Extinction Chronicles - 200520 ·

I’m torn between exploring love or death just now - “death” because it’s so fucking hot here, i think it might be a good idea to acclimate for where i’m headed; “love” because it is all that stands between us and complete annihilation of our species. Shit is starting to get real as they say in the hood - my real estate agent is vacating a “salaried exempt” position typical of the industry, which when the “economy” functions can be so lucrative that a mortgage is feasible, but when shit tanks - is vulnerable. The thing to keep in mind is that this position i’m describing is the exact position which the leader of the free world occupies. D_rump is mortgaged up to his neck and will do anything to remain solvent - including taking our nation’s wealth. My real estate agent is not that unscrupulous, but how do i aid someone betting a family’s future on the “infinite growth paradigm”¿ I don’t know. When we die, there is no debt, except the karmic payments we have assumed by our behavior. The physical reality of Newton’s 3rd law of Physics could be described as “Stevens’ 3rd law of Metaphysics” - for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction - do shit, and shit will come back around. The hitch to this inexorable truth can be found in the Bhagavad Gita which also points out the secret of human freedom is to do well without attachment to the results.

Fucking paradox - tell me g_d is not a broad with a wicked sense of humor. My sense is the mooks fucking shit up for all, have determined they are going to die and there is no retribution anywhere for any action they take in this earthly realm - they, by nothing more than their convictions are allowed to commit mayhem to their dying day · and there will be no, as the militarist euphemistically describe it, “blowback.” What if they are wrong - what if you are a curios megalomaniac with nothing but time on your hands and resources to point you toward this obscure but seditious discourse; and what if you’re wrong¿ What if James Joyce was prescient in his priest’s description of hell in the early novella “The Artist As a Young Man” was accurate? You may want to take a break now and do you “due diligence” as they say in the trade, just to see what may be in store for you if you misjudged the existential reality of “payback is motherfucker;” and if that is not enough of a caution - try Geoffrey Chaucers’ description of the “Summoners Tale” where the friars were well described at the asshole of Satan, wiggling and lurching from pain to pain. If that is not enough to give you pause in your reckless and ill-conceived destruction of a species, try taking your metallic intellect and plunging it into the emptiness of your own soul in search of substance without atmosphere - lost in space might be a bitch if you are dead as fuck.

Then there is love - ah love · what a remarkable rescue from so much loneliness. But what does it take to be worthy of that elixir of bliss blended with humility and warm heartedness¿ is it even real, or just another manipulated screen by someone with one hand on the keyboard, and the other in your pocket? I don’t Know - IDK · Bob Dylan sang this conundrum quite well, “I used to care, but things have changed.” well folks - here’s cheek, Bob · “you be lying” : “But what do i know?” - Michel de Montaigne. When i awoke from my appendectomy in 2005, i didn’t yet know my 3rd wife had already left me in all but spirit. I do remember the room - a pale pea green that oddly resembled he lack of pain that i’d been in for the past 36 or so hours. My last memory was looking into the face of the surgeon who was about to gut me - she was pretty in a blond-bored kind of way, and the only wit i had about me was to plead, “i’m a stone cutter and my stomach is really important to me, please be careful” to which she powerfully made clear my “faux pas,” by telling this soon to be anesthetized chit at L.A. County General - “I am careful with ALL my patients.” And so with great trepidation about some unconscious nurturing from a snarky, but lovely internist i’d just offended, i went under and learning to appreciate more fully how little control i have in this world. I awoke in a pale pea green room, without the pain that had incrementally increased until my diagnosis 30 hours into this medical journey. They finally plugged relief into the intravenous catheter i had watched a bored technician “cock sideways” after she had plunged it into my vein - (i’d asked at the time, 20 hour marker, “won’t that tear the vein” - to which she nodded an indifferent affirmative). Upon waking, all i could see was the arc of an enormous crescent shaped window with the skyline of a Los Angeles i’d been born to, but barely knew.

Behind my head i heard a voice emerge from through the fog of anesthesia and relief from 36 hours of nearly continuous pain; the voice said gently “breathe, breathe deeply,” so i did. I’d not seen my wife since she had dropped me off at County USC some 20 hours into the ordeal, and she was nowhere around as i regained consciousness - fuck i was just grateful to be alive · The young fellow in the bed across from mine, which had a top sheet but no pillowcase was wired and in incased on 3 of the limbs i could see. He had slid his motorbike into the the wall of the transition from the 5 south to the 110 north at Chaves Ravine - two knees and an elbow were crushed like the corners of a cardboard box, but he sounded cheery and happy to be alive - not unlike myself. I was told when they discovered me awake that as soon as i could take a shit · i could go home, meaning the “chit” was no longer ticking and i was no longer hawking my future to an illness i did not see coming - much like my roommate who’d be in hock for much, much longer. I commenced walking the halls, knowing medically the sooner you grow capillaries and the more you hydrate - the better you will recover - i was so amped on opioids that it didn’t matter who i talked to or where the fuck my wife was, we were all friends and so i took a shit and went home.

My wife arrived in my van and on our drive “home” that Thursday, she informed me - “I’m leaving you” · well what are you going to say - “don’t”, “please don’t” · i went back to work on Monday and when returning from my walk from the train station was accompanied by the local homies pressing me for “where you moving to, when are you leaving, what’s going on?,” clearly i had no clue but it was Monday and the El Camino hadn’t been driven in more than 5 days - the battery needed to be charged · i called my wife to explain that i was taking the car out to charge the battery, so if i wasn’t back when she got home - the battery had died · “try and reach me on the cell phone.” - she paused, this had been only the 2nd time we’d spoken since she’d picked my up from the hospital and had announced her plans, which i still not believe .  .. “I moved out today,” she calmly explained, to which i replied “then i guess it doesn’t matter to you if the El Camino dies,” i had to hang up, my battery needed charging. I finally understood 15 years later and counting that she did her level best with what she had. It has probably taken that entire time to understand what a gift she had given me, leaving when she did. She was my love and my universe, and it will be no different now than when i draw my last breath - except there may be another who may have become my love and my universe .  ..  ··· i just don’t know; i do know that love is grand - though sometimes a bit bumpy.

jts 20/05/2020

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com 

reprinted with permission - all rights reserved

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Extinction Chronicles - 190520 ·

It is okay to whine and complain, or the contraction “whinge,” it is not okay to attribute that choice to someone, or something else; not because it is forbidden in the holy scriptures, or that it indicates a character flaw - but because to attribute what you feel or do to anyone other than the seat of your own agency is not real; you are going to die - that is real. The paradox is that the more suffering of others that you can relieve between now and when you die - the happier you will be is more real. But how is this possible if you have absolutely no control over another human being? The Chinese artist Al Weiwei demonstrated this fact quite creatively when he so provoked the government of China as to force them to incarcerate him in such a way that he had absolutely no privacy at any time during an 81 day period - guards accompanied him to the toilet, to the shower to his sleep. Yet he presses on, as one can after such intrusion. He has not surrendered and though i do not follow his continuing exploits, i commend his gumption and valor. If i could figure out a way to provoke the fossil fuel/digital overlords to attempt anything remotely similar with my life, i would; not from solidarity with Al Weiwei’s form of dissidence but because at the end of that day of protest, China is a more monitored nation than anyplace on earth.

I fear that any commentary about that event, simply “normalizes” the intrusion of state into the lives of all, nor am i sure that my particular brand of crazy would be anymore effective in impeding the destruction of our world by greed - but i’d give it the good old “college try”. We human beings are so surrounded by luxuriant beauty and rich examples of a good life that it continues to astonish me that people would want anything more than waking up and opening their eyes and breathing. Pop lived the last 10 months of his live amped on opioids with a catheter stuck up his penis to piss into because he crushed the thigh knuckle of his right femur trotting for the toilet. It was a privilege and a hoot to spend copious hours attending to the wonder he still managed to hold for a world that was extraordinarily reduced from the days of his youth as a pilot flying B-17 bombers across the Mojave Desert, though never being forced to murder citizens for war. One example of the way he lived his life, during one of our afternoon conversations he confided out of the blue - “we were taxiing after landing and my wheel brakes failed - the bombardier in the nose was crushed to death, there was nothing i could do,” then he moved on . .. ··· after the divorce Ma, would ridicule pop for waking up at night screaming - as though that justified their separation. 

They both did the very best they could with what they had, and i remember exactly when that lesson sunk in. I had been invited down to Anthony Amato’s farm in Vista, CA. He was a stone mason who reinvented himself as artist in the hotbed of creative life Southern California circa 1980’s. I was a wild card having attended the Laguna Beach School of Art previously having returned from NYC, hammer in hand and the catechism of Jose De Creeft’s advocacy of hand carving tattooed to the inside of my skull. Tony and i had an awkward relationship out of the gate, for by that time my studio hours were in the 1,000’s and his claim to fame was that Gloria Vanderbilt was his private student after 15 years of hanging curtain wall marble through the greater Los Angeles area - his favorite boast was “I’m a stone carving thoroughbred from 5 generations of stone cutters going all the way back to Italy.” - I loved Tony Amato, but he was never my master - back to the morning in Vista. I was an unpaid “intern” to him, while he set up his carving school in the hills of Vista - i was strong as a hemp rope and tireless; he knew this and needed my affirmation because he was also looking to dislodge the other sculpture teacher in the type of intrigue that can only found amongst the vain seeking immortality, Lewis Cohen who had been instrumental in securing 6 or so consecutive scholarships for me; i betrayed Lewis by throwing my support Tony’s way, and 30 years later Lew has still not forgiven me.

Tony was a wise guy in his own way, and i have no regrets for the years i spent carving granite under his guidance .  .  . back to the morning in question - 3 days, picking, digging, dragging and trenching, and i liked it. Tony was older by a decade and a “journeyman” mason - we were down on the southern slope and he was mocking my pace - “a dollar waiting on a dime” · while i was patiently trying to describe the complexities of having been raised by parents who had wanted to murder me, but wouldn’t own it. “Look Joseph, they did the best they could with what they had at the time, and your blaming them now is just bullshit and won’t change a thing.” There is no reply to clarity like that, and no matter how many times i might want to explain that hearing my mother tell the story over and over of walking in on pop in the bathroom in the middle of the night holding my squalling body and asking him “what are you doing¿” with his wry reply - “trying to figure out how to flush him down the toilet” wounded my soul in places that are difficult to recover from, but there is no one else that can stitch it up but myself - Mr. Amato never ascertained me a “journeyman” stone cutter · oh well .  ..  · · · 

Then there is that fucking paradox - in his last days with Pop savoring a lemon rind as though it was the finest liquor he had ever tasted, or turning to me after wiping his ass and telling me, “i’m not gonna forget this.” How does one reconcile the individual healing with the very real service that is available to every human on the planet witnessing suffering of any kind? I don’t know, that is a question. Buckminster Fuller said, “if you can’t solve a problem, enlarge it,” so i do, or try. We are a species on the brink of exterminating ourselves with nary a backward glance. Citizens of the once gr8 nation ‘merica are declining to wear masks for no better reason than vanity - to use the vernacular SMFH. The rest of the world is so far ahead in determining our species fate, i can only hope the corporate whores ruling DC (apologies to sexworkers worldwide) have not so antagonized the entire planet against a nation - for all my pointed criticism, i love dearly and hold in high esteem. Corporations are a worldwide menace and nothing about their rapacious behavior is unique to my country - it is this delusion that the world must face, there are no good guys, or bad guys; there is only “how can i help and what will it take for you to feel safe?” - everything else, as my father and Tony Amato might have said, is “bullshit.”

jts 19/05/2020

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com 

reprinted with permission - all rights reserved

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Extinction Chronicles - 180520 ·

Exclusion is the goto tool of the narcissist - i know this because i was raised by one, maybe two. Growing up in a vastly white suburban city of Orange County, bordering the wannabe center of the known universe - Newport Beach, i went to school with many; i probably possess more traits of a narcissist than i am comfortable with admitting to, but not so many i can’t hold the possibility up and peer into its darkness. My saving grace was to be born a two-eyed cyclops which gave me just enough cache to not be murdered in my crib by my beautiful family. Rather than narcissism my condition gave me a near-pathological revulsion for bullies - i say near pathological because murder is for people who do not know how to adapt, and as a two-eyed cyclops - adaptability is something you acquire or starve to death trying to find your food on the plate. G_d in her infinite mercy created a great imbalance in the visual acuity between my two eyes, with the one eye no longer correctable - if it ever was. I think this was meant to help me orient in a 3 dimensional world, having no concrete example of what 3 dimensions looks like; i know this because when young and someone asked if it was right or left, i had to pick up a pencil to find left - that much i knew; i’m still left-handed, emphatically: most of my compliments are left-handed; my politics are left of left and i usually take what is left over because the crush of VIP’s and wannabe VIP’s at the buffet table gives me a rash.

As does cruelty of any kind, and as i grow closer to death most especially the cruelty i’ve yet to purge from my own being. Being a blind person with sight, i’ve had to sense a lot of things in the world. I wear my hair long because i’d read somewhere of a military unit during WWII that was recruited off the reservation because of supernatural gifts at certain reconnaissance, but after induction and their locks had been shorn the gift had vanished. Whether true or not is of little importance, because like the placebo - if you believe it to be true · you’re halfway home. This supposition is partly what drives me to distraction with the frenzy surrounding the current nincompoop occupying the West Wing of the White House. He is a an empty suite of the purest kind - a man devoid of character and essentially composed of nothing more than the attention you give him - don’t believe me, ask his wife. What is most dangerous about this phase of our species’ disappearance from the face of the planet is how much time and effort are wasted combatting a cipher. Like the people who fill a room of strangers with tales of their travels, the extent of their accomplishments and a list of the do’s and don’ts you must comply with to be of any worth to the gathering, so too d_rump relies entirely on cooperation and proximity to the microphone. 

I am very wary of people who require microphones to make a point, but more wary of people such as young master zuké of the ubiquitous fb channel who presumes the role of who talks-to-who, or as Bob Dylan said so well “you dance with who they tell you to, or you don’t dance at all.” Zuké not unique to this conceit if you’ve ever been to a Hollywood anything you will find that the importance of a conversation is ranked by its proximity to the microphone - the closer to the microphone, the more important the conversation. I’m sorry, it seems stupid to me that we humans have arranged our world around amplification. My neighbors have just suffered a great loss which was only been made clear by their absence. On their return and in my awkward efforts to be of service, the matriarch could only answer in the negative to my question - is everything all right? - “Khong, was her only reply. Someone important to my neighbor friends has died, that is clear. The country i was born to has just past 90,000 deaths from the same virus that has claimed a single life in Viet Nam - the U.S. is only 2/3 larger in population. This is what i mean about proximity to the “microphone” someone in control has determined to listen to the wrong channel about how to live, or humanity is listening to the wrong channel about how not to live. 

The greatest irony is there are acolytes here in VN trumpeting the benefits of “free market economies” and how, if VN would only emulate the very successful ways of the “Western World” they too could enjoy the benefits of goods-galore in the markets and be as “cool” as all the characters they see on Movie screens and TV screens, and Telephone screens .  .. etc., etc., Even the the artists that i’ve met in this nation are taken in by the allure of fame and what it can do for your “career” - if only you would _______ fill in the blank. As a failed artist and deeply flawed genius, i have no standing in the argument. These are not the days when noble Patrons employed noblesse oblige in service of a better world. These are the days of avaricious gallery owners pimping artists to the lowest bidder. Go to the Art Basel Galler-Rama and see what is selling; to who and for what price and you will see how low the bar has been set for the “end-days” culture. If you know “Artspeak” and are properly hooked up - the sky’s the limit, you might even get hung at “Mar-A-Lago,” imagine what that would do for your career to be included in the chump collection?

But these are the “Extinction Chronicles and rather than point out what all but the most dense amongst us see, but won’t talk about - let us examine whether it is useful to adhere to the whimsical dictates of the big shots amongst us - those who have more “likes” more “local friends” more “destinations” and most importantly - more “money than g_d”. How about if we invite jeffrey bezos to come and give a seminar on how VN might rally from its recent C-19 success and attract new markets that will ultimately benefit all of VN, like the same petro-nazis who have skimmed the easy pickings from the U.S. Stimulus package. Those fuckers are not nationalists anymore than the art industrialists give a fuck about your development as a creative person desperately trying to find correlations for your suffering in a way that will contribute to your tribe’s survival - whatever tribe that may be. For my money - i have no tribe; like Groucho Marx said so well “I wouldn’t want to be a member of any club that would have me as a member”. Being a human is a condition i cannot excise from my being, however much i whistle like a bird or moo like water buffalo i am stuck with all the conflicting human emotions of hate, envy and pettiness that our species continues to hand down to each generation until something greater in our souls can be found than greed as a reason to wake up each day.  

Wasn’t this fun · yeah, i’m laughing at you too, whoever you are who was dumb enough to read this far looking for an answer to an impossible question like “how do we survive” ?

jts 18/05/2020

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com 

reprinted with permission - all rights reserved

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Extinction Chronicles - 170520 ·

I like to laugh at VIP’s - i’m sure it’s reaction formation · and i’m just really conflicted about my own self worth. Still in all, as a spectator sport, we are living in what the military politely describes as a “target rich environment” for laughing at VIP’s. If i had to take a guess, my trouble stems from being the 3rd child to a family of really pretty people. Where i sit today i struggle to leave go of the judgements i have made about them and their favorable appearances, because judgements are just fucked up; i don’t know better place to start. It is clear that to judge another is mostly highlighting those aspects of self one finds unappetizing. However it’s scary when i watch “woke people” and my skin crawls, or conversely it is those i imagine are suffering who get the greatest part of my concern; that doesn’t say much for my peace of mind. I once worked in a commercial real estate office that was populated by trust-fund babies, that portion of the population born on on 3rd base thinking they’d hit a triple and the behaviors i witnessed tracks with the leadership in place today, and often the leadership that steps into vacuums such as we’ve seen in post Covid-19 planet earth. From what i understand, the ultra-right anarchistic capitalists have had a large role to play in the agitation to “return to normal.”

I was working on the 17th floor of a Los Angeles office building when 9/11 occurred, and then spent an unnatural amount of time shooting Osama in an app that materialized within days of the event. However, i seemed to be the only person in Los Angeles who perceived the world’s outpouring of concern for the ‘merican people. Watching the drumbeat for war banging its way down the pike, turned my stomach, because of the wasted opportunity to alter history - i feel the same about this virus. I know how little 9/11 changed the hearts of those extracting profit on that 17th floor; if anything the tragedy seemed to inflame greed that is inherent to commercial real estate, or speculation of any kind. This may be why i am sensitive to the efforts to educate Viet Nam on the “promise” that profit uses to gain a foothold in the hearts of a people tempered by a war to protect their nation from the aggression that capitalism employs for easy pickings, and the seduction capitalism reverts to to deceive the war weary. Viet Nam defeated the world because she understood deceit after years of betrayal by imperialist powers - the world has changed, but the motivation has not.

It is why the hair on the back of my neck stands on end when someone who would not give me the time of day when i was a stranger, but all of a sudden wants to play paddy-cake if there is any sense my influence can benefit them. The game is the same worldwide - Viet Nam is no different. VIP’s live and die on how popular they can be - VIP’s want influence, i do not. My ambition wherever i have gone is to learn and help people achieve their goals. I realized this while teaching in downtown Los Angeles schools. My employers enjoyed the fact that i could establish rapport with students as long as i was as compliant as they deemed appropriate for the students, however once i made clear it was the student’s interests to which i remained obedient, my usefulness as an instructor sort of evaporated. There was one occasion that stands out in my mind while mining the commercial real estate market of Los Angeles which corresponds - because familiarity is part of the “con” i sat in the Regional Manager’s office one afternoon with one of the top salesman exploring ways to increase sales, and i suggested: “why not treat the market like one might behave toward a grove of valuable fruit trees, like avocados?” The two eminently successful by the $ metric looked at me like i was from another planet. The conventional wisdom for property is to squeeze until there is pain, then sell. The concept of compassionate transactions was, and is entirely foreign to the captains of industry - part of the “infinite growth paradigm” delusion. 

The stakes are much greater today than the egos on the table 15 years ago - now it has become clear that what John Lennon imagined so many years ago was more truth than idle speculation, “I think we’re being run by maniac for maniacal end, and I think I’m liable to be put away as insane for expressing that. That’s what’s insane about it.” What is disturbing is how many of the doofuses protesting masks intrinsically understand what John said, but are unable to make the connection because .  ..  ··· because of what¿ the billionaires are capable, willing and actively buying a lot of friends? Yes that is part of it, but it is the same in the small ancient village i live on a different scale. The big shots, VIP’s and their running dogs perform much the same on an abbreviated scale - but with much greater consequence. This is why the koch bros, unfettered by morals were able to unleash bullshit into ‘merican schools on an unprecedented level. Everyone want’s to be a big-shot; what better bait for the ancient con of “bait and switch” than moolah, (you know, fast cars, broads - the more willing the better · suck-ups galore) all the shit one found in high school while fending off bullies and Christian confidants - “tell me your nasty, and i will save you.” The same old salacious snake oil salesman that want to peek at you “user” history to determine which side of the “law” you stand, so they can jack-off in the privacy of their corner offices.

Much as i didn’t want to, i am laughing at the mockery of compassion that passes to today as “aid to developing nations.” The foreigners i find on nearly every continent i’ve been to want mostly to ingratiate themselves enough with the local culture to be important, or VIP’s, after which overlay whatever conceit it is they are running from where they ran from; and this is important - MYSELF INCLUDED · This myopic self-centered blindness to the greater danger we all of us face - extinction · is what i live and breathe. At my age and given my questionable embrace of the “at risk” parts of our world, and i know some pretty at risk characters, my time is not long, nor is my patience. When i see creative, intelligent and caring personalities around me vying for a piece of the fat meat at the buffet table - be it cruise ships left at sea without a care for the 1,000’s of displaced workers, or the oil tankers waiting offshore to crash asunder into shore by the bad weather we all know is coming - or the “leader of the FREE world” willing to sacrifice millions of his faithful to gain ratings, i don’t give a fuck anymore if i prick your sensitive places, unless of course you still possess enough spirit in your heart to look into my wounded eyes and say to me “i don’t care if you are old, ugly, and poor - i still love you.”

jts 17/05/2020

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com 

reprinted with permission - all rights reserved

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Extinction Chronicles - 160520 ·

When people talk about the 60’s, they often have no clue what they’re talking about - i know, i was there, and i still don’t know what happened. The ruling class, then known as the “establishment” likes to excise that period from history much like it gussied up the racial hatred of ‘merica until the truth-teller Covid-19 crashed the party. Years after the trash got picked up at Woodstock, i would try and puzzle how one’s comrades could so easily forget how close to upending the established order people were. I understand that Richard Nixon was terrified of the protests that swamped his administration, so much so he shot himself in the foot with Watergate. Humanity should have known the gig was up when he and Chairman Mao took to schmoozing over tea. I was keeping body and soul together in a crash pad that was to become a nexus to other nexuses. I couldn’t even keep the names straight of the characters traipsing through where i lived in a garage sleeping on a sheet of plywood suspended over a workbench and a discarded chifferobe - once calling the police asking if they had a Rick Ronzoni in custody (no one told me Ronzoni was his nickname after the pasta maker). One night enough into the wine to chance most things, a stranger Christina Christofferson waltzed into the kitchen and asked “would anyone like to take a hit of acid with me?” She was big and blond and charismatic, and though i prefer my women svelte - she looked like an interesting conversation, so i said “yes.” We stayed up and talked all night; by morning we had parsed the universe - although like all good LSD trips, and Las Vegas - what happens there stays there. (and what Gertrude Stein said still holds true - “there’s no there, there”)

Though this chronicle is not about Christina it’s about S_____ S_____ whom i met shortly after at the dance studio Christina lived at on the SEC of 4th and Main in Santa Ana. This dance studio was another nexus in a chain of nexuses one finds if they live long enough, and it was a hoot. She lived there there with the gay Rasputin Gerry who couldn’t have been slimier if he’d washed his laundry in petroleum. But that was then and this is now. It was in Gerry’s anteroom that i met S_____ S_____. There were many architectural wings to this dance studio that were bracketed from the Great Room out - a mock balcony, porthole double doorways into the checkerboard tile kitchen and sunburst cutout panels in its 30’ ceiling. The dance room also contained a working 5’ high fireplace and its 8’ long mantel. Showers were taken in the atrium at the top of the staircase using a garden hose into a child’s wading pool. It is where S_____ S_____ sat bold as fuck and forward to beat the band - as in “would you like a piece of candy little boy?” Of course this was 40 years ago looking through the haze of 3 marriages and too many careers to count, but you get the gist of it. I don’t know if we had sex that day or soon there after. She was a single mother of 2 boys and like most of the contingent at the dance studio worked at Fairview State Hospital in Costa Mesa, tending the “tard’s” as they liked to say. S_____ S_____ was fun to be around, but very regulated. There were certain hours to be welcome and when you weren’t, that too was quite clear. She is 7 years my senior and i couldn’t tell you if that influenced my choice with my last wife, being the same difference older.

S_____ S_____ likes to drink - which certainly had a roll to play in my own history of substance strategies, as well as my appreciation for the power of En Vino Veritas. She was an erudite woman until she sacrificed her mind on the alter of Television, the same mausoleum ma left her’s. Besides the sex that was mercurial but lush, conversation was often scintillating, however as i was to later learn of the William F Buckley variety, rather than the William Burroughs my left-handed brain groks. S_____’s mother was a college professor and that S_____ had no sheepskin, i think it left her with a chip on her shoulder that eventually crushed her. This is sad for no other reason than the fact she had spent her entire working life ministering to the ‘tard population which other members of my community could barely look at much less change diapers for; wipe tears and make a home for in the wards of Fair View State Hospital. I took a run at the occupation myself. To give you an idea how upside down that world can be; i was working in a local facility closer to the college i was attending for my credentials as a Psychiatric Technician - S______ was grandfathered in, but it eventually became an Associate Arts Degree; and was called “on the carpet” for some infraction or other; when i left that manager’s office i was feeling smug and superior in a defensive kind of way, asking myself “why work with stupid ’tards.” As i passed one room back to my station, i was beckoned by in by a young man with severe Cerebral Palsy; he wanted a game of chess - i know chess well but am no master. The short answer is this man who could not line up a straw to his mouth without assistance crushed me at the game in fewer than a dozen or so moves.

In this same facility there was a hydrocephalic case whose cranium was easily twice her body. If you have never been inside such an institution - do so · you’ll be a better human for it. S_____ S_____ worked for 25 years attending these individuals and i am lucky to have known her, and not. Like all modern relationships, people fall away and others fall into place - you can’t know from one year to the next who’s in, who’s out. I am always amazed by the changes life reeks on us all. Whilst out of touch S_____ S_____ lived an entire lifetime including a savage betrayal by someone i had just met coming into her life as i was exciting. I had been living in her garage carving my 3rd piece and sleeping on another plywood sheet - that i didn’t die from the charcoal brazier i used for heat is a wonder for the ages. It was about this time i was really beginning to have my suspicions about art and why nothing i carved resembled the subject as well as what i drew or painted. Years later after her ex had taken everything he could lay his hands on including her heart, S_____ was a changed woman - not just older but broken in spirit. I would swing by when in town to chew that fat, and commiserate, for i had by that time my own wounds which had knocked the cockiness right out - so what was there left to share - horror stories?

When i left the United States, it became increasingly difficult to arrange visits with ma, though she had a spare room, my peripatetic lifestyle grated on those in the family who were circling the wagons around her fortune and viewed my solvent however rootless existence as evidence of a flawed character. Somewhere late in my travels, i got an email from S_____ S_____ suggesting i return to the states and that we throw in together - “buffer each other” was the expression. By this time my lopsided vision was making drawing more and more difficult - and i thought what the hell. What Thomas Wolfe said about “You Can’t Go Home Again” is true. What had been eccentricities during short visits rendered cohabitation impossible. On its face, it was a great idea that might have worked were we the young questing minds that had met, oh-so-long ago, but calcification had taken its toll. The masks had come off and the presumptions were no longer assumable. I will be grateful to this grand dame who i believe genuinely thought she could play avatar for my mother and actually soothe the grief of a dead parent; however I have been grieving the loss of ma since she abandoned me 40 years ago. What i didn’t understand when i accepted the role of roommate/caregiver was the expectation i would substitute for her son who moved to the other side of the country precisely when she’d needed him the most. It is a karmic debt that is mine alone to carry - if i am to be punished for abandoning my mother to my brother’s best efforts or rewarded for helping an old friend leave-go of her sanctuary and join her son, where he had fled, where - according to her, she is welcomed and loved. I may never know; i do know if i don’t find somewhere that i am welcomed and loved, i will still try to help others find the same - just like my old friend tried to do for me - even if it is only within their own skin.

jts 16/05/2020

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com 

reprinted with permission - all rights reserved

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Extinction Chronicles - 150520 ·

For all my whining, i’ve had an incredibly fortunate existence - good friends · not that many, but really good friends. When i was a young turk not yet living in Santa Ana, i threw in for a while with the Herrera Familia such that i was made godfather to Joseph Herrera’s 1st born son - Joseph Baldano Herrera. I haven’t seen the child since the age of one and have no idea where the Herreras are or who lives. Ernesto was the oldest son of Mr. Herrera, who with his wife were salt of the earth people. Joseph was the 2nd son, and for the 2 years that i knew the family was in prison more than not - though they were crazy days, i was not and knew it. It was around the same time i met, married and divorced my 1st wife and got 60 stitches in my right forearm, but i learned much more than pain. For one thing, when Ernesto after a day of drinking got it in his head “i can shoot an apple off the top of your head” no matter how many time he repeated, or how drunk i got - i still declined this too kind invitation from another “walking wounded Vietnam Vet; this refusal and the fact i was a guedo made me untrustworthy en los ojos de la familia, but more than worthwhile in mine. Ernesto’s father Senor Herrera worked 5 days out of the week, sober as a judge; supported his 8 children; and untold grandchildren and was wise. One example is when with with considerably patient enthusiasm he explained to me “when you die and you have as many friends as you have fingers on one hand - you were a lucky man” for emphasis he raised his right hand with his fingers splayed prominently displaying the missing middle finger of his right hand - they liked me, and for the better, they liked to laugh at me.

But this discussion isn’t about the Herrera family it’s about Dr. “Mac” Mac O’lash - my very best of friends, though i was no where around when he died. It is likely from his kindness toward me and patience with my confusion that i had the presence of mind to resist the very tempting invitation to have an apple shot off my head by a drunken Mexican. Dr. Mac knew me from a very young age and always had the coolest things. His garage was always open and if you ever needed anything for your bike - he had it, and more. One xmas my heart was set on a “sting ray” bicycle with the riser handlebars and banana seat - i got it, except it was a girl’s. I couldn’t look Mac in the face for months. His manner, no matter what kind of a snot-faced-spoiled kid you were, was the kind you find in stories; he reminded me of my Great Grandmother Munner - each possessing the most affirmative language i can remember anyone in my growing up years using; “how grand; isn’t that fine; take good care.” His daughter Carolyn, my older sister’s age is and was the most mysterious, fetching and alluring females i have ever known. Knock as i might - that door never opened. Mrs. Mac O’lash was a different story. Orange County being one of the cattiest of locales, in the cattiest of times, Mrs. Mac O’lash wasn’t cool enough, and her fussy ways made her the perfect target for the gossips that somehow could always be found drinking coffee at our house, before ma became liberated and went back to school. Many decades later and worlds away from that neighborhood, i would still be calling Mac, and on occasion got his wife Polly on the phone.

Over time, when Mac was not available, my conversations with Polly grew longer and i found Mrs. Mac O’lash to be one of the keenest minds i’ve known, with an uncommon generosity toward the world in general and abandoned cats in particular. As with most good things in life, she died shortly after we became friends by phone. As unfortunate this was for Mac, it was fortunate for me. I was better able to understand what the sudden loss of his wife to an aggressive brain tumor meant to my friend Mac. I’d like to have been as much help to him as he had been to me over the years - but that will have to remain one more regret. When i returned to California after conquering the Art World of NYC - a legend in my own mind · it was more than unsettling to find my success in NYC meant shit in California, and i would have start all over again on my climb to the top of the heap, though i hadn’t yet learned there is no top - just a big heap. Mac invited me to visit him in his office on Sundays which i did every Sunday for some years. By this time Mac had married me twice, once to the Cherokee propellor blade and then my 2nd wife, a younger woman and her child who had joined my aerospace coed softball team “Ma’s Marauders” sponsored by “Ma Spring ‘Em” Bail Bonds of Anaheim. We lost every game that season but one, but that one victory felt awful good. It was a very hard time for everyone involved, but mostly the 18 month old child who i couldn’t have loved more if she had been my own. 

By this time, our Sundays had ceased because i felt my particular “crazy” required a more traditional approach, and Mac had retired from his role as Reverend at the State Hospital for “retarded, challenged, exceptional,” all those expression society uses to allay its discomfort with human beings who are different. I don’t know how many decades Mac was the reverend for this unique ministry, but i can say for certain there are human beings alive today whose lives are significantly improved from having known him - i know this because it is true for me. This doesn’t make me solipsistic, just aware. I worked for a time with that population that is so different from mainstream that people still do not know how to address them with the dignity that every living thing on the planet deserves. Are they “retarded, are the handicapped” - this language is no longer used to describe that population, and it is certainly in part because of the efforts of my very determined and very loving friend the RR Dr. “Mac” Mac O’lash. I know this because our conversations often had to do with perception and language. The modality he employed was long before self-help glommed onto the role of linguistics in changing people’s behavior simply by changing the language used to describe themselves or their relationship to others.

For example - the difference between “you are a fuck” and “you behave like a fuck” are vast and largely unconscious. In the first instance your statement depending on to whom you said it can be remarkably destructive - especially for a young child. The 2nd example, you are addressing a manageable component that is neutral “behave” and you are not diminishing the person you are addressing. And it gets more interesting, for example, if you preface either statement with “I feel” . . . you are immediately defusing a potentially volatile exchange by owning your own opinion and making it possible for the exchange to be a dialogue rather than an accusation. Dr. Mac lost the sight of one eye in a freak racketball accident at the age of 90. It is testimony of what right living can provide, for he lived another number of years after that because he was adaptable and rugged from a life of giving and encouragement to others. I’d like to have been built more like him, but my solitary pursuit of the creative life effectively prevented such generosity. I can hear his voice now, “bullshit” - he was a Taurus and could be quite point blank as the best often are. So i’ll employ one of my favorite quotes and keep trying to help the as i can using his “successive approximation” — Dr. Francis, “Mac Mac O’lash

“Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.” - Archimedes 

jts 15/05/2020

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com 

reprinted with permission - all rights reserved

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Extinction Chronicles - 140520 ·

Did not sleep well last night but to my credit still managed the bicycle circuit this morning. Am now treating this chronicle more as a journal without monitoring my thinking as i might with a strictly essay form - while this might be taxing for you the reader, for me it is helpful to dwell in more of a stream-of-consciousness mode if i am to keep it up day in and day out. Today i will shift gears and focus on other characters, because there is just so much one can say about oneself without others beginning to get a good idea of just how crazy you are - we wouldn’t want that would we¿ Scott Paulsen was a 26 year old charismatic 6th Grade teacher at Mesa Verde Elementary School where my family lived. The housing tract we lived in was brand new and were we lived in the North of what before it became the City of Costa Mesa, was reputedly named Goat Hill - more mythical than actual. We moved there because Pop had trained at the Santa Ana Air Station which became the site of one of my Alma Maters, Orange Coast College. Each of the 4 children attended Mesa Verde Elementary and all had had Mr. Paulsen for the 6th grade except the oldest brother who lucked out with Dame Beaumont who could have been a stand in for Bette Davis in “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane”

Mr. Paulsen was a keen and thoughtful educator of the “old school”, so much so he inspired my mother to become an instructor when it became clear we could not keep up with Joneses on Pop’s salary as a teacher, and ma was big on keeping up with the Joneses. The first day of classes when it was my turn to learn, Mr. Paulsen had all the students stand up and introduce themselves  to the rest of the class - so did. “Good Morning class, my name is Joseph Stevens.” Mr. Paulsen promptly interrupted me and declared, “you’re not Joseph - your name is Todd, I know your Mother and father, Harold and Marty; I know your oldest brother is named Bradley; I had your sister Kristin in my class two years ago; and I know you have a younger brother Casey - your name is not Joseph, your name is Todd.” It is true what he said, though not entirely accurate. My namesake is Joseph Vernon, my maternal grandfather who died long before i was born. What could i do? Years later when it came time to open a checking account the nice lady asked me what name i would like printed on my checks, i said “Joseph T. Stevens” - patience is our friend. After this event, i was not quite the same eager student i had been on the first day, but a curious child by nature. So when Mr. Paulsen rearranged the seating and i was given i seat in the front row i once again felt the spark of learning in my heart - and of course enjoyed sharing with anyone who would listen, obviously.

Well what a surprise while entertaining the youngster to my left with my erudite understanding of that day’s lesson - “Thwack” · my head rang for minutes until i realized Mr. Paulsen very much didn’t like competing for the class’s attention and he was a dead aim with the chalkboard eraser. School, was a frolicsome environment, and a complex social incubator. For example, we would play softball against the other 6th grade classes, and Mr. Paulsen opened the naming of our team to competition - he picked mine · “Paulsen’s Pulverizers”, i could bust a gut so proud was i, though as a ballplayer - it just wasn’t in the cards for me. Quite the opposite, one lunchtime Mike Lambert convinced me to steal Mr. Paulsen’s Winston cigarettes from his coat pocket while he was busy pitching during lunch recess. Yeah, you guessed me and mike got busted smoking in the dirt piles back of the Kinney Shoe Store. But Mr. Paulsen was a good egg, so much so that when our dog Snoopy the beagle would break out of the yard so he could follow the scent of younger brother Casey when he became a student with Mr. Paulsen, and instead of making a big stink, he just allowed my brother to bring the dog home - one more eccentricity of the Stevens’ clan.

Scott and Liddy - Mr. and Mrs. Paulsen are woven into the very fabric of my life many decades later. I owned an old building with my last wife near Eagle Rock. Scott and Liddy came for breakfast and we stood on the roof patio toasting champagne in the direction of Occidental College where they had been college sweethearts. It was also the same house where sitting in the den commiserating about the breakup of my marriage when Scott announced, “No I’m not a Democrat, I’m a lifelong Republican.” It was as though all the underpinnings of assumptions i had made throughout my life was simply pulled out from under me in one swell foop, and not. He, Mr. Paulsen more than any other conservative i have ever known, and having worked thirteen years in aerospace, i’ve known many - is as principled and loving toward all people of our nation with a profound regard for the complexities of we are faced with. For a while, i was a wage slave as a broker’s assistant in a commercial real estate firm, later an agent able to make my own calls. Though generally one of the least exciting and more venal assignments in my long employment history - there were moments. On one occasion hammering the phones i struck up a conversation with a nice enough guy and started reeling him in - what turned out, was that he and his brothers owned a 215,000 sf shopping center at the SW corner of Hollywood Blvd & Vermont, just down the hill from Frank Lloyd Wright’s, Hollyhock House.

The reason i share this is that one of Mr. Paulsen’s children was in the real estate trade entered his firm into the bidding for this property; also it happened just as the Los Angeles real estate market was taking a nosedive in the 2005 recession. For me it was a lesson in greed and stupidity - in my initial conversation with the owner i had thrown out a figure od $100 million, which he could not get out of his head. The bidding eventually stalled at $80 million something, and the brothers wouldn’t budge. Months later the market had tanked and the property was finally sold years later at a 1/3 of what they could have had in hand without greed as their guide. Now i sit removed from the “sturm and drang” decades and portraits later loving my friend that hit across the side of the head with a projectile when i deserved it. I ask you reading now what you can do to relieve the suffering at your elbow? “Humans of New York” started as a phenomena much different than it started, just like when Mr. Paulsen loosed his cannon across my disrespecting cranium - we can learn · i did enough to encourage him Mr. Paulsen to paint him and his wife Liddy, knowing me to be not only “Liberal” but radical to the point of dying in Vietnam. (he heartily approved of my travel plans to VN when we spoke last - likely our last). Scott Paulsen is a loving influence in my life that i am grateful for · i struggle to say that about everyone i meet, for no other reason than how much his kindness has made me a better human being.

jts 14/05/2020

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com 

reprinted with permission - all rights reserved

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