self / other - the sonnet

Without referencing the reams of data available theorizing the idea of self, i shall try and share what i know of myself. For many years, i barely distinguished my own existence from that of my family unit - 'we' was what i believed to be comprised of self and other. That is not to say my siblings and parents were not well defined or amorphous, but my boundaries did not consider their autonomy. This all changed as i was forced to integrate into a world that did not include my backup army. Nor did i easily relinquish my delusions of being an appendage of the home unit preferring to know myself as brother or son, rather than “i.” Eventually as family dissolved into the learning curve of post 1960’s divorce mania, i found myself rudely ejected from what i’m sure must have been experienced by my otherwise loving family as virulent clinging, not different from the amateur parachutist pushed out of the airplane on the count of two, because otherwise he’d have clutched the door. However like all strong manifestations, the flip side of my insular family identity was an intense hunger to individuate. My father was more than an amateur scholar, he read books like some people scroll screens today - interminably. Upon his death, i had occasion to select from his vast library - from witchcraft to obscure enlightenment philosophy. His avowed faith was Existentialism - “a philosophical theory or approach that emphasizes the existence of the individual person as a free and responsible agent determining their own development through acts of free will.” While our disagreements could be at times violent, it was to my credit that i acquiesced to his superior forces - deference is not surrender, it is a choice.

Pot bugged pop, yet powerful narcotics allowed a cogent transition for him, broken ball and socket @ the femur and all; it was as though the universe allowed him to march out the door by existential choice. Recollection will not return him, yet lessons remain. Discipline was keen for him - a mark of many things, contrasting with his later stage enthusiasm on ice faisons-le maintenent. What cued me to my own confusion of self was the expression self-discipline. I had conflated freedom of will with authority; two vastly different issues. It is easy to be an outlaw, the culture fairly demands it of you with gangster glam and leadership examples; freedom of will as pertains to self is an entirely different matter. For example, just now to chew on this essay i determined to take a smoke break only to find the box of packaged tobacco needed to be disassembled so i may roll smaller cigarettes, and rather than practically suspending my decision to smoke and take care of business, i succumbed to rolling the one off, saying the whole way to my self “i’ll do it when i return; this is where it gets dicey, the ironies of such synchronicity were such, i postponed that chore for this more interesting activity - making a fool of myself. More to the point - have fun while ye may. What was that pale outline in the dark hankering from one hunger to the next, presuming its worth, or your interest in this narrative¿ That to me is fascinating - the question of what is addressing who¿ It is not clear to me why i would resort to tobacco at all after a 10-year hiatus - but that i did is more information than i had before; a question to me is more valuable than the answer, especially as it pertains to self.

In my young life quest to learn that magic condition of self-discipline which pop so stridently advocated required knowledge of self - a complete foreign land for me then, now only nearly complete. There is an Australian variation of the septic (Yankee) “ok” gesture of thumb and forefinger aloft, the Australian exception being the “O” part is then brought up and parked unchastely on the nose - “fuck knows” - a fairly silent reply to an amazing number of different circumstances in this world. Who knows what one’s on about even in the most obvious circumstances. Do you think if you asked Mr. M.T. Suit if all the fear he has precipitated into a frightened world has anything to do with his own father, would Mr. M.T. Suit be capable of chirping anything¿ It’s a very plausible idea that he may not; when you can’t reasonably expect a cogent response from the leader of the “free world” about himself, it does not bode well for our collective future. It does, however give us a pretty good idea how rare self awareness might actually be, so i don’t feel so bad understanding my own self as little as i do. I am curious though and hoping that my own behavior yields more data. There’s an irony; in a world awash in data, i’m looking to my self for information - ‘da fuck is that all about¿ - answer class, - fuck knows. Initially i consulted my family appendages for answers. For the too longest time my siblings were avatars of what my self could be, for they each in their own way are fine examples of human beings. Oscar Wilde was to have said, “be yourself, for everyone else is taken.” Like most assertions this wisdom was derived from another source; according to the “Quote Investigator” website, Thomas Merton (1915-1968) wrote in an essay “Day of a Stranger” - 1967: In an age where there is much talk about “being yourself” I reserve to myself the right to forget about being myself, since in any case there is very little chance of my being anybody els. Rather it seems to me that when one is too intent on “being himself” he runs the risk of impersonating a shadow.”

‘Da fuck is that all about¿ together class - fuck knows¿ How does anybody approach self but with enormous humility. It’s not like this writer monk was Joel Osteen “praying for dollars,” if a Trappist Monk don’t know hiself, who does¿ You can begin to see why questions are so important to me, especially about that which i know so very little - my self. My siblings functioned nicely as guideposts for a while, but to find validation in another’s approval is a little like aping the homies so as not to get beat up - regardless of how decent a puppet you might be, a puppet’s a puppet. A parent’s influence is far harder to disentangle. Especially if they are flawed, as all parents are. To separate out one’s flaws from another can be difficult enough, just with strangers - but parents - where to begin¿ Initially it was all my fault; then it was all their fault; then i began to wonder about fault. What kind reality contains the premise of guilt - all together class - fuck knows¿ Does Freud ? - his double nephew Edward Bernays, using Freud’s theories, was responsible for the Advertising war against humanity which has put the corporations in our driver’s seat to destruction. What about Jesus? he says i’ll assume your guilt, but you must live in peace. I’m game, show me where peace is in this world and i’ll go there and try to help. If as my father taught me, you believe yourself to be “a free and responsible agent determining their own development through acts of free will; one simply picks a poison. I choose love. Does this mean i have no guilt - not even close. But what i feel guilty about has turned 180 degrees. I feel guilty for feeling guilty, if that makes any sense. Doesn’t matter, because it is a whole lot easier to forgive myself for guilt than it is for murder or mayhem. But this is the key, i did not choose murder or mayhem, and if i did not choose either of those very popular but essentially ineffective behaviors, what’s to keep me from choosing anything else i believe to be worthy?

Like writing essays, or feeling happy? The internet is now off where i am, nor is it the 1st, 2nd, but 3rd day in a row. If expression of my self was dependent upon access to this , this , this apparition, this fiction of communication, i’d be silenced in its absence¿ No more so than if i believed that non smoking would quiet the part of me which picked up my last cigarette. All that i can hope to do is understand, it’s all anyone can ever do. By muting the voice inside, one does not become more pure, or kind, or even bloodthirsty (ask any one of the soldiers who’ve taken their own lives from little more than confusion). What we have available to us is an ability to peer into the recesses of our darkness to see what we are as seen through the lens of what we do. This won’t necessarily open a direct channel to our more unsavory impulses, but it might go a long way toward helping us survive. If you decide for yourself what you will do and accept the consequences of your choices, over time you will have a far better definition of that rangy enigma wrapped in a mystery shambling through your interior emerging as calamity or bliss or even fury than if you perceived your soul as a reflection of your family, affiliations, loves, hatreds, or even guilt. The law of attraction is a money making scheme - bad shit happens to good people, ask any of the refugees we are murdering with our mute consent to the overlords of war. What i have found is that if you like your self as much as possible knowing what a schmuck you can be, it is far easier liking the next person you meet.  

p . s . . . . now the power is out - bye, bye, (though why i’d care to preserve power without an internet connection will have to remain a mystery for the time being) .  .  . 5:00 o’clock somewhere on the planet .

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other - the sonnet

Self and other - other? what else is there¿

besides everything - don’t sound like good odds,

like finding out the womb was really air,

or learning home is only where one trods.

Ah well, ya’ meet lots of people that way,

and keep meeting others - stars in the sky.

Oh fuck, what if stars are just like a day, 

and they just go on and on; why oh why¿

Where’s one to fit amidst such density¿

Can "One" be an illusion - one big lie¿

Is truth also in that category¿

But truth says for certain i’m gonna die¿

“I am one, and you are he, and” .  . this blows!

Who do i ask? will they tell me “fuck knows”¿

  

jts 052717

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com 

http://josephtstevens.blogspot.com

reprinted with permission - all rights reserved 

balance / imbalance - the sonnet

I’ve taken up drinking and smoking after a 10 year hiatus - and enjoy all the calamity which comes from such dubious entertainment, including the personal responsibility for both balance and imbalance from such behavior. A painting instructor once opined “ya’ gotta suck on a little blood” after i had extolled the great virtues of a vegetarian diet. Of course i was too young to fully appreciate such wisdom, and he himself later gave up tobacco and alcohol as all wise spirits will. The fact remains there is a great need for balance in our hell-bent-for-destruction world and abstinence from alcohol and tobacco seems the equivalent of the Democratic Party’s acquiescent if-you-can’t-beat-‘em-join-‘em strategy for staying employed by Wall St. Bruce Lee said the first stage of battle is to know your opponent, and Leonard Cohen sang “I fought the bottle, but I had to do it drunk.” Is it possible that from a political naivety, i’m missing the point for why the Democratic party has abandoned its roots and thrown in with the corporations. Is it possible that the leaders are simply employing a similar logic to my own - there is no purity only practical strategies for staying alive without being crushed¿ What i particularly enjoy about my bad habits are those moments when they are mastered and the utility of moderation has provided a simple pleasure that is the more satisfying for its forbidden nature. Is it possible that my vow of poverty is actually impeding my spiritual development, and Mr. M.T. Suit is actually the 2nd coming while my distorted view of purpose is clouding my vision of his worth¿ I don’t think so, “but what do I know” - Michel de Montaigne.

My physical balance is actually abysmal, given to vertigo close to precipitous drops like the Grand Canyon. It may be reaction formation that i dally with unsavory habits, ideas, in some cases - people; or it could be that the whole cannot be predicated on a single valence - yin and yang of existence so to speak. As i understand the cosmology of Balinese Hindu practice, there is a constant struggle between the sacred and evil with humanity’s behavior tipping the balance. I try to be mindful of this daily, but have found appearances can be deceiving - most especially my own delusions which i so desperately cling to. After some surgery to my core, it became necessary to relearn my physical balance which due to visual anomalies had never been that keen. Just like the sublime pleasure of waking after enjoying my poisons in proper proportions relocating the locus of physical balance can be a particularly rewarding experience requiring mindfulness not unlike the attentiveness required to listen to one’s thoughts without a moral checklist. It is those moments of quiet when i’m able to see the sky Pema Chodron refers to as self minus the clouds. What of the clouds - the harangue of society to conform, an unfair suspicion of others which experience confers and doesn’t seem to relinquish without a very determined higher purpose. How can we as people honor our higher objectives without trampling those same emerging desires in others however they are manifested¿ What does it mean to take a position, and to what extremes does one go to see that purpose realized¿ 

What distinguishes conformity from solidarity¿ All or nothing doesn’t seem to be a valid strategy for much of anything, yet the examples of its virtue are rife in our collective consciousness from “The African Queen” Shakespeare’s “St Crispin Day” soliloquy. I know i’m guilty as hell having burned so many bridges for often ill considered reasons. The more dangerous inclination is the righteousness of such gestures, for i can honestly say the instances where my motivation was entirely for the wellbeing of the other could be counted on a single hand. That is not an easy defect to own and it is clouded by unexamined, or at best, misunderstood motivation. What is the balance between self care and unqualified openness which i consider a fundamental keystone for human understanding - myself and others¿ Much is made of fear in the world we inhabit, as something to fight, something to own, something to use. Does it make sense to believe an emotion so deep in our collective heritage can be understood, when it can be provoked by something as faint as a whiff of perfume from a past love¿ Is it a rational emotion if it can be employed by unscrupulous leaders to divide and conquer from within as well as without¿ Is there any useful purpose to tame such a biological tool which certainly saved more than one early hunter from being stomped to death, or are our more noble objectives reached when fear is transmuted into action such as those seen in “African Queen” or Agincourt and the “St Crispin Day” speech¿ I don’t know; i ask because the days we are living are filled with great fear and great demand for change. 

What is the balance between action and inaction¿ The tao says to heat things, become active - to cool things, become inactive. The question remains how to determine what should be heated and what should be cooled. Our leadership is entirely subsumed by greed. Venal considerations seem to animate thinking from the high to the low: if you have it, you want more, if you don’t have it, you want some; i don’t see any shift in the horizon. If anything the discussion of values has been so truncated that a person can bamboozle nearly half of an entire nation in the space of Twitter’s 140 character limit. There does not seem to be much deep thinking, and what there is of it is being seduced by the relentless application of resources which the uber rich seem to have been saving for just such an occasion; gazillions of dollars can clearly buy a lot of friends, professors, politicians, judges, lawyers, thugs, wannabes, etc., etc., etc. How does one balance the despair resulting from such odds¿ Even the audacity of hope has been bought and sold, so where do we go from here¿ I am always leery of the first person pronoun - we, for it construes perimeters of inclusion and exclusion i don’t have much truck with. My efforts toward solidarity have been reduced to these plaintiff wails only because doing nothing is not an option. Is it possible to balance my pathological independence with the very real need for concerted action against a handful of emotional ciphers driving starship earth like a bunch of drunken frat boys with their daddy’s car¿

My balance is based on the ease with which i face death. I make every effort to honor the uniqueness that each other human brings to the equation without sacrificing my purpose or good will in the process.

If a cheerful disposition is offensive or provocative to another, i find myself like snow melting away from that company, and it is my defect. People are sensitive and know when they are not being loved. Is unqualified love the secret to both personal integration as well as harmonious group dynamic? I believe hate is nearly useless for anything but corroding the person who chooses it as a companion. There is very little to balance between these two polar opposites, yet here we sit on a razor’s edge; one side is that beautiful morning waking refreshed with a faint memory of forbidden fruit, but otherwise physically strong and emotionally invigorated for having faced down the devil and won; the other side is the sick feeling of poison oozing from your pores while remorse throbs in your temples for having desecrated your temple. Could the answer to life be as simple as personal restraint¿ If that were true all the cowed spirits of the world would be much happier for their surrender. Can it be as William Blake described in the Marriage of Heaven and Hell - “The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom”¿ Then maybe surrendering to the superior forces of hate and greed running amok in our world might the answer. What i’m convinced of is this, without forsaking war and plumbing the depths of our own commitment to a meaningful life our species will be hewn in half by the razor’s edge before we gain our collective wisdom from our mindless excesses.

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imbalance - the sonnet

I’ve been convicted of being imbalanced;

my jury didn’t contain a single peer.

My crime - thinking without being well financed. 

i was sentenced to a long walk on a short pier.

Of course, i tripped on my way off the plank

somersaulting into a belly flop.

That didn’t kill me, it was the shallow tank.

Unreported - useless as a psy-op.

Justice is blind - kill or die - we all go.

The inbetween of life is where to stay.

This moment was given you not to blow

on reciting what others say to pray.

How to get that done, i have got no clue

save not caring if you cheer or you boo.

jts 052417

http://stoneartist.com 

reprinted with permission - all rights reserved 

on / off - the sonnet

Googol’s blogger analytic wants me to believe that the number of people who read these essays was, 1st inflated to 150-250 a day over the period of a year, and then dropped back to 20-40 a day on the turn of a dime - bullshit. As yet i’m unconvinced anybody reads these written explorations of mine as well as others, how shall i say this . . . ignorance - culling the wheat from the chaff. I hope this a practical approach to writing - especially if anything remotely resembling criticism is employed. As a Virgo skeptic, in rhyming slang - Virgo septic, i struggle with the stereotype of fussy, hypercritical and oversexed mostly because the conflict from my rational indoctrination which condemns astrology as voodoo occult superstition; yet that same rational indoctrination says the moon’s gravity is adequate to pull the tide in the Bay of Fundy 5 miles per day up and back; how can humans who are comprised of up to 70% water not be affected by the changing position of a planetary mass¿ Who is to say what is real, and what ain’t¿ That for me was part of the charm possessing a young mind during the 1960´s. Although there was no way to know at the time exactly how rigid the rules of conduct for hippies were, but the fiction of freedom was enough. The force of residual impression is no different than the tiger-by-the-tail the ruling class is occupied with convincing a nation weened on liberty and armed to the teeth that Mr. M.T. Suit is doing anything great by plundering the commons and jailing anyone who objects.

Fantasy is a difficult reality to maintain. When i first noticed the inflated numbers on my blog stats, my ego wanted to embrace the vain notion that there were readers telling other readers of my effort to find reason in this hall of mirrors we call the internet, soon to be renamed “Zuckerberg Informational Super Highway.” I was content to swim with the current, yet the surveillance-nurtured, neurosis-fed gift for hyper-vigilance in me attributed the cooked numbers to the NSA handlers assigned my supervision; i’ve worked in aerospace doing government work and know how freely dollars flow when it’s not your money. Yet even with the favored industry position of that firm, there were outages - a word i suspect our “civilization” is about to become intimately familiar with. As i understand the pathways of the internet it is predicated on endless cables of copper and/or optic fibers called the T1 Backbone. It is among the reasons why there is such an effort to yoke the population to the wireless technology - your handset is much easier to surveil, ask any drug dealer caught up in a Stingray dragnet. Now that it has become nearly impossible to conduct business without a cellular phone the ISP’s have begun their frontal assault on the T1 Backbone, and soon net neutrality will be a quaint memory of a time when the ruling class did not have its boot firmly clamped down on your throat. “You may say i’ve grown bitter, but of this you may be sure, the rich have got their channels in the bedrooms of the poor . “ .  .  

Leonard Cohen

.  .  “ . And there’s a mighty judgement coming, but I may be wrong, you see you hear these funny voices in the Tower of Song.” Something the ruling class may want to keep in mind: they reside on planet earth and as my friend Edward Colver so sagely observed “When the shit comes down, there will not be walls high enough to hide behind, nor is that meant as a threat - and certainly not an alternative fact. We as a species have wandered so far off track, as individuals, we barely stop to reason about what it is we are doing. Our greater concern seems to be who’s on whose side. We’ve lost so much perspective for the concept of a single individual’s worth that we’ve come to believe that just because those in power are able to buy whatever they desire, including human souls, that must mean only the ruling class can understand what is of value, i say bullshit. When i  was young i rode on the Grey Goose which was by some accounts John Wayne’s greatest love - i more remember the ice cream they served than the fact it was a converted mine sweeper that he docked in Newport Beach. When on our voyage back from Catalina Island, it made the obligatory pass in front of Mr. Wayne’s bayside mansion. I was struck by the realization he was old, fat, and bald, something i suspect is true for most of the ruling class - like the Wizards of Oz . I have nothing personal against John Wayne anymore than i care much about the men who are destroying our planet - it’s just at that time, i’d have traded John Wayne’s boat for the new skateboard that had rubber wheels and ball bearings which had just hit the market - a desire no doubt fueled by the emerging advertising technology that has since become the sacred text of consumer addiction. 

We are loosing our capacity to learn about ourselves; to plumb the interiors of our own minds and hearts; to learn what pleases us and what doesn’t; even to know the difference. Without this capacity for self-awareness we will continue to be at the mercy of unscrupulous, and greedy human beings who have no intention of sharing what they believe is theirs anymore than John Wayne would have thrown me the keys to the Gray Goose saying, “have a good time.” The difference is there are vastly fewer John Waynes today and ice cream is getting more expensive by the minute - genetically modified ice cream no doubt. The importance of knowing what you are on about cannot be overemphasized. The things which computers allow the ruling class to manipulate have grown exponentially to the point where “the powers that be” are predicting behavior of unborn children using computer models in all parts of the world. My young fantasy of becoming a Veterinarian was scuttled by my own lack of discipline and emerging awareness of an ethereal pull toward creativity, influenced i’m sure by my parent’s occupations. Today’s youth are not being provided that latitude. For far too many the choice is between the gang and police - both of which are criminal enterprises. “On track” anymore is shorthand for the rubric some institutional expert marked in your computer file at an early age describing your aptitudes and behavioral type with successive notes entered by underpaid overworked instructors only when there was a divergence from your trajectory. 

The tragedy is how vastly different our world could be were we raised to respect the differences of others rather than to fear the unknown. We are so cued to conform that even the non-conforming hippies were unawares, and possibly the worst offenders. The contradiction in terms is that without solidarity we are doomed. Until each human being on the planet embraces the right of existence, and rather than kill to that end, search for others willing to apply themselves to the greater good, we will continue to be divided and conquered. Today they have isolated us in front of the Godhead screen, scrolling through a virtual world that is little more than a neural programming language for what you must do in order to enrich a handful of people - BTW, you are paying them for the privilege. The fiction is that because you can see pornography at will; charge a new pair of Nikes delivered to your home via drone; or book a retreat in Bali to sanctify your wedding and do yoga at the reception, you are free and the world will continue on its merry way. What is not shared are the facts - people are starving, beaten and bombed to accomplish your convenience. It is only the luck of birth that you are not reading this in a war zone, and if you enjoy the conceit that somehow because you graduated top of your class and are working on the 17th floor of some building in Manhattan scrutinizing the reams of data separating the good from the bad arriving at this enviable occupation due to your own merits; you are not just deluded, but on a planet that is about to school you on how much choice you actually have. 

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off - the sonnet

“Fuck off and die” is an expression

i’ve heard more than once, much to my chagrin.

I’m learning to choose words with more caution;

knowing there are hearts with that opinion.

Harder though to know what provoked such words.

I’ve used them myself on some occasions.

usually, those believed to be turds;

usually, teachers of life lessons . . .

How can we be so off we would wish harm

to messengers of meaning; is it me¿

Am i so alone refusing to arm -

“Stockholm Syndrome” from slaughter of the bee¿

We’d better find more peaceful argument -

without peace we become the firmament.  

jts 052217

http://stoneartist.com 

reprinted with permission - all rights reserved 

birth / death - the sonnet

I was a franks breech with unilateral triangular alopecia, as well as duane’s retraction, or 6th nerve palsy, depending on who’s reading what - that i spent 2 weeks in an incubator during my first year of life is just icing on the cake. It seems perfectly reasonable to me that i’m a weird as fuck adult with no regrets - a vain affectation in solidarity with the beauty of Edith Piaf’s song. Because i was introduced to life on its terms out of the gate, my inner world holds a special place for reality - yours, mine, or the inexplicable. For a very long time i was occupied with mastering the mechanics of movement using monocular vision; that distraction impaired my capacity to appreciate the struggles of others, or honed that capacity to a razor’s edge - to this day, i’m not sure which. It wasn’t until i was in school and the perfectly reasonable taunts from children about discrepancies in my appearance began to inform me of society 1) normal was not an option 2) no one much cared. As it is with all misfortune, regardless of one’s misery, somewhere someone is worse off - my siblings were cursed with great beauty, an impediment for which i wouldn’t trade one second of my life; if anything, and they asked nicely, i’d shave hours off from my allotment of life just to mitigate some of the pain i perceive them having endured for nothing more than a fluke of birth.

Were they to read that, my fantasy is of umbrage for having patronized their misery, the same as i rankle when they attribute victimization to any effort on my part to understand my uniqueness. You may begin to see why reality is so attractive to me - good, bad or indifferent. There is nothing i can do to change the circumstance of my birth except to accept as much of what i am as possible - that and develop gratitude for the throes of this existence in which i find myself. Having been blessed with semi-exigencies early on, i have little patience for the contrived variety, most especially my own, but perspective can be tricky as recent developments in amerikan democracy have demonstrated. What does it mean to you when someone caves in their own life, and then demands that you assume responsibility¿ My inclination is to be helpful in a way which that individual might benefit. Yet just like using poisons to cure, the prescription can be lethal. If someone is furious, and asks you to join in their fury by insulting you, or worse blaming you for their emotion, their reaction when you reflect back to them the logic of their request is one of confusion not dissimilar to birth. The womb of justification for the most scabrous of emotions is warm and inviting, otherwise people wouldn’t spend as much time as they do immersed in such discomfort.

Nor is delivery into the unknown a guarantee for bliss, i’ll attest to that fact. To be free of the yoke of blame can be a burden as difficult as making amerika what it never was - great, any more than i’m retarded for not seeing you with both eyes. The United States was predicated on genocide of its indigenous people and nothing short of accepting that fact and atoning as much as possible will alter that truth; a black humanity was transported as slaves to be owned in the land of the free and home of the brave, and again only by looking deeply into that flaw will the healing come that is required for we as a nation to truly become exceptional. Amerika has been at war for 222 of its 239 years - 93%, not an alternative fact. It is possible to change, but like like taking possession of one’s emotions and the responsibility for those emotions, if you blame anyone but yourself, you’ll never become the sovereign of your soul. “Galatians 6:7 “Be not deceived; G_d is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” - “. . . Surely Allah does not change the conditions in which people are in until they change that which is in themselves .  .  . (13:11) - “It is a man’s own mind, not his enemy or his foe that lures him to evil ways” - Buddha; - “He who knows others is wise, he who knows himself is enlightened.” - Lao Tzu; - “There can never be peace between nations until there is first known that true peace which is within the souls of men” - Black Elk. 

What happens when there is no longer an external force to blame, or to which one prays¿ Awe is the natural condition of our kind. If it wasn’t from the expanse of desert after the horse, it certainly was the ceaseless landscape prior, or density of jungle without the aid of tempered steel. We have always been on the cusp of what is larger than ourselves; it is only a modern conceit that we have power at all. What would happen if the veil was lifted and our atmosphere shriveled to a wisp of oxygen as will happen when the oceans resist our arrogance and apply the logic of biological physics - kill things and they die. Do we really need the adversity required to surmount mindless destruction of a limited world in order to grow as a species? As people, do we really need to define ourselves by a capacity for destruction to resolve the fear in our hearts about loving that which does not love us back¿ What have we learned on our march into the unknown¿ I know better than to drive motorcycles, mostly because i’m not always sure which eye i’m looking through. I’ve learned that if i choose a companion who is unkind and lacking in feeling, there is nothing i can do to change that; i’ve also learned it is far better for my health to continue loving that human being regardless of whether we share parking places. The world is scary, but i need not be frightened, for that lizard reflex has as much to do with my safety as the number of combat deaths vs suicide in the armed forces has to do with reason.

We will be defined by how we lived, and the choices we made toward the greater good. It doesn’t matter if there is any record to prove that point, just as the dead spirits of Pompeii could care less about your opinion of their lifestyle. If they died happy that is all that matters. In today’s world, one can barely crawl out of bed without someone declaring exactly what you need to be happy, and those same interminable shills are the same fucking cowards that are surreptitiously collecting your keystrokes to confirm to you that they know you better than you know you. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if they actually gave a rat’s ass about your happiness - they don’t, for if they did the world would reflect a vastly different set of equations. There would be more parks, free time, books, schools (not institutional warehouses indoctrinating docility); clean air, water, childcare, birth control, respect, peace - etc., etc., etc. However just as the person who’d demanded that you be responsible for their fury, failing or falsehoods - this is your life, and only you will be the one to pass through it. If you see the splendor of each day, the horrendous complexities in finding who you are as opposed to what is said about you and act in accordance with your evolving awareness of your own majesty, then there is no reason that this instant that comprises your existence within the framework of the vast unknown cannot be filled with meaning of your own design.

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death - the sonnet

My momma’s gonna die; my pop is dead.

How’s that possible, where i’m from’ll be gone¿

looking forward to ma’s death without dread,

more like the children’s play “when am i on?

Life’s been fun, mostly from what they taught me,

and a little from what i learned - be kind,

though it could feel like the sting of a bee.

Are dead bees, the color love to the blind?

Is life a lesson, graded at the end¿

“A’s through this gate, and you f’s down those stairs;”

Do we graduate to a place we blend?

What if there’s more awe, but no one that cares¿

Whatever happens will be by experts,

without care for who it is that exerts.

  

jts 052017

http://stoneartist.com 

reprinted with permission - all rights reserved 

own - an essay / want - the sonnet

Early on, i accepted as fact that if i had any hope for a creative life, i’d either have to take orders about what i create, or buy back my life. The dissonance of having to buy freedom came as a shock, for i was born into a patriotic household which held the american dream in high esteem. The corporate overthrow of my nation was still in the shadows and living under rocks with grubs and bacteria. Initially, i believed in the sanctity of art and the honesty of literature - that the world of ideas was a temple within which the best of humanity was forged. My formative years coincided with the period of abundance just after WWII when the corporate tax rate was 90%, the nation`s interstate highways were built and the educational system was the envy of the world. However like some bad movie arc, my efforts to market my creative product coincided with the bumper sticker that read “he who dies with the most toys wins;” whoever printed that 1st batch is probably still living off the proceeds, or bankrupted by greed - and we all know what bankruptcy can accomplish if you turn to politics. Undeterred, i continued with my objective to carve stone until i was very old, because it gave me pleasure. It was not a straight line, as i was young and my ambition a very complex equation - at the time, i had no idea how complex. I sought the aid of an expert by returning to school. I had met my first stone carving instructor during a vision quest in New York City - it was s magical time when all things were possible. He was old school, 90 years of old school. Of the many things he taught me, carving without power tools was the most practical for reasons too vast to enumerate here. This wisdom, however, ran full up against the expert’s advice - command would be more accurate.

The expert was a fine man, but his strength was as a mason, whereas my first instructor was an artist. Nor do i regret my time working with power tools or peering into the workings of the art market from the inside out - it is ego filled. I had always been aware of that unsavory aspect of the process, but dismissed the manifestations as a crutch of the dilettante. Returning to school was rationalized surrender and the first step in my downfall, for now rather than owning the good fortune which comes from finding an activity you really love, i was willing to trade sacraments (machine - profit vs hand - poverty) in order to crash the financial barrier - a Faustian bargain one might argue, and like all good bargains, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably isn’t - no amount of machine proficiency could mask my growing disdain for the trappings of art world success. It wasn’t long after this, i was strongly encouraged to find a trade more profitable - i’d be crazy not to. As a young buck, hormones drive the train and i was not then, probably not now, grounded enough to fully appreciate how hardwired the ability to provide is to that of the biological drive. Carving weekends worked for a while, but eventually the payments for a new van, food for the dogs, clothes for the child and entertainment for the wife required a 2nd and at times 3rd job. The silver lining for this cloud was the discipline of language; i’d always deferred where my father’s stock and trade was concerned, no doubt some oedipal tension there, but who’d have thought expressing oneself could be such fun¿

Upon graduation i fled aerospace where i’d been renting my grey matter to the weapons industry into teaching at a time when “no child left behind” was becoming the corporate trojan horse to our nation’s most sacred asset - the young mind. You might well imagine how suited i was to this environment - too much of a free thinker to assimilate into the Bohemian Rhapsody of fine art; too moral to design weapons of destruction; how was i ever going to grade one student against another¿ By this juncture all my failure as a successful human being manifested in box after box of mementos of former glory - scads of aerospace coffee cups emblazoned at the taxpayer expense, nameplates from prestigious assignments, pictures with notable people (nobody you’d know) and always the infernal toolbox full of carving tools. Now that i’d been summarily dismissed from every rationalized occupation i could, there was nothing left but surrender - commercial real estate. It hadn’t occurred to me that i could sink any lower, but like Bob Dylan said, “when you think that you’ve lost everything, you find out you can always lose a little more.” A 50 year old l’enfant terrible in a room full of trust-fund babies; a pre 9/11 cia operative looking for a better life; and a roster of egos that make the U.S. Chief Executive, what’s his name, look like Dr. Albert Schweitzer - what could go wrong¿ My last wife a sainted woman, had by this time reconciled me to the fact that if there are Sunday Painters, there damn sure could be sunday sculptors; she got her credit cards and i got religion.

Until the food i’d been using to repress the nagging suspicion of trouble-in-paradise ruptured my appendix just as wife #3 skipped out with her debts paid and her name conveniently on the deed after having recently refinanced Chez Joseph. Self respect is highly overrated, until you go from wife, home and a job to a vacuum. The meaning of everything becomes highlighted, much like the vividness of a flower petal after a near death experience. Nor does meaning from such events necessarily make more sense, however brilliant it may be. For example, even with all the insights from such an assault on one’s measured perspective - maturation i think they call it - i am continuing to pay storage on things. Along with the one or two tchotkes that survived a bitter searching of the heart are all the stone carvings - residue from days of faith and hope - 17, a prime number which about sums up the significance of a life’s work. The far more valuable thing locked away in storage, something which can never be taken from me is the certain knowledge of how little power we have over things. Our conceit that one item is anymore valuable than another comes from a hierarchy of value we barely even think about anymore. It is assumed that the things we love will benefit from our interest and the things we hate will be punished - this delusion of power robs us from the awareness of our insignificance within the universe . . .

. . . simultaneously blocking our vision of the awe in which we swim. Robin Williams, may you . r . i . p , described life as fleeting; i miss his gift for understatement. We as a population have never been as enslaved as we are today, not in the perverse history of our kind with all of its cruelty, nobility and contradiction have we been as subjugated as today. The equivalent would be the ancient gazelle hunt in the canyon using cunning and intellect to stampede the unwitting herd only to find instead of nimble gazelles running for your spear tips, are pissed off Water Bufallo who hijacked the thoroughfare of your canyon ambush because they know where the water is - through you. Chevrolet even named a car the Impala, and if you don’t think they were seducing your sense of adventure with that name, you never owned an Impala. The sad truth is modern transportation was best described in “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?” which for the life of me i cannot understand how that cartoon ever saw the light of day given Disney’s corporate ethos in these the latter days of our species. Objects are certainly capable of reflecting back to the viewer information, even emanating information to those tuned to that very low frequency, but as sentient creatures graced with feeling we have somehow come to forget that an inanimate object is unable to manifest the simple gurgle of any infant creature - panda, eagle, crocodile, or even human. We have become so numb to the magnificence of existence that in our hunger we seek it everywhere - the chain of consumption; the ceaseless din of media; the irrational wish to be understood by a computer without feelings; or blindness to that miserable hate you find in others, as your own.

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want - the sonnet

At six i’d like to've sung country music.

i’d seen a girl smiling at a singer.

Then a stingray bike i’d have liked to pick,

because the seat somehow fit you and her.

Once in a while, she was all i wanted,

seldom worked if she weren’t looking at you,

which can be enough, you wished you was dead.

thank g_d for woman - the better world’s hue.

Woman taught me well that i should not sing

for her but for my own understanding.

She let me to carry her books one spring,

“saying what love! but knowledge is more binding”

i know very little about women.

i do my best, as it is with most men.

jts 051717

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com

http://josephtstevens.blogspot.com 

reprinted with permission - all rights reserved 

an essay / a sonnet

The word essay in French means “tried”, and so like its originator Michel de Montaigne - i do, i did and i will continue, because the alternative is surrender which i am also trying to accomplish. Fucking paradoxes - are they our friends¿ The capitalists resolved this paradox by trademarking “just do it” - a convenient slight of hand designed to weaken consumer restraint and encourage the delusion that if you pay outrageous sums for the white man’s moccasin assembled on the backs of wage slaves earning less in a day than what you spend on coffee before lunch. The workers suffer far from the bucolic venues you train your delusion of accomplishment, or more accurately feed your dopamine addiction. Don’t misunderstand, i loved running, but regardless of my affection for that exercise or addiction to dopamine, the realities of decay, unequal leg length and surgical intrusion have cornered my aged constitution into a reality learning curve; i’ve resorted to “adapt and improvise” under the guise of surrender. Nor was the discipline necessary to run 20 miles a week entirely in vain, now i write, sweating and whining the entire distance until I lay my head down at night and sleep the sleep of exhaustion. Running and essays have much in common; both have a beginning and end; each provides nourishment to the spirit; and during each activity one can begin to see things unrecognized prior to the effort - limits, broken-limits, understanding, and/or ignorance (most especially one’s own).

I chose not to title this essay, because i’m disillusioned regarding persuasion and its usefulness in improving the world (read saving humanity from certain doom). I read this morning that coral reefs provide half the oxygen in the atmosphere of our planet, and that the coral reefs on our planet are expected to expire by 2050 due to the increasing warmth of oceans - the “Great Barrier Reef” the largest living thing on earth and nursery to one quarter of the planet’s marine life is dying, if not dead already. With or without a title, how do you share information like that and not want to be persuasive¿ I am deep in the process of resolving issues of my own mortality, which for a stonecutter can be quite complicated, for example a brother (who is now facing cancer) asked me once if i carved stone in an effort to become immortal - like the rung bell, that question has never ceased to resonate. My resolution is that if i’m not immortal now what future time could possible contain more than all that i am right here, right now. It may not be a perfect solution, but how did we come by the deluded fantasy of any manner of perfection¿ Could it be the shrill drumbeat of deficiency blaring from every media portal and attached to every screen we consider on this “information superhighway” that demands we consider our existence as incomplete until we .  .  . buy, read, click, go - do  .  etc . etc . etc

Last night while sharpening a knife i noticed where a previous sharpener had created a dip at the junction of the outward curve and the inward curve. I understand this from fashioning stone and the complexities of joining convex and concave surfaces which can easily result in an unwanted line. From school i remembered a hated, but highly respected professor extolling the virtues of the “S curve” as it pertained to art and it occurred to me how many other places depend on this conscious balance of natural beauty which can be butchered by the inattentive hand of man, so i posted in the badlands of fb “isolation and distribution want equilibrium for perceptronium” with an s-curve street sign and an article from Wikipedia describing the s-curve. None of this explained my point that in today’s world the outward curve of “isolation” has nearly become a complete circle - money, lifestyle, information, love - so many things, while the inner curve of “distribution” has become a nearly flat line with very little of what is needed getting to so many who have such great need. I have grave reservations about the wizards of technology and their commitment to a level playing field, but must accept that my shorthand symbology is lost to most with or without zucky’s help picking what my friends see, or googol goosing the blogger numbers and obscuring from me information about who looks at what, simultaneously feeding the surveillance industry custom forms itemizing when i shit and how much.

This is where it gets dicey, do i now accept that what i think about the correlation between a thoughtfully sharpened knife edge and our impending extinction is just too bizarre for public consumption, even if in my heart of hearts i believe it to be marginally useful, if for no other reason than one lonely lost soul who might feel cared for by a perfect stranger¿ What if i’m providing public service entertainment for those hoards of snoops now employed to watch over a dangerous population waking to the destruction of their world; and what if the logic of what i say disguised as self-centered blather from a disaffected expatriate encourages one member from the conformity cocoon to flap his/her existential wings only to find the sky is the only thing to which they are chained - (thank you sheriff Dillon). The sad fact remains, persuasion is a weak tool for the weak minded, and the only real use this writing effort is good for is to reflect to myself the deficiencies of my reasoning and perhaps nurture the personal delusion of contribution to the greater good at a point in our history where “greater” is about to become exceptionally reduced. All the channels we now enjoy for entertainment and communication are about to be choked off through deliberate malfeasance, coordinated sabotage, and greed. What will be left is the giant screen from Orwell’s “1984” repeating over and over again - “war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength.”

So while i continue to adjust to an existential transition into the unknown, i will continue to share my efforts to understand what can’t be understood, because it is there that the soul of our growth resides. If we are to survive as something more than drones for the ruling class and fodder for their consumer massacre, it will be from individuals choosing difficult discussions about painful subjects with others who don’t want to hear - fucking paradox; is it an irony that paradox is my only friend¿ - “keep your friends close and your enemies closer” - Sun Tzu; “only your friends can hurt you, your enemies can’t get that close” - A. Nonymous. It doesn’t matter much, it’s certainly not worth going to war over. I have satisfied myself in this struggle with a problem that has no answer - how to save humanity from itself. Am i a better person for it¿ I’m a far better person than if i had spent the same amount of time scrolling fb making zucky richer; i’m a little closer to death and feel better about it; nor is it outside the realm of possibility that the one person reading this expository nightmare might look up perceptronium; be struck dumb by the logic contained in that word and then devote the balance of his/her life isolating its meaning and distributing her/his findings over an alternet designed by loving hearts to propagate meaning into a meaningless world.

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a sonnet

Iambic pentameter is our friend

and if it is good enough for Shakespeare

any friend of his, is mine to the end,

an end i’d have later than earlier.

Not so much because this place is so great,

but because frying pan into the fire’s true;

though change is how the bard would exclamate, 

that and doses of existential pooh. 

Plus les choses changent, plus elles restent les mêmes

besides that, why change horses in midstream?

where is it written that prior forms will maim,

or good taste is what consensus will deem¿

if i’m having fun minding my own business

what’s your concern if i mock you or ISIS. 

jts  051517

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com

http://JosephTStevens.blogspot.com

reprinted with permission - all rights reserved · 

∞

give / take - the sonnet

Can i write while listening to music - do i need your permission¿ Is expressing oneself with the written word while listening to a rhythm any different than feeling one’s heart or hearing a car horn while talking¿ Is it the equivalent of a guru introducing an obnoxious character into an ashram simply to provoke greater focus for the aspirants. Can it be the same for the act of giving¿ I’d read once that you give the gift you’d want yourself; i’d also read the best gift one can make is of one’s time. This makes sense, for from what little i possess, time is what i give away most reluctantly. This creates conflict for me in any number of ways - higher wisdom dictates service to others as a common sense solution to much of what ails our world. What is it to be of service - like the gift one desires, do i leave others alone¿ When i see misery, i strongly want to relieve that suffering. Are compassion and time intertwined¿ It seems to be that way on the faces of aged i’ve had the pleasure to spend time with. However, none of these abstruse considerations include the material props modern media cajoles its thralls, either to own, or give away in testimony to one’s prosperity. I am an unrepentant anti-consumer renegade. My resistance is not for lack of appreciation of fine cloth, food or music; but in repulsion from the transparent greed of those flogging pale imitations of fineness; while reducing the noble independent human spirit to that of a grasping, selfish angry wraith.

My parents were both teachers - one of English the other of Art. This happenstance of birth is a gift i’ve spent much of my life trying to share. However to date the closest i’ve gotten to my ambition is a more profound appreciation for the abundance of lessons involved in such a pursuit. You cannot share that which another has no interest, anymore than something can be taken from you for which you have no interest. So how to be generous in a world supremely occupied with the business of acquisition and ceaseless trumpeting of hard bought booty¿ Lao Tzu - “Simplicity, patience, compassion - these are your greatest treasures.”  Of all that i’ve ever come into possession, these three qualities of mind have been the most difficult to gain, yet the most easily given away - if for no other reason than the pleasure they seem to bring as gifts - a fucking paradox - ain’t life grand. The cultivation of these 3 treasures has brought me closer to my original ambition for the sharing of my creative heritage, albeit without much resemblance to the initial concept. Like the gift to oneself, i’ve found it is enough that i practice my passion without attachment to the results.

Early dreams of conquest and acclaim have given way to an intractable pull toward some unknown outcome. Although the future for me has been reduced to a hazy outline, this writing effort for a more personal understanding of what it is to give stands in high relief. Why is that¿ I have learned very few people are interested in what you might think they need, but may find common ground when they hear you share something you are searching for. I am searching for how to give, and it is confusing. I recently saw an interview with an Australian Bushman who explained there are no words for “please” and “thank you” in his native tongue because sharing is an accepted feature of his culture, however he was referring to material objects. What of our digital isolation and the illusion of being connected without presence¿ What i am giving is contained in my mind’s eye of you scratching your head asking yourself WTF¿ That barely seems substantial - like a monologue in an empty room, yet there must be a reason you’ve taken your time to read this far¿ Based on life experience, i’m fairly certain that i’m not the only human being on a planet of 7 billion searching for ways to give, so we have common ground.

In Bali the method of instruction for the very young is to take the child’s hand and go through the motion; by self disclosure of my own difficulties it may be possible that someone reading will be encouraged to puzzle through to an unknown solution using language. If however, the reader is sampling another’s work for reasons of self aggrandizement as i myself have done, you may be reading facile pychobabble devoid of sense. Nor is a leap into writing for one’s pleasure necessarily an honest one. It may be that my repressed selfishness toward others drives this sanctimonious declaration of innocence and vacuous mea culpa¿ i don’t know .  .  . I know i’m not alone, nor are you. It was the prospect of losing fun in the creative process where i’ve found sanctuary. For example, just now googoling “art and literature” to further expand an emerging idea, when what rose to the top of the heap was a Wikipedia article on the Economics of Art and Literature : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_the_arts_and_literature. This is how the internet has become an instrument of indoctrination for the purpose of defining value. By any measure of market value, i’m a dismal failure. For the longest time, i was inoculated from this harsh truth by conceit until i realized - my work is just that, mine.

Minus the confusion of competition upon which art industrialization has piked the collective creative genius of hu[wo]manity, i still very much want to share what i’ve created, because i like it. However, if as an artist you are not giving yourself the gift you’d want most yourself - the thrill of carving into one’s greatest fears; exalting the most delusional fantasies, or plumbing the depths of one’s most most debased infirmities; instead kowtowing to acclaim or financial incentive - who’d fucking want to do that¿ Is it an irony that each of the categories for personal exploration above has a correspondent new release, be that xbox, ipad, cnn, darkweb or senate hearing¿ Or have i placed myself in a “painter’s corner of logic by having chased a dialectic for giving without a safety net. Do i give fuck¿ As it happens, i do. But the fear i’ve carved out here is my own and not designed to inflame yours; any exaltation from this effort is mine alone knowing i did my best and it’s possible, even likely, one other person will have read it, which may be delusional; and without completely gutting myself for public spectacle, i’ve made an honest effort to be vulnerable which unfortunately i still consider an infirmity. The joy however remains from taking my most precious resource time and attempting to construct something out of nothing - the gift of meaning, or lack thereof.

  

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take - the sonnet

A young man i know kept my unbrella

i lent him to keep rain from his mother.

At first mad, like he saw my weak aura,

later saddened by his offense to her.

I write to learn more about this event

but find only a cave roaring inside

“not here, go back to your own fucking tent.”

?you took my shelter and left me outside¿

Nonsense - the sky’s immense - we are all wet,

and getting wetter; if our water’s owned

it means, when we are born we assume debt.

same as thinking kindness can be loaned.

tomorrow i draw; like this time i take

to search for some meaning in what i make 

jts 051317

http://stoneartist.com 

reprinted with permission - all rights reserved