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

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