I sat in ma’s dining room after she had been taken to have a basil carcinoma excised from her cheek; anxious for her comfort and unwelcome to her side by the eldest sibling and his anxiety, which my fantasy tells me is his need for me to be guilty so he can justify his rancor. I am not innocent - he has cause, as is the case with all estrangement - a condition requiring active participation from all involved. My complex demands constant mindfulness if i am to extricate myself from a destructive family pattern where no one is served - especially not our mother. He 'ghosted' me, after escorting her to and from her procedure. Her overflowing pill dispenser ever populated with another expensive medication the medical industry uses to keep the dying from death. 'The crux of that biscuit' being her anti-anxiety fix which she began and ended each day, and the only medication she'd plunder at will when the need for rest was too great; historical self-discipline informed her what dosage was needed to rest. Pop had a slightly more spartan approach to discipline. He rarely resorted to corporal punishment to enforce his existential notions, I remember one occasion when quite young when his response to my claim of having vacuumed my room was to place his hand over mine on the vacuum handle and vigorously maneuver to every corner under my desk, then the entire room. Later in life I was to learn this direct method of instruction had been a long standing practice of the very practical Balinese tradition. What I took away from his intense focus was a deep appreciation for anything related to cutting corners - a now defunct antiquated value pertaining to thoroughness and pride in one’s work which the ruling class has upended with shoddy product - the only plausible outcome of today’s anarchistic capitalist monopoly.
I write about discipline out of great respect for those values imparted to me by my father which allows me to now sit in Montevideo, Uruguay persisting in an activity greater than my own comfort - writing. Dorthy Parker — “I hate writing, but love having written.” While in California, I watched some Television and was amazed by the amount of content compared to when I was young, yet, like the products for sale as a result of today’s mass production - volume does not translate to higher quality. If anything the bloodless nature of capitalism has resulted in its singular most pertinent innovation - “planned obsolescence”. For the uninitiated, this expression acknowledges that those responsible for taking your money and providing you product deliberately create defects in their products that force you then to replace those products in a predictable pattern. It is for this reason the computer you upgraded to requires replacement. “Tech experts generally agree a computer should last anywhere between three to five years before needing to be replaced” — Matt Koble. While some may exhort the discipline applied by this twisted ethos is what “builds” the economy by expanding the consumer base; i say bullshit. It is a lack of discipline that has subverted the exchange of value between the consumer and his/her erstwhile providers. The greed of our corporate overlords is the antipathy of discipline and now manifests as the greatest seizure of assets in the past 200 years - a demonstrated lack of restraint. If anything it is the patience, even the survival of humanity which is being put to the test. Fracking is poisoning the water table, throwing dice with the proliferation of genetically modified seed stock is enhancing the capacity of our nutritional products to transport the corporate poison Glyphosate into our planet’s life cycle. 8% of fossil fuel continues to be diverted into the production of “new” plastic when by 2050 it is expected there will be more plastic in the oceans than there are fish. These defects in the much lauded form of provisioning our species - capitalism - is not from discipline, but from unbridled greed.
I understand greed, mostly in a fashion similar to how Leonard Cohen sings of in “We were locked in this kitchen, I took to religion, And I wondered how long she would stay, I needed so much To have nothing to touch, I’ve always been greedy that way.” Somehow the intangible is what my interior hungers for - to make a cogent thought understandable in written form, or the turn of a lady’s cheek expressive as a creative facsimile. Even my vices are of a more impermanent nature, not for any alteration of inherent awareness. but as something of a prod to shake off corrosive socialization that numbs natural freedom for which our consciousness is capable. It has confused me from the time I first learned of Dionysius, and his offspring Bacchus how large parts of our history are full with elixirs and substance whose sole purpose is to jolt the unexamined presumption of normal anything. Einstein had said “There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” It is my belief that Dr. Einstein was not describing any state of bliss to which zealots of all stripes aspire - be it “70 virgins”, “Rapture” or even “Nirvana,” rather those miracles he described are, or are not found from a close study of our world. This activity requires a strict discipline, for we are asked on a daily basis to aver our sight from scabrous aspects of current existence, contrary to any happy depiction of commodities guaranteed to satisfy a hunger never present at birth and which has only become insatiable from relentless exposure to a false insinuation that whatever you possess is inadequate, be it peace, product or appearance.
Lao Tzu — “Be content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you.” I have read this kindness repeatedly for nearly 50 years, and still find it difficult to fathom. For example, how does one reconcile this concept with violence, hatred, cruelty, greed oppression, etc. . . .? Is is not natural to resist all that is not in service of the greater good? Yet I am finding from actively opposing ills of our world as best I could understand at the time, few if anyone has ever welcomed or wished to consider alternatives. It is a growing conviction of mine that any effort to persuade, dissuade or convince another of anything is futile, yet to keep my mouth shut in the face of obvious stupidity, especially willful stupidity, requires every ounce of discipline i’ve ever gained. There is hope, i pray for the survival of our kind because we have worth. We are not the pale echo of ourselves shown in the ever present self-serving advertisement; there are heroes who daily exert themselves unselfishly loving, and learning to love, the impossible - that hideous grotesque caricature of our once beatific existence. The most powerful affect ever known to our kind is love, nothing of any comparable force has ever accomplished as much, especially not hate. Yet where hate is so easily accessible for a variety of reasons, not the least of which would be the fear which our leaders foist on us in supporting the delusion that sells mechanized death as anything but more death; love has illuminated the fact that peace is our inherent nature, compassion our most noble instinct and happiness our highest aspiration. Nor do i feel compelled to persuade anyone of this truth; it is enough for me to feel it; i’d be lying through my teeth to suggest to you, i’ve arrived at this conclusion through anything but assiduous discipline - regardless of any dictionary definition.
It has been the absence of will which has brought me closer to my objectives than any delusional belief that discipline is best understood by an act of willfulness. If anything, forcing that which is not into existence has resulted in defeat after defeat, while patiently waiting to see what unfolds of its own volition has always yielded the deepest love, the finest expression and the clearest images. Carl Jung has stated “Where love rules there is no will to power, where power rules, there love is lacking. The one is a the shadow of the other,” or put differently by Jimi Hendrix - “When the power of love overcomes the love of power - the world will know peace.” Google (the god of all meaning} defines discipline as “the practice of training people to obey rules or a code of behavior, using punishment to correct disobedience,” yet behavioral science is unequivocal that intermittent positive reinforcement is far and away the more successful method for behavior modification. That the practice of wearing a hair shirt for “mortification of the flesh” has been part of Western tradition is no coincidence, we have been, and are being, punished by unscrupulous spiritual leaders based on their ignorance, not ours. We continue to retrieve baby ducks from sewer drains and exalt the miraculous accomplishments of the limbless amongst us; it is our nature to act with compassion which TAFKAP (may he r . i . p .) so sagely observed as verb, not the adjective which the clerics have subverted into the same language used to murder with effectiveness such that those earning from our slaughter are the sole beneficiaries of humanity’s patience. My objective is to transform that which is intolerable in my existence into a recognizable form that may help others to not feel alone; this ambition comes from a discipline learned within the bosom of my family; i am grateful. Dr. M.L. King Jr. - a scholar warrior of fore observed, “Those who love peace must learn to organize as effectively as those who love war.” I am incapable of altering my family or its concept of me, yet freedom and “on-the-hand-guidance” from loving parts of that same family sustain and encouraged me to learn ways to organize for peace, regardless of any limits my upbringing may have presented. Are we any different than that rhizome which Carl Jung used to describe us the family of [wo]men?
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'going down the road' - the sonnet
“going down the road” pop often replied
after a broken hip laid him down hard;
his irony survived, for he had died
with well chosen words like any good bard.
I wonder if he found life is a dead end,
or the road we travel is interstellar?
I will not know until i reach that bend,
or g_d answers the question i’d asked her:
“if i live well and peer into the void
with love in my heart; kindness in my soul
and resist all calls to become android,
may i pass beyond with peace as my goal?”
i’m in no hurry to get where i go
to learn what it is no human can know.
jts 20/8/2016
http://JosephTStevens.blogspot.com
http://stoanartst.blogspot.com
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