190820 - Extinction Chronicles ·

I live in “The City of Wagging Tongues,” as i’m sure, so do you all. This particular community is unique for its bilingual nature and Occidental Occupation - there is a gulf of misunderstanding which it has tried to resolve through a mutual pact of greed under the guise of entrepreneurial development. This is not the first community i’ve lived in that was predicated on “fleecing” the visitor. I once lived in a high desert community at the southern foot of the California Sierras. Though vastly different in demographics, the two are remarkably similar in their defensive conceits - with deeply divided communities joining forces in service of extracting money from a mostly unwelcome tourist population. The segment which i sort of resembled in the high desert was white and old, while their partitioned confederates were the original indigenous inhabitants, greatly reduced in ranks due to genocidal incursion by the whites through the years, but still controlling enough real estate clout to make their voices heard and force a coalition of sorts. 

The whites whom i knew considered themselves “Mountain Men,” which is shorthand for reactionary operatives - think, _rumpian stronghold on Meth. They considered anyone who hadn’t lived in “Klan Valley” more than 2 generations as “flat landers.” The indigenous people were even more inhospitable, with good reason, for the entire valley had been entirely their’s before it was stolen by “settlers” less than 150 years earlier. I can’t say for certain because it has not been an area of scholarly study, but there are many similarities in most of the cities i have traveled to in the past 5 years. Though the state of Oaxaca is the most diverse in terms of ethnic breakdown and incidentally the poorest state in Mexico, while the bulk of the real estate in the city of Oaxaca is foreign owned, mostly by Spaniards. While the original Spanish invasion was stopped by the native Oaxaquenos on the slopes of Mont Alban, ultimately they had their ways and simply bought the town of Oaxaca.

A circumstance that has been sadly repeated in the province of Quang Nam where the ancient city of Faifo is located (Faifo - meaning the city of friendly strangers) though now known in the Hipster Doofus websites as Hoi An · considered a prime destination for the cultural adventurers hanging worldly savvy on their belts like so many “scalps” confirming some twisted version of courage and intrepidness in their trek toward enlightenment, or away from their inevitable earthly demise depending on where one stands. I don’t know anymore and am as guilty as any other interloper in this unique nexus of shore and history where farmers have been nurturing the loving abundance of rich wetlands at the crossroads of an epochal struggle between two jealous behemoths who are currently engaged in some incestuous fluid-exchange at expense of each of their ostensibly “free” populations but who are in reality consumer fodder for an economic system off the rails.

And there is very little between the socio-sexual-economic climax of these two mirrored images of the face of greed to intercede on behalf of our species survival. The powers-that-be have effectively divided us such so that wherever one travels it is nearly impossible to explain to anyone present how what Leonard Cohen so beautifully described as “steering by the venal chart” is not in our species’s best interest. Just a moment ago the wind rush that announces the rain squalls to come tipped over my smoking station at the back porch. I was greatly relieved to find no ceramic had been broken, but while rearranging the parts and pieces of my disgusting, but highly satisfying habit, i remembered back to one of my earliest assignments chopping vegetables in the Chinese restaurant in my home town. The owners were generous and gently amused by my cultural curiosity, even offering to apprentice me to a Chinese chef they were importing from China to a restaurant in Hollywood - how much different might my life have been had i accepted their kind offer rather than my reckless and myopic pursuit of fame and fortune in the wilds of the NYC art world circa 1974.

But the relief i felt finding no broken accoutrements of my possibly enjoyable, but very lethal tobacco habit coincided with a still remembered admonishment by my friend the restaurant owner watching me light up a cigarette at the end of our communal meal after the dishes were clean. “Dirty Habit” was all he said, and while appreciating that no ceramic had been broken by the change of weather, i had to chuckle to myself at the tobacco soot and grime i was picking up from my back porch along with the unbroken dishes/ashtrays - and acknowledge the timely truth of his kindly rebuke · Maybe that is the wildcard of our human experience - that nothing is lost through time and that no matter how vicious and demented the “whip hand” gets our collective search for meaning and relation will always rise up through the rhizome C.G. Jung used to describe the human trajectory. I don’t know, and i’m glad as hell that i have relieved myself of that conceit so that i might more carefully consider each invaluable passing moment in my own steps toward death, and beyond.

jts 19/08/2020he http://stoanartst.blogspot.com 

reprinted with permission - all rights reserved

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180820 - Extinction Chronicles ·

“The true revolutionary is guided by strong feelings of love” - Che Guevara ·

Pop called it “fun”, Ma called it “cutesy”; i’m at a loss do describe it, but if you ain’t loving you ain’t doing ‘shit,’ in the vernacular. There is lots of unnecessary tension in our world - a pitched (pun intended) battle for the calm of our world’s heart. Even if the dreaded plague is as deadly as the figures describe, is that not all the more reason to find that gentle compassion in each of our hearts that nurtures recovery, rather than disease and death? We are not stupid creatures no matter how incessantly we are so depicted. Yet the only enemy we refuse to face is our own sordid fear. Know this, i am describing my own weakness, not yours - i don’t know you · however much energy i expend addressing ‘you’ day in and day out. I understand that when i visit sites on the internet and do not participate, i could easily be described as a “troll;” i visit not from some salacious interest in what you might reveal, but because i am curious about my fellow creatures, especially during these times of unrest and anxiety.

However i am built for candor and have found that when i express “contempt, lust, anger, affection” however fleeting these emotions may be, the reaction from others is often disproportionate to my observation, and so i prefer to remain silent, however observant. That is the delusion of connectedness on the internet. I much prefer the “blood and guts,” of "i’m not comfortable in your company, and so i’ll see ya’ later". Conversely, and paradoxically the same warmth i have managed to maintain through my wounds is not often welcomed - which sadly, i entirely understand, having been conned · first by myself toward myself, which then manifested from others, along with my tacit encouragement and guidance on exactly how to accomplish the “con.” I know, it’s complicated, but i’m working on it. What i no longer allow from myself or others is the condemnation of my intention. If i am able to restrain my rage toward the “leader of the free world” even an iota, then i figure i am entitled to the same courtesy of those i offend with my renegade approach to existence.

We are all wounded, all of us are hurting, and no one has escaped the whip of judgement. Mine own judgement of myself i can assure you is far more unjust and inaccurate than any rebuke you might ever conjure based on any perceived betrayal i may have committed, knowingly or unknowingly. It has been many years since i have allowed myself to expend energy to the detriment of others; there is no point. As a young swain wading into the egos of other “men” and women, it became clear to me early on that no one gets out alive and to waste my time or sully my karma, accomplishing what mother nature will do on her own in her own good time without my help is a fool’s errand. What then to do with my outrage became a responsibility that was entirely my own¡ the deeper i peered the more i became convinced that any outrage was a conceit entirely of my own making, and therefore required a resolution of my own design.

Something, much easier said than done. Those same pillars of conviction that justified my outrage never seemed to be my own architecture - always a loyalty, conviction or debt i had assumed rather than embraced; from those cracks in faith i had to reassess my entire raison d'être which finally caved under the weight of a fading vision that rendered my life’s work - the finest art i was capable of - a charade · I am an artist, but not because of any outward recognition that my “wounded child” demanded, but because creativity is fun - that of the many sensations i have found in my blind but deeply feeling existence found momentary exaltation when what i could see, lined up with what i could create. My last two drawings deprived me of that satisfaction, but if i was truly honest, i would say none of my drawings, carvings or paintings ever matched the standards i had set for myself out of hubris and pain hoping for some kind word that could never be provided by anyone but myself.

I have caused havoc for which i am remorseful and am only just now beginning to see my role in such delusional behavior. If i feel shitty about anything ever - it is my doing, and no one else · The remarkable truth that flows from that belief is, i have not caused any havoc that was not based on someone else’s purpose, and from that comes compassion for the unkindness we each, everyone of us does to ourselves. Conversely, if i am dedicated to a gentle acceptance of my own conceit about retribution and payback, i am also capable of a determined kindness for others who suffer from similar delusion. Someone, anyone i meet or have met, may very well wish me unkindness, an unkindness that can never have substance for it stems from an internal conviction that has little to do with my own. If i can focus continually on the wellbeing of all around me, devoid of any sel-interest i may have in that outcome - only good can come from my thinking, i LIKE that. It doesn’t matter whether i am successful in my ambition, for that is the responsibility of each of us to do kindness to ourselves, first and foremost and then to aid and abet where possible others in their pursuit of that understanding - an entirely feasible ambition · far more than becoming acclaimed and lauded at some point in human history where one is no longer breathing or caring . ain’t love grand ¿? 

jts 18/08/2020

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com 

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170820 - Extinction Chronicles ·

So what the fuck is love¿ that is a question? I once proclaimed myself as a gangster of love because of a song i’d heard, talk about your hubris. Master Thay - Thich Nhat Hanh - has little solidarity with romantic love, which was disconcerting to hear, for so much of my interior has been occupied with the chivalrous notions of King Arthur and the “Round Table.” From which, much that i am now certain, is due to the lack of close reading of the betrayals and deceptions during that much lauded epoch - and the same could be said about my reading of the “Tibetan Book of the Dead;” the “I Ching;” even about Doctor Hawking’s “A Brief History of Time.” Does this mean i should simply stop reading in search of understanding about what it means to love as a human, or that i should apply more carefully all that i read to the life in which i am intrinsically linked? When i was young, there was much discussion about the proper ways of everything, and from that i was much criticized for being too much "in my head"; yet those same critical mentors failed to realize that without feeling i would have literally been bouncing off walls due to my peculiar monocular visual reality.

I can still remember Patsy Donahue’s freckled pug nose when she was 7 or so, that would be close to 50 years ago; if i struggle, i might remember how she played tetherball - lord g_d forgive me, i sort of wish she was the only female who'd ever captivated my imagination, but i’d be lying. At an older age, i remember cupping Jan Ogden’s waist at a Junior High School dance, thinking what a perfect fit that was as we glided on and off the dance floor of the fully lit auditorium, an experience that was too soon to devolve into darkened light shows with quiet corners that barely contained the vibrant embraces of other young women encouraging my ardent advances - which oddly corresponded to impassioned communiques of “love ever after” and “no one but you’s” none of which actually panned out - though i kept plugging with some well into my 50s · Pop always did say “you’re not a fighter, you’re a lover.” 

Still and all this romantic stroll down the clap trap of lover’s lane does not help me to understand how a loving heart such as mine so closely resembles the persona in Leonard Cohen’s simple phrase - “to every heart love will come, but like a refugee.” It is encouraging to me that i am at such a polar opposite with the reprehensible repulsion of our world’s outcasts and feel such solidarity with their plight, however dishonest is my material distance from their suffering. I am now faced with the age old dichotomy of “am i my brother’s keeper?” but face that question alone and without support for myself, save my own prudent path toward my own solitary demise. I am not complaining and am as generous as i know how to dilute the suffering of those around me - be that emotionally, or materially · anymore the distinction feels blurred. My fear is that given my propensity toward “in for a penny, in for pound” i no longer feel the, for lack of a better expression “wind under my wings,” fear has blunted my youthful exuberance and seems to have stifled my native generosity.

Or, i am a wounded warrior in a corner marshaling what is left of my fighting spirit of love and loathe to squander what is left of my “miracle” on the vacuousness of a population brought up on the “con” and more than willing to relieve me of the last of my resources - you tell me. No, don’t i will find out for myself, for one of the advantages of old age is previous experience and the look of authenticity so many use to obscure behavior they are often too stupid to hide. Am i cautious¿ fucking “A” right - but not too much so · more in passing, for my theater of operations no longer includes the entirety of our species, only those i interact with. Master Thay is more than wise, he is loving and mindfulness does not cover a multitude of sins, but illuminates a multitude of blessings. People are not inherently devious, but they are inherently loving, so finding who is so and who is not so, is not as complicated as one might imagine.

The more difficult task is finding within myself that which is devious and double-dealing, or as they used to say when ‘merica was gr8, “talking out the side of your mouth.” There is no exorcism that i have found which will excise the evil in my own being, but i’ve also found that there is no evil within my being that is not subject to loving intervention; when murderous rancor rises up from the bile of my wounded parts and claims agency over my actions, it is the ghost of the “i” banished to the outer perimeters of my soul that can only but obey my determination for mercy regardless of the outrage. Ever closer we march to a place where it doesn’t matter what you feel, only what you have done, while each new instant is an opportunity to do something different than you have ever done before - if you are searching for magic in a world full of grievous wrongs, i can think of no more fearsome weapon than individual choice · love and peace my friends, or bust .  ..  ···

jts 17/08/2020

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com 

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160820 - Extinction Chronicles ·

Who knew that i would ever understand so much about a “voice crying in the wilderness”¿ Yet here i sit watching the world needlessly succumb to base emotion in service of the destruction of so many? I’m sure i could be more confused, but i’m not sure how. I was raised in a family of beautiful, quiet people, who’d prefer to stand in front of the mirror than most anything else i knew of. Mother, father, brothers and sister. I could never figure out what they saw that was so interesting, for i never saw my own face minus glasses until a short stint with contact lenses in my 30s gave me some indication of how i appeared to others - i was not terribly impressed. My youth was full with “image”, or i should say 'match the image'. I remember desperately longing for toys i saw advertised on TV; at that time there was TV, newspapers, magazines and billboards. TV was the most effective in creating my longing; even as child i could feel the emptiness of not owning what was clearly an asset to the happy well adjusted youth that, though far more handsome and much happier than i, seemed content.

I was not. The TV show “Leave it to Beaver” had siblings about my own age an older brother and a younger brother with an asshole friend of the older brother who resembled many of the people passing through my household. This show, along with “The Donna Reed Show,” “Father Knows Best,” and “My Three Sons” constituted what my world was “supposed” to resemble. The misalignment was simply an opening to the commercials that occupied a larger and larger portion of any night’s viewing until commercials were nearly 50% of the night’s viewing. The shows created a vacuum, that was filled by the products for sale; “trouble with your girlfriend" - it’s because you stink if you don’t use this product;” trouble in your marriage, “it is because your trash is overflowing and your neighbors are looking down on you for your ‘stink’, "losing at work, it is because you are too tense and need to spruce up your ‘cool factor’ by smoking Winston cigarettes.” There was nothing in your life that could not be resolved by the right purchase.

Except that you were stuck with the same unfeeling, obnoxious relatives that never seemed to respond to the platitudes you could find in “Dennis the Menace,” or overcome your adversary the same way James West managed in “Wild, Wild West.” Nothing you saw on television quite matched what you saw in real life, except maybe the murder to John F Kennedy, or the Watts Riots. Even as a young child you could hear the hatred people expressed for anyone or anything different than the carefully cultivated yards, and outfits people wore to adhere to the visions they were viewing on the TV screen. It wasn’t until i was 40 years old, nearly 50 years after the hero of WWII, Franklin Delano Roosevelt died that i learned he was unable to walk and that he served a large portion of his presidency from a wheelchair. This is the same power of deception that allows a billionaire to steal my country out from under the nose of some 380,000,000 ‘mericans.

Sadly, i’ve come to the conclusion that there is little i can do to protect anyone from such deceit. I am still climbing out from under the delusion that my family is justified in their antagonism toward me, or more importantly - that i am neutral in the equation. I, like any other human faced with a determined foe, have “cut them off at the knees,” figuratively speaking. That cannot be easy for a group of vain persons who suckled at the tit of my young worship. As a child, my elder siblings were the epitome of all that was good and right in the world. My younger brother benefitted from all the attention i did not receive from them, which i mostly bestowed on him, because it seemed right. From where i stand now, having pulled away nearly every early reinforcement of that previous family dynamic, i cannot imagine how disconcerting it is to look into what was once the face of all my powers of reverence and succor to find - very little ·

That is my responsibility - to locate in my heart what was once great warmth and admiration and to now provide support where i can · it is little different than what i undertook when i realized what a troubled woman my own mother was and how little she regarded my wellbeing. I was faced with believing her rage, or seizing my own soul and determining the path of my own feelings, regardless of the pain that that might cause me. It is not a complicated equation. She is now ready to die and though in reality, her interest in my wellbeing is nothing i may ever understand - my only responsibility is to honor her efforts as best as i can understand them. It is the same for my brethren · regardless of how abysmally they have behaved toward me, my only recourse is to find ways to accept them wholly and completely for who they are and what they represent to my destiny, however remote that relationship might be; may you go in peace; i am sorry, please forgive me, i love you - thank you ·

jts 16/08/2020

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com 

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150820 - Extinction Chronicles ·

I like it - doesn’t matter what · i like it. I’ve lost track of the continuous days that i have sat down to write a 5 paragraph daily and am conflicted about checking. If i were to verify how many continuous days it would introduce an ego component into something i work hard at partitioning, for that is an aspect i find distracting from what it is i want to accomplish - fluid logic that remains outside the strictures of “stream of consciousness” writing (seemingly an oxymoron) - orthodoxy has never been my long suit. What i was chewing on prior to commencing this late in the day essay was opening with a litany of my fears in search of Pema Chodron’s description of “our” soft spot she posits, i think quite accurately, which lies directly behind the fear we all front as foundation for our aggressive behaviors. My family is known for its paunch; i say family, but i mean the three sons (& and daughter, but that’s too scary a prospect for this essay). Pop carried his birdlike frame and ham hock hands pretty much most of his life, save a period in the assisted living facility where his “belly” seemed to fit the Pasha roll he took on the couch with some lady’s hand in each of his mitts.

Ma really was a desert rat to the bone, her itinerant miner father - my namesake resides deeply in her makeup, though her Steel Magnolia, Alabama mama will ever be her North Star. Grandma Maude, and Grandpa Joseph met in the wilds of Nevada circa late 1920’s - She a single woman 1918 UCLA graduate, school marm in a one room schoolhouse Mina; he passing through. From what i recall, they met at a dance - he 20 years her senior · she escaping an obligation to return to Los Angeles and put her elder sister Eula through school as she had done Maude. I’m sure it was not that simple, anymore than i am certain who was the elder of the two; But within 4 years Maude was married with 3 children and 20 years later her middle daughter, my mother - a checker at the new Von’s Supermarket, met my father with whom within 8 weeks of meeting married and then bore him 4 children within 6 years - i be # 3 of 4 ·

Ma has now turned 92 and though i don’t fear her as she would seemingly desire - i do respect her. She locked me out of the home i’d grown up in at age 15, then changed the locks. This happened after she’d “kicked pop to the curb” citing his ________ fill in the blanks. Her last constructive comment to me during a reunion i had arranged for her with the husband of her deceased college chum was “you are so obsequious;” this was just prior to my departure for the country i now live in, and though it was over a year ago - i am still smarting from her gratuitous cruelty. I accept that it is as much a feature of the dementia for which she was cloistered as integral to our troubled relationship, but i do not hold with the segregation of meaning that the “experts” like to promulgate. I stayed close to pop to the end, though my siblings placed thoughtless and cruel impediments in my path. Pop lived the last 10 months of existence with a broken thigh knuckle and was stewed to the gills on “the magic patch,” but like the “exceptional children” i had the privilege of serving in one of my career incarnations as a Psych-Tech intern, communication is where you find it.

Now i hammer a keyboard in a Covid-19 locked down commune of a world heritage site chomping at the bit to pulse my blood better on my bicycle in this flat bicycle heaven while doing my level best to do what my mother’s sister advocated “leave the world a better place than you found it.” I loved my Aunt Jane, and she loved me - i love all of my family, but as Bob Dylan said better than me, “I’m not ready to pull down my hedges.” This morning i sent a photo to the eldest brother, who sadly strikes me now as a bad version of a proletariate Martinet having reigned over the looting from our mother’s flat files of over 4 years of drawings i had made while in seclusion in the high desert of the Southern Sierras. The photo was of a city and a time when ma had been “farmed out” while the maiden Aunt and my grandmother consolidated there forces in pre-war Los Angeles. My mother’s banishment to the perimeters of Death Valley in the custody of her father wounded ma deeply, but also provided her with the gumption to survive to 92 in a plague infested inner-city convalescent home - a fine point i’m sure will have been lost on the eldest brother who i hope would place the photo in front of our mother just for the endorphins it would produce, but i sadly doubt his wounds would permit such a kindness.

Still that is not my problem - my problem is to frame my history in such a way that it permits a loving orientation to share with the world about the unique history we are all abandoning to a corporate putsch · mid stride. I am not strong like i used to be and it seems even the universe is conspiring to weaken me further by the rainy season and a general proscription from unnecessary travel in the hamlet i reside. So i go where my mind still allows me access where due to the irrepressible joviality of my sire is a loving place; ma too, but her’s is more the torture of an ambition that never quite joined with the wounds she has suffered. I can pray for her comfort with confidence, for she is a crafty soul who has peeked out at me kindly from time to time, me her offspring nemesis. She even had the gaul to proscribe me from accurately describing myself as a two-eyed cyclops so deep is her vanity about birthing “perfect” children. What she regrettably did not, but maybe somewhere deep in her being understands, is it is was not obsequiousness that prompted me to arrange a visit from an old friend, but deference to her feelings which i cannot begin to understand, but value for their depth and complexity - she is a grand dame and i am grateful to have been her son · that is as close as you will ever get to my “soft spot”, until next time . .. 

jts 15/08/2020

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com 

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140820 - Extinction Chronicles ·

 

What a scary time this must be for all - i am at times ashamed to include myself in the human species: 4:30 pm Viet Nam time, Quang Nam province in the midst of quelling a Covid-19 outbreak of questionable origin; my own home province Orange County, CA is under assault for the casting of ballots that might indicate who wants what from whom by a fascist corporate cabal, which has incidentally installed its fictional future in this same country it could not defeat by military means, so then resorted to the Neo-Liberal lingua franca · bucks for ballots. I am surrounded in my dying days by a “limp-wristed” cultural effete promulgating a boon for mankind based on nothing more than the yoke of greed - “if you can take it from him/her, it is because they didn’t value it enough to keep it from you first, WHAT A CROCK OF SHIT”, he said to no one listening.

There are memes on fb about “shit getting real” - the fact is, it has been getting real for a long time. The assault on the U.S. Postal system to steal a national election should be proof enough about the danger we as a species face from a bunch of corporate thugs, yet not. So i appeal to anyone within reading distance and free of conceit about their future at “the grownup’s table,” are you too stupid for blinkers or did you just walk into the paddock and let the dumb motherfuckers raping the planet blind you with some vacant promise of "future riches”¿ i understand, sort of, because it was the same con the pissant pukes used to send 58,000 of my kin to a death killing people with no more on their minds than feeding themselves and living free.

We, as the books might say, “have bigger fish to fry.” have you ever read a book that suggested your suffering was unnecessary and nearly entirely the result of some suspicious character in the shadows lacking testicles enough to say "it is 'I' who fucked your future and stole your grandparent’s bank account, but don’t look too closely because i am in the process of stealing your grandchildren’s future as well BTW it’s a really neat flick your paying me to watch - you better pay attention · you don’t want to miss anything important.” I, in the meantime have to ask myself whether this prose is aiding and abetting, or informing you of avenues of escape - lucky me ·

I’m not much better than those who’d enslave you, for i have little respect for your demonstrated capacity to distinguish the real from the illusion. Every penny you spend seeking distraction, confirmation or ownership in a system that has shown you no regard or respect says to me that you are too stupid to understand the pit you are in, much less have any ideas about helping our world to survive. So let me ask you this - if you were in my shoes, how would you go about encouraging a planetary uprising that might result in the survival of our species and a blossoming of reason in a world willing to starve infants, poison plants and induce free thinking of a population that has barely figured out how to reason much less grow¿ that is a question?

One of the advantages of being old - “i don’t really give a fuck what you think, but value highly the affects of my actions” · with what time is left to me which seems to be a more and more complicated equation with each wheeze; i revere the ability to do a good that i do not understand more than any conceit of contribution to which i cling. I cannot even say in what venue my thinking will be read, much less ascertain its usefulness - how much more vanity do you wish me to demonstrate¿ I accept that there are those with conceit enough to destroy a species, so i have little delusion to what ends the monsters in our midst will go to review and allot appropriate, _____ what’s the word i am looking for? “means” to gain their dubious ends - an end that cannot ever be accomplished for the sheer ignominy of its purpose, sort of like watching your neighbor slit his/her puppy’s throat without your objection - good luck · let me know how that works out for you - ya’ pissant fucks who do the murders and those who refuse to object ·  

jts 14/08/2020

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com 

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130820 - Extinction Chronicles ·

Here i sit, once again - staring at a blank page · delicate flower that i am, that blank page almost feels violent. Age, however, precludes that easy assumption and i realize at some level i am simply staring at my own emptiness. When younger and full with ego, i might have seen a rich future of recognition and understanding of my valiant effort to help mankind, help herself. Now it is just one more opportunity to honor the privilege of breathing at a time in human history when so many are being robbed of that simple pleasure. I say robbed, because i am certain this plague is manageable and has only risen to a threat due to incompetence and greed, again by that same August Body of “leaders” who are no doubt clustering in highly sanitized bunkers and possibly too frightened to count their money, much less take a vanguard position to save others. We, all of us already know in our hearts how little the “powerful” in this struggling world of ours esteem our wellbeing and safety, for if it is not war that gets us, then it will be: poverty, gratuitous destruction of the eco-system; arrogant technical manipulation of the agency of free people, racist division of the species in service of war from that same technical manipulation; or just plain old fucking fatigue.

Last night, i spent the better part of the night in a twilight zone of a semi-conscious state, not from excessive substance abuse, but from a conscious decision to pray as best i know how by chanting my homegrown mantra believing more and more with each breath that we are powerful in what we think, and what we hope for - a power that is magnified a gazillion times when it is on behalf of people we know, and a googol times more powerful when we pray on behalf of people we don’t know. Don’t believe me, i’m crazy, but i’m happy. When i woke finally after having given myself permission to sleep my fill, it was not with the weight of the world that had kept me semi-conscious throughout the night, but with the joy of having tried to help, however stupid my effort may have sounded at the time to my rational indoctrination. Peace of heart is important, don’t believe me, ask the Dalai Lama, but more importantly ask yourself if you have ever gained an inch from strife.

My young family life was fraught with the conceit of the time - later to be described by the Neo-Liberals as exceptionalism · what a crock of shit, John Kennedy was shot dead by a cabal of petrol nazis and there was nary a peep from the “Sargent of Arms” as though Bob Dylan was more than a minstrel but an actual agent of the great beyond trying to warn us against our own hubris. My family is comprised of decent people to a fault, parents and progeny. We lived next door to a family who were soon to become Mormons and who to this day i hold dear to my heart, though young T____dy in our few exchanges after 4o years, soon deteriorated into a vituperative rant of such violent and indiscernible nature i yanked the plug within hours. His namesake father was a kind gentle man, though daughters within the home suffered from physical violence i only understood 30 years after the fact. My family’s violence was more genteel and of an insidious nature that is now described as “gaslighting.”

We are awash in violence, and to keep one’s head above water is a continual challenge - while the greater challenge is to not return fire. This is hard for me, for i had no example but the streets and the bare knuckle vernacular that allows wounded people worldwide to love in a violent world. For the longest time i wanted to believe the repartee i had learned in the streets was received in the same vein i had delivered it - tongue in cheek · that violent dishonesty is my own covert violence toward myself and personal shame for a softness i protected without really knowing why. I am slowly understanding better that the insults that came so quick to my tongue were defensive in nature for a fiction i had constructed about the nature of a world i experienced, and continue to experience as cruel and unfeeling. What i discounted was the force of my own orientation and responsibility for wounding people who were not even aware of their unkindness, much less in a position to defend themselves against fantasies that were in large part created out of my own fears.

Now i am going to die, if not tomorrow or the next day, much sooner than my date of birth. When i was very young i tried to conceive of what the word heaven used by adults meant. At the time there was much writing that got filtered down, even to the young about cosmology and what the expanse of the universe might be; this may have even predated the “big bang” theory of spontaneous expansion and certainly was before any “string theory,” but there was enough vague references about the enormity of our universe to capture my young imagination. Just like all thinking, i had difficulty embracing any thought that did not include my family constellation, much less the concept of death - but i tried, because that is how my family rolled, at that time. Later such visions of family became much more self-centered and narrow from renegotiation and betrayal, which is the inherent process of all learning. Today, i don’t know; which is the single most valuable lesson i have taken from my upbringing. Sometimes that ignorance is so overwhelming i am fraught with fear, but due to the focus on curiosity from my parents it always gives way to the same feeling i might have had on an early summer morning wondering what new adventures i could find in that long coming day in front of me.

jts 13/08/2020

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com 

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