Monday, August 31, 2015

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 . ?

Sunday, August 23, 2015

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.

Sunday, August 2, 2015

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

Saturday, August 1, 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