health - the essay / illness - a sonnet

Last night i had cyber sex - couldn’t really call it sexting, because i don’t own a phone. Nor could i say it was the best i ever had, for it was a first. What i can say is pound-for-pound computer sex comes nowhere close to skin-to-skin fornication - not even the same universe. I am not complaining and i applaud the flexibility of my partner to even consider such a measure; i wonder if she woke with the same confusion that i did absent the warmth and smelly breath of real life. There seems to be nothing the virtual world contains that approximates the dynamic possibilities actual life affords. One begins to wonder what they where thinking calling virtual anything, much less reality. Was this sexual experience healthy - virtually, in the denuded emptiest sense of the word. All that it seems to afford is the independent life each of us pursues 1,000’s of miles apart - i do not think that is too healthy, mostly because i like sex - not virtually, but actually. Somewhere between “The Scarlet Letter” and the discovery of AIDS we lost the capacity to fully appreciate the benefits of wholesome sex, but that is not all we have lost. With the advent of labor saving everything, we now work a full day and then take the money we earned and give it to a “health” club so we may sweat expertly. Our food has also been contaminated by this labor saving ethos, to the extent food that was supposed to be healthy and fast was baked using the same ingredients used to fabricate yoga mats. I don’t know what universe you were raised in, but that doesn’t seem too healthy to me. I accept that the most important point of health is the state of one’s own mind: “I choose to be happy, for it is better for my health” - Voltaire. Yet in a world full of unreasoned reflexive hate the state of happiness can be very complicated to cultivate. I take to cyber trysts hoping to recover some of the visceral pleasure still available to a determined soul; it is a good thing i am not so much affected by disappointment as i am curious to learn how to mend.

After many injuries - heart, head and soul, i am also convinced that the human being, like most living creatures seeks stasis - wants to be healthy and is extremely powerful to this end. I have watched personal injuries close from gaping bloody wounds to faint scars, and that is a wondrous miracle. The human character has also this capacity for healing as anyone who has suffered the loss of a love, loved one or even been forced by circumstance to deprive another of the same. How can we as a species do, as the song sang of “accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative.” ? It is becoming more than a rhetorical question now that we are facing the possible extinction of our species. One of the many benefits of experience is a calm approach to calamity and injury, when there is blood pouring down your arm, one does not stop to point the finger or argue whether it is a serious injury - you staunch the flow, elevate the wound over the heart and seek transport to the nearest doctor. Our planet is bleeding from savage disregard, and if we don’t staunch the hemorrhaging, elevate the wound over the heart (would that we could know where that might be on such a complex organism as our earth) and find a doctor capable of curing such a wound - we perish. “φροντίζετε τον εαυτό σας” - Αριστοτέλη; “ Physician heal thyself” - Aeschylus. I no longer argue with anyone unwilling to consider the danger of our circumstances, rather i take what steps i am capable of to alleviate the symptoms - routinely using the proper adjective, poison, to describe plastic; live as local as i can to where i reside - supporting local markets and encouraging sustainable strategies, and i write essays. While this may not seem much, it is as close to the clotting behavior of blood as i can get, that and being happy. I used to believe this was the result of the perfect Rawlings baseball glove, oiled and cured around a baseball just at the sweet spot; then it became “her” smile until i saw the other side of that - now my happiness comes from personal choice which is not always easy, evidenced by my curious sexual proclivities.

I am waiting on a lad who draws for a living in the local zocalo. Remembering how vital the support of older artists has been to my own development, i try to support how i can. To that end, i had asked if he wanted to sign his drawing of Frida Kahlo’s profile before it was framed - at another time in my existence i might have considered someone missing such an appointment as a personal affront - no longer. At some point in my journey, the reality of personal responsibility of others for their actions became one more thing to observe, rather than something to act on. A great deal of stress was resolved by this awareness. Stress is a killer and so much of it is from our own conceits. War is an abomination born of greed - there is no other cause or root, yet people are ready to join forces killing others, simply because the fury accessible in combat mimics unresolved conflicts in each of our hearts. I do not want to change your mind by what i write, i write to expunge the fury of my own unfinished business. I am going to die and there is no amount of exercise or health potions that will change that fact, least of all killing another. So i busy myself with those activities that give me pleasure and honor my unique skills such as they are. The illusion of recognition by anyone other than myself for my efforts has freed up a lot of creative elan i had long thought withered and bone dry. It helps that i don’t spend a lot of time or effort organizing external proof of my existence, though eating chocolate doesn’t hurt - except those children exploited by Nestles and other global corporate tyrannies who burn forests so as to plant palm oil plantations. I cook my meals of legumes native to where i live with vegetables. It gives me great satisfaction to prepare my own meals, and while bordering on the tedious at times, i do not miss the muss and fuss necessary to be in society and not give offense by blowing my nose after enjoying the chilies that are such an important part of my diet.

It is amazing the time and expense i save by eating my own cooking - time i use to accomplish tasks of my own design. Freud has been said to define mental health as contentment with work and love, or words to that effect. I am lucky to have always possessed a natural affinity for work - love had been a tad more elusive, until i learned for certain that i could not give love until i found it inside myself - that was an ineffable dawn of sorts. We do not live in a world which encourages love, rather one that profits from that which cannot be sold - love. We are not allowed to revere the power of love outside of prescribed paths anointed by family, community or experts. It is a small wonder love has survived without a champion for as long as it has - true testimony to love’s innate vitality, sort of like the health good food yields. I can speak from both sides of the equation having been romantically betrayed by 3 wives. The most difficult aspect of those experiences is personal responsibility that cannot be denied - i accepted the unacceptable, love without a home, or a home without love - your call. That i selected each as partners is indisputable, but they are not absolved. Nor am i innocent, it was my love that was inadequate to the task - if they had gotten enough from me, it would not have been necessary to search elsewhere. Clarity and self awareness is critical to any kind of growth - most especially the personal kind. Hatred has been as much of an impediment to personal growth as any history i may have passed through or excuse i might have conjured from interested, however misguided advice. Hatred has been one of the most corrosive emotions i’ve ever encountered in myself or others. What is curious is how that word parses upon deeper examination, specifically with respect to “aversion” - to be repelled by something. I was brought up using as much sense as logic with mother and father representing each modality respectively. Logic is something like mathematics when you push an equation out the window - like a piano falling it either lands or it does not. Sense is not quite as tidy with six people in a circle around an apple, each seeing a different apple.

Does that make an artist’s apple more correct than yours, even though professionally trained artists in some venues have sold their renditions for $100’s of millions? Yeah, i’m with you - though truth be told, it would be difficult to decide whether to trade a limb for one of Cezanne’s apples; i guess it would depend on the limb. Love is an attractive principle, while hate is by definition repellent. I found this one of the many times that i managed to quite smoking; the most successful times being when i was pulling myself toward a higher objective, never from my inordinate capacity for denial. However, love can make for strange bedfellows at times like just now: i elected to smoke while i ponder the end of this writing - we all have habits that do not aid our health - i fly in jet planes at times, though i walk as much as possible to offset my carbon footprint. While i drink mezcal, i manage to enjoy the two shots most nights and mitigate with hydration those mornings when logic is overtaken by my lesser senses. Our planet is rugged like most life in her precious atmosphere; she will continue on in some form long after we are gone, yet my hope is for an awakening of love for our mysterious existence in the vast sea of dark matter. I have found love inside of myself that i never expected. It is not faint, nor is it romantic - it is a powerful belief that my death is not any different than the inexplicable nature of my birth. We are passing through, and if we are smart, we will try to enjoy these sacred seconds we have been given to expand our awareness of the inexplicable. Most all other struggles are window dressings of denial and vain efforts to define the nature of something we do not understand. I cannot make another person happy anymore than i can allow them to deprive me of mine. This is not to say i cannot derive great pleasure in searching for ways to help others be happy, so i continue to seek out those demonstrating best what they’ve learned so far in the hope that by being of assistance, my wellbeing will grow more hardy and can become an example to others as they have become to me.

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illness - a sonnet

Illness is another making you whole,

because it’ll never happen in this world.

If you are not well, it is from your hole,

and if well, for not living imperiled.

Can death be denied or even vanquished,

or is wellness a friend to meet always?

I don’t know, but i am not extinguished,

so wellness must accept some of my ways.

Never been so sick as when full of hate,

yet delivered from death by simple love.

It may be, we cannot control our fate,

but am sure worthy quarry is not dove.

if you are not well, you think about it,

it may help to pay heed to what you shit.

jts 05/28/2018

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com 

http://josephtstevens.blogspot.com 

reprinted with permission - all rights reserved ·

 ∞

here - an essay / there - a sonnet

One week and a day ago, i was in the city where i had grown up, or at least the place i have claimed to have grown up since i left at the age of 15. The reality is much different, for i was really only a resident for some 10-15 years and i am now 63. It is far from where i now live - a place i hopefully continue to grow. When i arrived home here, i mercilessly tried to resume my schedule of work which is the only real sanctuary i’ve known since i discovered the benefits of that discipline; however, indoctrinated might be a better description for my work habits. My parents were hard working depression era babies and it was post WWII ‘merica - everything was possible. I remember being gathered into the multipurpose room at our school where the teachers wheeled the televisions in so the whole school could together witness John Glenn being launched into space. How much has changed since that time. For our instructors, it must have indeed been phenomenal to witness a human being being launched out of our atmosphere, yet i could not have understood it as anything more than a normal event in the havoc of childhood. Before i was out of high school, i can remember sitting with the girl from the next block watching men orbiting the moon; which was more abnormal - the close proximity of a girl you’d wrestled when youngsters, but who could now pin you with a glance, or the fact that human beings were circling the same planetary body you’d howled at when you found out why your parents liked beer. Is that feeling of dislocation the same fiction for time? Does our mental apparatus so capable of fantasy and understanding slip in and out of here and there as easily as it slips out of now and then? When i had returned here to my home, the confusion of my memory about home was so strong that i became physically ill and slept for nearly a day. Our literature is full of stories based on the confusion our minds create when leaving the here and now: Rip Van Winkle was able to elude a miserable phase of his existence and the perils of war simply by wandering away from home and helping a stranger schlep a keg of gin up a hill; Odysseus has great difficulty just getting to home and hearth from war, much less convincing his long suffering wife that it was indeed him and not some usurper - how many men today are dreaming of just such a journey from the here and now of war to the there and then of home?

Sitting here now, i realize John Glenn, and the three moon astronauts certainly must have felt something similar at some point in their respective journeys - a longing for the familiar, the clinging to a memory. Soren Kierkegaard has said “life can only be understood backward, but must be lived forward”, while Sir Stephen Hawking posited “why we are able to look back in time, but not forward?” Anymore, i’m nearly incurious about that for which i cannot obtain an answer, for there is so much about where i sit that is inexplicable. Why for example is war a part of the human plight, and is there a role in the questions i ask for perpetual war? Why are man and woman so similar, and yet unlike as water to land? If self knowledge is the only certainty in human relations? How is it that service to others is the most pure form of love¿ Do i have to leave where i sit to learn what others know, or is writing a form of mind melding, similar to reading? I did not necessarily want to travel to my home town, yet my life has been enriched for the journey; i do not necessarily want to write my insides out, but welcome the possibility that someone else may be aided in their journey by reading what i write. What is that incessant prod we as humans posses to change our location - to leave the earth’s atmosphere or to relocate our homes? Are we in some way mimicking a truth about death we all try to avoid using religion, or non-religion - elaboration or meditation. Is it possible that a profound truth about death is as simple as standing up and moving from one room to the next; putting down one task in order to pick up another, or waking up to go back to sleep? What if nirvana is nothing more than the capacity to expand one’s present awareness to the same limits the atoms and molecules within and without our persons contract and expand to ceaselessly, even after the separation of our consciousness from our corporeal being?

What of consciousness - that nerve wracking capacity to distinguish the skin of another from one’s own, though you be naked in bed together in the throes of passion with the echoes of even a single such experience being heard across decades and thousands of miles? Do such echoes interfere with our capacity to be truly present in the moment; is our awareness constantly clouded from clarity by reverberations from past or even future events? I know very well that my recent illness could have been as simple as wanting to be someplace i am not - that makes no sense. If strong, pure and true feelings arise from the capacity to be as much in the present as one’s senses allow, does dragging any memory into the place one is prevent the ability to perceive one’s true location? What of questions, from the simple act of writing in the present about where i am it occurs to me this essay contains more questions than it likely contains question marks. It is a hot day and the streets are barren, people have fled for the closest shade which at this time of year for the street i live on is lacking for the better part of the day. Do i move because it is warm, or strategize on how to maintain fresh air and how to regulate my body temperature. What of the persons who must work in the heat, if service to others is the highest form of love, to love must i go out in the heat to try and aid those who suffer? My mind has not fully recovered its suppleness from my passing illness and i watch in the present moment what must seem like babble to a reader, do i vacate my stream of consciousness and retrieve the rigid learning of rhetoric and form to appease the wraith of that critic who haunts my creative steps, or do i penetrate the regions of my mind, because that is where i am for the moment? What would animate me to believe some other mode of prose would be more cogent than what i find in front of me, and why would i care?

I have lived too long in too many different places to be fooled by such fiction, and have struggled too long getting to a place where listening to my own questions gives me more pleasure than hearing the answers of others. Another paradox, in a world full of paradoxes: “If you are speaking you are saying what you already know; if you are listening, you may hear something you have never heard before.” - Dalai Lama. This morning i read of a period in C.G. Jung’s life where in the process of pursuing lucid dreaming he experienced a continual state of psychosis - a condition described by impaired thoughts and emotions so severe as to lose contact with external reality. Yet our world today is slaughtering infants for the sake of religion and profit, that behavior is not consistent with what i consider external reality. Who defines external reality¿ I’d like to think it is the artists left who are not deluded by the siren of celebrity and fame; instructors who continue to fight for the strength of their pupil’s capacity for critical reasoning or parents, like the mother of John Lennon who teach their children that happiness is a noble pursuit. Does my hoping for a better world rob me of the capacity to be where i am in the present, or have i reached a hilltop where the echoes of a better world are stronger than the din of misery rising from the valley of strife? Rumi - “Wherever you stand, be the soul of that place.” Confucius - “and remember, wherever you go, there you are.” Is our susceptibility to mobility and its marketing stratagems of planes, trains and automobile more an inability or unwillingness on our parts to plumb the ever changing scenery of our own interiors or immediate surroundings¿ Does anything really change going from one place to another, or is the act of change so overwhelming to our mineral minds that we need props to make it palatable and give excuses for our fatigue and road weariness?

I’m pretty sure that most of my useful lessons in life were as a result of being very present whatever my location; the converse being probably as equally true for missed opportunities and costly accidents from being mentally or emotionally someplace else at the time. Is hope capable of growing anywhere other than where one stands¿ Can love blossom where you aren’t? I don’t know. I do know that the illusion of home as a child was so strong as to rob me of years of contentment while i wandered hither and yon looking for what i believed had been lost. I now believe strongly that home is a state of mind one carries and no amount of brick and mortar or ordained unions from civil or religious authorities will substitute for the warmth and kindness one is able to bring to each and every doorway one visits - railway station, courthouse, or homeless shelter. As equally true, if you are not of a family frame of mind as pertains humanity, no amount of authority, or wealth, guns or small Mediterranean islands will ever provide you the memory you hold dear of some place you’d rather be, for we are all guests of this wondrous planet we call home. It doesn’t matter if you are an anabaptist or shiite faithful, taoist or hindu, your body is going to wear out and your consciousness is going to transition from the skin you now understand to be your own - transition back to that place where you will not be a guest at the mercy of passing whims of loved ones or subject to egregious insults of bitter adversaries. We are all going to die and there is no amount of prayer or death you can visit on the planet that is going to alter that fact. Your bloody faith may serve you now, if all the further you have gotten is to deprive another of what we were all born to do - live well and love purely; however, what if all the mayhem and destruction on our planet is the direct result of prayers and bloody faith from the inhabitants of what we believe to be heaven, and that to reach their heaven, they use mayhem and destruction, just like here? 

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there - the sonnet

it’ll never be possible to be there,

for you are here, and it is here you stay.

you may search always for that secret lair

but remain here at the end of the day.

many will name themselves that sacred place,

family, friends - all who want your presence

or enjoy the pleasure of seeing your face.

wherever you go, there won’t be the essence.

you bring essence with you, of what there is.

why search for something that’s always with you?

Is it habit from doing that which does 

no more now, then when you thought it a clue?

if there where ever a place not here

i only hope it’s well-stocked with good beer.

jts 05/22/2018

http://josephtstevens.blogspot.com

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com 

reprinted with permission - all rights reserved 

 ∞

hard - the essay / soft - a sonnet

I said good bye to my mother the day before mother’s day - likely for the last time; that was hard. I’m watching adolescents cavort in a train station, not sure which is harder. By ma’s own reckoning, she is convinced that i mean her no good - it is not what i feel, and i take pains to make tangible gestures demonstrating my positive feelings towards her. It must be very hard for her to feel what she asserts about one of her own. I can understand to a degree her frustration, but believe strongly that one person is incapable of changing the mind or heart of another. However, i equally believe in the importance of honest and clear communication. I am learning that that can be very difficult for some people; ma may be one of those people. It is hard for me to hear some things, many things: no, yes, will you, you cannot, but especially no. I have such and aversion to no, that i rarely ask for anything - it is a character defect i am not proud of, but easier to remedy than those character defects i am proud of, like: stubbornness, doubt, intensity, determination, pride etc., etc., etc. I can be entirely too inflexible when i am on the trail of what my byzantine logic has deemed worthy of pursuit, and what could be useful persistence in another circumstance often blinds me to the nuances of scent, broken twigs - the capacity to listen to my own better hunter. Same too for the kill, where a simple twisted neck might suffice i tend to go for the heart. You may be getting a sense of where conflicts might arise between ma and myself seeing life in such vivid blood soaked metaphors, how could anyone as gentle as ma tolerate such a brute? she doesn’t. Tolerance isn’t my long suite as well, though i’m getting better, but i’m not sure why. I don’t really want to reach a point in personal development where i tolerate: bigotry; is that an oxymoron - “tolerant bigot”¿ Nor do i wish to reach a point in my political awareness where fascism and injustice become normalized. But to change such behavior one must be willing to confront the ignorance of others and that is hard.

Who am i to determine for anyone else what constitutes ignorance. It has been difficult enough for me to accept the barest of outlines of my own monumental ignorance about what is meaningful, where would it be possible to school another. It is quite difficult within my own cohort of age, race, education to comprehend much of the thinking that animates my generation, how is it possible to know anything enough of other cultures, much less genders such tolerance is even achievable, much less understanding enough to present a possibly better idea? It could be that in my zeal to help heal the wounds of the world, my determination rather than aiding the process in fact blocks my ability to learn from others; if you can’t learn enough about someone else to understand their position how would it ever be possible to gain their assistance in building a better world? Are we even meant to change anything, even the prospect of a better world, free of cruelty, greed, hunger and delusion? It is, only because at one time or another i have been besot by some number, or all, of those specific poisons. It was not healthy, nor am i cured; but i know change is possible, at least within the confines of my own skin. I’m not suggesting that change is easily accomplished, and i would never advocate the path i have taken; it was too hard for me, to the extent that the optimistic do-gooder wading into any and every misfortune i encountered is now reduced to a hobbling old fool who mutters to himself as a he chastises others for asking for something so simple as a cigarette. It not clear to me which character i’d prefer to spend time with - the unctuous crusader spewing homilies about anything and everything, or the dyspeptic crank standing far enough from the train tracks to evade flying debris when it derails, albeit to facilitate dragging mangled bodies from the wreck, but still that’s hard.

My young life was consumed by the fiction of carving stone into fame and fortune, and base mostly on the fact that you are not reading this self-conducted interview in Playboy or Utne, i’m thinking that fame and fortune gig is stuck in traffic. However if you are hearing this confidence as complaint - you may want to check your own orientation. I learned a lot from carving stone - about myself, art, women - even power. When considering the act of breaking rocks, one might imagine great force. As it happens, it is more like cracking eggs. For example, the harder you hit a chisel into the stone, the more likely you are to blunt your tool and do damage to the stone itself. Whereas when you listen to the ring of each blow and watch the grain open within your hands it is more like peeling the skin off of a soft avocado in the cup of your hands with your thumbs - not exactly like that, but closer than you might imagine. There are many circumstances in life where force does not yield the expected results. I was once faced with a 2 year old who, no matter how much love i might have prepared her breakfast, or how little time we may have had to explore the dilemma, would not even consider the prospect of tasting, much less eating her cereal. I was laid low to be deprived of the goto emotion of fury by the smiling face of a child. To be rendered impotent in this world today is becoming an increasingly common occurrence as you can see with ballooning gun sales and impoverishment of the commons in favor of profit for the merchants of death, yet to schooled about the limits of one’s own conceit regarding personal power by the smiling recalcitrance of a toddler is a privilege i will cherish to my dying day, the lesson is still hard.

I just boarded the train, which is easy; carrying a backpack, rucksack, 4 framed drawings and a bag with a half-empty bottle of wine a Balinese mask i bought with my last wife, and a cast replica of a human femur - that is hard. My destination is a city i’ve called home for a little over a year. Because the concept of home is quite so difficult to fathom for me, it does not feel as though i am returning as much as i am leaving and it can be quite confusing. Just to mix things up a bit the universe re-introduced me to a former love interest; i guess for the spirit of universal equilibrium, i was at that time also departing for distant lands. Muhammad Ali - “if you’re the same man at 50, that you were at 20, you have wasted 30 years of your life.” I do not feel that i had made a mistake continuing on my journey, but did drag a newly met woman back with me in one of the intervening returns. Could it be that i missed something about the person i am going to see, 40 years later, but still, and that by hooking up with a total stranger in between semesters i was trying to resolve a mistake? That is looking backward in time looking for a solution to a current question; it is what we as a species have been trained to do - reflect and learn from our mistakes. Yet we continue repeating the same mistakes: war, tyranny, hunger, poverty - this after 10,000 years of experience and libraries full of wisdom. Could it be that peering into previous experience looking for solutions to current problems blunts our capacity to see openly and thoroughly world and time in which we exist¿ My history between when i last knew of anything about my former love interest and now has not been the most simple passage, but more importantly could serve to prejudice rather than predispose my normally warm and loving nature. How does one separate out the realities of betrayal and poor partner choices, or even clearly distinguish one’s own contribution to strife vs resistance to being played, in a world increasingly oriented toward “playing” - that is hard.

What is harder is to devolve away from the loving inclination humanity is born with. We are certainly responsible for each of the choices we make in our long journey toward the veil, but if our wisdom guides us toward shutting down and clenching our hearts as though one can be protected from the pain of feeling, we are doomed. If what you have learned has taught you while it is never a good idea to sport fuck with a woman’s heart, the opposite is as equally true - love is not a commodity that can be hoarded and hidden away for some rainy day when all the planets line up and the young person you once were finally found the young person you once loved and ever after is all that is left to take place. Love is a muscle that must be exercised to remain supple and strong. Love is not valuable if it is not spent, and the longer it remains tucked away from the light of day gathering dust the less currency it carries. There is no determine when, how or if your romance is going to topple after listing for years, decades or even centuries like the leaning tower of pizza. But without a whole shit pot more of dynamic resourceful loving taking place on our planet we are doomed - not the romantic crafted fake love of song and story but the infinitely personal challenging face of unrecognizable terrain. The sort of love that comes without signposts or confidants or parents counseling the correct vs the impossible, and we all know how much fun that one is. Love is complex for me, more so than any other aspect of my existence because i believe strongly in its importance but have yet to give it over to the one person in my tiny circle who has not enough - myself, and that is hard. 

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soft - a sonnet

why is woman’s skin different from man¿

don’t tell me it’s because of her lotion,

or that you think it is part of god’s plan.

woman’s skin shimmers much like the ocean.

why are babies born to her, and not him?

is it because his heart is hard like his head

and babies need someone hip to each whim,

someone kindly savvy, not dense like lead.

ever heard of a beard, soft as a petal,

or “delicate”, to describe a home run?

me neither; so how’d she get so lethal

being so gentle¿ - breaking hearts for fun?

whatever her training or formula

i pray she guides my funeral gala

jts 05/14/2018

http://stoneartist.com 

reprinted with permission - all rights reserved 

 ∞

tired - an essay / rested - the sonnet

While growing up my parents decided to divorce. It was and remains a fairly common occurrence in the U.S. - about half of the marriages endure. My mother suffered from insomnia as a result, making her working life strenuous and my growing up - interesting. I do not like the feeling of not having had enough rest, whether this can be attributed to my early experiences or a simple biological quest for stasis - who knows. Last night was unusual and all the warnings for a restless night lined up - a forthcoming journey, new neighbors - the owners were called away late at night. My room has a an odd acoustic amenity such that i can hear someone breathing in the main entryway. Normally this is not a factor in sleeping, for the house becomes quiet early on, but sometimes that just won’t happen - last night was one of those nights. I once lived in a room in Uruguay that had very tall ceilings and a paper thin wall that mostly served as a crude speaker of sorts amplifying everything from the room next door - my neighbor was an Argentinian cocaine addict given to late night television - which grew in volume as the night wore on. This experience cured me of any fallacious thinking about control; considering the level of bomb borne mayhem in parts of our world, mine is a minor complaint. I would expect that the children of those regions are far advanced in their capacity to seize rest when possible to my own crude routines designed to refresh me for the next day’s labors. Last night - nothing would work. This happens, and apparently has been happening for centuries if your read anything on fatigue. Arguments come out on both sides with Leonard Cohen in his typically majestic openness declaring “the last refuge of the insomniac is a sense of superiority to the sleeping world,” while the more scientific writings exhort the dangers - mostly with regard to damage to the economy - accidents, disorientation, loss of clarity, etc., etc., etc., 

So waking up from a sleepless night and completing some of the preparations for a long journey, lacking strength to draw, i took a nap. I prefer the feeling of rest to the oppression of fatigue. How much of that is reaction formation to the torments of living with a sleep deprived adult during my formative years is anyone’s guess. So why is it as part of the medical training ritual that those responsible for our healthy wellbeing are subjected to sleep depravation as a training modality¿ Medical Interns are systematically taxed to a destructive level as though the capacity to function without sleep is going to inform their medical decisions¿ I couldn’t even power through a simple essay on exhaustion without taking a nap, much less operate on my 3rd patient of my third straight shift. Why are we as a species not taking advantage of our own best information and lessening the burden of those tasked with our wellbeing - well compensated though they be. How is it that the vaunted excellence of Western medicine has been bifurcated, even stranded into classifications of wellness. The rich live longer - that fact is well documented as well as the lethality for women of color bearing babies. There is something immensely askew when enough data accumulates that clearly prescribes 1) greater rest for the neophyte practitioners of medicine 2) adjustment to protocols for the at-risk portions of the population lacking medical attention 3) restriction of profit from the health or illness of humanity. What if, as some philosophers suggest we are all a single tree and the conceit that some branches are more worthy of wellbeing is destructive to the tree in its entirety. Be mindful that these thoughts are coming from an admittedly sleep deprived individual and as such are suspect. . . 2 days later in flight, after cycles of fatigue, rest, and now more fatigue. Taking off at 6:45 am required rousing by 4 to be out the door in time - i woke at 2:45. I am not sharing from complaint - these are exigencies for most people on our planet. Harried is what describes hunted foxes, but now describes schedules of the better part of our world. Recently Amazon announced it was applying for a patent on a device which can synchronize with workflow schedules and prompt a worker to speed up or detect when the employee has paused for an “unacceptable” amount of time. How long before we are lining up at the charnel gates because the +/- 5v device implanted in our craniums has determined your time on the planet is up? 

I will be away from home and routine for an unknown time. It is not a happy prospect, but i’ve been able to observe the approaching change from a distance - a little like watching a train wreck in slow motion, and if that observation is accurate - watching a train wreck in slow motion is very taxing indeed. It is hard to differentiate the fatiguing from the simply annoying. Part of the journey means visits with family, that sadly are not happily anticipated (my responsibility) - additionally i will be opening a storage crypt shut from the light of day for four years. It is hard to say which is more tiresome the 2 hour drive to and from, or the dead weight knowledge of having to shift statues about that were intended as a bulwark against poverty in my later years and have now become little more than a funny resemblance to Byron’s albatross. What becomes increasingly clear as i fly through the air ever closer, is how much control can be gained through simple discipline of one’s thoughts. Part of the advantage of rising ahead of time was the meditation/exercise cycle i would gain by accelerating my schedule. Rather than sweating the entire trip about events i have no control over e.g. will the shuttle wait, can i recover enough rest in a single night etc., it is nearly possible to examine the near future as it pertains to tiredness. I am hoping the airplane i am flying in is not tired, nor the customs agent giving to assessing my threat to the states at large, or the shuttle driver. It would seem the only time that exhaustion is a welcome condition is when it intersects with a period of time where rest is accessible. That seems to be a back-assward way to go about living. Our planet, if you can accept the concept of it as a living system, is at the point of collapse, and still we are demanding more from mother Gaia than at any other time in history; what could go wrong¿ I worry about driving for two hours when i’m not well rested, and we are asking an intricitly complex ecosystem that, to this day, we barely understand enough to support not just 7 billion of the most destructive animals ever developed on its surface - as it is having 10s of thousands of tons of irradiated water poured into her oceans and billions upon billions of pieces of plastic waste gorging its waterways.

What could go wrong, besides everything¿ It seems me and the planet are not the only tired things in our world. Solution, leaders, entertainment . . . damn near everything i can imagine is tired in one way or another. How much of that statement is projection from an old man, and how much an accurate estimation by a seasoned veteran of the culture wars, i don’t know. I know i’m still fresh enough to be asking questions. What would it take from us as a species to give mama earth a rest. This morning i threw away more plastic than i have in the past week, and i could have avoided it. Poor judgement is one of the warning signs of fatigue. What if mama Gaia starts making poor judgements from her fatigue¿ I’ve read the magnetic poles have begun to oscillate, what other planetary systems are given to stress-induced oscillation. Is there a point of intersection with the firestorm activity, and the chem trails that nobody knows anything about - the same “nobody” who appointed mr. m.t. suit, and decided in a world of unemployed mothers and fathers that robotic technology is going to save us all. I don’t trust the motivation of those propagating robot technology. I am of an age where the leaders had been trumpeting the coming of the technology, how work weeks would shrink and abundance was a natural outgrowth - it turns out the only thing produced with any abundance is war and tyranny. These two activities are quite strenuous on not just the population but the ecosphere itself. Before i left an essay was circulating amongst friends suggesting that south of the equator the backwardness and inability to capitalize on natural resources could be attributed to superstition while the advanced extraction methods of the northern regions was due to a rational philosophical foundation. As a child of the north, it is galling to hear the same tired conceits trotted out in advance of the full court press to undermine commonwealth and privatize natural resources.

Tired arguments in a tired world pitched to war weary residents - what could go wrong, or more importantly, what could go right, and how? One important step is to scale back what are considered worthy objectives. This has happened to me as i’ve aged, when i once thought nothing of landing in a foreign nation without a destination, anymore i’m reluctant to leave my lodgings if i don’t know where and when i’m going to arrive. .. a full week into a complicated journey. Yesterday, i may very well have said my last goodbye in person to my ma. And while anticipation of such a serious task could be more than fatiguing, the conversation permitted nothing but the most focused and caring approach possible. Our relationship is tired, but the love is fresh. She is aged and from having lived in her company during one of the most trying times of her life - she appears to me as exhausted. What is different this time around, is i am not owning that. Not because i am unwilling to shoulder whatever i can to ease her passing, but because the burdens she would have me carry are fictitious. I couldn’t have known this when young, it was only from sorting through baggage of my own design that i have learned, or am learning to distinguish between real and unreal. What i have learned is that i cannot be responsible for what another person feels anymore than i can expect to sway another by my expectation, command or desire. Ultimately each human organism rights his/her self back to whatever trajectory their inner compass had guided them to before they acceded to influence. If someone is hell bent for greed, no amount of logic will veer them from that path, and if one’s heart is guided by love there is not amount of hatred or cruelty that will bend that heart to its will. I believe that the fatigue that is not the result of hard happy work comes from the burden of dread one drags in the wake of a misguided ambition. Those tasks that nurture one’s core hopes come easily and the struggles necessary to persevere are endurable and even fortifying as well as edifying. I am now taking a train to a little known destination to meet a once known love, however puppyfied that love might have been. I do not dread this journey to gaze into the face of an old love, nor know exactly why. I can only hope that i brought some similar ease and comfort to the exchange of complex emotions for what may have been the last time sharing air with my too-tired-to-enjoy-life-but-still-on-her-feet-swinging mother.

Addendum: a wracking cough i carried with me to my rendezvous has miraculously subsided; whether it was from the kind ministrations of a loving heart, or the physical joy of being in the company of a loving being, i can’t say but i welcome 

any healing that leaves my pain more tired than my joy.

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rested - the sonnet

things at rest will tend to remain at rest;

things in motion tend to stay in motion-

unless acted upon by some interest

for example - the moon and the ocean.

heavy rocks tend to sit where they are set

airheads get blown back, forth, and back again

yet relativity remains the net

making what sits where a function of when

the kindest motion is the most gentle

and that which is stationary hardest

the heart waiting for sound of her ship’s keel

or news informing of the bitterest 

entropy expends our world yet our black

holes emit knowledge that our hearts still lack

jts 04/27/2018

http://stoneartist.com 

reprinted with permission - all rights reserved 

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