expectation - the essay / awareness · a sonnet

dedicado a Dame Flor Fuentes y a los suyos, cuya inescrutable bondad e inexplicable generosidad han rescatado un alcance creativo que yo creía perdido:

I challenge the reading audience to read ∞ anything Ω : time stamp ·: closing in on 8:00 AM, according to my dyspeptic record keeping, i’ve not published an essay/sonnet since _Dec 2, 2025_ “So what?” you might ask, because i gave my now dead father my sacred word, “I will continue writing”, which i have; including the well-gnawed bone of a manuscript written during pandemic of 2o21 behind the lines of post-‘merican war Viet Nam. For now i’m bunkering through D_rumpf-plagé*o24 in the valley of clouds, Oaxaca; Mexico. However due to the co-morbidity of ‘Dominion’ conceits out of the cerebral bowels curtis yarvin’s minion; and seer perversion of Tolkien’s LoR symbolism by yarvin’s dapper ‘monied class’, evasion is a de riguer plein air proposition - virtual certitude more easily conjured than one might imagine, thanks to the hubris and tedious ostentation of the techno/gazillionaire-geek’s faux intellect and their effete buffoonery. 

Expectations besides, this ostensible 5-paragraph essay, thank g_d, won’t die, just quietly erode into the aether as literal compost, figuratively speaking. It was William Shakespeare’s remark that ‘all human disappointment stems from expectation’ which got me thinking about how to reconcile that empirical logic with Albert Einstein’s equally ponderous quip, “God doesn’t play dice with the universe.” Are these seemingly diametrically opposed dynamics reconcilable¿ If i were a betting man, who @ 72+ plausibly proffers legitimate credentials as artist/author/sculptor/engineer/investigator/agitator; what else could i be, but a gambler; it ain’t all cake and ice cream. So how to harness the irresistible force of expectation with immovable objectivity of reality; or more bluntly - behead the gorgonesque gazillionaire grinding our planet’s habitability into a plastiglyphositic smear over the windshield of our Deoxyribonucleic Helix oscillating our survival over the abyss of our doom.

Aside from being one of the most powerful tools in the child-rearing repertoire,  expectation finds traction in the physical universe as one of the fulcrums of quantum theory. Know, one i am no physicist only a extremely curious person; 2) my education amounts to suspending two gallon jugs from the ceiling of the Harris’s pottery shop on Logan; linking the two with a tenuous tether, setting one swing in a gentle circular motion to watch how that energy was then transferred through the tether to the second still jug while the energy dissipated from the 1st, it animated motion for the 2nd that was then passed back and forth (in theory). Reality, was as ever vastly different; however the fact remains there was enough energy generated that summer afternoon to animate my fingers on a keyboard in the badlands of ______, or your eyeballs, whoever and where ever you is: s’plain me that? 3) Mr. Lambert the physics instructor at Estancia High School, 1970-something cornering me in one of the labs and demanding to know ‘what-the-fuck’ i was doing in a ‘survey class’, when i could be studying actual physics - a remarkably nurturing, thoughtful complement for a befuddled adolescent trying to parse Watergate, LSD and Woodstock in the same semester.

Today the table stakes are a little higher, and the cheaters a little bolder than those band of brothers bungling their burglary of boosting salacious psychiatric conjecture for blackmail leverage against an “off-the-reservation” Rand analyst who was innocently looking to atone for crimes against humanity by publishing common knowledge about the ‘merican war in Viet Nam - instead we now face an incalculable reality of viewing one of Rod Serling’s more unique efforts waltz its way off the ‘screen’ into our commercially implanted artificial intelligence whose apparent design is to render ‘people kind’ obsolescent by resetting our Jungian archetype to 0x0/oo, or if you prefer an elevated vocabulary: oooooooo as an 8-bit byte corresponding to an electrical state of off, or low voltage for master digit, bElony’s, post-neuralink ledger location for ‘people kind’.

Ah, but therein lies the rub - ‘always a fuckin’ rub’ ·:e.g. did you know that Leo Tolstoy the writer whose vivid proletarian prose could conjure the likes of “Alyosha the Pot” possessed a searing hard-on for William Shakespeare¿ i know huh? ‘just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water’, i read it in a pamphlet at the CSUF library. The pamphlet, “On Shakespeare and on Drama” was entirely dedicated to defaming poor William, making the fictitious struggle for market share between Gates and Jobs look like an allegory for an amish barn-raising pahté. God may not play dice with the universe, but i’m willing to give generous odds the demigods wreaking havoc on our precious planet are so engrossed in the ‘banal evil’ Hannah Arendt framed so well they be unable to distinguish an ‘economic tic’ from a plunge in the ice-bath of Dante’s “Divine Comedy”, at least that is my expectation and i’m stickin’ to it, for i’d be surprised if the ruling class version of Cerberus, ai, has the capacity to distinguish between mild contempt and steely resolve as it gulps what “Faik Besos” conceives of as “Foundation” (no Asimov irony here - move along), for a post-apocalyptic dénouement. 

- takers · ¿ 

(i ain’t worried, dey’z a glut on ‘takers’ in our world)

 jaJaJA Ω demonic cackle fades to .  .. _  ∞

X  /   X  /   X  /   X  /   X  / 

awareness · a sonnet 

Awareness dwells in the heart; though neither

is constrained by the other, they reflect

each other’s truth through illumined ether -

highlighting flaws as beacon, not defect.

Lacking perspective, bird’s eye view is all

horizon: on high, down low; all is near

at hand; in reach; never too tall to fall

or fail, only how to conquer all fear.

Yet their essence bounds and is bounded by

a dynamic that dissolves completely

all it contacts; they become what won’t die -

love: undiluted, unabated - only free ·

from: possession; definition; extinction;

intimidation; complication - conclusion ·  

solidarność 

(˚ ㄥ _˚)                    

o5 October 2026 jts

http://ExtinctionChronicles.blogspot.com 

http://JosephTStevens.blogspot.com 

http://Stoanartst.blogspot.com 

prohibited from AI sampling in any form

reprinted with permission; all rights reserved

∞

☮️

A WALK WITH SPIRITUALITY - Harold R. Stevens ·

 

“A WALK WITH SPIRITUALITY”

I go for a walk each day. The morning and I hold hands

As we carefully descend the stairs at seven a.m.

I first cross over a new black surface. and pass

the blank faces of many garage doors.

This morning, I was lifted in my solitude. I heard

The clouds singing silently......reverently.

The sweet breath of the heavens flowered my vision.

I slipped into the AWE of spirituality.

I was connecting with all things. I reached out

And kissed the lips of human love.......

Cascading and splashing over my reverie, the dignity

And worth of every living thing on earth.

I was experiencing an intense interconnectedness

of existence. Is this true spirituality?

Was my soul touching the center...the TAO OF NOW?

I looked up. The heavens winked at me.

The moment shattered and crumbled in an explosion

of reality. A leashed dog and master passed by.....

HAL STEVENS 3/27/01

(˚ ㄥ _˚)                    

01 January 2026

http://ExtinctionChronicles.blogspot.com 

http://JosephTStevens.blogspot.com 

http://Stoanartst.blogspot.com 

prohibited from AI sampling in any form

reprinted with permission; all rights reserved

∞

adaptation - an essay / resistance · the sonnet

 

“Real Artists Don’t Starve - They Thrive · “ was enough of a trigger to provoke me to my last version of this essay begun at the end of last year and has been stalled for the past 3 months having deteriorated into a miasma of self-indulgent dreck. I capitulated this morning when i sat upright out of an existential stupor hoping the change in surroundings i landed in due to a precipitous decision to evade “The inevitable;” my neighbors where i live are ‘noise thugs’, meaning that to make their pound of flesh, they think nothing of coopting the tranquility of the entire colonia to whatever variation of ‘music’ deemed popular for whatever crowd by whoever is making those choices, nor to they give a fig whether their volume of entertainment might disrupt anyone else’s activity for a radius of 300 meters; the insult is their contempt for the sleep of those who depend on their weekends for rest - these ‘masters of music’ feel their creativity is so sacred that 1, 2, or 3 in the morning is too soon to interrupt their cultural ‘elan’.

So i took a room in a lodge away from the gossips who have ascribed ‘hatred’ of the culture as motivation for my seemingly bizarre choices - or so it seems to me. The irony is that the hope to ‘evade’ rather than adapt has only created a cascading gaggle of ‘ducklings’ waddling after my every effort to control my environment. The room i was placed in was catty-corner to the ‘off-cycle’ kitchen at precisely the moment when the chef-master wished to do his most creative work on the same Sunday morning i was hoping to disentangle myself from real vs fantasy impediments of my creative process. “En Vino Veritas” once again saved the day and kept me from acquiescing to rudeness and so found my self further complicating the scene by sharing my ‘unframed-inarticulate’ objections with the Dame/Manager on her Sunday morning, knowing i’d be calling down the dogs of sanctimonious indignation for my arrogance.

I’m really not sure what to do next; it is impractical to change countries every time a cultural rift sticks in my craw, the equivalent echo would be to change families when yours will not alter their preferred brand of toxin when you object. The problem for me is that my yen for kindness is retreating more quickly than my ability to adapt to solitude and rationalize my circumstance as a form of existential dignity without any attending support. Media and its orchestrated distraction is a poor substitute for flesh and blood; while fear and isolation are poor compensation for the courage it takes to defy coalescing into the ‘pod’. The irony is that it “T’was been ever thus.” - Larry Golden · I did not sleep well after the kerfuffle but could’ve; it was the anxious child in my looking forward to the pleasure i know can be found in massage + temezcal (steam bath). Sadly i no longer access easily the metaphysical wonder found in not understanding some things. In my earlier pilgrimages to where i now live; may die, i’d channel Don Juan, and find magic under every rock.

Now i’m just tired, possibly besotted, having found sober allure in the wisdom of Mescalito - ‘the more things change the more they remain the same.’ - old french proverb. Mescal is the most benign intoxicant i’ve found, while the catechism is oddly the same; moderation, all things moderation. Days ago, I thought for a moment i’d fallen for a woman; mostly because i’m a ‘hopeless romantic’ but i know in the darker chambers of my being i want to vindicate myself and be worthy of what lovers know, rather than the hard-bitten realist i have become. The paradox is for those 60 seconds that i flirted with this woman, i lost 10 lbs of angst and added 15 years to what is increasingly looking to be a telescoping future. My bravado has met its match in degenerative osteoarthritis of the hip, even if i can analyze whys and wherefores and maintain an optimum physical condition - the world i face doesn’t admit my type of genius, and as much as it galls me to say, George’s boot on the throat is as courageous a commentary as i’ve found.

And it would be a lot of fun to devise an existential ‘Hail Mary’ that might provide some leverage for liberty to those who’ve peeled the digital claw from their skullcap and stand outside the tangle of what had at one time been a human vista which yielded the Shakespeares, the Dylans, Rembrandts, and Einsteins of our world. I don’t know what it takes to gain traction over the blare of computer models and their handmaiden, artificial intelligence. I am proud to think i can continue to stand here with my ‘little wild bouquet’ of aphorisms cobbled together in the manner of a modern day Montaigne, and would love to leave you reading with a lighter heart than the one you brought to the screen; the best i can tell you is it will be more valuable to you when you find it within your own tool box, because the same as you are peering over my shoulder is a search for the right size screw to cinch this ‘bad boy’ in place, there is no doubt someone in your world peering over your should assessing and evaluating what you read, why and noting what you build - good luck to us all.

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resistance · the sonnet  

Adaptation isn’t resistance, it’s life;

and what resists, persists - a paradox

for both states - life and death · describe much strife:

life through fullness, death’s void walled off by locks.

To what end persist, if both states lack peace?

What state teaches peace; can it be acquired

If it can’t be learned, what about hired - a lease?

My flesh is borrowed, why can’t calm be hired?

“A bunch of words” - how’d they learn to fight back?

Do words resist writing, to serve a poem birth

adding strength to its life ducking’n ai hack

Does it matter to this world’s shrinking girth?

so goes the saga - ‘Willy or Won’t he -

performed on the stage of ‘Don’t get a Fee’ ·

(˚ ㄥ _˚)                  

jts 7/9/2024

http://ExtinctionChronicles.blogspot.com 

http://JosephTStevens.blogspot.com 

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com

prohibited from AI sampling in any form

reprinted with permission; all rights reserved

∞

roots - the essay / rootless · a sonnet

 

roots - the essay

It’s 3:30 a.m. where i am now overwriting an essay about relocating that i wrote 7 years ago - ironically the central question of where to ‘be’ remains the same, (‘form i’m’ i.e. early onset dementia - contraction · appositive¿), in the same city where i’d formulated the original question re: relocating, though 1,000 of miles and years in between. Just at the moment i stand writing preparing to capture a stool sample, because the location i moved to-from where i was asking myself about where-to-be was a bust, in/out of the vernacular. The reason for the stool sample is in the short time i had been in the ‘returned-to’ Arcadian setting of my memory fantasy, my guts were in an uproar, and i wasn’t quite clear whether what i experienced in that location was emotional or biological, ergo: ‘test the hypothesis’. Sadly i could be ‘burned at the stake’ for such an heretical thought process in these days of Corporate Putschland, for the MAGA running dogs being quite so severe in their litmus testing of anything that might educate, agitate or organize the ‘prols.’ The other more pertinent issue for this essay is volition, whether its creation is the result of an aggregate creative tension, or the reaction formation ‘separation anxiety’, having just been denied access to the ‘internet tit’; and this is where is gets dicey, is this writing is a reflection of some tear in the space/time continuum¿ fuck-knows as is said down under in Auz. Back to roots - the ostensible subject of this writing · maybe William ‘the scribe of scribes’ was narrow in his long-lived hypothetical question - ‘to be or not to be’, might well have been better served by, ‘to grow or not to grow.’ ? 

I’m beginning to feel as a pariah might, specimen jar by my by side; how much of my dysthymic affect is due to withdrawal from internet addiction; how much from an existential reckoning born of complaisant work habits gone-to-seed /(emotional denial of the real exigencies of ‘creative fallow time’), inhaling FOAS gas from the black plastic bag hanging up at my workstation shoulder to keep the night lights out of my new digs; or a simple bad habit - i d k. Whatever it was, has passed, as clouds do. This morning I garnered a dopamine fix from more easily ‘pinching off’ my last stool compared to yesterday’s torturous lucid dream state revisit with toilet training¿ After dropping off my final shit debt, i had blood sucked out of a vein by a kindly receptionist with whom i’d shared a laugh with when initiating this laboratory sequence - testing for parasites in water and my body; as well as ascertaining my general health condition as much as a blood panel can yield. Prostate cancer seems to favor our blood line, father and both brothers having been visited by the affliction, my PSA results thus far haven’t warranted a closer scrutiny: meanwhile ‘back @ the ranch’ my long estranged nephew lamented on the phone yesterday his mother, my sister has 3 years to live from a rare form of Palsy - 1 in 100,000 · NSP .  .. writing resumed: 19 days later . .  .  water analysis of former bucolic fantasy/escape scenario domicile contained e-coli; my stool samples contained: Trophozoites Blatocysistis spp., Chilomastix mesnili of indeterminant duration that was not resolved entirely by sulfides, though a week later the ‘Doctora’ amended her regime to include a sulfide-based antibiotic; along with the most helpful lactobacillus-booster - And as i rinsed my laundry and surfaces of the fecal/e-coli/chilomastix mesnili contamination and looked forward to the therapeutic resource available @ the ‘community center’, my upper right canine tooth broke at the gum-line, BUT ‘it’ doesn’t stop there - the damsel neighbor contestant vying for ‘Mexico’s Got Talent’ woke me to what can only be described as caterwauling just far enough into my REM for how to jury-rig a salt pack for the exposed tooth root, only to have the contrivance drop out of my slumbering mouth hours later to fall onto the possibly still contaminated, but closed toilet seat lid while trying to re-infuse the saline solution during a pee-break that gave me enough bladder control to not pee all over myself while trotting for the toilet seat in time to discover the water service was off this particular Sunday; how about you - how’s your day going¿ he queried into the aether to no one in particular. 

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Blah, blah, yammer, yammer .  .. the underlying tension to this passing vignette was the certain knowledge while processing the complications of a broken incisor on a Saturday afternoon/turning Sunday morning in the semi-rural enclave i am trying to make home was the real understanding that the most effective tactical approach to surviving the ‘toxic’ reality of my circumstance would be to fast - autophagy. A spiritual conceit i desultorily dabbled in during my ‘dissipated’ wanderings as a Kafkaesque Hunger Artist/l’infant terrible in Manhattan assiduously aping the TV Roadmap that passed for an instruction manual to the culture wars in the post 60’s pre bi-centennial ‘merica of my youth. The forgoing paragraph/stream-of-conscious dreck is a self-conscious effort to blunt some of the self-serving ruling class terror-as-advertising-model being foisted on my born-in-nation that is currently attempting to extricate itself from the web of comeuppance it faces in the pre-extinction “a iEye” bubble scrolling across every screen on the planet.

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.  .. All of which i am narrating against the backdrop of dissonance one finds on an ‘empty stomach’. Not entirely empty, for i’m also digesting the beaker of blackchocolatecoffee i had gulped at dawn before learning the tinacos were empty and the shit i’d passed in prelude to the turd remnants of the hopefully inert worm husks of my gut in preparation for the salubrious lactobacillus cocktail i so much look forward to. It is now just before Noon, water is on asshole is as clean as i can manage - all things being equal · which they clearly have not been. Did a mention my eldest stepsister died a week ago today, and amongst the stressors of yesterday was whether to seek a way to honor the tradition of saying ‘Kaddish’ for the departed in my world - her cousin had passed some 2 short months ago, and October will be the 1 year anniversary of Ma’s departure from her earthly woes. So it’s not for not while approaching my 72nd revolution around the sun that i would struggle quite so furosously to understand the ‘root’ of this mystery others describe as ‘life’, but which remains for me little more than a continuing mystery interspersed with intermittent bursts of brilliant illumination. Bob Dylan has said, amongst other things - “Ya’ always have to be prepared, but ya’ never know for what” has presaged much of the simple pleasures i’ve discovered during my short tenure alive. For example, i’ve found the ‘brilliant illumination’ i just alluded to has as much to do with previous preparation as with any intrinsic reality i may, or may not have stumbled upon. For example the ‘field day’ of synchronicity i’ve tried to delineate herein under the guise of a general inquiry about roots, is little more than more hacking toward the ‘source’ much like the just, dug-up stump i used as an excuse within which to inter-be the tiny sangha in which i am convalescing while postponed grief washes over my decrepit, though once fit frame. And just like cleaning up shit, or preparing for any unexpected event, the 2nd time is always easier to recreate than the 1st. I learned that fact by losing weeks of work with a single keystroke, or watching a nose or chiseled finger fall to the ground with a single misplaced stroke, ergo the useful homily about picking oneself up rather that remaining crumpled from the fall.  

And still the reader may be asking, “what does this solipsistic diatribe have to do with ‘roots’¿  Filtering through the detritus, while attempting to develop cogent thinking to contribute to the commonweal without pontificating, rather enflaming the mental faculties of so many on “a iEye” autopilot - so much so they be unawares, i’m also approaching 40 hours without a meal; which is not to say without nutrition, for chocolate, coffee and the grain i drank to fool the lactobacillus supplement prescribed by the doctor was more than a continued battle with the blastocyst hominis infestation which while allegedly non-pathogenic has been described elsewhere as ‘mysterious’. The fact is this confluence of events: moving; aging; digging up roots; dying family; assimilation; breaking teeth; health; creativity; civic activism; maturation are all part of a larger continuum which cannot be fathomed only imagined. Whether it is a growing entity or adheres to biological fundamentals - who can say¿ I am blessed having been raised by parents possessing abundant curiosity which for the longest time i ignored as beneath my enlightened achievements, or veered from lacking the simple self-respect necessary to honor one’s own reasons. Today i must ascertain whether the dentist postponed my request for a consultation two days ago when the tooth broke, so as to infect the root and thereby gain additional revenue from a root canal which is in keeping with the allopathic health model of “care” as a revenue stream. Twisted thinking at best, but as Jung postulated: “A tree’s roots much reach down to hell if its branch hope to reach heaven.” - paraphrasing to be sure, yet the ominist thread of his archetypal conception is mirrored by Pema Chodron - “Only when we know our own darkness well can we be present with the darkness of others . Compassion becomes real when we recognize our shared humanity.’ 

Again, back to the essence of this effort, Roots, as our ostensible leaders rearrange the Titanic’s deckchairs, and BINGO¡ i believe i’m beginning to understand better how my own malaise has sucked the wind from my existential sails. At least when you’re in Ted Kosinski-land sp¿, and are clinging to the carefully ‘emulated’ fame-fiction posted by publicity farm teams; one is relentlessly pursuing the only escape available to the creatives of end-stage capitalism, the PAYOFF. Yet that nagging existential question, like some twisted “Tell-Tale Heart” harkening the impending conclusion to our shared delusion .  .. raison d’être raison d’être raison d’être ..  . The nihilists populating the ‘Rapture Sect’ of the billionaire class are fond of displacing their unaddressed developmental angst/inescapable cognitive dissonance for an unquenchable gluttony in the form of financial hoarding without foundation. For myself there is proof in the pudding which i inevitably discover echoing Dorothy Parker’s sage observation “I hate writing, but I love having written.” Regardless of the outcome of whether my tooth gets yanked from the perfidy of a closet bigot covertly excavating a living by destroying the aging root pulp of a foreigner, or the sonnet to follow this essay yields a moment’s respite to one’s mind seeking surcease from the relentless manipulations of a post-capitalist algorithm’s inevitable starvation from a lack of curiosity, matters not; i’ve done my best to reflect some small light in my corner of a dimming world searching for .  ..   . . . _________________fill in the blank ∞

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rootless - a sonnet

 X  /   X  /   X   /   X  /   X     / 

Rootless is not available to our kind;

though rhizome has been used to describe us

it’d be fun to find the plant with that mind;

more on point to chat with such’d be a plus

yet tumbleweeds all flee this distinction

taking with them their knowledge of 'rootless'

Is that volition, or great imagination¿

i don’t want an answer, if it’s baseless.

Al-Qaeda claimed itself a base; and not

its model being dissolute, or amorphous. 

A hydra’s similar - a polyglot

like the plant that could spout its own genus

Is that what it means to have roots - a home?

or are we more like Jung’s ‘smear - a rhizome¿ 

(˚ ㄥ _˚)                    

jts 11 August 2o25

http://ExtinctionChronicles.blogspot.com 

http://JosephTStevens.blogspot.com 

http://stoanartst.blogspot.com

prohibited from AI sampling in any form

reprinted with permission; all rights reserved

∞