Monday, March 26, 2018

abnormal - the essay / normal - a sonnet

Normal is way too overrated, if it exists at all. Yesterday i ceased a 186 day language learning streak, not a little like when Forrest Gump stopped running. Neither could i ever stop learning anymore than i could stop breathing or prevent the image of Forrest Gump from bubbling up to my consciousness. But for those 186 days, my lessons were as much a part of my makeup as family members and family memories which i don’t want to forget. Does that make this learning experience, normal? What about writing essays, is that normal behavior - especially essays more concerned with reducing my anxiety, than yours? I was born cross-eyed with a bald patch on my left temporal lobe - normal has never been an option for me, much to my sibling’s chagrin. At one point in my life i even believed it was necessary to accentuate my eccentricities, much to my parents' chagrin. Today, i am grateful to the universe for giving me something at birth, which i fear too many others will live their entire lives never knowing - what it feels like to be different. In psychiatric jargon, to become apart is labeled “individuation” and lauded - sort of; “normalization” is also a behavioral modification modality employed by workers of the mind to diminish anxiety - so what is the objective, according to whom¿ Having no frame of reference except for what i would never be - Normal - my socialization was what might be described as interesting. One part of my being through my one good ear would literally hear the demands for homogenization from commercials, teachers, parents etc., etc., etc., while the somewhat less than deaf side of my reality might sort of hear something like - “what, are you stupid?” The trouble often being i couldn’t be sure whether the quizzical look from the other was surprise from my weird eyes or from some extravagantly inappropriate comment/question. Metaphors are sometimes too real for words. What eventually became clear, was if i allowed the external world to define for my "normality," - there would never be a place for me in the world.

I once asked my mother, why it seemed gay men wanted my attention - without missing a beat she replied, “maybe because you are so colorful.” That may be the kindest thing ma has ever said about me, kidding, sort of. Having spent many years of study in the arts, a tolerance for people’s life style choices was a given until a savage domestic betrayal wounded me so deeply that i am only just escaping the blanket condemnation of an entire segment of the population. Nor would my narrow-minded reaction be an abnormal response by any number of cultural metrics. It is during times of personal development, my abnormal inclinations become really useful. The people my last wife used to effectuate her liberation are the only persons worthy of my oh-so-rare enmity, and so we’re clear on the concept, rather than enmity, i should be creating honorariums, and lobby for national holidays in their names. It is the blanket condemnation which i bring to bear, when thwarted, that it not normal, or more accurately, too fucking normal. People strive for stasis, the same condition to which a healthy organism rights itself whenever possible - hungry - eat, tired - sleep etc., etc., etc. The world we inhabit has been hijacked by a concept which considers those natural instincts abnormal, or not a personal prerogative. From a profit extraction point of view, i can well understand the awkwardness for a superior being told by an employee, “Excuse me boss, had a tough night, and i gotta grab 40 winks. See ya’ in about an hour.” That is, if you accept profit extraction as a normal criteria for human behavior, which i don’t. This is not because bettering one’s lot should not be a widely propagated idea, but to do so at the expense of all around you, is not only not normal, it is insane. It is the same sort of disconnect we have arrived at existentially - i am alive, that is good; death is going to happen, and i don’t know what that means · ergo, it must be bad.

The divide and conquer strategy of the wealthiest amongst us has so much relied on this fixation with greed and death, that their profit extraction systems are endangering the very existence of our species, all save those empty souls believing the human experience can be fathomed by digital technology and even be uploaded into an immortal race of droids; in powerful circles this is not considered abnormal thinking. If we of humanity were as intent on understanding their 'trail of excess' as the uber-rich are in knowing our 'trail of crumbs', we’d all be able to call that excess up on an app and see their perfidy for ourselves. However, “normal” today means the chief executive to the highest office in the land, need not share his tax data with you; you on the other hand on penalty of ________ fill in the blank, must cut out your monetary heart and prove that it is beating for any middling bureaucrat, public or private sector (the lines are blurred anymore as to who is who) that asks. Yet that arrangement is considered normal by the news analysts tasked with explaining the workings of reality to the great unwashed. How can things have gotten so far from the pursuit of happiness, that happiness is considered touchy-feely-new-agey-gay-communist-2nd-ammendment—attacking liberal propaganda? If you don’t believe me, look up from your screen and feel how many around you are happy. That is a nearly impossible task, for so many of us have been sold a bill of goods which dictates unhappiness is reason enough for medication, shopping or any number of other inducements that are guaranteed to protect you from Blaise Pascal - “All of humanity’s troubles stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Based on this definition, we are heading for more trouble, not less. I can’t speak for you, and i am no marine, but i don’t have to seek out trouble, it manages to find me. It is a sad commentary on our level of development as a species wherein the Dalai Lama has to remind us that happiness is normal, not the lucre from some tooth and nail donnybrook at the mall.

I have friends that i grew up with; some who view their monetary position as achievement; some their lack of accreditation as failure; while others are convinced their spiritual pursuits will provide immortality - these are very normal conditions within the cohort i grew up. That was a long time ago; it has taken some fairly jarring events, and a good deal of aging to reach a point where i can accept those circumstances as normal for some, but not for me. Nor could i really tell you what it is i do seek, or whether in fact i haven’t found what i seek and am too stuck in a former frame of reference, lacking the courage of my convictions to accept that i am happy - well that sounds a little harsh, not unlike the criticisms one might hear from the ambitious cohorts i grew up in. Today i spend months on a single drawing; that is not practical and it causes consternation with artisan friends who labor under the Sword of Damocles to make a living from their alla prima concept of creativity. I am not an art worker, nor dilettante from wealth and privilege; early in my art vocation it became clear i would never be the captain of my ship and ever at the mercy of art movers and shakers until i could buy back my creative prerogative and own my time. I do not recommend this approach to anyone with their heart set on fame and fortune, for it is abnormal to laugh at one’s patrons, much less eliminate them from the buyer’s pool. If i have any say, which if Mark Rothko is any harbinger, i do not, but if i do have any say in what happens to my work: you must prove 1/2 of your net worth has no relationship to the richest .01% HNWI, or you may not purchase or possess my stone carvings. It is a conceit to believe you have control of anything, but it is immoral to have something and not take responsibility for that. Laugh if you must; don’t buy if you like, but don’t expect to find hand-hewn stone carvings, or machine-hewn granite by a left-handed two-eyed cyclops anywhere else in the world.

So if normal has become abnormal, and vice-versa what good is tradition? In days-gone-by acceptable behavior was developed over time for a community, or culture; dangerous and unfruitful behavior was gradually extinguished, while what contributed to the common good was nurtured and propagated. Today corporate media wizards control what behavior gets propagated, and the only motivation i can see for why one behavior is favored and another extinguished is profit. To me that is not only not illogical, it is not normal. A quaint homily while growing up was “it takes money, to make money” has now morphed into “critical mass” - a point at which a self-sutstaining state is reached. Remember we are only talking about symbols representing value, symbols that have no relationship to wellbeing, tragedy, love, grief or any other commonly used expressions for the human condition. That is not normal. Even the black holes of our universe emit something identifiable thanks to Sir Hawkings’ abnormal mental acuity, whereas financial wherewithal is more like a cancer which only exists for its own growth; that is not normal, or it’s a normal that needs far better understanding if it is to ever take its rightful place in our infantile civilization. If you feel yourself to be abnormal, as i do about myself, i can only recommend that you narrow that grandiose gauge back down within your own skin - to begin to evaluate normalcy based on your own internal metrics. Learn what your limits are by exceeding them and pursuing the boundaries of your comfort zone. However, if you find your very existence provokes others to describe, or behave toward, you as though you are abnormal, you may want to find kinder friends, for If we expect to survive the coming test of our so highly touted adaptability, it might be a good time to bone up on the fundamentals. John Wooden - “Happiness, begins where selfishness ends.”

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normal - a sonnet

life is too fucking short to be normal;
by the time you found any examples,
the test proctor’d be saying the clock’s full.
Say you found normal - odds on, it was pills.

Some say “you need to be like us - not odd,”
others ask why can’t you be different¿
When i hear that now, i just look and nod
hoping to get back - following the scent.

Normally i get hungry, so i eat
guided to food by its fine aroma
grown much finer giving most of the meat,
but not all the carnal phenomena.

beware clerics who demand you believe
if you just be normal, you’ll never leave. 

jts 03/26/2018
http://josephtstevens.blogspot.com 
reprinted with permission - all rights reserved 


Tuesday, March 20, 2018

secret - an essay / public - the sonnet

I prefer to remain as open as i know how; having said that, i consider myself a very private man - yeah, i know - another fucking paradox. I would prefer not to be as private as am, but my journey has convinced me that not everyone will treat injuries the same. Those things about myself that are not accessible to anyone or anything but my own heart pertain to suffering. I have not always been reluctant to confide the inner recesses of my being; before i understood anything about the mechanics of socialization, i was more than happy to divulge whatever was of interest to another spirit. From that openness, i learned betrayal, shame and fear. I also learned self-respect, discernment and a profound appreciation for Sister Rosetta Tharpe’s song “Don’t Take Everyone To Be Your Friend.” What is left to me, is the process of opening back up again; if in fact i ever was. I have learned there is such a concept as “false intimacy;” which is apparently based on an analysis of behavior for predatory personality types; sadly, i could certainly be included in that spectrum - if you can see it, you can be it. I feel like i am tiptoeing around the concept of “secret” which is precisely my objection to the intrinsic nature of secrecy. When i become aware of someone trying to hide something from me, it is insulting - as though, i am unworthy of a confidence. This is an irrational reaction-formation to a family dynamic long gone, but the residue is pernicious. If anything, when someone is clearly hiding something, i have begun to feel compassion that person having to resort to such constraint and restriction. When i was a young man one of the more worldly wise of my wooly friends remarked, “when you think you’re looking good, you’re looking bad, and when you think you’re looking bad, you’re looking good.” I’m sure there was more than a trace of recovering Catholic in his wryness, but the key to remember - there is no obscuring the truth - you can’t fake shit. Ask anyone who has tried to live a lie; people know truth which is why Hank Williams’ song If You Only Loved Me Half As Much As I Love You is so poignant.

What’s the use to deny we’ve been livin’ a lie
That we should have admitted before
We were just victims of a half hearted love
So why should we try anymore?

I’ve had job assignments, more than i am happy about, which required fairly high levels of fidelity - one pertained to family estates, another national defense. What has stuck with me about both, has been the bald-face hypocrisy of both. It seems the more steps you take to preserve some fiction of security, the more dodgy become the principals. I won’t go into details, because then i’d have to kill you. A clear outgrowth of the fallacious concept of security is the humongous growth of surveillance. It reminds me of a Dr. Seuss story about the Star Bellied Sneetches. The idea that there is a segment of the population who can be trusted vs a segment which can’t, runs contrary to logic when at society’s core - the family unit, there is no consensus between siblings. Who benefits from the illusion that a metric could be developed which determines honor; just like the story of the Sneetches, only the guy who could place or remove the stars came out ahead. But do we learn ? NOOooo - we still put faith in leaders, be they generals, presidents, popes or bankers - always knowing that anyone occupying that position of power is no more likely capable than yourself to formulate a logical response to an illogical circumstance. What is worthy of hiding? They thought the launch code to the nuclear arsenal would be worthy of termination with extreme prejudice; now we have an individual in possession of those launch codes who also feels he can grab women’s genitals because ________ fill in the blank. There used to be an actionable offense for trading in industry secrets, now we have a stock market which by all accounts is made up of the richest, and a government at the beck and call of those who can pay. If the insiders are running the asylum, how can you call it “insider trading”, much less prosecute it?

When the concept of honor has become as indecipherable as the steps taken to protect it, we need to take another look at who is hiding what from whom, or not. I am severely incurious with anyone about anything they don’t want me to know. This nearly vicious disinterest, i’m sure, is more reaction formation from a domestic collapse which involved my stolen dog, a man i thought was the friend i never had, and a wife who didn’t want me, for purely pecuniary reasons, to know her dad had died - if that sounds bitter, i assure you it is not intentional, for it is beyond funny - i think it’s called tragicomedy. She is still in hiding, supposedly from the danger of my _______ fill in the blank. It is greed that drives secrets, greed and shame, if you have enough of both, there is no place on the planet where you will ever feel secure. Sadly the opposite is not necessarily true; if you have reached a point in your personal development where you could not give a fuck who knows what about you and there is little of material value you seek outside of roof and enough to eat there is no place on earth where you are not easily accessible to anyone who wants to find you badly enough. I recently read an article on the superiority of what vs why in my own journey toward personal growth, and while the logic was formidable in support of “what,” what was missing was the author’s agenda. There is no magic bullet - one size fits all for anything in our world. Any strategy which leads one out of the dark into the light is valid. Self knowledge by all accounts is the only adversary worthy of struggle, and it seems to me fewer and fewer of us are even curious to know why that is, if indeed that is a true statement. I am living in a country with a language different than the one i understand, and it has been a fruitful experience to differentiate what people say vs what they do - if for no other reason.

I would be lying through my teeth to say suspicion hasn’t haunted my steps and would be equally dishonest to suggest that on balance people are exactly the same with or without comprehensible language understanding. The same behaviors that distinguish the decent from the less decent manifest for the same reasons, greed, love, hate, compassion. What is different is the illusion of protection, those who understand each other are more confident without any real foundation for that trust. It is not dissimilar to the Blue Wall of Silence for police; Omerta/Black Hand for the homies; or now the Bible for ‘merican fascists. Why is that? Can it be that the fear of standing alone has become so pronounced from the divide-and-conquer strategy of the ruling class that we as human beings are no longer capable of distinguishing fact from fiction - that the dreaded TOP SECRET boogeyman haunting our keystrokes and our footsteps is robbing us from the simple realization that we came into this world alone and we are going to leave alone, regardless of how many others with who we may be gunned down? What concerns me more is my own willingness to forgo my own native curiosity in favor of emotional armor. “You don’t want me to know, fuck you - i won’t even look.” That behavior is ignorant and like the cartoon lump where when you push it down one place, it just pops up in another. There is a difference between looking and seeing. I see it often in my drawings; my ability to discern parts of my subject are completely obscured from my perception until enough work has provided a context to see more deeply. I had read an apocryphal story of the indigenous people who without the context in which to view a sailing vessel were unable to see ships which conveyed their invaders. I’m hoping the same is true for personal growth, that only after enough other events will those morsels of understanding i quest for appear.

Just like there is no hiding the avarice and greed of today’s leaders from the bulk of humanity whose very existence is threatened by the princelings and overlords aspiring to today’s exalted thrones of opulence and power, so too will the character of humanity reveal itself when faced with a non-fictional choice between love and hate. A man knows when he is loved, just as a women knows when she loves a man and vice versa. There is no altering that condition of our kind, nor can you hide “nothing” behind unassailable measures of protection and expect people to believe there is something rather than nothing. Just as money has turned out to be a fiction which serves a handful, so too will the bytes and terabits be revealed as figments of someone’s imagination. What i won’t share with you cannot be pried from my soul any more than your humanity can be hidden from you. It is not in our nature to become so numb to mayhem that images of mangled babies and the parents who mourn them can be inoculated by diversions of greater and greater fantasy. When your woman betrays you - you know it and there is nothing she can say or do but to accept that fact and move on. So too with our kind - your job, your church, not even your language is going to protect you from the certain knowledge that shit has gone terribly wrong and without a whole lot of love and determination by a whole lot of like-minded people, it’s going to continue moving in that same direction. The reverse is as equally true, the fewer fictions supported by the civilized world means more and more human beings will resort to what they had learned from centuries of word-of-mouth heritage, that is if we can manage to avoid the poison of a dying culture and embrace the loving human being you just met as you got up from your computer or looked away from your scrolling-hand held just now - there will be a ray of hope left to us, and you won’t even have to remember your password.


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public - the sonnet

How can “public” be secret’s antonym ¿
If i hadn’t asked, i’d never’ve found out.
Way easy to pass the veil of a hymn-
what else can be taken without a bout ?

Commonwealth will not fit within a safe,
yet our world believes that passwords protect-
bullshit is worthless - excess, is one waif.
You have a vote and must make it elect

“Privatize” means “I’ll take what you can’t have”
-having everything doesn’t mean you are,
anymore than television is a salve
for believing yourself close to what’s far.

What is hidden, may not be hid. Maybe
it sits in plain sight, helping you to be.


jts 03/19/2018
http://stoneartist.com 

reprinted with permission - all rights reserved 

Saturday, March 17, 2018

cooking bedbugs - a sonnet



My life sometimes seems full of blood-suckers, 
enough so to serve some up in a poem.
What I'll do is fry them little fuckers
making them do more than mess up my home.

Logic says they're smart enough to eat me,
so if they taste a little like myself
would that just make them fruit of my own tree?
How long 'til we're buying them off the shelf¿

My folks grew up in the great depression.  
Hunger wasn't yet all about ratings 
nor were cooked varmits poetic fiction -
more like a lesson on the world's workings.  
  
If  you have intestinal fortitude 
try bedbugs for your mealtime interlude. 

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"cocinar chinches" - un soneto"
Mi vida a veces parece llena de chupasangres,
lo suficiente como para servir a algunos en un poema.
Lo que haré es freírlos pequeños cabrones
haciéndolos hacer más que estropear mi casa.

La lógica dice que son lo suficientemente inteligentes como para comerme,
entonces si saben un poco como yo
¿Eso solo los haría fruto de mi propio árbol?
¿Cuánto tiempo 'hasta que los compremos fuera de la estantería¿

Mis padres crecieron en la gran depresión.
El hambre aún no tenía que ver con las calificaciones
tampoco fueron pociones cocinadas poéticas de ficción -
más como una lección sobre el funcionamiento del mundo.
  
Si tienes fortaleza intestinal
prueba chinches para tu interludio a la hora de la comida.


jts 2011
http://stoneartist.com 
reprinted with permission - all rights reserved e



 ∞

Monday, March 12, 2018

home - the essay / lessness - a sonnet

Ma changed the locks when i was 15, i am now 63, and that still hurts. She, however, is not responsible for my feelings, or my behavior - i am. It may be for this reason that she changed the locks; she may have wanted me to be responsible for her feelings. I asked her once what is the meaning of “home?” Her reply was “someplace you go and they can’t turn you away.” Her father was an itinerant miner. He was estranged from my grandmother for many years; my mother was periodically left with him for extended period, as was my uncle. At the end of my grandfather’s life he was taken back into the family home in Los Angeles where he died from cancer. My sense is that these events affected my mother deeply, along with many other equally confounding dynamics one might find in many homes on our planet. My idea of what constitutes home is complex, where what i really need to do is make it simple. One of the difficulties for me, is being welcome, without which i find it very difficult to feel that i belong. That is an irrational and largely useless strategy for making oneself to home. I can only imagine what it means to children whose homes have been bombed out from under them, witnessing their family members shredded into corpuscles. In a larger sense, we are all family and the only home we have is mother earth. We are not doing a very good job respecting where we came from - were our bones are supposed to come to rest. Rather than fighting about where we live, it might be a good time to re-evaluate how we live; what is our definition of home, and what it means to be a human being.


Ma is not, nor has she been a bad mother. She provided for herself and her family to the limits of her capacity; the struggle between her and myself must have been a lesson we both needed to understand. She is aged and nearing the end of her life on earth. I would be at her side, but the changed locks are of a different nature now - she is still a good mother doing the best that she knows how; i am at a loss for how to help her, it seems i’m at a loss to help most of those i wish to help. The irony is when there is a chance for me to help, like answering the door for the upper two floors where i live, i resist. I don’t mind when someone asks me for something, and i have an opportunity to say “yes” or “no.” But i find myself unwilling to have things taken from me, or expectations assigned to me, like “you live on the ground floor, you will answer the door.” That is cognitive dissonance running contrary to my instincts for happy living today - minimizing suffering and helping where i can. If i were truly a worldwide citizen, one would think there would be no limits to my willingness to help, though i find the following true as well: Bob Dylan - “try to make things better for someone, sometimes, you just end up making it a thousand times worse”. Over the years with composite families of my own, the idea of home has undergone various changes, from being willing to give up my life protecting my family, to solitary escapes from scabrous environments. Today, that which is suitable determines where i live; if i can work quietly without disturbance, it is suitable. As with most things, definition is all. But is there more; is there an intrinsic meaning to hearth and home, or is the essence more metaphysical, having something to do with the limits of our skin?

I don’t know, I do know many have striven over generations to lay down roots, which by some calculations is a measure of belonging. These same people have been driven from their communities by changing demographics, war and other calamities, and the trend toward upheaval is only going to rise with the tide - 40% of the planet’s population lives within 100 kilometers of the shoreline. Many of these communities are ancient, reaching back into the dawn of our human history - the roots run deep. I know in my own country the pace of change has inspired virulent fear, often fed by the same unscrupulous characters that would try to sell desert lots on the promise of California falling into the ocean. However in the United States, there are more vacant properties than there are homeless people. That circumstance describes a twisted system that is not out of kilter but intentionally flawed to the core. The problem is that the same mania for profit that glutted the housing stock has been exported as a business model to an amazing percentage of the world’s leaders who are emulating ‘merica’s shameful exploitation of the natural human instinct to want to be at home. I wonder how easy it would be to sell that bullshit, if our children were raised to see themselves as members of the human species rather than factions of waring tribes fighting for fewer and fewer resources? What would it take to convey such logic to larger and larger segments of our world¿ Education is no longer a viable conduit for promulgating wholesome citizens - the smart money is, and has been for a long, long time choking off the concept that people are valuable ingredients to a civilized world, rather we have been encouraged in some gladiatorial delusion that if one can excel enough at ______ fill in the blank, security will be provided. They don’t say by whom or how, but the careerist shills are reassuring in their zealous encouragement that with the correct combination of correct skills ________ fill in the blank, you will meet with rich success.

The truth is excellence is not expected, nor is it tolerated outside of an extremely narrow spectrum of accomplishment. That spectrum of accomplishment is entirely controlled by computer models of what will generate the maximum revenue stream to a smaller and smaller number of people. The days of any child in the United States believing s/he can grow up to become president ended with the birth of Barron Trump and the election of his father. Though it actually ended much earlier with the beginning of the “Industrial Revolution,” which was neither industrial nor revolutionary. The meaning of industrial was simply a perversion of “industry” which means - hard work. As to revolutionary, orgasm might be a more accurate term - The Industrial Orgasm. Prior to this juncture in history, snake oil salesman were marginalized hucksters spiking cod liver oil with sour mash, making enough scratch to get the next village drunk. But when revolutionary industrial empresarios got wind of how much snake oil could be manufactured by machine for next to nothing, the greed race was on. It has never been a question of if, but when the banksters would simply muscle the middle man out. Prior to the Industrial Orgasm, when a man received a home, or enough property to build on, hard work was an asset; today hard work is defined by the number of hours you can clock on the account to which you’re assigned - the battle cry is “work smarter, not harder.” There are pockets of entrepreneurial low hanging fruit left, but just as the snake oil salesman was subsumed by the empresario, who was then shouldered aside by the banker, excellence in the modern era is not well tolerated. Ask Aaron Swartz, all he wanted was to share digitized knowledge with as much of the human population as possible; his fatal mistake was not including a coin slot in his technology.

The world’s billionaires do not care, not one of them - to want to control a billion dollars does not describe a personality that cares for anything but its own ego. The problem for the billionaires is that collectively they are dumber than they are individually. Because of this anomalous social throwback to their fraternity heyday, they remain largely oblivious to the havoc they have wreaked being more concerned about the opinions within their well insulated cohort than aware of the consequences of egregious stupidity. While the balance of the population is having to become more and more resourceful and creative in their growth for literal survival within the world they were born, be that suburban Costa Mesa, or Ubud Bali. The inclination to resist the phenomenal pace of coming change will impair dynamic creativity for a time, and nationalist rivalries will erupt, but the temporary infusion of disaster cash will only remedy so much and fewer and fewer problems which the havoc created by the smaller and smaller, ever more identifiable portion of the population will be held accountable. “When the shit comes down, there  will not be walls high enough to protect them” - Edward Colver. People want to cooperate, it is in their nature and when left to their devices they will build peaceful communities full of the human drama that characterizes our species. The extent of travel enjoyed today will be become evermore restricted for a variety of reasons, from ecological impact, to the cost of security necessary to shuttle the wealthy from compound to compound. Much like i had to reconcile my own behavior with its consequences about what i understand is home, so too will humanity have to come to terms with unrealistic greed and the role it has played in its own dislocation from what it had once believed to be home. The delusion that there is an app that can substitute for what it means to belong to one’s own world will collapse with the myth of home being where the heart is. The only home left to any of us is made up of the soil, water and air we have through our greed and cowardice allowed to be become polluted, possibly beyond repair. If we are serious about fighting for our homes we’d better enlarge our concept of where we belong - quickly. 
  

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lessness - a sonnet

I had a stuffed animal, a long time;
where it was, i was at home - home is gone.
finding my way back, has been a long climb.
made much richer by all that i have drawn.

It could be that work has become my home
- a place i cannot be turned away from,
i have fun, does that condemn me to roam?
- sounds odd, like marching to war to a drum¿

i like what i do, liked my animal;
don’t like war, but i like drums - like the beat.
I can’t play for shit, just not capable.
- everywhere might be home, t’ain’t all mama’s teet

if there is any truth to “less is more”
will having less get us back to the core?

jts 03/12/2018
http://stoneartist.com 
reprinted with permission - all rights reserved 


Monday, March 5, 2018

wrong - an essay / right - the sonnet


“When goodness is lost, it is replaced by morality” - Lao Tzu

We live in a time when goodness, if not lost, can certainly be difficult to understand. Not because we are not surrounded by good people, places and things. However from the love of profit, the unscrupulous amongst us have monetized as much as they can lay their hands on, including each keystroke i make now - however faint. Whether that is right or wrong, i cannot say, but i know it is not moral. In a moral world, ideas and the communication medium within which they wander would not bear a cost, for they would be recognized for the benefit which those concepts would provide a curious public: information about how to grow with purpose, how to raise happy humans, or even how to prepare nutritious meals would be freely developed and exchanged. Prior to the “civilized” model of human existence, people lived and survived well, within a vast spectrum of environmental conditions, but without the conceit of good, better and best. The early humans knew that when the game was not killed, or the crop did not yield, hunger would follow. Today, nearing the latter part of my existence - my bigger concern is not if i can find food but whether the units of measure i use to buy what i need will evaporate as result of governmental fraud, or the complete collapse of the “economy” from mismanagement and bad faith. I have done as i was socialized to do - worked, married, bought houses & many things along with paying taxes: on all my bank accounts beginning in the 5th grade, on my wages beginning at age 14, on all purchased items through sales tax, (for cars alone a figure that numbers in the 10s of thousands), for automotive registration, for licensing, for insurance .  .  . etc., etc., etc. We live in a world dominated by computer power, but there is no application that i’m aware of which easily distinguishes what you spend and what you pay for in tax. Why is that? I think it is because Mark Twain was right, “There are lies, damnable lies and there are statistics”. Statistics, like corporations and the ruling class are not given to scruples.

It is difficult for me to conceive what that state of mind might be like. Once i began to wonder about why i was paying for a home which i had to leave daily, plus the cost of storage space for items i might need but couldn’t fit where i lived, i then began to doubt the wisdom of my socialization. Sadly there were many years lost while i blamed my plight on ________ fill in the blank. Whether that was right or wrong, i cannot say, but i can say it was not a morally defensable position - if guilt is a valid condition, the responsibility was and remains mine alone. What i cannot fathom is what it means if the government steals my contribution to my own social security, or the bank fails which with great moral reservation i allow to utilize my deposits. This is a conundrum of personal responsibility, for to rectify either of these precarious conditions requires i do something to protect what is mine - in the parlance of late stage survivalists - self reliance. That is a paradox; if i use a bank believing the fiction of an “economy”, and capitalize on my political franchise as a citizen - the roles i was raised to believe in and support would result in my independence, but by all accounts these same entities are not not only not keeping faith, they are actively participating in the impoverishment of my wealth and the disenfranchisement of my freedoms along with apparently the entire population of the world. Ironically these same mooks are doing the same to all those sellouts they have on FuckTheWorld Inc. payroll. I can’t say whether this is right or wrong, but it is definitely not moral. Morality as i understand it includes the kindness one pays to a dying human being, the gentleness one gives to an infant or the care of all that protects our fragile organisms in this bubble of air we call home. What is not moral is beating a man on the ground, stealing from those who have nothing or wrecking the world that is all we have to leave the unborn amongst us.

How can we as a species, who can build a pyramid that aligns with galaxies we cannot see; peer beyond our toenails to the very  molecules at birth which dictate the color and length of those toenails; or pluck from air the vibrations of a Mozart piano concerto, not restrain the wholly destructive behavior of a handful of human beings from our population? That is a question. I do not believe it is enough to simply refrain from destructive behavior, it is very important to propagate non-destructive loving behavior indiscriminately. We are beyond the point in our extinction where we can pick and choose those with whom we will share our concept of morality. The first human being you have a moral obligation to, is yourself. Hatred, greed and delusion have been proven to be destructive states of being to the fragile cellular membrane we occupy, yet the number of other people i know, and i know a lot of people, who could be said to be free of these self-destructive conditions are 0 - 1, the one includes myself in the count. The most evolved people i have ever read or known of can only have learned the benefits of living free from these limitations of the human condition by confronting their own capacity for such. “There is no eradicating evil, for every new solution creates a new evil” - Sheldon Kopp via The Eschatological Laundry List, or phrased differently “The meaning of life - one damn thing after another” - D.E. Tuppins. The delusion of a saintly human being might be a good starting point for the liberation of our collective spirit. Does this mean we have a license for mayhem, clearly we do, otherwise we would no longer entertain war as a means of improving our world. Even the “awakened” ones amongst us use the metaphor of spiritual warrior to characterize their otherwise benign efforts to save us from ourselves, so deep is our love affair with war. Nor is enlightened self-interest an adequate enough concept to to avert the coming cataclysm, how could it in a world able to coin the expression “disaster capitalism” faster than people are able to comprehend the meaning of the word - disaster?

Hatred is a far more complex feeling than the cartoon pejorative we have been carefully cultivated to rely on. It is at its root - aversion. By this definition to my chagrin, i remain a hater at heart recoiling down the street, sometimes bouncing away from people, places or things for no reason at all - but powerfully, just the same. How can that be? Is there such a state of existence where, minus the silly shit-eating grin one finds on the faces of acolytes, there is such a thing as steady state attraction? Oddly that is how i picture the megalomaniacs, sort of like sharks who are also unable to back up because the design of their gills would suffocate them. Corporate CEOs contain one of the largest demographics of sociopaths, oddly opposite the logic of the CIA bureaucratic org chart which according to one optimistic analyst has the sociopaths occupying the operative lower rungs, while managers lead - possessing the more wholesome mental makeups - whatever that means. Any of these considerations discussing our moral decay neglects the only really important point - what’s it gonna take for mankind to survive¿ It would be so easy if this were a novel, or movie - you just plug in Deus ex Machina, and presto the skies open; a miracle occurs; our heroes and heroines are back alive and there’s a chicken every pot. Yet, our world is accelerating the production of plastic at a time when it is projected there will be more plastic in the ocean than there are fish within the next twenty - thirty years - an ocean which since 2011 has received 300-400 tons of radioactive water each day - with no end in sight. Yeah, instead of Deus we get Shakespeare - “Hell is empty, and all the devils here.” This might be a good time to accept the fact that our characters are not angelic, and dying ain’t gonna change that fact. What then? I say we peer deeply into the abyss and be as Ben Franklin had described himself, “perhaps i’m an optimistic pessimist - prepare for the worst, but when the very worst doesn’t happen, i’m pleasantly surprised.” 

I don’t know what is right anymore, for i am unsure of the bumptious aversion meter that has guided so many of my steps through this world. I do know it would be very wrong of me to not do my level best to try and aid the refugees from the coming collapse of our world as we understand it, if for no other reason than i am a refugee; we all are. Simplify Simper Fi might be a good start, rather than “always faithful”, we might become “ever skeptical”. Let us actually rely on ourselves once again for our perceptions - the screen is fake, the puppeteers behind the screen are fake, the person in front of you, sneering, leering or leaving is more real than anything you will find here or out there. Look to your insides, tend to your wellbeing - does that friend resemble an ad, or flawed family dynamic, then embrace that, fucked up feelings and all - let the discomfort soak in. There is no place else for us to go. If we do not discover a way to protect our planet before we protect ourselves there will be no lives to protect, for we will have perished from the face of the earth, all of us - 7 billion souls, just like anyone of the species we have destroyed since the beginning of the “industrial revolution” which just like all revolutions promised much and delivered little. The revolution that is left to us is the battle of the two wolves from Indian lore. One benign, generous and loving for our world and all that is in it, the other vicious, selfish and hateful. They engaged in a lifelong battle for your soul - the one that wins, is the one you feed. Only the stakes are no longer for your life alone, we are now all of us making decisions that will determine whether there will be a continuation of our species. It is said that Jesus returned from the great beyond, and from this return we have justified one war after another, never coming close to applying his lessons. If that is the end product of immortality i think i’ll take my chances on finding friends here on earth and having some fun doing the best i know how - if that is wrong, at least i had a little fun doing it. 


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right - the sonnet

I was right once, for about a second,
then i was born to ma for a lifetime -
to hear her tale, two lifetimes, she’d reckon.
It’s just like her to double a good time.

I once had rights, ’til i learned otherwise.
“True” they said, but you do this, this happens.
Too often, what i’ve wanted was not wise,
though it depends on how you use the lens.

I was just told i was delirious,
nor would he be wrong, for i’m more than not,
and much more “left” then i am dexterous.
Ma’s dilemma, me the gordian knot.

i can’t cure her illness, for it is age
but can honor her life and burn some sage. 




jts 03/05/2018
http://stoneartist.com 

reprinted with permission - all rights reserved