Extinction Chronicles - 180420

I’m going to drink early, and drink early - a Pomelo Growler from Pasteur House Brewing Company · i confide this with you because it is contrary to my best intention when i finished writing yesterday and posted. When i went back in the middle of the night to read the day’s labor i found the writing to be flabby and verbose - big words replacing clarity and candor. I would much rather have In Vino Veritas than market ready prose any day. Damn this Pomelo IPA is quite fine. Did you know that in 16th century England they preferred beer to water for the process rendered of brewing beer rendered the beverage pure compared to the water available at that time - sort of like Flint Michigan. The difference is that in today’s ‘merica a president is successfully serving up a cultural Kool-aid Jim Jones could only but admire. What is sad to me is that Michigan is also the epicenter of the progressive educational system that drove much of ‘merica’s period of enlightenment guided by John Dewey’s pragmatic approach to learning. Don’t believe me - look it up for yourself.

Now i will order an English meal from one establishment for tomorrow, and a ‘merican burgers for myself and others (local friends) if it works. I like trying to connect the dots that people won’t normally entertain, always have - though it has gotten me into more difficulty than any real good shit that abandon might have yielded. Fuck it - whaddya gonna do ¿ - “it is the habit of men to quit just before success” - Lao Tzu ? So the computer so widely reported as friend to man - just now took 2 solid hours of fb text to order 1 hamburger for myself and two hamburgers for my friends · given they are at another address and there is the language barrier, but lord have mercy we have placed the future of our species in the lap of this efficiency expert and it has yet to do after 2 hours what a simple conversation would accomplish in 5 minutes, language barrier or no. When we factor in age, gender and political blindspots it is a small wonder we are still treading water - which for the coastal communities of our planet is all they can look forward to.

Nor am i complaining - others may describe my oblique approach to communicating as whimper, whinge or outright whining · again FUCK YOU. I see damn few willing to look at the facts, much less take steps to help those around them, except for that popular refrain “look at me - look at what i have done” I do not want you to know what my dharma strategy is, not because i doubt your sincerity, which i do (my defect, not yours) but because i believe what the Bhagavad Gita said “The secret of human freedom is to act well without attachment to the results” My father for all his domination and ungentle ways, i believe wanted me to be free in the highest meaning that he could gather - he was a scholar of the nondescript type · fervent and relentless, i am only a son of 3, middle though that be with a sister above - oh well. My skin is about to rot about my flesh and my mind to collapse like a withered nut within a hard shell, yet i would have you believe there is a better life than what you are being forced fed like a gaggle of geese yielding Foie Gras to some medieval banquet does “Blade Runner”

Clueless joe has come out and declared war on pot as a “gateway” drug while sea levels are rising; a virus is laying bear the perfidy of a healthcare system bending ‘mericans over the profit table and a tally of desire that gives 1,000,000,ooo yeses to 5 empty suits, and then ignores 1,000,000,ooo,ooo,ooo,ooo,ooo,ooo no’s because they lack introductions. Again, FUCK YOU - i don’t ask your concordance, confirmation, or commiseration; what i demand is that you peer into your own history and future and ask whether you have done all that you can to relive those you know and wish to know of suffering. Nor do i necessarily give a rat’s ass if you do or don’t; sadly i’m pretty sure you are only tuned in at this point of the narrative whether you are named or indicated in terms of notoriety, for that is how you have been “tuned” willingly or not by the lean forward click bait technology of those whose self indulgent bells and whistles have driven this feckless herd of ours to the precipice of doom.

Now i await news of whether it was possible to arrange a foreign meal of dubious want for friends i have only just made - i am past the 2 liter mark for bia; it was outstanding and i am now plumbing my heart for salacious tidbits that might aid you the reader in focusing on our inexorable calamity. To give you an idea how mean my kindly father was at his core when asked about “our collective future” his go-to remark about “going down the road” was “man am i glad i’m old.” For the younger arrogant members of our audience this aside may seem unimportant, yet for me as your guide, it carves divets into my soul to know there is so little i can do to protect you. Just now on my I tunes library Art Intel is sharing BD’s lay across my big brass bed, so few of you understand how poignant these lyrics are it saps my will - sort of. You will have to find ways to discern fake from fact - who gives a fuck about your future against your myopic fantasy about your everlasting glory, you are dead - your grandchildren are dead and you handed their future to them without pity; i spit on your vanity and applaud all the steps you have taken to allow something resembling peace to those who manage to follow your mangled conceit.

With much love and pity .  ..  ··· your former and future friend

jts 18/04/2020

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com se

reprinted with permission - all rights reserved

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Extinction Chronicles - 170420

I sit in Hoi An, Viet Nam 17 days into “shelter in place” orders from the central committee. My circumstances given what the world faces are comfortable, if not benign. As ever, most torment in my life is at my own hand. My vices are in check and what relations i allow are kind, or gone, yet i would presume to take your time for complaint¿ WTF is that all about? I have music, means to express myself and a vehicle for expression though it be a 50 cc 2 cycle in a world ruled by Maserati technology. My faculties are intact if that is a word to describe my framework some 65 odd years past my breech - more accurately a Franks Breech · ass 1st i arrived and from what i understand about intestinal rectitude on death - ass first i shall depart. (coughing jag @ during the corona-19 epoch not withstanding)· Los Lobos visits just now on my music channel which is restricted to a single processor, owning no phone and eschewing apps of all kind. Internet is highly suspect due to the obtuse supervision and contribution of Art Intel which may or may not have misinterpreted the human’s fascination for the word “viral” and zigged when it should have zagged.

Who knows, and who cares is a condition which seems to remains fundamental and immune to interpretation, or it’s polite euphemism - spin · Yet from where i sit watching a country struggle to remain close to the blessed wonder of a leader who actually led - such that by simple loving logic, Ho Chi Minh literally handed Uncle Sam his ass on a platter. Yet in less time than it has taken my life to past, the land my nation once conspired to denude, destabilize and destroy is even at this time of “defense against contamination" building more and more “units” for entertaining that same destructive wolf now wearing the cloak of entrepreneurial infusion - this deceit drives me to distraction. However, i am old facing my death spiral and my progressive zeal is blunted by self-awareness and fatigue - i will not help those who will not help themselves · I search my experience for unconditional love and see my own selfishness at each turn - that ego declaration i am repulsed by from others handing out bezo bounty calling it the “future”.

I do not wish to wallow in my history which is unique and rich, for if past is prologue, where i sit now is as rich and worthy of my entire focus - such as it is, as anyplace i have ever been in my life. Just now my farmer neighbors with whom i hold most solidarity are entertaining the newest child in the clan. I editorialize my excoriating judgement about tobacco infestation and cultural contamination which are norms for me, but can be seen as newfound “social distancing” for the world i have yet to find a place in. I love Hoi An, there is a rich history which allows for immersion into an environment which can only recognize itself in hindsight, but is yoked to the present by how to "make a living" - not much different than my own world view. My limited strategy has been to evacuate at the first sign of dissension - while in many ways practical, also is in many ways a precipitous life strategy· If that sounds like complaint, it is not - what you read is simple fear, mine own. Having been birth-evacuated to a ‘merican beauty besought by two prior births and a husband as poetic as his life’s trajectory to which he and his loins were condemned - a confused infusion to a regional DNA strand delaminating from the greed of a WWII victory.

How does greed fit into a limitless universe said every billionaire who has ever raped and pillaged from the dawn of time¿ From what i can see around me, the answer to that question has been the ability to frame such a selfish ambition as honorable - “if i were ‘he/r’ i would be different; i would disperse my gain, however achieved more equitably, because i am more noble." I say this because of my own conceit that i am better able to give to others by simple virtue of my “enlightened” upbringing - (picture tongue piercing cheek) · still i press forward in my mist of fatigue and surrender. I have now finished my allotment of vice as it closes in on the witching hour which contains my few hours of substance surcease. My sole objective is the partial paragraph of personal profile i can provide to strangers who do not join, but from data the googol state provides, preview.

Pop was a HS english teacher who advocated the elegance of a 5 paragraph essay for expressive clarity, and who also demanded of me on a phase of his death bed to never quit writing. The past weeks have challenged that pledge which he pulled from my chest - not because i don’t enjoy the act of sharing, but because i am afraid that what i hold dear is unimportant to anyone but myself - so i say to you “unknown reader” Fuck you and the thge horse your rode in on" - an expression i learned from my mother’s 2nd husband. I loved him with great respect, mostly from the calm he brought to ma's brutal heart. My mother is 91 facing 92 in a locked facility in LB CA; her last exclamation to me was “you are obsequious” and as with most of any of the other unkind declarations she has ever made, i join it to the same confused judgement of those i’ve met and who do not possess imagination enough to peer beyond the harsh persona i struggle not to be, while focusing more closely with the character i am learning i consist of;

or as Bernie Mac said so much better - “Fuck you, i’m not afraid of you.” 

jts 17/04/2020

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com 

reprinted with permission - all rights reserved

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another fucking Nuyier - oh Boy · !

weird day, again · and again ·· and ··· am writing this with 24 point type and the xptr lid closed to 80 degrees because the hinge to my screen is failing. and i will have to relinquish xptr connection for 2 weeks beginning feb 3. it is still 2 weeks prior to lunar new year in Viet Nam and the country is fairly quaking in anticipation. tomorrow morning, hell or high water i leave Hoi An for Laos at 4:50 am and tonight my landlord decided was the best time to combat the broken screens in his overpriced house. i have taken refuge in the Aussie bistro Dingo Deli and am nursing my affliction to the tune of sonic aggression under the guise of patriotic assertion · 

it is now 5:58 pm and i have two hours to sink into sleep if i am to have a fair shot at driving alert and understandingly through some of the most war torn parts of a horribly abused land. the irony that i selected this land to die and to love my last breath in grows daily both for the lessons of my own ignorance and lessons i am still capable of processing as well as the possible resolve i cam seeking on behalf of the global community - sadly it would seem the haters have arrived sowing seeds of dissension and nationalism blinding all to the dangers of, forgive me the coining of new expressions “Big-Shotism”. be not disfigured by the egos of small people · grow large and be so to others.

i am faced with the very real prospect of dying alone in a foreign land friendless and possibly robbed of my life savings by the same govt. that dropped more bombs than dropped in all of WWII on a country the size of the state of Delaware, then left defeated. what i hope for past this possibility, is that others join forces with all they are near rather than those small cliques which arise from the familiar, and also logically coalesce into fictional pockets of solidarity; when the reality is we are being splintered by a hateful handful using the delusion that if you recognize the appropriate cadre somehow you will mysteriously land a seat in the “big house” - bullshit but powerful enough to distract the feeble and tired mind of those greedy enough to wage war on their brethren - how fucking sad ·

there is no total that does not include the most vulnerable amongst us - our mothers our broken brothers, our beaten sisters · the world we understand is on its last legs and no amount of clinging to the familiar will save the unborn children of our dying planet until we each accept our limited desires and seek a greater happiness only found in the fulfillment of those we do not know · your struggle is my struggle, and yet you reject my aid because i am afraid and show it. that is my error and i strive daily to show my brave love for who you are and what you have tried to accomplish · it is in my weakness that i shrink from cruelty that i am sure you do not want me to possess - while my struggle remains to give you what i do not have.

it is now 6:32 pm and i must rise at 4:00 am· i`ve no qualms about paying the high price of the sandwiches and two drinks i had at the western oriented establishment, because by all accounts the locals enjoy their work and the management makes every effort to enlarge understanding . my homestay was not as generous and cast aspersions about it being a “fancy” place but then rode off with one of the fancy patrons clinging to her exquisite figure · i am a hypocrite, she is a hypocrite - no one’s hand’s are clean and as long as we search for a divine other to redeem us from our wicked hatred rather than take that weakness in hand to comfort and acknowledge it for the source of our cruelty to others which it is - we are fucked 

7 jan 2020

it is 7 days past the new year 2020, i have given notice on my home in Hoi An and made plans to leave for Arequipa Peru - and changed my mind. the neighbors who four days ago were inexplicably plaguing me with very loud Vietnamese music most of which i really like, but some sounds like the textbook definition of caterwauling - today when the electricity went down i was in their field to visit in the guise of calming the waters. i did not sleep well last night though i drank little - comparatively speaking. i find in my solitude it is very important that i express myself and continue to push the limits of my company with humans. i have not seen Ms N___ since christmas-eve-day-morning when she rode off with her kuta-cowboy pressing his blue-jeaned phallus into her shapely shift on her scooter set off with tangerine lipstick, but what i remember is her crimson blush when she realized this ride had to be initiated under my bewildered expression· i do not understand the chemistry between us, but it requires considerable mindfulness to keep the mixture benign. i am glad to have not booked a ticket for Peru, and look forward to my introduction to D___ H___, though we have been in seemingly constant communication for some 10 years. she still believes that when i visit HCMC in late jan-early-feb that i leave from there for Peru, it will be interesting to learn how that innocent deception plays out.

meanwhile back at the ranch, i’m eating beet-root-pumpkin-seed salad              (note: devoid of pumpkin seed) at Dingo Deli which seemingly reserves a table for me to write at, or the facility is just so large that my table at the door remains empty mostly. i like Viet Nam very much despite its quirks and inherent misunderstandings, i've been reading war histories and Uncle Ho’s Diary - a collection of poems written while in prison prior to the ‘merican war; it is fascinating reading emphasized by the French conversation i hear murmuring in the background while i write now. ironically the hatred of the French is greater than that of the “My”, but my sense is blunted by my isolation and pain. if i am patient and loving it may be i have landed in a place where when my physical force withers and am left with little more than a creative legacy spread across the continents i have been - i may be safe to die. speaking of which, ma is certainly where i left her and heard her last best admonition of my failings - “you are obsequious”, though i’m not sure i can agree with her which may be the root of all our estrangement.

what i don’t want to happen is for her rage at my disobedience to define the last loving relation for which i have waited so patiently. it seems there is a flaw in every conviction e.g. when i was prepared to join the sangha at Từ Hiếu in Hue, i listened to Thay describe how the elder wounded were often too “afflicted” to learn the practice - well shit howdy, d’ya think¿ so what do i do? rail and resist a loving revolutionary lover because his concept excluded my peculiar “affliction” or hunker down and swim upstream like some weakened salmon sperm hoping my DNA strand actual, rather than being spilled into some passion-frenzied-hanky finds residence in the loins of a loving mother which may possess the requisite nurturing skills to allow my strand to join those of the greatly reduced human genome about to wage real war with survival¿ that is the question. 

i am now 65 and find certain “holes” in my normally locked thinking - abnormal vacancies as well in my normally ordered existence of desperation-does-life - coming soon to a screen near you. today while attempting to splice my most recent retreat to a stand of sorts i had to face the shortage of electricity which interrupted my “escapist” movie entertainment, dressed up as cultural anthropology cum - youtube nostalgia for the decency of actor Richard Boone - i faced that very real vacuum of naked self with nothing to distract me. what i resorted to was digging in the garden with the neighbors - it is what i grew up with; children today have no such memory to fall back on. i am at a loss how to create pathways for others to follow. fb is not a public utility but rather the outgrowth of an obscene amount of money and research in how to affect the thinking of the population. it seems i am often surrounded by cliques believing by the the uniformity of their thinking that they are invulnerable to such influence - that somehow the solidarity they enjoy in groups renders their thinking independent - oddly similar to the smugness with which i’ve enveloped myself by solitude.

yet just like finding myself deprived of late-afternoon entertainment seeking sobriety the solace i seek in companionship may be nothing more than a chimera which when pulled aside like some curtain of old reveals the same singular fear of death from which no one escapes. so is it escape we seek or a deeper participation in the panoply of reality in which we are all immersed, including the intransigent resistance to ending a sentence with a preposition, or the perverse pleasure of blasting Trinh Cong Son back against the wall of cultural struggle at my back in the “foreigner” enclave where i write now - an illusion consistent with riding back to my lone room drunk in the dark. this coming Monday i will ride to my 2nd visa extension to Laos. it is a 6 hour drive along with the meal at the border where when i was last there i was refused service as much as was possible; it will be curious to see the memory of me picking up plastic and sharing my nothing with the urchins guarding the border. what was hardest was driving past the killing fields my country initiated and which Uncle Ho prevailed by simple decency.

i remain confused by how to mitigate cruelty that is so much a part of where i now live, and rather nurture a loving solidarity for our species. even how to reconcile my egotistical reaction about Nhi’s rejection of my heart offering, down to the “sonic” attack by my neighbors - we are so close, yet so far. it is health i need and for that i require love for which my history hasn’t prepared me well. but why not¿ i’m not a bad guy and don’t want much but peace and kindness. i accept i have hackles that hurt others. i will continue to blunt them as i can, and in the opposite effect a positive force for the betterment of all, because that is how i was trained; what can i do to train others than what i am doing - that is a question .? 

jts 05/06/2019

http://stoanartst.com 

reprinted with permission - all rights reserved

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"whoopee, we're all gonna die" - Country Joe and the Fish

a year ago i had written a lament on the eve of the day of the dead celebration in Oaxaca Mexico - all hallows eve - samhain · now one year later i am feeling flat, obtuse and alone in an entirely different culture. it is a blessing to write, for it is a communion with one who will always be the closest i can get to understanding what it means to be alive - myself. much of my indoctrination has been about convincing me that those closest to me held the key to my happiness - family. where i sit just now this was a hoax, perhaps not intentional, nor necessarily mean spirited - but cruel in its own twisted way. which means i am the same having been birthed out of the same cauldron · letting go of sanctimony has been a ripe challenge if only to tease from the strands of conceit a kernel of decorum so fleeting of mind . we are as Mr. Dylan said about the Titanic, though he was not only addressing the good ship democracy, but our planet writ large. how can we have allowed ourselves to be so ignobled by such rabble as those affect-cyphers seizing all and exacting more. Wasichu is such a marvelous expression “he who takes the fat from the bone” and so fits our approach to each other. i am considering a new blog - “the extinction chronicles”. it will be interesting to learn whether the name is available, and how much time it will take to quash readership - AI being the affective retard its progenitors. could only help but to reflect.

“how unkind” that i would point my digit in all directions as judge of all goodness in the world, when in fact i am as fraught with that same greed and rancor about which i rail · the journey seems to be about reconciling the good will you want to feel toward others with the ofttimes covertly unkind narrator of this story. more accurately i wonder about the benefit of sitting hour after hour divulging or puzzling issues that may or may not ever be read, though i have created “extinctionchronicles.blogspot.com” to act on that concern · i realized my last crush could not reciprocate warmth because, i believe, she found my habits worthy of correction · however that she is my last crush was determined more by lack of communication, myself being so loquacious and she so non-communicative. my fantasy about her judgment is literally based on interpreting a tea leaf gift from her. these tea leaves detoxify the liver and ameliorate other self-destructive habits. it was not a bottle of Jack Daniels, what was i to think¿ i’ve been shrunk · a 10 year long critique by one mental health professional or another · i think ever last human being should have an opportunity to peer deeply into the recesses of their upbringing - but if you voluntarily enter the lion’s den, remember there is no magic bullet, nor anyone on earth that can guide you to what is truth for yourself ·

i don’t know whether love will again perch at my doorstep or whether anything i can say or do will contribute to the preservation of a single DNA strand in our increasingly tenuous place on this molten rock covered by a film of oxygen and water· it is raining in anticipation of a larger rainfall - i live on the central coast of Viet Nam· i have loved the rain for the better part of my life, and just now evaluating the 400+ ml of a contraband local rice wine of indeterminate potency, but legitimate heritage i thought back to an entire adolescent day spent spent with Rick Grierson - splashing with abandon for what seemed like an eternity · the simple act of dancing around in what i’d been taught since potty training must be covered and dried out from seemed on that day more real than much supposed entertainment i’ve endured since · truth be told, damp cloth next to the skin for too long is just lame · i am in a house off of a rice field that 50 years ago the nation i paid taxes to committed some of the most heinous acts of the 20th century. there is not fuck all i can do to alter that truth, but i am able to make my own private reparation daily. i do not know how to rescue the world from itself, for i am having a challenge just rescuing myself from my self, or is it protecting my persona from the being that got hijacked in service of rectitude. 

as a trained engineer and wannabe gangster of love, i have had to adapt and improvise to a myriad of environments - but whether that experience translates into action that might help pockets of humanity to survive which she has set upon herself - i d k ¿ i do know it is important to devise a coffin that i might fall into happily, for it sure as fuck doesn’t look like there is any sister of mercy out there gonna help me in my dotage - does that sound bitter¿ i’m thinking facetious, but then again i was 50+ before i understood “facetious” was not an insult ma was using to condemn my behavior, but rather an observation about the playfulness of one of her charges - such are the challenges of misunderstanding. ma now sits in a memory ward of a convalescent home equal to her financial standing, being plied with all the latest pharmaceuticals tailored to rich geriatrics - that she is 91 and having long since given up the ghost of meaning, is a non-player. whether she ever understood the lengths i had gone through to allay her concerns about her failure vis-a-vis my “worth”, i will never know, what i do know is that i have done all i could to give her respect and appreciation for her gift of life, while simultaneously examining my own confusion about the self-serving and aggrandizing clusterfuck she tried to inculcate into my very existence.

here i sit closer to death than birth and am alone · ma’s intransigent narcissism may have scarred much of my life, but with balance and love i may yet be able to transform the unintended but very real cruelty. this might have been the only flavor of my without pop - a man ma liked to disparage as “cute” · i owe a debt to pop - he was no saint, but got closer to the authentic than any other member of our blown-all-to-hell atomic family constellation. if i do find an unidealized love, it is because he could say “yeah, your mother was a victim” without an iota of rancor and in the next moment be sitting on a couch full of women, holding each of their hands in turn, as though he was doing them kindness - which in fact he was. i watched his same illimitable id wrap its arm around the waist of his caregiver; she might have been wiping his ass at the time - a hip fracture rendered him an invalid for the last 10 months of his life. he became the star of the morality play he never wrote but lived to the quick. just now i know what my next drawing project will be - a woman i’ve known “virtually” for more than a decade; she lives a day from where i sit. the incurable romantic in me would like to check the box marked “forever” but also understand that the simple act of study might be more valuable than any effort to redefine my personal history and perhaps a lot less challenging for her. what i have learned is a man can never own a woman’s heart - she will love you until she doesn’t anymore ·  

jts 30/10/2019

http://stoanartst.com 

reprinted with permission - all rights reserved

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