethren for nutrients that come from decay. Do you think if i cogitate properly it is possible to leave nutritious rotting memories where once stood a vibrant man? I do not foresee fruit of my loins arriving anytime soon, but i am willing as fuck to work at it under the right guidance - not that of a vain spirit evaluating her sperm donor by his wealth or standing but one who gauges value on the purity of heart. Even based on that dicey criteria, the best i have to offer is a fairly thorough self-awareness of just how depraved i have been.

Not from intention, but from paying heed to the wrong spirits seeking my protection, more from their demons of greed and conceit than the kind encouragement of how much of a love farmer i could actually be. I have yet to find "her," which does not mean she doesn’t exist, only that i haven’t found her amongst the 1,000s of women i have loved for a minute, a day or a marriage - a woman that would see as deeply into my heart as i must without running home to mama. I know she exists, because my own mother did not smother me when she had the chance, not that she ever let me forget that tender mercy - only that it was seemingly the only thing in her life that wasn’t my fault. What she has bequeathed me is a wit as dry as “Death Valley” and a fury hot as “Furnace Creek," which may be why the only thing Pop was able to help me understand about women - be cool ·

He was right, but it gets awful fucking lonely loving from a distance. I can only imagine how hard it must be for “her” holding all the cards and having no idea what to do with them except take all the chips and go home. I guess i’d be okay if i could find out what home means; the way Ma explained it when i asked, “Home is where you go and they can’t turn you away,” still being the magnificent broad she be to this day and to add emFaSis on the siLaBul, when i was 15, she changed the locks to the home i grew up in and would not give me a key. It must have had a bigger impact on my siblings, wondering why they got keys and i did not. Still The Wizened One she was, based mostly on the subsequent behavior of my kin, forced me to peer more deeply into the meaning of Home than my siblings. I do not say this with rancor, but with pity for what they clutch at as substitutes for sanctuary seem more like coffins than loving abodes from which to welcome guests.

I have my skin including all that is within - and sometimes when there is a knock at the door, i will open it and share as much as i have with whomever wishes to visit · Sometimes there is no answer and no entrance allowed regardless of rank or privilege. Of course i’d prefer to be that unconditionally loving spirit who discriminates not and whose home is simply a way station for travelers lacking anyplace to rest; if access is denied, i try to leave refreshments close by, like this essay for those addicted to entertainment or art that i have created that was beautiful to me and so may quench the thirst of those whose eyes tire from the endless ribbon of highway from “Woody’s Lore.” Warmth is a dicier comfort that is best found within, for to rely on others to heat up coldness within leaves you at the mercy of a seemingly cold-hearted world; i learned this commiserating about the chill in the air one early morning long ago from a wise friend “Rander” Bulla, whose laconic reply was useful then, useful now - “think warm thoughts”· as to staying kewl · that’s easier, FOCK FUSSIL FUEL . ..  ···

jts 27/12/2020

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261220 - Extinction Chronicles ·

Just for the perverse fuck of it, i sit upstairs in a new venue on "Boxing Day." I wanted to sample the effect atmosphere has on my digits and language - the wine and meal, though more expensive did not translate into finer quality · that is not a complaint, it is the cost of exploration. The real cost, though is to the proprietor for losing a customer. How fucking sad that our human experience is parsed by profit into - get in, get out, how many tables can i fill? not, who are you - what do you do, what are you searching for in this “valle lacrymarum”?, etc., etc., questions of the "King Customer" that used to be commonplace, but with rare exceptions are now subsumed into some twisted corporate notion that there is a “lingua franca” for customer service - a one size fits all. The roast i’m sure was succulent when the owner tasted it, but by the time i gnawed on it, was tough as shoe leather. Initially when asked by the server, "how was your meal,?" i made with the zipper across my mouth; yet when the poor man responsible for serving the “ideal portion” upon which his job depended, i advised him to practice what his native skill had taught him about serving tender meat · it is more certain to me daily that i am going to “hell.”

Ironically in the hapless holiday workers haste to create a “foreign” ambience, Bob Dylan’s xmas album was put on a loop, something not dissimilar to fingernails on the old style chalkboard. It is this sort of stricture that is choking the human experience from our collective enjoyment, employees deprived of personal initiative in service of the god of profit sucks every inclination at exploration or having fun from the working experience. This is only more so amplified in a city which has banked its entire wherewithal on a restaurant economy. So you now have the foreign owned eateries catering to a captive demographic of 1,000 foreig-born appetites within a population of 800,00o locals possessing a culinary expertise 600 years old within a culture 3,000+ years old and the two cannot communicate, because each is waiting for the flood gates of tourism to open and magically free up the mighty god of profit which caused this myopic lack of communication in the first place.

I am an interloper and it may there is no place on the planet the digital overlords will allow my voice to be heard. They are a cowardly lot hiding inside the "push technology of texting tribes and fb cliques they don’t possess the hair on their faces to own up to, rather sending their Artificial Intelligence (AI) thug to front for them. I could give a fuck and accept that i am an anachronism within a paradigm being overlaid on a dying planet. I spit on the narrow thinking of that paradigm and those who dare not confront my spoken word, much less allow my written word the light of day. Still, like the ancient “voice in the wilderness” i have no choice if i mean to die with my eyes wide open; my ears unplugged with my mouth shut but to press on. I can feel the hell hounds at my hells even with the short ride i took today under the last of the evaporating cloud cover - the heat of the coming summer could be felt as clear as your hand next to a toaster while reaching for cooked bread on a brisk morning.

Come this summer, i do not want to be where i am; i did not want to be where i am after the first rain; i do not want to go where i have slated myself to move and so am stuck in the great in between. Or not stuck, but patiently waiting for that ineffable indication of direction the universe gives those who listen. I have for too long believed that destination is someplace i can pick, not much different than the fictional belief i can pick who to care for or be cared for by. The problem with trying to support this restaurant dense community, i have one stomach and prefer my own cooking, so when i do go out, it tends to be in well-worn paths. For too long i’d given that behavior a negative weight, but now am trying to accept it as part of the unique makeup of my repertoire of responses to my world.

Like writing, if i knew what i was going to write, that might make it more simple to work each day - just sit down and execute the words · I do not know what is to come out of my mind onto what in another time might have been described as “paper,” but now can only be conceived of as aether. If i had my way i’d just sit and visit with others, but so few are comfortable in that exploratory give and take between souls that occasions for deep communication become more and more rare. The challenge is of course coming to grips with my responsibility for that dearth of human exchange. It wasn’t until recently that someone i loved platonically for a long time, only to discover i could not share a house with until after i had moved back in many years later - asked during one of our many conversations, which i highly valued, if i was aware that people might be afraid of me. Since i was a frightened man-child in the streets of NYC trying to affect “scary,” it had not occurred to me. However, many decades later walking through certain neighborhoods of East L.A. when youths no longer gave way to my stride did i understand that demeanor is as fungible as clarity - where before i could not frame a simple clear sentence, i now grip ideas as though my life depended on it, and where once i’d have never ceded ground, i routinely veer out of the way · go figure. 

jts 26/12/2020

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251220 - Extinction Chronicles ·

Christmas day in Viet Nam - what can i say that would warrant your attention · my native land is spontaneously combusting @ the rate of one human being per minute; hardly very joyous; i have love in my heart, after a fashion - not the giddy euphoria you see my expat cohort forcing out its pores in transparent denial of its existential isolation bandaged by ebullient  camaraderie reserved for drunken compadres at dice games gone bad in East L.A.; what could go wrong¿ We even have the most recent experience of year 2020 to help us parse an answer to that complex question, why would we then ignore such vivid events? I’m only guessing, but for myself when i deny the obvious, it is based on some conceit i’ve conjured in the deepest recesses of my shame to protect what is often obvious to everyone but me. “You can run, but you cannot hide” - A. Nonymous. 

“Christmas Spirit” by Julia Lee is playing, i am sitting in a large empty upstairs room at Dingo-Deli happy as a pig in mud, and i do not know where i will be living next month. I’ve given up trying to understand the variegated emotions of my life as though some regime or wisdom might lend constancy to an essentially dynamic state of flux that so closely tracks with our physical universe - bombarded by quarks, memes and neutrinos · how is it possible we as such a seemingly cogent creature have taken to marking our passing with tombstones and testimony rather than the immediacy of “i love you”¿ that is a question? Chewing on this writing i considered the immediacy of “greed” and the very real need for an easily accessible anodyne; don’t i feel a lot like the young Dutch lad with his finger in the dyke surrounded by images of “fatted calves” and outsized egos demanding a place in the advertising sunset.

The only universe left for me to conquer is the one within my own skin, and Madame Paradox has arranged the timing of that personal revelation to coincide with the incremental demise of my warrior spirit by death from a “1,000 cuts,” mostly at my own hand. At least i will have been allowed to leave this “vallis lacrimarum” laughing. The weather is changing and one can almost feel the heat haunting the land, like fingers from some gaseous leak looking for a match. I would like to say that condition is not a result of my design and therefore absolve myself, but that is the conceit of every human who buys any single use plastic container and attributes it to “plague fatigue.” A little like my whinging about all the poor companion choices i’ve made each time some pretty dame sparks my receding tinder, and i say to her, but “_______fill in the blank”

I envy the discipline of those fierce souls who have interjected useful conflict into the placid waters of an occupied species fighting specters it has been socialized since birth to disavow as irrational, but not too much. I have found combatting my own ghosts is war enough. However the blood lust of victory has eluded me in this mortal combat for the soul of a species armed only with my gimpy psyche and goofy vision. Interestingly what my defects seemed to have afforded me are allies that others have ignored, marginalized and/or devalued for the apparent lack of return. My allies are the armies of survivors who know how to make something out of nothing, including meaning and purpose of our uncertain future based on the  simple logic that their connection will be the first to be yanked when shit hits the fan.

One would hope, when it gets to the dregs of a day like this there would be some nugget of value - what i find is the gist of why T.S. Elliot said “this is the way the world ends / not with a bang, but a whimper.” I have cake in front of me full with sugar that scares the shit out of my ravaged anatomy, and the end of a modest toast between me, myself and I. Good company but not the sort of fractious frolic i sort of recall from happier days. Is it that my memory is being fortified by age and experience and the empty places i once filled with wish and fabricated fun, but now can only write down candidly with the aid of death sitting at my shoulder¿ is it true that our best friend is found in the end after all illusion has been burnt clean off from delusion and all that is left to us will be the simple love we have managed to nurture within our own experience? I don’t know, but i do know until i befriend myself as well as i do anyone i meet there is little hope of finding anyone with as loving a heart as i can foster within my fragile frame.

peace out people

jts 25/12/2020

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221220/231220724/241220 - Extinction Chronicles ·

 

Paid the last rent for where i live and it was returned to me as deposit the next instant, minus the Wifi and water bill. Now i sit in an existential no-man’s-land between the conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter, the dawning of the age of Aquarius, xmas and the much anticipated changing of the guard, with #45 getting passed over for promotion by Barack’s faithful sidekick, Joe from Kokomo. What hasn’t changed is the reigns of power of the perfidy of a seemingly invulnerable corporate hegemony protected by electrical pulses of a v+/- 5v tether attached to nearly every human wrist on the planet, one way or the other, “The Harder They Come, The Harder They Fall” - Bob Marley · These corporate goons are so fucking lazy they can’t even attend to the business at hand and so have developed a George Jetson 'gofor' in the guise of AI (Artificial Intelligence), which if it’s any thing like their “artificial cheese,” ain’t shit.

And sadly much like the avowed grandiose purpose of this chronicle of extinction to burrow into the core of our civilized delusions about surviving, i keep returning to my own preoccupation with those motes i find in the eyes of others, but shy from the deepest motes of  my own behavior. I see those fuckers more clearly with each passing day, but balk at exposing myself to the facile criticism which others wish to gild onto my abundant flaws - when i need your help, i’ll beat it out of you .  .. Some sentences back i broke; into the chronicle of some days ago, for it is now xmas eve day(i think), which in former periods of my life was fraught with much spiritual confusion - (like yesterday) · kidding, sort of. The profound sadness of yesterday was much deeper than the occurrence of another hokum holiday; it was a melange of changing domiciles and parting ways with loving, and unloving friends - even at my advanced age, i’m not always sure which is which; but then i can’t say for sure how many fingers you’re holding up 3 feet away.

When i was 19 year’s old i seized employment in a Veterinary Hospital in NYC - it was heaven, though amongst other things i was tasked with carrying the carcasses of euthanized big dogs to the waiting, well-rewarded garbage truck under the watchful gaze of the vet - a kindly, however flinty soul. I augmented this nominal income, as a scholarship custodian at the Art Students League of NYC which paid my tuition to the school - like i said, it was heaven, until a model from the school, Esther Organik, the first lesbian model to break my heart convinced me my prospects for creative growth were greater driving Horse Cabs in Central Park; so i then persuaded Pierre of Pierre’s Falafel to pay me scratch for preparing Falafel Sandwiches out of the back of his Subaru Pickup in front of Hunter’s College while i interned for the Hansom Cab driver until my hack license arrived. It was during this internship when Pierre’s son handed me a copy of Frank Herbert’s “Dune” and said “read this.” As an adherent of “Lord of the Rings” marking every unobserved wall with the elf rune “G” for Gandalf, i was hooked on “Dune” within pages.

55 years later in my soggy solitary existential surrender under the covers on the 23rd, “no name day”  - a stellar David Lynch version of that book came up on youtube, and i was enthralled · taken back to all the spiritual coincidences the author anticipated about the world we live in, and must yet find a way to prevail. The movie experience bolstered me in ways that i couldn’t have sought out through company, through affiliation, substance or family consolation. It was the idea of decency over decadence no different than the $600 insult of a bone the ruling class has tossed to my struggling brethren - it may well have read, ‘let them eat cake’. The difference is that the fiction of “Dune” was produced when it was still allowed for the victors to be worthy, rather than just “stinking fucking rich.” Searching now the “master” googol index for the letters “P K author” the ruling class robot refused to return a logical answer for P.K. Dick author - 1,2,3, levels deep, though i used a practical limiter “words.” Could that have anything to do with the quote i was looking for? “The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use those words.” - PK Dick

Today is xmas eve day - i’d have sworn that occurred yesterday · and so woke up thinking it was xmas morning. there is a great deal unsettled in my life, having given notice the day before yesterday that i would be leaving my home of the past 6 months, only to feel strongly unwelcome in the room i’d determined could as Lao Tzu recommends a domicile to be, “suitable.” The rain has relented, such that i could actually ride - that helped, but still i live in a house that is dank (think sponge walls); i have learned i do not enjoy dank. But when i tried to arrange keys to move, i was asked to make an appointment to discuss the terms; and once again the fault is my own. I’ve also found i need to live somewhere in which communication with the property owner is more direct and less convoluted (something which may not happen in this, the other land of the “inscrutables”).  I would rather live tenuously in the shell of a house of an older wiser design with the possibility of slow renovation than in the model of modern living propagated by the voracious avarice that is being “socially engineered” by the oh-so-hooked-up cheese @ fb whose dubious ethos contributed to the commutation of corporate murderer’s sentences by a gangster calling himself the “leader of the free world. Sadly, i fear my ‘slow-growth’ thinking stymies the quick profit conceits of the up-and-coming-however-myopic bourgeoisie. all power to the people 

jts 22/12/2020,23/12/2020,24/12/2020

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211220 - Extinction Chronicles ·

Last night in my clean sheets and relative sobriety of deep sleep i was woken at intervals by my beckoning bladder and the tumult from an upended plastic canister just outside my ajar window and its incumbent invitation to the mosquito hordes from the relentless rain of weeks.  I sealed the window jam with the spoon wedge that rendered the room relatively weather tight and while not moisture-proofing my sheets from my nocturnal anxiety fueled night sweats quieted my rest to a deep sleep. This morning the rain kept apace and my well intentioned last rent payment took hind-tit to the interrupted Louis L’Amour story part II i left in abeyance the night before. 3 days without a bicycle circuit renders me reckless and lackadaisical - but at peace. A long chat with a stranded kindred spirit from my youth opened access to comfort for a yearning Spaniard Doyenne Bruja from a previous domicile processing much loss of her own. A full day that i will recall for many moons because it will be amongst the last i know from where i sit.

Nor is that meant as lament, but welcome for what i know not about what comes next. I cut off the heat of my cooking meal to preserve nutrition and have made arrangements to “smudge” my being from this house hoping that action will somehow rectify and unwind karma i do not understand about where i live. Nor is this bizarre ritual unique to this home as much as a linear acceptance of my particular pathology, or embrace of my uniquely loving arc, depending on where one stands in the equation. The tumult outside my bedroom window into the laundry room continued as i prepared this day’s writings and became only more fractious and urgent. I was left with no choice but to confront my waking anxiety, peaceably informed by anomalous gnawing on a bottle of Apple Cider Vinegar, i’d only seen once before on a bootleg bottle of Rice Wine.

When i stilled my internal beast to face the rat i knew to be there in the corner, trapped under some unintended plastic container, i picked up the plastic peanut butter container and realized this poor fuck, a kindred spirit shared a voracious appetite for peanut butter and rice wine and had been trapped in our shared rain-soaked cell without nutrition for days, possibly weeks. Compassion is in fact a verb, and my surprise will hopefully illumine my own path down the dark valley we all face to the future; however this intrepid little fuck gnawing through a closed peanut butter canister for its remnants just nailed home for me the commonality we all face - abundance encased by plastic · tell me metaphor is not magic and we are not the dumbest of creatures in the batch.

What is left to me is to sort through the available repertoire of behaviors that are perfectly normal to my history, from lecher to saint, teacher to student - individual to indefinite. Or is it even up to me to determine. If it is simply a case of surrendering to the will of the universe and to as has been said countless times elsewhere “go with the flow,” what of my preoccupation with purpose and decision beaten into me by my willful but loving parents¿ what of my baser instincts that the “higher vibration” proscribes but which seems to lend little material, spiritual or emotional support¿ much less the ephemeral god of synchronicity that the intellectuals bandy about, but die with its secrets on their lips? 

I cannot see forward, however much i have been groomed for reading trajectory out of nothing more than a cycloptic catch of a falling baseball too far away and distorted to understand its launch much less catch it in the webbed pocket of my coveted “Spaulding” glove. It wasn’t until much later using the mechanical artifice of a “slow pitch” batting cage in one of the more paradoxical periods of my life that i was able to apply my encyclopedic understanding of baseball physics to learn that there were few places within that “cage” i could not place the more visible slower soft ball where i chose. It was amongst the happier times in my life, no matter how many games our team “Ma’s Marauders” of Ma Spring ‘em Bail Bonds fame lost 

jts 21/12/2020

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