fear - the essay / trust - a sonnet

It is all hallows eve 2018, and i could be afraid; i am not. There is nothing i can do to change the landscape of today’s world except what i am obligated to dig for the good of where i live - there is a lot to dig. Right now the owner assumes the lion’s share of tasks; it needn’t be this way, but that is the outgrowth of profit taking. Previously i could hold forth on fairness, equitability, sharing, cooperation . .. still could, but it doesn’t seem anyone cares to hear such anachronisms in this sophisticated hothouse we have assembled, for better or worse - ours. Where i live is analogous in many ways except perhaps the propietario, is benign and fair, whereas the profit-takers of our civilization - the mighty captains of industry have proven themselves closer to one of Bob Dylan’s villains.

Well, I had to go down and see a guy named Mr. Goldsmith 

A nasty, dirty, double-crossin’, back-stabbin’ phony I didn’t want to have to deal with

But I did it for you

And all you gave me was a smile

Well, I cried for you, now it’s your turn to cry a while

There was a 97 year-old woman shot dead in an act of domestic terrorism last week; i’m through with Mr. Goldsmith, and not buying what he’s sellin’; you may not murder 97 year old people and get a pass with “thoughts and prayers.” I have concern for those who survive and those who have lost dear ones. I pray for comfort from their desolation and pain; that it is transfigured into specific and articulate language denouncing violence and fury for the ineffective and cruel hoax that it is - “war is over” - John Lennon. The sad truth is found in an apocryphal quip of Franz Kafka’s - “If a man were to meet himself walking down the street, he’d likely turn and run.”

It is not only the country i was born to that suffers the sad truth of environmental degradation, it is also true for any indigenous mother fighting for clean water; desecration to the highlands of the Amazon where oil spill is cascading down the watershed; the single use plastic fabricators in the Himalayas where bonfire size heaps of plastic is now burnt directly into the highest regions of our petal like atmosphere - throughout our world the Mr. Goldsmiths are churning the environment into a killing floor robbing whole cultures the tranquility that is the human birthright. I cannot affect the minds of those greedy persons whose consumer addictions this delusional pursuit of status and wealth proclaim with their servitude. Whatever does not encourage my determination to find the “unified theory” of human cohabitation is dead weight, including the additional 5 cigarettes i now smoke daily, as well as the dubious merit of more agave elixir - the the good argument in favor never be far. It is no coincidence that in addition to “en vino veritas” the spirits have been known as “courage in a bottle.” Pema Chodron describes fear as the Oz behind the curtain of fury - the same fury that compelled a man to murder a 97 year-old woman - the same fury that would seduce my ego into proclaiming i have no fear in an essay about fear. For Pema Chodron, fear is what causes the heart to clinch, to shut down, to become hardened to the world, to resort to the glut of fundamentalism i hold in store when i have to lie about being afraid in an essay on fear. Though i feel the eel of ego squirming in prevarication, i say i do not possess fear. The further i gaze into the chasm i welcome as my passing, the more it resembles the imponderables of my world. How to elicit from each person you meet their highest self, i suspect saying “namaste” to each we meet is not enough.

And that is another reason i say i do not fear; though i have enjoyed no great success in my quest for universal brother/sisterhood, i continue to make the effort. I have enjoyed some small successes in greeting that avatar of myself as i walk toward my final transition and shuffle of this mortal coil. He’s not after all such a bad fellow. What has been curious is the circuitous route it has taken me. For far too long i believed others required what my avatar had convinced me was my reality, so i hoisted sail and set about rescuing humanity. It is true, if i saw a man coming toward me demanding to be rescued, i would take a step back and see what was blocking my retreat - perhaps not break into a dead run. The point is that by accepting this dark pleading soul of mine, it allows me optimism that i can find more ways to make other people’s worlds less heavy; though as Mr. Dylan has said “I’m not ready to pull down my hedges.” I strongly believe that if the man who murdered the 97 year-old woman last week in the synagogue had found a channel inside of himself to say “i accept your fear, you are in a frightful world,” he might have calmed enough to smoke a joint and watch another episode of “King of the Hill.” Laugh if you must but it beats the shit out of gazing into the fb abyss, or the state Leonard Cohen sagely described as “getting lost in that hopeless little screen. I don’t feel there is any percentage in fear is in part why i pay close heed to my comfort. Not meaning possession of vast wealth or opulent and well guarded compounds, with continental cuisine - but beans and rice with good hydration, some exercise and meditation with enough physical work to be honest while preserving enough elan to create - being open and candid with whatever aspect of my being that luxuriates in tobacco and alcohol, while giving fealty to my health. Along with learning my 6th grade teacher was a republican; finding out that the “Desiderata” was fraudulently released, shook my utopian rose colored glasses to the ground - without trust, fear has fertile soul.

I have trust issues, and that awareness has required great faith to peer into as deeply as i might the profile of woman. For practical reasons growing up, i had to delude myself into believing i was not afraid of my mother. This manifested as pigheaded stubbornness and obstinate independence, traits i fear my mother most admires. She is too old to get on the internet so i harbor no great fear that she would be reading this, what i do fear is that i may not love her as openheartedly as i would want her to have loved me - that as Frank Zappa has said is the “crux of the biscuit;” i do not love myself openheartedly, and so therefore do not love others so; that is scary shit, but fuck it, whaddya’ gonna’ do - as they now say in the white house. Part of the recourse one has when pursuing the Cerberus at our own gates is persistence, and as i resolve to love myself, i am empowered with love for ma, and all others as well as i know how, or learn to, or am taught to . .. The other equally important growth is the freedom of expression that is born of discovery. Think of it as being able to introduce a new friend which after the trials and tribulations of transgressions and forgiveness a mutual compassion has fruited from the fertile soul of a reality that has no webpage or socialized euphoria - just human relatedness. The flip side of trusting that people will accept your new friend - we’ll call him Kafka Avatar, is you are then obligated out of simple human courtesy to be as welcoming to all other’s avatars, including the murderous schmuck killing old people instead of self-soothing himself; smoking a joint and watching more episodes of “King of the Hill.” I pray for a president whose name i cannot in good conscience write down, but i pray the same for him as i do my mother, my family all those who have comforted me, and all those who have tormented me. Dalai Lama says good will gives one confidence, and he wasn’t lying.

It is now the midst of day-of-the-dead fiestas in Mexico. The sun is setting and the dogs are barking in the distance and just outside my window. I can see the slope upon which the conquest of the “new world” by the Spaniards was halted. My father is dead and i refuse to harry he or Dame Maria Sabina, hoping only that they are tripping the light fandango wherever wonderful spirits journey after this speck in time we call life. Yet the wounds of my lessons by Kafka Avatar are still fresh and darkness is descending like Leonard Cohen’s “You want it darker, we kill the flame.” I do not disbelieve what i know nothing about and read today valid arguments about the invention of language which said it was from the labyrinths of our emotional place within nature that language sprung describing the basics of the human experience - fear, trust, love, hate. These are emotions we are awash in, yet seemingly lacking capacity to discuss them without resorting to mayhem. I’m through with Mr. Goldsmith, i ain’t buyin’ that shit no more. We have every reason to be afraid, for it is a scary time for all of us. The courageous thing to do is what it would take to greet your avatar walking toward you on the street - a calm hello and warm handshake - all the while peering deep into your own interior and being very aware of each passing inclination and pulsation in your being without making judgement or reacting - to simply open yourself to the experience and try as much as possible to know you are simply the universe witnessing itself. This may not help much with the thrice married roller derby mamma of five living next door who has also taken a shine to your lawnmower, or the unemployed plumber who brings you all the back issues of “Anger Management in the 2nd Millennium,” but like the man said “try a little tenderness,” or was it the dame, what’s her name .  .. “do unto others, as you would have them do unto you.”

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trust - a sonnet

i do not need all of your assurance,

it is more useful to carry my own,

and can be owned - defined as insurance

until the underpinnings have been blown.

more reasons i keep assurance as mine,

once i know what is wrong having done it

claiming the fault was another's, d'be lying

and holding to deception is bullshit.

so as the chief cook and bottle washer

of this Constitution, i trust myself. 

though warms me to the core you’d reassure

me about mischief by some absent elf.

again; here rests what i did, right or wrong

know this, ‘done me best, no matter how long.

jts 10/31/2018

http://stoneartist.com 

reprinted with permission - all rights reserv

 ∞

new - an essay / old - the sonnet

It is past noon on the 22 October 2018; i sit in a new room for the 1st time since July 2017. I like it very much, though there was much consternation in the run up to the act. Odd that given how many new residences i’ve enjoyed in my long life; one might expect a normalcy of sorts for the process, yet it feels almost the inverse - that somehow a new setting reflects poorly on me as a human being. Some of that certainly is from socialization, and partly from having 3 siblings, none of which has lived in their respective domiciles less than 20 years - a combined total likely closer to 100 years than 75, but shit changes regardless of any effort to prevent it. For example, just now the AI-pseudo intellect of apple’s RTF text editor chastised my use of a comma in front my last “than” until i added a number behind it. That is more sophisticated than i’d have expected from a bloated, sloppy app from one of the world’s top five richest companies - like i said, shit changes. In the case of my new habitation, i am glad i rolled with the unknown. There is a large enclosed garden just down the slope from my ample patio. I have high ceilings and even a second bed in my loft, though how i’d ever manage to sleep in two beds eludes me. Just now i received a refrigerator from my enigmatically kindly Duena, so all that remains is is to register with the authorities of my new habitation - a not unique requirement to life in our modern world. Yet here i sit writing as i would had i never moved, for it is Monday and that is what i have deemed normal for Mondays, when i’m of a mind. One thing seems fairly clear, moving homes is no guarantee of new thinking or new stories - perhaps incrementally. The transition from my former abode was fraught with the anxiety, and existential angst. I remain unclear about how much was of my making, if any - a blissfully ignorant thought, however impossible. Aside from the emergent misalliance that is provoked when loyalties are rent asunder; there was a provocative claim to money not honorably gained. I hesitate to say someone stole money, because that is such sad echo to put out into an already sad enough world, but i am struggling to relinquish what i believe is a just claim to monies i left on deposit.

That there is a ruling elite positioning themselves to plunder money i paid into social security could certainly color my sense of umbrage at an egregious misrepresentation of facts in record. This personal controversy is contrasted against a very real learned certainty that to quibble over filthy lucre is a self-inflicted impediment to a free and clear future - go figure. Which part of the equation is actually new, the fact that greed impacts honest dealings, and has from the time of the first purloined sirloin, or that abandoning a quagmire to those who believe gain at any cost is a valid enterprise? What i seek is not so much justice, as the fruits of correct ambition using the trusty lens of the written word to tease insights from the abyss of my despair. Ha, fucking despair, who’s got time for that shit. I’m surrounded by enough honest labor to challenge the exploits of old. Where do i find in the days of yore keys to valid human effort that yields wisdom and guidance for all who seek it? That sounds like an innocuous enough desire - help others to help others. That is assuming it is true what Albert Einstein said “The high destiny of the individual is to serve rather than rule.” It is an irony for me that i’m doing no favors for the people i thought to be friends by leaving them in a quagmire of greed, yet to take the steps necessary to separate them from ill-gotten gains would require measures that would surely leave them further removed from peace than they are now i’d imagine - fucking paradoxes, someone aught to get a gun as if there were a target for ambiguity. Or is it a function of the unknown that the only help one can expect is to face wholly and honestly failures, or miscalculations in PC terms, and to apply whatever learned adaptations fit in each new circumstance? I don’t know. I’m not even sure any longer i wish to be influenced by previous convictions when looking out over the horizon of possible eventualities.

For example, where i dwell is an ideal location for intensive permaculture experimentation, yet i am not owner, or even tenured guest and i am stating opinions as though they were facts - those who have known me over time would not be surprised. I just don’t have gas in the tank to fight any battles up a hill, nor am i any authority on permaculture. However the underpinnings of logic which permaculture, as i understand it, are based on - doing the most with the least effort; listening carefully to what the landscape does of its own accord and simply help it to excel. But what if it is not just the landscape one needs to read; what if it’s the whole history of the property that must be taken into to consideration, including the personalities, ambitions and complexities of the those who call this home where i am now in the process of transplanting myself¿ I just don’t know. Nor am i sure what is new about this circumstance vs my previous aside from the obvious - it is rural and not city; there is much space with nary a soul passing my window or a hint of any neighbor near or far. Am i the same person i was when i moved into my previous domicile? Is the concept of anything new a hoax; is it a fiction that we are able to alter our perceptions and behaviors to illicit new outcomes. As i remember from school, this question has been all the rage during certain religious epics - nature vs nurture, itself a variation of predestination vs free will. This recent assault on my wherewithal is not the first time in my life someone has taken advantage of my good nature, and yet i cling to cheerful optimism as pragmatically efficient the same as my father did, and likely his father before him, though i know little about my grandfathers, either one. I do know that payback is a motherfucker; karma’s a bitch - then you die.

So what is to be gained by seeking solutions to our kind’s perennial faults - greed, hatred and delusion, amongst others too many to count? Will it provide me long-lived habitation like that of my siblings? Would the right blend of interpersonal savior faire with business acumen allow me a strife-free existence free from betrayal and deceit¿ How does one devise such a blend of skills if that were true¿ Is it even possible to imagine something altogether new which when practiced produces peace and harmony - maybe “do unto others as you would have them do unto you”? I try to apply logic to my life, such as pissing in a jug instead of flushing gallons each time i pass water - I cannot alter the waste and avarice being applied to the world’s water supply, but i can damn sure restrict the number of times i flush water down the drain - regardless of any offense my eccentricity give to conventional thinking. I am the anti-consumer and find little worth in shopping, but that is not a new behavior is what used to be called frugal - formerly a trait of character, but now consigned to the very unhip quip of “cheap.” I remember portable phones when the first came out some time during my second marriage; i also remember the young married mother who owned when she bolted for Las Vegas leaving the long suffering, but very patient father tending the two daughters, his own business and the household - while the portable phone was of no help in explaining the abandonment. Eventually there was reconciliation, but that was due more to the husband’s tenacity than any enhance communication option the gadget provided. For myself, during the collapse of my last marriage that we both had phones only enhanced the irreconcilable estrangement when her phone would not be answered for days on end - hardly an inducement to maintain such a shackle - she or it.

As i age and my once mighty productive output ebbs to a trickle like my pee, i measure the suitability of any domicile by how easily i am able to work; this partly explains why i had stayed in the company of people who would eventually betray their supposed friendship for a paltry sum. So including the installation of a refrigerator; as well as a jaunt to the local vegetable stand, i have managed a 5 paragraphs on an unwieldy topic of parsing whether there is any such thing as “new,” or we are all just delusional and feasting on the same hash, just with different fixings. I have learned something i never realized before, though the word could almost be called my personal motto - unwieldly is not unwieldly - it is “unwieldy”. Does confronting wrong thinking count as something new? If so that really calls into question my rock solid faith in the old french proverb, “plus les choses changent, plus elles restent les mêmes.” I can speak for no one but myself, but for wrong thinking, i’m what might be described as a target-rich environment. Nor can i attribute any particular condition where my proclivity for wrong thinking crosses over to “less” wrong thinking, or even becomes right thinking, as though there were such a thing. I had thought about the home i was just sort of chased out of in much the high esteem i perceive my current lodgings. What has changed from my previous happy circumstance? Was it me or them or both? Would i want to prevent such change even if i could¿ Am i really in a new circumstance, or am i a different person in the same circumstance - just a different location? I can’t say just now, because i don’t know - i only hope that this new circumstance was as much fun as the last - because why not¿

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old - the sonnet

i used to think “old as dirt” was funny

now i am not so indestructible- 

no news to the sad whimpers in my knee

which one - is based on g-d’s good timetable

Old’s still funny, mostly if you ain’t dead.

today, this escapes any discussion-

replaced with a feeble manufactured dread 

lacking nothing, except some compassion.

Purchase-price for the eternal of young

includes your memory of those things past-

value, honor, what it means to belong,

and understanding you will come in last

ya’all win - anymore i could give a fuck

i’ll welcome my next breath as just good luck.

jts 10/22/2018

http://josephtstevens.blogspot.com 

reprinted with permission - all rights reserv

 ∞

wellness - the essay / illness a sonnet

Writing with a 36 point font is a concession to my vision - a necessary adaptation that permits me to track the words i write but interferes with the pace of thought. Is that wellness - a constant tradeoff between what is easily achieved balanced against adaptation? In the past week i suffered food poisoning such that i thought i was gonna die, or more accurately i took a hard look at the fact i am gonna die. Nor were the symptoms all that gruesome aside from a radioactive liquid stool i was afraid to expose to air for fear of killing the planet and all life herein. Compared to some maladies i’ve encountered this was even benign in so far as i could not eat, nor wake up from demon haunted dreams of subducting continental plates with prehistoric plant life feeding on my dream state. And as the universe is so fond of synchronicity this weeklong state coincided with the evaporation of a sciatic tangle that has plagued me profoundly for four years, across four continents and had forced me to seriously consider the value of my existence. So pernicious and insidious was this tangle that the inflammation created pus pockets in my groin that disallowed reaching my toes in a seated position without great pain. Willingly or not the effect on my gait was so persistent that the muscles in my right leg became enervated and began to atrophy from evading the pain - consciously or un consciously. And then spontaneously one day within the past two weeks the core of the tangle found its way back to stasis. It may have been from accentuating the horse stance i do daily as part of my efforts to remain supple and cheerful in the face of overwhelming odds, but there was no anticipating the contrast between the two states. So in gratitude, i now walk three circuits of the long block where i live and found a way within my addictive personality disorder to enjoy a single cigarette daily with my “caballo” of mezcal.

Is this wellness? I haven’t written in just about a month and have become mindful of the dissonance it creates for me - not the tormented driven anxiety which accompanies fatuous oaths, but like the phone call with an old friend you know is waiting to occur though you own no phone, better yet a visit that is on the horizon though too far distant to spy the mast - flat earthers not withstanding. The process of writing often holds for me solutions to problems that elude understanding using the blunt force of thinking - really such a crude tool for perceiving the more remote characteristics of our universe. Writing often seems something like a ouija board yielding threads and relationships like forms emerging from a fog. The wellness for me in such dynamic is the informative aspect. While a robust curiosity is a gem to respect and value in one’s repertoire of senses, perception and the capacity to reason is useful for its capacity to discern sense from nonsense, or as is often the case, reason’s remarkable ability to be wrong. With writing, while certainly not a perfect lens for peering into the labyrinth of one’s darkest recesses it beats the shit out of a witching stick, or trying to read the tea leaves of social media for a clue about the digital avatar you have become, or are becoming. My sense is searching for self on a server somewhere is as silly as it is dangerous - certainly not wellness.

In the deepest void of my sciatic despair, i believed that with the logical combination of diet and exercise it would be possible to untangle what had become tangled - is that wellness? I remember walking with luggage embraced in front of me like a pregnant woman, and thinking to myself, while not a cure, for some reason walking that way was less painful. And now we are full circle back to the inevitable paradox - does one live for relief from pain by whatever measure or means, or accept the reality of suffering? I don’t know. I know it gives me great pleasure to walk unhindered by a sensory presence of pain that had become closer to me than any one of my wives at their most loving. The forced fast of my food poisoning excursion reminded me how much i prefer svelte to the denial one gains from eating for comfort and wearing its pudgy raiments so proudly just like the “Emperor’s New Clothes”. There is so much of my life that seems predicated on denial, and not. I was once given a birthday card which read “Da’ Nile” is more than a river in Egypt. Clearly it was a pointed commentary concerning a mutual understanding about me, between my wife and her requisite gay friends. The irony being i was certainly in denial, but not about whatever it was they would snicker about between themselves; it was the fiction i’d contrived for people whose behavior did not match their expressions. I wanted to believe their words, but ignored the meanness of their behavior - that is not wellness. She subsequently abandoned me 5 days after i enjoyed an appendectomy for a perforated appendix - possibly the kindest thing she ever did for me - and there was much kindness in that messy human experience.

I quit drinking and smoking for 10 years about this same time - an equally interesting act of denial that was more from fear than any particularly earnest quest of good health. I refused to accept responsibility for my poor choice of companion - i equated her absence as punishment from the universe for excesses i’d been cautioned away from since the raucous 60’s gave way to the “greed is good” ethos of our rapidly shrinking future. I suppose at some level i believed the same about being assaulted by sciatica. I had gone from running 20 some miles a week for years to searching for some way to anticipate whether my next step would buckle my leg out from under me or send shooting pain throughout my lower extremities. My decision to drink after a 10 year hiatus came at the end of a 3 month commitment to a school in the foothills of Nepal. Again i would not accept responsibility for the fact i wanted to help people that did not need my help. More bullshit - i went to expunge my guilt on their dime and couldn’t hack the fact that i was more committed to helping myself than plumbing the realities of what they needed and whether i had it in me to give. Next stop South America where i was repulsed by the mercenary corruption made chic in Ecuador. Though acclimating to the possibility that every step for the rest of my life would be fraught with pain, i’d not yet reached a point in my wellness that i could see clearly the personal projection i’d made onto an entire culture largely based on unexamined fears and ambitions entirely my own.

And not, Uruguay is more progressive, and Ecuador is more reactionary, and externalizing conflicts one experiences in the course of a lifetime as political realities is not wellness. What i accomplished in Uruguay was to take up smoking after 10 years not. The thinking, if i can reconstruct it, would have been, if i’m gonna suffer, i may as well enjoy it. For a while it worked and i had a ball - sort of. I discovered myself a changed person. The gamble of fame or even awareness by another human being of what my work reflects about me, receded in importance to the actual acceptance of what i had given myself through simple discipline - the gift of self awareness, and destruction of ego. Just as my last wife was alluring such that i’d to look past the lack of emotional nutrition at our table, i’d conveniently ignore the very real likelihood that birds of a feather flock together. My own un-wellness may have simply starved her from our home. I don’t know, but i do know the experience of trying to draw as best as i know how what i see, has taught me much about personal limitations and flaws i could barely accept much less make use of in the creative process. Yet here i sit once again flogging the indecipherable; using the inept in hopes of rendering something cogent to anyone with curiosity - go figure.  

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illness - a sonnet

i came out ass first - some may have called that ill,

it’s just my dumb luck being sick when profitable.

are you not ill today due to your pill,

or well because you like to be tractable.

i like drinking more than the hangover

so i drink the way i live - quietly.

illness doesn’t know it’s not a flower

until you get a cup and told to pee.

you will remain ill until you are well,

you become well the instant you say so.

careful - you can die of wellness - a hell

known to anyone who’s known as fatso

it’s sad and lonely to have too much wealth

an illness best cured by losing one’s health

jts 10/08/2018

http://stoneartist.com 

reprinted with permission - all rights reserved

 ∞

stay - an essay / go - the sonnet

I am faced with the unenviable decision to leave accommodations i very much like; and because of that there is internal dissonance which i must also face. Such as, “if you so very much like it, why go¿” I like women, and remain single; i like alcohol, but call a halt - enough so as to enjoy the next day. There is no black and white standard, but we are prompted to apply either or thinking daily. It would be easy if i could attribute my desire to leave to others, then i could absolve myself and say “it was because of them that i did not stay.” However my experience has determined that to be a bullshit reason to do pretty much anything, much less something as important as staying. My mother changed the locks to the house i grew up in when i was 15 - i was an unruly child, in a family of unruly people. They were so unruly that i was not given a new key. It was the kindest thing ma ever did for me; over the years she has done many kind things, not always helpful, but often oddly kind. My sense is that contrary to outward appearance, for she is a truly beautiful woman, her wounds and affronts affected her more deeply than her beauty aided her. In our struggle to reach mutual understanding, i believe her wounds informed her compassion about how to raise a loud, cross-eyed, intellectually precocious, and socially awkward human being in a family of pretty people. So when she said “you are not welcome here unless you obey,” by changing the locks, i had to choose which version of ma i was to obey - the vain, petty, selfish woman who abandoned her marriage because it wasn’t lucrative enough, or the shrewd, hardheaded desert urchin willing to sacrifice all she had, including her family, for the sake of a better station in life? For far too long, i believed myself to be wronged, yet her decision gave me something i believe she may have deprived my siblings - self-respect.  This is not to say she has ever abandoned her dreams of perfecting me to the degree she has improved my siblings, but then that is why i respect her.

She isn’t convinced. One day, not all that long ago i drove from past Bakersfield to Seal Beach; picked her up and drove from Seal Beach to the Getty Museum so that she could see Vermeer’s “Blue Lady.” As we entered the afternoon 405 South traffic and i was transitioning into the carpool line, a 3/4 ton pickup decided i wasn’t accelerating quickly enough in the carpool line, just as the sea of brakelights to my immediate right was coming to a screeching halt; the truck was tailgating me at 60+ mph, ma took this opportunity in our journey to turn full face to me in her seat and exclaim in her best umbrage, “YOU DON’T RESPECT ME.” This and other formative events have helped me to respect and admire her all the more, if only for being something of an emotional idiot savant in a world full of acolytes to the Church of Internet. One might think my extravagant gesture in squiring ma to a magnificent painting demonstrates filial respect, but her keen sense of her own misery was more correct - it was a very patronizing thing for me to do, not much different than dragging a person who has just had their stomach stapled into an all-the-steak-and-potatoes-you-can-eat-buffet. Once she and i had returned to Seal Beach, i did not stay the night. Rather i drove the 3 hours home. I covered more than 400 miles for the day, only to learn ma knows more about respect than i do, but then i’ve always been an unruly child. If you think this retelling is some twisted rendition of a yuppified “Stockholm Syndrome,” you might be right - i have had just enough sense beaten into me to not be sure - ergo, i essay - do i stay, do i go¿ “Be content with what you have and the whole world belongs to you” - Lao Tzu. I do not have another mother, and the one i do have has now taken up residence in an assisted living facility. It is not practical for me to be at her side. She needed protection from me declaring to my eldest brother one particularly morbid evening i committed “elder abuse” because i would not concur with a statement she had made - another long drive home late at night. My being at her side while she faces her end, would likely only enflame her, or him, or possible worse confirm for the other two her death was a direct result of my deep-seated matricidal tendencies, after all she is only 90.

I have decided my responsibility is to seek peace for myself which doesn’t include being where i am not welcomed. I don’t know how my siblings acclimated to our mother’s unique schema of the world, but i now know it doesn’t include updates from them to me on her wellbeing. Nor is that a complaint, i pity them their inability to see quite how much that behavior mimics ICE and its racist adherents. And just like the nazis of wwii, these are nice people i’m talking about. But one thing my brethren did not take away in their adaptive strategies was the sense of independence that is the hallmark of our Mater. I don’t know that they ever gave themselves permission to decide whether they would obey or not; if they did, they may have seen the cost to me for disobedience, and so chose a more stealthy resistance. It is here where our tale of family harmony turns on its ear. Each sibling has chosen distance as an adaptive strategy, with two living as close to the U.S. borders away from ma as is physically possible, and one, the eldest, yoked to the shackles of abundance which his fealty has cost him. That is a harsh judgment, and may simply be sour grapes on my part, or it may be hurt i feel. I’m leaning towards hurt, for i don’t put much stock in avarice. I don’t like to cause pain, so when one who i looked up to as a hero fails to understand my militant pacifism, i move away: physically, emotionally, but not spiritually. For like the injustice i have endured at the hands of a well-meaning but not very self-aware parent - it is not realistic to declare of a family member “you are a nonperson”, much less unworthy of my love - one of the aspects of self agency i prize. While it is not always a kindly thing to remove oneself from an unpleasant circumstance; is it any more kind to remain when one’s presence is not inservice of a greater harmony? I don’t know - clearly i don’t know. But what if we take that a step further and ask about living a lie, knowing that someone thinks less of you than you yourself do, or worst, vice versa. Self esteem is a miracle when done with panache, and impenetrable armor where it only serves the possessor. For all i might be conflicted about with regards ma, i perceive her as wearing her self esteem with panache, while her prolific complaint a mere pitfall in her complex perception.

If the theory is correct, all that is needed for me to live a happy fulfilled existence anywhere in the world is a little panache with my self-esteem, however, my self esteem is the ruggedized variety, more wash-and-wear than the Rodeo Drive variety all the rage today. In the bullpens of the engineering discipline i have spent much time in, we’d describe the empty suits periodically wandering the halls with noses of their sycophants close behind as “all show and no go.” I’m not particularly comfortable with people who need to impress, and again this may be entirely my own projection. The flip side would be my reluctance to be anywhere i cannot be myself - as much as i have discovered who that is. That’s a pretty tall order in an increasingly orthodox and regimented world, and not. I have shared in this essay as honestly as i know how, shared things i am not allowed to share with my family. The gist of this whole discussion boils down to “allowed by whom.” In my family, ma is the arbiter of good taste - but she is 90, and though i have protected her long life with a talisman bought and prayed for in the Taoist Temple of Bejing there is only so much “fake it ’til you make it” left to a nonagenerian. My hope for ma is that she retains enough of the gumption that guided her to separate from my father to satisfy for herself whether her conflict with abundance vs deprivation proved useful. if not for that reason, then perhaps affirming the oh so well framed statement by A. Nonymous - “life is like a shit sandwich, the more bread you got, the less shit you have to eat.” Mostly i wish for her to the end is self-agency. Let her passing be a choice she makes not as a regret she must struggles to defy. After watching ma experience a life of opulence, i cannot say that it protected her from her early childhood poverty, any more than my brother, armed with her fantasies about my character, has protected her from self-inflicted suffering. What i do know is that she now more resembles the kaleidoscope of pharmaceuticals she takes to stay alive than the powerhouse of personality that inculcated respect and admiration in this unruly child.

If i have cancer, i choose to die from it rather than accept the strategies of a medical establishment whose priorities are clearly conflicted between a client’s welfare and great personal wealth. While i’m alive, i look to be well, and this includes peace where i live, including and most especially within my own skin. I don’t ask for much from others, and look to share how i can what i have. Given my eclectic perspective, this sharing does not always include material gifts, and like all good mysteries in the universe involves a conundrum. All i have of any real value is myself and my time, time i have bought and paid for at great personal expense. Oh mother of god! will the irony never cease¿ I have yet to meet that tribe which takes great joy in my presence over extended periods of time “guests and fish are alike in that they both stink after 3 days” - old Chinese proverb. What is left to me is to be at peace within my skin. As the external voices of what i should have; could have; would have been; recede into former times and places, what i occupy myself with is what i do which is: write, draw, cook, eat, drink, shit, piss, sleep, exercise, tai chi, meditate - rinse and repeat. If there becomes too much interference with that program i move on. What i strive for is helping others do what they want to do in the belief that karmically that will eventually comeback to, if not me, than somebody who could make good use of it. I am not anxious to travel, nor am i afraid to settle down - whatever that means. What i don’t want to do is cling to the pain of being evicted from my home when young by devising some perfect circumstance that is fool-proof, ironclad and will endure through the ages into eternity; that is a fiction. I cannot protect my mother from herself, anymore than i can correct my brother for his misunderstanding of who i am. All i can do is make any effort available to me to better understand who i am, why i do what i do, and share that knowledge with anyone who is curious. “My three greatest treasures, simplicity, patience and compassion” - Lao Tzu; may you all become stinking rich by that standard. May you r . i . p . ma.

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go - the sonnet

“Go” she said. “Where he cried?”-"you can't stay here”

she replied scornfully, though not cruelly.

“shit” he thought, not yet knowing of his tear.

“you’ll be sorry” he groaned so piteously,

What he really wanted was to give love,

and to be loved. Was that so much to ask¿

Off he went to where life fit like a glove,

yet without ruby slippers - what a task.

The yellow brick road was now a tollway

allowing no pedestrians - only cars.

“With gas,” he thought, “it might get me part way.”

He didn’t know where - just not behind bars.

what a surprise when he got to the end-

where he began unwilling to defend. 

jts 09/10/2018

http://stoneartist.com 

reprinted with permission - all rights reserved e

 ∞

flux - the essay / stasis - a sonnet

I normally write on Monday’s, but just now realized that to ponder an essay about flux on Sunday would be apropos. By definition it is not possible for anything to exist, but in a state of flux; yet as humans we have conjured the word “stasis” and its appropriate definition, however false:

Stasis (from Greek στάσις "a standing still") may refer to: A state of stability, in which all forces are equal and opposing, therefore they cancel out each other. Stasis (political history), as defined by Thucydides as a set of symptoms indicating an internal disturbance in both individuals and states.

As creatures with the capacity for language, but the inability to explain the whys and wherefores of our time alive, how is it possible to parse any part of that which we do not understand into equal and opposing forces¿ I can understand the desire for stasis - a respite from the storm, cessation of loving hostilities within the framework of marriage, or even a pause in the unending pursuit of answers to Shakespeare’s eternal question: to be or not to be. Has there ever been a stasis of any kind, a pause in any mountain’s erosion toward the inevitable valley¿ I don’t see how. And yet there it sits in our lexicon of language, which is often more than adequate to settle, at least, arguments in games of Scrabble. How many other words do we use that have no relationship to truth? “If you want to tell people the truth, you’d better make them laugh or they’ll kill you.” — George Bernard Shaw. The truth, is i hope you’re laughing, ‘cause i ain’t quite ready to do the ever-after-two-step. And this is where it gets dicey, what good am i to you if i am not prepared to die for what i believe¿ Fucking paradoxes. Pema Chödrön uses the simile of flux within the universe to explain the futility of holding on to a closed heart - (paraphrasing) that circumstance which initially closed your heart has inevitably changed since you used it as an excuse to close your heart. Oddly one cannot understand that idea unless one has actually closed down one’s own heart. Is that the essence of change, simply pre and post prompts? Are there conditions that must be met in one’s own growth in order to grasp certain other concepts¿ How the fuck are we as a species supposed to transmit knowledge from generation to generation? Is all education conditional and only subject to immutable laws of organization¿ How can that be if knowledge cannot even be presented in a predictable sequence? Is this barrage of words gonna change any of the needless suffering in our world¿ If not, what will? Were i a day younger, i might have had some silly conceit of using this essay as a vehicle for personal change . ha . ha . ha .

This begs the question, from what to what. Just now standing outside smoking 3 of 6, i’d determined that the click on the keyboard from my longer nails was dissonant to my particular brand of autism, so i cut them and now type quietly enough to sooth my retentive state of denial. However it does provoke the possible irony of quiet keystrokes in a world where wunderkinds are worth multiple billions simply for their capacity to harvest a predictable cacophony of keystrokes. The acute reader will rightfully take umbrage with my mixed metaphor equating my not entirely private act of writing with the emerging science of bandwidth presence and social engineering. I was long-nailed joseph, now short-nailed joseph, though during the ten minutes of time on this 2nd paragraph, approximately 960,000,000 of my cells are now dead and replaced with brand new ones. If one were to expand that logically, how does one transform a self that is already ceaselessly transforming? There seems to be a fixation on permanence in our planet; i carved stone for 40 years in some convoluted reaction formation about mortality, and some declare _rump was anointed in heaven. What if our confusion about eternity is simply a question of perception¿ My particular eyesight has provided me a broad spectrum of strategies to manage visual acuity. What if perceiving eternity has more to do with the amount of clarity and openness we can experience each moment than any contrived notion we each might conjure out of the labyrinth of our human archetype? I was about to rail just now about googol’s chief scientist and his fixation on the transgenic uploading human DNA to a silicon matrix, for why rail¿ It’d be sort of like shaking one’s umbrella at the rain - don’t ya’ think? Just like early cinema was a slight of hand - many pictures seen quickly - so too we seem to want to blur and provide an illusion of mobility, rather than peer deeply into each moment you inhabit. 

The framework of essays have a melody, but in the wrong hands (read mine own) can be much like the fiction of time, a sweeping minute hand registering favorably with whatever edition of socialization was supplanted within the blossom of our early selves. To stake out a position about change precludes discovery. Discovery suggests a state of unknowing which is not possible. It is the cudgel of conviction that blunts our capacity to peer deeply without ascribing value or judgement. The limits of perception are self imposed. I have read that humans have on average 12,000 to 70,000 thousand thoughts per day, however 98% of those thoughts are the same ones that you had the day before. Given the size and scope of the universe, and our unique capacity for reason aided by our senses, i’d have to say we as a species are seriously underutilizing our capacity for perception. Unfortunately the +/- 5v straw sucking your focus down the rabbit hole is diminishing rather than enhancing any vestiges of curiosity left to our kind, and i mean that in the nicest possible way. Fucking paradox, the slower you the more you see. At the end of Siddhartha by Herman Hess, it was the river passing which yielded Siddhartha a sense of change as it pertained to himself. I resist change, which makes no sense. The illusion of using stone carvings as a means of establishing a state permanence, is little different than climbing the highest mountain which was eroding the whole time you were climbing it and even while you stood at the pinnacle. I haver read that Rembrandt was fascinated by the changes to his face as he aged, that is the root of curiosity in my mind, but moreover a wonderful capacity to peer into the abyss. In the town where i live there is an older woman who sells fruits and nuts. She kindly asked “how are you?” I replied “older, thank god; how are you¿” i asked. “Younger, thank god,” she replied. “Please share with me your secret.” i asked. “I don’t resist.” she smiled.

There was a thread of wisdom across my screen this morning. The kernel i took away corresponds to Jung’s notion of the shadow. To embrace that which we repeal. I cannot retrieve a time in my life where i might have done things differently, but i can do things as differently now as i would have then. Am i making decisions today based on an effort to preserve the home in which i grew up? I was powerless to stop it’s disintegration. Have i been making decisions based on the same conviction for the past 50 years¿ There are very good reasons to look deeply into the place we exist, rather than clutching at a time, idea, or person whose entire cellular structure may have changed since you actually shared air together. I was raised by patriots, yet ma did look up at me without guile while the fox channel piped in like some sycophantic sibling, and asked - “Do you really think Trump is such bad guy¿” I was horrified, and not. Our individuation would not allow that debate. My own struggle be a good son had brought me full circle to the “he” she would change. She’s a crafty woman, so i’ll never know if that had been her plan all along. What i have gained is a kinder appreciation for her own unique dialogue with permanence. She is approaching her transition, and i with who she shared her childhood “inconsolable fear of death” cannot alter her path. What i have learned, is that she cannot alter mine. I would say to her now, “ma, that’s a good thing, don’t you see¿ If you cannot change my path, that means no one can change yours either. You are powerful ma.” About this time she might be weeping, trembling or worse yet - tossing tissues at me. What saddens me was not conveying clearly to her the she i found her to be. Ma was present during the same domestic collapse that affected all us. I’m not sure she was ever able to forgive herself, and i only say as much for knowing how long it has taken me to forgive myself.

And it is here in the melody we find the “crux of the biscuit” - Frank Zappa. .. forgive who, for what i ask. Once one has permission to consider the vastness of what we do not know about where we are, the tragedies and accomplishments we cling to shrink - the “so large against the sky, so small against the stars” late Leonard Cohen shared. When the not yet dead Jim Morrison sang “you cannot petition the lord with prayer” it later resonated for me with readings from Lao Tzu. Much of the wiser things i’ve read or learned are not so much concerned with the capacity to change one’s environment, but in understanding one’s relationship to one’s environment. When this practical advise is held up against what we’ve learned about the scope of our universe in just the past 50 years, much less the last 100 years, there becomes a great onus, to again try and understand, rather than to change one’s place in the much larger universe. My sense is the deeper we are able to peer into all the realms of our world the more real change we might find. Me, within the frontiers of my own skin, i’m doing good when i keep it to 2 shots and 6 cigarettes, much less attenuating my language around ma, whom i’ve known forever but have only begun to understand recently her somewhat remote humor, much less that which she wants. I know this, on any 10 trips to the store she will change her buying habits for everything but buttermilk. Her passing is not something i welcome, and not. My hope is that her infinitely pliable perspective comea full circle, from: inconsolable fear of death, to: the Valkyrie like bravery it must have taken to unmoor from a 60’s suburbia sham and to damn the torpedos, full speed ahead into a paradise or kingdomcome, whichever comes first - however hasty the timing of her decision may have been. I now know, she was being shadowed by her own internal dialogue as are we all no matter what lengths we go to to make the unconscious conscious. We are all different people, even from the people we were when we made the conscious decision to change. “Be like water my friend” - Bruce Lee, and even better “Don’t resist” - la Sra. Gaia de Donde yo Vivo.

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stasis - a sonnet

stasis is the trip you can’t ever take,

and because of that you can’t ever leave.

There are beings who’ve never ate aught but cake,

some whose fare is naught but beans; i believe,

not that i choose to, because i’ve seen it-

just about. there’r more on beans than cake,

yet here we sit in a pile of shit

being told “this is gonna change, but I’m fake.”

However, distribution wasn’t ever thus;

not that long ago . .. we took what we earned,

including kings - lot’s dethroned without fuss,

because justice ain’t aught, when you get burned.

To say there is a balance of power,

means you accept death, nor never cower.

jts 09/03/2018

http://josephtstevens.com 

reprinted with permission - all rights reserved e

 ∞

expert - the essay / idiot - a sonnet

I am not - an expert; i have at times thought myself one - but no longer. It’s only fair to you that i share this now so you may continue your search for one, if that is what you were searching for. Nor am i immune from the allure of consulting an expert, or taking an expert’s advice at face value, but now resist the absurd assumption that anyone could know more than i do about the question i have asked. Certainly there are members of the audience who are more familiar with the chemical makeup of Jupiter, or can say off the top of their head which 3 countries have the highest per capita post graduate degrees within the population, but i have to ask “so what”? There is no school that i’m aware of which offers a Doctoral in Self Awareness - not being an expert at either self awareness or post graduate degrees, it is entirely possible one could become a doctor of “Self Awareness,” but then what¿ It’s hardly a marketable skill, besides what industries would hire an expert on self awareness, and what would they do even if they found a job? One would think in a world filled up to the brim with experts, such an industry would have long since been established. Makes ya’ kind of wonder about the usefulness of experts. Still in a world where one cannot open a screen without being persuaded about something - from personal deodorant to whether Hillary was an agent of Satan, it is natural to expect a greater degree of tranquility than the transient spikes of reality one might sift in between the massive advertising influx we now enjoy thanks to deneutralizing of the internet by the real experts of our world - the advertisers.

I’m not sure i would even become an expert again given the chance. It’s a tremendous fiduciary responsibility - at times i think it is the insurance industry’s actuary tables that drives the need for expert leadership. If the actuary table says you gonna die at 57, there has to be somebody on staff that can explain why you did not. While navigating my way through the career minefield, it has been fairly frustrating to possess a natural curiosity about most things but finding most trades have established expert requirements which entails schooling, which entails money; i am mostly glad i do not have to place graduate of _rump University on my resume, although the more difficult alma mater might have been Florence Ursala Taylor University - ole' FUT U. We’re lucky to be living in times when knowledge no longer has the cache it once had. I picture growing up and someone declaring there is a gyre of plastic debris in the Pacific Ocean three times the size of France. Firstly, someone might even have known what a “gyre” was, but secondly if you inhabited the “free world”, such a declaration would most likely have been held up as a communist conspiracy, or if you lived within the communist block, such news would be used as an example of western decadence and capitalist inefficiency. Experts can be found to testify about most anything, except what is. No one knows that; so like the drunken husband with something to hide, we stumble from one assertion to the next all the while, the savvy wife (our decaying world and its plastic gyres) simply peers into his degenerate heart and then weeps silently inside at the travesty which life has made of her love.

We know today what we are supposed to know; what we are losing is the capacity to understand its meaning. Everyone who possesses affect, is faced with fleeting senses about the world. This awareness expands with more and more experiences which we use to inform our judgements; unfortunately, these same experiences are filtered through the input of those we have selected as experts. My mother and father were my go-to experts while growing up and that is a difficult influence to modify. Yet over time, it has become clear that their estimation about events, particularly those pertaining to my own emerging self awareness contradicted my own beliefs. According to the experts this is a normal process known as individuation, i can’t say how that process has gone for ma, but pa is dead; so that aspect of my process has gone as far as it could using real time input - as though it were a neatly wrapped package complete with beginning and end. As an experience, however indistinct, the ability to stand alone has meant everything, including my willingness to scrutinize its utility using this essay. For too long during this inchoate struggle to differentiate authority from self knowledge it was a war, sometimes with both parents and sometimes running battles with one or the other. Like most things of enormous import, we pretend in preparation. I substituted different authorities who concurred with my assertions about whatever: relationships, drugs, education, faith. But all the while there was a gnawing sense of dishonesty about another’s undue influence. Anytime i abdicated my own agency in favor of someone else’s belief it usually turned out badly. However the reverse is equally as true, each time i assumed responsibility for my decisions, a part of me grew, not necessarily in power, but awareness.

This has resulted in making me a better student of good advice, for any unwillingness to hear the wisdom of others is the mark of a weak mind. One indication of good advice is understanding the advisor’s ability to set aside self-interest, or more accurately a capacity to advocate for the greater good. If someone’s sole interest is your betterment, that probably comes with a hook, whereas when the logic of any recommendation could as easily apply to all, that tells you something. Another aspect of advice is how invested is the advisor in his/her own advice. The path to expert status is expensive and time consuming. Malcom Gladwell states in his book “Outliers” that anyone can become a master of something with 10,000 hours of practice. As a child of the 60’s, i’ve heard some pretty astonishing theories, but that is just weird. It stands to reason you are going to improve the more times you practice anything, but whence stems this maniacal urge to codify the process. I suspect it has something to do with insurance actuary tables but am unwilling to spend 10,000 hours devoted to proving that theory. How many young pianists read that quote in some self-help blog and abandoned the pleasure of a life of music simply because the haste that accompanies adolescence whispered “no”? Early on while searching careers to sustain my passion for carving stone, i thought of becoming a barber. What better way to grow smarter about the human head than cutting hair? Pop put the kibosh on that idea, just as he had looked into my impressionable face and declared, “you’re not a painter, you’re a sculptor.” There is nothing wrong with paying careful attention to a parent’s advice, except that Bob Dylan also described it as “oozing out of my ears.” Anytime we neuter our own ability to hear ourselves clearly and honestly, we do the world a disservice.

The older i get the more convoluted becomes reality. There is the promise of the ever-after which has kept us at each other’s throats since we decided it was a good idea to seize resources not rightfully ours; If i believe that my god is the keeper of the keys to the ever after kingdom, it only makes good sense for me to control your wealth. Then there is the high-minded ambition of creating “civilization” as opposed to allowing 1st nation cultures to educate their own children, utilize their own resources or preserve their own culture. Which brings us full circle to the “crux of the biscuit” - Frank Zappa, the “Economy.” This contraption that grew up around the industrial revolution is now being uploaded into the cerebral cortexes of lab rats in preparation for saving humanity for the experts, and that is enough for me. I’ve worked with experts who could devise methods for target acquisition on a black battlefield at night in the snow, but who also believed because their pastor - an expert - said “that god is a republican; poor people are evil and satan is a black lesbian”. These same people whom i have worked closely with who were loving parents, good friends and devote christians. The economy, as it stands today, represents a system of mindless extraction oblivious to consequence. This is not consistent with our physical universe. Our species exists because conditions were such that our environment fostered development, of our bodies, our minds and our future. However that same genius that giveth, can and shall taketh away. While walking yesterday, it occurred to me that no one knows whether the first domino to fall in climate change isn’t a breathable atmosphere. We have a cadre of AWOL captains of industry, using hired-gun “experts” to declare that fossil fuel, glyphosate and constant surveillance are necessary for the economy: how much more crazy is that than positing that what we don’t know about our future is simply resulting in less and less and less .  .  . breathable air¿

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idiot - a sonnet

Idiot, is a species of moron

as we are a species amongst others. 

We share a planet, but treat all as pawn

expecting that we become ancestors,

a status many believe - exalted.

Yet not a one has returned to confirm

there’s more to the great beyond than being dead,

much less where one’s penis is ever firm.

We know love is healthy, but let it die

We know war is useless, but still we pay

We know truth is sacred, but still we lie

We know god is in us, but still we pray

i know some - dumb as posts - myself am one,

and rather be, than ruled by one - when done.

jts 08/13/2018

http://stoneartist.com 

reprinted with permission - all rights reserved e

 ∞