work - the essay / play - a sonnet

Today is writing day, and i had errands to run. The journey ended up with a blockade by the teacher’s union which i support, however the diversion took my ride far from my destination. I have been struggling with pain while walking and it is beginning to resolve itself, i hope. The remedy has involved diet, exercise and continuous work, over years. What makes me believe that it is resolving itself, is simply because the pain is different, so whatever i am doing is having an effect. Still, today’s unexpected walking mileage was work; as is starting this writing later in the day; as is sifting through existential detritus for useful analog to share in a digital wasteland. I like to work, mostly because some of the most fun i’ve ever found flowed directly from a work site. Picture a huge warehouse with stacked 4’ high pallets of 20 gallon plastic buckets; each wall of the warehouse is lined with pallets stacked 4 high and 3 deep with just enough space for a single person to pass. Then imagine a thousand lids for those 20 gallon buckets used as flying discs; now picture 100 young working men equally divided between those two rows of pallets on opposing walls of this warehouse - paint ball will never be as much fun as that war was. Life cooking soup in a factory is dirty, hot, and dangerous - but one learns not all adages are true; for example a watched pot will actually boil. I use to equate work with gainful employment, but found most employed people do the least to gain the most - a logical strategy when the owners of most jobs seek the same. Early in my aerospace career, i had accomplished a change order that was very involved. The owner of the company - a friend who magnanimously provided me a career path - was taking a walking tour with the customer (air force); wanting to impress on my friend how hard i was working. i proudly displayed my dense change order. I could not have imagined at the time, i was essentially telling the customer we have a flawed product that needed much work to make it right.  One of the greatest difficulties we face surviving the next 100 years as a species is we are not working toward a common goal - the single greatest flaw, fatal flaw of capitalism.

We do not enjoy the luxury of leisure time to discover adjustments to capitalism such that the naked lust at the core of its success could be attenuated down to simple sperm donor. I’ve seen rooms containing less than a dozen people discussing simple engineering choices deteriorate into screaming matches of a nearly violent nature; watched community meetings devolve into tribal posturing of check and checkmate and families steal from each other for material gain. I am at a complete loss as to what common denominator would inspire a species to care about each other. The logic is all in place that the most enlightened have basically shared the same wisdom with varying degrees of success. Nor do i believe any lack of success on humanity’s part is simply from laziness. I’ve seen women empty dump trucks of sand using nothing more than wicker baskets held tight by their bowed heads; i’ve seen men pour asphalt roads in 100º F. Sadly in either instance the purpose for such effort is most likely pay, remuneration, scratch, share, cut - all still wage slavery. I wouldn’t be so bold as to equate this effort now with what it took from the women in Bali carrying bricks on their heads for the two-story homestay built next door, but it’s not far off. They at least were compensated. I write because my father wrote, and i admired those principles he found from a life in words. My writing has taken me through many topics, from flight manuals to city plans to prospectuses for commercial real estate. These experiences have given me a profound regard for the capacity of statements and assertions to affect the thinking of different people. It has also given me great caution for the abuse that comes from subterfuge and chicanery when unprincipled people are given a voice. When you are talking eye to eye, after enough times, bullshit basically just up and says to you point blank, “i am bullshit.” Written words are more difficult to decipher without the scent that comes with a spoken lie. Take “Cool Hand Luke” for example; if you read the book, you know there is a scene where the prisoners are faced with shoveling sand on poured tar for what seems like forever, but because Luke wanted to have fun, he turned the chore into a game and in so doing gained 4 hours of rest for the entire crew - no one expected they could complete the task in half the time.

I’m not suggesting Donn Pearce, the author of “Cool Hand Luke,” is a liar and a cheat by convincing you with the written word that tossing sand on hot tar in sweltering heat could be transformed into a noble act by virtue of defiance, but the net effect is no different than the influence a dead dictator has had on the current ‘merican administration in the guise of ‘ole mr. m.t. suit. By many accounts Mien Kampf was bedtime reading for m.t. suit for decades. It is an irony that a personality so inimical to worker’s welfare could apply such a work ethic so assiduously and continuously as to bring a nation to the brink - but there ya’ have it. What is missing from this entire discussion, is purpose as it pertains to issues of work. My purpose in writing is to lift others, to encourage personal achievement by sharing examples of my own discoveries and humor about my legendary failures. I’m pretty sure the main reason i am able to pursue my purpose as it relates to work is because money is not the reason is not the reason i write. Nor do i have any other formula for anyone wanting to pick and choose what they turn their hand to, work like hell and buy your time back. For decades, i worked weekends carving stone, and i’d be lying if i wrote that much of that activity didn’t include the fiction of “discovery and acclaim.” My luck is holding and i remain obscure and more than able to meet any demand for my labor intensive product. The discipline i have acquired while shoehorning carving time into my employment schedule informs my choices about time. “Time is a created thing; to say I don’t have time, is like saying I don’t want to.” - Lao Tzu. I approach my mortality with more appreciation than when young and possessed by delusions of grandeur, it is no longer issues of legacy or fame, but the quality of each exertion and why. Part of the confusion about art and my devotion to it developed when i began to understand the market never wanted the best that i could do, but that which would would generate the most income for its owners - indistinguishable from any paid employment to which i’ve ever subjected myself.

The mythological greatness that capitalism holds up as its enduring legacy is no more than a paragraph in the book of human history. The reason is a basic function of logic, for any market activity based on “buy cheap, sell dear” can only result in lower quality and higher prices. Once i wakened from my dream of fame and fortune, it became clear i would have to ask myself difficult questions about my own creative conceits - could i accept anonymity as the end product of my life’s work? This line of questioning cut to the core of my motivation - do i labor for recognition, from who, for why¿ Do i work for the pleasure it gives me to accomplish what only i and my cumulative experiences can yield. There is no one-size-fits-all answer. I take great pleasure when i am understood through the lens of my work, but it gives me much greater joy when i learn from a subject that they feel understood in my work. I had a therapist who used to laugh at me for carving stone, he equated it to grandiosity, mostly i’m sure because he had never carved stone - itself a happiness no one should leave the planet without having tried, but i digress. This therapist was soothing his anxiety about fucking with people’s thinking by believing his guidance could help me be more practical in earning a living - a perfectly rational strategy as i’m sure some employees being paid with tax dollars to warehouse kidnapped children rationalize their occupations. Until our civilization is capable and determined to develop the capacities of every human being on the planet to his or her utmost, we are a doomed species. I don’t say this with hatred or contempt or even all that much angst, but because it is a logical truth. To believe that a handful of human beings can be worthy of more wealth than 3.5 billion human beings combined is not simply injustice, it is a distortion of the truth which is we could be 3.5 billion times more powerful as a species if our focus was on developing each other rather than overcoming each other.

The notion of overcoming the other guy in this dog-eat-dog environment serves not the dogs, but the dog owners - less dog food and less dog shit. To think because you have a job, home, car and family you are successful, does you disservice only because you’ve never given yourself permission to do what you want - to start with a blank state and create whatever life you choose with the those skills you acquired with love and affection. If you are like me, it is not a simple path to have questions which only you can answer, and mostly after enough others have given you wrong the directions with the best of intentions, but wrong directions nonetheless. My telling you to do this or that does nothing for the personal journey you are on before death, but my saying there are questions to be found may help you in a world full of answers all of which are usually designed to separate you from your money, or seize your time for service in somebody else’s empire. Profit for me is ability to lay my head down and die knowing i did my best to learn something about myself and what i was capable of while harming as few as possible on the way - and that has been work enough. I have learned that for some things there is no amount of intention or willfulness that will accomplish a successful end - love for one, death for another. Some will never love you, regardless of how hard you work, and death is going to get you, no matter how hard you work. So i’m very specific about what i do and why - i work at what makes me happy, for it is more likely i will enjoy some happiness doing what i enjoy. As a wage slave, especially in the days before computers were roboticized to accomplished mundane tasks the exhortation of the managers was work smarter, not harder. In retrospect they were telegraphing their next punch when we humans are put out of work the final out come of “buy cheap, sell dear” manifest. So again my luck has held out and i am content to continue working, only now i only work at what i want to work at, but at the end of patiently saving enough to buy back the only thing i have worth owning - my own life.

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play - the sonnet

Mezcal and poetry - what could go wrong,

besides everything - enough to stop?

It would be if i wanted to live long,

i’m no turtle - my stock’s a dumber crop.

We live to die, ignored by those who’d cry

and instead scream all the while - look at me.

We’re taught to ignore who we love - to lie

to ourselves, so we may become more free.

One problem is we learned most as children,

whose lessons aren’t forgotten or lied to.

Kids can’t lie, and know who’s kith and who’s kin

inspiring stories like “Winnie the Pooh.”

- into a world that’s mostly concerned with

“fuck any cost, we want another myth.”

jts 06/29/2018

http://josephtstevens.blogspot.com 

reprinted with permission - all rights reserved

 ∞

change - an essay / preserve - the sonnet

Yesterday Mexico upset Germany in the World Cup 1 - 0; Germany was heavily favored - not a bit unlike Humanity vs corporations . . . 

I was fortunate to have been raised by parents where the father, who i am sure for purely perverse reasons, ever favored the underdog. This upbringing encourages hope from me in a hopeless world. It has become very popular to accept the forgone conclusions spouted by the highly paid talking heads parroting the ruling class party line - resistance is futile. The irony and the paradox is that were they - the-powers-that-be - to take their own advice, there could be hope for our world. Instead, we enjoy a dystopian decay of a wondrous environment remarkably adept at providing all that is needed to sustain life in a vacuum nearly full with dark matter, about which nobody seems to understand much. We are unable to see dark matter, but we are able to extrapolate its existence. Change is not all that much different; humans have a tendency to believe only what is in front of them and so give little credence to the ceaseless manifest transformations occurring as you read this. Take for example, your body, the one you were born with has, with the exception of the corneas, changed cells completely on average every 7 years. Yet many find it difficult to forsake; the religion they were born into; their nationality at birth; or even shake certain convictions held by those who allegedly know you better than you do yourself by virtue of early family experience. Muhammad Ali - “The man who views the world at 50 the same as he did at 20, has wasted 30 years of his life.” Our world culture is schizophrenic with respect to change. Smart money has no qualms about tearing out entire forests simply to provide space to produce palm oil, yet will commit genocide defending a 2,000 year old memory. I am oddly resistant to change, though i’ve lived on four continents in as many years. It is not clear yet whether my travels are in quest of change or a vain effort to preserve my conceit of a creative life. Having spent years in therapy, i have been indoctrinated into the faith of personal growth. The dilemma is what criteria constitutes growth - if it is simply a developing capacity for self awareness - what then is left for the agency of free will. If all therapy is designed to strip away the sham of ego and stand naked in the shimmering light of the unconscious what sanctuary on earth is safe for morals? However, if it is self that determines morals who would dare to presume what is right for another¿

Are there actually timeless values - immutable truths which if followed will gradually lead our species toward the light, or inexorably drawn to the dark matter depending on your team? Does everything depend on perspective - is there some clause to truth that could actually reconcile the kidnapping of children from their parents, and to not only exonerate the culprits, but pay them handsomely for their evil acts¿ I planted a tree on the street where i live and it felt great; two hours later a local vendor failed to return with my change - my choice is to treat both events the same. Any other response seems impractical, i am the host of my feelings, and if i am as willing to take pleasure in the possible growth of a tree, why would i not gamble on the growth of my friend the vendor to eventually come to grips with her greed? I could waste a lot of time chasing her down to chastise her dicey ethics - would that affect any change in her beliefs¿ Yet what of the greater mayhem exacted by the same greed motivating my friend the tortilla vendor by those deflowering virgin forests for the sake of your nutritional hipster doofas exercise cookie¿ Is it only a question of scale that animates my outrage, or is it that destroying the habitats of orangutans augments my strenuous objection to the rank of righteous wrong? What amazes me is how resistant to change such assaults on our species remain. War has afflicted us from the first pissing contest between rival brutes, brutes who lacked then the cajones to do their own fighting and so employed the easily led - no different then military recruiters to this day. Let us not forget the paradox of heroism within the microcosm of armed conflict - how many lyrical exhortations have been made, honored and repeated with the intent of inspiring greater atrocity¿ “We few, we happy few, we band of brothers; For he to-day who sheds his blood with me Shall be my brother, be he ne’er so vile, This day shall gentle his condition:” - William Shakespeare. We are in a state of war according to Warren Buffett, the question remains who determines the battlefield and what are the objectives¿

Often i’ve thought it must be through cooperative effort upon which the tide of battle will turn - the more i watch mobs and bodies of people surging, the less confidence i have in change based on mass. Nor does it follow, the model for subverting the public will so successfully employed thus far by the ruling class. Can it be that the individual efforts Ms. Rand advocated and with which has so neatly subverted the barely post-pubescent intellects of today’s conservative baronets can yield the Neitzchean/googol androids on which their chief scientist Dr. Frankenstein wants to compile humanity. Talk about your change, remembering the author of the good Doctor Frankenstein was a woman so enamored of her dead husband Percy Bysshe Shelley that she kept his dead heart wrapped in one of his poems - i don’t consider Kurzwell’s hubris as quite so innocent. I do remember a feeling about a chica in a science lab early in college just when “Hotel California” was first released. “Hotel California” is playing just now as i write - i can still feel the mystery of that young woman, though i cannot recall her features. I can understand people wanting to preserve such feelings, there are even some hearts i would keep - some i would take from their beating chests - kidding, sort of. Change is awkward contrasted against those elements of our world that are relatively stable - rocks for example. We used to have the capacity to relate to our physical world reflected in expressions like “The Rock of Gibraltar” for tower of strength, now however the simile for strength has morphed into tera-whoopdeedoos reflecting one’s relative bandwidth capacity. I have found through my work, if i am unrelenting something will happen eventually. This strategy runs counter to the inspiration-based art industry startled out of position by the dot.com economic tsunami every self-respecting over-achiever on the planet paddles in place hoping to catch, which we all know is coming because Siri tells us so.

What i have found in my dogged pursuit of what makes me happy is one; it ain’t all good, but if you keep trying some of it becomes so. The paradox is in part according to who; anymore, i am the arbiter of good taste; this outcome is a serendipitous happenstance i did not see coming. By excising myself from the fiction of art as a product, i suffer. And again, according to who¿ As a young turk i fully expected the world would be as easily conquered as art school - many battles later, no one is left standing except me. After so much struggle, the only one on the top of the heap, is me. But the passion of my previous generations is not so easily pacified. Because i have no one else to overcome, i am compelled by blood to better myself - once again, according to who, or more accurately - how¿ Of the myriad things i’ve turned my hand to as wage slave, drawing provided the best use of my unique perception - a cyclops possessing supernatural 3 dimensional acuity; i think it has something to do with being half-deaf, or it could be because vision for me is a constant alternate between the view from one eye and the other. Change does not seem as bizarre to me as it may seem to others, and vice-versa, i’m sure. Being free of the yoke of market is the key to changing the pace of industrial art. This meant subjugation to the “twenty years of boredom” - Leonard Cohen sings about, but also a narrow window for the happiness i find in an unencumbered creative existence. My current project is a closeup selfie by a very petite, very determined, very bright, and from what i can see from the photograph, very determined young professor. I met her at Occupy LA and so understand the barest outlines of her struggles in a foreign nation as an academic. I share this because for the first month and a half of the project, all i could find was discoloration of the paper. Paul Cezanne said “try to ignore the outlines;” i have found him a difficult spirit to ignore. Were i less driven by insatiable hunger for change like an adrenaline junkie, i might have had a chance to enjoy the changing discolorations longer - patience has never been my long suit. What makes the wait worthwhile is when the problems and possible solutions present themselves in exponentially increasing increments - that is the best place i’ve found to get lost in a world altogether too busy telling me where i am. 

When i defeated the last of my foes, the creative battles got much better and the terrain more lush. A blank page is no longer empty and injustice is just one more opportunity to improve. I cannot say what goes on in the mind of a human willing to kidnap a child from its parent, but i have control over what goes thru my mind. This means also freedom to determine what i do, not easily gained freedom, nor much - but enough for me to stare into discolored paper as long as i can hold the gaze looking for meaning. As a young turk willing to .  . . i had no idea that the real battle for freedom was to fight for my own - then, i wanted to liberate the world. For many decades, i struggled to learn how, however most of what i managed to learn was how to be happy. This included faking it in a lot of places with a lot of people - the resulting surprise is a longstanding habit - do something long enough and like magic - shit happens. Literally, be wrong long enough it’ll bite you in the ass every time. But again, who’s buying - who is selling? On my lonely summit, the only customer i cater to is my own self and that fucker wants to spend nothing on everything, and still drive a caddy - live on easy street taboot. So i did the next best thing, i’ll never see enough of 'the' lovely woman to satisfy my cheap ass lord-of-the-manor self, but i can draw, or try to using my cyclops dimensional dyslexia. The win-win upside of my twisted plan is even if i fail a drawing, i’ve just spent an ungodly amount of time fathoming the beauty of woman. It’s a paradox that my patience, or lack thereof is what has given me the confidence that even if nothing ever comes of the hours of fathoming, or worst yet that what north/south light i’ve scrounged together at the time is no longer suitable, prest-o change-0. There are many north/south light windows on this planet filled with 7 billion + human beings; i simply move sideways and try to understand someone or something else with my pencil. As long as i seek it out there will always be more discolored paper of one kind or another to provide puzzle and wonder until something understandable can be found.

addendum: the tortilla vendor eventually provided my change, but i have a sense she felt cheated in doing so - a sense that reflects my shortcoming, not hers.

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preserve - the sonnet

Ma is more than fond of marmalade 

and no matter who’s around, that won’t change;

how much she gets comes from who’s there to aid

and why - for her, for them - that’s quite a range?

If i don’t change her water, my fish’ll die.

More preserve would save ma - she’s old as dirt.

They’ll both be dead whether or not i lie,

i’d mostly want that neither suffer hurt.

Were it my power to change anything,

i would not; to change their joined destiny

would describe more to what it is i cling

than any knowledge of their destiny.

i use to shape stone for my amusement

now i use stone to find what’s important

jts 06/18/2018

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com

http://josephtstevens.blogspot.com

all rights reserved 

reprinted with permission - all rights reserved ·

∞

family - the essay / parent - a sonnet

I live with the parents of a family in an old house in an old city; i am not a member of the family; it is not my home town, but i call it home. There is nothing i can do to change those facts. They are a good people doing their best to be decent human beings, and i consider myself lucky. When researching this essay, i discovered (according to the internet) the only antonym to family is parent - that struck me odd. Family is for me fraught with meaning and the subject of much powerful feeling - happy and sad, however, it is unusual to find a word with a single opposite; the word “parent” is not what i expected to find. Maybe i was searching for some clue about my own family history - to learn whether there was something i was missing, or if my expectations were exaggerated. I can see the logic of parent as antonym to family, but don’t quite see how parent can be integral to family, though entirely apart and opposite. Perhaps it is not dissimilar to “army” having a unique definition, but still consisting of leaders and followers¿ My family was for me at one point the source of all that was worthy in the universe; it was inconceivable that there could be a better world. The more i learn of the world, the more i discover that my family is very much like every other family in the world. My parents, rather than having been flawless raising flawless children, clearly left a legacy to the world for all the faults available to humans, most of which are well represented in my flawed character. What i wonder is how many others of our kind have grown to accept the reality of imperfection, as opposed to carrying that time honored cross - “do as i say, not as i do”? It was my dumb luck to be born to parents who did their best to live their “talk”. 

As a brother to my siblings - i must be as much a wonder to them as they to me (not discounting their indifference). What is sad is how little room there is in our opinions to wonder together. I have read that friends are g_d’s way of apologizing to us for our family; i damn sure am not interested in any apology from g_d. Once i realized there was no one coming to my rescue, no one to chastise my family for their obvious shortcomings and blatant cruelty, i had to accept there was to be no justice; it became clear to me the only person i was able to change was myself, my family henceforth took on a whole new complexion. The indifference from them i fought against for so long has become something in my own character to which i refuse to give ground. I can only hope mine is not some reaction formation in an unconscious effort to rise above, for striving to be “better” than them would rob me of the chance to know and accept them as clearly as i can perceive who they are. If you are thinking about me, “sanctimonious fuck” i can appreciate that, i feel way too much the same toward my family. But that does nothing to break the cycle of emotional violence that is at the root of much of our suffering on the planet. Too often i witness videos of uncommon cruelty, especially to children and it turns my stomach as much for the helplessness i feel being unable to aid or alter such injustice as for my lack of understanding as to why it occurs. It is unclear to me whether my sensitivity is an outgrowth of being unattractive and loud in a family of quiet, pretty bullies, or is my resistance instinctive to injustice generally. If my feelings are based on the former, it would suggest everyone should be raised in Hollywood by narcissistic minor stars just to gain an appreciation for decency; if i am motivated by the latter, from where does my resistance spring - what is it that motivates me to tempt the powers-that-be with such an obvious target as my interminable antics?

Appetites are cultivated at the dinner table, and in a world so full of greed, it would seem this might be a good place to search for answers. I had two brothers and a sister - there was never a day where my parents did not manage to put food on the table. I do, however remember endless discussions about the difficulty of achieving that feat, as well as formative struggles about what i would and would not finish. I can’t say which had a bigger effect on moderating my behavior, watching all the food disappear in a whoosh, or admonitions about starving children in China. Family is also not all about food, the meaning of belonging and order are learned in the bosom of the family. If your sibling use force to effect their desires, there is a good chance you will resort in kind, if a sister pleads vapors after throwing her weight around, one may learn to mistrust the sufferings of another. The obverse is equally true that values are instilled, honored and upheld within the same cauldron of conflict that determines who cleans what when. As estrangement crept into the recesses of our evolving ancestry mine own family has sought sanctuary in surrogate family warmth. However, this strategy is the same as g_d bestowing friends for an apology - de facto family cannot be parsed nor “blood is thicker than water” be diluted, the only problem being that we all do - bleed. Initially i thought of the fertile soil in processing specific family members using essay, and it would write itself, yet the more the ghosts that haunt my waking hours assert meaning the more current does one’s activity become - almost as though the two activities were mutually exclusive. Where i live revers the family in ways that preserve comfort and safety. My family are ghosts that wander close enough to me to be remembered, but not so close as to cause harm.

It would be important for you to know that where these ghosts of mine inhabit would very much resemble where i live and what i see from watching children laugh and old men with canes taking old women’s grocery bags to lighten her load. I know this because of where, how and with whom i was young. There is no amount of emotional trauma that will dissolve that sort of learning. My parents planted olive trees - “The Wonder Years” missed some of what mid-60s suburbia was like. Picture these trees, climbable and overburdened with ripe bursting purple ammunition, white t-shirts and somewhere in the background loud enough to hear “For What It’s Worth” by Buffalo Springfield playing not softly. That these same trees i’m sure were planted in honor of the end of WWII would become the Castles in a Tom Sawyerish full-on post-pubescent war with colorful wounds and all just a short time before those same able-bodied however naughty lads were led to slaughter for the profit of what has become the undoing of the last gasp of liberty on a planet preparing to spontaneously combust is no small irony. My family tends to the ironic, can you tell¿ What i’m learning from being with many different families in search of the door my key fits. At first it was confusing when my door key no longer fit, but when i saw the broomstick sitting where we’d “jimmy” the sliding door open when we lost our key, i knew i had just moved. For the longest time, i believed it was they who had left me. As i find out more, i’m not so sure. Part of what i value about learning the reality of domestic collapse early on is it can be very acclimating to a more rational view of change than the picket-fence-fantasy about a chicken in every pot, fighting for democracy in a world full of dictators and tyrants, or perfect job and address fiction that anybody can be assimilated into the dream on your screen with the right portfolio.

If we are the family of peoplekind which i fictionalize in my frontal assault on the future, when anyone on the planet hears a baby laugh, they know everything is okay. Our neglect to this manifold capacity of our species to thrill in the joy of an infant cannot be desensitized. This loving inclination, however can be hijacked. When the sanctity of human warmth toward those in need becomes a key stroke, read that as “money in the bank,” we are in dire jeopardy. Your very capacity to reason and feel is being programmed; there is no amount of being “hooked-up” that can protect you - except yourself. My concern is my own memory of the influence my family held for personal choice. When a boy, as i recently watched, bends down at the wonder of a flower in an estuary looking up at his mother trying to hold his hand but too engrossed in a phone call to see his glance much less understand in his eyes she had preferred her funny box to his miraculous discovery - it makes me wonder what he might be learning from others in his family. My status as to non-member most places i go has given me a deep sympathy for what some endure to enjoy what i perceive as “as close to heaven on earth as anyone is gonna get” - the bosom of the family. They say to those much is given, much is asked; “they” seem to have forgotten the ciphers in the larder stealing the wealth of the commonweal, but that is another essay. Members of any family are the heroes of the world and on whose backs our kind will survive, and there is strength in numbers. Unfortunately for the equations of survival, logic doesn’t favor large families, but many families together - kind of like life in non-warlord populations. War within families is the worst form of war. When there are sides taken - the sanity of family generosity withers. Nor does a war between families harvest much though “Romeo and Juliet” keeps bringing ‘em through the doors, go figure¿

A sixth paragraph to the 5-paragraph from : 5.6 if you will. Just now in a quandary over the end of this family oriented essay. The old woman selling pork rinds until her death passed by. There is a tradition in the town i live to offer water to strangers - i assimilate as i can and give what i can. The fine line between giving and taking is something of the elephant in the living room nobody wants to address. She just looked at me with baleful eyes and my heart clinched; it didn’t close, just clinched. She is angry with me because i do not offer her water each time she passes. But nothing has changed; that she is angry with me is not different than if she was angry with everyone who had ever given her water but not always. Where this is a challenge is how to keep my heart open, or i am bullshitting my way to a fake-it-’til-ya’-make-it ending? i don’t know - what i imagine are throw backs to ghosts of a family gone and someone threatening with baleful eyes - if you don’t comply, you don’t get any porridge. There is no point to giving if you have not conceived the kindness yourself; this may seem at odds with non-attachment? Does non-attachment apply to consequence¿ Clearly not for those in the kleptocracy ransacking our future. It is a paradox to me that what is right for one is not right for all? This paradox of individuation may be what Jung perceived, yet justice is born at the hearth. How is it correct for me to offer to one and not to another? Limits on what one could want would resolve such a question¿ Via Bob Dylan’s Theme Time Radio Hour, Gurdjieef - “Bread for yourself is a material question, bread for your neighbor is a spiritual question.” I do not know the answer but pretty sure if we don’t start asking questions about such things soon, our answers will likely be more than moot. (look it up)

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parent - a sonnet

father - a poet; mother - a painter

got siblings, but we’re far from family.

ma was a goofy kid, beauty hurt her;

pa - goofier - together grew a tree.

each has been a puzzle for a lifetime.

pretty sure each have said the same - once, twice?

But would never presume to know their rhyme,

for they’d cut their teeth on dreams, paying the price.

- the same price i am paying, though childless

who exacts this standard - one size fits all¿

“we be your ancestors - obey or else”

at this turn, i do wish we’d take their call.

fuck it all, ideas spawn and music grows

which came first: chicken / egg . who the fuck knows ? 

sonnet 5.6 : who the fuck cares : ¿

jts 06/11/2018

http://stoneartist.com 

reprinted with permission - all rights reserved e

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discipline - an essay / chaos - the sonnet

One spring Saturday morning when young enough to treasure baseball and green grass, i was tasked with vacuuming my room i did so in the most cursory manner possible. It was to become one of those formative moments that only makes sense much latter in life, like about now. Pop wasn’t impressed with my effort and told me so, and i did not possess sufficient respect for his opinion. It became a contentious pattern of “irresistible force and immovable object” that would also serve us each much better later in life, drawing us closer. However this particular saturday morning, the normally immovable object clasped its hand over mine and patiently vacuumed into the nether regions under mine and my brother's desks, and along with other grosser oversights. This same man, exacted a solemn promise from me before he died that i would never stop writing - ergo. From this seemingly retentive indoctrination i wandered into the infernally sacred world of integrity, however my own efforts toward meaning in an inchoate atomic vapor have gradually massed - lucky you. I know for certain my life would have been far more vacant without my dogged struggle to understand the meaning of that Saturday oh so long ago. Today, i’d rather be drawing than tearing my heart out of my chest using letters to make sense for a reader already fraught with altogether too much guilty pleasure of reading with so much scrolling left to do in the day. But here i sit pondering how to advocate ideas about responsibility to people whose thinking i’d rather not change¿ It has become painfully clear to me that where i live has an expectation with it that the “1st floor respond to the front door - i resist; not because i don’t wish to be of service, but because i am here on the 1st floor to work, i feel compelled to do just that. Sometime recently a statement made to me by an old love “nobody is going to do for you, you have to do for yourself;” this kind quote drove home the question of in whose interest is help. It has also heightened my awareness of how important it is to honor those who have shown kindness by returning kindness back out to the larger world.

Dorothy Parker - “I hate writing, I love having written.”

I’ve wandered past the point of noreturn and placed the eyes in my latest drawing, and it doesn’t help that her lips are what can only be described as a luscious red - most of the guideposts prior to the point of noreturn consist of a blind faith that if you piece together enough marks, eventually they begin to seek each other out and one who can follow begins to find paths. - depending entirely on one’s capacity to follow anything. My weekly postcard to ma has been moved out days by the drawing - the dissonance of which is complicated in ways a 5 paragraph essay have not yet explained. So the steps necessary to comply with a dying man’s request are part of what’s at stake when i hear any knock on the door. I dropped my last phone on a rooftop in Uruguay, and before it hit the cement, i had decided not to replace it - talk about your knocks on the door, +5v zzzZt -5v zzzZt +5v zzzZt -5v zzzZt +5v zzzZt -5v zzzZt . . . ∞ the loss of bandwidth has been well worth the convenience of boycotting bezo’s amazon without breaking a sweat. Dissonance demands disclosure in the temple of the soul and issues of self-discipline need be laid bare. I just listened to Johnny Cash sing “Satisfied Mind” written by Red Hayes and Jack Rhodes; one the manifold benefits of self-discipline is supple flexibility - fucking paradox: ya’ can’t live with it, and ya’ can’t shoot it. It comes down to pussy - the eternal yin yang, even Leonard Cohen’s “delta of the alpha the omega” - Pema herself - “things come together; things fall apart”. Even moderation has its limits and from “time to time, shit just gets crazy.” - A. Nonymous. So i resort to activities which led to happiness, having written, forexample - is it possible that ignoring spell check long enough the morphed version is embedded in the library? I ask because in reviewing my text i joined no and return to find it was a single word no different than forexample, you see - two rings on forexample, DING, DING DING . . . 3. Who knew editing AI could be so much fun, if only people were so amenable - said no lover to each other ever .

The birds are whiffling outside my window, and i’m on schedule to even get some drawing in today - i learned from stonecarving - another wannabe one word miscreant: “wannabe” already having been absorbed into the errorless spellcheckaether. Eroticism can be inflaming to the spirit, yet love is the engine of survival according to Mr. Cohen. Where is the demarcation where passion is not destructive, or selfish? I wonder at times if rigidness of purpose is an interloper to the world of logic. Is it sufficient to accept constancy is a fiction and wander to Johnny Cash, or try to describe impossible things which somehow coalesce, if done enough times, like pluck fastic¿ How many time in polite company have you wanted to drop some truth on somebody, but shied away not wishing to give offense? I feel ya’. Is there really anything that should not be spoken of -¿- have we collectively shamed ourselves into believing that war on humans, drugs or even war on mother earth is anything but a moral evil, but to rail against such is disallowed and dangerous. That the monster monsatan named its poison roundup is an irony even i cannot resist. The dissonance provoking this 'try' on the topic of discipline could be as simple as guilt - an entirely self-imposed rebuke born of moderate excess. Bob Dylan - “I’m okay with chaos, not sure if chaos is okay with me” The point is whether discipline is a worthy subject, but whether discipline is worthy. I can say for certain it has been; my father allowed no arms out the car windows, and to this day i have all my limbs; i have sonnets; i have stone carvings, and now i will possess an essay devoted to the subject of discipline. I guess you have a pretty good idea about how good i am at devotion - more like plodding - step lightly has taken on remarkable changes in meaning of late. I’m pretty sure that issues of “core” are at stake in the temple of the soul - core dump taking on a whole new meaning in the cybertronics fantasyland of today's rulers. This dystopian take on technological advance is born of long chawed thoughts on integrity from a saturday morning with Pa years ago.

I may be hypersensitive to 1st floor expectations from already having been a conscripted concierge at a pensione in Montevideo, or is that one does something until it is done and then moves on to something else. I was unable as a child to paint by numbers, a failure which haunts me to this day. If only i could decipher the codes - the world would be safe and ‘merica gr8 again - not. There is no code, we are not going to be rescued, and as she-who’d-been-queen said once, “nobody is going to do for you, you have to do for yourself.” It seemed like a good idea at the time, like so many good ideas, “yeah, that’s it! i’m a ‘stonecutter’ - what could go wrong¿” kidding, sort of. At the time it was one of the few things i can remember feeling if it all ends now - i will not be condemned for what i was then doing. Just now the man making his living hauling castoffs parked his well laden truck over a 2-day old cement patch - This patch of the commonwealth only required eight days to cure for it to last centuries as well-cured cement in our overly cemented world bears out. It reflects the lack of collective discipline we have come to today where to muster barriers that bars traffic for the good of all is fraught with controversy. As it happens - barriers have become a hot topic for it is obstruction of traffic the opposition is using to make its point in the city i reside. Nor is it unique in the annals of protest - having taken 5 hours one day to move a rented car 1,000 yards at the airport in Marseilles. I swear solidarity must be at times sister paradox laughing at her favorite fool. It is difficult enough to make my cigarettes back to 6 again, how would it be possible to distill the world’s protest into a single voice? My struggle with language has not been so much to curtail, as to make the unexpressed - expressed. Given ours may be the last voices having witnessed some part of our fascinating future, it would seem so sad to have left one 'i love you unexpressed', even though 'i love you might sometimes come out as fuck you.' - "Ambiguity is the handmaiden to her sister paradox.” - A. Nonymous.

The clock is ticking and i can feel the time in front of hot lips receding - is it discipline to plod on, or is this scribble a variation of Pavlov’s Dogs and thoughtless mimicry a family variation of today's cellular +/- 5v zzsZt prod? How many in the audience knew the french meaning of essay is “to try”¿ I did not try to replace the barriers that were thoughtlessly removed, i did not delve into the darker aspects of discipline; is discipline also the ability to refrain from action? If ambiguity is paradoxes handmaiden, then certainly ambivalence holds the whip. I liked skateboards when my frame matched my affections, it was the fluidness of rolling so foreign to walking and its compressions that drew me in before ego and and its fake tricks distracted me. Lao Tzu apocryphally describes thoughts as monkeys swinging through the trees - fun to watch. There are many civilizations that have crashed and burned for as many reasons as there are scholars, i’d be willing to bet the metrics will prove out that the social systems which failed correspond to metrics reflecting a loss of self-discipline. And as anyone who has quite smoking - discipline doesn’t have as much to do with the proess as desire - a moral question even - do you honor the temple you occupy to pray in for a short time in this domain. I’ve had occasion to be around severely disciplined individuals but the landscape is a tad stark for me. I wonder if i have restricted my own being in the process of hewing out time and resources to do what i have found yields small happiness if practiced long enough. I can’t say how you spent your afternoon, but i have found questions about an activity i believed myself to have mastered - self control. The release i have found in allotting my days to what i do provides the patience to not do anything. When we are in a target-rich environment of must do’s as this world is clearly, the youngish tendency is to muscle through, but the more practical truth is to not waste ammo. The most powerful weapon we possess today is our minds, so fuck 'success or fail' - find your bliss and apply your potty training.

@ the event horizon of discipline - this "try" has been semi-selfreviewed . . . read at your own risk . .

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chaos - the sonnet

some fridays where i live are close to chaos

as i’d care be, struggling free from order.

watching the calle can school one on loss-

mythologizing gain at the border. 

humans die based on the color of skin

i barely see color from light or shadow

how could i ever know from kith or kin

much less which shoulders off whose heads shall blow

death is not chaotic, war is very.

“the that way to hide leaders

i would ask “they” to make “it” less scary

“they” could make some places with fewer fears.

“she” said you can befriend uncertainty!

could it be so simple - be and let be?

jts 06/04/2018

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com

http://josephtstevens.blogspot.com

reprinted with permission - all rights reserved 

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