'Bout a funny ol' world that's a-comin' along
Seems sick and it's hungry, it's tired and it's torn
It looks like it's a-dyin' and it's hardly been born"
- Bob Dylan
It is said, “you are as old as you feel.” - A. Nonymous - i am old, kidding sort of. I enjoy writing for that simple reason - its capacity to provide fun, for if you expect your audience to engage in a willing suspension of disbelief, you’d damn sure better be able to pull it off yourself. Besides in the scheme of things, my corporeal imprisonment within a 13.722 billion year-old mesh of some kind which the brightest amongst us are still struggling to explain would be somewhat less than a skid mark, not really even rising to the threshold of the alarm necessary to hit any brake: more like watching a kinescope from a great distance of some flickering slow motion train wreck. If you don’t want me playing with words, don’t read it. Nor do i particularly feel old, more weary of the needless fear which seems to be ever in balance against the reality of my picayune crossing of the time stream. My father’s poems lost in the ransacking of his carefully constructed house of cards involved bucolic memory’s of his youth. At the time, while supremely involved with my own calamities, his craftings always managed to open for an instant in time a vision of his past that was fresh and full with vitality. I would not likely feel quite so old if all i knew were as fortunate to possess such a memory: or it could the burden of guilt i carry for not having fought harder to publish his work, much less lose possession of his lexicon. In the end Pop did not carry much dead weight, which is not to say i did not witness some spectacular heartbreak watching his changing views on the progressive dismantling of his world. It is an odd postscript to his teachings that i would be wondering what he might feel about the cavalier approach toward humanity’s impending extinction. Toward the end Pop resorted to brevity - “screw the little guy” would likely be his sardonic quip. Is this what it means to grow old - wax nostalgic as a sop to personal grief, instead of penetrating the thorny conundrum of the aged¿ Have i lost so much virility in my headlong rush to death that i can no longer fuck an idea until something grows? I recently listened to “Hanoi Jane” give a TED talk exhorting the power of aging - for women - realizing, sadly, she is a chauvinist. Is that what it means to age - to be disabused of one’s delusions?
If so, i’m game; where do i sign up? When i was young, i owned a baseball how-to book that was from a time when illustration was at a zenith. Cadres of artists who had illustrated everything that fed the WWII death machine, including the coastline for the Normandy invasion, all looking for work - including my cherished how-to baseball book. The quality of drawing in this book was like a Grey’s Anatomy for baseball fiends. I memorized every illustration; how to hit; how to field; how to bunt, swing away and snap one’s wrists when coming around. What it didn’t explain was how to normalize monocular vision such that i could hit a fast-pitched ball. That revelation took about 10 years off my life, but it was well worth it, if only to become a 22 year-old twelve year-old, aging fast. If i had known then what i know now, i may not have been in such hurry to become a “teenager,” though my older brother and sister looked like they were having fun. By fifteen Baker St. had lost a 1/3 of its population, by age 16, 1/2. With the wisdom gained from being so much older, the elder brother and sister followed Pop out the door, leaving me with a very angry 42 year-old divorcee, and a little brother doing his best imitation of Tom Sawyer’s kid half-brother Sid. I was then 16, by 17 i was alone in Europe. Not exactly alone, Pop had fulfilled his filial responsibilities and i was boarded, with a U.S. Army Sargent Major and his English bride. I’m now 63 scratching my head wondering what the hell this has to do with penetrating whatever mystery can be found in essaying “old”¿ It is a relief that i do not have any answer, or at least little more than the signposts put up by thoughtful fore-bearers. Having a gift for avoidance when young, i survived learning which elixirs combined with which activities that would result in the haze that fractalized those times, at least for those who were careful. Elixirs and behaviors do not work any longer, or their effects have become dead-end signposts, both having dubious value. Life is no longer a trailer for the main feature, as i draw nearer and nearer to my own death, the signpost i would like to leave takes on added weight, or if you will, needs to become light as a feather. We are reaching a point in human history when if you cannot travel light, you may want to check your kit.
Are long hashed-over events from nearly 50 years ago pertinent? What if, as ancient Hebrew wisdom once described, each life is a universe, would my existence or its particulars represent useful data? I don’t know, but i do know if there was a way to have fun, my father would find it. What if as, some posit, our existence is all smoke and mirrors¿ I have read an entire tract by a neuroscientist suggesting our realities could be understood as icons on the computer screen - each a self-contained set of criteria and relatedness, but having no bearing to any other icon on screen. I find Plato to be more accessible, but then i never read “The Republic” cover to cover. My interest in this particular polemic was piqued when someone told me Plato allowed sculptors into the republic, but not painters. Apparently Plato objected to the illusionary underpinnings of perspective, whereas a lump of stone, regardless of the likeness, would be an acceptable surrogate for Medusa, or some satyr for that matter. I think it will be more useful for us to explore closely the relationship between change and history. For example, knowing my protoplasm is little more than a coincidence, it informs my miseries of their sheer insignificance, but also electrifies my heartbeat, for of all the coincidences, my particular miracle allows me to spell words and smell puppy breath. What is difficult to understand, is how if we could all be smelling puppy breath, or spelling words, why are we wasting time on killing what is going to die anyway? As a young turk, it was patently clear, at least according to my older brother, war is not the answer, and according to my sister, g_d is likely a woman - not a man. Armed with the truth as my family had explained it to me, i set out to seek my fortune; end war, while searching for the face of g_d in every woman i met. We as a species have been doing the same thing since the beginning, but just like energy - objects tend to remain in motion until acted upon by another force. Hanoi Jane talked about it in her sexist TED talk, “entropy” the 3rd Law of Thermodynamics which states more elegantly at absolute zero you cannot suck any more energy from the system to do anymore work.
It would seem, the inside-the-box thinking of the ruling class has determined, not only do they not want absolute zero, but if they can heat the whole world up, does that mean, we the suckers, will yield more work¿ Clearly logic is not something they teach to trust fund babies. But if we look deeper into human history, prior to when the experts told us history was over, one can find substantial models for successful cohabitation of this world, not only successful, but thriving. Bali was able to create such surpluses from their water management that they grew the first three-crop yield of rice in Asia. This provided their culture with adequate leisure to develop the highly evolved artistry which sustains mama Agung to this day. Unfortunately for the world, the yahoos steering the fracking train are still sinking 8% of oil extraction into the manufacture of new plastic, a lot of which ends up on the shorelines of Bali. Greed, is as old as dirt, but who’d have thought it would swallow the other 6 deadly sins? Have we learned anything as a species¿ Back to the analogy of a single life as macrocosm, or is it microcosm - have i learned anything other than how to spell and have fun, and spelling i don’t do so good at? I have learned that it is truly better to be happy; not the fake giddy-baubles of Disneyland or owning a Maserati, (truth be told, i’ll have to revisit the Maserati idea after i’ve owned one), but the happiness that comes from an absence of greed, hatred and delusion. The sort of happiness that allows one to follow the sacred thread into the happy hunting ground bravely and calmly. I have learned to veer from dishonesty, for it is so important to preserve brutal candor when trying to express the wonder and beauty of this world. I have learned that war is not the answer, it’s not even part of the question because the only war that is winnable is the one inside oneself. There are no other enemies than the ones conjured by one’s own fears and cowardice. The odd thing is, i knew this as a youngster and still waded into the fray, whether from cowardice at the prospect of battling such a noble adversary as myself, or the delusion of thinking myself the only sanctuary of righteousness in an indecent world? I don’t know.
What i’d like to learn is how i flimflammed myself out of knowing my own heart. Was it necessary to fight fictional battles against imagined adversaries to know what Leonard Cohen meant when he wrote, “Love is the only engine of survival.”? Is it possible our old world simply had to get to this point in history to understand the paucity of groveling for every legitimate joy. Were we given the temporary security of a loving family just to develop wings with which to fly our own course¿ I don’t know, but i do know what it feels like to live 63 years, and i have some idea how limited my understanding of time is against a universe i have no reason to believe is not 13.772 billions years older. Now that i have wasted much of my 63 years, it might be a good idea to try and understand better the world i live in. Not the planet, for it will be here, plastic and all, long after we’ve expired. Just like waging fictional wars with fictional adversaries for fictional objectives does not bear up well to scrutiny, perhaps the veil of delusion will yield understanding to simple questions - How can i help you? How do you feel¿ What do you want¿ Albert Einstein - “make things simple, but not simpler.” Doctor Einstein did not participate in the development of the nuclear bomb outside of confirming the theoretical underpinnings. He did not participate as a scientist of conscience, would that the computer scientists blowing up the world today shared his principles. How can we understand any other time in our history, when we can barely understand the times in which we now live? It is more than a rhetorical question, for if we do not learn more of whatever our much older and wiser world can teach us, we, like any child that ignores its parents about playing on the freeway, may find ourselves splattered all over hell and gone. (yes as a matter of fact, when bored - Pop would offer us a quarter to go play on the freeway - why do you ask¿)
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young - the sonnet
thank g_d young is much more than not being old;
one can be infantile but wise as time;
others have years, but lacking hearts that are bold.
i’d never trade what i’ve learned for a dime.
i have nothing left to me, but to learn.
nearly from where i started - same lessons -
If lucky, served fresh when it comes my turn,
from lower east side delicatessens.
if i must learn, i hope it’s as much fun
as it was learning to tie my shoelaces.
Heidi Mueller taught me this, and to run
when she started making funny faces.
i can recall her happy confidence.
but also saying, “you are too damn dense.”
jts 07/09/2018
http://stoanartst.blogspot.com
reprinted with permission - all rights reserved ·
∞
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