peace

I have just woken from an afternoon nap; the disquiet of work is not yet deafening; the wispy tendrils of undiscovered-love are quiet and pain is not shouting; is this peace? The creative tension between whether to draw or write pushed me to the keyboard with it’s illusion of understanding, yet the fallow gurgle of color bubbling on the surface of the drawing-in-work is almost creating itself in front of my eyes. Is there a magic for compounds that were once together to again coalesce into some image of pertinence and meaning? Is the act of dialectic questioning a tonic to the terror of not knowing? Or can it be as simple as remembering how to breathe? The sun is dampened by the high clouds of the Himalayas; my lungs have cleared somewhat from decades of abuse; and I have come to accept the quizzical looks on people’s faces as they laugh at me, “ki bhan ca!”  The drawing continues to clamor for creative attention. Creative work is not so much different from the poor schmuck Sisyphus rolling his boulder up the Hades hill; only to get inches from the top so it can roll back down - over and over again. Constant creative tension disperses ego into mystery. Is that the nature of peace - the oblivion which creation has the capacity, but not always the kindness to provide? It is clear when there is no self between color, tone or shifting mass from Plato's 3 dimensional ideal, just consecutive decisions - an ever evolving where and how to smear, shear or grind closer to that moving target - beauty; it is as close to bliss as I have been - is that peace?

Why then does it at times feel like such a battle? How can so many extraneous unrelated discursive ideas intrude? How much difference is there between meditation and creation? Each requires an absence of will; the a subordination of distraction; a heart full of love, or whatever guise the loving heart cloaks itself in at the time - suffering, pride, lust - all those passing squalls of dissonance the chattering monkeys of the mind seem so adept at conjuring. Still none of these props comes close to nourishing the hunger that comes from searching for that precise application which Paul Cezanne described as not “clashing with nature (g_d)” - writing is no different. When conjuring a portrait, each soul tries to reveal itself; I try to discern that feeling or experience that is not easily shared but cannot be disguised or forgotten. It is for this reason self is an unwelcome companion in the creative journey - to remove all possibility of projection. It is the same trying explain an idea in such a way that someone may find their own experience in the concept and permit a kinship - then words are friends. My good fortune was to have parents with two distinct passions - literature and plastic arts. They applied themselves honorably, and in so set an example for what is possible through consistent effort - music unfortunately skipped a generation and I’m left to the eternal damnation of a tin ear. As with all tragedies the silver lining is my love and appreciation for beautiful music is reciprocal to my lack of capacity. Is that some sort of law of nature - what gets taken away is returned in some balanced aspect, true for love, kindness, and honor? If so we just need the patience and pluck to perceive each transformation.

I recently watched a clip of George Harrison - his last interview. He struck me as completely at peace, if anything somewhat anxious to be on with it. What was most vivid in his discussion was a determination to contribute something of value - not of value in the sense of what he George Harrison had discovered, but an exhortation to those of us left to seek higher ground. It was almost as though there was no George, rather someone who cared about people he didn’t know, nor ever would know; I like that. However, it still confuses me when compassion runs full square up against stupidity and bullshit. I am more comfortable with someone attempting a strong-arm robbery on me than being played. When an institution such as facebook sends me Halloween greetings after sifting my content for what can be monetized or traded with whichever corporatized government apparatus believes my irreverent contempt for trust-fund-babies-cum-nouveaux-riche-lords-and-ladies is analyzable, I chortle to myself. Where with interpersonal dealings, when someone presumes to take, I chortle in their face just for the pleasure I get from “afflicting the comfortable and comforting the afflicted” - Oscar Wilde. It only gets dicey when, as just now, I read myself taking pleasure in someone’s discomfort, because that is real; it is a defect which is mine - a smug satisfaction at the expense of another which at another time in my life would be a torment, an imperfection subject to the shrill denunciation of self loathing but which today is no more than grist for the mill. I am determined to take no real pleasure other than striving toward better understanding through whatever existential lens I have at my disposal at that moment.

Lao Tzu said “if you are anxious you are living in the future; if you are depressed you are living in the past; if you are at peace, you are living in the present,” which again leaves more questions than answers. For example, writing that sentence takes me back to 1973-something and the emerging orthodoxy of Baba Ram Dass and his “Be Here Now" acolytes. I had come by an Irish Setter who was abandoned to her own devices in a barnyard because the Ram Dass ashram wouldn’t allow animals. In my 60's-flavored self-righteousness and solidarity with my new best friend, I agonized for her having suffered an externally imposed arbitrary spiritual regulation completely at odds with my no-holds-barred concept of freedom. I share this for the simple awareness of how little I have changed. I still chafe at oppression under the guise of orthodoxy - be here now - is still a fungible concept however correct Eckhart Tolle, Lao Tzu or Baba Ram Dass may be. Peace, however, is not subject to any criteria other than what can be found within the struggle of each human heart, creature, system or dynamic. I use a variety of realities to describe peace, for quiescence is not unique to the human condition. Take for instance the critical mass of a thermonuclear device - it is the peaceful resolution of contrary physics allowed to expand to their potential - just as the exhaustion of rage is subject to the limits of its fury. Peace is not the idyl defined by Jesus, Muhammad or Buddha, but rather a shifting condition somewhat akin to a wave one needs to paddle for to ride that much sought state of peace. Does that make any sense?

The art of calm has been and will continue to be developed by advocates from “How to Stop Worrying and Start Living” by Dale Carnegie; to “Meditations” by Marcus Aurelius; to this humble 5 paragraph essay by nobody you know - yet we burn with passion, seethe with jealousy, weep in misery and laugh hysterically - why? Why must we struggle to either maintain, evolve or discover peace? How is it that our natural condition is so antagonistic to the state which so many strive to achieve through drugs, meditation, passion or force of intellect? Is it possible to be hostilely peaceful like the cartoon of the hippy and his peace sign T-Shirt shouting “you want a peace of me” or the way Richard Nixon’s peace with honor cashed in on the backs of 58,220 dead Americans - how about the American Indian holocaust with estimates of 95 to 114 million human beings murdered by disease, starvation and superior technology while my nation barely takes a backward glance in its headlong leap into further death and destruction - all the while screaming manifest destiny, exceptionalism or 9/11! Clearly my sense of peace does not come from a blind eye to pustulating injustice and ignorance; though the sadness I feel from plumbing these examples of hypocrisy is more of a tonic to me than that existential tic which pulls more alcohol from a bottle than wise; caves-in to stress riding in the gut and gorges on GMO contaminated comfort food; or wallows in some delusional state cowering from some command of an exalted promise of bliss by ___fill-in the blank___ etc . . . world peace will never arrive until personal peace is nurtured, shared, and/or taken. So by my lights you may find me in a backwater somewhere peacefully struggling to depict the majesty of a naked woman or typing ideas on how to survive the havoc of a handful of haters who will never know peace; may you not be one of them.

post script: this morning Paris was savagely attacked in an effort to be heard by a body of people whose families have likely been attacked in kind by imperial forces raining anonymous destruction from the skies above - war is over - we are our own enemy.

peace - the sonnet

I sit in Nepal and I am at peace-

still close to hurt and anger; could be mine

I feel - maybe warp and woof - my life's piece.

Still I wonder if I’ve crossed a line,

or if I care anymore where I am

but more about easing pain not my own.

What I feel is my own; I have no dam;

why seize debris? D’be like taking a loan.

I don’t know, but I can learn what you teach;

if you want to know more, I will no less;

if you want to take, I’ll move within reach;

if you want to win, I can become lifeless.

What’s not your’s to have is me on my knees,

for to own it, you must make your own peace.

the illusion of internetedness

Computers are now making decisions about who to kill without the aid of human oversight - to the extent this insanity exists, Steven Hawking has lent his name to a petition of world leaders opposing Artificial Intelligence for drones. Synchronistically during the flight in which I began this essay, the random films available included “AI” - a cute film wherein Pinocchio meets the microprocessor; and the latest from the Terminator franchise in which the former governor of California hams it up on camera for a gazillion(x) wad of $s. “Skynet” is unvanquished; I guess so some bean-counter-intern can practice squeezing cabbage from a turnip. I used to think computers were nothing more than an on/off switch to the Nth power, I’m coming to believe they are more of an effort to squeeze blood out of stone, with us being the stones. Originally heralded as the ultimate in labor saving devices for its ability to save labor as well as calculate Pi to googol decimal places, computers and their stepchild the internet are now the most lauded and overwrought purveyors of pornography our infantile species has managed thus far, (paraphrased out of context from a TED presentation by Clay Shirky). If computer power has enhanced our capacity and perception all that much, how is it no one is computing parallels between the increased rate of destruction of our planet with processor speed or computer memory? How is it possible to have such unparalleled poverty, corruption and war (and fuck Bono’s giddy shilling for ruling class about the any-moment-now party-line end-of-poverty bullshit). How can so many be kept in the dark from a simple addiction to an empty media stream?

Lest you believe me a luddite, this essay is written on a computer and will be published on the internet with little hope of ever reaching print - a great irony to use the same channel which is being used to oppress the best part of humanity with trite trinkets and baubles not dissimilar to what the Dutch paid for Manhattan. Today instead of costume jewelry, the invaders are using virtual puppet shows to captivate consumers, and as Albert Einstein said “manipulate the emotions of the masses and thereby control them.” Nor am I immune to the siren song - the illusion of not being invisible which Zuckerberg and company have so glibly foisted, spliced, conjured in their quest for amassing gobs of pelf at the expense of all which could have been accomplished with this communication technology or might have been developed had we not allowed ourselves to be bamboozled by a bunch avaricious pin heads posing as visionaries. It seems that the more complex our world becomes, the easier it has become for a handful of humans to twist larger and larger bodies of people into a predictable pattern, or at least so predictable as to monetize a keystroke or click of a button. I refuse to be consigned to the pale echo of myself which Zucky and company attempt to constrain into evermore rigid venues stripped of any of the joy and suffering which I prize as evidence of my existence.

While writing this at the eastern edge of Kathmandu valley in Nepal, I had to reconcile an irrational fear and unnecessary anxiety about change to the status quo of a tenuous domestic happiness against the reality of the addition of a calm and compassionate rocket scientist from Kazakhstan into my fantasy cohort of compassionate souls - ostensible champions to an underserved elementary school in semi-rural Nepal.  Shakespeare said truth is stranger than fiction, and of all the scenarios and the public notices I’ve viewed and posted on the “internet super highway,” or Zukè`s twisted toll road, my continued astonishment at the richness and complexity of the people I cross paths with and the challenges they face, dwarf any diluted silhouettes contrived by the lords of the data stream. Nor do I see the ham-fisted efforts of digital designers to fashion a narrow gauge description which fits their business model coming close to facilitating the nuance which comes from the skin to skin, breath to breath reality one gains listening, walking and sharing with those in our midst, and I have dear friends I’ve never met, or will possibly ever meet which without the internet would never have been possible. How can we who occupy this wondrous dying planet seize the initiative to exploit technology rather than each other. What irony that an inanimate technology with the capacity to amplify each voice and transform the fractured broken chorus of people kind into a pool of knowledge accessible to each and every hungry mind but is now used as no more than a goat’s bell apprising the lords and masters of our exact whereabouts and activity of each person yoked to a +/- 5v shackle.

Am I shrill in my denunciation of the waste and utter incompetence of current design and architecture of today’s computer interconnections, perhaps. Given the ability of the sirens of media to shout over any and all other voices than those specifically in lockstep with the infantile and grossly irresponsible concept that 1) being like them is a worthy pursuit 2) doing what they say will lead to a seat at the grownup’s table - I may not be shrill enough?

I haven’t written a word in weeks, if not months. There is nothing or anyone to blame, but sitting here searching for words to describe the multitude of experiences and emotions of this journey, I feel weakened. How does this pertain to an essay on the Internet, and why do emotion and personal expression seem so inextricably connected? I just about abandoned this effort to begin emails to people rather than an amorphous dialogue with readers of an indeterminate composition: that anything is "either/or" is part of the indoctrination to on or off species from an analog anatomy. 

It is now the next day and my toe is cringing from repeated soaks in saltwater for a hangnail - those funny contradictions, the painful cutting to a “V” of a nail edge that is throbbing to the contrary. I wonder if the tension is analogous to Leonard Cohen’s “bitter searching of the heart,” or when Lao Tzu says “pretty words may be ugly and ugly words may be beautiful”? Writing is an odd balm to the disquiet of sitting in the midst of another culture’s high holiday and knowing so little or being known so little. But somehow this all pertains to the internet, for the content we sift through like children at the seashore sifting through sand for treasures is not within the capacity of the “rainbow makers” of media to provide. It is only within each heart to process or not, to feel pleasure or not - just like the writing discipline for me wicks away the discursive chatter so easily mimicked in the 5 second pageantry scrolling from interminable flicks of the wrist. Nor is it lament I seek to share, but rather a demand on myself for more than the egocentric stroke from yammering on line, or fake feeling of contribution by believing you have more than anyone else no matter how much you give away. Yet oddly coming full circle to what it means to give, and whether this contrivance of broadcast upon which you read this means I have actually shared - you have something you did not have before. I care about that - and you didn’t have it prior to this point in your curiosity.

Is that enough to blow Hurricane Patricia the fuck out before she hits landfall making more rugged a whole lot of already rugged Mexican lives? There is the Lorenz Attractor which says if enough people actually were able to blow hard enough at precisely the correct moment as determined by scientific law the hurricane would cease; however that loving killjoy William Shakespeare got there first - “so near, yet so far. I have to say I’m riding with Lao Tzu on this, for the simple fact that I have no control over any other person. So while I may be willing to blow for the benefit of others, it is more likely the act of expunging my frustration with this semi-cogent diction of addlepation is as close to rabble rousing as I’m going to get. Besides, people mostly look at you as though you’re cray when you stand up in mixed company and declare “hey everybody, listen to Bill Nye the Science Guy and blow hard when he gives the signal”, but then for all you know, I’m hardwired into Google Inc, and have closely coordinated the time of release for this document based on a data feed of what makes people laugh mined from the “youtube” analytics. 

note: that derisive snort you just made is enough to avert, not Patricia but the hurricane forming on her heels which would have dwarfed Patricia in its savagery and intensity - I hesitate to say stranger things have happened. but then again I never thought I’d be duped into working for a smarmy Harvard non-grad for laughs because the rat bastard is too cheap to pay me my worth. go figure .  . 

jts 

http://josephtstevens.blogspot.com

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com

reprinted with permission

all rights reserved

∞

family

At one time in my life - my fear of being away from my family was the only thing that bothered me about death. It wasn’t the unknown or cessation of life that disturbed me - it was the act of separation from what I believed to be the source of all good things in the world - mother, father, brothers, sister. At some level, past a deep denial of pain, I’m sure that feeling of good remains true - past deep, deep denial. Aided by a reaction formation to that discomfort, I spend a fair amount of intellectual capital attempting to cultivate brotherhood amongst all I meet. As part of this quixotic pursuit, I have found in similar proportion the same dissonance which I feel in the bosom of my family within the greater body politic. This correlation doesn’t auger well for any conceit about personal evolution or augment the objectivity necessary to write about a topic as old as Cain and Abel. For example, after my father, my greatest hero growing up was my older brother. He was Fonzerelli, Hans Solo and Che Guevara rolled into one, whereas pop just had an uncanny resemblance to 007. Laugh if you must, but in my mind’s eye my family suffered from great beauty, and me - great beauty because like wealth and friends one can never be sure if people hang or are hanger’s on, and me because I have the temerity to drag my cohort out into the light of day rather than afford each the dignity of privacy within which to consider issues of family or even beauty. In deference to this fair objection to a conceivably entirely conjectured affront - I apologize, but will press on as is my wont, fantasy or no. Of my earliest memories would be of my older brother, my hero, remarking to me “someone is gonna punch you in the face for your big mouth,” and he was right. The assailants name was Bill H____; I had been talking to his girlfriend at a party the night before, so when asked the next day if this was true, I said yes. In one swing, he broke his hand on my face to the degree the military wouldn’t take him; due to this self-inflicted injury he escaped service in Vietnam - an act of compassion, which was more synchronistic than intentional. 

My brother was drafted and inducted into the military imperial expedition known as Vietnam. He had the balls to tell the Army he would not go to Vietnam, so I went to break him out of the brig. Which did not become the revolutionary act I had pictured more - what's it look like in the belly of the beast. Still, they had captured my hero brother, so armed with a “Bantam Complex” - David and Goliath delusion writ small , I confronted the amassed superior forces of Camp Pendleton. They mocked my puppy dog heart; The spirit was willing but the flesh was unable to break my homie out of stir. I had seen done in TV and movies since first exposed to the boob-tube, but solidarity was all I could muster. The sad extent of my military campaigns consists of a failed breakout attempt and a life lesson which says if you make nice with another man’s woman, there’s a fair chance you might get punched in the face. I’m pretty sure my brother never knew about that lesson, or if he cared; what I’m not clear about is whether I got punched because he told me when I was young that it was going to happen? Having heroes can get dicey if you are not real clear about what exactly you want to happen and why. I wanted family, or more importantly the feeling of family - love. It took many, many years to distinguish one from the other. First, it has become necessary to confront the fact that what I feel is not necessarily aligned with what others feel. Keep laughing, for I am just about as dense as I sound. My good fortune is to genuinely love my family and by extension love all people-kind or at least those at whom I am able to stop snarling; what seems to elude me is that part of love which is mine? Keep laughing .  . cause’ I love you too . . . < written in France ; written in Seal Beach, CA > ma’s star is beginning to twinkle or as she stated so simply “I want to clunk out;” the oldest brother, my hero has a seething exclusive fury manifested by “don’t speak to me,” flavored with early school yard bully. It is difficult to hear and remain compassionate, but not so hard to understand nor difficult to imagine how he would believe shutting me out will make the pain go away - 

I embraced much the same fiction to facilitate my own effort for escape velocity from the family event horizon. Growing up, rage was the lingua franca; always attributed to the other, rarely embraced for having originated at one’s core - we were too civilized. My father was a man of discipline and outbursts of anger were not included in that discipline - small wonder I’m “mad;” I can’t even come clean without blaming some other body, even that of a dead man. Ironically there is no one with which to find fault. My parents did the best they could with what they had - exactly the same as my brother is doing the best he can with what he has. As I write this, ma is scarfing my last pistachios from France, and the small boy in me wants to run and snatch back my precious morsels — as though saving pistachio meat might preserve that French experience. The irony is that ma may be feeling those morsels contain some precious memory if she could only find the right one. As "little boy", I am angry and frightened but the "educated-striving-son" of my parents I wonder if my brother and I share similar fears or depravations and see them too clearly in each other for comfort? Ma is just trying to satisfy a craving, scratch an itch, fill an emptiness. How is it possible to harden one’s heart to such an honest hankering? It seems all of life is about seeking a successful strategy to attenuate hankering of one sort or another, be it family, booze, broads or the latest corporate labor-saving device. (talk about your oxymoron)- sort of like the “brotherly love” I have for my sister - the consummate broad - a beauty in the mysterious sense of the word - the inexplicable, inexorable - indelible. I have found myself on more than one occasion looking into some artwork I’ve made only to find my sister’s sublime expression asking I know not what, nor is it some incestuous taboo that I surreptitiously examine with you. Everyone sees the world from their crib of origin; I just consider myself fortunate to have lodged with striking characters out of the gate. One might say I am “oppressed by” Leonard Cohen’s “figures of beauty.” Of the artifacts I studied early on, Maillol’s sculptures defined for me a moderne classic quality - an influence recently reinforced while witnessing his Ode du Cezanne at the Louvre. Family and beauty are conflated for me with love which leads to more beauty unless otherwise cursed.

“By means of beauty all beautiful things become beautiful. For this appears to me the safest answer to give both to myself and others; and adhering to this, I think that I shall never fall, but that it is a safe answer both for me and any one else to give - that by means of beauty, beautiful things become beautiful.” - Socrates as quoted by Plato in “Phaedo”

Beauty nor family is enough, for there is so much ugly loneliness in the world that the flood of  cheap knockoffs which Corporate Inc. flogs as real are snatched up by a population starving for what only the human heart can discern - real love, real family, real beauty. Computers are attempting to parse the natural language of yearning found in infancy and within the cauldron of childhood so as to mimic some discourse which all the world hungers for - belonging. Even orphans know the difference between real and fake, why is that? Have I improperly conflated beauty with family; can the mystery of family be distilled? Is ugliness a key ingredient to family, what about violence, when one brother slugs another to seize the last dollop of peanut butter is that cruelty merely an echo of Cain and Abel, or a hook upon which some unevolved ad lackey for the corporate overlords to hang his cap of profit upon? Or is our family of [wo]man as Carl Jung perceived - a rhizome of sorts, residing just under the threshold of life, mingled in the soil with countless generations of human suffering and joy - an organic configuration of DNA - a complex of emotional impulses spinning in some convoluted axis of love, hate and hunger? That sounds poetic, yet is more substantial then the television novellas used daily to indoctrinate entire generations to whatever flavor of pulp fiction the ruling class cares to feed its population. I say “its” population in the full meaning of the possessive, for whatever illusions homies may have about the role of freedom and outlaw-hood, or fantasies the tea party fringe feel when they fondle their weapons instead of their women, there are few free-minded humans left with time or inclination to wage the sort of war necessary to liberate the human spirit from this sham culture posing as holy provider of food, shelter and spiritual sustenance. We have become a conveyer system of profit for a handful to harvest; we sleep-walk from cradle to grave well reflecting the fake food we eat and the rote learning that passes for understanding.

It may be time to expand any interpretation of family to include every living and non-living aspect of our world, to begin examining whether family as we understand it is only a primitive effort by a feeble species to respond to the vastness of a seemingly limitless sky anchored by violent surroundings; that the feeling of belonging our family constellations provide as a ready made group resembling each other in appearance, language and ambition is more like the comfort of a molecule within a larger anatomy. This alternative perspective begins to make sense when our world is viewed at a distance from the planet itself - a perspective hitherto unimaginable to earlier generations. Yet that newness does not mitigate the level of violence which open wounds of war describe daily by body counts and hysterical rhetoric used to justify the simple greed of a handful of human ciphers preying on the body politic all the while camouflaging its avarice as righteous prayer. The good news is like any of the plethora of organisms amidst the wondrous flora and fauna found on this moist orb in the middle of nowhere, we humans may be little more in the evolutionary chain than the vestige of tail which the coccyx in our own body describes. All of our struggle and strife may be no more than the closing of skin over a stump of bone which no longer contributes to the health and welfare of the planet - metaphorically speaking. However it is as plausible that our human joys and honest efforts to mimic the love of parent, the warmth of siblings within the honor of community may be enlarging the planet’s cerebral cortex and fortifying the brainstem and spine of this figurative mother earth with which to explore the greater universe and find our true family constellation amidst the boundless galaxies and worlds which we have barely begun to perceive - i don’t know . ?

stillness - the sonnet

I sit at ma's house on my way to Nepal,
though when asked, the I Ching replied, "be still."
Do I not listen like some know-it-all,
or do I "be all here" right up until .  . . ?

Ma sleeps, wakes and sleeps - too soon, a long sleep.
May it be deep rather than the restless
rest which made much of her life way too steep.
Will my journey help her to find stillness?

Himalaya means "abode of snow",
and I with no home nor knowing what rest means
thinks to find someplace which only she'll know.
I'm either a good son - or full of beans.

The truth is, where you are will soon be empty,
so give what you can - all your empathy.

train surfing France - the sonnet

T G V is a bullet train in France,

my ticket did not include a seat number.

so once more - where to sit was up to chance-

two cheats stole mine - lost theirs - who looked dumber?

I did because I then saw cheats everywhere-

that blindness made me twice as big a fool;

not just for time lost in a fool’s lair,

but nearly missing train surfing’s best school.

I’ve had good rides; Bejing to the Blue Line.

one twenty through France c’est tres magnifique,

Much finer than sitting looking quite fine;

body felt contours - the far better peak.

“Silly” you might say - many do and will,

nor never know is this more boast than skill.

jts 31 July 2015

a friend - the sonnet

It is said, “to have a friend - be a friend”
though being one doesn’t mean you will have one,
nor does “friend” mean they’ll be one to the end
Muhammad Ali says know “friend” when done.

I will be a friend to Muhammad Ali,
though he need never know - because I do.
I’m his friend, because he's been one to me,
nor need he know this before he is through.

If I am a good friend, he need not know,
in the same way he taught me a life lesson
by planting seeds only wisdom could grow -
like seeing how wise pop was though I have no son.

Pop or Ali - friend both, or one of them
either may help stop ignorant mayhem. 

jts 31 July 15

love and work . . .

. . . work and love; that’s all there is.” - Sigmund Freud - so sayeth the man who called woman “the dark continent,” and whose cocaine habit may have had more to do with psychology than either his id or his ego. Yet how does one quarrel with such a notion, even his alter ego Carl Jung described something similar - “As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being,” and if you have never lit a fire in freezing weather, you may never fully appreciate love and work . . . or you may appreciate each more, idk. I use to know everything, then I fell in love - that’s the last thing I remember clearly. That’s what makes love so fascinating, everything is so vivid, breathing, brushing your teeth - even shopping. Why else do you think there could be so many men standing outside any store on the planet picking their noses not causing a ruckus - it is because the men are in love, while the women are spending money the men earn working. Cocaine or no cocaine, Sigmund Freud was right. I may have married for love every time; but like Socrates said, “By all means, marry. If you get a good wife, you’ll be happy; if you get a bad one, you’ll become a philosopher, ” so what of me - a happy philosopher. 3 times married, each wife leaving for a different reason; still not clear why, but I’m working on it.

I keep falling in love, or more correctly - I keep loving, however much more my once animal magnetism is now more magnet than -ism. G_d, in her infinite mercy has blessed my decrepitude with more work than love, where when young I had more love than work - “plus les choses changent, plus elles restent les mêmes.” I never dreamed the future would be quite so sudden, perhaps because I’ve yet to love; have known lust; shared delusions; even shared enthusiasm? I can’t say if I’ve ever been “in” the kind of love where one’s giving is all that matters; whether as hard as I’ve worked at being worthy of love, or being worthy of not being left, or whatever it is which men use to convince themselves they are choosing “she who would be Queen,” and not some pale echo of a movie or storyline? I’m not sure if there is a place in my heart where it mattered whether I’d been loved in return. Have I in fact ever been to that sacred land of “everloving” as I like to sign my letters to ma? If so, wouldn’t I still be serving; still buying flowers for “ma miel” or bringing my check home? And what of pain; wouldn’t that be purely fictional, a momentary distraction; minor irritation - hardly worthy of a Heathcliff? Maybe I’ve never really learned how to work at love, even the non-work of Zen love; that for all my efforts to be, what Oscar Wilde described as “earnest,” have all been some cobbled-together front made up of snippets of Valentine's day indoctrination from commercials - nothing of substance; nothing on the scale of a visceral imagination able to conjure the “face which launched a 1,000 ships.” (google Homer Helen of Troy)

Not to be Euro-centric, just because I am, but of my earliest literary memories was kinship with the gimp Hephaestus of Greek mythology, never mind the curios sea-change to my psyche from deep, now receding, pain of sciatica - denial of grief? a sympathetic psychological solidarity with the broken hip of a now deceased parent? What is truly fascinating is the capacity for Greek Mythology to anticipate existential oddities of a particular life from the viewpoint of the physically challenged. Consider the following - a gimp 1) fashioned the first woman, Pandora and a box for her which contained all the world’s evils; 2) a box subsequently opened by the gimp’s wife, Aphrodite, loosing evil into the world, 3) who after which was snared with her lover Mars trapped by a net the gimp designed, for he was also principal artisan for Zeus himself. The gimp got the gimp either from an injury suffered when Zeus throw him to earth enraged because the gimp had sided with his mother Hera over some godlike struggle, while in other versions the gimp was cast out by Hera because she was mortified to have given birth to a god with a hideous birth defect .  . whoever g_d turns out to be, she has a wicked sense of humor. From my youth, I can still picture one snarky doctor remarking in some physical exam, “oh one of your legs is shorter than the other;” all I asked was “why are my eyes crossed?” When you’re twenty, a short leg is meaningless; after running a marathon in your fifties - such information takes on new meaning. Many inconsequential observations take on new meaning with age; that I’ve been cuckolded by 3 separate wives has for example, nothing to do with Mars or Aphrodite - it is from my own stupid choices made while becoming a “happy philosopher.”

A poor choice by the gimp is given as the reason Zeus threw Hephaestus from heaven having sided against the Zeus - “the ruling class;” or it could have been pure luck to have a flaw for which he could be cast out of heaven, who wants to live with a bunch of gods anyhow. I’m pretty sure he was cast out of heaven for being, as Johnny Cash described in song - “an unruly child,” certainly not for some congenital birth defect. I prefer to see calamity as part of the happy philosopher training - Super High Intensity Training (SHIT), though I never imagined so much job training, and I’ve had some high intensity training; I remember one Memorial Day being set up with a contraption in a yard with weeds as tall as myself, a big yard. The way this contraption worked was to push down on the handle while pushing forward which leveraged the lawn mower a good couple of feet higher like the maw of some serpent gulping down weeds with each bite - it was a long, long day. Yet here I sit with a Dick Tracy-like +/-5v digital signal stapled to my wrist telling me the “oceans will be dead in 40 years; accept austerity because the world is running out of money, the color of your skin and your zip code determine how much jail time you get and . . . the next ‘great extinction’ is about to commence;” Even at my age, I'd prefer a decade or two more of that Memorial Day 40 years ago, rather than witness the end of my species without adequate love or strength to thwart Zeus from killing our planet - or whoever the fuck he, she or they might do . .  .

Today is ma’s birthday; I love her, and don’t know whether I’ll be able to find an international phone to call and say as much - yet, just as it is my responsibility to know love from what she has shared with me about this complex - but thoroughly fundamental emotion, so too she has only her own heart with which to know my wishes. Sometimes - most times; all the time, no matter what is said or done about, to or for another we have only our own interior to inform us what is truth. As with work, talk is cheap and I can go on, and on about what I’ve done, or mean to do - all that will be left is what has been done without explanation or adherents. This is no different for our species and how we live in our world - we can be members of 1,000s of different groups and be recognized as leaders or as one of Mr. Dylan’s “Early Roman Kings,” what will remain is whether our planet responds to the love we each apply by how we live. If we are asleep or uncaring, that is likely how we shall perish, yet the opposite is as equally true - if we sustain the pain of healing, and live with love in our hearts for all, including the ciphers amongst us who have caused so much devastation for such a small momentary thrill as to ride in a rocket or limousine from private jet to private gate without once having to look into the face of hunger or anguish - dying with love in one’s heart is a vastly more worthwhile objective, however hard the work.

home

I now sit in the hometown of a personal hero, Paul Cezanne; one could even say I reside here, for I’ve signed a contract and paid monies for a domicile; however, you may not send me a letter; there are no cheques with my address; no utility bills; alimony payments or community associations claiming my responsibilities. My handlers at the NSA have access to every bank transaction I’ve made in the past 12 months, though not every expenditure, or why. Any skank with middling hacking skills has access to my email, but my phone is turned off and I’ve not figured out how to place a phone call from a pay phone - everyone here speaks French, or tries to. If every man’s home is his castle, mine would be under siege, or I’m not home. 5 Minutes ago I had no idea how much Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong had influenced my life - writers who wrote the song “Papa was a Rolling Stone” for the Temptation’s which powerfully established an image in my mind at a very young age of what might be coming - a romanticized “white bread” version of actual reality for far too many, but a vivid image nonetheless. It was more than synchronicity by which my divorced father-of-four became the horrific reflection of all male disfunction during the sisterhood-is-powerful epoch of the late 20th century - an epoch which brought us the 77% pay ratio, twerking and the much beloved shill for Monsanto the corporate-sponsored presidential annointee - Hillary Rodham Clinton; while in the meantime from another personal hero - William Shakespeare author of Hamlet, the still apt expression “something is rotten in the state of Denmark.”

Whether it is coincidence or synchronicity that of my many homes, one was on Hamlet St, or whether having another street address at Figueroa St for that same home diluted any synchronicity and augmented the coincidence or only augmented and confirmed Master Shakespeare’s prescience about betrayal, my last wife sold my castle out from under me - (IJDK) I just don’t know. I do know - after that illuminating experience wherever I lay my hat is my home, try as I might to conjure hearth and home. So what the fuck is home? I get the part about formative and am at peace with my people and my parents - grateful for them even, very grateful - especially the more I'm in the world which includes my propeller-blade ex. Earlier in my saga, a tender young heart had embroidered for me a pillow long since hugged to dust which read “Houses are made of Brick and Stone, Homes are made of Love Alone,” that she married another tender young heart less than 3 years later is not the point; that I love Paul Cezanne for his integrity and courage is - bourgeoise son of a banker or no; g_d in her tender mercies bestowed upon me a brother of my own who shares birthdays with Mssr “C,” and although my sibling confuses autonony with some fantasy of having reign over what I say, IJDK; I do know love is a choice; I choose to love my brother, his mother and all of her children - including myself, because that’s how I roll - like a rolling stone.

In my last post card to ma, I wrote “not sure if I belong here or anywhere, or everywhere.” It does make all things more possible if it is love and contentment which you unpack, be that an airport bathroom or some pseudo art patron’s pool house (actual patrons having expired with the Medici Family). The origins of art as talismans protecting and aiding a community’s wellbeing supported by the tribe’s patrons has been usurped by the same commodification of mother earth as with Warren Buffett twisting the ideal of home ownership by being the largest holder of mobile home mortgages. Capitalism is the science of making the lowest common denominator pay which is why art and capitalism are mutually exclusive - the delusion of modern artists believing themselves outsiders rather than harlequins need only research the corporate funded fine art scholarship surrounding Jean-Michel Basquiat. Yet still within me the creative sits as close to my core as any other wholesome inclination I possess, so what of this semi-autonomous region of self I drag across the planet seeking a dwelling place to call home or atelier depending on which pretty French woman I’m trying to impress. The advantages of having a dwelling were explained by metaphor of “setting down roots.” The word Dwelling itself a misnomer of the Old English dwellan to seduce, get lost; related to Old Saxon bidwellan to prevent, Old Norse dvelja to delay tarry or stay, Old High German twellen to prevent - each expression describing the interruption one’s way in one manner or  another - pick your poison, so to speak.

Lao Tzu defines the excellence of a residence by its “suitability.” Bringing us full circle to purpose instead of possession for good reasons why to live anywhere. Like any really creative corporate whore, I live to make art, so you’d think somewhere with lots of artists would be logical - maybe LA with its adrenalin junkies scribbling wannabe proletariat esoterica upon wannabe corporate esoterica - either too passé or not passé enough; IJDK, I do know if the “writers” hate any harder, they is gonna hurt themselves; Paris, maybe as a hotbed for creative growth? I was just there and I’m sad to say how oh-so-orthodox scribble has been anointed to haute culture, but there it sits in the City of Lights; not just sits but displayed prominently right there on Champs Elysees, a golf swing from Arc de Triomphe, emblazoned on the Peugot dealership - Oh the Humanity. ! ; I was weak-kneed for much different reasons than you might imagine - think laughter rather than weeping; kinda gives très chic a whole new slant don’t it? I’ve even lived on an island made of marble in the Philippines attempting my own esthetic Arcadia but found the pernicious and largely anglo patronage of Sex Tourism just sucked the suitability right out that plan. Despair not intrepid reader, for not to be funny or anything, Woody Allen did say 90% of life is just showing up, and what Bob Dylan shared about “my bell still rings” still rings true for me; so again I ask you, if there is no place like home as Glenda so kindly pointed out, where is it here on this rock encrusted molten core hurtling through space that is not exactly like every other place on this too soon to be “formerly homo sapien inhabited” planet; I want to go there I’ve been told it’s home - on good authority .  .  .

But I’ve been told many things in my lifetime, “I love you;” “leave” of course my personal Trump favorite “you’re fired.” Darling Glenda, have you lied to me? before you answer, remember one can lie once, twice - some their whole lives and still be believed, but as the Vaudevillian Heirloom once said “you can fool some of the people some of the time, some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all the people all of the time. IJDK - I do know I’d rather be fooled than be fooling; I also know that I want peace, good food, and love - any love; it matters not whether it’s hard:soft, smooth:rough, long:short, right:wrong - it just has to be real. Maybe that’s what Frank Baum meant for Glenda to say instead of “home” - “There’s no place like ‘love’;” maybe he’d been on the phone to Frank Capra and was a little confused. Dig this ! What if the human heart is all the home we ever get or were meant to have; once the ticker starts keeping time the only way any of this phantasmagoria will make sense is when the heart is in love, because love is where the heart came from and hopefully, love is where the heart will go? What if all the yearning and capitalizing and hating are just convoluted efforts to get back to the heart - not dwelling in one’s own empty orchestra, but the dancing to; the following of one’s heart - listening carefully to all the contending ideas and discordant feelings of a dying world struggling to dethrone and distract what your heart is telling you - what Leonard Cohen has described by “blizzard of the world has crossed the threshold and overturned the order of the soul.” What if from these exertions we learn there is no single location on the planet that is home, but all places are home - stretching logic a little further, is it possible there could actually be rapture in our lifetime at that precise instant our beloved but immovable Gaia and the irresistible force of the clearly male-flavored and long-anticipated Mr. Singularity simultaneously discover each other; and the Vulcan mind-meld which was not entertainment at all but the instrument of our next step for spiritual evolution resulting in a love-inspired, however long-abated, and not entirely welcomed but no longer anonymous incineration torching our carbon rich atmosphere from what is still today the mythical spontaneous combustion? don’t laugh - this sound reasoning describes abiogenesis - something we may need to know more about if and when we kill all life in our home . planet earth . . IJDK .  . .

Death

I don’t want to, but I must - like using a capital “I” for the first person singular subjective personal pronoun in this essay rather than my preferred lower case “i” - death is incontrovertible; there, I’ve spoken truth to power. Stick a fork in me, I’m done. Wasn’t that fun?

Sadly it is just that simple and yet here we are 2,000 plus years since the death of Christ and still murdering each other in the vain hope of helping the victim to heaven. Were it that simple we would not have allowed our collective existence to be hijacked by a bunch of mercantile pimps selling the promise of afterlife camouflaged as deodorant, or gratitude disguised as Mother’s Day flowers. I can remember lying awake as an 8 year old trying to understand what it means to die, possibly precipitated by the death of a new pet rat that got its head stuck in the mesh of its cage and pulled itself apart, but more likely reaction formation to the dawning realization that the family I was born to and idealized, had no concept of unconditional love and I could not reconcile myself to their growing list of conditions; so like any 8 year old with the power of the universe at his disposal, sort of, I imagined my family into an all-loving fable as seen on TV and substituted the vague outlines of the incomprehensible - death - as the immediate cause of my growing existential “angst” ( good word - look it up ). From this resistance to the reality of character formation and the pressures of socialization, I threw my puny intellect up against eternity and the limits of infinity - got nowhere, but it felt better than looking at brothers and sisters embarrassed by my crossed eyes.

Yes you’d be right, he not only looks funny - he won’t shut up. It is still not clear what they are more embarrassed by, my presence or my tongue, i d k? I do know, I still have difficulty reconciling my love for them against their “terms of endearment,” and I still aver from applying the apt expression Leonard Cohen coined - “bitter searching of the heart” because I suspect that might lead to love, growth, maybe even acceptance; then what would I have to grouse about? Unfortunately after this much time, I am more enamored of the consequence of death than any mysterious key which might unlock access to the mythical loving hearth of yore. Death, however is certain - I know because my rat beheaded itself in pursuit of its own liberty which only serves to prove my childhood rat was a better patriot than that large percentage of non-voting U.S. citizens reclining in their impotence rather than face the uphill task of dethroning the “paper tigers” who have overthrown our hallowed halls of liberty - very much like that 8 year old me afraid to change so-called objectionable aspects of my being for fear of finding out nothing would inspire love from the unloving. Like every briar patch, there is a silver-lining, for I have cultivated a lifelong fascination for the inexorable end of life. In case you’re reading in search of eternal truth, sorry to say I’m no closer to an understanding of death, but like an old pair of tennis shoes, if you keep something around long enough eventually it will become, if not comfortable, at least irritatingly familiar.

So too with death, but this is where our “gamer” culture and I part company. Today’s ruling class has staked its existence on a demonstrated ability to keep us at each other’s throat - politically, religiously, ethnically .  . . etc., For me, while death has certainly not subsided in its fascination over the years, rather than the familiarity of a cranky relative for whom one must attenuate one’s attention in order to maintain perspective, and or dignity - death strikes me more as a beautiful paramour who commands one’s attention regardless of proximity or time. Nor by this disclosure, am I lending credence to any mullah’s fictional depiction of 70 virgins waiting on the other side of a suicidal jihad; besides what good could come from chasing death, anymore than what might be accomplished by attempting to, as Arundhati Roy has suggested “pursue beauty to her lair;” clearly I have anthropomorphized Ms Roy’s far more courageous and sublime metaphor in service of my own narrow gender idealization - I’m a man; what can I say. Michel Montaigne said about death - to paraphrase “what an expert it is, for it has been doing what it does much longer than our lifespan allows us to conceive; therefore picture the expertise it must have at what it does; relax and enjoy the ride.” Unfortunately logic, death and humans never seem to agree and so some 500 years after Mssr Montaigne’s generous efforts, John Q Public is still being sold a “pig in poke” and still trotting off to war with a promise of protecting somebody from something as long as death is allowed to validate the ticket. The sad truth is even if I was to track down the dirty dog selling the “pig in poke” theory and slit the throat of said dirty dog - some other dirty dog would step in and continue selling “pigs in pokes,” because, I guess, John Q Public has a genetic appetite for “pigs in pokes.”

Unfortunately for the species, the stakes have risen to where the haters are not content with organized war to winnow the unsightly excess of what Paul Cezanne described as we “bipeds.” Today the bored-to-tears, never-worked-a-day-in-their-lives ruling class has gambled life as we know it against a hubris born of psychotic upbringings rendering compassion for anything other than opulence a chimera to be caged and eviscerated for whatever profit can be sucked out of its marrow. To those of leadership defined by wealth, we are fodder for the economic cannons of the long discredited and ever new “infinite growth paradigm.” Never mind that by the digital barons' very own computer models we now sit at the precipice of the 6th major extinction with the human population square in the cross hairs of a technology run amuck. The ability of marketing mavens to create euphemisms such as “information super highway;” “war on terror;” or my personal favorite “clean and sober” is so great that while ad men for monsatan are drinking glyphosate in front of school children, the marketing shills now describe our salvation in an evolutionary event being propagated as “the singularity.” This coming deliverance, not unlike the movie, will bend over our kind like the newly coronated TPP is bending over the ghosts of Mom and Pop stores echoed from an America even up until fairly recently - which for me as an old man has a much different meaning than some homie in Hollywood looking to make his bones throwing up on the Hollenbeck Station - ironically even that effete act of rebellion is diluted by the cancer his momma is dying from - a disease she got picking strawberries in a glyphosate inundated field in Garden Grove when he was just a baby - but that homie or homette will never learn this fact because the haters have convinced an entire generation that learning is black magic of “whitey.”

. . and still death keeps on coming and coming like some sex addict looking to get out from under in a zen retreat sponsored by Hare Krishna - meaning no disrespect to the sacred. There has to be some reason we continue to write, to draw, to sing; unless death is more like I have conceived her - a beautiful woman who must be serenaded and we being too much like Cyrano De Bergerac are ashamed of our big noses, or like me with my crossed eyes, must dress up our fear of her rejection (or embrace depending on your particular neurosis) with creative offerings, similar to how I convinced myself as a child, “if only I was .  .  . then they would love me”, or for the purposes of this essay death in her insatiable hunger might become so distracted by our myopic efforts to separate ourselves from the inevitable cycles of growth, decay and demise within this physical realm we inhabit that we could somehow become exempt. Perhaps the spirit of desire in itself is enough to staunch that hemorrhaging of our life force spilling into the world’s battlefields; or depleting our former human capacity for excellence on the charnel floor of the newest mall built, itself upon the carcass of a dead neighborhood rich with recent human history having been sacrificed for a parking structure in which to house conveyances that burn the life blood of dinosaurs from our planet’s last “great extinction.” Nothing will stop death, not religion, not money, not love; if there is no way out, then I choose to go with love in my heart, for I have yet to discover a more consistent feeling of wellbeing and accomplishment than to love that which cannot be loved, even death.

Dedicated to the future of my species from planet earth; 3 July 2015      

what it means to be human

I possess most of the grosser aspects of being human - birth, potty training, guilt; but the keener more salubrious aspects of life seem to elude me: love, belonging, contentment. The question of how to achieve these important objectives seems to me to be a perfectly valid ambition - grand perhaps, but perfectly valid. A practical individual would methodically separate each ambition listed however esoteric and find what is necessary to satisfy that ambition and then set about accomplishing that feat; unfortunately, of the many things for which I’ve been accused, the word practical has rarely been used. So like the blind men describing the elephant in ancient Hindi folklore, each with his own certainty about that elephant - be it the rope-like tail, snake-like trunk or tree-like legs; there is a hunger inside of me seeking understanding about an incessant yearning that is as limited a description about this elephant called life as those blind men’s honest efforts to comprehend their part of the beastly elephant - elegant, holy, far more sacred than I will ever become, but still a beast, if for no other reason then she and her parts are prey to our manmade demons. 

Were that all there was to being human - our demons and the sheer magnitude of their destructive impulses, life would be simple, hideous but simple. My good fortune has been the distinct privilege to have lived on the fringes of a creative life. I say fringes, for I have been able to sustain the financial burden of buying my own time, and in so doing become the sole arbiter of my own good taste - a lonely bitter road, but with blossoms on occasion that make the whole comedy worthwhile. I say bitter not with the acrid biting pain born of hate and resentment, although I have personal experience with that flavor, but bitter in the way Aloe Vera will pucker parts of your alimentary canal but mend you in a balancing kind of way - if that makes any sense. The same as how some life lessons cannot be grasped at first blush, or a loving heart be gained without knowing its counterpart - be that companion pain, anger or even fear clutching at and catching the normal open flow of, for lack of a better expression the “good shit” - your first wheelie, first kiss - any of those feelings that astonish and gladden the spirit, the human spirit, or whatever animal parts of it left after the invidious, incessant assault of the Borg Corporation and its “resistance is futile” bullshit has gotten under your skin, into your dreams, between you and your bliss - whatever fucked up thang’ the ciphers and their minions are plotting to dethrone you from or subject you to . . or both.

You see what I mean about hate, so fucking accessible . . , but like Lao Tzu said about going into the darkness - I’d never know just how full with hate I could be were it just an aspect of existence, rather than a choice; I choose love, or as Voltaire said, “I choose happiness, it is better for my health.“ Ya’ gotta love the French, and I do. Yet as codified as happiness has become, even having its very own location in the American Declaration of Independence : 

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by    their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it .  . .

there is no lock on any outcome as pertains happiness .  . rights or no rights. Some of our current confusion about this aspect of the human condition may derive, in part, from a fungible interpretation of the meaning of human - corporations having been accorded the same rights and privileges as people - a semantic leap accomplished by the powers that be, “government” no longer being a sufficient description of who or what is driving this train. And so we are now full circle back to the blind men describing some manner of elephant, only now like some shitty shell game we are being asked to question the very essence of being, or at best compare our hopes and aspirations with the financial bottom line of a McDonalds or Walmart. Can there be any doubt about why there might be so much confusion about happiness when we are so easily fooled about who or what has infiltrated our tribes, as easily as I have substituted happiness for love using a rhetorical coup d’etat - or weren’t you paying attention enough to notice I had substituted happiness for love?

We will always be a conglomeration of tribes, branches being the essence of our DNA sequencing. What is in question is who is doing the pruning and to what end? Prior to the microscope giving voice to our myopic hubris about the role of illness and death vs an eternally shifting stasis around and about the logic of harmony over chaos, our kind followed the flora and fauna in a luxuriant path filled with endless varieties hurtling through the expanding poorly comprehended universe on our moist orb of minerals and gas - not bad work if you can get it. We had it all “dicked” or as they say, “pussied” depending on your slant, and we could still - were we as human as our heroes have made us out to be. Not the sport/celebrity freaks serving as gladiators/minstrels/lapdogs to the corporate overlords and their cipher sycophants, but the heroes bursting through the walls of history unrepentant and unbowed by any fashionable ethos or conventional wisdom - the human spirit made manifest by the voices of Muhammad, Christ, Groucho Marx. Any intellect capable of discerning what love is and what love is not must be brought to bear - be that intellect digital, simian, canine or human - in throwing off the shackles of despair and depression wielded over our planet by the narrow interests of hatred, cruelty and profit - instruments of the weakest amongst us used to divide and conquer for no other reason than an irrational fantasy of building mountains - so irrational that the agents of hate cannot even be consistent about what exactly is gained by making mountains, much less digging endless holes into our hurtling orb - still moist, however sullied.

You reader, are patient - I know this because you have gotten this far in an essay which can have no ending. Even if our species were to cease its existence, a not unlikely outcome given our perverse delusions concerning eternal salvation; the points raised by this hackneyed narrative using crude symbols to represent even cruder ideas will continue, as it has been continued, somewhere in the universe, in some form - simple math; does that quest for understanding or being understood constitute humanity? That you are even reading this comes from a digital command manipulating your fingers and focusing your attention, ergo the digital domain present and accounted for; Koko has proven the Gorilla wants to be understood, enough so she would make the effort to learn our sign language; and I know from being one’s companion that a good canine will let you know when it is time - each are examples of a non-human entity extending itself beyond its tribe to communicate; so by definition the search for understanding cannot constitute the definition of being human. If you’ve ever seen a bitch surround its whelps in a snarled fortress of impenetrability, what better example of the tenacity of love for one’s own could there be? So love, and its manifold expressions cannot be the exclusive purview of Homo sapiens; and I hate to disappoint former Governor Romney, but just because some bought-and-sold-for shill of the merchant class declares that disembodied “credit default swaps” made manifest by +/-5v echoes on some HD storage media behind a foreign server’s firewall makes them the embodiment of “people too” - that my brothers and sisters is just laughable . haha . . . hold the phone . ! that’s IT - laughable, we humans are laughable, for as often as OE (operator error) has made me laugh at myself, there is nothing funny about how computers have become people kind’s latest in an endless parade of violent to non-violent shackles; nor is Koko in all her giggled ticklishness, funny in a cage; and as much as I love the grinning mutts, it is a dog’s life, ask any pooch at Yulin’s dog meat festival - but me sitting here thinking about you the kind reader, scratching your bewildered head wondering if that fuck might be right - well friend that is enough to make me laugh, even if only quietly at myself thinking I got a reader . . .

les muses - the sonnet

I thought I knew what a muse was, but no.

now i know how little I know about them,

muses I mean. I found more, but they go 

away - again - like dream lessons from REM.

With good dreams, I will fight to remember,

and with good ones, they will keep teaching me.

bad dreams singe you - a never cool ember

teaching you the same - what it is to be.

One cannot pick one’s manner of muses:

anymore than one can know one's extent.

what remains to be is what one chooses,

for those choices become every moment.

lucky to find some who mend misery,

with any luck, we'll learn more history.

jts 15 June 2015 stoneartist.com