Wednesday, August 31, 2016

simplicity / complexity - the sonnet


“Make it simple, not simpler” - Albert Einstein. It would seem Dr. Einstein wasn’t just smart, but prescient. Today people are waiting with abated breath for iPhone 7 - the 7th version of an appliance allegedly here to make our lives simpler. It would seem that Apple Inc. is the only one living more simply by running from paying their fair share of taxes - taxes plundered from the commonweal - taxes that were used to fund the original research and development of this Albatross around our necks, or more accurately, the +/- 5v shackle affixed to our wrists - soon to be implanted in our brains. If you think i’m kidding, read from Ray Kurzweil - chief engineer at Google. Recently I read that Australia has already begun injecting subdural chips for the sole purpose of authenticating your existence. Many youth today will not be astonished by these developments; myself it is difficult to fathom the astonishing pace of pacification for an entire planet by a handful of monsters. It seems so simple, yet if that is true, the polar opposite must also be true. For example, wars use to be fought for a broad spectrum of reasons - scarcity of resources, ideological differences, even things as banal as succession to the throne. Today, the only reason wars are fought is that it is extremely profitable to a handful of animals, i’m unwilling to attribute something so noble as human qualities to those who would winnow the population for fun and profit. Am i making it too simple? The reverse of this unfortunate predicament would be to set those same ciphers who currently declare themselves “masters of the universe” at each others throats. At least this way we may willingly submit to the victor. If all which humanity has become is “spoils to the victor,” why not let these faceless cowards duke it out to their demise; this way we may be assured that the leader we are following is at least willing to fight for our allegiance - 

a circumstance that is not going to happen; i don’t know what is going to happen. I do know the only power i possess is over myself, and when in the company of a beautiful woman or a bottle of whiskey - even that self-discipline is in doubt. But all is not lost, for i have humor, or at best the conceit of humor. Mark Twain has said, “against the assault of laughter, nothing can stand.” What if it were that simple? For example, has anyone quantified the number of tyrants who abrogated their power at the mere mention of “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” What good is all this world class technology if no one keeps records of such important facts if not to ectify the dearth of legitimate leadership at the the dawn of the Anthropocene (man new) Epoch. The current epoch Holocene (whole new) lasted from the time of the last Ice Age, 11,700 years. The good news is we are no longer in an Ice Age which then covered all the Midwest and Northeast of the U.S. in permafrost; the bad news is this may become the shortest-lived epoch of all - the Nekrosanthropocene (dead man new). Say i’m hysterical; we have more carbon in the atmosphere of our planet than we’ve had in the past 800,000 - 15,000,000 years. For those keeping track that is longer than we the homo sapiens (saps for short) have lived on the planet. We’d have had better data, but since the 1970’s the fossil fuel industry knew from its own scientists that carbon emissions would have an impact on world climate; this heinous treachery was only announced within the past year. Robert Brulle a professor at Drexel University published the only study i could find on the “corporate controlled” internet for money spent on climate change denial: 2003 - 2010, $558 million. This is only the money that could be tracked, but because our leaders at all levels of government have betrayed their public office for private gain, the largest monies spent subsidizing our own doom is untraceable, and getting more untraceable by the minute - not very funny is it? 

I think it’s hilarious - here we sit yoked to the greatest research device ever used by haters to poison the human race against itself, and we’re posting photos of cats, nice cats - but cats nonetheless. There are children pulling in more money than you will ever make in your lifetime, because they know how to better monetize your keystrokes than you do - not laughing? Try this - Alexander The Great defeated Darius III, ruler of the Achaemenid Empire - the largest empire ever known to rule our world @ 44% of the world’s population or 50 million out of 112 million people alive in 480 BC. Today there is one billionaire alive for every 3,867,403.31 people on the planet - any of you “wannabe big-shots” want to whip it out and go toe-to-toe with those odds. Just askin’ - still not laughing? A ballpark estimate for the total cost of salary for just the United States “legislative branch” and staff has been estimated at $171,000,000 - for the numerically challenged that reads as one hundred seventy one million and some odd dollars. By contrast, money paid to those same civil servants living on your dime accepted $3,900,000,000 in “lobby” money, or again for the numerically challenged three billion nine hundred million dollars - still not laughing. I can’t help you. I begin to understand through these exertions what Dr. Einstein may have meant by “make it simple, but not simpler”. Simplify for the ruling class began as one sage professor posited when the newly empowered capitalista had an excess of product no one wanted - soap for example. Previously human beings rinsed with water/vinegar/salt and made good, so the ever perspicacious merchant class convinced us soap was the remedy to our filth; lo and behold, we have inundated our waters with the very solvent we buy to save us from our dirt. Tired of waiting for the transit - poof we’ll transport you for a song - the automobile song (sorry kind reader, but the agents of our doom will not allow me to post “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” without cost to you).

“I am comfortable with chaos, I’m not sure chaos is comfortable with me” - Bob Dylan. I sit in Uruguay frightened, not from the Uruguayans who i find have heart and core values preserved g_d knows how from much bullshit in the world, but i promised an essay on simplicity and i cannot be much more simple than that; i could become simpler but would rather not. Ours is not a time of leisure, but like the false promise of making life simpler by using an Apple iPhone 7 - i’d be lying to you were i to suggest anything but diligent effort in service of your more heartfelt ambitions would be of any use to you at this time in our history for no other reason than to leave your own concept of how to survive. We, none of us know what will be read from this chaos that we muddle through with our plaitive cries for understanding. If nothing i say or write ever helps another cogent creature on our world to perpetuate itself as a viable rhizome; i am doing my best. Is this simplicity? No, it is a complex of burdens i have chosen, full of complexity not of my making. How can i cook this melange into a nutritional fare worthy of our human history - i’m not sure. I don’t buy much: unprepared food, threads that run bare, flowers for what i cannot resist and tokens for what i can. I apply myself, searching for anything of value outside of myself; my own interests seem paltry compared to the suffering i’ve learned to peer into. It is my nature to help, but we’ve almost allowed ourselves the delusion that someone else’s aid is dirty - how the fuck did that ever happen? 

As a kid my most vivid memories are from working together with my homies - even if it was only how to throw rocks at our enemies - more often, it was fixing the chain on a bicycle or figuring out which way the tin foil on the antenna made the TV channel clear. Yet, here i sit decades later trying to explain what was then only an existential pimple - that shrill scream notifying all within earshot to “duck under our desks and tuck our heads between our knees” in anticipation of what would later be euphemistically described as “anonymous incineration,” but now has become, and remains, a swelling chancre of fear foisted on an entire planet for no other reason than the same egocentric ambitions which plagued the world when Alexander conquered Darius III nearly 2,500 years ago. Let me put it to you differently - as dumb as you think humans were then - you’d be 10x as dense. I mean no offense, but rather than respecting your capacity to exceed the expectations of your rulers, you spend your pennies on Laker Jerseys, paying Uber to improve the rulers ability to track your ever move, or mortgage your time to own a building that proves you are Queen/King of your castle. You are not free if you live to die in the service of a rich man’s margin. Having said that - there is a lot in that margin the rich man cannot account for - courage, love, honor, loyalty - all those things the media hooks you with but never delivers. The only place anyone has ever found those qualities are in the day-to-day relationships which 99% of the world develops out of love and concern. You think i’m kidding - when was the last time your sports hero came to you in your despair and said, “I know she broke your heart, but she did it for your own good.” - that is a question .  . ? .  . anyone .  .  

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complexity - the sonnet

Complexity as a sonnet stops here,
how could it go further, where would it go?
Sonnets by nature mostly persevere,
for to develop word-thoughts, one is slow,

. . . especially ideas of any use.
What in this dying world helps the other?
That concept itself is pretty damn loose.
Still, we’re in a sonnet - going further.

Does it matter where we end - up, or down?
Fucking questions - can’t we make it simple?
Love is close, so why do i always drown?
Maybe battleships are not so good to pull?

Yet they say what is of use ain’t easy
Life’s hard, works fun, sometimes even cheesy. 


Monday, August 29, 2016

time / present - the sonnet


“Time is a construct” - Lao Tzu - at 62, for me a fairly substantial construct, but construct it is; elstwhys “how can we” as Sir Stephen Hawking has asked, “look backward in time, but not into the future?” By all accounts time has not always been with us, at least not our part of existence. It is the eternal from which we are comprised based on what “we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind” - Albert Einstein. At the instant of expansion from the initial singularity - time, space, energy and mass are considered to have become manifest. Regardless of your faith regarding then, now or afterlife, we can only be that from which we came. We are not out of time, but time itself - a condition from which the chattering monkeys of our mind demand attention away from the eternal present. If we are no more than time itself sprung from the root of all, what could possibly compensate us for our very nature, time - the caress of a loving other, a small Mediterranean island or life eternal? This being an irony itself when logic suggests that time is the only thing we actually possess? No small irony we have become possessed by the only thing we have in abundance. How can we as a passing awareness in a universe of indifference become worthy of this precious commodity, or if you will - capital, though i prefer Bob Dylan’s expression, “time is an ocean that ends at the shore”? It has been suggested our oceans will be dead in 40 years, but then the same nameless authorities suggest by that time there will be more plastic in the oceans than fish - perhaps we will have done our progenitors a favor by killing off the womb of life.

I write with my time, and i draw, paint, carve and seek the fragrance of woman; beans are good, but no substitute for the sweet scent of love, or tangible feel of work. Nor am i sure which is better for me - i like both. What i don’t understand, as yet, is the in-between - not that t’aint, but that which is not work or love - moment minus purpose? This curiosity seems to hold for me the same fascination as “dark matter” does for physicists. Time that is not assigned, be it spiritual or venal confuses me. My day for death will come. I used to dread that day, because death gives no indication of purpose or unknowns for time - my most loyal companion. Other conceits of my life have given way - strength, belonging, even my most noble quest - purpose quail at the sight of death; but waiting for meaning about time minus purpose eludes me. Who or what ascribes meaning to the “dark matter” - particles, wavelength - gravitational or otherwise? Does it even matter what path this unexplained curiosity courses? If it didn’t, i wouldn’t write about it, would i? To what end though? There is no comment i can make or concept to develop that will affect the outcome of my existence - the gods may choose to curse me with great wealth, may even grace my work with a model/companion, but nothing will alter the passage of time. What if that consciousness from the “initial singularity” thought the same. Stop laughing; if we have consciousness, how is it not possible that all which is fallout from the “big bang” could be dissimilar? Logic is our friend.

We of time, contrary to what i may have conjectured, have little time to us - Stephen Hawking, seemingly the only one amongst us with balls, says our future lay elsewhere - extraterrestrial. I’m of the mind, if we couldn’t or wouldn’t make our case here with what was available to us here, how the fuck are we going to lodge elsewhere? Or perhaps more significantly - should we? My aged nails grow thick, does that function entitle me to another shot back into the “initial singularity” where time is of no consequence? Our species is barely able to defend its inherent composition - water, from adulteration by a handful of pencil-neck geeks in pretty threads. Funny we have more time than water, but i don’t hear anyone laughing. The thieves of our life’s moments currently enjoy a vast absence from responsibility for their cupidity - “currently” and “vast” being the operative expressions. However, reality is little concerned with corporate flimflam; far less than what media chatter depicts. Leonard Cohen, i believe was closer when he suggested “there’s a mighty judgement coming”, but I don’t know when. That you have taken time from your busy schedule to look at these words gives me hope. Not the sort one feels from new love, but the sort that makes the transition into the great beyond more welcome. I do not dread losing my ability to contemplate such things as time, but rue the thought of having been distracted from loving concern for all others by a handful of ciphers whose concept of existence is predicated on avarice, so much so they have taken from you your most precious resource - time - and have yet to gain one millisecond for themselves; nor shall they. How can the lords of our world be so deluded as to think there is profit from stealing what we barely understand much less possess? 

Some will use their time to counter uncomfortable notions espoused herein, for which i apologize - use your time more wisely. Others will find residence and expend their resources to accomplish dreamt for ends - bless you. The reality for each is to her/his own good office; i have chosen to spend mine as fruitfully as i know how - the most interesting result of which is having no idea of your response - nor much care? For many years i have cared what others think, not just about writing - my work - my appearance, my demeanor - my being. Early on one critic compared my writing to, “throwing spaghetti against the wall to see what sticks.” At that time, i resented her, but now find welcome for anyone willing to show me error in my thinking - time is short; ignorance long. Truth be told, i am a little like spaghetti tossed against a well; my last wife and i even decorated the wall over our stove in the loft with much tossed spaghetti; it was as good a way as any to spend our time together, much better than Leonard Cohen’s “getting and having,” which ultimately sealed the fate of our marriage. I currently sit with a wad of marijuana under my cheek - last of the beer poured into a flagon .  . and now magically it is the next day. Leonard Cohen’s “Future” is playing, but i’m thinking about Bob Dylan - . . “for me the future is already a thing of the past .  . “ . Lao Tzu allegedly said “if you are living in the past, you are depressed; if you are living in the future, you are anxious; if you are happy, you are living in the present.” For many years, i’ve used this homily as a prompt to remain in my skin and be aware of all i can with senses available to that mortal coil. However, it turns out while researching Lao Tzu’s quote, i learned Lao Tzu never said such a thing, or at least according to the author who relied on Wikipedia for his sources. Is this fictional quote at odds with the logic of remaining in the present?

Is the present now any different than the instant of expansion from the initial singularity - “The Big Bang” if you will? What a hoot that would be for all the afterlifers to find themselves in the mayhem of that moment? I try to be compassionate, but sometimes .  .  . Back to whether this “now” is any different than the “now” before time existed - what’s the harm in envisioning our beings as powerful as that state of existence which contained all that comprises our expanding universe? I have seen where ole’ “brass balls” himself - Sir Stephen Hawking has suasively argued of emissions from a black hole. Bear in mind the escape velocity of a black hole is greater than the speed of light - note: researching just now, i’ve learned that in Cern they have discovered motion greater than the “Cosmic Constant” - light, which had been considered the fastest motion in the universe .  . So i guess ole’ Brass Balls Hawking really knows his stuff .  . There is a man who has better reason than most to fully appreciate how precious time is. What can we learn from his joy for life? His willingness to face down sacred cows - forgive me Dr. Einstein, anybody who could make Marilyn Monroe laugh is aces in my book; i wish you and Marilyng could have spent more time together. I’d have liked to have seen her as an old blossom someplace other than my mind’s eye. Thank you kind reader, i’d be lying to you were i to suggest parsing time with you has been easy - it has not been, for i am now older than i was when i started, happier, but older. Perhaps getting old is truly a blessing. Imagine for a moment that we are only in the beginning chapters of our book of history, and that when Sir Stephen Hawking finally understood time travel - his first destination was to Marilyn’s side that sad night. It is possible that if Dr. Einstein could make Marilyn laugh, Sir “brass balls” Hawking may have already given Ms. Monroe immortality, and ipso facto my theory of g_d as woman will finally become understood.

“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” - William Shakespeare

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present / the sonnet

Does my head hurt because i essayed time?
Better i it, than it should assay me,
for there is little life if you just mime
what you imagine the world wants to see.

Where’s that spark Commander Cohen describes?
Is it found on the mountain of slow moving
time Bob sings about with beautiful vibes,
or does it just spring from an act of giving.

What is this speck in time we all cling to,
some for so long its atoms have dispersed?
If history’s a story - and false too,
what of the future, and dreams of being 1st?

What is wrong with breathing in and out, in
and out? Where would you go if this ain’t heaven? 







Saturday, August 27, 2016

delusion / clarity: (this ought to be good) - the sonnet


Last night it rained hard, and i kept myself awake nearly the entire night for concern about an open window in my just-rented new lodging. It is a considerable distance from where i slept, and i without transport except the public kind imagined the very worst sort of things including water running in sheets down the wall into the sitting room of my new landlord - and, yes, my umbrella was amongst those things left in my new lodging; so today was spent getting drenched on my mission to rectify an oversight. Last night was more like Pema Chodron’s quote “you are the sky, everything else is just the weather”, or Mark Twain’s observation, “ I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.” If only delusion were so inconvenient as this. The capacity for fictive faith is so deeply ingrained in our species it has been identified as one of the “3 chains of suffering in Buddhist cosmology - greed, hatred and delusion." A young woman of high intellect recently asserted to me with certainty “there are no facts;” if that is so, i choose to follow master Bertrand Russell’s admonishment and utilize only the facts when making any decision of a material nature - this in a world where one of the more progressive social networks minds.com includes highly scientific assertions the earth is in fact “flat.” As a creative spirit i assume the prerogative of poetic license and of the facts i’m aware of is Bob Dylan’s quote “I love women, and she loves men,” but then i may be deluded - a fact you will need to determine for yourself.

The human condition is predicated on death, and of birth. Everything of any use to use to us as a species has been developed from this existential reality - people are here, then gone; people who’ve never been here, appear. That is a  magnificent fact - how magnificent; will depend entirely on how we approach the next 100 years of our specie’s finite reality. “Reality”, now there’s a word that needs be included in any discussion of delusion - or as they say in my corner of the world “fucking reality.” Part of that reality is the fact my father, not quite on his deathbed, but close enough for government work, made me promise i would never stop writing - that you are reading this now gives legs to that fact - however delusional what i write may be - a fact that cannot be ignored - considered, but not ignored. What then is the heart of delusion? How can we as cogent creatures parse this phantasmagoria of images and assertions where each perspective adds a new wrinkle to the equation - real vs unreal? For a decade i did not smoke or drink - now i do both, +/- months. During that hiatus either of these two “plagues” on the human condition was an anathema to me - i was the zealot’s zealot and we all know there is no zealot like a reformed zealot. How and what has changed that reality? 

I began drinking the week i left the nation of Nepal after 3 months of - tutoring within the strictures of the “volunteer economy.” I could say that it was from witnessing the installation of “boutique viewing abodes” for the rich and famous in a nation recently devastated by massive tectonic activity - further oppressed by a more powerful neighbor to the South in the guise of undue influence over a sovereign nation’s constitutional will; i could say it was from being thwarted in love by some of the world’s most beautiful women, or i could say it was a personal choice for which i alone am responsible - the latter assertion being the more plausible and honest. Why to smoke? that is a more thorny question, for as an infant i was hospitalized for two weeks at year one and deprived of family visits - conventional wisdom of the time. So complex is this existential conundrum for me, as an adolescent i gave to my mother a lighter with the sacred oath to smoke no more, “it’s easy to quit smoking, i’ve done it hundreds of times.” - Mark Twain. Now i sit with these self-inflicted afflictions - wheezing and befuddled but content - how can that be reality?

The rain continues and the closest “squeeze” to me is flitting about like some sparrow raptor hybrid - i have warm food - one empty bottle of beer and one nearly empty whiskey bottle at my beck and call - enough tobacco to make through to morning coffee. Is this reality or the unanswerable chain of greed from the 3 aforementioned poisons? When does want become greed? Where does the corpus of our learning intersect wisdom? I could wait for my young friend the sparrow to resolve her absence in my favor; i could break open the spare bottle of beer; i could importune the legions of patient women turning a deaf ear to my physical longings - all of this is reality. So what exactly constitutes delusion? I have an ache in my hip very near an actual break in my father’s frame; i’ve often wondered if the mind and its faculties are so powerful that i engaged my fictive faith in solidarity and condemned myself to a delusional pain in service of something i could not stop - my sire’s suffering? I know this, sitting here breathing that his command, i not stop writing was an act of love on his part - fact. I know that my dame his former wife has forgiven me all my transgressions - fact - reluctant or otherwise; if there is any lack in her forgiveness, it would be from a genuine conviction that I could have done better - lucky me.

How many hope from others that there is an expectation of having a good heart? Have we gotten so far afield that to believe others might be cheering us on is delusional? Is it real to think our value to others is solely from what we can provide them rather than the simple joy of sharing air? I am delusional believing otherwise, and i am okay with that. It would be more delusion on my part to look elsewhere for that which only i can define: how much, when, where and why. It is also delusional for me to believe that desires which are my own are the result of some agency outside my own awareness. No one is more willing to attend each an every desire you possess than yourself - right or wrong. That is a fact which no amount of advertising or situational ethics can obviate. I don’t particularly care if you like what write; what i care about is whether what i have said helps you arrive at a place of clarity which no other person, conviction or faith may circumvent - fact

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clarity: (this ought to be good) - the sonnet

A full bottle to the better i got, 
just took less fervor than that joy drunks know ... 
where their fun always ends with what is not
i find it helpful to keep something in tow.

What lens sheds light to the core of this world?
i drink, i dream of the one too alone
to find a place within any fold,
searching for fire in which all can be shown.

One bottle empty - my body absent 
the mind asserting its fake clarity-
that real thing not found in the firmament
but in the heart of one’s own charity.

seek your counsel - the seat of your own worth
there is no truer sound found on this earth.


Friday, August 26, 2016

freedom / slavery might become demonic if . . the sonnet


r . i . p . Moses of late @ Whitley and Hollywood Blvd . blessings .  . into the great beyond .  . .

Q: what is the opposite of freedom?
A: - quick answer (per google - g_d of all understanding and decency)
“According to the Collins Thesaurus, the most likely antonym for freedom is “slavery.” However because the word ‘freedom’ has a complex and nuanced meaning, concepts like “dependence” or “limitation” may also be considered its opposite”

I’m leery of beginning any discussion with a definition - for example the next sentence in this essay was to begin with the word “elst” as in elsewhere, elsewhen - found; elsewhy - not found in any search - any. Erstwhile, however, is little too close to home, and i don't feel free enough to discuss that just now. I'm no William F. Buckley by a long stretch - he who once prefaced a dictionary with, and i paraphrase “if you want to know the meaning of a word, ask me” - i don’t know? how do you spell h u b r i s ? But is it too much to ask that the language we use is a little more pliant in service of understanding, or at the very least, an accessible meaning for freedom?

“Strike Three” you’re . . . , for within three short paragraphs on an essay about freedom, i am stymied by legitimate foundation for simple appropriate word usage. Small wonder our youth are in revolt when what we present as a language framework is incohesive - strike 4 ? Apple’s much vaunted RTF schema for writers everywhere just disallowed the word “incohesive.” WTF ? (like fuck this shit, but different)

How do we get to freedom from here? With every fiber of my corporal being i struggle to be free: of greed, hatred and delusion. I seek happiness - the absence of greed, hatred and delusion. Yet here i sit tethered to a delusion that you the reader seek the same - the delusion is mine, not yours. How is this freedom? A man i recently met in the company of my “sainted” mother answered when asked, how does on atone for my people’s behavior toward Black Africans? “I do what i enjoy and want to do more of that.” Can freedom be that simple? G_d the woman i hope you to be, please “make it so.” 

This may be the shortest essay i’ve ever attempted; an irony being that is was the word freedom i'd try? Ma - bless her stars - has a yen to extirpate the word “that” from my vocabulary, is that freedom?

I’ve just eaten a world-class sourdough bread in a non-European country with cacao frijoles and washing it down with whiskey, lemon turmeric, cayenne and beer - is that freedom . ? . i don't know, but it's fun to ask.

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slavery might become demonic if .  .  . 

slavery is demonic - they all lied -
"what, when, where, why, and how" disparity.
Believe me not; ask the kings and queens who died
whispering, dear g_d “I want to be free.”

Quaint i know, talking smack like we don't got
all that stuff right at the end of our wrist?
Can’t help feeling a lot like some robot
pulling threads spun with a sick greedy twist.

Silly me seeing power not possible,
for all you can reflect is what you see.
We are dying; eminently reflectable
Not from what i say, but from what we be.

How fun to see there is no more to find
than some small question in back of your mind.




Saturday, August 20, 2016

discipline / "going down the road" - the sonnet



I now sit in my mother’s dining room in Seal Beach, California after she had been taken to have a basil carcinoma excised from her cheek; I am anxious for her comfort but unwelcome at her side - not by her, but the eldest sibling who has anxiety such that my fantasy is he needs my responsibility to attenuate his discomfort. I am not innocent, nor is he without cause, as is with all estrangement - a circumstance requiring active participation. My conflict, and call for discipline is how to extricate from a destructive family pattern where no one is served - especially not our mother. He sits mute to me having escorted her to and from her procedure. Her overflowing pill dispenser now populated with yet another expensive medication the medical industry uses to keep the dying from death. Irony being the anti-anxiety fix she begins and ends her day with is the only only one she plunders at will when the need for rest is too great. That is self discipline on her part to know what is needed for her rest; thank g_d for small favors. My father however, had a slightly more spartan approach to discipline. While he certainly never beat me to enforce his existential notions, I remember one occasion when quite young where his response to my claims of having vacuumed my room was to take my hand under his on the vacuum and vigorously touch every corner under my desk. Later in life I was to learn this method of education had been a long standing practice of the very loving Balinese tradition. What I took away from his instructional event was a long memory for anything associated with cutting corners - a now defunct euro-centric value for thoroughness and pride in one’s work which the ruling class has upended with shoddy product - the only plausible outcome of today’s anarchistic capitalist monopoly.

I write of discipline out of a deep appreciation for those values imparted to me by my family - all members for each lesson that allows me now sitting in Montevideo, Uruguay to occupy myself with an effort greater than my own comfort - writing. Dorthy Parker — “I hate writing, but love having written.” While in California, I watched some Television and was amazed by the amount of content compared to when I was young, yet, like the products for sale as a result of today’s mass production - volume does not translate to higher quality. If anything the bloodless nature of capitalism has resulted in its singular most pertinent innovation - “planned obsolescence”. For the uninitiated, this expression acknowledges that those responsible for taking your money and providing you product deliberately create defects in their products that force you then to replace those products in a predictable pattern. It is for this reason the computer you upgraded to requires replacement. “Tech experts generally agree a computer should last anywhere between three to five years before needing to be replaced” — Matt Koble. While some may exhort the discipline applied by this twisted ethos is what “builds” the economy by expanding the consumer base; i say bullshit. It is a lack of discipline that has subverted the exchange of value between the consumer and his/her erstwhile providers. The greed of our corporate overlords is the antipathy of discipline and now manifests as the greatest seizure of assets in the past 200 years - a demonstrated lack of restraint. If anything it is the patience, even the survival of humanity which is being put to the test. Fracking is poisoning the water table, throwing dice with the proliferation of genetically modified seed stock is enhancing the capacity of our nutritional products to transport the corporate poison Glyphosate into our planet’s life cycle. 8% of fossil fuel continues to be diverted into the production of “new” plastic when by 2050 it is expected there will be more plastic in the oceans than there are fish. These defects in the much lauded form of provisioning our species - capitalism - is not from discipline, but from unbridled greed.

I understand greed, mostly in a fashion similar to how Leonard Cohen sings of in “We were locked in this kitchen, I took to religion, And I wondered how long she would stay, I needed so much To have nothing to touch, I’ve always been greedy that way.” Somehow the intangible is what my interior hungers for - to make a cogent thought understandable in written form, or the turn of a lady’s cheek expressive as a creative facsimile. Even my vices are of a more impermanent nature, not for any alteration of inherent awareness. but as something of a prod to shake off corrosive socialization that numbs natural freedom for which our consciousness is capable. It has confused me from the time I first learned of Dionysius, and his offspring Bacchus how large parts of our history are full with elixirs and substance whose sole purpose is to jolt the unexamined presumption of normal anything. Einstein had said “There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” It is my belief that Dr. Einstein was not describing any state of bliss to which zealots of all stripes aspire - be it “70 virgins”, “Rapture” or even “Nirvana,” rather those miracles he described are, or are not found from a close study of our world. This activity requires a strict discipline, for we are asked on a daily basis to aver our sight from scabrous aspects of current existence, contrary to any happy depiction of commodities guaranteed to satisfy a hunger never present at birth and which has only become insatiable from  relentless exposure to a false insinuation that whatever you possess is inadequate, be it peace, product or appearance.

Lao Tzu — “Be content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you.” I have read this kindness repeatedly for nearly 50 years, and still find it difficult to fathom. For example, how does one reconcile this concept with violence, hatred, cruelty, greed oppression, etc. . . .? Is is not natural to resist all that is not in service of the greater good? Yet I am finding from actively opposing ills of our world as best I could understand at the time, few if anyone has ever welcomed or wished to consider alternatives. It is a growing conviction of mine that any effort to persuade, dissuade or convince another of anything is futile, yet to keep my mouth shut in the face of obvious stupidity, especially willful stupidity, requires every ounce of discipline i’ve ever gained. There is hope, i pray for the survival of our kind because we have worth. We are not the pale echo of ourselves shown in the ever present self-serving advertisement; there are heroes who daily exert themselves unselfishly loving, and learning to love, the impossible - that hideous grotesque caricature of our once beatific existence. The most powerful affect ever known to our kind is love, nothing of any comparable force has ever accomplished as much, especially not hate. Yet where hate is so easily accessible for a variety of reasons, not the least of which would be the fear which our leaders foist on us in supporting the delusion that sells mechanized death as anything but more death; love has illuminated the fact that peace is our inherent nature, compassion our most noble instinct and happiness our highest aspiration. Nor do i feel compelled to persuade anyone of this truth; it is enough for me to feel it; i’d be lying through my teeth to suggest to you, i’ve arrived at this conclusion through anything but assiduous discipline - regardless of any dictionary definition.

It has been the absence of will which has brought me closer to my objectives than any delusional belief that discipline is best understood by an act of willfulness. If anything, forcing that which is not into existence has resulted in defeat after defeat, while patiently waiting to see what unfolds of its own volition has always yielded the deepest love, the finest expression and the clearest images. Carl Jung has stated “Where love rules there is no will to power, where power rules, there love is lacking. The one is a the shadow of the other,” or put differently by Jimi Hendrix - “When the power of love overcomes the love of power - the world will know peace.” Google (the god of all meaning} defines discipline as “the practice of training people to obey rules or a code of behavior, using punishment to correct disobedience,” yet behavioral science is unequivocal that intermittent positive reinforcement is far and away the more successful method for behavior modification. That the practice of wearing a hair shirt for “mortification of the flesh” has been part of Western tradition is no coincidence, we have been, and are being, punished by unscrupulous spiritual leaders based on their ignorance, not ours. We continue to retrieve baby ducks from sewer drains and exalt the miraculous accomplishments of the limbless amongst us; it is our nature to act with compassion which TAFKAP (may he r . i . p .) so sagely observed as verb, not the adjective which the clerics have subverted into the same language used to murder with effectiveness such that those earning from our slaughter are the sole beneficiaries of humanity’s patience. My objective is to transform that which is intolerable in my existence into a recognizable form that may help others to not feel alone; this ambition comes from a discipline learned within the bosom of my family; i am grateful. Dr. M.L. King Jr. - a scholar warrior of fore observed, “Those who love peace must learn to organize as effectively as those who love war.” I am incapable of altering my family or its concept of me, yet freedom and “on-the-hand-guidance” from loving parts of that same family sustain and encouraged me to learn ways to organize for peace, regardless of any limits my upbringing may have presented. Are we any different than that rhizome which Carl Jung used to describe us the family of [wo]men?

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"going down the road" - the sonnet 

“going down the road” pop often replied
after a broken hip laid him down hard;
his irony survived, for he had died
with well chosen words like any good bard.

I wonder if he found life is a dead end,
or the road we travel is interstellar?
I will not know until i reach that bend,
or g_d answers the question i’d asked her:

“if i live well and peer into the void
with love in my heart; kindness in my soul
and resist all calls to become android,
may i pass beyond with peace as my goal?”

i’m in no hurry to get where i go
to learn what it is no human can know.
  


Wednesday, August 10, 2016

pride / modest shame - the sonnet


Thinking that a snort of grappa will prime the pump in such a way I may drink red wine like the ruling class - without thirst, is a vanity. I am old and can barely afford such delusions - note to the young: don’t try this at home. To write a sentence much less an essay about a topic so deeply rooted in my own pathology is the height of conceit, an excessive aspect of pride, for I struggle with what it means to have pride in oneself - no clue but am learning how to capitalize “I.” This self-conscious affectation is mostly due to the influence of D.E. Tuppins’ jocular admonition, “after me you come first.” The painful lessons of self-respect, however, are rooted i imagine, from belonging to a brood of beautiful people struggling with their own vanities. When i say beautiful, i mean literally - multigenerational homecoming queens, swimming champions, and bomber pilots - all. My own extistence is more ambiguous - cross-eyed with a bald spot the size of a fist spanning the temporal lobe; distractingly loud for compensating from a ruptured eardrum and a weird as fuck personality by default from parsing a 3D world using a 2 dimensional monocular vision .  .  . I share this not as an excuse for poor behavior, but from pride at having got this far life and still be open about defects - like the conceit i will become sober from drinking grappa - an arrogance which by extension morphs into the delusion that essays on pride could be useful to those left alive amongst the last DNA strands of our species. As a proud man, I struggle to find ways to contribute to the outcome of our collective future - not based on any delusion of utility, but because that is what I have been fortunate enough to learn - “do your best, without attachment to the results”(derived from Vedic scripture)- A. Non 

My aged instincts tell me if there is a spiritual force, she is feminine and very funny. For example from what i’ve learned, self-respect requires that one feel self-love, yet all those i’d model appropriate lessons for such are knee-deep in their own issues of exaggerated self-love - the pretty monster, Narcissus. If i live to be a 1,000 year’s old, nothing’s gonna change and i’m gonna be ugly as fuck on the outside, weird as fuck on the inside - and confusing as fuck to all nearby; Madame g_d, i defer to your superior forces, but know this: i’ve learned of the existence of William Blake and mean to permeate my being, my work and my attitude with his irreverence - is that okay? i find i’m proud, but not necessarily stupid; seriously Madame g_d - what the fuck do you want? I’ve done my best, and am surrounded by much beyond my best effort - hate, jealousy, cowardice, greed, .  .  . etc. Nor am i petitioning you for terms of surrender - my time is coming soon enough, and though i may not be at peace, i’m not necessarily not at peace - enough so to mock you as you do me - take your best shot, i did and all i got were three wives, but please guide me - i’m lost and not without heart. When i look to what I can feel good about during my time here on this one of your more innocuous celestial bodies - flat or otherwise, doubt seems to be my only companion, beauty and joy having ditched me between marriages; either 1 , 2 or 3. Still i do my best like any well meaning, hell-bent-for-leather wish-he-had-something-to-be-narcissistic-about aging man in the days of rapture looking for any excuse, lame or otherwise to feel good.  .  . 

Dear Reader, you got this far - so you know how to read .  . well done - try and teach others. Reading was one of the first life gifts that made me question the seeming absolute nature of self-loathing, that there might be more to being alive. Yet as with all things - the price of pleasure comes with a cost - in this case understanding, or more accurately a desire to understand. How is it that all the finest authors, from antiquity to today have been able to plumb the existential bowels of our kind; prepare symbols in an order that permit strangers to share awareness, yet from Hammurabi to Leonard Cohen, our finest literature has not prevented grotesque aberrations like Fukushima, Monsanto or the Donald “T” with access to power over life and death - even that of the continuation of our species? Such considerations kind of make my curious efforts at sobriety and clarity weak, don’t it? Truth is messier, for i’ve been broken so many times one more defeat is nothing. If anything, my earnest hope for some happy outcome to our collective existential cul-de-sac is nearly the height of “conceit”? How can it be possible that a want for one’s kind - people - to endure, conjures images of omnipotence, delusion or worse “vanity”? Truthfully, I essay in a desperate effort to comprehend the pitiless stupidity of our demise, that and fathom my own reality. e.g. I have lived now more than a year without a home when it seems all humanity is being evicted and threatened for its freedom, love, safety - existence. My occupation and companionship during this sojourn have been a series of portraits of remarkably complex women with varying degrees of relatedness to myself in an excessively prideful, not quite conceited effort to see into the beauty of the incomprehensible; small wonder i fantasize about a female g_d who laughs at my foibles. My last wife’s comment on her portrait was “you have to have balls to sit for Joseph.” Given her ties to the gay community, i’ve often wondered at the ambiguity of such a remark. 

The companion sonnet for this essay was to be modesty, yet according to the internet dictionary, shame is higher on the list of antonyms for pride - and once again, i’m confused as fuck. To my thinking shame and modesty are wildly divergent concepts - the latter being a laudable objective, especially in a world full of greedy people using pelf as validation of big shot status. Shame, however is a corrosive residue from poor parenting; educational indoctrination or a blunt behavioral tool for socialization into consumer fodder which like any illness is fair game for healing. The Dalai Lama said, “if you cannot help, at least do no harm,” and my old man Harold Reed Stevens said, “if you’ve got nothing good to say, keep your mouth shut”. I believe them both as well as a strong adherence to Lao Tzu who said, “what is a good man, but a bad man’s lesson; what is a bad man, but a good man’s job?” In the hostel where I have stayed for three months, a conflicted young man spontaneously kissed my neck as a woman might, except his was unbidden, unwelcome. He was consumed by his own confusion. This hostel is in a latino culture with which i have a deep bond with, even familial relationship to, coming from Los Angeles. However, given my nation’s arrogance, I also suffer American guilt by association - sort of like being an old white man in the Philippines where if you haven’t bedded every barely pubescent woman, someone who looks very much like you has. My interpersonal relationships that aren’t historic and sacred, are often tenuous, if there is a storm to be found, the “perfect” one will find me. Rather than knock this boy’s dreams to the ground and step on their oblivious throats - i moved as far away as an architectural remnant of grander days would permit, and in his conceit, he attempted to normalize his fantasy by supervising access to common areas. Witnessing this passion play through the lens of my own prejudice with a limited emotional palette i pulled out the family standby for behavior modification - extinction, or in the vernacular - shunning, “cut them off at the knees”, “pull their ticket”, “know them not”, etc .  .  .

Mute shunning is one of the cruelest realities one can come up against - to lose, in an instant, access to what had been moments ago considerate, positive, nurturing exchanges is shitty. I am not proud of my limited repertoire for responses to intrusion by a world which often seems to make this quiet retreat my go-to protection against behaviors i’ve found can be amazingly aggressive in their indifference to my own excessive sensitivities, but more importantly and for purposes of this essay about boundaries which i remain confused - another hot-button issue in my personal minefield of upbringing having been diagnosed, according to one professional - albeit much too late to be of much help, as the “identified patient”. Ergo, when the external world, which can be quite lazy about its own self-awareness, attempts to project responsibility onto me for realities inconsistent with what i know to be my behavior, i resist; i resist with the same fervor i rely on to examine my own copious faults, and if you think considering one’s own issues of sobriety, gender confusion or concepts of self-worth in a 5-paragraph essay is a cake walk - try it sometime. Perhaps now you have a better sense of what a proud fuck I am? This conceit is not just embarrassing, it’s dangerous, for having come from a family where vanity was a blood sport, sanctimony and self-righteousness were and remain shadow ministers to shadow emperors. Irony begets irony and obviously i’ve yet to convince Madame g_d that modesty is my ambition and humility my divine objective. This delay may be due to my shadow narcissism looking for its day in the sun, or the paradox that to properly conceive my own insignificance it is necessary that my mind grapple with the extent of those nether regions in my apparently, or delusional, expanding self-awareness. 

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modest/shame

how can modest shame be opposite pride?
the dictionary calls them “antonym,“
which makes sense if from guilt one runs to hide;
is there sense in a modest battle hymn?

i sought love from one thirty years younger;
she came chirping to me, rare bird - no shame.
confused me such i thought myself stronger
instead of an aging stallion gone lame

i could feel humiliated, i don’t;
her brave heart sought logic where there was none.
when young i might have resisted, i won’t
she is keen, but must say if we are one.

i am old, wrong and too glad to say no,
if i am damned or redeemed she would know.