071220 - Extinction Chronicles ·

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

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

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

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

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

jts 07/12/2020 

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com 

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051220/061220 - Extinction Chronicles ·

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

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

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

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

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

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

jts 05/12/2020 

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com 

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041220 - Extinction Chronicles ·

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

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

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

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

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

 

jts 04/12/2020 

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031220 - Extinction Chronicles ·

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

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

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

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

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

jts 03/12/2020 

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com 

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021220 - Extinction Chronicles ·

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

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

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

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

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

jts 02/12/2020 

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com 

all rights reservedou f

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011220 - Extinction Chronicles ·

So once again, like a deer caught in the headlights of oncoming traffic, all my good words flee and i am faced with a blank page. It is unbelievable to me that i could have ever reached a saturation with rain where enough became too much - enough already · 3 months ago at the beginning of September a character on the expat page posted a line from “Forrest Gump” - ‘then one day it began raining and it rained for the next four months’, pretty sure neither of us gave much credence to the anthropological reference; nothing i’d seen in my previous year would suggest truth to what i’m sure was meant as humor; yet here 3 months past and 13 typhoons later - still it rains · At my college graduation - the quote on my cake read from William Blake’s “Marriage of Heaven and Hell” · ‘Enough or Too Much;’ that wife did not make it past the emergency appendectomy, but the memory of my University graduation did. I elected to forgo the trappings of cap and gown, then found myself glommed onto by the only other person in the crowd of graduates to leave go his cap and gown.

Writing now, i feel nothing but compassion that person having made such a daring choice, or economic, idk, then clutch at the only other recognizable individual in the crowd. The error is mine for not having the moral courage and compassion to open my heart and embrace him like a brother, rather than a rival for notoriety that his all too human gesture then represented to my fledgling, however aged intellect. It was only the beginning of a long road of lessons from that day day forward. I was a 50 year-old college graduate, but by g_d i was a graduate. Pop could not remember where he parked the car, foreshadowing a memory fade which served to rend the tender fabric of a never-close family to shreds soon. Some within that constellation would argue the point given their conceit of strong family ties, but from where i stand, he my father was left alone searching for the car that carried the memories of a loving family to his mission at the church of learning. My stepfather couldn’t wait, and so it was a graduation dinner fraught with all that was to define the later days of that merry band of fellows - myself included ·

My stepfather was a complicated factor in a complicated equation - suffice it to say he conned me to gain the love of my mother · and that is enough. She will die happy because he loved her as best he could with the cards he was dealt. Much havoc was wrought however with the collision of his patrician old money roots and the working class DNA Ma had finagled herself out of. I believe to this day that the walk my stepfather and i took the day we first met with nothing but a tennis ball between us was an honest and decent exchange of positions and that his intentions were honorable - that they moved their household and the economic center of gravity of our conjoined families to the deepest recesses of the canyons of Beverly Hills is an entirely different issue. Leo was a CEO of an insurance brokerage firm and as such swam in waters which none in my family knew - including Ma. The ensuing confusion involved, basic loyalties, to the extent, i once stood in the exiting aisles of a cultural event torn between the call of my father and my mother’s husband. I apologize Pa, i selected wrong and followed the wrong leader.

Again, none of these humans i describe herein are evil; i am simply attempting to describe the inequity that wealth can wreak on normal relations - including that of one’s own understanding of self. Leo came ill, an inexplicable wasting and i tried to ameliorate using metaphysical therapy based on an arrogant, however plausible quote by Pablo Picasso - “When art is properly understood, it will cure the toothache.” At great personal sacrifice with little regard for my effort i transported a 5’ granite femur to a window in the desert where my stepfather could see it as he lay wasting away for no other reason than he favored it. I am not claiming to be all “that,” nor was my gesture devoid of self-interest. My gesture did not save him from his destiny; whether it provided him any comfort, i’ll never know. I do know that same femur gained my last wife a dental implant when she sold it at a loss to my “best friend,” unbeknownst to me, while our marriage was collapsing which mostly added grist to that mill of domestic destruction.

Neither of those two characters are in a position to gain much traction with me, nor are they vile or despicable creatures simply because they betrayed me at my most vulnerable; if anything they have become Professors Emeritus at the University of J.Todd; helping me to better understand the character of those i know, those i’ve known and those i may someday think i know. For example, having spent 22 years gaining a Bachelors Degree in English - i understand better than most the cost of education, and having spent nearly as many years in one institution of Fine Art Study or another - i know what i know, and what i don’t know · I know i would have to live a 1,000 lifetimes to begin to appreciate the ineffable quality of really fine art, i can also tell you at a glance, what is dreck, what is fake and who is in it for the money; i’m not going to tell you what i’ve learned for it might rob me of my last great amusement - laughter.     

jts 01/12/2020 

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com 

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301120 - Extinction Chronicles ·

I watched a fetching film today from a story by John Steinbeck - i was transformed back to life, and i am grateful · “Red Pony” I have struggled for overlong to be approved. Any more, i could give a fuck about your opinion - that is not to say i do not care about you, i do, but what you think has only to do with your behavior, not mine. Albert Einstein - “All that is valuable in human society depends upon the opportunity for development accorded the individual.” For all its bluster and promise digital electronics drag us daily further and further from this simple fact.” For days, weeks, months and years i have disciplined my life to fashion the highest art i know - and what i have managed is far better than nearly all i’ve witnessed · For anyone who knows me, they would understand how difficult a statement that is for me to make, not because i’m not an arrogant prick who routinely burns bridges - i am, but Because my standards are nearly impossible to acheive and my ambition for excellence is relentless. Years ago that narrow allegiance to art de-coupled from the sinking ship our planet is yoked to, and simply became a question of raison d’etre.

If we are not here on this planet to help each other survive, why not just surrender now and accept Jim Jones and his Kool-Aid fix¿?

For my part it is because my story is unfinished. Just now standing at the back window where i smoke and drink all the sentences i would share rose and fell in quick succession, i didn’t run back and write then down because of fear - fear that you would see me clearly and not like what you see. It is an honest reaction; the dysfunction in my family communication manifested in derogatory remarks like “everything you say begins with ‘I’.” like that is supposed to be a bad thing. Any other notion i expound on about another or circumstances in general is fantasy, so what is left to speak about? We as a civilization have created a body of fiction in substitution for our fears. Homer’s “Iliad” is based on our mortal fear of confronting our basest instincts and so we substitute fictional characters to act out our primal emotions - all great literature and expression is based on this sleight-of-hand.

We love poetry because it is alleged to be distilled language devoid of subterfuge, yet even one of the greatest of the Western Romantic Poets, Percy Bysshe Shelley couldn’t get his heart buried based on ______fill in the blank. How fucking gory is that to have to collect your husband’s dead heart based on a fictional novel your mother wrote? What if Mary Shelley had simply dialogued with her mother Mary Wollstonecraft about the “Rights of Women” and let the dead rest? How much different are we today struggling to resolve the Poetry of the Great Ho Chi Minh or to understand the dialectics of Chairman Mao, much less resolve what the fuck the founding fathers were thinking parsing people of color into 3/5s of a person. You can begin to see why as i close in on my death what you think about what i write or what i’ve expressed about what i’ve witnessed grows less and less pertinent with each breath i take.

Rather my entire focus is shredding the chaff of socialization and de-coupling from the demands the few make on the many while tuning my ear and my resources to serve the greater good in each of us. And again the irony being the only logical way to accomplish that is to alter my own self, for every defect that others seem to possess in adequate quantity to offend my unctuous sensibilities is never their offense, but always my own supercilious reaction to another. That is goofy, and i only know this because it is always the mote in mine own eye - as the good book says. But enough with good books, if we don’t find a way to clue the young to bullshit games empty souls will play to gain an upper hand in daily dealing, we're fucked.

“Empty Souls” is a harsh and unnecessary brand to be throwing around when i declare my purpose is to attenuate hatred and encourage kinship. I can only attribute my use of such an inflammatory expression to my years of experience in the essentially dishonest discipline of rhetoric and advertising. I am ashamed to admit it has become 2nd nature to use language which rather than encourage learning and sharing is designed to ridicule and diminish - the very same language and behavior i rail against - that has to tell you something about my myopia · it may even be a terminal case, and we all be dying of one thing or another.

jts 30/11/2020 

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