loss - the essay / gain - a sonnet

“of all the things I’ve lost, the thing I miss the most is my mind” - A. Nonymous

I came home yesterday after an unexpected trip into town involving multiple busses and colectivo taxis only to find my keys gone. I rent, and relations with the landlords had been at a low ebb - it was not a happy moment. Once inside, i learned that the visa i believed to be out of reach was much nearer. Having two such contrary experiences in such proximity to each other can be disconcerting - whether to “laugh or cry” comes to mind. Bob Dylan has written “When you think you’ve lost everything, you find out you can always lose a little more.” I will rue his passing, not so much for myself because my own time is not so very far away, but for the loss to the world of such much needed wisdom about our human existence. My home has locks and keys for every door and most of the windows contain bars. My landlords are caring people making the most of a frontier experience, and the wealth of locking mechanisms reflect their concerns. It is not nice to have things taking away from you. However this is running counter to many things i am trying to understand about attachment and what is important. After my father passed away, i was in deep denial about the effect his death had on me. Nearly a decade later i am only beginning to recognize my impulse to repress many feelings, not just grief. It is as though the pain finds a way to be felt, regardless of any brave homilies one might evoke to get to the other side of discomfort. Yet with awareness and acknowledgement of pain comes growth. It is as though by the act of embracing discomfort one gains possession of a ghost, or more accurately light in a dark region of the soul.

According to my understanding Buddha said life is suffering, and that the cause of suffering is attachment. I admire Buddha very much, but do not consider myself a Buddhist - i’d be afraid of the attachment. Nor am i enamored of “things,” preferring a warm hearted woman to any cold beer i’ve ever had. G_d in her tender mercies made sure i learned attachment to a warm heart can be as lethal as any cold beer, only more so. The confusion of this lesson still resonates in distant parts of my being. The only solution i’ve found as yet is to be the warm heart for those still seeking what cannot be owned. Anymore, i’m losing confidence that anything in this material plane can be owned, including the mortal coil we all shuffle off. So how is it we as humans have dug ourselves this bottomless pit of violence and despair based on ownership? What is discernible about those who have achieved great possession, be it wealth, power or skill is the tangible sense of fear. It is as though beyond all appearances to the contrary the kernel of emptiness from such a quest rises like a cloud of smoke looking for fire. In the news Tiger Woods the golf prodigy was shown in a booking photo for drunk driving looking forlorn and haggard; i empathize, for i know that look well. However, there is nothing i can do to reverse that tape back to the Mike Douglas show when 2 year-old Tiger father was paraded by his father like a trained seal. Were that possible, i’d be tempted to strenuously object to Tiger’s father hijacking what didn’t belong to him - the happiness of another. Nor is this any of my business outside of provoking thought about possession and loss.

Just now i offered cold water to the harried half of my landlord’s team - she is bushwacking the immense yard they have secured for themselves through dogged determination and great bravery. Where we live can be quite hot, and from personal experience at bushwacking i believe in the power of cold water during great exertion - she declined; i can only try to understand. She may not have been thirsty, or had other reasons to decline. If i was strongly attached to dharma, i could feel much different about her rejection and have on many similar occasions. Part of my neurosis is to give compulsively. It may be from what i feel is empty within myself - kindness in this case. In many other instances, it is a spontaneous urge to help, and it doesn’t much matter who. What does matter is why. I am constantly surprised how often my help is declined, for example my friend whom i accompanied to town (in order to lose my keys) bought 4 large spools of yarn for his weaving business, i offered to share the burden in our journey back to the village, which he declined. It could be the logic of interpersonal dynamics demanding that i help myself, or it could be that i am not seeing clearly the needs of others - I don’t know. Even this writing labor of love is tainted by the confusion of motivation. Do I press on paragraph after paragraph due to some vain effort to vanquish a self-imposed working solitude with an illusion of high minded purpose¿ If so, does that reflect my conflict with dharma, or a fundamental lack of understanding about “good works”¿ There seems to be a huge disconnect in logic between what i am willing to do of free will with that of circumstances where i feel manipulated into giving, and i am confused.

My same living circumstance includes a metal frame veranda that has been waiting 3 months for a bamboo covering. Initially, i was taken out into the local fields in search of bamboo after a weekly shopping excursion. I felt resentful and hostile that my time was being taken from me without consultation at a time when i was in a pitched battle with a drawing project - the insinuation that the bulk of this effort was to fall in my lap became apparent soon enough; i balked. Now 3 months later, the bamboo was cut and delivered to the lawn in front of my casitas. 3 of us waded into the pile stripping stalks from the poles. I joined in, because that is how i’m built. It came time to break in the heat of the day; however three days later when there was no forward progress stripping stalks, i felt compelled to assume this responsibility, why is that¿ I’d convinced myself that it was for my domicile, so it was logical to contribute - but that is personally dishonest; invariably my willingness to extend myself in a fair fashion with this couple is not reciprocated. Is that loss or theft¿ What is it that i am attached to which is provoking such existential confusion, even motivating me to move elsewhere in the delusion that anything anywhere else will be different¿ Weeks earlier a new tenant and i were separated from the landlords during the weekly shopping excursion, i suggested she call them; she handed me her phone and i explained to the landlords we’d be too late for any rendezvous. When she and i returned to her car, she discovered her phone gone and became apoplectic accusing me of leaving her phone or worst taking it.

I liked this lady, and found myself shutting down to her, even to my living circumstances which prior to this had been tolerable. Meanwhile my sister introduced a logistical wrinkle for a family heirloom that soured for the time being - these are objects and buildings dislocating relations between people. Has it always been this way with humans¿ My last communication to my sister was asking if she knew our brother had, or was about to have major surgery - i’ve not heard back. How has it come about that inanimate objects have gained precedence over human emotion¿ Have we gained anything in a world of locks, heirlooms or attachment to conditions of success¿ Our wars increase and our future existence has become uncertain. Happiness has become a business and self knowledge a fearful domain remedied by more expense paid to professionals. What if there was no such thing as loss¿ What would happen if we listened to the wise, and trained ourselves to value nothing more than the ability to help another for no other reason than the certain knowledge that the only value of any worth is an open contribution to the wellbeing of another¿ There certainly was another time in our human existence that this was certainly true, otherwise you would not be reading for the simple reason our species would not have survived as long as it has. I cannot protect myself from loss, not by currying favor with strangers under the guise of dharma or amassing weapons, ammunition and impenetrable barriers between myself and others. The best thing i can see for me to do is gently mine the depths of my own confusion with whatever method or means that reveals more of the emerging self that remains warm and loving toward others under the broadest spectrum of circumstance.

  

+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-

gain - a sonnet

how did i come out ahead with such pain¿

who’d want to look a gift horse in the mouth?

why does so much strife accompany gain¿

do all freebies become vet bills going south¿

how is yoking the young to clocks worthwhile

when some take more walking to their cars than 

some earn in a lifetime lifting “the” pile?

-you paying for that last ride in the van¿

will any human become a star echo?

was your last great effort worth all the time 

it took away from watching your child grow,

or prevent your body from becoming slime¿

will words of any kind ever favor

what we have lost by our worst behavior?

  

jts 060917

http://josephtstevens.blogspot.com 

reprinted with permission - all rights reserved 

∞

man - an essay / woman - the sonnet

Percy Sledge is playing and it is raining - likely the next 10 or so days. I find it difficult to publish my last essay on ma, not because i feel shame for what i’ve written as honestly as i know, but because i have concern that it may cause harm to another. I consider myself fortunate to have such reservations in a world seemingly gorged on blood. I will reluctantly post my thoughts about my parent, for that is what i have grown to believe men do - the difficult thing. It is difficult to know what criteria to apply when fulfilling such an open ended obligation, however honestly acquired. Do i, as is done every day by the U.S. Military, slaughter scores of innocents to protect the lives of a handful of aristocratic oil executives, or do i give up my life in the name of a principle i cherish, such as peace - as was done recently by very brave souls in Portland Oregon¿ Who is to say what is manly¿ Is it the father that beats his son senseless, because that is how the father was raised, and it is all he knows? Or is it that child who, when grown, understands the mindless stupidity of violence and like a blind person in a maze feels his way toward a different life without knowing where it will lead¿ Is that the essence of courage, to acknowledge a wrong you know in your heart to be foul, and rather than adhere to a known condition, strike out for untrammeled paths searching for a solution¿ I don’t know. I do know that if we as a species do not come up with a more benign appreciation for strength we’ve come to understand as “might is right”, then we are doomed.

I understand fear, so i know what it means to want to be scary like the hissing cobra with it’s hood, or the snarling dog backed into a corner with its dander up. That bluff has worked from time to time, though the damage it has done to my deeper purpose may not heal before i shuffle off this mortal coil. Can’t say when i first understood the power of love, or that i understand it now. What i do know is the difference between love and hate, having been consumed by both at different times - sometimes for the same reason. Yeah, you guessed it, women - ain’t she magic - lucky men. Is luck enough, not by a long shot. Is work the answer¿ If it is, the advent of robotics is about to put a lot of us shit out of luck. Is it intellect that distinguishes us from the other species¿ Tell that to the whales and other marine mammals possessing beyond keen hearing having their acoustic capabilities blown to smithereens by technology developed by very, very smart humans. Once on a bus in Bali, i was holding forth with my reservations about the odds of human survival to an urbane French journalist who looked at me and quipped, “we will survive, because of greed.” For the longest time, i wanted to believe; his comment gave me hope. As many have learned, or hopefully learned, the audacity of hope is not enough. It will require a resolve that we have not yet witnessed as a species. We must resolve to help the other survive. If we cling to the notion of survival based on the perfectly natural concept of self vs other, we like a tree comprised of a gazillion independent cells each working entirely on its own behalf will wither and die before it ever reaches the light of day - not unlike this evolutionary dead end at which we as a species have now arrived.

The antiquated notion for any manner of definition about gender which if understood and applied correctly will result in a life of ease, riches and abundant blessings is laughable, but not funny. My own father had very definite ideas about what it means to be a man, replying to my young question about how to know when a woman loves you - “when she acquiesces.” Like myself, he was a hopeless romantic in many ways; i do not share this with embarrassment, but to openly challenge the myth of fixed and immutable values - a gift from my father that keeps on giving. However, it is important to distinguish between the circumstantial ethics all the rage in leadership circles today and the ability to openly and honestly examine one’s own beliefs. The cut-and-paste ethos permitting one segment of our civilization to ravage at will is a sleight of hand like the shell game with more than one pea. When it came time for pop to reexamine his beliefs, he employed logic and fairness, acquiescing himself thoughtfully to a changing landscape; what he did not do was employ one set of values for himself and another for others - that to me is honor. When he was faced with injury or personal setback, he would look deeper into his core beliefs for understanding and awareness, rather than abandon personal responsibility which was for him the keys to the kingdom of personal development - a domain he occupied with gusto, reflected in his wry unrelenting embrace for fun laced with meaning - meaning being the key. So strong was his need to understand, and to help others, he’d grasp an unwitting guest by the lapels and pull them closer to ask “why are you here on earth?”

How many of us have come to terms with this question, much less inspired others to seek their own answer¿ I resort to repeating anecdotes from pa attempting to parse meaning from mayhem - it may not bear fruit for anyone but myself, and that is just enough. I’ve come to understand that the opinion of others, while helpful for an instant, has little bearing on the personal struggle for discipline necessary to sift through any history, searching for bits and pieces of existence which when glued together become a collage recognizable to others as a useful part of existence. While effort can, at times, be too much fun, it still requires a persistence not unlike lugging a sled to the top of the hill for the thrill of riding down, or the repair of a flat bicycle tire knowing how much pleasure can be found in-between flat tires. The further i get from these pleasant activities, the less meaningful the youthful objectives of fame and fortune become. My sense is any appeal to ego for acclaim is the bait used by the ruling class to defang and attenuate the danger of the unrestrained creative impulse. What would happen if people occupied themselves with no other consideration than exploring the highest quality artistic product conceivable, devoid of financial concerns¿ What if criteria for greatness was no longer patronage, but the simple self satisfaction of confronting the tabula rasa unafraid or better yet - anything playfully¿ What if that same quality of application became the criteria for any endeavor, be it building a wagon, a house or even a civilization¿ I don’t know.

I do know that if this concept of enjoyment was expanded to include the pleasure found in helping another accomplish a similar personal objective, we would become a transfigured creature pulled up from the bile and chimera of ceaseless war which our corporate overlords are using to keep us in a constant state of exhaustion. Don’t believe me, ask yourself where have you ever been well served by your hate, and if you’re feeling up for a real struggle, tell me honestly how that experience feels contrasted with the exhilaration of your first love, even 2nd or third if you’ve been as lucky as i. It is not the knowing that is of any use, that much is clear, for we all understand that Jesus gave up his life for our sins and that Muhammad is the only prophet and still we are at each others throats, killing under the guise of love - that is not love. Love is what provokes me to address strangers in vain, advocating that they look into their hearts and discover what it takes for them to feel good about what they do. Is it the best¿ Ask me if i give a fuck - i will not. The notion that one is responsible for the feelings of any other person is a false premise. If one chooses to torment and sow discord, that will become apparent soon enough, and why would i employ one second of my life to dissuade or even rebuke such an asinine objective - where would one begin¿ The very best i can accomplish is to assume my responsibilities toward the life so generously provided me to see what cannot be known about my essence by doing daily those things that bring me pleasure in the irrational but fondly held faith i may catch a glimpse of myself through the love of other.   

+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-

woman - the sonnet

women - can’t live with ‘em, and can’t shoot ‘em

just as well ma taught me respect - beats jail,

besides cacti have a fragrant blossom.

though its thorny leaves tend to the frail.

it’s the middle ground that is so much fun.

laughing hard with a woman is as though

the world was rain and she was the first sun

crying too, one can learn - just watch her go.

please hear only questions i am sowing

to explain my solitary circumstance.

the only facts are dames themselves crowing-

“shit talking” just confuses balls with pants.

know this - if your game’s faking humility,

you'll likely learn the meaning of frailty.

jts 060117

http://JosephTStevens.blogspot.com 

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com

all rights reserved 

∞

ma - the essay / pa - a sonnet

“All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That’s his.” - Oscar Wilde

I had decided on the subject of this essay as i woke, including the quote above. Just prior to writing, i received an email from my sister. She wants to arrange possession of a family heirloom for her son; that he didn’t invite me to his wedding still smarts; that he wouldn’t arrange his own acquisition is sad; the fact that she will provide movers to pick up and deliver is curious. Without information, i can only experience my feeling, which is toward a sibling who wants to take something from me without the courtesy of looking in my eyes. After one Thanksgiving dinner at a Joshua Tree home - a home which said sister subsequently procured from ma without any family discussion, save that between her and ma, i was preparing a plate of food to bring to Iceberg Slim’s daughter who i worked with in a Los Angeles brokerage office. My sister not so surreptitiously complained to ma, as though i was taking food out of my sister’s mouth. Ma rejected this objection - sadly i fear for the sole purpose of smoothing the way por moi avec un petite femme. However it may have been at just that instant my concept of ma began to deepen. Not because it might have been pity motivating her (fuck that), but for demonstrating an equity from her of which i’ve not seen enough. Ma has always been hard nosed with good reason. She raised four strong personalities during the fractious 60’s and loosed herself from what she had come to believe as a flawed marriage not in her best interest. Ma has always held her interests in high esteem, which in the era of June Cleaver, Father Knows Best and the Donna Reed Show had been more than confusing. Somehow ma and her finely tuned antennae had anticipated Gloria Steinem (CIA operative) and the real need for a review of modern gender roles. Ma saw opportunity in these shifting social dynamics to better her station and to that end, sacrificed much, though not without paying through the nose. She took on a grueling 10 year tenure as a middle school art teacher, which allowed me to leave home at age 15 (read as door locks changed). Her work included 5 periods of 50 pupils from Newport Beach, CA - the most privileged children in the country. It was, as i imagine now, as close to hell on earth as one might want to find.

The gamble was worth it, for she was delivered by the universe into a loving union with the CEO of an insurance brokerage firm - she had arrived in nirvana. At least as close to nirvana a woman could grapple with who spent her adolescent summers with her father, an itinerant miner in a dirt floor house to a service station he ran in the desert of Nevada circa 1940’s. I am sitting here trying to sift through conflicting emotions in an effort to understand this woman free of personal hurt and reservations one might learn as a boy going toe-to-toe with an understandably enraged self-actualizing adult. While she was teaching, i was just one other prong on the fork - a confused man-child. I feel great compassion for her through the lens of my own pain looking into the telescope of time. She had the gall to buck a system that was just then beginning to show the signs of the collapse which now surrounds us; that her early depravation seems to have informed her struggle more than any other factor is simply unfortunate for the world, for she was, and remains an incredibly intelligent, skilled and resourceful woman in a world of great need for such qualities. To see her today trapped in her gilded cage, under the protection of the eldest son. What figures more importantly for me is the effort to understand the flaws of my mother in terms of envy she expresses regarding my father. She had been duty-bound to disparage him for nearly the full of her post divorce life, lest her escape into abundance be noted by anyone as anything less than serendipity. I find common cause and commiserate her confusion at having gotten all she ostensibly asked for only to find emptiness, and still my admiration for her grows. All of the protections she had put in place to protect her from the elements, from me, from poverty, from all that was to blame for any misery in her life have only become mirrors reflecting the mirage of her own fears - a cage trapping her.

But the imprisonment of age has not daunted her, if anything it has provided her a sanctuary in which to plumb her own depths somewhat free of the vanities of beauty, though still shrouded in the trappings of wealth - glitter for those who remain yoked to such illusions. There is no question that my own reservations about wealth and power may be little more than envy - reaction formation of one shoved aside by family-order and greed; that my fascination for beautiful women could be the cloying residue of a rebuked younger brother; twisted yearning of a motherless child; or it may just be really neat to admire beauty through the viscera of art; i wish it were that simple, especially for my mother and sister. Ma has never given up hope i might improve even helping me to mitigate my intransigence - a character flaw i could do well without, but then that admonition comes from a woman who demanded that my siblings, or anyone for that matter, share her opinion regarding my stubbornness, or any opinion of hers for that matter - in a quietly intransigent manner; ironically it is likely her perseverance which i modeled. What is more troubling and difficult to distinguish is the role of disparagement in her world view. Her own father, my namesake, was largely absent from her life, though her mother made the very progressive decision for them to spend time together. Her mother a genteel southern belle married grandpa the much older miner, and then with three children in tow and few prospects on the horizon bailed for the greener pastures of life with my maiden aunt - the well-to-do career civil servant who had a dim view of my grandfather the “rough cobb” yankee. The further i remove myself from family, the more i subscribe to intergenerational pathology, which if true is remarkably encouraging, as well as damming in its mechanics. For example, were my failing to be merely intransigence, self loathing would not have become my demon to befriend in grudging admiration in order to become free. As i picture my siblings, they have been encouraged to see their strengths contrasted against my manifold faults, or illusionary exalted power depending on which side of the bed one rises - vice versa. The confusion of such exaggerated capacity or defects about anyone, impairs the ability to peer more deeply into cherished convictions about one’s own conceit.

In my family, if it doesn’t square with the party line, personal expression is a verboten behavior. So like all myopic writers expressing eternal truths, i resort to impulse power - the harder they come, the harder they fall; or in this case the more you want me to shut up, the more i want to say. When all of ma’s self-made turbulence manifested in a collapse at her teaching position, i returned home from school as the medics were leaving; after some hours of knowing little more than ma had collapsed, my sister came out of the closed room and walking down the darkened hall telling me, “well I hope you’re happy now.” Ma’s collapse was not my fault then, nor is harm to her my doing now - my solitary dialogue with this demon of destruction does not bode well for me, my siblings or our collective awareness; i hear now the cousin demon of self loathing clenching at my gut screaming - let me out, let me out, and all i can do is reassure these kindly internal monsters they have not committed mayhem, and would they please come up with something more constructive than “y’all are fucks”. The people i’m describing are not evil, they are my family. I am, we, are not guilty of anything more than being confused humans doing their best. During this tumultuous growing up time, ma was adamant that psychology would verify all she felt and went to great lengths to confirm her suspicions - not terribly different than this sanctimonious diatribe ostensibly written for the purpose of honoring a complex relationship with a parent. It is the hazy outlines of awkward moments coming into focus which keep me plugging toward a deeper understanding of ma’s being and the prism of light that is her family; for example there is a startled look in her eye after an embrace when i have asked “why does it feel like you are pushing me away when we hug¿” It is the difficult questions i ask, and which she accepts after a fashion, that give me heart, for without the ability to bring to fruition the integration of one’s feeling, what good are sensibilities?

Ma has come to accept that i will not accede to a delusional deconstruction of family, so when she bemoans the standoff my siblings and i enjoy by waxing nostalgic - “my family never had this kind of .  . . “ as a good son i feel honor bound to gently point out that she did not speak to her sister for 20 years. I’m altogether too certain it is the instinct of my siblings to attribute anything but kindness to such a remark. I believe they use their convictions about me as justification for feelings they have chosen. I’m struggling for a different approach - ma is not a saint - a magnificent powerful woman, but no saint, anymore than i am as you can read in this scandalous expose. From this, i accept that i will never get all that i want or ask for from ma, much less, family or the world, but more importantly, if i am to learn how to love, it must be based on what is, not for some state of things to be. I have learned something; i can love ma. This one lesson in life thus far is worth more to me than anything i’ve learned. What i have found from this decision, is a woman of vast worth who is sitting beached by an unkindness of her own making. At a time in her life when she could be honing all the extraordinary skills she has gained tooth and nail during a long exciting existence, she sits weighted by some erroneous delusion that either her favorites are exalted without flaw, or she failed in some way; her children have failed, or her housekeeper is .  . .  Her sensibilities are delicate, and she has imparted much to each of us which: but great sensitivity is an odious condition without a free and open embrace of all it can achieve - good and bad. Sensitivity can be confused with reality; reality is flawed, it is intractable, relentless in its slog toward eternity. Sensitivity is dynamic, it can become an urge to quiet an infant’s discomfort, or provide the safe feeling of truth in the midst of lies, or even demand love toward siblings whose behavior doesn’t meet one’s high standards of excellence. Sensitivity can lead one to understanding or plunge one to the depths of delusion, whereas strength most often results in exhaustion. I hope as ma fades toward her destiny that she feels the understanding which her strength has encouraged me to learn and allowed her daughter to achieve.

post script: to anyone reading this as an indictment of people i know to be doing their best and who are not present to defend themselves - the fault is my own for not being more clear that the struggle i’ve attempted to describe herein is love and nothing more.

+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-

pa - a sonnet

pa was a poet of finer meaning

than found in most amateur poetry.

he’d call bullshit like a judge in hearing-

heard enough times, you’d know what’s up a tree.

his feelings were deep and not always clear

so reading his soul was more than a treat,

it was a channel to one you held dear.

dumb luck he was left alone with just feet.

lines did not fill him enough in the end

the measure of his steps walked off the page.

but like some minstrel of yore; he’d just bend,

that, or i could not read his change of age.

matters not; what does - is you’ve read one more.
poetry for him was just life at the core.

jts 053017

http://stoneartist.com 

reprinted with permission - all rights reserved