will - an essay / acceptance - the sonnet

I was fired today (sort of - let go, asked to come back if .  .  .) from my volunteer position - nor was it the first time someone has told me that i don’t help. I’m pretty sure it has something to do with my willfulness. I don’t perceive impediments clearly and so become insensitive when my focus becomes willful. It is a character defect which falls into the category of paradox. I read this morning the indigenous people of Chiapas are being hounded into the forest by armed thugs - it is impossible to not object to such senseless violence toward other human beings, yet i may have just now called down the heat to my own, too close, orbit. Fuck ‘em - they is running dogs for the same thugs who have superheated our atmosphere just to own fast cars that gets them laid, or laughed at, depending on the sophistication of the lady. 

C.G. Jung - “Where love rules, there is no will to power, and where power predominates, love is lacking.”

I am finishing a drawing i’ve worked on for 4+ months; it would be a much different drawing, had i stopped at any number of times my flagging will had dictated. It is difficult to know when there is nothing more the work can yield, but i am finding my orientation toward my product does not fit many paradigms. The difficulty is in how to understand willfulness as it relates to the process of creation. When my schedule changed this morning, my assignment did not. I write once a week, and find, like most things, when you do something enough - shit happens. Structured time was recommended too me early on, and has been a boon to making shit happen. It is the yield, that puzzles me. Many of my brethren chose to have the work pay the freight - a choice i find fraught with conflicts of interest. I chafe at the inclination of patrons to believe they have any role in my creative process, and my hope is that if anyone ever buys what i have made, it will be because it contributes to what they understand about their world. My sense of the art market is that it is off the rails like most other commodifiable intangibles. The indigenous people of Chiapas are not understood as tangible parts of the economic paradigm and so like forested acres impeding the infinite growth model of modern economics, they are mowed down.

My concern about calling down the heat is a valid one during these days of eviscerating liberty - but is well worth any risk, for what’s one more extirpated malcontent. But before i’m spit out like so much grit, would someone please explain to me how the willfulness of a handful of High Net Worth Individuals (HNWI) became avatars for the human spirit seemingly through no more than ad fodder, while multitudes of humans are condemned for believing in the sanctity of our living world and its values developed over millenniums of human development. Jung believed in an archetype human state, once referring to our generations as rhizome:

C.G. Jung - “… Yet I have never lost a sense of something that lives and endures underneath the eternal flux.  What we see is the blossom which passes. The rhizome remains” 

I believe human will very much resembles this notion, while philosophers have commandeered the model rhizome to assist the overworked, undereducated drone programmers formulating pathways for the ever enlarging computer framework which the more creative of the digital empresarios have deemed “artificial intelligence” - why not, fake intelligence - we got make believe everything else. The trouble being, is to whose will does this intelligence apply itself. I know for certain zucky has never given a fair ear to what i would like to see on fb, rather his conceit is what he thinks he can fathom from my clicks with which to compile some proximity of my intent - bullshit. The first thing i was taught about computer science is to find out what the user wants, but this was in the days before your keystrokes had been commodified. The rhizome of our world that is currently being nurtured is not predicated on the will of humanity, but the will those HNWI who can pay for what the computer apparatus is told to do. 

I am far enough along in my failures to understand some of the lessons which led me to begin doubting the worth of will, most especially the flawed concept of will over another human being. It is enough of a struggle just to attempt my own self-control to the degree i cause no harm to anyone, most especially myself as the ever apt D.E. Tuppins of Detroit remarked “after me, you come first.” Yet without will, i would not attempt this sharing with you. Yes, i hope to learn through the writing process more about will than i did when i began; and yes it is necessary to accept there is much about will, that i do not understand, so how am i to share with you what i don’t know myself¿

Lao Tzu - “People usually fail when they are on the verge of success. So give as much care to the end as to the beginning. Then there will be no failure. 

This value of perseverance Lao Tzu articulated so well has been misconstrued, and i would doubt seriously if it has found its way into any algorithmic wisdom. My sense of the drawing i now struggle with about when to stop, resembles more Lao Tzu’s admonition than any economic insight. Put differently, the best work is accomplished when it is only the pencil point and the paper surface, minus the ego interlocutor. Ego asks questions like “will they like it, will it sell, is it worthy etc., etc., etc.” When i feel present with what she was looking at such that i can begin to try and understand what she might have felt, it then becomes the beginning of the drawing and i am only concerned with a better understanding of my feeling about the person and place, not whether i can do it, but how can i do it?

Nor is the willfulness involved in writing much different; i sometimes have a vague idea about what to write, and then veer from anything that smacks of telling another what to think. It’s a method of leashing the internal editor while letting the cat out of the bag, so to speak. My issue with systems which do not account for the human in a respectful and considerate fashion exactly mirror my own struggles with will; i will move heaven and earth to learn self-control, but will wage eternal and protracted warfare with anyone who wishes to tell me what i must do - fucking paradoxes - can’t live with ‘em, and you can’t shoot ‘em. It is also for this reason war is an anathema to me, like not giving a shit whether you understand words i use or not - war is not my problem, yet my only problem. As long as humans are conned into believing that the chum you are in the foxhole with dodging incoming rounds is any less valuable to you than the person lodging incoming at you - we as a species are doomed. What is sad, is how close we are to crossing the threshold toward a mutual awareness of our common enemies - greed, hatred and delusion as well as those who would advance these self defeating values as helpful for our collective future. 

Dwight D. Eisenhower “… we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influences, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”

This was a the last republican to balance the budget and the supreme allied commander at the end of WWII, a willful man who was also black. At the time the Nazi economic model presented a threat to the emerging democratic paradigm. With 20/20 hindsight it is clear we quit that war just before success otherwise we might have been better positioned to survive the corporate putsch we are now facing. The problem is that our enemy is no longer the other guy, i have no problem with people being wealthy; i object when that silly ambition becomes justification for destroying my world. Mr. M.T. Suit is threatening to do just that, and i’m not even black, muslim, korean, indian or gay. The people who have conceived the treadmill on which our world is exhausting itself have no concept of personal will, otherwise they would have curtailed their avarice long ago. While those who side with humanity have been convinced if they could only be rich, and selfish and able to control others - existence would be a delight. 

I have found my peace, and sadly it more closely resembles war, except the struggle lies within my own heart. I will myself away from hate, from greed and i demand clarity from my purpose. I cannot know what another person is facing, whether they are more worthy of survival than i, or even whether they want my seat in the lifeboat, but i know that no one gets out a alive and i would rather my last feelings on earth be from the warmth of helping another, rather than that scabrous unrelenting fear of who else is gonna try and take my seat. We are a capable people, but only in so far as our personal ambition meshes with a grander design - one in which the openness of youth is honored with a learning environment that respects their hunger for personal growth and is not a foil to obscure some more sinister purpose of indoctrination into a consumer maze ending in addiction to objects that leech the very joy of life from the sinews of their soul - one where families are not torn apart by poverty or greed by ill-conceived social systems meant only to keep them serviceable as cogs in a factory - one in which the aged and infirm are helped in anyway that relieves the suffering inherent to such states.

Michel de Montaigne - “Of all the virtues life confers on us, contempt of death is one of the greatest. The premeditation of death is the premeditation of liberty. He who has learned to die has forgot to serve”

There is an irony that the promise of everlasting life held dear by the waring factions of our world has never, to anyone’s certain knowledge, justified the taking of one life over another. Even if it were true that the right adherence to the right idea would guarantee a seat in the life raft of “ever after”, who is to say that the person you just whacked wasn’t g_d’s own child - it’s happened before, and from my experience - what happens once, happens twice and so on and so forth; or better yet, your theoretically appalling violence just split a demon into two demons - each twice as venomous as the original - talk about your conundrums. Creating art or writing does not deliver me from strife, rather it helps me to understand the limits of my own will, for no matter how clearly i may perceive a beautiful thing, i have learned that any effort however determined will fall short of depiction; and however logical an idea may seem to me when attempting to formulate a way to express that idea clearly enough to be easily shared - it all sounds like gibberish until long after the fact when the panic of expression has folded its way back into the dull suffering we are all searching to control - somehow, some way. My will may not have been entirely beaten into submission yet, but it certainly is more mindful of what it nurtures and what don’t, for if you ain’t loving - you ain’t payin’ attention - good luck to us all - invest your assets wisely.

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acceptance - the sonnet

acceptance is never just happenstance,

by definition it’s a decision

always the right one, and never by chance

though times it results in devastation.

is Mr. M.T. Suit the one leading?

i don’t know where he’s going - we won’t meet

mostly because i do not serve a king-

that he’s a rich fool, just makes it more sweet.

i accept the miracle of what’s next

having no idea what that’ll be is fun;

pretty sure it won’t be found in a text,

might be from the business end of a gun

i won’t pull that trigger, it’s the wrong end-

our future will be made by how we blend.

jts 12/11/2017

http://josephtstevens.blogspot.com 

reprinted with permission - all rights reserved 

you are nothing - an essay / and everything - the sonnet

The expression “you are nothing” could be understood as a harsh condemnation of all for which you believe about yourself, yet according to the scientists in our midst, our universe is comprised of 99% dark matter - a substance which they are at a loss to describe. Having suckled at your mother’s tit such information may be more than unwelcome, but if your have been bombed day and night for the better part of your life, this idea may not seem quite so foreign. The conceit that our world, our homes or even our ideas are at the center of the universe is easily forgiven when contrasted with the enormous distance between each of us or between the object of our desires and our satisfaction. I have sought refuge from the isolation of my own skin by attempting to understand what another might feel; my hope of course is to find something in common. However, regardless of how much i have found in common with others, i have yet to meet someone who is content with being nothing. This is not to say my ambition in life is to become nothing, but rather to understand more fully the implications of being what i am - nothing. Many reading that statement might be motivated correct such a heretical self opinion, but i would have to wonder why. I can appreciate the despair of emptiness but am more curious what it must be like to feel kinship with dark matter. Clearly the leaders of the planet have good reason to keep the mass of humanity apart, but that hasn’t stopped many to seek common cause if only for our mutual survival, but what does that mean - survival? What makes capitalism so attractive to the lazy amongst is its plug and play aspect, find what others hunger for and corner the market - you’re set for life. The razor’s edge which the capitalists walk, however means they must somehow convince you they care about what you hunger for, that or convince they know better than you what you are hungry for - which is currently the sorry state of our economy.

A pretty amazing feat for a planet comprised of 96% dark matter, but when you think about it 96% of what is bought can hardly be explained - sort of like we are buying nothing for everything. Maybe the capitalists are not as dumb as they appear from a distance. They damn sure have a lot of nothing, and clearly want more. What i’m not so sure about is spending the better part of my life struggling to acquire something that i don’t understand. I like the idea of being happy, and choose to do so at every turn. Writing for example - the process can be quite disconcerting, but to go back and read something you felt deeply enough about to take the time and formulate what you hope is a cogent discussion which others might understand - that can be quite nice, most especially if it makes sense when reading through the lens of time. Lao Tzu says to be content with what you have and the whole world belongs to you. That is an enormous prospect, certainly much greater if you subscribe to the expanding universe model of our world as opposed to the various beliefs based on end-of-life concepts mostly favoring the preservation of self. I distrust any state of mind feverishly clung to, but rarely enjoyed, put differently “insanity doesn’t run in my family, it sort saunters.” So what is it about nothingness that feels at once compelling as though swimming in it, but simultaneously repugnant enough to provoke Blaise Pascal’s remark “all of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone. Is there such a thing as boredom, part of the charm of human indoctrination is having convinced the multitudes that quietude is really the sin of sloth. I dam sure have a hard time doing nothing, but i have never claimed any recovery from my very special indoctrination. I’m not sure i’d even want, what would i do without all my petty grievances and petulant slights to nurture like some metaphysical elixir delivering me from - something better.

What’s to say that this instant in time isn’t the apex of the expansion for our universe and each passing second of our existence is only leverage keeping the whole scheme of things from collapsing back into one of the multitude of black holes, with each subsequent black hole collapsing into its predominate neighbor until there is nothing left to happen but another big bang. Like i said, insanity doesn’t run in my family, it just sort of saunters. Is our purpose such an exalted state fraught with meaning and design that we must evaluate ours against that of others, like little boys comparing their penises with others when they think no one is looking, or women tearing each other apart believing success will yield the best man DNA or whatever other comparisons we make that generate insatiable hungers rendering us vulnerable to influence. What is influence, besides social gravity, does this answer how we have become immeshed in the lives of leaders whose only pedigree is defined by the numbers of otherwise thinking human beings clinging to that orbit? What i don’t understand is the dissonance of isolation, as though it is a physical threat to others to be alone. I like people; they are fascinating and amusing. But like hard liquor too much of a good thing can be stupefying. The difficult part of human relations for me is to know what is helpful, this could be a blindspot from my own confusion or an inherent flaw in our human capacity to identify and express clearly what we need - i don’t know. Bob Dylan has sung “ya’ try and help someone sometimes and end up making things a thousand times worse” - and damn if that ain’t true - ask anyone of my last three wives. Is there a secret to knowing what is helpful, or is it like tying shoelaces, you can only succeed after x number of tries? I was lucky, i had Heidi there to teach me, so i really wasn’t looking at my shoelaces, but she was smart too, not just good looking; so when she caught on i was back on my own - see what happens when you try and take advantage of a good thing.

Being nothing is not such a bad thing, certainly not bad enough to convince a planet to destroy itself if you do not possess that quality. One of my greatest anxieties today is centered around a storage unit. The only items of any real concern are statues i scraped out of stone believing that act would create something when i still believed there was a there there, but Gertrude was right - “there is no there.” Is my life’s work nothing? This is an existential cul-de-sac i’d have rather not walked down, but while we’re here - what of it. I have a brother who once asked me once “Why stone carvings, do you want to be immortal?” A question like that is why i never really feel alone. In his absence i have gravitated to others who have also posed questions that are impossible to answer. I admire that capacity to pose good questions - enough so to emulate. However, if i have been successful, please don’t mention it - t’was nothing .  .  . For my money, our world is far too full of answers; questions yield a much better Return On Investment (ROI) than any of the marketplace miracles with which the wizards of wall street are ransacking the planet - besides questions are more fun, and we all like to have fun. Take for example what if next time you were about to reply to some hateful post using all the bile you have been hoarding because who the fuck wants to be a hater - and instead of mimicking the rancid invective so much the rage today, you were to just ask why? Children know the wisdom of this question, that is until it is beat out of them by the fear of not knowing the answer, but until that happens can there possibly be any answer more correct than a question¿ Does if follow that to know nothing is a worthy ambition? Ask me when i have figured out how to get there, if there is any there there.

What would our world look like if instead of striving to become somebody, we became nothing - i read today that our environment will be uninhabitable by 2100. That is a grievous thought if only for the galling stupidity that is bringing that about, yet it may present perfect conditions for us to consider what it might be like to be nothing. There was also available on the “information super cul-de-sac” an article on Perceptronium, a supposed new element that is comprised of our consciousness. Is that even possible¿ If that were true would questions be the dark matter within that lattice? just askin’. How much further along might we have gotten had we simply accepted our deaths as the indigenous people do - a deeply moving experience that is part of the great cycle, rather than our tedious conceit that with the right combination of certainty and persuasion we can all be around just like we are now forever - euwwh. “if you are the dealer, i’m out of the game” - Leonard Cohen. The charm of being nothing is one never has far to go to get home, sort of like Dorothy clicking her heels “there’s no place like home, there’s no place like home. I laugh, but only because i’m not entirely prepared to live as the real heroes of our epoch do - homeless. It causes me consternation to not have a door to lock on all the somebody’s in our world who seem fascinated by the possibility of establishing that certainty with anyone within earshot everywhere they go. Nor am i prepared to extinguish my own infernal flame within my soul that prompted me to fantasize in stone about an immortality which all but a blood relative have been too timid to ask me about - but i’m getting closer. Here’s an irony that i cannot or will not parse aside from this exercise in exorcism of personal demons, i am compelled to help people believe themselves well in every meaning of the word, it pains me to know of anyone who believes themselves less than the most exalted and conceited amongst us - our leaders. Am i externalizing an inner conflict or reading correctly that being nothing is a little like being a working class hero - something to be? i don’t know the answer, and don’t care . .  . 

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and everything - the sonnet

". . . not a drop in the ocean; the ocean

in a drop” - Rumi - paraphrased for this

sonnet - i do not have to, but i can -

remembering the universe can’t miss.

so why all the turmoil about the end

when near as we know there’s no stop, no start.

sort of like chicken and the egg, we tend

to believe all we see - which ain’t too smart.

unable to perceive from much distance

we pretty much guess at what’s past our nose.

were you deaf, would you be able to dance¿

good then - though it made you not, you’re a rose.

you are that flower, that mountain - the sea

whether you flourish or perish - just be

jts 12/04/2017

http://josephtstevns.blogspot.com 

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com

reprinted with permission - all rights reserved 

∞