There was an expression from the early days of computers - “they are our friends.” Having spent a large portion of my working life in technology, i can guarantee you that was coined by a hipster doofus geek agog with the potential of “his” new toy while talking to the “money man”, who at that time was skeptical and ignorant, but rich and smelling blood in the water. Today our lives are consumed by this exchange because all of the innovation that has followed has been dictated by a single maxim, “how do we (read captains of industry) make money with this contraption. Until that myopic vision is returned back to the will of the people, our lives will never become as simple as the computer technology owners would have you believe. We are now simply data do be modeled for whatever outcome is selected from the myriad of possibilities by who ever has their finger on that trigger. Nor do i use the word trigger without due consideration. Computer technology is now more dangerous to the survival of the free people of this planet than any anonymous nuclear incineration, for from that likely event - eventually scalded, irradiated creatures would emerge and repopulate or re-mutate the planet. The only outcome from humanity’s blithe infatuation with the narcissist screen is a world full of M.T. Suits echoing whatever chamber they emerge from. What technology does today is what the thumb on the scale use to do to working to stiffs trying to buy food, it (computer technology) stiffs us all - all except the rulers. All that technology has allowed for is fewer to take more from larger segments of the population, all the while convincing them what a good a deal they found. Compared to what could have been accomplished with semi-open hearts programming for the good of all, computers are little better than stone hammers cutting basalt; try it sometime and you will know from what i speak. What is simple has changed very little from the first time our species wandered into a grove of fruit trees with fat dumb animals grazing in tall grass, one moves away from loud obnoxious others and gravitates toward quiet loving others. If you don’t believe me, review your blocked list. Is it possible to live a simple life, or at best include simple activities in a complicated life, i am certain. It begins the minute you quiet your mind and ask yourself “what do i want?” . . .
. . . not as in what don’t i have, but as in the memory of planning how to achieve a cherished hope - be that a full spring day of baseball and cool grass or the look on her face when you had surprised her with candy from the wedding you had to attend for your cousin. I remember as a child running for bed to find out what happened in the story i had been reading the night before and then hiding from the lights out command by sneaking a flashlight into bed - i was naughty then, i am naughty now, but far more comfortable having accepted there are consequences for every behavior. It is the same for our world and we are behaving very poorly - there are, and will be vastly more severe consequences which we will encounter them as they arise. If there is a supreme consciousness gazing over our flock, she has demonstrated adequately that hate is a cesspool which when lived in, by or around will cause illness and calamity. The opposite is as irrefutable - love grows from love and every kindness you have ever shown to another has elevated your life and calmed your anxiety, most especially when that act remained anonymous; call me a pollyanna do-gooder if you must, but do so with examples and logic otherwise i will attribute your fuzzy thinking to computer contamination, or cruelty from others for which you have yet to find forgiveness. Just like our earliest predecessors migrating in search of the simple life, we gravitate to calm; our bodies yearn for stasis from good nutrition, right thinking and lots of sex, or exercise if that is all you can find. How we have reached a point in human development where we are pointing fingers at each other screaming “it’s all your fault” as blowback from the miracle of modern technology. As long as you are blaming every other person on the planet for your misery you remain vulnerable to the exhortations of the merchant class - “buy this snake oil, it’ll make your woman horny and your boss a pussycat, more so if you get them to drink it too”.
“I choose to be happy; it is better for my health” - Voltaire
What makes me happy is woman flesh; it is so soft. However, i have also learned that until i became comfortable in my own skin, no matter how much, or how many of her, i made love to she did not feel it. Without learning to show kindness to your own heart all you will ever be able to touch is emptiness. If you cannot find pleasure in the success of another all you will ever feel about your accomplishments is a deep profound sense of lacking - a lurking dissatisfaction - a suspicion that somewhere, someone is having more fun than you are; earning more than you - sleeping with your wife/husband: etc., . etc., etc., . Yet once you have accepted there is no future, no past, no nothing but where you sit picking your nose, your friends - but not your friend’s nose the world is your oyster - literally. You become surrounded by abundance, people’s fury becomes their own and your mistakes and transgressions become your classrooms full of lessons and pretty little girls with freckles named Patsy Donohue who like you because you can swing effortlessly like a monkey, and exactly what in the hell is so wrong with that? We have become so twisted by things and screens that the pleasures of a world without some reflected inducement divined by our previous keystrokes the world has become gray to our eyes, not because the sky has changed, but because we have voluntarily taken up blinders which without the corporate switch having been toggled is not animate or wiggly or shimmering or any of the other bells and whistles the boy blunders of silicon valley have stuffed into the pandora’s box of our age. Harsh you say, no more than working your twenty years to then become a pharmaceutical annuity for a physician class that has sold its soul to Monsanto. Sorry, but in the vernacular - fuck that noise. What is needed for a fulfilled existence? The answer cannot be found through the psychiatric handmaidens to the ruling class - neither of who have a clue. You know what you want, it becomes a question shedding the consumer oriented socialization from our souls however well intentioned - the same emotional straightjacket which facilitates this essay, but frowns on my dancing naked in the moonlight on a beach by myself.
What is left? There is a long haul from cradle to grave during which it is best to fend for oneself, because relying on others for anything other than the joy of human companionship and cooperation is weak and unmanly, or unwomanly depending on your squad. All of the great lessons are only as great as you are able to understand, but the best are those which elude your certainty - like why are we here¿ - explain that to my satisfaction and i’ll treat you to a weekend in the Bahamas, albeit during hurricane season, but a weekend in the Bahamas is a weekend in the Bahamas. Do what you like, and learn to like what you must do. It doesn’t hurt to be well compensated, but that comes with a hook and always will, just ask Mr. Obama. What does it mean to be compensated? If i spend an hour out of my day to stitch a tear in a pair of my favorite shorts, am i more compensated for the satisfaction of keeping a farthing for myself and having my favorite shorts just that much longer than i would be if i succumbed to the implicit threat that if my apparel doesn’t match what i see on the screen, then so too my life will never resemble the Arcadian glades of “OC;” to drive or be driven through my pitiful existence in the powerful machines found on every other page, screen, billboard, sidewalk . . . all nothing more than vast hours of commute and endless reams of bills for those things which showed promise, but ultimately cost more in storage fees or the bother of protracted wars with in-laws over inheritance or association fees for the aging rich person in all of our lives. If it’s not the rich aunt, it’ll be the rent-controlled apartment or family photo 3 generations removed. The only real success you will ever find is the comfort of having done your best to help everyone you’ve ever met without harming the most hated of your enemies - not as simple as it sounds, but what is. The face i am drawing now is one of the saddest, yet open and determined expression i’ve ever seen. To imagine her in full bloom joy, if only within the vivid terrain of my incorrigible imaginations is one of the kindest things i’ve ever done for myself - and now i have either spoiled that feeling for eternity by sharing it with you, or multiplied joy enough to save the world - your call.
How you feel about anything is the only thing over which you have any control, regardless of how powerful you declare yourself to be from chronic media indoctrination. Mr. M.T. Suit was played by his homies into fronting for his tribe, and it is not going to end well - possibly for all of us. But if you can picture the gyrations that it takes for Mr. M.T. Suit to reconcile the slights (the magnitude of which he is only getting a glimpse of because he is too stupid to know better) with his vacuous conceit you might then be able to teach quantum mechanics to kindergartners, so clear would be your thinking. To attribute any reality to powers other than what you have in front of you is my lack of clarity, not yours. What you do next that moves your heart closer to comfort is your power, that it also happens to lighten another’s burden is testimony to your wisdom. I will write a sonnet about “complex”, which happens to have been parsed by the mental health industry to conjure logic about our minds.
“The pendulum of the mind swings between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong.” - C.G. Jung
What is complex, seems to be “nonsense” from the two poles Dr. Jung spoke of, for if we need to resort to things complex to make sense of the unexplainable that is just busy work. Exactly why there is no correct word for dawn at a beautiful waterfall you had hiked five hours the previous day to sleep near - that feeling is yours forever and indescribable. Albert Einstein had said to “make it simple, but not simpler”, but he may have also been able to teach quantum mechanics to kindergartners. We are possibly the last of our species - a species whose unfettered leaders, at the apex of its civilization believe an algorithm, however elegant, is capable of comprehending the inexpressible. We could have been great friends with computers just like we all could have been great friends to Mr. M.T. Suit had there been the proper programming, but as William Shakespeare said so well “aye, therein lies the rub.” If you got an itch, scratch it; unless of course the itch is some punk ass mosquito whining for attention. In which case, just like commercials and mute buttons they fit hand and glove, frick and frack - splinter and knot head, we decide to scratch or not until the next itch demands a decision from us to love or love more.
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-
complex - a sonnet
complex is what is not simple.
everything’s simple or complexs’ a myth;
But then your complex was cured by a pill,
or found someplace that it should not end with.
why bother making what is hard harder¿
alias - “dollar waiting on a dime.
it gets down to the gut - what is hunger?
if it does not feed you, why waste the time¿
time is all you have - another fiction.
what’s then left to you from cradle to grave?
Time does nothing but create more friction
in lives that end being “one more thing to pave.”
we are just passing through what seems complex
but’ll never be explained by scrolling text . . .
jts 11/20/2017
http://stoneartist.com
reprinted with permission - all rights reserved
No comments:
Post a Comment